ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I was thinking of closing some of my pro windows that I've had open for five years now.

00:00:03 ◼   ► And then I thought better of it.

00:00:05 ◼   ► [

00:00:08 ◼   ► MUSIC ]

00:00:09 ◼   ► I have upgraded my podcasting setup, but I have not yet posted about it on my site.

00:00:10 ◼   ► Has it really happened then, Casey?

00:00:12 ◼   ► Probably.

00:00:13 ◼   ► The podcast setup upgrades in the woods, and no one hears about it on your blog.

00:00:17 ◼   ► I have spent $10 before tax to upgrade my podcasting setup.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Now, what could that be?

00:00:24 ◼   ► You will not guess, but I would love to hear you try.

00:00:27 ◼   ► $10 for the Snickers bars.

00:00:29 ◼   ► I'm guessing it's either software. Nope. Or Okay. Or I was

00:00:34 ◼   ► gonna guess like a giant blanket or something but you sound you

00:00:36 ◼   ► still sound a little bit echo. So it's probably not that.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Now it's the blankets on the wall even though Aaron keeps

00:00:41 ◼   ► asking me to take it down the chat room is getting in on it.

00:00:44 ◼   ► It is not a spit filter although I like that even better than pop

00:00:48 ◼   ► filter. The microphone that I'm using now has one built in. No

00:00:52 ◼   ► it is not gold audio table. No it is not a heating pad. Yes. 10

00:00:55 ◼   ► whole dollars. You can't get gold audio cable for $10. Yeah,

00:00:58 ◼   ► It's at least gold cables start at $30. All right, I will give you one better

00:01:02 ◼   ► I will try to give this away. I purchased this $10 item from Apple

00:01:07 ◼   ► Can you purchase anything for $10 from Apple? That's not software. Yeah, how about that? Yeah, I was gonna say

00:01:13 ◼   ► Thunder bolt it to ethernet adapter is like 19

00:01:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean like you can't go into the Apple store buy anything for less than at least 15

00:01:21 ◼   ► I succeeded in doing exactly that. Hmm. What does Apple sell for $10 and it was not software?

00:01:27 ◼   ► He said so it is not software. Hmm was it was that its actual like regular price or was it?

00:01:32 ◼   ► They don't really put something on sale at the stores

00:01:34 ◼   ► What do they sell at $10? Did you get a sim removal tool and somehow pay $10 for it?

00:01:39 ◼   ► This is much more protectors are 15 at least this is much more entertaining than I thought it was going to be

00:01:46 ◼   ► Actually, this would become a topic. It's like what can you buy it on Apple Store for $10?

00:01:50 ◼   ► Wait a second. Is it a retail Apple Store online? Yes. No, no retail and the chat room the chat room has figured it out

00:01:56 ◼   ► Oh magsafe adapter. Yep $10. Yep. Oh, wow. Wow. I thought though

00:02:00 ◼   ► I thought that would be $19 - just because it'd be like well, we can't sell something for $10

00:02:04 ◼   ► I thought for sure it must have been like a third-party product sold in an Apple store

00:02:07 ◼   ► So is this so your your laptop won't run out of battery power during the podcast or something? I

00:02:11 ◼   ► Used to use my work

00:02:14 ◼   ► Hi-res anti glare 2011 MacBook Pro 15-inch MacBook Pro

00:02:19 ◼   ► But the fans constantly screamed no matter what I did no matter what I did

00:02:23 ◼   ► they were always screaming and Marco was very gentle about basically telling me to shut up and deal and use a different computer and

00:02:30 ◼   ► so

00:02:32 ◼   ► Eventually I had gotten Erin a brand new MacBook Air. This was a few months ago

00:02:37 ◼   ► I got her a brand new MacBook Air and I started borrowing that in order to record well

00:02:43 ◼   ► Unbeknownst to Marco and John I was doing this on battery power on Wi-Fi

00:02:48 ◼   ► Oh my god, which if Dan Benjamin ever heard this he will probably fly to Richmond and murder me

00:02:54 ◼   ► I'm so happy you never told us that you're welcome. That was the right call now

00:02:58 ◼   ► I'm still on Wi-Fi, but now at least I'm plugged into the wall. No the the Wi-Fi thing

00:03:03 ◼   ► I'm less concerned about because I know you're a nerd

00:03:06 ◼   ► I know you're set up, but I know that you are like probably right next to your router

00:03:09 ◼   ► I am indeed so I'm and and Wi-Fi is not as unreliable as as it used to be

00:03:14 ◼   ► You know modern Wi-Fi is really not that bad

00:03:16 ◼   ► if you're if you're anywhere near the near the base station, but

00:03:20 ◼   ► The running on battery thing that would that would stress me out like crazy

00:03:24 ◼   ► Yep

00:03:24 ◼   ► Like even if even if I was 100% like I would always have that stress

00:03:27 ◼   ► Even if I even if I had a fully charged eight-hour battery, it would still stress me out

00:03:32 ◼   ► Yep, and the MacBook Air does last an eternity

00:03:35 ◼   ► But I kid you not those times that I told you I needed to go because my battery was dying

00:03:40 ◼   ► That was not a lie. That's because the battery was dying and real-time follow-up from me to me

00:03:45 ◼   ► It was ten dollars and fifty two cents with tax. Oh my god, that's incredible and that in that while I will also say

00:03:51 ◼   ► that I

00:03:53 ◼   ► walked in with my dad who happened to be in at the time and I was all smug and happy with myself because he has

00:03:58 ◼   ► A 5s I have a 6 I was going to go in use the Apple Store app

00:04:02 ◼   ► I was going to use Apple pay within the app and walk out and not have to speak to anyone

00:04:09 ◼   ► well

00:04:10 ◼   ► that would that would mean that you could actually

00:04:11 ◼   ► find this adapter on a wall display where you could get it and someone didn't have to go into the back or whatever and get

00:04:16 ◼   ► It for you, right?

00:04:17 ◼   ► So as it turns out it was on the floor

00:04:19 ◼   ► Although it was on the opposite side of the store from where I expected it was if you looking at any

00:04:24 ◼   ► Given Apple Store any normal one anyway, and you know the Genius Bar is in the back

00:04:27 ◼   ► I thought it was to the right it turns out it was to the left

00:04:29 ◼   ► and so I grant well actually a

00:04:32 ◼   ► person had

00:04:34 ◼   ► accosted me in a happy way when I walked in because it was surprisingly empty and

00:04:37 ◼   ► They directed me to the thing and I said, okay, I'll just pay for it with the app

00:04:41 ◼   ► You know very in a nice way you can go away now

00:04:44 ◼   ► Well, then I go to open the Apple Store app and it hangs and so I think to myself self

00:04:50 ◼   ► I'm a smart guy. I know there are eye beacons all over the place in this store

00:04:55 ◼   ► I wonder if having Bluetooth on is somehow confusing it so I turned Bluetooth off force quit started again

00:05:01 ◼   ► Nothing still hangs self. Maybe it realizes that the Apple Store Wi-Fi is nearby

00:05:07 ◼   ► You should kill the Wi-Fi and that'll do the trick. Well, then does it even work after that?

00:05:11 ◼   ► Yeah, because I have AT&T no, but I'm Stanley doesn't even know that you were in the Apple Store

00:05:15 ◼   ► If it doesn't have one of those things, ah, good point. Actually, I didn't think about that. That's a very fair point. So I

00:05:21 ◼   ► Force quit the app turned off the Wi-Fi

00:05:23 ◼   ► Started the app again did mark

00:05:26 ◼   ► So fine

00:05:26 ◼   ► So eventually I have to go over there to someone with my tail between my legs and say hey

00:05:30 ◼   ► Can I play for this please because I kind of can't do it on my phone all by myself and so then

00:05:35 ◼   ► This nice person allows me to pay and I say to my dad not thinking really about what I was saying

00:05:42 ◼   ► oh my my Apple pay moment is ruined and

00:05:45 ◼   ► then they the

00:05:48 ◼   ► Gentleman said well, no, it's not you can Apple pay right here

00:05:50 ◼   ► And then because I had like the thought of I beacons in my head

00:05:55 ◼   ► I thought oh and in the thought of using Apple pay an app

00:05:59 ◼   ► I thought oh well I guess I have to like turn Bluetooth on aren't I and I say that out loud and then I realized that

00:06:04 ◼   ► Absurdity of what I just said because it's all NFC. This is like how doctors make the worst patients. You know

00:06:10 ◼   ► Make the worst Apple pay it's so yeah, so so that's the thing is that I said out loud

00:06:16 ◼   ► That was my critical mistake was saying it out loud. Oh, I should probably turn Bluetooth on shouldn't I?

00:06:20 ◼   ► and then I realized the absurdity of what I said and he just sets his iPod touch on the on the counter and I

00:06:28 ◼   ► Realized what he means and so I put my phone on top of his iPod touch which sounds awkward

00:06:34 ◼   ► But it wasn't and sure enough everything worked. No problem. Well, then it gets better because I

00:06:39 ◼   ► Start to walk away thinking. Oh, he'll send me my receipt

00:06:42 ◼   ► No problem, because they know what my credit card is and they'll they'll send automatically

00:06:48 ◼   ► I just had this exact same issue and they go to walk away and then the guy says oh

00:06:52 ◼   ► Do you want your receipt and I said, oh, yeah

00:06:54 ◼   ► You can email to me and you know

00:06:55 ◼   ► whatever the email is on file and he looks and he's like, Oh, I don't have an

00:06:58 ◼   ► email on file. And at that point it occurs to me the whole freaking point in

00:07:01 ◼   ► Apple pay is that I have, you know, the device, whatever, whatever ID.

00:07:06 ◼   ► So it's a unique credit card number for the device. Of course they don't have it

00:07:09 ◼   ► because I've never used it there before. So basically I should not be allowed in

00:07:14 ◼   ► an Apple store unsupervised is a summary.

00:07:16 ◼   ► The only way this could have gone worse is maybe if your credit card was

00:07:19 ◼   ► declined and then if you left the thing in the store,

00:07:22 ◼   ► - That's true actually.

00:07:24 ◼   ► - Or like, or the payment didn't go through,

00:07:25 ◼   ► but you didn't know it, so you started walking out

00:07:26 ◼   ► and then you get tackled by security.

00:07:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:07:29 ◼   ► - You stop lifting a $10 MagSafe adapter.

00:07:30 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:07:31 ◼   ► Anyway, do you want to start with some follow-up?

00:07:34 ◼   ► - We have so much follow-up.

00:07:35 ◼   ► - We have a lot of follow-up.

00:07:37 ◼   ► - It's not a lot.

00:07:38 ◼   ► - Oh, it says the king.

00:07:40 ◼   ► All right, let's talk about Transmit, the app by Panic.

00:07:44 ◼   ► What happened with them, John?

00:07:45 ◼   ► - So they got their app rejected for, what was it,

00:07:48 ◼   ► for like send the exporting files to iCloud or something,

00:07:51 ◼   ► and we complained about in the past two shows.

00:07:53 ◼   ► And I think towards the end of our last show,

00:07:57 ◼   ► bemoaning the state of the App Store

00:07:59 ◼   ► and the various rejections,

00:08:00 ◼   ► I said both the worst and the best thing that could happen

00:08:03 ◼   ► is that these people who have had their apps rejected

00:08:06 ◼   ► get contacted by someone at Apple

00:08:08 ◼   ► and they quietly work out their differences

00:08:10 ◼   ► and their apps are reinstated.

00:08:11 ◼   ► And I said, that's the best thing that happened

00:08:13 ◼   ► because hey, yay, we get the apps that we wanted.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Those application developers get their apps onto the store

00:08:18 ◼   ► just like they wanted.

00:08:20 ◼   ► and it seems like everybody's happy,

00:08:21 ◼   ► but it's the worst thing that can happen

00:08:22 ◼   ► because this is what happens all the time.

00:08:25 ◼   ► Like there's some problem,

00:08:27 ◼   ► a bunch of people get their apps rejected

00:08:30 ◼   ► or pulled from the store.

00:08:33 ◼   ► There's lots of blog posts about it, we all complain.

00:08:35 ◼   ► Apple contacts them, quietly works it out with them

00:08:38 ◼   ► and puts them back in.

00:08:39 ◼   ► And then the cycle just repeats itself.

00:08:41 ◼   ► Like you're never going to,

00:08:42 ◼   ► we never get our Christ-tunity, right?

00:08:44 ◼   ► We're never gonna get,

00:08:46 ◼   ► it never gets bad enough that something has to be done.

00:08:48 ◼   ► Now I can't say that's necessarily the case.

00:08:50 ◼   ► this time because sometimes the outcome is the app gets pulled, there's a whole bunch

00:08:54 ◼   ► of brass people complain, and Apple doesn't change its mind.

00:08:57 ◼   ► An example of that from the early days would be NES emulators or MAME type things or all

00:09:03 ◼   ► sorts of things that have been on the store briefly and then immediately pulled because

00:09:06 ◼   ► you're not allowed to do emulation or run code or stuff like that.

00:09:09 ◼   ► Apple pretty much hasn't budged on that except for scripting engines and games and other

00:09:13 ◼   ► little gray areas that I think eventually got written to the guidelines.

00:09:17 ◼   ► doesn't always turn out positively but this type of thing where they make dumb

00:09:20 ◼   ► decisions they linger we have to make a bunch of noise and then it gets worked

00:09:24 ◼   ► out that never makes anything get better like we're not making progress we you're

00:09:28 ◼   ► you know we should if we were making progress a cycle wouldn't keep repeating

00:09:32 ◼   ► itself so that best worst thing that was going to happen did happen and I just

00:09:36 ◼   ► saw someone add to the notes that uh didn't just happen for transmit also

00:09:39 ◼   ► happened for drafts which got pulled for its extension and of course we talked

00:09:43 ◼   ► about pcalc which got rejected and then reinstated so it's good in that in this case the apps

00:09:50 ◼   ► that we want to see on the store actually did get on the store eventually it's bad and

00:09:54 ◼   ► that it seems like you know it doesn't seem like that apple is making forward progress

00:10:00 ◼   ► on it the only the only hope i have is that under this new apple regime where you know

00:10:06 ◼   ► it just seems like tim cook is is less stubborn tim cook's apple seems to me to be slightly

00:10:10 ◼   ► less stubborn than Steve Jobs' Apple was. Is it because Tim Cook is less stubborn than Steve Jobs?

00:10:15 ◼   ► Maybe I'm just projecting, I don't know, but we already talked about how the engineering

00:10:18 ◼   ► organization has made progress in doing things that previously they were quote unquote too

00:10:23 ◼   ► stubborn to do, you know, whether that was the, you know, a corporate directive or whatever,

00:10:27 ◼   ► but for years there were things we wanted that we didn't think, oh, they're never going to let you

00:10:30 ◼   ► use keyboards, custom keyboards in iOS, and they did, and extensions and all that other stuff.

00:10:36 ◼   ► That is good forward progress.

00:10:39 ◼   ► And it could be, I'm holding out hope maybe

00:10:41 ◼   ► that someone high up in the organization

00:10:45 ◼   ► has sent the word down that the App Store

00:10:47 ◼   ► needs to do less of this stuff,

00:10:48 ◼   ► and maybe this'll be, maybe the next time this happens,

00:10:53 ◼   ► we'll have a better, faster response,

00:10:54 ◼   ► or maybe this won't happen again in the same way.

00:10:56 ◼   ► I don't know, I mean, we'll just have to wait.

00:10:58 ◼   ► But for some reason, I find myself slightly more optimistic.

00:11:02 ◼   ► Even though the best worst thing did happen,

00:11:03 ◼   ► I found myself slightly optimistic

00:11:05 ◼   ► that Tim Cook's gonna be like,

00:11:07 ◼   ► "Why do we keep seeing all these stories about this stuff?

00:11:09 ◼   ► Why can't we get our acts together on that?

00:11:12 ◼   ► What is it that we're doing

00:11:14 ◼   ► that's making us do these things

00:11:15 ◼   ► and then reversing ourselves?"

00:11:16 ◼   ► Obviously, we're not even happy with our own decisions,

00:11:18 ◼   ► 'cause it's not like they're reversing, I don't think,

00:11:20 ◼   ► because of pressure.

00:11:22 ◼   ► It's like inattention, you know?

00:11:25 ◼   ► Like the banal evil of inattention where it's like,

00:11:30 ◼   ► is there something going on over there?

00:11:31 ◼   ► Did somebody reject something?

00:11:33 ◼   ► Why don't we take a look at that?

00:11:33 ◼   ► And by the time people take a look at it,

00:11:35 ◼   ► They were like, oh, this is panic.

00:11:36 ◼   ► They're great. Why are we rejecting for this?

00:11:37 ◼   ► This thing is just fine.

00:11:38 ◼   ► You know, like they reverse because if the best minds

00:11:41 ◼   ► in the company were put on it,

00:11:42 ◼   ► they never would have rejected it in the first place.

