ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Uh, so I received my first Kickstarter backed thing in the mail today.

00:00:06 ◼   ► And I want to love it, but it's quasi-DOA.

00:00:12 ◼   ► So I got the nifty mini drive.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Did you guys remember this from like eight months ago or something like that?

00:00:17 ◼   ► I think so.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:19 ◼   ► It's like, was it like the USB drive that fits in the SD card slot?

00:00:21 ◼   ► Yeah, basically.

00:00:22 ◼   ► So what it, the premise is, it fits in the SD card slot of a Mac.

00:00:28 ◼   ► they've designed it and machined it in such a way that you stick this into the slot and

00:00:33 ◼   ► stick I think it's a micro SD card into the nifty mini drive and then you put the mini

00:00:40 ◼   ► drive in the SD card slot for your Mac and then it sits flush as opposed to the way full

00:00:45 ◼   ► size SD cards typically sit and so you've basically added another drive to your Mac

00:00:50 ◼   ► which I don't know why I wanted to do this other than it seemed cool and now that I've

00:00:54 ◼   ► I've gotten it, it looks great. It looks to be the same aluminum that the Mac is made

00:01:02 ◼   ► of. I didn't get a color. I just got it in plain aluminum. And I really like the look

00:01:05 ◼   ► of it, but apparently some tolerance or something was a little bit off in some of the first

00:01:10 ◼   ► batches. And so without putting scotch or cello tape around it, the drive was read-only.

00:01:18 ◼   ► So I had to put scotch tape around it because SD cards have a physical switch to make the

00:01:24 ◼   ► them read-only. And so apparently, yeah, so apparently without Scotch tape around it,

00:01:30 ◼   ► it didn't trip or did trip whichever direction the switch that made the, that made OS X treated

00:01:36 ◼   ► as read-only. So now I have Scotch tape around it. But other than that, it's actually really

00:01:40 ◼   ► cool. I was just curious.

00:01:41 ◼   ► So let me just, let me just clarify. So you took something from somebody who's never

00:01:45 ◼   ► made anything before that's made to sit flush inside of a delicate tiny slot in your

00:01:50 ◼   ► expensive computer, then added tape to it and put that in the delicate slot in your

00:01:55 ◼   ► expensive computer.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Yes. You are exactly right. Clearly nothing bad will happen.

00:01:59 ◼   ► I'm looking at this video, and they're taking the little SanDisk label and using it as a

00:02:03 ◼   ► shim inside the thing to—did you see this in the video? I'm assuming you did. They're

00:02:08 ◼   ► saying, "Take the little carrier, take your little card that's inside it," but then they

00:02:11 ◼   ► shoved a little piece of paper or plastic underneath it to try to shim it to shift it

00:02:17 ◼   ► around inside the thing. Is that where you put the tape?

00:02:19 ◼   ► No, I just put the tape around the outside of it.

00:02:22 ◼   ► - Watch the Kickstarter video.

00:02:23 ◼   ► I don't have the audio on, but here.

00:02:25 ◼   ► - This seems like the kind of product

00:02:26 ◼   ► where the better idea would be to wait

00:02:30 ◼   ► until this thing got popular,

00:02:32 ◼   ► wait till somebody else with manufacturing experience

00:02:34 ◼   ► rips it off and just makes like a $7 version of it

00:02:37 ◼   ► on Amazon and just buy that.

00:02:39 ◼   ► - Why would you buy this at all though?

00:02:40 ◼   ► Like that's my, I don't understand that at all.

00:02:42 ◼   ► - Because it just seemed cool.

00:02:43 ◼   ► - How big is the biggest like just capacity

00:02:46 ◼   ► you can have in here?

00:02:47 ◼   ► I have a 64 gig micro SD card and that was not--

00:02:50 ◼   ► - It was super duper slow.

00:02:52 ◼   ► - It wasn't terrible.

00:02:53 ◼   ► I mean, I put like five gigs of top gear on it

00:02:55 ◼   ► and it took like 10 minutes or something like that.

00:02:57 ◼   ► I mean, it was not fast without question,

00:02:59 ◼   ► but it was not terrible.

00:03:00 ◼   ► - Then you're checking up your SD card slot.

00:03:01 ◼   ► Like what if you wanna take things off a camera?

00:03:03 ◼   ► Like the whole point of it.

00:03:04 ◼   ► - You assume I use a camera other than our phones.

00:03:07 ◼   ► - I mean, I have this new small camera

00:03:10 ◼   ► and it has SD cards, but I never take them out

00:03:12 ◼   ► because it charges over USB,

00:03:16 ◼   ► which is an awesome feature of the camera.

00:03:18 ◼   ► And so I just plug it in by USB whenever I transfer

00:03:21 ◼   ► so I can kind of top off the charge also.

00:03:23 ◼   ► - What camera is this?

00:03:24 ◼   ► - The ridiculous one, the Sony RX1.

00:03:27 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah.

00:03:28 ◼   ► - I'm looking.

00:03:29 ◼   ► - That charges over USB?

00:03:31 ◼   ► - Not only does that, I have a Sony camcorder

00:03:33 ◼   ► that we got when the baby was born.

00:03:35 ◼   ► The camcorder charges over USB.

00:03:37 ◼   ► It's awesome.

00:03:38 ◼   ► I keep meaning to blog about this.

00:03:39 ◼   ► It's one of the best features just for like,

00:03:41 ◼   ► it's one of those little tiny conveniences

00:03:43 ◼   ► that's just awesome.

00:03:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause the change,

00:03:45 ◼   ► Well, on the RX1 does it have a removable battery though at least?

00:03:48 ◼   ► Yeah, and I have, I have, I got a second one because the battery life isn't that great

00:03:51 ◼   ► if you're doing a whole bunch of viewing on the screen.

00:03:53 ◼   ► Like you can only shoot like a couple hundred pictures before the battery goes.

00:03:57 ◼   ► And we only ever hit the battery being dead during shooting once, like because we just

00:04:00 ◼   ► don't shoot that many at once.

00:04:03 ◼   ► But it's a fantastic camera for so, in so many ways.

00:04:06 ◼   ► I was excited about that camera until I saw how much it costs.

00:04:08 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, so it just costs as much as a regular camera.

00:04:10 ◼   ► Yeah, it's, the cost is insane.

00:04:11 ◼   ► I was like, oh, it's exciting, it's so small and it's still two grand, so nevermind.

00:04:14 ◼   ► You know, what's crazy about this camera is that

00:04:18 ◼   ► it is actually worth it.

00:04:20 ◼   ► Compared to the market, it is worth that price.

00:04:24 ◼   ► I totally see why Sony is charging that, however--

00:04:26 ◼   ► - You're getting the miniaturization and everything.

00:04:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, but yeah, however, even though it is

00:04:32 ◼   ► competitive with its equals, it is still,

00:04:36 ◼   ► you still feel like you shouldn't be paying this much

00:04:38 ◼   ► for a camera this size, even though it's so great

00:04:42 ◼   ► because it is that size and it is like it's so good.

00:04:45 ◼   ► Like the image quality you get from both

00:04:47 ◼   ► that ridiculously good sensor and the really,

00:04:50 ◼   ► really good optic in front of it,

00:04:52 ◼   ► the quality you get of it, like it is better in many ways

00:04:56 ◼   ► than my 5D Mark II.

00:04:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, these cameras are pissing me off still.

00:05:01 ◼   ► It's kind of like television's been pissing me off

00:05:02 ◼   ► for a long time 'cause it's like, look,

00:05:04 ◼   ► I liked mirrorless, I'm like, okay, finally,

00:05:06 ◼   ► we're making some frigging progress.

00:05:08 ◼   ► We can stop with the flappy mirrors and the other stuff

00:05:10 ◼   ► that has its origins in optical things

00:05:12 ◼   ► that are no longer a factor because we all have giant screens in the back and we use those.

00:05:14 ◼   ► And we stop, alright.

00:05:15 ◼   ► That will be, you know, like how long, this should be progressing like Moore's Law.

00:05:19 ◼   ► I want a gigantic full-frame sensor in a tiny little camera.

00:05:22 ◼   ► The sensor is only like one inch square.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Can we fit that in a small camera?

00:05:26 ◼   ► Oh, it's still two grand.

00:05:27 ◼   ► I mean, come on, come on, faster, faster.

00:05:29 ◼   ► Because you realize like this is one of those things where it should be that like in five

00:05:35 ◼   ► or ten years, the amazing Canon 5D, I should be able to get that in a little dinky thing.

00:05:39 ◼   ► Like it seems like that should be the progression.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Maybe not a phone but in a tiny little dinky handheld camera, but it's like well

00:05:45 ◼   ► No, if you get a small camera you get a sensor the size of you know

00:05:48 ◼   ► 1/8 of a postage stamp so screw you like no put the big sensor in there. Well, I would do it

00:05:52 ◼   ► It's still too grand. I guess it just that's how much I mean

00:05:55 ◼   ► It's 2800 but like you know, I mean I think

00:05:59 ◼   ► The the rx-1s biggest flaw or biggest downside. It's not really a flaw

00:06:05 ◼   ► I guess it's it's more of just a downside of the practicality of its design is that

00:06:10 ◼   ► The lens sticks out pretty far just because I think it's just because if you want an f/2.0

00:06:17 ◼   ► 35 millimeter lens that can project enough of an image circle to cover a full-frame sensor

00:06:24 ◼   ► It needs to be a certain size like you just can't like I don't think they could have made it that much smaller

00:06:29 ◼   ► and so the result is that the camera is is

00:06:32 ◼   ► Fairly deep so like you can't put it in a pocket of anything except like a big loose jacket pocket

00:06:40 ◼   ► You get one of those pancake lenses though, that gives you the weird fisheye appearance

00:06:45 ◼   ► type thing.

00:06:46 ◼   ► No, that you can do.

00:06:47 ◼   ► But you're right though, the optical part of it is the intractable part, because if

00:06:51 ◼   ► you're precision grinding glass and aligning the things with each other, and the nature

00:06:55 ◼   ► of optics and the nature of glass is such that that is not...

00:06:58 ◼   ► I don't expect that to get cheap according to Moore's law, but I do keep hoping that

00:07:02 ◼   ► the sensor part of it should progress along the typical technology.

00:07:07 ◼   ► So I'm okay with like zoom lenses always being super expensive because it's like that they're

00:07:12 ◼   ► not subject to Moore's law or any of those things.

00:07:14 ◼   ► But the sensors I felt like the light gathering ability at the very least, I want to see more

00:07:19 ◼   ► progress than I have seen.

00:07:21 ◼   ► So even though like my Canon S110 or whatever the hell I have for my little mini camera

00:07:25 ◼   ► is amazing compared to like my first digital camera, it's not amazing enough.

