ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Remember when Twitter was good?

00:00:02 ◼   ► [

00:00:08 ◼   ► But God, the decisions that make it terrible.

00:00:11 ◼   ► You know what I've noticed lately, by the way?

00:00:13 ◼   ► Maybe I'm just waking up to five years ago, but I've done a couple of searches recently

00:00:19 ◼   ► for hotels, like for WWDC and things like that.

00:00:23 ◼   ► And I was looking at Facebook recently and they were putting in ads for the destinations

00:00:31 ◼   ► I was searching for when I was not even anywhere near Facebook at the time, which is extremely

00:00:38 ◼   ► creepy.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Oh, that's the new internet. That's the modern privacy economy.

00:00:44 ◼   ► So now I'm extremely… So the net effect from that is that if I do look at Facebook,

00:00:49 ◼   ► I look at it and then I log the hell out because I feel like that makes a difference even though

00:00:53 ◼   ► it probably doesn't.

00:00:54 ◼   ► It doesn't, yeah. I mean, this is just like the boil the frog analogy. It's like, you

00:01:00 ◼   ► know, at some point we all say, "Oh, we can't do this. This is too creepy." And

00:01:05 ◼   ► And then, you know, six months later, that's fine.

00:01:07 ◼   ► And then move on to the next creepy thing.

00:01:09 ◼   ► And Facebook and Google and all these companies

00:01:11 ◼   ► that make money based on how creepy they're willing to be

00:01:14 ◼   ► will always get more and more creepy over time

00:01:17 ◼   ► because that's how they will keep making money

00:01:18 ◼   ► and keep staying ahead of each other and the competition

00:01:21 ◼   ► and keep their numbers growing every quarter.

00:01:23 ◼   ► It's a whole business built on

00:01:25 ◼   ► how creepy are you willing to be?

00:01:27 ◼   ► And if you take small enough steps,

00:01:29 ◼   ► it's pretty easy to justify pretty much anything.

00:01:31 ◼   ► - Anyway, you wanna do some follow up?

00:01:34 ◼   ► Actually, since I brought it up, let me interrupt you by saying we have recorded this on Monday

00:01:41 ◼   ► the 19th of May.

00:01:43 ◼   ► And we did that because our schedules over the next couple of weeks are a little wild.

00:01:47 ◼   ► But regardless of when we release this, if anything –

00:01:49 ◼   ► Wacky wild, Casey.

00:01:51 ◼   ► Something like that.

00:01:53 ◼   ► Regardless of when we release this, if something we say sounds really, really stupid because

00:01:57 ◼   ► of some news that has just recently come out, it's because we recorded this on Monday

00:02:01 ◼   ► rather than our normal day.

00:02:03 ◼   ► clearly that's why we sounded stupid and it couldn't possibly be because we actually said

00:02:09 ◼   ► something stupid.

00:02:10 ◼   ► Right, and that would be the only reason why we ever say anything stupid. It's only because

00:02:15 ◼   ► we record the show a couple days before we post it usually. That's the only reason we

00:02:18 ◼   ► ever get anything wrong.

00:02:19 ◼   ► I'm not going to bring up finals. So, tell me about Beats headphones.

00:02:26 ◼   ► So last week I kind of defended Apple's supposed acquisition of Beats, which we still don't

00:02:31 ◼   ► know anything about and we still have no confirmation about, but I defended it basically saying

00:02:37 ◼   ► that Beats is actually a really strong headphone brand and that their headphones, while they

00:02:42 ◼   ► are not what audiophiles want in a headphone, they are very appealing to a lot of people.

00:02:48 ◼   ► And well anyway, so today I actually spent the most time that I've ever spent with

00:02:53 ◼   ► Beats headphones because I had to go back to the Apple store.

00:02:56 ◼   ► Yeah, what's going on?

00:02:57 ◼   ► Is it anything worth sharing?

00:02:58 ◼   ► - No, the iPhone 5 sleep/wake replacement program.

00:03:02 ◼   ► I wanted to get mine replaced because I want to have

00:03:05 ◼   ► a very long life for development testing.

00:03:08 ◼   ► So, anyway, so I went to go pick it up today.

00:03:10 ◼   ► And you know, everything you do at an Apple store these days

00:03:13 ◼   ► this is probably its own topic,

00:03:15 ◼   ► but everything you do at an Apple store these days

00:03:17 ◼   ► takes like 45 minutes.

00:03:19 ◼   ► Because there are certain things that you can't really

00:03:21 ◼   ► make appointments for,

00:03:22 ◼   ► like picking up your phone from repair.

00:03:24 ◼   ► There are other things that you can make appointments for

00:03:26 ◼   ► if you're willing to make an appointment

00:03:27 ◼   ► 17 days ahead of time and then you get there and it doesn't really matter that you made the appointment because they are already backed

00:03:32 ◼   ► Up and it still takes 40 minutes before anybody will see you like a doctor

00:03:35 ◼   ► Yeah, and they do this weird thing where?

00:03:38 ◼   ► The you go to the person well first you go to the person at the front door who seems to be doing nothing and they

00:03:44 ◼   ► Tell you to go back to the to you know

00:03:45 ◼   ► Ivan in the back or whatever and go register with Ivan back there with the line of people

00:03:49 ◼   ► so you go in the store and you think you're getting somewhere then there's this big line of people behind some guy with an iPad and

00:03:55 ◼   ► Eventually you get to him and you tell him what you need. All right here stand here at this table and wait and we'll have you

00:04:02 ◼   ► know

00:04:03 ◼   ► Jerry come out and talk to you

00:04:05 ◼   ► And so then then you stand and then you're like, all right. Well

00:04:08 ◼   ► You know five ten minutes in like okay

00:04:10 ◼   ► Can I can I move from this table like what will happen if I go look at the laptops over at that other table or go?

00:04:16 ◼   ► Start playing with the headphones at the table over there

00:04:18 ◼   ► And you kind of have to sit there standing around like waiting and playing this game like oh

00:04:23 ◼   ► "Well, maybe I'll just go over there and listen for my name

00:04:26 ◼   ► "and look for someone walking over there."

00:04:28 ◼   ► It's a really weird experience.

00:04:31 ◼   ► I definitely get the feeling that Apple retail stores

00:04:34 ◼   ► are not only having trouble keeping up

00:04:37 ◼   ► with the customer volume that they get,

00:04:40 ◼   ► but not doing a very good job with the solutions

00:04:43 ◼   ► they've come up with so far,

00:04:45 ◼   ► with creating good experiences with people.

00:04:47 ◼   ► I no longer enjoy going to the Apple store.

00:04:50 ◼   ► It's getting closer and closer to going to the DMV

00:04:53 ◼   ► in experience, quality, and things I would try to avoid.

00:04:57 ◼   ► - But it's really because you're an East Coaster

00:05:00 ◼   ► and we're too, I don't know, organized.

00:05:03 ◼   ► And we like order too much.

00:05:06 ◼   ► - Lines, we like lines.

00:05:07 ◼   ► - Exactly, I don't know.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Apple Stores are, to me, like the epitome of California.

00:05:14 ◼   ► Hey man, it's cool, just wait here for a while.

00:05:18 ◼   ► It'll be awesome.

00:05:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've never enjoyed going to Apple Stores.

00:05:22 ◼   ► I want to get in, I want to get out.

00:05:24 ◼   ► And it's just, they make it impossible.

00:05:26 ◼   ► It's like a game, you just have to try to get served.

00:05:29 ◼   ► Good luck.

00:05:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, seriously.

00:05:31 ◼   ► I will say that the Apple Store app

00:05:35 ◼   ► that lets you buy things, that is really nice,

00:05:38 ◼   ► but everything else about the experience

00:05:41 ◼   ► is pretty crummy these days.

00:05:43 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:05:44 ◼   ► Anyway, so I had some time for my pickup

00:05:47 ◼   ► that's supposed to only take five minutes.

00:05:49 ◼   ► I had probably a good 20 minutes in there,

00:05:52 ◼   ► and I went back to the headphone tables

00:05:55 ◼   ► I mentioned last week.

00:05:56 ◼   ► Figured, well, you know, it was only two tables away

00:05:59 ◼   ► from my designated spot where I was supposed to stand,

00:06:01 ◼   ► but there was nothing.

00:06:02 ◼   ► So I figured, you know, oh well, I'll see what goes on.

00:06:06 ◼   ► And it turns out they did find me, it wasn't a big deal.

00:06:08 ◼   ► So nice top tip for all you life hacks out there.

00:06:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:13 ◼   ► So I got a chance to try all of the headphones they had.

00:06:16 ◼   ► I made it a point to try every single one,

00:06:18 ◼   ► So it was probably a total of, I don't know, maybe 20 sets, something like that.

00:06:22 ◼   ► And the good thing is this time there was a song on most of the iPods.

00:06:25 ◼   ► There was the Foo Fighters "Walk."

00:06:27 ◼   ► [music]

00:06:34 ◼   ► Which is a great song from a great album from a great band.

00:06:37 ◼   ► And the good thing about this song is that I actually knew it.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Normally I go to the iPods in these stores and I don't know any of the songs on them.

00:06:45 ◼   ► and they're all like, you know, crappy modern pop songs, which makes it very hard for me to judge sound quality.

00:06:50 ◼   ► And I'm always afraid to plug my own iPhone in because it looks like the headphone cable had some kind of security attachment on it as well.

00:06:56 ◼   ► So I never, I'm never willing to plug my own phone in to use my own music, so anyway.

00:07:01 ◼   ► So I was able to compare this song that I know very well. I know how it's supposed to sound on good headphones.

00:07:07 ◼   ► And it's a pretty rockin' song. It has a lot of bass, a lot of everything really.

00:07:12 ◼   ► It's a very all over the spectrum kind of song.

00:07:15 ◼   ► So it should give me a pretty good idea of how things sound.

00:07:19 ◼   ► And I tried every headphone they had that worked,

00:07:23 ◼   ► which is another problem,

00:07:24 ◼   ► about a quarter of them just didn't work.

00:07:26 ◼   ► A lot of them, they weren't plugged in maybe,

00:07:29 ◼   ► or they had noise canceling and the batteries were dead,

00:07:32 ◼   ► or whatever the case, doesn't matter.

00:07:33 ◼   ► Most of them I was able to try.

00:07:36 ◼   ► And the Beats had such an incredibly distinct sound.

00:07:41 ◼   ► And by that I mean it was all bass, like all, all bass.

00:07:44 ◼   ► It was shocking, like, you know, in this Foo Fighters song,

00:07:47 ◼   ► in order to turn, I had to turn it down far enough

00:07:52 ◼   ► that it wasn't blowing at my ears with bass,

00:07:54 ◼   ► but at the volume, at like the highest bass volume

00:07:57 ◼   ► I could tolerate for a sustained period,

00:08:00 ◼   ► you could barely hear the words that were being said.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Like the bass was so strong and the mid-range

00:08:05 ◼   ► was like tucked down under everything,

00:08:07 ◼   ► you could barely hear it.

00:08:09 ◼   ► And it was really strange.

00:08:10 ◼   ► And so I looked at a few other,

00:08:12 ◼   ► I tried a few other sets and verified that

00:08:15 ◼   ► they didn't just have a crappy version of the song,

00:08:16 ◼   ► it wasn't some weird EQ setting in the iPod settings area

00:08:20 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:08:21 ◼   ► It was just that the Beats headphones really sounded bizarre

00:08:24 ◼   ► and I don't know why anybody would want that.

00:08:29 ◼   ► I said last week that people do like it.

00:08:31 ◼   ► And that's true.

00:08:32 ◼   ► I mean, I guess this is a lot of the same opinion I have

00:08:35 ◼   ► when I drink Starbucks coffee.

00:08:36 ◼   ► but man, it was rough.

00:08:40 ◼   ► It was really rough.

00:08:41 ◼   ► And I tried every other set they had too.

00:08:44 ◼   ► And most of them, you know, like I tried all the Bose ones.

00:08:47 ◼   ► They had Bose has this new line called like accurate sound

00:08:50 ◼   ► or something, which was comical

00:08:51 ◼   ► because it doesn't sound accurate at all.

00:08:53 ◼   ► And there, you know, there's all sorts of,

00:08:55 ◼   ► all sorts of like other, you know, luxury brands.

00:08:57 ◼   ► There's Bang and Olufsen, there's B&W and not BMW,

00:09:01 ◼   ► B-N-W and all these other things.

00:09:05 ◼   ► And, oh, please BMW, never make headphones

00:09:07 ◼   ► 'cause they would probably be terrible.

00:09:08 ◼   ► That would cause a conflict in my mind.

00:09:10 ◼   ► So generally, I got the opinion,

00:09:16 ◼   ► if you ever go into a Bang & Olufsen mall store,

00:09:19 ◼   ► you get the feeling it's like a Bose store times 10

00:09:26 ◼   ► where they have all these things around

00:09:28 ◼   ► that they'll have this crazy expensive speaker dock,

00:09:30 ◼   ► crazy expensive headphones,

00:09:31 ◼   ► crazy expensive speaker tower fan thing

00:09:34 ◼   ► and all these weird, bizarre, boutique electronics

00:09:38 ◼   ► that are ridiculously expensive and kind of cool

00:09:42 ◼   ► and gimmicky maybe, but probably not worth those prices.

00:09:45 ◼   ► That's how the Apple Store is getting

00:09:49 ◼   ► with all of its audio stuff.

00:09:50 ◼   ► And to some extent it's always been this way,

00:09:52 ◼   ► the Apple Store has never been a place

00:09:53 ◼   ► where you could go buy audio file grade headphones

00:09:55 ◼   ► or anything.

00:09:57 ◼   ► But that is, that's how their entire headphone department is.

00:10:03 ◼   ► It's these like two to $400 boutique, fancy,

00:10:08 ◼   ► fashiony, marketing heavy brands that are not very good

00:10:13 ◼   ► by most measures, but just cost a lot of money

00:10:17 ◼   ► and are fancy.

00:10:19 ◼   ► And I wonder, I hope this is wrong,

00:10:25 ◼   ► but I'm a little scared this might be a future direction

00:10:29 ◼   ► Apple takes or makes a bigger push into with their retail efforts, like becoming this fancy

00:10:37 ◼   ► upscale boutique thing and other things.

00:10:43 ◼   ► Apple has always had the reputation for being expensive and overpriced compared to other

00:10:47 ◼   ► computers and we all know because we're informed on these matters that Apple computers really

00:10:55 ◼   ► aren't that much more expensive than comparably priced other computers.

00:10:58 ◼   ► which doesn't really have the kind of low end

00:11:01 ◼   ► that everyone else will market.

00:11:03 ◼   ► Apple just pretty much has the mid-range

00:11:06 ◼   ► and high end of computers.

00:11:07 ◼   ► In fact, really just the high end these days.

00:11:09 ◼   ► And so Apple computers are not overpriced.

00:11:13 ◼   ► They are expensive, but it's a good value.

00:11:15 ◼   ► You get your money's worth for them.

00:11:17 ◼   ► All the headphones they have in their store

00:11:21 ◼   ► are not that way.

00:11:22 ◼   ► They don't have that same like,

00:11:24 ◼   ► okay, well, they're pricey, but it's worth it.

00:11:27 ◼   ► They're pricey and it's not worth it.

00:11:28 ◼   ► And it is just overpriced, kind of almost sham,

00:11:33 ◼   ► marketing sheep kind of stuff.

00:11:34 ◼   ► All the stuff that other fans accuse us of

00:11:38 ◼   ► for being Apple sheep or fanboys or whatever,

00:11:42 ◼   ► that's all, people who like the kind of headphone brands

00:11:45 ◼   ► that Apple sells, those accusations are a lot more accurate

00:11:49 ◼   ► for that and for the headphone business

00:11:51 ◼   ► that Apple's doing now.

00:11:52 ◼   ► And so I hope that Apple is not going to go further

00:11:54 ◼   ► in that direction because it scares me

00:11:56 ◼   ► because I think that would actually damage

00:11:57 ◼   ► their overall brand because people would start associating

00:12:01 ◼   ► Apple with, even more so, with overpriced stuff

00:12:06 ◼   ► that's not actually worth its price.

00:12:08 ◼   ► And for the rest of their products, that's not the case.

00:12:12 ◼   ► - But people like those headphones though.

00:12:14 ◼   ► People see the value in Beats headphones

00:12:16 ◼   ► because they're cool, right?

00:12:17 ◼   ► Whereas when you show them your Mac, you're like,

00:12:20 ◼   ► "Well, I like it because of such and such

00:12:22 ◼   ► "operating system and build quality and whatever."

00:12:25 ◼   ► and they're like, meh.

00:12:27 ◼   ► But you show them the Beats headphones

00:12:29 ◼   ► and they don't care about the Soundclaw.

00:12:30 ◼   ► They like them 'cause they're cool.

