What A Lot Of Things: Tech talk from a human perspective

In this rollicking 18th episode of What A Lot Of Things, Ian and Ash dive into the choppy waters of Apple's tussle with the EU over the Digital Markets Act, pondering the implications for developers and users alike. They then take a wistful trip down memory lane, discussing the persistent challenge of legacy systems and out-of-support software, with a particular focus on SQL Server. Along the way, they manage to squeeze in a cheeky debate on teleportation ethics, ponder the correct pronunciation of 'SQL', and reminisce about childhood telly frights. It's a right old mixed bag, this one - tune in for a jolly good natter about tech, nostalgia, and everything in between.

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Creators & Guests

Host
Ash Winter
Tester and international speaker, loves to talk about testability. Along with a number of other community minded souls, one of the co-organisers of the Leeds Testing Atelier. Also co-author of the Team Guide to Software Testability.
Host
Ian Smith
Happiest when making stuff or making people laugh. Tech, and Design Thinking. Works as a fractional CTO, Innovation leader and occasionally an AI or web developer through my company, craftscale. I'm a FRSA.

What is What A Lot Of Things: Tech talk from a human perspective?

Ash and Ian talk about interesting Things from the tech industry that are on their minds.

Ash:

Imagine being in a in a lift to somewhere you actually want to go to.

Ian:

Oh, look, we're on episode 18 now. We are. How are we on episode 18?

Ash:

With the sequence of events preceding episode 18.

Ian:

We we were like episode 1, 2, 3, 7, 8. Uh-huh. And then suddenly, 12, 30, 40, 15, 60, 17, 18.

Ash:

I know it's the productivity is is terrifying, isn't it?

Ian:

Yes. Speaking as the person who edits it, yes.

Ash:

In the bottleneck.

Ian:

I can't remember what we do to get started.

Ash:

Well, usually, we'll we'll have wheeled off about 20 minutes worth of of guff about

Ian:

Things which ought to be things, but we try to pretend they weren't. Yeah. Yeah. Which we then have to edit out. Yeah.

Ian:

Ex

Ash:

or edit in at great length.

Ian:

Oh, yes. There's no sensible level of editing, apparently.

Ash:

No. No. There's just editing, isn't there? There's no, like, there's no levels in between.

Ian:

Yeah. Basically.

Ash:

Yeah. So if you sit down and record for a half an hour or 2 hours, there's very little that can be honestly cut without reference to something else that's happened within those time frames.

Ian:

This is just a way of preparing you for what will happen when I finish editing the previous episode. And, just in case you thought we weren't doing time machines

Ash:

Oh, yeah.

Ian:

That's particularly freakish. But in the editing of the previous episode, we we basically make a very detailed list at the end of all the things we talked about, including the ones we want to cut out. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm sure it will be seamless when I finally get around to it.

Ian:

So I

Ash:

guess we could have, like, a classic entry to the podcast where we say hello rather than just immediately into a tirade about moving things in and out of columns.

Ian:

That seems outlandish. Yeah. But, you know, let's give it a go.

Ash:

Yeah. So I I I have a small announcement.

Ian:

That's not hello.

Ash:

Oh, sorry. Hello. I have a small announcement.

Ian:

Hi, Ian.

Ash:

I'll just have. Well, we could announce that you've bought some new kits, so we can do

Ian:

Outside broadcast.

Ash:

Outside broadcast. So should we do that? We'll say hello first.

Ian:

I'm a bit worried Paula might listen to it.

Ash:

What? As the the, the chief treasurer of your business.

Ian:

Yes. She might find that my business has been investing in wireless microphones. I might be out on my ear. I'll be living in this office.

Ash:

It's quite spacious.

Ian:

Yeah. But not very comfortable.

Ash:

No. No.

Ian:

There's nowhere to sleep.

Ash:

No. Pigeons for company.

Ian:

Just pigeons.

Ash:

Right. So should we have that as a small announcement then?

Ian:

Do you think, that announcement will create expectations which we will subsequently be unable to meet?

Ash:

I no. Because we are gonna meet it, aren't we?

Ian:

I think we are. We plan to. Yeah. If we don't, it was a big waste of money.

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So I think, you know, in order to find out what the return on investment will be, we need to at least give it a try, don't we?

Ian:

Or at least make an announcement about it. Yeah. That's the hard bit out the way then, isn't it?

Ash:

Yeah. Exactly.

Ian:

So we bought some see what I did there.

Ash:

Straight into

Ian:

it. We bought some wireless portable microphones that mean that we will be able to go for a walk and record an episode while going for a walk at the same time, Thus depriving us of our notes, privacy or privacy, depending which side of the Atlantic you live on, and various other things that we depend upon. But this podcast kind of began that way, didn't it?

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah. So walks on the, the famous Ilkley Moor, which is not too far from here.

Ian:

Sometimes even without a hat.

Ash:

Mostly without a hat, to be fair. Yeah? Fearless, we are.

Ian:

Fearless. Senseless. Senseless and fearless. So since we began in an ambulatory fashion, we should at least try recording one of our perambulations. Yeah.

Ian:

Just so that you can hear me puffing up hills while Ash, the hill running lunatic, sails up effortlessly.

Ash:

It's okay. I'll just wait at the top.

Ian:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the range of the wireless on the microphones is something like 80 yards or something. Alright.

Ash:

Okay.

Ian:

You can't overtake me by too much. Okay. And by that point, we won't be able to hear what each other is saying. So won't be much for a conversation. It just

Ash:

become externalized internal monologues from the 2 of us, but, but while walking. I think I might let Instead of while sitting.

Ian:

I might let you edit that. Okay.

Ash:

2 separate channels there, I think.

Ian:

Yes. Yeah. Yes. Well, that will be exciting anyway. Yeah.

Ian:

Absolutely. Standby for a maybe we won't give it a proper episode number. Could be a bonus, couldn't it? Could it like you would bonus episode? Yeah.

Ian:

If if anyone gives us a fuck no. No. Actually, we're not gonna bribe people to do what we already planned to do.

Ash:

Yeah. Will make no difference to the outcome.

Ian:

Are they still gonna try and do it? Yes. Yes. Give us money or don't, we're still gonna do it. Yeah.

Ian:

I love our purposefulness.

Ash:

Okay. But this one, we're firmly sat down and ready for a couple of things.

Ian:

We are planted firmly. Okay. Well, with that rather feeble preamble compared to our normal marathon preambles, I suppose we're going to have to move on to things Yes. Since we have no other

Ash:

No other announcements?

Ian:

Announcements, if we can even call that one.

Ash:

It's a promise.

Ian:

It's a yeah. Without a deadline.

Ash:

Promise without a deadline.

Ian:

Yes. The best kind of promise. Absolutely. So let's I guess we're gonna move on to things Yeah. Which means I think we now need to bring our attention to our extremely narrow definition of fairness

Ash:

Yes.

Ian:

Which would require us to remember the order in which we did the previous one.

Ash:

Let's consult our records. So from review of the episode known as 17. I think I went first with large action models. So with our narrow definition of fairness, we have to let Ian go first.

Ian:

We don't want to.

Ash:

Yeah. Based on the moral

Ian:

framework that we serve. Yeah. We thank goodness we don't have a complicated moral framework. Otherwise, we'd be, you know, like 2 philosophers debating. I think we already made more of that decision than it possibly deserves.

