ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Let me start by saying that I have started work on the Showbot title ordering, but it is not done.

00:00:07 ◼   ► And I apologize for that.

00:00:08 ◼   ► There was a poll request. Someone sent you the code.

00:00:10 ◼   ► I know. I know. But I don't know if I've only glanced at it, but I'm

00:00:14 ◼   ► a little opinionated about how I want it done. So I'm going to give it the college try.

00:00:19 ◼   ► One of us shipped something.

00:00:21 ◼   ► You're so mean to me. I'm going to give it the college try and see if I can do it the way I want

00:00:27 ◼   ► to do it and if I can't do it in basically the one time I sit down to do it, then I'll

00:00:33 ◼   ► take the pull request and walk away.

00:00:35 ◼   ► How about this alternate strategy?

00:00:37 ◼   ► Accept the pull request and let us use that while you work on your solution, then revert

00:00:41 ◼   ► that integration and put in your change transplant.

00:00:44 ◼   ► To be honest, that's probably the better approach, but that's all right.

00:00:49 ◼   ► All right, so nothing really happened this week, so let's start with follow-up.

00:00:53 ◼   ► Apparently some stuff we've said in the past has been wrong.

00:00:56 ◼   ► Really?

00:00:57 ◼   ► I would like to talk now for a half hour to explain why it was wrong.

00:01:00 ◼   ► All right.

00:01:01 ◼   ► John?

00:01:02 ◼   ► This first item is, I didn't put this first one in there.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Who put the first item in?

00:01:05 ◼   ► Oh, that might have been me actually.

00:01:07 ◼   ► We got a lot of feedback that when we were talking about what would cause someone to

00:01:13 ◼   ► switch to Android from an iPhone and we got a piece of feedback that we talked about an

00:01:19 ◼   ► episode or two ago that said, "Hey, a lot of these new versions of iOS can slow down

00:01:28 ◼   ► your phone and make the response time to everything a lot less quick."

00:01:34 ◼   ► And that's maybe why people switch.

00:01:36 ◼   ► And so somebody wrote in, I don't have who it was, but somebody wrote in, "Many people

00:01:39 ◼   ► have noted the perceived slowdown on older phones could likely be purchasing an old phone,

00:01:45 ◼   ► For example, buying a 4S today, which is still on store.apple.com.

00:01:50 ◼   ► Actually I think I wrote that.

00:01:52 ◼   ► The point being that you can still get a 4S today, and iOS 8 is presumably coming out

00:01:58 ◼   ► in September, and probably isn't going to run too well on a 4S, because I believe it

00:02:03 ◼   ► is supported.

00:02:04 ◼   ► Is that right?

00:02:05 ◼   ► The 4S is supported on 8, that's correct.

00:02:07 ◼   ► 4S and up.

00:02:08 ◼   ► So all the A5 devices are supported on 8.

00:02:10 ◼   ► Which is interesting because there's a lot of them.

00:02:12 ◼   ► Like if they cut off the A5 device,

00:02:14 ◼   ► if they cut off the original iPad mini,

00:02:17 ◼   ► which is still for sale.

00:02:18 ◼   ► - Exactly, so there's a lot of older devices being sold

00:02:22 ◼   ► that are still going to be supported.

00:02:24 ◼   ► And so that's something to consider

00:02:27 ◼   ► and something that would perhaps drive you away from Apple

00:02:30 ◼   ► because here you get this perhaps not amazing experience.

00:02:34 ◼   ► You know, what if this was your first iPhone

00:02:36 ◼   ► or first smartphone and you buy a 4S today

00:02:39 ◼   ► and it runs all right with iOS 7

00:02:41 ◼   ► And then in a couple of months, you see that iOS 8 is available, you go and update it,

00:02:46 ◼   ► and all of a sudden it runs like crap.

00:02:48 ◼   ► I mean, that's no bueno.

00:02:50 ◼   ► So that's just something to consider.

00:02:52 ◼   ► We talked about that in past shows.

00:02:53 ◼   ► We were talking about why the heck the iPad 2 was around so long.

00:02:56 ◼   ► They finally stopped selling that, right?

00:02:58 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:03:00 ◼   ► You're probably right.

00:03:01 ◼   ► Anyway, yeah, we've had that same complaint.

00:03:03 ◼   ► And another one of my hobby horses is not putting enough RAM in things, especially when

00:03:08 ◼   ► you can't upgrade it.

00:03:10 ◼   ► It's short-sighted from a sort of customer satisfaction and brand satisfaction level

00:03:15 ◼   ► to skimp on RAM, even though it helps your margins, because some people will say, "Well,

00:03:20 ◼   ► I'm just going to get it with the minimum," and if the minimum is not a reasonable amount,

00:03:24 ◼   ► like if you're just setting someone up for -- it's much better now in the days of SSDs,

00:03:27 ◼   ► but when it was spinning disks, it was just torture to get a Mac with the minimum amount

00:03:30 ◼   ► of RAM and then use it for several years.

00:03:32 ◼   ► And by the end of its lifetime, the OS and all the apps need way more RAM, and the thing

00:03:35 ◼   ► was always swapping, especially it was like a 5400 RPM laptop drive and it was bad.

00:03:43 ◼   ► When we talked about this, the whole having an upgrade that slows down your thing, I don't

00:03:47 ◼   ► think any of us thought that wasn't a phenomenon that happens.

00:03:51 ◼   ► I think we've all actually owned devices that we've either decided not to upgrade to iOS

00:03:56 ◼   ► 7 or regretted upgrading to iOS 7, and all the way back.

00:03:59 ◼   ► I remember on one of my original iPod touches, I think I didn't want to upgrade to 4 or something,

00:04:05 ◼   ► and then eventually I gave in and regretted it.

00:04:07 ◼   ► This is a thing that happens

00:04:08 ◼   ► if you keep devices long enough.

00:04:12 ◼   ► I actually, I did add two tiny notes

00:04:13 ◼   ► to this bit of follow-up here, I guess.

00:04:15 ◼   ► The first one is that if you buy a device,

00:04:18 ◼   ► if Apple sells you something

00:04:20 ◼   ► that they probably shouldn't still be selling,

00:04:21 ◼   ► like you get an iPad 2

00:04:23 ◼   ► and when it was so clearly long in the tooth

00:04:25 ◼   ► or you end up with a current non-retin iPad Mini

00:04:28 ◼   ► or poor Marco's mom buying the iPhone 4

00:04:32 ◼   ► when she shouldn't have been.

00:04:34 ◼   ► That's Apple's fault for selling those things.

00:04:37 ◼   ► And the customer gets it and they get a bad experience.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Sometimes it's just a bad experience

00:04:41 ◼   ► right out of the box, right?

00:04:43 ◼   ► But the idea that the solution to that

00:04:47 ◼   ► is to try another vendor, in some sense,

00:04:50 ◼   ► makes sense if you don't know anything about Apple

00:04:53 ◼   ► and its products or whatever.

00:04:53 ◼   ► You bought an Apple thing, it sucks,

00:04:54 ◼   ► you try a different one, right?

00:04:56 ◼   ► But for tech savvy people,

00:05:01 ◼   ► I would imagine that they could have a similar reaction,

00:05:04 ◼   ► but for a different reason.

00:05:05 ◼   ► Tech savvy people are gonna do it for the airline reason,

00:05:07 ◼   ► where like it's vindictive, where you're like,

00:05:09 ◼   ► well, I bought this thing, I was satisfied with it,

00:05:12 ◼   ► I used it for a while, I upgraded it,

00:05:14 ◼   ► Apple shouldn't have even allowed it to be upgraded,

00:05:16 ◼   ► so that's Apple's fault, I hate Apple now,

00:05:18 ◼   ► my solution is for my next phone,

00:05:20 ◼   ► for my next tablet or whatever,

00:05:21 ◼   ► I'm going to buy from a different vendor.

00:05:24 ◼   ► And that can very quickly turn into,

00:05:26 ◼   ► you know, I just hate Apple not buying their stuff anymore,

00:05:28 ◼   ► when in reality the optimal solution for that person

00:05:31 ◼   ► who maybe used and enjoyed Apple products for a while

00:05:33 ◼   ► is the next time they buy,

00:05:35 ◼   ► you know, buy a higher end Apple product.

00:05:38 ◼   ► Spend more money, I'm sure Apple would love this,

00:05:40 ◼   ► spend more money on Apple products

00:05:41 ◼   ► and actually it'll work well.

00:05:42 ◼   ► Again, it's Apple's fault for selling these old devices

00:05:44 ◼   ► too long, it's Apple's fault for allowing the upgrades

00:05:46 ◼   ► to go on them when they don't perform well.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Arguably it's Apple's fault that the software

00:05:50 ◼   ► doesn't perform well, but like,

00:05:53 ◼   ► if for example I had a relative who had that experience

00:05:56 ◼   ► And I knew that they were satisfied with Apple devices in general.

00:05:59 ◼   ► I wouldn't recommend, oh, well, for your next one, you should get an Android phone,

00:06:02 ◼   ► if I think that they would not get a better experience out of that.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Yes, they get the satisfaction of saying, well, now I'm not going to buy Apple stuff anymore.

00:06:09 ◼   ► But it's like, really, you'd be super satisfied with an iPhone 5S for your next phone.

00:06:13 ◼   ► Right? So if you say you had a 4S, you upgraded to get slow.

00:06:16 ◼   ► If you really loved your iPhone for all of its life, except for this last part, which again, totally Apple's fault for putting them in this situation and everything.

00:06:25 ◼   ► it's like cutting off your nose to spite your face

00:06:27 ◼   ► by saying, well, the next phone I'm gonna get

00:06:28 ◼   ► is an Android phone, because that probably won't be

00:06:31 ◼   ► a satisfactory experience, especially if someone

00:06:32 ◼   ► just is used to iOS or whatever.

00:06:34 ◼   ► So that's one angle on this, the whole idea of just,

00:06:38 ◼   ► I'm angry, I'm gonna get revenge at Apple,

00:06:40 ◼   ► and I'm gonna do something that's technically not really

00:06:42 ◼   ► in my best interest.

00:06:43 ◼   ► And by the way, this is why, again,

00:06:45 ◼   ► everyone loves to spend money on Apple.

00:06:46 ◼   ► So this is why I recommend people,

00:06:48 ◼   ► don't get an Apple device if the only one you can afford

00:06:50 ◼   ► is the cheapest one they sell,

00:06:51 ◼   ► 'cause the cheapest one they sell always sucks.

00:06:53 ◼   ► Like, that's true of, you know, you get an iMac,

00:06:56 ◼   ► but it was like the $1,000 iMac,

00:06:58 ◼   ► it's like 15% less expensive and 50% slower.

00:07:02 ◼   ► Like, and you know, if you can't get the expensive one,

00:07:06 ◼   ► you actually are probably better off with something else.

00:07:09 ◼   ► And then the other point I had on this topic is,

00:07:11 ◼   ► at a certain point, hardware and software

00:07:16 ◼   ► sort of catches up to the baseline of what the OS,

00:07:20 ◼   ► what people wanna do with the OS.

00:07:22 ◼   ► If you think about the early history of OS X,

00:07:24 ◼   ► where it was just super slow for just years at a time,

00:07:27 ◼   ► just years and years, it felt gross,

00:07:29 ◼   ► it felt like molasses, it was really slow,

00:07:31 ◼   ► it was compositing on the CPU,

00:07:33 ◼   ► even when they got the compositing on the GPU,

00:07:35 ◼   ► the drawing and the window resizing

00:07:37 ◼   ► and all the event handling, it was just slow, it was crappy.

00:07:41 ◼   ► At a certain point, the cheapest Mac you could buy

00:07:44 ◼   ► could pull down Windows fast, could scroll fast.

00:07:47 ◼   ► Like these days, no matter what Mac you buy,

00:07:49 ◼   ► buy the least expensive new Mac from Apple,

00:07:52 ◼   ► it will scroll a page, okay?

00:07:53 ◼   ► And that sounds stupid, but we went through years

00:07:56 ◼   ► where it couldn't scroll

00:07:57 ◼   ► and where everything was just super slow.

00:07:59 ◼   ► I think iOS devices are very close to getting to the point

00:08:04 ◼   ► where no matter what piece of crap you buy from Apple,

00:08:06 ◼   ► you'll be able to scroll through a webpage, okay?

00:08:08 ◼   ► It'll load a webpage, okay?

00:08:09 ◼   ► It won't, like, no OS upgrade will screw them

00:08:12 ◼   ► in the way that iOS 8 is probably able to screw

00:08:15 ◼   ► the lowest supported device today.

00:08:17 ◼   ► We're getting very close to that tipping point where the hardware is good enough for the

00:08:21 ◼   ► basics to work.

00:08:23 ◼   ► We're not there yet, though, and I think this is a painful period.

00:08:26 ◼   ► And in the beginning of iOS, like, forget it, you know.

00:08:29 ◼   ► The iOS 1 was like, once the 3G and especially the 3GS came out, you didn't even want to

00:08:33 ◼   ► look at those old devices anymore.

00:08:35 ◼   ► You could not go back.

00:08:36 ◼   ► But you do eventually hit some minimum threshold of, like, you know, on the Mac menus work,

00:08:41 ◼   ► window resizing works, scrolling works.

00:08:44 ◼   ► You can launch applications without waiting a year.

00:08:46 ◼   ► There's still tons of other things that you can do without, that will make your thing

00:08:50 ◼   ► feel slow or whatever, but we just need the basics to work and we're not quite there yet.

00:08:53 ◼   ► So I'm hoping this time period where Apple keeps doing the strategy of selling devices

00:08:57 ◼   ► for a long time, giving them OS upgrades for a long time, will eventually work out for

00:09:03 ◼   ► them when the cheapest device they're selling meets the minimum threshold required for just

00:09:08 ◼   ► the basics to not be awful.

00:09:11 ◼   ► - I think certain generations age better than others too.

00:09:14 ◼   ► Like in the case of the iOS devices,

00:09:16 ◼   ► where you'll have basically the old models

00:09:19 ◼   ► being kept around for two years or so.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Certain chips and models have a lot more headroom in them

00:09:28 ◼   ► than others, and so the original iPad was not kept around

00:09:33 ◼   ► because it did not have a lot of headroom,

00:09:34 ◼   ► had way too little RAM.

00:09:36 ◼   ► The A5 with the iPad 2 at the time had tons of headroom.

00:09:41 ◼   ► which is why they're still selling A5 devices today.

00:09:44 ◼   ► And the original iPad mini, for an iPad these days,

00:09:50 ◼   ► it's kinda sluggish, but it still works.

00:09:53 ◼   ► So that's why they can still sell it.

00:09:54 ◼   ► But running iOS 7 on the iPhone 4 was a bad move.

00:10:01 ◼   ► And I think the A6 and A7, especially the A7,

00:10:08 ◼   ► really has a lot of headroom in it.

00:10:09 ◼   ► So like the current 5C is the A6.

00:10:14 ◼   ► I don't know how long they're going to keep selling A6 devices.

00:10:17 ◼   ► There aren't any iPads with it anymore.

00:10:19 ◼   ► But I would guess that the 5C internals from the iPhone 5 with the A6,

00:10:26 ◼   ► I would guess those stick around for another couple of years.

00:10:28 ◼   ► And that really won't be that bad.

00:10:31 ◼   ► The RAM problem is going to be an issue for-- even for the A7 device.

00:10:34 ◼   ► It's not like the CPU is going to get bad.

00:10:35 ◼   ► But again, Apple's been so stingy with RAM,

00:10:37 ◼   ► They've gone multiple generations without bumping the RAM specs and these things.

00:10:42 ◼   ► And that is going to hurt it much sooner than like, you know, you're not going to top out

00:10:46 ◼   ► the A7 doing basic stuff.

00:10:48 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:10:49 ◼   ► The A7 is completely adequate for sliding views back and forth, scrolling them, responding

00:10:54 ◼   ► to tap events, doing all the basic things you're going to need that we were just talking

00:10:58 ◼   ► about.