00:07:29 ◼   ► And so like the mirrorless movement I thought we were going to move towards.

00:07:33 ◼   ► So you don't want a giant SLR and you don't need this giant thing.

00:07:35 ◼   ► in these little tiny cameras, we're going to put much bigger sensors and give you a

00:07:38 ◼   ► reasonable lens and try to cut down the price. But it seems like the RX1 is the other direction.

00:07:43 ◼   ► It's like, okay, for people who already have lots of money and are professional photographers,

00:07:46 ◼   ► we can make them not have to carry such a big giant monster thing, but it's still going

00:07:50 ◼   ► to cost, you know, whatever, $2800 as you said.

00:07:52 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's, like, it isn't as portable as I want it to be, but I love using it. I

00:07:57 ◼   ► just absolutely love using it. And, like, it has made my entire setup of Canon glass

00:08:04 ◼   ► seem obsolete now. Even though the glass is great, this now feels like the new form factor

00:08:12 ◼   ► of cameras. I really don't see myself buying another SLR. I probably will. I'll probably

00:08:18 ◼   ► go back on this in three years or something.

00:08:20 ◼   ► No, you won't. The days of the SLRs are numbered with those stupid mirrors. People are going

00:08:26 ◼   ► to be talking about that sound. "When I was a boy, we heard this when we took a picture,

00:08:29 ◼   ► and we loved it!"

00:08:30 ◼   ► Nice.

00:08:31 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:08:32 ◼   ► I'm actually just excited.

00:08:33 ◼   ► I don't know anything about photography, and I wish I did, but I've never had the time

00:08:38 ◼   ► nor the money to figure it out.

00:08:40 ◼   ► Nor the children.

00:08:41 ◼   ► Nor the children.

00:08:42 ◼   ► That makes me do it.

00:08:44 ◼   ► But I'm actually kind of happy to see Sony doing well again.

00:08:46 ◼   ► I think, Jon, you've talked about this at length in the past, but when I was a kid,

00:08:50 ◼   ► Sony was the brand.

00:08:51 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:08:53 ◼   ► And then, God, how the mighty fell.

00:08:56 ◼   ► And to hear you espousing this camera with such enthusiasm,

00:09:02 ◼   ► it's good to hear that Sony's doing well.

00:09:04 ◼   ► But what happened, Sony bought Minolta

00:09:06 ◼   ► and really became extremely serious about camera stuff,

00:09:10 ◼   ► like, I don't know, five, six, eight years ago,

00:09:12 ◼   ► something like that.

00:09:13 ◼   ► And they've been slowly progressing.

00:09:15 ◼   ► And they got into the SLR business fairly recently,

00:09:19 ◼   ► like with the A90 was the first one?

00:09:21 ◼   ► Whatever the first one was, they got into the SLR business.

00:09:24 ◼   ► And what's happening now, for a while, Canon was very clearly the leader in sensor technology.

00:09:32 ◼   ► And for a while, I think even the lenses, and they're still doing very well in the lenses,

00:09:35 ◼   ► very close with Nikon, but still doing very, very well.

00:09:40 ◼   ► But the Canon sensors have kind of slowed down in progress recently, and everyone else

00:09:45 ◼   ► has caught up very closely.

00:09:48 ◼   ► And in many ways, by almost all measurements, the new Sony sensors are better than Canon

00:09:53 ◼   ► sensors. Sony used to be an embarrassment in the camera industry. I remember when I

00:09:58 ◼   ► was first shopping for digital cameras, like, oh, it's Canon and Nikon, and Sony makes cameras

00:10:02 ◼   ► too, but just ignore them because they're pieces of crap, like they don't know what

00:10:04 ◼   ► they're doing with these digital cameras, right? And it's taken them a while to turn

00:10:09 ◼   ► that around, to be taken seriously as a player. Like, every time they'd be like, "Some amazing

00:10:12 ◼   ► new Sony camera would have some aspect of it that was amazing, but all the rest of it

00:10:16 ◼   ► would be crap," and you'd look at the pictures that you get taken with and it would just

00:10:18 ◼   ► be a mess. Even if it was just image processing or battery life or some weird ergonomic aspect

00:10:23 ◼   ► that was screwed up because they wanted to make it sleek, but it seems like they're finally

00:10:26 ◼   ► figuring it out at long last.

00:10:28 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:10:29 ◼   ► And so now that they're carrying forward their strengths that they had and the electronic

00:10:32 ◼   ► stuff and, you know, they figured out all the other stuff that, you know, it kind of

00:10:37 ◼   ► makes me wish to have implemented camera because even all these cameras like now that now that

00:10:41 ◼   ► the whole back of them is a screen and a lot of it is the UI and these camera makers have

00:10:45 ◼   ► no idea how to make a user interface to save their lives.

00:10:47 ◼   ► The UI's are terrible.

00:10:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:49 ◼   ► I really, you know, they can need some help there.

00:10:52 ◼   ► The good thing about saving cameras is that I think like car dashboards, there will always

00:10:57 ◼   ► be a place, especially in professional cameras, for knobs, dials, and buttons, because you

00:11:01 ◼   ► can use them without looking, and it's much easier using a touchscreen.

00:11:05 ◼   ► And it doesn't mean you don't also expose that on a touchscreen, but the camera makers

00:11:09 ◼   ► who are good at the shutter button, the knobs, the dials, the twisty things, that skill will

00:11:14 ◼   ► not become obsolete.

00:11:15 ◼   ► It won't be like, "Oh, well, you used to be good at those knobs and twisty things, but

00:11:17 ◼   ► now you don't need them at all anymore."

00:11:19 ◼   ► No, you'll always want them on a camera.

00:11:21 ◼   ► And that's why Apple shouldn't make one.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Ah, yeah, because they'll-- no removable battery, no buttons.

00:11:27 ◼   ► Apple would make one with no buttons,

00:11:28 ◼   ► and everything would be on the screen.

00:11:30 ◼   ► It would be a pain in the ass to use.

00:11:32 ◼   ► Yeah, it might be OK for a casual camera.

00:11:34 ◼   ► We're just talking about people who are in different--

00:11:37 ◼   ► Well, that's the problem, though.

00:11:37 ◼   ► For a casual camera, that's why people love the iPhone.

00:11:39 ◼   ► That's all they want.

00:11:40 ◼   ► It's a big screen that you point at something,

00:11:42 ◼   ► and you say, what on screen now?

00:11:44 ◼   ► Make picture of.

00:11:45 ◼   ► The problem is that the market for casual cameras

00:11:47 ◼   ► is evaporating.

00:11:48 ◼   ► Well, that's the phone market.

00:11:50 ◼   ► Basically, you could say Apple has entered the market with the iPhone, and that's the

00:11:53 ◼   ► market.

00:11:54 ◼   ► That's what they're doing.

00:11:55 ◼   ► Right.

00:11:56 ◼   ► Apple has entered the camera market the same way they entered the video game platform market,

00:11:58 ◼   ► kind of accidentally.

00:12:00 ◼   ► And once they realized they were doing it, they really took advantage of it.

00:12:05 ◼   ► Apple's still not really in the video game market.

00:12:07 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:12:09 ◼   ► How well is that Wii U selling?

00:12:11 ◼   ► I know.

00:12:12 ◼   ► I'm just saying that they're in their own market, making their own things.

00:12:17 ◼   ► They'll never be in the gaming market until they decide they want to make a machine focused

00:12:22 ◼   ► on games.

00:12:23 ◼   ► And they're not going to do that because it's not what they do.

00:12:25 ◼   ► Well, I think they have made machines for the same use.

00:12:28 ◼   ► No, it doesn't even have any buttons on it.

00:12:30 ◼   ► It's the same thing.

00:12:31 ◼   ► It's like trying to make a car dashboard, but no steering wheel.

00:12:35 ◼   ► You steer by dragging your finger on the screen.

00:12:36 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:12:37 ◼   ► You can put a virtual steering wheel on the screen and drag that with your finger.

00:12:42 ◼   ► They're not going to do that.

00:12:43 ◼   ► They're never going to put something on an iPhone that uggs it up just for the purposes

00:12:47 ◼   ► of games. So the type of games that you can put on an entirely touch screen device with

00:12:53 ◼   ► really no buttons to speak of that you can use for gaming is so incredibly limited.

00:12:56 ◼   ► Well, they're doing a typical disruption move of not attacking head-on into that market.

00:13:04 ◼   ► They're kind of running this parallel thing on the side that is taking a lot of that market

00:13:10 ◼   ► away without doing exactly the same thing. Because if they tried doing exactly the same

00:13:13 ◼   ► thing, they would have a lot harder time. They're doing a blue ocean thing. They're

00:13:16 ◼   ► going for the people who were never going to buy those crazy game machines, right? And

00:13:19 ◼   ► that's why they're selling a bazillion copies and making tons more money. But they're not

00:13:24 ◼   ► going after the people who want to play, you know, games that can't be played on a touchscreen.

00:13:29 ◼   ► Apple's not interested. Like, if Apple's interested in taking the gaming market, they would make

00:13:33 ◼   ► something that can play games that can't be played on a touchscreen. But they're not interested

00:13:37 ◼   ► in the gaming market. They'll just take what they can get from what they are interested

00:13:40 ◼   ► in. But they're making more money than everyone else because it turns out there's way more

00:13:43 ◼   ► people who don't care about games that can't be played on a touchscreen. Because basically,

00:13:50 ◼   ► touchscreen games alone are too complicated for most people. It's just like, "Oh, it's

00:13:53 ◼   ► a touchscreen game," but it's simple. You'll like it. You just pull back the little bird

00:13:56 ◼   ► and let them go. People can handle it. It could be jeweled.

00:13:59 ◼   ► They've made an alternative. Like before, if you wanted to play a game, you've always

00:14:05 ◼   ► had the consoles and the high-end PCs doing these A-rated games, major, big-budget, complex

00:14:12 ◼   ► things, these awesome graphics and everything. And you've always had the market for casual

00:14:16 ◼   ► games. In the old days, casual games were those CD-ROMs at Walmart full of 10,000 solitaire

00:14:23 ◼   ► variants. Now, and then for a while they were like flash games on the web, and there are

00:14:30 ◼   ► still some of that, but now you're seeing this massive boom. Oh, and like for six months

00:14:35 ◼   ► they were on Facebook, and now you're seeing this massive boom.

00:14:38 ◼   ► Well, they're still on Facebook.

00:14:39 ◼   ► Microsoft owned the casual game market in the '90s because the casual game market was

00:14:43 ◼   ► dominated by Minesweeper and Solitaire, the two most played games by humans in the entire

00:14:49 ◼   ► history of the universe because everyone had a PC on their desk in the '90s and all they

00:14:53 ◼   ► did all day was play Minesweeper and Solitaire.

00:14:55 ◼   ► Too bad they didn't charge money for those.

