00:00:00 ◼ ► All right, we should start by pointing out we have done another members special. Because I'm an idiot
00:00:07 ◼ ► and I like getting my feelings hurt, I decided I would roll the dice and see what John and Marco
00:00:15 ◼ ► thought about John's of Bleecker Street, which is my beloved preferred pizza institution in Manhattan.
00:00:22 ◼ ► And so what we did was we spent a truly absurd amount of money to get Goldbelly to send us
00:00:30 ◼ ► two not particularly large pizzas per family and do that overnight from Manhattan to our respective
00:00:37 ◼ ► households. And then we cooked them up much like we did with the, I almost said frozen meals but
00:00:41 ◼ ► don't call them frozen meals, call them TV dinners. And so they all arrived at our desks at about the
00:00:45 ◼ ► same moment. We talked about it on air. I will not tell you if my feelings were hurt or not, but I
00:00:51 ◼ ► will tell you that it was an adventure to say the least. And so if you are not a member you can go to
00:00:57 ◼ ► ATP.fm/join. You can join for as little as one month, although we'd love for you to stick around.
00:01:03 ◼ ► If you join you get access to all the member stuff that's ever happened and we're up to like, I don't
00:01:07 ◼ ► know, six-ish episodes I think, something like that now. And so you get access to all that. You could
00:01:13 ◼ ► grab them all and then cancel your membership. We're not slimy, we let you do that. You'll hurt
00:01:18 ◼ ► our hearts and our feelings, but you can do that. That is allowed. And so, but I think once you check
00:01:24 ◼ ► out all the perks you will love it. So please check out ATP.fm/join. Marco, John, anything to add.
00:01:30 ◼ ► - If you could imagine what it would be like for Casey to try to convince two New Yorkers with
00:01:38 ◼ ► strong opinions on pizza to try his pizza, you can see why this was a good episode. I suggest,
00:01:47 ◼ ► if you've been on the fence before about membership for whatever reason, you aren't a member yet,
00:01:57 ◼ ► - Yeah, even just discuss non-technical things. These kind of member specials and this one in
00:02:07 ◼ ► the bagel talk. And also I would like to point out just one more time, I probably made this point on
00:02:12 ◼ ► the special, although I might have forgotten. My birth certificate says state of New York,
00:02:16 ◼ ► my friend. Only two thirds of your host, their birth certificate states state of New York,
00:02:40 ◼ ► I'm like, Casey, did your parents live in New York when you were born? Or did they just drive there
00:02:49 ◼ ► - I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to be offended. And to be honest, I started it by
00:02:53 ◼ ► throwing you under the bus earlier, but I'm not sure how offended I should be. No, they were
00:02:58 ◼ ► living, I believe they were living in Fort Montgomery at the time, which is nearish Newburg.
00:03:02 ◼ ► And I was born in Newburg, which is probably, I'm now probably giving away some sort of top secret
00:03:08 ◼ ► tell people the answers to your security questions. - Yeah, so there you go, whoopsies.
00:03:11 ◼ ► But anyways, but no, they live in New York. - There's nothing in Newburg for any security
00:03:45 ◼ ► - No, no, that doesn't, no, so like, how about this, John's a bleaker, let's just take that as
00:04:10 ◼ ► - I don't know, man, so you consider like the lake that we used to go to, you consider that
00:04:22 ◼ ► I'm right, I am not trying to say I'm right, but to me, I feel like anything within a couple
00:04:44 ◼ ► definition, but you know, and different people have different definitions. The one definition
00:04:47 ◼ ► every New Yorker can agree upon is upstate begins north of them, you know, no one thinks they live
00:04:52 ◼ ► upstate. However, if you kind of, you know, plot like, you know, the bell curve of like, all right,
00:04:57 ◼ ► well, where does upstate really begin to most people's opinions? You know, it certainly begins
00:05:04 ◼ ► at least above like, you know, Westchester or Rockland Counties, and possibly even lower than
00:05:14 ◼ ► I really don't mean it that way, so you would say Westchester County is, you personally,
00:05:42 ◼ ► - When I was a kid growing up on Long Island, if we visited Marco, where Marco's house is
00:05:55 ◼ ► - I know, I'm just telling you what the, and I recognize that that's a very limited perspective,
00:06:00 ◼ ► like that classic New Yorker cover that shows the map of the United States with the New Yorker's
00:06:04 ◼ ► view of it, and it doesn't make sense. And today, I would probably say anything that's above West
00:06:09 ◼ ► chester, but I still feel in my bones the idea of, like, going to visit Marco would mean driving
00:06:16 ◼ ► by the time you get, like, once you're more than 20 or 30 miles from the city, I think the argument
00:06:28 ◼ ► - It's just a ballpark, but I'm gonna say, yeah, like, something on the order of, like,
00:06:36 ◼ ► out of the way, I feel like we've accomplished something, so yeah, if you wanna hear more of that,
00:06:44 ◼ ► All right, let's do some follow-up. Apparently, this is the follow-up that will not die. I mean,
00:07:00 ◼ ► I think this is it. All right, so I mentioned last episode, I had switched from the Kobo Sage
00:07:05 ◼ ► to the slightly smaller Kobo Libra 2 device, and a couple of people pointed out that Libra 2
00:07:12 ◼ ► doesn't support Dropbox, which I didn't know at the time, I'd only used it for, like, a day,
00:07:18 ◼ ► and so I hadn't noticed, oh, this feature that I like, this Dropbox feature that the Sage has,
00:07:23 ◼ ► the Libra 2 doesn't actually have it, and I was a little disappointed by that, and I thought--
00:07:29 ◼ ► - Remind me, what was the draw for Dropbox integration? 'Cause that is not something I feel
00:07:34 ◼ ► like I have ever wanted on the Kindle, but I have a feeling you're using it for a purpose that I
00:07:40 ◼ ► either am not expecting or just not something that I do, so remind me, what's the purpose there?
00:07:45 ◼ ► - Well, the main purpose, and the reason it's on the Sage, the Sage supports a stylus where you can,
00:07:49 ◼ ► like, draw or take notes on pages, the main reason I think it's there is so you can, like,
00:07:54 ◼ ► export your notes that you make into something that's easily accessed elsewhere, but what I use
00:08:00 ◼ ► it for is, I have ebooks from various sources that, you know, like, sometimes if you buy,
00:08:06 ◼ ► like, not pirated, if you buy, like, an O'Reilly one or something like that, like, sometimes you'll
00:08:10 ◼ ► buy an EPUB file, or you'll buy something that is downloadable as an EPUB file without DRM,
00:08:16 ◼ ► like, you know, a lot of, like, you know, the, like, tech instructional stuff a lot of times
00:08:19 ◼ ► comes this way, I bought a couple of ebooks recently that came that way, and so you'll have
00:08:23 ◼ ► an EPUB file, like, all right, how do I read this easily? And you can, you know, drag it into Apple,
00:08:27 ◼ ► or Apple Books or whatever, or I can drop it in this Dropbox folder that I just have a Dropbox
00:08:32 ◼ ► folder now for the Kobo, and any EPUB files or PDFs, I can stick there, and then I can get them
00:08:37 ◼ ► on the Kobo and read them that way, so that's my main use. - So is there, is there no, and I'm
00:08:42 ◼ ► viewing everything through the lens of Kindle, 'cause it's the only thing I'm familiar with,
00:08:46 ◼ ► with the Kindle, you get, like, a bespoke email address, I think at, like, kindle.com or something
00:08:50 ◼ ► like that, and you can email a PDF or an EPUB or what have you to there, and then it will send you
00:08:55 ◼ ► an email back and be like, are you sure you wanna do this? - No, no, no, it doesn't, no, well,
00:08:58 ◼ ► you can, like, you can, you can, like, give it, like, permitted email address sources to say,
00:09:15 ◼ ► like, newspaper and magazine periodical support, 'cause they would devise this, like, table of
00:09:20 ◼ ► content structure out of it, and so I reverse engineered that, figured out what they were doing,
00:09:24 ◼ ► and then did it with Instapaper, so that Instapaper would basically generate, and it still works this
00:09:28 ◼ ► way, it would generate a Kindle format periodical file and send it to that email address that you
00:09:35 ◼ ► would enter in the Instapaper control panel for, you know? Anyway, it's a little bit tricky with
00:09:39 ◼ ► Kindles because, at least back then, I don't know if this is still the case, I think it might be,
00:09:44 ◼ ► but back then, Kindles didn't support EPUB, they had their own custom format that was based on the
00:09:48 ◼ ► ancient Mobi or Moba Pocket format, and if you, and you could email documents to their service,
00:09:54 ◼ ► and it would actually convert them to Kindle format on Amazon's end, and then send them over
00:09:58 ◼ ► to Kindle. And Kobo, as far as I know, doesn't need to do that, it seems like the device just
00:10:08 ◼ ► interrupting earlier was that there exists such a thing with Kobo as well, there's some email you
00:10:13 ◼ ► can send things to? - No, so the way Kobo normally, as far as I can tell, I looked for that, as far
00:10:18 ◼ ► as I can tell, to send stuff to it electronically, the only way to do it is this Dropbox integration
00:10:23 ◼ ► on the Sage, and apparently, the only other way to get stuff on it is to connect it to your
00:10:29 ◼ ► computer with a USB cable, and it shows up as a USB storage device, and you can drag files over
00:10:33 ◼ ► that way, which is fine, but not great, you know? So anyway, so I posted about this on Macedon,
00:10:38 ◼ ► and a few people, including Stefano Castantini, wrote in that there's actually a hack that,
00:10:45 ◼ ► I mean, and I use the term hack very loosely, it's very easy, there's this third-party hack app
00:10:51 ◼ ► called Nickel Menu for Kobos, and the way you hack this is you connect it to your computer as a
00:10:57 ◼ ► drive, and you just put this file on the drive, and when you eject it, the Kobo sees this file,
00:11:04 ◼ ► reboots, and so it must have some kind of checking for plugins kind of system, that's how it feels,
00:11:16 ◼ ► and then once you load this plugin, then you have an extra menu on the bottom of your Kobo,
00:11:21 ◼ ► and there's a few little incantations you can put in this config file, one of which will enable
00:11:41 ◼ ► basically sticking this file on the USB drive version of it, and that was it, that's all I had
00:11:46 ◼ ► to do, so I'll put the links in the show notes, obviously, when you're installing random hacks
00:11:52 ◼ ► from the internet onto a device, it is worth considering, what is the security service area
00:11:58 ◼ ► that I'm exposing here, and so what I did for the Dropbox support was, I have a secondary
00:12:04 ◼ ► Dropbox account that only has access to one folder, and then I share it with my primary account,
00:12:10 ◼ ► so that way, 'cause I figure, if this third-party thing ends up being untrustworthy in the future,
00:12:15 ◼ ► or presently, or whatever, what do they have access to? Well, they have access to a handful
00:12:29 ◼ ► on that, it's still a device on your network and stuff like that, so that's up to you, but
00:12:32 ◼ ► I decided this hack was worth it, and now I have Dropbox, and it's great, there's a couple other
00:12:41 ◼ ► - That's cool, so we'll have some links that Marco provided in the show notes. John, we have all
00:12:46 ◼ ► sorts of genuinely interesting news and feedback and whatnot with regard to multiple displays on
00:12:51 ◼ ► M1 and M2 Macs, we were talking about, I don't remember when in the episode we were talking about
00:12:56 ◼ ► it, we were talking about how the MacBook Air doesn't support more than one external display,
00:13:01 ◼ ► and we were trying to theorize whether or not that was Apple being jerks and doing that in software,
00:13:29 ◼ ► one for the built-in display and one that can run the external display. The display controllers are
00:13:32 ◼ ► not part of the GPU, they are separate bits on the SoC. On the Mac Mini, the internal display
00:13:37 ◼ ► controller signal is piped out to a chip that converts it to HDMI, so that's why the Mac Mini
00:13:41 ◼ ► has got an HDMI port on the back. The controller that drives the internal display seems not to be
00:13:45 ◼ ► able to output display port signals. It seems from die shots that Apple is using a lot of die area
00:13:50 ◼ ► for the display controllers." Richard Stevens continues that Hector Martin, who does, Asahi
00:14:02 ◼ ► - Oh yeah, I love this about Richard Stevens, says Hector Martin, but I think you're right. Anyway,
00:14:07 ◼ ► A-S-A-H-I Linux. It's the Linux that runs on your M1 and M2 Macs, right? And they've been figuring
00:14:16 ◼ ► out how to tap into all of the hardware features of M1 and M2 SoCs, including the GPUs and display
00:14:24 ◼ ► drivers and everything, so they know a lot about these internals. Anyway, Hector had a bunch of
00:14:28 ◼ ► tweets that were since deleted, but Richard found them in the Internet Archive. Here's what Hector
00:14:32 ◼ ► had to say. "Why does the M1/M2 only support one external display? Because Apple's display
00:14:38 ◼ ► controllers are so fancy pants that the M1 Macs has more silicon dedicated to display controllers
00:14:43 ◼ ► than CPU cores. They can't fit any more of these on the cheap chips. Compare the display area and
00:14:49 ◼ ► the die shot below to the power CPU cores, excluding the L2 cache. One display controller is larger than
00:14:56 ◼ ► two power CPU cores combined with enough spare leftover to cover the efficiency CPUs as well.
00:15:02 ◼ ► M1 Macs has four of them, plus the internal one, which is on top of the CPUs not annotated in the
00:15:07 ◼ ► die shot." So I actually additionally annotated the die shot that's in our little show notes here.
00:15:12 ◼ ► We'll try to put a link to the old Twitter thread and the show notes for you to look at.
00:15:20 ◼ ► when you compare them to the power CPU cores. Is that performance? Performance, power, whatever,
00:15:25 ◼ ► like the good ones, the fast ones, the big ones, right? The efficiency CPU cores are really small.
00:15:31 ◼ ► I'm not reading that from the text because in the text it's PCPU and eCPU as abbreviations.
00:15:35 ◼ ► It's kind of cheating because like, "Oh, just exclude the cache." Well, you can't really
00:15:44 ◼ ► in the display controls. But anyway, all this is to say is this is a hardware limitations
00:15:48 ◼ ► of the SOC and Apple decided to make it this way. And one reasonable theory about why they decided
00:15:56 ◼ ► to make this way is that the display controls are surprisingly large. When you're budgeting out how
00:16:00 ◼ ► much space and therefore how much power and how much cost you have to allocate to all different
00:16:05 ◼ ► functionality on an SOC, maybe for your low-end chip you decide, "Eh, two display controllers
00:16:11 ◼ ► should be enough." And so you burn almost as much area as half of the power CPU cores. I did it
00:16:19 ◼ ► again. Performance CPU cores as you did in the other. Now, it doesn't mean that Apple can't
00:16:25 ◼ ► change their mind about that. It could be that having the M1 and M2 both be like this, only
00:16:31 ◼ ► support two external displays with two display controllers, has garnered enough complaints that
00:16:36 ◼ ► the M3 may make a different choice. We'll see. So stay tuned for that. But anyway, on the M1 and M2,
00:16:41 ◼ ► the display support is not Apple artificially limiting you to something. It is a decision
00:16:46 ◼ ► Apple made when they designed the M1 and M2 SOC in terms of allocating space for drivers. But
00:16:52 ◼ ► that doesn't mean, as we've talked about in many past shows and we will now talk about again,
00:17:01 ◼ ► So Edward Munn writes and says, "It is possible to get the M1/M2 MacBook Air to support multiple
00:17:05 ◼ ► external monitors by using a dock that supports DisplayLink with the correct drivers installed.
00:17:10 ◼ ► DisplayLink does have its drawbacks, however. You can only watch DRM content in a browser by
00:17:14 ◼ ► disabling hardware rendering. You cannot watch content within the TV app, and a message displays
00:17:18 ◼ ► when logging in saying that the screen is being monitored." Oh, besides that! Yeah. I don't know,
00:17:24 ◼ ► a lot of people are in this setup and I don't know if these are universal. I think you can use
00:17:29 ◼ ► DisplayLink stuff and not see some of these, but anyway, I don't speak for much experience.
00:17:34 ◼ ► So Edward continues, "Despite these drawbacks, it does allow for a one-cable solution for multiple
00:17:38 ◼ ► monitors and charging." And Edward says, "Lastly, I find it amusing that this M2 MacBook Air can
00:17:43 ◼ ► natively support a 4K HDR 144Hz monitor or even a 6K monitor, but requires workarounds to display
00:17:51 ◼ ► two tiny 1080p monitors." It just goes to show, it's not the resolution or the number of pixels,
00:17:56 ◼ ► it's the fact that, hey, are you a separate display that I have to deal with? Then I have
00:18:00 ◼ ► to have a display controller for you or I have to do something else. Steve McWee writes, "I have two
00:18:05 ◼ ► 24-inch HP monitors running off a base model M1 Air using the Wavelength USB 3.0 to HDMI adapter."
00:18:12 ◼ ► And finally, Lior Chacade says, "Yes, DisplayLink is an external driver. Yes, it uses screen
00:18:18 ◼ ► recording to send data out as data packets over thunderbolts instead of using the Data Display
00:18:26 ◼ ► comparable alternatives, but at the end of the day, it does the job of connecting multiple
00:18:33 ◼ ► in my experience in the corporate world, terrible docks like this that support multiple displays
00:18:39 ◼ ► were ubiquitous. They were everywhere. Even before ARM on Mac, everyone had one of these third-party
00:18:45 ◼ ► docking things that you would connect your laptop to that would let you have multiple displays,
00:18:53 ◼ ► did they all use this DisplayLink tunneling video over USB or was it just a common product?
00:18:59 ◼ ► But either way, I think this is the corporate solution to, hey, I've got an M1 or M2 and I want
00:19:04 ◼ ► more than one monitor. It's like, well, deal with this. It's a little bit janky, it's a little bit
00:19:09 ◼ ► weird. I bet the video quality probably has some compromises as well. I don't know all the technical
00:19:13 ◼ ► details, but that's what you have to do. And it seems like for the 15-inch MacBook Air, I assume
00:19:20 ◼ ► those limitations will continue to be the case, but maybe for the M3, they'll do something better.
00:19:24 ◼ ► Indeed. All right. And then Ryan Maxwell wrote in, "Marco dismissed the idea pretty strongly
00:19:29 ◼ ► that Apple would intentionally cripple the MacBook Air to segment the product lines and try to upsell
00:19:33 ◼ ► users, which for the record, I agreed with. My first Mac was an iBook G4 and one of the main
00:19:37 ◼ ► differences between an iBook and a PowerBook G4 was that the PowerBook supported extending your
00:19:41 ◼ ► desktop to an external display. The iBook just supported mirroring. The problem was the iBook
00:19:45 ◼ ► G4 was totally capable of supporting extending. It was just a firmware lock. There was a very
00:19:50 ◼ ► popular utility that many of us used to unlock the feature. It worked great. I can imagine such hacks
00:19:54 ◼ ► are much harder these days. We'll put a couple of links to relevant information in the show notes.
00:19:57 ◼ ► Couple of people have this story. Some people thought it was iBook G3 or G4. This is back in
00:20:01 ◼ ► the days when the pro laptops were called PowerBooks. It's not that Apple has never done
00:20:05 ◼ ► this and they would never do it. It's just not common practice. I mean, giving this example from
00:20:10 ◼ ► the days of the iBook and the PowerBook shows how old it was, there's probably a couple more modern
00:20:14 ◼ ► examples, but in general, that's not how Apple segments. They segment by designing the M1 chip
00:20:19 ◼ ► to display controllers. It's baked into the hardware. It makes a chip smaller, cheaper,
00:20:24 ◼ ► lower power, so on and so forth. And Apple hopes that they have struck the right balance between
00:20:29 ◼ ► cost and power efficiency and features. Maybe they haven't with the M1 and M2. Maybe they'll
00:20:33 ◼ ► change their mind, but that's the point at which they're making the decision. It's not like they're
00:20:38 ◼ ► making a chip capable of driving seven displays and they say, "Oh, but seven displays on a MacBook
00:20:43 ◼ ► Air, they would never buy our pro products. Quick, we need to cripple it." They tend not to do that.