00:10:59 ◼   ► But if applications start using more memory because the applications become more sophisticated,

00:11:04 ◼   ► that A7's not gonna save you if everything keeps getting swapped out and you can't fit

00:11:07 ◼   ► things in RAM, you play one game and it boots out all your Safari tabs and it's all sorts

00:11:11 ◼   ► of, you know, so that's why I say we're getting close to the threshold but we're not there

00:11:15 ◼   ► yet.

00:11:16 ◼   ► So I would think even the most expensive, fanciest iOS device you can get today has

00:11:19 ◼   ► still not met the minimum threshold of you can keep that device for like five years and

00:11:24 ◼   ► it will still be basically competent.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Whereas, I mean, I'm sitting next to a Mac right now, granted it's the top-end one, but

00:11:30 ◼   ► But again, if you bought a top-end Mac in 2008, it still runs OS X perfectly well.

00:11:36 ◼   ► I'm running a current version of Photoshop, I run lots of applications.

00:11:40 ◼   ► Granted I upgraded the RAM and all that stuff.

00:11:42 ◼   ► That's not true today.

00:11:43 ◼   ► If you buy a top-end iPhone today in a couple years, it will not be up to the task of running

00:11:49 ◼   ► all the applications that...

00:11:51 ◼   ► Even just the basics of just being able to...

00:11:52 ◼   ► I feel like, "Oh, every time I launch this, this other thing, it gets booted out of memory,

00:11:57 ◼   ► and I can't even run this game because it requires more RAM this thing has.

00:12:01 ◼   ► Well that's something that, well first of all real-time follow-up, I was wrong. They

00:12:05 ◼   ► are still selling the iPad 4, which has the A6 CPU. It's an A6X, but it's the same

00:12:10 ◼   ► CPU. So, my mistake. Also, I think you're right that high-end Macs can last longer,

00:12:19 ◼   ► but also don't forget, you're talking about a Mac Pro where almost everything's upgradeable.

00:12:23 ◼   ► And modern Macs, not only are most Macs sold not Mac Pros, but modern Macs don't even have

00:12:29 ◼   ► a lot of upgradeable parts anymore.

00:12:30 ◼   ► It used to be, you know, if you bought a MacBook or a MacBook Pro three years ago, five years

00:12:35 ◼   ► ago, you could upgrade the RAM and hard drive over time.

00:12:38 ◼   ► You could maybe swap out the old spinning disk for the SSD and get another couple of

00:12:41 ◼   ► good years out of it.

00:12:42 ◼   ► You can max out the RAM, you know.

00:12:43 ◼   ► Which is exactly what I did.

00:12:45 ◼   ► Right.

00:12:46 ◼   ► A lot of people do that.

00:12:47 ◼   ► It's a great idea to do that, especially now that SSDs are so cheap.

00:12:50 ◼   ► But the devices we buy today, because they are so not upgradeable, almost every Mac that's

00:12:59 ◼   ► sold now doesn't have replaceable RAM anymore.

00:13:01 ◼   ► That's what I was saying.

00:13:02 ◼   ► But if you buy a top-end Retina MacBook Pro today, everything's sealed up, can't upgrade

00:13:06 ◼   ► anything, I think that machine will be fine for the basics in five years.

00:13:10 ◼   ► Yeah, but I would say if you're specing out a MacBook Pro, I would say get the most RAM

00:13:16 ◼   ► you can afford up front.

00:13:19 ◼   ► the RAM will make the biggest difference over time with how well it ages.

00:13:23 ◼   ► Yeah, someone just asked me on Twitter recently if they should—I forget which machine they

00:13:26 ◼   ► were specing out—should I take the CPU upgrade to an i7 or should I take the extra RAM? And

00:13:31 ◼   ► it's a difficult choice, but I have to go with the RAM, because again, like, you know,

00:13:37 ◼   ► you can always do—like, if things take a little bit longer, fine, but RAM is like capabilities.

00:13:41 ◼   ► Speed versus capability. Do you want to be able to run these two programs at the same

00:13:44 ◼   ► time without swapping, or do you want these programs to run 15% faster? And being able,

00:13:51 ◼   ► like capability is more important than speed.

00:13:53 ◼   ► Right, and the difference between 8 and 16 gigs of RAM, say, or especially, is there

00:14:00 ◼   ► anything still with 4 gigs of RAM in the lineup, maybe the low-end MacBooks? But the difference

00:14:04 ◼   ► between the base amount of RAM and twice as much of that is a much bigger difference usually

00:14:10 ◼   ► than the CPU choices you have where, you know, for the same price of doubling the RAM, you

00:14:15 ◼   ► might get an extra, you know, 5% CPU performance. It isn't a big jump on the CPU for the money.

00:14:22 ◼   ► It used to be better, but these days, yeah, you don't get much for your extra CPU money.

00:14:28 ◼   ► Exactly. And, you know, going back to the iOS devices, I think this is why you're right

00:14:31 ◼   ► to focus on RAM because that is the limiting factor so often. Like, that was definitely

00:14:37 ◼   ► the case with the iPad one. And feedback from the chat, yeah, tons of stuff with 4GB of

00:14:41 ◼   ► RAM still coming as stock, some of the low end stuff.

00:14:44 ◼   ► I was going to make a snarky comment, but I'm sure Apple is still selling stuff with

00:14:47 ◼   ► 4GB, but I wouldn't have actually believed that this list is true, so now I'm even more

00:14:51 ◼   ► depressed.

00:14:53 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week, once again, by our friend Matt Alexander and his company,

00:14:58 ◼   ► Need. Need is a refined retailer and lifestyle magazine for men. Each month, Need curates

00:15:05 ◼   ► and sells a limited quantity of exclusive products from the world's top men's brands.

00:15:10 ◼   ► These collections are presented in the form of a monthly editorial, built around a certain

00:15:14 ◼   ► theme, and are shot by local independent photographers.

00:15:18 ◼   ► Beyond Clothing, which they have a lot of really nice clothing, but Beyond Clothing,

00:15:22 ◼   ► Need also sells coffee, literature, furniture, and so forth.

00:15:25 ◼   ► So you can tell this is written by a British person because he uses the phrase "and so

00:15:28 ◼   ► forth" in the script.

00:15:29 ◼   ► Soon, they'll localize to certain cities around the world, the first of which will

00:15:32 ◼   ► be London.

00:15:34 ◼   ► just launched volume 8 assembly it features some of the best products for

00:15:38 ◼   ► evenings with friends hosting parties and so forth see look again very British

00:15:43 ◼   ► their favorites this month are the Stewart throw which Matt tells me throw

00:15:48 ◼   ► means blanket I guess but it's fancier if you call it a throw it could at all

00:15:53 ◼   ► isn't that also a pillow is couldn't they read a throw pillow that that

00:15:56 ◼   ► exists right I think so John you're domestic is that right you're asking me

00:16:01 ◼   ► about the terms for furniture items from a British ad.

00:16:04 ◼   ► - That's correct.

00:16:05 ◼   ► - Not my area of expertise.

00:16:06 ◼   ► - Okay, well, if you want it to become

00:16:08 ◼   ► your area of expertise, go to need.

00:16:10 ◼   ► So their favorites are the Stuart Throw,

00:16:12 ◼   ► which might mean a blanket, the Schwood sunglasses,

00:16:16 ◼   ► that has to be something cool,

00:16:17 ◼   ► and the classic Oxford watch.

00:16:20 ◼   ► See, I wish I could have a British accent

00:16:22 ◼   ► 'cause I feel like saying the classic Oxford watch

00:16:25 ◼   ► would be so much cooler if I had a British accent.

00:16:27 ◼   ► - That's true, and it is a damn fine looking watch.

00:16:29 ◼   ► It really is.

00:16:30 ◼   ► way better than all the smartwatches

00:16:32 ◼   ► that our industry's coming up with these days.

00:16:35 ◼   ► All right, so there's also a special offer for ATP listeners

00:16:39 ◼   ► anyone who places an order with need and was sent from ATP,

00:16:42 ◼   ► send an email to hello@neededition.com

00:16:46 ◼   ► with the subject line overcast trousers.

00:16:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:16:51 ◼   ► Once again, that is send an email to hello@neededition.com

00:16:54 ◼   ► subject line overcast trousers.

00:16:57 ◼   ► - And to be clear, to be clear, that's need edition

00:16:59 ◼   ► like a newspaper edition, not edition like mathematics.

00:17:03 ◼   ► - Maths, if you're British.

00:17:05 ◼   ► - Correct. - It's maths.

00:17:06 ◼   ► So yeah, no, no, it's edition, EDI,

00:17:08 ◼   ► you know, that kind of edition, neededition.com.

00:17:12 ◼   ► Subject line overcast trousers.

00:17:13 ◼   ► Anyway, they will throw in a bunch of extras

00:17:15 ◼   ► with those orders, so you know, things like magazines,

00:17:18 ◼   ► field notes, socks, scarves.

00:17:20 ◼   ► See, what I've learned from need is that a scarf

00:17:23 ◼   ► is not only something you should wear in the wintertime

00:17:25 ◼   ► when it's freezing.

00:17:27 ◼   ► You can also wear them when it's less freezing as a fashionable item to improve your fashion

00:17:32 ◼   ► score.

00:17:34 ◼   ► So anyway, they will, and then also if you do that you will also be put on a list to

00:17:38 ◼   ► get 25% off your next order.

00:17:40 ◼   ► So go to NeedEdition with an E not an A, NeedEdition.com and once again email them after you place

00:17:47 ◼   ► your order at hello@neededition.com, subject line overcast trousers to get all sorts of

00:17:52 ◼   ► cool stuff and a discount on your next order.

00:17:55 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Need, once again.

00:17:58 ◼   ► They can really show you how to be much more fashionable

00:18:01 ◼   ► and cool than I could ever possibly explain to you,

00:18:03 ◼   ► because I am not fashionable or cool.

00:18:05 ◼   ► However, I've had some things from Need,

00:18:06 ◼   ► and they make me look much more fashionable and cool

00:18:09 ◼   ► than I really am.

00:18:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:18:14 ◼   ► - Well done.

00:18:14 ◼   ► No, thanks to Matt Alexander and the Need crew.

00:18:17 ◼   ► That's extremely cool.

00:18:19 ◼   ► - I got red shoelaces from them.

00:18:21 ◼   ► That was amazing.

00:18:22 ◼   ► It turns out if you take a regular pair of shoes

00:18:25 ◼   ► and you put red shoelaces in them,

00:18:27 ◼   ► they become fashionable shoes.

00:18:28 ◼   ► - We have some more follow up from Melissa Savage,

00:18:32 ◼   ► who is the wife of one of the co-hosts

00:18:35 ◼   ► of the Mobile Couch podcast,

00:18:37 ◼   ► and she actually has her own podcast,

00:18:39 ◼   ► which I don't remember what it is,

00:18:40 ◼   ► so I'm a terrible person.

00:18:41 ◼   ► - Very helpful.

00:18:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, thank you.

00:18:43 ◼   ► She wrote in to say,

00:18:45 ◼   ► "I thought I'd just drop you a note about screen size

00:18:48 ◼   ► "because it illustrates why it's important

00:18:50 ◼   ► "to have more women in tech.

00:18:52 ◼   ► We are on average smaller than men, meaning our reach is not so large.

00:18:55 ◼   ► Despite what you say about getting over the bigger screen within a week,

00:18:58 ◼   ► the iPhone 5 annoys me daily because I can't quite stretch my right thumb to the left corner,

00:19:03 ◼   ► site of a thousand and one key functions for most apps."

00:19:06 ◼   ► This is where, of course, the back button is.

00:19:08 ◼   ► So she goes on to say, "Not only this, but women's clothes almost never have pockets,

00:19:13 ◼   ► or when they do, they are crappy tiny ones.

00:19:15 ◼   ► The iPhone 5 doesn't fit properly into any of my jeans' pockets.

00:19:18 ◼   ► Modern purses have phone slots, but these are not large, maybe four inches by a half an inch.

00:19:23 ◼   ► So, real time follow up, by the way, her podcast is Silver Screen Queens. Anyway, the point being

00:19:30 ◼   ► that we were lamenting the fact that our jeans pockets, or if you're Matt Alexander,

00:19:35 ◼   ► our trouser pockets are not big enough. Wait, are those the same things? I thought

00:19:39 ◼   ► trousers were like khakis or are trousers all pants if you're a British person?

00:19:44 ◼   ► I thought they were all pants. Don't say pants to a British person.

00:19:48 ◼   ► I thought they were all the things that we put over our underwear.

00:19:51 ◼   ► We'll have to get some clarification with Matt Alexander on the underwear hierarchy.

00:19:55 ◼   ► Any one of those CPG Grey videos to show the hierarchy of the lower body of men.

00:20:04 ◼   ► So a random stranger in the chat room with no credibility is saying that trousers are

00:20:08 ◼   ► all pants.

00:20:09 ◼   ► And by pants you mean not underwear.

00:20:11 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a good question.

00:20:13 ◼   ► This is very confusing.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:20:15 ◼   ► Why did the British take our language and mess it up so badly?

00:20:18 ◼   ► Seriously, they ruin everything.

00:20:20 ◼   ► So yeah, so to come sort of back to point, the idea is that here it is we're lamenting

00:20:25 ◼   ► the fact that our trouser/jeans pockets are not big enough, and we actually have pockets

00:20:31 ◼   ► that are designed to fit things.

00:20:33 ◼   ► Whereas women don't often have pockets at all, and occasionally when they do have pockets,

00:20:39 ◼   ► they're tiny.

00:20:40 ◼   ► And that is something that, quite frankly, I did not even consider.

00:20:42 ◼   ► Well, not just the—I mean, there's two points here.

00:20:45 ◼   ► One is the clothing thing.

00:20:47 ◼   ► And the second is small hands and reaching the corners of the screen.

00:20:53 ◼   ► Even when the iPhone, when the iOS devices got taller, it was a little bit harder to

00:20:57 ◼   ► reach over there.

00:20:58 ◼   ► But here's the thing about the women in small hands in reach issue.

00:21:02 ◼   ► When I see people out on the street with comically large phones, it seems to be most frequently

00:21:08 ◼   ► women with comically large phones.

00:21:11 ◼   ► And I don't know why that is.

00:21:12 ◼   ► You would think if they, on average, have smaller hands, they would favor smaller phones.

00:21:17 ◼   ► That is not what I see.

00:21:19 ◼   ► I mean, at the very least it's equal, but my impression is that you are more likely

00:21:25 ◼   ► to see just a really big phone in use by a woman than a man.

00:21:30 ◼   ► I don't know if that—does that match your experiences?

00:21:33 ◼   ► No.

00:21:34 ◼   ► Oh, really?

00:21:35 ◼   ► See, I have seen only a handful of comically large phones, but the first one that I saw

00:21:41 ◼   ► amongst my peer group was a dear friend of mine who is extremely petite, has a just ridiculously

00:21:50 ◼   ► large phone. To me it looks like an iPad mini.

00:21:52 ◼   ► - See, for me, I think first of all, the smaller hands and reach issue is not just a woman's

00:21:58 ◼   ► issue. My hands are kind of medium-sized and when Apple increased the screen size with

00:22:05 ◼   ► the iPhone 5, I had changed the grip I had on the phone. I used to hold it a certain

00:22:10 ◼   ► with all the old size and then I had to like kind of kind of choke up a little

00:22:15 ◼   ► bit on the phone like in in t-ball terms because that was last time I played

00:22:19 ◼   ► sports I had to choke up a little bit to get a better reach when the five came

00:22:24 ◼   ► out and I there's still like certain things you gotta like kind of kind of

00:22:27 ◼   ► hold it back a little bit in your hand like dude I had to adjust the way I even

00:22:30 ◼   ► touch it to hit certain corners and so I don't think it's necessarily a men and

00:22:35 ◼   ► women issue I think it's just like I mean there's already even within you

00:22:39 ◼   ► Within both genders, there's a pretty big range

00:22:41 ◼   ► of hand sizes.

00:22:42 ◼   ► And I think a lot of, like iOS has,

00:22:45 ◼   ► with 7 especially, when they added the edge swipe gesture

00:22:49 ◼   ► to go back and stuff like that,

00:22:51 ◼   ► like they're making the interface more screen gesture based

00:22:55 ◼   ► instead of based on tapping a certain button

00:22:57 ◼   ► in a certain spot on every screen,

00:23:00 ◼   ► overall helps this problem because it makes it

00:23:02 ◼   ► so that you don't have to touch

00:23:04 ◼   ► a very certain far away area so often.

