ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I'm already tired, I'm already cranky. This is going to be a long show.

00:00:05 ◼   ► If only there was like a mild beverage you could take that would help you be a little

00:00:09 ◼   ► bit more awake and alert for a little while after you take it, that would really come

00:00:12 ◼   ► in handy.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Marco, drug pusher.

00:00:16 ◼   ► I mean of all the drugs that you can be mildly chemically addicted to, it is by far the most

00:00:20 ◼   ► pleasant and least harmful.

00:00:22 ◼   ► That's not true. I'm sure there are less harmful drugs to be addicted to.

00:00:26 ◼   ► I mean deodorant maybe, but like,

00:00:28 ◼   ► that's not really a chemical addiction.

00:00:31 ◼   ► - How are you using deodorant?

00:00:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:34 ◼   ► - He's huffing it, that's what he's doing.

00:00:37 ◼   ► No, I did have a glass of Diet Coke, you're right.

00:00:40 ◼   ► So maybe that'll help a little bit.

00:00:42 ◼   ► 'Cause that's what you were talking about, is caffeine.

00:00:44 ◼   ► And I get my caffeine from Diet Coke,

00:00:46 ◼   ► like any responsible human would do.

00:00:47 ◼   ► - Right, surrounded by cancer sugar.

00:00:48 ◼   ► Good luck with that.

00:00:50 ◼   ► - It's better than having to choke down coffee, am I right?

00:00:52 ◼   ► So anyway, so yeah, so I'm tired.

00:00:54 ◼   ► - Nothing in the world is worse in the food world right now

00:00:58 ◼   ► than the gradual invasion of sucralose into everything.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Why, why?

00:01:04 ◼   ► Just use real sugar or don't sweeten it.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Sucralose is the worst in the universe.

00:01:10 ◼   ► You can always taste that horrible aftertaste,

00:01:12 ◼   ► ugh, this has sucralose in it.

00:01:14 ◼   ► - Well, so that's the thing is,

00:01:15 ◼   ► the horrible aftertaste that regular humans like yourself

00:01:18 ◼   ► get from Diet Coke, I actually get that from regular Coke.

00:01:21 ◼   ► Like the regular Coke lingers in my mouth for days.

00:01:25 ◼   ► And Diet Coke is just--

00:01:26 ◼   ► - It could be the phosphoric acid.

00:01:28 ◼   ► - Just stop drinking soda, problem solved.

00:01:31 ◼   ► - Soda's terrible.

00:01:32 ◼   ► - I don't, I drink Diet Coke,

00:01:35 ◼   ► I have a can at lunch pretty much every day,

00:01:38 ◼   ► well, during the week that is,

00:01:40 ◼   ► and then I'll usually have like a glass after dinner,

00:01:42 ◼   ► and that's it.

00:01:43 ◼   ► But I have not yet found any demonstrable proof

00:01:49 ◼   ► in my own body.

00:01:50 ◼   ► I'm not saying this is true for anyone else, but in my own body, I have not yet found demonstrable

00:01:54 ◼   ► proof that caffeine negatively impacts my ability to sleep.

00:01:59 ◼   ► Especially after you two keep me up until midnight.

00:02:02 ◼   ► But I can have a fair bit of Diet Coke in the evening right before going to sleep and

00:02:07 ◼   ► I'm fine.

00:02:08 ◼   ► Why?

00:02:09 ◼   ► Ew, it's so bad.

00:02:11 ◼   ► But the thing is though, you are right that Diet Coke is bad.

00:02:15 ◼   ► But coincidentally, I am also right that coffee is revolting.

00:02:19 ◼   ► - No, that's not-- - And we're both wrong.

00:02:21 ◼   ► - I think there's a large body of evidence

00:02:23 ◼   ► to suggest that I'm right on this and--

00:02:26 ◼   ► - No, coffee's disgusting and I,

00:02:28 ◼   ► oh God, I would hate to be that person

00:02:30 ◼   ► that has to have a cup of coffee in the morning

00:02:32 ◼   ► in order to function.

00:02:33 ◼   ► Screw that.

00:02:34 ◼   ► You know what I do in order to function in the morning?

00:02:37 ◼   ► I get out of bed.

00:02:38 ◼   ► I don't even shower in the morning, I shower at night

00:02:39 ◼   ► because PS, showering in the morning's disgusting.

00:02:41 ◼   ► You should be showering before you get in bed

00:02:43 ◼   ► rather than sleeping on three weeks worth of filth.

00:02:45 ◼   ► But anyway--

00:02:46 ◼   ► - You're just piling on the unpopular opinions.

00:02:49 ◼   ► keep going. No, no, it's not my fault that everyone's wrong. How often are you washing

00:02:53 ◼   ► your sheets? Hang on a second, I'm doing some math. You may be slightly off on your sheet

00:02:59 ◼   ► washing cycles. No, it is more often than once every three weeks. But seriously, I cannot

00:03:05 ◼   ► fathom, like I understand that I am the weirdo on this one, all snark aside. I am the weird

00:03:10 ◼   ► one that almost everyone I know showers when they wake up. I'm trying to make two different

00:03:15 ◼   ► points simultaneously. Number one, I currently, as it stands today, have no morning routine

00:03:23 ◼   ► in order to get out, to get myself moving in the morning. The way I get myself moving

00:03:27 ◼   ► in the morning is I open my eyes. I am ready to go after that.

00:03:31 ◼   ► - Uh, so, so I'm looking at a, at a little avatar view of my Skype client that does actually

00:03:37 ◼   ► - I don't even know what that avatar is, actually.

00:03:38 ◼   ► - It does actually reflect generally what you look like, and your hair is really nicely

00:03:43 ◼   ► and it looks like you might have some product in there.

00:03:45 ◼   ► So did you put that on at night somehow?

00:03:47 ◼   ► - No, no, no, that's a fair criticism.

00:03:49 ◼   ► That's an entirely different issue.

00:03:50 ◼   ► What I meant to say, I have my morning routine,

00:03:52 ◼   ► don't get me wrong.

00:03:53 ◼   ► My point was just that I'm not one of those people

00:03:56 ◼   ► that needs a coffee in order to be ready to handle the day.

00:03:59 ◼   ► You can come at me right first thing in the morning

00:04:01 ◼   ► with some sort of technical problem,

00:04:03 ◼   ► and I'm okay with that.

00:04:04 ◼   ► Now, the one thing I did not consider

00:04:06 ◼   ► is I do need to consume something for breakfast.

00:04:09 ◼   ► It can be damn near anything.

00:04:11 ◼   ► I can have a Pop-Tart, I can have an Eggo.

00:04:12 ◼   ► I typically make myself a fruit smoothie, whatever.

00:04:15 ◼   ► - You know, I would hate to be the kind of person

00:04:16 ◼   ► who couldn't function in the morning

00:04:17 ◼   ► before I ate something.

00:04:19 ◼   ► I just get out of bed, I'm ready to solve problems.

00:04:21 ◼   ► I often will start work and programming

00:04:24 ◼   ► before I've had coffee.

00:04:25 ◼   ► That's a thing.

00:04:26 ◼   ► Like, I often don't have coffee till like 10 or 11 o'clock.

00:04:29 ◼   ► - Oh, see, I'm okay with that.

00:04:31 ◼   ► It's these people that typically work in an office

00:04:33 ◼   ► that are like, "Ugh, don't talk to me,

00:04:35 ◼   ► "I haven't had my coffee."

00:04:36 ◼   ► Like, screw that, come on, you're an adult.

00:04:38 ◼   ► - That's just them being like a pain in the butt.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Like, you know, if they weren't complaining

00:04:41 ◼   ► about their coffee, they complain about something else.

00:04:43 ◼   ► - I agree, we agree.

00:04:44 ◼   ► - No, I will say though, in defense of your weird

00:04:46 ◼   ► night showering habit, having traveled with you a bunch,

00:04:50 ◼   ► it actually makes it really convenient to travel with you.

00:04:53 ◼   ► Because I'm never waiting in the morning

00:04:56 ◼   ► for you to get ready, you're always ready,

00:04:58 ◼   ► like whenever I am, 'cause I'm a morning shower,

00:05:01 ◼   ► so of course I take longer, I also sleep

00:05:02 ◼   ► as long as I possibly can, so I'm never waiting

00:05:05 ◼   ► for you ever when we travel.

00:05:07 ◼   ► - I don't know if that's actually true.

00:05:09 ◼   ► I would hope you don't ever wait for me in the morning.

00:05:11 ◼   ► I'm sure there's some point in time

00:05:13 ◼   ► where you're waiting on me.

00:05:14 ◼   ► - Well, when you're doing your hair.

00:05:15 ◼   ► No, actually.

00:05:16 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:17 ◼   ► No, it actually, it would be,

00:05:18 ◼   ► I don't think people actually shared a hotel room,

00:05:21 ◼   ► but if we ever had to,

00:05:22 ◼   ► that would be very convenient also

00:05:24 ◼   ► to have you be a night shower,

00:05:25 ◼   ► 'cause then we're not competing for the shower

00:05:27 ◼   ► in the morning either.

00:05:28 ◼   ► - That's true, that's true.

00:05:30 ◼   ► The whole point I was trying to make is,

00:05:31 ◼   ► like I was saying, is twofold.

00:05:32 ◼   ► One, I mean, I could handle a technical problem

00:05:35 ◼   ► first thing in the morning.

00:05:36 ◼   ► I'd prefer to have a breakfast first, but I don't have to.

00:05:38 ◼   ► But number two, I can't get out of my head how gross it is for someone to take the day's

00:05:46 ◼   ► filth and put it into their bed every night.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Every night, today's filth.

00:05:51 ◼   ► Monday's filth, into the bed.

00:05:52 ◼   ► Tuesday's filth, let's add Tuesday onto Monday's filth.

00:05:55 ◼   ► Wednesday's filth, let's add Wednesday's filth onto Tuesday's filth onto Monday's filth,

00:05:59 ◼   ► and let's just roll in it for eight hours.

00:06:01 ◼   ► That sounds awesome.

00:06:03 ◼   ► And again, I recognize before the entire internet writes me, which they're about to do anyway,

00:06:07 ◼   ► I recognize that this is a weird thing and that I am the weird one here, but I cannot

00:06:12 ◼   ► fathom how any human being that values hygiene can get into covers that they're getting in

00:06:19 ◼   ► without showering first.

00:06:21 ◼   ► That's disgusting.

00:06:22 ◼   ► Oh, I don't get it.

00:06:23 ◼   ► Now, this is where a couple of...

00:06:24 ◼   ► So there's a few things people say.

00:06:25 ◼   ► Number one.

00:06:26 ◼   ► How dirty are you getting during the day?

00:06:28 ◼   ► So how dirty are you getting during the day?

00:06:30 ◼   ► You sit in an air-conditioned office behind a queue, yeah, behind a chair, or in a chair,

00:06:34 ◼   ► behind a screen, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:06:37 ◼   ► It's still some point, it's, I can only speak for myself, but at some point, at some point

00:06:41 ◼   ► during the day, I probably have at least a little shimmer on me of sweat, of dirt, of

00:06:47 ◼   ► something.

00:06:48 ◼   ► Because you don't have winter there.

00:06:49 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:06:50 ◼   ► Number two.

00:06:51 ◼   ► In the south.

00:06:52 ◼   ► I'm choosing what battles to fight right now.

00:06:53 ◼   ► Number two.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Number two.

00:06:56 ◼   ► This is where all sorts of people come out of the woodwork and say, "Well, don't you

00:06:58 ◼   ► sweat at night?"

00:06:59 ◼   ► Sometimes.

00:07:00 ◼   ► You're absolutely right.

00:07:01 ◼   ► Sometimes I do.

00:07:02 ◼   ► But at least leave it as the night dirt that's in the bed.

00:07:05 ◼   ► Why not? Why would you contribute the day dirt on top of the night dirt? That's barbaric,

00:07:09 ◼   ► I tell you. It's insane.

00:07:10 ◼   ► I think your threat model for dirtying sheets is wrong. I think the whole model of like

00:07:18 ◼   ► how sheets exist in one state and how transfer happens from you to the sheets, putting them

00:07:23 ◼   ► in a state that you don't like. I think that whole model is wrong because, well, maybe

00:07:27 ◼   ► we don't want to get into too much. Are you sleeping naked?

00:07:30 ◼   ► Wouldn't you like to know, Jon?

00:07:33 ◼   ► I'm just saying, it seems like what you're modeling here is an idea of how things would

00:07:43 ◼   ► transfer from one place to another, making one thing that was clean dirty, right? But

00:07:48 ◼   ► I don't know if that idea maps to the reality of you sleeping in beds.

00:07:52 ◼   ► It's an alternative reality, Jon. Moving on, let's start with some follow-up.

00:07:55 ◼   ► My favorite thing about this conversation is all the new listeners we got last week

00:08:00 ◼   ► thinking, you know, what they're going to expect that this show is, and then they tune

00:08:05 ◼   ► in and hear this this week.

00:08:06 ◼   ► Well, they're not going to tune in live.

00:08:07 ◼   ► They'll just be the pre-recorded one, and this will not be heavily featured at the start

00:08:11 ◼   ► of the program.

00:08:12 ◼   ► Let's hope not.

00:08:13 ◼   ► Let's hope not.

00:08:14 ◼   ► So let's start with some follow-up.

00:08:18 ◼   ► Consumer Reports has recommended the MacBook Pro.

00:08:20 ◼   ► So, turns out that they have worked with Apple in order to fix Apple's bugs, which may or

00:08:27 ◼   ► may not entirely be Apple's fault.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Well, I guess the bugs were. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Point is, they have retested their MacBook Pros.

00:08:33 ◼   ► One model got almost 19 hours on a charge. I'm not entirely clear how that could be possible, but that's what they say.

00:08:41 ◼   ► Because that's how their tests work. Like I was saying before, the absolute numbers don't really matter on tests like this,

00:08:47 ◼   ► because there's no way you're actually gonna, you know, simulate any particular users.

00:08:51 ◼   ► All you want to know is, we use the same test all the time. Is this better or worse than the same than, like, the previous Mac or a different model?

00:08:57 ◼   ► You want some kind of consistency within the numbers, but it's like story points in a sprint,

00:09:03 ◼   ► Casey.

00:09:04 ◼   ► The absolute values don't mean anything.

00:09:05 ◼   ► I don't know what you're talking about.

00:09:07 ◼   ► So for the Consumer Reports thing, the main reason I put it in here, one was just to follow

00:09:11 ◼   ► up on like, "Hey, guess what?"

00:09:12 ◼   ► Like we said, they probably would last time, they retested it and everything's fine, blah,

00:09:15 ◼   ► blah, blah.

00:09:16 ◼   ► But thinking of it from the perspective of someone who used to write for a publication

00:09:22 ◼   ► that did product reviews and used to do product reviews myself, as like an institution for

00:09:27 ◼   ► for doing reviews as a publication, as a venue,

00:09:30 ◼   ► as a place where people get information,

00:09:33 ◼   ► this is not a good outcome

00:09:35 ◼   ► because now anyone who reads Consumer Reports

00:09:38 ◼   ► has to think Consumer Reports did or didn't recommend it,

00:09:42 ◼   ► but is this the real story

00:09:43 ◼   ► or do we have to wait two weeks

00:09:44 ◼   ► for them to figure out what the real story was

00:09:45 ◼   ► and then to tell us whether they should get it or not.

00:09:47 ◼   ► Like their job is to tell us whether this laptop

00:09:50 ◼   ► is worth buying or should be avoided.

00:09:53 ◼   ► And I'm going to say, although some people may differ,

00:09:57 ◼   ► that the product, with and without this bug,

00:10:00 ◼   ► like whether you have the beta version

00:10:01 ◼   ► that fixes this bug fix,

00:10:02 ◼   ► or whether you don't have the beta version,

00:10:04 ◼   ► is not that different.

00:10:05 ◼   ► Marco's using it presumably without this beta fix,

00:10:08 ◼   ► and it is a satisfactory product, right?

