ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Alright, so last episode I mentioned that at my alma mater, which is Virginia Tech,

00:00:08 ◼   ► they have been requiring tablets for a while.

00:00:11 ◼   ► And when I say tablets, I don't mean iPads.

00:00:13 ◼   ► I mean honest to God, those awful Microsoft quasi-computers, not the Surface, like the

00:00:19 ◼   ► real old Microsoft tablets.

00:00:21 ◼   ► And so I got some feedback.

00:00:23 ◼   ► I got some from a just graduated or recently graduated student, Alan Fuller, and I got

00:00:28 ◼   ► some from somebody who is associated with the teaching part of the college, Joseph G.

00:00:34 ◼   ► I'm going to read you a very small excerpt of what Joseph said. He said, "I teach electrical

00:00:38 ◼   ► engineering and I can tell you that most of the students here hate those required tablet

00:00:44 ◼   ► PCs, that they are all required to buy, more expensive and less capable. The purpose is

00:00:48 ◼   ► for everything to be submitted electronically, but it fails so spectacularly at this that

00:00:53 ◼   ► I just have them print everything and submit hard copies.

00:00:57 ◼   ► I suspect half of them are browsing Facebook during class anyway.

00:01:00 ◼   ► And I thought that was kind of interesting and different that here it is that the school,

00:01:06 ◼   ► if you ask me, was trying to be progressive and say, "Oh, let's do this wild thing

00:01:10 ◼   ► with these tablets, and as it turns out, apparently everyone hates them anyway."

00:01:13 ◼   ► Which is of no great surprise, but I thought it was interesting.

00:01:16 ◼   ► I think it's interesting too.

00:01:19 ◼   ► I think we are all, especially John, we are all old enough that we didn't really have

00:01:26 ◼   ► computers really that prevalent in classrooms when we were in college, and certainly, you

00:01:31 ◼   ► know, high school. I don't know if they do that in high school yet, but, you know,

00:01:33 ◼   ► we didn't have...

00:01:34 ◼   ► They do.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Like, not everybody was having laptops on their desk in college when we were there.

00:01:39 ◼   ► Is that fair for you also, Casey? I know it's fair for John, because he's like 50.

00:01:42 ◼   ► Well, wow. We did not have laptops in high school when I was in high school. However,

00:01:48 ◼   ► The school in which my wife teaches actually made national news many, many years ago because—well,

00:01:53 ◼   ► like 10 years ago—because they used to have—what did you call the MacBooks before they were—iBooks.

00:02:00 ◼   ► They used to have iBooks and they sold them for $50 a pop after they'd been used by

00:02:04 ◼   ► like middle schoolers for a couple years.

00:02:06 ◼   ► And they sold them at the Richmond International Raceway, the NASCAR track.

00:02:09 ◼   ► And apparently there were like stampedes in order to get these 50—

00:02:12 ◼   ► Oh, I remember that.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the school district in which Aaron teaches.

00:02:16 ◼   ► That's awesome.

00:02:17 ◼   ► How about that?

00:02:18 ◼   ► To this day, they have really crummy Dells that all the kids get issued, and from what

00:02:22 ◼   ► I understand, it's a double-edged sword.

00:02:24 ◼   ► I can't imagine paying attention to school at all if I was in high school with a laptop,

00:02:30 ◼   ► with an Internet connection.

00:02:31 ◼   ► Even without an Internet connection, why would you ever pay attention to class?

00:02:39 ◼   ► In my senior year of college, we had one class that was in a brand new lab with all these

00:02:44 ◼   ► Linux desktops.

00:02:47 ◼   ► I spent so much time playing same gnome

00:02:50 ◼   ► and browsing the internet and not at all paying attention

00:02:53 ◼   ► to what was being said in the class.

00:02:54 ◼   ► And I was lucky that even being a computer science student,

00:02:59 ◼   ► most of the classrooms didn't have computers in them.

00:03:01 ◼   ► They just were like regular classrooms with desks

00:03:02 ◼   ► and you would take notes if you were a good student

00:03:05 ◼   ► or you would stare at the wall like me.

00:03:07 ◼   ► And the idea of like having those,

00:03:10 ◼   ► I would not have the self-control and I would imagine,

00:03:13 ◼   ► in fact, I know I didn't,

00:03:15 ◼   ► when I had that opportunity senior year,

00:03:16 ◼   ► didn't have that self-control. And I looked around the room and no one else did either.

00:03:22 ◼   ► And I have to imagine that's probably going to be a pretty common problem as computers

00:03:27 ◼   ► infiltrate and become—they probably already are—everyday items now in college classrooms.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Well, you know, the problem with the Virginia Tech thing is it's like the Minitel effect,

00:03:37 ◼   ► where a school thinks, "All right, technology, this is the next big thing." And the mistake

00:03:42 ◼   ► they make is saying, "Not just that we're going to require everyone to have a computer,

00:03:45 ◼   ► or this year we'll require everyone to have this computer,

00:03:47 ◼   ► but they think that they're gonna do it

00:03:50 ◼   ► like they do with desks.

00:03:51 ◼   ► We've decided that this is the best desk for our school

00:03:53 ◼   ► and it's got this chair and this height

00:03:55 ◼   ► and has this place for your books

00:03:57 ◼   ► and we're gonna order 500 of them,

00:03:58 ◼   ► we're gonna use them for the next 20 years.

00:04:00 ◼   ► And so they decided that whatever,

00:04:02 ◼   ► this little flippy round screen tablet PC thing,

00:04:04 ◼   ► that's the future and they just went with it

00:04:07 ◼   ► and they expect it to be standardized going forward.

00:04:09 ◼   ► And that stuff is obsolete before it even arrives

00:04:12 ◼   ► at the school due to the delays

00:04:13 ◼   ► in purchase orders and everything.

00:04:15 ◼   ► And after they realize that they made-- or after everyone--

00:04:18 ◼   ► after all the students realize that they made a terrible mistake,

00:04:21 ◼   ► you know, oh, this is terrible.

00:04:23 ◼   ► Don't do this.

00:04:24 ◼   ► It doesn't work.

00:04:24 ◼   ► It doesn't make our lives easier.

00:04:25 ◼   ► These are crappy computers.

00:04:27 ◼   ► They don't say, oh, yeah, no, we got to stop that.

00:04:29 ◼   ► And they just keep going with it.

00:04:31 ◼   ► Oh, we'll get the new version of that tablet PC.

00:04:33 ◼   ► So it's a whole combination of ailments of not refusing

00:04:36 ◼   ► to admit your mistakes and not realizing that standardizing to that degree

00:04:40 ◼   ► is always going to come back and bite you.

00:04:41 ◼   ► And the Minitel was this computer they had in France.

00:04:44 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:04:44 ◼   ► someone in the chat room can look it up on Wikipedia and tell us more about it.

00:04:47 ◼   ► Nice.

00:04:48 ◼   ► But for a long time, it was good.

00:04:50 ◼   ► And then everyone in France could get a mini-tell and get onto this little network and do interesting

00:04:56 ◼   ► things and you don't have this in your other countries.

00:04:57 ◼   ► But it's bad in that it lasted forever and it was just an embarrassment and a joke.

00:05:01 ◼   ► Obviously, the government doing it is the worst case scenario in terms of standardizing

00:05:05 ◼   ► universally and being out of date and taking forever to arrive and not being able to fix

00:05:10 ◼   ► mistakes.

00:05:11 ◼   ► But a university is a nice step down from that.

00:05:13 ◼   ► Well, to be fair, Virginia Tech only mandated tablets for the engineers, and they've been

00:05:19 ◼   ► mandating computers in general for incoming students for something like 20 or 30 years.

00:05:24 ◼   ► I think it was like mid-80s that they started mandating that all the students would have

00:05:29 ◼   ► to have computers.

00:05:31 ◼   ► But I agree with you, John, that it's, I think, them saying, "Ooh, this tablet thing, this

00:05:34 ◼   ► is progressive and exciting, and we're a progressive school," and it ends up biting them in the

00:05:39 ◼   ► in the butt and nobody has got the confidence to hit the brakes and say, "Man, maybe this

00:05:44 ◼   ► is bad." And also consider that these aren't purchased by the school. These aren't issued

00:05:48 ◼   ► by the school. These are—everyone has to buy their own machine.

00:05:52 ◼   ► Yeah, well, they take so much money from you anyway. Who cares?

00:05:54 ◼   ► That's true.

00:05:55 ◼   ► It's kind of insulting, though, at that point.

00:05:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it feels bad, but it also feels bad buying hundreds of dollars worth of stupid

00:06:00 ◼   ► books every semester, too.

00:06:01 ◼   ► That's true.

00:06:02 ◼   ► I don't know. Do kids still buy books? We used to buy books.

00:06:04 ◼   ► Oh, yeah. And they still pull all the same crap with, like—

00:06:07 ◼   ► Used books.

00:06:08 ◼   ► like, you have to buy the professor's own book, and then you have to buy the spiral-bound

00:06:14 ◼   ► Xerox piles that are some other thing. And then of course, they have the used book ordeal,

00:06:20 ◼   ► which there's no better word for it. It's just a giant scam.

00:06:25 ◼   ► I wonder, this has been a big problem that's probably beyond the scope of this show, but

00:06:35 ◼   ► There's a problem now with college being worth it or not.

00:06:40 ◼   ► I don't know how much this has been a problem in the past, but it seems like a combination

00:06:45 ◼   ► of surprisingly dramatically increasing tuition in the last decade or so, and then the economy

00:06:54 ◼   ► being so terrible for jobs, seems like college is actually becoming a worse and worse deal

00:06:59 ◼   ► for students.

00:07:00 ◼   ► Again, this is probably way beyond the scope of this show, but all these things add up

00:07:05 ◼   ► and you've got to figure, especially in our industry, where so many people get by just

00:07:10 ◼   ► fine without a college degree.

00:07:13 ◼   ► It doesn't really help when you're starting out, but you can make it work.

00:07:18 ◼   ► Private colleges probably, state schools I think, even though funding is being massively

00:07:22 ◼   ► slashed for them, I think still, net-net, I would say you're better off going through

00:07:28 ◼   ► the cheapest possible state school that you can get into than not, because your student

00:07:32 ◼   ► debt won't be astronomical like it'll be if you go to some place that costs you 60 grand

00:07:36 ◼   ► a year or something. You know what I mean?

00:07:38 ◼   ► And plus, if your boss is somebody like me who was pretty much a slacker and just barely

00:07:43 ◼   ► got through school, I don't really care what school you went to. If I'm reviewing your

00:07:48 ◼   ► resume, whatever school you went to, I probably haven't heard of it no matter how good it

00:07:53 ◼   ► was. So I don't know, I don't care. I have to imagine that's probably true of many of

00:07:57 ◼   ► like mid-level and high-level bosses and tech companies, especially smaller companies run

00:08:01 ◼   ► by younger people, I have to imagine that many of them are being run by slackers.

00:08:05 ◼   ► Once you get to a certain size, though, they do the stupid filtering of like they just

00:08:08 ◼   ► want a degree for you. The first level HR pass is just filtering anybody who doesn't

00:08:13 ◼   ► have a degree in something vaguely related. And that's stupid, and you could say that's

00:08:18 ◼   ► not the way you should run a company, but once companies reach a certain size, they

00:08:21 ◼   ► start doing stupid things, and that's one of them.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess, well, all this is probably true in most tech jobs.

00:08:27 ◼   ► If you have to, if you want a job at a place that has an HR department, you're better off

00:08:33 ◼   ► making something that they can buy the company.

00:08:35 ◼   ► You have a better chance of them buying your startup than you do of getting through the

00:08:40 ◼   ► HR department's automatic filters and all the keyword filtering and the recruiters and

00:08:44 ◼   ► all that crap.

00:08:45 ◼   ► Well, I mean, most people don't, that's the thing, most people don't go through that gauntlet.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Most people get into companies like that because they know someone who's there, or someone

00:08:56 ◼   ► inside the company starts to know them online, even if they just follow them on Twitter or

00:09:01 ◼   ► something, and you bypass some or all of that idiotic process by someone inside the company

00:09:06 ◼   ► going, "Yeah, no, no, just bring him in.

00:09:08 ◼   ► We actually want to interview him."

00:09:09 ◼   ► And that short-circuits the idiocy, you know what I mean?

00:09:12 ◼   ► And that's how people get hired, the referrals, friends, stuff like that, and those type of

00:09:16 ◼   ► things.

00:09:17 ◼   ► I don't think I've ever gotten a job by just going through the front door.

00:09:23 ◼   ► Maybe once in my life I get a job by just going through the front door, and every other

00:09:26 ◼   ► time it's like you know someone inside the company or you get to know someone inside

00:09:31 ◼   ► the company, you know someone who knows someone, and then you bypass all of that BS, and that's

00:09:35 ◼   ► how you get your interview, instead of having to jump through the stupid hurdles and pass

00:09:39 ◼   ► keyword filters and all that stuff.

00:09:42 ◼   ► How I got my job, which became Tumblr, was exactly just applying.

00:09:49 ◼   ► David posted a Craigslist ad looking for programmers, and I responded.

00:09:53 ◼   ► And that's how I got that job.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Well, see, I don't think I've ever gotten a job that way.

00:09:58 ◼   ► And by the way, real-time follow-up as per Twitter, not the chat room.

00:10:01 ◼   ► I'm disappointed in the jackals.

00:10:03 ◼   ► Useless chat room.

00:10:04 ◼   ► I know, seriously.

00:10:05 ◼   ► Can we call them jackals? Because this isn't 5x5.

00:10:07 ◼   ► We should have our own term.

00:10:08 ◼   ► Heathens.

00:10:09 ◼   ► Heathens?

00:10:10 ◼   ► people jackals either and I won't call these people jackals either. It's disrespectful.

