ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► What the hell's on the live stream right now that everyone's freaking out about?

00:00:02 ◼   ► Warm it up, Chris!

00:00:03 ◼   ► I'm about to- Jesus.

00:00:04 ◼   ► We're not live yet, right?

00:00:08 ◼   ► We do have some follow-ups.

00:00:10 ◼   ► Something happened a few hours ago, thank goodness, because otherwise this would have

00:00:13 ◼   ► been a short show.

00:00:14 ◼   ► But yeah, we do have some follow-ups.

00:00:17 ◼   ► So, Jon, would you like to tell us about how people do or do not play games?

00:00:22 ◼   ► Yeah, last week I mentioned the average age of gamers and none of us knew what it was,

00:00:28 ◼   ► if someone wrote it in the chat room, I didn't notice, so I apologize for that.

00:00:31 ◼   ► But I looked it up, you know, it's not hard to find this information, so here are the stats.

00:00:36 ◼   ► This was in regards to both of you saying that you had grown out of playing games,

00:00:39 ◼   ► and me saying that's ridiculous, because most people who play games are even older than you,

00:00:43 ◼   ► or adults. Wait, hold on. Neither of us said we grew out of games. That's going to get us

00:00:49 ◼   ► some feedback, which it already has, which is not accurate.

00:00:53 ◼   ► I don't remember the exact quote, but it was something like you just felt like you were

00:00:57 ◼   ► out of it. Anyway, everyone responding thinks that's what you said. So obviously there was

00:01:00 ◼   ► a miscommunication and you can feel free to clarify because they keep saying, I agree with

00:01:03 ◼   ► Casey and Marco, I also grew out of games. Like we're seeing those responses. Again,

00:01:07 ◼   ► that doesn't mean that's what you said. But that's clearly the message that people were getting.

00:01:10 ◼   ► What we both said was that we didn't see games, correct me if I'm wrong Casey, that we didn't see

00:01:16 ◼   ► games as like a juvenile thing that you would grow out of, but rather we played games for a long time.

00:01:22 ◼   ► And then we, you know, in recent years or, you know, after we left college or whatever,

00:01:26 ◼   ► we just didn't choose to spend our time playing games or didn't have the time to play games

00:01:30 ◼   ► anymore. So it's not necessarily a growing out of it, because that implies that it's,

00:01:34 ◼   ► you know, like a juvenile thing. It's more that we just chose not to spend our time doing that

00:01:39 ◼   ► anymore. Yeah, I would agree with that. Our priorities shifted. Right. It's like the same

00:01:43 ◼   ► result, but with a different reason and with less judgment in the reason. Initially, one of you said,

00:01:50 ◼   ► I don't know. I guess I just grew out of it. Maybe that was a joke. And yes, later you did say that

00:01:54 ◼   ► at least Marco said that he didn't think they were juvenile or anything, but everyone latched on to

00:01:58 ◼   ► the growing out of it angle. But anyway, here is the information I was trying to get across.

00:02:01 ◼   ► This is the average age of gamers, and no one else knew what it was. The average age of game players,

00:02:06 ◼   ► according to the Entertainment Software Association, which is a trade association

00:02:10 ◼   ► that tracks these type of things for video games, is 31 years old. This is the United States

00:02:17 ◼   ► stats only, I think it's only US. Anyway, the average age of the US population is 37.2. So,

00:02:22 ◼   ► yes, the average age of the people in the United States is slightly older, but I think that makes

00:02:27 ◼   ► sense considering video games were introduced partially into the lives of many people who are

00:02:31 ◼   ► alive today, so you don't have a sample, you know, everyone alive wasn't born when video games were

00:02:36 ◼   ► introduced. The ratios are 52% male, 48% female, and out of the most frequent game purchasers,

00:02:43 ◼   ► The ratios are exactly even, 50/50 male/female.

00:02:46 ◼   ► They say 59% of Americans play video games.

00:02:50 ◼   ► And here are some stats and breakdowns.

00:02:52 ◼   ► Women over 18 are 36%.

00:02:54 ◼   ► Boys 18 or younger are 17%.

00:02:57 ◼   ► So twice as many adult women play games as juvenile boys do.

00:03:02 ◼   ► And they say 51% of U.S. homes have a game console,

00:03:05 ◼   ► and there's an average of two game consoles in each house that has any.

00:03:10 ◼   ► So, like I said, most game players are more or less our age.

00:03:13 ◼   ► I'm older than 31.

00:03:14 ◼   ► You guys are also-- you're both older than 31, right?

00:03:17 ◼   ► I am 31.

00:03:18 ◼   ► Yep.

00:03:18 ◼   ► There you go.

00:03:19 ◼   ► So you are exactly the average age of a gamer.

00:03:21 ◼   ► And I think it makes sense, because people your age, Marco,

00:03:24 ◼   ► and my age are basically like--

00:03:26 ◼   ► video games were invented more or less when we were young.

00:03:28 ◼   ► By the time we were old enough to play them, they were popular.

00:03:32 ◼   ► We played them.

00:03:33 ◼   ► We grew up.

00:03:33 ◼   ► We continue to play them.

00:03:34 ◼   ► Whereas people who were 30 years old before the Atari 2600

00:03:39 ◼   ► was introduced are much less likely, I think,

00:03:41 ◼   ► to have gotten into it.

00:03:42 ◼   ► So we are sort of the first generation of people to have grown up with games and it makes sense that we continue to play

00:03:46 ◼   ► them

00:03:47 ◼   ► Whereas the people who are sort of ahead of us may have never gotten into it at all

00:03:51 ◼   ► And I think I made all these points in the last show people talking about growing out of games and stuff

00:03:55 ◼   ► And tweeting about it and so on and saying well I do it

00:03:58 ◼   ► I don't do it as much now as I used to

00:04:00 ◼   ► You may grow out of the games that you played when you were a child in the same way you grow out of the books

00:04:05 ◼   ► That you read or you don't read little golden books anymore

00:04:07 ◼   ► You don't watch a Hannah-Barbera cartoons

00:04:09 ◼   ► Anyway, like there are many things you did as a child that you grow out of

00:04:11 ◼   ► but video games are a medium and they're fairly diverse.

00:04:16 ◼   ► And so even though you, of course, you don't have the time to play games that you use,

00:04:20 ◼   ► because you don't have time to do anything. You don't have time to just

00:04:22 ◼   ► pick any sort of leisure time activity. Of course, you have more time than that when you're a kid.

00:04:26 ◼   ► But as you get older, you will like different games, just like you like different movies and

00:04:31 ◼   ► different television shows and different books. And that, I think, is natural.

00:04:35 ◼   ► I think a lot of the people who say, "Well, I grew out of games. All I do now is..."

00:04:40 ◼   ► And then they insert like the three games that they play, but I barely have time for that

00:04:43 ◼   ► Well, yeah, so of course you barely have time, but if you're still playing games like that

00:04:46 ◼   ► Then you didn't really grow out of games. You just grew out of the games that you played as a child

00:04:50 ◼   ► It's true that some people never go out of the games. They played as a child. Maybe they played super mario

00:04:53 ◼   ► Bellas as a child they love super mario to this day and they keep playing it. That's fine, too

00:04:57 ◼   ► Same thing with books. I mean how many adults out there read young adult books as like

00:05:02 ◼   ► you know and love them like the harry potter series is a good example or a lot of these things even like the

00:05:07 ◼   ► Hunger Games and stuff like that. A lot of these books are technically young adult books,

00:05:10 ◼   ► but many adults enjoy them. Did they not grow out of that? Should they have grown out of books? Should

00:05:14 ◼   ► they have grown out of those specific books? I don't think it's an important distinction. But

00:05:18 ◼   ► the idea that games are something that most people played when they were a kid and don't

00:05:23 ◼   ► play anymore, I think is not borne out by the statistics, at least in the United States.

00:05:27 ◼   ► Do people count as gamers if they just have like Angry Birds and throw it on their phones

00:05:33 ◼   ► versus a console game or a PC game?

00:05:36 ◼   ► Is there a distinction and should there be a distinction?

00:05:39 ◼   ► And maybe the answer is no.

00:05:41 ◼   ► But should there be a distinction between people

00:05:43 ◼   ► who have a couple of casual games on their phone

00:05:46 ◼   ► versus people who own dedicated gaming hardware

00:05:49 ◼   ► or have bought a $40 or $50 game before?

00:05:53 ◼   ► - I don't think they're making those kind of distinctions.

00:05:56 ◼   ► I think they consider all games games and so would I.

00:05:59 ◼   ► If you say, well, I don't play games, all I do is

00:06:01 ◼   ► and then you insert some iOS game

00:06:02 ◼   ► that you obsessively play in every moment of your spare time.

00:06:04 ◼   ► Like, yeah, you play games.

00:06:06 ◼   ► They do add information on consoles,

00:06:09 ◼   ► which you would consider, like, that's not casual, right?

00:06:11 ◼   ► I don't know if that's still true,

00:06:12 ◼   ► but like, this thing is saying 51% of homes

00:06:14 ◼   ► have a game console in them.

00:06:16 ◼   ► Someone in those homes is playing those games, right?

00:06:19 ◼   ► And so it's, you know, it's not like,

00:06:20 ◼   ► well, 51% of homes have game consoles,

00:06:22 ◼   ► but the only people who play game consoles

00:06:24 ◼   ► are the 17% of gamers who are male and younger than 18.

00:06:28 ◼   ► Like, that seems unlikely.

00:06:29 ◼   ► But anyway, I count them all as games.

00:06:30 ◼   ► There's iOS, there are plenty of legitimate games on iOS.

00:06:34 ◼   ► I mean, maybe they're not counting like Solitaire and Minesweeper, but I think maybe these days

00:06:39 ◼   ► those have sort of fallen by the wayside.

00:06:41 ◼   ► But yeah, I don't think there's a useful distinction between them.

00:06:44 ◼   ► That's not a real game.

00:06:45 ◼   ► That's not a real book.

00:06:47 ◼   ► That's just a, I don't know, a mystery novel, a romance novel.

00:06:50 ◼   ► Do these not count as real books or something?

00:06:52 ◼   ► It has to be Tolstoy.

00:06:53 ◼   ► A game is a game is a game.

00:06:56 ◼   ► Fair enough.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Actually, I do have a question for you.

00:06:58 ◼   ► Does Tina get involved in any of the video gaming around your house?

00:07:03 ◼   ► She plays games on her phone a lot, and I think that's where she plays the majority

00:07:07 ◼   ► of her games, but at various times she has been very into, as an adult, very into both

00:07:11 ◼   ► console games and computer games.

00:07:14 ◼   ► But these days, any time she—I don't want to reveal her dirty gaming secrets, but I

00:07:20 ◼   ► would say certain iOS games that have the ability to get their hooks into people have

00:07:25 ◼   ► gotten their hooks into her.

00:07:26 ◼   ► And so she is very susceptible to that.

00:07:28 ◼   ► I don't approve of most of the games that she plays, but she definitely does play them.

00:07:32 ◼   ► Fair enough.

00:07:33 ◼   ► Now what about your kids?

00:07:34 ◼   ► Because I know your son, last I heard, is really into Minecraft.

00:07:39 ◼   ► Is that still the case?

00:07:41 ◼   ► Yes, Minecraft has destroyed his life and ours.

00:07:46 ◼   ► He had a very diverse gaming education up until the age of, I guess, nine.

00:07:51 ◼   ► Sometime in his ninth year of life, Minecraft came in and destroyed everything else having

00:07:57 ◼   ► to do with his life.

00:07:58 ◼   ► He is obsessed with Minecraft.

00:07:59 ◼   ► Has he played any game other than Minecraft recently?

00:08:03 ◼   ► I don't think so.

00:08:04 ◼   ► He's totally obsessed.

00:08:06 ◼   ► And neither your son nor daughter got into the Wii U very much?

00:08:09 ◼   ► Well, I mean, that's the other—when his friends come over, he plays the Wii U with

00:08:13 ◼   ► his friends, because I guess Minecraft is not as much of a social game.

00:08:17 ◼   ► So he does still play that, and I assume the next—recently I've been playing games

00:08:22 ◼   ► that he can't play with me, but I'm assuming the next game that we can all play together

00:08:25 ◼   ► comes out, he'll play with me, like the next Zelda game or—what do you call it,

00:08:29 ◼   ► God, I can't even remember the name anymore, because the Last Guardian, if that ever comes

00:08:33 ◼   ► out, he'll play that with me.

00:08:35 ◼   ► But he's not clamoring to play those games.

00:08:36 ◼   ► We have all his game consoles hooked up, and I've been playing games on them more than

00:08:40 ◼   ► he has.

00:08:41 ◼   ► But yeah, it's natural for kids his age to get obsessed with things like this, and

00:08:46 ◼   ► just ask Marco with his total annihilation units and everything.

00:08:49 ◼   ► You get really—at a certain point, you get really into one game.

00:08:52 ◼   ► Like, yeah, you like lots of games, but then a certain game comes and it absorbs you.

00:08:56 ◼   ► This has happened with Minecraft.

00:08:57 ◼   ► My daughter, I keep trying to get her to play games many, many times on many different consoles

00:09:02 ◼   ► and on the computer.

00:09:03 ◼   ► She'll play a little bit of kind of casual games on iOS, but she's just not into it.

00:09:08 ◼   ► I don't want to really push it, but I keep putting them in front of her.

00:09:11 ◼   ► I actually had her play Monument Valley, and that, I think, was about her speed.

00:09:14 ◼   ► I still haven't played that yet.

00:09:16 ◼   ► She just turned seven.

00:09:18 ◼   ► I did buy that game and have not even opened it.

00:09:20 ◼   ► Like now, ever since iOS 6, I believe, added that new badge on apps so that you could tell if you have an app that you've never launched before,

00:09:28 ◼   ► I've really been shamed by those badges on my phone because it's all games.

00:09:34 ◼   ► And there's like, there's, I probably right now on my phone probably have like seven or eight games that I bought in the last six months that I haven't even launched yet.

00:09:43 ◼   ► Like, I want to be a gamer in theory, but I never decide to spend the time doing that.

00:09:49 ◼   ► Monument Valley is actually a great example of an application that takes advantage of

00:09:54 ◼   ► retina.

00:09:55 ◼   ► They go, "Oh, it doesn't matter for games.

00:09:57 ◼   ► Who cares?

00:09:58 ◼   ► Half of those are low-res, 3D things scaled up to..."

00:10:00 ◼   ► But Monument Valley has graphics that really benefit from the retina resolution, because

00:10:06 ◼   ► they're just such beautiful little finely detailed things.

00:10:10 ◼   ► It's not like a typical 3D game with stuff flying all over the place.

00:10:14 ◼   ► It's very precise, and it looks great in retina, I think.

00:10:18 ◼   ► The game itself, I think it's more of a casual game.

00:10:21 ◼   ► I think it is very beautiful and interesting, but it's way too easy for anyone who's an

00:10:27 ◼   ► actual experienced gamer and plays games a lot.

00:10:31 ◼   ► And it's a little bit short.

00:10:32 ◼   ► I don't really care about length.

00:10:33 ◼   ► It's not like I'm buying it for the length.

00:10:34 ◼   ► If it was short and fulfilling, I feel like it just...

00:10:38 ◼   ► should have been a little bit more there in terms of the overall experience. Maybe if it was harder

00:10:42 ◼   ► and I had more of a challenge, but I recommend it for lots of people who find the games that I enjoy

00:10:48 ◼   ► too challenging. So I think that's why I had my daughter play. It's like, well, you'll be able to

00:10:52 ◼   ► play this. You'll be able to do well and it will challenge you a little bit. I think you'd be bored

00:10:57 ◼   ► by it, Margot, but you should still just launch it just to look at the graphics because, like I said,

00:11:00 ◼   ► it is the rare game that I can't even imagine on a non-retina screen being half as nice looking.

00:11:08 ◼   ► So you said that it's probably way too easy for an experienced gamer, so now a little

00:11:15 ◼   ► concern that I won't be able to handle it.

00:11:17 ◼   ► You will, it's not.

00:11:18 ◼   ► I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

00:11:20 ◼   ► I need to try it.

00:11:21 ◼   ► I haven't bought it yet.

00:11:22 ◼   ► I keep forgetting about it anytime I'm sitting in front of my phone or iPad just goofing

00:11:26 ◼   ► off.

00:11:27 ◼   ► I need to get it.

00:11:28 ◼   ► Although, I don't know.

00:11:29 ◼   ► Maybe my things are skewed, because I have seen tweets from people talking about not

00:11:33 ◼   ► so much getting stuck, but having difficulty, and I can't tell if they're joking.

00:11:36 ◼   ► So maybe my idea of what's difficult and what's not is totally skewed.

00:11:39 ◼   ► So one of you should just play it.

00:11:41 ◼   ► Just play through two levels, it'll take you five minutes.

00:11:42 ◼   ► And just tell me, wasn't that like, there's almost no choice.

00:11:46 ◼   ► Like it leads you, it is very linear.

00:11:50 ◼   ► There's not many places that you can go wrong.

00:11:52 ◼   ► I mean, the same could be said of Journey, but it's different.

00:11:56 ◼   ► Anyway, try it.

00:11:58 ◼   ► Homework for you two.

00:11:59 ◼   ► If I try the first two levels and it takes me 35 minutes, should I not admit that?

00:12:03 ◼   ► It will not.