00:10:11 ◼   ► With the beta fix, maybe it'll be a little better.

00:10:15 ◼   ► - Stop.

00:10:15 ◼   ► - You talked about it the whole last time,

00:10:17 ◼   ► about how it's not as bad as you thought it would be.

00:10:19 ◼   ► I'm not saying--

00:10:20 ◼   ► - I know, no, just every week I waffle

00:10:21 ◼   ► on whether I like the new one,

00:10:24 ◼   ► or whether I wanna switch back to the old one.

00:10:25 ◼   ► - But it's not as if the battery life is fatally bad.

00:10:27 ◼   ► - The keyboard is so bad.

00:10:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know, I know.

00:10:29 ◼   ► - The battery life, so, again,

00:10:31 ◼   ► I've actually been doing my own tests,

00:10:32 ◼   ► and the battery life is not good, but it's okay.

00:10:36 ◼   ► And the old one was similar.

00:10:37 ◼   ► The old one was also not good, but okay.

00:10:39 ◼   ► But, God, the keyboard is so bad.

00:10:42 ◼   ► - That's the thing, they can't even recommend the product.

00:10:45 ◼   ► - Marco, remind me, have you tried the Magic Keyboard?

00:10:48 ◼   ► We've been through this so many times,

00:10:49 ◼   ► I honestly don't recall.

00:10:50 ◼   ► - No, 'cause for desktops, I gotta use an ergonomic keyboard.

00:10:53 ◼   ► Like, I use-- - Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:10:54 ◼   ► I just use desktops too heavily,

00:10:56 ◼   ► and I have minor RSI problems if I use regular keyboards.

00:10:58 ◼   ► And so to avoid those,

00:11:00 ◼   ► and to avoid them becoming major RSI problems,

00:11:03 ◼   ► I use ergonomic keyboards.

00:11:05 ◼   ► - No, totally.

00:11:06 ◼   ► I was just curious, I didn't know if you had tried one

00:11:08 ◼   ► for more than 10 seconds in a store,

00:11:09 ◼   ► because I find that,

00:11:11 ◼   ► I've talked long, to anyone who will listen,

00:11:15 ◼   ► about how much I love the Magic Keyboard.

00:11:17 ◼   ► And I have only used the new MacBook Pro keyboard

00:11:19 ◼   ► for but a flash.

00:11:21 ◼   ► And it was a while ago, so this is all on memory,

00:11:24 ◼   ► it was a very brief time that I used it, but I feel like the frustrating thing for me about

00:11:30 ◼   ► the new MacBook Pro keyboard was that it was like 80% of perfection.

00:11:35 ◼   ► I'm not saying you agree, I'm just saying to me.

00:11:37 ◼   ► Because it was so similar to the Magic Keyboard, but I think the throw was a little bit smaller,

00:11:43 ◼   ► and that difference was enough to just drive me batty.

00:11:47 ◼   ► And I'm sure I would get used to it over time, but man was it annoying because I feel like

00:11:51 ◼   ► it was so close you were right there you almost had it and they didn't quite get

00:11:56 ◼   ► there and the thing that's scary to me is that I suspect whenever a Magic

00:12:00 ◼   ► Keyboard 2 happens I bet you anything they're going to use that keyboard with

00:12:03 ◼   ► the shorter throw and I'm going to be very sad and I'm going to be the I'm

00:12:07 ◼   ► going to be Gruber in buying a thousand and four original Magic keyboards to

00:12:11 ◼   ► keep around until kingdom come because this is my favorite keyboard I've ever

00:12:14 ◼   ► used. Well first of all I actually have done that myself I Microsoft upgraded

00:12:19 ◼   ► the Sculpt ergonomic keyboard that I have used

00:12:23 ◼   ► for a few years now as my main one.

00:12:25 ◼   ► They quote upgraded that to the new

00:12:27 ◼   ► Surface ergonomic keyboard.

00:12:30 ◼   ► And I bought one and I actually had to return it

00:12:32 ◼   ► because the Surface ergonomic keyboard is Bluetooth

00:12:36 ◼   ► instead of its own custom wireless thing,

00:12:37 ◼   ► but it has like special Bluetooth implementation details,

00:12:41 ◼   ► I guess, that are incredibly incompatible with Macs.

00:12:45 ◼   ► And I've never had a PC keyboard that was

00:12:47 ◼   ► incompatible with a Mac before.

00:12:49 ◼   ► The Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic is one of these,

00:12:51 ◼   ► or I mean the Microsoft Surface ergonomic, excuse me.

00:12:54 ◼   ► And the two main problems, if you're looking at this,

00:12:57 ◼   ► a lot of people ask me about this,

00:12:58 ◼   ► two main problems, number one,

00:12:59 ◼   ► you can't remap option and command

00:13:02 ◼   ► to be like on Windows and Alt properly.

00:13:04 ◼   ► The system panel that you do it in

00:13:06 ◼   ► for every other PC keyboard,

00:13:08 ◼   ► the change just doesn't apply, it doesn't work.

00:13:10 ◼   ► Like you can change it there,

00:13:11 ◼   ► but the keys still don't change their functions.

00:13:14 ◼   ► And the second problem, which is even more fatal than that,

00:13:17 ◼   ► is that it's Bluetooth implementation,

00:13:20 ◼   ► basically it falls asleep after a while,

00:13:23 ◼   ► and when you wake it up by pushing keys again,

00:13:25 ◼   ► the first couple keys you push don't get recognized.

00:13:28 ◼   ► So it's really a pain to use in practice.

00:13:32 ◼   ► So it is effectively incompatible with the Mac.

00:13:35 ◼   ► First time I've ever had a PC keyboard

00:13:36 ◼   ► where that's been a problem, and so I had to return it.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And also the ergonomics got worse and I got a little here.

00:13:42 ◼   ► So there you go.

00:13:43 ◼   ► The key switches feel a little bit better,

00:13:44 ◼   ► but it is way too wide,

00:13:46 ◼   ► 'cause it added the 10-key numpad area back on,

00:13:49 ◼   ► and it's low and flat, does not have a riser in front,

00:13:52 ◼   ► so the ergonomics are all worse,

00:13:53 ◼   ► and whatever the look they're going for,

00:13:55 ◼   ► it's like gray, it's like the lining of cubicle walls,

00:14:00 ◼   ► like that kind of gray, carpet-y material, you know?

00:14:02 ◼   ► - Oh. - Like that's,

00:14:04 ◼   ► it's like they made a keyboard out of that,

00:14:06 ◼   ► so big miss on that,

00:14:08 ◼   ► and so because the sculpt ergonomic keyboard

00:14:11 ◼   ► that I like so much is now officially discontinued.

00:14:14 ◼   ► I stockpiled three of them right now

00:14:17 ◼   ► 'cause you can still get 'em in most places

00:14:19 ◼   ► for like around 60, 70 bucks.

00:14:21 ◼   ► So I stockpiled a few of them for myself.

00:14:23 ◼   ► And I figure like by the time I burn through three of these,

00:14:25 ◼   ► which should be probably five years or so, six years or so,

00:14:29 ◼   ► then I should probably be able

00:14:31 ◼   ► to find something else by then.

00:14:32 ◼   ► - And is that one Bluetooth,

00:14:35 ◼   ► the old one that you're stockpiling or is that wired?

00:14:38 ◼   ► - No, it's its own custom RF dongle

00:14:40 ◼   ► like most logitech mice, you know,

00:14:41 ◼   ► it has its own little thing.

00:14:43 ◼   ► And it's not very good, like the Sculpt wireless

00:14:47 ◼   ► that I've been using for years now,

00:14:49 ◼   ► the wireless thing is pretty flaky.

00:14:51 ◼   ► That's usually the way these keyboards eventually die.

00:14:53 ◼   ► The reason I replaced them is usually

00:14:55 ◼   ► that the wireless thing just becomes too unreliable.

00:14:57 ◼   ► And you can change batteries and you can resync it

00:14:59 ◼   ► and you can move it around.

00:15:00 ◼   ► And eventually those things just don't help anymore

00:15:04 ◼   ► or it still starts failing.

00:15:05 ◼   ► And when it's working properly, it never fails, it's solid.

00:15:08 ◼   ► So whatever it is that kills these keyboards

00:15:10 ◼   ► after maybe two years of use,

00:15:13 ◼   ► that is what ultimately ends these for me

00:15:17 ◼   ► and for a lot of other people.

00:15:18 ◼   ► - So what were we trying to talk about

00:15:20 ◼   ► on the consumer reports thing?

00:15:22 ◼   ► - Consumer reports, who cares?

00:15:23 ◼   ► I mean, consumer reports are still gonna keep doing

00:15:25 ◼   ► the same BS they do all the time.

00:15:27 ◼   ► They're gonna keep doing it.

00:15:28 ◼   ► Every time there's a new Apple product,

00:15:28 ◼   ► they're gonna get attention with some crazy headline.

00:15:31 ◼   ► Oftentimes it'll be about a real problem.

00:15:33 ◼   ► Sometimes it won't be.

00:15:35 ◼   ► But usually when it is a real problem,

00:15:36 ◼   ► they will be overblowing it.

00:15:38 ◼   ► - Like Margo's drinking beer tonight.

00:15:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:15:41 ◼   ► - I've had like--

00:15:43 ◼   ► - Am I right, am I right?

00:15:44 ◼   ► - I've had literally like one inch of beer,

00:15:47 ◼   ► it is still in the neck.

00:15:48 ◼   ► - And you're hammered.

00:15:49 ◼   ► - And it's a 4% beer.

00:15:51 ◼   ► - There's no amount that I'm saying here,

00:15:54 ◼   ► you mentioned last time I said I could tell

00:15:56 ◼   ► when you were drinking and you said,

00:15:57 ◼   ► oh yeah, well next time tell me, and so I just did.

00:16:00 ◼   ► - This is like the lightest beer I've ever seen

00:16:02 ◼   ► and I've drank almost none of it.

00:16:04 ◼   ► - I do not, I'm not attributing any kind of cause,

00:16:07 ◼   ► I'm just saying.

00:16:08 ◼   ► - I'm just saying.

00:16:10 ◼   ► All right, so also in this last week,

00:16:13 ◼   ► I haven't had a chance to read this,

00:16:15 ◼   ► so I'm gonna defer to you, Jon, on this.

00:16:18 ◼   ► But there's a blog post on the WebKit blog,

00:16:21 ◼   ► introducing Riptide, WebKit's Retreating Wavefront

00:16:25 ◼   ► Concurrent Garbage Collector.

00:16:27 ◼   ► That sounds fancy.

00:16:29 ◼   ► So what's this all about, Jon?

00:16:31 ◼   ► Well, on the last program where we talked to Chris Lattner,

00:16:35 ◼   ► towards the end we talked about Arc versus garbage collection.

00:16:41 ◼   ► And Chris went through this whole big thing

00:16:42 ◼   ► about the trade-offs and the different behaviors.

00:16:46 ◼   ► And that might have been over a lot of people's heads

00:16:48 ◼   ► because there was lots of jargon there.

00:16:50 ◼   ► This is another one of-- WebKit often does these things.

00:16:54 ◼   ► The WebKit developers post a thing

00:16:56 ◼   ► that talks about some technical underpinnings of some feature

00:16:59 ◼   ► of the browser or the engine usually.

00:17:02 ◼   ► And this one describes their new garbage collector

00:17:05 ◼   ► for JavaScript, kind of like the stuff that Chris said,

00:17:09 ◼   ► you can't read this starting from zero

00:17:11 ◼   ► and understand every part of it,

00:17:13 ◼   ► but they do go through and explain a lot of it.

00:17:15 ◼   ► And I think if you just Google some stuff

00:17:16 ◼   ► and find some links, you can start understanding it.

00:17:20 ◼   ► But I think it's a good example of a lot of the things

00:17:24 ◼   ► that Chris alluded to, like that the attributes

00:17:27 ◼   ► a garbage collector that are very similar to the attributes of ARC in that there's additional

00:17:32 ◼   ► bookkeeping and stuff that has to be done in line as part of the normal operation, because the slam

00:17:39 ◼   ► against ARC is very frequently that, well, you've got all these reference counts, you know,

00:17:45 ◼   ► increments and decrements all over your code. You didn't write those things, but they get added

00:17:48 ◼   ► anyway, and it's just like overhead. And so even if you don't understand all the weird nuances of

00:17:54 ◼   ► this very, very long article. I think it is written in a very clear way. Whoever wrote this,

00:17:58 ◼   ► I think, did a good job. You have to assume some foundational knowledge, and maybe more things

00:18:04 ◼   ► could be links, because, you know, I'd love to make things links and things that I had no idea.

00:18:08 ◼   ► Yeah. But anyway, you can just the word you don't understand, just, you know, type it into a Google

00:18:13 ◼   ► search box or look at the Wikipedia page or something and you learn about it. So I would

00:18:17 ◼   ► encourage anybody whose interest was piqued by that discussion on last week's episode to read,

00:18:23 ◼   ► maybe over a couple nights, this very long post about WebKit's garbage collector, because

00:18:29 ◼   ► I think it is really well done, and you'll learn a lot, and you will also, even if you don't learn

00:18:36 ◼   ► that much, come to a gut-level understanding of exactly how much of a pain in the butt it is to

00:18:42 ◼   ► make JavaScript go fast, and how much time and effort and money is being put into doing that.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Indeed, and this was by Philip Pislo, just FYI.

00:18:50 ◼   ► I miss the beach.

00:18:51 ◼   ► Beach. Wavefront, that's all it took. Riptide, wavefront, it's like, ah, summertime.

00:18:59 ◼   ► If you read the whole thing and understand a little bit of it, the title will make sense

00:19:02 ◼   ► by the end. Retreating Wavefront Concurrent Garbage Collector, all those words mean something

00:19:06 ◼   ► and are explained at length in the article. Go figure. It's funny, you know, I remember

00:19:10 ◼   ► you being vehemently opposed to the beach, and I was only mildly less opposed to it.

00:19:15 ◼   ► Now the two of us are both converted. Who knew? Turns out I'm opposed to your pronunciation

00:19:19 ◼   ► of that word.

00:19:20 ◼   ► Which word?

00:19:21 ◼   ► Just keep going.

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00:21:20 ◼   ► [Music]

00:21:21 ◼   ► [Music]

00:21:22 ◼   ► [Music]

00:21:23 ◼   ► [Music]

00:21:24 ◼   ► All right.

00:21:25 ◼   ► So, John had a big day yesterday, was it, I believe, when the 10.3 beta was released.

00:21:32 ◼   ► And John, I have it on good authority that you did a little happy dance at your cubicle

00:21:37 ◼   ► when you saw this news come out. Is that true? Please do not deny it.

00:21:40 ◼   ► >> I did not do a happy dance. My happy dance was when they announced the existence of the

00:21:46 ◼   ► file system. That was my happy dance. Like, yes, they were to make -- you know, we had

00:21:50 ◼   ► a bell, we had a happy dance, we had all sorts of things. That time has passed.

00:21:54 ◼   ► Although, I will say this, though. So what you're talking about is the announcement that

00:21:58 ◼   ► -- the announcement/leak or whatever -- that iOS 10.3 and the beta builds that developers

00:22:03 ◼   ► can get now will apparently convert your iOS device from HFS+ to APFS upon upgrade.

00:22:13 ◼   ► And that's mostly notable because A) it is a partial fulfillment of the goal Apple set

00:22:20 ◼   ► forth for itself at WWDC last year.

