ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Why did you make me download this stupid game?

00:00:01 ◼   ► - You should play this while rocking.

00:00:04 ◼   ► You get an infant in your arms.

00:00:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, you can do it one handed.

00:00:07 ◼   ► - One arm, baby holding, rock, bounce, walking,

00:00:10 ◼   ► tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, die,

00:00:13 ◼   ► tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, die.

00:00:15 ◼   ► - All right, so in the post show from the last episode,

00:00:20 ◼   ► we kind of had a post show neutral.

00:00:21 ◼   ► And I was talking, or I thought I was talking

00:00:25 ◼   ► completely hypothetically about "Cars for Aaron and Myself"

00:00:29 ◼   ► now that Declan's around. And I don't know if I made it clear that that entire conversation

00:00:36 ◼   ► was completely hypothetical. And of course, what with this being us, everyone came out

00:00:41 ◼   ► of the woodwork to give car recommendations or car anti recommendations, you know, never

00:00:45 ◼   ► buy this car, it's terrible, etc. Which is which is certainly appreciated. But I don't

00:00:50 ◼   ► think I made it clear that that it was all just hypothetical. I mean, neither of us is

00:00:54 ◼   ► going to get a car anytime soon. And I still love my BMW and I plan to keep my BMW for at least a

00:01:00 ◼   ► couple more years if not longer than that. And as I think I said on the show, Erin loves her Mazda 6

00:01:05 ◼   ► and I think she'd probably rather give me up than the cars and you know who can blame her. So I did

00:01:10 ◼   ► want to mention that additionally a lot of people came out of the woodwork to say the Gulf R wagon

00:01:16 ◼   ► is a thing or if you're not from the United States the estate. I believe that's right.

00:01:21 ◼   ► And saloon is the sedan, is that right? Yeah, and you're still saying golf apparently too?

00:01:25 ◼   ► Yeah, golf, golf, whatever. It's just all... What is that? It's not even an accent.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Is it G-U or G-O? Isn't it a G-O-L-F? Yes.

00:01:34 ◼   ► So it's Golf R. Yeah.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Why is everyone saying that's wrong? You keep saying like the Gulf of Mexico.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Oh, all right. Well, whatever. Anyway, the G-R. Point being, I know that's a thing. The reason

00:01:48 ◼   ► I didn't bring it up is because I don't suspect that we'll get it in the United States. And yes,

00:01:53 ◼   ► I believe it was in Los Angeles briefly, for the purposes of the Los Angeles Motor Show, Auto Show,

00:01:59 ◼   ► whatever, but the likelihood of that arriving in the States is slim to none. Additionally,

00:02:03 ◼   ► people have suggested various Subarus, including the Outback, also known as the BMW 3GT, as well as

00:02:10 ◼   ► the Subaru Forester and I owned a Subaru in the past and that car had its entire

00:02:18 ◼   ► drivetrain replaced over the course of the 60 or 80,000 miles that I had it and

00:02:23 ◼   ► although I drive like a jerk I don't drive like an animal so I don't think

00:02:26 ◼   ► it's my fault and the likelihood of me getting another Subaru is not good. So

00:02:31 ◼   ► thank you for all the recommendations for the cars that I'm not buying and

00:02:34 ◼   ► that will be enough of the car talk for now. You know TIFS 3 GT has not had any

00:02:38 ◼   ► parts on it replaced, it's actually going quite well. In fact, we use it for our Thanksgiving

00:02:41 ◼   ► trip this past weekend and it was glorious. I love all the luxuries of having, you know,

00:02:46 ◼   ► like all the weird little hooks and stuff in the trunk and all the little latch points

00:02:50 ◼   ► and little things that can move around, plus the giant trunk space to begin with. It was

00:02:53 ◼   ► quite pleasant and yeah, I think we're going to sell you and Aaron on one of these next

00:02:59 ◼   ► time. You'll see, you'll see. You're denying it now but I bet once you actually see it

00:03:07 ◼   ► give it a chance and once Aaron sees it and gives it a chance I bet we can convert you

00:03:11 ◼   ► guys.

00:03:12 ◼   ► That's not likely.

00:03:13 ◼   ► You could probably, you may be able to get me, maybe, but there's no chance it'll get

00:03:17 ◼   ► Aaron because she's, I think she thinks it looks too much like a wagon which she doesn't

00:03:21 ◼   ► like and beyond that I don't think she particularly wants a BMW much to my chagrin, I don't know,

00:03:27 ◼   ► that word I'm thinking of.

00:03:28 ◼   ► It's pronounced "shog ride."

00:03:30 ◼   ► Much to my dismay, let's go with that.

00:03:33 ◼   ► In no small part because all BMW drivers are jerks, myself extremely included, and she

00:03:37 ◼   ► doesn't want to associate with them.

00:03:39 ◼   ► Anyway, sorry, enough of the car talk.

00:03:41 ◼   ► You want to tell us about something that's cool?

00:03:43 ◼   ► I would love to.

00:03:44 ◼   ► In fact, this week we have a fourth sponsor, and it's a holiday miracle.

00:03:49 ◼   ► It's definitely not because of a clerical error last week, it was definitely a holiday

00:03:53 ◼   ► miracle that's the reason we have four sponsors this week.

00:03:57 ◼   ► Our first sponsor this week is Studio Neat, once again,

00:04:02 ◼   ► with a whole bunch of cool stuff.

00:04:03 ◼   ► So if you go to studioneat.com/atp,

00:04:08 ◼   ► they have made a really cool ATP holiday cocktail guide

00:04:12 ◼   ► for us, and they've made, you gotta check out this pig.

00:04:15 ◼   ► I mean, first of all, the pig looks incredible

00:04:17 ◼   ► because they have incredibly good design skills over there.

00:04:20 ◼   ► Go to studioneat.com/atp,

00:04:23 ◼   ► and they have actually made custom drinks.

00:04:25 ◼   ► They've made the Casey List, the John Siracusa,

00:04:27 ◼   ► the Marco Arment.

00:04:28 ◼   ► You can tell they actually listen to our show

00:04:30 ◼   ► and actually know us.

00:04:32 ◼   ► So the Casey List is a vodka drink.

00:04:34 ◼   ► The John Siracusa is non-alcoholic and is based on Sprite.

00:04:37 ◼   ► - (laughs) That made me laugh so hard

00:04:40 ◼   ► when they showed this to me,

00:04:41 ◼   ► when Tom and Dan Studio Neat showed this to me.

00:04:44 ◼   ► The John Siracusa was far and away my favorite.

00:04:46 ◼   ► - Well, because, and I was a little concerned.

00:04:48 ◼   ► It was like, I saw this,

00:04:49 ◼   ► you know, when we weren't on the air when I saw this,

00:04:51 ◼   ► and when I first saw they had made drinks

00:04:52 ◼   ► for the three of us, I thought, oh, well,

00:04:54 ◼   ► I don't know if John's gonna wanna be associated

00:04:57 ◼   ► with an alcoholic drink.

00:04:58 ◼   ► And I saw, oh no, it's Sprite.

00:05:02 ◼   ► It's fine. (laughs)

00:05:05 ◼   ► John, is that a correct assessment?

00:05:07 ◼   ► - I was happy that they made an alcoholic,

00:05:10 ◼   ► but I'm not a big fan of mint.

00:05:12 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:14 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure I would actually like this one,

00:05:15 ◼   ► but if the drink is just supposed to embody me

00:05:18 ◼   ► more than be a drink that I like,

00:05:20 ◼   ► then I don't know, maybe it's a combination.

00:05:22 ◼   ► It might work.

00:05:23 ◼   ► I've never, I haven't tried this, so I can't say whether or not it works as a drink.

00:05:26 ◼   ► Well, similarly, I don't know if I'd like a Moscow Mule.

00:05:28 ◼   ► I mean, if you look at the constituent ingredients, it seems like something I would enjoy, but

00:05:33 ◼   ► I don't know that I've ever had one.

00:05:35 ◼   ► So like, I know I hate old-fashioneds much to the dismay, not chagrin, of Mike Hurley

00:05:41 ◼   ► and Marco, but this sounds like it would be all right.

00:05:45 ◼   ► I think it's funny, and mine is like, of course, a coffee-based dessert drink, which sounds

00:05:51 ◼   ► pretty good if I can say. I think it's even better that Jon has a minor complaint about

00:05:58 ◼   ► his. It wouldn't be the Jon Siracusa if the real Jon Siracusa didn't have a minor

00:06:04 ◼   ► complaint about it.

00:06:05 ◼   ► Well, I haven't talked about my vague dislike of mint things on the show before, so they

00:06:09 ◼   ► can be forgiven for not knowing this tiny detail about me.

00:06:12 ◼   ► Would you like to talk about that now, Jon?

00:06:14 ◼   ► I would not.

00:06:15 ◼   ► Would you talk about that now, Jon?

00:06:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:19 ◼   ► - No, we don't need to, we can move on.

00:06:21 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:06:22 ◼   ► - Well, we're still in the sponsor, right?

00:06:23 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, sorry, my bad.

00:06:25 ◼   ► - No, we're gonna come back to that at some point.

00:06:27 ◼   ► Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday.

00:06:30 ◼   ► Anyway, this is all at studioneat.com/atp.

00:06:34 ◼   ► You gotta look at this page, it's hilarious.

00:06:36 ◼   ► They also have made a cocktail tool guide

00:06:39 ◼   ► at cocktailtoolguide.com, and check that out as well.

00:06:44 ◼   ► They've collected a whole bunch of gear,

00:06:46 ◼   ► some stuff they make, some stuff that they don't make,

00:06:48 ◼   ► and they don't care if they make it or not.

00:06:50 ◼   ► They want you to have the best gear

00:06:51 ◼   ► for making cocktails at home.

00:06:53 ◼   ► And some of this stuff is really cool.

00:06:55 ◼   ► And finally, they have this new thing

00:06:58 ◼   ► called the Simple Syrup Kit.

00:07:00 ◼   ► And it is exactly what it sounds like.

00:07:02 ◼   ► It is a kit to help you make and store simple syrup.

00:07:05 ◼   ► And honestly, when they first announced this,

00:07:07 ◼   ► I was a little skeptical,

00:07:08 ◼   ► because I've made simple syrup before.

00:07:10 ◼   ► It's sugar and water.

00:07:11 ◼   ► And I thought, what could you possibly need a kit for

00:07:14 ◼   ► to make this?

00:07:15 ◼   ► couldn't you make this in anything?"

00:07:16 ◼   ► And I have, and for years I've been making

00:07:18 ◼   ► my own simple syrup, usually for iced coffee recipes.

00:07:21 ◼   ► And the fact is, making simple syrup by yourself,

00:07:23 ◼   ► even though it is incredibly simple,

00:07:25 ◼   ► it does have like two or three potential spots

00:07:27 ◼   ► for annoyance, and I watched the video

00:07:30 ◼   ► and I saw the simple syrup kit tonight,

00:07:31 ◼   ► and I'm like, actually, that fixes those annoyances.

00:07:35 ◼   ► Like, I gotta hand to these guys.

00:07:36 ◼   ► I thought there was no room for a dedicated product

00:07:39 ◼   ► in that space, but they made one.

00:07:40 ◼   ► And it looks pretty good, I gotta say.

00:07:43 ◼   ► I mean, check this out.

00:07:44 ◼   ► These guys really have a knack for taking things

00:07:47 ◼   ► that maybe you didn't think you needed,

00:07:50 ◼   ► and then once you have them, you're like,

00:07:51 ◼   ► wow, of course I needed this, this is great.

00:07:53 ◼   ► How do I live without this?

00:07:55 ◼   ► Check out Studio Neat, and you gotta look at their

00:07:58 ◼   ► CocktailToolGuide.com as well as the StudioNeat.com/ATP,

00:08:03 ◼   ► where they created these awesome cocktails for each of us.

00:08:07 ◼   ► And really, they're really funny, I gotta say.

00:08:10 ◼   ► And the pages are beautiful,

00:08:11 ◼   ► the video they shot is beautiful, the simple syrup kit.

00:08:14 ◼   ► Check them out, they make great stuff.

00:08:17 ◼   ► As I mentioned last time, they have the Cosmonaut,

00:08:18 ◼   ► they have the Glyph, they have the Neat Ice Kit,

00:08:21 ◼   ► all this great stuff they make, studioneat.com/atp.

00:08:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, and as the final quick addendum to that,

00:08:28 ◼   ► Tom and Dan are the two guys that run Studio Neat,

00:08:30 ◼   ► and they're friends of ours,

00:08:32 ◼   ► and they're super, super, super awesome, awesome people.

00:08:34 ◼   ► So if you're gonna throw a little bit of money their way,

00:08:39 ◼   ► they're well deserving, and the stuff they make is awesome.

00:08:43 ◼   ► And I don't know if we mentioned,

00:08:44 ◼   ► but you get 10% off if you use the code ATP,

00:08:46 ◼   ► and forgive me if we already talked about that, but.

00:08:48 ◼   ► - Yes, forgive me if we're not talking about that.

00:08:50 ◼   ► That's very important.

00:08:51 ◼   ► Use coupon code ATP for 10% off

00:08:53 ◼   ► anything from the Studio Neat store.

00:08:56 ◼   ► So thanks a lot to Studio Neat once again.

00:08:58 ◼   ► - All right, what are we talking about tonight?

00:09:00 ◼   ► There's not that much going on.

00:09:02 ◼   ► All right, well, that was a good show.

00:09:06 ◼   ► - Thanks a lot to our four sponsors this week.

00:09:09 ◼   ► - Marco makes his own news, right?

00:09:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, you could say that.

00:09:13 ◼   ► Marco, what's been a bee in your bonnet these days?

00:09:16 ◼   ► - Well, I had to think about the push notification ad,

00:09:20 ◼   ► which was, I don't know how much of a topic that really is.

00:09:24 ◼   ► - It's really a topic.

00:09:25 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:09:27 ◼   ► You did a whole blog post about it.

00:09:28 ◼   ► You tweeted about it all day.

00:09:29 ◼   ► It's, let's just say about you making your own news.

00:09:31 ◼   ► That could have come and gone,

00:09:32 ◼   ► but you felt like you needed to chime in about it.

00:09:34 ◼   ► And so you wrote a big, a long blog post about it

00:09:37 ◼   ► and then argued with people on Twitter about it.

00:09:39 ◼   ► - It was 195 words, most of which were not about

00:09:42 ◼   ► that particular one.

00:09:43 ◼   ► - Really?

00:09:44 ◼   ► I thought it was longer.

00:09:45 ◼   ► - No, there was an image in the middle

00:09:47 ◼   ► that might have thrown you off.

00:09:48 ◼   ► - Make yourself useful and put a link in the show notes.

00:09:50 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:09:52 ◼   ► - So basically the other day, Apple sent out

00:09:56 ◼   ► two push notifications advertising the red App Store

00:10:00 ◼   ► promotion from the App Store app.

00:10:03 ◼   ► So if you had notifications enabled for the App Store,

00:10:06 ◼   ► And if I remember correctly,

00:10:08 ◼   ► I don't think I ever actually enabled those.

00:10:10 ◼   ► I don't think I was ever asked to.

00:10:12 ◼   ► Maybe the first time I launched the App Store app

00:10:14 ◼   ► on some OS version, maybe it asked me and I said yes,

00:10:16 ◼   ► but I don't usually say yes to things like that.

00:10:20 ◼   ► And mine were enabled, so I don't know what that was about.

00:10:23 ◼   ► If it's actually enabled by default

00:10:26 ◼   ► and it never asks you upfront, that's kinda crappy.

00:10:30 ◼   ► But I can't say for sure whether it was that way or not.

00:10:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was wondering why I didn't see this.

00:10:34 ◼   ► And now that you mention this,

00:10:35 ◼   ► I realized that the whole time I was reading your tweets and your post, I was like, well,

00:10:39 ◼   ► I didn't get that because I don't have an iPhone.

00:10:40 ◼   ► Right. But I realized I do have an iPhone and then I thought, wait, I have an iPhone.

00:10:45 ◼   ► Why didn't I get that? And I realized the reason I didn't get it is because any time I

00:10:48 ◼   ► set up any iOS device, I go to the notification screen, turn everything off and then

00:10:53 ◼   ► selectively turn on like the two apps that I want to allow to send me notifications,

00:10:57 ◼   ► which are, I don't know, like messages.

