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19: Designed by App in Cal

 

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00:00:06   Slash ATP to learn more

00:00:09   And you're gonna have like 16 hours in your car. Oh, yeah, you're gonna be gonna burn out the butt massager

00:00:15   So true

00:00:21   Should we tell the public when we were actually recording this so that if anything big happens next week that they know

00:00:29   Yeah, we probably should. So today it is June 21, which is a Friday.

00:00:35   The longest day of the year.

00:00:36   Is it really?

00:00:37   By some times, yes. It is the solstice.

00:00:40   Ah, right, right, right. So we are recording today because John is traveling next week,

00:00:45   and we didn't want to leave our beloved fans/listeners without an episode next week.

00:00:51   So we're recording very early, and we'll release a week from today.

00:00:55   So, when Apple buys Nintendo on Monday, we won't know about it.

00:01:00   Well, I thought the plan was you were going to buy Nintendo on Monday, then sell it to

00:01:04   Apple, and then they would just shut it down and eat it alive.

00:01:08   Is that not the plan?

00:01:09   Not a bad idea.

00:01:10   I mean, that would give us more to talk about, at least.

00:01:12   But then John wouldn't be able to talk about it.

00:01:14   I would just call you and just talk alone without John.

00:01:16   Oh my God, that would make him so angry.

00:01:18   It would be so funny.

00:01:20   I guess somebody bought Nintendo, huh?

00:01:22   Anything to say about that?

00:01:23   Nope, not really.

00:01:24   Not really, okay. I guess we'll move on. Let's talk about the Mac Pro some more.

00:01:28   John, what would you do? I mean, honestly, you'd be so upset.

00:01:31   I would think I would actually write a blog post about that. That's how momentous that

00:01:36   would be. You'd be so angry it would drive you to write

00:01:38   a blog post. No, I'd be so motivated. Yeah, there's so

00:01:42   many things I want to write about, but it's like, "Eh, don't have time. Gotta go back

00:01:45   to fretting about my review." That's true. How's that going?

00:01:51   I'm fretting about it.

00:01:52   Well, at least it's not July.

00:01:54   Yeah, no, that's why I didn't say I'm writing.

00:01:58   I'm fretting about it as a full-time activity.

00:02:02   I'm still gathering resources and trying to come up with an outline and thinking about,

00:02:07   "Oh, God, look at all the stuff I have to write."

00:02:10   And then also thinking, "Maybe it'll be really short this year.

00:02:12   I don't know."

00:02:13   I mean, you've got to figure, they're changing less and less in each release as the release

00:02:17   time has gotten shorter, right?

00:02:20   Yeah, more or less, but like, I don't know. I'll have to see. I think it will be shorter.

00:02:24   I think that's been the trend, because they have, like you said, they've been doing less,

00:02:28   but you never know when I'm going to go off on some weird tangent.

00:02:30   Yeah, maybe knowing you, you're probably not going to make the review shorter. It'll just

00:02:35   give you more space and time to expand on things that you would have otherwise not gotten

00:02:39   – not had time to get to.

00:02:40   Well, like the 10.6 review, I thought that was going to be super short, because like

00:02:44   Apple's coming out up front, zero new features. Like, oh, this is going to be a short review.

00:02:47   And it was shorter, but it wasn't as short as I thought it was going to be.

00:02:51   Was it like a few thousand words less?

00:02:53   It wasn't a whole lot shorter?

00:02:55   Yeah, and this one I think will be shorter still, but we'll see.

00:02:58   Quantity is not the thing.

00:02:59   Just quality.

00:03:00   I want it to be interesting and good.

00:03:02   So I'm going to concentrate on that, assuming I ever finish fretting and start writing.

00:03:06   Fair enough.

00:03:08   So speaking of shorter things, this might be a short episode, because we have a laundry

00:03:12   list of miscellaneous topics, but I don't know how much we'll actually get to.

00:03:14   Casey, come on.

00:03:15   You know us.

00:03:16   Now that I've stated it's a shorter episode, we're going to go for two hours so everyone

00:03:19   buckle up.

00:03:20   Any time John and Dan would say, "Oh, this is going to be a short one of Hypercritical,"

00:03:25   I would always immediately take out my iPhone from walking the dog and just look at the

00:03:30   timestamp and just see how much… and it's always like 110 minutes remaining or something

00:03:35   like that.

00:03:36   We went through this.

00:03:37   My listeners did a good job and did statistical regression analysis to see that me saying

00:03:42   it was going to be a shorter show did not, in fact, make the show longer and actually

00:03:47   made it slightly shorter. And I don't know enough about statistics to know whether—like,

00:03:51   the statisticians argued amongst themselves whether it was significant or not, but there

00:03:55   was no clear trend of the opposite. It just seems that way. It's like, you know, it

00:03:59   seems like it because it's the opposite of what you would expect and it stands out

00:04:03   in your memory. But in reality, they were actually not way longer.

00:04:07   I love that both your audience and you know that.

00:04:11   That somebody actually went…

00:04:13   Several people, several people, yes.

00:04:15   Someone put the link in the show notes about it.

00:04:18   Oh, that's fantastic.

00:04:19   All right, so one of the things I wanted to ask you guys what you thought about, and this

00:04:24   may or may not take very long, but there's been a couple, or there were a couple of new

00:04:29   Apple videos that were shown on the Keynote Monday, or I believe they were both Keynote

00:04:35   Keynote Monday. And the first one was the one that was at the very beginning of the

00:04:41   keynote itself. And I don't know if it has a title, it probably does and I'm not aware

00:04:45   of, but it was a fairly abstract black and white kind of almost essay about what Apple

00:04:54   does in order to design products. And to my recollection, I don't remember them ever having

00:04:59   started with a video. And I think we talked about this briefly one or two episodes ago,

00:05:03   but they actually started with a video this year and I thought it was a very interesting

00:05:06   video that basically said, "Hey, listen."

00:05:09   The way I interpreted it was, "This is how we do our thing and if you don't like it,

00:05:14   tough nuts."

00:05:15   And I was curious what you two had to say about that.

00:05:17   They used to start with the Mac PC ads.

00:05:21   Remember when they started a couple of keynotes with those?

00:05:24   Didn't they start last year's keynote with the—

00:05:26   Oh, with the GarageBand thing?

00:05:27   No, no, no.

00:05:28   The guy walking in the woods who was blind, using an iPhone.

00:05:30   That wasn't the start.

00:05:31   the start. I mean, "start" means like lights dim, everyone gets ready to hear something,

00:05:35   and instead of a person walking out on stage, they just play a video. And I think the only

00:05:39   other times they've done that are when they were showing ads, like the old Mac PC ads

00:05:45   with Justin Long and Hodgman.

00:05:46   Well, you can kind of argue that they're all ads, right?

00:05:50   But like television ads that were going to run on television, they would play that. Or

00:05:53   custom ones where this was not going to actually run on television, but those characters come

00:05:58   But the difference about this one is it wasn't it wasn't fun. It wasn't supposed to be like funny and it wasn't an

00:06:04   advertisement using known properties or showing a product or something it was more like a

00:06:09   Mission statement kind of a

00:06:13   statement of philosophy or whatever and I

00:06:17   Thought as I said, I think on the first in the podcast we did right after the keynote that that was like, okay

00:06:24   This is gonna be something big like, you know

00:06:26   Like when a video begins with in the course of human events like you know

00:06:30   Well, oh my god

00:06:32   Apple is start opening an Apple store on the moon and they're whatever like it's gonna be something

00:06:38   momentous or significant for the company or that maybe they were buying Nintendo like you know

00:06:42   I mean like something at that level and what followed in the keynote did not live up to that lofty goal

00:06:47   and so then in hindsight the video which is beautifully produced and very interesting and

00:06:51   and contains a lot of accurate content about how Apple sees itself and how we see Apple

00:06:57   comes off as pretentious because what they released was great and awesome, but that video

00:07:05   should have been saved for when they do something more momentous.

00:07:10   So you did or did not like it all the time?

00:07:12   I loved the video.

00:07:13   I thought it was beautiful.

00:07:14   It was nicely done.

00:07:15   You understand what it's saying, but I feel like it was out of balance.

00:07:18   You can't start with that.

00:07:22   And everyone's like, "Oh my God, what is it going to be?"

00:07:25   And what it is is great, but not like, you know, I don't know.

00:07:29   I mean, maybe when could have Apple have gotten away with that?

00:07:31   They can get away with it at the original Mac intro and probably the iPhone intro.

00:07:36   That's about it.

00:07:37   You really think it was overblown?

00:07:38   I didn't think it was overblown at all.

00:07:40   Slightly.

00:07:41   It was just slightly overblown.

00:07:42   Not ridiculously overblown, but slightly.

00:07:43   I don't know.

00:07:44   I wouldn't say that either.

00:07:46   And by the way, I should point out, the chatroom is saying that last year, the Siri comedy

00:07:51   stand-up video, that was the intro last year, wasn't it?

00:07:54   Yeah, because they did a little GarageBand bit, like, well, it was like a rimshot drum

00:07:59   roll.

00:08:00   Yeah, it was like "Series Comedy Act."

00:08:03   Thanks for that.

00:08:04   Right.

00:08:05   I believe that was the intro, so I think they're right.

00:08:07   Anyway, I don't think this year's intro video was overblown or overstayed in the case at

00:08:12   all.

00:08:13   I mean, looking at the keynote, right afterwards, we were all excited, and as you said, we all

00:08:20   thought it was pretty great. Now, with some time for it to sink in and get a little bit

00:08:24   less shiny looking back on it, I still think it was awesome. I still think it was a really,

00:08:28   really great keynote. It was one of the best ones we've had for years.

00:08:31   I agree.

00:08:33   And there was a lot. Not only was the energy really great, and the showmanship was really

00:08:39   with the exception of that weird car demo.

00:08:41   But besides that, everything was great.

00:08:44   And then what they showed us was also pretty great.

00:08:47   You had this revolutionary change in iOS,

00:08:53   a nice update to OS X with mediocre scale improvements,

00:08:58   but a nice update.

00:09:01   But the big thing was iOS.

00:09:02   And then this surprise Mac Pro, which to most people

00:09:05   doesn't matter, but to a few people,

00:09:07   including the three of us, it's really interesting and extremely surprising. Plus, better MacBook

00:09:14   Airs. I think it was a really good keynote.

00:09:16   Yeah, but if you're going to explain your philosophy, the products they introduced were

00:09:22   not out of character for the company or shocking or going to knock the industry on its ear

00:09:28   or anything like that. And so that's why it's out of balance a little bit.

00:09:32   Maybe iOS 7 might.

00:09:33   I think it would be better if that video was just on their website, it would be fine, but

00:09:39   using it as a lead-in to introduce a bunch of products that more or less everybody expected

00:09:43   and that aren't like the original Mac or the iPhone, where it's just like nobody saw that

00:09:50   coming and it was just out of left field and it far exceeds these expectations.

00:09:54   I don't think it's crazily out of balance, it's just a little bit out of balance.

00:09:57   I do think the keynote was great.

00:09:58   I think all the announcements were great.

00:10:00   I think it was very impressive again, except for the car thing.

00:10:04   But it's tough to pull that off.

00:10:06   Because all those things they said, you want to say those things, and it's difficult to

00:10:10   say them without sounding a little bit full of yourself.

00:10:14   You're telling them why you're great, and you have to do it in a way that isn't insulting,

00:10:18   and it's very difficult to pull that off.

00:10:21   Think different is kind of similar.

00:10:23   Think different kind of pulled it off because there was no attachment.

00:10:25   It wasn't leading to any sort of product.

00:10:26   It was just pure, "This is the philosophy of the company."

00:10:29   That didn't sound pretentious, that sounded foolhardy, perhaps.

00:10:32   Because you almost went bankrupt.

00:10:34   You've got nothing.

00:10:35   What the hell do you think you're going to make?

00:10:36   A teal computer?

00:10:37   So what, right?

00:10:38   And in hindsight, it looks good, right?

00:10:40   But here, I was just in the context of using that as the lead-in.

00:10:45   They didn't put anything in there that they needed that video.

00:10:50   The Johnny Ive videos where he tells you about their philosophy are more product-focused

00:10:54   and would match up better with a bunch of product announcements versus like the philosophical

00:10:59   thing with something revolutionary that, you know, if they're going to enter some new business

00:11:03   or something, maybe I can see that. But anyway, I like the video. I watch it again. Every

00:11:07   time I watch it, I'm impressed by whoever made this video did an awesome job. It's very

00:11:10   clever and nice and tasteful, and I do like it.

00:11:14   Well, wouldn't you also, I mean, the video also sets the stage for iOS 7 specifically.

00:11:20   It's specifically about, you know, clearing away everything, starting over again, you

00:11:23   You know, taking away what's unnecessary.