00:12:31 ◼   ► It's like those $100 pair of jeans.

00:12:33 ◼   ► The stores that sell $100 jeans,

00:12:35 ◼   ► try to convince someone who bought a $100 pair of jeans

00:12:37 ◼   ► that your $25 pair of Levi's is just as good.

00:12:41 ◼   ► Like you won't.

00:12:42 ◼   ► It's a different type of mindset of the experience.

00:12:43 ◼   ► So I think the advantage that Beats has

00:12:45 ◼   ► is that you don't have to convince a regular person

00:12:50 ◼   ► that the Beats headphones are worth that.

00:12:52 ◼   ► You do have to try to convince the regular person that your Mac is worth more than the

00:12:57 ◼   ► $300 Dell laptop because they don't see that.

00:12:59 ◼   ► We see the differences, but they don't.

00:13:01 ◼   ► I don't know if that's necessarily true, though.

00:13:04 ◼   ► I think that most people that don't have Macs would probably buy one and spend the hundreds

00:13:15 ◼   ► and hundreds of dollars that they think extra.

00:13:19 ◼   ► If a comparable PC is $500, the equivalent Mac in their minds is $1,000.

00:13:23 ◼   ► I think a lot of people would spend that extra $500, so to speak, but the thing is it's $1,000

00:13:31 ◼   ► they're spending to get this Mac, unlike spending just a couple hundred dollars on a pair of

00:13:36 ◼   ► headphones.

00:13:37 ◼   ► Like a couple hundred dollars is a lot of money, don't get me wrong, but it's a much

00:13:41 ◼   ► more approachable luxury price point in the same way that there are probably many people

00:13:46 ◼   ► that would, if they could, buy either a German luxury car or perhaps an Italian sports car.

00:13:53 ◼   ► But as you keep going up this ladder, the jump from agreeable to really nice is tremendous

00:14:01 ◼   ► and less and less and less affordable.

00:14:04 ◼   ► Think about Air Jordans when we were kids.

00:14:06 ◼   ► In the '80s and '90s, they were $100 in the '80s.

00:14:09 ◼   ► That's easily the amount of Beats headphones that were Air Jordans better than a basketball

00:14:15 ◼   ► plus shoe that costs half as much, probably not,

00:14:17 ◼   ► without the Reebok pump.

00:14:18 ◼   ► - Oh, I wanted some of those so bad.

00:14:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, you wanted them because they're cool.

00:14:22 ◼   ► They got the charge, a Ridiculous Premium for them,

00:14:24 ◼   ► and they were similarly priced to Beats headphones today,

00:14:27 ◼   ► adjusting for inflation, depending on what, you know,

00:14:30 ◼   ► particular model you were getting.

00:14:32 ◼   ► - I have incredibly sad real-time follow-up.

00:14:35 ◼   ► This is the saddest thing I've ever seen.

00:14:37 ◼   ► - Oh, the Beats BMW headphones, yeah.

00:14:39 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:14:40 ◼   ► There actually is a pair of Beats BMW headphones,

00:14:44 ◼   ► officially made by Beats licensed by BMW.

00:14:47 ◼   ► Wow. I can't even imagine

00:14:50 ◼   ► the level of douchitude required to wear those in public.

00:14:54 ◼   ► Wow. Wow.

00:14:57 ◼   ► But it's just it's just the BMW logo that adds that, though.

00:15:01 ◼   ► Beats by themselves are just Beats.

00:15:02 ◼   ► Once you add the BMW logo to it, it's like that's too much.

00:15:05 ◼   ► Yeah, that's that's rough.

00:15:07 ◼   ► That wow. Well, they have those didn't Porsche Porsche design did like

00:15:12 ◼   ► hard drive enclosure for Lacey at some point.

00:15:15 ◼   ► - Oh, please, Porsche and Ferrari are the worst

00:15:18 ◼   ► when it comes to licensing their logo for use

00:15:22 ◼   ► on everything under the sun.

00:15:23 ◼   ► - But it wasn't a logo, it was like they designed,

00:15:24 ◼   ► I didn't even think it had the Porsche logo on it.

00:15:26 ◼   ► It wasn't like a car type thing.

00:15:27 ◼   ► Porsche has a design studio.

00:15:28 ◼   ► They did a laptop like that too.

00:15:31 ◼   ► They didn't look bad.

00:15:32 ◼   ► Anyway, those Beats headphones, it's just logo branding.

00:15:34 ◼   ► All they did was stamp a BMW thing on there.

00:15:37 ◼   ► - And probably triple the price. (laughs)

00:15:39 ◼   ► - Well, it's on sale right now for only $150.

00:15:42 ◼   ► Whoo, you couldn't pay me to wear those

00:15:44 ◼   ► Before I get miserable as well anything else on beats?

00:15:47 ◼   ► No, I think I think that's it just that the Apple store is a terrible place to buy headphones

00:15:52 ◼   ► I will say by far the most comfortable pair of headphones there

00:15:56 ◼   ► It was night and day difference most comfortable pair of headphones by far was the B&O H6

00:16:03 ◼   ► Those like tan ones with like the white cups and the tan leather ear cups

00:16:08 ◼   ► extremely lightweight, very, very comfortable.

00:16:11 ◼   ► They were in a class of their own for comfort.

00:16:13 ◼   ► Unfortunately, they were like three or $400

00:16:15 ◼   ► and they didn't sound that good.

00:16:17 ◼   ► But those were great.

00:16:19 ◼   ► And all the other ones, like people kept asking,

00:16:21 ◼   ► oh, did you try like the BMW P5 and P7?

00:16:25 ◼   ► Yes, I did.

00:16:26 ◼   ► All the new Bose, the quiet comfort 15,

00:16:28 ◼   ► the new accurate whatever, which is a hilarious name,

00:16:32 ◼   ► all those things.

00:16:33 ◼   ► Everything I tried sounded weird and disappointing to me

00:16:36 ◼   ► in some way or another.

00:16:37 ◼   ► A lot of people have asked me what they should buy

00:16:41 ◼   ► instead of these things.

00:16:43 ◼   ► I don't have one solid answer for that

00:16:46 ◼   ► because it depends on what you're doing.

00:16:48 ◼   ► I guess I'll write it up on my site sometime.

00:16:51 ◼   ► But, and the challenge is that a lot of times

00:16:54 ◼   ► the luxury, these luxury overpriced marketing brands

00:16:58 ◼   ► will be better than the better sounding ones

00:17:00 ◼   ► in some of those factors like comfort or convenience,

00:17:03 ◼   ► noise isolation or like the clicker on,

00:17:07 ◼   ► they'll have the iPhone clicker

00:17:08 ◼   ► where some of the big ones won't.

00:17:10 ◼   ► So it's tough.

00:17:11 ◼   ► I can't just give one solid recommendation.

00:17:14 ◼   ► I would say in general there's five or six solid models.

00:17:19 ◼   ► I disagree with the wire cutter on a number of them,

00:17:21 ◼   ► but for the most part,

00:17:23 ◼   ► there's five or six good solid models.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Like the AKG makes a bunch of good ones,

00:17:27 ◼   ► Sony makes some good ones,

00:17:29 ◼   ► Beyerdynamic or Byerdynamic, however you say it,

00:17:31 ◼   ► I love their stuff.

00:17:32 ◼   ► The DT 770s would be a really good pick, I think,

00:17:35 ◼   ► which Casey's wearing right now.

00:17:37 ◼   ► There's a number of really good ones

00:17:40 ◼   ► that are not that expensive and are very good.

00:17:43 ◼   ► But it depends on do you need them to be portable.

00:17:45 ◼   ► Like for portable, if you're gonna be walking around

00:17:48 ◼   ► and you want them to be folded up and pocketable,

00:17:50 ◼   ► I haven't found anything better than the Sennheiser PX200 IIi

00:17:54 ◼   ► which is unfortunate because it's mediocre

00:17:57 ◼   ► in all other regards except portability,

00:18:00 ◼   ► but it destroys everything else in portability.

00:18:02 ◼   ► Like everything that's not an earbud, it's way better.

00:18:05 ◼   ► But anyway, if you can wear in-ear monitors or earbuds

00:18:10 ◼   ► without a lot of discomfort like what I have,

00:18:12 ◼   ► by all means do that because they're way more practical.

00:18:15 ◼   ► You can fold them up and put them in your pocket

00:18:16 ◼   ► and everything.

00:18:17 ◼   ► I just can't wear those, so you know,

00:18:18 ◼   ► I'm stuck with full-size headphones, but oh well.

00:18:22 ◼   ► Anyway, before we move on to anything else,

00:18:24 ◼   ► we should talk about our first sponsor.

00:18:25 ◼   ► It's a new sponsor this week.

00:18:26 ◼   ► It's called Dash.

00:18:28 ◼   ► It's thedash.com/atp.

00:18:30 ◼   ► That's thedash.com/atp.

00:18:33 ◼   ► Dash is run by a really nice guy

00:18:35 ◼   ► who I met last year, and I can't tell you why,

00:18:39 ◼   ► but he did a really nice thing for me.

00:18:41 ◼   ► Anyway, so this is thedash.com.

00:18:43 ◼   ► Now he's a paying sponsor, and his site is even better now

00:18:46 ◼   ► than it was last year, and it's really great.

00:18:48 ◼   ► They've done a lot of good work here.

00:18:49 ◼   ► So Dash is real-time dashboard for your website,

00:18:54 ◼   ► your business, your life.

00:18:56 ◼   ► It's an online dashboard, and it has all these little

00:18:58 ◼   ► widgets, it's almost like a more deluxe, more robust

00:19:02 ◼   ► hosted version of Panix Status Board as like a web app.

00:19:07 ◼   ► And so it's really quite good.

00:19:09 ◼   ► So go to thedash.com/atp to see what I mean.

00:19:11 ◼   ► They have a bunch of different widgets pre-built for you.

00:19:14 ◼   ► You can build your own widgets.

00:19:15 ◼   ► They integrate with lots of third party services.

00:19:17 ◼   ► You can do things like watch your server statuses

00:19:20 ◼   ► or watch the weather, watch the news,

00:19:22 ◼   ► analytics kind of things for your services

00:19:24 ◼   ► or for your products, whatever you can get.

00:19:26 ◼   ► You can also set up variations of your name

00:19:29 ◼   ► to get like vanity searches, your product name,

00:19:31 ◼   ► your company name, you can search Twitter, Google News,

00:19:34 ◼   ► all sorts of great stuff.

00:19:35 ◼   ► They also have, you can customize all these widgets.

00:19:38 ◼   ► They support Apple TV, it'll look good there,

00:19:42 ◼   ► look good on a Chromecast if you AirPlay it

00:19:44 ◼   ► or send it to Chromecast.

00:19:45 ◼   ► And all this stuff is really,

00:19:47 ◼   ► you gotta just log in and try it out.

00:19:49 ◼   ► And the good thing is you can log in for free.

00:19:51 ◼   ► You can sign up with just an email, free accounts,

00:19:54 ◼   ► you can get one private dashboard,

00:19:56 ◼   ► and you can also create public dashboards.

00:19:58 ◼   ► It's kind of like GitHub where the public model is free

00:20:02 ◼   ► and then if you want private ones,

00:20:03 ◼   ► like for your internal company use

00:20:04 ◼   ► that you wanna keep private,

00:20:06 ◼   ► you get one for free and if you have a pro account

00:20:09 ◼   ► for just 10 bucks a month,

00:20:10 ◼   ► you can have unlimited private ones if you want.

00:20:13 ◼   ► But everybody gets unlimited public dashboards.

00:20:15 ◼   ► So check it out.

00:20:17 ◼   ► Go to thedash.com/atp.

00:20:21 ◼   ► Really great thing here and check it out.

00:20:24 ◼   ► Great guy behind it and I've tried it.

00:20:27 ◼   ► It's pretty fun to play around with

00:20:28 ◼   ► and you can make some pretty cool dashboards.

00:20:30 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Dash at thedash.com/atp

00:20:33 ◼   ► for sponsoring our show.

00:20:35 ◼   ► - He made dashboards on that page.

00:20:36 ◼   ► I take a look at, he's got one for each one of us.

00:20:39 ◼   ► This looks really nice.

00:20:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, this does look awesome.

00:20:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I mean, he's a fan.

00:20:42 ◼   ► He actually bought a few sponsorships.

00:20:44 ◼   ► I think we have him for the next three weeks.

00:20:47 ◼   ► So yeah, he's a fan of the show.

00:20:49 ◼   ► He's been following us for a long time,

00:20:51 ◼   ► and so we thank him very much.

00:20:53 ◼   ► This is really cool stuff.

00:20:54 ◼   ► - You know, I love that for each of these dashboards,

00:20:57 ◼   ► there's an image and for John,

00:20:59 ◼   ► it's I believe the correct toaster.

00:21:01 ◼   ► - That is the correct one.

00:21:02 ◼   ► - I was gonna say from my eyes, it looks right.

00:21:04 ◼   ► - See, attention to detail.

00:21:05 ◼   ► - For mine, it's a white BMW as,

00:21:08 ◼   ► well, that could be silver, but it looks white to me, BMW.

00:21:11 ◼   ► For yours, it's a picture of yourself,

00:21:15 ◼   ► which I just think is a hysterical commentary

00:21:18 ◼   ► on what the three of us think is important.

00:21:21 ◼   ► - Yep, this guy's such a fan, thank you.

00:21:23 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:21:25 ◼   ► He needs to add hypercritical.co to my server status widget.

00:21:28 ◼   ► This looks really nice.

00:21:29 ◼   ► Well, you can try it for free if you want to be public.

00:21:31 ◼   ► Yeah, we should move our download stats to this.

00:21:34 ◼   ► Anyway, all right.

00:21:35 ◼   ► So we have a little bit more follow up about net neutrality.

00:21:40 ◼   ► Yeah, this was just an article today

00:21:41 ◼   ► that reminded me of our past discussions of net neutrality.

00:21:44 ◼   ► It's by-- these guys confuse all the time,

00:21:46 ◼   ► so I wrote his name-- Ben Thompson.

00:21:47 ◼   ► He's a Strategery guy, or Stratechery

00:21:50 ◼   ► if he's given up on Strategery, but I still like Strategery.

00:21:55 ◼   ► It's about net neutrality and it touches on some of the things that we mentioned in the last show

00:22:02 ◼   ► about how there are tech companies that are lobbying Washington for their interests in net

00:22:09 ◼   ► neutrality debate, and then there are the ISPs and all the other companies lobbying on the other side

00:22:13 ◼   ► of this, and they're spending way more money than the tech companies. And this article basically

00:22:16 ◼   ► says that we shouldn't all be as cynical as we are about making changes.

00:22:24 ◼   ► Don't just assume, oh, we're never going to win or whatever.

00:22:27 ◼   ► Because if we do that, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

00:22:29 ◼   ► And I don't want to ruin the little arc of this article.

00:22:33 ◼   ► It's kind of short, but you should read it.

00:22:34 ◼   ► He describes some of his personal experiences

00:22:36 ◼   ► and how he says, despite his personal experiences,

00:22:39 ◼   ► it's important for all of us in the tech community not to give up on this

00:22:42 ◼   ► and not to be like, well, nothing's ever going to change, so why bother?

00:22:46 ◼   ► And particularly highlights the phenomenon of us doing that well, nothing's gonna change

00:22:51 ◼   ► Why bother and then waiting for some terrible bill to come up or for some terrible thing to be proposed?

00:22:56 ◼   ► And then everyone gets angry all of a sudden on the internet and like fills out these little petition forms

00:23:01 ◼   ► And I do this as well like, you know

00:23:03 ◼   ► just tries to rally people on twitter and

00:23:06 ◼   ► Use hashtags and do whatever you can and write your congressperson and call them

00:23:10 ◼   ► to try to stop whatever is like at the last minute, right and

00:23:14 ◼   ► his comparison is like, that's what we're doing.

00:23:16 ◼   ► And the other people have been lobbying Washington

00:23:18 ◼   ► steadily for 10 years.

00:23:20 ◼   ► And so our strategy of waiting until the last minute

00:23:23 ◼   ► and get all angry, it becomes less and less effective

00:23:26 ◼   ► as everyone gets bored of our anger.

00:23:28 ◼   ► So I mean, I'm actually even a little bit more cynical

00:23:34 ◼   ► than this article in that I think that even if we all

00:23:38 ◼   ► have the right attitude, the bottom line is

00:23:39 ◼   ► if we don't have the same number of zeros

00:23:43 ◼   ► before the decimal point and the amount of money

00:23:45 ◼   ► that we're throwing into Washington,

00:23:46 ◼   ► it doesn't really matter.

00:23:48 ◼   ► So maybe that's the next level of cynicism

00:23:51 ◼   ► that he has to shake me out of,

00:23:52 ◼   ► but I thought it was a good article

00:23:53 ◼   ► and I think everyone should read it.