00:11:01 ◼   ► And is there another one?

00:11:04 ◼   ► - Messages and messages?

00:11:06 ◼   ► I can't think of anything offhand,

00:11:08 ◼   ► but certainly not App Store.

00:11:09 ◼   ► - Well anyway, so regardless of whether it was,

00:11:11 ◼   ► if it's on by default, it's even worse.

00:11:14 ◼   ► But regardless, what I was pointing out,

00:11:16 ◼   ► and it kinda got, the idea kinda got muddied a little bit

00:11:19 ◼   ► because the message they sent was promoting something

00:11:23 ◼   ► for the Product Red charity thing, which is,

00:11:27 ◼   ► and I don't, honestly, I don't know the details

00:11:29 ◼   ► of how the Product Red corporation works.

00:11:31 ◼   ► I think it's not technically a non-profit

00:11:33 ◼   ► and there's some kind of weird stuff.

00:11:34 ◼   ► I don't know the details, it doesn't matter.

00:11:35 ◼   ► And please don't email us,

00:11:37 ◼   ► but it really doesn't matter for the conversation.

00:11:40 ◼   ► A lot of people took issue with me

00:11:43 ◼   ► complaining about a push notification

00:11:44 ◼   ► that is for this good cause.

00:11:47 ◼   ► And the fact is, I'm not taking issue with notification,

00:11:51 ◼   ► I'm taking issue with,

00:11:53 ◼   ► or rather I'm not taking issue with the content of it,

00:11:55 ◼   ► I'm taking issue with the fact that Apple sent

00:11:59 ◼   ► a promotional push notification.

00:12:00 ◼   ► And there is specifically a rule

00:12:02 ◼   ► In the App Store guidelines, rule number 5.6,

00:12:05 ◼   ► and the rule says that apps cannot use push notifications

00:12:09 ◼   ► to send, I forget the exact wording,

00:12:10 ◼   ► but it's something like marketing or promotions of any kind.

00:12:14 ◼   ► This rule, if you've ever had any apps installed

00:12:16 ◼   ► on any iPhone ever, and you've ever said yes

00:12:18 ◼   ► to push notifications to anything besides messages, John,

00:12:21 ◼   ► if you almost certainly know

00:12:24 ◼   ► that apps violate this rule constantly,

00:12:26 ◼   ► apps always send push notifications

00:12:29 ◼   ► for advertising purposes.

00:12:31 ◼   ► is always like, "Hey, come back to our game.

00:12:33 ◼   ► "New bombs are 50% off today only."

00:12:35 ◼   ► Like crap like that.

00:12:36 ◼   ► And it is so incredibly common.

00:12:38 ◼   ► And it's really unfortunate.

00:12:39 ◼   ► And so my post was basically saying,

00:12:42 ◼   ► "This is really unfortunate how common this is,

00:12:44 ◼   ► "that it is against the rules,

00:12:45 ◼   ► "and Apple doesn't really enforce that rule."

00:12:48 ◼   ► And to some degree, they kinda can't enforce that rule.

00:12:50 ◼   ► And we talked about this a little bit before.

00:12:53 ◼   ► And now it's even worse that Apple itself

00:12:56 ◼   ► doesn't follow that rule.

00:12:58 ◼   ► And so that's my main complaint here,

00:13:00 ◼   ► after all this preamble that, yeah, it was a little thing.

00:13:03 ◼   ► Yeah, it was, you know, essentially for a good cause.

00:13:06 ◼   ► Yeah, it was only two push notifications

00:13:08 ◼   ► sent in one hour on one day.

00:13:11 ◼   ► But this is really setting a bad example.

00:13:14 ◼   ► It's setting a bad precedent and it's showing once again,

00:13:16 ◼   ► it's this is not that different from the U2 album

00:13:20 ◼   ► being shoved into our libraries.

00:13:21 ◼   ► This is not as bad as that, I don't think.

00:13:22 ◼   ► But it's, this is Apple showing that they don't respect

00:13:30 ◼   ► or they don't see that this is a boundary

00:13:32 ◼   ► that they shouldn't cross.

00:13:34 ◼   ► Like, an advertising push notification to me

00:13:37 ◼   ► is really offensive.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And I totally understand why like, you know,

00:13:44 ◼   ► the Target app or the Kohl's app

00:13:46 ◼   ► or some kind of crappy news sites app,

00:13:48 ◼   ► yeah, they will do it, of course they'll do it.

00:13:50 ◼   ► They're crappy retailers and they're shameless

00:13:52 ◼   ► 'cause most giant retailers have to be shameless to survive.

00:13:56 ◼   ► And certainly news sites generally do as well.

00:13:59 ◼   ► So that's fine.

00:14:00 ◼   ► If somebody with really terrible low standards

00:14:02 ◼   ► with no self-respect,

00:14:04 ◼   ► and who doesn't respect their customers either,

00:14:06 ◼   ► wants to spam people, that's not a surprise.

00:14:09 ◼   ► But those are not usually terms used to describe Apple

00:14:11 ◼   ► or their products, and especially things

00:14:13 ◼   ► that are the default in their products.

00:14:15 ◼   ► And so what worries me here is that not only is Apple

00:14:18 ◼   ► setting a bad example that this practice is okay

00:14:21 ◼   ► by doing it themselves, but also that it just shows

00:14:24 ◼   ► that Apple is, like there's stuff getting through,

00:14:28 ◼   ► And you know, Apple is not one person.

00:14:30 ◼   ► Apple has lots of people, maybe some of them, you know,

00:14:33 ◼   ► don't follow the same standards or make mistakes sometimes.

00:14:35 ◼   ► That's fine.

00:14:36 ◼   ► But it's a worrying trend.

00:14:39 ◼   ► First we had the U2 album that somehow got out

00:14:41 ◼   ► and that, like, no one was able to stop that

00:14:43 ◼   ► and say, you know what, this is kind of a bad way to do this.

00:14:47 ◼   ► And now we have this message.

00:14:48 ◼   ► And again, it's a little thing.

00:14:50 ◼   ► But we're starting to see a trend here

00:14:52 ◼   ► and that worries me.

00:14:53 ◼   ► It worries me that Apple doesn't seem to respect

00:14:55 ◼   ► this boundary and doesn't seem to think this is a problem.

00:14:59 ◼   ► I think my issue with it is not so much everything that you said about push notifications and

00:15:04 ◼   ► boundaries in the YouTube album and everything.

00:15:06 ◼   ► It's part of a pattern of behavior with Apple and the App Store, where if this was the only

00:15:13 ◼   ► thing that happened, it probably wouldn't have bothered me that much and would have

00:15:16 ◼   ► just been a silly aside.

00:15:18 ◼   ► But this is happening in the context of an Apple with an App Store and a long history

00:15:24 ◼   ► of really weird, arbitrary, nonsensical enforcement,

00:15:29 ◼   ► or half enforcement of some rules when they feel like it,

00:15:32 ◼   ► but not other rules.

00:15:33 ◼   ► Like if Apple didn't have that pattern of behavior

00:15:36 ◼   ► where an app will be found in the app store for three years

00:15:38 ◼   ► and then get pulled, and Apple will get pulled

00:15:40 ◼   ► and put in after a bunch of stories appear on websites,

00:15:43 ◼   ► you know, or they'll reject an app for reasons

00:15:46 ◼   ► that don't seem to make sense or be fair, you know,

00:15:48 ◼   ► like that whole history and the fact that all of us

00:15:53 ◼   ► are kind of close to people who write applications

00:15:55 ◼   ► and come in contact with those sort of weird arbitrary rules

00:15:58 ◼   ► and all that stuff over the years,

00:16:01 ◼   ► that makes this thing more egregious

00:16:03 ◼   ► because it's like, it's like the rubbing end in our face.

00:16:06 ◼   ► Yes, we know the rules don't really apply to Apple

00:16:08 ◼   ► 'cause they run the store.

00:16:09 ◼   ► Like we're aware of that.

00:16:11 ◼   ► But it's like, at least for me anyway,

00:16:14 ◼   ► my sort of bitterness and anger by proxy,

00:16:17 ◼   ► 'cause I don't even have an app in the app store,

00:16:18 ◼   ► but I know a lot of people who do when I read these stories,

00:16:20 ◼   ► I'm like, this person did everything right.

00:16:22 ◼   ► They made a great app, they tried to do something.

00:16:24 ◼   ► It seems, if I could never predict it,

00:16:26 ◼   ► they would have got a pulse, not a borderline thing.

00:16:29 ◼   ► Seems like it's exactly what Apple wanted

00:16:30 ◼   ► and then the app gets pulled for some crazy reason

00:16:32 ◼   ► and Apple doesn't care and it's this person's livelihood

00:16:34 ◼   ► and they spend all this time on it

00:16:36 ◼   ► and they could not have predicted ahead of time

00:16:37 ◼   ► that this would have been the result

00:16:39 ◼   ► and yet now they could potentially out all that time

00:16:42 ◼   ► and money they spent developing the application

00:16:45 ◼   ► now may be wasted for reasons that don't make sense.

00:16:49 ◼   ► Like, you know, we all sit out here and try to divine

00:16:51 ◼   ► What is Apple's motivation?

00:16:53 ◼   ► What kind of store are they trying to make?

00:16:55 ◼   ► 'Cause they're sure as hell not gonna tell us.

00:16:56 ◼   ► Like they list all these rules, but they don't say why.

00:16:59 ◼   ► And their decisions, you look at them

00:17:01 ◼   ► and you try to figure out based on this decision,

00:17:02 ◼   ► they trying to not have a store

00:17:05 ◼   ► where junky apps are on there?

00:17:07 ◼   ► No, there's plenty of junky apps.

00:17:07 ◼   ► Are they trying to not have a store

00:17:09 ◼   ► where apps have advertising?

00:17:10 ◼   ► No, they're trying to not have free apps.

00:17:11 ◼   ► They don't want apps like, it doesn't even make any sense.

00:17:15 ◼   ► With the exception of some simple stuff like no porn apps,

00:17:17 ◼   ► like that kind of thing makes sense

00:17:20 ◼   ► and they've been consistent on.

00:17:21 ◼   ► Almost everything else, I can't figure out

00:17:23 ◼   ► what it is that they're aiming for.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Why enforce this rule and not that one?

00:17:27 ◼   ► Why come down here and not there?

00:17:29 ◼   ► What is the shape of the app store

00:17:31 ◼   ► they're trying to make by these rules?

00:17:32 ◼   ► So it just seems arbitrary.

00:17:34 ◼   ► And in the context of all of that,

00:17:36 ◼   ► then doing something like this just seems egregious.

00:17:39 ◼   ► And it's not the incident,

00:17:40 ◼   ► it's the surrounding sort of sadness.

00:17:44 ◼   ► And the reason this incident is so galling,

00:17:45 ◼   ► you put the text of the rule 5.6 in your thing,

00:17:49 ◼   ► in case people think this is some big legalese thing

00:17:50 ◼   ► or whatever, here's the full text of this rule

00:17:54 ◼   ► in the App Store guidelines.

00:17:56 ◼   ► "Apps cannot use push notifications

00:17:57 ◼   ► "to send advertising, promotions,

00:17:59 ◼   ► "or direct marketing of any kind."

00:18:01 ◼   ► That's it, that's the whole thing.

00:18:02 ◼   ► There's not like 20 paragraphs of stuff, that's it.

00:18:04 ◼   ► And it is not ambiguous, advertising, promotions,

00:18:07 ◼   ► or direct marketing of any kind.

00:18:08 ◼   ► This is clearly either it's an advertisement

00:18:10 ◼   ► or it's a promotion or it's direct marketing.

00:18:12 ◼   ► It's certainly one of those things,

00:18:13 ◼   ► like that pretty much covers all your bases.

00:18:15 ◼   ► And so they do this one little thing,

00:18:17 ◼   ► like we were already kind of upset

00:18:19 ◼   ► that they don't catch all these ads that are spamming us

00:18:22 ◼   ► with, come back to our store to buy as an app purchase.

00:18:25 ◼   ► And then when they do it themselves,

00:18:26 ◼   ► for me it's not so much about the push notification,

00:18:28 ◼   ► which I never even saw.

00:18:30 ◼   ► It's about, like someone at Apple had no problem doing this

00:18:35 ◼   ► and it's just, it's like just rubbing it in your face.

00:18:37 ◼   ► And that's, maybe that's like transference,

00:18:39 ◼   ► like it's not fair to come down

00:18:40 ◼   ► on whatever this one little incident was,

00:18:43 ◼   ► but really it is, it's about everything else

00:18:46 ◼   ► that has to do with the app store

00:18:47 ◼   ► and it's just being focused on this one little,

00:18:48 ◼   ► Maybe for Marco it's also about the push notification, but for me this is just, you know, the flashpoint

00:18:54 ◼   ► of a much larger sort of sadness about the App Store.

00:18:59 ◼   ► Do you think that people who aren't in our little circle of tech nerd people know or

00:19:05 ◼   ► care anything about this specific notification?

00:19:08 ◼   ► Like if they don't read sites that covered it as news, if they don't read Marco's blog,

00:19:12 ◼   ► they don't follow anyone on Twitter, but the notification did come on their phones, did

00:19:16 ◼   ► they even take note that it was, they even notice.

00:19:19 ◼   ► - I mean, I would imagine most people

00:19:22 ◼   ► who have any reasonable number of apps installed

00:19:25 ◼   ► probably get regular spam notifications.

00:19:28 ◼   ► Like, I mean, so many apps send them,

00:19:31 ◼   ► especially like, you know, big retailer and publisher apps.

00:19:34 ◼   ► - Or games, game, free-to-play games are the worst.

00:19:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, like, all of those apps,

00:19:40 ◼   ► it is so incredibly common,

00:19:42 ◼   ► this is mostly what I'm posting about,

00:19:43 ◼   ► abuse of this system and directly breaking

00:19:46 ◼   ► this rule is so incredibly common that I would imagine

00:19:50 ◼   ► most people who have a reasonable number of apps installed

00:19:52 ◼   ► are accustomed to seeing push notification ads all the time.

00:19:56 ◼   ► So they probably didn't think anything of this one.

00:19:58 ◼   ► Maybe even the people who run the app store promo team,

00:20:02 ◼   ► like maybe the people at Apple who sent this ad

00:20:05 ◼   ► aren't even aware that it's against the review rules.

00:20:08 ◼   ► These are different teams.

00:20:10 ◼   ► They probably have, I bet the people who have sent this ad

00:20:13 ◼   ► don't even know about this.

00:20:15 ◼   ► and maybe on their phones,

00:20:17 ◼   ► maybe they see enough push notification ads

00:20:18 ◼   ► from other apps,

00:20:19 ◼   ► they just think it's a normal acceptable thing to do.

00:20:21 ◼   ► - Well, that's what I think.

00:20:22 ◼   ► I think it is a normal acceptable thing to do

00:20:24 ◼   ► for other people.

00:20:25 ◼   ► Again, that's why I'm getting back to the theory

00:20:27 ◼   ► that it's our closeness to people

00:20:30 ◼   ► who make and sell apps on the App Store

00:20:32 ◼   ► and the history of Apple dealing with the App Store rules

00:20:34 ◼   ► and those people that makes us in any way sensitive to this.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Whereas I think other people

00:20:38 ◼   ► who don't know anyone who makes apps,

00:20:39 ◼   ► don't care what it takes to make apps,

00:20:41 ◼   ► don't care what the rules are for the App Store,

00:20:43 ◼   ► this totally disappears into the noise.

00:20:45 ◼   ► Noise that is mostly not of Apple's making,

00:20:47 ◼   ► maybe just through their negligence

00:20:49 ◼   ► of not enforcing this rule on other applications,

00:20:51 ◼   ► which as you pointed out somewhere, maybe in the blog,

00:20:54 ◼   ► it's really hard to enforce this.

00:20:56 ◼   ► And Apple historically has not been good

00:20:58 ◼   ► at sort of crowdsourcing this kind of enforcement

00:21:00 ◼   ► because basically when you're reviewing the app,

00:21:03 ◼   ► if you review the app

00:21:04 ◼   ► and you never get an ad push notification,

00:21:06 ◼   ► you can't determine whether the ad

00:21:09 ◼   ► will never send a push notification.