00:11:25   But they had their own iOS 7 intro video, which was also very good, but so much more product-focused,

00:11:29   and it kind of hit some of the same points.

00:11:31   Yeah, I mean, I think that's why it was there.

00:11:33   This was like laying the foundation for the iOS 7 video later on,

00:11:37   and for us to accept that the iOS 7 design decisions were correct and inevitable.

00:11:44   Well, here's what I think that video was a lead-in for.

00:11:47   I think it was a lead-in for the Tim Cook era,

00:11:49   where this is the first big party for Tim Cook's newly rearranged Apple and what they can do.

00:11:55   And that, I mean, it wasn't stated as such, but in hindsight it looks like if you had to say,

00:12:00   "What was that video about?" Because it wasn't about a new Mac Pro, and I think it was kind of

00:12:05   about iOS 7, but the iOS 7 video was more about that. It was more about, it's like Tim Cook's

00:12:11   thing different, not really, but like he's saying, "Here we are, this is the new Apple,"

00:12:16   the forestall-less Apple, I guess, the new Tim Cook Apple with something new showing

00:12:21   that we really can move on from all the things that Steve Jobs created just to do something

00:12:26   great in his absence, something that he didn't foresee and didn't have a hand in.

00:12:31   In hindsight, I think that's what that video will match up best with.

00:12:35   See, and what I think what the video did for me was, you know, Apple hadn't said anything

00:12:42   since what, October, November, something like that?

00:12:44   What was it, the iPad Mini release?

00:12:45   Is that right?

00:12:46   was the last Apple event. Right, so this was, to me it kind of set the stage for

00:12:51   here's, here's Apple. I know we haven't said anything for almost a year now or

00:12:56   eight months, whatever the number was. Here's kind, let me, let's just remind

00:12:59   everyone this is how we roll and this is what we do and we're gonna keep that

00:13:04   mindset while we show you all this cool crap with the exception of the weird car

00:13:08   demo. And I think it was a really nice way to set the stage. Was it overblown? I

00:13:13   I mean, I don't think it was, but I can see your point, John.

00:13:16   But I think it was all about setting the stage for,

00:13:19   this is Apple.

00:13:20   This is-- we are Apple.

00:13:22   This is what we care about.

00:13:23   And if you don't like that, shove off.

00:13:25   But this is how the rest-- the next two hours are going to be.

00:13:29   I don't know, that's what I thought.

00:13:31   OK, so what about-- did you guys watch the video that they did

00:13:34   not show during the keynote, which is called making--

00:13:37   or I don't know if it's called making a difference one app

00:13:39   at a time, but--

00:13:40   Something like that, yeah.

00:13:41   It was something like that.

00:13:42   It was like an eight minute video or something along those lines.

00:13:45   I haven't even watched it.

00:13:47   It's interminable.

00:13:48   It's long.

00:13:49   It's ten minutes long, but it seems long.

00:13:52   T-L-D-W?

00:13:53   But I watched the whole thing.

00:13:55   It is beautifully produced.

00:13:56   It is nice.

00:13:57   It's heartwarming.

00:13:59   But it really depends on your goodwill towards Apple to accept the connection between Apple

00:14:04   and all the good things that they're showing happening in there.

00:14:07   They are good things, but are they necessarily related to Apple?

00:14:11   helps people in all sorts of ways, and all sorts of companies are behind that technology.

00:14:15   It's good that Apple's technology helps people in that way, but I don't think it's a distinguishing

00:14:23   characteristic that makes Apple stand out, unlike the design video which shows what they

00:14:30   put in that design video are the ways that Apple is different than most other companies,

00:14:35   whereas I think any company that makes a technology product that can be used to help people could

00:14:39   could have made a video like the one that Apple made there. Although at least it shows

00:14:42   that Apple cares that this is how their products are, this is what they're thinking of when

00:14:46   they're making their products, they want to see this type of outcome. But it's easy to

00:14:48   be cynical about it. And you know, like Monsanto could have made the same ad, it would have

00:14:53   been like, "Damn them, this is not really what Monsanto is like." And with Apple, like,

00:14:57   that's kind of what Apple's like. But on the other hand, what technology company, Microsoft

00:15:01   could have made the same video. Their products are helping people in similar ways, you know?

00:15:05   Yeah, I really liked it. Part of the reason I liked it was because it featured Charlottesville, Virginia,

00:15:09   which is just an hour west of here, and I used to live there. But beyond that, I thought it was really

00:15:14   touching and heartwarming, much like the Blind Hiker guy from last year's keynote.

00:15:20   I just thought it was well done. And you're right that, you know, anyone could have made a video

00:15:25   like this, but I love that Apple cares enough to not only make a video that's like one or two

00:15:30   minutes, but they made like an eight or nine minute video all about why and how their devices

00:15:37   literally improve people's lives.

00:15:39   And I just think it's cool that they even pay lip service to that being a priority,

00:15:43   whether or not it is a priority.

00:15:46   Although I would argue it is, given all their accessibility work and things of that nature.

00:15:50   I don't know, Marco, what did you think?

00:15:51   Well, you didn't see the videos.

00:15:53   Never mind.

00:15:54   I don't care about you.

00:15:55   It would have been, I mean, like the reason the hiker thing worked for me, I think, is

00:15:57   because Tim was there doing the intro and afterwards talking about it to say, "This

00:16:03   is not just a heartwarming video. Let me tell you personally from my heart in a convincing

00:16:06   way that this is what makes me get out of bed in the morning. This is what I'm trying

00:16:11   to do with the company." And he's the CEO. That makes that one land more, whereas having

00:16:16   this video is kind of out there as a corporate statement.

00:16:19   It's nice and all. I think it's fine, but especially at 10 minutes long, if you're going

00:16:24   to use it as a something to represent your company. No one's going to watch that 10-minute

00:16:29   long video. Very few people are, I think.

00:16:31   Well, except you and me, apparently. Certainly not Marco.

00:16:33   I haven't even watched it. I have so many Apple videos that I want to watch. I still

00:16:39   have like eight or nine sessions that I wanted to watch that I didn't get a chance to see.

00:16:43   Yeah. See, that's another thing I'm doing instead of writing.

00:16:44   I felt the entire plane ride home, I was watching sessions. And even like the day after I got

00:16:50   home watching sessions. See, now remember we were talking before about how once you

00:16:55   leave that week, it's no longer your job to be in those sessions, and so you just never

00:17:00   get around to doing it. Well, I'm seeing that now. I have these eight more sessions that

00:17:04   I really want to watch, but when's going to be a good time to do it?

00:17:08   I'm assigning it to you. It's your job, since you don't have any other job.

00:17:11   Hey, you're unemployed. What else do you have to do?

00:17:13   That's right. Exactly. I'm supposed to be making an app or something, but I'm saying,

00:17:16   That job starts in a few weeks.

00:17:18   This week, your job is to watch WRC.

00:17:20   And then give Jon the cliff notes for anything

00:17:22   related to this team.

00:17:23   No, I've got to watch it myself.

00:17:25   I know you do.

00:17:26   All right, there were a couple other videos

00:17:28   I wanted to briefly touch on.

00:17:29   The first was-- I don't remember if they showed this

00:17:31   during the keynote.

00:17:32   I believe they did at the very end,

00:17:33   but the new commercial about design

00:17:35   by Apple in California.

00:17:37   And this kind of ties in with the one

00:17:39   we mentioned at the beginning, and that

00:17:40   was at the beginning of the keynote, where they said,

00:17:43   at the end of the video, something along the lines of,

00:17:45   only then we sign our work, and then they flash up

00:17:47   "Designed by Apple in California."

00:17:49   In this other video, they show people

00:17:52   just using their products in everyday things

00:17:54   and everyday scenarios.

00:17:55   And again, at the end, it's "Designed

00:17:56   by Apple in California."

00:17:58   So one of the things you can easily

00:17:59   see between these two videos that literally bookended

00:18:02   the keynote and then OS X Mavericks,

00:18:04   which was in the middle-- by the way, I still hate that name.

00:18:06   Anyway, all of this is "Go California, Ye California,

00:18:10   Ye California."

00:18:11   And why or when did they get so excited about California?

00:18:15   Not to say that's bad before we get

00:18:17   a zillion angry Californians, but when

00:18:20   did this become a thing?

00:18:21   That's been on the back of their products

00:18:23   since Jobs came back practically,

00:18:25   or maybe even more of that.

00:18:26   But I mean, it seems like there's

00:18:28   a new emphasis behind it.

00:18:29   And I don't know what brought that on.

00:18:31   Well, it's less about California and more about made in the USA

00:18:34   at this point, I think.

00:18:36   I mean, the California pride has always been there.

00:18:38   And you're right, that was a lot of jobs right there.

00:18:41   But I think at this point, this is them saying,

00:18:44   kind of responding to all the Chinese worker controversy

00:18:48   kind of things in the last year, saying, you know what?

00:18:51   No, we can bring something to the US.

00:18:52   And now, this is something they can say,

00:18:54   especially with the Mac Pro, now they can really say,

00:18:58   look, this is like a whole US computer right here.

00:19:01   As long as you don't check where the--

00:19:04   Where all the components inside it.

00:19:05   --was made.

00:19:07   Yeah, I mean, because what else?

00:19:08   So it's like, what, the ASIC CPUs, I think,

00:19:11   aren't they manufactured in Texas?

00:19:12   They are, but what about all the RAM, the flash and the DRAM?

00:19:17   This gets back to what Casey just said about,

00:19:19   like, he liked the video because it showed a part where

00:19:21   he lived.

00:19:22   Like, this silly notion that we have of attachment to place

00:19:27   and extension into jingoism and nationalism of pride

00:19:32   in countries, really pretty much nonsensical

00:19:35   if you think about it for more than 10 minutes.

00:19:37   But it is definitely a real thing.

00:19:38   So I don't blame them for playing into it.

00:19:42   But in the cynical view, as Marco said, you can view it as damage control for the Chinese

00:19:47   factory things or whatever.

00:19:48   Pride in California is no more or less ridiculous than pride in the United States is probably

00:19:53   no more or less ridiculous than pride is made on earth.

00:19:57   It doesn't really matter where it's made or where you're from or anything like that.

00:20:00   Is it a good product?

00:20:01   Is it not a good product?

00:20:02   Are you treating workers well?

00:20:03   You're not treating workers well.

00:20:05   Our country needs to have a good economy, so keep the business in our company, not in

00:20:08   Stonehenge's country because of imaginary lines or oceans or whatever.

00:20:16   I find that's why designing California bothers me a little bit.

00:20:20   Who cares?

00:20:21   What is it about the borders of California that exist for historical reasons that have

00:20:26   nothing to do with anything that makes you proud that the people who made it were in

00:20:30   California when they made it and perhaps live somewhere else now and perhaps were born somewhere

00:20:34   else. As Dented Meat said in the chat room, I'm so ready to join Starfleet, apparently.

00:20:41   I think the Buy California takes away from their message. What they are is they're proud

00:20:50   that we made this thing, and this thing is good in these ways. They show the people using

00:20:53   their products and having fun with them. It's also beautifully shot, and all the people

00:20:57   are beautiful. That part of it is a legitimate message. "Hey, we made something nice, and

00:21:03   products enhance people's lives. So thumbs up, right guys? That's advertising. It's

00:21:08   fine. You can see it on Mad Men. But the geographic part of it, I find a little off-putting, but

00:21:14   probably other people don't.

00:21:15   Well, California is itself also part of the advertising. And it's not like they chose

00:21:20   California just for this, but I think they're using it to their advantage now that they're

00:21:25   there. California has a really great reputation among, I think, most people, most Americans

00:21:30   especially, of being this really nice place,

00:21:34   and kind of this cool place, and this kind of liberal, hippie,

00:21:37   but cool, great weather place.

00:21:40   And that's the way things happen.

00:21:41   Except for LA, right?

00:21:42   Are we leaving out LA?

00:21:43   Who cares about LA?

00:21:46   No.

00:21:48   There aren't that many states in the US

00:21:51   with that great of a reputation, where you can say, oh, yeah,

00:21:55   we're from Minnesota.

00:21:56   And you're going to have everyone in the whole country

00:21:59   saying, "Wow, Minnesota, they made that in Minnesota? That's so cool." This isn't

00:22:03   a major effect or a major part of their marketing or branding efforts, but it is a small contributor.

00:22:11   And especially in the wake of both the Chinese worker thing and the wake of Samsung becoming

00:22:16   this major competitor, this is them saying, "Don't support that Korean company. We're

00:22:22   an American company in California."

00:22:23   Yeah, don't you find that slightly off-putting? That's where it starts to get into... Anyway,

00:22:28   I think it's fine.

00:22:29   Well, I find it off-putting that all of our politicians have to end everything with "God

00:22:32   bless America."