00:14:56 ◼   ► Don't forget FreeCell.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm sorry.

00:14:58 ◼   ► Oh, that's true.

00:14:59 ◼   ► It's an untapped market, but that's just the equivalent.

00:15:02 ◼   ► Everyone has cell phones now and everyone plays games with them, but Apple was smart

00:15:05 ◼   ► enough to actually make a market.

00:15:06 ◼   ► Even if the iPhone just came with three games and there was no App Store, people would play

00:15:10 ◼   ► those three games so much.

00:15:11 ◼   ► The difference now is that they have this massive game library on these casual devices.

00:15:18 ◼   ► Casual gaming has never been better than it is today, and it gets better all the time.

00:15:25 ◼   ► Apple really owns quite a big portion of casual gaming, and that's why they're attacking big

00:15:30 ◼   ► gaming, because casual gaming in general is now way bigger, way easier, and way more rich

00:15:36 ◼   ► than it was before in content availability. And so now, whereas before, I think a lot

00:15:41 ◼   ► of people would get tired of those casual games and go buy an Xbox if they wanted to

00:15:47 ◼   ► play games at night, now you're seeing a lot more people who are sticking with the world

00:15:51 ◼   ► of casual games instead of buying a game console.

00:15:55 ◼   ► But if Apple's just not willing to make it possible to play games that aren't playable

00:16:00 ◼   ► on a touchscreen, they're never going to pull that market. It's like someone who's trying

00:16:04 ◼   ► I'm going to make a thing and it's like a movie but it's on a little tiny box that's

00:16:07 ◼   ► in your home and way more people are going to have it and like saying, "Okay, well, are

00:16:13 ◼   ► you ever going to do a thing where the picture is the size of the side of the building?"

00:16:17 ◼   ► No, no, it's always going to be small in the home.

00:16:19 ◼   ► Like it can't really be taller than one story because people's ceilings are like eight feet

00:16:23 ◼   ► high so we're really not, you know, there will always be a market for movies because

00:16:27 ◼   ► the screen is way bigger and it's a different experience.

00:16:29 ◼   ► And I mean this is not as ridiculous in terms of square footage or whatever but there's

00:16:33 ◼   ► There's just certain types of games that people like to play that you can't play with touchscreen

00:16:37 ◼   ► controls.

00:16:38 ◼   ► And if Apple is never, never, never, never going to go after them, there's always going

00:16:42 ◼   ► to, like they're saying, "We don't want that.

00:16:45 ◼   ► You can do something else."

00:16:46 ◼   ► And it just so happens that the games that you can't play with touchscreen controls are

00:16:48 ◼   ► like the traditional genres that are way deeper that most people can't play at all.

00:16:52 ◼   ► But there is a proven market for.

00:16:55 ◼   ► Is there enough of a market for four or three console competitors?

00:16:58 ◼   ► Probably not, so say goodbye to some of them, right?

00:17:01 ◼   ► but I still think that if Apple refuses to go to that,

00:17:04 ◼   ► it's not like there's a future where all gaming

00:17:06 ◼   ► is touchscreen gaming.

00:17:06 ◼   ► That just does not exist. - Oh no, definitely not.

00:17:08 ◼   ► But just like there's no future

00:17:10 ◼   ► where movie theaters are totally gone,

00:17:11 ◼   ► but I think it's very easy to see that game consoles

00:17:15 ◼   ► are getting really marginalized, just like movie theaters.

00:17:19 ◼   ► - I mean, it's consolidation.

00:17:21 ◼   ► There's probably not enough of a market left

00:17:23 ◼   ► for all the players that are there

00:17:25 ◼   ► to be doing what they're doing,

00:17:25 ◼   ► so there's gonna be some sort of consolidation

00:17:27 ◼   ► that goes on there.

00:17:28 ◼   ► But the fact that Apple is so hands off with the games,

00:17:33 ◼   ► they're not even, it's not even to the point where,

00:17:35 ◼   ► I mean, maybe we should talk to some Apple evangelists

00:17:36 ◼   ► about this, but like, so they're competing in theory

00:17:38 ◼   ► with Android for the casual game dollar,

00:17:41 ◼   ► like, so you wanna make a Sally's Spa type game.

00:17:45 ◼   ► The console makers in that market are so mature

00:17:47 ◼   ► that Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sega,

00:17:50 ◼   ► like all those people back in the day,

00:17:52 ◼   ► would go to the popular third party developers,

00:17:54 ◼   ► like EA or whoever, and court them and say,

00:17:56 ◼   ► you should really make your next great Sally Spaw game for our platform and here's why."

00:18:00 ◼   ► And cater to them and just go after them because they're competing for the content creation

00:18:04 ◼   ► talent.

00:18:06 ◼   ► Is Apple going out and trying to get EA to make casual games for them and not for Android?

00:18:11 ◼   ► No, because they're just like, "EA will make games for us.

00:18:14 ◼   ► We're the only people who have paying customers who got it in the bag."

00:18:18 ◼   ► The market hasn't matured to the point where it's even to the level where the console market

00:18:22 ◼   ► was in the '80s where...

00:18:23 ◼   ► I don't believe Apple believes in games.

00:18:26 ◼   ► They like the fact that games are on their platform, but they're not going to do anything

00:18:29 ◼   ► for those people with the games except, "Okay, we'll put a good GPU for you in there."

00:18:32 ◼   ► We're like, "Oh, could you put buttons and a joystick?

00:18:34 ◼   ► We're having an officially supported Blu--" Even just Bluetooth, it's like something,

00:18:37 ◼   ► anything.

00:18:38 ◼   ► Throw us a bone.

00:18:39 ◼   ► Let us have a controller.

00:18:40 ◼   ► They're like, "No, we'd rather you not muck up our thing with any sort of traditional

00:18:43 ◼   ► video game controller.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Can't you just make your game touch screen?

00:18:45 ◼   ► Really we feel like your game should conform to our interfaces, our vision for the phone

00:18:49 ◼   ► or whatever."

00:18:50 ◼   ► And they're like, "Ah, all right.

00:18:51 ◼   ► That's where the money is.

00:18:52 ◼   ► Let's make a million of these games for a dollar each or whatever."

00:18:55 ◼   ► I just don't feel like Apple believes in, understands, or is interested in gaming.

00:18:59 ◼   ► They just, you know, pick what they can get.

00:19:00 ◼   ► Well, I think you're right about that for the most part.

00:19:03 ◼   ► But do you honestly think that a game released for iOS would sell very well if

00:19:09 ◼   ► it costs like more than a dollar and required a $30 joystick?

00:19:13 ◼   ► Well, like that's, that's how, if they ever wanted to go after the rest of the

00:19:16 ◼   ► market, you take your iPad pro in 2020, right.

00:19:19 ◼   ► And you have an officially supported Bluetooth controller interface for it,

00:19:23 ◼   ► or some sort of attachment that snaps into the lightning connector on your phone or whatever

00:19:28 ◼   ► and turns it into a game machine and suddenly now the rest of the market is in real trouble

00:19:32 ◼   ► because they're saying "we're not going to leave a portion of the game market for you,

00:19:36 ◼   ► we're taking all the monies from all the casual games and even that niche market for just

00:19:39 ◼   ► people who want more sophisticated games, we're going to take that too because guess what,

00:19:42 ◼   ► we have official support for games that you play that do not require you to touch the

00:19:46 ◼   ► screen." And then everyone else is doomed. But Apple thus far has been like "nah, just

00:19:51 ◼   ► stick to the touch screen. That's our thing. It's simple. If you feel like you can't make

00:19:55 ◼   ► a certain type of game you can't make with a touch screen, tough luck. Then don't do

00:20:00 ◼   ► it then, right?

00:20:01 ◼   ► Yeah, but that's, I mean, as a user, I kind of like that. As a user, as a casual gamer--

00:20:08 ◼   ► I'd say it's the wrong strategy for Apple, but I'm just saying it doesn't show me that

00:20:13 ◼   ► they're really, really into gaming. Because they're not trying to say, "What kind of interactive

00:20:17 ◼   ► gaming experiences can we have? Let's make it like--" Nintendo is into gaming. Nintendo

00:20:20 ◼   ► It was like, what can we make to do something new in gaming?

00:20:25 ◼   ► And we don't care what we have to make, a crazy waggly remote,

00:20:27 ◼   ► a second screen, like whatever.

00:20:30 ◼   ► We just try to think of something.

00:20:31 ◼   ► Except easy online play.

00:20:34 ◼   ► Oh, they would do that if they could.

00:20:36 ◼   ► It sounds like a competence issue, I believe,

00:20:38 ◼   ► not really a-- they would like that to happen

00:20:40 ◼   ► if you could sprinkle the fairy dust and make it happen.

00:20:42 ◼   ► But their whole company is focused

00:20:44 ◼   ► on what can we make to push the frontiers of gaming.

00:20:48 ◼   ► And Apple is just not doing that at all,

00:20:50 ◼   ► not even close.

00:20:52 ◼   ► You know, to go back a little bit, I have to disagree that Sol—well, maybe not disagree,

00:20:56 ◼   ► but point out that maybe Solitaire is not the most widely played game ever, because

00:21:02 ◼   ► I can tell you, when I had a Nokia or Nokia whatever it's called phone, and it had nibbles

00:21:06 ◼   ► on it or whatever—

00:21:07 ◼   ► Oh yeah, the Snake game.

00:21:08 ◼   ► You know what I'm talking about?

00:21:09 ◼   ► Snake, that's what it was.

00:21:10 ◼   ► I saw that getting played constantly for like five years.

00:21:12 ◼   ► Yeah, Snake and Bejeweled might be contenders, but I feel like the sheer number of idle hours

00:21:17 ◼   ► of desk drones not wanting to work at their Windows 3.1 PCs.

00:21:22 ◼   ► That's very true.

00:21:23 ◼   ► You know, Windows 95.

00:21:24 ◼   ► Like, there's just institutionalized old people, Solitare, playing for just hours as they sit

00:21:29 ◼   ► at their security desk and, you know, do nothing.

00:21:31 ◼   ► Well, and also, like, those Windows games were the three Windows games, or the two Windows.

00:21:35 ◼   ► Like, sometimes you didn't get Freestyle.

00:21:37 ◼   ► I don't know what conditions led to that or what versions of Windows had it and didn't.

00:21:41 ◼   ► But like, Solitare and Minesweeper, those have been on every desktop computer that everyone

00:21:46 ◼   ► has ever had that ran Windows, which is most of them, since the early 90s or earlier, and

00:21:51 ◼   ► they're still there now. They've had, what, 25 years at least?

00:21:58 ◼   ► They're on your work computer is the key. Of course you can put whatever games you want,

00:22:03 ◼   ► but on your work computer there's nothing except, and especially before the web, the

00:22:07 ◼   ► web has really hurt that because now you can just go look at porn, right? So that's probably

00:22:10 ◼   ► sucking a lot of time away from the people sitting at desks being bored.

