The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► You know what I had to do to get this to happen?

00:00:02 ◼   ► What'd you have to do?

00:00:03 ◼   ► Reboot into my super duper clone

00:00:05 ◼   ► Really?

00:00:06 ◼   ► Yeah, because I just upgraded to 10.8

00:00:08 ◼   ► I was like i'd upgraded every other computer in the house to 10.8 without a problem

00:00:12 ◼   ► I said oh this looks like it's going to be a cakewalk

00:00:14 ◼   ► I'll just upgrade my main machine to 10.8 and it was going fine until I tried to use skype and you sounded like

00:00:20 ◼   ► Whatever the the voice from uh, the scream movie. Oh, yeah

00:00:26 ◼   ► I always do my Skyping from my MacBook Air.

00:00:29 ◼   ► But right after I upgraded that machine to 10.8

00:00:32 ◼   ► and first tried to record a show,

00:00:33 ◼   ► I forget how many problems Skype gave me.

00:00:36 ◼   ► So it was pretty bad.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Anyway, before we get started, this is De rigor.

00:00:41 ◼   ► This is something I do with everybody on the show now

00:00:43 ◼   ► is I need a little bit of personal information.

00:00:45 ◼   ► I need your mother's maiden name

00:00:47 ◼   ► and the name of the street you grew up on

00:00:49 ◼   ► and your first elementary school.

00:00:52 ◼   ► - What about my pet's name?

00:00:53 ◼   ► First pet.

00:00:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:00:54 ◼   ► all four of those things.

00:00:56 ◼   ► >> BRIAN KARDELL Yeah, that's always just been weird to me that we have all these rules

00:01:00 ◼   ► around passwords and the backup, the backup for like, well, in case you forgot your password,

00:01:04 ◼   ► the backup is like things people can easily find out about you using the internet. That's

00:01:08 ◼   ► like the category of what they are, you know?

00:01:10 ◼   ► >> JONATHAN KARDELL Right.

00:01:11 ◼   ► >> BRIAN KARDELL Of all the things, like what color is your hair? What is your eye color?

00:01:15 ◼   ► You know, like you can Google for all this stuff. Mother's maiden name, do you kill off

00:01:19 ◼   ► your entire mother's side of the family? Like they no longer exist. How hard is it to look

00:01:22 ◼   ► up what someone's mother's maiden name is?

00:01:24 ◼   ► Yeah, and of course the reason we're talking about this is the Matt Honan situation from

00:01:30 ◼   ► a week ago.

00:01:31 ◼   ► There's a picture of him in case you wanted to know his hair color and eye color.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Right.

00:01:35 ◼   ► You can go right to the Wired story.

00:01:36 ◼   ► See the poor guy right there.

00:01:38 ◼   ► You can just – the look on his face is like I just lost all the photos of my daughter.

00:01:43 ◼   ► That's what that look says to me.

00:01:46 ◼   ► So anyway, long story short, I mean I'm sure everybody who listens is probably at least

00:01:49 ◼   ► somewhat familiar with the story, but Matt Honan is a lot of Twitter followers and he

00:01:53 ◼   ► for Wired, used to write for Gizmodo. Really had like a war almost like a

00:01:58 ◼   ► worst-case scenario where like Saturday afternoon he's playing with his young

00:02:03 ◼   ► daughter and all of a sudden like starts noticing some funky things. I forget what

00:02:07 ◼   ► what came first but it's like all of a sudden his phone rebooted, his iPhone

00:02:10 ◼   ► rebooted, and next thing you know is his iPad reboots, his MacBook Air reboots, they

00:02:17 ◼   ► all get locked out, they're all remote wiped, and all of a sudden some hacker

00:02:22 ◼   ► hacker group starts posting, takes over his Twitter account and starts posting, I mean,

00:02:27 ◼   ► just horrible, racist and homophobic and maybe even most embarrassing of all, ridiculous

00:02:33 ◼   ► hacker Leetspeak talk to his Twitter account.

00:02:39 ◼   ► And long story short, the whole thing happened because they wanted to mess with his Twitter

00:02:44 ◼   ► account.

00:02:45 ◼   ► And to get his Twitter account, they wanted his Gmail account.

00:02:52 ◼   ► and his Gmail account had as his backup his me.com iCloud email address as like a secondary

00:03:02 ◼   ► account.

00:03:04 ◼   ► And they knew that they could take that over just by calling Apple and giving them his

00:03:10 ◼   ► street address in the last four digits of his credit card.

00:03:14 ◼   ► And they could get the last four digits of his credit card just by calling Amazon and

00:03:21 ◼   ► Amazon is what was it I forget what you needed to know like an email address and

00:03:26 ◼   ► a shipping address and then you could say hey I have a new credit card I just

00:03:29 ◼   ► wanted to add it to my account you give them a bogus credit card then you call

00:03:34 ◼   ► Amazon right back and say I lost access to my email I think I've got this right

00:03:41 ◼   ► so far do I have you got it right I lost access to my email but I do know the

00:03:46 ◼   ► last four digits of my credit card which is the bogus one they just gave you you

00:03:49 ◼   ► they you just gave Amazon not even a real credit card. You just go online and use like a tool that

00:03:55 ◼   ► gives you like a credit card. You know, one that hasn't been verified to make charges, but just

00:04:01 ◼   ► the numbers comply with the rules, you know, we're like MasterCard start with a five and visas start

00:04:07 ◼   ► with a four and a couple of other rules. At which point Amazon will let you reset your account to

00:04:17 ◼   ► I forget what they do.

00:04:18 ◼   ► Somehow they reset your-- they let you add a new email address,

00:04:22 ◼   ► I think.

00:04:22 ◼   ► They let you log in, and you can't see your credit card

00:04:25 ◼   ► numbers after logging in.

00:04:26 ◼   ► But you can see the abbreviated versions

00:04:27 ◼   ► of your existing credit card number.

00:04:29 ◼   ► Which is all you need to give Apple.

00:04:31 ◼   ► Right, just those last four digits,

00:04:33 ◼   ► because they star out everything except for the last four.

00:04:35 ◼   ► Right.

00:04:36 ◼   ► And so then you can call Apple back with-- say, I'm Matt

00:04:39 ◼   ► Honan.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Here's my home address.

00:04:42 ◼   ► Here's the last four digits of my account.

00:04:46 ◼   ► I you know, please reset my iCloud password.

00:04:50 ◼   ► And then at that point, all that all those dominoes

00:04:53 ◼   ► that I just set up over the last four minutes,

00:04:55 ◼   ► they all fall down because now they've got

00:04:57 ◼   ► his iCloud account.

00:04:59 ◼   ► And they can they've got the password for that.

00:05:02 ◼   ► And then they use that to use the find my iPhone

00:05:05 ◼   ► to remote wipe his devices to lock them out of his computers.

00:05:09 ◼   ► And then they had Gmail send a reset password

00:05:13 ◼   ► to the iCloud account they were in control of,

00:05:15 ◼   ► which let them take over his Gmail, and then they just, I mean, it seems like the guy,

00:05:19 ◼   ► I can't, he does, the thing that most surprised me is that he wasn't, at least publicly and

00:05:24 ◼   ► writing about it, didn't seem angry about the guys who did this to him.

00:05:27 ◼   ► That's one of those things where like you're in shock, because it's just, it's just such

00:05:31 ◼   ► a huge thing that's just so unlikely to happen, you don't even imagine it happening. And also,

00:05:37 ◼   ► he says many times that he blames himself, and probably rightly, like you don't blame

00:05:42 ◼   ► yourself for getting hacked, but you blame for yourself for having no backups.

00:05:44 ◼   ► Right, that's that's the killer

00:05:46 ◼   ► All the guys wanted to do is take over his Twitter account and mess around with it which in and of itself

00:05:51 ◼   ► They're being assholes about it

00:05:53 ◼   ► But at least if that's all that they did all they did was embarrass him by

00:05:57 ◼   ► Putting a bunch of gibberish on his Twitter account for 12 hours

00:06:00 ◼   ► But the remote wiping of his computers and they they also like remote or not remote wipe

00:06:07 ◼   ► But you know did whatever you do in Gmail to say hey just you know

00:06:10 ◼   ► Delete everything I have in here which is like for him like seven years of email or something like that

00:06:15 ◼   ► Boom just closed out the account. That's just spite

00:06:18 ◼   ► Well, it's not it's not so much spite because they don't even know the guy

00:06:22 ◼   ► It's just like if you give hackers once hackers get access

00:06:26 ◼   ► How are you gonna resist that like now, you know that the whole idea is like control and power

00:06:30 ◼   ► It's like you know what I can remotely wipe all these guys machines because of how he set everything up

00:06:34 ◼   ► That's just the ultimate in power. You're reaching across the internet and just like massively

00:06:39 ◼   ► Smiting this person so it's impossible to resist I guess so because I guess whatever is wrong with your with whatever is wrong with your

00:06:46 ◼   ► Mind that would make you want to

00:06:48 ◼   ► Take over someone's Twitter account like that

00:06:50 ◼   ► It's probably wrong in the same way where you're gonna get a half a giggle out of remote wiping their computer and that's

00:06:56 ◼   ► That's all you need

00:06:58 ◼   ► Yeah, that's just that's that's just the mindset. But the thing about it is like

00:07:02 ◼   ► so we all heard this story and I think

00:07:06 ◼   ► First thing everyone's looking for like what can I do to prevent this happening to me?

00:07:10 ◼   ► That's why we all read all these details about how this is a kind of ad and you know

00:07:14 ◼   ► Like is there something I can do to my setup to make it so this can't happen to me

00:07:19 ◼   ► I think the worst part of the story is

00:07:21 ◼   ► There's probably nothing you can do to stop something similar happening to you

00:07:26 ◼   ► not the exact same thing but something similar because

00:07:29 ◼   ► All you can do is have good backups obviously, but ignoring having good backups

00:07:34 ◼   ► Everything else is like things that aren't under our control

00:07:37 ◼   ► We don't control Amazon's policy for recovering your credit card or Apple's policy for how to reset like we don't control any of that stuff

00:07:44 ◼   ► And so there's nothing it doesn't seem we seem powerless because like I have good passwords. They're all different

00:07:50 ◼   ► Have like having a backup email account seems like a good thing

00:07:54 ◼   ► I have you know if I ever need to recover I've got my backup email account like everything seems to be good and then

00:07:59 ◼   ► Where we end up getting screwed is because of things that other people did that we can't control they probably never even thought of right

00:08:05 ◼   ► Like Google for example really really encourages you to have a backup email account

00:08:09 ◼   ► But in fact if he didn't he would have been better off

00:08:12 ◼   ► Right or if it had been something other than you know a different service that didn't have as exploitable

00:08:19 ◼   ► Rules for a password recovery, and this kind of gets back to the question of you know the getting your what is your first?

00:08:25 ◼   ► pet's name and stuff like that. The idea that there's all this security, but the weak link

00:08:29 ◼   ► and the security is the thing that's there because we all forget our passwords, and that's like,

00:08:34 ◼   ► "Oh, I forgot my password. How do I recover it?" And the things that you use to recover it are so

00:08:39 ◼   ► much less secure than every other part of the system. It's just the most glaring weak link.

00:08:44 ◼   ► I mean, then why is it I'll ask you, "What is your first name? What is your last name?"

00:08:47 ◼   ► Like, it's so easy to find that information.

00:08:50 ◼   ► And just, you know, just tell me the truth. Is it really you? Right, like, you know, if you

00:08:54 ◼   ► pinky, if you pinky swear, you can get your account. And I, I recognize why that's the case.

00:08:58 ◼   ► But it seems almost perverse. It's like, it's easier. You know, it's easier than remembering

00:09:03 ◼   ► your password, remembering simple demographic information about yourself and looking in your

00:09:07 ◼   ► wallet for two seconds at your credit card. And that's all you need to get into these accounts

00:09:10 ◼   ► if you're willing to sit on that phone for two seconds. So. Right. And I have to admit,

00:09:15 ◼   ► at a certain selfish level, one of the things I was looking at over the weekend is this

00:09:19 ◼   ► excuse me, as this situation exploded was I remember thinking I kind of hope that Honan

00:09:27 ◼   ► did something stupid at some point along the way. Like, you know, figures out that it, you know,

00:09:32 ◼   ► like he logged into his Gmail on a, you know, library, public library computer or something

00:09:41 ◼   ► like that, like something that I would never do, so that I then I could think,

00:09:49 ◼   ► well, that couldn't happen to me. Whereas I kind of think, yeah, it might be.

00:09:59 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't know that anybody could take over my Twitter

00:10:02 ◼   ► account the way that they did. I don't think I have a chain of email accounts

00:10:07 ◼   ► that's connected to Gmail like that. But I'm not 100% sure. But somebody certainly could have

00:10:16 ◼   ► or even still could take over my iCloud account the same way.

00:10:22 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer** Yeah. Well, not anymore because of that.

00:10:25 ◼   ► **Ezra Kleinman** Right. And Amazon has as well.

00:10:28 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer** Yeah. And the one thing in this story is I think

00:10:30 ◼   ► Amazon decision to display the stars and then the last four digits of their credit card,

00:10:36 ◼   ► I don't think you should ding them for that because that's been standard practice forever

00:10:39 ◼   ► Starting out everything the last four digits

00:10:42 ◼   ► the flaw is not that Amazon shows you last word is the flaw is an Amazon's customer service allowing you to reset passwords and

00:10:48 ◼   ► Secondarily an Apple saying oh you just need to give me the last four digits because I don't want you to read the all the

00:10:53 ◼   ► Digits over the phone because that would be insecure or whatever like that's crazy

00:10:57 ◼   ► Where you just need the last four digits as to prove that you're you it's not I don't I don't blame

00:11:02 ◼   ► Amazon at all for showing the credit cards the way they did everything else yes, there's plenty of blame to go around for that one part

00:11:08 ◼   ► I don't think people should get hung up on right and a prayer yeah, and so am an Amazon

00:11:12 ◼   ► I think has an easier fix where I just don't think that they should allow like you said they shouldn't allow

00:11:17 ◼   ► That stuff to be changed over the phone like that

00:11:20 ◼   ► And particularly not oh you know

00:11:23 ◼   ► It's so disconnected where you give them a credit card, and they say okay went to them

00:11:28 ◼   ► And you call back and say hey, I just got locked out

00:11:30 ◼   ► here's my credit card number that you just gave them and there's no awareness that you just gave

00:11:33 ◼   ► them to that it doesn't have to be a credit card that you use like their verifications procedure

00:11:37 ◼   ► for proving who you are is similarly bogus that it's gamed so easily by call give a fake number

00:11:43 ◼   ► hang up call back right it certainly shouldn't be possible to do it with a credit card that

00:11:48 ◼   ► like if you want to say this is my new credit card and that they want to enter it without actually

00:11:52 ◼   ► running a charge that's okay but it should still somehow be flagged as okay there's a new credit

00:11:58 ◼   ► card here, but this is an unverified card that hasn't even had a charge run against

00:12:01 ◼   ► it yet.

00:12:02 ◼   ► Or just have an awareness that this guy just called two minutes ago, or yesterday, or whatever,

00:12:06 ◼   ► and has called to add this card.

00:12:10 ◼   ► Not a lot of thought has gone into those recovery procedures.

00:12:13 ◼   ► And I understand the recovery procedures have to be easy, because look, these guys couldn't

00:12:17 ◼   ► even remember their password.

00:12:18 ◼   ► We got to make it so easy.

00:12:19 ◼   ► Can you imagine the turmoil if they had policies that were more like you'd forget your password

00:12:25 ◼   ► and you'd call them up and you're like, "I can't prove to these people that I am who

00:12:27 ◼   ► I am like they want my passport and I have to show up in person and give a blood sample like I don't know

00:12:33 ◼   ► It's ridiculous. I can't get my account unlock. They won't believe that I am. Oh, yeah, my totally am like that is bad PR

00:12:38 ◼   ► It's also they go to the other way and they say okay

00:12:41 ◼   ► well

00:12:41 ◼   ► We'll just ask them some basic stuff and ask them some

00:12:44 ◼   ► Security question that anyone could Google the answer to and you know

00:12:47 ◼   ► Maybe something about their credit card or just the expiration date or some stuff like that

00:12:51 ◼   ► So people come out of that experience like oh, I forgot my password. I call customer service. It was so nice

00:12:55 ◼   ► It was so easy. I got right back in

00:12:57 ◼   ► That's 99.99% of the time.

00:13:00 ◼   ► Those policies put good feelings on customers and how easy it was for them to recover their

00:13:05 ◼   ► account.

00:13:06 ◼   ► But this 1% is a doozy.

00:13:07 ◼   ► Right.

00:13:08 ◼   ► And I can sort of see.

00:13:09 ◼   ► And so I think bottom line is that Apple really had the procedure in place that deserves the

00:13:14 ◼   ► most criticism, where being able to get your iCloud account or Apple ID, I should say,

00:13:19 ◼   ► because it's any kind of Apple ID, not just an iCloud account.

00:13:22 ◼   ► you can get your Apple ID password reset just with your name, home address, and last four

00:13:30 ◼   ► digits of a credit card really seems like glaringly insecure.

00:13:35 ◼   ► Like when I wrote about it, you'd never write your password on a piece of paper and put

00:13:40 ◼   ► it in your – or at least most people wouldn't do it and keep it in your wallet.

00:13:45 ◼   ► But anybody who picks up my wallet has my home address and the last four digits of all

00:13:49 ◼   ► my credit cards.

00:13:50 ◼   ► I mean, and so, I mean, obviously you're in a lot of trouble if some, you know, no good

00:13:54 ◼   ► nick has your wallet, but you shouldn't be thinking, like if I lost my wallet or I suspected

00:14:00 ◼   ► somebody stole it, I would never think, well, now they've got my iCloud account.

00:14:04 ◼   ► But in fact, according to the, you know, by their previous procedures, they would.

00:14:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:09 ◼   ► And it's the worst because that is the power of the Apple ID has just vastly increased

00:14:14 ◼   ► over time.

00:14:15 ◼   ► Like at first it was like, you can buy stuff from iTunes.

00:14:17 ◼   ► That's bad enough.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Right.

00:14:19 ◼   ► iCloud and you can remote wipe those machines and then extend it to Macs and so like finally

00:14:23 ◼   ► iCloud became powerful enough to control any piece of hardware anyway if so configured

00:14:28 ◼   ► and this poor guy just after that happened gets hacked and they just they reach out and

00:14:33 ◼   ► they just wipe all his hardware which is such a crazy thing you would expect like oh they

00:14:36 ◼   ► have to break into each thing or whatever no they just get that one little key to the

00:14:39 ◼   ► kingdom and over the network wherever you are wherever these things are they can go

00:14:44 ◼   ► I mean you're really once you're in fine once you're in find my iPhone you're

00:14:48 ◼   ► you're I don't know six clicks away from wiping out all three of the devices yeah

00:14:54 ◼   ► so I I don't know what what they should do I know everybody a lot of people a

00:15:01 ◼   ► lot of thing a lot of publicity and in response to this is about Google's

00:15:05 ◼   ► optional two-factor authentication you know which I don't use even in and after

00:15:13 ◼   ► this because it just seems like a pain in the ass.

00:15:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I wonder if that would have helped though because if you had your backup email address

00:15:20 ◼   ► as your Mac.com thing, would that be the two-factor?

00:15:23 ◼   ► I don't think the two-factor lets you use email.

00:15:25 ◼   ► I think it has to be like a phone or something.

00:15:27 ◼   ► Well, two-factor is for just getting in, but what if you can't get into the two-factor

00:15:32 ◼   ► thing?

00:15:33 ◼   ► I thought you could go, "Okay, I've totally forgotten.

