ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► - How's it going? - Not bad.

00:00:02 ◼   ► You?

00:00:03 ◼   ► - So I was taking a sip, I'm well.

00:00:06 ◼   ► I have, as of four seconds ago, started my holiday party.

00:00:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, you started a little early.

00:00:12 ◼   ► - I did not bring a bottle like I did.

00:00:14 ◼   ► No, no, no, the critical error I made years ago,

00:00:17 ◼   ► which I will not make again, was bringing the bottle with me.

00:00:20 ◼   ► I have rationed appropriately.

00:00:22 ◼   ► I do not have an inappropriate amount.

00:00:25 ◼   ► And the only way for me to refill is if I go

00:00:28 ◼   ► all the way downstairs.

00:00:30 ◼   ► I am learning from my mistakes, don't worry.

00:00:33 ◼   ► (phone ringing)

00:00:35 ◼   ► How's it going?

00:00:36 ◼   ► I agree, and we have a long night ahead.

00:00:40 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:00:41 ◼   ► - Are you having a beer tonight?

00:00:43 ◼   ► - Not yet.

00:00:44 ◼   ► - Pacing yourself.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Very boring, but very adult.

00:00:48 ◼   ► - Yes, I'm very tired today,

00:00:50 ◼   ► so I'm having some caffeinated tea to help keep me

00:00:52 ◼   ► nice and alert and lucid as much as possible

00:00:56 ◼   ► for this podcast.

00:00:58 ◼   ► This is busy week.

00:00:59 ◼   ► For Christmas week, in our family, we tend to basically

00:01:05 ◼   ► do nothing for an entire week.

00:01:07 ◼   ► And when you have a job or something, a regular job,

00:01:12 ◼   ► for the most part, not everybody, but for the most part,

00:01:15 ◼   ► when you take a vacation, you just kind of stop going

00:01:18 ◼   ► to the job and other people pick up your slack.

00:01:20 ◼   ► And I know it's a little hard for the holidays,

00:01:21 ◼   ► but when you're self-employed, as Casey, you know now,

00:01:25 ◼   ► when you're self-employed, when you take a week off,

00:01:29 ◼   ► the work doesn't get done by other people,

00:01:33 ◼   ► it just doesn't get done.

00:01:34 ◼   ► So all you're doing is moving the work from your

00:01:38 ◼   ► quote vacation week, you're just moving it to different

00:01:40 ◼   ► times before and after.

00:01:42 ◼   ► So the week before vacation is extra busy,

00:01:45 ◼   ► and that's where we are now.

00:01:48 ◼   ► - Which explains why I saw a new test flight beta

00:01:52 ◼   ► from Overcast fly by like, I don't know, half an hour ago

00:01:55 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:01:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was like 20 minutes ago, because I'm trying

00:01:58 ◼   ► to fix all these bugs in time for the App Store Connect

00:02:00 ◼   ► holiday shutdown, which--

00:02:02 ◼   ► - When is that?

00:02:03 ◼   ► I know what you're referring to.

00:02:04 ◼   ► - I believe it begins on the 24th, I think, which is Monday.

00:02:06 ◼   ► - I'm surprised it's that late.

00:02:08 ◼   ► - It's something like that, but I want to ideally

00:02:11 ◼   ► submit this to the App Store tomorrow, and that way,

00:02:14 ◼   ► it gets approved probably by Thursday, and then if I have

00:02:18 ◼   ► to do an emergency fix, I can issue that Thursday or Friday.

00:02:21 ◼   ► - Smart.

00:02:22 ◼   ► - It's a whole thing.

00:02:23 ◼   ► So it's like everything is compressed,

00:02:26 ◼   ► and it's a very busy week.

00:02:28 ◼   ► This is the same time that I believe it was last year

00:02:32 ◼   ► that I started using things, because in the holidays,

00:02:35 ◼   ► like in our lead up to our big holiday family trip,

00:02:38 ◼   ► all the stuff we traditionally do for that,

00:02:41 ◼   ► we have a whole bunch of to-do items for that,

00:02:43 ◼   ► in addition to just life stuff all catching up,

00:02:46 ◼   ► end of the year stuff, tax stuff, all sorts of things,

00:02:50 ◼   ► and it becomes very, very nice as you're running around

00:02:53 ◼   ► doing crazy things to just be able to yell into your phone,

00:02:55 ◼   ► "Hey, thing, add this to my to-do list and things,"

00:02:58 ◼   ► or whatever, and to build up a quick list via Siri

00:03:01 ◼   ► and be able to plow through them as you get chances to.

00:03:04 ◼   ► So I'm in that kind of mode, like the super busy,

00:03:06 ◼   ► doing everything mode, like getting tons of stuff done,

00:03:09 ◼   ► juggling five different things,

00:03:10 ◼   ► but I have an important update.

00:03:12 ◼   ► I called US Bank this morning to inquire

00:03:16 ◼   ► about my Tesla lease balance,

00:03:19 ◼   ► and they said that they had just, this morning,

00:03:22 ◼   ► received payment from Tesla, and I have a zero balance.

00:03:25 ◼   ► - Yay!

00:03:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, we finally, they're gonna send me a statement

00:03:29 ◼   ► that confirms that I have a zero balance

00:03:31 ◼   ► that I don't have yet, but they told me verbally

00:03:33 ◼   ► that it is done, and this should be the last I hear

00:03:37 ◼   ► of my old Tesla lease that Tesla failed to terminate

00:03:41 ◼   ► properly when they offered to. (laughs)

00:03:44 ◼   ► So-- - So, wait,

00:03:45 ◼   ► so let me play this back to make sure

00:03:47 ◼   ► my understanding is right.

00:03:48 ◼   ► So you had paid a bunch of money that you shouldn't have

00:03:53 ◼   ► against that lease that should have been closed

00:03:56 ◼   ► but wasn't, or done, or what have you, and it wasn't.

00:03:58 ◼   ► So that has or has not been refunded to you,

00:04:01 ◼   ► that pile of money.

00:04:02 ◼   ► - The pile that I had paid has--

00:04:04 ◼   ► - Correct. - Tesla sent me

00:04:05 ◼   ► a check for that.

00:04:06 ◼   ► - Okay, and you have received it?

00:04:08 ◼   ► - Yes, and I deposited it, and it hasn't bounced yet,

00:04:10 ◼   ► so we'll see what happens. (both laughing)

00:04:12 ◼   ► I don't know how long it takes to check

00:04:13 ◼   ► to really be totally clear.

00:04:14 ◼   ► I think it takes like a week. - Sure, sure.

00:04:16 ◼   ► - I don't know, but yeah, so hopefully

00:04:18 ◼   ► that doesn't bounce.

00:04:19 ◼   ► If it does, it'll make for a great segment on the show.

00:04:22 ◼   ► - Oh, my word, that would, in a way, I kind of want it to.

00:04:25 ◼   ► (both laughing)

00:04:28 ◼   ► Okay, so you have that money already,

00:04:29 ◼   ► and as far as we can tell, all is on the up and up,

00:04:31 ◼   ► and then the only other missing piece was to get the bank

00:04:35 ◼   ► that held, or whatever the terminology is,

00:04:37 ◼   ► that held the lease to agree that the lease is done.

00:04:40 ◼   ► And that sounds like that is also now accomplished.

00:04:44 ◼   ► - Yes, 'cause Tesla had to both pay me the money

00:04:46 ◼   ► that I had overpaid to them,

00:04:47 ◼   ► and they had to pay the bank the rest of the balance,

00:04:49 ◼   ► 'cause the bank sent me like a $5,000 bill.

00:04:51 ◼   ► And so, (laughs)

00:04:54 ◼   ► both of those things have now been done.

00:04:56 ◼   ► And so as far as I can tell, I think I'm done.

00:04:59 ◼   ► I think I'm finally out of that.

00:05:01 ◼   ► I think it's all taken care of, finally,

00:05:04 ◼   ► and I can finally get back to enjoying

00:05:06 ◼   ► what is really my favorite car I've ever had,

00:05:09 ◼   ► and I just want to enjoy it.

00:05:10 ◼   ► So now I'm back to enjoying it.

00:05:12 ◼   ► - Did you read, was it a Wired article, is that right?

00:05:16 ◼   ► - Yes, this Dr. Elon and Mr. Musk, Life Inside,

00:05:21 ◼   ► Tesla's Production Hell.

00:05:23 ◼   ► - I have, you know, I typically don't read anything,

00:05:26 ◼   ► anything like that, because here's, like, this,

00:05:28 ◼   ► even before this lease debacle,

00:05:30 ◼   ► where they totally butchered basic administrative tasks,

00:05:34 ◼   ► I knew the company was a mess.

00:05:36 ◼   ► I knew Elon Musk personally was a mess,

00:05:38 ◼   ► and kind of a horrible person, especially to work for.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And so I knew there was a bunch of, like,

00:05:43 ◼   ► you know, toxic waste over there.

00:05:47 ◼   ► And I love the car so much.

00:05:50 ◼   ► I didn't want, I wouldn't want my view to be tarnished.

00:05:53 ◼   ► I didn't want to have to get down into, like,

00:05:55 ◼   ► the dirt of that and get involved in that.

00:05:56 ◼   ► So, like, I don't pay attention to their drama,

00:06:00 ◼   ► their company, their stock, anything like that.

00:06:03 ◼   ► I don't get involved.

00:06:04 ◼   ► I just like the car a lot,

00:06:05 ◼   ► and there is no other car I'd rather have.

00:06:08 ◼   ► And so whenever some big, you know,

00:06:11 ◼   ► toxic whirlwind starts about them,

00:06:13 ◼   ► I try to ignore it as much as possible.

00:06:15 ◼   ► And a lot of them are BS anyway.

00:06:18 ◼   ► Some of them are true, but a lot of them are BS anyway,

00:06:20 ◼   ► so it's just kind of nice to just stay out of the whole thing.

00:06:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, did you read this, Jon?

00:06:24 ◼   ► - I read it, I just kept waiting for you to say,

00:06:25 ◼   ► ignorance is lisp, but I guess you're off that train.

00:06:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:29 ◼   ► - Never. - Never.

00:06:30 ◼   ► - I just didn't think about it.

00:06:30 ◼   ► No, I'm never off the train, let's not get ridiculous.

00:06:32 ◼   ► - The lisp puns will never end.

00:06:34 ◼   ► - The puns will continue until morale improves.

00:06:36 ◼   ► - Do you hear this, by the way?

00:06:38 ◼   ► Can you hear this on my microphone?

00:06:39 ◼   ► - It sounded like a printer for a split second.

00:06:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, sure, people can print while I'm in here, it's fine.

00:06:43 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:46 ◼   ► - Which family member is committing--

00:06:50 ◼   ► - It's the one that's my daughter, 'cause she doesn't care.

00:06:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:53 ◼   ► Just so you can hear the dulcet tones

00:06:55 ◼   ► of my Canon inkjet printer.

00:06:57 ◼   ► - Oh, yi yi yi.

00:06:58 ◼   ► Now, I read this article, and then it was a good article,

00:07:01 ◼   ► but it's really more of the same.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Like, you don't need to read any more Elon Musk articles,

00:07:06 ◼   ► or really any more Tesla articles.

00:07:08 ◼   ► This is a little more detailed than I had read previously,

00:07:11 ◼   ► but ultimately it says what we all knew,

00:07:13 ◼   ► which is exactly what you were just trying to say, Marco,

00:07:15 ◼   ► is that Elon seems to be kind of a dirtbag

00:07:19 ◼   ► for a loose definition of the term,

00:07:21 ◼   ► and the company seems to be a complete disaster.

00:07:23 ◼   ► So, news at 11.

00:07:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:07:27 ◼   ► - But I don't know, whatever.

00:07:29 ◼   ► But it was interesting.

00:07:31 ◼   ► I'm not saying don't bother,

00:07:33 ◼   ► but it is exactly what you expect it to be.

00:07:36 ◼   ► But it's well written.

00:07:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it does raise the question.

00:07:39 ◼   ► People have asked me before, how can I support them,

00:07:41 ◼   ► and this horrible person who runs this company,

00:07:45 ◼   ► how can I support them by being their customer?

00:07:47 ◼   ► We've talked about this a little bit before.

00:07:51 ◼   ► There's only so many companies to buy certain things from.

00:07:54 ◼   ► There's only so many large corporations.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Large airlines are a big one of these,

00:07:58 ◼   ► where an airline can make you really mad,

00:08:01 ◼   ► but then sometimes you gotta fly them again

00:08:02 ◼   ► in the future anyway, 'cause there's only five airlines.

00:08:06 ◼   ► With cars, there's a pretty small number

00:08:08 ◼   ► of car companies out there that make cars

00:08:10 ◼   ► that are anything like what I would drive.

00:08:12 ◼   ► I don't know anything about the other ones, really.

00:08:15 ◼   ► They could be led by horrible people, too.

00:08:18 ◼   ► You typically don't become the CEO of a large corporation,

00:08:22 ◼   ► and you especially typically don't succeed

00:08:24 ◼   ► as the CEO of a large corporation

00:08:25 ◼   ► without being able to play the politics game real well,

00:08:28 ◼   ► and a lot of that comes kind of dirtily.

00:08:31 ◼   ► Is that a word?

00:08:32 ◼   ► - I know what you're saying, yeah, yeah.

00:08:33 ◼   ► And so most people who run most large corporations

00:08:38 ◼   ► have some dirt on them and are not the nicest

00:08:41 ◼   ► or best people in all of their lives.

00:08:43 ◼   ► And so it's like we typically just don't hear

00:08:47 ◼   ► about most of the other ones.

00:08:49 ◼   ► We hear about a few high-profile examples

00:08:50 ◼   ► of these companies, but we don't hear

00:08:52 ◼   ► about most of anything else.

00:08:54 ◼   ► And so it's better to just do what you can here and there,

00:08:59 ◼   ► but not be super religious about it,

00:09:01 ◼   ► because chances are anything you love,

00:09:05 ◼   ► somebody can ruin it by saying,

00:09:06 ◼   ► "Well, you know, this executive who works there

00:09:09 ◼   ► "was kind of a jerk once."

00:09:10 ◼   ► So you gotta kind of be willing

00:09:13 ◼   ► to look past some degree of that.

00:09:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, my dad worked at IBM for a very long time,

00:09:18 ◼   ► and by virtue of his particular role in the company,

00:09:21 ◼   ► he would interact with the CEO

00:09:23 ◼   ► on a not-completely-regular basis,

00:09:27 ◼   ► enough that the CEO would recognize who my dad is,

00:09:29 ◼   ► although my dad was nowhere near the CEO.

