The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Do you have one?

00:00:00 ◼   ► Do you want one?

00:00:01 ◼   ► What's what's your, what's your display setup at home?

00:00:03 ◼   ► So I don't have them.

00:00:05 ◼   ► I display set up, believe it or not is so I have a MacBook pro and I believe

00:00:10 ◼   ► or not, I'm using with an adapter, an old Thunderbolt display, I shit you not.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Like the non retina one.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Like, I think so.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Like I, I'm very into just using my laptop and then I use the display if

00:00:23 ◼   ► I have to have a second screen, but I'm very like, just, just use my laptop.

00:00:27 ◼   ► And I'm good.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Oh, so primarily though, you're actually, you, you're, you're just looking at the

00:00:32 ◼   ► actual M one Mac, you know, the built-in M one, just laptop display.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:00:37 ◼   ► I just, I'm just kinda like, you know, that's my display and that's what I look

00:00:40 ◼   ► at and I have everything in one place and I'm good, but 16 inch or 14 inch.

00:00:44 ◼   ► I have the, it put me on the spot 14 inch.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:48 ◼   ► Smaller, big, small.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Well, to me, the 14 inch as it's gotten bigger and bigger and

00:00:53 ◼   ► bigger, it feels bigger and bigger.

00:00:54 ◼   ► But it's funny you mentioned about the old thing.

00:00:56 ◼   ► Cause I feel the same way.

00:00:57 ◼   ► It's like, I used to be up at night creative and even the screen sizes and

00:01:01 ◼   ► stuff, like, I'm like, maybe I should get a studio display.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Maybe I should get a bigger display.

00:01:05 ◼   ► It's like everything bigger and slower and you know, older, right?

00:01:08 ◼   ► I don't want to rehash it too much, but I spent most of, or over two years, I guess,

00:01:14 ◼   ► starting at like the end of summer 2019.

00:01:16 ◼   ► And I've told this story, but it was a combination of, I had a retina

00:01:20 ◼   ► detachment in my right eye and, and we were doing renovations at our house,

00:01:25 ◼   ► including my office.

00:01:26 ◼   ► So I packed up my 5k iMac from 2014 and was full-time using a Mac book pro, a 13,

00:01:35 ◼   ► an older 13 inch Mac book pro with the built-in display, like in the kitchen

00:01:39 ◼   ► for all my work because I remember this, I remember this and the retina

00:01:43 ◼   ► detachment applies because then even after like the renovations were over,

00:01:48 ◼   ► like, which were luckily just ahead of COVID it was, we, we really, the timing

00:01:54 ◼   ► was just unbelievable.

00:01:55 ◼   ► Like it was literally like the city of Philadelphia said, Hey, this

00:01:58 ◼   ► Friday is the last day after this.

00:02:00 ◼   ► We're going to have a lockdown.

00:02:01 ◼   ► No, no work.

00:02:02 ◼   ► It would, you know, would have been illegal for our contractors to, uh, to be

00:02:06 ◼   ► in the house and, you know, and it did, you know, I don't blame them every, you

00:02:09 ◼   ► know, it was worrisome, but they, they were literally just finishing up the last

00:02:12 ◼   ► few things, putting like some grommets in my desk so I could string cables through.

00:02:17 ◼   ► It was just finishing up.

00:02:18 ◼   ► But even after that, I didn't set up the 5k iMac again, because that focal distance

00:02:24 ◼   ► I had terrible double vision.

00:02:26 ◼   ► Whereas if I was closer, like you are with a laptop, I could see it perfectly.

00:02:31 ◼   ► So I just kept working on the MacBook pro.

00:02:34 ◼   ► And then even as my eyesight got better, then I really realized it a year ago when

00:02:40 ◼   ► I tested the iMac, uh, 24 inch, you know, the first M1 iMacs from Apple, I was like,

00:02:47 ◼   ► Hey, I was like, Hey, I can see this really good.

00:02:50 ◼   ► And it's nice to have a big display.

00:02:52 ◼   ► But I didn't want to get the 24 inch iMac.

00:02:55 ◼   ► And I either wanted to wait to see if Apple came out with a big one or if they

00:02:59 ◼   ► came out, you know, with the thing that they actually did come out with the 27

00:03:04 ◼   ► inch iMac screen as a standalone 5k as a standalone display.

00:03:09 ◼   ► And I was like, I'm just going to wait for that.

00:03:10 ◼   ► And then, you know, there's another year, another year just goes fly by, but I, I

00:03:17 ◼   ► know it and I tell that to people, I have friends and, and, and they're like, that's

00:03:22 ◼   ► crazy.

00:03:22 ◼   ► So you spent like years and years with like a big 27 inch 5k display.

00:03:27 ◼   ► And before that I had, you know, uh, 20 inch, the old Apple 20 inch display.

00:03:32 ◼   ► Remember that thing?

00:03:32 ◼   ► I had that for forever.

00:03:35 ◼   ► And I had the 20 inch instead of the 23, because at the time it was all I could

00:03:38 ◼   ► afford, but I loved it.

00:03:39 ◼   ► And it never, it never gave me any trouble.

00:03:41 ◼   ► And I was like, yeah, it was a bit of an adjustment, but I, I sort of find that.

00:03:46 ◼   ► Only having the laptop screen.

00:03:50 ◼   ► It does help me focus, like, you know, and I think you, knowing you, I think you're

00:03:55 ◼   ► a little bit like me, like having too much on screen at once might be

00:03:58 ◼   ► counterproductive to productivity.

00:04:00 ◼   ► That's it.

00:04:01 ◼   ► Well, like the Thunderbolt display, the reason why I've always kept it is it's

00:04:04 ◼   ► 27 inches.

00:04:05 ◼   ► It's really nice.

00:04:06 ◼   ► It's actually a good display.

00:04:08 ◼   ► It's one cable plugin.

00:04:09 ◼   ► But the thing is, as I start having all the displays, exactly, like you said, I

00:04:12 ◼   ► start having so many windows and I'm just like, why do I have all these windows

00:04:15 ◼   ► open?

00:04:15 ◼   ► I eventually close them and I'm back on my laptop.

00:04:17 ◼   ► I will say though, now that I'm back and I've got, I've still got the

00:04:20 ◼   ► review unit, a studio display.

00:04:22 ◼   ► I've ordered my own and it is, I forget what the shipping was.

00:04:27 ◼   ► The date was like July or August or something like that or end of June.

00:04:31 ◼   ► It is, the demand and supply chains issues are real, right?

00:04:33 ◼   ► So it is nice.

00:04:35 ◼   ► And I'm like, oh yeah, this was nice to be able to put two full-sized browser

00:04:39 ◼   ► windows side by side and see both of them completely.

00:04:42 ◼   ► And it's great for being able to work on two things side by side and drag and drop

00:04:46 ◼   ► things between them.

00:04:47 ◼   ► So I'm back hooked on it again.

00:04:49 ◼   ► But I totally understand your perspective of living on that.

00:04:52 ◼   ► I will probably break down and get one.

00:04:54 ◼   ► I'll leave it at that.

00:04:55 ◼   ► All right.

00:04:56 ◼   ► What's, what is your webcam situation?

00:04:58 ◼   ► Do you just use the built-in M1?

00:05:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I do.

00:05:02 ◼   ► You know, I've been looking, actually a bunch of my friends have really nice ones

00:05:05 ◼   ► and I've been thinking about getting like an external, like really high end one, but

00:05:08 ◼   ► I was reading Jason Snell's review of the firmware update and the camera's really

00:05:12 ◼   ► looking good with the firmware update.

00:05:14 ◼   ► There's, I still have some pickies and we could get into it if you want, but like.

00:05:17 ◼   ► It's, you know, that's why I'm thinking about getting one now is it kind of solves

00:05:20 ◼   ► two problems with one, you know, with one display.

00:05:22 ◼   ► See now that's interesting.

00:05:25 ◼   ► Cause I still think it looks bad.

00:05:26 ◼   ► I mean, not bad, bad.

00:05:29 ◼   ► I mean, I said, I still have some problems.

00:05:31 ◼   ► It's not perfect.

00:05:31 ◼   ► It doesn't look as good as it could.

00:05:33 ◼   ► And I think it's a firmware issue still.

00:05:35 ◼   ► It's, it's nowhere near as good as something, you know, like I think what

00:05:38 ◼   ► you're talking about with the really nice ones, like a lot of people have the Sony

00:05:41 ◼   ► whatever it's like a thousand dollars.

00:05:43 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:05:44 ◼   ► It's like the barrel or whatever it is.

00:05:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:46 ◼   ► And it's, it's sort of known as the YouTuber's camera because there's a, you

00:05:50 ◼   ► know, it's, it's just perfect for a lot of pro or semi-pro or prosumer level,

00:05:57 ◼   ► really polished YouTube style talking to the camera videos at a very affordable

00:06:03 ◼   ► price for a thousand dollars and you can use it as a webcam and you know, you'll,

00:06:08 ◼   ► you'll get in your, your team or, or company Zoom calls and just blow everybody

00:06:15 ◼   ► away with, with your image quality.

00:06:17 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:06:17 ◼   ► That's a, you know, a thousand dollars Sony camera is not what you expect from

00:06:23 ◼   ► a $1,600 built in webcam in a, in a studio display.

00:06:27 ◼   ► I mean, that's clearly above and beyond for anybody who's had their head in the

00:06:31 ◼   ► ground this week, the news this week on the firmware update for the studio

00:06:35 ◼   ► display is that Apple finally came out.

00:06:39 ◼   ► I know I like to put finally in quotes.

00:06:40 ◼   ► You have to, to, to get it though.

00:06:42 ◼   ► You have to have a Mac running the beta version of MacOS 12.4.

00:06:48 ◼   ► And then once you have a Mac running the beta version of 12.4, if you have a studio

00:06:54 ◼   ► display attached software update, we'll see it and tell you there's a firmware

00:07:00 ◼   ► update for the studio display.

00:07:03 ◼   ► And it is funny, like firmware is, is one of those words, like,

00:07:08 ◼   ► Uh huh.

00:07:09 ◼   ► What, what exactly did, cause remember we used to call the, I, we used to

00:07:12 ◼   ► call the iPhone's operating system firmware, like for the first year.

00:07:15 ◼   ► Nobody really, nobody really knew what to call it because it wasn't, you know,

00:07:19 ◼   ► and I think even Apple called it a firmware update.

00:07:21 ◼   ► There's a certain line that an operating system can cross where it

00:07:27 ◼   ► goes from being firmware to an OS.

00:07:29 ◼   ► But it's effectively, it's, it's just a beta version of iOS 15.5 that powers

00:07:35 ◼   ► the studio display under the hood.

00:07:37 ◼   ► So I did it cause I'm an idiot.

00:07:39 ◼   ► But also in my personal experience, the, these, especially like the end of the

00:07:47 ◼   ► cycle, OS updates, in other words, you know, we're obviously heading towards

00:07:53 ◼   ► WWDC, we're going to get announcements of iOS 16 and MacOS 13, et cetera.

00:08:01 ◼   ► And they're going to have betas for developers that are really, really,

00:08:05 ◼   ► really rough at WWDC.

00:08:07 ◼   ► That's just the way that the calendar works.

00:08:09 ◼   ► But these ones that come out at the end of the previous year's cycle, like

00:08:13 ◼   ► around now in April are really pretty.

00:08:16 ◼   ► You know, they're, they're, they're very stable.

00:08:19 ◼   ► Like, and honestly, I've been running and living on MacOS 12.4 beta three because

00:08:25 ◼   ► of this studio display thing all week long.

00:08:28 ◼   ► And I could not tell you one thing that I've encountered that seems like a

00:08:32 ◼   ► bug or glitch beta wise, you know?

00:08:34 ◼   ► So I don't, yeah, it's not, that's great.

00:08:36 ◼   ► I wouldn't, that's not to say that I'm telling everybody listening to this

00:08:40 ◼   ► podcast, go and go, go install a beta version of the OS on your production Mac.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Gruber says there are no bugs.

00:08:49 ◼   ► I mean, there's a reason they still call it beta, but pretty stable.

00:08:52 ◼   ► But I installed it.

00:08:53 ◼   ► I got the update.

00:08:54 ◼   ► It is kind of wild to, to, to have your display updating.

00:09:00 ◼   ► It's just such a weird, you know, you just, you just don't think of your.

00:09:06 ◼   ► Display is having an operating system and it's sort of like, I don't know.

00:09:12 ◼   ► It's like when your Apple TV updates, I mean, it takes a couple of minutes

00:09:15 ◼   ► and for the most part, day to day, you don't notice that the display

00:09:19 ◼   ► is actually an iOS computer.

00:09:21 ◼   ► It just, you plug it in and it just runs and runs and runs and wakes up when

00:09:26 ◼   ► you want to wake up the, the, the Mac.

00:09:29 ◼   ► But when you'd run a software update, it really does seem like a

00:09:32 ◼   ► weird thing to be waiting for.

00:09:34 ◼   ► I don't blame them for this.

00:09:36 ◼   ► I, I, I, I think the camera and getting the image signal processor to, to, to do

00:09:42 ◼   ► things with the camera is probably the main reason that they designed it this

00:09:46 ◼   ► way, you know, as an iOS computer, instead of just being a traditional dumb display.

00:09:52 ◼   ► My, my thoughts on the image quality are.

00:09:56 ◼   ► I, I think that what we saw a month ago when it first shipped and I wrote my

00:10:01 ◼   ► review and most of the reviews, if they mentioned the camera really trashed the

00:10:06 ◼   ► image quality were that there, there was something clearly wrong.

00:10:09 ◼   ► And I think what a couple of sources within Apple told me that something

00:10:14 ◼   ► happened late in the cycle and how it slipped through, I really can't explain.

00:10:20 ◼   ► Best way I can explain it is that in really good light, it, the problems were

00:10:25 ◼   ► harder to notice and they were probably, they probably, I don't know what happened,

00:10:31 ◼   ► but some kind of bug was introduced to the image processing and it was only

00:10:36 ◼   ► tested like inside Apple's beautiful headquarters with beautiful, even light

00:10:42 ◼   ► lighting, beautiful, even lighting, not just bright, but like bright and even.

00:10:48 ◼   ► And it, they just, you know, they didn't really notice it and whatever, but

00:10:54 ◼   ► yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely a lighting issue because even in like

00:10:57 ◼   ► Jason Snell's latest thing, you can see the colors are just off due to the

00:11:02 ◼   ► lighting, but you can tell it's a lighting issue with the old firmware.

00:11:05 ◼   ► Yeah, well, but I still feel like the new firmware, that's why earlier I

00:11:09 ◼   ► said it looks a lot better to me, but I still feel like they can tweak that

00:11:12 ◼   ► more and that there's still a bit of a color saturation light adjustment that

00:11:17 ◼   ► can be made, I don't know, there's something still in the picture that

00:11:20 ◼   ► just feels a little off to me.

00:11:21 ◼   ► It is funny, Ben Thompson and I mentioned it on dithering the other day, but it is

00:11:26 ◼   ► funny doing an audio podcast where we're talking about purely visual image quality

00:11:32 ◼   ► things, so you'll have to play along with us, but I think the biggest thing I see,

00:11:37 ◼   ► and I'm bad at talking about details like this, like I've all, I'm also really bad

00:11:44 ◼   ► at like describing food, like I could never be a restaurant critic cause I'm

00:11:50 ◼   ► just really, really bad at, if I get a dish that I really love, like, Oh my God,

00:11:56 ◼   ► this is great, every single time we come to this restaurant, I'm just going to

00:11:59 ◼   ► order this, I don't even care what else is on the menu cause this is so good.

00:12:02 ◼   ► I couldn't tell you why I couldn't describe what it is that they've done to

00:12:06 ◼   ► it, you know, I just know that I like it, which does not make for good criticism.

00:12:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm sort of like that with image quality.

00:12:13 ◼   ► I'm a little bit, I could talk about it a little bit better than I can with food.

00:12:17 ◼   ► To me, it's, it's a con, still a contrast issue, especially with skin tones.

00:12:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:24 ◼   ► The skin tone is really where you can tell exactly.

00:12:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:27 ◼   ► It's, it still looks very flat to me.

00:12:30 ◼   ► So I will, I absolutely, I will link to at least three different things.

00:12:35 ◼   ► Jason Snell's piece, which is terrific.

00:12:37 ◼   ► Definitely.

00:12:38 ◼   ► Because the thing Snell has that makes, it's like, there's no point in me

00:12:44 ◼   ► spending hours taking example pictures side by side because I only have one

00:12:48 ◼   ► studio display here and the thing Snell has going on is he still has his review

00:12:53 ◼   ► unit.