00:15:35 ◼   ► You send something to my backup email address."

00:15:37 ◼   ► Isn't that the point of the backup?

00:15:38 ◼   ► It's like the last resort?

00:15:39 ◼   ► But I think if you turn if think if you'd sign up for the two-factor authentication at Google then

00:15:44 ◼   ► You can't reset your account that way

00:15:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean the one thing I did in response to the story was changed my backup email address on Google to not be

00:15:55 ◼   ► One of my various Apple IDs. Mmm

00:15:58 ◼   ► There's only predictions old people have is we have multiple Apple IDs for historical reasons and you know that helps a little bit

00:16:07 ◼   ► security through obscurity, but yeah, I changed it to not be my my because so then

00:16:11 ◼   ► like because your main email address is really like the keys to the kingdom because that's always like associated with all of your accounts and

00:16:17 ◼   ► You can send the password resets there. So that really has to be super protected and I've many times

00:16:21 ◼   ► I've considered putting two-factor auth on my gmail account

00:16:23 ◼   ► But it just seems too annoying to me

00:16:27 ◼   ► Maybe I should just try it for a while to see if it really is annoying

00:16:30 ◼   ► But it's especially annoying to me because I don't even have an iPhone. So I got my crap phone and

00:16:34 ◼   ► Do I really want to be making sure my crap phone is charged and it has a signal and I can look at the little

00:16:39 ◼   ► code and I don't know

00:16:41 ◼   ► Maybe I'll try it someday. But but anyway, like, you know, I would have been more motivated motivated to do that. There was some sort of

00:16:46 ◼   ► Password hack or something or really it's just it's customer service policies that that bit him, right?

00:16:53 ◼   ► And I can also see how I you know, it was a mistake and not clearly somebody with a good

00:16:59 ◼   ► suspicious hardened

00:17:02 ◼   ► Security mindset didn't really look at these procedures that Apple had in place

00:17:06 ◼   ► But from a customer support standpoint you could see I mean who knows who only knows who can only guess how many people call

00:17:13 ◼   ► Apple every honest people with the honest problem that they don't remember their iCloud password

00:17:18 ◼   ► Who need to just need it reset?

00:17:22 ◼   ► I mean who knows I mean I wouldn't be surprised if it's a huge number

00:17:26 ◼   ► Yeah

00:17:27 ◼   ► When they say social engineering you think it's like someone who's a smooth talker kind of cajoled somebody into doing something

00:17:32 ◼   ► they weren't supposed to or whatever, but this was a case of they were just going right down,

00:17:35 ◼   ► they were totally within the guidelines. They didn't have to sweet talk anybody. They didn't

00:17:39 ◼   ► have to make a sob story. And I bet those sob stories work. Like I bet, you know, if you're

00:17:43 ◼   ► really convincing and you're just like, oh, it's an emergency or I need this right now, you know,

00:17:47 ◼   ► I don't remember my home address. Can you, you know, or if you can be convincing, not that I

00:17:51 ◼   ► remember my home address, but if you can be convincing in that way, that's what you think

00:17:54 ◼   ► of when you're social engineering. This wasn't social engineering. This was just a normal

00:17:58 ◼   ► Customer services a call that proceeded exactly as expected right? That's that's the really scary part, right?

00:18:04 ◼   ► Yeah, it wasn't like this was you know, the world's greatest con man

00:18:07 ◼   ► really pulling a clever a

00:18:11 ◼   ► Clever scam over the support rep. Yeah, it was just right it also seems to me and this isn't is so clear from

00:18:18 ◼   ► Honan's reporting on it, which has been copious, you know, he did a really good thorough write-up of it for wired the

00:18:24 ◼   ► day or two later

00:18:27 ◼   ► But I got the impression from his back and forth with the one of the hackers who got him

00:18:33 ◼   ► That

00:18:37 ◼   ► This seems like at least in certain underground circles seemed to be widely known that you can take over at

00:18:44 ◼   ► An Apple ID pretty easily if you can get those things yeah

00:18:49 ◼   ► This is the type of thing that would be widely known because it just doesn't require any technical skills. It's just simply you know a

00:18:56 ◼   ► Not very well kept secret among people who are in these circles that here here are the easy ways to

00:19:00 ◼   ► Exploit customer service policies to get access to people's accounts and hacking required and so I you know one of the floods I've had

00:19:08 ◼   ► In the week since is that I've seen a lot of reports over the last year or two

00:19:12 ◼   ► Not a ton but enough that I've seen it. It's like a

00:19:16 ◼   ► Something that's repeated that people getting their iTunes account hacked and they're swear up and down that they used a unique password

00:19:24 ◼   ► never put it into with somebody else's computer and it just doesn't make any

00:19:31 ◼   ► sense how their account got hacked. And there was the stories like oh this is a

00:19:38 ◼   ► well-known hack and Apple's addressing it maybe if it was all customer service

00:19:42 ◼   ► stuff. I wonder though because it and my first thought was I bet that maybe

00:19:45 ◼   ► that's the source of this is that there's people who you know that who use

00:19:49 ◼   ► this this address and four digits of a credit card combined maybe with the

00:19:53 ◼   ► Amazon thing to do that but I would think that Apple would be able to and

00:19:59 ◼   ► Apple's publicly at least has brushed these off by saying you know with you

00:20:03 ◼   ► know that their response when people write in and say look my account was

00:20:06 ◼   ► hacked was that you know you should be more careful with your password blah

00:20:09 ◼   ► blah blah more or less kind of blaming them assuming that it was somehow the

00:20:14 ◼   ► users fault that for leaking their password but I would think if there was

00:20:17 ◼   ► a pattern where these people who called and said my account got hacked and their

00:20:22 ◼   ► account records show that they had one of these phone calls where they got the

00:20:27 ◼   ► account changed presumably recently, right? I mean I don't think any of these

00:20:32 ◼   ► hackers if their goal is to do things like buy $100 worth of apps from your

00:20:39 ◼   ► iTunes account it's not like they're changing your password and then doing it

00:20:46 ◼   ► two months later because you're gonna notice right away because all of a

00:20:49 ◼   ► of a sudden you can't get into your iTunes account.

00:20:51 ◼   ► Presumably they change the password and immediately use it.

00:20:55 ◼   ► You would think that that pattern would be detectable

00:20:57 ◼   ► in your records that hey, these people all called up

00:21:00 ◼   ► and had their password changed right before

00:21:02 ◼   ► they then claimed to be hacked.

00:21:04 ◼   ► - It's the same as the Amazon situation though

00:21:06 ◼   ► where you call up, add a credit card, hang up,

00:21:07 ◼   ► call right back and say I can't get into my account.

00:21:09 ◼   ► Like there probably is a lack of global awareness

00:21:13 ◼   ► of what has happened in the past to this customer.

00:21:16 ◼   ► I mean, you always say, let me pull up your record here

00:21:18 ◼   ► before you talk to it and you expect them to see a record of all the times you've called,

00:21:21 ◼   ► but maybe that's not happening.

00:21:24 ◼   ► Obviously it's not happening in the Amazon case where they're not pulling up your thing

00:21:27 ◼   ► and saying, "You just called two minutes ago to add this credit card.

00:21:29 ◼   ► Now you're reading the number back to me."

00:21:31 ◼   ► Anyone can see that that's weird.

00:21:33 ◼   ► So you're just assuming that they would realize that, "Oh, all these people who got hacked,

00:21:39 ◼   ► well, I can look from their records and they all did this password."

00:21:41 ◼   ► Maybe they don't even see that.

00:21:42 ◼   ► Maybe it's not even the same people.

00:21:43 ◼   ► Maybe they don't have access to that record.

00:21:45 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:21:46 ◼   ► You can't tell.

00:21:47 ◼   ► The other alternative is that Apple knew and was trying to cover it up, but I don't see

00:21:50 ◼   ► why they would do that because it's so easy to change that policy.

00:21:53 ◼   ► As we see, they changed the policy.

00:21:55 ◼   ► It's not rocket science.

00:21:56 ◼   ► It's not like they need to patch some piece of software.

00:21:58 ◼   ► They just say, "Okay, new policy, everybody.

00:22:01 ◼   ► Don't do that anymore."

00:22:02 ◼   ► Right.

00:22:03 ◼   ► It's a hard problem to solve, though, because what should they do?

00:22:05 ◼   ► What should they do to let you reset your password if you forget it?

00:22:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:10 ◼   ► I mean, you could go with the full credit card number if it's a credit card that's actually

00:22:14 ◼   ► been used.

00:22:15 ◼   ► That's not good though, because I don't think it should be information that you can

00:22:19 ◼   ► get by stealing somebody's wallet.

00:22:21 ◼   ► Well, I mean, it's got – the thing with the two-factor is like something you have

00:22:24 ◼   ► versus something you know and all the different things that you can use to authenticate.

00:22:28 ◼   ► But when they've forgotten their password and if you don't have any other shared piece

00:22:33 ◼   ► of information with them, all you can do to prove that you're you is give them information

00:22:38 ◼   ► they already have about you.

00:22:39 ◼   ► There's no new information you can give them to prove that you're you.

00:22:43 ◼   ► You can only, I mean, maybe what you could do in the fantasy world type thing is when

00:22:49 ◼   ► you create your account, have a photo have to be associated with the account, and when

00:22:55 ◼   ► you try to recover your thing, they can do a video chat with you, which we currently

00:22:58 ◼   ► don't quite have the technology to fake.

00:23:00 ◼   ► They ask you questions and you talk to them and they can see that it's really you.

00:23:03 ◼   ► Then your twin brother can break into your account, I guess, but that's kind of more

00:23:06 ◼   ► of a family problem.

00:23:09 ◼   ► Stuff like that.

00:23:10 ◼   ► What else can you really do?

00:23:11 ◼   ► They all they know about you is what they have on file and if you can parrot back every piece of that information to them

00:23:16 ◼   ► Then what else do they have?

00:23:18 ◼   ► So I think photos and video is that the only next place that can go and beyond that it has to be some sort of

00:23:23 ◼   ► Two factor thing. I know I've gotten credit cards before

00:23:28 ◼   ► Where like when the new credit card comes you have to call to activate it and that only works if you call from the phone

00:23:35 ◼   ► Number that they have on a file for you. Yeah, I

00:23:39 ◼   ► Don't know how much your phone can be, you know

00:23:42 ◼   ► And I know that's how partly least partly how Google's two-factor authentication works is assuming that you have a phone number that can be trusted

00:23:48 ◼   ► Yeah, that's that's the something you have. What do you have? I have my cell phone. I have my home phone

00:23:52 ◼   ► I have possession of the home from which this number

00:23:55 ◼   ► I mean, it's not people don't have landlines as much anymore, but it's it's it's the something you have thing there

00:23:59 ◼   ► I had a similar situation

00:24:00 ◼   ► I don't know if you saw these tweets from like the other week when I was going in to pick up my monitor at the Apple

00:24:04 ◼   ► Store. Yeah, I did and I forgot my wallet

00:24:08 ◼   ► and they said oh, sorry, we can't give you your computer without your wallet and and

00:24:12 ◼   ► What I thought of was look you've got my information on file

00:24:16 ◼   ► Why don't you just call the telephone number?

00:24:19 ◼   ► Associated with with you know this repair and my wife will answer the phone and she'll

00:24:24 ◼   ► Tell you that I just left to go to the Apple store and she'll talk to me on the phone and confirm that it's to

00:24:28 ◼   ► You that it's like right? What's more secure than that?

00:24:30 ◼   ► Like anyone can get a wallet and a photo ID and who knows the picture they even look at the picture if it looks

00:24:36 ◼   ► Particularly like me or anything like that anyway

00:24:39 ◼   ► Yeah, that's much easier to fake then you have this telephone number on file that I gave you when I drop the thing off

00:24:44 ◼   ► Why would I you know if someone had my wife a gun pointed home so they can get a new 27 inch monitor?

00:24:49 ◼   ► But they wouldn't accept that

00:24:51 ◼   ► And nor would they accept the other things that I suggested which was like a

00:24:54 ◼   ► Google for my name or other people said how about you just sign in with your Apple ID like there's an Apple ID

00:24:59 ◼   ► Associated with this repair if I can sign in with that does that prove it as me nope photo ID only

00:25:05 ◼   ► So I have to go back home and get a photo ID and then I know I don't know I know the kicker

00:25:09 ◼   ► Yeah, the guy doesn't even ask me for it. I think I said silent the whole time. I'm like

00:25:15 ◼   ► Tell him what I hear he goes back

00:25:17 ◼   ► It's a thing gives it to me puts it back in the box all packed up

00:25:20 ◼   ► He says alright, so you're all set like I just wanted to make sure that he wasn't waiting till the very end to say okay

00:25:24 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, let me see that photo. We had nothing I

00:25:26 ◼   ► Can't it was like you know

00:25:28 ◼   ► I just went home to get my photo ID and then now you didn't even ask for it

00:25:32 ◼   ► So I recognize you from when you dropped it off. I

00:25:34 ◼   ► Did I didn't recognize him he wasn't the guy who helped me and he wasn't I didn't see him when I first came

00:25:39 ◼   ► Where were you killing me? Where was he half an hour ago? Yeah

00:25:42 ◼   ► But there's a similar situation where you're gonna hand somebody especially like it was a warranty repair

00:25:49 ◼   ► So it's free you're gonna hand somebody a potentially expensive piece of hardware

00:25:52 ◼   ► just because they told you like their name and

00:25:55 ◼   ► That there's something waiting for them and they want some way to show that you're you and that

00:26:00 ◼   ► That's even weirder because when you drop it off,

00:26:03 ◼   ► they don't think they take the photo ID.

00:26:04 ◼   ► I don't remember.

00:26:05 ◼   ► Maybe someone will send you angry emails and say they do,

00:26:07 ◼   ► but that's what they go with, photo identification.

00:26:12 ◼   ► So it seems like for online,

00:26:14 ◼   ► it has to be something similar where either they're relying

00:26:16 ◼   ► on your physical appearance and things that are difficult

00:26:19 ◼   ► to fake, not so much a photo,

00:26:20 ◼   ► but a video of you talking or something you have,

00:26:23 ◼   ► which is your cell phone or your home phone

00:26:24 ◼   ► or something like that that they can show that,

00:26:27 ◼   ► "Yeah, I have this information."

00:26:28 ◼   ► And you may know the information that we have on file here,

00:26:31 ◼   ► but let's prove it's really you.

00:26:32 ◼   ► I'm gonna call the phone number on here

00:26:34 ◼   ► and you better answer it to show that it's really you.

00:26:36 ◼   ► - Only other thing I can think of that could verify stuff

00:26:42 ◼   ► like that would be like your home address.

00:26:46 ◼   ► Like that seems pretty secure,

00:26:47 ◼   ► but then you don't get fast turnaround.

00:26:49 ◼   ► Like maybe they could--

00:26:50 ◼   ► - Send you a piece of mail.

00:26:51 ◼   ► - Right, they'll send you a piece of mail

00:26:53 ◼   ► and the mail would contain like a, you know,

00:26:57 ◼   ► some kind of keyword or something like a unique and then you have to call Apple

00:27:00 ◼   ► and read the keyword and then you know you could get your account back but you

00:27:04 ◼   ► know I customer service wise the three or four day turnaround on that is you

00:27:09 ◼   ► know it's intolerant flip out yeah people would flip out it would be like

00:27:12 ◼   ► there would be a story in the New York Times and within two days of that policy

00:27:17 ◼   ► going to affect it's got to be electronic it's got to be immediate but

00:27:21 ◼   ► it also has to be secure right now and I guess I would be negligent if I didn't

00:27:26 ◼   ► mentioned that the recent act didn't Apple recently acquire on of the URL handy they just bought like a fingerprint ID company

00:27:33 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's that's not good tweet about that

00:27:35 ◼   ► I forget who it was saying that if if this this hack had happened two days earlier before the acquisition

00:27:42 ◼   ► The acquisition would have been read would have been reported as a desperate move by Apple to shore up its security resources

00:27:47 ◼   ► I didn't think of that but that is true. That's totally true

00:27:50 ◼   ► Apple that story dodged the bullet just by by mere days

00:27:56 ◼   ► Right because everybody wants to see cause and effect. All right. Yeah

00:27:59 ◼   ► Yeah, that would have been huge. That would have been absolutely huge and then it would have been that, you know

00:28:04 ◼   ► And it got a regular amount of well

00:28:06 ◼   ► This means Apple must be adding fingerprint ID to phones and trackpad soon or whatever, but it would have been deafening

00:28:11 ◼   ► It would have been like iPhone 5 is gonna have a fingerprint ID scan all because of that Matt Horner

00:28:16 ◼   ► They was you know

00:28:17 ◼   ► What happened is he got hacked and then 24 hours later they acquired a company for several million dollars because that's how those deals work

00:28:22 ◼   ► All right, so he wakes up and said what Matt Horan was hacked by the fingerprint company the next day. It's bought

00:28:28 ◼   ► It's done. I will say this though in terms of coincidences and cause and effect and thinking maybe you know

00:28:34 ◼   ► This might be related somehow tonight just a few hours ago. I got a direct message from

00:28:39 ◼   ► at verified

00:28:42 ◼   ► Then it's the Twitter verified accounts

00:28:45 ◼   ► Account and the direct message said that Twitter wanted to verify my Twitter account and click this URL

00:28:52 ◼   ► Sure, rub it in. Go ahead.

00:28:54 ◼   ► And I click it, and you have to answer like three questions, and then all of a sudden

00:28:59 ◼   ► now I've got the little blue stamp up there on my Twitter account.

00:29:03 ◼   ► And you get recognized at Apple stores, and your Twitter account is verified. It's all

00:29:06 ◼   ► right. I'll handle it.

00:29:07 ◼   ► You know what? Getting recognized at Apple stores is no good.

00:29:10 ◼   ► I don't ask for it, but it's just one time it would have actually helped me.

00:29:13 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true.

00:29:14 ◼   ► It's the one time that it would have saved me, you know.

00:29:16 ◼   ► You should have had him call me. I would have vouched for you.

00:29:18 ◼   ► Oh, that would be the worst. That's the worst.

00:29:22 ◼   ► Well, Krewberry will tell you that to me.

00:29:25 ◼   ► So what did Twitter ask you?

00:29:26 ◼   ► Well, you know what?

00:29:27 ◼   ► And the funny thing is, it's not really – they're not really assuming that – they say – here's

00:29:32 ◼   ► what they say when you – this is how you get verified.

00:29:33 ◼   ► They say you're going to answer three questions.

00:29:35 ◼   ► And I'm thinking – I'm so suspicious and paranoid.

00:29:38 ◼   ► I was already thinking –

00:29:39 ◼   ► This is a scam.

00:29:40 ◼   ► Number one, I was thinking when the direct message came in that it was a scam.

00:29:42 ◼   ► And I was hesitant to click the link and –

00:29:45 ◼   ► Because you don't follow at verified.

00:29:46 ◼   ► So how did they DM you?

00:29:48 ◼   ► That's a very good question.

00:29:51 ◼   ► And in fact, I don't know.

00:29:53 ◼   ► And –

00:29:54 ◼   ► Well, their Twitter, they can do whatever the hell they want.

00:29:55 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:29:56 ◼   ► But it was the weirdest DM I ever got because it showed up on my Mac in the tweetbot alpha

00:30:02 ◼   ► and I went – just I don't even know why because I was so suspicious about this whole

00:30:06 ◼   ► thing.

00:30:07 ◼   ► I went to my iPhone and opened the official Twitter client and looked for it there and

00:30:11 ◼   ► it wasn't there.

00:30:12 ◼   ► And I like waited a couple of minutes and reloaded and it didn't come.

