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The Talk Show

81: ‘Bring Back Jerry Yang’ With John Moltz

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► Are you recording? I am recording now.

00:00:03 ◼   ► We could do like a...

00:00:04 ◼   ► Yes? Yeah, one, two, three.

00:00:08 ◼   ► But should we do that?

00:00:09 ◼   ► One, two, three.

00:00:10 ◼   ► Well, we could just clap our hands.

00:00:12 ◼   ► I already started. Do you want me to stop and do that?

00:00:14 ◼   ► No, I thought you were...

00:00:16 ◼   ► Are you gonna have to edit this now?

00:00:17 ◼   ► You're not gonna edit this?

00:00:18 ◼   ► I swear to God, you're not gonna do that?

00:00:24 ◼   ► You wouldn't like that.

00:00:25 ◼   ► I was gonna clap just for the sake of you.

00:00:28 ◼   ► I don't think here's my thing I don't think that listeners of the show they

00:00:34 ◼   ► shouldn't notice a damn thing it should just all the all the all the all the all

00:00:40 ◼   ► the all

00:00:42 ◼   ► (beeping)

00:00:45 ◼   ► (static)

00:00:53 ◼   ► - It's like they won't even know that anything has changed.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Quality wise. - I guess they would,

00:01:09 ◼   ► why would they?

00:01:10 ◼   ► - Editing wise.

00:01:11 ◼   ► still got to dot the I's and cross the T's on the feed redirection and stuff like that.

00:01:16 ◼   ► Yeah, right. But that's not my problem. Or is that my problem?

00:01:21 ◼   ► That is your problem too. No, I think it seems as though any well-written

00:01:27 ◼   ► podcast client, if they get a 302 HTTP, which is like a 301 says redirect, go over there,

00:01:36 ◼   ► but don't not permanently 302 is permanent and then it should remember the new URL so if you were

00:01:43 ◼   ► previously subscribed at mule radio dotnet slash the talk show whatever the feed URL is

00:01:49 ◼   ► your your podcast software will just automatically update to daring fireball dotnet feeds the talk

00:01:57 ◼   ► show or whatever i don't know i haven't decided on the URL yet but nobody should notice a damn thing

00:02:03 ◼   ► Ah Christ now you're back

00:02:11 ◼   ► Starting out splendidly

00:02:19 ◼   ► No quality problems are endemic to

00:02:25 ◼   ► podcasting

00:02:28 ◼   ► No problems whatsoever. Do you see the rumor today just broke hours before we started recording that?

00:02:33 ◼   ► that Twitter might buy SoundCloud. Yeah. That won't mess with anybody.

00:02:41 ◼   ► No, that won't. But it's funny, Dan Fromer, friend of the show, occasional guest of the talk show,

00:02:49 ◼   ► pointed out the sort of irony in that is that SoundCloud is effectively Odeo 2.0.

00:02:55 ◼   ► Yeah. And Odeo was like a,

00:03:01 ◼   ► Hey, podcast. It was, I mean, this must be like back in like 2000.

00:03:04 ◼   ► It's so hard to remember that.

00:03:05 ◼   ► Or 2005, but it was Ev Williams and Biz Stone and all these guys, you know, they left Google after

00:03:12 ◼   ► Blogger, you know, it was like Google bought Blogger. And then when their time was up,

00:03:17 ◼   ► they all got the hell out of Google and they made Odeo and it was going to be like, like

00:03:21 ◼   ► Blogger for podcasting. And it just, they just didn't seem, it seemed, you know, it was a good

00:03:27 ◼   ► idea I mean they were on to something in terms of like back in 2004 2005 thinking podcasting was

00:03:33 ◼   ► gonna be big clearly they're at it you know that the base the fundamental idea there's pretty good

00:03:39 ◼   ► and ahead of its time but they didn't never get quite got it to work and then it was like one of

00:03:45 ◼   ► their guys you know guy named Jack is over there and they were like anybody else have any ideas and

00:03:50 ◼   ► Jeff Dorsey is like I got an idea and it turned into Twitter Twitter yeah but I

00:03:58 ◼   ► know do the audio really didn't it was a separate company though right well it

00:04:03 ◼   ► well it was start Twitter started as an audio product and it you know I'm not

00:04:09 ◼   ► quite sure what the legal you know so at some point you know lawyers came in and

00:04:15 ◼   ► and it went from Twitter being an audio product to Twitter being a standalone corporation.

00:04:23 ◼   ► It was spun off. But Twitter started life as a product of the audio corporation.

00:04:30 ◼   ► I've got an audio t-shirt upstairs.

00:04:34 ◼   ► **Ezra Klein:** Nothing happened to that.

00:04:35 ◼   ► **Beserat Debebe-Hassan:** To audio?

00:04:36 ◼   ► **Ezra Klein** Yeah.

00:04:37 ◼   ► I think they changed the name to the Obvious Corporation. I think it might...

00:04:43 ◼   ► **Beserat Debebe-Hassan** Oh, really?

00:04:43 ◼   ► Trenton Larkin Yeah, which I think is still the parent company

00:04:47 ◼   ► of Medium. You know, that's the new thing that that

00:04:50 ◼   ► Jay Haynes Oh, really? Okay. Okay. So that guy that they

00:04:52 ◼   ► just when he started that he just started under that umbrella.

00:04:55 ◼   ► Trenton Larkin Yeah, I think I you know, and again, is there

00:04:58 ◼   ► really a difference if they just design? I don't know. Maybe they just dissolved Odeo

00:05:03 ◼   ► and started a new company called Obvious or I think they changed the name though, you

00:05:07 ◼   ► know, just to like save on paperwork or something. I don't know. Like, it might have been easier

00:05:12 ◼   ► to just change the name of Odeo to the obvious corporation.

00:05:16 ◼   ► Right.

00:05:17 ◼   ► So, are you playing on using SoundCloud?

00:05:21 ◼   ► I guess so. I mean, I don't want to get…

00:05:24 ◼   ► Well, it's funny because now that I have to worry about every single detail of hosting

00:05:33 ◼   ► the podcast, and there are… I don't know how much of the details you're taking care

00:05:37 ◼   ► of with the—what's the parenting show? Get back in and I'm going to turn this car around.

00:05:44 ◼   ► Yes. Turning this car around. I was going to call it Don't Make Me Go Back There.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Also, that was also in the running. We had a long list of things that dad say.

00:05:59 ◼   ► Yeah, don't make me go back. That was probably in there someplace.

00:06:04 ◼   ► But there are, there's all sorts of details you have to worry about. And a fundamental one is,

00:06:09 ◼   ► where do you store the audio files? It would cost, according to my calculations,

00:06:17 ◼   ► a couple of thousand dollars a month for me to host the audio on Amazon S3.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Could be off by a little, but I'm probably not off by a lot.

00:06:30 ◼   ► which is, you know, start talking about hundreds of dollars, and I might just squander it.

00:06:35 ◼   ► Thousands of dollars, you've got my attention. And SoundCloud is free. I mean, I don't want to

00:06:41 ◼   ► get too into baseball here. But to me, it's sort of an interesting, it's the perils of venture

00:06:47 ◼   ► backed cloud services. So SoundCloud is free for everything. And it started life, I guess,

00:06:55 ◼   ► as sort of a music hosting service where musicians could put songs up and have people playing,

00:06:59 ◼   ► but they don't, you know, they let you put anything up there, including podcasts. And

00:07:04 ◼   ► you can put your podcast there and they don't insert their own ads. They have a player that

00:07:10 ◼   ► you can embed. Like if you've got, you know, if anybody's ever looked at the talk show pages on

00:07:14 ◼   ► Mule Radio, they use the SoundCloud embeddable player. That's what we use. And it but that

00:07:21 ◼   ► doesn't really have ads. It has SoundCloud branding. But you don't have to use their

00:07:26 ◼   ► audio player, you know, like Dave Whiskus's unprofessional show. Him and Jamie Newberry

00:07:35 ◼   ► now are the hosts of that. I forget who used to be the host. But Dave. Well, what's his—I

00:07:40 ◼   ► always forget that guy's name.

00:07:41 ◼   ► Dave Buehler, Jr. Lex.

00:07:42 ◼   ► Dave Buehler, Jr. That's it. Lex. Right.

00:07:44 ◼   ► Dave Buehler, Jr. Who is on my parenting podcast.

00:07:47 ◼   ► Dave Buehler, Jr. He is?

00:07:49 ◼   ► Dave Buehler, Jr. Yes.

00:07:50 ◼   ► Dave Buehler, Jr. He never speaks up. All I ever hear is you and John Armstrong.

00:07:55 ◼   ► Are you giving them the Casey treatment? Isn't this called the Casey treatment?

00:07:58 ◼   ► They should do a show they should do a show and they should be called like those guys the other guys

00:08:04 ◼   ► Right the other guys. Oh my god. That'd be great

00:08:07 ◼   ► They should pretend to be each other

00:08:13 ◼   ► Just to confuse things

00:08:16 ◼   ► But I got an unprofessional he hosts the their audio with SoundCloud, but he uses a different, you know, HTML 5 audio player

00:08:23 ◼   ► there. And it all seems too good to be true. And because behind the scenes, SoundCloud

00:08:29 ◼   ► hosts your audio on Amazon S3. And so, you know, it's hundreds, if for a popular enough

00:08:36 ◼   ► show, thousands of dollars worth of S3 bandwidth that SoundCloud is just covering based on

00:08:44 ◼   ► the like $60 million they've raised in venture capital.

00:08:48 ◼   ► Yeah. So it's a perfect fit for Twitter. Right.

00:08:54 ◼   ► And no idea how to monetize this. Right. And so like with like my friends and as I've been talking

00:09:00 ◼   ► and planning and plotting and detailing, you know, everything I have to do to move the talk show to

00:09:07 ◼   ► be part of Daring Fireball. And I hear that and I think, "Well, that's too good to be true." And

00:09:12 ◼   ► too good to be true is to me, it makes me very uncomfortable. I'd rather pay a reasonable amount

00:09:18 ◼   ► of money for something that I feel is sustainable, then do it. And I say this to some people,

00:09:22 ◼   ► and some people hear it and they think, "Oh yeah, you have a good point. That is a little

00:09:26 ◼   ► worrisome." And then other people are like, "Just take the free hosting, dummy. And worry about

00:09:31 ◼   ► what you do when it goes away, when it goes away. Wait for the burden."

00:09:34 ◼   ► Tim Cynova - Well, you have an established podcast. So in your situation, it's a little easier with

00:09:41 ◼   ► established sponsors and such. So it's a little easier to actually go out and shell something out.

00:09:48 ◼   ► but like right, you know, when we started up, we didn't have any, we didn't have any advertisers

00:09:51 ◼   ► to begin with. And so it would have been a lot harder. Right. It's not that I have a lot of

00:09:57 ◼   ► confidence that I was going to go someplace. And there's other options besides Amazon S3.

00:10:01 ◼   ► There's all sorts of things like, you know, one could do to host a podcast, but they're, you know,

00:10:05 ◼   ► because SoundCloud offers a good quality, you know, because it's backed by S3. I'm, they don't

00:10:14 ◼   ► tell you that. But it just, if you poke around and see where your stuff's coming from, it seems

00:10:17 ◼   ► like it is. Good quality. It works around the world, which is often a problem. Like if you were

00:10:23 ◼   ► just to do like the obvious thing and just get like a Linux server and start just put your audio

00:10:31 ◼   ► files there and let people download it. Like people around the world might have trouble getting it,

00:10:35 ◼   ► whereas something that's meant to be a content delivery system, like S3 works better. And then

00:10:41 ◼   ► you don't have to pay. And again, like you said, it seems like a perfect fit for Twitter.

00:10:47 ◼   ► You guys have no idea. You guys have exorbitant costs and no idea how to make money for it.

00:10:54 ◼   ► We're going to spend a billion dollars on you guys. You should come work with us.

00:11:04 ◼   ► All sorts of acquisitions.

00:11:06 ◼   ► Who does Mark? There's another one. Marco uses something else. What's the other one?

00:11:12 ◼   ► Libsyn.

