358: ‘Double-Digit Domains’, With Paul Kafasis
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I don't have that much content. Let's do an ad right now. Let's
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start with an ad. All right, we talk about Squarespace.
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Paul and I can tell you right now right off right off the
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start. I can tell you that in fact, Squarespace is is a
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sponsor of the show there. Nailed up. You've probably heard
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is the number one place that I recommend. I honestly recommend
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got analytics, they've got templates to choose from.
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They've got the content management tools you need for
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like if you want to keep a blog going on your Squarespace site,
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you could do that. You want to sell stuff online store, of
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course they do that you name it, they've got it everything you
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use that same code talk show and you save 10% See, there we go.
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One down, one down five to go. Maybe only four to go. Are you
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following the the home run race? Some I'm he's still stuck at 60
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right? Yeah, he had as we record as we record today on Wednesday,
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the 28th. Now by the time people listen to us, he might have
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already have Jared jizz. We're talking about Aaron judge from
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the New York Yankees. He's at 60 home runs. The American League
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record is 61. That's what people are talking about. I want to
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I'll come back to that. By the time people listen to us, he
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might be at 61. He might be at 62. He could could be at 63. Who
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knows? He more than that. Yeah, right. But last night he went he
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went, did he even have a plate appear? Or did he even have an
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a bat? He got he got four walks. I heard he had four walks last
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night against the Toronto Blue Jays with that's part of that's
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part of the game, right? And it's you know, I mean, the Blue
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Jays are in it. So right, you know, they it's legitimate for
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that because the night before he got intentionally walked, and
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they won the game, the Blue Jays won the game, which they needed.
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So you can't fault them for that. Right? There's there's no
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whatever reluctance any team has, and any pitcher might have to be
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the team and the pitcher to give up a record breaking remembered
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home run. You don't have to be a sports psychologist to to get
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that nobody really wants to be that pitcher. The Blue Jays are
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definitely trying to win. They're not walking them for
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that reason. I listened to the the Keith Olbermann has brought
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back his old TV show countdown is now a podcast and it's I just
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love it. It's literally with with overcast speed ratings. I
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probably get through in about half an hour. It's like a half
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hour a day like a daily news podcast. But of course, Keith
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Olbermann while the main focus of his show is US National
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Affairs, for lack of a better term. He's big, big base on a
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sports sports band. Yeah, he used to used to be a ESPN Sports
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Center. That's probably where most people in the 90s got to
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know him. Certainly came to Nash and Dan Patrick. Right,
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right. The sort of still famous is like maybe is it nostalgia? I
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don't know, probably in my mind, the seminal duo, who ran Sports
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Center, my favorite running gag of the era was they were the 90s
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of the the Dan Patrick Keith Olbermann Sports Center was
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every weekend. If they were doing Sports Center, and there's
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a NASCAR race on they would tell you who came in first who came
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in second who came in third and where Dick trickle finished. Of
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course. Dick trickle was a NASCAR racer with let's say a
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very amusing name. And they would never say why but they
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would just say so and so came in first second and here was third
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and Dick trickle finished 21st. And they wouldn't laugh they
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wouldn't giggle but they would always tell you where Dick
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trickle finished. Anyway, my favorite I think I think it was
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Olbermann was they were talking they must have been talking
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about a baseball game and he said that's a that's an E7 an
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error on the on the left fielder that's an E7 if you're scoring
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at home, or even if you're alone. That's a little bit of a
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thinker you gotta it takes a second but does. So anyway,
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I Olbermann has been talking about the home run race and
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there are so many weird baseball is such a weird sport and I we
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have nerd stuff to talk about but it everyone loves when we
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talk about baseball. Absolutely definitely do it. But but the
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very strangest thing about baseball in the US at least is
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that it predates all the other major sports by decades that the
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history of Major League Baseball goes back to like the 18 70s
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1860s. I mean, we're talking like when Lincoln's assassination
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was fresh news, fresh. And the rules were very different. And
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like I know some of this but I forget it over time just how
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different some of the rules are. But you know, at one point it
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was five balls to get a walk. Okay, there was one season the
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all time Major League record I don't have it offhand here in
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front of me but the all time Major League record for batting
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average. If you just go through every season and pick the player
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who finished a season with the highest batting average is not
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the record that most people generally most people go to
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Rogers Hornsby who I think bad at 420 something in 1920 might
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have been 420 in 1920. But that's not the highest recorded
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and batting average in Major League Baseball some guy in like
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1871 hit 497 or something like that. But but what was different
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than they count was a walk a walk was a hit. I thought I think
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that for one season so it was in today's terms is on base
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percentage which is still a very, very, very good on base
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percentage but so now now I'm looking up what was bonds is OBP
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in that year when he broke the walk record and it was six Oh,
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it'd be Yeah, 609 which is crazy just insane to think in
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that sport where it's so notoriously difficult to to get
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on base get on base. It wasn't even close that he was on base.
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He was on base three out of five times. Yeah. Trying to think
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what else the gist of it is people, there's sort of two
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sides on this home run record where to sort of stay above the
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fray, people are talking about the American League, the
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American League, which is 61 and then there's a nice number and
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it's near and dear to Yankee fans hearts because the original
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record holder in the American League was Babe Ruth 1927 and
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then the first player to beat it was also a Yankee Roger Maris in
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what was it 1961 61 because it was 61 and 61 is easy to remember
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right sort of like the Rogers Hornsby 420 and 1920 which I
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might be I might be wrong about but it sounds good. I know it
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for Maris it's definitely Yeah, 61 and 61 but there's a lot of
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fans do you don't have to be a Yankee fan there's a lot of fans
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who view all of the season home run marks above 61 as being a bit
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suspect because of the
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what was there was there something unusual in the 90s in
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baseball john
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the the single season home run record above here's what they
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are so tied at 10th is Babe Ruth at 59 in 1921 I forgot that John
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Carlos Stanton hit 59 in 2017 Babe Ruth is 60 was 1927 Aaron
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judges already tied with him then Roger Maris 61 and 61 and
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now you get to the late 90s number six is Sammy Sosa 99 with
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63 Sosa in 2001 hit 64 Mark McGuire hit 65 and 99 Sammy Sosa
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hit 66 in 98 Mark McGuire hit 70 in 98 and then in 2001 Barry
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Bonds hit 7373 right so McGuire is on there a couple of times
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Sosa is on there 123 times 9098 99 in 2001 I don't know what
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happened to him in 2000 yeah they're they're all bunched
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together and everybody knows that it was the steroid era
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performance enhancing drugs era of baseball but there's no
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asterisks next to any of those records because no it wasn't
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technically against the rules people I mean it's a very
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complicated area right nobody they did in the backlash to it
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did set none of those guys are in the Hall of Fame right none of
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those guys are in the Hall of Fame but none of them are banned
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from like Pete Rose is literally banned from being in the Hall of
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Fame they're not the voters don't even get to vote for him
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because baseball determined that he broke this that you know the
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rule and as a lifetime suspension from baseball none of
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these guys got suspended none of these guys are banned these are
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the records it's the way it was
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right so so yeah when people say the legitimate home run record I
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don't know this these things happened I remember the home run
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races between McGuire and Sosa and Bonds is ridiculous season
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they happened those are the numbers so I think I think
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focusing on the American League record makes more sense just
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calling it that way
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yeah and and the fans the fans I think the fans sort of have the
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right attitude or the fans if he gave if he gets to 61 or even 62
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then the fans will certainly Yankee fans will be happy but I
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think baseball fans in general want to see it happen and if
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people want to consider it the the legitimate home run record
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that's that's up to them it doesn't really it doesn't make
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that big a difference really
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well do you know that until I think like until the 90s there
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was an asterisk on Maris's record because he did it in 162
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games Babe Ruth hit 60 in 154 games and so judge did 60 in 154
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and the sort of the hope was that he would break 60 in 154
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fewer and obviously he just tied that right but yeah there's I
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mean it's all it's all meaningless anyway ultimately
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there's not any money attached to this there's not any directly
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anyway it's just it's just fun numbers to debate and so you can
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have a nice bar debate over who should be considered the
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greatest home run hitter or whatever
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so what let me get personal though now you're a Red Sox fan
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what I am yes so how even this season how how does how does
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that where does that put you in terms of how do you like seeing
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judge do this yeah were you hoping he'd get stuck on 59
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because screw me as a Yankee or you like well but the other guys
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are Yankees anyway right so like Aaron judge seems like a nice
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enough guy I have no problem with him he's not like usually
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you pick one guy on the other team that you don't like and for
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a while was Brett Gardner who's no longer on the team and for no
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good reason anyway but wait you don't know who you didn't like
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you didn't like yeah Gardner no no I hated Brett Gardner hated
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him just for no good reason like I said all right I don't know
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who while he was on the team forever so that was part of it
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but yeah I don't know like I don't well the thing was judge
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he had a shot at doing it before they faced the Red Sox then they
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played the Red Sox for four games this past weekend and so
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the concern was he would do it against the Red Sox so I guess
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like that I was rooting for him to not do it this past weekend
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right but yeah if he if he hits I'll tell you what I would I
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would have liked to have seen him hit 74 then we don't have to
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have this debate about the steroids and so hopefully
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somebody some year legitimately hit 74 home runs I don't know if
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it'll ever happen but you know I don't have a negative opinion
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about it I don't I don't think I think at this point he's
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probably going to do it and good for him and I'll tell you what
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you might be upset because next year he might be a New York Met
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I don't know I don't want to think about it exactly it would
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have been better if they'd signed him before the season
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yes before before he had one of the greatest seasons of all times
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in a contract here yeah I think that would have been better for
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them he did do he did the thing that Derek Jeter used to always
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do you know and then Jeter stay to Yankee his whole career but
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you get towards the end of your career and you get shorter and
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shorter contracts and you kind of it comes up more often it's
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like one time in the prime of your career where you sign like
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a 10 year deal and then you don't have to you don't have to
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renegotiate for a decade but when when Jeter's contracts are
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up he'd always refused to we can either make a deal before the
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season starts or after that season but I'm not I'm not I'm
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not going to spend even one minute thinking about this
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during the season which isn't an unreasonable position and I
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think also a lot of players do that yeah and I think it's sort
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of it creates a deadline for the team to make their best offer
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before the season it's it's not a bad negotiating tactic either
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in addition to being a way to stay focused on the game and
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compartmentalize it yeah absolutely yeah before we leave
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the subject I will bring up the fact that the over the weekend
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the the Friday night baseball game on Apple TV was the Sox
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Yankees game right and because of Aaron judge being at 60 it
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almost had to Apple it doesn't release Ben Thompson and I
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talked about this on dithering but I'll go over it here that
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the weird thing about these streaming services like Apple TV
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plus and Amazon Prime compared to traditional TV is that in
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traditional TV networks love to brag about the ratings and for
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my whole lifetime decades and they'd be like oh last night's
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Monday Night Football game was the highest rated 39 million
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people watch yeah 39 million people watch it was the highest
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rated regular season NFL game in seven years or something like
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that they'd love to say stuff like that and instead what
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everybody does now is effectively I think gives out
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the Bezos numbers which it was 200% more than last year yeah it
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was it was 1.3 times as Apple hasn't I don't think said
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anything like that about it but if they did surely they would
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give a number like it was 1.6 times higher than the second
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rated Friday Night Baseball game of the year but without a
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baseline you don't know what that means but so wait did they
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say anything I don't I don't think they said anything you're
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just assuming it was it was well watched but it was the
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fact that it was on it was the first time to my record
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recognition all season where my worlds have collide I think you
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and I talked about this when you were on six months ago at the
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outside right yep right when they started right broadcast
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because they just announced the Apple had the Friday Night
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Baseball deal and you and me being baseball fans we talked
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about it this was the first time that I'm aware of that Friday
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Night Baseball was somewhat controversial because it was a
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game everyone wanted to watch and people don't know how to
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watch stuff on streaming right right are people confused by it
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does it make it worse do people think hey I don't even own any
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Apple products so I can't watch this right I have an Android
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phone I don't I don't have I use a PC why how am I supposed to
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watch Apple TV do are people confused by the fact that the
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service is called Apple TV and they have a product product a
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physical hardware product called Apple TV and then when
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you're in the TV OS the app you use to watch the sports is
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called TV it are I'm confused by it just trying to describe it
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to my audience who I know knows this very well no it's been bad
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naming for a couple years and they have not made it better but
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I well I I'll tell you what I think it's interesting that
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obviously this finally happened that there was a game where
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people wanted to check it out and I think it's good for for
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the service because it somebody explained it to like their
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parents they said oh you want to watch this game here's how you
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do it and right now they know how to do it and that's I think
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that's exactly what Apple wanted was was more of these marquee
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games where people would tune in just for that and learn how to
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use the service right people people will complain about
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anything on Twitter and the internet as a whole so I tried
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not to ever take it too personally or get too annoyed by
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it but there I what I saw last week leading up to that game
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especially probably in the day before when it was clear from
00:16:14
◼
►
the night before that he hadn't already broken the record was
00:16:17
◼
►
there were people saying that what Apple should do is let let
00:16:21
◼
►
the the Yankees network yes that's their traditional
00:16:25
◼
►
regional sports network let them broadcast the game too so
00:16:29
◼
►
that people who are used to Yankees fans or who are used to
00:16:32
◼
►
watching them and yes can catch it on yes as well. Oh no right
00:16:38
◼
►
no I mean just obviously no can you even imagine if that
00:16:44
◼
►
reached any Q's desk like how he would react to that yeah like
00:16:49
◼
►
did he might still be laughing now now five days later he might
00:16:54
◼
►
still be laughing I mean like I get the I get the request that
00:16:58
◼
►
oh I want it to be easy whatever but watching Apple TV is
00:17:02
◼
►
not actually difficult you need to figure something out you
00:17:05
◼
►
need to either you can do it in a browser can't you yeah yeah
00:17:08
◼
►
right so so you don't need any hardware you just need a
00:17:10
◼
►
computer whatever if it were actually something where you
00:17:13
◼
►
know oh people aren't going to be able to watch it for
00:17:15
◼
►
whatever reason then this could make sense but no the whole
00:17:18
◼
►
reason they made the surface and the whole reason they got
00:17:20
◼
►
Friday Night Baseball was to get people to come watch the
00:17:22
◼
►
games right they won't just give away the most important
00:17:25
◼
►
one of the year it'll be nice not a nice gesture yeah and
00:17:29
◼
►
even if it was just for the New York Yankees fans it's still
00:17:32
◼
►
who's the most who's the most likely fan base in baseball
00:17:36
◼
►
right and if I think I think that a big reason that Apple is
00:17:40
◼
►
edging its way into sports Amazon is too is to increase
00:17:45
◼
►
it's not that sports in itself itself is all that valuable
00:17:49
◼
►
it's that it gets them to expand the user base right so
00:17:54
◼
►
you are Netflix already has the the stranger things people
00:17:58
◼
►
right and HBO has already got people who love Game of Thrones
00:18:03
◼
►
Game of Thrones or whatever yeah so you get people who love
00:18:05
◼
►
shows like certain things and and you can already get them
00:18:08
◼
►
but how do you expand and get a new audience and maybe the
00:18:11
◼
►
audience who just wants to watch the game of the week of
00:18:14
◼
►
baseball is different than the sort of people who watch shows
00:18:17
◼
►
like Ted Lasso and Severance and already have Apple TV but I
00:18:21
◼
►
it's so funny cuz I wanted to ask you about this but we just
00:18:23
◼
►
got. We just got a thing in the mail today. It's like a postcard
00:18:28
◼
►
from Amazon and it was addressed to my wife to Amy and
00:18:32
◼
►
it just says how to watch Thursday Night Football on the
00:18:35
◼
►
one side and it says so step one open or download the Prime
00:18:41
◼
►
Video app on your TV computer phone or streaming service sign
00:18:44
◼
►
in with your Amazon Prime account or sign up for a 30 day
00:18:47
◼
►
free trial in the Prime Video app select quote Thursday Night
00:18:52
◼
►
Football step four press watch game on. It's not hard right
00:18:58
◼
►
that makes sense and and I think people who listen to the
00:19:00
◼
►
show know what it's like to sign up for a new streaming
00:19:02
◼
►
service and depending on your device, whether it's an app
00:19:07
◼
►
store thing for your phone or tablet or your Apple TV box or
00:19:12
◼
►
it's a go to the web and just search for. I'm sure if you go
00:19:16
◼
►
to Amazon, the Amazon is all about the the football and of
00:19:19
◼
►
course the Lord of the Rings show they have on but it is it
00:19:24
◼
►
it is different than just saying go to turn on the TV to
00:19:29
◼
►
and go to channel 850. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean there's a
00:19:34
◼
►
couple extra steps but now wait I wanna back up. This was
00:19:37
◼
►
addressed to Amy. I assume you your family has a Prime
00:19:40
◼
►
account. Yes, we do and do you know is it under her name? I
00:19:43
◼
►
actually don't know. I'm not quite sure if they sent this to
00:19:46
◼
►
her because she is her account or but they say sign in with
00:19:50
◼
►
your Amazon Prime account or sign up for a 30-day free trial.