00:22:14 ◼   ► But the content filter won't know that you're using Minesweeper.

00:22:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know, I have to wonder.

00:22:19 ◼   ► I wish Microsoft had put monitoring in all its stuff so we can calculate the sheer number

00:22:23 ◼   ► of hours that people have spent playing these games.

00:22:27 ◼   ► Minesweeper does not translate well to touch, by the way.

00:22:29 ◼   ► I downloaded one for the iPad for my most recent flight somewhere, and I remember trying

00:22:33 ◼   ► it out, and the problem is the difference between flagging a square and opening it,

00:22:39 ◼   ► which is a really, really important thing to not do wrong.

00:22:42 ◼   ► With your right you got to touch with your right

00:22:44 ◼   ► Like it even it had it like you could set us that double tap was one of them and one of them was like

00:22:51 ◼   ► Tap and hold but like if you mess up once

00:22:54 ◼   ► You blow up a bomb and your games over so even casual games can't be touchscreen only

00:22:59 ◼   ► Mine sweeper doesn't well like

00:23:03 ◼   ► For a long time that two of the biggest casual games are mine sweeper and Tetris and neither of those work on touch

00:23:09 ◼   ► I'm a huge Tetris fan, and it does not work on touch

00:23:12 ◼   ► Yeah, but you know but that's not to say that there aren't awesome casual games that I know that

00:23:18 ◼   ► It's just my screen with yeah touch screens have done a Nintendo type move where there was types of games that were not possible without

00:23:24 ◼   ► A touch screen right and suddenly the whole world of them has opened up so kudos for all of that

00:23:28 ◼   ► But clearly that was not like that's a side effect of that making a touchscreen interface, you know

00:23:32 ◼   ► And I really do believe that they are making their hardware

00:23:35 ◼   ► Like they want who wants the GPU. It's all about game people

00:23:39 ◼   ► So they were in consultation with all these other guys about their gaming stack, but that's

00:23:43 ◼   ► as far as it goes.

00:23:44 ◼   ► We'll give you a great GPU, we'll give you a great screen.

00:23:48 ◼   ► Don't ask us for anything else.

00:23:50 ◼   ► But also, they give them a lot of good APIs.

00:23:54 ◼   ► Making games for iOS is way better of a business and way better for the programmers than making

00:24:01 ◼   ► games for Android.

00:24:03 ◼   ► And Apple knows this, and I think Apple tries to stay ahead of this as much as they can.

00:24:07 ◼   ► devices consistently have really good GPUs.

00:24:10 ◼   ► There's a lot of Android devices sold that are really lopsided.

00:24:13 ◼   ► They have fast CPUs, really high resolution screens,

00:24:16 ◼   ► and really terrible GPUs, because it's harder

00:24:19 ◼   ► to really advertise that, or it's harder to get it right,

00:24:22 ◼   ► or more expensive. But Apple

00:24:25 ◼   ► does so well with having all their devices

00:24:28 ◼   ► being able to play really great games.

00:24:31 ◼   ► And they're not being that many GPUs out there,

00:24:34 ◼   ► So it's easy to program for all the Apple devices.

00:24:37 ◼   ► And they know.

00:24:38 ◼   ► Yeah, a lot of them are early Amazons though because they had an OpenGL-accelerated GUI,

00:24:41 ◼   ► so kind of they needed that anyway.

00:24:44 ◼   ► Right.

00:24:45 ◼   ► And Apple knows very much that gaming is extremely important to attract and keep people on their

00:24:51 ◼   ► platform, especially young people.

00:24:52 ◼   ► I mean, the whole iPod Touch was so focused on gaming for so long because of that, because

00:24:56 ◼   ► they knew that a whole lot of iPod Touch owners are kids and teenagers who their parents don't

00:25:02 ◼   ► want to buy them iPhones yet.

00:25:03 ◼   ► And so they have iPod touches, and games are really important in those markets, so they

00:25:10 ◼   ► really do focus quite a lot on games.

00:25:12 ◼   ► It makes me sad when I see a lot of my friends and relatives, without my consultation or

00:25:17 ◼   ► blessing, have decided they're going to buy their children or significant others Kindle

00:25:21 ◼   ► Fires.

00:25:22 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:25:23 ◼   ► And then I go and I see the Fire HDs, and then I go and I see the kids playing games

00:25:27 ◼   ► on a Kindle Fire.

00:25:28 ◼   ► There's nothing sadder than a kid playing a game on a Kindle Fire.

00:25:31 ◼   ► And I'm not saying this to sound like elitist, but like the Kindle Fire is not a gaming machine.

00:25:36 ◼   ► Like get your kid a Nintendo DS.

00:25:39 ◼   ► It will cost you less money and that kid will have so much more fun.

00:25:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:25:42 ◼   ► You know, I bet a lot of Kindle Fires were bought for kids thinking they'd be good gaming

00:25:45 ◼   ► machines.

00:25:46 ◼   ► Because it makes sense.

00:25:47 ◼   ► I mean, you can play Angry Birds on them and a couple of other things, but it's just...

00:25:51 ◼   ► You want a cheap solution to your kid's desire for an iPad.

00:25:56 ◼   ► Something where if they break it or lose it, you can be out $160 instead of $500.

00:26:01 ◼   ► bucks like that. That's a way more attractive thing for parents, I'm sure. But yeah, man,

00:26:08 ◼   ► because the Kindle Fire, I haven't used any of the new generation ones, but the first

00:26:12 ◼   ► generation one that I have is a terrible device in every possible way.

00:26:17 ◼   ► It's like when you're just a big fan of Coke and your parents buy you a case of RC Cola

00:26:21 ◼   ► and you're like, "No." I know it seems like the same thing.

00:26:25 ◼   ► There are no redeeming factors to the Kindle Fire one. It's just so, so bad. It wasn't

00:26:31 ◼   ► cheap enough to make it worth being this bad.

00:26:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:35 ◼   ► So parents, buy your kids Nintendo DS, please.

00:26:37 ◼   ► It's not that much money.

00:26:39 ◼   ► You can get it used all month.

00:26:40 ◼   ► Not the 3DS.

00:26:41 ◼   ► Don't even spring for the fancy--

00:26:42 ◼   ► that's one's too expensive.

00:26:43 ◼   ► Just an old Nintendo DS.

00:26:45 ◼   ► It's indestructible.

00:26:46 ◼   ► It has a bazillion awesome games that are fun,

00:26:51 ◼   ► that the frame rates are good on.

00:26:54 ◼   ► It's not a tablet, but yeah.

00:26:56 ◼   ► I think once your kid is able to start

00:26:58 ◼   ► caring about the frame rate, then maybe upgrade to an iPad.

00:27:02 ◼   ► Well, no, because the games, I would rather play a DS game.

00:27:06 ◼   ► It's got buttons. It's got buttons and a D-pad and you can draw

00:27:10 ◼   ► the screen. If I had to pick a platform to play Tetris on, I'd rather play Tetris on the DS

00:27:14 ◼   ► than on the X3. Yes, of course. I mean, the Game Boy was the original

00:27:18 ◼   ► Tetris Monster machine for kids. The parents were playing

00:27:22 ◼   ► it on their PCs, but the kids in the back of the car with the Game Boy, with the

00:27:26 ◼   ► gigantic gameboy with the, you know, not black and white, but kind of yellowish greenish

00:27:32 ◼   ► and black.

00:27:33 ◼   ► Those were the days.

00:27:34 ◼   ► Playing Tetris, that, you know, and Tetris.

00:27:36 ◼   ► Practically a Tetris machine.

00:27:37 ◼   ► Oh yeah, because any game with a scrolling background, like a platformer, just smeared

00:27:42 ◼   ► so badly on that screen, you couldn't even play it.

00:27:45 ◼   ► Just like the original Game Gear had the exact same problem.

00:27:48 ◼   ► The Game Gear was terrible.

00:27:50 ◼   ► Everything about the Game Gear was terrible.

00:27:51 ◼   ► Didn't it blow through batteries?

00:27:52 ◼   ► Yes, it used six AA batteries at a time.

00:27:54 ◼   ► And it used them up in five minutes.

00:27:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it would burn through six batteries in like 45 minutes or an hour. It was it was a pretty short time

00:28:02 ◼   ► It would last you a lunch period in middle school. That's my gauge for those things would last

00:28:06 ◼   ► It was like well

00:28:07 ◼   ► You could bring it to lunch and I don't want to turn on to lunch and then you

00:28:09 ◼   ► All your friends would play at lunch or by the end of lunch while the batteries are dying now

00:28:12 ◼   ► Yeah, and so you'd have to have like these tremendous rechargeable battery pack accessories or any and they were nikad not even nickel metal

00:28:19 ◼   ► I'd write exactly terrible terrible memory effect on them. Oh, yeah

00:28:24 ◼   ► Because I'm a my on let me tell you well

00:28:26 ◼   ► I think people with gameboys have to have those big light things on the front like those big as big like light

00:28:31 ◼   ► magnifying glass combo accessory, it's

00:28:34 ◼   ► With stereo speakers. Yes

00:28:36 ◼   ► That's what you missed out on too about not being a Mac user. So the the original Mac

00:28:41 ◼   ► Non desktop machine let's call it called the Mac portable

00:28:47 ◼   ► It had a lead acid battery like oh my god car

00:28:51 ◼   ► Okay, I weighed 16 pounds. I believe I have one in my attic it weighed 16 pounds

00:28:56 ◼   ► It had a full-size actual real keyboard

00:28:59 ◼   ► Because 16 pounds why the hell not right and so it's like this is a laughingstock

00:29:05 ◼   ► I had like a trackball embedded in for moving. This is a laughingstock type of thing like oh

00:29:10 ◼   ► This is a ridiculous machine

00:29:11 ◼   ► But you know what it had it had something that you kids might know the name of called an active matrix

00:29:15 ◼   ► LCD screen and that meant when you move stuff the screen updated and it was like a miracle

00:29:20 ◼   ► It was like a miracle because we'd all seen the smeary LCD screens like LCD screens

00:29:25 ◼   ► Those are terrible and once you saw this thing like wait a second. It doesn't smear

00:29:28 ◼   ► You know it was I mean I probably look at it now probably like a ghosting mess

00:29:31 ◼   ► But it was active matrix versus you know the passive matrix displays that you saw it was such a night and day and experience

00:29:38 ◼   ► It was like this is what I want from Apple. I don't care that it's 16 pounds

00:29:41 ◼   ► I don't care that as a last at battery

00:29:42 ◼   ► I don't care that it's this gigantic beast with a handle the screen is amazing. You know

00:29:48 ◼   ► That's that was the old Apple there was always something something phenomenal about even their worst machines. Did you in the Mac?