00:10:13 ◼   ► These awesome friends in the chat room let us down already. But Jason Deering in Twitter

00:10:19 ◼   ► said I was a freshman in '97, it wasn't mandated then, it was recommended and so I quickly

00:10:24 ◼   ► looked and according to Tech it wasn't until '98. Since '98 each coming undergraduate

00:10:29 ◼   ► student had been required to own a personal computer, blah blah blah. So real time follow

00:10:33 ◼   ► up. But no, I've never gotten a job, to my knowledge, to my recollection I've never gotten

00:10:37 ◼   ► a job just by cold calling someone. It's always been a friend of a friend or something

00:10:40 ◼   ► along those lines that has got me in the door. So I'm a little surprised, Marco, that—and

00:10:45 ◼   ► I think I knew that story, but I'm a little surprised that's how you ended up at Davidville.

00:10:48 ◼   ► Well, that was a fluke. I mean, my first job, even that—like, my first job out of college

00:10:52 ◼   ► at Vivissimo, even that was a friend already worked there and got me an interview. Like,

00:10:57 ◼   ► it was—like, it's so much more important with who you know. The Davidville that became

00:11:03 ◼   ► Tumblr job, that was a fluke. I mean, that doesn't really ever happen. That was totally

00:11:07 ◼   ► a fluke.

00:11:08 ◼   ► I don't think he had an HR department that you were bypassing either.

00:11:11 ◼   ► Not at all. Exactly. I mean, that's like, he emailed, you know, I emailed from the ad,

00:11:16 ◼   ► he requested a code sample, I showed him some PHP code I had written, that exactly he was

00:11:20 ◼   ► looking for, and that was it. And then he mailed me two books on Ruby on Rails and said,

00:11:25 ◼   ► "You start in a few weeks, get up to speed on this stuff." And that was it. But I think

00:11:30 ◼   ► one of the reasons that worked, one of the reasons that that was a totally lucky break

00:11:33 ◼   ► for me, is that he didn't really know what he was doing. So he didn't know that you're

00:11:39 ◼   ► supposed to go through all these crazy process and filtering and collect a billion resumes,

00:11:45 ◼   ► all that stuff that everyone else does because they know that's how it's done. David didn't

00:11:49 ◼   ► know that. He was a young kid when he hired me. I didn't know that really, but I had

00:11:54 ◼   ► to tell him about things like holidays. He really didn't know about how things were

00:11:59 ◼   ► are done in the pro-work world because he was never really in it except working for

00:12:04 ◼   ► himself by himself.

00:12:06 ◼   ► So that was a lucky break.

00:12:09 ◼   ► But I think if you don't have a college degree or if you have a crappy college degree

00:12:14 ◼   ► or if you have—I think my final GPA was something like a 2.3 or something.

00:12:18 ◼   ► It was a terrible GPA.

00:12:20 ◼   ► If you have a terrible GPA like me, I think you have a way better chance of getting into

00:12:25 ◼   ► companies like that that are being run by basically inexperienced young people, or companies

00:12:32 ◼   ► who are just so desperate that they just need anybody who walks in the door, but you don't

00:12:36 ◼   ► usually want those jobs. But the companies that are run by young people, like the startups,

00:12:42 ◼   ► and consultancies often, and everything like that, I feel like it's so much easier to get

00:12:44 ◼   ► a job there because you're more likely to run into somebody like David who doesn't really

00:12:50 ◼   ► know how things are supposed to be done in the ways that would rule you out.

00:12:54 ◼   ► All right, so what else

00:12:58 ◼   ► are we talking about? Anyway, this would be a good time to break

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00:15:06 ◼   ► No, that's pretty crazy. I've always honestly, I don't host my own email because hosting

00:15:10 ◼   ► email as MailRoute knows and as they solve for a lot of people, hosting email is such

00:15:18 ◼   ► a pain. Because you can set it up and you think it's working. But once you start getting

00:15:23 ◼   ► into the complexities of things like spam filtering, being blacklisted or blackholed

00:15:28 ◼   ► or whatever it is, gray listing, all the crazy complexity that we've added to our mail infrastructure

00:15:34 ◼   ► to, usually in response to spam or security problems. It makes hosting your own and getting

00:15:40 ◼   ► your own mail delivered to other people reliably so difficult.

00:15:43 ◼   ► Yeah, the graph I recently saw was showing a number of incoming mails per day, and it

00:15:48 ◼   ► was labeled with one color for spam and one color for good mail. And you see mostly it's

00:15:54 ◼   ► like 50/50 ratio good mail spam. But those were tiny little slivers, like two pixels

00:15:59 ◼   ► high. And then in the middle of the graph were two gigantic towers that were the height

00:16:03 ◼   ► of the screen, there were all the color of spam with a little tiny frosting on the top

00:16:07 ◼   ► of regular mail.

00:16:08 ◼   ► And over the course of two days, the spam volume went up by 10,000x and then went back

00:16:12 ◼   ► down again.

00:16:13 ◼   ► And it's like, is that like a bot gone wild or a coordinated attack?

00:16:18 ◼   ► That's the type of 10x, 100x, 1,000x volume that you just may, "Oh, guess what?

00:16:22 ◼   ► Today, your mail server is getting a bazillion spams.

00:16:25 ◼   ► You don't know why.

00:16:26 ◼   ► You can't control it."

00:16:27 ◼   ► Yeah, not good.

00:16:28 ◼   ► Yeah, that's crazy.

00:16:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, generally, the best wisdom I can tell

00:16:31 ◼   ► the audience is don't host your own mail if you can help it,

00:16:35 ◼   ► because hosting your mail sucks.

00:16:36 ◼   ► And this isn't even part of the Mailerite ad,

00:16:38 ◼   ► even they will help quite a bit in this regard.

00:16:41 ◼   ► This isn't even, you know, if you choose to use Mailerite

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00:16:46 ◼   ► But whether or not you do that, do not host your own mail.

00:16:49 ◼   ► That is, it is such a world of hurt to use a Steve Jobs,

00:16:53 ◼   ► or a bag of hurt, what was the Blu-ray?

00:16:54 ◼   ► Bag of hurt? - It's a bag of hurt.

00:16:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's such a bag of hurt.

00:16:57 ◼   ► You know, not to get all sad for a moment, but I really do miss Steve Jobs at times like

00:17:06 ◼   ► when the Galaxy S4 comes out and it has an easy mode.

00:17:11 ◼   ► You know, I would love to know…

00:17:12 ◼   ► Tim's sharing.

00:17:13 ◼   ► We'll take a dig at that too.

00:17:14 ◼   ► Don't worry.

00:17:15 ◼   ► You know, because Steve was always so good about these little quips that he would leak

00:17:20 ◼   ► in an email or a comment somewhere or on the earnings call or something.

00:17:25 ◼   ► would ask me about some competitor's stupid thing, and he would just tear them apart in

00:17:29 ◼   ► like seven words. And I really do miss, like, what would he have to say about, especially,

00:17:36 ◼   ► what would he have to say about Google Glass? I mean, that's...

00:17:39 ◼   ► Well, the big thing about Steve Jobs is it's twofold. One, he was a person that a lot of

00:17:44 ◼   ► people admired, and two, Apple as a company was and still is not the kind of company to

00:17:49 ◼   ► have like, "Oh, you could just call them up and get some random obnoxious quote from some

00:17:53 ◼   ► random VP. They're very controlled about their messaging. So you always want to hear what an

00:17:58 ◼   ► admired person has to say about any topic, right? So that's one reason we're hanging on his

00:18:01 ◼   ► paperwork. And the second thing is, he was the only person in the entire organization

00:18:05 ◼   ► who had the authority to make stupid-ass comments. You could not get... You couldn't get... You

00:18:10 ◼   ► couldn't call Apple and say, "Can you tell us what you guys think of this?" You're never going to get

00:18:13 ◼   ► anyone on the phone. No one will ever give you a line. But if you're talking to Steve Jobs,

00:18:17 ◼   ► you never know who's going to stop him. And most of the time, he was very controlled and didn't

00:18:20 ◼   ► say a thing, but occasionally you'd push that one button and he'd be like, "You know what?

00:18:24 ◼   ► That thing is a piece of crap. Let me tell you why." And you're like, "Ooh, this is the

00:18:27 ◼   ► stuff." Because you could never get that any other way. Now it's like Phil Schiller's going

00:18:32 ◼   ► to come up and make a quip about easy mode or whatever thing that they're going to be

00:18:36 ◼   ► showing for iOS 7 or new iPhones. They'll make an off-handed quip about something else,

00:18:41 ◼   ► but when the press gets him after the fact, he's just going to repeat his talking points.

00:18:46 ◼   ► He's not going to go off on a three-second diatribe about, you know, like the bag of

00:18:50 ◼   ► hurt thing, that's not like a rehearsed talking point.

00:18:52 ◼   ► That was like, someone asked him about Blu-ray, and he said, "You know what?

00:18:56 ◼   ► That stuff is crap."

00:18:57 ◼   ► And if that wasn't in the talking points, it's not going to come out of Tim Cook's

00:19:01 ◼   ► mouth or Phil Schiller's mouth.

00:19:03 ◼   ► He was the best when he fired from the hip, and he did it rarely, but when he did it,

00:19:06 ◼   ► it was fantastic.

00:19:07 ◼   ► See, I think a lot, like, I bet he had that phrase "bag of hurt" turning over in his

00:19:11 ◼   ► head for weeks or months, and he was just waiting for a time to use it.

00:19:15 ◼   ► I bet he had a nice arsenal of what he thinks about X, and we usually just didn't hear it.

00:19:21 ◼   ► Yeah, they're discussed internally. Anyone who's had these conversations with them internally is

00:19:26 ◼   ► going to be like, "Oh, he's giving greatest hits of the rants we've all had internally."

00:19:30 ◼   ► But normally that stuff would just stay inside the company, but he was the one guy who could

00:19:34 ◼   ► let it out when he felt like it, just for the hell of it. I always wonder how much stuff he does

00:19:39 ◼   ► ad-libbing like that. One of the ones that comes to mind—I really hope someone writes a tell-all

00:19:44 ◼   ► book about this stuff was back when he introduced the G5 and I think he said, "And they're

00:19:49 ◼   ► going to be at 3 GHz in a year." Someone in the chat room can correct me on the timelines,

00:19:53 ◼   ► right? And it's like, "Did someone from IBM tell him that?" He'd go, "You know what? Screw

00:19:57 ◼   ► them. They better be at 3 GHz within a year, and I'm just going to say they're going to

00:20:00 ◼   ► be, and if they're not, I'm going to blame them later." And everyone else would be like,

00:20:04 ◼   ► "Well, what are you going to do?" Steve Jobs says whatever he wants.

00:20:09 ◼   ► Alright, speaking of Apple, you want to discuss this WWDC situation?

00:20:15 ◼   ► I mean, unfortunately, it's only going to be relevant mostly to our live listeners,

00:20:19 ◼   ► of which there are now approximately 220, which is kind of crazy to think about.

00:20:25 ◼   ► But it'll only probably be relevant to them, because by the time this comes out, of course,

00:20:29 ◼   ► it will be...

00:20:30 ◼   ► We're going to release this probably on Friday, so we will already have or not have our tickets.

00:20:35 ◼   ► Well, we should confidently predict what's going to happen so people can laugh at us

00:20:39 ◼   ► in retrospect when they find out what actually did happen to us.

00:20:42 ◼   ► That's a fair point.

00:20:43 ◼   ► So I will confidently predict that I will try my darndest to get a ticket, fail, and

00:20:49 ◼   ► then go fetal for the rest of the week and weekend, crying miserably about how I didn't

00:20:53 ◼   ► get a ticket.

00:20:54 ◼   ► I still feel like I'm going to be able to get one.

00:20:55 ◼   ► Like, what was it, two hours last year or something?

00:20:57 ◼   ► If we're all there, you know, and Marco is starting to get on board with Marco's optimistic

00:21:02 ◼   ► prediction is like, "Look, they use it for iPhone orders. Way more people want an iPhone

00:21:05 ◼   ► than want to go to the WRC." There are many assumptions in that statement, one of which

00:21:10 ◼   ► is that this is the same system as used as iPhones, which I don't necessarily believe.

00:21:14 ◼   ► But hey, it could happen. The servers could stay up. And if they do, presumably everyone

00:21:19 ◼   ► who's there, sitting there, at 1 p.m., going click, click, click. Don't you think all those

00:21:23 ◼   ► people are going to get tickets? I hope so.

00:21:25 ◼   ► Yeah, but the problem is, I believe—I don't remember the gentleman's name, and I couldn't

00:21:29 ◼   ► pronounce it even if I remembered it. But the guy who did the WWDC alerts that you could

00:21:35 ◼   ► jump the line if you paid money.

00:21:37 ◼   ► Oh, that poor guy. Or all those poor people.

00:21:40 ◼   ► Yes. Well, beside that, I believe—

00:21:42 ◼   ► I don't feel sorry for the guy at all. I think he made out quite nicely, and this is

00:21:45 ◼   ► probably the last year he ever will.

00:21:47 ◼   ► Well, that's true.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Well, he's refunding everyone's money, I assume.

00:21:49 ◼   ► I don't know. And I wouldn't—wow. Email John. But no, anyway. Crap, I totally lost

00:21:57 ◼   ► my train of thought. And now we're doing it live!

00:21:59 ◼   ► Well, you know, and I would imagine that...

00:22:02 ◼   ► I mean, so what Apple did today, to recap for people listening in the far future,

00:22:06 ◼   ► is for, I believe, the first time ever, because it's only been necessary for the last,

00:22:11 ◼   ► I don't know, five years or so, but for the first time,

00:22:14 ◼   ► Apple announced WWDC

00:22:17 ◼   ► and its dates and its availability before the tickets were actually

00:22:20 ◼   ► available to buy.

00:22:22 ◼   ► And so they've said basically, "Buy the tickets tomorrow at this time."

00:22:25 ◼   ► And so it solves a lot of problems.

00:22:28 ◼   ► In previous years, like last year,

00:22:31 ◼   ► two years ago tickets sold out in about 12 hours.

00:22:33 ◼   ► Last year tickets sold out in about two hours.