00:23:55 ◼   ► We'll put it in the show notes.

00:23:56 ◼   ► - All right, so something we didn't get a chance

00:23:59 ◼   ► to talk about last week and perhaps even a week or two

00:24:02 ◼   ► before that is that Nintendo is not having a good time.

00:24:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, this keeps floating around the notes.

00:24:09 ◼   ► I don't know if there's that much to add.

00:24:11 ◼   ► I mean, I think the reason it went in there

00:24:12 ◼   ► because they announced some financial results which were bad and they made some projections

00:24:16 ◼   ► about how many Wii U consoles they think they're going to sell this year and it's not a lot.

00:24:19 ◼   ► And it's causing everyone to think about Nintendo again and I don't think anything has changed other

00:24:27 ◼   ► than us knowing now that the things that Nintendo has tried to do and seems to be trying to do

00:24:36 ◼   ► aren't working or at least they aren't working yet. I wrote something about this on

00:24:40 ◼   ► a hypercritical like a while back about Nintendo in crisis.

00:24:43 ◼   ► I went back and reread that.

00:24:45 ◼   ► And I think it basically that that's still my opinion.

00:24:47 ◼   ► It doesn't nothing has changed.

00:24:49 ◼   ► The Nintendo has the ability to get themselves out of the funk that they're in

00:24:54 ◼   ► because the whole thing was based on a premise that if

00:24:57 ◼   ► if there's no longer a market for devices that mostly play games,

00:25:01 ◼   ► Nintendo is screwed.

00:25:01 ◼   ► But if there is a market for devices that mostly play games,

00:25:04 ◼   ► then they have a chance.

00:25:06 ◼   ► And so there definitely is a market for things that just play games

00:25:09 ◼   ► because the PlayStation 4 is selling like crazy, and Xbox One is selling pretty well

00:25:13 ◼   ► as well, although they're kind of changing their strategy to try to keep up with the

00:25:17 ◼   ► PlayStation 4. And even the 3DS isn't doing that terribly, but the Wii U is doing terribly.

00:25:22 ◼   ► But anyway, the point is that it's not as if no one is buying things that mostly play

00:25:26 ◼   ► games. People are still buying them, it's still a big market, Nintendo has the ability

00:25:30 ◼   ► to get themselves out of their current crisis, they're just not doing it. So that was just

00:25:35 ◼   ► a you know, not necessary, but not sufficient again.

00:25:38 ◼   ► But it's a precondition for them getting out.

00:25:40 ◼   ► And so the question is, what do they do at this point?

00:25:44 ◼   ► Do they just keep trying to release games for the Wii U

00:25:47 ◼   ► and hope that some game catches on and people buy them like the Wii U

00:25:49 ◼   ► was kind of in the classic death spiral where they don't sell a lot of consoles,

00:25:54 ◼   ► which means the third party developers aren't going to bother making a game

00:25:58 ◼   ► games for it, because even if you sold to 100 percent of Wii U owners,

00:26:02 ◼   ► which you're never going to do, there would still be a small number.

00:26:05 ◼   ► And because there's no third-party games people have less and less reason to buy a Wii U and just goes down down down

00:26:10 ◼   ► So I don't know what they can or should do Mario Kart 8 is coming out soon. Mario Kart 8 is getting great reviews

00:26:16 ◼   ► Everyone says it's a great game. Is that gonna sell more Wii U consoles?

00:26:20 ◼   ► Probably not. I mean

00:26:23 ◼   ► It's the same choice they had before either make games that make people buy Wii U consoles

00:26:27 ◼   ► And if you if third parties won't do it

00:26:29 ◼   ► You got to do it yourself or figure out what your next thing is

00:26:31 ◼   ► I think Nintendo has enough money and stamina and corporate will to weather the storm of the terrible

00:26:36 ◼   ► Wii U sales and figure out what they're gonna do next and hopefully

00:26:39 ◼   ► Hopefully by the time they make their next move with either the next console or revision of the Wii U or whatever

00:26:44 ◼   ► We haven't passed through the period of time during which game mostly or game only hardware is something that people want to buy

00:26:50 ◼   ► So if you were Nintendo, what would you do? Can I go back in time to have a time machine or not?

00:26:58 ◼   ► If you took over today and you had enough political power

00:27:02 ◼   ► To to push through any change or initiative you you want it to what would you do?

00:27:06 ◼   ► I would start working on my next console which will be comparable in power to the

00:27:11 ◼   ► Competitive consoles and I would do basically what Sony did this generation

00:27:15 ◼   ► Which is look at what you did in the past generation and what everyone hated you for?

00:27:17 ◼   ► What the developers are pissed off at you about what their pyres pissed off with you about get all those people in the room

00:27:22 ◼   ► Have them all tell you what what you did wrong and how how your actions have hurt them

00:27:26 ◼   ► and then sort of like an intervention and then take that information and fix all those mistakes.

00:27:31 ◼   ► Sony did an amazing job with the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 3 had all sorts of problems. It was late,

00:27:37 ◼   ► it was expensive, it was a weird architecture,

00:27:39 ◼   ► third parties didn't like it,

00:27:41 ◼   ► you know, and so for the PlayStation 4 they brought all those people together and said just tell us what do you think we should do?

00:27:46 ◼   ► And they listened to them.

00:27:48 ◼   ► They actually listened, you know, instead of being like, oh, we know what the best thing is and the place,

00:27:51 ◼   ► that's one of the reasons the PlayStation 4 is doing so much better. It was relatively inexpensive,

00:27:56 ◼   ► They didn't commit lots of money to a motion control accessory of dubious value like Microsoft did.

00:28:01 ◼   ► They made the architecture much nicer for developers. They worked on their dev tools.

00:28:08 ◼   ► They were nicer to third parties and their reward is they're the clear leader in this generation of

00:28:13 ◼   ► consoles. So Nintendo needs a console that is on the same hardware level as whatever its competitors

00:28:20 ◼   ► are going to be. That's the price of entry where you can say, "Okay, at the very least

00:28:24 ◼   ► we can convince EA to give us, you know, the next iterations of all its games.

00:28:28 ◼   ► And like, you know, like make it make it a no brainer for people to port to you.

00:28:31 ◼   ► Like, well, we're making a cross platform game.

00:28:34 ◼   ► It's easy enough to port it to whatever the new Xbox is, whatever

00:28:37 ◼   ► the new PlayStation is and whatever Nintendo's console is.

00:28:40 ◼   ► And for two generations now, they've been out of that conversation

00:28:43 ◼   ► and they're getting farther and farther out of the conversation.

00:28:45 ◼   ► Whenever you're going to make a new game, you're going to be like,

00:28:46 ◼   ► well, we're going to make it for Microsoft console, Sony console.

00:28:49 ◼   ► And then maybe like a year later, we'll think about making some terrible cut

00:28:52 ◼   ► down port to go on Nintendo's console.

00:28:54 ◼   ► Last generation they didn't need the third party support because of the the magic of the Wii-mote and waggling your wrists and Wii Sports and all that good stuff.

00:29:01 ◼   ► This generation they didn't pull it off, their novelty with the gamepad was not enough to get people on board and they're in sort of a death spiral.

00:29:08 ◼   ► So the next generation they can't, they got to make competitive hardware. And if they can't make competitive hardware, this isn't optional for them.

00:29:13 ◼   ► They said, "Oh, they should get out of the hardware business." If they can't make competitive hardware and decide they're not going to be in the hardware business,

00:29:18 ◼   ► I guess they should partner with somebody like this is not my first choice, but I think about this a lot

00:29:24 ◼   ► It's like if this is not in Nintendo's wheelhouse to ever do hardware anymore

00:29:28 ◼   ► You know go over to Sony and say we really like what you've done with your hardware

00:29:32 ◼   ► How would you like it if we teamed up on the next console and made sort of a joint Sony Nintendo console worth into that?

00:29:38 ◼   ► Nintendo had some influence on the hardware and it was you know

00:29:41 ◼   ► Amazing great hardware that had lots of power was inexpensive and innovative and maybe had a VR headset or whatever

00:29:48 ◼   ► And then all the Nintendo franchises will be exclusively on that console

00:29:51 ◼   ► Again, I don't put that as my first choice

00:29:54 ◼   ► But I spend a lot of time thinking about it because I I look at the PlayStation 4 and I say

00:29:57 ◼   ► How great would it be if I knew that?

00:29:59 ◼   ► Nintendo was right now working on a Zelda game for that console and they're not they're working on it for the Wii U which is

00:30:04 ◼   ► Gonna be I'll enjoy it as well and it'll be interesting

00:30:06 ◼   ► but it's kind of a shame that they're gonna be that constrained when the

00:30:11 ◼   ► Contemporary consoles have so much more power so that's what I do

00:30:15 ◼   ► I would get working on the next console and make it competitive.

00:30:18 ◼   ► So if Nintendo gets in a really bad place, they continue marching down the hardware

00:30:25 ◼   ► path and that continues to go poorly.

00:30:28 ◼   ► And now they're legitimately starting to, to, you know, circle the drain.

00:30:32 ◼   ► Does Apple buy them?

00:30:34 ◼   ► No, I hope that that would be like terrible.

00:30:36 ◼   ► I, I would not want Apple to buy them because Apple doesn't, Apple slot into games.

00:30:41 ◼   ► But what if they want to be?

00:30:43 ◼   ► I don't know if you can you know, it's it's part it's either part of your culture or it's not.

00:30:48 ◼   ► I'm not going to say that Apple doesn't get games, but.

00:30:50 ◼   ► You know, it's it's like the what he called the terrible book from the 90s,

00:30:54 ◼   ► he's just not that into you. Apple, that's one of the notes in my notes,

00:30:59 ◼   ► that Apple and games, he's just not that into you like they're doing. Apple's just not that

00:31:03 ◼   ► into games like that. They like them on their platform, the fun and everything.

00:31:06 ◼   ► But all the other gaming companies, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo.

00:31:11 ◼   ► have people in positions of power who are really into games, who love games, who live and breathe

00:31:16 ◼   ► games. Like that is the same thing with any movie studio. Yeah, there's going to be a bunch of

00:31:20 ◼   ► bureaucrats and suits at movie studios, but there's also going to be people who love movies and movie

00:31:24 ◼   ► studios. You need to have that. Not everybody. There's going to be some stuff shirts and everything

00:31:28 ◼   ► to it. You need to have people. Same thing with car companies, the car guys who just love cars.

00:31:33 ◼   ► You absolutely need to have them. And thus far, I'm not convinced there is anyone high up in any

00:31:38 ◼   ► any position of power that has that passion for games at Apple, which is fine.

00:31:41 ◼   ► Like, Apple doesn't have to be a game company, but I would not want them to buy Nintendo.

00:31:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's pretty clear that not only is Apple not caring about games, I don't think

00:31:53 ◼   ► they respect games. Like, I said this before a long time ago, so I'll just go over the quick

00:31:58 ◼   ► version, but basically, if you look at Apple's history of how they treat games on their platforms,

00:32:05 ◼   ► both on the Mac and on iOS.

00:32:08 ◼   ► On the Mac they basically said,

00:32:10 ◼   ► "Eh, we're never gonna do anything

00:32:11 ◼   ► "to really make games easier or possible

00:32:13 ◼   ► "to bring in this platform in a competitive way."

00:32:15 ◼   ► On iOS, games came there anyway for other reasons

00:32:19 ◼   ► and Apple found themselves in the position

00:32:21 ◼   ► of all of a sudden being in a really pretty powerful

00:32:26 ◼   ► and pretty important position in the gaming world

00:32:29 ◼   ► almost accidentally.

00:32:31 ◼   ► And the way they've treated it since then

00:32:32 ◼   ► has really just been kind of patronizing.

00:32:35 ◼   ► Like Game Center is one of the best examples of this.

00:32:37 ◼   ► And just like the mediocrity that Game Center is,

00:32:42 ◼   ► together with the design that it had at first,

00:32:45 ◼   ► does it still look like that in 7 or do they?

00:32:47 ◼   ► - It's in 7 it's got these bubbles and stuff.

00:32:49 ◼   ► Like every game that I have in a Game Center integration,

00:32:52 ◼   ► it makes it worse.

00:32:53 ◼   ► Like when I play Letterpress,

00:32:55 ◼   ► I'll get a notification in Letterpress that someone's moved,

00:32:58 ◼   ► and then I will, you know, swipe

00:33:00 ◼   ► and Letterpress will be the front most app.

00:33:02 ◼   ► I'm not swiping on the notification, I'm just swiping to reveal letterpress as the frontmost

00:33:05 ◼   ► app. And I can sit there and stare at it and like, oh, well, it said there was a move,

00:33:09 ◼   ► but I don't see it yet. And my solution is always go, you know, hit the home button,

00:33:13 ◼   ► then go back into letterpress. Then maybe it will load the move. Like it's stuff like that. It's like

00:33:17 ◼   ► no progress indication, long waiting times, a notification comes through, but the game doesn't

00:33:22 ◼   ► know about it yet. Like what? I mean, it's, it's great that Lauren didn't have to write all this

00:33:27 ◼   ► code himself and it probably really helped him get out a game that was popular. And so it's good for

00:33:31 ◼   ► for developers, but as a player,

00:33:33 ◼   ► I hate it when the little Game Center banner comes down

00:33:35 ◼   ► and causes a hitch in frame rate.

00:33:37 ◼   ► I hate it when Game Center tells me there's a move,

00:33:39 ◼   ► but I launch the game and it doesn't show the move

00:33:40 ◼   ► immediately and I have no progress indication.

00:33:42 ◼   ► And there's so many games with integration like this

00:33:44 ◼   ► that I can't say, well, it's just because that developer

00:33:46 ◼   ► didn't integrate with Game Center properly.

00:33:48 ◼   ► It just, it makes games worse.

00:33:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's always been, it's been like this,

00:33:54 ◼   ► I got the feeling that Steve Jobs might have,

00:33:56 ◼   ► this might have been like a Steve thing where

00:33:59 ◼   ► they would use like cheesiness and kitsch to kind of patronize and like just just pay lip service to

00:34:09 ◼   ► things they didn't really care about that that they were being forced to address in some way

00:34:15 ◼   ► you know or you know for some reason like they would try to appropriate you know the success

00:34:20 ◼   ► of gaming to do their oh let's this fun little game center like like you can kind of tell like

00:34:27 ◼   ► Not only was their heart not in, but they don't really like it.

00:34:29 ◼   ► And it just, it, I don't know, it resulted in this attitude that was very clearly like,

00:34:39 ◼   ► obviously Steve doesn't give a crap about games and that shows in the product, right? And it seems

00:34:46 ◼   ► in all the changes in Apple, you know, in the last few years, I haven't seen anything regarding

00:34:52 ◼   ► games change for the better? I think they're trying. It's just that they don't know the

00:34:57 ◼   ► right things to do. It would be as if the music application or whatever, the thing that you play

00:35:02 ◼   ► music on your iOS device, as if it had a theme like a music room and there was little batons

00:35:07 ◼   ► for conducting and there was little musical staffs and a little guy with a tuxedo as the conductor.

00:35:19 ◼   ► They understand it so much more see like it's it's not just the theme

00:35:22 ◼   ► it's the idea that there needs to be this kind of window dressing like that games are a

00:35:27 ◼   ► Diversion and like almost every app is more serious the photo app is more serious

00:35:31 ◼   ► They're like they understand like photos are an important thing and we weren't we're not gonna sort of

00:35:35 ◼   ► Put like a weird photo theme on there

00:35:38 ◼   ► I mean iOS 7 has helped with that a lot like the old ones were a little bit more

00:35:41 ◼   ► Skeuomorphic and everything, but it's just the whole idea that gaming as a realm

00:35:45 ◼   ► Needs to have some different treatment because games are this other thing and no one is really seriously into game

00:35:51 ◼   ► Whereas music is like, oh you're really into music. We would never want to screw up

00:35:55 ◼   ► We want to show the album art big we want to have a nice efficient application because music is important

00:36:00 ◼   ► And you want it to be powerful and have you know?

00:36:02 ◼   ► increase the capability so you to get your music anywhere enjoy it and show people enjoying it and

00:36:07 ◼   ► Games, it's like I mean there are casual gaming type of company. So when they show people playing games, they're like

00:36:14 ◼   ► you know, shaking their iPod touch around and some kid is playing some little game.

00:36:17 ◼   ► "Wow, look at that car, vroom, vroom!" But Game Center itself doesn't acknowledge how serious

00:36:23 ◼   ► and what an important part of people's lives. And for that matter, I think iBooks kind of

00:36:27 ◼   ► doesn't acknowledge how important books are in people's lives because they're kind of like,

00:36:30 ◼   ► a little bit of the old version of iBooks anyway, a little bit of the,

00:36:34 ◼   ► "You have to feel like you're in an old, musty library, otherwise books don't count."

