The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Almost lost my mouth almost lost my fingertips yesterday because I decided to run with

00:00:06 ◼   ► Insufficient glove wear I

00:00:11 ◼   ► Thought I was too literally thinking

00:00:15 ◼   ► About a mile and a half from my home. I

00:00:18 ◼   ► Should have gotten that computer programmer

00:00:21 ◼   ► fingertip insurance

00:00:23 ◼   ► I

00:00:26 ◼   ► Had a lot of problems writing when I had that finger injury two years ago just with one bad finger

00:00:30 ◼   ► I think if you lose them all here, I think you're kind of hosed. Yeah

00:00:33 ◼   ► Become an expert in speech recognition systems in a hurry. Yeah, definitely. Although I think

00:00:42 ◼   ► That's interesting I never really thought about it but it's got to be the worst the worst use case for voice recognition has got to be writing

00:00:52 ◼   ► computer code I

00:00:55 ◼   ► I would think so.

00:00:58 ◼   ► The person to ask about that is John Siracusa.

00:01:00 ◼   ► Right. I'll bet he doesn't. He'll probably pipe in. He listens to the show.

00:01:04 ◼   ► He'd be the one to ask, though, because I know he uses it for his writing,

00:01:08 ◼   ► like those massive Mac OS X reviews. He dictates all of those,

00:01:13 ◼   ► which is amazing to me because I couldn't do that.

00:01:17 ◼   ► No, I don't think I could either.

00:01:19 ◼   ► it falls into the same category for me as not being able to type seriously on an iPad

00:01:29 ◼   ► because it's not the same capacity that I have on a regular keyboard.

00:01:33 ◼   ► >> It says two guys who both have weekly podcasts.

00:01:41 ◼   ► I write to me, in my opinion, I write way more eloquently than I speak.

00:01:48 ◼   ► I should not have a podcast.

00:01:50 ◼   ► It's an interesting angle.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Yeah, right. Here we are saying we basically can't express ourselves as fluidly or as

00:02:02 ◼   ► elegantly with speech.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Just not as accurate. I don't know. And part of it, I've said this before too.

00:02:10 ◼   ► My typing speed is as fast as I can think. And some people might say, "Wow, you must type really fast."

00:02:17 ◼   ► No, I type pretty slow. I think by the schemes by the the standards of somebody who's spent as many hours

00:02:24 ◼   ► Commutatively over the what the last 25 years at it

00:02:29 ◼   ► Keyboard is I have I should be a far better typist

00:02:33 ◼   ► but I'm not because there's I don't think there's ever any motivation to type faster than you can think unless you take some kind of

00:02:40 ◼   ► Secretarial job, which I've never had, you know, I've never had like a job or you

00:02:47 ◼   ► Type transcripts or retype stuff. So I mean what how would anybody ever have a motivation to type faster than they can think?

00:02:54 ◼   ► Right, unless you're just like I guess you could you could argue that stream of consciousness writing or something is faster than thinking

00:03:01 ◼   ► But I can I can talk far faster than I can think which is you know

00:03:04 ◼   ► That's why you stay in your home. Most right gets me into trouble. I

00:03:09 ◼   ► Had an idea

00:03:11 ◼   ► I should just toss this out there. Who knows maybe something will come in. You know, what's bothered me for years now

00:03:16 ◼   ► You've got a podcast you've been doing the or you have two podcasts now

00:03:19 ◼   ► Correct. Yeah. Yeah, I have a podcast on hiatus and the podcast with Manton Reese core intuition

00:03:26 ◼   ► Which we have been keeping up right pretty bit splitting one. You've you've put on hiatus on hiatus

00:03:31 ◼   ► Yeah, how many episodes just get in ten episodes?

00:03:35 ◼   ► So that was kind of a nice round number and I wasn't sure it was going on hiatus and tell

00:03:40 ◼   ► like the moment

00:03:42 ◼   ► Episode ten went out there and I was just like oh, you know, it would feel really good

00:03:46 ◼   ► not having, you know, the load of another episode next week or whatever. So it's

00:03:54 ◼   ► been feeling good. I've been missing it, but... and I've been gratified by some, you

00:03:58 ◼   ► know, faithful listeners who are missing it, but it's the kind of thing where it's

00:04:02 ◼   ► a format that is well suited to being able to take long

00:04:07 ◼   ► breaks. You should think about, yeah, it's what my wife Amy and Paul Kofasis did

00:04:13 ◼   ► with their show and maybe will continue to do is that they thought of it as a

00:04:17 ◼   ► season yeah and I think that they were originally gonna do 10 but they did 13

00:04:23 ◼   ► because it was going well and because they had sponsors yeah and I had stuff

00:04:30 ◼   ► lined up so you know why not and 13 you know is a reasonable season length but

00:04:34 ◼   ► then there's a break you know yep because yeah seriously - I mean they

00:04:38 ◼   ► were like did like proper editing and stuff like that I mean they would record

00:04:42 ◼   ► for like two hours to get a half hour show.

00:04:44 ◼   ► Right.

00:04:45 ◼   ► Yeah, and a lot of beloved TV shows,

00:04:49 ◼   ► it's not like they say even necessarily when

00:04:52 ◼   ► the next season is going to come.

00:04:53 ◼   ► They just eventually say, yep, we got another one.

00:04:56 ◼   ► Remember, The Sopranos was like that, right?

00:04:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:58 ◼   ► They're kind of like, yep, give it a year or two.

00:05:02 ◼   ► Maybe something will come out.

00:05:03 ◼   ► Yeah, Mad Men has sort of gotten like that.

00:05:05 ◼   ► I don't think quite as bad as The Sopranos got.

00:05:07 ◼   ► But I mean, I just mean bad as a fan,

00:05:10 ◼   ► because you'd like the show you wanted that season as quick as possible.

00:05:14 ◼   ► I don't think it was any kind of laziness or sloth on the part of David Chase and the

00:05:19 ◼   ► producers.

00:05:20 ◼   ► I think it was that's how long it takes to write that quality of material for 13 hours

00:05:28 ◼   ► of that quality and to line up all of the acting talent, creative talent to make it

00:05:34 ◼   ► happen.

00:05:35 ◼   ► That it can't happen.

00:05:36 ◼   ► You can't do it every year.

00:05:39 ◼   ► The side effect of that is it sort of exudes quality subconsciously, that idea that this

00:05:45 ◼   ► thing isn't like all the other shows.

00:05:46 ◼   ► It doesn't come out on some...

00:05:49 ◼   ► Nobody had to hire illegal immigrants to finish the show on time.

00:05:56 ◼   ► So let me just say this here.

00:05:57 ◼   ► I've been thinking about this for years, many years, all the way back to the first runs

00:06:02 ◼   ► of the talk show with Dan.

00:06:06 ◼   ► the biggest problem with podcasts in general? I have one specific gripe and it

00:06:11 ◼   ► applies to almost every podcast I'm aware of and it's the lack of

00:06:15 ◼   ► transcripts. For a couple of reasons. One, for me selfishly wouldn't it be

00:06:22 ◼   ► great to just have a searchable archive of all the shows that I've done so

00:06:27 ◼   ► that if I know in the back of my head, Jesus I had I remember when Jalka was on

00:06:31 ◼   ► the show a couple months ago and we were talking about you know whatever topic

00:06:34 ◼   ► What the hell did we say? Yeah, and when did we say whereas I it you know, there's there's no way to get that

00:06:40 ◼   ► You know and if I open up a six-month-old episode of the talk show, even if I know that this is the episode

00:06:45 ◼   ► I can't you know, how do I don't remember?

00:06:48 ◼   ► You know if it was at the 45 minute mark or the 20 minute mark or the hour and 20 minute mark when when whatever came

00:06:54 ◼   ► up

00:06:56 ◼   ► transcripts would solve that and then the other big thing would be

00:06:58 ◼   ► it would be Google searchable by everybody else not just me and

00:07:03 ◼   ► And thirdly, it has to be, it's like by definition, it's a huge accessibility issue, right?

00:07:10 ◼   ► Anybody who has a hearing impairment cannot enjoy this show.

00:07:15 ◼   ► That's true.

00:07:17 ◼   ► But it seems like there aren't, you know, every time I think of it and I get the itch

00:07:23 ◼   ► to look into it, there doesn't seem to be any kind of like turnkey solution.

00:07:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:29 ◼   ► a

00:07:30 ◼   ► Solution. Yeah

00:07:32 ◼   ► well

00:07:32 ◼   ► It seems like the kind of thing that where you could say naively that you should be able to just point

00:07:37 ◼   ► Dragon Dictate or something at it and yeah

00:07:40 ◼   ► transcript

00:07:41 ◼   ► But you know, it's not the case right? Yeah, and the other big problem with that wouldn't that wouldn't even if that worked

00:07:46 ◼   ► Accurately enough to be good enough it how would Dragon Dictate be able to tell our voices apart?

00:07:53 ◼   ► You know know which was me and which was you? Yeah. Yeah, that's a challenge and

00:07:57 ◼   ► You know, some people have tackled this like I think Renee Ritchie

00:08:00 ◼   ► Among his many other projects has tackled transcripts and I think he may just be doing it all himself

00:08:08 ◼   ► I'm not sure but

00:08:09 ◼   ► It seems like I've also heard some other people though enlist, you know, super fans to

00:08:14 ◼   ► Do transcripts on behalf of a show I mean that gets weird to me when it's like a

00:08:21 ◼   ► commercial enterprise like enlisting

00:08:25 ◼   ► donated labor, but

00:08:27 ◼   ► You know, that's something I agree with you. It would be and and there's a sense it's some in some ways

00:08:33 ◼   ► It's positive but in many ways it's negative. There's a sense that all this stuff that happens on

00:08:38 ◼   ► podcasting is kind of ephemeral like

00:08:42 ◼   ► radio

00:08:44 ◼   ► even though it's permanently recorded just as

00:08:46 ◼   ► Just as well as blog posts or articles are but you know

00:08:52 ◼   ► It wouldn't be that way as as much or even maybe at all if there were an accurate trans trans. Uh, yeah

00:08:58 ◼   ► It's not ephemeral, you know, it's like more ephemeral and maybe every single word is of less value

00:09:04 ◼   ► You know that if if we like I just right there three seconds ago said, you know

00:09:09 ◼   ► Which I know is a verbal tick I have and obviously

00:09:11 ◼   ► 98% of the times I say, you know on this show should and could be edited out

00:09:17 ◼   ► it would be if it were a written article instead of

00:09:20 ◼   ► off-the-cuff talk show. But there's always, you know, there's every show

00:09:29 ◼   ► that's worth listening to. I mean the whole point of what makes it worth

00:09:32 ◼   ► listening to is there's got to be something worth remembering about it,

00:09:34 ◼   ► right? Yeah, absolutely. So I, here's the thing though, I was thinking about it and

00:09:40 ◼   ► I know some people have done some things. I know Andy Baio had a project where they

00:09:44 ◼   ► had a whole bunch of, I forget what it was for, but a couple years ago he had a

00:09:47 ◼   ► a whole bunch of audio that he wanted transcribed

00:09:49 ◼   ► and he just threw it at Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

00:09:53 ◼   ► But that wouldn't, and it was really

00:09:56 ◼   ► relatively cost effective, it was relatively inexpensive

00:09:59 ◼   ► to get the people who participate in that to do it.

00:10:04 ◼   ► But I don't think it would work for the show

00:10:07 ◼   ► because I think you'd need somebody,

00:10:09 ◼   ► it couldn't just be anybody, like any person

00:10:13 ◼   ► anywhere in the world who happens to speak English,

00:10:16 ◼   ► You know speak English well enough to transcribe it like you to do it, right?

00:10:19 ◼   ► You'd a you'd need to know the guests on the show like

00:10:23 ◼   ► Because I feel like if somebody in a foreign country who I think is a lot of the people who do the Turk work

00:10:30 ◼   ► It is a very good possibility that every almost everybody I have on the show. We all sound alike to them. Yeah, right

00:10:37 ◼   ► Some more than others. Yeah, right and that would really screw up

00:10:40 ◼   ► I don't hear it. But like when I did the show with Dan every week

00:10:45 ◼   ► We used to get comments every single week from people who said they cannot tell us apart

00:10:49 ◼   ► Yeah, and I always felt bad about it, but it's like, you know must have made the show confusing

00:10:54 ◼   ► But he tries so hard to impersonate you. It's really it's kind of weird

00:10:57 ◼   ► And I feel like it would also help to know I mean not that we talk super tech stuff

00:11:04 ◼   ► But I mean, you know, it would helped if you you know

00:11:07 ◼   ► We start talking about some of these things that you know that you'd know that you know

00:11:11 ◼   ► Some of the words we use are goofy jargon jargon II acronyms and then like other little things like little

00:11:16 ◼   ► They've become like lovable like podcasting ticks like Merlin man with like

00:11:23 ◼   ► Turns out or something. Yeah. Yeah, and see that kind of stuff would be like why the hell does this guy keep saying turns out?

