132: ‘Peace, Porn, and Privacy’ With Guest Marco Arment

0:00:00I'm worried because I feel like whenever you're on the show we always go and

0:00:03you're the by far the longest guests like I feel like we could go like if we

0:00:07ever needed to do like a charity talk-a-thon me and you would be the two

0:00:11we can go for 12 hours and then this time we actually have a lot to talk

0:00:16about so I'm a little concerned but well maybe not start moving did you hear we

0:00:21don't talk anymore that that you got to me and that that somehow it with the

0:00:27Specifics are kind of vague as to how how you got to me and what that means

0:00:31But somehow you got to me and we don't talk anymore

0:00:34Has five people said that if there's been further speculation that we're on the out. Oh my god, I mean

0:00:42Fortunately, it's it's died down in the last few days. I think people have finally moved on

0:00:46From the peace saga, which is good

0:00:49The internet has a very short attention span and that that is both a blessing and a curse

0:00:54It is it is definitely a blessing when you are on the receiving end of it

0:00:57so that is nice, but

0:00:59Yeah, I heard I read and got emailed and heard lots of interesting theories about the conspiracy between you and I

0:01:07Or that that you?

0:01:09Got to me or paid me off

0:01:12Because people couldn't possibly believe

0:01:14That the story was what I said it was which is that I didn't want to be in this business after all so I exited it

0:01:22Right. You told this story on on your podcast the ATP

0:01:27probably not what is now the last episode.

0:01:29I'm guessing you have an episode coming out tomorrow,

0:01:32but the one from last week. - Today, it's already out.

0:01:35- Well, I have not listened, so you can stop me

0:01:38if we start covering this time and stuff.

0:01:39But last week's episode where you covered the peace thing,

0:01:41your more or less long, very long story, very short,

0:01:44is that what you wrote, as always, is exactly the truth.

0:01:49You are one of the most, almost painfully honest people

0:01:53I have ever met.

0:01:54Like, you almost can't even bring yourself

0:01:57to tell white lies, you know what I mean?

0:02:01If you go through something like this

0:02:03and then you explain yourself in public,

0:02:05what you say is the honest to God truth.

0:02:07So it's very funny that everybody would just assume

0:02:11that it could be, it was something else.

0:02:13And I think the part of the story that is the best

0:02:15was that, and again, people who listened to ATP last week

0:02:19know this, that you, I guess it was what, last Thursday?

0:02:23Or was it Friday?

0:02:24I don't know what day of the week it was,

0:02:26But I was at the dentist and I was waiting to go

0:02:30and you texted me and you were like,

0:02:31I think I'm gonna pull Peace from the app store.

0:02:34And I texted you, don't do it, don't be rash, wait.

0:02:38Wait 'til I'm out of the dentist.

0:02:39And I got home and it was already pulled

0:02:41from the app store and the thing was there.

0:02:44So I literally, you did not pull a lot of people.

0:02:47You had kind of made up,

0:02:48obviously you'd made up your mind

0:02:49because I told you not to do it, which we will get to.

0:02:53I will explain why I thought you should not do it.

0:02:55But it did amuse me greatly though then afterwards

0:03:00when I did notice immediately afterwards

0:03:02that there were an awful lot of people

0:03:03who assumed that it was pressure from me.

0:03:05Somebody more or less said that it was like

0:03:07that me and Kudol showed up with baseball bats.

0:03:11- I would have loved to see that.

0:03:12(both laughing)

0:03:14It was especially funny because I was literally

0:03:17just hanging out with you and Kudol like four days earlier.

0:03:20(both laughing)

0:03:23Yeah, it was interesting.

0:03:24I also heard, when I was briefly on ATP,

0:03:27like I heard people thought that Apple paid me off,

0:03:30which is the funniest, I think.

0:03:32'Cause like, I was making them a ton of money,

0:03:35you know, promoting their platform,

0:03:38doing everything they wanted me to do.

0:03:40- And it wasn't also, it also wasn't one of those things

0:03:44like today view widgets, right,

0:03:49where they say, okay, now over here on this today screen

0:03:54on iOS, what's that called?

0:03:56- It doesn't even matter.

0:03:57- Well, whatever, you know what I mean,

0:03:58but you can put a-- - I think it's called

0:03:59Stadu actually.

0:04:00- You can put a widget in there.

0:04:02And when they first opened this up,

0:04:05there were people who made things that did things

0:04:07that were creatively outside the purview

0:04:12of what they expected people to make.

0:04:15And then, you know, so like, I think one of the ones

0:04:18that was an early victim of this was, I think,

0:04:21PCALC, the calculator, made it so you can actually do your computation over there.

0:04:25Well, that was more than, they kind of, I think they envisioned it as more just like

0:04:28a status view, like it would show you the weather or whatever.

0:04:33And when people were actually doing real things over there, Apple, you know, reacted.

0:04:39This isn't that sort of, and it wasn't like they were breaking, you know, it wasn't like

0:04:43they were using private APIs.

0:04:44They were using the public APIs in ways that Apple didn't envision.

0:04:47Well, peace was not like you use the content blocking

0:04:51APIs in a way that they didn't envision.

0:04:53It was almost like right down the middle, the canonical,

0:04:57this is exactly the sort of thing that they envisioned

0:05:00would be made.

0:05:01Yeah, I mean, I got a couple of responses here and there

0:05:04from inside of Apple, and they were all extremely positive.