00:19:53
◼
►
Yeah, but that could just be a catch-all. Right. I'm not quite
00:19:55
◼
►
sure if she got it because she's the I don't even know I've
00:20:00
◼
►
had an Amazon account for so long and we've had Prime for so
00:20:02
◼
►
long that it's right. It's prehistoric in my brain who
00:20:06
◼
►
signed up for it first or who's well just cuz it's strange for
00:20:09
◼
►
that to be sent to her instead of you. Well, maybe I'll get
00:20:12
◼
►
mine tomorrow. Knowing the two of you. She doesn't care about
00:20:15
◼
►
football and you at least somewhat do. Right. And then the
00:20:17
◼
►
flip side of the card is the schedule where they just tell
00:20:20
◼
►
you all the upcoming games that are on Thursday Night Football.
00:20:23
◼
►
The other thing Ben and I talked about and I do think it's
00:20:25
◼
►
an interesting point but I think it's more about the Sunday
00:20:28
◼
►
football experience for me. Streaming services make flipping
00:20:33
◼
►
way more difficult, right? Like if your habit when you're
00:20:36
◼
►
watching baseball on regular TV is that when the commercials
00:20:40
◼
►
come on, you flip to another game. Flip to another game or
00:20:44
◼
►
flip to something else. Just flip to the news. Just something
00:20:47
◼
►
so you're not watching TV but you don't maybe you either you
00:20:51
◼
►
do or do not have a DVR where you can fall behind and then
00:20:54
◼
►
skip them but a lot of times for sports fans, they don't wanna
00:20:57
◼
►
be behind. They wanna be live because you don't wanna
00:21:00
◼
►
accidentally check Twitter when you're bored and find out that
00:21:03
◼
►
there's a home run coming up in 5 minutes that you didn't get
00:21:06
◼
►
to yet but the flipping is instrumental to my lifetime of
00:21:11
◼
►
watching quote unquote regular TV, cable TV. When I was a real
00:21:14
◼
►
little kid before, I was just gonna say you're young enough,
00:21:17
◼
►
I'm sorry, you're old enough that you didn't have a remote
00:21:19
◼
►
early on, right? Right. We did not have a remote control when
00:21:22
◼
►
I was a little kid and we only had. You were the remote
00:21:25
◼
►
control. Right and and I don't remember how old I was when we
00:21:29
◼
►
got cable but I'm gonna say I was around seven or eight. So,
00:21:32
◼
►
like around 1980, 1981 but I certainly watched TV in the
00:21:37
◼
►
70s as a wee little kid and you literally had a dial. I know
00:21:42
◼
►
this really makes me sound ancient but well, no, there
00:21:45
◼
►
were two dials on the TV and the one didn't do anything and
00:21:49
◼
►
I've never, I still don't understand it. It's like these
00:21:51
◼
►
are the UHF channels. Yeah, I was gonna say, wasn't that for
00:21:53
◼
►
UHF? Yeah, but there was never anything on them. Alright. We
00:21:56
◼
►
definitely were getting them over the air with an antenna
00:21:59
◼
►
that was on the roof of our house. It was fine. You know,
00:22:01
◼
►
I'm sure that to my eyes now, if I looked at the way Sesame
00:22:05
◼
►
Street looked over the air, I'd be like, I can't believe how
00:22:07
◼
►
staticky this is. This is ridiculous. Oh, god, yeah. But you literally would just get
00:22:11
◼
►
up and turn a dial to to change it but I remember when we
00:22:15
◼
►
got cable, you know, what a game changer it was and you
00:22:17
◼
►
needed, I mean, it was like the cable box came with its own
00:22:19
◼
►
remote. Right, cuz it had at that point, twenty, thirty, forty
00:22:23
◼
►
channels. Right and the TVs didn't get cable without the
00:22:27
◼
►
cable box. All of the, it's, it took a while for the TV sets
00:22:31
◼
►
to get there. It wasn't like you needed a box just to get
00:22:33
◼
►
like the premium channels like HBO. You needed a cable box for
00:22:37
◼
►
everything cuz your TV just didn't didn't crock cable. So,
00:22:41
◼
►
the cable company would give you your own remote and I
00:22:45
◼
►
remember it was pretty decent remote because it didn't have
00:22:47
◼
►
to do everything else. It didn't have to control the TV.
00:22:50
◼
►
So, it's just sort of like a number pad and an enter button
00:22:53
◼
►
and just to switch channels. Right and you could, I think
00:22:55
◼
►
it's always been sort of the UI for lack of a better
00:22:59
◼
►
description. The user interface for flipping between the two
00:23:02
◼
►
most recent channels on most remotes is just press enter
00:23:05
◼
►
without entering the number first and it'll go back. So,
00:23:08
◼
►
you could put two games on like on a Sunday afternoon to watch
00:23:12
◼
►
football and you could have the AFC game on one channel and
00:23:15
◼
►
the NFC game on the other and if you didn't particularly care
00:23:18
◼
►
about one game cuz it's not your favorite team and you're
00:23:20
◼
►
just sort of having a lazy Sunday afternoon watching
00:23:23
◼
►
football. What I would do is just watch till we got to a
00:23:27
◼
►
commercial. Flip to the other one and then it wasn't in a
00:23:30
◼
►
commercial. Hope it wasn't in a commercial and watch that one
00:23:32
◼
►
until it got to a commercial and then if one of the games was a
00:23:36
◼
►
blowout and one was exciting and close, maybe stick with that
00:23:39
◼
►
one. Actually watch a commercial. See what happens.
00:23:41
◼
►
Sure. But so, so you're now you're thinking about streaming
00:23:44
◼
►
services where you're much more locked in. Cuz you're you lose
00:23:49
◼
►
your place, right? I mean, you can't just switch between like
00:23:52
◼
►
if Apple, let's just say in the future if Apple has a baseball
00:23:55
◼
►
game at the same time that Amazon has a baseball game, how
00:23:58
◼
►
do you flip between the two? No, you can't cuz the I mean,
00:24:02
◼
►
even if you can load them both up in the apps, I think it'll
00:24:05
◼
►
pause or right. Yeah. I don't. Yeah. I think that's I well to
00:24:09
◼
►
me that sounds like a feature for to the developers of these
00:24:13
◼
►
apps because it means you're not gonna flip away from them.
00:24:16
◼
►
Right. But it's it it's irritating and. Contrary to the
00:24:22
◼
►
mindset of the sports fan in my opinion, right? Yeah, I'll give
00:24:26
◼
►
you that and sports sports is something you don't watch 100%
00:24:31
◼
►
at least I don't focused on especially a baseball game like
00:24:34
◼
►
I'll have in the background while I'm making dinner or
00:24:35
◼
►
something right. So yeah, flipping away from a game
00:24:38
◼
►
during a commercial and if you miss the first the next 30
00:24:41
◼
►
seconds of the game, whatever it's no big deal. But yeah with
00:24:43
◼
►
the streaming services just not really an option. And I just
00:24:47
◼
►
think that there's there's a weird consumer psychology play
00:24:53
◼
►
here where if you're Apple or you're Amazon or anybody else
00:24:59
◼
►
who wants to get into sports like if Netflix decides to get
00:25:02
◼
►
into sports, but it seems so far like it's Amazon and Apple
00:25:05
◼
►
in the US who are sort of focusing the streaming on
00:25:08
◼
►
sports. Yeah. You don't wanna make people angry and sports
00:25:12
◼
►
fans will get angry about anything like it like we talked
00:25:15
◼
►
about people will get angry about what's home run records
00:25:17
◼
►
the real home run record but like when the baseball playoffs
00:25:22
◼
►
switch TNT now has the American League Divisional series and it
00:25:27
◼
►
used to be on ESPN and so you just plug a different number or
00:25:32
◼
►
you go to your guide on your TV. They usually put the
00:25:35
◼
►
channels that carry sports somewhat close to each other.
00:25:37
◼
►
Find the one that says MLB postseason and hit the button
00:25:41
◼
►
on that and now you're watching it and your biggest complaint
00:25:44
◼
►
might be that you don't like the announcers right of course,
00:25:47
◼
►
but it wasn't when you know that there's a playoff game on
00:25:51
◼
►
you wanna watch it. You just you're gonna find it and you
00:25:54
◼
►
just go up and down the guide and oh there it is. It's on
00:25:57
◼
►
it's on TBS this week. So boom I'm watching it. Whereas this
00:26:02
◼
►
this is even with these easy steps go here sign in or if you
00:26:08
◼
►
don't have an account sign up for a 30 day free trial and
00:26:11
◼
►
then find the thing and hit watch. I don't know. I feel like
00:26:16
◼
►
there's an alienation effect of this. Well, I mean what do you
00:26:20
◼
►
think they should do differently? I don't think
00:26:22
◼
►
there's anything they can do differently. Yeah. That's it. I
00:26:24
◼
►
think they're right to get into sports. I think it's one of
00:26:27
◼
►
those disruptive ideas. This transition from linear cable to
00:26:33
◼
►
streaming streaming service, but I also the other thing I think
00:26:35
◼
►
that they really need to do here. Here's the one thing I
00:26:38
◼
►
think they could do technically and I haven't watched the
00:26:41
◼
►
Amazon's Thursday Night Football yet this season. I think
00:26:44
◼
►
there's only been one or two games and I've been busy on
00:26:47
◼
►
Thursday nights, but I do think that they should or optimize
00:26:51
◼
►
their technical stack to make it as much like cable as possible
00:26:55
◼
►
so that there's the least amount of lag and that if you do
00:27:00
◼
►
switch to another app or switch your input or something like
00:27:03
◼
►
that on your TV temporarily and come back to keep it going in
00:27:07
◼
►
the background if they can. I was gonna say I'm not even sure
00:27:10
◼
►
if they can. I won't say that they can't. Right. It very well
00:27:13
◼
►
could be the device. Right. Has the control over that as
00:27:16
◼
►
opposed to the app. Right. Like TV, like even if you're
00:27:18
◼
►
watching on Apple TV, but if it's the Amazon app, it has to
00:27:21
◼
►
follow by the rules of the TV OS platform. Right. And they
00:27:26
◼
►
don't just keep streaming and when you're watching most stuff
00:27:30
◼
►
in a streaming app like Game of Thrones or Stranger Things on
00:27:34
◼
►
Netflix or whatever else and you switch away, you don't want
00:27:38
◼
►
it to keep playing. Right. You want it to pause. Right. You
00:27:41
◼
►
want it to pause automatically. Whereas live sports are
00:27:45
◼
►
different. I feel like it's an unsolved problem. Computers can
00:27:49
◼
►
obviously do this. Right. This is not something that can't be
00:27:54
◼
►
solved, but it's a very different... It's fascinating to
00:28:00
◼
►
me how different it is. Whereas like I'll go back to TBS and
00:28:05
◼
►
sometimes they show old movies and sometimes they show live
00:28:08
◼
►
sports, but the guy running the console at TBS headquarters just
00:28:15
◼
►
is making sure that the right thing is being broadcast over
00:28:18
◼
►
the cable wire at the right time and that's it. And it
00:28:20
◼
►
doesn't matter to him whether it's live sports or a replay of
00:28:24
◼
►
Raiders of the Lost Ark or something like that. Whereas for
00:28:28
◼
►
the streaming services, I think they kind of need two different
00:28:31
◼
►
implementations. And the other place I'm going with this is
00:28:34
◼
►
this rumor that Apple might be interested in getting the NFL
00:28:37
◼
►
Sunday ticket. Right. Which is all about switching. The whole
00:28:41
◼
►
point, nobody buys Sunday ticket if they're not watching
00:28:43
◼
►
multiple games at the same time either on multiple TVs or
00:28:47
◼
►
like dividing one big TV up into four squares and having
00:28:50
◼
►
four games at once. And I never really thought about it. I
00:28:53
◼
►
don't have... You have to have DirecTV to get it at this point.
00:28:57
◼
►
I've never had that. But apparently they've made it very,
00:29:00
◼
►
very easy to... Well, but for something like that, they can
00:29:04
◼
►
do a split screen kind of thing within the app and let you...
00:29:08
◼
►
Does the MLB app right now let you do two games at once?
00:29:13
◼
►
I don't know. I think it does.
00:29:14
◼
►
Yeah. So I'd have to look at this again because I haven't
00:29:18
◼
►
paid that much attention to sports at all this year because
00:29:21
◼
►
it's been terrible here in Boston. But the split screen
00:29:24
◼
►
stuff is really the way to do this is like, especially if
00:29:27
◼
►
they have Sunday ticket and you say, "Okay, in slot one play
00:29:30
◼
►
the NFC game and in slot two play the AFC game, whatever."
00:29:33
◼
►
All within the app and then you're just flipping between
00:29:36
◼
►
them. The app is controlling it. I guess at that point, you
00:29:39
◼
►
know, you couldn't do that in a browser as easily. But there's
00:29:42
◼
►
at least ways to solve it for one thing like that for within
00:29:47
◼
►
just within the app. Because again, for several years,
00:29:49
◼
►
they've done March Madness. Like CBS, the CBS app has had
00:29:53
◼
►
some sort of split screen where you could be watching multiple
00:29:55
◼
►
NCAA basketball games at once. That's like the perfect example
00:29:59
◼
►
of when you want to switch because you don't care about any
00:30:01
◼
►
of these teams.
00:30:01
◼
►
Yeah, just show me one where it's a one point lead.
00:30:04
◼
►
Where it's close or like where my seed is going to win,
00:30:06
◼
►
whatever. And that I think has been the solution is just
00:30:09
◼
►
split screen.
00:30:10
◼
►
Yeah, and I would say that I'm glad you mentioned it because
00:30:14
◼
►
I've been a typical March Madness fan who doesn't really
00:30:17
◼
►
watch that much. I used to watch tons of college basketball
00:30:19
◼
►
when I was a young man with seemingly infinite time on my
00:30:24
◼
►
hands. But yeah, I've used that app for years and I have to
00:30:27
◼
►
say it is actually a very good app.
00:30:29
◼
►
Right. That's what I remember from using it was that it worked
00:30:31
◼
►
the way you're describing of being able to flip between
00:30:33
◼
►
things and focus on the one that you want.
00:30:35
◼
►
The last thing I'll touch on is with the Apple TV Plus. With
00:30:39
◼
►
Amazon Prime, I think the deal is a little bit more clear.
00:30:42
◼
►
I wonder how much of a problem it is for Apple that the, do I
00:30:49
◼
►
have to pay for this question is so ambiguous for Apple TV?
00:30:54
◼
►
I was going to ask you for the, has the baseball been free
00:30:57
◼
►
I believe it has been free all year.
00:30:59
◼
►
I thought so. It was initially they said free through June or
00:31:02
◼
►
July, whatever. And then it was a question of whether they
00:31:04
◼
►
were going to start charging or next year they'll start
00:31:06
◼
►
charging, whatever. But I think that's correct that these
00:31:09
◼
►
games are all free. So anyone who was saying like, oh, I want
00:31:12
◼
►
to watch this game and they should give it back to yes. All
00:31:14
◼
►
they had to do was go to, I don't even know, but appletv.com
00:31:18
◼
►
and they don't even need to pay for it.