00:11:13 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I don't know anything about that one.

00:11:16 ◼   ► Trenton Larkin Yeah, they're a little bit less nebulous

00:11:21 ◼   ► in terms of the money. They have some kind of tiering and paid accounts and something. I don't

00:11:25 ◼   ► know. Amy, what's her name? And Paul Kefasis have a show that Neneh used Libsyn to. I'm so bad with

00:11:37 ◼   ► names. Jon Moffitt

00:11:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I understand. Trenton Larkin

00:11:40 ◼   ► That's why I like to have you on the show, Jon. Jon Moffitt

00:11:43 ◼   ► have to remember what your name is exactly. He's got the same name that I've got.

00:11:49 ◼   ► Never bother you that Armstrong doesn't have an age. Yeah, he must be a Jonathan right

00:11:55 ◼   ► whenever I see a J. O. N. I just assume that's what that is. I assume that you're a Jonathan,

00:12:01 ◼   ► right? But we're not right. I mean, you're not know that's John. No, I see J. O. N. And

00:12:07 ◼   ► I think you're really a Jonathan and you're just pretending to be a John and

00:12:12 ◼   ► Then when other people will say to me if they say hey is your real name Jonathan group is your full name Jonathan grouper

00:12:18 ◼   ► Then I'm offended because I'm like no I have an H

00:12:21 ◼   ► Were you were you named after somebody?

00:12:23 ◼   ► Sort of long story short I

00:12:28 ◼   ► Was the first child and

00:12:32 ◼   ► my mom

00:12:35 ◼   ► This is before any kind of ultrasound type technology. So when my mom was pregnant with me in

00:12:41 ◼   ► 1972

00:12:44 ◼   ► All they knew was that she was pregnant and the sound had not been invented

00:12:49 ◼   ► Nope sounded and neither or nor had color, right? Right, but my mom was a hundred percent convinced that she was having a girl

00:12:57 ◼   ► She'd had no children before but she just felt like she was having a girl and she even has she still has it like

00:13:04 ◼   ► a little like back pocket sized book of baby names like that sort of little almost like a

00:13:12 ◼   ► pamphlet book with thousands of names but it's you know it's it's like you could fit in like

00:13:17 ◼   ► you it's like the size of a field notes but 45 names that you know used to buy books like that

00:13:22 ◼   ► in a supermarket yeah and she has it and and like the girl pages are all like worn you know that

00:13:31 ◼   ► there's also and there's there's annotated dozens and dozens of names circled and then different

00:13:35 ◼   ► colors for like second and there's like two boys names it was like jason and uh i forget the other

00:13:42 ◼   ► one uh i didn't like it though um but there were like two boys names that were like vaguely

00:13:48 ◼   ► underlined and that was it that was the only thought she'd put into it and then i came out

00:13:52 ◼   ► and they said it's a boy and she goes no it's not and my dad put it back and and uh

00:14:00 ◼   ► And she was upset because she didn't know she just was so sure it was a girl that had no names picked out and my

00:14:06 ◼   ► Dad was not in a room because this was

00:14:08 ◼   ► 1973 and men's was not done. No, it was not done. He was in a smoke-filled room with a bunch of cigars. Yeah

00:14:14 ◼   ► Yeah, probably like a six-pack or something sure and then they came in and they said

00:14:21 ◼   ► Yeah, good news. Your wife had a baby is a healthy boy and my dad

00:14:27 ◼   ► I guess he joined my mom and they said she said well, what are we gonna call him and he discusses his name is John

00:14:32 ◼   ► And that was it

00:14:34 ◼   ► There was like no discussion if my mom had spent like hours and hours over the proceeding like eight months

00:14:41 ◼   ► Picking out girls names and my they'd never discussed it and my dad just goes his name is John now

00:14:47 ◼   ► It ends up that both both of my grandparents her dad and my dad's dad were both named John

00:14:52 ◼   ► Okay, and so there you go

00:14:54 ◼   ► You know everybody felt honored, right?

00:14:57 ◼   ► What about you you named after anybody yeah, my grandfather my mom's dad he passed away like

00:15:05 ◼   ► Six months before I was born. So I was named after him tragic. Yeah

00:15:10 ◼   ► It's good name smoke kids don't smoke. It's a good name

00:15:15 ◼   ► Gets me through the day. Yeah

00:15:21 ◼   ► lots of other acquisitions in the news so and in near

00:15:25 ◼   ► Near acquisitions. Yeah tortured continuing tortured acquisitions. Yes

00:15:30 ◼   ► Well that the beats one which I thought would have been old news by the time we were recording this is still not still at limbo

00:15:37 ◼   ► It's still actually not news

00:15:39 ◼   ► Like that we're getting close to two weeks now right since it'll be like the end of this week will be two weeks Friday, right?

00:15:48 ◼   ► And a lot of people have been writing to me, you know at daring fireball emailing saying like hey

00:15:53 ◼   ► Maybe this whole thing is just nonsense and you know Apple not denying it is just their usual

00:15:58 ◼   ► You know, we don't comment one way or the other

00:16:00 ◼   ► Because if they and there might be you know, who knows I don't I actually don't know but you know

00:16:07 ◼   ► The idea would be well, why wouldn't Apple just publicly deny it if it weren't true the idea then would be

00:16:14 ◼   ► That they'd be given tonight anything right because then they'd be giving it away if there's another subsequent one

00:16:20 ◼   ► That was real but was still pending and then they didn't comment on that one

00:16:25 ◼   ► then

00:16:27 ◼   ► It would be a sign that if it's not true Apple will deny it

00:16:30 ◼   ► But if it is true is true, they'll be quiet where so therefore if they want to

00:16:35 ◼   ► maintain

00:16:37 ◼   ► You know keep people in up in the air until they have actually make the announcement themselves

00:16:42 ◼   ► they have to not comment on everything whether it's true or false. So there's some logic there.

00:16:47 ◼   ► But I do think though, that if it weren't the case, I don't think they would address it

00:16:52 ◼   ► officially with an official statement, but I think behind the scenes, they'd get word out. And we

00:16:57 ◼   ► haven't, I haven't seen any sign of that. There's not a single report from anybody saying, you know,

00:17:04 ◼   ► unnamed sources familiar with the situation say that Apple is not buying Beats. Everything has

00:17:10 ◼   ► said, you know, indicates that they that they still intend to and Peter Kafka of recode.

00:17:18 ◼   ► That's like the new all things D. He said like midweek last week that it was taking

00:17:25 ◼   ► longer than expected, but that this is the week sometime this week, it'll be announced,

00:17:30 ◼   ► I guess.

00:17:32 ◼   ► I can't, it seems like that video probably didn't help.

00:17:36 ◼   ► No, I would guess that that video did not help.

00:17:40 ◼   ► Dr. Justin Marchegiani That probably wasn't a right idea.

00:17:42 ◼   ► Dr. Darrell Bock No, you would think so. I just—my

00:17:48 ◼   ► guess is it's not the video that was the problem, it's the fact that the video got posted.

00:17:55 ◼   ► Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, that's probably not the—right,

00:17:56 ◼   ► the major problem. It was probably jumping the gun.

00:17:59 ◼   ► Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. And I would guess that Dr. Dre did not

00:18:04 ◼   ► expected to be posted to Facebook. You know, he's a very, very smart man. And he's clearly been,

00:18:12 ◼   ► if it's true, he's clearly been in… He knows enough that Apple doesn't want anything announced.

00:18:19 ◼   ► I think that it was the fact that it was his friend that… It wasn't that he posted it to Facebook,

00:18:23 ◼   ► it was his friend that posted it to Facebook. I bet that was a good conversation.

00:18:30 ◼   ► Because it was only up for a few hours. And then it was taken down early in the morning.

00:18:34 ◼   ► And it also seemed like the sort of situation where maybe he wouldn't have been getting up

00:18:40 ◼   ► early in the morning. Right? [Laughter]

00:18:45 ◼   ► - That would probably be my guess as well, yeah. There might have been a little sleeping in done

00:18:50 ◼   ► after that video was made. - No, and I pass no judgment there.

00:18:54 ◼   ► Nobody loves to sleep in more than I do. - You sure can't swing a

00:18:59 ◼   ► a pair of Beats headphones around without hitting somebody with an opinion about it though.

00:19:04 ◼   ► Ted

00:19:04 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I think the funny thing is I think that's it's to me the interesting thing about it

00:19:09 ◼   ► Isn't the actual it's no longer the actual acquisition if it comes to pass it's more

00:19:14 ◼   ► that the way that we've had like this two-week period where it was just a

00:19:19 ◼   ► unconfirmed rumor with no explanation from Apple or beats as to why

00:19:25 ◼   ► Apple would want to do this. It's become like this sort of

00:19:30 ◼   ► Blank canvas where everybody can project whatever they think about Apple onto it

00:19:34 ◼   ► Right

00:19:38 ◼   ► Good or bad. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I

00:19:41 ◼   ► Think I think it yeah everything. I mean, I think everything that Apple does has that has that element to it

00:19:46 ◼   ► Yeah

00:19:47 ◼   ► and I feel but I feel like this more so than anything else because we

00:19:50 ◼   ► It did seem to come out of left field like nobody was really predicting it

00:19:56 ◼   ► It did seem confusing at first to a lot of us to me at least and I think it's still I think it's still

00:20:02 ◼   ► Confusing a little bit anyway, because it doesn't seem like the hardware is that great. It doesn't seem like

00:20:07 ◼   ► you know, I mean like they have a streaming service already and

00:20:11 ◼   ► From what everybody says it doesn't seem like the licenses for the music go along with the sale, right? But then there's

00:20:20 ◼   ► I

00:20:22 ◼   ► have vine

00:20:24 ◼   ► But three billion seems like a lot for an aqua higher, right? Exactly, right? I don't you know, maybe all together though

00:20:31 ◼   ► Maybe yeah, I mean maybe all together. It seems like something a little bit here a little bit there

00:20:35 ◼   ► So it's not you know on the surface. It's not completely clear exactly

00:20:39 ◼   ► What the value is?

00:20:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I totally agree, but I don't know though that it you know

00:20:46 ◼   ► I'm willing to say as somebody who is you know, I think

00:20:51 ◼   ► widely known as a keen Apple observer, I'm willing to say, I just don't know. And just wait. And I'll

00:21:01 ◼   ► just wait. You know, I don't have there's no way that I could go off on any kind of strongly

00:21:06 ◼   ► opinionated. You know, column or rant here on the show one way or the other that this is stupid,

00:21:15 ◼   ► or it's genius. Either way, I don't know, because I don't know enough yet. I don't know why more

00:21:19 ◼   ► people can't just say I don't know right they think that's a sign of weakness I

00:21:25 ◼   ► guess I don't know but I've seen people you know saying that this is the clearest

00:21:30 ◼   ► sign this is you know incontrovertible proof that Tim Cook is a moron you know

00:21:36 ◼   ► that he's running the country into the company into the ground and I've seen

00:21:42 ◼   ► other people say it's genius you know and this you know keeps Apple on top of

00:21:46 ◼   ► music industry for another two decades. And it's like, really? I don't see how either

00:21:50 ◼   ► of those extremes is evident in the least.

00:21:53 ◼   ► Jared: Yeah. Sean, did you read Jean-Louis' Gassés?

00:21:56 ◼   ► Trenton Larkin No, I did not.

00:21:58 ◼   ► Jared He's got a piece up today. His Monday note is about that. And he kind of splits

00:22:05 ◼   ► it fairly well, basically just saying that he doesn't understand it at this point.

00:22:13 ◼   ► Right. Yeah, I think that's the to me, that's the only thinking man's take is, and it's that it

00:22:19 ◼   ► doesn't make it less intriguing. If anything, it makes it more intriguing. Because it's like, wow,

00:22:23 ◼   ► now we you know, there's something interesting going on here. I can't wait to find out more

00:22:27 ◼   ► about it. There's got to be you just feel like there's got to be something more. You know,

00:22:33 ◼   ► like, I don't think I really, really, really do not think that the the answer is, Apple has just

00:22:42 ◼   ► given up and decided to just be lazy and just throw billions around willy-nilly without really

00:22:47 ◼   ► thinking about it. That after going decades, only making relatively small. I mean,

00:22:54 ◼   ► I think it's the case that they haven't made a billion, they've never made a billion dollar

00:23:00 ◼   ► acquisition. And then all of a sudden now after never having done so now they're just going to

00:23:08 ◼   ► spend money willy-nilly. I mean, that doesn't… It just doesn't make sense to me. Like without

00:23:14 ◼   ► a very, very concrete idea of how it's going to help Apple. I just don't see it though.