0:05:08Like, they definitely did not want

0:05:11me to pull it from the App Store as far-- based

0:05:13on the implication that they would have hated it

0:05:16for some reason. Like, I mean, you know, they're not very generous with their communication,

0:05:21but it sure seemed like people in Apple were big fans of it. And when I pulled it and placed

0:05:28the burden on them to try to issue all these refunds first manually and then eventually

0:05:32they did that batch thing, that couldn't have been pleasant for them either and certainly

0:05:37couldn't have been cheap to have to process all those refunds. And, you know, just the

0:05:41manpower alone of processing all those refunds was getting to be probably significant. So,

0:05:46yeah, the idea that Apple paid me off to do all this was pretty entertaining. I also heard that

0:05:53advertisers somehow paid me off. Man, an app that sits at the top of the App Store paid app chart,

0:06:01if that could have sat there for like a month, I don't know if anyone else would have been able

0:06:05able to afford to pay it off.

0:06:07I mean, it would have made a ton of money.

0:06:10And that's assuming a lot, of course,

0:06:12but if you could have sat there for a while,

0:06:15that would have been a good amount of money.

0:06:18But the whole reason I canceled it was that it would have

0:06:22felt like making a ton of money off of drug dealing

0:06:25or something, it didn't feel right.

0:06:27That was the whole point.

0:06:29- I am looking right now, I actually have not been

0:06:32paying attention to see what is atop the top charts.

0:06:36So the top paid is, hooray, Tweetbot 4.

0:06:40- Well, I think today's probably Tweetbot.

0:06:42- Yeah, but number two is Purify.

0:06:46- Yeah, but I think Crystal was up there for a while,

0:06:48or Purify, I forget.

0:06:50- I think you gotta look at Grossing, though,

0:06:52but Grossing, they don't even register, it's all Candy Crush.

0:06:56- Yeah, that's been up there for a while.

0:06:59Well, I was on piece's top day, the one full day

0:07:03on the chart, it was grossing at, I think,

0:07:04like number 17 or 18 for a little while.

0:07:07Not for the whole day, but that was the peak.

0:07:09And then it was able to fall down the grossing ranks

0:07:12pretty far while still being number one in the paid chart.

0:07:15To give you, you know, like the volumes

0:07:17are much lower, obviously, in paid.

0:07:19But yeah, I mean, any app that's gonna sit there anywhere

0:07:23like in the top 20 paid is gonna be making

0:07:25really good money for a while.

0:07:27So and I don't you know, if other people want to go in there and make a ton of money making ad blockers

0:07:32That's fine. Like I'm willing and happy to yield that ground to other people. That's why I did it

0:07:37You know, it's I got there realized I really didn't like being there and left

0:07:43Yeah, I actually haven't looked in a while. It seems weird to me though

0:07:47I thought that there would be a couple up there, but it looks like it's all down to

0:07:49purify now

0:07:52It doesn't I don't see any of the others although maybe maybe they're on the free list in there

0:07:56I don't know which one's popular

0:07:58I thought there were a couple that would be popular though for a while crystal and purify were neck-and-neck and then I think maybe

0:08:04pure foot maybe crystals

0:08:06Thing with the acceptable ads that's I mean that's a whole other

0:08:09Drama that I don't really want to get into because I'm not involved happily anymore

0:08:13But it that's the kind of thing

0:08:16where it just shows how incredibly messy and difficult this business is and

0:08:21That's a perfect example of why I don't want to be in it after all because it is just very messy and very difficult

0:08:27as we record on on Thursday October 1st crystal is all the way down at 32 on the top paid and

0:08:34Like I said purifies number two

0:08:37So obviously there's been some divergence there, but you you you know, and and there is this weird

0:08:43perpetuating, it's this, you know, we've talked about this

0:08:46in so many different contexts ever since the App Store opened

0:08:48but once something is atop these charts,

0:08:51it tends to stay there because one of the ways that people,

0:08:54people hear, hey, I hear there's odd ad blockers for iOS.

0:08:57They go to the App Store, what do they do?

0:08:58They go to the top chart, they see one that looks reasonable

0:09:01at the top of the chart and they get it.

0:09:02And by that time, then they get it.

0:09:05Purify works, it, you know, it definitely does

0:09:07what it says on the tin, so then they're done.

0:09:09You know, they've just spent two or three bucks

0:09:11or whatever it costs on their thing and they're done

0:09:13and then none of the other, you know,

0:09:14so being at top is a huge advantage.

0:09:16So you, you know, peace having started at the top,

0:09:19I think there's a very good chance

0:09:20that it would still be there today if you hadn't yanked it.

0:09:24- Maybe, but at the same time, like, you know,

0:09:26right now you could see like Purify

0:09:27has already fallen to number two.

0:09:29You know, we'll see, you know,

0:09:31how much it stays at the top

0:09:32or how much it falls over time.

0:09:34I mean, it's only been a couple of weeks.

0:09:35It's been a pretty short time.

0:09:37So I don't even know if I would have been able

0:09:38to be there for a month.

0:09:39I don't even know if that would have happened.

0:09:40You know, there's no way to know.

0:09:42- Yeah, and I also-- - It doesn't matter.

0:09:44- I also wonder how much this is gonna be

0:09:46one of those things where it's not like sustain,

0:09:49not that it's not a sustainable business,

0:09:51'cause I don't think it's that much

0:09:52development work to keep it going.

0:09:54But that, let's say 15 to 20% of iOS users

0:10:00might be interested in a content blocker.

0:10:03Well, how soon until all of them already have one?

0:10:05And then what?

0:10:07I'm not quite sure if it's gonna be

0:10:09a chart topper in perpetuity.

0:10:12- Yeah, and we tried speculating on that on ATP,

0:10:15like what percentage of iOS people are likely

0:10:17to actually install and critically enable an ad blocker?

0:10:22And we came to about 10% being our estimate

0:10:25of people who would actually enable it also,

0:10:27'cause you have to like go through the settings menu

0:10:29and dive down to the Safari settings

0:10:31and actually turn it on in that convoluted settings thing.