00:12:54 ◼   ► He also has the one that he ordered for himself because unlike me, he ordered

00:13:00 ◼   ► one immediately as opposed to waiting and allowing the backlog to grow to like eight

00:13:06 ◼   ► to 10 weeks.

00:13:07 ◼   ► So he updated the one that he, I guess the one that he owns, I forget which one he

00:13:11 ◼   ► did, but anyway, he's got two identical studio displays, one of which is running

00:13:15 ◼   ► the firmware from a month ago that everybody agreed was even Apple agreed,

00:13:20 ◼   ► had a bug, had glitches and the new one.

00:13:23 ◼   ► So, and he could take side by side images in the same lighting and then what more

00:13:27 ◼   ► could you ask for?

00:13:28 ◼   ► No, it was great.

00:13:29 ◼   ► What he did was he actually updated his display, the one he bought, and he kept

00:13:32 ◼   ► the stock firmware on the review units.

00:13:34 ◼   ► That way you could have them side by side, truly running different firmwares.

00:13:38 ◼   ► It was great.

00:13:38 ◼   ► But I might've, I might've done it the other way.

00:13:40 ◼   ► It just risk, risk the beta firmware on Apple's.

00:13:43 ◼   ► But what's the difference?

00:13:46 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:13:47 ◼   ► But it's all good.

00:13:48 ◼   ► It's a great comparison.

00:13:49 ◼   ► It's a great comparison.

00:13:50 ◼   ► Right.

00:13:50 ◼   ► And the thing that was confounding originally was that Apple admitted, they

00:13:56 ◼   ► said, and it's funny what they will talk about and what they won't usually what's

00:14:00 ◼   ► inside a sealed device.

00:14:02 ◼   ► They don't, sometimes they're very secretive about, but they, you know, told

00:14:06 ◼   ► everybody, you know, it's, it's in the tech specs that the studio display has the

00:14:10 ◼   ► A13 chip and they told, I don't think it's advertised as such, but they told people

00:14:17 ◼   ► in the media that the camera system for the webcam is the same camera hardware as

00:14:23 ◼   ► the front facing camera in the new iPad air and last year's iPad pros, which is,

00:14:31 ◼   ► it's kind of easy to know which, which iPads have this camera system.

00:14:36 ◼   ► It's all the ones that support center stage, right?

00:14:40 ◼   ► Because center stage is this feature that the front camera is ultra wide, not

00:14:47 ◼   ► just wide, it's like almost fish eye.

00:14:49 ◼   ► If you just took the pure image and center stage uses, you know, software

00:14:54 ◼   ► intelligence to identify people within this ultra wide fish eye frame and crop

00:15:00 ◼   ► to where the faces, or if two people join to expand the frame to include both

00:15:08 ◼   ► people, including, you know, if one person is sitting and one standing over their

00:15:12 ◼   ► shoulder and it'll, you know, dynamically pan the crop on this ultra wide image

00:15:19 ◼   ► sensor to hopefully keep the subjects in frame and generally does a good job of

00:15:27 ◼   ► that on the iPad.

00:15:28 ◼   ► And so they said it has the same cameras, equal, you know, the same camera hardware

00:15:33 ◼   ► as the, the new iPad, but clearly you could take a picture of yourself.

00:15:38 ◼   ► I did it.

00:15:39 ◼   ► Other people did it.

00:15:40 ◼   ► It was a big part of my negative comments in my review of the studio display webcam

00:15:46 ◼   ► that right, right, right.

00:15:48 ◼   ► It's like, even if I use this iPad, which supposedly has the same hardware here,

00:15:52 ◼   ► same, same, you know, taken 10 seconds apart at the same desk in the same light,

00:15:57 ◼   ► better image quality, noticeably better.

00:16:00 ◼   ► And it, and they said, you know, what I was told unofficially was that they

00:16:06 ◼   ► expected that a bug fix to the firmware should at the very least get the image

00:16:11 ◼   ► quality up to the iPad level.

00:16:13 ◼   ► I would say that's true.

00:16:14 ◼   ► I would say that in my experience over the last few days, using the new

00:16:19 ◼   ► firmware on the studio display, the image quality is on par very much on par with

00:16:26 ◼   ► the front facing camera on newer iPads.

00:16:29 ◼   ► It's, it's not quite apples to apples because.

00:16:32 ◼   ► Pardon the pun.

00:16:35 ◼   ► I know, right?

00:16:36 ◼   ► It's it, or it, but it is different because the iPad, it's hard to get a

00:16:43 ◼   ► picture that shows the exact same framing.

00:16:48 ◼   ► You can't overlay two cameras, the physical objects, right?

00:16:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:52 ◼   ► Right.

00:16:52 ◼   ► And, and the iPad is, is a device that rotates and the studio display is not.

00:17:00 ◼   ► So sometimes the camera is on top and that's when the camera is centered, right?

00:17:06 ◼   ► So like for me, I always think you look best on an iPad front facing camera when

00:17:11 ◼   ► you're holding it vertically, like a phone, because then the camera is centered.

00:17:16 ◼   ► Whereas, and I know that not to digress onto an argument about where the camera

00:17:22 ◼   ► should go on iPads, but there's an awful lot of people who every time these iPads

00:17:26 ◼   ► come out that have like a magic keyboard component and you can use them in a

00:17:30 ◼   ► laptop configuration, shouldn't the camera be at the top there because when you

00:17:34 ◼   ► have it in laptop configuration, you look off center in the, in the front facing

00:17:41 ◼   ► camera.

00:17:42 ◼   ► I always felt that camera should be like, it is like on a MacBook Pro where it

00:17:46 ◼   ► should be like in landscape mode top.

00:17:48 ◼   ► That's where I feel they should have put it.

00:17:50 ◼   ► I understand why they didn't because of like hardware plays, but I agree with you.

00:17:54 ◼   ► But it, but just in terms of comparing the iPad camera to the studio display camera,

00:18:01 ◼   ► it would sure make it easier if they had done that.

00:18:04 ◼   ► And it makes it harder.

00:18:05 ◼   ► But so framing aside, just in terms of lighting and exposure and quality, it's

00:18:12 ◼   ► clearly on par.

00:18:13 ◼   ► Very, very similar.

00:18:15 ◼   ► Why do you think, why do you think if it's supposedly the same hardware, same

00:18:19 ◼   ► software, same whatever, why do you think it was different?

00:18:21 ◼   ► I mean, I like, I'll give you my input, but I want to hear yours first.

00:18:24 ◼   ► I honestly don't know.

00:18:26 ◼   ► And I get asked it.

00:18:27 ◼   ► It's, it's the, one of the most frequently asked questions I've, I've gotten from

00:18:32 ◼   ► friends and just regular readers and listeners of the show in all my years of

00:18:37 ◼   ► doing Daring Fireball, the, what do you, how do you think this happened?

00:18:41 ◼   ► How did they, how did they ship this?

00:18:44 ◼   ► I honestly can't, I still don't know.

00:18:46 ◼   ► I really don't.

00:18:46 ◼   ► The only guess I have, and this is with all my hardware and software experience,

00:18:50 ◼   ► is that even though it's the same off the shelf components and it shares

00:18:54 ◼   ► similarities with, you know, we'll call it iPad OS, there's clearly something

00:18:59 ◼   ► different, whether it's higher powered, a little bit of a different type of,

00:19:03 ◼   ► there's usually, you know, a chip in between, right, the, the, the image

00:19:07 ◼   ► processor and the camera, things like that.

00:19:09 ◼   ► There's something else I think going on with the hardware structure that's going

00:19:13 ◼   ► to possibly unveil another feature, whether it's, I don't know, filtering or

00:19:18 ◼   ► boosting, or I don't know what, but I would say if it's really exactly one to

00:19:23 ◼   ► one, it should have been the same image quality from the beginning.

00:19:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:25 ◼   ► It's just different.

00:19:27 ◼   ► Well, the other thing though, here's the other thing though, is that it, it was the

00:19:32 ◼   ► same image quality inside Apple before it shipped, because that's the thing I heard

00:19:37 ◼   ► from a few birdies, you know, friends who work at Apple who actually had been using

00:19:42 ◼   ► studio displays for months before it was announced late in the game, either, either

00:19:48 ◼   ► because they were actually working on it in some degree or, or somehow were brought

00:19:53 ◼   ► into the internal group that was testing it and they were running previous

00:19:59 ◼   ► firmwares that were only internal to Apple.

00:20:02 ◼   ► And they were like, yeah, mine.

00:20:03 ◼   ► And, and they, you know, a couple of them said to me, you know, I still have mine

00:20:07 ◼   ► right on my desk, I'm running an older internal firmware and my image quality

00:20:11 ◼   ► does not look like the one that the pictures you're showing.

00:20:15 ◼   ► Do you feel the April 26th firmware, and this is, I wish Jason would have

00:20:19 ◼   ► almost done a comparison.

00:20:21 ◼   ► Do you think if you compare that to an iPad now it's literally the

00:20:24 ◼   ► same or is it still different?

00:20:25 ◼   ► I think it's, I think it's close enough, you know?

00:20:28 ◼   ► Okay.

00:20:28 ◼   ► All right.

00:20:29 ◼   ► So you'd say you feel like if it had shipped with this, no one would have ever

00:20:32 ◼   ► said anything?

00:20:32 ◼   ► Oh, I still think there would have been complaints.

00:20:34 ◼   ► That's, that's what I meant.

00:20:36 ◼   ► Right.

00:20:36 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:20:37 ◼   ► And it makes it to me, it's, I'm going to write about it and I swear.

00:20:40 ◼   ► I definitely do.

00:20:41 ◼   ► Definitely.

00:20:42 ◼   ► I'm a hand, hand on my MacBook.

00:20:45 ◼   ► I, by the time this podcast is out, there will be a piece on Daring Fireball, but

00:20:49 ◼   ► it won't be super extensive because I'm just going to, like I said, I'm going to

00:20:52 ◼   ► defer to Jason Snell.

00:20:53 ◼   ► James Thompson, the author of the absolutely wonderful PCALC calculator,

00:20:59 ◼   ► amongst other things, had a tweet with some, some example pictures that I'll

00:21:03 ◼   ► talk about.

00:21:04 ◼   ► Great examples.

00:21:04 ◼   ► In fact, his was the first I saw.

00:21:06 ◼   ► He really spelled it out well.

00:21:07 ◼   ► So I'll just link to them and give my thoughts, but the thoughts in rough form

00:21:12 ◼   ► are there's, there's three, let's say three levels of image quality that I'll

00:21:19 ◼   ► address.

00:21:20 ◼   ► There's what actually shipped back in the end of, back in March with this studio

00:21:26 ◼   ► display, with the firmware they originally shipped with, which was really

00:21:30 ◼   ► bad, surprising.

00:21:31 ◼   ► It's the worst camera Apple shipped in image quality Apple shipped in, in, in

00:21:37 ◼   ► memory.

00:21:37 ◼   ► Right.

00:21:37 ◼   ► Like I can't agree.

00:21:38 ◼   ► Not to mention the cropping and like the oddities, right?

00:21:41 ◼   ► Like I know you're talking about quality right now, but the, the cropping was just

00:21:43 ◼   ► crazy.

00:21:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:44 ◼   ► The, the only, the only, the, the last time they shipped a camera with image

00:21:48 ◼   ► quality that bad were the Intel Mac books, which didn't have a series systems on

00:21:55 ◼   ► chips, but had, and remember they weren't even HD there, or they were like 720p.

00:22:00 ◼   ► It was like 720p.

00:22:01 ◼   ► Yes.

00:22:02 ◼   ► 720p without the, a series chip doing any signal processing and they just were

00:22:09 ◼   ► really bad and faint, you know, it was sort of like the last big complaint after

00:22:12 ◼   ► they fixed the keyboards.

00:22:13 ◼   ► The last big complaint people had about the state of Mac books was the built-in

00:22:18 ◼   ► webcams really had poor image quality.

00:22:20 ◼   ► Then the initial M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro shipped in November of 2020.

00:22:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:30 ◼   ► In November of 2020, the first Apple Silicon Macs shipped and they kept all of

00:22:36 ◼   ► the hardware other than the Silicon, the same, the same display, same form factor,

00:22:42 ◼   ► right?

00:22:42 ◼   ► Like if you held up the last Intel Mac book air next to the first M1, which is

00:22:49 ◼   ► still the only Mac book air with the M1, right?

00:22:52 ◼   ► Side-by-side without turning them on, you wouldn't be able to tell which was which,

00:22:56 ◼   ► right?

00:22:56 ◼   ► There's, there's no hard, no differences at all.

00:22:59 ◼   ► And they, they did this for a secrecy reasons.

00:23:02 ◼   ► They wanted to keep the fact that they were doing it secret, but I think the

00:23:06 ◼   ► biggest reason is, and I think you would agree with this, you know, this from

00:23:09 ◼   ► having built software over the years, that if you're going to make a really big

00:23:12 ◼   ► change to a low level thing, you want to keep everything else the same.

00:23:16 ◼   ► You know, right.

00:23:18 ◼   ► You don't want, you don't want to make like some sort of fundamental change, like

00:23:22 ◼   ► switching from Intel to a completely different arm based software architecture

00:23:28 ◼   ► and then have something go wrong.

00:23:30 ◼   ► Like, Oh, it's a new keyboard design or it's a new camera or new display type or

00:23:35 ◼   ► something like that.

00:23:35 ◼   ► Keep everything else.

00:23:36 ◼   ► Sure.

00:23:37 ◼   ► Keep every, keep everything else the same.

00:23:39 ◼   ► Isolate the number of variables that could be problematic or bugs that could show up.

00:23:44 ◼   ► But the neat thing about them doing this was the fact that the, like, let's just

00:23:49 ◼   ► say the Mac book air last Mac book air from Intel first Mac book air on Apple

00:23:53 ◼   ► Silicon, literally have the same camera.

00:23:56 ◼   ► Like I fix it could take, take the pot, take it apart, look at it and say, yeah,

00:24:01 ◼   ► these are the exact same cameras.

00:24:03 ◼   ► And the image quality from the Apple Silicon M one Mac book air is way better.

00:24:09 ◼   ► Not like, Oh yeah, I can kind of see that this looks better.

00:24:13 ◼   ► It was like night and day.

00:24:14 ◼   ► It's really fascinating.

00:24:17 ◼   ► And a very rare instance of, because the cameras are exactly the same, you could

00:24:23 ◼   ► really see what Apple Silicon image signal processing is capable of.

00:24:28 ◼   ► It's it truly phenomenal.

00:24:30 ◼   ► Uh, it just night and day, you can't believe it's the same camera.

00:24:33 ◼   ► So I that's like a baseline, right?

00:24:38 ◼   ► Like how good those cameras are.

00:24:41 ◼   ► What I would say for the studio display there, there's what shipped, which was

00:24:45 ◼   ► clearly problematic and didn't look even as good as like these year old year and a

00:24:53 ◼   ► half, almost old M one Mac books, right?

00:24:57 ◼   ► Like there were lighting and color and noise problems that you didn't even see

00:25:03 ◼   ► on those.

00:25:04 ◼   ► And yet this is a $1,600 standalone display that is much thicker.

00:25:09 ◼   ► It's three quarters of an inch thick.

00:25:10 ◼   ► Like a huge, huge problem with laptop webcams is that the lid is so crazy thin.

00:25:16 ◼   ► It's thinner than a phone, right?

00:25:18 ◼   ► It's thinner than an iPad.

00:25:20 ◼   ► And Apple to date at least has not not shipped cameras with a camera bump.

00:25:26 ◼   ► I don't know how they would do it, whether it would go on the back on the aluminum or

00:25:30 ◼   ► on the front and have like a hole under the, under the trackpad where it would go.

00:25:34 ◼   ► You can kind of the fact that both of those things seem so silly and ungainly is the

00:25:40 ◼   ► reason they probably haven't done it.

00:25:41 ◼   ► Right.

00:25:42 ◼   ► But you've got to ship these crazy thin cameras into these thin lids because you

00:25:47 ◼   ► don't want to make a lid as thick as an iPad.

00:25:49 ◼   ► Just to get a camera in there.

00:25:52 ◼   ► And even on the iPad, they have a camera bump, although not for the front facing

00:25:55 ◼   ► camera.

00:25:55 ◼   ► So I wonder if they could actually put the bump on the, so look at the clamshell,

00:25:59 ◼   ► right.

00:25:59 ◼   ► And do it on the backside.

00:26:00 ◼   ► I know what I'm saying.