00:22:33   Yeah, no, that's a little older.

00:22:36   But you can see why they do it.

00:22:38   Send email to Marco, please.

00:22:42   I think the California thing, to my memory, came in around the time Jobs came back again

00:22:48   and has stayed throughout.

00:22:50   It's shorthand for "We're proud that we did this," and they need some way to identify

00:22:55   themselves, and they are a California company founded in California, and so that's what

00:22:59   they've chosen, because their employees come and go, their executives come and go,

00:23:03   a lot of the people who work there weren't born in California.

00:23:06   They don't have much to hang their hat on, but insofar as a corporation can be seen as

00:23:11   an entity with a place, Apple's place is California.

00:23:13   So that's their shorthand for trying to refer back to themselves and their tribe as

00:23:18   a collective entity.

00:23:19   Well, and to that end, I mean, when you think of California and you think of business, other

00:23:23   than Hollywood and perhaps music, what's your first thought?

00:23:27   I'm a kiddo, so I don't know.

00:23:30   Fine.

00:23:31   Alright, never mind then.

00:23:32   No, but I mean, when I think of a big, well, maybe not a big business, but when I think

00:23:36   of business in California, I think Hollywood, I think music, and I think Apple.

00:23:41   And I would think that most Americans would agree.

00:23:44   I don't know.

00:23:45   Alright, there's one other video I wanted to ask you guys about, and then perhaps Marco

00:23:49   you can tell me about something that's cool.

00:23:51   But the other one I wanted to ask about is today, which again is quite a long time before

00:23:56   most of you will actually hear this episode, the trailer for the Ashton Kutcher Steve Jobs

00:24:01   movie came out.

00:24:03   Did either of you see this two-minute trailer?

00:24:04   Please, Mark O'Tommi.

00:24:05   Oh my God.

00:24:06   I did watch it.

00:24:07   Didn't I thought that maybe this is that other Steve Jobs movie, you know, the good

00:24:11   one because didn't this show in a film festival and everyone panned it like a year ago?

00:24:15   Well, like, "Panzerino," I think, said mixed about it.

00:24:18   He said it was—if memory serves, he said it was entertaining but not great.

00:24:22   I never had high hopes for this movie, and the trailer did not change my mind about that.

00:24:27   I don't think I'll even bother watching it.

00:24:29   So our friend Brad that—well, Jon, you've never met him, but Marco and I and David Smith

00:24:35   went and spent some time with Brad the Sunday before WWDC.

00:24:39   He had commented on Twitter that the musical selections were just terrible, or the musical

00:24:46   editing was terrible, and I think he's right.

00:24:48   I actually didn't think the trailer was bad. I mean, it is clearly taking a lot of creative

00:24:52   license with the actual reality of what happened. But I don't know, I thought it would be enjoyable.

00:24:58   So here's the question, Casey. If you were tasked with making a parody of this trailer,

00:25:03   how would you do it?

00:25:04   I would have made the same trailer.

00:25:05   That's what I'm saying. It is not, like, it is so overblown. And like, ignore the fact

00:25:11   that it's just, like, the people who made the movie just, I mean, clearly the people

00:25:14   who made this movie do not and cannot understand what it was that was important about all these

00:25:19   things that Apple did, which is fine, I guess, because if other people don't care, like,

00:25:23   just treat it as fiction. But even within the realm of fiction, it's so overblown where

00:25:26   everyone is just screaming and so emotional and dramatic about things, and they're saying

00:25:31   nonsense the whole time, right? Because, again, people, they don't understand what was important

00:25:35   about the Apple, what was important about the Mac, what was important about the iPhone.

00:25:39   They have no idea, like, no earthly clue. It's kind of like the Steve Jobs biography

00:25:42   where, but even more extreme, the Eilikson biography, where if you don't understand

00:25:47   what was important about the original Mac, there's no way you can make a movie about

00:25:50   it, right?

00:25:51   Well, but that's not their—their goal is not to be accurate. Their goal is to be,

00:25:53   is to be, like, good to watch, to be an interesting movie.

00:25:56   Well, like, it's like, based on a true story, but it's not, it's not like, you know,

00:25:59   a res—I think it's not so much—that's not the case in a lot of other movies. Like,

00:26:03   a lot of political dramas or things about important parts in American history, like,

00:26:08   like the Lincoln movie, which I didn't see. I'm assuming that that movie understood

00:26:12   that what was important about the civil war was like you know keeping the union

00:26:15   together and slavery and like the major issues were there and understood right

00:26:19   but because it's about technology and it's

00:26:23   it's not as important as the things that everyone can relate to it they don't

00:26:26   know what was important what was important about the apple to they're not

00:26:28   quite sure

00:26:29   uh... but they know is important you know people got rich from it

00:26:32   and they know something with nerds and electricity and so let's just go you

00:26:36   know i mean whereas no one's like something about slavery but was slavery

00:26:39   I think slavery was bad. Like, I don't remember. Something about that. But anyway, that's not

00:26:43   really important. We just want to show the dramatic scenes of Abraham Lincoln. No! You

00:26:46   have to understand what's behind it. Otherwise, you're not, you know, you're making a movie

00:26:49   loosely based on the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln not really, you know, so, whatever.

00:26:54   Like, I don't think this movie is going to make any waves. It will come and go. We will

00:26:58   forget it, mercifully.

00:26:59   John: How about just a blanket rule that I'm just going to not even watch any trailers

00:27:04   for any of these Steve Jobs various things. Just if anybody makes a good one, just let

00:27:07   me know afterwards.

00:27:08   There's the the Sorkin one. Isn't he doing one? Yes. Yes. Yes. He did

00:27:13   He didn't know this is not that he did the Facebook's are there. No, this is a terrible one with Ashton Kutcher

00:27:19   Well, no, no, no, that's not fair

00:27:20   There was one made by funny or die that I wasn't dumb enough to watch in its entirety and I want that hour back

00:27:26   It's supposed to be a joke like it is and it was so

00:27:30   Painfully bad and the comedy of it is Justin Long is Steve Jobs Justin Long the I'm a Mac Justin Long was Steve Jobs

00:27:37   And I should have known from the title, which I think was "I, Jobs," that it was going to be friggin' terrible.

00:27:43   And "friggin' terrible" doesn't begin to describe how bad that movie was.

00:27:47   It's like an SNL skit that goes on for an hour.

00:27:49   Yes, but during that terrible time in SNL when it was not even in the realm of funny.

00:27:54   Oh, God, I don't even--I feel like John Syracuse right now. I'm so fired up and angry about this.

00:27:59   Well, let's take a break from talking about terrible entertainment.

00:28:02   Yes, let's do that.

00:28:03   To talk about good entertainment.

00:28:04   And this episode is sponsored by Audible.

00:28:08   They're the leading provider of downloadable audiobooks.

00:28:10   They have over 100,000 titles in virtually every genre.

00:28:14   So if you want to listen to something, Audible has it.

00:28:16   Listen to audiobooks anytime, anywhere.

00:28:19   You can listen to them on iPhones, iPads, computers,

00:28:21   Kindles, lots of things.

00:28:23   Even the old iPods, they even work on those.

00:28:25   They're offering ATP listeners a free audiobook,

00:28:28   along with a 30-day trial.

00:28:31   Go to audiblepodcast.com/ATP to take advantage of the special offer.

00:28:36   Get a free audiobook, free 30-day trial, audiblepodcast.com/ATP.

00:28:44   Now Audible likes if their hosts have something to recommend, a certain book.

00:28:47   It helps to get started because then you know, like, OK, what do you want your free audiobook

00:28:50   to be?

00:28:52   So do you guys have any great recommendations of great audiobooks you've heard recently?

00:28:58   I have recommendations of books I've read.

00:29:00   I've not heard them on audiobooks, but I'm confident that they are excellent.

00:29:03   I have two.

00:29:05   The first one, which everyone will judge me for, is the new Dan Brown book, which I believe

00:29:09   is called Inferno.

00:29:10   Judge, judge, judge.

00:29:11   I know, I know.

00:29:15   So I actually quite like that one, but I'm a sucker for Dan Brown books.

00:29:18   They're easy reads, they're exciting, and so I like that.

00:29:22   The other one is a book that my wife recommended, which is called The Art of Racing in the Rain,

00:29:29   And it was a little bit on the emotional side and a little less on the racing side, but

00:29:34   there was enough racing to keep me excited and entertained.

00:29:38   And I actually really like that one as well, so I would recommend both of those.

00:29:41   That's so you.

00:29:42   Yeah, I know.

00:29:43   So here's what Audible is good for.

00:29:47   I would never recommend someone read this recommendation, I'm going to say, but on

00:29:51   audio, this is the ideal place for it.

00:29:54   So what I did when I was looking at this, I went to the Audible Ocon website and I searched

00:29:59   for Stephen King, who's one of my favorite authors.

00:30:01   Again, feel free to judge.

00:30:02   And I got 145 results, which I guess doesn't surprise me, because he's got a lot of books,

00:30:09   but they have—I mean, I don't know if they have all of them, but they have a lot,

00:30:12   all right?

00:30:13   And what I'm going to recommend is the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, which is like

00:30:16   a gazillion pages.

00:30:18   And if I line them up on the shelf in hardcover and I said, "Oh, you should really read

00:30:21   this book series," you'd be like, "Okay, whatever.

00:30:23   There's no way I am reading that, because it's just too much.

00:30:27   You can recommend one book and they're like, "Oh, maybe I'll read it and see if I like

00:30:29   it," but recommending a seven-book series that took place basically over the course

00:30:33   of my entire life, from 1970s and it ended in the 2000s.

00:30:39   But an audio, they have every single one of these in audio, and if you're on a long car

00:30:43   trip or you're going to be traveling or you're just going to listen to it over the summer

00:30:47   at the beach or when you're out mowing the lawn, you just get every single one of the

00:30:50   seven books and just plow through them.

00:30:53   That is probably the only way most people are ever going to read a multi-thousand-page

00:30:58   epic like The Dark Tower.

00:31:01   We haven't done the Incomparable podcast about this series yet.

00:31:04   We will eventually.

00:31:06   I think it's great.

00:31:07   Even when it goes off the rails a little bit, I think it all comes together in the end.

00:31:11   So that's my recommendation.

00:31:12   JAYLEE STEWART-G

00:31:14   that one reason I do like audiobooks, especially, first of all, traveling and cars and everything,

00:31:19   it's awesome for all that, but one thing I like about them is I actually like when

00:31:22   a lot of books are abridged, because a lot of books need to be abridged.

00:31:25   No, I hate when they're abridged. I was going to specifically mention these Darktar

00:31:30   ones are unabridged, which I like, but I guess Audible has both, so if you're the kind

00:31:34   of person who doesn't want to hear all the words in the book, then they have that for

00:31:38   you, but I highly recommend the unabridged.

00:31:39   Hudge, hudge, hudge.

00:31:40   The unabridged. Show title, there you go.

00:31:43   Alright, well thank you very much to Audible for sponsoring this episode of ATP. To get

00:31:48   a free audiobook and 30-day trial, go to audiblepodcast.com/ATP. Thanks a lot.

00:31:54   Alright, so what's next?

00:31:56   Alright, so the other thing I wanted to ask you guys about, and perhaps more Marco than

00:32:01   anyone else since you haven't done any of your other homework, is what do you suspect

00:32:08   people will do—and I think we've touched on this briefly—but what do you suspect

00:32:11   app developers will do with regard to dropping support of old versions of iOS when iOS 7

00:32:17   comes out.

00:32:18   I feel like we've glanced off the outer atmosphere of this topic, but I think there's more to

00:32:23   be said.

00:32:24   So let's suppose that you haven't sold everything that you own, and let's suppose you still

00:32:30   had at least one popular app, be that Insta-something else or Instapaper or whatever.

00:32:36   What do you think you would do?

00:32:37   I mean, you've said in the 300 other podcasts you were on this week that you're probably

00:32:41   probably going to stick with iOS 7 for this new thing.

00:32:44   Definitely.

00:32:45   But what do you think you would do if you had a successful existing iOS app?

00:32:54   That's a really good question.

00:32:55   Because, yeah, obviously, I think if you're making a new app and you have no legacy to

00:33:00   support, I would say no question, make a brand new one and require iOS 7, period.

00:33:07   No question?

00:33:08   No.

00:33:09   You can't say no question.

00:33:10   say you're EA and you're going to release a game, you've got to support iOS 7. So you're

00:33:14   talking to an independent developer, like a one or two person shop, making an application,

00:33:19   yeah, then they should go iOS 7 only. But--

00:33:21   And especially I am also referring to applications where they aren't custom making most of their

00:33:29   entire interface. Like, you know, a game has usually an entirely custom interface that

00:33:34   doesn't use any standard widgets or anything, at least in most cases.