00:31:20
◼
►
Right. I believe you probably can go to appletv.com. I think
00:31:24
◼
►
you can also go to tv.apple.com. But I do, but I think people
00:31:28
◼
►
have it in their head. Yeah. If you go to appletv.com, it
00:31:33
◼
►
redirects you somewhere with all of them. They're trying to
00:31:36
◼
►
sell you stuff. All of Apple's various things called Apple TV,
00:31:40
◼
►
Apple TV, 4k, Apple TV, HD, Apple TV app, Apple TV plus,
00:31:47
◼
►
and then I guess tv.apple.com gets you to Apple TV plus,
00:31:51
◼
►
which is their streaming service. Right. I just wonder
00:31:54
◼
►
though, how much of it is in the back of people's heads where
00:31:56
◼
►
this is where they're going to get me. Right. And people are
00:31:59
◼
►
rightfully, I'd like to come back with this at the end of the
00:32:03
◼
►
show, talking about rogue amoeba and subscriptions.
00:32:05
◼
►
Subscription fatigue is a real thing, right? Like, it is a huge
00:32:10
◼
►
thing. It's been a shift for content that you consume. It has
00:32:14
◼
►
been a shift in the software industry. So for people who
00:32:17
◼
►
actually pay for their professional software tools,
00:32:19
◼
►
it's at some level, it'd be very surprising to find anybody
00:32:23
◼
►
who's considered themselves a computer professional who
00:32:26
◼
►
doesn't subscribe to some kind of some service service or app
00:32:30
◼
►
or something like that. And it people realize, and they're
00:32:37
◼
►
right. I think that this is one of those cases where the person
00:32:40
◼
►
on the streets attitude is right, where you kind of do want
00:32:43
◼
►
to, hey, every couple months, you should like just take a
00:32:46
◼
►
look at your credit card bill and look at every single
00:32:49
◼
►
monthly subscription that's on there. And maybe circle a couple
00:32:53
◼
►
of them that that you haven't watched in a while. Like I'm
00:32:56
◼
►
old. Has anybody watched anything on Hulu in months? I
00:32:58
◼
►
don't know. It's easier to cancel than cable TV was back in
00:33:03
◼
►
the day where you don't used to have to drive down to a
00:33:05
◼
►
sketchy part of town and take your equipment in and where
00:33:08
◼
►
they were at least at least around here, they had
00:33:10
◼
►
bulletproof glass, which always amused me now. Now Xfinity has
00:33:15
◼
►
their like cell phone looking stores. But back in the early
00:33:18
◼
►
2000s, they had bulletproof glass. And I always joked that
00:33:21
◼
►
even the DMV doesn't have bulletproof glass, which is how
00:33:24
◼
►
much we hated our cable companies. Because there were
00:33:26
◼
►
times too where I had to move like when I moved up to
00:33:29
◼
►
Massachusetts and for two years back 20 years ago, I had to get
00:33:33
◼
►
new cable service. I wasn't just moving across town in
00:33:36
◼
►
Philadelphia and I could take my cable box. I had to go down
00:33:38
◼
►
there and so you had to return one and then you had to go pick
00:33:41
◼
►
up another one right at another place, which was also full of
00:33:45
◼
►
bulletproof glass. And one of those, what do you even call it
00:33:48
◼
►
like a lazy Susan? So where they can rotate that you can
00:33:51
◼
►
put down your box and then they can rotate it under the glass.
00:33:54
◼
►
Right. But that it was still a protective layer of bulletproof
00:33:56
◼
►
glass between them at all times.
00:33:59
◼
►
Basically is like a lazy side. Like you see that at really bad
00:34:01
◼
►
convenience stores and at the cable company.
00:34:03
◼
►
But you know, and they talk about it in the streaming world
00:34:08
◼
►
churn, right? That people, they'll watch their face and
00:34:11
◼
►
that maybe this has come back to bite Netflix now that the
00:34:15
◼
►
overall world is way more competitive and that Netflix is
00:34:19
◼
►
hey, we don't suffer churn was hubris fueled by the era where
00:34:25
◼
►
Netflix was so dominant.
00:34:27
◼
►
And then, yeah, there weren't so many other options.
00:34:30
◼
►
Right. And now that there's Disney Plus and HBO as a very
00:34:33
◼
►
good service and people are like, you know what? I'm done
00:34:36
◼
►
with Stranger Things and they thank you Netflix for releasing
00:34:39
◼
►
it all at the same time.
00:34:40
◼
►
All at once. Yeah.
00:34:41
◼
►
So I watched the whole season in 10 days and now I'll just
00:34:45
◼
►
turn off my Netflix subscription until you come out with
00:34:47
◼
►
something else I want to watch.
00:34:49
◼
►
It's, it's just a different mindset to me. Anyway, I thought
00:34:53
◼
►
it was interesting. I thought the play on sports gave us an
00:34:55
◼
►
excuse to nerd out on sports.
00:34:57
◼
►
Sure, absolutely.
00:34:58
◼
►
Rogers Hornsby was 424 in 1924.
00:35:02
◼
►
Okay, so you had the you had the you had the it matched the
00:35:05
◼
►
year, but it was it was four years later than you thought.
00:35:08
◼
►
He was not the MVP that year.
00:35:10
◼
►
No, who was not sure who was and let's see if I can Dazie
00:35:13
◼
►
Vance, who I don't never heard of.
00:35:15
◼
►
Never, nor, nor have I, but you know, I was a pitcher 262
00:35:19
◼
►
strikeouts. Okay.
00:35:20
◼
►
You have to admit great baseball name.
00:35:22
◼
►
It's true. It's true.
00:35:24
◼
►
All right, let me speak in a commercials and not skipping.
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I mean, you're not doing the show live.
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00:37:41
◼
►
Did you get the iPhone 14?
00:37:44
◼
►
I've got it. I got the Pro right in front of me.
00:37:47
◼
►
Which color did you get?
00:37:48
◼
►
It was, what is it? The, who's it? The deep purple.
00:37:51
◼
►
Deep purple.
00:37:52
◼
►
But it's in a case. So I got myself a nice, I usually get
00:37:56
◼
►
like a gray or a black case and I got myself a nice blue case.
00:37:59
◼
►
And that's so to me, this phone is blue. Last year's phone
00:38:01
◼
►
was blue in a black case. So I never saw the blues.
00:38:04
◼
►
It occurs to me for the first time. I didn't put it in my
00:38:07
◼
►
review, but it occurred to me and it's very obvious. And I
00:38:10
◼
►
guess I'd thought of it, but I just had never thought about
00:38:13
◼
►
the obviousness of it, that what Apple does with these, with
00:38:18
◼
►
the iPhones every year is they come out with limited edition
00:38:21
◼
►
colors. They don't call them limited edition colors, but if
00:38:25
◼
►
tradition serves, it doesn't matter how popular deep purple
00:38:29
◼
►
is. They didn't have deep purple.
00:38:30
◼
►
It won't be there next year.
00:38:31
◼
►
It won't be there next year. It wasn't there last year. And
00:38:33
◼
►
no matter how much you liked the, I forget what they called
00:38:36
◼
►
the blue one last year.
00:38:38
◼
►
Well, was it Pacific blue?
00:38:39
◼
►
Yeah, something like that. And then there was a green one a
00:38:42
◼
►
couple of years ago that was sort of like a Boba Fett
00:38:45
◼
►
colored green sort of. They're all, as I joked in my review
00:38:49
◼
►
and as my wife Amy put in her entire iPhone review, which she
00:38:52
◼
►
tweeted out, they're all just different colors of gray.
00:38:56
◼
►
That's it. That's the review.
00:38:57
◼
►
Sierra blue. Sierra blue.
00:39:00
◼
►
Sierra blue.
00:39:01
◼
►
But it is interesting. I never really thought about them as
00:39:04
◼
►
they don't call them limited edition colors, but they clearly
00:39:07
◼
►
are. And what I guess clarified it for me is I sort of really
00:39:12
◼
►
gave it an extra thought this year in my review about the
00:39:16
◼
►
fact that the iPhone 14 Pro models don't stick around for
00:39:22
◼
►
additional years. So it's not just that they're not going to
00:39:24
◼
►
come out with an iPhone 15 in deep purple next year.
00:39:29
◼
►
The you won't be able to even buy this one, right?
00:39:32
◼
►
The 14 Pros go away and it's it somehow it snuck up on me over
00:39:39
◼
►
the years because in the early years of the iPhone, that was
00:39:42
◼
►
what they did is they would keep the 3G when the 3GS came out
00:39:47
◼
►
and sell it at a lower rate and then keep the 3GS at a lower
00:39:51
◼
►
price when the iPhone 4 come out, so on and so forth with one
00:39:55
◼
►
new iPhone per year and the older ones sticking around. And
00:39:59
◼
►
they still do that with the non pro ones, right? You could
00:40:02
◼
►
still buy. I think they're still selling the iPhone 11 or
00:40:05
◼
►
maybe they've gone up to 12, but I think you can go. But even
00:40:08
◼
►
though Apple might not list the iPhone 11, you can go to like
00:40:11
◼
►
Verizon or AT&T and still buy.
00:40:14
◼
►
Still get one.
00:40:14
◼
►
Yeah, but you can't buy the iPhone 13 Pro anymore. Now there
00:40:19
◼
►
might be stock in the in the channel or something like that,
00:40:21
◼
►
but at this point, not for long, not for long.
00:40:24
◼
►
They so that's it's interesting to me from at a consumer level
00:40:29
◼
►
that no matter how popular a color is, that's it. This is
00:40:32
◼
►
your one chance and only to get it.
00:40:34
◼
►
Well, I guess the I guess the question is, is that true? I
00:40:37
◼
►
mean, yes, it's been true with this green with the blue and
00:40:39
◼
►
probably with the purple. But like if they had one that
00:40:42
◼
►
suddenly that was the one that sold so much more. Do you
00:40:44
◼
►
think I mean, I don't think that they would be reluctant to
00:40:48
◼
►
keep the color around if they discovered a color that that
00:40:51
◼
►
people loved. I think they'd probably keep it around.
00:40:53
◼
►
Yeah, and that's probably the sort of thing that they could
00:40:56
◼
►
do on relatively short notice, right? Like most I like to,
00:41:03
◼
►
and I've heard this from so many people at Apple, but most
00:41:06
◼
►
of the hardware decisions in like a new iPhone, like
00:41:09
◼
►
were made a year or two, two or two years ago, at least that
00:41:12
◼
►
much, if not more, right?
00:41:13
◼
►
No, no, but john, I read these rumors sites, and I hear that
00:41:16
◼
►
Apple at the last second decided to drop the fourth camera
00:41:20
◼
►
on the new iPhone.
00:41:22
◼
►
Yeah, that doesn't happen. But I would imagine that that ad
00:41:25
◼
►
saying we should go back, we should keep Deep Purple for a
00:41:28
◼
►
second year is something that they could decide.
00:41:30
◼
►
They could actually do.
00:41:31
◼
►
Right. And they could probably if it's if it is going to be
00:41:34
◼
►
that popular, they probably know it already from the initial
00:41:38
◼
►
sales, they could already get the gears turning to coat the
00:41:42
◼
►
steel bands with the Deep Purple and produce more of the
00:41:45
◼
►
Deep Purple back glass.
00:41:48
◼
►
Well, wait, so there's an interesting question briefly,
00:41:50
◼
►
let's say the hardware decisions for the iPhone 16 Pro are
00:41:54
◼
►
already made or about to be made. But when does next year's
00:41:57
◼
►
phone, the 15 Pro, when does production on that actually
00:42:00
◼
►
start? That's like a month or two, right?
00:42:02
◼
►
Yeah, because because high level production seems like
00:42:06
◼
►
something that really only gears up right at the very end.
00:42:09
◼
►
Yes. And I would think that the colors would be much closer
00:42:13
◼
►
to that than to putting another camera or whatever.
00:42:15
◼
►
Yeah, so I don't know, it might be too late. It really might
00:42:18
◼
►
even the color.
00:42:18
◼
►
No, no, I'm saying I think they've got enough time.
00:42:20
◼
►
Yeah, I'm saying with you that that in in June of next year,
00:42:23
◼
►
that's when they need to say these are the colors.
00:42:25
◼
►
Yeah, probably, I would bet because and I'm sure they do
00:42:28
◼
►
testing with the actual colors to get them to come out right.
00:42:32
◼
►
And then it it must be so fast. It's like one of the great
00:42:36
◼
►
secrets of the whole Apple world that they just deliberately
00:42:39
◼
►
don't ever shine a light on is how many engineers at Apple
00:42:45
◼
►
and designers are spending so much time so long in advance
00:42:49
◼
►
just to make sure that the deep purple steel looks the right
00:42:53
◼
►
color issue, right? And then there's somebody else. I don't
00:42:56
◼
►
know, it could be it might be this one person does all the
00:42:58
◼
►
colors. I don't know. But maybe there's somebody else who's in
00:43:01
◼
►
charge of making sure space black is as black as we think
00:43:05
◼
►
it's going to be, along with all of the other engineering
00:43:08
◼
►
issues of, okay, this seems right, these things are passing
00:43:11
◼
►
their quality tests. And then somebody over there is like,
00:43:15
◼
►
and they're like, okay, so we're gonna say go and you're
00:43:18
◼
►
gonna start making like 3 million of these a week. And
00:43:21
◼
►
they're like, yeah, yes. Yes, the purple will work. Well, and
00:43:25
◼
►
as you said, they've changed every year. So that I mean,
00:43:28
◼
►
maybe the process is not as complicated as we think, or
00:43:31
◼
►
maybe changing the color is not that complicated. But yeah,
00:43:34
◼
►
they they have not stuck with one. So they're obviously doing
00:43:37
◼
►
well in terms of well, because because what what phone was it
00:43:41
◼
►
that the white took forever and then wasn't very good? And was
00:43:44
◼
►
that the five or what? No, I forget or, or was it the four?
00:43:50
◼
►
I think might have been the iPhone for the white iPhone four
00:43:53
◼
►
was was where they did they announce it on day one, but yeah,
00:43:56
◼
►
coming next year, and then next year took forever.
00:43:59
◼
►
Yeah, I think what happened in the iPhone
00:44:03
◼
►
for was the last one that was introduced in June, and was the
00:44:10
◼
►
antenna gate phone. And they announced it probably at WWDC.
00:44:14
◼
►
And Steve Jobs did the introduction was one of the last
00:44:18
◼
►
phones might have been the last phone he introduced. Yeah, it
00:44:21
◼
►
was the four and it was 2011. So yeah, yeah. And it was a
00:44:26
◼
►
weird, it was the most unusual cycle in all of iPhone history,
00:44:30
◼
►
because it was the one where they decided we're going to
00:44:33
◼
►
shift it to the fall. But they also came off off cycle with the
00:44:37
◼
►
Verizon, Verizon iPhone, right, which was like February of the
00:44:41
◼
►
next year. And then I think the white iPhone fours started
00:44:45
◼
►
actually shipping in like May. You know, I'm sorry, I just I
00:44:49
◼
►
just pulled this up. So June was when they introduced the four,
00:44:52
◼
►
they said we're gonna have black and white. And the white
00:44:55
◼
►
just did not show up until April of 2011. The end of April.
00:45:00
◼
►
Right, which shows like that, like something obviously got
00:45:03
◼
►
screwed up internally for that to happen. Yeah. And I remember
00:45:07
◼
►
being, I think at the antenna gate event, which would have
00:45:13
◼
►
been earlier than this. Oh, way earlier. Yeah, much earlier.
00:45:16
◼
►
But it was still at a time where Apple was sort of mum on the
00:45:19
◼
►
fact that white hadn't shipped. And I believe it was a source of
00:45:23
◼
►
marital stress in my household. Because because we've always
00:45:28
◼
►
been everybody gets a new iPhone every year, we'll trade the old
00:45:32
◼
►
one in or I keep them on a shelf and Amy trades them in. But she
00:45:35
◼
►
wanted to get the white one. So she ordered the white one, but
00:45:38
◼
►
so she didn't didn't come. I mean, I did. It wasn't like they
00:45:41
◼
►
held her money. It was like, she was planning on it because I
00:45:45
◼
►
don't even think you can order it. I think it was just it just
00:45:47
◼
►
didn't exist. Yeah, it just didn't exist. But I remember
00:45:50
◼
►
when I went out to Cupertino to to the old town hall, band box
00:45:55
◼
►
auditorium. I mean, it's being generous calling it an ad
00:45:58
◼
►
auditorium, but and being on campus and seeing Apple
00:46:02
◼
►
employees walking around with white iPhone. They had the white
00:46:05
◼
►
ones. Yeah, it was like, whoa, what the hell? I was like, Oh,
00:46:08
◼
►
we're at Apple. So yes, there are people there were people at
00:46:12
◼
►
Apple who had them, but they were not on sale. I don't think
00:46:15
◼
►
we ever got a straight answer, of course, because Apple doesn't
00:46:19
◼
►
want to explain what was clearly an embarrassing, technical
00:46:24
◼
►
issue with the production of the way I forget what it was, or
00:46:27
◼
►
what the rumors were if it was like that in production, it was
00:46:31
◼
►
yellowing or if it was somehow the white back cracked easier or
00:46:37
◼
►
something because that was when the first one that had a glass
00:46:39
◼
►
back. So it wasn't plastic. If it had been plastic, I'm sure it
00:46:42
◼
►
would have been no issue. But something about making the
00:46:44
◼
►
white plastic or the white glass was a hold up. Very strange.
