From Goose to ASML: A Tech‑Heavy Podcast Recap and What to Expect in 2026

Name: 673: Six Impossible Things
Uploaded: 2026-01-09T09:02:21.388599+00:00
Channel: Accidental Tech Podcast
Description: Summary and key takeaways on From Goose to ASML: A Tech‑Heavy Podcast Recap and What to Expect in 2026, covering Music Pre‑Show Debate Marco and his friend
Accidental Tech Podcast
Jan 09, 2026
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5 min read
YouTube video ID: zGwsyqMoiho
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Music Pre‑Show Debate

Marco and his friend Tyler discuss whether the band Goose should replace Fish as the pre‑show music for live streams.
Marco explains he plays both because he has large libraries of each and notes that the Fish organization likely won’t object to a seven‑minute live recording, while the Goose organization’s stance is unknown.
The answer is deemed "astonishingly reasonable" and a call is made for anyone involved with Goose to reach out.
App Ideas and Jam‑Band Playback

Marco envisions a "Jam Band" playback app that would organize live recordings from Fish and Goose better than Apple Music.
He doubts a public release because the audience (people who buy $10‑$15 live recordings) is tiny.
John suggests a larger audience might exist, but Marco notes that only the bands or major platforms have the catalog rights needed for a useful app.
ATP Patrons Appreciation

A yearly thank‑you segment for ATP patrons (members who pay above the listed price for extra support).
Patrons receive a badge but no additional perks; the hosts express a wish for more tangible rewards.
Cord‑Cutting Segment

Upcoming Downstream episode with Jason Snell will cover cord‑cutting tools.
suppose.tv is highlighted as a service that matches a user’s channel needs to the cheapest streaming bundle (U.S.‑focused).
iOS Contacts Multi‑Select

Simon Lungberg shares a hidden two‑finger swipe gesture that enables multi‑select and drag‑drop of contacts in iOS 26.
The method works but is less intuitive than on macOS.
Studio Display Pricing Confusion

Initial claim of a $1,200 Studio Display price is corrected to $1,600 (plus optional stand).
An alternative cheap 5K solution: repurposing a 27‑inch iMac as a monitor for under $300.
Display Flickering & Temporal Dithering

Users report flickering on M‑series Macs with certain monitors.
Temporal dithering (rapidly alternating colors to achieve intermediate tones) can cause the issue.
Utilities still‑color and better‑display can disable temporal dithering, though this may affect color accuracy.
PlayStation Portal Streaming

The Portal can stream games from a local PS5 or via PlayStation Plus Premium (cloud).
Minimum bandwidth: 5 Mbps to start, 7 Mbps for 720p, 13 Mbps for 1080p.
Lack of Wi‑Fi 6/7 and requirement for wired or branded Bluetooth headphones limit casual use.
macOS Window Management

Double‑clicking the title bar can be set to “fill” (maximise without entering full‑screen) via System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Title Bar → Double‑Click Action.
Wi‑Fi 7, MLO, and Eero Experience

Early adopters report mixed results with Wi‑Fi 7: slower speeds than expected, WPA3 compatibility headaches, and limited device support.
Multi‑Link Operation (MLO) on Eero Max 7 improves speed/latency but forces a network reboot and enables WPA3.
After extensive testing, the host settles on a three‑node Eero setup (gateway in the basement, hallway node, second‑floor node) and removes a bedroom node that caused interference, achieving >400 Mbps throughout the house.
Apple Fitness Plus Updates

Apple’s annual “Quitter’s Day” analysis shows ~80 % of users who keep up their New‑Year exercise levels stay active through February/March.
New 4‑week programs (comeback, yoga habit, back‑to‑back strength + HIIT) launch in January 2026, adding structured workout plans to the previously a‑la‑carte catalog.
Sponsor Spotlights

Guru: AI‑powered knowledge base for enterprises.
Factor: Ready‑to‑eat meals with a 50 % discount for ATP listeners.
MasterClass: Online courses with up to 50 % off via masterclass.com/ATP.
Thread vs. Matter (Smart‑Home Protocols)

Matter: Application‑layer control protocol (IPv6‑based) that allows multiple controllers (Home Assistant, Apple Home) to manage devices simultaneously.
Thread: Low‑power mesh radio network for device‑to‑device communication, similar to Zigbee but IP‑addressable.
Border routers (e.g., HomePod, Apple TV) bridge Thread to Wi‑Fi/Ethernet.
ASML and TSMC Deep Dive

ASML (Netherlands) builds the only EUV lithography machines (~$400 M each) needed to print the smallest chip features.
TSMC purchases these machines to fabricate the world’s most advanced chips.
The video analogy: adjusting a mirror on an ASML machine moves a stick on the Moon by the width of a dime—illustrating picoradian precision.
The industry’s reliance on a single lithography supplier (ASML) and a single fab (TSMC) is highlighted as a geopolitical risk.
Apple 27‑OS, Liquid Glass, and AI

Apple’s 27‑OS redesign is expected to tweak, not overhaul, the controversial “Liquid Glass” UI (blurred bars, background reflections).
Users hope Apple will address blurs and wasted space before a major redesign.
Apple Intelligence (LLM‑powered Siri) is anticipated to ship modest improvements in 2026, though it likely won’t rival OpenAI or Google Gemini.
Future Tech Outlook for 2026 (Host Predictions)

Foldable iPhone – rumored form‑factor could change UI design; developers may need the device for testing.
M5 Ultra – next‑gen Apple silicon; hopes for a true Ultra chip rather than two Max dies stitched together.
OLED MacBook Pros – possible 2026 launch; excitement over screen technology choices.
New Apple monitors – successor to Studio Display/XDR could return Apple to the monitor market.
LLM‑powered Siri – incremental AI upgrades expected with Apple Intelligence.
Travel Router Review (Ubiquiti “Trrow”)

Small, card‑sized router with dual USB‑C, dual Ethernet ports, and a tiny status screen.
Provides Wi‑Fi rebroadcast and can use Ubiquiti’s Teleport (zero‑config VPN) to bridge a remote network back to the home LAN.
Initial setup issues: repeated “Trust this computer” prompts, confusing UI flow, DNS leaks when Teleport is enabled.
Troubleshooting steps discovered:
Ensure DHCP clients use the correct DNS (avoid Pi‑Hole DNS when Teleport is on).
Adjust subnet masks (e.g., change Raspberry Pi from 255.255.0.0 to 255.255.255.0).
Remove stray Docker networks on a Synology that were capturing traffic.
After fixing DNS and Docker network, the router worked flawlessly for hotel, beach‑house, and car‑travel scenarios.
Closing Remarks

The hosts thank listeners, remind them of the ATP membership benefits, and tease an “overtime” segment on foldable iPhone rumors.
They encourage following the show on Mastodon and note that the episode was largely accidental.
The episode weaves together niche tech debates, practical hardware tips, and big‑picture industry analysis—showing that whether you’re curating pre‑show playlists, troubleshooting a travel router, or speculating on Apple’s next silicon, the conversation equips listeners with enough detail to stay informed without watching the original recording.
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Full Transcript YouTube