0:10:34So then like the idea that ad blockers are going to,

0:10:38all of a sudden ruin everyone's lives,

0:10:41I think is unlikely and probably exaggerated.

0:10:45- Yeah, I think it's likely,

0:10:47I don't think it's likely that it would be

0:10:50that much different than on the desktop.

0:10:52And on the desktop, I pulled the 15% from

0:10:56what I think is what people estimate as the desktop number.

0:11:00And obviously that changes a lot.

0:11:01- Yeah, that seems reasonable.

0:11:02- Changes a lot based on the audience.

0:11:04I know Ars Technica, for example,

0:11:07is really, really hit hard by that

0:11:09because their audience is technically adept.

0:11:11My site probably is, to some extent,

0:11:14just because at least there's a high percentage

0:11:16of people who read my site who know what an ad blocker is

0:11:20and feel very, very confident installing an extension.

0:11:24- It's also worth pointing out,

0:11:26there's a lot of people, sorry,

0:11:30it's also worth pointing out that there's a lot of,

0:11:33like all those people who installed the ad blockers

0:11:36who are more likely to install ad blockers like Nerds and your site, how likely were

0:11:42they to click on the display ads to begin with? I bet the -- I mean, I've always kind

0:11:47of suspected that display ads on the Internet are mostly supported by inadvertent accidental

0:11:55clicks or people who don't realize they're clicking on an ad, who are misled into clicking

0:12:01on it by it looking like content or by one of those like stupid story ads like, you know,

0:12:06top 10 ways to lift your face up like all those crazy things like I've always kind of

0:12:10suspected that the bulk of display advertising online was being clicked through and funded

0:12:16by really accident or novices, you know, fueled by ignorance and confusion. Yeah, it's really

0:12:24and you know, I'm sure that's I'm sure that's not all of it. But I bet it's a lot more than

0:12:30both the advertisers and the publishers

0:12:32would like to believe?

0:12:34- Yeah, well, it is truly a,

0:12:37they truly opened a Pandora's box way back in the '90s

0:12:42when they first started measuring clicks in the first place.

0:12:46And I've linked to this over the years

0:12:48in numerous contexts talking about ads,

0:12:49but it's come back up again.

0:12:51It is absolutely a case of be careful what you measure

0:12:56coming to bite them.

0:12:59because at first, when nobody was trying

0:13:01to game the system at all,

0:13:03the idea of counting the actual clicks on the ads

0:13:06was amazing because nobody ever knew

0:13:09when you put an ad in a magazine,

0:13:11you have a good guess that the circulation numbers

0:13:16are probably pretty accurate

0:13:17because they were industry standards,

0:13:19and maybe they tried to fudge them a little bit.

0:13:21For the most part, it was so expensive to print magazines,

0:13:24they couldn't be that far off.

0:13:25But how many people actually read your ad

0:13:28if it's on page 13, or how many people skip right past it,

0:13:32what was the register?

0:13:34To actually be able to measure it in a meaningful way,

0:13:36TV commercials could never really be measured.

0:13:39If there was no gaming, if everybody was honest in the world

0:13:44which is probably the biggest, stupidest,

0:13:46if I've ever put forward,

0:13:48counting the clicks on ads would be great.

0:13:51And it did at first, web advertising was super,

0:13:56super expensive, like in a per customer,

0:14:00you know, however you wanna measure that,

0:14:01because it could be measured.

0:14:03But then as soon as people could, you know,

0:14:06as soon as that started working,

0:14:08people immediately started gaming it in various ways.

0:14:11So it's, you know, once they started going down that path,

0:14:14it was doomed, and still is to this day,

0:14:17the fact that they try to measure it.

0:14:19- Right, 'cause then you have all these problems

0:14:21with click fraud and botnets doing click fraud

0:14:23and all this stuff.

0:14:25It's this whole world of people trying to rip each other off.

0:14:30It's just disgusting to me.

0:14:32Again, it's one of the reasons why I didn't want to be in the business after all.

0:14:35It's just a dirty, messy world.

0:14:37At a fundamental level, the way I view advertising, even online, is that it's fundamentally no

0:14:43different than advertising in print or on TV, which is to say that it is primarily about

0:14:49awareness, making people aware.

0:14:52be people who've never heard of your product,

0:14:53making them aware of it for the first time,

0:14:55or if they have heard of it, reinforcing it with your brand,

0:15:00if it's some kind of visual ad,

0:15:03or with some kind of message about it.

0:15:05Like for example, like the ads I'll be reading

0:15:07during this podcast, where you're not seeing anything,

0:15:10but you can hear these talking points,

0:15:12here's what they want you to know about it,

0:15:15so that you have it in your head,

0:15:17so that if you need a new mattress, you can think,

0:15:19well, what about that one that all these podcasts

0:15:21you're talking about or something like that.

0:15:23Just so it's in your head, awareness.

0:15:25The fact that online ads can actually lead

0:15:28to engagement quicker, meaning you can just click on an ad

0:15:33and go and you're already at the Field Notes website

0:15:37and you can buy the notebooks right there.

0:15:39That's great, but that should just be,

0:15:42anybody who's deciding how much to spend online

0:15:44versus print or on TV, that should just be icing

0:15:47on the cake.

0:15:48It still should primarily be, look,

0:15:50If we put an ad on this website, we can expect 100,000 people will see it, and we roughly

0:15:57know that their demographics are like this.

0:16:01That's really all they should be looking at.

0:16:03But the fact that they think that they can identify people, "We'll spend this money,

0:16:07and it'll only go to people who've searched in Google Maps for an oil change in the last

0:16:1325 days," it's just crazy.

0:16:16And it leads to all sorts of sickness.

