ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I'm glad Honda's perfect.

00:00:02 ◼   ► Wow.

00:00:03 ◼   ► It doesn't even take premium fuel.

00:00:08 ◼   ► Yeah, so this is about bringing the iPhones in for the crescent moon problem and the various

00:00:13 ◼   ► experiences people had and what the Apple geniuses asked them to do to their phone and

00:00:18 ◼   ► what happened to the phone when it was taken into the back room and all sorts of stuff

00:00:21 ◼   ► like that.

00:00:22 ◼   ► So one theme was some people are super angry that we don't know this stuff.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Like it makes me so angry to hear you talk about genius stuff that you don't know about.

00:00:33 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, we don't know.

00:00:34 ◼   ► And then plenty of people tell us.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Like that's kind of how the show works.

00:00:38 ◼   ► We say, "I wonder what does happen in the back room."

00:00:40 ◼   ► And then a bunch of Apple geniuses anonymously email us and tell us what happens in the back

00:00:43 ◼   ► room.

00:00:44 ◼   ► So that was one theme.

00:00:45 ◼   ► And by the way, I can relate to that.

00:00:47 ◼   ► When you hear people talking about stuff on a podcast and you know the answer, but no

00:00:52 ◼   ► one on the show knows the answer because you're an Apple genius or a former Apple genius and

00:00:56 ◼   ► You hear the people thinking, "I wonder if it's this."

00:00:59 ◼   ► Like all of us offered various ideas of what it could be or whatever.

00:01:03 ◼   ► So that can be frustrating, but that's also part of the fun of podcasting.

00:01:06 ◼   ► The second theme that I saw emerge from the very large volume of feedback we got from

00:01:11 ◼   ► Apple Geniuses X.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Apple Geniuses are people who are Apple Genius adjacent.

00:01:16 ◼   ► They were all cagey about what their jobs were, and they all wanted to be anonymous

00:01:20 ◼   ► for the most part.

00:01:21 ◼   ► was that things are actually slightly different

00:01:24 ◼   ► from Apple Store to Apple Store.

00:01:26 ◼   ► We got email from geniuses in different countries,

00:01:30 ◼   ► in different states in the United States,

00:01:33 ◼   ► and they all describe what their store does.

00:01:35 ◼   ► And there's a commonality,

00:01:36 ◼   ► like we'll get to that when we get to the answers.

00:01:38 ◼   ► There is an answer to all of our questions last time,

00:01:40 ◼   ► but some stores were like,

00:01:42 ◼   ► "Our store tends to do this,

00:01:43 ◼   ► "except occasionally we do that.

00:01:44 ◼   ► "Our store always does this and doesn't do it."

00:01:46 ◼   ► Like subtle differences in policy

00:01:48 ◼   ► that I assume are like maybe at the discretion

00:01:51 ◼   ► of the store manager or just kind of like

00:01:53 ◼   ► what they tend to do, other people delving into details

00:01:56 ◼   ► of how the geniuses are rated by their managers

00:02:00 ◼   ► based on certain metrics that have to do with

00:02:02 ◼   ► how they choose to do discretionary things.

00:02:04 ◼   ► Anyway, I was surprised at the variety,

00:02:07 ◼   ► at how much things can vary from store to store.

00:02:09 ◼   ► And these are not things that the people writing in

00:02:11 ◼   ► presented as things that might vary.

00:02:13 ◼   ► The only way we discovered that they vary

00:02:15 ◼   ► is by the sheer volume of feedback.

00:02:17 ◼   ► you know, oh, like these five people said they always do this,

00:02:19 ◼   ► and these four people said they always do something slightly different.

00:02:22 ◼   ► And all those people are not presenting that as a thing that they think varies.

00:02:24 ◼   ► They think like all Apple stores do this, but they actually do vary a surprising amount.

00:02:29 ◼   ► And that kind of matches up with, you know, the experience even just that you two had in terms of,

00:02:34 ◼   ► if I bring it in at the end of the day and the store is going to close,

00:02:36 ◼   ► maybe they'll give me a replacement phone instead of trying to repair,

00:02:40 ◼   ► or they'll just tell me to come back the next day, you know,

00:02:42 ◼   ► or if you, you know, if you have iOS 9 or a beta on it,

00:02:45 ◼   ► the machine can't replace it, so they do that.

00:02:47 ◼   ► Lots of variations from store to store.

00:02:50 ◼   ► But anyway, we're not really interested in,

00:02:52 ◼   ► I'm interested in the variations

00:02:54 ◼   ► 'cause I find it interesting that there is apparently

00:02:58 ◼   ► so much discretion from one store to the other.

00:03:00 ◼   ► But the common stuff is what we're gonna try

00:03:02 ◼   ► to get to in the feedback, so one of you

00:03:03 ◼   ► can try summarizing the answers

00:03:06 ◼   ► to all of our questions from last week.

00:03:07 ◼   ► - All right, let me take a stab at this very quickly.

00:03:08 ◼   ► So the general theme seems to be

00:03:11 ◼   ► that the reason that a genius will ask you

00:03:14 ◼   ► turn off Find My iPhone. There's a couple of reasons actually. Number one, it's to prove

00:03:18 ◼   ► that that is your phone. And you haven't stolen the phone and, you know, claimed that something

00:03:25 ◼   ► is broken or perhaps something is broken, and you're trying to get a perfectly functional

00:03:30 ◼   ► phone out of the deal. So the most obvious answer was, we want you to prove that it's

00:03:35 ◼   ► indeed yours. Subsequent to that, if it comes that they need to replace the phone, according

00:03:42 ◼   ► to the geniuses, if I understood them correctly, they, the activation lock is tied in some

00:03:48 ◼   ► way shape or form to Find My iPhone. And so if they screw something up or something is

00:03:54 ◼   ► just fundamentally broken and they need to give you a new phone, they're going to want

00:03:58 ◼   ► to recycle or remanufacture is the word I heard used a lot, remanufactured the phone

00:04:06 ◼   ► that you've just given up. And they can't do that unless Find My iPhone is off because

00:04:10 ◼   ► because they have no back door to this.

00:04:12 ◼   ► - I think that summary's accurate.

00:04:14 ◼   ► The most common reason we heard cited

00:04:15 ◼   ► was proof of ownership for a reason,

00:04:18 ◼   ► because apparently people bringing in stolen phones

00:04:20 ◼   ► and going through this whole thing

00:04:21 ◼   ► or intentionally breaking part of it,

00:04:23 ◼   ► like opening it up and disconnecting the home button

00:04:25 ◼   ► and bringing it in saying,

00:04:26 ◼   ► "Oh, the home button doesn't work with stolen phones,"

00:04:28 ◼   ► was apparently a very common thing.

00:04:30 ◼   ► So that is the primary reason

00:04:33 ◼   ► is you're proving you're on the phone.

00:04:34 ◼   ► And then the other reasons I'm still a little bit fuzzy on,

00:04:37 ◼   ► but we got a lot of,

00:04:38 ◼   ► What you summarized is the common answer, I think.

00:04:40 ◼   ► All right.

00:04:40 ◼   ► So that's the Find My iPhone portion.

00:04:42 ◼   ► Now, the passcode was interesting.

00:04:46 ◼   ► I didn't realize the order of operations

00:04:50 ◼   ► that happens once my phone disappeared

00:04:52 ◼   ► to get the crescent moon repaired.

00:04:56 ◼   ► So apparently what happens is they go to the back room,

00:04:59 ◼   ► and they use this little clampy thing that

00:05:04 ◼   ► has suction cups on it to peel apart the phone once they've

00:05:07 ◼   ► removed the couple of screws that are on the bottom of it.

00:05:10 ◼   ► Then they replace the screen, and with the screen is the touch ID sensor and a bunch

00:05:14 ◼   ► of other things.

00:05:15 ◼   ► I don't remember the list off the top of my head.

00:05:17 ◼   ► But the key is, then they put it into this big black calibration machine.

00:05:22 ◼   ► And they are not allowed, or told anyway, not to give you your phone back unless you

00:05:26 ◼   ► pass calibration.

00:05:28 ◼   ► And apparently the way you pass calibration is, among other things, they put an app on

00:05:32 ◼   ► your phone temporarily that interacts with the calibration machine in order to calibrate

00:05:36 ◼   ► the screen and make sure the screen is working.

00:05:38 ◼   ► Now this is important because they can't put this app on your phone or do any of those

00:05:41 ◼   ► other things without you having either given them your passcode or just taken off the passcode.

00:05:47 ◼   ► So they run this thing through, they run your phone through this calibration machine just

00:05:50 ◼   ► to make sure everything's functional.

00:05:51 ◼   ► And if it passes calibration, you get your phone back that has a new screen, new touch

00:05:55 ◼   ► ID, et cetera.

00:05:56 ◼   ► If it doesn't pass calibration, then they'll just hand you a new phone and say, "Be on

00:06:01 ◼   ► your way."

00:06:02 ◼   ► said that we also permit customers to decline giving us the passcode with the

00:06:06 ◼   ► expectation that we'll perform this functionality check with the customer.

00:06:09 ◼   ► Some of the geniuses who said this said that they trusted the machine more than

00:06:13 ◼   ► like checking the functionality with the people. I would trust the machine more

00:06:16 ◼   ► too, especially for screen calibration type stuff. It's not clear to me

00:06:20 ◼   ► whether that can work with the passcode off or not. I think there's some feedback

00:06:23 ◼   ► related to that in there. But anyway, you would think that we'd be nailing this

00:06:26 ◼   ► down, but there are subtle differences between all the feedback that we got and

00:06:30 ◼   ► And you can't tell the subtle differences are significant or just differences in phrasing or whatever, but bottom line in the passcode is

00:06:36 ◼   ► they want to make sure that if they change something about your phone that all the stuff that's supposed to work still works.

00:06:43 ◼   ► And the other thing I just wanted to clarify a little bit is when I said an app with the calibration machine

00:06:48 ◼   ► I may have the details a little wrong about that.

00:06:50 ◼   ► I think we had heard talk of a custom ROM or a custom firmware.

00:06:55 ◼   ► We've heard talks, a talk from the feedback that it was an app.

00:06:59 ◼   ► The point just being that something happens on your phone that interacts with this machine

00:07:03 ◼   ► in order to make sure everything works right.

00:07:05 ◼   ► All right, anything else on the repair things?

00:07:09 ◼   ► I don't have anything else.

00:07:10 ◼   ► I feel like all we have done is initiated another torrent of clarifications from geniuses,

00:07:14 ◼   ► which is fine.

00:07:15 ◼   ► How about this?

00:07:16 ◼   ► Why don't we just say right now we're not going to be talking about this anymore?

00:07:19 ◼   ► So please, you don't have to even email us about it.

00:07:20 ◼   ► We're done with this topic.

00:07:21 ◼   ► Please, for the love of God.

00:07:22 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I don't think there's anything more productive to get out of it because we

00:07:26 ◼   ► wondered why they want you to have Find My iPhone, and I think we got a solid answer

00:07:30 ◼   ► on that to prove that you own it.

00:07:33 ◼   ► And then the passcode stuff and the other things, and when you get a new phone and when

00:07:36 ◼   ► you get a replacement and all that other stuff, I've got enough information to understand

00:07:40 ◼   ► what they're doing.

00:07:42 ◼   ► I don't think we implied that there was anything sinister going on.

00:07:44 ◼   ► I think we were just wondering, and I don't think there's anything sinister going on,

00:07:48 ◼   ► so I think we're all satisfied on that front.

00:07:50 ◼   ► Marco still wants the ability to, you know, this one person said they have, basically

00:07:55 ◼   ► the ability to test everything without having you unlock your thing with a passcode.

00:08:01 ◼   ► But anyway, that's – we'll probably get clarification on that.

00:08:06 ◼   ► I think I probably won't be able to help following up on that.

00:08:09 ◼   ► You know, I totally withdraw my argument just because I don't want to get any more mail

00:08:11 ◼   ► about it.

00:08:12 ◼   ► I'm so done with this topic.

00:08:13 ◼   ► Just –

00:08:14 ◼   ► Hold on, we're not there.

00:08:15 ◼   ► One quick – I just wanted to say thank you to the geniuses that did write in.

00:08:17 ◼   ► As much as we're joking, I, for one, and I think I speak for at least John, I for one

00:08:24 ◼   ► appreciated hearing all of this.

00:08:28 ◼   ► And I know a lot of you, and I'm not trying to be funny, I know a lot of you probably

00:08:31 ◼   ► felt like that was a risky thing to write into us and share any sort of information.

00:08:36 ◼   ► So I speak for all of us, even those of us who are grumbling, in saying thank you for

00:08:41 ◼   ► what you have already written.

00:08:42 ◼   ► But I agree, I think we've got the gist now.

00:08:45 ◼   ► So thank you.

00:08:46 ◼   ► All right, Marco, what would you like to talk about?

00:08:48 ◼   ► - Anything else?

00:08:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:08:50 ◼   ► So let's quickly, very fast,

00:08:53 ◼   ► this is how you do follow-up, guys, very fast follow-up.

00:08:55 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:08:56 ◼   ► Last episode, we talked about the live photos mode

00:08:59 ◼   ► on the 6S.

00:09:00 ◼   ► I said that it was most likely dumping the entire sensor

00:09:04 ◼   ► at 12 megapixels in a very fast burst to make those videos.

00:09:08 ◼   ► You can see in John Gruber's review,

00:09:11 ◼   ► which is excellent, you should read it,

00:09:12 ◼   ► that the resolution is substantially lower than that.

00:09:14 ◼   ► It is not dumping it at 12 megapixels for the video.

00:09:16 ◼   ► It's basically taking a lower resolution video,

00:09:19 ◼   ► it's like 1440 by something,

00:09:21 ◼   ► and it's one of those things like it looks fine on the phone

00:09:24 ◼   ► I wouldn't even say it looks good on the phone.

00:09:26 ◼   ► It looks fine on the phone.

00:09:28 ◼   ► On any more inspection than that,

00:09:31 ◼   ► any larger viewing or any close viewing,

00:09:34 ◼   ► it does not look very good,

00:09:35 ◼   ► but it looks good enough on the phone.

00:09:37 ◼   ► - Does it look good enough on the phone?

00:09:38 ◼   ► I don't know. (laughs)

00:09:39 ◼   ► - It is a very weird feature.

00:09:41 ◼   ► I think it's cool.

00:09:43 ◼   ► I think it's an interesting idea,

00:09:46 ◼   ► but the quality is not amazing.

00:09:48 ◼   ► And it's not gonna be for preserving things in high def.

00:09:55 ◼   ► It's gonna be for a ha ha funny look at this moment

00:09:58 ◼   ► surrounding kind of things.

00:10:01 ◼   ► If you want to actually have video of something,

00:10:04 ◼   ► just shoot video.

00:10:05 ◼   ► It looks way better when it's in video mode.

00:10:07 ◼   ► - One way or another, I am really, really excited

00:10:11 ◼   ► and amp to see this because I really think this could be extremely cool.

00:10:16 ◼   ► A lot of times when I'm taking pictures with either my phone or my big camera, I really

00:10:22 ◼   ► wish I had either context or even just a crappy still from a half second before I actually

00:10:30 ◼   ► hit the shutter.

00:10:31 ◼   ► And I'm really, really excited to see this.