00:22:36 ◼   ► And last year, the best time to release a press release

00:22:44 ◼   ► in the PR industry is about 8.30 in the morning.

00:22:48 ◼   ► So Apple tends to ship out all their press releases

00:22:52 ◼   ► and their new product announcements,

00:22:54 ◼   ► and they tend to lift embargoes at like 8.31 a.m.

00:22:58 ◼   ► And generally you want to do this,

00:23:02 ◼   ► not on Monday if you can help it,

00:23:03 ◼   ► 'cause there's a lot of competition

00:23:04 ◼   ► from things that built up over the weekend

00:23:06 ◼   ► on Monday for coverage,

00:23:07 ◼   ► so you don't want to compete with that.

00:23:08 ◼   ► You also want to do it on Friday,

00:23:09 ◼   ► because on Friday you're about to enter the weekend,

00:23:12 ◼   ► a lot of people aren't paying attention,

00:23:14 ◼   ► and there's not going to be a lot of time

00:23:15 ◼   ► to announce for people to write up reactions,

00:23:19 ◼   ► and they're going to have the weekend

00:23:20 ◼   ► and then they'll forget about it.

00:23:22 ◼   ► So generally you want to do it early in the week but not Monday.

00:23:25 ◼   ► So things are usually announced on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

00:23:29 ◼   ► And so it was pretty easy to predict that the announcement of this conference was probably

00:23:35 ◼   ► going to happen again, just like it did the year before, probably going to happen again

00:23:39 ◼   ► at a few minutes after 8.30 in the morning on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

00:23:44 ◼   ► And sure enough it did.

00:23:45 ◼   ► And it did it right after the day after the earnings call.

00:23:48 ◼   ► And there's, I don't know the details of this.

00:23:51 ◼   ► There's the SEC Quiet Period Guidelines, and I'm not qualified, and neither are you guys

00:23:58 ◼   ► as far as I know, none of us are qualified to talk about whether Apple is required to

00:24:04 ◼   ► stay silent, but it sounds like they're not.

00:24:06 ◼   ► They're not required.

00:24:07 ◼   ► Right.

00:24:08 ◼   ► It's not even an SEC thing, it's just something that people do.

00:24:10 ◼   ► It's like a guideline or a practice.

00:24:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a de facto thing as far as I know.

00:24:14 ◼   ► I don't even think the SEC recommends, it's just what everybody does, and once everybody

00:24:18 ◼   ► does it by not doing it, you would stick out, but I don't think the SEC tells you that you

00:24:22 ◼   ► should or even recommends that you do.

00:24:24 ◼   ► Well, but it's kind of, it's almost requisite.

00:24:27 ◼   ► You're right.

00:24:28 ◼   ► It's not required, but it's almost requisite.

00:24:29 ◼   ► My dad actually works for investor relations for a really, really big company.

00:24:33 ◼   ► So he's qualified to talk about that.

00:24:35 ◼   ► So he would be qualified, and he's been doing this for many, many years, including the time

00:24:39 ◼   ► I lived with him when I was in high school and whatnot.

00:24:43 ◼   ► My understanding is that if you say anything shortly before an earnings announcement, it

00:24:49 ◼   ► could reasonably be construed to affect the result of those earnings.

00:24:54 ◼   ► And so that would be releasing insider information before the company has released their earnings.

00:25:01 ◼   ► And thus, the logical thing to do is for all these companies to just shut the crap up for

00:25:07 ◼   ► like two or three weeks.

00:25:08 ◼   ► I don't remember how long it is, but some duration of time right before earnings.

00:25:12 ◼   ► So this way there are no slip ups.

00:25:14 ◼   ► And so to your point, Marco, it seems reasonable

00:25:16 ◼   ► that even though WWDC on the surface doesn't seem

00:25:20 ◼   ► like it would affect the stock price or anything like that,

00:25:22 ◼   ► for the last couple of years it's been announced

00:25:24 ◼   ► the day after their earnings announcement.

00:25:26 ◼   ► - Right, and so it was fairly easy to predict

00:25:29 ◼   ► that the announcement was going to happen this morning.

00:25:33 ◼   ► But nobody was predicting, and I heard a few rumors,

00:25:37 ◼   ► and I think a few other people did too,

00:25:38 ◼   ► but nobody was really predicting that this would happen

00:25:41 ◼   ► where the announcement was indeed at a predicted time,

00:25:44 ◼   ► but the on-sale date of the tickets is gonna be tomorrow.

00:25:47 ◼   ► And it solves a lot of problems.

00:25:48 ◼   ► One of the problems with last year's

00:25:50 ◼   ► that people complain about a lot

00:25:52 ◼   ► is because it was 8.30 in the morning Eastern,

00:25:55 ◼   ► it really screwed the Pacific Coast

00:25:57 ◼   ► because by the time they all woke up, it was sold out.

00:26:02 ◼   ► So it was kinda rough on people in the Pacific time zone.

00:26:06 ◼   ► And then of course, all time is around the world too.

00:26:09 ◼   ► If 830 a.m. Eastern, because GMT minus five is in the middle of the night for you and

00:26:15 ◼   ► your time zone, you're kind of screwed.

00:26:18 ◼   ► So this was a really good way to do it, I think.

00:26:21 ◼   ► People were speculating maybe they would have a lottery in place.

00:26:24 ◼   ► I'm actually very glad they don't have that because I know I would lose it because

00:26:27 ◼   ► I always lose drawings and raffles and things.

00:26:29 ◼   ► You and me both.

00:26:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:32 ◼   ► So, you know, I'm glad there's not a lottery thing, or at least they aren't all lottery

00:26:38 ◼   ► sales, but... Well, you're glad now. Will you be glad?

00:26:42 ◼   ► Right. A lottery is terrible because you want some

00:26:46 ◼   ► system that is... You don't want it to be random. You want some system that has some

00:26:51 ◼   ► kind of merit-based selection process, even if that merit is, who wants it the most? Who

00:26:57 ◼   ► is willing to wake up in the middle of the night? Who is willing to set up little things

00:27:01 ◼   ► to monitor? Maybe that's not the best way to do it, but that's the way anything in life

00:27:06 ◼   ► Who wants it the most? And if those people get it first and you're gonna go play in No Fara,

00:27:09 ◼   ► I don't want to stay up in the middle of the night. Well, I guess you don't want it as much as that other person wants to go there.

00:27:13 ◼   ► You know what I mean? And like that is so much better than random because then you and your friends can band together and

00:27:18 ◼   ► be idiots and stay up in the middle of the night on the other side of the world and get tickets and you can all go

00:27:23 ◼   ► together. Whereas if it's a lottery, maybe you get to go, but your two friends don't and then you have a worse experience

00:27:27 ◼   ► and it's just stupid. Right. So we don't know yet. You know, we will know in less than 24 hours

00:27:33 ◼   ► whether the three of us are going or not or whether some subset of us are going.

00:27:37 ◼   ► But the problem is, the old system, it gave more room for people who really, really cared

00:27:45 ◼   ► about it to have an advantage because we would be predicting the times and we would be waking

00:27:49 ◼   ► up early every day in April, basically.

00:27:54 ◼   ► We would be the ones setting up monitoring systems and hammering the page to see when

00:27:59 ◼   ► it changes.

00:28:00 ◼   ► So certainly now what they've done is made it so that you don't have to be paying that

00:28:06 ◼   ► much attention to have a chance at it.

00:28:08 ◼   ► So it is more fair in the sense that it will give way more people who are interested in

00:28:14 ◼   ► going a chance at getting tickets, but at the expense of crazy nerds like us who—oh,

00:28:19 ◼   ► wait, somebody yelled at us.

00:28:20 ◼   ► We're not supposed to say nerds.

00:28:21 ◼   ► Crazy geeks like us who really want it badly.

00:28:24 ◼   ► Wait, somebody yelled at us?

00:28:25 ◼   ► Yeah, some guy on Twitter.

00:28:26 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:28:27 ◼   ► I don't agree with him, but okay.

00:28:28 ◼   ► We're going to keep saying nerds.

00:28:30 ◼   ► Okay, so I think you're qualified to set the word on that.

00:28:35 ◼   ► So anyway, nerds like us are now at a slight disadvantage that there's going to be way

00:28:40 ◼   ► more competition from people who care a little bit less about it or who would have otherwise

00:28:46 ◼   ► been awake at that time anyway.

00:28:49 ◼   ► The only reason it's slightly worse for us is that it brought a few more people into

00:28:55 ◼   ► the fold. People who really do want to go, but their alerting thing didn't work, or they were

00:29:01 ◼   ► asleep but they didn't hear their phone go off. Those people who kind of unfairly got screwed

00:29:06 ◼   ► last year, they are now competing with us. But I think that's reasonable.

00:29:10 ◼   ► It's more than that though, because when I went two years ago, when I went in 2011,

00:29:15 ◼   ► my then employer, who I don't work for anymore, my then employer was probably going to fund my trip.

00:29:25 ◼   ► And when the tickets went on sale, I needed to go get final approval.

00:29:29 ◼   ► Marco, you've spoken about this at some point or another in the past.

00:29:32 ◼   ► I needed to go get final approval from my boss in order to spend a whole bunch of money

00:29:35 ◼   ► and get it reimbursed.

00:29:37 ◼   ► And now, all those people who are in that situation, they've done that today.

00:29:43 ◼   ► So and the point I was going to make earlier when I lost my train of thought is, I thought

00:29:47 ◼   ► that the gentleman who did the pay to jump the line alert system said he had like 20,000

00:29:52 ◼   ► people in his alert queue and there is something to the order of from our

00:29:57 ◼   ► friends in the chat room 5,000 tickets that you can buy and so even if even if

00:30:02 ◼   ► it's the same system that handles millions of iPhone orders when they are

00:30:06 ◼   ► brand new you're still talking about a whole crud load of people trying to vie

00:30:12 ◼   ► for 5,000 seats and that's just I'm really scared that's not gonna end well

00:30:16 ◼   ► for me yeah that's actually that's a bigger ratio than I would have expected

00:30:19 ◼   ► because you got to figure like not everybody who wants to buy a ticket even

00:30:22 ◼   ► sign up for that service, you know, there's probably some percentage of them who did,

00:30:27 ◼   ► but I don't know.

00:30:28 ◼   ► Well, the good thing is that this year, Apple says they're going to release the videos during

00:30:32 ◼   ► the conference, so they won't be live streamed, I assume, but like maybe you can figure it

00:30:36 ◼   ► like the day after or something.

00:30:39 ◼   ► And also, they don't do the idiotic thing where the only people who get the videos were

00:30:43 ◼   ► the people who actually attended WODC, which was incredibly stupid.

00:30:46 ◼   ► So now, if you were just a paid developer, they just say a registered developer, I assume

00:30:50 ◼   ► they need to pay developer free their iOS or the Mac and you want to see WWC sessions,

00:30:57 ◼   ► I assume that while WWC is going on, during that week they will slowly be doling out downloads

00:31:02 ◼   ► on the same way they always do on the iTunes, you know, what is it?

00:31:06 ◼   ► It's not iTunes University, but anyway, the place where you can download videos through

00:31:10 ◼   ► iTunes of WWC only they'll come out as WWC happens instead of having to wait a week or

00:31:16 ◼   ► two weeks, which even a week or two week isn't a big deal, but like this takes some of the

00:31:19 ◼   ► this thing out and hopefully will discourage people.

00:31:21 ◼   ► I try to discourage people on Twitter.

00:31:23 ◼   ► Discourage people from, it's expensive.

00:31:24 ◼   ► You have to, you know, if you don't live in the area,

00:31:27 ◼   ► you have to, you know, buy a hotel for a week

00:31:30 ◼   ► and you have to buy the ticket, which is not cheap.

00:31:32 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, it ends up being like $3,000.

00:31:34 ◼   ► - It's a lot of money, so stay home.

00:31:36 ◼   ► And you get almost all of the experience from home.

00:31:40 ◼   ► I just watched the videos.

00:31:41 ◼   ► And that, like, if I don't get a ticket,

00:31:43 ◼   ► it's not gonna be the end of the world for me

00:31:44 ◼   ► because that will be what I do.

00:31:47 ◼   ► I may still have to take a week off from work,

00:31:48 ◼   ► but that's--

00:31:50 ◼   ► - So you would take a week off of work

00:31:52 ◼   ► to sit in your house and watch these videos?

00:31:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the thing about that is

00:31:56 ◼   ► you would think that that would work out fine,

00:31:58 ◼   ► but the main problem is that the videos

00:32:00 ◼   ► would end up being released, well I don't know,

00:32:02 ◼   ► I don't know what kind of lag they are,

00:32:03 ◼   ► but the amount of time I can dedicate

00:32:05 ◼   ► to watch WWDC videos is much smaller

00:32:07 ◼   ► 'cause you gotta get kids out of the house in the morning

00:32:09 ◼   ► and the kids come home from school.

00:32:10 ◼   ► I mean, it's like when you're at WWDC,

00:32:12 ◼   ► you can just dedicate your heads down

00:32:14 ◼   ► whole life to just WWDC.

00:32:17 ◼   ► I mean, so far, every year that I've gone,

00:32:19 ◼   ► I've gone for I think four years now, something like that,

00:32:22 ◼   ► every year there have been a few sessions

00:32:23 ◼   ► where they were double booked

00:32:25 ◼   ► against something else I wanted to go to,

00:32:26 ◼   ► so I made a note and I told myself,

00:32:28 ◼   ► I'm gonna go and watch this video when it comes out

00:32:30 ◼   ► of this other one that I'm not gonna see now.

00:32:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, and did you ever actually do that?

00:32:33 ◼   ► - I never do. (laughs)

00:32:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:32:35 ◼   ► - I think I might have watched two or three videos

00:32:37 ◼   ► after the fact total, and usually that was only

00:32:39 ◼   ► because I was about to or already coding against some API

00:32:43 ◼   ► that the videos were about,

00:32:44 ◼   ► and I wanted to look something up

00:32:46 ◼   ► or go back to a video of a session I already did see live

00:32:49 ◼   ► to remember like, "Oh yeah, how did they do this one thing?"