00:11:30 ◼   ► That's the kind of thing that would look like a transcripting error

00:11:33 ◼   ► So but I'm wondering though if maybe it's just as simple as sort of a combination of your hey

00:11:41 ◼   ► have a superfan do it and combine that with well this show actually has good

00:11:47 ◼   ► and real sponsors now and a reasonable revenue stream pay them you know like I

00:11:54 ◼   ► don't know mm-hmm you know I think for a very reasonable hourly rate you know

00:11:59 ◼   ► maybe somebody out there who listens to the show and is a very fast typist and

00:12:04 ◼   ► maybe would actually even enjoy doing it maybe I could hire them and then they

00:12:07 ◼   ► would do transcripts every week. I would insist upon paying for it though

00:12:12 ◼   ► because I feel like it's got to be a quality product. Right, that just

00:12:17 ◼   ► makes everybody take it more seriously. Now the question to throw out there is,

00:12:22 ◼   ► and I always have this thought when it comes to the idea of app localization,

00:12:27 ◼   ► which again is also often like volunteer driven and ironically enough and it

00:12:32 ◼   ► seem to often be completely accepted by commercial software developers that it would be donated

00:12:38 ◼   ► in that sense.

00:12:39 ◼   ► I might be guilty of that too.

00:12:42 ◼   ► But I've always thought with something like that, if I ever formalized doing a really

00:12:46 ◼   ► ambitious localization, I would want to have two people for each language as a sort of

00:12:53 ◼   ► self-correction.

00:12:55 ◼   ► And I wonder if you would want that with transcriptions or if that sort of takes away that pride

00:13:00 ◼   ► and like you know the respect that that one person would have for being like the

00:13:04 ◼   ► official archivist yeah I think it's it's sort of a different problem because

00:13:09 ◼   ► with with with a localization you're you're running into those from any

00:13:18 ◼   ► language a converting to language B there's a 10,000 different weird you

00:13:25 ◼   ► know things that don't translate directly you know it figures of speech

00:13:29 ◼   ► in English that just don't have any direct equivalent in whatever language

00:13:34 ◼   ► you're you're going to and then picking the nuance of you know like there's

00:13:39 ◼   ► nothing like midway between casual and formal to translate it so do you pick

00:13:46 ◼   ► the one that's a little bit more formal or the one that's a little bit more

00:13:49 ◼   ► casual which fits with the brand and that's the sort of thing where if you

00:13:52 ◼   ► don't speak that language it's so hard to judge right like if you commissioned

00:13:56 ◼   ► the Spanish localization of Mars Edit. I don't know, I mean it's like I speak just a tiny

00:14:03 ◼   ► little thimbleful of Spanish. I couldn't judge whether the button to publish was using too

00:14:09 ◼   ► formal or too casual a tone. I wouldn't add... So that's where I would see having two eyes

00:14:16 ◼   ► look at it would really be helpful and might catch some of those things. Whereas for a

00:14:21 ◼   ► Podcast for idiomatic English speakers, you know, I don't I don't I don't think that would help

00:14:25 ◼   ► Because what would you have the second person do you'd just be paying them? Yeah read the transcript while they listen to the show

00:14:31 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I was thinking along the same lines of like each of them does it independently and then compare for differences

00:14:37 ◼   ► But they I think that's overthinking it. That's that's crazy

00:14:40 ◼   ► But I think it's a good idea. I think you you have an audience where I imagine at least

00:14:47 ◼   ► You know 10 to 20 people right now are probably at least considering the possibility that they are the person to do that

00:14:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I wonder if I wonder if just talking about this will turn up any any offers to do it

00:14:59 ◼   ► We shall say I mean, it would be really crazy of just talking about something like motivated people to do something. I know

00:15:06 ◼   ► The other problem I thought of I mean, this is easily solved, but it's like I don't know where I would put the transcripts. I

00:15:14 ◼   ► Guess I could ask my friend at mule to maybe add something to the custom CMS over there where there'd be like a transcript field

00:15:21 ◼   ► Or something like that, but or you know it were it seems like they'd be up to doing that

00:15:25 ◼   ► but without you know, assuming that they would in the worst case you could always just have like a

00:15:30 ◼   ► Site dedicated to it something that comes to mind is have you seen this?

00:15:35 ◼   ► It's really great. If you ever want to search anything about

00:15:38 ◼   ► WWDC it's called ASCII

00:15:41 ◼   ► WWDC no, what's it called?

00:15:43 ◼   ► ASCII like the

00:15:45 ◼   ► formats, right, right, right

00:15:47 ◼   ► WWDC calm and it's something I think Matt with three T's Thompson. I think he put it together

00:15:55 ◼   ► And it's brilliant. I mean give it a look if you can right now because you just get to search any

00:16:01 ◼   ► Word and because this makes it this makes sense because WWDC

00:16:06 ◼   ► sessions are

00:16:08 ◼   ► transcribed for

00:16:10 ◼   ► Accessibility purposes, I think yes, they took advantage of the presence of this

00:16:16 ◼   ► transcription material on the videos themselves, I think

00:16:19 ◼   ► And so you can search anything

00:16:22 ◼   ► it's only I think maybe

00:16:25 ◼   ► 2013 sessions but

00:16:27 ◼   ► It's pretty great and you can you can look up

00:16:30 ◼   ► You know if you have this hunch that you heard something in a session

00:16:33 ◼   ► You just type in the word maybe sometimes you have to because it's I think it is sort of automated or you know

00:16:39 ◼   ► transcribed by people who aren't perfect and you have to you know, adjust the stem of the word or something, but

00:16:46 ◼   ► It's pretty great

00:16:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm gonna that up. That's really good. So you could imagine that wwdc. They've got wwdc 2012 - oh look at that scroll down

00:16:56 ◼   ► All right help out with transcription. Oh

00:17:00 ◼   ► Like it looks like maybe for 2012

00:17:03 ◼   ► There were transcribed but maybe 2013

00:17:07 ◼   ► Yeah, Apple did a great job transcribing the sessions for this past WWDC, but there's tons of content in the previous year

00:17:14 ◼   ► So Apple did it for 2013 and I guess these guys were able to scrape it. Yeah, that sounds right

00:17:20 ◼   ► I'm just grateful that this thing hasn't been shut down yet and maybe won't be shut down ever

00:17:25 ◼   ► but this is probably the kind of thing where

00:17:27 ◼   ► Everybody who likes it should instantly grab a right curl dump of the whole thing

00:17:34 ◼   ► But this is the kind of thing, you know, you could imagine maybe not even limited to like how cool would it be if

00:17:39 ◼   ► If you could go to you know, ASCII

00:17:44 ◼   ► podcasts calm or something and then among the podcasts there is the talk show and

00:17:50 ◼   ► You know, this is ringing a bell. I think there was some company that did this

00:17:54 ◼   ► Years ago, I remember in like the original podcasting boom

00:18:00 ◼   ► I remember something I had I had because I had like a search feed

00:18:04 ◼   ► on you know my own name and products on this service that was trying to transcribe I think a bunch of the

00:18:11 ◼   ► you know like Leo's

00:18:14 ◼   ► twit shows and stuff like that, but

00:18:17 ◼   ► There's some there's some there's some like state-of-the-art out there and I don't know what it is

00:18:21 ◼   ► yeah, and another thing too is that

00:18:25 ◼   ► It occurs to me that I'm you know, I've been doing it long enough that I'm a little

00:18:29 ◼   ► blinded

00:18:31 ◼   ► Historically because it used to be I mean and this was for the first couple of years where I was regularly podcasting

00:18:36 ◼   ► It was there just wasn't a lot of sponsorship interest

00:18:40 ◼   ► It was really hard to get sponsors and and it didn't bring in much money

00:18:44 ◼   ► And so I you know, like when we were thinking about how could we get transcripts before what we were thinking we could possibly afford to pay

00:18:54 ◼   ► Was a very different percentage of the overall income. It was more or less again at the time

00:18:58 ◼   ► It was like cheese that's gonna take every you know, we'd have to you know

00:19:01 ◼   ► Just take the sponsor money and then hand it right over to the transcription service and maybe nothing left over

00:19:06 ◼   ► Whereas it's not the case anymore

00:19:08 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a lot of money to put into just quote unquote just having a transcript, you know, I'm just

00:19:16 ◼   ► randomly cruising around here on the web and I found this site podcast search service calm and

00:19:24 ◼   ► I don't know. It kind of looks like it could be trying to do this and I

00:19:29 ◼   ► don't know if it's worth even

00:19:32 ◼   ► Mention having mentioned them on the air or not, but yeah, it's the angle

00:19:37 ◼   ► It's the same kind of angle the idea looks like looks like a website from 1994

00:19:42 ◼   ► Which means it might just work

00:19:44 ◼   ► The whole thing is set in time Times New Roman

00:19:47 ◼   ► Speaking of sponsors, why don't I take a break here and thank

00:19:53 ◼   ► our first sponsor of the show and it's our friends at Drobo. You guys know

00:20:00 ◼   ► that the file transporter people are back at Drobo. It's all one big happy

00:20:05 ◼   ► family and they have sponsored the show a few times this year to talk about file

00:20:11 ◼   ► transporter but today I want to talk to you about Drobo which is the service

00:20:15 ◼   ► that they started with. Did you ever have a Drobo? I never did. Oh man, Drobo's are

00:20:20 ◼   ► really cool. Basic idea with the Drobo is it's like a hard drive, you plug it into

00:20:24 ◼   ► your Mac, it's a thing for your Mac, you plug it in your Mac and your Mac sees it

00:20:27 ◼   ► from your Mac's perspective just sees it as a hard drive. But what it really is is

00:20:31 ◼   ► a device that has like five slots and you can take actual drives in and out of

00:20:37 ◼   ► it. You almost treat the hard drives like floppy disks sort of. And it appears to

00:20:42 ◼   ► your Mac as one big single simple drive. But what you can do then is like, let's

00:20:51 ◼   ► just say you put five one terabyte drives in so you've got five total gigs

00:20:59 ◼   ► of storage. It won't give you all five gigs. What it'll do is replicate that

00:21:03 ◼   ► data across those five drives. So if you put, you know, a terabyte or two of data

00:21:08 ◼   ► in there. It's not all like the bit for one file is not just written on one bit

00:21:13 ◼   ► on a platter on one disk. It's replicated so that depending on the color of the

00:21:18 ◼   ► disk when it's ripped when it's green it's okay. When it drives are green

00:21:22 ◼   ► they're okay and you can just without turning the thing off without unmounting

00:21:26 ◼   ► it you can just pull one of the drives up which is crazy right now if you've

00:21:30 ◼   ► been using computers and hard drives long and long enough the idea that you

00:21:34 ◼   ► could do that, it sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Because your Mac still complains

00:21:39 ◼   ► when you unplug a goddamn USB key without unmounting it first. But that's because the

00:21:46 ◼   ► whole Drobo idea is set up that the data is always replicated. So why does that matter?

00:21:50 ◼   ► Because then what you could do if you start running low on space is you just pull one

00:21:54 ◼   ► of the old smaller ones out and plug a bigger one in and it's just there. You don't have

00:21:58 ◼   ► to reformat, you don't have to go into disk utility and manage partitions and resize and

00:22:04 ◼   ► this and that. Just plug a bigger piece of hardware in a bigger capacity drive

00:22:09 ◼   ► in there and it'll just work. So they have two, well three models for Mac users

00:22:16 ◼   ► right now. They've got the Drobo 5D that's a five drive system with

00:22:19 ◼   ► Thunderbolt and USB 3 interfaces. That's the one that's really really fast. That's

00:22:24 ◼   ► the one you want if you're doing like photo and video work. They have the Drobo

00:22:27 ◼   ► 5N and is for network. It's a network storage system that connects via gigabit

00:22:33 ◼   ► Ethernet, really fast Ethernet. And then they also have Drobo Mini and that's

00:22:40 ◼   ► designed for portability. It's small and lightweight. It's not as performance

00:22:44 ◼   ► optimized. It's meant for somebody who needs to work in the field like maybe

00:22:48 ◼   ► like a photographer or somebody who's out in the field and wants to carry

00:22:51 ◼   ► their storage partition with them. It's really easy to set up, really, really

00:22:56 ◼   ► friendly to just regular people. You just plug it in. The lighting system will tell

00:23:02 ◼   ► you how much space is left on each drive, they have a little

00:23:04 ◼   ► little blue lights for each one. And each one is worth 10% of the

00:23:08 ◼   ► storage. So when you start when you have a drive that starts

00:23:11 ◼   ► getting filled up towards like eight, nine blue lines, then you

00:23:14 ◼   ► know it's time maybe to buy a bigger one. You can buy these

00:23:17 ◼   ► things with no drives in them. No, no, just get the empty,

00:23:21 ◼   ► empty Drobo and put your own drives into the slots. Or they

00:23:27 ◼   ► will sell you ones with drives and their drive prices are very,

00:23:31 ◼   ► very competitive. It's not the sort of thing like when you buy RAM from Apple and you pay

00:23:36 ◼   ► a real markup for the convenience of having your Mac shipped with maxed out RAM. When

00:23:41 ◼   ► you buy your drives from the Drobo store, I think the prices are super competitive.