00:10:34 ◼   ► I think it should be really cool.

00:10:35 ◼   ► Now, it may end up that I get my iPhone 6s, which by the way is in Louisville, not that

00:10:40 ◼   ► I've been looking. I will get my iPhone 6s, try it, and think it's crap, but I don't know.

00:10:46 ◼   ► I'm really excited for it, and it just occurred to me, I am not saying that just because I

00:10:50 ◼   ► want to sound enthusiastic about something. I genuinely am enthusiastic and excited about

00:10:55 ◼   ► this.

00:10:56 ◼   ► Yeah, for me, I'm most excited, reading all these reviews and everything, I'm most excited

00:10:59 ◼   ► about 3D Touch, honestly. And also, the performance increase was way bigger than I expected.

00:11:05 ◼   ► Yeah, my goodness. I feel like they talked about it, but I don't know. When you see it

00:11:08 ◼   ► in the keynote or special event.

00:11:10 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, every year they say,

00:11:11 ◼   ► "Now it's even, you know, it's 20% faster, 80% faster."

00:11:14 ◼   ► But, you know, usually, a lot of times,

00:11:16 ◼   ► they cherry-pick that metric to be like the maximum

00:11:19 ◼   ► and in reality, it's maybe only 30% faster,

00:11:22 ◼   ► which is still great for one year

00:11:23 ◼   ► of semiconductor advancement,

00:11:25 ◼   ► especially compared to the world of PCs and Macs.

00:11:27 ◼   ► But this is one of those years where, you know,

00:11:30 ◼   ► some years it makes a bigger jump than others

00:11:32 ◼   ► and this is one of those years

00:11:33 ◼   ► where it's a noteworthy big jump.

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00:13:58 ◼   ► So big week Marco

00:14:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know what, we might as well go right to

00:14:06 ◼   ► the main controversy of the week.

00:14:08 ◼   ► The colored activity rings.

00:14:10 ◼   ► - I don't get why that's such a big friggin' deal.

00:14:14 ◼   ► Like, I don't like that it's color,

00:14:16 ◼   ► but I seriously am like, whatever.

00:14:19 ◼   ► But man, the internet's upset.

00:14:21 ◼   ► - Is it only color on the modular face?

00:14:24 ◼   ► - No.

00:14:24 ◼   ► - I think--

00:14:25 ◼   ► - Is it simple or the other one, that it's color as well?

00:14:29 ◼   ► - It's on utility, where it's color.

00:14:30 ◼   ► - That's the one.

00:14:31 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's what everyone's mad about

00:14:32 ◼   ► because Utility, which is the face I use

00:14:34 ◼   ► and I have the activity ring on it,

00:14:36 ◼   ► Utility is, well it was previously,

00:14:40 ◼   ► a very kind of restrained design.

00:14:42 ◼   ► It really, you could have called it simple.

00:14:44 ◼   ► Like it is a very simple design

00:14:46 ◼   ► if you don't crap it up with a bunch of stuff.

00:14:48 ◼   ► It is a very good design and many people are very upset

00:14:52 ◼   ► about the activity rings now being these bright colors

00:14:56 ◼   ► that match their colors in the activity app

00:14:58 ◼   ► rather than the previous monochrome version.

00:15:02 ◼   ► - Gotta say the upgrade experience, so watchOS,

00:15:05 ◼   ► it's watchOS 2, right?

00:15:06 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:15:07 ◼   ► - I was very confused by it,

00:15:08 ◼   ► 'cause first of all I tried to do it at work,

00:15:09 ◼   ► and that didn't work because the watch

00:15:11 ◼   ► wants to be connected to the charger,

00:15:12 ◼   ► and of course I don't have my watch charger work,

00:15:14 ◼   ► so fine, I wait 'til I get home and do it.

00:15:16 ◼   ► But I did like the phone part of it then

00:15:17 ◼   ► where it downloads the OS, right?

00:15:19 ◼   ► I get home and I put my watch on the charger,

00:15:22 ◼   ► and I let it do the update and it goes long,

00:15:24 ◼   ► and then I come back later, looks like it's all done,

00:15:26 ◼   ► and I pick up my phone in the watch app

00:15:29 ◼   ► and I'm not sure if it's done.

00:15:31 ◼   ► So I go back into like the updates thing or whatever

00:15:33 ◼   ► and it says, everything is up to date, 1.0.1.

00:15:36 ◼   ► You've got 1.0.1, all good.

00:15:38 ◼   ► I'm like, what do you mean 1.0.1?

00:15:41 ◼   ► Why is it, it says there's no updates

00:15:43 ◼   ► and I'm all up to date and the version is 1.0.1?

00:15:46 ◼   ► Is that talking about the version

00:15:49 ◼   ► of the Apple watch app on the, I don't know.

00:15:51 ◼   ► I was super confused.

00:15:52 ◼   ► Anyway, all I did was pick up my watch

00:15:53 ◼   ► and turn the dial and see time travel go

00:15:54 ◼   ► and basically say, "Oh, there you go, it's installed."

00:15:57 ◼   ► So I do have watchOS too, but I was confused by that.

00:16:01 ◼   ► What is that?

00:16:02 ◼   ► If you did it too, did you discover

00:16:04 ◼   ► what the 1.0.1 is referring to?

00:16:06 ◼   ► - Well, that was the previous version.

00:16:07 ◼   ► It's just a bug in the watch app,

00:16:08 ◼   ► which it wouldn't be the first one.

00:16:11 ◼   ► - All right.

00:16:12 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:16:14 ◼   ► I mean, again, I don't like the colors on the activity rings

00:16:17 ◼   ► on the, which one did you say it was?

00:16:20 ◼   ► - Utility. - Utility.

00:16:21 ◼   ► I keep wanting to say simple.

00:16:22 ◼   ► - I mean, I looked at it too, and I was, you know,

00:16:24 ◼   ► 'cause I use utility and I thought,

00:16:26 ◼   ► you know, this really is now a much less elegant

00:16:30 ◼   ► looking face than it was before.

00:16:32 ◼   ► However, I also do use the activity rings pretty heavily.

00:16:37 ◼   ► It's one of the most common reasons I look at my watch face.

00:16:40 ◼   ► And so when I first saw it, I thought,

00:16:42 ◼   ► ah, what a terrible mistake, those are so garish,

00:16:44 ◼   ► and they are, but then I went for a dog walk.

00:16:47 ◼   ► And on the dog walk, usually I would open the watch,

00:16:52 ◼   ► or I would look at the watch, it would wake up,

00:16:54 ◼   ► and usually I would tap the activity rings in the corner

00:16:56 ◼   ► to launch the full activity app

00:16:58 ◼   ► to check how I was doing in that app

00:17:00 ◼   ► because the rings on the watch face

00:17:01 ◼   ► either wouldn't have updated yet

00:17:03 ◼   ► or it would be kinda hard to see

00:17:05 ◼   ► when I was in motion on this big walk

00:17:07 ◼   ► and there's these little tiny rings.

00:17:09 ◼   ► And now with the colors, it is easier to see how I'm doing

00:17:12 ◼   ► because when I'm doing a big walk or something,

00:17:15 ◼   ► one of the rings can get ahead of the others

00:17:17 ◼   ► and sometimes you can't quite tell

00:17:19 ◼   ► whether it's the orange one or the green one.

00:17:21 ◼   ► And so you gotta look more closely to really know.

00:17:25 ◼   ► And now with these new colors, it makes it very clear.

00:17:27 ◼   ► So what I find now is that I don't have to launch

00:17:31 ◼   ► the activity app anymore.

00:17:32 ◼   ► I can just glance at it with the colors

00:17:33 ◼   ► and I can see how I'm doing with the green ring.

00:17:37 ◼   ► So it actually works for me.

00:17:39 ◼   ► And I really hate to say that because I really don't like

00:17:42 ◼   ► the way it looks, but it does work better for me.

00:17:44 ◼   ► - Anything else going on this week for anyone, Marco?

00:17:48 ◼   ► - I don't think so.

00:17:49 ◼   ► I mean, I'm working on some overcast upgrades.

00:17:52 ◼   ► - Are we really not gonna talk about this?

00:17:53 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't carry the way.

00:17:54 ◼   ► - Nah, we can talk about it.

00:17:55 ◼   ► We can talk about it.

00:17:56 ◼   ► - We're going to.

00:17:58 ◼   ► It will happen.

00:17:59 ◼   ► - Okay, so, Peace, your content blocker

00:18:02 ◼   ► that we talked about last episode,

00:18:04 ◼   ► it became extremely popular.

00:18:06 ◼   ► You had a change of heart.

00:18:08 ◼   ► You pulled it, and the internet got really,

00:18:10 ◼   ► really upset about it.

00:18:12 ◼   ► I will start by saying, I think it's kind of ridiculous

00:18:17 ◼   ► how upset the internet got about it.

00:18:19 ◼   ► It bothered me quite a lot,

00:18:21 ◼   ► and I really have nothing to do with this, really at all.

00:18:24 ◼   ► But I got bothered by it because I feel like

00:18:28 ◼   ► the internet wholly and entirely overreacted

00:18:32 ◼   ► over a decision that was not easy for you to make

00:18:36 ◼   ► and quite literally cost you a ton of money.

00:18:40 ◼   ► - Well, it didn't cost them any money in the end, right?

00:18:43 ◼   ► It cost them time, obviously.

00:18:44 ◼   ► He spent all his time making this app,

00:18:46 ◼   ► and then it was all for nothing.

00:18:48 ◼   ► I get, let me, maybe cost is a poor choice of words.

00:18:51 ◼   ► What I mean to say is--

00:18:52 ◼   ► - I lost money on the icons and the SSL cert,

00:18:55 ◼   ► the domain name.

00:18:56 ◼   ► - All right, so here's something I didn't know

00:18:58 ◼   ► until this all went around that got clarified for me

00:19:01 ◼   ► by asking questions about it.

00:19:02 ◼   ► My previous understanding about how refunds worked

00:19:07 ◼   ► was that if someone bought an application for a dollar

00:19:11 ◼   ► and Apple issued them a refund,

00:19:14 ◼   ► they would still want 30 cents

00:19:15 ◼   ► from the person who made the app.

00:19:17 ◼   ► In other words, if every single person who bought your application asked for a refund,

00:19:21 ◼   ► you would still have to pay Apple 30% of the total revenue from your application.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Apparently that changed some point in the recent past.

00:19:28 ◼   ► Marco, do you know, like, an exact date?

00:19:30 ◼   ► So people have said that over the years.

00:19:33 ◼   ► The thing is with, I mean, it's probably different on the Mac App Store where the prices are

00:19:37 ◼   ► usually a lot higher.

00:19:38 ◼   ► On iOS, though, the number of refunds that happen, typically on iOS, is usually so low.

00:19:44 ◼   ► I mean, most days I get, from Overcast,

00:19:47 ◼   ► I'll get whatever thousand or hundred or tens of buys,

00:19:51 ◼   ► and then you'll have one or zero or two refunds.

00:19:56 ◼   ► It'll be a massive difference.

00:19:58 ◼   ► And so it's the kind of thing

00:20:00 ◼   ► that almost all iOS developers never have to think about.

00:20:03 ◼   ► Therefore, I've never looked into it,

00:20:04 ◼   ► and therefore, I don't know if that was ever true.

00:20:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, anyway, the new system, as Marco can confirm,

00:20:10 ◼   ► is when Apple issues a refund,

00:20:13 ◼   ► Marco doesn't owe Apple any money for that particular purchase.

00:20:16 ◼   ► Like all the money goes back to the person who paid for the application and that's that.

00:20:20 ◼   ► So in theory, and as we'll find out in practice, if for example every single copy of an application

00:20:26 ◼   ► that was purchased was completely refunded, the developer gets zero dollars and everyone

00:20:30 ◼   ► who bought it gets the exact amount that they paid back.

00:20:33 ◼   ► So it's a complete clean slate ignoring Marco paying for the development of the application

00:20:37 ◼   ► and SSL certificates and icons and all that other stuff or whatever.

00:20:39 ◼   ► So that is the current situation.

00:20:40 ◼   ► And I'm happy to hear that because I remember hearing back in the old days about refunds

00:20:45 ◼   ► saying, "Oh, that's pretty harsh that Apple still demands the 30%," or whether that was

00:20:50 ◼   ► an intentional policy or a side effect of the system that they had or whatever.

00:20:55 ◼   ► It's usually not a big deal because refunds are infrequent.

00:20:58 ◼   ► But in a strange situation like we had here where many applications were purchased and

00:21:03 ◼   ► all refunded, that could have ended up being even more costly.

00:21:06 ◼   ► But it's nice that that wasn't the case.

00:21:09 ◼   ► Yeah, if it becomes the case, believe me, I will notice and I will let you know.

00:21:15 ◼   ► So the other thing most people don't understand about, and you can't really blame them, developers

00:21:21 ◼   ► know this, nerds who know developers know this, but regular customers, why would they

00:21:25 ◼   ► even have any need to know this?

00:21:27 ◼   ► Developers can't issue refunds.

00:21:29 ◼   ► They just can't.

00:21:30 ◼   ► Like if you sell an application on the App Store and someone asks you for your refund,

00:21:33 ◼   ► you literally cannot give it to them.

00:21:34 ◼   ► There's nothing you can do.

00:21:35 ◼   ► There's no button you can press to say, "Here's your money back."

00:21:38 ◼   ► Apple can issue refunds. That's stupid and it has been the case forever and you know every time stuff like this comes up

00:21:46 ◼   ► We all reflect once again about how Apple owns the customer and the developer doesn't

00:21:50 ◼   ► We don't know the customers names. We don't know the customer, you know, the people who sell applications can't respond to customers comments

00:21:55 ◼   ► Don't know who they are in some respects. That's good. It's like oh Apple is isolating you keeping your privacy blah blah

00:22:00 ◼   ► But on the other hand developers cannot issue refunds. So a lot of the people who are angry

00:22:05 ◼   ► Justifiably is like I bought an application for a whole three dollars and I'm really mad about it

00:22:09 ◼   ► Anyway, and it's obviously not gonna be supported because it was pulled and the developer won't give me a refund which is true

00:22:15 ◼   ► But he can't give you a refund. He literally cannot I'm sure I don't know

00:22:19 ◼   ► I asked Marco this is first question for Marco

00:22:21 ◼   ► If there was a big button that you could have pressed to refund everybody when you decided to pull the app

00:22:26 ◼   ► Would you have pressed it?

00:22:27 ◼   ► Maybe I would have I would have definitely considered it. I mean one of the weird things about the way this was done

00:22:33 ◼   ► So, I'll get into why I pulled the app, you know, once we get off this topic, I will

00:22:38 ◼   ► actually give people what they're looking for, which unfortunately I already did and

00:22:42 ◼   ► it's a really boring story.

00:22:44 ◼   ► The story is what I wrote.

00:22:46 ◼   ► But anyway, I'll elaborate if you want.

00:22:49 ◼   ► But no, so to refunds for a second, you are right so far, the way you said it, we don't,

00:22:55 ◼   ► I mean, I wouldn't even gotten the, you know, assuming that the sales had gone through

00:22:58 ◼   ► and had not been refunded, I wouldn't even have the money until like a month and a half

00:23:03 ◼   ► from now.