00:30:17 ◼   ► And I started thinking like, "Whoa, that's weird.

00:30:18 ◼   ► What the hell is going on?"

00:30:19 ◼   ► That never happens.

00:30:20 ◼   ► sometimes there's 30 seconds of latency between one client or another with DMs.

00:30:24 ◼   ► They're not real-time, but they're not two, three, four minutes apart just

00:30:30 ◼   ► because you're on a different client. Then I logged in to twitter.com, the

00:30:34 ◼   ► website, which I think is, I think most people would agree, is probably the

00:30:37 ◼   ► canonical interface to Twitter. Yeah, I always go there when I have a doubt. Right, and so I

00:30:41 ◼   ► went there and the DM wasn't there either, and now I'm thinking, now this is

00:30:45 ◼   ► weird, this is really, now I'm like, this is crazy. But then within like another two,

00:30:50 ◼   ► Three four minutes it did show up everywhere. Yeah, I've seen that with DMS like I

00:30:54 ◼   ► Frequently very frequently pretty much all the time get the email

00:30:58 ◼   ► I still have emails for DMS get the email response that I've got a DM before I see it in most of my clients

00:31:03 ◼   ► But yeah bottom line is they they have it's their their verified accounts account has a superpower that it can send DMS to whoever

00:31:12 ◼   ► They want

00:31:13 ◼   ► The three questions though are not about verifying you it's and it makes sense in hindsight

00:31:18 ◼   ► It has nothing to do with that because they're not suspicious

00:31:21 ◼   ► That I'm not that at my accounts been hacked, right? They already you know, I mean

00:31:27 ◼   ► All they asked me and it's so silly is they ask you a series of three questions of which tweet is better and it's so

00:31:35 ◼   ► obviously

00:31:37 ◼   ► Geared toward the assumption that you are some sort of pop culture celebrity

00:31:43 ◼   ► know that you're like a pop culture celebrity and it's like which tweet is better and

00:31:47 ◼   ► One on the one side. There's a fake a fake Twitter account saying

00:31:51 ◼   ► watching the Oscars

00:31:53 ◼   ► Like with a hashtag like washing the hashtag Oscars on ABC

00:31:58 ◼   ► Loving the fashions on the red carpet and then the other one is

00:32:02 ◼   ► watched the Oscars last night and

00:32:05 ◼   ► And then you vote you pick obviously the right answer is the one where you're doing it live

00:32:11 ◼   ► And then you click that and it says correct what you know tweeting things while they're happening is much more engaging with your fans than

00:32:19 ◼   ► Tweeting things after the fact well, so the question is if you had gotten these quote-unquote wrong

00:32:25 ◼   ► What would have happened? I don't have a verified account

00:32:28 ◼   ► I thought about trying that with the third one and you know and the third one's the same

00:32:32 ◼   ► It was like is it better you know the difference is is it better to tweet with pictures or not with pictures?

00:32:36 ◼   ► It's like you know hanging out with something something

00:32:39 ◼   ► And then there's a pic dot twitter dot something URL and the other one is just hanging out with someone someone

00:32:45 ◼   ► And I thought of obviously the one of the picture is supposed to be the one I thought about clicking the other one

00:32:49 ◼   ► I think that they just tell you the answer. I'm guessing I don't think it's a test and they're not gonna let you in

00:32:54 ◼   ► I think you click the wrong one and they say wrong

00:32:57 ◼   ► It's actually better to tweet with pictures and now you're allowed to be verified

00:33:00 ◼   ► That's weird like well first of all the verification process is weird because you like you would imagine. They're going like

00:33:07 ◼   ► Sorted by a number of followers descending and they just got down to like the hundred K's or whatever you're at

00:33:12 ◼   ► All right

00:33:13 ◼   ► Like they started with like the 20 million people like Ashton Kutcher or whatever and they're working their way down

00:33:17 ◼   ► So the poor team or guy or whatever whose job it is to verify accounts like boy now

00:33:21 ◼   ► Really scraping the bottom of the barrel because they're done with the actual like real

00:33:25 ◼   ► celebrities with millions and millions of followers and they're down to like the Mac nerd guys and

00:33:29 ◼   ► Then like so how do they know that this is the John Gruber kind of this?

00:33:32 ◼   ► It was just because they're Twitter guys and they were also happen to be computer nerds and they know who you are

00:33:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess so. I can only guess. There wasn't really any sort of actual, like if

00:33:44 ◼   ► @Gruber had been run by someone for years impersonating me, there was no, you know,

00:33:50 ◼   ► no, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how they would do it.

00:33:52 ◼   ► I mean, well, verified as being who? Like, say it was run by years. Maybe they're not

00:33:56 ◼   ► impersonating you. Maybe it's just some other guy named John Gruber. And like, you know,

00:33:59 ◼   ► all that, all your vari-, like, what are you even verifying? Because it's weird to me.

00:34:03 ◼   ► If there is a famous celebrity, internationally known celebrity like Tom Cruise,

00:34:07 ◼   ► you want to verify that the account that says Tom Cruise is really the account of Tom Cruise.

00:34:13 ◼   ► But when you get down to people who like everyone in the world doesn't know who they are,

00:34:17 ◼   ► what are you even verifying?

00:34:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not quite sure.

00:34:21 ◼   ► What I think is you're about to be monetized. That's what I think.

00:34:24 ◼   ► For the bill, it's going to be like, "Hey, John Gruber, verified celebrity.

00:34:27 ◼   ► Would you like to keep your verified account at Twitter? Well, consider sending it."

00:34:30 ◼   ► I mean, actually that may be welcome, you know.

00:34:33 ◼   ► Finally, you have a business model.

00:34:35 ◼   ► I'll pay you.

00:34:36 ◼   ► Just stop trying to show ads.

00:34:38 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:34:39 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:34:41 ◼   ► The other thing I don't know and I haven't had a chance because it just happened a few

00:34:43 ◼   ► hours ago, but I'm wondering now if it's going to be – if it's harder for me to reset my

00:34:47 ◼   ► password.

00:34:50 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:34:51 ◼   ► Like, all I can think is that this has something to do with the Honan thing and that they like

00:34:55 ◼   ► went and found people who are similar to Matt Honan who don't have verified accounts and

00:34:59 ◼   ► or verify them.

00:35:00 ◼   ► Yeah, but how does that help?

00:35:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess you have to try that.

00:35:04 ◼   ► All that would do is reinforce when the hackers take over your account.

00:35:07 ◼   ► Like, no, that's totally John Gruber saying those terrible things.

00:35:09 ◼   ► It's use a verified account.

00:35:11 ◼   ► Well, presumably being verified is extremely rare.

00:35:14 ◼   ► I would guess a sliver, a tiny little sliver of a thousandth of a percent of Twitter accounts.

00:35:21 ◼   ► Because you can't choose.

00:35:22 ◼   ► There's no way.

00:35:23 ◼   ► You can't go in and ask to be verified.

00:35:25 ◼   ► There is no way.

00:35:26 ◼   ► That's what I'm saying.

00:35:27 ◼   ► Starting with the celebrities and they just say they just sort by followers

00:35:30 ◼   ► And you're you're still in the very tiny tippy edge of that long tail out there, right?

00:35:35 ◼   ► but it's so rare that I'm wondering that if you call up with a

00:35:38 ◼   ► account password thing and and you know

00:35:41 ◼   ► Whoever you get or whoever helps people with with those type of problems with Twitter that if it's shows up as verified

00:35:47 ◼   ► It goes into like a white gloves department

00:35:50 ◼   ► Yeah, or they ask you the same questions about which tweet is better and you say shut up and reset my password

00:35:56 ◼   ► I don't know

00:35:57 ◼   ► Yeah, do you like the dick bar?

00:35:59 ◼   ► Yes, or no one of the questions they ask you

00:36:02 ◼   ► What's your favorite hashtag?

00:36:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess

00:36:05 ◼   ► Speaking of making money into the app net thing like the same same reason we're all desperate for something to happen

00:36:12 ◼   ► There is because we don't see Twitter

00:36:13 ◼   ► Being able or willing to make money in the way we think they should and like I made a joke about verified account

00:36:19 ◼   ► Costing you money, but like isn't that isn't that how you would prefer to pay for Twitter

00:36:24 ◼   ► Yeah, versus having to see ads yeah or something or all third-party clients dying

00:36:29 ◼   ► I mean you've got to make that choice you'd say you pay in a second

00:36:32 ◼   ► I was on the fence with I did I signed up for apt on that soon after it was announced. I became a backer

00:36:37 ◼   ► But I was on the fence about promoting it on daring fireball, but I just did right before we started recording tonight

00:36:44 ◼   ► I actually linked it up and encouraged people to sign up because then I saw their spam email got to you

00:36:51 ◼   ► And that actually I did that actually had nothing to do with that. I've actually been watching it

00:36:56 ◼   ► Through I don't forget how long ago they launched it, but I've been watching it and thinking if it gets close

00:37:02 ◼   ► Maybe I'll see if I can help him out a little but I'm a guy and I know I've helped Kickstarter projects out before

00:37:08 ◼   ► I don't think that I can even come close to helping raise that they're like $300,000 sure

00:37:13 ◼   ► Yeah, this is the email said is that everybody who currently backs a service got three of their friends to sign up

00:37:19 ◼   ► They'll make it and that's that's a tall order with a few days to go

00:37:22 ◼   ► And I don't know what they're gonna do

00:37:26 ◼   ► It's a weird thing and and I know that you've talked about it on

00:37:30 ◼   ► Hypercritical you did talk about apt on that. I know you talked about

00:37:33 ◼   ► Along with penny arcade and stuff. Yep, and it is weird. It's a weird situation a it's weird because it's not even really

00:37:42 ◼   ► Kickstarter they like built their own

00:37:45 ◼   ► Kickstarter because they had to they weren't they didn't fit in the Kickstarter rules, right? Is that why they did it?

00:37:50 ◼   ► I didn't yeah, that's in the fact

00:37:51 ◼   ► I said basically we would have been a Kickstarter but we can't because it says you can't use Kickstarter to start a business and that's what

00:37:55 ◼   ► We're doing. So right. That's that

00:37:57 ◼   ► hmm

00:38:00 ◼   ► And you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that if they fall short that they're just gonna pack it in and throw it out and not

00:38:06 ◼   ► Do anything? I don't know what I don't know what their plan B is

00:38:09 ◼   ► Well, that was that I convinced a friend of mine to sign up for it today. In fact doing my part to

00:38:14 ◼   ► to help them reach their funding goal.

00:38:17 ◼   ► And what I thought the deal was,

00:38:19 ◼   ► and I didn't bother to check

00:38:20 ◼   ► 'cause I guess I don't care enough,

00:38:21 ◼   ► is that if they don't reach their goal,

00:38:23 ◼   ► nobody gets charged.

00:38:24 ◼   ► So like I pledged $50 or whatever,

00:38:26 ◼   ► but that just means if we get our goal,

00:38:28 ◼   ► then we charge everyone's credit cards or whatever.

00:38:30 ◼   ► But if we don't get our goal, no one loses any money.

00:38:32 ◼   ► That's the secret Kickstarter is that

00:38:34 ◼   ► it eliminates the risk

00:38:35 ◼   ► that you're dumping your money down a hole.

00:38:37 ◼   ► It's like you're excited by the fact

00:38:39 ◼   ► that they're gonna reach their goal.

00:38:40 ◼   ► But if they don't, yeah, you do not add any money.

00:38:43 ◼   ► That was one of the interesting things about the penny arcade thing is that their big goal

00:38:46 ◼   ► was so far down, but to be fully funded, it was like 250K and they reached that in the

00:38:51 ◼   ► first day or two.

00:38:52 ◼   ► But that's not what everybody wanted.

00:38:53 ◼   ► So as soon as they reached that first limit, everyone's money is gone.

00:38:57 ◼   ► And then people aren't really motivated to...

00:38:59 ◼   ► It would rather have, "Wow, this audacious goal.

00:39:02 ◼   ► Let's everyone put their money towards it.

00:39:03 ◼   ► And if we get it, we'll be so excited that we won't care that we all just got charged."

00:39:06 ◼   ► Versus, "Everyone give me your money and I would like $500,000, but if I reach $1,000,

00:39:12 ◼   ► you're all getting charged."

00:39:13 ◼   ► That scares people away. I should probably revise my little write-up and emphasize that part that yeah

00:39:18 ◼   ► Kicking in 50 bucks is is definitely not and it you know 50 bucks is not a cup of coffee

00:39:23 ◼   ► That's that's a significant. You know right no. I mean. I don't know maybe there's somebody out there

00:39:28 ◼   ► I guess there's some people who throw 50 bucks around like loose change, but you know 50 bucks to me is something you really think about

00:39:34 ◼   ► But you're it is sort of no risk in terms of you're only gonna get charged if you're going to get a

00:39:42 ◼   ► a app.net service that will work. You're not going to throw your $50 in and, ooh, they fell short,

00:39:49 ◼   ► your $50 is gone and you don't even get the app.net. Well, before you write that up,

00:39:53 ◼   ► you should actually look it up because I didn't bother looking it up either. You go to their

00:39:56 ◼   ► website and look at the little fine print and it says what actually happens here. And the thing is,

00:40:00 ◼   ► even if they're fully funded and they get 500K, that still doesn't guarantee that their service

00:40:04 ◼   ► will ever come to the hill of beans. You know, like they could make the service and then no one

00:40:08 ◼   ► shows up and it just kind of fizzles away. But the fact that we're all willing to put

00:40:12 ◼   ► money behind this thing means that we want – not so much that we want something like

00:40:16 ◼   ► this but it's like we wish Twitter had a monetization strategy that made us feel more

00:40:21 ◼   ► comfortable. We all hate the scary stuff with the third-party clients going away. We don't

00:40:25 ◼   ► like ads. We didn't like the dick bar. There's so much about Twitter that's just bugging

00:40:30 ◼   ► us.

00:40:31 ◼   ► The way that in all of their first-party interfaces, the web, their apps and everything where they're

00:40:37 ◼   ► putting all this emphasis on the trends.

00:40:40 ◼   ► And also the card interface where you have these expanded tweets with all sorts of other

00:40:45 ◼   ► data.

00:40:46 ◼   ► Right, right.

00:40:47 ◼   ► Where all of a sudden one tweet can take up the whole length of your screen.

00:40:49 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like a little miniature webpage.

00:40:52 ◼   ► That's not what we want out of that.

00:40:54 ◼   ► The only time I want that is when Merlin Mann tweets one with a bunch of returns.

00:40:59 ◼   ► Once a month I'm going to put 40 carriage returns in here before the punchline tweet.

00:41:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:41:04 ◼   ► Yeah, he likes the vertical space.

00:41:06 ◼   ► He's a small man, though.

00:41:08 ◼   ► He may be compensating.

00:41:09 ◼   ► Well, and the big difference – there is actually a big difference in there, no joking

00:41:12 ◼   ► aside, which is that if that gag from Merlin truly annoys you enough, you just one –

00:41:17 ◼   ► You just unfollow him.

00:41:18 ◼   ► Your one click away from – the unfollow button is right there.

00:41:21 ◼   ► Whereas when promoted tweets and embedded – what do they call them?

00:41:25 ◼   ► Cards?

00:41:26 ◼   ► Whatever they call them.

00:41:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's called cards.

00:41:28 ◼   ► Right.

00:41:29 ◼   ► If they annoy you, tough luck.

00:41:30 ◼   ► That's coming right out of Twitter HQ.

00:41:32 ◼   ► I think the cards are also for like,

00:41:34 ◼   ► say you have someone that you follow and they post,

00:41:37 ◼   ► they say, "Check out this funny YouTube video."

00:41:39 ◼   ► Instead of that being like a two line text email

00:41:42 ◼   ► with a link, now it'll embed the YouTube video

00:41:46 ◼   ► right there in your timeline

00:41:47 ◼   ► if you're using one of their clients.

00:41:49 ◼   ► And you're like, "I don't want, I like that guy.

00:41:51 ◼   ► "I like his links, I like the videos he provides,

00:41:52 ◼   ► "but I don't want that video embedded

00:41:54 ◼   ► "and to start downloading and taking up seven inches

00:41:57 ◼   ► "of vertical screen space on my device.

00:41:59 ◼   ► "Like that's not how I wanna consume Twitter."

00:42:01 ◼   ► Because that just start like,

00:42:02 ◼   ► What if they just started previewing all web pages that way?

00:42:05 ◼   ► People are writing less than 140 characters

00:42:07 ◼   ► and what they're producing is, you know,

00:42:09 ◼   ► on an iPad an entire screen full of crap.

00:42:11 ◼   ► It's like, I'll tap the link if I wanna see it.

00:42:13 ◼   ► Don't inline it.

00:42:14 ◼   ► Like that type of interface where individual websites

00:42:17 ◼   ► pay to have tweets that reference their URLs

00:42:20 ◼   ► expanded into this big monster thing.

00:42:22 ◼   ► Like say IMDB paid them

00:42:23 ◼   ► and anytime I ever mentioned Tom Cruise,

00:42:25 ◼   ► it put four inches of information about Tom Cruise

00:42:27 ◼   ► and a little headshot and links to other stuff

00:42:29 ◼   ► underneath it.

00:42:30 ◼   ► And like, you don't wanna unfollow somebody

00:42:31 ◼   ► They mentioned Tom Cruise, but now all their tweets are annoying the hell out of you because they because of this IMDB connection

00:42:36 ◼   ► That's the Twitter's monetization strategy don't charge the customers charge these websites to crap up everyone else's timeline, but their stuff all right

00:42:44 ◼   ► And I like you know there's certain ways that tweet tweets obviously even in the third-party clients that we like they've they've grown past

00:42:53 ◼   ► Just pure text

00:42:55 ◼   ► Like most most of the clients I know of like if you embed a picture from known services

00:43:01 ◼   ► because the picture can be right there in the tweet, but they don't show you the whole

00:43:04 ◼   ► thing. It's always like a thumbnail, right? At least the ones I use, like Tweetbot and

00:43:08 ◼   ► -- well, I just use Tweetbot, really.

00:43:11 ◼   ► >> And that's up to the client software.

00:43:13 ◼   ► >> Right. It's up to -- that's the other thing. It's up to the client software, and they can

00:43:17 ◼   ► add a feature. So, like, Tweetbot -- and I think -- but I think, like, you know, I think

00:43:21 ◼   ► Tweety used to do this in Twitter's client, is they'll just show a little thumbnail of

00:43:24 ◼   ► the image, and if you want to see it, you tap it, and then you see it big. But that

00:43:28 ◼   ► if you're just scrolling through your tweets, even a tweet with a pictured link in it isn't

00:43:32 ◼   ► going to take up more room than a regular tweet.

00:43:36 ◼   ► That's the Twitter's big thing about making a consistent experience.

00:43:39 ◼   ► What that means is like in the current scenario, if you don't like how Tweetbot puts a thumbnail

00:43:43 ◼   ► image in because it makes your timeline too big and annoying, you try a different client

00:43:47 ◼   ► that doesn't do that, right?

00:43:48 ◼   ► You have choice, whereas consistent client experience means no, no, no, if the clients

00:43:53 ◼   ► even exist, they don't get to choose how that appears.

00:43:55 ◼   ► We choose how it appears and all clients must obey.

00:43:57 ◼   ► Like on this Twitter cards page, it's dev/Twitter.com/docs/cards.

00:44:01 ◼   ► It shows someone linking to a New York Times story.

00:44:04 ◼   ► And the thing, the tweet they show is, "That's a whole lot of people..." and then a New York

00:44:09 ◼   ► Times short URL, right?