00:23:46 ◼   ► So it's really, really easy if you just want to get a big storage from them. Just buy it

00:23:50 ◼   ► with the storage. Where do you go to find out more? Easy. Go to www.drobostore.com.

00:23:59 ◼   ► DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO,

00:24:00 ◼   ► DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO,

00:24:01 ◼   ► DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO,

00:24:02 ◼   ► DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO,

00:24:03 ◼   ► DROBO

00:24:03 ◼   ► they have a coupon code. Use this at the DroboStore.com website. Talk10.

00:24:09 ◼   ► T-A-L-K-1-0. And that'll save 10% off any purchase. And so some of these things, you

00:24:16 ◼   ► get the 20 terabyte model. It's 1,500 bucks. Well, you'll save 150 bucks just by

00:24:21 ◼   ► using that code. Serious money. 150 bucks you could save. Talk10. My thanks to

00:24:27 ◼   ► Drobo. I've got one here. They sent me one. It's really nice.

00:24:32 ◼   ► I love that idea that you know when they can be empty when they when they ship you an empty one

00:24:36 ◼   ► I love the idea that it solves that like super geek problem of having like five miscellaneous hard drives lying around

00:24:43 ◼   ► If you think I'll just plug them in here and see what it can what it can do with it

00:24:47 ◼   ► Yeah, it just creates one big pool of storage. It's a great thing

00:24:50 ◼   ► I mean, there's so many things you can use it for but anything you need if you you know, and again, it's just take a

00:24:54 ◼   ► Once every few months recommendation that if you don't regularly back up your Mac, please please think about it get some you know

00:25:01 ◼   ► Buy three different ways to back up your Mac.

00:25:03 ◼   ► You'd never, ever regret backing up too much.

00:25:07 ◼   ► You could use the Drobo as your time machine target.

00:25:10 ◼   ► Do it if you're not doing it already.

00:25:12 ◼   ► But it's a great way to, and like you said,

00:25:14 ◼   ► if you're a geek and you have a whole bunch of drives

00:25:16 ◼   ► laying around your office already,

00:25:17 ◼   ► it's a great way to put them to use.

00:25:19 ◼   ► So what's next?

00:25:24 ◼   ► How about the, how about this whole thing

00:25:27 ◼   ► with the Rate My App?

00:25:30 ◼   ► Yeah, let's talk about it.

00:25:33 ◼   ► So how do we review?

00:25:36 ◼   ► There was a few days ago, or last week, I was linking--

00:25:39 ◼   ► I had a whole bunch of-- every once in a while,

00:25:41 ◼   ► it's like I like to do--

00:25:43 ◼   ► if I have a whole bunch of saved stuff

00:25:45 ◼   ► and I can see a pattern that connects a few of them,

00:25:47 ◼   ► I'll be like, well, maybe today I'll do all four of these,

00:25:50 ◼   ► because they're sort of related.

00:25:51 ◼   ► And I had a whole bunch of--

00:25:53 ◼   ► I think they were all Tumblr sites.

00:25:54 ◼   ► And if they weren't on Tumblr, they were like Tumblr.

00:25:57 ◼   ► and they were just sites that people were collecting like screenshots.

00:26:03 ◼   ► One of them was like an iOS 7 criticism or it was a whole bunch of stuff in Apple's iOS

00:26:09 ◼   ► 7 with questionable design in iOS 7.

00:26:12 ◼   ► And then the other one of them was called F Your Review, EFF Your Review.

00:26:17 ◼   ► And all it is is a Tumblr that collects screenshots of those dialogue boxes that say, "Enjoying

00:26:27 ◼   ► this app?

00:26:28 ◼   ► Take a moment to rate it on the App Store."

00:26:30 ◼   ► And then there's usually three buttons.

00:26:32 ◼   ► Rate this app, remind me later, or no thanks.

00:26:37 ◼   ► And so I linked to it and I just wrote something to the effect of that it's been a pet peeve

00:26:43 ◼   ► of mine for a long time and that I've long considered encouraging daring

00:26:48 ◼   ► fireball readers to when they encounter these things to actually say yes if

00:26:51 ◼   ► they're annoyed by it as I am every time you see it from now and click the rate

00:26:56 ◼   ► button don't say the note don't hit the no thanks button hit the rate button go

00:26:59 ◼   ► to the App Store and leave a review of like one star and explain politely that

00:27:04 ◼   ► it's because the app keeps badgering you to review it and that is sort of a

00:27:11 ◼   ► Typical John Gruber move because I didn't tell people you picked up on it you ran this why I want to join the show

00:27:17 ◼   ► You picked up on it and and I didn't say this is what people should do

00:27:22 ◼   ► It was a very, you know, it's the way that I'm a total asshole

00:27:25 ◼   ► I just said I've long thought about doing this but by putting the fact that I'd long thought about doing it on

00:27:31 ◼   ► Daring fireball there's you know tens of thousands of people who saw it and then therefore had the idea

00:27:37 ◼   ► Well, and you're not naive you know that you can't protect against people following through with it

00:27:43 ◼   ► And some people start have in fact started doing it. Yeah

00:27:46 ◼   ► So you wrote about it and I linked it up today

00:27:52 ◼   ► But I thought it was the other day when you wrote about I thought you were really really thoughtful

00:27:55 ◼   ► Take on this because you're a developer. You are also in my opinion a very nice guy

00:28:02 ◼   ► Right most of the time. Yeah, you're sensitive and it is there's nuance here, right?

00:28:07 ◼   ► But there it is weird to me though there it

00:28:09 ◼   ► Clearly touched a nerve though where there were a lot of people on both sides

00:28:14 ◼   ► There are a lot of people on the user side

00:28:16 ◼   ► Who after I wrote that like the people who immediately started doing it who are like hell

00:28:20 ◼   ► Yeah, this this stinks and I'm sick of this. Yeah, and on the developer side boy

00:28:24 ◼   ► There are some people who got really angry at me because they're like hey it works this you know

00:28:30 ◼   ► You need good reviews in the App Store to stand out and this is the only way that you can

00:28:34 ◼   ► Get good reviews to stay competitive with everybody else who's doing it and and and then

00:28:39 ◼   ► probably even more

00:28:43 ◼   ► aggressive against you were the people who were sort of

00:28:46 ◼   ► protective of developers as a class who were kind of like who read into your statement as

00:28:53 ◼   ► passive-aggressive maybe as it was

00:28:57 ◼   ► that you were trying to literally undermine the

00:29:01 ◼   ► profitability the viability of small developer right industry and

00:29:08 ◼   ► That started to get I think that's what got my goat to start writing about it because it just rang very

00:29:17 ◼   ► It felt to me like

00:29:23 ◼   ► Misplaced blame

00:29:26 ◼   ► It's hard not to jump to the conclusion that people are frustrated by the App Store in

00:29:34 ◼   ► general and by the reviews system and they're doing things.

00:29:41 ◼   ► I think what it reflects is that customers know, developers know, and these people I'm

00:29:47 ◼   ► alluding to who are sort of jumping to the defense of developers in general all kind

00:29:52 ◼   ► to know that this is a gross work around like the rate me dialogues I mean they

00:29:59 ◼   ► are a gross work around and in the context of all that kind of collective

00:30:04 ◼   ► disgust and maybe shame on behalf of some developers it's like to have

00:30:09 ◼   ► there's this kind of phenomenon when you get like called out for something that

00:30:12 ◼   ► you kind of know is shameful you're gonna be that much more likely to lash

00:30:16 ◼   ► out about it it's like if you it's like it's like if you it's like if you are

00:30:21 ◼   ► crossing the street and somebody almost hits you and you get mad at them they're gonna be like super mad at you they're gonna find some

00:30:27 ◼   ► way to be like why the hell were you in the street, you know and

00:30:31 ◼   ► I think there's something to that that kind of got me going like, you know folks I take take take

00:30:38 ◼   ► responsibility for your own move here like

00:30:42 ◼   ► the the fact of the matter is you many people are

00:30:47 ◼   ► stooping in my opinion to a level of behavior with the design of their apps that is in

00:30:53 ◼   ► the in the aim of making more money and yes possibly in the aim of making the difference between

00:30:59 ◼   ► viability and and otherwise for a company

00:31:02 ◼   ► But the fact of the matter is you know

00:31:05 ◼   ► There's lots of different things you can choose to do or not to do to to make that difference

00:31:10 ◼   ► Right. It's it's all in some sense a negotiation

00:31:15 ◼   ► you know and and people forget that

00:31:18 ◼   ► The some I don't know why it is. I never forget it

00:31:23 ◼   ► I always think about it

00:31:24 ◼   ► but there's a lot of people who forget that the customer gets his say in the in negotiation too and I always thought that that's what

00:31:30 ◼   ► Music piracy was about like in the days when it was really rampant with

00:31:37 ◼   ► Napster is

00:31:40 ◼   ► that the music labels were saying as the CD era got older and older you're gonna pay more and more for CDs and a

00:31:47 ◼   ► Lot of top 40 CDs are gonna have fewer and fewer

00:31:50 ◼   ► Good songs on them, you know

00:31:52 ◼   ► And and it's not an exaggeration to say that a lot of money was made by the record companies

00:31:57 ◼   ► Selling seventeen eighteen dollar compact discs that maybe only had two two or three good songs on them. Yeah, and

00:32:07 ◼   ► Napster was a way for people to say you know what I think that's too much money. How about zero and

00:32:13 ◼   ► You know and and the the the me and I'm not saying it's right. I'm not justifying you know piracy of any content

00:32:22 ◼   ► But it's a negotiation

00:32:25 ◼   ► It's a way of them

00:32:26 ◼   ► You know the customer saying that this stinks paying all this money for CDs this stinks that I owned all these albums on

00:32:33 ◼   ► one format and now I have to pay for them on the same exact album on another format.

00:32:37 ◼   ► And I think that, you know, when the success of the iTunes Music Store showed that it wasn't just about people

00:32:48 ◼   ► saying that they felt entitled to never pay a nickel for anything. It was, you know, when you could only pay 99 cents

00:32:55 ◼   ► it was a way of saying, "Well, yeah, that's cool. That's a good deal.

00:32:58 ◼   ► I could get in on that." And, you know, is the right price 99 cents? Was it a $1.29 where they wanted to move

00:33:03 ◼   ► it and they got to eventually. I don't know, but it certainly wasn't $18.

00:33:07 ◼   ► Yeah. And the way I see it with this is, okay, you can ask us over and over and over again

00:33:14 ◼   ► to rate your app. And you know, you certainly can ask, but we collectively could if we chose

00:33:22 ◼   ► to rate the app and give it a bad rating because you're annoying us. We can do it, you know,

00:33:28 ◼   ► And there's this weird entitlement that some of the backslash had where it's like, how

00:33:32 ◼   ► dare you ruin this thing that is getting us four and five star reviews.

00:33:36 ◼   ► Right.

00:33:37 ◼   ► Because that's the thing that I got from a bunch of people.

00:33:39 ◼   ► I got it on Twitter, I got it in email.

00:33:41 ◼   ► It's it more or less boils down to the two word argument, it works.

00:33:45 ◼   ► And what I'm saying with this campaign is maybe, you know, maybe it won't work forever.

00:33:51 ◼   ► You know, using this music analogy, I also think that, you know, it was fairly subtle

00:33:57 ◼   ► the fact that you sort of caged it as a hypothetical.

