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77: Full-Stack Businessperson

 

00:00:00   oh my goodness, his sausages are wonderful.

00:00:05   (electronic beeping)

00:00:06   If I gave you a playlist of MP3s

00:00:09   and it lasted, say, half an hour to 45 minutes,

00:00:13   would you play that instead of that god-awful crap

00:00:16   that you make everyone listen to every week?

00:00:18   - Probably not, but I would at least be willing

00:00:20   to consider it.

00:00:21   - Your honesty is both annoying and appreciated

00:00:23   all at the same time.

00:00:25   - Yeah, I mean, chances are not great, I'll tell you that.

00:00:28   But I would consider it.

00:00:31   - Fair enough.

00:00:32   - Why is everyone in the chat room thanking Casey?

00:00:34   You don't know what the music is yet.

00:00:35   (laughing)

00:00:37   - Yeah, that's a good point.

00:00:38   I mean, what if it's just like a bunch of Dave Matthews band?

00:00:40   Like, is that really an improvement?

00:00:41   I would argue not.

00:00:42   - It honestly would not be a bunch of Dave Matthews.

00:00:45   The only reason I would play a bunch of Dave Matthews

00:00:48   is if A, I had absolute control of the live stream,

00:00:52   which would never happen,

00:00:53   and B, I did it just to troll Marco,

00:00:56   which I don't think I care enough.

00:00:58   So I would like to offer my services as unofficial official DJ or official unofficial DJ, if

00:01:05   you will, if you ever find the need arising.

00:01:08   I'm actually curious, Jon, what would be on your playlist?

00:01:11   I don't know.

00:01:13   I'd probably throw in some video game soundtracks, some mashups that I like, weird things I would

00:01:20   probably do because I'm not going to play songs that everyone's heard before because

00:01:23   that's boring.

00:01:24   Well, that's why I play fish because no one listens to it except me.

00:01:27   I will say that I did find out, I don't remember if it was you John that told me,

00:01:34   but somebody pointed out to me that the Journey soundtrack was available on iTunes and it

00:01:38   was like five or ten bucks and I pretty much insta-bought that.

00:01:42   That was me of course.

00:01:43   Okay, I thought it might have been you but I wasn't sure.

00:01:45   And it is excellent.

00:01:47   Do you remember the Transport Tycoon soundtrack was like really snazzy and snappy jazz?

00:01:52   Yeah, yeah, it was actually pretty good.

00:01:54   It was pretty good.

00:01:55   eventually made MP3s of—because it was all MIDI, I believe, just in a different file

00:02:00   extension—but really it was just MIDI. And somebody took the MIDIs and sampled them or

00:02:06   recorded them—I don't know what the correct term is—but did something with them to create

00:02:10   really good sounding MP3s. And at one point or another I had it, and I've long since

00:02:16   lost it.

00:02:17   I'm sure that the community of Transport Tycoon revivalists, which is quite large actually,

00:02:25   and has, I mean, because you know, if anyone out there is a fan of Transport Tycoon and

00:02:30   you don't know about OpenTTD, let me tell you about OpenTTD.

00:02:35   Fans have basically rewritten the entire engine of the game and it runs on everything.

00:02:38   It runs on Macs, Linux, Windows.

00:02:41   A couple people even ported it to iPad here and there, although the iPad ports are terrible.

00:02:45   It mainly runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux,

00:02:46   and it is so good, and they've added features to the game,

00:02:50   and they've improved things,

00:02:51   like they've improved the pathfinding of the trains

00:02:53   and everything, and they've added different features

00:02:55   that have this whole new signal type

00:02:56   that makes signals more useful.

00:02:58   It's fantastic.

00:02:59   Oh man, if you ever played "Transport Tycoon,"

00:03:04   or even "SimCity 2000," and you're into trains at all,

00:03:08   you're gonna love OpenTTD, and it's free.

00:03:10   - Yeah, it's really fantastic.

00:03:11   In fact, I think we've mentioned this on the show

00:03:13   some point or another, but Transport Tycoon and Visual Basic 1 were pretty much how you

00:03:17   and I became friends.

00:03:18   That's right, yeah.

00:03:19   The combination of those two. That and an utter fear of the outdoors.

00:03:24   Yeah, that probably contributed more. I mean, we would have found something else to do inside

00:03:28   on your computer if we didn't have those two things.

00:03:30   This is true.

00:03:31   The only time I've ever seen OS/2 warp.

00:03:34   Those were the days. Hi, Guy English. I feel like OS/2 needs, like, a Guy English bell,

00:03:39   just like File Systems and HFS+ is John's bell.

00:03:42   Yeah, it needs to be some kind of like dull thunk.

00:03:46   Like yeah, OS2 warp!

00:03:49   Woo!

00:03:50   Oh goodness.

00:03:51   All right, what's going on?

00:03:54   Any follow up?

00:03:55   Yeah, I put one item in because follow up was feeling lonely.

00:03:57   I can't believe you just put the transport tycoon stuff in a follow up.

00:04:00   I don't know if that qualifies as a follow up.

00:04:01   It was the beginning of the show.

00:04:02   I just knew that when I'm going to do show notes, if this makes it into the show, that

00:04:07   I would want to look at it there.

00:04:09   So it's not strictly follow up.

00:04:10   I'm sorry for tainting the sanctity of your follow-up.

00:04:13   We're talking about Apple Mail in Mavericks and the Gmail-related bugs and how the public

00:04:18   beta program for Yosemite might help Apple catch those type of bugs.

00:04:23   Michael Tsai—I really hope I'm pronouncing his last name correctly—tweeted or emailed

00:04:29   one or the other.

00:04:30   The other alternate theory for the Gmail bug was not so much that Apple didn't catch

00:04:35   it in Mavericks, it's just that it was difficult to figure out how to fix in time for the ship

00:04:40   date and they just shipped knowing that there were bugs and knowing they planned to fix them and were

00:04:44   working on the fix long before maverick shipped and shipped the fix as soon as they got it fixed.

00:04:48   Considering there's a second party involved here, considering like Gmail's on the other end over

00:04:52   there, it may be a bug that involves Google and also involves Apple. It's plausible theory and

00:04:59   we didn't mention it on the last show so I thought I would just mention it now.

00:05:03   I also think it's worth mentioning, so in the context of this we were talking about the Gmail

00:05:07   bug in mavericks point 0 and and you know gmail's various incentives and everything

00:05:13   and I believe John I believe you had asserted that certainly some people in Google use Apple

00:05:20   mail and there and there's enough of them that it'd be worth them making sure it works

00:05:23   and I said I'd be pretty surprised if there were any significant portion of people who

00:05:28   work for Google using using Apple mail and I asked if anybody knew this they could write

00:05:33   in. And we heard from a few people who work at Google who said universally, they all said

00:05:40   nobody there uses Apple Mail or effectively nobody. But they all said they've never seen

00:05:45   anyone use it and pretty much everyone uses Gmail because the workflows that are built

00:05:49   around it and everything, it's like Apple Mail's presence among Google employees is

00:05:54   apparently nearly zero, which does not surprise me.

00:05:57   It makes me wonder what kind of workflows, because they're like, one guy was like, "Oh,

00:06:00   I tried to use Apple Mail.

00:06:01   They all said that Macs are very prevalent there,

00:06:03   which we already knew, right?

00:06:04   So they said everyone's got Macs,

00:06:05   and one of the persons was like,

00:06:06   when I came I tried using Apple Mail,

00:06:07   but it was not the thing to do.

00:06:09   Everyone was using Gmail,

00:06:11   and I'm wondering if they have some kind of plugins

00:06:14   or Gmail Labs things.

00:06:16   What is it about the web interface

00:06:18   that kind of makes it so that Apple Mail isn't viable?

00:06:20   If you're just doing mail stuff, fine.

00:06:22   But what is the, is it just peer pressure

00:06:25   that everybody is using mail?

00:06:26   Is it, I guess maybe integration

00:06:28   with Google Calendar or something?

00:06:29   I don't know.

00:06:31   But anyway, yeah, I guess they're not motivated

00:06:34   to make it work with Apple Mail.

00:06:36   But it's interesting to me that there is that,

00:06:38   that at least that one person felt like there was,

00:06:42   that it was not even a viable thing to do,

00:06:44   not just like personal preference,

00:06:45   but just like once you're in Google,

00:06:48   you're gonna use Gmail 'cause that's the way it's done.

00:06:50   - Right, yeah, like it would be difficult

00:06:52   for you to use Apple Mail, was the gist of it.

00:06:54   And whether that was technical, political, or both,

00:06:58   I think it was kind of left to the imagination,

00:07:00   but I'm guessing it's probably some of both.

00:07:03   - The weird thing about the political angle is like,

00:07:05   oh, you know, well, it's like dog food.

00:07:06   Like why wouldn't, if you're not using

00:07:08   your own mail client, obviously,

00:07:09   then your own mail client sucks,

00:07:10   and you know, like you should use your own,

00:07:12   your own thing should be good enough for you to use.

00:07:14   But like I said, and wasn't contradicted

00:07:17   by any of the emails, Macs are all over the place in Google,

00:07:20   and how is that not a contradiction, you know,

00:07:22   in terms of like why are Chromebooks

00:07:24   not good enough for everybody?

00:07:25   I mean, I guess Google doesn't really make

00:07:27   sort of full-fledged computer but for developers or whatever but they're you know arch rival Apple

00:07:33   they're using all their hardware inside I mean they're not using the phones I assume but for

00:07:38   the laptops they're all Mac so it makes me wonder if like is Google motivated to make a sort of

00:07:43   non-chromebook full-fledged laptop I don't know what the hell OS it would run I mean certainly

00:07:47   not Windows so there it seems like they're internally conflicted no matter what. Well and

00:07:53   And there is a whole, I mean, I think a lot of this is kind of company culture as well.

00:07:57   Like, there's a whole lot of people out there who use a Mac as their computing platform,

00:08:04   but aren't all in on Apple's other stuff.

00:08:06   You know, they use Chrome as the browser, they probably use Gmail in a web window or

00:08:10   something as their mail client.

00:08:11   Like, there's a whole lot of people out there who function that way just fine willingly

00:08:16   and happily because that's just their preference.

00:08:18   And I would imagine those people are more likely to want to work for Google than somebody

00:08:24   who's all in the hall of Apple stuff.

00:08:26   So probably among their employees, it's kind of self-selecting where their employees

00:08:30   probably just want to use Google stuff in its native interface because that's just

00:08:34   their preference, and that's one of the reasons they work there.

00:08:36   Well, you've got Chrome as your browser, and then you have a bunch of terminal windows

00:08:40   in which you run Emacs or something, or maybe you have a favorite text editor.

00:08:44   And that's the whole experience.

00:08:45   But then it's like, why do you need Apple hardware?

00:08:47   Why can't you get by with the Chromebook?

00:08:48   Is it, you know, are you locally compiling things in Go and C++?

00:08:53   Is that why you need to have a better CPU than the Chromebooks?

00:08:55   Do you just want nicer hardware?

00:08:57   Like I don't know if there's much soul searching about this because they're probably like,

00:09:01   "I'm just going to get Apple hardware and then when I use it, I'm using all Google services

00:09:04   and I'm using whatever weird version of TextMate that I've kept left over or I'm using VI or

00:09:09   Emacs or whatever."

00:09:11   So I don't think there's much of an Apple in their faceness, but they're still using

00:09:16   Apple hardware.

00:09:17   to think that if Google continues this kind of Microsoft-like march towards "there is

00:09:22   no market we don't want, there is no thing we can't do, there is no reason we should

00:09:27   rely on everybody," like Google has really crept up on that.

00:09:30   They didn't start off that way, but now it just seems like the old thing with Microsoft

00:09:34   was like, "Is there any business they don't want?

00:09:36   Is there anything having to do with personal computers that they don't want?"

00:09:39   You're like, "Well, they make applications, but they don't make dev tools.

00:09:43   Well, they make a compiler, but they don't really make an ID.

00:09:45   Well, can they make an ID?

00:09:46   Well, they didn't make all the applications. They just do you know basic office. Okay? Well now they have a paint application like you know

00:09:51   Well, they don't make games. We're okay. They have flight simulator

00:09:53   Oh, well, they don't make game consoles not have the Xbox like it was like at Microsoft wanted to do everything and Google is slowly

00:09:59   Going towards it so far Google doesn't want to do

00:10:01   PC hardware like the Chromebook is close kind of they go on a supersede PC hardware with something

00:10:07   That's not as problematic as a PC and maybe they'll succeed in that someday

00:10:09   but I

00:10:11   Have my eye on Google's megalomania

00:10:14   Certainly the Apple we just discussed last week about the Apple IBM thing

00:10:17   There's plenty of things that Apple doesn't want to do like it still doesn't really want to touch enterprise with 10-foot pole

00:10:22   Which is why it's having a 10-foot pole named IBM touch it for them

00:10:25   Is there anywhere to go from here other than some something awesome oh actually before we do that

00:10:33   Speaking of follow-up. I love that

00:10:36   You've had like follow-up withdrawal like you had you get you were holding it for this like two weeks

00:10:39   You know you have to get some kind of follow-up out well

00:10:43   So the Apple IBM thing, we got some feedback from people

00:10:46   who are like, you're too down on Apple about the enterprise.

00:10:48   They actually do a lot of enterprise things.

00:10:50   I tried to express that in the last show

00:10:51   to say that it's not like Apple really ignores it.

00:10:54   They do do a lot of things for the enterprise.

00:10:56   They have come a long way.

00:10:57   But the question is always, are they willing to commit?

00:11:00   Are they willing to go to the lengths

00:11:02   that other enterprise companies go to?

00:11:03   So the two kinds of feedback we got were one,

00:11:05   from the people saying Apple is really doing much better

00:11:08   in the enterprise that are not nearly as bad

00:11:10   as you think they are.

00:11:10   And the other is from people saying,

00:11:12   as far as Apple has come, they're still bad for reasons X, Y, and Z.

00:11:16   So both of those are true.

00:11:18   They're not both seeing a different Apple.

00:11:20   They're seeing the same Apple, just looking at it from two different

00:11:22   perspectives.

00:11:22   One, that they've come such a long way and are so much better now than they

00:11:25   used to be.

00:11:25   And the other is that compared to the companies that build themselves around

00:11:29   serving the enterprise, Apple is still not willing to do all the things the

00:11:33   enterprise wants out of them.

00:11:34   And that's the impasse they've been at forever.

00:11:37   And the question, like I said last show, was always, what's Apple going to do

00:11:40   about that?

00:11:41   They're gonna continue to act this way,

00:11:42   to kind of turn their nose up at it,

00:11:44   but do enough to sort of get a little bit of the business,

00:11:46   or do they feel like they want more of the business?

00:11:48   And I think they feel like they do want more of the business

00:11:50   but they don't want to change them.

00:11:52   They don't want to change their own behavior

00:11:53   to get more of that business.

00:11:54   They just want to have someone else

00:11:55   augment their existing infrastructure and support

00:11:58   to get more of the business indirectly.

00:12:01   - We are sponsored this week, once again,

00:12:03   by our friend Matt Alexander at Need.

00:12:06   Need is a refined retailer and lifestyle magazine for men.

00:12:10   and it kind of came out of the Bionic podcast in a way.

00:12:13   And so you figure it has to be pretty interesting

00:12:15   if it came out of that, right?

00:12:17   Each month, Need curates and sells a limited quantity

00:12:20   of exclusive products from the world's top men's brands.

00:12:24   These collections are presented in the form

00:12:25   of a monthly editorial built around a certain theme

00:12:28   and are shot by local independent photographers.

00:12:30   And if I may say so myself,

00:12:31   they all look really stylish and awesome.

00:12:33   Beyond clothing, which they have a lot of,

00:12:35   they also sell coffee, literature, furniture,

00:12:37   and lots of other cool stuff.

00:12:39   "Need is also expanding. Soon they will localize to certain cities around the world,

00:12:43   the first of which will be London."

00:12:45   And I'm guessing that's London, England, or the UK, England? I never know. Great Britain,

00:12:51   oh boy. I'm pretty sure London at least is in England. I don't know how to refer

00:12:55   to the rest of it.

00:12:56   It's in England.

00:12:57   Sorry if I offended the entire UK, England, Great Britain, continent, subcontinent, island.

00:13:02   Okay, so, "Need is only eight months old, but they will already be one of the primary

00:13:07   sponsors of New York Fashion Week. Now I actually know what this is because my

00:13:11   wife watches Project Runway. Do you guys actually know what Fashion Week is?

00:13:15   It's something in New York City where a bunch of fashionable people descend upon

00:13:20   New York and make everyone else feel poor. It's a really good idea to

00:13:27   sponsor this if you're a clothing company and needs already doing it

00:13:29   because Fashion Week is huge. It is like New York has all these stupid things

00:13:33   like they have like internet week and all this crap that they try to boost other industries

00:13:38   and make them make make these like events all trying to mimic fashion week poorly. Fashion

00:13:44   week is the real thing. It's what everyone else is trying to be. It's such a huge deal

00:13:47   in New York. Need is sponsoring fashion week. They'll be bringing along small independent

00:13:52   brands to show off the company and its aspirations in the midst of the world of high fashion.

00:13:57   In other words, in their words, they're going to tell everyone about starting up working

00:14:00   independently and telling great stories in a traditional world of exclusivity and brands."

00:14:05   Anyway, go to neededition.com, and that's not the math, it's the "E" edition, neededition.com,

00:14:13   check out their collection, and it changes every month. Seriously, add this to your RSS

00:14:18   reader, it's one post a month, I mean, come on. If you still use RSS, we'll get to that,

00:14:22   but I still use RSS and I have it in my RSS reader. Anyone who places an order with need

00:14:27   and was sent from ATP can send an email afterwards to hello@neededition.com with the subject

00:14:34   line "New York Fashion Week."

