ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I don't think we let ourselves just be idiots often enough.

00:00:03 ◼   ► - We don't?

00:00:04 ◼   ► I feel like that's our core competency.

00:00:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:07 ◼   ► - So I was using my iPhone today.

00:00:12 ◼   ► I was sitting at, I would guess, 30% battery life.

00:00:16 ◼   ► I am aware that you can turn on battery percentage.

00:00:19 ◼   ► I think that is the mark of a lunatic

00:00:22 ◼   ► because all that does is stress me out when it's on.

00:00:25 ◼   ► I'd rather not know.

00:00:26 ◼   ► So anyway, so I was sitting at,

00:00:28 ◼   ► I would guess about a third battery life. And I go to record a video of Declan. We were

00:00:33 ◼   ► walking around outside. And as I'm recording the video, it's not that I was framing it,

00:00:39 ◼   ► I'm actively recording the video. All of a sudden the phone turns off. Okay. That in

00:00:44 ◼   ► and of itself is unfortunately common, but that was weird. But okay, so I go to turn

00:00:48 ◼   ► the phone back on.

00:00:49 ◼   ► Wait, wait, wait. That's common?

00:00:51 ◼   ► Well, common enough that we're… I don't want to say functional high ground, but it

00:00:56 ◼   ► It felt like a functional high ground sort of occurrence.

00:00:58 ◼   ► Like, oh, that was weird, but I'm sure once it reboots

00:01:02 ◼   ► itself, everything will be fine.

00:01:03 ◼   ► - Okay, your Windows recency is showing.

00:01:05 ◼   ► Like, that is not acceptable behavior.

00:01:09 ◼   ► That is not normal.

00:01:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, before the show, we were just talking about

00:01:13 ◼   ► how you were rebooting your iMac fixed everything,

00:01:15 ◼   ► but that's neither here nor there.

00:01:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I didn't say that was right either.

00:01:19 ◼   ► - So, I go to start the phone back up, and it tells me,

00:01:23 ◼   ► "No, I won't because your battery's dead."

00:01:26 ◼   ► What?

00:01:27 ◼   ► You know what I'm talking about?

00:01:27 ◼   ► Like the, "I will not start until you plug it in."

00:01:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, like, yeah, the little like,

00:01:31 ◼   ► battery with the red line and black screen, yeah.

00:01:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, so I'm like, "That's weird, I was just at 30%."

00:01:36 ◼   ► So I do the like, "Hold both buttons

00:01:39 ◼   ► "until it force restarts itself" dance,

00:01:42 ◼   ► and it starts back up, and I'm back at 30%.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Okay, that was really weird, but I'll roll with it.

00:01:47 ◼   ► And then I go to record a video again,

00:01:50 ◼   ► same exact thing happened.

00:01:52 ◼   ► except this time it didn't want to turn itself back on.

00:01:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, your battery is toast.

00:01:56 ◼   ► I've heard of this.

00:01:56 ◼   ► A lot of people have had this problem

00:01:57 ◼   ► with many different models of iPhone in the past

00:02:00 ◼   ► that exactly the same symptoms.

00:02:02 ◼   ► You get your battery down to something that's below half,

00:02:05 ◼   ► but not really, really low.

00:02:07 ◼   ► And then it's just like, nope, no battery for you.

00:02:10 ◼   ► And the same thing, like sometimes it'll come back like,

00:02:11 ◼   ► oh, here I am again, 20%.

00:02:13 ◼   ► You gotta take that in.

00:02:14 ◼   ► That is a very common symptom.

00:02:16 ◼   ► And I don't know what it is.

00:02:17 ◼   ► It could just be a bad battery

00:02:18 ◼   ► that just can't maintain the voltage.

00:02:20 ◼   ► And once it gets to blow a certain level,

00:02:21 ◼   ► the phone is just like, "Yeah, so much for that." But then you bring it back and it's

00:02:24 ◼   ► like, "Oh, I can maintain the voltage now. Oh, not really. I can't." You just got to

00:02:27 ◼   ► bring it in. Don't bother. Like some people, John Roderick, who lived with this for like

00:02:32 ◼   ► a year or more and accepted as just like, "This darn phone." It's like, that's like

00:02:37 ◼   ► Marco said, that's not the way it's supposed to work. You have to bring that in. Tell them

00:02:41 ◼   ► the symptoms. I'm sure they've heard it a million times before because this is a common

00:02:44 ◼   ► symptom.

00:02:45 ◼   ► There is one exception though that is also almost exactly the same behavior you get during

00:02:49 ◼   ► a hot or cold thermal shutdown?

00:02:51 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, obviously temperature stuff,

00:02:53 ◼   ► but I'm assuming it's spring.

00:02:54 ◼   ► It's like it's not too hot, not too cold.

00:02:55 ◼   ► I assume that you hadn't left it in the sun

00:02:57 ◼   ► on the dashboard of your car before using it.

00:02:59 ◼   ► No, we had just gone for a walk, about a mile and a half walk.

00:03:02 ◼   ► It was in my jeans pocket.

00:03:05 ◼   ► There was no-- I mean, it's humid out

00:03:08 ◼   ► because it's been raining for the last year.

00:03:10 ◼   ► But no, there was nothing environmental

00:03:13 ◼   ► that should have caused it.

00:03:14 ◼   ► What I've done is I've left it plugged in

00:03:16 ◼   ► and have planned to leave it plugged in all night,

00:03:19 ◼   ► just to see, this is before we had this conversation,

00:03:23 ◼   ► but I thought, well, maybe it's just like not calibrated

00:03:25 ◼   ► or something like that, so I'll just,

00:03:27 ◼   ► I'll leave it plugged in all night long,

00:03:28 ◼   ► I mean, I always leave it plugged in all night long,

00:03:30 ◼   ► but I'll just, I'll be really diligent

00:03:32 ◼   ► about leaving it plugged in,

00:03:33 ◼   ► and we'll see if that changes it,

00:03:34 ◼   ► but it sounds like I'm making a trip to the Genius Bar.

00:03:37 ◼   ► Wee! - Typical Windows,

00:03:39 ◼   ► blame yourself, just defrag at first.

00:03:41 ◼   ► No, you didn't update your Windows update virus definitions.

00:03:45 ◼   ► It was your fault, it's totally your fault.

00:03:47 ◼   ► - But aren't you happy now?

00:03:48 ◼   ► Like if I had something like this happen,

00:03:49 ◼   ► especially on a device that I've had for a while,

00:03:51 ◼   ► but like, oh yes, new battery.

00:03:53 ◼   ► Your battery's getting old anyway.

00:03:56 ◼   ► How many cycles has it been through?

00:03:57 ◼   ► You're gonna get a fresh new battery,

00:03:58 ◼   ► assuming you're still under warranty.

00:04:00 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, it's a 6S, so yeah,

00:04:03 ◼   ► I'm still under warranty.

00:04:04 ◼   ► But what that also means is I gotta go to the Genius Bar.

00:04:07 ◼   ► I've gotta do the backup dance.

00:04:08 ◼   ► I've gotta convince them that this is an actual issue

00:04:11 ◼   ► that isn't my fault, et cetera, et cetera.

00:04:14 ◼   ► - I guess I'm sure they're well versed

00:04:16 ◼   ► on this exact problem and have a procedure

00:04:18 ◼   ► and you are not the first person to tell them

00:04:19 ◼   ► is it'll be fine.

00:04:20 ◼   ► - I will say though, it really,

00:04:23 ◼   ► when I first saw this doing thermal shutdown,

00:04:26 ◼   ► it was on Tiff's phone this past winter

00:04:29 ◼   ► when she was trying to take videos of our kid

00:04:31 ◼   ► playing in the snow in like the high 20s or low 30s

00:04:35 ◼   ► in Fahrenheit.

00:04:36 ◼   ► And the phone, after a couple seconds of shooting video,

00:04:39 ◼   ► it just kept shutting down on her.

00:04:40 ◼   ► And we thought it was broken.

00:04:42 ◼   ► And I was like, oh, we gotta bring it in.

00:04:44 ◼   ► And then once we came inside,

00:04:46 ◼   ► and the problem could never be reproduced

00:04:48 ◼   ► at room temperature, and we were like, oh.

00:04:50 ◼   ► And I looked up and I figured out

00:04:52 ◼   ► that's actually expected behavior that,

00:04:55 ◼   ► I guess all those videos you see in Apple commercials,

00:04:57 ◼   ► like the shot on iPhone where people are on ski vacations,

00:05:00 ◼   ► I guess they're taking really short shots.

00:05:02 ◼   ► - No, you actually have to keep the phone,

00:05:04 ◼   ► you can't keep the phone in a pocket

00:05:05 ◼   ► that's essentially outdoors.

00:05:07 ◼   ► If your pockets are, if your pockets get cold,

00:05:10 ◼   ► in other words, you have to have it in a pocket

00:05:11 ◼   ► that's sort of the inside of the body heat part of it,

00:05:14 ◼   ► because that's all there really is.

00:05:15 ◼   ► as if your phone freezes solid within 20 seconds. It's already frozen when it's in your pocket,

00:05:19 ◼   ► and you take it out and it just goes that, you know, a little extra bit. So you really have to

00:05:23 ◼   ► either keep it inside your glove or someplace close to your body so that the phone stays

00:05:28 ◼   ► at more or less body or room temperature. Then you get a long time before it freezes solid into

00:05:32 ◼   ► a brick of inert lithium-ion battery. Or you get one of those, you know, those little hand warmer

00:05:39 ◼   ► thingies, you know, the little shaky packets with the chemical stuff that they give off heat. You

00:05:43 ◼   ► You could, someone should sell a case like that.

00:05:45 ◼   ► You've already got the big lump for the battery case

00:05:46 ◼   ► to have by the heat case for the winter.

00:05:48 ◼   ► - Then it would get hot thermal shut down.

00:05:50 ◼   ► - Well, it doesn't, they don't get that hot.

00:05:52 ◼   ► Those things are, you know.

00:05:53 ◼   ► - So the hand warmer things are the things

00:05:55 ◼   ► that people who live in ridiculous climates use, right?

00:05:58 ◼   ► So you guys use that all the time?

00:05:59 ◼   ► - Skiers use it.

00:06:00 ◼   ► Oh, the best is, I don't remember,

00:06:02 ◼   ► someone in the chat room would remember this.

00:06:03 ◼   ► Before the age of the chemical packets

00:06:05 ◼   ► that you would put in your pocket,

00:06:06 ◼   ► that you know, you'd start a reaction

00:06:07 ◼   ► and it would get warm, not hot, but you know, warm.

00:06:09 ◼   ► Like they're not burning your hands

00:06:10 ◼   ► 'cause they'd have lawsuits.

00:06:12 ◼   ► They had these things that were kind of like metal clamshell things that had inside them

00:06:17 ◼   ► essentially burning embers.

00:06:19 ◼   ► Like not open flames, but burning embers to give off heat.

00:06:23 ◼   ► It sounds like the most dangerous thing you could possibly imagine.

00:06:27 ◼   ► And that was the old tech.

00:06:29 ◼   ► And that was much worse.

00:06:30 ◼   ► So the new stuff is considerably safer and more civilized.

00:06:35 ◼   ► Was it like, was it airtight sealed in there?

00:06:37 ◼   ► Or how did that...

00:06:38 ◼   ► My recollection was that it was like a clamshell.

00:06:40 ◼   ► or look more kind of like a compact or a snuff box or something and the little burning ember

00:06:44 ◼   ► things you could get at by opening and closing it that way, but you'd use it closed and

00:06:47 ◼   ► just had a metal outside that would radiate the heat.

00:06:49 ◼   ► Weird.

00:06:50 ◼   ► It sounds like some kind of crazy contraption from your drug days, Jon.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Yeah, my drug days, right?

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00:09:03 ◼   ► - Anonymous has written in and said,

00:09:05 ◼   ► "Can you please address the business model behind Tesla's offering to 'unlock' physical

00:09:11 ◼   ► features already in the car, like battery capacity otherwise locked down?

00:09:15 ◼   ► It seems worrisome that an in-app purchase strategy is spilling over into hardware, not

00:09:19 ◼   ► just software updates like Autopilot."

00:09:22 ◼   ► What this is about is the Tesla Model S, the 70 kilowatt hour.

00:09:27 ◼   ► I couldn't remember what the 70 stood for.

00:09:30 ◼   ► Anyway, for the 70, you can pay $3,250 to unlock another five kilowatt hours.

00:09:39 ◼   ► So you can pay $3,250 for someone to flip an electronic switch.

00:09:45 ◼   ► And that...

00:09:46 ◼   ► I don't know about that, man.

00:09:48 ◼   ► That just seems a little weird to me.

00:09:50 ◼   ► Like, on the one side, they are indeed making the car better, so shouldn't you pay for that?

00:09:55 ◼   ► But on the other side, they make it better in so many other ways, and you don't have

00:09:58 ◼   ► to pay for that.

00:09:59 ◼   ► Is this something that costs money?

00:10:01 ◼   ► - The joke I made on Twitter about this was,

00:10:03 ◼   ► it's like in-app purchase where they ship you the app

00:10:05 ◼   ► that has the code for the features

00:10:07 ◼   ► that are currently locked.

00:10:08 ◼   ► And by doing in-app purchase,

00:10:09 ◼   ► all they do is flip a bit that enables that feature.

00:10:12 ◼   ► In other words, you got, just like when you get the car,

00:10:14 ◼   ► the car comes with this extra battery,

00:10:17 ◼   ► but it's not enabled.

00:10:18 ◼   ► Well, you get this app,

00:10:18 ◼   ► the app comes with this extra functionality,

00:10:20 ◼   ► but it's not enabled.

00:10:21 ◼   ► And that was mostly me being snarky

00:10:23 ◼   ► because of course the difference is

00:10:25 ◼   ► that it doesn't cost money

00:10:26 ◼   ► to manufacture the additional functionality,

00:10:28 ◼   ► Like copying bits is essentially free.

00:10:31 ◼   ► Whereas someone paid to manufacture and assemble

00:10:35 ◼   ► the parts of your car that they're giving to you

00:10:39 ◼   ► in a disabled state.

00:10:41 ◼   ► So you actually are receiving like,

00:10:44 ◼   ► that's part of the package, it's a physical good.

00:10:48 ◼   ► It costs every time they do that,

00:10:49 ◼   ► whatever it is, they put that extra bit of battery in.

00:10:52 ◼   ► That's a real physical item.

00:10:55 ◼   ► It's not just a simple copying of bits.

00:10:57 ◼   ► Now, I don't know if this makes this good from a business standpoint in terms of do

00:11:01 ◼   ► you feel better or worse about Tesla as a company in light of this?

00:11:04 ◼   ► Maybe you feel better because it's like your car magically got better, but maybe you feel

00:11:07 ◼   ► worse and that you understand you paid to manufacture, assemble this stuff and then

00:11:13 ◼   ► you give it to me, but you intentionally turn it off.

00:11:15 ◼   ► It's like you're making my car worse on purpose and then ransoming it that last little bit.

00:11:20 ◼   ► Unless I'm totally misunderstanding what they're actually doing with this bit flipping, but

00:11:25 ◼   ► if it is actually a physical thing that they are paying to create and then giving to you

00:11:30 ◼   ► in a shutoff state to try to ransom more money from you later, it doesn't give me a particularly

00:11:34 ◼   ► good feeling about the company or the car.

00:11:37 ◼   ► - It's definitely a weird thing. And yeah, I agree that it's probably not a way to win

00:11:44 ◼   ► customer satisfaction. People will feel ripped off by that. Like people who own the 70D and

00:11:52 ◼   ► then learn that actually you have 75 kilowatt capacity physically, but we only shipped it

00:11:58 ◼   ► to 70, and then if you want you can pay $3,000 to unlock it. I can totally see why the people

00:12:05 ◼   ► who own those 70Ds are like, "That's kind of BS-y. That's a little bit BS-y." But,

00:12:12 ◼   ► you know, Tesla, it's a weird company at a weird stage in its life doing weird things,

00:12:17 ◼   ► and most of those things are, I think, overall for the better.