All right. Uh, Marco, I have a question
for you. Uh, this is actually this was
posed to me in justest by my friend, our
friend, uh, Tyler, who went to Goose
with us. And we were talking about
Goose, uh, because that's a lot of what
I do these days with anyone who will
listen. And Tyler asked, "At what point
does Goose replace or at the very least
augment Fish as the pre-show music for
live listeners of the show?" And I would
like to know the answer, please. I don't
know if it ever will unless So here's
>> I had I had thought not.
>> The reason why one of the reasons I play
fish before the on the live stream
before the show is that I just have a
ton of it. Now I also have a ton of
goose. So that that that is an equal,
you know, equal push there. Um, the the
biggest difference is over the years I
have occasionally
emailed somebody or had a conversation
with somebody who's like vaguely
involved in the fish organization here
or there. And I've gotten the impression
that this kind of stuff they really
don't care about. So like we're not
going to get in trouble playing seven
minutes of a live fish recording that I
bought on our live stream before we go
live to a few people. Like it's not I
don't think anybody in the fish
organization would have a problem with
that. I don't know the goose
organization. I don't like I I don't
really have an idea yet of whether they
would have a problem with us doing that.
And it's not worth going through the
like official channels of like music
licensing for, you know, because it's
like like the tracks I'm playing aren't
even in those channels. Like I'm just
I'm playing like purchase live
recordings from like Live Fish. So like
there's like so it it kind of avoids
that entire system um which avoids
headaches.
>> That's an astonishingly and
frustratingly reasonable answer to be
completely honest, but I appreciate it
nevertheless. That that that is actually
fascinating. Uh so yeah, if you're
involved in the Goose organization, then
uh you should let us know
>> for lots of reasons. I would love to
know people involved in Goose like that
cuz I I have a feeling I'm going to be a
fan of this band for a very long time.
Uh, and you know, probably if they stay
together for the rest of my life,
probably the rest of my life. Uh, so I
would love to to get to know anybody
there who might, you know, who I'm who
might be able to work together in some
capacity or just or just, you know, hey,
I'd love to buy you a coffee if you're
ever in New York, like anything like
that.
>> How would you how would you work
together with fish in some capacity?
What capacity? In what capacity would
you work with fish? Please enlighten me
about your uh speculation. Well, if I
ever make my jams app, so that's that's
the my tenative name for the app that I
would make that is the Jam Band spec the
Jam Band specific music playback app.
Um, that would have, you know, features
in it that
>> would that like, you know, listening to
my Live Fish and Goose recordings in
just the Apple Music app. It works, but
there are like organizational and
experiential features that I would much
rather like I'd much rather it work a
little bit differently in some of those
areas or have certain features that
Apple will never get around to adding.
It would never make sense for them. Um,
and if you if I made an app specifically
for listening to these Jam Band
recordings, like I have a few good ideas
around how I would do that. Um, but it
would never make sense for me first of
all really to even make that app. If I
did make that app, it would never make
sense for me to try to release it to the
public because the audience would be
very, very, very small. How many people
have bought, you know, thousands of
dollars worth of live recordings off of
either, you know, Goose's Band Camp page
or Live Fish? Like, I've literally like
every I buy every show for both bands.
They're like $10 to $15 each and they
play like, you know, 30 shows a year or
whatever. No one else does this as far
like you know the the number of people
who buy all those tracks is probably
very small. And so if I'm going to make
an app that requires those tracks to
play to be useful, what's that audience
size really like? And how many people
would have so many of those tracks that
it would be worth having a special app
to help you catalog them and listen to
them better or whatever?
>> Uh I I take your point. I take your
point, but I think there's more of an
audience there than you would expect.
And I would also argue that if you did a
good music playback app that takes into
account like this version is good
because of this thing or you know so and
so had a really good run during during
this version you know.
>> Sorry Margot doesn't do apps with user
generated content. Oh, no. I'm I'm even
fair. But I was talking about even my
own internal notes, you know, like, oh,
I really like this version because
something like
>> Yeah. internal because like I have a
whole system in iTunes/Music of like how
I how I rate my fish concerts and goose
concerts. How I like I have certain
playlists that are like my favorite
tracks like from each band, you know? I
I have like a procedure that I go
through when I have a new show I haven't
heard yet so I don't get spoiled. Like
it's a whole thing. I would love to make
an app to help with this, but if anyone
else would use it besides me to make
that app good, you would need access to
the catalog. So really, the only people
who can make that app good are either
the big music platforms, which won't
ever make an app that's good for that
because the genre is too small. And
also, they don't even have access to all
the recordings because the bands don't
upload them to them. The other source of
that that kind of music would be the
bands themselves or a service they use
something like you know livefish
nugs.net or in goose's case band camp.
So all of those people can could make a
good app and live fish has an app. It's
not good. I would love to make an app
that would specialize in this but it
would really require the band's
cooperation to make it releasable to the
public because it would need access to
the band's catalog and and however
that's monetized I don't care. So, I
would I would have to work with them to
really make that the app I would want it
to be.
>> I don't know. I I hear you and I do
largely agree with you, but I think
there's more of an audience and more
ability for you to do this without band
buyin than you would expect. But is that
enough to take away from Overcast and
ATP and whatever else? Probably not.
>> God, no. I mean,
>> exactly. I mean ultimately like if I
look at like you know the just the
dollars and cents
>> I shouldn't really do anything except
overcast um and ATP like the like those
these two these two parts of my work
life make the vast majority of the
income
>> it doesn't make sense don't worry I'm
not leaving the show it doesn't make
sense for me to ever leave this show or
to ever give up Overcast like unless
some truck money backs up but I don't I
don't see that happening. Um, so those
two are are in my life. And so the
question is if I added anything else to
my life, uh, like we talked about in a
recent member special, like how would
that look? I don't know. It depends. The
one of the biggest things is like it
depends like how much would it need from
me, you know? Am I am I doing something
that has no server component that helps?
Am I doing something that is like
building on a part of iOS or whatever
platform that changes a lot or that
people expect a lot of? Well, uh, that
depends on the app. I know from
Overcast, if I'm making an audio playing
app, that goes a lot of places like that
that that goes all over the system and
all over people's lives, and people
expect a lot from that. Uh, so that that
is actually a pretty high needs app. Uh,
so anyway, it'll probably never happen,
but if Overcast went away, by whatever
means that would happen, I have two app
ideas I want to work on, and that's one
of them. Uh, but we'll see if that ever
actually happens. We should uh you I I
somebody needs to buy Overcast so you
have the availability to work on this
and you and I can do it together because
surely that won't strain our friendship
whatsoever. You and I working on this
bickering about Dave Matthews and Fish
and whatever else.
>> The problem with that setup would be
unless we also involved John we first of
all the show would become quite awkward
but second of all if it was just me and
you and not John we would never work.
>> That's true. That is very true. We would
just like, you know, play around like,
you know, we we'd like, "Oh, check out
this clip. Oh my god, did you hear this
performance of this?" And, you know,
hey, you want a beer? Yeah. And then
like we would just we would never get
anything done. Like you and I don't I
don't think we are like high
motivational working people. I think we
we need external people to like be a
little bit of a boost. And I think John
would be that person. Like I I I have
occasionally wondered like what would it
be like for the three of us to make an
app together? And I think we see with
like our CMS,
we see how that would be, which is
>> please don't use that as an example of
anything
with the CMS. Like, you know, I wrote it
at first. John took it over and does
everything better. Like just everything.
And now I don't even touch it. Earlier
in the week, there was a bug that was
sending me a couple of crash logs in my
email. And I went to Slack to be like,
"Oh, hey, I I do you want me to fix
this?" And John's like, "I already did."
like and sure enough like he'd already
fixed a bug in my framework and already
like you know committed documented
everything like
so anyway uh I do wonder sometimes what
that would be like but I think we I
think we already know what that would be
like.
>> Yeah. Well, what we need is we need you
and me to develop and John will be our
certified scrum master.
>> Definitely not that.
>> John would fire both of us in a
heartbeat
>> in Indeed. You're both starting on a
pip.
>> If you're not familiar, uh performance
improvement plan. This is basically like
the first step in firing a person.
>> That's day one. That's you just start
that way. Keeps you on your toes.
>> Once a year, I like to give a special
thanks to our ATP patrons. Every
episode, we give thanks to our members.
Say thanks to our members who support
the show directly. Yada yada. That's
what Marco says in his little end thing.
And we do. We love all our members. They
make the show possible. We love you. We
thank you very much. We thank you every
single week. But when do the patrons get
thanked? They get thanked once a year,
usually in early January. So, here we
are. What is an ATP patron? ATP patron
is someone who's a member who pays for
the show to get the member version of
the show with the bootleg and the no ads
and the member specials. Like, they're a
member, but they pay more than the
listed price for membership. Why do they
do that? Why would you why would you pay
more than the thing costs? Well, I have
a fact item for that. If you want to
learn about ATP patrons, you can go to
atp.fm/patron
and learn how you can do that. There's a
tiny number of people who do this.
There's not a lot. Why did we implement
this? Because people asked us to. And so
we did. We implemented it and the
patrons came and they pay us more than
the listed price for ATP membership
because they love the show that much or
because they have that much disposable
income or both. And so I just want to
thank them because we don't have
anything else for them. They get a badge
on their member page. It says patron,
right? But other than that, we don't
have anything for them. The whole thing
is like they're paying extra and they're
not getting anything extra. They're
giving extra and they're getting the
same thing as all the other members. I
wish there was something we could give
them. We haven't thought of anything
good yet. But what they get for now is
once a year I like to thank them. Again,
I could read all their names, but that
would be a privacy violation. There's
not a lot of them, but I just want to
say you're out there. You're an ATP
patron. You did that thing where you pay
extra money voluntarily. I want to say
that we see you. We noticed you. We
thank you. Thank you ATP patrons. If you
want to become a patron, even if you're
already a member or if you're not a
member, ATP.fm/patron will explain how
to do it. That's it. Thanks.
>> Yep. Thank you so much patrons. We
appreciate you. All right. Uh some quick
followup with regard to cutting the
cord. Uh as I'm sitting here now, I have
not yet recorded, but by the time you
hear this, I will have recorded uh an
episode of Downstream with Jason Snell
uh where we're going to talk about cord
cutting and kind of what the state of
the world is. And one of the things that
we plan on talking about or that we have
talked about, I don't know what is time
in this particular segment, but anyway,
uh, one of the things that's being
talked about is suppose.tv, which I'd
never heard of, but Jason pointed to me
or pointed me to it. English. How does
it work? And, uh, what this lets you do
is it lets you pick out like, oh, I
really need HBO. I really need CBS. I
really need ABC. I really need Travel
Channel. And based on your particular
needs, it will suggest what streaming
service you should get. like what is
cheapest and what is the best fit and so
on and so forth. Uh I presume this is
just for America. I honestly don't know,
but uh it's worth checking out if you
are American and are looking to cut the
cord. So uh I will put a link to me on
downstream in the show notes. It will
404 until the episode is up and then it
will not 404. So uh check that out if
you're interested and check out
suppose.tv if you're looking to cut the
cord. All right. With regard to adding
contacts to a list one at a time in iOS,
we were lamenting how long that would
take. Simon Lungberg writes, "The iOS 26
contacts app does indeed support multis
select using the two-finger swipe
gesture. Selecting spread apart items
works by doing another two-finger swipe
at another place in the list. You can
then initiate a drag by holding and
dragging on one of the selected items.
Tap the back button and drop the
contacts in your list in the list of
your choosing. Is it intuitive? No. Is
it better than painstakingly moving one
at a time?" Marginally. But does it
work? Yes. And so Simon was not the only
person to write this in. A lot of people
wrote in about this, but Simon was the
one that best described it. So, thank
you.
>> And there was also a second method to do
it, which I thought I had saved, but I
had not. But suffice it to say that
multi select does work on iOS. It's just
not as obvious or as easy, I would say,
as physically easy as it is on the Mac,
but it's it's there and it works.
>> Uh, give me some context on this next
piece, John. Did one of us say that the
studio display
>> I did. I kept I was complaining about
the state of displays and I kept saying
like you could do X or you could get
this stupid studio display for $1,200.
And I believe I said it twice. So, I
have been corrected.
>> All right. So, Greg CA writes that the
studio display is $1,600, not $1,200. I
might have bought one at $1,200.
Instead, I converted my 27in iMac into
into a display for less than $300, which
I've seen videos about this. In fact, I
think Quinn did a video on this, which
I'll probably forget to put in the show
notes. But, um, it it is very involved,
far beyond what I feel comfortable
doing. But, man, if you want a nice 5K
display on the cheap, that's the way to
do it.
>> Yeah. I think I just keep blocking out
the studio display at $1,600. I'm like,
is it $1,200? Then you add like a couple
hundred for the adjustable stand. No,
it's $1,600, I believe, with the
non-adjustable stand and then you add
more. It's it's it's ridic I know it's
on sale sometimes, so maybe that's why I
was confused, but just FYI, 1,600, not
1,200.
>> Yeah. And uh we definitely do not have
links do not have links for the show
notes, but for what it's worth, uh David
Shaw in the chat has reminded me that
there are a bunch of new monitors that
have been announced over the last couple
days at CES, and some of them are 5K,
some of them are 6K. I I have no
judgments on these. I I barely know what
any of them are about, but it is worth
looking into spec, you know, especially
once these are actually available for
sale. There might be some new 5K or 6K
options that might fit your needs.
>> You might hear about them later on in
this show or on a future show.
>> All right, excellent. I love it. Uh,
with regard to other displays and
flickering, or I guess some of the same
display and display flickering, uh,
Steven Perilson writes, "There have been
issues with display support on M series
Max since November 2020 with Big Su. my
M1 Mac Mini on a generic Dell monitor
would flicker under certain conditions.
I eventually found this forum thread,
which we'll link in the show notes. In
there, I discovered a utility to to
disable temporal dithering, which solved
the issue for me. So, John, what is
temporal dithering anyway?
>> I didn't actually look this up, but I'm
assuming it's the uh the display. It's
kind of like what plasma displays would
do. If you ever see a slow-mo of a
plasma TV, uh it shows a certain set of
colored pixels and then shows another
set and then another set of colored
pixels and they combine to form the
final image. And I'm assuming they're
doing that to uh achieve colors tempor
temporarily means within time, you know,
like you're showing one thing then
another thing then another thing and the
combination of them smooshed together by
your brain makes the final color. And I
guess that is maybe the only way they
can make certain colors. Um yeah.
>> Did you really not know that? Because
you pretty much nailed it. I'm a little
annoyed.
>> I I I vaguely know what temporal
dithering. That's my attempt at a
definition. If I was close, then I got
lucky. This is the reality of being
friends with John is that like you think
like you think he won't know something
and he frustratingly usually knows it
already.
>> It's about monitor stuff. Like I do
watch a lot of videos about this, but I
mean you it's one of those things. It's
like test taking skills. It's like well
I know what dithering it is and I know
what the word temporal means. Anyway, go
on.
>> All right. So yes, in short it's let's
put two different colors on the screen
and flash them back and forth fast
enough that your brain kind of gets
receives the middle of the two colors
just like John said. Uh anyway,
continuing from Steven in there, I
discovered a utility to disable temporal
dithering, which solved the issue for
me. We'll link it in the show notes.
It's called still color. Uh also, better
display is another one that will turn
off GPU dithering. Steven continues, I
suspect and hope that this is the same
issue causing flickering with Apple
Studio displays. I've waited 5 years for
this problem to get media attention, and
it would be nice if Apple could improve
their display support. I don't know if
it is the same problem. I think this
might be a separate problem, but there's
I think there's enough display problems
to go around for everybody. But it's
good to know that if you're if you have
this temporal dithering issue or if
you're sensitive to it, there are
utilities that you can disable it. I do
wonder if disabling it would then like
reduce the color accuracy or color gamut
of your monitor, but you know, pick your
poison.
>> Yep. It's only $1,600. What do you
expect?
>> Right. All right. Then many, many people
wrote in to tell us that the PlayStation
Portal, which is a little handheld
screen and controller that you were
talking about last episode, can also
stream games with a PlayStation Plus
premium membership. So if jump in when
you're ready, John, but my understanding
is you were using it strictly to stream
games from within the home. Uh the call
is coming with from within inside the
house, etc., etc., but you could stream
games from the cloud. Is that what this
is about?
>> Yeah, I don't I don't have one of these.
What I was saying, what I said about it
was that it connects up to your
PlayStation that's in the house. And
they said, well, you can actually use it
without a PlayStation. It will stream
from the internet, which in my opinion
would be even worse because obviously
the latency streaming from a console
that's like two rooms over is going to
be worse than streaming from a data
center many miles from your house.
>> Sure. Uh, so apparently the official
ruling on the PlayStation Plus premium
membership PlayStation Portal
combination for streaming games, 5
megabits per second minimum to establish
a session at all, 7 megabits per second
minimum to stream at 720 and 13 megabits
per second for 1080. Matt Ripto writes,
"The PlayStation Portal is truly great.
John, you need pick to pick one of these
up ASAP." We saw a lot of people echoing
that sentiment. Jared Counts writes, "I
frequently tried to play a PS5 game with
the via the remote play app on my iPad
with a PS5 controller wired to the iPad,
and it works great until it doesn't. I
have an old Eero Pro in the living room
that the PS5 is wired to and a beacon in
our bedroom, and the connection will be
good for a while, but will randomly
degrade. Not great when you're in the
middle of a boss battle in a game that
has timing based pairing, Expedition 33,
or is purely rhythm based, like Hi-Fi
Rush." Christopher Masto writes, "The
PlayStation Portal doesn't even have
Wi-Fi 6, which is kind of sad.
>> It's got Wi-Fi 7. We were talking about
would Wi-Fi 7 help the place help the
PlayStation Portal? It doesn't even have
six."
>> Blake writes, "Keep in mind, the Portal
requires wired headphones or PlayStation
branded uh Bluetooth headphones. This
makes casual use in bed pretty annoying,
and I haven't found good uh haven't
found a good Bluetooth workaround that
doesn't get in the way."
>> That's good to know because I would be
like, "Well, of course, I can just use
AirPods in blue Bluetooth mode with
them, can't I?" And it seems like no.
>> Yeah, say at times. Uh, with regard to
the ask ATP about window minimization in
Mac OS, Churrog Desai writes, I have set
double tap on the title bar to fill
which maximizes a window the way Marco
wants. And there's a knowledgebased
article that we will link. You go into
system settings, desktop and doc window,
title bar, double click action fill. And