00:23:07 ◼   ► You can just use these gestures.

00:23:08 ◼   ► And I think this is the kind of problem that can be worked around with those kinds of decisions

00:23:13 ◼   ► for the most part.

00:23:14 ◼   ► I mean, obviously within reason.

00:23:15 ◼   ► You can't really use an iPad one-handed.

00:23:16 ◼   ► It kind of sucks.

00:23:19 ◼   ► And the five-and-a-half inch phone, which apparently might now be fake or delayed or

00:23:23 ◼   ► – it's one of those things where the analysts – there's basically zero evidence for

00:23:27 ◼   ► the five-and-a-half inch phone anymore, so the analysts who all predicted it are now

00:23:30 ◼   ► saying, "Well, it's going to be delayed until next year," because they don't want

00:23:33 ◼   ► to just say they were wrong.

00:23:36 ◼   ► I forgot where I was even going with this.

00:23:40 ◼   ► You were onto something with the grip thing, because when I see people using large phones

00:23:44 ◼   ► just really big ones that you notice, you're like, "Whoa, is that a tablet?" No, that's

00:23:48 ◼   ► their phone. I see them using it in a different way. They're not one-handing it

00:23:52 ◼   ► with a thumb on the thing. Maybe they're two-handing it. Maybe the ones that have a stylus

00:23:56 ◼   ► obviously, that's totally the Galaxy Note things or whatever.

00:24:00 ◼   ► You use it in a different way. And you do see, remember back when

00:24:04 ◼   ► we had sliders with QWERTY keyboards and everything,

00:24:06 ◼   ► the whole deal was people would pull out the phone,

00:24:09 ◼   ► hold it sideways, flip down the keyboard,

00:24:10 ◼   ► and it was kind of like, you know,

00:24:12 ◼   ► in landscape orientation,

00:24:14 ◼   ► where you're holding it on the side

00:24:16 ◼   ► like it's a Game Boy Advance.

00:24:17 ◼   ► So I'm making game references, you guys don't get it.

00:24:19 ◼   ► Anyway, landscape.

00:24:21 ◼   ► And using two thumbs on it with the keyboard,

00:24:23 ◼   ► but now that it's touch-oriented, that grip has gone,

00:24:26 ◼   ► and for a while we were in the one-hand thing

00:24:28 ◼   ► with the thumb on the thing,

00:24:29 ◼   ► but now with the larger phones, I see more two hands,

00:24:31 ◼   ► and like two-hand portrait,

00:24:33 ◼   ► two-hand landscape, one hand holding it, one hand tapping it,

00:24:35 ◼   ► like old people use remotes, you know?

00:24:37 ◼   ► You hold the remote in one hand,

00:24:40 ◼   ► and then you take the second hand and come from above

00:24:42 ◼   ► with a pointer finger and you hit the buttons

00:24:43 ◼   ► on the remote.

00:24:44 ◼   ► None of these things are, I think, necessarily bad.

00:24:49 ◼   ► People like the devices and are choosing to,

00:24:52 ◼   ► again, that's why Apple's gonna make a phone

00:24:53 ◼   ► with a bigger screen.

00:24:54 ◼   ► People like the bigger phones.

00:24:55 ◼   ► They're adapting their usage behavior to adjust for it.

00:24:58 ◼   ► But as Melissa writes in,

00:25:00 ◼   ► If you like to use your phone with one hand,

00:25:03 ◼   ► like with the traditional sort of iPhone style grip,

00:25:07 ◼   ► you will be annoyed with,

00:25:08 ◼   ► along with the rest of the people who like that,

00:25:10 ◼   ► no matter what your hand size,

00:25:12 ◼   ► that the phones keep getting bigger.

00:25:14 ◼   ► 'Cause I mean, like I said, when the phones got taller,

00:25:16 ◼   ► I found it harder to reach some sections on the screen.

00:25:18 ◼   ► You had to do a little shimmy where you,

00:25:19 ◼   ► remember we talked about that

00:25:20 ◼   ► when the iPhone 5 birth came out?

00:25:22 ◼   ► - Yep. - You had a little

00:25:23 ◼   ► grip shimmy, right?

00:25:24 ◼   ► And it's gonna be even worse.

00:25:25 ◼   ► We're going to have to adjust our habits

00:25:27 ◼   ► and if Apple stops selling phones of this size,

00:25:29 ◼   ► then we'll just suffer along with everybody else.

00:25:32 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:25:33 ◼   ► All right, a little bit of quick follow-up.

00:25:36 ◼   ► John, this is for you, I believe, about TVs.

00:25:39 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, we're talking about 4K and plasma,

00:25:42 ◼   ► and one of the reasons that Panasonic

00:25:44 ◼   ► exited the plasma business is it's gonna cost them

00:25:45 ◼   ► a lot of money to try to get a 4K plasma TV,

00:25:48 ◼   ► because those little cells or pits

00:25:51 ◼   ► that are in plasma televisions

00:25:52 ◼   ► that make up the picture elements,

00:25:54 ◼   ► if you were to quadruple the number of those,

00:25:57 ◼   ► or roughly quadruple the number of those

00:25:59 ◼   ► in the same area, they have to get much, much smaller, and that's harder to manufacture.

00:26:03 ◼   ► And AWACS—I think this was on Twitter—sent me a link to say that Panasonic actually did

00:26:08 ◼   ► make a 4K plasma television.

00:26:11 ◼   ► It's 152 inches diagonal, though.

00:26:13 ◼   ► That way, you don't have to make the cells any smaller.

00:26:16 ◼   ► You just make the television massive.

00:26:17 ◼   ► They said it weighs 1,300 pounds and draws 3,700 watts.

00:26:21 ◼   ► So it's not cheap either.

00:26:23 ◼   ► That must have a six-figure price tag.

00:26:26 ◼   ► It is, yeah.

00:26:27 ◼   ► I don't think I remember what the price was.

00:26:28 ◼   ► But anyway, we'll put the link in the show notes just to go to see.

00:26:30 ◼   ► Again, it's not the fact that 4K is an impossibility for plasma.

00:26:34 ◼   ► It's the technology to make the little picture elements, whatever they're called in plasma,

00:26:38 ◼   ► smaller.

00:26:39 ◼   ► They would have to do a lot of R&D to get that working.

00:26:41 ◼   ► But I'm assuming this gigantic television was simply whatever their latest and greatest

00:26:46 ◼   ► regular high-definition plasma process was and just made it way bigger with the little

00:26:50 ◼   ► cells being exactly the same size.

00:26:53 ◼   ► If only there was already a word for "little picture elements."

00:26:56 ◼   ► not pixels, because the pixel is the resulting image on the screen. I'm trying to talk

00:27:00 ◼   ► about—and there is no equivalent in CRTs because it's just a big vacuum and an electron

00:27:03 ◼   ► gun and scanning over the phosphorous. I think they're called cells.

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00:29:05 ◼   ► - So Marco, big day?

00:29:07 ◼   ► - Little bit.

00:29:09 ◼   ► I'm so tired.

00:29:10 ◼   ► - When'd you wake up?

00:29:13 ◼   ► - I didn't sleep well last night,

00:29:16 ◼   ► so it's kind of a blurry line.

00:29:18 ◼   ► Well, that was my next question was did you sleep any?

00:29:21 ◼   ► When did you actually remove yourself from bed?

00:29:25 ◼   ► - About eight, I decided I was probably done sleeping

00:29:28 ◼   ► and I had to come downstairs

00:29:30 ◼   ► 'cause I had the launch scheduled for 11

00:29:33 ◼   ► and I had it in the state in iTunes Connect

00:29:35 ◼   ► where it just has an availability date set in the future.

00:29:38 ◼   ► Because the problem was, you know,

00:29:41 ◼   ► so I wanted to launch it today.

00:29:42 ◼   ► If you set it to be released in the App Store today,

00:29:46 ◼   ► then it'll start going on at midnight last night.

00:29:49 ◼   ► And I didn't want to stay up all night if there were server

00:29:51 ◼   ► issues.

00:29:52 ◼   ► Because that was the big question mark was,

00:29:54 ◼   ► will the server stay up under the load of however many people

00:29:58 ◼   ► tried out on day one?

00:29:59 ◼   ► I had no idea, because I didn't really know how heavy

00:30:03 ◼   ► is each user on the server.

00:30:04 ◼   ► I really had no measure of that.

00:30:07 ◼   ► You didn't do load testing with a bunch of VMs

00:30:09 ◼   ► and hit it from-- that's the great thing about EC2 and stuff.

00:30:12 ◼   ► You can just get a fleet of instances briefly

00:30:15 ◼   ► and bombard your service to simulate the load

00:30:17 ◼   ► of thousands of users.

00:30:18 ◼   ► And I mean, it costs some money,

00:30:20 ◼   ► but you can just ditch them all when you're gone.

00:30:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I thought of that.

00:30:23 ◼   ► It would have been very hard like to mimic

00:30:26 ◼   ► the exact usage pattern of overcast users

00:30:29 ◼   ► without having a bunch of iPhones connecting at weird times,

00:30:31 ◼   ► having podcasts being released at certain times.

00:30:33 ◼   ► It would have been hard to simulate well.

00:30:36 ◼   ► And so instead I opted to use that wonderful cloudness

00:30:39 ◼   ► of modern hosting to instead just temporarily

00:30:43 ◼   ► to get way more resources than I actually needed.

00:30:46 ◼   ► So I temporarily, a couple days ago,

00:30:48 ◼   ► I went from two web servers on Linode to eight,

00:30:51 ◼   ► and a very easy way to create more if I needed to.

00:30:54 ◼   ► And it turns out I ended up needing way less than that.

00:30:56 ◼   ► Anyway, so I was scared of what the servers would do,

00:31:00 ◼   ► and I didn't wanna be kept up all night.

00:31:02 ◼   ► So instead, I set it to be released tomorrow,

00:31:05 ◼   ► and then today at eight a.m., I changed the date back,

00:31:08 ◼   ► which makes it immediately get released at that point.

00:31:10 ◼   ► But immediately released on the App Store

00:31:13 ◼   ► doesn't mean it's immediately available to everybody

00:31:15 ◼   ► whenever they check and showing up in search results.

00:31:17 ◼   ► Because it has to propagate to different CDMs

00:31:20 ◼   ► around the world, different servers being replicated.

00:31:22 ◼   ► However Apple does it, it usually takes a few hours.

00:31:25 ◼   ► So I wanted to launch at 11 a.m.,

00:31:27 ◼   ► so I made the switch of the date at eight a.m.,

00:31:29 ◼   ► figuring that by 11 it would be available everywhere

00:31:32 ◼   ► and showing up in search results.

00:31:34 ◼   ► And turns out that was too early.

00:31:37 ◼   ► It actually showed up by about 10 or 9.30 even.

00:31:39 ◼   ► It only took like an hour and a half.

00:31:41 ◼   ► But I waited anyway and I had all the people

00:31:44 ◼   ► who had advanced beta copies, the depressed people,

00:31:47 ◼   ► I had told them all, don't publish before 11.

00:31:49 ◼   ► So I waited and I didn't publish before 11 either.

00:31:52 ◼   ► And yeah, so spent the morning just looking over everything,

00:31:56 ◼   ► tweaking everything and then I launched it

00:31:58 ◼   ► and the response was strong immediately.

00:32:03 ◼   ► I was scared of lots of potential things.

00:32:08 ◼   ► I knew that I had made an app that I was very happy with.

00:32:11 ◼   ► And my beta testers were generally very happy

00:32:14 ◼   ► with it as well.

00:32:15 ◼   ► But that's only like 30 people.

00:32:17 ◼   ► And this app was downloaded by thousands of people today.

00:32:20 ◼   ► So the opinions of 30,

00:32:23 ◼   ► especially this relatively undiverse group,

00:32:27 ◼   ► are not very reflective of the web at large.

00:32:30 ◼   ► So I didn't know what to expect from either the server load

00:32:33 ◼   ► or from just the reception of the app.

00:32:35 ◼   ► And are there any really crazy bugs

00:32:37 ◼   ► that are just really edge case that none of these testers

00:32:40 ◼   ► or I hit that would be major showstoppers

00:32:44 ◼   ► and that I'd have to freak out

00:32:46 ◼   ► and issue a quick emergency update.

00:32:48 ◼   ► And it turned out none of that happened.

00:32:50 ◼   ► It was great, it was just smooth.

00:32:52 ◼   ► I was so worried, I haven't eaten well

00:32:57 ◼   ► for a day before this.

00:32:59 ◼   ► Yesterday I was feeling terrible all day.

00:33:01 ◼   ► It ended up being nervousness.

00:33:03 ◼   ► Now my back is a mess.

00:33:05 ◼   ► I've been holding all this tension in my back

00:33:08 ◼   ► and my lower back is just destroyed today, it's awful.

00:33:12 ◼   ► 'Cause I was really taking this nervousness inwardly.

00:33:17 ◼   ► But it seems like everything went very well.

00:33:21 ◼   ► I mean, the downside is I spent most of today

00:33:25 ◼   ► reading thousands of tweets and hundreds of emails.

00:33:28 ◼   ► I still, I'm mostly keeping up with the tweets.

00:33:32 ◼   ► I still have, at the time of reading this,

00:33:35 ◼   ► 524 emails that I haven't gotten to yet.

00:33:37 ◼   ► - What are people email, is this like support emails

00:33:39 ◼   ► to the support address or personal emails to you

00:33:41 ◼   ► or is there a difference?

00:33:43 ◼   ► - It's, well there isn't really a difference yet.

00:33:45 ◼   ► I have a support person I'm going to hire

00:33:47 ◼   ► but I wanted to receive all the emails on day one.

00:33:51 ◼   ► First of all, just from a pragmatic standpoint,

00:33:54 ◼   ► I wanted to know about bugs immediately

00:33:56 ◼   ► so I could try to fix them.

00:33:58 ◼   ► - But these are emails that like from the application,

00:34:00 ◼   ► you're in the application, there's a button somewhere

00:34:01 ◼   ► you can hit that emails you,

00:34:02 ◼   ► that's what you're talking about, right?

00:34:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, and it's mostly people

00:34:08 ◼   ► with little feature requests, some bug reports,

00:34:11 ◼   ► some tech support kind of stuff.

00:34:13 ◼   ► I would try to be careful and set expectations

00:34:18 ◼   ► for tech support very low.

00:34:20 ◼   ► I don't use the word support anywhere.

00:34:24 ◼   ► And the descriptions of all these email addresses

00:34:27 ◼   ► is feedback.

00:34:28 ◼   ► And I say everywhere, I can't respond to everything.

00:34:32 ◼   ► - Well you have an auto responder that says,

00:34:34 ◼   ► please explain to me why you wouldn't want

00:34:36 ◼   ► the number one podcast app available on the app.

00:34:38 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:34:39 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:34:40 ◼   ► So anyway, I have a lot of email to go through.

00:34:44 ◼   ► I don't think it's that bad of a thing.

00:34:45 ◼   ► I'll see what happens day to day.

00:34:47 ◼   ► I didn't know if I should hire someone

00:34:51 ◼   ► because as far as I know, maybe by next week

00:34:53 ◼   ► it'll be like five emails a day.

00:34:55 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:34:56 ◼   ► I don't know what to expect yet for daily volume.

00:34:58 ◼   ► And so until I know that, I'm not going to,

00:35:02 ◼   ► I'm not gonna make any decisions about

00:35:03 ◼   ► whether I'm gonna hire someone or not,

00:35:05 ◼   ► but I probably will end up doing it if I can.

00:35:07 ◼   ► But yeah, most of the emails are stuff

00:35:11 ◼   ► that takes a few seconds to look at

00:35:13 ◼   ► and maybe a minute to respond to

00:35:15 ◼   ► if I have to respond, a minute at most,

00:35:18 ◼   ► but when you have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds

00:35:20 ◼   ► of them, that adds up quickly.

00:35:22 ◼   ► - So the launch went well, the servers didn't croak,

00:35:25 ◼   ► all is good in the world?

