ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► There's a review that keeps happening.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I think the person like updates it in some way or I don't know what they do, but they

00:00:08 ◼   ► asked the title is something along the lines of non-CASEY download option.

00:00:15 ◼   ► One star, I don't have it in front of you, but it's like one star and it basically

00:00:18 ◼   ► says I can't handle Casey and I need to fast forward every time he talks.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Well, we already do offer a non-CASEY download option.

00:00:28 ◼   ► It's the non-Casey download option that's not coming.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Feature already implemented.

00:00:32 ◼   ► I believe it was last episode we talked about the time capsule and how that is or is not

00:00:39 ◼   ► a acceptable way of backing things up.

00:00:43 ◼   ► And John lamented how network-based time machine backups are really crummy and the time capsule

00:00:49 ◼   ► is a piece of junk and blah, blah, blah.

00:00:52 ◼   ► And somebody whose name I need to rediscover, hold on, let me fill this dead air by mumbling,

00:00:57 ◼   ► uh...

00:00:58 ◼   ► cried off to come back to it and it was in fire

00:01:01 ◼   ► uh... it was whatever's in the follow-up yet

00:01:03 ◼   ► uh...

00:01:04 ◼   ► somebody posted uh... at a blog post

00:01:07 ◼   ► and the title is time capsule backup verses sarah kusa so immediately i was

00:01:12 ◼   ► intrigued

00:01:13 ◼   ► uh... so the a quick

00:01:16 ◼   ► uh... subsection of that post several weeks slash months ago my internal s_s_d_

00:01:20 ◼   ► suddenly died completely

00:01:22 ◼   ► i hadn't made a clone backup or manually offload of the data since the morning

00:01:25 ◼   ► I'd been working all day and had many irretrievable projects that were lost,

00:01:29 ◼   ► except for the time capsule backup from 30 minutes before I went in the SSD or I

00:01:33 ◼   ► send the SSD and warranty. And when it got back a week later,

00:01:36 ◼   ► I booted up the new drive with it connected to the time capsule.

00:01:39 ◼   ► It asked if I wanted to restore from the time capsule.

00:01:41 ◼   ► And I said yes and went to bed. When I woke up in the morning, my baby was back.

00:01:45 ◼   ► The beauty of the time capsule is it's fire and forget usability that earned some

00:01:49 ◼   ► loyalty and I'm quoting and Casey was right.

00:01:53 ◼   ► My work here is done.

00:01:54 ◼   ► What?

00:01:55 ◼   ► I've just quit the podcast, and I would drop this mic if it wasn't so darn expensive.

00:01:59 ◼   ► And chain to your desk.

00:02:00 ◼   ► And on and out.

00:02:01 ◼   ► And on and out.

00:02:02 ◼   ► Yeah, the time machine's been around for a long time.

00:02:04 ◼   ► Like that product's been around for a long time.

00:02:06 ◼   ► And in the beginning, it got a bad reputation because network time machine backups were

00:02:11 ◼   ► terrible mostly for software reasons.

00:02:13 ◼   ► So right away, out of the gate, it was like, "Don't buy a time capsule because it doesn't

00:02:17 ◼   ► work."

00:02:18 ◼   ► And how much of that was the time capsule's fault, and how much of that was the network

00:02:21 ◼   ► protocol they were using for a time machine?

00:02:23 ◼   ► We don't know, but that gave it a bad rep.

00:02:25 ◼   ► But even after they fixed the protocol,

00:02:27 ◼   ► I've heard from many, many, many people

00:02:29 ◼   ► over the many years that the time capsule has been out

00:02:32 ◼   ► and the story has not been good.

00:02:34 ◼   ► So I'm sure this person had a good experience

00:02:35 ◼   ► and it worked fine.

00:02:36 ◼   ► It's not like it doesn't work at all.

00:02:37 ◼   ► I mean, they keep selling them, right?

00:02:39 ◼   ► But in the grand scheme of things,

00:02:41 ◼   ► and all the feedback I've received over the many, many

00:02:43 ◼   ► years, it's decidedly negative for this product

00:02:46 ◼   ► for both hardware and software reasons.

00:02:48 ◼   ► And it's better now than it was, but I would still not

00:02:50 ◼   ► recommend anybody buy one.

00:02:52 ◼   ► And that was nuclear Zen fire on Twitter, like Marco said, whose first name is Michael,

00:02:56 ◼   ► and that's all we know.

00:02:57 ◼   ► So, thank you, Michael, for sending that in, and for once in my life, saying that I was

00:03:01 ◼   ► right and John was wrong.

00:03:03 ◼   ► That's very exciting.

00:03:04 ◼   ► He was wrong about it, though, so…

00:03:08 ◼   ► Oh, you John Syracuse.

00:03:10 ◼   ► All right, so how do we want to tackle the…well, is there any other follow-up?

00:03:13 ◼   ► I'm sorry.

00:03:14 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Has anything really happened this week, like news-wise?

00:03:16 ◼   ► That's really…I mean, Balmer's fire kind of…

00:03:19 ◼   ► Someone's not looking at the file.

00:03:21 ◼   ► We have lots of things in there.

00:03:27 ◼   ► This is going to be a long one, so buckle up kids.

00:03:30 ◼   ► Let's start with Balmer, because that'll be pretty quick I think.

00:03:34 ◼   ► I think, I don't know, we've joked a lot about how Balmer has been performing pretty

00:03:42 ◼   ► badly in a number of ways for years.

00:03:47 ◼   ► But in fact, Ben Thompson, the guy who writes "Stratechery"--

00:03:52 ◼   ► I'll link this in the show notes--

00:03:54 ◼   ► he's a pretty awesome writer and thinker these days.

00:03:58 ◼   ► And he actually spent some time at Microsoft,

00:04:00 ◼   ► so he's kind of familiar with how it works.

00:04:02 ◼   ► And he made a really good counterpoint

00:04:04 ◼   ► to this, which is basically that Steve Ballmer actually

00:04:07 ◼   ► did a very good job with what he was kind of hired to do,

00:04:11 ◼   ► which is take the ship that Bill Gates kind of built

00:04:16 ◼   ► when he was at the head, and just keep it going.

00:04:18 ◼   ► Why was he hired to do that? Who decides that that's what he was hired to do?

00:04:23 ◼   ► Well, we can argue about that. But he did a part of his job extremely well, which is,

00:04:29 ◼   ► he kept Microsoft going, he made them more profitable, he made them get more success

00:04:36 ◼   ► in various business roles and enterprise roles, which is a massive part of their business.

00:04:41 ◼   ► So he did a lot of that well.

00:04:45 ◼   ► But what he failed to do was push into any new markets

00:04:50 ◼   ► and recognize new markets that he had to push into.

00:04:54 ◼   ► And almost all of his new initiatives

00:04:58 ◼   ► that he tried to do over the years that were not related

00:05:02 ◼   ► to the business and profit side-- almost everything

00:05:06 ◼   ► he tried to do on the product side was mostly a failure.

00:05:09 ◼   ► And but it's kind of hard to say, you know, the board let him keep his job all these years

00:05:16 ◼   ► because he was doing, I guess, well enough for on the business and profit side of things.

00:05:23 ◼   ► So it's not like, you know, he wasn't necessarily like a complete buffoon all this time.

00:05:30 ◼   ► I would say the board is more to blame for keeping him in that long when it was obvious

00:05:36 ◼   ► that a lot of major product direction changes were necessary.

00:05:39 ◼   ► I can't believe you're defending Ballmer.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Like the only thing you could, like any defensive Ballmer has to come down to defending short-term

00:05:47 ◼   ► thinking over the long term.

00:05:48 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, in the long term he screwed the company, but you know, day by day he wasn't

00:05:52 ◼   ► that bad.

00:05:53 ◼   ► Like, and they say, well, it's really the board's fault for not firing him.

00:05:55 ◼   ► Like, yeah, the board does share some of this blame.

00:05:57 ◼   ► But bottom line is, you know, if we look back on Steve Ballmer's tenure as Microsoft's

00:06:01 ◼   ► CEO, it's going to be he was the guy in charge when Microsoft lost.

00:06:05 ◼   ► Like, they were the big dog, they became not the big dog, he oversaw that, and during the

00:06:09 ◼   ► whole time, it's not like he was a total buffoon, it's not like he didn't see some of these

00:06:14 ◼   ► things, but as you said, every time something was coming that was a threat, and he tried

00:06:18 ◼   ► to counter it with his company and his products, he screwed up, he failed.

00:06:22 ◼   ► The only good thing that could be attributed to his watch is the Xbox, and even that is

00:06:26 ◼   ► not...

00:06:27 ◼   ► I mean, you have to say, look, they entered a new product area, they were successful,

00:06:34 ◼   ► not totally financially successful, but they are now a player, a major player in the market.

00:06:39 ◼   ► And that's saying something, right? But every other initiative, they just missed everything.

00:06:42 ◼   ► So in the micro level, saying, "Well, at least he was good at tuning their current businesses,

00:06:47 ◼   ► and he kept the money going, and he grew the company, he did all this." Yeah, but that doesn't

00:06:50 ◼   ► matter. What matters is what is your legacy? What have you done? You took control of a company that

00:06:56 ◼   ► was on top of the world, and you leave a company that's practically irrelevant. And that's how you

00:07:00 ◼   ► you have to measure how good a job did you do.

00:07:04 ◼   ► No, it's not.

00:07:05 ◼   ► Not if you're a shareholder.

00:07:06 ◼   ► All you need to measure is are you getting more money or not.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Look at their stock price over his tenure, too.

00:07:10 ◼   ► It is not a great looking.

00:07:14 ◼   ► Tim Cook has only been around a little while.

00:07:15 ◼   ► Look at the graph of when Tim Cook took over, what was the stock price, and what is it now.

00:07:20 ◼   ► That's after Apple getting slaughtered in the stock market.

00:07:24 ◼   ► I don't think he did any good for anybody except for the people who knew well enough

00:07:27 ◼   ► to sell when the getting was good.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Now Microsoft Stock price has been stagnant forever.

00:07:32 ◼   ► But anyway, it doesn't matter.

00:07:33 ◼   ► I think your job as CEO is not to just try

00:07:36 ◼   ► to goose the stock price so people can invest in bail.

00:07:39 ◼   ► It's like, if you care about the company--

00:07:40 ◼   ► and surely he does, because he was there from the beginning.

00:07:43 ◼   ► If you care about the company, you

00:07:44 ◼   ► want to make sure that your life's work is

00:07:46 ◼   ► to build this company and leave it better than you found it.

00:07:49 ◼   ► And I think that's what he cares about,

00:07:51 ◼   ► and that's what we should care about when we measure someone

00:07:53 ◼   ► as a CEO.

00:07:53 ◼   ► Not whether-- that's like saying,

00:07:55 ◼   ► we're going to measure someone's presidency by how

00:07:57 ◼   ► many of their friends they got rich with contracts,

00:07:59 ◼   ► government contracts during their tenure there. It's like, well, yeah, he totally screwed the

00:08:02 ◼   ► whole country and left it in the worst condition they started. But boy, while he was president,

00:08:07 ◼   ► he got so many of his friends awesome government contracts and they all got rich. That's not how

00:08:11 ◼   ► you measure things. No, it's not how you measure a president. You measure a president or a government

00:08:16 ◼   ► by, is the population's quality of life at least as good, if not better than it was before that

00:08:23 ◼   ► government came to office? And similarly... That's a high bar, but anyway, yeah.

00:08:27 ◼   ► Well, yeah, but similarly with the corporation, it's are they making money, and specifically

00:08:31 ◼   ► are they making money for the people who own portions of the corporation?

00:08:34 ◼   ► I mean, I agree with you.

00:08:36 ◼   ► To me, Ballmer was a schmuck.

00:08:38 ◼   ► But in the end of the day, did he or did he not please the shareholders and make the money?

00:08:42 ◼   ► Because arguably, that is the only measure that really matters.

00:08:46 ◼   ► No, I disagree.

00:08:47 ◼   ► That measure almost matters, almost not at all.

00:08:50 ◼   ► That's not what matters, certainly not what matters to Steve Ballmer.

00:08:53 ◼   ► It's not what matters to anyone, probably including Microsoft shareholders.

00:08:56 ◼   ► Because if shareholders are not just about to die and need to blow their money on a big

00:09:01 ◼   ► weekend, they also care about the long-term health of the company.

00:09:04 ◼   ► Because if you're buying shares and you're not just going to flip them in two days or

00:09:08 ◼   ► something, or some high-frequency trading favor, you're going to sell them 15 milliseconds

00:09:12 ◼   ► after you buy them.

00:09:13 ◼   ► You care about the long-term health of the company, because you're going to buy, hold,

00:09:16 ◼   ► and hope they go up and sell later.

00:09:18 ◼   ► And you don't want it to go up 5% or 10%.

00:09:20 ◼   ► You want it to double.

00:09:21 ◼   ► And Steve Ballmer did not make that happen, is not making that happen.

00:09:24 ◼   ► And that's true.

00:09:25 ◼   ► Anyway, I think that's just a terrible measure of a terrible way to look at things.

00:09:32 ◼   ► The reason the board didn't fire him is because even they didn't look at it that way.

00:09:35 ◼   ► Even the board of directors, who you think, "Surely they care about shareholder value

00:09:38 ◼   ► and everything," they kept them around because of personal relationships and thinking that

00:09:42 ◼   ► he was going to do it.

00:09:43 ◼   ► The thing is, he said most of the right things.

00:09:45 ◼   ► He saw the threats.

00:09:46 ◼   ► He tried to position the company to counter them.

00:09:49 ◼   ► He fielded products that were competitive with them.

00:09:50 ◼   ► It's just that they all flopped.

00:09:53 ◼   ► It's not like he was totally oblivious.

00:09:54 ◼   ► He just didn't execute.

00:09:56 ◼   ► And he was slow, he was wrong, and everything he did

00:10:02 ◼   ► had problems.

00:10:03 ◼   ► But I think it was time for him to go.

00:10:06 ◼   ► I'm glad he's gone.

00:10:08 ◼   ► Somebody could have done worse, yes.

00:10:09 ◼   ► But people could have done a lot better.

00:10:12 ◼   ► I agree.

00:10:13 ◼   ► Probably his worst problem-- you can

00:10:16 ◼   ► look at his various failings.

00:10:18 ◼   ► I mean, one of them is obviously not getting very well

00:10:21 ◼   ► into most new markets, especially

00:10:22 ◼   ► in the consumer space.

00:10:24 ◼   ► One of them was just that he was so embarrassing in public so often.

00:10:27 ◼   ► I mean, he really made himself and the company look stupid on a very frequent basis.

00:10:35 ◼   ► And I think, though, you can look at what Microsoft has done and not done in the last

00:10:41 ◼   ► roughly 12 years or 13 or 14 years, since around 2000 to now.

00:10:47 ◼   ► And it's very obvious that Microsoft's greatest enemy has been itself, not anybody

00:10:53 ◼   ► else. Not Apple, not Google. Its greatest enemy has been itself. And Microsoft has always,

00:11:01 ◼   ► even from before Ballmer, been infamous for infighting and having divisions, especially

00:11:07 ◼   ► like Office versus Windows. You'd have these ridiculous infighting groups that would really

00:11:12 ◼   ► hurt the products that came out and the company. But it seems like with Ballmer that all got

00:11:17 ◼   ► even worse. He famously had the stack ranking system for the entire company, all these performance

00:11:22 ◼   ► reports in this ultra-competitive environment.

00:11:24 ◼   ► That wasn't him, though.

00:11:25 ◼   ► That predates him as CEO.

00:11:27 ◼   ► Does it?

00:11:27 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:11:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's been around for a long time.

00:11:30 ◼   ► Oh, OK.

00:11:31 ◼   ► It's possible.

00:11:32 ◼   ► It's been terrible for a long time at Microsoft.

00:11:34 ◼   ► But it seems like Balmer's greatest failure over the years

00:11:38 ◼   ► has really been not fixing or making that worse.

00:11:43 ◼   ► I mean, not fixing that or even making it worse.

00:11:46 ◼   ► Microsoft could do a lot of things.

00:11:48 ◼   ► They have a lot of smart people there.

00:11:49 ◼   ► They have a lot of resources.

00:11:51 ◼   ► I mean, they have a ridiculous R&D budget.

00:11:54 ◼   ► They have ridiculous staff.

00:11:56 ◼   ► They-- and a lot of good stuff happens within Microsoft.

00:11:59 ◼   ► But so little of it ends up making it into the products,

00:12:03 ◼   ► because it's just slaughtered by the process and the bureaucracy

00:12:07 ◼   ► and the people and the strategy tax and the complexity.

00:12:11 ◼   ► Maybe this giant reorganization he

00:12:13 ◼   ► was trying to do, which most Microsoft watchers think

00:12:16 ◼   ► is a pretty bad idea, and it's probably what actually finally

00:12:19 ◼   ► got him fired.

00:12:20 ◼   ► maybe this is actually his attempt to fix that.

00:12:22 ◼   ► >> Well, it's aspirational. It's like, "Boy, I wish this is the company that Microsoft was,

00:12:26 ◼   ► but it's not." And what everyone's saying is like, "That's a great vision, but explain to me how

00:12:31 ◼   ► you're going to get from where you are to there, because that's a big gap, and people don't trust

00:12:35 ◼   ► that they can get there." Microsoft's kind of got like a Xerox PARC kind of vibe. Xerox made all

00:12:40 ◼   ► their money selling copiers, and they had all this money, and they made this research center,

00:12:43 ◼   ► and they're doing lots of interesting research, and they made nothing out of it. Apple took the

00:12:47 ◼   ► the ideas. Microsoft took the idea that Xerox did not become the power in the personal computing

00:12:52 ◼   ► world that they could have been. And Microsoft had all this money from the PC business, and

00:12:55 ◼   ► they put it into R&D, and they were out there with the Microsoft pen for Windows computing.