00:12:21 ◼   ► With the Model S, keep in mind that the Model S is sold with a pretty healthy profit margin,

00:12:26 ◼   ► from what I understand, and the main reason is to basically fund the company's further

00:12:31 ◼   ► development to do things like the Model 3.

00:12:33 ◼   ► Because if you look at what's included in the Model S, and the starting price of whatever

00:12:38 ◼   ► it is, like $70,000, whatever the starting price of the Model S is, and then you look

00:12:43 ◼   ► at the Model 3 with the starting price of $35,000.

00:12:47 ◼   ► And we already know some of the things that will be included and won't be included in

00:12:49 ◼   ► that.

00:12:50 ◼   ► And it seems kind of crazy if you try to estimate, well roughly how big of a battery is there

00:12:55 ◼   ► in the Model 3?

00:12:56 ◼   ► Roughly how big of a battery is there in the Model S?

00:12:59 ◼   ► How can they possibly cut the cost of the car in half and sell the Model 3 with so much

00:13:06 ◼   ► of what's also in the Model S?

00:13:09 ◼   ► And the answer is that their costs aren't being cut in half, just the Model S has a

00:13:14 ◼   ► nice fat profit margin and the Model 3 won't.

00:13:17 ◼   ► So what you're paying for with the Model S today is not just like cost of the components

00:13:22 ◼   ► plus 20%, you know, you're paying a premium for it because it is a brand new product.

00:13:27 ◼   ► You're paying kind of like the early adopter premium on it.

00:13:30 ◼   ► It has high profits now.

00:13:32 ◼   ► In the long run, it will have lower profit margins in all likelihood because competition

00:13:36 ◼   ► will come in and push some of these prices down.

00:13:38 ◼   ► And as things mature, then the cost will also go down.

00:13:41 ◼   ► But the role of the Model S is basically

00:13:44 ◼   ► to generate lots of profit for Tesla to make the Model 3.

00:13:47 ◼   ► So from that perspective, I can see why they do things

00:13:50 ◼   ► like this, because you know that that additional battery

00:13:53 ◼   ► that you're hauling around, the additional

00:13:55 ◼   ► five kilowatt hour battery, did not cost Tesla

00:13:58 ◼   ► $3,000 to put in there.

00:14:00 ◼   ► - Or even if it did, you already paid for it.

00:14:02 ◼   ► Like they sold you a car with that battery in it

00:14:04 ◼   ► for the price that you paid, you know what I mean?

00:14:06 ◼   ► Like that was like, someone in the chat room is saying

00:14:09 ◼   ► it's the type of thing where they stopped manufacturing

00:14:11 ◼   ► the 70 kilowatt, but you bought a 70 kilowatt.

00:14:13 ◼   ► So it's like, well, we don't have any more 70 kilowatts,

00:14:15 ◼   ► but we'll give you a 75, but flip the switch

00:14:18 ◼   ► so that when you get it, it looks like the 70

00:14:20 ◼   ► that you ordered.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Like that was the arrangement.

00:14:22 ◼   ► You order the 70, comes with 70 kilowatts,

00:14:24 ◼   ► we give you a car that comes with 70 kilowatts,

00:14:26 ◼   ► everyone should be happy.

00:14:27 ◼   ► But again, from a feel good about the company perspective,

00:14:31 ◼   ► they should do what Apple does in those cases

00:14:33 ◼   ► where like if you have a really old Mac

00:14:34 ◼   ► and something goes wrong with it

00:14:35 ◼   ► and you're still within warranty or whatever,

00:14:37 ◼   ► or Apple just feels bad, they're like,

00:14:38 ◼   ► "Well, we can't fix this for you.

00:14:41 ◼   ► "We can't replace the part

00:14:42 ◼   ► "'cause we don't make that part anymore,

00:14:44 ◼   ► "and we can't give you a new laptop of this kind

00:14:47 ◼   ► "'cause we don't even make that laptop."

00:14:48 ◼   ► But here you go, here's the current model of that laptop.

00:14:51 ◼   ► That happens all the time at Apple,

00:14:53 ◼   ► and every time it happens,

00:14:55 ◼   ► it's like a miracle to the people who get it.

00:14:58 ◼   ► Like, "You're giving me,

00:14:59 ◼   ► "not only are you giving me a new laptop,

00:15:00 ◼   ► "you're giving me a new, better laptop

00:15:02 ◼   ► because you don't make my old crappy one anymore and you're not charging me any money for it

00:15:06 ◼   ► because it's just like this this laptop is a total write-off it's having too many hardware

00:15:09 ◼   ► failures we can't get apart that makes people love Apple so if Tesla someone in the chat

00:15:13 ◼   ► room said it would make the people feel bad who bought a 70d and just got a 70d if you

00:15:16 ◼   ► bought a 70d after they stopped manufacturing them and they gave you a 75 they're like yeah

00:15:20 ◼   ► I know you ordered a 70 but here's a 75 you would love Tesla you'd be like this is awesome

00:15:24 ◼   ► and would 70d people be mad no because they've had their car for a year or whatever like

00:15:28 ◼   ► it's not well they'd be mad but it wouldn't be for legitimate reasons but you know do

00:15:32 ◼   ► Do other Mac users get mad like,

00:15:33 ◼   ► "Hey, that's no fair, I had to pay for that computer new.

00:15:36 ◼   ► You bought an old crappy computer and it broke

00:15:38 ◼   ► and you got the new one for free."

00:15:39 ◼   ► Anyone who begrudges people their good fortune

00:15:42 ◼   ► involving the time they chose to purchase

00:15:45 ◼   ► or the time their thing broke, it's just ridiculous.

00:15:47 ◼   ► So anyway, I don't think this is, as you noted, Margot,

00:15:51 ◼   ► like this is a car that, you know,

00:15:53 ◼   ► it costs a lot of money, has a big margin.

00:15:55 ◼   ► The people who are buying it

00:15:56 ◼   ► are probably not caring that much about $3,000 here or there

00:15:59 ◼   ► because this is a very expensive car.

00:16:01 ◼   ► So in the grand scheme of things,

00:16:02 ◼   ► maybe it doesn't hurt them,

00:16:03 ◼   ► but they've sort of,

00:16:05 ◼   ► they've missed an opportunity to become even more beloved

00:16:08 ◼   ► using the Apple style things of just like,

00:16:11 ◼   ► surprise and delight or whatever,

00:16:12 ◼   ► not just in your application, but also in your policies.

00:16:14 ◼   ► It's one of the reasons people like the Genius Bar.

00:16:17 ◼   ► I know people have bad experiences with it as well,

00:16:19 ◼   ► but to go there, have a person who,

00:16:21 ◼   ► will take care of your needs

00:16:23 ◼   ► and if there's any sort of issue to have the people go,

00:16:27 ◼   ► that's like kind of like a luxury goods experience

00:16:29 ◼   ► If you pay, if you really, really massively overpay for something, the one good thing

00:16:33 ◼   ► is like if you have any problem with it, like, "Oh, return it anytime or we'll give a new

00:16:36 ◼   ► one or we'll clean it up for you for free or whatever," even though you don't massively

00:16:41 ◼   ► overpay for Apple stuff, maybe just a little bit overpay, when you go in with your broken

00:16:45 ◼   ► computer and they can't replace it because it's too old and they give you a brand new

00:16:48 ◼   ► model, that's just awesome.

00:16:50 ◼   ► That's like you are loyal for at least another three years before you get mad at them again.

00:16:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, and also, keep in mind also,

00:16:56 ◼   ► even though all the hype right now is about the Model 3,

00:17:01 ◼   ► for the next two years, possibly more,

00:17:04 ◼   ► the Model S is still the only Tesla you can buy,

00:17:07 ◼   ► or the X, I guess, but nobody wants that one.

00:17:10 ◼   ► Sorry, X people.

00:17:11 ◼   ► So the entry price, whatever they can make

00:17:14 ◼   ► the cheapest Model S, that is the entry price for Tesla

00:17:18 ◼   ► for the next X years, two, three, whatever it ends up being

00:17:21 ◼   ► before anybody can just go order a Model 3

00:17:24 ◼   ► and have it delivered in six weeks or whatever.

00:17:27 ◼   ► So the lower they can make that price,

00:17:29 ◼   ► the more people they can get into

00:17:31 ◼   ► being Tesla customers at all.

00:17:33 ◼   ► They also, though, want to preserve those profit margins

00:17:35 ◼   ► on the higher spec models,

00:17:37 ◼   ► because that's funding the rest of the company.

00:17:40 ◼   ► So it's important for them to somehow

00:17:44 ◼   ► get the price down enough

00:17:45 ◼   ► so they can get a few more people in,

00:17:47 ◼   ► basically without cannibalizing their higher end sales,

00:17:50 ◼   ► So they have to do tricks like this,

00:17:52 ◼   ► where it's like, well, if we sold it just as a 75 before,

00:17:57 ◼   ► so it was like 75 for that one, or 85 for the big one up,

00:18:02 ◼   ► that was too small of a difference.

00:18:03 ◼   ► We would lose too many sales, maybe they figured,

00:18:05 ◼   ► so they made that one a 70,

00:18:07 ◼   ► even though it technically had 75 in there,

00:18:08 ◼   ► or something like that, you know?

00:18:10 ◼   ► And then when they raised the other one from 85 to 90,

00:18:13 ◼   ► then they raised the other one from 70 to 75,

00:18:15 ◼   ► 'cause now you're just keeping the same difference.

00:18:17 ◼   ► There's all sorts of reasons why they could have done this

00:18:19 ◼   ► that make total sense and that even though

00:18:22 ◼   ► they might annoy some of the customers

00:18:24 ◼   ► who don't think things should work that way,

00:18:26 ◼   ► it might be better than the alternative

00:18:28 ◼   ► for the company as a whole.

00:18:30 ◼   ► - You know, this isn't unprecedented either.

00:18:32 ◼   ► Like when I first heard about the story a few days back,

00:18:34 ◼   ► my first thought was, "Oh, that's a little gross."

00:18:37 ◼   ► But as I was thinking about it while you guys were talking,

00:18:41 ◼   ► I paid almost $1,000 for a COB access port,

00:18:45 ◼   ► which is a thing, I referred to it as a chip colloquially,

00:18:49 ◼   ► But really, it's just a software reprogrammer that you plug into the OBD2 port, and it will

00:18:58 ◼   ► reflash the computer and give you a little bit more power, and it makes the car a little

00:19:02 ◼   ► bit faster.

00:19:04 ◼   ► And then I was thinking to myself, "Well, but that's a little bit different, because

00:19:06 ◼   ► that's third-party."

00:19:08 ◼   ► And so, yeah, it makes sense that a third-party is going to want to sell you something to

00:19:12 ◼   ► make your car better.

00:19:13 ◼   ► But then I got thinking about it a little more, and it occurred to me, BMW sells what

00:19:16 ◼   ► they call the Performance Power Kit, which to my understanding does have a little bit

00:19:21 ◼   ► of hardware involved, but the majority of the changes are simply a reflash just like

00:19:28 ◼   ► my Cobb does. So this is a first-party thing. And again, it's not entirely apples to apples

00:19:34 ◼   ► because there is a little bit of hardware, but it's a first-party thing that I'm looking

00:19:38 ◼   ► on BMW's website right now and it's $2,107. So this is not that different in my eyes than

00:19:48 ◼   ► what BMW is already doing and presumably other manufacturers as well. I wonder, can you pirate

00:19:53 ◼   ► a battery? Yeah, I don't know. You could pirate the bid flipping, but no, but in the BMW case,

00:19:59 ◼   ► maybe part of the money that you're paying is to offset increased warranty repairs for your engine

00:20:04 ◼   ► that is operating slightly outside the intended, you know, boundaries of whatever, you know,

00:20:10 ◼   ► depending on what it's changing about the engine. It could be impacting reliability or other issues

00:20:16 ◼   ► like that. So the price is basically, everyone pays this price as a blanket insurance policy

00:20:21 ◼   ► for these slightly increased odds that you're going to have your valve train blow up or whatever.

00:20:25 ◼   ► It could be, but I mean, I would hope and assume that these engines are built in such a way that

00:20:33 ◼   ► that their tolerances give them enough leeway that a first party solution would not bump

00:20:39 ◼   ► up against any of that. Now my solution might.

00:20:42 ◼   ► But there's a reason they sell them where they sell. They sell the, they try it, but

00:20:45 ◼   ► the car manufacturer trying to do or sell their engines tuned in a way that balances

00:20:51 ◼   ► performance with reliability because. And economy. And emissions. Right, right. So there's

00:20:56 ◼   ► a whole bunch of things in the mix there and they're going for something that makes, you

00:21:03 ◼   ► You know, the worst thing you want to happen is you put these cars out there with a particular

00:21:07 ◼   ► balance of things and it turns out that all of them end up coming back in like six years

00:21:11 ◼   ► with something really expensive wrong with the engine.

00:21:13 ◼   ► Like you don't want that to happen.

00:21:14 ◼   ► But if people say, "Well, I know you can squeeze some more horsepower out of this thing if

00:21:18 ◼   ► only you increased the boost on the turbos or, you know, changed the timing or, you know,

00:21:24 ◼   ► whatever you want to do on the thing."

00:21:26 ◼   ► And it might have a slight detrimental impact on reliability, but if people are willing

00:21:30 ◼   ► to give us some money, we'll do that. And then, I guess, like a big pool to pay for

00:21:35 ◼   ► the one guy out of every hundred whose engine dies a premature death due to this tuning

00:21:39 ◼   ► thing. But everyone has the same engine. It's not as if it's part of your engine that you're

00:21:43 ◼   ► not being allowed to use. It's more like, I think of it as like buying AppleCare+ or

00:21:49 ◼   ► whatever.

00:21:50 ◼   ► Fair enough.

00:21:51 ◼   ► I was going to say it's like 80-minute CDRs versus 74-minute standard, but as you kept

00:21:57 ◼   ► going it ended up being nothing like that.

00:21:59 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:22:00 ◼   ► - Goodness.

00:22:02 ◼   ► All right, Adam Bushman writes in to say,

00:22:04 ◼   ► "Getting to love something like ad bumpers

00:22:06 ◼   ► "by just being exposed to it frequently,

00:22:09 ◼   ► "that's called the," is that Meri or Meri exposure effect?

00:22:13 ◼   ► I'm surely mispronouncing that,

00:22:15 ◼   ► but M-E-R-E exposure effect.

00:22:17 ◼   ► - You know, Casey, you are the chief pronouncer on the show.

00:22:20 ◼   ► - Oh, great.

00:22:21 ◼   ► - Chief summarizer and chief pronouncer.

00:22:23 ◼   ► - I thought it was like merely by being exposed

00:22:25 ◼   ► and it's like the worst name effect ever,

00:22:27 ◼   ► the mere exposure effect.

00:22:28 ◼   ► Merely by being exposed.

00:22:30 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:22:32 ◼   ► Anyway, we'll link the Wikipedia article,

00:22:34 ◼   ► which obviously none of us actually read,

00:22:36 ◼   ► but you can read it.

00:22:37 ◼   ► - Indeed.

00:22:38 ◼   ► - You all can do our homework for us.

00:22:39 ◼   ► - That's how the show works.

00:22:40 ◼   ► It's accidental.

00:22:41 ◼   ► - Well, you know, one of the jobs of Wikipedia

00:22:44 ◼   ► is every phenomenon that you think has a name probably does.