00:46:50
◼
►
Well, the other thing I wanted to say, though, and I do find
00:46:52
◼
►
all this talk about color. It's obviously the color of the
00:46:55
◼
►
iPhones is always featured in the ads, the billboards. I think
00:46:59
◼
►
they've made commercials to mention the color of the year,
00:47:02
◼
►
like Deep Purple this year. And what do 98% of people do as soon
00:47:06
◼
►
as they get their iPhone? Put it in a case. Do you think I'm
00:47:10
◼
►
right? What percentage of iPhone users do you believe?
00:47:13
◼
►
Yeah, we've talked about this. I don't know a number, but
00:47:17
◼
►
certainly more than 75%. And I would not be surprised if it's
00:47:21
◼
►
over 90%, 95%, close to 98%. It's the vast, vast majority.
00:47:26
◼
►
And my sort of trivia question for people or thinking question
00:47:30
◼
►
for people is, can you think of another product that you buy
00:47:33
◼
►
and then immediately sort of transform? Like, I mean, it
00:47:37
◼
►
speaks to the, as durable as modern smartphones are, it
00:47:41
◼
►
speaks to the lack of durability. Like, Apple could
00:47:43
◼
►
design a phone that did not require a case. Like most
00:47:47
◼
►
people don't put a case on their Apple Watch and their Apple
00:47:49
◼
►
Watch Ultra, which is designed to take hammer blows. But the
00:47:53
◼
►
phone is still left fragile enough that everyone puts a case
00:47:57
◼
►
on it. And I can't think of another product like that, then
00:48:01
◼
►
besides smartphones, not just the iPhone. I think it's most
00:48:03
◼
►
smartphones. And I think at this point, it's too ingrained.
00:48:07
◼
►
I think that they really could. Like, I don't even know that I
00:48:09
◼
►
really need this case as much. Yeah. And over the summer, they
00:48:14
◼
►
had an ad campaign. Actually, I think it was for the Watch. But
00:48:17
◼
►
it was curious because there were rumors that what we now
00:48:20
◼
►
know is the Ultra was coming out. But Apple made a
00:48:22
◼
►
commercial over the summer for the Series 7 regular watches,
00:48:25
◼
►
showing them getting hit with soccer balls and other action
00:48:29
◼
►
type sports and swimming and just sort of emphasized like,
00:48:33
◼
►
hey, your Apple Watch, you can actually wear it. It's tough.
00:48:36
◼
►
It can handle this. Yeah. I see a fair number of people,
00:48:39
◼
►
though, with, I don't know if you'd call it some kind of
00:48:42
◼
►
wrapper on their Apple Watch. Of course, there definitely are
00:48:45
◼
►
bumpers and there are cases for them. But it's not, I don't know
00:48:49
◼
►
what percentage, but it's way, way, way lower than phones.
00:48:52
◼
►
If it's double digits, I'd be surprised. I think I almost
00:48:56
◼
►
exclusively see naked Apple Watches, and I almost
00:48:58
◼
►
exclusively see cased phones. Right. And you do see people,
00:49:02
◼
►
like there are cases for iPads, but I typically only see them
00:49:06
◼
►
or notice them for children, for the obvious reason. Like an
00:49:10
◼
►
actual like hard case. Right. Like a hard case. And otherwise
00:49:14
◼
►
with iPads, people just buy the magnetic covers and they sort
00:49:17
◼
►
of, there's a little bit of protection there. And yeah.
00:49:20
◼
►
Yeah. Like the cover gives you scratch protection, which is
00:49:23
◼
►
what I care most about with an iPad. Cause I'm going to just,
00:49:25
◼
►
at some point I'm going to put it in a bag and carry it around
00:49:28
◼
►
with other stuff. And I don't want the glass getting
00:49:30
◼
►
scratched, but you don't really need a case. And there are
00:49:33
◼
►
other products like you could, I guess somebody maybe for like
00:49:37
◼
►
the education market, there are cases for Mac books. I don't
00:49:42
◼
►
know. But at this point, I don't know what they could do with
00:49:45
◼
►
the phone. I think that they could just beg people. They
00:49:50
◼
►
could make it an entire hour of the September event next year,
00:49:54
◼
►
emphasizing how durable the new iPhone 15 Pro is. And that you
00:49:58
◼
►
can hit it with a hockey puck and you can drop it and you
00:50:02
◼
►
could do this and you could do that and it won't scratch. And
00:50:05
◼
►
I think everybody would just nod their head and then they'd
00:50:07
◼
►
buy it. And then go buy a case. I don't know. I mean, I agree
00:50:12
◼
►
I think it's very ingrained and I didn't wait to get the phone
00:50:16
◼
►
to get a case. I got a case and came the same day the phone
00:50:19
◼
►
did. But if they, I don't know, if they talked up the display
00:50:23
◼
►
being so shatterproof the same way like the Ultra Watch is, I
00:50:29
◼
►
might at least be willing to consider it. I'd like to not
00:50:33
◼
►
need a case or not feel like I need a case. I actually, I don't
00:50:36
◼
►
even remember what happened. I actually, it was on the trip to
00:50:41
◼
►
Cupertino to go to the event earlier this month. And somehow
00:50:48
◼
►
I noticed that the back of my personal iPhone 13 Pro, the back
00:50:52
◼
►
had now had a crack in the corner. And I didn't remember
00:50:55
◼
►
dropping my phone. I don't know when it happened. And it's like
00:50:58
◼
►
somehow my phone knows that I'm here to pick up a review.
00:51:02
◼
►
Right. You're getting a brand new phone. So whatever. Right.
00:51:05
◼
►
And it like spitefully cracked itself or something. But it was
00:51:08
◼
►
on the back.
00:51:09
◼
►
That was, that's what I've always thought about. Apple
00:51:11
◼
►
executives, you famously asked if any of them used a case and
00:51:15
◼
►
they all held up their phones naked.
00:51:17
◼
►
And it's like, great, you've got a barrel of iPhones. You can
00:51:20
◼
►
just grab a brand new one. The average person, and honestly,
00:51:24
◼
►
the repairs on it are not terribly bad for like getting, I
00:51:28
◼
►
think you've done it once or twice, right? You've three
00:51:31
◼
►
times repaired. And it's what, like 50 bucks?
00:51:34
◼
►
Oh, no, it varies. And apparently the back is actually
00:51:39
◼
►
super expensive. This is putting this ties into the news that
00:51:42
◼
►
came out last week from iFixit's teardown that the regular
00:51:45
◼
►
non-pro iPhone 14s have an all new internal engineering design.
00:51:51
◼
►
That's easier to repair, right?
00:51:53
◼
►
Because there's two ways to get to it. Right. You could get to,
00:51:58
◼
►
if you just need to fix the screen, you could take off the
00:52:00
◼
►
screen. Whereas I believe it's the case that for the last few
00:52:03
◼
►
years, the only way to get anywhere is to go through the
00:52:07
◼
►
screen. And so if like your camera's broken or the back glass
00:52:10
◼
►
is broken so bad, you want to get it fixed. It literally has
00:52:15
◼
►
to be almost completely disassembled.
00:52:17
◼
►
It's like a $500 or $400 repair for like the pro model. It's
00:52:21
◼
►
shockingly close to half the price of the phone. Whereas the
00:52:25
◼
►
display is cheaper, but the display is not that much cheaper
00:52:28
◼
►
because they're expensive displays, especially if you get
00:52:30
◼
►
the pro model. But that's a big change for the non-pro iPhone
00:52:34
◼
►
14, but the pros still have the same repairability issues.
00:52:38
◼
►
No. So I don't buy, I don't typically use a case. I buy a
00:52:42
◼
►
couple of cases a year. Last year I went overboard. I bought
00:52:45
◼
►
way too many cases for somebody who doesn't use a case. And I
00:52:48
◼
►
had it in my head that it was justified because I would either
00:52:51
◼
►
write a big article talking about, here's my favorite as a
00:52:54
◼
►
non-case iPhone person who occasionally uses one like on
00:52:58
◼
►
vacation to get a better grip in a Disney world or something
00:53:04
◼
►
like that. And it might be rainy, it might be slippery. I
00:53:07
◼
►
want to put my phone in a case to give it more grip. Anyway,
00:53:11
◼
►
it's just all very unusual to me that we obsess about these
00:53:13
◼
►
iPhone callers. Apple clearly obsesses about them. They make
00:53:16
◼
►
them the focus of their marketing campaigns and
00:53:19
◼
►
billboards. And I think it's the reason why people, so many
00:53:24
◼
►
people, seemingly 95% of people instantly put their brand new
00:53:28
◼
►
iPhones into a case as soon as they get them is they want to
00:53:31
◼
►
protect them because they like the way they look naked but
00:53:35
◼
►
never actually enjoy it. And it's, I mentioned...
00:53:38
◼
►
Never actually get to see it.
00:53:40
◼
►
Until they take it out of the case, when they send it back,
00:53:43
◼
►
when they get a trade-in in two years or three years.
00:53:45
◼
►
And look how nice it looks then.
00:53:47
◼
►
Right. I just find it endlessly fascinating that people care
00:53:52
◼
►
about the color and the case and the condition of their iPhone,
00:53:55
◼
►
but never actually enjoy it.
00:53:57
◼
►
Well, but that's... So you asked what color I got. I got the
00:54:00
◼
►
purple because I thought if I don't like it, I'm not going to
00:54:02
◼
►
see it. And if I do like it, well, I'm not going to see it.
00:54:05
◼
►
So I don't know.
00:54:05
◼
►
You do see it through the buttons though, because you like
00:54:07
◼
►
to buy a case where the buttons... The case doesn't have
00:54:10
◼
►
buttons. You actually poke through.
00:54:12
◼
►
That's right. That's right.
00:54:13
◼
►
So you do get to see your deep purple buttons.
00:54:16
◼
►
I do see some buttons. They mostly look gray. Amy is
00:54:20
◼
►
correct. Looking at the cameras on the back, there's like a
00:54:24
◼
►
hint of purple. It's mostly gray. The other thing I also
00:54:28
◼
►
find interesting, I probably say this every year too, is
00:54:31
◼
►
that I do find it interesting too, that I see almost nobody
00:54:34
◼
►
with Apple branded cases.
00:54:36
◼
►
You see, I see... I see a decent amount of those.
00:54:40
◼
►
I shouldn't say none, but you don't see that many, in my
00:54:44
◼
►
opinion. I don't know. I don't know if it's because...
00:54:48
◼
►
There are so many cases. The Apple ones are fairly
00:54:51
◼
►
expensive. You can get a cheaper case.
00:54:53
◼
►
That if you don't care that much about the aesthetics, a
00:54:56
◼
►
$20 case is just as good as a $50 case. It might even be
00:54:59
◼
►
better in terms of protection. So yeah, I feel like those
00:55:02
◼
►
cases are sold... They're certainly sold at a premium, an
00:55:05
◼
►
Apple premium. And so yeah, I'm not surprised they're not
00:55:08
◼
►
super popular.
00:55:09
◼
►
Well, it's just endlessly fascinating, as I said. All
00:55:14
◼
►
right, let me take another break here and thank our next
00:55:17
◼
►
friend of the show. It's our good friends at Linode. Linode,
00:55:21
◼
►
that's where I host Staring Fireball. They've got a new
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product release. They call it... It's their database product.
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You can go to linode.com/products/databases and
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◼
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find out more. They've got MySQL, MongoDB, PostgresQL. I
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◼
►
think I'm pronouncing that right. That's how I guessed the
00:55:39
◼
►
last time, and a bunch of readers said that is how you
00:55:41
◼
►
pronounce Postgres. I believe you can also...
00:55:43
◼
►
Yeah, no, that one's right.
00:55:44
◼
►
You can leave off the PostgresQL. You can just call it
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◼
►
Postgres. But anyway, what is it? It's a fully managed
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database service for those databases, and it is simple and
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reliable. You can easily deploy high performance database
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clusters. Managed databases allow you to quickly deploy a
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new database and defer management tasks like
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configurations and manage high availability, disaster
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recovery, backups, data replication with managed
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databases. Here's what you get from Linode. Simple and fast
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really small. You can do really small things at Linode for
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affordable, allowing you to focus on your projects, not
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your infrastructure. Go to Linode, Linode.com/the
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talk show. And by using that URL, Linode.com/the talk
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your GitHub accounts to sign into Linode or just use your
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email address. But just by going to that URL, you get
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100 bucks in credit, $100 just for going to Linode.com/the
00:57:14
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talk show. Here's a camera. I want to talk before we leave
00:57:17
◼
►
the iPhone 14. I wanted to talk about a camera issue. I
00:57:20
◼
►
sort of punted, and I've been doing this for years now,
00:57:23
◼
►
where it's I don't feel like I'm an expert photographer,
00:57:26
◼
►
and I feel like the people who are better than me at
00:57:29
◼
►
photography can do better, let them focus on the camera
00:57:33
◼
►
parts of their review. Camera-focused reviews. Yeah.
00:57:36
◼
►
And the curious thing, I mean, not curious, but the most
00:57:39
◼
►
interesting thing about the iPhone 14 Pro camera this
00:57:41
◼
►
year is that the quote-unquote main camera, which is for
00:57:44
◼
►
both 1x and 2x, now has a 48 megapixel sensor. And it's
00:57:49
◼
►
using something called pixel binning to treat each little
00:57:53
◼
►
square, two by two square of four pixels as one pixel to
00:57:57
◼
►
make a 12 megapixel image. And by using four real pixels as
00:58:02
◼
►
one virtual pixel, it's a way to have an effective 12 megapixel
00:58:09
◼
►
sensor that greatly reduces noise. And everybody seems to
00:58:14
◼
►
agree, you take a picture with the new iPhones in low light,
00:58:18
◼
►
and you look at for the noise, you see a lot less noise. And
00:58:21
◼
►
that's great. But it is technically a 48 megapixel
00:58:24
◼
►
sensor. And the only way to shoot 48 megapixel images is to
00:58:29
◼
►
shoot the ProRAW format. And I did play with this in my
00:58:35
◼
►
review before I wrote. I'd forget if I even mentioned it.
00:58:37
◼
►
But when you do shoot ProRAW, you get the option. Do you want
00:58:41
◼
►
to shoot RAW 48 megapixel or RAW 12 megapixel? And you might
00:58:47
◼
►
Okay, so it's like the video where you can do 30, 60 FPS,
00:58:51
◼
►
that sort of thing.
00:58:52
◼
►
Right. Or, you know, like 1080, maybe a better comparison is
00:58:55
◼
►
1080p to 4K, because it's just resolution.
00:58:58
◼
►
Well, why would you want to do that if you're shooting RAW?
00:59:00
◼
►
Don't you just want the RAW sensor data? And the answer is
00:59:04
◼
►
that it takes about a second for each shot. If you're shooting
00:59:08
◼
►
the 48 megapixel RAW images, you press the center, the
00:59:13
◼
►
shutter in the iPhone camera app, and it's...