00:12:04 ◼   ► The first level will take you 30 seconds,

00:12:05 ◼   ► the second level should take you about two minutes.

00:12:07 ◼   ► - One more quick theory about gaming

00:12:11 ◼   ► and losing interesting gaming over time.

00:12:14 ◼   ► And maybe this is just me, I don't know.

00:12:16 ◼   ► And Jon, I'm sure you're gonna have

00:12:17 ◼   ► a good explanation for this.

00:12:19 ◼   ► I've found that one of the biggest factors

00:12:23 ◼   ► I think that got me out of gaming,

00:12:24 ◼   ► and maybe it's just coincidence

00:12:25 ◼   ► 'cause it overlapped my age progression

00:12:28 ◼   ► and my work progression,

00:12:29 ◼   ► but one of the things I think got me out of gaming

00:12:31 ◼   ► is so many of the types of games that I enjoyed

00:12:35 ◼   ► fell out of favor and we would get

00:12:38 ◼   ► almost none of them made anymore.

00:12:39 ◼   ► So for example, I love 2D platformer games.

00:12:43 ◼   ► Sonic, Mario, any of the good 2D platformers, I love those.

00:12:47 ◼   ► But almost nobody makes 2D platformers anymore.

00:12:49 ◼   ► - Incorrect.

00:12:50 ◼   ► - Well, hold on, hold on.

00:12:52 ◼   ► And I did play that awesome one on Xbox Live,

00:12:53 ◼   ► the Shadow Complex, I think it's called.

00:12:55 ◼   ► I did play that one and loved it.

00:12:58 ◼   ► So for a while-- and maybe now the indie scene

00:13:02 ◼   ► is getting this back, fortunately.

00:13:04 ◼   ► But for a while, once the 3D systems came out,

00:13:08 ◼   ► the PlayStation, the N64, the Saturn,

00:13:11 ◼   ► it became-- 2D platformers basically

00:13:15 ◼   ► went extinct for a while.

00:13:17 ◼   ► And the same thing happened with RTS games,

00:13:20 ◼   ► where I loved RTS games, as you mentioned in my Total

00:13:23 ◼   ► Annihilation phase earlier.

00:13:25 ◼   ► loved RTS games through my, through almost my entire teenage

00:13:28 ◼   ► hood, if that's a word. And, and then RTS has kind of stopped

00:13:34 ◼   ► being made very well after maybe 2003, 2004-ish. Like, Supreme

00:13:40 ◼   ► Commander was kind of, was like a big one that was awesome, but

00:13:42 ◼   ► nobody bought it. And then they kind of went by the wayside as,

00:13:45 ◼   ► as fantasy and MMOs kind of took over. And so like that kind of

00:13:51 ◼   ► bothered me too and and and now like iOS and I also I also love turn-based

00:13:56 ◼   ► strategy games but those are very few and far between and are you almost never

00:14:00 ◼   ► commercial hits and now with iOS like some of the best casual games is you

00:14:07 ◼   ► know are they used to be great in iOS you get them for like five bucks and

00:14:10 ◼   ► they were awesome and now they've all been ruined with freemium and free-to-play

00:14:14 ◼   ► and all that crap and so I wonder like you know is this just me am I am I just

00:14:19 ◼   ► kind of missing the new stuff because I stopped looking around like I do with

00:14:24 ◼   ► PHP or is this like is this a legitimate reason why I've been kind of kicked out

00:14:29 ◼   ► of gaming for a while I don't know well there's two there's two things here one

00:14:33 ◼   ► there are genres that become more and less popular over time think of in terms

00:14:39 ◼   ► of movies like murder mystery movies where the whole plot of the movie is

00:14:43 ◼   ► someone is murdered and you have to figure out who it is you don't see a lot

00:14:45 ◼   ► of them anymore. You do see some of them, but that genre has become less popular over

00:14:51 ◼   ► time. So that does happen. And it comes in cycles, you know, what's popular now may not

00:14:54 ◼   ► be what's popular 50 years from now and goes around in circles. On that front, by the way,

00:14:59 ◼   ► the reason I said incorrect for the 2D games is right now there's a massive renaissance

00:15:03 ◼   ► in 2D platformers, which I don't particularly like because I'm not into 2D platformers,

00:15:06 ◼   ► but they're all over the place. And not just indie games. Nintendo has been putting out

00:15:10 ◼   ► brand new 2D Mario games that I enjoy way less than their 3D versions and there's just

00:15:16 ◼   ► a constant stream of them and those are not indie things, those are like, you know, they're

00:15:20 ◼   ► Nintendo flagship titles and tons of indie ones.

00:15:23 ◼   ► So if you're into 2D platforming, like, you cannot throw a rock without hitting a 2D platformer.

00:15:29 ◼   ► But one of the genres you mentioned, real-time strategy, the type of real-time strategy game

00:15:33 ◼   ► you're talking about, like, isometric sprite-based, you know, 2D map kind of thing, like even

00:15:40 ◼   ► before the age of 3D games.

00:15:41 ◼   ► Hey, wait.

00:15:42 ◼   ► Hang on a second.

00:15:43 ◼   ► Total Annihilation was none of those, by the way.

00:15:45 ◼   ► Go ahead.

00:15:46 ◼   ► All right.

00:15:47 ◼   ► I don't know what vintage your real-time strategy games are, but yes, they eventually went 3D

00:15:50 ◼   ► and you could, yeah.

00:15:52 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:15:53 ◼   ► They became less popular.

00:15:54 ◼   ► A lot of the reason they became less popular is because computers became more able to do

00:15:58 ◼   ► the genres that became more popular.

00:16:00 ◼   ► So once first-person shooters started to take over the entire universe and you could do

00:16:03 ◼   ► any genre in first-person perspective, so there was first-person everything, real-time

00:16:09 ◼   ► strategy games became less popular. They're still out there. I mean, there's still StarCraft.

00:16:14 ◼   ► There's the things that they've kind of, you know, that same type of perspective you'll

00:16:17 ◼   ► see, not that Diablo is not a real-time strategy game, but it's a similar perspective in that

00:16:21 ◼   ► you're looking down on what looks like a little board and clicking on people and doing things.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Yeah, if you get really into a particular game and a particular genre and a particular

00:16:32 ◼   ► implementation of that genre, because people will be like, "Well, I like real-time strategy

00:16:35 ◼   ► games, but I don't like the ones that do X, Y, and Z. I only like the ones that, like,

00:16:37 ◼   ► when I was, I think I talked about myth on a past show, about how much I liked it and

00:16:41 ◼   ► it was so different than other RTS games. If you're into those specifics, you may have

00:16:45 ◼   ► to wait for another one of those things to come around, but what I would say is that

00:16:49 ◼   ► the things you like about that type of game exist in other games, and you shouldn't really

00:16:53 ◼   ► be married to the genre. Like, if you just like watching murder mysteries, it's like,

00:16:58 ◼   ► what is it that I like about murder mysteries? Do I like the fact that someone gets killed

00:17:02 ◼   ► and I could get the same thing out of a horror movie? Do I like the fact that there's suspense

00:17:05 ◼   ► and I could get it out of a different kind of thriller or am I just looking for a puzzle that I have to solve and

00:17:10 ◼   ► Instead I should be watching the you know M. Night Shyamalan movies with a stupid twist

00:17:13 ◼   ► I mean like what you were getting out of those games the things you enjoy systemizing things

00:17:17 ◼   ► Micromanaging things you know do you enjoy like working the tech trees?

00:17:21 ◼   ► There's a lot of games you can play now perhaps like a role-playing game with a big crafting tree and like character

00:17:26 ◼   ► Develop like you may be able to get the same experiences out of different types of games

00:17:31 ◼   ► Or it may be that you just really like real-time strategy games

00:17:33 ◼   ► and you just have to wait until something like that becomes popular again.

00:17:36 ◼   ► That's conceivable too.

00:17:37 ◼   ► And like I said, it's the same thing in every other medium.

00:17:40 ◼   ► What kind of books are popular now?

00:17:42 ◼   ► What kind of movies?

00:17:43 ◼   ► What kind of TV shows?

00:17:44 ◼   ► I mean, look at TV for crying out loud.

00:17:45 ◼   ► If you are totally into formulaic half-an-hour sitcoms, it's there.

00:17:49 ◼   ► So hard to find now, but everyone has to have some sort of twist or angle, and the one-hour

00:17:53 ◼   ► drama is hugely popular now.

00:17:56 ◼   ► The one-hour drama was like an aberration 20, 30 years ago, and now it's like everything

00:18:00 ◼   ► has to be this gritty one-hour drama.

00:18:02 ◼   ► Like they make a show about Sleepy Hollow and it's like this big gritty thing, you know

00:18:05 ◼   ► and whereas like

00:18:06 ◼   ► The old sitcoms are they used to be everywhere now

00:18:09 ◼   ► They're very rare and each one of them has some weird twist about them

00:18:12 ◼   ► So I think that's part of it

00:18:14 ◼   ► But like I said, like gaming is not as broad as books movies or TVs not yet anyway, but it's getting close

00:18:20 ◼   ► But there's probably something out there that you would get the same type of enjoyment out of and who knows like maybe if you're like

00:18:25 ◼   ► Oh, they don't make murder mystery movies anymore. All of a sudden you start going to see like, you know

00:18:30 ◼   ► goofy comedies, you may find out, hey, I never watched goofy comedies before, but I really enjoy them. So there's a lot out there.

00:18:35 ◼   ► You know, the funny thing for me is, to take this aside just a smidge, is that I find that I get

00:18:42 ◼   ► really into certain games, but only for a very small window of time. And most recently it's been iOS games, but

00:18:49 ◼   ► I think I mentioned last episode, or I might have, that I played Metal Gear Solid

00:18:55 ◼   ► the whole way through. I used to love the Zelda games. Well, I played Ocarina of Time,

00:19:00 ◼   ► and I don't think I ever had whatever it was for the Wii. But I'll find these games that I just

00:19:05 ◼   ► am obsessed with. So I'm looking at my iPhone, and I only have a handful of games on there,

00:19:08 ◼   ► but like, you know, right when the iPhone came out, I played the crap out of flight control for

00:19:13 ◼   ► forever. When the incident came out, I loved that. Letterpress loved that. Tiny Wings.

00:19:19 ◼   ► Ramp Champ by the Icon Factory, which is a much better game than anyone, well,

00:19:23 ◼   ► then a lot of people gave it credit for threes when that came out recently. So all these games,

00:19:27 ◼   ► I just madly in love with them and I'll play them to death. Not unlike what I do when I find a song

00:19:33 ◼   ► I like, and then I just never look back. So I haven't played threes in like a month and I was

00:19:39 ◼   ► playing it nonstop for two or three weeks. And maybe that's just my personality, but I don't

00:19:43 ◼   ► know. It's just the way I've approached gaming lately. You're in the middle of a letterpress

00:19:47 ◼   ► game against me, Casey. So anytime you want to move like six months, I was about to say,

00:19:52 ◼   ► I haven't opened that that happened forever. It's not that it's bad

00:19:54 ◼   ► Like I still do enjoy it when I open it

00:19:57 ◼   ► But I just never think about it anymore and I think I heard Marco say that you're the same way like I get these

00:20:02 ◼   ► Obsessions, but then just as quickly as I get the obsession then it's done

00:20:07 ◼   ► That's why I like with my limited time as an adult and a parent and all this other stuff

00:20:11 ◼   ► The type of game that I gravitate to are two kinds one is the kind that I can just spend for a couple of minutes

00:20:17 ◼   ► Of fun like whatever less as asynchronous turn-based games like letterpresser

00:20:20 ◼   ► Words with friends and threes even though it's single-player. You know it's just like yeah, whatever just some quick fun and the other type of

00:20:26 ◼   ► Game I like is the kind

00:20:27 ◼   ► Kind of like the like true detective or the new popular thing of one hour dramas that have a season long arc that that that ends

00:20:34 ◼   ► And then the cast changes

00:20:36 ◼   ► There's a couple of shows doing that now and that I think is a good model because people like I don't want to invest in

00:20:41 ◼   ► This show that could go on some X number of seasons that might not have a satisfying ending or whatever like where I met your mother

00:20:49 ◼   ► I don't even watch that show.

00:20:51 ◼   ► But it's like, well, if people don't have a lot of time,

00:20:54 ◼   ► let's make a one-hour thing, a one-season arc

00:20:58 ◼   ► that you can consume as a thing and be satisfied with.

00:21:01 ◼   ► And so the video games that I--

00:21:03 ◼   ► the non-casual video games that I play

00:21:05 ◼   ► are ones that are going to give me

00:21:07 ◼   ► an experience for a defined amount of time.

00:21:08 ◼   ► And it's not going to be open-ended.

00:21:10 ◼   ► And I'm going to play through it.

00:21:11 ◼   ► I mean, not necessarily that they're story-based games,

00:21:12 ◼   ► because Journey is not really a story-based game.

00:21:14 ◼   ► But that's two hours of gameplay.

00:21:16 ◼   ► In and out, that is the perfect--

00:21:18 ◼   ► You know, it's cheap, I can get it as a digital download.

00:21:21 ◼   ► Amazingly enjoyable for me, loved it, two hours, done.

00:21:24 ◼   ► And even something like The Last of Us,

00:21:25 ◼   ► I think I only, I don't remember how many hours

00:21:26 ◼   ► I put into that, maybe 16 or 11 or 20,

00:21:28 ◼   ► I don't remember what the stat was,

00:21:30 ◼   ► but that's a little bit longer,

00:21:31 ◼   ► but it's a single player,

00:21:33 ◼   ► there is a multiplayer aspect that I don't care about,

00:21:35 ◼   ► single player game with a story,

00:21:36 ◼   ► I play it as a beginning, middle, and end, and I'm done.

00:21:39 ◼   ► It's not like I feel guilty, like,

00:21:40 ◼   ► "Oh, I never go back to it."

00:21:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I finished it, I played the game.

00:21:43 ◼   ► Like, there is a, it is a unit of entertainment,

00:21:45 ◼   ► This just happens to be a longer unit than a movie, but actually a similar length to

00:21:49 ◼   ► watching True Detective, for example.

00:21:52 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by our friends at Fracture.

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00:22:04 ◼   ► Their prices start at just $12 for a 5x5 inch print, and I've actually used these things

00:22:09 ◼   ► so that—let me deviate from the script for a second.

00:22:13 ◼   ► I have Fractures all over the place, basically.

00:22:14 ◼   ► I'm looking at two right now above my desk that are roughly,

00:22:17 ◼   ► I don't know, 17 by 12, something like that.

00:22:20 ◼   ► And then I have these app icon fractures

00:22:22 ◼   ► up on the wall in my office for all the major apps

00:22:25 ◼   ► that I've worked on or built.

00:22:28 ◼   ► And I use a little 5 by 5, so I spent $12 for that.

00:22:30 ◼   ► It's amazing.

00:22:32 ◼   ► And it's nice.

00:22:33 ◼   ► You don't need a frame.

00:22:35 ◼   ► In fact, I don't think you even could frame them.

00:22:37 ◼   ► Well, you could try, but you don't need a frame.

00:22:39 ◼   ► It's just like the picture itself is printed on glass,

00:22:42 ◼   ► and it is a complete product already.

00:22:44 ◼   ► So if you look into buying a frame or getting framed,

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00:22:52 ◼   ► It looks nice, it looks modern,

00:22:53 ◼   ► and the print quality is fantastic.

00:22:55 ◼   ► - Well, let me actually, let me interrupt you.

00:22:57 ◼   ► I was at your house recently

00:22:58 ◼   ► and got to see fractures for the very first time.

00:23:01 ◼   ► I keep meaning to order one, or order several actually,

00:23:04 ◼   ► of my Instagram, some of my Instagram pictures,

00:23:06 ◼   ► but I can't freakin' pick which ones I want,

00:23:09 ◼   ► which is a personal problem.

00:23:10 ◼   ► But anyway, I saw the ones at your house,

00:23:12 ◼   ► And I expected them to look good or even great,

00:23:16 ◼   ► and they looked better than great.

00:23:17 ◼   ► They really, really, really genuinely look awesome.

00:23:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm very happy with them.

00:23:21 ◼   ► That's why I keep, even though some of these I've ordered

00:23:25 ◼   ► outside of coupon code times,

00:23:27 ◼   ► I still order them because I like them.

00:23:29 ◼   ► Anyway, all right, so,

00:23:30 ◼   ► every fracture is handmade and checked for quality

00:23:33 ◼   ► by their small team in Gainesville, Florida.

00:23:35 ◼   ► See, there isn't a whole lot of great stuff

00:23:37 ◼   ► that comes out of Florida,

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00:23:40 ◼   ► And Merlin, of course.

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00:23:55 ◼   ► Go to fractureme.com and use coupon code ATP to get 20% off.

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00:24:06 ◼   ► Thank you very much.

00:24:07 ◼   ► So we should take note that we have finally the three of us figured out a

00:24:14 ◼   ► design that we felt was worthy of printing a t-shirt mostly because we

00:24:19 ◼   ► wanted to get it out for WWDC like all the cool kids do and we were running out

00:24:23 ◼   ► of time.

00:24:23 ◼   ► So we have t-shirts available for sale.

00:24:27 ◼   ► It we are recording this on the last day of April of 2014 and they are going to be

00:24:34 ◼   ► available for purchase until May 11. Is that right?

00:24:38 ◼   ► Something like that, yeah.