00:09:30 ◼   ► It was one of those, like, he sidestepped his way

00:09:33 ◼   ► into the CEO's world, if you will.

00:09:35 ◼   ► Well, anyway, he worked there under the tenure

00:09:38 ◼   ► of a few CEOs, 'cause he was there for like 30 years.

00:09:41 ◼   ► And I'd asked dad once,

00:09:44 ◼   ► this was around the time of a CEO change,

00:09:46 ◼   ► "Hey, is Joe Smith or Susie Smith or whatever,

00:09:50 ◼   ► "is Mr. and Mrs. Smith, are they kind of mean?"

00:09:53 ◼   ► And my dad just looked at me and scoffed,

00:09:55 ◼   ► and he was like, "Of course they are!

00:09:56 ◼   ► "They're the CEO of IBM.

00:09:58 ◼   ► "You don't get to that position by being nice."

00:10:00 ◼   ► You know, which is exactly what you're saying.

00:10:03 ◼   ► He was kind of almost offended

00:10:05 ◼   ► that I'd even asked such a ridiculous question.

00:10:08 ◼   ► Of course they're a jerk.

00:10:10 ◼   ► - See also most politicians, right?

00:10:12 ◼   ► Most politicians who start ranking highly,

00:10:16 ◼   ► once you get to the national level especially,

00:10:19 ◼   ► you have to be a certain level of dirtbag

00:10:21 ◼   ► to be able to succeed and to climb the ladder.

00:10:25 ◼   ► Very few people make it that far

00:10:27 ◼   ► who aren't just total jerks in some way.

00:10:30 ◼   ► Some do, it is possible to.

00:10:32 ◼   ► Just the odds are against you.

00:10:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, well done.

00:10:36 ◼   ► All right, so let's continue,

00:10:37 ◼   ► since we've already started with follow-up,

00:10:38 ◼   ► and let's continue.

00:10:39 ◼   ► A lot of people helpfully wrote in

00:10:42 ◼   ► to tell us why your camera error happened.

00:10:45 ◼   ► And some people seemed to think it was ridiculous

00:10:47 ◼   ► we didn't know this.

00:10:48 ◼   ► I will come to your defense, Marco, and say,

00:10:50 ◼   ► "I had no idea this was a thing,

00:10:52 ◼   ► "and I think that it's utterly preposterous."

00:10:55 ◼   ► But Marco, would you like to tell us

00:10:57 ◼   ► why your video cut off at just barely shy of 30 minutes?

00:11:00 ◼   ► - All of Europe told us about this.

00:11:02 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:11:04 ◼   ► There was an EU import law that classified video cameras

00:11:09 ◼   ► at a different tax or tariff or import rate,

00:11:13 ◼   ► whatever it is, to other types of cameras.

00:11:16 ◼   ► And that by the all DSLR and mirrorless manufacturers

00:11:21 ◼   ► setting their limits to just shy of 30 minutes

00:11:23 ◼   ► would get them classified not as a video camera,

00:11:26 ◼   ► but as a still camera.

00:11:27 ◼   ► And that got them, I guess, a lower import tax or whatever,

00:11:30 ◼   ► and so they could be sold for lower prices.

00:11:32 ◼   ► And so basically all of those camera makers

00:11:34 ◼   ► that make those kind of cameras

00:11:36 ◼   ► all limit their cameras to 29, 59 or whatever.

00:11:39 ◼   ► And apparently we've also heard,

00:11:41 ◼   ► although I have not yet verified,

00:11:42 ◼   ► we've also heard that that tax regulation

00:11:45 ◼   ► is getting relaxed next year,

00:11:47 ◼   ► and so maybe the camera makers will adjust things.

00:11:50 ◼   ► We also have already been told, thank you very much,

00:11:52 ◼   ► about various hacked firmware things

00:11:54 ◼   ► that we can install on our cameras.

00:11:56 ◼   ► That's nice, I'm glad those exist, I'm not gonna do that.

00:11:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, not a chance.

00:12:01 ◼   ► - And finally, we absolutely did hear

00:12:03 ◼   ► about external recorders to be used,

00:12:06 ◼   ► to basically use HDMI recorders or recording monitors

00:12:09 ◼   ► to get around this limit.

00:12:11 ◼   ► That is nice, I believe I said this last episode,

00:12:13 ◼   ► but cut it out, those cost like $800,

00:12:16 ◼   ► and that doesn't seem like a great solution

00:12:19 ◼   ► to this problem either.

00:12:20 ◼   ► So my solution instead is gonna be

00:12:22 ◼   ► I'm going to just not record

00:12:23 ◼   ► for more than 30 minutes at once.

00:12:25 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:12:27 ◼   ► Chris Adamson writes and says,

00:12:28 ◼   ► another reason not to use Dropbox for everything.

00:12:30 ◼   ► So this was in the context of,

00:12:31 ◼   ► why don't I just put pretty much everything in Dropbox

00:12:35 ◼   ► or Google Drive or what have you?

00:12:36 ◼   ► And so Chris says, another reason not to use Dropbox

00:12:38 ◼   ► for everything, it cannot store bundle files,

00:12:40 ◼   ► such as GarageBand projects.

00:12:42 ◼   ► And Apple's support article notes

00:12:43 ◼   ► that while GarageBand for iOS can save files locally

00:12:46 ◼   ► or to iCloud, saving via the files app

00:12:47 ◼   ► won't work to Dropbox, Google Drive, Box,

00:12:49 ◼   ► or Microsoft OneDrive.

00:12:51 ◼   ► John, I get the feeling that you're twitching

00:12:53 ◼   ► because I didn't appropriately describe what a bundle is.

00:12:57 ◼   ► Would you like to elaborate any or are you satisfied?

00:13:00 ◼   ► - I'm not sure the summary is right

00:13:01 ◼   ► where it says it can't store bundle files.

00:13:03 ◼   ► The tech note says it can't store GarageBand files,

00:13:05 ◼   ► which I assume are bundles.

00:13:06 ◼   ► Bundle is just a directory full of files,

00:13:08 ◼   ► but the directory itself has a dot

00:13:11 ◼   ► and a bunch of letters at the end of it.

00:13:13 ◼   ► And the OS and applications treat it specially

00:13:16 ◼   ► and don't show you that it's a directory,

00:13:18 ◼   ► they just show it to you as a file

00:13:19 ◼   ► unless you do a particular run.

00:13:21 ◼   ► Anyway, there's nothing particularly special

00:13:24 ◼   ► about bundles or GarageBand bundles

00:13:28 ◼   ► that would prevent Dropbox from storing them correctly.

00:13:31 ◼   ► And in fact, I'm pretty sure Dropbox does store,

00:13:35 ◼   ► you know, just bundles as a concept, okay,

00:13:37 ◼   ► 'cause I'm pretty sure I put some bundle files in there

00:13:39 ◼   ► and taken them out and they continue to work.

00:13:40 ◼   ► But there must be something about either

00:13:41 ◼   ► how GarageBand works or how iOS treats them,

00:13:45 ◼   ► or maybe there's some Mac-specific metadata

00:13:47 ◼   ► that Dropbox doesn't support that's important in this case

00:13:49 ◼   ► that Apple has a tech note that says,

00:13:51 ◼   ► no, don't try to save your GarageBand files to cloud storage.

00:13:54 ◼   ► You can save them to iCloud Drive,

00:13:55 ◼   ► which again shows that it's not some limitation

00:13:57 ◼   ► of cloud drives, it's just some limitation of these services.

00:13:59 ◼   ► So yeah, that kind of gets back to what I was saying,

00:14:03 ◼   ► or I think we talked about this when we were talking

00:14:04 ◼   ► about Plex, like not all file systems are created equal

00:14:09 ◼   ► when it comes to storing stuff from your Mac,

00:14:13 ◼   ► because the rules about file names are different,

00:14:15 ◼   ► and in this case, whatever thing is preventing

00:14:18 ◼   ► this particular kind of bundle from working

00:14:19 ◼   ► in a particular application might have

00:14:21 ◼   ► particular requirements.

00:14:22 ◼   ► Some applications are cranky about storing stuff

00:14:25 ◼   ► on what they perceive to be network volumes,

00:14:28 ◼   ► so you have to fool them somehow.

00:14:30 ◼   ► We've talked about that before.

00:14:31 ◼   ► So yeah, the world of file systems is still

00:14:35 ◼   ► filled with pitfalls, and if you don't think about them

00:14:39 ◼   ► and just think, oh, like everything is everything,

00:14:41 ◼   ► and I can store this file anywhere I want,

00:14:44 ◼   ► in a cloud, on a drive, you know,

00:14:46 ◼   ► on a fish in a box with a fox, you actually kind of have

00:14:49 ◼   ► to be careful a little bit.

00:14:52 ◼   ► - All right, there's another link in the show notes

00:14:55 ◼   ► which I only had a chance to very quickly glance at,

00:14:58 ◼   ► because it came in late breaking.

00:15:01 ◼   ► I don't know which one of you gentlemen added this.

00:15:02 ◼   ► I'm guessing, John, but can you tell me

00:15:04 ◼   ► about shortcuts.fun, please?

00:15:06 ◼   ► - .fun, yeah.

00:15:07 ◼   ► - That's a fantastic domain name.

00:15:09 ◼   ► - It is a really good domain name.

00:15:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, the first thing is that my work,

00:15:13 ◼   ► firewall prevented me from getting to it.

00:15:14 ◼   ► I'm assuming just because it has .fun on the name,

00:15:16 ◼   ► you're like, you know what, just don't allow anyone

00:15:18 ◼   ► to go to .fun from work, because they shouldn't

00:15:20 ◼   ► be going there.

00:15:21 ◼   ► Anyway, I got to look at it later.

00:15:23 ◼   ► So this is a website and a library created by Josh Verant,

00:15:27 ◼   ► and the upshot is it lets you make shortcuts

00:15:31 ◼   ► by writing JavaScript, like just open a text field

00:15:34 ◼   ► and start writing JavaScript against his library,

00:15:37 ◼   ► and then it will compile it, sort of, or package it

00:15:40 ◼   ► into a .shortcut file, which I'm assuming is just like

00:15:43 ◼   ► a bundle directory that's zipped and renamed .shortcut

00:15:45 ◼   ► or whatever, you can do it right on the website.

00:15:46 ◼   ► You can go to the website, there's a text field,

00:15:48 ◼   ► you can write stuff there, you can click a button

00:15:49 ◼   ► and it will take what you typed in that text field

00:15:51 ◼   ► and download in your browser a .shortcut file

00:15:54 ◼   ► that you can run on iOS.

00:15:55 ◼   ► And so this is like a reverse engineering

00:15:57 ◼   ► of the .shortcut file format, which again,

00:15:59 ◼   ► I know nothing about, but I assume,

00:16:00 ◼   ► like so many of Apple's other formats,

00:16:02 ◼   ► it's just either a zip or a zib file

00:16:06 ◼   ► that if you decompress it as a directory full of files,

00:16:08 ◼   ► then a particular format, a particular folder structure,

00:16:10 ◼   ► and it just runs them.

00:16:12 ◼   ► So if you do want to make shortcuts,

00:16:15 ◼   ► but don't want to use the UI, this is the thing for you.

00:16:19 ◼   ► What Josh wrote on the website is,

00:16:21 ◼   ► "I built this library out of frustration

00:16:22 ◼   ► with Apple Shortcuts app, as I found complex shortcuts

00:16:24 ◼   ► were difficult to manage using this drag and drop interface.

00:16:26 ◼   ► I wanted to write shortcuts the same way I write code,

00:16:28 ◼   ► so I created shortcuts.js."

00:16:30 ◼   ► Or shortcuts.js.

00:16:31 ◼   ► He's got a big article in Medium where he describes

00:16:33 ◼   ► the whole process and the reverse engineering,

00:16:35 ◼   ► we'll put a link to that in the show notes.

00:16:37 ◼   ► So that's cool, I mean, obviously this is a hack

00:16:40 ◼   ► and it's reverse engineered and Apple can change

00:16:41 ◼   ► the format at any time, yada, yada, yada.

00:16:43 ◼   ► Like there's no guarantee this will continue to work,

00:16:46 ◼   ► but it's nice that it has an option.

00:16:48 ◼   ► Of course, one of the links is to an example.

00:16:51 ◼   ► I said like, "What do these things look like?

00:16:52 ◼   ► What does it look like when you write a shortcut

00:16:53 ◼   ► in JavaScript?"

00:16:55 ◼   ► Doesn't quite look maybe the way you would expect it to.

00:16:59 ◼   ► So this is, they have a bunch of examples,

00:17:03 ◼   ► like here's a battery level checker example,

00:17:06 ◼   ► and everything is done in terms of what I presume

00:17:08 ◼   ► are the underlying either Objective-C or Swift objects

00:17:11 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:17:12 ◼   ► So there's a thing called getBatteryLevel

00:17:15 ◼   ► that gives you the getBatteryLevel, right?

00:17:16 ◼   ► And the shortcut is, if you're writing the shortcut

00:17:18 ◼   ► in the shortcuts app, it would be like,

00:17:20 ◼   ► "Okay, we'll get the result of this action

00:17:22 ◼   ► and then compare it with this comparison block."

00:17:24 ◼   ► And you know, it's parameterized so it's a less than thing,

00:17:27 ◼   ► and then when I say it's 20, it's like,

00:17:29 ◼   ► "Oh, great, well now I get to write this in code,

00:17:30 ◼   ► I'll just be able to do if getBatteryLevel less than 20."

00:17:33 ◼   ► No.

00:17:34 ◼   ► You have a function called conditional

00:17:36 ◼   ► that takes an object with keys named input,

00:17:39 ◼   ► and that's a string, which is the less than sign,

00:17:42 ◼   ► and then value, and that's a number, which is 20,

00:17:44 ◼   ► and then an if true key, which gives you an array of,

00:17:49 ◼   ► just, it's like, it's not how you would write it.

00:17:52 ◼   ► You don't, you can't just use the less than operator

00:17:54 ◼   ► in JavaScript, I mean, this is,

00:17:56 ◼   ► you could add this on top of the library,

00:17:59 ◼   ► you know, eventually, this is like version one,

00:18:00 ◼   ► or it just shows that under the covers,

00:18:03 ◼   ► all those blocks you see in shortcuts

00:18:04 ◼   ► apparently map directly to silly functions

00:18:07 ◼   ► called conditional that takes strings as input to,

00:18:11 ◼   ► it's just, it's not the way you would write it in code.