00:23:19 ◼   ► Tim Cynova It's interesting that when they acquired Next, I mean, Next was only like

00:23:24 ◼   ► 400 million or something like that?

00:23:26 ◼   ► Dave

00:23:26 ◼   ► Yeah. 400 and some. Yeah. And there's some inflation adjustment that you have to do.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Right. Right. But there's also, I mean, I think there's just a part from the value of the dollar,

00:23:37 ◼   ► there's, there's an acquisition inflation. Yeah. That's gone on since then. I mean,

00:23:43 ◼   ► some of these acquisitions that have happened have just driven up. It's like every time somebody

00:23:47 ◼   ► wants to get acquired, they're like, well, you know, Facebook bought Instagram for.

00:23:55 ◼   ► Well, look at it this way. The Apple next acquisition was, I forget when it was

00:24:03 ◼   ► officially completed. I think it was like at least a handshake around Christmas 1996,

00:24:10 ◼   ► but made official in January '97. So, whether you want to call it '96 or '97,

00:24:16 ◼   ► probably '97 is a little bit better because it's, you know, Christmas week or New Year's week,

00:24:22 ◼   ► 96 is effectively 97 anyway. But even so, the dot com bubble was still in the early days,

00:24:30 ◼   ► you know, it had gotten started, but it was still early days. And so I think at that point,

00:24:37 ◼   ► acquisitions were still largely done on traditional metrics of revenue, revenue and profit,

00:24:46 ◼   ► like the idea that you would value an acquisition on anything. Well, it's sad in a lot of cases,

00:24:56 ◼   ► but in others, maybe not. So you know, like, a good example might be Facebook buying Instagram,

00:25:02 ◼   ► where Instagram hadn't tried to make a nickel, right? They'd never sold the app.

00:25:08 ◼   ► They'd, they'd never done was clearly worth a lot, right? Because they had growth. And they had,

00:25:14 ◼   ► you know, all of these images, they had even a good technology, like one thing that to me often

00:25:19 ◼   ► goes on unsaid about Instagram, because it's, when things work, we just don't notice it, we take it

00:25:24 ◼   ► for granted. But Twitter, which was all just text, you know, had so many problems with scaling with

00:25:33 ◼   ► the fail well, etc. Instagram was doing something, you know, where I'm guessing the average Instagram

00:25:40 ◼   ► post is at least… Well, I don't know. It's got to be at least a thousand times bigger than a tweet,

00:25:47 ◼   ► though, because it's an image, not just 140 characters. I don't know. It could be 10,000

00:25:56 ◼   ► times more. I don't even know. I don't even know how big an Instagram image is. But it's got to be

00:25:59 ◼   ► at least a thousand times more and never really had scaling problems. And the previous darling of

00:26:10 ◼   ► social photo sharing Flickr. Now, we have to go way back in the day for the early days of Flickr

00:26:16 ◼   ► before Yahoo bought them. Also had, you know, terrible scaling problems. And it was far smaller

00:26:23 ◼   ► than Instagram was. They did a great job. So there's some value there. But billions or what

00:26:28 ◼   ► was it 1 billion that Facebook bought them for? I think so. For a company that never even tried to

00:26:34 ◼   ► make a nickel. That's crazy. Well, not crazy, but it's it's it would certainly be crazy if you

00:26:39 ◼   ► had a lot of users which is a pretty important rhetoric for that kind of thing and the potential

00:26:46 ◼   ► to make money is there yeah right i think the biggest thing if you're going to compare

00:26:53 ◼   ► something like apple buying beats for three billion today to apple's next acquisition in 97

00:27:01 ◼   ► isn't about the the inflationary difference between 400 and some million then and three

00:27:08 ◼   ► billion now. It's really more how much is the cost compared to how much the Apple had

00:27:14 ◼   ► on hand at the time. Whereas now Apple has what like 160 billion in cash, much of it

00:27:20 ◼   ► off see overseas. But even so even if you even if they decided to pay the entire price

00:27:27 ◼   ► in cash using overseas cash, and pay, you know, 30 or 40% income tax on the thing, it's

00:27:35 ◼   ► a drop in the bucket, right? They could spend 5 billion on beats, and it's only 1/35 of their

00:27:43 ◼   ► entire cash on hand. Whereas the 400 and some million acquisition of Next in 1997 was, people

00:27:53 ◼   ► say this all the time that it's a bet the company move. That is one case where it's not the least

00:27:58 ◼   ► bit hyperbolic, where it was enough, you know, Apple was near bankruptcy, they didn't have,

00:28:03 ◼   ► they couldn't afford to lose to not have it work out. Right. If you're with us basically, so yeah,

00:28:10 ◼   ► so Microsoft's investment was Microsoft 150 million, right? 150 million. Yeah. So it was

00:28:16 ◼   ► three times bigger. A third. Yeah. And it seemed so Microsoft basically paid for a third of that.

00:28:22 ◼   ► I've said this before. Microsoft's people often look back at that and say that Microsoft helped

00:28:27 ◼   ► save Apple by giving them 150 million. The 150 million they gave Apple didn't really

00:28:32 ◼   ► make much of a difference compared, you know, in terms of keeping the company afloat, like,

00:28:36 ◼   ► right, they needed office. Yeah, they still needed billions of revenue per quarter, just to stay in

00:28:42 ◼   ► the black. So 150 million investment from Microsoft. I mean, it was enough at the time that it

00:28:47 ◼   ► certainly didn't hurt. But it didn't really make a big difference. I mean, they needed billions in

00:28:51 ◼   ► revenue, and to keep costs down to stay in the black quarter quarter. It was the, like you said,

00:28:57 ◼   ► yeah, the commitment to keep doing office and the political value of the $150 million investment.

00:29:04 ◼   ► Yeah. The fact that…

00:29:06 ◼   ► Jared: Apple's revenue last quarter was $45.6 billion.

00:29:10 ◼   ► So, you know, considering that they've taken that about that, and that's not even a record quarter,

00:29:19 ◼   ► $3 million does not, $3 billion does not seem like very much.

00:29:25 ◼   ► Right, I think that the the the concern and I have this concern I do I mean I you know

00:29:31 ◼   ► I want to see how it turns out. I mean but as a as a

00:29:34 ◼   ► Company watcher. I'm certainly concerned about it where it's not the money. It's to me that the

00:29:40 ◼   ► The potential that it could signify a lack of focus, you know that focus has always been

00:29:47 ◼   ► The key to Apple's success that they have all of this talent in the company

00:29:55 ◼   ► and so many good executives and the whole operation is working on such a

00:30:01 ◼   ► relatively few number of products now Tim Cook has said I use the analogy

00:30:07 ◼   ► several times but that like you know that that he could put all of the

00:30:12 ◼   ► company's products on one table in an Apple store the entire lineup of

00:30:17 ◼   ► hardware that Apple sells could be arranged neatly on one table and that

00:30:22 ◼   ► that sort of focus is what lets the company do such good work on those products.

00:30:27 ◼   ► Yeah, and I guess that kind of colors how you think this deal is, the value of this

00:30:36 ◼   ► deal, depending on whether you think that they're going to sort of subsume that brand

00:30:39 ◼   ► into their own or keep it separate.

00:30:42 ◼   ► Yeah, totally. I mean, Montero and I talked about this last week. I just don't know.

00:30:47 ◼   ► To me, that's one of the single biggest questions about this potential acquisition. It's fascinating

00:30:55 ◼   ► to me because on the one hand, I can't see Apple owning a sub-brand. On the other hand,

00:31:05 ◼   ► I can't see spending $3 billion for Beats and not keeping the brand because to me, it

00:31:11 ◼   ► seems to me like most of the value in Beats is in the brand.

00:31:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I would guess so. Again, again, we're just…

00:31:19 ◼   ► Right. I have heard from some people, I mean, clearly among audiophiles, like your Marco

00:31:26 ◼   ► Armentz, people who really know what they have seemingly have fully operational ears

00:31:34 ◼   ► and really can tell the difference between different headphones. Beats is like a non-entity

00:31:39 ◼   ► and almost treated with disdain. But I've seen other people say, "Well, so audio files

00:31:44 ◼   ► will keep buying their audio file headphones from Sennheiser and whoever else." But normal

00:31:51 ◼   ► people love the way beats headphones sound, and that it's not about fidelity and reproducing

00:32:00 ◼   ► music in some sort of way that you measure fidelity, but effectively making it sound

00:32:06 ◼   ► as though you have a nightclub in your head.

00:32:08 ◼   ► Trenton Larkin And that they do a really good job of that.

00:32:12 ◼   ► I don't know, though, that that means that it would be hard for a competitor to do the

00:32:16 ◼   ► same thing, though, that they you know, that they have technology that is it that they

00:32:20 ◼   ► have technology that's hard to reproduce or, you know, I don't think that's

00:32:24 ◼   ► Unknown Speaker seem like that. No, it doesn't seem like

00:32:26 ◼   ► it's particularly since their stuff was made by monster before. Right. I mean, they've

00:32:31 ◼   ► only been making their own stuff for a little while six, six months or something. Yeah,

00:32:36 ◼   ► Maybe a little longer than that, but I've also seen other people and this is on Twitter and you know

00:32:41 ◼   ► It's all you know, this has been the knock against Apple for

00:32:44 ◼   ► Did as long as Apple has existed, I mean probably from like 1980 onwards

00:32:50 ◼   ► People who are clearly not a fan of Apple products in general saying it's a perfect acquisition for Apple overpriced technology

00:32:58 ◼   ► sold based on marketing alone

00:33:02 ◼   ► So it's a you know

00:33:03 ◼   ► I don't think it's a problem for Apple that from among some people the idea that Apple buys beats

00:33:07 ◼   ► Reinforces that notion of the company because I feel like those people there's nothing Apple could ever do in a million years to turn them around

00:33:14 ◼   ► Right, you know and if your goal is to get a hundred percent of all consumers to view your brand

00:33:21 ◼   ► Favorably, you're doomed. You're never you're gonna end up, you know

00:33:26 ◼   ► You're gonna end up failing. Yeah, there's no brand in any market that works like that

00:33:31 ◼   ► So what other what other acquisitions? Well, let's take a break. Okay. And let me tell you about our

00:33:39 ◼   ► first sponsor, our good friends, all three sponsors today, longtime friends of the show,

00:33:44 ◼   ► glad to have them on board with the transition to the new Daring Fireball version of the talk show.

00:33:50 ◼   ► Our first is our good friends at Igloo. That's the internet you'll actually like. Igloo,

00:34:00 ◼   ► And they want me to tell you a little bit about

00:34:02 ◼   ► Their comparison to SharePoint now SharePoint is an internet product from a little company in my

00:34:09 ◼   ► Washington state of Washington up by you Microsoft's correct just up the road

00:34:14 ◼   ► If you go to the URL, I'm gonna tell you in a minute

00:34:18 ◼   ► Which is igloo software comm slash the talk show

00:34:23 ◼   ► You will go to a special page. They've set up just for listeners of the show where they show the results

00:34:29 ◼   ► of a white paper that they commissioned from a company called Osterman Research. They said,

00:34:35 ◼   ► "Here, you guys, go out there. We're paying you, but go out there and do an honest version

00:34:38 ◼   ► where you compare our product to SharePoint, and then we're going to share the information

00:34:43 ◼   ► with people." And they came out ahead in just about every way you could imagine. SharePoint

00:34:49 ◼   ► is too expensive. You can save a ton of money by going with igloo. SharePoint requires too

00:34:55 ◼   ► many resources. You have to host it yourself. You have to pay for these Windows servers.