00:23:04 ◼   ► Yeah, but like if there was a way in Apple's system to basically say, "Oh, give all that

00:23:06 ◼   ► money back," like the customers gave the money to Apple, and if you could push a button that

00:23:10 ◼   ► made Apple give the money back to them, like it would never appear in any of your statements

00:23:13 ◼   ► that would just be like, "Oh, plus this amount, oh, minus this amount," and then your statement

00:23:17 ◼   ► a month and a half from now would be like zero dollars.

00:23:18 ◼   ► Right, right.

00:23:19 ◼   ► I mean, if, so if they gave me the control, then I would have really considered doing

00:23:24 ◼   ► that.

00:23:26 ◼   ► It does really suck that I am actually now losing money on this, on this project rather

00:23:32 ◼   ► rather than making some money, but I also,

00:23:34 ◼   ► it was a weird dilemma of like,

00:23:37 ◼   ► do I keep all or any of this money that I,

00:23:41 ◼   ► you know, whoever doesn't claim a refund,

00:23:43 ◼   ► do I keep any of it, and then Apple made this decision

00:23:46 ◼   ► for me, they sent me an email, like I got an email

00:23:49 ◼   ► from iTunes Connect, whenever it was, yesterday afternoon,

00:23:52 ◼   ► whatever day it was, I've lost track of all meaning of days,

00:23:56 ◼   ► but whenever it was, they sent me an email saying,

00:23:58 ◼   ► because you pulled your app,

00:23:59 ◼   ► we are refunding all the customers.

00:24:02 ◼   ► And it almost looked like a form email.

00:24:06 ◼   ► You could tell that it was, you know,

00:24:07 ◼   ► somebody filled in like three words in it.

00:24:10 ◼   ► But they decided to do that, most likely because

00:24:14 ◼   ► I was directing over 10,000 people to their refund form.

00:24:18 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:24:19 ◼   ► Like I was seeing over the last couple of days,

00:24:22 ◼   ► there were, I think at my last count,

00:24:23 ◼   ► it was something like 13 or 15,000 people

00:24:27 ◼   ► who had been issued refunds

00:24:29 ◼   ► the regular process. And what that process is involves doing some kind of live chat agent

00:24:36 ◼   ► thing with somebody at iTunes. So this was a…

00:24:40 ◼   ► Steve McLaughlin You cost Apple money too.

00:24:43 ◼   ► John

00:24:59 ◼   ► I messed up, simple as that.

00:25:01 ◼   ► So I decided, given the situation I'm in,

00:25:03 ◼   ► where I've already done that mistake,

00:25:05 ◼   ► how do I resolve this mistake in the best way possible?

00:25:07 ◼   ► And had I been given the option to issue everybody

00:25:10 ◼   ► bulk refunds, I probably would have done it.

00:25:14 ◼   ► I can't say definitely, yes I would have,

00:25:16 ◼   ► because it was such a rush, I don't even know.

00:25:20 ◼   ► I honestly don't know.

00:25:21 ◼   ► But I had considered it, and I had asked some friends,

00:25:24 ◼   ► I had asked some friends, is this possible

00:25:26 ◼   ► to bulk cancel all these things and bulk refund them.

00:25:30 ◼   ► And everyone I asked, I asked a handful of people

00:25:32 ◼   ► and they all said, "I don't think that's possible."

00:25:34 ◼   ► Because most of the time the way the iTunes store works

00:25:37 ◼   ► is this total black box and it's all in Eddy Cue's team

00:25:42 ◼   ► and Eddy Cue's team has enough to do.

00:25:44 ◼   ► If there's one department within Apple

00:25:48 ◼   ► that has way too much on their plate,

00:25:50 ◼   ► it's Eddy Cue's department.

00:25:51 ◼   ► And so I thought, especially in regards to the iTunes store,

00:25:55 ◼   ► This is this old infrastructure that often does not work incredibly well with things

00:26:01 ◼   ► like iTunes Connect errors and stuff like that.

00:26:03 ◼   ► The idea of asking them to make an exception for you sounds so ridiculous to almost anybody

00:26:09 ◼   ► who's involved in this because they know asking them to just make the basic functionality

00:26:14 ◼   ► work every day is enough work for them.

00:26:16 ◼   ► That's hard enough.

00:26:18 ◼   ► Anyway, so I didn't, I was not given the option

00:26:22 ◼   ► to bulk refund everybody, but I am kinda glad it happened

00:26:27 ◼   ► because it resolved a lot of problems.

00:26:30 ◼   ► Even though it was weird that they didn't ask first,

00:26:36 ◼   ► but I'm not surprised, and it is kind of nice

00:26:40 ◼   ► that I didn't have a choice in the matter,

00:26:42 ◼   ► because then I didn't have to make that choice.

00:26:44 ◼   ► - So related to that, and part of the reason

00:26:46 ◼   ► why someone who purchased the application

00:26:48 ◼   ► would be annoyed. I mean there's a lot of reasons. So if you purchase it, since Marco

00:26:53 ◼   ► can't issue you a refund and since he had no way to do a bulk refund, what you were

00:26:57 ◼   ► doing was directing people, please go request a refund. Because it's the only way you're

00:27:01 ◼   ► going to get one. You have to ask Apple. And that process is annoying. And it's like, oh,

00:27:04 ◼   ► you know, buying the app is easy. You just tap a button on your phone. Getting your refund

00:27:08 ◼   ► seems like a hassle. I don't know how to do it. Now I got to like look on Apple's site.

00:27:11 ◼   ► How do I do refunds? Marco will link you to the forum. Do I have to fill this out? Do

00:27:13 ◼   ► I have to go to the chat thing? It's a hassle. So that's inconvenient. If you want your $3

00:27:18 ◼   ► back thing to me, but why would you want your $3 back?

00:27:20 ◼   ► Well, what people are basically doing is like,

00:27:21 ◼   ► the app is pulled, obviously there'll be no further

00:27:23 ◼   ► development of the app, but the question is,

00:27:25 ◼   ► and a lot of people have this question,

00:27:27 ◼   ► will the application continue to work?

00:27:30 ◼   ► I bought it, I installed it, it's on my phone,

00:27:33 ◼   ► Marco pulls it from the store,

00:27:34 ◼   ► which means no new people can buy it.

00:27:35 ◼   ► What does it mean about the copy of Peace

00:27:37 ◼   ► that is on my phone right now?

00:27:39 ◼   ► Will it continue to work?

00:27:40 ◼   ► If I get a refund, will it continue to work,

00:27:42 ◼   ► or will it be deleted from my phone?

00:27:44 ◼   ► If I don't ask for a refund, how long will Peace work

00:27:46 ◼   ► before it just breaks entirely?

00:27:48 ◼   ► - Right, so the answer is, as far as I know,

00:27:53 ◼   ► it doesn't affect the logical mark on your account

00:27:58 ◼   ► that says you bought it.

00:27:59 ◼   ► So you are still able to have it, run it,

00:28:03 ◼   ► I think you're able to restore it.

00:28:05 ◼   ► The way I deleted it was I didn't actually delete

00:28:09 ◼   ► the entry out of iTunes Connect.

00:28:10 ◼   ► I just set the availability date to be as far

00:28:12 ◼   ► into the future as it would let me.

00:28:14 ◼   ► I don't know the defined details of how that worked

00:28:16 ◼   ► and so, I've had it works and so,

00:28:18 ◼   ► I'm not gonna promise anything there,

00:28:19 ◼   ► but I think it should allow restores and everything.

00:28:21 ◼   ► Anyway, as for it functioning,

00:28:25 ◼   ► once you have it installed,

00:28:27 ◼   ► it will continue to function

00:28:29 ◼   ► until something in iOS makes it stop working.

00:28:33 ◼   ► It will though, stop getting updates from Ghostery

00:28:37 ◼   ► sometime in the future.

00:28:38 ◼   ► Right now, it is still able to get updates.

00:28:40 ◼   ► These are gonna be somewhat costly for me to run

00:28:42 ◼   ► if a lot of people keep the app installed,

00:28:44 ◼   ► so I might stop that,

00:28:45 ◼   ► I'm going to stop that eventually, because now that everybody has gotten a refund on

00:28:50 ◼   ► it, that also makes it easier for me to say, "Well, you know what? In a few months, if

00:28:55 ◼   ► I decide to shut down the updater and stop paying for all that bandwidth and hosting

00:28:59 ◼   ► for that operation, then I feel okay doing that then." So I'm going to shut it down

00:29:05 ◼   ► at some point, but I haven't yet. And when that happens, the app background updates to

00:29:09 ◼   ► to get new definitions from my server.

00:29:12 ◼   ► So eventually it'll become less effective over time

00:29:17 ◼   ► as new ad servers and new trackers start existing

00:29:21 ◼   ► on the web that it doesn't know about.

00:29:23 ◼   ► So that's how it will eventually break.

00:29:25 ◼   ► Or some iOS update comes out and says,

00:29:28 ◼   ► "Well, now you have to be on our new 128-bit processor

00:29:32 ◼   ► "by this date, and if you're not,

00:29:33 ◼   ► "we're gonna cut you out of the store."

00:29:34 ◼   ► As far as I know, I don't think they've done

00:29:36 ◼   ► any permanent breaking changes that would, say,

00:29:39 ◼   ► rule out an iOS 4 app from still running today.

00:29:42 ◼   ► I don't think that's the case.

00:29:44 ◼   ► All that is a very long way of saying,

00:29:47 ◼   ► if you wanna keep Peace installed,

00:29:49 ◼   ► and if, for whatever reason, Apple does not remove it

00:29:52 ◼   ► off your phone, and it's any kind of botch-restore operation

00:29:55 ◼   ► or weird thing like that, as far as I know,

00:29:57 ◼   ► it should continue to work for a long time.

00:30:00 ◼   ► - All right, let's, I think Jon and I both have

00:30:02 ◼   ► some more questions for you about this,

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00:31:32 ◼   ► for even more than 10, if you have more than 10.

00:31:34 ◼   ► If you have 10 or fewer people, it's free forever.

00:31:36 ◼   ► So really, give this a shot.

00:31:38 ◼   ► And if you have more than 10 people,

00:31:39 ◼   ► start with a free trial,

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00:31:43 ◼   ► Check it out, igloosoftware.com/atp for your free trial.

00:31:47 ◼   ► Get started today.

00:31:48 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Igloo, the internet you will actually like.

00:31:51 ◼   ► - John, any other questions immediately about peace?

00:31:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, are we gonna get into the good stuff?

00:31:56 ◼   ► We've just covered--

00:31:57 ◼   ► Let me get into the why.

00:31:59 ◼   ► I'll tell you the story of how this came to be.

00:32:02 ◼   ► Is that good?

00:32:03 ◼   ► - Well, can we just cover a couple of,

00:32:05 ◼   ► something right off the bat.

00:32:07 ◼   ► Can we just admit that it was just a complete glorified,

00:32:12 ◼   ► well-executed money grab?

00:32:13 ◼   ► That's absolutely what happened, right?

00:32:15 ◼   ► - The most unsuccessful money grab in the history of play.

00:32:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm really bad at money grabs, apparently.

00:32:21 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:32:23 ◼   ► Yeah, so anyway.

00:32:26 ◼   ► No, what actually happened was Apple paid me off.

00:32:28 ◼   ► That was my best, the best theory I heard

00:32:31 ◼   ► was that Apple paid me off to pull the app.

00:32:34 ◼   ► Now, Apple, who made this content blocking API,

00:32:38 ◼   ► who clearly wanted people to use it

00:32:40 ◼   ► for ad and tracking blockers.

00:32:41 ◼   ► - They just wanted you to block pictures of cats, Marco.

00:32:44 ◼   ► - Who, I was also making them a lot of money.

00:32:47 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:32:48 ◼   ► 'Cause they're 30%, 30%'s a lot, you know.

00:32:51 ◼   ► So that I think by far was my favorite theory.

00:32:56 ◼   ► That yeah, of course, yeah, Apple paid me off

00:32:58 ◼   ► to take this down.

00:32:59 ◼   ► For what exactly?

00:33:01 ◼   ► To make them lose money and go against

00:33:02 ◼   ► all their strategy goals?

00:33:03 ◼   ► Yeah, that makes sense.

00:33:05 ◼   ► No, I mean the fact is no one paid me anything.

00:33:06 ◼   ► I'm now losing money on this because all the refunds

00:33:09 ◼   ► got issued so I'm gonna lose a few thousand dollars on it

00:33:12 ◼   ► but oh well, that's the risk I took.

00:33:13 ◼   ► So what happened was over the summer,

00:33:19 ◼   ► So we had the content blocker announcement at WBCC.

00:33:24 ◼   ► And in fact, John and I are actually in the session video.

00:33:27 ◼   ► There's one of the shots that pans over to the audience

00:33:31 ◼   ► and there's a clip of me and John,

00:33:34 ◼   ► I think we're clapping at one of the things

00:33:35 ◼   ► that was said or whatever.

00:33:37 ◼   ► - That's how I knew you were making a content blocker.

00:33:38 ◼   ► It's like, "Margo's in this session.

00:33:40 ◼   ► "He never gets the things that I go to.

00:33:42 ◼   ► "He's making a content blocker."

00:33:43 ◼   ► Didn't wanna say anything.

00:33:44 ◼   ► - And I hadn't decided right then

00:33:46 ◼   ► whether I was going to do it or not,

00:33:47 ◼   ► but I knew right then it was going to be a big deal

00:33:50 ◼   ► and a big market and I wanted to use one.

00:33:53 ◼   ► And that is usually a pretty good recipe

00:33:55 ◼   ► for me to want to make an app.

00:33:57 ◼   ► And the reality is I also want to keep doing Overcast

00:34:02 ◼   ► as my primary app.

00:34:05 ◼   ► And so I wasn't going to tackle a new app

00:34:08 ◼   ► that I thought was going to be a massive time sink.

00:34:11 ◼   ► And so content blockers are so easy to make.

00:34:15 ◼   ► I mean, really, the one I made that briefly did

00:34:20 ◼   ► very, very well, and then the ones that are there now,

00:34:24 ◼   ► this is probably the most money for the least effort

00:34:27 ◼   ► that has ever been possible in the App Store.

00:34:29 ◼   ► And it's, you know, soon enough,

00:34:31 ◼   ► it'll be diluted by tons and tons.

00:34:33 ◼   ► But I thought on day one, there would be way more

00:34:38 ◼   ► in the market than there were.

00:34:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I couldn't make one.

00:34:40 ◼   ► That's how easy it is to, because it's like one API

00:34:43 ◼   ► that if you go to the session, you're like,

00:34:44 ◼   ► this is how it works, and then it's just down to the data.

00:34:47 ◼   ► Right, that's it.

00:34:48 ◼   ► - And so the data is, yeah, the code part of it

00:34:52 ◼   ► is ridiculous, people asking me to open source it,

00:34:55 ◼   ► you don't understand how little code there is here.

00:34:56 ◼   ► It is, it's incredible, especially because like,

00:34:59 ◼   ► the extensions that I added, all they do

00:35:02 ◼   ► is bring up Safari View Controller.

00:35:03 ◼   ► It's like, I don't even write the mini browser.