00:36:38 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:36:38 ◼   ► Well, and you know, with Game Center, it's very much about compartmentalization. It's like,

00:36:43 ◼   ► "Let's take this world of games that's happening all around us accidentally, and we're gonna

00:36:49 ◼   ► clean all this mess up and just kind of shove it in this drawer over here. All you game

00:36:53 ◼   ► things, you can stay in here. We don't really want you to seep out." Same thing with Newsstand.

00:36:58 ◼   ► Newsstand is exactly in the same position, if not even worse, because Apple's like, "Okay,

00:37:05 ◼   ► well we have this, we will benefit if magazine and newspaper people make their apps here

00:37:11 ◼   ► instead of making websites and we'll benefit from that.

00:37:14 ◼   ► And we want it to look good for our platform.

00:37:18 ◼   ► So we're gonna make this little newsstand area,

00:37:20 ◼   ► exactly the same thing, like this cheesy, kitschy,

00:37:24 ◼   ► condescending skeuomorphism that started out

00:37:27 ◼   ► in previous versions and then in 7,

00:37:30 ◼   ► it really didn't get a lot better.

00:37:32 ◼   ► Actually, in many ways, a newsstand is significantly worse

00:37:35 ◼   ► than iOS 7 and there's no more wooden shelves.

00:37:40 ◼   ► but now it's even more invisible

00:37:44 ◼   ► and there's all sorts of other problems with it.

00:37:47 ◼   ► And it's like Apple just takes the things

00:37:51 ◼   ► that they don't wanna really see,

00:37:52 ◼   ► that they don't want to be prominent

00:37:55 ◼   ► and creates areas for them to be segregated

00:37:58 ◼   ► and tucked away and hidden.

00:38:00 ◼   ► Because to them, it's like this is this sloppy, dirty,

00:38:04 ◼   ► juvenile or evil world of games or magazines respectively.

00:38:09 ◼   ► Yeah, and like iOS is not, it's a platform for certain kinds of games, but it's not for

00:38:15 ◼   ► the kinds of games that Nintendo does well, and those are the types of games I like to

00:38:19 ◼   ► play.

00:38:20 ◼   ► Like, you know, console games, handheld games, games that are really deep, really rich, that

00:38:24 ◼   ► have physical controls, that, you know, and VR games may be a separate thing entirely,

00:38:28 ◼   ► because that's, the industry is experimenting with VR now, and Sony's got their own headset

00:38:32 ◼   ► coming out, Nintendo could possibly do something interesting in that direction, we don't know

00:38:37 ◼   ► how well that's going to work out.

00:38:41 ◼   ► Is Apple going to have headset support for its iOS devices?

00:38:44 ◼   ► Maybe they will.

00:38:45 ◼   ► Maybe that'll be the way games get into it.

00:38:47 ◼   ► But for now, all iOS games are things where you tilt your device or you touch your screen.

00:38:52 ◼   ► And that is a fairly narrow range of things.

00:38:55 ◼   ► And the games that I've traditionally done on Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft platforms

00:38:59 ◼   ► are still really popular.

00:39:00 ◼   ► Just look at the sales numbers for the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One.

00:39:03 ◼   ► People still want to play them, and you can't play them on iOS devices.

00:39:06 ◼   ► So it's like, why should Apple be interested in getting that serious about games when it

00:39:13 ◼   ► doesn't have a hardware platform you can play them on?

00:39:15 ◼   ► I mean, someday if they wake up and decide to turn Apple TV into a game console, maybe

00:39:18 ◼   ► then we'll have something going on there, but that hasn't happened so far.

00:39:21 ◼   ► Well, even like last year, they added the game controller framework to iOS 7, which

00:39:28 ◼   ► lets other it's like they could have just like gone the extra step, made their own official

00:39:33 ◼   ► controller attachment for their iPhones or iPod touches.

00:39:37 ◼   ► Why didn't they do that?

00:39:39 ◼   ► And the answer I think is because they just don't care that much or they weren't that

00:39:42 ◼   ► confident in the idea or whatever the case may be.

00:39:44 ◼   ► They didn't want to bother with that.

00:39:45 ◼   ► They didn't want to tarnish their product line with this cheesy little game controller

00:39:49 ◼   ► attachment.

00:39:50 ◼   ► They want, "Okay, we will make an API that will of course, if you want to make your own,

00:39:56 ◼   ► you can and of course you'll have to pay us to make your own."

00:40:00 ◼   ► But that's another thing entirely.

00:40:03 ◼   ► And of course the reality which anybody could have told them

00:40:07 ◼   ► anybody who has ever played video games ever in their life

00:40:11 ◼   ► could have told them if the first party vendor

00:40:14 ◼   ► doesn't have like an official hardware add-on

00:40:18 ◼   ► nobody will buy it.

00:40:19 ◼   ► Even official hardware add-ons like the Kinect

00:40:21 ◼   ► like usually those fail.

00:40:24 ◼   ► Like you know there was like this,

00:40:26 ◼   ► like we talked about a few episodes ago

00:40:28 ◼   ► the 32X, the Sega CD, the Jaguar CD attachment,

00:40:32 ◼   ► the TurboGrafx CD attachment,

00:40:33 ◼   ► all these hardware add-on things in the old console world

00:40:38 ◼   ► that almost all failed.

00:40:40 ◼   ► - Well, not all of them.

00:40:41 ◼   ► - I said almost.

00:40:42 ◼   ► - What was the memory pack for the Nintendo 64?

00:40:44 ◼   ► I forget what that was.

00:40:45 ◼   ► - Well, that's 'cause it came with Perfect Dark.

00:40:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, because they bundled it with a game, yeah.

00:40:49 ◼   ► And the same thing with the Rumble pack.

00:40:50 ◼   ► They bundled with Star Fox.

00:40:52 ◼   ► But even the Kinect, the original Kinect,

00:40:57 ◼   ► that had a pretty good sell-through for a peripheral.

00:41:00 ◼   ► People made games that supported the Kinect,

00:41:02 ◼   ► which is fairly unprecedented.

00:41:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was remarkable and very unusual.

00:41:07 ◼   ► - But it was certain dance games and stuff

00:41:09 ◼   ► that you couldn't do without the Kinect.

00:41:11 ◼   ► They weren't bundled with the Kinect.

00:41:12 ◼   ► You'd have to buy the Kinect and buy that.

00:41:14 ◼   ► And a lot of people bought,

00:41:15 ◼   ► I think Apple would be overjoyed if,

00:41:18 ◼   ► well, I don't know if they would be overjoyed,

00:41:19 ◼   ► but anyway, it would be,

00:41:20 ◼   ► have you ever seen anyone using one of those controllers

00:41:23 ◼   ► attached to an iOS OS?

00:41:24 ◼   ► I've still never seen one in the wild.

00:41:26 ◼   ► And so that makes me think that they're not selling a lot of those devices, and let alone

00:41:30 ◼   ► games that require them or take advantage of them.

00:41:33 ◼   ► Like none of those are really, like, I don't even know if it's financially feasible to

00:41:37 ◼   ► make a high quality game and say, "Oh, by the way, to play this game you need to have

00:41:41 ◼   ► a controller accessory."

00:41:43 ◼   ► And then the other problem is, the economics of the App Store are such that, I mean, there's

00:41:48 ◼   ► lots of, that could be a whole show of discussing the problems of economics in the App Store

00:41:52 ◼   ► for developers.

00:41:54 ◼   ► But in this particular area, one of the problems is if you make a game that requires a game

00:41:59 ◼   ► pad, you've cut down your market size so substantially that, you know, suppose 1% of

00:42:06 ◼   ► iPhones sold in the past year, you know, 1% of those also bought game pads.

00:42:11 ◼   ► That's probably extremely optimistic.

00:42:13 ◼   ► I bet the number is nowhere near that.

00:42:14 ◼   ► But let's say it was 1%.

00:42:16 ◼   ► Well, that means you're also cutting your audience down, you know, by 99% by making

00:42:20 ◼   ► game that requires it in a market where the only way to make any money at all is through

00:42:25 ◼   ► massive volume. That's a terrible, it's just a terrible situation. It's never going to

00:42:31 ◼   ► catch on.

00:42:32 ◼   ► That reminds me of the other story that I alluded to earlier. I don't know if you guys

00:42:34 ◼   ► heard about that. Microsoft is unbundling, making a version of the Xbox One that you

00:42:38 ◼   ► can buy without the Kinect 2.

00:42:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I'd heard that.

00:42:42 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's kind of a shame, but it's kind of, I mean, in the face of Sony's sales,

00:42:50 ◼   ► I guess they felt like they had to do something.

00:42:51 ◼   ► I believe they're still keeping the SKUs

00:42:53 ◼   ► that have it bundled,

00:42:54 ◼   ► but they want to make a cheaper one without it.

00:42:55 ◼   ► Bottom line is not a lot of games are coming out

00:42:59 ◼   ► that require the Kinect that are compelling enough

00:43:04 ◼   ► for someone to want to pay an extra $100 for the console.

00:43:06 ◼   ► So they're like, all right, well, here's a version.

00:43:08 ◼   ► We'll shave some money off the price.

00:43:10 ◼   ► You don't have to buy the Kinect with it.

00:43:12 ◼   ► And it's kind of a shame because I think the Kinect

00:43:15 ◼   ► was an interesting idea.

00:43:17 ◼   ► I think the second version of it

00:43:18 ◼   ► is way better than the first.

00:43:19 ◼   ► and you could do interesting things with it.

00:43:22 ◼   ► It's just that because they're selling

00:43:25 ◼   ► so much fewer consoles than Sony is,

00:43:30 ◼   ► they feel like they have to make this move.

00:43:32 ◼   ► And it's really like, I don't know how I feel about it

00:43:35 ◼   ► because in many respects,

00:43:37 ◼   ► like if they had just launched in every country,

00:43:39 ◼   ► instead of launching in like,

00:43:41 ◼   ► Sony's in way more countries than there.

00:43:42 ◼   ► I think Microsoft's in like 13

00:43:44 ◼   ► and Sony's in like 50 or something like that.

00:43:47 ◼   ► If their rollouts have been equal geographically,

00:43:49 ◼   ► Maybe the race would have been closer

00:43:51 ◼   ► in terms of sales numbers,

00:43:53 ◼   ► and they could have stayed the course,

00:43:54 ◼   ► but instead, because they're behind,

00:43:56 ◼   ► they want to have a way to catch up.

00:43:58 ◼   ► But once you open that door,

00:43:59 ◼   ► once you say that it's possible

00:44:00 ◼   ► that there's any Xbox One out there without the Kinect,

00:44:03 ◼   ► forget about it in this generation,

00:44:04 ◼   ► having some game that someone's gonna put tons

00:44:06 ◼   ► and tons of money behind,

00:44:08 ◼   ► that's gonna be like a tractor that pulls,

00:44:10 ◼   ► that shows everyone how amazing the Kinect is,

00:44:11 ◼   ► because like Marco said, now all of a sudden,

00:44:14 ◼   ► you have to look at the ratios.

00:44:15 ◼   ► It used to be, I could sell into 100% of the Xbox One market

00:44:18 ◼   ► if I made a Kinect game.

00:44:19 ◼   ► And now it's like, oh, it's 99%, 98%, 97%.

00:44:22 ◼   ► Like, depending on how that SKU sells without the Kinect,

00:44:24 ◼   ► the number's probably just gonna go down and down.

00:44:27 ◼   ► - And also, in the console world, it's very important,

00:44:29 ◼   ► as you said earlier, to be cross-platform.

00:44:30 ◼   ► You know, with these games having such massive budgets

00:44:33 ◼   ► to be competitive, if you can't be on PlayStation and Xbox,

00:44:38 ◼   ► it's gonna hurt pretty big time.

00:44:39 ◼   ► You know, that's gonna hurt a lot.

00:44:41 ◼   ► - Well, the Kinect games are always trying

00:44:43 ◼   ► to be the exclusives.

00:44:44 ◼   ► Like, you know, yeah, of course you can't port the same

00:44:46 ◼   ► because no one else has the amazing Kinect.

00:44:47 ◼   ► And same thing with Sony with VR.

00:44:49 ◼   ► If Microsoft doesn't have a VR headset and Sony does, Sony's got to get people to make

00:44:54 ◼   ► VR games or ports, VR ports of games, and those are not going to be able to be on the

00:44:58 ◼   ► Microsoft console.

00:44:59 ◼   ► And Sony, if you sell, again, if you sell the most hardware, you're in the power position.

00:45:02 ◼   ► It's like, who cares if you can put your game on Microsoft or Nintendo's consoles?

00:45:06 ◼   ► We have sold X number of million consoles, you're doing fine.

00:45:11 ◼   ► Nintendo can't even get those people to answer their calls.

00:45:14 ◼   ► And Microsoft, it tries to make that same argument for the Kinect.

00:45:17 ◼   ► People go like, we've looked at how well Kinect games sell

00:45:19 ◼   ► in the previous generation and the current one.

00:45:22 ◼   ► And it's not just about addressable market.

00:45:24 ◼   ► It's about the fact that no one has found a way to make a game

00:45:27 ◼   ► that will sell millions of copies for, you know, the Kinect.

00:45:30 ◼   ► Like, I hope Microsoft keeps trying.

00:45:32 ◼   ► I hope what they've done can combine with VR stuff,

00:45:35 ◼   ► can combine with the game pad stuff that Nintendo's done.

00:45:38 ◼   ► Like there is the making of some great next generation gaming experiences

00:45:43 ◼   ► down the line with all the technology that everyone has experimented with in the past two generations.

00:45:48 ◼   ► So Marco, what else is pretty neat these days?

00:45:51 ◼   ► What's also amazing these days is an old sponsor that's back. It's our friends at Hover. Hover is

00:45:59 ◼   ► the best way to buy and manage domain names. Now Hover is a domain registrar. They're owned by the

00:46:05 ◼   ► people at Two Cows, which has been around forever. And, you know, they — look, let's be realistic here.

00:46:12 ◼   ► Not every domain name registrar is a pleasant experience

00:46:15 ◼   ► to use and be a customer of.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Hover is just great.

00:46:21 ◼   ► I use it for a lot of my stuff.

00:46:23 ◼   ► I use it for about half my domains,

00:46:27 ◼   ► some of the emails I use, all this stuff, it's fantastic.

00:46:30 ◼   ► Hover gives you easy to use, powerful tools

00:46:34 ◼   ► to manage your domain so that anybody can do it.

00:46:37 ◼   ► It's nerd friendly, it's also regular people friendly.

00:46:40 ◼   ► They also have amazing customer support.

00:46:43 ◼   ► You can call them on the phone.

00:46:44 ◼   ► You know, you can do it online too, that's fine.

00:46:45 ◼   ► They have online support like everybody,

00:46:47 ◼   ► but you can call them on the phone.

00:46:49 ◼   ► And if you call during business hours,

00:46:51 ◼   ► which are pretty generous,

00:46:53 ◼   ► a real human being will pick up the phone

00:46:56 ◼   ► and they will be able to help you.

00:46:58 ◼   ► They have a no hold, no wait, no transfer phone policy.

00:47:03 ◼   ► So it's pretty amazing.

00:47:04 ◼   ► Literally, like you call them up

00:47:06 ◼   ► and somebody picks up the phone

00:47:07 ◼   ► and they can actually help you.

00:47:09 ◼   ► I wish all companies, not just registrars,

00:47:11 ◼   ► I wish all companies had this.

00:47:13 ◼   ► And the only other one that I know of is Ting,

00:47:15 ◼   ► and that's only 'cause it's the same people running it.

00:47:17 ◼   ► But anyway. (laughs)

00:47:19 ◼   ► So Hover, they take all the hassle and friction

00:47:21 ◼   ► out of registering a domain and then owning it.

00:47:24 ◼   ► We all know, we've all had those tech support calls

00:47:27 ◼   ► from people who are less into web geeky stuff like us,

00:47:30 ◼   ► who somehow they got themselves stuck

00:47:32 ◼   ► trying to figure out DNS,

00:47:34 ◼   ► and we have to try to help them out.

00:47:36 ◼   ► Send these people to Hover, trust me,

00:47:38 ◼   ► You will not regret it.

00:47:40 ◼   ► So they also have fantastic email hosting

00:47:43 ◼   ► in addition to domain registration.

00:47:45 ◼   ► These days it makes sense to get

00:47:46 ◼   ► your own unique email address.

00:47:48 ◼   ► It is personal, professional, and cooler

00:47:50 ◼   ► than your Hotmail or AOL address.

00:47:51 ◼   ► Is it, am I supposed to pronounce AOL as like Aol

00:47:54 ◼   ► 'cause of the new capitalization?

00:47:56 ◼   ► - Oh my goodness, I don't think so.