00:24:39 ◼   ► Yeah, they have a little over a week, so we'll talk about this one more time and only one

00:24:42 ◼   ► more time on the next episode. They are $19. They have basically a stylized version of

00:24:49 ◼   ► our show art on the front and a little surprise on the back. I don't know if you want to talk

00:24:53 ◼   ► about that or you want to leave it as a small surprise. That's up to you, Marco.

00:24:56 ◼   ► I think you should check it out. I think you should go to the final URL of the thing is

00:25:02 ◼   ► teespring.com/accidental. However, we made a little shortcut in case you don't know how

00:25:08 ◼   ► to spell teespring. If you go to ATP.fm/shirt, it will redirect you to the shirt. So ATP.fm/shirt.

00:25:17 ◼   ► You must buy this shirt within the next roughly 10 days or so. And actually by the time this

00:25:22 ◼   ► episode comes out, it's gonna be more like eight days. So hurry up and buy the shirt.

00:25:26 ◼   ► We've already sold a lot through past the goal. So this is awesome. Thank you very much.

00:25:31 ◼   ► And so these will definitely be printed and made.

00:25:34 ◼   ► They will make it in time for the US for WWDC probably.

00:25:38 ◼   ► Internationally, it depends on where you live.

00:25:41 ◼   ► We've heard reports of some of them coming right before,

00:25:43 ◼   ► some of them coming right after.

00:25:44 ◼   ► So we can't really guarantee internationally.

00:25:46 ◼   ► But in the US, they should be there in time for WWDC.

00:25:51 ◼   ► And yeah, so check it out, teespring.com/accidental

00:25:56 ◼   ► or atp.fm/shirt.

00:25:59 ◼   ► And keep in mind that since we are so--

00:26:02 ◼   ► it's so difficult for us to pick a design that we like.

00:26:05 ◼   ► If we have shirts next year, it's

00:26:07 ◼   ► very likely that it will be a different design.

00:26:09 ◼   ► So even if you are living internationally

00:26:12 ◼   ► or aren't going to WWDC at all anyway,

00:26:15 ◼   ► don't worry so much about whether you're

00:26:17 ◼   ► going to get it in time for this year's WWDC.

00:26:20 ◼   ► If you order it now, you'll have it for next year's WWDC.

00:26:22 ◼   ► And next year's shirt, if there is one,

00:26:24 ◼   ► will very likely be different.

00:26:25 ◼   ► So this may be the only time to buy this shirt.

00:26:28 ◼   ► You can decide whether that's a good or bad thing when you go look at the shirt, but please

00:26:31 ◼   ► do keep that in mind.

00:26:32 ◼   ► Because tons of people keep asking me if they want to order a Hypercritical shirts, and

00:26:36 ◼   ► I did Hypercritical shirts already, and I'm not sure I'm doing them again anytime soon,

00:26:41 ◼   ► if ever.

00:26:42 ◼   ► And those people should have ordered when they were available for sale, so don't let

00:26:44 ◼   ► this happen to you.

00:26:45 ◼   ► Order them when they're available for sale.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Yeah, and I also wonder, for those who are international, I have not tried this myself,

00:26:52 ◼   ► obviously, but I wonder if you could arrange with your hotel, "Hey, would you accept a

00:26:56 ◼   ► package for me or so on and so forth. So you might even be able to get it delivered to your hotel.

00:27:00 ◼   ► I know that is a possibility. So I mean, the hotels usually will charge for that.

00:27:04 ◼   ► But I know it is possible because I did that one year to get a shirt delivered to

00:27:08 ◼   ► the conference, to a hotel at the conference. But look into it anyway.

00:27:12 ◼   ► And also because, so Teespring is kind of like Kickstarter where they have like the buying period

00:27:18 ◼   ► for a limited time and then they do the whole run at once, they print them all and that's it. You

00:27:22 ◼   ► you can't order them after that. So it is very unlikely, I think, that we will get our act together and make a new design that we like in the next year.

00:27:30 ◼   ► So definitely, if you want a shirt anytime between now and next May, you should probably buy this one.

00:27:38 ◼   ► All right, thanks a lot.

00:27:41 ◼   ► Okay, so we were actually, I was a little nervous about not having a lot to talk about on this show,

00:27:47 ◼   ► And then just today Facebook decided to try their own hand at X callback URL.

00:27:53 ◼   ► Which was surprising for me anyway.

00:27:57 ◼   ► So they came out with Facebook app links and I should probably point out, I guess

00:28:01 ◼   ► it's the pulse, what is it like?

00:28:03 ◼   ► It's not a subsidiary of Facebook.

00:28:04 ◼   ► It's I'm not familiar with what pulse is, but I guess it came from there.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Do you guys know what that is?

00:28:10 ◼   ► Okay.

00:28:11 ◼   ► Good talk.

00:28:12 ◼   ► Well, anyway, so apparently it's some like sub section for lack of a better way of

00:28:16 ◼   ► phrasing it, Facebook.

00:28:18 ◼   ► And they came up with App Links.

00:28:20 ◼   ► And so one of you guys put this in the show notes.

00:28:23 ◼   ► And it's probably for the best if I read this very quickly.

00:28:26 ◼   ► Quote-- and this is from their website--

00:28:27 ◼   ► "With App Links, Facebook wants to standardize deep

00:28:29 ◼   ► linking to native apps by using special metadata attached--

00:28:33 ◼   ► excuse me-- added via HTML.

00:28:35 ◼   ► The basic premise of App Links is that if a user taps on a

00:28:38 ◼   ► link on a mobile device, and that link belongs to a website

00:28:41 ◼   ► that in turn offers the same content in a native app with

00:28:45 ◼   ► better features than a web view, the link could automatically redirect the user to the

00:28:49 ◼   ► app if installed on the App Store, with support for deep linking to content inside the app.

00:28:55 ◼   ► The goal, according to Facebook—actually, I guess it isn't from this site. Anyway,

00:28:58 ◼   ► the goal according to Facebook is to provide the best experience to a user who clicks a

00:29:02 ◼   ► link on a mobile device with features to control what happens when a link is clicked on iOS,

00:29:07 ◼   ► Android, or Windows Phone. Is that from Federico's write-up, actually?

00:29:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it is.

00:29:11 ◼   ► OK.

00:29:11 ◼   ► So I pasted in this paragraph.

00:29:14 ◼   ► First of all, I saw this Facebook app link thing

00:29:16 ◼   ► like 15 minutes before the show started,

00:29:17 ◼   ► so I know very little about it.

00:29:19 ◼   ► But I pasted in this thing because it sounds like something

00:29:21 ◼   ► I would never, ever want.

00:29:23 ◼   ► The idea that I'm on a web site, and I tap on a link,

00:29:27 ◼   ► and it takes me out of the web browser, puts me into an app,

00:29:30 ◼   ► and shoves me into some deep thing in the app.

00:29:32 ◼   ► The example in the video was like, say you're on a website,

00:29:34 ◼   ► and you see a movie, and you want

00:29:36 ◼   ► to know if it's playing towards you, and you tap on it.

00:29:37 ◼   ► And it launches a movie app and takes me into there.

00:29:39 ◼   ► I know that there are examples like,

00:29:41 ◼   ► yeah, it's annoying to have to go back to the home screen,

00:29:43 ◼   ► launch your ticket buying app,

00:29:45 ◼   ► do the same search you just did on the web.

00:29:47 ◼   ► But if I'm in a website and I found the thing,

00:29:50 ◼   ► I would like to buy it there on the web.

00:29:51 ◼   ► I hate that little banner that comes down and says,

00:29:54 ◼   ► hey, I know you're looking at our website,

00:29:56 ◼   ► but did you know we have an app?

00:29:57 ◼   ► You should try that.

00:29:58 ◼   ► The whole idea that the app could provide

00:30:00 ◼   ► better features than the web view.

00:30:02 ◼   ► Look, if I'm on a web browser and I'm doing stuff,

00:30:04 ◼   ► I wanna just do it on the web.

00:30:06 ◼   ► I'm not saying that native apps don't have a place,

00:30:07 ◼   ► but if I'm navigating around the web,

00:30:09 ◼   ► The last thing I want is to be chucked into an application,

00:30:12 ◼   ► deep linked or otherwise.

00:30:13 ◼   ► So I do not like the idea of this thing.

00:30:18 ◼   ► I'm assuming people are commenting on this

00:30:19 ◼   ► about the interapp communication thing

00:30:22 ◼   ► that maybe iOS 8 will do something about or whatever.

00:30:26 ◼   ► We'll talk about that in our WWC prediction show

00:30:29 ◼   ► in the future, I'm sure.

00:30:30 ◼   ► But that's about native apps talking to each other

00:30:32 ◼   ► and cooperating, multiple native apps coordinating

00:30:35 ◼   ► to get a single job done.

00:30:37 ◼   ► And I guess the web browser is one of those other native apps,

00:30:39 ◼   ► but if I'm on a web page, I don't like those two things

00:30:44 ◼   ► being-- I don't like switching between those two things.

00:30:46 ◼   ► I don't care how coordinated they

00:30:48 ◼   ► can be about where I jump back and forth.

00:30:50 ◼   ► I question whether jumping out at all

00:30:52 ◼   ► is ever the right thing to do.

00:30:54 ◼   ► Well, and see, generally speaking,

00:30:56 ◼   ► I would agree with you that if I'm in the browser,

00:30:59 ◼   ► it's probably a deliberate action,

00:31:01 ◼   ► and I want to remain in the browser.

00:31:04 ◼   ► And the app banners, whatever they're called, at the top,

00:31:07 ◼   ► They just get in the way and are very annoying, especially in the case that the app is already

00:31:11 ◼   ► installed.

00:31:12 ◼   ► Well, maybe less so if you're trying to advertise that you have an app.

00:31:15 ◼   ► In any case, the one time where I think this makes a lot of sense is if, for example, for

00:31:20 ◼   ► some reason I've browsed something in Safari and I end up on some really heavy media app.

00:31:26 ◼   ► Let's take Spotify, for example.

00:31:29 ◼   ► I'm probably going to want to listen to whatever the song or playlist or what have you is in

00:31:34 ◼   ► Spotify's app rather than in mobile safari. So for things like that, it makes sense. But other than that, I tend to agree with you, Jon.

00:31:42 ◼   ► I guess it's not the capability that's bad so much. It's just that I see the potential for abuse.

00:31:47 ◼   ► And that if there was a big badge that was like, "Open this up and insert name of native app here," and it was clear that that's what it was going to do, it's fine.

00:31:54 ◼   ► But these websites, these companies are so desperate to get you to install and use their app.

00:32:00 ◼   ► I don't know why they just, you know, better engagement with our, I'm not going to do Marco's voice, "Brains!"

00:32:05 ◼   ► Like, it's just annoying. It's like, I would rather you just make your website good, and I'll use your app if I want to, but like, now if we give them the ability to make every single link a potential minefield that's going to take you out into some native app, I'm not enthusiastic about this.

00:32:20 ◼   ► I'm not enthusiastic about this.

00:32:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I think definitely, I totally agree that

00:32:28 ◼   ► this has nothing to do with X callback URL

00:32:31 ◼   ► or internet communication, really.

00:32:33 ◼   ► That's a different problem.

00:32:36 ◼   ► I think there's a couple problems with this.

00:32:39 ◼   ► I agree with everything Jon said so far,

00:32:40 ◼   ► which is that, yeah, there are probably some conditions

00:32:42 ◼   ► where this is what you'd want as a user,

00:32:47 ◼   ► but there's also probably just as many, if not more,

00:32:46 ◼   ► where it's not what you'd want as a user.

00:32:48 ◼   ► And yeah, you could then prompt the user

00:32:50 ◼   ► to ask what they want,

00:32:51 ◼   ► but then that's more clunkiness, more complexity.

00:32:53 ◼   ► It's one of those things where,

00:32:56 ◼   ► I have a feeling this solves a problem

00:32:57 ◼   ► that Facebook thinks they have,

00:32:59 ◼   ► and they assume everyone else has the same problem,

00:33:01 ◼   ► but it doesn't really,

00:33:03 ◼   ► there's probably not a good problem

00:33:04 ◼   ► to be solved in a good way here.

00:33:06 ◼   ► Furthermore, I don't know how they could possibly get this

00:33:09 ◼   ► to work very well because,

00:33:11 ◼   ► or very effectively in the real world,

00:33:13 ◼   ► because the most common mobile browsers

00:33:15 ◼   ► are mobile Safari and Chrome,

00:33:17 ◼   ► at least the ones that are actually used for web browsing

00:33:20 ◼   ► instead of sitting in a drawer playing videos.

00:33:22 ◼   ► And I don't see, you know, Apple,

00:33:26 ◼   ► there's almost no chance in hell

00:33:28 ◼   ► they would ever implement this in mobile Safari,

00:33:30 ◼   ► so that's out.

00:33:31 ◼   ► Any chance of like, you know, a plugin architecture

00:33:34 ◼   ► in mobile Safari that would enable plugins for this

00:33:36 ◼   ► is probably also out.

00:33:37 ◼   ► Google implementing this in Chrome, maybe,

00:33:41 ◼   ► but Google hates Facebook,

00:33:43 ◼   ► so I don't know if that's gonna happen either.

00:33:45 ◼   ► What's in it for them? Probably nothing. Does this require browser support?

00:33:49 ◼   ► I didn't even read enough of it to know whether it requires browser support. Well in the documentation

00:33:53 ◼   ► I read through all the documentation and it did I didn't like it. I didn't think it was very good

00:33:57 ◼   ► I thought their examples were the

00:33:59 ◼   ► Examples are always contrived, but these were crummy. They were just crummy examples, but the way I understood it is if

00:34:06 ◼   ► You tap a link

00:34:09 ◼   ► In or if you end up on a page in a web browser

00:34:15 ◼   ► including like a UI web view in say Tweetbot for example,

00:34:18 ◼   ► then if you see all these meta tags, meta tags, whatever they're called, at the top of your of this HTML document,

00:34:25 ◼   ► you can say, oh I can build a URL based on the information in these meta tags and

00:34:32 ◼   ► make a check, you know with the with iOS and say hey does this URL, is this a URL that you know about?

00:34:38 ◼   ► And if so, just quietly, well, I guess not so quietly actually redirect into the app. So say I'm in Tweetbot,

00:34:44 ◼   ► I land on—I'm using a browser in Tweetbot—I land on a Spotify page,

00:34:49 ◼   ► then Tweetbot can say, "Oh, I see that there's this app link," or whatever it's called, and

00:34:54 ◼   ► I see that Spotify is installed on Casey's phone, so let me just punch you over to Spotify. Marco,

00:35:00 ◼   ► did you read into this at all?

00:35:01 ◼   ► No, I actually spent about five minutes before the show looking at this because I didn't see it before then,

00:35:06 ◼   ► but so I could be totally wrong on this. Yeah, I mean, that's the way I interpreted it.

00:35:11 ◼   ► hopefully we'll either get a lot of email saying I'm right or a couple emails saying I'm wrong.

00:35:16 ◼   ► Well, the key diagram on the site is the one that's like, "Hey, it works across, you know,

00:35:20 ◼   ► Windows Phone and Android and iOS." And like right away, well, Apple has no interest in this. And the

00:35:27 ◼   ► thing is if Apple has no interest in it, and I think as Renee tweeted, that's why the link to

00:35:31 ◼   ► Renee in our show notes is like doing this right before WWDC, there's a reasonable chance, I'm not

00:35:38 ◼   ► to say a good bet, but there's a reasonable chance that Apple might have some similar type of

00:35:42 ◼   ► thing having to do with maybe like a better version of xCallback URL or something.

00:35:46 ◼   ► Whatever Apple decides to do that's remotely in this area, that's what Apple's going to do,

00:35:50 ◼   ► that's what they're going to support, and that's what everybody on the iOS platform is going to

00:35:53 ◼   ► support. Making it cross-platform standard is so hard when one of the vendors, Apple,

00:35:58 ◼   ► is just going to ignore you forever and might potentially do its own thing. Because if Apple

00:36:03 ◼   ► does its own thing, people will do whatever the hell iOS supports because it is still by far the

00:36:08 ◼   ► most popular platform for games where people will actually give you money, or for applications,

00:36:12 ◼   ► not just games, but half games. Anyway, yeah, so I totally expect Apple to ignore this, and if Apple

00:36:19 ◼   ► ignores it, it's a non-starter for the Apple platform anyway, and that means it's never going

00:36:23 ◼   ► to be cross-cross platform. I know it's an open standard and blah blah blah, but good luck getting

00:36:26 ◼   ► Apple to sign in with that. Like, your best bet would be to get it to be supported as like a

00:36:30 ◼   ► W3C standard because Apple does support those. But something coming from Facebook and trying to

00:36:36 ◼   ► solve their cross-platform development difficulties, Apple is just not interested in that at all.

00:36:42 ◼   ► And that's not to say that Apple is the one who added that stupid annoying dialog box. And

00:36:46 ◼   ► I complained about that dialog box. It says, "Hey, download your app." But before they did that,

00:36:51 ◼   ► it was every individual website doing something even worse in client-side JavaScript to do the

00:36:56 ◼   ► the same feature. So really I'm mad at everybody who keeps trying to make me get their app.