00:35:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean the database server load

00:35:29 ◼   ► never went above like .4,

00:35:31 ◼   ► which is awesome, 'cause that's the hard one to scale.

00:35:35 ◼   ► The web servers were negligible.

00:35:37 ◼   ► - Have you cranked back on some of the expanded footprint?

00:35:41 ◼   ► Like, have you gotten rid of some of those VMs,

00:35:43 ◼   ► or are they still--

00:35:44 ◼   ► - No, they're all still there.

00:35:44 ◼   ► I mean, if I keep all of these up for an entire month,

00:35:48 ◼   ► the entire hosting bill of Overcast is like $540 a month,

00:35:53 ◼   ► something like that.

00:35:54 ◼   ► When I sold Instapaper,

00:35:55 ◼   ► the hosting bill was about $7,000 a month.

00:35:58 ◼   ► - For more or less hardware?

00:36:00 ◼   ► Well, it was more overall horsepower,

00:36:02 ◼   ► but not by a whole lot,

00:36:04 ◼   ► because hardware has gotten better since then,

00:36:06 ◼   ► and Linode upgraded all their stuff.

00:36:08 ◼   ► So Linode's current pricing is almost cheaper

00:36:13 ◼   ► than most dedicated pricing for similar things.

00:36:17 ◼   ► It's extremely competitive.

00:36:19 ◼   ► Before this, I was gonna host it at Limestone Networks,

00:36:24 ◼   ► which is a really cheap, dedicated host.

00:36:27 ◼   ► And I had a server there for a while

00:36:28 ◼   ► when I was developing, doing crawling and stuff.

00:36:30 ◼   ► And that server was like 260 bucks a month

00:36:33 ◼   ► for what I'm, you can now get at Linode for about 160.

00:36:38 ◼   ► I mean, it's crazy how good Linode is right now.

00:36:41 ◼   ► - This is another example of hardware catching up

00:36:44 ◼   ► to something that doesn't change as much.

00:36:46 ◼   ► So yes, hardware always gets better,

00:36:48 ◼   ► but for textual data in small amounts,

00:36:53 ◼   ► it used to be that no matter how small

00:36:54 ◼   ► your textual data was, if you just wanted to store

00:36:56 ◼   ► an address book for people that's like bounded in size, only text, not a lot of things. Even

00:37:01 ◼   ► that would be super expensive just because hardware hadn't caught up.

00:37:04 ◼   ► Hardware has gotten so much better, people's address books are similar in size. Maybe they're,

00:37:10 ◼   ► you know, twice as big, five times as big, still mostly text, maybe with little pictures.

00:37:14 ◼   ► But that grows much more slowly than computing power, price performance, memory, and stuff

00:37:18 ◼   ► like that. So I think the cost of like, you know, fast forward 15 years, the cost of doing

00:37:22 ◼   ► a similar service to Overcast, like podcast feeds, keeping track of what podcasts are,

00:37:26 ◼   ► all their metadata, what their feed addresses, all that stuff.

00:37:29 ◼   ► That's not going to grow at the same rate as how cheap memory and storage and everything

00:37:33 ◼   ► grows.

00:37:34 ◼   ► So you're getting to the point where it'll be like, "Oh, I run my podcast metadata service

00:37:39 ◼   ► on a puck in my home that I keep in the attic and never look at."

00:37:43 ◼   ► Right.

00:37:44 ◼   ► And that's...

00:37:45 ◼   ► Well, honestly, the dream is not that.

00:37:46 ◼   ► The dream is closer to what Linode offers, because this thing runs somewhere else that

00:37:49 ◼   ► you don't have to think about it.

00:37:50 ◼   ► I know, but I'm talking about hardware requirements.

00:37:52 ◼   ► it would be like, oh, it's like $5 a month,

00:37:54 ◼   ► unlimited CPU and memory.

00:37:56 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, exactly.

00:37:57 ◼   ► I was thinking actually as a side note,

00:38:00 ◼   ► which I guess all side notes are temporary,

00:38:02 ◼   ► if Apple updates the Apple TV with an A7 chip

00:38:06 ◼   ► to take advantage of metal

00:38:07 ◼   ► and making a game console version and everything,

00:38:10 ◼   ► I wonder about the web hosting potential.

00:38:13 ◼   ► It's like Mac mini colo times two,

00:38:15 ◼   ► the web hosting potential of Apple TVs,

00:38:18 ◼   ► 'cause A7s are really good chips.

00:38:19 ◼   ► - But it's not, I mean, for web hosting,

00:38:21 ◼   ► It's like you got to have memory to have all this the the disk stuff cache in memory

00:38:26 ◼   ► So you don't actually you know see you don't have to pull it off the disk ever your disk caches are all warmed up

00:38:31 ◼   ► Right so you need a lot of memory for that and you probably need lots of small weak cores more than what is a seven?

00:38:37 ◼   ► I've still just two two fairly expensive course. I think still something like I mean

00:38:42 ◼   ► That's why the server chips are all like tons and tons of relatively weak small cores, so you could be processing lots of

00:38:48 ◼   ► things at the same time and each one of those things is no longer that demanding if you're just getting and

00:38:53 ◼   ► Sending again sending and receiving small bits of textual information

00:38:56 ◼   ► so apparently

00:38:58 ◼   ► A similar company to to Mac Mini colo or whatever was anyway similar company called a Mac Mini vault

00:39:06 ◼   ► They host they already have a page host on an Apple TV

00:39:10 ◼   ► We'll put that link in the show notes. Hey, no fans in the Apple TVs

00:39:15 ◼   ► You don't have to, you know, I guess you have to add your own fans. Maybe if you packed enough Apple TVs in,

00:39:20 ◼   ► I mean, they do produce heat. If you packed enough of them in, you need something to push that heat into the hot aisle in the data center,

00:39:25 ◼   ► so you'd have to like add fans to the front of it. Very strange.

00:39:28 ◼   ► I imagine like, you know, computing power to density ratio has to be pretty good with an A7-based Apple TV.

00:39:36 ◼   ► That has to be pretty good.

00:39:37 ◼   ► Yeah, but I mean, like the Mac Minis though, these are not purpose-built hardware for the data center.

00:39:42 ◼   ► And the people who do make purpose-built hardware for the data center have access to more or

00:39:46 ◼   ► less the same technologies, right?

00:39:48 ◼   ► So it's not as if, you know, this is the optimal solution.

00:39:50 ◼   ► It's just funny and interesting from like, imagine if you just got a bunch of these pucks

00:39:53 ◼   ► and you put them in this little drawer.

00:39:55 ◼   ► But realistically speaking, Google's still making their own blades out of God knows what,

00:39:59 ◼   ► and it's, you know, even better.

00:40:01 ◼   ► So first day went well.

00:40:04 ◼   ► Do you care to share how many users you have?

00:40:05 ◼   ► I saw you tweeting earlier today how many signups you had.

00:40:10 ◼   ► What are we at in at least a vague order of magnitude?

00:40:14 ◼   ► - 21,800.

00:40:16 ◼   ► - Now is that accounts registered server side

00:40:19 ◼   ► or are those number of downloads from the App Store?

00:40:21 ◼   ► - That is accounts registered server side.

00:40:23 ◼   ► Number of downloads I won't have until tomorrow morning

00:40:25 ◼   ► when I get the stats.

00:40:26 ◼   ► - I mean you figure it would be similar

00:40:28 ◼   ► 'cause it's, you know, you can't really use the app

00:40:30 ◼   ► until you sign up.

00:40:32 ◼   ► So if people downloaded it and didn't launch it I guess.

00:40:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, but yeah.

00:40:35 ◼   ► So I mean I would imagine the number of downloads

00:40:38 ◼   ► is probably substantially higher

00:40:40 ◼   ► because there are gonna be some people who downloaded it

00:40:42 ◼   ► and just haven't launched it yet.

00:40:44 ◼   ► Some people who downloaded it got to the login screen

00:40:46 ◼   ► and said, "I don't wanna create an account,"

00:40:48 ◼   ► and deleted it, or said, "I'll come back to this later

00:40:49 ◼   ► "and do this."

00:40:51 ◼   ► So I would guess number of actual downloads

00:40:54 ◼   ► might even be as high as twice that.

00:40:56 ◼   ► - Do you have the FAQ linked from that first screen

00:41:00 ◼   ► that says, you know, create an account or whatever?

00:41:02 ◼   ► - That's why I wrote the FAQ,

00:41:04 ◼   ► and that's why it's called the Skeptics FAQ.

00:41:06 ◼   ► It's because I knew people would say,

00:41:09 ◼   ► why do I need an account?

00:41:10 ◼   ► And that's why that's the very first question.

00:41:12 ◼   ► Or no, I think it's the second question.

00:41:14 ◼   ► You should keep track of it.

00:41:16 ◼   ► If they launch the app for the first time

00:41:18 ◼   ► and don't hit either one of those buttons,

00:41:21 ◼   ► the second time they launch the app,

00:41:22 ◼   ► you should make the Skeptic's Fact more bold.

00:41:27 ◼   ► Because I don't even remember seeing it there, but you want--

00:41:30 ◼   ► there is an explanation.

00:41:31 ◼   ► You might as well give it now.

00:41:33 ◼   ► There is an explanation of why do

00:41:34 ◼   ► I have to make an account of any kind for a podcast app.

00:41:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, and this was, I've had a couple,

00:41:41 ◼   ► I didn't know, this was another kind of risky thing.

00:41:44 ◼   ► I didn't know if there would be a lot of people

00:41:45 ◼   ► who were offended by this and who would skip it,

00:41:48 ◼   ► who would cancel their efforts to try Overcast entirely

00:41:52 ◼   ► just because they didn't wanna do that.

00:41:54 ◼   ► The reason the accounts are there

00:41:56 ◼   ► is because this is an entirely server-backed app.

00:41:58 ◼   ► The server does all the crawling, all the updating,

00:42:00 ◼   ► all the notifications and everything.

00:42:02 ◼   ► The server does a lot of the work.

00:42:04 ◼   ► And the app doesn't even have an XML parser.

00:42:07 ◼   ► the server does everything and just outputs JSON

00:42:09 ◼   ► to the app which it can decode quickly and natively.

00:42:12 ◼   ► Anyway, and so there has to be some kind

00:42:14 ◼   ► of user identification method between the app and the server.

00:42:17 ◼   ► Now if all I ever had was an iPhone app,

00:42:20 ◼   ► or even if all it ever was was iOS apps

00:42:24 ◼   ► that were all in the same account,

00:42:25 ◼   ► I could do things to kind of hack around this.

00:42:27 ◼   ► Like I could do like, you know,

00:42:28 ◼   ► generate a random ID the first time you use it

00:42:30 ◼   ► and then use that as your username behind the scenes

00:42:32 ◼   ► and never even show the user what their username is.

00:42:35 ◼   ► and then that could work just fine.

00:42:38 ◼   ► I could also store a user ID string in iCloud

00:42:42 ◼   ► in the key value store so that way they could launch it

00:42:45 ◼   ► on their iPad after I make an iPad version

00:42:47 ◼   ► and then it syncs over.

00:42:49 ◼   ► There are things like that I could do.

00:42:50 ◼   ► The big problem with that is first of all,

00:42:52 ◼   ► that would almost completely rule out web functionality.

00:42:55 ◼   ► Second of all, if I then had a way for them

00:43:00 ◼   ► to add an email address and password to this account,

00:43:04 ◼   ► Believe me, I know what would happen,

00:43:08 ◼   ► because I had similar issues with people

00:43:09 ◼   ► making accounts at Instapaper.

00:43:11 ◼   ► What would happen is people would make duplicate accounts.

00:43:14 ◼   ► They would, rather than associate an email address

00:43:17 ◼   ► with their current account, they would create

00:43:19 ◼   ► a new account inadvertently with the email address.

00:43:23 ◼   ► And then you have two accounts, and they email me saying,

00:43:26 ◼   ► all my podcasts are gone, because I logged into the new one.

00:43:29 ◼   ► They didn't know.

00:43:31 ◼   ► And then you have to find ways to merge accounts.

00:43:34 ◼   ► And it basically becomes a big issue with

00:43:37 ◼   ► perceived customer stability and data loss,

00:43:41 ◼   ► 'cause they will do something weird

00:43:43 ◼   ► that makes them think they lost everything,

00:43:45 ◼   ► and then blame me and be very unhappy.

00:43:47 ◼   ► And also it's just a massive burden on support email.

00:43:51 ◼   ► And so I chose, you know what, let me try instead,

00:43:54 ◼   ► just require the account right up front.

00:43:57 ◼   ► Explain it as best I can.

00:43:58 ◼   ► I know a lot of people are still gonna not do it,

00:43:59 ◼   ► but let me just require the account up front,

00:44:02 ◼   ► I make it always require an email address

00:44:04 ◼   ► so I can do password resets.

00:44:06 ◼   ► And let's just see if that works.

00:44:09 ◼   ► Maybe that'll be fine.

00:44:12 ◼   ► And in the future, if it ends up a lot of people

00:44:14 ◼   ► are being turned off by that

00:44:15 ◼   ► and I really want their business,

00:44:17 ◼   ► then maybe I can add the system where,

00:44:19 ◼   ► okay, it just starts up with an anonymous ID

00:44:21 ◼   ► and then you can add an email address later.

00:44:22 ◼   ► But I would rather try this first

00:44:24 ◼   ► because if this can work well enough,

00:44:27 ◼   ► it is so much easier to support

00:44:29 ◼   ► and it's so much easier as a user

00:44:31 ◼   ► that it's always the same.

00:44:32 ◼   ► All right, and you say all these things as though you've been burned once or twice

00:44:36 ◼   ► before.

00:44:37 ◼   ► I don't know what that's about.

00:44:38 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:44:39 ◼   ► All right, so let me start with a couple of obvious questions, and then I have some hopefully

00:44:44 ◼   ► less obvious questions, and then as we talk, I'm sure Jon will start tearing apart little

00:44:49 ◼   ► bits and pieces of what you're saying.

00:44:50 ◼   ► I'm so looking forward to this.

00:44:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I do want to save that for probably the end if we don't get to it in the middle.

00:44:57 ◼   ► Why freemium?

00:44:58 ◼   ► I'm not that confident in the market for a paid up front app anymore, especially because

00:45:03 ◼   ► I wanted to charge a good price for it.

00:45:06 ◼   ► The model is, in summary, the app is free, there are some limits, the in-app purchase

00:45:11 ◼   ► removes the limits.

00:45:12 ◼   ► That's it.

00:45:13 ◼   ► It's one purchase, one time, five bucks, and that removes all the limits.

00:45:17 ◼   ► So it's kind of like a trial version.

00:45:19 ◼   ► It's kind of my hacky way of doing a trial version, except that the entire app doesn't

00:45:25 ◼   ► just certain things just don't work.

00:45:28 ◼   ► Certain things don't work unless you pay.

00:45:30 ◼   ► And the two big things that don't work,

00:45:33 ◼   ► the smart speed and voice boost,

00:45:35 ◼   ► you can actually demo them without paying for five minutes.

00:45:39 ◼   ► Like there's like a five minute trial of those features.

00:45:42 ◼   ► I actually wasn't even sure if Apple would allow that,

00:45:44 ◼   ► but they did.

00:45:45 ◼   ► So it is basically a trial version.

00:45:50 ◼   ► And again, so going back a minute, so that's five bucks.

00:45:53 ◼   ► I don't think, if I launched today in the App Store, I'm sure my day one sales at five

00:45:59 ◼   ► bucks would be decent, but first of all, I know I got way more people as this model than

00:46:06 ◼   ► I would with that model.

00:46:07 ◼   ► I know that.

00:46:09 ◼   ► Second of all, I know over time that would be very hard to sustain because once the initial

00:46:16 ◼   ► PR is over, and once all your friends and all your blog readers have bought it, and

00:46:23 ◼   ► once everyone who's going to write about it

00:46:24 ◼   ► has written about it.

00:46:26 ◼   ► Then the sales of every app just tail off like crazy.

00:46:30 ◼   ► They just drop.

00:46:32 ◼   ► If you look at the graph, it looks like a roller coaster.