00:32:52 ◼   ► Like the scroll view session, I always go back to that

00:32:54 ◼   ► 'cause it's full of crazy good stuff.

00:32:55 ◼   ► And there's times where I'll go back for reference purposes,

00:33:00 ◼   ► but I'm never gonna make two hours and sit down

00:33:03 ◼   ► and watch a couple of these things.

00:33:05 ◼   ► - I've got the WWDC 2003 DVD set to my right.

00:33:10 ◼   ► I kept it because it came in a metal box.

00:33:12 ◼   ► I don't know if people remember that.

00:33:13 ◼   ► And the first WWDC I went to was two years ago.

00:33:15 ◼   ► So I was never actually able to go, but I either knew people who went or knew people

00:33:19 ◼   ► who could have gone but got the DVD set and set as part of the...

00:33:22 ◼   ► Do you remember, Marco, where you...

00:33:24 ◼   ► I guess you probably weren't around when they had the...

00:33:26 ◼   ► I'm gonna get the name wrong.

00:33:27 ◼   ► I think it was...

00:33:28 ◼   ► There was different ADC levels.

00:33:30 ◼   ► It was select and premiere.

00:33:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:32 ◼   ► I came in right as that was about to end, so I did see it, and it was like 500, 1,000,

00:33:38 ◼   ► and 3,000, something like that.

00:33:40 ◼   ► I think it was just...

00:33:42 ◼   ► Select was 500 and premiere.

00:33:43 ◼   ► I think it was premiere.

00:33:44 ◼   ► the chat room and correct me. And that was like four digits. I don't remember what it

00:33:48 ◼   ► was. But what you got was like one WWDC ticket and you got the DVDs and you got like, it

00:33:52 ◼   ► was, you got lots of stuff. And so anyway, I got, I got new DVDs.

00:33:56 ◼   ► And you got a big hardware discount. And yeah, I know. And a big, that's the whole reason

00:34:00 ◼   ► we used to do these things, friends and I.

00:34:02 ◼   ► Right, because you'd get like 400 bucks off.

00:34:03 ◼   ► Yeah, we'd go in together and have a bunch of different hardware discounts. And that

00:34:06 ◼   ► was the way I bought all our Macs was the hardware discounts. But anyway, I had that

00:34:10 ◼   ► DVD set and that was back in the days when I would get those DVD sets and I would watch

00:34:14 ◼   ► single session, or just every single one. I go through them in order. And these days,

00:34:20 ◼   ► when I actually attend, I don't obviously do that because a lot of them I was there

00:34:23 ◼   ► for so I don't have to watch them again. But I will go back and look at the ones that I

00:34:26 ◼   ► didn't see. The only thing I'll start skipping now is like, now that it's like, there's a

00:34:31 ◼   ► track on like web development. Well, I did watch a couple of those from last year, but

00:34:34 ◼   ► I'm not going to watch those. And even some of the iOS ones I'll skip because I'm mostly

00:34:38 ◼   ► in there for the Mac OS X stuff. But it used to be when it was just Mac and there wasn't

00:34:41 ◼   ► like a track about how to do CSS or high DPI images or other esoteric things that may not

00:34:49 ◼   ► really be in Apple's wheelhouse and you could just learn about it or may have already learned

00:34:52 ◼   ► about it otherwise. I would just watch every single session. And that sounds boring, but

00:34:57 ◼   ► I find maybe as I'm getting older, I have less time from that because the kids take

00:35:02 ◼   ► a lot of time and everything, but that's the way I would consume things. When I was getting

00:35:07 ◼   ► into a hobby or something, I would read everything there was to read about that hobby. When I

00:35:10 ◼   ► learning UNIX, I just bought O'Reilly books and just read them from cover to cover.

00:35:15 ◼   ► And today you read toaster manuals of toasters you don't own.

00:35:19 ◼   ► Those are much shorter. I read UNIX power tools twice. I remember getting the end of

00:35:22 ◼   ► that and going back to the beginning and reading through it again. That's not a small book.

00:35:26 ◼   ► Well, but you make an interesting point, Marco, and I know you said that jokingly, but I really

00:35:30 ◼   ► shouldn't say this on the show. Well, actually, it will come out after the fact, so it doesn't

00:35:33 ◼   ► matter. But part of the draw of WWDC is the experiences you have outside of the sessions,

00:35:39 ◼   ► and the sessions are unbelievable. In my two years of going to WWDC, I've only skipped

00:35:43 ◼   ► three or four sessions, or three or four slots, I guess I should say. And some of the best

00:35:48 ◼   ► experiences I've had, though, are networking with people. Like, for example, I met David

00:35:51 ◼   ► Smith there, and David just pointed out in the chat room that the gentleman whose first

00:35:58 ◼   ► name, I don't know how to pronounce, but his surname is Prendeville, who ran the WWDC

00:36:03 ◼   ► alert thing. Apparently he only had 600 subscribers, which is a lot better than the 20,000 I apparently

00:36:10 ◼   ► invented out of thin air. So thank you, David.

00:36:12 ◼   ► Oh, good. That's way more encouraging.

00:36:14 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe the doomsday scenario wasn't quite so bad.

00:36:16 ◼   ► But I remember, I think that 20,000 number, I remember last year when, I don't know if

00:36:20 ◼   ► they did, did the WWDC Alerts Twitter thing?

00:36:23 ◼   ► It was oversubscribed.

00:36:24 ◼   ► Yeah, that, the WWDC Alerts Twitter thing had something like 20,000. I forget the exact

00:36:30 ◼   ► number, but it was in that range.

00:36:32 ◼   ► And so--

00:36:33 ◼   ► I thought it was 8,000.

00:36:34 ◼   ► I was having good memories.

00:36:35 ◼   ► Yeah, 8,000.

00:36:36 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:36:37 ◼   ► It was more than the tickets that were available.

00:36:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:40 ◼   ► I think last year they sold something like 5,500 tickets.

00:36:43 ◼   ► And they've been at that number pretty comfortably

00:36:46 ◼   ► or near that number pretty comfortably for enough time

00:36:48 ◼   ► that we can be pretty sure that that's roughly what they

00:36:50 ◼   ► think the maximum should be.

00:36:52 ◼   ► And certainly going there for the last few years,

00:36:55 ◼   ► few years, you can see in Moscone it is packed full.

00:37:00 ◼   ► And it is so hard, it's just line after line after line.

00:37:03 ◼   ► You get out of a session, if you want to get a popular

00:37:06 ◼   ► session, if you want to get in there even,

00:37:09 ◼   ► you have to get there like a half hour before it starts

00:37:11 ◼   ► and stand in some long line.

00:37:13 ◼   ► - Which means you've skipped the session before.

00:37:15 ◼   ► - Right, I mean it's really quite difficult to maneuver

00:37:19 ◼   ► around the conference with the number they have now.

00:37:22 ◼   ► They certainly can't sell more tickets

00:37:23 ◼   ► and keep it in that venue.

00:37:24 ◼   ► It's still not the PAX level of waiting, because I find that you don't usually have to actually

00:37:30 ◼   ► skip the previous session. You'll just get a crappier seat. Whereas with PAX, you have

00:37:34 ◼   ► to skip the previous two sessions to get in line. The only thing you have to skip sessions

00:37:38 ◼   ► for, I think, is if you want to get into the lunch session, like the JJ Abrams one, I was

00:37:41 ◼   ► in line for that for like an hour and a half.

00:37:43 ◼   ► Right. See, I always miss the crazy good Friday lunch session, because I always have to fly

00:37:47 ◼   ► out at like 1 p.m.

00:37:48 ◼   ► Yep. Same here.

00:37:49 ◼   ► Well, why do you do that to yourself? I book my tickets. I hate traveling, so I need an

00:37:54 ◼   ► entire day to prepare my mind and body for travel.

00:37:57 ◼   ► So you stay on the Friday night?

00:37:59 ◼   ► Yes, no, always.

00:38:00 ◼   ► Oh, see, I don't want to stay the extra night, and I, for the love of all that's

00:38:03 ◼   ► good and holy, I do not want to do a red eye.

00:38:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't want to do a red eye.

00:38:06 ◼   ► No, I never do a red eye, but I want all my flights to be at noon.

00:38:13 ◼   ► That's the way—it's not always possible, but that's what I'm shooting for.

00:38:15 ◼   ► The entire day is just dedicated to travel, and I don't want to wake up early in the

00:38:19 ◼   ► morning.

00:38:20 ◼   ► So, David Smith just put in the chat room, "God, he's my best friend."

00:38:24 ◼   ► just said that the original WWDC Alerts, this is the unpaid completely free one, was around

00:38:31 ◼   ► $9,000.

00:38:32 ◼   ► Look at that, I win.

00:38:33 ◼   ► That's actually pretty promising.

00:38:34 ◼   ► The showcase showdown.

00:38:35 ◼   ► Without going over.

00:38:36 ◼   ► Does that mean you win both of the showcases then?

00:38:40 ◼   ► No, it wasn't within $100.

00:38:41 ◼   ► Oh, darn.

00:38:42 ◼   ► Our second sponsor for the show this week is another new sponsor.

00:38:46 ◼   ► It is Hover.

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00:39:20 ◼   ► And the reason why is because it's generally a terrible business. It's full of weird, just like, constant commodity bargain basement pricing, followed by various, oftentimes really sleazy ways to make additional money for the registrar on top of that.

00:39:37 ◼   ► And I'm not going to name names here because who cares,

00:39:41 ◼   ► but you all know the other registrars I'm talking about.

00:39:43 ◼   ► Like there was one, not the elephant one,

00:39:46 ◼   ► but there was one that if you searched for a name

00:39:49 ◼   ► just to see if it was available,

00:39:51 ◼   ► they would register it for like,

00:39:52 ◼   ► they would hold it for like two weeks.

00:39:54 ◼   ► So that if you still wanted that name,

00:39:56 ◼   ► you had to go through them

00:39:57 ◼   ► and pay their extra high price for it.

00:39:59 ◼   ► Like domain registrars do sleazy stuff like that

00:40:01 ◼   ► all the time, crazy upselling tactics, it's terrible.

00:40:05 ◼   ► Hover is clean, it's simple, and it's a powerful domain name

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00:40:18 ◼   ► I believe that's what it stood for, right?

00:40:19 ◼   ► Is that--

00:40:20 ◼   ► I don't remember what it said.

00:40:21 ◼   ► Casey, John won't know, but you should know.

00:40:23 ◼   ► Oh, I remember.

00:40:23 ◼   ► I don't know about Windows shareware.

00:40:25 ◼   ► I heard it was in Two Cows, though.

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00:41:22 ◼   ► because usually it's the kind of thing where you let things

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00:41:31 ◼   ► If you try to change a DNS record,

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00:41:34 ◼   ► Like you go try to make a DNS entry or buy a new domain

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00:41:41 ◼   ► because it is so-- it's just such a terrible experience

00:41:45 ◼   ► using their control panels and everything.

00:41:47 ◼   ► But then you think, oh, I'll move someday.

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00:41:54 ◼   ► But there's not that pushing need

00:41:57 ◼   ► because you don't really know-- moving things sucks,

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00:42:00 ◼   ► Hover actually offers a moving service.

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00:42:37 ◼   ► a_t_p_

00:42:40 ◼   ► so before we leave the uh... w_w_t_c_ topic uh... are either of you two

00:42:44 ◼   ► gentleman going to go if you don't get a ticket like john you said

00:42:48 ◼   ► in all likelihood you'll probably take off the time but you'll probably stay at

00:42:52 ◼   ► home yeah i can't i can't uh...

00:42:54 ◼   ► justify going if I don't, because what would I do for the week?

00:42:57 ◼   ► Like, although, like you said, that like one of the reasons that I am actually

00:43:01 ◼   ► going is that I do have interactions with people outside the sessions, but it's

00:43:04 ◼   ► mostly so that I can have like dedicated time where there's no distractions and

00:43:12 ◼   ► no other demands on my time.

00:43:13 ◼   ► I'm just there to attend sessions.

00:43:15 ◼   ► And secondarily, and a close second is if after a session is over, I just need one

00:43:21 ◼   ► thing clarified and it's not clear from the notes, the guy who gave the

00:43:24 ◼   ► presentation is at the front of the room and I can go ask him.

00:43:27 ◼   ► And then third is the thing that everyone says, "Oh, all the people you meet outside,"

00:43:31 ◼   ► and everything like that.

00:43:32 ◼   ► And that's definitely true as well, but for business purposes, I guess, for research purposes,

00:43:39 ◼   ► it depends on who I'm meeting with, I guess.

00:43:41 ◼   ► If I'm meeting with big fancy people in super secret, then yeah, I get a lot of value out

00:43:47 ◼   ► of those meetings, but I can't bank on that.

00:43:48 ◼   ► I can't guarantee that I'm going to have a private meeting with Tim Cook when I'm there.

00:43:52 ◼   ► So I wouldn't go there with no ticket hoping that I'll just happen to catch Craig Federighi

00:44:00 ◼   ► on the steps of Moscone and Ben Dizier for 15 minutes because that's probably not going

00:44:05 ◼   ► to happen.

00:44:07 ◼   ► And more importantly, how could I justify it as a business expense for the purpose of

00:44:13 ◼   ► writing my review if I don't even have a ticket?

00:44:14 ◼   ► So that's kind of bogus.

00:44:15 ◼   ► So yeah, if I don't get a ticket and if I can't finagle a ticket through whatever crazy

00:44:21 ◼   ► please somebody out there from Apple, help me, love me" type of system, then I'll

00:44:25 ◼   ► just stay at home and watch the videos.

00:44:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know what I would do.

00:44:29 ◼   ► Hopefully we won't have to think about this because we'll get tickets, but if I don't

00:44:35 ◼   ► get a ticket, I might still...

00:44:38 ◼   ► I would have a higher chance of going based on what you just said.