00:18:13 ◼   ► I still say this is probably more comfortable

00:18:16 ◼   ► for a programmer than using the shortcut UI.

00:18:19 ◼   ► Not sure if it helps with debugging,

00:18:21 ◼   ► I just, again, I just looked at this this afternoon.

00:18:23 ◼   ► I don't think just because you write it in JavaScript,

00:18:25 ◼   ► you can actually debug it in JavaScript,

00:18:27 ◼   ► because in the end, you have to package it up

00:18:29 ◼   ► as a .shortcut file and run it on your phone.

00:18:32 ◼   ► At that point, you're at the mercy

00:18:33 ◼   ► of whatever debugging abilities you have there,

00:18:34 ◼   ► but if you're a programmer and you're interested

00:18:37 ◼   ► in playing with shortcuts in something

00:18:39 ◼   ► other than a bunch of rounded rectangles

00:18:42 ◼   ► on your phone or iPad screen,

00:18:44 ◼   ► check out this site, shortcuts.fun.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Is that it, plural, yeah, plural, shortcuts.fun.

00:18:49 ◼   ► - This is very cool and very impressive,

00:18:52 ◼   ► but I agree with you that the language of it,

00:18:56 ◼   ► and I don't mean that like JavaScript,

00:18:57 ◼   ► but the kind of flow of the way

00:18:59 ◼   ► it's been implemented is clunky.

00:19:01 ◼   ► This reminds me of, what was it?

00:19:04 ◼   ► It was some god awful SharePoint thing I did.

00:19:06 ◼   ► What was it, camel C-A-M-L?

00:19:08 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

00:19:09 ◼   ► Now I'm miserable just thinking about SharePoint again,

00:19:12 ◼   ► but basically a query language where you have to say,

00:19:16 ◼   ► okay, I want this thing, and then I want a comparison,

00:19:18 ◼   ► and the particular comparison I want is less,

00:19:20 ◼   ► and it's exactly what you said before.

00:19:21 ◼   ► It's just so clunky, and it's probably a lot less clunky

00:19:26 ◼   ► than dragging stuff around on the screen.

00:19:29 ◼   ► I mean, I've seen some Federico shortcuts,

00:19:30 ◼   ► and they are masterpieces, but they are out of control,

00:19:34 ◼   ► and so this does seem like it would help a lot, but oi.

00:19:39 ◼   ► - So I've done some research while you guys were talking

00:19:42 ◼   ► on the dot fund TLD.

00:19:44 ◼   ► I was wondering like what's available there,

00:19:46 ◼   ► 'cause I'd never heard of this.

00:19:47 ◼   ► I was wondering what's available,

00:19:47 ◼   ► and how much do these cost,

00:19:50 ◼   ► and it turns out that you can register

00:19:53 ◼   ► a lot of keywords there that are like dictionary words,

00:19:56 ◼   ► but they seem to be priced such that the ones

00:20:00 ◼   ► that are better and more desirable are way more expensive.

00:20:04 ◼   ► So for instance, coffee.fund is $5,600 per year,

00:20:09 ◼   ► and so that to me suggests coffee is a very fun thing,

00:20:12 ◼   ► so I wondered what can I get that's less fun than coffee?

00:20:17 ◼   ► Now I think podcasts are pretty fun.

00:20:19 ◼   ► Podcast.fund is only $2,800 per year,

00:20:22 ◼   ► so that's about half the price for podcast.fund

00:20:26 ◼   ► compared to coffee.fund.

00:20:27 ◼   ► That does seem to suggest we're getting less fun though,

00:20:29 ◼   ► so then I tried SharePoint.fund.

00:20:33 ◼   ► - Oh, God. - That's only $1,160 per year,

00:20:35 ◼   ► so that one has a lot less interest

00:20:37 ◼   ► in the fun buyers looking for SharePoint.

00:20:40 ◼   ► Then I found the bottom of the barrel.

00:20:42 ◼   ► - How is that not SharePoint?

00:20:44 ◼   ► That is the bottom of the barrel.

00:20:45 ◼   ► - There are things that are less fun than SharePoint.

00:20:47 ◼   ► Tied at just $4 a year each are airportsecurity.fund

00:20:52 ◼   ► and finally tetanusshot.fund.

00:20:57 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:21:00 ◼   ► - This is useful podcasting content.

00:21:03 ◼   ► I'm glad we're here.

00:21:04 ◼   ► - I'm not sure this is an efficient market

00:21:06 ◼   ► setting these prices.

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00:23:03 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:23:07 ◼   ► - Apple is shutting down Apple Music's

00:23:09 ◼   ► rarely used connect feature.

00:23:11 ◼   ► So is this the thing where like as an artist,

00:23:13 ◼   ► you could go up there and like talk about what you're up to

00:23:15 ◼   ► and what tour you're doing

00:23:17 ◼   ► and do a little behind the scenes stuff, is that correct?

00:23:19 ◼   ► - Was this the thing that Drake introduced

00:23:21 ◼   ► or was this before that?

00:23:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:23:23 ◼   ► - I don't remember.

00:23:24 ◼   ► - But yeah, it was basically Ping 2.0.

00:23:27 ◼   ► It's like here, let's build a social network

00:23:29 ◼   ► inside Apple Music so that the artist can post

00:23:31 ◼   ► their stuff here and people can follow them.

00:23:34 ◼   ► It was basically, you know, the world of music promotion

00:23:36 ◼   ► is very heavily tied to other networks,

00:23:39 ◼   ► especially like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook.

00:23:41 ◼   ► So like it was basically Apple's attempt

00:23:44 ◼   ► at trying to capture that world of social promotion

00:23:47 ◼   ► of musical stuff and musical bands

00:23:48 ◼   ► and fans following musicians into their own thing.

00:23:53 ◼   ► And it was, you know, not that different from Ping, really.

00:23:55 ◼   ► Ping was like follow your friends.

00:23:57 ◼   ► This was follow the bands you like.

00:23:59 ◼   ► And I don't think it ever had any traction at all.

00:24:03 ◼   ► Even at the very beginning, like they had a few artists

00:24:06 ◼   ► on board to start it out and start posting

00:24:08 ◼   ► and I tried following some artists I liked

00:24:10 ◼   ► but it didn't, it seemed to pretty much die out

00:24:14 ◼   ► and have nobody posting there that I followed

00:24:17 ◼   ► almost immediately afterwards.

00:24:19 ◼   ► I think the reason why social networks like Twitter

00:24:21 ◼   ► and Facebook and to some degree in this area, YouTube,

00:24:24 ◼   ► the reason these succeed is because like, you know,

00:24:27 ◼   ► artists that you follow tend not to have a lot to say

00:24:30 ◼   ► most of the time.

00:24:31 ◼   ► Like, you know, if you go follow your favorite

00:24:34 ◼   ► handful of bands on a social network,

00:24:37 ◼   ► if the social network is only them,

00:24:39 ◼   ► if you're not seeing anyone else posting,

00:24:41 ◼   ► that's gonna be a pretty low volume social network.

00:24:43 ◼   ► Whereas the other ones, you're going there all the time

00:24:46 ◼   ► for other stuff, for you know, for all sorts

00:24:49 ◼   ► of different sources and people to follow

00:24:52 ◼   ► or communicate with or you know, post things yourself.

00:24:54 ◼   ► There's tons of reasons to go to social networks

00:24:56 ◼   ► other than, whatever this is, not App Store Connect,

00:24:58 ◼   ► not iTunes Connect, Apple Music Connect, Apple Music Ping,

00:25:02 ◼   ► whatever the heck it was called.

00:25:03 ◼   ► There's no reason to just keep going to that,

00:25:05 ◼   ► to have that be integrated as part of your life

00:25:07 ◼   ► that you're constantly going to.

00:25:08 ◼   ► Whereas the other ones have other draws

00:25:10 ◼   ► that keep people going back and checking in all the time.

00:25:14 ◼   ► So I don't think this ever really stood a chance.

00:25:15 ◼   ► Even when it was introduced, I don't think anybody

00:25:18 ◼   ► was saying like, this is gonna take over the world.

00:25:20 ◼   ► I think everyone was basically saying,

00:25:22 ◼   ► what are they doing, why are they doing Ping again?

00:25:24 ◼   ► And it didn't work out.

00:25:26 ◼   ► - This falls under our category of the best time

00:25:28 ◼   ► to cancel services after people have forgotten that it exists

00:25:31 ◼   ► and this definitely qualifies 'cause I've never read

00:25:33 ◼   ► this story, I'd forgotten that it exists.

00:25:35 ◼   ► Like, oh yeah, they did that thing.

00:25:37 ◼   ► I do think it's actually very different from Ping

00:25:38 ◼   ► for exactly the reason you said.

00:25:40 ◼   ► Ping was, you know, see what your friends are doing.

00:25:43 ◼   ► Like an actual social network that all the participants

00:25:45 ◼   ► would both be able to consume the output of other people

00:25:49 ◼   ► and produce output for other people in the network.

00:25:52 ◼   ► So it was all, it's many to many, right?

00:25:54 ◼   ► - And that was fundamentally flawed

00:25:55 ◼   ► because it was based on the assumptions

00:25:57 ◼   ► that you and your friends have the same taste in music.

00:25:59 ◼   ► I guess, you know, nobody has like a fish friend.

00:26:02 ◼   ► - It doesn't expect you to be the same taste

00:26:04 ◼   ► and it doesn't expect you to be just your friends,

00:26:05 ◼   ► but the whole point, it was just regular people

00:26:07 ◼   ► to regular people, but Kinect seemed,

00:26:08 ◼   ► I don't know if this is entirely true,

00:26:10 ◼   ► but it very much seemed, this is, first of all,

00:26:13 ◼   ► it was pitch to creators to get them to come.

00:26:16 ◼   ► Like, hey, you famous person who makes music,

00:26:18 ◼   ► come to our service.

00:26:18 ◼   ► All the things that you think you wanna do

00:26:20 ◼   ► to communicate to your listeners,

00:26:23 ◼   ► we will make it easy for you to do those things.

00:26:25 ◼   ► So it made it attractive for them.

00:26:27 ◼   ► And then for everyone else, it was like,

00:26:28 ◼   ► you sit back and wait to hear from the famous people.

00:26:32 ◼   ► So like you said, your band has an album

00:26:34 ◼   ► once every few years and then they go on tour

00:26:36 ◼   ► and maybe they'll have some behind the scenes stuff,

00:26:37 ◼   ► which takes work to produce.

00:26:39 ◼   ► Like that was the whole picture of the team.

00:26:40 ◼   ► Like your fans are hungry to know, like,

00:26:43 ◼   ► how you're in the studio working on your album

00:26:45 ◼   ► and what did you have for lunch today?

00:26:46 ◼   ► And here's some behind the scenes,

00:26:47 ◼   ► look at our lyrics in progress and whatever.

00:26:50 ◼   ► You have to encourage the artists to do that.

00:26:52 ◼   ► I mean, Apple probably went so far as to let you know,

00:26:55 ◼   ► get the ones that are friendly to them to do it,

00:26:57 ◼   ► pay them to do it, whatever.

00:26:58 ◼   ► Just gotta kickstart the service.

00:27:00 ◼   ► And then presumably the fans are sitting there waiting

00:27:02 ◼   ► to see something from their band.

00:27:04 ◼   ► But that's the ghost, like I said, it's a ghost town

00:27:07 ◼   ► because people don't follow that many artists

00:27:09 ◼   ► and artists don't have that much to say

00:27:11 ◼   ► and that much to update.

00:27:12 ◼   ► And the artists aren't gonna invest the time and energy

00:27:14 ◼   ► to put highly produced content out to an audience of nobody.

00:27:19 ◼   ► All the people are not sitting in,

00:27:21 ◼   ► I don't know where you would sit in iTunes application,

00:27:23 ◼   ► in the music application on your phone,

00:27:26 ◼   ► waiting for the once a month thing to come.

00:27:27 ◼   ► No, you're gonna be someplace else.

00:27:29 ◼   ► You're gonna be on YouTube looking

00:27:30 ◼   ► at the millions of videos.

00:27:31 ◼   ► You're gonna be on Twitter, you're gonna be on Facebook.

00:27:33 ◼   ► You're going to be where things are actually happening.

00:27:36 ◼   ► So no one's going to produce for an audience

00:27:37 ◼   ► that isn't there.

00:27:38 ◼   ► And it's like, you can't have an audience

00:27:41 ◼   ► if there's nothing for them to do except for wait

00:27:43 ◼   ► for messages from on high from the famous people.

00:27:46 ◼   ► So I think Ping was actually a better,

00:27:49 ◼   ► smarter everything connect, which is saying something

00:27:52 ◼   ► because Ping was also fundamentally flawed

00:27:53 ◼   ► because it's like, why would people,

00:27:55 ◼   ► how do you bootstrap this social network

00:27:58 ◼   ► when you don't have anything to offer

00:28:00 ◼   ► over the million other social networks

00:28:01 ◼   ► that are already much better established

00:28:03 ◼   ► and where people already have a place to talk about music

00:28:06 ◼   ► that they like or send each other links to things

00:28:08 ◼   ► that they think are cool.

00:28:09 ◼   ► Like they do that on every other social network

00:28:11 ◼   ► and Ping didn't have any, you know, all these services,

00:28:14 ◼   ► especially when they're tied to iTunes,

00:28:15 ◼   ► seem like they were created by an Apple

00:28:17 ◼   ► that still thinks it's the king of digital music, you know,

00:28:19 ◼   ► 'cause of the iTunes store and selling people songs

00:28:21 ◼   ► for 99 cents, like that time has passed.

00:28:24 ◼   ► But that seems to be the place where Apple thinks

00:28:26 ◼   ► they can, they have a lever to bootstrap a social network

00:28:30 ◼   ► and they just don't, they just don't have one.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Like you can bootstrap a social network

00:28:34 ◼   ► with enough money and effort,

00:28:35 ◼   ► but iTunes is not an advantage.

00:28:37 ◼   ► In fact, at this point, it is probably

00:28:38 ◼   ► a very big disadvantage because no one wants

00:28:40 ◼   ► to launch that app and the apps on iOS

00:28:45 ◼   ► are not particularly well suited to that

00:28:47 ◼   ► or neither is any real music player app.

00:28:50 ◼   ► Even something like Spotify,

00:28:51 ◼   ► which is doing what Apple wishes they could do

00:28:52 ◼   ► where people trade Spotify playlists with each other

00:28:54 ◼   ► and create them and like even that,

00:28:58 ◼   ► Apple is so far behind that and that's a thing

00:29:00 ◼   ► that has existed for years.