00:22:23 ◼   ► They said, you know, we want to convert all of our platforms, that means like iOS and

00:22:28 ◼   ► Mac OS, and I guess watch OS, I mean basically all Apple platforms, to be on

00:22:33 ◼   ► APFS in 2017. Now 2017 is the entire year, they didn't say which part of the year

00:22:38 ◼   ► or whatever, but here we are in January and there's already a beta of iOS 10.3

00:22:43 ◼   ► that converts to APFS. So it's not as if they're waiting till, you know, October or

00:22:48 ◼   ► whatever when the successor to Sierra comes out for the Mac or, you know,

00:22:52 ◼   ► whenever these things are gonna be released. They seem to be ahead of the

00:22:56 ◼   ► game ahead of schedule. And I was worried last year that are they really going to be

00:23:00 ◼   ► able to roll over their entire product line with a new file system that they just announced

00:23:07 ◼   ► next year sometime? But they're apparently doing well. They seem confident. People who

00:23:11 ◼   ► have upgraded, I think Marco is one, have not seen all their data disappear in a puff

00:23:16 ◼   ► of smoke. So things are looking good so far, right?

00:23:19 ◼   ► So my upgrade went totally fine.

00:23:22 ◼   ► I didn't realize, so here I was,

00:23:25 ◼   ► new beta of iOS comes out.

00:23:27 ◼   ► Of course, I installed on my main phone immediately.

00:23:31 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:23:32 ◼   ► Like, hour zero. - On the line.

00:23:34 ◼   ► Did you not learn from iOS 5?

00:23:36 ◼   ► You and I did this together on iOS.

00:23:38 ◼   ► - I know. - Was it five, four?

00:23:39 ◼   ► - It was five. - Which everyone, yeah.

00:23:40 ◼   ► We learned together.

00:23:42 ◼   ► - Gruber still gives me crap about that, yeah.

00:23:44 ◼   ► - But you should give you and me crap,

00:23:46 ◼   ► because we were both idiots.

00:23:47 ◼   ► And here it is, well, now to your defense,

00:23:49 ◼   ► this was a point release.

00:23:50 ◼   ► - Right, and the point releases

00:23:52 ◼   ► are usually completely harmless.

00:23:55 ◼   ► They are almost never a problem for almost anybody.

00:23:57 ◼   ► And so, that's why I figured, let me do this,

00:24:01 ◼   ► there's some new APIs I needed to test against,

00:24:04 ◼   ► let me try some stuff and make sure

00:24:05 ◼   ► everything works and everything.

00:24:06 ◼   ► So, okay.

00:24:08 ◼   ► Then after I installed it, like an hour later,

00:24:12 ◼   ► I learned that, oh, I'm now using APFS.

00:24:16 ◼   ► Like, it was not even a thing.

00:24:18 ◼   ► All I noticed was that the install took maybe

00:24:22 ◼   ► 15 minutes longer than I thought it would.

00:24:24 ◼   ► It was a little slow, but otherwise,

00:24:26 ◼   ► my phone booted up, everything's fine,

00:24:27 ◼   ► everything's totally fine.

00:24:28 ◼   ► I've had zero issues so far.

00:24:30 ◼   ► And then, a couple hours later, when chatting with John,

00:24:34 ◼   ► I learned that I'm using APFS before John.

00:24:38 ◼   ► - Funny how that is.

00:24:40 ◼   ► - Well, it's not really true, because like I said,

00:24:41 ◼   ► I used it on the Sierra dev builds.

00:24:43 ◼   ► - That doesn't, not in your main machine.

00:24:45 ◼   ► That doesn't count.

00:24:46 ◼   ► If it's not like your main machine.

00:24:47 ◼   ► - It was on my main machine.

00:24:48 ◼   ► It was as main machine-y as it could be.

00:24:50 ◼   ► I did everything that you could do with APFS

00:24:52 ◼   ► on my main machine.

00:24:53 ◼   ► - You can't boot off of it with Mac OS X.

00:24:55 ◼   ► - No, you cannot boot off of it,

00:24:57 ◼   ► but I was still using it.

00:24:58 ◼   ► - Well, then you're not really, yeah, that doesn't count.

00:25:01 ◼   ► I'm using APFS in production on my main machine before John,

00:25:04 ◼   ► and that's it, I think I'm done for the year.

00:25:06 ◼   ► - It's on your phone, your main machine.

00:25:09 ◼   ► Come on, thought you were a Mac user.

00:25:10 ◼   ► - It's the computer I use most often.

00:25:12 ◼   ► - Anyway, based on nothing but Marco's firsthand experience

00:25:17 ◼   ► of having upgraded and the vague wording in Apple's release notes that have been tweeted

00:25:23 ◼   ► out by various people.

00:25:27 ◼   ► This is what we're talking about on past shows about in-place conversion and how the design

00:25:33 ◼   ► of the APFS makes that not as crazy as you might think it sounds.

00:25:36 ◼   ► You might be thinking, "Oh, how is it going to upgrade my file system?

00:25:40 ◼   ► Do I have to have like 50% of my storage free so it can write all the data to a new location

00:25:44 ◼   ► and do this thing or is it going to like back it all up to the cloud or make me do an iTunes

00:25:48 ◼   ► backup and restore it?

00:25:50 ◼   ► How is it going to do this without destroying my data?

00:25:53 ◼   ► And as we discussed last time, the strategy is that you leave all the data exactly where

00:25:57 ◼   ► it is, you write a new set of metadata structure somewhere and the metadata is just like, tells

00:26:03 ◼   ► you information about the data.

00:26:05 ◼   ► Where is it?

00:26:06 ◼   ► How much of it is there?

00:26:07 ◼   ► Like the names of the files, the dates, all that crap.

00:26:10 ◼   ► Write that somewhere and that doesn't take up that much room.

00:26:13 ◼   ► Like you need a reasonable, probably fixed-sized chunk of metadata, more or less, plus or minus

00:26:19 ◼   ► extended attributes, for each file.

00:26:22 ◼   ► And the bigger of the files you have, the more efficient this is.

00:26:26 ◼   ► So if you have tons and tons of relatively large files like music or videos, it's an

00:26:31 ◼   ► even bigger win.

00:26:33 ◼   ► So you don't probably need that much free space.

00:26:34 ◼   ► You need to need some free space.

00:26:36 ◼   ► For all iOS upgrades, you need some free space.

00:26:38 ◼   ► But you don't need that much.

00:26:39 ◼   ► They write all the metadata there, pointing to the data exactly where it exists.

00:26:43 ◼   ► And then only at the very, very end, after writing all of the metadata, they do a very

00:26:48 ◼   ► fast, very quick operation that says, "And big swapper-oony."

00:26:52 ◼   ► Rewrite the headers and the volume to say, "Oh, actually, now this is an APFS volume,

00:26:57 ◼   ► and the metadata is over here."

00:26:58 ◼   ► And that little tiny critical section should only take like fractions of a second, right?

00:27:04 ◼   ► That is the only time where you could potentially have a problem if it failed in the middle.

00:27:08 ◼   ► But even then they could use journaling and everything to defend against that.

00:27:12 ◼   ► You don't have to worry about any more than you normally would.

00:27:15 ◼   ► You know, somehow running out of battery during your upgrade or I don't even know what could

00:27:20 ◼   ► happen because it's not like you're going to accidentally unplug a phone.

00:27:22 ◼   ► Like they do want to be plugged in when they're being upgraded but it's not like you're going

00:27:25 ◼   ► to have a power cut unless there's some sort of hardware problem where you really drain

00:27:27 ◼   ► your battery.

00:27:29 ◼   ► So the moral of the story is yes, upgrading in place is a real thing.

00:27:34 ◼   ► It should go fine, and it is actually fairly safe, assuming everything goes okay.

00:27:40 ◼   ► So I'm not afraid of doing this upgrade.

00:27:43 ◼   ► I'm not going to do the beta.

00:27:44 ◼   ► I'm not in no hurry.

00:27:46 ◼   ► But when 10.3 comes out, I expect it to be fairly uneventful, barring any catastrophic

00:27:52 ◼   ► bugs.

00:27:53 ◼   ► Because once you're running APFS, then if there's a bug in APFS, then you're going

00:27:56 ◼   ► to be sad, right?

00:27:57 ◼   ► But the conversion process itself seems like it's okay.

00:28:01 ◼   ► What are you more afraid of in practice?

00:28:04 ◼   ► Bugs in APFS or the regular behavior of HFS+?

00:28:08 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the only thing that bothered me a little bit about the conversion when

00:28:11 ◼   ► I was thinking about it more now that it's a real thing.

00:28:15 ◼   ► Because the conversion is, like, what I would like it to do is run essentially FSDK or,

00:28:22 ◼   ► you know, the repair thing to validate all of the HFS+ metadata to make sure that it's

00:28:28 ◼   ► not incorrect in various ways.

00:28:30 ◼   ► In all the ways that if you were to run disk utility on your disk right now, it would find

00:28:33 ◼   ► a bunch of crap wrong because HFS is weird and buggy and sometimes doesn't keep track

00:28:37 ◼   ► of things the right way and it will find stuff that it can tell is wrong by exhaustively

00:28:40 ◼   ► going over the data and the metadata and comparing them and doing so and so forth.

00:28:44 ◼   ► I would like it to do that before it dutifully writes the new metadata to a new location.

00:28:49 ◼   ► And based on your 15 minute time, I'm not sure that it does.

00:28:52 ◼   ► I don't know how long it would take to essentially FSTK HFS+ on a 64 gig iOS device.

00:29:00 ◼   ► Maybe it's faster than I think because the disks are so much smaller than, you know,

00:29:02 ◼   ► like a terabyte on a Mac or whatever.

00:29:05 ◼   ► So I'm not sure if it is doing that, but I would feel more comfortable if before it decided

00:29:10 ◼   ► to make a copy, made sure the thing that it's copying is right.

00:29:13 ◼   ► And this gets back to what you're saying.

00:29:14 ◼   ► What are you afraid of bugs in APFS or bugs in HFS plus?

00:29:18 ◼   ► I'm still probably more afraid of bugs in APFS because bottom line, it takes a long

00:29:23 ◼   ► time for a file system to really be bug free.

00:29:27 ◼   ► But at the moment of conversion, I am definitely more worried about my existing HFS+ disks

00:29:33 ◼   ► on all my iOS devices having the normal residue of problematic metadata that seems to accumulate

00:29:39 ◼   ► in all HFS+ volumes.

00:29:41 ◼   ► I'm more worried about that at that point.

00:29:43 ◼   ► After conversion, I have to say I have to give the nod to HFS+ for a brand new file

00:29:52 ◼   ► substance that has never been deployed on Apple devices.

00:29:54 ◼   ► If something is gonna go wrong,

00:29:56 ◼   ► it's gonna happen in like that first big deployment.

00:29:59 ◼   ► It's, you know, HFS plus for all of its little crappy bugs,

00:30:02 ◼   ► I really don't expect any massive data destroying things

00:30:05 ◼   ► to suddenly pop up.

00:30:07 ◼   ► HFS plus is gonna be what it is

00:30:08 ◼   ► and it has been for a long time and it's not good,

00:30:11 ◼   ► not good by a long stretch, but presumably,

00:30:14 ◼   ► like I can't remember the last time a,

00:30:16 ◼   ► oh, I can't remember last time HFS plus was even updated,

00:30:19 ◼   ► but all the updates that they've done to it,

00:30:21 ◼   ► none of them have caused any sort of catastrophic problems

00:30:24 ◼   ► is it APFS Plus, APFS, oh god, I cannot say these names.

00:30:28 ◼   ► Yeah, anyway, I'm gonna upgrade everything.

00:30:32 ◼   ► I'm just gonna go for it.

00:30:33 ◼   ► I have a lot of backups, you should have

00:30:35 ◼   ► a lot of backups too.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Let's just all dive in and see how it goes.

00:30:38 ◼   ► - Well that's part of like, you know,

00:30:40 ◼   ► on one hand, it is awfully bold for Apple

00:30:42 ◼   ► to deploy their brand new file system

00:30:45 ◼   ► on their most popular device.

00:30:47 ◼   ► Like, you know, to make it part, an automatic,

00:30:50 ◼   ► not even like an opt-in, but an automatic part

00:30:53 ◼   ► of seemingly all iOS 10.3 installed,

00:30:55 ◼   ► well, you know, we'll see if it ships that way,

00:30:57 ◼   ► but it looks like that's the plan,

00:30:59 ◼   ► then that means all of the iPhones are gonna get this

00:31:01 ◼   ► and they're all gonna be converted

00:31:02 ◼   ► when they reboot and that's it, right?

00:31:04 ◼   ► And that's a pretty bold move.

00:31:06 ◼   ► On the other hand, iOS is, you know,

00:31:10 ◼   ► even though it has a much larger install base,

00:31:13 ◼   ► in many ways it's lower risk

00:31:14 ◼   ► because the nature of phones is that

00:31:18 ◼   ► they're these kind of closed systems,

00:31:19 ◼   ► you have like very limited numbers of configurations,

00:31:22 ◼   ► You don't have like weirdo, like on a Mac,

00:31:24 ◼   ► you have all the different disks and partition schemes

00:31:28 ◼   ► and all sorts of apps that could be trying to mess with them

00:31:30 ◼   ► or things like that.

00:31:31 ◼   ► On iOS, it's all very controlled

00:31:33 ◼   ► and there's fewer combinations of things,

00:31:35 ◼   ► fewer configurations, and also, the nature of phones

00:31:38 ◼   ► is that people lose, break, and replace them often.

00:31:43 ◼   ► And so they're designed in software and in services

00:31:47 ◼   ► to have everything in the cloud

00:31:48 ◼   ► and have everything backed up most of the time.

00:31:50 ◼   ► I mean, that isn't in practice always the case,

00:31:52 ◼   ► but that's the case way more often on phones

00:31:55 ◼   ► than it is on Macs.

00:31:57 ◼   ► So if something does go catastrophically wrong

00:31:59 ◼   ► for some percentage of users on the phone,

00:32:01 ◼   ► it is probably less destructive

00:32:03 ◼   ► than if it happened on Mac OS.

00:32:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mostly agree with that.

00:32:07 ◼   ► Well, I mean, the other obvious reason

00:32:08 ◼   ► why they would do iOS first is 'cause it's more important

00:32:11 ◼   ► and that's where their effort goes

00:32:12 ◼   ► and the Mac will be an afterthought.

00:32:14 ◼   ► Like, oh yeah, I'm also looking for the Mac.

00:32:15 ◼   ► But yeah, phones are so much more of a controlled system.

00:32:19 ◼   ► And also all of the weird crap about APFS,

00:32:22 ◼   ► which is mostly good, you know,

00:32:23 ◼   ► like the space sharing stuff and, you know,

00:32:28 ◼   ► all the things that make it behave differently

00:32:33 ◼   ► than you might expect are not visible at all in iOS.

00:32:36 ◼   ► 'Cause iOS doesn't have the problem of 10 different ways

00:32:38 ◼   ► that you can see free space and users looking at it.

00:32:41 ◼   ► Like already the way you see free space in iOS

00:32:44 ◼   ► is already an illusion.

00:32:45 ◼   ► You go to the, you know, the preferences in general

00:32:47 ◼   ► and usage and all that stuff.

00:32:48 ◼   ► Like those numbers have only a vague connection

00:32:51 ◼   ► to space on disk because they're totally hiding

00:32:52 ◼   ► whole classes of things that don't count towards your space.

00:32:55 ◼   ► And they're trying to sum up space

00:32:56 ◼   ► and attribute it to applications

00:32:57 ◼   ► like it's already an illusion.

00:32:59 ◼   ► So there's no weirdness there.

00:33:01 ◼   ► Whereas on the Mac, if you do, you know,

00:33:03 ◼   ► if you use the power of the file system

00:33:05 ◼   ► and a disk utility is actually updated to use it,

00:33:08 ◼   ► people can make arrangements

00:33:10 ◼   ► that start to make far less sense

00:33:12 ◼   ► where you can have a single APFS container

00:33:14 ◼   ► with three volumes on it

00:33:15 ◼   ► and then how do you throw the free space on them?

00:33:17 ◼   ► and trying to figure out when you make an instant copy,

00:33:20 ◼   ► does that count as space being taken up?

00:33:22 ◼   ► Now you have two one gigabyte files

00:33:24 ◼   ► where before you had one,

00:33:25 ◼   ► but the free space didn't change

00:33:26 ◼   ► even though you don't have any shared volumes

00:33:28 ◼   ► on the containers and all that goes away on iOS.