00:33:38   But even not a game.

00:33:39   Like, say Evernote didn't exist, but they formed a company six months ago, and they're

00:33:44   about to come out with their first product.

00:33:45   It's going to be called Evernote.

00:33:46   It's a note-taking type of thing.

00:33:50   And I would still say don't make it iOS 7 only.

00:33:52   I think that is a luxury that you have if you know that—well, you'll get into this,

00:33:59   I'm sure, eventually, because the other side of this coin is you can stand out from the

00:34:04   the pack by being iOS 7 only and being the only app that

00:34:06   accurately links up with iOS.

00:34:08   But I guess Microsoft Office would be another example,

00:34:11   even though their new iOS office is not all that impressive.

00:34:14   If Microsoft Office came out like the real Microsoft Office,

00:34:17   not just like a SkyDrive application that

00:34:18   lets you view and minimally edit apps,

00:34:21   they have to support iOS 6.

00:34:23   They can't say, oh, no, Microsoft Office for iOS 7 only,

00:34:26   because that offers no advantage and it

00:34:29   offers a mostly disadvantage.

00:34:30   So it's not quite as universal, I think, as you're saying.

00:34:32   But for you, it definitely is universal.

00:34:34   And for lots of other people, it's

00:34:37   a way to stand out from the pack.

00:34:38   Because if you were the first to-do app that is truly

00:34:40   iOS 7 native in look, feel, and functionality,

00:34:43   you stand out more than if you just make another to-do app

00:34:45   that works on iOS 6 and 7.

00:34:47   Yeah.

00:34:48   And part of it also is about why your app exists.

00:34:54   If you are somebody like Evernote, or like Instagram,

00:34:57   or Twitter, like a big web service,

00:35:01   where your primary business is not selling your app for a few bucks, your primary business

00:35:05   is this big web service, especially if it's something social where you need to have as

00:35:09   many people as possible, then you should be compatible with as many versions as possible.

00:35:15   Then you might still need to run an iOS 5, who knows? Probably not 5, but you at least

00:35:20   couldn't go 7 only so soon because that would really hurt your bottom line to lose all those

00:35:26   free users, that would hurt the bigger product too much,

00:35:30   probably, for a while.

00:35:32   And similarly, if you're that kind of company,

00:35:35   you should probably also have an Android app and a Windows

00:35:37   Phone app and even a Windows 8 app,

00:35:41   because you need to be everywhere.

00:35:44   But for most people, most iOS developers

00:35:48   are in one of two situations.

00:35:51   Either they're doing contract work for somebody else,

00:35:53   which is, I would assume, based on just anecdotal evidence

00:35:58   and talking to people everywhere,

00:36:00   I would assume that contractors are probably

00:36:03   the bulk of the people programming for iOS.

00:36:05   If not the majority, I bet they're a massive portion.

00:36:12   Anyway, so if you're contracting for somebody else,

00:36:14   you might not be able to make this choice, or at least not

00:36:17   yet, or you might not be able to be that aggressive with it.

00:36:20   So that'll just depend on your client

00:36:23   on your business needs.

00:36:24   But if you're in the segment of developers,

00:36:26   like what I usually do, which is you sell an app for money,

00:36:31   in some form, whether it's the magazine with an app purchase

00:36:34   or something else with an app purchase

00:36:36   or whether it's a few bucks up front for the app,

00:36:38   like Vesper, Instapaper, that kind of stuff.

00:36:41   If you're in that business where you need to make money

00:36:43   from the app and you're better off having a better app

00:36:48   that people will talk about and think is worth money

00:36:51   and you're better off targeting people who will spend money on an app,

00:36:55   then not only does that weight you more towards newer devices

00:36:59   and people who upgrade quickly anyway,

00:37:02   but then you really can stand out by, as you said,

00:37:04   you really can stand out by having a really, really nice iOS 7 app

00:37:09   from early on in that OS's release cycle.

00:37:13   So if you're in that kind of situation,

00:37:18   and obviously I think it's very important to recognize

00:37:20   whether you are or not.

00:37:22   But if you're in that kind of situation where you can benefit

00:37:25   from having a really great app for the new OS

00:37:27   and you're targeting people with money,

00:37:29   then I think it's very safe to require it within about a month

00:37:34   of the launch.

00:37:35   I think one thing everyone can agree on,

00:37:37   assuming Apple's numbers are accurate

00:37:39   and I have no reason to doubt them,

00:37:40   is that it's probably safe for everyone,

00:37:43   if you're making a new application, to drop iOS 5.

00:37:46   Oh, yeah.

00:37:47   because 6, 93%, it doesn't matter who you are,

00:37:51   that's safe at this point.

00:37:55   Unless you're targeting the iPad,

00:37:56   then it's a little bit less safe.

00:37:58   Yeah, I guess if you have an app that's iPad only,

00:38:00   and specifically targeted to people

00:38:01   who are likely to have old iPads.

00:38:03   But it's not going to get any safer than that.

00:38:05   When are you going to have a higher number than that

00:38:07   in adoption?

00:38:08   As a lot of people were pointing out on Twitter today--

00:38:11   maybe it's just one person.

00:38:12   I cannot keep track before I read these things.

00:38:14   iOS 7 probably won't be like that,

00:38:16   Because iOS 6 stretched back pretty far,

00:38:18   like a surprisingly far amount down to lower, crappier devices.

00:38:22   Whereas iOS 7 draws the line a little bit closer up.

00:38:24   And so we'll have to wait for those old devices to age out.

00:38:27   And it will probably be a long, long time before iOS 7 or greater.

00:38:31   That's not true.

00:38:32   You don't think so?

00:38:33   No, no, no.

00:38:34   I'm thinking specifically of my cruddy iPod Touch that runs

00:38:38   iOS 6 and totally shouldn't.

00:38:40   The 3GS?

00:38:41   No, well, iPod Touch--

00:38:43   No, no, no, I'm saying--

00:38:45   3GS is the other example, like that it could run iOS 6,

00:38:48   but you know.

00:38:49   But what does 7 go down to though?

00:38:51   It goes down to the iPhone 4.

00:38:53   - It supports everything that 6 does,

00:38:54   except the 3GS and that iPhone 4 cord touch.

00:38:58   - And any iPod touch except for the most reason.

00:39:01   - Right, yeah, yeah, the one that was based

00:39:02   on the iPhone 4 internals.

00:39:04   It does not support that one.

00:39:05   But it supports all the recent ones,

00:39:07   which is, everything has been for sale

00:39:09   except for the cheapest one until two weeks ago.

00:39:11   - Well, the only iPod touch it supports

00:39:13   is the absolute most recent one.

00:39:15   It doesn't support any of the--

00:39:16   Yes, but that's a little bit distorted

00:39:17   because they skipped a year of the iPod Touch,

00:39:19   which, as you know--

00:39:21   Maybe my view of things is--

00:39:22   maybe my view of things is also skewed because I'm an iPod

00:39:25   Touch household.

00:39:26   So it seems to me it's like if they came out with Mavericks

00:39:29   and the only Macs it ran on are the absolute latest model

00:39:32   that they're still currently selling in each product line.

00:39:34   And you feel that way.

00:39:35   But we'll see.

00:39:36   But the proof is in the pudding.

00:39:38   How well does it run is what really matters.

00:39:40   Because I wish I had not upgraded my old Touched

00:39:43   iOS 6 because it chugs. And so, yeah, it can run it, and I was initially happy that it

00:39:49   was supported. And I guess I probably still am because there are probably a lot of apps

00:39:51   that are iOS 6 only. At least I can run them, but it is not happy at all.

00:39:56   Yeah. So, yeah, I think 7 cuts off about the same number of people, probably as 6 did.

00:40:04   And I don't--

00:40:05   If you're not an iPod touch user.

00:40:06   Well, but if you're an iPad user, it cuts off nothing. So, maybe that balances out.

00:40:10   Anyway, I'm not that worried about cutting off new devices for 7, because I don't think

00:40:17   it's substantially different than every other OS release in that regard. So yeah, I don't

00:40:24   know. And I think we are going to see some people holding back because they don't like

00:40:28   the changes. Just like some people held back because they heard about maps or whatever

00:40:33   on 6, or their jailbreaks don't work until a certain date afterwards or something like

00:40:39   Those are all going to be like small slices.

00:40:43   And they're all going to add up to something significant, but they're all going to deteriorate

00:40:47   over time. Like once there's a jailbreakout for seven, if there isn't

00:40:51   already, there might already be one. But once there's a jailbreakout,

00:40:55   then one of those big slices goes away. Once there's, you know,

00:40:59   to various degrees of tethering for the jailbreak, then

00:41:03   everything all changes. Once most people get a little more comfortable with the idea of

00:41:07   of how it looks, then another slice starts falling away.

00:41:10   Once a new device comes out that replaces something

00:41:13   that was old and unsupported, like maybe

00:41:16   when the next generation of iPod Touch comes out,

00:41:18   possibly this fall, who knows, maybe then

00:41:21   some of the old iPod Touch users who can't run the new one,

00:41:23   maybe they upgrade.

00:41:24   And so then that slice falls away.

00:41:26   And that's always what happens with every release.

00:41:28   There's always these segments of people

00:41:30   who either can't or won't run the new OS

00:41:32   for a limited amount of time until either they

00:41:35   change devices, their old device dies, or some condition changes that was holding them

00:41:39   back.

00:41:40   So the way you're talking, it almost sounds like if you still had Instapaper, you would

00:41:43   make it iOS 7.

00:41:44   Well, no. Instapaper still doesn't require iOS 6. Instapaper, I was set on requiring

00:41:51   5 for a while. I forget when I started requiring 5, but it was before 6 was out, but not by

00:41:58   that much. I think a few months before 6 came out.

00:42:01   With the magazine, I was able to require six because I just didn't care and I wanted all

00:42:07   the new stuff and I wanted to use Avenir next without having to pay for it for iOS 5.

00:42:15   But again, I think there's a few different factors here, right?

00:42:21   Obviously, again, if you don't need tons and tons of people necessarily, if you just need

00:42:28   good app sales, that's different.

00:42:30   Instacaper was a brand new app being released today, I would probably require, well, today

00:42:36   I'd require six, but I don't know. I think if it already required six, and therefore

00:42:42   if it had already cut off all the iPad One people, then I wouldn't have that much of

00:42:47   a problem requiring seven within about two months of seven's release.

00:42:52   But you also have to consider that the fallback, or the, I can't think of the word I'm looking

00:42:59   for. But in order to support both iOS 7 and iOS 6, it stands to reason it's a lot more

00:43:04   challenging than simultaneously supporting 6 and 5. You know what I mean? So in other

00:43:09   words, two...

00:43:10   Well, not necessarily. I mean, it really depends, right? The magazine supports 7 with a very,

00:43:14   very small code change. It's literally just like, you know, it's hidden under the status

00:43:19   bar accidentally, so you've got to like change that. That's it. That's a very small change.

00:43:23   And you can conditionally do that, you know, if I'm running on 7, do this. Otherwise, do

00:43:27   this. You know, if there's few enough of those conditions, that's manageable. I think the

00:43:34   big problem with trying to support 7 and 6 at the same time isn't necessarily the code

00:43:40   complexity, because you can make that work. You know, for the most part, you can deal

00:43:44   with that. The big problem is by not fully adopting 7's new interface stuff, your app

00:43:52   will look old and feel old. That's the big problem. It's not about code. Well, it would

00:43:59   be about code if you actually need to rewrite, if you write two separate interfaces, then

00:44:03   it is about code. Please don't do that. But if it's just about, you know, we have to work

00:44:09   on both, then what you're going to have is an iOS 6 app that happens to be compatible

00:44:14   with 7, and it's going to look and feel like an iOS 6 app for the most part. You'll get

00:44:17   like the new bar styles once you compile it for 7 and stuff. But you won't have any of

00:44:24   the new navigation stuff. And it'll be a lot harder for you to add that in to an existing

00:44:31   code base that has to also run on 6 all the time.

00:44:33   But there's a potential pitfall in this, though, that you could also end up with, to use in

00:44:38   OS X analogy, an application full of drawers. Do you remember? Maybe that was before your

00:44:43   time. Do you remember the drawers in OS X?

00:44:45   Yeah.

00:44:46   They very heavily used the 10.3 days?

00:44:49   It was like one of their flagpole UI elements.

00:44:52   They said, here's Mac OS X, and it's

00:44:53   got a thing called Sheets that come down from the window.

00:44:55   That was a new element.

00:44:56   It's got this thing called the Dock.

00:44:57   That's new.

00:44:58   It's also got this thing called Drawers.

00:45:00   And the mail application, Apple's mail application,

00:45:02   originally featured a drawer.

00:45:03   And everybody said, oh, I'm going

00:45:04   to have these drawers in my application.