00:26:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:02 ◼   ► Like in reverse.

00:26:03 ◼   ► Right.

00:26:03 ◼   ► But I think, I think it would be ugly, right?

00:26:05 ◼   ► It was so terrible.

00:26:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:07 ◼   ► So you can see why they don't do it, but with all this room in the studio display, I

00:26:13 ◼   ► just assumed that they would put a pretty nice camera in there, you know, like nicer

00:26:17 ◼   ► than, than you could ever expect on a, on a Mac book.

00:26:21 ◼   ► And.

00:26:22 ◼   ► I don't know that anybody's done this.

00:26:25 ◼   ► I mean, I get, I'm going to look for it after we record, but what I'm really

00:26:29 ◼   ► curious about is a side-by-side comparison of the 24 inch iMac from last year to the

00:26:36 ◼   ► studio display webcam, because I don't recall having any thoughts about the

00:26:42 ◼   ► webcam.

00:26:42 ◼   ► I was like, this is a pretty good webcam.

00:26:44 ◼   ► You know, it wasn't like blow away good.

00:26:46 ◼   ► Like, Oh my God, they've, Apple has made a webcam that looks as good as the iPhone

00:26:53 ◼   ► selfie camera.

00:26:54 ◼   ► Right.

00:26:54 ◼   ► Which, but which I thought was on the table for the studio display, right?

00:27:00 ◼   ► Like, okay.

00:27:01 ◼   ► You know, they sell iPhones starting at like five, $500, right?

00:27:06 ◼   ► You can get like an iPhone se for $500.

00:27:09 ◼   ► And the front facing camera on the iPhone se is way better than the front facing

00:27:16 ◼   ► camera on any other device Apple makes iPad, Mac, whatever it's it, you know, and

00:27:23 ◼   ► we've just sort of somewhat accepted that.

00:27:26 ◼   ► Well, that's because it's the iPhone, but it's, it's a $500 phone with all sorts

00:27:31 ◼   ► of other stuff.

00:27:31 ◼   ► Why wouldn't, why couldn't they put a camera that quality into a $1,600 display?

00:27:37 ◼   ► I'm not even saying like the iPhone latest and greatest, the iPhone 13.

00:27:42 ◼   ► I'm saying like, why, what about like the iPhone se, which is based on like a

00:27:46 ◼   ► several years old design?

00:27:48 ◼   ► I know.

00:27:49 ◼   ► Definitely.

00:27:49 ◼   ► So I was sort of hoping for something like that.

00:27:52 ◼   ► I ultimately, what I think happened inside Apple before we move on is I think very

00:27:58 ◼   ► early in the process of designing the studio display, they decided that center

00:28:04 ◼   ► stage was so useful, so cool that we should definitely get center stage into the

00:28:11 ◼   ► camera on the studio display and at a very early, and I don't know if that was a

00:28:16 ◼   ► debate.

00:28:16 ◼   ► I don't know if there were people, I sort of suspect from what I've heard that

00:28:21 ◼   ► there, you know, as you, as anything would be inside Apple, right?

00:28:25 ◼   ► That there are two sides to the argument and some people were on one side and some

00:28:28 ◼   ► on the other, but the center stage side obviously won the argument.

00:28:32 ◼   ► And, and I think everything else follows from that decision that the highest level

00:28:38 ◼   ► decision of what is, what, what kind of camera is going to go into this Apple

00:28:43 ◼   ► studio display was, well, first it should support center stage, like, like the

00:28:48 ◼   ► iPads do.

00:28:50 ◼   ► And then it means, well, then it needs to be an ultra wide because that's the whole

00:28:55 ◼   ► idea behind center stage.

00:28:57 ◼   ► And if it's going to be an ultra wide, the best ultra wide that we have is the one

00:29:02 ◼   ► we're using in the iPads.

00:29:03 ◼   ► Why don't we just use the same camera from the iPads?

00:29:05 ◼   ► People like the iPad front facing camera with center stage.

00:29:08 ◼   ► We'll use that and dot, dot, dot.

00:29:12 ◼   ► Here we are.

00:29:13 ◼   ► And it's just sort of flat, you know, because the thing is that that flatness,

00:29:18 ◼   ► that lack of contrast, especially on skin tones where it like somebody said, like,

00:29:23 ◼   ► it's hard to tell whether the person is really a person or whether they're a

00:29:27 ◼   ► cardboard cutout of a person.

00:29:29 ◼   ► Right?

00:29:30 ◼   ► Yeah, definitely.

00:29:31 ◼   ► You know, like if you, I don't know how many people have tried that, but like if

00:29:35 ◼   ► you're working remotely in zoom, just put a cardboard cutout of yourself in your

00:29:39 ◼   ► desk chair and you know, go play, go, go watch a movie or something like that.

00:29:45 ◼   ► While it looks like you're a, it sounds like a Seinfeld plot, right?

00:29:49 ◼   ► Like sometimes I was just thinking the same thing.

00:29:51 ◼   ► We got to make a show on this.

00:29:52 ◼   ► Something George would do.

00:29:53 ◼   ► It's very flat.

00:29:55 ◼   ► The, the iPad front facing camera is pretty flat too.

00:29:59 ◼   ► It's just, I think people didn't complain about it with the iPad pro when, when

00:30:05 ◼   ► center stage debuted last year, because nobody really expects better from the

00:30:09 ◼   ► iPad front facing camera.

00:30:11 ◼   ► Like there was expectations were just higher for this.

00:30:15 ◼   ► And I think Apple is, has been taken by surprise that people had that.

00:30:19 ◼   ► On the other hand, I would like to be, I try to be open and assume that my

00:30:24 ◼   ► preferences, I would have preferred a front facing camera that had no center

00:30:29 ◼   ► stage support and used a field of view that was just optimized for the idea of

00:30:37 ◼   ► one person right in front of the display, looking as good as possible.

00:30:42 ◼   ► You know, from about arm's length in front of the display.

00:30:46 ◼   ► And therefore it could have used a different lens that wasn't ultra wide,

00:30:51 ◼   ► a different sensor that wasn't meant for an ultra wide lens and then wouldn't need

00:30:56 ◼   ► to crop and could hopefully look better and look more like the, the front facing

00:31:03 ◼   ► camera on an iPhone.

00:31:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:05 ◼   ► Right.

00:31:05 ◼   ► Well, and I think also basically like the cameras are also changing so fast now and

00:31:10 ◼   ► our expectations of them are so much more that like they take time, right?

00:31:14 ◼   ► Cameras.

00:31:14 ◼   ► I remember the first, literally the first digital pack, like digital camera, going

00:31:18 ◼   ► back to the Kodaks and the Apple quick takes and all that.

00:31:21 ◼   ► Like if you look at how long ago that was to what we have, how it goes, there's

00:31:25 ◼   ► such a big difference in terms of like the development of it.

00:31:28 ◼   ► So I think it goes slow.

00:31:29 ◼   ► So then you see all these changes and then you're like, Oh wait, why isn't that one

00:31:33 ◼   ► as good as this one?

00:31:34 ◼   ► And you start comparing them.

00:31:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:36 ◼   ► So what I wish.

00:31:37 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:31:38 ◼   ► I had the quick take.

00:31:38 ◼   ► I remember it w it was super expensive.

00:31:40 ◼   ► I didn't own it myself.

00:31:41 ◼   ► The quick take magic, quick take 100, but I was doing a building a website at

00:31:46 ◼   ► Drexel university after I graduated.

00:31:48 ◼   ► And we, we got out of budget, we bought one and used it to take pictures.

00:31:53 ◼   ► And it was unbelievable because they weren't the greatest pictures in the

00:31:57 ◼   ► world.

00:31:57 ◼   ► But the fact that we could just take pictures and immediately put them on the

00:32:00 ◼   ► website was like, everybody was blown away.

00:32:03 ◼   ► Oh, it was so cool.

00:32:04 ◼   ► It was so cool.

00:32:05 ◼   ► It was terrible.

00:32:06 ◼   ► It was so cool.

00:32:07 ◼   ► Terrible.

00:32:08 ◼   ► I, I just feel, I just wish, I feel it.

00:32:12 ◼   ► What I'm trying to say, I guess is I think that they optimized for center stage.

00:32:17 ◼   ► And now they've with the firmware update, they fixed the color, some of the color

00:32:22 ◼   ► stuff.

00:32:22 ◼   ► And so it's a lot less noisy.

00:32:24 ◼   ► It's a little, it's better in low light, but because they're cropping an ultra wide

00:32:28 ◼   ► image to simulate a non ultra wide camera.

00:32:32 ◼   ► It's, it's always going to be a little, eh, not as good as just a camera that was

00:32:37 ◼   ► meant for that focal distance, like the camera that they put in the iMac 24 inch

00:32:43 ◼   ► last year, which nobody really talked about, right?

00:32:46 ◼   ► Like it's almost like the invisible webcam.

00:32:49 ◼   ► Nobody was like, Holy crap, this 24 inch iMac has an amazing web camera.

00:32:53 ◼   ► This is like, you know, Sony $1,000 standalone camera.

00:32:57 ◼   ► Nope.

00:32:57 ◼   ► Nobody said that, but also nobody was like, Hey, this camera makes everybody look

00:33:02 ◼   ► flat and it's way too noisy.

00:33:03 ◼   ► It's, you know, it's, it's sort of like exactly what you expected.

00:33:07 ◼   ► It was unremarkable and did its job and what it said on the 10, right?

00:33:10 ◼   ► Right.

00:33:10 ◼   ► And if they had put that camera, the same camera as the 24 inch iMac into the studio

00:33:16 ◼   ► display, I still think I would have been a little, a little disappointed because I

00:33:20 ◼   ► was really hoping that for $1,600, they could wow us, but I would have, I would

00:33:24 ◼   ► have had no complaints.

00:33:25 ◼   ► I also, you know, I would have been a little disappointed.

00:33:28 ◼   ► I might've mentioned, you know, I sort of was hoping that they would just blow us

00:33:31 ◼   ► away and give us something even better.

00:33:34 ◼   ► But you know, this is actually very good and I have no complaints and it would

00:33:38 ◼   ► have been like a very small section of my review as opposed to several days worth of

00:33:44 ◼   ► work.

00:33:45 ◼   ► You know, adding to your, adding to your argument, I think you're onto something

00:33:48 ◼   ► with the whole like center stage stuff, because the other thing is not only do

00:33:51 ◼   ► you have all that stuff, like you said, a different lens and all that, you also

00:33:54 ◼   ► have the image processing that has to be done to filter out, like you said, the

00:33:58 ◼   ► person centered in the frame, right?

00:33:59 ◼   ► So you're basically, no matter what you do, gonna get a subpar picture because

00:34:04 ◼   ► there's so much that has to happen to make that picture look right in the frame.

00:34:08 ◼   ► Right?

00:34:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:09 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely.

00:34:10 ◼   ► I will say this.

00:34:11 ◼   ► I also complained in my initial review that center stage could lag significantly.

00:34:16 ◼   ► Like if you turned your head to the side and went to the edge of the field, it

00:34:19 ◼   ► would pan over to where you were, then you'd come back to the middle and it

00:34:23 ◼   ► would take several seconds to recenter.

00:34:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:26 ◼   ► They, they have definitely addressed that.

00:34:28 ◼   ► I mean, like, not like, you know, again, sometimes you get like a firmware

00:34:32 ◼   ► update or an OS update and they say we've improved the image quality.

00:34:36 ◼   ► And you're like, I think they have, but it's kind of hard.

00:34:39 ◼   ► The center stage thing is definitely different and the lag is gone.

00:34:42 ◼   ► I think, I think where they've gotten to with this firmware, and it's one of those

00:34:45 ◼   ► things I'm sure there's some engineer or engineers at Apple who are continually

00:34:50 ◼   ► working on tweaking the center stage.

00:34:52 ◼   ► So I'm sure it'll continue to improve, but it, this is, this addresses my

00:34:56 ◼   ► complaints and I w I wouldn't complain about the way center stage

00:34:59 ◼   ► works with the new firmware.

00:35:00 ◼   ► I, I didn't, I didn't see what Jason said, but he was also saying that I guess.

00:35:04 ◼   ► When it does the recentering of the image, it's apparently really fast, like jerky.

00:35:09 ◼   ► Like it's very abrupt, not smooth.

00:35:11 ◼   ► And that would kill me because I like, I, you know, I was a film major.

00:35:15 ◼   ► So for me, video work is very important to be smooth and natural.

00:35:18 ◼   ► So I, I got to see what he's talking about, but it needs to be subtle.

00:35:22 ◼   ► It needs to be like what you see on television, as he put it.

00:35:24 ◼   ► I, I, he might've tested that more than I have in the last few days.

00:35:29 ◼   ► I haven't seen what I would call jerkiness.

00:35:31 ◼   ► It is a little bit less smooth, but it's, it, it wasn't overcompensating for

00:35:37 ◼   ► smoothness that I complained about.

00:35:40 ◼   ► And that Jason also complained about in our initial reviews.

00:35:43 ◼   ► It was the fact that like their algorithms seem to want to say, if we pan over to

00:35:50 ◼   ► the left, because you moved to the left, we don't want to pan back to the right.

00:35:54 ◼   ► Too quickly, because then it looks like we're going back and forth.

00:35:57 ◼   ► But if you just temporarily leaned over to the side, like that's where I keep my,

00:36:02 ◼   ► my coffee or, or, you know, just to somebody else comes into room with a

00:36:07 ◼   ► question and you want to turn to them and answer their question, a real real life

00:36:12 ◼   ► person, and then come back to your video call, you kind of want that camera.

00:36:16 ◼   ► You don't want to wait three or four seconds before it re-centers.

00:36:20 ◼   ► I mean, the smoothness, you do want it to be a little more subtle.

00:36:23 ◼   ► You want it to be just a, I know what he's saying.

00:36:25 ◼   ► Like if you move around, you see almost moving around, like it's a camera guy,

00:36:28 ◼   ► like got to keep it centered on every shot, right?

00:36:30 ◼   ► You don't want it to be that.

00:36:31 ◼   ► Linear is all I'm saying.

00:36:32 ◼   ► Or that that that's surgical.

00:36:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:34 ◼   ► So I, you know, anyway, I guess where we've wound up bottom line is I'm well,

00:36:39 ◼   ► I'm disappointed.

00:36:40 ◼   ► I'm a little disappointed that they chose to go the center stage

00:36:43 ◼   ► route with this camera hardware.

00:36:45 ◼   ► I do think though, given the camera hardware, they're very close to as

00:36:49 ◼   ► good as it's going to get as opposed.

00:36:51 ◼   ► I actually think center stage was the right move for this display because the

00:36:55 ◼   ► whole purpose of it is everyone's working at home or at least will be for a while

00:36:59 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:36:59 ◼   ► And like, I think it's a cool technology, right?

00:37:02 ◼   ► You're on a conference call.

00:37:03 ◼   ► You want to be centered.

00:37:04 ◼   ► So I give them props for it, but I think they need to make it a lot better.

00:37:08 ◼   ► That's just my input.

00:37:09 ◼   ► I just wish they'd use the same camera as the iMac 24, but.

00:37:12 ◼   ► You know, I agree, you know, but I'm open to the idea that there might be as many

00:37:17 ◼   ► or maybe even more people who are glad that it has center stage, even if the

00:37:21 ◼   ► quality's a little less than it would be without center stage.

00:37:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:24 ◼   ► That's how I feel.

00:37:25 ◼   ► I feel like center stage as a feature really adds a level to the display to make

00:37:29 ◼   ► everyone on that display look centered.

00:37:31 ◼   ► And that's, that's pretty cool.

00:37:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:33 ◼   ► I, and I know that you can just buy a a hundred to $200 webcam and, and put it on

00:37:40 ◼   ► top and it's not that big of an expenditure if you really want to do it.

00:37:44 ◼   ► And you could spend a couple hundred dollars more and get a really professional

00:37:48 ◼   ► looking rig, but I don't need that.

00:37:51 ◼   ► I don't do calls enough, you know, and because I don't do them enough, I just

00:37:57 ◼   ► really don't want anything sticking up over my display.

00:38:00 ◼   ► Like I find it distracting.

00:38:02 ◼   ► Again, same again, but I do think they're going to improve the image quality.

00:38:05 ◼   ► I think, I think they have tricks.

00:38:07 ◼   ► They can make it better and they will.

00:38:08 ◼   ► That's my gut.

00:38:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:09 ◼   ► The contrast for sure.

00:38:11 ◼   ► I would hope it just seems like they could just up the contrast maybe.