00:29:01 ◼   ► So I kind of feel bad for Apple's efforts in this area,

00:29:06 ◼   ► especially since they, like they continue to think that,

00:29:10 ◼   ► you know, producing high quality content by famous people

00:29:13 ◼   ► is a thing that helps you win.

00:29:14 ◼   ► Like, I don't understand how YouTube hasn't convinced them

00:29:17 ◼   ► that's not the case.

00:29:18 ◼   ► YouTube didn't win by having high quality content

00:29:19 ◼   ► by famous people.

00:29:20 ◼   ► YouTube won by having people making videos in their basement

00:29:23 ◼   ► showing demonstrations of VCRs.

00:29:25 ◼   ► Like that's how YouTube won.

00:29:27 ◼   ► And I can't imagine Apple producing anything

00:29:31 ◼   ► that encourages and fosters and builds on

00:29:33 ◼   ► that type of content.

00:29:35 ◼   ► But that's, you know, that's apparently the way

00:29:37 ◼   ► you build a social network.

00:29:39 ◼   ► - All right, moving on.

00:29:41 ◼   ► Microsoft Edge, which I guess is a web browser,

00:29:44 ◼   ► don't really care, but apparently it's coming to Mac OS.

00:29:46 ◼   ► Hooray!

00:29:48 ◼   ► Yes, I think.

00:29:49 ◼   ► - That's not what this says.

00:29:50 ◼   ► You are missing the story here.

00:29:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:29:54 ◼   ► - Now I know that the story is that it's,

00:29:57 ◼   ► my understanding of the story is that they're canning

00:29:59 ◼   ► their custom rendering engine

00:30:00 ◼   ► and they're now forking Chromium, is that right?

00:30:03 ◼   ► And using that as a rendering engine,

00:30:05 ◼   ► which means basically the entire world

00:30:07 ◼   ► is going to be WebKit going forward.

00:30:08 ◼   ► It's just a matter of what the particular genesis is

00:30:11 ◼   ► of your particular flavor.

00:30:12 ◼   ► - Excuse me, Chromium is not WebKit.

00:30:13 ◼   ► - Well, no, it is a descendant of WebKit, is it not?

00:30:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, so the family tree is getting complicated.

00:30:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly, there you go.

00:30:21 ◼   ► - You mentioned before you didn't know what Edge was.

00:30:22 ◼   ► So Edge is the thing, we all know Internet Explorer.

00:30:27 ◼   ► Good old, bad old Internet Explorer.

00:30:30 ◼   ► That was a big problem for the whole world for a long time.

00:30:33 ◼   ► And many generations of web developers

00:30:37 ◼   ► will continue to loathe into their retirement.

00:30:41 ◼   ► They will tell stories of IE6 forever.

00:30:43 ◼   ► Again, I will tell stories of IE6 forever, I guarantee it.

00:30:46 ◼   ► Edge was supposed to be the successor to Internet Explorer

00:30:49 ◼   ► 'cause Internet Explorer was old and creaky

00:30:50 ◼   ► and had to support people's corporate internets forever.

00:30:53 ◼   ► And as much as Microsoft tried to improve it,

00:30:56 ◼   ► they had increasingly Byzantine backward compatibility hacks

00:31:00 ◼   ► involving HTML comments and different modes

00:31:02 ◼   ► and a mini language inside the headers to basically say,

00:31:05 ◼   ► we won't break your intranet,

00:31:07 ◼   ► but if web developers know the right incantations,

00:31:09 ◼   ► their standards compliance sites will render

00:31:12 ◼   ► almost as good as they do

00:31:13 ◼   ► in insert standard compliant browser here.

00:31:15 ◼   ► Edge was a successor to that to say, clean sheet,

00:31:18 ◼   ► this is not compatible with your stupid IE6 only intranet.

00:31:22 ◼   ► It's a modern browser and it's fast.

00:31:24 ◼   ► And they spent a while developing that.

00:31:27 ◼   ► And then I wish I knew the exact timeline

00:31:29 ◼   ► so I could say the number of years

00:31:30 ◼   ► they spent on the Edge stuff.

00:31:32 ◼   ► But this announcement is,

00:31:33 ◼   ► all right, nevermind about the Edge thing.

00:31:34 ◼   ► We're gonna make a new web browser

00:31:36 ◼   ► and it's gonna be based on Chromium,

00:31:38 ◼   ► which is based on Blink, which was based on WebKit,

00:31:41 ◼   ► which was based on KHTML and KJS,

00:31:43 ◼   ► which are from the KDE Foundation.

00:31:45 ◼   ► And if you know what KDE is, you're probably very old.

00:31:48 ◼   ► Yeah, so that's quite a lineage of these browsers,

00:31:53 ◼   ► but the, and it'll be coming to macOS.

00:31:55 ◼   ► So you'll be able to run a Microsoft web browser on your Mac

00:31:58 ◼   ► if that's really a thing you wanna do.

00:32:01 ◼   ► But the main thing that's got people in a tizzy about this

00:32:06 ◼   ► is it kind of reduces the biodiversity

00:32:10 ◼   ► of the web browser ecosystem by one,

00:32:14 ◼   ► which is a lot when there weren't,

00:32:16 ◼   ► how many browsers out there, how many web browsers exist

00:32:20 ◼   ► that you can basically view modern websites with?

00:32:24 ◼   ► Not many.

00:32:25 ◼   ► You can count them on probably one hand,

00:32:28 ◼   ► especially if you coalesce the mobile and desktop variants.

00:32:31 ◼   ► And so Microsoft apparently is not a big enough company

00:32:36 ◼   ► and does not have enough money

00:32:37 ◼   ► and is not strategically important enough for them

00:32:39 ◼   ► to sustain the development of a separate web browser engine

00:32:44 ◼   ► so they're gonna build something on Chromium.

00:32:46 ◼   ► Are they gonna fork it?

00:32:47 ◼   ► Are they gonna say, in the same way

00:32:48 ◼   ► that Blink was forked from WebKit,

00:32:49 ◼   ► are they going to take Chromium and run with it?

00:32:52 ◼   ► I doubt it because if they could support

00:32:54 ◼   ► the continued development of a web engine,

00:32:57 ◼   ► a web browser engine, they would do that.

00:32:59 ◼   ► I think they want Google and the open source community

00:33:03 ◼   ► to continue to advance Chromium

00:33:04 ◼   ► and they just want to reap the benefits of that.

00:33:06 ◼   ► So I think they will release a browser built on Chromium

00:33:09 ◼   ► and when Chromium gets updated,

00:33:11 ◼   ► they will incorporate those updates into their browser

00:33:13 ◼   ► and they will just keep doing that

00:33:14 ◼   ► and basically be mostly out of the business

00:33:18 ◼   ► of developing a full featured modern web rendering engine

00:33:23 ◼   ► and instead allow that to happen,

00:33:26 ◼   ► allow someone else to do that

00:33:27 ◼   ► because it's just too much of a pain,

00:33:30 ◼   ► it's just too much work to do that as a product

00:33:32 ◼   ► which is making me think about,

00:33:34 ◼   ► it used to be we talk about how many companies

00:33:37 ◼   ► have enough money and technical expertise to be a platform.

00:33:40 ◼   ► In the old days, it was like a desktop PC platform.

00:33:44 ◼   ► You have to make an operating system

00:33:45 ◼   ► and you have to have APIs,

00:33:46 ◼   ► you have to have a developer program

00:33:47 ◼   ► and you have to support them

00:33:48 ◼   ► and you have to get hardware vendors

00:33:49 ◼   ► to make the hardware you want

00:33:51 ◼   ► or you have to make your own hardware

00:33:52 ◼   ► and you have to deal with drivers

00:33:53 ◼   ► and you're just like, it takes a lot of time, money

00:33:57 ◼   ► and expertise to make a platform

00:34:00 ◼   ► and then for that platform to be successful enough

00:34:02 ◼   ► in the market and sustain that, it's very difficult.

00:34:04 ◼   ► So there's not a lot of say personal computer platforms

00:34:07 ◼   ► that exist in a popular today.

00:34:09 ◼   ► You've got the Mac, you've got Windows,

00:34:10 ◼   ► you've got Linux on a desktop,

00:34:11 ◼   ► which is coming anytime soon

00:34:12 ◼   ► and various also brands in the mix there.

00:34:17 ◼   ► At this point, web browser engines seem like perhaps

00:34:20 ◼   ► even more difficult to keep up with than desktop operating

00:34:23 ◼   ► systems from a technical perspective

00:34:25 ◼   ► because the web changes much faster

00:34:27 ◼   ► and it's a sort of a communal thing

00:34:29 ◼   ► where if new web standards come out

00:34:31 ◼   ► and those web standards are supported by,

00:34:34 ◼   ► insert whatever the important browser is

00:34:35 ◼   ► that has the most market share

00:34:37 ◼   ► and you don't support it on a reasonable timeline,

00:34:40 ◼   ► and websites start using it because the browser

00:34:43 ◼   ► that has 80% market share supports it,

00:34:45 ◼   ► you will be left behind and people will come to say,

00:34:47 ◼   ► well, the site doesn't work and insert my favorite browser,

00:34:50 ◼   ► I have to go to the market later.

00:34:52 ◼   ► That's what happened with Internet Explorer

00:34:54 ◼   ► and Chrome and it's, right now even Microsoft thinks,

00:34:59 ◼   ► we can't keep up with that.

00:35:00 ◼   ► It's just too much, it's too much too fast

00:35:02 ◼   ► and actually that's not our strategic strength.

00:35:05 ◼   ► It's not an important advantage

00:35:06 ◼   ► for us to have our own browser engine

00:35:07 ◼   ► so we'll let someone else do it.

00:35:09 ◼   ► If everybody does that though,

00:35:11 ◼   ► eventually there's only one browser engine,

00:35:14 ◼   ► hopefully not controlled by some single company

00:35:17 ◼   ► and then we're back to Internet Explorer again

00:35:19 ◼   ► where Microsoft and Internet Explorer dictated

00:35:22 ◼   ► what could and couldn't be on the web

00:35:23 ◼   ► because so many people ran Windows and Internet Explorer 6

00:35:27 ◼   ► that even if you made a cool standard compliant site,

00:35:29 ◼   ► if it looked like crap in IE6,

00:35:31 ◼   ► it was basically invisible

00:35:32 ◼   ► to a large portion of the population.

00:35:33 ◼   ► So this has a lot of people nervous.

00:35:36 ◼   ► I kind of understand why Microsoft bailed on it

00:35:39 ◼   ► from an investment perspective

00:35:40 ◼   ► but and I do understand exactly how complicated it is

00:35:44 ◼   ► to build and sustain a modern web rendering engine

00:35:47 ◼   ► but I just don't really have a particularly good feeling

00:35:49 ◼   ► about this happening.

00:35:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I already feel like, as you said,

00:35:53 ◼   ► Chrome is becoming the de facto standard

00:35:56 ◼   ► and that makes me uncomfortable.

00:35:59 ◼   ► Like I can't think off the top of my head of that many,

00:36:01 ◼   ► or really anything that absolutely requires Chrome

00:36:04 ◼   ► but certainly Google's own web properties

00:36:07 ◼   ► work a lot better in Chrome, which makes sense.

00:36:09 ◼   ► But there's a handful of sites, again,

00:36:10 ◼   ► I wish I could think of an example

00:36:12 ◼   ► that just don't work properly in Safari

00:36:14 ◼   ► and do work better in Chrome.

00:36:15 ◼   ► And a lot of people seem to really like Chrome.

00:36:17 ◼   ► I don't particularly care for it.

00:36:20 ◼   ► It doesn't really work for me in a few different ways

00:36:22 ◼   ► that really don't matter.

00:36:24 ◼   ► But I am not keen on the idea of Chrome

00:36:28 ◼   ► kind of getting even more cemented as the de facto standard.

00:36:34 ◼   ► And yeah, it's all sort of WebKit behind the scenes

00:36:38 ◼   ► but there's more differences here

00:36:39 ◼   ► than I'm comfortable with already

00:36:41 ◼   ► and that just makes me uncomfortable.

00:36:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, the JavaScript engines are totally separate

00:36:44 ◼   ► because Chrome has the V8 engine

00:36:48 ◼   ► and Apple has what the hell is there called?

00:36:52 ◼   ► - Is it Nitro, is that a thing?

00:36:54 ◼   ► - There's a bunch of code names for the faster versions.

00:36:57 ◼   ► But anyway, they have their own

00:36:57 ◼   ► and they're separate from each other.

00:36:58 ◼   ► JavaScript core is I think the framework.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Anyway, someone posted in the chat room

00:37:03 ◼   ► an article I read earlier today,

00:37:04 ◼   ► an article, a Hacker News comment

00:37:06 ◼   ► that shows just how fraught the world

00:37:08 ◼   ► of browser development is.

00:37:12 ◼   ► So this is Microsoft back when they were doing

00:37:14 ◼   ► their Edge thing, they're having a problem

00:37:17 ◼   ► where YouTube, if you tried to go to YouTube

00:37:20 ◼   ► and play a video in Edge, all of a sudden

00:37:23 ◼   ► the sort of hardware accelerated efficient

00:37:26 ◼   ► GPU driven video path that was nicest to your battery

00:37:30 ◼   ► stopped working in Edge.

00:37:32 ◼   ► And when Microsoft's browser team investigated it

00:37:34 ◼   ► they found there was like an invisible div,

00:37:36 ◼   ► like a div with some transparency

00:37:38 ◼   ► or a hidden div or whatever covering the video.

00:37:42 ◼   ► And their acceleration framework thought

00:37:44 ◼   ► that it couldn't accelerate that

00:37:45 ◼   ► because there was an element in front of it.

00:37:46 ◼   ► Like it thought that it couldn't use the fast path

00:37:49 ◼   ► so it fell back to like the less efficient rendering mode.

00:37:52 ◼   ► But that didn't happen in Chrome.

00:37:55 ◼   ► Chrome was apparently smart enough to know that,

00:37:56 ◼   ► oh yeah, there's something in front of it

00:37:58 ◼   ► but use the accelerated path anyway

00:37:59 ◼   ► but because the thing in front of it is invisible

00:38:01 ◼   ► or is zero present opacity or whatever.