00:34:58 ◼   ► igloo is fully hosted you don't have to worry about it people actually this is

00:35:03 ◼   ► the big one people actually use it what they found is that companies that use

00:35:07 ◼   ► SharePoint based internets what the employees actually do is spend all their

00:35:11 ◼   ► time going around it and using email and avoiding it whereas companies that use

00:35:16 ◼   ► igloo people actually will use it and they like it and I'm laughing because I

00:35:22 ◼   ► used to work someplace they use SharePoint and and that is exactly what

00:35:26 ◼   ► What we found right you install it and then people find ways to get it wrong get away from it

00:35:31 ◼   ► SharePoint doesn't play well with mobile. That's a huge thing going forward

00:35:35 ◼   ► You know igloo everything they do it has responsive layout

00:35:39 ◼   ► So it's all works great from your phone whether you're on Android whether you're on iOS

00:35:43 ◼   ► So they have a thing you can download just go to igloo software.com slash the talk show they have an evaluation kit you can download

00:35:53 ◼   ► They also have some new templates they've set up. These are pretty recent these came out like last month

00:35:58 ◼   ► But templates you can use in a glue to set up igloo in different ways

00:36:03 ◼   ► depending on what you need like if you need a customer community site or

00:36:06 ◼   ► A corporate intranet just for your team to share two very different use cases where the years

00:36:12 ◼   ► You know setting up something for a community of your users people who are outside the company or something internal only

00:36:17 ◼   ► They have an app based social network

00:36:21 ◼   ► a couple of new templates, all of them you can start using for free with up to 10 people

00:36:30 ◼   ► just to try it out. And that's just fantastic because then you you just set it up free,

00:36:36 ◼   ► start using a free get 10 people on board. You don't have to pay anything and make sure

00:36:40 ◼   ► that it works just the way you want that it actually is all these things I've just been

00:36:43 ◼   ► telling you are true. Only then do you need to sign up when you add more than 10 people

00:36:48 ◼   ► and after that the price is really, really competitive. So my thanks to them. And again,

00:36:53 ◼   ► just go to igloosoftware.com/thetalkshow. What were we talking about? Acquisitions.

00:37:01 ◼   ► So what else?

00:37:02 ◼   ► **Robert Wiblin-Lamport, Jr. "Aquisitions." **Ezra Klein "Aquisitions."

00:37:03 ◼   ► **Robert Wiblin-Lamport, Jr. "Aquisitions."

00:37:04 ◼   ► **Ezra Klein "Aquisitions."

00:37:05 ◼   ► **Robert Wiblin-Lamport, Jr. "Aquisitions."

00:37:06 ◼   ► **Ezra Klein "Aquisitions."

00:37:07 ◼   ► **Robert Wiblin-Lamport, Jr. "Aquisitions."

00:37:08 ◼   ► **Ezra Klein "Aquisitions."

00:37:09 ◼   ► **Robert Wiblin-Lamport, Jr. "Aquisitions."

00:37:10 ◼   ► **Ezra Klein "Aquisitions."

00:37:11 ◼   ► record but YouTube is supposedly buying a twitch twitch for a billion dollars so

00:37:19 ◼   ► there's two interesting things about that one twitch is is effectively I saw

00:37:25 ◼   ► it I just posted a thing before I did we started recording that it's like the ESPN

00:37:28 ◼   ► of video games that they stream right they treat video games the way ESPN

00:37:33 ◼   ► treats sports and you go to twitch and you use twitch and you can watch you

00:37:36 ◼   ► know top players play video games and you and I have talked about this because

00:37:41 ◼   ► our sons, who are 10 years old, are really into watching videos of people playing video games.

00:37:46 ◼   ► And, you know, I didn't come up with this last time we talked about it, but,

00:37:51 ◼   ► you know, I've already watched this season, probably the Yankees have played, I think,

00:37:57 ◼   ► 42 games so far. I've probably watched about 30 of them. So, I'm probably up close to 100

00:38:04 ◼   ► hours of baseball that I've watched so far this year. And yet, I'm the one who was thinking,

00:38:10 ◼   ► just like a month ago. How crazy it is that my son watches people playing game, video of people

00:38:16 ◼   ► playing games rather than playing them himself. Whereas I haven't played baseball in 15 years and

00:38:22 ◼   ► watch hundreds of hours over the year. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks like, duh, it's the

00:38:27 ◼   ► same thing. You know, I'm into baseball. So I love watching my favorite baseball team play. He's into

00:38:32 ◼   ► video games. And so he loves watching people play video games. And I would rather watch people play

00:38:38 ◼   ► video games because I have a better chance than with my local sports team. I have a better chance

00:38:43 ◼   ► seeing somebody actually win. So. I think that maybe if you're Google YouTube, that makes a lot

00:38:57 ◼   ► of sense. I also think it's interesting that it's being dealt with as a YouTube acquisition,

00:39:03 ◼   ► not a Google acquisition. I thought that was interesting too. And I didn't even notice this,

00:39:06 ◼   ► but like the head of YouTube, her title is CEO. Like their YouTube, I didn't know that. I just

00:39:13 ◼   ► thought because they were trying to get the same unified sign in everywhere. I didn't realize that

00:39:17 ◼   ► YouTube is, you know, as independent as it seems to be. But it totally makes sense to be, you know,

00:39:24 ◼   ► for it to, you know, it does make sense that it's YouTube in particular, not Google in general that

00:39:29 ◼   ► might be making this acquisition. Yeah. Somebody and I apologize because I don't remember it was

00:39:34 ◼   ► a retweet of someone who I don't follow, but said that a while ago Vimeo had noticed that people were

00:39:41 ◼   ► posting a lot of sort of the sort of let's play videos and responded by banning them.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Which, I mean, I guess, you know, if that's what you want for your platform, then

00:39:56 ◼   ► you don't want that kind of thing on your... I mean, they're a little more artsy, I guess.

00:40:00 ◼   ► Yeah, and they've you know, they've yeah, they've always sort of differentiated themselves from YouTube or YouTube has sort of been like

00:40:07 ◼   ► anything that you can legally post as

00:40:10 ◼   ► Video you can post to YouTube where you know, I mean, you know

00:40:15 ◼   ► The copyright stuff in particular and I'm sure that there's some kind of content based stuff that that would get

00:40:22 ◼   ► Rejected from YouTube, but if it's legal you can post it and they don't care what it is

00:40:27 ◼   ► Right, I mean you can just you know it's yeah, I'm sure they actually are they often

00:40:31 ◼   ► I mean and they basically usually it seems like they usually wait for someone asked to have it taken down, right?

00:40:35 ◼   ► Whereas Vimeo is always sort of yeah exactly they sort of want a sort of artistic style. I

00:40:41 ◼   ► Don't know and they also have restrictions about commercials type stuff. You know where you can't

00:40:46 ◼   ► So I did I didn't think about that the licensing aspect of it

00:40:50 ◼   ► Which maybe maybe that is more of what it is rather than sort of the artsy

00:40:56 ◼   ► Aspect of it. Yeah, I thought it was more like but we don't we don't want let's play videos on our

00:41:02 ◼   ► our site

00:41:05 ◼   ► I did see somebody tweeted that one of the things people who are fans of Twitter concerned about with the YouTube acquisition

00:41:11 ◼   ► Is that a lot of these videos get posted with music playing in the background?

00:41:15 ◼   ► You know and YouTube has gotten very very good at flagging such things identifying right copyright music

00:41:23 ◼   ► But to me, that's sort of a, you know, and, you know, I'm not a big fan of Google. I think it's

00:41:29 ◼   ► fair to say, but I have to say that if you're putting copyright music in your videos and

00:41:33 ◼   ► uploading them to a commercial website, and it gets flagged, it's on you. Yeah, there's sort of,

00:41:40 ◼   ► you know, the world's tiniest violin playing a sad song here for you. It's like, you know,

00:41:44 ◼   ► I understand that it's it in if, you know, it's one of those things like comics ology going to

00:41:50 ◼   ► Amazon where you know it is making it worse for you as a user but you know come on you know

00:41:56 ◼   ► Copyright stuff is still copy. You know, there's

00:41:58 ◼   ► Can't using music for free is still you have to admit. It's a gray area, right?

00:42:04 ◼   ► Like you had to you know, you had to think eventually that's that bubble was gonna burst one way or the other

00:42:09 ◼   ► Yeah, and I do I think we're on the cusp of this sort of

00:42:15 ◼   ► video people people spent you know note and observe observing noting and then monetizing the fact that

00:42:22 ◼   ► Millions of people are watching hundreds and hundreds of hours of people play video games this that's gonna become a thing

00:42:29 ◼   ► It's it's gonna quickly. It's not gonna take long before

00:42:31 ◼   ► Idiots like me who think wow these crazy kids today. You know no longer see it as odd or unusual

00:42:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it may be you mentioned this before but I feel like that's this is kind of my first

00:42:44 ◼   ► first moment of having something like that come up. I mean, and from kids so young, I

00:42:51 ◼   ► mean kids from, you know, our kids are 10, and seeing what they do and kind of in the

00:42:56 ◼   ► beginning going, "Oh, you know, that's so lowbrow," but then realizing, "Well,

00:43:01 ◼   ► maybe not. Maybe I need to give it another chance."

00:43:04 ◼   ► Pete: Yeah, and I'm sure it's just like, you know,

00:43:07 ◼   ► I feel like I'm almost proud of myself for being as uncommudgeonly as to recognize that

00:43:13 ◼   ► this is normal, that I shouldn't be seeing, that I was wrong, that I shouldn't be seeing,

00:43:17 ◼   ► this is weird. I'm kind of proud of myself.

00:43:20 ◼   ► Jared: And it wasn't until he started watching that stuff that I even realized that this was

00:43:27 ◼   ► such a huge industry. I wrote that article about the guys doing Minecraft stuff and they're making

00:43:34 ◼   ► ridiculous amounts of money.

00:43:35 ◼   ► Pete: Right. And good for them, right?

00:43:38 ◼   ► Jared Yeah, no, it's great. It's great.

00:43:39 ◼   ► I mean, because it all comes down to the bottom line is attention. This is not a new observation,

00:43:46 ◼   ► it's obvious, but that's the one thing that we have collectively in the aggregate that's

00:43:51 ◼   ► a limited resource. Every person only has 24 hours in a day and we need to spend a certain

00:43:56 ◼   ► number of hours of that sleeping and eating and working or going to school or something.

00:44:01 ◼   ► So if you're capturing in the aggregate millions of hours of attention, there's tremendous value

00:44:09 ◼   ► there. Yeah. And Stampy Longnose, that guy that are, the main guy that I wrote about

00:44:14 ◼   ► that article, recently tweeted that he's, you know, it was a picture of Jack Black.

00:44:21 ◼   ► You know, he was visiting with Jack Black and the two of them are going to be working

00:44:24 ◼   ► on something together. That's awesome. Yeah. That's so great. Which is a really, which

00:44:30 ◼   ► is a good fit for starters, but also just, I mean, the fact that this guy who was working

00:44:36 ◼   ► in a pub two years ago and is now the gigantic mogul of YouTube Minecraft

00:44:42 ◼   ► videos so awesome but that it's all just you know of a piece that you're doing

00:44:47 ◼   ► this you know you're doing this thing that people watch for this reason I do

00:44:51 ◼   ► these things that people watch for another reason we should do something

00:44:53 ◼   ► together right what else acquisition news AT&T oh yeah is buying direct TV

00:45:03 ◼   ► For 45 billion dollars you can just feel the increase in competition. Can't you I?