00:21:11 ◼   ► The app is approved,

00:21:13 ◼   ► it goes into the store,

00:21:14 ◼   ► then here come the push notifications to be able,

00:21:16 ◼   ► like it's trivially easy to do that.

00:21:18 ◼   ► So there needs to be some mechanism

00:21:19 ◼   ► whereby people can report notifications,

00:21:22 ◼   ► but I think you also said like,

00:21:24 ◼   ► you don't put that in the UI

00:21:26 ◼   ► to say report this notification as spam or something,

00:21:28 ◼   ► 'cause that's kind of mucks it up.

00:21:29 ◼   ► And it's like, there's kind of the maps thing

00:21:31 ◼   ► all over again, where people were trying to send corrections

00:21:33 ◼   ► when Apple had things in the wrong spot

00:21:35 ◼   ► and Apple was not good at integrating those corrections,

00:21:37 ◼   ► at least initially, into improving the map data.

00:21:40 ◼   ► This is not Apple's forte.

00:21:42 ◼   ► So if they are going to have a sort of very clear,

00:21:45 ◼   ► unambiguous rule against push notification ads,

00:21:47 ◼   ► they also need some mechanism for enforcement.

00:21:50 ◼   ► Independent of them sending it themselves,

00:21:52 ◼   ► which I, and I totally buy what Marco said,

00:21:54 ◼   ► is that the people who sent it either didn't know

00:21:56 ◼   ► that this was a rule or didn't care.

00:21:58 ◼   ► And both I think are equally likely.

00:22:01 ◼   ► But again, I think the only reason

00:22:03 ◼   ► that it's talked about in our circles

00:22:05 ◼   ► is because of our former contact with the App Store

00:22:08 ◼   ► and it has poisoned us on this entire issue.

00:22:10 ◼   ► Everyone else doesn't care at all

00:22:11 ◼   ► 'cause their entire life is dismissing stupid notifications

00:22:14 ◼   ► about come back to the game now

00:22:15 ◼   ► because your seven sprouts have blossomed

00:22:17 ◼   ► and you need to pluck them and you can get this new

00:22:20 ◼   ► 50 gems or 20% off, whatever.

00:22:23 ◼   ► - We shouldn't just accept that, oh, well,

00:22:25 ◼   ► this rule is violated all the time,

00:22:26 ◼   ► so we might as well not even try to enforce it.

00:22:29 ◼   ► Like, that's not good enough to me.

00:22:31 ◼   ► That, I've heard a few people say that,

00:22:33 ◼   ► like, oh, well, this is too common, who cares,

00:22:35 ◼   ► it's just one notification.

00:22:36 ◼   ► And the fact is, it isn't just one notification,

00:22:38 ◼   ► and the entire experience of your phone,

00:22:41 ◼   ► of using your phone, changes in a pretty important

00:22:45 ◼   ► and non-subtle way if you routinely get ad notifications.

00:22:50 ◼   ► Like that is not a small thing.

00:22:53 ◼   ► - Just wait until they start showing up on your watch.

00:22:55 ◼   ► - Right, like that is not a small thing.

00:22:58 ◼   ► Notifications should matter,

00:23:00 ◼   ► or you should at least be allowed to treat them

00:23:03 ◼   ► as if they matter, whether you do or not is another story,

00:23:05 ◼   ► but it is an interruption to you.

00:23:10 ◼   ► It is literally pushed, you don't ask for it,

00:23:12 ◼   ► it is literally pushed to your device at any time.

00:23:15 ◼   ► It alerts you, it is meant to interrupt you

00:23:18 ◼   ► to show you something that you care about seeing.

00:23:21 ◼   ► An ad is never gonna be one of those things.

00:23:23 ◼   ► And it's, the idea that oh well,

00:23:27 ◼   ► Apple can't really enforce us very easily

00:23:29 ◼   ► and lots of people break the rule,

00:23:31 ◼   ► so eh, we don't need to even try to enforce the rule.

00:23:34 ◼   ► No, that is not good enough, and that is not,

00:23:38 ◼   ► like Apple shouldn't think that's good enough.

00:23:40 ◼   ► And what worries me is whenever there's any sign

00:23:43 ◼   ► that maybe they do think it's good enough,

00:23:45 ◼   ► and I think that's why this irritated me so much.

00:23:50 ◼   ► - And see, the thing is, even though Apple's bad at this,

00:23:52 ◼   ► at sort of crowdsourcing, a type of thing

00:23:54 ◼   ► that can't be done in App Review really,

00:23:56 ◼   ► because it's so easy to circumvent,

00:23:57 ◼   ► that has to be sort of done in the field,

00:23:58 ◼   ► and they have to collect that information.

00:24:00 ◼   ► - Right, and most people don't realize,

00:24:02 ◼   ► App Review only spends a few minutes with each app.

00:24:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, so the other alternative is to

00:24:08 ◼   ► collect all the information,

00:24:09 ◼   ► and that Apple is not good at,

00:24:12 ◼   ► but the other part of it,

00:24:13 ◼   ► they're in such a powerful position to,

00:24:16 ◼   ► if they can get any kind of collection,

00:24:18 ◼   ► they're in such a powerful position to enforce it

00:24:20 ◼   ► because all they have to do is kind of have a sort of,

00:24:23 ◼   ► you know, I don't know, three strikes you're out,

00:24:24 ◼   ► or some sort of demerit-based system where,

00:24:26 ◼   ► you know, the first time, all right, so what,

00:24:28 ◼   ► maybe you didn't know about this rule,

00:24:29 ◼   ► maybe you didn't see this in the guideline.

00:24:30 ◼   ► by the way, app developer, we noticed that a lot of people

00:24:33 ◼   ► reported your app sending push notifications,

00:24:36 ◼   ► maybe confirmed with the app developer,

00:24:37 ◼   ► is this the case or are these people,

00:24:39 ◼   ► I don't know how you determine authenticity

00:24:40 ◼   ► 'cause it's so easy to fake this, like or whatever,

00:24:42 ◼   ► but in consultation with the things that,

00:24:44 ◼   ► hey, not an automated kind of YouTube is taking down

00:24:47 ◼   ► your movie because someone was playing copyrighted music

00:24:49 ◼   ► in the background, right?

00:24:50 ◼   ► But in a human way, which I think they can afford to do

00:24:53 ◼   ► with developer relations, hey, we got a lot of complaints

00:24:56 ◼   ► about your app sending an ad,

00:24:57 ◼   ► somehow collect those things and say to the person,

00:25:00 ◼   ► you know, you're not supposed to do that.

00:25:01 ◼   ► It says this guideline.

00:25:02 ◼   ► Okay, my bad.

00:25:03 ◼   ► That's one strike.

00:25:04 ◼   ► And the second time they do it to say like, you know,

00:25:05 ◼   ► hey, we told you about this before

00:25:07 ◼   ► and it seems like you're still doing it.

00:25:08 ◼   ► You really need to stop doing that

00:25:10 ◼   ► because if we get more reports of you doing it again,

00:25:11 ◼   ► we're gonna pull you out from the store.

00:25:13 ◼   ► And then whether it's three strikes

00:25:14 ◼   ► because it's a baseball analogy

00:25:15 ◼   ► or something entirely different,

00:25:16 ◼   ► like they are totally in a position to talk to the people

00:25:19 ◼   ► about something because it's a willful violation.

00:25:22 ◼   ► It's not like, oh, I accidentally use something

00:25:24 ◼   ► that calls a private API.

00:25:25 ◼   ► Like those things happen all the time.

00:25:26 ◼   ► People aren't doing that intentionally.

00:25:27 ◼   ► There's no accidental push notifications for ads happening.

00:25:30 ◼   ► ♪ I can sit down and talk ♪

00:25:31 ◼   ► Maybe once you don't know about it,

00:25:33 ◼   ► maybe twice, oh, you didn't quite get it worked out,

00:25:35 ◼   ► but like three or four or five times,

00:25:37 ◼   ► or maybe it resets after a year or whatever,

00:25:39 ◼   ► they're in such a powerful position

00:25:40 ◼   ► to tell anybody in the App Store, you need to stop this.

00:25:43 ◼   ► And they don't need to be perfect.

00:25:44 ◼   ► They don't need to catch every single one,

00:25:45 ◼   ► but there has to be repercussions.

00:25:47 ◼   ► Right now, people are terrified to make,

00:25:50 ◼   ► and we'll talk about this maybe the next topic,

00:25:52 ◼   ► terrified to make notifications

00:25:53 ◼   ► at their widgets and stuff in iOS

00:25:55 ◼   ► 'cause they're afraid they're gonna get pulled,

00:25:56 ◼   ► but nobody's afraid to send push notifications

00:25:58 ◼   ► 'cause there's no repercussions.

00:25:59 ◼   ► and Apple has all the power.

00:26:01 ◼   ► They can, at their leisure, whenever they want,

00:26:03 ◼   ► according to whatever schedule they want,

00:26:05 ◼   ► put the fear of Apple into every single developer and say,

00:26:08 ◼   ► "Yeah, we may just pull your app if you keep doing that."

00:26:10 ◼   ► But they don't, there's no consequences,

00:26:12 ◼   ► they don't collect this data,

00:26:13 ◼   ► there's no three strikes policy,

00:26:15 ◼   ► it's just, you know,

00:26:16 ◼   ► it's completely falling through the cracks.

00:26:18 ◼   ► - Well, that's the thing, and you hit the nail on the head

00:26:20 ◼   ► and that they're enforcing the wrong stuff.

00:26:23 ◼   ► They're tearing apart all of these today widgets,

00:26:26 ◼   ► which maybe we should take a pause and then talk about that,

00:26:28 ◼   ► rather than going after all these

00:26:31 ◼   ► ridiculous push notifications.

00:26:33 ◼   ► And a lot of people have called for,

00:26:35 ◼   ► and I think they're right,

00:26:37 ◼   ► like I think one of you just said this,

00:26:38 ◼   ► but having some way of reporting them,

00:26:40 ◼   ► and I think it was Paul Haddad had said,

00:26:44 ◼   ► if you do, what is it, a right to left swipe,

00:26:46 ◼   ► did I get that correct?

00:26:47 ◼   ► Anyway, it doesn't matter.

00:26:48 ◼   ► If you do the swipe the one direction

00:26:50 ◼   ► to take action on the particular push notification

00:26:54 ◼   ► you just got, well, let's use swipe in the other direction

00:26:57 ◼   ► to like report for spam or something along those lines.

00:27:00 ◼   ► And I don't think that's a bad idea.

00:27:01 ◼   ► And I don't think most regular users have any idea

00:27:05 ◼   ► that you can get pretty granular

00:27:08 ◼   ► with your push notification settings,

00:27:10 ◼   ► more so than almost anything else I can think of in iOS.

00:27:13 ◼   ► And so I think a lot of people just live with all the spam.

00:27:16 ◼   ► And that begs the question,

00:27:17 ◼   ► if there's this much spam coming onto their phones,

00:27:20 ◼   ► at what point do people start feeling

00:27:22 ◼   ► like that degrades the experience?

00:27:23 ◼   ► Well, I love my iPhone,

00:27:24 ◼   ► except that it's constantly buzzing with weird messages

00:27:27 ◼   ► that I really don't care about

00:27:28 ◼   ► and I wish I could make them go away.

00:27:30 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:27:31 ◼   ► Marco, you wanna tell us about something that's cool?

00:27:33 ◼   ► - We are also sponsored this week by Harry's.

00:27:35 ◼   ► Go to harrys.com, H-A-R-R-Y-S.com

00:27:38 ◼   ► and use the promo code ATPHOLIDAY,

00:27:41 ◼   ► special one this week, ATPHOLIDAY, all one word,

00:27:44 ◼   ► to save $5 off your first purchase.

00:27:46 ◼   ► Do you have someone in your gift list

00:27:47 ◼   ► that's impossible to shop for,

00:27:49 ◼   ► that guy in your life who has everything?

00:27:51 ◼   ► Holiday shopping for these people in your life

00:27:53 ◼   ► can be stressful, time-consuming, and frustrating.

00:27:55 ◼   ► The last thing you wanna do is go to the mall

00:27:57 ◼   ► and try to find something.

00:27:58 ◼   ► Have you considered gifting razors?

00:28:00 ◼   ► How about a Harry's razor?

00:28:02 ◼   ► Razors are not a typical gift.

00:28:03 ◼   ► You'd never go to a drugstore and pick up a razor as a gift

00:28:05 ◼   ► because drugstore razors are flimsy, tacky,

00:28:07 ◼   ► and really nothing special.

00:28:09 ◼   ► Harry's came out with a limited edition line

00:28:11 ◼   ► just for the holidays, starting at just $15,

00:28:13 ◼   ► including free shipping.

00:28:16 ◼   ► They have this one that's really nice.

00:28:17 ◼   ► It's called the Winter Winston Set.

00:28:19 ◼   ► And the Winter Winston Set is only $30

00:28:21 ◼   ► for a sleek chrome razor, three high quality blades,

00:28:24 ◼   ► and their amazing foaming shave gel or shaving cream.

00:28:27 ◼   ► It's already gift wrap and shipping is always free.

00:28:30 ◼   ► And as a special holiday offer,

00:28:32 ◼   ► Harry's giving our listeners $5 off

00:28:34 ◼   ► with promo code ATPHOLIDAY.

00:28:36 ◼   ► That's right, even those of you

00:28:38 ◼   ► who are already loyal Harry's users

00:28:40 ◼   ► will get $5 off a Winter Winston set

00:28:43 ◼   ► with promo code ATPHOLIDAY.

00:28:45 ◼   ► You get the razor, three quality blades,

00:28:47 ◼   ► and a tube of their foaming shave gel or shave cream

00:28:49 ◼   ► for just $25 shipped.

00:28:51 ◼   ► That's amazing.

00:28:52 ◼   ► Harry's.com was started by two guys

00:28:54 ◼   ► passionate about creating a better shaving experience

00:28:56 ◼   ► for all men.

00:28:57 ◼   ► We've talked about them before.

00:28:58 ◼   ► I like Harry's razor stuff.

00:28:59 ◼   ► I think I said before, I would say it is comparable

00:29:02 ◼   ► to a Gillette Fusion cartridge in shave quality,

00:29:06 ◼   ► but it costs half as much.

00:29:08 ◼   ► And the handles and the cream are awesome.

00:29:11 ◼   ► The handles are way better than fusions.

00:29:14 ◼   ► Nice like heavy weighty metal handles.

00:29:16 ◼   ► And they just look really classy.

00:29:18 ◼   ► It's like, you know, nice classy old style.

00:29:20 ◼   ► Harry's is also the gift that gives back.

00:29:21 ◼   ► Harry supports the community by donating 1% of sales

00:29:24 ◼   ► and volunteering 1% of all employee time

00:29:27 ◼   ► with their community partner, City Year.

00:29:29 ◼   ► The holidays are a time for thanks and giving,

00:29:31 ◼   ► and giving Harry is something you can feel good about.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Go to harrys.com now and get $5 off a Winter Winston set

00:29:37 ◼   ► with the code ATPHOLIDAY.

00:29:39 ◼   ► That's right, as a special limited time offer

00:29:41 ◼   ► for the holiday, Harry's giving all new

00:29:43 ◼   ► and existing Harry's customers $5 off

00:29:46 ◼   ► the Winter Winston set.

00:29:47 ◼   ► That's harrys, H-A-R-R-Y-S, .com,

00:29:51 ◼   ► and enter coupon code ATPHOLIDAY at checkout

00:29:54 ◼   ► for $5 off the winter Winston.

00:29:56 ◼   ► Harry's a shave good enough to gift.

00:29:58 ◼   ► - You know what I like best about the Harry's handle,

00:30:01 ◼   ► the shaving handle thing?

00:30:03 ◼   ► It's not shaped like some part of a transformer.

00:30:06 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:30:07 ◼   ► Like it's not like I'm holding

00:30:08 ◼   ► a tiny skinny robot in my hand.

00:30:10 ◼   ► I don't know when that started, maybe.

00:30:12 ◼   ► I think it started even when I was a teenager.

00:30:13 ◼   ► The razor handles had to look like transformers.

00:30:16 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense.