00:37:00 ◼   ► Apple adding the feature to standardize it at least standardizes the annoyance and makes it like,

00:37:05 ◼   ► it doesn't slow down the browser as much because it's no longer terrible client-side JavaScript

00:37:09 ◼   ► running, but it's no longer a modal dialog box or something that would like animate,

00:37:14 ◼   ► but they wouldn't use this. The GPU is accelerated animation. So it would be like,

00:37:18 ◼   ► you know, JavaScript redrawing. Oh, it was bad. Yeah. So reading more on the Vitechy's article,

00:37:25 ◼   ► quoting again, "Apps that implement app links will be

00:37:28 ◼   ► able to scan a link that's been tapped by the user and,

00:37:30 ◼   ► in a matter of seconds, understand whether it can be

00:37:32 ◼   ► opened inside a native app through deep linking, fall

00:37:35 ◼   ► back to a web view, or offer a way to download the app from

00:37:38 ◼   ► the App Store." So this corroborates what I was

00:37:39 ◼   ► thinking earlier, that you're in Tweetbot.

00:37:41 ◼   ► You land on some page.

00:37:43 ◼   ► It looks at the page as HTML and says, hey, is there

00:37:45 ◼   ► something I can do with this or not, and then can handle it

00:37:48 ◼   ► and dump you into the app in question.

00:37:51 ◼   ► I mean, I guess that's nice.

00:37:52 ◼   ► but to both your points, without Safari supporting this,

00:37:55 ◼   ► I don't see how this is gonna be that fantastic.

00:37:58 ◼   ► - By the way, this also requires a page fetch.

00:38:00 ◼   ► It requires for, let's say you open a link in Tweetbot,

00:38:04 ◼   ► it requires Tweetbot to first fetch the HTML of the page,

00:38:07 ◼   ► parse it, look for these tags,

00:38:10 ◼   ► and then possibly offer you the option

00:38:12 ◼   ► to redirect into an app.

00:38:13 ◼   ► So that's pretty crappy.

00:38:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, the reason I put that quote in there,

00:38:17 ◼   ► that one that Casey just read,

00:38:18 ◼   ► was not because of the information in it,

00:38:19 ◼   ► but because I wanted to shame the copywriter

00:38:22 ◼   ► who wrote it, who's like-- so the little bit was like,

00:38:25 ◼   ► app links will be able to scan a link that's

00:38:27 ◼   ► been tapped by the user and comma in a matter of seconds,

00:38:30 ◼   ► comma.

00:38:30 ◼   ► Understand whether it can be opened in a matter of seconds.

00:38:33 ◼   ► I sure as hell hope not.

00:38:35 ◼   ► I know it's an expression, but the copywriter

00:38:38 ◼   ► is-- that's the wrong order of magnitude

00:38:39 ◼   ► for how long it should really take to scan for links in HTML.

00:38:42 ◼   ► Because if it really does take seconds,

00:38:44 ◼   ► there's a serious problem.

00:38:45 ◼   ► Well, and even the wording there, scan a link,

00:38:47 ◼   ► that's not really true.

00:38:48 ◼   ► It's fetch the contents of a link

00:38:50 ◼   ► and then look at the contents to see if maybe you can open it.

00:38:52 ◼   ► I mean, that's a different proposition.

00:38:55 ◼   ► I don't see this being widely adopted.

00:38:58 ◼   ► John, as you said, if there's no chance

00:39:00 ◼   ► that Apple's going to implement this, which I'm pretty sure

00:39:02 ◼   ► that's the case, then how much of a standard is it?

00:39:05 ◼   ► Facebook has a lot of this platform-itis going on,

00:39:08 ◼   ► and they always have.

00:39:09 ◼   ► This is nothing new.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Where Facebook always comes out--

00:39:12 ◼   ► Facebook and Apple both have their-- and Google and Amazon,

00:39:15 ◼   ► everyone-- they all have their own breed of arrogance.

00:39:18 ◼   ► And Apple's arrogance is well known and well documented.

00:39:22 ◼   ► Apple's arrogance is, we're just going to make our own thing

00:39:24 ◼   ► and you can make it a standard if you want to.

00:39:27 ◼   ► Facebook's arrogance is, we're going to launch

00:39:29 ◼   ► all these platforms and standards that are going to be useful

00:39:31 ◼   ► and implemented by everybody, even when that's almost

00:39:34 ◼   ► never actually the outcome to what they make.

00:39:37 ◼   ► And it almost always just serves them at best

00:39:40 ◼   ► and even they often abandon the things they make.

00:39:42 ◼   ► So, you know, it's, I think this is a nice sounding story,

00:39:47 ◼   ► But I don't see it being implemented by almost anybody

00:39:50 ◼   ► important, and certainly not widely enough to matter.

00:39:53 ◼   ► Yeah, Facebook is not a trusted actor in this relationship.

00:39:56 ◼   ► Right.

00:39:57 ◼   ► Because yes, they're trying to make an open standard,

00:40:00 ◼   ► but it's so clear that it is designed to solve a problem

00:40:03 ◼   ► that Facebook has, which is how do we

00:40:04 ◼   ► deploy our application on all the different platforms.

00:40:07 ◼   ► Apple does not have that particular problem,

00:40:09 ◼   ► or at the very least has it in a very small version

00:40:12 ◼   ► and that they still make iTunes for Windows.

00:40:14 ◼   ► But beyond that, they do not want

00:40:15 ◼   ► to deploy their software on every mobile platform.

00:40:18 ◼   ► So this isn't a problem they have.

00:40:19 ◼   ► And it's like, why would we get on board with this thing

00:40:23 ◼   ► that, yes, it's open and trying to be standardized,

00:40:25 ◼   ► but it clearly exists to serve Facebook

00:40:27 ◼   ► and will probably evolve to continue to serve Facebook

00:40:31 ◼   ► if we're not sure that-- the W3C is the only thing.

00:40:34 ◼   ► And even that is just like these big companies are all

00:40:37 ◼   ► on the whatever in these working groups for W3C

00:40:40 ◼   ► at each other's throats trying to fight for the little details

00:40:43 ◼   ► of what image elements can be used for multi-resolution images

00:40:47 ◼   ► on the web, and whether we should support Canvas

00:40:49 ◼   ► and all this other stuff.

00:40:50 ◼   ► And so that is a form in which they

00:40:52 ◼   ► feel like it's a more level playing field, where

00:40:54 ◼   ► all the big companies are at each other's throats trying

00:40:57 ◼   ► to deal with web standards.

00:40:59 ◼   ► And whatever gets through, more or less Apple implements.

00:41:01 ◼   ► But Apple also does the thing where it proposes a standard,

00:41:05 ◼   ► then implements it and ships it to millions and millions

00:41:07 ◼   ► of people, and says, well, we already kind of implemented

00:41:10 ◼   ► this and shipped it to everybody.

00:41:11 ◼   ► Does that help you guys think maybe you should adopt it

00:41:13 ◼   ► as a standard W3C?

00:41:16 ◼   ► It's not a-- yeah.

00:41:18 ◼   ► That's how standards work in the real world.

00:41:20 ◼   ► The sort of kumbaya, sit around the campfire,

00:41:24 ◼   ► think we're all going to get along type of thing.

00:41:26 ◼   ► Like, oh, Facebook released it at an open standard.

00:41:28 ◼   ► Everyone should use it now.

00:41:29 ◼   ► That's never what it's like.

00:41:31 ◼   ► So what is benefiting Facebook by having a standard way

00:41:37 ◼   ► with which to deep link into an app?

00:41:39 ◼   ► Because that's the ostensible premise behind this.

00:41:42 ◼   ► Not only that you can launch an app, which everyone knows how to do reasonably easily,

00:41:45 ◼   ► but here's a standard by which we define what data you're passing to that app,

00:41:51 ◼   ► or that needs to be passed to that app in order to get to the exact content you want.

00:41:54 ◼   ► So what's the play for Facebook here?

00:41:57 ◼   ► Well, it's pretty obvious. It's for Facebook's app.

00:41:59 ◼   ► It's so that, you know, if you...

00:42:01 ◼   ► Let's say, you know, Facebook obviously encourages sharing all their crap as much as possible.

00:42:05 ◼   ► Let's say you hit a sharing link in something that goes to a Facebook property.

00:42:10 ◼   ► they want to be able to launch one of their apps directly into that so that they control the whole experience and it isn't just showing their web page.

00:42:17 ◼   ► Or it goes right to their app and they get more information, or it's faster for the user so they don't have to go through the web first.

00:42:22 ◼   ► They clearly want this for themselves. I mean, that's why they did it.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Didn't Facebook just have, I was seeing tweets about it today, didn't they have their little developer PR thing or some kind of...

00:42:33 ◼   ► Yeah, it's called Fate.

00:42:35 ◼   ► Oh god, I didn't even think of it that way.

00:42:37 ◼   ► Anyway, like, I did not watch this speech thing, but from what I've seen from Facebook

00:42:43 ◼   ► in past months, I'm going to pretend that I did and pretend this is what they said.

00:42:47 ◼   ► And I imagine that this is all part of the strategy that they have to stop being a single

00:42:53 ◼   ► thing called Facebook, which is a website that you go to, or more abstractly an application

00:42:57 ◼   ► that you use through the web browser and other things, and start being a series of more special

00:43:04 ◼   ► purpose applications circling around this giant hub of information that they have about

00:43:09 ◼   ► everybody.

00:43:10 ◼   ► And so I think things like paper, paper didn't replace the Facebook app.

00:43:16 ◼   ► It just kind of augments it.

00:43:17 ◼   ► I think what they want to make is a fleet of mobile applications, a fleet of native

00:43:21 ◼   ► mobile applications that all cooperate and interoperate with each other and with the

00:43:25 ◼   ► Facebook website to make one single unified Facebook experience.

00:43:29 ◼   ► And that's why they want to deep link from paper into the official Facebook app, from

00:43:33 ◼   ► the Facebook website into whatever other app they come out with, like the idea that they're

00:43:37 ◼   ► transitioning into, well, they already were a platform, but they want to be a different

00:43:41 ◼   ► kind of platform where all these different pieces on all these different platforms can

00:43:45 ◼   ► all talk to each other and sort of cooperate.

00:43:48 ◼   ► So in some ways it is kind of like inter-app communication, but all their data is on the

00:43:51 ◼   ► web and in the cloud, and so they have to, their version of inter-app communication is

00:43:56 ◼   ► a way to basically deep link from one application to another into the web out of the web.

00:44:01 ◼   ► So it makes sense from what they want to do.

00:44:03 ◼   ► Why do they think they want to do it as an open standard?

00:44:06 ◼   ► That just tends to be the way they do things.

00:44:08 ◼   ► And I think they would be happy if it became commonly supported

00:44:11 ◼   ► because then they would have some assurance that the OS

00:44:14 ◼   ► or the web browsers or whatever wouldn't change in a way that

00:44:16 ◼   ► prevents their nice standard from working.

00:44:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess.

00:44:20 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:44:21 ◼   ► At first, I was like, oh, this sounds-- actually, no, this

00:44:24 ◼   ► doesn't sound that impressive after all.

00:44:26 ◼   ► It sounds like a cool idea until you think about it a little bit

00:44:29 ◼   ► or try to implement it and start thinking

00:44:30 ◼   ► about the realities of it and how Apple will never support

00:44:33 ◼   ► Mobile Safari and everything.

00:44:35 ◼   ► It kind of falls apart under scrutiny, I think.

00:44:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, that's a very good way of phrasing it.

00:44:39 ◼   ► What else is cool these days?

00:44:41 ◼   ► - Our friends at Backblaze, we are also sponsored this week,

00:44:44 ◼   ► once again by Backblaze, which I still pronounce

00:44:47 ◼   ► sometimes in my head as backblaze,

00:44:49 ◼   ► 'cause I think it sounds fancier, but.

00:44:50 ◼   ► - Oh, God.

00:44:52 ◼   ► - Anyway, they're awesome.

00:44:53 ◼   ► So Backblaze is online backup for five bucks a month.

00:44:56 ◼   ► It's a Mac native app, and at five bucks a month

00:44:59 ◼   ► gets you unlimited, unthrottled, uncomplicated backup.

00:45:03 ◼   ► We've talked a lot about the value

00:45:05 ◼   ► of online backup here before,

00:45:06 ◼   ► and to quote one of John Gruber's sponsor reads,

00:45:10 ◼   ► if you don't use this, you're nuts.

00:45:12 ◼   ► I mean, online backup is amazing.

00:45:14 ◼   ► There's an entire class of problems, hazards, events,

00:45:18 ◼   ► where if you just have a local clone or time machine backup,

00:45:21 ◼   ► like sitting in your office next to your computer plugged in

00:45:24 ◼   ► things like power surges, lightning strikes,

00:45:26 ◼   ► floods, fires, theft, there's all sorts of bad things that can happen that would affect

00:45:32 ◼   ► both the main computer and the backup if all you have is the one in your house. And so

00:45:37 ◼   ► online backup takes care of that and a whole bunch of other problems. It's a fantastic

00:45:41 ◼   ► solution. I've been using it myself. My wife uses it. We've been using Backblaze for a

00:45:45 ◼   ► couple of years at least now. Very happy with it. So they also have easily, you can easily

00:45:51 ◼   ► restore all of your files of course, but you can also easily restore just one file right

00:45:56 ◼   ► through the web interface. You also have an iOS app that you can use to access any of

00:46:00 ◼   ► your backed up files and even share them if you want to. They just added email alerts

00:46:07 ◼   ► so that you can say, for instance, like every week or two weeks the email you is saying,

00:46:12 ◼   ► "Alright, this is the status of your backups. Here's what we have. We have this computer,

00:46:15 ◼   ► we have this many gigs, this is the last time it checked in," etc. So you can always be

00:46:20 ◼   ► confident at what it's doing. You can of course also try to restore anything on the web whenever

00:46:24 ◼   ► you want to to confirm that. It's also founded by ex-Apple engineers. It is a

00:46:29 ◼   ► native application. It's not some weird cross-platform runtime

00:46:33 ◼   ► thing. It's a native application. It sits in your system preferences. There's also a

00:46:37 ◼   ► little menu bar thing. It's pretty nice. It runs natively on Mac and on Mavericks

00:46:41 ◼   ► and it's also a PC application as well. So there's a 15-day trial with no credit

00:46:47 ◼   ► card required. You just enter an email and password and that's it. And once

00:46:51 ◼   ► Once again, once you go to pay for it, it's just $5 per month for a computer, and there's

00:46:55 ◼   ► no gimmicks, no add-ons, no additional charges.

00:46:57 ◼   ► Five bucks a month for unlimited, un-throttled backup.

00:46:59 ◼   ► It even gets cheaper, actually, if you pay for a whole year up front.

00:47:03 ◼   ► So it is by far the simplest online backup to use.

00:47:05 ◼   ► Just install it, and it does the rest.

00:47:07 ◼   ► Go to backblaze.com/atp to get going.

00:47:10 ◼   ► Once again, it's backblaze.com/atp, and I use it and also recommend it.

00:47:14 ◼   ► Thank you very much to Backblaze for sponsoring the show.

00:47:18 ◼   ► So God help me, but I'm about to bring up comics.

00:47:20 ◼   ► Skip, skip, skip.

00:47:21 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:47:22 ◼   ► I actually don't really have that much to say about the ComiXology Amazon thing, but

00:47:28 ◼   ► I thought I should at least ask you two if you had anything to say.

00:47:32 ◼   ► To me, it seems like everyone is acting selfishly as expected and there's nothing here of

00:47:37 ◼   ► note.

00:47:38 ◼   ► But I don't know, what do you guys think?

00:47:39 ◼   ► I think Merlin covered it very well on Back to Work this week, so we'll just listen

00:47:43 ◼   ► to that.

00:47:44 ◼   ► He did a really good job of covering the nuance of this problem.

00:47:49 ◼   ► I mean, I had a quick blog post about it,

00:47:52 ◼   ► and I'm not going to rehash it here.

00:47:53 ◼   ► Basically, my opinion is that Amazon,

00:47:56 ◼   ► as the new owners of Comixology, Amazon

00:47:58 ◼   ► is doing what they always do, the kind of thing they always

00:48:00 ◼   ► do.

00:48:01 ◼   ► It's not really a surprise to anybody,

00:48:02 ◼   ► and it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody

00:48:04 ◼   ► that Amazon is acting the way they always do.

00:48:06 ◼   ► And it kind of sucks, but they have their reasons,

00:48:09 ◼   ► and that's it.

00:48:10 ◼   ► Whenever we talk about tech topics

00:48:13 ◼   ► where there is something that upsets, basically,

00:48:17 ◼   ► people who are into following the tech industry

00:48:20 ◼   ► and they get angry about it on Twitter

00:48:21 ◼   ► and they write blog posts and stuff like that.

00:48:24 ◼   ► There's a couple of different reactions

00:48:27 ◼   ► that I see that are sort of reaction types.

00:48:31 ◼   ► One is the easy one where people are

00:48:34 ◼   ► partisans for a particular company.

00:48:36 ◼   ► If they like one company, they don't like another company,

00:48:38 ◼   ► whatever happens, they're going to find out

00:48:39 ◼   ► why this proves that Google is evil,

00:48:41 ◼   ► why this proves that Apple is evil, like whatever.

00:48:42 ◼   ► Like they have their favorite company,

00:48:44 ◼   ► they have the companies they don't like.

00:48:46 ◼   ► whatever happens, those people will come out of the woodwork and do that.

00:48:49 ◼   ► So you have people who are really big Amazon fans defending Amazon,

00:48:52 ◼   ► and you have people who hate Apple saying it's Apple's fault, they come out, you know,

00:48:55 ◼   ► that is straight up.