0:16:18yeah and all sorts of really creepy and perverse incentives and behavior like

0:16:24it's it's one of those worlds where anybody who who is kind of privacy and

0:16:31sensibly minded or anybody who has really strong ethics I think is often

0:16:37driven out of that business like because if they won't do it someone else will

0:16:43you guys on ATP you guys compared it to the pornography industry and then I

0:16:49think you guys kind of backed away from it because it's almost like wow that's

0:16:52a really strong comparison but I actually think it's actually really I

0:16:55think that's not a bad comparison at all in terms of that you're it it's not you

0:17:02know remove any judgment of whether the existence of pornography in and of itself

0:17:06has any sort of moral you know any kind of moral quandary that you should be

0:17:14pondering it's just that you end up in programming and doing things that are

0:17:20you know whoever is implementing it is unhealthy right that if you know if it's

0:17:28some kind of paper thing for porno you you're you know that they're they're set

0:17:33up in a way. Somebody had to program the system that enables somebody who's got like an addiction

0:17:38to the stuff to just keep spending as much money as they can. That is absolutely immoral.

0:17:45I mean, either somebody feels really guilty about that or somebody who wrote that code

0:17:50just doesn't have a moral compass that points that way. A lot of the stuff, the programmatic

0:17:55stuff in advertising is down that path. It's maybe not quite as far, but it's pretty bad.

0:18:03You know that you're doing things that you know that the user isn't happy about that isn't good for them

0:18:08And that they wouldn't want to know exactly what's going on

0:18:12Right and and one of the problems that that you know

0:18:16So that's the side of the advertiser the side of the ad blocker of like the person or company

0:18:21Making and running the ad blocker itself

0:18:24That faces an interesting dilemma

0:18:27where and I think you see this playing out with this acceptable ads thing with adblock plus and crystal and the

0:18:33the controversy that has stirred up,

0:18:35and some things you've said about the deck and everything

0:18:37and how the deck had their privacy policy and everything

0:18:39and whether, you know, the question of whether the deck

0:18:41should be, should count as an advertiser

0:18:43that should be blocked.

0:18:44One of the problems here,

0:18:46I faced this with Instapaper back forever ago.

0:18:49I faced the problem that what people actually wanted

0:18:55was to get the articles without ever viewing the ads,

0:18:58even once.

0:18:59They wanted me to go out and scrape new articles for them

0:19:02they had never seen before and show them immediately

0:19:05in the ad-stripped text view.

0:19:08Like, that's what people actually want.

0:19:10And what's actually healthy for publishers and for the world

0:19:12and for me legally was not to do things like that.

0:19:15It was to say, you know, okay, well,

0:19:17I'm gonna save things you have viewed in your web browser.

0:19:20You know, like, that's different.

0:19:22And it was always a really tricky balance

0:19:24because the user base, you know, the customer, the market,

0:19:28was pushing me to go over that line.

0:19:31and I would always try to hold back a little bit.

0:19:33But not all my competitors did, and that hurt me.

0:19:35And I think in the ad blocker industry,

0:19:37I think you see the same thing, which is,

0:19:40you know, we can talk all we want about how,

0:19:43like, you know, well, like I also on ATP,

0:19:45I compared it kind of to piracy, and it's not,

0:19:48these aren't great comparisons, so please don't email us,

0:19:50but you know, it has some overlap,

0:19:53is what I will say about that.

0:19:55And in the sense that, like, you know,

0:19:56making an ad blocker is kind of like

0:19:58making money from piracy, it's like, well,

0:20:00People are going to pay me to hide everyone else's ads.

0:20:04And I can say, well, I can justify it with reasons X, Y,

0:20:07and Z, many of which are perfectly valid,

0:20:09things like security, tracking, creepiness, et cetera.

0:20:12Those are all very valid reasons.

0:20:14But if I made an ad blocker that only blocked tracking

0:20:19and still showed ads, nobody would want it,

0:20:23because what people actually want is to block all the ads.

0:20:27And all the tracking and the security and the creepiness,

0:20:30those are all convenient justifications for them.

0:20:32Just like when people pirate stuff, they say,

0:20:34well, it wasn't available in my country yet,

0:20:36or it wasn't available without DRM in the format I wanted,

0:20:39on the box I wanted to play it on, whatever.

0:20:41People can rationalize all sorts of reasons for piracy,

0:20:44while also knowing, yeah, it's also kinda not right.

0:20:47And so that's how I was feeling about ad blocking

0:20:49when I quit, was like, I could rationalize

0:20:53a whole bunch of reasons why this needs to exist,

0:20:55and why I might even wanna still run one,

0:20:57which I do right now.

0:20:58I still run Ghostery on my computer,

0:21:00and I still run, I'm switching between various blockers

0:21:04on my phone trying to find a good one.

0:21:05I'm currently using one blocker.

0:21:07You know, people will rationalize these reasons,

0:21:10but to be the person making it and enabling this

0:21:13and making money from it even,

0:21:15it puts it on a different level.

0:21:17And there's always gonna be this tension between,

0:21:20you know, trying to make it seem morally acceptable,

0:21:24but also the reality of what the market really wants

0:21:28To get everything for free and to not see any ads ever and no matter what they say if they if they say it's all

0:21:33About something else. It's all about tracking whatever

0:21:35Some people are honest about that most aren't most people just want to block all the ads. I disagree. I really do disagree

0:21:42I think there's definitely some subset of people who really do want to block the ads really do

0:21:47you know sort of the

0:21:49What's that? There's even a magazine was that called?

0:21:52Sort of like an anti-advertising magazine

0:21:57We need the consumer reports. No, no, no used to sell it at Whole Foods, but they don't need more but it's

0:22:02It'll come to me we need a goddamn forum like you guys have

0:22:08It's the people who are opposed to advertising in general not just online advertising

0:22:14But who actually are crusaders about the you know that that advertising is a perverse force on on

0:22:20on our society

0:22:23You know and obviously you don't have to go far to find cases

0:22:25There are some cases where it is, you know, the cigarette companies and the way that legislation

0:22:36has been passed that they really can't advertise anymore.