00:14:36   To commemorate the special occasion, they will then throw in a bunch of extras with

00:14:39   those orders before they ship things like magazines, field nose, socks, scarves, etc.

00:14:44   And then you'll be put in a list to get 25% off your next order.

00:14:47   Now they've been doing this offer for a couple of weeks now.

00:14:50   ATP listeners, if you have multiple orders where you've emailed them and gotten the

00:14:54   25% off the next order thing, you can stack that,

00:14:57   so you can collect two of them and then get 50% off

00:14:59   an order after that.

00:15:00   So just for ATP listeners, they're being really nice to us.

00:15:04   And most of all though, the first five orders

00:15:07   will receive one of five limited edition,

00:15:09   never to be publicly sold, Neid branded hats.

00:15:13   Now I don't have a lot of hair, so hats are very useful.

00:15:17   Neid produced a Neid-Ebbets Field collaboration hat.

00:15:21   Ebbets Field is the company that created

00:15:23   original baseball cap apparently. These hats are gonna be worth about $50 if

00:15:27   they were sold at retail but they're not going to be. There's a

00:15:30   five limited edition hats and let me see I believe you get it for free right yeah

00:15:36   they will just toss us in so the first five orders that email them with this

00:15:40   email hello@neededition.com after you hear this with the subject line New York

00:15:43   Fashion Week after you place an order. This is a great deal I might do this I

00:15:48   I'm gonna take one of these.

00:15:49   (laughing)

00:15:50   Quick, before the delay on the live stream.

00:15:52   (laughing)

00:15:53   - Nice. - Anyway, thank you,

00:15:54   thank you very much to Need.

00:15:56   Go to neededition.com to check it out.

00:15:58   - I have a request.

00:16:01   For that ad read, can you put in like ragtime bionic music?

00:16:05   You know what I'm talking about?

00:16:06   - See, I love, I love when Need sponsors

00:16:08   because I can totally mess up the entire read

00:16:11   and put all sorts of my own personal crap into it.

00:16:14   And it doesn't matter because Matt is like a friend of ours

00:16:16   so he doesn't really mind, and it still works,

00:16:19   'cause people keep ordering stuff.

00:16:21   So it's both a great thing that Matt is doing for us,

00:16:24   and a great thing that our listeners are doing for Matt

00:16:26   and for us indirectly, by buying stuff from his company

00:16:29   anyway, even when I fumble through the read like that.

00:16:31   - Right, so I told you I had a piece of follow-up that I,

00:16:36   oh, that's what it was, I was stalling, so I could remember.

00:16:39   John, how's the review?

00:16:41   - That's your follow-up?

00:16:42   - Yes. - I thought you were gonna

00:16:43   talk about Apple IBM stuff, input from your dad, but--

00:16:46   Nope, I asked and he had nothing.

00:16:49   - No, reviews just going slowly.

00:16:51   It's terrible.

00:16:53   I don't know.

00:16:54   - Good, eh?

00:16:56   - It's like a dark cloud over my life.

00:16:59   And I just feel like it's never gonna get done.

00:17:01   I don't have to end up taking off time from work to get done.

00:17:04   And then they keep changing things and things don't work.

00:17:07   And you're trying to review anything

00:17:08   that has to do with the network

00:17:09   and like the seeds are coming out the like,

00:17:10   oh, this functionality still doesn't quite work yet.

00:17:12   And then all this stuff they don't mention

00:17:14   and you try it and it doesn't work.

00:17:15   and they're like, well, does it not work 'cause it's broken

00:17:17   or does it not work 'cause it's still like month

00:17:19   from release and I can't really write about it?

00:17:22   And then I'm going back through stuff I've already written

00:17:24   and changing it because I have this big paragraph

00:17:26   complaining about this, but then they change that,

00:17:28   so I don't have the complaint anymore.

00:17:30   Like, yeah, I have notes in my thing of like,

00:17:34   remember to talk about this, and then I have to go back

00:17:37   two weeks later and remove that note,

00:17:39   because oh, actually now that's changed,

00:17:40   so you don't have to remember, I'm not making progress.

00:17:42   I need to plow bravely forward

00:17:45   and just get something written

00:17:47   and then go back and change it even though it keeps,

00:17:49   it's, I don't know.

00:17:50   I don't know if they're changing more things than usual

00:17:52   or if I'm writing too early about things

00:17:55   that I have complaints about, I don't know.

00:17:57   It's going slowly, it's depressing.

00:17:59   - So semi-related, you had tweeted earlier today

00:18:03   that you had something to the order

00:18:05   of four or five machines on your desk

00:18:07   and anytime you did anything,

00:18:09   you were inevitably using the wrong keyboard and mouse.

00:18:13   And I had suggested, and from your snarky reply,

00:18:16   I assume many had suggested that you should use,

00:18:20   what is it, Synergy, is that right?

00:18:22   - Yeah, well see, other people, fine,

00:18:24   people don't know what I know,

00:18:25   but you of all people should know

00:18:27   that I know what Synergy is.

00:18:28   - I was encouraging you to better yourself

00:18:30   by using Synergy. (laughs)

00:18:31   - I know all about Synergy.

00:18:33   I don't want it, I don't need it for this,

00:18:36   like it's just a temporary situation.

00:18:38   I'm not trying to create a setup

00:18:41   where I have a system where I can use five computers

00:18:43   once I just have to do it remote desktop is the worst because you can kind of keep it straight if you're like

00:18:49   It's like laptops and my desktop you kind of keep it straight if things are physically separated

00:18:54   But once you bring a remote desktop into the mix

00:18:56   then it's game over because now like you have the same screen three times because I you know

00:18:59   I've got the original screen and then the remote screen and then my regular screen that it's in and then if

00:19:04   The remote desktop is at the front or then it gets all your keyboard focus

00:19:08   So you're like quicksilver shortcut goes to the remote desktop not to the thing over there, but it's just

00:19:12   It's madness. I could I just quitting apps and closing the wrong windows just for hours at a time slowly going mad

00:19:19   But synergy would fix this for you my friend, and it doesn't take them. No it would not it would not

00:19:25   No, I mean synergy has downsides as well, and it's it's just another layer of stuff

00:19:31   It's the same reason. I don't you screen your team ox right like I know I recognize all the benefits

00:19:35   I've experimented with them, but you know it's always something like you know the screen you're like

00:19:40   "I don't want you taking over control A."

00:19:42   Well, you can remap that.

00:19:43   Well, I don't want it to have any of my keystrokes.

00:19:44   And you know, like it was Synergy doing weird things

00:19:47   with making using your regular computer feel strange

00:19:50   and doing weird things with the command key.

00:19:52   It's just, it's not, I'm not gonna try to,

00:19:55   plus that's a, not really yak shaving,

00:19:57   but it's a diversion.

00:19:59   Like I don't need to be, what I should be doing

00:20:02   is making forward progress in a review,

00:20:04   not trying to tweak my setup that helps me do the review.

00:20:07   It's like I do enough of that of just sitting here

00:20:08   using Yosemite and doing experiments to try to figure out

00:20:13   how I can accurately write a single sentence.

00:20:15   I've spent like 45 minutes, an hour,

00:20:17   experimenting with the thing to say,

00:20:18   "What can I say about this?

00:20:20   "What is the truth of this thing?"

00:20:21   And then it's like, "Well, I wrote one sentence tonight

00:20:23   "and I spent an hour and a half

00:20:24   "and now I'm tired and need to go to bed.

00:20:26   "At this rate, it'll be done in 10 years."

00:20:28   (laughing)

00:20:30   - So the review is going excellently is what I'm hearing.

00:20:33   - Mm-hmm.

00:20:34   (laughing)

00:20:36   - Awesome.

00:20:37   (laughs)

00:20:39   - Well since I've asked, what's going on with Overcast?

00:20:42   - I'm fixing bugs basically.

00:20:44   Yeah, that's about it really.

00:20:46   I'm fixing lots of bugs.

00:20:47   The sales are going pretty well still.

00:20:49   Obviously it's down substantially from the first few days

00:20:53   but it seems to be leveling off now which is nice

00:20:56   because now I'm able to predict roughly what it will be

00:20:59   in next month and so far I'm very happy with it.

00:21:03   - Have you cranked back on the initial server build out

00:21:07   farm, whatever you want to call it.

00:21:09   - I actually haven't.

00:21:11   So far I'm keeping all eight of the webheads

00:21:13   and the reason why is, so as, so before,

00:21:18   you know, I have one feed crawling server

00:21:22   that its entire purpose is to crawl the feeds

00:21:25   and it can be maxed out, you know,

00:21:27   it can be like hammered at CPUs because it doesn't matter

00:21:31   because that's its only job.

00:21:33   And so what I have going at launch,

00:21:36   I had these eight web servers up front

00:21:38   to help take web requests.

00:21:41   And then very quickly after launch,

00:21:43   my feed server got overwhelmed with just the queue

00:21:45   was backing up because so many people were adding more feeds

00:21:48   and I was already crawling a lot,

00:21:49   but people added a lot more than I expected.

00:21:51   So I started, I ran additional crawling processes

00:21:55   under nice on the web servers.

00:21:57   And so in theory, what I think this will do

00:21:59   and what it is doing so far is all the web servers,

00:22:02   I have now burst capacity.

00:22:05   So when a popular show, like right now,

00:22:08   I mean our show is one of the top shows in Overcast.

00:22:11   There's something, I think there's like 20,000 people

00:22:13   or something who subscribe to it in Overcast.

00:22:14   So when a new episode of this show is published,

00:22:17   I send 20,000 push notifications

00:22:19   within the span of a few seconds.

00:22:21   And any of those devices that are connected to the internet

00:22:24   will immediately try to fetch,

00:22:27   try to perform a sync request basically.

00:22:29   And so you might have 20,000 devices all performing syncs

00:22:32   within the first few seconds of that request going out.

00:22:36   And so I need some kind of burst capacity

00:22:38   for when that happens.

00:22:40   So what I'm doing now is I have all these web servers

00:22:43   and I'm keeping the additional crawlers running on nice,

00:22:47   so what I think should happen is I'll have

00:22:49   that burst capacity when I need it,

00:22:50   when a new episode of Something Popular comes out,

00:22:52   and all the rest of it, and when that happens,

00:22:54   all of those processes that are nice will deprioritize

00:22:57   and maybe the queue for crawling other things

00:22:59   will slow down for a minute or two.

00:23:01   And then the rest of the time,

00:23:03   I have all this additional feed capacity.

00:23:05   So I think this is, and my original plan was

00:23:09   that the feed crawling on those web servers

00:23:11   was gonna be temporary and that once everything calmed down,

00:23:14   I would eliminate half of them maybe

00:23:16   and then set up a dedicated feed server

00:23:19   to crawl more feeds that way.

00:23:21   But I think I'm actually gonna keep it the way it is

00:23:23   because it gives me this nice balance

00:23:24   of a lot less wasted capacity.

00:23:27   - And you had said in the past

00:23:29   that whatever the sum total of the monthly cost

00:23:32   for these 810 servers is considerably less

00:23:35   than what you had last paid for Instapaper, is that correct?

00:23:38   - Yeah, yeah, I'd originally said it was like 540.

00:23:41   I had to upgrade my backup server,

00:23:42   I ran out of space on it,

00:23:43   so now it's gonna be more like 600,

00:23:45   but still, yeah, 600 bucks a month

00:23:47   for a lot of line of instances,

00:23:51   providing a lot of power, a lot of computational power.

00:23:53   That I don't think is a bad deal at all.

00:23:56   - Nice.

00:23:57   - Anyway, that's how Evercast is going.

00:23:59   It's going very well and I'm very happy.

00:24:01   I'm fixing a lot of bugs.

00:24:03   There still are some annoying ones,

00:24:04   but I think I actually got two of the biggest ones

00:24:07   in this update, so we'll see.

00:24:09   I'm still working on the update,

00:24:10   but I'll submit it probably in a few days.

00:24:12   - So do you feel like you're working just as hard

00:24:15   as you were pre-launch and post-launch,

00:24:18   or have you kind of settled into a rhythm at this point

00:24:21   and you're able to breathe?

00:24:22   - I am able to breathe, but it is still a lot of work.

00:24:26   Email, I'm still keeping up with email.

00:24:29   I did hit bottom of the first batch.

00:24:33   What's interesting is what people are requesting now.

00:24:37   So I'm still getting about 100 emails a day.

00:24:39   And many of them I don't respond to.

00:24:43   I promised in the feedback form that I would read everything

00:24:47   but I won't guarantee a response to everything.

00:24:49   And I'm keeping that promise so far.

00:24:51   I am reading everything and I'm not responding to everything

00:24:54   'cause I can't.

00:24:55   Even reading 100 emails a day takes a long time.

00:24:57   (laughs)

00:25:00   And a lot of them don't even need a response.

00:25:01   A lot of them even say as much, no response necessary,

00:25:03   and so I take them up on that offer usually.

00:25:06   But what's interesting is that what people are asking for now

00:25:11   is different from what people asked for on day one,

00:25:13   even though the main feature set has not changed since then.

00:25:17   I'm getting a couple bug reports, certainly,

00:25:20   here and there, 'cause there are still some bugs

00:25:21   that are affecting a lot of people,

00:25:22   which I'm very annoyed by,

00:25:24   and I'm trying to fix as quickly as I can.

00:25:26   But for example, day one had tons of requests

00:25:30   for the two big things I don't support, streaming and video.

00:25:33   It also had lots of requests for smaller features

00:25:37   and preferences and behavioral preferences people wanted.

00:25:40   Different ways they wanted episode management to be,

00:25:42   push notification options, things like that.

00:25:44   All sorts of different, more granular options

00:25:47   or different modes episodes could be in.

00:25:49   Like one of the more common ones on day one,

00:25:52   which I mentioned before, was a lot of people

00:25:54   want an episode to be new but not downloaded.

00:25:57   And a lot of people want deleted episodes

00:26:00   to also show whether they have been played

00:26:02   or whether they were never played.

00:26:05   So people requesting these different states things

00:26:07   can be in, and of course all the management of the interface

00:26:10   and the code that would go with that would be a lot.

00:26:13   All that was really on day one.

00:26:15   And what I'm hearing from people now

00:26:16   is substantially less of those requests.

00:26:20   And the requests I'm getting now are much nicer and more

00:26:23   like, "You know, it would be nice if someday maybe you added this," not like, "I can't

00:26:27   use a podcast app that doesn't have this," or "I don't believe you shipped 1.0 without

00:26:31   this," which a lot of the day one stuff was that.

00:26:34   And so, and I think, I mean, my theory on this was pretty obvious, really.

00:26:37   You know, I think day one, everyone tried it who was into podcast apps, who heard about

00:26:44   it.

00:26:45   Like, there was this big rush of people who tried it and, you know, probably necessarily

00:26:49   didn't want to like it maybe on some level because nobody wants to change their workflow

00:26:54   if they're established. And also people who really do find those features like deal

00:26:59   killers. Anything that I don't do or that I do differently from what they want to do,

00:27:03   that actually is a deal killer for them. So all of them I heard from on day one, and then

00:27:07   I stopped hearing from them because they stopped looking at the app. So now what I'm hearing

00:27:11   from, who I'm hearing from are the people who are actually using the app for the most

00:27:15   part. I mean, there are new people discovering it every day, but not nearly in the numbers

00:27:19   as the first two days.

00:27:21   So the emails I'm getting now are actually--

00:27:24   on some level, I think they're actually

00:27:25   more important to pay attention to,

00:27:27   because most of those people who I heard from on day one,

00:27:31   I'll probably never win them over.

00:27:33   It's probably not worth a lot of effort to try to win them over.

00:27:38   And there's a lot of people who use the app for whom it could

00:27:40   be a little bit better with what might be a small change.

00:27:44   And by catering to those people, I build Goodwill,

00:27:48   I build fans, I build loyal customers,

00:27:51   and those people are the ones who will spread the app

00:27:54   to their friends.

00:27:55   And so I think it's more important to make a smaller group

00:27:59   more fanatically happy about your app

00:28:02   than to try to address the entire world with it.

00:28:05   - So John, tell us about Arm-based Max.

00:28:10   - Let me talk about this.

00:28:12   So many past shows, it seems like.

00:28:14   I don't know why it's coming up again.

00:28:15   I guess Jean-Louis Gasset wrote about it

00:28:18   on his Monday Note blog, and then a bunch of people

00:28:21   linked it, including Gruber, and people

00:28:23   were talking about it again.

00:28:25   I guess we'll talk about it again, too.

00:28:26   I feel like we had this exact same discussion.

00:28:28   I pulled these exact same numbers last time,

00:28:30   but I mean, I don't know.

00:28:32   I guess we'll talk about it again.

00:28:34   - I don't think it was a very good article,

00:28:36   because it was based on a lot of assumptions

00:28:39   about the relative chip pros and cons between

00:28:43   ARM and Intel that aren't necessarily true,

00:28:47   or at least partially misinformed.

00:28:48   - You're not looking at the notes file either, I guess?

00:28:51   - No.

00:28:52   - Yeah, anyway, so here are the stats I put in the notes file

00:28:54   probably the same exact stats I had last time.

00:28:56   So the whole idea was should Apple not use Intel CPUs

00:29:00   in its Macs anymore, but instead use ARM CPUs,

00:29:02   presumably of their own design.

00:29:05   And everyone suggesting that has their reasons

00:29:08   for suggesting it.