00:47:59 ◼   ► - All right, well, it's cooler than your Hotmail

00:48:01 ◼   ► or OWL address for your business, blog, portfolio, resume,

00:48:04 ◼   ► or whatever you use your email address for.

00:48:06 ◼   ► You can get your own domain name,

00:48:07 ◼   ► and have your email be something at that domain,

00:48:10 ◼   ► and all that can be taken care of at Hover.

00:48:13 ◼   ► Really fantastic.

00:48:14 ◼   ► So there's so much more I can say about Hover,

00:48:16 ◼   ► and I will tell you in the next few weeks of ads,

00:48:18 ◼   ► 'cause I don't have time today,

00:48:19 ◼   ► but it's a great domain name register.

00:48:21 ◼   ► I'll check them out.

00:48:22 ◼   ► I use them, a lot of people use them, it's fantastic.

00:48:25 ◼   ► So check out Hover.

00:48:26 ◼   ► Our code this week is ScrummerFall.

00:48:29 ◼   ► - Oh my God, oh no.

00:48:32 ◼   ► - So if you use coupon code ScrummerFall,

00:48:35 ◼   ► do I have to spell that?

00:48:36 ◼   ► I don't even know, do people know what that means?

00:48:39 ◼   ► It's a S-C-R-U-M-M-E-R-F-A-L-L, Scrummerfall.

00:48:44 ◼   ► Use coupon code Scrummerfall to get 10% off

00:48:48 ◼   ► your purchase at Hover.

00:48:49 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Hover for sponsoring our show once again.

00:48:53 ◼   ► - So we should probably talk about things

00:48:57 ◼   ► that are probably gonna happen during WWDC.

00:49:01 ◼   ► - Think there's gonna be a keynote?

00:49:03 ◼   ► - There's gonna be a keynote, there's gonna be Odwalla,

00:49:06 ◼   ► Marco's gonna complain about the fact that Odwalla has bananas in almost all of them.

00:49:09 ◼   ► Now, do you think they're gonna bring back my flavor?

00:49:12 ◼   ► All I care about is that there's Mango Tango.

00:49:14 ◼   ► If there's Mango Tango, I'm happy.

00:49:16 ◼   ► That's all I care about.

00:49:18 ◼   ► We had a very interesting email a little over ten days ago, and it was an anonymous email

00:49:25 ◼   ► that went via the feedback form.

00:49:28 ◼   ► And the message is, "iOS 8 wishlist."

00:49:32 ◼   ► Yes.

00:49:33 ◼   ► And then there's a series of items.

00:49:35 ◼   ► and a series of items. This person did not specify who they are, didn't specify

00:49:42 ◼   ► if they're knowledgeable about anything, didn't specify any really anything at

00:49:48 ◼   ► all other than to say that they need to be anonymous. For now. It said "Anon for

00:49:53 ◼   ► now." So it basically has no credibility. However, I think it's an interesting list.

00:49:58 ◼   ► Agreed. And so what I thought I'd do is kind of start calling out the items on

00:50:04 ◼   ► this list and we'll talk about the ones that we think are worth talking about and then

00:50:10 ◼   ► we'll just blow by the ones that we don't think are very interesting.

00:50:15 ◼   ► So with that in mind, in the yes column, health book, monitor heart rate, VO2 level.

00:50:22 ◼   ► I'm not sure why it's VO2.

00:50:24 ◼   ► I'm assuming that's oxygen level?

00:50:25 ◼   ► Yeah, is that like a virtual oxygen?

00:50:27 ◼   ► Unless it was a fat-fingered CO2 level.

00:50:30 ◼   ► Anyway, hydration level, sleep, and steps.

00:50:34 ◼   ► What do we think?

00:50:35 ◼   ► - I mean, I think there's been enough smoke

00:50:37 ◼   ► around the health book thing that it's probably correct.

00:50:41 ◼   ► - I agree.

00:50:42 ◼   ► - You know, the details of which things are included,

00:50:44 ◼   ► I mean, steps and sleep can both be tracked by motion,

00:50:47 ◼   ► that's easy, you know, hydration,

00:50:49 ◼   ► hydration O2 and heart rate,

00:50:51 ◼   ► that would require some kind of extra sensor

00:50:53 ◼   ► that we don't know about yet,

00:50:54 ◼   ► so that's probably a question mark or a maybe.

00:50:56 ◼   ► - No, we know about it, it's gonna be the earbuds.

00:50:59 ◼   ► No, that was fake.

00:51:01 ◼   ► I know, I know, I'm kidding.

00:51:02 ◼   ► As opposed to this email, which is impeccably sourced

00:51:05 ◼   ► as a random person who typed things into a feedback form.

00:51:08 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:51:10 ◼   ► For the record, I was kidding.

00:51:11 ◼   ► I knew that was fake.

00:51:12 ◼   ► But yes, I would say the health book thing is plausible.

00:51:14 ◼   ► The details of it we don't really know for sure,

00:51:16 ◼   ► but it's certainly plausible.

00:51:18 ◼   ► Oh, we didn't even talk about that in the Nintendo thing,

00:51:20 ◼   ► how one of their strategies to get them out of their funk

00:51:21 ◼   ► was going to be health-related apps, which seems to be--

00:51:25 ◼   ► everyone seems to be doing this these days, the fact

00:51:27 ◼   ► that we have the technology, the networking, and the last piece we need is the sensors

00:51:32 ◼   ► and Fitbit has been sort of the spearhead into this, into health monitoring for individuals.

00:51:37 ◼   ► It seems to be reasonably popular and have positive results for people, so Apple getting

00:51:42 ◼   ► into it doesn't surprise me.

00:51:43 ◼   ► And of course, we've all seen all the screenshots of the health book looking app and stuff.

00:51:49 ◼   ► This is just an iOS 8 wish list, so we can't talk about whether Apple's going to have any

00:51:55 ◼   ► any devices like this where they're gonna launch this

00:51:58 ◼   ► kind of like the M7 without any accompanying hardware.

00:52:02 ◼   ► It's like, oh, well, our phone has this,

00:52:03 ◼   ► then these new APIs and so on and so forth,

00:52:05 ◼   ► and then third parties will make sensors for it,

00:52:07 ◼   ► or is it gonna integrate with the iWatch later, or, you know.

00:52:11 ◼   ► But I think it's a pretty sure bet

00:52:13 ◼   ► that some health monitoring stuff

00:52:15 ◼   ► is gonna be in iOS 8 software-wise.

00:52:18 ◼   ► - I agree, and I'm very curious to see what sensors,

00:52:23 ◼   ► if any, will be provided for this.

00:52:24 ◼   ► By the way, real time follow up, V02 is apparently aerobic capacity.

00:52:29 ◼   ► Thank you KJ Healey, friend of the show.

00:52:31 ◼   ► It's for volume, right?

00:52:33 ◼   ► So thanks for that KJ Healey.

00:52:36 ◼   ► Next, transit in the maps app, in the Apple Maps app.

00:52:40 ◼   ► I would suspect this would be something they would do because they got dinged on it or

00:52:47 ◼   ► they continually get dinged on it.

00:52:48 ◼   ► But I think we talked about, maybe it wasn't us, but somebody talked about it on one of

00:52:51 ◼   ► the podcast I listen to, about how hard that is.

00:52:55 ◼   ► Because to normalize all this disparate data

00:52:57 ◼   ► across gazillion cities across the planet

00:53:00 ◼   ► is not an easy task.

00:53:01 ◼   ► And given that Apple does so well

00:53:03 ◼   ► with normalizing all the data on their map themselves,

00:53:06 ◼   ► I'm not really too confident they're gonna get this right.

00:53:09 ◼   ► But it seems plausible.

00:53:12 ◼   ► - I think that's something that they want to do,

00:53:13 ◼   ► whether they're ready in time.

00:53:15 ◼   ► Like I think they're more cautious

00:53:16 ◼   ► about rolling out something half-baked at this point.

00:53:18 ◼   ► But-- - Especially in Maps.

00:53:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, on the maps effort, Apple seems committed

00:53:23 ◼   ► and they did not have a good initial showing.

00:53:26 ◼   ► And hopefully they're learning that the only way to do this

00:53:29 ◼   ► is to do what Google does.

00:53:31 ◼   ► You're not boiling the ocean,

00:53:32 ◼   ► but you're boiling a pretty darn big lake.

00:53:34 ◼   ► And that's what they have to end up doing.

00:53:35 ◼   ► You gotta put bodies in the ground.

00:53:37 ◼   ► You gotta put resources towards this.

00:53:40 ◼   ► It's a super big pain.

00:53:42 ◼   ► You can't half-ass it.

00:53:43 ◼   ► You gotta, there's no shortcut.

00:53:46 ◼   ► So, and the transit is like, oh, the shortcut will be

00:53:49 ◼   ► that we'll just have third parties do it.

00:53:50 ◼   ► It's a third party opportunity.

00:53:51 ◼   ► And people are like, no, we don't like that shortcut.

00:53:54 ◼   ► Google has transit, you don't, you suck.

00:53:57 ◼   ► So I really hope that this is true

00:54:01 ◼   ► that they're working on transit.

00:54:03 ◼   ► As for whether it's ready in time for a WOEC announcement,

00:54:07 ◼   ► I'm not sure.

00:54:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, all right, on device Siri.

00:54:11 ◼   ► - See that, I would love to see that.

00:54:12 ◼   ► So I assume what this means is that the dictation

00:54:16 ◼   ► would take place on the device,

00:54:18 ◼   ► which Android and Windows Phone already do,

00:54:21 ◼   ► and so do Macs, actually,

00:54:23 ◼   ► and just not iOS devices yet, right?

00:54:25 ◼   ► There's still no way to do it on iOS?

00:54:26 ◼   ► - That's right as far as I know.

00:54:28 ◼   ► However, isn't the download on OS X

00:54:30 ◼   ► something like a little shy of a gig?

00:54:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like 800 megs, something like that.

00:54:34 ◼   ► - So given that Apple is ridiculously obsessed

00:54:37 ◼   ► with continuing to offer eight and 16 gig devices, really?

00:54:42 ◼   ► I mean, it seems like that'd be a lot of space

00:54:45 ◼   ► to take up on some devices

00:54:46 ◼   ► that really don't have enough space.

00:54:48 ◼   ► - Well, it would probably just be an optional download then,

00:54:50 ◼   ► just like it is on Mac.

00:54:52 ◼   ► 'Cause how many people actually would care enough

00:54:55 ◼   ► to use that?

00:54:56 ◼   ► Probably a minority, but for those people,

00:54:59 ◼   ► it would be really nice to have.

00:55:00 ◼   ► - They're gonna need to concentrate on getting

00:55:02 ◼   ► their server-side implementation up to snuff

00:55:05 ◼   ► before worrying about adding another implementation

00:55:07 ◼   ► to the mix.

00:55:08 ◼   ► Like, because the problem with Siri is not that,

00:55:11 ◼   ► oh, it does everything over the network,

00:55:12 ◼   ► because for phone people,

00:55:13 ◼   ► like the size of data that it's transferring

00:55:16 ◼   ► is not that big, it's just the server's gotta be responsive.

00:55:18 ◼   ► They have to be available, they have to respond quickly.

00:55:20 ◼   ► You can't talk, record something, send it to the server,

00:55:24 ◼   ► wait, and get a response to say,

00:55:25 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, forget it, we couldn't talk to the server.

00:55:27 ◼   ► "Sorry about that, try again later."

00:55:29 ◼   ► Like that is unacceptable.

00:55:30 ◼   ► And so I don't think that experience of going to a server,

00:55:33 ◼   ► it would be all that terrible

00:55:35 ◼   ► if it just worked reliably and quickly.

00:55:37 ◼   ► And so hopefully that's where

00:55:38 ◼   ► they're concentrating their effort.

00:55:39 ◼   ► I don't use Siri enough to know

00:55:41 ◼   ► whether it's getting worse or better or whatever,

00:55:42 ◼   ► but anytime that fails for one of those,

00:55:45 ◼   ► "Yeah, you said a bunch of stuff and we recorded it,

00:55:47 ◼   ► but we couldn't make connect the dots."

00:55:49 ◼   ► "Yeah, I know you have a net connection.

00:55:51 ◼   ► It just didn't work out, sorry."

00:55:53 ◼   ► Anytime that happens, it's bogus.

00:55:54 ◼   ► And I'm not ready for them to say,

00:55:58 ◼   ► "Well, actually we have a second implementation

00:55:59 ◼   ► that's all on device and you don't have to worry

00:56:01 ◼   ► about the network.

00:56:02 ◼   ► You just have to worry about memory usage and storage area

00:56:07 ◼   ► and whether this on device thing works."

00:56:08 ◼   ► And again, it's another area where Google has on device

00:56:12 ◼   ► stuff working and their servers respond faster.

00:56:14 ◼   ► So this list reads more like a list of areas

00:56:18 ◼   ► where Apple needs to improve.

00:56:19 ◼   ► I guess it's a wishlist.

00:56:20 ◼   ► Like every area where they need to improve,

00:56:22 ◼   ► they should improve in all those areas.

00:56:24 ◼   ► But I don't see them going for on-device Siri.

00:56:29 ◼   ► I would rather see them address the server-side stuff

00:56:33 ◼   ► because I don't think it's that crazy for phones anyway,

00:56:36 ◼   ► to just say, "Yes, it's all server-side.

00:56:37 ◼   ► Don't worry about it.

00:56:38 ◼   ► We'll get the data through.

00:56:40 ◼   ► It's not a lot of data.

00:56:41 ◼   ► We'll just make sure our servers are all available and fast."

00:56:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, certainly that would be nice.

00:56:45 ◼   ► I mean, I would prefer they give us both, really.

00:56:48 ◼   ► Having on-device dictation, like, you know,

00:56:51 ◼   ► have the servers still do the smarts of like,

00:56:55 ◼   ► okay, we know what you said,

00:56:57 ◼   ► but then what do you mean by that?

00:56:58 ◼   ► Like, that's obviously an area

00:57:00 ◼   ► where the server-side infrastructure could benefit a lot

00:57:02 ◼   ► from continuing to be server-side with both resources

00:57:06 ◼   ► and with, you know, just updating the information

00:57:08 ◼   ► that it has and learning and stuff like that.

00:57:11 ◼   ► You know, that's very much like a big data problem.

00:57:13 ◼   ► they need big data to do it.

00:57:14 ◼   ► The actual dictation though,

00:57:18 ◼   ► while dictation does benefit from the big data approach,

00:57:21 ◼   ► you can also do a pretty good job

00:57:23 ◼   ► just having something local,

00:57:24 ◼   ► as you know by using all the Dragon stuff.

00:57:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, you need more RAM for that

00:57:28 ◼   ► as I think Casey pointed out.

00:57:29 ◼   ► Like that's hardware wise,

00:57:32 ◼   ► I mean the excuse has always been,

00:57:33 ◼   ► well more RAM requires more power

00:57:35 ◼   ► and it's a battery thing and blah, blah, blah,

00:57:37 ◼   ► but jeez, I mean forget about the storage

00:57:39 ◼   ► which we've already complained about,

00:57:40 ◼   ► 16, 32, 64, eternal trinity.

00:57:44 ◼   ► You gotta get more RAM.

00:57:45 ◼   ► You gotta get more RAM on these devices.

00:57:47 ◼   ► You got like people, it's just, it's unacceptable.

00:57:49 ◼   ► One gigabyte is not enough.

00:57:51 ◼   ► And so like having more RAM,

00:57:53 ◼   ► and if they can deal with the battery stuff,

00:57:55 ◼   ► I think that would open the door for on-device,

00:57:57 ◼   ► what you're talking about, on-device.

00:57:58 ◼   ► Like I'll just figure out the text version of what you said

00:58:01 ◼   ► and send the text up to a server,

00:58:03 ◼   ► which is even lower bandwidth,

00:58:04 ◼   ► and it can do the smart stuff

00:58:05 ◼   ► of figuring out what you mean by those words.

00:58:07 ◼   ► - All right, next, notification center revamp.

00:58:09 ◼   ► more Siri like Google Now and less a list of notifications.

00:58:14 ◼   ► - Boy, I would hate this.

00:58:15 ◼   ► - So where does the list of notifications go?

00:58:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agreed.

00:58:19 ◼   ► - The last thing notification center needs

00:58:20 ◼   ► is for Apple to be more clever about it.

00:58:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:58:23 ◼   ► They need to become less clever about it, simplify it.

00:58:26 ◼   ► Just give me a straight list of notifications

00:58:29 ◼   ► would be better than what it is now

00:58:31 ◼   ► with like the confusing like all versus missed

00:58:34 ◼   ► and then some things just kind of disappear forever.

00:58:36 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, no, how many times does a notification appear

00:58:38 ◼   ► on your device and you do whatever the wrong thing is

00:58:42 ◼   ► and you say, "What did that notification say again?"

00:58:45 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, sorry sucker,

00:58:46 ◼   ► "you're never gonna see that again."

