Daniel and Manton discuss Apple’s massive root access security flaw, Apple’s reaction to it, and what the internal repercussions at the company might be. Daniel catches Manton up on his ambition to ship MarsEdit 4 as early as next week!

Many thanks to our sponsor this week:

• Ship better apps, faster with buddybuild.

Links:

• Security Update 2017-001 – Apple’s official information page about the macOS root access bug.
• Leave the Password Empty – Innocuous-seeming advice in the Apple Developer forums about the root login vulnerability.
• Pure Frustration – Follow-up comment explaining the inspiration for trying to log in as root.
• Apple to Audit Development Processes – Reuters story includes a copy of Apple’s official statement of regret.
• lsbom – Man page for the little known installer-package inspection utility.

Manton and Daniel compare notes about that time they shared a hotel room together at a tech conference. Or did they?

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Links:

• Hivelogic Fanatics — 2008 picture of Manton and Daniel at the W Hotel in San Francisco.
• California Adventure — Manton blogs about his trip to California for WWDC 2004.

Daniel commits to wrapping up MarsEdit 4 by December 1. Manton also looks towards wrapping up for a public Micro.blog release. They reminisce about Apple’s abandoned system-wide help systems, and review Daniel’s approach to going freemium with in-app-purchases on the Mac App Store.

Many thanks to our sponsor this week:

• Carbon Copy Cloner: Don’t let disk failure be a showstopper – make your bootable backup today!

Links:

• Micro.blog for iOS – The iOS app for Manton’s microblogging service.
• Authoring Apple Help – Apple’s development guide to their in-app Help system.
• Apple Guide – Wikipedia article about Apple’s old guided tutorial help system.
• Balloon Help – Another of Apple’s abandoned system-wide help systems.
• Introducing Scrivener 3 – Announcement of the new version from Literature & Latte.
• Taking Longer Than Hoped – Pre-release blog post from the Scrivener folks that mentions waiting for Apple app review.

Daniel and Manton close in on committing to release dates for MarsEdit and Micro.blog. They weigh tough, last-minute decisions about keeping or cutting features. Manton admits to taking on new commitments as an event organizer. Finally, they talk about resources for teaching kids to code including App Camp, Hour of Code, and Swift Playgrounds.

Many thanks to our sponsors this week:

• Linode: Cloud Hosting for You.
• Digimarc: The best mobile scanning solution today. The only solution for tomorrow.

Links:

• StoreKit – Apple’s API for in-app purchases.
• MarsEdit – Daniel’s Mac-blased blog editing app.
• Micro.blog – Manton’s Web, Mac, and iOS micro-blogging app.
• IndieWebCamp Austin – Open web conference that Manton is co-organizing.
• Release Notes – The gold standard for podcaster-organized developer conferences.
• App Camp – App Camp for Girls fundraising campaign.
• Hour of Code – Program devoted to giving kids a cursory introduction to programming.
• Swift Playgrounds – Apple’s immersive, iPad-based programming education app.
• Minecraft – The popular world-building game.
• TinyMUD – Server-based world-building game from the 1990s.
• Moos (object oriented MUDs) – Object-oriented variation on MUDs.

Manton got his iPhone X, while Daniel patiently awaits his. Daniel admits fault for having been dismissive about Face ID, and Manton concedes the iPhone 8 and X seem to be complementary hits. They talk about Daniel’s decision to migrate his web server, and weigh the merits of taking on too many tasks vs. outsourcing to experts. Finally, they talk about the fear of shipping and the consolation that only a subset of all possible customers is ever reached by the news of a major release.

Many thanks to our sponsors this week:

• Ship better apps, faster with buddybuild.
• Linode: Cloud Hosting for You.

Links:

• iPhone X – Apple’s newest new phone.
• Verge Review – Video includes night-vision filming of Face ID’s IR projection.
• Kinect – Microsoft’s 3D vision technology.
• Wii Remote Sensor – Information from Wikipedia on the sensor’s 3D viewing abilities.
• Face ID Skepticism – Daniel’s historically unfortunate malprediction.
• Upgrade 166 – Including Jason Snell’s take on Apple’s recent earnings.
• AAPL stock price – Yup. It’s past $900 Billion.
• Red Sweater – Daniel’s main site, recently migrated to Linode.
• Postfix – The venerable UNIX mail server.
• Craig Hockenberry – Friend of the show who is not a friend of self-hosting.
• Yellow Dog Linux – Manton’s 2003 web-hosting solution.
• Ubuntu – Daniel’s 2017 web-hosting solution.

Daniel and Manton recap their experience placing pre-orders for the iPhone X, discuss Apple’s unusual PR strategy for iPhone X reviews, and debate the appropriateness of Apple firing an engineer for letting his daughter film a YouTube video of his pre-release phone.

Many thanks to our sponsor this week:

• TextExpander: Communicate Smarter.

Links:

• iPhone X – Apple’s product page for the new phone.
• Face the Future – The Verge’s iPhone X review.
• iPhone X at Disneyland – Matthew Panzarino’s review for Techcrunch.
• My iPhone X Video Went Viral – Brooke Amelia Peterson’s recap of reviewing her father’s iPhone X.
• Mike Allen’s Nephew – John Gruber’s take on Axios’s early impressions of the iPhone X.