00:34:01 ◼   ► But to any intelligent reader,

00:34:04 ◼   ► that caging is a sort of implicit,

00:34:07 ◼   ► it's a hint that this is sort of a,

00:34:11 ◼   ► it's a thought experiment, right?

00:34:15 ◼   ► And so taking your music example,

00:34:17 ◼   ► you could imagine somebody, a blogger in the

00:34:19 ◼   ► pre-iTunes days saying, $18 for a CD?

00:34:24 ◼   ► Well, sometimes I think what would happen

00:34:26 ◼   ► if I just asked each of my readers to

00:34:29 ◼   ► Make a copy of their favorite song and give it to somebody for free. All right, you know and that's a I think that's fairly comparable

00:34:36 ◼   ► because

00:34:38 ◼   ► You know, there's lots of nuanced differences in particular like a lot of people in this case feel

00:34:43 ◼   ► that

00:34:45 ◼   ► if people acted on your

00:34:47 ◼   ► You know

00:34:49 ◼   ► Your hypothetical advice that it would unfairly

00:34:53 ◼   ► Proportionately affect smaller indie developers. I think that was one of the one of the sort of like things that rank old people

00:35:00 ◼   ► But you know, that's it was a hypothetical and it feels to me I think a lot of people it felt like they weren't

00:35:09 ◼   ► They weren't giving

00:35:12 ◼   ► First of all, Darian fireball readers as a whole like enough respect for you know, sure

00:35:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm sure you have not not to dismiss anybody in your audience

00:35:21 ◼   ► but I'm sure you have a few idiots reading the blog.

00:35:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:35:25 ◼   ► But, you know, come on, that's not who you're writing to.

00:35:30 ◼   ► Right, it's not like a situation where you are

00:35:33 ◼   ► getting up every day and writing for an audience of idiots

00:35:37 ◼   ► who will do whatever you allude to

00:35:39 ◼   ► without thinking it through.

00:35:41 ◼   ► - Right.

00:35:42 ◼   ► - And to sort of like hold you accountable

00:35:45 ◼   ► for a standard of behavior that assumes

00:35:49 ◼   ► you have thoughtless, mindless drones

00:35:53 ◼   ► who read and follow your every word,

00:35:55 ◼   ► I think there's something wrong with that too.

00:35:56 ◼   ► - Right, or that I'm somehow targeting

00:35:58 ◼   ► my political enemies or something.

00:36:00 ◼   ► - Right.

00:36:01 ◼   ► Well, another thing was somebody who was debating this

00:36:05 ◼   ► with me on Twitter was talking about it

00:36:07 ◼   ► being undermining businesses.

00:36:10 ◼   ► And I pointed out, I do think it would be

00:36:13 ◼   ► a much different situation if you were to list

00:36:17 ◼   ► like five or ten companies and say, even theoretically, sometimes I wonder what if I ask the users

00:36:23 ◼   ► of app A, app B, and app C to give them one star.

00:36:28 ◼   ► That would be a more hostile act, I think.

00:36:33 ◼   ► Our friend, there's a lot of nuance to explore here.

00:36:35 ◼   ► Our friend Cable Sasser, you quoted his tweet, but he had a very good point out, Cable, a

00:36:40 ◼   ► long time co-owner of Panic Software, that the one star aspect of it makes him very uncomfortable.

00:36:47 ◼   ► that no argument that these these dialog boxes are annoying.

00:36:50 ◼   ► And collectively, it's becoming, if anything, a bigger problem as

00:36:54 ◼   ► time goes on as more apps do it and seemingly ask you more and

00:36:57 ◼   ► more times. But that the the angle of my hypothetical

00:37:00 ◼   ► proposal where you leave a one star review is perhaps

00:37:04 ◼   ► problematic. Because what if you otherwise love the app, but you

00:37:07 ◼   ► would just like to gently, gently poke the developer about

00:37:11 ◼   ► this, this issue, the rate my app issue. And so I've seen

00:37:15 ◼   ► other people on Twitter who are like, well, what if you gave them say two stars fewer

00:37:20 ◼   ► than you would have otherwise awarded. So if you would have given them a five star,

00:37:24 ◼   ► give them a three star review and say, I'd give it five stars if it weren't if it would

00:37:28 ◼   ► cease bugging me to rate the app, which is an interesting proposal, like the one star

00:37:35 ◼   ► in particular isn't magic, and perhaps would only skew the ratings, you know, it just it.

00:37:44 ◼   ► I think the whole five star rating thing is a bad idea anyway.

00:37:49 ◼   ► I almost feel like, I feel like the whole app store would be better off if it was like

00:37:52 ◼   ► a thumbs up, thumbs downs thing.

00:37:54 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely.

00:37:55 ◼   ► And I think most, more than anything, what your post and the follow up has done is just

00:37:59 ◼   ► draw a circle around the fact that this review system is not very good.

00:38:03 ◼   ► Right.

00:38:04 ◼   ► And the combined with, yeah, it's a bad review system in general, I think.

00:38:08 ◼   ► And nobody agrees on what difference between Ford, you know, what's a three star is three

00:38:13 ◼   ► star in the because it's in the middle of the five stars does it mean okay or

00:38:16 ◼   ► it's three stars good four is very good and five is excellent and you too is

00:38:22 ◼   ► okay you know there's no guidelines as far as I know either from Apple so who's

00:38:27 ◼   ► to say that one star isn't the right the right rating when an app does something

00:38:33 ◼   ► that's like philosophically offensive to me like everything so I want I don't

00:38:39 ◼   ► want if you had a track you're going there I don't want to derail it too much

00:38:42 ◼   ► but one thing that came to mind is it's an interesting problem to me because I think

00:38:51 ◼   ► it's fundamentally wrong to modally interrupt a user from the course of their own self-driven

00:39:00 ◼   ► action in an app.

00:39:02 ◼   ► To ask them to do something, and this is the key point, to ask them to do something that

00:39:08 ◼   ► is of no benefit to them.

00:39:11 ◼   ► Right. You are totally it is a developer's problem. You are and

00:39:14 ◼   ► you are distributing your solution to this problem. And

00:39:18 ◼   ► the attempt The problem is, how do we get more users to download

00:39:21 ◼   ► our app?

00:39:22 ◼   ► That's your problem as a developer, that is not the

00:39:27 ◼   ► users problem at all. And if they've paid, you know, it's

00:39:29 ◼   ► it's even worse, in my opinion. Yeah. And you're just taking that

00:39:33 ◼   ► problem and distributing a solution across all, however

00:39:37 ◼   ► many users you have, you know, if you have 10,000 users, you're

00:39:40 ◼   ► just giving each one of your users one ten thousandth of a share of your problem.

00:39:45 ◼   ► Yeah. So depending on how strongly you take that offense,

00:39:49 ◼   ► it could very well be grounds for a one star review.

00:39:53 ◼   ► But more, you know, more to the point, like if people are saying, no,

00:39:58 ◼   ► you should have just recommended three stars or you know, two stars off.

00:40:01 ◼   ► All of this is just, you know,

00:40:03 ◼   ► you could make cable or anybody else could thoughtfully make an argument that

00:40:07 ◼   ► That's not fair either, to deduct two full stars.

00:40:11 ◼   ► But since Apple gives no guidelines

00:40:15 ◼   ► for how things should be rated,

00:40:17 ◼   ► the other thing is I just took that,

00:40:20 ◼   ► your suggestion in the hypothetical,

00:40:23 ◼   ► one star is the right number to choose

00:40:25 ◼   ► because it makes the hypothetical expression

00:40:28 ◼   ► of disdain more strongly.

00:40:31 ◼   ► And it doesn't mean that every person

00:40:33 ◼   ► who is even inspired to follow up on your pseudo advice

00:40:38 ◼   ► actually chooses to give one star.

00:40:40 ◼   ► - Right, and I tend to think that most people,

00:40:43 ◼   ► whether they're being thoughtful or being unthoughtful,

00:40:47 ◼   ► tend towards the extremes.

00:40:49 ◼   ► So again, I haven't done any kind of statistical analysis,

00:40:51 ◼   ► but just eyeballing reviews

00:40:53 ◼   ► seems like the most common reviews are five star,

00:40:56 ◼   ► if you really like the app,

00:40:57 ◼   ► and one star if you don't or you feel ripped off

00:41:01 ◼   ► or you've famously, and it's not a good practice,

00:41:06 ◼   ► but users who are hit by bugs will often file the bug report

00:41:10 ◼   ► by leaving a one-star review on the App Store.

00:41:13 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:41:16 ◼   ► - But that just seems to be that in some ways,

00:41:19 ◼   ► a lot of people tend to use it as a thumbs up, thumbs down,

00:41:21 ◼   ► and thumbs up is five and thumbs down is one.

00:41:24 ◼   ► And it works out.

00:41:27 ◼   ► Maybe the average stands up in the middle.

00:41:30 ◼   ► Yeah, or four is, it's perfect in every way,

00:41:33 ◼   ► but there's one tiny little problem.

00:41:36 ◼   ► So how much in general, Jon, do you feel like

00:41:38 ◼   ► you should be held accountable for the power

00:41:43 ◼   ► that you might wield with your audience

00:41:46 ◼   ► to inspire them to do things?

00:41:49 ◼   ► And is that something you think about more these days?

00:41:53 ◼   ► - Oh, I definitely do.

00:41:54 ◼   ► I worry about it, and this is a perfect example.

00:41:56 ◼   ► 'Cause it's no joke that I've been thinking about this

00:41:58 ◼   ► for years and the reason I haven't done it before

00:42:00 ◼   ► is that it's out of fear that it would be too successful,

00:42:05 ◼   ► you know, that too many people would leave one star reviews

00:42:08 ◼   ► and that it would, you know,

00:42:10 ◼   ► anybody who thinks I took it lightly

00:42:11 ◼   ► that this could actually affect the average rating

00:42:14 ◼   ► of certain apps and that a decrease in the average rating

00:42:17 ◼   ► would actually lead to a decrease in sales,

00:42:19 ◼   ► I am completely aware of that, right?

00:42:21 ◼   ► And that's, I do worry about that sometimes.

00:42:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:42:26 ◼   ► - And it's very, very hard for me.

00:42:27 ◼   ► I've said this before, my interface to Daring Fireball is literally almost exactly the same

00:42:35 ◼   ► as it was six or seven years ago.

00:42:38 ◼   ► I still have the same old 20-inch cinema display in front of me.

00:42:42 ◼   ► I'm sitting at the same desk.

00:42:44 ◼   ► I'm sitting in the same office.

00:42:47 ◼   ► I'm using...

00:42:48 ◼   ► Well, actually, it's not the same keyboard but the same model keyboard.

00:42:53 ◼   ► it's so much of a bigger audience, right? And it's very different than like if

00:42:59 ◼   ► you're like a live performer, right? Like I've effectively gone from back in 2002

00:43:05 ◼   ► to 2003 being the equivalent of playing in like a local pub to playing on a

00:43:11 ◼   ► daily basis, you know, before thousands of people. But it doesn't look different,

00:43:15 ◼   ► right? If you're a stage performer and now all of a sudden you're no longer

00:43:19 ◼   ► performing comedy in front of 20 people at 11 o'clock at night but instead

00:43:24 ◼   ► you're performing in front of 4,000 people at you know the Mirage in Vegas

00:43:29 ◼   ► every night it feels different instantly I mean it's a huge you know big room

00:43:33 ◼   ► whereas when you're a writer like I am here it doesn't feel that different

00:43:38 ◼   ► so I definitely think about it and I definitely hope that most people out

00:43:41 ◼   ► there are being thoughtful about it but on the other hand I actually feel pretty

00:43:45 ◼   ► I do feel I know it sounds and this is the other thing too people are like

00:43:49 ◼   ► what's just a stupid dialog box hit a button and it goes away and you know for

00:43:52 ◼   ► a while but I do feel like collectively it's such a bad practice mm-hmm and like

00:43:59 ◼   ► I was saying it's a philosophical turn off and so if you get turned off it's

00:44:05 ◼   ► the kind of thing where like for example on the positive side of things if like

00:44:09 ◼   ► an app you use expresses you know some feature in a way that has like a little

00:44:14 ◼   ► bit of humor or like a touch of humanity that really relates to you, then you get like a

00:44:19 ◼   ► sense of like, "I'm kind of like simpatico with this app," right?

00:44:23 ◼   ► Like this is kind of like, it's almost like it's an emotional reaction.

00:44:26 ◼   ► And this kind of thing is emotional as well.

00:44:30 ◼   ► And if you're gonna have emotional bad things, well, I hate to break it to folks, but that's

00:44:37 ◼   ► gonna lead some people to the one star zone.