Ash:

Yeah. Maybe. So, Ian, tell me of your thing.

Ian:

Well, I'm I'm glad you asked. My thing is a bit more based on the news than usual. Oh. It's my thing is the battle that's currently appears to be going on between Apple and the European Union, whose, Digital Markets Act seems very I'm going to say some cynical people might feel as though it's targeted directly at Apple. This is one of these things where you see a lot of people are waving about it, But the thing that strikes me is that as usual, I seem to be, taking I mean, I I I like Apple.

Ian:

Are you

Ash:

on Apple's side, Ian?

Ian:

I I'm a little bit on Apple's side, but,

Ash:

This has nothing to do with refreshing your iPhone every year for the for the latest and greatest.

Ian:

I I haven't done that for quite a long time.

Ash:

Oh, okay.

Ian:

I think I had all the iPhones up to like 8 or something. And then after that, I went to every 2 years.

Ash:

Alright. Okay.

Ian:

But,

Ash:

So still strong fan fan boy attitude, but not quite as strong as, as it used to be.

Ian:

Well, I feel as though the attached to the sort of fanboy label is a kind of uncritical acceptance of all all things. And, at my age, I find it hard to be uncritically accepting of large organisations' actions. Sure. And you've got to be clear eyed about these things. And, you know, you see some of the things, the lawsuits and stuff that are going on involving Apple.

Ian:

And you think, well, if it turns out they did that, that's not very good.

Ash:

Yeah. Okay.

Ian:

But on the whole, there are some sort of some areas where they, I think, have a level of integrity. You might not agree Sure. With them, but you can agree that they're doing things because they believe it's what their users will be best for their users Yeah. Rather than, sort of for shabby commercial manipulation.

Ash:

Okay. So what does the what's the gist of the of the conflict then between the 2?

Ian:

Well, the EU passed the Digital Markets Act some while back, and it came into effect Yeah. Slightly less than some while back. It basically means that Apple have had to do a bunch of stuff in the for their EU customers only they've chosen to do in order to comply with the DMA. Right. So for example, in the EU, companies can operate independent app stores.

Ian:

Yeah. And it's even gonna be possible for developers to allow apps to be installed through downloads from the web, which is funny because in a way, if you have a Mac or PC or sort of any kind of desktop or laptop computer, you do that routinely. I think we'd be astonished if somebody tried to Yeah. Yeah. That's to sort of prevent that.

Ian:

But on the other hand, if you think about the use of computers versus the use of phones and mobile devices, They're quite they're quite different people. And I think Apple has a sort of nuanced view that it's okay for Mac users to do that at their level of tech savviness and understanding, but it's not okay for phone users to be able to do that

Ash:

Right.

Ian:

Because I I I sense I'm rambling.

Ash:

No. That that's a lot of work. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Ash:

So I think as if I say if I try and play back, like, my understanding of what it what it all means

Ian:

It might be clearer than mine.

Ash:

So so you've got, like, Apple Music, formerly known as iTunes. It might still be called iTunes. I don't know. And then you've got, which is a store where you go and buy music. Yeah.

Ash:

But then you've got the Spotify app, which is you have your subscription through Spotify and you stream music through

Ian:

it. So, okay. Well, I think Apple Music is the same.

Ash:

Right. But they're not equal on iOS, are they, in terms of what they can do?

Ian:

I believe that's true. Yes.

Ash:

Yeah. So it's like if you go on to Apple Music, I don't know if you if you can still, like, buy an individual song or you have to subscribe. I'm not sure. But No. No.

Ian:

No. So I think for the purpose of this comparison, we you can go and buy individual songs from Itunes music store, but that is almost a sort of vestigial thing. By far, the biggest thing that Apple Music subscribers do is the same as Spotify. They they stream music on their device. And they can make local downloads of it and stuff, but it's all protected, but it lets them stream.

Ash:

Yeah. So so a better example might be, like, with games for it. So if you had a, I don't know, a Steam app, which you could then buy games through and download them to your your Apple device, can you currently do that?

Ian:

I that that seemed to have more levels of indirection in it than I was expecting. Okay. So, you Steam is a good example of an app store, isn't it? Yeah. So you can, on your Mac, you can instal Steam, and then you can access your Steam library on your Mac in the same way as you could on a on a PC.

Ash:

Mhmm.

Ian:

Although obviously there's slightly different coverage of what games support what platform. But for example, you could get Baldur's Gate 3 through Steam Yeah. On either of those in the same way. But you can't install the Steam apps app store on your iOS device or iPad iOS device because that is a non permitted Mhmm. Thing by Apple.

Ian:

Yeah. And Apple justified this kind of, policies, the the policies in this area by pointing out the things like the battery life, the security of the platform, their ability to prevent viruses, those kinds of things, is contingent on them controlling what is able to be installed on an iPhone. Yeah. And if you want, you can get a developer account and then probably install all sorts of things, but, you know, for regular users. And so Epic Games want to have an app store on iOS so that they can make the money.

Ash:

Yeah. So rather than giving the the significant cut, whatever the cut is to, to Apple for the same product.

Ian:

And and actually, the cut is is a deep cut that Apple wants for this. Yeah. It's 30% for purchases of apps. And then for subscriptions, it's 30% for the 1st year, and then 15% thereafter for that same subscription.

Ash:

Yeah. So thus rendering some apps, like, obsolete in terms of revenue because you might not have 30% in it.

Ian:

Yeah. I mean, the the it's digital goods only Yeah. For which they do that. So Amazon, for example, you can go on Amazon's app and buy, I don't know, a special knife for cutting cardboard boxes open, and the Apple don't take a cut of that. Right.

Ian:

But if you go on the Amazon's Audible app to buy a and you wanted to buy an audio book, you'd really have to do that on the web. Yeah. Although you could listen to it on your iPhone or whatever. Yeah. And in fact, there's a broad category of quotes, unquote listener apps, which Apple permits where people sell and sell the service Yeah.

Ian:

Via a web payment, but you can consume it on your phone. Spotify is among these. So Spotify have they only got the ability to subscribe to Spotify on, on on their website. Yeah. But you can listen to it then on an app.

Ian:

Yeah. Apple have another rather barmy provision, as well as the 30% tax, which is a non steering provision. So you aren't allowed to give people a link to go to the website and to buy this. Yeah. Which leads to some faintly ridiculous Yeah.

Ian:

Situations.

Ash:

So my most recent role involved a lot of trying to, work with Apple's, like, labyrinthine rules around what is and what is not, appropriate and trying to get, especially with, like, in app purchases involved, trying to get an app through their app store is a very, very difficult proposition and is full of pretty opaque. Until you submit you don't know Yeah. What they're going to say. Yeah. Which is kind of an interesting like

Ian:

ironic isn't it?

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah. The the you know, in this example the EU are being opaque and slightly vague with the with the with the with the digital markets act and not really telling Apple what they need to do in order to comply with it. So there's there are some interesting parallels between the 2 organizations. Yeah.

Ash:

Yeah. Absolutely. So, obviously, on a small scale with you submitting an app and trying to get around or comply with Apple's quite frankly bizarre and a little bit, like, temperamental policies at times. Some apps sell through, some receive scrutiny that you wouldn't believe.

Ian:

Are you are you on Mastodon? Like, I can never remember.

Ash:

No. No? No. Still only LinkedIn and only just?