00:29:09   One of the reasons that comes up very often

00:29:10   is that if they did that, ARM CPUs are more power

00:29:15   efficient than x86.

00:29:16   And the second reason is that Apple

00:29:18   would be master of its own destiny because Apple really

00:29:20   wants to own and control all the important technologies that

00:29:23   go into their devices, witness their design of the A7

00:29:26   and their deep involvement in the manufacturing process.

00:29:29   And of course, they do all the software as well.

00:29:31   They make the OS.

00:29:32   They make the applications and blah, blah, blah.

00:29:34   And originally, if you want to go back really far,

00:29:36   they investigated--

00:29:39   My understanding is that they investigated for the iPhone project or for an Apple phone

00:29:43   project.

00:29:44   Can we make a phone and not do a deal with a wireless carrier?

00:29:47   Is it feasible to do it on Wi-Fi?

00:29:49   Can we be our own — what is that acronym, Casey?

00:29:52   MVNO, something like that?

00:29:55   They looked into all that.

00:29:56   It turned out not to be feasible, but the whole fact that they were looking into it

00:29:58   was like, "Can we do this without being beholden to somebody else?"

00:30:01   And it turns out the answer was no.

00:30:03   So a bummer for them.

00:30:04   So anyway, this is along the same vein.

00:30:06   On the tech front, though, and the power thing, every time I think about the power thing,

00:30:09   I think about, you know, just how far Intel has come

00:30:13   in terms of power efficiency.

00:30:16   So we'll look at here, I have stats for the current

00:30:18   13 inch MacBook Air, which is kind of my sort of

00:30:20   standard bearer for Apple's middle of the road laptop.

00:30:24   It does not have a gigantic battery.

00:30:26   It's pretty slim, but on the other hand,

00:30:27   it is a full-fledged laptop and the performance

00:30:29   is actually pretty good.

00:30:30   So the current Gen 13 inch MacBook Air

00:30:33   is a 54 watt hour battery and Apple says it gets

00:30:36   about 12 hours battery life.

00:30:37   Now in my own testing when I was doing Mavericks battery testing,

00:30:40   I found that number can get even bigger

00:30:41   if you use it very lightly.

00:30:43   Like you really are just doing like light web browsing.

00:30:45   And my battery test was very light in Mavericks.

00:30:48   It was like automated, basically like going

00:30:50   to a bunch of web pages, switching tabs,

00:30:52   reloading web pages, going to a text editor,

00:30:55   typing some random text, saving the text document,

00:30:57   going-- it was like that's the type of stuff it was doing.

00:30:59   Very light.

00:31:00   And I was getting 15 hours out of it.

00:31:02   But anyway, 12 hours is what Apple says.

00:31:04   The iPad Air, which is my standard bearer for the iOS,

00:31:07   ARM device, it's got the biggest, fastest ARM CPU in it,

00:31:11   it's got a pretty darn big battery

00:31:12   'cause the iPad Air is their biggest iPad.

00:31:15   It is a, I guess, what is this number wrong in here?

00:31:17   32.4 watt hour battery, let me check.

00:31:22   32.4 watt hour battery, I just have a typo in the notes.

00:31:25   And Apple claims this is good for 10 hours of battery life,

00:31:28   although they say nine hours if you use cellular data.

00:31:30   So if you do the math on that,

00:31:33   it ends up that the iPad Air is about 40%

00:31:35   more energy efficient than the MacBook Air in terms of how many watt hours gives you

00:31:40   how many hours of usage out of it.

00:31:43   And who knows if Apple's usage things are comparable?

00:31:46   Like, how are they coming up with the 12-hour number of the MacBook Air and what kind of

00:31:50   activity they're coming up with with the iPad Air 10-hour battery life?

00:31:54   But still, the iPad Air wins by like 40%.

00:31:57   The iPad Air wins by 25% if you include cellular data, but the MacBook Air doesn't even have

00:32:02   that option.

00:32:03   So whatever.

00:32:04   better energy efficiency.

00:32:06   But then you look at, you have to have some proxy for,

00:32:08   okay, it's 40% more energy efficient,

00:32:10   but how fast is the CPU?

00:32:11   How does the A7 CPU compare to the MacBook Air CPU?

00:32:14   And CPU benchmarking is a pain.

00:32:16   I just did Geekbench because that's what everybody does,

00:32:19   whatever.

00:32:19   This is just ballpark, right?

00:32:21   So the MacBook Air Geekbench,

00:32:22   compared to the iPad Air Geekbench,

00:32:26   the MacBook Air is 230% faster in single core

00:32:30   and 250% faster in multi-core.

00:32:31   So in exchange for 40% more energy efficiency,

00:32:36   it gives up 2X performance or 2.5X performance.

00:32:40   And so that's quite a gap to make up.

00:32:43   So you could say, oh, the ARM processors

00:32:45   are more energy efficient.

00:32:47   They're not more energy efficient when doing the same thing.

00:32:49   The conjecture of Apple switching to ARM

00:32:52   is that they could switch to ARM CPUs,

00:32:53   ignoring the chipset, ignoring Thunderbolt,

00:32:55   ignoring all the other technical

00:32:57   and intellectual property issues

00:32:58   that may prevent them from having this be feasible.

00:33:00   Just the CPU, can Apple take an ARM chip

00:33:05   and make it 250% faster while maintaining

00:33:10   its 40% energy efficiency advantage, right?

00:33:13   It's because as you make the CPU more performant,

00:33:17   you're gonna lose that energy efficiency, right?

00:33:19   It's not like the iPad Air is 40% more energy efficient

00:33:22   doing the same thing, it's way slower.

00:33:23   It's two times slower at least.

00:33:25   And this doesn't even get into like the relative comparisons

00:33:29   of the embedded GPUs and forget about a discrete GPU

00:33:32   and the MacBook Pros and again, the Mac Pro,

00:33:35   who knows what you would do with that.

00:33:36   So there are a lot of just unanswered

00:33:39   technical performance questions in terms of like,

00:33:42   what would be, putting aside the being master

00:33:45   of your own destiny, what would be the advantage

00:33:49   for Apple to switch to ARM, technically speaking?

00:33:52   Would you get a Mac that lasts longer battery wise?

00:33:55   Would you get a Mac that performs as at least as well

00:33:58   is the existing Macs, would you get Macs to perform better?

00:34:00   These are all unanswered questions, we don't know.

00:34:02   I'm saying that the gap right now,

00:34:04   it does not make it seem like Apple,

00:34:06   like it's a gimme for Apple to say,

00:34:07   oh, Apple could totally make a CPU that is exactly as fast

00:34:10   as the current MacBook Air is,

00:34:11   but is more energy efficient.

00:34:12   I don't see that in the numbers.

00:34:14   I'm not saying it's impossible,

00:34:15   but nothing Apple has ever done so far

00:34:17   has shown that it could do that.

00:34:20   And the second aspect of this is everyone complaining

00:34:22   about the Broadwell delay,

00:34:23   it's like Broadwell being delayed into next year,

00:34:24   which is why Apple had to rev its laptop line

00:34:27   and just say, well, okay, we'll give you more RAM,

00:34:28   which is nice by the way,

00:34:29   give you more RAM and lower the prices

00:34:31   'cause we're not gonna have new laptops

00:34:32   until we can get the new CPUs.

00:34:34   And so it's a bummer, like, oh, well, see if Apple,

00:34:36   you know, if Apple made its own ARM chips,

00:34:38   they wouldn't have this problem

00:34:39   because they wouldn't be reliant on Intel

00:34:42   and these delays wouldn't affect them

00:34:44   because they would be, you know,

00:34:44   getting masters of their own destiny.

00:34:47   I don't much see that because in the race to say,

00:34:51   can we make an ARM chip that's as good,

00:34:53   that has the same performance per watt as Intel things?

00:34:56   If you're gonna have any shot at that,

00:34:59   you have to be using the same process size as Intel.

00:35:02   And the only person who can do the same process size

00:35:04   as Intel is Intel.

00:35:05   So you'd still be relying on Intel

00:35:07   to fab your 14 nanometer ARM chips.

00:35:09   And if Intel can't get its 14 nanometer x86 chips

00:35:13   out the door, chances of it being able to get your ARM

00:35:16   14 nanometer chips out the door

00:35:17   before it puts this x86 ones out the door are very slim.

00:35:20   You'd have to get Intel to agree to fab them

00:35:22   in the first place, then you'd have to get them

00:35:24   to agree to give you priority.

00:35:25   And then you'd have to say that the thing that's stopping Intel from making the x86 chips at 14 nanometers is just like laziness or something

00:35:31   And if only you know, if only Apple was whipping them along and say well see if Apple was master of its own destiny

00:35:35   You would have 14 nanometer ARM CPUs for its next generation of MacBook Airs that have more performance per watt than the Intel ones and just

00:35:42   Technically speaking. I don't see it now

00:35:44   It doesn't mean they're not gonna do it or they would do it and just make some excuses and eventually catch up because

00:35:49   That's kind of an Apple's mo. It's like like with the Maps thing

00:35:52   Well, we just can't have Google Maps anymore and our new maps are gonna be worse and they're gonna be worse for a long time

00:35:57   Possibly forever, but we just have to do it. That's always an option

00:36:00   So I'm not saying Apple will never do this but on paper

00:36:02   It does not look like a compelling change for me

00:36:05   And this is even ignoring like the Mac Pro and all my sad x86 games and the ability to run windows and all that

00:36:11   Yeah, the ability run windows. I wonder how much that matters

00:36:15   My my feeling is that it probably matters a good amount still and I'm sure it's going down every year with how much that matters

00:36:21   but I bet there's still a lot of people who run like the Windows version of Microsoft Office in virtualization at least.

00:36:28   Ahem.

00:36:29   Right.

00:36:30   Yeah, that's exactly true. And actually I recorded an episode of Mac Power Users last night,

00:36:35   and one of the things we very briefly talked about is what happens if, you know, Macs go ARM, or if they certainly if they weren't Intel.

00:36:42   And that would be a showstopper for me.

00:36:45   Additionally, if there was an Intel Mac and an ARM Mac, let's say they were both brand

00:36:52   new, you know, Broadwell comes out, but simultaneously there's an ARM-based Mac, I would absolutely

00:36:57   choose the Intel-based Mac for work at least because I live in Windows at work.

00:37:04   I don't use Bootcamp.

00:37:06   Is Bootcamp even still a thing?

00:37:07   Yeah, it's still there.

00:37:08   Okay.

00:37:09   Well, anyway, so I don't use Bootcamp, I use VMware Fusion, but my point is that I pretty

00:37:15   much live in VMware Fusion at work.

00:37:16   And so for me to have really bad and crummy virtualization

00:37:21   would be a showstopper.

00:37:23   I would have to use one of those Dell behemoths

00:37:25   if I didn't have an Intel Mac.

00:37:28   And that's just a terrible life that nobody wants to leave.

00:37:31   - Yeah, I mean, I think, you know,

00:37:34   to do an architecture transition again

00:37:37   would have to come with major gains.

00:37:40   And I think, you know, John, everything you said is right,

00:37:42   and, you know, looking at what they would lose

00:37:44   with Windows compatibility and the cost of having all developers have to recompile, because

00:37:50   as we said last time we talked about this, or as I said at least, going from PowerPC

00:37:56   to Intel, they used Rosetta to try to help transition along and emulate the old stuff,

00:38:01   but that also worked primarily because the Intel chips were so much faster. There was

00:38:05   a huge performance jump when they made that transition. And here there probably wouldn't

00:38:10   that same performance jump, in fact it might even get slower.

00:38:15   It would not be an easy transition.

00:38:17   It would be possible, you know, they could do it,

00:38:19   it's a different environment now,

00:38:21   Windows isn't as important, developers in the Mac App Store,

00:38:24   they're using Apple's Xcode toolkits and everything,

00:38:28   so Apple could just ship a cross compiler

00:38:31   and make universal binaries again.

00:38:33   They could do it if they wanted to,

00:38:35   but it would not be a cheap or easy transition to make.

00:38:38   make. And so the question is whether it would be worth it. And I've been looking at these

00:38:43   numbers and thinking about, you know, john, you're right, thinking about like the fab

00:38:46   capacity issue, and I don't see it really being worth it.

00:38:49   See, I think they could actually make a pretty darn high performance ARM chip, mostly because

00:38:55   like with their integration, like the fact that they control the compiler, they control

00:38:58   the language, they, they control the micro architecture of the chip, you can really get

00:39:02   some impressive gains out of that. But you still are always in the end faced with the

00:39:06   the problem of who the hell is gonna fab this chip?

00:39:07   And if the answer isn't Intel using their best process

00:39:10   before at the same time as they do their own flagship chips,

00:39:13   then your answer is, well,

00:39:14   it doesn't matter how great your chip is.

00:39:15   If you have to fab at a size,

00:39:17   a generation behind what Intel does,

00:39:19   how the hell are you gonna compete

00:39:20   on price performance with them?

00:39:21   Like it is just a huge advantage to say,

00:39:23   you're at 22 nanometers and we're at 14.

00:39:25   It's like, you know,

00:39:27   like everyone likes to bring up the x86 tax.

00:39:29   Like all these crazy instructions,

00:39:31   like the x86 tax has been going down, you know,

00:39:34   for, it just always keeps going down and down

00:39:37   because as the number of transistors in the chip

00:39:38   goes up and up, and even if you exclude cache,

00:39:41   which is a huge part of it,

00:39:42   or even if you exclude the GPU,

00:39:44   like the percentage of transistors you have to spend

00:39:47   that x86 is so small that it's not even a factor.

00:39:50   Like it's a factor, you know, in terms of elegance

00:39:53   and it's just disgusting to think about those things

00:39:54   being there and it would be nice if more of them

00:39:56   get phased out, but at this point it's like,

00:39:58   x86-64 isn't as gross.

00:40:01   You can implement the old like 16-bit instructions

00:40:03   crazy ass crap that's never gonna get called

00:40:05   as slow as you want with as few transistors as you want.

00:40:07   It's just, it's a tiny blip, it's not the kind of blip

00:40:10   that you can build a sustainable performance advantage on.

00:40:14   You know, like process and manufacturing

00:40:16   is just such a huge part of this.

00:40:18   And so Intel has to be a huge part.

00:40:20   And I don't know the ins and outs of the details

00:40:21   that people have been talking about this,

00:40:22   but like CPU is one thing, but you've got chipset,

00:40:25   you've got Thunderbolt, you've got whatever

00:40:26   the current version of PCI expresses and all that stuff.

00:40:29   And a lot of that stuff is tied up with either patents

00:40:31   or actual intellectual property that involves Intel.

00:40:33   So I don't think you're gonna get away from Intel

00:40:36   unless you're gonna do something like an iOS device

00:40:40   where it's like, oh, no Thunderbolt over here,

00:40:42   we don't even have USB.

00:40:43   It's our own little widget,

00:40:44   it's got our own port on the side of it,

00:40:47   and we control everything,

00:40:48   but you can't quite do that with Macs yet.

00:40:50   - We are also sponsored this week by a new sponsor.

00:40:54   It is TopBrewer.

00:40:56   Go to topbrewerusa.com.

00:40:59   It's from a company called Scanomat.

00:41:01   This is interesting.

00:41:02   So Top Brewer is a revolutionary coffee system

00:41:05   that dispenses espresso, coffee, cappuccino, lattes,

00:41:09   filtered sparkling water, cold and hot filtered water,

00:41:11   and other drinks on demand via a Bluetooth connection

00:41:14   with just a tap on your iOS or Android device.

00:41:18   Top Brewer is designed and manufactured in Denmark.

00:41:21   A lot of things that are awesome come from Denmark

00:41:22   that are difficult to pronounce, such as Jorg Jensen.

00:41:26   Is that the Jensen Electronics brand, I assume?

00:41:28   - Is this one of those electronic brands

00:41:30   that no one's ever heard of except for you.

00:41:31   - No, gents, they've been around forever.

00:41:33   They've been around since the 80s at least, right?

00:41:35   Also Bang & Olufsen, which you've probably heard of them

00:41:38   at least, they're in the Apple stores and everything.

00:41:39   And of course Lego, which is singular and plural

00:41:43   at the same time, it is not Legos.

00:41:45   It is Lego trademark brand bricks or something, right?

00:41:48   So anyway, Lego comes from Denmark too.

00:41:50   Great design and great coffee

00:41:51   are also part of Denmark's culture.

00:41:53   Now with Tott Brewer, drinks are customizable

00:41:56   and can be saved as favorites.

00:41:57   You can have this thing if you prefer 9.5 grams

00:42:01   of espresso beans in your espresso, over 8.5 grams.

00:42:04   You can save your preference as a favorite

00:42:06   and your favorite drink as a tap away.

00:42:08   You can save whether you like more or less foam

00:42:11   in your cappuccino, all this stuff.

00:42:13   Now what's cool with Top Brewer,

00:42:14   you probably saw this circulate around,

00:42:17   look at these cool gadget kind of sites about a year ago

00:42:19   when they first announced it and showed it off.

00:42:21   It looks just like a big,

00:42:24   one of those big U-shaped kitchen taps.

00:42:27   It just looks like a tap on a flat counter.

00:42:30   And all the machinery and reservoirs and everything for it

00:42:33   are hidden in the countertop.

00:42:35   It is the coolest, cleanest, most modern looking thing

00:42:39   I've seen in a long time.

00:42:41   It's all, you know, all the machinery's hidden away

00:42:43   and you can see this beautifully designed silver tap

00:42:46   and it's really cool.

00:42:48   And these are commercial grade components in the top brewer.

00:42:50   Now, they target both home installations

00:42:53   as well as small offices and commercial settings.