00:44:42 ◼   ► I would be more likely to go than you, but I still wouldn't say right now, "Yes, I'm

00:44:47 ◼   ► definitely going."

00:44:48 ◼   ► I have a hotel reservation because it's totally refundable, but I haven't booked a plane yet

00:44:54 ◼   ► because I'm not going to book a flight.

00:44:56 ◼   ► I'll pay the extra couple hundred bucks, whatever the price is raised to tomorrow, if I get

00:45:00 ◼   ► the ticket, rather than buy the plane ticket today on the off chance I don't get a ticket

00:45:05 ◼   ► tomorrow.

00:45:06 ◼   ► Yeah, we should tell everyone about that because I think that was a good three-way triumph

00:45:09 ◼   ► of all of us having the wherewithal and guts to actually buy our hotel tickets, what, a

00:45:15 ◼   ► month ahead of time?

00:45:16 ◼   ► Yeah, we bought it in March.

00:45:17 ◼   ► Yeah, and I forgot who initiated that, but like you always hear like, you can

00:45:22 ◼   ► always look at the schedule and ballpark and you kind of know, yeah, it's probably

00:45:25 ◼   ► going to be like this week, like every year that's been the case where you could

00:45:28 ◼   ► look at that, but it's one thing to look at the schedule and know that it's another

00:45:32 ◼   ► thing to actually pull the trigger and get the tickets.

00:45:33 ◼   ► But like, I forget who pointed out, but like, you know, hotel tickets are

00:45:37 ◼   ► refundable 24 hours ahead of time.

00:45:38 ◼   ► So there's no risk in doing it, except if it's some sort of hotel that has an

00:45:42 ◼   ► annoying website that makes refunds annoying, or you don't have any confidence

00:45:46 ◼   ► they're going to correctly process it and they're going to charge you anyway even though

00:45:48 ◼   ► you don't show up right. So if you have a good hotel with a reasonable website, it's

00:45:52 ◼   ► worth doing. So hey, we had our hotel reservations a month in advance and they were actually

00:45:58 ◼   ► cheaper than even the Apple special where we're reserving a block of room for you rates

00:46:03 ◼   ► for the same place.

00:46:04 ◼   ► Right. Well, and so to answer the question I asked of the two of you, I don't know what

00:46:09 ◼   ► I'm going to do if and when I don't get a ticket. I've already established I'll go fetal

00:46:13 ◼   ► for about three or four days. But a part of me thinks it's worth going to network. It's

00:46:18 ◼   ► worth going to see people, to see the David Smiths and the Jim Dalrymples of the world,

00:46:24 ◼   ► and certainly to see Marco or John or whoever is out there. But I don't know if I would

00:46:31 ◼   ► go for the whole week. Our good friend David Smith, friend of the show David Smith, has

00:46:34 ◼   ► said he's going, and I believe he's intending to go for the whole week. I don't know what

00:46:39 ◼   ► I'm going to do. And I'm such a wimp and so indecisive, I can't figure out what I'm going

00:46:44 ◼   ► to do. But maybe Marco and I, maybe we'll commiserate, maybe we'll celebrate. I don't

00:46:48 ◼   ► know.

00:46:49 ◼   ► What would you do though? I guess the only advantage is that you could stay out all night,

00:46:53 ◼   ► which is not my thing anyway, but if it's your thing, you can do that and then sleep

00:46:56 ◼   ► during the day instead of having to get a present. But even then, I guess if you just

00:47:00 ◼   ► want to go and socialize with people. You wouldn't be getting much done from a business

00:47:08 ◼   ► perspective, unless you're going there to try to like, "I need a partner for my new venture," or,

00:47:12 ◼   ► "I'm trying to recruit a designer to help me and I want to talk to people and meet people," maybe,

00:47:17 ◼   ► I don't know. I guess I am the wrong person to ask about what kind of business value you can get at

00:47:22 ◼   ► social interactions. But unless you have money falling out of your ears and you don't have any,

00:47:29 ◼   ► because that's a week of vacation time if you have a job and this is not part of your job,

00:47:35 ◼   ► What else could you use that week for? What else could you use that thousands, really thousands of

00:47:39 ◼   ► dollars for? It's a tough call. You're absolutely right. But now this isn't an oranges to oranges

00:47:46 ◼   ► comparison, but if I wasn't at WWDC, what was it, 2011, then firstly, I wouldn't have met you.

00:47:52 ◼   ► And secondly, I wouldn't have been there with Marco and Merlin and a friend of mine, Eric

00:47:57 ◼   ► Schurter, to buy you a toaster. So there's something to be said for these social interactions.

00:48:02 ◼   ► It's clearly important. That was one day though. I know a lot of people who aren't,

00:48:05 ◼   ► If they say, "If I don't get tickets, I'll go, but not for the whole week."

00:48:08 ◼   ► That makes sense to me, because you want to be there for the keynote excitement and the

00:48:11 ◼   ► few.

00:48:12 ◼   ► Maybe you'll arrange with people, like, "Oh, we should go out tonight, and then the other

00:48:16 ◼   ► group of friends should go out the next night."

00:48:18 ◼   ► Then you see the few people you're going to see, and then you're out of there.

00:48:21 ◼   ► That's why I'm saying maybe I wouldn't go for a whole week, and I'm making this up.

00:48:25 ◼   ► Maybe I'd go arrive Sunday, stay there Monday, Tuesday, and fly back Wednesday or something

00:48:30 ◼   ► like that.

00:48:31 ◼   ► I'm tired just thinking about W

00:48:35 ◼   ► Introvert versus extrovert. Does the thought of seeing all these wonderful people who you love

00:48:41 ◼   ► make you feel exhausted? You may be an introvert. Oh, I'm excited. I really hope... Because,

00:48:46 ◼   ► the more I think about it, the more I think, if I didn't have a ticket, I would probably still go.

00:48:53 ◼   ► But I think it would suck. Because most conferences, like South by Southwest is a joke.

00:49:00 ◼   ► The sessions in South by Southwest are terrible.

00:49:03 ◼   ► They're mostly panels where people just read Twitter

00:49:06 ◼   ► and BS their way through.

00:49:08 ◼   ► As an audience member, it's pretty hard.

00:49:11 ◼   ► It's pretty unusual to be in a South by Southwest session that

00:49:14 ◼   ► was worth your time.

00:49:16 ◼   ► They do exist, but they're certainly the minority.

00:49:20 ◼   ► But that conference is all about drinking and partying

00:49:22 ◼   ► and socializing.

00:49:23 ◼   ► And so if you're going to South by Southwest without a ticket,

00:49:27 ◼   ► you'll still get almost all of the value of that conference.

00:49:30 ◼   ► But WWDC, for me at least, is not that way.

00:49:35 ◼   ► I mean, it does have drinking and partying,

00:49:37 ◼   ► but for me, the great value of that conference

00:49:41 ◼   ► is the sessions and even the socializing

00:49:43 ◼   ► that happens in Moscone.

00:49:46 ◼   ► I get usually-- - Yeah, that's a good point.

00:49:48 ◼   ► - Usually I get more socializing done

00:49:50 ◼   ► in the chair areas of Moscone between sessions

00:49:54 ◼   ► or if there's one schedule gap

00:49:56 ◼   ► where nothing's really that great,

00:49:57 ◼   ► I'll go sit down and answer email and stuff

00:49:59 ◼   ► and talk to people there.

00:50:00 ◼   ► - And you wanna know why?

00:50:01 ◼   ► Because you can actually hear people.

00:50:03 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

00:50:04 ◼   ► The social environment of yelling at a bar

00:50:09 ◼   ► while everyone's drunk is really not that great.

00:50:12 ◼   ► - You're not gonna get the best development advice

00:50:13 ◼   ► from your favorite developer

00:50:14 ◼   ► when he's had three drinks in him.

00:50:16 ◼   ► - Like it's fun. - Maybe you'll get

00:50:17 ◼   ► the best juicy tips and rumors

00:50:19 ◼   ► and you'll have the best trash talking,

00:50:20 ◼   ► but that's the thing.

00:50:21 ◼   ► If you come out of a session,

00:50:23 ◼   ► some session that is about scroll views and something, and you're sitting next to someone

00:50:27 ◼   ► who you want to talk to, or you see someone in three rows away, when you come out of the

00:50:31 ◼   ► session, that's the perfect opportunity to discuss scroll view performance with a developer

00:50:37 ◼   ► who you're lucky enough to meet in real life, because that's in the front of their mind.

00:50:41 ◼   ► Whereas if you come up to them in a bar later and want to discuss scroll view performance,

00:50:43 ◼   ► they're going to be like, "It's not the time for that now."

00:50:46 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

00:50:47 ◼   ► It's the time for beer.

00:50:48 ◼   ► Yeah, and trash talking whoever you want to trash talk at that time and doing you know complaining about Apple or you know

00:50:54 ◼   ► App review or whatever all the other there's plenty of other things you can do as well

00:50:58 ◼   ► But there is something to be said for like it's like an academic type

00:51:01 ◼   ► Context where you're learning about your craft and your business and that's valuable and like, you know

00:51:06 ◼   ► I'm a lot of people ask me like why I go because I'm not developing an application but you know

00:51:11 ◼   ► I'd go for my review obviously

00:51:12 ◼   ► But if if you're actually making an application I meet so many developers both iOS and the Mac who were like

00:51:18 ◼   ► this one session has made this entire thing worth it for me because now, oh my god,

00:51:22 ◼   ► I can't wait to grab my laptop, run back down to a chair, and

00:51:26 ◼   ► implement this thing that they just showed because it's gonna make my life so much easier and I never realized that it was

00:51:30 ◼   ► so much better way to do this, you know what I mean?

00:51:33 ◼   ► And as long as it's not an iCloud session, that usually turns out pretty well for that developer.

00:51:36 ◼   ► All right, so I'm sorry, I prolonged the WWDC talk for a long time.

00:51:42 ◼   ► I feel like we're probably good here.

00:51:44 ◼   ► And so you'll see via Twitter whether or not any of the three of us got tickets.

00:51:49 ◼   ► And I'm sure if, if I don't, I'll be complaining and moaning like a,

00:51:53 ◼   ► like a baby for weeks.

00:51:55 ◼   ► So let's hope, let's hope for the good of all of the nation and the

00:51:59 ◼   ► world that I actually scored.

00:52:01 ◼   ► So if we don't get tickets, Casey, we'll just sit in a Google

00:52:03 ◼   ► hangout together and stare at quick time videos synchronized.

00:52:06 ◼   ► You might be joking.

00:52:08 ◼   ► I'm all in.

00:52:08 ◼   ► It's like that scene when Harry Met Sally, we'll have the split screen.

00:52:11 ◼   ► and we'll both watch the same session at the same time

00:52:14 ◼   ► while laying in bed.

00:52:15 ◼   ► - Again, you think, you might be joking,

00:52:17 ◼   ► but I'm not, I'm there.

00:52:18 ◼   ► - The funny thing is it would actually be fairly productive

00:52:20 ◼   ► of us to just like arrange like an East Coast meetup

00:52:24 ◼   ► for like one week in August,

00:52:26 ◼   ► where we all just get together

00:52:28 ◼   ► and watch the videos back to back.

00:52:30 ◼   ► - That's true.

00:52:31 ◼   ► - Well, we'll go to the Arment compound.

00:52:32 ◼   ► - There you go.

00:52:34 ◼   ► - That's true.

00:52:35 ◼   ► - We can stay in the guest houses, right, Mark?

00:52:37 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah, on the estate.

00:52:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, something like that.

00:52:41 ◼   ► The crummy thing is, it's actually, Marco is in the middle of the three of us, but what

00:52:45 ◼   ► are you, like two or three hours from John and eight from me?

00:52:48 ◼   ► Six or eight from me?

00:52:49 ◼   ► Yeah, the middle is generous.

00:52:50 ◼   ► I'm way closer to John than you.

00:52:51 ◼   ► Oh, well.

00:52:52 ◼   ► That's your fault.

00:52:53 ◼   ► I'm living down there.

00:52:54 ◼   ► Yeah, but you have 70 mile per hour speed limit roads in your state, so.

00:52:57 ◼   ► No, I think that's just west, right?

00:52:59 ◼   ► No, no.

00:53:00 ◼   ► It's here too.

00:53:01 ◼   ► In full Virginia?

00:53:02 ◼   ► Excuse me, except...

00:53:03 ◼   ► Real Virginia?

00:53:04 ◼   ► In the real Virginia.

00:53:05 ◼   ► Email Marco.

00:53:06 ◼   ► But also consider that we're out of state.

00:53:07 ◼   ► Do you think anybody in West Virginia is listening to this podcast right now?

00:53:11 ◼   ► Probably not.

00:53:12 ◼   ► Let's be realistic here.

00:53:14 ◼   ► But also consider we are not a state, we're Commonwealth.

00:53:16 ◼   ► I believe like Massachusetts, if I'm not mistaken.

00:53:18 ◼   ► Yes.

00:53:19 ◼   ► I don't get it.

00:53:20 ◼   ► I don't know what the difference is either.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Neither do I.

00:53:22 ◼   ► It's just so the residents can say that to people.

00:53:24 ◼   ► Seriously, so we can be obnoxious like that.

00:53:26 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:53:27 ◼   ► We're like the hipsters of, I don't know.

00:53:29 ◼   ► You and your states.

00:53:31 ◼   ► We were commonwealths before we were even states.

00:53:33 ◼   ► Anyway, all right, what else did we talk about tonight?

00:53:36 ◼   ► Or are we done?

00:53:37 ◼   ► - Well, I think we can do another 15 minutes or so

00:53:39 ◼   ► if you want.

00:53:40 ◼   ► Do you think--

00:53:41 ◼   ► - Do you wanna talk about earnings

00:53:42 ◼   ► or do you wanna talk about something else?

00:53:43 ◼   ► - I think the earnings thing has a couple

00:53:45 ◼   ► of interesting things about it, but not a whole lot.

00:53:48 ◼   ► First of all, I'm glad that the stock price

00:53:51 ◼   ► didn't totally just plummet.