00:11:44 ◼   ► So just to reject it because of, you know,

00:11:45 ◼   ► the whims of some individual reviewer or something.

00:11:48 ◼   ► And that is a structural problem.

00:11:49 ◼   ► The fact that that type of thing can happen

00:11:51 ◼   ► and not be resolved without a long time passing.

00:11:54 ◼   ► Anyway, so there you go.

00:11:57 ◼   ► - Well, and this is a little bit better.

00:12:00 ◼   ► A full on rejection is a little bit better

00:12:02 ◼   ► than what some developers go through.

00:12:04 ◼   ► Mark Christian wrote me a little while ago, a couple weeks ago, saying that, you know,

00:12:10 ◼   ► he's one of the developers of the app Dragndrop. That's D-R-A-G-O-N-D-R-O-P, which I've mentioned

00:12:16 ◼   ► a long time ago on the show. Well, anyway, he wrote in, he said, "I have another idea,

00:12:20 ◼   ► or excuse me, another app in the store called Timebar. When I tried to publish an update

00:12:23 ◼   ► for Yosemite, App Review decided that the fundamental idea of the app is unacceptable."

00:12:27 ◼   ► And I think that's because it kind of paints the menu bar as a progress meter. And the

00:12:32 ◼   ► The idea of this app, I guess, is to count down until you get up and walk around or maybe

00:12:38 ◼   ► you know, the turkey's done or what have you.

00:12:40 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:12:41 ◼   ► Anyway, so App Review decided that the fundamental idea of the app is unacceptable.

00:12:44 ◼   ► It violates the max menu bar and rejected me.

00:12:47 ◼   ► So he's stuck in limbo because it isn't kicked out of the store, but he can't update it.

00:12:53 ◼   ► And that's an even worse place to be than a full on rejection as far as I'm concerned.

00:12:59 ◼   ► And you know, get the hell out of here.

00:13:01 ◼   ► But I mean, I guess maybe that's what Panic had to deal with.

00:13:04 ◼   ► I don't know, I guess so.

00:13:05 ◼   ► Maybe that is the same.

00:13:06 ◼   ► - Well, you can always pull your own app, right?

00:13:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I just did so.

00:13:09 ◼   ► - And it is, you know, it's different on the Mac,

00:13:11 ◼   ► 'cause you don't have to use the Mac App Store.

00:13:13 ◼   ► You know, on iOS, if you have that limit on iOS,

00:13:16 ◼   ► your product is just dead.

00:13:18 ◼   ► Like, you will never be able to do that product again

00:13:20 ◼   ► in that way.

00:13:21 ◼   ► And so I feel less bad for Mac developers in this regard,

00:13:27 ◼   ► just because there is another option there,

00:13:30 ◼   ► and it's not a bad option.

00:13:31 ◼   ► Whereas the iOS option is like,

00:13:33 ◼   ► "Well, you can put it on the Cydia store."

00:13:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:13:37 ◼   ► Yeah, that's like the iOS equivalent of like,

00:13:39 ◼   ► "We can go live in the woods."

00:13:40 ◼   ► Like there's nothing, like that is not a business model.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Please email Casey if you disagree.

00:13:46 ◼   ► Now, I think that it's important to,

00:13:48 ◼   ► when we hear things like transmit and drafts,

00:13:53 ◼   ► getting their bad decisions reversed.

00:13:56 ◼   ► The reason why we were mad about this

00:13:59 ◼   ► is not that we disagreed with the rule.

00:14:03 ◼   ► I mean, some of us might've disagreed with the rule,

00:14:04 ◼   ► but that's not the main reason why this is so destructive.

00:14:08 ◼   ► The main reason why it's so destructive

00:14:09 ◼   ► is that we can't tell in advance what the rules will be.

00:14:13 ◼   ► And Apple's refusal to document more of these rules,

00:14:17 ◼   ► and again, part of that is just because

00:14:18 ◼   ► they haven't decided it yet.

00:14:19 ◼   ► And I recognize that that's an issue,

00:14:22 ◼   ► but part of it also is like,

00:14:23 ◼   ► at the very top of their rules document,

00:14:25 ◼   ► it says this is a living document,

00:14:26 ◼   ► and it's been pretty dead for a long time.

00:14:28 ◼   ► Like there's a lot of rules that are not on it.

00:14:30 ◼   ► A lot of newer rules that have seemingly no intention

00:14:34 ◼   ► of ever getting onto it.

00:14:35 ◼   ► And it just seems like, you know, when Apple does things,

00:14:40 ◼   ► like with many of the rules, it just seems like,

00:14:43 ◼   ► well, that makes sense.

00:14:44 ◼   ► Like it's common sense or you can see why they're doing it.

00:14:48 ◼   ► Like that's a sensible rule.

00:14:50 ◼   ► It's not, you can't really argue too much with it

00:14:52 ◼   ► or you at least see their point of view.

00:14:54 ◼   ► And you can predict when you're developing an app,

00:14:56 ◼   ► Like, launcher, I totally get that that was gonna be

00:15:00 ◼   ► rejected because they've had a long standing rule

00:15:02 ◼   ► against these home screen within an app style of apps,

00:15:07 ◼   ► launchers like that.

00:15:10 ◼   ► They've had a lot of issues with those in the past.

00:15:13 ◼   ► So there are certain rules that the developers all know,

00:15:16 ◼   ► okay, this idea for an app, before I even start building it,

00:15:20 ◼   ► this will almost certainly get rejected,

00:15:22 ◼   ► so I shouldn't build it.

00:15:24 ◼   ► The problem is when the rules start getting

00:15:25 ◼   ► really capricious and unpredictable and unjustifiable,

00:15:29 ◼   ► then developers start wasting time

00:15:33 ◼   ► or actually shipping apps first

00:15:35 ◼   ► and then they get rejected later,

00:15:36 ◼   ► which hurts their relationship with their customers

00:15:38 ◼   ► in addition to wasting all the time

00:15:39 ◼   ► of having the app being built.

00:15:41 ◼   ► It's pretty bad when developers waste months on something

00:15:44 ◼   ► that they're pretty sure is gonna get approved.

00:15:46 ◼   ► - And the worst part is that it's like,

00:15:49 ◼   ► Apple doesn't speak with one voice on any of these things.

00:15:52 ◼   ► I mean, again, the reversals are not because

00:15:55 ◼   ► changed their mind but just because the the the corporation as a whole believes that the Panix app

00:16:01 ◼   ► should be allowed but the people who were tasked with the individuals who were tasked with that

00:16:06 ◼   ► decision at that particular time said no so what i was thinking of is you know well what if we had

00:16:10 ◼   ► a you know if you have a questionable uh app or feature idea as part of your dev membership blah

00:16:15 ◼   ► blah you get two or three of these you know instead of a technical support instance you can say

00:16:19 ◼   ► uh ask apple i am playing a feature like this and you just describe it before you've written a line

00:16:25 ◼   ► of code. Will this be allowed in the store? And have a system whereby if they say yes,

00:16:30 ◼   ► it will be allowed in the store, that you have some reasonable hope that that answer

00:16:35 ◼   ► is meaningful in any way. Well, that's hard, though. Barring a rule change. If you were

00:16:41 ◼   ► to ask, you know, like, the same type of people who came up with the decision now to say transmit

00:16:46 ◼   ► is allowed in the store with that feature, right? When faced with this question, hey,

00:16:50 ◼   ► there's a feature. Say that same group of people, whoever they are, were faced with

00:16:53 ◼   ► with the same question before panic had written a single line of code and said,

00:16:57 ◼   ► we're thinking about this feature to transmit. It's going to do X, Y, and Z.

00:17:00 ◼   ► Uh, is that going to be allowed those same people hopefully could come up with

00:17:04 ◼   ► the same answer six months ago.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Like I don't think that much has changed since then and say, yeah, go ahead,

00:17:09 ◼   ► build that or, you know, or just be able to ask them ahead of time.

00:17:13 ◼   ► But the idea now is like,

00:17:14 ◼   ► if I can get somebody an app review and ask them,

00:17:16 ◼   ► depending on who I get an app review, the answer means nothing.

00:17:18 ◼   ► Because if I get a different person,

00:17:19 ◼   ► when my app is reviewed and they don't share information, Oh yeah.

00:17:21 ◼   ► I said that guy could do that feature and it's okay.

00:17:24 ◼   ► Or like, even if the answer is we don't know yet

00:17:27 ◼   ► and we have to like sort of regroup and have a big meeting

00:17:29 ◼   ► and decide whether it's like, do that beforehand.

00:17:31 ◼   ► Like ideally do that before you even write the guidelines

00:17:34 ◼   ► and then put it in the guidelines.

00:17:35 ◼   ► But say it's something they never thought of,

00:17:36 ◼   ► like, hmm, we never considered this 'cause that can happen.

00:17:39 ◼   ► We never even considered doing this in an application.

00:17:41 ◼   ► We'll get back to you.

00:17:42 ◼   ► And then you're kind of in a holding pattern,

00:17:44 ◼   ► but at least you're not like either just guessing

00:17:47 ◼   ► or like asking the best sources you do have

00:17:49 ◼   ► and them telling you probably yes, no, maybe,

00:17:52 ◼   ► but those mean nothing, right?

00:17:53 ◼   ► The idea that the company can't decide,

00:17:55 ◼   ► can't speak with one voice on this.

00:17:58 ◼   ► There is no one voice, there is no,

00:18:00 ◼   ► and I know there's millions of app developers

00:18:01 ◼   ► and every single one of them can't be bugging Apple

00:18:03 ◼   ► and saying, can I have this feature?

00:18:04 ◼   ► But that's why I'm saying like,

00:18:05 ◼   ► it would have to be a limited resource,

00:18:06 ◼   ► like technical support incidents,

00:18:08 ◼   ► 'cause there's a cost associated with it

00:18:09 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

00:18:10 ◼   ► But this is, I think this is a system that could work

00:18:14 ◼   ► if again, Apple could get its act together

00:18:16 ◼   ► with App Store stuff.

00:18:17 ◼   ► And some of the things like, oh, you know,

00:18:19 ◼   ► It's a situation they didn't think of.

00:18:20 ◼   ► Some of these things with like sending a file

00:18:22 ◼   ► to iCloud Drive, like people were baffled

00:18:24 ◼   ► because like Marco just said,

00:18:25 ◼   ► "Well, it's not because we didn't like the rule."

00:18:28 ◼   ► In this case, like what rule?

00:18:29 ◼   ► What, you know, the rule they were signing

00:18:30 ◼   ► didn't even mention iCloud Drive.

00:18:31 ◼   ► And the second thing is everyone said,

00:18:33 ◼   ► "Isn't that the whole point of iCloud Drive?

00:18:34 ◼   ► Maybe we're misunderstanding

00:18:35 ◼   ► what the point of iCloud Drive was,

00:18:36 ◼   ► but are you supposed to be able to send files?"

00:18:38 ◼   ► Like it's, you know, it just, it doesn't make any sense.

00:18:41 ◼   ► And clearly, you know, the so-called living document

00:18:45 ◼   ► hasn't been updated to reflect

00:18:47 ◼   ► all these new things we've got.

00:18:48 ◼   ► Like there's no new clauses or anything in there

00:18:50 ◼   ► for all these features that we got in iOS 8.

00:18:52 ◼   ► I'm still gonna say that Apple's dealing

00:18:55 ◼   ► with server-side software and services is worse than this,

00:18:58 ◼   ► but this is probably the app store, the iOS app store,

00:19:02 ◼   ► I guess the Mac app store too,

00:19:04 ◼   ► are their worst externally visible administrative problems

00:19:08 ◼   ► in the company, I think.

00:19:10 ◼   ► - These kind of decisions are usually not

00:19:12 ◼   ► like one random reviewer somewhere.

00:19:14 ◼   ► Usually it gets escalated at least a couple levels up.

00:19:18 ◼   ► From what I understand and from what I'm kind of hearing rumblings of, this is a mid-level

00:19:22 ◼   ► fight with an Apple.

00:19:24 ◼   ► It's a mid-level conflict between mid-level department...

00:19:27 ◼   ► Well, there are always mid-level things, but when a mid-level thing...

00:19:31 ◼   ► Like when stories start coming out, and when people are writing blog posts, that becomes

00:19:35 ◼   ► the message of the day, is Apple did something bad and we're angry about it.

00:19:40 ◼   ► Eventually, those mid-level fights start to filter up to the higher levels, and the higher

00:19:44 ◼   ► level people go, "What's going on down there with you guys?

00:19:46 ◼   ► I saw some stories about this thing.

00:19:48 ◼   ► I think like nobody likes bad press.

00:19:49 ◼   ► Nobody likes to, you know,

00:19:51 ◼   ► and if it gets up to their level,

00:19:53 ◼   ► then all of a sudden, you know, whoever it is,

00:19:55 ◼   ► a more senior vice president

00:19:56 ◼   ► goes down to the mid-level people and says,

00:19:58 ◼   ► you know, get your stuff together.

00:20:00 ◼   ► What the hell are you guys doing?

00:20:01 ◼   ► Work it out.

00:20:02 ◼   ► When your internal problems end up,

00:20:04 ◼   ► you know, on the pages of, you know, tech news sites,

00:20:08 ◼   ► we have a problem.

00:20:09 ◼   ► And if that happens too many times,

00:20:10 ◼   ► hopefully somebody really high up will be like,

00:20:13 ◼   ► we have a structural problem here.

00:20:16 ◼   ► and we need to sort this out." Like it seems like they did sort out and decide to do on the

00:20:20 ◼   ► engineering side, they made massive structural changes that have resulted in what we feel on

00:20:27 ◼   ► the outside as positive change, right? Right, and you can tell, like, you know, we,

00:20:31 ◼   ► right now, nothing is resolved. You know, with Transmit getting approved, Draft getting re-approved,

00:20:36 ◼   ► this doesn't actually resolve anything yet. What will resolve this is if we stop hearing about

00:20:41 ◼   ► things like this, where it's like, "Oh, surprise, there's this rule no one could have predicted,

00:20:44 ◼   ► and we're going to half enforce it with some apps. That's the problem here. So this, I hope that

00:20:50 ◼   ► upgrade that happened in engineering that got them to increase collaboration in Tim Cook's words,

00:20:57 ◼   ► I hope they can apply that to this area too, because clearly this is not like one rogue

00:21:02 ◼   ► employee making bad decisions. This is clearly an ongoing conflict within the middle of these

00:21:08 ◼   ► organizations that somebody has to resolve and it's not going to resolve itself at the

00:21:14 ◼   ► levels it's at. Obviously there's some kind of back and forth going on here that's not

00:21:18 ◼   ► good.

00:21:19 ◼   ► We didn't even talk about this last time, but we had a link in last week's show notes.

00:21:22 ◼   ► It was about that post where I think it was someone quoting from, either quoting from

00:21:27 ◼   ► or like recalling what someone told them over the phone. And the idea was that, again, I

00:21:32 ◼   ► think this is hearsay.

00:21:33 ◼   ► Like the launcher developer.

00:21:35 ◼   ► That said that the App Store people said we rejected your app because it's a high-profile app and we figured by rejecting your app

00:21:41 ◼   ► It'll a lot of people will notice and it will get the message out to the rest of the developers that they shouldn't do things

00:21:46 ◼   ► Like you've done like they were making an example of you like that's there someone

00:21:50 ◼   ► Supposedly articulated this philosophy of App Store of this is how we communicate our policies

00:21:56 ◼   ► We don't write them into guidelines instead. We pick a high-profile app and make an example of it

00:22:00 ◼   ► So all the other application developers see its head on the pike and know not to go there

00:22:04 ◼   ► anymore, don't do what this developer did.

00:22:07 ◼   ► Which is, A, it's amazing someone would say that out loud to a developer, and B, even

00:22:11 ◼   ► if that's your secret strategy, it's a terrible secret strategy too.

00:22:15 ◼   ► That is not the correct way to communicate to your application developers.

00:22:18 ◼   ► There are better ways.

00:22:19 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I called "disgusting" on my blog, because that is really truly disgusting.

00:22:24 ◼   ► And yeah, so it was the developer of Launcher, I think his name is Greg something, I'll look

00:22:28 ◼   ► and put it in the show notes.

00:22:30 ◼   ► And yeah, he was paraphrasing the conversation he had

00:22:35 ◼   ► with, like a reviewer called him in response

00:22:37 ◼   ► to some of his inquiries.

00:22:39 ◼   ► That's what they do, like you inquire,

00:22:41 ◼   ► and then if you're lucky, you get like a random phone,

00:22:43 ◼   ► this is what I said as the Agent Smith phone call,

00:22:45 ◼   ► you get like a random phone call from somebody

00:22:48 ◼   ► who usually you don't get a name or any way

00:22:50 ◼   ► to like contact them again.

