ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► - No.

00:00:00 ◼   ► - Oh no.

00:00:02 ◼   ► - Oh no.

00:00:03 ◼   ► (John groans)

00:00:04 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:00:07 ◼   ► - All right, so you wanna do some follow-up?

00:00:09 ◼   ► We can start with handwriting recognition,

00:00:11 ◼   ► which I'm assuming is more of John's follow-up?

00:00:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know why none of us thought of this,

00:00:17 ◼   ► probably because we're all Westerners.

00:00:20 ◼   ► But the one thing we didn't talk about with iPads

00:00:22 ◼   ► and styluses or styli is that handwriting recognition

00:00:28 ◼   ► Good text input with a with a pen is good for people who don't write with

00:00:33 ◼   ► Roman characters who have tons and tons of characters Chinese Japanese

00:00:37 ◼   ► It's pain in the butt to enter those with the keyboard because they have to have these crazy multi-level keyboards, but you you know

00:00:43 ◼   ► Tap one key then tap another tap another work your way down to the actual character you want or combine multiple taps to make one

00:00:49 ◼   ► thing

00:00:50 ◼   ► Whereas these people know how to draw it with you just gave them a pen

00:00:52 ◼   ► So if you can recognize that it's actually way more convenient than trying to use a keyboard

00:00:56 ◼   ► So that I mean, I don't know if that's harder or easier than recognizing. I assume it's harder than recognizing, you know

00:01:03 ◼   ► regular Roman characters that we have

00:01:06 ◼   ► But it's definitely if you can get it to work

00:01:09 ◼   ► It's definitely more convenient for the person inputting the characters than hunting through some crazy keyboard

00:01:14 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely. I will say that a friend a friend of mine will Haynes

00:01:19 ◼   ► He had shown me

00:01:22 ◼   ► He lives in Tokyo despite having grown up in Australia and he had shown me the Japanese keyboard

00:01:28 ◼   ► I'm sure there's like a name for like kanji or something like that and that's probably wrong, too

00:01:31 ◼   ► But anyway, he had shown me the Japanese keyboard which involves

00:01:34 ◼   ► you know drawing these little characters on the bottom of the screen very much like the palm was way back in the day and

00:01:41 ◼   ► As someone who has never seen that before it was amazing

00:01:45 ◼   ► It was extremely cool and I could see how having a stylus would make it that much better

00:01:48 ◼   ► Monk bent in the chat room is telling us that

00:01:52 ◼   ► Very few people write with characters these days and most most of the young people because everything is digital

00:01:57 ◼   ► Just deal with the crappy input systems

00:01:59 ◼   ► So it could be that everyone just gets over this and they forget how to write their traditional characters. I don't know

00:02:04 ◼   ► I mean like

00:02:05 ◼   ► We've been getting on the people on the Far East have been getting along without this for a long time with these with these various

00:02:10 ◼   ► hacks of keyboards that have hierarchies to them or

00:02:13 ◼   ► Graffiti like systems where you do a series of strokes to sort of narrow down and you know

00:02:17 ◼   ► It's kind of like autocomplete for individual characters, which represent entire

00:02:21 ◼   ► words or ideas.

00:02:24 ◼   ► So we may already be past that threshold.

00:02:29 ◼   ► This is where we need someone from the Far East

00:02:31 ◼   ► to come on the program and tell us whether this is something

00:02:33 ◼   ► that people actually like.

00:02:34 ◼   ► But it's so hard to say how--

00:02:36 ◼   ► I mean, we'll talk about this later when

00:02:38 ◼   ► we talk about Apple's earnings-- how things play in countries

00:02:40 ◼   ► other than the United States and what those markets really want.

00:02:43 ◼   ► And it's very difficult to tell how much of what Apple does

00:02:46 ◼   ► is influenced by people and cultures

00:02:49 ◼   ► that we know nothing about.

00:02:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely.

00:02:52 ◼   ► As a quick aside, Marco, Tif's car has the iDrive

00:02:56 ◼   ► with handwriting recognition, is that correct?

00:02:58 ◼   ► - It does, yes.

00:02:59 ◼   ► - Do you use it ever?

00:03:01 ◼   ► - I tried it, I think once, and it wasn't really worth it

00:03:05 ◼   ► because it was actually slower than just using the wheel

00:03:09 ◼   ► to go around picking the letters.

00:03:10 ◼   ► 'Cause you have to draw the characters one at a time,

00:03:12 ◼   ► so you write the character, and then you wait,

00:03:13 ◼   ► and then it recognizes it, and then you keep going.

00:03:15 ◼   ► And so, just because of the lag inherent in those steps,

00:03:20 ◼   ► It just wasn't really any faster than using the wheel,

00:03:23 ◼   ► so I just use the wheel now when I drive her car.

00:03:26 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:03:27 ◼   ► I mean, it's not a one-to-one comparison,

00:03:28 ◼   ► but it was the closest that I could think of

00:03:31 ◼   ► off the top of my head.

00:03:32 ◼   ► - You could possibly argue it's better for safety

00:03:34 ◼   ► that you're not looking at the screen as much.

00:03:36 ◼   ► In practice, that's not true.

00:03:38 ◼   ► In practice, it is just as distracting as using the wheel,

00:03:40 ◼   ► and you still have to look at the screen just as much,

00:03:42 ◼   ► so I just try not to enter navigation directions

00:03:45 ◼   ► while I'm moving.

00:03:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, that seems like the smartest approach.

00:03:48 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:03:49 ◼   ► - All right, so we had a very interesting email

00:03:51 ◼   ► from Matt Chandler and I really wanted to talk about this

00:03:55 ◼   ► and then I thought, well, maybe that's mean of me.

00:03:58 ◼   ► And then someone else who is not me

00:04:00 ◼   ► and I'm guessing is not Marco added it to the show notes.

00:04:03 ◼   ► - This is why Marco should look at the show notes

00:04:05 ◼   ► before the show.

00:04:06 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:06 ◼   ► So he'll know when he has a question that's directed to him.

00:04:09 ◼   ► - Oh, you picked out this one?

00:04:10 ◼   ► Oh boy, this will be good.

00:04:12 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:04:12 ◼   ► - Okay, so from Matt Chandler,

00:04:15 ◼   ► "I listened to Marco on the talk show,

00:04:17 ◼   ► episode now it's all floppy where he discussed how Apple's feedback system is

00:04:21 ◼   ► quote extremely hostile quote because among other reasons you get no feedback

00:04:25 ◼   ► or response from Apple when you file a radar I was surprised by this as some of

00:04:29 ◼   ► my friends and I have filed bug reports for overcast both through Twitter

00:04:32 ◼   ► Twitter and email and have never received feedback any feedback no form

00:04:36 ◼   ► response tweet or favorite on Twitter this didn't bother me as I didn't expect

00:04:40 ◼   ► a response but I wondered why Marco called this behavior by Apple extremely

00:04:44 ◼   ► hostile while he takes the same approach with Overcast. Yes, Overcast is smaller,

00:04:47 ◼   ► but it certainly receives much less feedback as well. Thanks for the great

00:04:51 ◼   ► show and Marco, thanks for the great work on Overcast.

00:04:53 ◼   ► I can answer this one if you want. The reason I put it in here is not because necessarily I

00:04:57 ◼   ► thought Marco had to answer it, but I felt like anybody answered. Casey, do you want to answer it?

00:05:01 ◼   ► Marco, I know can answer it. I can answer it. Can anyone in the audience not answer this?

00:05:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:08 ◼   ► I mean, I'd be curious to hear both of your answers.

00:05:11 ◼   ► To me, it seems pretty obvious that even in operation

00:05:16 ◼   ► the size of Overcast, if one were to acknowledge

00:05:19 ◼   ► every single bug request and report and feature requests,

00:05:23 ◼   ► that that would be a tremendous mountain of just thanks

00:05:28 ◼   ► and okay and I got it and dupe and et cetera.

00:05:32 ◼   ► And I can see why Marco wouldn't want to do that.

00:05:36 ◼   ► But the difference is Marco's business isn't,

00:05:39 ◼   ► well, I don't know,

00:05:40 ◼   ► I already feel like this is a weak argument,

00:05:41 ◼   ► but Marco's business isn't to make

00:05:44 ◼   ► other people's bug reports his job.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Whereas when you're providing developer tools,

00:05:51 ◼   ► that kind of is your job.

00:05:53 ◼   ► - John.

00:05:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, what was your answer, John?

00:05:55 ◼   ► - Oh, you want my answer now?

00:05:56 ◼   ► Well, I think Matt Chandler knows the answer too.

00:05:58 ◼   ► Yes, Overcast is smaller.

00:06:00 ◼   ► You think?

00:06:01 ◼   ► Is it a little bit slower than Apple?

00:06:02 ◼   ► maybe a little bit smaller than Apple, I'm not sure.

00:06:04 ◼   ► We have to check Marco's earnings for this year

00:06:05 ◼   ► to see if he pulled in $18 billion in profit this quarter.

00:06:10 ◼   ► I don't think he did, but we'll check.

00:06:12 ◼   ► - I didn't quite hit that target, no.

00:06:14 ◼   ► - Yes, Overcast is smaller,

00:06:15 ◼   ► but it certainly receives much less feedback as well.

00:06:17 ◼   ► Exactly, it is smaller,

00:06:19 ◼   ► and proportionally receives less feedback.

00:06:20 ◼   ► How much smaller than Apple is Overcast?

00:06:23 ◼   ► And what proportion of his thing, you know?

00:06:27 ◼   ► So that's one thing.

00:06:27 ◼   ► Obviously it's pretty close to smaller.

00:06:28 ◼   ► It's one person.

00:06:29 ◼   ► He would spend all his time just dealing with bug reports.

00:06:31 ◼   ► in a second, in case you already covered it.

00:06:33 ◼   ► He's not a platform.

00:06:34 ◼   ► He is not publishing APIs for people to write code against.

00:06:38 ◼   ► He has no developers.

00:06:39 ◼   ► There is no overcast developer program.

00:06:41 ◼   ► There is no MarkerArmin developer program.

00:06:43 ◼   ► People are not paying for a membership

00:06:46 ◼   ► to a thing to be supported.

00:06:48 ◼   ► You're merely a customer and sending a report.

00:06:49 ◼   ► Now, all that said, that's not to say

00:06:52 ◼   ► that he shouldn't give responses,

00:06:55 ◼   ► form responses, personal responses, or whatever,

00:06:57 ◼   ► to the degree that he feels like he can

00:06:59 ◼   ► do sort of the Daniel Jowkut,

00:07:01 ◼   ► I give you amazing exceptional customer support,

00:07:04 ◼   ► he should by all means, it is a good thing to do that.

00:07:07 ◼   ► But on the list of priorities,

00:07:09 ◼   ► responding to every single bug report

00:07:12 ◼   ► and giving an acknowledgement that it was received

00:07:15 ◼   ► are probably pretty low for a one person shop

00:07:17 ◼   ► that's doing all the stuff that Marco is doing.

00:07:20 ◼   ► So I don't say that it's like he shouldn't send a response

00:07:25 ◼   ► and people shouldn't expect one,

00:07:27 ◼   ► but the explanation for why there was no response

00:07:29 ◼   ► and why he might say it's extremely hostile for Apple

00:07:32 ◼   ► to not send a response is fairly clear.

00:07:34 ◼   ► It's hostile for Apple because Apple does not have

00:07:37 ◼   ► any constraints that would make it have to be

00:07:39 ◼   ► such a big black hole.

00:07:41 ◼   ► We know that, I mean, look at App Review.

00:07:44 ◼   ► They're hiring people to look at every single

00:07:45 ◼   ► of these hoejillion apps that come in.

00:07:48 ◼   ► If Apple wanted to do this and listed as a priority,

00:07:51 ◼   ► they have more than enough money and resources

00:07:55 ◼   ► and expertise to do this.

00:07:56 ◼   ► So that's why it's hostile for Apple

00:07:59 ◼   ► because from Apple it's like a choice.

00:08:00 ◼   ► It's like a prioritization of something

00:08:02 ◼   ► that we think should be much more important

00:08:03 ◼   ► to Apple than it is.

00:08:05 ◼   ► And we know they have the resources to do it.

00:08:06 ◼   ► In Marco's case, you could still be angry at him

00:08:08 ◼   ► because you got exceptional support

00:08:09 ◼   ► but from this other one person operation

00:08:11 ◼   ► because they value support more than he does.

00:08:13 ◼   ► But if Marco shifts to do support differently,

00:08:16 ◼   ► he's got to pull from someplace else.

00:08:18 ◼   ► So what other part of Marco's business do you think

00:08:20 ◼   ► he should sacrifice to make sure

00:08:21 ◼   ► that everybody who sends a bug report gets a reply?

00:08:24 ◼   ► I, you know, that's, these are trade-offs that he makes

00:08:27 ◼   ► and you can argue whether they're the right trade-offs

00:08:29 ◼   ► or whether you like that kind of company,

00:08:30 ◼   ► but I don't think you should be confused

00:08:32 ◼   ► about why Marco can call Apple extremely hostile

00:08:36 ◼   ► for doing the same thing he does,

00:08:37 ◼   ► because he's not Apple and they're so different

00:08:39 ◼   ► than different standards apply.

00:08:40 ◼   ► - So Marco.

00:08:42 ◼   ► - This is gonna be possibly a little controversial.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Not that I should be that surprised,

00:08:48 ◼   ► or anybody who knows me should be that surprised

00:08:50 ◼   ► by me previously saying something I'm about to say with that.

00:08:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:08:55 ◼   ► - This should be good.

00:08:55 ◼   ► Wait, let me go make some popcorn.

00:08:56 ◼   ► Hold that thought.

00:08:57 ◼   ► - The sad truth is that it is not worth

00:09:02 ◼   ► answering your email.

00:09:03 ◼   ► You plural, not like you this guy, you everybody.

00:09:08 ◼   ► In general, on average, it is not worth

00:09:11 ◼   ► answering your email.

00:09:12 ◼   ► Now let me go into why that is.

00:09:13 ◼   ► I don't say this to be a jerk.

00:09:16 ◼   ► I'm saying this literally as like

00:09:18 ◼   ► just simple time constraints and economics.

00:09:22 ◼   ► So here's how this works.

00:09:24 ◼   ► This morning, so usually I go through the overcast

00:09:27 ◼   ► feedback email in the evening or like before bed

00:09:32 ◼   ► on the iPad, I'll go through it a lot there

00:09:34 ◼   ► because I respond to almost none of it.

00:09:39 ◼   ► Really, almost none.

00:09:40 ◼   ► I respond to maybe three or four emails a day

00:09:43 ◼   ► from that account.

00:09:44 ◼   ► Since last night when I last cleared it out,

00:09:47 ◼   ► I've received 207 and there's still three more hours today

00:09:51 ◼   ► before I go to bed.

00:09:52 ◼   ► So I expect to receive maybe 220, 250,

00:09:56 ◼   ► we'll see what happens.

00:09:57 ◼   ► That's pretty typical.

00:09:59 ◼   ► Most days I receive between 60 and 200.

00:10:02 ◼   ► I'm getting a little more now

00:10:03 ◼   ► 'cause there's some sync bugs that I'm trying to squash.