00:45:09 ◼   ► Was just talking to somebody yesterday we we got together with friends yesterday out-of-town friends

00:45:16 ◼   ► And and we were talking about that the that's the thing that really greats about the Comcast

00:45:23 ◼   ► Time Warner

00:45:26 ◼   ► Merger which is really Comcast buying Time Warner, which is for almost the same amount of money like forty six billion dollars

00:45:33 ◼   ► It would be one thing if Comcast's argument was, "Okay, don't worry, this is still going

00:45:39 ◼   ► to be okay for consumers. Here's why." And there's some kind of argument they could make

00:45:45 ◼   ► there and maybe it makes some kind of sense. But the fact that they're actually saying

00:45:48 ◼   ► that it will increase competition, it would increase competition for us to consume our

00:45:56 ◼   ► largest competitor. It makes no sense, right? If the Yankees and Red Sox merged, you could say,

00:46:05 ◼   ► "Well, this would be good for baseball for this reason or the other." But you can't say it would

00:46:10 ◼   ► increase competition because it's two arch rivals with big budgets. It can't. Direct TV and AT&T

00:46:19 ◼   ► merging cannot increase competition. **Matt Stauffer**

00:46:24 ◼   ► Yeah, it's the classic lobbyist talk. Yeah, I also saw that DirecTV in particular was part of

00:46:31 ◼   ► a compart of Comcast. And I think it's driven. It could be the sort of thing where maybe AT&T

00:46:38 ◼   ► wouldn't have done this if they didn't have the nagging feeling that this Comcast/Time Warner

00:46:43 ◼   ► thing is going to go through and that they kind of need to get bigger in the same way.

00:46:49 ◼   ► But part of Comcast's argument that this is not anti-competitive or bad for consumers in

00:46:56 ◼   ► a competitive way is that the average U.S. citizen has like three options, or at least three options

00:47:04 ◼   ► as an alternative to Comcast and Time Warner. But it's not about cable service to your home or

00:47:10 ◼   ► any kind of wired thing. It's DirecTV, that they're counting as competition, something of an

00:47:18 ◼   ► an entirely different sort. Just the whole thing. I mentioned this before. I'm just

00:47:24 ◼   ► glad that here in Tacoma we have a city provided broadband. You know, very few cities have

00:47:31 ◼   ► done that. Forget who else. I just saw somebody was, was it San Diego? I forget. They're

00:47:38 ◼   ► somewhere in Southern California where they have municipal Wi-Fi and that it works. It's

00:47:44 ◼   ► really good. If it's not San Diego, it's somewhere else in Southern California. But

00:47:49 ◼   ► you're downtown and you can just walk around and get on the Wi-Fi and you have superior

00:47:55 ◼   ► to LTE, wireless internet everywhere.

00:47:59 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yeah. But those pockets are very few and far

00:48:03 ◼   ► between.

00:48:04 ◼   ► Eric Bischoff Yeah. So what do you guys have? You guys have

00:48:06 ◼   ► wired broadband?

00:48:07 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yep.

00:48:08 ◼   ► Eric Bischoff And who do you pay? Who do you write?

00:48:10 ◼   ► Tim Cynova We were one of those, like in the late '90s,

00:48:14 ◼   ► of those cities that was vying for the title of America's most wired city or something

00:48:20 ◼   ► like that.

00:48:21 ◼   ► So, you know, there was the few ones that were doing that.

00:48:26 ◼   ► So the city runs the network and they have contracted with a few small local private

00:48:34 ◼   ► companies to provide the service and come out and do the installation and stuff like

00:48:38 ◼   ► that.

00:48:39 ◼   ► And there's a good service?

00:48:40 ◼   ► So just, it's fine.

00:48:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:42 ◼   ► I mean, it's certainly no worse than Comcast. I feel good that I'm not sending Comcast my money.

00:48:50 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer:** That should be their slogan.

00:48:51 ◼   ► **Brett Harned:** Yeah, right. Certainly no worse than Comcast.

00:48:55 ◼   ► I mean, I experience ups and downs. I don't have any idea if I experience more ups and downs than

00:49:03 ◼   ► your average Comcast user. But I don't get a lot of them. And I pay for like the cheapest level.

00:49:13 ◼   ► So...

00:49:14 ◼   ► Trenton Larkin Shocker.

00:49:15 ◼   ► David Bonilla Yeah.

00:49:16 ◼   ► You need that before you ask.

00:49:20 ◼   ► Trenton Larkin Let me take a break here and thank our second

00:49:24 ◼   ► sponsor, our good friends at Backblaze. Backblaze is unlimited, un-throttled,

00:49:32 ◼   ► uncomplicated backup for your Mac available anywhere you pay five dollars

00:49:39 ◼   ► a month per Mac and you get unlimited backup it sounds too good to be true but

00:49:46 ◼   ► it's not makes a lot of sense does it take a long time for your initial

00:49:50 ◼   ► backload upload of your entire four gigabytes or whatever you have or four

00:49:56 ◼   ► terabytes however big it is to upload yeah it does actually but you can just

00:50:01 ◼   ► do it during your free trial period. And then once your whole Mac is backed up over the

00:50:06 ◼   ► cloud to back blazes servers, everything else is just incremental after that. And they have

00:50:15 ◼   ► iOS apps for your iPhone for iPad that you can access your data from anywhere at any

00:50:21 ◼   ► time. So if you're on your iPhone, and there's a file that you know is on your Mac and your

00:50:26 ◼   ► Mac is backed up to backblaze. You can just go into backblaze on your iPhone, go to where that

00:50:31 ◼   ► file is on your hard drive, and download it right there to your iPhone from anywhere, anytime.

00:50:37 ◼   ► And it's all for just $5 a month. No upgrades. There's no, oh, for well, there is a $5, $5 a

00:50:45 ◼   ► month tier, but it's not really the one you want. You're going to want to upgrade to a bigger thing

00:50:49 ◼   ► because you only get so much. No, it's nothing like that. It's just $5 a month for everybody,

00:50:55 ◼   ► per Mac. Great service. I always say it makes you sleep better knowing you have an offsite backup.

00:51:02 ◼   ► I've been using it. I forget how long I've been using it. And it just runs in the background

00:51:08 ◼   ► on your Mac. Nothing to worry about. Just a great service. I think it's probably a great thing,

00:51:13 ◼   ► not just for all of you out there listening to the show. But it's also a great thing that you could

00:51:20 ◼   ► set up for your parents or anybody like less technical family and friends members who have

00:51:25 ◼   ► Macs so that you know that everything they have is getting backed up off site just in case

00:51:32 ◼   ► something bad happens in the house or wherever their Mac is great, great, great service.

00:51:36 ◼   ► If you haven't tried it, I just can't imagine what you're waiting for. And I don't even know,

00:51:42 ◼   ► I can't imagine why anybody would try it and then not sign up for it because it's just so great.

00:51:48 ◼   ► Where do you go to sign up and find out more easy? Go to their website, www dot back blaze.com

00:51:55 ◼   ► slash daring fireball back blaze.com slash daring fireball. My thanks to them.

00:52:03 ◼   ► I'm going there right now.

00:52:07 ◼   ► Yes, just you but you should I currently don't have offsite backup. Well, then you're not is dumb.

00:52:16 ◼   ► Yeah, really dumb. And you should start it. Start it right now while we're recording the show over

00:52:21 ◼   ► Skype because I'm sure that won't cause any trouble whatsoever. I'll wait until we're done.

00:52:28 ◼   ► My thanks to Backblaze for ruining this recording of the talk show.

00:52:31 ◼   ► I already ruined it. I tell you, it does put perspective on it. Where if you want, you know,

00:52:39 ◼   ► Apple, the company with $160 billion in the bank, is buying a company for $3 billion

00:52:45 ◼   ► and it was mega mega news for you know a week and a half if assuming it comes to fruition this week

00:52:52 ◼   ► i'm sure it'll pop pop back up to the top of the tech news uh what is that 1 15th the size of

00:52:59 ◼   ► atnt's purchase of direct tv yeah do you think that they would wait until wwdc i've that's it

00:53:08 ◼   ► i thought of that i you know they're close enough now because what we're as we record today we're

00:53:13 ◼   ► two weeks to the day. We're recording on Monday the 19th. So, we're two weeks to the day. So,

00:53:18 ◼   ► I don't know. Why not? And especially if they have some sort of consumer-based story to tell about

00:53:28 ◼   ► why they're doing it and what they have planned together, why not? Why not just get all the

00:53:35 ◼   ► paperwork ready to go and don't put the signatures down until Sunday, June 1st, and then Monday,

00:53:41 ◼   ► June 2nd have something on the keynote. It's close enough that I wouldn't be surprised.

00:53:47 ◼   ► Then you got instant news. Not that anybody's probably not going to write about it anyway, but…

00:53:53 ◼   ► Well, and they get their own… They get to spin it their way. Tell their side of the story and

00:54:03 ◼   ► explain themselves first in a in a in a forum that's more you know a richer medium than just

00:54:15 ◼   ► a press release right a press release you just can write what you want to say whereas during a

00:54:19 ◼   ► wwdc keynote you can tell it and you can you know use use your voice and you know slides and

00:54:27 ◼   ► bring dr gray up on stage if you want i don't know i don't know but it you know it's

00:54:32 ◼   ► it's, you know, it's the way that, you know, there's something about watching people talk

00:54:38 ◼   ► that's different and better than just reading about it. Right. The iPhone announcement in

00:54:43 ◼   ► 2007 would not have been the iPhone announcement if it had just come out in a press release

00:54:47 ◼   ► with a picture. It's the fact that it was on on stage with the crowd, right?

00:54:51 ◼   ► Stan Sigmund hadn't been there.

00:54:53 ◼   ► Pete: Right. Exactly. What would we have laughed at?

00:54:56 ◼   ► I wonder if anybody else remembers him as fondly as we did.

00:55:04 ◼   ► Jared; God, that was, it was just so, because that keynote was so amazing.

00:55:11 ◼   ► And then we had to sit there for five minutes and listen to Stan Sigmund.

00:55:16 ◼   ► Do you know who Stan Sigmund was? Is it Sigmund or Stigman?

00:55:21 ◼   ► Stan Sigmund.

00:55:21 ◼   ► Stan Sigmund was to the iPhone keynote what Christian Laitner was to the Dream Team. Do

00:55:32 ◼   ► you remember the Dream Team, the first time the US sent professional basketball players to the

00:55:37 ◼   ► Olympics? And it was Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Charles Bart. I mean,

00:55:44 ◼   ► it's just you know those three the three at the top are arguably that I think well you know LeBron's

00:55:49 ◼   ► probably up there now maybe I don't know but you know at the time they were all three were

00:55:53 ◼   ► considered arguably the single greatest player of all time all on the same team oh you know almost

00:56:00 ◼   ► all not just all stars but Hall of Famers down the line and then they had they had room for one

00:56:06 ◼   ► college player and it it could have been either Shaq who wound up having a fantastic pro career

00:56:12 ◼   ► you know, Hall of Fame career, or Christian Leitner from Duke, and they picked Christian Leitner.

00:56:16 ◼   ► That was Stan Sigmund.

00:56:20 ◼   ► The greatest announcement in the history of consumer electronics.

00:56:27 ◼   ► And then at one point…

00:56:31 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer** And then it just like stalls.

00:56:34 ◼   ► **Ezra Kleinman** Right. In the midst of outright near pandemonium and delirium in the

00:56:40 ◼   ► the in the in the hall all of a sudden there was narcolepsy people had to pass

00:56:50 ◼   ► smelling salts out yeah when when Jerry Yang is up there yeah who's Jerry Yang

00:56:59 ◼   ► is up there and he's not like the least charismatic

00:57:04 ◼   ► right bring back Jerry Yang Jerry Yang back up breaking news

00:57:23 ◼   ► come to our attention that like a dummy I forgot to mention something that I

00:57:30 ◼   ► I wanted to during the recording with John Moltz and that is this

00:57:34 ◼   ► For those of you who will be in San Francisco during the week of WWDC

00:57:40 ◼   ► I'm gonna have another live audience episode of the talk show. I've done this last two years as we the third year

00:57:48 ◼   ► It's been a lot of fun and the show should be even better than before

00:57:53 ◼   ► It's going to be on Tuesday. That's June 3rd

00:57:57 ◼   ► 6 to 9 p.m. At mezzanine in San Francisco. We've already got the venue

00:58:01 ◼   ► I don't have any ticket information yet. Don't have the URL

00:58:05 ◼   ► but I will

00:58:07 ◼   ► So what I'm going to do is rather than announce it on daring fireball

00:58:12 ◼   ► I will announce it here on the show in the next episode not this episode not not the one you're listening to right now

00:58:19 ◼   ► next episode episode 82 I will

00:58:23 ◼   ► Have instructions URL or something like that where you go to buy your tickets for the show. So the first crack at

00:58:30 ◼   ► Tickets we should have about 500 available

00:58:33 ◼   ► the first crack will go to

00:58:35 ◼   ► The first people who listen to the show

00:58:38 ◼   ► So if you really want to get a ticket you want to be sure to get one pay attention

00:58:41 ◼   ► Keep your eyes peeled for the next episode of the talk show episode 82 give it a listen and in that show

00:58:47 ◼   ► You'll find out how to get a ticket

00:58:50 ◼   ► Thanks. I hope to see you there and now back to the talk show

00:58:55 ◼   ► So so

00:59:02 ◼   ► WWDC, all right two weeks

00:59:05 ◼   ► Two weeks now, maybe you want to hold off on you want to hold off on speculation for your next show?