00:44:11 ◼   ► But then underneath it, it has the headline, the byline, a picture, a link to the New York

00:44:15 ◼   ► Times, and the first paragraph of the story.

00:44:18 ◼   ► And the date, the thing, you know, like, "Why?

00:44:21 ◼   ► If I want to go read that story, I'll go read it."

00:44:24 ◼   ► But if every single client did that, I mean, I would not like that because a lot of the

00:44:29 ◼   ► tweets that I see have links in them, and I don't want to see the links in line like

00:44:33 ◼   ► that.

00:44:34 ◼   ► And I would be very upset if I had no choice.

00:44:36 ◼   ► Well, it would ruin – it just would spoil what I think Twitter is.

00:44:40 ◼   ► I mean, it really would start to lose the whole appeal to me.

00:44:47 ◼   ► And I know that that Michael Sippy blog post from a month back or so that sort of gave

00:44:52 ◼   ► everybody the chills about the direction they're heading with this where he reiterated that

00:44:58 ◼   ► the way they see their developer relationships going forward isn't with developers writing

00:45:02 ◼   ► client apps that show you Twitter. It's developers creating, I don't even know what they want

00:45:08 ◼   ► to call it, but it's these embedded iframes more or less that you put inside tweets.

00:45:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like an RSS reader only you always have to use the preview pane and that like

00:45:21 ◼   ► Like you don't have just a view of the articles.

00:45:23 ◼   ► Every single thing you see expands out to some big blob of it.

00:45:27 ◼   ► It's basically forcing you to go to a web page every time you read a tweet.

00:45:31 ◼   ► And it's a way for the people on the receiving end of those links to shove their crap in

00:45:35 ◼   ► your face.

00:45:36 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, websites come and develop to our interface, and then anytime anyone references

00:45:40 ◼   ► a URL anywhere, you can just shove a big giant square of stuff in their face.

00:45:43 ◼   ► But whatever you want there, and we'll charge you money for that."

00:45:46 ◼   ► It's just terrible.

00:45:47 ◼   ► So for anybody out there who's on the fence and who agrees with me and you, John, that

00:45:54 ◼   ► just don't like the direction Twitter's going with their relationship with developers and

00:45:59 ◼   ► the way that they're -- the monetization strategy that they're clearly taking, the only thing

00:46:06 ◼   ► that you can do about it, the one and only thing that you can do as a user that would

00:46:10 ◼   ► have any -- you know, sure, you're just one user against 100 million who are using it,

00:46:14 ◼   ► But the only thing you can do is throw your support to some kind of competitor.

00:46:19 ◼   ► That's the only thing you can do that would have any kind of effect.

00:46:21 ◼   ► You know, complaining about it isn't going to do anything.

00:46:24 ◼   ► Of course, when I talked about app.net, I had all these pessimistic things to say about

00:46:28 ◼   ► it because don't you kind of get that feeling that the reason Twitter is doing this is that

00:46:32 ◼   ► the only people who care are nerds like us, and maybe there's not enough of us to make

00:46:36 ◼   ► a difference?

00:46:37 ◼   ► Right.

00:46:38 ◼   ► No, I do have that fear.

00:46:39 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:46:40 ◼   ► And even if there was enough of us, like, because in the beginning, in, you know, 2006,

00:46:44 ◼   ► 2007 like Twitter was just nerds like us and there was a definitely different vibe back then but now

00:46:49 ◼   ► If even if we got critical mass to go over app net it got funded all the nerds went over there

00:46:55 ◼   ► And they had some sort of gateway and clients could read both of them and murder like you can imagine a scenario where nerds are

00:47:00 ◼   ► On app net but like wouldn't you miss?

00:47:02 ◼   ► The the pop culture celebrity people that you happen to follow on Twitter not that I follow a lot of them

00:47:09 ◼   ► But it would be weird like oh, we're over there

00:47:11 ◼   ► But everything else is happening in that other place. Twitter has just become so pervasive like on

00:47:16 ◼   ► television news even which drives me nuts for like the noise reads tweets and stuff like that, but it's like that is the network for

00:47:22 ◼   ► Everybody and we'd be on this other little thing

00:47:25 ◼   ► That's just never gonna get critical mass and even though it would feel cool and we'd have our own little thing

00:47:28 ◼   ► We'd feel kind of like left out, you know, and it's kind of

00:47:33 ◼   ► I'm of two minds about this this the bias maybe it's the same type of thing where it's up

00:47:39 ◼   ► We had Myspace and Friendster and all those other things.

00:47:43 ◼   ► Every time one of those looked like it was dominant, something else came along and wiped

00:47:46 ◼   ► it out.

00:47:47 ◼   ► Now we have Facebook.

00:47:48 ◼   ► My big fear with Facebook is, unlike Friendster and Myspace, Facebook has just gotten too

00:47:52 ◼   ► darn big and now it's too big to fail.

00:47:56 ◼   ► Something can't come along and wipe out Facebook the same way Facebook did to Myspace because

00:48:01 ◼   ► it's reached some...

00:48:03 ◼   ► It's gone over some line.

00:48:04 ◼   ► It's just too darn big.

00:48:05 ◼   ► My fear about Twitter is the same thing.

00:48:07 ◼   ► Even if something better comes along, it's too late.

00:48:10 ◼   ► Twitter is just too darn big and it's going to take a really long time.

00:48:13 ◼   ► It's kind of like Windows.

00:48:14 ◼   ► Windows got so big that it didn't matter how much better something was, you basically had

00:48:17 ◼   ► to wait for it to become irrelevant and the future to be in mobile and Microsoft to not

00:48:22 ◼   ► be there.

00:48:23 ◼   ► And then that's what makes Windows go away.

00:48:24 ◼   ► It's not because Mac operating system was better and Windows goes away.

00:48:27 ◼   ► It goes away because who cares about desktop operating systems anymore?

00:48:30 ◼   ► We only care about mobile and the people who went in mobile were not Microsoft.

00:48:33 ◼   ► So is that what has to happen here for Twitter and Facebook to, you know, nothing can defeat

00:48:38 ◼   ► them until they become irrelevant?

00:48:40 ◼   ► That's scary.

00:48:41 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:48:42 ◼   ► Maybe defeat is the wrong term.

00:48:44 ◼   ► My optimistic take on app.net would be something along the lines of the comparison between

00:48:50 ◼   ► commercial TV and HBO.

00:48:54 ◼   ► And the idea is that I think most people, I think a lot of the people who don't really

00:48:58 ◼   ► like the way Twitter is growing also have a lot of complaints about commercial TV, the

00:49:03 ◼   ► themselves, the number of commercials that are shown, and the just the way that the nature

00:49:11 ◼   ► of commercial TV sort of has a never-ending decade after decade drive towards lowest common

00:49:18 ◼   ► denominator content. Right? I mean, I think a lot of the shows that are on TV now, the

00:49:25 ◼   ► reality type shows, are not really even any further, they're not, they're even worse maybe

00:49:31 ◼   ► then like the dystopian future oh my god look how bad TV is from like RoboCop

00:49:37 ◼   ► right yeah great the accuracy al my balls right you know idiocracy is still

00:49:42 ◼   ► a little bit out ahead but well the America's funny time videos was

00:49:45 ◼   ► basically out my balls and that was like in the 90s right right but as the years

00:49:50 ◼   ► go on that the idiocracy future idiocratic future doesn't seem as

00:49:55 ◼   ► far-fetched, it seems less and less far-fetched as time goes on.

00:50:01 ◼   ► Well that's the case where I think it's not so much that entertainment is appealing to

00:50:07 ◼   ► base instincts, because that's been around forever, and I think there's the counter-examples

00:50:12 ◼   ► like Lost was on ABC and no one's going to say that that was trashy reality show, that's

00:50:17 ◼   ► the opposite of high-budget, single artistic vision, high production value, stuff like

00:50:24 ◼   ► But the thing about people hate about TV is that there's an entrenched business model

00:50:28 ◼   ► that hasn't kept up with technology and it's difficult to dislodge that.

00:50:32 ◼   ► So what we're looking for on HBO is like, one example is that, well, on HBO shows, they

00:50:37 ◼   ► can make shows for adults because they're not burdened by these legacy things when the

00:50:40 ◼   ► airways belong to the people and you had to license them through the government, but then

00:50:44 ◼   ► you had to have decency rule, like all that stuff that burdens the networks doesn't burden

00:50:49 ◼   ► HBO.

00:50:51 ◼   ► And so that's why you get content that's more appealing there, because what can you really

00:50:54 ◼   ► do?

00:50:55 ◼   ► Within the confines of the decency rules of network television, you're limited in terms

00:50:58 ◼   ► of programming for adults, because not all adults want just everything that's Pollyanna

00:51:02 ◼   ► all the time.

00:51:06 ◼   ► And it's the same situation with Twitter.

00:51:07 ◼   ► I don't know if there is...

00:51:11 ◼   ► What is the equivalent of being able to show nudity and curse and having people pay you

00:51:16 ◼   ► directly lots of money?

00:51:19 ◼   ► What is the equivalent of that in App.net?

00:51:21 ◼   ► I think the equivalent is more about the overall experience that you're not being badgered

00:51:26 ◼   ► by promotional garbage and that there aren't idiots.

00:51:36 ◼   ► I think maybe the equivalent...

00:51:37 ◼   ► It's a hard analogy because it's a social network versus just TV broadcast.

00:51:42 ◼   ► But there aren't going to be as many idiots on App.net as there are on Twitter because

00:51:48 ◼   ► Because at least for now, it seems like the plan is that everybody who's on there has

00:51:51 ◼   ► to pay at least something to get in.

00:51:52 ◼   ► So you're not going to have...

00:51:55 ◼   ► There's not going to be idiots there that you can assume that there's a higher level

00:51:58 ◼   ► of discourse.

00:51:59 ◼   ► I mean, one thing...

00:52:00 ◼   ► I mean, and it's super, super early days.

00:52:01 ◼   ► I mean, in fact, I mean, they just let me...

00:52:03 ◼   ► I got in today.

00:52:04 ◼   ► I'm in on the alpha.

00:52:07 ◼   ► I don't know how many users are in there already.

00:52:09 ◼   ► But I posted one...

00:52:10 ◼   ► I was going to call it a tweet, but I guess you have to call it a post to app.net.

00:52:15 ◼   ► And the post ID was like 8,200 something.

00:52:18 ◼   ► So there's only been, you know, just with all the tests that they've, you know, whatever

00:52:22 ◼   ► else, I don't even know how many of those are from actual users and how many are automated

00:52:26 ◼   ► things that they've tested while building the thing out.

00:52:28 ◼   ► But there's only been 8,000 posts so far.

00:52:30 ◼   ► Whereas Twitter is up at like, you know, 12 quadrillion.

00:52:33 ◼   ► You're already at 8,000.

00:52:34 ◼   ► I knew I should have checked that out.

00:52:36 ◼   ► I got the email too and I'm like, "I'll check it out."

00:52:38 ◼   ► But that's not my user ID.

00:52:39 ◼   ► It's my, it was the tweet ID or post ID.

00:52:41 ◼   ► I have no idea what my user ID is.

00:52:43 ◼   ► Well, I guess the equivalent is that no ads.

00:52:49 ◼   ► There's no ads on HBO and there'd be no ads on the Twitter replacement thing and there'd

00:52:54 ◼   ► be no ads and no fear of ads because everyone pays for it outside of my game.

00:52:57 ◼   ► And it's not just ad ads either because clearly the stuff like having embedded New York Times

00:53:04 ◼   ► stories show up as a card instead of just a URL, it's not really an ad but there's a

00:53:10 ◼   ► financial thing in there where they're getting money, they're sharing money with the New

00:53:13 ◼   ► York Times to have New York Times stories treated specially, and there's not going to

00:53:17 ◼   ► be anything of that.

00:53:18 ◼   ► You know?

00:53:19 ◼   ► It's not, you know, so advertising is the wrong word for that, but it's favoring the

00:53:24 ◼   ► interests of somebody other than me for financial reasons.

00:53:27 ◼   ► Me as the user.

00:53:28 ◼   ► Yeah, their big thrust is like whatever makes our service more desirable to customers, that's

00:53:34 ◼   ► what we'll spend all our time on.

00:53:36 ◼   ► features, making it like whatever users of the service want, that's what we communicate

00:53:42 ◼   ► with. Whereas you get the feeling that people on Twitter are not worried about what the

00:53:46 ◼   ► users of their system want. They're more worried about how do we get money from somebody to

00:53:50 ◼   ► keep us in business before the VC runs out.

00:53:52 ◼   ► Right. So my thought too is like HBO. Most people don't have HBO. Everybody watches commercial

00:53:58 ◼   ► TV, but only some people have HBO. I'm guessing at this point I probably wouldn't abandon

00:54:05 ◼   ► Twitter for App.net, but maybe I would use App.net as the thing I'm logged into all day

00:54:09 ◼   ► and only check Twitter once in a while. But in the same way that when you get HBO, it's

00:54:13 ◼   ► not like your commercial TV turns off.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Yeah. The thing I wonder about Twitter is they have all these... They've been hinting

00:54:20 ◼   ► at the, "I wouldn't write third-party clients that I were you. If you're gonna write clients,

00:54:24 ◼   ► don't write a general purpose one." They've been making scary, vague moves in that direction

00:54:31 ◼   ► for a long time, but they never actually pull the trigger.

00:54:34 ◼   ► And I kept thinking, how are you going to stop somebody?

00:54:38 ◼   ► I guess you can use OAuth on the API to reject clients, but that's like an arms race in terms

00:54:43 ◼   ► of illicit Twitter clients.

00:54:45 ◼   ► And what I'm thinking of is, if App.net took off and was popular, wouldn't there be hacked

00:54:53 ◼   ► clients that merge Twitter and App.net into a single thing or some sort of proxy gateway?

00:54:59 ◼   ► I guess it's within their power to reject requests that aren't authenticated with some

00:55:03 ◼   ► digitally signed.

00:55:04 ◼   ► But that's just that arms race of client side software versus server side.

00:55:10 ◼   ► You don't want the nerds on the other side of that to be your enemy.

00:55:13 ◼   ► I'm not saying it can't be done, but that's a lot of time and energy fighting against

00:55:17 ◼   ► that.

00:55:18 ◼   ► And really, do they really care?

00:55:19 ◼   ► Was it you who came up with the stats for what percentage of Twitter users use third-party

00:55:25 ◼   ► clients?

00:55:26 ◼   ► asked about it and somebody who reads during fireball linked to you know

00:55:28 ◼   ► figured it out I think he I think is his methodology was pretty pretty good he

00:55:34 ◼   ► he like slurped like a million random tweets from the there's still some way

00:55:39 ◼   ► that you can get that you can get like just show me like tweets to show me a

00:55:44 ◼   ► random tweets that people are tweeting from around the world and he grabbed

00:55:46 ◼   ► like a million of them and analyzed where they were from and it's you know

00:55:50 ◼   ► the the biggest hole in his methodology is it because there's no other way to

00:55:55 ◼   ► get the real information, what people are using to see Twitter.

00:55:58 ◼   ► What you can do is you can see what people are using to post to Twitter, which is different

00:56:03 ◼   ► because I would guess that there's an awful lot of people out there, now that Twitter

00:56:07 ◼   ► has hit, like you said, CNN shows hashtags 24 hours a day.

00:56:12 ◼   ► I think there's an awful lot of people out there with accounts that have two followers

00:56:16 ◼   ► and they've only tweeted three times themselves, but they actually do use Twitter.

00:56:21 ◼   ► They use it and just consume.

00:56:23 ◼   ► Just pure consumption.

00:56:24 ◼   ► It's like something that they look at but don't post to.

00:56:28 ◼   ► But I would guess that would only skew it more towards the official Twitter clients

00:56:31 ◼   ► and the Twitter website, not less.

00:56:33 ◼   ► Yeah, and do you remember what the number was?

00:56:35 ◼   ► It was like 23 percent, 20 percent.

00:56:37 ◼   ► I remember thinking it was way higher than I thought it would be.

00:56:40 ◼   ► I think it was close to like 20 or something.

00:56:42 ◼   ► I would have thought it would be like 3 percent.

00:56:44 ◼   ► And I think that's skewed by the fact that people who create content and have a lot of

00:56:49 ◼   ► followers are more likely to need something like that.

00:56:53 ◼   ► For example, just as an – and I have never seen the appeal of this software, but I know

00:56:57 ◼   ► that a lot of celebrity people use TweetDeck.

00:57:00 ◼   ► That's a way for them to be able to – TweetDeck lets you have some chance of managing an awareness

00:57:09 ◼   ► of people who are talking to or about you when there are so many people.

00:57:12 ◼   ► It's the same reason you don't use Unified Timeline, because your @ replies, anytime

00:57:16 ◼   ► you say anything, would just swamp your ability to read the three posts from the people you

00:57:20 ◼   ► reply to.

00:57:21 ◼   ► So can you imagine if you had 20 million followers or something they were just it just becomes untenable so I think

00:57:26 ◼   ► Tweet bot is a way

00:57:28 ◼   ► Like I don't even know if they look at their replies and then just doing like a bunch of canned searches

00:57:32 ◼   ► You know and then they can kind of get a big overall picture

00:57:35 ◼   ► But but yeah for someone who just wants to read Twitter tweet deck is not that's a tool for the Twitter power user or whatever

00:57:40 ◼   ► You want to call them, but there's also you know they are pulling the plug on some people

00:57:44 ◼   ► I know that they just pulled the plug on Instagram connecting to Twitter

00:57:48 ◼   ► Well, I mean they got bossed by Facebook right and you know famously, you know people have observed that Jack Dorsey, you know Twitter

00:57:55 ◼   ► Inventor and CEO or whatever his title is. I guess he's not the CEO, but you know, he's like chief designer at Twitter

00:58:02 ◼   ► Had been a active Instagram user and hasn't posted an Instagram since their Facebook acquisition

00:58:14 ◼   ► But ultimately though you know and you can say well it makes sense that they'd pull the plug on you know

00:58:19 ◼   ► Somebody owned by Facebook or whatever, but really it's like you said though

00:58:22 ◼   ► It's just an API you know if your API is there you know I mean they're gonna play favorites like that

00:58:27 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if they started doing it to

00:58:29 ◼   ► Desktop clients yeah, I mean I've won. They'll end up with I would imagine if they do

00:58:34 ◼   ► Lock it down is similar to what Apple uses for push notifications and iCloud and everything where there's like a cryptographic

00:58:39 ◼   ► connection between like you are allowed to send push notifications and

00:58:44 ◼   ► And the only reason you're allowed is because it's, you know, configured through your developer

00:58:48 ◼   ► ID and connected to your Apple ID, and we have the information about you, and if you

00:58:53 ◼   ► violate it, we pull the plug on you, and the barrier to getting up and running again is

00:58:57 ◼   ► making a new fake Apple ID from a different IP address and pay the $99 again and get everything

00:59:02 ◼   ► configured and deploy a new version of an application from a different Apple ID and

00:59:06 ◼   ► make your customers download on the store, and then we lock you down again.

00:59:08 ◼   ► And so like, you could go cat and mouse like that, or you could just try to crack the encryption

00:59:12 ◼   ► somehow or whatever, but I don't know who is more motivated to stop that.

00:59:17 ◼   ► I haven't seen any cases of Apple's push notification thing being hacked or gained, because I don't

00:59:23 ◼   ► think there's any financial gain for that.

00:59:26 ◼   ► There's probably not any financial gain for breaking through the prohibition on third-party

00:59:32 ◼   ► Twitter clients, but there's definitely geek, like, "There's no financial gain, but I really

00:59:36 ◼   ► want to use a third-party client."