00:29:55 ◼   ► Universe back then did you guys ever have mouse pointer trails?

00:30:00 ◼   ► Intentionally or unintentionally because the crappy you know the the first power book so did they all have active matrix?

00:30:08 ◼   ► I think made have only been an option

00:30:09 ◼   ► I remember I remember mouse cursor trails on bad laptops for you it was it was actually a feature of Windows

00:30:15 ◼   ► I think in 3.1 they added it. It was a feature where it would just draw, it would leave the

00:30:21 ◼   ► mouse pointer graphic, it would not unblit it, it would draw it on the screen in the

00:30:27 ◼   ► shadows. So it's very similar to when Windows freezes.

00:30:31 ◼   ► But it happened all the time.

00:30:34 ◼   ► When a window blocks its main event loop, whatever, I forget what it's called on Windows,

00:30:37 ◼   ► but when it doesn't respond to its main event loop and it doesn't respond to repainting

00:30:41 ◼   ► So everything just kind of smears all over the window because it's not

00:30:44 ◼   ► Is this still true in Windows 7 and 8 that it's the windows aren't their own layers anymore or like

00:30:51 ◼   ► Windows Windows 7 arrow has a compositing window manager. Oh good finally. Okay, because I know like you can turn it off though

00:30:58 ◼   ► Because it's windows good. Yeah

00:31:00 ◼   ► But yeah

00:31:01 ◼   ► Like it the screens were so bad back then they actually added

00:31:03 ◼   ► Artificial mouse trails to make it easier to see where your mouse pointer was to find where it is

00:31:08 ◼   ► And that's actually that's actually kind of an accessibility thing like my mother

00:31:12 ◼   ► Uses the crank up the size of the cursor thing because her vision is going right

00:31:16 ◼   ► uh

00:31:17 ◼   ► And so that because she can't

00:31:19 ◼   ► Otherwise she forgets where the cursor is and you can't see it like you wiggle it around try to get the motion

00:31:22 ◼   ► Well, if you've got trails and you wiggle it around all of a sudden

00:31:24 ◼   ► This is white swirl happening off in the corner. You're like, oh, there's the cursor

00:31:27 ◼   ► So marco, can I ask you about the magazine? Yeah

00:31:33 ◼   ► So you had tweeted earlier today, which if this gets released by the time anyone hears

00:31:39 ◼   ► it, it's going to be like a week ago. But anyway, you had tweeted that you had added

00:31:43 ◼   ► support for other mail clients other than Apple Mail. And it got me to thinking, and

00:31:49 ◼   ► I'm probably not looking at this right, but I wanted to hear your guys' take. It got me

00:31:53 ◼   ► to thinking that to some degree, I feel like that sort of developer effort that you had

00:31:59 ◼   ► had to go through to support all these other mail clients, which I'm assuming is just a

00:32:03 ◼   ► series of URL schemes. Is that correct?

00:32:05 ◼   ► Yeah. And it wasn't all these other. I literally just added support for Gmail and Sparrow,

00:32:09 ◼   ► because I can't—nobody told me any other client that they're using, except for that

00:32:14 ◼   ► new mailbox thing, but they don't have a URL scheme, so I can't do anything with it.

00:32:18 ◼   ► Right. But it still got me to thinking that that almost smells to me like the iOS equivalent

00:32:25 ◼   ► of the Android fragmentation in the sense that it's something that's not well managed

00:32:30 ◼   ► by—well, I mean, URL schemes are well managed by the OS, but—

00:32:32 ◼   ► No, they're not. They're really, really not.

00:32:34 ◼   ► It's the Wild West out there. They don't even have a registry like they did for type

00:32:38 ◼   ► creator codes, you know?

00:32:39 ◼   ► Okay, so that's fair. But what I'm driving at is there's a mechanism for quasi-interapp

00:32:44 ◼   ► communication, but really, that is a hack to me that you shouldn't have to go through.

00:32:48 ◼   ► And I don't think it's Apple's style to let you pick a different mail client, or

00:32:51 ◼   ► or at least not in iOS, but that just kind of smells.

00:32:55 ◼   ► I was curious what you guys thought about that.

00:32:57 ◼   ► - They don't like letting you pick a different mail client.

00:32:59 ◼   ► But eventually, think about the Mac,

00:33:03 ◼   ► how they don't really like letting you pick

00:33:06 ◼   ► your different default browser.

00:33:07 ◼   ► Remember when there was the internet config control panel

00:33:10 ◼   ► where you said, what application do you want to use

00:33:11 ◼   ► for the FTP protocol?

00:33:13 ◼   ► What application do you want to use for,

00:33:14 ◼   ► and you got the pickup, and then you're like,

00:33:15 ◼   ► you know what, let's just put that as a preference in Safari.

00:33:18 ◼   ► And then every stupid web browser had to say,

00:33:20 ◼   ► no, I'm the default browser.

00:33:21 ◼   ► And you'd have to go to the app itself to change that setting.

00:33:24 ◼   ► Like, there was no system-wide-- there still

00:33:26 ◼   ► is a system-wide registry and database of who controls it.

00:33:28 ◼   ► But it's not exposed.

00:33:29 ◼   ► And that's the Mac where it's supposed to be the Wild West.

00:33:31 ◼   ► On iOS, it's like, so you want to use a different default.

00:33:34 ◼   ► Mail client?

00:33:35 ◼   ► Well, screw you.

00:33:35 ◼   ► Like, that's why when I went to the magazine,

00:33:38 ◼   ► and I saw, oh, it wants me to send an email.

00:33:39 ◼   ► And the only email account I have configured on my Mac

00:33:43 ◼   ► is not one of the ones that I would want to use from a web

00:33:45 ◼   ► browser.

00:33:45 ◼   ► So basically, I couldn't-- I don't have-- I use the Gmail

00:33:49 ◼   ► this is before you added Gmail support or whatever.

00:33:52 ◼   ► But it's like, anytime I see anything that's sending email on iOS,

00:33:55 ◼   ► my heart drops because I'm like, "Oh, well that's not using--"

00:33:58 ◼   ► I have one really obscure account configured to mail

00:34:02 ◼   ► and I never look at it, and I don't want to send from that account,

00:34:04 ◼   ► and it's not my real account, and it's not like my Apple ID account,

00:34:07 ◼   ► and it just depresses me, all because I deign to use a different email client.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's a mess. That whole world is a mess.

00:34:16 ◼   ► But I think Gmail is probably the only real exception where

00:34:21 ◼   ► there's actually demand that matters to Apple.

00:34:25 ◼   ► On the Mac, when a lot of this Mac stuff was designed,

00:34:29 ◼   ► the early days of Mail and Safari, Mail and Safari sucked.

00:34:34 ◼   ► And in many ways, Safari still sucks.

00:34:37 ◼   ► Apple didn't have a Mail client, and Apple

00:34:39 ◼   ► didn't have a web browser when this stuff was

00:34:41 ◼   ► done in classic Mac OS.

00:34:42 ◼   ► Of course they're going to let you

00:34:43 ◼   ► pick what the default application for email is.

00:34:45 ◼   ► because Apple didn't even have a horse in the game.

00:34:47 ◼   ► It's not like they had a Claris email, or I guess,

00:34:49 ◼   ► but loosely affiliated.

00:34:51 ◼   ► But they sure didn't have a web browser.

00:34:52 ◼   ► It's like, do you want to use IE as your default web

00:34:55 ◼   ► browser, or Netscape, or iCab, or Cyberdog.

00:35:00 ◼   ► I guess they had Cyberdog, too.

00:35:02 ◼   ► We keep going back.

00:35:03 ◼   ► That underpinning, if you were designing an OS,

00:35:05 ◼   ► I'm going to be an awesome OS, and I'm

00:35:07 ◼   ► going to support third-party development,

00:35:08 ◼   ► of course you have to have a system by which the user gets

00:35:11 ◼   ► to choose which of these umpteen third-party applications

00:35:14 ◼   ► they want to serve these particular needs.

00:35:15 ◼   ► But then once Apple has a horse in the game, like it simplifies things greatly so you don't have to shop around.

00:35:20 ◼   ► Like Apple gives you something, everything works out of the box and you're fine.

00:35:22 ◼   ► But God forbid you are a slightly advanced user and say,

00:35:25 ◼   ► "You know what, I believe I'll use a different mail client."

00:35:27 ◼   ► It's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up, what are you doing here?"

00:35:29 ◼   ► You know?

00:35:30 ◼   ► And on the Mac you can figure out how to do it, but a normal person can't.

00:35:33 ◼   ► Like, if my parents decided that they wanted to use a different mail client, which they probably never would,

00:35:38 ◼   ► but if they did, they would have no idea how to do that.

00:35:40 ◼   ► They would never think to look in the preferences for the mail client that they...

00:35:43 ◼   ► In either mail client they wouldn't think they'll look for the preferences to tell the OS that they want to use it as a client.

00:35:48 ◼   ► Well it would do what the browsers do, which is all the third party ones would have a nag screen that would pop up saying,

00:35:52 ◼   ► "Hey, you want to say this is the default?" But I think like on iOS,

00:35:57 ◼   ► because iOS launched with the best browser and mail client available on iOS,

00:36:01 ◼   ► and it's now, I would say, mail and Safari are still the best mail client and browser available on the platform.

00:36:12 ◼   ► Safari is the best because they won't let anyone else use

00:36:14 ◼   ► Nitro JavaScript engine.

00:36:16 ◼   ► So duh, no wonder it's the best for safety reasons

00:36:19 ◼   ► and whatever.

00:36:19 ◼   ► Like they have legitimate security reasons

00:36:21 ◼   ► for not allowing that to happen.

00:36:22 ◼   ► But everyone else's hands are tied behind their back.

00:36:24 ◼   ► So no one is ever going to make a better browser than Safari

00:36:26 ◼   ► in terms of performance and web rendering

00:36:28 ◼   ► because they're the only guys who

00:36:29 ◼   ► get to use the good rendering engine.

00:36:31 ◼   ► They're the good JavaScript engine.

00:36:32 ◼   ► I wouldn't-- I don't know.

00:36:33 ◼   ► I mean, Safari JavaScript is faster than everyone else's

00:36:36 ◼   ► on iOS.

00:36:36 ◼   ► But I don't think that's what's holding back

00:36:41 ◼   ► the other browsers.

00:36:42 ◼   ► You're not allowed to use a Java--

00:36:45 ◼   ► that's why-- doesn't Chrome use WebKit on iOS entirely,

00:36:49 ◼   ► including the JavaScript engine?

00:36:51 ◼   ► Unlike Chrome on the Mac, which uses the V8 JavaScript engine?

00:36:53 ◼   ► Because you're not allowed to make an interpreter.