00:22:51 ◼   ► If this is a one way, one time phone call

00:22:54 ◼   ► coming from like the main Apple switchboard number,

00:22:55 ◼   ► like you can't, there's nothing you can do about it.

00:22:58 ◼   ► And they're usually very terse.

00:23:01 ◼   ► I've gotten a couple of these calls

00:23:02 ◼   ► for various questions I've asked,

00:23:04 ◼   ► or issues I've run into,

00:23:05 ◼   ► and usually they're pretty terse,

00:23:08 ◼   ► 'cause they know that there's a good chance

00:23:10 ◼   ► they're gonna be quoted and put on a blog somewhere.

00:23:13 ◼   ► And so they conserve words,

00:23:15 ◼   ► and they're very non-committal with many things they say.

00:23:18 ◼   ► And occasionally you'll get somebody

00:23:20 ◼   ► who is a little bit more helpful, and he did.

00:23:23 ◼   ► And I think they were a little too helpful

00:23:26 ◼   ► in explaining why they're doing some of these things.

00:23:28 ◼   ► And if that is true, I mean, we don't have any validation.

00:23:32 ◼   ► We will never get any validation from Apple

00:23:33 ◼   ► whether this is true or not.

00:23:35 ◼   ► I don't think he has any reason to lie about it.

00:23:37 ◼   ► And even if he's exaggerating about it,

00:23:39 ◼   ► even then it's still pretty terrible.

00:23:41 ◼   ► And those people who call, those are mid-level people.

00:23:45 ◼   ► That's not the person who spends six minutes

00:23:47 ◼   ► with 10,000 apps a day.

00:23:49 ◼   ► That is a mid-level manager you're talking to.

00:23:51 ◼   ► That's like through the approval review board

00:23:54 ◼   ► or whatever they call it.

00:23:55 ◼   ► that's where that phone call comes from.

00:23:58 ◼   ► So anything they say usually is pretty credible

00:24:02 ◼   ► as the current policy of App Review.

00:24:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know, but it's still hearsay

00:24:07 ◼   ► because we're going by what the developer says

00:24:08 ◼   ► that someone from Apple said.

00:24:10 ◼   ► So I'm just saying this is not a confirmed thing.

00:24:12 ◼   ► - No, but I'm saying, I'm sure,

00:24:14 ◼   ► the nitty gritty details are probably suspect

00:24:18 ◼   ► because people have bad memories.

00:24:20 ◼   ► I don't know if you recorded the call, probably not.

00:24:23 ◼   ► but the big picture, like the general idea,

00:24:26 ◼   ► is probably right.

00:24:27 ◼   ► And if the person who called him said that,

00:24:32 ◼   ► that is not the actions of just one little employee

00:24:34 ◼   ► somewhere buried in an apple,

00:24:35 ◼   ► that's the actions of a mid-level person,

00:24:36 ◼   ► and that's substantial.

00:24:39 ◼   ► - So I'm all depressed now,

00:24:40 ◼   ► so why don't you tell me about something that's really cool?

00:24:43 ◼   ► - Absolutely.

00:24:44 ◼   ► So we have something a little bit special this week,

00:24:46 ◼   ► a song sponsor.

00:24:48 ◼   ► This is a song, instead of me doing a sponsor read.

00:24:51 ◼   ► - It's not a fish song, is it?

00:24:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:24:54 ◼   ► No, it is way better than that.

00:24:56 ◼   ► It is a Jonathan Mann song.

00:24:58 ◼   ► - Oh, that is way better.

00:24:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, see, we got it.

00:25:00 ◼   ► We got a good one this time.

00:25:01 ◼   ► This is for Dash at thedash.com.

00:25:03 ◼   ► Before I split this, I gotta give you a quick story.

00:25:06 ◼   ► So I met Scott O'Reilly from Dash at Singleton this year.

00:25:11 ◼   ► He came up to me and said, "Hi, I'm the guy from Dash."

00:25:15 ◼   ► And for the first 20 or 30 seconds of that conversation,

00:25:20 ◼   ► I thought he was the guy who made

00:25:22 ◼   ► the developer documentation app Dash,

00:25:24 ◼   ► which is a documentation app that runs on the Mac.

00:25:27 ◼   ► - I was gonna guess Mrs. Dash.

00:25:29 ◼   ► - He was not salty.

00:25:32 ◼   ► The first 20 or 30 seconds, I said some things

00:25:35 ◼   ► that were like, that probably did not make any sense

00:25:38 ◼   ► to him at all.

00:25:39 ◼   ► Like looking back on it, it was pretty embarrassing.

00:25:41 ◼   ► And the truly embarrassing thing is I never corrected it.

00:25:44 ◼   ► Like I never said, "Oh, I'm sorry.

00:25:45 ◼   ► "I thought you were that other guy."

00:25:46 ◼   ► I just kinda, once I realized it,

00:25:48 ◼   ► I just kinda rolled with it.

00:25:50 ◼   ► So here I am during his ad rate.

00:25:52 ◼   ► I'm first going to apologize to him publicly

00:25:54 ◼   ► 'cause I still haven't told him that.

00:25:56 ◼   ► So this is my coming out on that.

00:25:58 ◼   ► And second of all, he was such a nice guy

00:26:00 ◼   ► that even if he thought what I was saying

00:26:02 ◼   ► didn't quite make sense, he didn't let on at all.

00:26:04 ◼   ► Like he just rolled with it and as far as I can tell,

00:26:07 ◼   ► I was not busted there.

00:26:09 ◼   ► So if you knew, he was nice enough not to embarrass me.

00:26:12 ◼   ► And so anyway, he's a really nice guy.

00:26:15 ◼   ► And so here it is, the Jonathan Mann song

00:26:17 ◼   ► for Dash at thedash.com.

00:26:19 ◼   ► Well, goddamn it's Dash, where you can easily create real time.

00:26:25 ◼   ► Dashboards that show information.

00:26:27 ◼   ► There are dozens of pre-built widgets for services like app figures, Google Analytics,

00:26:34 ◼   ► GitHub, and don't forget Twitter.

00:26:37 ◼   ► Go to the Dash.com.

00:26:40 ◼   ► You don't need no credit card.

00:26:42 ◼   ► Go to the Dash.com.

00:26:45 ◼   ► Play with it because it is fun.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Well, goddamn, it's Dash You can also show custom data

00:26:54 ◼   ► It's got a great API to share from Dropbox or the web

00:27:00 ◼   ► Things like line charts, speedometers, tables, or used iframe

00:27:06 ◼   ► Pricing model is a lot like GitHub All the public dashboards for free

00:27:11 ◼   ► 10 bucks a month, unlimited private dashboards could be yours

00:27:17 ◼   ► So go to thedash.com, they're currently running a promotion.

00:27:22 ◼   ► If you sign up at thedash.com, private dashboard you'll be able to get one.

00:27:28 ◼   ► Go to thedash.com, you don't need no credit card.

00:27:32 ◼   ► Sit, go to thedash.com and play with it because it is fun.

00:27:41 ◼   ► So thanks a lot to thedash.com.

00:27:43 ◼   ► there and check out Dash, it's pretty cool. And yeah, the guy who runs it, Scott, is really,

00:27:49 ◼   ► really nice. So thanks a lot to Dash. Go to thedash.com.

00:27:54 ◼   ► All right. So the whole of the internet has sent us a link with regard to Crossy Road,

00:28:01 ◼   ► which I almost called Crossy Bird. It was built by two Victorians, Andrew Sum, who is

00:28:07 ◼   ► was 24 in Matthew Hall, who is 39. And among other things, they said that the game has

00:28:13 ◼   ► generated enough for them to retire quote, seven figures is correct. One of them said,

00:28:21 ◼   ► so that answers the question as to whether or not they're making any money on this game.

00:28:25 ◼   ► And it sounds like the answer is, uh, yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, to be fair, my original statement

00:28:30 ◼   ► when they were positioned at like number five top free app, but number 200 top grossing,

00:28:36 ◼   ► My original statement was that basically it was probably out of proportion, that they

00:28:40 ◼   ► were not really making as much money as they probably should with that level of free downloads.

00:28:45 ◼   ► And then of course last week, after a couple of updates, changed it and dramatically improved

00:28:50 ◼   ► their rank.

00:28:51 ◼   ► So yeah, good job for them.

00:28:52 ◼   ► The most interesting thing in this story is that the -- who assisted?

00:28:56 ◼   ► One of the developers was saying, this is a quote, "We always wanted to build a popular

00:29:00 ◼   ► game, but we didn't think we could build a game that could generate money.

00:29:03 ◼   ► Everyone else in the industry will tell you that you need to squeeze people and you need

00:29:05 ◼   ► You do this and that and get some things behind a paywall

00:29:08 ◼   ► You're told that if you're not making clash of clans a clash of clans clone. You're doing it wrong

00:29:12 ◼   ► I felt very very strongly there were other ways of doing this so they have the same doubts about like can we make a game?

00:29:16 ◼   ► That isn't annoying that monetizes in a nice way

00:29:19 ◼   ► They you know they wanted to make a popular game

00:29:21 ◼   ► But they didn't think they could build a popular game that would actually generate money because they didn't want to do all the scummy things

00:29:27 ◼   ► That all those free-to-play games do and so this is a feel-good story because they made a great game

00:29:32 ◼   ► They did it the way they wanted with extremely gentle monetization

00:29:37 ◼   ► And they made a lot of money and you know as Marco said they could have made even more money

00:29:42 ◼   ► But once the once you're into

00:29:44 ◼   ► Enough money to retire. I think they're going to enjoy their retirement a lot more having made a game that they're proud of

00:29:49 ◼   ► Rather than having even double the money

00:29:52 ◼   ► But just feeling bad about the way they got it because they seem like that kind of people

00:29:56 ◼   ► And one of the developers said it took him

00:29:59 ◼   ► What did he say six weeks to get all the characters just by playing the game like not not paying any money

00:30:04 ◼   ► And he says other people have done in two weeks

00:30:06 ◼   ► So they made this game and they knew it was both possible and probably pretty darn fun

00:30:10 ◼   ► To not pay a cent and play the game and yet they're still ended up making tons of money because this is I mean

00:30:15 ◼   ► Half of it is make a really good game

00:30:17 ◼   ► And the other half is make it make a really good game that happens to get some traction in the market

00:30:22 ◼   ► And you kind of need both of those

00:30:24 ◼   ► But making a really good game helps a lot

00:30:26 ◼   ► Yeah, definitely and like you said it is a happy story and and that really does make me feel good for not having paid

00:30:32 ◼   ► I hate anything

00:30:33 ◼   ► You know, I still haven't paid anything for it because I don't I just play with the black sheep all the time

00:30:37 ◼   ► I want it in a gumball machine nice. I should I should give some money for it eventually

00:30:42 ◼   ► I don't know and and no one in my family's paid for it

00:30:44 ◼   ► none of my kids have paid my wife has found out that when you get the

00:30:48 ◼   ► The trial thing where it shows you hey try out these three characters for a limited time

00:30:52 ◼   ► She tells me that when they offer them to you the discounted price

00:30:56 ◼   ► that you can pay for them with the little coins that you get for free so you don't have to put any actual money in it

00:31:01 ◼   ► And you can still quote unquote buy the characters that are offered to you for trial

00:31:05 ◼   ► Which is yet another way that they're not getting money from you

00:31:08 ◼   ► It's like pick up these fake coins in the game and use the fake coins to buy the characters

00:31:12 ◼   ► No real money ever passes to us at all. Yeah, it really is surprising but it shows that it can be done

00:31:18 ◼   ► Which is which is really exciting tell us about your PlayStation 4 in DLNA support

00:31:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I was complaining about how crappy the ps4 is media center features are compared to the ps3

00:31:29 ◼   ► That was kind of part of the fact that the ps4 was like no, this is a game machine

00:31:34 ◼   ► It's not a media center like the Xbox one like it's kind of a differentiator

00:31:37 ◼   ► It's also probably a prior prioritization thing where like Sony was concentrating on making the best consoles or playing games hardware wise

00:31:43 ◼   ► And if that's your priority you're gonna put all the other stuff off

00:31:46 ◼   ► Alberto, Sandra sent a tweet that said the rumor is that

00:31:52 ◼   ► DLNA support is coming in early 2015 and that the holdup was it was waiting for a final

00:31:56 ◼   ► Certification on a new DLNA spec so that could have been also another reason it was being delayed

00:32:00 ◼   ► But I'm glad to hear that it's coming

00:32:02 ◼   ► And Benu was the first person to tweet at me the story

00:32:05 ◼   ► That Plex is coming to the ps4 in fact depending on what country we live in it may already be out for the ps4

00:32:11 ◼   ► It's not out yet for the US because as Plex says on the link we'll put in the show notes

00:32:18 ◼   ► Sony has multiple business units to cover different regions and each of the business units need to approve the app

00:32:22 ◼   ► And so the approval processes don't all go in sync and I think Sony's probably also preoccupied with things at this point

00:32:28 ◼   ► Anyway, we're waiting for them to approve the Plex app for the US store and once that is available

00:32:34 ◼   ► I don't know if it's gonna be free or pay or what but anyway Plex will be on the ps4 which kind of makes sense

00:32:38 ◼   ► It's an Intel processor and Plex is available for a million other things anyway, so

00:32:43 ◼   ► Multiple media related features are on their way for the ps4 and I'm happy about it

00:32:48 ◼   ► And we never found a compatible Bluetooth remote did we?

00:32:52 ◼   ► No one sent one I asked and no one has sent me any tweets or anything although a couple people have said their harmony remote

00:32:57 ◼   ► Works with it if you want to buy a harmony remote well didn't world in the chat says apologies for recommending the harmony apparently

00:33:04 ◼   ► It's limited aka no playback controls

00:33:06 ◼   ► Other people have tweeted at me that like there are if someone said hey

00:33:09 ◼   ► I use my harmony with it, and I tweeted them which mod

00:33:12 ◼   ► What's the exact model that you have and didn't get a reply?

00:33:14 ◼   ► I mean there are like I said there are IR solutions where you can buy a little you know

00:33:19 ◼   ► USB IR dongle or something and shove it in there and then but all those get bad reviews

00:33:22 ◼   ► and I don't want that anyway, but yeah, no no rumors of a media remote yet, but

00:33:26 ◼   ► I'll get the media center features first I guess

00:33:30 ◼   ► In the last episode I think it was or certainly recently we talked about Twitter ad creepiness, and this was spoken about

00:33:39 ◼   ► kind of violently on a recent episode of connected on relay FM and

00:33:44 ◼   ► A little birdie told us

00:33:46 ◼   ► That they had Twitter in their offices for a few hours in the last couple of weeks and supposedly Twitter said

00:33:53 ◼   ► They had over 20 million devices that opted into that creepy thing where the Twitter app will scan

00:34:00 ◼   ► What other apps are on your device?

00:34:02 ◼   ► So if you hear if you have the latest Twitter app

00:34:06 ◼   ► Version you could have opted out of this apparently I have never I haven't run the official Twitter app in ages

00:34:12 ◼   ► But the little like cancel or X or whatever was so small that everyone

00:34:18 ◼   ► Literally just missed it but apparently according to Twitter according to this little birdie

00:34:24 ◼   ► The it was done

00:34:26 ◼   ► entirely to build up some new ad targeting capability the rolling out next year and

00:34:31 ◼   ► With regard to what John was saying about well

00:34:35 ◼   ► well, maybe Apple's gonna do something about this,

00:34:39 ◼   ► but either because Twitter's big

00:34:41 ◼   ► or maybe they can't because Twitter is big,

00:34:43 ◼   ► well, apparently they're the number five

00:34:45 ◼   ► globally ranked iOS app,

00:34:46 ◼   ► and so Apple is extremely aware of what Twitter is up to.

00:34:51 ◼   ► All that from a little birdie.

00:34:53 ◼   ► - Aware, but then it's like, okay, so are they talking?

00:34:55 ◼   ► They're like, you know,

00:34:56 ◼   ► because like I said, they're not gonna just be like,

00:34:57 ◼   ► well, you know, some mid-level person,

00:34:59 ◼   ► that's just gonna pull the Twitter app.

00:35:01 ◼   ► That sounds like these are gonna be

00:35:02 ◼   ► more higher level negotiations between the companies

00:35:04 ◼   ► to discuss what their app is doing and to work out something.

00:35:07 ◼   ► I'm hoping that's happening now.

00:35:08 ◼   ► If it's not, then Apple is dropping the ball

00:35:10 ◼   ► because they're just not paying attention.

00:35:12 ◼   ► You know, or they see it happening and don't care

00:35:14 ◼   ► and figure, well, people don't know,

00:35:16 ◼   ► but I don't know, I can't fathom the strategy.

00:35:19 ◼   ► Like it's so, this whole thing is just so at odds

00:35:21 ◼   ► with everything else they do.