00:33:32 ◼   ► And also iOS is case sensitive.

00:33:33 ◼   ► So that gets rid of all of whatever you're gonna deal with

00:33:36 ◼   ► for case folding stuff.

00:33:38 ◼   ► I did file one radar against APFS back in the early days

00:33:41 ◼   ► about the whole character encoding handling

00:33:45 ◼   ► and the fact that you can have two files

00:33:47 ◼   ► with apparently the same name on the Mac on APFS,

00:33:50 ◼   ► but you can't do that in HFS Plus

00:33:52 ◼   ► because HFS Plus does this normalization stuff

00:33:55 ◼   ► to try to make them all the same.

00:33:56 ◼   ► They do a weird normalization, but anyway.

00:33:58 ◼   ► I don't know the state of that radar.

00:34:00 ◼   ► I don't think the state of that radar has changed.

00:34:01 ◼   ► Maybe it was closed as a dupe.

00:34:03 ◼   ► I don't even remember.

00:34:04 ◼   ► It went into the black hole.

00:34:05 ◼   ► I haven't heard anything about it.

00:34:06 ◼   ► But for Macs, most, the vast, vast, vast majority

00:34:10 ◼   ► which have case insensitive file systems,

00:34:12 ◼   ► they're gonna have to make decisions about that.

00:34:15 ◼   ► And I don't know what decisions they made.

00:34:17 ◼   ► So if the Mac gets the ability to boot from APFS

00:34:22 ◼   ► before the October-ish release of whatever follows

00:34:25 ◼   ► Mac OS Sierra, I will be surprised.

00:34:28 ◼   ► But on the other hand, it's January,

00:34:30 ◼   ► and they're already doing iOS.

00:34:31 ◼   ► Maybe it will come to the Mac earlier.

00:34:33 ◼   ► But coming to the Mac is obviously the change

00:34:35 ◼   ► that I find more interesting, because I'm into the Mac

00:34:38 ◼   ► and because you can actually see the file system.

00:34:40 ◼   ► And I think it is actually the more difficult one

00:34:42 ◼   ► than doing iOS.

00:34:44 ◼   ► That's interesting.

00:34:45 ◼   ► Never thought of it that way.

00:34:47 ◼   ► Any other thoughts about iOS 10.3 that are general

00:34:52 ◼   ► and aren't spelled out in the rest of our document?

00:34:54 ◼   ► - No, I don't know.

00:34:55 ◼   ► Marco, you're using it, what is it like?

00:34:57 ◼   ► Anything exciting in there?

00:34:58 ◼   ► - No.

00:35:00 ◼   ► I mean, as a user, I don't even really notice anything,

00:35:04 ◼   ► honestly.

00:35:05 ◼   ► - That's a good sign.

00:35:05 ◼   ► Sounds like it's stable.

00:35:07 ◼   ► - I mean, I've had zero problems.

00:35:10 ◼   ► Like, nothing that you'd typically associate

00:35:13 ◼   ► with a beta one of a major point release,

00:35:16 ◼   ► or like a major release like iOS 11.

00:35:18 ◼   ► It's nothing like a beta one of that level.

00:35:21 ◼   ► If I didn't know academically that I was running a beta,

00:35:26 ◼   ► I would not realize I was running a beta.

00:35:29 ◼   ► - That sounds like a pretty clear win to me, so far anyway.

00:35:32 ◼   ► - Oh, the other thing on file system being in 10.3,

00:35:34 ◼   ► like the fact that this is a point release,

00:35:36 ◼   ► and Mark was saying, well, you don't really notice

00:35:37 ◼   ► that much of a difference.

00:35:39 ◼   ► APFS tech wise has capabilities that could be leveraged in iOS 11 or whatever the next

00:35:46 ◼   ► major version is to provide headlining style features.

00:35:50 ◼   ► So for example, snapshots, the ability to preserve the state of the entire file system

00:35:54 ◼   ► in a consistent state could be used, I don't know if Apple will do this, you know, it's

00:35:59 ◼   ► a political issue more than anything, to roll your phone back to an ungood state in a reliable

00:36:06 ◼   ► way.

00:36:07 ◼   ► It's something that you can't really do now.

00:36:08 ◼   ► restore from backup or restore from the cloud and we know how annoying that is to do.

00:36:12 ◼   ► But imagine if before the iOS 11.1 to 11.2 upgrade it would just routinely snapshot everything

00:36:19 ◼   ► beforehand and if you didn't like the upgrade at any point you could switch back to the

00:36:23 ◼   ► state it was like the day before or whatever.

00:36:25 ◼   ► Well there's no chance of that.

00:36:26 ◼   ► I know.

00:36:28 ◼   ► But tech wise that is possible.

00:36:30 ◼   ► Right and I think what's more likely to be used is maybe a recovery thing where like

00:36:35 ◼   ► if an upgrade fails for some reason,

00:36:38 ◼   ► then there'd be some mechanism to have it

00:36:41 ◼   ► kind of automatically roll itself back.

00:36:43 ◼   ► You know, that's more likely, I think,

00:36:45 ◼   ► than I don't like the new icons, I'm gonna go back.

00:36:48 ◼   ► Like Apple does not enable that really at all.

00:36:51 ◼   ► - I mean, or you could do it on a, like,

00:36:53 ◼   ► I don't know, they could do it at any level they want.

00:36:57 ◼   ► They could do it at a per application level

00:36:58 ◼   ► to go back to an old version of the application.

00:37:00 ◼   ► They could do time machine type of features

00:37:02 ◼   ► inside applications to find old versions of,

00:37:04 ◼   ► You can already do this stuff in various ways

00:37:07 ◼   ► above the level of the file system,

00:37:08 ◼   ► but the fact that you get this sort of for free

00:37:11 ◼   ► out of the file system and it's very efficient and fast

00:37:14 ◼   ► and presumably will have APIs.

00:37:15 ◼   ► Those are the type of things that,

00:37:16 ◼   ► yeah, you've got APFS now,

00:37:18 ◼   ► but you don't have probably almost any of the features

00:37:20 ◼   ► that could be built on it.

00:37:21 ◼   ► Those are major OS features.

00:37:23 ◼   ► They could be for few, maybe not even 11,

00:37:25 ◼   ► maybe iOS 12 or whatever.

00:37:26 ◼   ► Same thing with on the Mac.

00:37:28 ◼   ► If and when we can boot from APFS,

00:37:29 ◼   ► yeah, that's all well and good,

00:37:31 ◼   ► but there are many years, presumably,

00:37:33 ◼   ► of features that are built in this.

00:37:34 ◼   ► Like who knows if Time Machine will even be updated

00:37:37 ◼   ► to support APFS in the next version of macOS.

00:37:39 ◼   ► Maybe we'll have to wait for the version after that.

00:37:41 ◼   ► It's non-trivial to take advantage of all these features.

00:37:44 ◼   ► And I'm in no hurry.

00:37:45 ◼   ► It's like step one, get the file system with these features

00:37:48 ◼   ► and make it solid.

00:37:49 ◼   ► Step two, three, four, and five,

00:37:50 ◼   ► then slowly roll out the features that,

00:37:54 ◼   ► consumers won't care that it's enabled

00:37:56 ◼   ► by the new file system.

00:37:56 ◼   ► They only care about the features,

00:37:58 ◼   ► but many things will be enabled by these features.

00:37:59 ◼   ► So I look forward to them, even though,

00:38:01 ◼   ► oh, 10.3, ho-hum, new file system.

00:38:03 ◼   ► What was the big deal?

00:38:04 ◼   ► The big deal should come later.

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00:39:46 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:39:49 ◼   ► - We have finally gotten our wish,

00:39:52 ◼   ► and by our I mean mostly Marco,

00:39:54 ◼   ► and you can respond to App Store reviews now,

00:39:57 ◼   ► which is really exciting.

00:40:00 ◼   ► I think developers have been talking about this for forever and a day.

00:40:03 ◼   ► I saw a link fly by to Chalk's blog.

00:40:06 ◼   ► I don't have it handy.

00:40:07 ◼   ► I'll see if I can dig it up for the show notes.

00:40:09 ◼   ► But I think it was from 2009 or something like that, saying, "Oh, we should really be

00:40:14 ◼   ► able to respond to reviews in the App Store.

00:40:19 ◼   ► Android has been able to do this for a long time, and now it's finally a thing."

00:40:24 ◼   ► And that's something to be excited about.

00:40:26 ◼   ► it seems pretty clear to me that Phil Schiller

00:40:29 ◼   ► is making moves.

00:40:30 ◼   ► So, Marco, how do you feel?

00:40:32 ◼   ► - It's kind of amazing as an iOS,

00:40:35 ◼   ► and I said some of this when Phil first started doing things

00:40:38 ◼   ► like last spring and summer,

00:40:40 ◼   ► but it's just kind of amazing as an iOS developer

00:40:43 ◼   ► to have things changing in the App Store

00:40:46 ◼   ► and getting better at all.

00:40:48 ◼   ► Because the App Store is, what, eight years old,

00:40:52 ◼   ► eight and a half, something like that?

00:40:53 ◼   ► - Something like that.

00:40:54 ◼   ► that time, during like the first seven years of it,

00:40:59 ◼   ► almost nothing changed, almost nothing improved.

00:41:02 ◼   ► There were a few minor things here

00:41:04 ◼   ► and exceedingly minor things.

00:41:06 ◼   ► Some things even got worse.

00:41:08 ◼   ► So to have it being worked on and to have positive changes

00:41:13 ◼   ► or any changes is a new feeling for iOS developers.

00:41:20 ◼   ► And overall, since Phil has taken over,

00:41:23 ◼   ► I think the changes have been overall quite good.

00:41:26 ◼   ► Very few things have been like a major miss

00:41:29 ◼   ► or majorly harmful.

00:41:31 ◼   ► Even search ads where they were very controversial

00:41:34 ◼   ► and I think that's with good reason.

00:41:37 ◼   ► I now spend more on search ads than I do on my servers

00:41:41 ◼   ► and I don't love that.

00:41:44 ◼   ► - Oh, I didn't know that.

00:41:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was, it's accounting time

00:41:48 ◼   ► with taxes and everything.

00:41:50 ◼   ► So I've been looking back and doing all the,

00:41:53 ◼   ► adding up everything and I now spend a good amount of money

00:41:56 ◼   ► on search ads every week.

00:41:58 ◼   ► And I have all these graphs and I mean this is a diversion

00:42:02 ◼   ► and this is not the main topic tonight I guess.

00:42:03 ◼   ► It could be if you wanted to but anyway,

00:42:06 ◼   ► basically I'm now paying for a certain part

00:42:09 ◼   ► of my user base and it isn't that big of a portion

00:42:11 ◼   ► of my user base that the overall search ad traffic

00:42:13 ◼   ► has been lower than I expected.

00:42:16 ◼   ► And I don't think it's 'cause I'm losing auctions.

00:42:18 ◼   ► I think it's 'cause I'm not being shown

00:42:19 ◼   ► or there aren't that many searches

00:42:21 ◼   ► for the things I'm bidding on.

00:42:22 ◼   ► but the search ad system is possibly a net improvement,

00:42:27 ◼   ► but it's something, it's something big,

00:42:30 ◼   ► and these are customers that now I'm getting,

00:42:33 ◼   ► and the way I have things split out and being measured,

00:42:38 ◼   ► it is apparent to me that most of the customers

00:42:40 ◼   ► I'm getting via search ads are not coming from people

00:42:43 ◼   ► who are looking for overcast.

00:42:45 ◼   ► They are coming from people who are looking for like,

00:42:47 ◼   ► podcast or things like that, like more generic terms,

00:42:50 ◼   ► competitor names, things like that.

00:42:53 ◼   ► 'Cause I have my overcast bids I have on a separate campaign

00:42:57 ◼   ► so I can tell, like, am I spending a lot of money

00:42:59 ◼   ► just to get people out, I was gonna get anyway,

00:43:01 ◼   ► which, you know, I don't want that number to be very high.

00:43:04 ◼   ► Although I don't really want anybody else

00:43:05 ◼   ► outbidding me either, but, you know,

00:43:07 ◼   ► if that number was very high, then I'm just paying

00:43:09 ◼   ► for people who tapped result number one

00:43:11 ◼   ► and said result number two in the search,

00:43:13 ◼   ► and that's no good.

00:43:14 ◼   ► But that number isn't very high,

00:43:15 ◼   ► that's not a massive percentage of what I'm spending.

00:43:17 ◼   ► Most of what I'm spending is on generic search terms.

00:43:20 ◼   ► So the system is kind of working as designed.

00:43:24 ◼   ► I don't love that I'm taking a portion

00:43:27 ◼   ► of what Apple's giving me every month

00:43:29 ◼   ► and just giving it right back to them.

00:43:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:43:32 ◼   ► 'Cause they're already taking 30%,

00:43:33 ◼   ► at least that I don't see.

00:43:36 ◼   ► It doesn't feel good to be paying them back all this money.

00:43:38 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:43:39 ◼   ► But overall, the search ads have been okay.

00:43:43 ◼   ► As I said, they're not bringing in

00:43:45 ◼   ► a large percentage of new users.

00:43:47 ◼   ► Off the top of my head, I actually don't know the number,

00:43:49 ◼   ► but off the top of my head, I think it's probably

00:43:51 ◼   ► 10% or less of new users are coming through search ads.

00:43:54 ◼   ► But it's in that ballpark at least.

00:43:57 ◼   ► But these are people I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

00:44:01 ◼   ► Pretty clearly, you could tell from the search terms

00:44:04 ◼   ► and from how, when I go to the store,

00:44:05 ◼   ► how I rank on those search terms,

00:44:07 ◼   ► 'cause App Store search is terrible.

00:44:09 ◼   ► So you search for podcasts and five of the first 10 apps

00:44:13 ◼   ► are alarm clock apps.

00:44:14 ◼   ► It's stuff that's totally unrelated, literally.

00:44:17 ◼   ► The search is still just as awful as it's always been.

00:44:20 ◼   ► But to have search ads there,

00:44:22 ◼   ► I am getting customers I wouldn't have gotten before,

00:44:24 ◼   ► so that's overall positive,

00:44:26 ◼   ► even though I'm paying for them.

00:44:28 ◼   ► And I'm paying a little more than I would like,

00:44:30 ◼   ► but it's still within the realm of reasonable, I think.

00:44:34 ◼   ► So anyway, that aside, it is really nice,

00:44:37 ◼   ► going back to the original question,

00:44:39 ◼   ► it is really nice to have changes happening

00:44:42 ◼   ► in the App Store, that most of which are good.

00:44:44 ◼   ► And I'm also using subscriptions now,

00:44:47 ◼   ► using the internet purchase subscriptions.

00:44:49 ◼   ► Next September, I'm gonna start getting

00:44:51 ◼   ► my 85% people renewing.

00:44:53 ◼   ► That's gonna be a great day,

00:44:54 ◼   ► 'cause I'm gonna just get a raise for no reason.

00:44:57 ◼   ► That's awesome.

00:44:58 ◼   ► So, you know, everybody let your subscriptions renew, please.

00:45:00 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:45:02 ◼   ► But otherwise, yeah, so anyway.

00:45:04 ◼   ► So for this specific change of responding to reviews,

00:45:07 ◼   ► and I guess maybe we'll get later

00:45:09 ◼   ► to the app review prompting mechanism change.

00:45:13 ◼   ► I don't know if we're gonna talk about that on this show.

00:45:16 ◼   ► If not, we talked about it on this week's

00:45:17 ◼   ► under the radar, plug plug.

00:45:19 ◼   ► So, responding to reviews.

00:45:22 ◼   ► So as, let me begin by asking you guys,

00:45:24 ◼   ► as App Store users, do you read a lot of the reviews?

00:45:28 ◼   ► - No.

00:45:29 ◼   ► - So basically, if developers start responding to reviews,

00:45:31 ◼   ► will you really see that?

00:45:34 ◼   ► - I do read reviews for apps that I have no idea

00:45:37 ◼   ► about the whole domain.