00:44:41 ◼   ► And the fact that this Tumblr blog existed that was called "F Your Review," that doesn't

00:44:47 ◼   ► come out of thin air.

00:44:50 ◼   ► It wasn't like problematicreviews.tumblr.com.

00:44:55 ◼   ► It was meant to be a heated rejection of the whole idea.

00:45:00 ◼   ► I do think that my having written it, it did uncover.

00:45:04 ◼   ► And I'm not surprised, but it was kind of a relief because I felt like I'm not alone,

00:45:08 ◼   ► where it feels felt like a lot of the response I got from users was, you know, I hadn't really

00:45:12 ◼   ► thought about it. But you're right, this is annoying as hell. And I see a couple of those

00:45:16 ◼   ► every goddamn day now. You know, it's funny, I'll tell you what, I was in New York, the

00:45:20 ◼   ► last few days, I was up for the I went to the Instagram event in New York. And it was

00:45:27 ◼   ► a really nice event. And Kevin Systrom, the founder, and I don't know what his title is

00:45:32 ◼   ► now that they're on Facebook, but what you know, he's the boss of Instagram did a really

00:45:36 ◼   ► great job. I thought it was a great presentation. But while he was doing a demo of the new faced

00:45:42 ◼   ► or not Facebook, Instagram messages, while he was doing his demo, Instagram gave him the like

00:45:50 ◼   ► Instagram, rate it later, not now. And so and it was clearly not part of the, you know, what he was

00:45:56 ◼   ► ready for. And I think I'll get to the technical reason. I think I know why he got that alert.

00:46:02 ◼   ► were on stage in front of the audience of the press you in so he you know he handled

00:46:06 ◼   ► it great he's like no i don't want to rate instagram right now thank you very much all

00:46:11 ◼   ► right let me come back to that in a moment let me just do a second sponsor read and this one's great

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00:48:06 ◼   ► How about that? There you go. Quality stuff. Good new sponsor. I like getting a sponsor

00:48:12 ◼   ► like that is a little bit off the... No offense to Drobo. I love Drobo. But Drobo is a perfect

00:48:18 ◼   ► example of like a typical talk show sponsor, right? A little nerdy, plugging hard drives

00:48:22 ◼   ► in. Now we've got something a little different.

00:48:25 ◼   ► Well, this recognizes that all of us techies, we have other aspects to our lives that we

00:48:30 ◼   ► need to buy other things. So why not get the message out?

00:48:34 ◼   ► Right. So one of the things... And I didn't know this. Now, get back to these RateMe dialogues.

00:48:42 ◼   ► I knew I'd been annoyed by them.

00:48:44 ◼   ► And I knew that there was a lot of similarity

00:48:46 ◼   ► between a lot of the ones I'd seen.

00:48:48 ◼   ► But only after I wrote this and it sort of became

00:48:50 ◼   ► a topic of conversation on Twitter

00:48:54 ◼   ► and an email with readers

00:48:56 ◼   ► that I start looking into it a little bit.

00:48:58 ◼   ► And I found, I guess I'll put it in the show notes,

00:49:01 ◼   ► but there's like an open source project at GitHub

00:49:03 ◼   ► called iRate, which is funny, right?

00:49:06 ◼   ► - How appropriate, yes.

00:49:07 ◼   ► - Right, it's I capital R-A-T-E.

00:49:11 ◼   ► But it's funny because it's gotten a lot of people--

00:49:14 ◼   ► I'm not even going to say it.

00:49:16 ◼   ► But anyway, and a longtime friend of the show--

00:49:20 ◼   ► he's never been on, but he's Dan Weinman,

00:49:24 ◼   ► who's a professional programmer, was taking a look at it.

00:49:30 ◼   ► And it's, A, even if you're not a programmer,

00:49:33 ◼   ► if you go to their website and just read the read me

00:49:35 ◼   ► and just look at the configuration options for this--

00:49:37 ◼   ► and it's ostensibly simple.

00:49:39 ◼   ► it's you know air add this open source thing to your your iPad or iPhone app

00:49:44 ◼   ► and it will automatically you know ask the user to rate and you know not rate

00:49:51 ◼   ► if they choose the app but it has so many configuration options it's crazy

00:49:56 ◼   ► it's so super complicated and it has really in my opinion really bad defaults

00:50:03 ◼   ► And it's the dialogue like I think it is the default dialogue

00:50:07 ◼   ► Is the one that you're all of you anybody I bet every single person listening to the show has seen it not just seen it

00:50:14 ◼   ► but has seen it within the last three or four days is

00:50:17 ◼   ► This dialogue that says do you like this app?

00:50:20 ◼   ► And there's three buttons and then I'll rate it

00:50:24 ◼   ► Ask me later and

00:50:28 ◼   ► Bottom no. Thanks

00:50:31 ◼   ► and

00:50:33 ◼   ► And the one thing that I've noticed, I've known this, everybody's known it, the "No

00:50:38 ◼   ► Thanks" button doesn't seem to do what you would want it to do, which is...

00:50:45 ◼   ► I think this is very obvious.

00:50:47 ◼   ► I'm not gonna rate rap right now, and I don't wanna ever be asked again.

00:50:51 ◼   ► Right?

00:50:52 ◼   ► Yep.

00:50:53 ◼   ► And now all it says is "No thanks."

00:50:54 ◼   ► It doesn't say, you know, "We'll never ask you again."

00:50:57 ◼   ► But I'm not sure what else "no thanks" could mean, or a reasonable person could assume

00:51:03 ◼   ► it means, if there's also a button above it that says "remind me later," which I'm guessing

00:51:09 ◼   ► nobody has ever tapped in their life.

00:51:13 ◼   ► But if one of the options is "remind me later" and another one is "no thanks" and you tap

00:51:19 ◼   ► "no thanks" and then a week or two later the same app asks you again, that to me feels

00:51:25 ◼   ► broken.

00:51:26 ◼   ► And it's apparently by design, like looking at it,

00:51:29 ◼   ► like Dan Weinman looking at the code.

00:51:32 ◼   ► What no thanks really means in this open source project

00:51:36 ◼   ► is no thanks for this version of the app.

00:51:39 ◼   ► But if it's version 2.7.3, when you release 2.7.4 to fix a bug,

00:51:48 ◼   ► this irate project will then take a queue to ask again.

00:51:52 ◼   ► And that's why so many of us for so many apps

00:51:55 ◼   ► have seen the same goddamn dialogue so many times.

00:51:59 ◼   ► And I think it's why during the demo yesterday

00:52:02 ◼   ► at the Instagram event that Kevin Systrom got prompted

00:52:05 ◼   ► by it from Instagram app, because I'll bet what happened

00:52:08 ◼   ► is that he upgraded the version on his phone

00:52:12 ◼   ► to either a newer beta or to maybe

00:52:14 ◼   ► the App Store release version.

00:52:16 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Which had just come,

00:52:17 ◼   ► which was coming out yesterday.

00:52:19 ◼   ► I think it came out like during the event.

00:52:21 ◼   ► So my guess is he upgraded to the new version

00:52:24 ◼   ► of Instagram and hadn't launched it yet.

00:52:27 ◼   ► Or maybe it like, maybe, I'm not even quite sure about this,

00:52:31 ◼   ► but maybe it doesn't ask you the first time

00:52:33 ◼   ► you launch after an upgrade.

00:52:34 ◼   ► It maybe it asks like the third time after you upgrade,

00:52:39 ◼   ► it will ask again.

00:52:40 ◼   ► And he'd install, you know,

00:52:42 ◼   ► it was such a good presentation, very well rehearsed.

00:52:44 ◼   ► He probably installed it, ran through the demo

00:52:47 ◼   ► two or three times, saw that it was all working

00:52:50 ◼   ► exactly right and then on stage hit the whatever you know the nth time when irate is going

00:52:58 ◼   ► to make you angry.

00:53:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:53:01 ◼   ► Hey kids, John Gruber here. I've always wanted to do this. I've got breaking news. It ends

00:53:13 ◼   ► up in the couple of hours in between when Daniel Jalkett and I recorded this episode

00:53:19 ◼   ► right now, Friday, December 13th in the evening, the developer of this irate open source package,

00:53:28 ◼   ► Nick Lockwood, has, now this is not coincidence, this is in response to conversations on Twitter

00:53:37 ◼   ► among various people in the developer community before we recorded, but anyway, Nick Lockwood

00:53:43 ◼   ► has made changes in the new version of irate which he published today on github

00:53:47 ◼   ► has a few changes it no longer asks users to rate the app each version it asks once

00:53:56 ◼   ► and if the user selects no thanks they will never be asked again and he even went so far as to remove

00:54:06 ◼   ► the option to prompt again each version.

00:54:10 ◼   ► I think all of these are changes for the better.

00:54:14 ◼   ► So great move and really really cool response from

00:54:19 ◼   ► developer Nick Lockwood and I really hope developers who are using this package

00:54:23 ◼   ► update to the latest version. Now back to the show.

00:54:27 ◼   ► So I'm looking as well at this configuration documentation. There are

00:54:31 ◼   ► a ton of different things as you said including all these like fine-tuned

00:54:36 ◼   ► attributes that taken together determine when it will prompt you but one of them

00:54:44 ◼   ► is literally prompt again for each new version and it says in the

00:54:48 ◼   ► documentation because iTunes ratings are version specific you ideally want users

00:54:53 ◼   ► to rate each new version of your app so that's the mindset behind the so so you

00:54:59 ◼   ► John when you said you think it has poor defaults I think the defaults if it's

00:55:05 ◼   ► set to prompt again for each new version, which it sounds like it is, they are very

00:55:12 ◼   ► well chosen for the goals of the project.

00:55:16 ◼   ► And this gets back to my whole point about who is this in the service of, right?

00:55:23 ◼   ► The whole point of this project being here at the disposal of hundreds or thousands of

00:55:31 ◼   ► developers is to benefit developers by maximizing some perceived benefit of

00:55:38 ◼   ► capitalizing on users and not just of getting reviews but of getting new

00:55:43 ◼   ► reviews over and over and over again because in fact from everything I've

00:55:47 ◼   ► been able to gather from this this project which I think is super popular

00:55:51 ◼   ► and other ones there is no way to stop being asked not only does the no thanks

00:55:57 ◼   ► button not stop you from being asked again when a new version comes out

00:56:00 ◼   ► Even if you rate the app, if you do the thing that they really want you to do,

00:56:06 ◼   ► which is tap that first button and leave the app, even though you clearly went to

00:56:10 ◼   ► the app for some other purpose, which was to actually use the app, but you're

00:56:13 ◼   ► willing to say, "You know what? Forget everything. I will do you a favor. I will

00:56:19 ◼   ► take time out of my life right now. I will drop what I was doing. I will hit

00:56:24 ◼   ► this button, I will go and peck out using my thumbs in the App Store a review of

00:56:31 ◼   ► your app right now, and I'll give it five stars and submit it and put my name on

00:56:36 ◼   ► it on the iTunes Store as a review of your app. You do all of that for the

00:56:42 ◼   ► developer, and then the next time a new version of the app comes out you're

00:56:44 ◼   ► gonna see that dialog box again. Even hitting "rate the app" doesn't set any

00:56:49 ◼   ► kind of flag that says, "Okay, this guy is, you know, you don't have to show this

00:56:53 ◼   ► user the dialog anymore there is no way to stop getting prompted there is no way

00:56:58 ◼   ► as a user on a default configured deployment of irate and that's what it

00:57:05 ◼   ► looks like and looking at this documentation a little more it actually

00:57:09 ◼   ► covers this case specifically in the same area it says if you set that prompt

00:57:14 ◼   ► again for each new version value to no then it clearly says they will not be

00:57:20 ◼   ► prompted again each time they install an update if they've already rated the app

00:57:25 ◼   ► then it goes on to say it will still prompt them for each new version if they

00:57:31 ◼   ► have not rated the app and that presumably means if they've said no

00:57:35 ◼   ► thanks but then it says you can override this using a delegate method

00:57:40 ◼   ► irate should prompt for rating so it has to be completely customized

00:57:44 ◼   ► Some sense of decency needs to be instilled into this framework.