00:45:06   So any kind of application that would today have a sidebar

00:45:08   ended up with a drawer.

00:45:10   And drawers ended up being not such a great idea.

00:45:12   And so all these people were like,

00:45:14   I'm going to be a native application,

00:45:15   not going to be carbon application where I'm going to use it, it's going to be Kogo, and

00:45:18   I'm going to get to use drawers and do all this stuff and look at I'mNative. And then

00:45:21   everyone's like, yeah, no, not so much on that drawer thing. And then you're stuck with

00:45:25   an application with drawers and you go, oh, I've got to change this to a sidebar. So we

00:45:28   don't know what is the equivalent of drawers. If anything, maybe there's no equivalent of

00:45:31   drawer in iOS 7. There might be something in there that's like that, that seems like

00:45:36   a good idea, and everyone jumps in the bandwagon and says, oh, look at this, I'mNative, I'm

00:45:40   a real iOS 7 application. And then everyone goes, ooh, actually not so great. And then

00:45:44   you're forced to rewrite parts of your UI because that entire interface element or some

00:45:49   aspect of it falls out of favor or is determined to not be a good idea.

00:45:53   Not that that argues against doing it.

00:45:54   You really should go whole hog into iOS 7 because someone's got to find out if there

00:45:59   are any drawers to continue to talk to this analogy lurking.

00:46:03   The only way you're going to find out is for people to make real applications using the

00:46:06   system that Apple has devised, and we'll find out what works and what doesn't, right?

00:46:11   If I were to wager a guess, I think what will happen is a lot of these big apps, say like

00:46:16   Evernote, maybe that's a little too big, but take Instapaper for example, maybe they'll

00:46:21   try to dance the, you know, "We'll still look like iOS 6 for the most part.

00:46:27   We're not going to look like the fancy new iOS 7 thing."

00:46:30   And I don't think that's going to work for very long.

00:46:31   I think that even your average customer is going to say, "Why does this look so old?

00:46:36   Why doesn't it look better?"

00:46:38   And I suspect that people will hedge in the direction of not requiring iOS 7.

00:46:44   And then Marco, I think you'll end up right, that people will quickly end up requiring

00:46:47   it after just a couple months.

00:46:50   And also, it's going to take a little while for developers to realize what they should

00:46:55   do under iOS 7.

00:46:57   This is why I've said, as soon as we get beta 2, which actually might be before this

00:47:00   podcast is released, but as soon as we get beta 2, I'm installing it on my main phone,

00:47:05   because I need to start learning it.

00:47:07   I have it on this 4S, but I hardly ever use the 4S for anything because it has no data

00:47:11   plans. It's basically an iPod touch, but I have an iPhone. So it's never in my pocket.

00:47:16   I'm never using it. I need to immerse myself in iOS 7 as a user so I can start to understand

00:47:23   how my app should be. It's going to take developers a while to get into that, I think.

00:47:30   Tim Cynova Do the 4S and the 5 have the same size SIM?

00:47:34   I don't remember.

00:47:35   I'm not sure. I guess I could pop it over if I do.

00:47:37   That's what I was going to say is if it were me, I mean, I don't have a--

00:47:40   But it's so chunky.

00:47:42   The screen's so short.

00:47:44   Oh, it's so terrible.

00:47:46   The short screen is the one that's going to kill you.

00:47:48   I still like the four design better than the five design in terms of, like, an object.

00:47:54   But yeah, the short screen, you're like, you can't go back once you get the taller one.

00:47:59   It's going to be the same way when the iPhone Plus comes out.

00:48:01   By the way, the chat is correcting us that actually know that they're not the same sim size.

00:48:05   Oh, then you won't have to suffer through the small screen then.

00:48:08   Keep in mind that my carry phone is a 4S, you spoiled jerks.

00:48:12   That's alright. You'll probably upgrade this fall, right?

00:48:15   Are you on a two-year cycle? Yes, sir.

00:48:17   It'll be fine. Alright, we have a second sponsor this week. This is a new sponsor.

00:48:22   It's called Transporter.

00:48:25   And you might have heard about this from other tech podcasts because they're sponsoring all of my favorite shows,

00:48:29   so you probably have heard of them already,

00:48:31   but we're going to tell you about them anyway.

00:48:33   This is Transporter.

00:48:34   So here's the idea.

00:48:35   Sharing the occasional photo, movie, or document online

00:48:38   is simple enough, but trying to share and protect

00:48:41   entire collections of files is far from simple.

00:48:44   There are solutions out there to do this,

00:48:46   but most of them are cloud solutions.

00:48:47   They require either recurring fees or a lack of privacy

00:48:51   or a lot of complexity.

00:48:53   Transporter is special.

00:48:55   It's your own private shared drive that you own and control,

00:48:59   but it's available from all your devices

00:49:00   and can even share folders with other transporters you choose

00:49:03   anywhere around the world.

00:49:05   So basically, it's like a hard drive enclosure

00:49:08   with special software on it and a network port.

00:49:11   And so all your data is stored directly

00:49:13   on the transporter's hard drive.

00:49:15   It's only shared with people you specify,

00:49:18   and so it's completely private, unlike most cloud services.

00:49:22   And best of all, it's really, really easy to use.

00:49:24   You can just send an invitation to somebody

00:49:26   that you want to share a folder with or anything,

00:49:28   and they accept it, and that's it.

00:49:30   So obviously, there's an obvious comparison here to Dropbox.

00:49:34   And what I love about Transporter

00:49:36   is that they are not afraid for us to talk about Dropbox.

00:49:39   They aren't afraid to themselves talk about Dropbox

00:49:42   and how they compare, because obviously one question is,

00:49:44   why not just use Dropbox?

00:49:46   They attack this question head on

00:49:47   because they are confident in their product

00:49:49   to say there actually are a lot of advantages here.

00:49:52   So one of the biggest advantages is that you own and control

00:49:55   the hardware.

00:49:56   And that gives you a level of control and privacy that you really can't get with most

00:50:00   other services, including Dropbox.

00:50:02   And any time data is transmitted, you can have two transporters that share a folder.

00:50:07   So then the files will sync every time you modify something.

00:50:11   Or you can have a transporter at home and be somewhere like on your iPad or your laptop

00:50:16   and pull files off of it using one of their apps.

00:50:18   What's great about this is the file never passes through transporter servers.

00:50:22   And all data along the way is encrypted end to end.

00:50:26   And only you have the key.

00:50:27   And it's only stored locally in those app storage.

00:50:30   So it's never transmitted over the internet.

00:50:32   Nobody at Transporter, nobody on their servers,

00:50:34   has access to the data.

00:50:36   Nobody has the keys over there.

00:50:37   Their staff can't read your data.

00:50:39   If they get some kind of weird government request,

00:50:41   they can't do anything because they can't read the data.

00:50:43   It's really great end-to-end encryption.

00:50:46   So it's a level of privacy and control

00:50:48   that a lot of businesses need and a lot of people

00:50:50   feel safe having.

00:50:52   So Transporter is sold in three different configurations.

00:50:55   You can get one empty for 200 bucks-- well, $199.

00:50:58   So we've got 200 bucks.

00:51:00   It can use any 2 and 1/2 inch hard drive.

00:51:03   So you can supply your own drive.

00:51:04   And you can also upgrade these later.

00:51:06   Or you can get a one terabyte model for $299 or a two terabyte

00:51:11   model for $399.

00:51:13   Anyway, to learn more, go to filetransporter.com/atp.

00:51:18   And they have a special deal for all of you wonderful listeners.

00:51:22   If you buy them from their online company store

00:51:24   at filetransporterstore.com, you can use the coupon code ATP,

00:51:28   all lowercase, after you select the model that you want to buy.

00:51:32   And you get 10% off.

00:51:34   And this is pretty good.

00:51:35   10% off the two terabyte model is $40.

00:51:37   So that's a lot of money off.

00:51:39   So go to filetransporter.com/ATP to learn more

00:51:43   about this cool thing.

00:51:44   Or you want to buy one directly with our coupon code,

00:51:46   go to filetransporterstore.com and use coupon code ATP.

00:51:50   Thanks a lot for the transporter.

00:51:53   I should say that they sent, apparently I'm their favorite because they sent me a demo

00:51:57   unit to play with and I have never really played with network attached storage before

00:52:03   and this thing was set up pretty much immediately and it is basically private Dropbox in the

00:52:09   best possible way. It really is pretty nice. And aren't they coming out with a new version

00:52:13   of their software? Am I making that up?

00:52:14   Yes, there's a 2.0 version. It might be out by the time this podcast airs. I spoke with

00:52:19   them today and they think it might be. They're very, you know, they're storage people so

00:52:22   So they're very conservative with what they release.

00:52:24   They want to make sure it's stable and everything

00:52:26   like that.

00:52:28   So yeah, so there's going to be this big 2.0 version that makes

00:52:30   the software even better and gives you

00:52:32   a lot of the conveniences that the Dropbox integrated software

00:52:35   does with things like Finder integration

00:52:37   and things like that.

00:52:38   Also worth pointing out is that these capacities--

00:52:40   I mean, to get two terabytes on Dropbox,

00:52:43   you're going to end up paying quite a lot.

00:52:45   And because this is all your local storage,

00:52:47   they can give this to you.

00:52:48   And there's no recurring fee for the service.

00:52:51   You buy the enclosure, and then just the price

00:52:55   of the enclosure covers lifetime service from their servers

00:52:59   to do the relaying and coordination of the handshaking

00:53:03   and the DNS stuff to say for your app

00:53:05   to be able to find your transporter and everything.

00:53:08   So there's no monthly fees.

00:53:09   You could buy the enclosure up front and you're set.

00:53:13   So anyway, really great product.

00:53:14   Yeah, it's really nice.

00:53:15   It really is.

00:53:16   All right.

00:53:17   Before we move on, I have one brief thing

00:53:19   to say about the Transporter. I know a lot of nerds who hear about this, and I think

00:53:23   the first time I heard about it on a podcast ages ago, I thought, "It sounds like a step

00:53:28   backwards, because it's like, 'Oh, a Dropbox, everything's in the cloud. I don't have to

00:53:31   worry about storage anymore.' And then these people want to sell me a hard drive in a box?

00:53:35   Didn't we already do that? I'm removed on from having a hard drive in a plastic box

00:53:39   or whatever." But as I've learned more about the product and looked at it, what I do is

00:53:47   I fast-forwarded my mind like 10, 20 years, and what got me to watching the video on their

00:53:53   site where they show like, you know, they're always doing these videos where they show

00:53:56   a nice house with transporters all over it, and everyone's work desk has a transporter

00:53:59   on it or whatever.

00:54:00   So if you think about it, these things are already pretty small.

00:54:02   Like if you look at them, you know, it's a 2.5-inch drive, they're already pretty small,

00:54:04   but shrink these things down in 10, 20 years to be like similar capacities, but now they're

00:54:08   the size of a thumb drive, and like they barely need any energy, or maybe they like get all

00:54:13   their energy wirelessly or something like that, and have way more of them.

00:54:17   And that is actually more of the future, because instead of having a single central service

00:54:21   using Amazon S3 as its back end or whatever, you have a real truly completely distributed

00:54:27   system where everyone's house is just littered with these little things that deal with their

00:54:31   storage and they're all redundant and talking to each other and completely secure, and there

00:54:34   is no central point of failure.

00:54:36   And people aren't in control of their own data because they control, "Oh, I put these

00:54:39   three at home, these four at work, these up in the vacation house," or whatever.

00:54:43   your own data, you get all the benefits of a cloud where you can get at it anywhere and

00:54:47   it's redundant and you don't have to be like, "Oh, my power went out of my house, but I

00:54:51   still have access to my work transporter and it's synced with my home or whatever." And

00:54:54   that actually sounds more like the sci-fi books where it's like a distributed network

00:54:58   of completely independent little tiny storage pods instead of relying on a single company

00:55:03   to do your cloud hosting stuff.

00:55:06   Oh, yeah. And plus, you get one of these at home, one of these at work. That's going to

00:55:10   to be way cheaper than having two terabytes of S3 storage that you have to pay for every

00:55:16   month.

00:55:17   Yeah, and it might actually be faster, too.

00:55:21   Dropbox occasionally gives me data rates that I know are not anywhere close to maxing out

00:55:24   my Fios connection, and I don't know if they're throttling it or if S3 is cranky or if I'm

00:55:30   talking to a server in Seattle and it's far away from me and it's a lot of hops, but

00:55:33   I'm like, even just waiting for the audio files to upload to you, they're not going

00:55:38   at the speed of my upload connection.

00:55:39   Whereas if we both had transporters,

00:55:41   like the only thing--

00:55:42   Oh, yeah.

00:55:42   --would be stopping, it would just be our internet guys.