00:13:01 ◼   ► They were doing tablets way before anyone thought that anyone should be doing tablets.

00:13:04 ◼   ► They made smartphones. They were putting Windows on phones. They were doing all these things.

00:13:09 ◼   ► It was all there for the taking, and they just didn't execute. They're like, "Xerox."

00:13:14 ◼   ► weren't fielding $10,000 Alto computers that no one wants to buy, but it was close.

00:13:18 ◼   ► They kept making tablets and Windows-type convertible tablet things and smartphones,

00:13:24 ◼   ► and just all of them were not good enough. And so they were there first, and they had the R&D,

00:13:28 ◼   ► and they had the tech, and they did lots of interesting things, but they could not get a

00:13:31 ◼   ► good product out of it. And that's the failure of the company. So then other companies came along

00:13:36 ◼   ► and ate their lunch. But they snatched defeat from the drawers of victory. They had all the money in

00:13:41 ◼   ► in the world, all the R&D in the world, all the right tech. They were looking in the right

00:13:44 ◼   ► places. Sometimes they were looking in the wrong places. Interactive TV was the wrong

00:13:47 ◼   ► place to look, and MSNBC was a side show. That's what happens when you have too much

00:13:51 ◼   ► money, I guess. But they were looking in the right places. Mobile pen tablet computing

00:13:56 ◼   ► that just didn't get there.

00:13:58 ◼   ► Yeah, and I thought a friend of the show, Guy English's post about Balmer's straight

00:14:03 ◼   ► jacket was really interesting, and you guys kind of alluded to this earlier in that, okay,

00:14:08 ◼   ► So now Balmer has said, we're going to go all Apple and reorg the company.

00:14:14 ◼   ► And now Balmer's gone.

00:14:15 ◼   ► So now somebody else is going to have to come in and either say, oh, just kidding.

00:14:22 ◼   ► Or they're going to have to roll with this decision that Balmer made.

00:14:26 ◼   ► And that's a tough spot.

00:14:27 ◼   ► I mean, arguably being the CEO of a company that big, even when they're doing well,

00:14:31 ◼   ► as tough when they're doing not so well as worse and doing it when you're using

00:14:35 ◼   ► somebody else's playbook that you may not buy into sounds worst of all.

00:14:40 ◼   ► No new CEO has to use that playbook, though. That's the thing about being a new CEO.

00:14:44 ◼   ► And yeah, it's embarrassing when you do the about face, but not that bad, because a new

00:14:47 ◼   ► guy comes in. The new guy comes in, and people expect him to like, "Well, now he's really

00:14:52 ◼   ► going to clean house," or whatever. And so your first move being reversing all your

00:14:57 ◼   ► predecessors' move happens all the time. That's part of the power move of asserting

00:15:02 ◼   ► So I don't think it's as big of a straight jacket as that post implied.

00:15:05 ◼   ► I think, you know, the problem that post was getting at is that like,

00:15:08 ◼   ► let's assume that this shape that Ballmer wants to make Microsoft is a better shape than it is now.

00:15:14 ◼   ► And I think most of us agree that the shape it is now is terrible, and this new shape looks a lot like Apple,

00:15:19 ◼   ► and Apple seems to be successful at doing the things that Microsoft says it wants to do,

00:15:23 ◼   ► like be a devices and services company or whatever.

00:15:25 ◼   ► So it's like, yeah, okay, that's good.

00:15:27 ◼   ► But, you know, how do you get there from here?

00:15:29 ◼   ► And it's not so much that you're tied into Ballmer's plan,

00:15:32 ◼   ► is that if you also agree that Microsoft should

00:15:35 ◼   ► be that kind of company, and it should eventually

00:15:37 ◼   ► look like this, now it's on you to figure out

00:15:39 ◼   ► how to get it there from here.

00:15:40 ◼   ► So he could just lay out the goals,

00:15:41 ◼   ► like we should be more like Apple, and I'm out of here.

00:15:43 ◼   ► But reading too much into it is like,

00:15:46 ◼   ► I don't know why he got kicked out.

00:15:49 ◼   ► Was the reorganization his idea, and then he got kicked out?

00:15:53 ◼   ► Was the reorganization the board's idea,

00:15:54 ◼   ► and he just got to announce it before he got kicked out?

00:15:56 ◼   ► Like there's so many things we don't

00:15:57 ◼   ► know about the details here. But once a new guy comes in, all bets are off. He could do

00:16:02 ◼   ► anything. He could pull that HP. What's his name? It starts with an A—

00:16:07 ◼   ► A Pompiger? Yeah. He came into HP and said, "We're not

00:16:12 ◼   ► going to make personal computers anymore." Was he the guy who sold POM? He made like

00:16:16 ◼   ► 15 rapid-fire drastic decisions and then got booted out, and then half of them got reversed.

00:16:22 ◼   ► You're not looking for that kind of disaster here. I think this is just one thing. The

00:16:26 ◼   ► guy is going to say, "Yes, I agree with that vision. We're going to try to get there,

00:16:29 ◼   ► and that poor sucker is going to have to do the hard work." But it's not a straight jacket.

00:16:34 ◼   ► If he comes in and says, "Nope, I changed my mind. We're going to become like IBM

00:16:37 ◼   ► and be a consulting company," then he'll do that.

00:16:41 ◼   ► And speaking of IBM, the other series of interesting thoughts I saw about this was

00:16:46 ◼   ► another friend of the show, Craig Hockenberry, tweeted about how—I'm going to butcher what

00:16:50 ◼   ► he said, which was, although brief, very eloquent—but he said, "Hey, you know,

00:16:54 ◼   ► You know what Microsoft needs now is a Lou Gerstner and as the child of a nearly lifelong

00:16:59 ◼   ► IBMer I can tell you that IBM was in a really rough spot for a fair bit of time and then

00:17:06 ◼   ► Lou Gerstner came in and basically said you know we're going to shake everything up and

00:17:11 ◼   ► we're really going to cut the fat and you're just going to have to deal with it because

00:17:14 ◼   ► I have to save the company.

00:17:15 ◼   ► And now IBM is not the biggest company in the world but certainly one of the biggest

00:17:19 ◼   ► companies in the world, and it's doing, by most measures, very, very well.

00:17:24 ◼   ► And so now we're kind of wondering, okay, well, that's nice.

00:17:26 ◼   ► We know we need someone that looks and smells like Gerstner, but how do you find that person

00:17:30 ◼   ► and who is that person?

00:17:31 ◼   ► Well, I mean, don't you think he saved IBM by destroying it?

00:17:36 ◼   ► The village had to be destroyed to save it.

00:17:38 ◼   ► He saved IBM, the corporate entity, to making it into a profitable business again, but he

00:17:43 ◼   ► destroyed the old IBM to do that.

00:17:45 ◼   ► The old IBM was gone, and this was the new IBM, because he had decided that the old IBM

00:17:49 ◼   ► had no place in the world. And lots of things were lost with that. IBM, creator of the personal

00:17:56 ◼   ► computer, that's not the IBM we have today. They are more of a services company, and that's

00:18:01 ◼   ► how he was able to make them successful. But that's not what IBM used to be. So in some

00:18:05 ◼   ► ways, IBM was reincarnated under his leadership, which I'm sure Microsoft watchers would be

00:18:10 ◼   ► like, "All right, fine. Go ahead and reincarnate Microsoft, because currently it's like a lifeless

00:18:12 ◼   ► corpse and no one really is interested in it." But on other things, if you're looking

00:18:17 ◼   ► for Microsoft to return to its former glory, you don't want someone like that coming in

00:18:22 ◼   ► and transforming the company into something you don't recognize anymore, even if the new

00:18:25 ◼   ► thing is successful.

00:18:26 ◼   ► And that's fair. I think that's very fair. I just thought it was a very interesting point

00:18:30 ◼   ► in parallel. And I think you're both right. I think that they could stand to have a Gerstner,

00:18:36 ◼   ► but maybe that's not what they really want right now. And maybe they don't want to pivot

00:18:40 ◼   ► their brand, right Marco?

00:18:42 ◼   ► Nice.

00:18:43 ◼   ► Well, like Marco said, do they want a forestall?

00:18:46 ◼   ► Do they want like, we want to look like Apple,

00:18:48 ◼   ► we want to be like Apple, we want

00:18:50 ◼   ► to be like a cross between Apple and Google.

00:18:51 ◼   ► We want to have Google's online services with the Windows

00:18:54 ◼   ► Azure stuff or whatever.

00:18:55 ◼   ► Because Microsoft still has some good tech and good products,

00:18:57 ◼   ► which is a shame when any tech company is going down

00:19:01 ◼   ► the tubes, is like, there's always good stuff in there.

00:19:04 ◼   ► So there are good things, things to recommend.

00:19:06 ◼   ► Even Windows Phone is not actually a bad product at all.

00:19:11 ◼   ► It's just that an Xbox, again,

00:19:13 ◼   ► a product that is something, that could be something, right?

00:19:17 ◼   ► So you're looking for someone to say,

00:19:20 ◼   ► "Take all these things, get rid of all the bad things,

00:19:22 ◼   ► "but keep us as a company,

00:19:24 ◼   ► "the kind of company that makes the Xbox,

00:19:25 ◼   ► "the kind of company that makes Windows Azure,

00:19:27 ◼   ► "the kind of company that make Windows Phone.

00:19:29 ◼   ► "We can do all these things.

00:19:30 ◼   ► "We're smart and capable people.

00:19:32 ◼   ► "Just make all those things successful now, please."

00:19:34 ◼   ► And so if you want someone to do that,

00:19:36 ◼   ► and you're looking for someone with experience

00:19:38 ◼   ► making kind of like, we make devices,

00:19:40 ◼   ► of software that runs the mom plus the software and services, like you could do worse than

00:19:44 ◼   ► a forestall like figure, someone who has experience in another company that is successful doing

00:19:48 ◼   ► exactly the thing that you want to be doing.

00:19:51 ◼   ► Here's a weird idea.

00:19:53 ◼   ► What if Microsoft completely exits the consumer space?

00:19:57 ◼   ► So the way this would look would be Xbox would be spun off into its own company, which would

00:20:02 ◼   ► solve a big problem for Microsoft, which is making it profitable.

00:20:05 ◼   ► would be spun off, or sold, but probably spun off.

00:20:11 ◼   ► The rest of Microsoft would become a lot like IBM in that it would be focused on business

00:20:17 ◼   ► computing and consulting and enterprise services.

00:20:21 ◼   ► Because if you think about it, their consumer stuff is where all of the losses appear to

00:20:26 ◼   ► be happening in market share and relevance and probably in profits pretty soon.

00:20:32 ◼   ► The problem, I forget who tweeted this and I'm sorry,

00:20:35 ◼   ► it's somebody I follow who tweeted,

00:20:36 ◼   ► you know, the problem that Microsoft has is that

00:20:39 ◼   ► nobody's paying for software anymore.

00:20:42 ◼   ► And the direction on that-- - Well, corporations are.

00:20:44 ◼   ► - Well, yes, but-- - Oh, they are.

00:20:46 ◼   ► Oh, they are. - But,

00:20:48 ◼   ► look at Windows and Office as Microsoft's two big cash cows.

00:20:53 ◼   ► Think about how that might be collapsing

00:20:57 ◼   ► in the near future.

00:20:58 ◼   ► - Oh, no, we see it happening. - And it's not gonna go away.

00:21:00 ◼   ► - We see it happening.

00:21:01 ◼   ► It's not going to go away tomorrow, but it certainly seems like its best days are behind

00:21:05 ◼   ► it.

00:21:08 ◼   ► What if Microsoft's future really is just completely exiting consumer stuff and only

00:21:15 ◼   ► being enterprise-focused, high-end office needs, all that?

00:21:20 ◼   ► Basically, if your office would have an Exchange server or would use SharePoint, then that's

00:21:25 ◼   ► the kind of customer Microsoft wants to keep.

00:21:28 ◼   ► But those are not their good products.

00:21:29 ◼   ► I think SharePoint is terrible, Exchange is terrible.

00:21:32 ◼   ► Those are not like, I grant you those things, those products that make money, and then no

00:21:36 ◼   ► one else wants to be in that business except for maybe like, you know, SAP, Oracle or whatever.

00:21:40 ◼   ► But those are not their best products, right?

00:21:43 ◼   ► But they are probably their most successful.

00:21:46 ◼   ► And they're least competitive.

00:21:48 ◼   ► They have the lowest upside probably because, I mean, that's what people are looking for

00:21:52 ◼   ► is like, what is the upside?

00:21:53 ◼   ► Like do we think enterprise software that looks like this crap has a bright future and

00:21:57 ◼   ► that you're going to grow the company by selling more of that

00:22:00 ◼   ► for money.

00:22:01 ◼   ► The trend is in the other direction,

00:22:02 ◼   ► getting rid of that stuff, using simpler things,

00:22:04 ◼   ► switching to Google, integrating with non-Microsoft products.

00:22:07 ◼   ► So they're squeezing every ounce of money out of that.

00:22:09 ◼   ► That's like their last bastion, and they've defended it well.

00:22:12 ◼   ► And Balmer has goosed that to try

00:22:15 ◼   ► to make it produce as much money as possible.

00:22:17 ◼   ► And they have some good things in the web services space

00:22:19 ◼   ► that they kind of transition to.

00:22:21 ◼   ► But if anyone was going to look at the crown jewels

00:22:23 ◼   ► of Microsoft, I mean, I don't know

00:22:25 ◼   ► if they would pick that enterprise-y type software.

00:22:27 ◼   ► And anyway, you could make a successful enterprise.

00:22:29 ◼   ► I think I would, actually.

00:22:30 ◼   ► I would say, I think I would really consider it.

00:22:32 ◼   ► You have no idea how much a SharePoint license is

00:22:35 ◼   ► and how many-- I mean, for the last four or five

00:22:38 ◼   ► years of my life, I have more often than not

00:22:40 ◼   ► been working on top of SharePoint, which

00:22:42 ◼   ► is why I'm bitter and jaded.

00:22:44 ◼   ► But it's popular.

00:22:45 ◼   ► It's extremely popular.

00:22:47 ◼   ► And as you know, exchanges, I mean,

00:22:49 ◼   ► those are not cheap platforms.

00:22:52 ◼   ► And when you get an exchange server or a SharePoint server,

00:22:55 ◼   ► you're going to be doing that on Windows Server 2008, and you're going to be using SQL Server,

00:22:59 ◼   ► and it spreads quick. And it's profitable. It's got to be.

00:23:03 ◼   ► Yeah, but I don't think there's a bright future in selling that kind of software to businesses.

00:23:09 ◼   ► Well, no one uses it because it's good. Because it's good does not enter into this. Enterprise

00:23:15 ◼   ► software is not about what's good. There's all these other factors involved. And Microsoft

00:23:19 ◼   ► is pretty good at those factors. And there's no sign that's going to go away.

00:23:23 ◼   ► There is! They're already getting disrupted at the low end. It used to be everybody had

00:23:26 ◼   ► Exchange, but now you probably don't have Exchange if you're a smaller company. You

00:23:29 ◼   ► get away with having like Igloo or something like that, or you use Google or something.

00:23:33 ◼   ► And what about sharing? We have SharePoint and all these things, but in our office we

00:23:36 ◼   ► use Google Hangouts, we use Dropbox to share things because the enterprise software is

00:23:40 ◼   ► so terrible. And we're a pretty big company, right? We still pay for all the Microsoft

00:23:43 ◼   ► stuff, but it's being eaten from all sides. It's super duper high-end, I don't even know

00:23:48 ◼   ► if Microsoft plays there anymore, and that's kind of like rarified territory anyway, where

00:23:52 ◼   ► They have special custom systems for that.

00:23:54 ◼   ► And then at the low end, Microsoft

00:23:56 ◼   ► was constantly being eaten by all these little web services.

00:23:59 ◼   ► And even in companies that pay for these things,

00:24:00 ◼   ► the people who are in the companies

00:24:01 ◼   ► are choosing to use something else.

00:24:03 ◼   ► It's like the way iPhones made it into the enterprise.

00:24:05 ◼   ► Nobody wanted them.

00:24:06 ◼   ► RIM had a stranglehold on it.

00:24:08 ◼   ► They were great at serving those customers,

00:24:09 ◼   ► but people didn't want to use them.

00:24:11 ◼   ► They wanted to use iPhones.

00:24:12 ◼   ► And that's the problem with the enterprise business,

00:24:14 ◼   ► that it's surrounded on all sides

00:24:16 ◼   ► by other things that want to eat their lunch.

00:24:18 ◼   ► And if people don't want to use your product,

00:24:20 ◼   ► I did this thing, an article on Fatbutts, I think, ages ago about what defines enterprise

00:24:25 ◼   ► software or enterprise entanglements and why Apple doesn't want to get involved in the

00:24:29 ◼   ► enterprise space.

00:24:30 ◼   ► And enterprise software, my definition is when the person buying your product is not

00:24:33 ◼   ► the person that has to use it.

00:24:35 ◼   ► That's enterprise software, right?

00:24:37 ◼   ► Because that totally defines the entire shape of this product.