00:45:38 ◼   ► Like I'm looking for an, I was looking for an application

00:45:40 ◼   ► recently for like laying out where furniture is in rooms

00:45:45 ◼   ► something that can do walls and doors and windows, you know, with correct to scale measurements and

00:45:49 ◼   ► have like, you know, couches and end tables, you know, to see how furniture is going to fit in the

00:45:52 ◼   ► room without doing it yourself by cutting out little pieces of paper, which is fun, but I

00:45:56 ◼   ► figured that an iPad app would be better. And I have no idea about that area. And as you noted,

00:46:01 ◼   ► search is terrible. So I do what I think are reasonable searches and it shows a million hits,

00:46:06 ◼   ► half of which are scams or pieces of garbage. And the ratings don't tell you that much. I have to

00:46:12 ◼   ► to actually look at the reviews to see, you know, like a two and a half star thing could

00:46:17 ◼   ► be 50 people cranky that it's $5 and then 150 people who think it's actually a reasonably

00:46:23 ◼   ► good app. And the only way to tell that is to look at the reviews. So I will scroll through

00:46:27 ◼   ► them and see, you know, because you can't tell. People rate things low for reasons unrelated

00:46:33 ◼   ► to the functionality of the app. I'm willing to pay $2.99. I don't care that 90% of your

00:46:37 ◼   ► reviews are from people who can't believe you'd wanted to charge $2.99 for this. Like,

00:46:40 ◼   ► I just want to know, does it do the job?

00:46:42 ◼   ► So I do read them and weep, I suppose.

00:46:46 ◼   ► - So my theory, my impression of this so far, basically,

00:46:52 ◼   ► is like the effectiveness and the value

00:46:55 ◼   ► in developers being able to respond to reviews

00:46:59 ◼   ► is highly dependent on implementation details

00:47:02 ◼   ► of how this is actually done for both the reviewer,

00:47:05 ◼   ► the customer, or the reviewer, the developer,

00:47:07 ◼   ► and people reading the reviews.

00:47:09 ◼   ► And also, just how many people actually do go through

00:47:13 ◼   ► and read reviews, 'cause I think iOS developers

00:47:16 ◼   ► have a pretty good idea that having star ratings matters.

00:47:20 ◼   ► Having a high average matters, and it looks better

00:47:23 ◼   ► if you have a high number of them,

00:47:25 ◼   ► 'cause it says usually in parentheses next to the star

00:47:27 ◼   ► average, it'll tell you how many ratings there were.

00:47:30 ◼   ► And so when people are choosing an app or deciding

00:47:34 ◼   ► whether to download or buy an app, I think a lot of people

00:47:36 ◼   ► do look at those star ratings, and that matters.

00:47:39 ◼   ► But the actual written reviews, we don't really know.

00:47:43 ◼   ► I kind of have a hunch that they don't matter that much,

00:47:46 ◼   ► that not a large percentage of people do go through

00:47:49 ◼   ► and really read them, or read a decent number of them.

00:47:53 ◼   ► And so if that's the case, then whether developers

00:47:56 ◼   ► can respond to them doesn't matter that much.

00:47:59 ◼   ► And if you look, this is one of those things

00:48:01 ◼   ► that the Android people are going crazy today,

00:48:03 ◼   ► 'cause Android has had this for years,

00:48:05 ◼   ► maybe even since day one, I don't even know.

00:48:07 ◼   ► From what we hear from Android people,

00:48:08 ◼   ► it's mostly a non-issue.

00:48:11 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, some people do it,

00:48:12 ◼   ► it doesn't really matter.

00:48:13 ◼   ► Like, it isn't that big of a deal, right?

00:48:16 ◼   ► So we don't know how this will play out on iOS,

00:48:19 ◼   ► it isn't the same market,

00:48:20 ◼   ► but there's certainly some overlap.

00:48:22 ◼   ► And if I'm right that not a lot of people

00:48:24 ◼   ► read a lot of the reviews,

00:48:26 ◼   ► they mostly just look at the ratings,

00:48:28 ◼   ► then whether you as a developer respond to them

00:48:32 ◼   ► is really completely up to you.

00:48:33 ◼   ► And it's kind of an optional support channel

00:48:36 ◼   ► if you want it to be.

00:48:38 ◼   ► That being said, App Store reviews,

00:48:41 ◼   ► like your customers consider that a support channel

00:48:44 ◼   ► whether you do or not.

00:48:45 ◼   ► And that's not gonna suddenly start

00:48:48 ◼   ► now that developers can leave responses.

00:48:50 ◼   ► That's always been the case.

00:48:51 ◼   ► You've always had people treating the review system

00:48:54 ◼   ► as a support channel and using it to grind axes

00:48:59 ◼   ► or to ask weird questions or to withhold stars as hostages

00:49:03 ◼   ► until you add their favorite features.

00:49:05 ◼   ► Like that has always been the case.

00:49:08 ◼   ► it's not gonna change that for developers.

00:49:10 ◼   ► Like the perception that people expect you to respond

00:49:13 ◼   ► has always been there.

00:49:15 ◼   ► So people who are upset now that this is like

00:49:18 ◼   ► an additional support channel they now have to manage,

00:49:20 ◼   ► you know, newsflash, it always has been one,

00:49:22 ◼   ► we just haven't been able to manage it.

00:49:23 ◼   ► So now we will have a way to do it.

00:49:28 ◼   ► Implementation wise, there's a huge open question of

00:49:31 ◼   ► how are these shown, are they shown in a way

00:49:33 ◼   ► that many people will see them?

00:49:34 ◼   ► One of my big questions about it is

00:49:36 ◼   ► If I respond to a review, is the person who wrote it

00:49:39 ◼   ► notified of that response?

00:49:41 ◼   ► Is it sent to them in some way through, you know,

00:49:43 ◼   ► through like an email by Apple or something?

00:49:45 ◼   ► Because if not, then the value, I think,

00:49:47 ◼   ► for me responding is even lower.

00:49:49 ◼   ► 'Cause a large part of the value,

00:49:51 ◼   ► if somebody writes something that is either

00:49:54 ◼   ► really a support request or is indicating

00:49:57 ◼   ► they're having some kind of problem you could help with

00:49:59 ◼   ► or the misunderstanding, the app in some way,

00:50:01 ◼   ► like they're saying it doesn't have a feature

00:50:03 ◼   ► but it really does have that feature,

00:50:05 ◼   ► If they aren't notified of my response,

00:50:07 ◼   ► that has a lot less value than to respond.

00:50:10 ◼   ► So the implementation details, they rest a lot on this.

00:50:14 ◼   ► How are they shown in the interface?

00:50:16 ◼   ► How do developers respond?

00:50:17 ◼   ► How hard is it to respond?

00:50:19 ◼   ► Do we have to go through some weird iTunes Connect tool?

00:50:21 ◼   ► Is there gonna be a third party app that makes it easy?

00:50:24 ◼   ► How are we gonna deal with the different storefronts

00:50:26 ◼   ► in different parts of the world?

00:50:28 ◼   ► How are we gonna deal with different languages?

00:50:30 ◼   ► There are lots of big question marks

00:50:32 ◼   ► on the implementation details of this

00:50:34 ◼   ► that will decide how effective it is or isn't

00:50:36 ◼   ► and whether it's worth developers responding or not.

00:50:39 ◼   ► And of course there's gonna be the people

00:50:41 ◼   ► like Twitter and Facebook who just respond

00:50:44 ◼   ► to every single thing with please email support

00:50:46 ◼   ► and we'll try to help you out,

00:50:47 ◼   ► like fake template response.

00:50:49 ◼   ► But overall, it's probably gonna be either

00:50:53 ◼   ► completely forgettable and it's gonna be a total non-event

00:50:56 ◼   ► and not a lot of people are gonna respond

00:50:59 ◼   ► and it'll be fine and nobody will care,

00:51:01 ◼   ► or it'll be a positive thing.

00:51:03 ◼   ► The only downside is I'm gonna start reading my reviews.

00:51:06 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:51:07 ◼   ► - It'll be positive for developers.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Like it's situational.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Like one, this is a developer pleasing feature

00:51:13 ◼   ► more than a customer pleasing one it seems to me.

00:51:14 ◼   ► - Yes, absolutely. - 'Cause as you noted,

00:51:15 ◼   ► like customers may or may not care,

00:51:17 ◼   ► especially if they're not notified, who knows.

00:51:19 ◼   ► But if you happen to be a specific developer

00:51:24 ◼   ► who has a specific app that has a very popular,

00:51:27 ◼   ► lots of people clicked on helpful, blah, blah, blah,

00:51:29 ◼   ► like the top review is a scathing review

00:51:33 ◼   ► filled with mistaken information, as in like you said,

00:51:36 ◼   ► I expect this thing to have feature X and it doesn't,

00:51:38 ◼   ► it's garbage and it totally has feature X,

00:51:40 ◼   ► this person just hasn't found it.

00:51:42 ◼   ► And you would love to be able to tell them,

00:51:43 ◼   ► actually click on the blah and there's a thing,

00:51:45 ◼   ► and you know, like, but you can't respond

00:51:47 ◼   ► and you don't know the person's email

00:51:49 ◼   ► and there's no way you can communicate that

00:51:51 ◼   ► and your poor app sits there with this,

00:51:53 ◼   ► everyone, you know, and everyone who loads up your app

00:51:55 ◼   ► is gonna see that as like the most helpful review

00:51:58 ◼   ► and it is just the worst.

00:51:59 ◼   ► And most developers aren't in this situation,

00:52:01 ◼   ► But for the one that is, this feature is like the best thing ever because they don't care

00:52:08 ◼   ► how it affects the whole app store.

00:52:09 ◼   ► They don't care if it even gets them any more conversions.

00:52:13 ◼   ► They just, it's like the principle.

00:52:14 ◼   ► I just can't stand this one mistaken review sitting there at the top, right?

00:52:19 ◼   ► And I guess I could just release a new version and erase it, which is a whole other thing

00:52:23 ◼   ► about how reviews and ratings are going to last across releases, which by the way, is

00:52:27 ◼   ► not part of this.

00:52:28 ◼   ► Apple has said they're aware of that problem.

00:52:30 ◼   ► They don't have anything to announce at this time, but we should be looking forward to something happening there

00:52:35 ◼   ► But in the meantime it just feels so good

00:52:38 ◼   ► I can imagine as a developer to be able to finally respond

00:52:42 ◼   ► I think even if they're not notified it just lets you feel better to be like

00:52:46 ◼   ► Well that person will never know because they're long gone

00:52:48 ◼   ► But anyone else who stumbles across these reviews at least I've set the record straight whether or not you really set it straight

00:52:53 ◼   ► Whether you actually dug yourself in deeper by being passive-aggressive in your response and people look think of your app worse

00:52:59 ◼   ► Like it's just human nature to feel better about this and practically speaking. I think you have to give developers that channel

00:53:07 ◼   ► It's up to them to do something useful with the channel

00:53:10 ◼   ► They could not use it at all or they could

00:53:12 ◼   ► You know be self-destructive and do bad things with it and argue with their customers even though you only have one reply

00:53:17 ◼   ► I guess they get into edit wars as the question and the answer re-edited themselves over and over again

00:53:21 ◼   ► But not having that channel along at all for like seven or eight years has just felt terrible

00:53:27 ◼   ► And so I think this is it's a really important feature to have

00:53:30 ◼   ► The importance is far out of proportion

00:53:33 ◼   ► From the effect that it will have on anybody's business probably but just like it's one of those like why didn't you know?

00:53:40 ◼   ► You had a system for commenting you had everything in place

00:53:43 ◼   ► We're not asking you to expose their emails which is another bone of contention of who owns the customers Apple still owns them, right?

00:53:49 ◼   ► But just give developers some way to respond and it took so long and it's finally here

00:53:53 ◼   ► So I think I think there's no way this can't be a net positive for the App Store as a concept

00:53:59 ◼   ► Even if it's not a net positive for any particular person sales

00:54:02 ◼   ► It will it will be a net positive for for a developer state of mind exactly

00:54:07 ◼   ► Well, I'm looking forward to seeing how this shakes out and I don't know

00:54:11 ◼   ► I'm also curious to hear what you think of it Marco after it's been a little while in seeing if you hate reading reviews or not

00:54:16 ◼   ► Well, what do you think of it? You're an iOS developer? What do you think? I?

00:54:21 ◼   ► I don't know. It's a little weird for my situation because it's a company, it's not just me.

00:54:30 ◼   ► And seeing the feedback come through our email is interesting and enlightening. It does tell

00:54:35 ◼   ► me that a lot of the problems we expect to see, because we know that they're problems,

00:54:43 ◼   ► you know, a lot of people cite them as problems. But there are certainly times where people

00:54:46 ◼   ► like, "I don't understand how to do blah, why can't I do blah?" And in that situation,

00:54:52 ◼   ► it would be super convenient to be able to—and these are all emails, so obviously we can

00:54:58 ◼   ► reply—but hypothetically, if these are reviews, it would be super convenient to be able to

00:55:02 ◼   ► say, "Oh, if you need to do that thing, you just tap here and then tap there, and then

00:55:06 ◼   ► problem solved." And by the way, it sounds like we need to make this better in the future.

00:55:10 ◼   ► But in that sense, I'm positive about it.

00:55:15 ◼   ► I don't suspect that it's going to be my personal job to be trolling the reviews and—well,

00:55:21 ◼   ► not trolling, I guess, but weeding through the reviews.

00:55:24 ◼   ► You know what I mean, right?

00:55:25 ◼   ► Weeding through the reviews to respond when necessary.

00:55:29 ◼   ► But I agree with both of you.

00:55:31 ◼   ► I think this is a net positive, and I'm curious to see what happens in it.

00:55:36 ◼   ► And I'm also very curious to see if after a while, like if you people start, people

00:55:43 ◼   ► or companies for that matter, start replying to your views and we see how that goes.

00:55:48 ◼   ► And that either convinces the rest of us to dive in head first, or if it convinces, someone

00:55:55 ◼   ► in the chat said trawling, that is the word I was looking for.

00:55:58 ◼   ► T-R-A-W-L-I-N-G.

00:55:59 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:56:00 ◼   ► Sorry. Anyway, so yeah, so does Marco start replying to reviews and he has a terrible

00:56:08 ◼   ► experience with it and so Underscore says, "Oh, I'm never touching that." Or does Marco start

00:56:13 ◼   ► replying to reviews and it's a great experience and suddenly Underscore's like, "Heck yeah, I want

00:56:19 ◼   ► in on that." And then suddenly my employer's like, "Heck yeah, we want in on that." You know what I

00:56:23 ◼   ► mean? Like, I'm curious to see what the not literal beta testers but kind of effective beta testers

00:56:30 ◼   ► show us about the experience, if it's garbage or if it's great.

00:56:33 ◼   ► It really depends on that personality, though. We all know people who probably shouldn't

00:56:37 ◼   ► respond to comments. Like, you can make it worse for yourself, you know, because you

00:56:41 ◼   ► have a free text box, and if you get there, like, in the wrong mood or you're angry, like,

00:56:45 ◼   ► if you end up, like, yelling at your customers, it's not a net win for you. But I don't think

00:56:48 ◼   ► someone like David Smith is going to see someone yelling at their customers and say, "Oh, I

00:56:52 ◼   ► better stay away from reviews," because he won't yell at his customers. Like, customer

00:56:55 ◼   ► customer support and dealing with customer support issues is a skill, and you can have

00:57:01 ◼   ► more or less of it depending on where your skill set lies, and it is not a thing that

00:57:05 ◼   ► you should just assume that you're able to do just because you wrote the application.

00:57:08 ◼   ► So the channel has to be there, but for, you know, it's giving people, even though they

00:57:15 ◼   ► only have one reply, that is more than enough rope for a lot of people to hang themselves.