00:42:55   It includes a burr grinder for the coffee,

00:42:58   which is made of, even the burr grinder

00:43:00   is made of cast aluminum, and it alone is 13 pounds

00:43:04   and is really high quality stuff in here.

00:43:07   So Top Brewer is the perfect marriage

00:43:08   of beautiful design, exquisite coffee,

00:43:10   and so here's what you do.

00:43:12   You find one of these things or install it in your home.

00:43:15   But at first, if you wanna go try it, go find one.

00:43:17   They have them installed at various places

00:43:19   around a lot of cities these days,

00:43:20   and they're expanding very soon.

00:43:23   So go find one of these.

00:43:24   you install their app and then you just order from the app.

00:43:27   You just walk up to the thing

00:43:28   and order it right from the app.

00:43:29   And then it makes your drink right there.

00:43:31   You don't have to interact with anybody.

00:43:32   So maybe the baristas might have a problem with this,

00:43:34   I don't know.

00:43:35   But you don't have to interact with anybody

00:43:36   or give your name so they can misspell it on the cup

00:43:38   or anything like that.

00:43:40   You just walk up to this thing with the app

00:43:42   and it makes your preferred drink.

00:43:44   And you can walk up to any of these things,

00:43:45   anywhere that you find one, in any city,

00:43:48   any stores that have them,

00:43:49   or you can install one right in your home or office.

00:43:52   So anyway, go to topbrewerusa.com.

00:43:56   That is topbrewerusa.com.

00:43:59   Check it out, it's really interesting,

00:44:00   and I think these are probably gonna be big pretty soon.

00:44:03   - All right.

00:44:04   So the other thing that's been going around the internet

00:44:06   over the last week to week and a half, maybe two weeks,

00:44:10   is whether or not anyone can make money

00:44:12   in the iOS App Store.

00:44:14   Marco, are you making any money in the iOS App Store?

00:44:18   - Well, I am right now.

00:44:19   Ask me again in three months.

00:44:21   - Fair enough.

00:44:21   - That's fine for Marco, that's the other thing

00:44:23   that's going on. (laughing)

00:44:24   - Yeah, right.

00:44:25   - The actual full version of that is,

00:44:28   is it possible for anyone to make money in the App Store

00:44:30   besides Marco?

00:44:32   That's basically the meme.

00:44:33   - That's true. - Besides Marco

00:44:34   and like three other people that they list.

00:44:36   - That's true.

00:44:37   - I mean, there's two problems really that people face.

00:44:39   Problem number one is getting noticed at all

00:44:43   and ever having strong sales.

00:44:45   So that's like, my reputation and existing audience

00:44:49   gives me that kind of for free.

00:44:51   Not entirely free, but close.

00:44:53   But then problem number two affects me

00:44:56   as much as anybody else, which is once you've found

00:45:00   and saturated the number of people

00:45:02   who are going to ever buy your app,

00:45:04   what happens to your sales curve?

00:45:07   And how do you get more people to buy it

00:45:10   who are not finding it, or who are choosing not to buy it,

00:45:14   or who are looking at the category

00:45:17   and choosing one of your competitors instead?

00:45:20   And that's a much harder problem.

00:45:22   And I don't have any benefits there

00:45:25   over anyone else really.

00:45:26   And it's a hard problem to solve.

00:45:28   And so the first problem you can kind of address

00:45:33   by doing things like picking a category

00:45:40   where there's less competition but there is still a market.

00:45:42   That's really hard to find though.

00:45:44   A lot of times there's no competition

00:45:45   'cause it isn't very useful.

00:45:48   Or it's a problem that it's very useful

00:45:50   like 10 people in the world and you're one of them.

00:45:52   So congratulations, but it's gonna be hard to sell it.

00:45:55   And a lot of things are just like,

00:45:57   you know, it's kinda cool, but who's gonna pay for it?

00:46:00   And if it isn't that compelling to pay for,

00:46:03   even if it's kinda cool,

00:46:05   it's hard to get a lot of sales there.

00:46:07   So we've seen a lot of these blog posts

00:46:11   over the last couple of weeks

00:46:14   on the problems in the App Store

00:46:15   and how hard it is for developers

00:46:17   to make a good living there.

00:46:19   And a lot of developers have shared numbers,

00:46:22   like actual numbers, here's what we made,

00:46:24   which is unusual.

00:46:25   In most places, talking about your salary is taboo,

00:46:29   and that's a whole other discussion

00:46:32   about whether that should be that way.

00:46:33   There's actually a really good Planet Money episode

00:46:35   about that recently that you can find.

00:46:37   It's interesting though to see,

00:46:39   'cause what most of these people are revealing

00:46:42   is that they're making a lot less money

00:46:44   than people might have assumed,

00:46:45   and that a lot less money then is worth continuing

00:46:48   to work on it basically.

00:46:50   And so this was started out by Jared Sinclair

00:46:54   and his post about Unread, which is an RSS reader,

00:46:58   and it ends up it's made, I forget the exact number,

00:47:01   it was like $30,000 over its lifetime of over a year,

00:47:04   right, something like that?

00:47:06   - I thought it was like 40-ish, but the point is,

00:47:08   it was in the 30 to 50 range, let's say.

00:47:12   - Right, yeah.

00:47:13   So, and so it was below his expectations

00:47:16   and makes it hard to justify full-time work on it.

00:47:20   If you're a programmer in the United States

00:47:23   paying for United States health insurance and everything

00:47:25   and rent or a mortgage and everything else,

00:47:28   it's pretty expensive to live here.

00:47:30   And if you're making 30,000 a year,

00:47:34   when you have a skill that you could make easily twice that,

00:47:37   probably more so, depending on the area that you live in,

00:47:41   working for anybody else, that's kinda hard to justify.

00:47:44   So I don't know, Casey, I mean, what do you think about this?

00:47:45   'cause you're a normal person.

00:47:47   I'm apparently, people get mad when I talk about this

00:47:51   because anything I say, people say,

00:47:53   "Oh, well, this doesn't apply to you.

00:47:55   "You can't say that.

00:47:56   "Oh, this works for Marco."

00:47:57   People get very mad at me when I talk about this.

00:47:59   So Casey, you are more normal than I am

00:48:02   and people tend to like you a lot more.

00:48:04   So what do you think of this?

00:48:05   (laughing)

00:48:07   - Right, so I think it's a tough thing

00:48:11   and there's been a bunch of things that,

00:48:14   friend of the show _DavidSmith has posted both in text form and in audible form about this.

00:48:20   I think he is a good counterpoint to yours insofar as he is also successful, but he does it by way

00:48:29   of diversification, whereas you do it by way of really dumping all of your time into one app. And

00:48:35   both of those are perfectly valid ways of going about it. For me, I don't think I'm going to ever

00:48:42   post this in a blog post or anything, but I was looking at fast text numbers and

00:48:46   in brief the first check I got from Apple was

00:48:51   the end of September in 2010 and it was $43 and I was

00:48:58   unbelievably excited about that because I had actually earned some modicum of money on the App Store.

00:49:04   I didn't earn a lot and if we care I could go in the blow-by-blow of how much I earned but suffice to say it wasn't

00:49:11   until sometime during ATP's run that I finally cracked into profit for fast text.

00:49:20   And I was just adding up all the numbers, and if I added things correctly, I am $143

00:49:28   in the black.

00:49:29   That counts for all the money I've made, which is about $650, minus five years in the app

00:49:37   which is about a hundred bucks a pop, minus the $40 I spent on Opacity Express to make

00:49:43   the world's worst icon with feet. You're welcome, Jon.

00:49:47   [laughter]

00:49:47   I liked it.

00:49:49   Well, you're not subtracting on WWDC tickets or travel to WWDC or the price you paid for the

00:49:55   inferior footless icon that replaced the real icon?

00:49:58   Well, I have not... My friend, Jacob Swydek, actually did not charge me for that icon. He

00:50:06   He did it out of the goodness of his heart because he's awesome.

00:50:08   And I don't know if he's doing contract work anymore,

00:50:10   but if you want a good icon, talk to him.

00:50:12   Anyway--

00:50:13   But WWDC, you don't count.

00:50:14   And that wipes out all your profit.

00:50:16   Well, yes and no.

00:50:17   Of the four years I've been to WWDC,

00:50:20   I think work paid for three of them, if I'm not mistaken.

00:50:23   So you could argue that that one year would put me heavily

00:50:29   in the red.

00:50:30   But I consider that slightly ancillary.

00:50:34   And we can get into a whole debate as to whether or not that's reasonable, but

00:50:37   let's take WWDC as completely unrelated.

00:50:40   Let's assume I've never been to WWDC still over five years because, uh,

00:50:45   fast text last, or excuse me, launched shortly after iOS four came out.

00:50:50   Um, and so in the five or so years that it's been out, I've earned $143.

00:50:57   Now I've done nothing to promote it other than occasionally mentioning it here.

00:51:01   And that's about it.

00:51:04   And to be honest, especially now, it's getting a little old,

00:51:07   getting a little long in the tooth.

00:51:09   I need to find some time to work on it.

00:51:13   - I can't believe I beat you.

00:51:14   - I know.

00:51:15   - I can't believe overcast shit before your iOS 7 update.

00:51:18   - The really embarrassing thing is that

00:51:19   iOS 8 is gonna beat me too.

00:51:21   I did work on it briefly two weeks ago.

00:51:24   And I, what was it that you had said?

00:51:27   The, shoot, the top--

00:51:29   - The top layout guide.

00:51:29   - Yes, that got me halfway there,

00:51:31   but I'm not quite through yet.

00:51:33   And because I'm too damn stubborn to use springs and struts,

00:51:36   I still haven't updated it.

00:51:38   But anyway, but yeah, so over the course of five years,

00:51:43   having done no real marketing whatsoever,

00:51:47   I've earned $143.

00:51:50   And I'm happy with that.

00:51:51   I mean, I'm certainly not complaining about it,

00:51:54   but I certainly wouldn't be leaving my job

00:51:56   for $143 over five years.

00:51:59   I mean, that's like one nice meal, if by nice you mean Panera Bread, every half year to

00:52:06   a year.

00:52:07   You know what I mean?

00:52:08   So it's hard.

00:52:09   And Justin Williams has been talking in his snarky way, which I love, but he's been talking

00:52:17   on and off about that, "You know what?

00:52:19   Business is just hard.

00:52:22   Business is hard."

00:52:24   And that's the thing is that you got to be a businessman or woman before you're

00:52:32   a developer in a lot of cases.

00:52:34   And I think Marco, you've done pretty well with that by finding a niche, niche, niche,

00:52:40   whatever, finding a cubby that's not terribly well served up until Overcast.

00:52:47   And in the case of Overcast, finding a way to make it something unique.

00:52:53   And we'll see over time, or you'll see over time, whether or not that's sustainable.

00:52:58   But _DavidSmith, by comparison, has his hands in a lot of different pots.

00:53:05   And that's what keeps him profitable and able to be independent.

00:53:10   And somebody mentioned in the chat a moment ago, "Well, yeah, you say you didn't do any

00:53:14   real marketing, but, well, you mentioned it on ATP and that's marketing."

00:53:18   And that's a fair point.

00:53:19   That's an absolutely fair point.

00:53:20   "Okay, let's assume that that's quote-unquote real marketing. I still have only earned 150 bucks over five years."

00:53:27   You know, so if that's real marketing, that means it's even more depressing than we originally thought.

00:53:32   So...

00:53:33   This episode is also sponsored by Fast Text.

00:53:35   Right? You know, so...

00:53:37   I don't know. It's...

00:53:39   I long so much. I long so much to be able to go independent and do my own thing and not work for the man.

00:53:47   And I love my job, I truly do.

00:53:49   But it would be so neat to be like you or underscore and be able to be my own person,

00:53:55   if you will, in mega air quotes.

00:53:58   But in the end of the day, I don't really have a terribly stressful job.

00:54:03   And as long as I show up and do decent work, I'm going to maintain that not terribly stressful

00:54:10   job.

00:54:11   And there's a lot to be said for that.

00:54:13   And I think, as always, the grass is greener on the other side.

00:54:18   And I have it pretty easy, all told.

00:54:22   So young and foolish.

00:54:23   "If I just show up every day and do good work, I'll keep my job."

00:54:26   And I tell you about that right after my first child was born, that I lost my job.

00:54:31   Anyway, that's lots of fun.

00:54:33   What job number is this for you, Casey?

00:54:34   Is it number three or something?

00:54:36   This is four.

00:54:38   And did you voluntarily leave all the previous jobs?

00:54:41   Thus far, yes.

00:54:42   you're a quitter. What I'm saying is chances are good that you're going to have more jobs

00:54:48   in your life. And I think it's a reasonable chance that some of those transitions will

00:54:54   happen not by your choice. It is certainly possible. I tend to try to

00:55:00   pick a company that from everything I can tell is stable and to the best of my ability

00:55:08   I am certainly not the most important person there, but I am not the low-hanging fruit,

00:55:14   if you will.

00:55:16   But you're right.

00:55:17   I mean, the company that I work for, it could fold tomorrow, and I could be none the wiser.

00:55:22   Well, let's not turn this into an episode of quit.

00:55:25   But the whole thing of the illusion of stability versus the panic that you feel and the stress

00:55:33   that you feel about, "Oh, I'm doing my own thing, but that means it's all on me,"

00:55:36   where it's like, well now I'm not doing my own thing,

00:55:39   it's not all on me, but at least I have security.

00:55:40   Well you really don't have security,

00:55:42   but it kind of feels like you do.

00:55:43   So the reality is that depending on your personality trait,

00:55:47   the bottom line is, do you feel more stressed?

00:55:49   Are you more stressed in situation A versus situation B?

00:55:52   Regardless of whether situation A and B

00:55:55   are actually comparable in any way.

00:55:57   Because like, just because you feel safer in a job

00:55:59   doesn't mean a job is safer,

00:56:00   but feeling safer is like 90% of the battle anyway.

00:56:03   Like if you have a personality

00:56:05   where if you were to go off on your own,

00:56:07   all you would do is stress all the time.

00:56:09   - Yep.

00:56:10   - That wouldn't be a good thing for you,

00:56:12   even if it was exactly comparable risk-wise in reality.

00:56:15   It just matters how you feel.

00:56:16   But like all this stuff on the web,

00:56:18   going around about the App Store viability,

00:56:21   I have to think that it's motivated by,

00:56:25   like there's no point in writing about this

00:56:28   if there's not an angle.

00:56:30   And the angle I see a lot is someone who's not me

00:56:35   is to blame for my difficulties.

00:56:39   Not in a bad way, 'cause everyone kind of thinks that,

00:56:40   but it's like, if it was just on you, you're like,

00:56:43   well, I mean, kind of like Casey's thing,

00:56:44   he's not writing posts complaining about how hard it is

00:56:46   to make money out of FastX.

00:56:47   Whose fault is it that, you know, FastX?

00:56:49   Well, is FastX a awesome super duper app?

00:56:52   No, it's not. - No, it is not.

00:56:54   - Has it been updated religiously

00:56:56   to keep up with the latest tech?

00:56:57   No, it has not.

00:56:58   - You're a jerk.

00:56:59   - Is it, you know, it's not like you're searching for like,

00:57:02   why couldn't I make money off,

00:57:03   you know why you couldn't make money off FastX,

00:57:05   You know what I mean?

00:57:06   - Absolutely.

00:57:06   - And that's why you're not writing blog posts about it.

00:57:08   Whereas other people like Jared,

00:57:09   they'd say like, "I made a great app.

00:57:11   I love it.

00:57:12   It embodies my own ideals.

00:57:14   I think the interface is great.

00:57:15   I think it does something useful.

00:57:16   I really like the way it works.

00:57:17   I worked hard on it.

00:57:18   It's bug free.

00:57:19   I've kept it updated.

00:57:20   I use latest technologies."

00:57:22   And then, "Why aren't I successful?"

00:57:27   And you're not gonna turn that on yourself

00:57:29   because you're like, "Look, I made an awesome app.

00:57:30   I did a good job with this.

00:57:31   I look at all the other apps that are out there.

00:57:32   Mine is at least as good as them, if not better.

00:57:35   So you're gonna immediately be looking for

00:57:37   some reason why you didn't succeed

00:57:39   that doesn't have to do with your own personal failings.

00:57:41   And in most cases, it's not really your fault.

00:57:43   Like you did do a good job on the things that you care about.

00:57:46   Like you did make an ICUI.

00:57:48   It is a good app, it is bug-free, it does do something useful

00:57:50   but then you get into all the things

00:57:52   the market was talking about.

00:57:52   All right, well then whose fault is it?

00:57:54   What am I gonna write about?

00:57:54   Well, maybe you wrote an app

00:57:56   that has a potential customer base of 10 people

00:57:59   and they all bought it already, right?

00:58:00   Maybe your taste doesn't match other people's tastes.

00:58:03   Like if you have a beautiful bug free,

00:58:05   nice interface application for like, you know,

00:58:09   counting oranges, how many people in the world

00:58:11   need to count oranges?

00:58:12   Maybe it's just a hobby of yours or like train spotting

00:58:14   or some other strength.

00:58:15   Like you have, there's so much more to it

00:58:17   and that's where the end of the business is.

00:58:18   Maybe you picked a good audience,

00:58:19   maybe it's already crowded, so on and so forth.

00:58:21   And that's kind of boring too.

00:58:23   That's where a lot of these things get to is like,

00:58:24   oh, just business is hard or whatever.

00:58:26   But everyone is looking for something more interesting

00:58:29   than that because just saying business is hard,

00:58:30   Like that post has to come after everyone else's post comes

00:58:33   to be kind of like the, you know,

00:58:34   let me just say the obvious thing to get us back to sanity.