00:57:51 ◼   ► Right, and again I think that it's arguably well-intentioned but blind to

00:57:58 ◼   ► the cost of user attention. I don't think that you know whoever wrote this and set

00:58:04 ◼   ► up this configuration system was in any way evil. You know I just think it's right

00:58:11 ◼   ► You know and it and I do think it was well-meaning in that it's aiming to solve a problem developers face

00:58:16 ◼   ► But I think it's completely blind and ham-fisted to the effect it has on users. Yep

00:58:21 ◼   ► You know and I'll draw another similarity and again people keep saying that the defenders of this practice keep saying but it works

00:58:28 ◼   ► And there's all sorts of stuff that works. That's that is not right, you know telemarketing works. That's right, right telemarketing works

00:58:35 ◼   ► But it's annoying as hell and I would never want any product or service that I'm involved with to be involved with it

00:58:41 ◼   ► Like even if it was cost-effective I would never have you know

00:58:45 ◼   ► You know pay $100 to have some

00:58:48 ◼   ► Telemarketer try to get more readers of daring fireball or you know people to buy Vesper or something like that

00:58:55 ◼   ► It's you know, it's beneath the brand in my opinion. That's why we're on the same. It works. Yeah

00:58:59 ◼   ► I

00:59:01 ◼   ► was just gonna say I think that this reflects like

00:59:04 ◼   ► there's kind of a herd mentality with

00:59:07 ◼   ► developers and I fall victim to it sometimes but you know

00:59:11 ◼   ► The problem is we're all sort of scrambling for how are we gonna make a living at this?

00:59:14 ◼   ► How are we gonna like eke out enough of a profit that we can you know?

00:59:18 ◼   ► Maybe quit our day job or you support our family. All these are valuable things to aspire to do, but you're right there

00:59:25 ◼   ► This is one variable in like not just dozens but hundreds or thousands of variables that added together

00:59:33 ◼   ► you know lead to whether you make a living or not and

00:59:37 ◼   ► And there's lots of things.

00:59:38 ◼   ► You know what else makes money?

00:59:39 ◼   ► Pornography.

00:59:41 ◼   ► And Apple--

00:59:43 ◼   ► - That's a good point.

00:59:44 ◼   ► - Apple draws the line right there.

00:59:45 ◼   ► If each of these apps popped up a bare boob

00:59:49 ◼   ► every once in a while,

00:59:50 ◼   ► maybe they'd make a little more money.

00:59:52 ◼   ► But Apple draws the line on that for us.

00:59:56 ◼   ► If Apple said tomorrow,

01:00:02 ◼   ► hey, guess what, folks?

01:00:03 ◼   ► New policy.

01:00:05 ◼   ► you're not allowed to proactively encourage users

01:00:09 ◼   ► to rate your app from the app.

01:00:12 ◼   ► That would be it.

01:00:13 ◼   ► It would be over, and that would be a new rule of the game

01:00:16 ◼   ► for developers to play with.

01:00:17 ◼   ► And they'd have the time to fix it, to submit.

01:00:21 ◼   ► No apps would be taken out of the store,

01:00:23 ◼   ► but as new apps, new versions get submitted,

01:00:26 ◼   ► they would need to comply.

01:00:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:28 ◼   ► And I think what I feel like when stuff like this

01:00:31 ◼   ► comes up and people--

01:00:33 ◼   ► I have to be careful because I'm a developer too.

01:00:35 ◼   ► I face my own problems, but it so happens

01:00:39 ◼   ► that I'm not in deep with iOS as a revenue stream.

01:00:44 ◼   ► So I have to be careful not to be too dismissive

01:00:46 ◼   ► of folks having problems with this,

01:00:49 ◼   ► but it feels to me, it reminds me of situations

01:00:52 ◼   ► I've encountered myself where I was looking

01:00:55 ◼   ► for easy outs or easy blames for what's going wrong

01:01:02 ◼   ► with my business or with my app.

01:01:04 ◼   ► Kind of reminds me of this old quip

01:01:08 ◼   ► I think Gus Mueller made on his blog years ago.

01:01:12 ◼   ► I wish I could remember the context,

01:01:13 ◼   ► but it was like somebody had one of these

01:01:15 ◼   ► kind of like whiny rants about so and so.

01:01:19 ◼   ► I think it was somebody who was like quitting

01:01:20 ◼   ► the software business and blaming it on

01:01:23 ◼   ► piracy or people not,

01:01:28 ◼   ► lack of marketing or something or other.

01:01:30 ◼   ► Gus just says maybe your app just sucks

01:01:32 ◼   ► You know like that's always something

01:01:35 ◼   ► We have to think about yeah, and and and sometimes I think when people are down to the point where they're considering

01:01:43 ◼   ► whether or not I can force users or

01:01:47 ◼   ► strongly compel them to do my bidding and

01:01:50 ◼   ► That makes the difference between whether I make a living or not. That's a sad place to be and there is there is

01:01:58 ◼   ► To be sympathetic to developers. There's also a prisoner's dilemma angle to this, right?

01:02:04 ◼   ► I mean, what's the classic formulation of the prisoner's dilemma? It's like you and a friend are both put in jail

01:02:10 ◼   ► separate cells and

01:02:13 ◼   ► the jailer comes to you and they want you both to confess to a crime and you can

01:02:18 ◼   ► Your like three options are to maintain your innocence

01:02:21 ◼   ► And if you both maintain your innocence, then you'll both get out without doing a day of jail time because the they don't have a confession

01:02:27 ◼   ► you can say it was all the other guy's fault and he'll do all the jail time. He'll do, you know,

01:02:32 ◼   ► ten years of jail time and

01:02:35 ◼   ► you get to walk away.

01:02:39 ◼   ► Or it's no, no, or what did I guess it would be like you would do like a year of jail and he'd do ten years

01:02:44 ◼   ► of jail.

01:02:45 ◼   ► Isn't that it?

01:02:47 ◼   ► I don't remember the details.

01:02:48 ◼   ► Well, but anyway, it's in your interest in theory to stick together and do the right thing and maintain your innocence and you both walk

01:02:55 ◼   ► out but that there's a big motivation to rat the other guy out because then you won't be getting

01:03:01 ◼   ► the worst of it and you can't trust him not to do the worst and stick it to you. Or it's like if you

01:03:06 ◼   ► both rat each other out then you do some time. But if you rat him out and he says you're both

01:03:16 ◼   ► innocent then he does all the time. And so it's in your interest to do it and just hope that he

01:03:21 ◼   ► did the right thing and let you go, right?

01:03:23 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:03:24 ◼   ► - And there is a prisoner's dilemma angle to this

01:03:26 ◼   ► where it's like if the other developers are doing it

01:03:29 ◼   ► and you're not, they're getting more reviews.

01:03:31 ◼   ► And if it does seem to work

01:03:33 ◼   ► and the reviews that are left are mostly positive,

01:03:36 ◼   ► then your app is getting a disproportionate share

01:03:40 ◼   ► of positive reviews because you're not asking,

01:03:44 ◼   ► your competitors are,

01:03:46 ◼   ► and therefore their app is better reviewed than yours only,

01:03:48 ◼   ► not because it is better, but only because they're asking.

01:03:51 ◼   ► And therefore, it's in your interest to go along with it.

01:03:54 ◼   ► And that's sort of why I feel like Apple would be the one

01:03:59 ◼   ► who could solve it best by saying,

01:04:00 ◼   ► "You're not allowed to do this."

01:04:02 ◼   ► Because it also leads, it's a slippery slope.

01:04:04 ◼   ► And as I've researched this,

01:04:06 ◼   ► there's a lot of apps that are doing other things.

01:04:08 ◼   ► They're not just saying, "Hey, if you like it,

01:04:09 ◼   ► "leave an app or leave a review."

01:04:12 ◼   ► There's other apps that are like going,

01:04:14 ◼   ► taking measures to try to only get positive reviews.

01:04:18 ◼   ► Instead of saying, "Rate the app," they're doing things like saying, "Do you like the

01:04:23 ◼   ► app?

01:04:24 ◼   ► How do you like this?"

01:04:25 ◼   ► And if you say, "Yes, I like it," then they ask you to leave a review.

01:04:29 ◼   ► And if you say, "No, I don't," then they don't ask you to leave a review.

01:04:33 ◼   ► They'll point you somewhere else, like point you to a help page or something like that.

01:04:36 ◼   ► Right, which somehow feels disingenuous and slimy when it's automated like that.

01:04:42 ◼   ► But for example, it doesn't feel so bad if I, as a software business owner, like selectively

01:04:50 ◼   ► choose to mention, "Hey, maybe you could leave me a review," in like an email correspondence.

01:04:56 ◼   ► Right.

01:04:57 ◼   ► And that's totally okay.

01:04:58 ◼   ► You know, we do that with Vesper.

01:05:00 ◼   ► Like we'll, you know, at the bottom of like, when we answer support emails, we'll just

01:05:04 ◼   ► put in a little quick boiler point like, "Hey, if you like the app, it would be really, it

01:05:09 ◼   ► would be great for us if you took the time to leave a review."

01:05:12 ◼   ► Something like that. Well, it's sweet. A big part of that is you're you're squeezing that in as like a side note in

01:05:19 ◼   ► A communication that is getting back to the point otherwise for the customers benefit exactly answering a question, you know

01:05:27 ◼   ► providing them with a workaround or

01:05:30 ◼   ► Acknowledging. Yes, that's a known bug but it's it's you know, it's an Apple bug and we have to wait for salt

01:05:36 ◼   ► We're as annoyed by it by you, but we have to wait for Apple to fix it

01:05:39 ◼   ► we've filed bugs with them and you know hopefully we'll have an update soon or

01:05:43 ◼   ► something else you know like hey you're that's a cool feature request we'll

01:05:46 ◼   ► think about it you know or you know that's a cool feature request we have

01:05:50 ◼   ► thought about it here's why we didn't do it you know something like that some

01:05:54 ◼   ► sort of positive interaction and at the end of it another thing I've seen and I

01:05:59 ◼   ► think it's great I think it's totally cool are some people it's nowhere near

01:06:04 ◼   ► as prevalent a practice as these alerts these alerts have become like a disease

01:06:08 ◼   ► But like so I've seen there's I've seen screenshots of some apps

01:06:11 ◼   ► We're like on the settings page on a settings panel. There will be like a link like

01:06:16 ◼   ► to two buttons like one tap here to get support if you have a

01:06:21 ◼   ► Issue and then underneath that if you like the app tap here to rate it in the App Store

01:06:26 ◼   ► These ratings really help us with our you know rankings in the store

01:06:30 ◼   ► I think that's ideal because it's again it's sneaking it in and in a place that does not slow down the user and right

01:06:38 ◼   ► It's not you know just I don't know that's to me

01:06:40 ◼   ► It's it just as crazy to me that there are some people who don't see how an alert is is going right to code red

01:06:47 ◼   ► You know yeah

01:06:49 ◼   ► You should never show an alert unless you have to like I think ideally the ideal work flow through any app

01:06:55 ◼   ► involves no alerts

01:06:57 ◼   ► You know only when you really have to when there's no other solution

01:07:02 ◼   ► We've got to make sure because all right they're trying to delete this thing and if they do it

01:07:06 ◼   ► There's no way to undo it

01:07:08 ◼   ► we've got to show an alert to double-check that they really wanted to because it would be catastrophic if they

01:07:13 ◼   ► deleted it by accident, right and so I think like

01:07:16 ◼   ► More forgivable example is like sparkle in Mac apps where it does show an alert

01:07:25 ◼   ► but it is clearly usually clearly for the customers benefit right to get an updated version and

01:07:32 ◼   ► importantly in almost every app on the Mac that uses sparkle there is a

01:07:36 ◼   ► preference in the app to completely disable the

01:07:40 ◼   ► the alerts

01:07:42 ◼   ► So it's a totally different

01:07:44 ◼   ► Mindwell, and again, it's an important thing where again it's in the users interest usually to be running the latest version of the app

01:07:51 ◼   ► But it's not in the users interest in general to update automatically, you know without their yeah

01:07:59 ◼   ► Okay, right. So you're protecting them and and and benefit. Yeah, the right thing to do is to do

01:08:05 ◼   ► What sparkle does is to say, okay, there's an app store. There is an update of version, you know

01:08:10 ◼   ► Whatever number you're running this number. Here's you know, you can do this later or you could do this now

01:08:17 ◼   ► so I think that there is a possible like

01:08:20 ◼   ► another possible like acceptable

01:08:24 ◼   ► Communication stream between developers and users which is some kind of like passive news stream

01:08:30 ◼   ► Where it's kind of like the about box idea. It's still begging the users attention

01:08:36 ◼   ► I've seen this in some games like they'll have like general news, but then occasionally they'll also have as among those news items

01:08:43 ◼   ► You know, hey, you've been using this for a while if you like it rate it. Yeah

01:08:47 ◼   ► And that kind of stuff usually entails like some kind of little subtle signal like a little

01:08:54 ◼   ► You know like maybe a little red light or something on the main screen that lets you know, there's messages, right?