00:36:54 ◼   ► That's their other thing.

00:36:56 ◼   ► You can't use--

00:36:56 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:36:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:57 ◼   ► Unless you're a game maker and you get grandfathered in

00:36:59 ◼   ► or whatever the hell crazy deal they have with EA

00:37:01 ◼   ► to let them run Lua scripts or whatever.

00:37:03 ◼   ► I think that doesn't matter.

00:37:03 ◼   ► You can't make an interpreter.

00:37:05 ◼   ► They changed the interpretation of that rule

00:37:06 ◼   ► like a year ago to be more-- even more vague

00:37:10 ◼   ► unspecified but more sensible most of the time.

00:37:13 ◼   ► But still, I mean it's...

00:37:14 ◼   ► Yeah, it still boxes out JavaScript engines.

00:37:16 ◼   ► Oh, sure.

00:37:17 ◼   ► They're clearly, "Oh, you're making a language and we don't want you to download code from

00:37:20 ◼   ► the internet and execute it."

00:37:21 ◼   ► You know, so you have to use our JavaScript engine and the slow version of our JavaScript

00:37:26 ◼   ► engine that doesn't have all the security, you know, possibly security violating features.

00:37:29 ◼   ► So no one is going to ever make a browser that's going to be universally better than

00:37:32 ◼   ► Safari.

00:37:33 ◼   ► And then mail, I would say that lots of people would say that people already have made better

00:37:38 ◼   ► clients than mail.

00:37:39 ◼   ► I don't know how if you like this mailbox crazy thing which has other server side and security and privacy concerns to it, but

00:37:45 ◼   ► Client wise like it's an innovation in terms of how you deal with your mail, and I really like that innovation

00:37:51 ◼   ► I just don't like everything else about the client which is why I'm not going to get it, but

00:37:54 ◼   ► They have a chance that there is a chance that someone could make a better

00:37:58 ◼   ► Ios native mail client than apple because there's no technical reason holding them back

00:38:02 ◼   ► The only thing that screws you is that well so what?

00:38:05 ◼   ► no other application is going to see your stupid mail thing,

00:38:08 ◼   ► and when you send mail, we're going to still pull up Apple

00:38:09 ◼   ► Mail, because that's the way it works.

00:38:11 ◼   ► Right.

00:38:11 ◼   ► So do you ever think that will change?

00:38:13 ◼   ► I mean, I don't.

00:38:14 ◼   ► I don't ever see there being enough demand from customers.

00:38:17 ◼   ► Honestly, Gmail maybe.

00:38:20 ◼   ► Chrome, no.

00:38:22 ◼   ► I just don't see there being this massive demand

00:38:26 ◼   ► from customers on iOS to want to use alternative clients enough

00:38:30 ◼   ► for Apple to want to change their minds on the policy.

00:38:32 ◼   ► Like, if there was a huge demand, that'd be different.

00:38:35 ◼   ► - I think long term what's going to happen is that,

00:38:38 ◼   ► as in so many things, there's going to be

00:38:42 ◼   ► a new killer application, either category

00:38:44 ◼   ► or individual instance, that wants to fill the role

00:38:48 ◼   ► that's currently filled by a default Apple application.

00:38:52 ◼   ► And in order to be competitive,

00:38:54 ◼   ► there will be public pressure to say,

00:38:55 ◼   ► hey, why can't I use popular new thing

00:38:58 ◼   ► instead of the dumb default thing that comes?

00:39:00 ◼   ► And that will only happen,

00:39:01 ◼   ► not because of any of Apple's doing, but because of the sheer mind share and sort of cultural

00:39:06 ◼   ► traction that this other thing gets.

00:39:08 ◼   ► They dodged the bullet on Twitter for that because it was always third party and they

00:39:10 ◼   ► didn't have a single horse in the game, right?

00:39:12 ◼   ► And they integrated Twitter into the US, but I don't know what the next thing is, but whatever

00:39:16 ◼   ► it is, if it wants to take over like web browsing or mail sending, it becomes wildly popular

00:39:20 ◼   ► independent of Apple.

00:39:21 ◼   ► Apple will be under pressure from that same casual public to, "How come every time I send

00:39:26 ◼   ► mail on my iPhone it brings up the stupid mail application?

00:39:29 ◼   ► want to sell in holo mail with the new holographic holo whatever thing that's made by a third

00:39:33 ◼   ► party company that's not Apple, and they have an app, but every time I send mail, like,

00:39:37 ◼   ► that's the phenomenon I'm looking for, where it's going to be something that becomes popular,

00:39:40 ◼   ► independent of Apple, that they can't be ignored, and they're just going to be forced to say,

00:39:45 ◼   ► you know, "All right, we now have a way for you to choose which application you want to

00:39:50 ◼   ► send mail. Do you want our boring other one or this crazy holo mail that everyone loves?"

00:39:54 ◼   ► Or, I'm mispronouncing holo, but whatever. Holographic.

00:39:57 ◼   ► Maybe what it would actually take would be one of those killer apps getting huge and

00:40:03 ◼   ► taking over, growing really fast, like Instagram levels of growth, just taking over like crazy,

00:40:08 ◼   ► but on Android instead, and not even being available on iOS because it can't exist in

00:40:13 ◼   ► the app store.

00:40:14 ◼   ► That's why there would be pressure.

00:40:15 ◼   ► They would say, "On my iPhone, the stupid Apple app always comes up, but on my Android

00:40:19 ◼   ► phone I get to pick which one I want, and everybody who has an Android phone automatically

00:40:22 ◼   ► picks whatever crazy popular new thing is.

00:40:24 ◼   ► So everyone with an Android phone is happily going along and doing their thing, and the

00:40:26 ◼   ► And the Apple people are like, yeah, we have this work around where most Apple--

00:40:30 ◼   ► the worst case scenario is people have to do what Marco is doing.

00:40:32 ◼   ► It's like, all right.

00:40:34 ◼   ► You tried to do it with the magazine originally with the Chrome--

00:40:36 ◼   ► Yeah, and just automatically pick the right one.

00:40:38 ◼   ► With Instapaper, like, oh, if you have Chrome installed,

00:40:40 ◼   ► you're forced to do crap like that because the OS gives no way

00:40:43 ◼   ► for people who want to use Chrome to indicate that preference.

00:40:45 ◼   ► You're like, well, if they have it installed--

00:40:47 ◼   ► I shouldn't have to do this at all.

00:40:49 ◼   ► There should be absolutely no reason why an app developer should

00:40:52 ◼   ► need to separately code support for different mail

00:40:55 ◼   ► clients or different browsers. I shouldn't even have to know what browsers are out there.

00:40:59 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like every application is going to have to have this stupid proliferation of preferences

00:41:03 ◼   ► and dealing with URL protocols, because it just makes a mess. And that's like the worst thing that could happen

00:41:07 ◼   ► to Apple, is that something becomes wildly popular, Apple refuses to budge,

00:41:11 ◼   ► every application that does anything that involves this application suddenly adds a preference that says

00:41:15 ◼   ► "Use Apple default, use this one," or whatever. And then every time you download a new application, you've got to

00:41:19 ◼   ► go into settings and change it and say, "Oh, I've got to tell this to use my..." I mean, like, Fantastic

00:41:23 ◼   ► is kind of almost there, because they

00:41:25 ◼   ► want to make a default calendar, but they can't

00:41:26 ◼   ► replace the default calendar.

00:41:28 ◼   ► There's a lot of people, I bet, who

00:41:29 ◼   ► would buy an iOS calendar application completely

00:41:32 ◼   ► replacing the existing calendar if they could.

00:41:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I would do that with Fantastic Cal, absolutely.

00:41:38 ◼   ► And actually, you were talking about something

00:41:40 ◼   ► that's only on Android that isn't on iOS.

00:41:42 ◼   ► And this isn't a great example, but one that jumped to mind

00:41:45 ◼   ► was the swipe keyboard thing that all the Android users

00:41:49 ◼   ► rave about.

00:41:49 ◼   ► And I don't think it's popular enough

00:41:52 ◼   ► to get the response from Apple that you're talking about,

00:41:54 ◼   ► John, but that certainly is something that I think of

00:41:56 ◼   ► that Android users can hold over our heads and say,

00:41:59 ◼   ► "Hey, look what we can do," and you can't

00:42:01 ◼   ► without a jailbreak or something like that.

00:42:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's a limit to what Apple will do.

00:42:04 ◼   ► Letting you pick your favorite email application

00:42:06 ◼   ► is within the realm of what I would consider plausible

00:42:10 ◼   ► for Apple to do in the future,

00:42:12 ◼   ► but letting you pick a different app instead of Springboard

00:42:14 ◼   ► is outside that realm, or a different keyboard,

00:42:17 ◼   ► like a third-party keyboard app, that is just,

00:42:21 ◼   ► They don't even let you drill down to the Mac.

00:42:22 ◼   ► That's a good yardstick, is the question.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Do they let you replace the Finder with another app?

00:42:26 ◼   ► No.

00:42:27 ◼   ► You can hack it up and figure out a way to do it,

00:42:29 ◼   ► because it's the Mac, and it's much more open than iOS.

00:42:31 ◼   ► But they don't offer you that option.

00:42:33 ◼   ► You can pick your default browser,

00:42:34 ◼   ► and you can pick your default mail client.

00:42:36 ◼   ► And you can pick which application

00:42:37 ◼   ► automatically has ownership over .shtml files,

00:42:40 ◼   ► or whatever the hell you want.

00:42:41 ◼   ► But you cannot pick through a GUI interface.

00:42:44 ◼   ► You know what?

00:42:45 ◼   ► I'm not into the Finder.

00:42:46 ◼   ► Can you launch into Pathfinder?

00:42:47 ◼   ► It's up to the Pathfinder devs to figure out

00:42:49 ◼   ► how to hack your system up to make that happen.

00:42:50 ◼   ► So keyboards probably outside the realm of possibility in the near or distant future.

00:42:58 ◼   ► Springboard replacement also probably not going to happen.

00:43:00 ◼   ► Oh yeah, never going to happen.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Because that's what's going to happen in Apple's way.

00:43:02 ◼   ► But replacement mail and browsers, maybe not mail, maybe not browsers, maybe not calendar,

00:43:09 ◼   ► but something along those lines.

00:43:10 ◼   ► Like camera apps maybe, you know, like all the...

00:43:13 ◼   ► There aren't that many types of apps like that that the use case is so compelling to

00:43:19 ◼   ► to replace the default apps.

00:43:21 ◼   ► Like there really aren't a lot of categories like that.

00:43:23 ◼   ► And that's why I think like Calendar is a great example

00:43:26 ◼   ► of one of those categories, but I think the demand for that

00:43:29 ◼   ► is even lower than the demand for browsers.