00:59:16
◼
►
Yeah, I don't know if it's a full second, but it feels like
00:59:18
◼
►
a second before it's available to shoot the next picture. So
00:59:21
◼
►
that's obviously suboptimal. And that's why they offer, even
00:59:26
◼
►
if you do want to shoot RAW to do all your development and
00:59:29
◼
►
editing with the RAW image, you could still shoot it as 12
00:59:32
◼
►
megapixels. But anyway, what I've seen in the reviews, Jason
00:59:36
◼
►
Snell's review, Mark Spoonhour at Tom's Guide had a good
00:59:39
◼
►
review and a lot of side-by-side images is, boy, there is a
00:59:43
◼
►
lot of... Your intuitive sense, and Apple's marketing, I think
00:59:46
◼
►
rightly so, has been away from megapixel wars for years and
00:59:50
◼
►
years, and that megapixels as a primary concern for somebody
00:59:56
◼
►
buying a new camera or buying a phone to use as a camera is
01:00:01
◼
►
probably not the biggest concern you have. There's so many
01:00:03
◼
►
other factors in image quality. But all that said, still more
01:00:07
◼
►
megapixels are better, right? At some level. And it does seem
01:00:12
◼
►
like there's a lot of detail that the 48 megapixel sensor is
01:00:15
◼
►
capable of in a lot of light, like so that pixel binning to
01:00:20
◼
►
treat the 48 megapixel sensor as a 12 megapixel sensor really
01:00:24
◼
►
makes the most sense in low light or even medium light. But
01:00:28
◼
►
with a lot of light like outdoors, there's plenty of light
01:00:31
◼
►
to just treat it as a 48 megapixel sensor. And the one
01:00:35
◼
►
thing you don't have the option of is to treat it as a 48
01:00:39
◼
►
megapixel sensor shooting JPEG. You can shoot raw and get 48
01:00:43
◼
►
megapixel, but now you've got these big, huge 80 megabyte
01:00:47
◼
►
files each image, and you have to develop it manually like
01:00:51
◼
►
whatever software you use to edit one that it uses to edit
01:00:55
◼
►
raw images. Wouldn't it be nicer if you could just say, "Ah,
01:00:58
◼
►
I don't want to shoot raw, but I want the 48 megapixel sensor
01:01:02
◼
►
size when there's plenty of light and just let me shoot
01:01:04
◼
►
JPEG or the HEIC." Do we pronounce that? Do you know? Or
01:01:10
◼
►
do we spell it out like HEIC? I always forget it, too. JPEG,
01:01:14
◼
►
I'll never forget, but somehow HEIC, I'm always like, "Is it
01:01:19
◼
►
HECI, HEIC?" Whatever it is.
01:01:21
◼
►
Yeah, I see that frequently, and it still hasn't stuck in my
01:01:25
◼
►
head. JPEG's been around forever.
01:01:26
◼
►
Right. So when I say JPEG, I mean compressed images, and
01:01:30
◼
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I'll just use it as shorthand for all of them. There is no
01:01:32
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option. You can't dig into settings and say, "I would like
01:01:35
◼
►
to shoot JPEG and have the iPhone do the development of the
01:01:39
◼
►
raw image for me." And because it'll be compressed, I would
01:01:42
◼
►
guess that that means you could shoot it 48 megapixels, and it
01:01:48
◼
►
wouldn't take a second for each shot because it's not moving
01:01:51
◼
►
that huge raw image. It's doing the processing before it moves
01:01:55
◼
►
it over to storage, but they don't offer that option. And I
01:01:59
◼
►
think I see why, but I'm just curious if you have thoughts on
01:02:02
◼
►
it. As someone who designs software, sometimes you don't
01:02:08
◼
►
want to give users an option because you just don't want
01:02:12
◼
►
them to shoot themselves in the foot. Right?
01:02:14
◼
►
Right. I mean, that's... So I'm just fiddling with this right
01:02:18
◼
►
now as you were talking about it. And when you take a raw in
01:02:22
◼
►
48 megapixels, it puts a little spinner on the screen, and it's
01:02:27
◼
►
over a full second before that's done, before you can take
01:02:30
◼
►
another photo. But I'm looking at all the controls, and
01:02:32
◼
►
there's... because there's controls for video too, where you
01:02:35
◼
►
can adjust 120 FPS versus 240 for slow-mo. But I don't think...
01:02:40
◼
►
and they all have these little, what I call tiny text, under
01:02:43
◼
►
the control. And it says a minute of video will be
01:02:45
◼
►
approximately 45 megs for this, 65 megs for this, 100 megs for
01:02:48
◼
►
this. But so you were talking about moving the file. Do you
01:02:50
◼
►
think that's what the delay is? Or is it the processing?
01:02:53
◼
►
I don't know. I don't know enough about it. But it seems to
01:02:57
◼
►
me like it must... because at some level, some... it is using
01:03:00
◼
►
the whole 48 megapixel sensor to shoot the 12 megapixel images.
01:03:04
◼
►
So at some point, I'm not quite sure. Maybe it's possible that
01:03:10
◼
►
even if they allowed you to shoot 48 megapixel JPEGs, that it
01:03:13
◼
►
would still take a second because that's not where the...
01:03:17
◼
►
this takes a long time comes into play. I don't know.
01:03:22
◼
►
But they don't even make it an option.
01:03:25
◼
►
Right. My thought would be that if you're shooting in RAW, you
01:03:29
◼
►
have to go turn the RAW option on. So that's not even visible
01:03:33
◼
►
by default. If you're doing that, you either have decided to
01:03:37
◼
►
screw around with this or you know what you're doing. And so
01:03:39
◼
►
shooting in that 48, it being a little slow, you'll be...
01:03:43
◼
►
that'll be acceptable to you. Whereas if you're just someone
01:03:45
◼
►
shooting normal camera shots, I think that delay would just be
01:03:49
◼
►
too much. And that'd be my guess for why it's not enabled.
01:03:52
◼
►
Yeah. But it's like you don't want to... and I know that's...
01:03:55
◼
►
there are times when Apple makes the mistake of seemingly
01:03:59
◼
►
babying users too much. I don't think this is a case. I think
01:04:04
◼
►
this is a case where they've... a situation where they're
01:04:08
◼
►
enabling as much as they can for people who really do want to
01:04:13
◼
►
use their phones as pro cameras, which is what RAW shooting
01:04:17
◼
►
is. Right? You need some kind of professional photo editing
01:04:20
◼
►
software to develop them properly. So they're making it
01:04:24
◼
►
possible, but they really don't want someone to accidentally
01:04:29
◼
►
think that, "Oh, I've got the 512 gigabyte version. I can
01:04:35
◼
►
shoot... I'm not worried about the image size. I'll shoot 48
01:04:38
◼
►
because 48 sounds four times bigger than 12."
01:04:41
◼
►
Sounds so much better. Sure.
01:04:42
◼
►
Right. And then all of a sudden, they're in a situation
01:04:46
◼
►
where, "Yeah, that would work great in lots of light, but it
01:04:50
◼
►
doesn't work great. It doesn't work well at all in low light."
01:04:54
◼
►
And now the whole point of the pixel binning strategy of
01:04:57
◼
►
shooting 12 megapixel images on a 48 megapixel sensor goes out
01:05:00
◼
►
the door if the user just has like a yellow button at the top
01:05:04
◼
►
of the camera button to say 48. And they leave it on in the
01:05:09
◼
►
dark because it's a manual control that they've enabled.
01:05:13
◼
►
And it's... I could just see how this is a very complicated
01:05:16
◼
►
dance for Apple internally to sort of whiteboard out the,
01:05:21
◼
►
"Okay, these are the options we will let people choose. These
01:05:25
◼
►
are the options we won't let them choose. And then these
01:05:28
◼
►
will be the defaults." I think if you step back, it's more...
01:05:32
◼
►
You're absolutely right. But it doesn't matter that it's a 48
01:05:36
◼
►
megapixel camera. It's just we have... The iPhone 14 Pro now
01:05:40
◼
►
has a better camera. And that's what most people need to know,
01:05:43
◼
►
that every year the camera gets better. And this year it's
01:05:45
◼
►
particularly better because of this pixel binning.
01:05:47
◼
►
And I think most people won't even be aware that, "Oh, there's
01:05:52
◼
►
a way that this could shoot a much bigger 48 megapixel image,
01:05:56
◼
►
but it's not letting me do it." I think almost nobody will be
01:05:58
◼
►
aware of it. It's definitely a wonky kind of... You'll read
01:06:01
◼
►
about it in tech reviews, but not when you're using it. So to
01:06:03
◼
►
me, it definitely seems like the right call. If there's a
01:06:05
◼
►
downside... If there are these downsides, which it seems like
01:06:08
◼
►
there would be, then just don't even allow this option because
01:06:10
◼
►
most people aren't going to need it. Almost no one's going to
01:06:13
◼
►
need it. The people that do want it can do it in RAW. You've
01:06:16
◼
►
covered everybody who can take advantage of this pretty well.
01:06:18
◼
►
Yeah, I would say so. And it kind of exemplifies the sort of
01:06:23
◼
►
feature that Apple will dive kind of deep into during the
01:06:29
◼
►
keynote, but then they're never going to mention it in their
01:06:32
◼
►
advertising. In the ads, yeah. They're not going to have these
01:06:34
◼
►
48 megapixel sensor ads. And then people are like, "Why am I
01:06:39
◼
►
still shooting 12 megapixel images?" And Apple is like,
01:06:43
◼
►
"Okay, we're going to need to make a longer ad." No, it's like,
01:06:46
◼
►
no. You don't want to explain this to people. I think you're
01:06:49
◼
►
right. Basically, you just open the camera app, you hit the
01:06:52
◼
►
shutter, you're going to get better looking pictures.
01:06:54
◼
►
Than you did last year or two years ago. Exactly.
01:06:56
◼
►
And the information is out there if you really want to dig into
01:06:59
◼
►
it and find out more. Yeah. So one of the open questions that
01:07:03
◼
►
we've, I've had at least, and it seems like a lot of the other
01:07:06
◼
►
people who reviewed the iPhone 14 Pro didn't, it didn't bother
01:07:10
◼
►
them or didn't obsess them like me, is, okay, if you've got any
01:07:15
◼
►
of the other phones, including the new regular iPhone 14s,
01:07:20
◼
►
brand new, just came out. The 14 Plus isn't even out yet,
01:07:24
◼
►
right? It comes out next week. Right. Next month. And you don't
01:07:26
◼
►
have the Dynamic Island. Where do your live activities show
01:07:30
◼
►
up other than your lock screen? Right. Okay. Everybody, I
01:07:35
◼
►
understand everybody's phone gets them on the lock screen,
01:07:37
◼
►
but you're just using your iPhone 14, but there's a live
01:07:40
◼
►
activity. Where does it show up if you don't have a Dynamic
01:07:42
◼
►
Island? And the developer documentation before, and I
01:07:47
◼
►
think it's just one of those things where Apple being Apple
01:07:51
◼
►
and keeping things secret, and they successfully kept the
01:07:54
◼
►
Dynamic Island very secret, right? People knew. Absolutely.
01:07:56
◼
►
Yeah. Nobody knew about it until the announcement. I would say
01:07:59
◼
►
it's one of the biggest secrets that they've kept under wraps in
01:08:01
◼
►
recent years. Nobody had any idea. People knew about the
01:08:05
◼
►
holes that were punched in the display, but everybody just
01:08:08
◼
►
assumed it would be a permanent oval shape. And I think, well,
01:08:11
◼
►
how do you keep it secret? You keep things secret by not
01:08:15
◼
►
telling people, right? That's the, it's the most obvious
01:08:18
◼
►
thing in the world. You keep a secret by never telling your
01:08:20
◼
►
secrets, but therefore the developer docs for live
01:08:23
◼
►
activities were all, I think even to people, some people
01:08:27
◼
►
inside Apple, they were in the dark about why are we being
01:08:30
◼
►
cagey about this? There's some obvious questions, but we're
01:08:34
◼
►
starting to get more answers. And one of them is that the
01:08:38
◼
►
human interface guidelines now say, having been updated,
01:08:42
◼
►
having been updated a couple of times, they've been clarified,
01:08:45
◼
►
but they now say on devices that don't support the Dynamic
01:08:48
◼
►
Island, the system can display live activity update in a
01:08:52
◼
►
banner that appears briefly while people view the home
01:08:55
◼
►
screen or use another app, but only if the app determines
01:08:59
◼
►
that the update is important enough to interrupt people.
01:09:02
◼
►
Jared: Which is such a, that, that last clause is so
01:09:05
◼
►
bizarre to me because like, it's basically saying like, but
01:09:10
◼
►
only if you think you should. And it's like, well, great.
01:09:14
◼
►
I'm developing whatever nonsense app that is interrupting
01:09:18
◼
►
people. I think I should interrupt people.
01:09:21
◼
►
Pete: Well, I guess, I guess part of it is you're only going
01:09:26
◼
►
to get live activities when you've asked for them. So like,
01:09:31
◼
►
if you order food from the DoorDash app and you, I think
01:09:37
◼
►
you have to, I think, well, maybe not, I guess, or you hail
01:09:40
◼
►
a ride from Uber, it'll just become a live activity, but
01:09:44
◼
►
you're the one who hailed the ride, right? So, how frequently
01:09:50
◼
►
do you want updates about where your driver is who is
01:09:53
◼
►
delivering your food or is coming by to pick you up to take
01:09:57
◼
►
you to the airport or whatever? It is the little ambiguous?
01:10:04
◼
►
Jared: Yeah. Well, and, and so I don't know, like I mentioned
01:10:09
◼
►
something tangential to this, but they're talking about the,
01:10:12
◼
►
about putting ads in this space in live activities. And the
01:10:18
◼
►
language there was even worse. It said, "Avoid using a live
01:10:21
◼
►
activity to display ads and promotions. Live activities
01:10:24
◼
►
help people stay informed, so it's important to display only
01:10:27
◼
►
information that's related to those events or tasks."
01:10:29
◼
►
Avoid using a live activity to display ads is so wishy-washy.
01:10:34
◼
►
How about you just say it is forbidden to use a live
01:10:38
◼
►
activity to display ads?
01:10:39
◼
►
Pete: Yeah. And then, Nili Patel brought this up on the
01:10:43
◼
►
last episode of my show and he asked Apple about it and did
01:10:46
◼
►
not get a straight answer from them. And again, I think it's
01:10:50
◼
►
like one of those things where like a normal person like me
01:10:54
◼
►
doesn't even think about putting ads in the dynamic
01:10:57
◼
►
island. I'm just thinking…
01:10:58
◼
►
Jared; But that's not the problem.
01:10:59
◼
►
Pete; I know. The problem is all of the abnormal people who
01:11:03
◼
►
are in product marketing at various companies and who are
01:11:06
◼
►
like, "Wait, we have a new area where we can put an ad and
01:11:08
◼
►
it's always visible no matter what…"
01:11:10
◼
►
Jared; And it'll pop up. Right, exactly.
01:11:11
◼
►
Pete; No matter what other app, it's sort of like the holy
01:11:14
◼
►
grail of counting engagement.
01:11:17
◼
►
Jared; Right.
01:11:18
◼
►
Pete; Wait, we can still keep the ad up there even when
01:11:22
◼
►
they've left our app?
01:11:23
◼
►
Jared; They've left the app but the ad can stay. Exactly.
01:11:25
◼
►
So, I mean, obviously, the worst abuses of this, people
01:11:29
◼
►
will uninstall the app, they'll delete the app, they'll
01:11:32
◼
►
complain about it, whatever. But I mean, if you look at
01:11:34
◼
►
notifications, notifications, push notifications on your
01:11:38
◼
►
phone are not supposed to be used for promotions, for
01:11:40
◼
►
advertising, whatever. And I haven't looked at what the
01:11:42
◼
►
language is around that, but they are used that way. And
01:11:47
◼
►
there are various apps that I have that I either have
01:11:49
◼
►
turned off notifications or I've deleted because, "Oh,
01:11:52
◼
►
Lyft will say like, oh, for the next six hours, you can
01:11:56
◼
►
get 20% off on your next ride." And it's like, I don't
01:11:58
◼
►
care, I wasn't taking a ride, stop bothering me. But
01:12:02
◼
►
that's an app where I want the notifications for like,
01:12:04
◼
►
your driver is three minutes away, so I can't turn off
01:12:07
◼
►
the notification. Most apps, I just turn off the
01:12:09
◼
►
notifications, I don't ever let them have the
01:12:11
◼
►
notifications, and so I don't worry about it. But there's
01:12:13
◼
►
certainly some where they're abusing this, and it's
01:12:15
◼
►
something that I don't have enough control over to say,
01:12:18
◼
►
"Don't show me the scammy ones, only show me the ones
01:12:20
◼
►
that I need." And both of these things are ambiguous
01:12:23
◼
►
enough or not restricted enough that I'm concerned
01:12:27
◼
►
about how this is going to play out.