00:59:38 ◼   ► So maybe the hackers are just motivated to find their way to crack it just for the hell

00:59:42 ◼   ► of it right now yeah I don't know but anyway I'm a little depressed though

00:59:47 ◼   ► because I kind of was rooting for app dotnet hopefully hopefully maybe you

00:59:51 ◼   ► know maybe maybe they'll turn it around in the last five days I don't know what

00:59:55 ◼   ► do you think about what did you think about when I was my son like a points

01:00:00 ◼   ► about out the net is remember the whole big thing with a robo not robo tweeting

01:00:02 ◼   ► but the wanting for you to tweet and stuff like that yeah they were very

01:00:06 ◼   ► quick to reply to him at my point when I talked about in the show it's not so

01:00:09 ◼   ► much that they did this because they've responded quickly and they were cool

01:00:12 ◼   ► about it and everything like that.

01:00:13 ◼   ► Just that it gives you that doubt that like, why did they think this would be okay?

01:00:18 ◼   ► Like it makes you question their judgment.

01:00:19 ◼   ► It doesn't make you question like their motivation and like they're clearly like they're motivated

01:00:24 ◼   ► for the right reasons and they really want, our goals are aligned with their goals, really

01:00:28 ◼   ► want to do the right thing.

01:00:29 ◼   ► But it's like, man, how did something like that slip by?

01:00:32 ◼   ► Not that it's that important, but it's like, am I being fooled here or do we really not

01:00:36 ◼   ► share the same values, you know?

01:00:38 ◼   ► And that's-

01:00:39 ◼   ► Right.

01:00:40 ◼   ► And what you're talking about is when you first signed up, I don't even know what they

01:00:41 ◼   ► do anymore. But when I signed up like a day or two in, part of the appeal of signing up

01:00:47 ◼   ► was that you get to reserve your existing Twitter username. But the way that they did

01:00:53 ◼   ► it was they needed you to tweet like a pre-generated tweet that said something corny like, "I'm

01:01:00 ◼   ► supporting app.net. You can too. Here's the URL and there's a hashtag in there." And you

01:01:06 ◼   ► tweeted that and you're tweeting that was what their bot would look for to see the tweet

01:01:12 ◼   ► and then say, OK, this guy did it. And there's like a little like a little unique token in

01:01:16 ◼   ► there too somewhere. And then they would say, OK, so now at Gruber is is verified as a backer

01:01:22 ◼   ► of app dotnet. So this guy has the at Gruber name reserved for our thing, too. But that's

01:01:28 ◼   ► cheesy. I mean, you know, I don't I never tweet hashtags and I don't I don't like anything

01:01:34 ◼   ► like that that asks you to tweet on their behalf.

01:01:38 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's…

01:01:39 ◼   ► Because I remember there was one time one of those Mac software bundles had a thing

01:01:43 ◼   ► like that where it was like you got like a free app if you gave them your Twitter name.

01:01:48 ◼   ► Instead of getting 10 apps for 50 bucks, you got 11 apps for 50 bucks.

01:01:51 ◼   ► It's an even better deal.

01:01:52 ◼   ► Just give us your Twitter name and people are doing it.

01:01:55 ◼   ► And all of a sudden your Twitter stream was just full of like 37 people who all were promoting

01:02:00 ◼   ► the such and such Mac bundle.

01:02:01 ◼   ► And it's like, man, that is so cheesy and just wrong.

01:02:05 ◼   ► And exactly, I had that thought too.

01:02:08 ◼   ► It really was like a bad taste in the mouth, as like my first experience with App.net.

01:02:14 ◼   ► Yeah, and again, it didn't make me question the point of the project or anything they

01:02:18 ◼   ► say about it.

01:02:19 ◼   ► It just made me think about, like, you want to feel when you're supporting someone like

01:02:24 ◼   ► this that they share your values and tastes, I guess.

01:02:28 ◼   ► And part of it is just misunderstanding and an experience because you didn't have to tweet.

01:02:32 ◼   ► I think even from the very beginning, you didn't have to tweet that corny signing promotional

01:02:35 ◼   ► thing.

01:02:36 ◼   ► You just needed to have the few bits of information in there.

01:02:38 ◼   ► But they didn't make that clear.

01:02:39 ◼   ► And to that credit, they didn't do the thing that so many sites do where they want you

01:02:43 ◼   ► to sign up and you go to the OAuth screen or whatever.

01:02:46 ◼   ► It's like, "This company would like to read tweets in your timeline, see your followers,

01:02:53 ◼   ► and there's always tweet as you."

01:02:54 ◼   ► And it's like, "Hell no.

01:02:56 ◼   ► Hell no.

01:02:57 ◼   ► Who would ever say yes to that?

01:02:59 ◼   ► And yet so many people do, because as soon as you check that, you know two seconds later

01:03:03 ◼   ► there's going to be one of those blah, blah, blah signed up for the whatever.

01:03:08 ◼   ► And this was better in that it didn't want the power to tweet as you, which is crazy.

01:03:13 ◼   ► No one would say yes to it.

01:03:14 ◼   ► It just wanted you to tweet something on their behalf.

01:03:19 ◼   ► And part of it is like social promotional like in the meaning.

01:03:21 ◼   ► Like if we could just get all these guys to tweet to each other.

01:03:24 ◼   ► But it was so corny.

01:03:25 ◼   ► And that's why I was so shocked to see it from, I think, you and Marco.

01:03:28 ◼   ► I was like, "Has someone hacked their account?"

01:03:29 ◼   ► Because I know you guys don't sign up for things that they'll let you tweet as you.

01:03:32 ◼   ► It's funny.

01:03:33 ◼   ► I got a couple.

01:03:34 ◼   ► You were not the only one.

01:03:35 ◼   ► I got a couple of, "Hey, was your Twitter account hacked?"

01:03:38 ◼   ► Like just not a bunch, but at least more than one.

01:03:41 ◼   ► I got two or three like, "Dude, is your Twitter account hacked?"

01:03:45 ◼   ► I remember Guy, Guy English, his came out and he immediately tweeted an apology.

01:03:51 ◼   ► He was like, "I'm really sorry about that last tweet, but I'm kind of hoping to see

01:03:54 ◼   ► this."

01:03:55 ◼   ► He apologized on both his and App.net's behalf.

01:04:00 ◼   ► By the time I decided to fund it, I'd seen all you guys do this, and I had read enough

01:04:06 ◼   ► about the backlash that you didn't have to tweet what they told you to tweet, and so

01:04:10 ◼   ► I just replaced that text with something scolding them for doing this.

01:04:16 ◼   ► One of your tweets is featured on their homepage.

01:04:20 ◼   ► tweet is not. But like I said, I still funded them because I want the same thing that they

01:04:27 ◼   ► want. And no one else is like... This is what I was talking about earlier today when I was

01:04:31 ◼   ► talking to my friend and trying to convince him to fund this thing. It's kind of weird

01:04:35 ◼   ► to me that we want this thing, but the traditional way is, I guess, you max out all your credit

01:04:42 ◼   ► cards or you get a business loan or you launch it at being partially supported by some existing

01:04:47 ◼   ► line of business. We're in this weird time period where the thing to do is not to do

01:04:53 ◼   ► any of those other traditional ways of starting up a business that requires capital and time.

01:04:57 ◼   ► Like we need a certain amount of time to make this product to try to get, you know, we're

01:05:01 ◼   ► going to start a business and we got to start from nothing. So you need seed capital, you

01:05:04 ◼   ► need to go into massive debt. Those are the traditional ways to do it. Now we have this

01:05:08 ◼   ► new way, which is, hey, if there's a bunch of other people who want this, get the money

01:05:10 ◼   ► up front. And it's exciting and interesting and it's the Kickstarter phenomenon. But part

01:05:15 ◼   ► Part of me says, "Isn't there someone who wants to do something like App.net who either

01:05:19 ◼   ► has the capital to do it or can be a business that can be funded in traditional ways?"

01:05:24 ◼   ► I guess the traditional ways suck.

01:05:26 ◼   ► Getting a business loan sucks.

01:05:27 ◼   ► Maxing out all your credit cards, I can imagine that sucking too.

01:05:30 ◼   ► So many businesses have been started that way.

01:05:33 ◼   ► Or start from nothing, like grad students who have crappy retail jobs doing it in their

01:05:37 ◼   ► spare time until it takes off.

01:05:39 ◼   ► There's so many other ways that businesses start.

01:05:41 ◼   ► I don't like feeling like, "Oh, if App.net doesn't make it, well, that was the one way

01:05:45 ◼   ► way this could have happened. There's so many other ways I feel like this could happen.

01:05:48 ◼   ► Not that I wish them—don't wish them well, but if this doesn't make it, I hope someone

01:05:54 ◼   ► else out there looks at this and says, "Well, there was a lot of people who wanted to give

01:05:58 ◼   ► money to make this happen." Maybe the same people will say, "All right, well, we've

01:06:02 ◼   ► got to give all this money back, or we can't charge these people." But maybe we'll find

01:06:06 ◼   ► some other way to do this, because clearly there's, you know, whatever, $200,000 worth

01:06:09 ◼   ► of people who think this is a good idea.

01:06:11 ◼   ► Right. And the other thing too is it really does require some imagination up front to

01:06:15 ◼   ► imagine that it could be how it could make the world a better place if it existed. Whereas

01:06:19 ◼   ► once it was off the ground, and there were I mean, and clearly, like, you know, if they're

01:06:24 ◼   ► already even if they don't raise another dollar, they've already got $220,000 raised or something

01:06:29 ◼   ► like that, which at like 50 or 100 bucks apiece is, you know, thousands of people that if

01:06:36 ◼   ► there were thousands of smart people on there, then and they were using it already. People

01:06:40 ◼   ► who were like, "Well, maybe I should sign up too," wouldn't have to imagine what it

01:06:43 ◼   ► was like. They could see, "Well, look, here's people writing clever posts on this thing.

01:06:48 ◼   ► I can actually see the appeal." It's a lot more easier to get people to sign up once

01:06:53 ◼   ► it exists than before it exists.

01:06:56 ◼   ► Yeah, and I'd be willing to say, I wonder if they asked everybody, again, I still haven't

01:07:00 ◼   ► looked this up on their side, but if they said, "Look, guys, we didn't make our funding

01:07:02 ◼   ► goal. How would you feel about just giving us the money you pledged anyway?" I would

01:07:06 ◼   ► say, "Sure, go ahead." I wouldn't be grudging the money because I think, like, whatever

01:07:10 ◼   ► If if you get this thing out there and we start using it and you can actually make it cool

01:07:14 ◼   ► Then you can win based on your features like it's you know, make a cool thing that I can show people

01:07:18 ◼   ► Hey check this out. Isn't this cool add features that Twitter doesn't have it doesn't have time to have or

01:07:23 ◼   ► You know or just make it a better experience in Twitter

01:07:26 ◼   ► It almost would be better if they waited to do this project until after Twitter screwed everybody and killed the third-party clients because then they'd

01:07:32 ◼   ► Get funded. I'll tell you. Yeah, I do think that I do wonder about I've had that same thought too that

01:07:38 ◼   ► And maybe just one more like a straw that broke the camel's back type thing like where the next big rumored

01:07:44 ◼   ► Breakup is flipboard, you know where the flipboard CEO resigned from Twitter's board was on Twitter's board, but now he's off and

01:07:51 ◼   ► You know like a week or two ago as of a week or two ago, and there's I know Dustin Curtis

01:07:57 ◼   ► Reported it. I've heard the same thing. I can't you know, I don't really report rumors, but I've heard the same thing though that

01:08:03 ◼   ► like through the grapevine that that Twitter might be about to pull the plug on flipboard and I know that a lot of people I

01:08:09 ◼   ► Don't use flipboard that much

01:08:10 ◼   ► But I know that Twitter is a really good source for it is you hook up your Twitter to your flipboard and then?

01:08:15 ◼   ► Urls that are posted from the people you follow on Twitter

01:08:19 ◼   ► Which is a really really high hit rate of things you're interested in show up as flipboard articles

01:08:24 ◼   ► You know so if they pull that you're gonna lose a really good source for

01:08:30 ◼   ► Sort of the way that flipboard can get serendipitous articles not just you know

01:08:35 ◼   ► It's like the one of the things that I think is appealing about flipboard compared to RSS is RSS just gives you things

01:08:40 ◼   ► You know you want whereas flipboard can sometimes give you things you do enjoy

01:08:44 ◼   ► But that you would didn't ask for and Twitter is a big source for that

01:08:48 ◼   ► I can't help but think I really think I think that if Twitter does that I think it's really gonna

01:08:53 ◼   ► My prediction is it's gonna infuriate flipboard users because I really do think that that's a big part of flipboards

01:09:00 ◼   ► appeal.

01:09:01 ◼   ► Well, I think they're going to do the calculation and say there aren't enough Flipboard users

01:09:04 ◼   ► for that to matter.

01:09:05 ◼   ► But I was thinking the other day about how I use Twitter and how it has become—I was

01:09:09 ◼   ► thinking of someone's blog and I'm like, "Boy, I wonder if this person has done a blog post

01:09:14 ◼   ► lately."

01:09:15 ◼   ► And I was thinking, "You know why I don't know if they're doing blog posts and I haven't

01:09:18 ◼   ► seen them?

01:09:19 ◼   ► It's because they don't tweet their blog posts and Twitter has started to replace RSS for

01:09:22 ◼   ► me."

01:09:23 ◼   ► Before, when I was living in that news bar all day, I always knew if someone, you know,

01:09:26 ◼   ► someone posted their blog once every two months.

01:09:28 ◼   ► But I would see that post because it would come up in my feeds.

01:09:30 ◼   ► But now if they don't tweet about it, I'm using Twitter like RSS, and that's why it

01:09:33 ◼   ► burns me so much to think that that would go away because it's replaced or mostly supplanted

01:09:38 ◼   ► so many other services in my life, and then they're going to change the rules on me, and

01:09:42 ◼   ► I'm going to be like, "Ugh."

01:09:43 ◼   ► My refer is a daring fireball.

01:09:44 ◼   ► The refer listings are almost useless anymore because it's all just Twitter.

01:09:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:49 ◼   ► I mean, it doesn't matter.

01:09:50 ◼   ► It's not like everything I've posted during Fireball, the number one refer to it by far

01:09:55 ◼   ► is Twitter.

01:09:57 ◼   ► And I don't even know how much, it's not, you know, presumably a lot of it is the Daring

01:10:00 ◼   ► Fireball, @DaringFireball account Twitter account, but if I actually like poke into

01:10:05 ◼   ► it, it's, you know, it's other people of course, you know, people who just like, you know,

01:10:08 ◼   ► here's an article at Daring Fireball.

01:10:09 ◼   ► Huge, huge, huge source.

01:10:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I can tell you that that's basically how I read Daring Fireball.

01:10:15 ◼   ► Why do I follow the Daring Fireball account?

01:10:17 ◼   ► Because I have to know, you know, like don't I know that just go to the Daring Fireball

01:10:21 ◼   ► site and read stuff?

01:10:22 ◼   ► The way I go there, 99.9% of the time, is the Daring Fireball account tweets something,

01:10:27 ◼   ► and I click on it, and that's how I read it.

01:10:30 ◼   ► That's how it happens.

01:10:31 ◼   ► I used to, I still subscribe to your feed, but I do that for all these things.

01:10:38 ◼   ► I subscribe to the Twitter accounts of things whose feeds I also subscribe to, and whose

01:10:42 ◼   ► websites I also see.

01:10:43 ◼   ► Only for sites that are like, you can't do it for The Verge or something that's posting

01:10:47 ◼   ► 20 million things every day, because that would just be ridiculous.

01:10:49 ◼   ► But for sites that update once or twice or five or ten times a day, that's how I see

01:10:54 ◼   ► their stuff.

01:10:55 ◼   ► And if someone doesn't have an official Twitter account like that person's blog that I'm thinking

01:10:58 ◼   ► that they post anything, I'll just forget it exists after a while.

01:11:01 ◼   ► Yeah, same here.

01:11:02 ◼   ► I agree.

01:11:03 ◼   ► You know what?

01:11:04 ◼   ► Let's take a break.

01:11:05 ◼   ► I should do the first sponsor.

01:11:06 ◼   ► The first sponsor?

01:11:07 ◼   ► It's like an hour in.

01:11:08 ◼   ► Oh, Jesus Christ.

01:11:09 ◼   ► You know what?

01:11:10 ◼   ► And I swore to the Mule guys I was going to get this done in an hour.

01:11:13 ◼   ► Last week's show is about an hour.

01:11:16 ◼   ► Christ.

01:11:17 ◼   ► Anyway, Macworld Superguides.

01:11:18 ◼   ► guides. You ever hear these super guides? The people at Macworld, these guys, they're

01:11:21 ◼   ► my friends, but they're really the best in the business when it comes to covering Apple.

01:11:26 ◼   ► So many smart writers and editors, and they don't just do, it's not just the magazine

01:11:30 ◼   ► and the website. They've got a whole series of ebooks, and some of it's compiled from

01:11:35 ◼   ► the best information that they've published on the web, a lot of it is original content,

01:11:40 ◼   ► and they cover these topics in super good, super deep depth, and with the same sort of

01:11:46 ◼   ► high quality of writing and editing that you expect from Macworld.

01:11:52 ◼   ► And they're available just about anywhere you could want them.

01:11:54 ◼   ► You can get them at the iBook store.

01:11:55 ◼   ► You can buy them directly from Amazon at the Kindle store.

01:11:58 ◼   ► You can get them from Macworld if you want.

01:12:03 ◼   ► Who writes for Macworld?

01:12:04 ◼   ► We've got Chris Breen, Dan Frakes, Lex Friedman, of course Jason Snell.

01:12:10 ◼   ► I don't even know.

01:12:11 ◼   ► Does he even work anymore?

01:12:12 ◼   ► like a new job as the IDC whatever, director of whatever.

01:12:16 ◼   ► You're the vice president.

01:12:17 ◼   ► Don't forget Dan Morin.

01:12:18 ◼   ► I was going to forget Dan Morin on purpose and you blew it.

01:12:23 ◼   ► And of course Serenity Caldwell who I think not only writes for them but she also does

01:12:28 ◼   ► a lot of the production work on putting these ebooks together.

01:12:32 ◼   ► And so their newest one, no surprise, and ties right in with having Syracuse on the

01:12:38 ◼   ► show it's their total mountain lion five bucks five dollars that's all it costs

01:12:44 ◼   ► and you get all the detailed information everything Macworld knows about

01:12:48 ◼   ► mountain lion all the new features and for six bucks you just throw one buck

01:12:53 ◼   ► more you can even get a bundle and it contains DRM free ePub and Kindle files

01:12:58 ◼   ► and a PDF version you get it all DRM free other books in the Macworld

01:13:04 ◼   ► Super Guide series you might be interested in Mac gems second edition for bucks

01:13:08 ◼   ► Master iPhone photography I had that you know what I should read that one three bucks three bucks

01:13:15 ◼   ► And it's all everything you want to know about the iPhone camera and photography

01:13:19 ◼   ► They got the I've iPad Super Guide ten bucks the URL. It's macworld.com

01:13:25 ◼   ► super guides

01:13:28 ◼   ► Go get them. They're great books. I've read a bunch. I've gone through the

01:13:33 ◼   ► the Mountain Lion one and I've learned new things. I can't imagine that anybody

01:13:37 ◼   ► wouldn't except maybe maybe John. macworld.com/superguides. So your

01:13:44 ◼   ► your your your Mountain Lion review is out. Yeah. And I know I know you've

01:13:49 ◼   ► covered it extensively on Hypercord. We don't have to go through it. Yeah I'm gonna talk

01:13:53 ◼   ► about it more this week. I can't be the only I love it and I wrote this when I

01:13:59 ◼   ► linked to it as I know that for a lot of us we look forward to release day of

01:14:02 ◼   ► of Mac OS X versions as much for--

01:14:07 ◼   ► and as the time goes on, too, because I get access

01:14:09 ◼   ► to the seeds now, I have developer accounts.