00:30:17 ◼   ► It's like make it comfortable.

00:30:18 ◼   ► - Am I supposed to say H,

00:30:20 ◼   ► - So the British people understand what I'm saying,

00:30:21 ◼   ► even when I spell it out?

00:30:22 ◼   ► - Uh, the way they complain about hover,

00:30:26 ◼   ► you probably should.

00:30:27 ◼   ► - H-A-R-R-Y-S dot com.

00:30:30 ◼   ► Harries.

00:30:30 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:30:32 ◼   ► - All right, so do you wanna talk about today widgets,

00:30:34 ◼   ► 'cause as if this episode wasn't grumpy enough,

00:30:36 ◼   ► let's get even grumpier.

00:30:37 ◼   ► So one of the friends of the show, Greg Pierce,

00:30:39 ◼   ► writes an iOS app called Drafts,

00:30:41 ◼   ► and he had a pretty cool today widget, from what I gather,

00:30:46 ◼   ► where there are several buttons that will let you

00:30:48 ◼   ► do several different things,

00:30:49 ◼   ► including start a new draft in the app.

00:30:53 ◼   ► And apparently he was told by Apple,

00:30:56 ◼   ► was it today or yesterday, recently,

00:30:58 ◼   ► that if he wants to continue to have his app in the app store

00:31:02 ◼   ► he needs to take away those buttons from his today widget,

00:31:05 ◼   ► which was effectively the entire today widget.

00:31:08 ◼   ► So here it is, he's getting told

00:31:10 ◼   ► you cannot have anything really interactive

00:31:13 ◼   ► in the today widget, that's not fair.

00:31:14 ◼   ► Anything that involves like creation,

00:31:17 ◼   ► I forget how he phrased it,

00:31:18 ◼   ► I don't have the tweet in front of me,

00:31:19 ◼   ► but it's something along the lines of,

00:31:20 ◼   ► it's for viewing data only.

00:31:23 ◼   ► - Right, well so, and I think we need to be very clear

00:31:25 ◼   ► on this because a lot of the tweets and stuff flying around

00:31:27 ◼   ► have not been, and Greg clarified this too,

00:31:31 ◼   ► but it's important that if we're talking about this,

00:31:33 ◼   ► we're talking about the right thing.

00:31:35 ◼   ► So it appears, and unfortunately this seems

00:31:38 ◼   ► to be constantly shifting, but it appears that

00:31:41 ◼   ► the reason why Apple is not letting them have those buttons

00:31:44 ◼   ► in the app is not because they are buttons necessarily.

00:31:47 ◼   ► It is because they launched the app from the widget

00:31:51 ◼   ► to complete a task or to do a task in the app.

00:31:54 ◼   ► And that is what Apple is saying you can't do.

00:31:57 ◼   ► Whether you agree with that or not, we can talk about,

00:31:59 ◼   ► but Apple is not saying you can't have buttons.

00:32:03 ◼   ► They're saying you can't launch the app

00:32:06 ◼   ► from the extension to complete a task.

00:32:08 ◼   ► - Was that something that was known beforehand

00:32:10 ◼   ► or they just decide that now or seemingly make it up?

00:32:13 ◼   ► - They seemingly made it up.

00:32:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've heard, and yes, and you know,

00:32:17 ◼   ► Monty underscore underscore in the chatroom is saying,

00:32:19 ◼   ► dash Evernote does that exactly, Marco, I know that.

00:32:23 ◼   ► And there are other apps that do that.

00:32:24 ◼   ► This is, as John was saying earlier,

00:32:26 ◼   ► part of the problem with App Review,

00:32:28 ◼   ► that a lot of times the rules are not enforced consistently.

00:32:30 ◼   ► And a lot of times, like Evernote might have been approved,

00:32:33 ◼   ► and they made like a little note to their boss saying,

00:32:36 ◼   ► hey, we might wanna consider the policy

00:32:39 ◼   ► on whether they can do this or not.

00:32:41 ◼   ► And then, you know, eventually they make that decision

00:32:43 ◼   ► and then draft gets hit by it,

00:32:45 ◼   ► and then maybe Evernote will get hit by it

00:32:46 ◼   ► in the future next time they try to update,

00:32:48 ◼   ► or maybe Apple will send them a pleasant phone call.

00:32:51 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:32:52 ◼   ► But the point is these rules are evolving,

00:32:55 ◼   ► and it's really a bad scene for all parties involved.

00:32:59 ◼   ► I think Apple is obviously,

00:33:02 ◼   ► Apple is never going to say,

00:33:03 ◼   ► "These are the rules, they are set in stone,

00:33:05 ◼   ► "and they are complete."

00:33:06 ◼   ► They even say in the rules document,

00:33:08 ◼   ► I think it says in the intro that it's like

00:33:09 ◼   ► a living document and it will be changed over time,

00:33:11 ◼   ► and they're gonna change their mind on rules,

00:33:13 ◼   ► they're gonna figure out new rules.

00:33:15 ◼   ► - Well see, the fact that they change over time,

00:33:17 ◼   ► like we'd expect them to change over time,

00:33:19 ◼   ► to change in response to changing markets,

00:33:22 ◼   ► to be refined and made more specific

00:33:24 ◼   ► and clarify things that are unclear,

00:33:26 ◼   ► that's why it's so important to do the thing

00:33:28 ◼   ► that Apple seems not to do that well,

00:33:30 ◼   ► which is explain the motivations.

00:33:32 ◼   ► Because if you say, here's a set of rules

00:33:34 ◼   ► and what we're trying to do with these rules is,

00:33:36 ◼   ► and then explain their motivations,

00:33:38 ◼   ► because the motivations let you say,

00:33:39 ◼   ► well, the rule doesn't say anything about this specifically,

00:33:42 ◼   ► but does it violate the spirit of the law?

00:33:45 ◼   ► We have the letter of the law,

00:33:46 ◼   ► we don't necessarily have the spirit.

00:33:48 ◼   ► Is there a good chance that this is like borderline

00:33:51 ◼   ► and might get rejected or, you know,

00:33:53 ◼   ► usually you can tell if you're trying to skirt a rule,

00:33:55 ◼   ► like you know you're doing that,

00:33:55 ◼   ► but sometimes you're just like,

00:33:58 ◼   ► the example I just put in the show notes

00:33:59 ◼   ► is James Thompson's PCALC,

00:34:02 ◼   ► where he made a, PCALC is a calendar application calculator

00:34:06 ◼   ► for iOS and the Mac.

00:34:08 ◼   ► And he made a little calculator in the today widget,

00:34:13 ◼   ► just a number pad with plus, minus, multi,

00:34:15 ◼   ► it's a calculator, right?

00:34:16 ◼   ► And that the whole time he was making that,

00:34:19 ◼   ► he's like, boy, this is a perfect example of a today widget

00:34:22 ◼   ► because it just so happens

00:34:23 ◼   ► that an extremely simplified version

00:34:25 ◼   ► of the functionality of my application

00:34:26 ◼   ► fits within a today widget

00:34:28 ◼   ► because the big calculator app, it's very complicated,

00:34:31 ◼   ► it's got a customizable keyboard

00:34:32 ◼   ► and a tape and scientific notation

00:34:34 ◼   ► and programmable functions like that.

00:34:36 ◼   ► But I can give you a simple

00:34:37 ◼   ► add a bunch of numbers together thing here.

00:34:39 ◼   ► And he got rejected.

00:34:40 ◼   ► And I haven't talked to him about this,

00:34:43 ◼   ► so I don't know whether this is the case,

00:34:45 ◼   ► but from seeing his tweets about it,

00:34:47 ◼   ► it seems like he spent the entire time since WWDC,

00:34:50 ◼   ► since iOS 8 was announced until now,

00:34:52 ◼   ► working on this widget,

00:34:53 ◼   ► never in a million years thinking

00:34:57 ◼   ► this widget is gonna get rejected

00:34:59 ◼   ► because you're not allowed to have calculators

00:35:00 ◼   ► as in a today widget, right?

00:35:02 ◼   ► It just didn't even occur to him

00:35:03 ◼   ► because looking at the rules,

00:35:05 ◼   ► there's nothing from what he could define

00:35:06 ◼   ► from the spirit of the rules that said this type of thing

00:35:09 ◼   ► would cause it to be rejected.

00:35:11 ◼   ► Now I'm pretty sure this was fairly quickly reversed.

00:35:13 ◼   ► I think it's back in the store now or whatever.

00:35:15 ◼   ► - That's correct.

00:35:16 ◼   ► But it was reversed after we all loudly publicized it.

00:35:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, after we all, you know,

00:35:20 ◼   ► because he's a well-known developer,

00:35:22 ◼   ► a long time Apple developer, there was lots of stories.

00:35:24 ◼   ► Is that why it got reversed?

00:35:26 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe not.

00:35:27 ◼   ► Maybe it was just a mistake or whatever.

00:35:29 ◼   ► But that type of experience

00:35:30 ◼   ► where you think you're doing exactly what Apple wants.

00:35:33 ◼   ► Like you're coming home from WWC and you're like,

00:35:35 ◼   ► "Boy, I'm totally on board with this thing.

00:35:37 ◼   ► I'm going to make a great,

00:35:39 ◼   ► I'm going to take advantage of these new APIs you made."

00:35:41 ◼   ► Like that's what WAC is trying to get you to do.

00:35:43 ◼   ► Here's this new software, here are these new APIs.

00:35:45 ◼   ► Now go out there and make something great with it.

00:35:47 ◼   ► And you do it and it's just like, nope, reject it.

00:35:49 ◼   ► And you're like, what do you mean reject it?

00:35:50 ◼   ► And you know you have no recourse.

00:35:52 ◼   ► You know, this is the appeals process,

00:35:53 ◼   ► but like it's so difficult to talk to someone

00:35:55 ◼   ► and you just don't understand.

00:35:57 ◼   ► You say, "I didn't think I was skirting a rule.

00:35:59 ◼   ► I didn't think I was even close to any lines.

00:36:01 ◼   ► Nothing in these things would indicate to me

00:36:02 ◼   ► that I would ever get rejected."

00:36:04 ◼   ► And then you just get rejected.

00:36:05 ◼   ► And would it have been reversed

00:36:07 ◼   ► if he wasn't such a well-known person

00:36:08 ◼   ► in the Apple community?

00:36:09 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe not.

00:36:10 ◼   ► You're never gonna get an explanation of why it happened,

00:36:13 ◼   ► or at least not a public one.

00:36:14 ◼   ► And there's just nothing in there.

00:36:16 ◼   ► What are you trying to do with these?

00:36:19 ◼   ► What are you trying to prevent from happening?

00:36:20 ◼   ► You're launching another application?

00:36:21 ◼   ► No. Are you putting advertisements in there?

00:36:23 ◼   ► No. Are you putting a tiny little game inside there?

00:36:25 ◼   ► No. It's just,

00:36:26 ◼   ► it's exposing some functionality in your application.

00:36:28 ◼   ► It's like, it's exactly what you think you were supposed to do.

00:36:30 ◼   ► So that type of stuff,

00:36:32 ◼   ► again, frustration by proxy.

00:36:33 ◼   ► I don't have an app in the app store.

00:36:34 ◼   ► It doesn't affect me, but it's just,

00:36:37 ◼   ► it makes me upset that this happens.

00:36:41 ◼   ► It's like mismanagement.

00:36:42 ◼   ► Especially when it's immediately reversed.

00:36:44 ◼   ► It's just bad blood for no good reason.

00:36:46 ◼   ► - Right, and I think what you just said about,

00:36:48 ◼   ► oh, well, he wasn't putting a little game in there

00:36:50 ◼   ► or anything, I think that should be allowed too.

00:36:52 ◼   ► I think what we're seeing here is Apple is obviously

00:36:57 ◼   ► still trying to figure out what the rules around this are.

00:37:00 ◼   ► And I think the rules should have already been decided

00:37:04 ◼   ► for the most part and should be pretty clear to them.

00:37:06 ◼   ► And I think they are exerting a lot more

00:37:09 ◼   ► like nanny state level control over this than is warranted.

00:37:13 ◼   ► Because from their point, and secondarily,

00:37:16 ◼   ► maybe the reason they don't want apps to launch themselves

00:37:19 ◼   ► or other apps from notifications or from today view,

00:37:23 ◼   ► maybe there's a security angle on that, I don't know.

00:37:26 ◼   ► If there is a security angle on that,

00:37:28 ◼   ► Apple should fix that security angle and then allow it.

00:37:30 ◼   ► Because like, that's stupid.

00:37:33 ◼   ► So maybe this is a security thing and that's the reason.

00:37:36 ◼   ► We haven't been told that, but regardless,

00:37:38 ◼   ► that's something worth fixing and then allowing.

00:37:41 ◼   ► I think what we're seeing here is Apple saying,

00:37:44 ◼   ► here's this great new system we've made, very powerful,

00:37:48 ◼   ► but we're gonna be extremely cautious

00:37:50 ◼   ► so that we don't allow users

00:37:52 ◼   ► to make a bad experience for themselves.

00:37:54 ◼   ► That is Apple's typical MO.

00:37:56 ◼   ► However, the way they've done it here is,

00:37:59 ◼   ► first of all, the process of adding a today widget

00:38:03 ◼   ► to your today view is pretty deliberate.

00:38:06 ◼   ► Like, you don't just install an app

00:38:09 ◼   ► and all of a sudden it's automatically in your today view.

00:38:11 ◼   ► Like, that doesn't happen.

00:38:13 ◼   ► You have to manually go and add it.

00:38:15 ◼   ► And that's a process that I would imagine most users

00:38:18 ◼   ► don't know how to do, don't care to do,

00:38:19 ◼   ► and are certainly not gonna be able to do it accidentally

00:38:22 ◼   ► too many times and not even knowing how they did it.

00:38:24 ◼   ► - And it's considerably harder than, say,

00:38:26 ◼   ► accepting push notifications for an app.

00:38:28 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, like, the app can't just present

00:38:30 ◼   ► a button that does this.

00:38:31 ◼   ► Like you have to actually go into your today view

00:38:34 ◼   ► and like go down to like the edit area

00:38:36 ◼   ► or whatever it is and add it.

00:38:38 ◼   ► Like you have to deliberately put these things there.

00:38:41 ◼   ► Because of that, so you have chosen to download this app,

00:38:45 ◼   ► you have chosen to add its widget to today view,

00:38:48 ◼   ► I don't think Apple needs to be as protective

00:38:52 ◼   ► of what's there because the user has chosen,

00:38:55 ◼   ► put this here, please, I am wanting,

00:38:57 ◼   ► this is so important to me, I want this in my today view.

00:39:00 ◼   ► 'cause the today view, it doesn't scale well

00:39:03 ◼   ► to having tons of crap there.

00:39:05 ◼   ► You're gonna be picking a small number of things

00:39:07 ◼   ► to put there in all likelihood.

00:39:08 ◼   ► So Apple's concern, if I had to guess,

00:39:12 ◼   ► it's about keeping that simple and lightweight.

00:39:15 ◼   ► But they don't have to do that

00:39:16 ◼   ► because the process of adding those things

00:39:17 ◼   ► is already so deliberate and difficult.

00:39:19 ◼   ► And it doesn't handle having a lot in there

00:39:22 ◼   ► just design-wise already that I think

00:39:25 ◼   ► anything that an app is allowed to do in itself,

00:39:29 ◼   ► it should be allowed to do there too.

00:39:31 ◼   ► I don't think Apple is doing itself or its customers,

00:39:35 ◼   ► and certainly not its developers, any favors

00:39:38 ◼   ► by trying to say, well, you can put things here

00:39:41 ◼   ► and it's a UI view, you can render into it

00:39:44 ◼   ► whenever you want and you can have buttons and stuff,

00:39:47 ◼   ► but we only want it to be for these quick glance

00:39:50 ◼   ► kind of tasks, like that's a really hard line to draw.

00:39:52 ◼   ► We're seeing the problems with them trying to draw that line

00:39:55 ◼   ► And I think it's just, it's a bad idea

00:39:59 ◼   ► to even try to draw that line.

00:40:00 ◼   ► I think if somebody downloads a game,

00:40:02 ◼   ► let's say it's a game that puts Pong

00:40:05 ◼   ► in your notification center.