00:22:47 ◼   ► That's probably a phenomenon,

00:22:49 ◼   ► the idea that you tell them there's an idea

00:22:51 ◼   ► and it turns out there's a name for it already.

00:22:53 ◼   ► What is the name of that phenomenon?

00:22:55 ◼   ► I bet nobody knows except Merlin.

00:22:56 ◼   ► I guarantee you he knows.

00:22:58 ◼   ► - He doesn't know, he just looks it up on Wikipedia

00:22:59 ◼   ► like everyone else.

00:23:00 ◼   ► (laughing)

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00:25:32 ◼   ► - So, the New York Times on the seventh,

00:25:37 ◼   ► which was this past Saturday as we record,

00:25:40 ◼   ► released an article, Podcast Surge,

00:25:42 ◼   ► but Producers Fear Apple Isn't Listening.

00:25:46 ◼   ► And this article, it had some problems.

00:25:51 ◼   ► The quick summary from your summarizer-in-chief

00:25:55 ◼   ► is that Apple supposedly had a handful

00:26:00 ◼   ► of big-name podcasters into their campus

00:26:04 ◼   ► to talk to Apple about what they want from Apple

00:26:08 ◼   ► to make their jobs easier.

00:26:10 ◼   ► And the way this New York Times article was written

00:26:12 ◼   ► was basically we want all the data about all the things.

00:26:16 ◼   ► And Apple may or may not be giving that to us,

00:26:20 ◼   ► and that's mildly alarming.

00:26:22 ◼   ► This has created quite obviously quite a hubbub

00:26:26 ◼   ► in our little circle, because most of the things

00:26:29 ◼   ► that the New York Times article is talking about,

00:26:31 ◼   ► about big data, about getting access to who listened

00:26:34 ◼   ► to what when, and when I say who, I mean, you know,

00:26:37 ◼   ► how old is this person, what gender are they,

00:26:38 ◼   ► where do they live, how much do they make,

00:26:40 ◼   ► what do they like, what do they not like, et cetera.

00:26:42 ◼   ► when they listen? Do they listen to the whole thing? Do they only listen to part of it?

00:26:44 ◼   ► Did they listen to the beginning and skip the middle? Did they skip the ads? Did they

00:26:47 ◼   ► not skip the ads? Do they like the ads? Do they not like the ads? Tell us everything.

00:26:51 ◼   ► Well, for those of us who care about our listeners, we don't want that. We don't need that. We

00:26:57 ◼   ► don't want that. And we hope we never get in the position that we do need that. And

00:27:01 ◼   ► so this article had a lot of problems. And Marco, you wrote a really nice post about

00:27:06 ◼   ► I don't really know what to say that hasn't already been said in either Marco's post or

00:27:13 ◼   ► Federico's, but I'm sure there's something to be said, so Marco, take it away.

00:27:18 ◼   ► I mean, the good thing is all the other stuff that had to be said, Jason and Mike said on upgrade

00:27:22 ◼   ► this week, so I suggest you go listen to that instead. But if you really want to stick around

00:27:27 ◼   ► here as well or listen to us as well, there's a few parts here. I mean, so you mentioned the data

00:27:33 ◼   ► gathering part that the leading podcasters allegedly wanted. By the way,

00:27:36 ◼   ► this whole article is stating a bunch of things as fact. Like, this is definitely

00:27:43 ◼   ► how Apple does things now. This meeting definitely happened. It definitely

00:27:47 ◼   ► happened like this with these people in it. And so far I have not heard any

00:27:52 ◼   ► corroboration to support some of these facts, like the specifics about the

00:27:58 ◼   ► meeting. Additionally, I know firsthand that many of the things in the article

00:28:02 ◼   ► stated as fact or implied as fact are wrong or misleading

00:28:06 ◼   ► with how the system works or Apple's role in it

00:28:10 ◼   ► or technical details of how it works.

00:28:13 ◼   ► So take this article with a giant pile of salt.

00:28:16 ◼   ► Honestly, I would say don't even bother reading it

00:28:19 ◼   ► if you did read it.

00:28:20 ◼   ► It reads more like something that maybe somebody

00:28:24 ◼   ► on Forbes would have written to be like an anti-Apple

00:28:27 ◼   ► like clickbait piece 'cause it attributes a lot

00:28:30 ◼   ► of intent and malice to Apple for what they've been holding back on all these years and stuff

00:28:38 ◼   ► like that, that is just misleading at best and in some cases just outright wrong. It

00:28:44 ◼   ► needs to be taken with a lot of salt. So that being said, I think you can look at the medium

00:28:51 ◼   ► here, the podcasting medium, the way it has worked so far, which basically works like

00:28:57 ◼   ► RSS readers that happen to play audio files. That's basically it. Like, sites publish RSS

00:29:02 ◼   ► feeds with MP3s or AACs and the vast majority are MP3s, so I'm just going to say that from

00:29:07 ◼   ► now on. And clients are basically RSS readers and they fetch those RSS feeds for everything

00:29:12 ◼   ► you subscribe to and when a new episode is present, they download the MP3 file that's

00:29:17 ◼   ► embedded, the link of which is embedded in the feed. Then they show it to you as an episode.

00:29:21 ◼   ► it's playing, it's simply playing an MP3. It is not like loading pages on the site of

00:29:29 ◼   ► the podcast provider or anything like that. It is not executing JavaScript on their behalf.

00:29:34 ◼   ► It is not sending them tracking information. They do get the hit on their server for when

00:29:41 ◼   ► you fetch that MP3. So podcasters already have a certain amount of data about their

00:29:48 ◼   ► listeners. And so the idea that like, you know, Apple needs to step in and provide data

00:29:54 ◼   ► so that people can have any idea what size their audience is, it's a little exaggerated

00:29:58 ◼   ► because we already know how big our audience is. It's a little bit approximated, but I

00:30:03 ◼   ► think, you know, I think history shows with a lot of this, you know, data science in massive

00:30:09 ◼   ► quotes, I'm just, my fingers are just constantly moving during this whole thing. Constant air

00:30:13 ◼   ► air quotes, just up and down.

00:30:15 ◼   ► All the web data stuff is also imprecise,

00:30:17 ◼   ► so, you know, and is also very easily faked

00:30:20 ◼   ► and defrauded all the time and everything,

00:30:22 ◼   ► so all the problems that apply to what we have now

00:30:24 ◼   ► also apply to proper, my fingers are still moving,

00:30:29 ◼   ► big data kind of analytics and creepy tracking stuff.

00:30:34 ◼   ► Anyway, so we already know how big the audience is,

00:30:37 ◼   ► to a rough degree, where they are, to a rough degree,

00:30:41 ◼   ► and how many of them download each show.

00:30:44 ◼   ► We don't need that level of data integration

00:30:47 ◼   ► where you go much beyond this yet.

00:30:49 ◼   ► And we might in the future,

00:30:51 ◼   ► in order to get high ad rates, but right now we don't.

00:30:55 ◼   ► The reason the web had, well, quote, had to,

00:31:00 ◼   ► my fingers are still moving,

00:31:01 ◼   ► had to do all this creepy data stuff,

00:31:03 ◼   ► is because web ad rates just plummeted.

00:31:07 ◼   ► I mean, they were never great to begin with,

00:31:09 ◼   ► And over the years since the web has been a thing,

00:31:12 ◼   ► I think they've just basically always gone down.

00:31:15 ◼   ► Because general web display ads,

00:31:17 ◼   ► like ads you'd see on the side of a news site

00:31:19 ◼   ► or increasingly on top of the news site

00:31:21 ◼   ► you're trying to read floating in,

00:31:23 ◼   ► flying around the news site,

00:31:24 ◼   ► in the background of the news site,

00:31:26 ◼   ► in every sidebar above and below the content,

00:31:27 ◼   ► posing as content, posing as,

00:31:29 ◼   ► oh, these top news stories,

00:31:30 ◼   ► these weird new tricks the new scientists

00:31:32 ◼   ► wanted you to learn about Britney Spears.

00:31:34 ◼   ► The reason it keeps getting so bad on the web

00:31:36 ◼   ► is that nobody looks at web ads, nobody sees,

00:31:39 ◼   ► it's not that people see them and ignore them,

00:31:42 ◼   ► people don't even see them.

00:31:43 ◼   ► Even if you don't have an ad blocker installed,

00:31:46 ◼   ► you visually don't see them.

00:31:48 ◼   ► Like you don't perceive them, you skip over them.

00:31:52 ◼   ► The whole banner blindness thing is real.

00:31:54 ◼   ► There's very little that web publishers can really do

00:31:57 ◼   ► to make a lot of money on those things.

00:32:01 ◼   ► And so they've had to do all this crazy tracking stuff

00:32:04 ◼   ► just to try to make it slightly more targeted,

00:32:07 ◼   ► to raise the rates slightly more,

00:32:09 ◼   ► and then of course there's the rise

00:32:11 ◼   ► of all these programmatic ad exchanges,

00:32:12 ◼   ► which makes everything even worse,

00:32:14 ◼   ► and even more horrible, and even more creepily tracked,

00:32:16 ◼   ► but that's a long side that we don't need

00:32:18 ◼   ► to get any more into.

00:32:20 ◼   ► Summary version, basically, the web sucks for ads.

00:32:25 ◼   ► It is a terrible place to advertise,

00:32:27 ◼   ► it is a terrible place to publish advertisements,

00:32:30 ◼   ► to try to make money from them,

00:32:31 ◼   ► additionally, as I mentioned before,

00:32:33 ◼   ► all the massive fraud that goes on.

00:32:35 ◼   ► It's such a mess.

00:32:37 ◼   ► It is so, it's just bad for everybody

00:32:39 ◼   ► because the medium just doesn't work that well for display.

00:32:43 ◼   ► It just doesn't work very well, simple as that.

00:32:45 ◼   ► And as everything gets more and more cutthroat

00:32:47 ◼   ► and advanced technically and algorithmically generated

00:32:50 ◼   ► and everything, it's just getting worse and worse and worse.

00:32:53 ◼   ► And there's kind of no end in sight there.

00:32:55 ◼   ► The web as a place to make money through advertising

00:32:58 ◼   ► is really a pretty bad place to be.

00:33:02 ◼   ► So podcasts on the other hand,

00:33:05 ◼   ► because these are just MP3 files,

00:33:07 ◼   ► it's just an audio stream,

00:33:09 ◼   ► there's basically nothing you can really do

00:33:12 ◼   ► to advertise in an audio stream

00:33:15 ◼   ► except just insert an ad that somebody is speaking

00:33:19 ◼   ► into the stream.

00:33:21 ◼   ► And because of lots of reasons,

00:33:23 ◼   ► there's not a lot of tracking you can do

00:33:25 ◼   ► to say like, you know, did people hear that ad?

00:33:27 ◼   ► With a few exceptions, but for the most part,

00:33:30 ◼   ► you can't really track did people hear this,

00:33:32 ◼   ► Did people listen this far on the show?

00:33:34 ◼   ► You pretty much can't do it,

00:33:35 ◼   ► 'cause what if somebody's playing it on their iPod

00:33:38 ◼   ► that doesn't even have an internet connection?

00:33:40 ◼   ► You don't know that.

00:33:41 ◼   ► They're still playing the file they downloaded from you,

00:33:43 ◼   ► and there's no way for that to be reported to you.

00:33:45 ◼   ► What if they're playing it in some web embed

00:33:48 ◼   ► or Twitter embed, where they can see the MP3 file,

00:33:52 ◼   ► but they're not loading a whole app,

00:33:55 ◼   ► or they're not loading your whole webpage or something.

00:33:58 ◼   ► They're still listening.

00:34:00 ◼   ► And by the raw metric of download counts,

00:34:03 ◼   ► they will be counted.

00:34:05 ◼   ► But that's all you can really get.

00:34:07 ◼   ► - What if the soothing sound of our voice

00:34:09 ◼   ► put them to sleep, and as they fall asleep,

00:34:11 ◼   ► five ants play?

00:34:12 ◼   ► - Exactly, yeah, like, should we get paid for those?

00:34:14 ◼   ► So there's no way to tell whether somebody

00:34:17 ◼   ► has listened to a certain point, basically,

00:34:19 ◼   ► unless you control the app.

00:34:21 ◼   ► And we'll get to that.

00:34:22 ◼   ► So anyway, this to me is like this beautiful system,

00:34:26 ◼   ► because the web, I love the web.

00:34:29 ◼   ► And it makes me so sad to see what the web has become

00:34:33 ◼   ► over the last five years or so,

00:34:36 ◼   ► as everything has just gotten so much more cutthroat

00:34:38 ◼   ► and driven by automated ad tech

00:34:40 ◼   ► and algorithmic content generation.

00:34:42 ◼   ► And it's just, as I said, it's just a mess.

00:34:44 ◼   ► And as a fan of both the web as a medium

00:34:47 ◼   ► and also the openness of blogging

00:34:50 ◼   ► and RSS feeds and everything,

00:34:52 ◼   ► which I still use, by the way,

00:34:53 ◼   ► I still use an RSS reader, it's not dead,

00:34:56 ◼   ► That world is losing to Facebook and Twitter

00:35:01 ◼   ► and Apple and these kind of closed ecosystems.

00:35:06 ◼   ► That makes me very sad.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Podcasting is still run that way.

00:35:12 ◼   ► The question basically, the debate here,

00:35:15 ◼   ► is whether podcasting can still be run that way

00:35:19 ◼   ► for a longer time or whether this,

00:35:22 ◼   ► the article kept saying it has outgrown its roots.

00:35:26 ◼   ► has it, like, does podcasting really need

00:35:29 ◼   ► to add all this crap to let people's business grow?

00:35:33 ◼   ► Because podcasting is working just fine the way it is.

00:35:37 ◼   ► So if you talk about how much you make per listener

00:35:41 ◼   ► or per user, ad people call this the CPM,

00:35:44 ◼   ► the cost per thousand impressions,

00:35:46 ◼   ► however you measure that.

00:35:48 ◼   ► Thanks, France, by the way, for the M.

00:35:50 ◼   ► So the web, I think you're lucky to get,

00:35:54 ◼   ► I mean, what's a good web CPM today?

00:35:56 ◼   ► Like a few dollars maybe at most?

00:35:58 ◼   ► I mean, and with podcasting, the numbers are lower.

00:36:01 ◼   ► The listener numbers are lower.

00:36:02 ◼   ► Like, you know, a good website can get

00:36:04 ◼   ► millions of hits a month.

00:36:07 ◼   ► The top podcast, things like This American Life,

00:36:09 ◼   ► like really big podcasts might get like

00:36:12 ◼   ► a million downloads a month or something in that ballpark.

00:36:14 ◼   ► I don't know, I don't have recent numbers on that,

00:36:15 ◼   ► but that's what I heard like a year or two ago

00:36:17 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:36:18 ◼   ► So you know, a million downloads a month for a podcast

00:36:21 ◼   ► would put you in like the top handful of podcasts

00:36:23 ◼   ► exist in the world. Whereas a million hits to a webpage is kind of like lower to mid-level

00:36:28 ◼   ► traffic these days. Like you can get way more than that if you're a big site. But the podcast

00:36:34 ◼   ► can command something like a $20 to $60 CPM instead of what the web is getting like, you

00:36:41 ◼   ► know, a dollar or two. Because podcast advertising is just so much more effective. It's not even

00:36:47 ◼   ► close. It is way more effective. And part of that is because you have, you know, people

00:36:53 ◼   ► like us, like the hosts reading the ads,

00:36:55 ◼   ► and that makes you pay attention more,

00:36:57 ◼   ► a big part of it is you're actually hearing them,

00:36:59 ◼   ► as opposed to the web where you just do not

00:37:01 ◼   ► even see the ads at all.