00:10:06 ◼   ► When you buy my app, so I'm a one person company,

00:10:08 ◼   ► I blogged about how much I made,

00:10:10 ◼   ► it was like 160,000 before expenses and taxes

00:10:13 ◼   ► and all that stuff last year.

00:10:15 ◼   ► So that's roughly what I make.

00:10:17 ◼   ► It's like, it's one developer's good salary.

00:10:20 ◼   ► It's not stunningly great,

00:10:22 ◼   ► it's just a good developer salary

00:10:23 ◼   ► for the level of experience I have.

00:10:25 ◼   ► That's not so much that it would make

00:10:27 ◼   ► a lot of financial sense for me

00:10:28 ◼   ► to hire a support person, for instance.

00:10:31 ◼   ► And I've tried, I have tried

00:10:34 ◼   ► to outsource support services in the past.

00:10:36 ◼   ► I've had very mixed results with them,

00:10:39 ◼   ► and I question whether that was money well spent at all.

00:10:43 ◼   ► I could also attempt to answer more emails

00:10:47 ◼   ► by using TextExpander to make my few form answers

00:10:51 ◼   ► and just send those to everybody.

00:10:53 ◼   ► And I did that for the first couple of months of Overcast.

00:10:56 ◼   ► And I question whether that's better

00:10:57 ◼   ► than not answering them at all.

00:10:59 ◼   ► Because, and I should point out on Hello Internet

00:11:02 ◼   ► they had a similar conversation with this a few months back.

00:11:04 ◼   ► You know, is something that you're pretty sure

00:11:08 ◼   ► is like a form response, a template response,

00:11:10 ◼   ► is that actually better than no response at all?

00:11:13 ◼   ► Like, is a response that is clearly insincere

00:11:17 ◼   ► and that I didn't put a whole lot of time into,

00:11:19 ◼   ► is that really a good thing?

00:11:21 ◼   ► Like that's up for debate as well.

00:11:23 ◼   ► The simple fact is, when you get 200 support emails a day

00:11:28 ◼   ► and you're one person and, you know,

00:11:31 ◼   ► my job is not answering email, my job is making the product

00:11:34 ◼   ► and making it work for everybody.

00:11:35 ◼   ► And responding to email, and this isn't just support email,

00:11:38 ◼   ► this is email in general.

00:11:39 ◼   ► Responding to email is one of the least

00:11:42 ◼   ► time efficient things you can do.

00:11:44 ◼   ► Like it really, like, and of course it varies

00:11:47 ◼   ► depending on why you're responding to the email,

00:11:48 ◼   ► who you're responding to and for what.

00:11:49 ◼   ► But in general, responding to email

00:11:53 ◼   ► is an extremely inefficient use of limited time

00:11:57 ◼   ► because you are taking your time to produce something

00:12:01 ◼   ► that's only ever gonna go to one person.

00:12:03 ◼   ► Whereas if I spent that time instead fixing the bugs

00:12:08 ◼   ► that everyone's complaining about,

00:12:10 ◼   ► then they're fixed for everyone.

00:12:11 ◼   ► Or if I can make the product better in some way for everyone

00:12:16 ◼   ► that's way better use of that time

00:12:19 ◼   ► than responding to every email one by one saying,

00:12:22 ◼   ► thanks for the report, I'm looking into it,

00:12:23 ◼   ► or thanks, I'm about to fix this,

00:12:24 ◼   ► or this is fixing the next version,

00:12:25 ◼   ► or the version's pending approval.

00:12:27 ◼   ► It's such a better use of time.

00:12:30 ◼   ► In an ideal world, you would have time to do both.

00:12:33 ◼   ► I recognize that.

00:12:34 ◼   ► But this is not an ideal world, this is reality.

00:12:36 ◼   ► And in reality, when you have an app that is free up front,

00:12:40 ◼   ► and at the most you can ever hope to make from somebody

00:12:42 ◼   ► is $3.50 before tax, it's really hard to justify

00:12:46 ◼   ► spending a ton of time on answering individual emails.

00:12:51 ◼   ► And I knew that going into it, I knew that for Instapaper.

00:12:54 ◼   ► So the entire app is designed in such a way

00:12:58 ◼   ► that it sets expectations accordingly.

00:13:02 ◼   ► You'll notice in the app, nowhere does it say support.

00:13:05 ◼   ► It only says feedback.

00:13:08 ◼   ► And on the feedback link, first, before it lets you email it

00:13:11 ◼   ► it shows you a page with an FAQ and known bugs

00:13:14 ◼   ► and what's being fixed in this version,

00:13:16 ◼   ► what's being fixed in the next version?

00:13:17 ◼   ► It shows you this page, so try to address

00:13:19 ◼   ► what you're about to tell me,

00:13:20 ◼   ► so maybe you don't have to tell me.

00:13:22 ◼   ► Maybe you can help yourself,

00:13:23 ◼   ► maybe you can save yourself the time sending me the email.

00:13:25 ◼   ► Certainly it saves me the time

00:13:26 ◼   ► having to read it or answer it.

00:13:29 ◼   ► And it says right there, I will read every email,

00:13:34 ◼   ► which by the way, even that takes a lot of time,

00:13:37 ◼   ► a lot more time than I would have expected

00:13:38 ◼   ► when I wrote that.

00:13:40 ◼   ► I read every email, and I say I will read every email,

00:13:42 ◼   ► but I also say, I'm just one person with limited time,

00:13:45 ◼   ► and so I cannot guarantee your response.

00:13:49 ◼   ► And the result of that is I respond to almost none of them

00:13:54 ◼   ► because I literally don't have the time.

00:13:56 ◼   ► I would so much rather spend that time fixing the bugs

00:14:01 ◼   ► and making the app better for everyone

00:14:03 ◼   ► than responding to one person.

00:14:04 ◼   ► And I know that sounds cold and I know that sounds harsh,

00:14:07 ◼   ► but that's the reality.

00:14:09 ◼   ► That's like when you're paying so little for apps,

00:14:12 ◼   ► that's kind of part of it.

00:14:14 ◼   ► That's kind of what you have to expect from that.

00:14:16 ◼   ► That's all involved in this.

00:14:17 ◼   ► And so the reason I don't answer my email most of the time

00:14:22 ◼   ► is because, it's not because I'm a jerk,

00:14:26 ◼   ► at least in my opinion,

00:14:27 ◼   ► you can make your own evaluation of that.

00:14:29 ◼   ► It's not because I'm trying to be a jerk.

00:14:30 ◼   ► It's because it is really,

00:14:32 ◼   ► I've decided it really is just an incredibly bad use of time.

00:14:37 ◼   ► And I know it's not gonna please everybody,

00:14:39 ◼   ► but I think it will please the most people overall

00:14:42 ◼   ► for me to be doing things that make the app better

00:14:43 ◼   ► for everyone rather than spending three hours a day

00:14:46 ◼   ► answering email.

00:14:47 ◼   ► - I don't remember if I've ever told this story publicly,

00:14:51 ◼   ► but I feel like I have.

00:14:54 ◼   ► I have a couple of thoughts.

00:14:55 ◼   ► First, I remember vividly that I,

00:14:59 ◼   ► when you and I kind of got reacquainted, so to speak,

00:15:03 ◼   ► 'cause we were old friends, kind of fell out of touch,

00:15:05 ◼   ► not in an angry way, just fell out of touch,

00:15:07 ◼   ► and then we were starting to get back in touch,

00:15:09 ◼   ► And I would send emails to you periodically.

00:15:12 ◼   ► And this was when Tumblr was really starting to take off.

00:15:15 ◼   ► And then the Marco Arment was starting to become like a thing

00:15:18 ◼   ► more than it was just a person.

00:15:20 ◼   ► And I would send you emails, Marco, and I would never get a reply.

00:15:24 ◼   ► Or I would get a reply really, really late.

00:15:27 ◼   ► I remember one time Aaron and I were on our way to New York when this was when

00:15:30 ◼   ► you were at Tumblr, because we ended up visiting you at Tumblr, we were on our

00:15:33 ◼   ► way to New York to visit and I think I tweeted about it or something like that.

00:15:37 ◼   ► And you were like, wait, you're on your way to New York.

00:15:39 ◼   ► And I said, yes, I emailed you about that

00:15:41 ◼   ► like two months ago.

00:15:42 ◼   ► You said you did.

00:15:43 ◼   ► And so, and God did it annoy me so much at the time.

00:15:47 ◼   ► But then fast forward a few years

00:15:50 ◼   ► and suddenly I'm on a podcast and we get email.

00:15:55 ◼   ► Oh, do we get email?

00:15:56 ◼   ► In fact, we even got an email

00:15:58 ◼   ► about how we tell people not to send us email.

00:16:00 ◼   ► - Yes, we did. (laughs)

00:16:02 ◼   ► - Which actually made some really good points,

00:16:04 ◼   ► but I couldn't help but laugh at the irony of it.

00:16:07 ◼   ► But anyway, and so I don't know how to explain it

00:16:12 ◼   ► other than however much email that you, the listener, gets.

00:16:17 ◼   ► There's a decent chance that those of us on the show

00:16:22 ◼   ► get more than that and Marco gets more than that still.

00:16:25 ◼   ► And the other thought I had is how many shows

00:16:29 ◼   ► across how many podcasts have talked about

00:16:32 ◼   ► how email is such a problem?

00:16:34 ◼   ► There was that wonderful episode of Hello Internet.

00:16:36 ◼   ► I think Mike and I have talked about this on analog.

00:16:38 ◼   ► God knows that Merlin has talked about this constantly

00:16:42 ◼   ► and for good reason.

00:16:44 ◼   ► The reason everyone complains and moans about email

00:16:48 ◼   ► is because email is kind of an inherently selfish thing

00:16:52 ◼   ► that nobody really deliberately signs up for

00:16:55 ◼   ► and it just kind of happens to them.

00:16:57 ◼   ► And so how you deal with that, you do the best you can

00:17:02 ◼   ► and that's what Marco's doing.

00:17:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's really it.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Again, I'm not trying to be a jerk

00:17:08 ◼   ► by not responding to most of the email I get.

00:17:10 ◼   ► It's almost like a defense mechanism.

00:17:13 ◼   ► I have to defend my time and attention

00:17:16 ◼   ► because if I did respond to all that email,

00:17:19 ◼   ► all these bug fixes and improvements and things I'm making

00:17:23 ◼   ► would all take longer to come out

00:17:25 ◼   ► and I wouldn't be able to do as much.

00:17:27 ◼   ► - You could spend your entire day just doing email

00:17:30 ◼   ► because remember that email, once you respond,

00:17:32 ◼   ► Now you're engaging with that person.

00:17:33 ◼   ► And from that person's perspective, it's just them and you.

00:17:36 ◼   ► And from your perspective,

00:17:37 ◼   ► you're holding now 200 simultaneous conversations,

00:17:40 ◼   ► maintaining state in each of those conversations,

00:17:42 ◼   ► remembering who that person is

00:17:43 ◼   ► and what they said previously.

00:17:45 ◼   ► Basically imagine, you get 200 support emails today.

00:17:48 ◼   ► If you responded to all 200,

00:17:50 ◼   ► then those 200 send the response back.

00:17:52 ◼   ► Then tomorrow starts and you get another 200

00:17:53 ◼   ► and you start responding to those.

00:17:55 ◼   ► You will spend 100% of your time conversing over email

00:17:59 ◼   ► with people who have problems with your $5 application,

00:18:02 ◼   ► right?

00:18:03 ◼   ► And you are just one person.

00:18:05 ◼   ► And someone in the chat room says, I'm describing a CRM.

00:18:07 ◼   ► Says, yes, when you have a staff of people, you can do that.

00:18:10 ◼   ► But for a small business, with one person doing

00:18:14 ◼   ► all of the work, if that one person said,

00:18:17 ◼   ► I really need to support my customers,

00:18:19 ◼   ► that's all that one person would ever do.

00:18:21 ◼   ► They would never fix a bug, never write

00:18:23 ◼   ► a new version of a program, never create a program,

00:18:26 ◼   ► never do anything else, never do a podcast,

00:18:28 ◼   ► never have any sort of extracurricular activities.

00:18:30 ◼   ► They would just spend all their waking hours

00:18:32 ◼   ► conversing with individuals over email

00:18:33 ◼   ► about the problems they're having with their application

00:18:35 ◼   ► and never have any time to investigate them.

00:18:37 ◼   ► And so maybe you could say,

00:18:38 ◼   ► well, you should expand your company.

00:18:40 ◼   ► You shouldn't have a one-person company or whatever.

00:18:41 ◼   ► But the origin of this question is about hypocrisy.

00:18:45 ◼   ► How can you be so angry about Apple

00:18:47 ◼   ► doing something that you yourself do?

00:18:49 ◼   ► It's different context.

00:18:51 ◼   ► The conditions are entirely different.

00:18:53 ◼   ► Therefore, the conclusions are different.

00:18:55 ◼   ► - Absolutely.

00:18:56 ◼   ► And the input that the email gives me is very valuable.

00:18:59 ◼   ► Like, by the emails alone, the emails kind of help me decide,

00:19:04 ◼   ► like if I have a few big features that I want to do next,

00:19:07 ◼   ► the emails decide what comes first.

00:19:09 ◼   ► And the emails decide things like, for example,

00:19:12 ◼   ► I've mentioned this on Twitter a couple times,

00:19:15 ◼   ► my big feature plan over this winter was to do streaming.

00:19:19 ◼   ► And I started streaming a little bit last fall,

00:19:21 ◼   ► and I haven't worked on it since for two reasons.

00:19:24 ◼   ► Number one is that they're keeping other things

00:19:26 ◼   ► that keep coming up, bug fixes, sync issues,

00:19:29 ◼   ► watch kit, stuff like that.

00:19:31 ◼   ► But then number two is that by reading the email

00:19:34 ◼   ► and by reading all the tweets, which is even more,

00:19:37 ◼   ► you know, even more big stuff coming in that way,

00:19:40 ◼   ► I can see very clearly that streaming

00:19:43 ◼   ► is not what I should be doing next.

00:19:44 ◼   ► What I need to be doing next, which is what I am doing next,

00:19:48 ◼   ► is auto-delete control.

00:19:51 ◼   ► That right now, the app just deletes an episode

00:19:52 ◼   ► when you're done with it, 'cause that's how I listen

00:19:53 ◼   ► and I don't care. Like once I'm done with it, I never want to hear it again. Like that's

00:19:57 ◼   ► it, I'm done. And I thought that's how the app could always work. It keeps things very

00:20:01 ◼   ► simple with like the different states an episode can be in and things like that. It keeps a

00:20:05 ◼   ► lot of things very simple. That is by far and away the number one request, the number

00:20:11 ◼   ► one complaint, and the number one reason people choose not to use my app is that I don't have

00:20:15 ◼   ► that control, the finer control over whether something gets deleted or not and when it

00:20:19 ◼   ► gets deleted. By far, that's way more important than streaming based on what people are telling

00:20:24 ◼   ► me and what they've been telling me for months. And so, you know, I wouldn't have known that

00:20:28 ◼   ► had it not been for the email. At the same time, I get, I would say, literally 40 emails

00:20:34 ◼   ► a day about that. And, again, for a while, I was replying to all of them. It took hours.

00:20:40 ◼   ► It takes long enough just to read them, even that. Like, and I said, I'll read all my email.