00:35:23 ◼   ► We just talked about the Apple Pay stuff

00:35:24 ◼   ► and how it's not sending even the information

00:35:27 ◼   ► Casey would like to share with the Apple Store.

00:35:29 ◼   ► It's just, you know, complete anonymity.

00:35:32 ◼   ► And you know, we don't collect your data.

00:35:33 ◼   ► we won't let the NSA look at your messages,

00:35:35 ◼   ► you know, all this stuff and then,

00:35:37 ◼   ► but we'll let the Twitter app scan every app on your thing

00:35:40 ◼   ► and report back for ad targeting.

00:35:41 ◼   ► Like that just seems crazy.

00:35:43 ◼   ► - Well, and it's important to clarify too,

00:35:45 ◼   ► that it isn't just Twitter that does this.

00:35:48 ◼   ► There are lots of other,

00:35:49 ◼   ► there are ad packages out there, ad analytics packages

00:35:51 ◼   ► that many apps integrate that do the same kind of like

00:35:55 ◼   ► super creepy scanning for all the apps

00:35:57 ◼   ► you have installed thing.

00:35:58 ◼   ► And that's why I think really,

00:36:00 ◼   ► I think Apple should care about this problem

00:36:02 ◼   ► because as I said last week, it does violate

00:36:05 ◼   ► the perceived walls that exist between apps and iOS.

00:36:09 ◼   ► Like, I as a user assume that apps can't creep on each other,

00:36:14 ◼   ► like that they can't look around

00:36:15 ◼   ► and see everything else on your system.

00:36:17 ◼   ► And they can't see your data,

00:36:19 ◼   ► but even the list of apps you have installed,

00:36:22 ◼   ► that can do things like probably pretty easily

00:36:25 ◼   ► uniquely identify you within like maybe an IP range,

00:36:28 ◼   ► and so all these different things Apple's trying to do

00:36:30 ◼   ► to reduce the ways they can uniquely identify you

00:36:33 ◼   ► between app installs, those are out the window,

00:36:35 ◼   ► or between apps from the same vendor,

00:36:36 ◼   ► those are all out the window,

00:36:37 ◼   ► all the advertising identifier stuff.

00:36:39 ◼   ► So Apple has done things in this area before

00:36:42 ◼   ► that show that they care about this problem.

00:36:43 ◼   ► I would say this is a similar facet to that problem

00:36:47 ◼   ► of user privacy expectations and device tracking

00:36:51 ◼   ► and uniqueness there.

00:36:53 ◼   ► And so I hope Apple is thinking about taking steps

00:36:56 ◼   ► in the OS to make this technically impossible,

00:36:59 ◼   ► or at least substantially more limited than how it is now.

00:37:03 ◼   ► Anyway, also related to this, I said last week

00:37:07 ◼   ► that in iOS 7 and forward,

00:37:08 ◼   ► MAC addresses were returned as all zeros.

00:37:10 ◼   ► The best QA engineer I've ever met, Nick Arnott,

00:37:14 ◼   ► who knows how to break everything that I write,

00:37:16 ◼   ► also broke that statement.

00:37:18 ◼   ► Points out that that's close,

00:37:22 ◼   ► but it's actually zero two followed by all zeros.

00:37:26 ◼   ► So there's mostly zeros,

00:37:27 ◼   ► that there's a single two in there.

00:37:29 ◼   ► Thank you to Nick Arnott for finding a little bug

00:37:32 ◼   ► in something I said once again.

00:37:33 ◼   ► - Mostly zeros means slightly non-zero.

00:37:36 ◼   ► - Something like that.

00:37:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know what that's from.

00:37:39 ◼   ► - It's all right.

00:37:41 ◼   ► - Sorry.

00:37:42 ◼   ► - I got nothing.

00:37:42 ◼   ► - I haven't done one of those in a while.

00:37:45 ◼   ► - All right.

00:37:46 ◼   ► John, why don't you tell us about

00:37:49 ◼   ► the Google Authenticator app that you are overjoyed with?

00:37:53 ◼   ► - Two groups of three.

00:37:55 ◼   ► So this is the Google Authenticator app that you run

00:37:58 ◼   ► that gives you your little time-based

00:38:01 ◼   ► two-factor authentication code.

00:38:02 ◼   ► It's just got a set of a six-digit number

00:38:04 ◼   ► that changes every 30 seconds or whatever the interval is.

00:38:08 ◼   ► And so when you log in with two-factor authentication,

00:38:10 ◼   ► you put in your name and your password,

00:38:11 ◼   ► and then it gives you a challenge.

00:38:12 ◼   ► It says enter your code, then you take your trusted device,

00:38:14 ◼   ► like your phone or whatever,

00:38:16 ◼   ► and you read this number off of it.

00:38:17 ◼   ► And it's a six-digit number,

00:38:18 ◼   ► and if you read this number off

00:38:20 ◼   ► and type it in a lot of boxes,

00:38:22 ◼   ► as you tend to do when you first enable it,

00:38:25 ◼   ► it's not so bad after that.

00:38:27 ◼   ► You'll find it annoying that you have

00:38:29 ◼   ► to transcribe a six digit number under mild time pressure.

00:38:33 ◼   ► Although some iOS apps make it worse,

00:38:35 ◼   ► because I've just recently used an iOS app where it challenges

00:38:39 ◼   ► you with the code.

00:38:40 ◼   ► But if your Google Authenticator is on the same device,

00:38:42 ◼   ► of course, then you have to either double tap home

00:38:44 ◼   ► if it's in the multitasking switcher,

00:38:45 ◼   ► or single tap home to go to the Google Authenticator app

00:38:48 ◼   ► to get the number.

00:38:49 ◼   ► Look at the number.

00:38:51 ◼   ► Now you have to memorize the number,

00:38:52 ◼   ► because you have to switch back to the other app.

00:38:54 ◼   ► you memorize the number, switch back to the other app.

00:38:57 ◼   ► And when I would do that with this one app,

00:38:59 ◼   ► I forget what it was.

00:39:01 ◼   ► I would resume the other app

00:39:02 ◼   ► and it would immediately take me back

00:39:04 ◼   ► to the username and password screen.

00:39:06 ◼   ► Away from the, and so then I was under a time pressure

00:39:09 ◼   ► based on how much time was left

00:39:10 ◼   ► to enter on the iOS keyboard with no auto-complete

00:39:13 ◼   ► my username and my password, which are pretty darn long,

00:39:16 ◼   ► and then enter that six digit code.

00:39:18 ◼   ► But my complaint many, many shows ago,

00:39:20 ◼   ► I don't remember when,

00:39:21 ◼   ► was that Google Authenticator app

00:39:23 ◼   ► presents a six digit number

00:39:25 ◼   ► and does not present it as two groups of three numbers.

00:39:27 ◼   ► It just is a six digit number all stuck together,

00:39:30 ◼   ► which is crazy because it's like the USB connector

00:39:33 ◼   ► and all these other things.

00:39:34 ◼   ► It's like, if your job is to make this application,

00:39:37 ◼   ► and if what this application does

00:39:38 ◼   ► is display a six digit number,

00:39:40 ◼   ► what are you even thinking about?

00:39:44 ◼   ► Is it, how can I do my job well?

00:39:45 ◼   ► Think for, your only job is to display a number.

00:39:48 ◼   ► Your only job is to make a connector.

00:39:50 ◼   ► Like what is it that makes a good connector?

00:39:51 ◼   ► What is it that makes it easy to look at

00:39:53 ◼   ► and transcribe a three digit number?

00:39:55 ◼   ► You always break bit long numbers into groups.

00:39:57 ◼   ► What do you think?

00:39:57 ◼   ► Credit card numbers are broken up into groups of four.

00:39:59 ◼   ► Like phone numbers,

00:40:00 ◼   ► like you don't just put all the numbers together.

00:40:02 ◼   ► Six is too many.

00:40:03 ◼   ► So anyway,

00:40:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:40:05 ◼   ► Alexandre Duhill tweeted at me

00:40:07 ◼   ► that the new update to the Google Authenticator app

00:40:10 ◼   ► has two groups of three numbers, finally.

00:40:12 ◼   ► And then later in the day, Romain, what is his last name?

00:40:16 ◼   ► Moisescat?

00:40:17 ◼   ► Is that the same as Moises Chuyen?

00:40:19 ◼   ► But different, anyway.

00:40:21 ◼   ► Romain said that when I worked at Google last year, after listening to one of your podcasts,

00:40:25 ◼   ► I filed a feature request for breaking out the digits in Google Authenticator iOS app.

00:40:29 ◼   ► Glad to see they finally paid out.

00:40:31 ◼   ► So whether this was directly in relation to his feature request or not, I thank Romain

00:40:35 ◼   ► greatly for connecting the dots, connecting my complaining to an actual feature request

00:40:40 ◼   ► inside Google, and then many months later, now finally, I get two groups of three numbers.

00:40:46 ◼   ► That is fantastic.

00:40:48 ◼   ► So your life is complete.

00:40:50 ◼   ► is right in the world. Well, let's not go crazy. I get annoyed about these things all out of

00:40:54 ◼   ► proportion because, and people posting a link to youhadonejob.org, it's not kind of like you

00:40:59 ◼   ► had one job, but just like if you think at all about doing some simple job well, like if you

00:41:05 ◼   ► had to put on a big whiteboard, okay, what are the things that contribute to me doing my job well,

00:41:10 ◼   ► like on the connector? What are the properties of a good connector versus bad? Just even just think

00:41:14 ◼   ► about it for a second unless like the top five, like a family feud or whatever, you know, it's,

00:41:18 ◼   ► And for showing numbers, like there's not that many things.

00:41:21 ◼   ► Make sure the numbers are readable.

00:41:22 ◼   ► Like it's just numbers.

00:41:23 ◼   ► You don't have to worry about like does the O look

00:41:24 ◼   ► like a zero or any other.

00:41:26 ◼   ► Just all you've got is numbers.

00:41:28 ◼   ► And you don't have to pick anything else about it.

00:41:29 ◼   ► It's already six digits.

00:41:30 ◼   ► You know everything about it.

00:41:32 ◼   ► They did stuff like make it flash red

00:41:33 ◼   ► when it's about to expire, like all subtle things like that.

00:41:36 ◼   ► But nowhere did they think, you know what?

00:41:37 ◼   ► Six digits shoved all together is kind of hard to transcribe

00:41:40 ◼   ► or memorize or read easily.

00:41:41 ◼   ► We do two groups of three, it'll be a lot easier.

00:41:44 ◼   ► And it's not like people are unfamiliar with grouping.

00:41:45 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:41:46 ◼   ► Anyway, it's done now.

00:41:47 ◼   ► I'm done complaining.

00:41:48 ◼   ► happy. And I will preemptively say once again, everyone who thinks I should not be using

00:41:54 ◼   ► Google Authenticator and I should be using whatever their favorite app is, I know about

00:41:57 ◼   ► it.

00:41:58 ◼   ► We are also sponsored this week by lynda.com. L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash ATP. lynda.com is

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00:43:59 ◼   ► for the Apple developer program,

00:44:00 ◼   ► I have never used a DTS ticket.

00:44:02 ◼   ► 'Cause you get, I think it's two a year, is that right?

00:44:07 ◼   ► - I think that's right, but I'm not sure.

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00:46:00 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to lynda.com for sponsoring once again.

00:46:02 ◼   ► My GR in the chat room reminds me that if I'm doing the authentication code on iOS,

00:46:06 ◼   ► I can just copy and paste the code rather than memorizing it.

00:46:11 ◼   ► So accustomed to only using the authenticator app to enter it on my Mac or something, and

00:46:15 ◼   ► yes I know I can use a copy/paste synchronization utility.

00:46:17 ◼   ► I keep meaning to check out one of those because that frustrates me a lot, like when I have

00:46:21 ◼   ► something on my iOS device that I want to transfer to my Mac.

00:46:23 ◼   ► I know there's a million utilities that do that synchronization, but I never quite get

00:46:27 ◼   ► around to loading one.

00:46:28 ◼   ► But anyway.

00:46:29 ◼   ► Because I've also I've always intended to set something like that up and just never actually do it

00:46:33 ◼   ► Well, whatever happened to pay spot because that was amazing when it first came out and I don't even think it works anymore

00:46:38 ◼   ► Well originally the problem they had was that you had to go launch pay spot in order to get it to to copy because like

00:46:45 ◼   ► I remember they were the ones I believe yeah who did the silence. Yeah. Yeah, that's right

00:46:49 ◼   ► Try to keep running in the background

00:46:50 ◼   ► But now that's not a problem anymore and I assume all the good ones out there just you know

00:46:53 ◼   ► Do it as a background thing. Well, you still can't know you still are not running in the background constantly

00:46:57 ◼   ► unless you're playing audio.

00:46:58 ◼   ► Like I could build that into Overcast as a feature.

00:47:02 ◼   ► If you happen to be playing a podcast,

00:47:04 ◼   ► it'll continuously sync your clipboard to something.

00:47:07 ◼   ► - But you could use it as an extension.

00:47:08 ◼   ► I was saying you just flick up or go to, you know,

00:47:10 ◼   ► like it seems like there's other ways to do it

00:47:12 ◼   ► as a Today Center widget and watch Apple reject you.

00:47:15 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:47:15 ◼   ► - So let's talk about hockey and I don't mean the sport.

00:47:20 ◼   ► So Microsoft acquired HockeyApp

00:47:23 ◼   ► And that's weird, but kind of awesome.

00:47:27 ◼   ► Um, I really like the.

00:47:29 ◼   ► Microsoft that, um, Azure like has spawned from in so far as they're not

00:47:37 ◼   ► the old guard where if it's not windows and not office, then get the crap out of

00:47:42 ◼   ► here, it's the new where we are all things to all people kind of Microsoft.

00:47:46 ◼   ► And I'm not sure what the play is with regard to hockey app, but I like the

00:47:51 ◼   ► thinking there. I like the idea and I think it's a really good idea that could fit in really well

00:47:58 ◼   ► with their existing Azure mobile services offerings. So I really dig it in principle,

00:48:03 ◼   ► but I was curious to hear what the two of you, especially Marco, thought about this.

00:48:07 ◼   ► Can you, before Marco chimes in, can you explain it to me? Because I know HockeyApp only because

00:48:12 ◼   ► I've been on betas that use HockeyApp to distribute the beta versions of their iOS apps to me,

00:48:17 ◼   ► but I don't understand what Microsoft would do with this.

00:48:21 ◼   ► Do they distribute beta versions of Windows phone apps?

00:48:24 ◼   ► Does the hockey already do that?

00:48:26 ◼   ► I don't understand the synergy here at all.

00:48:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:48:29 ◼   ► But I confess that I just don't know what hockey app,

00:48:31 ◼   ► maybe I just don't know what hockey app does

00:48:33 ◼   ► besides what I've used it for,

00:48:34 ◼   ► which is install betas on iOS.

00:48:35 ◼   ► - And to be clear, that's all I've used it for.

00:48:37 ◼   ► But the way I'm theorizing this is that

00:48:40 ◼   ► Microsoft is kind of quietly,

00:48:42 ◼   ► especially with Azure specifically,

00:48:43 ◼   ► trying to be kind of a one-stop shop

00:48:45 ◼   ► for all, all the backend stuff with regard to mobile apps.

00:48:48 ◼   ► So mobile services, um, Seems to do a really good job with, you know, Hey,

00:48:54 ◼   ► we'll give you a decent API to do some basic stuff.

00:48:58 ◼   ► Like I think that you can, they give you an API that'll make it really easy to do

00:49:02 ◼   ► user accounts based off of Twitter or Facebook.

00:49:05 ◼   ► Um, they make, there's a bunch of other things that they've, they've got in there.

00:49:09 ◼   ► I haven't looked at it in a while, but my guess is they're trying to make it so that

00:49:13 ◼   ► if you're writing like, let's say I thought about writing a shared grocery list app, and

00:49:19 ◼   ► I don't want any more recommendations of what to use.

00:49:21 ◼   ► I've got it under control.

00:49:23 ◼   ► But in the same way, john doesn't need any more recommendations about two factor stuff.

00:49:27 ◼   ► Well, anyway, I'd like to write that sort of app, but I need to have a way of doing

00:49:32 ◼   ► user accounts, I need to have a database back end, I need to have some sort of web based

00:49:37 ◼   ► API, and I would need to distribute beta builds.

00:49:40 ◼   ► Well, three of these things I could do on Azure and the beta builds I'll soon be able to do on

00:49:46 ◼   ► Azure if that's what envelops HockeyApp. So I'm assuming they're trying to be a one-stop shop

00:49:52 ◼   ► for anything that isn't on the device that your mobile app would need in order to be successful.