00:37:02 ◼   ► And not because of ad blockers,

00:37:03 ◼   ► because you actually just ignore them.

00:37:06 ◼   ► Podcast ads are so much more effective

00:37:07 ◼   ► just because of the medium, because of how it's heard,

00:37:10 ◼   ► where it's heard, who is saying it, what they're saying,

00:37:13 ◼   ► the relationship people have, the dedication they have,

00:37:16 ◼   ► where and how they're listening,

00:37:18 ◼   ► as opposed to like on the web,

00:37:19 ◼   ► you're kind of just like skimming constantly,

00:37:21 ◼   ► and you kind of get through as fast as you can.

00:37:23 ◼   ► A podcast you're probably listening to

00:37:25 ◼   ► while doing something else, whether it's working,

00:37:27 ◼   ► driving, whatever the case, you're less physically engaged

00:37:31 ◼   ► in the activity, so you're less likely, I think,

00:37:33 ◼   ► to skip the ad.

00:37:34 ◼   ► It's just such a different environment

00:37:36 ◼   ► that it just happens to work way better for ads.

00:37:40 ◼   ► So for some reason, this handful of big podcasters

00:37:44 ◼   ► allegedly met with some people at Apple,

00:37:47 ◼   ► allegedly trying to get them to say,

00:37:50 ◼   ► Well, we want to basically do web levels of data tracking,

00:37:55 ◼   ► and we want Apple to put that in their app,

00:37:58 ◼   ► because that's the only way we can really have it done

00:38:00 ◼   ► is to put these things in apps.

00:38:02 ◼   ► The implication there is because they want

00:38:04 ◼   ► their business models to be more like the web,

00:38:07 ◼   ► and that just seems insane to me,

00:38:10 ◼   ► because the web is in such shambles,

00:38:12 ◼   ► and we have it great over here in podcast land.

00:38:16 ◼   ► They don't know how lucky they are.

00:38:18 ◼   ► The web does these data things because it has to

00:38:21 ◼   ► for most sites to get anything at all,

00:38:24 ◼   ► not because that is the inevitable way forward

00:38:28 ◼   ► to quote, "grow" your business.

00:38:30 ◼   ► Podcasting is not new.

00:38:33 ◼   ► It is not even, I wouldn't even say it's booming.

00:38:37 ◼   ► I think it's growing steadily

00:38:39 ◼   ► the same way it has for 10 years.

00:38:41 ◼   ► And if you look at like podcast growth,

00:38:44 ◼   ► it's not a hockey stick curve.

00:38:46 ◼   ► it's basically a line. And everyone who thinks it's new, it's just like the tip of the iceberg

00:38:52 ◼   ► thing where it finally pooped out of the ocean, where it's like they think, "Oh my god, this

00:38:56 ◼   ► is here all of a sudden." And in reality, like, no, it's been growing the entire time

00:38:59 ◼   ► under the ocean, you just didn't see it. There's basically the debate over whether podcasting

00:39:07 ◼   ► needs to change in order to enable "growth" or to mature or something. And what angered

00:39:14 ◼   ► me so much about this article, in addition to all the things that it got factually wrong

00:39:18 ◼   ► or misleading, it basically stated as given, as fact, that podcasting was outgrowing its

00:39:26 ◼   ► roots and needed to change the way it operates, to be more like the web. I very strongly disagree

00:39:33 ◼   ► with that. I'm not saying that podcasting should never change, but I am saying I don't

00:39:38 ◼   ► think it needs to change in this way right now, and possibly ever, because this is a

00:39:44 ◼   ► a different medium, it works very differently, and the idea that a few people, most of whom

00:39:49 ◼   ► come from the web and ad tech worlds, think that podcasts should work more like the web,

00:39:55 ◼   ► first of all I find that baffling, because as I said the web sucks, and second of all

00:39:59 ◼   ► I think that is a bad argument, it doesn't follow, like you can't make that argument

00:40:04 ◼   ► without support that's showing that somehow podcasting is really suffering without this

00:40:09 ◼   ► and is declining and needs this to survive, and I'm seeing no evidence of that at all,

00:40:13 ◼   ► In fact, I'm seeing the opposite.

00:40:14 ◼   ► I'm seeing podcasting is growing and is doing very well.

00:40:17 ◼   ► Going to the Apple side, like what could Apple do?

00:40:20 ◼   ► Apple is a directory, they're the biggest directory,

00:40:25 ◼   ► and they have this big editorial section

00:40:27 ◼   ► where they can promote shows, which they do.

00:40:29 ◼   ► And as far as I know, they're the only people

00:40:31 ◼   ► who invest a lot of human effort

00:40:33 ◼   ► to actually make editorial podcast picks

00:40:36 ◼   ► in lots of different categories every week,

00:40:38 ◼   ► and around the world, I think.

00:40:40 ◼   ► So they're already doing a lot on the editorial side.

00:40:44 ◼   ► I don't know what else they could do on the editorial side.

00:40:46 ◼   ► I think they're already doing way more

00:40:49 ◼   ► than anybody could be expected to do,

00:40:52 ◼   ► given that they're making so little money off of podcasting.

00:40:54 ◼   ► I think they're doing a very good job.

00:40:56 ◼   ► Apple, I think editorially, I think they're set.

00:40:59 ◼   ► We should be thankful they're doing as much as they do.

00:41:02 ◼   ► And then you have the Apple Player.

00:41:05 ◼   ► And this is kind of where, so the Apple Podcast Player

00:41:08 ◼   ► is the most popular podcast playing app,

00:41:10 ◼   ► the one built into iOS.

00:41:11 ◼   ► I don't know how well iTunes does anymore on the desktop.

00:41:13 ◼   ► I think it's pretty small probably,

00:41:14 ◼   ► but the one on iOS that comes with iOS

00:41:17 ◼   ► called Podcasts from Apple with the purple icon,

00:41:20 ◼   ► that is the most popular podcast player on the world.

00:41:21 ◼   ► It has something like 60% or 70% of podcast downloads

00:41:26 ◼   ► according to most people.

00:41:28 ◼   ► And so they're basically pushing Apple to say,

00:41:30 ◼   ► the stats we get now are not enough.

00:41:32 ◼   ► We want you to do two things for us.

00:41:34 ◼   ► We want you to A, give us as much data as you can

00:41:37 ◼   ► about the people.

00:41:38 ◼   ► So tell us like how many of these downloads into your app

00:41:40 ◼   ► actually get listened to?

00:41:41 ◼   ► Where do they listen, you know,

00:41:43 ◼   ► where do they stop playing each episode?

00:41:44 ◼   ► Like what, exactly what timestamp down to the second

00:41:47 ◼   ► so we can optimize our content

00:41:48 ◼   ► and tweak our storytelling abilities

00:41:51 ◼   ► and then our advertisers can ask

00:41:52 ◼   ► how many people actually heard our entire ad

00:41:54 ◼   ► so they can then, I guess, not pay us?

00:41:57 ◼   ► Like I, I get, a lot of these things don't make sense

00:42:00 ◼   ► once you think them through.

00:42:01 ◼   ► But I don't know why, why are podcasting

00:42:04 ◼   ► to be asking for some of these things?

00:42:05 ◼   ► But anyway, so that's part one,

00:42:08 ◼   ► is that they want Apple to add all this creepy data tracking

00:42:11 ◼   ► to their player app, and then to report it

00:42:14 ◼   ► to the podcasters in some way.

00:42:15 ◼   ► And once again, I think Jason Snow and Mike Hurley

00:42:18 ◼   ► on Upgrade this past week did a very, very good job

00:42:21 ◼   ► of covering exactly what the kind of implications

00:42:24 ◼   ► of this would be, and how just the scale

00:42:27 ◼   ► of the operation this would entail to even do this

00:42:30 ◼   ► if they wanted to, and how useful the data would actually be

00:42:33 ◼   ► considering that it's not, like it isn't all listeners.

00:42:37 ◼   ► It's, depending on the show, somewhere between like

00:42:40 ◼   ► probably 20 and 70% of the listeners.

00:42:43 ◼   ► So, you know, and it might not be a representative sample.

00:42:46 ◼   ► So it's, you know, the quality of the data they would get

00:42:49 ◼   ► would itself be in question even if they got it.

00:42:52 ◼   ► And in the process of them getting it

00:42:54 ◼   ► and the systems involved, the implementation of that

00:42:57 ◼   ► would be a huge mess, not to mention all the ethical

00:43:00 ◼   ► and quality issues, it would then create

00:43:03 ◼   ► the incentives it would create with podcast creation,

00:43:06 ◼   ► with these pro podcasters to like,

00:43:08 ◼   ► structure their shows differently

00:43:10 ◼   ► so that they would boost these numbers

00:43:11 ◼   ► in these little tiny ways that would kinda

00:43:14 ◼   ► sacrifice quality or overall flow,

00:43:17 ◼   ► but it would give us 5% more this month, you know.

00:43:20 ◼   ► 'Cause you can say now that would never happen,

00:43:22 ◼   ► but look at the web, it happens, it always happens.

00:43:24 ◼   ► So, you know, let's not kid ourselves,

00:43:26 ◼   ► like that would definitely happen.

00:43:28 ◼   ► So you have this massive problematic request

00:43:32 ◼   ► of the more data.

00:43:34 ◼   ► Then you also have the request from the podcasters

00:43:37 ◼   ► that Apple enable other business models.

00:43:39 ◼   ► And what they basically mean is,

00:43:41 ◼   ► enable a way for people to pay for our shows.

00:43:44 ◼   ► You know, there's already ways to pay for podcasts.

00:43:47 ◼   ► Lots of podcasts do.

00:43:49 ◼   ► I know this because Overcast doesn't support their feeds.

00:43:51 ◼   ► And I hear from all their fans every day.

00:43:54 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:43:56 ◼   ► There's already ways to do things like paid feeds,

00:43:59 ◼   ► members only feeds, whether it's password protected

00:44:01 ◼   ► or it's hidden URLs, I do support those,

00:44:04 ◼   ► thanks Jason, I do support those.

00:44:07 ◼   ► Please subscribe to Six Colors.

00:44:09 ◼   ► You know, the password stuff I don't support

00:44:10 ◼   ► and a lot of them, there'll be like a members only area

00:44:14 ◼   ► or paid podcasts that aren't even distributed

00:44:16 ◼   ► as podcast files, they're in a feed,

00:44:18 ◼   ► you sign up with their website

00:44:19 ◼   ► and then you can download the raw audio files.

00:44:21 ◼   ► There are lots of ways to do this.

00:44:23 ◼   ► The biggest way to do this though,

00:44:26 ◼   ► Apple made in 2008.

00:44:27 ◼   ► It's called the App Store.

00:44:29 ◼   ► This is what most people do.

00:44:31 ◼   ► If they wanna have a paid podcast,

00:44:33 ◼   ► they release their own app to play their podcast,

00:44:37 ◼   ► which gives them all of the capabilities

00:44:40 ◼   ► that the podcasters are asking Apple for, allegedly.

00:44:43 ◼   ► That already exists.

00:44:44 ◼   ► It's existed for eight years.

00:44:46 ◼   ► It's called the App Store.

00:44:48 ◼   ► You can make your app,

00:44:49 ◼   ► you can charge whatever you want for the app,

00:44:51 ◼   ► you can have in-app purchase in the app,

00:44:53 ◼   ► you can control the entire player experience

00:44:55 ◼   ► and do all the creepy data tracking you want.

00:44:58 ◼   ► That's already there.

00:44:59 ◼   ► Many podcasts have their own apps.

00:45:02 ◼   ► This is not a new thing.

00:45:03 ◼   ► And it works okay.

00:45:05 ◼   ► I don't know anybody who makes a ton

00:45:07 ◼   ► of their listenership or money that way,

00:45:10 ◼   ► but they make some, it's fine.

00:45:12 ◼   ► So you know what?

00:45:13 ◼   ► If that's the kind of system you want, it already exists.

00:45:16 ◼   ► And take it from a developer,

00:45:18 ◼   ► I guarantee you that whatever Apple would do

00:45:21 ◼   ► with the podcast app store,

00:45:22 ◼   ► or with the podcast store

00:45:24 ◼   ► that everyone's apparently asking for, would be worse.

00:45:27 ◼   ► That would be a worse system than just making your own app.

00:45:32 ◼   ► You don't want that.

00:45:33 ◼   ► Trust me, either way, Apple's taking 30%.

00:45:35 ◼   ► Let's be honest here.

00:45:36 ◼   ► I mean, we know that.

00:45:37 ◼   ► They're taking at least 30% either way.

00:45:40 ◼   ► At least in the App Store, it's only 30%.

00:45:42 ◼   ► If they make their own podcast store,

00:45:44 ◼   ► that gives them the opportunity to set a new rate.

00:45:45 ◼   ► They might be hired now that Apple's a services company.

00:45:47 ◼   ► So, believe me, you don't want that.

00:45:50 ◼   ► - But don't you understand why they don't want

00:45:51 ◼   ► to make their own app?

00:45:52 ◼   ► Like, isn't it obvious, like, the fragmentation problem of that?

00:45:56 ◼   ► If everyone has their own app, like, the advancement of the app store is like the one place you

00:46:00 ◼   ► go to get all the software instead of having to go to individual developers' websites that

00:46:04 ◼   ► have discoverability problems and making people aware and getting the fatigue.

00:46:08 ◼   ► Kind of like we have on Apple TV now, like, the fatigue of, like, if I want to list this

00:46:12 ◼   ► podcast, I got to do this app, and I want to do that podcast, I got to do that app.

00:46:16 ◼   ► Kind of like when books were individual apps back when Apple was allowing that, where you

00:46:19 ◼   ► got one book as an individual app. It's just a lot of fragmentation and if everybody did

00:46:24 ◼   ► that, it's really hard to get attention from anybody. And the sort of level playing player

00:46:29 ◼   ► that you were talking about before is an advantage of saying, "Look, Apple, if you just implement

00:46:33 ◼   ► this stuff as sort of the baseline within the only podcast player app that matters,

00:46:38 ◼   ► the built-in Apple one as far as these people are concerned, allegedly, in this article

00:46:42 ◼   ► here, then we wouldn't have to fight for the attention to get our app downloaded." And

00:46:47 ◼   ► It really is a barrier to people.

00:46:48 ◼   ► Like people don't want to have to download a new app for,

00:46:51 ◼   ► it's like having to download a new app

00:46:53 ◼   ► for every movie you want to see.

00:46:54 ◼   ► It's like rather just go to a store

00:46:55 ◼   ► and be able to rent or buy the movie

00:46:56 ◼   ► and you don't have to go to 17 different stores.

00:46:58 ◼   ► Then there are still multiple stores,

00:46:59 ◼   ► but if it was one per podcast, that's bad.

00:47:02 ◼   ► So I kind of, what I'm trying to do reading this article

00:47:05 ◼   ► is put myself into perhaps not the head space

00:47:08 ◼   ► of the theoretical people who talk to Apple,

00:47:11 ◼   ► but the head space of the author of this article,

00:47:14 ◼   ► because a lot of things in this article are not quotes,

00:47:17 ◼   ► are not like sentiments attributed to people

00:47:20 ◼   ► who supposedly met with Apple,

00:47:21 ◼   ► but rather are just stated in what looks like

00:47:24 ◼   ► the author's voice, presumably informed by,

00:47:27 ◼   ► I don't know, by accounts of the meeting.

00:47:31 ◼   ► And I'm trying to figure out like,

00:47:33 ◼   ► why is it that the author or the people

00:47:37 ◼   ► that the author spoke to believe these things

00:47:40 ◼   ► about podcasting?

00:47:41 ◼   ► Like what is, I don't know, what are we missing?

00:47:45 ◼   ► 'cause I think you've outlined it pretty well.