00:38:04 ◼   ► And the nefarious interpretation of this is that,

00:38:07 ◼   ► aha, Google is intentionally making changes to YouTube,

00:38:10 ◼   ► which Google owns, to make Microsoft's browsers worse

00:38:12 ◼   ► because Google was touting how battery efficient Chrome is.

00:38:17 ◼   ► Look at us when we, which is ironic considering

00:38:20 ◼   ► Chrome is a battery pig compared to Safari

00:38:22 ◼   ► but everything's relative.

00:38:24 ◼   ► So if you have a PC and you're not running a Mac

00:38:27 ◼   ► and you're trying to watch YouTube video,

00:38:29 ◼   ► you do it in Chrome, it hurts your battery

00:38:31 ◼   ► much less than if you did it in Edge.

00:38:33 ◼   ► And so they're like, look at this Chrome,

00:38:36 ◼   ► Google taking advantage of the fact that they own YouTube

00:38:39 ◼   ► to crap on someone else's browser

00:38:41 ◼   ► to make Chrome more dominant.

00:38:42 ◼   ► And that could be what happens.

00:38:43 ◼   ► That's the thing that happens in technology all the time,

00:38:45 ◼   ► doing stuff to make your competitor's product look bad.

00:38:49 ◼   ► But a more benign explanation is that YouTube

00:38:53 ◼   ► and many other web properties have to do all sorts of things

00:38:55 ◼   ► to either defeat ad blocking or defeat bots or both,

00:38:59 ◼   ► like all sorts of obfuscation techniques

00:39:02 ◼   ► because the web is a very adversarial environment

00:39:04 ◼   ► and Google knows this.

00:39:06 ◼   ► People are constantly trying to game Google,

00:39:08 ◼   ► people are, you know, lots of things are coming by

00:39:10 ◼   ► trying to scrape content or be automated

00:39:12 ◼   ► and sometimes you have to do stuff in the markup

00:39:14 ◼   ► that doesn't make any sense

00:39:15 ◼   ► because it breaks some other adversary

00:39:18 ◼   ► and might have also broken Edge HTML at the same time

00:39:21 ◼   ► because its optimization didn't understand

00:39:23 ◼   ► that that thing was invisible.

00:39:24 ◼   ► So there are also plausible,

00:39:26 ◼   ► and again, I'm not saying this is what happened,

00:39:27 ◼   ► but plausible benign explanations.

00:39:29 ◼   ► So the bottom line is if you are Microsoft

00:39:32 ◼   ► making Edge HTML, it doesn't really matter

00:39:34 ◼   ► whether it was they're trying to mess up your browser

00:39:37 ◼   ► or they're trying to fight bots or something,

00:39:40 ◼   ► you have to be aware at all times,

00:39:42 ◼   ► how is our browser doing with the latest version

00:39:44 ◼   ► of insert popular site that we don't control?

00:39:46 ◼   ► Oh, it looks like it used to work great on that site

00:39:49 ◼   ► but now it doesn't.

00:39:49 ◼   ► Quickly figure out why it doesn't work

00:39:51 ◼   ► and fix our rendering engine so it does.

00:39:53 ◼   ► And that's what it means to make a web browser.

00:39:55 ◼   ► Like if your web browser works worse in YouTube,

00:39:59 ◼   ► you can't ignore that.

00:40:00 ◼   ► You have to have people, a very large engineering team,

00:40:03 ◼   ► forget about adding features,

00:40:04 ◼   ► just all the time making sure

00:40:05 ◼   ► that all the popular websites that must work

00:40:07 ◼   ► and must work well,

00:40:09 ◼   ► continue to work and continue to work well.

00:40:11 ◼   ► And those websites are changing all the time

00:40:13 ◼   ► and they're not consulting you when they change them.

00:40:14 ◼   ► They're making the changes that they need to make,

00:40:16 ◼   ► whether they're trying to intentionally mess you up

00:40:18 ◼   ► or they're just doing something totally unrelated

00:40:19 ◼   ► that incidentally messes you up

00:40:21 ◼   ► because what they're doing seems inexplicable.

00:40:23 ◼   ► But again, many inexplicable things happen on the web

00:40:25 ◼   ► for purposes other than screwing other web browser vendors.

00:40:29 ◼   ► That's just a tiny glimpse of what it would take

00:40:30 ◼   ► to maintain a web browser engine.

00:40:33 ◼   ► And if you don't think it's strategically important

00:40:36 ◼   ► for you to do that, why would you waste all that money?

00:40:39 ◼   ► Thus far, Apple continues to think

00:40:40 ◼   ► it's strategically important for them

00:40:41 ◼   ► to have their own web browser engine.

00:40:43 ◼   ► I don't think they're ever going to change their mind

00:40:44 ◼   ► about that because it seems like that battle

00:40:47 ◼   ► was won a long time ago.

00:40:48 ◼   ► And now that they have their own browser engine,

00:40:50 ◼   ► they can be much more battery efficient with it

00:40:52 ◼   ► on all their portable devices,

00:40:53 ◼   ► which is super important to Apple

00:40:54 ◼   ► because phones is their whole biz

00:40:55 ◼   ► and other portable products.

00:40:57 ◼   ► And I think they like the control and yada yada.

00:40:59 ◼   ► And you can see Google and Apple

00:41:02 ◼   ► and Firefox, the Mozilla Foundation, whatever,

00:41:04 ◼   ► duking it out over standards,

00:41:06 ◼   ► both inside and outside the formal standards process.

00:41:08 ◼   ► So they're all, and Microsoft's in that mix too.

00:41:11 ◼   ► So everyone still has a stake in this,

00:41:13 ◼   ► but Microsoft's sort of bowing out

00:41:16 ◼   ► and not getting behind the Google side of things,

00:41:19 ◼   ► but saying of all the,

00:41:21 ◼   ► because they could have just picked WebKit, right?

00:41:23 ◼   ► They could have picked WebKit

00:41:24 ◼   ► and JavaScript core or whatever, but they didn't.

00:41:27 ◼   ► And just basically saying, we'll use what you do.

00:41:30 ◼   ► You just do what you do and we'll,

00:41:31 ◼   ► I'm assuming Microsoft will continue to participate

00:41:33 ◼   ► in W3C standardization process and put their 2 cents in,

00:41:37 ◼   ► but they're just gonna take Google's work.

00:41:40 ◼   ► And so now it is Google,

00:41:42 ◼   ► which already had by far the dominant market share

00:41:45 ◼   ► of web browsing across the entire world.

00:41:48 ◼   ► And then in a tiny little corner off to the side,

00:41:51 ◼   ► Apple with its whatever it is, 20% worldwide market share,

00:41:55 ◼   ► but a much larger percentage of people

00:41:57 ◼   ► who buy things through the web browser.

00:41:58 ◼   ► So they still have that power base to work from.

00:42:00 ◼   ► So I don't know, I'm a little nervous about this.

00:42:04 ◼   ► I'll try Edge when it's on the Mac,

00:42:06 ◼   ► but kind of like Firefox,

00:42:08 ◼   ► I don't think that the change is gonna stick

00:42:11 ◼   ► unless it does something pretty amazing.

00:42:13 ◼   ► - I gotta tell you, I do not miss doing web development.

00:42:16 ◼   ► - Nope. - It was fun for a while,

00:42:18 ◼   ► but I do not miss it at all.

00:42:21 ◼   ► - I mean, every field of development,

00:42:23 ◼   ► you have to deal with somebody's BS,

00:42:25 ◼   ► but it feels like with web development,

00:42:27 ◼   ► you had to deal with a lot of people's BS

00:42:30 ◼   ► and it never really ended.

00:42:31 ◼   ► In fact, it only seemed to increase over time.

00:42:34 ◼   ► We thought, okay, once IE6 is out of the picture,

00:42:36 ◼   ► everything will be easier.

00:42:38 ◼   ► And instead, it just got harder in different ways.

00:42:41 ◼   ► And now what modern web development is,

00:42:44 ◼   ► certain things are very easy,

00:42:46 ◼   ► but in general, the entire field as a whole

00:42:49 ◼   ► has not gotten easier.

00:42:50 ◼   ► It's just way more complicated,

00:42:52 ◼   ► and there's so much more that you, quote,

00:42:55 ◼   ► have to do and use and know about and learn,

00:42:59 ◼   ► and it seems like it's accelerating

00:43:00 ◼   ► like how quickly things change

00:43:01 ◼   ► and how much stuff you have to know

00:43:03 ◼   ► to be a working web programmer in most of the industry.

00:43:07 ◼   ► It's just nuts.

00:43:09 ◼   ► - It's kind of like programming in the early days

00:43:11 ◼   ► where you're just writing some sort of batch job

00:43:14 ◼   ► in Fortran or something on a high-performance computer

00:43:17 ◼   ► that just does some operations on a bunch of numbers.

00:43:19 ◼   ► And today, to be an iOS developer,

00:43:21 ◼   ► you need to know so much more than they needed to know.

00:43:23 ◼   ► They needed to know how to write to one machine,

00:43:25 ◼   ► and they needed to know some basics,

00:43:26 ◼   ► and the API was small, and you could do it now.

00:43:28 ◼   ► In order to be an iOS developer,

00:43:29 ◼   ► you have to know all the stuff about using the IDE

00:43:31 ◼   ► and the million APIs and everything about design

00:43:34 ◼   ► and layout, and it's just so much harder.

00:43:35 ◼   ► It's because we make better programs.

00:43:37 ◼   ► We make more complicated programs.

00:43:38 ◼   ► So in web development, things are better

00:43:40 ◼   ► if what you wanted to make was a website

00:43:43 ◼   ► that you could have made in 1993.

00:43:44 ◼   ► You could make that today so much better

00:43:46 ◼   ► with so much less work,

00:43:47 ◼   ► but you don't want to make a 1993 website.

00:43:49 ◼   ► You want to make a modern website,

00:43:50 ◼   ► and modern websites, guess what?

00:43:52 ◼   ► Have way more features and do way more things,

00:43:54 ◼   ► and so you have to learn more APIs,

00:43:56 ◼   ► and it's just scaled up.

00:43:59 ◼   ► So I think the standards were to get IE6 out of there

00:44:02 ◼   ► and to basically try to get everyone

00:44:04 ◼   ► on some semblance of the same page

00:44:06 ◼   ► and get basic support for things

00:44:08 ◼   ► that everyone knows are good

00:44:10 ◼   ► but that Microsoft was preventing us

00:44:11 ◼   ► from using for years, like basic CSS.

00:44:14 ◼   ► That's so boring, no one even talks about it anymore.

00:44:17 ◼   ► We're like 17 battles on from that,

00:44:19 ◼   ► but the stuff that we fought the battles over and won,

00:44:22 ◼   ► you can use that right now, and it is very pleasant to use,

00:44:25 ◼   ► but just the table stakes have been raised.

00:44:29 ◼   ► You can't even participate in the web at the highest level

00:44:33 ◼   ► if you don't know how to use all these other things,

00:44:36 ◼   ► and that's where everyone's fighting and working

00:44:38 ◼   ► at the bleeding edge to have the coolest,

00:44:41 ◼   ► most advanced website.

00:44:42 ◼   ► The nice thing is that if you don't want to have

00:44:44 ◼   ► a cool advanced website,

00:44:45 ◼   ► but you just want to have a bunch of static pages

00:44:48 ◼   ► with words on them and pictures and stuff,

00:44:50 ◼   ► it's so much more pleasant now to do something like that.

00:44:53 ◼   ► There is a little bit more you need to know,

00:44:54 ◼   ► because you didn't have to worry about responsive

00:44:55 ◼   ► back in the day, because what did that mean?

00:44:57 ◼   ► Who's gonna be, you look at a website and your phone,

00:44:59 ◼   ► so you don't have to worry about that,

00:45:00 ◼   ► and you just gotta make sure you support

00:45:02 ◼   ► the smallest computer screen at 640 pixels wide

00:45:05 ◼   ► or whatever the hell, which ironically is narrower

00:45:07 ◼   ► than most phones these days.

00:45:09 ◼   ► But if you just want to do a simple website,

00:45:12 ◼   ► the web is incredibly pleasant today,

00:45:14 ◼   ► but yeah, if you want to make YouTube or Gmail or whatever,

00:45:18 ◼   ► it's incredibly complicated.

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00:46:57 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:47:01 ◼   ► - Over the last week or two,

00:47:04 ◼   ► there has been a pitch from NPR

00:47:07 ◼   ► for something that's rad.

00:47:10 ◼   ► It's called remote audio data,

00:47:12 ◼   ► and this is the pitch directly from rad.npr.org.

00:47:17 ◼   ► Remote audio data measures podcast listening

00:47:20 ◼   ► across a range of participating clients and platforms,

00:47:22 ◼   ► aggregating the data in publishers analytics endpoint.

00:47:25 ◼   ► No thanks.

00:47:26 ◼   ► I mean, what, huh?

00:47:28 ◼   ► What is this about?

00:47:29 ◼   ► Marco, tell me about this.

00:47:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is, I mean,

00:47:32 ◼   ► I guess I should be careful here

00:47:34 ◼   ► because I'm in this field

00:47:36 ◼   ► and it's involving other people who are in this field

00:47:38 ◼   ► and everything else.

00:47:39 ◼   ► So, you know, I don't wanna like be rude or anything,

00:47:42 ◼   ► but this is a spec that NPR developed

00:47:46 ◼   ► to get more analytics in podcasts.

00:47:50 ◼   ► And I honestly don't think we're gonna hear about it at all

00:47:55 ◼   ► past about this week or so for the simple reason,

00:47:58 ◼   ► and again, I'm not saying this to be mean,

00:48:00 ◼   ► for the simple reason that there is absolutely no reason

00:48:04 ◼   ► for podcast app developers to implement this at all.

00:48:09 ◼   ► The only support I think I expected to get client-side

00:48:12 ◼   ► is from NPR One, which is their own app,

00:48:16 ◼   ► and maybe down the road, Pocket Casts,

00:48:18 ◼   ► which they, through a consortium of something complicated,

00:48:21 ◼   ► they do own it, but Pocket Casts has said publicly

00:48:24 ◼   ► they're not planning on adding support to it.

00:48:25 ◼   ► So I don't see any reason why app makers, including Apple,

00:48:30 ◼   ► which is the big one that matters the most,

00:48:33 ◼   ► would implement this.

00:48:34 ◼   ► So here's what RAD is.