00:35:05 ◼   ► Like, there is so little code in the app.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Anybody can make these, the only limitation

00:35:10 ◼   ► is what the heck you use for the data,

00:35:13 ◼   ► for the rules of what to block.

00:35:14 ◼   ► That is the only hard part.

00:35:16 ◼   ► And the fact is there's tons of publicly available lists

00:35:21 ◼   ► and databases that you can use.

00:35:22 ◼   ► - And you can even like, I'm assuming this is the case,

00:35:25 ◼   ► and I expected to see more of these.

00:35:26 ◼   ► I haven't really looked into content blockers that deeply,

00:35:29 ◼   ► but couldn't you have it so that someone enters a URL

00:35:32 ◼   ► from which to pull data in a format that you specify?

00:35:35 ◼   ► Like it could be, like the app could come with no data

00:35:38 ◼   ► and say, "Well, this is a content blocker,

00:35:41 ◼   ► "and it works like this,

00:35:42 ◼   ► and it expects its data to be in this format,

00:35:44 ◼   ► so type a URL here of a file that I can pull

00:35:49 ◼   ► that will be in that format and I will parse it

00:35:51 ◼   ► and that will be your content blocker.

00:35:52 ◼   ► And maybe you'd have like a default one

00:35:53 ◼   ► that pulls like a content blocker

00:35:54 ◼   ► that blocks like two big ad networks or something like that.

00:35:57 ◼   ► Isn't that something you could do as well?

00:35:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, the data you have to give them

00:36:02 ◼   ► is just a list of rules expressed in JSON.

00:36:06 ◼   ► And so you can get that JSON from anywhere.

00:36:08 ◼   ► You can include it in the app,

00:36:10 ◼   ► you can build it on demand.

00:36:11 ◼   ► and the way I was doing it so you'd have dynamic rules.

00:36:14 ◼   ► It doesn't matter, you can get it from anywhere,

00:36:15 ◼   ► it doesn't matter.

00:36:16 ◼   ► - And you can make up your own format

00:36:18 ◼   ► that's just like type a bunch of host names

00:36:19 ◼   ► if you wanted to make a super simple one.

00:36:21 ◼   ► I'm actually surprised more people didn't do that

00:36:22 ◼   ► because that is really the least amount of work you can do.

00:36:24 ◼   ► You make a trivial application that uses one API

00:36:27 ◼   ► and maybe even you go the extra mile

00:36:28 ◼   ► like Marco didn't do the little extensions

00:36:30 ◼   ► that bring up the Safari View Controller.

00:36:32 ◼   ► - And I should just say right now,

00:36:34 ◼   ► I said there's not a lot of code in here.

00:36:36 ◼   ► A lot of people have said the right thing to do

00:36:39 ◼   ► is for me to open source it.

00:36:40 ◼   ► A, I disagree, I'm not obligated to open source it.

00:36:43 ◼   ► B, my arrangement with Ghostery is that I'm just giving it

00:36:47 ◼   ► to them and they can do whatever they want with it,

00:36:48 ◼   ► so it's no longer mine and that's fine.

00:36:52 ◼   ► The fact is if you want to reproduce this,

00:36:54 ◼   ► it is not a lot of work to make another app like this.

00:36:58 ◼   ► It really is very, very easy.

00:37:00 ◼   ► The only hard part is the data and that is very hard.

00:37:04 ◼   ► - And then you have to pay someone to make the icons

00:37:05 ◼   ► or you could shamelessly copy Marco's icons.

00:37:07 ◼   ► - No, I don't copy mine.

00:37:08 ◼   ► No, go to Louis Mantia.

00:37:09 ◼   ► I'm just saying like what the, what the, what the million ripoff applications, the same

00:37:14 ◼   ► kind of applications that put like pictures of Mario into their games and stuff, like

00:37:18 ◼   ► they'll just copy it exactly.

00:37:20 ◼   ► Yeah, if you want to get icons made, go to Parakeet, it's great. I'll put the link in

00:37:24 ◼   ► the show notes because they're awesome, they do great work. You can copy my design or don't

00:37:27 ◼   ► copy my design. Anyway, so the thing is, all summer I was thinking, you know, I should

00:37:38 ◼   ► really do this because I have like, A, it seems like there will be a market. Now again,

00:37:43 ◼   ► I was assuming from the beginning that it would be a very crowded market right from

00:37:47 ◼   ► day one and that somebody like Adblock Plus, like some well-known brand in ad blocking

00:37:54 ◼   ► that had way more exposure and visibility and user base than I could ever muster, that

00:38:00 ◼   ► they would be there on day one and would just own the whole market.

00:38:03 ◼   ► And why do you think they don't?

00:38:04 ◼   ► Are they just not paying attention to WWDC?

00:38:07 ◼   ► Just not like, you know, because we all knew content blockers were going to be a big thing,

00:38:11 ◼   ► but maybe that gets lost in the WWDC news?

00:38:14 ◼   ► You would think, I don't know.

00:38:16 ◼   ► I agree with you.

00:38:17 ◼   ► I totally thought that on day one of the store there would be a million content blockers

00:38:22 ◼   ► because they are so easy to make and there are so many places where you can get lists

00:38:26 ◼   ► from and you can do the thing, like I said, and not even include lists.

00:38:29 ◼   ► And when I found out you were making one, I'm like, well, that's pretty good because

00:38:34 ◼   ► in the sort of, even if there are tons of them coming out because they're easy to make,

00:38:38 ◼   ► how do you get yourself heard above the noise and people who are going to install iOS 9

00:38:43 ◼   ► on day one, like, you know, and who are into, who know that there are content blockers and

00:38:48 ◼   ► who are going to be looking for ones on day one, you have better access to them than a

00:38:52 ◼   ► lot of other things.

00:38:53 ◼   ► Maybe even better access to those people than a big company like the thing that makes Adblock

00:38:57 ◼   ► Plus because you travel in Mac nerd circles and Mac nerds read your blog and listen to your podcast or whatever. So

00:39:03 ◼   ► if your goal is to

00:39:05 ◼   ► Try to sell a lot of content blockers being there on day one with the content blocker with a name that people recognize

00:39:11 ◼   ► Was a good play and you know and it was it turns out

00:39:16 ◼   ► That you know, there was a good play a lot of people bought it

00:39:19 ◼   ► you ended up being number one paid app in the App Store and

00:39:22 ◼   ► And there weren't a lot of other ones too, and I don't quite understand why either, other

00:39:26 ◼   ► than maybe they were just, everyone else was asleep at the switch.

00:39:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean like, at the Loop, they tried to, they were publishing this list that was

00:39:32 ◼   ► being updated, and even at, like on launch, there were only something like six entries

00:39:38 ◼   ► on it, and only like two or three of them were really getting any traction on the charts.

00:39:42 ◼   ► I mean, I was really surprised by how few there were.

00:39:45 ◼   ► Anyway, and by the way, going back, I think one of the reasons why the big companies like

00:39:49 ◼   ► like Adblock Plus didn't go there,

00:39:51 ◼   ► or haven't gone there yet,

00:39:52 ◼   ► is because iOS content blockers are very, very limited.

00:39:55 ◼   ► They don't have access to what's being browsed.

00:39:58 ◼   ► All you do is you provide a list of rules

00:40:01 ◼   ► and regular expressions to say block things that match this.

00:40:04 ◼   ► But you are not being,

00:40:06 ◼   ► your code is not being called on every page load,

00:40:10 ◼   ► or it's not being notified on what's being loaded.

00:40:12 ◼   ► And you can't do things like inject your own scripts,

00:40:15 ◼   ► do your own tracking from your site.

00:40:16 ◼   ► Like, you have no access to the way things are.

00:40:20 ◼   ► And these big companies, like Adlog Plus, like Ghostery,

00:40:24 ◼   ► they have, you know, the business arm of those companies

00:40:27 ◼   ► usually needs some kind of access or analytics

00:40:30 ◼   ► or tracking, humorously, of what you are,

00:40:35 ◼   ► what you're browsing and what things are being included

00:40:37 ◼   ► on this page, what ads are being shown,

00:40:39 ◼   ► what trackers are being loaded.

00:40:41 ◼   ► Almost all these big companies have arrangements like that

00:40:43 ◼   ► in some way, shape, or form.

00:40:45 ◼   ► Some of them are kind of questionable.

00:40:47 ◼   ► I think Ghosteries is pretty safe.

00:40:49 ◼   ► The way it works, I explain that in the post,

00:40:51 ◼   ► their business model I don't think

00:40:52 ◼   ► is something to be concerned about.

00:40:54 ◼   ► The whole acceptable ads thing on AppBlocks Plus

00:40:56 ◼   ► is I think more, a little squishier.

00:40:59 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

00:41:01 ◼   ► Fact is, that I think is why these big companies

00:41:04 ◼   ► weren't there on day one.

00:41:06 ◼   ► - Actually, now that I think about it,

00:41:07 ◼   ► that actually kind of makes sense because,

00:41:10 ◼   ► I understand that their business model doesn't work on it,

00:41:11 ◼   ► but you're like, oh, well, why wouldn't they just

00:41:13 ◼   ► do exactly what you did and sell an app for $3 and make a whole bunch of money.

00:41:17 ◼   ► And I think the answer is probably that even though it's a lot of money for a one-person

00:41:21 ◼   ► developer for a big company, they're like, "Well, paid apps, they can make a little money

00:41:28 ◼   ► in a burst and then that's it.

00:41:29 ◼   ► There's no recurring revenue and we can't support our main business model."

00:41:33 ◼   ► So basically they're passing up what they consider to be chump change.

00:41:37 ◼   ► What is significant to one person, I don't know how many people work for these bigger

00:41:39 ◼   ► companies but presumably a lot more than one person, like that it just didn't seem worth

00:41:44 ◼   ► it to them.

00:41:45 ◼   ► So that might explain why the really big companies didn't do it.

00:41:48 ◼   ► They want, you know, they want huge numbers, they don't want like something that would

00:41:52 ◼   ► be significant to an individual, and especially if it's not recurring.

00:41:57 ◼   ► But then it's like why didn't someone else, another single person developer, just give

00:42:04 ◼   ► it a shot?

00:42:05 ◼   ► Like there were so few of them that when people were making lists on iOS 9 launch day, like

00:42:09 ◼   ► here are all the iOS 9 content blockers.

00:42:11 ◼   ► There was two things on the list

00:42:12 ◼   ► and yours wasn't even included

00:42:13 ◼   ► because of the five hour delay getting it on the store.

00:42:15 ◼   ► It was like Crystal, Purity.

00:42:17 ◼   ► - Purify. - Purify.

00:42:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, one blocker, blocker with an R.

00:42:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, they started trickling in,

00:42:23 ◼   ► but to be able to have them in a list

00:42:25 ◼   ► that fits on a single screen,

00:42:27 ◼   ► man, not a lot of people made content blockers.

00:42:29 ◼   ► - Right, so that was surprise number one

00:42:31 ◼   ► was that there were so few.

00:42:33 ◼   ► Surprise number two was that mine topped the chart,

00:42:37 ◼   ► at least the paid chart.

00:42:38 ◼   ► Crystal was free on day one and got,

00:42:40 ◼   ► I think the guy said it was like 100,000 installations

00:42:42 ◼   ► and then he made it paid on day two.

00:42:45 ◼   ► And I think now it's number one,

00:42:46 ◼   ► but anyway, doesn't matter.

00:42:48 ◼   ► And you're right, I mean, the kind of money

00:42:50 ◼   ► that was coming in, it's great for an individual.

00:42:53 ◼   ► If you have a big staff, it's questionable,

00:42:56 ◼   ► if it's worth going against your business interests.

00:43:00 ◼   ► - And then you'd have to support that.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Say you're a big, well-known company,

00:43:03 ◼   ► it's like, oh, I make my little burst of money from it

00:43:05 ◼   ► and maybe a little bit trickles in from it,

00:43:06 ◼   ► but it's not significant to my bottom line.

00:43:08 ◼   ► And then I have to continue to pay some contractor

00:43:11 ◼   ► to make sure the app continues to work

00:43:12 ◼   ► and make sure whatever server is serving the data file

00:43:15 ◼   ► that gets updated, it just might seem like a hassle

00:43:17 ◼   ► to the big companies.

00:43:18 ◼   ► - Exactly, so anyway, going through the summer,

00:43:21 ◼   ► as I'm thinking about building this,

00:43:22 ◼   ► and I really didn't spend a lot of time on it.

00:43:25 ◼   ► Most of the summer was spent thinking about how to do it.

00:43:28 ◼   ► And I formed the idea of the structure of the app,

00:43:32 ◼   ► these extensions it would have,

00:43:33 ◼   ► how that would work and everything, and that'd be great.

00:43:35 ◼   ► I wasn't really writing a lot of code until kind of the middle of the summer when I started

00:43:39 ◼   ► playing with the various block lists that exist out there and various hosts files. I

00:43:45 ◼   ► started emailing the people who maintained them, asking if I could license them for use

00:43:48 ◼   ► in a paid app because most of them are for non-commercial use only, so you have to get

00:43:53 ◼   ► a separate license. So I started that kind of negotiation and discussions. But the original

00:43:58 ◼   ► version of it that I made that I was running for at least a few weeks over the summer on

00:44:04 ◼   ► on my own phone, it was much simpler.

00:44:07 ◼   ► All it did was block all third-party JavaScript.

00:44:12 ◼   ► That actually works surprisingly well.

00:44:15 ◼   ► Like, one rule, just block all third-party JavaScript.

00:44:19 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure I would recommend that people do this,

00:44:22 ◼   ► but if your main goal, if you're willing to tolerate

00:44:25 ◼   ► a lot of things being broken, and you're willing to go

00:44:29 ◼   ► through the process of making the exception,

00:44:30 ◼   ► or whitelisting, or opening up without content blockers,

00:44:33 ◼   ► If you're going to go through that process a lot,

00:44:36 ◼   ► that gets you most of the way there.

00:44:38 ◼   ► I would say just blocking all third-party JavaScript

00:44:42 ◼   ► gets you 80% of the way there.

00:44:44 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:44:45 ◼   ► That's really, it's kind of sad how much that gets you there.

00:44:48 ◼   ► And all these big databases and everything,

00:44:52 ◼   ► their strengths are mainly in getting it more to the point

00:44:56 ◼   ► where it blocks the ads without making anything break

00:44:58 ◼   ► or with making very few things break.

00:45:01 ◼   ► But if you just wanna block all the ads

00:45:02 ◼   ► and occasionally have to open something up

00:45:05 ◼   ► in the unresearched view, just block all JavaScript,

00:45:08 ◼   ► that works fine.

00:45:08 ◼   ► And so, all summer I was doing that,

00:45:10 ◼   ► and towards the reason this problem attracted me

00:45:13 ◼   ► in the first place, again, was because I knew

00:45:16 ◼   ► there was gonna be a market for it, I wanted to use it,

00:45:19 ◼   ► and I had the idea of how to do it my way.

00:45:21 ◼   ► I thought, I did think at the time,

00:45:25 ◼   ► you know, I wonder if I'm gonna get in trouble

00:45:28 ◼   ► for making an ad blocker, like I wonder if people

00:45:30 ◼   ► are gonna get mad at me if I make an ad blocker.