00:58:37   The previous ones are like, what is Apple doing?

00:58:40   What is the app, is the app store environment getting worse?

00:58:43   Is Apple not doing things that may,

00:58:45   it used to be easier to make money,

00:58:46   but now it's not as easy.

00:58:47   And I blame Apple for that

00:58:49   because they control the ecosystem.

00:58:50   And on iOS, there is an angle to that

00:58:52   because it's like, if you want to make an iOS app,

00:58:55   the app store is the only game in town.

00:58:57   Like unless you want to, you know,

00:58:58   sell them one of those weird jailbreak stores or something,

00:58:59   which usually people don't want to do,

00:59:01   Apple controls everything.

00:59:03   And so unless Apple is perfect, you're gonna say,

00:59:06   I made a good app, I think I picked a reasonable category,

00:59:09   but the App Store is harder to make money in now

00:59:12   than it used to be.

00:59:13   And whenever I see posts like that, I think, well, yeah,

00:59:17   like people know about it now.

00:59:19   Like it's not, you know, getting in early,

00:59:21   the gold rush is over.

00:59:22   The gold rush didn't end because Apple did something bad.

00:59:25   The gold rush ended because everyone came to California.

00:59:28   Like, and now everyone's here now.

00:59:29   Like the gold has been dug out of the ground.

00:59:32   When you're the first app on the App Store on day one,

00:59:34   everyone buys you because there's nothing for them to buy.

00:59:36   If you were the first Read Later app,

00:59:39   then you would get a lot more customers

00:59:40   than if you're the 17th Read Later app, right?

00:59:42   That's just, the gold rush means everyone rushed in

00:59:44   and the market was filled.

00:59:45   And so now of course it's harder to make money,

00:59:47   but it kind of gets, like what I kind of get back to is the,

00:59:50   I see this a lot in writers complaining,

00:59:53   I guess developers too, like writers, developers,

00:59:57   anybody who does anything creative fields

00:59:59   in development, they're like, don't work for free.

01:00:02   We've all heard that before,

01:00:02   and I think I've done this complaint

01:00:04   about the same thing on the podcast.

01:00:05   But don't work for free because it devalues the work.

01:00:08   So when you work for free and I tell somebody

01:00:10   that I wanna get paid, they're like,

01:00:11   well, I'll just take this guy, he works for free.

01:00:13   And don't do that because you're making the thing

01:00:16   that we do less valuable by being willing to do it for free.

01:00:20   And that is 100% true.

01:00:22   If the market is full of people like,

01:00:23   I will write your application for free,

01:00:25   or I will write your blog post for free,

01:00:27   I will do this logo design for you for free it makes it harder for you to

01:00:31   Charge money for any of those services because if the guy doing it for free is just as good or God forbid better than you

01:00:37   You've got you know it's very difficult to charge money, and so you if you are talking to your peers

01:00:42   Hey, everybody who does whatever everybody who paints paintings everyone who writes articles everyone who develops software

01:00:46   Don't do your thing for free or don't give your thing away because that makes it harder for all of us to make money

01:00:51   and

01:00:53   That is true. But the problem with that is what if the thing that you're doing is really fun

01:00:58   What if it's really cool? What if it's really fun to make apps? What if it's really fun to do paintings?

01:01:03   What if logo design is really fun? What if you can do it in your spare time like while having a regular job?

01:01:09   What if college students really like to do it and they're really smart and talented and don't really need to have a job

01:01:14   Those are unfortunate facts of life about many endeavors and making apps is kind of fun

01:01:19   I guess and working for yourself is also fun all these things that make it attractive to people like Casey and me and you know

01:01:25   it's like

01:01:25   That makes it attractive to everybody. Everybody wants to do that. Everybody wants to lead the good life. Everyone wants to do something cool and

01:01:32   all the people who are able to do that something cool because they don't need to have a job or because they're in college or

01:01:39   Because they're just young and foolish or whatever and like their reward is the fun of it

01:01:43   They make it hard for everyone else to make money

01:01:46   That's like I don't know it's like that's not I don't I don't think you can blame anybody in that the people saying that that

01:01:52   It's made it's harder

01:01:53   It is harder, but I don't really blame the people doing it for free or for the fun of it

01:01:56   because they're getting their own reward out of it and like that's

01:02:00   I'm not gonna say that this you know people who've run these blog posts are not entitled

01:02:05   But like I'm I'm making it statement independent of that thing of saying there is no entitlement

01:02:09   To be able to make a good living doing something awesome that you love right think of all the people who are in actual

01:02:16   creative fields like, you know, people who want to be singer-songwriters or like painters or poets.

01:02:23   You can be like, "Boy, wouldn't it be great if I could make six figures a year writing poetry?"

01:02:28   Yes, that would be great. Good luck with that, right? Like, the more people want to do it,

01:02:32   the more awesome it seems. Of course, the harder it's going to be to do that. And

01:02:36   writing applications is much more viable skill in terms of making money than poetry. But it's

01:02:43   It's a continuum, and writing applications

01:02:45   that you feel like writing when you feel like writing them

01:02:48   is farther towards the poetry end of the spectrum

01:02:50   than doing what Casey or I do,

01:02:53   which is doing something that an established company

01:02:56   needs you to do for money in a business

01:02:58   that they've already proven is a viable business.

01:03:01   Is that too depressing?

01:03:02   I don't know.

01:03:03   - Do you, Jon, at all aspire to be independent,

01:03:08   be that an independent consultant

01:03:09   or perhaps an independent product guy?

01:03:12   Is there any part of you that desires for that?

01:03:15   - Oh, I aspire to be retired.

01:03:17   (laughing)

01:03:19   - That's a wonderfully John Syracuse answer.

01:03:21   - Oh, that's fantastic.

01:03:23   - I aspired not to have to work.

01:03:24   I aspired to be independently wealthy.

01:03:26   All these are reasons why I will never have these things,

01:03:28   but if you're just asking what I want,

01:03:29   yep, that's what I want.

01:03:30   I want to not have to work.

01:03:31   And who doesn't want to not have to work?

01:03:33   Like seriously, like exactly.

01:03:34   - So accepting that working in some capacity

01:03:38   is a fact of life at the age in which we all are,

01:03:42   Would you, in a perfect world,

01:03:44   do you think you would prefer to be independent,

01:03:45   or do you think you would prefer to be working for the man

01:03:48   and have that either perceived or perhaps actual stability?

01:03:53   - Well, I'm just doing what everyone else does,

01:03:55   which is you kind of like,

01:03:56   you do the thing that causes the least pain, essentially.

01:04:01   - Right. - So for me,

01:04:03   I would be incredibly stressed out

01:04:05   if I was in any of these situations

01:04:07   these indie developers are in.

01:04:08   - Oh, amen, absolutely. - It just is not compatible

01:04:11   with my personality, right?

01:04:13   So the only way, like, it's very attractive,

01:04:15   but the only way I could do it is if I could say,

01:04:17   well, I don't have to worry about money,

01:04:20   so, like, that's, the thing of it is,

01:04:22   like, if you just dump the bucket of money on me,

01:04:24   and say, here you go, you never have to worry

01:04:25   about money again, what I would end up doing

01:04:27   would look a lot like what an indie developer ends up,

01:04:29   is doing, but the only reason I'd be able to do it

01:04:31   is because I would have no pressure to be successful.

01:04:34   Like, I could do whatever the hell I wanted,

01:04:36   and it doesn't matter if it's a seizure or fails,

01:04:38   and that's the only way I could do that

01:04:40   without stressing myself to death.

01:04:42   - Yeah, but you'd find other things to stress about.

01:04:44   - No, I wouldn't though.

01:04:45   This is like the remaining,

01:04:48   well, I guess I would probably stress

01:04:49   about health and stuff eventually.

01:04:50   I get old and stress about my kids and all that stuff.

01:04:52   But there's always something.

01:04:53   But in terms of work, the only thing I would do,

01:04:57   the only way I would ever do the indie lifestyle

01:04:59   is if it didn't count,

01:05:01   like if it didn't matter whether I succeeded or failed.

01:05:03   So because I just wouldn't,

01:05:05   the kind of life that Marco leads,

01:05:07   or any of these indie developers were like,

01:05:09   or even, I mean, well, I don't know.

01:05:12   If your livelihood depends on you being successful

01:05:16   by doing something that you wanna do

01:05:18   with the skill that you have,

01:05:20   whether it be writing an application

01:05:21   or even like writing a novel or running your own website

01:05:25   or anything like that where it's just you, nobody else,

01:05:27   no support, so like basically entrepreneurial spirit.

01:05:30   I do not have that because there would just be

01:05:33   too much stress and I would be miserable.

01:05:34   And so I have chosen a life that avoids that stress

01:05:37   by saying someone else worry about that.

01:05:39   I will develop my skills, become a valuable worker

01:05:42   for someone else to pay, and that to me feels more secure.

01:05:46   And I don't know what number job I'm on,

01:05:47   like six, seven, something like that.

01:05:49   I don't like that experience either,

01:05:51   having to go from job to job, but the gaps are longer,

01:05:55   and in between I feel like I have more stability

01:05:57   than I would know those things,

01:05:58   which is why neither one of us to this point,

01:06:00   Casey or I, are Marco, and Marco is Marco,

01:06:03   because he did things that we were not willing to do.

01:06:06   - Well, hold on though.

01:06:08   There's a big asterisk here though,

01:06:10   what a lot of people don't know or have forgotten,

01:06:14   is that I didn't take Indeed development full-time

01:06:16   until after it was successful.

01:06:19   - Yes, and that's true, but I've thought about this

01:06:22   on and off a fair bit.

01:06:24   You did answer a Craigslist ad for a job posting

01:06:29   that had, for a company of one employee,

01:06:32   which is something that I can't speak for Jon,

01:06:35   but there's no frickin' way I would ever do that

01:06:37   because at that point, all of the stability I'm seeking,

01:06:41   it's not there, because it's just one guy.

01:06:42   How could one guy possibly do anything right?

01:06:45   - But he was young, though.

01:06:47   Like, I might do that if I was young.

01:06:48   - Well, no, that was a concern.

01:06:50   That was definitely a concern,

01:06:51   because of how expensive New York is to live in,

01:06:54   I was concerned that, well, if this company goes under

01:06:56   and I stop getting paid, it takes like one and a half months

01:06:59   for me to have no savings left, and that's it.

01:07:02   So I was concerned, but I mean, the main reason I did that

01:07:04   was not because I was some forward-thinking maverick

01:07:09   or something, it was because I only had two offers

01:07:12   that were at all even reasonable,

01:07:14   and I really didn't wanna take the other one.

01:07:18   The other one would've made me miserable, and I knew that,

01:07:20   and David let me work on a Mac, so I took that one.

01:07:23   That was it, that was the factors that went into it.

01:07:26   - Right, and all of that makes sense,

01:07:27   but the thing of it is is that you took what to John or I,

01:07:30   or I shouldn't speak for John, but what to me

01:07:33   was a tremendously risky offer. Even though in a lot of ways it was better, it was still

01:07:38   riskier and I am so risk adverse that I really admire the fact that you took that job offer

01:07:45   at Davidville which led to all of these other things. If I was in the same position, I would

01:07:54   have gone to whatever that financial services firm or whatever it was that you were also

01:07:58   flirting with. That's where I would be and I would be freaking miserable right now.

01:08:01   Well, see, I would have taken that job.

01:08:03   My first job out of school was in a five-person startup.

01:08:06   It was like the dot-com days, like 1997.

01:08:09   So that's what you did then.

01:08:11   And it's your first job, and you don't have any responsibilities.

01:08:14   And you figure-- I did take that job.

01:08:17   It's just that my company didn't turn out to be Tumblr,

01:08:20   like almost everyone else's.

01:08:21   You know what I mean?

01:08:22   So it's almost just luck of the draw.

01:08:23   But the thing about Marco saying,

01:08:24   well, I didn't leave my job until I was making

01:08:26   good money with Instapaper.

01:08:28   Like, yeah, that's the typical nerd way to do it.

01:08:30   But even at that point, I would be saying,

01:08:33   well, I did this app in my spare time.

01:08:36   It's popular.

01:08:36   People like it.

01:08:37   I'm making good money off of it.

01:08:39   Now I can quit my job.

01:08:40   And I would never get to that leap point,

01:08:41   because I would say, you can't quit your job, because yeah,

01:08:44   you're making money off of an app, but what about next year?

01:08:45   And the year after that, and the year after that.

01:08:47   And you have to have some confidence,

01:08:48   like this is a thing that I can do, that I can sustain this,

01:08:51   that I'm going to have to write a second app and a third app,

01:08:53   and I'm going to have to find ways to make money,

01:08:55   and whatever.

01:08:55   And I would never have confidence that I could do that.

01:08:56   And what I would feel like I was doing

01:08:58   if I take the time off, I'm derailing from a career path elsewhere.

01:09:02   And if I go off and Instapaper goes for a few years and then it kind of fizzles out,

01:09:05   I'm like, "Oh, now what do I do?

01:09:07   I got to go back into the job market and I would be afraid that I can't get back into

01:09:11   the job train."

01:09:12   Now, that is not a really irrational fear because if you wrote Instapaper and it fizzled

01:09:16   after a few years but did really well in between, it would be no problem for you finding a job

01:09:20   doing iOS contracting.

01:09:22   It wouldn't actually be a problem.

01:09:24   But I mean, I wasn't looking at the App Store

01:09:26   at the time, so I was in 1997.

01:09:28   There was no App Store or anything like that.

01:09:29   But that's the kind of feeling that,

01:09:31   even if you are doing a side project,

01:09:33   and even if the side project becomes successful and

01:09:36   lucrative, the truly person who's

01:09:40   afraid about his financial security like I am

01:09:42   and probably like Casey is, would be like, oh, that's fine.

01:09:45   But you can't quit your job, because what are you

01:09:47   going to do next year, or the year after that,

01:09:48   or 10 years from now, or 15 years, or 20 years from now?

01:09:51   Or do you think this is a sustainable thing

01:09:53   that you can do in your entire career?

01:09:55   Or do you think this is something that might go well

01:09:57   for a couple years, then you're gonna have to get

01:09:59   a real job again anyway.

01:10:00   And if you had to get a real job again anyway,

01:10:01   why not just keep the real job you have now

01:10:03   because it'll be harder to come, you know.

01:10:05   That's the kind of little voice in the back of my head

01:10:08   that's preventing me from ever doing anything independent.

01:10:12   - Yep.

01:10:13   - Well, but you know, the trick there,

01:10:14   I mean, but this really is quit.

01:10:16   The flaw in that thinking is in assuming

01:10:20   that jobs are stable.

01:10:21   And the reality is like they're not at all.

01:10:25   - Yeah, I made the same point before.

01:10:26   And I've been through seven jobs anyway.

01:10:27   I'm just saying like people do essentially

01:10:29   what makes them feel comfortable

01:10:31   within the bounds of their values or whatever.

01:10:33   And within the bounds of my values,

01:10:35   having a regular salary job makes the rest of my life

01:10:38   less stressful.

01:10:40   As you get closer to retirement,

01:10:43   maybe that changes, but it's like,

01:10:44   well, you know, maybe I go independent now

01:10:46   because it's not like I have 20 years of career

01:10:47   ahead of me anyway.

01:10:48   So if I end up doing something outside of my job

01:10:50   that becomes vaguely successful,

01:10:51   I can't jump ship and do that because if it fizzles out after a few years

01:10:54   Then I'm actually really I'm gonna retire with all the money

01:10:56   I saved for my salary job during those other years anyway

01:10:58   So I think all these indie developers talking to each other on these blogs and amongst each other is

01:11:04   just kind of a way of each person coming to terms with their own sort of values like

01:11:09   It takes a certain amount of guts to leap into that lifestyle and it takes a certain sort of

01:11:15   Temperament and mindset to keep at it like underscore definitely has the mindset

01:11:20   He has the mindset to jump into it and he has the head for keeping doing it

01:11:23   He's just gonna do what it takes and he's like, you know

01:11:26   The the full spectrum kind of business thing and you to Margo for this but you know

01:11:29   Like you may like set one aspect more than another but you realize there is a spectrum of things that you have to do

01:11:35   there's the business side the marketing side choosing what you're gonna do the technical side and

01:11:38   You have your favorites and nobody likes all of it, but you realize it's sort of a you know

01:11:42   instead of like a full-stack web developer

01:11:45   you have to be a full-stack business person,

01:11:47   and you have to be able to tolerate

01:11:48   the lifestyle that comes with that.

01:11:50   Obviously, success makes it more tolerable,

01:11:52   but some people jump into it

01:11:54   liking only one aspect of it,

01:11:56   and realize that all that other stuff is just necessary.

01:11:59   And that's the problem with the gold brushes.

01:12:00   You could jump into it just being into the one aspect of it,

01:12:03   and just be like, "I really like development,

01:12:04   "and I made an app,

01:12:05   "and it's one of the only three of its kind

01:12:07   "in the app store, and I'm making money for three years."

01:12:10   And then all of a sudden, all these competitors come in,

01:12:12   and it becomes a more competitive market space,

01:12:13   and you're like, well, I really don't like doing any

01:12:15   of the parts except for the cool part where you write the app

01:12:18   and if I don't do those things, I can't really compete

01:12:22   and App Store, you've changed, man.

01:12:24   It's like, well, maybe you just weren't cut out for that.

01:12:28   Just like the environment has changed

01:12:30   and the things that you like to do and don't like to do

01:12:33   no longer make so, are no longer a fit for success

01:12:37   in this environment, right?