0:22:39And that when they used to be able to, they really did.

0:22:41You could prove it that they targeted their ads to children.

0:22:47you know, famously the Joe Camel cartoon mascot for Camel cigarettes was, if there

0:22:57were polls where they would go and, you know, talk to kindergartners and

0:23:00they're amazing, amazing brand awareness in kindergarten age kids of the mascot

0:23:06for a cigarette company. That's really sick and it wasn't an accident. It was

0:23:10actually planned. So yeah, that's it, you know, there's an example. There are people

0:23:13who kind of feel that way about all ads and maybe it's not even the

0:23:18messaging, but there's others who are clearly online who really care about

0:23:22every single byte of data. Every byte. Somebody pointed out to me, for example,

0:23:28and with Daring Fireball and the deck, the deck ads are so small compared to

0:23:33online ads, you know, in general. But because Daring Fireball has almost no

0:23:39images, oftentimes has no images other than like the logo on the whole home

0:23:45page, the deck actually comprises a significant portion of the average page

0:23:51view, especially if you don't even look at the whole home page where there is a

0:23:54whole big wall of text, but if you just go to like an individual short entry a

0:24:00significant portion, maybe even a majority portion of the bytes that get

0:24:04downloaded on the page view go to the ad. I think looking at that as a percentage

0:24:08which is kind of unfair just because of the design of Daring Fireball.

0:24:11But if you really want to look at it that way, okay, fine.

0:24:14I say go ahead and block the ads.

0:24:16But I don't think a lot of people feel that way.

0:24:18I think people, the thing that's opening people's eyes with this, with the content blocking,

0:24:25are the performance numbers that people are seeing.

0:24:28I think when I see people whose eyes have been opened by some of the stuff that Ben

0:24:32Brooks has been publishing when he's doing the yeoman's work of testing all these things,

0:24:38and the New York Times published a thing today

0:24:40where they tested a bunch of sites with ad blockers.

0:24:43And when you see that you can save 30 seconds

0:24:46on a mobile page view when you go to Boston.com

0:24:49by having an ad blocker,

0:24:50I don't think it's about blocking ads.

0:24:52I want that speed increase.

0:24:54- Yeah, and that's certainly a major part of it.

0:24:59That is a major justification and a major motivator,

0:25:02especially on mobile.

0:25:03On desktop, it was easier to get wasteful

0:25:05and kind of ignore it, but on mobile it matters more.

0:25:08On mobile also, screen space matters more.

0:25:10You know, like the ads that would come in

0:25:11and take over a massive chunk of the screen

0:25:13or do these stupid overlays or break when you zoomed in.

0:25:17So many bad ad things out there,

0:25:19but it's a major motivator,

0:25:21but I think it comes down to like,

0:25:24if you ask people, would you rather see this thing

0:25:28with ads or with no ads,

0:25:30they would choose no ads every time.

0:25:32You know, obviously there's some exceptions,

0:25:34like, you know, like certain magazines where like the ads are kind of the point, but for

0:25:38the most part, most content, I think if people were given the option to take it with no ads,

0:25:42they would take that option, you know, assuming the cost was equal and probably both free.

0:25:47And so what you have in the ad business is this kind of tension, this kind of balanced

0:25:51tension, well, usually it's balanced, where the people really want the stuff for free

0:25:58and they don't want to pay, they don't want to pay for it and they also don't want to

0:26:01see ads. And the publishers, you know, they obviously can't operate for free. So like,

0:26:06they say, "All right, well, we'll kind of reach this equilibrium like, okay, well, we're

0:26:10going to show ads and most of you are going to tolerate them. And you're going to tolerate

0:26:15it because you don't want to pay us. And it's kind of okay." And for the most part, both

0:26:19sides of that, usually it's this relationship of tolerating you, not actually wanting the

0:26:28the ads or enjoying the ads. You know, most people, if given the choice, again, they would

0:26:33say, "Well, I don't have to see the ads, then don't show them to me or don't waste my time

0:26:37with them." So it's always this kind of tension. And in the grand scheme of things, I think

0:26:42people do like free content better than they like paywalled stuff. So ultimately, I think

0:26:48this is a necessary evil. Like it's, and obviously this is always evil, you know, but it's a

0:26:54It's a necessary compromise of how content is viewed and paid for and everything.

0:27:00And I run the deck ads on my site, I run ads on my podcast, just like you do on here, and

0:27:06those are both choices where it's like I also, I would love to do an ad-free podcast

0:27:13where people just paid us, but that would make a lot less money and reach a lot less

0:27:18people.

0:27:19And if you put a paywall up in front of a podcast, that is just death.

0:27:23nobody listens. So it's really, it's never a great relationship. It's never perfect.

0:27:32It's never really what all sides want, but it's this compromise that all sides have reached

0:27:37most of the time. And anything you do to throw that out of balance, like making the ads really

0:27:41obnoxious or really creepy or really overreaching or really slow or have other major problems,

0:27:48there's gonna be pushback from that.

0:27:49But the basic notion of I'm gonna show you ads

0:27:54and you're gonna tolerate them,

0:27:56it's a little bit uncomfortable even from the start.

0:27:59And I've always kind of felt mildly irritated

0:28:04by the fact that I make my living on ads

0:28:08because I don't like ads.

0:28:12But I think this is the best solution we have

0:28:14given all the variables.