00:20:47 ◼ ► If they do do that, it's a pretty terrible mistake because that means when they were designing the
00:20:51 ◼ ► chip, they made the wrong choice. If that's part of their design, that we want to segment the line
00:20:57 ◼ ► and give people a reason to upgrade, they would bake that into the hardware because then they
00:21:00 ◼ ► would give you a smaller and cheaper chip, two things that Apple cares about, and yes, also more
00:21:05 ◼ ► power efficient, which customers care about. Sometimes Apple makes the wrong choice with
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00:23:05 ◼ ► With regard to Final Cut Pro and the iPad, Chris writes, "My one terabyte 13-inch M1 iPad Pro has
00:23:15 ◼ ► 16 gigs of RAM and virtual memory, so the inability to round to projects is definitely not a hardware
00:23:20 ◼ ► issue." For what it's worth, not every M1 iPad Pro has 16 gigs of RAM. They can come with as
00:23:28 ◼ ► quote-unquote "little" as 8. And then I don't know what the virtual memory story is on iPad OS. I
00:23:33 ◼ ► know that that's a relatively new development but I can't recall the specifics. Jon, do you happen
00:23:38 ◼ ► to remember? Yeah, I just want to add that M1, the minimum amount of RAM I believe is 8 gigs. I don't
00:23:43 ◼ ► think Apple has ever sold it with less than 8 gigs. So if you've got an M1, you've got 8 gigs
00:23:48 ◼ ► and you may have more. The reason I put the virtual memory note in here is because I said it
00:23:52 ◼ ► on last week's show and we talked about it again. It's become the sort of colloquial way to talk
00:23:57 ◼ ► about this topic. But you know, this is a tech show and I'll hold on to this one as long as I can.
00:24:03 ◼ ► iPads have always had virtual memory forever. What they haven't had is they didn't use swap.
00:24:10 ◼ ► They wouldn't take things out of RAM and swap them to, you know, flash storage and back. Those are
00:24:15 ◼ ► two different things. Virtual memory just means that the addresses that your program is using
00:24:24 ◼ ► address space and every process gets its own gigantic virtual address space of a given size.
00:24:30 ◼ ► And it's like, well how can every single process on the computer have the same address space?
00:24:34 ◼ ► Aren't they stomping over each other memory? No, because those aren't the real addresses. Those are
00:24:37 ◼ ► virtual addresses and there's a thing, there's a bunch of hardware in there that translates from
00:24:42 ◼ ► virtual addresses to hardware addresses. And at that point the hardware and the operating system
00:24:46 ◼ ► make sure that two processes don't stomp on each other by using the same physical address. So
00:24:52 ◼ ► basically all systems that run Darwin, the core of what was Mac OS X, have and always have had
00:25:00 ◼ ► virtual memory. But iOS devices and iPad OS for the longest time did not have swap, which meant
00:25:05 ◼ ► that when RAM was getting close to being exhausted they would say, "Oh, don't worry about it. This
00:25:10 ◼ ► stuff that's in RAM, I'll write it to 'disk' in a big giant file. And if someone needs it again,
00:25:17 ◼ ► I'll go get it from there and to make room for it I'll take something that is in RAM and put it back
00:25:21 ◼ ► there." And anyway, doing that a lot is called swapping. That is called the swap file and iPad OS
00:25:27 ◼ ► did not have that for a long time but now does support it on certain hardware configurations.
00:25:36 ◼ ► but I only imagine it will become more prevalent. But the point is it's not a limitation. The big
00:25:42 ◼ ► beefy iPads do support swap. I just wanted to be a little bit careful about saying they support
00:25:47 ◼ ► virtual memory because maybe I'll lose that battle. Maybe just eventually people will just, "Well,
00:25:54 ◼ ► I don't think so though because the problem is they've always had virtual memory and there's
00:26:02 ◼ ► But I feel like virtual memory has been supported since the 386. I don't think it's the kind of
00:26:10 ◼ ► thing you have to say that modern computers support or don't support. Every computer supports
00:26:22 ◼ ► It's like saying, "Yeah, my computer supports math." Yeah, most computers support math.
00:26:28 ◼ ► I know, but if you were trying to reuse that term, say, "My computer can do addition," it's like,
00:26:32 ◼ ► "Well, I don't mean addition. I mean it'll take memory and write it out to persistent storage."
00:26:37 ◼ ► I'm like, "Well, that's totally different. Why are you using that term?" Anyway, I would say it
00:26:42 ◼ ► doesn't have swap, doesn't use swap, virtual memory with swap. I don't even know how Apple
00:26:48 ◼ ► I believe they called it virtual memory swap when they had it on one of those little bubble
00:26:57 ◼ ► word swap." Virtual memory swap, I think that three-word phrase, use that one. That one works.
00:27:15 ◼ ► All right, so bringing you back to Final Cut Pro, I thought this feedback was excellent,
00:27:27 ◼ ► So Brendan writes, "As an occasional Final Cut Pro user for over a decade, I'm extremely
00:27:34 ◼ ► and everything with the way Final Cut Pro 10 handles project files. It's extremely flexible
00:27:38 ◼ ► and allows assets, proxies, and cached renders to be segmented out on different volumes and
00:27:57 ◼ ► So in other words, like one of the things, and maybe one of you can have a better explanation
00:28:06 ◼ ► with these like super high resolution video files, that's really computationally intensive
00:28:14 ◼ ► So Final Cut Pro would make these quote unquote proxy files, which basically means it'll
00:28:18 ◼ ► down sample your 4K video to like 720p that it'll use for the purposes of doing the edits
00:28:30 ◼ ► it'll go back to the source material and render it in 4K or what have you. And that was proxy
00:28:44 ◼ ► scenes. And you can be explicit if you so choose and tell it, oh, I want the proxy media
00:28:52 ◼ ► So, yeah, I think Brendan makes a good point that it is extremely flexible, which is wonderful,
00:29:00 ◼ ► that might not be so wonderful if you're trying to work within the extreme limitations of iPadOS.
00:29:05 ◼ ► See, I don't buy this as a format difference, though, because that's true between Macs as
00:29:09 ◼ ► well. If you have a project file that references assets that are all over the place and you
00:29:13 ◼ ► give that to somebody else on a Mac and they're on their laptop across the country and they
00:29:17 ◼ ► try to open that project, it's not going to work. It's not going to be able to find all the media.
00:29:21 ◼ ► Like that's just the nature of the beast. I don't think there's anything particular in iPadOS that
00:29:25 ◼ ► prevents access to network storage or whatever. But, you know, again, Apple makes the operating
00:29:30 ◼ ► system so they could patch these things. I think if there was a new project format on the Mac,
00:29:39 ◼ ► also support it on iPadOS and it would behave exactly the same way as it does on a Mac,
00:29:43 ◼ ► where it says, "Oh, you open this project? I don't know where the hell any of this media is.
00:29:46 ◼ ► I tried to connect to the server, but it's not accessible on my network. I don't know where it
00:29:49 ◼ ► is. Sorry." Like that's the nature of complicated formats like this. So it is another thing to
00:29:56 ◼ ► consider that dealing with that on iPadOS may be slightly more difficult because of sandboxing and
00:30:01 ◼ ► the inability to mount network drives as far as we know. But, you know, Apple does make the OS and
00:30:08 ◼ ► they can make all that possible. So it's still a little bit of mystery. I would love to hear
00:30:11 ◼ ► a technical explanation from somebody at Apple of why the project format is different. I would
00:30:17 ◼ ► hope they wouldn't say, "Well, you know, the iPad is a little less — like sort of just a vague answer
00:30:23 ◼ ► doesn't tell us anything." Because they can't — I don't think Apple can say with a straight face,
00:30:26 ◼ ► is kind of the point of this follow-up. I don't think they can say with a straight face anymore
00:30:29 ◼ ► that it's a power limitation, especially for the people with like a 16-gig iPad Pro with an M1.
00:30:34 ◼ ► And they'd be like, "No, there's no excuse for in terms of horsepower or power." And swap,
00:30:40 ◼ ► right? Virtual memory swap, as Apple would say. That's got it all, right? So what's the problem?
00:30:48 ◼ ► I continue to hope, fingers crossed, that it is just an updated project format that will eventually
00:30:52 ◼ ► come to the Mac. And if and when it does, to Brendan's point, it will have to support all
00:30:55 ◼ ► the existing workflows, if they are an essential part of people's business, which I think they are.
00:31:01 ◼ ► Indeed. And then finally, I think it was like right in the beginning of the year — I forget
00:31:06 ◼ ► exactly when it was — but Dell announced their own kind of knockoff version of the Pro Display XDR.
00:31:13 ◼ ► You might remember this because it had a truly enormous webcam that stuck up above the top
00:31:21 ◼ ► forehead of the monitor. If memory serves, it had a little drop-down like connectivity port that
00:31:27 ◼ ► would come off the bottom of the monitor, which I actually think was kind of cool. But I'm not sure
00:31:31 ◼ ► that many share that opinion with me. But anyways, this is a 32-inch 6K monitor, the oh-so-eloquently
00:31:38 ◼ ► named the U3-224KB. Well, apparently pricing has been released, and it is $3,200, which normally
00:31:48 ◼ ► would make me do a spit-take, but remind me how much your ridiculously overpriced monitors were,
00:31:54 ◼ ► gentlemen. Well, are you including the stand? Yeah, don't forget, this comes with a stand. So
00:31:59 ◼ ► it's $3,200, comes with a height-adjustable stand, and this thing has, to remind everybody,
00:32:04 ◼ ► 140 — up to 140 watts of power delivery, a 4K webcam, a huge array of ports, just a ton of
00:32:10 ◼ ► ports all over it. It has slightly higher resolution than the XDR. It's 6144x3456 instead of
00:32:17 ◼ ► the XDR, it's 6016x3384. Sorry about the way I read that number, just deal with it. There are also,
00:32:25 ◼ ► because this is Dell, we'll put a link to the product page, they make a whole line of these
00:32:29 ◼ ► monitors, and you can change tons of things about them. This monitor is available in the following
00:32:34 ◼ ► sizes in inches, 24, 27, 30, 32, 34, 38, 43, and 49 inches. Well, slow down though, but that doesn't
00:32:41 ◼ ► necessarily mean 6K in all the rest. Right, exactly, and it goes up to 8K as well. So those
00:32:47 ◼ ► smaller monitors are different resolutions, and the bigger monitors can be different, but I'm saying
00:32:50 ◼ ► this is the matrix of different features, so you can't get all the resolutions at all the sizes,
00:32:54 ◼ ► obviously, but there's a lot of choices here, like I said, including up to 8K, I think the 8K
00:32:59 ◼ ► version is like $4,000 or something. Now, this is not really an XDR quote-unquote replacement,
00:33:04 ◼ ► because I don't think any of the combinations of sizes and resolutions support HDR 1600 nits. I
00:33:13 ◼ ► don't know if they have mini-LED backlights, but hey, $3,200 for XDR resolution if you don't care
00:33:20 ◼ ► about HDR, and you don't mind looking at what is a very unattractive monitor in my opinion,
00:33:26 ◼ ► it's a good deal. That's what we were wondering about the whole time. We were talking about this
00:33:30 ◼ ► at CES, we were making fun of the looks, we were looking at all the ports, but like, well,
00:33:32 ◼ ► how much is this going to cost? And the question was, how much will it undercut the XDR by? And I
00:33:37 ◼ ► think $3,200 with adjustable stand is a good price. Like, that is a way better deal than the XDR.
00:33:56 ◼ ► Yes. But you know, so I think this is a very good deal relative to what else is in the market,
00:34:03 ◼ ► which as far as I know is just the XDR, like in this kind of resolution and size class.
00:34:07 ◼ ► I don't think there's anything else really. I could be wrong, but I'm not aware of any.
00:34:17 ◼ ► So yeah, but, but I think so for this to be $3,200 and the XDR to be with the stand $6,000.
00:34:24 ◼ ► Yeah, this is a really good deal. I would at least though, I would caution people if it's been a
00:34:32 ◼ ► while since you've used an Apple computer with a third party monitor, the experience is not always
00:34:39 ◼ ► as seamless as you would hope it would, it should be. It's not like the olden days because the olden
00:34:44 ◼ ► days things were simpler. We didn't have things like HDR and all these like new DRM schemes for,
00:34:49 ◼ ► you know, movie protection and stuff like that. So, you know, on some level, like I am not tempted
00:34:55 ◼ ► by this. Obviously I already have the XDR, so that's a huge difference, but I'm not tempted
00:35:00 ◼ ► by this because my experiences with my ultra fine LG monitor have been pretty paper cutty in part
00:35:09 ◼ ► because the ultra fine is just such a mediocre monitor, but also in part because Apple does not
00:35:15 ◼ ► seem to take much effort at all in making the experience good for third party monitor users.
00:35:20 ◼ ► And oftentimes as Apple's computers move forward, as the hardware and software move forward,
00:35:28 ◼ ► oftentimes it seems like the number of paper cuts that you get by using a third party monitor
00:35:32 ◼ ► is increasing over time. So while you are able to save a good amount of money going with this option,
00:35:38 ◼ ► you are giving up a lot of niceness and you're setting up for possible paper cut issues that you
00:35:44 ◼ ► might not get with a first party monitor. And that's not to say that like Apple is, you know,
00:35:48 ◼ ► making the best monitors here. You know, it's just to say the reality of the situation is you're in
00:35:52 ◼ ► an integrated environment if you're using this with a Mac and you're going to miss out on some
00:35:56 ◼ ► of those integrations. And it might not be, there might be annoyances or limitations by going with
00:36:02 ◼ ► this that we don't really know about yet or that you might not be thinking of that are worth
00:36:05 ◼ ► considering when you're making a decision. I think a lot of the fault is going to lie with
00:36:10 ◼ ► the monitor maker. That's why I was suggesting maybe Dell over somebody else. Cause I think
00:36:13 ◼ ► there is like driver software that you might have to install on your Mac to get all the features of
00:36:17 ◼ ► this monitor to work. And that's kind of the responsibility of the third party monitor maker.
00:36:23 ◼ ► You would hope Apple would work together with them better. But that is, you know, it's like,
00:36:29 ◼ ► who's to blame here? Is it Apple because they don't care about making stuff work with third
00:36:32 ◼ ► party monitors or is it the third party monitor maker because they stopped caring about the
00:36:36 ◼ ► drivers for Mac OS after a few years? Cause they've already made their money in that monitor. They
00:36:39 ◼ ► don't care already bought it to give one. I don't, I don't know if this is an example that, you know,
00:36:45 ◼ ► puts Apple in a good light, but it is something that happened before Apple sold monitors besides
00:36:52 ◼ ► the XDR or even maybe before the XDR the M1 and M2, for example, even though they can only drive
00:36:58 ◼ ► one monitor, they can drive the LG 5k I believe. Right. Yeah. And so the LG, LG 5k is a third party
00:37:05 ◼ ► monitor. It was the only, you know, Apple retina resolution, third party monitor for a long time.
00:37:11 ◼ ► While we were asking for Apple to make one again, other than the XDR. Well, there was the,
00:37:15 ◼ ► there was the 4k for a while and then they changed it, which made it slightly less retina E, but
00:37:20 ◼ ► there, it was the LGs, the two LGs, the 4k and the 5k. Yeah. I guess the 4k 24 inch was the
00:37:25 ◼ ► closer to that, but anyway, the 5k was the big one, right? Until Apple, you know, Apple had the
00:37:29 ◼ ► XDR, but until Apple came with studio display and the LG 5k is weird and requires Apple to do some
00:37:35 ◼ ► stuff to support that, that Apple did. Like as far as I'm aware, you didn't have to install any
00:37:45 ◼ ► that's not Apple doing it out of the goodness of their heart. It's because the LG 5k is basically
00:37:48 ◼ ► the same monitor that was in a 5k iMac and they'd already done the work for that. But the fact is
00:37:53 ◼ ► that the, you know, M1, when it first came out, could drive a third party monitor. And Apple had
00:37:59 ◼ ► to do some work to make that happen because for people that don't know, we talked about it when
00:38:02 ◼ ► the 5k iMac first came out, which was ages ago. The 5k, in fact, Apple bragged about it. That's
00:38:07 ◼ ► why we knew about it. The 5k iMac had its special, you know, Apple custom timing controller, cause
00:38:11 ◼ ► it's basically like two internal logical displays with like two parallel display stream things going
00:38:18 ◼ ► in there and then a controller that synchronizes them. That's how you get 5k resolution over one
00:38:22 ◼ ► cable internal to the 5k iMac. Well, that was, that was true at the time. It is a little bit
00:38:27 ◼ ► different now, but carry on. Yes. But I, but I think the, even the, the LG 5k today, if you
00:38:32 ◼ ► connect it to an M1 over a single cable, it's doing the display stream multiplexing. It's more
00:38:38 ◼ ► commonplace now, but Apple had to support that. My point is with the M1, they could have chose not to
00:38:42 ◼ ► support it cause none of their monitors do stuff like that, or maybe just the XDR or whatever. So
00:38:51 ◼ ► since we don't sell any monitors like this, we should make sure the LG 5k works cause it's the
00:38:55 ◼ ► only game in town or just saying, well, we already basically did that work for the 5k iMac. So we get
00:38:59 ◼ ► it for free. So we might as well do it, but, uh, it is a thing that happened. The Dell ones,
00:39:03 ◼ ► on the other hand, especially the 6k thing with the camera and all the ports, I imagine you're
00:39:07 ◼ ► going to be relying on, uh, Dell keeping its drivers and software up to date to have all
00:39:13 ◼ ► the features of that monitor working. How good is Dell at doing that? Probably better than some
00:39:18 ◼ ► random no name brand that you just found online. Right. But maybe not as good as you want it to be
00:39:24 ◼ ► to Marco's point, especially years down the line. Yeah. It's, it's still Dell at the end of the day
00:39:29 ◼ ► and, and Dell also, you know, they're not going to care nearly as much about how it works on a Mac
00:39:35 ◼ ► than they are how it works on their PCs that they sell. So, or other PCs. I thought I saw the word
00:39:39 ◼ ► Mac mentioned on the product page, so let me search for it again. I mean, you know, they'll
00:39:43 ◼ ► take our money, but you know, you better believe they're not going to like, you know, have amazing
00:39:47 ◼ ► driver support if they don't have to. I mean, I'm just happy to see the word mentioned. This monitor
00:39:50 ◼ ► is compatible with multiple operating systems, including windows and Mac OS, though are in a
00:39:55 ◼ ► circle. I guess one of the other ones, Linux. Uh, but anyway, uh, there, there are at least mentioning
00:40:00 ◼ ► it. So they, I think they understand who, who would want a monitor with this kind of pixel
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00:42:16 ◼ ► What do we have to talk about tonight? Well, first we can talk about whether I use this
00:42:23 ◼ ► phrase correctly. And I don't, I shouldn't be asking you to, maybe we can get some young people
00:42:26 ◼ ► in the chat to weigh in. What I wrote as the top topic here is a WWDC vibe check. My use of that
00:42:34 ◼ ► term is in the sense that we are seeing how we all kind of feel about WWDC being two weeks out from
00:42:42 ◼ ► it. Is that the correct use of the term vibe check? Do we have any, who are we kidding? There are no
00:42:46 ◼ ► young people in that room. I don't know why I'm thinking this. All that matters is like,
00:42:50 ◼ ► is our audience old enough to think that we are using it correctly? Whether or not we actually are.
00:42:57 ◼ ► Here's the thing. I know young people listening to the podcast, hello out there. We love that
00:43:01 ◼ ► you listen to it. Tell your friends to tell your nerdy friends, which is what I always say. Cause
00:43:04 ◼ ► if you tell your regular friends, they're going to listen and think it's super weird, but tell
00:43:07 ◼ ► your nerdy friends. Anyway, people who listen, people who listen live, like there's a very tiny
00:43:12 ◼ ► number of dedicated people who are in our chat room right now who listen to the live stream of
00:43:16 ◼ ► this as we record it. And we have to imagine because the number is so small, the, the, uh,
00:43:22 ◼ ► the percentage that might be young people, uh, there is probably very low. Yeah. That is probably
00:43:28 ◼ ► accurate, but I will say as an official old, I do believe you are using the term correctly. And,
00:43:34 ◼ ► and yes, again, I don't know how much stock I put in any of our, yep. Totally, totally. I mean,
00:43:40 ◼ ► I do, I do have teenagers, so I feel like I have a leg up on you too, at least, but I can just learn
00:43:44 ◼ ► through osmosis by hearing them say things, but well, who's, who's less likely to know about cool
00:43:50 ◼ ► slang, like a random, you know, 40, whatever year old or a 40, whatever year old with teenage
00:43:57 ◼ ► children. I almost think the people without the teenage children are more likely to get it right
00:44:02 ◼ ► because the teenagers will try harder to hide it from you when they're your kids. Oh my God. No,
00:44:06 ◼ ► no, you can't help. You'll see when you have a teenager, you can't help but hear them speak all
00:44:11 ◼ ► the time and them talk to their friends and they will say things to you using the same language.