00:48:57 ◼   ► The other way are as people trying to figure out what's really going on and saying, well,

00:49:01 ◼   ► it's really nobody's fault, and they're just kind of sort of trying to do the middle

00:49:05 ◼   ► of the road type thing where they don't want to assign blame, but they're sad about it,

00:49:10 ◼   ► and it's just like, well, it's just the way it is because everyone just has to be selfish,

00:49:12 ◼   ► is kind of what Casey said before.

00:49:15 ◼   ► And my reaction to it is always a little bit,

00:49:18 ◼   ► I don't know if it's less common

00:49:19 ◼   ► or people who have my reaction

00:49:20 ◼   ► just don't tweet about it as much.

00:49:22 ◼   ► I come in from like a parenting angle

00:49:24 ◼   ► where whatever company I like the best,

00:49:27 ◼   ► like in this case will be Apple, right?

00:49:29 ◼   ► Something bad will happen and I will decide

00:49:33 ◼   ► that I'm very disappointed in the company that I like.

00:49:35 ◼   ► And so-- (laughing)

00:49:37 ◼   ► - You give them a thumbs down?

00:49:38 ◼   ► - Instead of taking it out on the companies,

00:49:39 ◼   ► instead of taking out the companies that I don't like,

00:49:41 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, well, you are the company I don't like

00:49:44 ◼   ► and this is your fault.

00:49:45 ◼   ► Instead I will say, "What is it that my company did that caused this to happen?"

00:49:49 ◼   ► You know, it's like, I'm disappointed in my child, like that I hold my children to a higher

00:49:53 ◼   ► standard, right?

00:49:54 ◼   ► I don't care what other kids are doing.

00:49:56 ◼   ► Why were you involved?

00:49:57 ◼   ► And so, I mean, maybe that's not the real origin of this thing, but that's just, you

00:50:01 ◼   ► know, like, the way I was thinking was like, my first reaction is always to blame Apple.

00:50:05 ◼   ► Is it because I dislike Apple?

00:50:06 ◼   ► No, it's because I expect more of them, you know what I mean?

00:50:09 ◼   ► Like, I have a high standard and I'm disappointed in them.

00:50:12 ◼   ► Yeah, and we should point out, by the way, what we're talking about. In case anyone was living

00:50:16 ◼   ► under a rock this week and didn't realize what happened, Comixology, the popular comic buying

00:50:20 ◼   ► app for iOS, especially iPad, was bought by Amazon. And then like within a month, Amazon did

00:50:28 ◼   ► basically exactly what the Kindle app does, which is they removed the ability for Comixology to have

00:50:32 ◼   ► in-app purchase for new comic issues. And is that even the right term, comic issues? I'm sorry, I'm

00:50:38 ◼   ► I'm not a comics person.

00:50:39 ◼   ► So anyway, I'm not sorry.

00:50:41 ◼   ► Anyway, they removed in-app purchase.

00:50:44 ◼   ► And so now you have to go out to the Amazon website

00:50:47 ◼   ► separately, or the comiXology website owned by Amazon,

00:50:50 ◼   ► buy the comics there, and then go into the app

00:50:52 ◼   ► and download them, download things you've bought.

00:50:54 ◼   ► It's the exact same way the Kindle app works.

00:50:57 ◼   ► And that's almost entirely just to avoid paying Apple

00:51:02 ◼   ► their 30% on in-app purchases.

00:51:05 ◼   ► And Apple has a couple of rules

00:51:07 ◼   ► that you have to give them their 30% on an app purchases

00:51:11 ◼   ► and also that if you have a way on your site

00:51:16 ◼   ► for people to pay you without going through Apple

00:51:18 ◼   ► for something that is digital,

00:51:21 ◼   ► you can't advertise that in the app

00:51:22 ◼   ► and you can't link to it from the app.

00:51:24 ◼   ► So you can't, for instance, like,

00:51:26 ◼   ► you can't just have an app or like a link in the app

00:51:28 ◼   ► that kicks you out to Safari for a second,

00:51:30 ◼   ► you enter your credit card stuff on your site,

00:51:32 ◼   ► avoid Apple's charge, and then kicks you back into the app.

00:51:35 ◼   ► That's no longer-- that was only allowed for two weeks,

00:51:39 ◼   ► then they killed that.

00:51:42 ◼   ► So the issue is, obviously, Comixology under Amazon--

00:51:47 ◼   ► Amazon did not want to keep paying Apple 30%.

00:51:49 ◼   ► And many people are blaming Apple for this,

00:51:52 ◼   ► including John, I guess.

00:51:53 ◼   ► Many people are blaming Apple, saying, well, they

00:51:55 ◼   ► shouldn't be taking 30%, or they shouldn't have that rule

00:51:57 ◼   ► that you can't link to your store.

00:51:59 ◼   ► And that's certainly something worth discussing.

00:52:01 ◼   ► A lot of people are mad at Comixology,

00:52:03 ◼   ► because they're ruining the experience here,

00:52:04 ◼   ► making it much more clunky to buy things,

00:52:06 ◼   ► and probably eliminating a lot of impulse buys.

00:52:09 ◼   ► 'Cause what would happen, I guess, from what I've heard,

00:52:11 ◼   ► is that you'd get to the end of a comic

00:52:13 ◼   ► and it would ask you to buy the next issue.

00:52:14 ◼   ► And you could buy it right there and start reading it.

00:52:16 ◼   ► And you can't do that as easily anymore.

00:52:18 ◼   ► So that's probably gonna impact sales.

00:52:20 ◼   ► - Let me explain why I blame Apple for this,

00:52:22 ◼   ► and have blamed Apple for it ever since they did

00:52:24 ◼   ► the same thing with the Kindle app way back when.

00:52:27 ◼   ► And it's not about the particulars,

00:52:29 ◼   ► it's about the big picture.

00:52:30 ◼   ► And the big picture is the technology exists

00:52:33 ◼   ► to provide an experience that customers like.

00:52:37 ◼   ► And not only just the customers like,

00:52:39 ◼   ► but that actually is beneficial

00:52:40 ◼   ► to the people selling the goods as well.

00:52:42 ◼   ► Like you said, the ability to just write in the app,

00:52:44 ◼   ► impulse purchase comics.

00:52:45 ◼   ► Every comic I've ever purchased in my life,

00:52:47 ◼   ► with the exception of I think one flimsy paperback

00:52:50 ◼   ► anime comic back when I was 15 years old,

00:52:52 ◼   ► has been through the Comixology app.

00:52:54 ◼   ► And why?

00:52:55 ◼   ► Because it is so ridiculously easy.

00:52:56 ◼   ► I'm not even into comics.

00:52:57 ◼   ► I don't even like comics,

00:52:59 ◼   ► but I've got the Comixology app,

00:53:00 ◼   ► and if you read one issue,

00:53:01 ◼   ► and if it puts that button and says,

00:53:02 ◼   ► "Do you wanna read the next one?"

00:53:03 ◼   ► And it puts a little price like, "Eh, whatever."

00:53:05 ◼   ► You tap the button.

00:53:06 ◼   ► Like that's the whole killer,

00:53:07 ◼   ► that is the killer app of the app store.

00:53:08 ◼   ► The fact that you could with your thumb go,

00:53:10 ◼   ► "Yeah, all right, I'll do that."

00:53:11 ◼   ► And the game goes, and you're like, "Oh, is it all right?"

00:53:13 ◼   ► I mean, that's why the 99 cents.

00:53:15 ◼   ► The barrier to entry is so low.

00:53:16 ◼   ► So technology exists for sure to do that.

00:53:19 ◼   ► And the experience is really awesome for customers.

00:53:21 ◼   ► They love it.

00:53:22 ◼   ► And it's usually pretty good

00:53:23 ◼   ► for the people selling the stuff too,

00:53:25 ◼   ► because they sell more stuff,

00:53:26 ◼   ► because the barrier to buying it is less.

00:53:29 ◼   ► Anything that prevents that from happening,

00:53:31 ◼   ► anything that says, yeah, we could do this,

00:53:32 ◼   ► and yeah, it would be good in all these sorts of ways,

00:53:34 ◼   ► but I don't care what the but is.

00:53:36 ◼   ► Is the but like, well, they have to get 30%

00:53:38 ◼   ► 'cause it's fair and they wanna have a flat,

00:53:39 ◼   ► I don't even wanna hear about the reasons.

00:53:41 ◼   ► All I know is that this is technologically possible,

00:53:44 ◼   ► it is not financially infeasible, but it doesn't happen.

00:53:49 ◼   ► And so you say, well, Apple sets the rule,

00:53:51 ◼   ► Amazon is choosing not to follow them,

00:53:53 ◼   ► it's Amazon's fault for doing that.

00:53:55 ◼   ► This is not just one occurrence.

00:53:56 ◼   ► I mean, I guess Kindle is also Amazon as well,

00:53:58 ◼   ► but a lot of businesses don't have 30% to shave off

00:54:02 ◼   ► to give to Apple.

00:54:04 ◼   ► And you say, well, they used to pay way more

00:54:05 ◼   ► than that brick and mortar retail stores.

00:54:07 ◼   ► That's true as well.

00:54:08 ◼   ► We're supposed to be getting better over time

00:54:09 ◼   ► and the value you're getting out of being in the App Store,

00:54:14 ◼   ► is that worth 30%?

00:54:17 ◼   ► The relationship you had with retail establishments,

00:54:20 ◼   ► even though they took more off,

00:54:21 ◼   ► was much more complicated in terms of being able to ship,

00:54:23 ◼   ► for books, in the case of books,

00:54:24 ◼   ► being able to ship things back and dealing with inventory

00:54:27 ◼   ► and having a remainders market and like,

00:54:30 ◼   ► I would think that we would be having

00:54:31 ◼   ► more efficiencies in the system.

00:54:33 ◼   ► I'm not saying they should charge less than 30%,

00:54:35 ◼   ► I'm not saying they shouldn't charge 30% at all,

00:54:36 ◼   ► I'm saying that it is in Apple's interest

00:54:38 ◼   ► as the platform owner to figure out

00:54:41 ◼   ► what they have to do to make it so there's a good experience

00:54:43 ◼   ► that is definitely a win-win.

00:54:45 ◼   ► I don't know if it's a win-win-win

00:54:47 ◼   ► to use the business speak.

00:54:48 ◼   ► I don't know if everyone's gonna be happy,

00:54:50 ◼   ► but at least two of the three parties here

00:54:51 ◼   ► are gonna be happy with this.

00:54:53 ◼   ► They need to figure out a way to make it happen.

00:54:54 ◼   ► And the second thing that annoys me about it

00:54:56 ◼   ► the strategy tax thing and that, oh, by the way,

00:54:58 ◼   ► did you know that Apple has a bookstore?

00:54:59 ◼   ► And they pay themselves 30%, don't worry.

00:55:02 ◼   ► You know, that seems like, is that the reason

00:55:05 ◼   ► they're not doing it, 'cause they wanna promote iBooks?

00:55:07 ◼   ► Well, I don't think iBooks even sells comics,

00:55:08 ◼   ► so probably not in this case,

00:55:09 ◼   ► but in the Kindle store, it really burns me

00:55:11 ◼   ► that, you know, Kindle can't, you know,

00:55:13 ◼   ► if Kindle wants to sell their books inside the app,

00:55:16 ◼   ► which everyone who uses the Kindle app would love,

00:55:18 ◼   ► they've gotta give Apple 30%.

00:55:20 ◼   ► And really, there was just, I don't think there's 30%

00:55:22 ◼   ► hanging around to shave off of these things, right?

00:55:24 ◼   ► And so, yeah, they could just crank up their prices

00:55:26 ◼   ► by 30%, but then they have to match the store on the web store.

00:55:29 ◼   ► All these rules that Apple set up are made to introduce inefficiencies in the system

00:55:33 ◼   ► to force people to either use their system and therefore not be able to offer people

00:55:38 ◼   ► a discount for going to the website or whatever, or don't use it.

00:55:41 ◼   ► People are choosing not to use it.

00:55:42 ◼   ► You can say, "Well, they're playing hardball, and that's Amazon's fault."

00:55:45 ◼   ► At this point, I think it's clear that Apple's strategy of just holding the line on 30% and

00:55:49 ◼   ► saying, "Nope, it's going to be this way for everybody, and that's it," it's not working.

00:55:54 ◼   ► It's not making people-- it's having the opposite effect.

00:55:56 ◼   ► People aren't saying, well, what choice do we have?

00:55:58 ◼   ► I guess we just got to do it, because we

00:55:59 ◼   ► want to give our customers a good experience,

00:56:01 ◼   ► and we get more sales.

00:56:02 ◼   ► The opposite is happening.

00:56:03 ◼   ► They say, well, they're just opting out.

00:56:05 ◼   ► And if they think they're calling Apple's bluff

00:56:08 ◼   ► or whatever, I think Apple's bluff is called.

00:56:10 ◼   ► Apple needs to do something about it, because we

00:56:13 ◼   ► want to have--

00:56:14 ◼   ► I mean, there are so many other things that

00:56:16 ◼   ► aren't as good in Android.

00:56:17 ◼   ► But Android at least gives you the option

00:56:19 ◼   ► of not paying Google whatever percent if you

00:56:22 ◼   ► use your own payment processor.

00:56:23 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, so on Android you can,

00:56:25 ◼   ► if you use Google, they charge 30% just like the others,

00:56:29 ◼   ► but there's no rule against using your own,

00:56:31 ◼   ► so you can build on your own, and many of the big apps have.

00:56:35 ◼   ► And I wanna point out also,

00:56:36 ◼   ► Amazon, when they sell something,

00:56:40 ◼   ► they also tend to usually charge at least 30%,

00:56:44 ◼   ► especially on digital goods,

00:56:45 ◼   ► especially for smaller publishers, for self-published people

00:56:48 ◼   ► they actually often charge more than 30%.

00:56:51 ◼   ► And so this isn't like Amazon wants

00:56:54 ◼   ► to give more to the authors.

00:56:56 ◼   ► It's more like Amazon just wants that 30% for themselves.

00:56:59 ◼   ► Well, the authors will get more.

00:57:01 ◼   ► But we're ignoring how Amazon splits up its money.

00:57:04 ◼   ► Because that is a whole separate issue of yes,

00:57:06 ◼   ► you can definitely complain about Amazon.

00:57:08 ◼   ► They're not great about--

00:57:09 ◼   ► they want all the money for everything.

00:57:11 ◼   ► They want to sell your stuff below cost

00:57:13 ◼   ► and give you nothing for it.

00:57:14 ◼   ► They want to give your thing away for free.

00:57:15 ◼   ► Like Amazon deals with that.

00:57:16 ◼   ► I'm just talking about the relationship between Apple

00:57:18 ◼   ► and everyone else.

00:57:19 ◼   ► Because that's where the dysfunction is.

00:57:21 ◼   ► If we could address this and we could buy things

00:57:23 ◼   ► inside the thing, then the secondary dysfunction

00:57:25 ◼   ► would be like, okay, well how much of this purchase price

00:57:27 ◼   ► after Apple gets its cut goes to the creator or whatever.

00:57:30 ◼   ► So I think that's a little bit of a sideshow

00:57:32 ◼   ► and a lot of people are like, well this is better

00:57:33 ◼   ► because some of that 30% will go to the content creators

00:57:36 ◼   ► and that's probably true, but that's not why,

00:57:39 ◼   ► like don't hang your hat on that as the reason

00:57:41 ◼   ► we shouldn't be able to buy things inside an iOS app.

00:57:43 ◼   ► It is an artificial situation brought on by

00:57:46 ◼   ► a platform owner and someone who wants to be in the platform

00:57:49 ◼   ► butting heads and we are the loser.

00:57:52 ◼   ► The customers are the loser in this situation.

00:57:54 ◼   ► And in the beginning it was like,

00:57:55 ◼   ► well, let's just see how this shakes out.

00:57:56 ◼   ► But now after all these years,

00:57:58 ◼   ► I think Apple needs to do something different.

00:58:00 ◼   ► I don't know what that different thing is.

00:58:01 ◼   ► Is it different thing you buy Amazon?

00:58:03 ◼   ► No, maybe not.

00:58:04 ◼   ► Is it different thing you lower your percentage,

00:58:06 ◼   ► you come up with a different kind of deal?

00:58:08 ◼   ► Because consumers are suffering for it.

00:58:09 ◼   ► And that I think is the primary response.

00:58:13 ◼   ► Apple's like, oh, we just care about making great products.

00:58:15 ◼   ► It is not a great product when I can't buy a Kindle book

00:58:17 ◼   ► inside the Kindle app.

00:58:18 ◼   ► It's just not.

00:58:19 ◼   ► So yeah, I disagree on this point, on the idea that Apple has to do something, that

00:58:24 ◼   ► Apple is somehow losing here or they have to. I mean, there's one side of this that's

00:58:28 ◼   ► an entitlement argument that I don't think is entirely fair. One side of this is, well,

00:58:33 ◼   ► we should be able to do whatever we want on this computing platform because we're able

00:58:36 ◼   ► to do whatever we want on Macs and PCs. But the reality is, like, iOS is, yeah, it's

00:58:44 ◼   ► mostly like a computing platform, but there's no third-party software that doesn't go

00:58:49 ◼   ► through the App Store unless you jailbreak, but that doesn't really count.