the description from Apple is expand a
window to fill the space between the
menu bar and the dock. If the dock is
along the side of the screen, the window
fills the entire space below the menu
bar and to the side of the dock.
>> Yeah, I forgot. Lots of people wrote in
with a double tap uh shortcut, which I
didn't mention because we were talking
specifically about the green button, but
if I had had mentioned, I would have
been like, "Oh, and you can double click
the title bar, too, to do the green
button does, but you actually can
configure what double tap does to not
make it do the same thing as the green
button." And one of the options is this
fill option, which is what Marco was
talking about. Make the window really
big, but don't enter Mac OS's full
screen mode where it chops off the title
bar and stuff. And then we have a lot of
feedback with regard to Wi-Fi 7. We'll
start with Reed, who writes, "I've
upgraded Ubiquiti APs through the last
few revisions. I cannot recommend
wasting any effort on Wi-Fi 7 at this
point. It's been a rocky road with
iPhone and Ubiquiti bugs for at least
the first 6 months, and even now, I
think it's worse than just using Wi-Fi
6. You're forced into WPA3, which means
some devices aren't compatible, and you
need to type in your password again on
every single device. As a result, I've
run a separate SSID for my seven devices
that support Wi-Fi 7. I've occasionally
managed to break 1 Gbit per second, but
honestly, I typically see around 400 to
600 megabits per second, which is really
no better than I saw with my old
Enterprise 6 APs. Anyway, USB type
Steve, great name, writes, I remember I
remember trying to switch to WPA3 back
in 2018 or 19 and kicking half my
devices off the network as a result.
That was the day I learned that very few
of Nintendo's devices are WPA3
compatible. Patch writes, "Instead of
MLO, better speed gains can be had on
Wi-Fi 7 by using band steering to push
more capable devices to the 6 GHz band
and then setting that band as wide as
possible for your environment. I
currently live in an apartment building
where everyone else is using old ISP
provided routers. So, I'm the only one
in the area currently broadcasting a 6
GHz band. That means I can set it super
wide. I can almost saturate my internet
connection from my iPhone over Wi-Fi.
>> That's that's key. Like, I don't think
it was cuz I don't live in an apartment
anymore, but I used to. Like if you're
the only tech nerd like in your
neighborhood, in your block, in your
like set of apartments, and everyone
else has all 2.4 GHz like ancient crappy
Wi-Fi things, and you've got a 6, you
got the whole 6 GHz band to yourself.
And it 6 GHz is also shorter distance.
Someone also wrote in to say it's good
because people's stuff is less likely to
interfere with each other because 6 GHz
doesn't go as far and penetrate as far.
So, you don't have to worry about your
neighbors 6 GHz two doors down
interfering with yours as much as if as
their 2.4 GHz. So, lots of uh lots of
folks tweaking their bands out there to
get uh better bandwidth.
>> All right. And then Abraham Vy writes,
"Shakespeare's good naturaturely and
professional Wi-Fi guy." Uh my response
to pretty much everything said on the
previous episode of ATP was yes, but
also no, but also yes. This includes
channel selection, channel size, cell
size, and this is the tricky part
admittedly, says Abraham. In that order
gets you most of the way there most of
the time. So, let me repeat that.
channel selection, channel size, and
cell size in that order gets you most of
the way there most of the time. Wi-Fi is
science, not magic, but it's also bad
science. And I say this, says Abraham,
to every customer. It's funny because
it's true. Saul Sutherland writes, "I'm
a wireless network engineer for my day
job. I have my fingers deep into the
WLAN network engineering space.
Regarding MLO, there's one great example
of how multiple aggregate wireless links
can improve the user experience, which
exists with ERO's true mesh
implementation. In John's case, where he
has Tri Radio Eero Pro six nodes, 2.4
four, low five, and high five GHz. They
actually mesh with each other wirelessly
on all three bands at the same time.
This allows them to simultaneously
transmit on more than one radio to
another Eero across two frequencies or
transmit and receive across two radios
at the same time, even though in Wi-Fi
is inherently half duplex.
Unfortunately, this implementation sits
behind a patent, but I view it as a
lucky benefit. It exists in the consumer
market, not some enterprisegate cap
feature. They effectively did MLO before
the Wi-Fi alliance made it a standard
even though it only exists between EOS
on a network.
>> Speaking of EOS, I have some exciting
news. Uh
>> oh, do you?
>> Friend of the show, Yonyi, heard our
recent episode and had a bunch of Eroax
7 stuff uh that he didn't need and he
asked if I wanted it and I said sure.
>> Uh so he sent it along. I don't know if
you know what the Eroax7 is. We will
link it in the show notes. Uh, if you've
ever seen those statues that are on
Easter Island,
>> that is an annoyingly good analogy. That
is very well done.
>> That's what these things are like in
your house. Both in terms of their uh
sort of uh bearing and vibe and also
their size because this is the biggest
wireless access point I have ever owned.
It's not even close. Like it's they're
huge. Is it taller than the time
capsules with the hard drives in them?
>> It's bigger like because it's wider and
broader and also taller. It's thinner, I
guess, because like they're they're kind
of like flat curved like they're like
they're wide Easter Island statue type
things, but they're they're way bigger
than you think they are. Like I mean,
you can tell this is Ethernet jacks in
the back. That's it's a standard
Ethernet jack. Then use that, you know,
banana for scale. RJ45 for scale. Yes, I
know it's not RJ45. Um
>> Oh my god.
>> So, there's so much nery in like 3
seconds there. Um, the old the old ones
I had, the old EOS were like sort of low
slung and they've been getting bigger
over the years, but these are bigger.
But anyway, I I knew what I was getting.
Like I but I wanted to try because
these, as the name implies, Euromax 7,
these support Wi-Fi 7. Um, I think this
is like the fourth time I have changed
from one set of Euros to another. And
every single time I do it, I am amazed
at how well they do it. Like I used to
say that like if Apple made Wi-Fi
routers in the modern era, they'd be
like euros. Now I feel like Apple
wouldn't do it as well as they do.
>> You know, it's funny actually. I was
thinking to myself when you said that,
oh, they wouldn't make EOS because EOS
try to upsell you on Oh, no, you're
right. They would make EOS
>> services revenue.
>> Yeah. My ex My second thought was, and
if you're about to say, oh, but if Apple
did it, it wouldn't have that annoying
EOP plus upsell, I think Apple would be
more annoying than your iPhone. It would
be in the settings of your iPhone.
>> I have had EOS during the entire time
that Eero Plus has been a thing since
like Amazon bought them. And it never
bothers me. It is never in my face. I
never get nagged about it. It doesn't
appear in any setting screens. Like,
it's in the app. I It's there. If I go
to a feature that requires Euro Plus, it
appears it's like, "Do you want to do
Wi-Fi spectrum analysis?" Oh, that
requires Euro Plus. But like, that's me
scrolling through a bunch of features
and seeing these are the features you
could get if you have Plus. They don't
throw it at me. They don't email me.
It's not an unrelated screens. I never
even have to know it exists. They're not
crippling their things. Anyway, setting
that aside. Um, so and and I've never
never signed up for it. Um, so again,
you go to the error app and you're like,
I want to replace device. And it's like
you're the device you want to replace is
your gateway router. If you replace
that, you're everything's going to be
offline. Like it tells you, you know,
stuff I already know. But like it it's
so nice that it says if you do this,
here's the deal. And then it says,
"Here's the steps. Do this. Do that.
Unplug the thing. Plug in the new thing.
Blah blah blah. Wait for it to just
works." And it gets I have tons of
settings. I have like reserved IP
addresses based on MAC addresses. I have
filter like all of that is like it's
just completely transparent to removing
my main gateway router for the entire
house aside from everyone being offline
for like you know 5 minutes or however
long this takes which you know people
were home but they didn't even notice
because they were probably on their
phones and they just switched to
cellular anyway
totally transparent. Uh and then I
replaced a couple other base stations
and then I was like okay uh I realized
my mistake that I hadn't done speed
tests before I replaced all the routers
so my bad but I wasn't about to undo
everything. Um, and I ended up going
around and saying, "Okay, is this any
faster?" Well, I did find the setting,
um, in the app that said, uh, multi-link
operation. Uh, and their description is
multi-link operation connects your
wireless devices to multiple Wi-Fi
radios simultaneously, providing
supported devices faster speeds and
lower latencies. Summer devices may be
incompatible with MLO networks. Doesn't
say anything about simultaneous or
alternating MLO, but as we know from the
past uh, episode, it it's only
alternating. And even if that it's
questionable, but anyway, when you go to
enable it, it says, "Are you sure you
want to enable multilink operation? Your
network will reboot and disconnect for
about two minutes. WPA3 will be enabled
on participating bands. Some M some
devices may not be compatible with MLO
networks." And I found this a little
scary. Of course, by then I'd read all
the the mail people like, "Oh, I tried
MLO, but everything had to be on WPA3
and it didn't work with my Nintendo
stuff or whatever." I'm like, "Well,
like what the hell? I need to try this,
right?" So, I turned it on. I said,
"Yes, continue." the network was down
and things rebooted for two minutes and
it came back up. Everything was fine.
Like when it says WPA3 will be enabled
on participating bands, I don't know
what that means, but I can tell you what
it what it doesn't mean is that my
Nintendo Switch 2 was knocked off. My
Nintendo Switch 2 was still using WPA2
to connect, but it's fine. Like none of
my devices got kicked off the network.
Everything worked fine. Then I went
around the house and did a bunch of
speed tests and I was trying to figure
out how I can arrange my set of hardware
because I still have my old Eero stuff
and I have the new ones. is like, "Well,
now I have an excess of devices. Can I
add some more, you know, mesh nodes
somewhere that help?" Um, and in my
testing, going around speed testing
things on my phone essentially, which is
the most advanced Wi-Fi device I have is
my iPhone 16 Pro in terms of Wi-Fi
standards. Uh, I guess maybe my my M4
iPad Pro, but I was using both of them.
Uh, I went around the house and seeing
trying to see what node are you
connected to, both looking in the Arrow
app and looking at my thing and, you
know, figuring out, okay, well, it's
connecting to the hallway one, but it's
not choosing not to connect to that one
or whatever. Anyway, um here's what I
ended up with. Not only did I not use
any of the hardware that I replaced,
like I took out a bunch of hardware and
replaced it, I actually subtracted even
more hardware by not replacing the mesh
node in my bedroom. So now I just have
one in the computer room with me here,
which is the gateway one in the basement
next to my Synology, which is also wired
in. And my theory on the basement one is
the basement one is dead center of the
house, but in the basement, and it's
wired in. I want that one to project up
through the floor to the one that's in
my hallway in the center of the house.
And that one is not wired in because
there's no Ethernet there. And then that
one projects up into the second floor.
And what I found is that no place on my
second floor where I put another Wi-Fi
mesh node helps things at all. All it
does is provide interference. Devices
refuse to connect to it because the one
in the center is so much stronger. So
now I just have three uh ERO Max 7
nodes. Uh no, I don't want to have one
in the bedroom anymore. Signal in every
place in the house is stronger. uh from
my bed on my iPad, I get like 460
megabits per second down, which used to
that's that's the bad signal place. Like
that's the that's the parts where I had
had the worst signal previously. And I
don't again I didn't measure it before,
but now it's over 400 uh
>> uh gigabits, which is great. Uh from the
room I'm
>> mess
right
>> that would be really something. That
would be very impressive. Um, from the
room where I'm sitting now, the computer
room where, you know, I could I can't
touch the router, but it's like, you
know, six feet away from me is the
gateway router. I can get 900 up and
down. So, I am very happy with this new
setup. Thank you, Yonyi. Uh, and I'll
let you know if anything bad happens,
but I'm just I'm just an Eero fanboy.
Oh, and by the way, I did pay I did pay
for EO Plus because I wanted to see the
Wi-Fi Spectrum Analyzer. I'm just going
to cancel after the first month, but um
it didn't help. All it did was show me
that uh that I it was confirmed to me
that I don't want that other mesh node
in any of the upstairs bedrooms because
all I do is provide interference and no
devices ever choose to connect to them
because the signal is stronger from the
downstairs hallway one. That's very
impressive. That's that's very cool. I I
didn't dislike Eero. I felt like I
wanted something different and I I
personally felt like the Eero Plus stuff
was I wouldn't say it was naggy, but it
was it was gatekeeping some things I
wanted to see. I forget what like I
think uh
>> yeah there are some features that I can
imagine you might want but I don't want
any of the features it's gating and I
just forget that it exists like I had I
hadn't looked at it or thought about it
until I swap these heroes which is the
LA and the last time I looked at them
was when I swapped in the sixes. So
yeah, but there there are features
behind it but I don't like I turn off I
even turn off features that I get for
free. So I I don't want anything. Don't
do local DNS. Don't try to filter
things. Don't like I don't want any of
that stuff. For whatever it's worth, I
hate Eero Plus for reasons that only
apply to me basically. Um, so I' I've
never had EOS myself just because they
they seem optimized for cases where you
can't run Ethernet to all the APs and
I've been able to do that fortunately.
So I haven't I haven't had that need.
>> I don't know if I would say that.
>> I mean I Yeah, I mean all all these EOS
have Ethernet ports. If I could have
wired them all in, I would have. Two of
my three EOS are wider into Ethernet,
>> right? But like but I feel like that
like the main selling point of ERO uh
has usually been like if you can't run
Ethernet to all the APs they have the
fastest back hauls we were just talking
about. Um
>> yeah that that that is an advantage but
like it depends on which ones you buy
because the not they do sell sets where
only one of them I or I don't know if
only one of them has it. They used to
sell sets where only one of them has
Ethernet ports. The other ones don't. Um
maybe they all do now. But yeah, you're
you're right. The mesh network part of
it is for like hey you live somewhere
you're not going to run Ethernet you
want better Wi-Fi. Euro is is a easy
solution.
>> Yeah. The other reason I hate Eero and
in particular Eero Plus is that I cannot
tell you how many problems that causes
me for Overcast support.
>> Oh, interesting. Oh, because of the
Yeah, the blocking of uh things that
look like ads. Yeah. Every so often, one
of the podcast stats tracking redirect
services will be blocked by Eero Plus
and everyone on Eero with who has that
service, which includes a lot of people
who are like not super technical. Um,
everyone who has that service will all
of a sudden be unable to download like
the New York Times podcast, like some
really big shows and the and it'll just
the downloads will just fail. And if you
look at Overcast's one-star reviews, a
very common theme really up to a few
months ago uh was about download
failures and some of that was my fault,
but a huge amount of it were basically
people who have either Eero Plus or
somebody they live with a nerd who's
running Pi Hole or something, you know,
some kind of blocking uh at the network
level and they're blocking some podcast
download service and it is such a pain
in the butt because of course like you
know anything that happens in Overcast
no matter how the UI messages it like no
matter and I've tried like I built a
whole feature to like detect whether
something's being blocked by DNS and
show an alert in the home screen of the
app showing like hey I think your
network is blocking you know Mellin.ai
AI or whatever, you know, and here's
what that means and here's how to maybe
go fix it. Like check on these things.
Um, even then I get emails almost every
day saying like I didn't block this.
What? You know, even though like and you
know, you dig in and it turns out yes,
you know, somebody did like
>> Yeah, I have to say like I don't make a
podcast app. I've gotten these support
requests too for my apps. You're like
what? Your apps don't do anything
network. How could you possibly have
this complaint? I'll tell you why. I get
complaints. I can't update to the new
version of Switch Glass. I think
something is broken. And now obviously
we all know, well that's the Mac App
Store. That's not you. But users don't
know that. They just know that there's a
new version of my app and they can't get
it and they don't understand why. And
every single time it's some kind of ad
blocking thing that is somehow blocking
something having to do with the Mac App
Store. Like oh it's it's hor like it is
such a pain. Like it's like back in the
day like when when I used to work on web
apps and you'd get so many support
requests from people who it's it was
breaking for and you dig in and the
reason why it was breaking is they have
some kind of browser extension that's
interfering with something going on on
the page like that was such a common
thing in you know you know the two
decades and one decade ago. Now I feel
like anything that accesses the network,
anything that fetches anything from a
remote server or site or anything we
like everyone running all the network
interference think VPNs, ad blockers,
custom DNS, these are all just making it
a minefield of support out there.
anybody whose app at all uses the
internet because so like in the same way
that like you know you get the email
from like the Firefox person 15 years
ago and you'd be like oh god what are
you running like what you have no script
and all these other things that are
blocking my page and that's why it's
broken but now it's like everyone is
running something and they're getting
they're getting harder for a lot of
people to even know about or find
because it's bundled in as some kind of
like oh we're we're it's a safety
service on your router that you pay us
six bucks a month for or whatever
>> or it comes from the ISP like ISPs offer
these as value ads as well.
>> Yeah. And cellular ISPs now, too. Like
every it's just it's such a minefield
out there. It's it's such a pain in the
butt for all of us who have to support
these things. But uh that's just part of
the landscape, I guess. But like that's
part of why like I would never like if
every app I've ever made has dealt with
third party content in some form. I
think I have made my last app that deals
with third party content. I'll say that.
>> Well, like I said, my my app doesn't
deal with thirdparty content and I still
get the support complaints. Like you're
you're right. They're just part of the
landscape. And to be clear, I don't I
don't I'm not actually against these
services. I actually think they're good
for most people because they they exist
for a reason. Like cuz people do want ad
blocking and the internet is junked up
with a bunch of stuff. It's just it's
impossible to be perfect. Like
>> yeah, I use ad blockers in my browser
and a lot of stuff breaks and I have to
occasionally go to the other browser to
to do something
>> and and like there's no there is no
blocking service to get to right all the
time. And so it essentially requires
everyone to eventually become
knowledgeable enough to know to a know
or remember that that thing exists. To
your point of like I'm not blocking
anything. it's like they don't realize
what they're blocking or whatever. And
B, once they do know that it exists, now
it's another thing that you have to deal
with in your house, like another another
thing that you have to troubleshoot or
whatever. But the alternative is often
worse. So, I'm I'm not against these
services and I don't begrudge people
using them, but they do make things
harder for everybody. And it's
essentially it's an externality of the,
you know, surveillance ad uh industry
that's out there. It's like another
another bad effect of that that we have
to deal with so they can make money.
>> Oh, yeah. And and like you know with
Overcast it's also especially difficult
because there is no such thing as
blocking only ads on podcast and having
the rest of the podcast download because
the way they they do their ad tracking
stuff is they just redirect the download
through a bunch of third party services
and stuff. So if one of those domains is
blocked the redirect just doesn't
proceed. So the download just fails like
there's no it it isn't like on a web
page. If if you have ad blockers
installed, but you load a web page, odds
are the rest of the page will load.
>> Odds are the page will show a thing that
says, "Looks like you're blocking our
ads."
>> Sure. But like, you know, in in the
ideal case, like some of the page can
load while you're blocking the
JavaScript includes or whatever, but
that's not how podcasts work. And as we
have all this like network level stuff,
that breaks a lot of apps in a lot of
weird ways because there it isn't a web
browser and it doesn't work the same
way.
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our show.
Let's talk thread and matter. I brought
this up uh I believe it was the post
show uh last episode and I asked what's
the deal with thread and matter and um