00:24:40 ◼   ► Because they're saying, "How am I going to get these guys to pay for my software?"

00:24:45 ◼   ► And making the software better is not how you get that, because they're not going to

00:24:48 ◼   ► be the ones who use it.

00:24:49 ◼   ► They don't care if it's better.

00:24:50 ◼   ► Does this make my life easier as an IT manager?

00:24:52 ◼   ► And so your product necessarily becomes shaped into this thing

00:24:55 ◼   ► that IT managers love and that who cares if anyone else likes

00:24:58 ◼   ► it because they have no choice.

00:24:59 ◼   ► And that is an evolutionary dead end for software

00:25:01 ◼   ► as far as I'm concerned.

00:25:03 ◼   ► So let me take a quick break right now.

00:25:05 ◼   ► And then I want to talk about another angle

00:25:08 ◼   ► of this Microsoft discussion.

00:25:09 ◼   ► But because we're a half hour in,

00:25:10 ◼   ► let me take a quick break and thank our first sponsor.

00:25:13 ◼   ► It is Wordbox.

00:25:15 ◼   ► Wordbox is a simple yet powerful text editor for iOS.

00:25:19 ◼   ► Now this is pretty cool.

00:25:20 ◼   ► These guys made it.

00:25:21 ◼   ► And we've had a long history with arranging this spot,

00:25:27 ◼   ► because they initially wanted to release this during the Dev

00:25:31 ◼   ► Center outage.

00:25:32 ◼   ► That was when it was originally scheduled.

00:25:33 ◼   ► So we had to bump them.

00:25:34 ◼   ► And they were the nicest guys in the world dealing with them

00:25:37 ◼   ► and moving this around.

00:25:38 ◼   ► So I want to thank them for, first of all, their flexibility

00:25:41 ◼   ► and how nice they are.

00:25:42 ◼   ► Then I got a chance to see this app.

00:25:44 ◼   ► And I got to say, Wordbox is beautiful.

00:25:47 ◼   ► It is an absolutely beautiful app.

00:25:50 ◼   ► Go to wordboxapp.com to see what I'm talking about.

00:25:53 ◼   ► So it's a text editor.

00:25:55 ◼   ► It has auto-saving, a magical scroll button.

00:25:58 ◼   ► You can move the cursor wherever you want really easily.

00:26:00 ◼   ► It supports multi-markdown.

00:26:02 ◼   ► It supports text expander touch.

00:26:06 ◼   ► It is all cloud-based.

00:26:07 ◼   ► It uses Dropbox.

00:26:09 ◼   ► It's really-- it has so many features.

00:26:12 ◼   ► I can't believe this came out of nowhere.

00:26:14 ◼   ► It has folder support.

00:26:16 ◼   ► It has dropler sharing, Dropbox backgrounding support,

00:26:19 ◼   ► offline support, exports to HTML or PDF from Markdown.

00:26:24 ◼   ► There are so many smaller apps that I think this could very

00:26:26 ◼   ► easily replace.

00:26:28 ◼   ► Word counts, emailing, it's really fantastic.

00:26:32 ◼   ► And what I like most about it is the UI design.

00:26:34 ◼   ► I mean, this not only fits right at home on iOS 7, I think,

00:26:37 ◼   ► but it just is beautiful.

00:26:39 ◼   ► And you can get it right now for iOS 6, too.

00:26:41 ◼   ► It's really a fantastic, clean, modern design.

00:26:45 ◼   ► There's no, quote, "skeuomorphism" around.

00:26:48 ◼   ► It's very clean and modern.

00:26:50 ◼   ► And do you remember the day before WWDC's keynote,

00:26:57 ◼   ► or even that morning, I think it was,

00:26:59 ◼   ► there was this company called Flesky

00:27:00 ◼   ► that everyone thought had blown a exclusive about iOS 7

00:27:05 ◼   ► supporting third-party keyboards,

00:27:07 ◼   ► because Flesky had made their own keyboard.

00:27:09 ◼   ► Well, Wordbox supports Flesky built in.

00:27:13 ◼   ► I believe it's their launch partner.

00:27:14 ◼   ► I believe it's the first app that has Flesky support.

00:27:17 ◼   ► So you can use this cool WordBox app

00:27:19 ◼   ► to try out the new Flesky keyboard

00:27:21 ◼   ► and see finally an alternative keyboard in iOS

00:27:25 ◼   ► and what that means and what that could bring us

00:27:28 ◼   ► and how good it is.

00:27:29 ◼   ► So really cool app.

00:27:31 ◼   ► It's called WordBox.

00:27:32 ◼   ► Go to wordboxapp.com or simply search the App Store

00:27:36 ◼   ► for WordBox.

00:27:37 ◼   ► It's the one with the cool light blue icon with the W

00:27:40 ◼   ► in the circle in the middle of it.

00:27:42 ◼   ► But it's easier.

00:27:42 ◼   ► You can go to wordboxapp.com.

00:27:43 ◼   ► You can see lots of screenshots and video.

00:27:46 ◼   ► It's really cool.

00:27:48 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Wordbox App.com for sponsoring the show.

00:27:53 ◼   ► And once again, check out Wordbox.

00:27:55 ◼   ► Thanks.

00:27:56 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm running iOS 7 on my carry phone now and it fits right in.

00:27:59 ◼   ► I mean, it really does look good.

00:28:02 ◼   ► If you're a Markdown person, you should definitely check it out.

00:28:04 ◼   ► I'm really impressed by the design of those.

00:28:06 ◼   ► I know I said it before, but I'll say it again.

00:28:09 ◼   ► I love that they have this awesome, you can see in the screenshots, they have this awesome

00:28:13 ◼   ► black slide-up action menu where it grays up the whole screen

00:28:17 ◼   ► and all the buttons are the big circles, kind of like the iOS 7

00:28:19 ◼   ► dialer, the phone dialer.

00:28:21 ◼   ► Really, really cool.

00:28:22 ◼   ► And I was very impressed by this design.

00:28:25 ◼   ► The prevalence of applications that

00:28:27 ◼   ► do something other than the OS default for cursor control

00:28:30 ◼   ► should tell Apple that their cursor control

00:28:33 ◼   ► defaults are inadequate.

00:28:35 ◼   ► I keep hoping for the OS release,

00:28:37 ◼   ► will they realize-- every time I have

00:28:39 ◼   ► to do anything involving the cursor in a standard iOS text

00:28:42 ◼   ► field, it's like, come on, Apple, come on.

00:28:44 ◼   ► And now it's up to every third party app

00:28:45 ◼   ► they have to implement their own thing, which is kind of good,

00:28:47 ◼   ► because it's kind of like a lab to try

00:28:48 ◼   ► all sorts of different techniques in terms

00:28:50 ◼   ► of swiping and tapping.

00:28:51 ◼   ► And my big complaint is the wait.

00:28:55 ◼   ► How long do I-- press and hold, it's

00:28:57 ◼   ► such an important part of interacting

00:28:59 ◼   ► with text and selections in iOS by default,

00:29:02 ◼   ► but I don't like waiting anymore.

00:29:04 ◼   ► Who is it?

00:29:05 ◼   ► Was it you, Casey?

00:29:06 ◼   ► Or someone recently just installed iOS 7.

00:29:08 ◼   ► I know you did as well, Casey, and was complaining about the--

00:29:11 ◼   ► Or was it you, Marco, complaining about how long the animations take?

00:29:14 ◼   ► It wasn't recently that I installed it, but I complained about it last night.

00:29:17 ◼   ► Yeah, like I still haven't, last time I used iOS 7 was WWDC, right?

00:29:21 ◼   ► So, but when I do install it, I fully expect to agree with everything you said in that

00:29:26 ◼   ► post.

00:29:27 ◼   ► Oh yeah, you're gonna hate that.

00:29:29 ◼   ► And I can't do a default, right, you know, whatever hack to get rid of the animations

00:29:32 ◼   ► like I can in OS X.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Yep, exactly.

00:29:34 ◼   ► Yet another reason that the Mac is superior.

00:29:36 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:29:37 ◼   ► Oh goodness.

00:29:38 ◼   ► All right, so Marco, you said you wanted to make another point?

00:29:40 ◼   ► One more idea here to think about this Microsoft angle

00:29:44 ◼   ► a little bit more.

00:29:44 ◼   ► Or rather, do you think there is a way

00:29:51 ◼   ► that Microsoft could regain growth and a foothold at all?

00:29:56 ◼   ► But especially, could they grow market share again

00:30:01 ◼   ► in the world of mobile, of smartphones and tablets?

00:30:03 ◼   ► Like, do you see a way that that could happen?

00:30:05 ◼   ► Because honestly, I kind of don't.

00:30:07 ◼   ► I totally do.

00:30:08 ◼   ► But the company, things have to get worse before they get better.

00:30:11 ◼   ► So buckle up.

00:30:12 ◼   ► They're going to have to lose a lot of weight, a lot of money, a lot of personnel, a lot

00:30:17 ◼   ► of projects, a lot of products.

00:30:18 ◼   ► But it's like when Jobs came back.

00:30:21 ◼   ► He canned everything, basically, and said the whole company is concentrating on the

00:30:24 ◼   ► iMac, and then our next generation OS project, and that's going to take three tries for us

00:30:28 ◼   ► to get it right.

00:30:28 ◼   ► But everything else is gone.

00:30:29 ◼   ► Newton gone, Open.gone, HyperCard gone, everything.

00:30:32 ◼   ► And I doubt anyone's going to come into Microsoft and do that, but they should, because

00:30:38 ◼   ► if you want, pick your product. If you want the Xbox to succeed. If you want Windows Phone to

00:30:42 ◼   ► succeed. Whatever it is that you want to be your thing that you think has an upside in the future,

00:30:46 ◼   ► and I would say like, you know, Windows Phone, tablets, and Xbox, and any television-related

00:30:51 ◼   ► things like that, that set of consumer products probably has a much brighter future than their

00:30:55 ◼   ► other consumer products. Those can be made in, like, they're close. Like, you know, Windows 8

00:31:01 ◼   ► is terrible for policy reasons, not so much tech reasons. And as we've said in past shows,

00:31:06 ◼   ► They were the first ones to the new aesthetic.

00:31:08 ◼   ► So they have the right people in terms of design

00:31:10 ◼   ► and everything there.

00:31:11 ◼   ► It's just that all the other crap that they do,

00:31:13 ◼   ► and all the stupid entanglements,

00:31:14 ◼   ► and the fact that they have to have the desktop mode

00:31:16 ◼   ► on the surface.

00:31:16 ◼   ► And they're just their own worst enemy.

00:31:20 ◼   ► And I think they could turn this company around and pick

00:31:23 ◼   ► a few of those great products and make them successful.

00:31:26 ◼   ► The cost will be almost everything else they do.

00:31:30 ◼   ► But see, that worked for Apple.

00:31:33 ◼   ► But there's a very different,

00:31:35 ◼   ► that was a very different scenario.

00:31:36 ◼   ► That was, first of all,

00:31:38 ◼   ► Apple was in way worse shape then

00:31:40 ◼   ► than Microsoft is in now.

00:31:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's easier to do crazy things

00:31:43 ◼   ► when you're about to go bankrupt.

00:31:45 ◼   ► - Exactly. - And Microsoft is not,

00:31:46 ◼   ► unfortunately. - Not at all.

00:31:47 ◼   ► Microsoft is actually doing,

00:31:48 ◼   ► financially they're doing all right.

00:31:50 ◼   ► They're doing pretty well, I think.

00:31:51 ◼   ► - That has to get worse before it gets better.

00:31:53 ◼   ► - Right, but see, that's the thing.

00:31:56 ◼   ► I don't see that strategy working.

00:31:58 ◼   ► For a lot of the reasons,

00:31:59 ◼   ► I wrote this piece forever ago

00:32:01 ◼   ► about Microsoft and Apple's respective customer cultures.

00:32:05 ◼   ► This was back when Windows 8 hadn't come out yet,

00:32:08 ◼   ► but I think it was being shown off.

00:32:09 ◼   ► And I was speculating at the time

00:32:12 ◼   ► that Microsoft customers generally don't

00:32:16 ◼   ► like being told what to do.

00:32:18 ◼   ► And so they would probably resist Windows 8

00:32:21 ◼   ► if the new interface was mandatory

00:32:23 ◼   ► and they couldn't just turn it off and just always

00:32:25 ◼   ► see the desktop again.

00:32:27 ◼   ► And that turned out to be correct,

00:32:29 ◼   ► that Microsoft did release it that way.

00:32:31 ◼   ► people did hate it, and now with that whatever code name,

00:32:33 ◼   ► Blue Mountain, or whatever it is this fall,

00:32:35 ◼   ► they're going to revert that.

00:32:36 ◼   ► I think Microsoft-- the reason why people buy Microsoft

00:32:41 ◼   ► products is because the products let the people do whatever they

00:32:45 ◼   ► want with their computers, and they hardly ever kill anything.

00:32:50 ◼   ► They hardly ever restrict anything.

00:32:52 ◼   ► It's really not open in the sense of Stallman,

00:32:56 ◼   ► but it's open in the sense of capabilities and settings

00:32:59 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:32:59 ◼   ► It lets people do what they want.

00:33:01 ◼   ► But it's like raising a toddler and never telling them no.

00:33:05 ◼   ► That's what they're doing with their business.

00:33:07 ◼   ► It's terrible.

00:33:08 ◼   ► Back at that old hyper-critical episode where I talked about what's wrong with Microsoft,

00:33:12 ◼   ► their biggest problem is that when they had all the power in the world, they didn't use

00:33:16 ◼   ► it to subjugate the masses.

00:33:18 ◼   ► We are on top of the world.

00:33:19 ◼   ► Windows 95 has Jay Leno introducing it, and it's the greatest thing in the entire world.

00:33:24 ◼   ► Everybody loves Microsoft, and we do everything.

00:33:25 ◼   ► That was the time to say, "And guess what?

00:33:29 ◼   ► Our new thing is not even going to have a desktop.

00:33:31 ◼   ► It's all going to be like whatever the crazy idea was.

00:33:33 ◼   ► Because at that time, you know, they were like,

00:33:36 ◼   ► oh my God, I don't, you're right.

00:33:37 ◼   ► They would all go, I don't like this.

00:33:39 ◼   ► I want my old desktop back.

00:33:40 ◼   ► But if you didn't give them the option,

00:33:41 ◼   ► then Microsoft could have sat there with Zarmstolz

00:33:43 ◼   ► and say, what are you going to do?

00:33:44 ◼   ► Go to Linux on the desktop?

00:33:46 ◼   ► Buy a Mac?

00:33:46 ◼   ► Ha, I mean, those were ridiculous options, right?

00:33:49 ◼   ► They had the power to turn their whole user base,

00:33:51 ◼   ► as sort of Apple did, because the Apple faithful were like,

00:33:54 ◼   ► you know, we love Apple.

00:33:55 ◼   ► They're about to go bankrupt.

00:33:56 ◼   ► We'll buy anything you make.

00:33:58 ◼   ► a teal computer, I guess. All right. And this operating system that's humongously slow and

00:34:04 ◼   ► has these crazy buttons, the genie effect's kind of cool. They had a very small, tiny

00:34:09 ◼   ► amount of power and then grew it into something larger, but Microsoft was on top of the world.

00:34:13 ◼   ► And they could have, they should have, taken that opportunity to turn the ship.

00:34:17 ◼   ► Now, they're weakened and injured and like, "Here's Windows 8. We have some ideas for

00:34:21 ◼   ► new interface, but please, you can still get into us. Stop back. Don't hurt us." And I

00:34:26 ◼   ► I think they have more power than they thought they did.

00:34:28 ◼   ► And I think Windows 8 would have been more successful if they had really committed the

00:34:30 ◼   ► company to it.

00:34:31 ◼   ► But you're right.

00:34:32 ◼   ► At this point, people do have other options.

00:34:34 ◼   ► And maybe they don't have enough power to say, "You can't get the desktop back.

00:34:39 ◼   ► All of Windows 8 looks like this."

00:34:40 ◼   ► And then IT would have been like, "All right.

00:34:41 ◼   ► Let everybody start our plans to convert to..."

00:34:44 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:34:45 ◼   ► They still don't have great options, because Apple doesn't want their business, and they

00:34:46 ◼   ► can't use Linux.

00:34:48 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:34:49 ◼   ► I think their big mistake is catering to their customers to this real and sometimes perceived

00:34:54 ◼   ► be larger than it really is, desire by their customers not to have things change. Because

00:35:00 ◼   ► it's that's what leadership is. It's telling people, "No, this is the way things are going

00:35:03 ◼   ► to be in the future. No, you can't have the old way back." You can't do that all the time,

00:35:07 ◼   ► but at certain turning points, it's time to do that. And if you don't do that ever,

00:35:11 ◼   ► you will just be left with your cranky customers who will never really be satisfied and who are a

00:35:16 ◼   ► dwindling base. IBM kind of got in that situation too, where people were selling mainframes or

00:35:21 ◼   ► whatever, where you just keep selling mainframes and they just keep making demands and those main

00:35:24 ◼   ► mainframe people want mainframe features, then eventually you realize you're selling

00:35:27 ◼   ► to three people and the government, and the entire rest of the industry has moved on,

00:35:31 ◼   ► and your three customers are still cranky about something.

00:35:33 ◼   ► Well, right, but the problem is when Microsoft caters to a large degree to enterprise, enterprise

00:35:40 ◼   ► is always a big, slow-moving entity, and if you're answering to the enterprise, they're

00:35:46 ◼   ► never going to want new. They're going to want new only when they have to have it, because

00:35:50 ◼   ► that means I have to spend money from their tight budgets to buy new.