00:20:46 ◼   ► I'm not necessarily sure that will always be the case.

00:20:48 ◼   ► I can definitely see a future in which I say

00:20:51 ◼   ► I can't even keep up with reading it all anymore.

00:20:54 ◼   ► But even that, like reading it takes probably,

00:20:59 ◼   ► probably an order of magnitude less time

00:21:01 ◼   ► than responding to it.

00:21:03 ◼   ► And even that's hard enough to keep up with.

00:21:04 ◼   ► That's how much email I'm talking about.

00:21:06 ◼   ► - All right, let's talk about something

00:21:08 ◼   ► that's a little more positive than how much email we all get.

00:21:12 ◼   ► Do you have any ideas, Marco?

00:21:13 ◼   ► - Well, it's not email.

00:21:15 ◼   ► It is Squarespace.

00:21:17 ◼   ► Squarespace is the all-in-one platform

00:21:19 ◼   ► that makes it fast and easy to create

00:21:20 ◼   ► your own professional website, portfolio, and online store.

00:21:23 ◼   ► For a free trial and 10% off,

00:21:25 ◼   ► visit squarespace.com and enter offer code ATP at checkout.

00:21:28 ◼   ► Now they emailed me something earlier today.

00:21:32 ◼   ► This is kind of cool.

00:21:33 ◼   ► So I guess the Super Bowl's coming up pretty soon.

00:21:35 ◼   ► - That's correct.

00:21:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, so that's football, right?

00:21:39 ◼   ► No, I--

00:21:40 ◼   ► - Oh, God, it's also Sunday.

00:21:42 ◼   ► Did you know that? - They have winter there,

00:21:43 ◼   ► right?

00:21:43 ◼   ► - Oh God, I hate you.

00:21:45 ◼   ► - So, you know Jeff Bridges, the dude?

00:21:48 ◼   ► He has partnered with Squarespace

00:21:51 ◼   ► to bring his project to life.

00:21:52 ◼   ► It is dreamingwithjeff.com.

00:21:56 ◼   ► That's dreamingwithjeff.com.

00:21:58 ◼   ► This is an actual project.

00:21:59 ◼   ► This is not just like a PR stunt.

00:22:01 ◼   ► It's an actual project created by Jeff Bridges

00:22:03 ◼   ► with his friends in various locations in LA.

00:22:07 ◼   ► He created an album of unique and relaxing sounds,

00:22:10 ◼   ► guided meditations, and stories designed

00:22:12 ◼   ► to lull you to sleep.

00:22:13 ◼   ► This includes tracks such as A Glass of Water, IKEA,

00:22:18 ◼   ► and Hum.

00:22:20 ◼   ► I don't know, I haven't listened yet.

00:22:21 ◼   ► I literally just got this right before the show.

00:22:23 ◼   ► - You have to listen.

00:22:24 ◼   ► You can listen to the tracks on the website,

00:22:26 ◼   ► go listen to some.

00:22:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've heard it's quite good.

00:22:28 ◼   ► So anyway, you can listen to it for free on the site

00:22:31 ◼   ► dreamingwithjeff.com.

00:22:33 ◼   ► If you wanna download it, they have a pay-what-you-like

00:22:35 ◼   ► streaming system in place.

00:22:36 ◼   ► This is all based on Squarespace.

00:22:38 ◼   ► You can do all this Squarespace, the publishing of the site,

00:22:41 ◼   ► listening, the buying, this is all Squarespace. You can bid on one of these box sets, it's

00:22:47 ◼   ► like a limited edition box set, or you can just pay what you want to download the thing.

00:22:52 ◼   ► Jeff Bridges is the face of No Kid Hungry, this is a charity group that the main mission

00:22:57 ◼   ► of it is that no child goes to bed hungry in America. All proceeds from this album will

00:23:01 ◼   ► go to No Kid Hungry, this wonderful charity. So really this is not a joke, this is not

00:23:06 ◼   ► a PR stunt, this is really Jeff Bridges work with Squarespace to make this happen. Dreamingwithjeff.com,

00:23:11 ◼   ► it out and you can watch the Super Bowl on 2/1, I assume that's this Sunday?

00:23:18 ◼   ► Do I have to tell anybody besides myself what date the Super Bowl is?

00:23:21 ◼   ► Yeah, tell me.

00:23:22 ◼   ► I didn't know which Sunday it was.

00:23:24 ◼   ► You guys!

00:23:25 ◼   ► Oh, God, you're so bad.

00:23:27 ◼   ► Anyway, so they've worked with Squarespace to, I guess he's going to be involved in their

00:23:30 ◼   ► Super Bowl commercial.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Like, they're doing a Super Bowl commercial again this year.

00:23:33 ◼   ► I think they were the first one last year.

00:23:35 ◼   ► So Jeff Bridges is going to be in the Squarespace Super Bowl commercial, all worked in with

00:23:40 ◼   ► with this DreamingWithJeff.com project.

00:23:42 ◼   ► So check it out, watch the Super Bowl.

00:23:44 ◼   ► I'm really gonna add to tell people to watch the Super Bowl

00:23:49 ◼   ► to see the full commercial for Squarespace

00:23:51 ◼   ► with Jeff Bridges.

00:23:52 ◼   ► Anyway, check out Squarespace.

00:23:54 ◼   ► It's the best way to build a website.

00:23:56 ◼   ► We talked about it so much in the past.

00:23:57 ◼   ► We'll talk about it more in the future.

00:23:59 ◼   ► They have all these new features for Squarespace 7,

00:24:01 ◼   ► this whole new design, tons of great new features.

00:24:04 ◼   ► It is still, as usual, beautiful design,

00:24:06 ◼   ► simple and powerful, 24/7 support.

00:24:08 ◼   ► All this for just eight bucks a month

00:24:10 ◼   ► and you get a free domain if you buy a year upfront.

00:24:14 ◼   ► And start a free trial.

00:24:15 ◼   ► This is a real free trial with no credit card required.

00:24:17 ◼   ► Start building your website today.

00:24:19 ◼   ► When you decide to sign up for Squarespace,

00:24:21 ◼   ► make sure to use the offer code ATP

00:24:23 ◼   ► to get 10% off your first purchase

00:24:24 ◼   ► and show your support for our show.

00:24:26 ◼   ► Thank you very much to Squarespace.

00:24:27 ◼   ► Start here, go anywhere.

00:24:29 ◼   ► - Did you look at the songs, Casey?

00:24:31 ◼   ► - No.

00:24:32 ◼   ► - You should.

00:24:33 ◼   ► I looked at my phone on the mobile site

00:24:34 ◼   ► and I have this cool little tape player thing

00:24:36 ◼   ► and little music players embedded in it

00:24:37 ◼   ► and they are absolutely crazy.

00:24:39 ◼   ► - Good, crazy?

00:24:40 ◼   ► - It reminded me of something that John Roderick would make

00:24:43 ◼   ► because they both have a similar kind of voice,

00:24:45 ◼   ► they're both a little beardy and just--

00:24:48 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:24:49 ◼   ► - How does one vocally sound beardy?

00:24:52 ◼   ► - There is a song called "Hmm"

00:24:54 ◼   ► and it's like, just because he talks over them

00:24:57 ◼   ► and there's this music, listen to them and tell me

00:24:59 ◼   ► if you don't picture John Roderick doing it.

00:25:01 ◼   ► Anyway, it's all for charity, you should go do it,

00:25:03 ◼   ► spend some money.

00:25:04 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:25:06 ◼   ► So we had another piece of feedback from Alberto.

00:25:11 ◼   ► And John, would you like to talk about this?

00:25:13 ◼   ► - Sure, this is a question,

00:25:14 ◼   ► well, we get lots of questions in the same vein.

00:25:17 ◼   ► Most of the questions are like,

00:25:19 ◼   ► I'm just starting out in Field X

00:25:21 ◼   ► and you people have some experience in Field X,

00:25:24 ◼   ► how do I get started, so on and so forth.

00:25:25 ◼   ► This is a little bit of indirectly related to that.

00:25:29 ◼   ► This is from Alberto, he says, he listens to episode 101

00:25:33 ◼   ► about how Marco just quote, went and learned,

00:25:36 ◼   ► unquote, a new computer language.

00:25:38 ◼   ► And he was wondering how you go about learning

00:25:40 ◼   ► something so complex by yourself in a short time.

00:25:43 ◼   ► Do you just sit there with a textbook and start reading?

00:25:45 ◼   ► Do you open up a compiler and try it and see what's what?

00:25:48 ◼   ► Alberto says he wants to expand his very simple

00:25:50 ◼   ► programming skills and any tips you will give will help.

00:25:52 ◼   ► This whole vein of feedback where people want advice

00:25:57 ◼   ► on how to get better at something they think we know

00:26:00 ◼   ► how to do better than they currently know how,

00:26:03 ◼   ► it's always very difficult.

00:26:04 ◼   ► People always ask me for recommendations of things to do

00:26:07 ◼   ► or books to read, and I wish I had to go to answers for them,

00:26:10 ◼   ► but I don't.

00:26:10 ◼   ► But for this specific answer,

00:26:12 ◼   ► I'll just let Marco answer it.

00:26:13 ◼   ► I think there is an explanation of how Marco was able

00:26:16 ◼   ► to pick up Go in such a short period of time.

00:26:19 ◼   ► - Well, can I interject before that happens?

00:26:21 ◼   ► We get this, notice I didn't wait for your answer.

00:26:23 ◼   ► We get this question constantly.

00:26:27 ◼   ► We get this question, what should I learn?

00:26:29 ◼   ► I wanna learn to program, where should I start?

00:26:31 ◼   ► or alternatively, I'm about to start iOS development,

00:26:34 ◼   ► should I learn Swift or Objective-C?

00:26:36 ◼   ► And we get this question so darn often

00:26:38 ◼   ► that I actually wrote a very short blog post about it.

00:26:41 ◼   ► And it's only a couple of paragraphs,

00:26:43 ◼   ► we'll put it in the show notes.

00:26:44 ◼   ► But suffice it to say,

00:26:46 ◼   ► I think the key phrase in that blog post,

00:26:48 ◼   ► which conveniently is in bold,

00:26:50 ◼   ► is find a problem to solve

00:26:52 ◼   ► and then solve it using the most appropriate tools.

00:26:54 ◼   ► And that's really all it comes down to

00:26:57 ◼   ► as far as I'm concerned.

00:26:58 ◼   ► And I think that Marco is about to tell you

00:27:00 ◼   ► that that's kind of the path that he followed

00:27:02 ◼   ► when learning Go.

00:27:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's pretty much it.

00:27:05 ◼   ► So, I mean, first of all, if you only know one language,

00:27:09 ◼   ► and if you're new to programming,

00:27:10 ◼   ► or if you don't know any programming languages yet,

00:27:13 ◼   ► this sounds like a bigger deal than it really is

00:27:15 ◼   ► once you know a lot.

00:27:16 ◼   ► Like, when you've been programming for long enough,

00:27:19 ◼   ► you start realizing,

00:27:20 ◼   ► especially if you're exposed to a lot of languages,

00:27:22 ◼   ► you start realizing that they're a lot more similar

00:27:24 ◼   ► than you think.

00:27:25 ◼   ► There's a lot of overlap.

00:27:26 ◼   ► Usually the differences are really relatively minor

00:27:31 ◼   ► and come down to minor syntax details

00:27:33 ◼   ► and then the available libraries

00:27:35 ◼   ► that are built into the language

00:27:35 ◼   ► or that are available for it.

00:27:36 ◼   ► So the names of things you're calling might be different,

00:27:39 ◼   ► the symbols that you're using for certain things

00:27:41 ◼   ► might be different, but you're kinda doing

00:27:43 ◼   ► the same kinds of things,

00:27:44 ◼   ► or at least there's a lot of overlap.

00:27:46 ◼   ► And the concepts carry over.

00:27:47 ◼   ► And so learning a new language really is,

00:27:52 ◼   ► it's nothing like learning a new human language.

00:27:55 ◼   ► I mean, I know they have similar concepts too,

00:27:56 ◼   ► but there's a much higher learning curve

00:27:59 ◼   ► for like human spoken languages.

00:28:01 ◼   ► - There are more keywords.

00:28:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, the vocabulary is much bigger.

00:28:05 ◼   ► They're a lot more complex.

00:28:06 ◼   ► Like going between programming languages

00:28:08 ◼   ► is a lot simpler than it sounds,

00:28:09 ◼   ► if you're not a programmer or if you're new at it.

00:28:12 ◼   ► It sounds like it's a lot, but it's really not.

00:28:15 ◼   ► And yeah, it's basically what Casey said.

00:28:18 ◼   ► The way I learn, and I don't know if everyone does this,

00:28:20 ◼   ► but the way I learn is basically,

00:28:23 ◼   ► I have a problem that I need to solve in that language,

00:28:25 ◼   ► that both the language is well suited for

00:28:28 ◼   ► and that I'm very motivated to do.

00:28:31 ◼   ► So when the App Store came out, I learned Objective-C

00:28:33 ◼   ► and I learned the frameworks around Cocoa and UIKit

00:28:37 ◼   ► because I really wanted to make the Instapaper iOS app

00:28:40 ◼   ► and that was the only way to do it, so I did it.

00:28:43 ◼   ► And I just plowed through.

00:28:45 ◼   ► And what that looks like, and same thing with Go.

00:28:47 ◼   ► I figured out I had these problems

00:28:49 ◼   ► and before I tried Node,

00:28:51 ◼   ► I did it the exact same way basically,

00:28:52 ◼   ► just a little bit smaller learning curve

00:28:54 ◼   ► 'cause I already knew JavaScript somewhat,

00:28:55 ◼   ► but I had this problem that my existing toolkit

00:28:59 ◼   ► was not very well suited to solve,

00:29:01 ◼   ► and I knew that many other languages

00:29:04 ◼   ► would have been way better at it

00:29:05 ◼   ► as we discussed in the show.

00:29:06 ◼   ► I had heard good things about these, so I picked them,

00:29:10 ◼   ► and I just started kinda plowing through.

00:29:13 ◼   ► So Go has a pretty good online tutorial at golang.org.

00:29:17 ◼   ► Put it up, we'll put it in the show notes.

00:29:19 ◼   ► There's a pretty good online tutorial,

00:29:21 ◼   ► And actually the problem that I was solving

00:29:22 ◼   ► of basically being a feed crawler,

00:29:26 ◼   ► one of their examples on their site is a web crawler.

00:29:29 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:29:31 ◼   ► - And so my design of it is actually based on that.

00:29:35 ◼   ► And it's not very long, it was pretty easy to base on.

00:29:38 ◼   ► But a lot of the concepts of like,

00:29:40 ◼   ► oh how do I make it print status every second

00:29:42 ◼   ► to the log file and stuff like that.

00:29:45 ◼   ► How do I track what it's doing.

00:29:47 ◼   ► Managing the concurrency aspects, all that stuff,

00:29:50 ◼   ► That all came from that example first.

00:29:52 ◼   ► And then I built on that and I kind of made it my own.

00:29:55 ◼   ► But honestly, in general, the way to start a new language,

00:29:59 ◼   ► like you said before, is really just have a project

00:30:02 ◼   ► that you're motivated to do in it.