00:58:48 ◼   ► Try to find it.

00:58:49 ◼   ► Is it a notification center?

00:58:49 ◼   ► No.

00:58:50 ◼   ► Is it a missed?

00:58:51 ◼   ► No, 'cause you didn't miss it.

00:58:52 ◼   ► You saw it and then it went away.

00:58:53 ◼   ► It's like, "Ah!"

00:58:54 ◼   ► You know, it's not, they could be clever,

00:58:57 ◼   ► but try to explain to somebody,

00:59:00 ◼   ► like, "I saw a word appear on my screen,

00:59:01 ◼   ► "but now it's gone, where is it?"

00:59:03 ◼   ► - And it's a hard problem.

00:59:04 ◼   ► Like, you know, trying to be smart about it,

00:59:06 ◼   ► like, I just think it kinda can't be done well.

00:59:08 ◼   ► It's the kind of thing that it sounds cool on paper,

00:59:11 ◼   ► it'll make for an interesting keynote,

00:59:12 ◼   ► as you see with things like Google Now and with Cortana.

00:59:16 ◼   ► Like you see the other platforms doing this.

00:59:19 ◼   ► In practice, it's really hard to make that right

00:59:22 ◼   ► all the time.

00:59:23 ◼   ► It's a classic AI problem of like,

00:59:25 ◼   ► it tries to be smart, but a lot of times

00:59:27 ◼   ► that's not really what you wanted,

00:59:29 ◼   ► and it's very frustrating.

00:59:30 ◼   ► - And it's battling against notification overload,

00:59:32 ◼   ► because if you did just do the dumb linear list,

00:59:34 ◼   ► like very quickly that list would be crazy

00:59:36 ◼   ► and people would just start ignoring it.

00:59:37 ◼   ► Like they're trying to strike a balance between

00:59:39 ◼   ► just show you what's important,

00:59:41 ◼   ► get rid of it when you've already seen it,

00:59:44 ◼   ► and don't ever present like this humongous list

00:59:46 ◼   ► that you have to scroll through to look.

00:59:47 ◼   ► Because sometimes people get a lot of notifications.

00:59:50 ◼   ► - That's how I would do it actually.

00:59:51 ◼   ► Like if you look on the Mac, on Mac Notification Center,

00:59:54 ◼   ► it groups it by application, similar to iOS,

00:59:57 ◼   ► but like they kind of just stick around forever

00:59:59 ◼   ► until you clear them.

01:00:00 ◼   ► It's very annoying actually.

01:00:01 ◼   ► And you can kind of see like okay,

01:00:03 ◼   ► well that's one approach, that's kind of weird.

01:00:06 ◼   ► I think what would actually be best

01:00:09 ◼   ► is for Notification Center to just be

01:00:12 ◼   ► one combined timeline of notifications

01:00:14 ◼   ► so that whatever order you receive them,

01:00:17 ◼   ► whatever order you saw them in on the lock screen,

01:00:19 ◼   ► whatever order they came in,

01:00:20 ◼   ► there's a list that shows those same ones

01:00:22 ◼   ► in that same order,

01:00:23 ◼   ► and maybe has a blue dot next to the unread ones,

01:00:25 ◼   ► but they're still there.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Even after they're read, they're still in the list.

01:00:29 ◼   ► I don't see, I can't come up with any better alternative

01:00:33 ◼   ► that's better all around,

01:00:34 ◼   ► 'cause every other one you come up with,

01:00:36 ◼   ► It's like, well, it's good for this use case,

01:00:37 ◼   ► but it's bad for these three use cases.

01:00:39 ◼   ► And like, it's, if you just give it one big list,

01:00:42 ◼   ► I think that's probably the least crappy option.

01:00:45 ◼   ► - Oh, I think they need to have that thing

01:00:47 ◼   ► you're describing accessible somehow.

01:00:49 ◼   ► I'm not sure it needs to be the thing in people's faces,

01:00:51 ◼   ► but would you, like, you need lifestreams.

01:00:53 ◼   ► Remember lifestreams?

01:00:54 ◼   ► That was a big trend back in the whatever, 90s maybe.

01:00:57 ◼   ► To conceptualize--

01:01:01 ◼   ► - I once met a vlogger.

01:01:02 ◼   ► - To conceptualize your use of a computer.

01:01:05 ◼   ► It was weird.

01:01:06 ◼   ► Buy time rather than buy file name or application or project

01:01:11 ◼   ► or anything like that so that anything you've seen or done

01:01:14 ◼   ► in your computer, you could just scroll back through

01:01:15 ◼   ► time-wise, kind of like the time machine UI,

01:01:18 ◼   ► but just cross-cutting across everything,

01:01:21 ◼   ► like web pages you've seen, email that you've read,

01:01:24 ◼   ► things that, messages that you've sent,

01:01:25 ◼   ► then you could just go scroll back through time

01:01:27 ◼   ► and see things in that way.

01:01:28 ◼   ► And then what you're talking about is a sort of

01:01:30 ◼   ► livestream view of your interaction with notifications.

01:01:34 ◼   ► And I think that should be accessible

01:01:35 ◼   ► because if you can't find something,

01:01:37 ◼   ► I'll just go back to your whatever,

01:01:39 ◼   ► they'd come up with some buzzword for it,

01:01:40 ◼   ► hell, they could call it livestream if they wanted.

01:01:41 ◼   ► And here's everything, and just go back through it

01:01:43 ◼   ► and you will see the events of the day as they unfolded.

01:01:46 ◼   ► This is when the message came in, and then you read it,

01:01:48 ◼   ► and then you replied, and you did this, and you did that.

01:01:52 ◼   ► But I don't know if that needs to be the thing

01:01:55 ◼   ► in the person's face, because what they're trying to do

01:01:57 ◼   ► is make it so you don't feel overwhelmed by notifications

01:01:59 ◼   ► by making them go away, that's why they have the miss thing

01:02:01 ◼   ► and the all thing, and I think that does make

01:02:04 ◼   ► for a better experience until you're like,

01:02:08 ◼   ► oh, what did that thing say?

01:02:09 ◼   ► Let me just go to the livestream and look at it.

01:02:11 ◼   ► I shouldn't say livestream because it's a terrible name,

01:02:13 ◼   ► but I don't know what else to call it.

01:02:15 ◼   ► - But that's how people use text messages though,

01:02:18 ◼   ► all the time, and it's fine.

01:02:20 ◼   ► Text messages are one giant chronological list,

01:02:22 ◼   ► totally unsorted, just by time.

01:02:25 ◼   ► - No, but it's by person.

01:02:25 ◼   ► It's by person though, isn't it?

01:02:27 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, okay, that's fair.

01:02:28 ◼   ► But still, I know so many people who

01:02:30 ◼   ► they need to get a piece of information

01:02:33 ◼   ► out of their text messages.

01:02:34 ◼   ► Like that's the only place it lives,

01:02:35 ◼   ► and they can just scroll up and just keep going.

01:02:38 ◼   ► They know roughly where it is,

01:02:39 ◼   ► and then they eventually find it, and that's it.

01:02:40 ◼   ► - But they end up with three gigabytes of messages.

01:02:43 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, but.

01:02:44 ◼   ► - The other category on their device starts growing.

01:02:48 ◼   ► - How helpful.

01:02:49 ◼   ► - If only Apple could store those things in the cloud,

01:02:51 ◼   ► and when you scrolled,

01:02:52 ◼   ► it would just pull those messages down,

01:02:53 ◼   ► and yeah, no, dare to dream, right?

01:02:55 ◼   ► - We'll get there.

01:02:56 ◼   ► - All right, so notification center in iCloud,

01:02:58 ◼   ► clearing notifications across Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

01:03:02 ◼   ► I will say that for iMessages, I think it's a little too quick to fall back to my other

01:03:11 ◼   ► devices, but in the last couple of months, maybe even more than that, if I'm in the midst

01:03:16 ◼   ► of a conversation on one of my devices, the other devices oftentimes will receive a new

01:03:23 ◼   ► text message, but generally speaking, nothing does any beeping or bonding or vibrating or

01:03:28 ◼   ► or anything like that, unless, let's assume I'm on my Mac,

01:03:33 ◼   ► unless I haven't acknowledged that new text message

01:03:36 ◼   ► on my Mac for like 10 or 15 seconds.

01:03:39 ◼   ► Now I think there should be a slightly longer grace period

01:03:42 ◼   ► than that because sometimes I'm,

01:03:43 ◼   ► especially on my Mac anyway, I'm looking at another window

01:03:46 ◼   ► or whatever the case may be and I haven't clicked back

01:03:48 ◼   ► to the messages window, but messages has actually

01:03:52 ◼   ► been working pretty well for me in this sense,

01:03:56 ◼   ► But I agree that in every other capacity,

01:03:59 ◼   ► it would be kind of neat to have one unified,

01:04:02 ◼   ► well, a unified timeline, actually.

01:04:04 ◼   ► - Man, your grace period is way more forgiving than mine.

01:04:06 ◼   ► With mine, like if I'm talking to you over iMessage,

01:04:09 ◼   ► and if the messages window is not my front-most window,

01:04:14 ◼   ► at the moment that comes in, it vibrates on all my devices.

01:04:18 ◼   ► I get zero grace period.

01:04:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, this thing reads even more like a wishlist item

01:04:22 ◼   ► of like, here's a problem I encounter using

01:04:25 ◼   ► Apple's cloud services on multiple devices,

01:04:27 ◼   ► and I want Apple to fix it, but I don't have any,

01:04:29 ◼   ► I don't have anything to say other than

01:04:31 ◼   ► it should do what I mean all the time.

01:04:32 ◼   ► And I, conceptually, we talked about this

01:04:34 ◼   ► when Messages first came out,

01:04:36 ◼   ► when iMessages first came out,

01:04:37 ◼   ► conceptually the thing that Apple is missing

01:04:39 ◼   ► is presence awareness, like figuring out

01:04:44 ◼   ► where you are and what you're doing.

01:04:45 ◼   ► Because if they can have a concept,

01:04:47 ◼   ► the concept of presence defined API-wise

01:04:51 ◼   ► so that each individual app isn't like

01:04:53 ◼   ► doing its own crazy heuristics,

01:04:54 ◼   ► like there was a framework for presence

01:04:56 ◼   ► and an awareness of where you are

01:04:58 ◼   ► and what device you're near

01:04:59 ◼   ► and what you're using or whatever,

01:05:01 ◼   ► then they could just improve that framework over time.

01:05:04 ◼   ► And applications that use that framework

01:05:06 ◼   ► would do the right thing,

01:05:06 ◼   ► including initially Apple's own,

01:05:08 ◼   ► like it would be a private framework

01:05:09 ◼   ► probably for a couple of releases.

01:05:10 ◼   ► And who knows, maybe they have a framework

01:05:12 ◼   ► that's supposed to do that, but it seems crappy.

01:05:14 ◼   ► Like we're all talking about situations where

01:05:17 ◼   ► because your messages window was hidden

01:05:19 ◼   ► or because it was in the front,

01:05:20 ◼   ► but you were looking at a different window,

01:05:22 ◼   ► it didn't go off on your iOS device,

01:05:24 ◼   ► then you, I have better luck getting messages

01:05:27 ◼   ► in the web interface to Gmail,

01:05:28 ◼   ► you know the little chat messages that come up.

01:05:30 ◼   ► I have missed fewer of those

01:05:32 ◼   ► than I have missed iMessages from my wife.

01:05:34 ◼   ► Like she'll send them from her phone

01:05:36 ◼   ► and I'll get the first one notification center

01:05:38 ◼   ► and I'll click on it and it'll launch the messages

01:05:40 ◼   ► and I'll converse with her

01:05:41 ◼   ► and then I'll go do something else

01:05:42 ◼   ► and another one will come in messages and I won't notice

01:05:45 ◼   ► and she'll be like, why didn't you respond to that one?

01:05:47 ◼   ► I didn't see it on my iOS device

01:05:48 ◼   ► 'cause it wasn't there,

01:05:49 ◼   ► 'cause messages was open

01:05:50 ◼   ► and it wanted me to say it was there

01:05:51 ◼   ► but it didn't even like,

01:05:52 ◼   ► or maybe bounce the icon once or something.

01:05:54 ◼   ► Like it's not, they don't have it yet.

01:05:57 ◼   ► So I think they have a long way to go there.

01:05:59 ◼   ► And I think this item for iOS 8,

01:06:01 ◼   ► iOS 8 will fix this.

01:06:03 ◼   ► Well, not in, it won't unless it has a cooperation

01:06:06 ◼   ► with the new version of OS 10

01:06:08 ◼   ► and all sorts of other things.

01:06:09 ◼   ► And this is just, you know, yes, I would like this too.

01:06:12 ◼   ► Make it so, but it's not,

01:06:14 ◼   ► it's a benefit more than a implementation.

01:06:17 ◼   ► - Our final sponsor this week is once again,

01:06:20 ◼   ► our friends at NatureBox.

01:06:21 ◼   ► Nature Box delivers delicious and nutritious snacks to your door every month.

01:06:26 ◼   ► Go to naturebox.com/atp to get 50% off your first box.

01:06:32 ◼   ► These are smarter snacks you can feel good about, with no high fructose corn syrup, no

01:06:36 ◼   ► partially hydrogenated oils, no trans fats, no artificial sweeteners, no noscual, and

01:06:42 ◼   ► no artificial flavors or colors.

01:06:44 ◼   ► They're better for you and they're nutritionist approved.

01:06:48 ◼   ► When you sign up you get a discovery box filled with surprise snacks.

01:06:51 ◼   ► and then you have the option to pick your own every month,

01:06:54 ◼   ► or you can have NatureBox surprise you with new ones.

01:06:57 ◼   ► You can browse their site, naturebox.com/atp,

01:07:01 ◼   ► to check out their full lineup,

01:07:02 ◼   ► along with all previous NatureBox deliveries,

01:07:04 ◼   ► with full nutrition labels

01:07:06 ◼   ► and ingredient lists for everything.

01:07:08 ◼   ► Each bag includes three to five servings of its snack,

01:07:11 ◼   ► unless you put it next to your computer all day,

01:07:13 ◼   ► and then it might become less than that,

01:07:14 ◼   ► but 'cause they're really good.

01:07:17 ◼   ► Each bag includes three to five servings of its snack,

01:07:19 ◼   ► and you can choose from three quantities every month.

01:07:21 ◼   ► You can get five bags for just $19.95,

01:07:24 ◼   ► 10 bags for just $29.95, or 20 bags for $49.95.

01:07:29 ◼   ► All of those come with free shipping

01:07:30 ◼   ► to the continental United States,

01:07:32 ◼   ► and it'll even ship to Alaska or Hawaii for just $2 more.

01:07:35 ◼   ► NatureBox is great for the home, office, or on the go.

01:07:39 ◼   ► Go to naturebox.com/atp to get 50% off your first box.

01:07:44 ◼   ► Thanks a lot, once again, to NatureBox

01:07:45 ◼   ► for sponsoring our show.

01:07:47 ◼   ► The sample they sent me is completely gone

01:07:50 ◼   ► because it was good.

01:07:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:07:52 ◼   ► - I've been very, very good about milking mine,

01:07:54 ◼   ► so to speak, but it is very good.

01:07:58 ◼   ► And very off the wall, which is kind of refreshing.

01:08:01 ◼   ► - It has some cool combination,

01:08:02 ◼   ► actually I should be honest, my sample was actually gone

01:08:05 ◼   ► before we even recorded last week's show.

01:08:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:08:09 ◼   ► But yeah, it's really good stuff.

01:08:11 ◼   ► - All right, so continuing this list that at this point

01:08:15 ◼   ► absolutely confirms that it's a wishlist

01:08:17 ◼   ► and not a birdie telling us something they know.

01:08:20 ◼   ► Unlimited photo stream.

01:08:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, unlimited, just like unlimited bandwidth from AT&T.

01:08:26 ◼   ► - Everything in tech that claims to be unlimited,

01:08:29 ◼   ► that's always true, right?

01:08:30 ◼   ► - Totally.

01:08:31 ◼   ► - Well, sometimes, like think about it,

01:08:34 ◼   ► Backblaze for instance.

01:08:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, they actually manage to do it.

01:08:38 ◼   ► - They say it's unlimited.

01:08:39 ◼   ► Maybe it's not.

01:08:40 ◼   ► Maybe if I had like 300 terabytes

01:08:42 ◼   ► that someone would come to my house and talk to me.

01:08:44 ◼   ► - In person.

01:08:45 ◼   ► But so far, I have multiple terabytes there.

01:08:48 ◼   ► I mean, maybe they're relying on the fact

01:08:49 ◼   ► that you can't upload, like the ISPs,

01:08:52 ◼   ► how long would it take you to upload a petabyte of data?

01:08:55 ◼   ► It's like, you know, it would take a long time.