I'm going to try to summarize a bunch of
people wrote in which is very helpful.
I'm going to try to summarize very
quickly. Uh Derek Seaman wrote a series
of posts about this a year or two ago um
which he reached out and pointed me to
and and according to him and I and I
think he's right almost all of those
posts by being a couple years old uh
still are applicable. Uh Derek from I
think his first post writes, "Matter is
a software control plane protocol, not a
networking protocol for your smartome.
It's built on IPv6 and is independent of
the under of your underlying network
protocols like Thread or Wi-Fi. Matter
devices must support multiple
simultaneous controllers. So for
example, Home Assistant and Apple Home
can both directly control a matter
device and the devices state is
reflected in real time to both
controllers. So that's matter. Matter is
how you control things. Thread is an
IPv6-based low power secure and
interoperable radio frequency mesh
networking technology specifically
designed for communicating with and
among devices within a smart home
environment. So let me rephrase what
Derek wrote. Uh basically Thread is how
all these devices talk. It's super
similar to Ziggb if that means anything
to you. It does it's okay if it doesn't
but it is IP addressable which ZigGB is
not. Matter is, like I said, how you
actually control the devices and local
control is actually a core tenant of
matter, which the home assistant dweebs,
of which I'm one of them, all of them
get real antsy and about anything that's
like cloud controlled. I actually don't
really mind that much, but most home
assistant assistant people get real
grumpy when you have to go to the cloud
to control things. They want that local
control. It has to have local control.
And again, I'm not that way, but one of
the nice things about matter is it has
to have local control. And then the
other piece is that uh thread border
routers are things that are a bridge
between traditional networks and the
thread network. And for example, I
believe HomePods can act as a border
router. And I know that Apple TVs can.
Uh and speaking of, look who's back.
Back again. Uh this is reading again
from Derek's series MDNS publisher. A
thread border router uses multiccast DNS
or MDNS to publish MDNS DNS SD discovery
packets on behalf of the thread nodes so
that they can be discovered on adjacent
networks. MDNS is back, baby. Who who'd
have thunk it? We're back and better
than ever. I know it never really left,
but you know what I'm saying. Then with
regard to Home Assistant specifically,
Michael writes, "To make matter matters
worse, the software Home Assistant uses
is the open home foundation matter
server, which is written in Python, but
that software has been moved to
maintenance mode as they rewrite the
entire thing in Typescript. And that
implementation isn't even certified yet.
Cool. So that's the summary of Thread
versus Matter, which I will probably
forget in about an hour. All right. With
regard to Apple Fitness Plus, we talked
about this uh off and on over the last
uh year or two. Uh Apple had a newsroom
post, which we'll put in the show notes
about this and about Quitter's Day. Um
uh reading from Apple's uh newsroom
post, many people give up their New
Year's fitness resolutions by the second
day in second Friday, excuse me, in
January, also known as Quitter's Day. A
new analysis of data over four years
identified participants with Apple Watch
consistently keep their keep up their
exercise levels through Quitter's Day
and beyond. Notably, many Apple Watch
users kept up New Year's resolution
exercise levels through Quitter's Day
and into the following months. Nearly
80% of those who increased their
exercise minutes maintained those
increased exercise levels through the
second half of January with 90% of that
group also maintaining elevated levels
through February and March. So I think
that's kind of neat. I mean granted this
is self um what's the word I'm looking
for? It's self-fulfilling or you know
they're they're self- congratulatory.
Look at us if you wear an Apple Watch
magically you'll be good at exercise. um
which I get that but I mean if the data
is to be believed and I don't think
Apple's in the habit of um completely
skipping over you know or fabricating uh
this data um I I think that's pretty
cool
>> well I mean they probably have cause and
effect reversed obviously
>> like the people who are people who are
more into fitness are willing to spend
lots of money on an Apple Watch but
anyway
>> that's true that is true uh but another
thing part of the reason I wanted to
call this out is also in the same post
they talk about programs and I'd like to
come back to what Apple's announcing.
But one of the things that I have
noticed as someone who occasionally uses
Fitness Plus, and I do really genuinely
like it. I think the coaches are
generally very good. I think the
workouts are fun. They have really great
music. The onscreen integration is super
great. You can watch your rings close in
real time on your TV or on your iPad or
whatever the case may be. I really like
it. But one of the things that bums me
out about Fitness Plus is that they've
never I think there's been a couple
exceptions here and there, but by and
large all of the workouts are one-offs.
you know, here's 30 minutes of strength
training, here's 20 minutes of
high-intensity interval training, here's
10 minutes of yoga, five minutes of
core, whatever the case may be. And
there's no continuity between them, and
that's fine. But I have cut my teeth on
something that we've talked about many
times. It used to be called Beachbody,
now it's body B odi. And there was a
whole gross MLM side of it. I'm not
talking about that. I'm talking about
the video side of it, which I always
thought was very good. And they've
actually dis they've uh sunset the MLM
stuff in the last like 6 months to a
year which I think is a very good idea.
But what makes Body different than
Fitness Plus is that almost all of their
stuff is a full program. Like let's do
eight weeks together. You know you and
the coach you have one, you know, one
workout either, you know, every day or
every other day or whatever the case may
be. You have eight weeks together or six
weeks together. and you're following a
program and this, you know, day one is
upper body, day two is lower body, day
three is core, day four is, I don't
know, aerobics or whatever the case may
be, but it's it's a continuous uh it's a
continuity that Fitness Plus has never
had. With that in mind, going back to
this newsroom post, starting January 5,
Apple Fitness Plus introduces four brand
new workout programs that offer users
weekly training plans to help take the
guesswork out of how to reach their
goals. Those programs include uh for
users looking to return to working out,
the make your fitness comeback program
features three popular workout types:
strength, hit, and yoga. The four-week
plan features three workouts per week,
one of each type for just 10 minutes.
The Build a Yoga Habit in four weeks
program is designed to help users add
yoga into their fitness routine. These
workouts are designed to increase
flexibility, cut down on stress, and
build strength and stability. Every
week, users will get two 10-minute
flows, one slow and one energetic, that
complement their existing workout
routines and help build a habit. That is
freaking cool, and I think I'll probably
try that. And then finally, the back to
back-to-back strength and hit program
provides three 20-minute workouts
pairing these two popular workout types
in fitness plus 10 minutes of strength
and 10 minutes of HIT. Again,
high-intensity interval training uh
three times per week over the course of
three weeks. The workouts are designed
to be done one right after the other
with no break in between. The program
launches uh I think it's just this
program that launches January 12th and
consists of three workouts per week,
each focusing on a different body area
to learn and practice common strength
moves to build confidence, improve users
technique. I haven't tried these yet,
but I think this is freaking great. I
really genuinely do and I I'm I'm really
into the idea of Apple kind of
stretching a little bit uh you know and
expanding and trying out different
things and I will absolutely try at
least one of these. I'll probably start
with the yoga habit thing and pair it
with my existing body workouts. Uh but I
might do the back backto-back strength
thing cuz why not? And generally
speaking after I do like one of these
eightweek programs on body I will
typically um do like a fitness a few
like a couple of weeks of fitness plus
as like a pallet cleanser. uh it's it's
the ginger of the sushi meal, if you
will. And uh and and so that's that's
maybe maybe that's when I'll do the
backtoback strength and hit for example.
So if this isn't your cup of tea, that's
totally fine. But I wanted to call
attention to it because I think it's
really really great.
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>> All right, let's do some topics. Uh,
let's talk about ASML and TSMC.
Um, ASML Holding, NV, commonly shortened
to ASML, originally standing for
advanced semiconductor materials
lithography, is a Dutch multinational
corporation and semiconductor company
that specializes in the development and
manufacturing of photoiththography
machines which are used to produce
integrated circuits. It is the largest
supplier of the semi for the
semiconductor industry as well as the
most advanced producer of extreme
ultraviolet lithography or EUVL
photoiththography machines that are
required to manufacture the most
advanced chips. This is relevant because
the very popular YouTube channel
Veritassium just did a I think it's
roughly an hourong video on the
ridiculous engineering of the world's
most important machine. I watched it
this morning. It is unbelievable. If you
like science at all, leaving aside
computing, if you like science at all,
this is incredible. And within the first
like five or 10 minutes, the following
quote happens, which blew my effing
mind. Somebody said, I think it was one
of the employees of ASML. But as you try
to print smaller and smaller features,
the gaps in the mask, so the mask is the
thing they make in order to, you know,
make these chips, the gaps in the mask
start to approach the wavelength of the
light that they're using. This is
unreal. How are human beings
accomplishing this? I don't understand.
I do understand because I watch the
video, but I don't understand how humans
are doing this.
>> That's why this makes such a great video
because the fact that Casey who's on a
tech podcast, this is all news to him is
like this is a thing you usually don't
have to think about because like I know
we talk about chips and stuff, but we're
like, "Oh, how big are they and what are
the performance numbers and how many
transistors and you know, how many cores
and stuff like that, but we don't talk
about the lithography stuff." And we've
talked about TSMC a lot and Intel and
their wos and uh the problems of having,
you know, just TM TSMC is the only
company in the world capable of making
the world's best chips and how that's a
problem. Um, and every time we talked
about that, I had in the back of my mind
and I should have kept putting in here
as maybe an overtime talk to talk about
ASML. Occasionally people would give us
feedback about it and it would say,
"What about ASML?" And I'd be like,
"Yeah, I got to remember to talk about
that some future time." And I just never
did. So this Veritassium video was a
great kick in the the pants to me to say
just it's time to talk about ASML.
Here's the deal with ASML. TSMC, you
know, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Corporation. They make these great
chips. To make the chips, they buy
machines from ASML. And the ASML
machines are the machines that actually
do the photoiththography, which is like
we design what the layout of the chip is
going to be like, and we essentially
project it. We take it from this big
thing like, you know, it's I don't know
how big. I think they show the reticles
of being like a couple inches big or
whatever. And we project it down to be
very, very tiny. And we expose, you
know, silicon photo lithography, so on
and so forth, which is like you put a
photo resist on certain areas and you
shine light on it. And the part that
doesn't have the photo resist gets like
eaten away and then you wash it away.
And like that's how you make these tiny
little features. You basically etch them
in it. The same way you like etch
something into glass or whatever. They
etch it into the silicon. And as Casey
was just pointing out, okay, well, so
you you got a mask, you got a thing, you
got photoresist, you got light, you
shine it, fine, but you want to make
things smaller and smaller and smaller.
And as you do that, you're like, but now
the wavelength of light is too big. It's
like, I know how to fix that. I went to
school. I learned about RGB bib and the
rainbow and everything. I know that the
long wavelengths are red. And as you go
shift down the rainbow and you go over
to the blue side, the wavelengths get
shorter. So instead of using red light,
let's use blue light. It's like, great.
Okay, but now we're making it so small
that the blue wavelength is too long. Is
there anything left of blue? And you're
like, I've learned about the
electromagnetic spectrum. Can we go like
like even darker blue or whatever? And
eventually you get out of the realm of
visible light. Uh, and they they call
EUV what is it called? Extreme
ultraviolet lithography. It sounds like
it's really really purple, but I I
forget from the details from the video,
but like essentially like you're you're
out of the visible spectrum because
you're you're going you've seen the
electromagnetic spectrum with like red
off to one side and then and then you
know, but you get like the
electromagnetic spectrum is huge.
visible light is a tiny portion of it.
We're off the realm of visible light
now. And the difficulty, one of the one
of the many difficulties of doing this
is how do you produce the light? Like
half of this giant machine, half of this
$400 million machine that ASML makes is
the light source, which you know when it
was just visible light, it was pretty
easy to make a light source. Now it's
not. It is more difficult. If I'm not
going to spoil it, but if you have not
if you don't already know this, uh you
will not predict how the light is
created in the light source for the ASML
machine. I don't want to spoil it. Um
the the reason I want to talk about it
is and this is this is a debate in
another video we'll link in the show
notes from the uh the great Asian
channel, which is it's an older one from
like it's a video from 2021 of like
who's more important, TSMC or ASML?
Because here's the thing. ASML, for
reasons that will be explained in the
video, is the only company in the world
that makes these machines. You're like,
"Oh, this is the whole freaking
industry. TSMC is the only company in
the world that can make the best chips,
and they get their machines to do it
from the only company in the world that
makes them. This doesn't seem like a
great idea." And one of the reasons it
never came up in all my past
discussions, uh, as I said, Taiwan is
uh, politically precarious because of
its relationship with China. The US is
politically precarious because we're
dumb. Um,
but ASML is in the Netherlands and the
EU is significantly less politically
precarious than either Taiwan or the
United States. I don't think that's
arguable at this point. So, one of the
reasons it doesn't come up is yes,
there's only one company in the world,
ASML, that does this, but they're not in
peril like Taiwan and America are
currently. Not that it's great to have
one, but still. And as as you watching
the video, you'll see why is there only
why is only ASML the only company in the
world that does this. Part of it is
Americans being dumb because we started
the program to do the US started the
program to do extreme ultraviolet
lithography and then bowed out and said,
"Oh, it seems too horrible. Let somebody
else do it." And so they did. All right.
We put a lot of money into it and Intel
is actually a partial investor in this.
And you know, it's this whole big
international entanglement. Bottom line
is one company in the world makes the
machines that TSMC needs to make the
chips and only TSMC knows how to use
those machines to make them. Like in in
the Aenometry video at the end, he's
like he gives this analogy of like a
chef and everything. It's like yeah,
anyone can buy those machines. If you
have $400 million, you can buy one. It's
about the size of like a a small, you
know, mobile home. Uh and I I forget
what the shipping costs are, but if you
have to ask, you can't afford it. Uh and
I believe it comes in 250 separate
packages. Anyway, if you can get one of
those and then hire whatever people it
needs to run them, still that's not
enough for you to be TSMC because you
don't just say, "Okay, now we've got the
machines. We because they will just
they're lithography machines. Now, what
are you going to print?" And that's all
about the, you know, the gate all around
transistors and how you're like there's
there's lots of, you know, just having a
KitchenAid mixer does not make you a
Michelin star chef. Let's put it that
way. So, who's more important, ASML or
TSMC? They're both pretty important. uh
but in the end ASML just has to make the
machine and they can sell it to somebody
and as far as they're concerned they
don't care what you do with the machine
whereas TSMC has to produce the finished
product which is the chips that are all
in all our phones and everything like
that. So I would say TSMC is more
important but ASML is definitely
necessary because without it TSMC can't
do anything. Um so this is just a
catchup essentially to say uh if you
kept hearing us talk about this and say
I can't believe they never talked about
ASML. Now we have and if you've never
heard of them now you know there's
literally one company in the world in
the Netherlands that makes the chips
that make that makes the machines that
can make the best chips. There are you
know companies in the world that makes
machines that can make not as good chips
because that's easier but right now ASML
is the only company that does this and
TSMC is the only company that can make
the very best chips with Intel possibly
pulling up alongside of course Intel
will be using ASML machines as well. Um,
and then finally in the Asianometry
channel, there is a TSMC analysis
playlist that has a bunch of stuff about
TSMC if you just haven't heard enough
about them. Lots of these things like
Veritasium does a great job with the
channels like turning everything to kind
of like the human story of like how did
this happen? It's not just like these
things spring into existence. People
have to really believe in something and
have to make sacrifices to try to do
things that seem impossible. And you get
that in the Veritassium video. And same
thing with the Asianometry channel to
learn about the history of TSMC and why
they are in the position they they're
in. It is fascinating and inspiring and
even if you just watch the Veritassin
video, it is just like mind-boggling to
think about. Uh and it really makes you
appreciate the uh all the little chips
that are in our computers.
>> Yeah. I I I I feel like this is very
much like the um 4hour Galactic Star
Cruiser video which I just finished
watching.
>> It's not 4 hours long.
>> No, no, no, no, no, no. What I mean by
that is to scare people away.
>> Yeah. No, it's I think it's a little
under an hour. But the thing with the
4-hour Galactic Star Cruiser video is
that about a year ago when it came out,
everyone was like, "Oh my god, you have
to watch this. It's incredible." And I
didn't for the longest time because it's
4 hours long. Similar to that video
though, it the 4-hour video was
incredible and this 1-hour video is
absolutely incredible. And if you have
even the vaguest interest in the or most
vague interest in science, you will
enjoy this video because basically they
had to do like six impossible things
back to back to back to back in order to
make these machines. And eventually
through a lot of hard work and a pile of
money, humans figured it out. It's I
mean I wasn't alive during the space
race, but it has a similar vibe from the
understanding I get at the space race
like oh we're just going to go to the
moon and put a human so they can walk on
it. Oh. Um, how and people figured it
out. It's just truly incredible. If you
have an hour to give, I cannot stress
enough, this is a truly worthwhile
video. And like John said, it really,
really helps you appreciate the
absolutely bananas amount of technology
that you carry around in your pocket or
on your wrist. And I guess the one thing
I'll again I'm not going to spoil how
they do the light source. But the one
this this one resonated the most with me
the example that one of the ASML
engineers gave to try to explain to you
like they could just rattle off
statistics but they don't mean anything
because you don't think about these
numbers often. They g he gave an analogy
that really resonated with me maybe
because of how I think about things but
I'll try to try to describe it in a way
that will hopefully resonate with the
audience. So they have mirrors in these
things. They spend a lot of time talking
about the mirrors. That's not what we're
going to talk about. They've got the big
mirrors, but they have to aim them
really carefully to say the least. And
the way they described the way they
described how uh carefully they aim the
mirror is like I give this analogy like
if you have um if you have like a stick
uh oh put it this way. Let's let's say
you have a mirror and you attach a stick
to the middle of the mirror. So it's
poking out of the mirror, right? Um as
you turn the mirror, the end of the
stick moves, right? If you make the
stick like a foot long and you twist the
mirror back and forth, the the end of
the stick moves a little bit. If you
make the stick like 20 feet long, when
you twist the mirror, the end of that
stick moves a lot because when you to
you point it to the left and then you
point it to the right, the end of the
stick that's 20 ft away is sweeping
across a huge distance. Like we all kind
of intuitively understand this. Like
you're still twisting the mirror the
same amount. You're But the longer you
make the stick that is sticking out of
the mirror, the more the end of that