00:30:03 ◼   ► If you just say, I wanna make an iPhone app,

00:30:06 ◼   ► just in general, and you don't really know what,

00:30:08 ◼   ► you don't have a specific app in mind,

00:30:10 ◼   ► you just wanna make an app.

00:30:11 ◼   ► 'Cause you heard making apps makes money

00:30:12 ◼   ► or it sounds interesting.

00:30:13 ◼   ► That's gonna be harder to get into.

00:30:16 ◼   ► It's much easier if you have a specific idea

00:30:19 ◼   ► of something that you really want to see,

00:30:20 ◼   ► something that you really want to make.

00:30:22 ◼   ► That's way easier to start with,

00:30:24 ◼   ► because then you're motivated to basically just start,

00:30:27 ◼   ► just plow through it.

00:30:29 ◼   ► And that's exactly how I do it.

00:30:31 ◼   ► I didn't read a book, I just plowed through.

00:30:33 ◼   ► You know, when I used to learn languages,

00:30:34 ◼   ► I used to read books,

00:30:35 ◼   ► like when I was in high school and college.

00:30:37 ◼   ► Now, there's so many great resources on the internet.

00:30:40 ◼   ► There's tutorials online,

00:30:42 ◼   ► there's places like our second sponsor, lynda.com,

00:30:46 ◼   ► which I'll get to in a second,

00:30:47 ◼   ► because this ties right into that.

00:30:50 ◼   ► There's all sorts of online documentation.

00:30:52 ◼   ► There's walkthroughs.

00:30:55 ◼   ► There's just so much available online that,

00:30:58 ◼   ► and Stack Overflow has been amazingly helpful

00:31:01 ◼   ► in this regard.

00:31:02 ◼   ► There's just so much available online now

00:31:04 ◼   ► that you can just kinda start,

00:31:06 ◼   ► just like start plowing through it,

00:31:07 ◼   ► like start with a tutorial and just start building it

00:31:10 ◼   ► into what you want it to be.

00:31:12 ◼   ► And you'll pick up a lot along that path.

00:31:16 ◼   ► You'll learn as you go.

00:31:18 ◼   ► You can do it the other way.

00:31:19 ◼   ► can read a book. I've never found that very helpful, but a lot of people do. It just,

00:31:22 ◼   ► you know, depends on how you learn. But in general, the way to learn is to just start plowing through.

00:31:27 ◼   ► Yeah, the only thing I'll add is that the specific question of how we go about learning something so

00:31:34 ◼   ► complex in a short amount of time. Both of us have been programming for a living for a long time now,

00:31:40 ◼   ► and the way we do it in such a short time is, as Marco said, we recognize the similarities between

00:31:47 ◼   ► programming languages and so we have a leg up on someone who's like "programming, what's that?"

00:31:51 ◼   ► You know, we don't have to relearn the concepts of, you know, what's a variable, what's a loop,

00:31:57 ◼   ► what's a conditional, like stuff like that. We don't have to relearn anything about functions or,

00:32:03 ◼   ► you know, now that we all know something like blocks or whatever the closures and stuff like

00:32:08 ◼   ► we don't have to relearn those concepts. It's just how are those concepts

00:32:11 ◼   ► implemented in this particular language. If you're starting from zero,

00:32:15 ◼   ► You will have to you will somehow have to learn these basic concepts, right?

00:32:19 ◼   ► But your second language you'll be able to learn quicker than your first and your third language you'll be able to learn even quicker

00:32:24 ◼   ► So that's how basically it's not like a technique of how do we go about learning something complex?

00:32:29 ◼   ► It's because we already know a bunch of similar things

00:32:31 ◼   ► So it's very fast for us to pick up something or what Marco in case you're both talking about is like, all right

00:32:36 ◼   ► Well assume you can pick up the language

00:32:39 ◼   ► It's still not gonna stick in our brains unless we use it to actually solve a problem because it'll just be like yeah

00:32:44 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know about you, but I can read an entire book on a language, which I've

00:32:48 ◼   ► done in the past, but if I don't use it to write a program of any significance, that

00:32:52 ◼   ► just leaves my brain.

00:32:53 ◼   ► And it's like, yeah, I can recognize it when I see it, and if you remind me, I'll be like,

00:32:57 ◼   ► oh yeah, but it doesn't stick unless you use it.

00:32:59 ◼   ► So you know, it's like, what's the trick?

00:33:02 ◼   ► The trick is, be a programmer for 10 to 20 years first, then you'll be able to pick up

00:33:06 ◼   ► new languages fairly quickly, unless it's a really weird language and you don't know

00:33:08 ◼   ► the concepts.

00:33:09 ◼   ► Like if we tried to learn something, like, I probably don't know a lot of the concepts

00:33:12 ◼   ► that are involved in Haskell.

00:33:13 ◼   ► So my first job there would be like, I can't just pick that up because I have no analog.

00:33:17 ◼   ► I need to first learn concepts that are not in any other language that I know that are

00:33:21 ◼   ► in Haskell or Erlang or something.

00:33:23 ◼   ► And then once they get that concept, then you know, it becomes easier.

00:33:26 ◼   ► Yeah, it's entirely true.

00:33:27 ◼   ► And kind of building on what you were saying, I'll read say NS Hipster.

00:33:32 ◼   ► And as of late, NS Hipster has been entirely in Swift and I have barely written any Swift

00:33:38 ◼   ► in my life, but I can still read it reasonably well because I can pick out bits and pieces

00:33:45 ◼   ► that remind me of other languages and kind of infer what this stuff is doing.

00:33:51 ◼   ► So I can look at Swift and say, "Oh, that looks a lot like JavaScript.

00:33:55 ◼   ► That's probably what they're doing there."

00:33:56 ◼   ► Or, "Oh, that looks a lot like C#.

00:33:58 ◼   ► I know exactly what's going on here."

00:34:01 ◼   ► And of course, that looks like Objective-C.

00:34:03 ◼   ► Well, I know what that means.

00:34:05 ◼   ► And so you can take this really nice and broad foundation, especially as you get more and

00:34:13 ◼   ► more experience, and apply that to all these other things, and you can do it quicker and

00:34:17 ◼   ► quicker with time.

00:34:20 ◼   ► What else is cool these days, Marco?

00:34:21 ◼   ► Well, as I mentioned a minute ago, if you're looking to learn something new, you should

00:34:25 ◼   ► check out our second sponsor, lynda.com.

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00:37:26 ◼   ► So Apple made a little bit of money last quarter.

00:37:29 ◼   ► - I'm shocked.

00:37:31 ◼   ► - I know, I thought they were on the ropes.

00:37:33 ◼   ► I thought that Apple was doomed, but seemingly not.

00:37:37 ◼   ► Yeah, so Apple made a metric butt ton of money

00:37:41 ◼   ► is I believe the official measurement that I've been quoted.

00:37:44 ◼   ► I don't even know really what to say about this.

00:37:47 ◼   ► It's a tremendous amount of money

00:37:50 ◼   ► and Apple is doing really, really well.

00:37:55 ◼   ► And I don't know what to make of this.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Even as someone who is very new to the Apple ecosystem,

00:38:00 ◼   ► as we've talked about very recently, in fact,

00:38:02 ◼   ► it's odd for me to see Apple doing this well.

00:38:08 ◼   ► Like what's not going well financially for them these days?

00:38:13 ◼   ► Anything?

00:38:14 ◼   ► - I mean, even a tiny part of Apple's business,

00:38:19 ◼   ► like the iPod business, for instance,

00:38:20 ◼   ► even that is doing amazingly

00:38:23 ◼   ► relative to many other companies.

00:38:25 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:38:26 ◼   ► - You know, it's like, and people mentioned

00:38:28 ◼   ► apparently like the amount of money that they lost

00:38:30 ◼   ► due to currency fluctuations this quarter

00:38:34 ◼   ► was like Google's entire quarterly profit.

00:38:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:38:37 ◼   ► Something like that.

00:38:39 ◼   ► Like, they just make an insane amount of money.

00:38:41 ◼   ► I mean, honestly, I don't think this is that interesting

00:38:43 ◼   ► from the money perspective.

00:38:44 ◼   ► I think what's more interesting,

00:38:46 ◼   ► and even then only mildly, but what's more interesting

00:38:50 ◼   ► is kind of looking at the trends of like how well

00:38:53 ◼   ► things like the iPhones and the iPads are selling,

00:38:56 ◼   ► what does the growth curve look like?

00:38:57 ◼   ► Are they accelerating?

00:38:58 ◼   ► And I think what we're seeing right now,

00:39:01 ◼   ► we're seeing that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus

00:39:04 ◼   ► were just massive hits.

00:39:06 ◼   ► And I think we all kinda knew that already,

00:39:08 ◼   ► but to see it officially recorded in the totals here

00:39:13 ◼   ► is really something to see.

00:39:16 ◼   ► They have made very strong inroads into other markets,

00:39:22 ◼   ► Asia, places like that, and also into the Android market

00:39:26 ◼   ► with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

00:39:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think these financial stories

00:39:30 ◼   ► are mostly interesting in the ways

00:39:35 ◼   ► they sort of highlight Apple's impotence.

00:39:39 ◼   ► Not that that's the main story.

00:39:41 ◼   ► Not that that's the main story.

00:39:42 ◼   ► Like the main story we hear, the main story is like,

00:39:44 ◼   ► oh, they're making a lot of money,

00:39:45 ◼   ► then everyone, you know, Grubdust has claimed Chowder,

00:39:48 ◼   ► and everyone makes fun of the stock analysts

00:39:50 ◼   ► who thought they weren't gonna sell things,

00:39:51 ◼   ► and then we look at the trends, how are the Macs doing,

00:39:53 ◼   ► how are the iPads doing,

00:39:54 ◼   ► I think I've seen all those stories.

00:39:56 ◼   ► And there have been some good ones about that,

00:39:59 ◼   ► but what I always think about when,

00:40:02 ◼   ► well, two things, when Apple or any company

00:40:04 ◼   ► has these big earnings.

00:40:07 ◼   ► One is the old Ed Catmull quote that success hides problems.

00:40:10 ◼   ► And so when you see massive success, you think,

00:40:12 ◼   ► "Boy, that much success can hide a hell of a problem."

00:40:17 ◼   ► You can have just dinosaur-sized problems.

00:40:21 ◼   ► $18 billion, like what kind of problem

00:40:23 ◼   ► could $18 billion not hide, right?

00:40:25 ◼   ► And so that's what I think about.

00:40:27 ◼   ► And the second thing is the frustration of,

00:40:30 ◼   ► it's kind of like in those, you know,

00:40:31 ◼   ► not SimCity or they don't play that enough,

00:40:33 ◼   ► but any of those sort of like simulation games

00:40:35 ◼   ► with an economy where eventually you break the game

00:40:38 ◼   ► and you essentially have unlimited funds, right?

00:40:42 ◼   ► And yet there are things, even with unlimited funds,

00:40:44 ◼   ► there are things you can't do

00:40:45 ◼   ► because usually it was the game world doesn't allow it.

00:40:47 ◼   ► This is where the analogy breaks down.

00:40:48 ◼   ► but when I think about Apple with all this money,

00:40:51 ◼   ► is all this money is not enough for them

00:40:55 ◼   ► to buy their way to whatever you want to pick,

00:41:00 ◼   ► to do network services as well as Google or Amazon

00:41:04 ◼   ► or even Facebook, to be able to hire

00:41:06 ◼   ► and retain the world's best talent.

00:41:08 ◼   ► There are some problems that throwing money out of them

00:41:12 ◼   ► just will not solve, right?

00:41:14 ◼   ► And that must be frustrating because it's like,

00:41:16 ◼   ► How do you get these things that we need to get?

00:41:21 ◼   ► What do we need?

00:41:22 ◼   ► And most companies is like,

00:41:23 ◼   ► "Oh, if we only had more money."

00:41:24 ◼   ► But at Apple it's like,

00:41:25 ◼   ► "No, we have all the money in the freaking world.

00:41:27 ◼   ► Why can we not turn this money into,"

00:41:29 ◼   ► and certain thing that Apple feels that it's lacking.

00:41:31 ◼   ► And from the outside,

00:41:32 ◼   ► there are many things that we feel Apple is lacking.

00:41:34 ◼   ► And on the inside,

00:41:35 ◼   ► I bet the main thing I think they're lacking is,

00:41:37 ◼   ► how can we get people,

00:41:39 ◼   ► how can we get really good employees?

00:41:40 ◼   ► Because we all know what it's like at Apple

00:41:42 ◼   ► or any large organization.

00:41:45 ◼   ► Everyone can't be in charge at Apple.

00:41:48 ◼   ► Some people have more of a say in what the company does

00:41:50 ◼   ► than other, it's a hierarchy.

00:41:52 ◼   ► Every corporation has a hierarchy.

00:41:54 ◼   ► And so how can you get all of the world's best people?

00:41:58 ◼   ► You can only get all the world's best people

00:41:59 ◼   ► who wanna work for a company.

00:42:01 ◼   ► And only a certain number of those can ever rise

00:42:03 ◼   ► to a position in Apple where they're in charge or anything.

00:42:04 ◼   ► And really smart people wanna be in charge of something

00:42:06 ◼   ► because they're really smart people.

00:42:07 ◼   ► So that's why people come to Apple, get experience,

00:42:10 ◼   ► and if they're really awesome,

00:42:11 ◼   ► they leave and start their own companies

00:42:12 ◼   ► or do their own things, and maybe they come back.

00:42:15 ◼   ► It's frustrating to see talent leave you

00:42:18 ◼   ► and go to other companies or go to startups.

00:42:20 ◼   ► So that's kind of the nature of the business.

00:42:21 ◼   ► And so that's why it makes me think about

00:42:23 ◼   ► all this giant mountain of money.

00:42:25 ◼   ► If I was at Apple, I'd be like,

00:42:26 ◼   ► how do we transform this money into improvements

00:42:30 ◼   ► in our products and services?

00:42:31 ◼   ► And all we do on the show is talk about all the areas

00:42:34 ◼   ► where Apple is weak.

00:42:36 ◼   ► And I think of every one of those areas

00:42:37 ◼   ► and almost all those areas, money may be necessary,

00:42:41 ◼   ► but it is clearly not sufficient

00:42:43 ◼   ► Because if all it took was money,

00:42:46 ◼   ► they would be great at everything.

00:42:48 ◼   ► Because they have all the, and this is not like,

00:42:49 ◼   ► they had blowout quarters before.

00:42:51 ◼   ► They just have massive amount of money in the bank.

00:42:53 ◼   ► They have a massive amount of money.

00:42:55 ◼   ► Like, they could, you know, it's like,

00:42:56 ◼   ► why not just pay all your employees $5 million a year?

00:42:59 ◼   ► Apple could pay, like, done.

00:43:01 ◼   ► And then all your employees leave

00:43:02 ◼   ► 'cause they retire on their $5 million in the first year.

00:43:04 ◼   ► And you're like, well, we just destroyed

00:43:05 ◼   ► the company with money.

00:43:06 ◼   ► That was a really bad idea, guys.

00:43:08 ◼   ► So it's actually, it's kind of like Brewster's Millions,

00:43:10 ◼   ► a reference that neither one of you get

00:43:12 ◼   ► because you weren't born, but the

00:43:13 ◼   ► - Nope. - Good movie.