00:48:36 ◼   ► So the fundamental problem that they're trying to solve,

00:48:40 ◼   ► right now in podcasting,

00:48:41 ◼   ► the only way you can really measure your audience

00:48:44 ◼   ► is either by number of hits to the RSS feed,

00:48:47 ◼   ► which is incredibly unreliable

00:48:49 ◼   ► and not very relevant for podcasts,

00:48:51 ◼   ► but the bigger one that people usually use

00:48:52 ◼   ► is number of downloads that an average episode gets,

00:48:55 ◼   ► or some of the bigger shows will say

00:48:57 ◼   ► number of monthly downloads that the show tends to get total,

00:49:00 ◼   ► including all of its archive downloads.

00:49:02 ◼   ► And so that's kinda how you sell your ads,

00:49:06 ◼   ► based on, well, our show tends to get X downloads

00:49:09 ◼   ► per episode, and so if you buy an ad for this episode,

00:49:12 ◼   ► you are likely to get about X downloads.

00:49:14 ◼   ► Now, there's a number of problems with this,

00:49:17 ◼   ► and limitations of this.

00:49:19 ◼   ► First of all, measuring a download is itself a little tricky,

00:49:23 ◼   ► and there's all sorts of efforts

00:49:24 ◼   ► that have been made over the years

00:49:25 ◼   ► to try to standardize what that means,

00:49:27 ◼   ► or what counts, what doesn't count.

00:49:30 ◼   ► There's been lots of complexity in the real world

00:49:32 ◼   ► that have made it harder.

00:49:33 ◼   ► So for instance, a download is not just a quote hit

00:49:38 ◼   ► or a request to the file, because even since like,

00:49:41 ◼   ► forever ago, since like desktop iTunes,

00:49:44 ◼   ► sometimes clients would make multiple requests

00:49:46 ◼   ► for the same file, taking different ranges of the file

00:49:49 ◼   ► for each request to basically run like four download segments

00:49:52 ◼   ► in parallel to speed up the download.

00:49:54 ◼   ► So you kinda have to, like if you see multiple

00:49:58 ◼   ► download attempts from the same IP address,

00:50:01 ◼   ► if they're for different ranges of the file,

00:50:03 ◼   ► you might have to conclude, well, that's one download, really.

00:50:07 ◼   ► But there's lots of situations where multiple people

00:50:12 ◼   ► are sharing one IP address.

00:50:14 ◼   ► So you can't just say that like one IP

00:50:17 ◼   ► has at most one download that's attributed to it.

00:50:21 ◼   ► Also, in the modern world, people download

00:50:24 ◼   ► from their mobile phones, and so they can roam

00:50:27 ◼   ► between cell networks and have different IPs

00:50:29 ◼   ► at different times of the day.

00:50:31 ◼   ► So you might have 10 people behind one IP,

00:50:35 ◼   ► or you might have one person who's roaming

00:50:37 ◼   ► between four different IPs throughout the same day,

00:50:40 ◼   ► trying to stream the same podcast bit by bit.

00:50:42 ◼   ► So it's actually not incredibly accurate

00:50:45 ◼   ► to measure downloads.

00:50:46 ◼   ► And then the other problem with downloads

00:50:48 ◼   ► is that you don't know if they actually listen

00:50:52 ◼   ► to the podcast.

00:50:53 ◼   ► All you know is that these people who you can sort of measure

00:50:58 ◼   ► download the podcast, for the most part, we think.

00:51:01 ◼   ► And then you can assume, based on that, well,

00:51:04 ◼   ► it seems like most of them listen to it, I guess, you know?

00:51:07 ◼   ► And for a while, that was pretty much

00:51:09 ◼   ► the only information we had, is like,

00:51:11 ◼   ► we can see people are downloading it,

00:51:13 ◼   ► and our advertisers who advertise with us,

00:51:16 ◼   ► they'll put in coupon codes or special links

00:51:18 ◼   ► that we read out, and people are using those codes.

00:51:21 ◼   ► So it seems like people are hearing the ads.

00:51:23 ◼   ► So it seems like we have an audience.

00:51:25 ◼   ► Or people write in, they say they listen to the show.

00:51:27 ◼   ► You can have people try to take a survey,

00:51:28 ◼   ► but that never works.

00:51:29 ◼   ► So everything is based in podcast metrics.

00:51:32 ◼   ► Everything is based on estimations.

00:51:35 ◼   ► Now, a big thing happened a few months back.

00:51:38 ◼   ► After years of big podcast producers campaigning Apple,

00:51:43 ◼   ► they convinced Apple Podcasts to open up something

00:51:46 ◼   ► called Podcast Analytics.

00:51:48 ◼   ► And Apple has the iTunes directory,

00:51:50 ◼   ► and Apple also has the biggest podcast player

00:51:53 ◼   ► in the Apple Podcasts app, which has something

00:51:56 ◼   ► like 60% to 70% market share, depending on who you ask.

00:51:59 ◼   ► So it's like the big dog.

00:52:00 ◼   ► It is the only big player that matters in podcasting.

00:52:02 ◼   ► Everything else is way smaller by comparison.

00:52:04 ◼   ► Spotify matters a lot.

00:52:06 ◼   ► They're estimated to have like 5% to 7%, something like that.

00:52:09 ◼   ► Apple has like 60% to 70%.

00:52:11 ◼   ► It's a big deal.

00:52:13 ◼   ► Apple finally agreed with podcasters a few months back,

00:52:16 ◼   ► and they introduced Podcast Analytics,

00:52:18 ◼   ► which in typical Apple fashion is not

00:52:21 ◼   ► personal, creepy level type stuff.

00:52:24 ◼   ► It's very privacy respectful, aggregate stats,

00:52:28 ◼   ► and only for people who opt in with Apple's global

00:52:31 ◼   ► opt-in thing during the iOS setup thing.

00:52:33 ◼   ► It's very anonymous, what you get from them,

00:52:35 ◼   ► but you are able to see basic trends like

00:52:39 ◼   ► how many people who download the,

00:52:41 ◼   ► first of all, how many people download it,

00:52:43 ◼   ► how many of those people actually listen to it,

00:52:46 ◼   ► and then how far into each episode they listen,

00:52:49 ◼   ► and you can see what parts they skip over.

00:52:51 ◼   ► My position basically is that's plenty.

00:52:54 ◼   ► That's more data, that's way more data than we had before.

00:52:58 ◼   ► And what it showed us, honestly,

00:52:59 ◼   ► was that all of our assumptions have basically been true,

00:53:02 ◼   ► that most people who download it listen to it,

00:53:06 ◼   ► most people who listen to it listen most of the way through,

00:53:09 ◼   ► and most people don't skip ads.

00:53:11 ◼   ► That's kind of what we've figured out over the years

00:53:13 ◼   ► based on how ads performed and everything,

00:53:15 ◼   ► and so that seemed to be the case.

00:53:16 ◼   ► And now we have really good data

00:53:19 ◼   ► from the biggest podcast app by far in the world

00:53:22 ◼   ► that supports that theory that,

00:53:24 ◼   ► yeah, you know what, podcasts are fine.

00:53:27 ◼   ► The downloads are mostly being measured accurately,

00:53:30 ◼   ► they're mostly counting,

00:53:31 ◼   ► people are hearing the ads, et cetera.

00:53:33 ◼   ► But there's a lot of big publishers now of podcasts,

00:53:35 ◼   ► and they really want to have their own,

00:53:38 ◼   ► first of all, they want more, they want much more data.

00:53:41 ◼   ► And then they also want more control over that data,

00:53:44 ◼   ► and they have all these backend systems,

00:53:47 ◼   ► there's all these ad platforms.

00:53:49 ◼   ► There are things like dynamic ad insertion,

00:53:51 ◼   ► which we've talked about before,

00:53:52 ◼   ► where they inject ads at certain timestamps of the file

00:53:55 ◼   ► at download time for each user

00:53:57 ◼   ► that can be locally tailored or whatever.

00:53:59 ◼   ► That's why if you listen to big popular podcasts,

00:54:01 ◼   ► you might hear a local car ad or something like that.

00:54:04 ◼   ► That's why that's happening.

00:54:05 ◼   ► When you're injecting ads at download time,

00:54:08 ◼   ► and those ads might be different lengths,

00:54:10 ◼   ► a bunch of stuff breaks.

00:54:12 ◼   ► Things like sync in a podcast app between multiple devices.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Things like sharing timestamps

00:54:17 ◼   ► that all of a sudden can't be guaranteed

00:54:19 ◼   ► to be pointed to the same part of the file

00:54:20 ◼   ► because the ad that came before them

00:54:22 ◼   ► might be different durations

00:54:23 ◼   ► based on when you downloaded it.

00:54:24 ◼   ► Things like range requests and resuming downloads break

00:54:28 ◼   ► because subsequent requests at the same URL

00:54:31 ◼   ► can get different durations.

00:54:33 ◼   ► You might make a request for the first chunk of a file,

00:54:36 ◼   ► then get interrupted.

00:54:37 ◼   ► You go into a subway tunnel or something.

00:54:39 ◼   ► You come out of the tunnel.

00:54:40 ◼   ► It makes a second request for the second half of the file,

00:54:42 ◼   ► and you have a little gap in the middle of the file,

00:54:44 ◼   ► or you have a part that gets repeated

00:54:46 ◼   ► because it's being served a different duration file.

00:54:49 ◼   ► All these platforms are out there that try to do this.

00:54:53 ◼   ► None of them do a great technical job

00:54:55 ◼   ► of actually inserting the ads.

00:54:56 ◼   ► They usually ignore basic HTTP caching

00:54:59 ◼   ► and ETag types of directives,

00:55:02 ◼   ► and they typically violate the MP3 standard

00:55:05 ◼   ► in a number of ways.

00:55:07 ◼   ► So lots of weird stuff happens

00:55:08 ◼   ► with podcast app seeking and everything else.

00:55:10 ◼   ► It's a mess.

00:55:10 ◼   ► But anyway, the bigger problem with dynamic ad insertion

00:55:13 ◼   ► in the context of this conversation

00:55:15 ◼   ► is that it breaks the relevance of Apple Analytics.

00:55:18 ◼   ► If the podcasters wanna know how many people listen

00:55:20 ◼   ► to a particular ad, Apple's aggregate stats

00:55:23 ◼   ► of all people who downloaded that episode

00:55:25 ◼   ► aren't going to really give them that information

00:55:27 ◼   ► because that particular ad wasn't necessarily served

00:55:31 ◼   ► at the same timestamp every time

00:55:33 ◼   ► and wasn't served for all downloads of that same file

00:55:35 ◼   ► because they might run an ad for two days,

00:55:38 ◼   ► and then the rest of the week,

00:55:39 ◼   ► they put a different ad in that spot or whatever.

00:55:41 ◼   ► So what the big podcasters want is a system

00:55:45 ◼   ► that they control completely,

00:55:47 ◼   ► that they can have individual tracking of everything

00:55:51 ◼   ► integrated with their ad servers

00:55:52 ◼   ► so that they can tell exactly how many people

00:55:55 ◼   ► listened to a podcast through certain timestamps,

00:55:57 ◼   ► through certain ranges of time.

00:56:00 ◼   ► They wanna know whether they made it to the end,

00:56:01 ◼   ► whether they made it most of the way to the end,

00:56:03 ◼   ► and of course, they really wanna know

00:56:04 ◼   ► how many people heard how many ads

00:56:06 ◼   ► and exactly which ads and when.

00:56:08 ◼   ► Now, this introduces a number of privacy concerns.

00:56:11 ◼   ► So in the old system,

00:56:14 ◼   ► the system that we are all still operating in,

00:56:17 ◼   ► the only information they have on you is your IP address.

00:56:20 ◼   ► When you fetch the file, they see your IP

00:56:23 ◼   ► because that's how internet transfers work.

00:56:25 ◼   ► You make a request to their server,

00:56:27 ◼   ► they see your IP, simple as that.

00:56:29 ◼   ► And the reality is there are services out there

00:56:32 ◼   ► and ad networks out there where they on the backend

00:56:35 ◼   ► can submit your IP to a web service

00:56:38 ◼   ► and learn everything about you.

00:56:39 ◼   ► No, this is true.

00:56:41 ◼   ► So already, the publishers that want to be gross

00:56:45 ◼   ► about your privacy are being gross about your privacy.

00:56:47 ◼   ► They're already able to with your IP address.

00:56:49 ◼   ► They're able to, with reasonable certainty,

00:56:52 ◼   ► correlate your IP address with other data sources

00:56:55 ◼   ► and services out there to figure out exactly

00:56:56 ◼   ► who you are if they want to,

00:56:58 ◼   ► and use that for advertising purposes.

00:56:59 ◼   ► They absolutely do that.

00:57:00 ◼   ► They will try their hardest to do that,

00:57:03 ◼   ► and that's the reality of big publishing businesses.

00:57:07 ◼   ► So to some degree, the cat's out of the bag, right?

00:57:11 ◼   ► So, but just because they can do that

00:57:15 ◼   ► doesn't mean that I wanna make it easy on them

00:57:16 ◼   ► to do anything else.

00:57:18 ◼   ► I have been very adamant in Overcast,

00:57:20 ◼   ► and just as a podcast listener,

00:57:22 ◼   ► against any other attempts to track any more data.

00:57:26 ◼   ► I think on a number of levels, it would be bad.

00:57:29 ◼   ► There's the personal privacy level

00:57:31 ◼   ► where it's just kind of gross,

00:57:33 ◼   ► that I think listeners don't need that and don't want that.

00:57:37 ◼   ► There's the kind of infrastructure level

00:57:40 ◼   ► of like I don't want other entities

00:57:44 ◼   ► telling me what to do in my app

00:57:46 ◼   ► and what I need to support in my app,

00:57:49 ◼   ► 'cause podcasting right now is wonderful.

00:57:51 ◼   ► It's open, it's an RSS feed with MP3s in it.

00:57:54 ◼   ► It's pretty basic.

00:57:56 ◼   ► You download those MP3s,

00:57:57 ◼   ► and you can do whatever you want with them.

00:57:58 ◼   ► You can play them, you can not play them.

00:58:00 ◼   ► You can do whatever you want with them as the player,

00:58:03 ◼   ► and as the listener, and there's no,

00:58:05 ◼   ► the contract basically ends between the podcast maker and you

00:58:10 ◼   ► at the point of download.

00:58:11 ◼   ► Once you download it, you have full control,

00:58:14 ◼   ► and they have no visibility.

00:58:16 ◼   ► And I like to keep it that way.

00:58:18 ◼   ► But anyway, so that's not what the big publishers want.