00:55:44   That's a great example, because that's

00:55:46   one of the problems I have with a lot of online backup services

00:55:49   and things like that, is that I have this awesome fat files

00:55:53   connection, and a lot of servers can't-- or services

00:55:55   can't accept my files fast enough.

00:55:58   That's one of the reasons why previous sponsor Backblaze,

00:56:00   why I like them so much, because Backblaze can actually

00:56:03   accept my uploads really quickly and usually

00:56:07   as fast as I'm willing to send them, whereas a lot of other services can't do that. But

00:56:12   yeah, this is even better. This is just going direct from your pipe at home to wherever

00:56:16   you're requesting it from. Anyway, moving on. Thanks to the transporter.

00:56:21   Well, yep. Thank you very much. And thanks for sending at least one of us a demo unit.

00:56:25   I really do like it. So...

00:56:27   I think pretty much anything called the transporter is cool, because you had the movies, right?

00:56:32   I mean, that was...

00:56:33   Oh, you're going to get so much email.

00:56:34   When you Google for it, the movie isn't the number one hit, but they're the number two,

00:56:36   They're doing pretty well. That's pretty gazie. Oh, that was a very very popular movie series

00:56:40   It's so bad

00:56:43   It was entertaining. It was bad. Why that's me. That's it's the it is like the pinnacle of bad entertaining movies and

00:56:50   Jason Statham is that he says him he he is in so many bad entertaining movies

00:56:55   that but this I think this I think the transporter especially the first one is just like

00:56:59   The the the best example of this category, but didn't use out ease the whole time so we can't yeah

00:57:05   I believe it was a, I believe there were eight with the W12.

00:57:08   Yeah, they were all, they were all the big outies of memory.

00:57:13   So I only saw the first one I think, and it was an A8 if memory.

00:57:16   But it had the W12 engine, I believe. So it was like the souped up A8.

00:57:19   Yeah, whatever. Anyway, uh, I have another couple of things we can talk about,

00:57:24   but I've been captain dictator.

00:57:26   So do you guys have something you would like to share?

00:57:28   John?

00:57:29   Did I complain about the iOS 7 calendar already?

00:57:33   No, you did not.

00:57:36   I had this in my mind as soon as I saw the keynote.

00:57:39   And I was like, well, it's just a little thing, not a big deal.

00:57:41   It's a beta, whatever.

00:57:42   But it's just been gnawing at me.

00:57:43   And then I always thought, well, maybe I already

00:57:45   complained about it.

00:57:45   But anyway, if this is a repeat, I apologize.

00:57:47   I'm old.

00:57:48   I'm senile.

00:57:48   And blame the other two for not reminding me

00:57:50   that they already talked about it.

00:57:51   So in the Google Docs file that I know you all constantly

00:57:54   have open, there's a link to an Apple Insider article

00:57:58   that has the picture I want that I'm pretty sure

00:58:00   was shown publicly so we're not breaking in at the end of the

00:58:02   day.

00:58:02   But anyway, you can just go to appleinsider.com and the link will be in the show notes.

00:58:06   Do you guys have this picture up now?

00:58:08   Yeah, I got it.

00:58:09   It took me a while to figure out how to click a link from Google Docs.

00:58:11   Or Marco can just pull up his iOS 7 device and look at the calendar.

00:58:15   But look at the middle picture of the calendar showing the month view.

00:58:19   I think I complained about it on Twitter.

00:58:20   Maybe that's what I'm remembering.

00:58:21   Did you see that?

00:58:22   The month view?

00:58:25   We were all in the sessions and heard about the philosophy of iOS 7.

00:58:28   And even in the keynote, they talked about it, about clarity and deferring to the content,

00:58:33   not having a lot of Chrome getting in the way, what's important about this, I just want

00:58:36   to see this stuff.

00:58:37   And so a good example of that is the red dot on the number 17 in the screenshot showing

00:58:40   you that today is the 17th.

00:58:42   You look at the screen, you can immediately find what day today is.

00:58:44   It's not like a subtle gray highlight or a little tiny underline.

00:58:47   It's like, boom, red circle, today is the 17th.

00:58:51   Not a lot of vertical lines separating anything, and it's very clean, the numbers are laid

00:58:56   out there.

00:58:57   But to me, and this happens to me in lots of calendar apps, on the Mac, in menu bar

00:59:01   icons, anywhere, the most important thing, especially in stupid outlook for the Mac,

00:59:06   the most important thing for me to know is, "What the hell month am I looking at?"

00:59:10   That's really important to me.

00:59:11   Like, "Oh, don't you know what the current month is?"

00:59:13   If you see the current day, don't you always know what the current...

00:59:14   No, I don't always know what the current month is, especially when it's on month boundaries

00:59:18   or have we crossed over and stuff.

00:59:19   And if you're paging through and you're not on the page with today, what month am I looking

00:59:23   at?

00:59:24   That is super important.

00:59:25   That is like the most important piece of content on this page with the possible exception of

00:59:28   what today's date is.

00:59:30   But even today's date is meaningless if you don't know what month it is.

00:59:32   And look how they treat the month in the month view on the calendar.

00:59:36   Do you see where it is in the screenshot?

00:59:38   I'm looking at the old calendar app on my phone next to this to see for comparison.

00:59:42   I don't know if it's better or worse the same, but all I know is it's bad.

00:59:45   No, the old one, there's like a second title bar below the main bar, and it just says in

00:59:48   big bold letters, "June 2013," right in the middle.

00:59:51   And this one says, "June."

00:59:53   It does not say June, it has the three-letter abbreviation.

00:59:56   And it's like, of all the content on this page, it should be just gigantic and bold

01:00:02   and not abbreviated, right?

01:00:04   Well, also, it's going to change positions as you flip through the months of where it's

01:00:07   at.

01:00:08   Yes, because it's like, I was asking people on Twitter, why in the world, like, this is

01:00:11   so in conflict with their stated philosophy.

01:00:14   Like they taught, I think they even brought this up when they're talking about the philosophy

01:00:16   of like, "Defer the content.

01:00:17   The content is king.

01:00:18   We really just want to see, people just want to see their content."

01:00:21   And the photo's like, "Look, we want to see your photos.

01:00:22   "Here, I want to see what the friggin' month is."

01:00:24   Like, "Oh, well that's not so important.

01:00:26   We're going to abbreviate it because it's more important for us to attach it right above

01:00:30   the number one in the month."

01:00:31   And you're right that it will...

01:00:32   Not only is it small, not only is it not emphasized, like it's even less distinct than the back

01:00:36   button, for crying out loud, it's going to move on every single page because if the first

01:00:39   day is a Friday or Thursday or Wednesday, it's going to move around and continue to

01:00:43   be abbreviated.

01:00:44   And that, I mean, it's...

01:00:46   So what?

01:00:47   They made one choice that is counter to what they're doing, and I thought it wouldn't bother

01:00:50   me.

01:00:51   decision in one application, those guys will fix it. I mean, the Notes app could be argued

01:00:55   as even worse with the weird letterpress style and the inset shadows and stuff or whatever.

01:00:59   But like, what? Big deal. Nobody's perfect. They have a philosophy. They're saying, "This

01:01:03   is what our philosophy is. This is our ideal. Okay, we failed to achieve it." But as time

01:01:08   has passed, it continues to just stick in my craw that I'm just like having them up

01:01:13   there showing this application and saying those words. Like, you'd want to hide this

01:01:18   one. You'd want to be like, "Oh, don't look at that one. That one we know doesn't conform

01:01:21   to our philosophy. Don't show it and say, "Isn't this beautiful? Isn't this nice?"

01:01:25   No, it's not. It says "JUN." It's bothering me more and more.

01:01:33   And so I know everyone is talking about the icons on the home screen, and are they going

01:01:36   to change those? Oh, don't worry. It's just a beta. They'll have plenty of time to refine

01:01:38   them. This is what I'm looking at.

01:01:40   They won't, though.

01:01:41   Well, anyway, this is what I'm looking at as my bellwether, because this doesn't require

01:01:45   you redrawing a whole bunch of icons. This just requires someone to go, "You know what?

01:01:49   month is a pretty darn important thing in month view. It does not deserve to be abbreviated.

01:01:53   It should be bigger. It should be bolder. And that's the kind of—I mean, just center

01:01:57   it. Put it on the same line. Center it. Let them spell it out. Plenty of room for German

01:02:00   month names, which I assume are much longer than ours. Whatever.

01:02:03   But faster. Yeah.

01:02:05   And they all move over to the right when you come up behind them.

01:02:09   I don't know. It bothers me. And I expected after the keynote to see a million people

01:02:13   slamming this because it is the most obvious example of "Do what I say, not as I do."

01:02:19   and yeah.

01:02:21   Well, you know, people have been pointing this out a lot,

01:02:24   and not just-- well, this is actually the first time

01:02:26   I've seen the calendar complaint.

01:02:27   But people, us included, have pointed out lots of just design

01:02:33   flaws in iOS 7 so far.

01:02:36   And I think it's important to consider that similar to how

01:02:40   Apple, the company, they always look out for-- people think,

01:02:44   oh, they do everything, whatever is best for users.

01:02:47   But that's not quite true.

01:02:48   they do what's best for Apple first,

01:02:50   and then secondarily what's best for users.

01:02:52   And if those priorities are ever challenged,

01:02:55   what's best for Apple always wins.

01:02:57   Similar to that, I think we all think of Apple

01:03:01   as this company that has this really great design sense,

01:03:03   and they do mostly, but there's always been

01:03:06   this kind of competing interest at Apple

01:03:10   of what looks cool.

01:03:12   And what looks cool, I think, is more important overall

01:03:17   then what's a great design to them in many instances,

01:03:21   and especially in software.

01:03:22   Hardware, they can often find the right balance.

01:03:25   In software, they often don't.

01:03:27   And I think this is one of those examples a lot about iOS 7.

01:03:31   For example, I think using the super thin font everywhere,

01:03:34   I find the extremely thin font extremely hard to read.

01:03:38   And the fact that there is that adjust legibility setting

01:03:44   to just make the font a little bit thicker,

01:03:46   That alone says they know this too,

01:03:49   and somebody's fighting about it internally.

01:03:53   There's always things like this with Apple software.

01:03:56   Almost everything they've removed

01:03:58   from this quotes, geomorphics stuff from desktop calendar

01:04:03   and stuff like that, almost all these things

01:04:05   are things that were put in there because they look cool.

01:04:08   And high enough up people, oftentimes Steve in the past,

01:04:13   high enough up people thought they looked cool enough

01:04:15   to push them through even though people knew that it wasn't as good of a design or it wasn't

01:04:19   as functional or it wasn't as usable or it wasn't as legible.

01:04:23   In the case of Jun, the cool thing that they are preserving, which many people pointed

01:04:28   out and which I think is totally not a justification for it but is possibly an explanation, is

01:04:33   that when you go from the month to the year view, like they want to do the transition,

01:04:36   it looks like you're just zooming out. And in the year view, the months are abbreviated.

01:04:40   And I think there it kind of makes sense because you can do the abbreviation in a much larger

01:04:44   font. You can put three big letters. You see it to the left there. It would be harder to

01:04:49   read September spelled out on the year view, but you can make SCP really big for September.

01:04:53   So they want the dynamic transition, that jun to go right into the little jun on the

01:04:58   year view in a transition. And it's like, "Oh, see? It's perfect." Just like how the

01:05:02   title slides over with the back button to become the title of the previous page and

01:05:05   all that stuff. It's just perfect, right? And someone was so married to that perfect

01:05:09   transition that they could not bear a crossfade into J-U-N-E, right? You know what I mean?

01:05:13   Like, a crossfade from year view into month view, where the three-letter abbreviation

01:05:17   crossfades into the full month name, is not the end of the world.

01:05:20   But someone was like, "No, we're married to me.

01:05:23   This is the transition.

01:05:25   No crossfades.

01:05:26   It's got to feel like it's a real thing."

01:05:28   And that's the wrong call, because it's better to sacrifice the purity of that transition

01:05:33   to conform to your other supposed purity, which is clarity and deferment to the content

01:05:37   and what is important and just show what's important to the user.

01:05:40   But if something is almost as usable and looks really cool,

01:05:45   they will always opt for that every time.

01:05:48   - Yeah, it's just a bad call, it's just a bad call

01:05:50   in one app, it's not a big deal, but like,

01:05:51   that's my canary in the coal mine.

01:05:53   I'm gonna be watching to see when that abbreviation

01:05:55   gets bigger.

01:05:57   - I'll be watching to see when the default font is thicker.

01:06:01   - I agree.

01:06:02   But to go back to the calendar,

01:06:03   I do think it was very cool, and John,

01:06:05   you touched on this briefly, the way the transitions worked,

01:06:08   and I don't have an iOS 7 device here,

01:06:11   but my memory tells me that when you went

01:06:13   from the day view to the month view,

01:06:15   you kind of zoomed out and back towards your face.