01:14:11 ◼   ► So I kind of know the software.

01:14:13 ◼   ► I'm not like a Joe user who needs to go to the Apple Store

01:14:15 ◼   ► and buy it and install it.

01:14:17 ◼   ► I kind of know it.

01:14:17 ◼   ► It's like the thing I have to look forward to is your review.

01:14:20 ◼   ► Well, the good thing about the review

01:14:22 ◼   ► is it won't screw up your computer

01:14:24 ◼   ► and make your Skype break and do other things.

01:14:26 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:14:27 ◼   ► It's risk-free.

01:14:28 ◼   ► You just read it.

01:14:29 ◼   ► And the other thing about it is that with these releases,

01:14:31 ◼   ► is like, you know, the initial mountain lion reel was a surprise because we didn't know

01:14:35 ◼   ► they were going to yearly release cycle and it just seemed to come out of nowhere. But

01:14:38 ◼   ► they paraded that OS around so much and just showed every possible feature of it. Like

01:14:44 ◼   ► there was nothing held in reserve for the longest time. And if you wanted to know about

01:14:48 ◼   ► this, just from Apple's official keynotes, you felt like you knew the whole operating

01:14:53 ◼   ► system and then forget about like the rumor sites that just would download the seeds and

01:14:55 ◼   ► show you everything. So certainly it's not like, oh boy, I can't wait to see it, read

01:14:59 ◼   ► this review so I could figure out, so I could see what's in this operating system. Because

01:15:02 ◼   ► if you cared, you could have found out. It's all just, you know, okay, so we know what's

01:15:07 ◼   ► there, let's hear some people's opinions about it. And that's why I think people read, not

01:15:11 ◼   ► just my review, but any review you want to hear. All right, we know about all these features,

01:15:14 ◼   ► but let's hear from someone who's used it. Is it good? Is it bad? Does it work the way

01:15:18 ◼   ► they say it should? How does it feel to actually use this thing? Stuff like that.

01:15:21 ◼   ► Do you ever think about doing this for iOS?

01:15:24 ◼   ► I get so tired thinking about just doing it for like, during the WWC keynote, when they

01:15:30 ◼   ► were going through like, you know, they did the Mac section, they did the iOS section,

01:15:34 ◼   ► and during the iOS section, I was like, "Oh, thank God I'm not running a review of iOS,"

01:15:37 ◼   ► because I'm not gonna say that I like the Mac better, but that's like where my history

01:15:41 ◼   ► is.

01:15:42 ◼   ► Like the Mac is my first love, and I have this deep background and context to speak

01:15:46 ◼   ► about iOS, whereas the number of people who have been using, not iOS, Mac, the Mac operating

01:15:52 ◼   ► The number of people who've been using iOS since day one, there's plenty of those people.

01:15:57 ◼   ► But how many people are still around who've been using the Mac since day one and have

01:16:00 ◼   ► all that history behind it and can talk about it?

01:16:03 ◼   ► And really, the other thing about it is so much of my Mac OS X reviews have become tangentially

01:16:10 ◼   ► about or indirectly about iOS anyway.

01:16:13 ◼   ► It's like I get to comment on iOS even though I'm not writing a review of it.

01:16:16 ◼   ► But really it just comes down to, you know, if this was my full-time job, sure, maybe

01:16:21 ◼   ► I'd do an iOS review, but it's not and these Mac ones almost kill me as it is.

01:16:27 ◼   ► From a practical standpoint, I don't even know if it would work out.

01:16:29 ◼   ► I mean, I know.

01:16:30 ◼   ► I mean, nobody really knows how much work you put into it other than you, but that is

01:16:34 ◼   ► one of the things, too, with you having the podcast now with having Hypercritical where

01:16:38 ◼   ► you do comment on it as you're going.

01:16:40 ◼   ► Like for the last several months, it's been one of the recurring bits up front is how's

01:16:44 ◼   ► the review going and you give some background on it and you get an even greater sense of

01:16:48 ◼   ► how much work it is to do this.

01:16:53 ◼   ► Not just the writing, but the fact that you've pointed out that you've always copiously illustrated

01:16:59 ◼   ► the reviews with screenshots and that it's really, really hard to get good screenshots.

01:17:06 ◼   ► You've pointed out just stupid things like if you're going to take screenshots of the

01:17:10 ◼   ► contacts app, you've got to make sure you've got a set of dummy contacts set up so you're

01:17:14 ◼   ► not putting your mom's address there, which would let you get hacked in addition to violating

01:17:21 ◼   ► your mom's privacy. And then when Apple changes the color of the leather in the address book

01:17:28 ◼   ► theme that the contacts app uses, now you've got to retake the screenshots.

01:17:34 ◼   ► Yeah, the worst part about it is that it's loaded all on the back end where no matter

01:17:41 ◼   ► how much preparation you do, you are at the mercy of their releases.

01:17:44 ◼   ► And so there's necessarily going to be this crazy mad scramble for the last build, the

01:17:49 ◼   ► second to last build, leading right up to when they do the release.

01:17:51 ◼   ► And you just can't do that ahead of time.

01:17:53 ◼   ► Like I start preparing like, you know, months and as soon as I know the new cat name practically,

01:17:59 ◼   ► that's where I'm starting.

01:18:00 ◼   ► And like, it's not like your homework where you're like, "I did all my work, reading for

01:18:04 ◼   ► the entire year and the first week of school."

01:18:05 ◼   ► You can't do that.

01:18:06 ◼   ► You're just at the mercy of their release schedule.

01:18:09 ◼   ► And so it just adds a tremendous amount of pressure.

01:18:11 ◼   ► But of course the main problem is that it just takes me forever to do this.

01:18:14 ◼   ► I'm not a fast writer.

01:18:15 ◼   ► I don't know how these guys who write for a living just churn out article after article

01:18:19 ◼   ► every day.

01:18:20 ◼   ► I can't do that.

01:18:21 ◼   ► That's not the way I work.

01:18:22 ◼   ► It's like blood, sweat, and tears.

01:18:26 ◼   ► And it's not because what I'm writing is so difficult or profound.

01:18:29 ◼   ► I couldn't do just a simple five-paragraph summary of an event.

01:18:34 ◼   ► It would still take me forever.

01:18:37 ◼   ► I'm no good at that.

01:18:38 ◼   ► So it really is very painful for me to get this amount of content out and have all of

01:18:44 ◼   ► it be correct and fact checked.

01:18:45 ◼   ► And that's why the day the article goes out, I get crowd-sourced corrections from everybody.

01:18:52 ◼   ► And the beauty of the web is that I can fix those things so that within the first hour

01:18:56 ◼   ► or two, almost everyone has been fixed because they've been found by people where I put the

01:19:00 ◼   ► wrong year on something or put the wrong cat name somewhere.

01:19:03 ◼   ► How long does it take to push the changes to the ebook versions?

01:19:07 ◼   ► That's going to be a show that I do.

01:19:09 ◼   ► This week on Hypercritical, I'm going to talk more about the review, and then next week

01:19:12 ◼   ► I'm going to talk exclusively about the pain of doing those ebooks.

01:19:16 ◼   ► And that is just so terribly painful.

01:19:18 ◼   ► Speaking of Macworld Super Guides, I enlisted the help of my friend Ren, who does the ebooks

01:19:24 ◼   ► over there.

01:19:25 ◼   ► I should have enlisted her help much earlier.

01:19:26 ◼   ► In fact, very early on, months before, I said, "You know what?

01:19:29 ◼   ► I should just pay her as a contractor to make this book for me, because she knows what the

01:19:32 ◼   ► hell she's doing, and I don't."

01:19:33 ◼   ► She really does.

01:19:34 ◼   ► She really does.

01:19:35 ◼   ► I was like, "But you know what?

01:19:37 ◼   ► I should learn how this stuff works anyway.

01:19:39 ◼   ► I should do this on my own."

01:19:41 ◼   ► I'm not going to say there was a mistake because I did learn a lot, but I should have contacted

01:19:46 ◼   ► her sooner.

01:19:47 ◼   ► I did contact some other people I knew who knew stuff about eBooks, but the thing that

01:19:50 ◼   ► she knows is, "Here's what the spec says, and here's how to do this, and here's what

01:19:56 ◼   ► the best practices are, but here's where the bodies are buried on iBooks.

01:19:59 ◼   ► Oh, so you're getting this one particular problem?

01:20:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I had that problem six months ago, and here's what you have to do to fix it."

01:20:05 ◼   ► stuff like that that you won't find in any documentation anywhere, just real-world knowledge.

01:20:10 ◼   ► And so that was a painful learning experience on my part.

01:20:12 ◼   ► But the other part is, if you want to make a correction, it's not like on our sector

01:20:18 ◼   ► where I just go into the CMS update thing, click a button, 30 seconds later it's up on

01:20:23 ◼   ► the web.

01:20:24 ◼   ► It's an ordeal.

01:20:25 ◼   ► So then you got to do this batch thing where you're like, "All right, I don't want to send

01:20:28 ◼   ► an update until I've got..."

01:20:30 ◼   ► You're waiting for them to slow down to a trickle, but all the while you know that there's

01:20:33 ◼   ► egregious double word sitting there in the first three paragraphs that you just wish

01:20:37 ◼   ► you could fix.

01:20:38 ◼   ► You're like, "No, no, no, just wait."

01:20:39 ◼   ► It's like the Mac App Store updates.

01:20:41 ◼   ► You know you've got a bunch of bug fixes, but the longer you wait, then you put it into

01:20:45 ◼   ► review.

01:20:46 ◼   ► As soon as it goes into review, you find some other crashing bug.

01:20:48 ◼   ► You're like, "Goddammit, should I wait?

01:20:49 ◼   ► Should I resubmit?"

01:20:51 ◼   ► That kind of delay just kills you, especially with something like this.

01:20:54 ◼   ► This is weird.

01:20:55 ◼   ► It's not like a novel where...

01:20:58 ◼   ► It's practically news.

01:20:59 ◼   ► It's time-sensitive material, where a week after it's out, no one really cares anymore.

01:21:03 ◼   ► So you really have to strike while the iron's hot.

01:21:05 ◼   ► And that's why through a series of bad things that happened, the various delays in getting

01:21:11 ◼   ► the first ebook up on Amazon and then doing updates to it just was very painful.

01:21:15 ◼   ► Right.

01:21:16 ◼   ► And it's sort of like with just shipping apps, where shipping apps used to be really required

01:21:22 ◼   ► in a tremendous amount of attention and QA and focus.

01:21:27 ◼   ► And the stakes were really high because when you said go, there was like a guy at a factory

01:21:32 ◼   ► who was pressing CDs or before that was making floppy disks and

01:21:36 ◼   ► you've got boxes and boxes of these things that take time to stamp and

01:21:42 ◼   ► store and a ship and it costs money to ship them and

01:21:46 ◼   ► Now you want to do an update you want to do a 4.1 update and you're gonna have to do all these

01:21:51 ◼   ► You know

01:21:51 ◼   ► You really do want to queue these things up so that you get as much you when you draw that line

01:21:56 ◼   ► It's in there and then you know digital distribution nobody, you know, it's not like like well, there's Firefox

01:22:02 ◼   ► I guess who ships an update every day, but most app developers, you know shipping stuff over the web

01:22:07 ◼   ► We aren't doing like daily updates to their software

01:22:09 ◼   ► But as soon as they feel like you know what this is better for customers right now

01:22:13 ◼   ► Then then what they had before it led to do a production build and get it out in a web

01:22:18 ◼   ► You just did it without really thinking about it that much but the App Store is sort of taking things back the other way

01:22:24 ◼   ► we're exactly like you said like you kind of want to

01:22:28 ◼   ► You don't want to get a submission in there and then find another bug tomorrow

01:22:32 ◼   ► Because then you're gonna have to start the whole thing all over again. You're back at the end of the line

01:22:37 ◼   ► You'll never actually release anything

01:22:38 ◼   ► So you just have to pick these arbitrary and breaking points to and then and then endure the unknown delay

01:22:43 ◼   ► That comes along with that

01:22:46 ◼   ► It's like going to the bank to deposit your money and every time you get almost up to the teller you get a phone call

01:22:51 ◼   ► That says hey, we've got another check come hurry up

01:22:53 ◼   ► Get out of the bank come pick it up and go get back in them get in the back of the line only instead of checks

01:22:57 ◼   ► It's it's typos right exactly yeah, and again like with with a book or something where you've got lead time

01:23:03 ◼   ► Then just give yourself three weeks to copy edit

01:23:05 ◼   ► It just like crowdsource that you know do do you know you can't but you can't do that with news because

01:23:09 ◼   ► Right up to the last second information is being at like you know

01:23:12 ◼   ► I had my call with Apple three days before the release like you know

01:23:15 ◼   ► It's not a lot of time to spare there - you know I added I added the entire Facebook section in like the last two days

01:23:21 ◼   ► Just because you know after talking to Apple

01:23:24 ◼   ► They they felt like they wanted to promote it and they gave me some good information on so I'm like yeah

01:23:27 ◼   ► I'll add that in.

01:23:30 ◼   ► It's a difference between the Macworld website and the Macworld magazine.

01:23:33 ◼   ► The Macworld magazine's got to be laid out, written up, copy-edited, and just going through

01:23:38 ◼   ► the whole printing process and mailed out to people.

01:23:41 ◼   ► That's very different than the Macworld website.

01:23:42 ◼   ► The Macworld website can say, "Oh, there's an earnings call.

01:23:46 ◼   ► We were on the earnings call.

01:23:47 ◼   ► We transcribed it.

01:23:48 ◼   ► Here's our summary of it."

01:23:49 ◼   ► They can do that that day when people want to read about it.

01:23:50 ◼   ► But there's not going to be a story in Macworld magazine with a transcript of the earnings

01:23:54 ◼   ► call because it's all news by then.

01:23:56 ◼   ► So it's just two different contexts.

01:24:00 ◼   ► I guess what I wish-- and like I said, in theory,

01:24:02 ◼   ► I wish that you did the same thing for iOS

01:24:04 ◼   ► that you do for Mac OS X, just because I'm selfish

01:24:06 ◼   ► and I enjoy it so much and it would be good.

01:24:09 ◼   ► But I would settle for somebody else doing it.

01:24:11 ◼   ► But now I had this thought before we did the show

01:24:13 ◼   ► that I was going to say that.

01:24:14 ◼   ► And then I thought, you know what?

01:24:15 ◼   ► The obvious answer is that I should be the one to do it,

01:24:18 ◼   ► because I've got all the time in the world.

01:24:20 ◼   ► That sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it?

01:24:22 ◼   ► It does sound like a lot of work.

01:24:23 ◼   ► You haven't done one of those in a while where

01:24:24 ◼   ► you do screenshots and stuff?

01:24:25 ◼   ► You used to do that more, but you'd have maybe seven screenshots.

01:24:30 ◼   ► And even just the minimal number of screenshots, the most screenshots I've ever included in

01:24:35 ◼   ► an article, still, to me, it's a pain in the ass.

01:24:37 ◼   ► Yeah, because each screenshot is a pain.

01:24:39 ◼   ► Anybody out there who's never done that, never written up an article where you'd really illustrate

01:24:43 ◼   ► it with screenshots that you intend for lots and lots of people to see, and so you want

01:24:48 ◼   ► them to look their best at you, it's really, really hard.

01:24:51 ◼   ► Especially where you're doing stuff like a couple of ones you've had about text selection

01:24:54 ◼   ► or like what UI elements, and you're trying to arrange the screenshot just so where you're

01:24:57 ◼   ► holding down the mouse cursor and you have the selection going or a context menu is up

01:25:01 ◼   ► and you got to screenshot it at the same time.

01:25:03 ◼   ► Right.

01:25:04 ◼   ► And you do end up thinking about things.

01:25:05 ◼   ► Once you're paying attention to the details, like where is the blinking eye beam cursor

01:25:08 ◼   ► going to be?

01:25:09 ◼   ► Is it on or off?

01:25:11 ◼   ► Do you want it in there?

01:25:12 ◼   ► And if you do, whichever one you want, it still is hard to time, you know, all sorts

01:25:17 ◼   ► of things like that.

01:25:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:25:19 ◼   ► And then when you take it again, you want to take it again because it was mistaken the

01:25:22 ◼   ► the first one, but now you've got to frame it the same way.

01:25:24 ◼   ► Yeah, and you've got the desktop background that's there, and with all the transparent

01:25:28 ◼   ► shadows it's so difficult to, like, if you miss something, you can't really erase it

01:25:31 ◼   ► because everything is transparent, including, like, the little edge of the windows.

01:25:34 ◼   ► So that takes it out of you, and, like, multiply that by 150.

01:25:38 ◼   ► I can only imagine doing it on iOS.

01:25:39 ◼   ► I'd be, you know, hammering on the little, you know, home button, power button screenshot

01:25:43 ◼   ► combo constantly, and then filling up my camera roll with all these iOS screenshots.

01:25:48 ◼   ► And then they'd all be at 2x on the big device, and I've got to figure out how to display

01:25:51 ◼   ► That was another thing that was new this year, which is like, all right, about a quarter of the way through

01:25:56 ◼   ► I realized, you know what? I should be doing all these screenshots in a retina resolution.

01:25:59 ◼   ► I don't know why I didn't think about that from the beginning, but I didn't.

01:26:03 ◼   ► But then, you know, I guess it was probably because I, you know, the retina macro pro didn't come out until

01:26:07 ◼   ► WWDC, so it just wasn't on my mind. I was like, yeah, people, I'm writing about the Mac,

01:26:13 ◼   ► I assume people read it on the Mac, I don't need to do 2x screenshots. Plus, I don't have a retina screen,

01:26:17 ◼   ► so I have to do that, you know, high DPI mode where I'm looking at this tiny little

01:26:20 ◼   ► Thing that's not even my screen is not even big enough to hold like the system preferences window and high DPI

01:26:25 ◼   ► All right, it's very difficult to arrange screenshot all of a sudden. It's in mr. Magoo mode

01:26:28 ◼   ► Yeah, and like I can't sometimes you can't even get the whole window on the screen all right

01:26:32 ◼   ► But then the file yeah, so I started taking my screenshots in high DPI where I run into all these problems

01:26:38 ◼   ► But I'm like you know what how do I even display these on the RSC ms?

01:26:41 ◼   ► Because you got to do that you know one of the 17 techniques you can use to show retin images to the right people

01:26:45 ◼   ► but not have everybody download them because it makes the pages too big and all that stuff and

01:26:50 ◼   ► And the RCMS just wasn't ready for it because it was a new type of thing.

01:26:53 ◼   ► I figured out how to get it done on the ebooks, but only for two images.

01:26:57 ◼   ► One was the actual retina screenshot, which shows up as retina resolution on your Kindle,

01:27:02 ◼   ► if you read the Kindle book on your Mac, or on the iOS device, or in iBooks.

01:27:09 ◼   ► And I did that for one image and it almost killed me because I had to try the 8,000 different

01:27:12 ◼   ► techniques to get it to work. And I also did my author picture in the back for retina resolution.

01:27:18 ◼   ► And that was enough, right?

01:27:21 ◼   ► Because there's no easy way for you to do it.

01:27:23 ◼   ► Every way is a hack, because you've

01:27:25 ◼   ► got to use these bogus CSS selectors to exclude

01:27:29 ◼   ► the old Kindle readers.