00:49:57 ◼   ► But like, isn't this is the type of play where that Apple doesn't play nice with anymore,

00:50:03 ◼   ► which is if you're doing something that is like a platform function, like I want to write

00:50:10 ◼   ► a compiler that lets you build iOS apps or I want to, you know, write something that

00:50:15 ◼   ► lets you manage the assets for your application or build your interfaces or anything having

00:50:20 ◼   ► to do with the development stack.

00:50:22 ◼   ► Apple wants to own the ID, they made their own compiler, like they own all the tools,

00:50:28 ◼   ► you know, verification tools, code signing tools, like it's all Apple stuff and beta

00:50:33 ◼   ► distribution, Apple bought test flight, you know, and before that like it's just

00:50:36 ◼   ► not that Apple's gonna go out of their way to break HockeyApp now because they

00:50:39 ◼   ► didn't before anyway and it's relying on technologies that Apple is making it but

00:50:44 ◼   ► if you're I would not sign up to try to make a tool that supports the Apple

00:50:51 ◼   ► ecosystem for developing applications because I would just know that even if

00:50:56 ◼   ► I'm allowed to live my time is limited because either Apple will start making a

00:51:00 ◼   ► free competitor to me or they'll do something that breaks my thing without

00:51:05 ◼   ► any pity because they'd be like look you should never been making that in the

00:51:08 ◼   ► first place not intentionally but it'll just happen like that is a that is a

00:51:11 ◼   ► very dangerous business to be in these days it's you know I mean I guess it's okay for

00:51:16 ◼   ► Microsoft because what do they care they get enough revenue to support this type

00:51:19 ◼   ► of effort but I mean I guess that's kind of part of the acquisitions like once

00:51:23 ◼   ► Apple bought test flight it's like well Apple has decided what they're gonna do

00:51:26 ◼   ► about this because there was a you know there was these third-party utilities

00:51:29 ◼   ► that Apple wasn't doing.

00:51:31 ◼   ► So Apple could have developed their own thing in house

00:51:32 ◼   ► or they could have bought somebody.

00:51:33 ◼   ► When they buy somebody, HockeyApp had to say,

00:51:35 ◼   ► well, they bought somebody and it wasn't us.

00:51:37 ◼   ► So now it's time to sell to whoever else wants to buy us.

00:51:39 ◼   ► And I guess that's Microsoft.

00:51:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it's important to point out,

00:51:44 ◼   ► Hockey does other things beyond just the beta stuff.

00:51:47 ◼   ► For instance, they have, they're a crash reporting tool

00:51:51 ◼   ► and that creates all the crash logs

00:51:53 ◼   ► and it sends it in from the app and everything.

00:51:56 ◼   ► And they also have, you know,

00:51:58 ◼   ► obviously the cross-platform stuff.

00:51:59 ◼   ► So there is still some value even if they can't develop betas to Apple anymore, or they

00:52:06 ◼   ► can't ship betas to Apple devices anymore.

00:52:08 ◼   ► It's less value, certainly, and they are never going to be able to match what the new Apple

00:52:13 ◼   ► TestFlight does, because the new Apple TestFlight completely does away with the annoying UDIDs,

00:52:18 ◼   ► and you just get email address people, and it lets them install your app on all their

00:52:23 ◼   ► devices.

00:52:24 ◼   ► Well, they have the advantage that they'll hopefully be able to be more reliable and

00:52:27 ◼   ► responsive than Apple, because—

00:52:28 ◼   ► - Right, so right now,

00:52:29 ◼   ► so as soon as Apple Test Flight thing came out,

00:52:32 ◼   ► I canceled my hockey plan.

00:52:34 ◼   ► And I said, I'm never gonna use this again

00:52:35 ◼   ► because I don't need it for the crash reporting

00:52:37 ◼   ► 'cause the other thing is,

00:52:39 ◼   ► I use Crashlytics for my crash reporting.

00:52:41 ◼   ► Crashlytics also has a beta shipping product.

00:52:44 ◼   ► They also have analytics and Twitter bought them.

00:52:48 ◼   ► - Don't you think crash reporting

00:52:49 ◼   ► is in this exact same category?

00:52:51 ◼   ► Like I want nice, symbolic crash reports

00:52:54 ◼   ► with all sorts of information.

00:52:56 ◼   ► iOS doesn't provide it for me natively.

00:52:58 ◼   ► I'll use Crashlytics, right?

00:52:59 ◼   ► Like that's exactly the type of tool

00:53:01 ◼   ► that it's like something that Apple should do.

00:53:02 ◼   ► There's a gap, a third party comes in to fill that gap,

00:53:05 ◼   ► is able to succeed until and unless Apple either buys them,

00:53:09 ◼   ► buys a competitor or does something else

00:53:11 ◼   ► that makes it so that everybody stops using them

00:53:15 ◼   ► and uses whatever Apple has officially blessed.

00:53:17 ◼   ► - In theory, yes.

00:53:18 ◼   ► In practice, most of the time Apple does things like this,

00:53:22 ◼   ► the Apple version sucks.

00:53:24 ◼   ► That was the case with the crash reporter.

00:53:25 ◼   ► - You're right, the Apple version often does suck,

00:53:27 ◼   ► But once the Apple version exists at all,

00:53:30 ◼   ► then there's even greater chance that

00:53:33 ◼   ► the way the third parties are doing it will

00:53:36 ◼   ► become less supported or break or whatever.

00:53:38 ◼   ► Because Apple then has a good story like,

00:53:40 ◼   ► "Oh, we're sorry, we didn't mean to break that,"

00:53:42 ◼   ► or whatever, but it's not really a high priority

00:53:44 ◼   ► for us to make sure that Crashlytics keeps working

00:53:46 ◼   ► because we do have our own offering,

00:53:47 ◼   ► and have you checked it out,

00:53:48 ◼   ► and then you can say, "Yeah, but your thing sucks."

00:53:51 ◼   ► - No, but I mean, theoretically,

00:53:52 ◼   ► that's been the case for a long time.

00:53:53 ◼   ► But in practice, like,

00:53:56 ◼   ► iTunes Connect has included crash logs since before Crashlytics has existed.

00:54:02 ◼   ► Since all of these crash loggers that came out, all have come out after Apple has included

00:54:07 ◼   ► crash logs in iTunes Connect.

00:54:08 ◼   ► Originally the iTunes Connect crash logs were delayed by like a week and they were never

00:54:13 ◼   ► symbolicated.

00:54:14 ◼   ► You had to like download them and symbolicate them yourself.

00:54:16 ◼   ► And I think some of that has been approved since then, but it's still... also they have

00:54:21 ◼   ► to abide by the system setting that says, "Do you want to send diagnostics to Apple?"

00:54:26 ◼   ► app developers. And if users say no to that, you won't get crash logs from them through

00:54:30 ◼   ► iTunes Connect, but your app doesn't know about that setting, it can't read that setting

00:54:33 ◼   ► even if you wanted to, and so your app bypasses that. And any crash logger that you embed

00:54:40 ◼   ► in the app, like Crashlytics or Hockey, those will send it regardless. So you're getting

00:54:45 ◼   ► more data from more people faster.

00:54:47 ◼   ► Yeah, you're just hoping with those type of tools that you are below the note—this feature

00:54:51 ◼   ► is below the notice of Apple. Like, Apple has bigger fish to fry, they're not going

00:54:55 ◼   ► to worry about making a much better crash reporting thing because they have something

00:54:58 ◼   ► there and you know like on their priority list it's really low down.

00:55:03 ◼   ► eventually you have to think they will get to it and this is the history of mac software

00:55:06 ◼   ► has been some third party makes something cool and it seems like apple will never do

00:55:11 ◼   ► something like that or is not interested in something like that.

00:55:14 ◼   ► sometimes these little things get snapped up relatively quickly like for the old timers

00:55:18 ◼   ► out there the clock in the menu bar was a third party application and fairly quickly

00:55:24 ◼   ► I think it was maybe it was less than a year. Maybe it was only a couple years but fairly quickly apple said

00:55:29 ◼   ► Hey clock the menu bar is a good idea. We should build that into the OS. All right, so that's the end of

00:55:35 ◼   ► You know, I'm not the end of third-party clocks in the menu bars

00:55:38 ◼   ► But for most people at the end of third party locks and menu visit people let us use the built-in one, right?

00:55:42 ◼   ► And other times there'll be something that third parties make

00:55:47 ◼   ► That everybody loves that Apple just doesn't do for years and years and years either because they they're just like

00:55:53 ◼   ► Philosophically opposed to it or because it's a frivolous thing that they're not they don't care that much about it

00:55:59 ◼   ► They have much higher priorities the crash reporting. It seems to me that

00:56:02 ◼   ► Eventually, they'll get around to making their crash reporting thing better

00:56:08 ◼   ► So it's closer to the best third party ones out there

00:56:11 ◼   ► But it hasn't happened in what how many you know, how many years of these things been out a couple years like six

00:56:15 ◼   ► It's been a lot of years

00:56:17 ◼   ► So it must be I mean

00:56:18 ◼   ► To be fair if you had to make a prioritized list of things that Apple has to work on in terms of developing for the Mac

00:56:23 ◼   ► and iOS you probably wouldn't put crash reporting very high unless either you probably put things like code signing and

00:56:27 ◼   ► provisioning and and beta stuff, I mean so test flight is obviously

00:56:32 ◼   ► the better thing to be concentrating on right now, but

00:56:35 ◼   ► It's difficult business the range between

00:56:38 ◼   ► Like what?

00:56:40 ◼   ► What's the what's the best third-party crash reporter that you that is possible to build given the structure that we have in iOS

00:56:47 ◼   ► versus what's the best crash reporter Apple can or is likely to ever build?

00:56:51 ◼   ► Like there isn't a whole lot of room for improvement there. The crash reporter is like between hockey and Crashlytics

00:56:57 ◼   ► I've used them both now. I first used hockey for Rivercast during the beta and then I switched over to Crashlytics

00:57:01 ◼   ► It's I'd say they're

00:57:05 ◼   ► Pretty much the same in the in the quality of the crashes they report and how they do that that role

00:57:09 ◼   ► Like there's only so so much you can do there

00:57:12 ◼   ► Realistically speaking with with the way the runtime works and everything. So that's all fine

00:57:16 ◼   ► So getting back to the topic of why Microsoft would want to buy Hoggy, I think the fact

00:57:23 ◼   ► is simple.

00:57:24 ◼   ► This is a multi-tool company.

00:57:27 ◼   ► They have multiple tools that support developers.

00:57:29 ◼   ► Twitter bought Crashlytics for the same reason.

00:57:32 ◼   ► Twitter bought Crashlytics because Twitter wanted to own a developer tools platform.

00:57:36 ◼   ► It gives them a lot of useful analytics.

00:57:38 ◼   ► It gives them a lot of in's with developers to sell their other SDK services on.

00:57:44 ◼   ► Microsoft wants the same thing.

00:57:46 ◼   ► That's what they're going for here.

00:57:47 ◼   ► They're going for developer tools.

00:57:49 ◼   ► And I think it's a good move for that.

00:57:52 ◼   ► The beta thing is basically, it's almost worthless now, where the beta thing is nice with hockey.

00:57:58 ◼   ► And the reason why I'm about to sign up with them again probably is the Apple TestFlight

00:58:04 ◼   ► beta occasionally requires app review.

00:58:08 ◼   ► And that makes it pretty inflexible.

00:58:11 ◼   ► And there's a limit of only two betas per day and everything else.

00:58:14 ◼   ► there's all these little limits and delays in place because it's Apple, and I've had

00:58:19 ◼   ► a build of Overcast sitting there for six days with nothing. It's in review, it isn't

00:58:25 ◼   ► even waiting for review, it's been in review for six days, a beta. So I can't cancel it,

00:58:29 ◼   ► I can't upload a new version, like my testing process has just stopped. Like it has completely

00:58:34 ◼   ► stalled for six days because something is wrong with Apple, and I'm sure it's going

00:58:39 ◼   ► into the holiday iTunes Connect shutdown in a few days, and I can't ship new versions.

00:58:45 ◼   ► I can't even ship versions to testers right now.

00:58:48 ◼   ► That's really crummy.

00:58:49 ◼   ► This is not confirmation of, but it's like the worst nightmare for the people who said

00:58:55 ◼   ► that Apple's going to buy a test flight and they're going to ruin it.

00:58:58 ◼   ► No, I mean, but so, you know, the Apple version of beta testing is way better than what third

00:59:03 ◼   ► parties can do.

00:59:04 ◼   ► When it works.

00:59:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:06 ◼   ► But what third parties can do is not useless.

00:59:08 ◼   ► It's not worthless, it's just not nearly as good

00:59:11 ◼   ► in the core function there.

00:59:14 ◼   ► But there is still value.

00:59:16 ◼   ► If you're shipping an app on iOS and Android

00:59:18 ◼   ► and Windows Phone, from what we hear,

00:59:21 ◼   ► Microsoft is getting into the cross-platform

00:59:23 ◼   ► developer tools game.

00:59:24 ◼   ► Somewhere, I don't know if it was a rumor

00:59:26 ◼   ► or if it was actual news, somewhere there was a thing

00:59:29 ◼   ► that said that early next year, Microsoft is gonna be,

00:59:34 ◼   ► or I don't know when, but sometime soon,

00:59:36 ◼   ► Microsoft is going to be releasing new Visual Studio type stuff that will be able to cross-compile

00:59:41 ◼   ► the same app onto all three platforms.

00:59:44 ◼   ► And that would be really cool.

00:59:45 ◼   ► A lot of developers will use that.

00:59:47 ◼   ► I mean, there are tools that do cross-platform stuff now, but from what I gather, none of

00:59:50 ◼   ► them are particularly good.

00:59:52 ◼   ► So if that's the business Microsoft is going into, I think it's a very smart business.

00:59:55 ◼   ► And hockey plays right into that, because with hockey, then, you can have testers on

01:00:00 ◼   ► all three platforms.

01:00:03 ◼   ► You can have like, you know, 10 people on iOS,

01:00:06 ◼   ► 20 people on Android, and you can get the one guy

01:00:08 ◼   ► who uses Windows Phone, probably also,

01:00:10 ◼   ► he's probably also the Opera user.

01:00:11 ◼   ► If you're developing them together

01:00:13 ◼   ► with this Microsoft Stack, it makes sense

01:00:16 ◼   ► to be able to test them together

01:00:17 ◼   ► and be able to collect crashes from them together

01:00:19 ◼   ► and all this stuff.

01:00:20 ◼   ► Like, so, from that point of view,

01:00:22 ◼   ► it makes a lot of sense why they would want it.

01:00:25 ◼   ► - Well, and also consider that they're, you know,

01:00:27 ◼   ► open-sourcing .NET and really embracing Mono and Xamarin

01:00:31 ◼   ► even more than they ever have before.

01:00:33 ◼   ► So it certainly, this all seems to indicate to me,

01:00:37 ◼   ► just like you said, Marco, that they're kinda going all in

01:00:41 ◼   ► on being the developer platform for all people

01:00:44 ◼   ► for all platforms, you know what I mean.

01:00:46 ◼   ► - Is that, do we know, is that true?

01:00:48 ◼   ► - Aren't we kinda being the developer platform

01:00:52 ◼   ► for all people if what you want to make

01:00:54 ◼   ► is a kind of mediocre app for all platforms?

01:00:57 ◼   ► Like not mediocre, like, kinda middle of the road,

01:01:00 ◼   ► because they have to vend functionality

01:01:02 ◼   ► that is platform agnostic.

01:01:03 ◼   ► And so that means, I mean, I guess the server side things,

01:01:06 ◼   ► it makes sense because it's always platform agnostic.

01:01:08 ◼   ► At least you want it to be.

01:01:09 ◼   ► That's the benefit of Azure is their best bet

01:01:12 ◼   ► because it's like, I don't want my backend

01:01:13 ◼   ► to be tied to one platform.

01:01:14 ◼   ► It's the whole point of it.

01:01:15 ◼   ► I want it to be accessible from the web, Mac, blah, blah,

01:01:17 ◼   ► blah, but almost everything else, it's like,

01:01:19 ◼   ► I don't know, it's not write once, run anywhere,

01:01:23 ◼   ► but kind of, you really have to buy into

01:01:26 ◼   ► the native structures of the individual platforms

01:01:29 ◼   ► to make a really great app on the individual platforms.

01:01:32 ◼   ► The only exceptions are backend services

01:01:33 ◼   ► and things like games that are like,

01:01:35 ◼   ► I don't care about your platform.

01:01:36 ◼   ► I control the whole screen, I'm a game.

01:01:39 ◼   ► And so that's why you have things like, you know,

01:01:40 ◼   ► the middleware for games and stuff.

01:01:42 ◼   ► But everything else, like I wonder how much of a,

01:01:45 ◼   ► if that's their strategy, say they succeed.

01:01:46 ◼   ► It's like now we are the biggest and best middleware vendor

01:01:51 ◼   ► for mobile applications.