Ian:

Not yet. I read a a post on Mastodon which made me laugh where the this topic was being discussed. Yeah. Somebody said, somebody was saying something in support of Apple's position or part of Apple's position. Yeah.

Ian:

And somebody responded saying, well, giant gatekeepers really are bad. And, somebody replied saying, it's funny to me that I don't know whether you're talking about the EU or Apple.

Ash:

Yeah. I think I think it's probably fair in this in in this regard, isn't it? In this particular, because it's it's it's like a game of chicken, isn't it? Where both of them are trying to see who blinks, but the the stakes are incredibly high. So for me, the EU is like it's like the the zenith of, like, the new neoliberal project, dislikes anything to do with the with degrading competition.

Ash:

And it's to me, I'm like, they were gonna come for the big tech companies eventually. It can't it can't accept that state of play, especially for a company that owns hardware, operating system, and app stores. That's three levels of uncompetitiveness, which is just like it's like incredibly difficult to break that down, isn't it? So hence all the weird behaviors that go on in there.

Ian:

Well, you also want to retain things like security and convenience for the for the user. So there's no question that one of Apple's big advantages in marketplace is its integration across all of its product line. Yeah. There's a whole thing, for example, iPhone mirroring that's coming in the next little versions of Ios or Mac OS, where if you can't find your phone but you've got a Mac, you can just display your phone on the screen of the Mac and do whatever it is you need to do. Yeah.

Ian:

As long as it's on the same network with you. That kind of integration across the whole stack is very, very compelling.

Ash:

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. But I can see why Apple would be afraid of other app stores because if you had another app store, which was easy to submit to, and in app purchases, you could link off to your website in order to do a subscription, then, well, Apple services model, like, you know, the the app store model would start to break down, wouldn't it, Some to some some degree because why would you stick with a as well, I'm sort of speaking as a developer, as a builder of apps. If there was another way to do Ios, because the reality is if you wanna make some money in the mobile space you need to get an Ios app on the store.

Ash:

Android apps you offer for completeness rather than making money. Yeah. You make money on Ios. So, but if I could find a better way, easier way of doing it rather than Apple's way as a builder of apps, I 100% would do it.

Ian:

Yeah. But you gotta sort of ask the question is what why is iOS like that? Is it because of that restrictiveness on the part of Apple? Android app stores, at one point, I think they're a lot better now, but at one point, they were notorious having full of

Ash:

Yeah.

Ian:

Sure. Pollution, basically, nasty malware apps that, you know, there was no real gatekeeping. You could just put whatever evil app you wanted. You know? It would do oh, here's here's my new calculator app that just monitors everything about your life and sends it to me while allowing you to do sums periodically if you want.

Ian:

You know, that that that kind of that kind of thing is exactly what Apple was forbidding Yeah. And that safety that people feel. Can you imagine, given that people feel safe now, how that feeling of safety would translate if suddenly all of that was relaxed? Yeah. People would be just installing stuff and believing it will be okay, but it's not.

Ian:

Yeah. And those standards which are so irritating for developers, I I got on the wrong end of this with with Shopify at one point a couple of years ago, right, trying to, make an app, or was involved in making an app for one of my clients Yeah. For Shopify, and it was unbelievable how hard it was. And they were just saying, oh, well, no. You have to take all payments associated with this app through Shopify Yeah.

Ian:

Payments. It was like, well, the rest of our platform can't use it. You know, it's it's it's almost impossible to do this. It's just like, well, no. Otherwise, you can't be approved in the store.

Ian:

And so it it turns into it it is really irritating for developers. Yeah. But Shopify, in this case, will already be seeing themselves as a champion of the user who wants to be able to do everything in the same way conveniently.

Ash:

Mhmm. And I

Ian:

think the same, you know, I want I love subscriptions made through Apple because I can easily find them and cancel them. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas I always remember The Times newspaper. I subscribed to that for a bit.

Ian:

I thought Rupert Murdoch was looking a bit skint, so I thought I'll send him £26 a month for a bit. So I got the £3, the £1 a month, 3 months plus 26.99 a month for for the rest of the year. And then I thought, well, I'll unsubscribe from this. There's nowhere to unsubscribe. You have to phone them up and argue with someone for, like, 10 minutes to say, look.

Ian:

No. I want to unsubscribe. Oh, yes. But have you not spotted this benefit that you've got? Yes.

Ian:

But now I want to unsubscribe. Yeah.

Ash:

But it might

Ian:

not be Have you not done this? And have you not done that? No. I want to and eventually, you can make them unsubscribe you. Yeah.

Ian:

Yeah. But I don't want that. I want to to go on the App Store, find my account, look at subscriptions, and just click unsubscribe. Yeah. That's what I want to do.

Ian:

As a user, that's what I wanna do. As a person who provides something, you're like, I'm not paying Apple all that money. I'm not doing this. I'm not doing that, but it's good for the user.

Ash:

Yeah. So so maybe Apple has the user in mind, but then doesn't the developers who build the apps make the user experience, you know, make the phone useful? Yes. So but Apple does not value the developers, certainly not their time.

Ian:

Well, Apple's got a very clear hierarchy. Yeah. Apple will deal and and John Gruber writes about this on Daring Fireball. I'm gonna, There's some really great writing about this, so I'm gonna put links in the in the show notes for this. But Apple, Apple's hierarchy is we do what's in our interest first.

Ian:

Yeah. Well And then we Actually. Then we do what's in the user's interest second, and developers are a distant third. Yeah. And actually, Apple, I think, does now have a developer relations problem.

Ian:

So, for for example, they launched a whole new platform, 4 or 5 months ago called Vision Pro, which is their VR platform. And there's no Netflix on it. No no YouTube because they've pissed off developers. Yeah. And developers are like, well, you're gonna treat us like this.

Ian:

It's not clear this platform is gonna be huge. We'll wait.

Ash:

Yeah. You

Ian:

know? And their day one was a bit lamer because it didn't have those especially video streaming. I mean, what application for VR is there if you're not looking at a a 20 foot cinema screen in your in your airplane seat? You want

Ash:

the kind of games and, streaming services in there, don't you?

Ian:

Yeah. And so it's it's clear that I mean, Apple have got some buddies like Disney who they get on very well with. Yeah. And Disney have provided apparently what's on absolutely amazing Vision Pro app where you could sit in Star Wars locations.

Ash:

Right.

Ian:

Star Wars cinema and watch, I don't know, My Little Pony or something. Yeah. It it it was a big issue in a way that these these companies weren't there.

Ash:

Yeah.

Ian:

They weren't there for Apple. And they they have got a problem, and they and I think they are charging too much. Yeah. And the way they've designed their, compliance for the DMA actions, you know, they've got some kind of core technology fee that they're charging per you know, if you have more than a 100, a 1000000000, I don't know, a 100,000, more than a lot of users Yeah. Then you have to pay like 50¢ per user for all the instalments.

Ash:

Okay. Yeah.

Ian:

Yeah. And you're only paying 17% instead of 30% for your other apps. You know, it basically, they've done it. It's like a salty tea danger being ordered to do something by their parents and then just doing the Like,

Ash:

A lot of the sums, it basically probably comes to a similar amount.

Ian:

Yeah. Exactly.

Ash:

And so but you've just snuck in this other charge to, like, even out the score somewhere else.