01:27:30 ◼   ► And it's a nightmare, right?

01:27:32 ◼   ► So I can only imagine doing that for every single image

01:27:35 ◼   ► would have required a much more robust solution than I had.

01:27:40 ◼   ► But maybe next year, will I have a retina Mac?

01:27:44 ◼   ► By next year, will the RCMS natively

01:27:46 ◼   ► support red in the images where I can upload a 1x and 2x and it'll serve the right one.

01:27:50 ◼   ► I mean if you go to one of the image URLs in my review and you shove the @2x into the

01:27:56 ◼   ► file name in the right place and load that image URL, a lot of them you'll get a 2x version

01:27:59 ◼   ► but you just won't see them on the website.

01:28:03 ◼   ► I mean you've been doing that on Daring Fireball, you've been trying to make the retina version

01:28:07 ◼   ► of your favicon and stuff.

01:28:08 ◼   ► Oh my god, I spent a whole day on that.

01:28:11 ◼   ► Right, and that's one image the size of your pinky nail.

01:28:14 ◼   ► 16 pixels 16 points. Yeah, so that's a particularly annoying one

01:28:19 ◼   ► But like even just like you know

01:28:20 ◼   ► The your logo at the top and stuff like that you have to come up you have to kind of decide on the technique and the

01:28:25 ◼   ► browsers haven't really settled on if they're using image with source setter I

01:28:29 ◼   ► Do the lazy thing with the logo I do I did that. I actually did this a while back with the logo

01:28:34 ◼   ► I did it. I think when the iPhone 4 shipped, but I just made it 2x and maybe it's even 3x

01:28:41 ◼   ► I don't remember but I might have made it even bigger

01:28:43 ◼   ► But I made it like twice as big and I just sized it with the image tag and just said, you know

01:28:48 ◼   ► it's if it's 400 if it's really 400 pixels and then in the image tag, it says 200 and

01:28:54 ◼   ► And that does the right thing

01:28:58 ◼   ► Yeah, just to show you what it means though

01:29:00 ◼   ► But it doesn't mean though that inefficiently

01:29:02 ◼   ► Everybody gets the big version whether whether you're on a machine that that can has a retina display or not

01:29:08 ◼   ► You're not it's not like you're running the verge and I don't have an image heavy site

01:29:11 ◼   ► So just doing that one image is probably not a big deal, but just to show you how crazy the the iBooks

01:29:16 ◼   ► or the ebook version of the world is the

01:29:19 ◼   ► The advice for doing images and iBooks is not to put width and height

01:29:24 ◼   ► in your image tags at all hmm and

01:29:27 ◼   ► Like when you have screenshots you're like, but no seriously

01:29:32 ◼   ► I really want this thing to be displayed in its native pixels because I'm trying to show this is what it looks like on your

01:29:37 ◼   ► screen and even when you have a retina version that you want to tell them some measurements

01:29:41 ◼   ► so it doesn't just say oh we're just gonna take this image and stretch it to the full

01:29:44 ◼   ► width of the current viewing device or book like no don't do that please don't stretch

01:29:49 ◼   ► it for me like because that's the big thing about my screenshots that's why I was so happy

01:29:52 ◼   ► when I could finally start using pings is you want to know what like the new doc looks

01:29:55 ◼   ► like I'm going to show you an exact pixel accurate representation of the new doc no

01:29:59 ◼   ► jpeg compression no gif 256 color things here's the actual pixels and if I can't even tell

01:30:05 ◼   ► you what width it is and you're just gonna take it and stretch it to the full width of

01:30:07 ◼   ► the reader and I don't know what width that is?

01:30:10 ◼   ► It just pains me.

01:30:11 ◼   ► It's like that's not... obviously ebooks are not meant for operating system reviews with

01:30:15 ◼   ► pixel art in them.

01:30:16 ◼   ► But that's what I'm making, so it's a real mismatch there.

01:30:20 ◼   ► The web is a little bit better, at least the web, they do want you to write the size in

01:30:24 ◼   ► points or whatever and then show the 1x or the 2x version, but if your stuff was just

01:30:28 ◼   ► arbitrarily scaled, that's very sad.

01:30:32 ◼   ► Yeah, that's it's funny.

01:30:35 ◼   ► I think that's not happening to you.

01:30:39 ◼   ► No, definitely not.

01:30:41 ◼   ► No.

01:30:42 ◼   ► The other thing too, and I think like, and it didn't occur to me until years in.

01:30:46 ◼   ► It occurred, this isn't the first year where I thought I wish that John or somebody were

01:30:51 ◼   ► doing what, you know, to iOS releases, you know, this copious documentation, opinionated

01:30:58 ◼   ► documentation, like telling a decade long story of the evolution.

01:31:02 ◼   ► that's really what it is. I mean, that's the thing that really makes the reviews,

01:31:05 ◼   ► your reviews celebrated is it's each one in and of itself does stand by itself

01:31:10 ◼   ► and you can just read it and as if you're just got on board with the Mac now

01:31:14 ◼   ► and don't care about what happened before you can just read it and learn

01:31:18 ◼   ► something and get you know appreciate your take on it but it's a it's a piece

01:31:24 ◼   ► of a greater single work which is the whole all of them together back-to-back

01:31:29 ◼   ► telling this like 10 11 12 year old story at this point I guess it's like 12

01:31:33 ◼   ► years 13 is it 99 was the first DP - because that's part then that's the

01:31:39 ◼   ► genius is that you somehow had the foresight at the beginning to say I'm

01:31:43 ◼   ► gonna start writing these articles I don't know if you had the idea at the

01:31:46 ◼   ► beginning that you'll do it for everyone going forward but you had the idea right

01:31:51 ◼   ► at the beginning two years before it ever even hit the consumers I mean did

01:31:58 ◼   ► Did you get, is the first one you wrote the first release?

01:32:01 ◼   ► There was Developer Preview 1, which I don't even know if I ever even ran that, but I wasn't

01:32:08 ◼   ► writing for ours at all.

01:32:09 ◼   ► The first thing I wrote for ours was a review of the book Infinite Loop, which is still

01:32:13 ◼   ► a pretty good book about early Apple history.

01:32:16 ◼   ► That was the first thing I wrote.

01:32:17 ◼   ► That was in 1999.

01:32:19 ◼   ► And then the next thing I said, "Hey, you know, there's the Developer Preview 2 of this

01:32:25 ◼   ► thing called Mac OS X coming out, which is supposed to be Apple's next generation operating

01:32:28 ◼   ► system strategy.

01:32:29 ◼   ► Ha ha, yeah, the number five in the series, collect them all.

01:32:33 ◼   ► But I think it's kind of interesting.

01:32:34 ◼   ► Why don't I write something about that?

01:32:37 ◼   ► And if you asked, did I think I would be still doing it 13 years later?

01:32:40 ◼   ► I didn't think Apple would be in business 13 years later.

01:32:43 ◼   ► This was not, I guess, 1999, it's pre-iPod, right?

01:32:49 ◼   ► It's post-iMac, so there's a glimmer of hope, and Steve Jobs is back.

01:32:53 ◼   ► But there have been so many next generation operating system strategies and so much sadness.

01:32:57 ◼   ► And then this new thing they were doing, the main reason I wanted to write about it, because

01:33:00 ◼   ► this new thing they were doing seemed so un-Mac-like.

01:33:02 ◼   ► Like BOS, I was all on board with that.

01:33:05 ◼   ► That it was kind of the sum of the same guys, it was Gase, it looked like, yeah, that's

01:33:11 ◼   ► what we think the next generation of the Mac should look like.

01:33:13 ◼   ► But then they bought Next, and you're like, I know Next.

01:33:15 ◼   ► But Next is like, that's not Mac-like.

01:33:18 ◼   ► And it was just weird to me.

01:33:19 ◼   ► And so it seemed like, but it also had a crossover with Unix, which I was heavily into, and I'm

01:33:25 ◼   ► like, well, this could be interesting, but it's definitely weird.

01:33:27 ◼   ► It seemed like something Mac users should know about, because I didn't think anyone

01:33:29 ◼   ► was paying attention.

01:33:30 ◼   ► I'm like, hey guys, look what's going on over here.

01:33:32 ◼   ► They're taking like Next Step and trying to make, you know, putting some weird Mac graphics

01:33:36 ◼   ► on it, but it still looks all weird.

01:33:37 ◼   ► Remember, this is pre-Aqua, right?

01:33:39 ◼   ► So no one knew what the hell this was gonna be.

01:33:40 ◼   ► It looked like a Platinum OS laid on top of Next Step with this weird, badly behaving

01:33:45 ◼   ► thing and none of your Mac apps ran right and it was just, it seemed like something

01:33:51 ◼   ► that people needed to know about it.

01:33:52 ◼   ► And even when I wrote about it, I was amazed that people said, "Wow, I didn't even know

01:33:56 ◼   ► they were doing this."

01:33:57 ◼   ► It's like, people weren't following Apple like they are now.

01:33:58 ◼   ► Nobody was following them.

01:33:59 ◼   ► No one was like looking at every WWC keynote.

01:34:02 ◼   ► They announced this at WWC, they said, "We're doing this thing called Mac."

01:34:05 ◼   ► First they were doing Rhapsody and that kind of fizzled, which was based on similar technology.

01:34:09 ◼   ► And then, "Oh, actually we're doing this thing called Mac OS X and we're going to have enhanced

01:34:12 ◼   ► QuickDraw."

01:34:13 ◼   ► And everyone was like, "Yeah, yeah."

01:34:14 ◼   ► Like people weren't following it.

01:34:15 ◼   ► So I was the only person on the web writing about this at all, you know, because who else

01:34:18 ◼   ► was even paying attention?

01:34:19 ◼   ► So Rhapsody was a much more easily understood story where long story short, the pitch on

01:34:26 ◼   ► Rhapsody was, okay, forget the Mac OS, just forget it.

01:34:29 ◼   ► That's old.

01:34:30 ◼   ► And it was running the country on the ground.

01:34:33 ◼   ► Now you've got this new thing from next.

01:34:35 ◼   ► We called it next step.

01:34:36 ◼   ► We'll just give it a new name now because the name never really, you know, we'll get

01:34:40 ◼   ► rid of the next name over.

01:34:41 ◼   ► Just call it Rhapsody.

01:34:42 ◼   ► make it look better and you're gonna we're gonna replace in your next computer will be running

01:34:47 ◼   ► the next version of what was next step more or less and then there would be like a you know

01:34:53 ◼   ► a compatibility layer where you could run mac apps in a classic thing and it just didn't fly

01:35:00 ◼   ► it just didn't fly at all because apple just didn't have the the they weren't in a position

01:35:08 ◼   ► of leverage over third-party developers they were at the other end of it where like they announced

01:35:12 ◼   ► this thing at WWDC and that everybody at WWDC was like, "Nope, we're not going to support

01:35:17 ◼   ► that." And instead of, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, good luck, you're going to be doing it," it

01:35:23 ◼   ► was actually at that point in '97 when people like Adobe and Microsoft were like, "Well,

01:35:28 ◼   ► we're not rewriting our apps for that." That meant that's not going to fly. And that was

01:35:33 ◼   ► it. Effectively, I would even go so far as to argue that at that point, Adobe probably

01:35:39 ◼   ► single-handedly had the ability to shit-can it.

01:35:43 ◼   ► If Adobe said-- well, Adobe combined with Microsoft.

01:35:47 ◼   ► That if Adobe-- if Office-- and it wasn't called the CS suite

01:35:51 ◼   ► yet, but Adobe's professional graphic design tools,

01:35:55 ◼   ► Photoshop and Illustrator and the other ones like that.

01:36:01 ◼   ► If they weren't going to run on it, then it wasn't going to fly.

01:36:04 ◼   ► Because Apple financially depended upon--

01:36:07 ◼   ► I mean almost completely people who were buying Macs to run Adobe software and/or off Microsoft

01:36:15 ◼   ► Office.

01:36:16 ◼   ► John: Yeah, at that point there was nobody who cared as much about Apple's thing business

01:36:20 ◼   ► as Apple did.

01:36:21 ◼   ► Like no one's business was dependent on them.

01:36:22 ◼   ► Even Adobe, most of their sales had gone to Windows, Microsoft.

01:36:25 ◼   ► I mean Bill Gates famously said about Next Step before it was acquired by Apple, "Are

01:36:29 ◼   ► you going to develop for the next computer?

01:36:31 ◼   ► Develop for it?

01:36:32 ◼   ► I'll piss on it."

01:36:33 ◼   ► That's one of the better Bill Gates quotes.

01:36:37 ◼   ► No one wants to rewrite their apps for a new platform unless their business is so incredibly

01:36:40 ◼   ► tied to yours, like, "Oh my God, all of our customers are on Macs, and if this is where

01:36:44 ◼   ► the Apple operating system is going, that's where all of our customers are going to get,

01:36:47 ◼   ► and we need to port our application to that."

01:36:50 ◼   ► Nobody was in that position.

01:36:51 ◼   ► Important guys or little guys, you know?

01:36:52 ◼   ► And you know, I can see, I actually don't even blame...

01:36:55 ◼   ► At the time, I thought it was cute, and I wasn't really on board with the whole next

01:36:58 ◼   ► thing.

01:36:59 ◼   ► I mean, you know, I saw it as arrogant, I think, more at the time.

01:37:03 ◼   ► Foolishly arrogant.

01:37:04 ◼   ► I can kind of see in hindsight where they were coming from,

01:37:07 ◼   ► where it surely would have been a lot easier,

01:37:10 ◼   ► and it would have shipped a lot sooner,

01:37:11 ◼   ► if, let's say, Adobe and Microsoft had said,

01:37:14 ◼   ► you know what, this does look good.

01:37:16 ◼   ► And we've always been a little intrigued by the whole,

01:37:20 ◼   ► you know, what everybody now calls cocoa,

01:37:23 ◼   ► you know, this whole development thing,

01:37:25 ◼   ► and it looks pretty good, does look fast,

01:37:26 ◼   ► but we couldn't get on board before

01:37:28 ◼   ► because the next user base was so small.

01:37:30 ◼   ► But now that you're bringing this

01:37:31 ◼   ► to the tens of millions of devoted Mac users,

01:37:34 ◼   ► this does look good, we're happy to do this,

01:37:37 ◼   ► let's help us, let's all work together

01:37:39 ◼   ► and make Coco Photoshop in 1997.

01:37:41 ◼   ► That it would have been a lot easier for Apple

01:37:45 ◼   ► and it would have been a simpler system

01:37:47 ◼   ► and it would have been a smaller,

01:37:50 ◼   ► effectively it would have been a lot like what we think

01:37:52 ◼   ► of what iOS has turned out to be.

01:37:55 ◼   ► - But it kind of turned out to be a blessing though

01:37:57 ◼   ► because it wasn't ready.

01:37:59 ◼   ► It was not ready for people to use it.

01:38:01 ◼   ► It was slow, all the APIs we take for granted

01:38:03 ◼   ► not there, didn't exist at all.

01:38:06 ◼   ► The quartz display layer was just dog slow.

01:38:09 ◼   ► There was no core data, no core animation, no core, but none of the core APIs really

01:38:13 ◼   ► existed.

01:38:14 ◼   ► I guess it was core audio maybe back then.

01:38:17 ◼   ► Everything was just in shambles there.

01:38:18 ◼   ► They built bundled applications where ugly ports of their next versions.

01:38:23 ◼   ► If you had tried to bring Microsoft Office to Rhapsody, it would have been like Word

01:38:30 ◼   ► 6.0.

01:38:31 ◼   ► It would have been like a disaster.

01:38:32 ◼   ► They just weren't ready.

01:38:34 ◼   ► And so this more gradual transition where they had to go back to the drawing board and

01:38:38 ◼   ► they had carbon, carbon was super important to not just the success of the operating system,

01:38:43 ◼   ► but just to making it pleasant for people.

01:38:45 ◼   ► I mean, IE5 for Mac OS X was a carbon application, right?

01:38:49 ◼   ► And it was omniweb and everything, but you needed IE to do your quote unquote "real web

01:38:55 ◼   ► browsing" because who the heck is going to use omniweb and things didn't quite look right.

01:38:58 ◼   ► all these these carbon apps, you needed them not just because that's how you got developers on

01:39:03 ◼   ► board, but because those were the apps people knew and loved. And even if they could port them

01:39:08 ◼   ► overnight, it wouldn't be the same, like, it just wasn't ready. Right? No, and, you know, and I do

01:39:14 ◼   ► think that that in the long term, you could see it as a blessing in disguise. And maybe, you know,

01:39:18 ◼   ► because effectively, they did eventually get what they wanted, but with iOS, I think, but I think it

01:39:23 ◼   ► was a lot better off. And maybe, you know, it was so much better off, because all of those other

01:39:28 ◼   ► technologies were ready by 2007 when I was shipped. And they could do things like have

01:39:35 ◼   ► really, really fast, fluid scrolling and response times.

01:39:40 ◼   ► Yeah, they got, they basically they took this this operating system that was slow bloated

01:39:44 ◼   ► piece of crap in 1999. And they got it so it's fast enough and tight enough that it

01:39:49 ◼   ► runs on a phone. And that's that's a quite a quite a transition.

01:39:52 ◼   ► Alright, let me do the second sponsor and then we'll wrap up.

01:39:58 ◼   ► Our second sponsor is IdeaBucket.

01:40:02 ◼   ► IdeaBucket is an iOS app.

01:40:05 ◼   ► It used to be an iPad app.

01:40:06 ◼   ► The new version, I think it's out today, is universal for iPad and iPhone.

01:40:13 ◼   ► And it's an app for helping you make decisions.

01:40:17 ◼   ► Really, really cool UI, really, really neat idea.

01:40:21 ◼   ► The idea is you could use this for something like picking your next job, choosing which

01:40:27 ◼   ► TV to buy, picking a name for a pet or even like name for your next child, choosing where

01:40:33 ◼   ► to go to vacation, anything like that where you have a whole bunch of choices to make.

01:40:38 ◼   ► And so the flow is simple.

01:40:39 ◼   ► It's a simple orderly thing.

01:40:41 ◼   ► You create a bucket for a decision you have to make and you add all of your ideas.

01:40:47 ◼   ► then you create criteria to rank these ideas and you rate them.

01:40:51 ◼   ► So you create a criteria and you can say which end of it is bad, which is good, like for

01:40:56 ◼   ► a vacation place you could say temperature, whether a thing is too hot or too cold, a

01:41:01 ◼   ► place is too hot or too cold for the time you're taking a vacation.

01:41:06 ◼   ► And then you rank these criteria, which criteria are more important for you.

01:41:11 ◼   ► Once you've set that up, you can create custom reports based on the weight of the criteria

01:41:16 ◼   ► and the rankings that you've applied to each of these criteria for each of the choices

01:41:20 ◼   ► in your decision, and you get these custom sliders to let you adjust them.

01:41:26 ◼   ► And then you see your results with three different reports.

01:41:28 ◼   ► The first is an overall highlight of your results displayed on a cool sort of slanty

01:41:33 ◼   ► line thing.

01:41:35 ◼   ► You kind of have to see it to understand it, but it's really, really cool.

01:41:37 ◼   ► If you see the movie on their web page, you'll see exactly what I mean.

01:41:43 ◼   ► The second is sort of a straightforward bar chart that ranks them, and the third is the

01:41:47 ◼   ► most powerful.

01:41:48 ◼   ► It lets you view a sort of scatter chart based on two selectable criteria at a time.

01:41:54 ◼   ► So anytime you want to make a decision, this is a great app to fire up and do it.

01:41:59 ◼   ► I have not seen any other app that tries to solve this exact same problem.