01:12:29
◼
►
>> Yeah, and Uber and Lyft both have a lot of pure ads,
01:12:34
◼
►
not like, "Eh, I'm not sure if this is really an ad or
01:12:36
◼
►
not." They've got all sorts of stuff in their apps for
01:12:40
◼
►
ordering food, like all I wanted was a ride to the
01:12:42
◼
►
airport. But now, you know, while I'm waiting and
01:12:45
◼
►
checking on where the car is, I'm being told how do I
01:12:48
◼
►
can order Uber Eats and stuff like that.
01:12:50
◼
►
>> Get yourself some tacos.
01:12:51
◼
►
>> And I really don't want that in the dynamic island.
01:12:55
◼
►
Like, I'm, I love—
01:12:56
◼
►
>> Live views, yeah.
01:12:57
◼
►
>> And I said this on the last episode, and I keep
01:13:00
◼
►
thinking about it. To me, the ride hailing app is on
01:13:05
◼
►
its way is the, to me, the best example of the dynamic
01:13:10
◼
►
island I can think of, because whenever they're on
01:13:12
◼
►
their way to pick me up, it's always a couple more
01:13:15
◼
►
minutes than they told you it was going to be. It's
01:13:18
◼
►
like, "Yeah, we'll be there in four minutes." And then
01:13:21
◼
►
you say, "Okay," and then you double click to pay with
01:13:23
◼
►
Apple Pay, and then they're like, "Finding you a ride."
01:13:26
◼
►
>> Yeah, and it spins, and it does a whole bunch of
01:13:29
◼
►
unnecessary animations to make you think something is
01:13:32
◼
►
>> Yep, yep. It'll flip, it'll twist. There's all sorts
01:13:35
◼
►
of—it's like, "Oh, now it's done." Nope, it's still
01:13:37
◼
►
>> We're triangulating. Look at this.
01:13:39
◼
►
>> And then you find out it's nine minutes, and it's
01:13:42
◼
►
like—it's still, again, it's like the Louis C.K. bit
01:13:46
◼
►
about being in an airplane with Wi-Fi and complaining
01:13:50
◼
►
about it. It's like you just dialed up a nice ride to
01:13:55
◼
►
go somewhere so you don't need to take your own car
01:13:57
◼
►
just by poking your fingers at a phone. We're living
01:14:01
◼
►
in the future. This is great stuff overall. Why complain
01:14:04
◼
►
about the extra five minutes? But what do I do in those
01:14:07
◼
►
nine minutes while the car is on its way? I spend time
01:14:10
◼
►
dicking around on my phone, and then I lose track of
01:14:14
◼
►
how much time has gone by, and I'm like, "Ooh, I bet the
01:14:19
◼
►
guy's outside." The dynamic island telling me, "Nope,
01:14:21
◼
►
they're still four minutes away. They're three minutes
01:14:24
◼
►
away." That seems like just what the doctor ordered,
01:14:27
◼
►
and I really do—I look forward to having that always
01:14:30
◼
►
on screen no matter what else I'm doing with the phone.
01:14:32
◼
►
For the nine or ten minutes, I'm waiting for them to
01:14:35
◼
►
show up. But I will find it so annoying if they start
01:14:39
◼
►
showing me ads for Taco Bell. Your driver driving a
01:14:44
◼
►
silver Tesla Model 3 is five minutes away, and by the
01:14:50
◼
►
way, you can get tacos at Taco Bell.
01:14:53
◼
►
Get yourself a Mexican pizza.
01:14:55
◼
►
Right. So, I guess we'll find out how it plays, but
01:15:00
◼
►
the more I think about it, the more worried I am that
01:15:05
◼
►
we're going to see ads up there from some of these.
01:15:07
◼
►
Or just nonsense in general, yeah.
01:15:09
◼
►
Yeah, nonsense in general. Maybe you could say, "That's
01:15:12
◼
►
not technically an ad, but it's also nonsense." But
01:15:15
◼
►
it's from an app. You definitely want to have
01:15:17
◼
►
permission to send you this stuff. You can't just
01:15:19
◼
►
delete it or have it stop sending notifications.
01:15:22
◼
►
The non-dynamic island story of this, the "What do
01:15:26
◼
►
people see?" my guess was that it would be more or
01:15:31
◼
►
less like maps turned by turned directions. And
01:15:34
◼
►
that's sort of the best experience I can think of.
01:15:37
◼
►
I think it's that the—if you have turned by
01:15:40
◼
►
turned directions on your phone and there's some
01:15:43
◼
►
kind of change, like, "Oh, you're getting—you're
01:15:45
◼
►
180 feet from where the directions say make a left,"
01:15:48
◼
►
then it comes back up, and then you make the left,
01:15:51
◼
►
and the GPS tells you—sees that you did it, and
01:15:54
◼
►
your next turn isn't for a couple miles, then it
01:15:58
◼
►
disappears. It disappears. And then it appears
01:16:01
◼
►
again when it'll say something like, "Not this
01:16:04
◼
►
light, but two lights from now make a right." That's
01:16:06
◼
►
pretty much exactly the experience for all of the
01:16:09
◼
►
live activities. But now you're asking all of these
01:16:13
◼
►
companies, from sports companies to—I don't know.
01:16:17
◼
►
I don't know who else is going to use the dynamic
01:16:19
◼
►
island, but anybody sending sports scores to
01:16:22
◼
►
determine how often to interrupt you?
01:16:24
◼
►
**Matt Stauffer** Yep. Like baseball, it's like every
01:16:26
◼
►
time a run's scored, you can—you should tell me
01:16:28
◼
►
about it. Football, every time points are scored,
01:16:30
◼
►
you should tell me about it. But basketball, you
01:16:32
◼
►
certainly don't want that.
01:16:40
◼
►
**Matt Stauffer** In the live activity, yeah, exactly.
01:16:43
◼
►
**Matt Stauffer** So, I don't know. We'll see how it goes.
01:16:46
◼
►
It's like, on the one hand, I still think it's going
01:16:48
◼
►
to be a great experience overall. I still think
01:16:50
◼
►
it's—also think it's very, very interesting that
01:16:55
◼
►
it's a major part of the iOS experience that is,
01:16:58
◼
►
for this year at least, exclusive to the very
01:17:00
◼
►
newest pro model phones only. I think it'll turn
01:17:03
◼
►
out okay, but as we wait for the live activities
01:17:09
◼
►
APIs to become live and third-party developers
01:17:12
◼
►
to actually be able to ship apps that use them
01:17:15
◼
►
so that we can see more of what the dynamic
01:17:18
◼
►
island can do. On the other hand, it's like,
01:17:20
◼
►
there's a part of me that's dreading it a little.
01:17:23
◼
►
**Matt Stauffer** Well, it's interesting because it
01:17:26
◼
►
is—you talked a bunch about this in your review
01:17:28
◼
►
of the phone, just how it's new and how it's
01:17:30
◼
►
different. It is a new UI playground. It's small
01:17:34
◼
►
relative to the whole screen, but it's a new
01:17:37
◼
►
paradigm to think about, like, how should my app
01:17:39
◼
►
interact with this and what should I do with it?
01:17:41
◼
►
And obviously these guidelines are helpful, but
01:17:44
◼
►
there's all sorts of different apps that might do
01:17:45
◼
►
something there, and I can't even envision them
01:17:48
◼
►
yet, but I'll be very interested to see them. But
01:17:51
◼
►
yeah, there's certainly also the vague sense of
01:17:53
◼
►
dread with anything new these days where it's like,
01:17:55
◼
►
all right, how's somebody going to screw this up
01:17:57
◼
►
**Justin Jackson** In a way that I never would
01:17:59
◼
►
have guessed, right?
01:18:00
◼
►
**Matt Stauffer** Right, because like you said,
01:18:02
◼
►
I'm a normal person and I'm not evil.
01:18:04
◼
►
**Justin Jackson** Right. Like, I'm sitting here
01:18:05
◼
►
worried about Taco Bell ads from Uber. And meanwhile,
01:18:08
◼
►
if there's anybody out there from like Uber, the
01:18:11
◼
►
type of team at Uber who puts these things in
01:18:13
◼
►
there, they're like, that's the dumbest idea ever.
01:18:15
◼
►
We've got 20 other...
01:18:16
◼
►
**Matt Stauffer** That are way worse.
01:18:17
◼
►
**Justin Jackson** Way worse, but we're going
01:18:19
◼
►
**Matt Stauffer** Way more evil than that. Come
01:18:20
◼
►
on, we can do better than that.
01:18:21
◼
►
**Justin Jackson** All right, let's take a
01:18:22
◼
►
break here. We'll move on from the iPhone, unless
01:18:24
◼
►
you have more on the iPhone. But...
01:18:26
◼
►
**Matt Stauffer** No, you know, it's a new
01:18:28
◼
►
iPhone. It looks a lot like the old iPhone. It
01:18:30
◼
►
seems pretty good. I don't know.
01:18:31
◼
►
**Justin Jackson** All right, let me take a
01:18:32
◼
►
break here. Thank our next sponsor, good friends at Retool. R-E-T-O-O-L.
01:18:37
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you just drag and drop into any interface that
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01:20:03
◼
►
Apple Watch 14, so, or not 14, Apple Watch Ultra
01:20:07
◼
►
came out since the last episode of the show.
01:20:08
◼
►
I've yet to see one. You've got one on your wrist
01:20:11
◼
►
right now, or you've got one?
01:20:13
◼
►
I've still wearing mine. Haven't taken it off
01:20:16
◼
►
since the, or still using it as my main watch.
01:20:19
◼
►
Although I'm curious, I actually should have
01:20:21
◼
►
maybe tried going back to my regular Series 7
01:20:24
◼
►
from last year before the show to see if I feel
01:20:26
◼
►
like it's tiny. But I'm curious, so you haven't
01:20:29
◼
►
popped into an Apple store to see one yet?
01:20:31
◼
►
Not yet, no. I'm interested to look at it. Your
01:20:34
◼
►
review had some good notes on sizing and saying
01:20:37
◼
►
like the gist of it was that if it looks bad to
01:20:40
◼
►
you, then don't get it obviously. But if you're
01:20:42
◼
►
worried that other people are going to think it
01:20:44
◼
►
looks bad, that they'll think the watch looks bad,
01:20:46
◼
►
not you. And I think that is very true. But to me,
01:20:49
◼
►
I have worn the smaller watch size for a long
01:20:51
◼
►
time. I like the smaller watch size and that
01:20:54
◼
►
everything that I see makes it look enormous. So
01:20:56
◼
►
I'm interested to try it on, but I'm not terribly
01:20:58
◼
►
interested in the product.
01:21:00
◼
►
Right. And you and I are pals and I've seen you.
01:21:02
◼
►
You've had a couple other watches over the years.
01:21:05
◼
►
What was the one you had that was solar powered?
01:21:07
◼
►
Wasn't it a Seiko?
01:21:08
◼
►
No, it was kinetic powered. Yeah, yeah. But it
01:21:09
◼
►
was a Seiko.
01:21:10
◼
►
Or kinetic powered. But I know you've had other
01:21:12
◼
►
watches and you're not as big a watch nerd as I
01:21:15
◼
►
am, but you have some. But in recent years, I
01:21:18
◼
►
don't know. I can't remember the last time I saw
01:21:19
◼
►
you without your Apple Watch on. I would say a
01:21:23
◼
►
devoted Apple Watch user. You're also a fitness
01:21:26
◼
►
enthusiast. You're a runner. And so the fitness
01:21:28
◼
►
features play right into that. I don't think,
01:21:31
◼
►
though, to my knowledge, you don't really do
01:21:34
◼
►
anything impacty, for lack of a better word. Do
01:21:39
◼
►
you dive? Well, something that you would say, "Oh,
01:21:42
◼
►
I need the Ultra because I keep smashing my Apple
01:21:45
◼
►
Right, right, right. No, yeah. I haven't, knock
01:21:48
◼
►
wood, I haven't broken any of the faces or
01:21:50
◼
►
anything. I mean, some of the running stuff, I do
01:21:53
◼
►
longer races where the battery life does play
01:21:56
◼
►
into it a little bit, or it has to be considered.
01:21:58
◼
►
Like if you run a marathon, even with the most
01:22:00
◼
►
recent Apple Watches, you at least need to be
01:22:02
◼
►
concerned about the battery life and figure out
01:22:04
◼
►
some ways to alleviate some of the pressures on
01:22:07
◼
►
it. But yeah, the pitch that they have for doing
01:22:10
◼
►
a 100-mile race or scuba diving or whatever,
01:22:13
◼
►
that's, none of that is directly appealing to me
01:22:16
◼
►
Yeah, so the biggest appeal to you would be the
01:22:18
◼
►
battery life.
01:22:19
◼
►
Battery life, and yeah, I think so. I think so,
01:22:22
◼
►
Combined with the fact that you can do the
01:22:24
◼
►
battery life and have more accurate GPS tracking,
01:22:28
◼
►
The GPS, I saw that that was more accurate, and
01:22:31
◼
►
I've used the Apple Watch, I've run with it for
01:22:34
◼
►
seven years now, and I don't know how inaccurate
01:22:38
◼
►
it is. I know it's not perfect, but when I go out
01:22:40
◼
►
and I do a six-mile run, if that's 5.9 miles or
01:22:44
◼
►
if that's 6.1 miles, it doesn't really matter. So
01:22:46
◼
►
I'm not that concerned with the GPS being super
01:22:50
◼
►
precise, so.
01:22:51
◼
►
Yeah, it seems to me, from what I can gather, and
01:22:53
◼
►
again, Apple, it's one of those things where
01:22:55
◼
►
they're not going to throw the other Apple watches
01:22:57
◼
►
under the bus and say, "Yeah, the GPS really kind
01:23:00
◼
►
So it's always an interesting dance for me to
01:23:06
◼
►
watch, is how do they say, "This one has much
01:23:09
◼
►
better GPS tracking, but there's nothing wrong
01:23:12
◼
►
with the GPS on the other ones."
01:23:13
◼
►
But everything in the old ones is fine, of
01:23:14
◼
►
course. Yeah, the ones we're still selling
01:23:16
◼
►
I get the opinion that basically they figured
01:23:20
◼
►
out that there's a sub-market of runners and
01:23:24
◼
►
cyclists, and maybe other activities, but who
01:23:28
◼
►
really, really want the GPS to be precise.
01:23:31
◼
►
Whether they need it to be or not, I get it.
01:23:34
◼
►
I get caring about details like that, right?
01:23:37
◼
►
That it uses Helvetica instead of Ariel or
01:23:40
◼
►
something that most people would consider
01:23:42
◼
►
superficial. Who cares? Most people would
01:23:44
◼
►
think if your run through downtown Boston
01:23:48
◼
►
makes it look like you cut through a building
01:23:50
◼
►
at one point around the corner. You know
01:23:52
◼
►
where you ran if you look back at the track
01:23:54
◼
►
and you're like, "Oh, that's the time I ran
01:23:56
◼
►
this way." And that it looks like it cut
01:23:59
◼
►
through a corner, it doesn't bother you.
01:24:01
◼
►
Whereas other people, it bothers them. And I
01:24:03
◼
►
get it, right? And I think also there are
01:24:06
◼
►
other competing GPS watches that don't have
01:24:10
◼
►
the problem. And so I can also definitely
01:24:12
◼
►
see how if you're already wearing something
01:24:14
◼
►
from Garmin or one of these other companies,
01:24:17
◼
►
and when you wear that watch and you go on
01:24:20
◼
►
a bike ride, the GPS is completely accurate,
01:24:23
◼
►
or as accurate as you think is reasonable
01:24:26
◼
►
for GPS. And then you've tried an Apple
01:24:28
◼
►
watch and it's mostly accurate but cuts off
01:24:31
◼
►
corners around skyscrapers and stuff like
01:24:33
◼
►
that. That's a hard switch because you're
01:24:36
◼
►
already used to the one that's more accurate.
01:24:38
◼
►
It's always hard to go backwards, right?
01:24:41
◼
►
Once you've switched to something with a
01:24:42
◼
►
retina display—nobody ever complained about
01:24:44
◼
►
the retina, the non-retina displays on
01:24:47
◼
►
MacBook Airs until all the other products—
01:24:49
◼
►
Steven: Until the other one.