00:45:32 ◼   ► I did think about that, but in the excitement

00:45:35 ◼   ► of solving this problem in a way that I thought

00:45:37 ◼   ► was very good, like I was very proud of this work.

00:45:41 ◼   ► And so in the process of like kinda ramping up

00:45:43 ◼   ► and seeing how it turned out, seeing how good it was

00:45:46 ◼   ► on my phone, even with just that JavaScript rule,

00:45:48 ◼   ► I kinda got lost.

00:45:51 ◼   ► The idea of I wonder what people are going to think

00:45:55 ◼   ► and if anybody's gonna be mad about this,

00:45:57 ◼   ► that got pushed to the back of my head

00:45:59 ◼   ► because I was so driven by and happy

00:46:02 ◼   ► about how nicely the app was turning out.

00:46:05 ◼   ► And so I was focused on totally the wrong things.

00:46:08 ◼   ► I was focused on, I'm very proud of this nice app I made

00:46:13 ◼   ► that is making me very happy on my phone,

00:46:16 ◼   ► and I sent it to some friends later on,

00:46:18 ◼   ► and they, it was making them very happy,

00:46:20 ◼   ► so it's like, I was so caught up in that,

00:46:23 ◼   ► that I didn't go back and rethink,

00:46:26 ◼   ► like, you know, maybe I should do this.

00:46:27 ◼   ► And then what happened was,

00:46:29 ◼   ► in an effort to try to make it better,

00:46:32 ◼   ► 'cause at first, again, I said,

00:46:34 ◼   ► running it for me with just the no third-party

00:46:36 ◼   ► JavaScript rule, that worked okay,

00:46:38 ◼   ► but I wasn't necessarily sure that that was gonna be

00:46:41 ◼   ► a good enough product to attach my name to,

00:46:44 ◼   ► because it's like, this is really great if you're a nerd

00:46:46 ◼   ► and you don't care about reloading a lot of things

00:46:49 ◼   ► a couple times to make them work properly.

00:46:51 ◼   ► So that's when I started looking at licensing

00:46:55 ◼   ► one of these other databases, and I couldn't find a good one

00:46:59 ◼   ► until I tried Ghosteries, and then I tried that,

00:47:02 ◼   ► it was amazing, so I contacted them,

00:47:04 ◼   ► I didn't think they would even say yes,

00:47:06 ◼   ► and then they did say yes, and it turns out

00:47:07 ◼   ► they're actually really nice and easy to work with,

00:47:09 ◼   ► and really fast to get things together,

00:47:10 ◼   ► which I was not expecting any of these things

00:47:12 ◼   ► from a company as big as them,

00:47:14 ◼   ► but they were really, really easy and nice to work with.

00:47:18 ◼   ► So I worked with them, and we met,

00:47:21 ◼   ► their office is right here in New York,

00:47:22 ◼   ► So we met in person, we arranged and we did the whole database, the contract, everything

00:47:27 ◼   ► else.

00:47:28 ◼   ► So then my mind, for those last few weeks before the launch, as this was all getting

00:47:33 ◼   ► in place, my mind was all about that.

00:47:36 ◼   ► And about like, "Okay, now we're on this train, this has inertia, we're going, this

00:47:40 ◼   ► is going to happen."

00:47:41 ◼   ► Once I signed that contract, I'm like, "This is going to happen."

00:47:43 ◼   ► And I never went back to re-evaluate, "Should I do this?

00:47:47 ◼   ► Do I want to be the person who owns the ad blocker?

00:47:52 ◼   ► Do I want to be in charge of an ad blocker?

00:47:55 ◼   ► I stopped evaluating that.

00:47:57 ◼   ► Once I got on this train of like,

00:48:01 ◼   ► this app is really good and now I have someone else's data

00:48:03 ◼   ► in it and I deal with them to keep going with it

00:48:05 ◼   ► and it's even better with their data.

00:48:07 ◼   ► I was so excited about how good the app was,

00:48:09 ◼   ► I never went back and rethought that initial decision

00:48:12 ◼   ► to even make it in the first place.

00:48:13 ◼   ► Also, honestly, I made the same mistakes with the magazine.

00:48:18 ◼   ► Which, that was a much less interesting story.

00:48:20 ◼   ► But when I made the magazine, I was so tied up

00:48:23 ◼   ► with the idea of making this cool magazine app

00:48:26 ◼   ► that looked really nice and worked well

00:48:27 ◼   ► and was way better than all the other newsstand apps

00:48:29 ◼   ► that I forgot to really truly evaluate

00:48:33 ◼   ► what it would be like to have to publish an issue

00:48:35 ◼   ► of a magazine every two weeks indefinitely.

00:48:38 ◼   ► And that's a lot of work.

00:48:40 ◼   ► And it's really hard to make the economics work.

00:48:43 ◼   ► And I kind of brushed those aside

00:48:44 ◼   ► 'cause I wanted to make this cool app.

00:48:46 ◼   ► And so I made the same mistake here,

00:48:47 ◼   ► with different consequences, different downsides,

00:48:51 ◼   ► where I was so enthralled with the app,

00:48:54 ◼   ► with the technical side of it,

00:48:56 ◼   ► that I didn't adequately think about, you know,

00:49:00 ◼   ► so I didn't think ahead to be like,

00:49:02 ◼   ► all right, in six months, do I want to be spending

00:49:05 ◼   ► half or more of my time being the guy

00:49:08 ◼   ► who runs this big ad blocker?

00:49:09 ◼   ► - Casey, this is where you jump in

00:49:11 ◼   ► with the Jurassic Park quote

00:49:12 ◼   ► that you have off the top of your head.

00:49:15 ◼   ► - I do?

00:49:16 ◼   ► - Marko, do you have it?

00:49:17 ◼   ► - No.

00:49:18 ◼   ► - The chat room will have it in about seven seconds.

00:49:20 ◼   ► Continue.

00:49:21 ◼   ► - That he spared no expense?

00:49:23 ◼   ► - No.

00:49:24 ◼   ► That's good though, great movie.

00:49:25 ◼   ► - All right, well, sorry.

00:49:27 ◼   ► I've got nothing.

00:49:28 ◼   ► - Chat room's got it.

00:49:29 ◼   ► - Mark was so preoccupied about whether or not

00:49:31 ◼   ► he could make an app,

00:49:32 ◼   ► they didn't stop to think whether he should.

00:49:34 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

00:49:35 ◼   ► Or rather, I stopped really early on to think

00:49:37 ◼   ► and then I was like, well, let me try it.

00:49:39 ◼   ► - So when you thought about it before you got into

00:49:41 ◼   ► like the whole, I'm making deals with Ghostery,

00:49:44 ◼   ► I'm happy with the app,

00:49:45 ◼   ► whatever, but when you thought about it before that,

00:49:46 ◼   ► Before all of that, you said,

00:49:48 ◼   ► "I'm gonna make a content blocker."

00:49:49 ◼   ► What did you, what was your thinking like?

00:49:52 ◼   ► 'Cause you gave yourself the green light.

00:49:54 ◼   ► You thought about it very early on

00:49:57 ◼   ► before you decided you were gonna do this,

00:49:58 ◼   ► and you said, "You know what I am gonna do?"

00:49:59 ◼   ► Was it based mostly on the fact that you wanted to run one?

00:50:04 ◼   ► This is before anyone had run one.

00:50:05 ◼   ► You hadn't made one, they didn't exist,

00:50:07 ◼   ► but you're like, "I want to run one."

00:50:08 ◼   ► Is that why you're making, you know?

00:50:11 ◼   ► Like, take us back to that thinking

00:50:12 ◼   ► before you got caught up in sort of

00:50:14 ◼   ► the momentum of making the app.

00:50:16 ◼   ► - Right, I mean, I absolutely want to run one.

00:50:18 ◼   ► As soon as I had the very early prototype

00:50:20 ◼   ► of the app on my phone with the just

00:50:22 ◼   ► no third party JavaScript rule,

00:50:24 ◼   ► as soon as I had that on my phone

00:50:25 ◼   ► and saw the massive difference it made in browsing speed,

00:50:29 ◼   ► and also, I really do object to tons

00:50:32 ◼   ► of web advertising and tracking.

00:50:34 ◼   ► I think what the web publishing world has done,

00:50:38 ◼   ► and I blame the publishers.

00:50:40 ◼   ► A lot of people, you know,

00:50:41 ◼   ► I don't wanna get too far into this,

00:50:42 ◼   ► 'cause if you wanna hear more about the, you know,

00:50:45 ◼   ► why this debate is so complicated.

00:50:46 ◼   ► This week's episode of Back to Work

00:50:48 ◼   ► is really good on that topic.

00:50:49 ◼   ► Merlin and Dan talked at length about this whole thing

00:50:52 ◼   ► and covered a lot of angles.

00:50:53 ◼   ► 'Cause it really is a very complex problem.

00:50:56 ◼   ► It is not a simple yes/no kind of thing.

00:50:59 ◼   ► They covered a lot of it.

00:51:00 ◼   ► But just briefly, I do wanna make clear,

00:51:04 ◼   ► I'm gonna still use an ad blocker.

00:51:06 ◼   ► And I'm still going to advocate that people block things

00:51:10 ◼   ► that they don't think are acceptable.

00:51:12 ◼   ► What changed in my mind and what really started bothering me

00:51:16 ◼   ► is that I don't want to be the person in charge

00:51:20 ◼   ► of making this decision for everybody.

00:51:23 ◼   ► I don't wanna be the enabler necessarily.

00:51:25 ◼   ► I don't wanna be the arbiter of what is good

00:51:27 ◼   ► and what is bad 'cause the problem is,

00:51:29 ◼   ► you say block, first of all,

00:51:32 ◼   ► I wanna clear up right up front the idea of,

00:51:36 ◼   ► well, I just wanna block tracking but not ads.

00:51:40 ◼   ► that's BS because ads are tracking.

00:51:43 ◼   ► Like you can't, while there are very, very few ads,

00:51:48 ◼   ► like The Deck recently published their new privacy policy

00:51:51 ◼   ► where they explicitly say,

00:51:53 ◼   ► "We will not do any tracking from The Deck.

00:51:55 ◼   ► "We're disturbing these static images," or whatever.

00:51:57 ◼   ► But that is really,

00:51:58 ◼   ► there are almost no advertising networks

00:52:01 ◼   ► that will claim that, that will guarantee that,

00:52:03 ◼   ► and that actually do that.

00:52:05 ◼   ► So the fact is, if you are saying,

00:52:08 ◼   ► I want to block tracking but not ads.

00:52:10 ◼   ► That is not really an enforceable thing.

00:52:14 ◼   ► In order to block almost any tracking,

00:52:17 ◼   ► you have to block almost all ads.

00:52:19 ◼   ► That's simple, it's simple as that.

00:52:21 ◼   ► You have to block ads to block tracking.

00:52:24 ◼   ► Furthermore, if you really want to block more tracking,

00:52:28 ◼   ► you also have to block things like social embeds

00:52:30 ◼   ► because Facebook and Twitter and Google+,

00:52:32 ◼   ► all these things, Amazon, all these links,

00:52:34 ◼   ► these things that are embedded in people's sites,

00:52:36 ◼   ► plus one this on Facebook,

00:52:38 ◼   ► thumbs up this on Twitter, whatever.

00:52:39 ◼   ► I know those are backwards, I don't care.

00:52:41 ◼   ► All those things are also tracking

00:52:42 ◼   ► because the social companies are some of the biggest

00:52:45 ◼   ► tracking companies in the world.

00:52:47 ◼   ► So you also have to block social embeds.

00:52:50 ◼   ► And what about embedded YouTube videos?

00:52:52 ◼   ► Google's tracking those.

00:52:54 ◼   ► Like, there's a lot, if you really wanna block tracking,

00:52:57 ◼   ► there's a lot you have to block.

00:52:59 ◼   ► So the fact is, this is very, very complicated.

00:53:01 ◼   ► It's a very much a gray area,

00:53:03 ◼   ► but you can't have it both ways.

00:53:06 ◼   ► If you say you object to being tracked

00:53:10 ◼   ► or you say you object to bad ads

00:53:12 ◼   ► or you try to whittle it down and say,

00:53:15 ◼   ► well, I wanna block ads but not yours, yours are good.

00:53:19 ◼   ► It becomes very, very hard to actually do that,

00:53:22 ◼   ► to actually manage that because it's usually,

00:53:24 ◼   ► usually you're asking for something that isn't possible

00:53:27 ◼   ► or you're asking for a distinction

00:53:28 ◼   ► that doesn't really exist.

00:53:29 ◼   ► - Had you thought about this angle at all

00:53:32 ◼   ► before embarking on creating the application, as in when I make this application, when I

00:53:40 ◼   ► use it, I'll set it up so I like how it works, but then I will sort of de facto be, even

00:53:46 ◼   ► if it's just by the defaults that I include in the application, be deciding what everyone

00:53:51 ◼   ► who uses my application sees on the web, and therefore I am sort of like the linchpin of

00:53:57 ◼   ► of some subset of the number of iOS users,

00:53:59 ◼   ► like Marco controls whether this group of users

00:54:03 ◼   ► sees this kind of ad on this site,

00:54:05 ◼   ► because he sets the default for his application

00:54:07 ◼   ► that happens to be populated.

00:54:08 ◼   ► Had you thought about that at all,

00:54:09 ◼   ► or had it not measured your mind?

00:54:11 ◼   ► Or if you did think about it,

00:54:11 ◼   ► how did you think that was gonna shake out?

00:54:13 ◼   ► - I really didn't think that much about these distinctions.

00:54:19 ◼   ► The only thing I thought of when I was making the app was,

00:54:22 ◼   ► Ghostery's data is tagged with,

00:54:26 ◼   ► This is one of the reasons why

00:54:27 ◼   ► GhostReach database is so good.

00:54:28 ◼   ► You can see this when you use the desktop plugin.

00:54:30 ◼   ► Each of the entries is tagged, so it'll say

00:54:32 ◼   ► like what it blocks on this page, and you can see,

00:54:34 ◼   ► oh, it blocked, you know, Google page sense or whatever,

00:54:37 ◼   ► ads, comma, ads, comma, tracker.

00:54:40 ◼   ► It blocked the deck, ads.

00:54:41 ◼   ► It blocked Adobe Omniture, tracker.

00:54:43 ◼   ► And it tags each entry with whether it's an ad,

00:54:46 ◼   ► a tracker, a social widget, font, comment,

00:54:48 ◼   ► you know, whatever the categories it has.

00:54:51 ◼   ► So I could have very easily made an option

00:54:53 ◼   ► right in the app that said, you know,

00:54:56 ◼   ► check mark, block ads, check mark, block trackers,

00:54:59 ◼   ► and have you toggle those separately from each other.

00:55:01 ◼   ► But again, I think that's a false distinction

00:55:03 ◼   ► because the fact is, if you say you don't wanna be tracked,

00:55:06 ◼   ► you have to block ads, simple as that.

00:55:09 ◼   ► So anyway, so I really hadn't thought

00:55:13 ◼   ► about the reality of me being the center.

00:55:14 ◼   ► I thought, you know, up until a few weeks

00:55:17 ◼   ► before the thing launched, I was just doing

00:55:19 ◼   ► my JavaScript thing and didn't have

00:55:21 ◼   ► any distinction whatsoever.