0:28:15- I think that's where the comparison to piracy works,

0:28:17I've always seen piracy as a negotiation. It is, you know, somebody if they're pirating

0:28:27an app or a game, they're, you know, that whoever makes the game is saying here, it's

0:28:34here's a new game for your PC, it's $40. And the person who pirates it instead of paying

0:28:40for it is saying no, it's $0. And at some point, and I know that, you know, with piracy,

0:28:47are absolute diehards, you know, and there are people, you know, kids, I when I was,

0:28:51you know, in college, I pirated all sorts of stuff. And it wasn't wasn't like if Adobe

0:28:57had halved the price of Photoshop, I was going to pay for it instead of pirating it. I realized

0:29:04that but you know, for some things at some point, it's it and I think that that was the

0:29:09The key to the iTunes Music Store making online music a success is that they were saying,

0:29:17"Here's a better deal.

0:29:18We'll have all the music.

0:29:19You'll get your album art.

0:29:20It'll all have good metadata right there.

0:29:23You'll be sure of the quality, and it's a fair price, 99 cents."

0:29:28Did it stop music piracy?

0:29:29No, definitely not, but it definitely turned some people who might have otherwise or previously

0:29:35using Napster or whatever the stuff that came after Napster was, to instead just say, "You

0:29:40know what?

0:29:41I'll just buy it from iTunes."

0:29:42It's a negotiation.

0:29:44I think what you see, and it's the same thing with a lot of piracy, and you see it with

0:29:47the entertainment industry and the way they approach movies and stuff like that, and music

0:29:53and games and software.

0:29:56And I think it's very true with the advertising industry, is that the industry, the publishers

0:30:00and the advertisers or the entertainment companies.

0:30:03They don't see it as a negotiation.

0:30:05They see this as a problem that could be solved

0:30:07so that they can do whatever they want

0:30:09and them, the people, will just take it.

0:30:13We can show you whatever online ads we want

0:30:16and you'll just suck it up.

0:30:17And that there's some, you know,

0:30:21I'm sure that there's a whole bunch of people who are,

0:30:24if they're looking at, wow,

0:30:26our mobile numbers are down this month,

0:30:28you know, this iOS content blocking thing is totally real.

0:30:32You can see it here, you know, five, six, seven percent down,

0:30:35you know, over where we were before this came out.

0:30:39You know that there's people right now who are thinking

0:30:44or who are demanding of their engineering teams

0:30:46to find a way around this.

0:30:48So not like how do we, you know,

0:30:50how do we start selling ads that people don't wanna block?

0:30:53It's how do we defeat the content blockers?

0:30:57And I think that's the wrong attitude.

0:30:59That's not gonna win.

0:31:01- Exactly.

0:31:04Right, but on the other side,

0:31:10when they make new kinds of ads,

0:31:13then the ad blocker people are gonna say,

0:31:15well, now we need to block this new kind of ad.

0:31:18Neither side is willing to agree

0:31:20to the other side's terms here.

0:31:21Like the advertiser is not gonna say,

0:31:23well, I guess we better stop publishing ads

0:31:25'cause nobody likes ads.

0:31:27And the ad blockers aren't gonna say,

0:31:29"Well, you know what?

0:31:31"That ad is fine, we're gonna publish that one."

0:31:32Because if they do, the users revolt

0:31:35and they go to something else.

0:31:36- So I don't know what the ultimate solution is,

0:31:40but it's absolutely some form of having a basic respect

0:31:45for the user and for your product.

0:31:47And I've been saying the following for years as well,

0:31:51is to me, as somebody who's always been sort of obsessed

0:31:54publishing and advertising and graphic design and branding and things like this, whether

0:32:00it's print or TV or online, it has always been, right from the very get-go, it has always

0:32:07been very clear to me that the traditional companies, either from TV or from print, when

0:32:13they went online, by and large, they had very little to no respect for the web. They either

0:32:20treated it as like, at some point they had to stop treating it as maybe a fad. But clearly

0:32:26at the beginning a lot of them thought maybe this is a fad. And they never ever treated

0:32:31it with the respect that they treat their main products. They would never put a pop-up

0:32:38that actually covered the actors faces on a TV show. Whatever you want to say about,

0:32:45even when they put, they do some stuff that still annoys me on TV, where they'll put little

0:32:49things up at the bottom of the screen, but they don't do something that covers the

0:32:52actual whole content of the show while the show is playing. Magazines don't allow advertisers

0:33:00to make ads that like tape pages.

0:33:03Jared: Well, they're getting worse every year with that.

0:33:05Pete: Well, now that print is getting desperate, it might be out of desperation, but certainly

0:33:10while they were profitable, they wouldn't do it. They wouldn't make you like, let's

0:33:13say a popular page like the Op-Ed page in the New York Times. They weren't going to

0:33:17to seal that with some kind of tape

0:33:19so that you have to sit there and spend 30 seconds

0:33:22looking at whatever logo is on the tape

0:33:25while you carefully cut across it to do it.

0:33:27But they've treated online ads like that all along.

0:33:31- Give it time.

0:33:33- I really do, but here's the thing.

0:33:36I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna tell you,

0:33:38I feel like I have to explain why I thought

0:33:41you shouldn't have taken piece out of the store.

0:33:44And at the time I didn't realize that

0:33:46Having read your piece, your article explaining it,

0:33:50I would have said, okay, you're right.

0:33:51If that's the way you feel, then just get out.

0:33:53I didn't know when you called me,

0:33:54I didn't know what you were thinking the problem was.

0:33:57I think the idea of that once it was out

0:34:02and once you saw that this was,

0:34:04that there was controversy to be had

0:34:07and arguments to be made

0:34:08and that it was going to be a nonstop,

0:34:10never-ending slog of what deserves to be blocked

0:34:14and what doesn't,

0:34:15the realization that he didn't want to be in this business

0:34:18was, you know, I think it was the right call.