00:44:16 ◼ ► They talk to their friends, whether they mean it or not. I mean, I mean, look, we, we get some of
00:44:21 ◼ ► that now, but like, it's funny, like, like, so going around, you know, my, my kid and his friends
00:44:27 ◼ ► going around that group is this, I don't know, I'm sure it came from a YouTuber, but some kind of
00:44:32 ◼ ► joke where they are like, you know, what's, you know, nine plus 10, like 27 or whatever, and
00:44:37 ◼ ► everyone laughs. It's like, okay. And I don't get it at all. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm already
00:44:42 ◼ ► at the point where, you know, the kids are doing stuff that I don't understand at all that, you
00:44:47 ◼ ► know, and, you know, every generation goes through this. And like, I'm thinking like, you know, when
00:44:52 ◼ ► we start saying things like vibe check, like, I'm already so disconnected from what the young kids
00:44:58 ◼ ► are saying and how what they think is funny and whatever references they're making from their
00:45:01 ◼ ► YouTube celebrities they follow. There is no way in hell that we're using this term correctly. Like,
00:45:06 ◼ ► we're just, we're too old. They're like, we should avoid any, anything that even seems like modern
00:45:11 ◼ ► slang. We should just stick with the the the phrases that are licensed for old people use.
00:45:27 ◼ ► I don't know. I'll ask my kids after. Anyway, I've defined the term as we're using it here.
00:45:32 ◼ ► If we're using it wrong, at least, you know what I mean, because the goal is communication. Although
00:45:35 ◼ ► I will say what I remember on a recent episode, I heard Casey say something that I actually talked
00:45:40 ◼ ► to my daughter about that I'm wondering where Casey heard it. He probably heard it from pop,
00:45:44 ◼ ► the same place my daughter did with some kind of popular media or like a sitcom or, you know,
00:45:49 ◼ ► something that you did that you use the term you are, I don't know, one of my phrases that I would
00:45:57 ◼ ► use for it is so on and so forth, et cetera, sort of one of those where you're trying to say,
00:46:02 ◼ ► and other things like this, I'm not going to list them all. You know what I'm talking about, right?
00:46:06 ◼ ► And the phrase you use is whatever, whatever you say, whatever, twice, whatever obviously was from
00:46:10 ◼ ► our generation. We all know about whatever my generation anyway, whatever Gen X is totally a
00:46:14 ◼ ► thing, right? Whatever, whatever saying in that particular way, whatever, whatever, whatever.
00:46:22 ◼ ► is whatever, whatever, is that a you thing? Or is that a common like thing among people your age?
00:46:29 ◼ ► And, and she said, no, it's not a me thing. It's just a thing that people my age say. And so,
00:46:36 ◼ ► did I? Yeah. Where did Casey pick up whatever, whatever. So it might be somewhere. I don't think
00:46:42 ◼ ► you picked up from your kids. Do either one of your kids say whatever, whatever when relaying
00:46:45 ◼ ► a story about something. So it's probably from like, you know, some television show or something
00:46:51 ◼ ► like that. And people keep getting down to yada yada and saying, yada yada, like Seinfeld that
00:46:57 ◼ ► made up that thing. Yada yada. Seinfeld did not make up yada yada. People Seinfeld popularized it
00:47:01 ◼ ► for the rest of the world. It's not the Metro New York area, but rest assured yada yada existed
00:47:06 ◼ ► long before Seinfeld. Well, this has been a language corner, but yeah. So let's talk about
00:47:13 ◼ ► how we feel about WWDC. However you want to phrase that. How we feel on, since I'm talking, I guess
00:47:18 ◼ ► I'll just start. I am excited. You know, I never, I never get any concrete information about anything
00:47:26 ◼ ► in any regard from any of the people I know inside Apple, but I can tell you that the, the, now I
00:47:33 ◼ ► don't want to say vibe, but I was going to say vibe. The, the impression I get from people. I
00:47:37 ◼ ► think we can use vibe. I think we all understand and know how to use vibe. I don't think that,
00:47:41 ◼ ► I think that's the thing that predates a lot of teenagers who are alive today. All right,
00:47:44 ◼ ► fair enough. The vibe from people inside Apple is that they are like vibrating. Like they are real
00:47:51 ◼ ► excited. At least that's, that's the impression I've gotten. I wish I could tell you that I'm
00:47:54 ◼ ► being coy and I know exactly what's happening and when it's happening, so on and so forth. I
00:47:59 ◼ ► genuinely know nothing, but our sources aren't that good. Yeah, exactly. Here's the thing that
00:48:08 ◼ ► they probably don't know anything either, right? That's the thing that a lot of people who are new
00:48:13 ◼ ► to the world of Apple might not understand when we're watching some kind of presentation and
00:48:18 ◼ ► Apple's presenting something, the vast majority of the Apple employees are just as surprised as we
00:48:23 ◼ ► are because they compartmentalize everything. If you don't need to know about project XYZ,
00:48:32 ◼ ► every Apple employer already knows this. No, every Apple employee does not know this. So
00:48:35 ◼ ► Apple employees are vibrating. There could be coming off the same thing that we are, which is
00:48:39 ◼ ► like, we feel like there's something big coming. And they literally don't know what it is because
00:48:43 ◼ ► they're not disclosed as they say on the headset or on the car or on the whatever the hell like
00:48:48 ◼ ► they don't, they just, they literally don't know. But because they are employees and work there,
00:48:53 ◼ ► you can kind of get a feel from, because maybe they know someone who does work on that team
00:48:56 ◼ ► or they know someone who knows someone and those people seem happy all the time or they seem
00:48:59 ◼ ► frantic all the time. Or yeah, they've been working nonstop for the last two months. Exactly. Like
00:49:04 ◼ ► that's the vibe that they're getting that we're not getting. And that is being transferred to us.
00:49:07 ◼ ► Yeah. My favorite example of this is, you know, after the Swift announcement in like 14 or
00:49:12 ◼ ► whenever it was, um, I was talking to a handful of internal Apple people and of the, I don't know,
00:49:19 ◼ ► five or 10 people I spoke to, I think maybe one or two of them was aware that the, that Apple was
00:49:24 ◼ ► working on a new language to release at some point. But I don't think a single one of them knew that
00:49:29 ◼ ► the Swift announcement was happening that day. So they're sitting there, you know, in the, in their
00:49:33 ◼ ► office or whatever, watching the keynote and saying, Oh, that's cool. You know, same time that
00:49:39 ◼ ► I'm looking over at John saying, Oh, that's cool. Like they all found out at the exact same moment
00:49:44 ◼ ► for something as big as Swift. So, I mean, not literally all of them, but you know what I'm
00:49:47 ◼ ► saying? So, uh, whatever, whatever, John, for the Swift, for the Swift example, specifically,
00:49:52 ◼ ► that's another example of how, how tricky it is to read the tea leaves at Apple. Um, way back in the,
00:49:59 ◼ ► the day, you know, I'd written a bunch of blog posts at Ars Technica, which have since been
00:50:03 ◼ ► moved to my own website, talking about Apple's needs for a new programming language. Uh, and in
00:50:08 ◼ ► response to those posts, lots of people from Apple either reached out to me, back channel, I talked
00:50:14 ◼ ► to them at WWDC, we would have discussions on the topic that I wrote about. Obviously, almost all of
00:50:20 ◼ ► them didn't know anything about what Apple would eventually do in this area. Some of them did.
00:50:24 ◼ ► Right. And we would have discussions about it. And in hindsight, I can see that a lot of those
00:50:29 ◼ ► discussions, you could tell which one of these people that I was talking about this four years
00:50:33 ◼ ► before Swift was announced, knew Swift existed or whatever, you know, or like two years, one year
00:50:38 ◼ ► leading up to it. That's the way that you can get a vibe from Apple people. The problem is though,
00:50:44 ◼ ► tons of stuff is happening inside Apple that never sees the light of day. And so you can have a
00:50:49 ◼ ► discussion with somebody that makes you, I totally think from all these discussions I've been having
00:50:53 ◼ ► with Apple people, they seem really excited about whatever, smell-o-vision, right? And I really
00:50:58 ◼ ► think Apple's working on a smell-based product and it just never sees the light of day. And you're
00:51:02 ◼ ► like, Oh, I guess I was wrong about that. And then you have to learn 15 years later that there was a
00:51:05 ◼ ► big smell-o-vision project and it got canned because of some internal political turf war,
00:51:13 ◼ ► Right. Exactly. So the vibe inside Apple reflects a feeling about what might be happening inside
00:51:22 ◼ ► Apple, but then there's the question, okay, but what of the things that happens inside Apple
00:51:26 ◼ ► comes out of Apple and in what form and when? Another example is the TV stuff. Apple's going
00:51:31 ◼ ► to make a television set. And like from what we understand from current rumors and people revealing
00:51:37 ◼ ► stuff, some of the technology that was originally made for the project where Apple was going to make
00:51:44 ◼ ► a television set, I keep saying television set, because I don't know how to explain this to young
00:51:47 ◼ ► people, but like a TV, a big screen that you look at that plays, anyway, ended up in the HomePod
00:51:54 ◼ ► of all places because they were working on audio for the HomePod. So the HomePod comes out of some
00:51:59 ◼ ► work that was done in the television. There was so much smoke around TV back in the day of just like,
00:52:04 ◼ ► Apple's going to make a television set, they're going to do it, it's going to be, and what we
00:52:06 ◼ ► ended up getting was the HomePod on the Apple TV and Apple never did make a television set. And
00:52:10 ◼ ► we'll see where the car stuff goes. So it's difficult to read, but sometimes like the vibe
00:52:17 ◼ ► you're getting, it's a legit vibe, even if Apple never ships any of that stuff in the form you
00:52:21 ◼ ► think they're going to. But in this case, I feel like the vibe about the headset is so strong and
00:52:27 ◼ ► so lightning focused and so detailed with the rumors that, you know, where there's smoke,
00:52:33 ◼ ► there's surely going to be fire eventually. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, again, I'm not playing coy. I
00:52:38 ◼ ► wish I knew when I was playing coy, but I'm not. But I don't know. I just feel like based on no
00:52:47 ◼ ► facts and just a gut feeling, I feel like there's going to be a lot this year, even if it isn't the
00:52:52 ◼ ► headset, I still feel like it's going to be a busy keynote. Obviously the drop of Final Cut Pro and
00:52:58 ◼ ► Logic Pro just last week, that could lead Len Creedence to the idea that it's going to be busy.
00:53:05 ◼ ► But I don't know. I just, I feel like there's going to be a lot here. And if there's no headset,
00:53:09 ◼ ► how can it be busy? Explain that to me. I don't know. I'm not sure. I really don't know. But I
00:53:14 ◼ ► mean, there's a couple of examples off the top of my head. It sounds like we're getting an all new
00:53:20 ◼ ► watchOS, or for some loose definition of all new, which we may or may not talk about this episode.
00:53:26 ◼ ► Yeah, we should be getting widget support on iPadOS. I'm trying to think of other things.
00:53:31 ◼ ► Presumably there'll be a lot of improvements to SwiftUI. I mean, this is a developer conference,
00:53:35 ◼ ► strictly speaking. So hopefully we'll see a lot of SwiftUI improvements. I'm not sure. I feel like
00:53:41 ◼ ► they could fill an hour to an hour and a half with just normal software stuff. I mean, hell,
00:53:47 ◼ ► Chris Vanazzo says in the chat, "No new features in macOS." That would need an hour and a half just
00:53:52 ◼ ► for applause, right? So that would be a crowd pleaser, but I don't know if it would count as a
00:53:56 ◼ ► big, you know, I kind of feel like headset is the obvious one that would make this big. And honestly,
00:54:02 ◼ ► if they have the headset, nothing else matters, essentially. Like not that they're not, of course,
00:54:06 ◼ ► they're going to have new versions of all their OS's and the new versions will have nice features,
00:54:09 ◼ ► but if they have the headset, that alone makes it this, an extremely, like these come rarely.
00:54:16 ◼ ► When does Apple introduce new platforms? Not that often. watchOS, tvOS, like they, you know,
00:54:21 ◼ ► sometimes they're big, sometimes they're small, but this is so hyped, so long rumored. It's as
00:54:25 ◼ ► if they were coming out with the car, right? All you need is that. If that exists in the keynote,
00:54:29 ◼ ► it is a big keynote. If that doesn't, it isn't released in this keynote. I think to make it a
00:54:39 ◼ ► need the 15 inch MacBook era to be announced. You need all new versions of the OS's with more than,
00:54:44 ◼ ► with some significant features that people care about. And I think you'd have to probably throw
00:54:47 ◼ ► in the Mac pro. That's what it would take to match the headset. And it always comes back to the Mac
00:54:52 ◼ ► pro. Honestly, no one cares about the Mac pro, but, but me, but if you're trying to make a big
00:54:57 ◼ ► keynote, you need the things people do care about 15 inch MacBook air, all new versions of all the
00:55:01 ◼ ► operating systems that people love Swift with the new features, new version of X code. And then you
00:55:05 ◼ ► throw in the Mac pro as a, you know, fun kick. If you remember when the Mac pro was announced
00:55:09 ◼ ► at WWC, we were all there. I believe, um, the 2019 Mac pro that is. And I think that was like
00:55:16 ◼ ► the star of the show in terms of didn't they like leave that to the end, like, despite the fact that
00:55:20 ◼ ► nobody buys them or whatever, it is a, it is a glamour product for Apple to roll out because
00:55:26 ◼ ► it's big, it's powerful, it's shiny, it's expensive. It's good looking if you like holes.
00:55:30 ◼ ► And so I even, I know people think like, oh, nobody cares about the Mac pro. That doesn't
00:55:37 ◼ ► make a big keynote. It does. It would, it would add to the bigness of it, but you need all that
00:55:41 ◼ ► stuff that I described. And on the other side of the scale, just the headset by itself.
00:55:46 ◼ ► Yeah, that's fair, but I don't know. I, I I've been talking a long time, but suffice to say,
00:55:51 ◼ ► I get the feeling that whatever it is, it's going to be a big year, which is why I really hope that
00:55:57 ◼ ► the three of us get to be there. So Apple call us, we'd love to hear from you. Um, but no, I,
00:56:02 ◼ ► I think it's, I think it's going to be big and, and I don't, I think that would be excellent
00:56:07 ◼ ► because I don't feel like the last couple of years have been bad by any means, but I think just a
00:56:12 ◼ ► really firing on all cylinders kind of year would be pretty, pretty awesome. I'm excited. You know,
00:56:19 ◼ ► I'm, I'm a little bit nervous for, as a developer that like, I'm about to have my summer, you know,
00:56:25 ◼ ► ruined in the best way. You know, the same way it's like, you know, like, like the Jonathan
00:56:29 ◼ ► Colton song about, you know, you're, you're in everything the nicest way. Like when you have
00:56:40 ◼ ► forgive the horrendous summarizing of this, you know, art form. Um, I feel like this is,
00:56:46 ◼ ► this might be like that for developers in the sense that like, whatever plans we had for this year
00:56:51 ◼ ► are probably about to be derailed in a pretty big way by the headset. You know, it seems by all
00:56:57 ◼ ► accounts, it seems like the headset is being announced at this event. Uh, and there's going
00:57:03 ◼ ► to be a developer story to it because obviously why else would they announce it if that'd be quite
00:57:07 ◼ ► a move at a developer conference to be like, here's a brand new brand new platform, a sweet solution.
00:57:12 ◼ ► You can make web apps for it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Um, so anyway, yeah, you can, you can program it
00:57:17 ◼ ► only with Siri. Oh gosh. I would quit the business. Anyway. Um, so I think our, our plans are, are
00:57:28 ◼ ► going to be disrupted if our plans weren't, you know, wait for the headset, it's going to be
00:57:31 ◼ ► disruptive. And I think it's going to be in a very exciting way. Um, I don't know what the headset
00:57:39 ◼ ► will be. I don't know what the headset chances are on the market, but you know, when I, when I use
00:57:45 ◼ ► the existing VR headset hardware that exists, you know, on the market today, the limited amount I
00:57:50 ◼ ► have used with it, although, you know, with the exception of the Oculus, whatever two that we have
00:57:55 ◼ ► upstairs, um, I'm super uninterested in it and it kind of gives me motion sickness a little bit.
00:58:02 ◼ ► I don't, it doesn't work optically well with my eyes for whatever reasons. It just, there's a lot
00:58:08 ◼ ► of like minor paper cuts or major paper cuts with it. And I don't find the games that interesting.
00:58:12 ◼ ► But Apple is full of really smart nerds. And many of them have apparently decided that what they
00:58:21 ◼ ► have is something special and worth shipping for Apple in a pretty high profile way. So
00:58:27 ◼ ► I'm, I'm optimistic. I'm tend to be optimistic that whatever they have is probably pretty good
00:58:44 ◼ ► unexcited about all the other VR headsets out there and also trust Apple to say, you know what,
00:58:51 ◼ ► if they're this excited about something like this and they're thinking and they're releasing it now,
00:58:55 ◼ ► there's probably something there. It's probably really good in at least some ways for at least
00:59:04 ◼ ► You know, Apple holds back on a lot of stuff. So we, we can be fairly sure that what does get out
00:59:14 ◼ ► they've done their homework. They've probably built something really cool. And it's probably
00:59:19 ◼ ► going to be really exciting when we see it. So that's why I'm, I'm very interested, not in the
00:59:24 ◼ ► VR or AR or XR space in general. I'm very interested in what the heck did Apple do here?
00:59:30 ◼ ► Because I trust them to, if they're, if they've gotten to this point, it's probably something
00:59:36 ◼ ► really exciting and really good. Now, how many other people will think so and will be willing
00:59:40 ◼ ► to spend $3,000 and, you know, deal with the whole, you know, butt mounted battery situation.
00:59:45 ◼ ► Who knows? We'll see when we get there. But again, I trust them to have gotten this right.
00:59:49 ◼ ► If they do that, I don't think that'll be a thing to deal with, by the way. I think that'll be a
00:59:52 ◼ ► feature that everyone will say, oh, of course they did it. I mean, we've all discussed all the
00:59:56 ◼ ► reasons. It's just that once the product comes out, all the reasons we've discussed suddenly
01:00:00 ◼ ► become like concrete and people say, I always thought it was a good idea because the headset
01:00:04 ◼ ► weighs less and you can swap batteries and so on and so forth. But right now everyone thinks it's
01:00:14 ◼ ► Exactly. Right. It was obvious we didn't copy Apple at all. I mean, Apple's not going to be
01:00:17 ◼ ► the first one to use a battery pack, an external battery pack, a bunch of other people. Not in
01:00:20 ◼ ► any way. I do feel like for this, for the headset, again, I get the vibe that it's coming this year.
01:00:26 ◼ ► If it's not, I think a lot of people will be disappointed. I think it's, you know, whatever,
01:00:30 ◼ ► like it would quote unquote justifiable. It's like, well, Apple never announced anything.