00:46:35 ◼   ► And they settle into a point,

00:46:38 ◼   ► and then that eventually lowers and lowers and lowers.

00:46:41 ◼   ► If your app is paid up front, that happens faster,

00:46:43 ◼   ► and it happens more severely.

00:46:44 ◼   ► I've seen this happen.

00:46:45 ◼   ► And Instapaper was always that model the entire time I owned it.

00:46:48 ◼   ► It's still that model today.

00:46:52 ◼   ► I know that model very well, the paid-up-front model.

00:46:55 ◼   ► I also know that in today's App Store, in a competitive category where I don't even

00:46:59 ◼   ► have the most features and people are very, very picky with what they want and what they

00:47:04 ◼   ► don't want, I knew that a $5 paid-up-front app was not a good long-term solution.

00:47:12 ◼   ► So that's why.

00:47:14 ◼   ► So I found a way to make free work.

00:47:16 ◼   ► I saw with Instapaper there were so many people who I would come in contact with in real life

00:47:22 ◼   ► even, even like family friends. I would be visiting them and I'd see on their phone,

00:47:28 ◼   ► they were still using Instapaper free, even like two years after it just continued. There

00:47:33 ◼   ► are so many people who, no matter how much they like you, they don't pay for apps.

00:47:40 ◼   ► It isn't just that they won't, it's that they, in their minds, don't. That's just

00:47:45 ◼   ► something I don't do. That's the kind of mindset it is.

00:47:49 ◼   ► - Who buys batteries, Marco?

00:47:50 ◼   ► - There's a lot of people, this is not a small group,

00:47:56 ◼   ► a lot of people who really just don't buy apps.

00:48:01 ◼   ► And I knew that the biggest podcast app in the world

00:48:06 ◼   ► by a very large margin is Apple's podcast app.

00:48:11 ◼   ► The second biggest by a pretty large margin is Stitcher.

00:48:14 ◼   ► Both of those are free.

00:48:17 ◼   ► I wanted to make an app that's good and free.

00:48:19 ◼   ► 'Cause the fact is the Apple podcast app is not bad.

00:48:22 ◼   ► It's not great, but it's not bad.

00:48:25 ◼   ► That's the biggest competition in the market,

00:48:26 ◼   ► and it's free, and it has a lot of features.

00:48:29 ◼   ► And it has some features I can never have,

00:48:32 ◼   ► like the integration with iTunes.

00:48:33 ◼   ► There are alternatives here.

00:48:35 ◼   ► I could have, like somebody in the chat said,

00:48:36 ◼   ► I could have done ads, but I've never seen an ad

00:48:38 ◼   ► in an app that I thought made the app look good.

00:48:41 ◼   ► Ads in apps are very intrusive,

00:48:45 ◼   ► because they take up so much space.

00:48:47 ◼   ► and the inventory is usually,

00:48:48 ◼   ► like I don't mind doing podcast ads here

00:48:50 ◼   ► because our advertisers are good

00:48:52 ◼   ► and because for the rest of the show,

00:48:53 ◼   ► we're giving like six minutes of ads

00:48:56 ◼   ► out of a 90 minute show.

00:48:57 ◼   ► When an ad's in an app,

00:49:00 ◼   ► not only are the advertisers usually terrible,

00:49:02 ◼   ► but it's taking up a pretty big chunk of the screen

00:49:04 ◼   ► all the time.

00:49:06 ◼   ► That's a much bigger cost on the user

00:49:08 ◼   ► than the kind of ads I respect,

00:49:10 ◼   ► like podcast and well done blog ads like the deck ads.

00:49:13 ◼   ► It's a very different ratio

00:49:15 ◼   ► and the advertisers are all cheap and crappy,

00:49:17 ◼   ► and so I just, I don't like app ads at all.

00:49:20 ◼   ► There are also features in the app,

00:49:22 ◼   ► like the Twitter feature, where, you know,

00:49:24 ◼   ► so I offer these like Twitter-based recommendations,

00:49:26 ◼   ► where you can connect your Twitter account,

00:49:27 ◼   ► and then you can get recommendations

00:49:29 ◼   ► based on the people you follow,

00:49:31 ◼   ► based on what they listen to,

00:49:32 ◼   ► and, you know, if they've connected to their accounts.

00:49:35 ◼   ► And that kind of feature works best

00:49:38 ◼   ► the more people you have, it's a social feature.

00:49:40 ◼   ► And this is why all social apps are free, right?

00:49:42 ◼   ► 'Cause the social network value, exponential,

00:49:44 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah, and so this is the same way

00:49:47 ◼   ► where that feature becomes a lot better

00:49:50 ◼   ► if I have more people using it.

00:49:51 ◼   ► So I decided rather than get five bucks from everybody,

00:49:55 ◼   ► I was going to try to get five bucks

00:49:59 ◼   ► from a few of the people who use the app

00:50:01 ◼   ► and just try to make the app as cheap as possible to host.

00:50:05 ◼   ► And I focused on that from day one

00:50:07 ◼   ► because I did not want to get to the point

00:50:10 ◼   ► where I was with Instapaper where it was very,

00:50:12 ◼   ► very expensive to host this.

00:50:14 ◼   ► With Overcast, I have made every possible focus

00:50:18 ◼   ► on keeping it as cheap as possible on the servers.

00:50:21 ◼   ► That's why I'm on Linode.

00:50:22 ◼   ► That's why my big expanded version of the hosting

00:50:26 ◼   ► was only gonna be 500 bucks a month,

00:50:27 ◼   ► and I'm probably gonna get away with more like two or 300

00:50:30 ◼   ► after this is all done.

00:50:31 ◼   ► The whole point of this was cheap hosting.

00:50:34 ◼   ► Make this sustainable that way.

00:50:37 ◼   ► And so the next question is,

00:50:38 ◼   ► which a few people have already asked,

00:50:39 ◼   ► is why not a subscription price?

00:50:42 ◼   ► And I thought about that a while too.

00:50:45 ◼   ► My model for the in-app purchase,

00:50:47 ◼   ► I've been all over the place with it in planning this.

00:50:50 ◼   ► Originally I was gonna do everything is unlocked

00:50:53 ◼   ► and you just pay what you want for the app.

00:50:56 ◼   ► And that, I thought about that,

00:50:59 ◼   ► I got some input from some trusted people

00:51:01 ◼   ► and that just, it wasn't very good.

00:51:03 ◼   ► - Is that even allowed on the App Store?

00:51:05 ◼   ► How would you get the money from them?

00:51:07 ◼   ► - I actually asked them that.

00:51:08 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:51:09 ◼   ► Because that's a good question.

00:51:11 ◼   ► I talked to a couple people at Apple,

00:51:13 ◼   ► whoever, you know, the people I could find at Apple.

00:51:16 ◼   ► They don't necessarily publish a directory or anything,

00:51:18 ◼   ► but the people I could find who might have been relevant

00:51:20 ◼   ► to it at Apple, I tried emailing in and got various places

00:51:24 ◼   ► and all of them kind of ended with, well, maybe.

00:51:27 ◼   ► So it was kind of a question mark

00:51:29 ◼   ► as to whether that would be allowed.

00:51:30 ◼   ► And generally with App Store stuff,

00:51:33 ◼   ► you don't wanna live on a question mark edge of a rule.

00:51:36 ◼   ► What you said earlier, Jon, is exactly right,

00:51:38 ◼   ► which is the cost of hosting each user goes down with time.

00:51:42 ◼   ► So the only way that my, if I'm responsible

00:51:46 ◼   ► about how I host this and how I manage the resources,

00:51:49 ◼   ► the only way that the costs really meaningfully

00:51:51 ◼   ► go up over time is if the user base

00:51:53 ◼   ► is growing substantially over time.

00:51:55 ◼   ► Because otherwise if the user base stays the same

00:51:57 ◼   ► and usage stays the same, then the cost of hosting

00:51:59 ◼   ► will slowly decrease as hardware gets better

00:52:01 ◼   ► and hosting gets cheaper.

00:52:03 ◼   ► - And I won't be like Instapaper where people like me

00:52:05 ◼   ► just have this massive backlog where you're saving

00:52:07 ◼   ► just thousands and thousands of articles, even when you archive them, right? I forget

00:52:10 ◼   ► what your policy was on archive things. It used to be like a window, but if you paid

00:52:13 ◼   ► for it, you've had various reels. But anyway, people's Instapaper collections could in theory

00:52:17 ◼   ► grow, whereas podcasts, there's some working set, and then after you've played an episode,

00:52:22 ◼   ► you're not retaining that info, are you? Well, I'm retaining the row in the database, which

00:52:27 ◼   ► is the row of five integers of the podcast ID, the user ID, whether you completed it

00:52:33 ◼   ► or not, and when. Well, I was saying you could trim that stuff

00:52:36 ◼   ► Like, you don't need to keep a record of,

00:52:38 ◼   ► I listened to this episode three years ago,

00:52:41 ◼   ► because it's no longer visible in the app,

00:52:42 ◼   ► hasn't been visible in the app for years.

00:52:45 ◼   ► - Well actually, if the podcast has fewer than 1,500 entries,

00:52:48 ◼   ► it is still visible in the app.

00:52:50 ◼   ► But that's, you know, the reality is,

00:52:53 ◼   ► like I mean, I know from Tumblr how these tables grow,

00:52:56 ◼   ► and what that means, and what it costs to host,

00:52:58 ◼   ► and the fact is, a table full of, you know,

00:53:01 ◼   ► hundreds of millions of integer associations like that

00:53:05 ◼   ► is really nothing to host.

00:53:07 ◼   ► It sounds like a big number, but in reality,

00:53:10 ◼   ► a table with five integer rows,

00:53:12 ◼   ► your service could be as big as Tumblr

00:53:16 ◼   ► and that table might only be like nine gigs.

00:53:18 ◼   ► We're not really talking a massive amount of data here.

00:53:21 ◼   ► And that's the kind of table where the index

00:53:24 ◼   ► is bigger than the table usually.

00:53:25 ◼   ► - And you were saving the textified versions of web pages

00:53:29 ◼   ► in the Instapaper database, right?

00:53:30 ◼   ► Because if a--

00:53:31 ◼   ► - I was saving them on S3, I wasn't saving the database.

00:53:34 ◼   ► - All right, well, but somewhere you were saving them

00:53:36 ◼   ► because you had the, what do you call it,

00:53:38 ◼   ► if someone had a different view of a website

00:53:42 ◼   ► than somebody else, you couldn't just save that webpage

00:53:44 ◼   ► as they saw it and allow everyone to see that.

00:53:46 ◼   ► - Right, it was a way to work with login barriers,

00:53:50 ◼   ► so that if you were logged in,

00:53:52 ◼   ► if a site required a login barrier,

00:53:54 ◼   ► if you saved it with a bookmarklet,

00:53:56 ◼   ► the bookmarklet would send a copy of what you were seeing

00:53:58 ◼   ► to the servers which would save it just for you.

00:54:01 ◼   ► And anyway, so, where was I?

00:54:03 ◼   ► Oh yeah, so subscriptions.

00:54:04 ◼   ► So yeah, I didn't do subscriptions

00:54:06 ◼   ► because my costs aren't high enough

00:54:09 ◼   ► where I really need them.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Like I can get along just fine without them.

00:54:14 ◼   ► And I might do them in the future.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Like with Instapaper, when I sold Instapaper,

00:54:17 ◼   ► I don't know what it is now,

00:54:18 ◼   ► I haven't been bugging them about stats or anything

00:54:21 ◼   ► 'cause honestly that's not my job anymore.

00:54:23 ◼   ► But when I sold Instapaper,

00:54:25 ◼   ► it was making about half of its income from subscriptions.

00:54:30 ◼   ► And the Instapaper, it was an interesting model.

00:54:31 ◼   ► It was, you know, the app was a few bucks,

00:54:33 ◼   ► Most of its life it was five, then it became three.

00:54:36 ◼   ► About halfway through the time I had it,

00:54:38 ◼   ► I launched these monthly subscriptions

00:54:40 ◼   ► that would allow me to offer a very small subset of users

00:54:43 ◼   ► very expensive features.

00:54:44 ◼   ► It started out with search.

00:54:46 ◼   ► Well, it started out with nothing,

00:54:47 ◼   ► then I added search.

00:54:48 ◼   ► Most people who subscribed did not subscribe

00:54:52 ◼   ► because of search.

00:54:53 ◼   ► Most people who subscribed subscribed out of

00:54:55 ◼   ► a sense of goodwill to me for providing

00:54:57 ◼   ► years worth of app updates without charging them

00:55:00 ◼   ► and basically building up a surplus of goodwill

00:55:04 ◼   ► among my audience.

00:55:06 ◼   ► That's kind of my plan here,

00:55:07 ◼   ► is if I need more money later on

00:55:08 ◼   ► to address hosting costs or whatever,

00:55:11 ◼   ► I'll do a few years of free updates.

00:55:14 ◼   ► People will like me enough that if I put in a tip jar

00:55:17 ◼   ► or something or a monthly voluntary subscription

00:55:19 ◼   ► that does nothing, you can make good money with that.

00:55:23 ◼   ► I mean, really, think about it.

00:55:24 ◼   ► I was making half of my income from those

00:55:27 ◼   ► when I sold Instapaper,

00:55:27 ◼   ► and most of those people never searched.

00:55:30 ◼   ► you know, that was not the reason they were buying it. So that's the plan for money,

00:55:36 ◼   ► is what I'm saying. Did I miss anything there? I'm sorry, it's been a long day. I'm kind of

00:55:40 ◼   ► mentally fried. So that last bit, though, you were saying, like, the idea of having

00:55:44 ◼   ► the equivalent of a tip jar, even if it technically is for search or whatever,

00:55:48 ◼   ► or having a subscription thing, you mentioned that those are both viable. It's not like you're

00:55:52 ◼   ► saying, "Oh, that can't work," I mean, because you know from experience that it can work in a

00:55:56 ◼   ► in a reasonable fashion.

00:55:57 ◼   ► What is it about that approach that you didn't like

00:56:00 ◼   ► that made you change your mind this time

00:56:03 ◼   ► and go with the $5 to unlock

00:56:05 ◼   ► the rest of the functionality thing?

00:56:07 ◼   ► - It really is a combination of not having

00:56:09 ◼   ► a lot of faith in that, 'cause keep in mind,

00:56:11 ◼   ► I sold Instapaper over a year ago.

00:56:13 ◼   ► And when I sold it, sales were not great.

00:56:15 ◼   ► And so, I saw the writing on the wall

00:56:20 ◼   ► for the paid-up front model back then,

00:56:22 ◼   ► and I'm not very confident in it now.

00:56:26 ◼   ► Part of it is also that now is a different model.

00:56:29 ◼   ► Instapaper had basically one and a half competitors.

00:56:32 ◼   ► The podcast app market has lots of competitors

00:56:34 ◼   ► and many of them are free.

00:56:36 ◼   ► And so I recognize there was stiffer competition here.

00:56:42 ◼   ► I was going into it, I was going into a very mature market.

00:56:45 ◼   ► Like with Instapaper, even though there was competition

00:56:48 ◼   ► from six months after I launched,

00:56:51 ◼   ► the competition and I evolved together.

00:56:56 ◼   ► Like we both started from the same spot of not much.

00:56:59 ◼   ► And then we were able to grow over time

00:57:02 ◼   ► in complexity and advancement.

00:57:04 ◼   ► With the podcast market, I'm going into it,

00:57:07 ◼   ► while everyone else who's in this market

00:57:09 ◼   ► has been writing their apps for four or five years.

00:57:11 ◼   ► These are now old apps.

00:57:13 ◼   ► They've been around the block.

00:57:15 ◼   ► They have tons of features, tons of infrastructure in place.

00:57:19 ◼   ► I was starting late to this game,

00:57:21 ◼   ► So I was going to come in with fewer features by necessity.

00:57:24 ◼   ► And so that's another thing, I tried with that.

00:57:28 ◼   ► I realized that I would need to do something

00:57:32 ◼   ► a little more dramatic than just launch to five bucks

00:57:35 ◼   ► if I wanted to get a decent user base.