00:35:54 ◼   ► And so as long as they have, they're concerned at all with what the enterprise thinks, I

00:36:00 ◼   ► don't think that there's much that can be done.

00:36:02 ◼   ► And that kind of comes back to our conversation earlier.

00:36:04 ◼   ► So how do you make Microsoft better?

00:36:06 ◼   ► I almost wonder if, as you got, I think maybe one of you guys said it, if you just spin

00:36:10 ◼   ► off the consumer business, however you define that and say, you go do your thing and don't

00:36:13 ◼   ► give a crap about the enterprise, do what you think is right.

00:36:17 ◼   ► And then the enterprise folks can do the boring stuff

00:36:20 ◼   ► that the IT guys need.

00:36:22 ◼   ► And they don't need to be as mobile in the sense of agile,

00:36:26 ◼   ► I guess I should say.

00:36:28 ◼   ► And they can continue to do the same old thing over and over

00:36:31 ◼   ► until they eventually wither away and die.

00:36:33 ◼   ► But say you tell the enterprise people, tough luck,

00:36:35 ◼   ► you're getting what we give you.

00:36:37 ◼   ► And they say, all right, no, screw you, Microsoft.

00:36:39 ◼   ► You didn't listen to us.

00:36:40 ◼   ► You're not giving us what we want.

00:36:42 ◼   ► What do they do after that?

00:36:44 ◼   ► All right, it's fine.

00:36:44 ◼   ► Microsoft says, fine, we lose all your business.

00:36:46 ◼   ► What are you guys going to buy instead?

00:36:48 ◼   ► And then they're going to be like,

00:36:50 ◼   ► I guess we'll buy Google services.

00:36:54 ◼   ► Wherever they run to, they're kind of a poison pill.

00:36:56 ◼   ► Say Microsoft completely pulls out of enterprises.

00:36:58 ◼   ► We are canning, we are stopping SQL Server,

00:37:00 ◼   ► we're stopping Exchange.

00:37:02 ◼   ► The only thing we're going to keep around is Windows Azure,

00:37:04 ◼   ► because that's like forward-looking network-type

00:37:05 ◼   ► services, and it's not the same thing.

00:37:07 ◼   ► You can't have it anymore.

00:37:08 ◼   ► We're canceling all those products.

00:37:09 ◼   ► And they're going to be like, but, but, but, wait, no, fine,

00:37:11 ◼   ► fine.

00:37:11 ◼   ► Go to someone else for their business.

00:37:13 ◼   ► Whoever gets all that business is now tied down

00:37:16 ◼   ► that crap and those customers. So if Google got those businesses, unless you're really,

00:37:21 ◼   ► really strong, unless Google also held the line, anyone who these enterprise customers

00:37:24 ◼   ► went to would be dragged down by them. It's like zombies dragging you down into the pit

00:37:28 ◼   ► of irrelevance, right? Because they're like, "We need to see the roadmap going forward,

00:37:33 ◼   ► and you can't change things, because now we're your big, important customer. How many millions

00:37:36 ◼   ► of dollars do we give you every year?" And it takes a strong company to be able to say

00:37:39 ◼   ► no to them. Microsoft can't do it. And whoever they go to, I don't know who they would go

00:37:45 ◼   ► or they go to Oracle, have fun with them.

00:37:48 ◼   ► Or again, SAP or some new company

00:37:51 ◼   ► would rise up to take their money.

00:37:53 ◼   ► You do not want those customers.

00:37:54 ◼   ► Those customers are not good for a successful business.

00:37:58 ◼   ► And if you lose them or intentionally piss them off

00:38:01 ◼   ► and abandon them, they're going to have to go somewhere.

00:38:03 ◼   ► And chances are good they're going

00:38:04 ◼   ► to go to one of your competitors and screw them,

00:38:06 ◼   ► and then you'll be free to sell like Apple.

00:38:08 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:38:09 ◼   ► Like Apple got out of that business for the most part,

00:38:11 ◼   ► except for maybe a little bit of education.

00:38:14 ◼   ► and it let them go forward and do what they want

00:38:16 ◼   ► without worrying about how they mess with the enterprise.

00:38:19 ◼   ► They did a little bit of like, oh, okay,

00:38:20 ◼   ► we'll change our iPhone to work a little bit better

00:38:22 ◼   ► with the enterprise, but they are not focused

00:38:25 ◼   ► on that customer.

00:38:25 ◼   ► They don't do what the enterprise wants.

00:38:27 ◼   ► Ask anyone who has IT has to deal with Apple.

00:38:29 ◼   ► They do not do what a large company wants them to do.

00:38:32 ◼   ► And I think Apple is freer and more successful for it.

00:38:35 ◼   ► - You know, and you're right, but also consider

00:38:38 ◼   ► what if Microsoft pulled an Apple card and they,

00:38:44 ◼   ► Let me try to get these words out in a way that makes sense.

00:38:46 ◼   ► What if Microsoft said, "Screw you, Enterprise,"

00:38:49 ◼   ► and then what if a different Microsoft product,

00:38:53 ◼   ► the new version of SQL Server,

00:38:55 ◼   ► the new version of Exchange that breaks all the old Exchange

00:38:58 ◼   ► but is better in every way,

00:39:00 ◼   ► what if that's what the new thing is,

00:39:03 ◼   ► so they self-cannibalize?

00:39:05 ◼   ► Is that so terrible?

00:39:06 ◼   ► Is that what it will take?

00:39:07 ◼   ► - That's not terrible,

00:39:08 ◼   ► but you have to go into it with a new attitude, right?

00:39:11 ◼   ► You have to go into it with the attitude of,

00:39:14 ◼   ► A, we're breaking everything, and I know you don't like it.

00:39:17 ◼   ► And we're hoping that you'll like our new product.

00:39:18 ◼   ► But B, going forward, you have to know the rules have changed.

00:39:21 ◼   ► You don't get to dictate what we want.

00:39:22 ◼   ► We are not going to hold backward compatibility forever

00:39:24 ◼   ► and ever and ever just to make you feel better.

00:39:27 ◼   ► You have to take more power in that relationship, which

00:39:29 ◼   ► they haven't been able to do it.

00:39:31 ◼   ► And that's why I think it's such poison

00:39:33 ◼   ► to have these as your customers, because they do pay you

00:39:35 ◼   ► tons and tons of money.

00:39:36 ◼   ► And it's natural for any business to go, geez,

00:39:38 ◼   ► these customers are paying us tons of money.

00:39:40 ◼   ► We have to pay attention to what we want.

00:39:41 ◼   ► Otherwise, that's the instinct of a business.

00:39:43 ◼   ► Do the customer's always right, do what the customer wants,

00:39:45 ◼   ► and you end up making your products beholden

00:39:48 ◼   ► to these buyers who are not gonna actually use your products

00:39:51 ◼   ► and it starts taking that same shape again.

00:39:53 ◼   ► So you have to, it's very difficult to serve

00:39:57 ◼   ► those businesses while still trying to make a product

00:39:59 ◼   ► that's good that the people who are buying it,

00:40:03 ◼   ► the actual users who are not actually buying it like.

00:40:06 ◼   ► And I don't know if any company's ever been successful

00:40:08 ◼   ► doing that.

00:40:08 ◼   ► Apple's solution was just like fine,

00:40:09 ◼   ► exit that business.

00:40:10 ◼   ► That's the solution.

00:40:11 ◼   ► If there's some company out there serving enterprise

00:40:15 ◼   ► and government while also making awesome products

00:40:18 ◼   ► that the users like, feel free to write us and tell us

00:40:20 ◼   ► about it.

00:40:21 ◼   ► Is it Lotus Notes?

00:40:22 ◼   ► I've heard it might be Lotus Notes.

00:40:23 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:40:24 ◼   ► Everything you guys have just said, I think,

00:40:26 ◼   ► supports the theory that Microsoft should probably

00:40:31 ◼   ► split itself into consumer and enterprise

00:40:35 ◼   ► as separate companies or majorly separate divisions.

00:40:39 ◼   ► to the point where they could have totally separate product lines. Because, you know,

00:40:43 ◼   ► if you think about it, trying to shove corporate Windows on the desktop at home and on laptops

00:40:49 ◼   ► and on consumer stuff has always kind of had problems. You know, back when Windows 2000

00:40:54 ◼   ► NT5, when that was supposed to be the big unifying release and it was so hard to do

00:40:59 ◼   ► technically that they had to push off the big unifying release to Windows XP and then

00:41:03 ◼   ► Windows's Mii came out.

00:41:07 ◼   ► It was clear back then that it was very, very hard

00:41:09 ◼   ► to mash these two worlds together of consumer

00:41:11 ◼   ► and enterprise on a technical level.

00:41:15 ◼   ► And then I think now we're seeing a lot of that

00:41:18 ◼   ► on the product level, and even on the company level,

00:41:22 ◼   ► where we're seeing-- Microsoft is not

00:41:24 ◼   ► doing a very good job of balancing these two things,

00:41:27 ◼   ► especially when it comes to their consumer device side.

00:41:30 ◼   ► You see like, you know, the Surface versus the Surface Pro as two separate products,

00:41:34 ◼   ► Office having its own giant pile of politics and conflicts and issues in that world.

00:41:40 ◼   ► You see Microsoft not being able to politically and strategically release Office for iOS or Android.

00:41:49 ◼   ► You know, you see these pretty big problems that are really hurting Microsoft big time.

00:41:54 ◼   ► Imagine this. Imagine Microsoft spins out a new consumer company.

00:41:59 ◼   ► They are responsible for Xbox,

00:42:03 ◼   ► whatever Zune still has left.

00:42:05 ◼   ► Basically they're responsible for Xbox

00:42:07 ◼   ► plus tablets and phones.

00:42:09 ◼   ► Scott Forstall is the CEO of that company.

00:42:13 ◼   ► Then their regular, everything else,

00:42:16 ◼   ► the entire enterprise and services side of their business,

00:42:19 ◼   ► all the server software, Windows for PCs, Office,

00:42:24 ◼   ► all of that is a totally separate company.

00:42:28 ◼   ► that has somebody like Ballmark but good at the head of that.

00:42:34 ◼   ► Why is that worse than what they have now?

00:42:42 ◼   ► Because the consumer side isn't making any money. There's no money to be made on the consumer side.

00:42:46 ◼   ► No, no, I don't think that's the problem. The technical problem is that all those things you just described share so much common technology

00:42:52 ◼   ► that it would be very difficult legally speaking. How do you divvy that up?

00:42:56 ◼   ► You could license it to each other.

00:42:57 ◼   ► They diverge or whatever.

00:42:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:59 ◼   ► But when I picture that in my mind, what I picture is a rocket ship going up into space.

00:43:04 ◼   ► And stage one is the enterprise business.

00:43:07 ◼   ► And it expends its fuel, separates, and tumbles back into the atmosphere.

00:43:13 ◼   ► And stage two and three is the consumer products.

00:43:16 ◼   ► And so it's like, who's going to volunteer to be on the stage one that fires us up and

00:43:19 ◼   ► then runs out of fuel and then tumbles into the ocean?

00:43:22 ◼   ► Who wants to be in that company?

00:43:23 ◼   ► But they're doing well.

00:43:24 ◼   ► The enterprise business goes well.

00:43:25 ◼   ► I know.

00:43:26 ◼   ► rocket, right? They have the most fuel, they have the most power, but inevitably they're

00:43:29 ◼   ► going to run a fuel tumble to the ocean. If I was there and they were divvying up the

00:43:33 ◼   ► company along those lines, I would wonder how many people would raise their hands to

00:43:36 ◼   ► be in that other part or to invest in that other part or whatever. It's like, this is

00:43:41 ◼   ► the future business and this is the current/dying business. That's a tough sell, too.

00:43:48 ◼   ► The current one is the one that pays dividends and makes reliable money every year, and the

00:43:52 ◼   ► consumer new one is the potential growth.

00:43:54 ◼   ► It's the shrinking one. I think those two things can exist within the same company.

00:43:58 ◼   ► It just has to be a change in attitude. I think existing within the same company gives you the

00:44:02 ◼   ► biggest benefit, because that's like using the booster rocket and not—and not—this analogy

00:44:06 ◼   ► is failing now—but not jettisoning it, like keeping it with you. It's kind of like what

00:44:13 ◼   ► Apple did with the Mac. The Mac, we have to get this thing back on track. We have to make one of

00:44:17 ◼   ► these teals so people will buy it. While we're doing that, let's work on the next stuff. And

00:44:21 ◼   ► we're going to try a whole bunch of things, and the one that stuck was the iPod. It's like,

00:44:24 ◼   ► "Oh, that gives us a small breathing room."

00:44:25 ◼   ► "Okay, we got to work on the next thing."

00:44:26 ◼   ► So it's not like the Mac was the office cash cow,

00:44:29 ◼   ► but it was the only thing they had.

00:44:31 ◼   ► And so job one was make sure that keeps making money.

00:44:33 ◼   ► And Microsoft already got that covered.

00:44:35 ◼   ► That can power your company while you work on the other things.

00:44:38 ◼   ► And when you work on the other things,

00:44:40 ◼   ► and if the other things are successful,

00:44:41 ◼   ► it's not like the Mac has faded away and slowly dwindled.

00:44:44 ◼   ► It's been growing along with everything else.

00:44:45 ◼   ► It's just growing at such a smaller rate than everything else

00:44:48 ◼   ► that it looks like it's unimportant.

00:44:49 ◼   ► But it's there.

00:44:50 ◼   ► So you can use that enterprise business as your platform that will keep you safe and

00:44:56 ◼   ► in the black long enough for you to work on the next big thing.

00:44:59 ◼   ► And if you hit that next big thing, that part that's been helping you stay safe and in the

00:45:03 ◼   ► black, that could be a successful business too and also still growing and also improving.

00:45:07 ◼   ► So I think probably keeping the company together but just organizing it and running it differently

00:45:12 ◼   ► is probably a better strategy than splitting it up.

00:45:15 ◼   ► Because with splitting it up, I don't see good things for that enterprise company and

00:45:18 ◼   ► I see all sorts of crazy issues in terms of like the entanglements almost get worse when you have to have some sort of cross licensing

00:45:24 ◼   ► agreement or you know

00:45:26 ◼   ► Coordinated development to maintain compatibility between enterprise windows and consumer windows and you know all that other stuff

00:45:33 ◼   ► You know the thing it is is that I feel like we've been beaten up Microsoft a lot

00:45:37 ◼   ► Today, and I think it's easy to kick somebody when they're down

00:45:42 ◼   ► But I think I speak for all of us when in saying that I'm actually very hopeful for Microsoft

00:45:47 ◼   ► And I was thinking about it, you guys made the point earlier that, you know, Microsoft

00:45:52 ◼   ► was really early on tablets and they were really early on smartphones.

00:45:55 ◼   ► Well, maybe they weren't that smart, but they were certainly more than just feature phones.

00:46:00 ◼   ► And so during those days, it was like they had good timing and they had decent vision,

00:46:07 ◼   ► but never really executed.

00:46:09 ◼   ► You know, they saw that smartphones were a thing and they saw it arguably before a lot

00:46:13 ◼   ► of other people did, but they never really did it well.

00:46:16 ◼   ► Now with, say, Windows Phone 8, they had pretty good vision and pretty good execution, but

00:46:24 ◼   ► the timing was terrible.

00:46:25 ◼   ► And so I wonder if for whatever the next big thing is, the next mobile, maybe it's TV,

00:46:31 ◼   ► as everyone's been saying, but I doubt it, but whatever that next thing is, maybe they

00:46:36 ◼   ► will get all three of those timing, vision, and execution right.

00:46:40 ◼   ► And then maybe that will really turn them around.

00:46:42 ◼   ► You could argue that maybe Azure is that thing.

00:46:44 ◼   ► I'm not saying that is, but you could pose the argument that maybe Azure's that thing.

00:46:49 ◼   ► And I'm really hopeful that maybe one of these days they'll get all three right at

00:46:52 ◼   ► the same time, because it's better for all of us, even die-hard Apple users, when Microsoft

00:46:57 ◼   ► is competitive and good.

00:46:59 ◼   ► Well, going back a second to the question I asked right after the last break, and it's

00:47:03 ◼   ► almost time for the next one, but my theoretical question here, let's ignore the question

00:47:10 ◼   ► of whether the company gets split up or not, because that obviously is a rat hole. For

00:47:15 ◼   ► the purpose of this, it doesn't actually matter.

00:47:19 ◼   ► Imagine what would an ideal Microsoft product launch look like today in the phone and tablet

00:47:26 ◼   ► area, like in the general mobile devices area, which is where all the growth is and which

00:47:30 ◼   ► is what's slowly eating PCs. Actually, not even that slowly. Where is Microsoft's place

00:47:38 ◼   ► in this market, because I'm kind of thinking they don't have one. Because here's the thing.

00:47:42 ◼   ► Let's say they release a real--I mean, look, Windows Phone 7 and 8 and Windows 8 were both

00:47:51 ◼   ► pretty good. Neither of them were great, but they were both pretty good, especially for

00:47:57 ◼   ► a Microsoft release in the last decade. They were really good. You can look at basically

00:48:04 ◼   ► the last few things Microsoft did on their major platforms, Windows 7 was very well received,

00:48:10 ◼   ► Windows Phone 7, Windows 8, and Windows Phone 8. Those were all very well received critically.