01:00:33 ◼ ► That was all on you. It was just rumors. But anyway, the good thing that I hope the headset
01:00:38 ◼ ► will do is provide cover for every other product. And I know this is not the way it works inside
01:00:45 ◼ ► Apple, but like it's plausible that there could be enough internal communication to let the other
01:00:54 ◼ ► products that are announced every day, every day, we see all the new versions of the new OS,
01:01:01 ◼ ► gives them some cover to not feel like they have to press, press, press to get their exciting feature
01:01:08 ◼ ► out the door ASAP, even if it's buggy, because the headset is just going to block out the sun
01:01:12 ◼ ► at WWDC. Right. And so a lot of times at WWDC, I feel like I feel some groups are pressing. They're
01:01:18 ◼ ► like, we really need to wow them in the keynote and they show something and we are wowed, but then
01:01:23 ◼ ► we realize like, Oh, this is even, isn't even in the build, the beta build at WWDC. It'll be coming
01:01:30 ◼ ► in the later build. And when it does come, it's buggy and unfinished and it just ends up being
01:01:34 ◼ ► frustrating and disappointing. And it's like, you don't need to try that hard ship what you're
01:01:39 ◼ ► actually ready to ship. Like, I don't want to see anything in any of the other sort of platform
01:01:43 ◼ ► stuff that isn't in the WWDC beta, because I feel like the headset provides them cover to be more
01:01:50 ◼ ► relaxed with their, uh, you know, with, with their choice of what to include and what to save for a
01:01:57 ◼ ► future release in the ideal world. I would have liked, you know, Apple to have the forethought to
01:02:09 ◼ ► So everybody else, when you're planning your new releases for the new versions of all the different
01:02:13 ◼ ► OSs, everybody takes a snow leopard, right? That didn't happen. Like that's that they don't have
01:02:18 ◼ ► that kind of coordination. They can't tell the future that far in advance. It's foolhardy to try
01:02:22 ◼ ► to make plans like that. I do think it would be wise for them to give each platform a snow leopard
01:02:27 ◼ ► once in a while, we've talked a lot about macOS not being annual if they could get the bugs out of
01:02:32 ◼ ► it, but it's just too big of a company to be that coordinated and making plans that far in advance
01:02:39 ◼ ► about software releases and releases and headset. Most of, you know, part of the reason you can't
01:02:44 ◼ ► make that plan is that all the other groups aren't even probably disclosed on the headset if they
01:02:47 ◼ ► don't have to be, uh, or subsets of them are because only some people who work on tvOS now
01:02:52 ◼ ► have to know about the headset, not all the people. And certainly the people who work on tvOS hardware
01:02:56 ◼ ► probably don't need to know about anyway, it's very compartmentalized to the detriment of Apple
01:03:01 ◼ ► internally. I feel like sometimes, and this is kind of one of those cases that we just assume
01:03:05 ◼ ► that despite the fact that if the headset does launch a WWDC, it will provide cover for lots of
01:03:11 ◼ ► other OSs. The only thing that helps them with is what I just described, which is okay. Now,
01:03:17 ◼ ► maybe they don't have to press, maybe the higher levels of the org chart can cannot press to have
01:03:22 ◼ ► the Xcode team, you know, push out some feature of Xcode that is buggy and going to cause the
01:03:27 ◼ ► app to crash all the time. They'll say, we'll just save that to next year. It's fine that you
01:03:31 ◼ ► don't have it. And they won't know that's because the headset is coming, but only like the people
01:03:35 ◼ ► seven levels off the org chart who are disclosed in the headset do know that. And they let those
01:03:39 ◼ ► things travel downhill. This, I know this sounds Byzantine and complicated, but honestly, this is
01:03:44 ◼ ► the way it works in big companies, especially ones like Apple that have everything compartmentalized.
01:03:48 ◼ ► This is whole, that's why reading the tea leaves is a thing. That's whole kind of game of telephone
01:03:53 ◼ ► of like what gets prioritized, what gets given money and why by people who at various points in
01:03:59 ◼ ► the chain don't know, have all the information available. They just know what the people above
01:04:02 ◼ ► them tell them and what the people below them send back and feedback, but they don't, nobody
01:04:06 ◼ ► has the whole picture until you get pretty high in the org chart. And it makes it very difficult to
01:04:10 ◼ ► act in a coherent manner. It's an, Apple has an amazing job of it to be clear as a company,
01:04:14 ◼ ► they speak with one voice, their, their marketing, their PR makes it seem like they are a coherent
01:04:20 ◼ ► mass, but internally it's lots of little kingdoms moving in all sorts of different directions,
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01:05:48 ◼ ► for sponsoring our show. So in terms of like the overall, like what I expect from the other
01:05:57 ◼ ► platforms, you know, it's hard when in a new platform year, like what we have most likely
01:06:04 ◼ ► here with the headset launching, this is a year as John mentioned, like this doesn't happen often,
01:06:07 ◼ ► this is a year of a new platform. What tends to happen with Apple when a new platform is being
01:06:12 ◼ ► developed is a bunch of talent is pulled from other teams to work on that new thing. And
01:06:17 ◼ ► obviously that doesn't, it doesn't all just happen in one year. But what has probably happened here
01:06:22 ◼ ► is probably a bunch of people from other OSs and other projects in the company have probably been
01:06:28 ◼ ► spending a lot of time recently working on the headset. And so I would expect based on that for
01:06:34 ◼ ► not only this year, but also last year to have been somewhat slow. And I would say that's kind
01:06:38 ◼ ► of the case, you know, that being said, Apple's a bigger company now than they used to be. And they
01:06:42 ◼ ► are able to maintain things on multiple fronts better than they used to be. They're still not
01:06:46 ◼ ► great at it, but they're way better than they used to be. But anyway, so I would expect this to be a
01:06:51 ◼ ► somewhat slow year for the other platforms. But that being said, in terms of like what is actionable
01:06:59 ◼ ► for developers to do with the headset right now, I think, you know, we're gonna see version 1.0 of
01:07:07 ◼ ► this OS, we're gonna see version 1.0 of the SDK and version 1.0 of all the frameworks and the UI
01:07:13 ◼ ► and everything else. On some level, it's very exciting and very disruptive to our customers,
01:07:18 ◼ ► as I was saying earlier. But also, there might just not be that much for us to do yet on it.
01:07:24 ◼ ► You know, first of all, I don't know when they plan to actually ship this thing to us. But that's
01:07:30 ◼ ► gonna itself be a pretty big limitation. Like there's gonna be a lot of things where we want
01:07:35 ◼ ► to develop something for this, but we kind of can't until we have one. Or we can only do preliminary
01:07:40 ◼ ► work maybe in some kind of simulator or something until we get one. Or maybe, you know, maybe Apple
01:07:45 ◼ ► will use the new developer center that they built, they opened up last year, to like, you know,
01:07:50 ◼ ► invite developers out by invitation only, come out to the developer center in, you know, July and
01:07:56 ◼ ► August, and you can sign up for like, you know, a one day slot to use the hardware and test your app
01:08:02 ◼ ► on it. You know, they did that with the watch. So, you know, and they had like the whole dev kit
01:08:06 ◼ ► situation with the transition to Apple silicones, like they've done stuff kind of in this ballpark
01:08:11 ◼ ► before. So I'm guessing that kind of thing will happen, you know, whether it will be open to
01:08:16 ◼ ► many developers is a different question. You know, I'm sure some developers will get invited.
01:08:21 ◼ ► You know, I don't know if it will be like, anybody can sign up kind of thing. I think it'll be more
01:08:25 ◼ ► likely, you know, don't call us, we'll call you. That's much more likely just for scale. But anyway,
01:08:31 ◼ ► so I don't expect there to be a ton for developers to do on the headset yet this summer, because
01:08:38 ◼ ► presumably, we won't have them yet. We won't have access to them yet. And we probably will have a
01:08:44 ◼ ► very early SDK. So and so it's going to depend a lot on what you do. Like if you if you make an app
01:08:51 ◼ ► or or choose to make an app, that is really a great thing in AR VR, then you're going to have
01:08:59 ◼ ► maybe a busier time. If you make, say a podcast player, you know, it might not be that important,
01:09:05 ◼ ► like, it might just be all right, find a way to show a UI. But otherwise, everything else is the
01:09:10 ◼ ► same. And and if the stories are accurate about like, you know, them being able to run iPad apps
01:09:15 ◼ ► and little windows, it might not be that much work at all for developers to get their apps to at
01:09:20 ◼ ► least run on the thing. And then, you know, once we have physical access to them, then we can maybe
01:09:24 ◼ ► worry about, you know, making it good in the thing. Secondly, if we don't have physical access to them,
01:09:29 ◼ ► neither do our customers. And so again, it's like, there's only going to be so much we can really
01:09:35 ◼ ► do until this thing is out in the market, or at least widely available to developers. So that's
01:09:41 ◼ ► going to hold back some of that. So I would, I would also hope that there is some nice to haves
01:09:47 ◼ ► on the other platforms. This is what we're gonna get to in a second. And I think, based on the
01:09:52 ◼ ► rumors and everything so far, that seems fairly plausible. And also just based on you know, what
01:09:56 ◼ ► Apple has done, even when their teams have been busy doing other stuff, you know, on new platforms,
01:10:02 ◼ ► whatever, they do tend to have decent iOS releases. You know, Mac OS, oftentimes, you know, is last
01:10:09 ◼ ► priority and doesn't get much. And frankly, that's often a good thing. Because when, when they,
01:10:15 ◼ ► when they touch Mac OS, without a ton of effort behind it, they tend to break things and make them
01:10:19 ◼ ► worse. So, you know, that's, it's good for Mac OS to not have not have a lot of updates when they're
01:10:25 ◼ ► busy. So, but iOS, I think is, is likely to have some decent quality of life stuff there. That,
01:10:33 ◼ ► you know, even if there isn't some kind of massive, you know, SDK overhaul, some kind of massive new
01:10:39 ◼ ► language or framework or anything else, like, even in the absence of those really big updates,
01:10:44 ◼ ► there tends to be a bunch of nice small stuff with new iOS upgrades, both as customer facing
01:10:49 ◼ ► features and on the on the developer SDK and a lot of little like quality life improvements,
01:10:53 ◼ ► little new APIs, little, you know, single little modifiers for Swift UI, or, hey, here's a new view
01:10:58 ◼ ► container that makes things easier for you. You know, stuff like that, that tends to get there
01:11:02 ◼ ► and never release. So I'm expecting that for iOS. And then I think what we're about to get to is,
01:11:08 ◼ ► I'm actually very excited and interested to hear that there's pretty strong rumors that WatchOS
01:11:18 ◼ ► So yeah, this is reported in Bloomberg, what was this last month, I believe in late April,
01:11:23 ◼ ► I believe it was a Mark Gurman piece that talked about how Apple is to upgrade its watch operating
01:11:29 ◼ ► system with a new focus on widgets. And so Mark writes, as part of WatchOS 10, Apple is planning
01:11:35 ◼ ► to bring back widgets and make them a central part of the interface. The new widget system on the
01:11:39 ◼ ► Apple watch will be a combination of the old WatchOS Glances system and the style of widgets
01:11:43 ◼ ► that were introduced in iOS 14 on the iPhone. The plan is to let users scroll through different
01:11:51 ◼ ► appointments, and more, rather than having them launch apps. The new interface will be reminiscent
01:11:55 ◼ ► of the Siri watch face, which was introduced in WatchOS 4, but it will be available as an
01:12:00 ◼ ► overlay for any watch face. It's also similar to widget stacks, a feature in iOS and iPadOS that
01:12:04 ◼ ► lets users pile many widgets into one and scroll through them. As part of the overhaul, Apple is
01:12:15 ◼ ► Apple may have that open up widgets instead. And it is worth noting that apparently the Watch
01:12:21 ◼ ► App Store has fewer than a million monthly users in the whatever region they were going to through
01:12:26 ◼ ► some court proceedings. Apple disclosed versus 101 million on the iPhone, so literally 100 times more
01:12:33 ◼ ► people using the iOS App Store than the WatchOS App Store. I can't say I'm surprised. But yeah,
01:12:38 ◼ ► I mean, I think the idea of widgets on the watch is appealing. I don't know if I'm quite
01:12:46 ◼ ► as enthusiastic as you are, Marco, but I will say that even as someone who has only dabbled
01:12:54 ◼ ► in watch development, one of the things that makes watch development very tough, particularly
01:12:58 ◼ ► for things like complications, is that you have extraordinarily little time as a developer to run
01:13:04 ◼ ► code that will update information on a complication and other things like that. And so if widgets were
01:13:11 ◼ ► given more flexibility and more time to update themselves, such that they're getting updated
01:13:17 ◼ ► more than what feels like three times a day, I know that's not literally the case, but that's
01:13:21 ◼ ► what it feels like sometimes, that I would be more enthusiastic about. Like when I look down at my
01:13:26 ◼ ► Carrot weather widget, and it's not, excuse me, complication, and it's not Carrot's fault,
01:13:32 ◼ ► oftentimes it is clearly behind, especially on spring or fall days where the temperature can
01:13:39 ◼ ► vary pretty dramatically from morning to afternoon. A lot of times I'll look and my watch will say,
01:13:45 ◼ ► "Oh, it's like 40 degrees outside," but I can tell it's easily 20 degrees more than that.
01:13:50 ◼ ► And so I think what I'm most potentially interested in is if there is either a better API,
01:13:59 ◼ ► which presumably there would be, and I'm going to give you a chance here Marco in a second,
01:14:02 ◼ ► but a better API to make this work a little better or be easier to do on the developer side,
01:14:08 ◼ ► but more importantly, just to have a little bit more ability to make the watch feel alive rather
01:14:16 ◼ ► than something that occasionally wakes up and then goes immediately back to sleep again. Marco,
01:14:21 ◼ ► does any of that make sense? Yes. And I think you've identified a couple of the key parts of
01:14:28 ◼ ► both why I'm excited for this and also why some of the issues I've had with WatchOS in the past
01:14:34 ◼ ► and present. So Apple has a long history going back to, I believe the first major version of this
01:14:41 ◼ ► that we saw in modern day was dashboard for macOS. A long history of these views that you can get
01:14:49 ◼ ► where you have to go to the view or you look at a view of something and at that point, when you're
01:14:56 ◼ ► looking at it, the app is asked, "Hey, update this data." And in the meantime, maybe it shows a
01:15:00 ◼ ► placeholder or stale data and then the new data pops in like a second or two later. And from a
01:15:06 ◼ ► user point of view, that sucks. It's terrible when you look at something on your watch or in the old
01:15:12 ◼ ► dashboard interface on the Mac or different places like that, or the old today screen or the today
01:15:17 ◼ ► widgets on iOS, you would seek out this information, you would go to it, or you would look at it.
01:15:24 ◼ ► And then at that point, the system would ask the app, "Oh, hey, update this." And the reason why
01:15:30 ◼ ► it was built that way was that the systems for various reasons over time, there weren't the
01:15:36 ◼ ► system resources or they were chosen not to be spent this way to have those apps constantly
01:15:41 ◼ ► running in the background, being able to update their data whenever they wanted. In the case on
01:15:46 ◼ ► the watch, the watch has always been extremely power constrained. And that dictates everything
01:15:52 ◼ ► about it. It's a very small battery and a very small device. And they really can't make the
01:15:56 ◼ ► battery any bigger. It's already most of the device. So it's like, you got to deal with what
01:16:00 ◼ ► you got here. And that dictates everything. That dictates the slow processor the watch has relative
01:16:08 ◼ ► to the phone. Everything is about space and power and minimizing drain on that battery.
01:16:14 ◼ ► **Matt Stauffer** Speaking of that, there are rumors that they're going to actually change the
01:16:17 ◼ ► SOC, not just change the number, but actually change. And I don't see the rumors around three
01:16:23 ◼ ► nanometer really confusing because I know TSMC is ramping up on three nanometer, but the lead times
01:16:29 ◼ ► are such that I can't figure out when Apple will ship a product fab done TSMC's three nanometer
01:16:36 ◼ ► process. But I also can't imagine the watch SOC being substantially better without going to a new
01:16:43 ◼ ► process. I don't know what the current process is. Is it actually the same process size as the
01:16:52 ◼ ► **Matt Stauffer** It might still be seven. I mean, because the watch SOC, the CPU in the watch,
01:16:58 ◼ ► I don't know about the whole SOC, the CPU cores in the watch have not changed in three years.
01:17:03 ◼ ► **Matt Stauffer** I think the whole SOC has. I think people who looked at the die shots that
01:17:10 ◼ ► **Matt Stauffer** Yeah. So it's using a three year old processor. And so that's not fun. Yeah,
01:17:22 ◼ ► smaller process size than the previous one, that could give Apple a little bit of headroom to
01:17:29 ◼ ► **Matt Stauffer** Yes, because that's the thing. Like with watch OS, since its beginning,
01:17:34 ◼ ► it was all about conserving, extremely aggressively conserving the resources on the watch,
01:17:40 ◼ ► because there's not much to go around. So that impacts the way apps have been built from the
01:17:45 ◼ ► beginning in various ways. But the gist of it is what Casey said, that your app, you don't always
01:17:53 ◼ ► run. Like if you're not being actively used on screen, with very few exceptions, you're not
01:17:58 ◼ ► running. And so if you rely on a third party app that has say a complication that you're looking
01:18:03 ◼ ► at, say, you know, carrot weather, you know, a good weather app, you know, you're looking at,
01:18:07 ◼ ► you know, whatever the complication is on the screen, like, that app is only being woken up
01:18:11 ◼ ► in the background every so often to, you know, fetch new data from the internet, update the data
01:18:16 ◼ ► in the app and, you know, update the complication, you know, data. And it tells the watch, hey,
01:18:23 ◼ ► over these next, you know, six hours, here's the hourly forecasted display from this time to this
01:18:28 ◼ ► time show this from this time to this time show this, etc. It gives us this timeline of updates.
01:18:32 ◼ ► And during that entire time, the watch may not and probably won't ever ask the app, hey, refresh,
01:18:39 ◼ ► give me give me give me new data here. So what you're looking at when you when you look at watch
01:18:45 ◼ ► complications, you are looking at a series a timeline of pre rendered data that is that the
01:18:52 ◼ ► app has provided during some like three second long window, it was allowed to run in the background
01:18:57 ◼ ► a few hours ago, possibly. And and there's a certain limit on how many times per day can do
01:19:01 ◼ ► that the app servers can send push notifications to request an update, but those aren't always
01:19:06 ◼ ► obeyed. It's more it's like, it's a request, not a guarantee, like, please give me some time,
01:19:10 ◼ ► I have some new stuff, I would like to show it. And the and the watch can say, okay, or the watch
01:19:16 ◼ ► can say, I don't know what you're talking about and just walk away. And so there's all these
01:19:21 ◼ ► limitations. And the widget system on the iPhone was built the same way. If you were making watch
01:19:28 ◼ ► complications, you know, a couple of years ago, then when widget came out, it was like, oh,
01:19:31 ◼ ► this is clock kit, just, you know, slightly different and with swifty, why, which made a
01:19:35 ◼ ► lot better. But that that that idea of when you swipe over when you view a widget on the iPhone,
01:19:42 ◼ ► that app is not running. And this is why again, like there's there's also some rumors with iOS 17
01:19:47 ◼ ► of possible interactive widgets. And I and this kind of flies in the face of this, because it's
01:19:52 ◼ ► kind of questioning like, well, what is what would that mean? And I think it would be very limited
01:19:56 ◼ ► if that if there's a thing but anyway, because, again, widgets on iOS work that same way. And
01:20:03 ◼ ► then actually, they later then brought that widget system back to the watch and replaced clock kit,
01:20:08 ◼ ► which was based on widget kit was based on the ideas of clock kit, but did it better with Swift
01:20:12 ◼ ► UI, then they redid the new complication system using widget kit because it was better. Anyway,
01:20:18 ◼ ► so they brought it back full circle anyway. So on iOS, you know, you have widgets, those apps aren't
01:20:24 ◼ ► running, it's the same thing where they are periodically asked for updates. And the app gives
01:20:30 ◼ ► the gives iOS a timeline to say, all right, show this from this time, this time, etc. And again,
01:20:35 ◼ ► same thing applies this, the that app servers can send a push notification requesting an update,
01:20:39 ◼ ► it may or may not be obeyed, there are there's there's limits, there's throttling, etc.
01:20:44 ◼ ► On iOS, there's, you know, one set of limits on the watch, it's way more aggressively throttled.
01:20:54 ◼ ► So anything they do, first of all, it makes perfect sense to bring that system more to the watch.