00:57:37 ◼   ► - Well, what I was thinking of was comparing it to,

00:57:39 ◼   ► also launch it free, but have a $20,

00:57:43 ◼   ► I like Marco 'cause he makes nice things thing

00:57:45 ◼   ► that unlocks some feature that no one's gonna use,

00:57:48 ◼   ► like search, but people would do

00:57:49 ◼   ► out of the goodness of their heart.

00:57:51 ◼   ► Like that's the model I'm comparing it to.

00:57:52 ◼   ► Not the $5 upfront, but the large in-application,

00:57:57 ◼   ► quote unquote, subscription, whatever you wanna call it,

00:57:59 ◼   ► that isn't really unlocking anything.

00:58:02 ◼   ► - Like the big tip jar.

00:58:03 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:58:04 ◼   ► - The main reason why I didn't do something like that

00:58:07 ◼   ► is that I just didn't think most people

00:58:08 ◼   ► would buy something that expensive.

00:58:09 ◼   ► And like one of my ideas was to have like a three-tier

00:58:13 ◼   ► system of like pay what you want, you know,

00:58:15 ◼   ► $2 a year, $5 a year, $10 a year, something like that.

00:58:20 ◼   ► And I was a little afraid that by making it complicated,

00:58:24 ◼   ► 'cause those things are all kind of complicated,

00:58:26 ◼   ► by making it complicated,

00:58:28 ◼   ► then I think you reduce dramatically

00:58:31 ◼   ► the number of people who will do it.

00:58:33 ◼   ► Because some of those words kinda scare people away.

00:58:37 ◼   ► I was even thinking maybe using

00:58:39 ◼   ► the public radio vocabulary,

00:58:41 ◼   ► calling these things pledges.

00:58:42 ◼   ► Or you could be a supporter of the app.

00:58:46 ◼   ► - Would you run a telethon once or twice a year then?

00:58:50 ◼   ► If I did that, maybe I'd have to consider it.

00:58:52 ◼   ► I thought of all those models in various showers

00:58:57 ◼   ► I've taken over the last two years.

00:58:59 ◼   ► And I, 'cause that's in the showers

00:59:02 ◼   ► when I think about pricing for my app most.

00:59:05 ◼   ► I don't know why.

00:59:06 ◼   ► That's my life.

00:59:09 ◼   ► So I went with this model because it's simple.

00:59:12 ◼   ► And because it's a low barrier to entry.

00:59:16 ◼   ► The price is relatively high.

00:59:17 ◼   ► If it's five bucks.

00:59:18 ◼   ► I was tempted to charge 10 actually,

00:59:21 ◼   ► but I knew nobody would buy that.

00:59:22 ◼   ► And who knows, I might discount the in-app purchase

00:59:27 ◼   ► in the future, I'll play it with the price,

00:59:29 ◼   ► it's not hard coded anywhere.

00:59:31 ◼   ► I decided in the end to just keep it simple

00:59:34 ◼   ► because it's simpler for everyone,

00:59:36 ◼   ► it's simpler for me, it's simpler for the users,

00:59:38 ◼   ► this gives me flexibility, I can do things like,

00:59:41 ◼   ► in certain places, people who can't use in-app purchase,

00:59:45 ◼   ► I can put up a web Stripe buying form,

00:59:48 ◼   ► and then sync that over with their account

00:59:51 ◼   ► so it unlocks the app.

00:59:52 ◼   ► By keeping it simple, I have many options.

00:59:56 ◼   ► So that's really it.

00:59:58 ◼   ► - All right.

00:59:58 ◼   ► - We are also sponsored this week by Fracture.

01:00:01 ◼   ► Fracture, they sponsored us a while ago back,

01:00:03 ◼   ► I think in May they sponsored us.

01:00:06 ◼   ► Fracture is great.

01:00:08 ◼   ► Fracture prints photos directly on glass in vivid color.

01:00:12 ◼   ► It's really interesting.

01:00:13 ◼   ► So I have a bunch of Fracture prints around my office

01:00:16 ◼   ► 'cause they're good.

01:00:17 ◼   ► I mean, you know, it started out obviously,

01:00:18 ◼   ► they were a sponsor, that's how I learned about them,

01:00:20 ◼   ► so disclaimer, but even when I'm not being sponsored

01:00:25 ◼   ► by them, I have on multiple occasions bought Fracture prints

01:00:29 ◼   ► at full price because I like them.

01:00:31 ◼   ► Fracture, their printing method, it's great,

01:00:35 ◼   ► like you upload a picture or whatever

01:00:36 ◼   ► and then you get it printed, and it's really,

01:00:39 ◼   ► the picture is printed directly on a thin piece of glass

01:00:43 ◼   ► that's then mounted to a thin piece of foam board

01:00:45 ◼   ► so that you can hang it up easily.

01:00:47 ◼   ► So these prints are relatively lightweight.

01:00:50 ◼   ► Like you don't have to worry about them

01:00:51 ◼   ► like falling off the wall and pulling your wall down

01:00:53 ◼   ► and shattering or anything.

01:00:55 ◼   ► They're just immensely practical

01:00:57 ◼   ► 'cause what you get is a really nice looking glass print

01:01:02 ◼   ► that's border to border, frameless,

01:01:04 ◼   ► and then it is kind of its own frame.

01:01:07 ◼   ► You don't need to then like get a picture frame.

01:01:09 ◼   ► And compared to getting a picture framed,

01:01:12 ◼   ► it's an amazingly good value.

01:01:14 ◼   ► So I have a bunch of these things.

01:01:15 ◼   ► I have a couple of big ones,

01:01:17 ◼   ► showing off various nice pictures I've taken.

01:01:19 ◼   ► And then I have these three

01:01:21 ◼   ► that are the smallest size they have,

01:01:22 ◼   ► which I believe is five by five inches.

01:01:24 ◼   ► And I use those to print out app icon pictures

01:01:28 ◼   ► of the apps I've worked on.

01:01:29 ◼   ► So I have this row hanging in the wall of my office,

01:01:32 ◼   ► this row of app icons that I've worked on.

01:01:35 ◼   ► It's kind of like a trophy collection

01:01:36 ◼   ► for the things I've done in my life.

01:01:38 ◼   ► Because when you make apps,

01:01:40 ◼   ► there aren't a lot of physical artifacts like that.

01:01:43 ◼   ► And it's great because the 5x5 print is just $12.

01:01:48 ◼   ► So it's really no barrier to entry here if you want to get a couple of app icons made.

01:01:52 ◼   ► You know, yeah, spend $12.

01:01:53 ◼   ► It's no big deal.

01:01:55 ◼   ► Anyway, Fracture puts everything you need to get your photo on the wall right in the

01:02:00 ◼   ► box.

01:02:01 ◼   ► They give you your own little picture anchor thing or if you get the desk version, it has

01:02:06 ◼   ► a little stand already built into the frame.

01:02:09 ◼   ► Prices start at just $12 for the prints.

01:02:11 ◼   ► They're very reasonable.

01:02:12 ◼   ► The big ones are really reasonable.

01:02:15 ◼   ► And every fracture is handmade and checked for quality by a human being in their small

01:02:19 ◼   ► team in Gainesville, Florida.

01:02:21 ◼   ► It is the thinnest, lightest, and most elegant way to display your favorite photos.

01:02:26 ◼   ► And the best thing is you can even get 15% off with a coupon code ATP.

01:02:32 ◼   ► So please use coupon code ATP to get 15% off.

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01:02:45 ◼   ► I definitely recommend them, they are great.

01:02:46 ◼   ► I'm looking at, let's see, five of them right now

01:02:49 ◼   ► in my field of view.

01:02:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, they are really good and I recommend them as well.

01:02:53 ◼   ► Let me ask another obvious question,

01:02:56 ◼   ► then I'll get into one or two that are less obvious.

01:02:59 ◼   ► What took so damn long?

01:03:00 ◼   ► - I started writing this in October 2012

01:03:03 ◼   ► and that was when I still own Instapaper in the magazine.

01:03:07 ◼   ► That's when I had the idea for the audio processing stuff

01:03:09 ◼   ► and so I wanted to make a little prototype

01:03:10 ◼   ► to see if it was even possible.

01:03:12 ◼   ► So I did, and it was, and it was great.

01:03:14 ◼   ► But I didn't really have time

01:03:15 ◼   ► to make a full podcast app around it at that point.

01:03:17 ◼   ► I had other projects.

01:03:19 ◼   ► Then, you know, eventually other projects went away,

01:03:23 ◼   ► and I had time, so I worked on them.

01:03:25 ◼   ► And so then, you know, by last fall,

01:03:27 ◼   ► when I announced Overcast at XOXO last September,

01:03:31 ◼   ► so almost a year ago, that's when I announced it,

01:03:34 ◼   ► by that point I'd been working on it full-time

01:03:36 ◼   ► for, I don't know, four or five months,

01:03:38 ◼   ► something like that.

01:03:39 ◼   ► I really thought it was almost done.

01:03:42 ◼   ► Because as a typical programmer, I was like,

01:03:44 ◼   ► oh well, you know, it works for me for the most part.

01:03:48 ◼   ► It works on my phone, it's fine.

01:03:50 ◼   ► So yeah, I should have it out in what, two months?

01:03:53 ◼   ► That turned out not to be the case.

01:03:55 ◼   ► It just, podcast apps are so incredibly complicated.

01:04:01 ◼   ► And I didn't quite fully appreciate that at the time.

01:04:05 ◼   ► You know, I didn't, I knew about stuff like,

01:04:08 ◼   ► know, feeds, you know, having to manage weird feeds and everything else, like, you know,

01:04:12 ◼   ► edge cases there. But just the interface, there's so many screens in a podcast app,

01:04:18 ◼   ► it's crazy. Like I have rinsed up about this briefly a couple weeks ago in the after

01:04:22 ◼   ► show, so I'm, you know, it's just so, there's so much that goes into a podcast app. And

01:04:28 ◼   ► the, I now have 545 emails in my inbox, at least half of which are asking for features

01:04:37 ◼   ► that I haven't even done yet. It's a very demanding market as I'm learning today.

01:04:44 ◼   ► I thought I was launching with a lot for a 1.0. Turns out, for the most part, yeah, people

01:04:52 ◼   ► are fine with it, but there's a lot of people out there who are really demanding more, a

01:04:58 ◼   ► lot more, even from day one. And so I didn't want one point. I anticipated some of this,

01:05:05 ◼   ► So I didn't want to disappoint people a lot on day one.

01:05:10 ◼   ► So I didn't want to leave like massive gaping holes.

01:05:12 ◼   ► Now streaming is a big one and you know video is a medium sized hole.

01:05:17 ◼   ► I don't ever plan to support video because it's kind of a different medium and it demands

01:05:21 ◼   ► different things.

01:05:22 ◼   ► I wouldn't be able to use my audio engine and any of the effects and everything else.

01:05:26 ◼   ► I could use the compressor but I couldn't use smart speaks it would be weird.

01:05:30 ◼   ► There's a bunch of stuff that I couldn't,

01:05:33 ◼   ► that it would be harder to do with video.

01:05:35 ◼   ► And the whole interface, you have to accommodate video

01:05:37 ◼   ► and then you have the question of like,

01:05:39 ◼   ► all right, well, are you allowed to mix video into playlists?

01:05:42 ◼   ► And if so, what do you do?

01:05:43 ◼   ► Like, do you start playing video podcast episodes

01:05:46 ◼   ► right in the middle of audio podcast episodes?

01:05:48 ◼   ► What if you're in the car?

01:05:49 ◼   ► Like, there's all sorts of like weird things

01:05:50 ◼   ► with supporting video that I don't think are worth it

01:05:54 ◼   ► because I don't think video podcasts

01:05:56 ◼   ► are that big of a requirement.

01:05:58 ◼   ► I would venture a guess,

01:05:59 ◼   ► the majority of podcast listeners don't listen

01:06:01 ◼   ► to any video podcasts.

01:06:03 ◼   ► It's just such a different medium.

01:06:05 ◼   ► Video, I think, was, for me at least,

01:06:07 ◼   ► it was an easy decision not to support.

01:06:09 ◼   ► You don't, you just don't do it at the same time

01:06:12 ◼   ► as audio podcasts.

01:06:13 ◼   ► It's a different demand, and I think also most videos

01:06:16 ◼   ► move to YouTube these days.

01:06:18 ◼   ► - That's what I was gonna say, like,

01:06:19 ◼   ► are video podcasts even a thing anymore?

01:06:21 ◼   ► Hasn't YouTube channels more or less replaced them?

01:06:23 ◼   ► But I mean, I suppose they're still out there,

01:06:24 ◼   ► but like, that definitely sounds,

01:06:26 ◼   ► if I was into video podcasts, I would want an app

01:06:29 ◼   ► that was built around video podcasts,

01:06:30 ◼   ► 'cause they're different enough.

01:06:32 ◼   ► And I suppose you could make one super app

01:06:34 ◼   ► that does both audio and video, but that's a tall order.

01:06:37 ◼   ► Like, I would be perfectly happy getting separate

01:06:39 ◼   ► applications for video and audio podcasts.

01:06:42 ◼   ► I mean, you know, and people use the YouTube application

01:06:45 ◼   ► if they're watching YouTube channels and stuff.

01:06:47 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:06:48 ◼   ► So that's why no video, no streaming was harder

01:06:51 ◼   ► to take, basically.

01:06:53 ◼   ► The reason I don't have streaming is not because

01:06:57 ◼   ► it's some oversight that I just forgot to add it,

01:06:59 ◼   ► like as some emailers have assumed.

01:07:02 ◼   ► That's not why.

01:07:04 ◼   ► The reason I don't have streaming is that

01:07:06 ◼   ► all my audio processing stuff is done using raw,

01:07:09 ◼   ► low-level core audio APIs that don't inherently

01:07:12 ◼   ► automatically provide streaming support.

01:07:14 ◼   ► The other apps use AVPlayer.

01:07:17 ◼   ► And AVPlayer, the AVPlayer framework is higher level.

01:07:20 ◼   ► The downside of AVPlayer is that it removes

01:07:22 ◼   ► a lot of the control that you have.

01:07:24 ◼   ► There is a way to do voice boost.

01:07:27 ◼   ► Not quite as well, but you can do it.

01:07:30 ◼   ► It's a little more CPU intensive if you do it that way,

01:07:31 ◼   ► but it is possible to do voice boost with AVPlayer.

01:07:35 ◼   ► To the best of my knowledge,

01:07:36 ◼   ► it is not possible to do smart speed.

01:07:38 ◼   ► And I've thought about lots of, over the last few years,

01:07:41 ◼   ► I've thought about lots of different ways

01:07:42 ◼   ► to maybe attempt to hack smart speed into AVPlayer.

01:07:46 ◼   ► And I just could not come up with anything

01:07:48 ◼   ► that was remotely doable and reasonable

01:07:52 ◼   ► and not like a ridiculous, horrible pile

01:07:55 ◼   ► of terrible, fragile hacks that would break immediately.

01:07:58 ◼   ► So in order to make Smart Speed, I had to do raw core audio.

01:08:03 ◼   ► And I thought Smart Speed was a good enough feature

01:08:07 ◼   ► to make that worth adding months of development time

01:08:10 ◼   ► and making me have to re-implement things

01:08:13 ◼   ► that everyone else gets for free with AVPlayer,

01:08:15 ◼   ► including streaming.

01:08:16 ◼   ► The other thing is, when the other apps that do streaming,

01:08:19 ◼   ► they have to do it in a limited way

01:08:22 ◼   ► because AVPlayer, through reasons that I believe,

01:08:26 ◼   ► I tried asking Apple about this at WWDC

01:08:28 ◼   ► in the labs this year, no one really knew for sure,

01:08:31 ◼   ► or at least told me, but it seemed like the reason why

01:08:33 ◼   ► is because of HTTP live streaming and its DRM,

01:08:36 ◼   ► and its expectations thereof.

01:08:38 ◼   ► You can't save a stream, and you can't turn a download

01:08:42 ◼   ► into a stream.

01:08:44 ◼   ► You have to either stream something or download it.

01:08:46 ◼   ► You can't do both.

01:08:47 ◼   ► You can't just start playing a partial download,

01:08:50 ◼   ► and you definitely can't convert a stream into a download.