00:43:14 ◼   ► - Nope.

00:43:14 ◼   ► - Everyone go watch Brewster's Millions

00:43:17 ◼   ► to understand the problem that Apple has.

00:43:20 ◼   ► Yes, Apple is Richard Pryor in this analogy.

00:43:23 ◼   ► - Oh, I love Richard Pryor.

00:43:24 ◼   ► Oh, see, now I actually wanna watch this.

00:43:26 ◼   ► - No, I think you're right.

00:43:27 ◼   ► I mean, as you said, there's just a lot of problems

00:43:30 ◼   ► that money either can't solve or makes worse

00:43:34 ◼   ► or isn't sufficient enough to solve.

00:43:36 ◼   ► And most, I mean, I would say looking at

00:43:40 ◼   ► what we identify as Apple's problems from the outside,

00:43:42 ◼   ► and assuming that they're at least partially true,

00:43:45 ◼   ► it seems like Apple's two biggest problems

00:43:50 ◼   ► are getting and retaining good talent, number one,

00:43:54 ◼   ► and number two, just like organizational inertia

00:43:57 ◼   ► of like the way things are set up,

00:43:58 ◼   ► the way like departments are structured,

00:44:01 ◼   ► the way the incentives are.

00:44:03 ◼   ► Like honestly, I think anyone interested

00:44:06 ◼   ► in the quality problems or perception of them,

00:44:11 ◼   ► whether you think they're real or not,

00:44:13 ◼   ► I think you should listen to this week's episode of Debug,

00:44:16 ◼   ► which is Neetan Ganatra and Don Melton, part three,

00:44:21 ◼   ► and they talk about this.

00:44:22 ◼   ► They talk about these accusations of quality issues.

00:44:25 ◼   ► And it was interesting to hear,

00:44:30 ◼   ► partially I think they were actually,

00:44:33 ◼   ► especially Neetan Ganatra,

00:44:34 ◼   ► I think they were actually quite defensive.

00:44:37 ◼   ► But it was little,

00:44:40 ◼   ► I had mixed emotions listening to it,

00:44:42 ◼   ► but it gives a lot of insight

00:44:44 ◼   ► into the way things are done at Apple.

00:44:48 ◼   ► And they don't work there anymore,

00:44:51 ◼   ► but they were there fairly recently,

00:44:53 ◼   ► and they were there for some fairly recent releases.

00:44:55 ◼   ► And the way things are done,

00:44:58 ◼   ► it sounds a lot like all the high priority bugs

00:45:02 ◼   ► tend to get fixed, but there's not a lot of time left

00:45:05 ◼   ► for the less high priority bugs.

00:45:08 ◼   ► - Well, this is how every company works.

00:45:09 ◼   ► like I haven't listened yet, it's in my queue,

00:45:10 ◼   ► but like they're probably defensive

00:45:12 ◼   ► because like what they're not saying,

00:45:14 ◼   ► whether they realize it or not is,

00:45:16 ◼   ► you don't know what it's like man,

00:45:18 ◼   ► to get anything done inside the company,

00:45:19 ◼   ► you have to do X, Y, and Z.

00:45:20 ◼   ► And when you're telling me that I should be doing this,

00:45:22 ◼   ► it's like, well, but you can't,

00:45:23 ◼   ► because like Apple, the structure of Apple

00:45:25 ◼   ► becomes the fixed thing.

00:45:27 ◼   ► And it's like to get anything done within the structure,

00:45:29 ◼   ► you have to do this.

00:45:30 ◼   ► Maybe that means within the structure,

00:45:32 ◼   ► the only thing you can do

00:45:33 ◼   ► is get the high priority bugs first,

00:45:34 ◼   ► because then you can get someone higher up

00:45:36 ◼   ► to pay attention to you

00:45:37 ◼   ► and you can make a priority for your team,

00:45:38 ◼   ► you can get it done.

00:45:39 ◼   ► anything lower priority, you can't work within the system.

00:45:41 ◼   ► So really what they're angry about

00:45:43 ◼   ► when they're being defensive is they're angry at the system

00:45:46 ◼   ► into which they are placed.

00:45:47 ◼   ► And then they're put into the system and told,

00:45:49 ◼   ► "Now get things done."

00:45:50 ◼   ► And they would like to do what they think

00:45:53 ◼   ► is the right thing, but within the system,

00:45:55 ◼   ► you have to work the system, right?

00:45:56 ◼   ► And who gets to change the system?

00:45:58 ◼   ► This gets back to, you know, who is in charge?

00:46:01 ◼   ► Are the people in charge the best people to be in charge?

00:46:03 ◼   ► You can't have a company where people move up the ranks

00:46:05 ◼   ► over many years and then someone realizes,

00:46:08 ◼   ► Like that guy has no idea what he's doing.

00:46:10 ◼   ► Get him out of there and bring someone.

00:46:11 ◼   ► Like people don't like it when you hire new people

00:46:12 ◼   ► and above them, they don't like when they bring in

00:46:14 ◼   ► new people that say all the current people there

00:46:15 ◼   ► don't know what they're doing.

00:46:17 ◼   ► Change like that takes time because egos get bruised

00:46:19 ◼   ► and people have to be kicked out of the company

00:46:21 ◼   ► and like, and if there's too much churn,

00:46:23 ◼   ► it seems like a volatile place and it's not fun to like.

00:46:26 ◼   ► All the problems of any human doing anything in a group

00:46:28 ◼   ► are magnified in a corporate setting.

00:46:30 ◼   ► And that is the main sickness of all corporations.

00:46:32 ◼   ► And I would say Apple has done better

00:46:34 ◼   ► than any other company to fight against

00:46:37 ◼   ► the sort of corporate malaise

00:46:39 ◼   ► to actually produce good products.

00:46:42 ◼   ► And they're rewarded with buckets of money.

00:46:44 ◼   ► But even those buckets of money

00:46:47 ◼   ► can't cure all the sicknesses within the organization.

00:46:50 ◼   ► And no amount of money can make it so that

00:46:53 ◼   ► people who wanna be chief

00:46:54 ◼   ► suddenly wanna be your Indians.

00:46:55 ◼   ► So you're never gonna have all the best people.

00:46:57 ◼   ► They're always gonna leave and do their own thing.

00:46:59 ◼   ► They're always going to be restless and do something else.

00:47:01 ◼   ► And, you know, I still say like the most practical thing

00:47:04 ◼   ► that Apple will do with this money

00:47:05 ◼   ► is address its shortcomings that can,

00:47:08 ◼   ► the money has the most effect on, for example,

00:47:10 ◼   ► prioritizing network services and infrastructure.

00:47:14 ◼   ► You can throw money at that.

00:47:16 ◼   ► If people learn that Apple was going to spend

00:47:19 ◼   ► $300 billion trying to catch up to Google

00:47:22 ◼   ► and Amazon and Facebook and network infrastructure

00:47:24 ◼   ► and data center expertise,

00:47:25 ◼   ► a lot of people who have network infrastructure

00:47:27 ◼   ► and data center expertise would go work for Apple.

00:47:29 ◼   ► But right now, those people don't wanna work for Apple

00:47:30 ◼   ► because the idea is that Apple is a place

00:47:33 ◼   ► where those things are not prioritized

00:47:35 ◼   ► and all the glory people are working on UIKit or whatever.

00:47:38 ◼   ► - Right, I mean that's like,

00:47:40 ◼   ► it seems like the two biggest problems in that area

00:47:44 ◼   ► of what frustrates the people who are there

00:47:46 ◼   ► are the way the system is set up

00:47:50 ◼   ► and the stress of working within that

00:47:54 ◼   ► and the deadlines of what you have time to work on

00:47:56 ◼   ► and what you don't have time to work on.

00:47:57 ◼   ► From what I've heard from so many people

00:48:00 ◼   ► in and out of Apple, those are the two biggest problems.

00:48:03 ◼   ► It's like, you know, you might be,

00:48:05 ◼   ► like a lot of people there are very happy

00:48:07 ◼   ► doing what they're doing,

00:48:08 ◼   ► but there's a lot of people there

00:48:09 ◼   ► who can't get the time or the staff

00:48:12 ◼   ► to fix the problems they wanna fix.

00:48:14 ◼   ► And there's a lot of people there

00:48:16 ◼   ► who are fighting the good fight

00:48:18 ◼   ► and working on things that need to be worked on,

00:48:20 ◼   ► but they don't get the support from above

00:48:22 ◼   ► or the resources from above.

00:48:24 ◼   ► I guess it's kind of the same problem.

00:48:26 ◼   ► Where like it's just not a high enough priority

00:48:27 ◼   ► for the company or it's kind of stuck

00:48:29 ◼   ► in this weird division somewhere

00:48:31 ◼   ► where like it kind of maybe should be somewhere else

00:48:33 ◼   ► or there's some roadblock in the middle of the hierarchy

00:48:36 ◼   ► that's making it hard for them or something like that.

00:48:38 ◼   ► There's these organizational challenges and you're right,

00:48:41 ◼   ► every company is gonna have problems like this.

00:48:44 ◼   ► That doesn't make them non-problems.

00:48:46 ◼   ► And really, I think you gotta listen to this debug.

00:48:51 ◼   ► It really encapsulates this so well

00:48:54 ◼   ► and even when Nitin Ganatra was attempting to argue

00:48:59 ◼   ► against this point, he was proving this point unknowingly.

00:49:03 ◼   ► Because he was saying, like, his point of view

00:49:07 ◼   ► is that he thinks this is like, I think he said,

00:49:11 ◼   ► it's probably like six P1, which means,

00:49:13 ◼   ► highest priority, the P1, six P1 bugs,

00:49:16 ◼   ► and then we'll all forget about this.

00:49:19 ◼   ► And then they proceeded to talk about how the P2 bugs

00:49:22 ◼   ► hardly ever, everybody wants to work on the P2 bugs,

00:49:26 ◼   ► but they're hardly ever allowed to

00:49:27 ◼   ► because of the release cycle leaving so little time

00:49:29 ◼   ► and everything's just about like,

00:49:31 ◼   ► is it high priority?

00:49:32 ◼   ► Fix it.

00:49:33 ◼   ► If it's not a high priority,

00:49:33 ◼   ► we can't afford to work on it right now.

00:49:35 ◼   ► And so I'm not feeling,

00:49:38 ◼   ► when I say I'm feeling a lack of quality here,

00:49:41 ◼   ► I'm not feeling six P1 bugs.

00:49:43 ◼   ► I'm feeling 6,000 P2 bugs that have accumulated

00:49:46 ◼   ► over the last five years and aren't being fixed.

00:49:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

00:49:49 ◼   ► I was gonna say that the success side problems thing,

00:49:54 ◼   ► The reason you can't get prioritization from your boss

00:49:57 ◼   ► to fix the P2s or whatever,

00:49:59 ◼   ► and the reason you think like they're, you know,

00:50:01 ◼   ► that's not a priority, these are the priority,

00:50:03 ◼   ► is because if you were to ever be able to make your case,

00:50:07 ◼   ► what you would say is,

00:50:12 ◼   ► we need to do this because of,

00:50:13 ◼   ► and you lay out all these reasons,

00:50:14 ◼   ► and what they would say is,

00:50:15 ◼   ► well, I don't think we need to do this because X, Y, Z,

00:50:17 ◼   ► and you'd have this argument,

00:50:18 ◼   ► and eventually what you'd come down to

00:50:19 ◼   ► as you move your way up the ladder is like,

00:50:21 ◼   ► well, obviously my priorities as the boss

00:50:26 ◼   ► are the correct ones

00:50:27 ◼   ► because look how successful as Apple has been.

00:50:28 ◼   ► And the higher you go up in the company,

00:50:30 ◼   ► the more the person can say,

00:50:31 ◼   ► well, I understand the people below me

00:50:33 ◼   ► might believe X, Y, and Z should be done,

00:50:36 ◼   ► but I believe it should be Q.

00:50:37 ◼   ► And history has shown that I've been pretty right

00:50:40 ◼   ► because Apple's been doing pretty well.

00:50:41 ◼   ► And like, it's the sort of,

00:50:43 ◼   ► that's the ultimate success hides problem thing

00:50:45 ◼   ► is that when you get into an argument

00:50:46 ◼   ► about what people should be doing,

00:50:47 ◼   ► that you need more staff to address this,

00:50:48 ◼   ► that and the other thing, everybody can't be in charge,

00:50:50 ◼   ► Again, for the millionth time,

00:50:51 ◼   ► there has to be people who are in charge,

00:50:52 ◼   ► and the people who are in charge always have at their back,

00:50:56 ◼   ► Apple is the most successful company in the world.

00:50:57 ◼   ► We make the best products.

00:50:58 ◼   ► We have 100% customer set.

00:51:00 ◼   ► Everybody loves us.

00:51:00 ◼   ► We make a bazillion dollars.

00:51:01 ◼   ► Everybody's buying iPhones.

00:51:03 ◼   ► They always have that sitting right behind them.

00:51:05 ◼   ► And so, no matter what argument you make based on reason,

00:51:07 ◼   ► in the end, and in the end,

00:51:09 ◼   ► the leaders might kind of be right.

00:51:10 ◼   ► It's like, well, what do you want?

00:51:11 ◼   ► We're the most successful company in the world.

00:51:12 ◼   ► Do you think the priorities I'm setting

00:51:13 ◼   ► as your boss or your boss's boss

00:51:16 ◼   ► or your boss's boss's boss or as Tim Cook,

00:51:18 ◼   ► are those priorities the wrong priorities?

00:51:19 ◼   ► In what way are they wrong?

00:51:21 ◼   ► Look how successful we are.

00:51:22 ◼   ► What criteria should we be judging ourselves on?

00:51:25 ◼   ► Pick a criteria, pick a metric, we are the best.

00:51:27 ◼   ► And you're saying, oh, it's not good enough

00:51:28 ◼   ► because you can't get people to fix your P2 bugs, right?

00:51:31 ◼   ► That's success side problems.

00:51:33 ◼   ► That's what you run up against.

00:51:35 ◼   ► And if you're one of the lower down people

00:51:37 ◼   ► and you can't convince the uppers,

00:51:38 ◼   ► it's like either you agree that they kind of have a point

00:51:40 ◼   ► and you become a company man,

00:51:41 ◼   ► and you argue that Apple doesn't have

00:51:42 ◼   ► reliability problems on podcasts,

00:51:44 ◼   ► or you leave the company and say,

00:51:47 ◼   ► well, these people are never gonna listen to me.

00:51:48 ◼   ► And whether they're right or not,

00:51:49 ◼   ► this is not the environment I wanna be in,

00:51:51 ◼   ► and so you leave.

00:51:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, speaking of podcasts

00:51:55 ◼   ► that we haven't listened to yet, or at least I haven't,

00:51:58 ◼   ► a friend of the show, Ben Thompson,

00:52:00 ◼   ► was on the talk show this week,

00:52:02 ◼   ► and one of the things that I noticed in the notes

00:52:05 ◼   ► was them talking about Apple employees

00:52:07 ◼   ► who have gone on sabbaticals and then come back.

00:52:09 ◼   ► And I know that both of you guys

00:52:11 ◼   ► were mentioning that a minute ago.