01:08:57 ◼   ► But so far, I haven't hit a back place limit.

01:09:00 ◼   ► - It's probably also used to the law of averages.

01:09:02 ◼   ► My mom's computer, I back up everything

01:09:05 ◼   ► I possibly can back up from that.

01:09:06 ◼   ► It's 37 gigs.

01:09:07 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:09:10 ◼   ► I'm paying the same 37 gigs there

01:09:12 ◼   ► I'm paying for one and a half terabytes on my desktop.

01:09:14 ◼   ► Yeah, PhotoStream, they don't have that same advantage, though, because I think people

01:09:18 ◼   ► just keep taking photos their whole life, and they, you know, it's not like with data

01:09:22 ◼   ► there's some turnover, like, you know, you're gonna, I don't know what the turnover is in

01:09:26 ◼   ► data, because maybe people delete their email after time, or it just doesn't seem like it

01:09:30 ◼   ► grows linearly, like maybe people aren't putting their photos into Photoshop or whatever. Anyway,

01:09:37 ◼   ► unlimited or not, yes, we all want PhotoStream to be better. We've had many past shows about

01:09:42 ◼   ► describing how frustrating it is that, with the Everpix gone and everything, that Apple

01:09:47 ◼   ► isn't picking up the baton and saying, "Don't worry. No matter how many pictures you take,

01:09:52 ◼   ► we'll take care of keeping them safe." For a fee, for not a fee, like, at least give us that option.

01:09:56 ◼   ► At this point, your options are not great, and no one company is ready to take care of your photos

01:10:03 ◼   ► forever or even try to make that promise. I really think this is the kind of thing,

01:10:07 ◼   ► I mean, and you know, we've talked at length about this, the prompt has talked at length

01:10:10 ◼   ► about this, even more so than us I think, which is saying a lot. I think this is one

01:10:16 ◼   ► of those things like Apple has to be the one to offer the photo solution finally. It doesn't

01:10:24 ◼   ► mean they will. I actually am not that confident that they will. But I think that's what

01:10:29 ◼   ► needs to happen long term. I really do. And there are so many question marks about how

01:10:34 ◼   ► they would do that and if they would do that and how they could pay for that. To me, I

01:10:38 ◼   ► I think the biggest question mark is still video.

01:10:40 ◼   ► What do you do with video?

01:10:41 ◼   ► And the answer is probably you just omit it

01:10:43 ◼   ► from PhotoStream or severely down sample it

01:10:46 ◼   ► so it fits within the one minute sending limit,

01:10:48 ◼   ► stuff like that.

01:10:50 ◼   ► But overall, I just think like,

01:10:53 ◼   ► if you look at how people actually use these devices

01:10:56 ◼   ► and what people's expectations of their data

01:10:59 ◼   ► and its safety actually are, I don't see any other solution.

01:11:04 ◼   ► That would actually be good long term.

01:11:07 ◼   ► Apple just has to do it and they have to find a way

01:11:09 ◼   ► to do it and pay for it.

01:11:10 ◼   ► And there are some shortcuts they can take

01:11:14 ◼   ► that could substantially cut down

01:11:17 ◼   ► on the cost and data volume.

01:11:18 ◼   ► Like for instance, just don't store,

01:11:20 ◼   ► obviously don't support raws and stuff from desktops.

01:11:23 ◼   ► Just don't store the full JPEG quality.

01:11:26 ◼   ► Like if they store every picture at quality 40,

01:11:29 ◼   ► almost nobody will ever be able to tell.

01:11:32 ◼   ► - No, I don't like that.

01:11:33 ◼   ► I think they need to store the full quality one

01:11:35 ◼   ► otherwise they're not really solving the problem.

01:11:36 ◼   ► I don't want crappy quality versions

01:11:38 ◼   ► of the pictures of my kids saved.

01:11:39 ◼   ► I'd say, oh, don't worry, all your devices went up in smoke

01:11:42 ◼   ► when your house burned down,

01:11:42 ◼   ► but we've got really crappy quality JPEGs.

01:11:44 ◼   ► No, I want the originals.

01:11:45 ◼   ► - No, but there's a lot of headroom in the JPEG format.

01:11:48 ◼   ► Like, for good JPEG encoders, there is a ton of headroom.

01:11:52 ◼   ► You can get the quality down really small.

01:11:55 ◼   ► Like, you know, you're not gonna bring

01:11:57 ◼   ► a full camera-sized picture down to 60 kilobytes or anything,

01:12:02 ◼   ► but you can bring it down from, you know,

01:12:05 ◼   ► What's a JPEG off an iPhone worth these days?

01:12:09 ◼   ► Like three and a half, four or five megs,

01:12:10 ◼   ► something like that?

01:12:11 ◼   ► - Somewhere around there.

01:12:12 ◼   ► - You could easily bring it down to one meg or less

01:12:15 ◼   ► and be very, and be transparent to almost anybody.

01:12:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, just like you can on a CD.

01:12:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, you can.

01:12:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't like that solution.

01:12:28 ◼   ► I think they should take RAWs.

01:12:30 ◼   ► They just gotta figure out the economics.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Like, this is something that I think people

01:12:34 ◼   ► to be willing to pay for as long as it's reasonable.

01:12:36 ◼   ► And I think with $5 unlimited backup,

01:12:39 ◼   ► it shows that it's within,

01:12:41 ◼   ► it's gonna get more and more reasonable over time

01:12:43 ◼   ► 'cause photos are not getting bigger at the same rate

01:12:46 ◼   ► that storage is getting cheaper at this point, I think.

01:12:48 ◼   ► So hopefully this will solve itself eventually.

01:12:50 ◼   ► A more realistic wishlist item for this would be

01:12:53 ◼   ► what we also talked about is for iCloud backups,

01:12:56 ◼   ► at least allow it to match the size of the device

01:12:59 ◼   ► for a reasonable price instead of being,

01:13:02 ◼   ► oh, you get a little bit free

01:13:03 ◼   ► and then we nickel and dime you.

01:13:04 ◼   ► And if you buy another device, oh, you

01:13:06 ◼   ► don't get any additional storage,

01:13:07 ◼   ► and you just keep paying more.

01:13:08 ◼   ► It would be nicer if they rewarded their good customers

01:13:12 ◼   ► who buy the biggest devices, who buy lots of devices,

01:13:15 ◼   ► by making each additional purchase help you

01:13:19 ◼   ► towards iCloud backup for them.

01:13:23 ◼   ► You know what would be really neat is if Apple--

01:13:25 ◼   ► and I don't think they'd ever do it-- but did a unified backup

01:13:29 ◼   ► solution.

01:13:30 ◼   ► So you've got backups of your iDevices, as big as they are,

01:13:36 ◼   ► as much as you want.

01:13:37 ◼   ► Time Machine now can refer to either a local drive and/or

01:13:43 ◼   ► the Apple MobileMe cloud or something like that.

01:13:49 ◼   ► PhotoStream goes on either forever more or considerably

01:13:53 ◼   ► longer than it does right now.

01:13:56 ◼   ► I could just see how that would be so awesome.

01:13:58 ◼   ► I would pay so much money to just be able to in one place or pay one entity

01:14:04 ◼   ► To make all of these backup problems go away. All right next on the wish list is auto downloading and updating iOS. I

01:14:12 ◼   ► don't see how

01:14:15 ◼   ► That would really be feasible without doesn't it already?

01:14:19 ◼   ► Yeah, this is like auto updating. Well, here's here's one problem

01:14:23 ◼   ► I mean like my mom can't upgrade to iOS 7 yet because she's in a free space

01:14:28 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:14:29 ◼   ► - And it needs like 800 megabytes

01:14:31 ◼   ► and she doesn't have that.

01:14:32 ◼   ► And what I have to tell her to get that is,

01:14:35 ◼   ► well, if you want to do that,

01:14:36 ◼   ► you have to delete all your photos basically.

01:14:38 ◼   ► 'Cause she has an eight gig iPhone 4.

01:14:39 ◼   ► There's like no space on there.

01:14:41 ◼   ► - Isn't this the one that you told her

01:14:42 ◼   ► expressly not to buy?

01:14:43 ◼   ► - Yes, yes it is.

01:14:45 ◼   ► - Have you reminded her of that fact?

01:14:46 ◼   ► - Every time I see her.

01:14:48 ◼   ► - And how does that go over for you?

01:14:50 ◼   ► - It's starting to not go over that well anymore.

01:14:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:14:54 ◼   ► Yeah, it's an eight gig iPhone 4.

01:14:57 ◼   ► so it's, yeah, they're really the best of everything.

01:15:00 ◼   ► Anyway, so I don't see, I think that's implausible.

01:15:04 ◼   ► It would anger so many people to have their phones

01:15:06 ◼   ► automatically update to like a major OS release.

01:15:09 ◼   ► Like everything, imagine if iOS 7 was an automatic update,

01:15:12 ◼   ► like not just an automatic download,

01:15:13 ◼   ► but if it just automatically installed

01:15:15 ◼   ► while your phone was charging one night.

01:15:17 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

01:15:18 ◼   ► - I think that's coming, just not in iOS 8.

01:15:21 ◼   ► Distant future, the infinite version.

01:15:25 ◼   ► Jeff Atwood, blog post.

01:15:27 ◼   ► Chrome is already auto updating.

01:15:28 ◼   ► You have no choice.

01:15:29 ◼   ► - No, the Jeff Atwood thing is it's gonna be written

01:15:31 ◼   ► in JavaScript.

01:15:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:15:33 ◼   ► - No, not that.

01:15:34 ◼   ► The other, he wrote a blog post about,

01:15:36 ◼   ► called the Infinite Version,

01:15:38 ◼   ► about the trend of software that wants to update itself

01:15:40 ◼   ► and you just accept it because that's just the way it works.

01:15:42 ◼   ► And that's the way, you know, that's a totally an Apple move.

01:15:45 ◼   ► When that day comes, it will just happen

01:15:47 ◼   ► and you'll just deal with it.

01:15:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I guess that's what happens with web apps,

01:15:51 ◼   ► but people get pretty angry at that too.

01:15:54 ◼   ► Just like anytime Facebook ever changes anything,

01:15:56 ◼   ► You see like half the world explode.

01:15:58 ◼   ► - I think they could make that the default

01:16:00 ◼   ► and people would just accept it.

01:16:03 ◼   ► Like, you know, maybe they're not ready for it in iOS 8.

01:16:06 ◼   ► I don't think this is gonna happen in iOS 8,

01:16:08 ◼   ► but in iOS 15, I would bet on it.

01:16:11 ◼   ► - All right.

01:16:13 ◼   ► Separate game store from app store.

01:16:15 ◼   ► - I would love that.

01:16:16 ◼   ► - I think it would be nice.

01:16:17 ◼   ► I don't think it'll happen.

01:16:18 ◼   ► - 'Cause if you look at the app store now,

01:16:20 ◼   ► and yeah, I agree.

01:16:21 ◼   ► I don't think there's a chance of it happening.

01:16:24 ◼   ► I just wish it would happen

01:16:25 ◼   ► because generally speaking,

01:16:28 ◼   ► I think if you're browsing the App Store,

01:16:32 ◼   ► you probably have one of those things in mind,

01:16:35 ◼   ► like are you looking for a game right now

01:16:37 ◼   ► or are you looking for something else, something non-game?

01:16:40 ◼   ► What that would do to App Store browsing

01:16:44 ◼   ► would be pretty substantial.

01:16:46 ◼   ► And it wouldn't all be good,

01:16:47 ◼   ► but I think it would be a net win.

01:16:50 ◼   ► You know, if you think about

01:16:51 ◼   ► if games had their own top charts,

01:16:54 ◼   ► assuming Apple's gonna keep the top chart,

01:16:56 ◼   ► which I still think they shouldn't,

01:16:58 ◼   ► I think the top apps ranking lists are very destructive

01:17:03 ◼   ► to quality of software and economics and so many things,

01:17:08 ◼   ► I think they're very, very bad for a lot.

01:17:11 ◼   ► But Apple seems to be pretty committed to keeping them,

01:17:15 ◼   ► at least by their inaction.

01:17:16 ◼   ► So assuming they're gonna keep the top lists

01:17:20 ◼   ► in the App Store,

01:17:22 ◼   ► having games have their own complete top list,

01:17:25 ◼   ► like not just this one category

01:17:27 ◼   ► with the little subcategories in the real App Store,

01:17:30 ◼   ► if you give it like its own entire store,

01:17:33 ◼   ► and then it has a completely different standard

01:17:35 ◼   ► for like editorial, you know, what's new and noteworthy,

01:17:39 ◼   ► the top list, all that stuff,

01:17:40 ◼   ► it would allow them to have more granular categories,

01:17:42 ◼   ► not that they would, but it'd be nice if they would,

01:17:45 ◼   ► stuff like that, that would be great.

01:17:47 ◼   ► And then in the newly separated App Store

01:17:51 ◼   ► with no games in it, it would be a lot easier to find apps

01:17:55 ◼   ► 'cause you wouldn't have all the charts and lists

01:17:58 ◼   ► and features be cluttered up with games.

01:18:00 ◼   ► The problem I think is that, first of all,

01:18:05 ◼   ► very few people, relatively speaking,

01:18:07 ◼   ► most people would just visit the game store

01:18:10 ◼   ► and the app store would be pretty abandoned

01:18:14 ◼   ► by most customers I think for casual browsing.

01:18:18 ◼   ► And that might not be a bad thing anyway

01:18:20 ◼   ► 'cause how many of them were actually going to the app store

01:18:23 ◼   ► looking for a new game to play

01:18:24 ◼   ► and then they ended up buying your PDF app?

01:18:26 ◼   ► Really, does that really happen a lot?

01:18:28 ◼   ► I mean, it might, but I don't know.

01:18:29 ◼   ► I would guess not.

01:18:31 ◼   ► And then the other problem would be,

01:18:34 ◼   ► how do you enforce the difference?

01:18:38 ◼   ► Like if you're an app that has a game type element

01:18:42 ◼   ► but you're a very useful productivity app also,

01:18:45 ◼   ► would you put yourself in the game store

01:18:46 ◼   ► to get more visibility?

01:18:47 ◼   ► Would Apple just allow that?

01:18:48 ◼   ► How would they judge certain apps

01:18:50 ◼   ► that are kind of like, kind of on the borderline

01:18:54 ◼   ► between like is this an app or is this a game?

01:18:56 ◼   ► So I think overall, it would have a few problems.

01:19:00 ◼   ► Apple could overcome this if they wanted to,

01:19:02 ◼   ► but I just think the chances of them doing this

01:19:05 ◼   ► are so low because it would be a massive change

01:19:10 ◼   ► to the App Store.

01:19:11 ◼   ► And if it's one thing Apple has shown us

01:19:13 ◼   ► over the last six, seven years, however long it's been,

01:19:16 ◼   ► it's that they don't really care

01:19:18 ◼   ► to make massive changes to the App Store.

01:19:20 ◼   ► whether they can't or whether they choose not to,

01:19:22 ◼   ► I don't know, but one of those things.

01:19:24 ◼   ► Either they can't or they choose not to,

01:19:25 ◼   ► and it's very, very clear,

01:19:27 ◼   ► and I'm expecting no substantial changes to the App Store.

01:19:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

01:19:33 ◼   ► I feel like at some point they're gonna have to piss

01:19:37 ◼   ► or get off the pot when it comes to--

01:19:39 ◼   ► - That is not the metaphor, but go ahead.

01:19:40 ◼   ► - Well, I'm trying to be polite-ish.

01:19:43 ◼   ► - That was the polite version?

01:19:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, ish. (laughing)

01:19:46 ◼   ► So they're gonna have--

01:19:47 ◼   ► - They're trying to play flight controller,

01:19:48 ◼   ► get off the pot.

01:19:49 ◼   ► Nice.

01:19:50 ◼   ► They're going to have to do something.

01:19:54 ◼   ► And I concur that I don't think that this is going to be the time for them to do it,

01:20:00 ◼   ► but I just, I don't understand why the outward, all outward indication is Apple just does

01:20:09 ◼   ► not give a crap that all of their best, all of their best third party developers really

01:20:16 ◼   ► are getting, I don't know if disenfranchised is the right word, but getting grumbly about

01:20:22 ◼   ► the ecosystem.

01:20:23 ◼   ► And a friend of the show, _DavidSmith, had a really, really good episode of Developing

01:20:29 ◼   ► Perspective that, if we remember, we'll put in the show notes, that wherein he talks about

01:20:34 ◼   ► kind of how the prevailing feeling in the community is very pessimistic and way more

01:20:43 ◼   ► pessimistic than it's been in a long time, and I agree with him completely, that there's

01:20:48 ◼   ► a lot of grumbling going on, a lot more than usual.

01:20:51 ◼   ► And I don't know, not that it all comes down to the store, but you put a little money in

01:20:56 ◼   ► everyone's pockets and typically everything looks a little bit better as a result.