01:12:38   And so as the environment changes,

01:12:39   the things that it selects for success change as well

01:12:42   I don't like we all have complaints about the App Store and what Apple does and those are all legitimate complaints

01:12:47   but most of this sort of talking about the App Store I think has to do with

01:12:51   people coming to terms with their own tolerance for what the current App Store environment is like and then

01:12:56   Because some people like well, I had to stop being independent

01:12:59   I had a job and other people like I'm gonna stick it out no matter what and like what you don't hear about

01:13:03   All these things is like well, here's my sales numbers, but like does your spouse work during that time?

01:13:08   Are you still living with your parents? Are you independently wealthy?

01:13:11   So it doesn't matter what happens here anyway, because you have a trust fund like you never know what they're actual

01:13:15   Do you live in Kansas where your rent is really low or like you never know what the actual situation is?

01:13:20   Like how do you live? How do you live on that little money?

01:13:22   Are you going to stick it out or you're not going to those are more like personal decisions that have to do with your current

01:13:27   Living situation and your tolerance for risk and stress

01:13:30   And that I think is the bulk of the discussion which is a good discussion to have

01:13:34   The these tiny sliver of the discussion is are there things that Apple is doing or not doing?

01:13:40   that make it better or worse for everybody or better or worse for a particular type of developer and that I think is the

01:13:45   Thing I took away from this is like not so much. What is Apple doing to the App Store?

01:13:50   that makes it a more hostile or friendly environment for developers, but

01:13:54   What kind of people are they selecting for and obviously the people having this discussion thinks if Apple is not selecting for me

01:14:01   That's bad because I'm awesome, which is good. You should think that but

01:14:03   The other side of the coin Apple might be thinking oh, yeah

01:14:08   We want to select those apps that win Apple design awards

01:14:10   But not as much as you might think like we just need enough to have Apple design awards, but in reality

01:14:16   We're also kind of okay with EA being in the store

01:14:20   Even though EA is never gonna win an Apple design award

01:14:22   Right and so like what the kind of store that we wish it was all filled with beautiful handcrafted artisanal

01:14:28   applications made by passionate people with attention to detail like you can't make a full store of that or

01:14:34   If you can maybe that's not the store that Apple wants you you do need like

01:14:38   Yeah, you need EA in there. I guess I mean and even even things like Tokuboko which are great applications

01:14:43   That's obviously that's like a full-fledged business

01:14:46   It's not like two people working out of a garage right even if it may have started that way and maybe even need Angry Birds

01:14:51   Which again started as two people and becomes this big thing so?

01:14:53   So I think it was an interesting discussion. I enjoyed spectating it from the sidelines, but I don't think there's any one clear like

01:15:02   Mission or like sign we can all hold over our head to say do X now or else it's just more like this is life

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01:15:31   in almost like a corrugated cardboard type of backing

01:15:36   so that you can put hangers in it and everything.

01:15:39   It's a really, really nice piece

01:15:40   because you don't need a frame for these things.

01:15:43   They're like, it's the finished product.

01:15:45   You hang it on the wall, you put it on your desk,

01:15:47   there's your photo, and it's really affordable

01:15:50   in my opinion.

01:15:51   What I use them for, so I have a couple of big ones

01:15:55   over my desk for pictures that I print,

01:15:56   you know, actual photos.

01:15:57   And then up on my wall I have this row

01:16:00   of app icon fracture prints.

01:16:02   And it's 'cause they have this small square size,

01:16:04   it's something like five by five, let me see.

01:16:07   Six by six maybe, something like that.

01:16:09   And so I have my app icons of the apps

01:16:14   I've worked on before, all printed on those.

01:16:16   So there's a row of three of them now,

01:16:18   I got two of them coming, yeah.

01:16:20   Anyway, it's a great way to have a visual representation,

01:16:24   like a tangible trophy of the apps you've done.

01:16:26   and you can put website icons up there, podcast artwork,

01:16:30   pretty much anything square or rectangular,

01:16:32   you can get printed on these things.

01:16:33   The print quality is fantastic, I'm very happy with it.

01:16:36   The photos look good, the icon artwork looks good.

01:16:38   Oh yeah, see, price I started just $12

01:16:43   for the small square size, which is five by five,

01:16:45   they say here in the read.

01:16:47   Fracture puts everything you need right in the box.

01:16:50   So they even give you a picture hanger screw,

01:16:52   like the little anchor screw, they even give you that.

01:16:55   It's a fantastic service.

01:16:56   They've been around for a while.

01:16:58   I've used them for a few years now.

01:17:00   They've sponsored for a few years.

01:17:01   I really enjoy Fracture Prints.

01:17:03   You really have to see it to believe it.

01:17:06   And just, you know, 12 bucks for the small size,

01:17:09   that's really, that's fantastic.

01:17:11   You know, you can get that no problem.

01:17:13   Now, the good thing is you don't even need to pay that much

01:17:16   because you can save 15% with the coupon code ATP.

01:17:21   So please go to fractureme.com.

01:17:23   that's fractureme.com and use coupon code ATP to get 15% off

01:17:28   so that way you support them and our show.

01:17:31   Now they're also doing something special.

01:17:33   If you order using coupon code marcofree,

01:17:37   the first 25 people to use coupon code marcofree

01:17:40   will get a free small square size,

01:17:42   which is the size I use for my app icons on the wall.

01:17:44   So go to fractureme.com to make an order

01:17:47   to use code marcofree.

01:17:48   If you're one of the first 25 people to do it,

01:17:50   you'll get a free small square print.

01:17:53   And if you are not, use coupon code ATP to get 15% off.

01:17:57   Still fantastic prices.

01:17:59   I love these guys.

01:18:00   Really, they sponsored our show a lot.

01:18:02   Even before they sponsored, I used them myself

01:18:04   and I continued to order prints from them.

01:18:07   Even when we don't even have a code

01:18:08   and I have to pay full price,

01:18:09   I still continue to order prints from them

01:18:11   because they're that good.

01:18:13   Anyway, thank you very much to Fracture,

01:18:15   who prints your photo in vivid color directly on glass.

01:18:17   fractureme.com.

01:18:20   So we should also point out with regard to people opening the kimono or whatever the phrase is.

01:18:26   That's such a gross phrase.

01:18:27   Well, sorry.

01:18:29   Revealing their numbers, which also, okay, sharing their number, whatever.

01:18:33   Anyway, the point is somebody, Jazzy Chad, I don't know who exactly that is, but Jazzy Chad put up a post,

01:18:43   which we'll put in the show notes, about what it's like for game developers.

01:18:47   because the assumption is the game developers make all the money in the app store.

01:18:51   And as it turns out, this person who has a day job at Twitter, which allows him,

01:18:56   I'm assuming it's a him, allows him to make these things in his spare time

01:19:02   and not have to worry about making a living off of it.

01:19:04   He wrote three or four games, some of which looked really nice.

01:19:08   I've not played any of them, but nevertheless, he wrote a few games.

01:19:12   And for three games, even in some of which he spent a lot of time

01:19:17   trying to market, he basically ended up a little bit in the red because of the marketing

01:19:23   he paid for in order to try to make some money on these games.

01:19:29   So even for game developers, all is not rosy in the app store anymore.

01:19:32   Well, you don't have to say even for, because what's more fun than writing a cool iOS application?

01:19:38   Writing an iOS game.

01:19:40   It's a reasonable yardstick to say, "How much fun is it to do this thing?"

01:19:45   And then how many people can do it at all?

01:19:48   All development has a good number in the how many people can do it at all because only

01:19:54   certain people have the desire or tolerance to learn all the SOTR crap you have to learn

01:19:58   to be a programmer, right?

01:19:59   So people just aren't into it, like, "That's great, that's good for us, right?

01:20:02   It helps us make more money because most people don't want to learn this crap."

01:20:07   But game development of all the kinds of programs you're going to write, writing a game, like

01:20:12   if you talk to any programmer, a lot of the first programming experiences is, I wanted

01:20:16   to write a game.

01:20:17   Because people who like to program maybe also like computer games, and I would like to write

01:20:20   one of those.

01:20:21   And even if you don't end up as a game programmer, how many of us, I know certainly my first

01:20:24   programs I ever wrote were game programs, and I certainly didn't end up as a game programmer.

01:20:28   Game programming is fun, so if it's fun, it's not looking good for what are my chances of

01:20:33   making a lot of money doing this.

01:20:35   In fact, it starts to become more like, what are my chances of making a hit movie or a

01:20:39   best-selling novel.

01:20:41   Games are kind of like that.

01:20:42   It is a creative field, you need all sorts of skills that don't have anything to do with

01:20:46   technical skills, and you need technical skills on top of that, which is like, "Oh, now it's

01:20:49   really hard to find this one or two people who can do this," right?

01:20:52   And also it's kind of a hit-driven culture where you have to have the right game at the

01:20:56   right time, and boy, that's tough.

01:20:59   I would not be surprised to see that it is much harder to make a living selling games

01:21:03   in the App Store than it is selling a to-do list application or a podcast application

01:21:08   or anything else.

01:21:09   games are a tough market because there is infinite competition. There are so many games.

01:21:17   Games are also competing for attention with other things that you do to kill some time sometimes

01:21:24   and have some fun sometimes. That includes things like social networking and movies and music.

01:21:29   No one listens to music except me anymore. Other people watch movies and browse Twitter and

01:21:36   and Facebook and post stupid stuff and like all of that is competing for time and attention

01:21:42   with games. And so, and you know games have these immense price pressures are squeezed

01:21:47   from all sides plus they have the problem of like you know if you make if you make an

01:21:52   RSS reader you can ship a 1.0 that isn't very good that didn't take you very long

01:21:56   to make and you can add to it over time. Games don't really work that way at least not

01:22:01   most of the time that you know usually with a game you pretty much have to do all of it

01:22:05   up front before you know whether anybody will buy it.

01:22:08   And so it's just a really tough market.

01:22:10   Unless you license IP and then you can do episodic content because you have a known

01:22:14   property, you know, like it's just, it's much more like games are almost nothing like the

01:22:19   application market and almost everything like the market for all their entertainment, whether

01:22:23   it be television shows or movies or music or anything like that.

01:22:27   There's a technical aspect to it and there's all sorts of those details that you have to

01:22:30   know but that's just the kind of like adds a degree of difficulty to what is basically

01:22:34   can you make a good game?

01:22:35   Can you even think of a good game that's fun?

01:22:38   And then can you implement that well?

01:22:40   And then can you put it out into an extremely crowded market in a way that people even see

01:22:45   it?

01:22:46   It's really hard to do.

01:22:48   Because there's no utility value.

01:22:50   Like a podcast app, this helps me do a thing I like to do.

01:22:53   It's like, it's different between, well, like I say, a podcast app helps you sort of play,

01:22:59   do something you want to do, which is listen to podcasts.

01:23:01   I'm trying to think of a game equivalent.

01:23:03   I don't know if there is one.

01:23:04   helps you manage your games, I don't know.

01:23:06   But games are just like the thing that you do that's fun.

01:23:09   It's like podcasts are the thing that you do that's fun.

01:23:12   - Right, and games do have a few advantages

01:23:14   over other app types.

01:23:16   One of them being, for example, that they don't really

01:23:21   compete directly as much as you might think

01:23:24   in the way that people usually only use

01:23:27   like one RSS reader at a time.

01:23:30   And they might only ever buy one or two RSS readers.

01:23:33   - Yeah, games are consumables, right?

01:23:34   - Exactly, like games, like you download,

01:23:36   you play it for a little while,

01:23:38   and then you move on and you buy more games.

01:23:40   And so it's not like, it's easier for multiple games

01:23:43   to reach the same customer.

01:23:45   Whereas if you're in a category of competing similar apps,

01:23:48   chances are most people are just gonna pick one of those.

01:23:51   - Or like email apps, like people aren't switching,

01:23:53   a small group of nerds is even looking

01:23:55   for alternative email apps.

01:23:56   Most people have an email app,

01:23:57   they're gonna stick with it or whatever,

01:23:58   but games are consumable.

01:24:00   That's actually a better fit for the App Store

01:24:02   in that respect, I guess,

01:24:03   It's like what do I do for upgrade?

01:24:04   But you don't you just make another game or you make game version two and you know

01:24:08   Make it a sequel and it's a separate app because everyone like no one has a problem with that

01:24:12   Yeah, well somebody does but you know, yeah, but it's the same thing. It's like well then how do you know?

01:24:16   It's just everyone wants to make a game and making a good game is really hard because it's just not technical

01:24:22   It's not really UI. Although you might have to do some UI but it is really hard to make a good game

01:24:26   I think though to end this on a positive note

01:24:31   You know when when the when all these posts first came out like two weeks ago whenever whenever Jared started it

01:24:36   When these first came out it looked pretty grim for the first few days

01:24:40   in the last few days, I've seen a lot of posts from people who are making it work and

01:24:47   They're they're they're inspirational in a way, you know, they're they're motivational at least where?

01:24:53   You can make this work

01:24:56   But you have to both

01:24:58   do it intelligently in a way that will succeed and have

01:25:01   reasonable expectations on how much you're going to make and you know base your decisions on that so

01:25:07   For instance, you know and John you were saying earlier like a lot of people want to be app developers

01:25:13   So therefore there are a lot of app developers and a lot of people doing it for very little money

01:25:16   Because a lot of people do it on the side. There's nothing wrong with that. That's how I started

01:25:20   Casey you're a side app developer John you would be if you could write apps in Perl

01:25:25   This is how lots of people start.

01:25:27   Like, and that's, and a lot of people never

01:25:30   take it full time.

01:25:31   That's what they always, they always do part time,

01:25:34   side projects, mostly as hobbies that might bring in

01:25:37   a little money here and there.

01:25:39   And there's nothing wrong with that.

01:25:41   You should probably start with that

01:25:43   if you're interested in doing this at all.

01:25:45   Don't quit your job and have this romantic notion

01:25:47   of sitting in a coffee shop and writing apps all day

01:25:49   and collecting a bunch of money.

01:25:50   Like, it's harder than that.

01:25:52   And it's gonna take longer than that

01:25:53   before you reach that point.

01:25:55   Like in the past year that I've been working on Overcast,

01:25:58   it really hasn't been full time.

01:26:01   I've had this show and I've had my blog.

01:26:04   Those both bring in money, they both take time and work,

01:26:08   and so I didn't have zero income for the last year.

01:26:12   I had income from those two things.

01:26:14   I don't think I would have done Overcast

01:26:16   if I had zero income for a year.

01:26:18   I think I would have tried to find some way

01:26:20   to continue having money come in every month.

01:26:23   And we all start from a very small amount.

01:26:26   Like, you look at apps today,

01:26:28   it's similar to putting AdSense on a blog in 2006.

01:26:33   Like, I had AdSense on my blog in 2006,

01:26:35   and I was extremely happy.

01:26:37   I was getting like fast text numbers at most.

01:26:40   And Google had like a minimum

01:26:43   where they wouldn't even send you a check

01:26:44   until you had at least, I think it was 100 bucks.

01:26:47   It was like 50 or 100 bucks,

01:26:48   and I only hit that twice in the entire time I ran ads.

01:26:51   So I made a total of like 200 bucks maybe in like five years.

01:26:56   You were my ad sense on my blog.

01:26:58   It was miserable.

01:26:59   And I was working on that frequently.

01:27:01   I was writing like probably once a week at least.

01:27:04   The problem is like the amount of effort

01:27:07   you put into something does not correlate directly

01:27:10   to how much other people are willing to pay for it.

01:27:13   And so you have to have reasonable expectations

01:27:16   of no matter how much effort you put into an app of type X,

01:27:21   whatever it is you want to make,

01:27:23   you're probably not going to earn more than

01:27:27   a few thousand bucks in the best case scenario.

01:27:29   Rather than bemoan that and complain

01:27:32   and say it's Apple's fault,

01:27:33   'cause you know, there are things Apple can do to improve,

01:27:36   but this is mostly not Apple's problem.

01:27:38   I think if you look at what something

01:27:39   like _DavidSmith is doing,

01:27:42   he makes many apps.

01:27:43   He tries things all the time.

01:27:46   He said on one of his shows recently,

01:27:47   I think he's made like a couple hundred apps,

01:27:50   And they aren't all still in existence in the store,

01:27:52   but he's created something like a couple hundred apps.

01:27:56   And he sees what works.

01:27:57   He doesn't put a ton of time into version one

01:27:59   if he can help it.

01:28:00   He sees what works.

01:28:02   And in the ones that work, he puts the time in

01:28:04   that they earn, basically, from their sales.

01:28:07   Proportionally, if something sells well,

01:28:09   he'll give it the attention, more attention to succeed more.

01:28:12   And if something doesn't sell that well,

01:28:14   he's going to, he discontinues it and moves on.

01:28:17   That's a really smart approach.

01:28:19   It's a very pragmatic approach,

01:28:20   it's a very effective approach,

01:28:22   and it's very realistic of what the store actually is.

01:28:25   I saw another post from a guy who said,

01:28:27   I'll try to find these in the show notes, I'm sorry.

01:28:30   I don't remember the names offhand,

01:28:31   but I saw another post from a guy who said,

01:28:34   he develops apps on the side, or as most of his income,

01:28:38   but he lives a really inexpensive lifestyle,

01:28:40   and he can go skiing with his family

01:28:42   and be present for his kids,

01:28:43   and he just lowers his expectations

01:28:46   and lowers his expenses,

01:28:47   and he can do what he wants.

01:28:50   That's great.

01:28:51   If you go into it with reasonable expectations,

01:28:55   you can succeed, but you have to know what the market is

01:28:59   and know what you're likely to get out of it.

01:29:02   And I saw also, like Justin Williams had a post

01:29:04   saying that he doesn't think you should spend

01:29:06   any more than 90 days building version 1.0.