01:01:53 ◼   ► Is that a big win?

01:01:55 ◼   ► Like, I still feel like that's,

01:01:57 ◼   ► that entire business is kind of in the middle of,

01:02:01 ◼   ► I was gonna say, in the middle of a bunch of hungry tigers,

01:02:03 ◼   ► if we're going, continuing with animal analogies,

01:02:06 ◼   ► 'cause you've got all the actual platform,

01:02:08 ◼   ► like, it just seems like Microsoft would be better off

01:02:13 ◼   ► if they were in Samsung's position

01:02:14 ◼   ► and Windows Phone was, you know, a big dominant platform.

01:02:17 ◼   ► Then they can make Windows Phone

01:02:19 ◼   ► and Windows Phone apps really awesome

01:02:20 ◼   ► instead of worrying about creating technologies

01:02:22 ◼   ► to help people make their mobile apps

01:02:24 ◼   ► on other people's platforms better.

01:02:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, but if you look at the position Microsoft is in,

01:02:29 ◼   ► like in reality, which I think, you know,

01:02:31 ◼   ► the problem with them in the later part of the Ballmer years

01:02:34 ◼   ► is that they weren't really looking at their reality,

01:02:36 ◼   ► or they were creating an even worse reality for themselves.

01:02:39 ◼   ► But if you look at the position they're actually in today,

01:02:42 ◼   ► I think this is a very smart move.

01:02:43 ◼   ► You know, like they've already shown that they are,

01:02:47 ◼   ► they have built no market share whatsoever,

01:02:52 ◼   ► realistically, in the new world of mobile at all.

01:02:55 ◼   ► And even their PC business is, it's not gonna go away,

01:02:59 ◼   ► but I think the growth is certainly gone.

01:03:03 ◼   ► And so there's a problem there.

01:03:05 ◼   ► And the whole move to Azure as a company focus,

01:03:08 ◼   ► having the guy who ran Azure become the new CEO,

01:03:12 ◼   ► this is a sign, like Microsoft is recognizing

01:03:15 ◼   ► not only a good business to be in,

01:03:18 ◼   ► but probably the best business that they can be in.

01:03:22 ◼   ► because their attempts at being otherwise have not worked.

01:03:27 ◼   ► And there are certain, in some ways it's too late.

01:03:30 ◼   ► No matter what they do to Windows Phone,

01:03:33 ◼   ► it is not gonna be significant.

01:03:35 ◼   ► Windows Phone has missed its window.

01:03:36 ◼   ► - I was gonna say it's never too late,

01:03:37 ◼   ► not for Windows Phone specifically,

01:03:38 ◼   ► but first of all, Windows Phone is not bad.

01:03:40 ◼   ► - It's always too late for Windows Phone.

01:03:41 ◼   ► - No, Windows Phone is not bad.

01:03:44 ◼   ► The hardware and the software is not bad.

01:03:47 ◼   ► But even if you agree that it's better,

01:03:50 ◼   ► they're in a Mac-like situation

01:03:51 ◼   ► or Apple was making better personal computers

01:03:53 ◼   ► with better software for years, but nobody cared

01:03:55 ◼   ► because it wasn't better enough

01:03:57 ◼   ► or because it was too expensive

01:03:58 ◼   ► or whatever other excuses you wanna make, right?

01:04:00 ◼   ► But you can't say like, well, there's no hope

01:04:02 ◼   ► because there was hope.

01:04:04 ◼   ► Like all, I guess all things to do

01:04:07 ◼   ► is make a translucent teal phone

01:04:09 ◼   ► and they're all set, right?

01:04:10 ◼   ► And you know, there's always hope to turn things around.

01:04:13 ◼   ► It seemed like the Mac couldn't get anywhere

01:04:16 ◼   ► and was never going to succeed,

01:04:17 ◼   ► but it's quote unquote succeeded

01:04:20 ◼   ► by A, having the iMac turn things around,

01:04:22 ◼   ► and B, hanging in there long enough

01:04:24 ◼   ► for everyone else to get destroyed,

01:04:25 ◼   ► and they're left with the only remaining paying customers

01:04:28 ◼   ► who pay a lot of money for their computers, right?

01:04:30 ◼   ► But then they also did the iPod and the iPhone, right?

01:04:32 ◼   ► And those are not the Mac, but they're similar

01:04:35 ◼   ► in that they're their own proprietary platforms

01:04:37 ◼   ► that Apple made.

01:04:38 ◼   ► And what I'm saying is, Microsoft still has the skillset

01:04:42 ◼   ► to make very competitive hardware and software products

01:04:47 ◼   ► like the PC was and like all the things that Apple makes.

01:04:51 ◼   ► It just so happens that the Windows Phone,

01:04:53 ◼   ► their timing was terrible

01:04:54 ◼   ► and two big competitors got there before them

01:04:57 ◼   ► and now they're kind of stuck and it's kind of unfair.

01:05:00 ◼   ► Windows Phone is not succeeding in proportion to its quality.

01:05:03 ◼   ► It's succeeding in proportion to its timing more or less.

01:05:06 ◼   ► But I wouldn't give up on that entirely

01:05:09 ◼   ► because it's kind of like Steve Jobs coming back to Apple

01:05:11 ◼   ► and saying, "Well, we lost the PC wars.

01:05:13 ◼   ► So what we really need to do is concentrate

01:05:15 ◼   ► on some business that is not like this.

01:05:17 ◼   ► We can't make a hardware software integrated product

01:05:19 ◼   ► like we were trying to with the Mac.

01:05:20 ◼   ► We should do something entirely different,

01:05:21 ◼   ► but become like a services company or whatever.

01:05:24 ◼   ► And it's weird with Microsoft

01:05:26 ◼   ► because Microsoft has so many different skills.

01:05:28 ◼   ► They're good at services.

01:05:29 ◼   ► They're good at hardware.

01:05:29 ◼   ► They're good at software.

01:05:30 ◼   ► They're doing a game console for

01:05:30 ◼   ► They're doing a game console for ground. They're good at so many different things

01:05:33 ◼   ► It's harder to know what to focus on but when Steve Jobs came back to Apple

01:05:37 ◼   ► He said no a we can make the Mac

01:05:39 ◼   ► Like people take notice of that again with the I'm I can be we can think of something new

01:05:43 ◼   ► That is very much like the Mac a hardware and software product

01:05:46 ◼   ► Integrated it takes advantage of all the things that quote unquote only Apple can do and all that stuff and then the iPhone the iPad

01:05:52 ◼   ► and so on and so forth like

01:05:53 ◼   ► Steve Jobs took a company that was failing to get traction with one product and made it

01:05:58 ◼   ► Get traction with products that are exactly the same like exactly the same strategy

01:06:02 ◼   ► Just just better executed and better timing and if Microsoft says well

01:06:05 ◼   ► I guess we can't be that company that we were now. We have to be a services company

01:06:10 ◼   ► There's some reputation

01:06:12 ◼   ► Management, you know resurrecting the reputation as people thinking Microsoft is cool and developers liking it and sort of the you know

01:06:18 ◼   ► The alpha geeks as we used to say when OS 10 was becoming popular the alpha geeks finally paying attention to Microsoft again

01:06:24 ◼   ► That's good. And if that's a good business for them fine, but I would not like to see Microsoft give up on

01:06:30 ◼   ► doing something else like Windows Phone and

01:06:33 ◼   ► Having that succeed because they don't wait, you know five years before they get off their butts and do something good

01:06:39 ◼   ► So, I don't know

01:06:42 ◼   ► it kind of scares me that

01:06:44 ◼   ► this sort of

01:06:47 ◼   ► Microsoft does become a

01:06:49 ◼   ► The Azure company or the company that does that type of stuff plus I guess exchange and SQL Server and stuff like that

01:06:54 ◼   ► that will be a sad end for the company.

01:06:56 ◼   ► I'd rather see them do more things like Windows Phone,

01:06:59 ◼   ► but better.

01:07:00 ◼   ► - Well, I don't think they're gonna lose control

01:07:02 ◼   ► of their software platforms.

01:07:04 ◼   ► I just think they're gonna become less and less relevant

01:07:07 ◼   ► over time.

01:07:07 ◼   ► And they're always gonna be there in the same way,

01:07:10 ◼   ► like IBM, I think still has a mainframe business,

01:07:13 ◼   ► but like it's, and I don't think it's gonna be that bad.

01:07:16 ◼   ► - No, but IBM is the worst example.

01:07:17 ◼   ► They're selling everything.

01:07:19 ◼   ► They even sold their x86 server business.

01:07:21 ◼   ► Aren't they doing that now?

01:07:21 ◼   ► Like they got rid of their PCs, the servers,

01:07:23 ◼   ► the mainframes are like all that's left and yeah, no, I don't, IBM is exactly what I don't

01:07:28 ◼   ► want Microsoft to become.

01:07:29 ◼   ► Right, but I'm saying like, like there are, there are healthy businesses in the computer

01:07:32 ◼   ► world like printers, you know, like printers are always going to exist, but they're just

01:07:38 ◼   ► going to get increasingly less and less important over time. They're already pretty much completely

01:07:42 ◼   ► forgettable and unmentionable. This is probably the first time you've heard about a printer

01:07:46 ◼   ► and that's, you know, no big deal, it doesn't matter.

01:07:50 ◼   ► You know, if that's where Windows and Office

01:07:55 ◼   ► and Windows Phone go, that's fine.

01:07:57 ◼   ► That's not a huge deal.

01:07:59 ◼   ► Like, they can be used every day by millions of people

01:08:03 ◼   ► and be completely unmemorable

01:08:05 ◼   ► and unimportant to the business.

01:08:06 ◼   ► - Microsoft should sell Office and Windows to Samsung

01:08:09 ◼   ► to destroy the company, to destroy Samsung.

01:08:11 ◼   ► Like as a virus, 'cause they'll be like, this is awesome.

01:08:14 ◼   ► You know, we're gonna have,

01:08:15 ◼   ► We're gonna own Microsoft Windows and Office those things are great and like trying to maintain

01:08:19 ◼   ► And work on that code base for products that people don't really like anymore

01:08:23 ◼   ► like that will just

01:08:25 ◼   ► It will distract and crush Samsung and then Microsoft can beat them to market with whatever the next big thing is and by the way

01:08:30 ◼   ► With IBM, I think what they sold their PC business and I'm pretty sure they sold their x86 service a long time ago

01:08:35 ◼   ► I think now they're serving their power server business that the power 7 power 8 processors and

01:08:39 ◼   ► Maybe they're also selling the mainframe thing or maybe they're one in the same. Anyway, Microsoft is the Marco of the corporate world

01:08:44 ◼   ► They're just selling everything. No IBM you mean? Yes, I've been like my brain said IBM

01:08:50 ◼   ► I'm out the dot you have no idea how much follow-up

01:08:53 ◼   ► I'm gonna get from my father over all this you can find out what they're actually selling, but I think they're selling everything everything must go

01:08:58 ◼   ► What else is cool

01:09:02 ◼   ► We're finally sponsored this week by automatic

01:09:05 ◼   ► That's with one T the normal way of spelling it not the WordPress way of spelling it automatic comm

01:09:11 ◼   ► ATP this is your smart driving assistant on your smartphone

01:09:15 ◼   ► Automatic it's a it's a look this little dongle that you plug into your now. What did we say it was? Oh?

01:09:21 ◼   ► Not old dirty bastard onboard diagnostic. Yes, okay the obd port on your car

01:09:28 ◼   ► the automatic little device plugs into that and then it uses Bluetooth to talk to your phone and

01:09:34 ◼   ► It can do all sorts of useful things as you would expect from your phone next into your car

01:09:40 ◼   ► So anyway, it can monitor how you drive,

01:09:44 ◼   ► you can monitor your fuel economy,

01:09:46 ◼   ► you can monitor like, you know,

01:09:47 ◼   ► are you accelerating too hard to be less efficient?

01:09:50 ◼   ► You can also read any check engine light codes,

01:09:53 ◼   ► like anything that would cause your car

01:09:54 ◼   ► to throw an error code.

01:09:55 ◼   ► Cars don't throw exceptions,

01:09:57 ◼   ► they just have little error codes

01:09:59 ◼   ► and you have to read them with special devices.

01:10:01 ◼   ► Well, automatic can read them.

01:10:02 ◼   ► It's great, so you can actually read the code

01:10:04 ◼   ► that your car is telling you and you can decide like,

01:10:06 ◼   ► is this something I need to get checked right away?

01:10:08 ◼   ► Is this something I can do myself?

01:10:10 ◼   ► Things like that.

01:10:12 ◼   ► You can also, it can detect if your car has crash sensors,

01:10:15 ◼   ► which I think all modern cars do

01:10:16 ◼   ► with airbags and everything.

01:10:18 ◼   ► It can detect that your car has been in a crash

01:10:21 ◼   ► and it can automatically signal for help.

01:10:24 ◼   ► That's really, really cool.

01:10:25 ◼   ► That could be potentially very, very important to you.

01:10:29 ◼   ► So your car's in a crash, it senses it,

01:10:31 ◼   ► it communicates with your phone and actually calls for help.

01:10:35 ◼   ► So as you're driving, automatic intelligently monitors

01:10:39 ◼   ► your driving patterns.

01:10:39 ◼   ► And so it looks at, as I said earlier,

01:10:41 ◼   ► it looks at things like how you're accelerating,

01:10:42 ◼   ► how you're braking, the G-force and stuff like that.

01:10:45 ◼   ► It can look at all these things and it can tell you tips

01:10:48 ◼   ► to optimize your fuel economy.

01:10:50 ◼   ► So it gives you all the data you need.

01:10:52 ◼   ► You can track your fuel cost.

01:10:53 ◼   ► You can track your efficiency every week.

01:10:55 ◼   ► If you're like one of those, what are they called?

01:10:57 ◼   ► Hyper-milers, the Prius people?

01:10:59 ◼   ► - Yep, yep.

01:11:00 ◼   ► - So if you're the kind of person

01:11:02 ◼   ► who likes to quantify things,

01:11:04 ◼   ► you want to quantify your life and achieve goals

01:11:09 ◼   ► and look at metrics and optimize metrics,

01:11:11 ◼   ► this is made for you.

01:11:13 ◼   ► 'Cause you can track all your costs,

01:11:14 ◼   ► track all your efficiency,

01:11:15 ◼   ► and then it'll give you little tips

01:11:17 ◼   ► of small changes you can make to your habits

01:11:19 ◼   ► if you want to save money in the long run.

01:11:21 ◼   ► And this fuel over time, that can save a lot of money.

01:11:24 ◼   ► You can even set it up if you want

01:11:26 ◼   ► to make subtle audio cues while you drive inefficiently

01:11:29 ◼   ► as kind of like a little error,

01:11:30 ◼   ► like hey, hey, that's a little rough there.

01:11:33 ◼   ► Like I found, in my car I have one of those lane change

01:11:37 ◼   ► warning things where it vibrates the steering wheel

01:11:39 ◼   ► if you start getting close to a lane line without signaling.

01:11:41 ◼   ► And it has actually made me a better driver

01:11:43 ◼   ► because I used to signal like as I was crossing the line,

01:11:47 ◼   ► and I didn't even realize I was doing that.

01:11:49 ◼   ► Now I signal before I start crossing the line.

01:11:51 ◼   ► Just like from this little subtle thing

01:11:54 ◼   ► that just reminded me, hey, that's not quite right.

01:11:56 ◼   ► And so it actually did improve my driving.

01:11:57 ◼   ► So automatic can do the same thing with these audio cues.

01:12:01 ◼   ► If you're driving very inefficiently

01:12:02 ◼   ► in a way that you're not gonna meet your fuel goals.

01:12:05 ◼   ► So anyway, you can save hundreds of dollars on gas,

01:12:08 ◼   ► you can diagnose your check engine light,

01:12:09 ◼   ► other error codes, and you can get help in a serious crash.

01:12:12 ◼   ► There's even a parking locator

01:12:14 ◼   ► that automatically remembers where you park.

01:12:16 ◼   ► Both iPhone and Android devices are supported.

01:12:20 ◼   ► Best thing is there's no subscription fees,

01:12:22 ◼   ► there's no monthly cost to this.

01:12:23 ◼   ► All you do is you pay for the automatic device upfront.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Normally it's 80 bucks.

01:12:28 ◼   ► It used to be 100, now it's 80, this is a great deal.

01:12:31 ◼   ► normally it's 80 bucks and there's no monthly fee.

01:12:34 ◼   ► Buy the device upfront and that's it.

01:12:37 ◼   ► Even comes with free shipping

01:12:38 ◼   ► and there's a 45 day return policy.

01:12:40 ◼   ► So you can try this out for a long time

01:12:42 ◼   ► and see if you like it and if it saves you money.

01:12:45 ◼   ► I bet you'll find that it will.