00:58:23 ◼   ► And I should clarify too,

00:58:24 ◼   ► while it is true that many of the publishers

00:58:27 ◼   ► of the largest podcasts in the world want things like this,

00:58:31 ◼   ► most of the podcasts that you, dear listener,

00:58:34 ◼   ► probably listen to, like if you listen to this show,

00:58:37 ◼   ► you probably listen to other tech shows.

00:58:39 ◼   ► You probably listen to other indie shows,

00:58:40 ◼   ► smaller shows that are produced by people

00:58:42 ◼   ► and not big corporations.

00:58:44 ◼   ► Chances are the people who make the shows you want,

00:58:48 ◼   ► you listen to, don't want any of this.

00:58:50 ◼   ► Like, we don't want any of this.

00:58:52 ◼   ► Our friends over at Relay and Five by Five

00:58:54 ◼   ► and all these other networks,

00:58:55 ◼   ► they don't want any of this either.

00:58:56 ◼   ► Like, indie podcast makers don't want any more tracking

00:59:00 ◼   ► and dynamic ad insertion and other BS.

00:59:03 ◼   ► We don't want that.

00:59:03 ◼   ► We don't need it.

00:59:05 ◼   ► Our ads sell fine, our podcast does fine.

00:59:08 ◼   ► We are very satisfied with the status quo.

00:59:10 ◼   ► We don't need any of this garbage.

00:59:12 ◼   ► So this is only a request from like the biggest,

00:59:16 ◼   ► biggest, biggest podcast makers

00:59:18 ◼   ► because that's what they do.

00:59:20 ◼   ► When you get to a certain size,

00:59:21 ◼   ► you can start thinking that way

00:59:22 ◼   ► and you start getting data people on board

00:59:23 ◼   ► and growth people and this kind of stuff happens.

00:59:26 ◼   ► So anyway, what the RAD standard is at a technical level

00:59:30 ◼   ► is simply an ID3 tag that includes a JSON bundle,

00:59:34 ◼   ► you know, JSON dictionary inside of it.

00:59:37 ◼   ► And it's basically a series of timestamps

00:59:41 ◼   ► and URLs to hit with arbitrary dictionary,

00:59:45 ◼   ► you know, key value pairs to hit those URLs with

00:59:47 ◼   ► when a user hits those timestamps in the file.

00:59:50 ◼   ► So what you're supposed to do if you implement RAD

00:59:52 ◼   ► on the client side is when you hit certain timestamps

00:59:55 ◼   ► given in the file, make an app-bound network request

00:59:57 ◼   ► to the URL that is provided by the podcaster.

01:00:01 ◼   ► Once you have that, you have user-level tracking.

01:00:03 ◼   ► You have individual tracking.

01:00:04 ◼   ► It's as simple as that.

01:00:05 ◼   ► The spec has certain privacy promises

01:00:09 ◼   ► that aren't actually fillable in practice.

01:00:12 ◼   ► The spec requires apps to make outbound requests

01:00:17 ◼   ► to arbitrary URLs that are specified in an ID3 tag

01:00:20 ◼   ► in the file that was downloaded.

01:00:22 ◼   ► So even if the player doesn't provide like a user identifier

01:00:26 ◼   ► the download server already has your IP

01:00:30 ◼   ► and it can serve you a dynamically generated file.

01:00:34 ◼   ► So it can serve you a file that has dynamically inserted

01:00:37 ◼   ► a unique set of URLs just for you to be called back to.

01:00:41 ◼   ► So it can track you through multiple IPs

01:00:43 ◼   ► as you run throughout the day.

01:00:44 ◼   ► It can see exactly how far you,

01:00:47 ◼   ► user that started out at this IP address

01:00:49 ◼   ► which they might be able to resolve to you, KC list,

01:00:52 ◼   ► that's all trackable then.

01:00:54 ◼   ► Once you know which copy of that file you serve

01:00:59 ◼   ► to which user, which you can do by just a dynamic URLs,

01:01:02 ◼   ► then you can track a user from start to finish.

01:01:05 ◼   ► You can see exactly what they do

01:01:07 ◼   ► and you can build a network of knowledge

01:01:09 ◼   ► of what IPs they tend to use at what time

01:01:11 ◼   ► they tend to use them and then you can track users

01:01:14 ◼   ► between shows over time.

01:01:16 ◼   ► So the privacy angle of this is pretty rough.

01:01:21 ◼   ► There's pretty much no privacy guarantee here

01:01:24 ◼   ► and the fact is even if a publisher now says,

01:01:28 ◼   ► oh well we won't do that, the fact is it's ad tech.

01:01:32 ◼   ► People will do it eventually.

01:01:33 ◼   ► If you won't do it, someone else will.

01:01:35 ◼   ► Like it'll happen.

01:01:35 ◼   ► So the only protection against ad tech is to block it

01:01:39 ◼   ► completely and so on the privacy front

01:01:44 ◼   ► and on the feature front, I see no reason at all

01:01:49 ◼   ► why podcast apps would implement this

01:01:52 ◼   ► and the good news about the world of podcasts

01:01:55 ◼   ► is that what are they gonna do about it?

01:01:58 ◼   ► Like right now, if I implement, so suppose I say,

01:02:03 ◼   ► no I'm never implementing this

01:02:05 ◼   ► which I did because I won't.

01:02:08 ◼   ► And so suppose a podcast app says that.

01:02:11 ◼   ► A podcast publisher, like a big publisher

01:02:14 ◼   ► cannot then block Overcast from downloading those files

01:02:19 ◼   ► because a podcast is beautifully an RSS feed

01:02:22 ◼   ► full of MP3 files or links to MP3 files

01:02:25 ◼   ► and if they somehow try to lock that down

01:02:29 ◼   ► any further than that, Apple Podcasts can't play it

01:02:33 ◼   ► and they lose their entire market.

01:02:35 ◼   ► So as long as Apple doesn't do stuff like this,

01:02:40 ◼   ► then we're pretty safe and I cannot possibly see Apple

01:02:45 ◼   ► implementing this for all the privacy reasons.

01:02:47 ◼   ► There's no way and there's nothing in it for them.

01:02:50 ◼   ► So there's basically no incentive that anybody could provide

01:02:55 ◼   ► that would make this worth implementing on a player side.

01:02:58 ◼   ► Unless they back up a truckload of money into my driveway

01:03:00 ◼   ► and buy Overcast, I don't think there's any path to this

01:03:05 ◼   ► on the client side.

01:03:06 ◼   ► There's no reason for clients to do it

01:03:07 ◼   ► and there's lots of reasons for clients not to do it.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Number one, being creepy, number two, GDPR liabilities.

01:03:15 ◼   ► Like there's huge liabilities.

01:03:17 ◼   ► Like if I am taking your behavioral data

01:03:21 ◼   ► and sending it, basically phoning home

01:03:24 ◼   ► and telling any arbitrary URL what you are doing

01:03:27 ◼   ► as you're listening,

01:03:28 ◼   ► that's a pretty huge security violation,

01:03:30 ◼   ► or privacy violation I should say.

01:03:33 ◼   ► And while it technically might not be

01:03:36 ◼   ► personally identifiable information by the GDPR definition,

01:03:40 ◼   ► it's still real creepy and it's still a liability

01:03:42 ◼   ► and it's still something that like,

01:03:44 ◼   ► if your users found out that you were doing that,

01:03:47 ◼   ► I bet they'd be upset about that.

01:03:48 ◼   ► I bet that's the kind of thing you would want your users

01:03:50 ◼   ► not to know about.

01:03:51 ◼   ► And typically, it's a good idea to minimize

01:03:54 ◼   ► those kinds of things in your business.

01:03:56 ◼   ► If you have a lot of those things, you're doing things wrong.

01:04:00 ◼   ► So I see the problem they're trying to solve with RAD.

01:04:05 ◼   ► I don't think it's as big of a problem

01:04:08 ◼   ► as they seem to think it is.

01:04:09 ◼   ► This is not a problem that most podcasters

01:04:11 ◼   ► that I listen to or know have.

01:04:14 ◼   ► And the solution they've come up with,

01:04:17 ◼   ► I fail to see why any app would ever integrate that

01:04:20 ◼   ► and there's a lot of reasons why we shouldn't.

01:04:23 ◼   ► - So I have a couple of thoughts about this.

01:04:26 ◼   ► I guess starting with what you just said,

01:04:29 ◼   ► I don't understand what,

01:04:32 ◼   ► why would you do this?

01:04:35 ◼   ► - I don't know.

01:04:36 ◼   ► - What is in it for anyone other than NPR?

01:04:40 ◼   ► Why does anyone, as a podcast app,

01:04:44 ◼   ► as a podcast client developer,

01:04:46 ◼   ► why would you spend the time to do this?

01:04:48 ◼   ► What's in it for you?

01:04:50 ◼   ► I just don't understand.

01:04:52 ◼   ► - The NPR website has answers to all your questions.

01:04:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, so what's the answer?

01:04:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, so to their credit, they did put up a page,

01:04:59 ◼   ► basically like a fact to explain this.

01:05:01 ◼   ► But this is their best chance.

01:05:04 ◼   ► They write this website.

01:05:05 ◼   ► It's their best chance to present their best case.

01:05:09 ◼   ► And so they address everybody.

01:05:10 ◼   ► So what does RAD mean to me?

01:05:12 ◼   ► If you're an app developer,

01:05:14 ◼   ► why should you implement this spec?

01:05:16 ◼   ► Which is, that's one constituency.

01:05:18 ◼   ► They spend one short paragraph

01:05:21 ◼   ► and basically say RAD will allow publishers

01:05:23 ◼   ► to receive organized enhanced listening metrics

01:05:25 ◼   ► and editorial blah, blah, blah, blah, right.

01:05:26 ◼   ► So I am an app implementer.

01:05:28 ◼   ► You've told me that RAD will allow publishers

01:05:31 ◼   ► to receive a bunch of new information.

01:05:33 ◼   ► Okay, I'm still waiting for the part

01:05:35 ◼   ► where I'm an app developer and it's appealing to me.

01:05:38 ◼   ► It reduces the need for each platform

01:05:39 ◼   ► to have a detailed analytics dashboard.

01:05:41 ◼   ► Am I a platform?

01:05:44 ◼   ► Do I have a-- - Again, not our problem.

01:05:46 ◼   ► - Do I have a detailed analytics dashboard?

01:05:48 ◼   ► I just have an app that plays podcasts.

01:05:51 ◼   ► I don't have a detail.

01:05:52 ◼   ► I don't want a detailed analytics page.

01:05:54 ◼   ► It allows for information to be aggregated

01:05:56 ◼   ► in a third party location.

01:05:58 ◼   ► Do I care about aggregating this information?

01:06:00 ◼   ► - And why is that an advantage?

01:06:02 ◼   ► That's not necessarily an advantage.

01:06:03 ◼   ► - RAD does not track specific user behavior.

01:06:06 ◼   ► Instead RAD uses a session ID blah, blah, blah,

01:06:08 ◼   ► the SDA credit to be lightweight, blah, blah.

01:06:10 ◼   ► So they say it'll be easy

01:06:11 ◼   ► to integrate into your application.

01:06:12 ◼   ► So they have an entire paragraph,

01:06:13 ◼   ► which as far as I can tell,

01:06:14 ◼   ► doesn't contain any piece of information

01:06:16 ◼   ► that would say why I should implement this spec

01:06:17 ◼   ► unless I really, really want to have

01:06:22 ◼   ► detailed analytics dashboard,

01:06:23 ◼   ► but I don't want to implement it myself.

01:06:25 ◼   ► I want to like have a third party one,

01:06:26 ◼   ► like it's an industry standard or whatever.

01:06:28 ◼   ► So speculatively in some future

01:06:30 ◼   ► where everyone implemented RAD,

01:06:32 ◼   ► there could be this dashboard that lets you look

01:06:34 ◼   ► at your RAD reported information

01:06:36 ◼   ► or provide the server side for whatever.

01:06:38 ◼   ► And it allows publishers to receive

01:06:41 ◼   ► organized enhanced listening metrics.

01:06:43 ◼   ► And I suppose if you are a publisher

01:06:44 ◼   ► and you want organized enhanced listening metrics

01:06:46 ◼   ► and you have your own app, maybe you would do that.

01:06:48 ◼   ► Then it says, what if you're a podcast creator?

01:06:50 ◼   ► What if you, you know, you make podcasts?

01:06:53 ◼   ► Why should you use RAD?

01:06:54 ◼   ► So, and this is an even shorter paragraph.

01:06:57 ◼   ► And I think probably an even less power

01:07:00 ◼   ► because that was the best case right there.

01:07:01 ◼   ► If you're like an app developer,

01:07:02 ◼   ► like they go to the publishing thing or whatever.

01:07:04 ◼   ► Anyway, why should you use RAD if you're a podcast creator?

01:07:08 ◼   ► The metrics will help you better understand your audience

01:07:10 ◼   ► across a range of platforms.

01:07:12 ◼   ► You'll be able to produce more informed, engaging content

01:07:15 ◼   ► and over time develop improved data

01:07:17 ◼   ► for your sponsors and advertisers.

01:07:18 ◼   ► So basically they're saying, if you knew more

01:07:20 ◼   ► about exactly what your listeners were doing,

01:07:22 ◼   ► you'd be able to make better content.

01:07:24 ◼   ► 'Cause if you're like, if you know, okay,

01:07:26 ◼   ► this is the point where they hit pause

01:07:28 ◼   ► and a whole bunch of people hit pause here,

01:07:29 ◼   ► a whole bunch of people stop listening at this point.

01:07:31 ◼   ► I'll know whatever we did there, let's do something different.

01:07:33 ◼   ► Like you can just get inside the heads of your audience

01:07:35 ◼   ► and use that as a direct feedback loop

01:07:37 ◼   ► to produce better content.

01:07:40 ◼   ► And also develop improved data

01:07:42 ◼   ► for your sponsors and advertisers.

01:07:43 ◼   ► Again, saying sponsors and advertisers want this

01:07:45 ◼   ► and if you give it to them, it will be better data for them.

01:07:49 ◼   ► But that's the whole pitch that if you knew more

01:07:51 ◼   ► about your audience, you could make a better podcast.

01:07:53 ◼   ► Which on its face seems like, okay,

01:07:55 ◼   ► well maybe that makes some kind of sense.

01:07:56 ◼   ► But on the other hand, you think about it like,

01:07:57 ◼   ► well, but does it?

01:07:59 ◼   ► Like is the information I'm gonna get about people,

01:08:02 ◼   ► you know, in terms of what timestamps and everything,

01:08:04 ◼   ► really going to help me?