00:38:14 ◼   ► And, and it would get some improvement because the other thing before we leave

00:38:17 ◼   ► the topic, the other thing that was so striking was with, I mentioned James

00:38:20 ◼   ► Thompson's tweet, he compared it to the image from his old, now we could say it's

00:38:25 ◼   ► old iMac pro and the iMac pro only had like a two megapixel webcam and.

00:38:32 ◼   ► But it, the image quality out of it was so much better.

00:38:36 ◼   ► It's so much better than the studio display.

00:38:38 ◼   ► Cause it has contrast.

00:38:39 ◼   ► He looks fine tuned very well.

00:38:41 ◼   ► Yeah, it has it.

00:38:43 ◼   ► And it, it, it just seems like how, how could they have shipped that a couple

00:38:48 ◼   ► of years ago and not matched it in contrast and just general image quality.

00:38:53 ◼   ► And it wasn't like James is, is some sort of a troublemaker who, who tried to make

00:38:59 ◼   ► the studio display look bad on purpose.

00:39:02 ◼   ► You know, it very, it was clearly very similar lighting in the exact same office.

00:39:07 ◼   ► It was like, you know, and it just nowhere near as good.

00:39:11 ◼   ► Like that doesn't seem right at all.

00:39:13 ◼   ► But yeah, no, for sure.

00:39:14 ◼   ► Here we are.

00:39:15 ◼   ► Here, let me take a break.

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00:42:00 ◼   ► Let's let's talk fantastic.

00:42:02 ◼   ► How.

00:42:02 ◼   ► All right, let's do it.

00:42:04 ◼   ► You guys had a big release.

00:42:07 ◼   ► I was going to say a month ago, I guess it's about two months ago.

00:42:09 ◼   ► Yeah, it happened.

00:42:10 ◼   ► And I was talking to the other day with someone on my team about it was back in

00:42:13 ◼   ► February, which I don't know how time is going so quickly, but here we are February.

00:42:17 ◼   ► We almost, I almost had you on the show right after it came out and something,

00:42:21 ◼   ► I forget what even happened.

00:42:23 ◼   ► Something fell through with, with us.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Scheduling wise, it was like you were traveling and then you were like, but

00:42:28 ◼   ► after, while I'm traveling, I could do it.

00:42:29 ◼   ► And it was, and here we are, it's the end of April.

00:42:31 ◼   ► Yeah, here we are.

00:42:32 ◼   ► May 1st is approaching.

00:42:34 ◼   ► I mean, it's a crazy, yep.

00:42:35 ◼   ► So tell me about the new, the what's new in fantastic.

00:42:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:39 ◼   ► So February was our big scheduling update called fantastic Cal scheduling.

00:42:43 ◼   ► And basically what we've done since we switched to subscription back in January,

00:42:47 ◼   ► 2020 is we want to keep pushing fantastic Cal and card hop as a productivity

00:42:53 ◼   ► platform.

00:42:53 ◼   ► So not only just have apps, not only just have, you know, different like calendar

00:42:58 ◼   ► contacts, but also have services that allow you to get ongoing benefits and

00:43:02 ◼   ► functionality.

00:43:03 ◼   ► So in February we launched fantastic Cal scheduling, which included openings,

00:43:08 ◼   ► which is, you know, send someone your link, your fantastic Cal link, and they

00:43:12 ◼   ► can go and they can quickly set sign up for openings on your calendar.

00:43:17 ◼   ► So fantastic Cal, what we're doing a bit differently than the other scheduling

00:43:21 ◼   ► services is that we're privacy first.

00:43:23 ◼   ► So you have to opt into openings in fantastic Cal.

00:43:27 ◼   ► We don't just assume you want to use it because once you opt in, it will share

00:43:31 ◼   ► certain details about your calendars, which is your open slots.

00:43:35 ◼   ► So there is a level of privacy involved because now your open slots and some

00:43:40 ◼   ► information about your calendar setups, nothing in terms of content.

00:43:43 ◼   ► It's just a matter of like times and dates and things like that, but it is

00:43:46 ◼   ► going to get shared on a Flexibit server, which of course we have a great privacy

00:43:50 ◼   ► policy and you should go read it.

00:43:51 ◼   ► Flexibits.com/privacy, which we try to keep it real, but the privacy first

00:43:56 ◼   ► approach is really important and everything like, because at the end of the

00:43:59 ◼   ► day, we want everyone using our products to feel secure and private.

00:44:02 ◼   ► So yeah, you opt into openings.

00:44:05 ◼   ► It shares instantly.

00:44:06 ◼   ► You don't have to do any configuration setup or more importantly, put your

00:44:10 ◼   ► accounts on a server somewhere, which is how the other services do it.

00:44:13 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:44:14 ◼   ► Enable, you're ready to roll.

00:44:16 ◼   ► You share your fantastic Cal link.

00:44:18 ◼   ► You can create what's called event templates and these event templates

00:44:22 ◼   ► allow you to customize things like.

00:44:24 ◼   ► Maybe you want to have a call only every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from nine

00:44:27 ◼   ► to five, so you can kind of fine tune the criteria of when events will be, or,

00:44:32 ◼   ► you know, appointments can be booked and that's it.

00:44:34 ◼   ► And then you share your fantastic Cal link.

00:44:35 ◼   ► Someone goes, they self serve it books it right on your calendar.

00:44:39 ◼   ► Automatically adds it and you're good to go.

00:44:41 ◼   ► And then the other part of fantastic scheduling is called proposals.

00:44:45 ◼   ► We've had these for a while.

00:44:47 ◼   ► I know you've used them and everyone loves them, but this is where, you know,

00:44:49 ◼   ► let's say you're recording a podcast or you're getting a game together and you

00:44:53 ◼   ► send a bunch of times, you only want to do five times instead of giving all the

00:44:57 ◼   ► open slots, you would send this proposals link to people and they would vote on

00:45:02 ◼   ► the best times that work for them.

00:45:03 ◼   ► And then once there's a consensus or unanimous.

00:45:06 ◼   ► Nist between the group, you schedule the event and off you go, or it's been

00:45:10 ◼   ► or, or like the group organizer, if there is no consensus, the group organizer can

00:45:15 ◼   ► look at everybody's responses and say, okay, there is no date that's perfect

00:45:20 ◼   ► for all six people, but this seems like Wednesday at 7 PM seems like the best

00:45:24 ◼   ► time that's it, and then everybody will get a notice that it's Wednesday at seven.

00:45:29 ◼   ► You got it.

00:45:30 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:45:30 ◼   ► So it gives the organizer the power to see the voting.

00:45:33 ◼   ► In fact, there is an option you can opt in where you say, okay, if it's

00:45:36 ◼   ► unanimous, then just pick the first date that happens unanimously, right?

00:45:39 ◼   ► Why even bother giving, why even go, you know, why have a task to confirm the event?

00:45:43 ◼   ► It's unanimous, right?

00:45:44 ◼   ► So yeah, it's really, really powerful and helpful.

00:45:47 ◼   ► And we've added a lot of features since we launched in February to make it better.

00:45:50 ◼   ► And the big one that everyone wants, which is coming is the ability to add

00:45:54 ◼   ► conference calls instantly to these events.

00:45:57 ◼   ► So for example, I give you my fantastic Cal link.

00:46:00 ◼   ► I want to have a zoom call created automatically.

00:46:02 ◼   ► I don't have to go in an extra step and add that zoom call.

00:46:05 ◼   ► You will go, you'll click your time.

00:46:07 ◼   ► It'll create the event and add the conference call automatically in one step.

00:46:11 ◼   ► And how's it going so far now that now that it's in the wild and it's in

00:46:15 ◼   ► the customer's hands, I tested it.

00:46:17 ◼   ► See, the problem with me is I don't collaborate with anybody.

00:46:20 ◼   ► And I understand, and you know, I beta test your stuff and it's like, but you

00:46:26 ◼   ► guys, you know, and the collaboration stuff like this is, this is, this is not

00:46:31 ◼   ► like esoteric calendaring problem.

00:46:34 ◼   ► This is literally at the heart of, this was a problem before computer

00:46:39 ◼   ► calendaring even existed, right?

00:46:40 ◼   ► How do you find times that are good for everybody?

00:46:44 ◼   ► You know, it's, it's a hard problem.

00:46:45 ◼   ► I tested it as best I could without collaborating with people, but I'm curious.

00:46:50 ◼   ► And it is, it is very clever.

00:46:52 ◼   ► And of course, like everything you guys do, which is why I'm such, I really am.

00:46:56 ◼   ► It's not just because you're my friend and you're on the show.

00:46:58 ◼   ► I'm just such a huge friend, a fan of Flexibits design style and language.

00:47:06 ◼   ► You know, it's, everything is exquisite, including, and, and I was, this is one of

00:47:11 ◼   ► the things I was most interested to sort of poke around about.

00:47:13 ◼   ► Like I'm not the best beta tester because I'm not, or at least from your

00:47:17 ◼   ► perspective, I'm not actually exercising the features.

00:47:21 ◼   ► I'm just poking around the UI, but as a company that is so truly focused on

00:47:29 ◼   ► Apple's platforms, right, Mac and iOS, you guys don't do Android software

00:47:34 ◼   ► and you don't do windows software.

00:47:36 ◼   ► You guys are a traditional, the old school, what we used to call indie Mac

00:47:40 ◼   ► developers, but expanded to iOS and focused on those platforms, but

00:47:45 ◼   ► therefore using Apple's frameworks and the state of Apple's user interface

00:47:52 ◼   ► recommendations and design, and going on top of that to build something both

00:47:58 ◼   ► branded in the Flexibits style, but still clearly, oh yeah, this is definitely

00:48:03 ◼   ► a great Mac app or a great iOS app.

00:48:07 ◼   ► I was so curious to see what, you know, like a web app from you guys would look

00:48:10 ◼   ► like, and it is very Flexibits-y.

00:48:14 ◼   ► It is, it's a really, really nice web app experience for the stuff that you, that

00:48:19 ◼   ► has to take place on flexibits.com to do this.

00:48:23 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:48:24 ◼   ► Yeah, we spent a lot of time, our web team is really, we're growing our web team

00:48:28 ◼   ► very quickly, our front and back end teams for the web, and we have a lot more

00:48:31 ◼   ► coming for the web, and I know your heart is in the web as, as mine, and we do have

00:48:36 ◼   ► a lot of web-based stuff coming and we're investing a lot into this web-based

00:48:40 ◼   ► backend, especially so, for example, when I share my Fantastical link with you,

00:48:44 ◼   ► you don't have to even have a device, right?

00:48:46 ◼   ► You just need a web browser.

00:48:47 ◼   ► So we really want to make it so, yeah, you're a Fantastical user.

00:48:50 ◼   ► You're on an Apple device, you're on a Fantastical user and you're using it on

00:48:54 ◼   ► some device, but the people you send your Flexibits, sorry, your Fantastical links

00:48:59 ◼   ► to, they can be on anything because they're just going to open it in a web browser.

00:49:02 ◼   ► I do want to say though, of course, if you're a Fantastical user and we send

00:49:05 ◼   ► you one of these links, you do, of course, have the native experience as well, right?

00:49:09 ◼   ► So you get the best of both worlds.

00:49:11 ◼   ► Yeah, it's, it, it feels very, uh, it's a very seamless back and forth, you know,

00:49:18 ◼   ► where the stuff that you would expect to be able to do right within Fantastical

00:49:21 ◼   ► on your device, you do, and the stuff that has to take place on the web feels

00:49:26 ◼   ► natural to take place on the web, but then it also allows, I forget if you

00:49:30 ◼   ► mentioned this, but this allows you to involve attendees who don't use Fantastical.

00:49:36 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:49:37 ◼   ► And that's part of what we're doing with our growth with not only scheduling,

00:49:40 ◼   ► but the subscription alike is you don't have to just be a Fantastical user

00:49:44 ◼   ► now to get involved with Fantastical.

00:49:46 ◼   ► Right.

00:49:47 ◼   ► So, you know, and you don't, so you therefore don't even have to

00:49:50 ◼   ► have a Mac or an iOS device.

00:49:51 ◼   ► Anything with a web browser and then it introduces, it is interesting.

00:49:57 ◼   ► It's sort of like the, the, I, what iPod was for Apple 20 years ago.

00:50:02 ◼   ► It's sort of like that for, for you guys, you know, it's the glass of ice water and

00:50:08 ◼   ► hell for people who've never experienced.

00:50:09 ◼   ► And I'll tell you, you know, we are Apple guys as you are, and as we'll always be,

00:50:14 ◼   ► and native always rules for us, me personally, but we do have lots and lots

00:50:20 ◼   ► and lots and lots of users who at work will have a windows machine or have an

00:50:24 ◼   ► Android device or whatever, and they really, really, really want to use

00:50:28 ◼   ► Fantastical now, I'm not saying we're going to be coming out with an Android

00:50:31 ◼   ► app any day now, but you know, at some point you want to have everyone be able

00:50:35 ◼   ► to use Fantastical, especially if they don't have a device, so our web, you

00:50:39 ◼   ► know, our, our opening of the web and our platform agnostic, if you will, is

00:50:43 ◼   ► something very important to us because we really do want to have the Fantastical

00:50:46 ◼   ► experience.

00:50:46 ◼   ► What?

00:50:47 ◼   ► Card hop too.

00:50:49 ◼   ► I got to always throw my card up.

00:50:50 ◼   ► Card hop's my, my baby.

00:50:52 ◼   ► Like I just, once you use it and I know you use it as well.

00:50:54 ◼   ► Once you use it, it's just such a great app.

00:50:56 ◼   ► The thing is, is just contacts are so boring.

00:50:58 ◼   ► So I get it's not as exciting as a calendar app, but it's a great app.

00:51:01 ◼   ► Card hop.

00:51:02 ◼   ► Well, I love though, this is a great moment in the history of the talk show is

00:51:09 ◼   ► you, you just assuming that people think calendar apps are pretty exciting and

00:51:14 ◼   ► you, I know you didn't mean that sarcastically.

00:51:16 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:51:16 ◼   ► I totally, oh yeah.

00:51:19 ◼   ► They're so hot, right?

00:51:20 ◼   ► Right.

00:51:20 ◼   ► Like for, for new listeners, somebody else who's never even heard the show,

00:51:24 ◼   ► what do you do?

00:51:25 ◼   ► You know, I have a podcast.

00:51:26 ◼   ► What's it about?

00:51:27 ◼   ► Well, it talks about how exciting calendar apps are.

00:51:29 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:51:30 ◼   ► And then, yeah, but I mean, Fantastical is pretty exciting as is Cardhop, right?

00:51:33 ◼   ► If you're into, if you're into product theory, but I hear you a hundred percent.

00:51:36 ◼   ► I, it's so exciting.

00:51:38 ◼   ► All right.

00:51:38 ◼   ► Hold that thought out.

00:51:39 ◼   ► Cause I want to, I want to come back to this, but let me just take a break here

00:51:41 ◼   ► and thank our next sponsor to our good friends at Linode.

00:51:44 ◼   ► Oh man, do I love Linode because they host Daring Fireball and I never.

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00:53:18 ◼   ► Unless they, you know, gave me a really unpleasant reason why they weren't

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00:54:22 ◼   ► I did not know that this, this is surprise serendipity between guest and, and sponsor.

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00:54:32 ◼   ► That's that's good to hear.

00:54:34 ◼   ► I don't, I'm not surprised though.

00:54:35 ◼   ► I honestly, I, you know, it's not like I go around and ask everybody on the

00:54:39 ◼   ► street, where do you host your website?

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00:54:46 ◼   ► So Flexibit's two main products.

00:54:48 ◼   ► You've got Fantastical and you've, which is calendaring and you've got Cardhop,

00:54:53 ◼   ► which is Contacts front end, and, but it uses the, because, you know, it's not

00:54:57 ◼   ► like you export your contacts from the Apple Contacts app and import them into

00:55:06 ◼   ► Cardhop and now your stuff is in Cardhop.

00:55:08 ◼   ► You guys use the system APIs that let you use the same database of contacts.

00:55:14 ◼   ► So, you know, if for some reason you only use Cardhop on your Mac and you

00:55:21 ◼   ► want to use the Apple Contacts app on your iPhone, or you just set up a new

00:55:26 ◼   ► iPad and you'd have an installed Cardhop yet, your contact, the changes you make

00:55:30 ◼   ► in Cardhop show up, you know, everywhere because it's just, it's, you're just

00:55:35 ◼   ► using these APIs.

00:55:36 ◼   ► That's right.