01:12:47 ◼   ► Now, 80 bucks, that's actually wrong too.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Because listeners of this podcast,

01:12:53 ◼   ► you get it for an even better price.

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01:13:09 ◼   ► just 60 bucks once, hurry up, it's limited time sale,

01:13:12 ◼   ► automatic.com/ATP, thanks a lot.

01:13:15 ◼   ► All right, so our friend Whitby in the chat

01:13:18 ◼   ► suggested this topic, it's a Chromium,

01:13:23 ◼   ► they wrote a proposal sometime (laughs)

01:13:27 ◼   ► called Marking HTTP as Non-Secure.

01:13:30 ◼   ► So they're proposing that browser vendors

01:13:33 ◼   ► change their UI paradigm.

01:13:35 ◼   ► So instead of saying,

01:13:37 ◼   ► instead of like showing a lock or some indicator

01:13:39 ◼   ► when a site is served over SSL to show that it is secure,

01:13:43 ◼   ► to actually mark non-SSL sites as insecure in the browser,

01:13:47 ◼   ► to make, to kind of like yell at people into recognizing

01:13:50 ◼   ► like, hey, what you're doing here is insecure.

01:13:53 ◼   ► They're saying like the absence of an icon

01:13:56 ◼   ► doesn't really communicate much to people,

01:13:58 ◼   ► whereas like an active alert saying,

01:14:00 ◼   ► this is insecure, might be more helpful.

01:14:02 ◼   ► So they're saying they intend to transition Chrome

01:14:06 ◼   ► to this sometime in 2015,

01:14:08 ◼   ► and maybe other browser vendors will follow.

01:14:10 ◼   ► And there's a whole bunch of stuff going on

01:14:13 ◼   ► in browsers these days with SSL

01:14:15 ◼   ► and trying to make it a bigger deal.

01:14:19 ◼   ► Chrome seems to be leading the way on that,

01:14:20 ◼   ► but the other browser vendors tend to follow pretty quickly.

01:14:23 ◼   ► What do you guys think about this?

01:14:26 ◼   ► Do you think, 'cause I have my own opinions on this,

01:14:28 ◼   ► how much do you think this would help and does it matter?

01:14:32 ◼   ► - First of all, for dating this,

01:14:34 ◼   ► if you look at the screenshots,

01:14:35 ◼   ► that is not the current version of Safari,

01:14:37 ◼   ► so I hate web pages without dates in them.

01:14:40 ◼   ► But anyway, the potential for this to be old

01:14:43 ◼   ► because that is not Safari 8 in the screenshot.

01:14:45 ◼   ► - Well, but it says they intend to begin

01:14:47 ◼   ► a transition plan for Chrome in 2015.

01:14:50 ◼   ► So it has to be sometime recent, right?

01:14:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know, but who knows?

01:14:53 ◼   ► This could have been written at the beginning of 2014.

01:14:55 ◼   ► Anyway, for this particular idea,

01:14:59 ◼   ► my question is always, say you communicate this to people,

01:15:03 ◼   ► that you changed the wording.

01:15:05 ◼   ► You know, it's a death tax, not a state tax, right?

01:15:09 ◼   ► This is now insecure instead of the other one being secure.

01:15:12 ◼   ► What do people do about that?

01:15:14 ◼   ► What action, is there a readily available action

01:15:17 ◼   ► that people can take to make them not just ignore this

01:15:21 ◼   ► like all the other crazy technical things

01:15:23 ◼   ► that their computer yells at them

01:15:25 ◼   ► that they don't understand.

01:15:26 ◼   ► Like a big giant red button that says switch to secure.

01:15:29 ◼   ► If we can make that big giant red button,

01:15:32 ◼   ► why doesn't the browser just try it all the time anyway?

01:15:34 ◼   ► Why don't we just make it try HTTPS by default all the time

01:15:37 ◼   ► and fall back to it?

01:15:38 ◼   ► Like that's what you need.

01:15:40 ◼   ► Not so much like communicating to the user information

01:15:45 ◼   ► that they don't understand what they can do with,

01:15:47 ◼   ► but rather simply just doing the right thing.

01:15:49 ◼   ► Like making the browser do HTTPS by default all the time.

01:15:52 ◼   ► Now I know that's not quite easy.

01:15:54 ◼   ► I know you can't just try HTTPS first and then HTTP,

01:15:56 ◼   ► and although, you know, there are technical hurdles to,

01:16:00 ◼   ► you know, you break different websites

01:16:02 ◼   ► if you try this all the time.

01:16:03 ◼   ► Like maybe it has to be something that people click

01:16:05 ◼   ► or whatever, but that's my big question about this.

01:16:08 ◼   ► If you communicate this information,

01:16:09 ◼   ► what do I do with this information?

01:16:11 ◼   ► What action do I take?

01:16:13 ◼   ► - Casey, what do you think?

01:16:14 ◼   ► - I understand the idea, but it just seems weird

01:16:17 ◼   ► to kind of flip everything on its head like that.

01:16:21 ◼   ► But I'm also probably reading too much into it

01:16:23 ◼   ► in so far as, does anyone, and does any regular human

01:16:27 ◼   ► really pay attention to whether or not a website

01:16:28 ◼   ► they're looking at is secure?

01:16:30 ◼   ► - I know people look, they used to,

01:16:32 ◼   ► back when web browsers were more stable

01:16:35 ◼   ► and there were fewer of them,

01:16:36 ◼   ► and it was just Netscape and Internet Explorer,

01:16:39 ◼   ► and people usually used one of them.

01:16:41 ◼   ► They knew to look for the little lock icon or whatever,

01:16:44 ◼   ► like in their browser, Chrome, and they'd be like,

01:16:46 ◼   ► is this secure before, like,

01:16:48 ◼   ► I just wanna look for the little lock.

01:16:49 ◼   ► And certain people were kind of trained

01:16:51 ◼   ► to look for the little lock,

01:16:52 ◼   ► but then a little lock started moving all over the places

01:16:54 ◼   ► and browsers got weird and sometimes the lock

01:16:57 ◼   ► had a line through it if there was like a certificate error

01:17:00 ◼   ► and it just, it started to sort of become just more noise

01:17:03 ◼   ► that your computer throws at you.

01:17:05 ◼   ► Sometimes it puts up a dialogue box

01:17:06 ◼   ► and it says allow or disallow.

01:17:07 ◼   ► And you ask, you know, you talk to people about computers

01:17:10 ◼   ► and they will be, they're either the people

01:17:12 ◼   ► who just always say allow or the people

01:17:13 ◼   ► who just always say disallow.

01:17:15 ◼   ► And you may be thinking that the people who always say allow

01:17:18 ◼   ► are, you know, stupid and naive and are doing insecure

01:17:21 ◼   ► things, but if you've ever had to try to help a person who's one of the disallow

01:17:26 ◼   ► people or deny people or whatever they do, I just always say disallow, I just

01:17:29 ◼   ► always say deny, and then they wonder why nothing works on the web because they

01:17:32 ◼   ► refuse to enable JavaScript or something, like it's, neither approach is great and

01:17:36 ◼   ► the problem is that regular users shouldn't have to understand all this

01:17:40 ◼   ► technical mumbo-jumbo just to get the thing they want done done, so that's

01:17:44 ◼   ► why I'm thinking exposing more of this technical mumbo-jumbo to regular people

01:17:49 ◼   ► is not really helping matters.

01:17:51 ◼   ► What I would be more in favor of is,

01:17:54 ◼   ► I mean, they're kind of doing,

01:17:55 ◼   ► wasn't the EFF doing the thing

01:17:56 ◼   ► where they're giving SSL certificates for free

01:17:58 ◼   ► just to encourage more sites to have them?

01:18:00 ◼   ► Make more sites SSL by default.

01:18:02 ◼   ► Make, have the web, people who run the websites

01:18:04 ◼   ► redirect HTTP to HTTPS all the time immediately on first hit

01:18:08 ◼   ► and just, people don't have to know about that, right?

01:18:11 ◼   ► If they don't care, if they don't know

01:18:12 ◼   ► where the lock icon is anymore, it should just,

01:18:15 ◼   ► this is a discussion that should take place

01:18:17 ◼   ► amongst the people who are making websites,

01:18:19 ◼   ► less so amongst the people who are using web browsers.

01:18:21 ◼   ► Maybe also amongst the people who are making web browsers,

01:18:24 ◼   ► but their customers are the individual users,

01:18:26 ◼   ► not the websites.

01:18:27 ◼   ► So I feel like this should be, you know,

01:18:29 ◼   ► more speaking inwards as an industry

01:18:32 ◼   ► and less outwards to the users.

01:18:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I think the main problems with this,

01:18:38 ◼   ► number one, I would even question, Jon,

01:18:41 ◼   ► when you said that at the beginning,

01:18:42 ◼   ► when we only had very few browsers,

01:18:43 ◼   ► people knew to look for the log hog hunt.

01:18:45 ◼   ► I bet nobody even did then.

01:18:46 ◼   ► Like I bet the percentage of internet users

01:18:48 ◼   ► who look for the lock icon is about the same

01:18:50 ◼   ► as it's always been, which is probably embarrassingly low.

01:18:53 ◼   ► I think the problem is like,

01:18:56 ◼   ► this is trying to address,

01:19:00 ◼   ► it'd be the same thing as like forming a consortium

01:19:03 ◼   ► to figure out how can we make people

01:19:06 ◼   ► better read text and error dialogues?

01:19:09 ◼   ► Like, you probably can't.

01:19:12 ◼   ► - You're lucky if they read the button text.

01:19:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, like there's very little you can do.

01:19:16 ◼   ► Maybe they just recognize the shape of okay

01:19:18 ◼   ► and hit it before even reading it.

01:19:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, or in their head they're saying,

01:19:23 ◼   ► how do I cancel out of this?

01:19:25 ◼   ► Just get rid of this, I don't know what to do.

01:19:27 ◼   ► It's a very hard problem that is multiply unsolvable.

01:19:31 ◼   ► So same thing here, it's like,

01:19:32 ◼   ► how do you make people pay attention

01:19:34 ◼   ► to the level of connection encryption

01:19:37 ◼   ► that they have in there?

01:19:38 ◼   ► I mean, we can't even make people pay attention

01:19:40 ◼   ► to the host they're connected to.

01:19:42 ◼   ► That's its own problem.

01:19:44 ◼   ► So the other problem with this scheme is that all it does,

01:19:49 ◼   ► you know, it's hard to say you are secure

01:19:52 ◼   ► or you are insecure because what does that mean?

01:19:55 ◼   ► If you are reading a blog or the New York Times

01:19:58 ◼   ► or something and it's insecure, what does that mean?

01:20:02 ◼   ► Does that mean the blog is going to hack you?

01:20:03 ◼   ► Like that's confusing to people at best if they even look

01:20:07 ◼   ► and it's misleading, certainly.

01:20:09 ◼   ► Similarly, if you say you are secure, you are secure,

01:20:13 ◼   ► like somebody in the chat said, a secure connection to totally.bankofamerica.lols.ru is not a

01:20:21 ◼   ► good thing. It's like, you can have an SSL certificate to a totally different domain

01:20:28 ◼   ► that is still a phishing domain, and you can still be insecure. Yes, you can look into

01:20:32 ◼   ► the EV stuff and get like the name of your company, Bank of America Incorporated, to

01:20:36 ◼   ► show a green button on the bar, but it's like, those can probably also be easily faked,

01:20:42 ◼   ► with enough effort, and also no one looks for those either.

01:20:45 ◼   ► Like, all the people who don't look for lock icons, they don't look for EV certificates either.

01:20:48 ◼   ► Or even if you're looking for it, like, it appears so differently, or sometimes not at all,

01:20:53 ◼   ► in different browsers. I met people who used to look at the lock icon, but once it became more

01:20:57 ◼   ► complicated than that, once it became more complicated than a binary thing that was

01:21:01 ◼   ► generally represented the same way everywhere, then people can't be bothered. And speaking of

01:21:05 ◼   ► the secure thing, I don't know if anyone's posted this in the chat room yet, because I'm scrolled

01:21:10 ◼   ► to look at something else, but I think Eric Schmidt had something where he was telling people to use incognito mode in Chrome

01:21:16 ◼   ► to avoid the NSA. Like that's what gets back to what Mark was saying. What does secure mean?

01:21:21 ◼   ► Or what does insecure mean? They don't mean what those words read as to a technically unsavvy user.

01:21:28 ◼   ► Because it's like either I'm safe or I'm not safe. That's what they're looking for.

01:21:30 ◼   ► It's basically all they can handle and even that only conscientious people can handle. Am I safe or am I not safe?

01:21:35 ◼   ► And like the real answer is so much more complicated than a binary you're safe and you're not safe.

01:21:39 ◼   ► That you can't like even if you could successfully communicate

01:21:42 ◼   ► That simple narration it's misleading and if you could sexually successfully communicate the the more nuanced information, which you can't but if you could

01:21:50 ◼   ► People would still be left with okay. Now I understand the exact

01:21:53 ◼   ► Parameters of the situation. I'm in what do I do about it?

01:21:57 ◼   ► Do I not use the web browser anymore?

01:21:58 ◼   ► And then you just go I said the two two strategies are allow everything or deny everything dismiss everything with cancel

01:22:03 ◼   ► them is everything with okay and I think there are more dismiss every allow allow all I think

01:22:08 ◼   ► there are more allowers than deniers because deniers really just can't get anything done

01:22:12 ◼   ► and they're they're very frustrating people but they're like no I just deny everything

01:22:16 ◼   ► I need I need a long explanation of why I'm supposed to not you know and it's like well

01:22:21 ◼   ► you can just keep hitting deny but you're never gonna be able to install any software you're

01:22:24 ◼   ► never gonna be able to watch any videos on the web all your websites will be broken but you're

01:22:27 ◼   ► like I feel safer this way right people learn very quickly that if you hit okay to everything

01:22:31 ◼   ► you get overall fewer boxes.

01:22:33 ◼   ► - Right, that's basically the strategy.

01:22:35 ◼   ► It's like a--

01:22:36 ◼   ► - The SSL question, it doesn't assure you

01:22:39 ◼   ► that the site is secure.

01:22:41 ◼   ► All it ensures you is that you have

01:22:42 ◼   ► an encrypted connection to the site,

01:22:44 ◼   ► and even that's kind of a questionable validity these days.

01:22:47 ◼   ► - And the incognito has nothing to do with anything,

01:22:49 ◼   ► but even SSL, we could say at this point,

01:22:50 ◼   ► does not protect you from, you know,

01:22:53 ◼   ► with heart bleed and everything.

01:22:53 ◼   ► That doesn't protect you really anyway.

01:22:55 ◼   ► - Right, well, and even then, it's like,

01:22:56 ◼   ► there's a whole class of security issues

01:23:00 ◼   ► that SSL doesn't protect you from.

01:23:01 ◼   ► things like password leaks and hacks.

01:23:04 ◼   ► Like if you see the secure icon,

01:23:07 ◼   ► does that mean you can type in the one password

01:23:09 ◼   ► you use for everything including your bank

01:23:11 ◼   ► and use that on this website because it's a secure site

01:23:13 ◼   ► and won't lose your password?

01:23:14 ◼   ► Like no, of course not.

01:23:16 ◼   ► But you know, so again, what does that mean?

01:23:17 ◼   ► So I think this is, you know,

01:23:21 ◼   ► the move to do HTTPS everywhere

01:23:24 ◼   ► that a lot of people are moving towards,

01:23:27 ◼   ► I think in many ways that's a good move

01:23:29 ◼   ► and that is probably the way we're going.

01:23:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, but this conversion to SSL reminds me of,

01:23:34 ◼   ► I mean, it's amazing that it's taken this long.

01:23:36 ◼   ► It's taken this long because the sort of artificial barrier

01:23:39 ◼   ► to this happening earlier was that SSL certificates

01:23:41 ◼   ► cost money, and it's not a lot of money,

01:23:43 ◼   ► but they cost money and they're annoying,

01:23:45 ◼   ► and the people who sell them are generally annoying.

01:23:48 ◼   ► And so EFF trying to reduce that barrier is better,

01:23:51 ◼   ► but it's like, what it reminds me of is the transition

01:23:54 ◼   ► from the old days of Telnet and FTP to basically SSH,

01:23:59 ◼   ► and SSH was free and open source,

01:24:01 ◼   ► and that's why it spread everywhere,

01:24:03 ◼   ► and nobody's telnetting into their machines anymore,

01:24:05 ◼   ► and nobody's using FTP with plain text passwords anymore,

01:24:08 ◼   ► because that would be crazy,

01:24:09 ◼   ► and yet we still continue to use essentially

01:24:12 ◼   ► the web equivalent, totally unencrypted telnet FTP,

01:24:15 ◼   ► like unencrypted protocols are crazy, right?

01:24:17 ◼   ► But we use HTTP all the time,

01:24:19 ◼   ► and yeah, we hope that when we're typing in a password,

01:24:21 ◼   ► I mean, I know I don't even check.