00:58:51 ◼   ► But this isn't a technical issue. This isn't a safety issue. This isn't a technical issue.

00:58:55 ◼   ► This isn't an ease of use. It is like, it's a capability thing that we know is possible.

00:59:00 ◼   ► It's an artificial business constraint. Well, sure, but okay, so this is only a contentious

00:59:06 ◼   ► issue because iOS is the dominant tablet platform for people who buy things and read them on

00:59:12 ◼   ► tablets that they also use for anything else in the world. So what if the dominant portable

00:59:18 ◼   ► computing platform was, you know, what if it ended up differently? What if the dominant

00:59:22 ◼   ► tablet or the dominant portable computing platform was the Sony PSP? Or what if it was

00:59:27 ◼   ► the E Ink Kindle? You know, then you look at like the E Ink Kindles, no one ever had

00:59:33 ◼   ► apps on that. I mean, they had a quick little KDK thing that died, thank God, it was half

00:59:37 ◼   ► baked at best. You know, you couldn't make apps for the E Ink Kindle. Apple could not

00:59:41 ◼   ► make iBooks for the E Ink Kindle. Apple probably also couldn't make iBooks for the PSP. It's

00:59:47 ◼   ► game console. Game consoles work very differently, similar to how the App Store works, although

00:59:51 ◼   ► probably on worse terms, I would imagine. And so, you know, you look at other types

00:59:57 ◼   ► of computing devices that aren't just PCs and Macs, other types of computing devices

01:00:01 ◼   ► that are owned by one company, that are kind of vertically integrated, et cetera. They

01:00:08 ◼   ► work usually the same way that Apple does with the same kind of rules, or more restrictive,

01:00:11 ◼   ► where they take bigger cuts.

01:00:13 ◼   ► So, and including one of Amazon's own platforms

01:00:17 ◼   ► that is very, very popular,

01:00:18 ◼   ► which is the E and Kindle platform.

01:00:19 ◼   ► So I don't really think that it's,

01:00:23 ◼   ► that Apple has to do anything here,

01:00:25 ◼   ► or that they're necessarily unjustified,

01:00:26 ◼   ► or that they're being excessively greedy.

01:00:28 ◼   ► I really--

01:00:29 ◼   ► - So your argument is that because other people

01:00:31 ◼   ► do bad things, Apple is also entitled to do bad things?

01:00:34 ◼   ► - No, my argument is that you, as company X,

01:00:39 ◼   ► or as individual X, you are not entitled

01:00:42 ◼   ► to access Apple's customer base

01:00:44 ◼   ► on your own terms that you dictate.

01:00:47 ◼   ► - But it's not the Amazon that has the entitlement.

01:00:50 ◼   ► I'm having the entitlement as the customer.

01:00:51 ◼   ► I'm supposed to be the one that Apple is serving.

01:00:53 ◼   ► Like they're reducing the value of their products to me

01:00:56 ◼   ► through this fight that they're having

01:00:58 ◼   ► with Amazon over this.

01:00:59 ◼   ► Like Amazon is certainly, yes,

01:01:00 ◼   ► certainly not entitled to access to Apple's customers.

01:01:02 ◼   ► That's the hope that the whole fight is over.

01:01:03 ◼   ► Like those two companies are fighting,

01:01:04 ◼   ► but we are the losers.

01:01:05 ◼   ► We are caught in the middle.

01:01:07 ◼   ► And at a certain point, us being the losers affects Apple

01:01:11 ◼   ► more than it affects Amazon.

01:01:12 ◼   ► Because Amazon can go anywhere, can sell--

01:01:14 ◼   ► whoever-- Amazon cares much less about who the winner is

01:01:17 ◼   ► in the whatever space than Apple does.

01:01:19 ◼   ► Because Amazon is promiscuous.

01:01:22 ◼   ► Will try to get you to buy-- yes,

01:01:23 ◼   ► they have their own platform too,

01:01:25 ◼   ► but it's not like they're shunning iOS and Android.

01:01:28 ◼   ► They will still sell what they want to sell.

01:01:30 ◼   ► It's us that's losing.

01:01:31 ◼   ► And I was willing to give it a couple of years

01:01:34 ◼   ► to see how it would shake out.

01:01:36 ◼   ► But if, for example, Apple had become ridiculously dominant,

01:01:39 ◼   ► like they had 90% market share and everything,

01:01:41 ◼   ► maybe Amazon would have lost this one.

01:01:43 ◼   ► Maybe they would have gone back to selling in the app,

01:01:44 ◼   ► but it didn't work out that way.

01:01:46 ◼   ► And so now I think it's time to readjust.

01:01:49 ◼   ► - I see, I just don't see the pressure

01:01:53 ◼   ► being that strong on Apple here.

01:01:55 ◼   ► - I think Apple is not fulfilling its responsibility

01:01:58 ◼   ► as a platform owner to make its products

01:02:00 ◼   ► the best they can be for its customers in the long term.

01:02:02 ◼   ► Not just the short term.

01:02:03 ◼   ► Like I said, I was willing to give them

01:02:05 ◼   ► a year or two to play hardball and see how it went, but it is going badly for them.

01:02:10 ◼   ► And I blame Apple because they're my child.

01:02:15 ◼   ► I will disagree that it's going badly. But also, one more thing.

01:02:18 ◼   ► I think Apple could probably look at this from another angle and say,

01:02:21 ◼   ► "If you're proposing a change to App Store policy, you can't just look at it as what would good implementations do with that.

01:02:25 ◼   ► What would good people do with that? How would that be used well?"

01:02:33 ◼   ► You have to also look at it as,

01:02:34 ◼   ► how would that be used terribly?

01:02:36 ◼   ► How would that be used by scammy people,

01:02:37 ◼   ► by crappy companies like King?

01:02:39 ◼   ► Like how would that be used by terrible people

01:02:42 ◼   ► and terrible companies?

01:02:44 ◼   ► And if, and allowing other in-app purchase systems

01:02:48 ◼   ► that Apple does not run would also introduce a huge risk

01:02:53 ◼   ► of an erosion of trust in the payment system

01:02:56 ◼   ► by bad actors, like big game companies

01:03:00 ◼   ► with in-app purchase schemes, stuff like that.

01:03:02 ◼   ► Like bad actors having their own credit card input things

01:03:06 ◼   ► in their apps that then behave badly.

01:03:09 ◼   ► - But who's suggesting that though?

01:03:10 ◼   ► No one is suggesting that.

01:03:12 ◼   ► - Well, so that's one of the options.

01:03:14 ◼   ► There's a couple options to solve this.

01:03:16 ◼   ► One of the options is to reduce Apple's cut.

01:03:19 ◼   ► Let's say they cut it in half to 15%.

01:03:21 ◼   ► Do you think that would change Amazon's mind?

01:03:22 ◼   ► I'm guessing not.

01:03:24 ◼   ► Let's say all the rules stay the same,

01:03:25 ◼   ► but the cut goes down.

01:03:26 ◼   ► - The most feasible option for them,

01:03:28 ◼   ► if you're looking like what's the practical solution,

01:03:29 ◼   ► what do you actually want them to do?

01:03:32 ◼   ► Two things, one on the technical side,

01:03:33 ◼   ► they should make it possible for someone with a catalog

01:03:36 ◼   ► volume the size of Comixology, let alone Amazon itself.

01:03:39 ◼   ► If there's any limit, Amazon is going to hit it

01:03:41 ◼   ► with like an Amazon.com app, for example.

01:03:44 ◼   ► Like it sells everything that Amazon sells

01:03:46 ◼   ► 'cause their catalog is massive.

01:03:47 ◼   ► But anyway, make sure that's all set,

01:03:50 ◼   ► make sure you have a system in place.

01:03:52 ◼   ► And then what I would change about it is it's ridiculous

01:03:55 ◼   ► that they have this hardline thing

01:03:56 ◼   ► where it's gotta be 70/30 with everyone.

01:03:58 ◼   ► Cut a deal with Amazon.

01:04:00 ◼   ► I think it's not insane, like, oh, it's unfair.

01:04:03 ◼   ► Why does Amazon get it?

01:04:04 ◼   ► They get a special deal because they're Amazon.com.

01:04:06 ◼   ► You are not Amazon.com, you get a different deal.

01:04:08 ◼   ► I don't think that's unreasonable.

01:04:10 ◼   ► And Apple seems so tied to like, it's 70/30,

01:04:12 ◼   ► it never changes, everyone is treated equally,

01:04:14 ◼   ► isn't that nice and fair for everybody?

01:04:17 ◼   ► It stops being a tenable strategy

01:04:20 ◼   ► when your consumers are made to have worse experiences

01:04:23 ◼   ► because of, I don't know, what crazy principle

01:04:25 ◼   ► that you want, like, you know,

01:04:26 ◼   ► in each individual Apple developer to feel fair.

01:04:29 ◼   ► I don't think it's unreasonable to cut a deal with Amazon.

01:04:31 ◼   ► Figure out what you have to do.

01:04:33 ◼   ► The terms of that deal don't even need to be public.

01:04:35 ◼   ► I don't care what Amazon and Apple have to do

01:04:37 ◼   ► to or with each other behind closed doors

01:04:40 ◼   ► to get this deal to happen.

01:04:41 ◼   ► Just do what you have to do.

01:04:43 ◼   ► If someone complains, hey, Amazon's getting a special deal.

01:04:46 ◼   ► When you get to be the size of Amazon,

01:04:48 ◼   ► then you'll get a special deal too.

01:04:49 ◼   ► Like, is that crazy?

01:04:50 ◼   ► Am I breaking secret rules of the App Store

01:04:53 ◼   ► by suggesting this insane idea?

01:04:55 ◼   ► - Well, it would be breaking with a lot of precedent.

01:04:58 ◼   ► Historically, Apple has generally very consistently

01:05:03 ◼   ► enforced the same rules for everybody, big and small.

01:05:06 ◼   ► And much of the big companies should grin in a lot of cases.

01:05:09 ◼   ► But they generally do not negotiate major exceptions

01:05:14 ◼   ► to rules like that, even with companies

01:05:16 ◼   ► as big as Amazon or Facebook or The New York Times

01:05:18 ◼   ► or anything like that.

01:05:19 ◼   ► They really have not done that.

01:05:20 ◼   ► I agree they haven't.

01:05:21 ◼   ► I think it's silly that they haven't.

01:05:23 ◼   ► See, I don't know.

01:05:24 ◼   ► I mean, there is-- a lot of the App Store,

01:05:27 ◼   ► and a lot of its problems, honestly,

01:05:30 ◼   ► are because of this almost mostly democratic system

01:05:35 ◼   ► that it has often been or it is in a lot of respects.

01:05:40 ◼   ► The top list is famously minimally filtered.

01:05:44 ◼   ► And so you see crappy scam apps up there all the time

01:05:47 ◼   ► because they're not really monitoring it that closely.

01:05:50 ◼   ► And it's worth arguing whether that's

01:05:52 ◼   ► a good thing or a bad thing.

01:05:55 ◼   ► But for the most part, the App Store is run

01:05:58 ◼   ► on a pretty level playing field,

01:06:00 ◼   ► where big companies are not allowed to break rules

01:06:04 ◼   ► that small companies can't also break.

01:06:06 ◼   ► - Well, it's not breaking a rule if you have a deal.

01:06:08 ◼   ► Like I said, there's anger in the chat room about this.

01:06:10 ◼   ► Here's, let me address a couple of the things.

01:06:11 ◼   ► Dented Meat says, "Do you really think

01:06:13 ◼   ► "that if Amazon is given a better deal,

01:06:14 ◼   ► "they will automatically pass the money

01:06:16 ◼   ► "to the content creators?"

01:06:16 ◼   ► No, of course not, I didn't say that.

01:06:18 ◼   ► I don't think anyone said that.

01:06:19 ◼   ► Again, we're not talking about

01:06:20 ◼   ► Amazon divides up the money.

01:06:21 ◼   ► That's a whole separate issue.

01:06:22 ◼   ► That's totally not what I'm talking about.

01:06:24 ◼   ► I don't know what Amazon would do with it, probably not,

01:06:26 ◼   ► because that's not how they work.

01:06:28 ◼   ► And then people say, comparing it to bribes and corruption.

01:06:32 ◼   ► It's a business relationship.

01:06:35 ◼   ► When Apple is buying parts from someone who makes

01:06:38 ◼   ► screens or widgets or whatever,

01:06:40 ◼   ► they negotiate a deal to buy those screens.

01:06:42 ◼   ► They get a better price than you do

01:06:43 ◼   ► if you wanna buy 10 of them.

01:06:44 ◼   ► That's business, that's not bribes and corruption.

01:06:46 ◼   ► That's just how business works.

01:06:47 ◼   ► You get volume discounts.

01:06:48 ◼   ► If you're going to drive a certain amount of business,

01:06:50 ◼   ► you get a better deal.

01:06:51 ◼   ► I don't think that's corruption or bribes.

01:06:53 ◼   ► That's just how business works.

01:06:56 ◼   ► It's a contract and no one else is entitled to see,

01:06:58 ◼   ► hey, how much is Samsung paying you for screens?

01:07:00 ◼   ► Apple's not entitled to see that.

01:07:02 ◼   ► That's individual contracts with businesses.

01:07:05 ◼   ► If someone's bringing up antitrust,

01:07:06 ◼   ► Apple doesn't have the market share in any market

01:07:09 ◼   ► to be even remotely considered for antitrust,

01:07:13 ◼   ► except for the crazy people who are gonna say

01:07:14 ◼   ► that Apple has a monopoly on Apple computers,

01:07:16 ◼   ► and I love that one, that everyone gets old.

01:07:18 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:07:20 ◼   ► You know, I understand why you'd want to have uniform rules.

01:07:24 ◼   ► And that's a good idea right up to the point

01:07:26 ◼   ► where it seems like there's some sort of problem.

01:07:28 ◼   ► Here, there is definitely a problem.

01:07:30 ◼   ► And maybe they can never come to a deal.

01:07:32 ◼   ► Like, if they can't come to a deal, they can't come to a deal.

01:07:34 ◼   ► But as far as any of us are aware,

01:07:36 ◼   ► they've never even considered this as an option.

01:07:38 ◼   ► I mean, another example is they held the line on--

01:07:42 ◼   ► I imagine a lot of the rumors are about Microsoft and Office

01:07:45 ◼   ► and why isn't Office available.

01:07:47 ◼   ► - Microsoft doesn't wanna give Apple 30%

01:07:49 ◼   ► of its software sales, right?

01:07:50 ◼   ► And so that went on for a really long time

01:07:52 ◼   ► until eventually Microsoft blinked and produced Office,

01:07:55 ◼   ► but they found a way to do it without giving Apple a cut

01:07:57 ◼   ► because you have to sign up for Office 365

01:07:59 ◼   ► and all this other--

01:08:00 ◼   ► - Wait, is that true?

01:08:01 ◼   ► I thought they were giving Apple the cut

01:08:03 ◼   ► if you bought it in the app.

01:08:04 ◼   ► - For the subscription, you mean?

01:08:06 ◼   ► - I thought it was a little of both.

01:08:07 ◼   ► I thought that the way that Microsoft hopes you go

01:08:11 ◼   ► is you already have an Office 365 subscription

01:08:13 ◼   ► you got on your own accord, but I believe, Marco,

01:08:16 ◼   ► you're also right that there is an in-app purchase of some capacity that Apple does get a cut of.

01:08:23 ◼   ► But like the thing everyone was talking about early on was Microsoft Office will be available

01:08:26 ◼   ► for the iPad, it'll be $99 and Apple will get 30% of that and that's not what Microsoft did,

01:08:30 ◼   ► that's not what happened. You know, like they have the subscription model and the apps are free,

01:08:36 ◼   ► right? It's a free download? Yep. Yeah, I mean, so that is, you know, it's a different monetization

01:08:41 ◼   ► strategy as opposed to simply selling Office at a premium price and giving Apple 30% right

01:08:47 ◼   ► off there. And in that case, there would be no way to get Office without paying Apple

01:08:51 ◼   ► 30%. And now there is a way. You download a free app, go to Microsoft's website where

01:08:54 ◼   ► they offer you the same prices, you know, in-app purchase. And even that took a long

01:08:57 ◼   ► time to figure out. And I think customers didn't really lose out in that one. And I

01:09:01 ◼   ► think Apple kind of won that battle. But the battle over an application through which you

01:09:06 ◼   ► naturally want to buy things and consume them right in them, Apple is not winning that battle

01:09:10 ◼   ► for whatever reasons, and I think something should be done about it.

01:09:13 ◼   ► And I mean, thus far, because Google is so incompetent in this area

01:09:17 ◼   ► and has not been able to penetrate the market, people aren't like, well,

01:09:20 ◼   ► screw Apple, I'm just going to get an Android dress because you're not like,

01:09:22 ◼   ► I think the iPad is still better.

01:09:24 ◼   ► You know, I think it's Apple still.

01:09:28 ◼   ► Maybe that's what they think, too.

01:09:29 ◼   ► Like we're still in the driver's seat.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Eventually we'll win this.

01:09:31 ◼   ► But there's a lot of years of suffering that's gone on already with the Kindle app.

01:09:34 ◼   ► And just the comiXology is a drop in the bucket.

01:09:37 ◼   ► And we just see a lot of it because, you know, we know people who

01:09:40 ◼   ► read comics and are angry about it, but I think it is a of a type that will continue coming up until

01:09:46 ◼   ► someone figures something out. So what about this as a proposed alternative? So the times in which

01:09:54 ◼   ► we all get bitter about the 30% seem to be, as far as I can tell, reselling. So Amazon or Comixology

01:10:03 ◼   ► is reselling the comics in their app.