00:52:12 ◼   ► And then with regard to the P2 bugs

00:52:14 ◼   ► that Marco was talking about,

00:52:16 ◼   ► I know I brought this up a couple episodes ago,

00:52:18 ◼   ► The Andy Matuszak interview on Objective-CIO,

00:52:21 ◼   ► he talks about that indirectly,

00:52:23 ◼   ► but just talks about how the incredible pace

00:52:26 ◼   ► and the priority of just getting new hardware

00:52:28 ◼   ► and other super important things done prevents them

00:52:33 ◼   ► from working on kind of the not as showy issues.

00:52:39 ◼   ► - Or major changes over time.

00:52:41 ◼   ► - Right, right.

00:52:42 ◼   ► So both homework assignments if you're bored.

00:52:45 ◼   ► All right.

00:52:47 ◼   ► Anything else on earnings other than that I want the bank account numbers for the hundred and seventy or whatever it is billion dollars

00:52:54 ◼   ► I haven't heard the the call yet, but I've read in many places that

00:52:59 ◼   ► Not that they gave a breakdown of six versus six plus

00:53:02 ◼   ► But they merely just said the six sold better than a six plus. Did you guys read that as well?

00:53:07 ◼   ► Yeah, that's that's what they said that that the six was the top seller in the line

00:53:11 ◼   ► But they didn't say him, you know what the ratio was and they don't usually break down the ratio like that

00:53:16 ◼   ► So I don't think we'd ever get good info on that.

00:53:19 ◼   ► I'm mostly interested in-- I'm always interested in not so much what they don't say, because

00:53:22 ◼   ► they don't say pretty much anything, but what they do say.

00:53:25 ◼   ► What value is there, or what would motivate them to tell us that the 6 sold more than

00:53:30 ◼   ► the 6 plus?

00:53:31 ◼   ► Right.

00:53:32 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:53:33 ◼   ► I mean, I can't even think of a cynical faking out your competitors.

00:53:41 ◼   ► Maybe they just-- I don't know.

00:53:42 ◼   ► I don't understand why they would say that.

00:53:43 ◼   ► And all I can think about is, why did you tell me that?

00:53:46 ◼   ► I assumed it.

00:53:47 ◼   ► I assumed it before the phones were even released.

00:53:49 ◼   ► The 6 was still better than the 6 Plus.

00:53:50 ◼   ► You're not telling me how much better,

00:53:51 ◼   ► so it doesn't give me any actual information

00:53:53 ◼   ► other than like 6 sold more than the 6 Plus,

00:53:55 ◼   ► but why are you telling me this?

00:53:57 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:53:58 ◼   ► - You know, it's funny.

00:53:59 ◼   ► I actually asked on Twitter, why wouldn't they say that?

00:54:02 ◼   ► Because I was having a dunce moment

00:54:06 ◼   ► and it was like, well, why not?

00:54:07 ◼   ► Who cares?

00:54:08 ◼   ► We're all friends, right?

00:54:10 ◼   ► And immediately I got a thousand replies

00:54:14 ◼   ► very gently telling me I'm an idiot.

00:54:16 ◼   ► But a lot of the responses were,

00:54:18 ◼   ► well, don't give your competitors anything.

00:54:20 ◼   ► And that makes sense.

00:54:22 ◼   ► And gosh, there was one or two others that were really good.

00:54:25 ◼   ► But it basically boiled down to what you're saying, Jon.

00:54:28 ◼   ► Why share that information?

00:54:31 ◼   ► What good does Apple,

00:54:32 ◼   ► what benefit does Apple gain from sharing it?

00:54:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I guess Apple breaks down things

00:54:37 ◼   ► that it doesn't have to all the time,

00:54:38 ◼   ► but like product mix is one

00:54:40 ◼   ► that Apple has almost never broken down.

00:54:42 ◼   ► I've always assumed, there's lots of reasons,

00:54:43 ◼   ► like you said, of people who give you good responses.

00:54:45 ◼   ► I always assume the reason they don't break it down

00:54:46 ◼   ► is because they don't want to tell their competitors

00:54:50 ◼   ► sort of like, this is the mix of demand for these products.

00:54:53 ◼   ► So if you're going to make a line of phones,

00:54:55 ◼   ► this is roughly how many big ones this size

00:54:57 ◼   ► and how many small ones this size you wanna have, right?

00:54:59 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:55:00 ◼   ► - Like they just, that's not the reason,

00:55:03 ◼   ► that's just the reason I always think of,

00:55:04 ◼   ► they're actually probably even better reasons.

00:55:06 ◼   ► But then that goes to make you think why?

00:55:08 ◼   ► I mean, someone in the chat room

00:55:09 ◼   ► said they were answering our question.

00:55:10 ◼   ► Yeah, but the press asks questions all the time

00:55:13 ◼   ► at these conferences and Apple just says,

00:55:14 ◼   ► "No, we're not gonna tell you that.

00:55:15 ◼   ► "Just do it all the time, right?"

00:55:17 ◼   ► Why decide to say that the six turns more?

00:55:20 ◼   ► It's not even anything, they're not even bragging about it.

00:55:22 ◼   ► It's not like a thing that you're bragging,

00:55:24 ◼   ► they're not countering a story, I don't think.

00:55:26 ◼   ► Is there a story out there that the, I don't know.

00:55:29 ◼   ► I can't figure it out.

00:55:30 ◼   ► But you know, maybe they just, you know,

00:55:33 ◼   ► they decided to throw the press a bone and tell them this

00:55:36 ◼   ► because it's another bullet point for a story.

00:55:38 ◼   ► But I don't think it puts Apple

00:55:39 ◼   ► in a particularly good or bad light.

00:55:40 ◼   ► Anyway, I haven't listened to the call yet.

00:55:42 ◼   ► We'll see what it was really like.

00:55:44 ◼   ► - All right.

00:55:46 ◼   ► So there's been a little bit of rumblings lately,

00:55:49 ◼   ► which I was not aware of until somebody else pointed it out.

00:55:53 ◼   ► And in this case, Wes Dart from Australia,

00:55:56 ◼   ► he or she said,

00:55:59 ◼   ► "It might be worth revisiting the new photo app for Mac.

00:56:02 ◼   ► I remember you guys were pretty excited about it.

00:56:05 ◼   ► I have a daily Google alert for all news about it.

00:56:08 ◼   ► It seems Apple have been removing references to it

00:56:10 ◼   ► their website. That doesn't instill a lot of confidence, does it? I mean, that's probably

00:56:19 ◼   ► not a good sign. And it also was funny to me, semi-related, that somebody pressed Tim Cook on

00:56:24 ◼   ► whether or not on the earnings call, whether or not the Apple Watch is really going to be released

00:56:30 ◼   ► early in 2015, because it's apparently coming out in April. And Tim said, from what I gather,

00:56:38 ◼   ► Well, the way we think of it is the first third of the year's early

00:56:41 ◼   ► The middle third is just the middle third and the last third is late. And so sure why not? It's still early, right?

00:56:48 ◼   ► We're all friends and I don't know it just struck me as funny. So are you guys?

00:56:53 ◼   ► Concerned about the fact that that photos apparently may not be the photo app may not be a thing anymore

00:56:58 ◼   ► Well, it seems like you know reading the tea leaves here and hearing a few rumblings here and there

00:57:05 ◼   ► I think the answer is not that the photos app is canceled or anything. I think it's just late

00:57:09 ◼   ► You know, it was I believe didn't did they say I thought I thought the initial release date was like last fall

00:57:16 ◼   ► But I think somebody else corrected me recently and said it was also early 2015. Yeah, it was always next year

00:57:21 ◼   ► So I think it was always supposed to be

00:57:23 ◼   ► 2015 sometime. Okay, so, you know if if that means by the end of April 2015

00:57:28 ◼   ► And they're suddenly removing all these references to it. I mean I

00:57:33 ◼   ► It really does sound like based on a few rumblings here and there, from what I can tell, it's

00:57:39 ◼   ► just delayed.

00:57:40 ◼   ► It's not delayed.

00:57:41 ◼   ► It's not cancelled.

00:57:42 ◼   ► Yeah, and I always wonder with these stories, with the sort of implied, "Apple's removing

00:57:49 ◼   ► Robinson's photo map for the Mac," dot, dot, dot.

00:57:51 ◼   ► Those stories will never say, "This means Apple is canceling it," because that's

00:57:56 ◼   ► the implication, but they only want to imply it.

00:57:58 ◼   ► They don't want to say it, right?

00:58:00 ◼   ► or even speculate about it,

00:58:02 ◼   ► because my question would be,

00:58:03 ◼   ► all right, if you're saying this

00:58:04 ◼   ► because you think the photos app for the Mac is canceled,

00:58:08 ◼   ► is that really a thing that you think would happen,

00:58:09 ◼   ► that Apple would cancel both iPhoto and photos for the Mac,

00:58:12 ◼   ► and there would be no--

00:58:12 ◼   ► - And Aperture.

00:58:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, and Aperture,

00:58:14 ◼   ► and there would just be no photo management for the Mac.

00:58:16 ◼   ► I mean, I suppose that could be a thing.

00:58:18 ◼   ► Like, by all means, make that argument.

00:58:20 ◼   ► Tell me why Apple does not want to be in the business

00:58:22 ◼   ► of making first-party photo management applications

00:58:26 ◼   ► for your Mac anymore.

00:58:27 ◼   ► I would love to hear that argument,

00:58:28 ◼   ► but they will never make that argument.

00:58:30 ◼   ► They will just say that it's being fooled from the site

00:58:31 ◼   ► and let you just worry about something.

00:58:33 ◼   ► So in the absence of someone making a compelling argument

00:58:36 ◼   ► that Apple no longer wants to make photo apps for the Mac,

00:58:39 ◼   ► which I bet, you know,

00:58:40 ◼   ► and if I had to make that argument by the way,

00:58:42 ◼   ► I would say history has shown over the past several years

00:58:45 ◼   ► that Apple's not great at making phone management apps.

00:58:46 ◼   ► And if Apple didn't make one and give one away for free,

00:58:48 ◼   ► that would open up the market to third parties,

00:58:50 ◼   ► but then the third parties would have to work

00:58:52 ◼   ► with the photos in the cloud.

00:58:54 ◼   ► And if Apple doesn't have an API for that, blah, blah, blah.

00:58:56 ◼   ► Anyway, I'm not saying it's totally ridiculous.

00:58:57 ◼   ► It could happen, right?

00:58:59 ◼   ► but I don't see anyone making that argument.

00:59:01 ◼   ► So then it's just like, oh well,

00:59:02 ◼   ► late software is late, right?

00:59:04 ◼   ► You know, what else is new?

00:59:06 ◼   ► And you take it off the site just because

00:59:08 ◼   ► it's kind of embarrassing to have it up there

00:59:09 ◼   ► for a long time and not have it available.

00:59:13 ◼   ► And maybe, you know, it was on the website too soon.

00:59:16 ◼   ► You're showing screenshots of something that doesn't exist,

00:59:18 ◼   ► that people can't get.

00:59:21 ◼   ► Why are you enticing them?

00:59:22 ◼   ► Same thing with like still selling Aperture

00:59:24 ◼   ► when it's canceled, like that's not a good move either.

00:59:26 ◼   ► And so this just seems like a correction.

00:59:29 ◼   ► If this photos app doesn't come out until next year,

00:59:31 ◼   ► I don't care, just make it freaking work.

00:59:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:59:34 ◼   ► - That's the thing, I mean, you're right.

00:59:36 ◼   ► Photos on your Mac, that's such an important thing.

00:59:39 ◼   ► That's not something you can mess with.

00:59:42 ◼   ► If it was a beta, I wouldn't install it.

00:59:44 ◼   ► - I don't know if I'm gonna even install the final version.

00:59:48 ◼   ► When they say this is a really, seriously,

00:59:51 ◼   ► I barely trust iPhoto with my photos,

00:59:56 ◼   ► and this new system, whatever it is,

00:59:59 ◼   ► I'm gonna run it in parallel with iVoto

01:00:02 ◼   ► for a long time before I trust it.

01:00:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, whether I use it immediately

01:00:07 ◼   ► and whether I trust it with everything immediately

01:00:09 ◼   ► will entirely depend on whether I can read

01:00:12 ◼   ► its directory structure. (laughs)

01:00:14 ◼   ► If I can read it back out and I can back it up

01:00:17 ◼   ► with Time Machine and all that stuff

01:00:18 ◼   ► that we talked about months ago when they announced this,

01:00:21 ◼   ► I'll be comfortable using it.

01:00:22 ◼   ► If it doesn't have all those things,

01:00:23 ◼   ► it's gonna be a tough sell.

01:00:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Anyway, we didn't actually get a third sponsor this week,

01:00:28 ◼   ► so instead I decided to kind of throw this one

01:00:31 ◼   ► to two conferences that are run by our friends

01:00:33 ◼   ► and are really nice.

01:00:35 ◼   ► Both happening in March, both happening,

01:00:38 ◼   ► oh boy, I gotta consult the CGP Grey video.

01:00:40 ◼   ► Is Ireland the UK?

01:00:42 ◼   ► I think, hmm, I think the bottom half is, anyway.

01:00:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:00:48 ◼   ► - That's how they refer to it, I think, the bottom half.

01:00:50 ◼   ► I remember seeing that on that video.

01:00:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, me too.

01:00:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, so anyway--

01:00:53 ◼   ► - Oh my god, you're gonna get so much email.

01:00:56 ◼   ► - To review, the two largest islands in the British Isles

01:00:58 ◼   ► are Ireland and Great Britain.

01:00:59 ◼   ► Ireland has under two countries,

01:01:01 ◼   ► the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland,

01:01:02 ◼   ► while Great Britain mostly contains three,

01:01:04 ◼   ► England, Scotland, and Wales.

01:01:05 ◼   ► These last three, when combined with Northern Ireland,

01:01:07 ◼   ► formed the United Kingdom.

01:01:08 ◼   ► - Anyway, NSConference@nsconference.com

01:01:12 ◼   ► is an awesome conference that is in, oh boy,

01:01:15 ◼   ► Lychester?

01:01:16 ◼   ► - I think it's Lyster.

01:01:18 ◼   ► - Oh, it's like the Boston style,

01:01:19 ◼   ► you just kind of delete the middle of the word.

01:01:21 ◼   ► - We can get some help from this in the chat.

01:01:23 ◼   ► There was a good video I saw

01:01:24 ◼   ► of Americans pronouncing British place names.

01:01:28 ◼   ► I should find that for the notes.

01:01:29 ◼   ► - Lysester.

01:01:30 ◼   ► - Lester.

01:01:31 ◼   ► - Like a creepy dude, Lester?

01:01:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, sure.

01:01:34 ◼   ► - My bad.

01:01:34 ◼   ► Here it was, I was so smug,

01:01:36 ◼   ► I thought I really nailed it, but I was wrong.

01:01:39 ◼   ► - Anyway, all right, so that's March 16th, 18th,

01:01:41 ◼   ► NSConference.com in Lester in the UK.

01:01:45 ◼   ► Speakers to this include some of my friends,

01:01:47 ◼   ► Jessie Char, Daniel Jockett, Paul Kvassus, Laura Savino,

01:01:50 ◼   ► Jamie Newberry and a bunch more people

01:01:52 ◼   ► who I don't know quite as well,

01:01:53 ◼   ► but it's a very, very good list.