00:47:47 ◼   ► Like from our perspective, it doesn't make any sense,

00:47:48 ◼   ► but our perspective isn't the only perspective.

00:47:50 ◼   ► And I think the best thing I've come up with is that

00:47:54 ◼   ► if you want to reach a bigger audience,

00:48:00 ◼   ► like podcasts are the size that they are.

00:48:02 ◼   ► Serial is way bigger than lots of podcasts.

00:48:04 ◼   ► This American Life is way bigger,

00:48:05 ◼   ► but that kind of barely counts

00:48:06 ◼   ► 'cause it built its audience on the radio

00:48:08 ◼   ► and not as a podcast, right?

00:48:10 ◼   ► If you wanna go really big with that,

00:48:14 ◼   ► Big audience means, I suppose, high production values.

00:48:19 ◼   ► It costs more to make shows than good to,

00:48:21 ◼   ► I don't even know if that's true, but again,

00:48:22 ◼   ► I'm trying to get in their head and they're thinking.

00:48:25 ◼   ► - I think it's loosely correlated.

00:48:26 ◼   ► High production values can result in better shows.

00:48:28 ◼   ► They sometimes do result in better shows,

00:48:30 ◼   ► but they don't always, and they aren't always required.

00:48:33 ◼   ► - Right, but anyway, if you were going

00:48:35 ◼   ► for a much bigger audience, part of that would also

00:48:38 ◼   ► be going for bigger advertisers, advertisers who are used,

00:48:43 ◼   ► who would not bother advertising on the numbers

00:48:47 ◼   ► that most podcasts put up.

00:48:49 ◼   ► And if you want big advertisers,

00:48:52 ◼   ► big advertisers having been conditioned

00:48:54 ◼   ► by all the crap on the web that you just talked about,

00:48:57 ◼   ► want this information that is not available from podcasts.

00:49:00 ◼   ► So it's kind of like, we wanna go really big,

00:49:03 ◼   ► we wanna go mass market.

00:49:04 ◼   ► And by the way, when you go mass market,

00:49:05 ◼   ► your CPMs go down because mass market,

00:49:08 ◼   ► like we're gonna make a show for everybody,

00:49:10 ◼   ► everybody is not as valuable as people

00:49:12 ◼   ► who are super duper into model trains.

00:49:14 ◼   ► Because if you have a podcast, you know,

00:49:16 ◼   ► for people who are super duper into model trains,

00:49:19 ◼   ► model train manufacturers will pay a lot for that, right?

00:49:22 ◼   ► Whereas if you're gonna have,

00:49:23 ◼   ► our podcast is listened to by everyone,

00:49:26 ◼   ► everyone's not a great demo.

00:49:27 ◼   ► Or like, our podcast is listened to by, you know,

00:49:30 ◼   ► like you really, the reason podcasts get such high CPMs

00:49:33 ◼   ► and the reason I think a lot of tech podcasts

00:49:35 ◼   ► get high CPMs is it's a narrow self-selecting audience

00:49:39 ◼   ► based on the topic.

00:49:41 ◼   ► and those audiences can be much more valuable

00:49:43 ◼   ► than the mass audiences.

00:49:44 ◼   ► So anyway, if you want to make podcasts way bigger

00:49:47 ◼   ► and sell to a mass audience and your CPM goes down,

00:49:50 ◼   ► you really need the tools that will let you get Coca-Cola

00:49:53 ◼   ► to put an advertisement on your thing,

00:49:54 ◼   ► or talk to Procter and Gamble or whatever.

00:49:56 ◼   ► Like these really big things that buy Super Bowl ads

00:50:01 ◼   ► and you have huge ad budgets.

00:50:04 ◼   ► And I think that's kind of the chicken egg,

00:50:07 ◼   ► the thing they're trying to go.

00:50:08 ◼   ► It's like podcasts,

00:50:09 ◼   ► it looks like almost like a wasted medium

00:50:11 ◼   ► from the perspective of these people

00:50:13 ◼   ► who wanna go for a big audience.

00:50:14 ◼   ► Like I bet many more people would go for,

00:50:17 ◼   ► or think about radio.

00:50:18 ◼   ► Like you'd have, you know,

00:50:20 ◼   ► every kind of mass advertiser would be on radio

00:50:22 ◼   ► because like, oh, this reaches everybody.

00:50:24 ◼   ► But the everybody model is so different

00:50:26 ◼   ► than the current podcasting model.

00:50:27 ◼   ► I think what they want to happen is,

00:50:29 ◼   ► please make a world where Coca-Cola will advertise.

00:50:32 ◼   ► And here are the ingredients we see

00:50:34 ◼   ► that will hook up all the pieces in this chain

00:50:37 ◼   ► so that we will have a podcast that plays to 50 million people and that really big companies

00:50:42 ◼   ► pay for ads at a tremendous rate and a tremendously low CPM, but we'll make it up in volume and

00:50:47 ◼   ► now we are a big player and we will just squish all the other shows and it'll make Serial

00:50:51 ◼   ► look like a little silly NPR fluke. I don't even know if Serial was NPR, sorry PRI if

00:50:56 ◼   ► that's you or whoever the hell it is. And that's so outside our understanding of podcasts

00:51:03 ◼   ► and our little tech circle and our nerdy podcast and stuff like that.

00:51:07 ◼   ► I don't necessarily think that that can't and shouldn't exist, but as a goal, I kind

00:51:16 ◼   ► of see it as, "Well, there's something to that.

00:51:18 ◼   ► Imagine if you have the podcast that everybody listened to."

00:51:21 ◼   ► Seriality seems like it was.

00:51:22 ◼   ► Most people, you know, it's just big compared to other podcasts.

00:51:25 ◼   ► It's not as if someone came out with the equivalent of Star Wars 1977, the movie that everybody

00:51:33 ◼   ► and a generation saw, there is no podcast equivalent to that yet.

00:51:37 ◼   ► And they could be going for it, and I think that's an interesting goal and interesting

00:51:40 ◼   ► thing to aspire to, but the things they're asking for, A, are informed by the web, and

00:51:45 ◼   ► like you said, that's pretty stupid, and B, what they're asking Apple to do, I don't understand

00:51:51 ◼   ► why maybe they haven't been burned enough by this, but asking Apple to, "Hey, build

00:51:55 ◼   ► these analytics into your app and subscriptions and stuff like that," and of course there

00:52:00 ◼   ► There are so many things that only Apple can do because they're platform-level things or

00:52:03 ◼   ► have to do with the App Store and there's only one way to get software on your things

00:52:06 ◼   ► is through the App Store.

00:52:08 ◼   ► Again focusing on iOS, but I'm sure they make the same pitch to Google, although Google

00:52:11 ◼   ► has its own Google Play thing going on over there.

00:52:14 ◼   ► But were they successful in lobbying Apple for the things they supposedly want, they

00:52:18 ◼   ► will just, you know, in their wildest dreams, what they will have successfully done is created

00:52:23 ◼   ► YouTube, which is terrible.

00:52:24 ◼   ► which is never a situation where the only

00:52:27 ◼   ► Reasonable way to make money with video on the web is through YouTube and YouTube controls or music

00:52:33 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah YouTube controls everything about it

00:52:36 ◼   ► And there's no competition and they can change the terms at any time and what the hell you gonna do because it's YouTube like why?

00:52:42 ◼   ► Would you ask for that? Why would you you are you know again Tapples credit or whatever or apples apathy or whatever like that?

00:52:49 ◼   ► Probably not gonna do any of this stuff

00:52:51 ◼   ► But if they did it would be terrible for everyone involved both the big guys because they would just be

00:52:56 ◼   ► Putting themselves under the thumb of Apple and for the small people who were like no we don't want that

00:53:00 ◼   ► We like to be free and open or whatever like so it's a terrible

00:53:03 ◼   ► Doomsday scenario if they got what they wanted because it would it would just make it

00:53:08 ◼   ► dysfunction all the ways you talked about for the web and the data and the in ever-decreasing

00:53:11 ◼   ► CPMs and the perverse incentives and the fraud and everything like that and you would be shoveling all of the power in the market to

00:53:18 ◼   ► this one gatekeeper just because you didn't want to write your own app and because you couldn't

00:53:22 ◼   ► abide to have a simple open system with RSS feeds because it just didn't give you the analytics you

00:53:27 ◼   ► want. It's such a terrible thing to want. Again, I kind of see where they're coming from and we want

00:53:33 ◼   ► the big breakout hit and we need this data and we need these tools, but I feel like you should work

00:53:37 ◼   ► that out. It's so hard for me to talk about this to even accepting the premise that these things

00:53:42 ◼   ► happen in the article, what they said they did, but let's pretend that it did. You should be

00:53:46 ◼   ► talking to Coca-Cola about how they should be okay with funding this podcast full of

00:53:53 ◼   ► celebrities that you think millions and millions of people are going to listen to without the

00:53:57 ◼   ► obsessive data that they think they should technically be able to get.

00:54:01 ◼   ► It's like Coca-Cola, picture back to the olden days when people filled out little paper forms

00:54:05 ◼   ► after they watched television shows and you bought advertisement based on that.

00:54:10 ◼   ► And now we're going to tell you a precise number of downloads and you won't do it because

00:54:13 ◼   ► it's just not enough data and you need to know the exact demos and again where they

00:54:16 ◼   ► live and what their income is and what things they last clicked on and what their last boss

00:54:18 ◼   ► on Amazon, what Cookie has been tracking them through their Facebook clicks for the last

00:54:23 ◼   ► - oh, it's just...

00:54:26 ◼   ► It's a somewhat admirable goal to try to make a podcast breakout hit, but I think the supposed

00:54:34 ◼   ► demands of these people in this article are totally the wrong way to go about it.

00:54:41 ◼   ► And one tiny passage that I highlighted here, just to finish up, like, makes me just question

00:54:46 ◼   ► everything about this.

00:54:47 ◼   ► This is, again, not a quote and not attributed to anything, but the article says, "Promotion

00:54:51 ◼   ► within iTunes, which is one of the only reliable ways to build an audience, particularly for

00:54:56 ◼   ► a new show, is decided by a small team, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:55:00 ◼   ► Promotion within iTunes is not only one of the only reliable ways to build an audience,

00:55:07 ◼   ► But probably one of the worst ways to build an audience.

00:55:13 ◼   ► If you could guarantee that you would be promoted as the number one podcast on iTunes for an

00:55:18 ◼   ► entire year, would that build an audience?

00:55:21 ◼   ► Versus, say, if you made a podcast that promised to slowly lay out the plot for Star Wars Episode

00:55:28 ◼   ► VIII, the episode VIII, entirely unpromoted on iTunes podcast, would crush your podcast.

00:55:34 ◼   ► the only reliable way to build it you build an audience by making things that people like and

00:55:39 ◼   ► Leveraging an existing audience is probably the best way to build nights

00:55:43 ◼   ► But the only reliable way like I don't know

00:55:45 ◼   ► I can't think of a single person who found their favorite podcast because it was promoted on iTunes

00:55:50 ◼   ► I'm sure they're out there and I'm sure they'll send us things but like it's just such a warped view of the world of podcast

00:55:55 ◼   ► Listening like that's not how people discovered cereal people did not discover cereal because it was promoted on iTunes

00:56:01 ◼   ► It was promoted in iTunes because people discovered cereal like it's you know, like there is a place for editorial order

00:56:07 ◼   ► But if you got it in your head that iTunes is already this this kingmaker gatekeeper

00:56:12 ◼   ► I don't know you you are

00:56:16 ◼   ► abdicating all of your responsibility to build your own audience by having a good show and doing your own marketing and stuff like that like

00:56:21 ◼   ► Again, editorials important and they do promote shows and it's important like, you know for shows to come out of obscurity

00:56:28 ◼   ► That Apple can you know put them in new and noteworthy and whatever whatever weird systems they're having and it's a fun little thing

00:56:35 ◼   ► But really to frame it as the only reliable way to build an audience particularly for a new show that

00:56:41 ◼   ► That just does not match with my understanding of the podcast world at all

00:56:46 ◼   ► Especially when it comes to mass-market shows because the mass market is not trolling the iTunes podcast directory

00:56:52 ◼   ► They don't even know what podcasts are right

00:56:54 ◼   ► they only know because they heard about cereal

00:56:56 ◼   ► and then they figured out what podcasts are.

00:56:57 ◼   ► - Like that's the problem,

00:56:58 ◼   ► like by treating Apple as the whole world,

00:57:02 ◼   ► you know, as you very well said,

00:57:04 ◼   ► like you're not only like trying to make them

00:57:07 ◼   ► the only platform that matters at all

00:57:08 ◼   ► and trying to increase their share,

00:57:10 ◼   ► but you're also kinda investing in the seeking shit

00:57:12 ◼   ► because that 60% market share

00:57:15 ◼   ► that they most likely have among listening,

00:57:17 ◼   ► that goes down every year.

00:57:19 ◼   ► Believe me, I've been watching.

00:57:20 ◼   ► That's decreasing over time.

00:57:23 ◼   ► as more podcast players sprout up on iOS,

00:57:27 ◼   ► and as more people finally get around to listening on Android

00:57:29 ◼   ► because Android so far has been very underrepresented

00:57:32 ◼   ► in podcast stats, according to most big hosts.

00:57:35 ◼   ► I know Libsyn used to announce numbers every so often.

00:57:38 ◼   ► It used to be something like eight to one in favor of iOS

00:57:42 ◼   ► for every show that they host, which is a lot of shows.

00:57:45 ◼   ► Now Android's getting higher.

00:57:46 ◼   ► You have people like Google Play and Spotify

00:57:49 ◼   ► entering the podcast market in possibly big ways.

00:57:53 ◼   ► We'll see how those end up going,

00:57:55 ◼   ► and I don't like them, but they exist,

00:57:57 ◼   ► so we'll see how that ends up going.

00:57:58 ◼   ► But you have the podcast market

00:58:02 ◼   ► becoming more and more diverse.

00:58:04 ◼   ► Apple's market share is going down,

00:58:07 ◼   ► and all of a sudden these people want to give Apple

00:58:09 ◼   ► a reason to lock things down and dominate.

00:58:12 ◼   ► That's a terrible idea.

00:58:14 ◼   ► And also, the idea of relying on them

00:58:17 ◼   ► for all of your audience growth is ridiculous.

00:58:21 ◼   ► We know from the App Store,

00:58:24 ◼   ► we know everyone who relies only on the App Store

00:58:28 ◼   ► for their promotion, we tell them they're doing it wrong.

00:58:31 ◼   ► We tell them, no, you can't,

00:58:32 ◼   ► even the App Store people will tell you,

00:58:34 ◼   ► please don't rely on us.

00:58:36 ◼   ► And if you're trying to get featured by the App Store

00:58:39 ◼   ► and you have no other marketing,

00:58:42 ◼   ► that actually hurts your chances of being featured.

00:58:45 ◼   ► they want to feature things that have real marketing plans.

00:58:48 ◼   ► And so the idea of trying to basically make Apple

00:58:52 ◼   ► do all your work for you to promote your podcast,

00:58:55 ◼   ► as you said, Jon, is terrible.

00:58:56 ◼   ► Also, getting back to the ad thing for a second,

00:58:59 ◼   ► which kind of ties into this,

00:59:01 ◼   ► everything that the podcasters are asking Apple to do,

00:59:06 ◼   ► or asking for, basically comes down to

00:59:09 ◼   ► we are not making enough per listener from our ads,

00:59:14 ◼   ► and we would like to add all this tracking

00:59:15 ◼   ► so that we can make more money.

00:59:17 ◼   ► It's basically like saying the only way for us to grow

00:59:21 ◼   ► is to extract more out of the existing listener base.

00:59:24 ◼   ► Remember what I said earlier about the relative size

00:59:27 ◼   ► of the audience between podcasts and the web?