01:21:00 ◼ ► Because it does what the watch needs. It gives a timeline of updates without having to have all
01:21:06 ◼ ► these apps running in the background drain the between the very, very tiny battery in the Apple
01:21:10 ◼ ► Watch. So it makes sense to have this be more built into the system. That being said, if there's
01:21:17 ◼ ► no other major advances, like more frequent background updates, more, you know, a more robust
01:21:24 ◼ ► system to request updates, higher limits on how much CPU time or memory those processes or
01:21:29 ◼ ► extensions can use when they're updating. Without other changes like that, it's going to be a fairly
01:21:36 ◼ ► limited system. And it's not going to enable a lot of what people would expect or want. So I hope
01:21:43 ◼ ► when they bring this over, assuming they have to, I mean, I'm sure it's too late now, whatever they
01:21:47 ◼ ► have decided to do, that's it. But I hope they have, when they have presumably brought this over,
01:21:52 ◼ ► I hope it has come with some increases in those limits or some, you know, less aggressive
01:21:58 ◼ ► throttling, some more frequent updates being permitted or something. And all of that, I think,
01:22:06 ◼ ► will be a great thing once they establish it. Because when you look at the way the watch works
01:22:10 ◼ ► now, apps on the watch still suck. They just suck less than they used to, way less. I mean,
01:22:22 ◼ ► they're still very limited. They're still way more limited than iOS apps. And it makes it very hard
01:22:30 ◼ ► as a developer to make a great watch app experience that will match what our users expect. As a result,
01:22:36 ◼ ► it's kind of unfair. You know, like, I don't use a third party weather widget on my, as a
01:22:42 ◼ ► complication on my watch. Because third party apps, even the best written ones, like Carrot,
01:22:48 ◼ ► Carrot's a great app. Even the best written weather apps on the Apple Watch cannot update
01:22:55 ◼ ► their complications as often or as reliably as Apple lets theirs update. So I use Apple weather
01:23:01 ◼ ► complications on my watch, even though they're less good, because they work better and more
01:23:06 ◼ ► consistently. And that's not to say anything against the developer of other apps. They can't
01:23:11 ◼ ► do anything about it. It's out of their hands. So, and I know this, like, because I have my own
01:23:16 ◼ ► custom little complications, don't do anything useful, but I just kind of use them for cosmetic,
01:23:21 ◼ ► you know, things on my own face. And I know that occasionally they just stop getting asked to
01:23:25 ◼ ► update. And I can't do anything about it. So the whole system is pretty, it's pretty limiting for
01:23:31 ◼ ► third party developers. So what I'm hoping, if they're moving this to the system from a developer
01:23:36 ◼ ► point of view, I hope those limits get get raised in a big way. And maybe they maybe they don't need
01:23:42 ◼ ► the new processor, maybe not. I hope not because I would like them to be available on all the
01:23:51 ◼ ► the honeycomb screen has always been a huge failure. I anytime you have to go to that screen,
01:24:00 ◼ ► you've lost. And it's going to that screen. It's like trying to plug in a micro USB cable.
01:24:06 ◼ ► It's like, I know I'm going to be I'm going to spend way too long staring at these tiny icons
01:24:09 ◼ ► trying to find the app that I want. And whatever I tap on whatever I guess is this alarm or timer,
01:24:14 ◼ ► whatever I guess is going to be wrong the first time and maybe the second. And so it that's created
01:24:19 ◼ ► is terrible. You can change it to a list if you want by a long pressing. But the list is terrible
01:24:25 ◼ ► in different ways. It's first of all, it's just too long. There's all these different built in
01:24:29 ◼ ► features, many of which you can't turn off that you know, you need some way to access. So that
01:24:34 ◼ ► whole system could use a rethink. It's a hard problem. I get you know, they're trying to cram
01:24:46 ◼ ► there is room for improvement in the way they've done it now. So if the rumor is correct, that they
01:24:52 ◼ ► are actually re implementing or rethinking large parts of how users interact with apps on the watch
01:24:58 ◼ ► at all. That's a very good thing too. And then finally, I would say the the rate of adoption of
01:25:07 ◼ ► third party apps among non nerd people on the watch is really low. And and I mean, this is just
01:25:15 ◼ ► anecdotal. But you know, look around people in your life who have Apple watches. We've talked
01:25:19 ◼ ► about that on the show before. How many of them even know that you can change the complications?
01:25:27 ◼ ► Ask around, look around, see how many people in your life use an Apple watch face that even has
01:25:31 ◼ ► complications. And then see how many of those are on the default. And it's a lot. It's most of them.
01:25:36 ◼ ► So the watch has a lot of functionality that is just that people just don't know about. And you
01:25:44 ◼ ► can't blame them because the way to access this functionality is often really hidden or convoluted.
01:25:50 ◼ ► Or on the phone. Yeah, or on the phone, which I mean, fortunately, they have been moving a lot of
01:25:54 ◼ ► that off. Like I recently I tried to edit like, what metrics were shown in different workout modes.
01:26:01 ◼ ► And that used to be phone only. And now it's watch only. Now you have to like hit the little
01:26:06 ◼ ► like dot menu on the workout and go in there and edit stuff there. It took me a while to figure out
01:26:11 ◼ ► like, first I was looking all over the phone app for it. Couldn't find it anywhere there. I'm like,
01:26:15 ◼ ► well, crap, did they just remove customization of workout faces. And then eventually I found it in
01:26:19 ◼ ► the in the watch app, but it took me a while. And I and that was like, I know this feature is probably
01:26:25 ◼ ► still here somewhere. And I know roughly where to look at it. And I'm a computer professional.
01:26:29 ◼ ► And it took me a long time to figure it out. So there's a lot of stuff like that on the watch.
01:26:34 ◼ ► There's a lot of functionality in the watch, much of which people would really enjoy if they knew
01:26:39 ◼ ► it was there or if they knew how to do it. And it's it has a massive discoverability problem.
01:26:44 ◼ ► And a lot of stuff is super clunky about it once you do figure it out. So there's a lot of room
01:26:48 ◼ ► for improvement there. I'm really excited that they're that they're tackling this because in
01:26:52 ◼ ► most for most of the last three to five years, it has seemed like the watch is not well staffed.
01:27:00 ◼ ► Like it seemed like when WBC comes comes and goes every year for the watch. It has seemed a lot like
01:27:06 ◼ ► man is do they have like more than four people working on this entire OS like because they you
01:27:12 ◼ ► know, they do good work, but it's just really bits and pieces come out every year like it's not it
01:27:17 ◼ ► not a lot comes out from the watch from watch OS every year. It's a very it's kind of like tvOS
01:27:21 ◼ ► like you get a couple of things here and there but it's a very very small set of new features
01:27:25 ◼ ► every year. And so it has seemed under invested in in the last you know, X years. This suggests
01:27:32 ◼ ► that they have actually put a lot of effort into it this year. So that's exciting to me as well.
01:27:36 ◼ ► I'm really looking forward to hopefully the watch having like major major updates in usability or
01:27:43 ◼ ► in app capabilities or app structure or whatever it is. I hope they actually deliver on that.
01:27:48 ◼ ► I hope it's really good. And I would also hope still maybe the more you put a widget like
01:27:55 ◼ ► architecture into the watch. I think the the easier that makes it for them to offer third
01:28:02 ◼ ► party watch faces as an option. Yeah. Now whether I know I know happen eventually whether yeah,
01:28:07 ◼ ► whether they are doing it, whether they will choose to do it, whether they will permit it.
01:28:12 ◼ ► These are all very different questions. But from a technical point of view using widget kit or a
01:28:19 ◼ ► widget kit like system with some pre-built parts makes a lot of sense for enabling for the structure
01:28:26 ◼ ► to enable third party watch faces because then you don't have to have a third party process running
01:28:31 ◼ ► constantly on the on the watch. You can again just wake it up periodically. You can you have you can
01:28:36 ◼ ► define certain pieces that you have to use like all right well you have to use this digital face
01:28:42 ◼ ► of this size and it has to be in this location or you can choose to use these specific analog
01:28:48 ◼ ► watch hands and they have to be in this location. You know whatever it is if they wanted to dictate
01:28:52 ◼ ► certain parts of it and certain requirements to say all watch faces must be able to do X, Y, Z or
01:28:57 ◼ ► must use pieces X, Y, Z in this way. They could do that really well with with with widget kit
01:29:03 ◼ ► technically speaking and practically speaking. So it seems like the the most apparent and obvious
01:29:08 ◼ ► way to enable third-party watch faces based on the tech stack we know of today is with widget kit.
01:29:13 ◼ ► So bringing widget kit to watchOS in a bigger way yeah that makes a lot of sense for maybe maybe
01:29:18 ◼ ► maybe enabling this either now or in the future. I hope it's now. If it isn't now and I know it
01:29:23 ◼ ► probably isn't I hope it's in the near future because I still want third-party watch faces
01:29:26 ◼ ► and this is just such a such a clear like you know I wouldn't necessarily call anything easy
01:29:31 ◼ ► but this is actually a straightforward and and dare I say obvious way to offer them you know
01:29:41 ◼ ► I hope this is an exciting year for watchOS. So imagine this it's WWDC we're you know we're
01:29:47 ◼ ► watching the video since it's a fantasy we're all sitting next to each other for the first time
01:29:51 ◼ ► since 2019. We're watching the video together and Kevin Lynch comes on the video and says
01:29:58 ◼ ► I only have one thing to tell you about the watch communication between the watch and the phone
01:30:03 ◼ ► is reliable now and then walks away. That's not gonna happen. Is that enough is it'll never happen
01:30:08 ◼ ► but Marco is that enough to make this a classic like just favorite WWDC of all time? Oh no because
01:30:15 ◼ ► I would first of all I don't think it's possible second of all I wouldn't I wouldn't believe them
01:30:19 ◼ ► and I think the the way the way to fix phone to watch communication is to get rid of it
01:30:24 ◼ ► like the way the way to fix it is to give me the same controls that I have on URL background
01:30:31 ◼ ► download sessions and URL communication which you most you have most of it already give me the same
01:30:36 ◼ ► background download abilities and APIs on the watch that I have on the phone let it let it
01:30:40 ◼ ► download like let background download start immediately and and let them run over wi-fi
01:30:46 ◼ ► and not over bluetooth to the phone. That's what like there's a there's a number of points in that
01:30:51 ◼ ► communication stack that are either unreliable or ungodly slow and again this is all in the name of
01:30:56 ◼ ► saving power like you can see why they did it but I think a lot of those decisions they might have
01:31:03 ◼ ► made sense seven years ago maybe they make less sense now or maybe they're not as necessary now
01:31:08 ◼ ► as they used to be and the those decisions really hold back apps and and so again I hope they like
01:31:23 ◼ ► immediately. That's it I can do it on iOS I can do it on all other Apple OS's. Well I don't I don't
01:31:31 ◼ ► think Mac OS supports background downloads anyway I can do it on most other Apple OS's. I can't do
01:31:37 ◼ ► it on on the watch and that really holds stuff back to the point where I had to make a breakout
01:31:43 ◼ ► game in my app so that you would keep the screen on like that the whole reason I had to make a
01:31:48 ◼ ► game in my watch app in my podcast app while you download a file is so that you have something to
01:31:53 ◼ ► do that will keep the screen on so I don't have to rely on the background downloads when you want to
01:31:57 ◼ ► download something right now before you go out for a run or something and you don't want it to be
01:32:01 ◼ ► cancelled for no reason or to never start for no reason so please Apple make that stuff better but
01:32:07 ◼ ► anyway I will complain a lot less about that if I have custom third-party watch faces. No that's
01:32:13 ◼ ► fair. So John pulling on this thread a moment what is your I don't care about anything else that
01:32:18 ◼ ► happened this was a great WWDC I assume new Mac Pro? I mean yeah well I'm not really expecting
01:32:25 ◼ ► that because of the rumors although I do have a brief aside about something that Marco talked
01:32:29 ◼ ► about how people don't know don't customize their complications on their watches they don't know
01:32:35 ◼ ► they can do it and the interface of doing it is clunky and it's lots of things on the watch are
01:32:39 ◼ ► non-discoverable and when you were describing that I thought this is another place where
01:32:45 ◼ ► it seems like Apple is I mean we don't know because we don't know what they're doing but
01:32:50 ◼ ► it seems like they're behind where everyone else is zooming forward with their large language
01:32:53 ◼ ► models one of the things that current large language models that are out there right now
01:32:57 ◼ ► are really good at doing is exactly this task which is a voice interface to describing what
01:33:03 ◼ ► you want your the complications in your phone screen to be like you can go to one of these
01:33:08 ◼ ► large language models right now and say make me a web page in the lower left corner put a picture
01:33:12 ◼ ► of a sun in the lower right corner put a counter that counts up every second and like you could
01:33:16 ◼ ► actually describe the functionality of the widgets and it will do it like how easy would it be for a
01:33:20 ◼ ► well-trained large language model to say I want the weather in the upper left the date in the
01:33:25 ◼ ► lower left and then continue a conversation said no I want the date to be the day of the week plus
01:33:31 ◼ ► the the month in the year or I don't want the year like those type of conversations you can have them
01:33:36 ◼ ► with large language models right now and the canvas that they're painting on is like anything
01:33:41 ◼ ► you can ask for more or less it'll try to do it with varying degrees the problem space of picking
01:33:47 ◼ ► which widgets you want to picking out from a fixed set of widgets to appear in a fixed set of location
01:33:52 ◼ ► with a fixed set of options large language models would eat that for breakfast the problems are one
01:33:57 ◼ ► apple seems not to be on that train with everyone else as far as we know because they haven't
01:34:02 ◼ ► announced anything in that area two their existing thing that you can talk to Siri sucks balls and we
01:34:06 ◼ ► know that and then you know three I don't think this is the type of thing that apple can uh you
01:34:13 ◼ ► know say oh well they're popular we're rolling out this year you know like it's again as hard
01:34:18 ◼ ► enough as we don't know what's going on but like it seems like apple is behind everyone else on
01:34:23 ◼ ► this so you can't expect them to surprise watch os 10 is out and it's got a large language model that
01:34:30 ◼ ► you can talk to and I guess this ties into what Marco was saying too is even if you could like
01:34:33 ◼ ► you don't run the large language model on the watch right so now it has to do network communication oh
01:34:38 ◼ ► no the sky is falling batteries being destroyed and I get that like like it's true of what Marco
01:34:43 ◼ ► was asking for I want my downloaders to start now and on wi-fi it'll kill people's watch batteries
01:34:46 ◼ ► but it's like but they want that to happen when they're down they you know it's the balance
01:34:50 ◼ ► between which would you rather have your podcast literally never downloads and it frustrates you
01:34:53 ◼ ► to no end or we burn part of your battery downloading your podcast like you have to pick one
01:34:57 ◼ ► you can't like there's no way to get the podcast on your watch without burning battery so either
01:35:01 ◼ ► you want it and you're willing to sacrifice the battery for it and you don't and the same deal
01:35:04 ◼ ► I think with talking to your watch and setting up with a large language model and setting up your
01:35:08 ◼ ► complications maybe as a one-time tutorial that you guide people through when they're setting up
01:35:13 ◼ ► their watch and they have a conversation with it and during the course of the conversation the
01:35:16 ◼ ► watch face forms in front of their eyes is a great way to a show people that's possible and b
01:35:23 ◼ ► let them know that they can do it in a way that doesn't involve them poking their fingers at the
01:35:26 ◼ ► screen trying to find the interface because I have the same frustration I'm not familiar with watch
01:35:29 ◼ ► os because I don't wear an apple watch and anytime I want to do anything in watch os I don't know
01:35:33 ◼ ► where it is I don't know how it works I can't figure out what things are supposed to be touching
01:35:36 ◼ ► or what even what the vocabulary of gestures is to do stuff large language models would destroy
01:35:42 ◼ ► this test they're so good at it it's such a narrow problem space and you can talk in a free form
01:35:46 ◼ ► manner and apple's speech to text actually works pretty well so once you get over that hurdle and
01:35:52 ◼ ► you can throw that text to a large language model running somewhere on an apple server that it can
01:35:56 ◼ ► communicate with that is a I think a really good use of current technology for you know talking to
01:36:04 ◼ ► things and the problem space of dealing with any kind of ui on a two-inch screen that's on your
01:36:11 ◼ ► wrist yeah and on the point of large language models by the way this is obviously you know a
01:36:18 ◼ ► huge question is like we're in the the this like you know boom time of this new generation of ai
01:36:25 ◼ ► capabilities what's apple gonna do with wtc with them and and I think unfortunately the answer is
01:36:31 ◼ ► probably nothing there is nothing because they like that's not what apple does like apple does
01:36:36 ◼ ► stuff you know more slowly than that in a lot of areas and I mean they they could if they were on
01:36:40 ◼ ► the ball on this and were were sort of ahead of the curve or even you know even with everyone else
01:36:45 ◼ ► they could have stuff to announce the wtc but that whole part of the org seems dysfunctional now again
01:36:50 ◼ ► because we don't know what's going on for all we know they've been working on large language
01:36:52 ◼ ► model stuff for seven years and they're about to roll it out and wow us but it certainly seems like
01:36:56 ◼ ► that's not the case no I think what's more likely is look apple apple knows that again these are
01:37:02 ◼ ► smart people they know that the eyes of the world are going to be upon them and expecting
01:37:08 ◼ ► ai announcements and so I think what they're going to most likely do is brand some things as ai
01:37:16 ◼ ► that are not actually using this new generation of of technique and it's just using you know the
01:37:21 ◼ ► the previous generation you know like you know what we used to call machine learning you know
01:37:24 ◼ ► these terms and I know these terms are you know oftentimes fake and shifting around over time but
01:37:30 ◼ ► they I think they might just you know show off stuff that is using that kind of technique
01:37:35 ◼ ► and say this is ai powered you know just because those are the buzzwords that people expect at the
01:37:39 ◼ ► day the rumors surrounding the like siri and the headset I seem to recall reading something
01:37:45 ◼ ► somewhere that was like a supposedly inside dirt on like that the headset team didn't really want
01:37:51 ◼ ► to use siri but like that's what's available to them they're kind of like wanted to go their own
01:37:55 ◼ ► direction because siri sucks so bad they're just like well we you know I don't know if they want
01:37:58 ◼ ► to use large language models maybe that predates that but like they know they have a problem here
01:38:03 ◼ ► because they the headset is similar like the interface to it is more limited than it is on
01:38:08 ◼ ► a phone ipad or mac so you have to figure out how do I manipulate things I don't know the whole
01:38:12 ◼ ► cameras looking at your fingertips and so on and so forth but it's a harder problem right it's
01:38:15 ◼ ► harder than just using a pointer or cursor you know or touching the screen with your fingers
01:38:18 ◼ ► you can't do that with a headset so let's use the voice assistant that our company already has
01:38:23 ◼ ► oh but that voice assistant is bad so well you don't want the headset to be bad people working
01:38:28 ◼ ► on the headset is that we want the headset to be good and we do need something that's going to
01:38:31 ◼ ► listen to us and so I kind of agree that they're like as they promote siri and the headset maybe
01:38:37 ◼ ► they'll have a new suffix siri ai seri I mean I don't know how they'll go that far but like
01:38:42 ◼ ► maybe they'll just say hey siri's in your headset too and everybody loves siri and look how amazing
01:38:51 ◼ ► yeah this is another one of the benefits of the headset the fact that it blots out the sun I
01:38:56 ◼ ► think it can blot out the fact that apple doesn't really have anything to show uh for it uh
01:39:01 ◼ ► regarding large language models wt which is fine they got a whole headset and a new platform isn't
01:39:06 ◼ ► that exciting I think they can get away with it this year next year when we come to wc next year
01:39:11 ◼ ► regardless of how the headset turns out maybe next year it's finally just shipping to people
01:39:14 ◼ ► or something next year apple needs to start having some kind of answers with large language models
01:39:19 ◼ ► because I think they've proven they're useful in enough context and like the reason I gave the you
01:39:24 ◼ ► know setting up the complications on your watch uh you know watch screen uh problem space that is
01:39:31 ◼ ► a limited domain where large language models can excel in in ways that siri absolutely has not
01:39:37 ◼ ► because you have to know how to talk to siri and in the special way that siri understands and even
01:39:41 ◼ ► when you know sometimes it does ridiculous things that that don't make any sense whereas large
01:39:46 ◼ ► language models don't work that way again if you've never tried one go go to one right now and
01:39:51 ◼ ► ask it to do something with a limited problem domain or even with a not particularly limited
01:39:55 ◼ ► one like I said asking it to make a web page for you or something it's really good about having a
01:40:00 ◼ ► conversation with you and understanding what it is you want as long as it's you're talking to it
01:40:04 ◼ ► about something that was able to train itself on it's out there in the world and apple can absolutely
01:40:09 ◼ ► find a large language model and train it on enough data to understand watch os complications yeah
01:40:16 ◼ ► one thing by the way like in in terms of like wwdc you know hopes and dreams here one thing I I would
01:40:23 ◼ ► love to see I I don't know if it'll be this year it'll more likely be next year but I would love to