01:06:18   That's a terrible description,

01:06:19   but you kept zooming outwards,

01:06:21   and like you said, Jon, you went from the month view

01:06:23   and then you zoomed out to the year view,

01:06:25   and then the way the transition for the home screen is,

01:06:27   when you hit the home screen from the year view,

01:06:29   or when you hit the home button from the year view,

01:06:30   you would kind of zoom out again into Springboard,

01:06:32   and I just thought that was really well done

01:06:34   and really cool, but before you said Crossfade,

01:06:37   I was thinking to myself, "You know, that's weird. Why didn't they do a crossfade from

01:06:40   month to year?"

01:06:41   Because it's not… But, you know, real Zooms don't crossfade, right? The thing about

01:06:47   all those things is I think they are good and they are really neat to see, but all the

01:06:51   previous versions of iOS have pretty much demonstrated that the conceptual model of

01:06:57   home screen application, like that one level of you're either in an app or you're in

01:07:00   a home screen, people get that, even with the transitions that are not as beautiful

01:07:05   perfect as they are on iOS 7.

01:07:07   Because like you said, if you tap on it in iOS 7, the calendar in particular, because

01:07:10   it's icon looks like you had simply zoomed in on the day view in a month calendar, and

01:07:16   it's just all like, "Oh, I'm just pushing back, pushing back, zooming in, zooming in,"

01:07:19   and just one smooth, continuous experience.

01:07:22   That's great and all, but it's fixing something that wasn't really a problem, because everybody

01:07:28   very quickly rocks screen with a bunch of icons, you're in an app, you hit that button,

01:07:32   you go back to the screen with a bunch of icons.

01:07:34   Everybody gets that.

01:07:35   It's not super duper, you know, even ignoring folders, which I think people still also kind of get, but just that model of like you're either

01:07:41   on springboard or you're in an app and if you're in an app and you want to get to springboard you hit the button, you don't

01:07:46   need the transition like, you know, like the genie effect to say where the hell did my window go?

01:07:50   I think that is still necessary because people click a button on their window and the window just has appeared

01:07:55   they will not notice that a little square appeared in the lower right, but I think everybody even if there was zero transition

01:08:00   Grok's the model eventually and certainly now of just like oh, I get it now. I'm in an app

01:08:06   I hit that button. I'm back on the screen with the icons. I get how those two things are arranged and so this

01:08:10   Marriage to this particular transition is like it's too much

01:08:13   It's killing an ant with sledgehammer like we get it

01:08:17   We understand how you get to and from the home screen and so like I don't say you shouldn't do it. It's good

01:08:21   It's nice and everything, but do not sacrifice aspects of the application for it. You know

01:08:25   Yeah, I think it's gonna be a lot like like you know what like when I when I made the magazine 1.0

01:08:30   and my goal was to have no settings screen.

01:08:32   And then that actually turned out to cause

01:08:34   a few other bad design decisions,

01:08:36   because I was trying to reach that one goal,

01:08:39   and reality interfered,

01:08:42   and I had to compromise in other ways.

01:08:45   And that turned out to be the wrong decision.

01:08:48   I think there's a lot of cases like that in iOS 7

01:08:50   where they're trying to preserve something

01:08:54   about the appearance or the structure or their principles,

01:08:58   and they're trying to say, "Well, we need to do,

01:08:59   We need to make this choice because of this principle, that this was one of our goals.

01:09:03   So therefore, because this animation is going to be this certain way, then it'll look

01:09:08   best to have Jun there instead of Jun.

01:09:10   And so this is what we're stuck with.

01:09:13   This is the right thing to do.

01:09:15   And eventually they're going to start refining that and cutting back on some of these things,

01:09:19   I think, or finding new ways to satisfy both.

01:09:24   Like they've got principles that they laid out, and some of the principles sometimes

01:09:27   come in conflict.

01:09:28   question of which one wins. And picking the right winner is just as important as picking

01:09:32   the correct principles. Because we all agree with the principles, "Oh, the transition

01:09:35   should be smooth and obvious, and also we agree with, oh, the content should be emphasized

01:09:38   and not the Chrome." Like, if you're on board with the iOS 7 idea, we're on board

01:09:41   with both of those. And it's like, okay, when they come in conflict, we maybe don't

01:09:46   agree with picking the transition one over the content being king. Or deciding that their

01:09:52   entire treatment of text also clashes with someone being able to look at this thing at

01:09:58   a glance and all they see is the content. Like, what they want to know is there, and

01:10:01   they're not distracted by the interface. And if people are having trouble reading these

01:10:04   spindly little fonts, then some other aspect of the philosophy has stomped on the one we

01:10:09   think should be more important.

01:10:11   Right, exactly.

01:10:12   Are we really that surprised either that Apple, when creating this new whizbang thing, has

01:10:18   favored the new whizbang thing over what is arguably right? In other words, I don't think

01:10:22   surprising that they're choosing Jun over doing something that doesn't really fit the

01:10:30   whizbang as well, but is really the right answer, and that's putting Jun in.

01:10:33   Does that make sense?

01:10:35   But they picked these tenets.

01:10:37   They really hammered on deferring to the user and the content and emphasizing the content

01:10:42   over the Chrome.

01:10:43   That's them.

01:10:44   No one's putting that on them.

01:10:45   They're not burdened with that.

01:10:46   They've chosen that as a tent pole of iOS 7.

01:10:49   And it's up to them to figure out, like, if they give us all these philosophies and tenets

01:10:56   of iOS 7, they have to figure out how to reconcile these in a pleasing way.

01:11:01   And it seems to me that they're picking the wrong ones.

01:11:04   Like, the one that most people could be on board with, I think the one that most people

01:11:07   are on board with is, "Okay, good.

01:11:09   No more weird leather and felt and stuff.

01:11:11   That's not important.

01:11:12   It's distracting.

01:11:13   We just want to see the information.

01:11:15   Show me my calendar.

01:11:16   Show me what the month is.

01:11:18   Show me what today's date is.

01:11:19   show me if I've got it in the com— like, I just want the information, don't distract

01:11:22   me with fancy looking buttons and stuff.

01:11:24   I think that's the one that we all agree is a good idea in iOS 7.

01:11:28   And the other ones they latched onto about their particular treatment of typography and

01:11:31   how things are transitioned were like, "Those are good and everything, but we really like

01:11:36   the one where you emphasize the content and not the Chrome."

01:11:39   And their prioritization of those, the tenets that they chose, seemed to be different than

01:11:46   everyone else's at this point.

01:11:47   Well, and this is, I mean, all design for all apps, every, design is a whole bunch of

01:11:53   series of choices, and most of them are not easy choices. And, you know, because with

01:11:59   those, with those principles they have, almost none of them are, you can just say, "All

01:12:05   right, well, you know, how should this thing behave? Well, we're going to satisfy all

01:12:07   three of those things perfectly and make everything great by just doing this one option here."

01:12:11   Like, every time you're designing something, developing something, you're always having

01:12:15   to compromise on those things.

01:12:17   And good design is about figuring out the right compromises.

01:12:21   'Cause there's always gonna be lots of conflicting rules

01:12:24   and principles and factors and everything like that.

01:12:27   And what makes a good designer a good designer

01:12:30   is having great judgment there,

01:12:34   and then also being able to look back

01:12:35   when they've been wrong and say, you know what,

01:12:38   that was the wrong choice, this is overall better

01:12:40   to do it this other way.

01:12:44   Is that all we got?

01:12:45   I guess.

01:12:46   We good?

01:12:47   I think we're good.

01:12:49   Alright, well thanks a lot to our two show sponsors, Audible.

01:12:53   Go to audiblepodcast.com/atp and File Transporter or just simply Transporter.

01:12:59   Go to filetransporter.com/atp and thanks a lot guys.

01:13:03   Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:13:10   Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:13:17   John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:13:22   Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:13:28   And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:13:31   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:13:38   @CASEYLISS

01:13:41   So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:13:46   Auntie Marco Arment

01:13:48   S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-Racusa

01:13:53   It's accidental

01:13:56   They didn't mean to

01:13:59   I don't have any objections to it. If we have the blessing of the person in the chat

01:14:10   room who will never get credit on the show, will just have to tell his grandchildren,

01:14:14   "They used my title once." Didn't hear that on the show, grandpa.

01:14:17   Oh, trust me. I do kind of like "I Feel Like John Syracuse

01:14:24   Now," but I don't think that really makes sense in the grand scheme of things.

01:14:28   know how I feel. You don't know what it feels like to be me.

01:14:33   No one really does. Oh my god, I'm losing it. That's not even that late. We've had

01:14:40   some fun reviews lately. Really? I don't even read them. I always

01:14:44   forget that that's a thing that I can go check.

01:14:46   Not that many reviews. Maybe we should have every three months begging for people to review

01:14:51   us because I remember that they existed recently, too. I usually check them pretty obsessively,

01:14:57   I had a long spell where I didn't.

01:14:58   I mean, WWDC had an interruption.

01:14:59   I went back, and there weren't that many new ones.

01:15:01   So maybe we have to go back to that section of the show where we beg everybody to leave

01:15:04   iTunes reviews.

01:15:05   Well, the problem is that they're not in the theme song, that there's no call-out in the

01:15:09   theme song.

01:15:10   We're getting tons of Twitter followers.

01:15:11   Our site's doing great.

01:15:12   Yeah, I don't know.

01:15:13   You don't need to call it the theme song.

01:15:15   But every once in a while, you mention the review, and people go, "We have a lot of reviews.

01:15:20   All our reviews are good."

01:15:21   And most of them—the good thing about having a show with three people on it is that in

01:15:25   In most reviews, your chances of them saying something nice about you are good.

01:15:29   The reviews always say something good about two out of three people.

01:15:32   That's true.

01:15:33   And then someone gets thrown under the bus.

01:15:36   That is true, actually.

01:15:37   Usually, it gives good odds.

01:15:40   That's mostly true.

01:15:41   However, I cannot remember seeing a bad comment about John Ever.

01:15:46   And if there's a bad comment, I'd say it's two-thirds about how much of a [censored] Marco

01:15:50   is and one-third about how ignorant and stupid I am.

01:15:53   My bad comments are pretty great.

01:15:55   My grand

01:16:03   I know, but that's the bad thing that they say, is that my performance in this show is

01:16:08   lesser and it doesn't satisfy their need for whatever it is they need.

01:16:13   I'm getting off with the least bad reviews.

01:16:17   But what I'm saying is, most of them, two out of three people, they say something nice

01:16:21   about.

01:16:22   Yeah, but some of the—God, I'm trying to find one or two of them that were interesting.

01:16:26   Oh, here you go.

01:16:28   Marco is so full of himself, but John makes up for them all.

01:16:31   Seriously, a good listen.

01:16:32   That's the entire review.

01:16:33   Yeah, I feel like that's pretty standard, I would say.

01:16:36   I feel like nobody really insults you, Casey.

01:16:39   The only thing people say about you is, "You want to read some bad Casey ones?

01:16:44   Go find some.

01:16:45   They're in there."

01:16:46   I would love to read some bad Casey ones.

01:16:47   I just thought the only bad Casey ones were like, "Who's this guy?"

01:16:49   Who the hell is Casey?

01:16:51   No.

01:16:52   Now they know who he is and they don't like him.

01:16:54   Oh no.

01:16:55   So in the middle of a very long review, I think Armit and Sirkusa feel that they need

01:16:58   a moderator of sorts to keep the show moving.

01:17:00   I agree, but they picked the wrong guy.

01:17:02   They picked a friend rather than someone with the requisite skill set.

01:17:05   Casey is in over his head.

01:17:06   I would have been too, but I would have declined the offer.

01:17:10   First of all, that's why you're wrong.

01:17:12   None of us like Casey.

01:17:13   First of all, suppose his entire premise is true.

01:17:17   Do you think anybody could like reign us in when John and I are both talking forever about

01:17:23   something like that?

01:17:24   It's an impossible job.

01:17:26   I don't know how to approach this diplomatically and delicately.

01:17:29   So I'm just gonna say you too impossible sometimes

01:17:31   Actually this was legitimately good feedback and actually to be fair made me try to work on on something that I do think is an

01:17:40   Issue Casey's diplomatic to the point of blandness always tempering his point of view as if to not upset anyone ever

01:17:45   Which continues I miss hypercritical but having John Syracuse on any podcast is better than none and I actually think he is

01:17:52   That that was a reasonable point. I just like it's like the Dark Crystal though

01:17:56   You guys that before you guys time you know dark crystal no

01:17:59   Not Marco nothing what chat room this is what I have to work with here

01:18:05   God

01:18:09   I

01:18:10   questioned whether I should preface that with like oh have you guys heard of that because I would be like

01:18:13   Insulting it's like have you guys heard of Star Trek like you'd be like oh come on like of course we're gonna start

01:18:17   I don't be stupid, but nothing all right nevermind

01:18:19   The chat room is catching up in there. They all hate us now so although

01:18:24   I will say, to go back a step, Ben Rice said, "I still think Casey List is Marco's imaginary

01:18:28   friend."