01:09:00 ◼   ► Something like that. Let's just say if something like that had become the de facto standard for how

01:09:06 ◼   ► People try to cajole people into reviewing. I don't think we'd be having this conversation

01:09:12 ◼   ► It's not that's not problematic enough or maybe not problematic at all

01:09:16 ◼   ► but there I

01:09:19 ◼   ► I think even with the alerts, which I think is generally heavy-handed for this, but as long as if this irate project that everybody...

01:09:27 ◼   ► or it seems to be so popular, if no thanks meant never show this again, ever.

01:09:32 ◼   ► Yeah, just one time only and you can opt out and it'll never show you again. I don't think we'd be having this conversation.

01:09:38 ◼   ► I really don't because then you'd only see that dialogue once for every app and even if you have a lot of apps installed,

01:09:44 ◼   ► that's not that bad.

01:09:45 ◼   ► It's in hindsight, and I didn't really this didn't really occur to me until after I published that

01:09:50 ◼   ► But the more I thought about it and really considered my position

01:09:53 ◼   ► It's not being asked the first time that annoys me

01:09:56 ◼   ► It's being asked the second through the nth times the one time it's like I don't like it

01:10:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I wouldn't do it, but I could live with it and it's the same thing as things like hey

01:10:07 ◼   ► Maybe you want to I don't think you should do all of these things. I think you have a limited amount of

01:10:12 ◼   ► attention you can take from the user, but if you wanted to maybe you want to do something like you said like

01:10:16 ◼   ► Prompt them once to sign up for an occasional newsletter

01:10:20 ◼   ► Yeah, or just follow your company's or products account on Twitter

01:10:26 ◼   ► Follow Vesper app on Twitter and you'll receive you know occasional

01:10:30 ◼   ► You know tips tricks news stuff like that, right and it would be completely appropriate

01:10:37 ◼   ► to say on your Vesper Twitter account, you know folks if you haven't done it yet now would be a great time to review

01:10:44 ◼   ► Exactly and and part of that too is that with an email newsletter?

01:10:48 ◼   ► You know you can and I know the panic apps have always done this and I think they've had a great success with it

01:10:53 ◼   ► And it's a really cool

01:10:54 ◼   ► You know the newsletters are you know everything you'd think a panic newsletter would be it's funny and very well designed

01:10:59 ◼   ► It's like one time when you install like a new panic app for the first time

01:11:04 ◼   ► They show you a dialogue box and it'll just it says something, you know, very friendly and it's like hey

01:11:09 ◼   ► We run a company newsletter where we give occasional

01:11:12 ◼   ► news and updates and tips

01:11:14 ◼   ► It's not annoying we promise and you can unsubscribe anytime

01:11:18 ◼   ► But it'd be it would be great if you signed up and you could put your email address in and hit a button and if you

01:11:23 ◼   ► Don't want it you hit another button and they never ask you again

01:11:25 ◼   ► Yeah, same thing for like Twitter and then again if you want to in your newsletter or in your Twitter account

01:11:32 ◼   ► occasionally remind people to do to maybe leave a review in the App Store

01:11:35 ◼   ► That's cool

01:11:36 ◼   ► Because if if they want to they'll do it if they don't they won't and if they're annoyed they know how to make it stop

01:11:42 ◼   ► You know how to hit the unfollow button in Twitter. Yeah

01:11:45 ◼   ► Whereas there is no way to make these dialogues stop

01:11:48 ◼   ► I think you I think you're right that the the one-time thing is I might consider it like

01:11:54 ◼   ► slightly a slight like

01:11:58 ◼   ► Tarnish on an app, you know, but maybe not even that maybe I would just accept it as the as the you know

01:12:04 ◼   ► Cost of doing business, but we all overlook

01:12:07 ◼   ► little things here and there in apps that bug us right and they don't have to be things that are like intentionally trying to

01:12:13 ◼   ► Coerce us into doing something could just be like oh, I I really hate the fact that

01:12:18 ◼   ► this button, you know always behaves this way when I click it and and then I think what you're on to here with the

01:12:25 ◼   ► in particular of this open source framework is collectively,

01:12:30 ◼   ► when you magnify that out over so many apps

01:12:33 ◼   ► doing the same thing and the sense that they're all

01:12:35 ◼   ► kind of collectively, they're giving it the okay

01:12:40 ◼   ► by all doing it, right?

01:12:42 ◼   ► It would be like what if you had this one really frustrating

01:12:45 ◼   ► annoying behavior of an app and then they open sourced that

01:12:48 ◼   ► and then suddenly all your apps were behaving that way.

01:12:50 ◼   ► - Right.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Let me take a break here and do the third sponsor break

01:12:54 ◼   ► and there's a couple more, I have a couple more points I think I want to make about these

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01:15:38 ◼   ► So the last thing I wanted to say about this is Apple's role, and not just in approving

01:15:42 ◼   ► the apps that are doing this, but in the way that the App Store is currently configured.

01:15:47 ◼   ► And one of the things, a lot of people jumped on this in the Twitter conversation.

01:15:52 ◼   ► An awful lot of people are saying what I think I agree with too, which is that there's a

01:15:56 ◼   ► big difference between asking the user once and asking them over and over again.

01:16:01 ◼   ► And it's that once every version that was annoying.

01:16:04 ◼   ► immediately then there were people defending it because the way the App

01:16:07 ◼   ► Store is set up it's only the current version of the app whose reviews are

01:16:14 ◼   ► counted to make the average rating so like if you had really good reviews a

01:16:19 ◼   ► year ago but now you've had two versions since and not so you know maybe not even

01:16:24 ◼   ► bad reviews just you don't have that many reviews they don't show up in the

01:16:27 ◼   ► default listing and that people based there like should I download it or not

01:16:31 ◼   ► decisions on how well rated it is. Be that as it may, that is not the user's

01:16:38 ◼   ► problem. That's right. Right? It just isn't, you know, and it's like, I don't know,

01:16:47 ◼   ► should that be fixed? I think there's got to be a better way to do it. I mean, I

01:16:51 ◼   ► think there's a lot of people who are, you know, as time goes on, who are kind of,

01:16:54 ◼   ► and the App Store gets older, you know, that it's discovery is definitely, it's

01:16:59 ◼   ► always been a problem in the App Store, right? Where the best apps don't

01:17:02 ◼   ► necessarily filter to the top. You know, Twitter clients is a perfect example

01:17:06 ◼   ► where like if you search the App Store for Twitter, you don't get a listing of

01:17:11 ◼   ► the best Twitter clients. You do get Twitter.com's official Twitter client

01:17:15 ◼   ► early on, but like apps like Twitterrific and Tweetbot, depending on, you know, the

01:17:19 ◼   ► day and what's going on with Apple's indexes, don't show up. You get a whole

01:17:23 ◼   ► bunch of junk underneath the official Twitter client. Whereas I think in a

01:17:28 ◼   ► world where the App Store worked according to Apple's ideals where the

01:17:32 ◼   ► best you know Apple's you know stuff has always been about the best you know

01:17:36 ◼   ► what's the best quality apps like tweet bot and Twitter if ik should be at the

01:17:40 ◼   ► yeah near the top of the results and what's worse is that they have

01:17:44 ◼   ► apparently been you know punished for this practice of starting you know

01:17:49 ◼   ► releasing a new release with a new skew and SKU code on the App Store right

01:17:54 ◼   ► which is itself a workaround to the lack of a paid upgrade system,

01:18:00 ◼   ► like where people, developers would like to ideally hold on to their sort of like

01:18:06 ◼   ► notoriety and their reputation in the store for a particular app, but to get paid again,

01:18:12 ◼   ► they either have to like jump through some weird hoops to turn their upgrade into an a la carte in

01:18:19 ◼   ► in-app purchase or they have to make an all-new SKU,

01:18:23 ◼   ► and then they start at the bottom, literally.

01:18:27 ◼   ► Like, I mean, somebody mentioned,

01:18:30 ◼   ► I think it was maybe David Barnard,

01:18:31 ◼   ► 'cause he's always real, you know,

01:18:34 ◼   ► I think productively critical about the search issue.

01:18:38 ◼   ► He said, you know, Tweetbot went from like number one

01:18:41 ◼   ► or number two in those results to off the page fold.

01:18:46 ◼   ► - Right.

01:18:47 ◼   ► So yeah, Apple's role, it's one of those things where,

01:18:52 ◼   ► you know, it's always been easy for us

01:18:54 ◼   ► who are big Apple fans and we appreciate

01:18:57 ◼   ► so much that Apple does, it's always easy for us to say,

01:18:59 ◼   ► like, oh, this one fix would fix everything,

01:19:02 ◼   ► or this is what they should do,

01:19:03 ◼   ► or this is, why is this all so screwed up?

01:19:06 ◼   ► And of course, we have to take a step back

01:19:08 ◼   ► and realize that when you consider that

01:19:11 ◼   ► for any one of these little things we can pinpoint,

01:19:13 ◼   ► there are actually dozens or hundreds of things

01:19:16 ◼   ► that could probably be improved.

01:19:18 ◼   ► It's easier than to at least be empathetic

01:19:21 ◼   ► to how it's not perfect.

01:19:23 ◼   ► - It is effectively, the similarity that keeps,

01:19:27 ◼   ► I don't think we've even mentioned it during the show yet,

01:19:30 ◼   ► but this whole practice of asking for the reviews,

01:19:32 ◼   ► it reeks of SEO, search engine optimization,

01:19:37 ◼   ► which is largely, in my opinion,

01:19:41 ◼   ► and always has been ways to take advantage

01:19:46 ◼   ► of search engines.

01:19:49 ◼   ► Whatever techniques have worked.

01:19:50 ◼   ► It's not about truly deserving top spots.

01:19:54 ◼   ► It's how to get the top spot, whether you deserve it or not.

01:19:58 ◼   ► And that's-- it's become a dirty word.

01:20:01 ◼   ► And people, other than marketing scumbags, people hear SEO,

01:20:07 ◼   ► and they think, oh, man, it's bad practices and annoying

01:20:10 ◼   ► cheats.

01:20:11 ◼   ► Well, that's-- I hate to say it.

01:20:13 ◼   ► That's what this rating thing is.

01:20:15 ◼   ► Even if it works, that shouldn't be how it works.

01:20:18 ◼   ► You're taking advantage of Apple's relatively poor ranking system.

01:20:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:26 ◼   ► Well, something else that just came to mind is another one of the Twitter things that

01:20:32 ◼   ► got to me a little bit because, of course, it's close to home and it's a personal allegation,

01:20:38 ◼   ► but there was a not so subtle suggestion that for me to criticize developers who are doing

01:20:45 ◼   ► this, it's a situation where my privilege should be called into question, meaning that

01:20:56 ◼   ► it's easy for me to take the high road or to proclaim that developers should or shouldn't

01:21:04 ◼   ► do these things, because implying that even with my modest Twitter and blog audience and

01:21:12 ◼   ► podcast audience that I have this huge upper hand in marketing my apps such that I wouldn't

01:21:18 ◼   ► need to use these kinds of marketing techniques.

01:21:21 ◼   ► And I thought that was particularly interesting because this was based in a post that you

01:21:29 ◼   ► had written because people could as easily, if not more forcefully, make that allegation

01:21:38 ◼   ► about you with Vesper.

01:21:40 ◼   ► Vesper. Right. Yeah, I definitely got that. I mean, to a couple of people with the effect

01:21:44 ◼   ► of developers defending their use of it in their apps. Well, I wouldn't have to do it

01:21:49 ◼   ► in my app either if I could get a link on Daring Fireball for my app as often as Vesper

01:21:53 ◼   ► does. And I don't know what to say to that. Here's what I have to say to it is these people

01:22:00 ◼   ► are overlooking how difficult it is to market apps and to make apps profitable and successful.

01:22:07 ◼   ► make apps profitable and successful,

01:22:11 ◼   ► even if you do have the luck of an audience.

01:22:14 ◼   ► - Of starting with some kind of audience or notoriety.

01:22:16 ◼   ► - It's this, you know, not to,

01:22:20 ◼   ► I don't wanna insult these people per se,

01:22:23 ◼   ► but they have a misunderstanding of the whole system.

01:22:28 ◼   ► - And it's better to have an audience than not.

01:22:34 ◼   ► It's better to be the Omni group and already have tens of thousands of happy users when

01:22:40 ◼   ► you're launching a brand new version 1.0 app that nobody's had before.