01:10:07 ◼   ► What if Apple announced that, "Hey, if you come to us and can prove to us that you're

01:10:12 ◼   ► a reseller, then we'll drop the fee to 15%," or something like that.

01:10:17 ◼   ► And so for things like games where you're not really reselling anything, then you still

01:10:22 ◼   ► have to pay the 30%.

01:10:24 ◼   ► And you can't just make a shell company and say, "Yes, I promise that this shell company

01:10:28 ◼   ► isn't me."

01:10:29 ◼   ► You have to actually go to someone in Apple and prove to them by whatever means they want

01:10:35 ◼   ► that you are simply reselling and you are not providing your own original content, and

01:10:40 ◼   ► thus it's not reasonable to give Apple 30%, you will give them the lower tier cost.

01:10:46 ◼   ► Well, you don't need to think that hard about this.

01:10:48 ◼   ► You can do things, if you're so stuck on doing uniform rules for everybody, you just give

01:10:51 ◼   ► like volume discounts.

01:10:52 ◼   ► If you sell X amount of dollars, we get X percent, and if you sell 10 billion dollars,

01:10:56 ◼   ► I mean like there are plenty...

01:10:57 ◼   ► Right, which Microsoft does that.

01:10:58 ◼   ► These are not like new technologies in the world of business.

01:11:01 ◼   ► Like this is how business has worked forever.

01:11:03 ◼   ► It's just that the app store is the aberration.

01:11:05 ◼   ► Can we apply this uniformly to everybody and not have any variability for volume

01:11:09 ◼   ► so that if you sell three in-app purchases for virtual coins versus 30

01:11:13 ◼   ► billion in-app purchases, when you get exactly the same percentage,

01:11:16 ◼   ► it's nice and convenient to everyone, you know, but like, again,

01:11:18 ◼   ► it's only a problem until like it's making your platform worse to deploy

01:11:22 ◼   ► applications on it.

01:11:23 ◼   ► The Kindle app is worse on iOS in this respect than it is on other platforms

01:11:27 ◼   ► that allow purchase. And Comixology just got worse because the previous company that owned

01:11:31 ◼   ► it was willing to bite the bullet and give the 30% surely shaving its margins and potentially

01:11:37 ◼   ► also shaving how much money go to content creators, but who cares? They were willing

01:11:40 ◼   ► to do this because that was how they got traction. They got enough traction, they got bought

01:11:43 ◼   ► out by Amazon. Amazon doesn't need traction. Amazon is Amazon.com. So yeah, they take away

01:11:47 ◼   ► the 30% because that's what Amazon does. It's not like I'm saying Amazon is the scorpion

01:11:53 ◼   ► here. It's like, well, it's in its nature. It's going to do that. Like I think Amazon

01:11:55 ◼   ► and does plenty of evil things too.

01:11:57 ◼   ► All I'm thinking about is why is the platform

01:11:59 ◼   ► that I use on my tablet getting worse

01:12:00 ◼   ► for me to do things I like to do on it?

01:12:02 ◼   ► And I just want it to be worked out.

01:12:05 ◼   ► - Marco, before you jump in, I'd just like to point out

01:12:07 ◼   ► I understand the Scorpion reference.

01:12:08 ◼   ► - That's what you talked about on Hypercritical

01:12:10 ◼   ► and you listened.

01:12:12 ◼   ► - You know, Jon, you're assuming

01:12:14 ◼   ► that Apple needs to address this.

01:12:16 ◼   ► And in your position, you're arguing that,

01:12:19 ◼   ► it is an assumption, you're arguing

01:12:21 ◼   ► that Apple needs to fix this.

01:12:22 ◼   ► And I just don't see the urgent need.

01:12:24 ◼   ► And I think the Kindle app being this way for so long,

01:12:28 ◼   ► I mean it's been what, four or five years,

01:12:30 ◼   ► probably three or four years that the Kindle app

01:12:32 ◼   ► has been this way?

01:12:34 ◼   ► That's been there long enough and it doesn't seem

01:12:38 ◼   ► to really be affecting Apple sales or customer satisfaction.

01:12:41 ◼   ► You know, overall it doesn't seem to be that

01:12:45 ◼   ► you know, Apple's really like being held with a fire here,

01:12:47 ◼   ► that they really have to change this.

01:12:49 ◼   ► I don't see the big push, I don't see why they would

01:12:52 ◼   ► have to do any of these things,

01:12:54 ◼   ► And by the way, I think lowering their cut to anything

01:12:58 ◼   ► would not please Amazon.

01:12:59 ◼   ► I think Amazon wants to own that whole experience

01:13:00 ◼   ► and the whole processing of anything.

01:13:01 ◼   ► - That is potentially right, but at that point,

01:13:04 ◼   ► I could stop blaming Apple and say,

01:13:05 ◼   ► "Well, Apple offered them like 0.001%

01:13:08 ◼   ► and they just still rejected it."

01:13:09 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, then it's not Apple's fault anymore."

01:13:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, and honestly, I really do think

01:13:13 ◼   ► Amazon wants to own the entire customer process,

01:13:16 ◼   ► not just that commission.

01:13:17 ◼   ► They want everything to be going through them only.

01:13:20 ◼   ► And so they have full control and full access.

01:13:23 ◼   ► I really don't think that a rate cut would do it for them.

01:13:26 ◼   ► - Well, the idea that they don't need to do it

01:13:27 ◼   ► 'cause it's like, well, they've been doing it

01:13:29 ◼   ► for years with Kindle and it hasn't hurt them, right?

01:13:30 ◼   ► It's difficult to sell what hasn't hurt them,

01:13:32 ◼   ► but the one thing I would point to, like a metric,

01:13:35 ◼   ► you're just like, well, maybe they would have sold more iPads

01:13:38 ◼   ► if you could have bought things.

01:13:38 ◼   ► Like, that's hard to prove, like, whatever.

01:13:40 ◼   ► But the one thing you could point to

01:13:42 ◼   ► is good old Tim Cook's favorite, customer sat.

01:13:44 ◼   ► Customer sat among people who read comics.

01:13:46 ◼   ► Has suddenly gone down, I can tell you that.

01:13:48 ◼   ► And I think customer, I mean, Kindle app didn't have it,

01:13:51 ◼   ► So like, customer sat among people who use the Kindle app would go, you know, way higher

01:13:56 ◼   ► for their iPads if they could buy things through it.

01:13:57 ◼   ► Because think about that.

01:13:58 ◼   ► Like, some people, they consider their iPad like, it's my comic reading device.

01:14:03 ◼   ► And like, that's what they use it for.

01:14:04 ◼   ► And I bet there are people out there who consider it their Kindle reader.

01:14:07 ◼   ► And if suddenly those people could buy the things, like they got to the end of series

01:14:10 ◼   ► one, of a book series, and there was a little page at the end of the Kindle thing that said,

01:14:13 ◼   ► "Do you want to start reading the next one?

01:14:14 ◼   ► Tap this button."

01:14:15 ◼   ► You tap the button, a little spinner appeared for two seconds, and you're reading the next

01:14:18 ◼   ► book.

01:14:19 ◼   ► sat with their iPad would go up.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Like, that is a metric that you can track,

01:14:23 ◼   ► that they talk about a lot, that they should be watching.

01:14:26 ◼   ► Is it causing people to not buy iPads?

01:14:28 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:14:29 ◼   ► Like, maybe customer satisfaction is disconnected

01:14:32 ◼   ► from their bottom line in vague ways,

01:14:34 ◼   ► but they do care about it, because that's their whole thing.

01:14:35 ◼   ► It's like, we're trying to make great products

01:14:37 ◼   ► that make people happy.

01:14:38 ◼   ► And here's a case where they're intentionally choosing

01:14:40 ◼   ► not to do something that they know will make people happy

01:14:42 ◼   ► because of a fight they're having

01:14:43 ◼   ► with a competitor about pricing.

01:14:45 ◼   ► And like I said, it's okay to do that for a while,

01:14:48 ◼   ► but the way it's shaking out doesn't seem like Amazon's

01:14:50 ◼   ► gonna budge and customer satisfaction with these experiences

01:14:54 ◼   ► is either still not going up to the level they know

01:14:57 ◼   ► it could be or going down in the cases where applications

01:14:59 ◼   ► have to backslide.

01:15:00 ◼   ► So assuming that there's no rate change that could get

01:15:04 ◼   ► Amazon to actually accept that and do everything directly

01:15:07 ◼   ► through Apple, assuming that the only thing that would allow

01:15:09 ◼   ► them to offer in-app purchases on Apple's platforms

01:15:12 ◼   ► in a way that Amazon would approve would be to do what

01:15:16 ◼   ► Google allows, which is to just have their own payment

01:15:18 ◼   ► processing in the app, and Apple would just remove the rule that you can't do that. Do

01:15:23 ◼   ► you think the net gain from that in overall Apple ecosystem customer satisfaction, assuming

01:15:30 ◼   ► that anybody else could do that same thing, assuming that anyone, as I said earlier, assuming

01:15:33 ◼   ► that King could put their own payment system in Candy Crush to make 30% more, and that

01:15:38 ◼   ► any random app could put their own credit card system in.

01:15:40 ◼   ► But you keep going back to your own payment system. No one is suggesting that. I would

01:15:44 ◼   ► never suggest that people be able to do their own payment systems.

01:15:47 ◼   ► So you're basically putting forth the idea that Apple should negotiate a lower rate with

01:15:51 ◼   ► Amazon and that Amazon would probably accept a lower rate.

01:15:55 ◼   ► It's not just Amazon.

01:15:56 ◼   ► Say Amazon plays hardball and we will not give you a red cent.

01:15:58 ◼   ► You'll never get anything if you don't.

01:16:01 ◼   ► For example, Amazon's policy was, "If you don't let us implement our own payment, then

01:16:05 ◼   ► screw you."

01:16:06 ◼   ► And then I would say it's in Apple's interest not to ever do that because we'd say, "Well,

01:16:09 ◼   ► you implementing your own payment system would make it worse for our customers."

01:16:12 ◼   ► So it's not actually, "We're not better than our customers, so I'll use this and forget

01:16:15 ◼   ► it."

01:16:16 ◼   ► mean like Marvel Unlimited and all these other like comicsology had white label

01:16:19 ◼   ► versions of their apps to other people so I don't know how it's gonna work out

01:16:21 ◼   ► now that Amazon owns them but there's a potential for other people in the market

01:16:25 ◼   ► to say well we'll do a deal for the people who own these comics and we will

01:16:28 ◼   ► sell comics electronically and we will let them but you buy them from within

01:16:31 ◼   ► our app and you would see the people who enter comics say well screw

01:16:33 ◼   ► comicsology I'm not using them anymore you can't even buy inside the app I'm

01:16:36 ◼   ► going to this other thing or I'm going to this description plan like those ones

01:16:38 ◼   ► where you pay a monthly fee and you can read X number of comics like the

01:16:42 ◼   ► competition hopefully at least in the realm of comics maybe not in the realm

01:16:45 ◼   ► with books or anything else, would make it so that other people would spring up and say,

01:16:49 ◼   ► "Well, you're not willing to pay Apple 2%, but I think 2% is a reasonable transaction

01:16:52 ◼   ► fee and we're going to pay it and now everyone's going to come to our app and no one's going

01:16:55 ◼   ► to buy through your thing because they don't want to go to your website to buy stuff."

01:16:58 ◼   ► I'm looking at just what effect these kind of decisions would have on the entire iOS

01:17:03 ◼   ► ecosystem and on all developers and all users of it. I don't see a scenario here where Apple

01:17:10 ◼   ► could make a change that would dramatically improve

01:17:14 ◼   ► the situation with Amazon stuff and would be a net benefit

01:17:18 ◼   ► and wouldn't have too high a cost in user satisfaction,

01:17:23 ◼   ► even ignoring the money Apple would lose on that reduced

01:17:26 ◼   ► or lost commission.

01:17:28 ◼   ► I don't see this as being a net win.

01:17:30 ◼   ► I see bad people taking advantage of it

01:17:34 ◼   ► and an erosion of trust in buying iOS apps

01:17:36 ◼   ► and paying for things on iOS,

01:17:37 ◼   ► which should reduce customer satisfaction.

01:17:40 ◼   ► What would the bad people do with a reduced rate based on volume or otherwise?

01:17:44 ◼   ► Yeah, the reduced rate, that's something that I think would probably only negatively

01:17:49 ◼   ► affect Apple, but I also don't—again, I don't see Amazon taking that deal.

01:17:53 ◼   ► And you're right, maybe someone else will, and maybe that'll be the situation.

01:17:56 ◼   ► But see, I just—again, I don't see the big need for this.

01:18:00 ◼   ► I mean, people are mad this week.

01:18:03 ◼   ► They'll be over it next week.

01:18:05 ◼   ► And even now, most of the anger is going to Comixology and Amazon.

01:18:08 ◼   ► Apple's not even getting hit by most of it.

01:18:10 ◼   ► Yeah, but the customer satisfaction with their iPads goes down.

01:18:12 ◼   ► They're less satisfied with their product.

01:18:15 ◼   ► Maybe it's like it doesn't reflect on Apple, maybe they blame Comixology, but what if the

01:18:18 ◼   ► next time they need to buy a tablet, by then they've long since heard that this isn't a

01:18:23 ◼   ► problem on Android and they read comics there and can buy them right in the app.

01:18:27 ◼   ► Maybe that will change their decision.

01:18:29 ◼   ► It's small, but these little things add up.

01:18:32 ◼   ► Books I think is bigger.

01:18:33 ◼   ► The Kindle app is bigger and the Kindle app has the advantage that I'm pretty sure you

01:18:35 ◼   ► you could never buy them inside the Kindle app,

01:18:37 ◼   ► so it's not like anything was ever taken away.

01:18:39 ◼   ► But if people find out that, oh, if you get a Kindle Fire,

01:18:41 ◼   ► you can buy within the app,

01:18:43 ◼   ► that may attract them more to a Kindle Fire,

01:18:44 ◼   ► especially if they start using their tablet mainly

01:18:46 ◼   ► as a Kindle device.

01:18:48 ◼   ► - I feel like, and you might have even said this earlier,

01:18:50 ◼   ► because the iPad, or maybe it was Marco,

01:18:51 ◼   ► because the iPad is so much better

01:18:54 ◼   ► than everything else on the market,

01:18:56 ◼   ► I don't think that customer sat,

01:18:58 ◼   ► will be influenced negatively enough

01:19:01 ◼   ► to level the playing field.

01:19:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, you're probably right,

01:19:05 ◼   ► And that's what Apple is counting on too, but these little things add up.

01:19:08 ◼   ► And I was going to say that Sam the Geek in the chat room says that the white label versions

01:19:11 ◼   ► of Comixology are keeping their in-app purchase.

01:19:13 ◼   ► But like I said, now that Amazon owns them, I wonder how long those white label versions

01:19:17 ◼   ► of Comixology app are going to be in the world at all.

01:19:21 ◼   ► But clearly the people who are currently using them, I think the companies that put out the

01:19:24 ◼   ► comics themselves actually white label them.

01:19:27 ◼   ► Those people are highly motivated to get away for people with iOS devices to be able to

01:19:31 ◼   ► easily buy their comics and apparently they have been willing to pay the 30%.

01:19:35 ◼   ► I assume they will continue to be willing to buy the 30% and that could be a way that

01:19:39 ◼   ► Apple quote unquote wins this one by basically saying, well, no one will use comicality anymore.

01:19:44 ◼   ► We'll still get 30% and we'll get 30% from these other people instead.

01:19:49 ◼   ► That's potentially true as well.

01:19:51 ◼   ► Like I'm just tired of the game of chicken.

01:19:53 ◼   ► I feel like it's gone on for too many years and I don't want to see apps coming onto the

01:19:59 ◼   ► platform and we'll all just assume, well, of course you can't buy within the application.

01:20:02 ◼   ► Of course you have to do this dance to go through a website and then like, some kid's

01:20:06 ◼   ► gonna ask me, "Grandpa, why can't I buy things inside applications?"

01:20:10 ◼   ► And I say, "Well, ten decades ago, three decades ago, wherever I went, I can't do math anymore

01:20:15 ◼   ► because I'm old, Apple decided that they wanted to charge everybody 30% and everyone else

01:20:20 ◼   ► decided they weren't gonna pay it.

01:20:21 ◼   ► And Apple still makes the best tablets, but we have to do this because of the fight between

01:20:24 ◼   ► these giant corporations."

01:20:25 ◼   ► Wow.

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01:21:17 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

01:21:19 ◼   ► But I've heard that in other businesses.

01:21:20 ◼   ► They're always just like that kind of,

01:21:21 ◼   ► like two companies and the customer kind of thing?

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01:22:14 ◼   ► - So are we done in the comics thing

01:22:15 ◼   ► that we don't have anything to say about?

01:22:17 ◼   ► - I didn't listen to the Back to Work episode yet.

01:22:19 ◼   ► I'm still behind, so I don't know what Merlin had to say

01:22:21 ◼   ► about it, but sorry if I repeated any of the stuff that he said.

01:22:25 ◼   ► He mostly took the middle, moderate round of this is all more complicated than we understand,

01:22:30 ◼   ► and we shouldn't be making assumptions like we understand everything going on with these

01:22:34 ◼   ► big companies.