stick moves. Let's say you make a stick
a mile long and you twist the mirror.
Boy, that stick moves across a huge
distance when you twist the mirror the
same amount, right? That's just sort of
the sort of the expansion of like how
far does the tip of the stick move based
on how far you move the mirror. I hope
I'm drawing a word picture here and you
can picture how the longer you make the
stick, the the farther the tip moves.
Um, so here's the analogy they do. We've
got the mirror. Pretend there's a stick
on it. Pretend the stick touches the
moon,
right? Uh, and by the way, the moon is
much farther away than you think it is.
This is a fun science exercise. Go to
anybody in your life, give them a sheet
of paper and say, "Draw the Earth and
the moon to scale with their distance to
scale." And see what they draw. Nobody
will draw it accurately unless they're
like a science nerd. Um, the moon's
really far away. Okay, that's how long
the stick is. It's on the mirror and the
stick is on the moon. All right. How uh
precisely does the uh ASML lithography
machine adjust the angle of its mirrors?
It adjusts them enough such that the
smallest adjustment it can make, the tip
of the stick that's on the moon,
connected to the mirror that's on Earth,
it can move the mirror just enough so
that the stick moves from one side of a
dime on the moon to the other.
>> A dime on the moon. Because again,
>> absolutely incredible. like a a 20ft
stick and you move that. Try to move it
with your hands. Move the mirror a
little bit so so that this 20 foot stick
only moves across the width of a dime.
Try it with a stick that's a mile long.
Try it with a stick that's on the moon.
That's how precise they control this
mirror such that they can move a stick
on the moon. And it's this that analogy
was just like that is a way to visualize
I think it was a pico radian or
something like that. That is just
mindboggling that it's just like how how
could you ever move anything that
precisely? That's the analogy they gave.
I'm sorry I kind of banged a little bit.
They do it in the video as well, but I
feel like people will just go past it
and like, "Oh, I guess it's pretty
precise." But like the physical
manifestation of like the stick coming
out of the mirror is just very
compelling to me.
>> For non-Americans, the diameter of a
dime.
>> How the diameter of a dime is
>> like a centimeter.
>> Yeah. Well, the the width of a dime is
or the Yeah. is something like a
centimeter. It's uh according to
Wikipedia, the diameter is 17.91
millimeters.
>> I love that you gave it a metric for all
the non- US people. Well, hey. Uh, but
no, this this is really incredible. I
cannot stress enough. You should watch
this video.
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Uh, John, you had a very cool topic that
you uh brought to us that Marco and I
were supposed to do homework about and
based on the show notes only I did
homework on and I'm not sure you you're
the only one who wrote it in there. I
think Marco and I was both like to not
spoil it.
>> Yeah, I always keep my own notes for
stuff like this.
>> I know you do. I know you do.
>> And so do I. And and it's totally a case
move to write it into the document.
>> Well, cuz otherwise I don't know where
to put it cuz I made little bullet
points.
>> There's nowhere else to write content on
a computer.
>> Yep. That's the only in the world.
>> All right. So, John, can you tell us
what we're doing here, please?
>> Yeah. So, here we are on the first show
of the year. We already thanked our
patrons. Um uh I I like to talk about
like what we're looking forward to. What
are you most excited about in 2026?
Obviously, we're talking mostly about
tech things here. So, what tech things
are you excited about in 2026? And the
only ground rules I wanted to put out
there was I wanted to say try to make
that your things as plausible as
possible which is like there's all sorts
of fantasies we can come up with are
things we would love to happen or the
things we would love to see but
obviously we don't know what will happen
so I can't say it has to be something
that could happen like just try to make
them as plausible as possible to
constrain us to not be too fantastical.
So, um, when we present our list of
things, tech things we excited about in
2026, you can also make the argument of
why you think it is reasonably plausible
that this could happen.
>> Uh, who's starting? I've been doing the
auto we have. Marco first.
>> Okay. So, what I'm excited about that is
reasonably plausible but not necessarily
guaranteed. My own software. Uh, this is
so I have three areas. This is one. Um,
I think it's going to be I've been
working on some stuff for Overcast that
I think is pretty cool and I think I
will be able to get it out this year.
So, I'm looking forward to that.
>> So, we can finally take that item from
the show notes and hoist it up. We have
an item in the show notes which is
future things Marco does. It's like,
yeah, I don't want to talk about tell do
it. So, we're just waiting for him to do
it.
>> Right. Exactly. So, there's there's some
of that. Um, also, you know, if I ever
do make the app I talked about in the uh
member special, um, probably that would
that would probably happen.
>> Not the jam music app, Casey. The other
>> Marco has a lot of things that he's
potentially doing.
>> Yeah. So, we'll see. We'll see if any of
them happen, but I I think this is a
good year for at least one of these
things to happen, you know, and maybe
maybe more. We'll see. All right. Right.
So then also uh I'm also looking forward
to and we'll get to a little bit of this
um I think in overtime. I'm also looking
forward to the foldable iPhone. I don't
know how that's going to go. Having both
printed out the 3D model of that one
mockup like I I did the the 3D printed
um you know size accurate or you know
>> spoilers for overtime. We will discuss
this then.
>> Yeah. So anyway, so we'll talk about it
more in overtime, but I did print myself
one of those and I've been kind of
noodling with it. Um, just playing with
the size, and I think it's really
interesting. It's either going to be
some like ridiculous high-end thing that
goes nowhere except a few power users or
it's going to be huge, not physically, I
mean that too, but or it's going to be a
huge transformational thing that's going
to become a very big part of the
high-end iPhone market for the
foreseeable future. And and on that
topic, by the way, do you think if you
so let's say you weren't interested in
it, let's say you weren't it wasn't on
your things you're looking forward to to
2026, do you think that you would
actually need to buy one of these to
test overcast or do you just assume that
like well my app is already like adjust
to any size and the size of it doesn't
look that far out of bounds like it's
not that it's not that different from an
iPad mini like do you not that would you
buy one because we know you would buy
one but like do you think this is the
type of thing that you would have to buy
to like just make sure your app works
right on
my app in particular?
Probably not. But it it's so
mechanically different. Like the way you
handle it is so different. I think most
people who like where like your app like
it where like you care about the design
and interaction of your app probably
you'll have to buy it just because it's
going to it's such a different form
factor
>> to see how the end UI feels for such a
>> Yeah. Even stuff like just where do you
put controls in the interface? Like how
like the reachability of things is
radically different. The the aspect
ratio of the of the front screen, if the
rumors are true, is radically different.
Like there's so many things about it.
Like the handling of it is very
different. And so I think if you have an
iPhone app and it also runs on the iPad
and you never bought an iPad to test it
out, you could get away with that. It's
probably you can probably make something
that's fine, but to really make
something that's good, you kind of need
an iPad to test that on, but at the same
time, like, you know, the world of iOS
devices is very big. I don't buy every
iPhone. I don't buy every iPad. I used
to, like back a long time ago, I used to
have like one of every size screen.
>> That's when there were far fewer devices
to buy, too.
>> Right. There was like one to two in each
family. Now, there's a million different
sizes. Every generation of phone and
iPad seems to change the screen size
slightly. So there's there's a bunch of
like minor variations of screen sizes.
>> It's just to keep devs on their toes so
they don't stop making fixed layouts
anymore. It's like, oh, we're going to
shave off three pixels next year,
>> right? That's what happens. And so
anyway, so I I don't buy every one of
those. But I think the foldable, if it's
if it's real and if it's rumored to be
if the rumors are accurate about like
the rough screen dimensions and
everything, it's so different from the
iPhone and the iPad. I think most
developers who are responsible for
laying out an interface are probably
going to want to have one.
>> I recall you said the same thing about
the Apple Watch Ultra just to give
people an idea of like oh but you can
just run in the simulator. It's probably
the same thing, right? Like didn't you
like say that when you did or maybe it
was underscore it was one of you two was
talking about it was me.
>> Apple Watch Ultra. It's like, okay,
well, yeah, I mean, I have a watch app
and this is a watch and how different
could it be and I have it running the
simulator and it works fine and it looks
fine, but having an actual Apple Watch
Ultra still provides insight that not
having it would leave you without.
>> That is the justification I use to buy
the Apple Watch Ultra. I mean, that
might have been a flimsy excuse, you
tell me. But,
>> well, the reason why I'm glad I did it
is because the Apple Watch Ultra, not
only at the time it came out, not only
was it significantly bigger screen than
the series uh large model was, that's no
longer the case, but it was
significantly bigger when it when it
came out, but also because it it's a
totally flat from edgetoedge screen on
the Ultra, there is no like curve around
the edges the way it is on on the series
watches. And that radically changes the
interaction and look of elements around
the edge of the screen. So when I got
it, I was instantly like, "Oh god, this
this is very different. So I need to
really consider this with my watch app
interface." But that was early on in the
Overcast rewrite and I ended up not
touching the watch app for like two
years after that. So my plan was sound.
My actions did not back it up. All
right, so getting back to what I'm
excited about. So, I got my software,
hopefully the foldable iPhone, one more,
and then a subsection. The broad part of
the section is I want to see Apple's 27
OSS. Now, specifically, this will be the
first time we see the liquid glass
design get its first like big tweaks.
Now, I'm not expecting the entire
interface to be radically different in
one year. In part because that's just
really aggressive. Apple has done it
before, but it that is a very aggressive
thing to do. Um, and in part because
there's still so many bugs from Liquid
Glass and this redesign that I don't
think Apple would have the bandwidth to
do two sweeping redesigns in a row. Um,
but I do think since we've had that
leadership change, there is probably a
good chance for some course correction.
You know, not major sweeping
differences, but tweaks. You know, maybe
more. We're going to see a lot more
frosting of the glass. I think in in a
lot more places we're going to probably
see like some of the more ridiculous
things like with the if I'm honest I I
think the the worst two things about
Liquid Glass in my opinion are blurs
that content has to scroll under. Uh so
you get blurry content under unreadable
text. So like the the whole like blurred
bar edges thing. that and the thing
where you make up a fake background
reflection of the content to slip under
bars on sidebars and stuff. Those two
are both so comically hostile to so much
of user interface design and just
honesty um that I can see I can see the
new leadership maybe having those on
their hit list pretty high up on the
list. So
>> I on this topic I was thinking about
this same thing when I was filling out
the uh uh $6 apple report card today. Um
you you cited a bunch of reasons why
Apple's obviously the 27 OSS are not
going to be some radical redesign. They
just did a redesign. You said they're
fixing bugs and you know they they don't
have the the bandwidth to change it all.
Uh that significantly. The other factor
and why when I talked about the 26 OS
when they first came out I was just sort
of resigned to having to deal with these
for the next several years is
essentially just like pride in saving
face. Um, if there had been like massive
public outcry to the 26 OS's, then yeah,
maybe Apple could justify like we got to
do a big hardc course correction here,
but there hasn't been. I mean, I know
people are grumbly about it or whatever,
but bottom line is like there's no, you
know, comedians making jokes about it is
not terrible in pop culture. Like they
didn't they did they didn't do a bad
enough job to justify it. And so Apple,
like even if it's new leadership,
they're not going to come out and say,
"Hey, everything we just described, all
those tours we had of developer
evangelists telling you how to use
liquid glass, all those WWC sessions,
all our documentation, forget it all. It
was a terrible idea, and we're going to
fix it." They wouldn't do that for all
the reasons you cited, but also because
it would reveal a mistake. It's It's
like admitting that you did something
terribly wrong. We spent an entire year
pretending we didn't do something wrong,
and now we're going to say that we did.
Even if they don't admit it, which they
never would, they would say, "We have a
new design and we think it's even
better." And everyone be like, "Didn't
you just have a new design? I guess
you're admitting that the old design was
bad." It's like, "No, we just think this
one's even like they do the typical
Apple, but they would never do that."
So, it's like, you know, again, like the
practical reasons are the real reasons.
Like, they just literally can't because
they're barely holding on to getting
their feet under them with 26 oss. But
also, even if they had a magic wand,
corpor from a corporate perspective,
especially under current leadership and
sort of the Apple IMO for the past
several decades is, you know, if you're
going to eventually contradict yourself
and correct some mistake, do it far
enough in the future. This is just like,
well, this is just our next revision of
the thing anyway. Like, they never fix
their problem immediately unless the
world is on fire. And the world uh is
not on fire when it comes to 26 oss. I
think it should be, but it's not because
it's too like they're not bad enough.
They they don't they don't do enough
things wrong in an egregious enough ways
for Apple to correct this. So we I I
totally agree with what you said like we
are any if there's something in
particular you don't like about iOS 26
if it can't be fixed with like a
reasonable appearance tweak you're going
to be stuck with it for a long time. And
on that front with the blurs that you
were talking about one of the complaints
I've seen from people who like are super
duper against like the 26 OS they're
like turn on reduce transparency or
whatever. If you turn on anything that
essentially disables the blurs, you see
just how much space gets wasted because
when the blurs are there, you you can
sort of like, well, where is the top of
the scrolling region? But like
practically speaking, the scrolling
region ends once something starts
screwing with the content. So when you
turn on like the reduced transparency or
whatever, you're like, "Holy cow,
there's like a 1-in opaque bar at the
top of the scrolling region. That's all
just wasted space." Like, yeah, before
that oneinch bar was your gradient fade
blur crap thing. And so it made you
think your content went all the way up,
but practically speaking, as soon as the
text goes under the blur area, it makes
you feel like your vision is failing
you. And so you see just how space
inefficient liquid glass is. Setting
aside the floating bars, which is the
other thing I was harping on, I'm like,
you've made rounded corners, which
pushes everything in. You made a
floating bar, so now there's margins,
and it's just basically there's less
room for stuff. And the more you tweak
the appearance to get rid of like the
blurs and the transparency, the more it
reveals how space inefficient it is. So,
I wish them luck in tweaking it, but I
really hope they tweak it as hard as
they possibly can in 27. But, but I
totally agree like they've got to at
least just get the bugs worked out, get
everything working, get it functional
again. Um, 27 OSS were not on my list,
but I see where you're coming from.
There is a lot of lowhanging fruit to
tweak these designs into something not
only less bad, but actually possibly
good. Like, there is like not everything
about liquid glass and these redesigns.
Not everything about it is bad. Just
there's some really egregious stuff
about it that I think can be tweaked
into something significantly better. And
>> and not all OSS have been uh equally
afflicted.
>> No. Like I it's I think it's by far the
worst on the Mac. Uh the the Mac really
hurts with Liquid Glass
>> and probably the best on TV OS since
it's barely there on TV OS.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, all right. So
the finally so at at kind of under the
category of Apple's 27 OS's but kind of
a separate thing what one thing I'm
really excited for in 2026 and believe
I'm not this is not sarcastic I'm I'm
really excited for it Apple intelligence
because think about it
>> it's already here Mark I don't know what
you're talking about
>> yes immage generation
>> on my Mac right now
>> yeah iOS 27 and you know the 27 OS's
broadly this is where we should start
seeing the first significant results
from all the different restarts and
leadership and team changes and the deal
with Gemini. Everything we've seen so
far from Apple Intelligence has
basically been like the version one beta
that didn't work or never shipped and
they've made a bunch of changes over the
last year. Obviously, they they replaced
the leadership of it. They they moved
the division around and they made that
deal with Google to have a white label
Gemini allegedly um for for some of the
backend stuff. So, I think these OSS
that that you know beta in the summer
and ship in the fall this year are most
likely where we're going to start seeing
real progress there. Now, I don't
necessarily expect the world here.
Again, it's only been one year since,
you know, everything else we've had so
far in 26. So, you know, we have to kind
of, you know, keep our expectations
reasonable for what what they what they
they can accomplish in one year. But
this is when we should start seeing
actual shifts and changes and results
from those fairly large shifts and
changes they've made over the last
couple of years to to try to get this
out the door. So, I really want to see
where this goes. Broadly speaking, 2026
is going to be a really defining year
for AI in general in the whole industry.
And it can go a lot of different ways.
It can be amazing. It could crash hard.
we we don't really know what's going to
happen yet. Um, if AI does crash hard,
that has a lot of ramifications for not
only the industry, but the economy. Um,
and so that like this could go a very
large range of outcomes here. And
whatever the rest of the AI world is
going to do outside of Apple's OS's, it
can go all over the place. I don't even
want to speculate because the range of
outcomes is so broad. it can be amazing
or it can tank the whole economy. Uh and
everything in between could happen also.
So who knows? Uh but with Apple's
platform specifically, I I think they
will be largely isolated from whatever
whatever is going on there in both
directions. Like if the AI world
crashes, I don't think Apple's going to
be that affected. This is not investment
advice. Uh if the AI world does
amazingly, I don't think Apple will do
amazingly with AI. Like I think I think
Apple's going to be right in the middle
and kind of doing their own thing in
their own pond here. Uh but
what they are doing is probably going to
get noticeably better and going to start
we're going to start seeing what Apple
actually can do with AI with the right
kind of setup. I still don't think
they're going to be a leader in AI.
Possibly forever, but certainly not
soon. We're not going to see them
competing with OpenAI, Gemini, Claude,
like we're not going to see them
competing with the big models um in in
most of the things that people use those
big models for. But we are going to see
like what's Apple's take on local AI
ondevice models with some use of servers
using Gemini, but like you know, mostly
on device still.
What What does this end up looking like?
all the the the magical fairy tales that
they that they spewed over at WBC two
years ago that that caused us something
as rotten post that Gubber wrote. Like
all of that stuff, that's all BS that
that never came to pass. It probably
never will come to pass and Apple's
probably going to keep trying to memory
hold as much as possible because they
don't want us talking about it because
it's fake and it was always fake. Okay,
but this year we're going to start
seeing what can they actually do. So far
they've done very little, but I think
again this is the year we're going to
start seeing the changes they've made
start to have shipping results in some
form and it'll probably start small, but
it'll be something. And I think that
that can really be exciting. Uh, and
maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it'll just fizzle
out and be nothing. Maybe we're going to
get another image playgrounds are here
and we're going to get another nothing
year. But I don't think so. I I think
this is the year where we're going to
start seeing Apple ship something good
with AI. Uh, you know, kind of for the
first time.
>> My turn.
>> Mhm. All right. So, I know that in our
internal show notes it says ground
rules. Try to make them as plausible as
possible. I'm going to start with one
that I will concede is not necessarily
that plausible, but I really honestly
think
>> John gets a Mac Pro.
>> Yeah. Right. Uh, I really honestly think