00:40:06 ◼   ► It's a Pong game and you can install the Pong Today widget

00:40:09 ◼   ► and you can play Pong in your Today view.

00:40:12 ◼   ► That's, you know, that's not a great idea for a game

00:40:15 ◼   ► but someone's gonna do it and make a billion dollars.

00:40:17 ◼   ► I will take my royalty later.

00:40:19 ◼   ► But if you wanna do that as a user,

00:40:22 ◼   ► why does Apple have to say, no, you can't do that?

00:40:25 ◼   ► That's not what this is for.

00:40:27 ◼   ► You have to go to the app for that.

00:40:29 ◼   ► You chose to get the app,

00:40:30 ◼   ► you chose to put it in Notification Center,

00:40:31 ◼   ► you chose to bring it down and play Pong with it.

00:40:34 ◼   ► This is not something that I see

00:40:37 ◼   ► ripe for abuse from developers

00:40:39 ◼   ► if you let them just do whatever they want with

00:40:41 ◼   ► in their little view there.

00:40:42 ◼   ► - Do you suspect that app review

00:40:44 ◼   ► is part of Federighi's organization?

00:40:47 ◼   ► - If I had to guess, I would say Schiller's.

00:40:49 ◼   ► 'Cause it's part of developer relations, I think,

00:40:51 ◼   ► which is part of Schiller's.

00:40:52 ◼   ► - Right, I agree.

00:40:53 ◼   ► Well, could it be something as simple as,

00:40:57 ◼   ► you know, as far as engineering is concerned,

00:40:59 ◼   ► it's the Wild West in a good way, not in a bad way.

00:41:03 ◼   ► But Schiller's group is like, "Uh-uh, uh-uh, that's no good."

00:41:07 ◼   ► - But Schiller, well, all right,

00:41:08 ◼   ► so Eddy Cue is the App Store guy, right?

00:41:11 ◼   ► - Yes. - Running the App Store.

00:41:12 ◼   ► All right, and so Peacock, the weird thing with Peacock,

00:41:15 ◼   ► as Jason Snell pointed out in the chat room,

00:41:16 ◼   ► is that Peacock was accepted,

00:41:19 ◼   ► Peacock was promoted with like the big banner

00:41:21 ◼   ► in the App Store with the big artwork and everything,

00:41:23 ◼   ► accepted to the App Store, promoted, and then rejected.

00:41:26 ◼   ► - It was rejected while it was in the promotion.

00:41:28 ◼   ► - Right, so people who are responsible for saying,

00:41:30 ◼   ► "Hey, here's an application that demonstrates

00:41:32 ◼   ► this is a great iOS app.

00:41:34 ◼   ► This shows a developer is using our new APIs,

00:41:36 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah, whatever."

00:41:37 ◼   ► They choose what to promote.

00:41:38 ◼   ► That's Schiller's organization, maybe,

00:41:41 ◼   ► but EdiQ runs a store where it's promoted.

00:41:43 ◼   ► I don't understand how it's working,

00:41:44 ◼   ► but it seems entirely plausible

00:41:46 ◼   ► that one hand didn't know what the other hand was doing.

00:41:48 ◼   ► On the one hand, some people are picking out applications

00:41:51 ◼   ► they think are worthy to promote in the App Store.

00:41:53 ◼   ► And on the other hand, someone else is rejecting PCAL

00:41:55 ◼   ► 'cause they think you shouldn't have a calculator thing

00:41:57 ◼   ► in the state.

00:41:58 ◼   ► And then eventually those people got together

00:41:59 ◼   ► and maybe talked and then the app was unrejected.

00:42:01 ◼   ► But it does not inspire confidence in the organization

00:42:06 ◼   ► when stuff like that happens because like,

00:42:08 ◼   ► guys, talk to each other, figure out what's going on here.

00:42:11 ◼   ► And especially since again,

00:42:14 ◼   ► we're trying to divine the motivations.

00:42:16 ◼   ► We're like, could we have foreseen this?

00:42:18 ◼   ► Is there anything in what Apple has ever said

00:42:21 ◼   ► from any public and private communication

00:42:23 ◼   ► about today widgets that would indicate to you beforehand

00:42:27 ◼   ► that this thing was even close to any boundaries

00:42:29 ◼   ► of something that you didn't want to have.

00:42:30 ◼   ► Because it's not, you know,

00:42:31 ◼   ► as much as your spirited defense of the Pong game, right,

00:42:35 ◼   ► because of the way today's center widgets work,

00:42:37 ◼   ► I think anybody doing that could have a reasonable

00:42:40 ◼   ► expectation that you were outside the bounds

00:42:41 ◼   ► of what a today's center widget is supposed to be.

00:42:43 ◼   ► Because it's so far out of the bounds of anything

00:42:45 ◼   ► that Apple has shown.

00:42:46 ◼   ► But Apple has shown things that are exactly

00:42:49 ◼   ► like a calculator type thing,

00:42:50 ◼   ► like a small vaguely interactive graph

00:42:53 ◼   ► or some information that you can swipe to do something

00:42:56 ◼   ► or a couple of buttons you can press.

00:42:58 ◼   ► It's adding numbers for crying out loud.

00:43:00 ◼   ► I mean, I know there are technical limitations

00:43:02 ◼   ► on today's center, which is in terms of like,

00:43:05 ◼   ► today's center, whatever the hell these things are called.

00:43:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:43:08 ◼   ► Limitations on like when your app is gonna be instantiated

00:43:11 ◼   ► and how quickly you're gonna be torn down

00:43:13 ◼   ► and like, you're not, you can't cram in,

00:43:16 ◼   ► you can't take a long time to initialize.

00:43:17 ◼   ► You don't have long time to tear yourself down

00:43:20 ◼   ► and you're getting pulled out.

00:43:20 ◼   ► Like there are limitations on putting it,

00:43:22 ◼   ► but if you're working within that context,

00:43:25 ◼   ► something like a procedurally drawn Pong game

00:43:28 ◼   ► or a calculator that has numbers, it's perfectly fine.

00:43:31 ◼   ► So it just doesn't make any sense.

00:43:34 ◼   ► And so when Apple does stuff like that,

00:43:36 ◼   ► this is the bad blood I was talking about.

00:43:37 ◼   ► When stuff like that happens, you're like,

00:43:39 ◼   ► it's not a big deal, but it gave one developer

00:43:42 ◼   ► a lot of stress for a day or two and doesn't make any sense.

00:43:45 ◼   ► and it makes it look like Apple is an organization

00:43:47 ◼   ► that doesn't have its stuff together, you know?

00:43:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it also, it does have a chilling effect

00:43:53 ◼   ► on other development.

00:43:54 ◼   ► Like, there's a, like, I mean, I don't have any plans

00:43:57 ◼   ► for a today widget, 'cause I don't think it makes

00:43:59 ◼   ► a lot of sense for Overcast, but if I had plans for it,

00:44:02 ◼   ► I would certainly be reconsidering them now,

00:44:04 ◼   ► because I don't know, like, as a developer,

00:44:07 ◼   ► like, should I invest a few months into doing something

00:44:10 ◼   ► that will very possibly get my app rejected in the future

00:44:13 ◼   ► and have to pull it out?

00:44:14 ◼   ► Like, it's such a big risk.

00:44:16 ◼   ► There are so many, and especially for apps like Draft,

00:44:20 ◼   ► like Peacock, where it's a bigger undertaking,

00:44:22 ◼   ► it's a bigger selling feature,

00:44:25 ◼   ► I don't know that I would be developing

00:44:27 ◼   ► for Notification Center widgets right now.

00:44:28 ◼   ► It's just not worth the risk.

00:44:30 ◼   ► - All right, why don't you tell us about something

00:44:32 ◼   ► that's cool, that maybe will make us a little happier

00:44:34 ◼   ► than this fiasco?

00:44:36 ◼   ► - Have you ever built a website, Casey?

00:44:38 ◼   ► - You know, once or twice.

00:44:40 ◼   ► - Building a website used to take a long time.

00:44:42 ◼   ► You would just set it all up yourself manually,

00:44:44 ◼   ► spend all day troubleshooting random errors and stuff.

00:44:47 ◼   ► If you ever had to edit the site,

00:44:49 ◼   ► it'd be pretty easy to break your links

00:44:50 ◼   ► or even break the whole site, break the layout,

00:44:52 ◼   ► put in like a space in the wrong place

00:44:54 ◼   ► and break your PHP file.

00:44:56 ◼   ► Sometimes even just changing the font color

00:44:57 ◼   ► would be a huge headache.

00:44:59 ◼   ► Now we have Squarespace,

00:45:00 ◼   ► and you can build beautiful websites with it without a sweat.

00:45:03 ◼   ► If you're new to Squarespace, check it out today.

00:45:05 ◼   ► If you've been hearing about Squarespace for a long time,

00:45:07 ◼   ► well now there's more with the brand new Squarespace 7.

00:45:10 ◼   ► Squarespace 7 has a whole bunch of really new features,

00:45:13 ◼   ► including a redesigned user interface,

00:45:15 ◼   ► they have integration with Google apps for your domain,

00:45:18 ◼   ► so you can have like your Squarespace domain

00:45:19 ◼   ► registered there, you can have your apps there,

00:45:21 ◼   ► you can have email, spreadsheets, documents,

00:45:23 ◼   ► all that set up through Squarespace

00:45:24 ◼   ► with the domain that's hosted by them.

00:45:26 ◼   ► They also have a new partnership with Getty Images.

00:45:28 ◼   ► So you can get 40 million high quality photos

00:45:31 ◼   ► for your site.

00:45:31 ◼   ► I mean, you probably don't need all 40 million of them,

00:45:33 ◼   ► but I bet there's something in there that you need.

00:45:35 ◼   ► You need an image for your site.

00:45:36 ◼   ► If you've ever tried to buy like a stock photo

00:45:38 ◼   ► or officially commercially licensed photo

00:45:40 ◼   ► from somewhere else, it's usually very complicated

00:45:42 ◼   ► get the right license, it's very expensive.

00:45:45 ◼   ► I did this for the magazine, I know how expensive

00:45:47 ◼   ► that can be and how complicated that can be.

00:45:49 ◼   ► They worked out a great partnership with Getty

00:45:50 ◼   ► so that you can pick 80 to 40 million high quality photos

00:45:55 ◼   ► for a post, for a header image, for a background image,

00:45:58 ◼   ► whatever you need, for just $10 an image.

00:46:01 ◼   ► It's really a fantastic deal and they take care

00:46:03 ◼   ► of all of it for you, you browse right

00:46:05 ◼   ► in the Squarespace interface, it's really great.

00:46:08 ◼   ► Anyway, they also have 15 new design templates

00:46:10 ◼   ► with Squarespace 7.

00:46:11 ◼   ► They have a great new feature called cover pages.

00:46:14 ◼   ► This is basically, it's either like an intro page

00:46:17 ◼   ► for your full site or it can be your site.

00:46:19 ◼   ► You can have like a nice single one page site.

00:46:21 ◼   ► You can put them up temporarily or permanently.

00:46:24 ◼   ► So you can do like a splash page to have promoting a sale

00:46:27 ◼   ► you're having or promoting a special or promoting a new post

00:46:30 ◼   ► you did or a new video you made.

00:46:32 ◼   ► Or you can just have a nice trendy intro page

00:46:34 ◼   ► to your full site.

00:46:35 ◼   ► They make it beautiful, they make it easy.

00:46:37 ◼   ► And I've seen this myself, it is really quite impressive.

00:46:40 ◼   ► This kind of stuff used to be really hard

00:46:42 ◼   ► and now it's really easy with Squarespace.

00:46:45 ◼   ► All this very simple, very powerful, beautiful designs.

00:46:49 ◼   ► You can customize them as much as you want.

00:46:51 ◼   ► You can be a nerd like us and actually inject HTML, CSS,

00:46:54 ◼   ► and JavaScript right into the template,

00:46:56 ◼   ► or you can use their drag and drop wizards

00:46:58 ◼   ► and it's all very easy.

00:47:00 ◼   ► It is great.

00:47:01 ◼   ► I love using Squarespace and there's so much there that,

00:47:04 ◼   ► like I, you know, our site for the show

00:47:06 ◼   ► is built on Squarespace.

00:47:07 ◼   ► I built a Squarespace site for my kids' preschool.

00:47:11 ◼   ► I mean, it's so, just so easy to use.

00:47:13 ◼   ► There are so many use cases for it

00:47:15 ◼   ► that you don't have, even if you know how to build websites,

00:47:17 ◼   ► you don't have to build every website you make.

00:47:19 ◼   ► And this is, I would recommend using Squarespace

00:47:22 ◼   ► for so many things that previously you'd try to do yourself

00:47:25 ◼   ► or you try to install some hosted CMS somewhere.

00:47:27 ◼   ► Anyway, you can start a free trial today

00:47:29 ◼   ► with no credit card required.

00:47:31 ◼   ► Start building your website.

00:47:32 ◼   ► When you do decide to sign up,

00:47:33 ◼   ► plans start at just $8 a month.

00:47:35 ◼   ► If you prepay for a whole year upfront,

00:47:37 ◼   ► you can get a free domain name for that.

00:47:39 ◼   ► Anyway, go to squarespace.com and use offer code ATP

00:47:43 ◼   ► to get 10% off your first purchase

00:47:45 ◼   ► and to show your support for our show.

00:47:47 ◼   ► We thank Squarespace once again for sponsoring our show.

00:47:49 ◼   ► Squarespace, start here, go anywhere.

00:47:52 ◼   ► - Do you wanna go totally meta and talk about podcasting?

00:47:54 ◼   ► 'Cause people love that.

00:47:56 ◼   ► - So our friend Alan Pike of Steam Clock Software,

00:47:59 ◼   ► wrote a great post that we'll link to in the show notes.

00:48:02 ◼   ► They basically considered and started researching

00:48:05 ◼   ► the possibility of making a podcast double-ender recording app.

00:48:11 ◼   ► In the post, they go through the rationale for why they wanted it, why they think there

00:48:15 ◼   ► was a market, and then as they did more research into the market and ran some numbers, they

00:48:19 ◼   ► realized they actually shouldn't make it because there just aren't enough podcasters

00:48:25 ◼   ► to really support it financially.

00:48:28 ◼   ► The market is just not big enough for it.

00:48:30 ◼   ► So our friend Rob Rhine at Martian Craft wrote kind of a follow-up, maybe a counterpoint

00:48:35 ◼   ► argument to it that was really good, basically saying, "You're targeting professionals,

00:48:41 ◼   ► somebody who uses an app to do their work, basically, to make their job possible or easier

00:48:47 ◼   ► or better, and when you're targeting professionals, it's easier to charge more money."

00:48:52 ◼   ► And so he was saying maybe there's a way to charge more money to the small number of

00:48:57 ◼   ► podcasters who might use such a thing and fund it that way. What did you think of these

00:49:01 ◼   ► when you read them?

00:49:02 ◼   ► I thought they were both really, really good posts. What I loved about Alan's was that

00:49:08 ◼   ► here was someone who actually put a little bit of thought into what he was doing, which

00:49:13 ◼   ► if you know Alan is of no surprise whatsoever, but he actually crunched numbers like you

00:49:18 ◼   ► were saying, Marco, and really thought about, okay, is this a viable business, which is

00:49:23 ◼   ► much better way of going about things than just throwing something against the wall and

00:49:27 ◼   ► seeing if it sticks. And I thought it was a really great post. And then Rob Reins was

00:49:34 ◼   ► equally great because he was saying, well, if you spin it one or two other ways that

00:49:40 ◼   ► you may or may not have considered Alan, there may be something there. And certainly both

00:49:46 ◼   ► of them have built successful businesses by making intelligent business decisions. And

00:49:53 ◼   ► I think Martian Craft is quite a bit bigger than Steam Clock, so you could make an argument

00:49:56 ◼   ► that Rob is coming from definitely a place of knowledge and experience.

00:50:02 ◼   ► Not that Alan isn't, but I think both of them make excellent points.

00:50:06 ◼   ► And whether or not you care about how the three of us make our podcast, it's still an

00:50:12 ◼   ► interesting thought process with regard to entering a new market.