00:59:30 ◼   ► A great podcast might get a few hundred thousand downloads

00:59:34 ◼   ► an episode.

00:59:35 ◼   ► That would put it in like the top probably five or 1%

00:59:39 ◼   ► of podcasts.

00:59:40 ◼   ► On the web, that's nothing.

00:59:42 ◼   ► if you want to grow your business as podcasters.

00:59:46 ◼   ► The way for growth is to get more people

00:59:49 ◼   ► listening to podcasts, and then to get more people

00:59:52 ◼   ► listening to your podcast.

00:59:53 ◼   ► That's obvious, like I don't understand

00:59:57 ◼   ► how anybody can look at the situation now and say,

01:00:00 ◼   ► well what we need to really grow this,

01:00:03 ◼   ► we're outgrowing this old model here,

01:00:06 ◼   ► what we really need is ad tech?

01:00:08 ◼   ► What?

01:00:09 ◼   ► No, you need more people listening to podcasts.

01:00:12 ◼   ► You know how you do that?

01:00:13 ◼   ► It's not by making podcasts suck.

01:00:15 ◼   ► It's not by getting all creepy on people

01:00:18 ◼   ► and putting all this stuff in their face.

01:00:20 ◼   ► It's not by putting up a paywall, sorry.

01:00:23 ◼   ► Grow the audience!

01:00:24 ◼   ► That's the way for revenue growth.

01:00:28 ◼   ► You start doing all this data mining crap

01:00:30 ◼   ► when either your ads don't work

01:00:32 ◼   ► or when you have saturated the audience

01:00:35 ◼   ► and you need to find new ways to extract more

01:00:36 ◼   ► out of what you have.

01:00:38 ◼   ► Neither of those things are true for podcasting.

01:00:40 ◼   ► It's the opposite.

01:00:41 ◼   ► Podcasting has tons of room to grow.

01:00:44 ◼   ► It is growing, not as a hockey stick level growth,

01:00:47 ◼   ► but it is steadily growing over time.

01:00:49 ◼   ► There's tons of potential still to grow into,

01:00:52 ◼   ► especially as we have further penetration

01:00:55 ◼   ► of Bluetooth and cell phones in cars,

01:00:57 ◼   ► which is where a lot of listening happens,

01:00:59 ◼   ► and we have all these new cheap home speaker

01:01:02 ◼   ► Bluetooth devices, people who listen more at home,

01:01:05 ◼   ► and you have people getting more and more

01:01:06 ◼   ► into the habit of listening to things on their smartphones.

01:01:09 ◼   ► There is tons of room for growth here.

01:01:12 ◼   ► And there are so many people who don't listen

01:01:14 ◼   ► to podcasts now.

01:01:16 ◼   ► That's where you focus.

01:01:17 ◼   ► You focus your effort on growing the pool.

01:01:20 ◼   ► We're already making great rates on the ads.

01:01:23 ◼   ► Rates that, as you said, when you expand Coca-Cola,

01:01:27 ◼   ► all these things where like, oh, we have to expand it

01:01:29 ◼   ► to brand advertising.

01:01:29 ◼   ► Okay, so right now, we have mostly

01:01:32 ◼   ► direct response advertisers.

01:01:33 ◼   ► This is things like Squarespace, things like,

01:01:35 ◼   ► things where you sign up for a service,

01:01:38 ◼   ► or you buy a product and you give them some kind of coupon

01:01:41 ◼   ► or discount code or you visit a special URL

01:01:43 ◼   ► and they track how many people bought their thing

01:01:48 ◼   ► through each show or each episode's URL

01:01:50 ◼   ► and that kind of gives them an idea

01:01:51 ◼   ► of how many people might have heard the ad

01:01:53 ◼   ► and how much they are willing to pay for future ads

01:01:56 ◼   ► as a result of how much they're making from their past ads.

01:01:58 ◼   ► All these articles about how much we have to like,

01:02:02 ◼   ► you know, move into brand advertising,

01:02:03 ◼   ► they're all like, well, we just keep hearing the same ads

01:02:06 ◼   ► from like Squarespace over and over again.

01:02:07 ◼   ► You ever wonder why?

01:02:09 ◼   ► They're not dumb.

01:02:10 ◼   ► They're buying them because they work really well.

01:02:13 ◼   ► And whatever they're spending on the ads,

01:02:14 ◼   ► which as I said is a really nice amount by CPM,

01:02:18 ◼   ► whatever they're spending on the ads,

01:02:20 ◼   ► they're making that back.

01:02:21 ◼   ► They can see it in direct response conversions and results.

01:02:25 ◼   ► The reason why we have so many direct response advertisers

01:02:28 ◼   ► and why every podcast for the most part does

01:02:32 ◼   ► is because they can directly measure the value,

01:02:35 ◼   ► they see it and they say we want more because these ads are working ridiculously well. Brand

01:02:42 ◼   ► advertising, things like, oh we're going to plaster Coke ads all over these billboards

01:02:46 ◼   ► for the next 10 years and hope that increases our margin slightly. Brand advertising by

01:02:50 ◼   ► definition is almost impossible to measure. It basically goes unmeasured. Brand advertising

01:02:56 ◼   ► is basically a shot in the dark. There are people are just hoping that over time by getting

01:03:01 ◼   ► their logo and their name out there and associating happy things with their brand or whatever,

01:03:05 ◼   ► people will start recognizing their brand

01:03:07 ◼   ► and sales will slowly increase as this recognition builds.

01:03:10 ◼   ► The web has developed such incredibly sophisticated

01:03:13 ◼   ► and creepy levels of tracking and analytics

01:03:15 ◼   ► and behavioral monitoring and surveillance

01:03:18 ◼   ► that they can see to a much greater degree

01:03:20 ◼   ► what works and what doesn't.

01:03:22 ◼   ► Brand ads don't pay that much on the web

01:03:24 ◼   ► because they can see it's not working.

01:03:27 ◼   ► When you're saying you want brand ads,

01:03:29 ◼   ► what you're really saying is,

01:03:30 ◼   ► we're gonna sell brand ads because our ads don't work.

01:03:33 ◼   ► So we're gonna sell these to you, Coke,

01:03:34 ◼   ► because we know you won't really be able to measure.

01:03:37 ◼   ► - Well, but Coke also isn't interested in the small numbers

01:03:39 ◼   ► and Squarespace, maybe not Squarespace,

01:03:42 ◼   ► but some other advertisers that are basically paying

01:03:45 ◼   ► to acquire new customers for some kind of subscription plan

01:03:48 ◼   ► may not be able to pay, like Coke will pay more

01:03:52 ◼   ► because brand advertising is by definition

01:03:54 ◼   ► a we want the big numbers, huge shotgun approach.

01:03:58 ◼   ► That's the only type of advertising

01:03:59 ◼   ► to which the sort of general purpose broad demographic

01:04:03 ◼   ► is actually desirable because that's what we're going for.

01:04:05 ◼   ► We want everybody to know what Coca-Cola is.

01:04:07 ◼   ► We don't care who you are, what you do,

01:04:08 ◼   ► what you're interested in,

01:04:09 ◼   ► you need to know about Coca-Cola and it's awesome.

01:04:11 ◼   ► They want the big numbers.

01:04:14 ◼   ► Anything that is acquiring customers,

01:04:16 ◼   ► even something like, you know, fracture or whatever,

01:04:19 ◼   ► like, I don't think that they,

01:04:22 ◼   ► they're not gonna keep the same CPM

01:04:24 ◼   ► and pay for a show that gives 100 million people

01:04:26 ◼   ► to bankrupt the company, right?

01:04:28 ◼   ► And they're not interested,

01:04:30 ◼   ► they're not interested in spraying their,

01:04:32 ◼   ► like they'd be overpaying because only a small fraction

01:04:34 ◼   ► of those people actually interested in signing up

01:04:36 ◼   ► would be much better to go on a podcast

01:04:38 ◼   ► where a much higher percentage of the people who listen

01:04:40 ◼   ► are into digital photography

01:04:42 ◼   ► and making prints of it or whatever.

01:04:43 ◼   ► So I feel like they wanna get those big advertisers

01:04:46 ◼   ► because the number on the check is gonna be really big.

01:04:49 ◼   ► And the only people who are gonna write that check

01:04:51 ◼   ► are the people who are doing brand advertising.

01:04:53 ◼   ► And that's the way you get, again,

01:04:54 ◼   ► if you wanna get a podcast that has 200 million downloads

01:04:58 ◼   ► for every episode,

01:05:00 ◼   ► I think brand advertising is your only path to that.

01:05:03 ◼   ► And so they're trying to connect the dots

01:05:06 ◼   ► to make that happen.

01:05:07 ◼   ► And by the way,

01:05:08 ◼   ► like I agree that the way you would get a big podcast

01:05:11 ◼   ► like that is you have to get more people

01:05:12 ◼   ► listening to the podcast.

01:05:13 ◼   ► But the best way to do that

01:05:14 ◼   ► is to keep podcasts like the web.

01:05:17 ◼   ► The reason everybody can and did eventually come

01:05:20 ◼   ► to use the web is because it wasn't controlled

01:05:23 ◼   ► by Microsoft or Yahoo or whoever else.

01:05:26 ◼   ► Like it was a thing that anyone can implement

01:05:28 ◼   ► the web browser and anyone can make a website

01:05:29 ◼   ► no one company owns and controls it, that's what let it spread everywhere.

01:05:34 ◼   ► If you try to make Apple the king of podcasts or Android the king of podcasts or whatever,

01:05:40 ◼   ► you're narrowing the number of people who can listen to podcasts, especially if you

01:05:44 ◼   ► pick somebody who has a platform.

01:05:45 ◼   ► Because again, say you took iOS or Android and one of them became the only thing in podcasting

01:05:50 ◼   ► that mattered, you're cutting off half of the market right there.

01:05:52 ◼   ► You want everybody to be able to listen to podcasts really easily, no matter what device

01:05:57 ◼   ► they have, whatever weird thing they buy in their house or have on their person or in

01:06:02 ◼   ► their car or wherever, you want everybody else in the podcast just like everybody can

01:06:06 ◼   ► go to your website.

01:06:07 ◼   ► The reason websites have huge amount of traffic is because everybody can go to websites.

01:06:12 ◼   ► You don't have to have a special kind of computer or a special operating system or a special

01:06:16 ◼   ► application or whatever.

01:06:18 ◼   ► Essentially every platform has some way to browse the web.

01:06:21 ◼   ► And we're at that point with podcasts now.

01:06:23 ◼   ► It's just RSS.

01:06:25 ◼   ► you can make a player for it for any type of thing.

01:06:28 ◼   ► Any move that big podcasts would do

01:06:31 ◼   ► in the hopes of getting like big brand advertising

01:06:33 ◼   ► or making a big podcast that tried to make podcasting

01:06:37 ◼   ► more narrow in that way is shooting themselves in the foot

01:06:40 ◼   ► because those people are out there,

01:06:43 ◼   ► you wanna make them be able to listen to podcasts

01:06:46 ◼   ► no matter where they are, what they're doing,

01:06:47 ◼   ► do not make podcasting tied to a particular store,

01:06:50 ◼   ► a particular application or anything like that.

01:06:51 ◼   ► That'd be so dumb.

01:06:52 ◼   ► This is the beginning of the ad.

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01:09:09 ◼   ► - So we talked about an episode or two ago

01:09:11 ◼   ► how I felt like it's been trendy to dislike the Apple Watch.

01:09:15 ◼   ► Well, it's been trendy to really, really, really freaking love the Amazon Echo.

01:09:21 ◼   ► I do not have one.

01:09:23 ◼   ► I don't know that I've ever...

01:09:24 ◼   ► I mean, sure, probably.

01:09:28 ◼   ► I've never seen one in person to my recollection, but everyone that I know swears by it loves

01:09:33 ◼   ► it, etc.

01:09:34 ◼   ► And so it seems like everyone's getting really infatuated with voice-based control.

01:09:39 ◼   ► And the people who did Siri, which was, you know, that software was eventually bought

01:09:45 ◼   ► up by Apple, and I believe the company was as well.

01:09:48 ◼   ► So a lot of the XSiri people have gone on to create Viv, which is kind of the spiritual

01:09:55 ◼   ► successor to Siri, and they demoed it on Monday.

01:09:59 ◼   ► Now, I didn't have the time to watch the video, but my understanding was this was something

01:10:03 ◼   ► pretty darn impressive.

01:10:04 ◼   ► - Impressive if you don't think about it too much, I guess.

01:10:08 ◼   ► Why do you say that?

01:10:10 ◼   ► I have hound. I've seen the the the viv things. I don't maybe maybe this only bothers people like me

01:10:16 ◼   ► But on the flip side of it. I think none of these things are up to the point where they pass

01:10:23 ◼   ► the regular person

01:10:26 ◼   ► thresholds of

01:10:28 ◼   ► Magic because as we've discussed many times in the past with Siri the problem with Siri and things like that is

01:10:33 ◼   ► And you'll see when you have any kid use Siri for five seconds people immediately jump to oh

01:10:37 ◼   ► this is a little person in my computer, but obviously it's not and as soon as they discover

01:10:42 ◼   ► the very real and very close limits of any of these things, it breaks the illusion. It's

01:10:47 ◼   ► like, oh, I thought this was like a little person on my computer I could talk to. Instead,

01:10:51 ◼   ► it's just a crappy program that's like, basically boils down to like playing a text adventure

01:10:56 ◼   ► game where you have to learn the syntax and what you can say and what you can't say. And

01:11:00 ◼   ► it's disappointing. It's disappointing to people and then they kind of put it in a bin

01:11:03 ◼   ► with I thought it was going to be this magical thing where I can talk to a person in my phone

01:11:07 ◼   ► really it's just like the voice version of the command line where I have to

01:11:13 ◼   ► learn the things that it can do first of all and then I have to learn the ways I

01:11:17 ◼   ► can say the things that it can do and granted there are many ways that you can

01:11:20 ◼   ► say it maybe more than in the average text adventure but probably about the

01:11:23 ◼   ► same as in any good text adventure and the new demo is like showing off context

01:11:28 ◼   ► like oh it kind of remembers last thing I said to it so I can refer back to it

01:11:31 ◼   ► using you know if I as long as they use the right words and they're the it will

01:11:36 ◼   ► understand what I'm talking about and build on my past conversations and it's like I'm having a conversation if you see a demo with a

01:11:42 ◼   ► preset script it is it seems to be very impressive until you realize there is only a very small number of things that you can ask about and

01:11:50 ◼   ► Those things aren't always

01:11:53 ◼   ► interesting do you like it's you want to ask about facts that you can pull out a wall from Afra or

01:11:59 ◼   ► Things having to do with the weather or date and time or unit conversions

01:12:03 ◼   ► Then you can have this amazing but extremely boring conversation about stuff that you don't really care about but if you really want to know

01:12:09 ◼   ► something more complicated

01:12:12 ◼   ► You better hope that's within the problem. I mean, I'm not saying well these are bad products. I think they're amazing

01:12:16 ◼   ► We need to keep advancing us and it's great

01:12:18 ◼   ► But I get like I said as soon as you have a voice talking to you or they can understand what you're saying people

01:12:22 ◼   ► Immediately jump to this is how 9000 or like it's a little person, but it's totally an older person

01:12:28 ◼   ► It's so far from that that there's always the inevitable

01:12:32 ◼   ► Let down

01:12:34 ◼   ► So as we continue to March there progress there

01:12:37 ◼   ► I'm you know

01:12:37 ◼   ► I think that's good

01:12:38 ◼   ► But this this slight diversion with Veeve and or Viv or however you want to say it and all those other ones

01:12:44 ◼   ► bothers me as the type of person who like reads the wire cutter or

01:12:49 ◼   ► Marcos headphones reviews or Marcos light bulb reviews or anything like that and that the the

01:12:55 ◼   ► very boldly stated business model of these companies is

01:12:58 ◼   ► We will make deals with other companies so you can say

01:13:01 ◼   ► you know, have a pizza delivered at my house at 5 p.m. and also send flowers to my mom for Mother's Day.