01:40:30 ◼ ► see apple make available to developers through apis on the phone some large language model
01:40:38 ◼ ► capabilities that they have optimized like crazy to run on their hardware so for instance you know
01:40:42 ◼ ► the the stable diffusion algorithm for image generation apple actually I think I believe it
01:40:48 ◼ ► was that one apple actually contributed to the open source project or whatever to optimize it
01:40:53 ◼ ► for running on apple silicon max and or apple silicon in general and so and then that that
01:40:58 ◼ ► kind of enabled people to make iphone apps with it I would love them to do more of that that kind
01:41:03 ◼ ► of thing of like and and build it into the os so that we don't have to download like each app you
01:41:08 ◼ ► know a good example of this right now is if you want if you want to transcribe sound into speech
01:41:15 ◼ ► into text apple has actually shipped an api to do this for a number of years now it's called
01:41:21 ◼ ► something like sf speak synthesizer the pro or speech recognizer whatever there were a number
01:41:26 ◼ ► of problems with it number one because I've been trying to do features like this in overcast for
01:41:34 ◼ ► when you do clip sharing and overcast to be able to show as part of the video clip the text you
01:41:41 ◼ ► know many apps like tick tock you know they do this they have this built in now this is a common
01:41:46 ◼ ► thing and I need to do it at some point and in the past this was limited by a number of factors number
01:41:51 ◼ ► one was in the past I don't know if this is still the case that api to use apple's built-in speech
01:41:58 ◼ ► to text api your app had to request and get access to the microphone even if you were feeding it audio
01:42:06 ◼ ► that was not from the microphone so I could not as a podcast app feed the pre-recorded audio that
01:42:13 ◼ ► I downloaded to my podcast app through their text-to-speech system or their speech-to-text system
01:42:18 ◼ ► until I prompted the user for microphone access and that alone was enough for me to say I'm not
01:42:22 ◼ ► using this feature because I'm not going to ask my users who are all you know educated nerds
01:42:28 ◼ ► for permission to access their microphone in a podcast app because there's no reason I would
01:42:33 ◼ ► need that except to be creepy and like spy on them with ads and stuff like okay so I don't even want
01:42:38 ◼ ► the appearance that I might be doing that I don't even want the ability to access their microphone I
01:42:42 ◼ ► don't want I don't I don't even want that to be possible in my app so that alone ruled it out but
01:42:48 ◼ ► also you know it was it was using older style you know models and and things to to do the speech-to-
01:42:55 ◼ ► text conversion and it wasn't very good in my testing like I made a couple of test prototypes
01:43:00 ◼ ► granting myself microphone access just to see like you know how good is this and it was bad and it
01:43:06 ◼ ► was it was too bad to ship so I didn't ship it well whatever however many months ago open ai
01:43:12 ◼ ► released their whisper model and whisper is really massively better it's not a small difference it is
01:43:19 ◼ ► way more accurate and there there is a project called whisper.cpp where some guy has done
01:43:25 ◼ ► amazing work in like transforming this this thing that you would otherwise need a whole bunch of
01:43:29 ◼ ► python to run into a very simple c++ wrapper that you could make ios and other apps with and it runs
01:43:36 ◼ ► fine on apple stuff and I tried that and I built a prototype with that and it was super easy to use
01:43:41 ◼ ► and and and the downside of using whisper oh there's two main downs number one if you use the
01:43:47 ◼ ► large models that have like larger vocabularies and more accuracy it's just too slow to run on
01:43:52 ◼ ► an iphone number two these models are huge to download like the the base model that provides
01:44:00 ◼ ► like okay accuracy decent speed is something I think it's something like 70 megs and then if you
01:44:07 ◼ ► want something more accurate it goes into like multiple gigs very quickly and this is just it's
01:44:13 ◼ ► untenable to run that in the way I would want to run that would be you know stuff like transcription
01:44:18 ◼ ► of what you're listening to you know there's lots of things I could do with that if it was fast and
01:44:22 ◼ ► and you know inexpensive computationally to run that but if I had to download like a two gig model
01:44:28 ◼ ► you know as part of the app to do those features or whatever that's that's not going to fly
01:44:33 ◼ ► and if it's going to be super slow it's not going to fly well they could build in some medium-sized
01:44:39 ◼ ► model into the os if they wanted to and they could use it themselves for their own speech to
01:44:43 ◼ ► text stuff and then make that available to developers they could also for instance optimize
01:44:47 ◼ ► that model you know the reason why the whisper dot cpp doesn't run very quickly on iphones one of the
01:44:53 ◼ ► reasons is because apple has not done their work to optimize that one the way they did with the
01:44:57 ◼ ► stable diffusion also they the the way these models usually work you if you're running in
01:45:03 ◼ ► the background you don't have access to the gpu or the neural engine as far as I know but you
01:45:09 ◼ ► definitely can't run you can't run ml models on the gpu if your app is in the background
01:45:13 ◼ ► you can only it it makes your app only use cpu based computation and that makes them way slower
01:45:19 ◼ ► to run in many cases and this is the case for whisper and whisper dot cpp only ever uses the
01:45:24 ◼ ► cpu it doesn't have any access to the hardware acceleration besides you know cpu raw stuff and so
01:45:30 ◼ ► this makes it slower than it than it could be so if apple actually wanted to offer a really great
01:45:35 ◼ ► dictation to speech api or just you know speech text api they could massively improve the the api
01:45:44 ◼ ► they've already offered for years by using this new kind of technique a new kind of model like this
01:45:48 ◼ ► optimize it let it run on the acceleration hardware ship it ship a base model with the os
01:45:54 ◼ ► and all of a sudden every app could have really easy access to speech to text that's the kind of
01:46:01 ◼ ► thing that i think is more likely for apple to offer with these new ai techniques sooner
01:46:07 ◼ ► than having them offer some kind of like full-blown customer facing you know quote ai powered feature
01:46:13 ◼ ► i think it's too soon for that and and that's that's kind of less appley to do that kind of
01:46:17 ◼ ► thing the customizing watch face is a great example of how apple would do it it's not like
01:46:21 ◼ ► you can have arbitrary conversations with the thing like they would be very narrowly constrained and i
01:46:26 ◼ ► know the large language models out there now are supposedly constrained but they're it's more like
01:46:30 ◼ ► everything except for these five or six things they try to keep them away from whereas this would be
01:46:34 ◼ ► you can discuss nothing except for watch faces and i feel like that is easier especially if they
01:46:39 ◼ ► train the model themselves right um which again costs money and you know regarding the the the
01:46:48 ◼ ► models are called large language models they use tremendous amounts of storage and tremendous
01:46:53 ◼ ► amounts of memory and tremendous amounts of compute not just for the training which is itself
01:46:57 ◼ ► huge because obviously you're grinding through tons and tons of data but even just for the part
01:47:01 ◼ ► of it where it runs the the inference part of it where it does its thing even that takes a
01:47:06 ◼ ► substantial amount of of power and resources which is why i was saying the watch would have to be
01:47:10 ◼ ► communicating with the server obviously and then even just communicating with the server would be
01:47:14 ◼ ► taxing for the watch and drain the battery and so on but not to mention the servers yeah well i mean
01:47:20 ◼ ► the servers yeah but again to be that incredibly constrained to just be doing watch faces it's what
01:47:26 ◼ ► we talked about a while ago and the people have actually implemented uh large language models
01:47:30 ◼ ► sitting in front of essentially the functionality exposed by siri or like you know limit functionality
01:47:34 ◼ ► that's already on the watch the watch can already pick complications and configure them and put them
01:47:37 ◼ ► in places on the faces it's just a question of translating from speech to text and from text to
01:47:43 ◼ ► what is this text telling me to do and then oh actually i i the watch have apis for doing all
01:47:49 ◼ ► the things you're asking for it's a very constrained problem space which is miles from like what
01:47:53 ◼ ► microsoft did was like here's bing you can talk to it about stuff good luck yeah but like ultimately
01:47:59 ◼ ► i what i want to see from apple in the ai age really is make a lot of this cool tech available
01:48:08 ◼ ► on device for for on device use by apps that are not communicating with their own servers
01:48:14 ◼ ► that can just run everything locally and apple has you know with the exception of of having
01:48:20 ◼ ► what seems like organizational or cultural trouble with ai machine learning techniques and
01:48:28 ◼ ► people in general um that that's a that's a large issue they need to they need to figure out if they
01:48:33 ◼ ► haven't yet and so far it seems like they haven't but what they have resource wise is they have all
01:48:39 ◼ ► these supercomputers in everybody's pockets that have amazing hardware and software capabilities
01:48:44 ◼ ► and and they care a lot about privacy and things running on device whenever possible and everything
01:48:51 ◼ ► and that's that's a level of sophistication and an amount of resources that their competitors don't
01:48:57 ◼ ► have so i i hope apple leans into that and i think this is this is how they're going to ultimately
01:49:02 ◼ ► tackle you know quote ai leaning into on device stuff as much as possible and and and if they do
01:49:09 ◼ ► that themselves they will most likely do it in a way where there is an api for developers to
01:49:14 ◼ ► hook into or use those same capabilities in our apps that's what i'm hoping to see from apple in
01:49:20 ◼ ► this new age of these new styles of ai it is you know cool on device capabilities that run quickly
01:49:27 ◼ ► and locally that don't need you know us to as you know a developer of one app we don't need to go
01:49:33 ◼ ► train our own models we don't need to uh you know go run a huge server farm or have our own you know
01:49:39 ◼ ► open ai tokens that we have to use and figure out how the heck to pay for like i want to see what
01:49:45 ◼ ► what apple can deliver us on device that they will maintain they will train they will update it over
01:49:52 ◼ ► time they will make it faster over time and let us build on top of it and they have a very strong
01:49:58 ◼ ► history of doing that in other in other areas so i i think this is what they will ultimately do
01:50:03 ◼ ► whenever they get their act together on ai and and we don't know when that will be and it probably
01:50:08 ◼ ► won't be all at once i'm hoping to see little hints of it this year even that i think is
01:50:13 ◼ ► optimistic but we'll see and then maybe next year or the year after maybe we'll see big stuff
01:50:18 ◼ ► and that's that'll be exciting they're already doing all that it's just a question of what
01:50:22 ◼ ► letters they put on it they used to put the letters m and l right now and now we're saying
01:50:26 ◼ ► the letters a and i what we mean is exactly what apple has been doing which is they they do provide
01:50:31 ◼ ► you a bunch of models you can use like that text-to-speech one that you were saying you know
01:50:34 ◼ ► and they do improve it over years they do make it run fast in the heart but they've done all of that
01:50:38 ◼ ► but like yeah but but no but the stuff that you have now there's better stuff apple that uses not
01:50:43 ◼ ► the m and the l but it uses the a and the i and it's all this you know right we obviously there is
01:50:47 ◼ ► there are different techniques to doing this and the current technique that lots of other companies
01:50:51 ◼ ► are experimenting with is better than what apple is doing so what we want is apple do what you've
01:50:57 ◼ ► been doing with all the things you used to call ml keep doing that we love frameworks we love you
01:51:02 ◼ ► making it fast on your hardware it's just that there's a new thing that does everything you've
01:51:05 ◼ ► been trying to do but better not everything but certain things it does better so please give us
01:51:10 ◼ ► access to that in a way that makes us not have to worry about it and i do think that they will do
01:51:14 ◼ ► that and i just got done saying the larger models are too big you know they're just way too big to
01:51:18 ◼ ► even run at all and even like phones or even big mac sometimes that's why you have to communicate
01:51:22 ◼ ► over the network but that's today like those things change like part of what makes that
01:51:26 ◼ ► tractable is just a march of progress but part of it is also companies like apple deciding that it
01:51:31 ◼ ► is important for their socs to be good at doing this and that can really knock down these things
01:51:36 ◼ ► that's the reason the socs we have today are so good at doing the things they do so good at image
01:51:40 ◼ ► processing so good at you know doing the kinds of computations that has to be done on a phone on a
01:51:46 ◼ ► mac or whatever those special process processes for video encoding and decoding and you know the
01:51:52 ◼ ► the neural engine all that stuff was developed because apple said these these types of functions
01:51:58 ◼ ► are useful to do on a phone or on a mac or whatever and we want to do them in low power
01:52:02 ◼ ► or what i think that will come for large language models as well i don't think we're going to you
01:52:07 ◼ ► know models that currently run that require hundreds of gigs of ram to do inference are
01:52:10 ◼ ► going to run on your phone anytime soon but i think there will be a meeting in the middle of
01:52:14 ◼ ► like you were saying margo cut down versions of these things limited problem space and and to be
01:52:19 ◼ ► clear with the limited problem space you're like oh there's no way they can never limit a large
01:52:22 ◼ ► language model enough it'll always be scary i'm thinking of the scenario when you were talking
01:52:25 ◼ ► about configuring the complications it never answers back the only thing it does in response
01:52:31 ◼ ► to you talking to it is show you what it thinks you're asking for as you're screening your
01:52:35 ◼ ► complications and basically says you know is this okay you know press okay or say okay or like
01:52:41 ◼ ► it never talks back to you it just does what you and it there's no way for you to accidentally
01:52:47 ◼ ► have your watch insult you or something or there's very few ways perhaps watch insult you
01:52:51 ◼ ► by arranging complications i guess each of each complication was a letter it could spell out a
01:52:55 ◼ ► naughty word or something and someone figured out how to do it but like it's really limited problem
01:53:03 ◼ ► well large language models are currently delivering on a lot of that promise i can have a conversation
01:53:09 ◼ ► in text with a large language model and get it to do useful things that reflect what i'm asking you
01:53:15 ◼ ► no it doesn't know anything about facts no it has no understanding of anything no i can't ask it
01:53:18 ◼ ► questions and trust its answers but i can ask it to arrange a bunch of complications on a watch
01:53:23 ◼ ► screen and the good thing about that is i'm the one who gets to say you did it correctly or you
01:53:27 ◼ ► didn't and if you didn't i could say no the upper left should be carrot weather and not apple's
01:53:32 ◼ ► weather widget and maybe and maybe it still fails to understand me or whatever but the result is
01:53:37 ◼ ► okay well fine i'll do that one manually or whatever but the point is like trying to do that
01:53:41 ◼ ► through siri now is laughable like you can't you know people people would never try to do that
01:53:46 ◼ ► they're they're lucky when they can talk to their watch to reply to a text or something and that's
01:53:49 ◼ ► only like nerds who have practiced that whole thing whereas large language models seem so much
01:53:54 ◼ ► more flexible about understanding the foibles of our language and and eventually doing what we want
01:53:58 ◼ ► and so i really do hope that again not this year probably but that eventually becomes one of the
01:54:03 ◼ ► things they start rolling out uh if not as a as a way to interface with tiny screens or headsets
01:54:11 ◼ ► then at least as something that we can expect our powerful max to be able to do right because i would
01:54:15 ◼ ► love to be able to say things to my mac to do drudgery without having to open up a web browser
01:54:20 ◼ ► go to one of these large language models type a bunch of stuff in and all that thanks to our
01:54:24 ◼ ► sponsors this week collide squarespace and trade coffee thanks to our members who support us
01:54:30 ◼ ► directly you can join us at atp.fm slash join you get that awesome new pizza special and everything
01:54:35 ◼ ► we've ever done before that plus all the membership perks you'll see atp.fm slash join thank you
01:54:39 ◼ ► everybody we will talk to you next week now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin
01:54:50 ◼ ► because it was accidental oh it was accidental john didn't do any research marco and casey
01:54:59 ◼ ► wouldn't let him because it was accidental it was accidental and you can find the show notes at
01:55:08 ◼ ► atp.fm and if you're into twitter you can follow them at c a s e y l i s s so that's casey list m
01:55:41 ◼ ► all right so i wanted to talk to the two of you i wanted to kind of invoke the brain trust
01:55:50 ◼ ► perhaps call the diamond dogs together and see what you two thought about pricing for call sheet
01:55:56 ◼ ► we talked about this i i don't know when it was i think it was a little bit last week i think it
01:56:00 ◼ ► was a little bit uh a few weeks before that but i'm getting knock on wood getting really close to
01:56:06 ◼ ► sending this to the app store which means i really need to lock down my pricing schedule for like a
01:56:10 ◼ ► better word um well you need to lock down your initial pricing sure you can always change yes
01:56:18 ◼ ► that is true um and so i think what i've landed on as a general scheme and then we'll talk about the
01:56:25 ◼ ► different options therein um i think what i'm going to do is you get to use the main screen
01:56:33 ◼ ► which shows you like popular stuff in your country or really your language popular stuff in your
01:56:37 ◼ ► language new stuff in your language um you know so that would generally be you know new stuff in
01:56:41 ◼ ► english for me and popular things in english um and sort of kind of american-based when it's english
01:56:48 ◼ ► but not always it's complicated doesn't matter but anyways um you can do all that in that you can do
01:56:54 ◼ ► you can you can tap through that whenever you want and and there's no real limit there so
01:56:59 ◼ ► hypothetically if you can six degrees of kevin bacon yourself to the information you want
01:57:03 ◼ ► that'll take a while but you can you can do that for free always but to search i think i'm going to
01:57:11 ◼ ► have a daily limit of something to the order of five maybe ten searches at most that's so many
01:57:18 ◼ ► what do you do that's too many is it okay have one or two like okay well let's shelve that shelve
01:57:24 ◼ ► that for a second put it in the parking lot we'll come back to that because no that is something i
01:57:28 ◼ ► want to discuss i didn't realize that that was too many so i want to discuss that like hold on a
01:57:31 ◼ ► second so some number of searches per day and then after that it's tough nuggies you know subscribe
01:57:36 ◼ ► or get out of here wait until tomorrow and i feel like in general that is the right approach and and
01:57:45 ◼ ► and that's what i think i want to go with but if you disagree either of you we can talk about that
01:57:49 ◼ ► in a second then the second question becomes you know assuming we have this some amount of free
01:57:54 ◼ ► searches per day and then you have to subscribe all right well what does subscribing mean
01:57:58 ◼ ► and i think when we first talked about this we had concluded kind of as a threesome that somewhere to
01:58:04 ◼ ► the order of eight dollars a year seems like a reasonable price for this sort of thing and i
01:58:09 ◼ ► think i feel pretty good about that but there's two other options on the table that i think would
01:58:13 ◼ ► be additive not a replacement one of them is do i offer a monthly option and if so how expensive
01:58:23 ◼ ► is that and currently i'm leaning toward offering a monthly option for either a dollar or a dollar
01:58:29 ◼ ► fifty i'm not really sure what what feels right there now that would be kind of considerably more
01:58:35 ◼ ► than the yearly option so i want to know your thoughts when we get there when i stop talking
01:58:38 ◼ ► in just a second um but i think for sure i want a yearly option the question is do i do a monthly
01:58:44 ◼ ► option and if so how much and then the other question is do i do a something like a lifetime
01:58:50 ◼ ► unlock i think using the word lifetime is a is a dire mistake and i wouldn't phrase it that way but
01:58:56 ◼ ► maybe a one-time unlock if i go this route at all and i'm currently i think i'm against it because
01:59:02 ◼ ► i just think that it sets me up for failure and even if i'm leading leaving a little money on the
01:59:14 ◼ ► makes me feel a little uncomfortable so that's kind of where where things sit right now and
01:59:21 ◼ ► i am curious what your thoughts are now marco you jumped all over me justifiably you know i'm not
01:59:25 ◼ ► i'm not upset you jumped all over me a second ago we're both of you really about five free searches
01:59:30 ◼ ► per day so talk me down from five which what should the number be marco i'd say one or two
01:59:35 ◼ ► i mean that that's that's tricky though it is look again it's tricky but and and there's a question
01:59:41 ◼ ► of like what defines a search that's a big question if you search and you mistype it and get
01:59:47 ◼ ► no results does that count as a search yeah so the way it's currently implemented it's not in the test
01:59:51 ◼ ► plate yet but the way it's currently implemented in a branch that i have going right now is that
01:59:56 ◼ ► you can strictly speaking type however many searches as you want during the day but the
02:00:00 ◼ ► moment you click your time to click the moment you tap on a result then that counts as a search and
02:00:06 ◼ ► now you've lost one of your one of your searches yes that sounds good i would also you know the
02:00:10 ◼ ► branding of this i would say you know you've like you call it something like free searches so like
02:00:16 ◼ ► you've you've you have one free search left today and then when you hit the end you've used up you've
02:00:21 ◼ ► used all your free searches today you can buy buy the subscription and get unlimited searches you
02:00:25 ◼ ► know that kind of that's how i would phrase this you have free searches and then you have this