00:57:18 ◼   ► So now there's another skill set that these small shops or independent developers who

00:57:23 ◼   ► who have to be able to do a million things,

00:57:25 ◼   ► guess what, here's one more thing

00:57:26 ◼   ► that you have to add to your skillset

00:57:28 ◼   ► or find some way to outsource.

00:57:30 ◼   ► - And honestly, and I said this under the radar too,

00:57:34 ◼   ► again, listen to the radar this week

00:57:35 ◼   ► if you're into this topic 'cause we went into more of it,

00:57:38 ◼   ► but this is a huge opportunity in the tools space

00:57:41 ◼   ► for some service or app to make it easy for developers

00:57:46 ◼   ► to receive new reviews and reply to them

00:57:49 ◼   ► and track which ones they have either replied to

00:57:52 ◼   ► or decided not to reply to.

00:57:54 ◼   ► Across all the different stores,

00:57:55 ◼   ► maybe with built-in translate functionality of some sort

00:57:57 ◼   ► with a decent API, that's a thing.

00:58:00 ◼   ► Please somebody make that,

00:58:01 ◼   ► and you can sell that to a lot of iOS developers

00:58:03 ◼   ► for ongoing recurring subscription fee.

00:58:05 ◼   ► - Using Apple's convenient open rest API?

00:58:08 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:58:10 ◼   ► I like all these things you're describing,

00:58:12 ◼   ► you know, it may just because I just did a podcast

00:58:15 ◼   ► about this, but all I can think of is how much better

00:58:18 ◼   ► that game I play that you guys make fun of all the time,

00:58:20 ◼   ► Destiny does with this exact thing.

00:58:23 ◼   ► Destiny, the game, has an extensive API

00:58:27 ◼   ► that is completely open to anybody who wants to use it.

00:58:29 ◼   ► They can give you all the information

00:58:32 ◼   ► about all your characters and all your stats

00:58:33 ◼   ► and let you do things with it.

00:58:34 ◼   ► And there are, you know, browser plugins, websites,

00:58:39 ◼   ► iOS applications, everything you could possibly imagine

00:58:42 ◼   ► for messing with your stuff in Destiny.

00:58:45 ◼   ► Why? Because it's an open API.

00:58:46 ◼   ► They said, here's an API to all of our stuff.

00:58:48 ◼   ► and a simple authentication scheme

00:58:51 ◼   ► where you just authenticate and then it's just,

00:58:53 ◼   ► and the number of things that people have made,

00:58:55 ◼   ► it's just like the thing you just described,

00:58:57 ◼   ► would there be a hundred of those the next day

00:59:00 ◼   ► if this was Destiny that we were talking about?

00:59:02 ◼   ► I don't know what the situation is

00:59:03 ◼   ► for Apple's Interface 2 reviews,

00:59:06 ◼   ► but if it's not as good as Destiny, the game,

00:59:09 ◼   ► maybe they should hire some people from Bungie

00:59:10 ◼   ► because this is like making a decent API

00:59:14 ◼   ► that anybody can use is like a simple REST-based API

00:59:17 ◼   ► that speaks JSON, it's not that hard.

00:59:20 ◼   ► Like individual people make these little Chrome plugins

00:59:24 ◼   ► or web pages that do amazing things.

00:59:26 ◼   ► And they do it all for free,

00:59:28 ◼   ► and they do it in their spare time.

00:59:29 ◼   ► And any one of them, you would love to have something

00:59:32 ◼   ► that's that good for what you described

00:59:34 ◼   ► for dealing with reviews in the iOS App Store.

00:59:37 ◼   ► But if Apple keeps it all proprietary

00:59:38 ◼   ► and it's behind some weird thing,

00:59:40 ◼   ► then it's gonna be much harder to make

00:59:41 ◼   ► and there'll be fewer of them and it will be sad.

00:59:44 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

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01:00:48 ◼   ► Betterment, investing made better.

01:00:51 ◼   ► - Moving on, I hear rumor on the streets

01:00:58 ◼   ► that Marco is actually going to,

01:01:02 ◼   ► in the new version of Overcast,

01:01:03 ◼   ► and don't tell him I squealed,

01:01:05 ◼   ► he's actually going to change the icon for Overcast

01:01:09 ◼   ► to be the show art of the actively playing podcast.

01:01:14 ◼   ► Since I've spilled the beans, Marco,

01:01:15 ◼   ► why don't you tell us more about this?

01:01:18 ◼   ► - So one of the features that has been added

01:01:20 ◼   ► in iOS 10.3 beta is this mechanism

01:01:25 ◼   ► for seemingly setting alternate app icons in code.

01:01:30 ◼   ► The implementation of this is a little questionable.

01:01:33 ◼   ► Steve Trout and Smith did some digging,

01:01:35 ◼   ► and apparently, I believe the API doesn't actually work yet,

01:01:38 ◼   ► but apparently there is evidence in the frameworks

01:01:42 ◼   ► and stuff that it prompts you to confirm it.

01:01:45 ◼   ► Like it prompts the user to confirm any change of icon

01:01:48 ◼   ► before it actually applies it.

01:01:49 ◼   ► And so the question is, what is this for?

01:01:54 ◼   ► And it is not for developers like me to do things,

01:01:59 ◼   ► like for instance, I would love to change the icon

01:02:02 ◼   ► based on whether it's night or day.

01:02:07 ◼   ► and I could have a dark mode at night,

01:02:08 ◼   ► and then I could have automatic dark mode switching

01:02:11 ◼   ► and everything, and that's just not gonna be practical

01:02:14 ◼   ► if that's what it is.

01:02:15 ◼   ► There was a tweet from the Fantastical people

01:02:18 ◼   ► that they would love to have,

01:02:19 ◼   ► because it's an alternative calendar app,

01:02:21 ◼   ► and just like the Apple calendar app,

01:02:23 ◼   ► they'd love to change their icon

01:02:24 ◼   ► to be the day number every day,

01:02:27 ◼   ► just like what Apple's app does,

01:02:28 ◼   ► so it always shows the right date,

01:02:29 ◼   ► and it's not gonna do that either.

01:02:31 ◼   ► - It just prompts you every morning.

01:02:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, right. (laughs)

01:02:33 ◼   ► Send you a push notification, time to update your icon,

01:02:36 ◼   ► Come here and say, "Okay."

01:02:38 ◼   ► - You can kind of understand why they do it that way,

01:02:39 ◼   ► because it is a security concern,

01:02:41 ◼   ► because if applications could programmatically

01:02:42 ◼   ► change their icon, you could totally be phished

01:02:46 ◼   ► by an application that suddenly changes its icon

01:02:48 ◼   ► to look like some trusted application,

01:02:50 ◼   ► and you don't notice that you're not on the page

01:02:52 ◼   ► you thought you were on, and you tap the icon,

01:02:53 ◼   ► and it puts up a phishing screen that looks just like the,

01:02:56 ◼   ► you know what I mean?

01:02:57 ◼   ► It is dangerous to allow applications

01:02:59 ◼   ► to arbitrarily change their icon without a prompt.

01:03:01 ◼   ► So I totally understand that prompt, but you're right.

01:03:04 ◼   ► that eliminates all sorts of use cases.

01:03:06 ◼   ► And especially with the phishing stuff,

01:03:07 ◼   ► this is kind of like so many other app store things.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Fantastic Al should be able to change its icon

01:03:12 ◼   ► to be the date, right?

01:03:14 ◼   ► It should be able to do that.

01:03:16 ◼   ► And it's like, well, but if we let them do that,

01:03:18 ◼   ► then everyone can, it's like,

01:03:20 ◼   ► do you like, there should be some earnable level of trust

01:03:24 ◼   ► within the system,

01:03:25 ◼   ► like just like there was on Stack Overflow or whatever.

01:03:27 ◼   ► And Fantastic Al should have earned some level of trust

01:03:30 ◼   ► by this point.

01:03:31 ◼   ► I don't know how this mechanism is gonna work.

01:03:33 ◼   ► It's very difficult to do these types of systems

01:03:34 ◼   ► just as the people who run Stack Overflow.

01:03:36 ◼   ► It is a hard problem to solve,

01:03:38 ◼   ► but throwing up your hands and saying,

01:03:40 ◼   ► well, oh well, fantastic help.

01:03:42 ◼   ► Can't show the data in their icon.

01:03:43 ◼   ► That's not the right solution either.

01:03:45 ◼   ► So I'm glad whoever this feature is made for

01:03:48 ◼   ► is getting the features that they asked for.

01:03:50 ◼   ► And I can think of reasonable uses of it in that context,

01:03:54 ◼   ► but it kind of annoys me

01:03:56 ◼   ► that the API is finally being made public,

01:04:00 ◼   ► but in a way that so many use cases can't use it.

01:04:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, again, like you said,

01:04:07 ◼   ► it is a tricky problem.

01:04:08 ◼   ► There's lots of potential abuses for this.

01:04:11 ◼   ► So it does make sense why they would strictly control it,

01:04:15 ◼   ► but honestly, I'm kind of surprised

01:04:18 ◼   ► it needs to be there at all.

01:04:19 ◼   ► I honestly am very surprised it needs to be there at all.

01:04:22 ◼   ► And if it needs to be there at all,

01:04:24 ◼   ► I think it should be there in a way that's more useful.

01:04:28 ◼   ► So for instance, maybe to avoid possible security issues,

01:04:32 ◼   ► maybe the icon has to be part of your app's bundle

01:04:34 ◼   ► so you can't generate it dynamically,

01:04:36 ◼   ► and then maybe App Review checks all of them

01:04:38 ◼   ► just to make sure that you don't have

01:04:41 ◼   ► the messages or Apple Pay icon in there.

01:04:43 ◼   ► That's a way they could do it for everybody,

01:04:46 ◼   ► and that would make it a lot more useful,

01:04:47 ◼   ► and then if it has to just ship 31 icons

01:04:50 ◼   ► and have the app just call them without a prompt.

01:04:52 ◼   ► That's totally reasonable.

01:04:54 ◼   ► - Even with those things,

01:04:55 ◼   ► because your applications aren't swept,

01:04:58 ◼   ► they're even swept to get up.

01:05:00 ◼   ► They could make an API like that,

01:05:02 ◼   ► but once you can get pointers to things,

01:05:03 ◼   ► you can fill in the image data with it,

01:05:05 ◼   ► programmatically from an obfuscated giant data array

01:05:08 ◼   ► that you hide and you're like--

01:05:09 ◼   ► - No, you can't.

01:05:10 ◼   ► If it was a set image named call

01:05:14 ◼   ► and you had to pass it only a name,

01:05:16 ◼   ► something in your bundle,

01:05:17 ◼   ► there's no way to abuse that then.

01:05:19 ◼   ► - People are very sneaky.

01:05:20 ◼   ► What was that thing we saw recently

01:05:23 ◼   ► with that piece of malware in the App Store,

01:05:26 ◼   ► doing some weird things and calling some weird APIs

01:05:29 ◼   ► with like some selector swizzling.

01:05:30 ◼   ► Like, bottom line is it's really difficult

01:05:33 ◼   ► to both human and automatically determine

01:05:36 ◼   ► whether an application is safe.

01:05:37 ◼   ► It's kind of a halting problem.

01:05:38 ◼   ► So it doesn't mean that they shouldn't do it

01:05:40 ◼   ► because it's impossible to do with 100% accuracy.

01:05:42 ◼   ► Like you're right, they were just covered in the 99% case.

01:05:45 ◼   ► But I think also, and even perhaps more reliably,

01:05:48 ◼   ► reputation of developers earnable

01:05:52 ◼   ► through some kind of system to show that you are trustworthy

01:05:55 ◼   ► and are not trying to scam people.

01:05:56 ◼   ► And even that has problems because like,

01:05:58 ◼   ► what if you're not trying to scam them,

01:05:59 ◼   ► but someone broke into your server

01:06:00 ◼   ► and mess with your application?

01:06:01 ◼   ► Like there's always gonna be problems.

01:06:03 ◼   ► But at this point in the life cycle of the App Store,

01:06:09 ◼   ► particularly for things like calendars

01:06:13 ◼   ► where the utility of it is significant.

01:06:15 ◼   ► Like I do look at the calendar icon

01:06:17 ◼   ► to see what the date is on my phone frequently.

01:06:21 ◼   ► they have to find a way to make that be there.

01:06:23 ◼   ► And whether it's the scheme that you were describing Marco,

01:06:25 ◼   ► where it's just a very limited API,

01:06:27 ◼   ► or it is a trust-based system,

01:06:30 ◼   ► which would have many other uses by the way,

01:06:32 ◼   ► not just for this API,

01:06:33 ◼   ► could have uses for review times

01:06:35 ◼   ► and for how deep of a review you do and stuff like that.

01:06:38 ◼   ► This is another one of those things

01:06:41 ◼   ► that should be there by now.

01:06:43 ◼   ► - I mean, no matter what, the fact that there's an API,

01:06:45 ◼   ► even though it's super restricted right now,

01:06:47 ◼   ► I mean, that's Apple style, right?

01:06:49 ◼   ► I mean, look at the Siri,

01:06:50 ◼   ► What do they call them?

01:06:51 ◼   ► The different groups of functionality,

01:06:54 ◼   ► there's a term for it.

01:06:55 ◼   ► I can't think of it off the top of my head,

01:06:56 ◼   ► but you can only use Siri in certain contexts.

01:06:59 ◼   ► Well, maybe this is one of those things

01:07:02 ◼   ► and maybe they'll open it up in the future.

01:07:05 ◼   ► I mean, I'm not terribly confident about that,

01:07:07 ◼   ► but it could be, you never know.

01:07:09 ◼   ► But yeah, however this came to be, whatever this is about,

01:07:12 ◼   ► I mean, I guess, cool, maybe we'll see what happens,

01:07:17 ◼   ► but I suspect just like Marco was saying,

01:07:19 ◼   ► is going to amount to a whole lot of nothing for most people.

01:07:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:22 ◼   ► Moving on, Steve Trout and Smith, who was, I guess at this point, an honorary member of the show,

01:07:27 ◼   ► since he's given us most of the topics for tonight just by tweeting all this stuff.

01:07:32 ◼   ► He has also found a floating detached keyboard.

01:07:37 ◼   ► Now this is different than the thing, I don't even know if it's still a thing,

01:07:40 ◼   ► but then the thing that at least used to be the case where you could slide the keyboard

01:07:44 ◼   ► up the screen on an iPad and it would split in two, so there would be like a half on either side

01:07:48 ◼   ► of the screen and I think the intention there was so you could touch type with your thumbs

01:07:52 ◼   ► while gripping the screen. This is not the same thing as that because that's split in two.

01:07:56 ◼   ► This is an entire like iPhone shaped and sized keyboard that you can use single-handedly on a

01:08:07 ◼   ► 9.7 inch iPad which seems really peculiar and stupid to me at first and then I got thinking

01:08:14 ◼   ► about it and I was like, "You know, that actually might make some amount of sense. This might be

01:08:18 ◼   ► kind of cool." So there's, um, because if there's a situation where I'm holding an iPad one-handed,

01:08:27 ◼   ► which admittedly I can't imagine that would be terribly often, but if I, or maybe if I had the

01:08:32 ◼   ► iPad propped and I wanted to use only one hand to type, having all those keys right next to each

01:08:38 ◼   ► other, I could see that being kind of cool. I mean, it's all hypothetical, right? Because I

01:08:41 ◼   ► because I haven't tried this myself, but it might be neat.

01:08:44 ◼   ► I'm not writing this off immediately as garbage.

01:08:46 ◼   ► It might also be garbage, I don't know.

01:08:48 ◼   ► It sounds like you're not too impressed, Marco.

01:08:51 ◼   ► - We would have to see how Apple tells the story

01:08:54 ◼   ► of this feature, like what is the intent of it,

01:08:56 ◼   ► if it gets released.

01:08:58 ◼   ► That's a big if, but if it gets released,

01:09:00 ◼   ► I would be very curious to know what Apple thinks

01:09:04 ◼   ► of this feature, what they expect it to be used for,

01:09:07 ◼   ► because as he's showing it in these screenshots,

01:09:11 ◼   ► I can't think of a good use for this.