01:08:53 ◼   ► Like, you know, just stream it and just save it,

01:08:55 ◼   ► just save what you're streaming until it's done

01:08:57 ◼   ► and then save that as a file.

01:08:58 ◼   ► No, you can't do that.

01:08:59 ◼   ► What I'm going to do when I do add streaming,

01:09:03 ◼   ► which is, I'm gonna begin work on that shortly

01:09:05 ◼   ► once 1.0 stuff settles down,

01:09:07 ◼   ► I'm going to do it so that you can just start playing

01:09:09 ◼   ► a progressive download.

01:09:11 ◼   ► Doing that well in the background download system

01:09:14 ◼   ► requires new capabilities that are in iOS 8 only.

01:09:18 ◼   ► So it made sense to wait until iOS 8 came out

01:09:22 ◼   ► and do it then.

01:09:23 ◼   ► And so that's what I'm gonna do with streaming.

01:09:25 ◼   ► - So let me ask a genuine question.

01:09:27 ◼   ► Why is streaming such a big deal,

01:09:30 ◼   ► not from a development side, but from a user side?

01:09:32 ◼   ► Like there have been times I've wanted to listen to a show

01:09:35 ◼   ► and it hasn't been downloaded

01:09:36 ◼   ► and so I just wait for it to download.

01:09:39 ◼   ► Like what am I missing that makes this such a big deal

01:09:42 ◼   ► to so many people?

01:09:44 ◼   ► - Most of the benefit of streaming I think has been removed

01:09:46 ◼   ► with background downloading.

01:09:48 ◼   ► in iOS 8 or 7.

01:09:50 ◼   ► I really think that for the most part,

01:09:53 ◼   ► most people are going to have things downloaded

01:09:56 ◼   ► when they're at home or the office on WiFi

01:10:00 ◼   ► and they will never even notice it downloading

01:10:01 ◼   ► and then they'll go out and start listening

01:10:04 ◼   ► and they'll just listen to whatever they have downloaded.

01:10:05 ◼   ► But streaming is really useful

01:10:07 ◼   ► like when you're adding a podcast

01:10:09 ◼   ► and you wanna start playing it immediately.

01:10:12 ◼   ► And so for that instance,

01:10:14 ◼   ► like oh, I just discovered this episode or this show,

01:10:17 ◼   ► Let me start playing this right now.

01:10:19 ◼   ► - You can't, not you personally,

01:10:21 ◼   ► but you can't wait like literally 60 seconds.

01:10:23 ◼   ► Also the chat room is saying storage space.

01:10:25 ◼   ► I mean, I shouldn't be arguing with anyone.

01:10:28 ◼   ► I just, I didn't realize that people were running

01:10:30 ◼   ► within like 50 or 100 megs of the limits of their device.

01:10:35 ◼   ► I'm surprised to hear that.

01:10:36 ◼   ► - You gotta live gigs free.

01:10:38 ◼   ► I just tried to upgrade my iPhone to 712,

01:10:41 ◼   ► which I'd forgotten that I hadn't upgraded it to that.

01:10:43 ◼   ► And every time I try to upgrade iOS,

01:10:46 ◼   ► and that thing, it tells me I don't have enough space.

01:10:47 ◼   ► Only 1.4 gigs are available, so I gotta go delete stuff.

01:10:50 ◼   ► And you need a lot of room just for even small OS upgrades.

01:10:55 ◼   ► - Also, there's the issue of download speed also.

01:11:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, which is what the chat room is now telling me,

01:11:02 ◼   ► is that I'm spoiled by LTE/decent wifi.

01:11:06 ◼   ► - Well, and also, some podcasts are hosted

01:11:08 ◼   ► on servers or CDNs that themselves don't send the files

01:11:10 ◼   ► very quickly or can't send the files very quickly.

01:11:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, that is a big problem.

01:11:14 ◼   ► So my experience, obviously I don't have an iPhone,

01:11:16 ◼   ► but like with my iPod touches,

01:11:17 ◼   ► with the background downloads,

01:11:19 ◼   ► every time I pick up my iPod touch

01:11:22 ◼   ► and go to Overcast over the past month or so

01:11:24 ◼   ► I've been using it, everything's already downloaded

01:11:27 ◼   ► 'cause it's just been sitting there in my wifi all day.

01:11:29 ◼   ► But on the occasion when I said,

01:11:32 ◼   ► oh, actually I wanna get like you just said,

01:11:33 ◼   ► oh, I just wanna get this episode,

01:11:35 ◼   ► I do the thing you just said, Casey,

01:11:36 ◼   ► and I go to download it and I look, it's like 1%, 2%.

01:11:40 ◼   ► And you're like, oh, no, it's gonna be,

01:11:42 ◼   ► and for me, I can't say,

01:11:44 ◼   ► well, I'm gonna get in the car and drive away anyway

01:11:45 ◼   ► Because as soon as I leave my house, the download stops.

01:11:48 ◼   ► It's an iPod Touch.

01:11:49 ◼   ► So I think there are two use cases.

01:11:52 ◼   ► One are the people-- when you say streaming,

01:11:54 ◼   ► you think of people just wandering around,

01:11:57 ◼   ► constantly pulling audio over cell data that

01:12:00 ◼   ► goes right into their ears.

01:12:01 ◼   ► But I think the other use case is I

01:12:05 ◼   ► don't want to have to wait for the download to finish,

01:12:07 ◼   ► and I want to be able to start listening as fast as I can.

01:12:10 ◼   ► Because presumably, the service can send audio data fast

01:12:13 ◼   ► enough that you can listen to it in more or less real time.

01:12:16 ◼   ► So that's what I would like out of the streaming.

01:12:19 ◼   ► That's like, I remember being frustrated

01:12:21 ◼   ► when Apple first added podcast to iTunes.

01:12:23 ◼   ► I got all excited when it's a podcast, got a subscription,

01:12:26 ◼   ► and then I clicked on an episode

01:12:28 ◼   ► and saw the downloading bar.

01:12:29 ◼   ► I'm like, why isn't it playing?

01:12:31 ◼   ► It's not gonna play until it finishes downloading.

01:12:33 ◼   ► This is ridiculous, you know,

01:12:34 ◼   ► because you're used to like everything, you know,

01:12:35 ◼   ► web browsers, if you go an audio file, a video,

01:12:37 ◼   ► like of course it starts playing

01:12:38 ◼   ► before the whole thing downloads.

01:12:40 ◼   ► It's not, you know, but podcasts weren't like that,

01:12:42 ◼   ► probably for framework reasons.

01:12:43 ◼   ► And by the way, a lot of people in the chat room

01:12:45 ◼   ► have mentioned lots of other podcast apps

01:12:47 ◼   ► that already do this.

01:12:48 ◼   ► I think what Marco was saying is that

01:12:50 ◼   ► the frameworks Apple provides

01:12:52 ◼   ► don't give you a convenient way to do that.

01:12:54 ◼   ► So if you want to do that, it is entirely possible

01:12:56 ◼   ► you have to do it yourself though.

01:12:58 ◼   ► And what Marco's saying is he wants to wait until iOS 8

01:13:00 ◼   ► because there are frameworks that make that easier.

01:13:02 ◼   ► All these other people with podcast apps,

01:13:04 ◼   ► like Marco said, got a big head start on him.

01:13:06 ◼   ► They've already implemented their own ways

01:13:07 ◼   ► to do all these things.

01:13:08 ◼   ► Essentially, I think what it comes down to for streaming is

01:13:11 ◼   ► You gotta pick what's gonna make it into 1.0,

01:13:13 ◼   ► and that one didn't make the cut.

01:13:14 ◼   ► I mean, if you had added streaming,

01:13:15 ◼   ► you'd be waiting many more months before the thing came out.

01:13:18 ◼   ► - Right, and specifically, what they've added in 8,

01:13:22 ◼   ► you know, this is no big top secret,

01:13:24 ◼   ► what they've added in 8 is the ability

01:13:26 ◼   ► to basically use streaming on the same download

01:13:31 ◼   ► that can become a background download if it has to.

01:13:34 ◼   ► In 7, if you wanted to do a background download

01:13:37 ◼   ► when the app wasn't running or whatever,

01:13:39 ◼   ► you kick off the request and it says,

01:13:42 ◼   ► all right, and then it can tell you progress updates,

01:13:45 ◼   ► but you can't get to the data until it's done.

01:13:49 ◼   ► So there's no way to stream that.

01:13:51 ◼   ► So if you were offering streaming before,

01:13:53 ◼   ► you had to offer streaming in a way that,

01:13:55 ◼   ► oh, and you also can't convert any other downloads

01:13:58 ◼   ► into a background download.

01:13:59 ◼   ► So you'd have to offer streaming in a way

01:14:01 ◼   ► that if you were streaming hit pause

01:14:04 ◼   ► and the app got terminated or got backgrounded,

01:14:07 ◼   ► that download would get canceled and fail

01:14:08 ◼   ► and you have to start over again with a background download

01:14:10 ◼   ► if you wanted that file.

01:14:11 ◼   ► Where what they've added in 8 is the ability to convert

01:14:16 ◼   ► a streaming data download into a background download.

01:14:20 ◼   ► So that that use case can continue and can do that well.

01:14:24 ◼   ► So that's what I'm gonna use.

01:14:26 ◼   ► - All right, what about the dev process

01:14:31 ◼   ► surprised you the most?

01:14:32 ◼   ► Was it just that there are that many screens

01:14:34 ◼   ► or was there something else?

01:14:36 ◼   ► - I was most surprised that all this audio stuff

01:14:38 ◼   ► worked on an iPhone.

01:14:40 ◼   ► - That's actually a pretty good answer.

01:14:41 ◼   ► - Really, because it was like, oh my god,

01:14:44 ◼   ► the amount of processing I do on every sample

01:14:49 ◼   ► that goes through 44,100 times per second,

01:14:54 ◼   ► or if you're a stereo podcast, 88,200 times per second,

01:14:58 ◼   ► the amount of just processing and math,

01:15:02 ◼   ► I look at almost every sample in some way

01:15:04 ◼   ► when smart speed is on, at least.

01:15:07 ◼   ► and even when smart speed is off,

01:15:09 ◼   ► to render the little peak meters animation,

01:15:11 ◼   ► the little EQ animation, I'm looking at every sample.

01:15:15 ◼   ► I'm doing an FFT on every sample.

01:15:19 ◼   ► That's crazy talk.

01:15:20 ◼   ► Thinking about that, just logically,

01:15:24 ◼   ► that shouldn't be so fast on an iPhone.

01:15:27 ◼   ► It runs at 30 frames a second on an iPhone 4

01:15:30 ◼   ► and without maxing out the CPU.

01:15:33 ◼   ► And to answer people in the chat

01:15:34 ◼   ► talking about battery impact and everything,

01:15:37 ◼   ► I was concerned about battery impact.

01:15:39 ◼   ► I've been using this for over a year now

01:15:42 ◼   ► and the battery impact is fine.

01:15:44 ◼   ► It's fine, like it's not.

01:15:47 ◼   ► What hits the battery the hardest

01:15:48 ◼   ► is playing shows faster than 1X.

01:15:52 ◼   ► And so to some degree, Smart Speed does that

01:15:54 ◼   ► because the reason why that's so hard

01:15:56 ◼   ► is that you're then asking the hardware

01:15:58 ◼   ► to process more than 44,100 frames per second.

01:16:02 ◼   ► You're asking it to, you know, if you're playing at 1.5X,

01:16:05 ◼   ► it's gonna process 60 whatever frames per second.

01:16:08 ◼   ► So it's going to, when you're playing faster than 1X,

01:16:12 ◼   ► it still has to decode the MP3, read all that data,

01:16:15 ◼   ► process all that data, so it's doing all that work

01:16:20 ◼   ► more per second.

01:16:21 ◼   ► That is what makes a big battery impact.

01:16:24 ◼   ► If you look at the CPU usage meter

01:16:26 ◼   ► as you're running one of these things,

01:16:28 ◼   ► but that's true of all the podcast apps, including Apple's.

01:16:31 ◼   ► They all have that problem,

01:16:32 ◼   ► because that's just the reality of playing data quickly

01:16:35 ◼   ► is that you have to then read and process it more quickly,

01:16:37 ◼   ► so you have to do more of it and it costs CPU time.

01:16:39 ◼   ► - You're not doing the equalizer animation

01:16:42 ◼   ► when the screen's off, right?

01:16:43 ◼   ► - Correct, yeah.

01:16:44 ◼   ► If there isn't one on screen, or the screen is off,

01:16:47 ◼   ► or the app is not foreground, then it does not do anything.

01:16:52 ◼   ► - All right, what's your favorite feature,

01:16:54 ◼   ► which may or may not be the one you're most proud of?

01:16:58 ◼   ► - I'm definitely, okay.

01:17:01 ◼   ► I think my favorite one is playlist reordering.

01:17:04 ◼   ► The way playlists are implemented is crazy

01:17:08 ◼   ► because I really wanted this particular feature,

01:17:12 ◼   ► which is I didn't want to have to distinguish

01:17:13 ◼   ► between a manually organized playlist and a smart playlist,

01:17:17 ◼   ► the way most iTunes does it that way.

01:17:20 ◼   ► I wanted all playlists to be smart and manually organizable.

01:17:24 ◼   ► So that's how I did in Overcast.

01:17:27 ◼   ► So you can set your criteria for your playlist

01:17:30 ◼   ► and what should be included,

01:17:32 ◼   ► But you can always just drag it around and reorder it.

01:17:35 ◼   ► And then when new things come in,

01:17:37 ◼   ► your order is preserved and it just tries to,

01:17:40 ◼   ► it tries to obey the filters in a reasonable way

01:17:43 ◼   ► and the priority settings and everything

01:17:45 ◼   ► to try to fit a new episode in where it should probably go

01:17:49 ◼   ► given your reordering.

01:17:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, when you first told us about Overcast,

01:17:55 ◼   ► that was quite a while ago and you were talking about

01:17:57 ◼   ► things like smart speed and things that you

01:17:59 ◼   ► were trying to include in it.

01:18:01 ◼   ► And you had told us about your playlist ideas.

01:18:05 ◼   ► Possibly it was underscore and I down in South Carolina.

01:18:08 ◼   ► But regardless of when, I never used playlists ever in any podcast app I've ever used.

01:18:14 ◼   ► And so when you gave us the beta, I tried to do a playlist for things that just Aaron

01:18:20 ◼   ► and I listened to, which is basically just IRL talk, and then everything else.

01:18:25 ◼   ► And every time I started fiddling with the playlist settings

01:18:30 ◼   ► or perhaps reordering the playlist

01:18:32 ◼   ► like you were describing,

01:18:33 ◼   ► it was very quickly apparent to me

01:18:35 ◼   ► that this was something that I've always wanted in my life,

01:18:37 ◼   ► I just didn't know it yet.

01:18:39 ◼   ► And it's really, really well done.

01:18:41 ◼   ► And I am not surprised that you count that

01:18:43 ◼   ► as your favorite feature.

01:18:44 ◼   ► I think my favorite is probably Smart Speed

01:18:46 ◼   ► because I think it is so transparent,

01:18:48 ◼   ► but the playlists are a close second.

01:18:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, Smart Speed, I think,

01:18:53 ◼   ► is definitely what I'm most proud of.

01:18:54 ◼   ► because smart speed, it's a hard thing to do.

01:18:57 ◼   ► Like one of my formulas for my own happiness

01:19:01 ◼   ► and intellectual happiness as well as success

01:19:03 ◼   ► in the app world is it's nice if you do like one hard thing

01:19:08 ◼   ► and a lot of easy things in an app.

01:19:11 ◼   ► That's a really good balance to have

01:19:12 ◼   ► because if you do like one really hard thing,

01:19:14 ◼   ► that makes it harder for competitors to do

01:19:16 ◼   ► and to copy you feature by feature.

01:19:18 ◼   ► But then all the easy things help it be easier

01:19:21 ◼   ► to maintain for you.

01:19:23 ◼   ► And usually, a lot of things that are very hard to do

01:19:27 ◼   ► aren't really worth it.

01:19:27 ◼   ► Like they don't bring,

01:19:29 ◼   ► it isn't a must-have feature for customers.

01:19:31 ◼   ► So you gotta be careful what you pick.