Ian:

Yeah. So they've they've managed to do the things that the DMA require of them, but in such a way as people like Spotify, there's there's a hilarious Apple press release about Spotify's lobbying of the EU in which they absolutely can Spotify. They slam them, you know, and they say, you know, that it it's free for Spotify to use. They don't pay Apple anything. And we've sent engineers to to to visit them in Stockholm to help them with their app.

Ian:

You know, we've done all this stuff for them. We haven't charged them for it, is what they say. And then and then, but Spotify want even more than than free. Yeah. So they basically sort of really just pouring disdain upon Spotify in their press release.

Ian:

And Spotify have done one. I don't know if it was in direct response.

Ash:

Passive aggressive

Ian:

press release

Ash:

they got each other.

Ian:

And Spotify have done one that's all about, oh, I can't can't exactly remember now. But, they're just

Ash:

like It's like the same argument in

Ian:

reverse perception. Each other. Yeah. But it's basically, I think, complaining that Apple has managed to comply with the DMA in such a way that it doesn't benefit Spotify.

Ash:

Yeah.

Ian:

And that's made Spotify very angry since they have invested a great amount of time and money in lobbying the EU to make sure that the DMA Yeah. Would allow them to do the the things they want But,

Ash:

you know,

Ian:

on your iPhone.

Ash:

Want more, don't they? Yeah. Spotify want more. Apple charge their 30%, and then whatever it becomes in the after the 1st year. So they naturally want more.

Ash:

Everybody wants more. Yes. But it's like you you're arguing over, you know, what the split is of of the pie, aren't you? So to be honest, there's a lot of same behaviors. Everyone arguing at each other with, like, same behaviors.

Ash:

Now it's become rather than, like, a sensible discussion. It's more like litigation and threats, you know, and passive aggressive press releases against the various players in there. And then it's hard to know, like it's hard to cope with something with a with a decent solution then, isn't it? Because you kind of drift further and further

Ian:

Everyone's entrenched then, aren't they?

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So I don't know. I've from reading some of the material around this, I felt like maybe, sort of, you know, Apple had come into it and the ear had come into it all from entrenched positions.

Ash:

Yeah. And they didn't have the skill, subtlety, or whatever it is in order to begin to move or be seen to move because any climb down would be seen as a

Ian:

Loss of face. Yeah.

Ash:

As a loss a loss of face. Yeah. Yeah.

Ian:

Exactly. Power and money.

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah. I seriously doubt that Apple would pull out of the European Union. Well Because it's, you know, 25% of global GDP. And if, like you said, they've got a hierarchy of three things where they do, something in their own interest first, then the users, and then the developers, so I don't know, staying in in the EU one way or another and offering services is probably, like, in their own interest in terms of cash.

Ian:

Yes. Up to a point now.

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Once it becomes

Ian:

I mean, the the the other side of the DMA coin is that, the fines for DMA violations Yeah. Are assessed against worldwide revenues, percentages of worldwide revenue. Yeah. So, actually, it's possible for the EU to be at least legally permitted to levy fines against Apple that are more than its European revenue.

Ash:

Yeah. Such companies are not used to being hit with sticks like that, though, are they?

Ian:

Well, I think they're used to it on some kind of scale.

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah. But it usually is like, you know, operating costs, chump change type fines, isn't it?

Ian:

Well

Ash:

not Yeah. Threatening the entire operation if you don't comply type fines. And, like, to me, that's what, like, the EU often brings to the table that maybe national governments less so because they're less willing to, you know, operate on their own, you know, as a single entity rather than as a a group of states like the EU is. It's just it's just, you know, you've got a massive company like Apple and a massive organization like the EU. Everything just gets massive, doesn't it, and, like, escalates from there.

Ash:

So how do you how do you honestly punish Apple for doing something wrong? Honestly, how do you do that? Because it's so big that most current frameworks, you just you just soak up the fine and continue to do business in a non compliant way, Just keep getting fined. So, you know, then you start getting into the mad numbers, don't you, of the fines. And it just kinda keeps keeps escalating from

Ian:

there. Yeah. Because the Spotify complaint, Apple has been was fined 1,800,000,000 Euros Yeah. For that. The traditional part of the fine, around 40,000,000 was, as the EU commissioner said, quite small, not even a speeding ticket or a parking ticket.

Ian:

But then they started from the 40,000,000 and then they said, as a result, the commission increased the total fine to 1,840,000,000, up from 40,000,000.

Ash:

Alright. K. That's a that's a fair old

Ian:

Which is 0.5% of Apple's worldwide turnover.

Ash:

Yeah.

Ian:

So the the I I agree with you that it's unlikely, but I don't think it's impossible. No. No. And I suppose my broad position is that how much you argue about competitive or not competitive. I like how my iPhone works at the moment.

Ian:

Yeah. I like that I can instal things and and and trust that they're okay. I like that I can subscribe to things and unsubscribe from them, and it kind of irritates me when things are different like with the times, you know, because of the this reader app rule exemption that they've got. I I you know, I would make them all. If I rule the world, I would reduce the Apple percentage down to something less than 15%.

Ian:

Yeah. And then and then I would just not let anybody have any exam I would just make everybody kind of pay it. And maybe they could they could introduce different things for different industries where there are different margins. Yeah. But, you know, there's all sorts of things you can imagine they could do, which doesn't break the fundamental safety and way of working of their platform.

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah.

Ian:

And I you know, as a user of that, I like it like that. I like to be able to trust it and to not have to deal with companies like Epic Games, who I feel are perhaps short of the moral integrity that I would like them to have. You know? I mean, no. I'm gonna say no disrespect to Epic Games, but, obviously, I have just disrespect.

Ian:

I don't really trust them. Yeah. I don't trust them with their loot boxes and their and their ways of getting money out of people. And I like the friction that Apple provides that stops them from doing it. The the latest thing that's happened that kind of prompted me to have this as the thing is the way that Apple has announced that EU users won't get Apple intelligence, iPhone mirroring, or the new share play screen sharing features that they've announced this year.

Ian:

So they're not saying they won't ever get them, but they won't get them this year. And the reason is because of the vaguely worded DMA, which is encouraging them to to which is basically whatever they do, they could end up being fined, know, a 180,000,000,000 Yeah. Dollars or something, euros. Therefore, they've got to think 2 and 3 times before they do anything. Okay.

Ian:

And new services. And again, I like having the new services. So my, I'm afraid my take on this is, I'm not really on the side of developers even though sometimes I am one. I'm on the side of users. So my my hierarchy would be users, developers, and Apple, which is slightly different than Apple's hierarchy.

Ian:

But the fact that Apple has users above developers, I think, is a good thing.

Ash:

Yeah. I I am slightly, I am slightly poisoned by the, the iOS development experience because it's dreadful. Yeah. Yeah. It's like just the whole tool chain for building and deploying things is is terrible.

Ash:

And it's it's big. You have to download loads of things with

Ian:

A lot of things.

Ash:

You a lot of lot of things. You have to change, you know, and, like, fill your fill your machine, and you have to buy their machines in order to do it as well. There's no flexibility, and, like, you know, you have to do this from a from Mac OS.

Ian:

Do you? I mean, you yeah. If you wanna write in Swift and stuff, but aren't there loads of people using, like, React Native and stuff where you can just Sure. Build it on a Windows and deploy it.