00:48:16 ◼   ► But in the market, Windows 7 I think did well, but the rest of it, especially in the mobile

00:48:22 ◼   ► area, has really done pretty terribly. What could they do if they released something that

00:48:28 ◼   ► was really, really great. Let's say Windows 8 on the Surface. Let's say that was a really

00:48:36 ◼   ► great launch. Let's say they even got the Surface down to $300 at launch, and so it

00:48:42 ◼   ► was price competitive, because when it did launch, it wasn't. But let's say they got

00:48:45 ◼   ► it there. What could they release that would give them substantial growth and market share

00:48:52 ◼   ► in this market? I don't think there was anything they could do, because Apple has the premium

00:48:58 ◼   ► end locked up tight. Google has everything else locked up tight. I don't really see

00:49:04 ◼   ► room for a third party here doing similar kinds of things. And maybe they do something

00:49:09 ◼   ► totally different, but then what is that? They tried a little bit with Windows 8 and

00:49:14 ◼   ► some of the Surface PC crossover stuff, but that didn't work that well either.

00:49:18 ◼   ► Well, I think Casey was right that that was a timing issue. You either get the execution

00:49:23 ◼   ► wrong or they get the timing wrong or both, and this was a timing issue. They released

00:49:27 ◼   ► adequate products with some interesting things about them to recommend them, but the timing

00:49:32 ◼   ► was awful. They're kind of in the similar position that Apple used to be in. Apple used

00:49:37 ◼   ► to routinely launch better products, but nobody cared. Oh, because everybody uses Windows,

00:49:41 ◼   ► because they can't run my applications on it. Because the software, it doesn't matter

00:49:47 ◼   ► how good Apple makes stuff. No matter how good anything Apple releases, no one's going

00:49:51 ◼   ► to care. But that's not entirely—it's just the bar is really high. So who would have

00:49:55 ◼   ► thought the solution was to release a teal Macintosh. That will do it. Now, that generated

00:50:01 ◼   ► excitement. Why did it generate excitement? Because it was a different color and it looked

00:50:05 ◼   ► different like fashion. They took a different tact and it got them attention. Did that turn

00:50:12 ◼   ► the whole company around? No, but that gave them a little more breathing room. And then

00:50:16 ◼   ► the next thing, the iPod, which everyone shunned, but that turned out to be a great idea. It's

00:50:21 ◼   ► It's possible, it's just really, really hard.

00:50:24 ◼   ► And if you're really late, like if Apple--

00:50:26 ◼   ► Apple can't be the seventh company

00:50:28 ◼   ► to release a translucent colored computer,

00:50:31 ◼   ► no matter how good it is.

00:50:32 ◼   ► They had to be the one to make the big splash with it.

00:50:35 ◼   ► So Microsoft was not the first one to release a tablet.

00:50:37 ◼   ► They were kind of the first one with the Windows 8 type look,

00:50:39 ◼   ► but it wasn't enough, and it was diluted and watered down.

00:50:42 ◼   ► But there are plenty of areas where

00:50:44 ◼   ► Microsoft could be successful with a new product.

00:50:48 ◼   ► They just have to reset it.

00:50:49 ◼   ► I would say even the Xbox, an established category, could have been a runaway hit if

00:50:55 ◼   ► everything had gone their way.

00:50:57 ◼   ► So say they released a-- say Sony screwed up.

00:51:01 ◼   ► Nintendo let them do what they're continuing to do because they're already screwing up.

00:51:04 ◼   ► Sony screws up, and Microsoft comes out and they do everything right with the new Xbox

00:51:09 ◼   ► launch.

00:51:10 ◼   ► And everybody loves them, and they end up taking market share from almost everybody

00:51:13 ◼   ► else.

00:51:14 ◼   ► become the uncontested, undisputed platform for AAA games.

00:51:19 ◼   ► Because the competition for that market is like Nintendo, Sony, and PC Space, which is

00:51:25 ◼   ► kind of Microsoft/Steam/whatever, EA and stuff like that.

00:51:32 ◼   ► That is a big market.

00:51:33 ◼   ► That market makes a lot of money, and if Microsoft could have come out and dominated it, that

00:51:38 ◼   ► would be a big win for them.

00:51:39 ◼   ► Because they're already in that market, and this is a generational turnover where lots

00:51:43 ◼   ► of things that happen. If they had executed amazingly well, and if they got lucky and

00:51:47 ◼   ► their competitors didn't execute as well, that would be a big win. And all of a sudden,

00:51:52 ◼   ► you'd see that making a lot of money for them. They could have made like wee bucks from the

00:51:57 ◼   ► launch. That's not how it turned out. They ended up doing a whole bunch of things wrong.

00:52:01 ◼   ► And one of their competitors, Sony, did not do a lot of things wrong. And it looks like

00:52:06 ◼   ► it's going to be a horse race again. But I don't count them out. It's just that it's

00:52:11 ◼   ► going to be really hard, and you can't look at what your competitors have already done

00:52:15 ◼   ► and try to do it better because you never know what better part you need to do to make

00:52:21 ◼   ► it happen.

00:52:22 ◼   ► If you looked at Apple, it's like, "Well, what do they have to do?

00:52:23 ◼   ► How awesome is the computer they have to do?"

00:52:25 ◼   ► No, they have to release a computer that's faster than everybody else.

00:52:27 ◼   ► So they have to release one that is more reliable.

00:52:30 ◼   ► Oh, they have to release one that's a different color.

00:52:32 ◼   ► What?

00:52:33 ◼   ► What did that guy say?

00:52:34 ◼   ► A different color?

00:52:35 ◼   ► Whatever.

00:52:36 ◼   ► That turned out to be the thing.

00:52:37 ◼   ► A different color was the thing that got them attention and turned things around.

00:52:39 ◼   ► and obviously I'm making light of it, it's much more to it than that.

00:52:42 ◼   ► I didn't think it was that simple.

00:52:43 ◼   ► But you know what I mean, no one would have predicted that. If you had to ask,

00:52:47 ◼   ► "Okay, we're getting killed here, we're releasing better products to Microsoft,

00:52:50 ◼   ► what do we have to do to make people notice us?" and you brainstormed it,

00:52:54 ◼   ► the guy who was coming up with the idea for the iMac, everyone would have been like,

00:52:57 ◼   ► "That's not going to do it." Because in the abstract, it seems stupid. You have to see

00:53:01 ◼   ► the concrete iMac to understand what it is about it. That's a difference in vision and it has to be

00:53:07 ◼   ► executed well, but just the idea of like we're going to make a computer that is designed

00:53:11 ◼   ► differently physically speaking, that doesn't sound like a winning idea, but the execution

00:53:16 ◼   ► matters. So if you said we're going to make a tablet that also doubles as a PC, I don't

00:53:20 ◼   ► even know that's a winning idea, but certainly the execution where there's one arm version

00:53:23 ◼   ► and then like an Intel version with a fan in it, and you can put the desktop on both

00:53:27 ◼   ► of them because they're afraid to go all the way, you know, like the execution was not

00:53:31 ◼   ► winning and I'm not even sure if that idea was winning, but I don't rule out the concept

00:53:35 ◼   ► of them feeling a product that, you know, becomes very popular and makes people sit

00:53:41 ◼   ► up and take notice of Microsoft again.

00:53:45 ◼   ► And with that, our second sponsor this week is another new iOS app.

00:53:49 ◼   ► I love this kind of sponsor.

00:53:50 ◼   ► This is my favorite kind of sponsor.

00:53:51 ◼   ► It's another new iOS app.

00:53:54 ◼   ► It's called Notograph.

00:53:56 ◼   ► And it's like "photograph" but for notes.

00:53:57 ◼   ► So "notograph."

00:53:58 ◼   ► N-O-T-O-G-R-A-P-H.

00:54:01 ◼   ► And this is a pretty cool app.

00:54:04 ◼   ► We talked last episode or two episodes ago about photo storage and photo stream and stuff

00:54:09 ◼   ► like that.

00:54:10 ◼   ► This is...

00:54:11 ◼   ► Notograph is a place to keep photos that you're taking more for like a note-taking purpose,

00:54:18 ◼   ► and they can be kept outside of your camera roll.

00:54:20 ◼   ► So they aren't clogging up your camera roll because you're not really taking a photo of

00:54:25 ◼   ► the label of a wine that you like.

00:54:27 ◼   ► You don't really need that to be in your family vacation photos.

00:54:30 ◼   ► That's not the purpose that you're taking it for.

00:54:33 ◼   ► And I use my camera on my iPhone all the time for this purpose,

00:54:35 ◼   ► for the purpose of reminding me of something

00:54:39 ◼   ► that I want to come back to later.

00:54:41 ◼   ► For me, it's often as simple as a picture of where

00:54:45 ◼   ► I parked in the parking garage.

00:54:46 ◼   ► I'll take a picture of the nearest sign

00:54:47 ◼   ► with the letter and number on it, something like that.

00:54:50 ◼   ► Or it can be longer, like, oh, here's a beer I liked.

00:54:53 ◼   ► Here's a product I wanted to look at.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Here's something I saw in a store,

00:54:56 ◼   ► but I want to learn more about it.

00:54:57 ◼   ► I want to go read Amazon reviews,

00:54:59 ◼   ► whatever the case may be.

00:55:00 ◼   ► So, Notograph is an app made for this purpose.

00:55:04 ◼   ► First of all, it's designed primarily for quick captures,

00:55:08 ◼   ► 'cause obviously when you're in these kind of situations,

00:55:11 ◼   ► you don't wanna have to be filled in

00:55:12 ◼   ► with lots of navigation.

00:55:13 ◼   ► So, you launch it, it's quick capture,

00:55:16 ◼   ► it opens always ready to take a picture.

00:55:19 ◼   ► It has all sorts of sharing options, iCloud,

00:55:21 ◼   ► syncing with Dropbox, Evernote, you can email,

00:55:25 ◼   ► you can message, all that stuff.

00:55:26 ◼   ► You can save these into your camera roll if you want to,

00:55:28 ◼   ► You don't have to.

00:55:30 ◼   ► It has a whole organizational system.

00:55:32 ◼   ► You can create folders and manage all these things.

00:55:36 ◼   ► But one of the coolest things about this, I think, is the UI.

00:55:39 ◼   ► It's a really opinionated UI, and I like that about it.

00:55:42 ◼   ► It was designed with iOS 7 in mind.

00:55:45 ◼   ► But if you take a look at the site,

00:55:46 ◼   ► it's notograph, N-O-T-O-G-R-A-P-H dot net slash ATP.

00:55:52 ◼   ► Go to notograph.net/ATP to take a look at their UI.

00:55:56 ◼   ► It's very text heavy, and it uses this awesome-- what's

00:56:00 ◼   ► the font here?

00:56:00 ◼   ► It's Tungsten by Heffler, Frere, Jones.

00:56:03 ◼   ► So it's a fantastic professional font.

00:56:06 ◼   ► And it is a very text heavy iOS 7 principle styled app,

00:56:12 ◼   ► but it doesn't look like every other iOS 7 app.

00:56:14 ◼   ► Because we're about to enter an era where

00:56:16 ◼   ► every app looks white with Helvetica, Noia,

00:56:19 ◼   ► and is all the same.

00:56:21 ◼   ► This looks different.

00:56:23 ◼   ► It takes a lot of the lessons learned from iOS 7,

00:56:25 ◼   ► but it has its own style.

00:56:27 ◼   ► And they have this cool UI mechanic

00:56:29 ◼   ► where to see the photos in a list,

00:56:31 ◼   ► you need some kind of thumbnail.

00:56:33 ◼   ► They have this thing where the list is a big rectangular cell,

00:56:36 ◼   ► the way table cells in iOS usually are.

00:56:38 ◼   ► And they have this cool UI where you just drag just

00:56:42 ◼   ► a horizontal box up and down the photo

00:56:43 ◼   ► to pick what part of it you want to be,

00:56:45 ◼   ► that little skinny rectangle thumbnail.

00:56:47 ◼   ► It's really cool, very cool UI, very cool idea.

00:56:50 ◼   ► And they even have-- and this is pretty cool--

00:56:54 ◼   ► They even have a video made by our friend Jonathan Mann, the guy who made our theme

00:56:59 ◼   ► song.

00:57:01 ◼   ► If you go to their website, notograph.net/atp, you can see this awesome music video that

00:57:05 ◼   ► Jonathan Mann made for it.

00:57:07 ◼   ► It's really cool.

00:57:08 ◼   ► So I think this is worth checking out.

00:57:10 ◼   ► I think you should definitely go get it right now to support them and our show.

00:57:13 ◼   ► So thanks a lot to Notograph for sponsoring our show.

00:57:16 ◼   ► N-O-T-O-G-R-A-P-H, like photograph, but for notes, notograph.net/atp.

00:57:22 ◼   ► Thank you very much.

00:57:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the thumbnail thing, because that was-- I agree with everything

00:57:27 ◼   ► you said.

00:57:28 ◼   ► I think the thumbnail thing was the most interesting bit of the UI that I saw.

00:57:32 ◼   ► And it was a really clever way to make a list that didn't feel like every other list that

00:57:36 ◼   ► you've ever seen in iOS.

00:57:38 ◼   ► And it is a pretty slick app, so you should definitely check it out.

00:57:41 ◼   ► All these applications that use like a-- they want to show you your content as the item.

00:57:47 ◼   ► Like, they don't want to have an item that just has like a list box and like a thumbnail.

00:57:50 ◼   ► like they want, you know, if you're sorting pictures

00:57:52 ◼   ► something, they want the pictures to be the item.

00:57:54 ◼   ► Like iPhoto is like this on the Mac,

00:57:55 ◼   ► where when you have events, it picks one of the photos

00:57:58 ◼   ► from the events to be the thing of the photo.

00:58:00 ◼   ► The key feature for any application that does that

00:58:02 ◼   ► is there has to be a way for you to say,

00:58:04 ◼   ► you know what, you picked the wrong picture iPhoto

00:58:06 ◼   ► for that event, I would like you to use a different one.

00:58:08 ◼   ► Or you know what, Nodograph, actually I would have

00:58:11 ◼   ► cropped that differently so I could see like the name

00:58:13 ◼   ► of the wine label that I took the picture of or whatever.

00:58:16 ◼   ► And that's the key feature.

00:58:17 ◼   ► It seems like, well what's the difference?

00:58:18 ◼   ► like a power user feature who's ever gonna use that but oh man it's makes so

00:58:21 ◼   ► much of a difference when you can move that little rectangle and pick which

00:58:24 ◼   ► part you want to crop or by the way people who don't know in what is it an

00:58:27 ◼   ► iPhoto spacebar lets you when you're scrubbing through the pictures in an

00:58:31 ◼   ► event you scrubbing through with the cursor hit the spacebar use iPhoto you

00:58:34 ◼   ► want yes I do it to pick the one you want for the event that is one of my

00:58:38 ◼   ► favorite iPhoto features that they actually added in recent years one of

00:58:40 ◼   ► the few favorite features and the fact that notograph has something like that

00:58:44 ◼   ► is a great idea everyone should do that that is not only is that the

00:58:48 ◼   ► best Syracusian feature pic that I could possibly think of. But we have what I believe might

00:58:55 ◼   ► be the perfect Syracusian topic coming up next. So what happened with Nintendo today?

00:59:01 ◼   ► Not much. Not much. Yeah, I think a lot of people are making fun of this product. We're

00:59:10 ◼   ► talking about the Nintendo 2DS, which is not a typo. It's not a joke. Kind of like the

00:59:16 ◼   ► name Wii. It seems like it might be a joke to begin with, but no, it's the real name.

00:59:20 ◼   ► In some ways it's kind of clever, but anyway. The 3DS is their handheld gaming system with

00:59:25 ◼   ► a 3D, you know, you don't need glasses, kind of a stereoscopic screen on the top and a

00:59:30 ◼   ► touch screen on the bottom, which is crazy in a strange Nintendo kind of way. But actually,

00:59:35 ◼   ► after a fairly disastrous start, it started selling well when they slashed the price.

00:59:39 ◼   ► And so now they're making a version of their flagship product, and the flagship feature

00:59:43 ◼   ► of the flagship product right there in the name. 3DS was that it's like a Nintendo DS,

00:59:47 ◼   ► but it's 3D, right? So now they made a version of it without the 3D.

00:59:51 ◼   ► Now, can I interrupt you real quick? The 3DS, that folds in half, does it not?

00:59:57 ◼   ► Yes, it does. It has a hinge, just like the, you know, there was the DS, and there's like

01:00:02 ◼   ► seven variants of this thing that are out there. I don't want to enumerate all of them,

01:00:04 ◼   ► but Nintendo is not shy about making different variations. Big ones, small ones, ones with

01:00:08 ◼   ► extra cameras, you know. Ones as big as your head.

01:00:10 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's actually not a terrible idea, because they make the big ones basically for

01:00:16 ◼   ► adult-sized hands, and not that I play handheld games, but if I did, I would appreciate the

01:00:19 ◼   ► fact they made big ones.

01:00:20 ◼   ► But anyway, the 2DS is getting rid of the 3D, and the 3D has kind of been one of those

01:00:24 ◼   ► things where it almost amazes me that they ever shipped the product, because it's interesting

01:00:29 ◼   ► tech.

01:00:30 ◼   ► 3D without glasses is a good idea, because everyone hates the stupid glasses.

01:00:33 ◼   ► It does work as advertised, but you do have to keep your head in a certain position, otherwise

01:00:39 ◼   ► you get the wrong image and the wrong eyes and it doesn't quite work right.