01:18:29   Well, I'll try my dark or something anyway.

01:18:35   What we have here with the three of us together is all the ingredients that are needed, they're

01:18:39   just not evenly distributed.

01:18:41   Some of Marco's self-confidence needs to go into Casey, and some of Casey's ability to

01:18:45   shut up needs to go into me and Marco.

01:18:47   That's about right, I'd say.

01:18:49   See what I'm saying?

01:18:50   That's fantastic.

01:18:51   If we find them, then we would have the ultimate podcast host who would then be very lonely.

01:18:56   Oh, God, that's so true.

01:19:00   And Dented Meat is right.

01:19:01   We all thought he was the imaginary friend around here, and then we met him.

01:19:04   Yeah, I met him for like ten seconds, but we did meet him.

01:19:08   Oh, by the way, Casey's real and he's spectacular.

01:19:12   You get that reference.

01:19:13   Yes, he's got that reference.

01:19:14   Oh, my God, I'm losing my crap over here.

01:19:17   Can that please be the show intro?

01:19:19   Oh, God.

01:19:20   We have so many great show interns.

01:19:23   I'll have to save them up.

01:19:25   We might have to do an "after the evening" or whatever, or "subsequent to the evening"

01:19:30   or whatever we're calling it.

01:19:32   This is good.

01:19:33   It's called "Before Midnight."

01:19:34   Before Midnight, yeah, exactly.

01:19:36   Oh, goodness.

01:19:37   I should find some of these bad reviews and pull up Gruber and read them all.

01:19:41   No, I mean, people aren't really mean.

01:19:45   You know what I mean?

01:19:46   No, for the most part.

01:19:47   There were a couple that actually stung, but genuinely, there were a couple that actually

01:19:50   They only think if there's a kernel of truth.

01:19:52   You know what I mean?

01:19:53   Well, yes and no.

01:19:54   But people aren't being like, "Go read some reviews to other podcasts, and you'll

01:20:00   see much more."

01:20:01   That's the problem.

01:20:02   Nobody hates us enough to write a really funny bad review.

01:20:06   They only hate us enough to write kind of mean reviews.

01:20:09   Well, because all listeners are all discerning and intelligent and attractive people.

01:20:13   Of course.

01:20:14   Even the ones who hate us are articulate enough to leave a reasonable review.

01:20:19   I think the only one that stung-- I shouldn't say it stung.

01:20:23   The one that I read about me hedging too much,

01:20:27   that was absolutely valid.

01:20:28   And it kind of stung, but more was like, dude,

01:20:31   I really do need to work on that.

01:20:33   The one about me being over my head kind of hurt.

01:20:36   It's OK, though.

01:20:37   I'll be all right.

01:20:38   But the premise there just is not valid.

01:20:40   Doesn't make any sense.

01:20:41   Like, I don't think people understand

01:20:43   that you're a programmer for a living.

01:20:44   They think you're just some guy off the street.

01:20:47   Well, I don't know.

01:20:48   most of the time. Still, come on. You know what I mean.

01:20:51   He writes Perl! How are you shitting your ass on me? He writes Perl. Come on.

01:20:55   But people think I'm an iOS or OS X developer, and I'm not.

01:20:58   No, actually, all kidding aside, forgive me for starting mutual admiration society,

01:21:03   but you know a d*** about Objective-C and Coco and Coco Touch for someone who never does any of this.

01:21:08   I know. I don't know if they know that or want to do it.

01:21:12   He says "prejudice me."

01:21:14   That's also a thing that non-programmers don't understand, is that at a certain point, when

01:21:18   you have a certain level of experience in programming, the mysticism of different APIs

01:21:23   and languages falls away, and you just kind of realize that it's all more or less the

01:21:27   same stuff.

01:21:29   That's the whole thing.

01:21:30   Employers are like this, too.

01:21:32   Once you've been a professional programmer for, I don't know, five years, certainly for

01:21:35   ten, assuming you've been keeping your skills up or whatever, you can learn any language,

01:21:44   because it's like, "Okay, well, what's the equivalent of whatever in this language?"

01:21:49   Conceptually you understand everything you need to know, and it's just a matter of syntax.

01:21:51   The same thing with APIs.

01:21:52   Once you've used an API that has all these concepts in terms of callbacks and notifications

01:21:57   and event loops and background processes, conceptually, once you understand the concepts,

01:22:05   it's not like, "Oh, but you're an iOS programmer.

01:22:08   You'll never understand OS X," or "You'll never understand .NET."

01:22:11   It's all the same stuff.

01:22:12   there's very rarely some new revolutionary idea that you can't even grok, and it's just

01:22:16   a matter of the details. Oh yeah, and going back to our design discussion,

01:22:19   I think it's a similar thing with like, you know, most programming languages don't come

01:22:23   out and do like radically totally unheard of ideas. It just, they're all trade-offs.

01:22:28   And it's like, all right, well, wickshadow trade-off, you know, like what are your priorities

01:22:31   for what you're doing, and therefore wickshadow trade-off is the best for you to use for this,

01:22:36   you know? Like there's, like, that's why it's so hard to say that one language is, quote,

01:22:40   better than another because usually they just have made different trade-offs.

01:22:45   And I think there is a thing where if someone just uses one language forever and that language

01:22:49   doesn't have anonymous functions or closures or currying or pick your whatever feature,

01:22:54   then you won't have seen that concept. And if some of the language is heavily based on

01:22:58   it, you will not grok it and you will have to first grok that concept. But that's why

01:23:01   I was saying if you've been in the industry for a long time and used lots of different

01:23:04   languages, eventually you didn't spend your entire time and see eventually you run across

01:23:08   a language that has these features. Or even if you're just in a language that never had

01:23:11   lexical scope and you don't understand how that works or why it might be useful.

01:23:16   But I feel like, especially in today's development, like the web where you encounter seven languages

01:23:20   running one application, you get all the concepts or whatever. But I think for non-programmers

01:23:26   listening, they will assign you an expertise in a particular realm and decide that you

01:23:31   can't possibly have any intelligent comment on the other realm. So because Casey's a .NET

01:23:34   net programmer, like what could he possibly have intelligent to say about OS X? Well,

01:23:39   it's not as evolved, that's totally foreign, I can't possibly understand what's going

01:23:44   on there. Like, GUI API is a GUI API, right? You know, talking to a database from programming

01:23:49   languages, talking to a database, you know, have you used an ORM before? Well, we have

01:23:52   ORMs here too, you know, it's just all the same stuff.

01:23:55   As long as we can all agree that PHP does suck.

01:23:58   Yes, well, we do. Everyone agrees. No one disagrees.

01:24:01   There is no better or worse language, except PHP, which is worse.

01:24:07   Are you feeling okay?

01:24:08   Look, I still use it, because again, it's the trade-offs, right?

01:24:11   There's joke languages that are worse, right?

01:24:14   There's like brain f***.

01:24:17   That's worse.

01:24:18   Right.

01:24:19   You know, there is levels to go down farther, but yeah, at a certain point.

01:24:21   I mean, arguably, PHP is kind of a joke language.

01:24:24   Actually, here's an interesting question, which maybe we should say for a show.

01:24:27   Which is a worse language, PHP or JavaScript?

01:24:30   Oh, PHP, no contest, come on.

01:24:33   Really?

01:24:34   I think that might require some thought.

01:24:35   No, because JavaScript just has so much fewer moving parts.

01:24:39   So even if you think all those parts in JavaScript are worse than the parts in PHP, PHP has so

01:24:43   many freaking parts.

01:24:44   Well, JavaScript has browsers, you know?

01:24:46   I don't know.

01:24:47   I think—

01:24:48   No, no, the language.

01:24:49   We're just talking about the language.

01:24:50   The language is just—

01:24:51   No, no, we're talking about—if you're talking about moving parts, we're talking

01:24:52   about it in practice here.

01:24:53   No, I mean like the language, like think of the size of the API, you know?

01:24:57   PHP is just crazy.

01:24:59   Yeah, but think about how much in JavaScript is just not accessible from the API. I don't

01:25:05   know.

01:25:06   That's what JavaScript is. JavaScript is a simple language that's crappy, but at least

01:25:09   it's small.

01:25:10   I mean, PHP might be worse than JavaScript, but I would really have to make a pros and

01:25:16   cons list or something. Really think about it and really weigh it. I think their badness

01:25:22   is closer than you might assume.

01:25:25   Well, you know, it's the same thing with the PHP discussion we had way back when.

01:25:28   It's like, I'm talking about just the language and the abstract, like in terms of here are

01:25:32   the keywords, here's the syntax, here's the concepts it embodies, and not any of the practical

01:25:35   concerns.

01:25:36   Once you throw the practical concerns into it, other things come in, because like JavaScript

01:25:40   as a language is better than PHP as a language, but you may say developing a real application

01:25:45   in JavaScript is worse because of variances in browsers, whereas PHP is always the same,

01:25:48   or whatever.

01:25:49   You know, like then you can make different arguments.

01:25:50   But when I'm talking about the language, I'm always talking about the language in the abstract.

01:25:53   You're a language designer. You want to make a thing that executes. There are no real-world concerns at all

01:25:58   You're just designing a language the same way you design a written language

01:26:01   Here's the syntax here are the nouns and verbs and here's how it's structured and you know the whole nine yards

01:26:06   I want to piddle with some of the server-side

01:26:09   piddle

01:26:11   screw around with

01:26:13   You're so hyper this is a whole nother show

01:26:17   It really is well, you know what?

01:26:19   We should just bank this for the next time one of us isn't around

01:26:21   But anyway, I want to screw around with Node.js

01:26:24   or one of the new hotness web frameworks.

01:26:28   - Node.js is so two years ago, come on.

01:26:30   - Whatever.

01:26:31   I live in the .NET world.

01:26:32   - Isn't the Windows Azure thing,

01:26:34   isn't that Node on the server?

01:26:35   I think it is, right? - I believe that's right.

01:26:37   Yeah, I think so.

01:26:39   - It's certainly interesting.

01:26:41   Whatever I see about Node.js,

01:26:43   it looks like it's probably really interesting right now,

01:26:46   but when you're programming something

01:26:49   and you don't want to spend a ton of time

01:26:50   like on the nuts and bolts of it,

01:26:53   you don't really want interesting.

01:26:54   You want something that was interesting five years ago.

01:26:57   And so I think Node.js, whatever project

01:27:01   I start five years from now, I'll probably use it then.

01:27:03   Well, here's the ideal project for something like Node

01:27:05   if you want to experiment.

01:27:05   It would be something like Matt and Reece's TweetMarker type

01:27:08   service, where conceptually, again, there's

01:27:11   not a lot of moving parts.

01:27:12   Like you're going to be storing an offset or a position

01:27:14   for people in some sort of server back end.

01:27:16   And what your server software has to do

01:27:18   is basically accept a request, maybe

01:27:20   with some minor authentication, and then

01:27:22   get and store a number for somebody.

01:27:24   You know what I mean?

01:27:24   Right.

01:27:24   It's not going to--

01:27:25   That's your problem.

01:27:26   You're not going to hit a problem where, oh, crap,

01:27:28   the icons library sucks for this.

01:27:29   Right.

01:27:30   So then you can write that in Node

01:27:32   and be like, my first Node application.

01:27:34   It's one step above writing an echo server.

01:27:36   But you get all the advantages that are supposedly in Node.

01:27:38   You can say, OK, does this scale really awesome?

01:27:40   It can.

01:27:40   Is this super easy to deploy, and I can run it everywhere?

01:27:43   And you can really torture test it and say, all right,

01:27:46   I could have written this in anything,

01:27:48   because the amount of code, it's like three pages of code for the server part of it, not

01:27:51   the storage part, not the all the other stuff, just for the web app part.

01:27:55   And that's a perfect opportunity to try out something new, because you're like, "If it

01:27:58   doesn't work, I'll just rewrite it and pick your favorite language and it won't be a big

01:28:01   deal.

01:28:02   But if it does work, maybe I'll get all these advantages that everyone says about Node."

01:28:06   You know what I think we should do is we should write websites in just straight C, because

01:28:12   that sounds bright.

01:28:13   I did that.

01:28:14   Been there, done that, yep.

01:28:15   I know.

01:28:16   I'm trying to troll you.

01:28:17   Nothing better than string manipulation in C.

01:28:20   Oh yeah.

01:28:21   Really secure too.

01:28:22   No buffer overflows in my query parsing code, no sir.

01:28:25   (laughs)