00:55:37 ◼   ► I personally find, I do, I, I'm not a big contacts user, but cause I, again, I

00:55:42 ◼   ► work by myself, but I love the interface to Cardhop.

00:55:46 ◼   ► I, I, if I had to, if I had to only use one, I would stick with Fantastical

00:55:51 ◼   ► cause I use a calendar more than I use contacts, but I like Cardhops more

00:55:59 ◼   ► than the built-in contacts app more than I like Fantastical more than the

00:56:03 ◼   ► built-in calendar app.

00:56:05 ◼   ► Does that make sense?

00:56:06 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:56:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:56:07 ◼   ► The thing with Cardhop that's, that's still the nut that we're trying to crack

00:56:10 ◼   ► and we're cracking it, we see it working, is you don't think about your contacts

00:56:14 ◼   ► the way you think about your calendars, cause your calendars are events that

00:56:17 ◼   ► happen throughout the day.

00:56:18 ◼   ► So there's time-based things that are happening.

00:56:20 ◼   ► People say, oh, I want to meet up this and that.

00:56:21 ◼   ► But with your contacts, you are interacting with them during the day.

00:56:25 ◼   ► So whether someone gives you a phone number or someone says, oh, give me a

00:56:28 ◼   ► call, or you're going to message someone, there's also actions in Cardhop.

00:56:31 ◼   ► So, you know, love, we have tons of users who love it, of course, but the thing

00:56:35 ◼   ► that we're trying to do is get people to understand this is how easy it is.

00:56:39 ◼   ► Cause I think once people get into the user interface, like you said, they go,

00:56:42 ◼   ► oh, this is a better way.

00:56:43 ◼   ► I think people just don't think about contacts cause it's, it's so boring.

00:56:47 ◼   ► I know back to that boring thing, but it is, it is a boring topic contacts.

00:56:50 ◼   ► So my favorite feature, I really do love it is when you're in Cardhop on the

00:56:55 ◼   ► main screen, there's a, a list of recents and then a very clear search box where

00:57:02 ◼   ► you could search for anything and a plus button, a plus button, you know, what's

00:57:07 ◼   ► your, what's somebody's reasonable guess what that does well, that's make a new

00:57:11 ◼   ► contact.

00:57:11 ◼   ► You hit the plus button and you get a little pop-up menu with two options, new

00:57:16 ◼   ► contact or, and this is where I'm going scan business card.

00:57:20 ◼   ► Yes.

00:57:21 ◼   ► Now two things about this.

00:57:23 ◼   ► Number one, the animation, when you hit the plus button to go to this little pop

00:57:29 ◼   ► up menu is so exquisite.

00:57:31 ◼   ► This is what I'm talking about with, with the design eye and attention to detail.

00:57:35 ◼   ► You guys have number one, the, the little menu with these two options animates out

00:57:41 ◼   ► of the button.

00:57:42 ◼   ► It doesn't just appear it, it grows out of it, which is the style of design like

00:57:48 ◼   ► that.

00:57:48 ◼   ► Going all the way back to the Scott Forstall era at Apple, it's, it's

00:57:53 ◼   ► cinematic design.

00:57:54 ◼   ► It there's, and it's not just showing off and it's not just looking cool to me.

00:57:59 ◼   ► It, it helps emphasize to the user what is going on, where did this menu come from?

00:58:05 ◼   ► It came from the plus button, right?

00:58:07 ◼   ► And it animates out of it.

00:58:08 ◼   ► But while the menu is animating out of it, the plus button rotates to just like 45

00:58:16 ◼   ► degrees to become an X, which means it, which gives you this clue that you could

00:58:22 ◼   ► tap it again and make the menu go away.

00:58:24 ◼   ► I love that you noticed this stuff because, you know, going back to literally

00:58:29 ◼   ► fantastic Cal 1.0 that came out in 2011, which by the way, it's birthday's coming

00:58:33 ◼   ► up soon and I'm so excited.

00:58:34 ◼   ► Yes.

00:58:35 ◼   ► I keep track of my apps, birthdays, the floating words that we had.

00:58:38 ◼   ► You just said it perfectly.

00:58:39 ◼   ► We always try to convey with animation, something that could take a sentence or

00:58:44 ◼   ► two just to say, this is happening.

00:58:46 ◼   ► So it's so cool to know that you noticed that like, it's all deliberate.

00:58:50 ◼   ► I, I would honestly recommend downloading.

00:58:55 ◼   ► I say this all the time about, I say this about like rogue Amoeba software.

00:58:59 ◼   ► I say it about a panic software, but it's like, it's worth downloading and trying

00:59:05 ◼   ► just to play with the user interface and get ideas for how user interface can work.

00:59:10 ◼   ► And just to throw it out there, we're free now, right?

00:59:13 ◼   ► Since we switched to subscription, we have free and we have paid.

00:59:15 ◼   ► So everyone could download any of our apps for free.

00:59:17 ◼   ► They don't even need to pay just even have it to play with it or use it.

00:59:20 ◼   ► Basically we have free versions now completely free.

00:59:23 ◼   ► I, I swear, even if you're thinking, I honestly have no interest in a new

00:59:28 ◼   ► contacts app or calendar app.

00:59:30 ◼   ► I, I, again, I really mean it.

00:59:32 ◼   ► If you care about user user interface design, you should, you should try these

00:59:37 ◼   ► free versions and just poke around and examine some of these details and think

00:59:41 ◼   ► about how many other apps, including last.

00:59:45 ◼   ► A lot of them from Apple don't have such exquisite attention to every single detail.

00:59:51 ◼   ► I just love that little rotating plus button, but scanning the business card.

00:59:55 ◼   ► It would, this it's like, how has this not been a feature ever

01:00:00 ◼   ► since the phones have had cameras?

01:00:02 ◼   ► Right.

01:00:02 ◼   ► Somebody gives you a business card and you actually want to keep it, right?

01:00:06 ◼   ► Like that's the number one thing.

01:00:07 ◼   ► A lot of times you get a business card and you're like, Hey, thanks.

01:00:09 ◼   ► Thanks.

01:00:10 ◼   ► And then as soon as they turn away, you just throw it right in the garbage.

01:00:12 ◼   ► But if it's a business card, you actually do want to keep the contact information

01:00:17 ◼   ► for instead of sitting down and pecking it out, you don't want to sit there and

01:00:22 ◼   ► peck all these details out on your phone.

01:00:25 ◼   ► What do you think?

01:00:25 ◼   ► I used to just think, well, I'll put it in my back pocket.

01:00:28 ◼   ► And when I'm at my Mac, I'll make a new contact and it's like,

01:00:32 ◼   ► ah, you might forget.

01:00:33 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:00:33 ◼   ► It might, you might lose the card.

01:00:34 ◼   ► Just, just point your camera at it.

01:00:37 ◼   ► And it works really well.

01:00:40 ◼   ► Right?

01:00:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:41 ◼   ► Our parser is great.

01:00:42 ◼   ► And you know, now we have the tools to be able to take a visual picture of the car.

01:00:46 ◼   ► We even keep a visual image of the card.

01:00:48 ◼   ► So let's just say it's a cool design or you just want to have it for reference.

01:00:50 ◼   ► We don't, you could throw the card away because you now have a digital copy

01:00:53 ◼   ► visually and actually textually.

01:00:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:56 ◼   ► Uh, and not to get all American psycho into the design of business cards, because

01:01:01 ◼   ► because you can't, because part of the appeal of a truly great card is actually

01:01:06 ◼   ► the quality of the card stock and whether it's like letterpress or something like

01:01:10 ◼   ► that, but I personally, I like the idea of keeping the photo of the card.

01:01:16 ◼   ► Because even though I love you guys, I trust you guys in terms of actually

01:01:22 ◼   ► being able to parse it accurately.

01:01:24 ◼   ► I also love the idea that just in case, you know, there's like a six, but the

01:01:30 ◼   ► font is hard to tell and maybe it get parsed as an eight, right?

01:01:35 ◼   ► That's right.

01:01:36 ◼   ► Like, you know, in some fonts, the six might, you know, and, and the type is

01:01:42 ◼   ► often very, very small on a business card for the obvious reason.

01:01:44 ◼   ► You could see it as a lowercase G then or something like that.

01:01:47 ◼   ► Well, I'm thinking like a phone number, right?

01:01:48 ◼   ► Like you transpose a six into an eight or vice versa or something like that.

01:01:52 ◼   ► And as a one with it has like the top, top part of the, of the.

01:01:55 ◼   ► Right.

01:01:56 ◼   ► Or what about like a font that, that puts a slash in the zero, you

01:02:02 ◼   ► know, to make it look technical.

01:02:03 ◼   ► I love the idea of having a photo of the card as a backup, right.

01:02:06 ◼   ► Just in case, like, so I scan the card a day later, I'm going to, like, I'm

01:02:11 ◼   ► going to call this person and I call them and it's not the right number.

01:02:15 ◼   ► Well, I can still look, even though I've thrown the card away, I can look at it

01:02:18 ◼   ► and say, Oh, I see it actually, the OCR was wrong on this.

01:02:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:22 ◼   ► It was a mis-parse or whatever it is.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Right.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Are you guys using the OCR features from the latest OSs to, to parse or did you,

01:02:30 ◼   ► are you using your own library?

01:02:32 ◼   ► Both.

01:02:33 ◼   ► So we are using the built-in stuff and then obviously we, we train it and we,

01:02:37 ◼   ► we improve it and enhance it on our own, but yeah, no, we're using the built-in

01:02:40 ◼   ► stuff and the reason why we do it on iOS.

01:02:42 ◼   ► So if you haven't noticed the Mac version doesn't have the business

01:02:44 ◼   ► card scanning is the cameras, right?

01:02:47 ◼   ► So on your Mac to get a business card scanned and you have to use one of the,

01:02:50 ◼   ► I know how this is so funny, how we're tying all this right back to the

01:02:53 ◼   ► FaceTime cameras, but the resolution's just not good enough to get a good OCR capture.

01:02:58 ◼   ► Ah, interesting.

01:03:00 ◼   ► Plus you're usually on the go with your phone anyway, when someone hands

01:03:03 ◼   ► you with a business card, so it just kind of makes sense to do it on your phone.

01:03:06 ◼   ► But yeah, we, we, we, if we had better cameras on the Mac that really did it

01:03:09 ◼   ► well, we would have it cause why not just hold the card up and let it work.

01:03:12 ◼   ► And in the future we may do that, but for now it's all on iPhone iPad.

01:03:16 ◼   ► And it's in some ways parsing once you get the OCR part done, right?

01:03:21 ◼   ► Like where you actually just know the, the actual characters on the card, right?

01:03:28 ◼   ► Parsing it into the semantics of, okay, this thing is a person's name.

01:03:34 ◼   ► This thing is a person's job title.

01:03:36 ◼   ► This thing is a person's company.

01:03:38 ◼   ► This is a phone number.

01:03:39 ◼   ► There's a fax number.

01:03:40 ◼   ► This is obviously an email address because it's all these letters and dots

01:03:45 ◼   ► smushed together with an at sign in between them.

01:03:48 ◼   ► I would imagine that one is pretty easy figuring out an email address.

01:03:52 ◼   ► That it's like the card hop part parser when you type stuff in, right?

01:03:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:03:55 ◼   ► We can kind of glean from the formatting, from the spacing, from the positioning,

01:03:59 ◼   ► things like that, what it's going to be, or number of characters,

01:04:02 ◼   ► like a zip code, things like that.

01:04:04 ◼   ► Right.

01:04:04 ◼   ► So like in other words, in card hop, if, if you just met somebody named Jane

01:04:09 ◼   ► Doe and she gave you her email address, you know, and you want to make a new

01:04:15 ◼   ► contact, you can just start typing Jane space, Doe space and her email address.

01:04:21 ◼   ► And if she were already in your contacts, you'd get a match and you'd see it.

01:04:26 ◼   ► But because it's new, you can hit return and it'll just make a new contact with

01:04:31 ◼   ► the first name, Jane last name, Doe and Jane Doe at example.com is the email

01:04:37 ◼   ► address.

01:04:38 ◼   ► That's exactly right.

01:04:39 ◼   ► You want to make some tutorial videos for us?

01:04:41 ◼   ► It's awesome.

01:04:41 ◼   ► Yeah, it'd be great.

01:04:42 ◼   ► Right.

01:04:42 ◼   ► But it's not going to do the, the dumb thing and make a new contact where there's

01:04:48 ◼   ► only one field filled in the first name.

01:04:52 ◼   ► And the first name is Jane space, Doe space, Jane Doe at example.com.

01:04:57 ◼   ► You know, you got it exactly right.

01:04:59 ◼   ► But once you got, you know, you guys have had that natural language parsing all the

01:05:02 ◼   ► way back to the origins of fantastic.

01:05:04 ◼   ► How that was sort of like the first thing I remember as, as a neat feature that you

01:05:09 ◼   ► could just say a podcast with Michael Simmons tomorrow 12, and it'll just parse

01:05:17 ◼   ► it into an event, you know, with all that information in it, that sort of parsing,

01:05:22 ◼   ► it, you know, it probably was pretty reusable scanning the business cards.

01:05:26 ◼   ► Not as much as you think, because since we have to train, since you have to train

01:05:30 ◼   ► it, it's all like computer learning.

01:05:31 ◼   ► It's like, it's, it's all different sets, but I will tell you one thing.

01:05:33 ◼   ► The parser and card hop is like, you know, again, my apps for my babies, but the

01:05:38 ◼   ► car parser and card hop is so magical, but it's also because contacts are very

01:05:43 ◼   ► strict, right?

01:05:44 ◼   ► Your names, you have address, you have phone numbers.

01:05:46 ◼   ► Things can't really be as abstract as events, but I love how in card hop, it

01:05:50 ◼   ► knows whether you're adding, editing, searching or interacting with contacts.

01:05:55 ◼   ► And it literally just knows what to do, you know, nine out of 10 of the times.

01:05:59 ◼   ► And I just, I don't know.

01:06:00 ◼   ► I know it's been like a while since we designed it, developed it, all that, but

01:06:03 ◼   ► I just find it so cool how it just works all the time.

01:06:06 ◼   ► And I know it's my app, but I got to say it.

01:06:08 ◼   ► Here's a question for you.

01:06:09 ◼   ► I'm surprised I never asked this privately, but it's popped into my head.

01:06:13 ◼   ► Now I need to know how many, how many cards did you guys get actual real

01:06:18 ◼   ► world cards to train and test?

01:06:21 ◼   ► We had, I'd probably say a few hundred ish.

01:06:25 ◼   ► I mean, we didn't go crazy.

01:06:26 ◼   ► We didn't have like tons.

01:06:27 ◼   ► Like I had a whole bunch of really old ones from, you know, old Mac world in

01:06:32 ◼   ► person, lots of conferences, speaking at conferences, days, things like, and then

01:06:35 ◼   ► throughout our crew, we had a bunch.

01:06:37 ◼   ► But what we did was we also created some and then printed them out to try to

01:06:42 ◼   ► get weirder fonts and things like that.

01:06:44 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean, we definitely spent a lot of time training and it always gets better.

01:06:47 ◼   ► You know, users will send us an example of a card that doesn't work and we can retrain it.

01:06:51 ◼   ► So we're always wanting to, you know, we're always wanting to make it better.

01:06:54 ◼   ► And when you guys were, it doesn't recognize things.

01:06:56 ◼   ► Like if I put my Twitter handle on my, uh, business card, it'll,

01:07:00 ◼   ► yup, it'll see an app, whatever.

01:07:01 ◼   ► And no, to put that in the right field.

01:07:02 ◼   ► That's it's really cool feature.

01:07:05 ◼   ► So before we leave it, what I want to talk about on this front is the

01:07:08 ◼   ► shift to a subscription pricing.

01:07:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:12 ◼   ► And so it was January, 2020, you said.

01:07:15 ◼   ► Yup.

01:07:16 ◼   ► January 29th, 2020.

01:07:18 ◼   ► I will remember the day forever.

01:07:19 ◼   ► All right.

01:07:19 ◼   ► And so previously, and that, that, that predates the existence of Cardhop.

01:07:26 ◼   ► Am I correct?

01:07:27 ◼   ► No.

01:07:28 ◼   ► So Cardhop came out, so we had Cardhop and Fantasticalis buy once apps, you know, the

01:07:32 ◼   ► old school, right And then when we switched to subscription on January 29, 2020, it was

01:07:37 ◼   ► just Fantasticalis 3 with the Flexibits premium subscription.

01:07:42 ◼   ► Right.

01:07:43 ◼   ► Right.