00:53:54 ◼   ► It seems to have stayed roughly the same,

00:53:56 ◼   ► which is itself an embarrassing level,

00:53:58 ◼   ► but I was expecting doom here

00:54:00 ◼   ► because we've talked about in the past,

00:54:02 ◼   ► and I've blogged a lot about how I think

00:54:05 ◼   ► Apple is kind of stuck in this rush of extremely negative momentum in the public eye, and especially

00:54:13 ◼   ► in the press. But I hear it from regular people too, so it's certainly getting out there.

00:54:20 ◼   ► And I have to think, people are going to be crapping on Apple publicly and expressing

00:54:29 ◼   ► doom and pessimism about the company and its products and its future. I was thinking that

00:54:34 ◼   ► that would be like a year or two long cycle.

00:54:37 ◼   ► And I was thinking also,

00:54:39 ◼   ► and this is not investment advice

00:54:41 ◼   ► 'cause none of us are qualified,

00:54:42 ◼   ► but one of the reasons why I sold all my Apple shares

00:54:46 ◼   ► back whenever it was, January, February,

00:54:48 ◼   ► I sold them at like 460 something.

00:54:51 ◼   ► And one of the reasons why,

00:54:53 ◼   ► oh, it was like soon after the holiday earnings call

00:54:56 ◼   ► and the stock took a dive on that call

00:54:59 ◼   ► and I realized holiday earnings are great usually,

00:55:03 ◼   ► And they were, you know, it's always the highest quarter

00:55:05 ◼   ► of the year, and so I figure that's probably the best news

00:55:10 ◼   ► they're going to announce for a long time,

00:55:12 ◼   ► possibly the whole year, at least as far as the market

00:55:15 ◼   ► is concerned, and so I figure if the stock took a dive

00:55:18 ◼   ► on what was probably their best news day of the year,

00:55:21 ◼   ► I don't think I wanna hold it for the rest of the year.

00:55:24 ◼   ► And so far that's proven to be fairly good,

00:55:27 ◼   ► a fairly good theory, it's panned out,

00:55:28 ◼   ► but you know, with this, I was thinking like,

00:55:31 ◼   ► quarter after holiday earnings is always kind of soft. And we've been hearing all these

00:55:37 ◼   ► rumors about how they were having way lower demand than expected, and they were possibly

00:55:43 ◼   ► having like oversupply of components. And I mean, it sounded bad, like, leading up to

00:55:49 ◼   ► this. The rumors were pretty bad. And then they released the earnings, and they're actually

00:55:53 ◼   ► pretty decent. And, you know, it's not like the holiday quarter, but they beat their own

00:55:58 ◼   ► own guidance, as they usually do, and even Wall Street didn't seem disappointed by

00:56:03 ◼   ► it.

00:56:04 ◼   ► Well, this was supposed to be the different quarter where they were saying, "We're

00:56:07 ◼   ► not going to give you the guidance that we're guaranteed to be. This time we're giving

00:56:10 ◼   ► you a range and we say we're going to fall within that range."

00:56:12 ◼   ► And they felt just above it, right?

00:56:14 ◼   ► Yeah, right. And the fact that they were still out of that range would be making me think

00:56:17 ◼   ► if I was an analyst, like, "All right, we're on to your game now. You still gave us an

00:56:22 ◼   ► estimate that you knew you could beat, but like, oh, it could be that they just had better

00:56:25 ◼   ► things happen. But it was just kind of like a wash. But the thing about that idea that

00:56:31 ◼   ► Apple is like doom and gloom about Apple, I feel like the entire industry in some respects

00:56:36 ◼   ► is in not so much doom and gloom or a death spiral, but like in a holding pattern. Because

00:56:40 ◼   ► we notice Apple in these things. But take a look at, have you ever been reading the

00:56:43 ◼   ► Samsung Galaxy S4 reviews? Yeah, they're really mediocre.

00:56:46 ◼   ► Right. And so the same, the attitude is basically from consumers and from the market, who cares

00:56:51 ◼   ► about the market. But from consumers, like what have you done for me lately?

00:56:54 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:56:55 ◼   ► iPhone, iPad, and even Samsung, the shining star.

00:56:57 ◼   ► Uh-oh, Apple's in the doldrums.

00:56:58 ◼   ► Samsung's, "No, the same thing with Samsung.

00:57:00 ◼   ► What have you done for me lately?"

00:57:01 ◼   ► Samsung, "Is the Galaxy S3, the Galaxy S4, is the S4 so much better than the S3?"

00:57:08 ◼   ► And they're like, "Oh, I guess it's another Samsung Galaxy phone, and it's got a bunch

00:57:12 ◼   ► of things in it, but they're not all that awesome."

00:57:14 ◼   ► And we're all in a holding pattern, because everyone's waiting for, "Okay, what's the

00:57:18 ◼   ► next big thing?"

00:57:19 ◼   ► That's why everyone keeps talking about stupid iWatch, because everyone has to have something

00:57:22 ◼   ► to be talking about. And I feel like the entire tech industry is in that holding pattern to say,

00:57:28 ◼   ► "What's going to be the next breakout thing?" Even if the next breakout thing is, "Oh my God,

00:57:31 ◼   ► iPad sales are doing a hockey stick and they're going out of control, and so many people are

00:57:36 ◼   ► excited about Apple again, and it's in the news again." Right? That could be it too. But everybody

00:57:40 ◼   ► is in it. There's no company that's like, "Well, Apple's just kind of boring and not really growing

00:57:45 ◼   ► like it used to, but Samsung has got an excit..." No, Samsung's just got another phone. And so,

00:57:49 ◼   ► So Apple's going to have another phone, and Samsung's going to have another phone.

00:57:52 ◼   ► Do you think Samsung's going to come out with its Galaxy Watch?

00:57:56 ◼   ► Is that going to be the exciting thing?

00:57:57 ◼   ► So everybody is just kind of like, "All right."

00:57:59 ◼   ► And now, yeah, Apple was ridiculously punished for burning so brightly before, and now it's

00:58:05 ◼   ► like, "All right, well, you'll be punished by the market, and you have to go into the

00:58:08 ◼   ► corner and stay there," right?

00:58:10 ◼   ► But it's not as if there is someone else sweeping past them to be the new darling of the industry

00:58:14 ◼   ► that everyone is pinning their hopes and dreams on, whose stock price is going up 500x over

00:58:19 ◼   ► course of two years. There is no equivalent to that. So everyone is just kind of sitting there,

00:58:24 ◼   ► cross-armed, saying, "All right, what have you done for me lately?" And it could be true that

00:58:27 ◼   ► this entire year goes by and no one does anything for those customers with their hands folded.

00:58:32 ◼   ► But I haven't listened to the audio of the earning call yet, but I read some transcripts,

00:58:35 ◼   ► and I think Tim Cook was making some faints in that direction of like,

00:58:39 ◼   ► "We might have some entering new categories, and we're not going to give you any timelines."

00:58:44 ◼   ► Well, he did give a timeline. He basically said, I mean, in a different comment, what

00:58:49 ◼   ► he basically said was, "We're going to be releasing new stuff this fall and next year."

00:58:55 ◼   ► So the implication was, "Don't expect much between now and this fall."

00:58:59 ◼   ► Well, I mean, he wouldn't even get pinned down on that, too, but all he would say is,

00:59:02 ◼   ► "We will have new stuff in the fall." Of course they'll have new stuff in the fall.

00:59:04 ◼   ► I mean, like, obviously. And if he's not going to be any more specific than new stuff, it

00:59:08 ◼   ► could be like, "Oh, we revved the MacBooks."

00:59:11 ◼   ► But he was firm enough on that though that I think what that means is

00:59:14 ◼   ► all those rumors about there being an iPhone 5s in the spring, that's all crap.

00:59:18 ◼   ► You know, that's probably not going to happen.

00:59:20 ◼   ► I think his comments made it very clear. And I think Gruber said too, it was kind of

00:59:25 ◼   ► like

00:59:26 ◼   ► setting expectations for

00:59:28 ◼   ► what's going to be announced between now and WWDC. Like, don't expect a whole

00:59:32 ◼   ► lot.

00:59:33 ◼   ► And what was interesting also is that

00:59:35 ◼   ► the press release this morning

00:59:37 ◼   ► for WWDC

00:59:38 ◼   ► confirmed with a quote from Phil that

00:59:42 ◼   ► at WWDC we will have new versions of iOS and MacOS in developers hands.

00:59:48 ◼   ► So that's... he came out right out and said that.

00:59:51 ◼   ► So we're going to see 10.9. Well, did anyone doubt that? Well, we've heard rumors.

00:59:56 ◼   ► We've heard rumors that 10.9 was being delayed.

00:59:58 ◼   ► Oh, it is being delayed, but you're going to have some version of it.

01:00:02 ◼   ► It's not going to be GM. If it's GM, screw it.

01:00:07 ◼   ► And to be like, oh, when iOS 5 was released at WWDC and the thing didn't work that well.

01:00:11 ◼   ► Right.

01:00:12 ◼   ► So it wasn't, you know, and that's the one I put on my phone.

01:00:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:16 ◼   ► No, so Google will never let me forget that.

01:00:19 ◼   ► Oh, I think I also put iOS 5 on my phone.

01:00:23 ◼   ► It was a big mistake.

01:00:24 ◼   ► So if 10.9, if 10.9 is GM at WWDC and you don't get a ticket, John, and I don't get a

01:00:30 ◼   ► ticket, does that mean we don't hang out in a, we don't get on a Google hangout together

01:00:34 ◼   ► because we're going to be too busy.

01:00:35 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:00:36 ◼   ► No, I would still have to watch all the video.

01:00:40 ◼   ► I don't even know what the hell I'd do.

01:00:43 ◼   ► That's the problem.

01:00:44 ◼   ► If that happened, all the real tech sites with the people who write every day as their

01:00:49 ◼   ► job would have 10-9 reviews up in a day or two, and I would not.

01:00:55 ◼   ► It would be months and months, and it wouldn't be...

01:00:59 ◼   ► For me taking three months to write something, it isn't three months better than someone

01:01:04 ◼   ► who wrote theirs in two days.

01:01:05 ◼   ► It's just not.

01:01:06 ◼   ► So that's all fine if I take my three months before the release date and all the reviews

01:01:10 ◼   ► arrive on the release date.

01:01:11 ◼   ► You don't care how long it took me, right?

01:01:12 ◼   ► But I don't think I'm going to want to wait for the amount of time it would take me to

01:01:15 ◼   ► write.

01:01:16 ◼   ► Oh, you sell yourself short.

01:01:17 ◼   ► I wonder how long I'll be able to spend on my review of your review.

01:01:21 ◼   ► Should I write a review of your review of his review?

01:01:23 ◼   ► I think that might have been my highest traffic post of 2012.

01:01:27 ◼   ► Yeah, you were riding my coattails, I know.

01:01:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I was, obviously.

01:01:31 ◼   ► And now you have like, you don't have more Google juice than my actual review, but you're

01:01:36 ◼   ► hit number two. Yeah, exactly. They were just like, of all the many people linked to it,

01:01:41 ◼   ► you are the second hit. Wait, I am really? Yeah, I think so. Just Google for Syracuse

01:01:44 ◼   ► Mountain Lion, you'll... Oh, that's hilarious. That's fantastic. You were the number one

01:01:50 ◼   ► hit for a while, I think. Sorry. How mad did that make you, John Syracuse? You must have

01:01:55 ◼   ► been... I don't think people had trouble finding... It was in the title. Was it? Or no, but no,

01:01:59 ◼   ► yours was in the title too. Oh, no, well, kind of. No, my name's not in the title. No,

01:02:03 ◼   ► your name is not in the title.

01:02:05 ◼   ► Well, I guess if you did R's Technica Mountain Lion,

01:02:07 ◼   ► you wouldn't be as highly ranked.

01:02:09 ◼   ► Well, that's hilarious.

01:02:10 ◼   ► Rest assured that people are not having trouble finding my review.

01:02:12 ◼   ► Oh, goodness.

01:02:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:15 ◼   ► That's fantastic.

01:02:16 ◼   ► All right, so anything else about earnings, or is that basically it?

01:02:18 ◼   ► I think, well, and it's worth thinking about, too,

01:02:20 ◼   ► like, you know, people who were expecting things earlier than that,

01:02:23 ◼   ► like new laptops or anything, look at Intel's roadmap

01:02:27 ◼   ► for what they would put into laptops or Mac Pros or iMacs,

01:02:31 ◼   ► And it looks like everything's basically waiting on Haswell right now.

01:02:34 ◼   ► But as far as I know, Haswell's not really coming out until third quarter, right?

01:02:38 ◼   ► Well, I mean, you know the Apple Intel magic of them getting stuff, like, not even ahead so much,

01:02:44 ◼   ► just like the first day of the quarter they could have it.

01:02:48 ◼   ► Like, "Well, it's not really ahead of schedule. It's exactly what we said it would be."

01:02:51 ◼   ► But we've given Apple preferential treatment, and they were able to arrange it so they can have their stuff out

01:02:55 ◼   ► exactly as the stuff arrives.

01:02:57 ◼   ► And the Zeons are still--it's the Ivy Bridge Zeons, right? It's not even, you know, Haswell?

01:03:00 ◼   ► Yeah, right now we're still the the current the the e5 series and the e3 series is sandy bridge EP, but then they

01:03:07 ◼   ► There's an e3 v2 line, which I just find out when I was looking at servers a couple days ago. I totally missed this

01:03:14 ◼   ► It's basically the ivy bridge EP

01:03:17 ◼   ► Version, but it's just single processor. There's no there's no dual processor version

01:03:21 ◼   ► So there's no e5 line as far as I could tell I'll put that in the X right? Yeah, right. Yeah

01:03:25 ◼   ► Well, honestly, my favorite CPU right now for servers, the best bang for buck that I

01:03:31 ◼   ► can get on a server right now is the E3-1270.

01:03:34 ◼   ► It's an awesome CPU.