00:50:16 ◼   ► When I read the original post about, "Hey, we're thinking about making this podcasting

00:50:22 ◼   ► Which is something I think we've talked about on the show before about the weird hodgepodge of things

00:50:26 ◼   ► We use to do the podcast and how one app that put it all together

00:50:29 ◼   ► We've been nicer, but we always said the same thing as Alan did in this thing

00:50:32 ◼   ► Well one app that puts all the other would be nicer, but the total market for people who need this app is small

00:50:37 ◼   ► and

00:50:39 ◼   ► You know probably those those people even if you sold every single one of them is probably still not a viable business

00:50:43 ◼   ► Which is what these two posts are about

00:50:44 ◼   ► but the real the real thing that I think about when

00:50:48 ◼   ► Reading the the original post about this app is just how incredibly hard it would be to do this app

00:50:52 ◼   ► Well because it encompasses so many other applications that are in themselves

00:50:56 ◼   ► complicated hard to do applications and and

00:50:59 ◼   ► Connecting things together is I think even harder than making a good audio editor a good audio recorder, you know a good, you know

00:51:08 ◼   ► Skype type application, whatever you want to call those voice communicate like

00:51:12 ◼   ► trying to either integrate

00:51:15 ◼   ► Multiple apps or build those things in and have them all work together

00:51:19 ◼   ► It's just incredibly hard to do a good job on so I think that just the development job on this would

00:51:25 ◼   ► I'm not gonna say it's harder than Photoshop because Photoshop is a very full-featured application

00:51:30 ◼   ► But it's harder than Photoshop 1.0

00:51:31 ◼   ► I can tell you that right to do all that all the things they all the things that we do with these separate applications as

00:51:38 ◼   ► Well as we're able to do them with these separate applications in the first version because that's what you would need you'd be like

00:51:45 ◼   ► Especially for a tech nerd type people's like well we get the job done now

00:51:48 ◼   ► But it would be nice if we didn't have these hassles

00:51:50 ◼   ► But how much you know how much money am I willing to give up for that and that's what the other

00:51:55 ◼   ► Follow-up post is about but also how much quality am I willing to give up for integration?

00:52:00 ◼   ► You're like well if I got this application and the pricing isn't a problem

00:52:05 ◼   ► But I get better results when I use these seven different applications that I'm already using so is the

00:52:10 ◼   ► Downgrading control or quality or whatever for the 1.0 version of this product, you know

00:52:14 ◼   ► It's it's a tough sell even for the people who you know money is no object. We don't care about the pricing

00:52:19 ◼   ► You can make it really expensive. What are you giving me? That is an improvement over what I have and

00:52:25 ◼   ► Especially just out the gate. I

00:52:27 ◼   ► Just can't don't see how it's going to be as good as whatever system everyone's using if you're gonna sell to new people

00:52:33 ◼   ► Hey, you don't know how to use these seven applications to make a podcast. It's really annoying

00:52:37 ◼   ► If you don't want to have to deal with that stuff or learn all that sort of witchcraft get this one application

00:52:42 ◼   ► Then I think you'd have a better shot at signing them because they don't know what it's like to use logic and Marco's weird audio

00:52:48 ◼   ► Aligner and Skype and all these other things that we use to sort of make this all work together

00:52:52 ◼   ► They don't know how to do all that

00:52:55 ◼   ► So you're giving them a shortcut to getting up and running but that market of people who want to do podcasting

00:53:01 ◼   ► But don't want to learn all the other applications

00:53:04 ◼   ► like how many new podcasts are coming on the scene at this point and how many of those people have max and you know the

00:53:10 ◼   ► whole idea of like will you be able to to send someone a link and they'll download an application and that'll hook them into this

00:53:15 ◼   ► app or whatever like

00:53:17 ◼   ► Man, I would not want to try to make the first version of that application at any price even if there was a huge market

00:53:23 ◼   ► So this application terrifies me from a development perspective because I think it would be really really hard to do

00:53:29 ◼   ► And I still think no matter how you price it. The market is really small

00:53:33 ◼   ► Now, the one good thing it has going for it is there,

00:53:37 ◼   ► not for integrated applications,

00:53:41 ◼   ► but for sort of expert level applications,

00:53:45 ◼   ► there is a market for a really, really difficult to use tool

00:53:50 ◼   ► that is really capable, but is also like full of bugs

00:53:53 ◼   ► and the vendor is annoying.

00:53:54 ◼   ► Like there's a long history of applications

00:53:56 ◼   ► that you can think of some, whatever application you use.

00:53:58 ◼   ► - Oh, like Logic?

00:53:59 ◼   ► - Avid, Logic, you know, even Photoshop to some degree,

00:54:03 ◼   ► Like those things exist.

00:54:05 ◼   ► So that must be,

00:54:06 ◼   ► maybe that's less possible today than it was,

00:54:09 ◼   ► but I still think those type of applications exist.

00:54:12 ◼   ► But I don't know if people wanna be in that software.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Even something like, not Final Cut,

00:54:18 ◼   ► Final Draft is actually kind of a weird example of that

00:54:20 ◼   ► where, listen to those John August podcasts

00:54:23 ◼   ► where there's one application

00:54:25 ◼   ► that everybody has to use that got entrenched

00:54:27 ◼   ► and the vendor is not the best vendor

00:54:29 ◼   ► and people kind of have this love-hate relationship with it

00:54:31 ◼   ► but it's like, it's the thing that everybody uses.

00:54:34 ◼   ► Yeah, someone else suggested Pro Tools.

00:54:35 ◼   ► Like that is the thing that happened

00:54:38 ◼   ► is that that's like kind of like a dysfunctional customer

00:54:41 ◼   ► and software vendor relationship, I feel like.

00:54:43 ◼   ► So I wouldn't want to go into that,

00:54:45 ◼   ► even though it appears to be a viable business model.

00:54:46 ◼   ► QuarkXPress is another example

00:54:48 ◼   ► that kind of eventually went sour, right?

00:54:50 ◼   ► So I think that that is what I see as a way

00:54:54 ◼   ► to make a business out of this,

00:54:55 ◼   ► but I wouldn't want to go,

00:54:57 ◼   ► I wouldn't want to be in that business.

00:54:59 ◼   ► And the other side of that, I was talking about like,

00:55:00 ◼   ► hey, make it a easy to use, integrated,

00:55:03 ◼   ► my first podcasting app that will not give you

00:55:05 ◼   ► as good a results as using these dedicated,

00:55:06 ◼   ► expensive applications in this mishmash

00:55:08 ◼   ► with Marco's special custom code.

00:55:09 ◼   ► Like it won't give you those kinds of results.

00:55:11 ◼   ► It will be buggy and weird,

00:55:13 ◼   ► and it will be really hard to pull off.

00:55:15 ◼   ► That I think is less viable

00:55:17 ◼   ► because I just think there are fewer people

00:55:19 ◼   ► trying to do podcasts in that way.

00:55:21 ◼   ► If anything, I think the only way

00:55:23 ◼   ► you can get an entry level app like that

00:55:24 ◼   ► is to target iOS and not the Mac,

00:55:26 ◼   ► and somehow get an audio interface in there

00:55:28 ◼   ► with the USB connector or something like that.

00:55:31 ◼   ► But man, my head hurts just thinking about this.

00:55:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, there's a number of big problems

00:55:37 ◼   ► with trying to make an app for podcasting.

00:55:39 ◼   ► And you nailed most of them.

00:55:41 ◼   ► It's like, first of all, having to work

00:55:44 ◼   ► with everybody's setups is not trivial.

00:55:48 ◼   ► Because this is a world where there's a huge variety,

00:55:52 ◼   ► a huge range of diversity of hardware

00:55:57 ◼   ► and hardware types, hardware setups,

00:55:59 ◼   ► logical setups of like,

00:56:03 ◼   ► do you have four people together in a studio

00:56:06 ◼   ► recording onto a multitrack mixer?

00:56:07 ◼   ► Do you have four people on Skype

00:56:10 ◼   ► who are all trying to talk at the same time?

00:56:11 ◼   ► Do you have, are you recording church sermons

00:56:14 ◼   ► and putting that out as a feed?

00:56:16 ◼   ► Are you recording off of a phone?

00:56:18 ◼   ► Do you have one person on a phone in Australia

00:56:20 ◼   ► while three people are in the UK

00:56:22 ◼   ► trying to talk without latency?

00:56:24 ◼   ► There's so many variations there.

00:56:26 ◼   ► There's also the huge variations in budget.

00:56:30 ◼   ► A lot of podcasts are produced in radio studios,

00:56:33 ◼   ► and a lot of them are produced on people's laptops,

00:56:36 ◼   ► and there's everything in between.

00:56:39 ◼   ► And all of that you have applied to what really

00:56:42 ◼   ► is a very small number of producers.

00:56:44 ◼   ► Overcast's entire directory, every feed I know exists,

00:56:48 ◼   ► I think I have a little over 200,000 of them.

00:56:51 ◼   ► From what I've heard, I've heard rumors about the size

00:56:54 ◼   ► of iTunes's directory being somewhere

00:56:56 ◼   ► around the 500,000 number.

00:56:58 ◼   ► And if I look at the number of,

00:57:02 ◼   ► so Overcast right now has about 180,000 users.

00:57:04 ◼   ► Of those, only about, I think something like 40,000 podcasts

00:57:09 ◼   ► actually have any subscribers.

00:57:11 ◼   ► So, obviously not everybody uses Overcast,

00:57:15 ◼   ► but I think that can give you some idea

00:57:18 ◼   ► of like roughly how many distinct podcasts

00:57:22 ◼   ► are even listened to by more than a couple of people.

00:57:26 ◼   ► And so I would put the number around 50,000 maybe.

00:57:29 ◼   ► And so you think about, all right,

00:57:32 ◼   ► so how many producers is that?

00:57:34 ◼   ► Not every one of those 50,000 that has listeners

00:57:37 ◼   ► is produced by a unique producer.

00:57:39 ◼   ► There's a lot of people who produce many shows,

00:57:42 ◼   ► radio stations, podcast networks.

00:57:45 ◼   ► So how many people actually edit podcasts

00:57:49 ◼   ► that are listened to by more than a couple of people?

00:57:51 ◼   ► that number starts getting smaller and smaller.

00:57:53 ◼   ► And you know, so as you go through these steps,

00:57:55 ◼   ► you start saying, all right, well,

00:57:56 ◼   ► how many people might,

00:57:57 ◼   ► how many people could even use an app I make?

00:58:00 ◼   ► And I would say generously,

00:58:02 ◼   ► the number of unique podcast producers

00:58:06 ◼   ► is probably less than 10,000.

00:58:08 ◼   ► Possibly a lot less than 10,000.

00:58:11 ◼   ► How many of them would be even willing to use my app?

00:58:15 ◼   ► 'Cause a lot of these people have their own workflows.

00:58:17 ◼   ► And this is like, when you get into like the pro

00:58:20 ◼   ► content production or the pro software markets,

00:58:23 ◼   ► you gotta fight with people's existing workflows.

00:58:25 ◼   ► So you have to say, all right, well,

00:58:28 ◼   ► I probably wouldn't use an app like this

00:58:29 ◼   ► 'cause I edit this show and I use Logic.

00:58:34 ◼   ► And Logic is not perfect, but it works.

00:58:38 ◼   ► And it's only 200 bucks, I think, or 300, I think it's 200.

00:58:41 ◼   ► So it's only 200 bucks, it works,

00:58:44 ◼   ► and I know there's a fairly decent chance

00:58:48 ◼   ► I'm not the only person using it.

00:58:50 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:58:50 ◼   ► And so, I know the number of using it for podcasting

00:58:53 ◼   ► is small, but the number of people using this

00:58:55 ◼   ► is gonna be big enough that if there's a major bug,

00:58:57 ◼   ► it'll probably get caught and fixed before it hits me.

00:59:01 ◼   ► And I know that I can buy this knowing that

00:59:05 ◼   ► it's gonna probably work on the next version of Mac OS X,

00:59:07 ◼   ► so I won't be stuck after an upgrade.

00:59:10 ◼   ► It's probably maybe going to be maintained in the future.

00:59:14 ◼   ► All these fears that no one ever got fired for buying IBM,

00:59:17 ◼   ► that kind of thing.

00:59:18 ◼   ► You generally wanna be conservative

00:59:20 ◼   ► in your choice of pro tools.

00:59:21 ◼   ► And so a small app would have to fight against

00:59:25 ◼   ► all of those factors for the chance to possibly win

00:59:30 ◼   ► a small percentage of a small number of people's business.

00:59:34 ◼   ► - The worst thing for the other app competing in this area

00:59:37 ◼   ► is that the other applications that people are using

00:59:41 ◼   ► just have to add a few features

00:59:43 ◼   ► to their existing mature applications,

00:59:46 ◼   ► like so audio editing apps, right?

00:59:47 ◼   ► There's plenty of established audio editing applications.

00:59:50 ◼   ► All they have to do is add one or two or three features

00:59:53 ◼   ► focused on podcasting,

00:59:54 ◼   ► say if they built in your audio alignment thing

00:59:56 ◼   ► for multi-track stuff.

00:59:58 ◼   ► That's like, oh, well, like if each one of the constituent

01:00:01 ◼   ► apps that you use for each function,

01:00:04 ◼   ► like if Skype adds some features focused on podcasting,

01:00:06 ◼   ► if Logic adds some features focused on podcasting,

01:00:08 ◼   ► and it like, you know,

01:00:09 ◼   ► Squarespace already has features focused on podcasts,

01:00:11 ◼   ► and like the integration of like all the different pieces

01:00:13 ◼   ► that we put everything together,

01:00:15 ◼   ► if they just kind of say,

01:00:16 ◼   ► "Oh, I guess podcasting is a thing now

01:00:17 ◼   ► "and I make an audio editor,

01:00:18 ◼   ► "so I should have a template for podcasts.

01:00:20 ◼   ► "I should have some tools that are useful

01:00:22 ◼   ► "for people who do large, multi-track podcasts."

01:00:24 ◼   ► And that's it.

01:00:25 ◼   ► And then it's like, "Well, now why am I using your app?"

01:00:27 ◼   ► And it was so easy for them to do

01:00:28 ◼   ► because they're already a great audio editor.

01:00:30 ◼   ► They're already a widely used application

01:00:33 ◼   ► for talking to people over the internet.

01:00:35 ◼   ► It's just so hard to compete in it.

01:00:37 ◼   ► All this said, if someone did an amazing job

01:00:40 ◼   ► on an application like this,

01:00:41 ◼   ► even if it didn't do everything in-house,

01:00:42 ◼   ► even if it said, "Edit audio and external editor,"

01:00:45 ◼   ► and threw you into logic or something.

01:00:47 ◼   ► Like if it didn't do the whole thing,

01:00:48 ◼   ► but it just kind of integrated stuff together.

01:00:51 ◼   ► Even that, I think we would all be willing to try

01:00:54 ◼   ► because we would like it to be easier.

01:00:57 ◼   ► So I don't think it's not like

01:00:59 ◼   ► the idea of the application is bad.

01:01:00 ◼   ► It's just that the environment for pulling it all,

01:01:03 ◼   ► the degree of difficulty is really high.

01:01:05 ◼   ► And I mean, maybe someone just did it for free

01:01:08 ◼   ► out of the goodness of their heart

01:01:09 ◼   ► and was an amazing developer.

01:01:10 ◼   ► It would be a benefit to the world,

01:01:12 ◼   ► but as a business, it's tough.

01:01:15 ◼   ► - Right, and worth clarifying two points.

01:01:17 ◼   ► One, there is an app for editing called Hindenburg,

01:01:21 ◼   ► which H_B mentioned in the chat.

01:01:23 ◼   ► I actually tried this.

01:01:25 ◼   ► Honestly, I kind of find the name distasteful

01:01:27 ◼   ► 'cause that's kind of a tragedy that killed a bunch of people

01:01:29 ◼   ► but anyway, so it's a dedicated like radio journalism,

01:01:33 ◼   ► podcast journalism kind of app.

01:01:35 ◼   ► It's made for radio journalists

01:01:38 ◼   ► to produce that style of podcast.

01:01:40 ◼   ► It is $375 to use commercially

01:01:45 ◼   ► And so Logic is half the price.

01:01:49 ◼   ► So they're fighting that battle already.