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah.

Ian:

I mean, not that anyone would want to

Ash:

build on a Windows and deploy it. Packages and things like that too and the builds to

Ian:

Yeah. But you can do that. There's there's I actually need to remember Apple announcing a toolchain that can do that online, so you can Right. Submit it into their toolchain.

Ash:

Yeah. You can do things like Code Magic and and things like that. But it's such a broken, like, fragmented ecosystem. Yeah. And agreed, people have tried to, like, Apple have tried some things in order to make it better, and other companies, like CodeMagic Freezance, have tried to, you know, make it easier for the for the app developer to build and submit things.

Ash:

Yeah. But in general, I have never spent quite as much time on tinkering with, releases than I have when I've been doing Ios app Yeah. Which doesn't fill me with delight.

Ian:

I I must admit, I feel like learning SwiftUI or something and just trying to do some small app and take it through the whole process just because I'm fascinated to see what that's like. And, you know, maybe that would poison, make me more. But in the end, the thing is that if you let developers do what they wanted, they would do terrible, terrible things. Not all of them. No.

Ian:

But some of them would. Yeah. You know they would. And like like and that's exactly what happened to to the Android store 5 years or however long ago it was. So in the end, I I it's hard to see a way around it, but I do think that they charge too much.

Ian:

You know?

Ash:

Yeah. So it renders them it renders their argument a little bit less trustworthy than it could be. Right? Because if you then if you say you're all egalitarian well, relatively egalitarian, and you say, like, the users come first and the developers come second, but then, you kind of, price gouge the developers who provide, you know, the user experience. And I think you, yeah, your argument becomes less compelling.

Ian:

Yeah. Apple needs to put some love developers' ways. No question. Yeah.

Ash:

I know 2 developers who work for Apple. Obviously, I'm not gonna mention any names, but, they are left in no absolutely no, like, no uncertain terms that money is made from hardware and software tool chains, deployment is best endeavors.

Ian:

That's that's

Ash:

they are left in no no no uncertain terms that that is the hierarchy of things

Ian:

Apple. That's interesting. Yeah. Because you sort of think maybe all these these costs and this app store stuff is all about actually trying to redress what they see as that balance.

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, you know, 8 well, I think it was was it like 80% is still hardware related and 20% is services? So they're still heavily it is kind of going the other way towards services, towards, you know, subscriptions and things like that. But it's still, you know, Apple's interest first.

Ash:

Right? Yeah. So what do they make their money on? Hardware. Hardware.

Ash:

And, obviously, they have people working on the software, but it's of a lesser concern than it is for the software. So, yeah, like you say, developers somewhere, a distant third trailing behind trying to catch up.

Ian:

Well, I think my conclusion on this is that we now have not being subject to the DMA is, is the first Brexit benefit of which I've become aware.

Ash:

Did you check that with Jacob Rees Mogg? He can add it to his little list.

Ian:

I may not need to because it sounds like he might lose his parliamentary seat.

Ash:

Oh, yeah.

Ian:

Given the general election, which may or may not be happening, have already happened. Let it be planned. Yeah.

Ash:

Well, that was a spicy thing, Ian. Thank you.

Ian:

Yes. It was. And, hopefully, dear listener, you won't have had to listen to the really rambly bit where I tried to explain it.

Ash:

And then I tried to explain it.

Ian:

Yeah. But your explanation was, I think, better than mine because I just I'm like the person who is explaining a thing by walking along until I see a rabbit hole and then just going down the rabbit hole. After 4% of the explanation is completed, I've gone into great detail on some small part of it.

Ash:

So I I often wonder, we spend all this time messing around with, cars, trains, planes

Ian:

Automobile. Automobile. Oh, no.

Ash:

It started with automobiles. When if we just got on with inventing teleportation, then the world would be such a better place.

Ian:

Have you not watched, CGP Grey's video about that though? No. Well, think about Star Trek.

Ash:

So I don't mind if you considered me dead.

Ian:

Yeah. Yeah. When you be when you beam down, the fact that none of the particles that you're made of when you arrive are the same as the ones that you were made of before you started

Ash:

Yeah.

Ian:

Is it really you?

Ash:

So I'm willing to put that to what's happening.

Ian:

Were you in fact murdered by the beginning beginning end of being beamed down?

Ash:

Right. So

Ian:

because your body was destroyed.

Ash:

Now, this is a language thing as well, isn't it? So why

Ian:

is funnier with the music.

Ash:

So what happens if I so in terms of choosing to teleport, I press the button and then had 10 seconds to get on the teleport transporter pad and then it transported me. Is that considered, would I be considered to have taken my own life, or is that just by choice?

Ian:

Well, isn't this the same as, Captain Kirk opening his communicator and saying, beam me up, Scotty?

Ash:

Yeah. That's true, actually. He decided. Okay then. So how about

Ian:

What if it turned what if it were to turn out that it was actually agonizingly painful? But because by the time you got there, the the memory of it being agonizingly painful was not transferred because it took the memory at the beginning of

Ash:

the process. Yeah. Is it would it be more or less painful than being on a flight for 14 hours?

Ian:

Yeah. Well, that's a good question.

Ash:

Well, yeah. Exactly. So, or we could, in the meantime, we could just get on with teleporting goods around, you know, inanimate things.

Ian:

Or what would be much more useful is if there could be some editing during the teleporting. You can teleport me a

Ash:

little bit better.

Ian:

You can teleport me to, Mexico. Apparently, that's the only place I could think of.

Ash:

I'm not aware of any

Ian:

other country. But then, you know, you could just remove some of my body fat on the way and not re not redo that bit.

Ash:

Right. Yeah. Could do.

Ian:

Be a bit messy though.

Ash:

Well, yeah. Yeah. I think we'd probably be better off just focusing on I I I implore your The

Ian:

core problem.

Ash:

I implore your, your ambition.

Ian:

Innovation. That's what it is. It's not.

Ash:

But, yeah, we should probably just focus on the car problem of of being able to transport things around people as they are, and then reconstitute them at the other end. And we've all seen the fly, but do you know the gist?

Ian:

Man turns into fly.

Ash:

Man turns into fly. So, I mean, I I don't doubt that we would start doing teleportation and then there would be some horrendous side effect of it that we hadn't we hadn't thought of and we'd be like, oh, right. Okay. You know? You lose an IQ point every time you go through it or something like that.

Ian:

I've that would become apparent quite quickly, Oliver. I I

Ash:

1st few days.

Ian:

They always reminded me this makes me think of some horrific episode of Doctor Who where, when people died, they actually appeared in a kind of holding area. And then, and then and then the people there would say, is it likely you're gonna be cremated? And they were like, yes. And they're like, oh, no.

Ash:

Not again.

Ian:

So, and then when they were cremated, their their person in the afterlife thing that they were in also caught fire.

Ash:

That sounds utterly, utterly, devastatingly horrible.

Ian:

Yes. Yeah. It it made an impression on me.

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah. That's not the sort of thing you you would forget, is it? No.

Ian:

Doctor Who is very good at, and I was always scared of it as a child.

Ash:

Me too, actually. Me too. There was a lot of hiding involved when it

Ian:

was That's why the good Lord has given us safers or at least our parents gave us sofas.

Ash:

Yeah. I would say that in the new doc 2, there's even scarier things.

Ian:

Weeping angels are more scary.