01:07:43 ◼   ► Then we added a bunch of stuff in the year of COVID of course, COVID hit, you know,

01:07:47 ◼   ► great stuff or not great stuff, but we added great stuff.

01:07:50 ◼   ► COVID wasn't great stuff.

01:07:51 ◼   ► And then I knew what you meant, but you know, it's worth, it's worth, you never

01:07:57 ◼   ► know.

01:07:57 ◼   ► Right.

01:07:57 ◼   ► You never, never know.

01:07:58 ◼   ► You never know.

01:07:59 ◼   ► And, and then the following year in 2021, we brought Cardhop to the Flexibits

01:08:06 ◼   ► premium subscription, no extra price just included, and we added features to allow

01:08:11 ◼   ► Flexi, sorry, Cardhop to be even more powerful and take advantage of the

01:08:14 ◼   ► subscription.

01:08:15 ◼   ► And now everyone who was buying a subscription got both apps, all platforms

01:08:19 ◼   ► and everything.

01:08:20 ◼   ► And then of course this past year we added scheduling again, same price, no increase

01:08:23 ◼   ► because this, the whole point of an ongoing subscription is that you get

01:08:26 ◼   ► ongoing value.

01:08:27 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:28 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:28 ◼   ► So,

01:08:28 ◼   ► And more, more, more, more value for the existing price.

01:08:32 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:08:33 ◼   ► Like we, we don't want to increase our price because that's the whole point why

01:08:37 ◼   ► you keep paying over time as you keep getting more.

01:08:39 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:40 ◼   ► So you can use Fantastical and Cardhop for free.

01:08:44 ◼   ► Correct.

01:08:45 ◼   ► In perpetuity, with a certain subset of features.

01:08:49 ◼   ► So instead of like the old method would be download Fantastical and use it for 30

01:08:55 ◼   ► days and then when the 30 days are over, you, you need to pay whatever the price

01:08:59 ◼   ► is.

01:09:00 ◼   ► And then two years later, whatever, you know, maybe a new dot O release comes out

01:09:08 ◼   ► and it's a paid upgrade for existing users and you can choose to try a trial again or

01:09:13 ◼   ► something.

01:09:14 ◼   ► And then if you want to pay for the upgrade, you pay for the upgrade and now

01:09:17 ◼   ► you're on it.

01:09:17 ◼   ► And that, you know, is the way the software, you know, indie software,

01:09:22 ◼   ► include Apple's own software work like that for a long time.

01:09:26 ◼   ► I mean, they moved away from it early, but it used to have to buy upgrades to the

01:09:29 ◼   ► OS.

01:09:30 ◼   ► I mean, I know it, I.

01:09:32 ◼   ► People, yup.

01:09:34 ◼   ► It, you might find it hard to believe, but like a new version of Mac OS 10 would come

01:09:37 ◼   ► out and it was $129.

01:09:39 ◼   ► And you think, well, that's crazy.

01:09:41 ◼   ► Who would do that?

01:09:42 ◼   ► People would line up at the Apple stores.

01:09:44 ◼   ► It was like the early, it was like the first version of like the iPhone days, but

01:09:48 ◼   ► people would line up on the day that these boxes of, you know, DVDs with the new Mac

01:09:53 ◼   ► OS were coming out.

01:09:54 ◼   ► Those were the days question mark?

01:09:56 ◼   ► Well, I don't know, but I certainly remember them, but it's, there were problems with

01:10:02 ◼   ► that method.

01:10:03 ◼   ► Right.

01:10:03 ◼   ► And I know people got used to it and people don't like change.

01:10:05 ◼   ► There were benefits.

01:10:06 ◼   ► It's, it's one of those issues where there are trade-offs on both sides.

01:10:10 ◼   ► You know, there were definitely good parts of it where once you spent the money, you

01:10:14 ◼   ► kind of owned that version and you had all those features and you could just use it

01:10:19 ◼   ► forever, you know?

01:10:20 ◼   ► And I remember when I worked at bare bones, we'd, you know, in that time, I think the

01:10:23 ◼   ► current versions were like version 6.0 and 6.5 BB edit.

01:10:27 ◼   ► And somebody would, you know, have like a BB edit three from eight or nine years ago

01:10:33 ◼   ► and, you know, have a question about it.

01:10:35 ◼   ► Still got technical support, you know, but then they'd, they'd, you know, they'd ask

01:10:39 ◼   ► about something and you'd say, well, that's a feature in the new version.

01:10:42 ◼   ► It would be a $50 upgrade for you or something like that.

01:10:47 ◼   ► And, you know, and you could choose and, and it was never a hard sell and it wasn't

01:10:52 ◼   ► like, oh, you don't get tech support if you're not on the latest version.

01:10:55 ◼   ► you know, there, there were benefits to it, but the problem, there were problems to it

01:10:58 ◼   ► too, right?

01:10:59 ◼   ► Where you just couldn't, you had to strategize your software development schedule

01:11:05 ◼   ► around the, the need to periodically, you know, regularly have major versions that

01:11:12 ◼   ► were worth an upgrade fee.

01:11:13 ◼   ► Absolutely.

01:11:15 ◼   ► And that doesn't necessarily align with the, the features you'd like to add next.

01:11:23 ◼   ► Right?

01:11:23 ◼   ► Like I, you know, you might want to do some things that aren't really the sort of

01:11:27 ◼   ► things people would pay for or, or justify an upgrade fee, but they seem like they're

01:11:32 ◼   ► would benefit the most people the most.

01:11:34 ◼   ► I need to say this as loud and clear as I can, but like switching to subscription was

01:11:39 ◼   ► the biggest liberation of my designer, creator, director abilities in the history

01:11:46 ◼   ► of my career, because the prior 10 years was trying to schedule features to keep

01:11:52 ◼   ► our business making money, having people rewarded over time, right?

01:11:56 ◼   ► Because you don't want to have someone buy your app and then you're like, oh,

01:11:59 ◼   ► three months later pay again, right?

01:12:00 ◼   ► Like you just don't want that.

01:12:02 ◼   ► And while people will argue, well, isn't that what you're doing with subscription?

01:12:04 ◼   ► No, absolutely not.

01:12:05 ◼   ► Because the app that was 50, we're not charging 50 every two months, right?

01:12:09 ◼   ► You're paying 40 once a year.

01:12:11 ◼   ► So the difference is, is we had to say, oh, there's a great feature.

01:12:15 ◼   ► Hey, John, we've been building this thing.

01:12:17 ◼   ► Hey, we need to wait a year because if we ship it now, we won't make money and we'll

01:12:20 ◼   ► piss every existing customer off because it's too soon.

01:12:23 ◼   ► And we were literally making our roadmaps around big launches.

01:12:27 ◼   ► Now I have an idea.

01:12:29 ◼   ► We're going as soon as I want to go.

01:12:31 ◼   ► We're going as soon as I want to go because we can just say, okay, we'll ship it.

01:12:35 ◼   ► We have ongoing people paying ongoing money.

01:12:37 ◼   ► And it's really the absolute, you probably can look at the last three years of

01:12:41 ◼   ► Flexibits from when we launched subscription and you will see the most amount of

01:12:44 ◼   ► output, the best features and the fastest production we've ever done.

01:12:48 ◼   ► I've definitely noticed that.

01:12:49 ◼   ► And the other thing it lets you do is, is roll out features one at a time.

01:12:53 ◼   ► Right?

01:12:53 ◼   ► Because exactly.

01:12:54 ◼   ► You don't have to pull them all together.

01:12:56 ◼   ► The dot O mentality of version 5.0 will be a paid upgrade meant that there, there,

01:13:03 ◼   ► it's not any sort of nefarious marketing.

01:13:06 ◼   ► It's the way it kind of had to be is you've got to stockpile enough features

01:13:13 ◼   ► to make the, to put in the dot O release so that there's something for everybody.

01:13:17 ◼   ► That's exactly right.

01:13:19 ◼   ► And the other thing is we've actually like with fantastic how scheduling that

01:13:22 ◼   ► came out in February, we've already released some features on the web, like to

01:13:26 ◼   ► improve the web UI, right?

01:13:27 ◼   ► Where we just did it.

01:13:29 ◼   ► We didn't even have an announcement.

01:13:30 ◼   ► We didn't need to, okay.

01:13:31 ◼   ► It just gets better.

01:13:32 ◼   ► Like literally the web version of the product will just get better as things

01:13:36 ◼   ► are done because why would we hold them back for three months or even just to

01:13:40 ◼   ► say, let's say we even want to just have a 3.1 update to get some press or to say,

01:13:44 ◼   ► Oh, look at all the things we've done.

01:13:46 ◼   ► Right.

01:13:46 ◼   ► Right.

01:13:46 ◼   ► We don't need to do that anymore because our customers are paying us ongoing

01:13:50 ◼   ► and we reward them in real time.

01:13:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:51 ◼   ► And I know not, it's awesome.

01:13:53 ◼   ► I know not everybody is going in that direction and I know

01:13:56 ◼   ► that there's hybrid approaches.

01:13:57 ◼   ► The excellent, excellent app agenda has, has a sort of hybrid approach.

01:14:02 ◼   ► I know sketch the, the drawing and I don't even know how, I don't know how to define

01:14:09 ◼   ► sketch, but it is design app design app.

01:14:11 ◼   ► That's a perfect way to put it has had a sort of hybrid approach where you can pay

01:14:17 ◼   ► and then new, new versions come out and they might have some features that you're.

01:14:23 ◼   ► What you've already paid don't include, but you can get the new version of the

01:14:27 ◼   ► app, but because your license doesn't include those features, they're sort of

01:14:31 ◼   ► X'd out or grayed out.

01:14:34 ◼   ► And, you know, I'm not saying there's one right way to do it, but I, I look at like

01:14:39 ◼   ► the sketch style of doing it and I think, well, that's a lot of engineering work

01:14:42 ◼   ► that you, it's no fun, right?

01:14:45 ◼   ► And it's, you know, because now you've got to have these, if thens all over the

01:14:50 ◼   ► code of what, you know, what level of licensing a person is at, whereas the, I

01:14:57 ◼   ► think they moved away from it completely now, I feel like.

01:15:00 ◼   ► I don't remember that.

01:15:01 ◼   ► I could be, and maybe like the web, they have the web version now that's more of a

01:15:05 ◼   ► like collaboration platform, but either way, no, I, your point well taken.

01:15:08 ◼   ► And you're right.

01:15:09 ◼   ► The thing is, is I would like to know, cause it's an experiment, how long that

01:15:13 ◼   ► can be sustained by agenda.

01:15:15 ◼   ► And there's, there's other companies doing it too.

01:15:17 ◼   ► I think panic does it with, with Nova.

01:15:19 ◼   ► At some point when there's a major bug in the OS and it requires a rewrite of the

01:15:24 ◼   ► app, how do you handle that?

01:15:26 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's wrong.

01:15:27 ◼   ► I actually love it.

01:15:28 ◼   ► And if we could do it perfectly, I think we would.

01:15:30 ◼   ► But I think long-term it falls apart, but here's the thing it's too fresh.

01:15:34 ◼   ► We'll see in five years and we can look back.

01:15:36 ◼   ► Right.

01:15:36 ◼   ► But the, it, yeah, Nova is a good example too.

01:15:39 ◼   ► I like it.

01:15:39 ◼   ► I like it.

01:15:40 ◼   ► And it is, it is, it is you, I like it too.

01:15:43 ◼   ► I like it.

01:15:43 ◼   ► And I certainly like it in theory because it is user-friendly.

01:15:47 ◼   ► It is, it is the developer trying to, to give the best value and, and, and let

01:15:55 ◼   ► people pay for what they want to.

01:15:57 ◼   ► But I guess what the bottom line is that what it comes down to is that writing apps

01:16:02 ◼   ► is like, ultimately like nothing else on the planet.

01:16:06 ◼   ► It's not like writing, like making a movie where you, you make a movie and then you

01:16:11 ◼   ► edit the movie and then the movie is out and it's done right.

01:16:15 ◼   ► And you can be George Lucas and revisit it and re-edit it and add new special

01:16:23 ◼   ► effects, but you're effectively just making a new movie, right?

01:16:26 ◼   ► Software.

01:16:27 ◼   ► And it's not like writing a book.

01:16:29 ◼   ► It's not like running a restaurant where you order the food and drinks that you

01:16:33 ◼   ► want, and then you get a bill for what you've ordered and you pay the bill and

01:16:38 ◼   ► then you get up and leave and you could never, you know, it's not, it, it is.

01:16:43 ◼   ► It is, I think this is where I'm going is ultimately, even if it's an app and it

01:16:48 ◼   ► isn't, it doesn't even have a web component, it is still sort of a service

01:16:53 ◼   ► where the service is the continuing development and bug fixing and adapting

01:16:59 ◼   ► to new operating systems and new hardware and keeping that process going.

01:17:05 ◼   ► It, if you think of it as paying for a service, it, it, that's really sort of

01:17:11 ◼   ► what it is and a simple subscription model.

01:17:14 ◼   ► And that's the thing that I, that, that to me is one of the big benefits, not,

01:17:18 ◼   ► not from your perspective of running the business and planning the roadmap,

01:17:22 ◼   ► but as a user, it is so simple.

01:17:25 ◼   ► You, you pay 40 bucks a year to flex a bits and you get all the features.

01:17:30 ◼   ► And if you don't pay, you get a very clearly delineated subset of those features.

01:17:36 ◼   ► And that's it.

01:17:37 ◼   ► I agree.

01:17:38 ◼   ► And you know, your, your analogy is really good.

01:17:40 ◼   ► Cause I was just thinking, let's say you are George Lucas and you sell a copy of

01:17:43 ◼   ► star Wars on Blu-ray, right?

01:17:45 ◼   ► And now it's now the Blu-ray players don't work anymore.

01:17:48 ◼   ► I demand, do you demand that you get that movie on digital?

01:17:52 ◼   ► Oh, that's a perfect example.

01:17:54 ◼   ► Cause I own, I counted one time when we moved.

01:17:56 ◼   ► Oh, my DVDs in the basement are play, Blu-rays are plenty.

01:17:59 ◼   ► The DVDs and Blu-rays are plentiful.

01:18:01 ◼   ► No, I had the VHS.

01:18:02 ◼   ► Remember they came out with an exquisite VHS box set.

01:18:05 ◼   ► Yes.

01:18:06 ◼   ► Yes.

01:18:07 ◼   ► It was a really excellent VHS box set.

01:18:09 ◼   ► It was beautiful.

01:18:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:11 ◼   ► So I had, I had, I think I had the star Wars trilogy on VHS at least once.

01:18:17 ◼   ► Also an older version that fell off the back of a truck.

01:18:20 ◼   ► I had it on DVD and then I had it on Blu-ray and because I don't have a

01:18:25 ◼   ► Blu-ray hooked up to my TV anymore.

01:18:28 ◼   ► I've also repurchased them on iTunes.

01:18:31 ◼   ► So I've, I've paid for the whole thing.

01:18:33 ◼   ► VHS, DVD, Blu-ray and iTunes.

01:18:36 ◼   ► So that's four times at least.

01:18:38 ◼   ► No, absolutely.

01:18:39 ◼   ► And the thing is like where our apps, so, you know, when we switched to

01:18:42 ◼   ► subscription, we actually unlocked all of the fantastic Cal two features

01:18:45 ◼   ► for prior users for free, right?

01:18:47 ◼   ► Right.

01:18:48 ◼   ► And that was the way we handled it.

01:18:49 ◼   ► We said, okay, all the features you've paid for, you get for free.

01:18:51 ◼   ► You get to keep them all the new stuff you got to pay.

01:18:53 ◼   ► But we had a lot of people who just wanted the old app, but if we had left

01:18:57 ◼   ► the old app on the app store and then bugs came and the app died, that would

01:19:01 ◼   ► be even worse, right?

01:19:02 ◼   ► So they get all of their features in the new ongoing supported app.

01:19:06 ◼   ► And to me, I feel that's the best of both worlds because you're in the new stuff.

01:19:10 ◼   ► And if you don't want to buy the new, new, new stuff or the different stuff, then

01:19:14 ◼   ► don't, it is important to keep your customers happy, obviously, but you know,

01:19:18 ◼   ► you can't make everyone happy.

01:19:19 ◼   ► Well, that's the similarity to any good business, right?

01:19:22 ◼   ► Like that's the part where being a software developer is exactly like

01:19:25 ◼   ► running a restaurant or running a movie theater or running a movie studio or

01:19:30 ◼   ► anything, making or selling cars.

01:19:33 ◼   ► And it doesn't matter if you make your customers happy.