01:01:54 ◼   ► And I will be speaking there as well.

01:01:57 ◼   ► I tend to speak at about one conference per year

01:01:59 ◼   ► and I've been wanting to do this one for a while

01:02:01 ◼   ► and the scheduling has never worked out until this year

01:02:04 ◼   ► and I'm very happy to finally work this out.

01:02:06 ◼   ► So check out NSConference.com.

01:02:08 ◼   ► Also, Oll, I apologize to Casey

01:02:11 ◼   ► 'cause he really wants to go and probably won't go

01:02:13 ◼   ► because baby stuff is hard and so, not that I blame you.

01:02:17 ◼   ► So anyway, it's ull.ie.

01:02:20 ◼   ► This is March 30th and 31st in Killarney, Ireland.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Speakers to ull include lots of people we know,

01:02:26 ◼   ► Jason Snell, Guy English, Dal Rampell, Georgia Dow,

01:02:30 ◼   ► Dave Whiskus, Serenity, Renee,

01:02:32 ◼   ► some guy named John or Jonathan Gruber,

01:02:34 ◼   ► I think he's an economist and more.

01:02:37 ◼   ► Go to ull.ie, 'cause that's pretty cool.

01:02:41 ◼   ► Anyway, yeah, so NS Conference and ull,

01:02:43 ◼   ► wanted to give them a nice shout out

01:02:44 ◼   ► since we didn't have a third sponsor this week.

01:02:46 ◼   ► Anyway, what else?

01:02:48 ◼   ► - So we're gonna get so much hate mail

01:02:49 ◼   ► and I'm not looking forward to it.

01:02:51 ◼   ► Anyway, I wanted to quickly talk about a tweet

01:02:55 ◼   ► that I had seen retweeted by my friend Andre Arco.

01:02:58 ◼   ► This tweet is by Gary Barnhart.

01:03:02 ◼   ► It says, "The history of programming is much more

01:03:04 ◼   ► "about programmers unacknowledged emotional attachment

01:03:07 ◼   ► "to familiarity than it is about invention."

01:03:10 ◼   ► And the first thing I thought of when I read this tweet

01:03:13 ◼   ► was Marco's insistence on sticking with PHP forever

01:03:17 ◼   ► up until a month ago.

01:03:19 ◼   ► The difference though in Marco's defense

01:03:21 ◼   ► is that you acknowledge your ridiculous insistence

01:03:24 ◼   ► on this ridiculous language

01:03:25 ◼   ► rather than just stick your head in the sand.

01:03:29 ◼   ► Although I guess maybe I should have thought of John first,

01:03:31 ◼   ► but since I don't feel like there's any--

01:03:34 ◼   ► - Why were you thinking of me first?

01:03:35 ◼   ► - Perl is fine.

01:03:37 ◼   ► Why do you need to learn any languages?

01:03:38 ◼   ► Perl is the best language, period.

01:03:39 ◼   ► - I know a whole bunch of languages.

01:03:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:03:42 ◼   ► I learn new ones all the time.

01:03:43 ◼   ► When Go and Dart comes out, when Go comes out,

01:03:45 ◼   ► when all these new languages come out,

01:03:47 ◼   ► I read all the documentation for the languages.

01:03:49 ◼   ► - Yes, but the only one you really need,

01:03:52 ◼   ► like Marco said, is Perl.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Just dollar signs for everyone, John.

01:03:55 ◼   ► - I think it's JavaScript is the only one

01:03:56 ◼   ► you ever really need.

01:03:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:03:58 ◼   ► No matter where you work,

01:03:59 ◼   ► you will find yourself writing JavaScript.

01:04:01 ◼   ► - That's true, actually.

01:04:02 ◼   ► - JavaScript, the worst language everywhere.

01:04:04 ◼   ► - Yep, that should be the slogan.

01:04:06 ◼   ► - Oh, you guys.

01:04:08 ◼   ► Anyway, I don't really have much to say

01:04:10 ◼   ► other than that I thought the tweet was cool

01:04:11 ◼   ► and it reminded me of you guys.

01:04:13 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true not just of programming languages, though it's true of anything.

01:04:17 ◼   ► Like again, with any sort of group organization with a hierarchy where people are in charge,

01:04:25 ◼   ► there's going to be an attachment of the people in charge to the things that they are familiar

01:04:29 ◼   ► with and since they're in charge they get to impose that on everybody else.

01:04:34 ◼   ► And any attempt to change is met with resistance from the people who are attached to the thing

01:04:39 ◼   ► that they're familiar with.

01:04:40 ◼   ► There are specific instances in programming it,

01:04:43 ◼   ► whether it's specific language or technology

01:04:46 ◼   ► or a particular code base

01:04:48 ◼   ► that people get attachments with.

01:04:50 ◼   ► In many cases, specifically with tech,

01:04:54 ◼   ► what's required is somebody who's not a tech person

01:04:59 ◼   ► to make a decision and impose it on the tech people.

01:05:03 ◼   ► That's how you get situation,

01:05:05 ◼   ► that's how you get essentially Mac OS X, right?

01:05:08 ◼   ► because Apple had all sorts of next generation

01:05:11 ◼   ► operating system initiatives within its walls,

01:05:15 ◼   ► and none of them were focused enough,

01:05:18 ◼   ► and they were put under very difficult constraints,

01:05:21 ◼   ► and they just couldn't get the job done.

01:05:23 ◼   ► So the only way they could break out of that

01:05:25 ◼   ► was they had to, someone who is not a programmer,

01:05:27 ◼   ► who has no attachment to the Mac toolbox

01:05:30 ◼   ► or to anything involving classic Mac OS,

01:05:33 ◼   ► to come in and say, "We're doing something different,"

01:05:36 ◼   ► because none of the people who were there in the trenches

01:05:41 ◼   ► were going to do that because all those people were experts

01:05:44 ◼   ► in the current Mac operating system.

01:05:46 ◼   ► And they may have had ambitions

01:05:47 ◼   ► to make a new operating system,

01:05:49 ◼   ► but they certainly had an attachment to the current one.

01:05:51 ◼   ► And it takes kind of an outsider.

01:05:52 ◼   ► And usually an outsider is not a tech person.

01:05:55 ◼   ► In this case, the outsider was the CEO of the company

01:05:58 ◼   ► who decided to purchase another company

01:06:00 ◼   ► that came along with Steve Jobs.

01:06:01 ◼   ► And he did a little inside out takeover type thing.

01:06:03 ◼   ► Those are the people who decided

01:06:05 ◼   ► Apple's next generation operating system was built on next step nobody

01:06:08 ◼   ► You know inside the company working on a new kernel or whatever decided

01:06:13 ◼   ► That next step was going to be the thing so like there's a way out of this. How do you

01:06:18 ◼   ► Deal with that emotional attachment you have a you get a decision made by somebody who has no emotional attachment to those things

01:06:25 ◼   ► And you know who I didn't know who there is it was Gil amelio then was the CEO

01:06:31 ◼   ► oh, I can't even remember the frigging CEO progression

01:06:33 ◼   ► in Apple, he did not have an emotional attachment

01:06:35 ◼   ► to classic Mac OS.

01:06:36 ◼   ► So the idea of, you know, using the Windows NT kernel

01:06:40 ◼   ► or buying Next or buying B or any of those things,

01:06:43 ◼   ► he is not burdened by any emotional attachment

01:06:45 ◼   ► to technologies or languages or anything having to do

01:06:48 ◼   ► with the current technology stack.

01:06:50 ◼   ► That was kind of a Christ-tunity though,

01:06:53 ◼   ► because if your company's going down the tubes,

01:06:55 ◼   ► the person can, the person in charge is empowered

01:06:59 ◼   ► to do that, and again, the success sides,

01:07:00 ◼   ► problem things, who at Apple is empowered to make them massively change their

01:07:04 ◼   ► priorities for network services? Anyone who has that sort of ability, like there's

01:07:11 ◼   ► no crisis causing it to happen at this point because for all the noise we make

01:07:15 ◼   ► talking about Apple and their problems, like then they turn in these financial

01:07:19 ◼   ► numbers and it's like tell me again why I have to totally change the way we do

01:07:21 ◼   ► things or otherwise, otherwise what? What happens if we don't? We have another

01:07:24 ◼   ► record quarter? Hmm. Well you know Blackberry was doing great in 2006. I know,

01:07:28 ◼   ► I know it hides problems right up to the point

01:07:31 ◼   ► that it doesn't, right?

01:07:32 ◼   ► And Apple especially, because if Apple misses

01:07:34 ◼   ► its fantastical earnings by just a little bit,

01:07:36 ◼   ► it's like, oh God, Apple is doomed.

01:07:37 ◼   ► They only made 16 billion.

01:07:39 ◼   ► And last year they made 18.

01:07:40 ◼   ► If they make 16 billion this, you know,

01:07:42 ◼   ► the same quarter next year, are they doomed?

01:07:44 ◼   ► No, they made $16 billion in a quarter.

01:07:46 ◼   ► They're fine, right?

01:07:47 ◼   ► So it's, but people will still go crazy over it.

01:07:49 ◼   ► So I guess that's kind of the upside.

01:07:51 ◼   ► I guess no one really talks about this,

01:07:52 ◼   ► but the upside of the crazy Apple blogosphere

01:07:55 ◼   ► and the pundits who are like,

01:07:57 ◼   ► Apple is doomed no matter what Apple does.

01:08:00 ◼   ► They're about to be destroyed

01:08:02 ◼   ► by whatever their competitor is.

01:08:04 ◼   ► That is actually that sort of manufactured chrysotunity.

01:08:08 ◼   ► That's like, it's not real.

01:08:09 ◼   ► It's a phantom.

01:08:10 ◼   ► Oh, I don't want to say it.

01:08:11 ◼   ► All right.

01:08:12 ◼   ► It's not a real problem.

01:08:15 ◼   ► But the perception that there is a problem

01:08:18 ◼   ► is the only thing they could ever give anybody

01:08:20 ◼   ► inside Apple any sort of clout to make a, you know,

01:08:24 ◼   ► to have a crisis that leads to an opportunity, right?

01:08:27 ◼   ► 'cause otherwise if there were any other company,

01:08:28 ◼   ► we would be like, nothing ever changes.

01:08:31 ◼   ► We're doing great.

01:08:32 ◼   ► I don't understand why I would ever listen to you.

01:08:36 ◼   ► Everything is fine.

01:08:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, and just to put a little bit of nuance on this,

01:08:41 ◼   ► when I complain about Apple's quality problems,

01:08:44 ◼   ► or what I perceive as those quality problems,

01:08:47 ◼   ► I'm not saying Apple's doomed.

01:08:49 ◼   ► They're not.

01:08:50 ◼   ► Apple's gonna be fine for a long time.

01:08:52 ◼   ► Apple's gonna be, even if they have a bad patch,

01:08:56 ◼   ► it's gonna be a little bit like Microsoft is today,

01:08:58 ◼   ► which is like, Microsoft is, you know,

01:09:02 ◼   ► I think by most of our estimations,

01:09:05 ◼   ► they're going through like their worst period ever

01:09:07 ◼   ► right now, and they're still making tons of money,

01:09:09 ◼   ► and they're still fine, and you know,

01:09:11 ◼   ► they're not making as much money necessarily

01:09:13 ◼   ► as they could be, or maybe as they were in the past,

01:09:15 ◼   ► I don't know about that, but you know,

01:09:17 ◼   ► they're still like, even in this state of them

01:09:21 ◼   ► producing things that don't do well on the market,

01:09:23 ◼   ► and things that tend to suck a lot, or fail at least,

01:09:27 ◼   ► they're still, as a company, and financially and everything,

01:09:30 ◼   ► so fine, it's not even funny.

01:09:32 ◼   ► And so, you know, Apple, even if they had a colossal series

01:09:36 ◼   ► of terrible moves and terrible products

01:09:38 ◼   ► that flopped in the marketplace,

01:09:39 ◼   ► which doesn't look like it's gonna happen anytime soon,

01:09:42 ◼   ► but even if that happened,

01:09:45 ◼   ► they have so much money coming in.

01:09:47 ◼   ► They're still gonna be selling to so many people.

01:09:49 ◼   ► They're still gonna have such great success

01:09:52 ◼   ► relative to the market as a whole,

01:09:53 ◼   ► relative to other companies,

01:09:54 ◼   ► relative to zero,

01:09:56 ◼   ► that they're gonna be fine.

01:09:59 ◼   ► So I'm not saying they're doomed.

01:10:01 ◼   ► I'm not even saying that they're gonna start

01:10:04 ◼   ► making less money.

01:10:05 ◼   ► I don't know that, you know, who knows?

01:10:07 ◼   ► I do think though that,

01:10:09 ◼   ► following the theme of success hides problems,

01:10:12 ◼   ► you can be selling tons and doing very well

01:10:17 ◼   ► in profit, in market share,

01:10:20 ◼   ► in any kind of like, you know,

01:10:21 ◼   ► money metric you want to measure,

01:10:23 ◼   ► and still not be making stuff that's good enough.

01:10:26 ◼   ► That is a different metric.

01:10:28 ◼   ► And you can, similar to how I said,

01:10:31 ◼   ► you can lose the functional high ground

01:10:34 ◼   ► without losing it to somebody else,

01:10:35 ◼   ► you can just lose it yourself.

01:10:37 ◼   ► You can still be doing very, very well.

01:10:40 ◼   ► You can still be making tons of money.

01:10:41 ◼   ► You can still be the market leader

01:10:44 ◼   ► in whatever metric you choose to be.

01:10:46 ◼   ► Despite that, your stuff might not be

01:10:50 ◼   ► as good as it could be or should be.

01:10:52 ◼   ► That is a totally separate measure

01:10:54 ◼   ► that often does not correlate to your market success.

01:10:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I wasn't talking about you.

01:10:58 ◼   ► I was talking mostly about, you know,

01:10:59 ◼   ► like this bad assumptions article by Ben Thompson,

01:11:02 ◼   ► who may or may not be in our chat room,

01:11:04 ◼   ► that like it's the analysts who are like,

01:11:06 ◼   ► "Apple has to come out with a network, you know,

01:11:09 ◼   ► or the competitors are gonna crush them.

01:11:10 ◼   ► They need, their lower priced phones

01:11:12 ◼   ► are gonna destroy them in China."

01:11:13 ◼   ► Like all these people who just don't understand Apple

01:11:16 ◼   ► or their business, they're the people who are manufacturing,

01:11:19 ◼   ► like the drama on the stock market with their price,

01:11:22 ◼   ► like why Apple's PE ratio is not what it should be

01:11:26 ◼   ► according to almost any rational thought.

01:11:29 ◼   ► It's just like, as this big article says,

01:11:31 ◼   ► we'll put it in the show notes,

01:11:32 ◼   ► like Apple is eternally,

01:11:34 ◼   ► and I think Asympico has said similar things,

01:11:37 ◼   ► Apple is eternally like on the edge of doom.

01:11:40 ◼   ► Like I think this was an Asympico thing.

01:11:45 ◼   ► He said like they're constantly falling to earth.

01:11:48 ◼   ► they just keep missing it, so basically they're in orbit.

01:11:51 ◼   ► Right?