Ash:

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. They've they've upped the threat level, I think.

Ian:

Well, that was that example that I gave was part of the new doctor who.

Ash:

Alright. Okay. Yeah. Not the Tom Baker. He was quite scary though in himself.

Ian:

I quite like the impersonation of him that takes place in dead ringers on radio 4.

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah.

Ian:

Look at all these links we'll be able to put in the show notes now. Look at dead ringers and doctor who and the episode of doctor who where you catch fire in the afterlife and, you know, so much.

Ash:

All the nice things.

Ian:

So many links.

Ash:

So we'll call this one the teleportation interlude.

Ian:

Yes. So And then we'll put it on the end. That's teleporting. Moving it around.

Ash:

Yeah. But it'll be slightly different every time it reconstitutes itself.

Ian:

Yes. What I'll do is I'll chop it up into, like, 20 bits and hide them through the rest of the episode, and then you have to find them and reconstruct them. And then we can have a conversation about did we murder that that interlude by

Ash:

what we did to it.

Ian:

Yes. So in order not to remain in this interlude indefinitely

Ash:

The indefinite interlude?

Ian:

The indefinite

Ash:

interlude. Fancy an indefinite interlude.

Ian:

There there was a Star Trek episode where, they meet the Next Generation people meet mister Scott from the Enterprise, from the old series.

Ash:

Okay.

Ian:

And the only way they've managed to do this is he's stuck in a transporter buffer for 200 years or something, which, is another thing that can go wrong. So they murdered him and put him in a transporter buffer.

Ash:

So they murdered him, imprisoned him, and then brought him back? Yes. Into a 200 years later when everyone he knows and loves were gone. That's pretty sad, isn't it? Oh, when you say it like that.

Ash:

Yeah. Just sound a

Ian:

bit brutal, doesn't it? Anyway, as we were just almost succeeding in doing Yeah. Let's move on from this interlude to another thing.

Ash:

Another thing.

Ian:

And in the interest of fairness, because it would be unfair if I had 2 things and Ash didn't have any, It's your turn. What is your thing?

Ash:

So I have entitled my thing out of support.

Ian:

Oh. Which is Which is different from out of hours support.

Ash:

Yeah. She's always it's been one of those things that's always been contentious. So I found an article, someone who used to work for Microsoft on SQL Server, which is the particular technology in question here, is now working for a consultancy probably helping people with very old versions of SQL Server, which is fairly lucrative. And as part of this article, this this company had scanned a 1000000 instances of SQL Server and found that 20% are close to or out of support. 20%.

Ash:

20% is that's pretty chunky. And my favorite part was that there are some SQL Server 7 instances. For those of you who like to cast your minds back to when, you know, the world was simpler and we just used to build, really simple, Windows apps.

Ian:

I'm gonna find some kind of harp glissando music and, we can do it. So if only we were being video, we could make a kind of wavy transition as we go back to the days of SQL Server 7 when life was simpler and the aspiration of everybody was to, I don't know, install SQL Server 7.

Ash:

Build apps with no animations, no fancy user experiences.

Ian:

No app store approval.

Ash:

Yeah. No. None of that nonsense. Nice clean tool chain. Yeah.

Ash:

No. It wasn't. So SQL Server 7 left extended support in October 2011. So this is one of the things that I really liked about this article and this phenomena is the extended support question. So Microsoft will allow a company to pay for extra support for their out of support database servers.

Ash:

So I can't get moved off this particular version of SQL Server. I can't do it until next year. Can you still support it with security patches and things? And we're a really big organization with many instances of it. Please help us out.

Ash:

We're obviously willing to pay, which is a it's a curious thing, isn't it? Because it kind of it means that rather than being just out of support, you have, like a stratified out of support, arena for your for certain products. And I guess it goes for the same with Windows versions as well. Large organizations sometimes stay on old Windows operating systems for a long, long time.

Ian:

I remember working in a financial services client in 2010 and having to migrate a Windows NT Server that nobody knew.

Ash:

Things I didn't expect to

Ian:

be doing. Was for. Yeah. But everybody knew if you turned it off, terrible things would happen.

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah. That's that's another interesting phenomenon with out of support as well, isn't it? It's like Yeah. I have no idea what the impact of this will be if it fails or if we just try and turn it off and cross our fingers and hope that everything goes well.

Ash:

To me, like, the main sort of wider part of this this this particular issue is we don't actively retire services and applications. They seem to hang around for a long, long time.

Ian:

But that depends on who the we is, doesn't it? Because I mean, look at going going back to Apple. It's really clear with them what phones can you instal the latest OS on, and then what phones do you still get security patches. Well, you can just go and look it up. And there are no weird exceptions or Yeah.

Ian:

But I mean, well, a fine organisation name must be. Fine. You're a standard organisation. But there's no there's no lack of clarity there. There.

Ash:

No. No.

Ian:

And it I suppose it's there's that sort of commercial side of it where it's a bit more that because it's, you know, SQL Server as a particular example is not consumer software. Yeah. And it tends to be companies, often quite large ones, that that are using it. That kind of bullet makes money available that blurs the lines.

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah. And I suppose if you have internal, internally facing and externally facing customer facing apps, then it's easier to retire an internal one than an external one sometimes. Or Yeah. The kind of flip side of that is with internally facing ones, there's less desire to do anything about it.

Ash:

It's like, well, it's plodding along and it works, so who cares?

Ian:

But the the a lot of these apps have formed parts of webs of things Yeah. Where, oh, well, the something or the app transfers the files every night to this app. And then then we pick them up out of this folder, and we import them into the database, and then something else happens, and maybe there's another app on the other side. You know, and once you have these app kind of interdependencies, then you end up in a world where actually changing anything is excruciating because you have to if if you're going to take it out for the the mix, then either you have to take all its downstream and upstream dependencies out at the same time, or you have to just maintain it and pay the the extended support, I suppose. Or or you have to put some kind of shim in there that can present these same interfaces to the downstream and upstream apps and yet do something sensible between them.

Ian:

The component modelling, Adarj. Is that how you say that?

Ash:

Yeah. I think so. Adarj. Adarj. I prefer the way you said

Ian:

That that that thing that exists for component modelling where you want things to be highly cohesive but loosely coupled. Yeah. It's that. But the the loose even so, even loosely coupled apps in a complex enterprise environment, you have apps that that are part of business processes that extend a long way on either side of the

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah. So you might have unintended consequences of

Ian:

And then you think, oh, I'm gonna get SAP and replace all of this. Mhmm. And then you have different problems.

Ash:

Just well, yeah. You swap out a set of problems for another. So one of the things I this just pops into my head is Hiram's law

Ian:

Oh.

Ash:

Is with a sufficient number of users of an API, it does not matter what you promise in the contract. All observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody. Yes. Yes. It's just one of those, like, similar to what you say about it being a part of a complex web of applications, just retiring something that has grown over time as well and that you probably don't understand all that well and who uses it and why, without doing quite a lot of analysis and putting in a, some kind of layer in between in order to to switch over, then it's very difficult to do so.

Ian:

This is where you get joint requirements documents from. Yeah. You know, it's kind of, oh, well, I've got this mortgage man since I seem to be in financial world. Let's say you have a mortgage management piece of software. That mortgage management software has to integrate with many, many things.