00:59:10 ◼   ► Maybe but you know you could ask me questions. I

00:59:13 ◼   ► Don't know

00:59:19 ◼   ► Big iPhone, I don't think so. Oh, wait. Wait, wait. I got a better. I got a better question split-screen iPad. Yeah

00:59:25 ◼   ► I

00:59:28 ◼   ► Believe it I mean, I don't think it's ridiculous

00:59:33 ◼   ► And you know, I trust

00:59:36 ◼   ► Mark Gurman who reported it enough that I don't think that he you know, I think his source probably, you know was reasonably

00:59:44 ◼   ► either in Apple or reasonably could be expected to

00:59:48 ◼   ► to know of such a thing. But I don't know. The devil would be in the details in terms

00:59:54 ◼   ► of how it's actually how you actually get into and out of this such a mode.

00:59:59 ◼   ► Yeah, because I think that's been I mean, Microsoft always tells them, you can use two

01:00:05 ◼   ► apps at the same time. But you wouldn't really want to write my guess is if it's true, it's

01:00:11 ◼   ► something that you manage within the multitasking switcher. In other words,

01:00:17 ◼   ► would the thing you get when you double tap the home button and that you zoom

01:00:22 ◼   ► out a little bit to like a card type view now in iOS 7 you do and it might

01:00:27 ◼   ► even help explain why they switched to that card type view where you actually

01:00:32 ◼   ► see what looks like windows of your apps as you pan left and right and that maybe

01:00:37 ◼   ► you could take two of them and push them together yeah and then you know but I

01:00:44 ◼   ► don't know though it all seems you know you start thinking about this if you

01:00:47 ◼   ► actually try to think it through and you know get it detailed down enough that

01:00:52 ◼   ► you could actually hand over to someone and say okay build this it you you start

01:00:57 ◼   ► seeing how complicated it is because it almost certainly would require apps to

01:01:02 ◼   ► support it explicitly because the size of the app on screen would be it would

01:01:06 ◼   ► be a new size. It would be a new window size, right? Because it's, you know, it's something

01:01:11 ◼   ► that would work with, uh, if they announced it at WWDC by definition, it would be part

01:01:17 ◼   ► of an announcement of iOS eight, not a part of new iPad hardware. So it would have to

01:01:21 ◼   ► work on existing iPads. Um, and then, so you could just take the half the size of the iPad

01:01:27 ◼   ► screen and that's the size that the app would be running in, you know, 10, 20, 2048, uh,

01:01:33 ◼   ► this would be like 1024 by I don't know whatever it would be I can't do the math

01:01:41 ◼   ► man right but it would still be new dimensions and a new size yeah and it

01:01:49 ◼   ► would so you couldn't just push together any two apps you'd only be able to push

01:01:55 ◼   ► together two apps that support it well then how do you show the user which ones

01:01:59 ◼   ► you can push together. I don't know. Yeah. And he also he ends the other thing was he

01:02:05 ◼   ► in sort of insinuated that it might have implications for well, I guess he said this, but

01:02:11 ◼   ► for data sharing between different apps. On that point, I think he was I think he was guessing,

01:02:20 ◼   ► guessing. Yeah, I don't think so. Because I don't think Yeah, it didn't seem like that was,

01:02:23 ◼   ► you know, what came from his source. It seemed like that was his reference. Yeah, I don't think

01:02:28 ◼   ► it would require the XPC as he said yeah certainly possible but again I think it

01:02:37 ◼   ► would have to be you know you have to figure I'd have to see the details of

01:02:40 ◼   ► exactly how you get into and out of the mode and I think it has to be the sort

01:02:43 ◼   ► of thing where I think the most important thing would be that you can't

01:02:47 ◼   ► get into it accidentally because I think that then all of a sudden you're and

01:02:51 ◼   ► it's starting to turn into something like the Mac where people are easily

01:02:54 ◼   ► confused and that's so big a part of right why as a pro it would be good it

01:02:59 ◼   ► would be great as a pro feature or something that you turn on explicitly

01:03:02 ◼   ► right and you just can't underestimate you don't want somebody I mean like my

01:03:07 ◼   ► mother or father right and I that everything's always and I don't play

01:03:12 ◼   ► that card lightly you know that because I know that some people get all incensed

01:03:16 ◼   ► about the plane that oh yeah the non techie tech savvy grandparents card but

01:03:22 ◼   ► - It's true.

01:03:23 ◼   ► - No, it's absolutely true.

01:03:25 ◼   ► I mean, my parents both have iPads now,

01:03:28 ◼   ► and in years I've gotten like one call

01:03:33 ◼   ► about like an iPad problem,

01:03:35 ◼   ► and it really came down to like a billing thing

01:03:39 ◼   ► with the cellular wireless,

01:03:41 ◼   ► which is sort of a complicated aspect of it.

01:03:45 ◼   ► But in terms of just using it,

01:03:46 ◼   ► it's never been a problem, whereas--

01:03:48 ◼   ► - And I think you and I talked about,

01:03:50 ◼   ► didn't you get a call once

01:03:51 ◼   ► when somebody was in full screen mode?

01:03:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely.

01:03:57 ◼   ► - And couldn't get out?

01:03:58 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

01:03:58 ◼   ► No, that was exactly true, where my parents

01:04:02 ◼   ► had got a new iMac and upgraded,

01:04:06 ◼   ► jumped a couple versions of Mac OS

01:04:09 ◼   ► and never had full screen mode before, got into it,

01:04:13 ◼   ► and it was a confusing phone call,

01:04:15 ◼   ► 'cause I was in there like, "How do you quit?

01:04:16 ◼   ► "We wanna quit mail."

01:04:17 ◼   ► And I was like, "Just go up to the menu."

01:04:19 ◼   ► And they're like, "There is no menu."

01:04:20 ◼   ► There's always a menu and then I thought wait

01:04:22 ◼   ► Not when you're in full screen, although I guess if you run the mouse up there

01:04:27 ◼   ► There is a menu but because they couldn't see it in the first place

01:04:29 ◼   ► They never even thought to run the mouse up to see if there was a menu

01:04:31 ◼   ► Yeah, full screen can getting into full screen mode accidentally required a phone call and I feel like whatever the iPad does for

01:04:39 ◼   ► Two apps on the screen at the same time cannot be something that it's gonna get me a phone call

01:04:44 ◼   ► Yeah, if I get a phone call about it, then I then Apple is somebody didn't do their job

01:04:50 ◼   ► And to me that's more important than number two which would be making it

01:04:55 ◼   ► Convenient enough that power users who know what they're doing and who really want to do it can get into it easy enough that it's that

01:05:03 ◼   ► they end up using I

01:05:05 ◼   ► Don't know it's like there's a lot of people out there who I

01:05:10 ◼   ► Don't want to call them iPad doubters, but you know people who just generally down on the iPad as like a

01:05:18 ◼   ► long-term replacement for the Mac and and a productivity device

01:05:22 ◼   ► Who who want more power user type features

01:05:28 ◼   ► In iOS, especially on the iPad maybe compared to the phone just because it's big enough that you could do stuff

01:05:34 ◼   ► Like nobody is saying they want two apps on the same time on the iPhone or at least nobody's saying

01:05:38 ◼   ► I

01:05:41 ◼   ► Just feel like those sort of people gla just gloss over how confusing

01:05:45 ◼   ► computers in general are to most people. It's just if you understand it and you never really

01:05:52 ◼   ► find yourself confused or lost on Mac OS X, you just can't. It's just so hard.

01:05:57 ◼   ► It's the same people who think that widgets on Android are the killer feature.

01:06:01 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. I just saw something this week on ZDNet about how much more you can quote

01:06:05 ◼   ► it. I didn't link to it because it was, you know, it's like one of those things like you

01:06:08 ◼   ► don't want to draw attention to something. And it wasn't the guy was, I think the guy

01:06:12 ◼   ► meant it honestly, but he said, look at how, you know, how huge the usability advantage

01:06:16 ◼   ► of Android is versus iOS. Usability, he called it. And it was his his home screen on both

01:06:26 ◼   ► devices. And he carries both like for work for some reason, he has an Android, a Galaxy

01:06:31 ◼   ► and a iPhone. And his iPhone home screen, of course, is just a bunch of apps. And his

01:06:37 ◼   ► his Android home screen is a couple of apps and a bunch of widgets, including a bunch

01:06:41 ◼   ► of like home automation ones so that he can like, you know, open his garage door and change

01:06:47 ◼   ► his thermostat and do all this stuff without ever entering an app, but do it right from

01:06:51 ◼   ► his Android home screen, which is cool in a geeky way. It's kind of, you know, and obviously

01:06:57 ◼   ► it makes him happy. And maybe, you know, he's too fiddly. Yeah, he's a perfect example of

01:07:01 ◼   ► a sort of person who truly is better served by Android than iOS.

01:07:06 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer:** Plus that guy, he tries too hard.

01:07:08 ◼   ► **Beserat Debebe:** But calling it a user-

01:07:10 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer** I know who that is.

01:07:11 ◼   ► **Beserat Debebe:** Calling it a years long usability advantage is,

01:07:16 ◼   ► I think, stretching it. I just feel like people vastly underestimate how big of a

01:07:21 ◼   ► usability advantage for different people iOS has in terms of never making people feel like they're

01:07:26 ◼   ► lost. Right? Because what happens you're in two screen mode and you hit the home button,

01:07:32 ◼   ► what happens? Do both apps go away and replace with your home screen? Because that's what I

01:07:38 ◼   ► would expect to happen because whenever I hit the home button, I'm taken back to the safety of

01:07:43 ◼   ► I'm back to ground zero, just a home screen full of apps.

01:07:46 ◼   ► There's a perfect solution for that.

01:07:50 ◼   ► What's that?

01:07:51 ◼   ► Two home buttons.

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01:10:15 ◼   ► Home button

01:10:21 ◼   ► Two of them well, here's what I wanted to talk about talking about one home button

01:10:25 ◼   ► So I don't know if you notice as I tweeted a couple of times about it, but a couple of weeks ago, I

01:10:29 ◼   ► bought I bought a Firefox Firefox, yeah, the ZTE open see Firefox OS phone. I saw it. I forget what

01:10:41 ◼   ► site I was reading. But it said that they started to sell it in the US on eBay. It's like an eBay

01:10:46 ◼   ► store. You just go there $99 smartphone unlocked. Oh, it's on. Of course, it's of course, it's on.

01:10:55 ◼   ► unlocked. So, you just go there and you spend 99 bucks. A couple days later, you get your phone.

01:11:02 ◼   ► I guess I should write about it on Daring Fireball. A lot of times,

01:11:06 ◼   ► I get these things and never end up writing about it. But long story short, it's not a good phone.