01:22:35 ◼   ► Okay, well, I guess we didn't overlap. Although, I did talk about, I tried to add disclaimers

01:22:39 ◼   ► as far as we know. Because who knows what overtures any one company's making to Apple,

01:22:43 ◼   ► who knows what response Apple's making to them. We just know what these people announce

01:22:47 ◼   ► publicly and what they end up doing.

01:22:49 ◼   ► I don't think this issue's gonna be resolved anytime soon

01:22:51 ◼   ► between Apple with their 30% rules

01:22:54 ◼   ► and their no external payment processing rules

01:22:57 ◼   ► versus Amazon and their desires

01:22:59 ◼   ► versus customers and their experience.

01:23:00 ◼   ► I just, you know, the Kindle app has been this way for years

01:23:03 ◼   ► and it has not budged.

01:23:05 ◼   ► Neither side has budged at all,

01:23:08 ◼   ► so I don't see that changing for a very similar app

01:23:12 ◼   ► with the same parties involved

01:23:14 ◼   ► that has a much smaller audience.

01:23:15 ◼   ► I just don't see it changing.

01:23:16 ◼   ► The volume discount thing has the advantage that it lets everybody pretend that they didn't budge.

01:23:21 ◼   ► Because Apple can say, "Well, we still apply the same rules to everybody." And other people say,

01:23:25 ◼   ► "Well, we weren't going to do it, but we got Apple to change the rules." Because what that encourages

01:23:30 ◼   ► is you are encouraged to drive more business through iOS. Sell tons of crap, because the more

01:23:36 ◼   ► stuff you sell, the lower our percentage goes. And so that would let everybody save face. And

01:23:41 ◼   ► like you said, maybe it wouldn't bring Amazon back to the table. But even if it'd ignore Amazon,

01:23:45 ◼   ► If they're going to be butts about it, then fine. Tons of other people would be like, "Oh,

01:23:49 ◼   ► now I am much more highly motivated to figure out a way to sell goods through

01:23:52 ◼   ► the App Store," because if I just sell a little bit of them, fine, but if I sell tons of them,

01:23:57 ◼   ► the percentage that gets taken goes down. Unfortunately, the people selling the most

01:24:01 ◼   ► stuff for the App Store are the companies you mentioned who are using the existing in-app

01:24:05 ◼   ► purchase system to sell digital coins to people for bazillions of dollars.

01:24:11 ◼   ► - Right, well and there too, there is pretty much,

01:24:14 ◼   ► besides Amazon, what other major examples are there

01:24:19 ◼   ► that would have enough of an impact,

01:24:23 ◼   ► that are inconveniencing customers enough,

01:24:27 ◼   ► and are bad enough and inconvenient enough for customers

01:24:29 ◼   ► that Apple would be more pressured to act

01:24:32 ◼   ► beyond just, let's just keep our 30%

01:24:34 ◼   ► 'cause it's working great for us.

01:24:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean you're looking for potential things.

01:24:39 ◼   ► Like if Apple wants some people to buy things through iPads,

01:24:44 ◼   ► and I think they should, because I think that's

01:24:46 ◼   ► a great way to buy a lot of content that can be digital.

01:24:49 ◼   ► And I think it should use a single unified system

01:24:51 ◼   ► that Apple controls for in-app purchases,

01:24:53 ◼   ► so everyone is like, all the things about it that we like,

01:24:56 ◼   ► if there was more of that, it would be better.

01:24:58 ◼   ► So anybody who's gotten anything to sell that could potentially

01:25:00 ◼   ► find its way through the invisible airwaves

01:25:02 ◼   ► to your iPad should be encouraged to do so.

01:25:05 ◼   ► Someone in the chat room brought up,

01:25:07 ◼   ► look where the revenue is coming from.

01:25:09 ◼   ► If it's all coming from the big guys,

01:25:10 ◼   ► then they wouldn't want to change the rate

01:25:12 ◼   ► because then every,

01:25:13 ◼   ► they basically, Apple would be losing money.

01:25:15 ◼   ► Like why would Apple ever do a volume discount

01:25:16 ◼   ► if all their income or a huge amount of their income

01:25:19 ◼   ► is coming from the big guys?

01:25:20 ◼   ► Yeah, Apple would make less money.

01:25:22 ◼   ► Like this is the problem with this whole thing

01:25:23 ◼   ► is that people used to be like,

01:25:25 ◼   ► oh, Apple runs the iTunes store at break even

01:25:27 ◼   ► and it's not really a profit center.

01:25:28 ◼   ► And oh no, the app store is like, yeah, they take a cup.

01:25:30 ◼   ► It's really just enough to keep the lights on.

01:25:32 ◼   ► But it has always been like Apple's,

01:25:34 ◼   ► I don't know if it's their secret strategy or whatever,

01:25:36 ◼   ► but it's been pretty clear.

01:25:37 ◼   ► Like, you could see Apple five years ago

01:25:40 ◼   ► rubbing their hands together saying,

01:25:41 ◼   ► "Yes, ignore our breakeven businesses.

01:25:43 ◼   ► "They're totally not there to make money.

01:25:44 ◼   ► "It's just to make our devices more valuable."

01:25:47 ◼   ► They know that it is, you know, this is what you want.

01:25:50 ◼   ► The type of system where we don't have to do anything more

01:25:53 ◼   ► and we magically get money.

01:25:54 ◼   ► Like, people can drive more and more money

01:25:56 ◼   ► through our systems.

01:25:57 ◼   ► Like, we like that.

01:25:57 ◼   ► The margin is better than having to make

01:25:59 ◼   ► another metallic widget to sell to somebody.

01:26:02 ◼   ► It's much easier to just simply let someone

01:26:04 ◼   ► tap another button and send, get another 30% cut

01:26:07 ◼   ► of a transaction is going through our system.

01:26:08 ◼   ► And lo and behold, years down the line,

01:26:10 ◼   ► suddenly Apple's businesses like iTunes and stuff

01:26:12 ◼   ► that were, oh, just run at break even,

01:26:14 ◼   ► are starting to make some significant money.

01:26:15 ◼   ► And the app store, same thing, like, oh, it starts out

01:26:17 ◼   ► as just enough for us to cover our costs or whatever.

01:26:19 ◼   ► But I have a feeling that Apple would like it

01:26:22 ◼   ► if these businesses stopped being break even

01:26:24 ◼   ► and started making some serious money.

01:26:25 ◼   ► And while people aren't paying attention,

01:26:26 ◼   ► that's where they're going.

01:26:27 ◼   ► So any potential plan that says, oh, we're gonna give you

01:26:30 ◼   ► less revenue because of your volume discount,

01:26:32 ◼   ► it's like Apple might be thinking,

01:26:35 ◼   ► I know we've always kind of pretended this is like a break-even business, but if we're gonna do this

01:26:38 ◼   ► It might actually be a break-even business and we're not Amazon. We don't we actually want profits. So

01:26:43 ◼   ► there are forces against any

01:26:45 ◼   ► idea like this but

01:26:48 ◼   ► It's almost like I wish it would hurt them more because you're right that it's not hurting them enough

01:26:52 ◼   ► That it's clear that they have to do this. They're gonna be out of business or they're doing that's totally not the case

01:26:56 ◼   ► It's just like it's it's just like a little thorn in your side where you know, it could be better and someday

01:27:02 ◼   ► You are going to have to explain to your mom who got a Kindle fire when she gets her iPad. I'll get the iPad

01:27:07 ◼   ► It's better but on my Kindle fire

01:27:08 ◼   ► I could buy the books and the thing you will have to explain that to her and good luck making it sound

01:27:12 ◼   ► Reasonable. This is impossible. It's not reasonable. Apple's product is worse than this one small way and it it galls me

01:27:18 ◼   ► Or she'll just get an iPad and just buy things and iBooks

01:27:21 ◼   ► That's a fate worse than death

01:27:24 ◼   ► Alright thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week fracture back blaze and new relic and we will see you next week

01:27:32 ◼   ► [music]

01:27:34 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:27:39 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:27:44 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:27:50 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:27:55 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:28:00 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:28:10 ◼   ► So that's K-C-L-I-S-S-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:28:22 ◼   ► ♪ It's accidental, accidental ♪

01:28:25 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't mean to ♪

01:28:28 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental, accidental ♪

01:28:30 ◼   ► ♪ Tech podcast so long ♪

01:28:33 ◼   ► - You wanna talk about this weird test flight thing

01:28:38 ◼   ► that we've been putting off forever?

01:28:39 ◼   ► It's really old news now.

01:28:40 ◼   ► - I've forgotten what it is by now.

01:28:42 ◼   ► - So Bursley was acquired.

01:28:44 ◼   ► Do we even know, like is there any actual confirmation

01:28:47 ◼   ► that Apple was the acquirer?

01:28:48 ◼   ► - The internet said so?

01:28:50 ◼   ► - Right, like I think even that is not definite,

01:28:54 ◼   ► like not confirmed, but TestFlight basically

01:28:57 ◼   ► just like very quietly shut down.

01:29:00 ◼   ► Like it stopped accepting new applicants or new customers

01:29:04 ◼   ► to beta test the apps with it.

01:29:06 ◼   ► And it's just like quietly shutting down.

01:29:09 ◼   ► And they never made an announcement about this,

01:29:11 ◼   ► they never explained it,

01:29:13 ◼   ► it's just like a very, very quiet shutdown.

01:29:15 ◼   ► And so the theory is that Apple bought them

01:29:19 ◼   ► and they're probably going to integrate maybe first party,

01:29:24 ◼   ► maybe Apple might actually integrate TestFlight-like

01:29:26 ◼   ► functionality into the provisioning portal for iOS apps

01:29:29 ◼   ► so that we could stop doing the stupid UDID dance

01:29:31 ◼   ► with things like Hockey and TestFlight

01:29:33 ◼   ► and other beta testing type things.

01:29:36 ◼   ► But I don't know.

01:29:38 ◼   ► I would love that to be the case.

01:29:41 ◼   ► I would love for the story with TestFlight

01:29:43 ◼   ► to be that Apple's building something like this in,

01:29:46 ◼   ► and that's why it's shutting down.

01:29:48 ◼   ► but first it was also a big mobile ad company, right?

01:29:51 ◼   ► Wasn't that, or analytics, one of those things?

01:29:53 ◼   ► So Apple might've wanted it for that,

01:29:55 ◼   ► and TestFlight was this little side project they had

01:29:57 ◼   ► that wasn't making any money,

01:29:58 ◼   ► so Apple just made them quietly shut it down.

01:30:00 ◼   ► Like it could be any of these things.

01:30:01 ◼   ► - I would put money that they're going to do the thing

01:30:03 ◼   ► that TestFlight did inside Apple,

01:30:05 ◼   ► just because it makes so much sense.

01:30:07 ◼   ► I mean, anytime you see a bunch of third-party sites

01:30:10 ◼   ► popping up that developers are using,

01:30:12 ◼   ► like lots of developers using HockeyApp,

01:30:14 ◼   ► lots of developers are using TestFlight,

01:30:16 ◼   ► Apple hates that.

01:30:19 ◼   ► If there's something that third-party developers need

01:30:22 ◼   ► to be done, there should not be a thriving ecosystem

01:30:25 ◼   ► of companies that serve these developers' needs to do

01:30:28 ◼   ► these things if the thing they're doing

01:30:31 ◼   ► is something like-- it's common.

01:30:34 ◼   ► So Apple wants to eventually have a solution to do that.

01:30:36 ◼   ► If they bought this company and this company did that,

01:30:39 ◼   ► I would say it's almost guaranteed

01:30:40 ◼   ► that what they're trying to do is

01:30:41 ◼   ► get something in-house that does similar to the thing

01:30:43 ◼   ► that they did.

01:30:45 ◼   ► See, I don't know.

01:30:46 ◼   ► this is probably just like--

01:30:47 ◼   ► - You're saying nothing can ever get better

01:30:48 ◼   ► in the App Store, but it can sometimes.

01:30:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's some kind of psychological barrier

01:30:53 ◼   ► that I have where, especially in areas like this,

01:30:55 ◼   ► like the provisioning of devices, the UDID limits,

01:30:59 ◼   ► the beta testing being such a pain,

01:31:01 ◼   ► I can't fathom Apple actually making

01:31:05 ◼   ► a major improvement to this.

01:31:06 ◼   ► And again, I would love to be proven wrong.

01:31:08 ◼   ► - They'll probably still give you a fixed list of IDs

01:31:11 ◼   ► that only rotates at a certain,

01:31:13 ◼   ► there will still be plenty of things to annoy you, I'm sure,

01:31:15 ◼   ► Like just the general experience of provisioning

01:31:18 ◼   ► and the ability for people to easily download betas

01:31:21 ◼   ► and distribute them.

01:31:22 ◼   ► Like I'm assuming they will fix some of the annoyances

01:31:25 ◼   ► but I guarantee there'll be more of the remainder.

01:31:26 ◼   ► Just don't worry, code signing will still be terrible.

01:31:28 ◼   ► So you'll have that.

01:31:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

01:31:31 ◼   ► I mean like I've heard rumblings here and there

01:31:34 ◼   ► from the rumor sites and everybody that like,

01:31:36 ◼   ► you know, this might finally be the year

01:31:37 ◼   ► where Apple like really makes things better

01:31:40 ◼   ► for developers in the App Store.

01:31:42 ◼   ► So like, you know, the tools side,

01:31:43 ◼   ► like the Xcode is fantastic.

01:31:45 ◼   ► It's been improved a lot.

01:31:46 ◼   ► You have to see the language has been improved a lot,

01:31:48 ◼   ► and all the tools are really great.

01:31:50 ◼   ► But then you cross over into the provisioning

01:31:53 ◼   ► and the iTunes Connect and the App Store rules

01:31:56 ◼   ► and the pricing mechanism and upgrades and trials

01:32:00 ◼   ► and all that stuff that developers have been wanting forever.

01:32:03 ◼   ► I have no faith that Apple will ever improve that stuff

01:32:08 ◼   ► because they just haven't.

01:32:10 ◼   ► The App Store has been running now for, what,

01:32:13 ◼   ► six years, five years, and this stuff has almost not changed

01:32:17 ◼   ► at all, there have been very minor changes.

01:32:20 ◼   ► - But don't you think they've been kind of in the middle

01:32:22 ◼   ► of a multi-year arc where they've been adding lots of stuff

01:32:25 ◼   ► so fast that they haven't had enough time

01:32:27 ◼   ► to essentially make it work?

01:32:28 ◼   ► - Yeah. - You know what I mean?

01:32:29 ◼   ► Like the whole, I mean there's the iOS thing,

01:32:32 ◼   ► and there's like, they've been doing a lot of stuff

01:32:34 ◼   ► to code signing provisioning profiles and betas,

01:32:37 ◼   ► and like, and sandboxing, and the sandbox bookmarks

01:32:40 ◼   ► on the Mac for opening up, like, they're adding all sorts

01:32:42 ◼   ► things you can do and revving their compiler toolchain like they've kind of

01:32:46 ◼   ► been outrunning themselves leaving a trail of crappy half implemented things

01:32:49 ◼   ► behind them hopefully at some point they will get to a point where they can

01:32:53 ◼   ► circle back and say that's what I hope they're doing by buying test fly it's

01:32:55 ◼   ► like okay we had a way to do this before the way sucked for years now we finally

01:33:00 ◼   ► have a chance to take a breath and say let's go back and instead of adding a

01:33:03 ◼   ► new capability let's merely make it less incredibly unpleasant to do with

01:33:07 ◼   ► something that you could previously do you know I mean I'm hoping that they're

01:33:11 ◼   ► at that point. I mean iOS 8 maybe I'm moving that direction as well now that we're over the 7 hump.

01:33:15 ◼   ► You know, so we'll see. Yeah, maybe. I hope you're right. I don't have high hopes or I don't have a

01:33:23 ◼   ► lot of faith, but I hope you're right. It might not be this year. It could be next year. Yeah, maybe.

01:33:27 ◼   ► Anything else going on? Nope. I quietly relaunched my website that's not on Tumblr anymore.

01:33:38 ◼   ► What is the URL?

01:33:39 ◼   ► www.caseylist.com. Really inventive.

01:33:42 ◼   ► And that's my second crack,

01:33:46 ◼   ► or third crack, if you will. I don't really have a name for it.

01:33:50 ◼   ► What is the directory called for the project? It has to have something.

01:33:54 ◼   ► It does. It's camel, C-A-M-E-L, which is

01:33:58 ◼   ► kind of a port menu. I don't know how to pronounce the word,

01:34:02 ◼   ► but you see it on Wikipedia all the time. It's a mash of my first

01:34:06 ◼   ► middle names. But anyway, so yeah, so that's all written in Node and everyone's probably breaking it now, and that's okay.

01:34:12 ◼   ► So what's it going to take to get you off of the using your last name as a pun thing? Is that an impossible task?

01:34:18 ◼   ► It's never going to happen. No, I mean, I couldn't think of a good name. And I was, so that site, in many ways, is kind of a mashup of underscores and your two sites, both in terms of inspiration for CSS, inspiration for layout, things of that nature.

01:34:33 ◼   ► nature. And, um, and so I, I looked at underscore site after I had decided to call this thoughtless

01:34:42 ◼   ► and, um, he just calls his David Smith and obviously there's hypercritical there's Marco.org.