00:43:31 ◼   ► I would say demand for browsers is probably lowest

00:43:34 ◼   ► because Chrome and iOS is not that much better

00:43:36 ◼   ► than Safari and iOS.

00:43:38 ◼   ► Demand is probably highest for email clients

00:43:40 ◼   ► because everyone wants to use the Gmail app.

00:43:41 ◼   ► I think that is probably the strongest case

00:43:45 ◼   ► for this preference existing.

00:43:47 ◼   ► calendars, I don't think, you know, I think the market for alternative calendars, while

00:43:52 ◼   ► it may be big enough to support a few developers doing it, I don't think it's big enough for

00:43:56 ◼   ► Apple to have to care about having a default setting.

00:43:59 ◼   ► Well, I don't know, like calendars, reminders, to-do lists, like there are tons of third-party

00:44:05 ◼   ► things that people like. Like the defaults are, I think a lot of people ignore the defaults

00:44:08 ◼   ► because the third-party market is so rich for those things, especially with like, you

00:44:12 ◼   ► know, they were ahead of Apple and integrating with a Mac client and an iPad and iPhone all

00:44:16 ◼   ► together with one big shared thing.

00:44:17 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:44:18 ◼   ► It's just that they're not so much launched

00:44:20 ◼   ► from other applications.

00:44:21 ◼   ► What you don't want is for people to be in a cool app

00:44:24 ◼   ► and see that they're about to do some activity that's

00:44:26 ◼   ► going to invoke another app and realize with a sinking feeling

00:44:30 ◼   ► that, oh, this is not going to invoke the app that I want.

00:44:33 ◼   ► And that repeatedly happening to people

00:44:36 ◼   ► is what makes people sad.

00:44:37 ◼   ► I guess it happens the most, I guess,

00:44:38 ◼   ► by sending email because it's not done from a sheet

00:44:41 ◼   ► like a tweet might be with that API or whatever.

00:44:43 ◼   ► They send you off to the mail app to send your email,

00:44:47 ◼   ► and you don't end up in the Gmail app or whatever

00:44:49 ◼   ► the app that you wanted to use was.

00:44:51 ◼   ► I mean, Apple can nip this in the bud.

00:44:53 ◼   ► Like, the reason we hated it so much with browsers

00:44:54 ◼   ► is because Microsoft stagnated on IE,

00:44:56 ◼   ► and they said, we're just not going to develop that anymore.

00:44:59 ◼   ► IE6 is perfect and never needs to be changed ever again.

00:45:02 ◼   ► And the gap just widened and became increasingly crazy.

00:45:05 ◼   ► Imagine if Windows users could not change their default

00:45:08 ◼   ► browser at all, but had to explicitly

00:45:11 ◼   ► like copy and paste the URL, launch Netscape back in the day, paste the URL in. That's

00:45:17 ◼   ► what the situation is like on iOS now, if you want to use something different for your

00:45:22 ◼   ► mail or browser. You're like, "Oh, there's a link. I don't want to tap it."

00:45:27 ◼   ► That's sort of true. On the new-ish version of 1Password, they did something absolutely

00:45:33 ◼   ► brilliant which was they made their URL handlers OP HTTP and OP HTTPS. So the premise is if

00:45:42 ◼   ► you're in Safari and you want to open that site that you're looking at in 1Password, it

00:45:46 ◼   ► is fiddly admittedly, but it's as unfiddly as you can be which is to say you go to the

00:45:51 ◼   ► URL bar and you put the letters OP in front of whatever the crap is there and then it'll

00:45:55 ◼   ► kick over to 1Password and open it up.

00:45:56 ◼   ► They had to make their own browsers. What they had to do?

00:45:59 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right.

00:46:01 ◼   ► That's like, that is so, I don't know if it's terrible, but it's like, you're one password

00:46:06 ◼   ► and you want to provide password management services, and the only way you can do it is

00:46:10 ◼   ► like, I've just got to make the whole new browser.

00:46:12 ◼   ► It's great that they can do it with a nice embeddable WebKit control and everything like

00:46:15 ◼   ► that, but it's like, that's the heavyweight solution.

00:46:17 ◼   ► Actually, don't even browse the web from our thing, because this is one little thing that

00:46:22 ◼   ► we want to do in some cases, and we can't do it unless you're literally using our software.

00:46:26 ◼   ► I have the exact same thing with Instapaper, which is I wanted to add an easy read later

00:46:30 ◼   ► because Mobile Safari makes that so hard to do, that I built a whole web browser into

00:46:35 ◼   ► Instapaper so that people could browse the web and save stuff from it if they couldn't

00:46:39 ◼   ► figure out how to install the bookmarklet.

00:46:41 ◼   ► You should never remove that feature, by the way. I'll hunt you down.

00:46:46 ◼   ► I would love to remove that feature. I would so love to.

00:46:51 ◼   ► I like to bring up the full version of the web page without leaving the app. That's my

00:46:56 ◼   ► common use case.

00:46:58 ◼   ► I would love to remove it, but I probably never can because of things like that, because

00:47:03 ◼   ► there's enough people who use it, but also because there's going to be so many people

00:47:07 ◼   ► who just browse from that.

00:47:09 ◼   ► Never figure out how to do the bookmark.

00:47:10 ◼   ► Right, because I can't do anything so far.

00:47:12 ◼   ► I figured out the bookmark, though.

00:47:13 ◼   ► I have it, but it's just, you know.

00:47:18 ◼   ► And I think a system like Windows 8's contracts would really go a long way towards solving

00:47:23 ◼   ► a lot of these issues.

00:47:24 ◼   ► all of them. There would still be some issues, but if Apple broadens this whole UI activity

00:47:31 ◼   ► thing from iOS 6 and combining with the remote view controllers thing that they quietly added

00:47:38 ◼   ► to iOS 6 as well and used behind the scenes, if they transform this into something like

00:47:44 ◼   ► Windows 8 contracts with iOS 7 maybe, if they did this, it would be a tremendous help if

00:47:53 ◼   ► if they did it that way. Right now, its current implementation on iOS 6, it's really extremely

00:47:58 ◼   ► unhelpful in many ways. For me to add the "send to Instapaper" button in the magazine,

00:48:05 ◼   ► I had to manually code that into the magazine, provide an icon for it, write all the code

00:48:11 ◼   ► to log into Instapaper, to save it, all that stuff. Even though I had the Instapaper app

00:48:17 ◼   ► installed. If I wanted it to be in the app without kicking over the Instapaper app and

00:48:21 ◼   ► taking back, which is kind of inelegant, if I wanted it to all be in the app, I had to

00:48:26 ◼   ► write that all myself. There's no way Instapaper could offer to the magazine its own interface

00:48:33 ◼   ► that could be in the magazine's share panel. That doesn't exist yet. If that did exist...

00:48:37 ◼   ► That share panel will open up almost guaranteed in iOS stuff. You will be able to put stuff

00:48:41 ◼   ► in that share panel. I really hope so. But that's a major architectural change, though.

00:48:46 ◼   ► That's why it's a big deal if they do it.

00:48:49 ◼   ► It might not happen yet because it is such a major change.

00:48:55 ◼   ► That's part of what Windows 8 contracts are.

00:48:58 ◼   ► That would go a long way towards solving a lot of these problems.

00:49:02 ◼   ► If I could just say, "Here, I have this item to share.

00:49:06 ◼   ► Open up a share panel and I can offer you a URL, a file of this type, and this text.

00:49:13 ◼   ► apps that can do something with these things can show up here and do their thing. And I

00:49:17 ◼   ► don't have to code all that myself. That would go a long way.

00:49:21 ◼   ► Is the remote view controller stuff the stuff that's using XPC that's actually in iOS 6

00:49:25 ◼   ► but not public? Yes.

00:49:27 ◼   ► The thing that spawns the external process and communicates with it through a secure

00:49:31 ◼   ► sandbox channel? Exactly.

00:49:34 ◼   ► It's currently used for the mail sharing controller, and I think maybe even the Twitter one and

00:49:39 ◼   ► the Facebook one. But definitely the mail one uses it. And they could definitely use

00:49:45 ◼   ► that exact same kind of system to do this for all third-party apps and have this kind

00:49:49 ◼   ► of system.

00:49:50 ◼   ► But the share sheet is different. The share sheet is literally what you said. It's just

00:49:53 ◼   ► a question of querying which applications can handle this type of thing, showing their

00:49:57 ◼   ► stupid icons and feeding them the data with a launch event. Like, add to Instapaper, you'd

00:50:03 ◼   ► be perfectly happy if the add to Instapaper was hit the share button, hit the little iInstapaper

00:50:07 ◼   ► icon, your application gets, like all you need is a freaking URL.

00:50:11 ◼   ► Your application gets a URL and has a chance to shove it in somewhere

00:50:15 ◼   ► and then it goes away. Well, but then the question is, does my

00:50:19 ◼   ► app, does it switch to my app first? Because that's kind of an elegant.

00:50:23 ◼   ► Or is my app just brought up in a background state and

00:50:27 ◼   ► I present a view controller that the remote controller then displays and then

00:50:31 ◼   ► I'm just handling this data and my app never shows up. That would be the right way to do it.

00:50:35 ◼   ► The share thing with the list of icons,

00:50:37 ◼   ► I assume it's going to launch you.

00:50:39 ◼   ► The remote view controller thing where

00:50:40 ◼   ► you get to present an interface is what you really want,

00:50:42 ◼   ► but that's more complicated.

00:50:44 ◼   ► But any time there's a private API like that used by Apple

00:50:46 ◼   ► apps, like XPC has public API on the Mac, right?

00:50:50 ◼   ► So this is kind of one of those things where it seems like--

00:50:53 ◼   ► this is how a private API becomes public.

00:50:57 ◼   ► It's like how a bill becomes a law, how a baby is made.

00:50:59 ◼   ► First Apple uses it in all their apps,

00:51:04 ◼   ► And then they hopefully wring the bugs out of it.

00:51:07 ◼   ► And then the next release, they open it up to everyone.

00:51:10 ◼   ► Or in the next release, they decide

00:51:11 ◼   ► they made a terrible mistake, scrap it, and start over again.

00:51:13 ◼   ► But XBC is already public on the Mac,

00:51:15 ◼   ► so I feel pretty good about that.

00:51:17 ◼   ► The only problem I have with this idea

00:51:18 ◼   ► is, let's take in the example of the magazine,

00:51:23 ◼   ► I don't really see how this would help in the sense

00:51:27 ◼   ► that what you're doing is you're doing something with a URL.

00:51:30 ◼   ► So if you have a share sheet, and you're

00:51:32 ◼   ► presenting to the share sheet, "Hey, I've got a URL. Who can do something with this?"

00:51:37 ◼   ► That's going to be half the damn apps on your iPhone or iPad or whatever the case may be.