01:01:50 ◼   ► Like they have to, and I'm not saying they should charge

01:01:53 ◼   ► less 'cause I don't think they could charge less

01:01:55 ◼   ► and make enough money to survive.

01:01:56 ◼   ► Because the number of potential customers

01:01:58 ◼   ► are so small here.

01:02:00 ◼   ► But so that's another thing to consider.

01:02:01 ◼   ► Like there are alternative editing apps.

01:02:03 ◼   ► And they, I don't know anybody who uses Hindenburg.

01:02:07 ◼   ► And I mean, granted, I don't know a lot of

01:02:09 ◼   ► radio journalists, but you know, I'm sure they have users.

01:02:11 ◼   ► But that's a tough sell to a lot of people.

01:02:14 ◼   ► Second thing to clarify is that Alan Pike's potential product was not an editing product,

01:02:20 ◼   ► it was just something to do the double-ending recording.

01:02:23 ◼   ► And the number of people who do that style of podcast production is even smaller than

01:02:27 ◼   ► the number of producers, because that's a fairly rare way to produce a podcast where

01:02:31 ◼   ► everybody records their end and then an editor combines them all.

01:02:34 ◼   ► That's what we do here, that's what a few other shows do that we know, but most shows

01:02:40 ◼   ► that have remote guests just record Skype and it's fine.

01:02:43 ◼   ► And it's not the best audio quality,

01:02:45 ◼   ► but then you avoid sync issues,

01:02:47 ◼   ► you avoid trying to get the other person

01:02:49 ◼   ► to select the right input for the program

01:02:51 ◼   ► that's recording the thing,

01:02:52 ◼   ► or having them have to buy Piezo or Call Recorder

01:02:57 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:02:58 ◼   ► It avoids a lot of issues to just record a Skype feed,

01:03:01 ◼   ► so that's what most people do.

01:03:02 ◼   ► - That was one of the big pitches of this,

01:03:04 ◼   ► is the difficulty of getting guests.

01:03:06 ◼   ► So if you're gonna have a podcast where you have guests,

01:03:09 ◼   ► and you don't want to limit yourself to guests

01:03:11 ◼   ► who know how to do podcasting,

01:03:13 ◼   ► You have to have some way to say,

01:03:15 ◼   ► hey, person who probably owns a computer

01:03:17 ◼   ► but knows nothing about podcasts,

01:03:19 ◼   ► do these simple steps and you will be able to talk to us

01:03:22 ◼   ► over the internet in a way that you will be participating

01:03:24 ◼   ► in a live podcast or in a prerecorded podcast.

01:03:27 ◼   ► And it's kind of like the same problem

01:03:28 ◼   ► that like a "Fog Creek" co-pilot was trying to solve

01:03:30 ◼   ► or whatever where you need to screen share

01:03:33 ◼   ► with your relatives to help them

01:03:34 ◼   ► with their computer problems.

01:03:35 ◼   ► It's difficult over the phone to get them

01:03:39 ◼   ► to initiate screen sharing.

01:03:40 ◼   ► So here, you just send them an email,

01:03:42 ◼   ► They click the link, they click three buttons,

01:03:44 ◼   ► and you're connected to them, right?

01:03:45 ◼   ► That's a very difficult problem.

01:03:49 ◼   ► And I think that problem is easier than the problem of,

01:03:52 ◼   ► hey, do these simple steps,

01:03:54 ◼   ► person who's not too familiar with computers,

01:03:56 ◼   ► and you are now talking live with me

01:03:58 ◼   ► and possibly recording your end locally on your disc

01:04:00 ◼   ► that is surely fast enough to keep up with this

01:04:01 ◼   ► and you won't have, like it's just,

01:04:03 ◼   ► and your audio input will be through the right stuff.

01:04:05 ◼   ► And it's, but just doing that part of it,

01:04:07 ◼   ► just the guest application,

01:04:09 ◼   ► even just that is really hard to do.

01:04:11 ◼   ► because Copilot, I don't even know if that's still a thing.

01:04:13 ◼   ► I've tried to use it a few times.

01:04:14 ◼   ► The Mac version did not go well for me.

01:04:17 ◼   ► I kind of sort of got it to limp through what it was.

01:04:21 ◼   ► I've paid for it like many times.

01:04:22 ◼   ► Like they had a business model where you pay some amount

01:04:25 ◼   ► and you can use it for like an hour or something.

01:04:27 ◼   ► In desperation, I've tried it.

01:04:29 ◼   ► It's a good idea, but it was not smooth sailing at all.

01:04:32 ◼   ► And so even that's not a solved problem.

01:04:34 ◼   ► And many people have tried,

01:04:36 ◼   ► including Apple with the iChat stuff.

01:04:39 ◼   ► And podcasting too, it has a certain degree

01:04:41 ◼   ► of built in complexity.

01:04:42 ◼   ► You're dealing with microphones

01:04:44 ◼   ► and people's random computers, random environments,

01:04:47 ◼   ► and random internet connections.

01:04:49 ◼   ► And there's a reason why.

01:04:51 ◼   ► If you have a regular show with regular guests,

01:04:55 ◼   ► the three of us, it's worth it for the three of us

01:04:58 ◼   ► to have each end recorded separately

01:05:00 ◼   ► because we're always the same people.

01:05:03 ◼   ► All three of us were willing and able

01:05:04 ◼   ► to buy a nice microphone and have a quiet room

01:05:08 ◼   ► where we record and use software that records it

01:05:11 ◼   ► and we're technically able to do that

01:05:13 ◼   ► and to do it reliably.

01:05:15 ◼   ► And all of our internet connections we know

01:05:17 ◼   ► are solid enough and we even live geographically

01:05:19 ◼   ► close enough that it's not usually a problem.

01:05:21 ◼   ► So none of these things were problems for us.

01:05:23 ◼   ► So that's why we choose to do the show that way.

01:05:26 ◼   ► But again, like if you're having a new guest every week,

01:05:29 ◼   ► that's a tough thing to coordinate.

01:05:31 ◼   ► And it's hard enough getting them a microphone

01:05:34 ◼   ► to even use Skype properly.

01:05:36 ◼   ► And to add in the complexity of, are you

01:05:39 ◼   ► recording the right thing?

01:05:40 ◼   ► And you're going to send me your file?

01:05:43 ◼   ► It's just not worth it.

01:05:44 ◼   ► I think the market for that is extremely small.

01:05:47 ◼   ► And it's not--

01:05:48 ◼   ► And the way the big shows do this, by the way,

01:05:49 ◼   ► the way the big shows do the how do you

01:05:51 ◼   ► go to get a guest up and running and everything,

01:05:53 ◼   ► is they throw humans at it.

01:05:55 ◼   ► So someone will contact you the day or week before.

01:05:58 ◼   ► They will mail you a microphone in the mail.

01:06:00 ◼   ► The person will contact you and make

01:06:02 ◼   ► sure your setup is correct and walk you

01:06:03 ◼   ► through laboriously over the phone, over video,

01:06:06 ◼   ► over whatever they can do to make sure your setup is correct

01:06:09 ◼   ► so that when the actual show goes,

01:06:11 ◼   ► you have a setup that is known and validated

01:06:13 ◼   ► to be working by a member of their staff.

01:06:15 ◼   ► That is incredibly expensive.

01:06:17 ◼   ► That's way more expensive than buying a $300 application

01:06:19 ◼   ► or a $500 application or a $1,000 application

01:06:22 ◼   ► or a $100 a month application.

01:06:23 ◼   ► But that has a much higher chance of success, I think,

01:06:27 ◼   ► than the application will take care of it for you.

01:06:29 ◼   ► You're probably still gonna need that human

01:06:31 ◼   ► to walk the person through the supposedly so simple setup

01:06:35 ◼   ► because of physical factors, not even the software,

01:06:37 ◼   ► even if the software is perfect.

01:06:39 ◼   ► - And beyond all that,

01:06:40 ◼   ► if you go to take Rob Ryan's approach of saying,

01:06:42 ◼   ► well hey, charge more money, this is worth it to people.

01:06:44 ◼   ► Beyond all the problems of it being a really small market

01:06:48 ◼   ► of people who are producing these things

01:06:49 ◼   ► and willing to try your app,

01:06:51 ◼   ► there's also some severe budget problems for most people.

01:06:54 ◼   ► Most people, podcasting well,

01:06:57 ◼   ► using high quality stuff, is already a tough sell.

01:07:00 ◼   ► Because you're already asking people to spend

01:07:03 ◼   ► a few hundred dollars on a decent mic

01:07:05 ◼   ► and some kind of setup there, maybe a pop filter,

01:07:07 ◼   ► maybe an anti-shock thing or a mount and all this stuff.

01:07:12 ◼   ► Then oh, call record, it's another 30 bucks

01:07:14 ◼   ► and maybe Logic's another $200 or maybe GarageBand,

01:07:19 ◼   ► but GarageBand keeps getting worse for podcasts

01:07:21 ◼   ► in each new version.

01:07:22 ◼   ► You're already asking people to spend a lot of money.

01:07:25 ◼   ► Already most people are not willing to do that.

01:07:27 ◼   ► Most podcasts are not produced that way.

01:07:29 ◼   ► Most podcasts are produced from people's built-in mics

01:07:32 ◼   ► and headsets and iPhone mics and stuff like that.

01:07:34 ◼   ► They don't sound very good, but a lot of people,

01:07:37 ◼   ► you can't ask, maybe some church recording at servants

01:07:41 ◼   ► and everything, they don't have maybe the money

01:07:43 ◼   ► to buy Logic, you know?

01:07:45 ◼   ► There's so many podcast producers out there

01:07:48 ◼   ► who are not gonna be spending hundreds or thousands

01:07:51 ◼   ► of dollars on software and gear to do this,

01:07:54 ◼   ► and that will always be the case.

01:07:57 ◼   ► There's always gonna be, most producers

01:08:00 ◼   ► who are gonna be doing it as a hobby,

01:08:01 ◼   ► or on a low budget and you have to account for that.

01:08:04 ◼   ► And so that's like, I agree with Rob Ryan

01:08:09 ◼   ► that a professional app should be priced accordingly,

01:08:14 ◼   ► but I don't think there's enough podcast producers

01:08:17 ◼   ► to ever support something like this anytime soon.

01:08:20 ◼   ► - In defense of Rob's post, if you could snap your fingers

01:08:23 ◼   ► and make the theoretical application come into existence

01:08:26 ◼   ► that is awesome at all this stuff,

01:08:28 ◼   ► that does everything as high quality,

01:08:29 ◼   ► is integrated, is relatively bug-free,

01:08:31 ◼   ► like that really provides the benefit,

01:08:34 ◼   ► then all of his various pricing strategies

01:08:36 ◼   ► could probably work out.

01:08:38 ◼   ► But the prerequisite is you actually have an application

01:08:42 ◼   ► that helps people make money,

01:08:43 ◼   ► like that is more convenient for them,

01:08:45 ◼   ► that produces better results in less time,

01:08:46 ◼   ► that has fewer bugs,

01:08:48 ◼   ► that has features that would be difficult,

01:08:50 ◼   ► you know, like they can replace a fractional portion

01:08:53 ◼   ► of a staffer that you would need, right?

01:08:55 ◼   ► Then it may be viable.

01:08:57 ◼   ► But like, even then it's borderline

01:08:59 ◼   ► because you don't have the benefit,

01:09:01 ◼   ► I think it was another Joel article,

01:09:02 ◼   ► like the different kinds of software you sell,

01:09:04 ◼   ► the cheap free stuff that random person buys off the street,

01:09:07 ◼   ► the sort of consumer applications

01:09:09 ◼   ► that you could sell to an individual

01:09:12 ◼   ► who's gonna buy application for like,

01:09:14 ◼   ► they'll buy Photoshop for themselves or whatever.

01:09:16 ◼   ► And then, and that's like a hundred bucks,

01:09:19 ◼   ► a couple hundred bucks,

01:09:19 ◼   ► or maybe like a small monthly subscription fee.

01:09:22 ◼   ► Then there's a gigantic chasm

01:09:23 ◼   ► and then your starting price is 30 grand, right?

01:09:26 ◼   ► And that's like enterprise software.

01:09:28 ◼   ► you're selling it to a business, to a business,

01:09:31 ◼   ► this is such an essential part of their business,

01:09:32 ◼   ► the 30 grand or, you know,

01:09:34 ◼   ► let's use the Oracle pricing model.

01:09:36 ◼   ► How about percentage of revenue?

01:09:37 ◼   ► How does that feel to you?

01:09:38 ◼   ► - Yes, how much money do you have?

01:09:40 ◼   ► - Not profit, revenue, yeah.

01:09:41 ◼   ► - Contact us for pricing.

01:09:43 ◼   ► - That is just a huge gap between like a couple hundred bucks

01:09:47 ◼   ► maybe pushing a thousand

01:09:48 ◼   ► and then up into the multiple thousands.

01:09:50 ◼   ► And there's not much in that middle ground there.

01:09:52 ◼   ► And I don't know, podcasting is not at the point now

01:09:55 ◼   ► where it can be sold as enterprise software

01:09:57 ◼   ► for the most part.

01:09:58 ◼   ► enterprises that are doing it maybe kind of like, I don't know, maybe like Twitter or

01:10:02 ◼   ► TV network is trying to do a podcast or like the Daily Show, but even those I think of

01:10:07 ◼   ► like the Daily Show podcast is not, you know, you couldn't sell them 30 grand podcasting

01:10:11 ◼   ► stuff, they're just putting stuff together.

01:10:12 ◼   ► And anyway, I don't know if that market will ever exist for sort of enterprise level sales,

01:10:18 ◼   ► because even in the entertainment industry like, you know, Maya or whatever is a couple

01:10:21 ◼   ► grand but it's not 60 grand, whereas Oracle, you know, sells to businesses and their checks

01:10:28 ◼   ► have a lot of zeros on them, so.

01:10:29 ◼   ► - Well, and all the pro podcasters who are doing it

01:10:31 ◼   ► like from studios or as part of bigger companies,

01:10:34 ◼   ► they already have their workflows established.

01:10:36 ◼   ► Like you're probably not even gonna get them

01:10:37 ◼   ► with a new tool like this, because they already have,

01:10:40 ◼   ► they're already set up with how they do things.

01:10:42 ◼   ► - Wasn't it on Core Intuition semi-recently

01:10:44 ◼   ► that Daniel Jalkett was talking about how,

01:10:47 ◼   ► I think it was maybe Fast Scripts, is that his,

01:10:50 ◼   ► is that right?

01:10:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, Daniel Jalkett has Fast Script,

01:10:52 ◼   ► the little script menu thing with the keyboard shortcuts.

01:10:55 ◼   ► And so he had written it and had like per seat licensing model or something like

01:11:00 ◼   ► that.

01:11:02 ◼   ► And then he got approached by some company and they said,

01:11:05 ◼   ► we want to buy it for the entire company. And I,

01:11:08 ◼   ► I forget exactly how he phrased it,

01:11:10 ◼   ► but apparently he came up with some number that he thought was so ridiculous.

01:11:13 ◼   ► They would basically laugh at him and that's what they paid.

01:11:15 ◼   ► And that's kind of what you guys are talking about is, you know,

01:11:18 ◼   ► you find there's eventually a time when a company will pay just absurd amounts

01:11:23 ◼   ► absurd amounts of money in order to get this app.

01:11:27 ◼   ► But I agree with you that finding podcasters to do this

01:11:30 ◼   ► is gonna be challenging.

01:11:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, and maybe someday there will be enough podcasters

01:11:35 ◼   ► to make this a viable market.

01:11:36 ◼   ► But today there are just simply are not that many

01:11:39 ◼   ► and we're so far from that.

01:11:41 ◼   ► It's not like there are almost that many.

01:11:43 ◼   ► It's not like there are gonna be that many next year

01:11:45 ◼   ► but it's gonna be finished making this app.

01:11:47 ◼   ► Like we are pretty far from there being enough

01:11:49 ◼   ► to support things like this.

01:11:51 ◼   ► So in conclusion, somebody make this awesome app.

01:11:53 ◼   ► We will all buy it and tell you what's wrong with it.

01:11:56 ◼   ► And you go out of business, the end.

01:11:58 ◼   ► - Honestly, I probably wouldn't buy it.

01:12:00 ◼   ► I already have our workflow.