01:19:36 ◼   ► That's generally a very good way to build a sustainable business, you know?

01:19:40 ◼   ► And anything where you're like, ah, screw the customers, we could do this.

01:19:45 ◼   ► It is, you can get away with it for a while there.

01:19:48 ◼   ► You could argue that, you know, and if you gain a monopoly, you know, like

01:19:53 ◼   ► cable companies come to mind, you know, you can sustain it for a very long time

01:19:58 ◼   ► and make mountains and mountains of money.

01:20:00 ◼   ► But in general, keeping your customers happy and thinking about, you know, and,

01:20:05 ◼   ► and sort of cooking the food you yourself would like to eat or making the sort of

01:20:12 ◼   ► movies that you yourself would like to watch or making the calendar and contacts

01:20:18 ◼   ► app that you yourself would want to use and have is a good way to build a

01:20:24 ◼   ► sustainable business and be happy just as, as you know, being, enjoying what you do

01:20:30 ◼   ► for a living here, here.

01:20:32 ◼   ► I mean, that's what we do.

01:20:33 ◼   ► And, you know, again, you can't make everyone happy and you have to be careful

01:20:36 ◼   ► not to modify your business to apply to people who don't care if you're in

01:20:41 ◼   ► business.

01:20:41 ◼   ► Like I find that the people who went the craziest didn't actually

01:20:44 ◼   ► care if we were in business, right?

01:20:46 ◼   ► They just wanted what they wanted.

01:20:47 ◼   ► So if you actually then bend your business to people who don't care, you're

01:20:51 ◼   ► in business, it's not a good business to be in.

01:20:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:53 ◼   ► So I guess that is also a lesson.

01:20:55 ◼   ► I mean, that's the thing.

01:20:56 ◼   ► And I, and I'm sure with the size of the, this podcast audience, that there are

01:21:02 ◼   ► people who listen, who really hate subscription price, Mac and iOS software.

01:21:06 ◼   ► Still, I get it.

01:21:08 ◼   ► I understand that I get it too.

01:21:09 ◼   ► But I think that the, the lesson for running a business is you can't please

01:21:15 ◼   ► everybody all the time.

01:21:17 ◼   ► And sometimes you need to make changes that will greatly displease existing

01:21:22 ◼   ► customers.

01:21:23 ◼   ► I mean, exactly.

01:21:24 ◼   ► No, exactly.

01:21:25 ◼   ► You can't, you could not please a hundred percent of the people, but we have a free

01:21:29 ◼   ► version.

01:21:29 ◼   ► So why isn't that good for those people?

01:21:31 ◼   ► Or we, if they had F2, a fantastic L2, they opened all of the features.

01:21:35 ◼   ► So why isn't that good enough for them?

01:21:36 ◼   ► Like we go through the list of like, well, what did we offer?

01:21:38 ◼   ► What did we do?

01:21:39 ◼   ► How flexible were we in understanding?

01:21:41 ◼   ► Were we, wow, a lot.

01:21:42 ◼   ► So who's left?

01:21:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:43 ◼   ► I I'm certainly guilty of this.

01:21:46 ◼   ► I mean, you can look at the design of my website and, and tell, you know, that,

01:21:51 ◼   ► that this is true, that I'm guilty of it, that this is the way it's always been.

01:21:54 ◼   ► This is so therefore it's the way it should stay.

01:21:56 ◼   ► If you change your website, I think I'll freak out.

01:21:58 ◼   ► No, it'll happen.

01:21:59 ◼   ► What it is.

01:21:59 ◼   ► Well, it'll happen.

01:22:00 ◼   ► Not for a while, not for a while.

01:22:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:22:02 ◼   ► No, no, no promises, but seeing the way things are going, probably not for a while.

01:22:05 ◼   ► Um, which is fine with me, but you can get with business models too.

01:22:10 ◼   ► You can get caught up with, this is the way we've always done it and.

01:22:14 ◼   ► Optimizing for not upsetting the apple cart of the existing customer base.

01:22:21 ◼   ► Who's you know, and, and it's human nature.

01:22:23 ◼   ► Most people don't like change, you know, and if this is the way it's always been,

01:22:27 ◼   ► that's the way it should always be.

01:22:28 ◼   ► But you might be missing out on what you need to do to adapt to the future.

01:22:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I could see that.

01:22:36 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break here.

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01:23:39 ◼   ► which is still exists for the Mac, but like a drag and drop really accessible way of

01:23:44 ◼   ► building apps, but on the web.

01:23:46 ◼   ► The result is that you can build production grade business apps.

01:23:51 ◼   ► These aren't like, like this is a prototype for what the app should be and then you

01:23:56 ◼   ► hand it off.

01:23:56 ◼   ► No retool lets you build the real production ready app, but with the ease of use of

01:24:04 ◼   ► like prototyping tools, it is a great combination of being easy and obvious, very

01:24:09 ◼   ► visual, giving you access to code when you need it to do things that absolutely

01:24:14 ◼   ► require writing code.

01:24:15 ◼   ► But the result isn't just like, here's a bunch of slides you can hand off to a

01:24:20 ◼   ► developer team and then they can build it for real.

01:24:23 ◼   ► It is real.

01:24:23 ◼   ► It really is.

01:24:24 ◼   ► And they are production grade business apps and you don't need to search the web for

01:24:30 ◼   ► component libraries and debug dependencies or write lots of boilerplate code.

01:24:35 ◼   ► It's all built in to the retool IDE.

01:24:39 ◼   ► Thousands of teams at companies like Amazon, DoorDash, Volvo, and Brex collaborate

01:24:46 ◼   ► around custom built retool apps to solve internal workflows.

01:24:50 ◼   ► To learn more, go to retool, R E T O O L dot com retool.com.

01:24:57 ◼   ► That's another one.

01:24:57 ◼   ► No custom slug for the show.

01:24:59 ◼   ► They'll know you came from here with the big, big surge in traffic.

01:25:02 ◼   ► I've poked around at this.

01:25:03 ◼   ► They've been sponsoring for a while.

01:25:04 ◼   ► It blows my mind how good this is.

01:25:07 ◼   ► I really, really encourage you to check this out.

01:25:10 ◼   ► If you have the need for some sort of, you have the idea for some sort of a

01:25:14 ◼   ► collaboration tool for your team, but you don't want to pay big bucks to hire

01:25:18 ◼   ► someone to build it.

01:25:19 ◼   ► I swear you check out retool.com and you could probably build it yourself.

01:25:23 ◼   ► Um, Hey, so the last thing I want to talk about is speaking of panic.

01:25:28 ◼   ► Who's who's come up, come up a couple of times on this show.

01:25:31 ◼   ► They're long awaited play date has started shipping.

01:25:36 ◼   ► Can I just laugh about the list we can drop with an hour, right?

01:25:39 ◼   ► Like you talked about the, we got to schedule a lot of time for this one.

01:25:44 ◼   ► And like, where did the, where did the time go?

01:25:46 ◼   ► That's the story of my life.

01:25:49 ◼   ► Anyway, that was the, yeah, right.

01:25:50 ◼   ► Right at the play date for sure, because that's a good one.

01:25:52 ◼   ► Well, and it's purely again, just happy coincidence.

01:25:55 ◼   ► This is just, it just shows that this was meant to be, you happen to already

01:25:59 ◼   ► have your hands on a play date.

01:26:00 ◼   ► Yes.

01:26:01 ◼   ► I was helping test for a bit and it is delightful and everything you'd expect

01:26:06 ◼   ► from a panic handheld video game.

01:26:08 ◼   ► It's actually more than a video game though.

01:26:11 ◼   ► Cause like we were talking earlier, like the SDK, the tools, everything that

01:26:15 ◼   ► they're providing to be able to build on this thing is what you'd expect from

01:26:19 ◼   ► panic because it's beyond what you'd expect.

01:26:21 ◼   ► So like someone's already developing like a calendar context, obviously

01:26:25 ◼   ► very basic, it is what it is, right?

01:26:27 ◼   ► You have a couple of buttons in the crank and the joy pad, but like that's the

01:26:31 ◼   ► kind of tools that they've created to give you the ability to not just build

01:26:36 ◼   ► games, someone's building an MP3 player for it, from my understanding, and like.

01:26:40 ◼   ► It really has great development tools and the apps and games and products that are

01:26:46 ◼   ► coming out for it are a testament to that.

01:26:47 ◼   ► I would say.

01:26:48 ◼   ► So their development story, and I think, I kind of think I, you know, I, you know,

01:26:54 ◼   ► I could ask, get cable and hit friends and from panic on the show and do a whole

01:26:59 ◼   ► episode and probably will sooner rather than later.

01:27:02 ◼   ► I hope you do.

01:27:03 ◼   ► But from the outside, it seems like it was the software that was holding

01:27:09 ◼   ► it up and I know they even blogged about it and it just, it's like, oh man.

01:27:13 ◼   ► Like so bad.

01:27:15 ◼   ► Like they got like the first batch of production units a couple months ago and

01:27:18 ◼   ► there was like a problem with them and they had to like send them back to

01:27:20 ◼   ► Malaysia and have something, you know.

01:27:22 ◼   ► Hardware is hard.

01:27:23 ◼   ► Hardware is hard.

01:27:23 ◼   ► Hardware is hard.

01:27:25 ◼   ► When you get into hardware, all bets are off.

01:27:28 ◼   ► That's where all the Kickstarters all fail and have problems.

01:27:30 ◼   ► Hardware is hard.

01:27:31 ◼   ► Right.

01:27:32 ◼   ► There's like, there's like the adage from Alan Kay, the great luminary of computer

01:27:37 ◼   ► science and Steve Jobs most famously was a big, he was a friend of Alan Kay and

01:27:41 ◼   ► cited it at the debut of the iPhone, which was that people who really care about

01:27:46 ◼   ► software should build their own hardware, I believe.

01:27:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:27:49 ◼   ► It was something like that, but yeah, hardware really has always been, cause

01:27:52 ◼   ► I've dabbled in hardware with a couple of companies I've worked at and done stuff.

01:27:55 ◼   ► It is always so complex and things like the supply chain issue and parts and

01:28:01 ◼   ► things fail and batteries and on and on and on, right?

01:28:03 ◼   ► Software is you just find the bug and you figure it out and fix it.

01:28:07 ◼   ► So it's like my corollary or converse or inverse, I forget the logical terms, but

01:28:13 ◼   ► like a corollary to the Alan Kay adage is that people who think software is hard

01:28:18 ◼   ► should try building hardware.

01:28:20 ◼   ► I love that.

01:28:21 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it's true.

01:28:22 ◼   ► Cause we're like, we have a great in software world, right?

01:28:25 ◼   ► You know, just make it, make it happen and then just poke at it until it works.

01:28:29 ◼   ► It never involves, no matter how bad the bug, how unexpected, how much it's not

01:28:35 ◼   ► even your fault, how poorly timed the bug could have been, it never, with software,

01:28:41 ◼   ► it never involves packing up a bunch of crates and shipping them back to Malaysia

01:28:47 ◼   ► and then waiting for them to be fixed over there and then shipped back to you.

01:28:51 ◼   ► During, during a worldwide,

01:28:54 ◼   ► right, during the whole supply chain issue.

01:28:57 ◼   ► Right.

01:28:58 ◼   ► During this whole supply chain issue.

01:28:59 ◼   ► It was just incredible.

01:29:01 ◼   ► The fact that they shipped them, cause I know they're getting in people's hands

01:29:03 ◼   ► now, I've had a bunch of friends tell me, you know, they're excited.

01:29:06 ◼   ► They, they actually, for a small company as they are for a company with so much

01:29:11 ◼   ► care and heart, they did an incredible job to pull this thing off.

01:29:15 ◼   ► And I'm not just saying it cause they're friends.

01:29:16 ◼   ► I'm not just saying it cause we love them, but like, it is actually a

01:29:19 ◼   ► really big thing that they pulled off.

01:29:21 ◼   ► It reminds me of when we were like the nineties, you know, maybe even going to

01:29:29 ◼   ► the eighties where it's like a small team of enthusiastic people could just build

01:29:37 ◼   ► a new hardware thing, a computer device.

01:29:40 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:29:41 ◼   ► And it happened all the time back then.

01:29:43 ◼   ► Right.

01:29:44 ◼   ► And it's like, you didn't have to be a fortune 10, you know, one of the 10

01:29:51 ◼   ► biggest companies in the entire world to launch a new hardware platform.

01:29:57 ◼   ► Right.

01:29:57 ◼   ► And you, eh, you hear things like meta or Facebook, I'm still going to call

01:30:01 ◼   ► them Facebook screw them.

01:30:02 ◼   ► On their, on their financials this week, they said that they spent $3 billion

01:30:07 ◼   ► in the quarter on R and D for their metaverse platform that's forthcoming.

01:30:12 ◼   ► And $10 billion over the last year, eh, you know, just enormous sums.

01:30:19 ◼   ► I mean, $13 billion on a thing that's, that's not shipping and

01:30:23 ◼   ► isn't, won't be shipping for years.

01:30:24 ◼   ► They're not talking about like the headsets that are already shipping.

01:30:26 ◼   ► And like Tony Fidell had a tweet that I just loved where he, he like linked

01:30:31 ◼   ► to it and just said the entire iPhone didn't cost anywhere near $3 billion

01:30:35 ◼   ► to develop the whole thing over the whole process.

01:30:38 ◼   ► Like, yeah.

01:30:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:38 ◼   ► I'm not, I'm just saying though, that things have gotten big and it's

01:30:41 ◼   ► hard and it's like, oh, imagine if like a small company, privately held company

01:30:48 ◼   ► that's been around and, and has like, and I've, I know them, I know a bunch

01:30:52 ◼   ► of people who work there, I visited their office, they're such great people.

01:30:55 ◼   ► They're just good, good people.

01:30:56 ◼   ► And they have such great camaraderie in between them.

01:30:59 ◼   ► But imagine if a team like that could build like a new hardware platform to

01:31:02 ◼   ► do something as silly and fun as play black and white games, you know?

01:31:07 ◼   ► And it's like, uh, yeah, well, they've done it.

01:31:09 ◼   ► They've pulled it off.

01:31:10 ◼   ► They're shipping it.

01:31:11 ◼   ► It's great.

01:31:11 ◼   ► The thing I want to mention though, you mentioned that their software strategy

01:31:14 ◼   ► is great and I have followed along.

01:31:16 ◼   ► I have like a developer account with them.

01:31:19 ◼   ► I don't, I've, my personal play date is a few thousand down on the list of coming,

01:31:25 ◼   ► but I'll be patient.

01:31:26 ◼   ► I can wait, but I, you know, I'm very much looking forward to it, but I've followed

01:31:30 ◼   ► along with the development thing all along.

01:31:31 ◼   ► And I would say in broad strokes, what they have is three tiers of development.

01:31:35 ◼   ► They have a C API, which is what you would, it's correct.

01:31:39 ◼   ► Which what you would think would be the only one, right?

01:31:42 ◼   ► Where you, you program in C and they have libraries that, you know, help you, you

01:31:48 ◼   ► know, do things like play sound and, and draw graphics on the screen and get input

01:31:53 ◼   ► from the buttons and of course the crank.

01:31:55 ◼   ► But then they have a Lua programming interface, which is, I think it's fair to

01:32:00 ◼   ► say again, I haven't written a play date game, so I can't verify it, but it's

01:32:06 ◼   ► effectively like the C interface, but slower because instead of being compiled

01:32:11 ◼   ► C code, it's the Lua scripting language.

01:32:14 ◼   ► Right.

01:32:15 ◼   ► So Lua is the speedy development one, but it's pretty performance, not great due to

01:32:21 ◼   ► garbage collection, but then you use C obviously, if you're, if you're familiar

01:32:26 ◼   ► with C or if you want to learn C, I guess, because you actually get the performance

01:32:30 ◼   ► with C because it's native C code.

01:32:32 ◼   ► And you get the manual, you get all the benefits of manual memory

01:32:37 ◼   ► management and all of the penalties.

01:32:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:40 ◼   ► They got the garbage collection stuff in Lua is it's hit or miss.

01:32:44 ◼   ► The performance is just hit or miss.

01:32:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:46 ◼   ► And it's so depending on the type of game you want to make, if you're really pressing

01:32:50 ◼   ► the limits of the play date hardware, you're probably going to have to get dip

01:32:53 ◼   ► into C at some point and the games, I would guess, I don't know, I you've played

01:32:59 ◼   ► it, I don't know, but I would guess that the games that seem the most technically

01:33:05 ◼   ► fascinating are probably written in C.