that there's a chance. is so you're
saying there's a chance uh I think that
there's a chance this will happen and
that is that Apple turns the policy
corner and what I mean by that is they
start to read the freaking room and
realize
>> that's not going to happen. I know I
know and realize that it's time to maybe
consider that they need to change their
approach. Maybe a lot, maybe a little
but I feel like maybe it's time that
Apple starts to really change their
approach. And actually, I could even
broaden this beyond just policy, tech
policy, and say maybe they change their
approach about other things, too. For
example, maybe they start rolling out
bits and pieces of Apple intelligence
more than two times in the year. And I
know they've started doing this, but
maybe they like really embrace this. And
the kind of unsaid, which now I'll say
out loud, correlary to this is maybe if
we get some new faces at the top of the
food chain, maybe we'll see a slightly
different apple. that maybe maybe will
make us a little bit happier because
there's a lot of the current Apple
particularly around policy that does not
make basically anyone but Apple happy
and I'm really really hopeful and I
really based on just my thumb in the
wind I really think that there's a
prayer even without a regime change but
especially with a regime change maybe
Apple starts to find a little bit of
sanity. I think that's the only reason
I'm giving you the pass on this one for
the plausibility is because you're tying
it to a leadership change because I
think there's no plausibility without a
leadership change. That's my opinion.
But because there have been rumors that
we've discussed in the show about an
imminent leadership change which
plausibly could happen within the next
year. I think this one clearly is is in
the as plausible as possible though you
are kind of like Mark with his Apple
intelligence things. You are being very
optimistic.
>> Yeah. But I I think too like you know we
have Yeah. like the rumors of a
leadership change and and I think the
evidence that you know of all the
different scheduled retirements and
everything.
>> Yeah. It's just a question of whether it
comes in the calendar year or not.
>> Yeah. And and it's and and I think you
know there's there's a couple different
ways this can go. Like it is looking
apparent that most likely
there will be Tim Cook will most likely
become chair of the board. Um now
there's a lot of different versions of
how that story can go. um he could
remain CEO for another year or whatever
or you know a few whatever he wants to
do but it's what's very clear is that
Apple as a company is very patient. Tim
Cook as a leader is very patient and the
transition plan that whatever transition
plan they're executing on they're going
to do it at the pace they want to do it.
It is pretty clear that this plan has
started moving, but I don't know on what
timeline. Like he Tim Cook could still
be CEO for another two or three years if
he want. Like it could be a it could be
much faster than we think. He could be
out next month or he could be, you know,
still CEO two or three years from now
and just also be chair of the board
maybe or what? Like there's so many ways
this can go and again Apple's very slow
and very patient and Tim Cook is very
slow and very patient. So I do think
this change is pretty clearly happening
but I wouldn't expect anything about it
to move quickly.
>> My second one which is I think moving
slightly more realistic but maybe not is
I I I wrote it in our internal show
notes AI getting a grip. And what I mean
by that is I think it's clear that AI
has promised us the entire world. The
universe has been promised to us and as
yet I would not say it's been delivered.
I think that there are times when you
know LLMs and AI as it's commonly
described are incredibly impressive,
incredibly powerful. I mean again I
vibecoded most of call sheetapp.com with
uh I think it was chatgpt might have
been claude I don't remember. Probably a
combination of both. Um, it can be
really incredible, but I don't think
it's solved all problems. Certainly, the
absolute embarrassing disaster, the
disgusting things that are happening
with Grock right now are inexcusable.
Um, and I really hope that we start to
get a grip as a society, as a people on
AI. And maybe that means the bubble's
going to burst. I don't think it's going
to go quite that far. But I hope and I
think that maybe we'll start to get a
grip and maybe we'll start to treat it
as being we'll we'll try to understand
and appreciate that there are limits to
what AI can bring us and do for us and
and that's okay. That's not a bad thing.
>> Speaking of vibes based, I feel like
your first two items are very vibes
based. It's Apple turns a policy corner
and AI gets a grip. Very viby.
>> It is. It is. I I I I was I started with
trying to come up with specific things
like I'm excited for such and such or so
and so and you know such and such device
or or whatever the case may be and
honestly I'm sure there will will be a
device I'm excited for. I mean in
Marco's example
>> something like the like the Apple's new
F1 service or something like that.
>> Oh actually that is a great one. I am
really excited for that actually.
>> I'm helping you out with your list.
>> Yeah. See I I appreciate it John. Thanks
for the help dad. Uh but no that is
true. I I very much am looking forward
to F1 as covered by Apple uh or not
covered by you know like handled by
Apple
>> as paid for by Apple. So you don't have
because you already pay for the thing
that it's going to come with it's saving
you money and potentially they might do
new or interesting things.
>> I I I'm not so confident they'll do new
and interesting things but as we
discussed the way I read the
announcements was that at the very worst
they will not take away the new and
interesting things that F1 themselves
are doing or at least not for me. Um so
I'm really excited about that. That's a
great one. Thank you John. Um, and then
the final one that I had, which is
probably a little vibesy for John's
taste, is tech experimentation. And the
foldable iPhone, I think, fits into
this. Yes, there have been foldable
phones for a while, but there's never
been a foldable iPhone. And I'm excited
to see a foldable iPhone based on the
photos that I've seen, and again, we'll
talk about it in overtime. I'm not sure
this is something I want, but I'm pretty
sure this is something I will get and at
worst return if I don't like it.
>> I I wouldn't have called this I knew um
I was just called Marco my son's name. I
knew Marco was going to get one of
these. I did not predict that you would
expect to go out and buy one. I'm sure
you'd be interested in it. It's cool.
>> He's going to buy it, love it, and break
it in a week.
>> Uh, I think that is one of two likely
options.
>> Casey hasn't yet seen the price. And
unlike Marco that it's going to he could
be scared away because the thing is it's
2500 bucks. You're going to be like,
>> "You bought a Vision Pro?" I was about
>> I know, but that's that's what I'm
saying. He's been burned. He's like,
"I'm I bought this $3,500 vision Vision
Pro. I'm not buying a $2,500 stupid
phone."
>> No. Prices just delay, Casey. They don't
prevent them from buying.
>> That's true.
>> Gets worn down eventually.
>> I'm so angry at you because that is so
accurate. Uh anyway,
>> but anyway, so what you're saying like
so you're you're looking forward because
you think think it's cool because you
think you would use it. You you already
said like half jokingly that you think
you'd get it and then return it, but
like like what's your motivation here?
>> So all snark and joking aside, my
motivation is I think it makes for a
better program if if all three of us or
at least some of us have experience with
the device. And so
>> tech gadget of obligation. Yeah. No, I
really mean it. I mean, and that's why I
justified and how I justified the Vision
Pro. Now, granted, I wanted a Vision Pro
because it's freaking cool, but the way
I justified it to myself and to a lesser
degree, Aaron, was this is something
that I think genuinely improves the
content of the show because I can speak
for say I was going to say intelligently
about it, but at least I can speak from
experience with it. And yes, I need it
for my work. Uh, and so anyway, um I I
think I will at the very least buy one
and try it. I don't feel like this is a
need I have in my life. But every other
time Apple has come out with some other
thing like the Apple Watch or hell the
iPhone to begin with, I've always sort
of I don't think this is a need I have
in my life. And then I've decided, oh my
god, I needed it so badly. So I'm I am
finally becoming self-aware enough to
expect that not only well, as Marco
said, I want it. Not only will I choke,
as Marco said, over the price, but I do
consider it I really truly consider an
obligation for the show to pick one of
these up and give it a shot and see what
I think. And if I do return it, then oh
well, at least I've tried it. Um, and
and I'm excited for that. A lot of this
like push into the home that everyone
keeps saying Apple is doing, but we
haven't really seen yet. I'm excited for
that. And I feel like just generally,
and again, this is I guess it is kind of
vibesy, John, and I'm sorry, but I get
this vibe, this feeling that tech is
starting to experiment a little bit
more. They're either all in on AI, and
that's the only thing that matters, or
they're doing really loopy stuff. Like
I'm watching The Verge coverage of CES
and granted CES is always loopy and
weird, but I I feel like we're starting
to get a little bit of fun back in tech
and maybe I'm just trying desperately to
find anything to be happy about right
now, but I I'm getting the feeling like
there's going to be some experimentation
this year and I'm really hopeful and
excited about that. So, I apologize,
John. It is very vibesy. You're right.
But it's a bunch of vibes in F1. So, how
about that?
>> Thought maybe you just specifically pick
that uh that robot vacuum that climbs
stairs. No, no, no. We actually talked
about that on clockwise earlier today.
>> The the pool vacuum that that lifts
itself out to go into its charging
cradle.
>> No. I mean, I do think that's fun
experimentation. I do think that is in
the context of tech experimentation, but
that's not for me.
>> The LG robot that folds your laundry.
>> No. No. No.
>> I mean, like CES is always like a fever
dream of products that never really work
or ship. But like Yep.
>> But there but I think you're right. Like
I think you're hitting on something,
Casey. Like there is
>> there is kind of like this this pent up
demand for fun. And I think a lot of
experimentation is happening and a lot
of that like a lot of that I think is is
the phase that we're in with AI which is
like the current the current next big
thing. A weird phrase but it makes sense
in my mind like tech goes through the
you know the next big thing phases and
when you look around like what they've
been recently like you know for a while
back it was self-driving. It is
happening very very very slowly in ways
that most people don't have a lot of
access to but it like that was the big
thing and it was it didn't really result
in a lot of like immediate fun or impact
to tech products you know during the
hype cycle. Then after that we had uh
cryptocurrency which was not fun at all.
>> Nope. people made money with it, but it
was just kind of like that was that was
one of the biggest moments where like
finance bros replaced tech bros and now
there's no more distinction now like the
you know the nerds are all pushed out of
most of tech now and it's all just run
by finance tech bros now. Um so like
that was not really fun either. Um, and
then we went from crypto to a brief
diversion into the metaverse, which
kind of sucked. And I I wouldn't
describe any part of that as
particularly fun either. Um, but then we
went to AI and AI it is not perfect. You
know, we it has a lot of challenges. It
has a lot of limitations. Um, you know,
again, as I as I was just saying, like
2026 could be a year where we have a
serious correction with AI, but
AI is fundamentally
opening up new doors and creating new
value in tech products that people can
actually use and see today, right now,
and it's actually affecting our lives
right now. I ask ChatGpt questions
almost every day about something. It it
has really like replaced a lot of web
searching for me, and it has augmented
what I'm doing in a lot of different
ways. And yeah, it's not perfect. It
makes up APIs that don't exist. It makes
up facts that don't exist. Like, you
know, it's not it's not perfect, but it
immediately today has value. And even if
it never has any more value than it has
today, it still has a lot of value.
Which is why I think, you know, if there
is an AI crash or correction, it's not
going to be because AI is a stupid idea
like crypto. Like, that's not going to.
And remember NFTTS? uh remember when
everything was going to move to
blockchain not the blockchain not a
blockchain but blockchain anyway
>> you know it's not like that there's
actual value not only being created and
not only promised of maybe being created
but that has already been created we
already today have amazing value and
uses for the AI that we have already
today if there is some kind of big crash
or correction it's going to be more
about the expectations being even more
inflated than it could do and or all the
ridiculous finance tricks that are being
played to try to finance this buildouts
and you know all like that's going to
who knows how that can blow everything
up but the actual core of the technology
is valuable and it's already here and
we're already using it and I think that
is driving a lot of fun um and if we
look at it as like the Gartner hype
cycle you know the famous thing of like
I I I think I think 2025 was the peak of
inflated expectations in the Gartner
hype cycle I think 2026 will bring on
the trial of disillusionment. Um, but I
don't think it's going to go that low
because again like ultimately it has
those fundamental values established. So
whatever the heck happens with like
OpenAI's giant buildout and then taking
all the RAM and whatever and Nvidia's
valuations and all these big like you
know financial and market moving and
supply moving things that are happening
in that part of that world. Regardless
of all that, and this is part of why I'm
excited about Apple intelligence.
Regardless of all that, this industry
has created a whole bunch of value
already that we're already using to make
products today and that we're already
using as consumers today. That is
bringing a lot of the fun into this.
It's opening up new possibilities. It's
making things very easy that used to be
very hard. It's saving people time and
that changes the viability of certain
tasks. So, like that's a whole bunch of
the good kind of disruption. It isn't
just a whole bunch of people, you know,
burning GPUs to maybe make some money to
buy some heroin. Like, it's it's real
value being created here. Uh, and people
are using it today to improve their
lives today already. So, I think that's
driving a lot of the fun. And and I'm
pretty if I if I go back to the gardener
life cycle thing, like I I think we're
going to reach the plateau of
productivity very quickly with AI. Like,
if there is a trail of disillusionment,
like if we do have like a brief
correction or crash, I think it's not
going to be that bad. And I people who
are hoping AI will just go away. I think
that's an increasingly kooky position to
take. Uh I I don't think that's ever
going to happen. That that's like saying
I wish we could get rid of the internet
or cryptography or like it just it's
never like that's impossible. It's not
going to go away. It's here and it's
good and it's not good at everything but
it's good at a lot and so we're using it
and it's fun. And I think also like what
that is doing to the rest of the
industry is pushing so hard on hardware
capacity and energy
that we are getting amazing
computational power. We are getting
amazing computational resources. Now
granted we can't buy any of them because
open is buying them all. Uh but if there
is any kind of correction or or you know
whenever whenever things catch up to
this demand we are going to have a huge
glut of computing power of probably
energy.
>> Let's hope they build those RAM fabs
before the crash right
>> that also is I think already
contributing to the feeling of fun and
promise but then will contribute even
more in the future. you know, once once
this, you know, supply and demand kind
of balance each other out here.
Computers are g are just getting so good
and so fast and they will eventually
become so cheap again that that's going
to help everything we do. Even the stuff
that doesn't use AI, everything just
keeps getting better and faster. So,
that that's also pretty good reason to
be optimistic. If you watch that ASML
video, try not to think too hard about,
okay, but what's the next thing after
EUV and who's making that and how long
is that going to take after you see the
timeline of what it took to make EUV
here. Uh things get harder. And as I
think we said years and years ago when
we first talked about the end of Morris
law, Morris law will end. You can't make
things smaller forever. Uh take a
physics class.
>> All right, John, your turn.
>> All right. Uh let's see here. Um, my
first item look thing I'm looking
forward to in 2026. I hope this is
extremely uh plausible. Um, is the M5
Ultra. Uh, not looking forward to the
Mac Pro because I don't think that's
plausible.
>> Yeah, I think you're right.
>> Right. I'm not looking forward to the M5
Extreme or anything that's like a quad
or whatever because I don't that's not
going to happen. There's no rumors of
that. It's just that's Apple has given
up on that. But the M5 Ultra is in fact
rumored. We talked about it in the
previous show. It seems eminently
plausible. They did make an ultra for of
the M1, M2, and M3. They basically said
they're not making one for the M4. I
would like to see one for the M5. I'd be
most excited if it's not two M5 Maxes
stuck together. But even if it is two M5
Max stuck together, that'd still be a
pretty cool chip. I just want to see it.
I'm excited for the M5 Ultra. It's been
a It's been a rough time for me on the M
chips. Yeah, they're great and
everything, but I'm always looking for
the super high-end one, and they just
have been dropping the ball on it. like
they've either just been not making them
or making them real late. Setting aside
the Mac Pro, just like it's been it's
been harder lately to be a fan of
high-end desktop Macs. And it's
difficult because everyone else is happy
because all the other chips are so
amazing. It's like well but but the
high-end desktops like ah no one cares
about that. Like it's all about the
laptops. It's all about the phones.
You're right. It is. But like here I am.
I like high-end desktops. Apple's been
dropping the ball. Multile is rumored. I
would love it if they just at least like
caught up to where they were. This is
like the bargaining stage that I'm in.
Can we just go back to when you did
ultras that have the same number as the
non-ltra chips? That would be great. M5
Ultra. Looking forward to it. And if
it's not two M5 Max stuff together, I'll
be super excited just to see like like
what is their fallback strategy of like
well we you know their original strategy
is we're going to take two Maxes and
stick them together and we're going to
make this quad thing and it's going to
be amazing. They couldn't do the quad
thing and then the two Maxes stuck
together. like that actually that was
like a money-saving idea and it kind of
makes sense and it's cool and everything
but it's like it does have drawbacks and
it's not it's not as easy as we thought
it would be because you know that see
how long it took to get the M3 M3 Ultra
out the door and it it doesn't give us
the clean win that we thought it would
in terms of scaling. So maybe we should
just make a chip that is bigger than the
Max that is its own chip. I would love
to see that. I have heard no rumors to
that effect, but that is M5 Ultra when
whatever form it takes. That's my number
one item I'm looking forward to in 2026.
Uh, number two, I'm surprised you two
didn't say this. OLED MacBook Pros. I
don't even like laptops.
>> I think it's too soon. Too soon,
honestly.
>> Um, I isn't this I think this is the
year for the OLED MacBook Pros, isn't
it?
>> I No, I I thought we're getting the M5
MacBook Pros like sometime soon,
>> but also the OLED ones.
>> No, I think those are M6. I think those
are the year after.
>> Yeah, I know. But I'm saying I think
both of those are happening in 2026.
>> It it could be, you know, spring and
fall like they could.
>> Exactly. Like that was Anyway, if I'm
wrong about the like you're right that
the M51 ones are not going to be OLED.
So like if you're thinking that March is
going to come or we're going to have
OLED MacBook Pros with M5s, we're not.
Okay. That's that's not the rumor
anyway, right? The OLED ones are
supposed to come after that. And it is
plausible, I think, that those OLED ones
could ship within calendar year 2026. If
they don't and they end up in spring
next year, oh well then, you know, but I
but I think it's plausible. It's not
unrealistic because you know what? OLED
screens do exist. Apple ships them in
some of their products. They're really
good. You could put them in a MacBook
Pro. Um, that's what I'm looking forward
now. The M5 ones will be fine, but I'm,
you know, I like because the old M6 ones
are going to be the rumors have it to be
redesigned. I'm looking forward to
seeing that and I'm looking forward to
them getting old because I feel like
they deserve it. They're the most
popular Mac products. Their current
screens are actually really good. Like,
it's not like they have terrible
screens. They have better screens than
any desktop Mac, I'll tell you that. Uh,
but I am actually looking forward to the
OLED ones if only to see like what Apple
chooses because I alluded to in some
past episodes and we'll talk about maybe
more CS CS stuff in the future. The
variety of screen technology available
mostly in the TV world, but also in the
monitor world. It's really diversifying.
Like it used to just be there's like LCD
and OLEDs and then there was like two
varieties of OLEDs and then there's a
couple of LCDs. Like there's a million
different varieties now. Uh, Apple's got
a couple different ones, too, like their