01:08:05 ◼   ► Like, is that the best way to create good,

01:08:08 ◼   ► you know, content, good entertainment, right?

01:08:11 ◼   ► To be able, it's kind of like those things

01:08:13 ◼   ► where they, they parodied on the Simpsons

01:08:15 ◼   ► with an episode that you guys might've seen.

01:08:16 ◼   ► But like, and based on a real thing

01:08:19 ◼   ► where they would show like test audiences,

01:08:22 ◼   ► something, a movie or a television show,

01:08:24 ◼   ► and the members of the test audience

01:08:26 ◼   ► would have some kind of device or feedback,

01:08:28 ◼   ► real time feedback, like a dial that they can turn

01:08:30 ◼   ► to say you like this, you don't like it or whatever.

01:08:33 ◼   ► Some sort of way to give real time feedback

01:08:35 ◼   ► about how they're feeling about what it is

01:08:37 ◼   ► that they're watching.

01:08:38 ◼   ► And it would all be like, it would be aggregated

01:08:40 ◼   ► into a graph, so like a boring part of the Oscars

01:08:42 ◼   ► would come on and all the lines would dip down,

01:08:44 ◼   ► and then like a cool part would come on

01:08:46 ◼   ► and all the lines would go back up.

01:08:47 ◼   ► You ever see that type of thing?

01:08:49 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

01:08:50 ◼   ► - And it's like, as if they expect either in real time

01:08:55 ◼   ► for you to be reacting to this, oh, all the dials went down,

01:08:57 ◼   ► everybody be funnier, or like, next time we do the Oscars,

01:09:01 ◼   ► we won't do a segment like that because nobody liked it.

01:09:03 ◼   ► Like it seems to make sense, but if that's,

01:09:06 ◼   ► Marlon talks about this a lot on his various podcasts.

01:09:09 ◼   ► That's not really the best way to improve

01:09:11 ◼   ► the quality of your content is to micromanage

01:09:14 ◼   ► the psyche of every person consuming it

01:09:15 ◼   ► because there's too many assumptions.

01:09:18 ◼   ► The main one being that the people who are currently

01:09:20 ◼   ► listening and giving you feedback are the audience

01:09:21 ◼   ► that you want or that represent the only audience

01:09:24 ◼   ► that could ever exist for whatever it is you're doing.

01:09:27 ◼   ► Nevermind that this is not like that little dial

01:09:28 ◼   ► of happy and sad, it's merely like,

01:09:31 ◼   ► when did they hit each timestamp or whatever?

01:09:32 ◼   ► It's really geared towards, did they hear the ad or not,

01:09:35 ◼   ► which has some relevance to you as a podcast creator,

01:09:37 ◼   ► but it probably won't help you make your actual podcast

01:09:40 ◼   ► better unless your podcast is 100% ads,

01:09:42 ◼   ► in which case maybe it will help you.

01:09:44 ◼   ► And then finally, if you're a brand/sponsor/advertiser,

01:09:48 ◼   ► what does RAD provide access to and all the information

01:09:51 ◼   ► they want about download, stop, starts, ad listings,

01:09:53 ◼   ► so on and so forth.

01:09:54 ◼   ► So this page where they explain why you would want to,

01:09:59 ◼   ► why RAD, where does RAD fit into your life?

01:10:02 ◼   ► If you're making a podcast play rap, why would you do it?

01:10:06 ◼   ► If you make your own podcast, why would you want it?

01:10:08 ◼   ► And if you're a listener of podcasts,

01:10:09 ◼   ► why would you want it?

01:10:11 ◼   ► And it's not a really particularly compelling case.

01:10:15 ◼   ► And so, yeah, I don't,

01:10:17 ◼   ► it's one of those things where the way stuff like this

01:10:22 ◼   ► actually comes to pass is not because of the cases

01:10:25 ◼   ► made successfully to all constituencies,

01:10:26 ◼   ► it's because one particular consistency has all the power

01:10:29 ◼   ► and they also reap all the benefits and they just do it.

01:10:33 ◼   ► So if Apple were an advertising company like Google

01:10:36 ◼   ► and they were the dominant podcast platform,

01:10:39 ◼   ► they would do this immediately

01:10:40 ◼   ► and it would become the de facto standard

01:10:42 ◼   ► because the person who could benefit most from it

01:10:44 ◼   ► has the most power and they just do it.

01:10:46 ◼   ► And it wouldn't really matter whether app developers

01:10:47 ◼   ► want to do it, whether podcast creators want to do it,

01:10:49 ◼   ► or whether listeners want to have it happen,

01:10:51 ◼   ► it would just happen.

01:10:52 ◼   ► Again, getting back to web browsers,

01:10:54 ◼   ► if every web browser influenced that W3C DRM scheme,

01:10:58 ◼   ► it doesn't really matter whether you as a web browser user

01:11:03 ◼   ► care about that, you're getting it

01:11:05 ◼   ► whether you like it or not,

01:11:07 ◼   ► which is why it's bad to concentrate power like this.

01:11:09 ◼   ► So I think we've talked about this before,

01:11:11 ◼   ► how we've basically been saved by Apple's,

01:11:14 ◼   ► at one point, benevolent neglect

01:11:16 ◼   ► and now just general benevolence of podcasts.

01:11:18 ◼   ► The fact that they're not an advertising driven company,

01:11:21 ◼   ► they don't care that much about podcasts,

01:11:23 ◼   ► so they're gonna be careful about privacy

01:11:25 ◼   ► and they're not gonna screw it up.

01:11:27 ◼   ► It's an uneasy piece we have right now with podcasts

01:11:31 ◼   ► and we just better hope that Apple

01:11:34 ◼   ► doesn't turn into an advertising company

01:11:37 ◼   ► or doesn't lose its dominant position in podcasts

01:11:39 ◼   ► 'cause that'll be bad for everybody.

01:11:41 ◼   ► - So the other thing I wanted to say about this is,

01:11:44 ◼   ► I'm gonna put a little bit of words in Marco's mouth

01:11:47 ◼   ► and you know what, he's the editor,

01:11:49 ◼   ► so he can always cut this later.

01:11:50 ◼   ► But I feel like this is an example

01:11:55 ◼   ► of why Marco is so fiercely independent

01:11:58 ◼   ► and why Marco, you went for market share

01:12:02 ◼   ► a year or two ago or whatever it's been.

01:12:04 ◼   ► - For?

01:12:05 ◼   ► - For that, for, good grief, God.

01:12:08 ◼   ► - Sorry.

01:12:08 ◼   ► - Anyway, the point I'm driving at is that

01:12:11 ◼   ► if you have a lot of market share,

01:12:13 ◼   ► if you have some amount of influence

01:12:17 ◼   ► or perhaps leverage over the community

01:12:22 ◼   ► or over the market, if you will,

01:12:23 ◼   ► then you can say no to RAD or things like it

01:12:28 ◼   ► and that may be enough.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Now I don't know if you're at that point

01:12:32 ◼   ► and honestly it doesn't really matter one way or the other,

01:12:34 ◼   ► but for those of you who heard Marco say four years ago,

01:12:39 ◼   ► oh, I'm going for market share

01:12:41 ◼   ► because podcasting is important to me

01:12:43 ◼   ► and I wanna try to steer it in the way

01:12:45 ◼   ► that I think is best.

01:12:47 ◼   ► Well now the fruits of your labor are coming to fruition

01:12:51 ◼   ► because now by you not implementing this,

01:12:54 ◼   ► I don't know if it would be enough to kill RAD,

01:12:55 ◼   ► like I think you're right that Apple's the one

01:12:58 ◼   ► who will really put the nail in the coffin,

01:13:00 ◼   ► but by you and Pocket Casts, and I don't know

01:13:05 ◼   ► if Castro's made a statement about this one way or the other.

01:13:07 ◼   ► - I can't possibly see them doing this.

01:13:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly, and we know the Castro guys

01:13:12 ◼   ► and they're great, great people and I agree

01:13:14 ◼   ► that I don't expect them to do it.

01:13:15 ◼   ► So by you guys as a collective and you as an individual

01:13:20 ◼   ► angling for market share and refusing to do

01:13:23 ◼   ► this sort of invasive stuff,

01:13:26 ◼   ► that, if not you individually, but that in aggregate

01:13:29 ◼   ► could be enough to really make this go away.

01:13:33 ◼   ► And as both a podcast consumer and a podcast creator,

01:13:37 ◼   ► that's really darn important to me

01:13:38 ◼   ► and I'm thankful for you and Castro and Pocket Casts,

01:13:41 ◼   ► at least so far, for standing your ground

01:13:44 ◼   ► and not caving to this.

01:13:46 ◼   ► And so if you scratch your head and thought Marco

01:13:48 ◼   ► was being ridiculous and getting on his high horse

01:13:51 ◼   ► for no good reason, well, maybe it was for good reason.

01:13:54 ◼   ► It just took four years for us to get there.

01:13:56 ◼   ► - Like ultimately what I want and what I've wanted

01:13:58 ◼   ► this whole time is I want the podcast client side ecosystem,

01:14:03 ◼   ► the player ecosystem, to be so diverse

01:14:07 ◼   ► that nobody accumulates enough power

01:14:10 ◼   ► to dictate things like this to the market.

01:14:12 ◼   ► And Apple already has that much power,

01:14:14 ◼   ► but due to the aforementioned benevolent neglect

01:14:17 ◼   ► they've been mostly doing with podcasts,

01:14:19 ◼   ► they're basically this giant unmovable force,

01:14:22 ◼   ► but that mostly is good to us.

01:14:24 ◼   ► That mostly doesn't make waves and doesn't ruin things

01:14:27 ◼   ► and doesn't lock things down.

01:14:28 ◼   ► And that's really nice.

01:14:29 ◼   ► That has allowed podcasting to flourish

01:14:34 ◼   ► and to be what it is today.

01:14:35 ◼   ► If Apple tried to lock this down for themselves

01:14:38 ◼   ► 10 years ago, five years ago, they could have.

01:14:40 ◼   ► And apps like mine wouldn't be able to really have a market,

01:14:44 ◼   ► but they didn't and that's really nice.

01:14:47 ◼   ► But beyond Apple, the other 30 to 40% of the market,

01:14:55 ◼   ► that does have the potential for significant consolidation

01:14:59 ◼   ► of power if it doesn't remain diverse.

01:15:02 ◼   ► Right now it's nicely diverse.

01:15:04 ◼   ► Spotify's a bit of a concern to me,

01:15:06 ◼   ► but for the most part we're doing okay.

01:15:09 ◼   ► And you can't get 40% of the market right now,

01:15:13 ◼   ► 'cause it's so many different players,

01:15:15 ◼   ► to all agree on a new standard to implement.

01:15:18 ◼   ► You're never gonna get all of us to do that.

01:15:21 ◼   ► And that's actually really good.

01:15:25 ◼   ► Besides Apple, which is not moving,

01:15:27 ◼   ► there is no other consolidated source of power

01:15:29 ◼   ► in this business that has enough power

01:15:32 ◼   ► to really matter that much.

01:15:33 ◼   ► And as a result, the medium can't move forward,

01:15:38 ◼   ► quote forward in the way that people want it to.

01:15:41 ◼   ► But I consider that a good thing,

01:15:43 ◼   ► because right now where the medium already is, is great.

01:15:46 ◼   ► It's thriving, it's flourishing, it's booming.

01:15:49 ◼   ► People are making tons of money.

01:15:52 ◼   ► It's very, very healthy.

01:15:54 ◼   ► And it's wonderful for listeners too.

01:15:56 ◼   ► It's not, you don't have people making tons of money

01:15:59 ◼   ► at the top and then listeners having their privacy

01:16:01 ◼   ► all crazily, horribly invaded on the other end.

01:16:05 ◼   ► It's just really good, it's nice.

01:16:06 ◼   ► It's a great market.

01:16:08 ◼   ► And the last thing I want is for that to get ruined.

01:16:12 ◼   ► And when people say, the people who argue

01:16:14 ◼   ► for things like this, I was talking about it

01:16:16 ◼   ► on Twitter the other day and I got a bunch

01:16:17 ◼   ► of responses from people.

01:16:19 ◼   ► Most really were in support of my position,

01:16:21 ◼   ► but a few were opposed to me saying they need this.

01:16:25 ◼   ► And be careful when you hear somebody describe anything

01:16:30 ◼   ► as the future or as moving forward.

01:16:35 ◼   ► Because that implies a certain level of inevitability

01:16:40 ◼   ► that podcasting is, by staying where it is,

01:16:43 ◼   ► by not implementing things like this,

01:16:45 ◼   ► they're trying to position the future they want

01:16:50 ◼   ► as the future period.

01:16:52 ◼   ► And the future they want as the way forward.

01:16:56 ◼   ► But that's not a foregone conclusion.

01:17:00 ◼   ► The future of podcasting hasn't been written yet

01:17:05 ◼   ► because it's the future.

01:17:06 ◼   ► We can make it whatever we want.

01:17:10 ◼   ► And based on certain power structures and dynamics

01:17:13 ◼   ► in the market now, there are certain outcomes

01:17:16 ◼   ► that are more likely than others.

01:17:17 ◼   ► And I think an outcome where everyone's doing tons more

01:17:20 ◼   ► of tracking on the client side is pretty unlikely

01:17:23 ◼   ► because of the way this power structure is set up.

01:17:25 ◼   ► And I would absolutely argue that it is not

01:17:30 ◼   ► a foregone conclusion that the way forward

01:17:32 ◼   ► is more ad tracking because that presumes

01:17:36 ◼   ► that we have a problem today, that ads are terrible today

01:17:40 ◼   ► and people can't build real businesses or whatever.

01:17:42 ◼   ► And that's totally bogus.

01:17:44 ◼   ► The only people trying to make that argument

01:17:46 ◼   ► are the biggest companies in podcasting,

01:17:48 ◼   ► who by the way, tend to make like millions of dollars

01:17:50 ◼   ► a year in ad revenue.

01:17:51 ◼   ► We don't need things like this.

01:17:53 ◼   ► The only people pushing for this are people

01:17:54 ◼   ► who want even more, even more, even more.

01:17:57 ◼   ► And you know, that's what big companies do.

01:17:59 ◼   ► I understand the urge to do that.

01:18:01 ◼   ► But the rest of the podcasting ecosystem out here

01:18:04 ◼   ► doesn't want or need any of this.

01:18:07 ◼   ► And I would strongly argue that the future of podcasting

01:18:11 ◼   ► is not gonna be what these handful of big publishers

01:18:14 ◼   ► want it to be.

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