01:33:08 ◼   ► That doesn't mean they're the most fun, right?

01:33:09 ◼   ► Because like, you know.

01:33:11 ◼   ► Yup, exactly.

01:33:11 ◼   ► It doesn't affect what the game design or the execution is.

01:33:14 ◼   ► It's just performance.

01:33:15 ◼   ► Right.

01:33:15 ◼   ► Like, you know, remember like when, or, or look at Wordle, I'm not, Wordle probably

01:33:20 ◼   ► wouldn't be that great of a game.

01:33:21 ◼   ► Well, maybe it could be on play date, but you don't really need a keyboard.

01:33:26 ◼   ► You're not typing.

01:33:27 ◼   ► So I guess you could crank out or D plus around a keyboard.

01:33:31 ◼   ► But the crank really is the way to go.

01:33:32 ◼   ► Cause think of it, it's like swiping, right?

01:33:34 ◼   ► It's like scrolling up or down or left or right or whatever.

01:33:36 ◼   ► Yeah, you can, you can really do a lot with the crank.

01:33:38 ◼   ► My point is the Wordle became a worldwide sensation that gets jokes made about it

01:33:43 ◼   ► on late night talk shows.

01:33:44 ◼   ► And there's like every other, at least every other week there now there's a

01:33:49 ◼   ► Wordle cartoon in the New Yorker.

01:33:51 ◼   ► A game of Wordle's magnitude could easily be written in Lua.

01:33:55 ◼   ► I mean, like you could be like a really sloppy, lazy loop, you know, wasting as

01:34:00 ◼   ► much memory as you can in Lua.

01:34:03 ◼   ► And it would still run fine on a play date.

01:34:06 ◼   ► Going back a couple of years on iPhone, remember the flappy bird, which was

01:34:10 ◼   ► an absolute sensation, you could easily write flappy bird in Lua and not run

01:34:16 ◼   ► into memory constraints, you know, it's, you know, so I think there's going to be,

01:34:20 ◼   ► you know, maybe the most fun games will be written in Lua because that's, you

01:34:24 ◼   ► know, it's the fastest way to develop.

01:34:25 ◼   ► That's, but that's, that's a twofold development strategy that sounds like,

01:34:30 ◼   ► wow, that's a lot of work for a small company.

01:34:32 ◼   ► This is the big one.

01:34:33 ◼   ► Let's go to the big one.

01:34:34 ◼   ► This is the big one.

01:34:35 ◼   ► I think this one's amazing.

01:34:36 ◼   ► It's called Playdate Pulp.

01:34:39 ◼   ► Yup.

01:34:40 ◼   ► And to explain this.

01:34:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:43 ◼   ► So it's a web based game editor.

01:34:44 ◼   ► And the thing is, is Cable and I are from the old days, as are you, you know,

01:34:47 ◼   ► Commodore 64, Amiga, where, as you said, the teams had all these great, crazy,

01:34:52 ◼   ► wacky ideas that were just like, yeah, we're going to do this and we did it.

01:34:54 ◼   ► Pulp to me is of the Anthem and spirit of, I guess we'll call them 80s kids.

01:35:00 ◼   ► Like us, like it is a full web-based.

01:35:03 ◼   ► And when I say web-based, you got to just go to like the website.

01:35:05 ◼   ► It's like play.date/pulp or something like that.

01:35:08 ◼   ► I don't remember, but basically it's a full web based game editor that

01:35:14 ◼   ► allows you to do pixel art, the music, scripting, sprite placement,

01:35:21 ◼   ► like it's just crazy good.

01:35:23 ◼   ► And like you use it, it has undo.

01:35:25 ◼   ► You got to check it out.

01:35:26 ◼   ► I just, I keep raving about it, but it is, it is so crazy cool that I'm like,

01:35:32 ◼   ► why did they do this?

01:35:33 ◼   ► But I think the reason why they did it was because a, they wanted to and could,

01:35:36 ◼   ► which is great, that's what indie developers do, but B I think it would

01:35:40 ◼   ► get certain people that don't want to look at a text editor, you know, input,

01:35:44 ◼   ► if you will, to writing code to go, Oh, I can just lay some stuff out.

01:35:48 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

01:35:48 ◼   ► I can just write some basic scripting.

01:35:50 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

01:35:50 ◼   ► Look, I have a game.

01:35:51 ◼   ► I have a game going.

01:35:52 ◼   ► I think it really is the most incredible entry to the play date to just

01:35:56 ◼   ► dabble, scroll around and make a game.

01:36:00 ◼   ► And by the way, you can either side load with a cable or wirelessly through the

01:36:05 ◼   ► web.

01:36:05 ◼   ► It is just, it's everything you'd expect in some crazy harebrained.

01:36:10 ◼   ► Anyway, that's great.

01:36:12 ◼   ► I can keep going.

01:36:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:36:13 ◼   ► And you know, and they've got the native environment.

01:36:15 ◼   ► That's the, you mentioned it's, it really was by coincidence, but you

01:36:19 ◼   ► mentioned Nova, which is their code editor for the Mac, sort of the new

01:36:23 ◼   ► version of what they used to have called Coda, but it's all new and you

01:36:27 ◼   ► could use it for any kind of text editing that programming sort of thing

01:36:31 ◼   ► that you would want to do.

01:36:33 ◼   ► But because they have their own text editor for the Mac Nova, which is

01:36:38 ◼   ► really good, really rich, really worth checking out and panicked to the max in

01:36:43 ◼   ► terms of how it's designed and looks and organized, but they've made it into

01:36:47 ◼   ► IDE for playdate development.

01:36:49 ◼   ► You know, and if you're never going to write a playdate app, you can use Nova

01:36:54 ◼   ► to make a website or to write shell scripts or markdown documents or whatever

01:36:59 ◼   ► it is that you might be doing.

01:37:01 ◼   ► And the IDE stuff doesn't get in the way, but if you want to write a playdate

01:37:04 ◼   ► app in C or Lua, you could do it and it integrates and they have a simulator,

01:37:10 ◼   ► you know, just like running the iPhone simulator.

01:37:12 ◼   ► So you can like actually just like build and run your game and it pops up on your

01:37:17 ◼   ► Mac and a little fake on-screen playdate and get it running, which is obviously,

01:37:22 ◼   ► you know, before the actual hardware was able to ship to developers, you know,

01:37:26 ◼   ► it was the only way to do it, you know?

01:37:28 ◼   ► So, all these games and apps have been in development from people who

01:37:32 ◼   ► haven't even touched a playdate yet.

01:37:34 ◼   ► You know, and I know some of the developers like you and testers have

01:37:38 ◼   ► had pre-release hardware for a while, but there are also, I don't know how

01:37:43 ◼   ► many, hundreds, thousands, who knows how many people are doing this already, who

01:37:47 ◼   ► could be building these things right there in Nova and testing on the simulator.

01:37:53 ◼   ► It's so much richer than it could be, you know, and it would have to be.

01:37:57 ◼   ► And the simulator looks, you know, so nice.

01:38:01 ◼   ► It's just like everything Panic does where it's like, well, if we're going

01:38:04 ◼   ► to build it, well, we should make it look as good as it possibly can.

01:38:07 ◼   ► But the pulp thing, and it reminds me, you know, to throw back to the last

01:38:12 ◼   ► sponsor, Retool, it is, Retool is super, super impressive for building like

01:38:16 ◼   ► business apps in the web with all of these components, like full featured,

01:38:20 ◼   ► like no joke, just drag them around.

01:38:23 ◼   ► And pulp is like that for building playdate games and apps, if your idea is

01:38:27 ◼   ► more app-like, it's just so super impressive and it just looks so cool.

01:38:32 ◼   ► They kind of make the whole user interface for playdate pulp on the web

01:38:36 ◼   ► looks playdate style.

01:38:38 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

01:38:40 ◼   ► Right?

01:38:40 ◼   ► You know, it reminds me of it, I want to go back to the Commodore 64 Amiga

01:38:42 ◼   ► days, it really reminds me there was like pinball construction kit, the

01:38:45 ◼   ► world of this video game, all these construction kits that I remember when

01:38:48 ◼   ► I was young, I didn't really know what I was doing.

01:38:50 ◼   ► You could just click around and, oh, I need that.

01:38:51 ◼   ► I put that there.

01:38:52 ◼   ► Oh, I do this.

01:38:52 ◼   ► And then when interpret everything you did and turn it into the bundle or the game.

01:38:56 ◼   ► It is so frigging cool.

01:38:58 ◼   ► I love it.

01:39:00 ◼   ► I love it.

01:39:00 ◼   ► I love it.

01:39:00 ◼   ► A pinball construction kit.

01:39:02 ◼   ► I totally remember that.

01:39:03 ◼   ► Haven't thought about it in decades, but you remember it, right?

01:39:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:06 ◼   ► There was, that was a good one.

01:39:07 ◼   ► There were some other construction kits like that, you know?

01:39:10 ◼   ► And there, you know, like there are whole games where the game

01:39:12 ◼   ► actually is sort of like that.

01:39:14 ◼   ► There's like the railroad construction kit and like build your own roller

01:39:18 ◼   ► coaster type games where the game is organizing like the tracks and building

01:39:23 ◼   ► a thing, but you're really, if you think about it, it's not that you're playing

01:39:26 ◼   ► a game, it's that you're making a game.

01:39:28 ◼   ► Right?

01:39:29 ◼   ► And it's so fun to make the game that it actually feels like a game itself.

01:39:33 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:39:33 ◼   ► Making the game is the game.

01:39:35 ◼   ► By the way, as I just Googled the construction kit, there was a music

01:39:37 ◼   ► construction kit, I remember this now, and you would go in and you would drag in.

01:39:41 ◼   ► I mean, obviously that's how most music editors work now, right?

01:39:44 ◼   ► You drag stuff on.

01:39:45 ◼   ► But in the day when this came out, what is this 1984, right?

01:39:49 ◼   ► You would be able to drag music notes and stuff and then make music.

01:39:52 ◼   ► This was like unheard of, right?

01:39:54 ◼   ► But you're putting it all together.

01:39:56 ◼   ► That's the game itself.

01:39:57 ◼   ► And then the output is your reward.

01:39:59 ◼   ► Right.

01:39:59 ◼   ► And I totally think that it circles right back to what we talked about earlier

01:40:04 ◼   ► about building things that you yourself would want to use.

01:40:07 ◼   ► And obviously the team at Panic forever has spanned the visual people, the artist

01:40:15 ◼   ► type designer type people, and the people who are truly just extraordinarily

01:40:20 ◼   ► talented programmers, you know, like Steven Frank, who wrote the code that

01:40:24 ◼   ► let the, geez, what was their MP3 player back in Audion, Audion, do transparent

01:40:30 ◼   ► windows on classic Mac OS.

01:40:33 ◼   ► The skins, remember all that?

01:40:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:40:34 ◼   ► I remember you'd see that like X-ray look, that transparent look, and you were

01:40:37 ◼   ► just like, what?

01:40:38 ◼   ► Right.

01:40:38 ◼   ► And it was like, oh, that's faking it.

01:40:40 ◼   ► That's not really what's behind the window.

01:40:42 ◼   ► And then you'd put something dynamic behind the window and see that it really

01:40:47 ◼   ► was updating.

01:40:47 ◼   ► And it was like, that's actually impossible.

01:40:50 ◼   ► I know enough about Mac OS that you can't do this.

01:40:53 ◼   ► And it's like, how are they doing this?

01:40:54 ◼   ► And you find out that they're doing it all at interrupt time, which won't mean

01:40:59 ◼   ► something to most people.

01:41:00 ◼   ► But if you remember classic Mac OS programming, knowing that they were doing

01:41:05 ◼   ► all this at interrupt time is sort of like, it's like doing all of your work

01:41:11 ◼   ► between seconds.

01:41:14 ◼   ► Like if seconds are a real measure of time and, but all, everything you do is

01:41:18 ◼   ► between those seconds, it's like, or like if you have a watch that ticks 60 times a

01:41:25 ◼   ► second, right?

01:41:26 ◼   ► That the second hand ticks 60 times a second.

01:41:29 ◼   ► You're doing all of your work only at the times when the second hand is moving

01:41:34 ◼   ► between seconds.

01:41:35 ◼   ► Right.

01:41:36 ◼   ► And then what the duration of the actual execution, right?

01:41:38 ◼   ► And once the, once the second hand is actually at the five second mark, you

01:41:43 ◼   ► don't get to do anything until it moves to six, but you only get to move.

01:41:47 ◼   ► You only get to do work in between the second hand moving from five to six,

01:41:50 ◼   ► which it does very, very fast.

01:41:52 ◼   ► Right.

01:41:53 ◼   ► Again, it's hackery.

01:41:54 ◼   ► And that's, that's why all this stuff is doable is the best.

01:41:57 ◼   ► I say the best app makers and the best experience makers hack to get their end

01:42:02 ◼   ► result, no matter how it's done.

01:42:04 ◼   ► Right.

01:42:04 ◼   ► Right.

01:42:05 ◼   ► I, I, I'm so looking forward to getting playdate in my hand.

01:42:08 ◼   ► I'm so hoping it's a hit form, but I do think that pulp in particular, even

01:42:12 ◼   ► though it won't let you make the richest games and the ones that push the hardware

01:42:18 ◼   ► to the actual absolute maximum, it will expose game-making to anybody who can just

01:42:24 ◼   ► look at it and just start, just do it visually.

01:42:27 ◼   ► And it's like you said, some people it's, it's just a fact that there are very few

01:42:30 ◼   ► people or far fewer men and women who have the programmer type minds to build a game

01:42:38 ◼   ► that is a thing you look at and play.

01:42:41 ◼   ► And that it's the feel of actually playing the game or the feel of scanning a

01:42:47 ◼   ► business card in a card hop or the way the menu comes out.

01:42:52 ◼   ► And, but, but can conceptualize all of that as source code in a text file,

01:42:58 ◼   ► whatever language, whether it's C or Lua or Swift or Objective-C, it's, it's a

01:43:05 ◼   ► special type of talent to be able to, to do that, to go from this completely

01:43:10 ◼   ► abstract thing of source code to build the real thing.

01:43:14 ◼   ► Whereas the pulp is just like direct manipulation of the thing itself.

01:43:19 ◼   ► You just build the actual game and it's like right there in your web browser and

01:43:24 ◼   ► then just move it over to your play date.

01:43:26 ◼   ► And now it's on your play date.

01:43:27 ◼   ► Pulp is how I actually wish, like when I was younger and I used to see programming

01:43:31 ◼   ► tools, I mean, obviously on Commodore 64 was like assembly language and then

01:43:34 ◼   ► hacking and pinking and poking and all that.

01:43:36 ◼   ► But I'm actually one day, I know it's never going to happen, but I wish that

01:43:40 ◼   ► there was a pulp for everything.

01:43:41 ◼   ► Meaning, why can't I just draw it on the screen?

01:43:44 ◼   ► Like I know you're kind of getting there with sketch and some other things, but

01:43:47 ◼   ► there really should just be a language that you put stuff down, you say make it,

01:43:51 ◼   ► it's almost like AppleScript or connecting stuff, HyperCard-esque, right?

01:43:54 ◼   ► Just make it work.

01:43:56 ◼   ► Well, HyperCard is probably the closest we ever got.

01:43:59 ◼   ► Yeah, HyperCard's the closest we got.

01:44:01 ◼   ► It was so good.

01:44:02 ◼   ► It was so, so good.

01:44:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, maybe that's the, you know, for those old enough to remember it.

01:44:07 ◼   ► But I mean, I often bring this up, but when I was at Drexel in the early 90s and

01:44:12 ◼   ► Drexel was this camp, you know, a university that had this, every student had to

01:44:17 ◼   ► have access to a Mac, not just a computer, but a Mac, and they had worked out a deal

01:44:21 ◼   ► with Apple that every student could buy one at a tremendous, truly tremendous,

01:44:25 ◼   ► discount over retail.

01:44:27 ◼   ► And it, you know, they had a lab full of computers.

01:44:29 ◼   ► You didn't have to buy one, but you know, otherwise you'd have to go to the lab.

01:44:32 ◼   ► But that way, the professors in any field, not like just me because I was in computer

01:44:37 ◼   ► science, but like my math professor had built like a HyperCard stack to help teach

01:44:43 ◼   ► calculus.

01:44:43 ◼   ► Like it was his own work.

01:44:45 ◼   ► He made it and it was really polished.

01:44:48 ◼   ► It was awesome.

01:44:49 ◼   ► It was, and that's, that was the power of it.