01:00:42 ◼   ► And they shipped it with a little slider that lets you turn down the 3D effect, and when

01:00:46 ◼   ► you put the slider all the way down it turns it off.

01:00:49 ◼   ► So they probably have some kind of stat since these things are internet connected.

01:00:52 ◼   ► How many people using our 3DSes that we've sold have that slider all the way down all

01:00:56 ◼   ► the time?

01:00:57 ◼   ► And probably determined that that 3D feature is not as popular as we thought it was going

01:01:02 ◼   ► to be.

01:01:03 ◼   ► It apparently isn't a big differentiator for people.

01:01:05 ◼   ► It's not the reason people are buying this.

01:01:07 ◼   ► They're buying them, they're putting the slider down to the bottom, they're leaving

01:01:09 ◼   ► it there and they're just using it like a Nintendo DS or whatever, and they're really

01:01:12 ◼   ► buying it because we make good games. So let's make one of these products without the 3D feature

01:01:16 ◼   ► because we can save money. And the way they seem to save money with this product

01:01:22 ◼   ► is by decontenting it, to use the word from the auto industry.

01:01:26 ◼   ► Getting rid of the 3D is surely cheaper to have a screen that doesn't do with that little 3D thing,

01:01:32 ◼   ► so little lenticular things on top of it and everything. It doesn't fold in half,

01:01:37 ◼   ► And I thought that was because they wanted to save money on the hinge, because hinges are

01:01:40 ◼   ► expensive on electronics and more moving parts, and you have to thread ribbon cables through them,

01:01:45 ◼   ► and there's reliability issues and all that other stuff. But what I read—and I don't know if this

01:01:49 ◼   ► is confirmed yet, but I've just read it, so by the time you hear this episode, maybe you'll know

01:01:52 ◼   ► whether it's true or not—is that it doesn't have two separate screens. It has one big screen,

01:01:58 ◼   ► and they just crop out the top and the bottom part. And that's why it doesn't bend in half,

01:02:01 ◼   ► because it can't bend in half. And one screen that's larger—if you look at it,

01:02:06 ◼   ► top and bottom screens aren't even the same size.

01:02:08 ◼   ► So if there's one big rectangular screen that's the width of the top screen,

01:02:12 ◼   ► they're just hiding part of it with the plastic surrounding parts,

01:02:15 ◼   ► you know, and they're hiding of course the middle part as well.

01:02:17 ◼   ► And it seems like that might be more expensive, but I can also imagine it being cheaper.

01:02:21 ◼   ► I don't know if that's true, but that would also explain why the thing doesn't fold.

01:02:25 ◼   ► And the final reason it doesn't fold is it looks kind of more like a tablet form factor.

01:02:30 ◼   ► Like you can kind of squint and think of it as kind of like an iPad Mini with like

01:02:34 ◼   ► like handles and controls on the sides, but then they put this thing on that makes it

01:02:38 ◼   ► look like it's a top screen and a bottom screen. And all this saved them 40 bucks retail, which

01:02:43 ◼   ► is not really that much, but it's a pretty significant amount. If you think of like,

01:02:46 ◼   ► if you had a consumer electronics product and someone told you, "Okay, we want this

01:02:50 ◼   ► to run all the same games and be a good product, but you have to take $40 out of it." You'd

01:02:54 ◼   ► be like, "40 dollars? How the hell do I get $40 out of it? I'm already using a plastic

01:02:57 ◼   ► for the case. I can't really get that much money out for the chips and stuff. Like, maybe

01:03:01 ◼   ► Maybe I can save a few bucks here and there if they have a die shrink of them or something.

01:03:04 ◼   ► Maybe we can combine some chips and save a buck.

01:03:06 ◼   ► But 40 bucks, how are we going to get $40 of value out of this handheld?

01:03:10 ◼   ► And this is what it took to get $40 out of it.

01:03:12 ◼   ► So it's cheaper, it plays 3DS games in 2D, it may be one big screen underneath the covers,

01:03:19 ◼   ► they move the controls around a little bit.

01:03:22 ◼   ► I don't think it's as ridiculous a product as everyone's making it out to be.

01:03:25 ◼   ► I've looked at it and I've seen it, especially the video that Casey put in that he said is

01:03:29 ◼   ► an embarrassing video and you know come on everyone can't make Apple quality videos right

01:03:33 ◼   ► but look at the size of the device and how it kind of zips up into the little bag

01:03:36 ◼   ► I would buy this for my kid if he wanted to play handheld games and I think the kid would like it

01:03:41 ◼   ► and enjoy playing games on it and that's what game machines are supposed to be for and I think

01:03:46 ◼   ► Nintendo would actually make money selling them because they have it seems found a way to take

01:03:50 ◼   ► some value take some not take some value but take some cost out of the manufacturing process and

01:03:54 ◼   ► lower the price while still making a profit. So I have to give this kind of a

01:04:00 ◼   ► tentative thumbs up. What do you guys think? I don't know. So I haven't played console

01:04:06 ◼   ► video games with any regularity in like 10 years. We only have a Wii in the house

01:04:10 ◼   ► which is on only occasionally and usually only for Rock Band John Judgeaway.

01:04:15 ◼   ► I saw the pictures of the 2DS and I saw the ridiculous video for the 2DS

01:04:21 ◼   ► And I don't know, the fact that it doesn't have a hinge just looks and feels wrong to

01:04:28 ◼   ► me.

01:04:29 ◼   ► It just looks like it's clearly something that was designed originally to have a hinge

01:04:34 ◼   ► and now doesn't.

01:04:35 ◼   ► And the thing that really kind of confuses me is that now you've taken a device that

01:04:41 ◼   ► we think is designed for children and people with perhaps smaller hands and smaller bodies

01:04:46 ◼   ► and now you've made it bigger because it can never fold in half.

01:04:49 ◼   ► But did you see how big it is?

01:04:50 ◼   ► I don't know if it's that much bigger.

01:04:52 ◼   ► It's still pretty darn tiny.

01:04:54 ◼   ► Look at it next to that little kid who zips it up into his little carrying case.

01:04:56 ◼   ► It is small.

01:04:57 ◼   ► Are we talking about the video?

01:04:58 ◼   ► Yeah, look at the video.

01:05:00 ◼   ► When you see it just by itself, you think it looks like some gigantic ... I don't know,

01:05:06 ◼   ► but look at it next to the ... it's practically like a toddler putting it away.

01:05:10 ◼   ► It is still small.

01:05:11 ◼   ► I think it's still a reasonable size for a kid to tuck in his backpack to go on a car

01:05:15 ◼   ► trip to have something to play in the car or on vacation or something.

01:05:20 ◼   ► I don't think it's too big.

01:05:21 ◼   ► It's certainly not huge, but maybe it's me.

01:05:24 ◼   ► And I just don't get the way--

01:05:28 ◼   ► it looks like it's supposed to have a hinge and just doesn't.

01:05:30 ◼   ► Like, they forgot it rather than they designed it out.

01:05:34 ◼   ► See, the thing with the one with the hinge is a lot of 3DS games,

01:05:37 ◼   ► like, there's shoulder buttons on it as well.

01:05:39 ◼   ► There's face buttons, shoulder buttons.

01:05:40 ◼   ► And you've got the analog stick and the D-pad.

01:05:43 ◼   ► And you've also got a stylus for the bottom touch screen.

01:05:45 ◼   ► And some games try to use all those controls at once.

01:05:48 ◼   ► And famously, I think it was the Pilotwings.

01:05:51 ◼   ► Chat room can tell me-- not Pilotwings, Kid Icarus,

01:05:55 ◼   ► whatever the Kid Icarus game for the 3DS.

01:05:57 ◼   ► Come on, chat room.

01:05:58 ◼   ► Wait for the delay to go.

01:05:59 ◼   ► Anyway, there was one game that Nintendo came out with.

01:06:02 ◼   ► They required you to use the styles at the same time

01:06:05 ◼   ► as the analog stick at the same time as the shoulder button.

01:06:07 ◼   ► And the game came with a little plastic stand thing,

01:06:11 ◼   ► because Nintendo recognized that trying

01:06:14 ◼   ► to manipulate the machine in this manner

01:06:17 ◼   ► while also supporting it is actually very difficult.

01:06:19 ◼   ► So find a table, use this special plastic stand

01:06:22 ◼   ► to prop it up into the right position,

01:06:24 ◼   ► and then you can play our game.

01:06:25 ◼   ► And that's kind of a failure of game design

01:06:28 ◼   ► and hardware design.

01:06:29 ◼   ► It's kind of ungainly to be trying to be holding

01:06:32 ◼   ► basically a little miniature laptop that folds open,

01:06:34 ◼   ► a little clamshell thing,

01:06:35 ◼   ► while using all these controls all over it

01:06:38 ◼   ► and sometimes using a stylus and everything.

01:06:40 ◼   ► I think the tablet form factor

01:06:43 ◼   ► gives a better grip on the overall thing,

01:06:45 ◼   ► like the fact that it's just one big solid piece instead of some floppy thing.

01:06:49 ◼   ► The chat room says Kid Icarus Uprising was the game, so I was close.

01:06:53 ◼   ► I think that form factor may actually be better.

01:06:56 ◼   ► Unfortunately, it's probably worse for some games that were designed around the clamshell

01:06:59 ◼   ► factor because some games, like someone was saying in Metroid Prime Hunters, it's going

01:07:03 ◼   ► to be very difficult to play that game because it was designed around the position of the

01:07:06 ◼   ► controls for the folding game where the controls were lower down, nearer to the touchscreen,

01:07:11 ◼   ► and now they're sort of slid up.

01:07:13 ◼   ► But I think overall, it will probably feel more secure in your hands, this one piece,

01:07:18 ◼   ► instead of having that strange hinge thing at various angles.

01:07:22 ◼   ► So again, I don't think this is necessarily a loser product, and I think they might sell

01:07:26 ◼   ► a lot of them.

01:07:27 ◼   ► And actually, I'm now looking at an image of what appears to me to be the 2DS, the...

01:07:34 ◼   ► What was the non-3D one, the DS and the 3DS?

01:07:37 ◼   ► And you're right, I didn't realize...

01:07:38 ◼   ► I believe that's 2DS, 3DS and 3DS XL.

01:07:42 ◼   ► Yeah, there's also the DSi which is the same size as the DSi.

01:07:45 ◼   ► And there was the old DS before they redesigned it.

01:07:48 ◼   ► Put it in the chat room or something so we can...

01:07:50 ◼   ► That's where I got it from.

01:07:51 ◼   ► It was from...

01:07:52 ◼   ► Is it a joystick one?

01:07:53 ◼   ► No, Medialib.

01:07:54 ◼   ► Yeah, blah.

01:07:55 ◼   ► It's from Alex Sibinski.

01:07:57 ◼   ► Yep.

01:07:58 ◼   ► So, anyway, whatever it is I'm looking at, compared to that monstrosity on the right,

01:08:03 ◼   ► it actually doesn't look that big at all.

01:08:05 ◼   ► That's the XL, and that's the one I would buy, by the way, because it's made closer

01:08:08 ◼   ► for adult hands.

01:08:10 ◼   ► So that's designed to be a monstrosity?

01:08:11 ◼   ► I'm not trying to be funny.

01:08:13 ◼   ► The whole point of that one is to be larger for older people who have trouble seeing and

01:08:17 ◼   ► it costs a little more because you have a bigger screen, but if you're an adult you

01:08:19 ◼   ► don't want to have your hands on those.

01:08:20 ◼   ► Yeah, but you're the only adult wanting to buy a 3DS.

01:08:23 ◼   ► Well, I don't.

01:08:24 ◼   ► I would already have one.

01:08:25 ◼   ► I don't play handheld games at all because they're terrible for RSI.

01:08:31 ◼   ► You can't make a really ergonomic controller when the controller is also the game system

01:08:36 ◼   ► and the screen and has to be portable.

01:08:38 ◼   ► So I understand the compromises there and I kind of miss out on some of the games that

01:08:41 ◼   ► that I would like to play. Like, I wish, what is it, Gravity Rush? I gotta ask the chat

01:08:45 ◼   ► room again to confirm my memory is failing. But anyway, there's a game for the Vita that

01:08:49 ◼   ► I would really love to play, but I'm not gonna buy a handheld gaming system to play it, and

01:08:52 ◼   ► I keep hoping it would come out for the PS3 or something.

01:08:54 ◼   ► Wasn't there some, like, third-party, or maybe it was first-party box that you could get

01:09:00 ◼   ► way back in the day to play original Game Boy games on a TV?

01:09:03 ◼   ► Yeah, there's a lot of products like that, and I keep hoping that there will be some

01:09:07 ◼   ► kind of product or maybe the virtual console games where 3DS only games will... someone

01:09:12 ◼   ► says it's pronounced "Vita", what did I say?

01:09:16 ◼   ► I thought that's what you said. Is that "Vita"?

01:09:18 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:09:19 ◼   ► I'm not going to say "Vita". Anyway, I keep hoping that these games that I've been missing

01:09:25 ◼   ► on handheld will eventually come to a system that I can play, you know, somehow on my television

01:09:30 ◼   ► holding a slightly more ergonomic controller in more comfort.

01:09:37 ◼   ► So you're saying that tentative thumbs up for the system. Is that fair?

01:09:44 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean, it's kind of sad that Nintendo has to go to these lengths. This is not a

01:09:48 ◼   ► power move. This is not like, "Oh, we're on top of the world, and now we're so successful

01:09:52 ◼   ► that we can do this." This is kind of like, "Look, the Wii U is doing really badly. The

01:09:56 ◼   ► 3DS has actually kind of picked up in recent years, and it's not... That has a chance for

01:10:02 ◼   ► some growth. What can we do to get more money out of the part of our business that actually

01:10:05 ◼   ► Maybe we make a cheaper version around holiday time.

01:10:08 ◼   ► People are more likely to buy it for their kids.

01:10:11 ◼   ► Because their kid wants an iPad mini, but we can't afford that, so we're going to buy a $130 3DS or 2DS.

01:10:18 ◼   ► And honestly, I think that 2DS, like the games that are available for the DS,

01:10:22 ◼   ► plays any DS game plus any 3DS game.

01:10:25 ◼   ► So there's a huge game library available for this.

01:10:27 ◼   ► And I would put the game library that that thing can play

01:10:30 ◼   ► up against like seven App Store game libraries.

01:10:33 ◼   ► Not that there aren't great games in the App Store, but the depth of game available on that device,

01:10:39 ◼   ► and the type of gameplay experiences that you can have with buttons and shoulder buttons and sticks

01:10:43 ◼   ► and a touch screen and a stylus and all that other stuff, just puts the iOS gaming experience to shame.

01:10:47 ◼   ► So I would be totally comfortable buying this less expensive device. Now, granted, the games are

01:10:52 ◼   ► going to cost you more or whatever. Buy this less expensive device in like two games and the kid's

01:10:56 ◼   ► stocking for Christmas. And I think even though the kid wanted an iPad Mini, if he's the right

01:11:01 ◼   ► age and he is a gamer, he would be much happier with this device.

01:11:05 ◼   ► So two very sore thumbs up.

01:11:08 ◼   ► Yeah, pretty much. Real-time follow-up, Prihingya in the chatroom says it was a Super Game Boy

01:11:14 ◼   ► for Super Nintendo that I was thinking of, which it was.

01:11:17 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:11:18 ◼   ► So then, Jon, you kind of started down this road and then backed away. What do you think

01:11:23 ◼   ► this means as a barometer for the health of Nintendo and their power in the marketplace?

01:11:29 ◼   ► I mean, it certainly, like you said, doesn't seem like this was the move of the king.

01:11:34 ◼   ► It seems like it was the move of the competitor, almost.

01:11:39 ◼   ► So I mean, how does this make you feel as a Nintendo fan?

01:11:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that it's a good thing Nintendo made all that money during the Wii era, because

01:11:46 ◼   ► now their rainy day fund, it's now time for them to start using it.

01:11:51 ◼   ► And I think they do have some breathing room to regroup.

01:11:55 ◼   ► Doing these type of moves is like, "Okay, let's shore up the dam while we try to regroup."

01:11:58 ◼   ► And I really hope they are regrouping because they have they have some breathing room

01:12:01 ◼   ► They made tons of money with the success of the Wii. The Wii U is tanking

01:12:05 ◼   ► They have to decide are we going to try to recover the Wii U? Do we think that do we think they already did price drop

01:12:10 ◼   ► On that one they dropped they dropped the good one the one that you really want from like 350 300

01:12:15 ◼   ► So that's a good move to

01:12:18 ◼   ► The reboot the HD remake of Wind Waker which appeals to old people

01:12:23 ◼   ► Is going to be available early in digital only form that's also a good move like when you have a kind of like a

01:12:28 ◼   ► an important popular title that you know people are going to want. Release it early in digital

01:12:32 ◼   ► form to sort of reward people who don't want to go to the store and buy a disc. I think

01:12:37 ◼   ► the digital one might also be a little bit cheaper. So those are good moves, but are

01:12:41 ◼   ► they going to stick it out with the Wii U? Are they going to rev the Wii U way before

01:12:44 ◼   ► everyone else revs? Because there's no PS5 and Xbox. We don't want to even think of the

01:12:49 ◼   ► name. Those aren't coming out for many, many, many years. But Nintendo could produce a new

01:12:55 ◼   ► console in the next two years. Is that their reboot plan? Or surely they're not going to

01:13:00 ◼   ► stick with the Wii U for eight years. Eight years from now, pull out this podcast and

01:13:04 ◼   ► play it back to me.