01:13:06 ◼   ► You're like, "Wow, what an amazing demo! It's like having a personal assistant!"

01:13:09 ◼   ► But you don't get to pick what pizza it is or what company sends the flowers.

01:13:14 ◼   ► The company that makes the product that you're talking to does deals with dominoes and pro flowers,

01:13:20 ◼   ► and that's what gets sent. Not because those are the best flowers or because your assistant knows the best flowers to get for your mom

01:13:25 ◼   ► or the kind of pizza that you like,

01:13:27 ◼   ► But because these are the deals the company whose voice agent that you're talking to made, you know

01:13:32 ◼   ► Made partnerships with and so their incentives are all screwed up

01:13:37 ◼   ► Their incentives of the supposed personal assistant is not to help you get the things that you want in your life. It's to

01:13:43 ◼   ► dutifully follow through on the business deals that the company's made and all these companies are looking for if we make this thing so

01:13:48 ◼   ► Sticky that people love talking to it and just like rely on it as part of their life

01:13:52 ◼   ► Then we can charge people a lot of money to you know, like the same way that Google can charge money for search results

01:13:58 ◼   ► We got everybody typing into our search box now all of a sudden you buy you buy

01:14:02 ◼   ► Advertising keywords or search keywords for us. It's very valuable

01:14:05 ◼   ► Everybody does all their pizza ordering then we can charge whatever pizza company a lot of money

01:14:09 ◼   ► They said did you want on the pizza be the pizza company fulfills pizza requests?

01:14:13 ◼   ► but

01:14:14 ◼   ► You know obviously people like me and I think a lot of people kind of care where their pizza comes from

01:14:19 ◼   ► maybe they don't care so much about where the flowers come from, but

01:14:21 ◼   ► And the model that they should be presenting is, "Here is an artificially intelligent

01:14:27 ◼   ► agent or whatever."

01:14:28 ◼   ► The agent's a good 90s Apple thing.

01:14:31 ◼   ► The knowledge navigator is going to help you in real life.

01:14:34 ◼   ► It's supposed to be helping me.

01:14:35 ◼   ► It's supposed to be like I want it to do things that, you know, if it's going to save me work,

01:14:39 ◼   ► I would go and figure out what the best dishwasher is and what the comparative features are and

01:14:44 ◼   ► stuff like that.

01:14:45 ◼   ► Or, you know, I would, if I moved into a new area, I would, you know, troll reviews to

01:14:49 ◼   ► to try to find out where do people like, you know,

01:14:52 ◼   ► the best pizza or, you know, like ratings or like,

01:14:55 ◼   ► I want it to figure out what I want in my life,

01:14:58 ◼   ► what my needs are and follow through on that.

01:14:59 ◼   ► But I don't know if there's money to be made in that

01:15:01 ◼   ► because we're not willing to pay for that service.

01:15:03 ◼   ► So someone's got to pay and the people who are paying

01:15:05 ◼   ► is Domino's and you're gonna get a stupid Domino's pizza.

01:15:08 ◼   ► - So you get what you deserve.

01:15:10 ◼   ► - Right, and it's just, it's misaligned incentives,

01:15:12 ◼   ► but I don't know the way out of it

01:15:14 ◼   ► because aligned incentives would be,

01:15:16 ◼   ► you pay me $5 a month for the privilege of using

01:15:18 ◼   ► Siri or Veeve and no one wants to do that either because they're not good enough for

01:15:22 ◼   ► five dollars a month. It's like, "Nah, I'll just do the web search myself or I'll just

01:15:25 ◼   ► go to the wire cutter myself," right? So I don't know how you find your way out of this.

01:15:30 ◼   ► It could be, I don't know, it could be that most people are fine with that. They're like,

01:15:34 ◼   ► "I don't really want to know or care what deals you make behind the scenes as long as

01:15:38 ◼   ► somebody comes and picks up my package. I don't care what they ship it by or anything

01:15:42 ◼   ► like just..." They're not as picky. They're not reading reviews about their light bulbs,

01:15:46 ◼   ► right? They're just like, "Whatever, it's just convenient for me to be able to do this and I

01:15:50 ◼   ► don't really care what company or product is involved in. I don't care what deals are made

01:15:55 ◼   ► behind the scenes and I don't care that my needs aren't the most primary thing. It's a service I

01:15:59 ◼   ► get for free. It's built into my phone or I yell it into the air and Amazon Echo does it. I don't

01:16:03 ◼   ► care that all the products are fulfilled through Amazon or, you know, like it's like pushing that

01:16:06 ◼   ► button for paper towels, you know, at least you get to pick because Amazon has a wide variety,

01:16:10 ◼   ► but I don't care that they all come from Amazon. Maybe most people are fine with that.

01:16:15 ◼   ► But for me personally, I don't like it and I also think that the misaligned incentives will just

01:16:21 ◼   ► become a larger and larger problem until and unless these services actually become so good

01:16:27 ◼   ► that people are willing to pay for them. Because wouldn't you pay $5 a month to have a personal

01:16:30 ◼   ► assistant who you could just shout orders to and would do stuff and was not actually a person,

01:16:34 ◼   ► you didn't have to like care about their feelings and well-being or anything? Like that's the dream

01:16:38 ◼   ► of artificial intelligence personal assistants from every movie about the future where you just

01:16:41 ◼   ► you just yell things into the air and things get done.

01:16:43 ◼   ► And wouldn't you love if that assistant

01:16:44 ◼   ► learned more about you and about what you like

01:16:47 ◼   ► and what you dislike and did the research for you

01:16:49 ◼   ► and collaborated with other agents

01:16:51 ◼   ► and just sort of asked your reaction

01:16:53 ◼   ► to the meal you're just eating

01:16:54 ◼   ► instead of you having to hit a star rate.

01:16:56 ◼   ► That's the magical future we think about

01:16:58 ◼   ► and I think everyone would be willing to pay for that

01:17:00 ◼   ► because paying for an actual personal assistant

01:17:01 ◼   ► to do all that stuff, it's really expensive.

01:17:03 ◼   ► $5 a month looks like a bargain.

01:17:05 ◼   ► But we're not there yet,

01:17:07 ◼   ► the products just aren't that good.

01:17:08 ◼   ► So in the meantime, Domino's will be paying them

01:17:10 ◼   ► to deliver you excurable pizza to your house.

01:17:14 ◼   ► - I love that your dream scenario here

01:17:16 ◼   ► is that you can basically have a virtual person

01:17:21 ◼   ► who is totally basically your slave

01:17:23 ◼   ► and you can be a jerk to.

01:17:25 ◼   ► - It's not actually a person, it's just a computer.

01:17:27 ◼   ► But you don't have to be a jerk to it,

01:17:28 ◼   ► but you also don't have to worry about,

01:17:30 ◼   ► they don't sleep, don't eat, don't get annoyed

01:17:34 ◼   ► when you're frustrated, don't get annoyed if you yell,

01:17:36 ◼   ► and that's why we use computers,

01:17:38 ◼   ► because we don't have to have this constant,

01:17:40 ◼   ► we're not trying to emotionally support our computers

01:17:42 ◼   ► most of the time.

01:17:43 ◼   ► We just want them to do what we tell them to do

01:17:45 ◼   ► when we do it, 'cause they're machines

01:17:46 ◼   ► and they're not people, right?

01:17:48 ◼   ► And that's the dream of having the computers,

01:17:51 ◼   ► just think not as a personal assistant,

01:17:53 ◼   ► but rather think of it as like using a computer

01:17:58 ◼   ► without having to sit in front of a computer

01:17:59 ◼   ► and click on things or touch a screen or type things in.

01:18:01 ◼   ► You're just talking into the air and then somewhere else,

01:18:03 ◼   ► a computer is doing your thing.

01:18:04 ◼   ► And the whole machine learning angle,

01:18:07 ◼   ► the same way a personal assistant would learn your preferences and everything, that's what

01:18:12 ◼   ► computers are great at.

01:18:13 ◼   ► That's what Netflix is great at, by seeing what we watch, and we have to help with the

01:18:16 ◼   ► silly way of hitting stars and stuff, but eventually Netflix gets good at thinking,

01:18:19 ◼   ► "I think you will like this movie based on movies you've seen in the past and have liked."

01:18:25 ◼   ► It's incredibly primitive compared to what we could do if we had a conversational, long-term

01:18:29 ◼   ► relationship with a voice-controlled thing that was on our side and was entirely made

01:18:35 ◼   ► to try to make our lives better, but again, there's no business model for that, and the

01:18:40 ◼   ► tech still isn't quite there. But I feel like we can get there eventually. And once we do,

01:18:44 ◼   ► someone is going to get $5 a month from a hell of a lot of people once that becomes

01:18:48 ◼   ► good enough.

01:18:49 ◼   ► Well, but it doesn't have to be that it's $5 a month. I mean, it could be that this

01:18:55 ◼   ► future Siri or what have you takes a cut of whatever it facilitates a sale for.

01:19:01 ◼   ► So like-- - But that's incentivized

01:19:04 ◼   ► to make deals with the highest bidder

01:19:06 ◼   ► who makes crappy pizza.

01:19:07 ◼   ► In fact, the crappy pizza problem.

01:19:09 ◼   ► - Well, perhaps, but first of all,

01:19:10 ◼   ► Domino's Pizza is not crappy.

01:19:12 ◼   ► Second of all-- - Oh my God, it's so bad.

01:19:14 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

01:19:15 ◼   ► - Hi, Jon. - Yeah, I'm with Jon.

01:19:16 ◼   ► Sorry, Casey, that's just an excuse.

01:19:18 ◼   ► - Well, you guys are, you're way too snooty.

01:19:20 ◼   ► Anyway, the point is that,

01:19:22 ◼   ► why couldn't we have a hypothetical conversation

01:19:25 ◼   ► where I say, "Hey, (beep)

01:19:26 ◼   ► "I'd like a pizza, please."

01:19:27 ◼   ► Sure, where would you like it from?

01:19:29 ◼   ► Papa John's or Domino's or what have you mean presumably would have to be some national change, so I'm not it's not

01:19:34 ◼   ► But then how do you get paid? How does that service get paid?

01:19:37 ◼   ► You think it's just taking a cut of that because they were kind of like grub hub or whatever like they'd have to kind of

01:19:41 ◼   ► Opt in the money's got to come from somewhere because unless you want to pay extra for that pizza and like have this you know

01:19:46 ◼   ► Siri surcharge of experts because grub hub is so friggin expensive like there's lots of services that kind of do a small portion of what?

01:19:52 ◼   ► We would imagine Viva Siri doing but all of them the disincentive is

01:19:56 ◼   ► This is great if you have money to burn and you can't be bothered to go someplace and you don't mind your food being

01:20:01 ◼   ► Cold by the time it gets here and you don't mind waiting a long time and half the time

01:20:03 ◼   ► It doesn't work like this. There's so many caveats, but the the money is a big deterrent

01:20:08 ◼   ► Five dollars a month for the blanket service of essentially just connecting the dots to things that you could do themselves

01:20:14 ◼   ► That works financially if you have enough people do it as does Domino's being the exclusive will bring you a crappy pizza provider

01:20:21 ◼   ► but I feel like the percentage of everything is just back to the grubhub model and it's

01:20:26 ◼   ► That has proven to be good for, you know,

01:20:31 ◼   ► in my day we would say yuppies,

01:20:32 ◼   ► but like good for people who with high paying jobs

01:20:35 ◼   ► and not a lot of time and more money,

01:20:39 ◼   ► money is less important to them than their time.

01:20:41 ◼   ► And so they do that.

01:20:42 ◼   ► And even those things you're kind of like,

01:20:45 ◼   ► sometimes that just, it's more worth of you

01:20:47 ◼   ► to go there yourself and get the thing.

01:20:48 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:20:49 ◼   ► - Everyone needs to--

01:20:50 ◼   ► - Would any of us order pizza in that way?

01:20:53 ◼   ► Even if you could like,

01:20:54 ◼   ► So if you could tell at the store, but it charged you 20% on top of that, would you

01:20:58 ◼   ► order pizza that way?

01:20:59 ◼   ► I mean, if I was in a position where I didn't want to sit down at a computer or an iPad

01:21:04 ◼   ► or an iPhone, and I just wanted to within 30 seconds say, "Hey, get me..."

01:21:10 ◼   ► Oh, I forgot.

01:21:11 ◼   ► I can't say that.

01:21:12 ◼   ► Sorry.

01:21:13 ◼   ► Well, it's too late now.

01:21:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:15 ◼   ► What did they say on upgrade?

01:21:18 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:21:19 ◼   ► I wanted to say Aloha.

01:21:20 ◼   ► Aloha, telephone.

01:21:21 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:21:23 ◼   ► Get me a pizza, a large pepperoni, no pineapple,

01:21:28 ◼   ► pizza from Domino's delivered to my house.

01:21:31 ◼   ► - Your bad taste continues.

01:21:33 ◼   ► - You're in favor of this bull siri pepperoni in pineapple?

01:21:38 ◼   ► - I honestly have not tried pepperoni in pineapple yet,

01:21:40 ◼   ► but I do like pineapple and ham.

01:21:42 ◼   ► I don't get that a lot in New York

01:21:44 ◼   ► 'cause they don't really do it here

01:21:45 ◼   ► 'cause it's not canonical, Jon,

01:21:46 ◼   ► but I do enjoy that combo when I can get it.

01:21:50 ◼   ► But yeah, normally, I mean I like pepperoni,

01:21:53 ◼   ► and I like pineapple, so you know.

01:21:55 ◼   ► - There was a ham and pineapple discussion,

01:21:57 ◼   ► but I'm not sure if it's on a podcast

01:21:58 ◼   ► that has yet to be released.

01:21:59 ◼   ► Did you hear me talk about Hawaiian pizza on any podcast?

01:22:02 ◼   ► If not, it hasn't been released, so I won't spoil it.

01:22:04 ◼   ► - I did hear you talk about it.

01:22:06 ◼   ► I forget which show it was on.

01:22:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, same here.

01:22:09 ◼   ► - It might have been when you guessed it on upgrade.

01:22:10 ◼   ► You did that recently, right?

01:22:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe that was it.

01:22:12 ◼   ► But anyway, yeah, I don't wanna get into it now.

01:22:15 ◼   ► - All right, so the point is, the point is.

01:22:16 ◼   ► - The point is Casey has terrible taste in pizza,

01:22:19 ◼   ► so his answer to this question is irrelevant.

01:22:21 ◼   ► - Whatever, if you, Marco and John slash you--

01:22:25 ◼   ► - Switch to hamburgers if you need to.

01:22:27 ◼   ► - Oh, no, because then I'm gonna tell you

01:22:28 ◼   ► I think Wendy's is just fine,

01:22:29 ◼   ► and then you're gonna bust my balls about that too.

01:22:31 ◼   ► - All right, what are they like in the South?

01:22:32 ◼   ► How about barbecue?

01:22:33 ◼   ► - Oh, God. - Yeah, would you just get it

01:22:34 ◼   ► from Dallas Barbecue because it doesn't matter?

01:22:36 ◼   ► - Oh. - Would you say,

01:22:37 ◼   ► well, barbecue is barbecue.

01:22:38 ◼   ► I mean, I guess Dallas Barbecue is fine.

01:22:40 ◼   ► - But for all these things, though,

01:22:42 ◼   ► the money's gonna be coming from taking a cut.

01:22:44 ◼   ► The money's gotta come from somewhere,

01:22:45 ◼   ► so it's gotta be a surcharge, right?