01:24:22 ◼   ► Do I look up to see it's HTTPS?

01:24:24 ◼   ► I just assume, 'cause what kind of crazy website

01:24:25 ◼   ► would put up a password prompt and not have it to be HTTPS?

01:24:28 ◼   ► But you don't, so really--

01:24:31 ◼   ► - Everyone fish John.

01:24:32 ◼   ► - We should be HTTPS everywhere instead of,

01:24:37 ◼   ► just like we're SSH everywhere,

01:24:38 ◼   ► 'cause nobody uses Telnet anymore.

01:24:39 ◼   ► Although I'm glad it's still installed

01:24:41 ◼   ► 'cause I still use it to debug web servers.

01:24:43 ◼   ► - The big problem with adoption of SSL everywhere,

01:24:47 ◼   ► of HTTPS everywhere rather,

01:24:48 ◼   ► is that the certificates expire.

01:24:51 ◼   ► And I think it used to be you could get a five year one

01:24:53 ◼   ► and I think they killed that last year, right?

01:24:55 ◼   ► Now can you only get like a three or two year one?

01:24:58 ◼   ► something like that, SSH keys never expire.

01:25:01 ◼   ► So you can have the same SSH key for 10 years

01:25:05 ◼   ► and it'll continue to work.

01:25:06 ◼   ► - But a website is more heavyweight than a server,

01:25:09 ◼   ► the server that you remotely connect into, right?

01:25:12 ◼   ► I just feel like the main barrier was that it cost money

01:25:15 ◼   ► and that you had to deal with these weird vendors

01:25:17 ◼   ► and if they could make it easier

01:25:18 ◼   ► and make it simpler to update these things,

01:25:20 ◼   ► and it just has to happen,

01:25:22 ◼   ► because if you're running a website,

01:25:24 ◼   ► that's a big thing that's worth an investment

01:25:26 ◼   ► of like a couple minutes every three years.

01:25:29 ◼   ► - Sure, yeah, the problem is that it is a very highly

01:25:32 ◼   ► technical process that is very error prone,

01:25:35 ◼   ► very intimidating and very complicated

01:25:38 ◼   ► that you have to do every two or three years.

01:25:41 ◼   ► And that's like on a grand scheme of things,

01:25:43 ◼   ► like in the grand scheme of the internet,

01:25:45 ◼   ► no one's gonna do that.

01:25:45 ◼   ► Like yeah, the big sites will do it.

01:25:47 ◼   ► But everything else out there, it's not gonna do it.

01:25:51 ◼   ► - But people, what's left is not a big site.

01:25:53 ◼   ► People don't run their own websites so much anymore

01:25:55 ◼   ► And if they do, they're probably tech nerds anyway.

01:25:56 ◼   ► We just need the big sites to do it.

01:25:58 ◼   ► And like Facebook, you know,

01:26:01 ◼   ► WordPress has to have like idiot-proof support for it

01:26:04 ◼   ► built in where you just click a button

01:26:05 ◼   ► and it connects everything.

01:26:06 ◼   ► You know, like it's possible to get this to happen.

01:26:10 ◼   ► And I think the money,

01:26:11 ◼   ► making it free if this actually works out.

01:26:13 ◼   ► Like if you had like the SSL certificate equivalent

01:26:16 ◼   ► of hover, I don't know if hover sells SSL.

01:26:19 ◼   ► - I think they do.

01:26:20 ◼   ► - Well, there you go.

01:26:21 ◼   ► But like, but they can't do the thing.

01:26:22 ◼   ► They don't, can't do a thing where you set up

01:26:24 ◼   ► your own WordPress ID and just press a button and then it says I'm gonna buy

01:26:27 ◼   ► and install an SSL certificate for you this is how much it cost you want me to

01:26:31 ◼   ► do this and you know it auto renews like every couple years oh and it sends you

01:26:35 ◼   ► an email by the way we're gonna update your SSL certificate in a couple of

01:26:37 ◼   ► weeks you want us to do that yeah go ahead that's not how it works now you

01:26:41 ◼   ► know look at different encryption protocols and include the right ones and

01:26:46 ◼   ► create your key with some crazy command line program that asks you a million

01:26:49 ◼   ► questions you don't know the answers to that uses vocabulary you're not

01:26:51 ◼   ► familiar with even if you are familiar with you forget which thing you're

01:26:53 ◼   ► supposed to write their your name or your company name or whatever.

01:26:56 ◼   ► Oh yeah, well and then like and the instructions are gonna say like these last three things

01:26:59 ◼   ► you must skip them don't enter anything in like these these three fields and it's like

01:27:02 ◼   ► oh come on.

01:27:03 ◼   ► But anyway I still think all that stuff the people who have to deal with that are better

01:27:08 ◼   ► equipped to deal with it than users are to deal with more interface elements telling

01:27:13 ◼   ► them something that they don't understand about the the pages they're using.

01:27:18 ◼   ► I mean, my mother still emails me things and says,

01:27:20 ◼   ► I got an email and it wants me to go to this site.

01:27:26 ◼   ► Is this site safe?

01:27:27 ◼   ► And just in my default answer, I'm now, no, I'm the denial.

01:27:31 ◼   ► I've said, no, denied, denied.

01:27:33 ◼   ► Just do not do anything.

01:27:34 ◼   ► That email didn't come from who you think it came from.

01:27:36 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:27:37 ◼   ► - And like even, I remember early on in the days

01:27:39 ◼   ► of the internet, I demonstrated how you can send email

01:27:41 ◼   ► from anybody, but you know, tell Netink to port 25,

01:27:45 ◼   ► back when that was all, back when that was all encrypted

01:27:47 ◼   ► like, you know, president@unitedstates.com,

01:27:49 ◼   ► look, you got an email from president

01:27:51 ◼   ► of the United States, see how I did that?

01:27:52 ◼   ► And that didn't take.

01:27:53 ◼   ► And so still to this day, she's like,

01:27:55 ◼   ► but the email came from you.

01:27:57 ◼   ► I'm like, it did not come from me.

01:27:58 ◼   ► I know it looks like it came from me, but it didn't.

01:28:01 ◼   ► Did it?

01:28:02 ◼   ► So even that concept, like it's just,

01:28:06 ◼   ► the mental model of how people think the internet works

01:28:08 ◼   ► is so different from how it actually works

01:28:10 ◼   ► that it's very difficult to, you know,

01:28:12 ◼   ► you can't get the models in sync

01:28:14 ◼   ► because the way the internet really works

01:28:15 ◼   ► is too complicated for people to know or care about.

01:28:18 ◼   ► And so you really just have to not give them choices

01:28:22 ◼   ► and sort of be safe by default

01:28:24 ◼   ► and make it so that you don't have to do anything

01:28:27 ◼   ► through no action of your own.

01:28:29 ◼   ► You are slightly more protected now than you were before.

01:28:32 ◼   ► - All right.

01:28:34 ◼   ► - Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week,

01:28:36 ◼   ► Automatic, lynda.com and Dash.

01:28:39 ◼   ► And we will see you next week.

01:28:41 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:28:43 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:28:48 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:28:51 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

01:28:54 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:28:59 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:29:01 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

01:29:04 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:29:09 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:29:14 ◼   ► @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:29:18 ◼   ► So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:29:23 ◼   ► Anti-Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C

01:29:28 ◼   ► U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:29:30 ◼   ► It's accidental

01:29:33 ◼   ► They didn't mean to

01:29:36 ◼   ► Accidental

01:29:38 ◼   ► Tech podcast so long

01:29:43 ◼   ► Want to address

01:29:44 ◼   ► Esketologist concern that that the clock in the menu bar wasn't integrated into the OS quickly

01:29:50 ◼   ► It didn't come until some system 7.5 and I'm going to say yeah, that was quick

01:29:55 ◼   ► It was only four years between the time was introduced in the time. We got scooped up

01:29:58 ◼   ► That's in a 30 year history of the Mac. That's relatively quick compared to oh

01:30:01 ◼   ► I don't know like theming which almost made it in but then no not at last minute and we were still waiting for it to come

01:30:07 ◼   ► But anyway, yeah, the history of the Mac from 1994 until today

01:30:11 ◼   ► has had a clock in the menu bar.

01:30:13 ◼   ► It's a pretty long time.

01:30:14 ◼   ► And for a couple of years before that,

01:30:16 ◼   ► it was a third-party utility.

01:30:17 ◼   ► Was Windows Shade third-party?

01:30:18 ◼   ► You guys don't know.

01:30:19 ◼   ► Maybe someone in the chat room knows.

01:30:21 ◼   ► I remember Windows Shade, and I remember getting a crappy

01:30:24 ◼   ► knockoff for my PC because I thought it was awesome.

01:30:26 ◼   ► It is awesome.

01:30:27 ◼   ► It was awesome, and it is.

01:30:29 ◼   ► Windows Shade had to go back to being third-party after being

01:30:32 ◼   ► integrated to the OS because they took it out in OS X.

01:30:35 ◼   ► And they had-- so in practice, you guys

01:30:37 ◼   ► Have like all these like sticks around your screen like these windows

01:30:39 ◼   ► Awesome window shade was awesome. Yes Marco. That is basically how it works. Why would you want that?

01:30:45 ◼   ► This is why window shade was awesome

01:30:47 ◼   ► I'm a screen full of sticks if you're a person like me who arranges your windows on the screen

01:30:52 ◼   ► Like doesn't maximize everything doesn't tile everything but actually arranges them like you'd arrange items on a desk in front of you

01:30:58 ◼   ► So, you know where everything is. No, I I do that. I

01:31:00 ◼   ► Always got very mad whenever anybody would move my my like aim window or something. All right

01:31:05 ◼   ► Well, they're not just anyone know but everything all your terminal windows all your editor windows stuff like that. All right being able to

01:31:11 ◼   ► Essentially minimize them without having them move

01:31:15 ◼   ► So when you want them back you go to where they were but they don't take they don't take up visual space on your screen

01:31:20 ◼   ► Anymore, you just have the little little stick thing like

01:31:23 ◼   ► Displaced minimization like into the dock or you know hidden also has its place

01:31:28 ◼   ► But being able to sort of maintain the spatial state of your windows while having them

01:31:34 ◼   ► Minimize themselves having them hide having them curl up and get out of your way until you want them

01:31:38 ◼   ► Let's you quickly find them again without going to a menu without hovering over a bunch of little identical looking icons to talk because you know

01:31:44 ◼   ► Exactly where it is because you can visualize where it was and now you just have the top part of it

01:31:47 ◼   ► So I miss window shade it wasn't the ultimate thing for randomization all the other all the other tools

01:31:53 ◼   ► We currently have now are all so good, but they took away that one

01:31:56 ◼   ► It's kind of a shame and it's probably just as well because nobody arranges their windows anymore

01:32:00 ◼   ► They just do everything full screen or just have no idea where their windows are I?

01:32:03 ◼   ► I can't I can't imagine having like all these sticks all over the place and be like because it seems like well

01:32:08 ◼   ► You don't minimize all of them. It's not you have a million sticks. You just minimize the ones you're not using right now

01:32:12 ◼   ► Why is that so much better than hiding because hiding gets it all the way gone like how do you how do you get it?

01:32:17 ◼   ► Back then you hit the icon on the dock or you use the alt tab thing

01:32:20 ◼   ► What I kind of dog there's seven icons in the dock that are all bad from the same application

01:32:23 ◼   ► I mean, you don't know which one is the one you want

01:32:25 ◼   ► You got a home you got to do the mystery meet hover and find out which one it is

01:32:27 ◼   ► Oh, I never minimize that I only hide but what if you hide you had you had you get it back then?

01:32:33 ◼   ► You have to go back to the application go to go to some menu or yeah go to the doc

01:32:37 ◼   ► I kind of pull it up by its name

01:32:38 ◼   ► And I hope you remember the name and I hope your application is good about giving titles to the windows that make sense in it

01:32:43 ◼   ► You know especially if it's a window that has tabs and it doesn't convey the tab title up

01:32:47 ◼   ► Spatial memory is a lot better for me anyway. I think for most people yeah, I spatial memory of where things are on the dock

01:32:52 ◼   ► Seriously like like the things are always in the same place in the dock so I know the application icon or the little yeah

01:32:59 ◼   ► But you have to the application icon doesn't magically make the window appear

01:33:02 ◼   ► You have to look at the list of windows that are minimized under it. How many windows do you keep in one app?

01:33:07 ◼   ► a lot of window maybe this is our disconnect here like I I generally

01:33:11 ◼   ► Don't like in each app

01:33:14 ◼   ► I usually keep between one and two windows like and I use tabs very heavily and in terminal and the browsers

01:33:19 ◼   ► But yeah, I don't keep a whole lot of windows open. I have 11

01:33:24 ◼   ► Windows and colloquy right now to give it an example. Oh my god in B in B B ad in B B edit

01:33:30 ◼   ► I frequently have I don't know. I think I've pushed up into a hundred before maybe 20 or 30 most of the time

01:33:37 ◼   ► I don't even know colic we had multiple either in terminal. I terminal usually have one two three four five six

01:33:44 ◼   ► Seven eight eight or nine maybe that was wrong with each of those windows tabs in it. Do you not believe it?

01:33:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I was gonna say do you not believe in tabs? Oh my no the with the terminal windows have tabs

01:33:54 ◼   ► though I love terminal tabs obviously my browser windows have tabs how many

01:33:57 ◼   ► browser I don't have a lot of browser windows open now right now I have I love

01:34:01 ◼   ► I love that every week we're finding out like some crazy computer habit from John

01:34:06 ◼   ► that we that nobody would have expected I have 19 Safari windows open right now

01:34:09 ◼   ► Oh my windows 19 Safari windows not even tens of tabs in those windows if only

01:34:17 ◼   ► there is a way for you to like save things to a reading list or something to

01:34:20 ◼   ► Later that's not what this is for. Yeah, I have this is why I need a bigger screen to like

01:34:25 ◼   ► This is like giving a hoarder a bigger house like you don't that's not gonna fix your problem

01:34:31 ◼   ► Oh, no, I'm not I'm not hoarding things not collecting windows. They each have a thing that I'm doing in them

01:34:35 ◼   ► It's kind of sounds like you

01:34:37 ◼   ► John you cannot have 19 windows with multiple tabs for window that you're and I'm using scare quotes doing things

01:34:43 ◼   ► I definitely can I sometimes that sort of like sedimentary layers like

01:34:48 ◼   ► For example the work my work windows as I was doing work earlier today are you know separate from my other windows?

01:34:54 ◼   ► I don't use spaces either. Oh, how could you manage all that without space my 19 call crew windows by the way are

01:35:00 ◼   ► Precisely arranged in the same place. They've been for years the same windows because each one window per channel one window per channel

01:35:07 ◼   ► And they are precisely arranged and you hang out in 19 channels. Oh my how do you get anything done during the day?

01:35:14 ◼   ► I'm not in them. I'm just idling. You know how IRC works. You don't have to be there paying attention

01:35:18 ◼   ► Yeah, they're all in like the little tabs in the side. They're not no no the windows are open

01:35:22 ◼   ► I see how would having little us little minimized window sticks everywhere. How would that help you problem?

01:35:28 ◼   ► For for colloquy when I'm doing a podcast

01:35:31 ◼   ► I don't want to look at any of the windows except for the one I'm doing so I have to minimize all them to the

01:35:36 ◼   ► Docs ever the one that I'm doing if I could option

01:35:38 ◼   ► Window shade them and they would all shade up and then shade down the one I want I wouldn't have to do that

01:35:43 ◼   ► Oh my god, I know I can often click to make them all and minimize or whatever

01:35:47 ◼   ► I probably wouldn't use it for college. They probably use it for editing windows more

01:35:50 ◼   ► This user for finder windows - I'm stuck on I cannot maybe I cannot cognitively handle

01:35:57 ◼   ► More than a couple of Safari windows your window users. You're used to maximizing everything

01:36:03 ◼   ► You know handle one window at a time. I know no

01:36:05 ◼   ► No, I can only I can only handle like a sum total of maybe ten tabs across like two windows

01:36:11 ◼   ► You should see my work computer.

01:36:12 ◼   ► It has so many windows on it.

01:36:13 ◼   ► Like there is unbelievable amount of windows.

01:36:17 ◼   ► My home one, sometimes I have to go through

01:36:18 ◼   ► and clean up things.

01:36:19 ◼   ► Like I know what's in a lot of these windows.

01:36:20 ◼   ► And sometimes that, you know,

01:36:22 ◼   ► sometimes these things are from Instapaper,

01:36:24 ◼   ► but a lot of times there are things that I can't view.

01:36:26 ◼   ► I look at Instapaper on my iPad and some video won't play

01:36:29 ◼   ► 'cause it's like flash or 'cause the thing is choking on it.