01:24:50
◼
►
Right, until all their iPhones and iPads
01:24:53
◼
►
had retina displays. And here's this
01:24:54
◼
►
MacBook with these giant pixels that didn't
01:24:57
◼
►
bother you until three years ago, but now
01:24:59
◼
►
you got used to it. Well, once you're used
01:25:01
◼
►
to the fine-grain GPS accuracy, seems hard
01:25:04
◼
►
to go back. The battery life seems to me,
01:25:06
◼
►
though, like one of the killer features
01:25:09
◼
►
that might lead if the Apple Watch Ultra
01:25:13
◼
►
turns into a bigger hit. I don't know, not
01:25:16
◼
►
that I'm expecting, but maybe then people's—
01:25:19
◼
►
if it hits the over on the over-under for
01:25:21
◼
►
what people's gut feeling is for how
01:25:23
◼
►
popular it'll be, battery life could be
01:25:25
◼
►
the biggest one because it affects almost
01:25:29
◼
►
everybody, especially fitness people,
01:25:31
◼
►
right? Like people who do two-hour
01:25:32
◼
►
workouts, if you've got the watch tracking
01:25:34
◼
►
your fitness the whole time, it definitely
01:25:36
◼
►
takes a hit on the other ones. Whereas
01:25:38
◼
►
with the Ultra, the difference in battery
01:25:41
◼
►
life is just—it's hard to—you can list
01:25:45
◼
►
the numbers, but it's very different in
01:25:47
◼
►
practice. It's like, wait, I haven't
01:25:48
◼
►
charged that, so I've been wearing this
01:25:50
◼
►
other than in the shower for a day or two,
01:25:54
◼
►
and I haven't charged it, and it's still
01:25:55
◼
►
at 50 percent? That doesn't—it like
01:25:58
◼
►
totally breaks my mind with how I think
01:26:00
◼
►
of an Apple Watch. But the thing to me is
01:26:03
◼
►
that—so I used to wear a non-smartwatch,
01:26:07
◼
►
and I didn't have to charge it at all,
01:26:08
◼
►
literally walking around charged it, and
01:26:10
◼
►
so I never took it off, I didn't think
01:26:12
◼
►
about it, whatever. I had a pebble for a
01:26:14
◼
►
little while, and I can't remember, I
01:26:16
◼
►
think I had to charge that like once a
01:26:18
◼
►
week, maybe every three or four days. But
01:26:19
◼
►
when I got the Apple Watch, every night I
01:26:21
◼
►
had to take it off, I had to charge it,
01:26:23
◼
►
and that just became the routine. And so
01:26:25
◼
►
the thing for me is that if the Apple
01:26:28
◼
►
Watch lasted two days instead of one day,
01:26:30
◼
►
it really wouldn't do me any good, because
01:26:33
◼
►
I'm still just gonna—I either have to
01:26:35
◼
►
charge it every other day, which is a
01:26:36
◼
►
weird schedule, or I'm just gonna throw
01:26:38
◼
►
it on the charger every night, and I'm
01:26:39
◼
►
never gonna get below 50 percent. So for
01:26:42
◼
►
an actual activity, if you're out there
01:26:44
◼
►
doing an ultra marathon, you're running
01:26:45
◼
►
100 miles, and you need that battery to
01:26:48
◼
►
last that whole time, it makes perfect
01:26:51
◼
►
sense. But in terms of like day-to-day
01:26:52
◼
►
usage, my watch is now two-plus years
01:26:56
◼
►
old, and I usually run in the morning, and
01:26:58
◼
►
I'll play tennis at night or something
01:26:59
◼
►
like that, and either I don't have to
01:27:02
◼
►
charge it at all, or I'll throw it on the
01:27:03
◼
►
charger for a few minutes during the day.
01:27:05
◼
►
But it's not something where, like, when I
01:27:07
◼
►
got it, it was certainly good for the
01:27:08
◼
►
entire day, and I just charged it every
01:27:10
◼
►
night, and I never thought about it. So a
01:27:12
◼
►
little bit more battery, even if it's an
01:27:14
◼
►
a whole, even if it's 100 percent more
01:27:16
◼
►
battery, to me wouldn't really change the
01:27:17
◼
►
way I wore it. So I find that interesting
01:27:20
◼
►
that, like, some of the garments they talk
01:27:22
◼
►
about literally weeks of using this,
01:27:25
◼
►
actively using it, without needing to
01:27:27
◼
►
charge it, and that is, then you change the
01:27:29
◼
►
way you use it entirely. But an extra day
01:27:32
◼
►
doesn't really do anything for me.
02:05:03
◼
►
had the idea and you thought maybe we should try saying the word hijack and make it a shape
02:05:07
◼
►
of that and then you do it and the waveform for the word hijack looks stupid. You're
02:05:12
◼
►
like, ah, we need a better word. But it's fun that the word actually looks good.
02:05:15
◼
►
John "Slick" Baum: Right, right. Then we got to find another word.
02:05:17
◼
►
Dave Asprey So, before, the one thing I wanted to come
02:05:20
◼
►
back to was that we were talking about subscriptions earlier. And there was a stat in your write-up
02:05:25
◼
►
about the 20 years. We've shipped an astonishing 898 software releases since 2002 with 8,000
02:05:33
◼
►
888 of those being free updates. That's 98.9%. So, did we talk? I forget. Did we talk about
02:05:40
◼
►
this the last time you were on the show? The subscription pricing trend in India?
02:05:45
◼
►
John "Slick" Baum I mean, I've talked about this for years
02:05:47
◼
►
at this point. So, it's possible, but…
02:05:49
◼
►
Dave Well, podcasts are meant to repeat yourself.
02:05:51
◼
►
That means you've only had 10 paid upgrades in 20 years? I mean, somehow, if not, I need
02:05:58
◼
►
to go back to basic arithmetic class.
02:06:01
◼
►
John "Slick" Baum Work on your math.
02:06:02
◼
►
Dave But that's sort of… I mean, I know that
02:06:06
◼
►
that's… I know Rogue Amoeba, and I've been friends with you for a long time and
02:06:09
◼
►
following you, became aware of you very early in the Daring Fireball era. And I've used
02:06:16
◼
►
your products. So, I know that paid upgrades are few and far between, but that's fewer
02:06:22
◼
►
and further between than I would have thought for a successful, continually thriving software
02:06:31
◼
►
John The fact that we're only now at the 20th anniversary
02:06:34
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talking about AudioHijack 4, right? There's a lot of other apps' gain and version numbers
02:06:41
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are at a higher rate than getting to 4 in 20 years.
02:06:47
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Dave Well, so that I can… AudioHijack Pro 2 lasted
02:06:53
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for… I was just talking about this. It lasted for 11 years, and like 2.5 really should have
02:06:59
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been 3. And I think like 2.7 also had a major feature or two that could have made it version
02:07:05
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3 or version 4. So, we were definitely a little stingy, I think, with version numbers, in
02:07:10
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part because we had the idea that we've pretty much followed. There may be one or two exceptions,
02:07:15
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but basically if it gets a new version number, that will be a paid upgrade. And so, our version
02:07:20
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numbers have not gone up that much because we have not had that many paid upgrades. So,
02:07:23
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the obvious first question is, have we left money on the table? And the answer is probably
02:07:28
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yes. It's almost certainly yes. We have a pretty good article on our website, and it's
02:07:32
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called "Our Upgrade Philosophy." It's not our upgrade policy. It's our philosophy on
02:07:36
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what upgrades should be. And I don't remember the exact wording I wrote this years ago, but
02:07:40
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it's basically, "Bug fix updates are free. We don't charge for OS updates. If we need
02:07:45
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to support a new OS, to this point, we have not charged just for that. But when we add
02:07:50
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substantial new functionality, that is making the product better, and that's something that
02:07:54
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you should have to pay for, and it's fair to charge for, and it's fair for you to have
02:07:57
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to pay for it." And so, that's sort of how we've thought about it from the get-go, was
02:08:01
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that if there's going to be major new functionality, we'll charge for that. But when we do smaller
02:08:06
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updates, we'll provide that for free, and it adds value to the product, and it makes
02:08:10
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it more reasonable to charge a fair price from the beginning.
02:08:14
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So when I look at that number, I wrote this, and I did the math, and I looked at that number,
02:08:18
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and I said, "Yeah, we probably should have charged for a few more of those upgrades and
02:08:22
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made a little bit more money." But at the same time, we get a ton of people who say,
02:08:26
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"Oh, I've been using this for years, and it's great, and I tell all my friends." And when
02:08:30
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the new version does come out that's a paid upgrade, they say, "You know, I bought it
02:08:33
◼
►
immediately. I knew that there was going to be good value there, and I didn't have to
02:08:37
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be convinced to upgrade." So I don't need to, we don't need to wring every single penny
02:08:43
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►
that we can out of this. I try and run a good business, and we've been, as you said, thriving
02:08:48
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for 20 years. But if there's a little bit more money we could be making by annoying
02:08:52
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people by charging more often. To this point, we've been content with the paid upgrades
02:08:56
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that we've had. And the other thing is that, especially when we started, there were millions
02:09:01
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upon millions, tens of millions of Mac users, and almost none of them had our product. And
02:09:06
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at this point, there's tens of millions of Mac users, and still hundreds of thousands
02:09:10
◼
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or a few million, a couple million have our products. But we have complementary products,
02:09:16
◼
►
we have paid upgrades, and we still have a huge swath of people that can find our products
02:09:21
◼
►
and purchase them for the first time and hopefully see that there's a lot of value there. So
02:09:26
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it's something where even if we hit 10% of Mac users, there's still a huge number of
02:09:30
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people out there who aren't using our products and can be new customers. And that's where
02:09:35
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we've, our initial prices are not super expensive. They're not hundreds of dollars, but they're
02:09:40
◼
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not cut rate pricing. So I think we've always tried to charge a fair price and then have
02:09:44
◼
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a fair upgrade policy. But if we haven't optimized for getting every single penny we could, I'm
02:09:49
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okay with that because we've been doing pretty well.
02:09:51
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Yeah, it's hard to, I was going to say it's hard to put a price on customer loyalty. And
02:09:56
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I would say, I guess it's impossible. You can't really assign a direct price. There's
02:09:59
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no way to make a column in a spreadsheet where you've pegged the exact value of loyalty that
02:10:07
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somebody has.
02:10:08
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Of that loyalty.
02:10:09
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Right, somebody who's been a user of your product since 18 years ago or something like
02:10:14
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that. This person has upgraded three times because there have been three paid upgrades
02:10:19
◼
►
over that time. They appreciate the fact that they know that they're getting a significant
02:10:24
◼
►
new version when they upgrade. And the old version isn't going to just stop working,
02:10:29
◼
►
right? There's always a limit to how long an old version is going to keep working. And
02:10:33
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there's all sorts of transitions that are outside your control, like the move to Apple
02:10:37
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►
Silicon and going back.
02:10:39
◼
►
You know, just OS updates in general. Yeah.
02:10:42
◼
►
Right. 64-bit transition and all of a sudden 32-bit versions of apps, you know, instead
02:10:47
◼
►
of getting a recommendation to ask the developer for an update, they just stop working, right?
02:10:53
◼
►
All of a sudden it just doesn't work. So there's things like that. But for the most part, the
02:10:57
◼
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traditional way of selling software to customers and making a business out of creating third
02:11:03
◼
►
party applications is here's the price. And when we come out with a new version, we'll
02:11:10
◼
►
have an upgrade price for existing users. And if you like the sounds of it, you could
02:11:15
◼
►
try it, but install the new version and see if you like the new features. And if you like
02:11:18
◼
►
it, buy it. And if you want to stick with your old version, you can stick with it for
02:11:22
◼
►
some amount of time. But that that way of selling software is definitely I'm not saying
02:11:28
◼
►
it's going away, but it has so clearly been. It's not the norm now, right? It's it. Are
02:11:35
◼
►
you worried that it like, I know that you like this method of software. And I know that
02:11:41
◼
►
there are a lot of users out there who prefer buying their software this way. But is there
02:11:46
◼
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has it occurred to you that as the as the industry moves on, and subscription pricing
02:11:51
◼
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becomes the norm, that people will start thinking your software is priced weirdly?
02:11:55
◼
►
I mean, so subscription pricing for software is has been fairly mainstream for I don't
02:12:01
◼
►
know what I want to say at least five years and longer before that Adobe and Microsoft
02:12:05
◼
►
were trying to do it and people really hated it. But it they stuck with it and businesses
02:12:10
◼
►
loved it because they could say, Oh, I'm not making a new purchase. I'm just subscribing
02:12:14
◼
►
to Photoshop for 50 bucks a month. And they don't have to justify anything. You just put
02:12:18
◼
►
it on a credit card and it goes forever. And so there were a lot of reasons why that took
02:12:23
◼
►
off. But for for a good long period of that time, people were saying, Oh, this is one
02:12:27
◼
►
way you can do it. And it's it's, maybe you should consider it. And I feel like that's
02:12:33
◼
►
still the case is that if you're in the App Store, especially on iOS, you can't have a
02:12:37
◼
►
free trial. So you need to have a low price up front or no price up front, and then collect
02:12:44
◼
►
money after the fact often with a subscription. On the Mac, we can say, you know what, you
02:12:48
◼
►
don't need to pay anything up front, it's $0, try it out. You'll be able to use every
02:12:52
◼
►
single feature. And then if you realize that this is useful for you, you'll pay, you know,
02:12:57
◼
►
not $2, you're going to pay 50 bucks, but you're only going to pay that once and it's
02:13:01
◼
►
going to work for months or years before you're ever going to need to pay again. And so, you
02:13:07
◼
►
know, I like the model, as you said, am I worried that people will think it's strange
02:13:11
◼
►
or not understand it? I mean, I wasn't until you mentioned it. But I think it's something
02:13:17
◼
►
I think it's something where we have the ability. If everybody went to subscriptions, and we
02:13:22
◼
►
were the last ones not doing it. And people said, Oh, why am I paying 50 bucks up front,
02:13:26
◼
►
I just want to pay three bucks. And I'll use it for 10 months, or I'll use it for 20 months.
02:13:32
◼
►
If I use it for 20 months, you're going to make even more money than you would have.
02:13:35
◼
►
At a certain point, we might say, okay, we need to switch to this method. But right now,
02:13:39
◼
►
it is not the case that people are terribly confused. It's not the case that people don't
02:13:44
◼
►
understand paying for an upgrade. There's, as you said, it's an older style of selling
02:13:48
◼
►
software and the company is 20 years old. And in 2002, this was the way to sell software
02:13:53
◼
►
on the web. You make a version, you sell it, and then you have a discounted upgrade later
02:13:57
◼
►
and get some additional revenue from people who are already using it. Now it's not as
02:14:02
◼
►
common, but it still works, is what I would say. And we have talked about and kicked around
02:14:07
◼
►
the idea of subscription pricing for years. And every day we get people who say, Oh, thank
02:14:13
◼
►
you for having a one time purchase. And I don't want to have another subscription. So
02:14:17
◼
►
that's indicative of the idea that not everyone wants this. It's not something that everyone
02:14:21
◼
►
thinks we're doing wrong. In terms of making more revenue or in terms of eventually being
02:14:27
◼
►
so weird that people don't get it, it's possible, but I'm not worried that we can't transition
02:14:32
◼
►
if we need to.
02:14:33
◼
►
Yeah, that makes sense. And I do think too, that this method, the traditional method of
02:14:37
◼
►
selling versions that the customer owns a license to for years to come and gets to choose
02:14:42
◼
►
whether they upgrade at a loyalty discount, for lack of a better word, when a major new
02:14:46
◼
►
version comes out years down the road. More and more, the apps that are left are professional
02:14:54
◼
►
tools. I mean, I suppose that if you put games aside, well then what are any of the apps
02:15:02
◼
►
people have been using on the Mac for years, 30, 40 years, right? We're almost 38 years
02:15:07
◼
►
into the Mac. Well, of course the software people pay for is more likely to be something
02:15:13
◼
►
that is quote unquote, a professional tool.
02:15:17
◼
►
Something that's making them money or that they're using at a job. Yeah.
02:15:20
◼
►
Right. But it just seems more like this is my job depends on this and I like buying my
02:15:27
◼
►
Yep. Yeah. No, I think that's right. Yeah. Like a carpenter isn't renting a hammer.
02:15:32
◼
►
Right. I've seen that analogy.
02:15:34
◼
►
He's buying a saw and he uses it.