01:29:09   'Cause that way, you know, you get it out there quickly

01:29:11   and if it's gonna be a flop, you can move on quickly.

01:29:13   And if it's gonna be a hit, then you can know that

01:29:15   and you can choose how much you invest in it in the future.

01:29:18   That again, greater device.

01:29:20   This is all about, and I know I just violated all this

01:29:23   with Overcast, but you know, keep in mind,

01:29:25   as I said, that was not full-time work.

01:29:27   It's all about limiting your risk

01:29:32   and lowering your expectations,

01:29:34   and then adapting to the conditions

01:29:36   that actually happen once you put it out there.

01:29:38   There was also, oh man, what's, I forget the name,

01:29:41   what's the guy who's running the four-part experiment

01:29:43   who had an app and he made it free

01:29:44   They made an in-app purchase.

01:29:46   An app store experiment, Stuart Hall.

01:29:47   All right, now I know.

01:29:48   Okay, so it's Stuart Hall.

01:29:50   We'll into it in the show notes.

01:29:51   It's called an app store experiment,

01:29:52   and there's like five or so parts.

01:29:55   And it's really good.

01:29:57   It's a really good read.

01:29:58   So he started out, he made an app

01:29:59   called the 7 Minute Workout.

01:30:01   It does something relatively simple,

01:30:03   but there is a market for it,

01:30:04   but it's a relatively simple app.

01:30:06   And he started out with it being a paid app,

01:30:10   and then it went in-app purchase, free app,

01:30:12   and he's trying all these additional things,

01:30:15   and he's showing the results,

01:30:16   he's showing all the actual numbers the whole time

01:30:18   of like, you know, here's, like, every,

01:30:19   I think like every six months or so,

01:30:20   he posts a new thing saying,

01:30:22   here's what I've done in the last six months,

01:30:23   here's the results that it has had and everything.

01:30:26   This is the way to do the App Store.

01:30:28   You take an approach like this,

01:30:30   or an approach like _DavidSmith's,

01:30:31   where he makes a lot of small apps first,

01:30:33   and then decides what to work on, you know,

01:30:35   or what to give more time to afterwards,

01:30:37   that is how you succeed.

01:30:39   - See, I think this blog discussion,

01:30:41   as it's spread out from our circle,

01:30:42   we start to get into things that are different.

01:30:44   Because in our circle,

01:30:45   this is the people who want to sort of live the life

01:30:47   where you want to make an application

01:30:49   that you think is cool,

01:30:50   that does something that you're interested in,

01:30:52   and you want to make it the way you want to make it,

01:30:54   and then you hope people will pay for that.

01:30:55   And that is kind of the central core

01:30:56   of our little circle of people, right?

01:30:58   - Right.

01:30:59   - And as this discussion has spread out,

01:31:00   you start getting into the people,

01:31:02   and I think underscores at the fringes of our circle,

01:31:04   because he has kind of the same values as us,

01:31:06   but a lot of the people closer into this central heart

01:31:09   of the indie lifestyle would say,

01:31:11   "Yeah, but I don't wanna make 100 apps

01:31:13   "'cause I probably wouldn't be into a lot of those apps

01:31:14   "or whatever."

01:31:15   And underscore and like,

01:31:17   is there a person, Stewart, I already forgot his name.

01:31:20   - Stewart Hall. - Who's doing this app.

01:31:21   One of the things that they're into

01:31:23   is the business part of it, the gaming part of it,

01:31:27   figuring out what do I do to my business

01:31:29   to like, I'm turning dials here.

01:31:31   Some of those dials have to do with writing code,

01:31:32   but a lot of the dials have to do with things like pricing

01:31:34   or which app should I make or what should I, you know,

01:31:37   that's the thing that they're into.

01:31:38   And as you go farther and farther out from that circle,

01:31:40   you'll find some guy who's making like an iOS application

01:31:43   that helps the reception desk at a dental office.

01:31:45   And he's making a living doing that,

01:31:46   but he's so far outside our circle,

01:31:47   he's never seen any of these blog posts, right?

01:31:49   But he's happily making a living doing that,

01:31:51   and you're like, but I don't wanna make a dental app.

01:31:53   It's not interesting to me.

01:31:54   It's like, oh, something is not as fun anymore, right?

01:31:56   You know, as you move away from the center of,

01:31:58   I wanna do exactly what I want, when I want,

01:32:00   I wanna do an awesome job on it, and I wanna get paid.

01:32:02   Like, yeah, everybody wants that.

01:32:04   And if your skills and interests

01:32:06   and what you do happens to coincide with the way they make money, that's great, but as

01:32:10   you spread out, people have different interests.

01:32:11   Maybe someone is super into making applications for a dentist's office, right?

01:32:16   And that's what he wants to do.

01:32:18   Maybe he wouldn't be in our circles, or maybe he's just like, "Well, I'll do this because

01:32:21   this makes money."

01:32:22   Like, it's the desire, the center of the thing is like this sort of selfish desire to just

01:32:28   be happy doing what you want to do and be successful.

01:32:30   And as you tell people, actually you have to be farther away from the thing you like.

01:32:34   you have to be more like underscore big is and it's like but that's not fun to me it's obviously fun for underscore

01:32:38   So he's doing it right? He's actually interested in that but you said but that's not fun for me

01:32:40   What I want to make is a whatever app and or I want to make games

01:32:44   That's all I want to make and it's like well

01:32:46   you know good luck like

01:32:48   It's not everyone can do exactly what they want to do

01:32:52   Some people are willing to get off of like I mean, it's we should have under score on the show

01:32:56   I said like would you prefer to just make one beautiful application that you're really into or

01:33:00   Do you actually like this part of it where you try to make lots of like is that actually interesting to you?

01:33:04   And it seems like he's always blogging about it everything seems like that that aspect of it is interesting to him

01:33:08   And it's just he's lucky in that

01:33:10   That interests him and he's good at it

01:33:12   And it meshes with this skill set and that allows him to be successful and all these people who are having small success

01:33:18   They were doing what they wanted to and they were doing it the best they could it just turns out that that is

01:33:22   Not a formula for making money at this particular time

01:33:26   And there are many things they can do to change their behavior to make more money

01:33:30   but the question for them is do those changes make me less happy and

01:33:34   Is it worth it for me or is there something else I could do that's radically different like say get it do iOS

01:33:40   contracting or just get a regular job or you know

01:33:43   Get a job in totally unrelated field and continue to do this on the side that would give me an overall happier life again

01:33:49   it's back to like, you know, essentially trying to do what's going to make you the happiest and

01:33:54   Picking an arbitrary goal like I want to be a successful indie developer

01:33:57   If that's not actually gonna make you happy because of what it takes to be an indie developer. You should do something else, you know

01:34:02   So in summary despite what we thought the forecast isn't as overcast as we initially believed

01:34:10   Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week need top brewer and

01:34:22   fracture and we will see you next week.

01:34:25   Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:34:32   'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:34:35   Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

01:34:38   John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:34:43   'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:34:46   It was accidental (accidental)

01:34:48   And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:34:53   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:34:58   @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:35:03   So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:35:07   E-N-T Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C

01:35:12   U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:35:15   It's accidental (It's accidental)

01:35:18   ♪ They didn't mean to ♪

01:35:20   ♪ Accidental ♪

01:35:21   ♪ Accidental ♪

01:35:23   ♪ Tech podcast ♪

01:35:25   ♪ So long ♪

01:35:27   - You spent a long time workshopping that

01:35:29   while we were talking?

01:35:30   - Wow.

01:35:31   - It's been a while since I've had an extremely cheesy joke

01:35:34   to end the show.

01:35:35   - It's been like two weeks.

01:35:36   - Oh, shut up.

01:35:37   - How is your show bot doing?

01:35:39   Is it up?

01:35:40   - Yeah, and actually somebody whose name

01:35:42   I don't have in front of me,

01:35:44   me, no, not the person, Robbie McKenny.

01:35:47   McKinney?

01:35:48   I don't know-- made a really good poll request,

01:35:52   which I have a couple of minor quibbles with.

01:35:54   So I didn't-- hey, I'm calling it like I see it.

01:35:58   Anyway, I'm assuming this is a he.

01:36:01   Made a poll request so it will periodically back itself up

01:36:05   to pastebin.

01:36:06   Wow.

01:36:07   Which I thought was a very clever idea.

01:36:10   It's complicated.

01:36:11   It's not the solution.

01:36:12   Yeah, it's like the Rube Goldberg machine

01:36:14   to persistence.

01:36:15   Oh, whatever.

01:36:16   every three seconds it prints out a little piece of paper then ties itself to the leg of a bird and

01:36:20   the bird flies off to a random direction. Why are you so mean to me? Why are you so mean? Anyway,

01:36:30   10 foot pole named IBM don't like it. It was like two seconds of the show. I aspire to be retired.

01:36:37   I actually was going to petition for my own title, but that is pretty good.

01:36:40   Yeah, that's my pick from what I've seen so far.

01:36:44   Who doesn't aspire to be retired? I mean, you aspire to be retired, do you not, Casey?

01:36:48   Oh, I absolutely—I aspire to—

01:36:50   It's not like full-fledged, like, John Roderick, like, "I have to be a retired CAA director."

01:36:54   I just—just retired is fine.

01:36:56   I don't aspire to be retired.

01:36:57   You are retired.

01:36:59   [laughter]

01:37:00   But retirement, like, to me, the idea of not working is really boring.

01:37:05   But, like, it's not not working. Retired means you no longer have your job.

01:37:09   You still do the things that you like doing, it's just that you don't—you're not doing them because

01:37:13   someone is telling you to.

01:37:15   And that's your life almost all the time.

01:37:17   It's kind of a blurry line, though.

01:37:18   Like I said, if I was retired, my life

01:37:20   would look a lot more like Marco's.

01:37:22   I would still probably do tech-related things.

01:37:24   It's just that I'm not doing them because someone is telling

01:37:27   me to or because someone is paying me to.

01:37:28   I'm just doing them because it's what I feel like doing.

01:37:30   Well, as an example, if I was quote unquote "retired,"

01:37:33   I would absolutely still write for my blog

01:37:36   that not that many people read.

01:37:38   I would still do the show.

01:37:40   Because those are the things that I, 99% of the time,

01:37:43   enjoy doing.

01:37:45   I told you earlier, I really like my job,

01:37:47   but I don't enjoy my job 99% of the time.

01:37:51   Got to be in the parking lot sometime.

01:37:53   Exactly.

01:37:54   The title of mine that I was going to petition for,

01:37:56   but I think the other one is better,

01:37:58   was Full Stack Business Person, which I think John said.

01:38:02   But I aspire to be retired is also pretty awesome.

01:38:06   I like Full Stack Business Person better than that.

01:38:08   And I think it's more at the heart of what

01:38:10   discussing about having to do all the aspects of being

01:38:15   successful, not just the ones that you like.

01:38:17   I mean, in that respect, I guess that's

01:38:19   the part of Marco's life that feels like working.

01:38:22   I'm sure you enjoy the development part way more

01:38:24   than the other parts, right?

01:38:25   But you got to do the other parts.

01:38:27   That's your version of-- that's your boss, basically.

01:38:30   You know that you have to do the parts of maintaining

01:38:33   your business and dealing with all that crap,

01:38:35   because you know that's just part of it.

01:38:36   And you hate managing people more

01:38:39   Then you hate doing it yourself, so you're just gonna do it or just you know deal with it

01:38:43   Right that that is essentially your boss

01:38:45   But the thing is if I you know being retired is like well

01:38:48   Whatever depending on the hobby that you pick there's probably some aspect of that too like for example say I'm retired

01:38:53   I would probably still like to write things and maybe I would still write like big

01:38:55   You know OS 10 reviews for our aesthetic and there's aspects of the writing process that I don't like too, but overall

01:39:02   It's still worth it, so I would do the parts that I don't like

01:39:05   Because overall I still like it and I would still feel like I'm retired and I don't have a boss telling me what to do

01:39:09   But I'm still doing activities that have aspects of it that feel like drudgery because the overall I like this

01:39:15   So it'd be like you wrote a show bot and then had everyone you knew and didn't know tear it apart

01:39:21   No, that's not there's no you liked every part of that. I did

01:39:25   Well, I got frustrated but I did like it overall but it's all the fun part like it's all development

01:39:30   You're not like sure, you know like out there, you know trying to negotiate for a trademark

01:39:35   mark on the name for your show bot or filling out paperwork for taxes for New York State

01:39:39   like no no no no no no nothing like that I do not underestimate the is that that's another

01:39:44   aspect we're gonna talk about this another aspect of the independent lifestyle like I

01:39:47   think I dislike the business part of it even more than Marco does but you're saying something

01:39:51   I think well it doesn't honestly it isn't that much work well as you've done it and

01:39:56   you get used to it it's kind of becomes more routine but I right especially like once you

01:39:59   cross the point where you're you're finally willing to hire an accountant it makes things

01:40:03   so much easier for not that much money.

01:40:05   And yeah, any business people who don't have an accountant,

01:40:09   hire an accountant.

01:40:10   - All the things that you've learned

01:40:11   over your years of doing this,

01:40:13   like that process of learning that, I would hate.

01:40:15   Like you've already done it.

01:40:16   You've learned it, you've set it up,

01:40:17   you've like, but that was work to do that.

01:40:19   Maybe you enjoyed it more than you've let on,

01:40:22   but I definitely just not want it,

01:40:24   like I have just no interest in that.

01:40:25   I don't want to deal with it, don't want to learn it,

01:40:27   don't want to get good at it, don't, ugh.

01:40:29   - Well, but you know, there's also,

01:40:31   there's like entire types of things

01:40:35   that you have to deal with

01:40:36   when working for someone else as well.

01:40:37   Things like commuting, finding the business,

01:40:42   dealing with the office and how things are done

01:40:43   and how to file for vacation days and how to file--

01:40:45   - You kinda train for those by going to school though

01:40:48   because school and going to college kinda trains you

01:40:50   on how to commute, how to live on your own,

01:40:52   how to deal with bureaucracy, how to follow rules,

01:40:54   how to show up places on time.

01:40:55   All the things that part of the working life school

01:40:57   essentially trains you for anyway.

01:40:58   It's like by the time I'm done with school and ready to get a job, I already know how to do this.

01:41:02   I already know how to commute. I already know how to use public transportation.

01:41:04   I already know how to show up places on time and do assignments and you know like that and in that respect school is a preparation

01:41:10   for the drudgery of

01:41:12   Life, but all this business stuff of being an entrepreneur. It's like nothing prepares you for like

01:41:16   Well, depending on what your major is

01:41:18   I guess like starting your own business and dealing with like, you know

01:41:21   All the incorporation and tax codes or like the part that you don't have to deal with having like lots of employees saying

01:41:27   you're actually gonna start a real company

01:41:28   with like 50 or 100 employees.

01:41:29   There's a whole bunch of stuff about that

01:41:30   that you don't know and that you would have to find out

01:41:32   if you decided to do that, but you hate that so much

01:41:34   you're just never gonna do it.

01:41:35   - Right, well 'cause I did briefly have a full-time employee

01:41:39   and it was awful, paperwork-wise, and so I stopped doing it.

01:41:42   Even though awful just meant like I got an envelope

01:41:45   from Paychex every two weeks 'cause I was paying them

01:41:48   like 50 bucks a month to handle it all for me.

01:41:50   And even that stressed me out

01:41:53   'cause I didn't understand it fully

01:41:55   and that bothered me.

01:41:58   - Forget about HR issues, like if you have a big company

01:42:01   where you're hiring 50 or 100 people, that's just, you know.

01:42:04   - I'm not saying that running a company with employees

01:42:07   is easier than going to work with somebody,

01:42:09   but working for yourself as a self-prior,

01:42:12   or like a one-person LLC, is pretty simple.

01:42:15   And I would say it's simpler than most people

01:42:19   who haven't done it probably think.

01:42:20   Especially, please, for the love of God, hire an accountant.

01:42:23   as long as you have an accountant

01:42:25   and have a lawyer do the LLC papers.

01:42:28   You'll be out of there for less than 2000 bucks probably

01:42:32   for everything to be set up.

01:42:34   The hardest part of working for yourself is the work.

01:42:38   It's making the money.

01:42:40   All this other stuff is very minor by comparison

01:42:43   for most businesses that we would start.

01:42:44   We're lucky, we're not trying to make stuff.

01:42:47   We don't need to hire 10 people

01:42:49   and have malpractice liability kind of insurances.

01:42:54   We're not gonna make a product that kills somebody

01:42:57   and then we get sued over it.

01:42:59   We're not trying to sell somebody some appliance

01:43:02   that they're gonna plug into their house

01:43:03   and it's gonna set their house on fire.

01:43:04   - It's much harder to start a restaurant, for example.

01:43:07   - Oh yeah.

01:43:08   - Then you have to have all this money up front,

01:43:09   you have to take all this risk,

01:43:10   you have to put your life savings into it,

01:43:12   you have to get business loans,

01:43:12   you have to hit up everyone you know for money,

01:43:14   and you have a 90% chance of failure.

01:43:16   - Yeah, exactly.

01:43:17   kind of businesses we start are very, very easy to start and run by comparison.

01:43:23   **Matt Stauffer:** Yeah. I mean, again, that's why it's like,

01:43:25   how fun is it? And that's another aspect, how little risk is there involved? Can you do it

01:43:30   in your spare time and do a lot of people think it's really cool? Starting a restaurant, just

01:43:34   a lot of people think that's really cool, but you cannot do that in your spare time while you hold

01:43:38   down a regular job very easily. Like physical businesses, starting a retail store or starting

01:43:43   and stuff like that are much worse,

01:43:45   which is why, you know, it's so many people writing apps.