01:22:45 ◼   ► It's better to be Panic than to be an unheard of software developer.

01:22:51 ◼   ► But it definitely does not make it easy for Panic or the Omni group or anybody else to

01:22:58 ◼   ► launch a 1.0 and get it to stick more than just on the first day.

01:23:03 ◼   ► You do get a nice spic.

01:23:05 ◼   ► It's easy to get a nice spike on the first day if you're known.

01:23:09 ◼   ► It does not have that much bearing on what happens a week or a month or two months or

01:23:14 ◼   ► six months later.

01:23:15 ◼   ► Eventually, it doesn't take very long for water to reach its own level.

01:23:19 ◼   ► The app becomes as popular as it should be whoever you started out as.

01:23:23 ◼   ► Eric: Then we get back to Gus Mueller's, "Maybe your app just sucks."

01:23:27 ◼   ► Those of us with some kind of built-in audience, if we're struggling to sell the app at some

01:23:31 ◼   ► point, we can choose to take stock in whether the app needs to be improved.

01:23:38 ◼   ► A lot of times an app just needs to exist for a number of years before it has the refinement

01:23:46 ◼   ► and the feature base and the mind share to be successful.

01:23:50 ◼   ► Gus is probably a good example of that because I'll bet that that's sort of what happened.

01:23:53 ◼   ► I don't know exactly how the sales chart for Acorn has been, but I think when Acorn first

01:23:59 ◼   ► shipped it was very interesting because there had been so many years where

01:24:03 ◼   ► everybody was like how come there's no indie image editors and then all of a

01:24:06 ◼   ► sudden there were a couple yeah corn was one and had some interesting you know

01:24:10 ◼   ► design and interface and features but it's such a heat you know you you know

01:24:16 ◼   ► you're competing against Photoshop you know and you've got a lot you know I

01:24:21 ◼   ► think it just took a while for acorn to have a minimum feature set that was just

01:24:25 ◼   ► like, you know what, this is totally feasible.

01:24:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, and one other quick thought that comes to mind

01:24:32 ◼   ► is all of these people who are sort of like

01:24:34 ◼   ► comforting themselves, I think,

01:24:38 ◼   ► maybe for the behavior of their app

01:24:39 ◼   ► or for the apps that they love,

01:24:41 ◼   ► comforting the fact that these tactics are being used

01:24:45 ◼   ► because it's somehow necessary

01:24:46 ◼   ► or because it's the leg up that they need

01:24:49 ◼   ► to offset that lack of an existing audience

01:24:52 ◼   ► or the lack of existing success.

01:24:54 ◼   ► It just strikes me as totally opposite

01:24:59 ◼   ► from the mindset you need to have

01:25:01 ◼   ► if you actually want to be successful

01:25:03 ◼   ► because by adopting these follow the herd tactics,

01:25:07 ◼   ► it's the exact mindset that prevents you

01:25:11 ◼   ► from having those noticeably different,

01:25:15 ◼   ► you look at some companies where you're like,

01:25:18 ◼   ► panic, for example, they keep coming up,

01:25:20 ◼   ► obviously we love them,

01:25:21 ◼   ► but they distinguish themselves often

01:25:25 ◼   ► by doing things that no other company does.

01:25:28 ◼   ► And it's not by assuming that because everybody else

01:25:32 ◼   ► has a nagware like dialogue in their app

01:25:37 ◼   ► that that's the way to do it.

01:25:39 ◼   ► And I think if these people think that,

01:25:42 ◼   ► if they're so convinced that the way to succeed

01:25:45 ◼   ► in the software business is to adopt whatever,

01:25:48 ◼   ► like I'm being a little dramatic here,

01:25:50 ◼   ► but whatever bottom feeding tactics everybody else is using,

01:25:54 ◼   ► then that's just like a symptom

01:25:56 ◼   ► that they're setting themselves up

01:25:58 ◼   ► for that kind of mentality in general.

01:26:01 ◼   ► Like, well, it's good enough for everybody else

01:26:04 ◼   ► on the App Store.

01:26:05 ◼   ► And you don't get successful and popular and beloved

01:26:08 ◼   ► by trying to be only as good as everything else

01:26:12 ◼   ► on the App Store.

01:26:13 ◼   ► Is that, I had to get up on my high horse eventually, right?

01:26:19 ◼   ► Well, that's why I had you.

01:26:20 ◼   ► I always have you on the show to get up on your high horse,

01:26:22 ◼   ► Daniel.

01:26:24 ◼   ► I got my stirrups on and my 10 gallon hat.

01:26:29 ◼   ► It's nuanced.

01:26:29 ◼   ► I think bottom line takeaway.

01:26:32 ◼   ► I think if there's anything everybody could take away

01:26:34 ◼   ► from this, if there's a way that raising this into an issue

01:26:38 ◼   ► that we're being discussed, if there's some change that comes

01:26:42 ◼   ► of this, my hope would be that it

01:26:44 ◼   ► would be to make these dialogues a,

01:26:48 ◼   ► when you hit no thanks, you never see it again.

01:26:51 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Or any version.

01:26:53 ◼   ► Regardless of all of the arguments that that's,

01:26:55 ◼   ► you know, that the App Store wants that.

01:26:58 ◼   ► 'Cause let's face it, people are not,

01:27:00 ◼   ► what do you do really as a developer?

01:27:01 ◼   ► If you're out there and you're on the fence

01:27:03 ◼   ► and you're thinking, you know, your app does this

01:27:06 ◼   ► and you're listening to the show,

01:27:07 ◼   ► I hope that we've convinced you at least

01:27:09 ◼   ► that it doesn't even make any sense

01:27:10 ◼   ► to ask people to do it over and over again.

01:27:12 ◼   ► Do you really think that they're going to leave multiple reviews?

01:27:16 ◼   ► I think they are, Jon.

01:27:18 ◼   ► I think that that's...

01:27:19 ◼   ► I think that...

01:27:22 ◼   ► Let's say you got 10,000 users.

01:27:25 ◼   ► I think they're counting on the fact that by annoying 10,000 people, 5 to 10 of those

01:27:32 ◼   ► people will push the button and go review.

01:27:36 ◼   ► I don't know what the numbers are, but if you think about it that way, you don't need

01:27:40 ◼   ► to hit that many people.

01:27:41 ◼   ► I mean, you don't need to hit that big of a percentage for it to make an impact and I think unfortunately, that's just another

01:27:47 ◼   ► That's another that's another case for

01:27:50 ◼   ► punishing the bulk of your users

01:27:53 ◼   ► When you know only a small tiny fraction of them is needed to give you the result you want. I

01:27:59 ◼   ► Also think that Apple should seriously considered banning it

01:28:03 ◼   ► And yeah

01:28:04 ◼   ► And I think the fact that there that like I as we talked about a few minutes ago that developed some developers

01:28:10 ◼   ► are doing the even more questionable practice of trying to figure out first

01:28:15 ◼   ► whether you're gonna leave a four or five star review and only then forwarding

01:28:19 ◼   ► you on. Because if you're gonna allow in general I'm not sure how you

01:28:24 ◼   ► would how you would ban just that even though that is to me clearly gaming the

01:28:29 ◼   ► reviews. It's almost as bad it's only it you know it's only a hair short of using

01:28:35 ◼   ► those scammy paid services that leave made-up reviews. Right, and it sort of

01:28:41 ◼   ► feels like the kind of thing where Apple could include it in the whole genre of

01:28:47 ◼   ► prohibitions against like acting like the App Store or acting like

01:28:52 ◼   ► the springboard or whatever, you know, getting into Apple's business. Right,

01:28:55 ◼   ► the reviews should be, you know, in theory, should be organic and, you know,

01:29:00 ◼   ► and only maybe prompted by things that are outside the app, like I said, like in

01:29:04 ◼   ► in a tech support email or your Twitter

01:29:07 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:29:08 ◼   ► - Well, one positive thing I think that came out of this

01:29:11 ◼   ► is there has been a little bit of a kind of a grassroots

01:29:14 ◼   ► call for voluntary rating of apps that you love.

01:29:19 ◼   ► And I think that's great.

01:29:22 ◼   ► That will offset to some extent that tiny percentage,

01:29:25 ◼   ► I think, of your readers who have gone out

01:29:27 ◼   ► and taken your advice literally.

01:29:30 ◼   ► But it also reminds me that there are a few,

01:29:34 ◼   ► In my mind, there may be at high level three different approaches to solving this problem.

01:29:39 ◼   ► The approach that many developers are taking now to coerce users into rating,

01:29:43 ◼   ► the approach that we wish would happen, which is Apple would systematically repair the review system in some important ways.

01:29:50 ◼   ► And then there's another option, which is

01:29:54 ◼   ► somebody putting together some

01:29:57 ◼   ► system whereby people can kind of take pride or

01:30:02 ◼   ► ownership of their ratings of apps some kind of system that gamifies

01:30:07 ◼   ► ratings in a way that

01:30:10 ◼   ► Users would want to go

01:30:12 ◼   ► You know show off what they like and and share their reviews like the example that comes to mind is I think some people out there

01:30:20 ◼   ► Developers in particular you are more likely now to report radar bugs to Apple because of this open radar

01:30:27 ◼   ► site where you can say look folks I

01:30:31 ◼   ► Did my part and whether Apple ignores my suggestion or heeds it I reported the bug

01:30:37 ◼   ► And I could imagine some system existing outside of the control of developers or Apple

01:30:44 ◼   ► that would encourage users to

01:30:47 ◼   ► Sort of show their their

01:30:50 ◼   ► And maybe this would be gaming in an appropriate way

01:30:54 ◼   ► I don't know but expect if it were framed towards showing your love for the apps that you love

01:30:58 ◼   ► I think that could be something I think that could

01:31:01 ◼   ► affect

01:31:03 ◼   ► You know the same kind of results that the people the developers are looking for without being so disrespectful of the users, right?

01:31:12 ◼   ► Interrupting them. Yep, that's it. Exactly. And if you I mean the funny thing is a lot of these users would be happy

01:31:17 ◼   ► To give five or ten minutes of their time voluntarily in service of the developer

01:31:23 ◼   ► But are outraged to have to give ten seconds in voluntarily

01:31:28 ◼   ► Right. Right. Because it's not just the 10 seconds, it's the interruption.

01:31:31 ◼   ► And it's like the cartoons, you know, there's a bunch of them who made the rounds.

01:31:34 ◼   ► But like, you know, why it's bad to interrupt a programmer.

01:31:37 ◼   ► And it's, you know, it's because it's...

01:31:40 ◼   ► You may only be taking two seconds of their time, but you're effectively like popping a bubble.

01:31:44 ◼   ► Yep.

01:31:45 ◼   ► That has taken a while to build up to get their, you know, head around a problem.

01:31:49 ◼   ► You know. And like you said, you know, right at the beginning that

01:31:53 ◼   ► The whole reason that they're in the app in the first place is to do whatever it is that the app does.

01:31:58 ◼   ► You know, let you take a picture or let you read your tweets or let you play a game.

01:32:05 ◼   ► Which is why it's especially terrible, this behavior on mobile devices,

01:32:11 ◼   ► because the whole thing about the time you spend in a mobile app is so much shorter than on a desktop app, right?

01:32:17 ◼   ► So interrupting is that much more egregious.

01:32:20 ◼   ► Right. Exactly.

01:32:22 ◼   ► Well where can people find out more from you Daniel?

01:32:24 ◼   ► Where do you want to send people?

01:32:25 ◼   ► Oh well I'm @DanielPunkAss on Twitter and I have a blog at bitsplitting.org and my software

01:32:33 ◼   ► is wonderful and you should rate it.

01:32:35 ◼   ► Please take a moment now to stop, pause this podcast, go directly to iTunes or to the App

01:32:40 ◼   ► Store and rate my software.

01:32:42 ◼   ► Mars Edit.

01:32:43 ◼   ► Mars Edit is on the Mac App Store and on my site at red-sweater.com.

01:32:48 ◼   ► And don't forget to rate the talk show in the podcast listings.

01:32:51 ◼   ► Wait, wait, wait.

01:32:52 ◼   ► We forgot to ask them to pause the podcast now.

01:32:55 ◼   ► Pause it right now before we finish.

01:32:56 ◼   ► There's only a few seconds left, but pause it.

01:32:58 ◼   ► Go to the App Store and give it a rating.

01:33:00 ◼   ► Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

01:33:02 ◼   ► First of all, think to yourself, "Am I going to rate this show four stars or five stars?"

01:33:06 ◼   ► And if it's less than four, don't pause the podcast.

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