0:34:21I didn't know that that's what you were thinking.

0:34:23I also think that this is why you're still getting shit

0:34:26from people out on the internet,

0:34:28'cause I have seen this, where there are people who,

0:34:30you know, are like LOLing at

0:34:33how could you build a content blocker all summer long

0:34:36and not imagine what it was like to have a content blocker?

0:34:39I can imagine that very easily,

0:34:42that you didn't really think about it.

0:34:44I thought your explanation, here's a cool API,

0:34:47I'd like to build one myself.

0:34:48I like to build things, so I'll build a thing.

0:34:51And you don't think past that.

0:34:53- Exactly, that was really it.

0:34:55It's like, I explained all of it on ATP.

0:34:57It's like all summer long I was focused on

0:35:00how to make a really cool app using this stuff.

0:35:02And I was not focusing on what will it actually be like

0:35:06if I make this cool app succeed

0:35:09and become a major person influential in this business

0:35:12and having everyone look at me this way.

0:35:15And I didn't think about that.

0:35:16You know, I should have, but I was naive

0:35:20and I wanted to do the cool thing

0:35:23where I make the cool app and then, you know,

0:35:25I didn't, you know, it didn't really matter

0:35:27what the app did.

0:35:28I just, I had this cool app idea and I tried it

0:35:31and it worked really well.

0:35:33And so I was motivated to keep going with it

0:35:35and I just didn't think about, you know,

0:35:37what would happen.

0:35:38And, you know, I mean, a lot about this is,

0:35:41A lot of the frustration and anger that I've received over it from other people is really

0:35:46about like, you know, they just can't believe that I got to that position and that I then

0:35:54gave it up for very few.

0:35:56That's one of the reasons.

0:35:58One of the other reasons is like, how do you walk away from all that money?

0:36:00And it's like, well, you know, money isn't everything and I felt bad about it, etc.

0:36:05And I mean, just once I decided to take it off the store, and when I had it, once I decided

0:36:15that, like you said you were at the dentist, it was the moment I decided, oh, I should

0:36:20take this off the store.

0:36:21It was like 10 30 in the morning.

0:36:23It was down by 12 30.

0:36:25It was like two hours.

0:36:26Like all I had to do was I talked it over with my wife.

0:36:30I ran it by you and I ran it by the ghostery people to make sure that I even could do it

0:36:33without breaking the contract,

0:36:35and that they weren't gonna be horribly mad about it.

0:36:38And that was it, and I was like, you know what?

0:36:41Yeah, I wanna do this, I'm done.

0:36:42Like, as soon as I even had the idea to do it,

0:36:43I felt a million times better.

0:36:45Like, it was like this giant weight off my shoulders.

0:36:49And that night when I was working on Overcast again

0:36:51for the first time in a couple of weeks, it felt so good.

0:36:54Because Overcast will probably not make,

0:36:59in its entire next year,

0:37:02what peace could make in two or three days.

0:37:04- But it's funny because--

0:37:07- But I felt so much better about it, you know?

0:37:09- And you and I have talked about this,

0:37:10that one of the things some people

0:37:12have a very hard time believing is that anybody,

0:37:17obviously, I don't think everybody thinks this way,

0:37:19I don't even think a majority,

0:37:20but there are clearly some people

0:37:21who cannot get it through their heads

0:37:23that pure money is not a primary motivating factor for us.

0:37:31It's great, I am successful right now,

0:37:33and I do appreciate that, and it's important to me

0:37:36'cause I have a family, and so it is certainly

0:37:38a significant motivator, and it is a very high priority

0:37:42for me, but it's not, number one.

0:37:44And maximizing it, getting every single dollar that I can,

0:37:47absolutely, positively is not.

0:37:50Number one motivator for me is,

0:37:51professionally, is doing good work that I'm proud of.

0:37:56And number two is probably just what I feel like

0:37:59the overall quality of my life. Am I happy? Money obviously plays a factor in that, but

0:38:05making the most money possible definitely doesn't.

0:38:07Right. And you and I are both fortunate that you and I have made enough money and make

0:38:13enough money through other means that we can say no to things that don't feel right to

0:38:17us. And there's all these studies done. There's a threshold for everybody and it's surprisingly

0:38:25low where additional money that you make above that threshold doesn't really make you happier.

0:38:32So there is this concept of what is enough and in most cultures that aren't Americans,

0:38:38that number is way lower. But even Americans have this concept of what is enough beyond

0:38:43which it stops really adding to your happiness in a proportional way. And I've heard estimates

0:38:49of that number being as low as like $75,000 a year,

0:38:53which in the software business

0:38:55is a pretty mid-range to low salary.

0:38:57So it's pretty, for people who are listening to the show,

0:39:00it's not that hard to achieve that.

0:39:02It isn't that unheard of.

0:39:04So the idea that if you already make a six-figure salary

0:39:09and the idea that you could turn away money

0:39:13from something that makes you feel terrible,

0:39:17that actually there's a lot of like widespread surveys

0:39:22and psychology and stuff to back that up

0:39:24where yeah, that actually is plausible to do.

0:39:26And in fact, people do it frequently.

0:39:28Like that once you've reached a certain level of income,

0:39:32you don't have to say yes to everything.

0:39:36And in fact, and a lot of people choose poorly on that scale

0:39:40and say yes to everything and are miserable for it.

0:39:43And they don't necessarily realize that

0:39:45they don't have to do that.

0:39:46- Yeah, and there's a lot of people who,

0:39:48you know, here are people who do it

0:39:50not just because they're well off enough

0:39:52and they can keep their lifestyle,

0:39:53people who downgrade their lifestyle

0:39:55and are delighted by it.