phone ones with the the uh pentile sub
pixel sharing thing at like 3x, which is
totally different from the tandem OLED
that is on the M4 iPad, which is totally
different from the mini LED thing that's
on the MacBook Pros. And so, like, what
are they going to pick for the MacBook
Pros? And I'm excited to see like a new
design for the MacBook Pros. Even though
I think the the current design is great
and we all love it because it fixed so
many mistakes of the past, the new one
could make more new mistakes in the
future, but it's still exciting. I'm
still looking forward to it. I want to
see what those are like. If they happen
in spring of 2027, oh well, they didn't
make my list, but I think it's
plausible.
Um, and on that front, and speaking of
CES, I'm actually looking forward to new
OLED gaming monitors. Uh, in particular,
uh, and my for my PlayStation 5, I have
a 4K 27inch monitor hooked up to it, and
I've been holding off replacing it. It's
just a like a really old IPS LCD 4K
non-HDR 27 in uh LCD monitor and it's
fine. I don't I think it's LG. Uh like
it's there's nothing wrong with it, but
it's old. Like it's it's not HDR and my
console is capable of HDR and it's not
OLED, so the black levels are garbage.
Um and you know there's no there's no
dynamic backlight at all. It's just a
constant backlight. And the reason I
haven't bought one is I look at them,
I'm like they're either really expensive
or they have some compromises or
whatever. And this year, like at CES,
there various manufacturers are showing
4K 27inch OLEDs with RGB stripe with no
white sub pixel, which is like basically
everything that I wanted. Like whether
it's QD OLED or not, there's, you know,
no white sub pixel, a normal sub pixel
structure, so three vertical stripes,
RG&B. Not that I'm going to use it as a
desktop monitor, but I occasionally do.
I'll hook up my laptop to it or
whatever, and it's nice to have that,
right? If I'm going to spend all this
money, I want it to be a plausible
monitor. And in particular, I don't want
32-inch 4K. Not because I'm going to use
it as a Mac display because already 4K
27 in is not the right retina resolution
for a Mac, but it's it's tolerable. But
for gaming, which is what I use it for
most of the time, I think I feel like 32
in my wife has a 32 in 4Kish monitor in
the basement for work. I feel like 32 in
is too big for 4K, even for video games.
So, I actually prefer like space-wise
and like field of view wise when I'm,
you know, the distance I sit from it
when I'm playing with my controller. I
want 4K 27inch OLED and a whole bunch of
those are coming out. I've seen a bunch
of them at CES, so I can't wait for my
favorite YouTubers to get them into
their little hands and test them and and
tell me which one is the best one and
and me figure out which one I can
tolerate. I'm not sure I'll buy one this
year because like I can't tolerate the
gaming ones like project light on the
ground and do all this stupid crap. I'm
not sure I'll buy one. I've always said
by the time I get my PS6, whenever the
heck that comes, I will definitely get
one. But I'm not opposed to getting one
now if I feel like it's finally arrived,
the price is right, it's HDR enough,
it's OLED enough, I have some faith that
it won't, the image retention won't be
that bad, it's, you know, it's pearl
pixel lighting controller bust. It's the
only the only thing I would tolerate. No
mini LED, no strobing 1000 Hz
backlights. Uh, Nvidia had some monitor
that strobes the backlight to give like
an apparent 1000 htz or something. It's
just no, they don't want that. per pixel
lighting control, RGB sub pixel, no
white sub pixel. Um, seems like I might
get that this year, so I'm excited for
that. Uh, and related to that, and maybe
pressing against my plausibility things,
Apple monitors,
>> amen to that, brother.
>> Like there there are rumors. There are
persistent rumors. Of course, there have
been persistent rumors from like the day
after the studio display was released
where they were like, "Oh, there's
actually a successor coming real soon."
No, there wasn't. Absolutely not. But we
have model numbers. We know they're out
there. They're potentially a successor
to the XDR, potentially a successor to
the Studio. Like, those rumors exist.
Those products exist. I think it is
plausible that they could come in 2026.
And if they don't, it will further
cement Apple's terrible drought on
monitors. What else is new? But I am
actually looking forward to that. Not
because I'm like, I'm not going to
replace my XDR. I'm fine with it. I'm
not going to replace my wife's studio
display. It's fine. I'm just excit I'll
just be excited for that turnover to
happen. And I also don't think I would
buy one as my gaming monitor because it
would be way too expensive or whatever.
But I'm excited for Apple to get back on
the horse when it comes to monitors. I'm
and I want them to do it mostly because
like kind of like the Vision Pro where
it's like they didn't really do any
update to it, but I am excited they did
something which shows that like they're
still it's still a product in their
lineup, right? Like they did put an M5
in it, which is more they did for the
Mac Pro with the longer the more years
pass without them touching the monitors
is like are monitors the new Wi-Fi base
stations? are they just not going to do
them anymore? Like I just I get the
fear. So,
>> Apple monitors uh something I'm looking
forward to. And my final item uh is
actually one that's already been listed.
I I described it as LLM powered Siri,
but it's basically Apple intelligence.
>> I think that's plausible
>> that the stuff that they announced in
2024 and could not do
>> they make a second or third or fourth or
whatever number they are internally run
at this problem. And I agree with Marco,
like leadership changes, the deals
they've been making, the technology
they've been doing is absolutely
plausible that they could actually
release something that makes Siri
better. I don't expect the world. I
don't want it to be perfect. I But like
as you were saying, Marco, like the
whole rest of the industry is doing
stuff that Siri that makes Siri look
even dumber than it already Siri was
already the laughingtock of the whole
industry. And now like literally
everything that has anything to do with
LLM is so much better at Siri in so many
ways. Not that they're perfect or
whatever, but Siri is just so dumb. It
feels like it feels like a previous
generation technology because it is a
previous generation technology,
especially now that I've got like the LM
powered like uh Google Home replacement
for home assistant thing or whatever.
Talking to that thing, it was already
way better than talking to Siri. But now
it's like I can just say whatever I want
confident that my intention will get
through. Now will it do exactly what I
want or give me the answer? No. But at
least it will know what I'm talking
about. Whereas every time I do anything
with Siri, I'm like it's like playing,
you know, a text adventure from the 70s.
What syntax do I use? Have to how do I
have to phrase this? I recently I was
trying to set up a reminder and I was
very careful not to use like the word in
or the word year or anything like that
because it was like I think I was trying
to say remind me to do like the six
colors year in review 2025 thing.
>> Oh, forget it.
>> And I tried to phrase that as carefully
as I could and it still made a year-long
event starting at today that was called
2025. It was like no Siri, no you didn't
get it. like and I'm just I I have so
much more confidence in literally
anything LLM powered would understand
the event that I was describing and put
it in the calendar. So LLM powered Siri
uh it won't be the best in the industry.
Uh you know, but I just want something
better than what we have and I feel like
it is plausible for that to come in
2026. I hope Apple prioritizes the right
things you're making the the Jabid like
image playgrounds or whatever. Like lots
of things they are here. Yeah, lots of
things could ship in 2026 related to LLM
stuff because Apple has been doing a
bunch of stuff. But I really hope that
someone somewhere recognizes like it's
all just window dressing ex, you know,
except for the voice assistant, right?
That's your big problem. People talk to
their phones and their phones and they
talk to, you know, other things and
everything else is making the phone look
even dumber. That needs to be the number
one priority. Forget everything else.
Delay everything else. Delay every other
like tell me my mom's flight is coming,
whatever. just make Siri better. Oh my
god. So, that is on my looking forward
to list. And I I do think it's
plausible. And I I just have to think
like cuz now they don't have a redesign
to talk about in, you know, the 27 OS's.
That's got to be the headline feature,
right? I don't know how they spin it,
but like, you know, hey, remember when
we talked about this in 2024? Well, here
it is. I you guess like maybe they just
pretend it never happened, but yeah. LM
powered Siri. Um, and I I could have
made my list longer, too, because there
actually is a bunch of cool stuff that
I'm looking forward to. But those are, I
guess, my top one, two, three, four,
five. Um, M5 Ultra, OLED MacBook Pros,
old gaming monitor, new Apple monitors.
I guess the middle three items are are
display related and LM Power series. No
TV stuff in there because TV technology
is in a weird place. And maybe I'll talk
about that in a future show, but uh, for
now uh, you know, this is an off year
for TV technology. Just, you know, save
your money for next year. All right. All
right, thank you to our sponsors this
episode. This I always say this week.
All right, thank you to our sponsors
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And thanks to our members who support us
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atp.fm/join.
One of the many perks of ATP membership
is ATP overtime, our weekly bonus topic.
Every episode has usually about 15 or 20
more minutes of a bonus topic at the end
for members only. This week, as kind of
alluded to earlier, we're going to be
talking about the uh form factor rumors
for the uh 18 Pro and Max and uh kind of
the headliner is the foldable iPhone and
the rumors around that and the 3D
printer mockups and everything like
that. We're going to talk about that in
overtime. You can join us to listen
atm/join.
Thank you so much everybody and we'll
talk to you next week.
Now the show is over. They didn't even
mean to begin cuz it was accidental.
>> Accidental.
>> Oh, it was accidental.
>> Accidental.
>> John didn't do any research. Marco and
Casey wouldn't let him cuz it was
accidental.
>> Accidental.
>> It was accidental.
>> Accidental.
>> And you can find the show notes at atm.
And if you're into Mastadon, you can
follow them at C A S E Y L I S. So
that's Casey Lis M A R C O A R M E N T
Marco R S I R A C USA Syracuse. It's
accidental accidental.
They didn't mean to accidental
accidental tech podcast so long.
I bought a thing and it has sent me down
the rabbit hole of all rabbit holes and
it is all okay now, but woof it was it's
been an adventure. This all started when
Ubiquiti decided to release something
that was laser aimed like like a EUV
machine laser aimed at my face which was
Ubiquiti decided to release a travel
router. So I had to have one and I
bought one. Now let me back up a smidge.
What the heck is a travel router? So,
uh, for the longest time, ever since
like a couple of years ago, uh, Quinn
had done a different video than the one
we talked about earlier where he talked
about like I think it was cool, um, like
nerd stuff you could buy or maybe it was
in the context of gifts. Uh, I forget
exactly what it was about. I'll find a
link and put it in the show notes, but
um, one way or another, Quinn had put
together a video about how you a bunch
of different things that are great for
nerds. And one of them was a travel
router. And the idea here is let's say
that you and your family are going on
vacation and let's say you arrive at the
hotel room. If it's a great hotel room,
which this never happens, you'll find an
Ethernet port waiting for you and you
just need to bring an Ethernet cable and
you can plug in your computer. But that
never happens. So instead, what happens
is there's Wi-Fi and there's typically
some sort of captive portal that you
need to go through and say, "Yes, I'm,
you know, the last name is Liss. I'm in
room 123 blah blah blah." And if you do
that for yourself for your phone, and
then you do that for yourself for your
iPad, then you do it for yourself for
some other device, then you do the same
dance for your partner and their phone
or andor their iPad, then you do it for
your child or children for their this,
they're that, they're this, they're
that. And it's just annoying. And so
what you can do is you can get these
little devices that are colloquially
called travel routers. Now, the Mac
Daddy of travel routers is or in terms
of the ones that everyone seems to buy
and what Quinn recommended was was one
of the many GLET travel routers. Uh it's
a not the great name greatest name, but
these are incredibly great devices. And
this is what I have in the tailgate tub
to um slurp up internet from like a
hotspot or my phone and then distribute
it via both e Ethernet and Wi-Fi to the
devices at the tailgate. I also, you
know, that would also do double duty and
when we would go on vacation, I would
have that thing get through the captive
portal and I would have that thing uh
get on the internet and once that gets
on the internet, it's rebroadcast or not
rebroadcasting, it's broadcasting Wi-Fi,
but the same SSID and password that's at
home. So all of our devices, they they
don't necessarily think they're at home,
but they at least connect to the
internet with the same SSID and
password. This is extremely convenient.
just so you don't have to do the same
dance with everyone. Now, additionally,
if you say go to a beach house or
something like that, have like more of
an Airbnb scenario rather than a hotel,
oftentimes you will find like an ERO or
some other U ISP issued router there.
And often times they will have an
available Ethernet port. And if that's
the case, you can quickly and easily
plug in your router to this Ethernet
jack and then you immediately have Wi-Fi
for all of your devices. It's
incredible. It's great. I love it. It's
a very dorky thing to do, but I freaking
love it. Now, these devices are not big
by any means, but they're not small.
Like, they take up space. I'm trying to
think of a good analogy, and I'm really
struggling to come up with one. Um, for
the three of you that know what this
means, they're often about the size of a
Mix Pre32, which is not helpful, and I
recognize that, but I don't know. It's
probably the same rough volume as a
HomePod mini, although it's rectangular
and, you know, in a very different shape
and whatnot. So, Ubiquiti decides to
enter this market and comes out with a
travel router. And I took one look at
this thing and said, "I must have it."
Not only is it Ubiquiti, which is my new
thing, but it was $80, which is within
reason for some of the GL GLET routers,
but by and large, I wouldn't say that's
impulse money, but because I mean, $80
is not a small amount of money, but
that's pretty good. I mean, the family
of four, when we go out to eat at at a
fast casual restaurant, like if we're
going to five guys, it's 50 freaking
dollars. And that's literally poop in
like a day. So,
>> I'm going to go I'm going to be a
contrarian here and say it's 2025. $80
is a small amount of money.
>> Well, that's true. Almost inflation,
baby. Inflation, baby. What are we going
to do? Um, so they came out with this
travel router and it is tiny. Think of a
approximately a regular average size
playing card. I know playing cards can
be different sizes, but like a canonical
averagesiz playing card.
>> Real time followup. Thanks long form in
the chat. It's 2026, not 2025.
>> Oh yeah, good point. Good point.
>> Still writing 2025 in all your podcasts.
>> Yep, there it is. Uh, so imagine like a,
you know, playing cards, you know, ace
ace 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 whatever. That's
roughly the size of that and probably
like half a deck tall. I know that's
very unscientific. I don't have the
actual dimensions in front of me. It
doesn't freaking matter. It's tiny. And
perhaps Marco, you can make the show the
the chapter art a photo of this device
because it is so cool looking. And uh
and I again I immediately I knew I had
to have it. It's so thin that on the one
side it has two USBC ports. We'll talk
about that in a minute. But on the other
side it has two Ethernet ports, one for
a client and one for uplink. It's so
small that the top like fifth is a door
or a joint that you lift up in order to
expand the depth of this thing so you
can actually plug in an Ethernet jack,
an RJ45 or whatever. I know it's not
RJ45, but you know what I'm saying. So,
>> it's 3.8 in x 2.6 in by a half an inch.
So, half an inch is not big enough for
an Ethernet port. So, you got to have
the big mouth.
>> You got to have the big mouth title. Uh,
so anyways, and on the front it has a
display and the display will tell you if
it's connected, what it's connected to,
how many clients it has, and whether or
not it's um it's connected via teleport,
which we'll get to in a minute.
>> Can I just do a brief aside now? I don't
want to come out against putting tiny
screens on every single freaking
electronic thing. Like for this, it
might be worth it, but like
>> the the latest anchor uh plug thing or
whatever has a screen on a million every
power bank battery thing has a screen.
You've got the USBC cable screen. In
some circumstances, I understand. I want
to see how many watts going through it.
I want to see the data rate. I want to
see whatever. But not everything needs a
screen. I know they're inexpensive, but
I feel like it's just wasting my battery
power for a thing that I'm never going
to look at again. Maybe in travel router
it makes sense because you do want to
see how it's performing or whatever, but
I feel like we've gone too far with the
screens. We need to pull back a little
bit both in car interiors and on
electronics. I I'll give you the car
interiors, but the other examples you
gave, like so I I have uh I have a
somewhat recent anchor battery bank that
has one of those little color OLED
screens on it that tells you like the
water in and out. It's really nice
actually. It's very useful to see like,
oh, is that thing charging?
>> Well, people like them because they're
cute and sometimes useful, but like the
smallest little tiny they're not 5 watt,
but you know, like the the smallest
little pluggy thing with one USBC port
that does not need a screen.
>> That's Yeah, I'll give you that.
>> And their newest one has it. I'm like,
now we've gone too far. It's too much.
But also, uh, the other another example
you gave on on Ubiquity stuff, like, so
for for reasons that I'm not going to
have time to get into on this show, I
had to set up a new Ubiquity router at
the beach, uh, a couple days ago, and it
had everything you just said you you
said two hours ago about your uh, Eero
swapping setup. Ubiquity has all the
same joy for me. Like I I had to replace
an old Ubiquiti router and I had a new
one on hand, thank goodness. And I just
like I installed it and it was like, "Do
you want to restore from the backup the
old one?" Yes. And it just adopted all
the equipment like it it everything was
perfect. And during that time it had a
little tiny like, you know, 3/4 of an
inch screen on the front of the router
that was telling me stuff like, you
know, the progress bar to show that it's
it's not dead. It's just booting and
it's oh, here's the software update.
Here's a progress bar. or like stuff
like that. Like it's just really nice to
be able to see like what's the state of
this thing right now. So honestly
disagree on screens being too in too
many places.
>> I'm just saying they've gone too far.
I'm not saying they're useless on
everything. Like there are places like I
feel like the bigger the bigger and more
permanent the thing is, the more I can
justify a screen. So ubiquity thing like
that makes sense. But like the travel
router is probably about the limit of
things like any any power bank that is
smaller than this travel router. any
power adapter, any cable that again,
special circumstances, if you really
want a cable to know how much power is,
it's good that they exist. They just
shouldn't be on everything. And seeing
it put on like the smallest, cheapest,
lowest power anchor adapter makes me
think they're just trying to put them
throughout the entire line because
they're cheap. That's all I'm saying.
So, I ordered this thing immediately.
Um, it sold out basically immediately.
And I lurk on Reddit on several
different subreddits. And one of the
ones I lurk on is the Ubiquiti Reddit.
And we're going to come back to that in
a minute. But I am super excited to get
this. And the the the Ubiquity subreddit
is losing their minds excited. Everyone
is like, "Oh, I must have this." Because
if you look at this, again, you have to
be the right kind of nerd. But just look
at this thing. It looks so cool. And
it's so small, so much smaller than the
GLET stuff that I already have. And so I
get it in and generally speaking today,
I really, really like this thing. We're
actually planning to travel in the next
couple of weeks for just a couple of
nights. And so I'm planning to bring
this with us. Uh we'll probably bring
one of the GLET ones that I have as a
backup um just in case, but I have no
expectation that I'll need it. Um but I
really really like it. It seems to work
really really well. Um the it's not
super crazy ridiculous fast. like I
connected it at a friend's house to
their gig symmetric gigabit Ethernet um
or FiOS and it would get via Ethernet
like 300 megabits a second down. But the
thing is a size of a playing card for
goodness sakes. Like I'm not I'm not
trying to download ISOs or you know
whatever while I'm on vacation. I just
want to have something that I can maybe
physically plug an Apple TV into and
then distribute Wi-Fi to everything
else. Do you think the number of times
people have said they've downloaded ISOs
is higher than the actual number of
times people have downloaded ISOs?
>> I think maybe just a little. So anyways,
uh one of the things that a couple
things that confused me or I didn't like
at first um the way you interact with