Ian:

Yeah. And some of the integrations are things like it has to have terminals that people are using it from that have at least the following level of web browser on them. Yeah. They may be using apps that use a completely unsupportable level of web browser. And then it's like, oh, no.

Ian:

How do I get IE 6 onto all these machines these days? But but and and then another dependency might be, okay. Well, we've got a company that prints and sends our statement. How do we integrate with them? You know, how do we, and then there's an you know, here's our accounting systems that Yeah.

Ian:

Let us know how well we're doing. How do we integrate with them? And by the way, that department over there probably wants to update that as well. You know, and it it that's the that's the thing that drives the these, you know, the requirements about I have to write down everything this system has to do and then everything else to integrate with. Yeah.

Ian:

When you've done when you've done that other that second list, you're looking at a moving field because people are upgrading other things in other places. Yeah. It's a it is a horrible nightmare. So I kind of get why people are quite happy to Yeah.

Ash:

Just to to to not

Ian:

solve the problem of MySQL servers a bit out of date.

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah. And then it's kind of a compound problem as well, isn't it? So the more out of date it gets, the harder it gets to

Ian:

Well, it's my my my package app that uses it is out of date. Yeah. And I can't update that because the new version doesn't support this. And the this is is essential to my other thing over here.

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah. So you might be stuck in a place where it's literally becomes impossible either, you know, you've got too much of a jump to up update your your SQL Server instance or even if you do, the app that depends on it might not be able to work anymore with the new one because, like, the features have changed, things have been deprecated, so without actually changing the app. And then it just becomes like a snowball of work, doesn't it? And it gets bigger and bigger and bigger until everyone says, I'll tell

Ian:

you what was less and less pure.

Ash:

Yeah. Well, until everyone says, well, let's just leave it till next year. Let's let's put it in the mix. So the reason why that that this kind of came home to me is that I I previously worked for an organization with many vintages of SQL Server across many different applications, and they just wrestled with this problem continuously. So they had to go undergo a payment card industry audit every year.

Ian:

Oh.

Ash:

And every year they would say, you know, these SQL server server 7 instances you have, you need to upgrade those. And they'd be like, oh, well

Ian:

Yes. Yes. I'm gonna put that right on the to do list.

Ash:

It's on

Ian:

the to do list. It's already here, so that's good. Yes. We're we're we're keeping track of that. Yep.

Ian:

Exactly. The risk assessment. Yep.

Ash:

And here's why we're deferring it for a year. Yes. And they just wrestled with that. And it took, like, herculean efforts to to to, like, bump by a few versions. And I don't know if it's the same for all technologies, but that was my experience of, like, SQL Server and trying to do it in that sort of sphere.

Ash:

It always took, like, a load of effort to get to whatever the the payment card industry people said. You need to get this application onto that version. You can't deal with card data anymore. Mhmm. And it often takes that level of Enforcement.

Ash:

Enforcement and motivation in order to get these things going because once you realize, it's like we we have to do this to continue to operate. But there's like some tension there as well, isn't there? Because it's like you know eventually you probably have to do something about it in order to continue operating, but you're also willing to let it go for as long as you can because you could be doing something else. There's always like the that sort of opportunity cost as well, isn't there?

Ian:

So there's 2 things that have come to my mind as we've had this discussion. 1 is about the tight coupling between applications and database version features. Yeah. I recently did something with a relational database in it where I used an ORM. Right.

Ian:

So called Prisma. It's a JavaScript thing. It sits between the database and the client, you know, the software that's that's that's using it

Ash:

Yeah.

Ian:

And allows a bit of abstraction. And I wonder if things like that might make the coupling between these things less because people are using features of databases that will be that that are, you know, I'm using this SQL subclass that's only supported up to this version Yeah. Because somebody did something. So I I I wonder if there'd be something like that. I feel if I wanted to move from Postgres to MySQL, this ORM software might might just help me Yeah.

Ian:

By because I'm not writing the queries directly against the database, but against an abstracted model of the database. Yeah. And the other thing is cloud. So I often get emails from Amazon saying you're using Python version 3.7, which will be deprecated in the Lambda environment

Ash:

as of command.

Ian:

Yes. We By the power vested in us, we have joy.

Ash:

By the power of great skull.

Ian:

Great grayskull.

Ash:

Grayskull. On.

Ian:

Honestly, it's like you weren't a kid in the nineties.

Ash:

I obviously wasn't.

Ian:

Not

Ash:

not the normal sort anyway.

Ian:

But, you know, I'm always getting emails from Amazon saying this is being retired and that's going. Yeah. I mean, are the cloud providers forcing people into these kind of upgrades? But I suppose yeah. Sorry.

Ian:

So there's a related thought, which is it I remember the beginning of the first iPhone was only sported for like 2 years or some or 3 years on thing. And the rate of change of iPhone as a platform was massive in those first 4, 5 years. Now it's a lot shallower. Yeah. And so is there something about the rate of change of SQL Server?

Ash:

Yeah. Maybe.

Ian:

That means that actually, it's not so hard to move from version 12 to 13 compared with 6 to 7 to 8. Yeah. Oh, so I've now made a very big hodgepodge of of points. So the 3 the 3 the points were using using middleware in between your app and the database Yeah. To stop you from being very dependent on that exact version.

Ian:

What cloud services do, which is, I think they force you to upgrade. But I'm wondering if there are, for big enterprises, there are exceptions being carved out.

Ash:

That'd be interesting to find out, wouldn't it?

Ian:

And then there was a third thing, but I'm like a goldfish going round in his tank, so I've forgotten where it was.

Ash:

It was, you know, if you were upgrading from 7 to 8, is that was that a bigger jump than, I don't know, 11 to 12? Yes. So which it could be. Yeah. I don't know.

Ash:

I guess with the cloud point, but sort of by necessity, if you begin a cloud migration, then you're you're you're tackling some of these problems, aren't you?

Ian:

Sorry.

Ash:

Because I don't think that most well, I don't know. They might allow you to use SQL Server 7 on in the cloud, but I I I don't know if they'd offer that. Maybe they would.

Ian:

Maybe Yeah. Well, you could run a oh, I wonder though. Mhmm. You could run a an e t two server. So in you've got RDS, haven't you, where they do a lot of that hard stuff for you, but it costs more.

Ian:

Yeah. And then there's a SQL. There's just an EC 2 server. This is all AWS, obviously. An EC 2 server where you could get a Windows EC 2 server

Ash:

And just install whatever you like.

Ian:

Find the oldest version of Windows that it will support Yeah. And then find the oldest version of SQL Server that will run on that version of Windows. I wonder I don't think it will go back as far as SQL Server 7. No?

Ash:

No. No. Maybe not. So maybe there are some constraints sort of creeping in with more with the benefits of having your database servers in the cloud rather than hosting them yourself. Because the the other thing that popped into my head about this as well was the the DBA, the database analyst.

Ian:

Oh, administrator.

Ash:

Administrator. I can't speak today. Database administrator.

Ian:

That's unfortunate because we're in the middle of recording a podcast. Apparently.

Ash:

So I remember from sort of back in the day, at the particular organization I was I was speaking of, they were very much the the guardians of that particular galaxy. Nothing happened on nothing happened on those instances, and you couldn't have a new one without a lot of cajoling and bribery, mainly, and some serious relationship building. Yes. So and then that's become less of a less of a a requirement, I guess, with the with cloud and containerization and various other things. Yeah.