02:00:29 ◼ ► paywall that gets you more searches i'm speaking of free you're doing a free trial right well that
02:00:34 ◼ ► was my initial thought but now that i have this whole free search thing i don't i feel like it's
02:00:38 ◼ ► kind of redundant yeah i don't know that you necessarily need a free if you have this here's
02:00:42 ◼ ► what you need you need to have what you need to have uh the goal is someone needs to use the app
02:00:48 ◼ ► enough to like it and and that is the tricky part so the use it enough to like it like just a single
02:00:57 ◼ ► use instance like i was watching one tv show and we had a question on the couch about what was this
02:01:01 ◼ ► person in that one instance of use that has i feel like that one instance uses has to be successful
02:01:08 ◼ ► and enjoyable without any pay crap in their face and you're like okay but how many searches is that
02:01:14 ◼ ► and that's why i think that picking the searches is tricky 10 is too many right because no one's
02:01:18 ◼ ► going to burn through 10 a day 10 is enough for a single couch instance and maybe you'd use the app
02:01:22 ◼ ► once every few days um but one is too few because for a single couch instance like no one will ever
02:01:28 ◼ ► get the point to like the app because they'll be like i used it for two seconds and then it
02:01:32 ◼ ► threw a paywall in my face and i hate it that's why the free trial is good because the free trial
02:01:36 ◼ ► period is unlimited and that allows the free trial period to be this is the time when you get to like
02:01:41 ◼ ► the app because it's unlimited it's a free trial everything's open full access to everything but
02:01:46 ◼ ► that door closes and that allows it takes the pressure off your number of you know searches
02:01:51 ◼ ► per day to allow people to get to like the app they're supposed to get to like it during the
02:01:56 ◼ ► free trial and then the paywall sole purpose is to gently remind people that they can pay to get
02:02:02 ◼ ► that experience that they previously had if you don't do a free trial you have to somehow thread
02:02:07 ◼ ► the needle of like how much will let people use it enough so they'll like it but like because
02:02:12 ◼ ► because i think some people will never go above one search per couch incident or whatever you know
02:02:17 ◼ ► like they'll just they'll just use the app forever for free to say i you know i don't do this often
02:02:23 ◼ ► when i do do it i look it up and again what you just described i can do as many searches as i want
02:02:26 ◼ ► until i find the result that i want and then i tap on it and i get my answer i put the phone down
02:02:30 ◼ ► never look at it again they might not even know you have a paywall with your limit of one and
02:02:34 ◼ ► other people in a single couch incident go through 75 searches because they're like what was this
02:02:39 ◼ ► person what was that search for this person i think the person's name was a sticker and they're
02:02:42 ◼ ► tapping through results and they're doing all sorts of things and they will be incredibly
02:02:45 ◼ ► frustrated by a limit that's like one or two but if you have the free trial you can be like look
02:02:50 ◼ ► you had the you had your salad days you got to use the app you got to see all the features you got to
02:02:55 ◼ ► you know and then it's just a question of how long is the free trial it would kind of be nice if the
02:02:59 ◼ ► free trial only started like when they you know when they had their first big usage scenario um
02:03:06 ◼ ► but yeah a free trial would hypothetically start upon subscribing so you subscribe yeah you get
02:03:12 ◼ ► your one week or whatever and then then you're charged i don't know i i hear what you're saying
02:03:17 ◼ ► i don't disagree with it but i feel like especially if i were to crank the limit from five to like two
02:03:22 ◼ ► or three then i i i maybe i'm wrong but i feel like at that point you have gotten at least a vague
02:03:30 ◼ ► enough notion to know okay no no this is all right and if you want to try again tomorrow try it again
02:03:34 ◼ ► tomorrow i don't i don't love the idea of both a free trial and the search limit but but that is a
02:03:42 ◼ ► weak opinion held loosely see this this is getting very complicated like i i almost think like
02:03:47 ◼ ► john's right like you know you you want to give people a chance to like the app of course so
02:03:53 ◼ ► that's making me now revisit like what if instead of just instead of having anything per unit of
02:03:58 ◼ ► time per day per month what if it was a higher limit that was a single view so for instance
02:04:03 ◼ ► you get 10 free searches after that you got to pay that's it like because then you could make
02:04:07 ◼ ► the number higher and you can give people more chance to get to know the app you could display
02:04:13 ◼ ► it more easily in the ui it's very it's much clearer to people what the limit is some people
02:04:18 ◼ ► take a while to come around to pay for stuff though like some people need to be convinced
02:04:21 ◼ ► that there is actual utility they may like the app and they may say oh that i found that app useful
02:04:25 ◼ ► but they haven't come around to the idea that i like it enough to pay for it and that's where the
02:04:30 ◼ ► doling out a small amount that periodically is better than the big buck even if it's a big bucket
02:04:35 ◼ ► of 100 once they burn through that 100 and they like the app they may not be ready to pay still
02:04:40 ◼ ► but if they'll but if there's one doled out each day after that they'd be like you know what i do
02:04:45 ◼ ► keep coming back to this is the same reason so many people including me eventually paid for the
02:04:48 ◼ ► new york times because it's like they have a bunch of free ones and i don't think i want to pay for
02:04:52 ◼ ► the whole thing but you know what over the course of months weeks years you realize i'm more sick of
02:04:58 ◼ ► of running out of my free articles of the new yorker or whatever than i am sick of paying for
02:05:02 ◼ ► the new yorker and then eventually you do it and obviously the numbers here are way smaller than
02:05:06 ◼ ► the new yorker the new york time subscription or anything like that but it does take people's time
02:05:11 ◼ ► to come around if you slam that door closed you use your 150 free searches and that's it forever
02:05:15 ◼ ► and ever and ever they're you're giving up the opportunity for them to eventually come around
02:05:20 ◼ ► because they're just going to delete the app yeah i guess yeah because it's just it's tricky because
02:05:25 ◼ ► like you you don't you don't want to make this too complicated you want to keep it so that people
02:05:30 ◼ ► know that there's a limit they know when they're going to hit it and then when they hit it they're
02:05:36 ◼ ► they're not they don't say screw you and delete the app and you know so i i get what you're saying
02:05:42 ◼ ► john i mean i i just think once we get into you have x per day they recharge per day and then you
02:05:48 ◼ ► can start a free trial that asks that lasts x amount of time then then you're paying me eventually
02:05:53 ◼ ► after that and by the way you have an annual or monthly like that's a lot of complexity for this
02:05:58 ◼ ► pricing model for a very simple app i i mean a lot of the apps i see on the app store are exactly
02:06:03 ◼ ► like that like i know i i'm i've been subjected to prompts and screens described in this exact
02:06:09 ◼ ► scenario and as a customer i tend not to get hung up with understanding what it is that saying the
02:06:14 ◼ ► customer all i know is can i use the app when i want to and if i can't how much money would i
02:06:20 ◼ ► have to pay to make it happen and then the final thing is will i be able to use the app in the
02:06:29 ◼ ► the text about what their scheme is and what the limits are and what the whatever all i know is
02:06:33 ◼ ► i can't do what i want now why is that and how can i make it go away and is this a permanent
02:06:37 ◼ ► situation and i feel like that's how most people interact with this like they don't have to actually
02:06:41 ◼ ► understand your business model well but that's even more reason to to me to say look it's either
02:06:47 ◼ ► you pay or you don't you know and this is what marco was saying a moment ago like if you don't
02:06:50 ◼ ► want to pay i'll i'll give you a little sip you can just make it a paid up front app like an old
02:06:54 ◼ ► person well yeah i mean but if you don't if you don't pay i'll give you a little sip of it each
02:06:59 ◼ ► each day and if you pay then that's that and then we're we're good here as long as you keep paying
02:07:03 ◼ ► you get as much as you want and and i i like marco was saying i don't disagree with you in principle
02:07:08 ◼ ► but i i i couldn't put my finger on what felt gross about it and i think it's what marco said
02:07:12 ◼ ► is that just feels too complicated like either you're paying me or you're not there's no in the
02:07:16 ◼ ► middle you know there's no free trial it's either you're paying me or you're not you really want to
02:07:20 ◼ ► use this app free trials are insanely popular for a reason though that's true all right and you can't
02:07:25 ◼ ► you can't overlook that they're everywhere they're everywhere i think they do really work and i know
02:07:31 ◼ ► it does complicate things it does especially for an app your apps your app is different in that it's
02:07:36 ◼ ► not like it is very situational you're probably not going to use this app while you're you know
02:07:41 ◼ ► commuting on the subway right it's it's when you're on the couch it's when you're watching
02:07:45 ◼ ► the show or when you're discussing a show like it's it's not a general purpose app so you don't
02:07:50 ◼ ► have that many opportunities for engagement and when you do have the engagement the value of your
02:07:55 ◼ ► app is it's there when people need it and if it's like oh they go to look it up and you're and your
02:07:59 ◼ ► app you know gives them the Heisman they're not going to come back it needs to like i said it
02:08:04 ◼ ► needs to prove value it needs to say i wanted an answer i got an answer and the app was pleasant to
02:08:10 ◼ ► use and this is the thing i find myself doing frequently so we'll see now here's the other
02:08:14 ◼ ► thing that i'm sure people listening are probably thinking and we've discussed as well the audience
02:08:19 ◼ ► for your app at least initially is not the same as the general public it's going to be able to
02:08:23 ◼ ► listen to your podcast and know about the app no one knows about this app except for people who
02:08:26 ◼ ► read your blog and listen to your podcast or are related to them because it's not out yet but that
02:08:31 ◼ ► is a ready-made customer base and that customer base has totally different values has a totally
02:08:36 ◼ ► different idea of the of the exchange going on here they might be buying it because they're a
02:08:40 ◼ ► fan of yours because they've heard us talk about it so much the general public is coming from a
02:08:46 ◼ ► totally different perspective so you know i feel like and i think it's reasonable to like this app
02:08:51 ◼ ► has nothing to do with atp it is a general purpose app that anybody who watches television and movies
02:08:55 ◼ ► can use the question is do you want to design this app to be optimal for the people who listen to atp
02:09:02 ◼ ► or to be optimal for the people who have no idea what atp is or who you are and those are two very
02:09:06 ◼ ► different designs unfortunately what makes you say that like what what's the difference because the
02:09:10 ◼ ► people who are listening to atp they have different desires out of the app their their impetus to buy
02:09:16 ◼ ► their their motivation to buy is so incredibly different for people who have no idea who you
02:09:21 ◼ ► are you know what i mean like it's just they're totally different but they're very they're limited
02:09:25 ◼ ► they're small in number and so like you could just say i'm just going to set them aside and i'm going
02:09:30 ◼ ► to build this app for the general public uh because you know practically speaking the people who just
02:09:35 ◼ ► want to be the app buy the app because they're curious about the app that casey made or because
02:09:39 ◼ ► they want to have more context for the next episode of atp they listen to that's not a market
02:09:43 ◼ ► that's going to sustain the development is that you know what i mean yeah everyone else is and
02:09:48 ◼ ► the everyone else you know the design for them often involves the gross stuff that you find
02:09:53 ◼ ► unappealing and complicated and i base that on all the apps that i download in the app store that
02:09:57 ◼ ► have those types of models that they're you know complicated and unappealing and gross feeling yeah
02:10:02 ◼ ► i mean i i i'm not sure i see a free trial is this make or break thing that you seem to because and
02:10:08 ◼ ► and maybe it's because i'm too myopic in the way i operate but like i i think a free trial is useful
02:10:21 ◼ ► homegrown alternate approach i think gives me kind of what a free trial like i i view them
02:10:26 ◼ ► i view them as equivalent even though they're not literally equivalent i view them as equivalent
02:10:31 ◼ ► spiritually equivalent where i either need a free trial to prove its worth or i need to you know
02:10:37 ◼ ► distribute little sips of the app to prove its worth and it seems it seems redundant to have
02:10:42 ◼ ► both to me but i don't know maybe maybe i've got this all right if you give them the sip like i
02:10:47 ◼ ► think the main thing when you give them the sip is to make sure it's clear to them this is not the end
02:10:52 ◼ ► that you should not delete this app because even though you i'm not letting you do this search now
02:10:56 ◼ ► at some point in the future that i'm going to tell you about tomorrow next week in an hour whatever
02:11:01 ◼ ► you will be able to use the app again and by the way if you don't want to see this nag screen here's
02:11:05 ◼ ► the subscription or whatever because that's what you're trying to stop is i've hit a paywall delete
02:11:10 ◼ ► this app that is you know because you never get that person back they're not going to redownload
02:11:13 ◼ ► it or whatever they have no you know and so that's that's what you're trying to avoid and free trial
02:11:18 ◼ ► let's the idea of the free trial is they get to try it with but they've all functionality and
02:11:23 ◼ ► hopefully fall in love with it and then when that door closes eventually they you know they say oh
02:11:28 ◼ ► i really did like this app or i did find myself using it a lot yeah i mean i again i hear you but
02:11:33 ◼ ► i i feel like that's the whole point of this i'm gonna say five searches a day maybe that number's
02:11:38 ◼ ► wrong but i feel like that's the whole point and so i i don't know i i it it feels currently like
02:11:45 ◼ ► it's like i said like it's redundant and i don't love it and and you know for what it's worth when
02:11:50 ◼ ► you tap on um when you tap on like a search i'm gonna send you to i'm just gonna put this in in
02:11:56 ◼ ► slack um i don't think we're gonna put an image in the show notes um but when you when you tap on the
02:12:02 ◼ ► like search area what what you're seeing that i'm putting in slack right now that's not in the
02:12:07 ◼ ► context of search it's just you know the the the one view in and of itself but this would be in
02:12:13 ◼ ► where the search results and stuff would be is like a kind of mini paywall that says hey you
02:12:18 ◼ ► got to keep going or wait you know another few hours in order to get you know whatever more
02:12:23 ◼ ► searches um and and that would show and then what what i haven't mentioned to you guys is the way i
02:12:29 ◼ ► currently have it is if you think about the area on the on the or if you think about the the the
02:12:35 ◼ ► main screen and how there's a little magnifying glass that slides in from off screen on the right
02:12:41 ◼ ► as you're drilling into things um when you're in free mode to the left of that magnifying glass i'm
02:12:48 ◼ ► trying to generate an image real quick so give me a second i'm stalling for time but uh to the
02:12:52 ◼ ► left of that magnifying glass there's a really obnoxious red banner at the bottom that says
02:12:58 ◼ ► you have one search left today i think marco made a good point earlier it should say one
02:13:02 ◼ ► free search left today yeah but anyways it's written right now you have one search left today
02:13:06 ◼ ► subscribe now to you know remove limits or whatever i i can wordsmith that however i want
02:13:11 ◼ ► but yeah but what i'm driving at is there's this big ass banner right at the bottom saying hey
02:13:17 ◼ ► this is your situation you've got you know whatever however many searches left and then
02:13:21 ◼ ► you're gonna have to subscribe in order to you know get more yeah i think you could i mean this
02:13:27 ◼ ► all makes sense and i think the ui you are conveying all the information you need you might
02:13:31 ◼ ► you could actually do a fun kind of i don't know if this is an underscore esque thing but it makes
02:13:34 ◼ ► me think of him uh kind of like where you know you have uh you know whatever you have uh one
02:13:39 ◼ ► free search remaining and then you use it and then someone goes to try to do another search and you're
02:13:43 ◼ ► going to show up the paywall on the paywall screen have a button that says can i just have one more
02:13:48 ◼ ► search and you press it and then your app says okay and it lets you do it i don't know again this
02:13:53 ◼ ► is a lot of complexity just the one just a one-time extra that i get i i come down with
02:13:58 ◼ ► marco i i don't want it this complicated that's not complicated that's fun that's surprising delight
02:14:02 ◼ ► what i'm basically saying is the thing that i do don't tell anybody but the thing i do with the
02:14:11 ◼ ► listeners that the end date is one day before it actually is well because that helps you know
02:14:16 ◼ ► resolve things like what time zone does it end in like that's that's the real reason exactly i
02:14:21 ◼ ► don't avoid all those issues the reason people don't say oh i thought the sale was supposed to
02:14:25 ◼ ► end today but it's not i don't have to deal with time zones the end date is always one day later
02:14:29 ◼ ► and that the having the limit be one you know having one extra in reserve that you give people
02:14:35 ◼ ► one time it's not like you can always ask for one more forever and ever but just having the one time
02:14:40 ◼ ► extra that's another enticement to eventually buy because all this app was nice to me i was
02:14:45 ◼ ► thinking about buying can i just do this one last search oh yeah you can then the paywall is really
02:14:49 ◼ ► down and no you don't get to ask for one more forever and ever like a like a two-year-old right
02:14:53 ◼ ► that's the type of thing you can do to soften this to make it more to make it less likely they delete
02:14:58 ◼ ► the app immediately all right here's i've i've been thinking about it i played with the app i
02:15:02 ◼ ► saw your paywall screen in slack i i think this is where i'm landing you get five or ten free
02:15:10 ◼ ► searches single time use and then one per day after that well that's interesting then when they
02:15:18 ◼ ► hit that one you show your your screen i will workshop the hell out of the screen for you don't
02:15:23 ◼ ► ship it the way i know you i know as soon as i said searches every day what is the everyday
02:15:28 ◼ ► phrase there for us anyway yeah we'll work out the screen but it's yeah this is by no means the
02:15:34 ◼ ► final screen this is very yeah you get five or ten five or ten searches up front for free then one a
02:15:40 ◼ ► day free searches then you hit the screen subscribe to continue after that one a day and i like how
02:15:47 ◼ ► you said you know or wait x hours to get you know your next free search like that's great
02:15:51 ◼ ► and you're then you have your two options i'm killing you're kind of killing me even offering
02:15:57 ◼ ► two options monthly and yearly well okay we'll get there we'll get there yeah but yeah you offer your
02:16:02 ◼ ► subscription option parenthesis uh and that's it and there's no free trial you get your one per day
02:16:09 ◼ ► after you've used your five you know single use ones that's it you one per day that's it you hit
02:16:13 ◼ ► this and you go forward if you want that i think that gives people enough time to get to know the
02:16:18 ◼ ► app with it with their five or ten you know stock free ones that aren't timed and then it gives them
02:16:23 ◼ ► that little out to keep them in the door um on the way if they want to keep them after they keep
02:16:28 ◼ ► going after that um but it but you know i think any more than one per day and you will have the
02:16:35 ◼ ► the limit that like you know which i was saying earlier with like how many incidents per couch
02:16:39 ◼ ► event are we are we going to even be using this app every day so so i i think that's probably
02:16:44 ◼ ► your best balance i i think that if you went with that model i think the initial bucket should be
02:16:49 ◼ ► more generous just because that's the following i think a little bit more than 10 would be because
02:16:55 ◼ ► you really you want to give people more time to fall in love with the app and some people hit it
02:17:00 ◼ ► after 10 some people it will take them three months to go through 10 some people go through
02:17:03 ◼ ► 10 and one couches in it so it i you know and it's because it is finite at one time it's not like you
02:17:09 ◼ ► have to worry about it recurring no one's going to live forever off of your free bucket of 20 instead
02:17:13 ◼ ► of 10 it's just giving people more time to use the app enough that they are convinced that it's the
02:17:19 ◼ ► type of thing they want to pay for or at least not delete so for the sake of discussion i'm not sure
02:17:24 ◼ ► this is the right answer but you get 20 searches for free then once that bucket is up be that in
02:17:31 ◼ ► an hour or in a year after that you get one freebie a day and if you if you use that one freebie
02:17:37 ◼ ► tough nuts either wait another day or pay me yeah i actually i kind of like that and i still think
02:17:42 ◼ ► you should have a free i still think you should have a free trial but whatever i i think i'm
02:17:47 ◼ ► team marco on that one i i disagree john also thinks we need to offer our t-shirts in 17
02:17:51 ◼ ► different options every time and i'm the one who's like can we just do like two or three people love
02:17:55 ◼ ► it people love it and it's even it even works with cotton bureau's new model nails we're not even
02:17:59 ◼ ► penalized for doing it all right all right well i'll think about the free trial although current
02:18:04 ◼ ► my current thinking is marco's right all right so i i actually really i didn't think about this
02:18:08 ◼ ► high well it's not really hybrid but i'm gonna call it the hybrid approach um i actually think
02:18:12 ◼ ► this this makes a lot of sense and i think it's reasonably easy to digest that's the thing i'm
02:18:16 ◼ ► worried about and that's that's what i keep coming back to with the free trial is i think it's adding
02:18:20 ◼ ► a layer of complexity that just isn't helpful and so um i like this because it seems pretty
02:18:25 ◼ ► straightforward you got your bucket once you use it you get one a day after that tough nuts