02:15:36
◼
►
I generally prefer your method just because I tend to, the software I tend to buy, I use
02:15:42
◼
►
for years and years. BB Edit and Mars Edit and Audio Hijacked, a lot of the apps I use
02:15:47
◼
►
on the Mac, the stuff from Omni Group are apps that have been around for decades plus
02:15:52
◼
►
or decades, like in the Omni Group's case or now in your case, right? It's decades.
02:15:59
◼
►
Right. And BB Edit goes back to 1992. So I prefer it, but I'm also ambivalent about it.
02:16:07
◼
►
I see which way the trend is going and I know how it's nicer to have regular monthly revenue
02:16:13
◼
►
than big bursts of revenue when you have a major update. And you know what you guys see,
02:16:19
◼
►
you know, I understand you run a tight ship over there as the CEO and co-founder, but
02:16:25
◼
►
you can, the one problem, some companies and we don't have to throw anybody under the
02:16:29
◼
►
bus, but some companies have gotten in trouble over the years where if your business model
02:16:35
◼
►
is that you only sell to your existing base when there's a major new update and you've
02:16:40
◼
►
sort of saturated the market or close to it where upgrade revenue is way more important
02:16:46
◼
►
than, or is at least essential to the company's business compared to brand new license sales.
02:16:53
◼
►
And a major upgrade gets delayed in engineering, right? It was supposed to come out in the
02:17:00
◼
►
Right. Yeah, sure.
02:17:01
◼
►
Here we are six months later and now it's starting to look like maybe next summer is
02:17:06
◼
►
a question mark, right? That we really underestimated this or that engineering challenge. Companies
02:17:14
◼
►
have gotten in trouble in that case and you don't, as long as you've still got people
02:17:20
◼
►
who aren't canceling their subscriptions, if people are just paying every month, it's
02:17:24
◼
►
much more regular.
02:17:25
◼
►
Yeah. No, it's certainly something that like, I definitely see that downside. And as you
02:17:30
◼
►
said, we've seen that happen and it has caused companies to go out of business even. But
02:17:35
◼
►
for us, the upgrade revenue has never been, we've only had these 10 upgrades that we've
02:17:39
◼
►
charged for. So obviously it can't be too much of our business. It's two things. As
02:17:43
◼
►
I said early on, it can't be that important, right? As I said early on, we've been able
02:17:49
◼
►
to grow the customer base just because the Mac has been getting larger and we started
02:17:54
◼
►
out very small. But the other thing is that we have a lineup of audio products. And so
02:18:00
◼
►
when we made Loopback, for instance, we advertise that to all of our users and a ton of them
02:18:07
◼
►
said, "Oh, that is a utility I can use." And they bought that for full price. I think we
02:18:11
◼
►
might've had a small discount, but it wasn't an upgrade. It was a brand new product. And
02:18:16
◼
►
now they own two of our products. And over the years, we'll have twice as many upgrades
02:18:20
◼
►
because it's over owning just one of them. So it's something where having complimentary
02:18:25
◼
►
products has been really useful in terms of generating more revenue. And the other thing
02:18:30
◼
►
is we've only ever grown organically. Instead of saying, "Oh, we want to be twice the size
02:18:34
◼
►
we are now. Let's just ramp up and hire people and then we'll need to find the revenue."
02:18:39
◼
►
We've said, "Okay, we've got enough excess revenue that we can hire a new person to either
02:18:43
◼
►
make a new product or develop this one further than we've been able to do so far." And obviously
02:18:47
◼
►
that's limiting. We're never going to be Facebook, Uber, some giant software company, but it
02:18:52
◼
►
has served us pretty well. And we're more than a lifestyle company where someone just
02:18:58
◼
►
is making just enough money to live their life. And we've got employees, we've had a
02:19:02
◼
►
staff, a double digit staff for many years now, and it's worked pretty well. And again,
02:19:06
◼
►
like I said, if we've left some money on the table, that's okay. But we've been fortunate
02:19:09
◼
►
enough to not make any huge mistakes where we were having a revenue gap that we needed
02:19:14
◼
►
to worry about.
02:19:15
◼
►
Yeah. The other thing I'll just do before we call it a show is it no longer even seems
02:19:22
◼
►
to be a topic of conversation amongst a lot of indie Mac companies I know of, of whether
02:19:30
◼
►
or not they're even going to try another attempt at iPhone software or iPad software for that.
02:19:38
◼
►
And I'm just curious where you see that at, right? Where in the early days of the iPhone,
02:19:43
◼
►
to make a very long story very short, when they first said, "Hey, this is the new iPhone.
02:19:48
◼
►
This is iPhone and it's built on the OS X and it uses Cocoa and it looks so cool." And
02:19:55
◼
►
it was at the height of indie Mac software having sort of the lickable user interfaces.
02:20:02
◼
►
And here's a device where it looks even better than on the Mac because the screen has smaller
02:20:07
◼
►
pixels. And there was so much enthusiasm of now we can, instead of making Mac software,
02:20:12
◼
►
we'll make iPhone software too. And if the iPhone is more popular than the Mac, which
02:20:17
◼
►
is funny to think, it was a question at any time, it could be huge, right? And Steve Jobs,
02:20:24
◼
►
when he introduced it was like, "I think we're going to try to sell 10 million in our second
02:20:27
◼
►
year." And it's like, "Well, that would be a lot of phones at a time when Apple, I think
02:20:31
◼
►
around that time they were selling like 2 million Macs a quarter." So he was already
02:20:36
◼
►
thinking that the iPhone might in its second year outsell the Mac in units. And it's like,
02:20:42
◼
►
"Oh, this is an exciting new frontier." There are obviously a lot of people whose career
02:20:47
◼
►
for a decade plus has been making iOS software, but it doesn't seem like it's in the style.
02:20:54
◼
►
It's nobody even really talks about it anymore of indie Mac or indie iPhone software tools
02:21:00
◼
►
like RogaMepos.
02:21:01
◼
►
Andy developers.
02:21:02
◼
►
Yeah, indie developers.
02:21:03
◼
►
I mean, the one, the obvious one that comes to mind for me is OmniGroup because they have
02:21:10
◼
►
iOS versions of most of their products. But yeah, in 2008, when you could start selling
02:21:16
◼
►
an iPhone app, we made a version of one of our products and we tried to sell it for $10
02:21:22
◼
►
whole dollars, which was way cheaper than anything we had on the Mac at the time where
02:21:26
◼
►
everything was $20, $30, $40, $50. And despite the fact that the iPhone had millions upon
02:21:32
◼
►
millions of users, none of them wanted to pay $10 for a product, especially that they
02:21:38
◼
►
couldn't use without paying for it. They couldn't try it out first. So very early on, we were
02:21:43
◼
►
dissuaded from much iOS development. And then over the years, just dealing with various
02:21:48
◼
►
App Store challenges and product review challenges, submission reviews that Apple does, and it
02:21:53
◼
►
scared us away from it. And the Mac never saw a downturn on the Mac where people, it's
02:21:59
◼
►
not something where people said, "Oh, I'm not buying software on the Mac anymore. I'm
02:22:03
◼
►
using the iPhone." It's something where people said, "Oh, I'm using both of these things."
02:22:06
◼
►
So the Mac was still a profitable place to be making software. And it was a place where
02:22:11
◼
►
you could say this piece of software is deep and it has a whole lot of functionality and
02:22:16
◼
►
you're going to use it a lot. And therefore, it should cost $50 or $100 because it is deep
02:22:22
◼
►
and because we can give you a trial of it and you can say, "You know what? I am going
02:22:25
◼
►
to use this. This is worth that kind of outlay in terms of cash." On the iPhone, we tried
02:22:29
◼
►
to make a relatively deep application, much shallower than our Mac apps, but certainly
02:22:34
◼
►
deeper than a lot of iPhone apps. And we priced it accordingly and $10 was a fairly high price.
02:22:40
◼
►
And it just didn't get any traction because that price was too high. I mean, I think going
02:22:44
◼
►
back to Vesper, you can relate to this somewhat that that was a more in-depth app than a lot
02:22:49
◼
►
of apps out there. And what was the price range on that? Did it go from like $3 to $10
02:22:56
◼
►
$2.99 to $4.99, I think. I forget what the highest was.
02:22:59
◼
►
Okay, so $3 to $5.
02:23:01
◼
►
Kind of hovered into $3 to $5 range.
02:23:05
◼
►
But even that is expensive for the iPhone.
02:23:08
◼
►
Yeah. And we really...
02:23:09
◼
►
And you have to do a lot of volume to...
02:23:11
◼
►
Yeah, we really figured out. I mean, I don't want to turn this into a whole side note about
02:23:16
◼
►
Vesper, but the timing in hindsight was terrible because it was right at the cusp of when subscription
02:23:25
◼
►
pricing was going to be...
02:23:27
◼
►
Subscriptions, yeah, absolutely.
02:23:28
◼
►
Yeah, it was going to become a thing and that's how you do iPhone apps, but it wasn't there
02:23:33
◼
►
yet. And yet the... And we don't have deep analytics. You don't get deep analytics like
02:23:41
◼
►
this, but it was pretty clear what was happening in hindsight is that when people were looking
02:23:44
◼
►
for a notes app on the app store, they would start by installing the ones that were free,
02:23:50
◼
►
whether they had in-app purchases or not. But if you could install it for free, they
02:23:54
◼
►
would start by installing the ones for free. And then at some point, they'd either find
02:24:00
◼
►
one that they thought was good enough or they would just give up. But they never got to
02:24:04
◼
►
the point where they're like, "Well, let me try this one with all the good ratings that
02:24:08
◼
►
looks really cool for $5." It's like they never got there.
02:24:13
◼
►
That lack of trials, I think it's still there. The alternative is you have a free version
02:24:17
◼
►
with in-app purchase, but I always point to that on the Mac that I can say, "We can charge
02:24:21
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a reasonable price because you get a chance to try it out before you ever put down any
02:24:26
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money." And I don't... I mean, I don't want to buy an app on the iPhone for 10 bucks unless
02:24:30
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I get a recommendation from a friend or I can play with it on their phone is even better.
02:24:36
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If there's a free alternative, that is the one I'm going to try, and I'm someone who
02:24:39
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sells software. So I have no problem paying for software, but I have a problem paying
02:24:43
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when I can't try it out first.
02:24:45
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Right. Well, and the other difference between people like me and you and even everybody
02:24:48
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who probably listens to my show here is we follow other sources of information like,
02:24:54
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"Oh, I saw Gruber mentioned a new Mercury weather app on Daring Fireball, so I'll check
02:25:00
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Right, exactly.
02:25:01
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Whereas to really be... That market isn't big enough, though. The number of people who
02:25:07
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would come to a new rogue Amoeba iPhone app just by reading Jason Snell's coverage of
02:25:12
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it and John Gruber's coverage of it, too many people just go to the App Store, and the App
02:25:19
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Store is their recommendation engine, and the App Store was telling people, "You should
02:25:22
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try all these free apps first." I mean, effectively telling them that.
02:25:26
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Absolutely, yeah.
02:25:26
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And I know that's counterintuitive because Apple's in so much regulatory pressure right
02:25:31
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now over the 30 and 15% cuts they take of the money. Obviously, Apple likes to make
02:25:37
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money from their control and their revenue cut of the App Store. So it's not that they
02:25:44
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were telling people explicitly, "Don't pay for apps in the App Store," but implicitly,
02:25:50
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that was the message you still get from the App Store experience. You type Notes App,
02:25:55
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and you see some options say "Install," and others say "Buy," and I'd rather install
02:26:02
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something for free than buy it before trying.
02:26:05
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Absolutely. Yeah.
02:26:06
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The other advantage you guys have is by eking out this ownership, well, not ownership
02:26:12
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exclusively, but you guys make audio apps. I mean, who knows? Maybe someday you'll come
02:26:17
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out with something that's not an audio app.
02:26:19
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Nah, but we have a niche.
02:26:21
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Right. And you're known for it. It's easier to cross-sell, right? You mentioned—well,
02:26:25
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you didn't mention Farrago, but Farrago is your soundboard app, and so I don't put
02:26:29
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gimmicky sounds on my podcast, but if I did, I know that I would use Farrago to do it,
02:26:33
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right? I wouldn't even look at anything else. And that you could cross-sell—you've
02:26:37
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got so many people who are doing things where that app makes sense, who are already using
02:26:42
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Audio Hijack or something else, that your semi-occasional "Don't abuse the mailing
02:26:48
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message," would say, "Hey, we've got a soundboard app now." That's like, "Oh,
02:26:52
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well, I love your other app, so I'll buy that or I'll at least try it."
02:26:55
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Absolutely. Yeah, there's huge value there.
02:26:59
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Yeah. And the other thing, too, about having this audio niche is there's no
02:27:04
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compatibility story between the devices. So, like, all right, I'm using Audio Hijack,
02:27:10
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and that's how I record my podcasts, and it's a very important tool to me. I don't
02:27:16
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need access to Audio Hijack on my phone, right? Because I don't do the podcast recording on my
02:27:21
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phone. And so, there's no interop. Whereas that—I'm not even saying it's a problem
02:27:26
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for the Omni group, but you could see with their apps, people are like, "Well, I need my to-do
02:27:32
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list on my phone, too, and I need it on my iPad." I keep my whole brain in Omni Outliner, and I need
02:27:38
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that when I have a new idea that I want to add to my outline. I've got to do it from my phone.
02:27:42
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And so, again, I'm not saying they absolutely had to, but you could see how with their
02:27:48
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apps and the sort of things people do with their apps, the idea that people
02:27:54
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would only still be using them on their Mac was probably—they probably were right that they had
02:28:00
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to fully embrace iPhone and iPadOS. Multiple platforms for it. Yeah, no. And our tools are
02:28:05
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much more of a sit down at your Mac and use them, and you'll get an audio file, which you can do
02:28:10
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whatever you want with. But yeah, you don't need to have it on your phone or your iPad.
02:28:15
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Yeah, that's exactly it. Your interop format is the audio file that gets produced by the various
02:28:21
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tools, and they just work. You can just take—well, it emits an MP3 file. One that you could play the
02:28:25
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MP3 file on your phone. That's probably what you wanted to do. Yep. All right. I'm going to call
02:28:32
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it a wrap. Thanks, Paul. Can I throw my plug in for—
02:28:37
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Of course. You mentioned owning the audio space,
02:28:40
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and whether we own it or not, we do own the domain macaudio.com, which is where people should go to
02:28:45
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find our products. So, I like having that domain because it at least makes it seem like we own the
02:28:51
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audio space. And I think we have mentioned that before, but you do like to—macaudio.com,
02:28:58
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and then it gets you out of anybody's confusion over how to spell the words.
02:29:01
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How to spell rogue or amoeba. Yeah. Which one do you think is more misspelled?
02:29:07
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Well, misspelled in terms of getting to us amoeba because amoeba has three different—at least three
02:29:13
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different valid spellings. And I don't remember which of them we own. We own the one that we use,
02:29:18
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but I'm not even sure we own either of the other common spellings of it. So yeah, amoeba is
02:29:23
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definitely the more problematic of the two, I think. Yeah. I think if you really wanted to cover
02:29:27
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all of your possible bases for misspellings of rogueamoeba.com, you'd have to—you'd need at
02:29:32
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least 20 domains. It's like—yeah, it's double digits domains. Yeah, exactly.
02:29:37
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Anything else you wanted to mention? I think we've covered it though. Congrats on 20 years.
02:29:41
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I'll at least have you on once more before you get to 30 years.
02:29:46
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Okay, I appreciate that. Sometime in the next 10 years.
02:29:48
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Yeah, sometime in the next 10 years, I will have you back on the show.
02:29:51
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No, no. I mean, I'm glad to be on. I appreciate it. And it's been fun celebrating this a little
02:29:56
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bit. The best thing is that it's made people talk about how they use the products. And that's the
02:30:00
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most interesting thing to me is that, you know, we make these products and we have an idea of how
02:30:05
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they'll be used. But we've heard from hundreds of different podcasts that said, "Oh, congratulations,
02:30:10
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I couldn't make my podcast without you." And it's a podcast I've never heard of on some topic I've
02:30:14
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never even thought of. And it's very cool to be a part of something without even knowing it and to
02:30:21
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►
finally see that. So it's just been really interesting to see so much feedback from people.
02:30:26
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Yeah, that's always one of the best parts about making tools is that if it's a tool of any kind,
02:30:31
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creative people are going to find ways that the toolmaker never thought would have been a use case,
02:30:38
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but they're going to find them. Absolutely.