01:19:33 ◼   ► But I talked in the last after show about how

01:19:36 ◼   ► I worked so hard on the Kindle feature for Instapaper.

01:19:40 ◼   ► And in reality, that probably wasn't worth

01:19:41 ◼   ► all the effort I put into it.

01:19:43 ◼   ► 'Cause it was hard.

01:19:44 ◼   ► It's easier these days with some of their tools,

01:19:46 ◼   ► but it was hard.

01:19:47 ◼   ► Anyway, Smart Speed is a very hard feature

01:19:50 ◼   ► to implement well.

01:19:51 ◼   ► You can do it badly in a few easier ways,

01:19:55 ◼   ► but I wanted to do it right and I wanted to do it well,

01:19:57 ◼   ► and doing it well is not easy.

01:20:00 ◼   ► That said, there isn't anything stopping

01:20:02 ◼   ► the other podcast app developers from doing it.

01:20:04 ◼   ► So, you know, like just time and dedication

01:20:07 ◼   ► and possibly having to rewrite a lot of code,

01:20:10 ◼   ► you know, they could do it.

01:20:11 ◼   ► It's not like this is gonna be exclusive to me forever.

01:20:14 ◼   ► Like, I'll be lucky if it's exclusive to me for six months,

01:20:17 ◼   ► you know, but anyway.

01:20:20 ◼   ► And yes, I know RSS Radio already does it

01:20:22 ◼   ► to prevent any feedback like that.

01:20:24 ◼   ► So it is even exclusive today.

01:20:27 ◼   ► But yeah, so anyway, I'm very proud of that.

01:20:31 ◼   ► I'm also very, very proud that my EQ meters

01:20:34 ◼   ► animation thing actually works.

01:20:36 ◼   ► Because the whole reason I did that

01:20:38 ◼   ► is because Apple in their music app and iOS 7,

01:20:43 ◼   ► like the problem I was trying to solve with that

01:20:46 ◼   ► was how do you indicate in the list of episodes,

01:20:49 ◼   ► how do you indicate which one is currently playing?

01:20:52 ◼   ► And the way Apple handles this

01:20:55 ◼   ► is they have a little pink animation in the music screen

01:20:59 ◼   ► that is like a tiny version of this

01:21:02 ◼   ► in like a little circle on the side or something like that.

01:21:04 ◼   ► It's a tiny version of a peak meter's view.

01:21:06 ◼   ► What drives me crazy about it is that it's fake.

01:21:09 ◼   ► It's just a canned animation of some bars moving up and down

01:21:13 ◼   ► it is not actually reflecting the music that it's playing.

01:21:17 ◼   ► So me being a smart ass and being arrogant,

01:21:20 ◼   ► I thought, you know what,

01:21:21 ◼   ► I bet I could do that for real in my app.

01:21:24 ◼   ► And so I tried and I'm like, you know,

01:21:26 ◼   ► and at first I was like,

01:21:27 ◼   ► I'm probably gonna have to use OpenGL

01:21:28 ◼   ► and to make it really fast and everything.

01:21:30 ◼   ► It's kind of hard to use OpenGL

01:21:32 ◼   ► on a translucent blended layer

01:21:34 ◼   ► that's gonna be blended into the rest of UI kit.

01:21:35 ◼   ► Like that's not easy.

01:21:37 ◼   ► And I really didn't want the overhead of doing GL

01:21:39 ◼   ► 'cause I didn't wanna be spending two weeks

01:21:40 ◼   ► on this one little feature.

01:21:42 ◼   ► - What made you think you knew

01:21:43 ◼   ► we're gonna need to use OpenGL for it?

01:21:45 ◼   ► just to get the animation fast enough,

01:21:48 ◼   ► or for battery reasons.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Maybe I could do it with QuickDraw or whatever,

01:21:53 ◼   ► but maybe it would take too long.

01:21:55 ◼   ► QuickDraw, right.

01:21:57 ◼   ► You mean the actual drawing process, though.

01:21:59 ◼   ► What you're worried about is not so much the core animation

01:22:02 ◼   ► will be run through OpenGL, but you

01:22:03 ◼   ► didn't want to have to draw the little lines with core graphics

01:22:07 ◼   ► thinking that you wouldn't be able to get 60 frames per second

01:22:09 ◼   ► out of that.

01:22:10 ◼   ► I was worried about that, and I was also

01:22:12 ◼   ► worried about the FFT that's running in the background

01:22:15 ◼   ► processing all the sound, like what is that going to do to battery life?

01:22:18 ◼   ► What do you think the GPU is sitting there waiting to run your DSP functions on it, right?

01:22:23 ◼   ► I've thought about that, but honestly the CPU versions of it work so incredibly well.

01:22:28 ◼   ► For the scale I'm running them on, I don't think the GPU will make a big difference.

01:22:33 ◼   ► The libraries, they have those, what are they called, the ARM extensions, the ARM SIMD extensions,

01:22:38 ◼   ► neon or something? Yeah, yeah. So like presumably Apple's libraries are using that behind the scenes

01:22:43 ◼   ► on the CPU's that support it.

01:22:44 ◼   ► So it's kind of like you get your own, you know,

01:22:46 ◼   ► it's like Ultivec all over again.

01:22:48 ◼   ► - Exactly, yeah.

01:22:49 ◼   ► So I made very heavy use of the accelerate framework,

01:22:52 ◼   ► the VDSB functions, which all do,

01:22:54 ◼   ► as far as I know they all use neon whenever they can.

01:22:58 ◼   ► And so, yeah, so I made this visualizer with that.

01:23:03 ◼   ► I realized how quickly it ran,

01:23:05 ◼   ► and it was originally only gonna be on,

01:23:09 ◼   ► like just overlaying the artwork on the table cells.

01:23:11 ◼   ► That's all I needed it for.

01:23:13 ◼   ► And then I realized, oh, this is really cool.

01:23:16 ◼   ► And I added it to the main playing screen,

01:23:20 ◼   ► first of all because it looked cool

01:23:21 ◼   ► and it seemed like a waste to have it

01:23:22 ◼   ► on the navigation screens and not on the now playing screen.

01:23:25 ◼   ► And also because I thought it might help,

01:23:29 ◼   ► if you're listening to a podcast on your phone,

01:23:32 ◼   ► but you're not doing something else,

01:23:34 ◼   ► if you're just sitting on the couch looking at your phone,

01:23:36 ◼   ► like nothing else is going on,

01:23:38 ◼   ► or you're sitting commuting on a plane

01:23:40 ◼   ► or something like that,

01:23:41 ◼   ► You wanted to signal to other people that you're listening?

01:23:44 ◼   ► - No, I wanted, well first of all,

01:23:45 ◼   ► it is nice that it has that feature

01:23:47 ◼   ► where like in a lot of other apps,

01:23:49 ◼   ► the only way you can tell that they're playing

01:23:51 ◼   ► is if the time is moving, basically.

01:23:54 ◼   ► And you know, or the symbol changes on the play button,

01:23:57 ◼   ► but like it's, these are pretty subtle signals.

01:23:59 ◼   ► With Overcast, it's very clear when it's playing something.

01:24:02 ◼   ► But also, I wanted to give people

01:24:04 ◼   ► who were just sitting there with their phone

01:24:05 ◼   ► who had nothing else to do, something to look at.

01:24:08 ◼   ► Like just something to like keep you

01:24:10 ◼   ► visually entertained a little bit,

01:24:11 ◼   ► so that maybe, just maybe, you'll,

01:24:13 ◼   ► for a few seconds more, not switch over to Twitter

01:24:16 ◼   ► and stop paying attention to what you're listening to.

01:24:19 ◼   ► So it was kind of like a political statement as well,

01:24:21 ◼   ► like, let me give you some reason to stay in this app

01:24:23 ◼   ► and something to just lock your visual attention

01:24:26 ◼   ► so that you can pay attention to the podcast,

01:24:28 ◼   ► rather than switching to something else

01:24:29 ◼   ► and zoning it out.

01:24:31 ◼   ► - So why did you mirror all the bars, Johnny Ive?

01:24:34 ◼   ► - It looked better.

01:24:35 ◼   ► Exactly, that's it, it looked better.

01:24:37 ◼   ► Simple as that.

01:24:39 ◼   ► There were a number of good reasons why the number of bars

01:24:43 ◼   ► had to be, it's 19, 18, 19, yeah.

01:24:48 ◼   ► There were a number of reasons the number had to be

01:24:51 ◼   ► no greater than 19, like the FFT window size.

01:24:54 ◼   ► It was like, it would have been really difficult

01:24:56 ◼   ► and much more complicated and much more CPU intensive

01:25:00 ◼   ► if I had more FFT buckets.

01:25:02 ◼   ► So I couldn't do more bars than that.

01:25:04 ◼   ► And so not only does it look better to have the shape

01:25:07 ◼   ► be symmetrical that the bars form,

01:25:10 ◼   ► rather than just being like a big slope

01:25:12 ◼   ► and you fall off the edge of the screen.

01:25:13 ◼   ► So not only is the shape nice and symmetrical,

01:25:16 ◼   ► but also the bars can be nice and thin

01:25:18 ◼   ► relative to like, you know, not being like these,

01:25:20 ◼   ► these, you know, big fat ones.

01:25:21 ◼   ► - You can always cheat and interpolate

01:25:23 ◼   ► between the bars, right?

01:25:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, but that's stupid.

01:25:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I couldn't do that.

01:25:27 ◼   ► - All right, so I've got two more questions

01:25:30 ◼   ► and then I'd genuinely like to hear John

01:25:32 ◼   ► destroy your user interface.

01:25:35 ◼   ► All right, firstly, what do you hope people appreciate?

01:25:39 ◼   ► And perhaps you feel like you've already answered that,

01:25:41 ◼   ► but an example of something we haven't really talked

01:25:43 ◼   ► about yet is the link to other ads.

01:25:46 ◼   ► - Do we, wait, before we made this entirely the me show,

01:25:49 ◼   ► do we have any other topics we wanted to get to?

01:25:51 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't wanna like take over our show.

01:25:54 ◼   ► - Too late, we do have topics,

01:25:55 ◼   ► but they'll keep till next week.

01:25:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you can blame me

01:25:58 ◼   ► 'cause I keep asking you questions, so it's my fault.

01:26:02 ◼   ► So yeah, so what do you hope people appreciate?

01:26:04 ◼   ► And what I was starting to say was,

01:26:05 ◼   ► an example of this that I've seen a lot of positive feedback

01:26:09 ◼   ► for from whatever was the linking

01:26:12 ◼   ► to the other independent podcast apps.

01:26:14 ◼   ► And I've seen a lot of comments fly by

01:26:16 ◼   ► about how that was a classy thing to do.

01:26:18 ◼   ► Maybe that's your answer, maybe it isn't,

01:26:19 ◼   ► but what do you hope users of the app really appreciate?

01:26:23 ◼   ► - To answer the question directly,

01:26:25 ◼   ► what I hope people really appreciate is the smart speed

01:26:27 ◼   ► and the voice boost, because these are the things

01:26:29 ◼   ► that just were the hardest.

01:26:31 ◼   ► They took the longest.

01:26:32 ◼   ► And for the time being, they set me apart.

01:26:35 ◼   ► These are features that they don't immediately scream,

01:26:39 ◼   ► oh my God, must have to a lot of people.

01:26:42 ◼   ► Some people, sure, but not to probably

01:26:44 ◼   ► the majority of people.

01:26:46 ◼   ► But once you try them, they're incredibly valuable

01:26:49 ◼   ► if you care about those things.

01:26:51 ◼   ► And some people don't.

01:26:52 ◼   ► Some people never play podcasts faster than 1X.

01:26:53 ◼   ► They don't want to, they don't see the point,

01:26:55 ◼   ► or they don't like the sound or whatever.

01:26:57 ◼   ► A lot of people couldn't possibly care

01:27:01 ◼   ► about the volume normalization and everything.

01:27:02 ◼   ► That's fine.

01:27:03 ◼   ► You know, you don't need everyone to love you

01:27:05 ◼   ► and you don't need everyone to appreciate

01:27:07 ◼   ► the amount of work you put into anything.

01:27:08 ◼   ► That's, you know, the amount of work you put into something

01:27:10 ◼   ► does not correlate to its value.

01:27:12 ◼   ► So that's fine.

01:27:14 ◼   ► But I hope people appreciate that stuff who care, you know?

01:27:19 ◼   ► And so that's the answer to that.

01:27:21 ◼   ► Now to get to the question that you kind of asked

01:27:23 ◼   ► about why I did the link to other apps in the,

01:27:27 ◼   ► I basically have a section in settings

01:27:29 ◼   ► that links to all my competitors for, well not all of them,

01:27:32 ◼   ► linked to some of my competitors,

01:27:34 ◼   ► probably the biggest ones.

01:27:35 ◼   ► The main reason why I did that,

01:27:38 ◼   ► it was kind of a what the hell moment.

01:27:41 ◼   ► It was like, you know what, I wanna do this thing,

01:27:44 ◼   ► and I think it would be pretty cool.

01:27:46 ◼   ► I was afraid though, it was a risk,

01:27:48 ◼   ► I saw it as a risk in two reasons,

01:27:51 ◼   ► one small and one big.

01:27:53 ◼   ► The small risk was that Apple would reject it

01:27:55 ◼   ► because they have pretty strict rules

01:27:57 ◼   ► about whether you can display and link to other apps

01:28:01 ◼   ► within your app and under what conditions.

01:28:03 ◼   ► And if you read the rules, it's kinda like,

01:28:05 ◼   ► well, this might qualify, this might not.

01:28:07 ◼   ► It was a little bit vague,

01:28:09 ◼   ► and I wasn't sure if they would approve it.

01:28:10 ◼   ► Turns out they don't care, not yet at least.

01:28:12 ◼   ► So we'll see future updates,

01:28:14 ◼   ► we'll see if this feature lasts.

01:28:16 ◼   ► So far they don't care.

01:28:17 ◼   ► The second concern, and that's a minor concern,

01:28:21 ◼   ► 'cause if they say I can't do it, fine,

01:28:23 ◼   ► I take it out and I resubmit, no big deal.

01:28:25 ◼   ► The second reason, though, was I was afraid that it would,

01:28:30 ◼   ► My goal with doing this, with linking to my competitors,

01:28:35 ◼   ► was really well-meaning.

01:28:36 ◼   ► It was really to just like, you know,

01:28:39 ◼   ► some of these people are my friends.

01:28:41 ◼   ► This is a small business.

01:28:43 ◼   ► These are all indie developers like me.

01:28:45 ◼   ► We're not talking about,

01:28:46 ◼   ► like I'm not linking to like major corporations

01:28:48 ◼   ► with VC funding who were trying to crush everybody

01:28:51 ◼   ► and put everyone out of business.

01:28:52 ◼   ► Like that's not this business.

01:28:54 ◼   ► This is a business of small independent developers

01:28:57 ◼   ► who are very similar to me.

01:28:59 ◼   ► and I wanted to kind of show solidarity with it almost,

01:29:03 ◼   ► just kind of be friendly with the business

01:29:06 ◼   ► rather than being hostile towards my competitors.

01:29:09 ◼   ► And again, some of these people are friends of mine,

01:29:12 ◼   ► which made it even easier to do it.

01:29:14 ◼   ► I was afraid though that it might be perceived as

01:29:17 ◼   ► me looking down on these people,

01:29:19 ◼   ► like, oh, you don't like my app?

01:29:21 ◼   ► Well fine, just take one of these,

01:29:23 ◼   ► 'cause I'm like the arrogant (beep)

01:29:24 ◼   ► who everyone hates.

01:29:26 ◼   ► I was worried about that perception happening,

01:29:30 ◼   ► but it didn't, and in fact, not only did it not happen,

01:29:33 ◼   ► I didn't see a single person who seemed to think that.

01:29:37 ◼   ► Having that feature in the app,

01:29:39 ◼   ► I think has gotten me more tweets, more comments,

01:29:43 ◼   ► more emails that are all positive

01:29:46 ◼   ► than anything else in the app,

01:29:47 ◼   ► including all my features, Smart Speed,

01:29:49 ◼   ► people like that more than everything else