02:18:29 ◼ ► uh all right so i think it's just as complicated as all the schemes you were describing as
02:18:33 ◼ ► complicated but again i say that the people who are using this app do not need a mental model of
02:18:38 ◼ ► this system they just need to know how do they feel about what the app is putting in front of
02:18:41 ◼ ► their face and doesn't make them want to pay money like that's the level people are operating at when
02:18:45 ◼ ► they're poking at their phone they are not trying to suss out your monetization model and and how
02:18:50 ◼ ► you've structured things so i don't think that's a concern at all but if that was a concern the
02:18:54 ◼ ► thing you just described is just as complicated as everything else we've described i mean maybe
02:18:59 ◼ ► well and also like some people will suss it out some people will complain some people will be
02:19:04 ◼ ► you know will be you know bounced off and they won't go through with it because they'll think
02:19:07 ◼ ► it's too ridiculous those are only going to be the listeners of our podcast though the regular
02:19:11 ◼ ► people just do not know who they would complain to assume case it doesn't exist and is just a giant
02:19:16 ◼ ► application mill somewhere like they think apple made all the apps like that's not the people who
02:19:22 ◼ ► complain are so much more like i was gonna say sophisticated but so much more in tune with how
02:19:26 ◼ ► the world actually works than the the most of the people who are just poking at their phone screen
02:19:32 ◼ ► yeah fair enough but all this is to say like you know you're not going to please everyone no matter
02:19:35 ◼ ► what you do don't sell yourself short like don't rip yourself off trying to please everyone like
02:19:40 ◼ ► if some if you hear from people who are like well 20 free searches is really not enough for my needs
02:19:46 ◼ ► like you know it's fine like two then then they should they should pay you if they say that's why
02:19:51 ◼ ► i'm saying they say i used that up in one couch incident a you know they heard listen to the show
02:19:54 ◼ ► because they said couch incident and g it's like okay but like fine you are you are outside the
02:20:01 ◼ ► bell curve 20 for one couch incident is way higher than you know so i'm sorry but i'm not
02:20:08 ◼ ► you can't configure the app for the outliers that's what you're just trying to find them no and and if
02:20:11 ◼ ► anybody uses it that heavily they should be paying for it that that is exactly like that is the kind
02:20:15 ◼ ► of user that like okay then that makes sense you have you have heavier needs for this you should
02:20:20 ◼ ► be paying for it simple as that you know because this is not a free app this is a this is an app
02:20:25 ◼ ► that has limited free functionality that is really a subscription priced app and there's nothing wrong
02:20:30 ◼ ► with that and people will there will be people who will try to make you feel bad about that
02:20:34 ◼ ► but don't because that's life this is what modern software is you have you know you have to keep it
02:20:38 ◼ ► up it's yeah modern software is ongoing revenue in some form because you because people expect
02:20:44 ◼ ► ongoing updates i'll just use imdb one star all right good luck with that all right so so tell
02:20:51 ◼ ► me if i'm if i'm bananas to say that monthly should be an option i i like it i think it's
02:20:57 ◼ ► good i think it's a lower number on the screen i think marco was saying should yearly be an option
02:21:02 ◼ ► no no i well no i i mean i i i think if there's only going to be one it should be yearly but
02:21:09 ◼ ► i think i'm okay with two but what i think i think what you want so i mean look cynically speaking
02:21:14 ◼ ► not everyone who signs up for a year will use it for a year so you kind of want to push more
02:21:20 ◼ ► people towards the yearly if you want to maximize money um so there's there's that to consider
02:21:24 ◼ ► i would suggest if you're going to offer both monthly and yearly which i think i'm okay with
02:21:31 ◼ ► price them in such a way that people who do math will go for the yearly yeah and that that argues
02:21:36 ◼ ► for uh not making it 150 because that makes the math harder for people right like like you know
02:21:41 ◼ ► so if you made it you know a dollar a month eight dollars a year that's pretty good like in terms
02:21:46 ◼ ► of that will drive people people can do that math in their head real fast right there or or make it
02:21:51 ◼ ► two dollars a month and make it ten dollars a year you know something like that whatever whatever it
02:21:54 ◼ ► is like make it so that people can clearly tell oh i should really go for the year and because
02:22:00 ◼ ► that's really what you want if i care about that but i think the smaller number for monthly
02:22:04 ◼ ► is is a smoother on-ramp for people who say i don't know if i want this eight dollars worth
02:22:10 ◼ ► correct then after three months of paying monthly they'll be like oh this is dumb i should just pay
02:22:13 ◼ ► for annual maybe yeah but ultimately like you you want this screen you want most people who
02:22:20 ◼ ► choose to subscribe to go for the longer term one for lots of reason number one you'll make more
02:22:24 ◼ ► money from people who abandon it early number two those people will be reminded only once a year
02:22:30 ◼ ► instead of 12 times a year that they are subscribing to your app and every time someone's
02:22:33 ◼ ► reminded they're subscribing to your app by one of those emails from apple saying these are about to
02:22:37 ◼ ► renew that's a chance for them to cancel it so you you don't want to have to bother people with that
02:22:42 ◼ ► every single month if they're willing to pay for a year at whatever price that is so ideally you
02:22:46 ◼ ► want yearly customers more than monthly customers so that you know because you'll you'll both make
02:22:52 ◼ ► more from them you know in terms of the abandonment and then you'll the ones that don't abandon it
02:22:56 ◼ ► you'll keep them longer probably so yearly is probably better for you so yeah i would price it i
02:23:03 ◼ ► think if if your yearly price is going to be eight bucks i think a dollar a month is a good price for
02:23:08 ◼ ► the monthly if you're i i would maybe push yearly to be 10 bucks but that's it's not that big of a
02:23:14 ◼ ► difference i know that you're going to have trouble asking for 10 bucks because it's you
02:23:18 ◼ ► and you you keep thinking you keep talking yourself down and giving yourself you know pay cuts well
02:23:24 ◼ ► it's it's it's just i i mean i honestly if it were no it is up to me but if it were up to me and i
02:23:31 ◼ ► felt like you know i could get away with whatever i wanted then i think i i think ten dollars a year
02:23:36 ◼ ► is reasonable in like ten dollars a year and like one or maybe two dollars a month but yeah i think
02:23:41 ◼ ► that a regular person would look this and be like no that's way too much money and that's what gives
02:23:47 ◼ ► me pause those people are going to say that no matter what these prices are it could be 10 cents
02:23:52 ◼ ► a month they would say that yeah maybe i i don't know i i feel like i feel like keeping it under 10
02:23:58 ◼ ► is it feels like i can just i it can it can be an impulse buy it under ten dollars even on a yearly
02:24:06 ◼ ► basis which is bananas because if you go out to eat and get a soda it's like 250 and that literally
02:24:13 ◼ ► is pissed away in the span of six hours but i mean i do this on the on the consumer side i do the same
02:24:19 ◼ ► thing and i'll look at a 10 plus dollar an app or a dollar a year nap and i'll be like do i really
02:24:24 ◼ ► need this so i feel like the most i can get away with per year is nine dollars and when i see those
02:24:30 ◼ ► ten dollar apps you know what i do i usually go for the free trial and see if i like it oh
02:24:34 ◼ ► if you're going to go with eight or nine bucks then yeah i'd say i i would say it in order to
02:24:41 ◼ ► maximize the best ratio of monthly to yearly um i'd say a dollar a month eight dollars a year and
02:24:47 ◼ ► you don't think that a dollar fifty is because i mean the only the only reason to do more than
02:24:52 ◼ ► a dollar and less than two is just to eke out a little bit more from the monthly people which
02:24:56 ◼ ► maybe that's dumb anyway because i'd be strictly speaking i'm if they if they stay for a year which
02:25:01 ◼ ► is a big if then i'm making more with a dollar a month than i am eight dollars a year but i don't
02:25:05 ◼ ► know it it just it doesn't make sense to make it one one fifty or two dollars or something i mean
02:25:13 ◼ ► you could you could try look and this is the kind you can play with this over time you can actually
02:25:16 ◼ ► you can change prices all the time like people don't need to have a comprehensive history of
02:25:20 ◼ ► the pricing of your app in their head well i thought for subscriptions though got a little
02:25:27 ◼ ► better than me mark i don't know if you can change you can actually increase the the subscription of
02:25:32 ◼ ► existence but i'm just thinking of like for going forward for new customers for setting aside what
02:25:36 ◼ ► existing customers do you just like retire one and start another subscription and like and just keep
02:25:41 ◼ ► it going but not have it be purchasable in the app so like like there's there's ways to do it like
02:25:44 ◼ ► yeah you just have multiple subscriptions at different price points like you can change like
02:25:48 ◼ ► recently you know the whole the disney plus mechanic they added you can increase the price
02:25:54 ◼ ► of an existing subscription and bring those users along but i believe they have to you have to give
02:25:59 ◼ ► them some amount of like the system gives them some kind of notice and i think they i don't think
02:26:04 ◼ ► they have to opt in but they have a chance to opt out so you know that's that kind of runs a risk of
02:26:08 ◼ ► loss there so you know ideally you don't need to change these prices but you can change these prices
02:26:14 ◼ ► yeah so but yeah i mean look i mean a dollar fifty a month is not bad i just think a dollar a month is
02:26:19 ◼ ► an easier it's a it's a more obvious sell it lets the screen look nicer like you you have more design
02:26:24 ◼ ► options in terms of your biggest markets like the us where it's going to be a nice even number you
02:26:28 ◼ ► can you cannot even show the decimal points like you know like so you have options there actually
02:26:34 ◼ ► no you can't because it's gonna it's gonna say do the new tiers have even like one dollar exactly or
02:26:40 ◼ ► is it still in 99 cents i thought so i thought they do i that's why i have it i got a double
02:26:45 ◼ ► check i think you're right yeah yeah because i that's why i have it currently is literally eight
02:26:50 ◼ ► dot zero zero and either one dot five oh or one dot oh oh you know um it's because i i was thinking
02:26:56 ◼ ► about it and and i was listening to um uh shoot uh thoroughly considered earlier today and they
02:27:02 ◼ ► were talking a lot about you know the 99 cent thing and i feel like you know having the round
02:27:08 ◼ ► number i feel like that just feels nicer yeah and and that's that's partly why i don't want to go
02:27:13 ◼ ► all the way to 10. i could be convinced to go nine but i don't think i want to go all the way to 10
02:27:17 ◼ ► because that just even 999 i mean that's effectively the same damn thing nine nine feels like 10 like i
02:27:23 ◼ ► think that's why i keep going back to eight as instead of like if you're going to be below 10
02:27:28 ◼ ► eight's a really good number yeah and that's kind of where i that well that that's kind of where i
02:27:33 ◼ ► am too so all right so i think we all then i'm asking not telling we all agree that about eight
02:27:37 ◼ ► dollars a year sounds about right and you marco you were pretty perturbed about the monthly idea
02:27:43 ◼ ► but have you come around on that or we still not loving it i think i i mean look i obviously i i
02:27:48 ◼ ► don't have a lot of data here i have my app that is yearly only but that's a little bit different
02:27:54 ◼ ► in the sense that my subscription is not gating access to core features of the app so it's a very
02:27:59 ◼ ► different mechanic um you know in your case this like you need to convert as many people as
02:28:05 ◼ ► possible because anybody you don't convert with this paywall as john said is likely to abandon
02:28:09 ◼ ► usage of the app completely you and then you make nothing from them you know in my in my case if
02:28:14 ◼ ► they don't like my my you know premium subscription they can just keep using the app for free and yeah
02:28:18 ◼ ► i make money from the ads from them so you know it's a very very different scenario in your
02:28:23 ◼ ► scenario i think it does probably make sense to to have monthly and yearly especially because the
02:28:28 ◼ ► monthly is a cheaper way in the door i don't think you need free trials uh but i could be wrong i
02:28:33 ◼ ► haven't i haven't used them in the app store so like as a as a developer so i'm not sure you know
02:28:38 ◼ ► how the conversion rate would be different it does introduce a level of conceptual complexity for the
02:28:43 ◼ ► customer uh it introduces complexity to the screen that being said i don't think it introduces
02:28:50 ◼ ► meaningful complexity to your implementation you know that's a flag you set on the in-app purchase
02:28:55 ◼ ► and then and you know you whatever validation you're doing server side or whatever like it
02:28:59 ◼ ► makes that a little more complicated to account for but for your purposes it almost doesn't matter if
02:29:03 ◼ ► somebody's in a trial or not like you're just trying to make money from them long term you
02:29:06 ◼ ► don't really care if you know this search came from a trial user versus this one came from a
02:29:11 ◼ ► paying user yeah it's not i i already have support for it in my kind of facade in front of storekit
02:29:17 ◼ ► too it's it's generally fairly straightforward unless you're trying to figure out how much time
02:29:21 ◼ ► is left in the trial and or how you know when the trial expired then it becomes a little bit
02:29:26 ◼ ► interesting but i think i could support the trial if i wanted to i just don't think i want to
02:29:31 ◼ ► um and because again i just feel like it's more complicated but yeah it is um but john where do
02:29:36 ◼ ► you come down on both monthly and yearly i think you should definitely have both the other thing
02:29:41 ◼ ► that's interesting about monthly which i thought i've i've been thinking about if i should message
02:29:49 ◼ ► this in app at all but certainly i'll talk about it on the show is that if you're a kc list
02:29:54 ◼ ► superfan you could do monthly and if you stick with it then you're giving me an extra you know
02:30:00 ◼ ► what three four dollars a year and now i don't think that that's necessarily going to be what
02:30:04 ◼ ► anyone would choose to do except like five of you who i whom i love dearly but um but it is it is
02:30:10 ◼ ► another way to kind of have an implicit tip jar without actually putting in a tip jar which i kind
02:30:16 ◼ ► of like yeah i mean there will be some amount of that for sure i don't know if it'll if it'll be
02:30:22 ◼ ► enough to make that have to dictate any choices you make about the pricing of the monthly um
02:30:26 ◼ ► it's that's probably not a massive factor in determining the price yep all right so it sounds
02:30:34 ◼ ► like the brain trust has concluded a batch of of non-renewable tokens up front or i shouldn't say
02:30:41 ◼ ► tokens of searches up front somewhere in the order of 20 ish i think i'd still go 10 frankly but go
02:30:48 ◼ ► ahead i don't i'd still go with free trial i mean there's no consensus here this is not decision
02:30:53 ◼ ► making by committee i have opinions marco has opinions but casey you get to decide you can do
02:30:58 ◼ ► whatever you want yeah yeah no i hear you if you're trying to get me and marco to come to
02:31:02 ◼ ► the consensus is not going to happen no no no not necessarily i i'm just trying to to for as much my
02:31:07 ◼ ► own benefit as the listeners i'm trying to get kind of the brass tacks where where did we all
02:31:12 ◼ ► where did we all individually land and and if there is something that vaguely smells like a
02:31:16 ◼ ► consensus what does that look like and it sounds to me like you know again something to the order
02:31:22 ◼ ► of 10 to 20 free searches and then one a day after that i i think it sounds like we all agree that
02:31:29 ◼ ► monthly and yearly is not such a terrible idea a little bit of disagreement as to whether it should
02:31:34 ◼ ► be a dollar a dollar fifty or two dollars do you think i could go all the way to two on monthly
02:31:39 ◼ ► you could try it i mean i i'm not sure i mean having having something begin with a one like
02:31:44 ◼ ► one dollar a month sounds like nothing to a lot of people like that that that is a really good
02:31:49 ◼ ► sounding and looking thing a dollar fifty is a little more complicated as john said it makes
02:31:54 ◼ ► the math a little bit less likely to end up with the yearly purchase but ultimately that's that
02:32:01 ◼ ► still looks really cheap two dollars is really cheap but it doesn't look as cheap as a dollar
02:32:06 ◼ ► fifty so you know i i think there is a lot of benefit like psychologically visually in getting
02:32:13 ◼ ► that that one one point something a month that that is i think very attractive and then yearly
02:32:20 ◼ ► eight maybe nine dollars i don't know i feel like the the the delta between 12 monthly installments
02:32:28 ◼ ► and one eight dollar installment you know i feel like that that's quite a lot of savings for the
02:32:34 ◼ ► yearly subscription right that's what you want you want people to be going to the yearly yeah i know
02:32:40 ◼ ► but i feel like what i want to do is make it like nine dollars a year but i still think that i agree
02:32:45 ◼ ► with what you're saying earlier i feel like there's some weird divide between eight and nine
02:32:50 ◼ ► that you would expect to see between nine and ten but i feel like it feels cheap in a in a
02:32:56 ◼ ► happy way whereas nine does not feel cheap in a happy way it feels like it's getting it doesn't
02:33:00 ◼ ► feel cheap at all really it feels like it's getting expensive and the thing what you have
02:33:03 ◼ ► to consider here is you know it's it's easy to look at these numbers and be like well geez i'm
02:33:09 ◼ ► setting this up so early and if i make this nine instead of eight i'm going to make x percent more
02:33:13 ◼ ► money yeah but if the conversion rate is affected even a little bit by these pricing differences
02:33:20 ◼ ► you can quickly erase that margin so if you know if if you convert a decent number more people
02:33:27 ◼ ► at eight than you would at nine you will make more money total at eight yeah and and it's and it
02:33:33 ◼ ► doesn't take that many more people to make up that kind of difference and the same thing is true of
02:33:38 ◼ ► the monthly level you know whatever it is like if you're setting it at you know a dollar fifty a
02:33:43 ◼ ► month versus two dollars a month i think you'll get way more people in at a dollar fifty than you
02:33:48 ◼ ► would at two and therefore i think i think you'd make up that difference in volume but you know
02:33:54 ◼ ► this is the kind of stuff that it's it's one thing to to have these kind of gut feelings this is how
02:33:58 ◼ ► we think it is it's really hard to know in advance and it's even harder to be able to make this kind
02:34:04 ◼ ► of decision without just testing it and then being willing to like you know change the pricing in the
02:34:11 ◼ ► cumbersome ways that we have to do that yeah one final thing we didn't talk about much but i'm
02:34:16 ◼ ► curious both of your opinions um maybe we'll start with john do i do some sort of one-time only you
02:34:22 ◼ ► know like standard style in-app purchase i'm going to call it a lifetime unlock during this
02:34:27 ◼ ► conversation but i would not refer to it that way like a i would refer to it as like a one-time
02:34:30 ◼ ► purchase or something do i do a lifetime unlock no no hey i agree that's where i've landed too
02:34:37 ◼ ► but tell me why i mean because that you can always roll it out later and you can roll it out to
02:34:42 ◼ ► people who have already paid you a bunch of money but just don't want to deal with it anymore but
02:34:46 ◼ ► really love the app and are willing to pay a lot and have had time to fall in love with it but
02:34:49 ◼ ► i don't see how anyone is going to see this app use it enough without doing one of the subscriptions
02:34:57 ◼ ► to decide they want to pay a price that's going to be worth your while for our one-time unlock
02:35:01 ◼ ► to keep it in your back pocket save it for three years from now from this app when this app is
02:35:05 ◼ ► wildly successful but all the power users are so pissed about paying subscriptions that you can
02:35:09 ◼ ► 100 then we can talk about it again but now absolutely not so for many reasons the you know
02:35:16 ◼ ► whatever even if you didn't call it lifetime unlock that's how people will perceive it they
02:35:21 ◼ ► will perceive this as i buy this and now i quote own it and they're going to a expect that it will
02:35:29 ◼ ► work forever which b involves you updating it over time because when we build modern software
02:35:36 ◼ ► we're building it on quicksand it there is no such thing as software that stays working forever
02:35:40 ◼ ► without updates anymore especially ios software accessing a web service like this there's so many
02:35:46 ◼ ► moving factors here like that's so you know you're building on quicksand this is going to require
02:35:49 ◼ ► constant updates you know not like every day but you know at least every couple of years like
02:35:54 ◼ ► suppose you suppose you worked on this decided you know this app's kind of done and abandoned it
02:35:59 ◼ ► and people were and you wanted people to still be able to use it you would have to put it in
02:36:04 ◼ ► a certain amount of time every couple of years just to keep it working on the latest versions
02:36:08 ◼ ► of of ios and the latest devices so you know there there's going to be some degree of maintenance
02:36:13 ◼ ► over time so you need ongoing revenue from people it's simple as that you need some way to make
02:36:21 ◼ ► money from ongoing use of your app to fund ongoing updates of your app which is what everybody
02:36:26 ◼ ► expects you to have so you're not going revenue simple as that if you don't if you don't have ads
02:36:31 ◼ ► then it's that's it like that's those are two options that we know about or you know creepy
02:36:37 ◼ ► user data which you don't want to do and i don't blame you so so like that's it like you have to
02:36:41 ◼ ► make ongoing revenue from your app somehow to justify continuing to update it so the and and
02:36:47 ◼ ► lifetime any kind of lifetime or flat rate or however you would brand it it it gives users the
02:36:53 ◼ ► impression and the expectation that and the entitlement that they will feel that they deserve
02:37:00 ◼ ► access to this app for an indefinite period of the future because they paid to unlock it they paid to
02:37:04 ◼ ► own it but that's not the reality of the modern software environment they can't own it they can't
02:37:09 ◼ ► like have it forever without ongoing work from you so it's better to not even try to sell that