01:13:06 ◼   ► So I would like to know what their strategy is, but I think they have a little bit of

01:13:12 ◼   ► breathing room, and I think these type of moves are like, while we're figuring out what

01:13:15 ◼   ► we're going to do, let's see what we can do to get a little bit more money out of these

01:13:21 ◼   ► good areas.

01:13:22 ◼   ► A lot of the problem could just be software. Maybe that's their strategy, regroup, and

01:13:26 ◼   ► we really need to be firing on all cylinders with first-party software.

01:13:29 ◼   ► Well, to that end, are we going to see Zelda and Mario in the App Store anytime soon?

01:13:35 ◼   ► I hope not. People keep saying that. I mean, Gruber said it today, like they should start selling for

01:13:40 ◼   ► the iOS store. Whether or not that's like—I don't think that would be a good long-term business

01:13:46 ◼   ► strategy for Nintendo, the company, but as a consumer, as someone who plays Nintendo games,

01:13:52 ◼   ► I would not like that at all, because the thing I love about Nintendo is that they make hardware

01:13:55 ◼   ► and software combined, they make a complete gaming experience, they tailor their hardware to fit the

01:13:59 ◼   ► software they want to buy, they want to make, and no one else does that to the degree they do. And

01:14:05 ◼   ► I love their games, and I would not want to play their games on a touchscreen.

01:14:08 ◼   ► Well, but you're assuming it's a touchscreen.

01:14:11 ◼   ► Or with any of those little controller things that Apple now supports. It's not the same thing.

01:14:15 ◼   ► I don't think they should do that, Nintendo doesn't think they should do that, I don't think

01:14:20 ◼   ► that would make anybody happy. It would turn them into Sega where it's like, "Oh, right,

01:14:23 ◼   ► well Sega's out of the hardware business. I guess we'll just make games now." And, you know,

01:14:27 ◼   ► people are not excited about Sega games, even though they are available. Are Sega games available

01:14:31 ◼   ► on iOS? I'm pretty sure. Yeah. A lot of them are. Yeah. Like, who cares? And they're mostly terrible.

01:14:35 ◼   ► Who cares? Nobody cares. Whereas, even as Nintendo fails, if they make a really good Zelda game for

01:14:41 ◼   ► the Wii U, it will make a lot of people very happy, even if it doesn't make Nintendo a lot

01:14:45 ◼   ► of money. So I'm one of those people who wants Nintendo to keep being Nintendo, and I would be

01:14:50 ◼   ► willing to have the Japanese government subsidize them to make them keep making it happen.

01:14:54 ◼   ► I'm actually with you on that. I think people calling for Nintendo to just make stuff for

01:14:59 ◼   ► iOS is a lot like people who used to call for Apple to just license Mac OS to PC hardware.

01:15:03 ◼   ► Yeah, it's exactly the same thing.

01:15:05 ◼   ► I think it's, obviously Nintendo makes a lot of money on their hardware, and that's the

01:15:08 ◼   ► business they're in. And so if licensing their games to other platforms would be really giving

01:15:15 ◼   ► up and it would probably lead to a dramatic shrinking of the company and probably a lot

01:15:21 ◼   ► of ruining of what's best about them.

01:15:23 ◼   ► The question is, Apple avoided that by finding another way out of their predicament.

01:15:28 ◼   ► The question is, can Nintendo do that?

01:15:30 ◼   ► Well, Nintendo has weathered a lot of ups and downs.

01:15:33 ◼   ► Like the Nintendo 64 was the beginning.

01:15:35 ◼   ► The Nintendo 64 and the GameCube were another pretty big, deep trough where like, "Oh,

01:15:40 ◼   ► we're totally counting Nintendo out."

01:15:41 ◼   ► And then they came out and over with the Wii.

01:15:43 ◼   ► And now it's like a roller coaster.

01:15:44 ◼   ► So now they're on their way back down again.

01:15:47 ◼   ► How far down is this going to go before they make U-turn again?

01:15:50 ◼   ► I think they're protected by their patience, by their determination, and by the mountains

01:15:55 ◼   ► of money that they make during the high periods that they presumably spend wisely.

01:15:59 ◼   ► I don't think they spend money extravagantly.

01:16:02 ◼   ► They don't have humongous staffs.

01:16:04 ◼   ► They are fairly conservative with what they spend, what their burn rate is.

01:16:08 ◼   ► So I'm hoping they can weather the storm and come out the other side.

01:16:13 ◼   ► Alright, and with that, let's wrap it up for the week.

01:16:16 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to our two sponsors this week, wordboxapp.com, that's the app Wordbox, and

01:16:21 ◼   ► Notograph, notograph.net/ATP.

01:16:24 ◼   ► And we'll see you next week.

01:16:25 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental, oh it

01:16:36 ◼   ► was accidental.

01:16:37 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:16:43 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, it was accidental

01:16:48 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM

01:16:53 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:16:58 ◼   ► M A R C O A R M

01:17:07 ◼   ► A N T M A R C O R M N S I R A C

01:17:12 ◼   ► U S A C R A C U S A

01:17:14 ◼   ► It's accidental They didn't mean to

01:17:20 ◼   ► Accidental Tech broadcast so long

01:17:27 ◼   ► What kind of weird reality are we in where I was agreeing with you, Marco, about enterprise-y related things?

01:17:33 ◼   ► Well, you're the two PC users, so you still have that infection coursing through your veins in trace amounts.

01:17:42 ◼   ► I don't even know how to argue with you on that one. You're probably right.

01:17:46 ◼   ► I'm surprised you're so happy about the TDS.

01:17:49 ◼   ► I'm not happy about the state of Nintendo's end, but I don't think the product deserves the ridiculous skin.

01:17:55 ◼   ► It's not attractive looking either.

01:17:57 ◼   ► There's many things against it.

01:17:59 ◼   ► It's an embarrassing joke name, it's not attractive looking, it looks ungainly and

01:18:04 ◼   ► awkward, but I think it's an okay product.

01:18:07 ◼   ► And like I said, there's seven DS products that I think you can buy now.

01:18:11 ◼   ► You can buy the...

01:18:12 ◼   ► I think you can still buy the DS, then there's the 3DS, then there's 3DS XL, then there's

01:18:16 ◼   ► the DSi, then there's the 2DS.

01:18:18 ◼   ► What the hell is the DSi?

01:18:20 ◼   ► They added a letter, I think that's the one with more internet connectivity and extra

01:18:24 ◼   ► cameras and there's a whole bunch of like they have tons of products.

01:18:28 ◼   ► Do they still suck at internet and social things or have they gotten better at that?

01:18:32 ◼   ► Nope, they still suck.

01:18:33 ◼   ► Okay.

01:18:34 ◼   ► They still suck.

01:18:35 ◼   ► That sounds good.

01:18:36 ◼   ► I mean, they have gotten better though.

01:18:37 ◼   ► You can't say they haven't gotten better, but they are still pretty crappy at it.

01:18:40 ◼   ► And part of it is the philosophy of protecting kids and a lot of the things they do are to

01:18:45 ◼   ► avoid what happened on the Xbox.

01:18:47 ◼   ► Like, "Hey, Xbox, the Xbox Live does it the best," but it's also the place where you go

01:18:51 ◼   ► and will immediately be bombarded by teenagers saying racist and homophobic things to you,

01:18:58 ◼   ► and god forbid if you're a female, right? So Nintendo does not have that problem for

01:19:01 ◼   ► the most part, and has avoided it by keeping people away from each other. You know what

01:19:06 ◼   ► I mean? Keep them separated. And now they're slowly trying to allow some kind of interaction

01:19:12 ◼   ► on a trusted basis, and they're trying to avoid becoming Xbox Live, basically.

01:19:18 ◼   ► Which is sad because Xbox Live, with the exception of the 10-year-olds swearing at you and calling

01:19:23 ◼   ► you horrible names, it's actually very successful in all other ways.

01:19:28 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it is the best one.

01:19:31 ◼   ► And yeah, it suffers from all those terrible ailments.

01:19:33 ◼   ► But I don't want to say who is doing console online best.

01:19:36 ◼   ► It's not Sony and it's not Nintendo, it's Microsoft.

01:19:39 ◼   ► But Microsoft also, in typical fashion, is that the price of good online that you have

01:19:43 ◼   ► to deal with jerks?

01:19:44 ◼   ► I'm not sure it's the price of it, but Nintendo and Sony were just mostly incompetent.

01:19:50 ◼   ► They had people who make games.

01:19:52 ◼   ► Sony has less of an excuse, but Nintendo was like, "Look, they had a bunch of people

01:19:54 ◼   ► who make games, a bunch of people who make hardware, and then all of a sudden they're

01:19:56 ◼   ► expected to make network services?

01:19:59 ◼   ► They must have had to hire people to do that, because do we have anyone who knows how to

01:20:03 ◼   ► run a server here?

01:20:04 ◼   ► A what?"

01:20:05 ◼   ► That's been the past many, many years.

01:20:09 ◼   ► They are getting better and they're slowly learning, but they're doing it very cautiously.

01:20:12 ◼   ► I remember one of their first forays was you had to have friend codes, which was like those

01:20:15 ◼   ► nine digit numbers.

01:20:16 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:20:17 ◼   ► You would exchange, because that way you couldn't accidentally see somebody who would say something

01:20:20 ◼   ► terrible to you or try to abduct you or whatever, right?

01:20:24 ◼   ► It was so hard to connect with somebody, the only people who would ever connect would be

01:20:27 ◼   ► like you and your best friend after six tries.

01:20:29 ◼   ► Yeah, did anybody actually ever do that?

01:20:31 ◼   ► I did.

01:20:32 ◼   ► Yeah, no I did.

01:20:33 ◼   ► So we played Mario Kart Wii over the internet against friends of ours, and this was, shortly

01:20:40 ◼   ► after Mario Kart Wii came out and I was on Fios and my friend was on a reasonably quick

01:20:47 ◼   ► Comcast connection and it was a total disaster.

01:20:50 ◼   ► That's not friend codes, that was the better iteration. Friend codes were back, I think

01:20:54 ◼   ► the DS, someone in the chat room will tell me, but it was before the Wii were the friend

01:20:57 ◼   ► codes.

01:20:58 ◼   ► Oh, my apologies.

01:20:59 ◼   ► The Wii, the Mario Kart Wii was like, that was the improved version. Now see how much

01:21:02 ◼   ► easier it is for you.

01:21:03 ◼   ► Oh, that was god awful.

01:21:04 ◼   ► I know, but it was still better. They've been slowly making it slightly better and more

01:21:08 ◼   ► possible to do, but they're a long way from it just being a free-for-all, and I think

01:21:13 ◼   ► that's probably—the Wii U has a lot of things where people can scrawl notes to each other,

01:21:17 ◼   ► and they must have a fleet of people, like Amazon Mechanical Turk or something, filtering

01:21:20 ◼   ► out all the penis drawings and stuff.

01:21:24 ◼   ► It's got to be moderated, because if you go to a certain level and you die and you fall

01:21:28 ◼   ► in a pit in a Mario game, you'll get to see a little message from somebody who keeps dying

01:21:32 ◼   ► there too, and it's always something nice like, "Oh, I keep dying here!"

01:21:35 ◼   ► It's not like curses or vulgar drawings or whatever so someone must be filtering all them out, and I would not want that job

01:21:41 ◼   ► No, definitely not so our friend Ben Thompson who we were talking about at the very top of the show is in the chat room

01:21:48 ◼   ► username monk bent and he's asking me my thoughts on the new Microsoft Oh

01:21:53 ◼   ► God how many words are in this title the Microsoft sculpt?

01:21:56 ◼   ► ergonomic desktop keyboard

01:21:59 ◼   ► It was the successor to the Microsoft natural ergonomic keyboard 4000

01:22:05 ◼   ► So yeah, Microsoft doesn't have any problems.

01:22:08 ◼   ► No, they have the worst names of anything in the industry,

01:22:12 ◼   ► especially their non-critical products,

01:22:16 ◼   ► like all the side stuff.

01:22:17 ◼   ► Oh, it gets terrible names.

01:22:19 ◼   ► I think Nintendo gives them a run for their money.

01:22:21 ◼   ► New Super Mario Brothers Wii.

01:22:24 ◼   ► Fair enough.

01:22:26 ◼   ► But yeah, so far-- we should talk about Jeff Atwood's

01:22:28 ◼   ► keyboard too.

01:22:28 ◼   ► This is pretty cool.

01:22:29 ◼   ► The code keyboard, you saw this?

01:22:31 ◼   ► I saw that.

01:22:32 ◼   ► I don't understand what makes it cool,

01:22:33 ◼   ► other than some DIP switches on the bottom.

01:22:35 ◼   ► - I can tell you what makes it cool

01:22:37 ◼   ► and what makes it a PC user's keyboard.

01:22:39 ◼   ► What makes it cool is that it's a single person's vision

01:22:42 ◼   ► for what a keyboard should be.

01:22:43 ◼   ► So that is something that I think Apple fans can get behind.

01:22:46 ◼   ► Regardless of what the product is,

01:22:48 ◼   ► this is a single person's vision.

01:22:50 ◼   ► He knew exactly what he wanted,

01:22:52 ◼   ► and he made a keyboard that in every aspect of this

01:22:55 ◼   ► is presumably exactly how Jeff Atwood wanted it.

01:22:57 ◼   ► And so there is a certain attraction to that.

01:23:01 ◼   ► - And he's like a nerd's nerd, too.

01:23:03 ◼   ► Jeff Atwood is exactly the kind of guy you would want to design a keyboard if you're

01:23:07 ◼   ► a nerd.

01:23:08 ◼   ► Right.

01:23:09 ◼   ► And you may not like what his decisions are, but Apple fans can totally get behind this.

01:23:12 ◼   ► It's an interesting product because it is a singular vision.

01:23:16 ◼   ► But his singular vision is for a keyboard that looks and behaves like that code keyboard,

01:23:21 ◼   ► which is not to my tastes at all.

01:23:23 ◼   ► I don't think it's even to Margo's taste because he likes the split keyboard.

01:23:25 ◼   ► So this is not split because he didn't want that.

01:23:28 ◼   ► This has big keys with long throws and clicky keycaps, which I used to like, but now I don't.

01:23:32 ◼   ► I need a very light pressure short throws like you know for RSI reasons or whatever like scissors. Yeah

01:23:38 ◼   ► so it's not a keyboard that I

01:23:40 ◼   ► Would ever buy or be interested in I don't think it's attractive looking either

01:23:45 ◼   ► I think it looks like a PC keyboard because it is a PC keyboard even though you can rewire it for the control key

01:23:49 ◼   ► I don't think the the text on the key caps looks nice that you know it totally does not appeal to me

01:23:55 ◼   ► But the idea of it definitely appeals to me and if you want it if your interests and keyboard tastes align with Jeff Atwood

01:24:01 ◼   ► then this is the one to get because some guy went out there and made something happen that you know

01:24:06 ◼   ► That you could not have made on your own you would have been like which one of these 17 keyboards

01:24:10 ◼   ► I want I can't really decide

01:24:11 ◼   ► But it's like this guy cut through all the fat and made the keyboard that he wanted to make and I was selling it to

01:24:15 ◼   ► You so it's a very very appealing product, but I don't think I would ever buy it and I'm assuming Marco would say the same

01:24:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I think

01:24:23 ◼   ► You know Jeff and the other people involved, but it looks like it's mainly mainly Jeff on the design and concept side

01:24:29 ◼   ► they've made a really what appears to be, I haven't tried it yet, but it appears to be a really good implementation of

01:24:36 ◼   ► the same old keyboard we've been using forever. And to a lot of people that's exactly what they're looking for.

01:24:41 ◼   ► You know, a lot of people like it

01:24:43 ◼   ► it's gonna appeal a lot to the people who are still holding on to IBM Model M's or who try to find them on eBay

01:24:49 ◼   ► because it's like, you know, it's like the keyboard and like if you want the standard key layout that's been around forever

01:24:56 ◼   ► and you want a really good implementation of that, then this is the one for you.

01:25:02 ◼   ► Because it has everything that geeks love. It has the Cherry MX key switches,

01:25:05 ◼   ► the big clicky loud ones that have great feedback.

01:25:08 ◼   ► Well, these are the quiet ones. The Cherry Clear's are quieter.

01:25:12 ◼   ► Oh, right.

01:25:12 ◼   ► Right. That's an aspect that he wants. He likes the clicky keys, but didn't like the

01:25:16 ◼   ► calamitous noise that some of them make. So the Cherry Clear ones are... He has a whole

01:25:20 ◼   ► big keyboard post about the different color of Cherry key switches.

01:25:23 ◼   ► Right. Fair enough.

01:25:24 ◼   ► But yeah, so it's a very good implementation of the same keyboard that's been around forever.

01:25:31 ◼   ► My dream keyboard, so I got this Microsoft many, many words ergonomic sculpt keyboard,

01:25:37 ◼   ► and so far, I've only had it for half of today.

01:25:41 ◼   ► So obviously this is not any kind of long-term impression.

01:25:44 ◼   ► So far, I think it's pretty good.

01:25:47 ◼   ► But they chose to use scissor keys on it.

01:25:51 ◼   ► you know, just like laptop keyboards and all of Apple's recent keyboards.

01:25:54 ◼   ► So it's like the short throw, flat top, scissor switch on the bottom.

01:25:58 ◼   ► And it's not mushy like the old dome switch, I mean, not dome, the old membrane one was.