00:55:22 ◼   ► And that's, I think, almost more defensible.

00:55:26 ◼   ► If you say third-party JavaScript is a problem,

00:55:29 ◼   ► because the reality is, most of the problems

00:55:33 ◼   ► with web tracking and creepiness and bad ads,

00:55:37 ◼   ► if you just block third-party JavaScript,

00:55:40 ◼   ► that is a very defensible, practical thing

00:55:43 ◼   ► that you should consider doing,

00:55:45 ◼   ► because that is kind of why these trackers

00:55:48 ◼   ► on the web can be so powerful,

00:55:49 ◼   ► because you can embed a script tag on millions of different publisher sites and your server

00:55:56 ◼   ► is called from the user's browser and you're able to run code, arbitrary code, on the user's

00:56:02 ◼   ► browser and have access to the DOM, the browser, the hardware access that's now being exposed

00:56:06 ◼   ► through all the web APIs. All this crazy stuff you have access to through these third party

00:56:11 ◼   ► embeds, you as the creepy ad company or whatever, and you can track everything. And the fact

00:56:15 ◼   ► is if people saw what is possible, like if you're on the fence about whether you want

00:56:21 ◼   ► to block tracking, if you see like the kind of, it is so creepy what publishers are able

00:56:30 ◼   ► to see. They're basically watching, they can watch an individual's every move. They

00:56:34 ◼   ► can see when you scroll, they can see where your mouse cursor is, they can see what you

00:56:37 ◼   ► hover over and how long you hover over it and how long you look at something. They can

00:56:40 ◼   ► see everything. If you block cookies or if you block third party, you know, third party

00:56:45 ◼   ► from other sites or whatever,

00:56:46 ◼   ► there's almost nothing you can do,

00:56:47 ◼   ► including setting the do not track header,

00:56:50 ◼   ► there's almost nothing you can do to prevent them

00:56:52 ◼   ► from identifying you uniquely.

00:56:55 ◼   ► Because even if you disable cookies and everything else,

00:56:58 ◼   ► they can identify what your phone's battery capacity is

00:57:01 ◼   ► through the new battery level APIs.

00:57:03 ◼   ► They can set different kinds of cookies through Flash

00:57:06 ◼   ► or through databases, WebDB kind of stuff.

00:57:09 ◼   ► There's so many, they can just analyze

00:57:12 ◼   ► your browser's request headers

00:57:14 ◼   ► And just combining that with your IP address,

00:57:18 ◼   ► and they can generally get pretty unique with that.

00:57:20 ◼   ► I mean, it is so easy to track you

00:57:24 ◼   ► and to uniquely identify you between multiple sites.

00:57:29 ◼   ► The only thing you can really do

00:57:31 ◼   ► is block third-party embeds.

00:57:33 ◼   ► Now, and so let me get to what Gerb just said in the chat.

00:57:37 ◼   ► So what if publishers then just proxy the JavaScript

00:57:40 ◼   ► through their servers?

00:57:42 ◼   ► Good question.

00:57:44 ◼   ► So first of all, and this is a whole topic

00:57:46 ◼   ► that we can get to of like, you know,

00:57:48 ◼   ► what happens if all this ad blocking does become so big

00:57:51 ◼   ► that publishers have to change where they do things

00:57:53 ◼   ► and, you know, the things they change to might be worse.

00:57:56 ◼   ► And in some ways they will be.

00:57:57 ◼   ► But the major thing holding this back right now

00:58:00 ◼   ► is ease and trust.

00:58:04 ◼   ► Publishers usually don't have big tech teams

00:58:07 ◼   ► and whatever tech teams they're doing are busy.

00:58:10 ◼   ► They're busy doing the crazy CMS stuff,

00:58:13 ◼   ► trying to accommodate some crazy stuff

00:58:15 ◼   ► the sales people sold on Advertiser

00:58:16 ◼   ► for like a one-off kind of thing.

00:58:18 ◼   ► That's what the tech teams are busy doing at big publishers

00:58:21 ◼   ► and they're usually not very big teams.

00:58:22 ◼   ► So to have those tech teams do any custom work

00:58:26 ◼   ► that involves running more things through their software

00:58:29 ◼   ► and through their servers and through their domain names,

00:58:32 ◼   ► that's unlikely to happen in a lot of publishers.

00:58:35 ◼   ► Secondly, the issue of trust.

00:58:38 ◼   ► And the fact is the advertisers and the publishers

00:58:42 ◼   ► and the visitors, we all hate each other.

00:58:44 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:58:46 ◼   ► The advertisers don't like the publishers either,

00:58:48 ◼   ► because publishers try to rip them off.

00:58:50 ◼   ► And so, the advertisers don't usually trust the publishers

00:58:54 ◼   ► to say how many people viewed something.

00:58:57 ◼   ► If you proxied everything through the publisher's server,

00:59:00 ◼   ► then the advertiser, or the advertising network,

00:59:03 ◼   ► has no way to verify that those were real hits

00:59:05 ◼   ► that came from real unique people.

00:59:07 ◼   ► The publisher could fake that data back to the advertiser,

00:59:10 ◼   ► and enough people would that you might get,

00:59:13 ◼   ► you might get like the big sites could agree to do that,

00:59:16 ◼   ► like New York Times could do that,

00:59:18 ◼   ► but you wouldn't see something like Google AdSense

00:59:20 ◼   ► where like this common thing that's on tons of sites,

00:59:22 ◼   ► you wouldn't see something like that

00:59:23 ◼   ► going to that kind of model because it just,

00:59:25 ◼   ► it couldn't be trustworthy back to the advertiser.

00:59:26 ◼   ► So that's not gonna happen.

00:59:28 ◼   ► Anyway, going back before I get too far

00:59:31 ◼   ► into the post-release thing, so I released this thing,

00:59:34 ◼   ► not thinking it would be a problem,

00:59:38 ◼   ► And then as the success rolled in and as I started,

00:59:42 ◼   ► as I hit number one, and as money started rolling in,

00:59:46 ◼   ► big money started rolling in,

00:59:48 ◼   ► I started getting a lot of attention

00:59:51 ◼   ► that I really was not prepared to get.

00:59:53 ◼   ► And I didn't want to be the face of this war.

00:59:57 ◼   ► You know, I felt, and I used a war metaphor

01:00:00 ◼   ► in my polling post, and I do wanna recognize

01:00:03 ◼   ► that I'm using these metaphors extremely lightly,

01:00:05 ◼   ► because this is all very much first world problems,

01:00:08 ◼   ► and this is nothing like what real war is.

01:00:11 ◼   ► So I really want to use these metaphors extremely loosely

01:00:14 ◼   ► and with that giant disclaimer ahead of it.

01:00:16 ◼   ► But I almost felt like I was an arms dealer.

01:00:19 ◼   ► You know, like there's this war going on

01:00:22 ◼   ► and these two sides really don't like each other

01:00:24 ◼   ► and are trying to do whatever they can to disagree

01:00:27 ◼   ► and a lot of casualties happening

01:00:29 ◼   ► and I was the arms dealer that was enabling that.

01:00:32 ◼   ► And yeah, if I pull my app, somebody else will step in.

01:00:36 ◼   ► They already did.

01:00:37 ◼   ► somebody else can step in and can become the arms dealer.

01:00:39 ◼   ► So it's gonna happen anyway, let them be the arms dealer.

01:00:43 ◼   ► I didn't want to do that,

01:00:44 ◼   ► I didn't want to be in that position.

01:00:45 ◼   ► And I just, I didn't expect the scale of it.

01:00:50 ◼   ► I didn't adequately question how I would feel about it,

01:00:54 ◼   ► you know, late enough in the process.

01:00:56 ◼   ► I was so taken by how great the app turned out

01:00:59 ◼   ► and how great the Go through Data Ace was working

01:01:02 ◼   ► that I didn't put enough thought into

01:01:04 ◼   ► do I really want to be doing this.

01:01:06 ◼   ► And then all the requests started rolling in of,

01:01:08 ◼   ► well, you know, this is really terrible for everybody,

01:01:11 ◼   ► but if you just make these changes,

01:01:13 ◼   ► and everybody had different changes,

01:01:14 ◼   ► and they were all very complex.

01:01:16 ◼   ► And I started, it was going to be that

01:01:19 ◼   ► Peace was going to,

01:01:20 ◼   ► it was going to have to replace Overcast completely.

01:01:24 ◼   ► It was, I was no longer going to be a podcast app maker.

01:01:27 ◼   ► I would have had to be a full-time ad-blocking app maker,

01:01:32 ◼   ► dealing with the full-time realities

01:01:34 ◼   ► of being in that position, of being that arms dealer,

01:01:38 ◼   ► being that arbiter of what is acceptable and what's not.

01:01:41 ◼   ► And the fact is, I don't know anything

01:01:44 ◼   ► about that business at all.

01:01:47 ◼   ► I've only even used an ad blocker

01:01:49 ◼   ► for like three or four months.

01:01:50 ◼   ► I've barely even used them for that long.

01:01:53 ◼   ► I was totally unprepared to be in this role.

01:01:57 ◼   ► And once I was faced with the reality

01:01:59 ◼   ► of what this role is like, I realized,

01:02:02 ◼   ► oh, I really don't like this.

01:02:03 ◼   ► this is really uncomfortable.

01:02:05 ◼   ► I was having trouble sleeping for those,

01:02:07 ◼   ► I mean it was only a few nights before I pulled it,

01:02:11 ◼   ► but I was having trouble sleeping,

01:02:12 ◼   ► I was really kind of upset all day, all night.

01:02:15 ◼   ► I mean it was, I really did not know what to do.

01:02:18 ◼   ► I just realized that I had gotten in way too deep.

01:02:22 ◼   ► I was way in over my head.

01:02:24 ◼   ► I had not thought it through enough,

01:02:26 ◼   ► and I had found myself in a very powerful position

01:02:32 ◼   ► that I really didn't want that power,

01:02:36 ◼   ► in an industry that I really didn't want to be in,

01:02:39 ◼   ► being the face of a war

01:02:42 ◼   ► that I really did not want to be the face of.

01:02:45 ◼   ► That's what happened.

01:02:46 ◼   ► - So, just to ask the question that a lot of people

01:02:49 ◼   ► have asked on Twitter and in the chat room,

01:02:51 ◼   ► even though I know what the answer is,

01:02:53 ◼   ► was the fact that peace blocked ads on Marco.org

01:02:57 ◼   ► a factor in any of your decisions?

01:02:59 ◼   ► - No, I don't make that much money from those ads.

01:03:01 ◼   ► It's fine.

01:03:02 ◼   ► No, not at all.

01:03:03 ◼   ► And it does block at them, right?

01:03:04 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:03:05 ◼   ► You run peace on Marco.org, your website, it blocks the ads on it.

01:03:08 ◼   ► And you know that, and it did not affect any of your decisions.

01:03:11 ◼   ► I thought it would be a massive dick move if I didn't.

01:03:13 ◼   ► Right.

01:03:14 ◼   ► I mean, that's maybe because if you know, like, all the different things that you do,

01:03:20 ◼   ► you make overcasts, you've got the podcast, you've got a website, and they all kind of

01:03:24 ◼   ► contribute to the stuff that you do.

01:03:26 ◼   ► But it has seemed to me in recent years that your website, although it used to be much

01:03:31 ◼   ► more important, is now less important.

01:03:34 ◼   ► So maybe people who only know your sort of public face from – I mean didn't you stop

01:03:38 ◼   ► selling sponsorships for the website recently?

01:03:41 ◼   ► Like a year ago or more.

01:03:43 ◼   ► It was a while ago.

01:03:44 ◼   ► Anyway, yeah.

01:03:45 ◼   ► I think people have the wrong impression and think of you – think of like Marco.org as

01:03:50 ◼   ► the same thing as like DerekFireball.net as in like Marco.org is the main thing and then

01:03:54 ◼   ► and you do these podcasts on the side

01:03:55 ◼   ► and you make software on the side or whatever.

01:03:57 ◼   ► But at various times,

01:03:58 ◼   ► the balance between the things you do has changed.

01:04:00 ◼   ► But anyway.

01:04:01 ◼   ► - I barely even write on my side anymore.

01:04:03 ◼   ► - Tell me about it.

01:04:04 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:04:05 ◼   ► Yeah, you, you're even worse than me.

01:04:07 ◼   ► - I'm winning.

01:04:08 ◼   ► - You are.

01:04:09 ◼   ► - I'm winning.

01:04:09 ◼   ► - No, but I mean, yeah, the fact is,

01:04:11 ◼   ► if the deck canceled my membership over this,

01:04:16 ◼   ► that wouldn't have,

01:04:17 ◼   ► threatening to do that wouldn't have been enough,

01:04:18 ◼   ► which they didn't,

01:04:19 ◼   ► but threatening to do that would not have been enough

01:04:22 ◼   ► for me to make this decision.

01:04:23 ◼   ► I made this decision with almost no input.

01:04:25 ◼   ► I asked almost nobody.

01:04:27 ◼   ► I did actually run it, a lot of the theories are

01:04:29 ◼   ► that John Gruber somehow sat on me to force me to do this.

01:04:32 ◼   ► The only person who knew before I pulled the app

01:04:36 ◼   ► that I was going to pull the app,

01:04:37 ◼   ► besides Ghostery and my wife,

01:04:39 ◼   ► the only other person that I told was John Gruber.

01:04:42 ◼   ► And because he's a smart guy.

01:04:45 ◼   ► And so I ran up by him as kind of a sanity check.

01:04:49 ◼   ► Like, am I totally insane here?

01:04:51 ◼   ► And I didn't want to ask a lot of people,

01:04:54 ◼   ► but I did ask him, 'cause he has a lot of thoughts

01:04:56 ◼   ► on this issue, and he said that I should keep it up.

01:05:01 ◼   ► He told me to leave it, like he said, don't do it.

01:05:05 ◼   ► He said, wait, you're being rash, think this through,

01:05:08 ◼   ► you probably don't want to do this.

01:05:10 ◼   ► So the theory that he somehow got to me,

01:05:13 ◼   ► I don't know, like a horse head on the bed,

01:05:15 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:05:16 ◼   ► the theory that he got to me is completely wrong.

01:05:18 ◼   ► The fact is, I made the decision before talking to him about it.

01:05:22 ◼   ► I ran it by him.

01:05:23 ◼   ► He told me, "Don't do it," and then I did it anyway.

01:05:27 ◼   ► So that's what happened.

01:05:30 ◼   ► And you know, once, and Ghostery was great.

01:05:31 ◼   ► I mean, I thought that was going to be a problem going to them and being like, "Hey, never

01:05:35 ◼   ► mind."

01:05:36 ◼   ► You know, right after all this.

01:05:38 ◼   ► But they made their own post.

01:05:39 ◼   ► I don't want to speak for them, but we were all on the same page.

01:05:41 ◼   ► It was fine.

01:05:42 ◼   ► And they were, again, so incredibly easy to work with.

01:05:46 ◼   ► Like, "Yeah, okay."

01:05:48 ◼   ► It was so easy.

01:05:49 ◼   ► That's what happened before and during.

01:05:53 ◼   ► And so I don't know how much I wanna talk about

01:05:57 ◼   ► what I think about ads today.