00:51:41 ◼   ► That's why they don't do it, because everyone's like, "I register for Star!"

00:51:44 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:51:45 ◼   ► "I can handle any data."

00:51:46 ◼   ► Well, and that actually, like, there was a good interview from Chipone on Debug, the

00:51:52 ◼   ► podcast by Rene Ritchie and Guy English. You know Chipone, the hacker guy? Anyway, Grant

00:51:58 ◼   ► Anyway, he was talking on their show about how this is a problem on Android that does

00:52:05 ◼   ► implement this feature, because then you have these apps that show these giant long lists

00:52:10 ◼   ► of what you can do with something, and they're not really ordered in any good way.

00:52:15 ◼   ► You can't really set a default of what you want to show up on top for certain types.

00:52:20 ◼   ► That actually then becomes a pretty challenging interface problem.

00:52:23 ◼   ► Yeah, they can do the thing where you hold down the icon and they wiggle and you can

00:52:28 ◼   ► X them out and there's a "more" button at the bottom if you want to get some back.

00:52:32 ◼   ► You're going to have to trim those lists because as soon as you do that, yeah, look at the

00:52:35 ◼   ► friggin' app store, it'll be used up the wall too.

00:52:37 ◼   ► Are you? I don't know. Well, first of all, they can police it, so they can say, "Well,

00:52:40 ◼   ► you don't really have a use for this, so we're not going to let you register for it."

00:52:44 ◼   ► Some applications, though, have legit—like, what if you're a text editor? Any time something

00:52:48 ◼   ► is text, you're like, "Oh, look, there's whatever. There's elements again." Or

00:52:53 ◼   ► or a PDF reader or something.

00:52:54 ◼   ► Yeah, like GoodReader and Dropbox will

00:52:56 ◼   ► get you a register for every file type.

00:52:58 ◼   ► Or an image, like all your camera apps

00:52:59 ◼   ► are going to show up, all your image retouching apps.

00:53:01 ◼   ► Like it's just-- the interface problem is you'll want to--

00:53:05 ◼   ► it's either going to have to be opt-in,

00:53:07 ◼   ► which would be kind of annoying for regular users,

00:53:09 ◼   ► or opt-out, where you just use the gesture that we all

00:53:12 ◼   ► know to make icons go away, which is hold your finger down

00:53:14 ◼   ► on them, hit the little x, and then trim the list.

00:53:17 ◼   ► Maybe that will be annoying.

00:53:18 ◼   ► Or it'll just reorder itself.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Whichever one you used last would move up

00:53:23 ◼   ► the front of the list. Oh no, that's no good. That's the reason Springboard doesn't work

00:53:27 ◼   ► that way. Because it would drive people nuts! Upper left is Safari, where did it go? I haven't

00:53:32 ◼   ► used it recently. You just get a muscle memory of like that sheet comes up, Instapaper is

00:53:37 ◼   ► top left corner, you tap it. If Instapaper is not the top left corner because you didn't

00:53:40 ◼   ► use it, but you used a different one last time, that's angry making. See, and I agree,

00:53:45 ◼   ► and that's what I'm driving at is that RPC definitely solves a problem which is if you're

00:53:51 ◼   ► Marco and you want to have a native instapaper share function from within the magazine you're right now

00:53:58 ◼   ► You're screwed and RPC would fix that but that to me. It doesn't really fix the problem of I have a URL

00:54:04 ◼   ► I wish to email

00:54:06 ◼   ► What can email this URL because it's more than just having a URL you want to share or do something with?

00:54:11 ◼   ► You want you want to be able to say that my intention is to email it and then that calls the list down

00:54:17 ◼   ► to whatever email clients you have or

00:54:20 ◼   ► Or perhaps if Apple was nuts and had a default email client setting, then that is what you

00:54:25 ◼   ► get.

00:54:26 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the Android intent.

00:54:27 ◼   ► It wouldn't just be protocol driven.

00:54:28 ◼   ► It would be action driven.

00:54:29 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:54:30 ◼   ► It would have to have...action would have to be a component.

00:54:32 ◼   ► We're just saying protocol driven for like if you have raw data, kind of like who can

00:54:35 ◼   ► handle this pasteboard data type of thing.

00:54:37 ◼   ► Yeah, there's also the intention is like I would like who is an email...

00:54:41 ◼   ► Apple can define these things.

00:54:44 ◼   ► I was saying in another podcast a while ago, if Apple wants to allow third party email

00:54:48 ◼   ► By all means let it say look if you want to be a third-party email application that participates in the system

00:54:53 ◼   ► We're defining here's how you must behave in terms of RPC. Here's the features you have to

00:54:57 ◼   ► support you must support attachments custom subject lines to is front like so you can like

00:55:02 ◼   ► Conform to some protocol that I'm sure Apple's mail application already totally conforms to or whatever like define it

00:55:08 ◼   ► However, you want people will jump through those hoops to be like you know so basically you don't run to the problem of like

00:55:13 ◼   ► Oh, well you pick the third-party email application that can't handle subject lines for some reason and my application

00:55:18 ◼   ► doesn't work because it puts some code in the subject line.

00:55:21 ◼   ► That's what they want to avoid.

00:55:22 ◼   ► Because you're not using the default email application,

00:55:25 ◼   ► your stuff broke.

00:55:26 ◼   ► So they would have to say, if you

00:55:28 ◼   ► want to be a replacement for a system thing,

00:55:30 ◼   ► you must support these features, this protocol.

00:55:33 ◼   ► Just screw it down as tight as you want,

00:55:35 ◼   ► because people will jump through it to be in that.

00:55:37 ◼   ► And that will solve the consistency

00:55:38 ◼   ► problem of being afraid.

00:55:40 ◼   ► Everything is working fine, but because you

00:55:42 ◼   ► use a third-party email application, something broke.

00:55:44 ◼   ► Right, and that's a huge support problem for developers.

00:55:47 ◼   ► that starts getting possible.

00:55:49 ◼   ► Right now, and that's kind of the flip side of this,

00:55:51 ◼   ► right now, because I'm building in support

00:55:54 ◼   ► for all these things manually, I can test them all.

00:55:57 ◼   ► And I can be pretty sure that the options that anybody

00:55:59 ◼   ► will ever see will all work.

00:56:02 ◼   ► But once you start integrating these other things,

00:56:04 ◼   ► then people will start blaming you for like,

00:56:07 ◼   ► "Oh, when I shared to new experimental browser X

00:56:10 ◼   ► "from your share panel, it didn't work right

00:56:13 ◼   ► "in this weird way."

00:56:14 ◼   ► And they'll email me saying it's my fault.

00:56:16 ◼   ► I just had that with the hypercritical.co podcast feed.

00:56:19 ◼   ► Ever since that site went up, people were like,

00:56:21 ◼   ► I tried to subscribe to your feed in Reader

00:56:23 ◼   ► and it showed me this crazy ass thing.

00:56:24 ◼   ► And they showed me a sheet in Reader

00:56:26 ◼   ► that shows a huge list of things, none of which are my feed.

00:56:29 ◼   ► Some of which have my name related to them.

00:56:31 ◼   ► I'm like, that must be running a search or something.

00:56:34 ◼   ► What the hell is it doing?

00:56:35 ◼   ► And you're like, look, it's a URL.

00:56:37 ◼   ► It's HTTP colon slash slash and it has a bunch of stuff.

00:56:40 ◼   ► You click it and this is on the Mac.

00:56:42 ◼   ► So it activates, okay, what is your handler for RSS?

00:56:45 ◼   ► I guess it looks at the MIME type of the thing coming back,

00:56:48 ◼   ► Atom feed or whatever.

00:56:49 ◼   ► And then it launches your preferred news reader

00:56:51 ◼   ► application, which happens to your readers

00:56:52 ◼   ► in these people's systems.

00:56:53 ◼   ► And then reader gets it.

00:56:54 ◼   ► And it turns out what Safari does is it takes off the HTTP,

00:56:58 ◼   ► puts in feed colon slash slash, finds out

00:57:01 ◼   ► whatever the default protocol handle is for feed,

00:57:03 ◼   ► basically what is your news reader, launches that,

00:57:07 ◼   ► but gives it that URL.

00:57:08 ◼   ► And I believe it excises the feed at that point,

00:57:12 ◼   ► and hands the URL without the leading HTTP or something.

00:57:14 ◼   ► What it comes down to is that what Reader was doing is taking the URL as it was given,

00:57:19 ◼   ► which no longer had-- oh, no, I think it was stripping off the feed.

00:57:22 ◼   ► Reader was stripping off the feed colon slash slash, not putting HTTP slash slash back on,

00:57:26 ◼   ► feeding that to the Google Reader API, and Google Reader API interpreted that as a search

00:57:31 ◼   ► term and not a URL, and hilarity ensues.

00:57:34 ◼   ► And that is a pretty-- that is like-- how complicated is that?

00:57:38 ◼   ► It's a link that you click that launches a protocol handle.

00:57:41 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:57:42 ◼   ► as simple as it could possibly be,

00:57:43 ◼   ► and yet it still went totally awry.

00:57:45 ◼   ► Like, once it went off to the third-party application,

00:57:47 ◼   ► it's like, oh yeah, I'm totally compliant,

00:57:49 ◼   ► I handle feed URLs, but then what it does with them,

00:57:51 ◼   ► it passes them to Google Reader,

00:57:52 ◼   ► and Google Reader does something crazy with it,

00:57:54 ◼   ► and then so you get into a situation where you're like,

00:57:56 ◼   ► hey, I tried to subscribe to your newsfeed,

00:57:58 ◼   ► but when I clicked on it,

00:57:59 ◼   ► because the newsreader I used isn't

00:58:01 ◼   ► whatever newsreader you tested with,

00:58:03 ◼   ► something crazy happens.

00:58:04 ◼   ► So I guess no matter how simple you make it,

00:58:06 ◼   ► something can go wrong that you did not expect.

00:58:12 ◼   ► Yep.

00:58:13 ◼   ► This bug is fixed in the next version of Reader, supposedly.

00:58:15 ◼   ► Right.

00:58:16 ◼   ► Then it'll introduce five more.

00:58:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:19 ◼   ► I'll be happy.

00:58:21 ◼   ► I don't know why Google Reader is doing this.

00:58:22 ◼   ► I'm assuming it's because they don't think .co is a real extension.

00:58:27 ◼   ► They're probably looking for the .com to doing their fuzzy matching.

00:58:30 ◼   ► Is this a URL?

00:58:31 ◼   ► It's kind of odd.

00:58:32 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:58:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:35 ◼   ► But the search terms that come up are vaguely related to me because they've got the word

00:58:38 ◼   ► hypercritical in feed and maine and so you see things about the podcast and my name and

00:58:43 ◼   ► yeah. Took me a while to figure that one out.

00:58:47 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]