01:43:49   - Yeah, 'cause it only takes like 100 bucks

01:43:52   and a few hours of time, and you have an app in the store.

01:43:55   That's like, it takes so little.

01:43:58   - Right, Casey?

01:43:59   (laughing)

01:44:01   - Well, that would be true if I had already known

01:44:03   iOS development when I wrote Fast Text,

01:44:05   and I know you were being silly,

01:44:07   but if I were to write Fast Text again today,

01:44:10   In fact, I have considered rewriting it in Swift.

01:44:13   - That may be the fastest path to an iOS 8 compatible

01:44:18   version, so just start over.

01:44:19   - Honestly, that often is the answer to it.

01:44:21   Whenever Apple changes stuff dramatically,

01:44:23   iOS 8 dramatically changes all the auto-rotation stuff,

01:44:26   and they replaced all of it basically.

01:44:29   Starting over with a brand new app is definitely easier

01:44:35   in some cases, especially if the app is relatively simple,

01:44:38   like FastText is, it's definitely easier to start fresh

01:44:41   than to try to carry forward this iOS 4 code base

01:44:45   for five years.

01:44:47   - Yeah, you're absolutely right.

01:44:49   On a very random note, John, I'm a little disappointed

01:44:51   in you because I ate fast food Italian last weekend

01:44:56   and you did not berate me at all.

01:44:58   - I saw you posted a picture of something.

01:45:00   I didn't know what that was.

01:45:02   - You've not been to Fazoli's?

01:45:04   Oh, so good.

01:45:05   - I did not recognize that.

01:45:06   I mean it looked like you know the typical Olive Garden like hot dog buns with grease sprayed on

01:45:11   People think that people think our breadsticks, but I thought maybe it was like like you had gone back to like

01:45:18   Virginia Tech and like an old like you know like a place a place on campus that you were into I'm like well

01:45:24   Whatever like maybe it's I don't know. I just know Italian food in Virginia anyway, so come on. Oh listen to this guy

01:45:30   yes, you're right there's certainly no Italians in the entire Commonwealth of Virginia and

01:45:35   Certainly none of them refugees

01:45:37   Fazoli's is fast-food Italian. That is not a joke. It is like a fast casual

01:45:44   I think it's what they call like a Panera Bread sort of thing and when you're in Fazoli's and you're dining in you get unlimited

01:45:50   What did you call them grease sprayed hot dog buns?

01:45:54   Yeah, more or less and and there there is a further was I don't know if there still is a Fazoli's

01:45:59   in the town next to where Virginia Tech is and I used to love going there and

01:46:05   and I haven't been to one in years

01:46:08   and we were on our way back from the beach

01:46:10   and I thought, you know, I think there's a fizzoli

01:46:14   somewhere in Virginia Beach.

01:46:16   And sure enough, we looked and there was one

01:46:18   and I begged Erin, would it be okay if we stopped?

01:46:20   And she said, absolutely.

01:46:22   And it was delicious.

01:46:24   - I'm looking through this menu here

01:46:26   and I'm betting all of this is microwaved.

01:46:28   - Probably.

01:46:30   - Everything I've found so far could be easily microwaved.

01:46:32   'Cause like, here's, so like I used to work

01:46:34   an Italian restaurant, it was one of my BS jobs

01:46:35   in high school, and I learned very quickly

01:46:38   that you shouldn't order things like lasagna

01:46:41   in an Italian restaurant. - Oh, I had that.

01:46:42   - Because you're not gonna make somebody

01:46:46   a single serving cube of lasagna when they order it.

01:46:49   That doesn't make sense, it's impractical,

01:46:50   it's probably impossible without taking a ton of time.

01:46:54   Lasagna is made ahead of time and put in the fridge

01:46:56   or frozen, and then when you order it,

01:46:58   they microwave it and serve it to you on a plate.

01:47:00   And looking at these kind of entrees they have here,

01:47:04   I'm looking at all the same,

01:47:05   like this probably all worked that way.

01:47:06   They probably all are just like pre-made,

01:47:08   in the freezer, waiting to be microwaved.

01:47:11   Oh God.

01:47:12   - The particular dish I had was the ultimate sampler,

01:47:15   which I did not consume all of

01:47:18   because I didn't have the room.

01:47:20   But it is fettuccine alfredo, meat lasagna,

01:47:22   spaghetti, and penne with meat sauce.

01:47:25   - So starch, butter, butter, starch,

01:47:27   beef, butter, and starch.

01:47:28   - Oh, this is so good.

01:47:29   What's the problem with fast food Italian?

01:47:32   Fast food in terms of you walk up to someone, tell them what you want, and you keep standing

01:47:35   there until you get the food.

01:47:36   No, it was not that bad.

01:47:37   Even if you take a little number, if you wait a couple minutes.

01:47:40   It takes minimum three, four, five minutes to cook pasta, but the fast food Italian place

01:47:46   is like, "Well, they have to have the pasta already ready, and they just dunk it into

01:47:48   hot water."

01:47:49   And it's like, "That's no good."

01:47:50   It's like immediately just forget it.

01:47:53   I would rather have a microwave thing of lasagna than some pasta that's been sitting around

01:47:57   waiting for me to show up and they just dunk it in hot water

01:47:59   and say, "Oh, here you go."

01:48:00   Like, no, you can't have,

01:48:02   there's no such thing as fast food pasta.

01:48:04   Now other kinds of Italian food,

01:48:06   I mean, the big restaurants make a bunch of lasagna anyway

01:48:08   and cut up for you, but they make it that day.

01:48:10   - Not always.

01:48:11   - Well, you know, good Italian restaurant.

01:48:13   - The place I worked at, they wouldn't even,

01:48:16   this bothered the crap out of me.

01:48:18   The bread they serve was frozen, you know, bought in,

01:48:22   and we just like baked it for like 10 minutes,

01:48:24   and it was all premature for warming it up though.

01:48:26   the butter, they would have me take the butter cups

01:48:30   from the tables that were half used

01:48:32   and just top them off and send them back out.

01:48:35   - That's probably illegal.

01:48:36   - Yeah, and I resisted.

01:48:38   Whenever I would not do that, they would yell at me

01:48:41   and they would make me do it and oh man, it was--

01:48:45   - Yeah, now fast food Italian should not be a thing.

01:48:49   I guess I suppose pizza is kind of fast food Italian,

01:48:52   but even a pizza takes a little while to cook and prepare.

01:48:55   I don't know.

01:48:56   I'm not into these places, Casey.

01:48:57   I'm glad you enjoyed your terrible fast food Italian.

01:49:00   You know where else I ate was at a Sonic Drive-In, which

01:49:03   is also amazing.

01:49:04   And I don't think you guys have that in the Northeast, because--

01:49:07   Is this like a tour of the worst fast food

01:49:08   restaurants in the country?

01:49:10   Oh, it's so delicious.

01:49:11   You know what it's like?

01:49:12   You listening to me talk about how much I love fizzolis

01:49:15   in Sonic is like the entire rest of the friggin' world,

01:49:18   listening to you talk about fish.

01:49:19   Cheesy bread hot dogs?

01:49:21   I did not have that.

01:49:22   I had just a cheeseburger.

01:49:24   What color is that drink?

01:49:26   What, is this made from food?

01:49:28   - Which drink?

01:49:30   - Any of them.

01:49:31   (laughing)

01:49:31   All of them that are shown on the website.

01:49:33   They're all these like neon colors.

01:49:35   (laughing)

01:49:36   This is bright blue, it's like a pure cyan,

01:49:39   like a bright cyan.

01:49:40   (laughing)

01:49:42   And then there's the hot dog that's in this cheese bun

01:49:44   with cheese and bacon on top of the hot dog

01:49:46   with cheese wrapped around it and cheese on top.

01:49:48   Like, oh my God.

01:49:49   - It's only 1,100 calories for one of these burgers.

01:49:52   That's pretty low for fast food.

01:49:55   - How much is one of these cheesy hot dogs?

01:49:57   Let's see, the one they're showing on the front page,

01:50:00   the Ultimate Cheese and Bacon Cheesy Bread dog.

01:50:02   (laughing)

01:50:03   What a name.

01:50:04   Where do you find, where'd he get the info?

01:50:06   Oh, your nutrition.

01:50:07   I love, it's only 550 calories.

01:50:09   That's not as much as I would've thought from,

01:50:11   although it's only one hot dog.

01:50:13   Presumably you'd probably order two of them, but.

01:50:16   (laughing)

01:50:17   Yeah, wow.

01:50:19   - Ultimate Cheese and Bacon Cheesy Bread dog.

01:50:22   still only 550 calories.

01:50:24   - The teal, cyan drink I was seeing on the home screen

01:50:28   is apparently Powerade brand Mountain Blast Slush,

01:50:32   which tastes like mountain blasts, I guess.

01:50:35   Only 150 calories for that.

01:50:38   - See?

01:50:39   - Oh wait, that's a wacky pack.

01:50:41   What is a wacky pack?

01:50:42   See, this is one of those sites where like every other word

01:50:45   has the registered trademark symbol after it.

01:50:47   (laughing)

01:50:48   'Cause like none of this is actually food.

01:50:50   It's all just like concepts and marketing trends

01:50:53   they've invented.

01:50:54   - Somehow fast food burgers and hot dogs don't bother me

01:50:57   as much as like fast food Italian, quote unquote.

01:50:59   - It's because you're Italian, that's why.

01:51:01   - I don't know, I don't know if it's like the,

01:51:02   I guess the like burgers and hot dogs

01:51:04   were always kind of fast food and there's not.

01:51:06   - They're mostly soy protein anyway.

01:51:08   - Yeah, I mean we have Shake Shack here now, I like that.

01:51:11   - I've never had Shake Shack but I'd really love to.

01:51:14   I've heard it's excellent.

01:51:15   - Shake Shack is very good.

01:51:16   There is usually a big line at the ones in New York,

01:51:18   I don't know how the ones everywhere else are.

01:51:20   But it is very good.

01:51:22   I mean, it's greasy, but it's like greasy fast food

01:51:26   done by foodies.

01:51:28   So it is a high quality implementation of greasy fast food.

01:51:33   - Do you guys have Five Guys burgers and fries

01:51:36   up where you are?

01:51:37   - Yeah, we have them too.

01:51:37   And comparing them, they're different.

01:51:39   I think Shake Shack feels a little bit more like,

01:51:44   it feels like it's worse for you when you're eating it,

01:51:46   which can be good and bad.

01:51:47   I I don't think there's any real like health or calorie difference between them like five guys feels more like

01:51:55   It was made by

01:51:57   You in your house or backyard and Shake Shack feels more like it was made in a restaurant because I mean they use the potato

01:52:03   Bun which maybe you wouldn't use at home and their burgers are a little different. I like them both. I think

01:52:08   Five guys fries are better and five guys has more variety in their menu

01:52:13   But like I stopped going to you know McDonald's and Burger King or whatever

01:52:16   I guess after I graduated college

01:52:18   And I think only reason I went to them there is because they were like in the food court

01:52:21   And I could buy them with my little you know points card thing

01:52:23   But I don't really go to those anymore, but shake when Shake Shack came

01:52:27   I started going to that and I realized this is like

01:52:29   Making up for all those years that I never went to McDonald's Burger King or Wendy or any other fast-food place because now I can go

01:52:34   to

01:52:35   Shake Shack and pay way more money and wait on a humongous line or have my poor wife wait on a humongous line rather

01:52:40   and

01:52:42   And get burgers again. I mean we make burgers at home and stuff too, but

01:52:45   Shave Shack ones are better than the ones I make at home and probably much worse for me

01:52:49   See this this is a totally southern thing, but we have a thing in North Carolina and Virginia called cookout and

01:52:54   they you can get like 44 pounds of food for five bucks or something like that, but um, but it is

01:53:02   Just like you were at a cookout in your backyard. It is

01:53:07   Eerie how similar the burgers taste but my backyard cookouts aren't that good though. I want better for them

01:53:13   Why wouldn't you just have a cookout cookout is not that hard to have and I'm not I'm no good

01:53:18   I'm no good at making burgers to home. Not that I've really tried to do anything special. We make them at home

01:53:23   they're alright, but I

01:53:25   Recently decided that it's not really worth grilling burgers most of the time I can like grilling hot dogs

01:53:31   It's so much easier because they're pre-cooked. So you can't really overcook them and they're very

01:53:36   it's very obvious like when they're done and you're like it's just so much you

01:53:41   and then you can have two of them or you can do different things like you don't

01:53:44   you don't get all full from having one and the hot dogs are slightly worse for

01:53:48   you probably than burgers slightly but you know the ones that are all beef it's

01:53:52   mostly just you know it's just beef and nitrites so yeah well they have a low

01:53:57   nitride nitrate the ones that taste bad yeah the whole ever I got a whole foods

01:54:03   hot dogs once like they have they I think they have like the no nitrides

01:54:06   bacon and Whole Foods. They have all sorts of like healthier equivalents of healthy food.

01:54:09   Oh yeah, and they're all awful.

01:54:10   They're just terrible.

01:54:11   Yeah, no, I actually, this is so sad. I recently discovered there's, I don't know what the brand

01:54:18   name is, but there's this brand of like hipster Brooklyn hot dogs. They're actually made in

01:54:22   Brooklyn and it's like $8 for six of them. But they're really good. They're like super

01:54:29   footlong thin, they have the natural casing and they're all beef.

01:54:31   Yeah, if you want that there's a commercial option, which is also really expensive,

01:54:35   but this is basically the hot dogs I buy as I figure out if I'm gonna have something terrible for me it better taste damn good.

01:54:39   The terrible thing.

01:54:42   Boar's Head natural casing footlong hot dog.

01:54:46   Yeah, it's very similar to those like the I because I my store has those too. I almost got those

01:54:50   Yeah, they're very similar. Those are like seven dollars for a pack or something like that. Yeah, they're they're good though

01:54:55   Like well the ones I had that were just similar

01:54:56   they're they're good because it only has like four ingredients and you know, it's mostly beef salt and a casing and

01:55:03   They're right and you know given how rarely I actually eat hot dogs

01:55:06   I'm willing to spend a dollar 25 on each one if I if I have to because they're it's they are really good

01:55:13   Should look that up good deal for said down where you're a Casey

01:55:15   Absolutely. Yeah, you should try those everyone in this podcast should try those particular hot dogs

01:55:21   because I think most people don't buy them because they look weird and

01:55:23   People are afraid of them because they say natural casing try it

01:55:26   I like them so much better than every other hot dog

01:55:29   In fact, we don't buy anything except Boris Head hot dogs,

01:55:32   'cause I won't eat anything else at this point.

01:55:34   And then you have the regular choice,

01:55:35   Boris Head hot dogs, and the footlong ones.

01:55:37   And yeah, they're expensive or whatever,

01:55:39   but it's worth trying once to see if you care

01:55:41   about the difference.

01:55:42   - Yeah, there's a hot dog shop very, very near to,

01:55:45   actually across the street from where I work,

01:55:47   and don't be creepy, and it is really awesome,

01:55:52   in part because the casing has that really awesome snap

01:55:57   to it, and oh, that's the best.

01:55:58   - Yeah, that's natural casing, yeah.

01:56:00   Yeah, and Pan in the chat mentions Nathan's

01:56:04   with the natural casing.

01:56:05   Those are hard to find around here,

01:56:07   but I think they're the best tasting ones I've had,

01:56:10   that the Nathan's natural casing footlongs.

01:56:12   But yeah, my regular store doesn't even have them,

01:56:15   and yeah, they're a little hard to find.

01:56:17   But yeah, I figure too, like if you're eating hot dogs

01:56:20   so often that paying about 75 cents to a dollar per hot dog

01:56:27   is a big problem for you,

01:56:29   I think you're eating too many hot dogs.

01:56:31   - That's probably true.

01:56:33   Or you may be a picky toddler.

01:56:36   - That's, yeah, that's fair.

01:56:37   - Lots of kids will only eat hot dogs.

01:56:39   - Yes, yeah, this rule exempts anyone under the age of 17.

01:56:42   Otherwise, you're eating too many.

01:56:43   If you're an adult and eating too many hot dogs,

01:56:46   then yeah, that's a problem.

01:56:47   And if you're not eating that many hot dogs

01:56:49   and you can afford a dollar per dog or whatever,

01:56:52   yeah, get these good ones 'cause they really are better.

01:56:55   - What you really need to find though,

01:56:56   And my friend Phil, he has found up in the DC area,

01:57:01   this guy, what is the name of the business?

01:57:05   I don't remember, but it's a guy who makes sausages.

01:57:09   His name is Lothar.

01:57:10   He's like 6'3" and 300 pounds, and he's from Hamburg.

01:57:15   And-- - Perfect.

01:57:16   - Or something like that.

01:57:17   I forget, somewhere in Germany.

01:57:18   And oh my goodness, his sausages are wonderful.

01:57:23   And that is a terrible poll quote

01:57:25   that I'm gonna pay for later in life.

01:57:27   (laughing)

01:57:28   But nevertheless, - That's going

01:57:29   to the front of the show.

01:57:29   - I am now committed.

01:57:31   But yes, the sausages that Lothar makes are excellent.

01:57:36   And I should just stop talking now.

01:57:39   Can we be done?

01:57:40   (laughing)

01:57:41   - This is turning into a crazy food podcast.

01:57:42   Marco wanted to cut most of this out.

01:57:44   - Yeah, definitely.

01:57:44   Except for Casey's sausage love.

01:57:46   - Yeah, great.

01:57:47   Thanks for that.

01:57:49   Oh, God.

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