01:09:14 ◼   ► I think it would be very, very hard to type on

01:09:16 ◼   ► on actual iPad hardware,

01:09:19 ◼   ► no matter where you put it on the screen.

01:09:20 ◼   ► I think it'd be very, very hard to type on.

01:09:22 ◼   ► The whole reason that that keyboard works

01:09:25 ◼   ► is because you are holding a device

01:09:27 ◼   ► that is roughly the size of your hand

01:09:28 ◼   ► and using one or two thumbs on it.

01:09:31 ◼   ► The way you hold an iPad is totally different.

01:09:33 ◼   ► The way your fingers reach things on the iPad

01:09:35 ◼   ► is totally different.

01:09:36 ◼   ► I don't see how this would work, honestly.

01:09:40 ◼   ► but at this point iOS is so big, there's so much there,

01:09:44 ◼   ► that they can add features like this

01:09:47 ◼   ► that only two people ever wanna use.

01:09:49 ◼   ► Or the app icon changing API that they added,

01:09:53 ◼   ► how many apps are you ever gonna be able to use that

01:09:57 ◼   ► in a constructive way, zero, five?

01:09:59 ◼   ► There's lots of APIs now, various extension points

01:10:03 ◼   ► that exist that are almost never used by anybody,

01:10:07 ◼   ► but one type of app uses it and that's enough.

01:10:09 ◼   ► as you mentioned, the Siri kit stuff,

01:10:11 ◼   ► like being able to order certain things through Siri

01:10:15 ◼   ► or query certain things through Siri

01:10:16 ◼   ► where that's really only ever gonna be used

01:10:18 ◼   ► by zero to one apps that are on somebody's phone.

01:10:22 ◼   ► But it's worth it to have it

01:10:23 ◼   ► because those might be enough people to matter

01:10:26 ◼   ► with iOS being so big.

01:10:27 ◼   ► So something like this,

01:10:28 ◼   ► I would argue on the iPad,

01:10:31 ◼   ► they should probably be spending their time

01:10:32 ◼   ► doing more important things

01:10:34 ◼   ► that affect more people on the iPad

01:10:35 ◼   ► that could have a bigger return,

01:10:36 ◼   ► but someone's gonna use it.

01:10:38 ◼   ► And so I guess if it wasn't too much work,

01:10:41 ◼   ► it's probably fine, but I hesitate to see,

01:10:44 ◼   ► or I struggle to see the use of this myself.

01:10:47 ◼   ► - I think there was a tweet saying that this is actually,

01:10:48 ◼   ► this code has been in there since the beginning of

01:10:50 ◼   ► - There it was. - of iOS 10.

01:10:51 ◼   ► Like it's not a 10.3 feature.

01:10:53 ◼   ► And again, to be clear to everybody,

01:10:55 ◼   ► this is not something that's in a 10.3 beta.

01:10:57 ◼   ► This is a hidden thing, like the code is there for it,

01:10:59 ◼   ► but it's not exposed.

01:11:00 ◼   ► It's just like going through headers

01:11:01 ◼   ► and finding things to call.

01:11:03 ◼   ► The most important thing to me,

01:11:06 ◼   ► looking at this potential feature

01:11:10 ◼   ► that may or may not ever ship or be revealed in any way,

01:11:15 ◼   ► is that it is, I guess the second,

01:11:18 ◼   ► maybe I'm missing some things,

01:11:19 ◼   ► iteration of bringing essentially Windows to iOS.

01:11:24 ◼   ► It is a floating square on the screen

01:11:29 ◼   ► that is not, you know,

01:11:31 ◼   ► it's not the screen divided in half or in thirds

01:11:33 ◼   ► or a slide, a panel that slides up from the side or whatever.

01:11:35 ◼   ► It is its own independent floating square

01:11:38 ◼   ► that presumably you can put wherever you want.

01:11:40 ◼   ► That's called a window.

01:11:42 ◼   ► Doesn't have title bar on it.

01:11:44 ◼   ► It's not a window in the Mac sense,

01:11:46 ◼   ► but it's definitely a window.

01:11:47 ◼   ► Picture in picture, also a window.

01:11:49 ◼   ► You can kind of move that thing around on the screen

01:11:50 ◼   ► without not completely free form.

01:11:52 ◼   ► Same thing with our little friend,

01:11:53 ◼   ► the assistive touch button nub thing

01:11:56 ◼   ► that you can put anywhere on the screen.

01:11:58 ◼   ► It's like iOS was first everything fills the screen,

01:12:01 ◼   ► and then second, the screen starts getting subdivided

01:12:03 ◼   ► pieces for multitasking in thirds and halves and stuff like that and then finally a bunch of little

01:12:09 ◼   ► guys come and plop up on top on this one big floating layer on top of everything keyboards

01:12:14 ◼   ► picture in picture is such stuff like it is a step in the direction away from the absolute extreme

01:12:23 ◼   ► simplicity that ios was born in and towards a tiny toe dip into the world of the mac where you can

01:12:31 ◼   ► have more than one thing on the screen at the same time in an arrangement of your choosing

01:12:36 ◼   ► and you can move stuff around depending on what you want to see.

01:12:41 ◼   ► And this tiny little keyboard, this weird little iPhone floating keyboard whatever thing

01:12:46 ◼   ► is interesting to me not just because it's a window but also because it reinforces the

01:12:51 ◼   ► idea and I feel this even on my iPad that sometimes when that keyboard slides up it's

01:12:57 ◼   ► It's taking a larger portion of the screen than you think is appropriate for a keyboard

01:13:03 ◼   ► at this time.

01:13:04 ◼   ► Like, "Oh man, my big iPad screen, now a huge portion of it is taken up with this big

01:13:08 ◼   ► honking keyboard."

01:13:10 ◼   ► If a particular task, you don't need that whole bottom third of the screen to be taken

01:13:15 ◼   ► up with the keyboard, just to have a little floating thing that you can put anywhere,

01:13:18 ◼   ► maybe you don't want it covering the bottom, maybe you want it covering the left or the

01:13:20 ◼   ► top or the side, or maybe you want it near your thumb or whatever.

01:13:23 ◼   ► The same reason people like the Assistive Touch button, even though they're chasing

01:13:26 ◼   ► that little puck around the screen,

01:13:27 ◼   ► moving it out of the way so it doesn't obscure stuff.

01:13:30 ◼   ► Apparently people get used to that and like,

01:13:32 ◼   ► that's just part of me using my phone

01:13:33 ◼   ► is occasionally I have to move the little thing

01:13:35 ◼   ► out of the way, but it's still preferable.

01:13:37 ◼   ► Well, here I think you're trading a very large keyboard,

01:13:41 ◼   ► take up, you know, not just obscuring a large portion

01:13:43 ◼   ► of the screen, but often the app have to change

01:13:45 ◼   ► their view hierarchy and view structure to accommodate

01:13:47 ◼   ► for the very large keyboard when it comes up,

01:13:49 ◼   ► to say, no application, you don't have to change

01:13:51 ◼   ► your layout at all, let the user deal with that.

01:13:53 ◼   ► The user will be the janitor,

01:13:54 ◼   ► and old Steve Jobs parlance,

01:13:56 ◼   ► and they'll just move the little tiny keyboard around

01:13:59 ◼   ► where they wanna move it.

01:14:00 ◼   ► Now, like both of you said, having not used this,

01:14:04 ◼   ► it does not immediately appear to me to be any sort of win,

01:14:08 ◼   ► and I kind of agree with the fact

01:14:10 ◼   ► of it not being exposed right now,

01:14:11 ◼   ► and I would like to have to see

01:14:12 ◼   ► what kind of story they explain this,

01:14:14 ◼   ► but like the split keyboard

01:14:16 ◼   ► that I think Casey mentioned before,

01:14:18 ◼   ► where you take the existing iOS keyboard and split it,

01:14:21 ◼   ► and I'm pretty sure that feature still exists

01:14:22 ◼   ► 'cause I've used it recently,

01:14:23 ◼   ► or recently-ish, like in the last year.

01:14:25 ◼   ► They announced that feature, they showed it,

01:14:29 ◼   ► people oohed and aahed, and I think most people

01:14:32 ◼   ► who don't use it just forgot about it.

01:14:33 ◼   ► But if it's still there, it doesn't do anybody harm.

01:14:35 ◼   ► If you don't ever use it,

01:14:37 ◼   ► and you don't ever accidentally trigger it, it's fine.

01:14:40 ◼   ► So this could be that category of things,

01:14:42 ◼   ► but I wanna encourage Apple to continue to explore

01:14:45 ◼   ► this radical idea we call Windows, with a lowercase w.

01:14:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:14:51 ◼   ► - Oh my goodness.

01:14:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, we'll see what happens.

01:14:54 ◼   ► It's fascinating to me that Apple is shipping this code

01:14:59 ◼   ► dark, not surprising necessarily, but just interesting.

01:15:03 ◼   ► But what's really super interesting is that

01:15:05 ◼   ► Steve Tran Smith is finding all this stuff.

01:15:07 ◼   ► Like just the stuff that he can dig up is tremendous.

01:15:11 ◼   ► And I don't even know where to begin to do some of the stuff

01:15:14 ◼   ► that he's able to do.

01:15:15 ◼   ► And I'm deeply impressed by it.

01:15:17 ◼   ► And I love that he's sharing it with the world,

01:15:19 ◼   ► even to the point of making a sample project

01:15:22 ◼   ► on GitHub, and we have a link to it in the show notes, or a link to a tweet of his anyway,

01:15:25 ◼   ► to exercise the icon thing. Like, just such cool stuff. And man, I wish I was smart like him.

01:15:33 ◼   ► But anyway, yeah, we'll see what happens with this floating keyboard thing. I do think that

01:15:38 ◼   ► your point about the windowing is interesting, Jon, especially because if I recall correctly,

01:15:44 ◼   ► you can actually resize the picture-in-picture window if you pinch it. I think there are some

01:15:49 ◼   ► some limits, but I think you can enlarge and shrink it.

01:15:52 ◼   ► And I've also noticed that you can kind of flick it

01:15:54 ◼   ► off to the side, so there's just like a little handle

01:15:58 ◼   ► or like nubbin that pokes out off the side of the screen.

01:16:01 ◼   ► So if you wanted to like shimmy it off to the side

01:16:03 ◼   ► just for a moment to look at something

01:16:04 ◼   ► and then bring it back, you can do that.

01:16:06 ◼   ► So there is some amount of window management

01:16:08 ◼   ► that's going on in iOS today.

01:16:10 ◼   ► And it seems like more and more is coming,

01:16:12 ◼   ► which is really, really interesting.

01:16:14 ◼   ► - And picture in picture, like it shows Apple's willingness

01:16:18 ◼   ► to ship features on iOS in which it's up to you

01:16:21 ◼   ► to deal with that little window.

01:16:22 ◼   ► Like the whole point is you don't have to have the app

01:16:24 ◼   ► in the front, you can go do other things

01:16:27 ◼   ► and we won't even mess with your multitasking.

01:16:28 ◼   ► We won't even take up one of the multitasking slots

01:16:30 ◼   ► or whatever, it's just this little window.

01:16:32 ◼   ► And maybe it's blocking stuff.

01:16:33 ◼   ► It's up to you to move it out of the way.

01:16:35 ◼   ► If it's covering something you don't want,

01:16:37 ◼   ► move it to a different place.

01:16:37 ◼   ► If you just wanna get rid of it,

01:16:38 ◼   ► like it is pushing that management test up,

01:16:41 ◼   ► deciding that you know where like,

01:16:42 ◼   ► oh, I don't care that it covers this part of the screen.

01:16:44 ◼   ► And if it's covering something, knowing you move it.

01:16:45 ◼   ► And in practice, I found with Picture-in-Picture,

01:16:48 ◼   ► it's usually not that hard to find someplace on the screen

01:16:50 ◼   ► where you can put it, where it's not bothering you.

01:16:52 ◼   ► And you know where that is because you know the apps

01:16:54 ◼   ► that you're using.

01:16:55 ◼   ► That's the curse and the power of Windows,

01:16:58 ◼   ► as we all know on typical personal computers is,

01:17:02 ◼   ► you can put them wherever you want

01:17:03 ◼   ► and you can arrange it in a way that makes sense to you.

01:17:04 ◼   ► And it's so much more limited in iOS.

01:17:06 ◼   ► Like you have very few of these little things

01:17:08 ◼   ► and the where you can put them and how big they can be

01:17:10 ◼   ► and how you manipulate them is incredibly limited.

01:17:12 ◼   ► But I think coming from a world

01:17:14 ◼   ► where the entire phone was one application all the time,

01:17:17 ◼   ► that incredible simplicity,

01:17:18 ◼   ► and moving to a world with iPad Pro,

01:17:22 ◼   ► large type devices with a pen and all this other stuff.

01:17:25 ◼   ► You have to start giving people the ability to do this,

01:17:27 ◼   ► otherwise you're not leveraging the power

01:17:29 ◼   ► of the larger screen and the multitasking

01:17:32 ◼   ► and all that other stuff.

01:17:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I love picture-in-picture on my iPad,

01:17:35 ◼   ► and I love it so much, even on macOS,

01:17:38 ◼   ► that I found, I don't remember who introduced this to me,

01:17:41 ◼   ► but, and forgive me if I mentioned this on the show before,

01:17:44 ◼   ► But there's a Safari extension called Pied Piper, but it's Pied P-I-P-er, get it?

01:17:51 ◼   ► Anyway, it's a Safari extension that'll allow you to easily do picture-in-picture on YouTube,

01:17:57 ◼   ► and I think Vimeo and a couple of other places, and Plex for the Plex web front end.

01:18:02 ◼   ► Yes, I am aware that you can do some right-click, right-click again dance on YouTube in order

01:18:09 ◼   ► to get it to support Picture-in-Picture, but this just puts a little button right on the

01:18:15 ◼   ► video that lets you kick it over to a Picture-in-Picture.

01:18:18 ◼   ► I find that super convenient, particularly because, although I don't believe in having

01:18:22 ◼   ► a gazillion Safari tabs like you do, John, I do believe in having about 11 billion spaces

01:18:28 ◼   ► or virtual desktops.

01:18:30 ◼   ► And so having Picture-in-Picture can let this hover across several different spaces, which

01:18:35 ◼   ► is really nice.

01:18:36 ◼   ► So I'll put a link to that in the show notes.

01:18:39 ◼   ► Anything else on iOS 10.3?

01:18:40 ◼   ► I briefly mentioned the reviewing interface thing that Marco said he talked about under

01:18:45 ◼   ► the radar, but that was an issue we talked about on past ATPs, I think, with applications

01:18:52 ◼   ► asking you to rate them obnoxiously more often than you would like.

01:18:56 ◼   ► And we were discussing, you know, "Oh, maybe you could report them that they're doing that

01:19:00 ◼   ► or applications shouldn't be doing that, but then how do you enforce the guidelines?"

01:19:03 ◼   ► Apple's solution to this seems to be make an official API for asking that and put limits

01:19:08 ◼   ► on the official API, and eventually some point in the future force everyone to use the API.

01:19:13 ◼   ► So this sounds, I endorse this plan.

01:19:15 ◼   ► This sounds like a good plan.

01:19:16 ◼   ► I look forward to them rolling it out.

01:19:18 ◼   ► I like that they're doing it reasonably cautiously, not just one day saying, "Hey, guess what?

01:19:22 ◼   ► If your app asks for reviews in any way except the official API, you will get rejected."

01:19:26 ◼   ► They're not doing that.

01:19:27 ◼   ► But the API is, the limits are sane.