01:11:13 ◼   ► **Beserat Debele

01:11:13 ◼   ► Oh, darn. B, one thing though that is interesting is that they copied conceptually, and I don't

01:11:25 ◼   ► mean this in a pejorative way at all. I just mean in terms of, look, they're following

01:11:31 ◼   ► years behind the footsteps of the modern smartphone, which is a touchscreen device that more or

01:11:40 ◼   ► or less run something that's like a real computer operating system. The post iPhone

01:11:46 ◼   ► smartphone, right? And one thing that they got right is there's only one button on the

01:11:51 ◼   ► front, a home button. There's a button to turn it on. It's got the exact same buttons

01:11:56 ◼   ► as the iPhone, except it doesn't have a mute switch. So there's an on/off switch at the

01:12:01 ◼   ► top, just like the iPhone. Volume up, volume down on the side. And then on the front face,

01:12:08 ◼   ► underneath the screen, there's just a circle, and that circle is the home button. And the

01:12:12 ◼   ► home button does exactly what the home button on the iPhone does, is it takes you to a home

01:12:17 ◼   ► screen full of app icons. So in one sense, I was actually, I found myself very… For

01:12:27 ◼   ► an iPhone user, there's no way to get lost or confused. It's very, very iPhone-like

01:12:32 ◼   ► in terms of what's the basic gist of how you use the thing. I would say in every other

01:12:40 ◼   ► regard it is really pretty bad. And I don't mean that you just pop your sim out and put

01:12:46 ◼   ► it in there. You know what I get another I can't because my sim is a Verizon sim and

01:12:51 ◼   ► it's a GSM phone and so it doesn't work. And I was I was going to go to T mobile and just

01:13:01 ◼   ► get a buy a SIM card from them because I've been curious I've been curious

01:13:05 ◼   ► about t-mobile ever since you know it just seems like they're the most

01:13:08 ◼   ► internet I don't know that I would say they're the best carrier right now in

01:13:11 ◼   ► the u.s. but they're the most interesting carrier that they seem to

01:13:13 ◼   ► have the best plans the most the best pricing right and a pretty cool you know

01:13:19 ◼   ► they just seem better like a better company than Verizon or AT&T albeit with

01:13:24 ◼   ► a smaller network coverage because it but it's like 50 I think to start and

01:13:29 ◼   ► that you could get one for it's like 50 bucks a month and it's prepaid. You don't have to get

01:13:33 ◼   ► in a contract or anything, but even 50 bucks felt like too much to waste on this thing.

01:13:37 ◼   ► Where at a dollar? Well, you know, and I don't regret the $100 I feel like it I got $100 worth

01:13:42 ◼   ► of curiosity answered and just using it at home on the Wi Fi network is more than enough to satisfy

01:13:49 ◼   ► my questions about it. I don't feel I don't feel like the ability to actually go out and use it

01:13:53 ◼   ► outside the house right would answer anything other than, you know, so I haven't been able

01:13:59 ◼   ► will send any text messages because I don't have a SIM card in it and I haven't been able

01:14:02 ◼   ► to place an actual phone call. But I don't like talking on the phone anyway.

01:14:06 ◼   ► Jared Ranerel who does that? Who uses the phone?

01:14:09 ◼   ► Jared Ranerel Right. And when I say that it's not good,

01:14:13 ◼   ► when I say that it's not good, I do not mean in comparison to a $700 iPhone 5S, which is

01:14:19 ◼   ► truly not a fair comparison. A $99 unlocked phone to an iPhone 5S that in the unlocked,

01:14:27 ◼   ► know, sells for seven or $800, which is that's not a fair comparison. I would say and I don't

01:14:33 ◼   ► have it here. So I can't you know, I don't have one in the house. But where Nokia has been going

01:14:39 ◼   ► and now Nokia's handset division is part of Microsoft. And Motorola has been going on Android,

01:14:47 ◼   ► in terms of lower cost smartphones. And I did see when I was out at build for the Microsoft

01:14:53 ◼   ► conference a month ago, I saw a low end Nokia, Windows phone handset that I think unlocked

01:15:02 ◼   ► was I could be wrong here, but it was like $129 way better than this device. Like, you

01:15:10 ◼   ► know, and again, not, you know, definitely not iPhone five, five s five c iPhone five

01:15:16 ◼   ► anything caliber, not even iPhone four s caliber, but pretty good, like in terms of things like

01:15:22 ◼   ► frame rate and, you know, load a web page and slide your thumb around and how does it keep up

01:15:27 ◼   ► with your thumb and stuff like that pretty good. And I know Motorola has a new thing I forget which

01:15:32 ◼   ► the model number is, but they have one that's like $129. And so they're not quite at the $99 price I

01:15:38 ◼   ► paid for this, but 129 to 99 is pretty fair comparison. And this this phone has got a lot

01:15:44 ◼   ► of problems. Video. So when you shoot video on this phone, it's like 380 by like 240 pixels,

01:15:53 ◼   ► which is really a pretty low size. And it's 15 frames per second.

01:15:59 ◼   ► So you're, you know, I mean, it's almost like if that's all they were able to put in here,

01:16:08 ◼   ► I almost, I mean, I guess it's better than nothing, but it's not much better than nothing.

01:16:12 ◼   ► Yeah. Can you remember? Do you remember that the original iPhone didn't shoot video? Yeah,

01:16:17 ◼   ► that's that is I caught myself thinking about that kind of crazy. Is that right? I was like,

01:16:24 ◼   ► that can't be right. And then they like went back and looked and I was like, Yep, that was right.

01:16:27 ◼   ► But I do think I bet that that was the sort of decision Apple made with the original iPhone,

01:16:34 ◼   ► where they probably could have done something like shot posted stamp sized 15 frames per second

01:16:39 ◼   ► video and they were like it'd be better not to even shoot video than to offer video like that

01:16:44 ◼   ► eventually there was an app how did that work right that's sort of when did video come to the

01:16:51 ◼   ► iPhone was it was it was another 3g 3gs because the 3gs the 3g only because it needed a better

01:16:57 ◼   ► processor right the 3g only added 3g and a new a new case design right but technically it didn't

01:17:06 ◼   ► didn't increase the CPU. You know, didn't increase the RAM, didn't increase the storage.

01:17:10 ◼   ► The one and only technical difference other than the outside appearance between the original iPhone

01:17:15 ◼   ► and the 3G was 3G. Maybe there was a jailbreak app that added video to the earlier ones. Because

01:17:25 ◼   ► I remember that there was one and I never installed it just because I think by that point,

01:17:30 ◼   ► I already moved on. The camera is just really bad. The video, it's not just that the video is low.

01:17:34 ◼   ► It's it really takes terrible, terrible photographs. And again, I so with the Nokia one,

01:17:42 ◼   ► the Nokia is low end $129 smartphone. The only photos I got to take I was in a room in Moscone,

01:17:49 ◼   ► where they had demo unit set up for media to play with. I mean, but I could I it the Nokia has a,

01:17:56 ◼   ► you know, if anything, they have it. Yeah. If anything, Apple just Apple just hired their

01:18:01 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. And from everything I've read about it, that's a pretty big hire that he wasn't,

01:18:06 ◼   ► it's not just the name that he actually was largely, you know, played a big part in making

01:18:11 ◼   ► Nokia. They're either one and two or two and one. I mean, that's, you know, more or less the gist

01:18:16 ◼   ► is that the two best companies that at mobile photography right now are Apple and Nokia. And

01:18:21 ◼   ► it doesn't matter which one you think is one and which ones too. You know, they're just leading the

01:18:25 ◼   ► way in terms of image quality and features and stuff. And this phone from ZTE is just,

01:18:30 ◼   ► it just feels like it's at least 10 years old. And it makes me wonder about Firefox in general.

01:18:38 ◼   ► I mean, I know I've was never really a full time Firefox user on the on the desktop. But it just

01:18:45 ◼   ► it's like, why are they way it just feels to me like this is just a waste of time on their part.

01:18:51 ◼   ► I don't know. And I feel like they're they feel locked out because these mobile platforms don't

01:18:57 ◼   ► allow, at least iOS certainly doesn't allow them to include their own rendering engine. You know,

01:19:04 ◼   ► even Chrome doesn't get to Chrome for iOS doesn't use the Chrome rendering engine. It's just a Chrome

01:19:11 ◼   ► wrapper around the system's WebKit version. You know, and so if you're a company like Mozilla,

01:19:17 ◼   ► that you know that the whole point of your existence is to have your rendering and

01:19:23 ◼   ► engine out there powering people surfing the web. I could see why you would want a mobile operating

01:19:29 ◼   ► system of your own so you could do it. But if this is how far behind you are, boy, it's going to be

01:19:34 ◼   ► tough to get anybody to—I just can't see why anybody would buy it. If you have the $99 to spend

01:19:40 ◼   ► on it, I just can't see why you wouldn't save up another $30 and get a Motorola Android phone or

01:19:46 ◼   ► get a Nokia Windows 8 phone when you get so much more. And much more likely you'd get the Android

01:19:51 ◼   ► phone. I mean, more people would get the Android phone.

01:19:54 ◼   ► Yeah, well, they would right now, at least, statistically. Although, you know—

01:19:58 ◼   ► Unless you're buying into a bigger ecosystem.

01:20:01 ◼   ► Right. I just feel—and I feel like the only other reason I can think of that someone would

01:20:04 ◼   ► buy this phone would be the politics of it, you know, that you support the whole political angle

01:20:10 ◼   ► of Mozilla and the, you know, open web and etc., etc. But I just don't see how there's enough

01:20:17 ◼   ► people out there that that's a statistically valid number of people.

01:20:21 ◼   ► Right. Well, it looks like it erased my notebook. I had some notes, but they were written using the

01:20:31 ◼   ► notebook app on the actual phone and it seems as though now they're gone. That's a shame.

01:20:38 ◼   ► I can remember a lot of them. One of the big problems with this operating system is that it

01:20:44 ◼   ► does not support selecting text. So there's no cut, copy, or paste.

01:20:50 ◼   ► So it's a lot like the original iPhone. It is. And I Twittered about some of these

01:20:55 ◼   ► things and people who support, who are fans of it, I guess, tried to call me a hypocrite

01:21:04 ◼   ► for it. How was it okay for Apple in 2007 when the iPhone was new and it's not okay

01:21:10 ◼   ► Well, that's because it's not 2007 anymore, right? It's you know, the world's moved on and

01:21:16 ◼   ► Other people called me out the other way and when I said that it was unacceptable

01:21:24 ◼   ► It was acceptable for Apple then but it's unacceptable now and they said no it was unacceptable for Apple then - it used to drive me

01:21:30 ◼   ► nuts

01:21:32 ◼   ► But my point to them is that no that was annoying then it was like an obvious

01:21:37 ◼   ► Shortcoming, but it was clearly acceptable because we were using it and you're even admitting that you still used it, right?

01:21:42 ◼   ► We were frustrated by it, but we see you I when I say it's unacceptable now

01:21:46 ◼   ► I mean

01:21:47 ◼   ► I

01:21:47 ◼   ► Can't imagine why someone would buy this phone where they can't select cut copy and paste

01:21:51 ◼   ► When for about the same amount of money they could buy a different one that does I mean everything has to be taken in

01:21:57 ◼   ► Context right like I mean the context of 2007 was the iPhone was

01:22:03 ◼   ► an amazing phone for the time

01:22:05 ◼   ► Even with its flaws right that people and we did put up with it with those shortcomings

01:22:10 ◼   ► And I just can't see why someone would put up with these now. I

01:22:13 ◼   ► Can't believe that it erased my notes. I think it's because I might let the battery die. I don't know

01:22:18 ◼   ► Didn't like what you were saying about it

01:22:22 ◼   ► You can't and you know even the web browser which you would think would be the one thing that might be good because it's you know

01:22:32 ◼   ► Fox's own thing

01:22:34 ◼   ► It's not good

01:22:36 ◼   ► You can't do things like jump like when you're scrolled down

01:22:40 ◼   ► You can't jump to the top like it doesn't have the iPhone thing where you just tap the status bar and scroll to the top

01:22:46 ◼   ► But the only way to get to the interface to manage your multiple tabs is at the top

01:22:51 ◼   ► So if you're scrolled down on a web page and you want to switch to another tab that's open

01:22:55 ◼   ► You have to sit there and flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick and and

01:23:01 ◼   ► It doesn't really have a lot of inertia either. So if it's a long enough page that you've been reading

01:23:06 ◼   ► I'm not exaggerating how many flicks you need to get to the top which is where

01:23:10 ◼   ► the

01:23:13 ◼   ► tab management is and

01:23:15 ◼   ► There's no

01:23:17 ◼   ► Bookmarks

01:23:20 ◼   ► Therefore there's no bookmark. Let's and I use you know, it's there's no book. There are no bookmarks that no

01:23:27 ◼   ► Not that I can tell I

01:23:30 ◼   ► Don't know if there's bookmarks. I don't know how you how you make them

01:23:33 ◼   ► Well, I guess our bookmarks here. Oh, yeah. I've just found it. Well, let's just say that the bookmarks are hidden

01:23:41 ◼   ► It's not intuitive no

01:23:47 ◼   ► Not intuitive the email client isn't too bad. It's got a decent. I map client. It's usable at least

01:23:55 ◼   ► But they just and you know and it's this whole is it Thunderbird is a branded Thunderbird is that no are they owned by?