01:03:38 ◼   ► I'm totally on board with a single processor, non-Xeon Mac Pro replacement machine, because

01:03:44 ◼   ► if you can get it clocked higher than a Xeon, you can get it earlier than a Xeon, and it

01:03:48 ◼   ► has other possible advantages, in terms of packaging and power consumption, I would not

01:03:53 ◼   ► turn my nose up at that. I would prefer Xeon and all the other ECC RAM and all that crazy

01:03:58 ◼   ► crap that we should not pay for, but we do. But, like, you know, better. I'll take what

01:04:04 ◼   ► I can get, you know what I mean?

01:04:05 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I mean, even my current Mac Pro, my "new" Mac Pro from the 2010 generation,

01:04:13 ◼   ► it's a single-socket, because the single-socket CPU, it's the 6x 3.33 GHz one, and that, for

01:04:19 ◼   ► for almost every type of workflow is faster than the dual socket ones, because the dual

01:04:23 ◼   ► socket ones aren't that high.

01:04:24 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not like the old days, where if you had a single CPU, that meant you had a

01:04:28 ◼   ► single thread of execution.

01:04:29 ◼   ► Right.

01:04:30 ◼   ► They also had umpteen cores in them, and it's like, "Well, you just have one CPU."

01:04:34 ◼   ► It basically just limits your RAM slots at this point.

01:04:38 ◼   ► And so if the next generation of Mac Pro only has one socket in any configuration, that

01:04:45 ◼   ► actually wouldn't be that bad because the single-socket Xeon's now are so good

01:04:49 ◼   ► that, you know, although they do make a heck of a lot of profit on the bigger

01:04:54 ◼   ► ones though, but I don't know, we'll see. I certainly think that my next Mac Pro

01:04:59 ◼   ► after this, assuming it still uses Xeon's, is probably still gonna be a single

01:05:05 ◼   ► socket one, and I bet that's gonna be true for a whole lot of buyers. I would

01:05:09 ◼   ► spring for the double if it wasn't like, "add another CPU for $2,000," like if it's

01:05:14 ◼   ► It's not ridiculous like it was.

01:05:15 ◼   ► No, it would be.

01:05:16 ◼   ► It would be at least $1,500, and it would be lower clocked.

01:05:19 ◼   ► Look at the prices.

01:05:20 ◼   ► That's all Intel, really.

01:05:21 ◼   ► Look at the prices now.

01:05:22 ◼   ► I'd have to think about it hard, because it's not as if this is a value.

01:05:27 ◼   ► It's not as if I can calculate, "Oh, well, I don't need this.

01:05:31 ◼   ► You know I don't need it."

01:05:32 ◼   ► But if I buy a new machine every once every five years, damn it, I want it to be the big,

01:05:36 ◼   ► beefy one.

01:05:37 ◼   ► And I'll just have to decide, do I think that really is the big, beefy one?

01:05:41 ◼   ► like you said, it probably would be lower clocked.

01:05:43 ◼   ► If they offered a single core, they could crank it up.

01:05:44 ◼   ► But there are too many variables.

01:05:46 ◼   ► The point is, we just want something,

01:05:48 ◼   ► even if it's not called a Mac Pro, whatever it is,

01:05:50 ◼   ► something that's not an iMac, something that's not a laptop,

01:05:53 ◼   ► something that's not a Mac Mini.

01:05:54 ◼   ► And that's really, really fast.

01:05:56 ◼   ► Didn't Cook say last year that sometime during 2013,

01:06:00 ◼   ► they would have something that will make the Mac Pro

01:06:04 ◼   ► customers happy?

01:06:05 ◼   ► What he said was later next year.

01:06:06 ◼   ► So in--

01:06:07 ◼   ► Well, right.

01:06:07 ◼   ► But we don't know what the later applies to.

01:06:09 ◼   ► But that certainly does correspond well to the next iteration of the Zeons.

01:06:13 ◼   ► Well, and beyond that, I mean, if he just said in so many words that there's not going to be

01:06:19 ◼   ► anything until the fall, it sounds like he's running out of time. Well, he, I shouldn't say

01:06:24 ◼   ► he. Apple is running out of time. I don't think anyone, there's like seven people waiting for

01:06:28 ◼   ► the answer to that question. Yes, but all seven of you are very, very whiny.

01:06:33 ◼   ► We are very whiny, we're very loud, but what he was actually referring to was like, you know,

01:06:37 ◼   ► whatever, like, I again, I have to listen to their own calls, but like, possibly entering a new product category, whatever that means, it means something more exciting than a new iPhone, new iPad or new Mac. That's what, and even that didn't produce enough excitement to cause any sort of market bump. It's just like, all right, well, that's what we all expect. That's what you're right, Tim. That is what we're waiting for. But we're gonna sit here with their arms folded until we get that thing. And so, nah.

01:07:06 ◼   ► Well, one thing that was also really interesting from the call was the number of iPads sold.

01:07:11 ◼   ► And this was crazy.

01:07:12 ◼   ► Basically they sold 19-point-something-million iPads, and that was more than they sold in

01:07:17 ◼   ► the holiday quarter.

01:07:18 ◼   ► That's crazy.

01:07:19 ◼   ► Well, I think that makes sense, because if you look at all Asympto, Horace Dedu's graphs,

01:07:27 ◼   ► if you look at all...

01:07:28 ◼   ► Whenever he overlays them, so you can just see, "Let's just put each product's introduction

01:07:33 ◼   ► and pin them to the zero on the x-axis.

01:07:36 ◼   ► And you look at the slopes of the various curves.

01:07:38 ◼   ► Here's how the iPad took off, and here's

01:07:40 ◼   ► how the Mac took off, and here's how the iPhone took off.

01:07:43 ◼   ► The iPad always had the steepest slope.

01:07:44 ◼   ► It was like, boy, it was small.

01:07:47 ◼   ► The absolute values weren't very high,

01:07:48 ◼   ► but it's like, boy, the iPad is taking off

01:07:50 ◼   ► much steeper than the iPhone.

01:07:51 ◼   ► The iPhone took off much steeper than the iPod,

01:07:53 ◼   ► and the Mac is just way back as this gradual ramp up to nothing.

01:07:58 ◼   ► So yeah, it's not a surprise that the iPad continues

01:08:01 ◼   ► to rocket up like that.

01:08:02 ◼   ► And that's kind of like the wild card, which if you want to be optimistic about Apple is,

01:08:07 ◼   ► where is the ceiling on iPad sales? Because it is so capable of replacing a PC for so many people,

01:08:17 ◼   ► and will only become more capable in time, and they'll keep driving the price down.

01:08:22 ◼   ► And we're just kind of, we're just getting off the ground. We're at the iPhone 3GS stage of the iPad

01:08:27 ◼   ► right now. You know what I mean? We got the one, and then we got the one that's faster and cooler,

01:08:31 ◼   ► but it's fatter, and now we got the mini, but we're now waiting for the big one to shrink.

01:08:36 ◼   ► Once the iPad hits the iPhone 4 stage and the iPhone 5 and beyond, I think there is tremendous

01:08:45 ◼   ► sales potential for these things as PC replacements, basically. Not you have this

01:08:52 ◼   ► instead of a PC, but for people who've never had a PC before, this will get them in the door.

01:08:56 ◼   ► For people who do have a PC, they're going to buy this as a companion and stop using their PC as

01:09:00 ◼   ► much and we're nowhere close to the ceiling on that versus the phone market where it's

01:09:04 ◼   ► like the competitors are locked in a deadly battle and the number of non-smartphones is

01:09:10 ◼   ► dwindling. I think they just crossed 50% of smart non-smartphones and stuff like that.

01:09:15 ◼   ► There's not this ridiculous upside where we're like, "Oh, by this time next year,

01:09:21 ◼   ► there will be 7x as many smartphones sold." That time is over, but that time is not over for the

01:09:25 ◼   ► the iPad. And the other thing is, the competitors in the tablet market are not making a dent

01:09:32 ◼   ► in the iPad so far. Actually, that's not true.

01:09:37 ◼   ► You're counting Kindles? Well, yeah. I mean, everyone else does.

01:09:40 ◼   ► So yeah, you have to count Kindles and Nooks. I don't know if you have to.

01:09:43 ◼   ► Well, yeah, I guess that's true. And nobody knows how much they've really

01:09:46 ◼   ► sold, do they? I mean, everyone…

01:09:47 ◼   ► It's not like where you see the market share graphs where it's like Android versus iPhone,

01:09:52 ◼   ► Android is like 50-something percent and iPhone is like 20. Every time you see a tablet, Apple

01:09:59 ◼   ► has like 70 or 80, depending on who's counting what.

01:10:01 ◼   ► But I think that is steadily going down. I think it used to be Apple had like 85 to 90,

01:10:07 ◼   ► and then it's been slowly creeping down, and now it's like 79. They still have, obviously,

01:10:13 ◼   ► a dominant hold on it.

01:10:15 ◼   ► It's okay for that to go on when the overall size of the market is going up so rapidly.

01:10:19 ◼   ► It's okay to be like, think of the iPod. The iPod hovered around 70 for a long time, and

01:10:26 ◼   ► that was just plain fine. 70 was considered dominant because other plus random competitors

01:10:31 ◼   ► is always going to add up to 30% or something, but if you went to buy a music player, you're

01:10:35 ◼   ► just going to get an iPod.

01:10:36 ◼   ► I never realized it was that low, because everyone assumed that the iPod was pretty

01:10:40 ◼   ► much the only game in town.

01:10:42 ◼   ► I think if you look at it now, they always pegged the number around 70-something. It

01:10:47 ◼   ► isn't as dominant as you would think it would be because we never would consider anything

01:10:49 ◼   ► else. Like, what are people buying besides iPods? I wouldn't even know where to go for

01:10:53 ◼   ► such a thing, but the world is a big place.

01:10:55 ◼   ► Right. It's one of those things probably where number one is the iPod, number two is like

01:11:00 ◼   ► 1%.

01:11:01 ◼   ► Because "other."

01:11:02 ◼   ► Because there's so many entries in that. What is it? The second plurality or something?

01:11:08 ◼   ► Yeah. I don't know. I don't know math. I'm just a programmer. I think it's also worth

01:11:15 ◼   ► of pointing out, based on what you just said about smartphones and market and everything,

01:11:21 ◼   ► that we have crossed an important threshold in the industry. And I don't think the industry

01:11:25 ◼   ► knows it yet, so I'm going to announce it here. Big news.

01:11:29 ◼   ► You heard it here first.

01:11:31 ◼   ► My mother just purchased her first smartphone.

01:11:34 ◼   ► Really? How much prompting from you was about this?

01:11:38 ◼   ► I told her not to get one, actually.

01:11:39 ◼   ► Did she get another one?

01:11:41 ◼   ► I didn't want to support that. And her needs for a--like, she has a MacBook Air and loves it.

01:11:46 ◼   ► She had an iMac--or an iBook before that. She actually figured out the computer

01:11:51 ◼   ► pretty well. I was pleasantly surprised, because she's really, really non-technical.

01:11:56 ◼   ► I was pleasantly surprised by how well she does on the computer, but I told her, "You don't need an iPad,

01:12:01 ◼   ► and you don't need a smartphone." Because I know what she does and doesn't do for the most part.

01:12:06 ◼   ► And she abuses her phones, so I'm like,

01:12:10 ◼   ► "Just get whatever cheap flip phone you can get." So she's had a flip phone for years,

01:12:14 ◼   ► she just got her first smartphone against my advice.

01:12:18 ◼   ► Can you guess what phone she got?

01:12:22 ◼   ► A Galaxy Note. The free iPhone 4. John, you are

01:12:26 ◼   ► correct. Even though I told her,

01:12:30 ◼   ► she was visiting here, she was visiting my library of old iPhones

01:12:34 ◼   ► in my house a couple of weeks ago or a month ago,

01:12:38 ◼   ► and I showed her, okay, I'm like, here's the iPhone 4,

01:12:41 ◼   ► here's the iPhone 5, I didn't share with the 4S

01:12:44 ◼   ► because who cares, I knew she wouldn't care

01:12:47 ◼   ► about the difference, so I was like, here's the 4,

01:12:48 ◼   ► here's the 5, and I told her specifically,

01:12:51 ◼   ► do not get the free one, the one that's even 100 bucks more

01:12:55 ◼   ► is way better because the 4S, - Power of free!

01:12:57 ◼   ► - The 4S is so much better than the 4,

01:13:00 ◼   ► and I showed her the 5 and I'm like, look, for 200,

01:13:03 ◼   ► you can get this one. It is way better than even the middle one.

01:13:07 ◼   ► And, you know, trust me, this is the right... I was trying to push you a five.

01:13:11 ◼   ► Like, just get the 16 gig, you know, the cheapest one. Trust me, get that. It's great.

01:13:15 ◼   ► And if you don't want to spend 200 bucks, at least spend the 100 and get the 4S.

01:13:19 ◼   ► Do not get the iPhone 4. She goes and gets the iPhone 4

01:13:23 ◼   ► and calls me, like, afterwards saying, "Hey, guess what I just got?"

01:13:27 ◼   ► And she kept saying, "It was free! I know you told me to get the other one,

01:13:31 ◼   ► the other one, but this one was free.

01:13:33 ◼   ► And it was so--

01:13:34 ◼   ► - Like the Seinfeld episode, who buys batteries?

01:13:37 ◼   ► - Like it was so powerful.

01:13:39 ◼   ► That's why this really matters a lot

01:13:42 ◼   ► to have that in the free category.

01:13:44 ◼   ► I mean, it matters so much that, you know,

01:13:47 ◼   ► people aren't thinking about the plan costs over time,

01:13:50 ◼   ► or how you can just spend 100 bucks

01:13:55 ◼   ► over this $2,000 phone contract,

01:13:57 ◼   ► spend 100 bucks more and have way better device

01:13:59 ◼   ► the whole time.

01:14:00 ◼   ► She actually will keep it the whole two years.

01:14:03 ◼   ► Like she's not gonna upgrade earlier or anything.