this is through the UniFi app, which is
kind of like equivalent to the Eero app,
if you will. Um, and what happens is it
it pairs, well, not even pairs, I
shouldn't say pairs. It just finds the
travel router via Bluetooth, which I
dig. And it's pretty quick to find it.
But then when you it brings up a modal
to interact with the travel router, and
you can set settings and do things like
that, but uh once you dismiss the modal,
it is extraordinarily not obvious what
you do to get back to that modal. And it
turns out that what you have to do is go
into the section, I forget the term for
it, but where you look at the other
networks that you have access to, which
for me is only my one. Thank you. That's
it. Site manager. You go up to the site
manager and it appears in there. But
what's super trick about this thing and
part of the the uh reason to however you
pronounce it that it exists.
>> It's pronounced trrow.
>> I'm already hearing about that.
>> Yeah, I actually I didn't blink an eye
because I thought you were right, but
here we are.
>> Turns out it's trough. Whoops. I I put a
link to the Trrow Disolution in the chat
room.
>> Oh, I saw it's in the show notes. I saw
it. Um, so the the way it's supposed to
work is you when you first connect it,
it says, "All right, what networks do
you have access to? And which one of
these networks would you like to
basically rebroadcast?" So, Marco, if
you got one of these, you could choose,
do you want it to rebroadcast the beach
network, the uh Long Island network, or
the the uh restaurant network? And you
could do any of the above. And I believe
you can swap between them. And once you
tell it that, it will slurp up, you
know, your Wi-Fi credentials and all you
need to do. And then suddenly now I have
my Wi-Fi network on this little tiny
device. Um, and that's really really
cool and and it worked pretty well for
the most part. Um, the only real
complaint I have about it today,
although we're going to go through a
journey together, so buckle up. Uh, the
only real complaint I have about it
today is that every time I connect it to
my phone for tethering purposes, and I
believe this is true of my iPad as well,
every single time they connect to each
other, I get the dialogue on my iPhone.
Trust this computer. Enter your
password. Maybe this is a setting that
I've flipped that I should unflip. This
might be a Casey problem, but I'm pretty
sure it's applicable on both the iPad
and the phone. And it's very annoying
that you have to do this every single
freaking time. It doesn't remember that
you've blessed this device. I don't know
if it's doing some sort of like USB
equivalent of like MAC address rotation
or something like that. Who knows? But
that's annoying. Additionally, I
couldn't figure out, like I said, how to
get back to the thing after I close that
dialogue. But as Marco said, you know,
you go to the site manager and that's
fine. So, this is all well and good. And
I got this and then for the first time,
I set up what what um Ubiquiti calls
teleport. And what Teleport is is like a
zero config VPN. And you can use their
one of their other apps called Wi-Fi
man. I'm not really sure why that's
where they put it, but that's where it
is to use this zero config VPN to bring
your device, your phone or your iPad or
what have you back into your home
network. And I believe there's an
equivalent for the Mac as well. I've
never done it on the Mac. And the idea
is that the CL the excuse me, the um
univer the ubiquity travel router w has
its own teleport. So, not only will you
be rebroadcasting your own Wi-Fi, but it
will actually join your network via VPN
to the point that I actually took a
spare Flex Mini or whatever this thing
is called, you know, the little baby
five port um switches that they have. I
had one that I had previously factory
reset deliberately. I plugged it in to
the Ethernet on the travel router and
adopted it through my iPhone cellular
connection which is bananas. So it
became a part of my network through the
travel well through my iPhone through
the travel router which is nuts. Uh very
very cool stuff. Additionally, if you
have a UniFi Protect camera, it will
also be able to stream to your DVR or in
my case, a cloud gateway fiber at home
via the travel router if the connection
is strong enough, if the internet
connection is strong enough. So, I could
bring a camera with me to vacation and
keep an eye on like Penny if we're
traveling with her or something like
that, which is super freaking cool. Your
entire network is where the travel
router is, and I think that's extremely
cool. So, I want to try this out. I've
never used teleport before. So, teleport
has a lot of options in um in the in the
on the ubiquity like web configurator.
Uh I'm going to tell you all the
options. Here we go. Is teleport on or
off? There's your options. So, uh I turn
teleport on and I gave that a shot. And
I connected to it via either my computer
or my iPad. It doesn't really matter.
And I think to myself, all right, I'm
going to see if I can SSH into my
Synology because that will be a great
test to see whether or not I can can
Yeah, I'm back on my home network. I'm
on a my home network is 192168.17
whatever. This network I think by
default was3 whatever. Um but I want to
see if I can reach into my Synology and
it doesn't work. Meanwhile, I'm still
cruising and for the last several days
while I'm waiting for it to arrive while
it's shipped, I'm cruising the Ubiquiti
subreddit and everyone's losing their
ever loving freaking minds for mostly
dumb reasons. John, what was the thing
on slash dot where every where they
panned the the uh original iPod?
>> Less space than a nomad.
>> Less space than a nomad. No wireless.
Less space than a nomad. Lame.
>> Exactly. All I saw was Wi-Fi 5. Lame.
Again, it's a travel router. I agree. If
you wanted this to be your home router,
that's wrong on a million levels, but
Wi-Fi 5 maybe not great.
>> Work great with a PlayStation Portal
>> or that's true. I mean, it's it's
equivalent with the PlayStation thing.
>> Yeah, most of these people like if you
went to their house and you replaced
their Wi-Fi 7 gear with Wi-Fi 5 gear,
how long would it take them to notice?
>> Also true. So, yeah. So, yeah, Wi-Fi 5,
lame. Uh, teleport doesn't work. Lame.
Which I think that there's some truth to
that, which we'll get to in a second. um
uh the it leaks DNS because one of the
things that it's supposed to do is if it
finds a captive portal so it can connect
to other Wi-Fi just like my GLI net can
it can connect to like a hotel Wi-Fi it
it is supposed to basically push that
captive portal to your client device
like your iPhone or your iPad or
whatever have you log in and then magic
happens and then it will be through that
captive portal and get on the internet
and people are saying well it's leaking
DNS and well of course it has to use the
local DNS to get to the cap captive
portal, right? And but then after that,
you're not using teleports DNS, you're
using local DNS, you're leaking DNS.
Everyone's losing their minds because
Reddit. Um, but I'm starting to get
myself a little spun up about this
because everyone's getting real annoyed
about how this thing is like shipping
with crappy firmware. It doesn't work
for beans. It's beta. Blah blah blah.
Everyone's upset. So, in summary, I
don't know what the hell I was doing and
I shouldn't have listened to Reddit. But
to get there, um, I initially tried to
set it up and I tried to set up with
teleport and that didn't seem to work at
all. It didn't wouldn't connect. I tried
factoring resetting a couple times. That
didn't seem to work. Um, then occas then
once I got teleport to seem to work,
then the internet wouldn't work when I
was connecting to it via the travel
router. And now I understand why, but I
didn't at the time. I I eventually put
the DNS on my the way I had DNS on the
cloud gateway fiber, the router here at
the house.
was that uh DH DHCP clients would be
issued the Pi Hole address as the DNS.
So the cloud gateway fiber has the
actual FIOS DNS in it, but it's issuing
to all the DHCP clients the Pi Hole DNS.
And that seemed to work just great. But
when I did that and when I tried to do
that, when I had teleport on, when I
connected to the travel router, it
didn't work for beans. The internet
wouldn't work. Clearly DNS wasn't
working. And so what I did was on the
cloud gateway fiber I stopped having it
give the Pi hole as the DNS server to
DHCP clients and then suddenly the
internet started working on um on
teleport. Now, this in the middle of
this, everyone is also losing their
minds because to be honest, the software
both on the iOS side and on the firmware
side was not 100% baked. And so, they a
lot of people noticed that there was a
firmware release on New Year's Eve on
John's birthday, but the iOS app at the
time was incapable of upgrading the
firmware. There was a button to do it,
but it didn't work. So then what people
realized is if you go to the Ubiquiti
apps test flight and then go back like
two or three versions, there was briefly
a version that would let you set the SSH
pack password for the travel router and
then you could SSH into the travel
router and force a firmware upgrade that
way, which I did and that did make
things better. But things still weren't
right. I am losing my mind. I cannot
figure out why it is that I can't get
the internet to work right. I can't SSH
into my Synology. Why is this not
working? What is wrong?
>> Can I take a guess?
>> Yes, please.
>> All right. You said you're using
Ubiquiti's teleport feature to bridge
the networks, right?
>> Yes.
>> Are you cheating? Cuz he did spoil this
already on Maston.
>> Uh I sort of
>> I'm only cheating a little bit because I
tried doing exactly this before. uh
earlier this or sorry last year uh
still writing. Okay. Uh so earlier uh in
the last year I uh there was a point
where I was not at the beach like I I
was somewhere on the mainland and
something was going on where I I wanted
to access the beach network. like I want
I needed to access I believe it was the
mixer like there was a DJ and there was
something not working right and I wanted
to log in and access the digital mixer
using their app on my iPad in my house
into the restaurant's network and so
it's like all right get me on the
restaurant network and I didn't have
anything set up except I had access to
the ubiquity control panel that I had
the site manager and so I like okay well
I have that what can I do and the first
thing I thought of oh there's this
teleport thing that will bridge the
network I'm on, my home network to the
restaurant network. Great. I'll do that.
And no matter what I did, I could not
get the two networks like I could get if
I did like, you know, what is my IP.com
or whatever, like I could I could have
my traffic proxied through the
restaurant's internet connection like a
VPN, like a like a relay, but I was
never able to see the restaurant's
network's internal devices. Yep, that's
where I was.
>> Through a bunch of research and trial
and errors, it seems like there is some
kind of default behavior and maybe it's
like with subnets or something or or you
know virtual networks or whatever they
like all these like these deeper layers
of networking that I usually don't mess
with cuz I'm not good at them. and you
know like VLANs like all this all this
stuff like there was some kind of
isolation that it was that teleport
forced by default
>> whether it was a subnet or a VLAN or
something like that and I
>> no matter what I did I I went into like
the firewall rules and everything and I
couldn't I could not get it to work no
matter what. Eventually I just gave up
but I spent I think I spent like three
hours trying to get it to work and I
just I could never get it to work. So,
it's exactly where I was, right? Every
time I connect via teleport and I try to
ping or ping or SSH into the Synology,
it doesn't work. I am asking around on a
private Slack that I'm a part of that
has a bunch of really smart people on
it. I'm asking around everywhere. I
hadn't gotten to Mastadon at this point.
I'm asking around everywhere and I
cannot figure it out. Eventually, I got
so desperate that I started a chat with
Ubiquiti support and said, "Please help
me. I don't understand. I cannot get to
any internal device from this travel
router for and actually at this point I
had come to realize I can't do it from
teleport at all because I had ended up
putting the teleport stuff and Wi-Fi man
and whatnot on my iPad which has a
cellular connection and trying that and
that couldn't get to the Synology or any
other internal host. Right? So, I get on
Ubiquity Support. I do a chat with them
and they're very kind and very polite
and very patient and I explain what's
going on and he and the the person I was
speaking to, I think his name is Peter
or something like that, says, "Well, why
don't you do you have any switches or
wireless access points or anything in in
on the network?" I said, "Yeah, we'll
ping one of those because Ubiquiti
stuff, all of their actual network
devices also pull IP addresses." So, I
ping Oh, and I knew I could p I knew I
could ping the the the cloud gateway
fiber, the router, but I couldn't ping
anything else as far as I could tell.
So, I go to ping one of the switches.
Works. I go to ping uh wireless access
point. That works. So, suddenly it's not
that I can't get to any of the internal
network, it's that I can only get to
ubiquity stuff. And the support person
basically said at this point was like,
well, my job to here is done. Get out of
here. I mean, it was nice about it, but
that was basically the message. And so
then it occurs to me, well, wait a
second. If I can ping ubiquity stuff,
can I ping things that are not the
Synology? Because I've only ever tried
pinging the Synology because why would I
try anything else? And then I tried
pinging my Mac Mini and it worked. Then
I tried sshing into my Mac Mini and it
worked. And suddenly I'm very confused.
>> Oh no.
>> Oh no. Indeed. So then I go back to
trying to ping an SSH into the Synology
and it's not working. So then I think,
okay, well, is it just Linuxbased stuff?
So I tried to ping my Raspberry Pi that
runs the uh Pi Hole.
>> You know what you need?
>> You need a new analogy.
>> Tell me about it. I I need to get rid of
the damn synology is what it boils down
to. But here we are. Um I try to ping
the Raspberry Pi that has the pi hole on
it and that doesn't work. So, it is just
Linux based stuff. That doesn't make any
sense. Wait, I have a second Raspberry
Pi in the bedroom that runs my little
beloved LED that tells me when the doors
are open in the house. Let me ping that.
And that piece of I could ping no
problem. What the ever loving is
happening right now. I am so lost. And I
realize that when when I take an a
proper assessment of everything, I
realize that the only two devices I
cannot successfully connect to are the
Synology and the Raspberry Pi that runs
the Pi Hole. Everything else in the
network has always been good to go and I
never realized it. By the way, would you
like to know why the internet didn't
work when teleport was on before? Well,
that was because it was all the DHCP
clients on the travel router were
getting the Raspberry Pi as a as a DNS
server. And guess what? They couldn't
access.
>> It's always DNS.
>> It's Well, it's DNS except it isn't in
this case. After going back and forth
with a couple of good Samaritans on
Mastadon, we come to find out it was two
very different problems and none of them
were the ubiquity thing and all of them
were at least tangentially my fault. for
the rasp. Oh, John, I I presume you've
already seen this, but do you would you
like to add anything or Marco for that
matter, would you like to add or take
any stabs as what's at as to what's
going on?
>> No, I've already forgotten what you
tooted about, but I did see you toot
about it.
>> Okay. Would you like to take a stab now
then?
>> Oh, no. I'm terrible at network stuff.
And I but I will say that you you
describing your flailing here is an
example of someone trying to figure out
a programming problem who doesn't know
how to use it doesn't know how to use a
debugger. Like you just don't have the
tools, right? Like imagine I mean Marco
doesn't have to imagine he's a PHP
programmer but imagine programmer
programming without access to a
debugger. You're like well you can do it
but like you're really doing with one
hand tied behind your back and it's kind
of miserable.
>> We don't even have a compiler over in
PHP land. Like we're we're operating
with basics here
>> right? So like you're trying to debug
network problems without like
fundamental understanding of networking
nor uh access to the basic tools of
debugging network problems which I'm
assuming the people on and to be clear I
don't have that knowledge either but
like that's why I just stay far far away
from network stuff if I can
>> right and so the people on mastadon
there were a couple of people on maston
who were incredibly kind and incredibly
patient and they suggested doing TCP
dump on the command line which will show
to the very small degree I understand
any of this which is way less than John
and basically zero
It'll show stuff happening via TCP IP
and it would show on both devices that
they were they were getting tickled by
like a ping or whatever. If I recall
correctly, they were showing that things
were coming in, they just weren't
responding. So things were really arry.
What ended up happening was for the
Raspberry Pi, even though I had a DHCP
reservation within the cloud gateway
fiber, when I set it up 11 billion years
ago, for whatever reason, I had
statically assigned an IP for it to use.
Now, those two IPs matched, it was
192.1687.152,
I believe. So the one that the Raspberry
Pi is statically assigning matches the
one that the uh that the the router is
issuing, but the subnet mask on the
Raspberry Pi was 255.255.0.0.
And I don't really know what I'm talking
about, but apparently what that means is
it was not trying to talk to the right
network in order to reply to these
requests. So once I changed it to
255.255.255.0
instead of 0.0, zero. Suddenly, I could
reach the Raspberry Pi and all was well
with DNS and everything was good again.
But that doesn't explain the Synology.
The Synology
is not responding and it has the correct
subnet mask 255 255 255.0.
So, I don't know what I'm doing. And
again, good Samaritans on Maston are
helping me out. We come to realize that
I one of my 80 million containers that I
use is uh Portainer P O R T A I N E R
which is basically a a way to manage
your containers and the way it does an
update for itself is I guess it makes a
sidecar container that that it it
creates itself and then is supposed to
destroy itself and usually does um and
and that's what modifies the actual
container and and then the sidecar goes
away. Well, the Synology, I don't know
because maybe Portainer wasn't cleaning
up well. I don't know what was going on,
but the Synology, when I looked at the
container manager on the Synology, which
is their equivalent of Docker, um, and I
looked at the networks on there, it
turns out that one of these brief and no
longer running but still existing
containers, sidecar containers, was
built a Docker network that was
192.168.0.0.
So I guess all of this traffic was
getting funneled into this Docker
network that doesn't really exist. So
once I deleted that network from Docker,
suddenly the Sonology worked. And so now
after I cannot tell you how many hours
of banging my head against the wall and
of asking for help from Ubiquiti and
asking for help from the good Samaritans
on on Masttodon, I finally got this
travel router working and it works great
and I freaking love it and I'm excited
to travel with it and see how it is in
the real in a real world scenario. I
suspect it'll be great for in the car
for hotel rooms. I'm a little worried
about how it'll work when we go to like
a beach trip where you're renting an
entire house. I reckon that maybe it's
not going to have strong enough radios
to reach, you know, the far corners of
the house, especially because generally
speaking, when you rent a beach house,
the router will be in one extreme corner
of the house and the bedrooms will often
be in the opposite extreme corner. Um,
but all in all, I'm extremely happy
about this. And for all the kvetching
that uh Reddit did about DNS leaks and
stuff like that, as far as I can tell,
when I have teleport enabled, I'm using
my Pi Hole for DNS just as I would
expect. So, we're getting, you know, ad
blocking when we're on when we're on the
travel router. All is good in the world.
But gentlemen, what a damn journey it
was, which was 98% my own doing. You
should buy a networking book or take
like a continuing education course on uh
networking.
>> I probably should. I probably should
because I know almost nothing.
>> You just need to learn like like a
handful of basics and a handful of like
debugging tools that you like your go-to
tools to basically say like like you
would with the programming problem like
I'm sending I'm sending data here. I
think it's this is what's happening. Let
me look at what is happening when I'm
leaving my computer. Let me look what's
happening when it arrives here. If I'm
on my Synology and the traffic arrives
there, how does it get routed? What does
it go to? and would have eventually I
mean I'm assuming you you would have
been able to walk through the same
things that the Mastenon people walked
you through to find your rogue uh uh
container with a network that was uh
sucking up traffic.
>> Yep. H what a journey. But I learned
some things. Not not as much as I
probably should have to John's point,
but I learned some things and I am very
very happy with it. And I don't think
this is the sort of device that would be
useful if you're not a ubiquity person.
But at $80, this is a musthave if you're
a ubiquity person and assuming you have
this need in your life in the first
place. Now, maybe you don't, but for me,
I freaking love this thing. The the
physical form factor is so great. I
actually do like the little screen on
it. I love the little door for the
Ethernet ports. I think it's kind of
silly, but I love it. It's has little is
Yeah. Right. Uh, that's a throwback that
we've made a couple times before in the
show. Uh, it has a little spot for a
lanyard if I wanted to attach a lanyard.
Uh, I love this thing. It's really great
and as long as you actually know what
you're doing, uh, I definitely recommend
it. So, check it out.