01:05:59 ◼   ► I mean, I already ranted about how ads and trackers

01:06:01 ◼   ► are the same thing, 'cause they are.

01:06:02 ◼   ► I will say that I think the biggest problem

01:06:06 ◼   ► that web publishing faces is that the things they're doing,

01:06:11 ◼   ► hmm, how do I say this nicely?

01:06:14 ◼   ► I would say journalists are kind of like,

01:06:17 ◼   ► I've had this problem with academics as well,

01:06:20 ◼   ► and probably because I was a terrible student

01:06:22 ◼   ► and had generally terrible experiences

01:06:24 ◼   ► with schooling growing up,

01:06:26 ◼   ► but academia puts itself in a really pious position,

01:06:31 ◼   ► and some of that is deserved, but a lot of it isn't.

01:06:35 ◼   ► In a lot of ways, they're just people

01:06:37 ◼   ► with the same flaws as everyone else.

01:06:39 ◼   ► The role they serve is in some part special and necessary

01:06:42 ◼   ► and in some part just a business.

01:06:44 ◼   ► And so journalism, I think you can say

01:06:47 ◼   ► all the same things about.

01:06:49 ◼   ► It is, it does serve a critical role in society, sometimes.

01:06:54 ◼   ► Most of the journalism taking place today

01:06:57 ◼   ► is not providing value really,

01:06:59 ◼   ► or not providing enough value.

01:07:01 ◼   ► It's really a hard business,

01:07:04 ◼   ► because if you're in the business,

01:07:05 ◼   ► like I thought it was kind of ironic,

01:07:09 ◼   ► forgive me if I'm misusing that word, the ironic police,

01:07:12 ◼   ► but it was kind of ironic that my post

01:07:17 ◼   ► in which I said that I was pulling the app,

01:07:21 ◼   ► somebody screenshotted on Techmeme that it was,

01:07:24 ◼   ► there were like a hundred other posts from news sites

01:07:29 ◼   ► that were basically just rewrites of it,

01:07:31 ◼   ► just valueless, bad rewrites of it.

01:07:34 ◼   ► That didn't even get the right point out of it, of course.

01:07:38 ◼   ► My experience with journalists personally

01:07:40 ◼   ► has been mostly mediocre to negative.

01:07:43 ◼   ► I have said many times in the past

01:07:45 ◼   ► that talking to journalists is like talking to the police.

01:07:48 ◼   ► Ideally don't.

01:07:49 ◼   ► They have different goals than you

01:07:52 ◼   ► and they have lots of incentives

01:07:54 ◼   ► that might be misaligned from your incentives

01:07:56 ◼   ► and that you, in my experience,

01:07:58 ◼   ► I've been very frequently misrepresented

01:08:01 ◼   ► and I've had my quotes very frequently used

01:08:03 ◼   ► out of context and against me

01:08:04 ◼   ► or as weapons to fight a cause that I wasn't representing.

01:08:08 ◼   ► So I've had a lot of mediocre experiences

01:08:11 ◼   ► or negative experiences with journalists

01:08:13 ◼   ► because there's this attitude in the business

01:08:16 ◼   ► that they are untouchable,

01:08:19 ◼   ► that they must be automatically supported by society

01:08:24 ◼   ► somehow that what they're doing has infinite value.

01:08:26 ◼   ► And the fact is then, I write this post

01:08:28 ◼   ► and I see the hundred useless rewrites

01:08:31 ◼   ► that most sites published about.

01:08:33 ◼   ► I mean, some sites had original content

01:08:35 ◼   ► that was interesting and interesting perspectives.

01:08:37 ◼   ► Most didn't.

01:08:39 ◼   ► There's a massive oversupply of journalism,

01:08:43 ◼   ► of publishing on the web.

01:08:45 ◼   ► Ad blockers have existed for a long time.

01:08:48 ◼   ► People have been blocking ads for a long time.

01:08:50 ◼   ► Ad rates have been going down for a long time,

01:08:54 ◼   ► especially display ads on websites.

01:08:56 ◼   ► Design decisions have been being made by data

01:09:00 ◼   ► for a long time.

01:09:01 ◼   ► There's this infectious culture of data people

01:09:04 ◼   ► that drives me nuts.

01:09:05 ◼   ► The analytics and data,

01:09:07 ◼   ► That, all those things are euphemisms for tracking.

01:09:11 ◼   ► And so this culture drives major decisions at publishers,

01:09:15 ◼   ► including what analytics they're going to have

01:09:17 ◼   ► on their site, what trackers they're going to embed,

01:09:19 ◼   ► how they're going to track you,

01:09:20 ◼   ► what they're going to track,

01:09:21 ◼   ► who they're going to sell your data to.

01:09:23 ◼   ► This culture of we're gonna track everything, that's okay,

01:09:27 ◼   ► we're gonna make all of our design decisions

01:09:29 ◼   ► based on data and A/B testing and everything,

01:09:32 ◼   ► that has infected the industry so, so badly.

01:09:35 ◼   ► And by the way, all this applies to apps as well,

01:09:38 ◼   ► but what apps can do is different,

01:09:39 ◼   ► and then we'll get to that possibly some other time.

01:09:41 ◼   ► The combination of the data people

01:09:44 ◼   ► plus publishing just being so hyper-competitive,

01:09:49 ◼   ► so over-supplied, and ad rates being so bad

01:09:53 ◼   ► leads to an environment where publishers are just desperate

01:09:58 ◼   ► because, as I said, the economics are hard.

01:10:00 ◼   ► They're really hard.

01:10:02 ◼   ► If you have a staff of more than zero,

01:10:06 ◼   ► if you're just yourself working,

01:10:08 ◼   ► a lot of people can make money themselves enough to survive.

01:10:12 ◼   ► But once you start supporting a staff,

01:10:14 ◼   ► like if you're big enough to have an HR department,

01:10:17 ◼   ► I think that's a good barrier.

01:10:19 ◼   ► If you're so big like that

01:10:20 ◼   ► and you're trying to make it in publishing,

01:10:21 ◼   ► it's really hard to do.

01:10:24 ◼   ► This environment, this atmosphere of difficult economics,

01:10:27 ◼   ► decreasing ad rates, it's creating this environment

01:10:30 ◼   ► where bad behavior, like embedding tons of trackers

01:10:33 ◼   ► and doing creepy things to your data,

01:10:35 ◼   ► is only going to increase.

01:10:37 ◼   ► It is prevalent now, it's only going to increase,

01:10:40 ◼   ► and the fact that, or the idea that journalism

01:10:44 ◼   ► needs to be supported by society no matter what,

01:10:47 ◼   ► despite all of this garbage,

01:10:49 ◼   ► I don't think is a valid argument,

01:10:50 ◼   ► and I think that there's really fault on both sides here.

01:10:54 ◼   ► The attitude from publishers seems to be

01:10:56 ◼   ► that they are helpless in this fight,

01:10:57 ◼   ► that, well, it's not our problem,

01:10:59 ◼   ► it's what the advertisers do and we have to use them,

01:11:02 ◼   ► then that's your problem, you know?

01:11:04 ◼   ► Then that's your fault, you are choosing to do this,

01:11:07 ◼   ► you are selling me to them.

01:11:09 ◼   ► So this is a hard problem.

01:11:13 ◼   ► It is not going to be solved anytime soon.

01:11:16 ◼   ► It's as much ad blockers fault as the decline

01:11:20 ◼   ► of the music sales were Napster's fault.

01:11:23 ◼   ► That's a contributing factor,

01:11:25 ◼   ► but it's not really the root problem.

01:11:28 ◼   ► And I think any discussion of ad blockers

01:11:32 ◼   ► that comes over the next months and years

01:11:34 ◼   ► as the economics of the surrounding world

01:11:36 ◼   ► continue to crumble,

01:11:39 ◼   ► a lot of it's gonna be blamed on ad blockers,

01:11:40 ◼   ► but the reality is it's much more complicated than that.

01:11:43 ◼   ► And I really think journalists and publishing companies

01:11:46 ◼   ► are looking at it completely the wrong way.

01:11:48 ◼   ► They're looking at it really in a way

01:11:49 ◼   ► that buries their heads in the sand.

01:11:51 ◼   ► They're saying, "Well, it's your fault.

01:11:52 ◼   ► "You're blocking our ads," whatever.

01:11:54 ◼   ► The real problem is them.

01:11:55 ◼   ► The real problem is that they are adding things to their sites and tracking things and shoving

01:12:01 ◼   ► in ads and arbitrary code. They are allowing themselves and advertisers to do really creepy

01:12:07 ◼   ► things in the name of money and data. That's problem number one. Problem number two is

01:12:13 ◼   ► that many of them are doing work that they assume has value, that might have less value

01:12:20 ◼   ► they think. Like taking my blog post and rewriting it for your audience, how much value does

01:12:27 ◼   ► that have really? Like are you adding much there? Should people be paying you for that?

01:12:32 ◼   ► I don't know. I think they're in trouble. I think they're really looking at it the

01:12:37 ◼   ► wrong way. And I don't want to seem like too anti-publisher here because there's

01:12:41 ◼   ► a lot of them that are really good. But there's also a lot of them that are going to be having

01:12:45 ◼   ► a really hard next few years, and I think they're gonna

01:12:49 ◼   ► blame ad blockers, but the reality is this was happening

01:12:54 ◼   ► with or without ad blockers.

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01:15:53 ◼   ► - What did you learn from all this, from the peace thing?

01:15:55 ◼   ► And I mean this not to beat you up,

01:15:57 ◼   ► but clearly this did not go the way you thought

01:16:00 ◼   ► it was going to go, and clearly--

01:16:02 ◼   ► - It was a disaster.

01:16:03 ◼   ► - Right, and I think what a lot of people lost sight over

01:16:07 ◼   ► you pulled "Peace" was that that—it was going to be a long-term fix, but it was a

01:16:16 ◼   ► short-term, increased disaster. Like, you were not making things easier on yourself,

01:16:23 ◼   ► at least for the first few days, by pulling "Peace." And I'm curious, you know, what

01:16:29 ◼   ► did you learn from this experience, and maybe even from the magazine? You've made a few

01:16:33 ◼   ► parallels with that experience. What have you learned?

01:16:36 ◼   ► I'd like to say that I learned not to tackle apps

01:16:39 ◼   ► without thinking them through,

01:16:41 ◼   ► but the reality is I'm probably gonna make that mistake

01:16:43 ◼   ► again in the future.

01:16:44 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:16:45 ◼   ► I'm just gonna hopefully pick better ones.

01:16:47 ◼   ► What can I say?

01:16:49 ◼   ► I like making stuff and I got carried away,

01:16:51 ◼   ► in both of those cases, I got carried away with,

01:16:54 ◼   ► you know, first of all,

01:16:55 ◼   ► underestimating how much work they would be,

01:16:57 ◼   ► and then second of all, not thinking forward enough,

01:16:59 ◼   ► like, do I really want to be this thing full-time?

01:17:04 ◼   ► because that can and probably will happen

01:17:06 ◼   ► to a lot of these things.

01:17:08 ◼   ► I thought peace was gonna be a really simple thing

01:17:12 ◼   ► that, especially since I outsourced the data to Ghostery,

01:17:15 ◼   ► I thought it would be effectively no upkeep.

01:17:19 ◼   ► I did not think it was going to do that well.

01:17:22 ◼   ► I didn't think I'd become the face of ad blocking,

01:17:24 ◼   ► and I didn't think through what it meant,

01:17:27 ◼   ► what it would mean for it to be widely used,

01:17:31 ◼   ► and what it would mean to put myself in that position

01:17:33 ◼   ► and whether I wanted to be in that position.

01:17:35 ◼   ► And the reality is, I'm not made for that.

01:17:39 ◼   ► I'm not made for this business.

01:17:40 ◼   ► I'm made for occasionally talking about it on podcasts,

01:17:44 ◼   ► but I'm not made for actually being in it,

01:17:49 ◼   ► for being involved, for being a major decision maker,

01:17:51 ◼   ► for the politics, for the pressure,

01:17:53 ◼   ► for possibly being sued.

01:17:55 ◼   ► I mean, we don't know.

01:17:56 ◼   ► I mean, ad blockers could get sued.

01:17:58 ◼   ► There's all these things that could happen.

01:17:59 ◼   ► And I didn't want to be in that business,

01:18:03 ◼   ► that I just wanted to make a cool app

01:18:05 ◼   ► and then get back to my podcast app.

01:18:08 ◼   ► And the fact is it isn't that simple.

01:18:10 ◼   ► And success makes it especially not that simple.

01:18:13 ◼   ► - So you could have done that, like physically speaking,

01:18:16 ◼   ► it could have been no upkeep,

01:18:17 ◼   ► 'cause you had to deal with the ghost tree,

01:18:18 ◼   ► you could have made the app,

01:18:19 ◼   ► you could have never modified the application again

01:18:21 ◼   ► except to keep it running,

01:18:22 ◼   ► and just continue to serve the ghost tree.

01:18:24 ◼   ► Like that was a possibility.

01:18:26 ◼   ► It's not as if there was something specifically

01:18:29 ◼   ► about this application that required

01:18:30 ◼   ► a tremendous amount of upkeep, right?

01:18:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's more that I thought the problem

01:18:35 ◼   ► was way simpler than it really was.

01:18:37 ◼   ► I really thought that just having this master on/off switch

01:18:41 ◼   ► and a handful of options below it would be enough

01:18:44 ◼   ► to solve the problem, and the reality is that's not enough.

01:18:47 ◼   ► Like any app, I mean, when I made Bugshot,

01:18:50 ◼   ► whenever it was, two years ago?

01:18:51 ◼   ► Yeah, two years ago, when I made Bugshot,

01:18:53 ◼   ► I thought the same thing,

01:18:54 ◼   ► that this is gonna be a simple little thing,

01:18:55 ◼   ► I'm gonna spend a week on it,

01:18:58 ◼   ► and then I'll use it, my friends will use it,

01:19:01 ◼   ► maybe I'll sell a couple thousand copies.

01:19:02 ◼   ► And in Bugshot's case, that's exactly what happened.

01:19:06 ◼   ► But even on day one, it was like, well,

01:19:09 ◼   ► gotta fix this bug, this feature request,

01:19:11 ◼   ► it's coming in a lot, I really should address that,

01:19:13 ◼   ► it wouldn't be that much work.

01:19:14 ◼   ► And so it starts eating more and more time,

01:19:17 ◼   ► and eating more and more of your attention.

01:19:19 ◼   ► The idea of just releasing an app out there,

01:19:22 ◼   ► and that's the end of it,

01:19:24 ◼   ► is something that I keep falling into.

01:19:26 ◼   ► That is one of the biggest lessons I have to learn here,

01:19:28 ◼   ► is like, when I had these little ideas

01:19:30 ◼   ► for little side apps, it's very hard to make those stay little side apps, to really

01:19:39 ◼   ► make them not take that long, not take away a lot of time from my primary app, which right

01:19:43 ◼   ► now is Overcast, and I expected to be that for a long time. I keep thinking I can do

01:19:49 ◼   ► more than I really can in a day or at a time. That is the main problem here. I have a lot

01:19:55 ◼   ► of things I want to do. I have a lot of ideas I want to work on, but I really need to first

01:20:01 ◼   ► question A) how much time they will actually take, probably way more than I think of ongoing

01:20:08 ◼   ► time, and then B) do I really want to be there? What if it succeeds? Then I'm that person,

01:20:15 ◼   ► then I'm in that business. Do I really want to be there?