01:11:51 ◼   ► Like it's just, and it's not,

01:11:53 ◼   ► and this is from the people who matter,

01:11:56 ◼   ► like in the financial markets and everything like that.

01:11:58 ◼   ► And everybody hates that,

01:12:00 ◼   ► and you have whole websites dedicated to just like,

01:12:02 ◼   ► I mean the Maclope, like all he does is just,

01:12:05 ◼   ► he or she, has just take down these people

01:12:09 ◼   ► who just have no idea what they're talking about

01:12:10 ◼   ► and constantly are talking about Apple

01:12:12 ◼   ► and seemingly having people listen to them.

01:12:14 ◼   ► But there is a benefit to that,

01:12:17 ◼   ► And the benefit is if that chatter gets loud enough,

01:12:21 ◼   ► it can be fuel for things to happen inside the company

01:12:23 ◼   ► that otherwise wouldn't.

01:12:24 ◼   ► I mean, and the other fuel is what Marco talked about,

01:12:26 ◼   ► that any good company, and especially Apple knows,

01:12:29 ◼   ► don't let yourself be Blackberry, right?

01:12:30 ◼   ► Don't let yourself be Microsoft.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Don't miss the mobile revolution.

01:12:33 ◼   ► Don't decide that a hardware keyboard

01:12:35 ◼   ► is the way forward, dammit.

01:12:36 ◼   ► Like you can always get blindsided.

01:12:40 ◼   ► And if I had, you know, an Apple to its credit,

01:12:42 ◼   ► and perhaps better than anyone else,

01:12:44 ◼   ► has been really good over the past decade or so

01:12:47 ◼   ► about trying not to let that happen to himself,

01:12:49 ◼   ► not resting on, like that's what the watch is all about.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Is the watch the right thing?

01:12:53 ◼   ► Is Apple TV the right thing?

01:12:54 ◼   ► Like these are things that Apple is trying.

01:12:56 ◼   ► They don't try a million things,

01:12:57 ◼   ► but they know we're gonna be the iPhone company forever.

01:13:01 ◼   ► That is not a viable strategy.

01:13:02 ◼   ► You will end up as a BlackBerry eventually.

01:13:04 ◼   ► It may take a while, but it'll eventually happen.

01:13:07 ◼   ► Like if I had to pick out something that is dangerous

01:13:09 ◼   ► to Apple right now, I would pick out like VR or something.

01:13:13 ◼   ► Maybe VR will be a fluke and it's not a big deal,

01:13:15 ◼   ► but Apple should be worried about it.

01:13:16 ◼   ► Apple should have contingency plans.

01:13:18 ◼   ► Apple should be working on VR.

01:13:20 ◼   ► Like, maybe it's not a big deal.

01:13:22 ◼   ► Maybe VR comes and goes and it's like, you know,

01:13:24 ◼   ► we didn't need to be worried about it, but.

01:13:26 ◼   ► - Doesn't VR come and go every seven or eight years?

01:13:28 ◼   ► - I know, like, you don't know, like,

01:13:30 ◼   ► but you never know what's gonna take.

01:13:32 ◼   ► Maybe it won't take now.

01:13:33 ◼   ► If you had said, like, tablet computers,

01:13:35 ◼   ► you better be worried about that Apple

01:13:36 ◼   ► when, like, pen for Windows came out,

01:13:38 ◼   ► or like the grid pad or whatever.

01:13:41 ◼   ► Oh my God, Apple, you better be worried about this.

01:13:43 ◼   ► They'd be like, what if they said,

01:13:45 ◼   ► no, we don't need to worry, that's stupid.

01:13:46 ◼   ► And then it went away and you're like,

01:13:47 ◼   ► see, we were totally right.

01:13:49 ◼   ► The whole thing with like tablets, that's pointless.

01:13:51 ◼   ► No one's gonna be, that stuff is useless.

01:13:53 ◼   ► And Paul was like, oh, you better do it in this PDA space.

01:13:56 ◼   ► We tried the Newton, it was crappy.

01:13:57 ◼   ► Nobody wants to have like a smart device

01:13:59 ◼   ► with a touchscreen, that's stupid, right?

01:14:01 ◼   ► If Apple kept having that attitude,

01:14:03 ◼   ► they would have never made the iPhone, right?

01:14:06 ◼   ► And so VR comes and goes, like you said,

01:14:07 ◼   ► and it's like, see, we were right, we didn't have,

01:14:09 ◼   ► no, you have to, you absolutely have to explore every avenue.

01:14:12 ◼   ► Maybe nothing comes to it,

01:14:13 ◼   ► but you have to be on the lookout for it.

01:14:14 ◼   ► I think Apple has that going for it,

01:14:17 ◼   ► that it's always gonna be on the lookout

01:14:18 ◼   ► for what the next thing that's gonna blindside it

01:14:21 ◼   ► and trying to stay ahead of it.

01:14:22 ◼   ► But the more difficult thing is

01:14:24 ◼   ► when you don't have anybody who's competing with you

01:14:27 ◼   ► in terms of product quality, profits, customer set,

01:14:30 ◼   ► anything like that,

01:14:31 ◼   ► what do you have to motivate you to be better

01:14:34 ◼   ► or to change the way you do business?

01:14:37 ◼   ► Because any argument you make about changing

01:14:39 ◼   ► the way you do a business can eventually end in,

01:14:42 ◼   ► what is it do you think,

01:14:44 ◼   ► How could we do better in some way?

01:14:46 ◼   ► Which metric that we can measure would we do better in?

01:14:48 ◼   ► Would we make more money?

01:14:49 ◼   ► Would we have higher customer satisfaction?

01:14:51 ◼   ► I guess maybe you could say we would have more market share,

01:14:53 ◼   ► but then they have a counter to that.

01:14:55 ◼   ► Like if you sold a lower priced phone,

01:14:58 ◼   ► you would increase your market share.

01:14:59 ◼   ► And then Apple said,

01:15:00 ◼   ► "Yes, but we don't care about market share.

01:15:01 ◼   ► We care about making the best products

01:15:02 ◼   ► and making a lot of money."

01:15:04 ◼   ► Possibly in that order.

01:15:05 ◼   ► - All right.

01:15:07 ◼   ► - Still waiting for that Sega VR headset.

01:15:09 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:15:11 ◼   ► Let me know how that works out for you.

01:15:14 ◼   ► Sony's making one, you got the Oculus,

01:15:16 ◼   ► you'll be able to get a VR headset someday.

01:15:18 ◼   ► - Thanks a lot to our sponsors this week,

01:15:20 ◼   ► Squarespace and lynda.com, and I guess Jeff Bridges.

01:15:24 ◼   ► And we will see you next week.

01:15:26 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:15:29 ◼   ► ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:15:32 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:15:34 ◼   ► ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:15:37 ◼   ► ♪ Oh it was accidental ♪

01:15:40 ◼   ► ♪ John didn't do any research ♪

01:15:42 ◼   ► Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, 'cause it was accidental.

01:15:47 ◼   ► It was accidental.

01:15:50 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.

01:15:55 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at

01:16:00 ◼   ► C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:16:09 ◼   ► ♪ Anti-Marco, Armin, S-I-R-A-C ♪

01:16:14 ◼   ► ♪ USA, Syracuse, it's accidental ♪

01:16:18 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:16:19 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't mean to ♪

01:16:22 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:16:23 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:16:24 ◼   ► ♪ Tech broadcast so long ♪

01:16:28 ◼   ► - What else is going on?

01:16:30 ◼   ► Anything fun?

01:16:31 ◼   ► - I mean, at this point, I think we're never gonna watch

01:16:33 ◼   ► the Microsoft thing, right?

01:16:34 ◼   ► 'Cause we all forgot to do it for two weeks in a row, right?

01:16:36 ◼   ► - Oh, were we supposed to?

01:16:37 ◼   ► I'll probably watch a little bit.

01:16:39 ◼   ► I read articles with highlights, and I know more or less

01:16:42 ◼   ► what was announced.

01:16:43 ◼   ► I just want to see it, I guess.

01:16:45 ◼   ► I mean, sometimes when I watch those things,

01:16:48 ◼   ► it very quickly becomes not about what's been announced,

01:16:51 ◼   ► but about how it's being announced.

01:16:53 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:16:54 ◼   ► And sometimes that could be good,

01:16:55 ◼   ► and sometimes it can be bad.

01:16:56 ◼   ► If it's really long and boring, then it's bad.

01:16:58 ◼   ► But you can always be surprised.

01:17:00 ◼   ► I would remember that one of the best Microsoft things I watched

01:17:02 ◼   ► in a long time was that when Windows 8 Metro was announced,

01:17:07 ◼   ► and it was like the UI guy explaining the UI philosophy

01:17:11 ◼   ► behind the Metro interface.

01:17:13 ◼   ► That was really good.

01:17:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think, I mean, I've heard so many people

01:17:18 ◼   ► talking about this Microsoft thing

01:17:20 ◼   ► and various things about it.

01:17:22 ◼   ► I think the biggest red flag for me

01:17:27 ◼   ► is that all these features that are designed for like,

01:17:30 ◼   ► it sounds like they have basically one continuous UI

01:17:33 ◼   ► between phones, tablets, and PCs,

01:17:37 ◼   ► and convertible laptops and everything,

01:17:40 ◼   ► everything, rather than the Windows 8 environment

01:17:43 ◼   ► of these two separate environments and Windows RT,

01:17:46 ◼   ► which I think no one's even really mentioned yet recently

01:17:49 ◼   ► with this stuff.

01:17:50 ◼   ► - I think they canned that, didn't they?

01:17:52 ◼   ► - I think so, but I don't know if that's been confirmed.

01:17:55 ◼   ► I think it's just been implied.

01:17:56 ◼   ► But all that stuff, the problem is that whole system of,

01:18:01 ◼   ► oh, it'll be wonderful, you can have these apps

01:18:03 ◼   ► that run the same on all these different platforms,

01:18:05 ◼   ► you can have things being handed off, all that stuff.

01:18:08 ◼   ► You have to not consider what happens

01:18:11 ◼   ► if you have all the Microsoft devices,

01:18:14 ◼   ► because that's not gonna happen.

01:18:16 ◼   ► Like, that's unrealistic.

01:18:17 ◼   ► So you have to instead be like,

01:18:20 ◼   ► all right, so what happens if I only have one or two of these?

01:18:24 ◼   ► Maybe I only have the laptop and the Xbox,

01:18:28 ◼   ► or maybe it's just like the tablet and the laptop,

01:18:31 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:18:33 ◼   ► No one's gonna buy the Windows Phone anytime soon.

01:18:35 ◼   ► So what happens then in a mixed environment

01:18:38 ◼   ► where I'm not totally bought in?

01:18:41 ◼   ► Is this stuff still compelling, if it works at all?

01:18:44 ◼   ► Is it still compelling?

01:18:46 ◼   ► That I think is, I hope Microsoft is smart and practical

01:18:51 ◼   ► and humble enough to recognize that they need

01:18:54 ◼   ► to be worried about that and they need

01:18:56 ◼   ► to make sure that works well.

01:18:58 ◼   ► I don't know yet if they are.

01:19:00 ◼   ► In general, the new Microsoft is moving in that direction

01:19:04 ◼   ► of being more pragmatic and honest

01:19:07 ◼   ► about their position in mobile, but we'll see.

01:19:11 ◼   ► And then HoloLens, I mean, HoloLens from what everyone says

01:19:14 ◼   ► is a really awesome tech demo that everyone hopes

01:19:18 ◼   ► will come out sometime soon with some kind

01:19:20 ◼   ► of reasonable hardware that performs something well

01:19:24 ◼   ► and works with some kind of mystery software,

01:19:25 ◼   ► but that's a whole lot of ifs, you know?

01:19:29 ◼   ► That's a big line of pretty big problems to solve

01:19:33 ◼   ► before this thing is truly compelling.

01:19:36 ◼   ► And so I hope it succeeds.

01:19:38 ◼   ► I think it'd be cool.

01:19:39 ◼   ► I think it would be cool to kinda like shake things up

01:19:41 ◼   ► in the industry and to have Microsoft be at the front

01:19:44 ◼   ► of it again is kind of exciting

01:19:45 ◼   ► because they haven't been for a while.

01:19:48 ◼   ► So I think that would be interesting.

01:19:50 ◼   ► I think it'd be cool.

01:19:50 ◼   ► I hope it works.

01:19:51 ◼   ► But there's so many ifs and people are comparing it

01:19:57 ◼   ► to the original demos of Kinect,

01:20:00 ◼   ► back when it was still called Project Natal, I think.

01:20:02 ◼   ► Right, that was what that was?

01:20:04 ◼   ► - Sounds familiar.

01:20:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:20:05 ◼   ► So people are saying the original demos of that

01:20:08 ◼   ► were like insanely awesome, ridiculous stuff,

01:20:11 ◼   ► and then the real thing came out

01:20:12 ◼   ► and it wasn't nearly that good in reality.

01:20:14 ◼   ► And so that could happen here,

01:20:15 ◼   ► but from what everyone has said

01:20:17 ◼   ► who has tried the HoloLens at the press event,

01:20:19 ◼   ► everyone said it was really good.

01:20:21 ◼   ► It was actually really good.

01:20:22 ◼   ► But of course it was all prototype hardware,

01:20:24 ◼   ► prototype software, pretty far from reality,

01:20:27 ◼   ► pretty far from release, so.

01:20:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, but like, I saw some people

01:20:31 ◼   ► who were normally skeptical say it was really good too,

01:20:32 ◼   ► but it's like really good, like a fun amusement ride,

01:20:36 ◼   ► but like what problem is this solving for me?

01:20:38 ◼   ► Like in gaming, it's easier,

01:20:41 ◼   ► because like gaming is an amusement ride.

01:20:42 ◼   ► That's the problem it's solving for you.

01:20:44 ◼   ► It's entertainment, right?

01:20:45 ◼   ► But for something that's not a gaming system,

01:20:47 ◼   ► the demo could be amazing because you didn't know

01:20:49 ◼   ► the things you're experiencing were possible,

01:20:51 ◼   ► and it was a super rock solid implementation of these ideas,

01:20:53 ◼   ► but then it's like, if you gave this to me

01:20:56 ◼   ► and put it in my house, what would I use it for?

01:20:58 ◼   ► Games are easy, I would use it to have fun, right?

01:21:00 ◼   ► If it doesn't make me sick,

01:21:01 ◼   ► and it's fun and novel and interesting,

01:21:03 ◼   ► and it makes new gameplay, it's just fun.

01:21:06 ◼   ► So that's all you need out of that.

01:21:08 ◼   ► But for, like I kept showing people

01:21:09 ◼   ► like 3D modeling and stuff, are you kidding me?

01:21:12 ◼   ► Take someone who uses Maya all day

01:21:14 ◼   ► and tell them you're gonna do everything with HoloLens.

01:21:15 ◼   ► It could get there eventually, maybe you have to do,

01:21:18 ◼   ► but like those applications are fiendishly complex.

01:21:21 ◼   ► They just, they're like the UI looks like

01:21:23 ◼   ► the dashboard of a 747, right?

01:21:25 ◼   ► You're gonna try to do that by waving your hands

01:21:29 ◼   ► around in space.

01:21:30 ◼   ► What is it making easier that,