01:21:01 ◼   ► So we'll see.

01:21:02 ◼   ► I don't know how much separating the game store from the app store is really going to

01:21:06 ◼   ► help.

01:21:07 ◼   ► I know it'll help make anything other than a game stand out a little bit more, but I

01:21:14 ◼   ► think we've got much bigger, much more fundamental problems than that.

01:21:17 ◼   ► I mean, here's the problem, the way I see it.

01:21:21 ◼   ► That if you look at the people who are actually complaining, it's the small potatoes for

01:21:26 ◼   ► the most part.

01:21:27 ◼   ► It's people like us, it's people like Underscore, it's people who are in the Apple Geek blogger

01:21:35 ◼   ► community, you know, it's people who read

01:21:38 ◼   ► Daring Fireball basically, those people are complaining.

01:21:41 ◼   ► But if you look at what's actually in the App Store,

01:21:44 ◼   ► all those people who are on those top lists,

01:21:47 ◼   ► they're probably like, well, look, we're fine,

01:21:49 ◼   ► this is great.

01:21:49 ◼   ► Our community has always complained about the App Store

01:21:54 ◼   ► from day one, we were complaining about some different

01:21:57 ◼   ► things back then, but it was mostly the same stuff,

01:22:00 ◼   ► mostly the same people.

01:22:02 ◼   ► There's always been, we've always been complaining

01:22:03 ◼   ► about this and if they fix some of the issues we have,

01:22:07 ◼   ► we will complain about different ones.

01:22:09 ◼   ► So I don't actually think it's that different now.

01:22:13 ◼   ► Now there's just some of the directions

01:22:17 ◼   ► that the App Store was taking at the beginning,

01:22:20 ◼   ► like the race to the bottom in pricing,

01:22:22 ◼   ► like some of those have just played out further

01:22:25 ◼   ► than they were at the beginning,

01:22:26 ◼   ► but I think for the most part,

01:22:27 ◼   ► it's the same group complaining, but the same complaints.

01:22:31 ◼   ► And I don't know how much Apple cares about that

01:22:34 ◼   ► because what I was saying earlier about how they kind of

01:22:37 ◼   ► put Game Center stuff and newsstand stuff,

01:22:41 ◼   ► they put these things in a drawer

01:22:43 ◼   ► and just kind of forget about it.

01:22:45 ◼   ► I think that's how they see apps.

01:22:47 ◼   ► I think that's how they see the entire

01:22:48 ◼   ► third-party development community.

01:22:50 ◼   ► Not quite as severely, but the same kind of feeling

01:22:55 ◼   ► where it's like we're gonna have this major community here

01:22:59 ◼   ► that we kind of just, we have to deal with them

01:23:03 ◼   ► because of market forces.

01:23:04 ◼   ► Like we have to interact with them,

01:23:06 ◼   ► but we're gonna try to compartmentalize it

01:23:07 ◼   ► as much as possible and kind of patronize it

01:23:10 ◼   ► to the degree we have to and just kind of, you know,

01:23:15 ◼   ► I don't know, just kind of like shove all these people

01:23:20 ◼   ► together in this way that will make them shut up

01:23:23 ◼   ► and get them out of our face so we can keep doing

01:23:24 ◼   ► our pristine stuff over on this side of the fence.

01:23:27 ◼   ► Like that's, and I know this doesn't represent everybody

01:23:31 ◼   ► who works at Apple, there's a lot of great people there

01:23:34 ◼   ► who try to make developers' lives better.

01:23:36 ◼   ► But the actions of the company as a whole

01:23:39 ◼   ► indicate that that's what they think of us.

01:23:42 ◼   ► And that has been the case for the entire history

01:23:46 ◼   ► of the App Store, and I don't see that changing,

01:23:49 ◼   ► and I don't really see a pressing need for it to change.

01:23:51 ◼   ► 'Cause if you look at it from the super hype executive's

01:23:54 ◼   ► point of view, and you look at it from Tim Cook

01:23:56 ◼   ► from Phil Schiller, who I think the app store is actually under Schiller's reign, I think,

01:24:02 ◼   ► but I'm not entirely sure. It doesn't matter. Whoever's reign it's under, if you look at

01:24:09 ◼   ► it from their point of view, they can, every quarter they can point to some number like,

01:24:13 ◼   ► "Look, here's how much we've paid the developers overall. We're doing great. We have all these

01:24:16 ◼   ► apps in our store. People keep buying them or people keep putting coins into candy, whatever,

01:24:21 ◼   ► and it's fine. There's no problems."

01:24:23 ◼   ► Yeah, that metric-based approach, though, is what annoys me the most,

01:24:27 ◼   ► because they get up there and this is what they say.

01:24:29 ◼   ► They have these numbers to say,

01:24:30 ◼   ► "Here's how many bajillions of dollars we gave to developers.

01:24:33 ◼   ► Here's how many apps we have in the store.

01:24:35 ◼   ► And let me show you this awesome app that is great."

01:24:38 ◼   ► And if they lay them all out like that, you're like,

01:24:41 ◼   ► "Wow, the app store is great."

01:24:42 ◼   ► But what they don't realize is the awesome app that's great sells nothing.

01:24:46 ◼   ► All that money is from bilking a bunch of whales

01:24:49 ◼   ► out of money for in-app purchases for crappy games,

01:24:53 ◼   ► And the number of apps in the store is high because there's millions of keywords, spam, clone, piece of crap things.

01:24:57 ◼   ► And like those three numbers are big on their own.

01:25:01 ◼   ► But like together, they don't make an app store filled with awesome games and developers making a lot of money.

01:25:07 ◼   ► You know what I mean? And I don't know if they know that or if they think they just look at their metric and say that metric is good, that metric is good, that metric is good.

01:25:14 ◼   ► Therefore, the app store is good because I think when they see these games like this app, isn't this beautiful app used for medical imaging or that sells like 10 copies?

01:25:21 ◼   ► No one buys it.

01:25:22 ◼   ► Everyone is buying Candy Crush and getting their money sucked out of their pockets.

01:25:26 ◼   ► And there's so many apps.

01:25:27 ◼   ► Look how many billions of apps we have.

01:25:29 ◼   ► We have more apps.

01:25:30 ◼   ► Yeah, they're all crap.

01:25:31 ◼   ► Like we just it's what we're all complaining about is because we want we

01:25:35 ◼   ► realized that those things are so different and we want there to be a store

01:25:38 ◼   ► with lots of good, high quality apps made by developers who get a fair price for

01:25:43 ◼   ► them and customers who are satisfied about them.

01:25:44 ◼   ► And that's not the app store that exists.

01:25:46 ◼   ► But the individual metrics are the numbers look good, right?

01:25:50 ◼   ► And I really wonder whether they are fooled

01:25:54 ◼   ► by those numbers or whether they just bring those numbers

01:25:56 ◼   ► out and say, well, this makes good for good PR,

01:25:58 ◼   ► but we know internally there's a bunch of problems.

01:26:01 ◼   ► - That's a good question.

01:26:02 ◼   ► - But if they know internally there's a bunch of problems,

01:26:04 ◼   ► we've had a lot of time for those problems to get fixed.

01:26:07 ◼   ► And Marco's right, there's been a decided lack of action.

01:26:12 ◼   ► So at what point do we just throw our hands in the air

01:26:14 ◼   ► and say, you know what, this is obviously the way it is

01:26:17 ◼   ► and we're just gonna have to live with it?

01:26:19 ◼   ► I mean, a lot of it, like if you look at the App Store,

01:26:23 ◼   ► it's obviously built on the same infrastructure

01:26:24 ◼   ► as the iTunes Store.

01:26:26 ◼   ► And the iTunes Store has the exact same issues,

01:26:29 ◼   ► where it doesn't really change very often.

01:26:31 ◼   ► If you look at the iTunes Store today,

01:26:35 ◼   ► versus the iTunes Store in 2008,

01:26:37 ◼   ► when the App Store was launched, it has not changed much.

01:26:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, but any joker with $99 can't put a song up there

01:26:44 ◼   ► that uses the same title as a Beyonce song

01:26:46 ◼   ► and trying to make money by people accidentally buying it.

01:26:48 ◼   ► - Right, that's true.

01:26:50 ◼   ► But, well it probably isn't that different actually.

01:26:52 ◼   ► But anyway, it seems like anything that involves

01:26:56 ◼   ► the iTunes Store infrastructure, for whatever reason,

01:26:59 ◼   ► whether it's technical, political, whatever the reason is,

01:27:03 ◼   ► it's like it's frozen in time and Apple can never

01:27:06 ◼   ► meaningfully improve it or they just choose not to.

01:27:09 ◼   ► And I don't know what that, like forever ago Casey,

01:27:12 ◼   ► our friend, I probably shouldn't name him,

01:27:15 ◼   ► but forever ago our friend told us a number of times

01:27:18 ◼   ► that the iTunes store is not run by Apple,

01:27:22 ◼   ► it's run by some contractor in Virginia,

01:27:24 ◼   ► something like that.

01:27:25 ◼   ► And I don't know if that's true or not,

01:27:26 ◼   ► but if that is true, it would explain a lot.

01:27:28 ◼   ► But either way, it just seems like Apple doesn't care

01:27:32 ◼   ► that much about the iTunes store,

01:27:33 ◼   ► or they are paralyzed by some kind of technical debt

01:27:37 ◼   ► that they haven't repaid or choose not to repay,

01:27:40 ◼   ► and just can't change anything about it.

01:27:42 ◼   ► Or whatever reason they don't change anything about it.

01:27:45 ◼   ► - They're paralyzed by the success

01:27:47 ◼   ► in terms of the volume.

01:27:48 ◼   ► Some of those numbers they tried out how many apps are there how many things are downloaded how many bytes how many songs and those?

01:27:54 ◼   ► Numbers are so big and any interruption in that is so you know like

01:27:58 ◼   ► You know this this should be something that the company can handle doing but I think that

01:28:03 ◼   ► As the biggest thing they have the biggest online thing that money comes in and data goes out is basically a app store and iTunes

01:28:11 ◼   ► Store combined right that's their biggest thing

01:28:13 ◼   ► If your plan is we're gonna totally change that thing

01:28:17 ◼   ► And you're an organization that feels nervous about your,

01:28:21 ◼   ► you know, not so confident about your ability to deploy

01:28:24 ◼   ► sort of web scale, Google scale services.

01:28:27 ◼   ► You're gonna be like,

01:28:28 ◼   ► eh, my bonus depends on not being down on Christmas morning

01:28:31 ◼   ► and letting people set up their new devices

01:28:33 ◼   ► and be able to buy apps and iTunes things.

01:28:35 ◼   ► And this works for that.

01:28:36 ◼   ► And people have complaints,

01:28:37 ◼   ► but like it's pretty easy to convince yourself

01:28:39 ◼   ► that the safe move is to just stick with the infrastructure

01:28:42 ◼   ► you have and just keep improving it by bits and pieces.

01:28:44 ◼   ► - How long can Apple keep going

01:28:46 ◼   ► with their web services feeling like they're running on DOS

01:28:49 ◼   ► and everyone else is in this century.

01:28:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, the longer they go, the bigger it gets.

01:28:52 ◼   ► Like if they had these same feelings back when the iTunes,

01:28:55 ◼   ► when the App Store didn't exist

01:28:56 ◼   ► and the iTunes Store was half the size

01:28:57 ◼   ► and now just the problem keeps getting bigger

01:28:59 ◼   ► and bigger over time.

01:29:00 ◼   ► So the longer they wait, the harder it is to replace it

01:29:03 ◼   ► with something better that also happens to work

01:29:05 ◼   ► at that scale.

01:29:06 ◼   ► It's just by Google.

01:29:08 ◼   ► - Well, you know, I think we're all losing sight

01:29:11 ◼   ► of the fact that it's only a matter of time

01:29:13 ◼   ► before WebObjects has a resurgence

01:29:15 ◼   ► because clearly that's what's going to happen.

01:29:17 ◼   ► - And I don't even know if they're still using WebObjects.

01:29:19 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:29:20 ◼   ► It doesn't-- - They are.

01:29:21 ◼   ► - They are, really?

01:29:22 ◼   ► - They are. - Oh, boy.

01:29:23 ◼   ► - On the backend, like we can see the WOAH URLs

01:29:26 ◼   ► and the web page, but you know.

01:29:27 ◼   ► - It could have been legacy URLs.

01:29:29 ◼   ► Nah, probably not.

01:29:31 ◼   ► - No, no, no.

01:29:32 ◼   ► My extremely limited understanding,

01:29:35 ◼   ► influenced in part by Friends of Birdies

01:29:39 ◼   ► and things in Birdies occasionally,

01:29:42 ◼   ► it is all mostly WebObjects, as far as I know,

01:29:44 ◼   ► if not all Web objects in the backend?

01:29:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

01:29:47 ◼   ► I mean, that probably, the language

01:29:49 ◼   ► might not be the problem.

01:29:51 ◼   ► I think it's pretty clear the problem

01:29:52 ◼   ► is just cultural within Apple.

01:29:54 ◼   ► It's like they, for whatever reason,

01:29:57 ◼   ► they just do not consider it a priority

01:30:00 ◼   ► to modernize these systems in a significant major way

01:30:04 ◼   ► or to make significant changes to the stores themselves

01:30:09 ◼   ► or the way they work to benefit users and developers

01:30:12 ◼   ► in a substantial way.

01:30:14 ◼   ► They just don't care.

01:30:15 ◼   ► That's the reality of it.

01:30:16 ◼   ► They just don't care.

01:30:18 ◼   ► - Well, and I wonder if part of the reason they don't care

01:30:22 ◼   ► is because from my understanding of the Google Play Store,

01:30:27 ◼   ► that is so full of, I don't know if I should call it spam,

01:30:31 ◼   ► but full of things that probably don't belong,

01:30:35 ◼   ► and you can define that however you'd like.

01:30:37 ◼   ► It's such a, it's an even worse Wild West out there.

01:30:41 ◼   ► And so since nobody's showing them up

01:30:44 ◼   ► and making them look bad.

01:30:46 ◼   ► And additionally, since so many really hot apps

01:30:48 ◼   ► are still on iOS first,

01:30:51 ◼   ► like Instagram is a great example,

01:30:53 ◼   ► which is quite old now, but take Instagram.

01:30:56 ◼   ► What's compelling Apple to make it better?

01:30:59 ◼   ► A bunch of whiny nerds talking on a podcast

01:31:02 ◼   ► that maybe none of them listen to anyway.

01:31:04 ◼   ► I don't see what the impetus is

01:31:08 ◼   ► to really make it better from their point of view.

01:31:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a good point.

01:31:11 ◼   ► I think we would all agree

01:31:11 ◼   ► that they still have the best store, as crappy as it may be,

01:31:15 ◼   ► because the problems are worse elsewhere.

01:31:17 ◼   ► And so Apple responds to competitive pressure.

01:31:21 ◼   ► Android getting better.

01:31:22 ◼   ► If you look at the past major iOS versions

01:31:26 ◼   ► and look at the features they've added,

01:31:28 ◼   ► a lot of them have been in iOS first

01:31:30 ◼   ► and that competitive pressure really had,

01:31:33 ◼   ► when Apple's deciding what's gonna go in iOS 5,

01:31:35 ◼   ► what's gonna go in iOS 6,

01:31:37 ◼   ► strategic and competitive things.

01:31:39 ◼   ► Like strategic is like, oh, we gotta do maps on our own

01:31:41 ◼   ► because we hate Google now, and notifications.

01:31:44 ◼   ► Why did they get those?

01:31:45 ◼   ► Well, Android had them for a while, and people wanted them,

01:31:47 ◼   ► so they had to do something like that.

01:31:48 ◼   ► Apple can add lots of different features to their OS.

01:31:51 ◼   ► They very often choose to add ones

01:31:53 ◼   ► that competitors had before them because it's

01:31:55 ◼   ► competitive pressure.

01:31:56 ◼   ► And so who is making the better curated, more pleasant, less

01:32:00 ◼   ► spam-filled app store?

01:32:02 ◼   ► Nobody, I guess.

01:32:03 ◼   ► Well, what is it?

01:32:05 ◼   ► Findio, fnd.io.

01:32:07 ◼   ► Isn't that Mute Winner that did that?

01:32:09 ◼   ► - No, I'm saying like which other platform?

01:32:10 ◼   ► Like, I mean, maybe Windows Phone

01:32:12 ◼   ► because it doesn't have a lot of apps,

01:32:14 ◼   ► so all of them in there, like, I don't know.

01:32:16 ◼   ► I don't wanna make fun of Windows Phone, but.

01:32:18 ◼   ► - I don't know.

01:32:19 ◼   ► Right, so back to this list,

01:32:22 ◼   ► which the longer we spend going through it,