01:12:01 ◼   ► - We would totally get it to look at it.

01:12:04 ◼   ► We'll make you buy it, Marco.

01:12:05 ◼   ► - We would send one of us to go get it, probably Marco.

01:12:08 ◼   ► And Marco would try it and not use it

01:12:09 ◼   ► because he doesn't like things that other people make.

01:12:12 ◼   ► And additionally-

01:12:13 ◼   ► - That's a good summary.

01:12:15 ◼   ► - And moreover, on top of that, we are,

01:12:19 ◼   ► well, maybe not you, John,

01:12:20 ◼   ► but certainly Marco and I are of an age where we grew up trying to find ways to

01:12:25 ◼   ► acquire things without paying a lot of money.

01:12:30 ◼   ► And while I think I speak for all of us and saying,

01:12:34 ◼   ► we're willing to spend money here and there when it's appropriate,

01:12:38 ◼   ► when we think it's reasonable, if we have a workflow that works,

01:12:42 ◼   ► that is not something that we necessarily,

01:12:45 ◼   ► that's not a problem we necessarily want to throw money at. And,

01:12:48 ◼   ► And that's what I think Marco is saying is that

01:12:50 ◼   ► we have something that works and if it's a lot,

01:12:52 ◼   ► if it's just way easier than okay,

01:12:55 ◼   ► but if it's just a bit easier, eh, whatever.

01:12:58 ◼   ► - I've been afraid to upgrade to Skype 7, that's free.

01:13:01 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:13:03 ◼   ► - Our final sponsor this week,

01:13:04 ◼   ► this actually ties in a little bit, is Lynda.com.

01:13:07 ◼   ► Lynda.com is an easy and affordable way

01:13:09 ◼   ► to help you learn with high quality,

01:13:10 ◼   ► easy to follow video tutorials.

01:13:12 ◼   ► Instantly three thousands of courses created by experts

01:13:15 ◼   ► on software, web development, graphic design, and more.

01:13:18 ◼   ► Go to lynda.com/atp to see for yourself.

01:13:20 ◼   ► That is L-Y-N-D-A.com/atp.

01:13:24 ◼   ► lynda.com has fresh new courses added daily.

01:13:26 ◼   ► They work directly with industry experts

01:13:27 ◼   ► and software companies to provide timely training

01:13:29 ◼   ► off in the same day new versions or releases

01:13:31 ◼   ► hit the market, so you can always stay up to speed.

01:13:34 ◼   ► They offer courses on all experience levels,

01:13:35 ◼   ► whether you're a beginner, advanced,

01:13:37 ◼   ► or anything in between.

01:13:38 ◼   ► Every lynda.com course is produced at the highest quality.

01:13:41 ◼   ► This is not like the inconsistent,

01:13:42 ◼   ► homemade videos on YouTube.

01:13:44 ◼   ► Courses are broken up into bite-sized pieces

01:13:46 ◼   ► so you can learn at your own pace

01:13:47 ◼   ► and learn from start to finish or just find a quick answer.

01:13:50 ◼   ► They have searchable transcripts as they play

01:13:52 ◼   ► so you can jump around, you can see what's being said,

01:13:54 ◼   ► you can skip around by clicking parts in the transcripts.

01:13:57 ◼   ► They have playlists, they have course completion certificates

01:14:00 ◼   ► you can publish to your LinkedIn profile.

01:14:02 ◼   ► You can even learn while you're on the go

01:14:04 ◼   ► with lynda.com apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android.

01:14:08 ◼   ► One of the great things about lynda.com that I like a lot

01:14:09 ◼   ► is that you can watch whenever you want

01:14:11 ◼   ► with no pressure or commitment

01:14:12 ◼   ► because you don't pay per video.

01:14:14 ◼   ► You get one low monthly price

01:14:16 ◼   ► and it gives you access to over 100,000 video tutorials.

01:14:19 ◼   ► It's just 25 bucks a month.

01:14:22 ◼   ► Unlimited access to their entire catalog.

01:14:24 ◼   ► This is great, if you're like me,

01:14:26 ◼   ► you like to know a little about a lot.

01:14:28 ◼   ► Lynda.com, and this is why this ties into

01:14:31 ◼   ► what we were just saying, Lynda.com was a big help to me

01:14:33 ◼   ► in learning how to use Logic to edit this podcast

01:14:36 ◼   ► and to make the audio sound good with things like

01:14:38 ◼   ► compressors and EQs and limiters and stuff like that.

01:14:40 ◼   ► Really, this is why this ties in.

01:14:45 ◼   ► You can just buy Logic, spend 25 bucks a month on lynda.com

01:14:49 ◼   ► and learn how to do all this yourself with those tools

01:14:52 ◼   ► and then you don't need to buy anything else.

01:14:54 ◼   ► Anyway, lynda.com also offers an annual premium plan

01:14:58 ◼   ► in which you can download courses to your iPhone, iPad

01:15:01 ◼   ► or Android app and watch them offline.

01:15:04 ◼   ► You can also get sample files with the premium plan

01:15:05 ◼   ► and practice along with the instructor.

01:15:07 ◼   ► Anyway, they have all sorts of courses you might like.

01:15:10 ◼   ► As I mentioned, creative tools like Logic,

01:15:11 ◼   ► they also have software development, productivity apps,

01:15:15 ◼   ► programming languages, web apps, native,

01:15:18 ◼   ► all this crazy stuff.

01:15:19 ◼   ► You can learn Creative Suite, you can learn Final Cut.

01:15:22 ◼   ► You can even learn soft skills

01:15:23 ◼   ► like management and negotiation.

01:15:25 ◼   ► lynda.com is so useful.

01:15:27 ◼   ► 30% of colleges and universities

01:15:29 ◼   ► and most of the Ivy League schools

01:15:30 ◼   ► offer lynda.com subscriptions to their students

01:15:32 ◼   ► and faculty members.

01:15:34 ◼   ► Anyway, check it out.

01:15:35 ◼   ► There's a lot of great stuff there.

01:15:36 ◼   ► I like them a lot.

01:15:37 ◼   ► Go to lynda.com/atp, L-Y-N-D-A.com/atp,

01:15:42 ◼   ► and you can get a free seven-day trial

01:15:44 ◼   ► with access to all courses.

01:15:46 ◼   ► Really a fantastic deal.

01:15:47 ◼   ► Go get your free trial, start out today,

01:15:49 ◼   ► and watch as much as you can in the next week.

01:15:51 ◼   ► lynda.com/atp.

01:15:52 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to lynda.com for sponsoring our show,

01:15:54 ◼   ► once again.

01:15:56 ◼   ► - All right, Jon, tell us about the video games

01:15:58 ◼   ► on the iPhone that you've been playing lately.

01:16:01 ◼   ► - Just one game, which I think Marco has played it.

01:16:04 ◼   ► I guess you haven't, Casey.

01:16:06 ◼   ► The game is Crossy Road.

01:16:07 ◼   ► Everybody's playing it, it's very popular these days.

01:16:09 ◼   ► I like the name until I realize that it's probably

01:16:12 ◼   ► an attempt to cash it on the flappy bird.

01:16:16 ◼   ► - I didn't even make that connection, but you're right.

01:16:17 ◼   ► - I liked it so much better before I made that connection,

01:16:19 ◼   ► but I still think it's a good name, it's adorable.

01:16:21 ◼   ► Anyway, the game is like kind of like Frogger,

01:16:24 ◼   ► if you remember that, if you don't, you can Google it.

01:16:25 ◼   ► It's like infinite Frogger.

01:16:26 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:16:29 ◼   ► That's not what I wanna talk about about this game.

01:16:30 ◼   ► What I wanna talk about is the monetization strategy

01:16:34 ◼   ► of this game, which is simultaneously confusing

01:16:38 ◼   ► and depressing, but maybe I still don't quite understand

01:16:40 ◼   ► the way things are working these days.

01:16:42 ◼   ► So it's a popular game, it's really well done.

01:16:46 ◼   ► I think they could have easily sold it for 99 cents,

01:16:49 ◼   ► but they didn't, they decided to go free to play.

01:16:50 ◼   ► Fine, that's what, you know,

01:16:52 ◼   ► big people are doing these days.

01:16:54 ◼   ► But Crossy Road is either really bad at free to play,

01:16:59 ◼   ► which makes it good,

01:17:01 ◼   ► or I don't understand how this stuff works.

01:17:04 ◼   ► So most free to play games have to find some way

01:17:07 ◼   ► to get money from you somehow in the game

01:17:10 ◼   ► by buying things that help you in the game

01:17:12 ◼   ► or showing you ads or both.

01:17:14 ◼   ► And Crossy Road has both of those things.

01:17:17 ◼   ► It has characters that you can use in the game.

01:17:20 ◼   ► You can buy different characters.

01:17:21 ◼   ► Starts you off with a chicken,

01:17:23 ◼   ► you can buy all sorts of other characters.

01:17:24 ◼   ► There's an in-game currency that you get

01:17:26 ◼   ► that you can find these little coins

01:17:27 ◼   ► and you get some currency.

01:17:29 ◼   ► And you can use that currency to redeem

01:17:31 ◼   ► and it's kind of like a gumball machine

01:17:32 ◼   ► that gives you characters for free.

01:17:35 ◼   ► And there's a time-based mechanic

01:17:36 ◼   ► where you get a free gift based on how long you play.

01:17:38 ◼   ► It's got all this type of things you see,

01:17:39 ◼   ► kind of an energy mechanic.

01:17:40 ◼   ► How long do you have to play?

01:17:41 ◼   ► How much longer until I get a new free gift?

01:17:42 ◼   ► How many coins do I collect?

01:17:44 ◼   ► And you buy the players with actual real money,

01:17:48 ◼   ► you know, 99 cents each or whatever.

01:17:50 ◼   ► And it seems like a reasonably good monetization strategy,

01:17:52 ◼   ► but the characters don't make the game any easier for you.

01:17:57 ◼   ► So they don't give you extra powers.

01:17:59 ◼   ► They don't give you extra lives.

01:18:00 ◼   ► They don't give you anything like that.

01:18:01 ◼   ► In fact, a lot of the characters make the game harder

01:18:03 ◼   ► for you instead of easier.

01:18:05 ◼   ► So the only motivation to buy them is kind of like

01:18:09 ◼   ► buying hats in Counter-Strike or whatever.

01:18:11 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's a frivolous thing that,

01:18:13 ◼   ► and that has worked in the past.

01:18:15 ◼   ► So maybe I'm not quite understanding it,

01:18:16 ◼   ► but they're not pressuring you to buy things in the game.

01:18:21 ◼   ► You can play it and you won't have to buy things.

01:18:25 ◼   ► And they have little thing where you can see an ad

01:18:27 ◼   ► and they just present you like a little icon

01:18:29 ◼   ► that shows like a little movie, which I don't think,

01:18:32 ◼   ► yeah, Team Fortress 2, sorry,

01:18:34 ◼   ► chat rooms corrected me where the hats were.

01:18:35 ◼   ► I was wondering how that would look in Counter-Strike.

01:18:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:38 ◼   ► Not really the right setting.

01:18:39 ◼   ► No, no.

01:18:41 ◼   ► A little movie strip and then a little coin symbol

01:18:43 ◼   ► or whatever saying, hey, if you watch this movie,

01:18:45 ◼   ► we will give you coins.

01:18:45 ◼   ► And of course, that's an ad.

01:18:46 ◼   ► If you tap on that, it shows you an ad for some other game.

01:18:48 ◼   ► You know, they get some money for that ad.

01:18:50 ◼   ► And then you get this in-game currency

01:18:51 ◼   ► that you can eventually redeem in a little gumball machine

01:18:53 ◼   ► for random characters that you can get.

01:18:55 ◼   ► These are the same characters that you could buy otherwise.

01:18:58 ◼   ► And I forget who pointed this out.

01:19:00 ◼   ► It might have been Jason and his thing

01:19:01 ◼   ► that he was writing about Crossy Road.

01:19:02 ◼   ► The fundamental problem with their monetization strategy

01:19:05 ◼   ► from the outside, from someone who's playing,

01:19:07 ◼   ► is I think it's more fun not to pay any money

01:19:10 ◼   ► to play this game.

01:19:11 ◼   ► It's more fun to play, the game itself is fun.

01:19:15 ◼   ► Getting coins in the game is fun.

01:19:17 ◼   ► Redeeming them in the little gumball machine

01:19:19 ◼   ► for a random guy is fun.

01:19:21 ◼   ► And you don't feel like you're missing anything

01:19:22 ◼   ► because you're like, boy, if I could pay the 99 cents,

01:19:24 ◼   ► I could finally get the power that lets me walk on water

01:19:26 ◼   ► for two steps and that would really help you.

01:19:28 ◼   ► There's none of that.

01:19:29 ◼   ► And so it is entirely, for the most part,

01:19:32 ◼   ► friendly to the user, not in your face.

01:19:34 ◼   ► It does prompt you a couple times to say, "Hey, do you want notifications when essentially

01:19:38 ◼   ► our energy meter runs out and when you should come back to the game and play again?"

01:19:42 ◼   ► But you can say no.

01:19:43 ◼   ► It presents that in-game, maybe presents it a few more times than it should.

01:19:47 ◼   ► And maybe little kids, like watching my kids play it, they will watch the ads to get the

01:19:50 ◼   ► coins because they want to get the other characters, so I guess they're getting some ad revenue

01:19:53 ◼   ► for that.

01:19:54 ◼   ► But I just look at this game and I'm like, "Boy, I wish I could give you some money for

01:19:58 ◼   ► this game, but I don't want any of the other characters.

01:20:00 ◼   ► Like I've got all the ones I got, I got...

01:20:02 ◼   ► It was more fun for me to get them for free and now I have them and they don't make the

01:20:05 ◼   ► game any easier anyway.

01:20:07 ◼   ► So what I'm saying is I'm concerned about Crossy Road.

01:20:09 ◼   ► The developer is probably a millionaire right now, swimming in his bathtub full of money

01:20:13 ◼   ► saying "That's great kid, you tell me how I should run my business."

01:20:15 ◼   ► But it's puzzling to me because it seems to do everything wrong from the perspective of

01:20:21 ◼   ► the evil free-to-play game that learns to extract money from people.

01:20:25 ◼   ► So I guess what I'm saying is you should all go out and get Crossy Road.

01:20:27 ◼   ► It's a great game and I really hope the developer is swimming in a bucket full of money.

01:20:32 ◼   ► I just don't figure out how they would be unless everybody's looking at those damn ads

01:20:36 ◼   ► Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me. I'm trying to look around. I'm trying to look I just love it the app store

01:20:41 ◼   ► Do you know where it places on the top grossing list? Oh, I don't know

01:20:44 ◼   ► I don't look at those things because it's it's number four on the top free list

01:20:48 ◼   ► But it would not surprise me if it actually if you're right that it actually isn't making that much money

01:20:53 ◼   ► I didn't even when you were describing that I've only played on a handful of times. Yeah, your score stinks

01:20:57 ◼   ► Yeah, because I only played on a handful of times

01:20:59 ◼   ► I don't I don't I don't really like this kind of game. But like I for like when somebody says oh my god

01:21:04 ◼   ► This game is great. You have to play it

01:21:05 ◼   ► I'll go and buy it in the App Store and I will forget

01:21:08 ◼   ► What the upfront price is whether it was free or not. Like I just don't even remember because it's like, okay

01:21:13 ◼   ► It's usually so cheap. It's a dollar who cares or it's free. And so I didn't even realize this was the monetization scheme

01:21:19 ◼   ► I've played the game a handful of times

01:21:21 ◼   ► Like you can probably expect many people to have done who have downloaded it. I didn't even realize that's how it was monetized. I like

01:21:29 ◼   ► So that's a problem.

01:21:31 ◼   ► He might make it up in volume though, because this is a super popular game.

01:21:34 ◼   ► And like I said, little kids do want to see the ads, so maybe all of his money is made

01:21:37 ◼   ► by showing ads to little kids to buy other games.

01:21:40 ◼   ► And I think people will buy the other characters, but I mean, my other yardstick is so far my

01:21:45 ◼   ► son who has spent an undisclosed amount of money on Clash of Clans, and the amount is

01:21:51 ◼   ► large.

01:21:52 ◼   ► Well that's very different though.