Ian:

I think that's I think that's that's so. And, you know, things like RDS, a lot of those things, you know, if you want to upgrade to the latest minor version of your database software, you just press a button and it does it. Yeah. Migrates the data and everything.

Ash:

Yeah. Then you have to test it, of course.

Ian:

What?

Ash:

Well but you could test it.

Ian:

Yeah. If you want to how hard could it be?

Ash:

Well yeah. Exactly.

Ian:

Or is it just SQL? How hard can it be?

Ash:

Well, this is the big question, is it? No. It's not really, is it?

Ian:

It's the small question.

Ash:

It's the small question. It's It's

Ian:

the small question you can have some fun with.

Ash:

I I I don't know how many people who call it SQL.

Ian:

I was a light holdout of that. Were you? I called it SQL for a very long time. Literally, the last couple of years, I've given in and said SQL.

Ash:

Alright. Okay.

Ian:

And maybe

Ash:

Was it was it just?

Ian:

It was just Microsoft. It was SQL Server. Everyone calls it SQL Server. Yeah. And you just even though it's really just Sybase.

Ian:

Sorry, Microsoft. No. Everyone says SQL server, and I've just caved in and started saying SQL server.

Ash:

Alright. Okay.

Ian:

Even though SQL is a word Yeah. That has nothing to do with it. Whereas SQL stands for structured query language. It does. So

Ash:

Yeah. It's like, so my partner Gwen, she's Australian, and when she first came over to the UK, she said data.

Ian:

They say that, don't they? Data. All my Australian colleagues that I talk to on calls often at stupid times in the morning, but they all say data.

Ash:

Yeah. So the the British people on Gwen's team soon made it made it known that data is not an acceptable phrasing.

Ian:

You come here with your Australian pronunciations.

Ash:

Exactly. So now that's it's it's not in use anymore, not in our house.

Ian:

Yes. If you call it that one more time, we're done. No. That is, what do Americans call it?

Ash:

Data.

Ian:

Yes. Yeah. There's no way they haven't got an annoying pronunciation. Sorry, Americans. Yeah.

Ash:

That's not alien.

Ian:

We love you dearly, but, you know

Ash:

Edit that out.

Ian:

Not not data.

Ash:

So that was my thing. It was kind of a a slight trip down memory lane with an interesting organizational pattern in there with and Microsoft being a little bit naughty and saying, well, this is out of support. But for you, as long as you can grease our palms with silver, we'll give you a little bit more support.

Ian:

Yeah. But the thing is, though, you gotta there's definitely costs to them to keep supporting it. Yeah. I mean, they've got to run have a load of servers with it on Yeah. You know, for reproducing problems and all that kind of stuff.

Ian:

And they may have to write fixes for for it. Yeah. So I I I feel like actually they're probably quite cheap for what it was. Yeah. I

Ash:

wonder how it works out in terms of cost.

Ian:

I don't think it's a major profit center.

Ash:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's more about maintaining the relationship with the customer for the future rather than, you know, making too much money off that.

Ian:

Yes. Like, well, fine. Upgrade everything to Oracle if you like and see how you like that.

Ash:

But don't come crying to us.

Ian:

Yes. When when you're being gouged for

Ash:

When Oracle realized you've got Java installed all over the place.

Ian:

Yes. And they

Ash:

still have to charge you for it.

Ian:

Yes. That will teach you.

Ash:

So next time we'll talk about old versions of Java installed everywhere.

Ian:

And I'm I'm afraid, my mom says I don't have to come to that. I've got a note.

Ash:

So, yeah, that was my thing. And the lesson there is, you know, if you're on SQL Server 7 and you can't convince everyone to to migrate in your organization, just, I don't know, maybe go work on another team.

Ian:

In another organization.

Ash:

In another organization. Yeah.

Ian:

Well, it's technical debt is painful in whatever form it Yeah. Exists, isn't it?

Ash:

Yeah. Because if you keep it running, at some point, some support will be required. And if it's running SQL Server 7, probably the people who built it are no longer there is a reasonable assertion. So

Ian:

Microsoft either. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

Ash:

yeah. Exactly. You'll have to bring them out of retirement like like, 1st 12 banking organizations and the various COBOL developers and things like that.

Ian:

That was quite sweet. Yeah. It's nice that it was very profitable to be a cobalt developer for a while though.

Ash:

Yeah. If you just stick with the same technology for long enough, it will come back around, and your day will come again.

Ian:

Yes. I was always a bit disappointed. We've all gone to 64 bit now. Mhmm. So I was looking forward to 2037 when we were gonna have the the Unix, year 2037 problem Yeah.

Ian:

Where, 2 to the 32 seconds would have elapsed since January 1, 1970 when they started counting.

Ash:

Yeah.

Ian:

But 64 bit means that, we've got a while longer before that runs out. To the point where they most of them have gone to milliseconds now, haven't they?

Ash:

Yeah. And we shan't be around to see the fireworks.

Ian:

They're gonna be fireworks?

Ash:

Metaphorically speaking.

Ian:

Metaphorically. Not actual fireworks. No. Well, that was 2 things. 2 things.

Ian:

2 things. And when you add it, when you think we're on episode

Ash:

18.

Ian:

18, that means we've now done 36 things.

Ash:

36 things.

Ian:

I think we could look back and say to ourselves, what a lot of things. Cut. Unlike, you know, after our first episode where we could only say what a lot of thing.

Ash:

You mean after the first thing of the first Yeah.

Ian:

Yeah. Halfway through the first episode.

Ash:

But that is that when

Ian:

you name

Ash:

the Twitter account?

Ian:

Well, I think we can precisely date when we named the Twitter account.

Ash:

Yeah. It's true. We called it Twitter, for example.

Ian:

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Not not mastodon as we call

Ash:

it now. So, Ian, what's the email address for what a lot of things?

Ian:

I'm gonna say it's technology eos@whataloftthings.com.

Ash:

Yep. That's exactly it.

Ian:

But I feel like I have to guess it each time even though I created it. Yeah. I I you know, getting old.

Ash:

So please get in touch.

Ian:

With who? For what? Oh, right. Yeah. Sorry.

Ian:

Recording was a lot of things. Yes. Brilliant. Yes. Yes.

Ian:

Do get in touch. We would love to hear from you. And, if you're really lucky, I'll be able to figure out why who you are and why you've why you've emailed me.

Ash:

The emails go to both of us.

Ian:

They do.

Ash:

We have joint responsibility.

Ian:

So Ash can can respond even if I'm doddering in the corner. Technologyeos@whatalotofthings.com. Email us. We'd love to hear from you.

Ash:

Okay.

Ian:

I feel like there should be more wittering before we on the other hand, we're up to an hour and 24 minutes

Ash:

Yeah. Exactly. Before the world wittering. Yeah. So

Ian:

It's a miracle I'm still awake. Isn't this where we have to make a list of all the things that we've said that we now want to cut out? Just for, you know, continuity Just for nightmares, future us.

Ash:

To compound our lack of continuity problems.

Ian:

Yes. Now too many continuity problems.

Ash:

Many continuity problems. Too many lack of con I can't even say it.

Ian:

Well, we're, we're happy to leave you with that incisive, piece of dialogue to, to enjoy. So goodbye, lovely listener.

Ash:

Goodbye, everybody.