01:22:46 ◼   ► Because unless you, you have to have deals

01:22:49 ◼   ► If you're going to take a cut, like the price remains the same, but they cut us in, you

01:22:52 ◼   ► have to have deals for that.

01:22:53 ◼   ► And if you don't, then you just have to add a surcharge because then you don't need deals

01:22:56 ◼   ► on either end.

01:22:57 ◼   ► But the surcharge is usually pretty significant.

01:23:00 ◼   ► And that's in addition to whatever additional things they're charging you to deliver it

01:23:03 ◼   ► plus tip and all that other stuff.

01:23:05 ◼   ► Well, that's the thing exactly though, because the delivery surcharge is a surcharge.

01:23:09 ◼   ► You could, if you wanted, get in your car or ride your bike or walk or what have you

01:23:14 ◼   ► and go fetch your pizza.

01:23:17 ◼   ► But sometimes you just want the convenience of this meal magically showing up at your

01:23:22 ◼   ► doorstep.

01:23:23 ◼   ► I personally cannot imagine a time where I would want to say, "Hey, Ahoy!

01:23:29 ◼   ► Telephone!

01:23:30 ◼   ► Get me a Domino's large pizza."

01:23:31 ◼   ► But there are certainly people in the world that may be willing to pay a dollar or two,

01:23:37 ◼   ► or whatever the case may be, to Ahoy!

01:23:39 ◼   ► Telephone!

01:23:40 ◼   ► Themselves a pizza.

01:23:41 ◼   ► I mean, Domino's lets you order pizza with emoji by some mechanism I've never tried.

01:23:45 ◼   ► So I would imagine that there are people

01:23:47 ◼   ► that are doing that too.

01:23:48 ◼   ► - You ever wonder why Domino's has to make it so easy

01:23:51 ◼   ► to order their pizza?

01:23:53 ◼   ► - You know, fine, okay.

01:23:54 ◼   ► If you wanna believe Domino's is gross, that's fine.

01:23:57 ◼   ► All I know is, just listen to the forthcoming episode

01:24:00 ◼   ► of Analog where we probably won't cut the discussion

01:24:03 ◼   ► about people that are too good for chain restaurants

01:24:06 ◼   ► and how much I hate all of them,

01:24:07 ◼   ► which is basically everyone in the chat room

01:24:09 ◼   ► and the two of you.

01:24:10 ◼   ► - There are good chain restaurants.

01:24:12 ◼   ► There just are very few good chain pizza restaurants

01:24:14 ◼   ► and I think most of them would be local chains

01:24:16 ◼   ► that you wouldn't have heard of.

01:24:18 ◼   ► But it's fine, no it's fine.

01:24:19 ◼   ► Also, if you're gonna have chain pizza,

01:24:21 ◼   ► I'm not sure Domino's is even the best one of those.

01:24:24 ◼   ► - Well what would it be?

01:24:25 ◼   ► - I was always a bigger fan of like the really crappy ones,

01:24:28 ◼   ► like Little Caesars or Pizza Hut,

01:24:30 ◼   ► because it's like, - Come on, what are you doing?

01:24:32 ◼   ► - If you're gonna go with some really crappy

01:24:34 ◼   ► big brand pizza, you might as well go like super crappy

01:24:38 ◼   ► and get like all the junk food value of it.

01:24:41 ◼   ► - I feel like I would get something frozen

01:24:43 ◼   ► the supermarket before I would take the delivery from any chain.

01:24:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I did a lot of those too.

01:24:48 ◼   ► Like a lot of like the big- And those are not good.

01:24:50 ◼   ► Don't get me wrong, they are terrible.

01:24:52 ◼   ► That's how bad I think the delivery is.

01:24:53 ◼   ► You would take a Red Baron pizza over Domino's.

01:24:56 ◼   ► Not Red Baron, but maybe something else.

01:24:59 ◼   ► What is the thing that's not delivery?

01:25:01 ◼   ► It's DiGiorno.

01:25:02 ◼   ► Man, that marketing works.

01:25:03 ◼   ► Nice.

01:25:04 ◼   ► That would kind of be like a match-up.

01:25:06 ◼   ► Like even- Anyway, like we shouldn't have gotten to the pizza topic.

01:25:11 ◼   ► How is it so- Why?

01:25:13 ◼   ► So moving on from-- - I can't imagine.

01:25:15 ◼   ► No, I can't get past this.

01:25:17 ◼   ► I can't imagine a world where somebody says,

01:25:20 ◼   ► "Man, I'd really like some pizza,

01:25:22 ◼   ► "and I'd like to get Domino's."

01:25:25 ◼   ► And you have to be like, "Mm, Domino's is not good enough

01:25:29 ◼   ► "for me, I'm sorry, we're gonna have to go somewhere else."

01:25:31 ◼   ► - Well, you know, sometimes you have to eat things

01:25:33 ◼   ► you don't like, but I think, I'm even,

01:25:36 ◼   ► this is more of an issue for me even than Marco's thing,

01:25:37 ◼   ► 'cause Marco's like, he has this fancy coffee, right?

01:25:39 ◼   ► But when he's on the road, he'll get Starbucks.

01:25:41 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Precisely.

01:25:42 ◼   ► When I'm on the road, the equivalent of me is I would choose not to have coffee.

01:25:46 ◼   ► Sometimes I do.

01:25:47 ◼   ► Like that's the level I'm at with…

01:25:49 ◼   ► Same thing with pizza and bagel.

01:25:50 ◼   ► I just don't get pizza if I can't get good pizza.

01:25:54 ◼   ► And it's fine.

01:25:55 ◼   ► I eat something else.

01:25:56 ◼   ► And if someone else gets bad pizza, I'll eat it.

01:25:57 ◼   ► You know, you gotta eat to stay alive, right?

01:25:59 ◼   ► But I will never choose it.

01:26:00 ◼   ► Whereas Marco, because he's addicted, will choose to get Starbucks because it's like,

01:26:05 ◼   ► "Well, it's better than no coffee."

01:26:06 ◼   ► But no, it's not better than no pizza.

01:26:08 ◼   ► No pizza beats Domino's pizza.

01:26:10 ◼   ► Oh my God.

01:26:11 ◼   ► If I, listeners, if I ever get to the point that I'm this fussy about fricking anything...

01:26:16 ◼   ► It's not fussy, it's just like, it's just a preference.

01:26:19 ◼   ► Like I don't consider it the same category of food.

01:26:21 ◼   ► It's like I'll just pick a different—there's plenty of kind of foods to choose from.

01:26:24 ◼   ► Like I'm not that picky about burgers, right?

01:26:27 ◼   ► Many more options for burgers, including ones from chains and lots of things from chains,

01:26:30 ◼   ► but when it comes to pizza, I will just pick a different food product.

01:26:33 ◼   ► And I don't think it's being snobbish, it's just kind of like that's—I don't like that.

01:26:37 ◼   ► Doesn't taste good to me.

01:26:38 ◼   ► I don't want it.

01:26:40 ◼   ► and I don't need it for chemical reasons,

01:26:41 ◼   ► so I will just pick something else.

01:26:44 ◼   ► I'd rather have a sandwich from Subway than bad pizza.

01:26:46 ◼   ► - Oh, I don't know about that.

01:26:47 ◼   ► - And sandwiches from Subway are probably

01:26:50 ◼   ► the bottom rung of thing that you can call sandwich.

01:26:53 ◼   ► As people know in the chat room,

01:26:54 ◼   ► we've lost the Domino's brand sponsorship

01:26:56 ◼   ► and we're losing the Subway brand sponsorship

01:26:58 ◼   ► from the show, it's fine.

01:26:59 ◼   ► - This is why we can't have brand advertisers in podcasts

01:27:01 ◼   ► 'cause we've already pissed off all the brands.

01:27:03 ◼   ► - We'll take Waffle House sponsorships though,

01:27:05 ◼   ► because I feel like they embrace what they are.

01:27:08 ◼   ► - I'm more of a steak and shake person myself,

01:27:10 ◼   ► I don't even understand why Subway is so bad. You're watching them create it in front of you.

01:27:16 ◼   ► You don't understand why Subway is bad? Please, Casey, please stop. Please stop.

01:27:19 ◼   ► I don't.

01:27:20 ◼   ► No, I'm trying to help you here.

01:27:23 ◼   ► I don't want your help.

01:27:25 ◼   ► Subway is not the hill you want to die on.

01:27:27 ◼   ► No, I'm not saying that it's the hill I want to die on. I don't want your help.

01:27:30 ◼   ► I want to be able to go to any friggin restaurant I want and be

01:27:34 ◼   ► genuinely happy with the meal I've had. I have gone to Subway, although not lately, and been

01:27:39 ◼   ► Genuinely happy with the meal I've had are there better sandwiches in the world abso-freakin-lutely does that count as a restaurant sure oh

01:27:46 ◼   ► I haven't been this angry at you two since the Mac Pro discussions

01:27:50 ◼   ► Just if I ever get this fussy and high-maintenance just kick me in the shins

01:27:57 ◼   ► What vodka would you drink Casey would you drink that they hit the big handle of like the cheap Russian?

01:28:02 ◼   ► Whatever vodka that comes in the plastic bottle would you drink that he just got to run it through Brita filters, and it's fine

01:28:06 ◼   ► How do you know that, John?

01:28:10 ◼   ► No, you weren't privy to this.

01:28:12 ◼   ► Because it's the stupid secret of vodkas.

01:28:14 ◼   ► Once I saw that, I don't drink anything about it, but once I saw that thing with the filters,

01:28:19 ◼   ► I'm like, "All right, everyone who deals with vodkas just..."

01:28:21 ◼   ► I thought that was BS.

01:28:22 ◼   ► I know exactly what you're referring to, but I thought that was BS.

01:28:25 ◼   ► Maybe it is BS.

01:28:26 ◼   ► I might be wrong.

01:28:27 ◼   ► I'm entirely willing to believe it, especially with alcohol.

01:28:30 ◼   ► After the first few drinks anyway, you can just secretly switch to the crappier stuff,

01:28:34 ◼   ► and no one cares.

01:28:35 ◼   ► Well, that's true.

01:28:36 ◼   ► Here's the thing, I would absolutely choose a fussy vodka like Tito's if I had the choice,

01:28:41 ◼   ► but if I don't have the choice, or if I'm, like a rail vodka's on happy hour, you know

01:28:45 ◼   ► what you do?

01:28:46 ◼   ► You just put a couple lemons in there, wait a second to get a little bit watered down

01:28:49 ◼   ► with a little bit of lemon in it, and then you're fine.

01:28:52 ◼   ► I'd prefer the Tito's for sure, but I am perfectly happy with a slightly watered down, slightly

01:28:57 ◼   ► lemony vodka, and I'd be happier about that having saved a bunch of money off getting

01:29:03 ◼   ► a rail one instead of a Tito's, I would be happy with that. Although that is the best

01:29:08 ◼   ► example I've heard so far of me being fussy.

01:29:11 ◼   ► Wouldn't you ruin like a $13 Brita filter by converting your cheaper vodka into $13

01:29:17 ◼   ► more expensive vodka?

01:29:18 ◼   ► You'd still come out ahead if you run it through enough times so it's equivalent to like the

01:29:23 ◼   ► $500 bottle.

01:29:25 ◼   ► Is there $500 vodka? Vodka's not that good.

01:29:27 ◼   ► I'm sure there is. I'm absolutely sure there is.

01:29:29 ◼   ► Oh, there absolutely is. And I should also note that my fussy vodka, Tito's, is like the cheapest of the fussy vodkas.

01:29:36 ◼   ► Which is part of the reason why I like it so much.

01:29:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I remember when you were coming over and we bought a bottle so that you would not judge our vodka collection because you're so judgy of things.

01:29:45 ◼   ► I remember being very surprised how inexpensive it was, because the way you talked about it, I thought it would be like a really premium priced one.

01:29:52 ◼   ► But nope, turns out vodka's just terrible, so nobody prices it very high.

01:29:55 ◼   ► - It's not terrible.

01:29:57 ◼   ► Are you a gin drinker?

01:29:58 ◼   ► You are a gin drinker, aren't you?

01:30:00 ◼   ► Oh, how's your grass taste?

01:30:02 ◼   ► - I occasionally drink gin.

01:30:04 ◼   ► Not by itself.

01:30:05 ◼   ► I mean, I prefer gin-based drinks like Martini's

01:30:07 ◼   ► to drinking it straight, but.

01:30:09 ◼   ► - Oh, God, a gin Martini.

01:30:11 ◼   ► I forgot. - Honestly,

01:30:11 ◼   ► I'm not that much of a liquor person.

01:30:13 ◼   ► I much prefer either not drinking or drinking beer.

01:30:16 ◼   ► - Oh, so you like to drink your bread.

01:30:17 ◼   ► I understand.

01:30:18 ◼   ► I'm gonna get so much angry email,

01:30:21 ◼   ► I'm gonna have to quit the show.

01:30:23 ◼   ► It's gonna be the worst.

01:30:24 ◼   ► - I tried to help you with the subway thing,

01:30:26 ◼   ► it's not too late to ask Marco to cut it out.

01:30:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:30:29 ◼   ► - Oh, this is staying in.

01:30:31 ◼   ► - No, you can let it stay in.

01:30:32 ◼   ► - Try to get this back on the rails slightly.

01:30:34 ◼   ► I will say, John, you were seemingly puzzled

01:30:37 ◼   ► by the idea of why would somebody pay a 20% premium

01:30:41 ◼   ► for the convenience of ordering through this,

01:30:42 ◼   ► through a cylinder robot voice.

01:30:44 ◼   ► - Not why, but that your audience is limited.

01:30:47 ◼   ► Because I know those services exist

01:30:48 ◼   ► and I know the people who use them,

01:30:49 ◼   ► but they're never gonna be mass market

01:30:50 ◼   ► because 20% is just too much for most people.

01:30:53 ◼   ► - I'll tell you what though.

01:30:54 ◼   ► I would probably pay roughly that premium

01:30:57 ◼   ► to avoid talking to somebody on the phone.

01:31:00 ◼   ► - I hear ya.

01:31:01 ◼   ► - Again, yeah, I know, I understand.

01:31:03 ◼   ► - If that was my only alternative,

01:31:05 ◼   ► 'cause a lot of the places around here,

01:31:07 ◼   ► in the area that I think Jon and the both of us live in,

01:31:11 ◼   ► there's not a lot of chains present.

01:31:13 ◼   ► And a lot of the places you order from

01:31:14 ◼   ► are just independently owned places.

01:31:16 ◼   ► And so anything that relies on really convenient,

01:31:21 ◼   ► you can order with our app or things like that,

01:31:23 ◼   ► most of the places around here don't support that

01:31:24 ◼   ► 'cause they're not a big enough operation

01:31:27 ◼   ► to be integrated that way or to have their own app

01:31:29 ◼   ► or whatever else, which means A,

01:31:31 ◼   ► I can't use Apple Pay anywhere.

01:31:33 ◼   ► I can't even use my chip card anywhere

01:31:36 ◼   ► in most places either.

01:31:37 ◼   ► And B, they don't support any of these

01:31:41 ◼   ► automated ways of ordering.

01:31:42 ◼   ► So if I wanna order something,

01:31:43 ◼   ► I'm still doing it the way the San Francisco people think

01:31:45 ◼   ► is barbaric of calling them on the phone

01:31:49 ◼   ► and placing an order for delivery

01:31:50 ◼   ► or going and picking it up in my car.

01:31:52 ◼   ► And I hate talking on the phone so much, especially--

01:31:56 ◼   ► - Me too.

01:31:57 ◼   ► - Nerdy introverts with disposable income,

01:31:59 ◼   ► again, it's a narrow market.