01:19:30 ◼   ► It's like three times per year you can ask, and with a global switch that says, "I never

01:19:36 ◼   ► want to be asked to rate an application. I'm going to use that global switch because I

01:19:40 ◼   ► do never want to be asked. Many applications that I use and like frequently ask me to rate

01:19:45 ◼   ► them and have obnoxious choices at the bottom of the dialogue boxes, none of which my brainstem

01:19:51 ◼   ► knows, you know, my brainstem doesn't know which one to pick so I have to read words

01:19:54 ◼   ► and be like, it's like, maybe later, no, like, oh, just go away box, I don't want to see

01:20:04 ◼   ► you. So I endorse this API. I wish it would come sooner. In fact, I wish they would, you know,

01:20:11 ◼   ► make it even more draconian now. And the nice thing is, everything I've heard about this is like,

01:20:15 ◼   ► yes, these are reasonable choices. Like what about the applications like Marco's that

01:20:20 ◼   ► never prompt you, but just have a little section in the preferences that say, hey, if you want to

01:20:24 ◼   ► rate it, are they okay? Answer, yes, you're totally allowed to do that because that's not a thing that

01:20:28 ◼   ► pops up in your face. If you're scrolling through the settings and you see the thing, those

01:20:31 ◼   ► Those applications don't have to be removed from the store

01:20:34 ◼   ► or changed a thing.

01:20:35 ◼   ► And if Marco wants to make it,

01:20:37 ◼   ► so when you tap that thing,

01:20:38 ◼   ► it pops up an inline thing to review the app.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Can he use that new API?

01:20:41 ◼   ► Yes, he can.

01:20:42 ◼   ► See, it's not that hard.

01:20:43 ◼   ► Like we're so used to like every API that Apple,

01:20:46 ◼   ► every sort of app store rule or API they introduce,

01:20:49 ◼   ► there being a bunch of obvious problems

01:20:50 ◼   ► that we all whine about, right?

01:20:52 ◼   ► No obvious problems in this one.

01:20:54 ◼   ► There may be non-obvious problems,

01:20:55 ◼   ► but like it is just a great feeling

01:20:57 ◼   ► to get an announcement at the app store and go,

01:20:59 ◼   ► they made, for all the big choices,

01:21:02 ◼   ► they made reasonable ones, yay!

01:21:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean this, like, again,

01:21:06 ◼   ► we did spend about half of Under the Radar this week

01:21:08 ◼   ► talking about this, so I have to re-put that

01:21:10 ◼   ► in the show notes, plug plug.

01:21:11 ◼   ► However, this is one of, this is like

01:21:14 ◼   ► quintessential good Apple.

01:21:16 ◼   ► This is like seeing a problem that is,

01:21:18 ◼   ► that causes a poor user experience,

01:21:21 ◼   ► but that for some reason, that exists for a good reason.

01:21:25 ◼   ► So like, these app reviews, these Rate My App dialogues

01:21:28 ◼   ► just for good reason, because they work.

01:21:30 ◼   ► And because, as I mentioned earlier,

01:21:32 ◼   ► star ratings in the App Store tend to matter.

01:21:35 ◼   ► And so when you can have a way for most apps

01:21:38 ◼   ► to get a lot more star ratings,

01:21:40 ◼   ► that will definitely increase their downloads and sales

01:21:44 ◼   ► in a way that most people don't love,

01:21:47 ◼   ► but most of them also just don't care that much about it,

01:21:51 ◼   ► that's going to happen, that's going to be inevitable.

01:21:53 ◼   ► So Apple has addressed the need for them with this API.

01:21:56 ◼   ► They're saying, okay, we understand that you need

01:21:59 ◼   ► to prompt users, or that you think you need,

01:22:03 ◼   ► there needs to be a way to prompt users to review your app.

01:22:06 ◼   ► However, they take control away from the developer

01:22:09 ◼   ► of whether that's allowed to happen or not.

01:22:13 ◼   ► The developer still says when it should happen,

01:22:16 ◼   ► but they don't know whether it will succeed or not.

01:22:18 ◼   ► And then combined with the policy change

01:22:23 ◼   ► that will be coming down the road at some unspecified time

01:22:26 ◼   ► that says you won't be allowed to ask for reviews

01:22:28 ◼   ► any other way, that combination will be awesome.

01:22:32 ◼   ► The only problem I see with this,

01:22:33 ◼   ► which again we talked about this on Under the Radar,

01:22:35 ◼   ► please listen to that also,

01:22:36 ◼   ► the only problem I see with this is enforcement,

01:22:38 ◼   ► because I think it's going to be similar to the rules

01:22:41 ◼   ► that they have against spam push notifications,

01:22:44 ◼   ► or push notifications that are used for quote,

01:22:46 ◼   ► marketing or promotional purposes.

01:22:48 ◼   ► I think every single app that uses push notifications,

01:22:52 ◼   ► with very, very few exceptions,

01:22:55 ◼   ► including the App Store app,

01:22:58 ◼   ► has been used for promotional purposes.

01:23:00 ◼   ► Apps abuse this all the time.

01:23:02 ◼   ► Apple themselves abuse this sometimes.

01:23:04 ◼   ► Games are the worst.

01:23:08 ◼   ► Big content apps are the worst.

01:23:10 ◼   ► Big company apps are the worst.

01:23:11 ◼   ► Tons of apps spam notify people for things like,

01:23:15 ◼   ► "Hey, bombs are now on sale for a limited time.

01:23:18 ◼   ► "Come check out the newest content."

01:23:20 ◼   ► Crap like that.

01:23:21 ◼   ► That is explicitly prohibited in the app review rules.

01:23:24 ◼   ► but that has never been enforced in any kind of scale

01:23:27 ◼   ► because it's kind of hard to enforce that

01:23:29 ◼   ► when you're reviewing apps for like three minutes at a time.

01:23:33 ◼   ► As long as you don't see the problem come up

01:23:35 ◼   ► during those three minutes during app review,

01:23:38 ◼   ► it's gonna be really hard to enforce

01:23:39 ◼   ► unless as we discussed a couple times way back,

01:23:42 ◼   ► maybe they could add some kind of report a problem button

01:23:44 ◼   ► but is Apple really gonna clutter up their UI

01:23:48 ◼   ► of every notification or something like that

01:23:51 ◼   ► or every app icon or every app in the store

01:23:53 ◼   ► with a report violation button, probably not.

01:23:57 ◼   ► So the problem that this review policy

01:24:02 ◼   ► and review change will have is like,

01:24:04 ◼   ► if they can't really consistently enforce

01:24:08 ◼   ► that you aren't allowed to do it the old way anymore,

01:24:10 ◼   ► then all the big apps that are data-driven,

01:24:13 ◼   ► like Twitter and stuff,

01:24:14 ◼   ► they're just gonna keep doing it the old way.

01:24:15 ◼   ► And nothing's gonna really,

01:24:17 ◼   ► it's only gonna hurt the good people

01:24:19 ◼   ► who are trying to do things the right way.

01:24:21 ◼   ► - I think you only need a small number of people reporting.

01:24:23 ◼   ► Like this is not a type of thing where you need like everybody to even know the reporting

01:24:26 ◼   ► interface exists.

01:24:27 ◼   ► All you need is five nerds.

01:24:29 ◼   ► Five nerds to know where – how to report it, right?

01:24:32 ◼   ► Because all you need to do is alert Apple, "Oh, hey, maybe check this app out.

01:24:37 ◼   ► Maybe it's doing this thing."

01:24:38 ◼   ► And unlike push notifications, it's not like this is a data-driven thing where like

01:24:42 ◼   ► the avenue is there and the avenue is legal.

01:24:44 ◼   ► It's just the content that's bad.

01:24:46 ◼   ► This is the place where the avenue is not allowed.

01:24:49 ◼   ► You are not allowed to pop up a dialogue box that says anything about ratings and leads

01:24:52 ◼   ► people to ratings, like without using the official API, right? So you don't have to

01:24:56 ◼   ► be like, "Oh, you're allowed to use push notifications." It's just the things that you push on those

01:24:59 ◼   ► notifications shouldn't be ads. You're like, "Oh no, totally. We'll never push ads," right?

01:25:03 ◼   ► That's not a reviewable thing. Whereas popping up a dialogue, I mean, obviously you can be

01:25:08 ◼   ► sneaky and say, "Oh, the content of the dialogue is pulled from the web and you'll never know

01:25:11 ◼   ► what it is," right? You know, people can work around it. But if you just let this go out

01:25:15 ◼   ► into the wild and nerds know where the box is that tells them the application is a problem,

01:25:20 ◼   ► that will you know and then they sort them by volume and they just say every week go through the ones that people are complaining about

01:25:27 ◼   ► And see if it's yes, it's true

01:25:29 ◼   ► Look, I've you know

01:25:30 ◼   ► I spent more than three minutes with this application and guess what it does prompt you for ratings and bring the ban hammer, right?

01:25:35 ◼   ► It's you know

01:25:36 ◼   ► It's like like all these enforcement problems like just because you can't do it a hundred percent doesn't mean you shouldn't try at all

01:25:42 ◼   ► They and they need to get better about this in general some kind of feedback mechanism for it

01:25:47 ◼   ► And honestly, I think applications will be motivated

01:25:49 ◼   ► to use it, because the API, another good thing

01:25:53 ◼   ► this API does, is it improves the application.

01:25:55 ◼   ► You don't have to send people elsewhere

01:25:56 ◼   ► to write a review anymore.

01:25:57 ◼   ► They can stay in your app.

01:25:59 ◼   ► Developers have wanted that for a long time,

01:26:01 ◼   ► and now you get it.

01:26:02 ◼   ► So there is incentive.

01:26:03 ◼   ► There's a carrot as well as a stick

01:26:05 ◼   ► for everybody to use this API.

01:26:07 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:26:08 ◼   ► I was happy with this announcement.

01:26:09 ◼   ► - And honestly, I hate read this app dialog boxes,

01:26:13 ◼   ► but the implementation of this is so good

01:26:16 ◼   ► that I think I would leave it on.

01:26:18 ◼   ► And I think I would be totally okay with apps I use

01:26:20 ◼   ► on a regular basis showing this easy little box,

01:26:23 ◼   ► like once, and then I can just say, yeah, okay,

01:26:26 ◼   ► four stars, five stars, whatever, done.

01:26:28 ◼   ► And that's it.

01:26:30 ◼   ► I never leave ratings for anything

01:26:33 ◼   ► because I don't wanna go through the hassle

01:26:34 ◼   ► and I never think about it.

01:26:35 ◼   ► I should because usually only people with access

01:26:38 ◼   ► to Grime leave ratings, so if you like things,

01:26:40 ◼   ► you should leave ratings for them.

01:26:42 ◼   ► But I almost never do.

01:26:43 ◼   ► I have very few reviews on my account

01:26:46 ◼   ► because I just don't think about it.

01:26:48 ◼   ► This makes it a lot easier to do it.

01:26:50 ◼   ► So as a customer and as somebody

01:26:52 ◼   ► who wants to support good apps,

01:26:54 ◼   ► I actually would leave this on.

01:26:55 ◼   ► It is a really nice implementation.

01:26:57 ◼   ► - Speaking of reviews, you've reminded me/shamed me

01:27:02 ◼   ► into the same sort of thing.

01:27:03 ◼   ► I was thinking, when do I leave Star Reviews

01:27:05 ◼   ► and why don't I?

01:27:06 ◼   ► And you got both the reasons.

01:27:07 ◼   ► I almost never do and I don't because who wants

01:27:10 ◼   ► to leave the application they're in to go do something.

01:27:11 ◼   ► But if it was in the dialogue and I could just hit the number of stars, I would do that

01:27:15 ◼   ► and I should.

01:27:17 ◼   ► And thinking of that, obviously I don't have any app in the store to think about reviews

01:27:20 ◼   ► for, but I do have podcasts in the iTunes store and those get reviews and I'm not going

01:27:25 ◼   ► to say they are a tire fire because they're not.

01:27:29 ◼   ► They're good reviews.

01:27:30 ◼   ► You know, we have good reviews for this podcast and for other podcasts that I'm on.

01:27:35 ◼   ► But as shows age, what I have found is new reviews come in more slowly and the reviews

01:27:42 ◼   ► become increasingly negative because eventually everyone who had anything nice to say about

01:27:46 ◼   ► the show has already said what they have to say, which is fine.

01:27:49 ◼   ► Like how many reviews can you leave for a show?

01:27:53 ◼   ► But if in the middle of this podcast, a magic auditory dialogue box could pop up and people

01:27:59 ◼   ► could auditorily or with mental powers press like, this is the analogy is falling apart.

01:28:05 ◼   ► If it was really easy to rate podcasts, I think more people would rate it, and I think it would

01:28:09 ◼   ► make the ratings nicer. But it's not easy to rate podcasts, and therefore nobody does it.

01:28:14 ◼   ► And I have to say, I don't rate the podcast I listen to either. And so the only people who

01:28:18 ◼   ► are motivated to rate podcasts are when the show newly launches and people are enthusiastic,

01:28:23 ◼   ► and then later when people are angry. And so now all we have left are the angry people rating the

01:28:27 ◼   ► podcast, which is fine. I don't even know how reviews or podcast stars have any effect on our

01:28:32 ◼   ► audience at all either, but...

01:28:34 ◼   ► I mean, it's also possible that you might be using a podcast app whose creator is very

01:28:39 ◼   ► vehemently against the idea of podcast reviews and would never implement such a feature.

01:28:43 ◼   ► Do other podcast things have it?

01:28:46 ◼   ► Well, not a lot of other podcasts have their own directories.

01:28:50 ◼   ► Those that do, I don't know of any that have any kind of review system, but that's probably

01:28:53 ◼   ► for good reason because your view systems for podcasts are a terrible idea.

01:28:57 ◼   ► But there's no API to do iTunes reviews basically to give a star rating to...

01:29:01 ◼   ► - No, I really doubt it.

01:29:03 ◼   ► I mean, you might be able to hack it

01:29:04 ◼   ► through some kind of undocumented weird thing,

01:29:06 ◼   ► but I really doubt it.

01:29:07 ◼   ► That would be a massive potential for abuse.

01:29:10 ◼   ► So I don't think they would want to expose that any real way.

01:29:13 ◼   ► You can read reviews through an API

01:29:16 ◼   ► that's I think also undocumented.

01:29:19 ◼   ► I don't do that either.

01:29:20 ◼   ► I don't care.

01:29:21 ◼   ► I don't want to show the content of reviews,

01:29:25 ◼   ► the ratings from reviews.

01:29:26 ◼   ► I think in the context of podcasts and podcast search

01:29:31 ◼   ► and podcast discovery, the star rating system

01:29:34 ◼   ► is incredibly dysfunctional, and therefore,

01:29:38 ◼   ► I just do not want it, and I don't want Overcast

01:29:41 ◼   ► to show any part of it ever.

01:29:42 ◼   ► I have my own recommendation system,

01:29:44 ◼   ► which is a simple thumbs up, that's it.

01:29:46 ◼   ► It's a Boolean, you like this, that's it.

01:29:49 ◼   ► There's no dislike, there's no stars, there's no commentary.

01:29:53 ◼   ► There's many problems with those systems.

01:29:56 ◼   ► Simple, thumbs up, easy.

01:29:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, the recommendation system in Overcast

01:29:59 ◼   ► works really well.

01:30:01 ◼   ► Chris Latner cheated on us and went on another podcast

01:30:04 ◼   ► to talk about stuff.

01:30:05 ◼   ► And I was like, oh, I wanna hear that podcast too.

01:30:07 ◼   ► So I launched Overcast and I went to the screen

01:30:09 ◼   ► where I was gonna search for the show name or whatever,

01:30:12 ◼   ► but I didn't have to because it was already

01:30:14 ◼   ► at the very top of the most recommended thing.

01:30:16 ◼   ► It was right there.

01:30:17 ◼   ► Like the icon, I mean, I recognized it

01:30:19 ◼   ► because the icon I had seen on Twitter.

01:30:20 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, that must be it, boop, boop, done.

01:30:23 ◼   ► Didn't even need to type anything into a search box.

01:30:25 ◼   ► And that's just from people going, thumbs up,

01:30:27 ◼   ► hey, this was a good episode of the show.

01:30:29 ◼   ► That's all it takes.

01:30:30 ◼   ► I don't really care what the star rating is for that podcast.