01:14:06 ◼   ► So it's just-- - You don't have to sound

01:14:07 ◼   ► so judgy.

01:14:09 ◼   ► I'm still rocking my 4S because I'm too cheap

01:14:11 ◼   ► to get a new one every year.

01:14:12 ◼   ► - But the 4S is a decent phone.

01:14:14 ◼   ► And even by today's standards, it's a heavy, big brick,

01:14:17 ◼   ► but it's decent.

01:14:18 ◼   ► - Oh, don't see it, sure. - That's why I said

01:14:20 ◼   ► in my Apple 2013 to-do list,

01:14:23 ◼   ► to add more variety for the phone lineup,

01:14:27 ◼   ► make a purpose-built low-cost free phone instead of having the old one because I think you

01:14:32 ◼   ► can get a better phone out for similar cost and similar margins than just redoing.

01:14:38 ◼   ► Maybe I'm wrong about that, Tim Cook, and tell me about the manufacturing stuff, but

01:14:41 ◼   ► think of how much better you would feel if she was getting a free phone with exactly

01:14:45 ◼   ► the same power and specs as the iPhone 4, but not an actual iPhone 4, a purpose-built

01:14:52 ◼   ► thing made with old technology but a newer phone.

01:14:54 ◼   ► - Right, like an A5 with a plastic shell.

01:14:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I mean, you don't have to make it crappy,

01:14:59 ◼   ► but like, you have the technology now

01:15:01 ◼   ► to make a better phone than that.

01:15:02 ◼   ► Maybe use dye-shrunk versions of components.

01:15:05 ◼   ► Maybe you can make it a little bit smaller and lighter.

01:15:06 ◼   ► Maybe you can bump up the margin a little bit, you know.

01:15:09 ◼   ► I know why they wanna keep making the same phone.

01:15:10 ◼   ► You've got the assembly lines going.

01:15:12 ◼   ► You've got the parts going.

01:15:13 ◼   ► It's like, you're in a groove.

01:15:14 ◼   ► The cost of everything is going way, way down.

01:15:15 ◼   ► But there's that certain point where like, you know,

01:15:18 ◼   ► remember when USB 1 started to become more expensive

01:15:21 ◼   ► than USB 2?

01:15:22 ◼   ► There was that crossover point

01:15:24 ◼   ► where it was like, if you actually wanted to put USB 1

01:15:27 ◼   ► on your motherboard or in your computer,

01:15:28 ◼   ► you would end up paying more,

01:15:29 ◼   ► because everybody would switch to USB 2.

01:15:30 ◼   ► - Or like when you have old RAM,

01:15:32 ◼   ► and you wanna upgrade,

01:15:33 ◼   ► if you still have something that uses DDR2,

01:15:36 ◼   ► and trying to find that nowadays is very expensive.

01:15:38 ◼   ► - It's not that extreme,

01:15:39 ◼   ► but I think there is definitely a case to be made for,

01:15:43 ◼   ► even if only just from a marketing perspective,

01:15:45 ◼   ► so your mother doesn't care that she's getting an old phone,

01:15:47 ◼   ► but some people do, they're like, oh.

01:15:48 ◼   ► - I don't think she knows that it's old.

01:15:50 ◼   ► - The iPhone 4, the 4 and the 4S looking the same,

01:15:53 ◼   ► probably helps in this regard, but I would feel bad if I was Apple that people are out

01:15:59 ◼   ► there today coming home with a new phone that is just as old as the iPhone 4. I'd rather

01:16:04 ◼   ► them coming home with a phone with similar power but maybe better battery life, maybe

01:16:07 ◼   ► a slightly better screen, maybe a fixed home button, maybe no glass on the back, all the

01:16:13 ◼   ► things that you can do to make it more durable for people who you know aren't going to be

01:16:18 ◼   ► is precious about their phones, right? I don't know how they make that work financially in

01:16:24 ◼   ► terms of making the same phone over and over again being cheaper versus making a new one.

01:16:28 ◼   ► But yeah, the power of free with contract, in the US anyway, I don't know how it is elsewhere,

01:16:33 ◼   ► I would really like to see them do that and come out with a line of phones with the same

01:16:39 ◼   ► price points free, $99, $299, and then the ridiculous phone, but not have, as soon as

01:16:46 ◼   ► you go off the top line and have it be like, "Oh, you're just getting the old phone."

01:16:49 ◼   ► Because there's something about that that makes me feel like they're leaving money and

01:16:54 ◼   ► reputation on the table by continuing to sell old phones that far into the past. So the

01:16:59 ◼   ► previous one, fine, but don't go back like two models or three models.

01:17:01 ◼   ► Oh, I mean, yeah. I think about the tech world. Think about what you were doing and what else

01:17:07 ◼   ► was around when the iPhone 4 came out. The iPhone 4 came out a few months after the iPad

01:17:13 ◼   ► for one thing.

01:17:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, and nobody wants an iPad One.

01:17:16 ◼   ► If they give you an iPad One,

01:17:18 ◼   ► who wants an iPad One at this point?

01:17:20 ◼   ► You can't practically give them away.

01:17:22 ◼   ► Like, even children turn their nose up out of them

01:17:24 ◼   ► because they don't play the Tokuboko games

01:17:26 ◼   ► at a good frame rate, you know?

01:17:27 ◼   ► - So, it came out right after the iPad One by a few months,

01:17:31 ◼   ► and it was in 2010.

01:17:33 ◼   ► I was still at Tumblr when the iPhone 4 came out.

01:17:37 ◼   ► And just thinking about how long we've had Retina screens.

01:17:41 ◼   ► Now it seems like we've always had Retina screens

01:17:43 ◼   ► our phones. Maybe not everything else, but on our phones, of course we've always had

01:17:46 ◼   ► retina screens. Nope, it's been since 2010, which was almost three years ago, and I can't

01:17:53 ◼   ► believe, like, there's people now getting A4 devices with crappy home buttons and questionable

01:18:00 ◼   ► antenna designs, but I'm going to have to support those--

01:18:02 ◼   ► - And like, give them a little bit more RAM, you know?

01:18:04 ◼   ► - Right.

01:18:05 ◼   ► - Like, do a, fine, make it an A4, shrink it, make it a slightly higher clock and double

01:18:09 ◼   ► the RAM and then all of a sudden it's not as embarrassing anymore. It's not as much a pain

01:18:14 ◼   ► for software developers who have to deal with this. You know what I mean? It's just so much

01:18:18 ◼   ► better for everyone involved. And then you probably wouldn't care that much that your mom got the

01:18:21 ◼   ► iPhone free model because you're like, "Oh, well, it's not that terrible." Oh, see, I disagree

01:18:26 ◼   ► because what do you think the likelihood is that the iPhone 4 will run iOS 7 when it comes out?

01:18:31 ◼   ► That's a very good question. As we know for sure. Your mom doesn't care if she can run iOS 7.

01:18:36 ◼   ► Well, but as a developer, I have to care.

01:18:40 ◼   ► If they're still selling all these, like, last year they were still selling three GS's

01:18:44 ◼   ► until the iPhone 5 came out. Well, that's why I said double the RAM, because like

01:18:48 ◼   ► RAM ends up being limited, like that's why multitasking couldn't go on the other phones.

01:18:52 ◼   ► Like CPU power and GPU power keeps you out of games and stuff, but I think they're

01:18:56 ◼   ► probably past the point now where they're adding OS features that can't run because of

01:19:00 ◼   ► CPU constraints. It's always RAM, but they're still relatively RAM starved. And there's

01:19:04 ◼   ► getting around that. There's nothing you can do to optimize your code. If the OS is taking up a

01:19:09 ◼   ► bigger portion of RAM, you have less left over for you, and no matter how you optimize your stuff,

01:19:13 ◼   ► you can't fix the OS. The 4 is just too old. The 3GS was even worse hanging around for that long.

01:19:22 ◼   ► What were the RAM levels? What did the 3GS have? 128.

01:19:27 ◼   ► 128, and then... No, no, it was 256. Never mind.

01:19:30 ◼   ► 256, and then... It was email Casey.

01:19:32 ◼   ► Yeah, like 512, 1 gig. If you look at the RAM things, they're doubling, right? And we're

01:19:37 ◼   ► not out of the uncomfortable part. Even with the 1 gig, you feel like, "Oh, well, if I

01:19:44 ◼   ► run a big game, it could be pushing up against the edge there."

01:19:47 ◼   ► Yeah. Well, and Retinas took us back on that regard a little bit, because everything started

01:19:50 ◼   ► taking—all the textures and everything started taking way more RAM, four times as much RAM.

01:19:54 ◼   ► Yeah. And we're not even talking about adding swap. We're saying, "Fine, still no swap.

01:19:58 ◼   ► We're still OK with that because we

01:20:00 ◼   ► don't realize that the performance constraints

01:20:02 ◼   ► are the reason for that.

01:20:03 ◼   ► But at least get us out of the woods.

01:20:05 ◼   ► If we go through two or three more doubling periods,

01:20:08 ◼   ► then we're going to be like, all right,

01:20:09 ◼   ► there's nothing they're going to do

01:20:11 ◼   ► with the OS and any one individual app that's

01:20:13 ◼   ► going to hose a 2GIG or a 4GIG phone.

01:20:17 ◼   ► And then if your mom has a 4GIG phone,

01:20:21 ◼   ► even if that phone is three years old,

01:20:22 ◼   ► you're like, it's got 4GIGs.

01:20:24 ◼   ► It'll be fine.

01:20:24 ◼   ► I can't-- I don't know what they could add that will make

01:20:28 ◼   ► 4 gig phone and say, "Oh, don't get that one. It doesn't have enough RAM to run the OS and

01:20:32 ◼   ► basic apps."

01:20:33 ◼   ► Now, you want to wrap it up?

01:20:35 ◼   ► Sure.

01:20:36 ◼   ► I think we're good.

01:20:37 ◼   ► All right. Special thanks again to our two sponsors today, MailRoute and Hover. Go to

01:20:44 ◼   ► mailroute. … Oh, crap. Is it net? Yes. I closed that window.

01:20:50 ◼   ► We are so professional here.

01:20:51 ◼   ► Go to mailroute.net to check out their hosted email filtering service. It filters out spam

01:20:57 ◼   ► viruses and other stuff, other good services there too. And then check out hover.com. Hover.com/ATP

01:21:04 ◼   ► to get a little discount on your order there. Hover is an awesome domain registrar and can't

01:21:09 ◼   ► recommend them enough. Thanks a lot guys and this was our first test of live streaming.

01:21:15 ◼   ► I think it worked very well. And yeah, thanks a lot and we'll see you next week.

01:21:20 ◼   ► week.

01:21:21 ◼   ► [music]

01:21:22 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:21:28 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:21:31 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

01:21:34 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:21:39 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:21:42 ◼   ► It was accidental (accidental)

01:21:44 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:21:49 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:21:54 ◼   ► @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:21:58 ◼   ► So that's Kasey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:22:03 ◼   ► N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N S-I-R-A-C-U-S-I-C-R-A-C-U-S-I-C-U-S-I-C-R-A-C-U-S-I-C-R-A-C-U-S-I-C-R-A-C-U-S-I-C-R-A-C-U-S-I-C-R-A-C-U-S-I-C-R-A-C-R-A-C-R-A-C-R-A-C-R-A-C-R-

01:22:03 ◼   ► ♪ N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N ♪

01:22:06 ◼   ► ♪ S-I-R-A-C ♪

01:22:09 ◼   ► ♪ U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A ♪

01:22:11 ◼   ► ♪ It's accidental, accidental ♪

01:22:14 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't mean to ♪

01:22:17 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental, accidental ♪

01:22:19 ◼   ► ♪ Tech broadcast so long ♪

01:22:23 ◼   ► - Is my voice synthetic?

01:22:25 ◼   ► I feel like I'm subconsciously making my voice

01:22:27 ◼   ► synthetically deep because there's an audience now,

01:22:30 ◼   ► as though there wasn't an audience before.

01:22:32 ◼   ► Well, maybe it feels more real now.

01:22:34 ◼   ► Yeah, seriously.

01:22:35 ◼   ► You know?

01:22:36 ◼   ► Don't overthink it, Casey.

01:22:37 ◼   ► I know, for real.

01:22:38 ◼   ► I'm already dooming myself.

01:22:39 ◼   ► I thought you were coming to this episode lubricated.

01:22:45 ◼   ► Let's just say I had an after-work function where I might have had a drink or two, and

01:22:51 ◼   ► I definitely have some of my—what do we call the coffee?

01:22:55 ◼   ► The fussy coffee?

01:22:56 ◼   ► I have fussy vodka.

01:22:58 ◼   ► What exactly is—I mean, I know this is probably not relevant to the show, but who cares—what

01:23:01 ◼   ► What exactly is fussy vodka?

01:23:03 ◼   ► I don't think there is really such a thing.

01:23:05 ◼   ► It's just a vodka that you have to special order from our local…

01:23:10 ◼   ► So, to get alcohol in Virginia, you have to go to an ABC store, which is a state-run thing,

01:23:18 ◼   ► and so in order to get this particular bottle of vodka, you have to special order it, and

01:23:22 ◼   ► that's what I've done.

01:23:23 ◼   ► So, it's marginally fussy.

01:23:25 ◼   ► Okay, I guess that works.

01:23:28 ◼   ► I'm not a coffee drinker, so it's the next best thing, right?

01:23:31 ◼   ► Now, John, I'm curious, do you have fussy water?

01:23:36 ◼   ► The fussiest water gets is I let the tap run until the water that's been sitting in the

01:23:41 ◼   ► pipes and kind of coming up to room temperature runs out a little bit and I get the slightly

01:23:46 ◼   ► colder water.

01:23:47 ◼   ► That's as fussy as it gets.

01:23:49 ◼   ► Oh, that's fantastic.

01:23:52 ◼   ► So I guess you want to start the show?

01:23:54 ◼   ► Maybe this is the show already.

01:23:55 ◼   ► No, this is not the show.