01:20:17 ◼   ► See, I think what I see at the center of this is like, again, I get back to the idea that

01:20:22 ◼   ► You could have made peace the way it was, made sure it could work as iOS is updated,

01:20:26 ◼   ► but never add another feature to it, never change a thing on it, never update the icon,

01:20:30 ◼   ► never like, "That's it."

01:20:31 ◼   ► You do the app, you make it, you leave it on the store, it is for sale, you never make

01:20:35 ◼   ► any other changes to it.

01:20:37 ◼   ► That is a thing you could do, but I think the problem is, is like, "Oh, I think these

01:20:40 ◼   ► applications are going to require this update."

01:20:42 ◼   ► They don't require the update, they only require it because you feel bad about having an application

01:20:47 ◼   ► that you know could be better in the million ways that everyone suggests to you.

01:20:50 ◼   ► And so you feel compelled to, like with Bugshot, you're like, you know, those people have a

01:20:54 ◼   ► point.

01:20:55 ◼   ► It would be better if it had this feature that beer.

01:20:56 ◼   ► And this actually would be a cool idea.

01:20:58 ◼   ► And it just, you can't, you can't, you can't abide by having an application on the store

01:21:02 ◼   ► that you made that is in some ways a representation of you.

01:21:06 ◼   ► Like this is my work, this is the type of thing that I made.

01:21:08 ◼   ► And then just never touch it again.

01:21:09 ◼   ► Like that sounds like it would be torture for you to be forced to put out an application

01:21:13 ◼   ► and say the only thing you're allowed to do is application from now on.

01:21:16 ◼   ► You're not allowed to do any work on it except if it breaks because of an OS update.

01:21:19 ◼   ► and then you do the minimum to get it working again

01:21:21 ◼   ► and that's it.

01:21:22 ◼   ► You can't add features, you can't change the behavior,

01:21:23 ◼   ► you can't update the icon, you can't make it more efficient,

01:21:26 ◼   ► you can't do anything with it, right?

01:21:28 ◼   ► And it seems like you are constitutionally incapable

01:21:31 ◼   ► and I think most developers are constitutionally incapable

01:21:34 ◼   ► of doing that because it would just eat at you.

01:21:36 ◼   ► You'd be like, but it's not good,

01:21:38 ◼   ► it's not as good as it could be, it could be better,

01:21:41 ◼   ► or I think I made a mistake with this,

01:21:43 ◼   ► or these features should be different,

01:21:45 ◼   ► or even just for your own purposes,

01:21:46 ◼   ► you'd be like, you know what,

01:21:47 ◼   ► the way I had this thing set up,

01:21:49 ◼   ► It's not even working for me anymore.

01:21:50 ◼   ► I can't even use my own app

01:21:51 ◼   ► because I'm not allowed to change it.

01:21:52 ◼   ► So that I think is at the core here

01:21:54 ◼   ► because I know there are a lot of developers

01:21:56 ◼   ► like who, you know, these places that just churn out

01:22:00 ◼   ► thousands and thousands and thousands of applications

01:22:02 ◼   ► with, you know, fleets or developers,

01:22:04 ◼   ► they're fire and forget.

01:22:05 ◼   ► It's like application goes out into the world

01:22:06 ◼   ► and makes whatever money it's gonna make,

01:22:07 ◼   ► it will never be revisited, right?

01:22:09 ◼   ► But that is not how you are,

01:22:11 ◼   ► you don't feel good working that way

01:22:13 ◼   ► so you never will work that way.

01:22:14 ◼   ► And so that's why it's basically impossible

01:22:16 ◼   ► for you to ever have an app like that

01:22:18 ◼   ► that you just say, oh, I'll just make this app,

01:22:20 ◼   ► and it will just sit on the store making money,

01:22:22 ◼   ► and I'll never look at it again.

01:22:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think you're exactly right.

01:22:26 ◼   ► I mean, I can't do that.

01:22:28 ◼   ► I am not able, whatever I think will happen

01:22:33 ◼   ► before it happens, when the time comes, I am not able,

01:22:37 ◼   ► like, the morning that I decided to pull it,

01:22:41 ◼   ► I decided to pull it mid-morning,

01:22:44 ◼   ► before that, I was sitting down to start work,

01:22:47 ◼   ► I had Xcode open, I had peace there,

01:22:48 ◼   ► and I was starting to work on the 1.1 update

01:22:50 ◼   ► that would add all these, you know,

01:22:52 ◼   ► granular settings and all this crap people wanted.

01:22:54 ◼   ► And I'm like, you know, that's when I started thinking like,

01:22:56 ◼   ► I really don't want to do this.

01:22:58 ◼   ► Like this is really, I'm not happy maintaining this app.

01:23:02 ◼   ► I can't handle the heat.

01:23:03 ◼   ► I would like to get out of the kitchen, please.

01:23:06 ◼   ► Like I cannot handle this heat.

01:23:08 ◼   ► And why am I, like, I wanna be shipping over Cast 2.0.

01:23:11 ◼   ► What the heck am I doing doing this app

01:23:14 ◼   ► that is making me hate myself.

01:23:19 ◼   ► And one of the problems is, it was bringing in good money.

01:23:23 ◼   ► It's really hard to turn that down.

01:23:25 ◼   ► A lot of people wouldn't be able to turn that down.

01:23:27 ◼   ► I was fortunate that I have other sources of income.

01:23:30 ◼   ► I have made money in the past, so I could,

01:23:34 ◼   ► I had to ask my wife, of course, like, am I crazy here?

01:23:37 ◼   ► But I, you know, the fact is,

01:23:41 ◼   ► it was really hard to turn that away.

01:23:44 ◼   ► once it was working, but that should give you some idea

01:23:48 ◼   ► of how bad I felt about it.

01:23:50 ◼   ► Like, that I really, really did not want to be

01:23:55 ◼   ► in that business once I was in it.

01:23:57 ◼   ► Once I was in it, I was like, oh no, this is not for me.

01:24:00 ◼   ► I can't handle it.

01:24:02 ◼   ► I mean, being in the ad blocking business

01:24:06 ◼   ► feels like being in the piracy business.

01:24:09 ◼   ► You know, and please, I don't wanna hear from people

01:24:11 ◼   ► about this comment, but, you know,

01:24:14 ◼   ► 'cause it isn't the same, it isn't a direct,

01:24:18 ◼   ► perfect metaphor, but there's a lot of overlap.

01:24:20 ◼   ► That being in the ad blocking, piracy, ad blocking,

01:24:24 ◼   ► these are things that lots of people want.

01:24:28 ◼   ► Lots of people won't admit they want it,

01:24:29 ◼   ► but they want it anyway.

01:24:31 ◼   ► Lots of people do it and don't talk about it,

01:24:33 ◼   ► and it's no big deal.

01:24:34 ◼   ► There are some legitimate reasons to do those things

01:24:38 ◼   ► that aren't just you want things for free,

01:24:40 ◼   ► Like there's actually legitimate reasons

01:24:41 ◼   ► for people to pirate things sometimes.

01:24:43 ◼   ► And there's, I think, very many legitimate reasons

01:24:45 ◼   ► to block ads.

01:24:45 ◼   ► But the fact is they kind of live in the same world

01:24:48 ◼   ► of things that are either illegal or kind of close,

01:24:52 ◼   ► you know, kind of in a gray area.

01:24:54 ◼   ► It's a tricky area to define morals and standards around.

01:24:59 ◼   ► And so making your living from an ad blocker,

01:25:04 ◼   ► it kind of feels like work,

01:25:06 ◼   ► it kind of feels like profiting off of piracy

01:25:09 ◼   ► or I don't know, I wonder if like,

01:25:11 ◼   ► I wonder like if people who work for porn sites

01:25:13 ◼   ► feel any weirdness about it, like any sleaziness or,

01:25:17 ◼   ► I don't know, I don't know what that industry's like either

01:25:18 ◼   ► but I suspect it might have some similar issues

01:25:22 ◼   ► of like some people just don't wanna be associated

01:25:26 ◼   ► with that kind of industry, you know?

01:25:27 ◼   ► And so I think ad blocking, it's one of those things

01:25:29 ◼   ► where it is questionable, it is potentially risky,

01:25:33 ◼   ► there's people getting hurt somewhere along the way,

01:25:37 ◼   ► like it's kind of tricky to stomach.

01:25:40 ◼   ► And I think there's a reason why most people

01:25:44 ◼   ► who make ad blocking software are not like prominent

01:25:49 ◼   ► indie personalities in public.

01:25:52 ◼   ► Like I don't know the people who make the other

01:25:54 ◼   ► ad blockers at all, I've never heard of them.

01:25:57 ◼   ► It's fine.

01:25:58 ◼   ► They probably would not be exposed to as much crap

01:26:02 ◼   ► as what I was getting because I put myself

01:26:05 ◼   ► out there in the public.

01:26:06 ◼   ► I have a very public persona in this industry

01:26:10 ◼   ► and among the press, which sometimes I really regret.

01:26:14 ◼   ► And this is one of those times,

01:26:16 ◼   ► where it's really hard to handle.

01:26:19 ◼   ► But this is the business made for anonymous companies

01:26:23 ◼   ► and people who don't mind the heat.

01:26:26 ◼   ► It's made for them and I'm neither of those things.

01:26:29 ◼   ► - So for all the people who are angry,

01:26:30 ◼   ► like my anger about this thing,

01:26:32 ◼   ► if I could speak to those people for a moment

01:26:35 ◼   ► still listening to the show and didn't rage quit because now they're super angry at Marco.

01:26:39 ◼   ► There's a couple aspects to that. First, I think it's reasonable for people to be angry because

01:26:46 ◼   ► Marco did inconvenience a lot of people who had to go get a refund before the big thing happened.

01:26:51 ◼   ► And also, it's this sort of feeling of betrayal, like I'm buying this thing because I trust the

01:26:57 ◼   ► things that Marco makes and now that the trust has been betrayed. So there is a fundamental screw-up

01:27:02 ◼   ► on Marco's part, underlying all of this. And understandably people are angry about it. And,

01:27:07 ◼   ► you know, Marco knew that that anger would be coming, and I think you accept that, yeah,

01:27:11 ◼   ► no, like, the short-term pain for long-term gain, it's best to just rip off the band-aid now,

01:27:15 ◼   ► people are going to be angry at you, and that's just something you're going to have to deal with,

01:27:19 ◼   ► right? Obviously it goes over the line when people get really mean about it, but whatever, like,

01:27:23 ◼   ► there's that aspect of it. And I don't think that's, you know, that's, I think that's part

01:27:29 ◼   ► of your decision making because I think although you may anyway the second thing is that the

01:27:33 ◼   ► people the other thing people are angry about you know they're angry spins out all sorts of

01:27:37 ◼   ► directions and it's like how did you make an ad blocker and not understand that you didn't want

01:27:43 ◼   ► to be a person who makes an ad blocker and I think you've done a good job explaining that now but I

01:27:47 ◼   ► think your blog post about it explains it even better particularly in the title and that you're

01:27:52 ◼   ► like how dumb does this guy have to be he spends the whole summer making an ad blocker he puts it

01:27:56 ◼   ► out there and then one day later he goes, "You know what? I don't want to make an ad blocker."

01:28:00 ◼   ► They block ads, right? Like, somehow you didn't understand how ad blockers work. And my take on

01:28:06 ◼   ► it based on your blog post and everything you said is that you understood that you were going to make

01:28:10 ◼   ► an ad blocker, you wanted to use an ad blocker, you still do want to use an ad blocker, and you

01:28:15 ◼   ► made one that you liked, which is, you know, like you said, your MO for doing things. An application

01:28:18 ◼   ► that you think is going to be popular that you yourself want to use that you can develop,

01:28:22 ◼   ► That's the formula for making an app, right?

01:28:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:28:25 ◼   ► And so you made the thing.

01:28:27 ◼   ► And when it came out, the thing you didn't anticipate

01:28:29 ◼   ► was the fact that-- not the fact that it blocked ads,

01:28:32 ◼   ► but it was like making an ad blocker

01:28:34 ◼   ► and having it block ads.

01:28:35 ◼   ► All that worked the way you hoped, and it's great.

01:28:37 ◼   ► What you didn't anticipate was how you would feel about being--

01:28:41 ◼   ► how you'd feel about being the person who made an ad blocker.

01:28:44 ◼   ► And people who think that you should

01:28:47 ◼   ► be able to predict how you'll feel about something

01:28:49 ◼   ► that has not yet happened are asking too much, I think,

01:28:53 ◼   ► of, you know, like, you say, I really want to be,

01:28:57 ◼   ► I don't know, like, the manager at the store that I work out.

01:29:01 ◼   ► I really want to be married.

01:29:03 ◼   ► I really want to, you know, get a tattoo.

01:29:07 ◼   ► I really want to learn to fly a plane.

01:29:09 ◼   ► I really want to be an accountant.

01:29:11 ◼   ► Until you actually do all those things,

01:29:12 ◼   ► you can have predictions about how much

01:29:14 ◼   ► you're gonna like it.

01:29:14 ◼   ► Are you really gonna like being a manager?

01:29:17 ◼   ► Are you actually gonna like learning to fly a plane?

01:29:20 ◼   ► You know, all those things.

01:29:21 ◼   ► You say you wanna get married once,

01:29:23 ◼   ► you're sure you wanna get married to this person?

01:29:24 ◼   ► A lot of people change their mind about that,

01:29:26 ◼   ► about half of them.

01:29:27 ◼   ► You know, like, you may think, you know,

01:29:30 ◼   ► like, it's like, didn't you understand

01:29:32 ◼   ► what it would be like to be manager?

01:29:33 ◼   ► You see the manager every day.

01:29:34 ◼   ► You know what managers do.

01:29:35 ◼   ► It's not like it's a mystery.

01:29:37 ◼   ► And then when you're saying you're the manager now,

01:29:39 ◼   ► now you're not happy,

01:29:40 ◼   ► sometimes you just don't know how you're gonna feel

01:29:42 ◼   ► about doing a thing until you actually do it.

01:29:44 ◼   ► And that's a mistake.

01:29:45 ◼   ► We all make that mistake in various sizes.

01:29:48 ◼   ► Hopefully, most of us don't make those mistakes

01:29:50 ◼   ► in the public eye, but sometimes you do, right?

01:29:52 ◼   ► And so, the way I frame what Margo has done here

01:29:57 ◼   ► is that he didn't correctly predict

01:30:00 ◼   ► how he would feel about something.

01:30:01 ◼   ► It's not an intellectual thing

01:30:02 ◼   ► where he didn't understand the consequences

01:30:04 ◼   ► or that all the grand conspiracy theories

01:30:07 ◼   ► that we don't wanna get into,

01:30:09 ◼   ► is that, like you said in your thing,

01:30:10 ◼   ► it didn't feel good to you to be doing this.

01:30:12 ◼   ► Everything else was working exactly as you predicted.

01:30:14 ◼   ► Like you thought it would sell,

01:30:16 ◼   ► could potentially sell a lot because you're prominent

01:30:19 ◼   ► and it's a thing that people want