01:42:03 ◼   ► Really, really cool.

01:42:06 ◼   ► They just launched the Universal today, like I said.

01:42:08 ◼   ► It's in the App Store for the iPhone and the iPad and for a very limited time it's only

01:42:13 ◼   ► 99 cents.

01:42:15 ◼   ► One buck.

01:42:16 ◼   ► So if you want to support the show, you want to support cool apps for the iPhone and iPad,

01:42:20 ◼   ► 99 cents.

01:42:21 ◼   ► Go get IdeaBucket.

01:42:23 ◼   ► You can find out more at ideabucket.me.

01:42:27 ◼   ► It's a .me domain.

01:42:29 ◼   ► IdeaBucket.me and you can find it in the App Store for 99 cents.

01:42:34 ◼   ► That's it.

01:42:35 ◼   ► One buck.

01:42:36 ◼   ► Great app.

01:42:37 ◼   ► So the thing I've gone back to the why doesn't why isn't there someone doing

01:42:42 ◼   ► what you do with Mac OS 10 reviews with iOS the other thing that occurs to me is

01:42:45 ◼   ► that it wasn't so clear at the beginning that iOS was an OS I mean we knew it I

01:42:50 ◼   ► knew it was I mean I'm technically savvy enough you know that I know that there's

01:42:53 ◼   ► a different OS I know it wasn't OS 10 it was this other thing that was an offshoot

01:42:57 ◼   ► based on similar technologies but I didn't really think of it as an OS like

01:43:02 ◼   ► in the abstract way that Mac OS 10 has always clearly been an OS where it was

01:43:06 ◼   ► this software that you could buy on a disk. It was on a disk. It was pure software. And

01:43:12 ◼   ► that in theory, Apple could have, you know, and for years and years and years, people

01:43:17 ◼   ► used to tell them they should do it. They could make it a version that ran on any PC.

01:43:21 ◼   ► And you could just go to a store and buy this Mac OS 10 and have a version that you could

01:43:26 ◼   ► put in a Dell shitbox and install it. It's an OS. It's a software that runs a computer.

01:43:34 ◼   ► You know, and even the early DP reviews, it was very clear that it was abstracted from

01:43:39 ◼   ► the computers it ran on.

01:43:40 ◼   ► Because you never, you didn't buy computers that ran Rhapsody Developer Preview 2.

01:43:45 ◼   ► You bought computers that came with Mac OS 9, and then you would get this disk from ADC

01:43:50 ◼   ► and put it in and install it.

01:43:52 ◼   ► It was clearly an OS.

01:43:53 ◼   ► Whereas like circa 2007, it was like the iPhone that we were writing about.

01:43:59 ◼   ► And we sort of, at least I did, I just sort of took it as a whole.

01:44:03 ◼   ► You know like everything I wrote about the iOS wasn't or about iOS was really in the context of writing about the iPhone

01:44:10 ◼   ► Remember where they call the updates it was a firmware update. I do remember that I do

01:44:14 ◼   ► 500 megabytes of firmware right and I remember kind of rolling my eye at that and I remember thinking like I

01:44:20 ◼   ► Remember thinking that it was it must have been a curious behind-the-scenes

01:44:23 ◼   ► Discussion as to what to call that

01:44:26 ◼   ► I mean like and I knew that it wasn't really firmware in the sense to call it whatever you want

01:44:31 ◼   ► But it's you know it's an OS update

01:44:33 ◼   ► But it just wouldn't have occurred to me to do that at the beginning well

01:44:38 ◼   ► It didn't become an didn't become an OS in most people's eyes until it accepted third-party applications because then you've got a platform

01:44:43 ◼   ► All right who cares what OS the iPads are on that pics at pixio thing no one cared about that because if you can't write

01:44:49 ◼   ► Apps for it. That's what it's not so much that we thought as pure software

01:44:52 ◼   ► But like once you can write apps for it all now you've got an OS on your hand so as soon as the app store

01:44:57 ◼   ► But all this is an OS you know you're writing an application on an OS

01:45:01 ◼   ► And they had that naming stuff. Oh, that's such a weird

01:45:04 ◼   ► You know iPhone OS makes some sense, but you know, it's gonna be on more than iPhones

01:45:09 ◼   ► I mean it was always an iPod touch right? So why is it called iPhone us? Well, whatever and

01:45:14 ◼   ► There was like for like five minutes. They wanted to call it OS 10

01:45:19 ◼   ► Which would be distinct from Mac OS 10. Do you remember that fine? Yeah, I do remember that. No, I do remember that

01:45:25 ◼   ► I think even wrote about it on during fireball when I was like and this is getting really really confusing because

01:45:30 ◼   ► everybody I know just calls Mac OS X OS X. They already call it that, even if

01:45:36 ◼   ► Apple doesn't officially call it. And then just two years later now Apple

01:45:41 ◼   ► calls Mac OS X OS X, which was the name that for, yeah like you said, for five

01:45:45 ◼   ► minutes they were using to call. It wasn't so much, was it that they were

01:45:50 ◼   ► calling iOS OS X? Yeah, they hadn't come up with iOS yet, it was iPhone OS and

01:45:55 ◼   ► you should look back in the post, but I'm pretty sure it was like they was

01:45:58 ◼   ► distinguishing OS X, which runs on things that aren't Macs, and then there's Mac OS

01:46:03 ◼   ► X, which runs on Macs.

01:46:04 ◼   ► Right.

01:46:05 ◼   ► It was very confusing.

01:46:07 ◼   ► It was like – OS X was like the umbrella term that encompassed iPhone OS and also the

01:46:11 ◼   ► thing that ran on iPod touches.

01:46:12 ◼   ► Right.

01:46:13 ◼   ► That's the way I more saw it.

01:46:14 ◼   ► It was OS X was like – was a parent umbrella technology.

01:46:21 ◼   ► And from OS X came two children, Mac OS X and iPhone OS.

01:46:27 ◼   ► Yeah, it was definitely confusing.

01:46:32 ◼   ► It definitely helped sort of avoid, it helped keep me from thinking about it distinctively

01:46:37 ◼   ► as just an OS.

01:46:40 ◼   ► And there are other little things too that if someone, if I had been trying to do this,

01:46:45 ◼   ► trying to do to iOS what you do to Mac OS X as it goes and write about each release

01:46:52 ◼   ► like mini book length form like what I buy it would I would it have occurred to

01:46:56 ◼   ► me to do a version of it a release for the iPad the original iPad which had

01:47:01 ◼   ► like a really weird version number it was like through a three to two or

01:47:05 ◼   ► something like that yes something like that it was like the original iPad key

01:47:10 ◼   ► I ship with like version 3.2 to of iPhone OS but the iPhone never got 3.2

01:47:15 ◼   ► anything the iPhone was on 3.1 and then the iPhone got 3.3 and the iPad was still

01:47:20 ◼   ► on 3.2.4. And it was, you know, it took them quite a while to get them squared up onto

01:47:28 ◼   ► one release. But, and, you know, technically it was like they kind of temporarily forked

01:47:32 ◼   ► it.

01:47:33 ◼   ► It's like when you used to get like the new Mac hardware in order to come with a special

01:47:36 ◼   ► enabler.

01:47:37 ◼   ► Yes.

01:47:38 ◼   ► Remember the enablers? Just for that piece of hardware, because they just released the

01:47:40 ◼   ► new Mac.

01:47:41 ◼   ► Right. And it would be like, you'd be running like, there's one Mac that can run System

01:47:47 ◼   ► 7.52 enabler B. I forget, it was like enabler something. It was a little thing. But there

01:47:53 ◼   ► was only one Mac in the world that could run it. And at least until the next version of

01:47:58 ◼   ► the OS came out, that Mac could run no other software. If you booted from an external hard

01:48:03 ◼   ► drive that had a generic system 7.52 installed, it wouldn't even get to the Happy Mac.

01:48:13 ◼   ► I think there are people out there who do every kind of review you could imagine for

01:48:20 ◼   ► every operating system. This year was one of the first years that people were putting

01:48:23 ◼   ► out reviews that were actually longer than my reviews. Not by much, but still longer.

01:48:29 ◼   ► That's always bothered me when people... The thing people remember about my reviews or

01:48:33 ◼   ► tease me about is how long they are, but as far as I'm concerned, it's not the length

01:48:37 ◼   ► and certainly not the comprehensiveness, because I'm keenly aware of all the things I omit.

01:48:43 ◼   ► So that's a double-edged sword, like, "Oh, your thing is so long.

01:48:45 ◼   ► Yeah, right, it is long."

01:48:46 ◼   ► But then they say, "Yeah, but why didn't you talk about this, and why didn't you talk about

01:48:48 ◼   ► that, and you missed this?"

01:48:49 ◼   ► It's like, sometimes they did miss it, but sometimes, like, "Geez, it's so long already,

01:48:52 ◼   ► you think I should have put more stuff in?"

01:48:54 ◼   ► And that's always not been the emphasis of my review, is not a comprehensive tour of

01:48:58 ◼   ► the features that are available, or "Let me show you every single pixel that changed in

01:49:02 ◼   ► the entire operating system."

01:49:04 ◼   ► It seems like that if you don't yourself know everything that changed, and I'm pointing

01:49:08 ◼   ► out some minute thing, but the minute thing that I choose to point out is based on what

01:49:13 ◼   ► I think is important, and just because I point out that minute thing doesn't mean that everything

01:49:16 ◼   ► less minute, anything larger, I caught as well, you know?

01:49:21 ◼   ► And it amazes me how I can get away with that.

01:49:23 ◼   ► For example, in my Lion review, I did not mention airdrop once, and nobody asked about

01:49:28 ◼   ► it.

01:49:29 ◼   ► That is a major headlining feature of the operating system on Apple's website, and I

01:49:32 ◼   ► didn't mention it once.

01:49:33 ◼   ► There's a variety of reasons why I might leave something out, but if you want that where

01:49:37 ◼   ► someone goes through every single thing and screenshots every single app and finds every

01:49:40 ◼   ► single new thing, you can find that out there.

01:49:43 ◼   ► And that's not what I think I'm delivering.

01:49:45 ◼   ► So for someone to do a similar review to mine to iOS, it wouldn't necessarily have to be

01:49:49 ◼   ► long or cover every minute detail.

01:49:52 ◼   ► It would have to be somebody who has been with iOS since day one, which, like I said,

01:49:56 ◼   ► is not hard to find, and is really invested in not just iOS, but in the entire history

01:50:01 ◼   ► of mobile operating system and what iOS means in that context, all the way going back to

01:50:06 ◼   ► like they were a heavy Treo user and they had to, you know, they're using a

01:50:10 ◼   ► razor and a StarTAC and like just their hardcore mobile handheld operating

01:50:15 ◼   ► system device aficionados who happen to have a keen interest in iOS and like are

01:50:21 ◼   ► gonna put everything in context because that's what I think I'm bringing to the

01:50:24 ◼   ► Mac reviews is perspective and history and all the things you get when you're

01:50:29 ◼   ► old I guess. That's what I've got to provide now is wisdom and

01:50:32 ◼   ► experience. And I guess I'm speaking to other people who are similarly decrepit

01:50:38 ◼   ► and old and have those similar experiences and they can understand that

01:50:42 ◼   ► context. And maybe I'm losing my audience for people who are younger and

01:50:45 ◼   ► just want to know what the new features are or whatever, but for any type

01:50:50 ◼   ► of thing that's what I'm looking for. Somebody who I can tell, you know,

01:50:53 ◼   ► if they're reading washing machines, they are a washing machine

01:50:57 ◼   ► aficionado and they've been writing about washing machines for decades and

01:51:02 ◼   ► know the history of washing machines, they know where this one falls in the pantheon

01:51:05 ◼   ► of washing machines. That's what I want to read, you know?

01:51:08 ◼   ► Right, and it's definitely more about the story. Like I said, it's the connection between

01:51:13 ◼   ► the previous reviews, where you combine them and you get a sense of a story. There's a

01:51:19 ◼   ► why as to, you know, here's the direction they're going. And I think it's best exemplified

01:51:24 ◼   ► by your writing about the file, not file system, but the document saving changes, which haven't

01:51:34 ◼   ► it they haven't all come at once. And they've been sort of like, well, here's sort of where

01:51:39 ◼   ► we're going to start going with it. And maybe the high DPI stuff is sort of like that, too.

01:51:43 ◼   ► Where, you know, although I think Apple kind of changed direction on that, from where we

01:51:49 ◼   ► envisioned it years ago being more like an arbitrarily resizable thing, where all the

01:51:53 ◼   ► Graphics or PDFs or some kind of you know vector graphics to the no no. No, we've that that was all problematic

01:52:00 ◼   ► We're just gonna go to X everything's twice as big

01:52:03 ◼   ► Yeah, but with the document saving stuff and the the way that because you you know

01:52:09 ◼   ► Like Matt Newberg had an article I linked to that did a really really good job of going into some of these details of the

01:52:13 ◼   ► way this new

01:52:15 ◼   ► Whatever you want to call the whole collective thing the new modern document Mac system

01:52:22 ◼   ► Thing works, but the thing you've covered well is

01:52:24 ◼   ► addressing the what's the problem Apple is trying to solve and

01:52:28 ◼   ► It's the fact that I think this was in your mountain line review, but I know that you wrote this where it's specifically that

01:52:35 ◼   ► This whole paradigm of how Mac OS X interface starts works with and how people interact with documents started in

01:52:43 ◼   ► 1984 and really they started planning it before that at a time when everything was being saved to 400 kilobyte floppy disks

01:52:51 ◼   ► where literally every single byte was precious and almost every floppy disk you owned was like filled up to the rim and

01:52:57 ◼   ► You really kind of needed to have the user in charge of every single thing that was going on to the disk because the space

01:53:04 ◼   ► Was so precious and it took good thing like 10 15 seconds to save your word document a little

01:53:09 ◼   ► Right, right, you'd say, you know, right it really and it really kind of required that the you know

01:53:16 ◼   ► I overuse this analogy, but it's you know required you the the

01:53:21 ◼   ► file system saving equivalent of a stick shift on a car, where you were in complete control

01:53:26 ◼   ► over what gear, you know, the car is in it every time. You really kind of needed to be

01:53:30 ◼   ► in charge of everything that got written to disk and when. Not yet, like you point out,

01:53:35 ◼   ► because you didn't want to go too long without saving because a crash, you'd lose everything,

01:53:40 ◼   ► and you didn't want to save too frequently because a save would take time.

01:53:44 ◼   ► And you can't, you couldn't do anything while it was saved.

01:53:46 ◼   ► No. You couldn't watch cursor.

01:53:47 ◼   ► You couldn't type, you couldn't pull down a menu, you couldn't, you know, sorry.

01:53:50 ◼   ► Go to another app.

01:53:51 ◼   ► No, you're waiting.

01:53:51 ◼   ► - This guy was happening.

01:53:53 ◼   ► - Right.

01:53:53 ◼   ► I remember when copying--

01:53:58 ◼   ► - Multiple files at once, yeah.

01:53:59 ◼   ► That was a hell of a WAC demo.

01:54:01 ◼   ► - I remember when copying files was modal.

01:54:05 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, no, I remember the first time

01:54:07 ◼   ► I was ever technically impressed

01:54:09 ◼   ► by another desktop operating system,

01:54:11 ◼   ► being a smug Mac user that I was

01:54:12 ◼   ► in the '80s or whatever, is when I saw a friend of mine,

01:54:17 ◼   ► He had OS/2, and he copied a document onto a floppy disk

01:54:21 ◼   ► and then went off to do other things

01:54:22 ◼   ► while the file copied onto the floppy disk.

01:54:24 ◼   ► And it was like, that's amazing.

01:54:25 ◼   ► How do you do anything else while something's

01:54:28 ◼   ► copying to a floppy disk?

01:54:29 ◼   ► And he's like preemptive multitasking.

01:54:30 ◼   ► Wow, on a desktop operating system.

01:54:33 ◼   ► And you really, really don't appreciate it.

01:54:35 ◼   ► That's one of those things where you just

01:54:36 ◼   ► don't appreciate how slow those disks were

01:54:38 ◼   ► until your attention was completely focused

01:54:41 ◼   ► on the screen and there was nothing

01:54:42 ◼   ► you could do until it was finished.

01:54:44 ◼   ► But you really needed that.

01:54:45 ◼   ► And all of these paradigms of how this works

01:54:47 ◼   ► and that you say command N to make a new document

01:54:51 ◼   ► and nothing is saved or blah, blah, blah,

01:54:54 ◼   ► nothing is written to disk until you do command S

01:54:57 ◼   ► and you pick a place and you pick a name

01:55:00 ◼   ► and you hit return in that dialogue box.

01:55:03 ◼   ► There was a reason for that,

01:55:05 ◼   ► but there is no reason for that

01:55:06 ◼   ► to be the dominant model today where people, you know,

01:55:11 ◼   ► I would be curious to know,

01:55:14 ◼   ► I think it'd be like a really interesting stat

01:55:16 ◼   ► is what percentage of their startup disk

01:55:18 ◼   ► is free space of an average Mac today?

01:55:22 ◼   ► It's not just a free space.

01:55:23 ◼   ► It's like, you know how long it takes

01:55:24 ◼   ► to save your text document?

01:55:27 ◼   ► It's like fractions of seconds.

01:55:29 ◼   ► Especially with an SSD?

01:55:30 ◼   ► Especially with an SSD.

01:55:32 ◼   ► With any of the modern Macs that ship with an SSD,

01:55:36 ◼   ► I don't even know that you could measure it.

01:55:38 ◼   ► Yeah, it's incredibly fast.

01:55:40 ◼   ► And most of the time, what it has to do with things

01:55:42 ◼   ► that don't have to do with actually writing the bits

01:55:44 ◼   ► It's just almost infinitely fast.

01:55:47 ◼   ► So it's like it's a situation where there's a paradigm for dealing with documents developed

01:55:51 ◼   ► at a time when the paradigm was appropriate, and then all the conditions surrounding it

01:55:55 ◼   ► changed with the exception of the users who still have that original paradigm in their

01:56:00 ◼   ► mind.

01:56:01 ◼   ► And so the paradigm makes no sense anymore, but that's like it's the -- it gets back to

01:56:04 ◼   ► that Joel Spolsky usability book, and I don't know if he originated this idea, but like

01:56:09 ◼   ► when the user's mental model doesn't match the program's model of how things should work,

01:56:13 ◼   ► you have, it's a usability problem.

01:56:16 ◼   ► And tons of users have that old model, tons of technically savvy users have that old model

01:56:21 ◼   ► in their mind of how things are supposed to work.

01:56:23 ◼   ► But that old way has all the problems that, this was actually in my line of view, I listed

01:56:27 ◼   ► all the problems that the old way has of like accidentally forgetting to save, thing crashing

01:56:31 ◼   ► in the middle, you saving over an old version on top of a new one, people reinventing versioning

01:56:35 ◼   ► by putting my document, my document two, my document three, my document final V2.

01:56:39 ◼   ► I mean, you've all seen these file names, right?

01:56:42 ◼   ► these anti-patterns that have to do with the old model and people just are wed to those.

01:56:48 ◼   ► And so even though they make no sense anymore and the operating system could do something

01:56:51 ◼   ► for you, now you have a situation with Lion and Forward where the mental model of the

01:56:55 ◼   ► technically savvy users does not match the model of the operating system.

01:57:00 ◼   ► And that's a bad situation.

01:57:01 ◼   ► It makes people unhappy.

01:57:03 ◼   ► They just want it to go back to the old way.

01:57:04 ◼   ► But Apple is trying...

01:57:05 ◼   ► I mean, Apple, it's so great that iOS exists because if the iOS didn't exist and they were