01:24:01 ◼   ► Oh, I don't know if they talk about Thunderbird anymore. No, they call it. It's just called email

01:24:06 ◼   ► and in fact, I think what's interesting is they spell it e dash capital ma il which

01:24:12 ◼   ► To me looks like and I you know, God knows I love some curmudgeonly grammar and spelling and stuff like that

01:24:18 ◼   ► But the - an email feels kind of old-timey feels a little 1990s

01:24:25 ◼   ► um and they have a thing called marketplace which is like their app store but really it's just sort

01:24:31 ◼   ► of like a directory of mobile operated mobile optimized websites and when you create an app

01:24:38 ◼   ► and download an app out of one of these things it's really just you know like when you're on iOS

01:24:43 ◼   ► like when you use the plus button and save a web page as an app and it just you just lose the

01:24:48 ◼   ► browser chrome um so that's like what the twitter app for this thing is the twitter app is just a

01:24:55 ◼   ► it seems a little bit different than when you go to Twitter on an iPhone, but not much.

01:24:59 ◼   ► And I haven't done that in so long.

01:25:05 ◼   ► And therefore though, you can't do anything like have two different accounts any more than you can

01:25:11 ◼   ► have two accounts on the Twitter website. There's no account switching. So it's just, when you use

01:25:19 ◼   ► Twitter on this, it's just the mobile Twitter website. Yeah. I remember that those days of

01:25:24 ◼   ► using like the mobile Major League Baseball site and all those the website's mobile yeah

01:25:31 ◼   ► right right no that's a lot like using this mostly mostly because of edge all right not because

01:25:38 ◼   ► they were better they were just they loaded faster right and so on the one hand there's the web and

01:25:47 ◼   ► what you call the web as a developer can mean different things to different people and one

01:25:51 ◼   ► thing could just be using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to do the actual layout and development of the app.

01:26:02 ◼   ► And webOS worked that way, right? From Palm and later HP, where apps were really just sort of like

01:26:08 ◼   ► bundles that inside were implemented using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. And there's nothing wrong

01:26:13 ◼   ► with that. Although there's some performance problems you have to overcome if you want to be

01:26:19 ◼   ► compared favorably to native code, like Objective C running on iOS, or even the Java type bytecode

01:26:29 ◼   ► that you run on Android. But it could be overcome. But what Firefox OS does really is just load

01:26:38 ◼   ► things, you know, actual websites over the internet and save them. And so a lot of stuff stops working

01:26:44 ◼   ► if you don't have an internet connection. Like there's games, they call it, there's games you

01:26:50 ◼   ► can get. But then if you don't have an internet connection, the games don't load because you can't

01:26:54 ◼   ► connect to the server anymore. And it's not entirely cached locally. And I just don't feel

01:27:00 ◼   ► like there's any, you know, I don't, we haven't gotten to a place where always having an internet

01:27:07 ◼   ► connection is a thing. Right. Right. I thought of you, because what was the

01:27:14 ◼   ► the thing you bought? You bought the for similar reasons. Like, I want to find out what the

01:27:18 ◼   ► how the other side lives. You bought the fire tablet, right?

01:27:21 ◼   ► Unknown Speaker No, I bought the Nexus seven Nexus seven.

01:27:25 ◼   ► Yeah, how's that going?

01:27:27 ◼   ► Unknown Speaker It's around here somewhere.

01:27:32 ◼   ► Unknown Speaker Didn't work out that great. No, it was it

01:27:36 ◼   ► was it was all right. I mean, it's, you know, for I mean, I think in that case, at the price,

01:27:42 ◼   ► Because it was only, you know, this was a couple of years ago now, and it was only 200

01:27:47 ◼   ► bucks and it was like an eight gigabyte.

01:27:48 ◼   ► It was at a price point that there wasn't an iPad available at that price point.

01:27:53 ◼   ► And you know, there's a, it's an ecosystem that has apps and Android is a full fledged

01:28:00 ◼   ► operating system.

01:28:02 ◼   ► So it was okay.

01:28:03 ◼   ► But I, you know, not a year into using it, I ended up having battery problems and then,

01:28:11 ◼   ► I had to reset it, recondition it to get it to the point where it would really hold a charge for

01:28:16 ◼   ► a good amount of time. And then one of the things I wanted to use it for was listening to music

01:28:22 ◼   ► on my desk as I was working. And it was just... There was a lot of bleed through in the device

01:28:31 ◼   ► of sound from other electronics. The kind of problems that we used to have with... I mean,

01:28:38 ◼   ► I mean, it seems like we used to have those problems.

01:28:41 ◼   ► I used to have to turn off the phone to do a podcast

01:28:45 ◼   ► or that kind of thing.

01:28:45 ◼   ► - Right, or if you got your headphones too close

01:28:47 ◼   ► to your laptop, you'd get weird feedback.

01:28:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it wasn't the headphone

01:28:54 ◼   ► 'cause it's the same headphones that I use with my iPhone

01:28:56 ◼   ► and everything else, and I don't get it

01:28:58 ◼   ► with any other device other than that.

01:29:01 ◼   ► - The other thing about this Firefox phone,

01:29:04 ◼   ► It has a 4.0 inch screen.

01:29:08 ◼   ► I think the aspect ratio is a little bit wider

01:29:11 ◼   ► when you're holding it in portrait than the iPhone.

01:29:14 ◼   ► But it's roughly an iPhone-sized device.

01:29:17 ◼   ► And I do find that comfortable.

01:29:19 ◼   ► I don't find myself wishing that the screen were bigger.

01:29:22 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:29:23 ◼   ► I feel like, I don't know.

01:29:24 ◼   ► I feel like it's gonna be a problem for me

01:29:29 ◼   ► if the new iPhone is bigger.

01:29:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know.

01:29:33 ◼   ► I mean, I'll wait until I see it, but I don't feel like I want a bigger iPhone particularly.

01:29:39 ◼   ► I'm curious. The other thing I guess I'm curious about, and it occurred to me when I was thinking

01:29:43 ◼   ► about how the buttons are the same as the iPhone, except for the lack of a mute switch,

01:29:47 ◼   ► but most phones don't have mute switches. And Apple, who is notoriously sort of minimalist

01:29:54 ◼   ► on including hardware buttons, you know, I love the mute switch on the iPhone. I don't

01:30:01 ◼   ► like whenever I try out these other phones and you have to do like this one the way to get into mute

01:30:05 ◼   ► is you hold down the power button and instead of you know like as though to turn off the phone

01:30:09 ◼   ► but you get a menu with four options turn off airplane mode or turn it on silence incoming

01:30:17 ◼   ► calls restart power off and I think android does the same thing where if you want to

01:30:21 ◼   ► at least an android phone that I had a while ago did where if you wanted to turn off the sound you

01:30:27 ◼   ► hold down the power button, wait for a menu to come up, and then hit it. I love that, like,

01:30:33 ◼   ► at the start of my son's concert a couple weeks ago, I didn't even have to take my phone out of

01:30:41 ◼   ► my pocket. I just, you know, just toggle the—

01:30:44 ◼   ► Stick your hand in and, yeah.

01:30:45 ◼   ► Yeah, just toggle the switch, and then I know it's not going to make a sound.

01:30:48 ◼   ► I do the opposite. I mean, I almost always have it in mute and only when I'm expecting a call that

01:30:56 ◼   ► I want.

01:30:57 ◼   ► Do I turn it off mute?

01:30:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I could do that too.

01:31:01 ◼   ► Or just to double check it, really.

01:31:02 ◼   ► A lot of times when I want to turn on mute, it already is on mute and I don't turn it

01:31:06 ◼   ► off.

01:31:07 ◼   ► I thought you were going to say that you do the opposite and when your son's school is

01:31:09 ◼   ► going to have a concert, you turn your phone up real loud.

01:31:12 ◼   ► I got to take this.

01:31:14 ◼   ► Sorry.

01:31:15 ◼   ► I thought that's what you were going to say.

01:31:19 ◼   ► Spend 45 minutes in the lobby drinking.

01:31:24 ◼   ► Please turn off and silence yourself.

01:31:26 ◼   ► I do the opposite.

01:31:27 ◼   ► not going to tell me when to silence my phone. I'm turning mine up. And I've set my ringtone

01:31:34 ◼   ► to a song with inappropriate lyrics. Tim Cynova Get wrestled out of the

01:31:38 ◼   ► school program by some bouncers. Now, I'd seen like back in the fall, I'd seen a few things

01:31:48 ◼   ► people predicting that Firefox OS was really going to take off and change the

01:31:57 ◼   ► playing field. If they had come out with this in 2009, two years after the iPhone, I would say

01:32:03 ◼   ► maybe because that's when Android was new too. I think it was the end of 2008 when the first

01:32:14 ◼   ► Android phone came out, the HTC. Was it the HTC One? I forget what it was called,

01:32:20 ◼   ► but I think it was Brown. It had a keyboard that came out of the side.

01:32:26 ◼   ► And had a lot of problems and a lot of problems just like this where you know it was it was like they were still

01:32:32 ◼   ► Growing out you know they'd started with the idea of an operating system that required a keyboard and required an up-down left rice device

01:32:41 ◼   ► So if you wanted to select text on that Android phone you had to use the rollerball

01:32:44 ◼   ► You couldn't use your finger on the touchscreen you had to go to the rollerball

01:32:48 ◼   ► You know it just feels like something from that era it just it's just a

01:32:55 ◼   ► Long long time ago though since I could have you know used a phone of any operating system where you can't even select text

01:33:01 ◼   ► Just feels you know

01:33:05 ◼   ► bizarre just feels like and it just makes me think that Mozilla as a whole is just off in their own cocoon and

01:33:10 ◼   ► Echo chamber in terms of you know, the politics of the whole thing are the only reason keeping it afloat

01:33:16 ◼   ► And and whatever remaining

01:33:23 ◼   ► traction or momentum

01:33:24 ◼   ► I guess that they have of all the people who switched to Firefox on Windows a decade ago, you know still

01:33:31 ◼   ► Giving them some revenue because they go up to the search bar and search through Google and that they have a you know

01:33:37 ◼   ► Revenue share deal with Google, but that's it's all

01:33:39 ◼   ► You know everything that's going on that that gives them any value is is 10 years old

01:33:45 ◼   ► Like they're still nowhere in terms of actual mobile

01:33:51 ◼   ► Kind of sad. Yeah, but not surprising

01:33:53 ◼   ► But open but totally open

01:33:56 ◼   ► John moltz, thanks for joining me. I

01:33:59 ◼   ► Say we call it a show. Where should we tell people to go?

01:34:02 ◼   ► We could tell them to go to your very nice website. Nice website net

01:34:05 ◼   ► and

01:34:07 ◼   ► your

01:34:08 ◼   ► Your podcast is called don't make me go back there

01:34:11 ◼   ► We should buy that you're home

01:34:14 ◼   ► It's called don't make me turn this turning this don't make me turn this car around automobile over

01:34:20 ◼   ► With on the freeway with turning this car around turning this car around with John Armstrong and Casey and the other guy Casey lists

01:34:28 ◼   ► Exactly

01:34:32 ◼   ► It's about three days you get get kicked out of school school function just for it in a car accident

01:34:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't text and drive but I do turn my ringer up during a school play