01:26:05 ◼   ► It's not mushy like that, because that was the problem with the original Natural 4000,

01:26:09 ◼   ► the predecessor to this one, was that it had just the mushiest, crappiest keys.

01:26:13 ◼   ► And this one has like decent scissor keys on it.

01:26:18 ◼   ► I would say probably as good as any Apple laptop keyboard

01:26:22 ◼   ► recently, possibly even a little bit better,

01:26:25 ◼   ► a little bit springier or firmer, I guess.

01:26:29 ◼   ► So I like the keys so far.

01:26:32 ◼   ► I haven't typed full time on a scissor keyboard

01:26:35 ◼   ► in a very long time.

01:26:36 ◼   ► So I don't know if it's going to be better or worse for potential

01:26:39 ◼   ► RSI issues for me.

01:26:40 ◼   ► But I'm hoping it'll be the same just by the layout.

01:26:44 ◼   ► It should be all right.

01:26:44 ◼   ► So we'll see about that.

01:26:47 ◼   ► But my dream keyboard doesn't exist.

01:26:49 ◼   ► My dream keyboard, the way I envision it today,

01:26:52 ◼   ► is basically this keyboard with Jeff Atwood's key switches.

01:27:00 ◼   ► And that, as far as I know, does not exist.

01:27:02 ◼   ► And everybody always recommends this one keyboard.

01:27:05 ◼   ► It's called Truly Ergonomic.

01:27:07 ◼   ► Here, I'll paste the link in the chat.

01:27:10 ◼   ► Everybody always recommends this.

01:27:12 ◼   ► And they say, why haven't you tried this?

01:27:13 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:27:14 ◼   ► And the reason why I haven't tried that

01:27:15 ◼   ► is because of that ridiculous layout that it has.

01:27:18 ◼   ► I really do not like ergonomic keyboards

01:27:20 ◼   ► that have weird custom layouts.

01:27:22 ◼   ► And this one is, as weird layouts go, it's kind of moderate.

01:27:27 ◼   ► Like it doesn't go totally crazy like the Kinesis Advantage,

01:27:30 ◼   ► but it's kind of in the middle between regular keyboards

01:27:33 ◼   ► and that.

01:27:34 ◼   ► So it's very, very strange.

01:27:36 ◼   ► And I don't like those kind of layouts

01:27:38 ◼   ► because that involves a very high learning curve.

01:27:41 ◼   ► And it makes it a little bit difficult

01:27:43 ◼   ► go between different computers.

01:27:45 ◼   ► And I frequently have to use a laptop here and there,

01:27:49 ◼   ► or a TIFF's computer here and there,

01:27:50 ◼   ► or someone else's computer here and there.

01:27:52 ◼   ► And so I really like having just one standard keyboard layout

01:27:55 ◼   ► that my fingers know and are accustomed to, and that's it.

01:27:59 ◼   ► I also think the truly ergonomic one

01:28:01 ◼   ► doesn't have the right shape.

01:28:02 ◼   ► It's not-- see, what makes the Microsoft keyboards great

01:28:06 ◼   ► is they have this giant hump in the middle,

01:28:08 ◼   ► and then it curves down from there.

01:28:09 ◼   ► And they have this great negative tilt

01:28:11 ◼   ► where the keyboard actually tilts slightly away from you,

01:28:15 ◼   ► in the, I guess, relatively vertical direction from you.

01:28:19 ◼   ► It tilts away from you so that it's extremely comfortable.

01:28:23 ◼   ► And in theory-- I don't know how many

01:28:26 ◼   ► studies have proven this-- in theory,

01:28:28 ◼   ► it should be very, very good for RSI prevention.

01:28:31 ◼   ► So Microsoft has a great way of making those keyboards

01:28:36 ◼   ► with the best shape and the most usable layouts.

01:28:41 ◼   ► So far, the Natural 4000 was this giant, ugly boat

01:28:43 ◼   ► with mushy keys.

01:28:45 ◼   ► And the new Sculpt ergonomic desktop keyboard

01:28:49 ◼   ► is way better looking.

01:28:53 ◼   ► I mean, you could tell-- I've already

01:28:56 ◼   ► started writing my review just of my initial impressions.

01:28:58 ◼   ► And it's so obvious.

01:29:00 ◼   ► You look at the Natural 4000, and if you

01:29:05 ◼   ► do a Google image search for Dell Dimension 2005,

01:29:09 ◼   ► You will see that's what PCs looked like in 2005 when the Natural 4000 was designed.

01:29:15 ◼   ► The Natural 4000 looks just like the PCs of the day. By today's standards, it looks ridiculous,

01:29:21 ◼   ► and not in a good way. So the new Microsoft Sculpt blah, blah, blah is quite good. It looks nice,

01:29:30 ◼   ► the keys feel pretty good. I like it better than the Kinesis Freestyle 2 for Mac, which I was using

01:29:36 ◼   ► for the last year. I like it better than that. And I think it'll be okay. My one reservation

01:29:41 ◼   ► is on the key type, and it being scissor keys, I'm a little bit worried about that.

01:29:46 ◼   ► I think the key to getting any kind of RSI benefit out of scissor keys is you can't hit

01:29:50 ◼   ► them as hard. The whole point of them is that they activate easier, but it doesn't mean

01:29:54 ◼   ► that people actually don't hit them as hard because people get into the habit of just

01:29:56 ◼   ► pressing as hard as they used to have to press. And that's actually hard, especially when

01:30:00 ◼   ► you get going, you get everybody had a steam, you may find yourself hitting the keys as

01:30:04 ◼   ► as hard as you used to have to hit your mushy keyboard

01:30:07 ◼   ► or whatever you're using before.

01:30:08 ◼   ► And that's the habit to try to break.

01:30:11 ◼   ► Like, that's what I've had to do.

01:30:13 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

01:30:14 ◼   ► And it actually helped a lot.

01:30:15 ◼   ► Like, the Kinesis Freestyle 2 that I've

01:30:18 ◼   ► been using for about the last year

01:30:20 ◼   ► has extremely light-pressed key switches for that reason.

01:30:24 ◼   ► It's not scissor keys, but it's very, very light-pressed,

01:30:27 ◼   ► regular keys.

01:30:28 ◼   ► And so I've kind of gotten used to that, I think.

01:30:31 ◼   ► So we'll see.

01:30:32 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's one of the reasons I like.

01:30:33 ◼   ► I'm using the Apple aluminum keyboard now.

01:30:36 ◼   ► Since I don't type correctly, I have extreme difficulty

01:30:39 ◼   ► with any layout changes, because I'm using the wrong hands

01:30:43 ◼   ► and the wrong keys.

01:30:43 ◼   ► I'm doing everything wrong.

01:30:44 ◼   ► So split keyboards paralyze me, because I can't use them.

01:30:49 ◼   ► But what I try to do is do everything

01:30:51 ◼   ► I can within a standard layout, which

01:30:53 ◼   ► means very light key presses, but also get it

01:30:56 ◼   ► to slope away from me.

01:30:57 ◼   ► Remember keyboards used to come with kickstands in the back?

01:31:00 ◼   ► It was just torturing yourself.

01:31:02 ◼   ► The more you tilt it up, the worse it is.

01:31:04 ◼   ► Even the Natural 4000 for some reason came with those.

01:31:06 ◼   ► I don't know why.

01:31:07 ◼   ► The Natural 4000 has this big stand you can put on the front lip that lifts it to get

01:31:12 ◼   ► the negative tilt.

01:31:13 ◼   ► But you don't have to put it on.

01:31:14 ◼   ► It had these giant stands in the back so you could set up your perfectly awesome natural

01:31:18 ◼   ► keyboard to be terrible for you.

01:31:21 ◼   ► People expect it.

01:31:22 ◼   ► I know.

01:31:23 ◼   ► This one, the clip-on front prop thing is still optional, although now it's magnetically

01:31:29 ◼   ► attached so it's much cooler.

01:31:30 ◼   ► But there's no more rear stands.

01:31:32 ◼   ► are just gone. So you can't set this up as terribly as you could the other one.

01:31:35 ◼   ► Yeah, so I'd say for people who have keyboards in there, start off with just trying to make

01:31:39 ◼   ► it level. Like, let's start with that, because almost every keyboard, including the Apple

01:31:42 ◼   ► aluminum, has some kind of tilt in the wrong direction, where like, you know, if you put

01:31:46 ◼   ► a marble on it, it would roll downhill into your lap. You want to try making it level.

01:31:50 ◼   ► Just start with that. And you can do that by propping it. You can do that by, if you

01:31:52 ◼   ► have an adjustable keyboard tray, just tilting that or whatever. And maybe you don't have

01:31:57 ◼   ► to go negative with it, but, you know, small changes can make a big difference over a long

01:32:00 ◼   ► period of time.

01:32:01 ◼   ► Yeah, John, I would say, given what you just said, I think you might want to try this keyboard.

01:32:06 ◼   ► It is split.

01:32:07 ◼   ► I can't do split.

01:32:08 ◼   ► Have you ever tried really giving it a real solid try?

01:32:11 ◼   ► I've never given it more than a week, but a week has been enough so many times because

01:32:16 ◼   ► I just have bad, terrible habits that are not compatible with a split keyboard layout.

01:32:21 ◼   ► And the thing is, rather than adapting, I adapt my bad habits to it.

01:32:25 ◼   ► I end up crossing over.

01:32:29 ◼   ► I'll find myself doing that, and then I find all I'm doing is honing my increasingly terrible

01:32:34 ◼   ► crossover habits on a split keyboard.

01:32:36 ◼   ► This one actually has a physical gap between the two halves.

01:32:41 ◼   ► If you want, you could stick a DVD case in that gap upright to block you from crossing

01:32:46 ◼   ► over if you wanted to train it.

01:32:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they would not.

01:32:50 ◼   ► In the chat room, suggesting I learned, Vorak, the person next to me at work, does that.

01:32:55 ◼   ► Aside from being a mild security through obscurity hack,

01:32:58 ◼   ► because whenever he leaves his computer unattended,

01:33:00 ◼   ► it's more difficult for me to screw with it,

01:33:02 ◼   ► because I can't find what the damn keys are.

01:33:04 ◼   ► Because of course, the key caps are all qwerty.

01:33:06 ◼   ► Yeah, now I'm probably past the point

01:33:09 ◼   ► where I can learn new keyboard layouts or new keyboard shapes.

01:33:13 ◼   ► But typing is really not-- I don't

01:33:16 ◼   ► think that's my biggest issue.

01:33:19 ◼   ► I think my hand positioning and stuff like that

01:33:21 ◼   ► is not as bad as it used to be.

01:33:22 ◼   ► So just going flatter and getting the keyboard

01:33:25 ◼   ► at the right height is like 90% of the problem

01:33:28 ◼   ► was for me anyway, I think for most people.

01:33:29 ◼   ► Because most people have their keyboard way too high

01:33:32 ◼   ► and tilt it up.

01:33:33 ◼   ► - Honestly, I really do think you should try this,

01:33:36 ◼   ► even with the DVD case hack if you need to.

01:33:38 ◼   ► Because, I mean, obviously you probably have

01:33:41 ◼   ► a more severe problem than I did,

01:33:42 ◼   ► but I was starting to get RSI-like symptoms

01:33:45 ◼   ► back about a year into my first job after college,

01:33:47 ◼   ► 'cause I was just constantly on the computer

01:33:49 ◼   ► and constantly on bad keyboards.

01:33:51 ◼   ► And I changed the keyboard and that was the number one helping thing, by far.

01:33:56 ◼   ► Well, the number one helping thing is typing less.

01:33:58 ◼   ► That is the number one thing.

01:33:59 ◼   ► I think you probably made that adjustment because that's when I had my problems was

01:34:02 ◼   ► when I had no life and no kid and I was just on the computer from the moment I woke up

01:34:08 ◼   ► until the moment I went to sleep, whether I was working or not, constantly typing.

01:34:12 ◼   ► And that's what killed me.

01:34:14 ◼   ► And you have a more balanced life where you only type for certain periods of time and

01:34:18 ◼   ► and then do other things that don't involve typing

01:34:20 ◼   ► for some portion of your waking hours,

01:34:22 ◼   ► it's amazing things happen.

01:34:24 ◼   ► - No, I definitely didn't do that.

01:34:25 ◼   ► I mean, I continued not to have a kid,

01:34:28 ◼   ► not to have a life for about five years after that.

01:34:31 ◼   ► No changes, no reduction, in fact,

01:34:34 ◼   ► probably an increase in computer use after that.

01:34:36 ◼   ► - Well, you are lucky, 'cause I could not do that

01:34:39 ◼   ► no matter what I was using, mouse, keyboard,

01:34:41 ◼   ► any shape, any anything, 'cause I was at my,

01:34:43 ◼   ► and also my keyboard always used to be way too high.

01:34:46 ◼   ► Like that was, if I had to pick my number one thing

01:34:48 ◼   ► I did was, once I crippled myself, was put the keyboard lower.

01:34:53 ◼   ► That's where I felt my biggest change.

01:34:54 ◼   ► Maybe I would have felt a similar increase if I had got a split as well, but if I had

01:34:59 ◼   ► the split and kept it up high, I would have still been killing myself.

01:35:04 ◼   ► Are we getting to the point then that in the same way that everyone was making t-shirts

01:35:10 ◼   ► right before WWDC, is it going to be soon trendy to make your own keyboard?

01:35:14 ◼   ► Is that going to be the next big thing?

01:35:16 ◼   ► I don't think that's something that regular people can do.

01:35:18 ◼   ► I think you have to be Jeff Atwood to make that happen.

01:35:21 ◼   ► And honestly, if I had to make my own--

01:35:22 ◼   ► Or John Siracusa or Mark Ormey.

01:35:23 ◼   ► If I had to make my own keyboard,

01:35:25 ◼   ► it would probably look a lot like the Apple aluminum.

01:35:27 ◼   ► I would just get those damn function keys away

01:35:31 ◼   ► from my number keys.

01:35:33 ◼   ► Because that thing kills me.

01:35:35 ◼   ► I know they want to make it as small as possible.

01:35:39 ◼   ► But the little dinky function keys

01:35:41 ◼   ► being right up against the number keys

01:35:43 ◼   ► is no reason for that.

01:35:44 ◼   ► Like for years and years, I was an Apple Extended 2 person,

01:35:46 ◼   ► and I still have a nice collection of Apple Extended 2s

01:35:49 ◼   ► upstairs.

01:35:50 ◼   ► And that was my keyboard that I used right up until the point

01:35:54 ◼   ► where I was crippled myself.

01:35:57 ◼   ► And I still like that better.

01:35:58 ◼   ► I don't like scissor keys as much as the Apple Extended 2,

01:36:01 ◼   ► but I recognize that scissor keys are better for me.

01:36:03 ◼   ► So they've become more attractive,

01:36:05 ◼   ► because now when I think about having

01:36:07 ◼   ► to hit the click of keys, it feels good,

01:36:09 ◼   ► but only for a short period of time,

01:36:10 ◼   ► then it starts to feel worse.

01:36:12 ◼   ► So plus, I thought your extended twos were your retirement plan, so you could sell them

01:36:16 ◼   ► all to Gruber.

01:36:17 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the plan now.

01:36:20 ◼   ► My left control key, which is apparently the only control key I use because I don't type

01:36:24 ◼   ► correctly, my left control key at work started sticking, and I tried to repair it.

01:36:31 ◼   ► I've taken apart scissor keys many, many times, Apple scissor key caps, and this was

01:36:35 ◼   ► the first time I successfully reassembled it, because those things are not easy to put

01:36:39 ◼   ► back together.

01:36:40 ◼   ► Especially if they come apart and you have all the pieces loose and you don't remember

01:36:44 ◼   ► how they went.

01:36:45 ◼   ► Luckily now they have YouTube videos and stuff to give you hints, but it is a very tricky

01:36:50 ◼   ► process.

01:36:51 ◼   ► Anyway, I got the key back together after cleaning it out and it still stuck, so I got

01:36:53 ◼   ► a new keyboard.

01:36:54 ◼   ► But that's one downside to scissor keys is...

01:36:58 ◼   ► You pretty much can't service them.

01:37:00 ◼   ► You can.

01:37:01 ◼   ► Like, I was proud of myself.

01:37:02 ◼   ► I was so excited.

01:37:03 ◼   ► Now I feel like I could take off an Apple scissor key cap and put it back successfully

01:37:05 ◼   ► after only 15 minutes of swearing.

01:37:10 ◼   ► But when I'm done, it will work like it did before.

01:37:15 ◼   ► It won't be off-kilter.

01:37:17 ◼   ► If you look at such tiny little parts in there, it's amazing that the thing functions at all.

01:37:20 ◼   ► It's extremely delicate.

01:37:22 ◼   ► Tiny, tiny little flanges and pins and stuff.

01:37:25 ◼   ► But there's something else wrong with that.

01:37:27 ◼   ► I don't know why it was sticking.

01:37:29 ◼   ► I brought it home with me so I can bring it down to the lab and try dousing it in alcohol

01:37:34 ◼   ► or running it through the dishwasher or all the other things I say you can do on the web

01:37:37 ◼   ► to one of these keyboards.

01:37:38 ◼   ► Wait, what else is in the lab?

01:37:41 ◼   ► You know what I mean.

01:37:42 ◼   ► Theoretically, it's like when the Grinch is going to take your Christmas tree to check

01:37:46 ◼   ► the lights.

01:37:47 ◼   ► So that's not actual lab.

01:37:48 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]