0:39:57You know, somebody who is just killing themselves

0:39:59in a corporate attorney job, you know,

0:40:01100 some hours a week doing this mind numbing work

0:40:06and then they leave and become, you know,

0:40:09a teacher or something.

0:40:11- Yeah, or like, you know, you take a job

0:40:13with a much shorter commute that's way close to your house,

0:40:15even if it pays less than the job all the way in the city,

0:40:18you're way happier taking the job that's a shorter commute

0:40:21and you're able to rationally say,

0:40:24"Yes, I can turn down the extra money

0:40:25"for the job in the city because I will be way happier

0:40:28"and probably healthier and probably have

0:40:30"a better family life if I choose this one."

0:40:33It's the same kind of thing, it all plays in.

0:40:35- Or somebody who leaves a six-figure engineering job

0:40:39at Apple or any of the big companies out there

0:40:43and it just opens up their own coffee shop,

0:40:45which is opening up a restaurant, notoriously low margin,

0:40:50difficult business to be in,

0:40:52but that all they've ever wanted to do

0:40:54is roast their own coffee and make a cool place

0:40:57where people can hang out.

0:40:58- I've thought about that many times.

0:41:00- If that's what you wanna do,

0:41:01I mean, that could be so much happier,

0:41:02and you're making way less money, way less.

0:41:05But anyway, people don't think.

0:41:07I'll give you a concrete example

0:41:08of money that I have passed up.

0:41:11And I don't think it's a thing.

0:41:12It certainly wasn't sustainable.

0:41:14I think Google's search algorithms have gotten around it.

0:41:16But at some point in the late last decade,

0:41:20I'm gonna guess that it peaked

0:41:21somewhere around 2008 to 2010 or so.

0:41:24It was a nonstop barrage every week

0:41:30where I got offers from people

0:41:32to place text ads on Daring Fireball.

0:41:35- Oh yeah, the big text ad thing, yep.

0:41:37- Either they wanted them on the homepage

0:41:39or it would be some specific page

0:41:42that ranked highly for a certain keyword,

0:41:44a post that I had written,

0:41:45and they would offer thousands of dollars.

0:41:48I mean, I remember one time it was a guy,

0:41:51and I actually pursued it,

0:41:52not because I thought I would take it,

0:41:53but I honestly, it was something like $20,000

0:41:56for, I don't know, a couple of months.

0:41:58And it just seemed like such a large amount of money,

0:42:01but I just wanted to see, is this a scam?

0:42:03This is a scam.

0:42:04But then I thought, how can it be a scam?

0:42:05Because if I don't get the money,

0:42:06I'm gonna take the text ad down.

0:42:08And it's, you know, it's the,

0:42:10And I thought, well, maybe the scam is that they think

0:42:12that Google will index it once.

0:42:15And I was like, no, it can't be, because this is an article,

0:42:17like let's say a year old article.

0:42:19If they think that there's value to be gained

0:42:21by putting a text ad there now,

0:42:23they must know that Google re-indexes these pages.

0:42:26And so therefore they must know

0:42:28that if I take the text ad down, that it'll re-index

0:42:31and they won't have that Google juice.

0:42:34And I just researched the company

0:42:35and it really seemed like, yes,

0:42:36this is a company that pays publishers

0:42:38tens of thousands of dollars to place these text ads.

0:42:41And then you could do things, they didn't even care.

0:42:43All they cared about was the search engines.

0:42:44And you could do things like use CSS

0:42:47to make it display none or fix position

0:42:51at 4,000 pixels off screen, whatever you wanted.

0:42:53They didn't care.

0:42:54So it wasn't like anybody would know.

0:42:56It wasn't like anybody would see it.

0:42:58But it was thousands of dollars from just nonstop for years.

0:43:02And I'd say no to all of them.

0:43:04Or the other thing I would do is I would write back

0:43:08and they would be like, a lot of them would say,

0:43:10what would you want?

0:43:12How much would you want for me to put a text ad on a page?

0:43:17And I would write back $100,000.

0:43:21And then they would say, that's too much.

0:43:22'Cause they're looking at Alexa numbers

0:43:25or something to gauge my traffic.

0:43:27But before I got to ridiculous numbers like that,

0:43:30I remember I would write back as a joke

0:43:33and just say like $10,000.

0:43:35And they'd be like, well, how about seven?

0:43:37be like oh shit yeah it's like you thought you were throwing out this

0:43:41obscene number that they would laugh at right and they were actually like yeah

0:43:44that's pretty close actually yeah we can do that now these are ads that weren't

0:43:51all they wanted was the text all they wanted to do is trick Google and other

0:43:55search indexes there was a major industry for a while I think I think it's

0:43:59finally probably died down as Google got smarter but that was a major industry it

0:44:03- It was a major industry,

0:44:04and the money was truly significant.

0:44:06I mean, I don't know what I could've if I'd pursued it,

0:44:09but easily tens of thousands a month.

0:44:11- Yeah, I ran those.

0:44:12Back when Market.org had like 100 visitors a month,

0:44:16I ran those from a company called TextLink Ads.

0:44:18It was like TextLink Ads with hyphens in it,

0:44:19and that was the company name.

0:44:20They might even still be around.

0:44:22I'm sure they've been bought a million times.

0:44:23- I don't think, but I think TextLink Ads were,

0:44:25I think that in particular, they weren't so scammy.

0:44:28They wanted-- - No, it was very similar.

0:44:31Like, you embedded this PHP thing.

0:44:32I remember I even, I was still very into PHP at the time,

0:44:35but I even modified the code to add nofollow to the links.

0:44:39And I think that eventually got me kicked out.

0:44:42'Cause I was aware of what they were doing,

0:44:43and I was like, well, I'm gonna add nofollow

0:44:45because that's the right thing to do.

0:44:48And they didn't have an explicit rule against it

0:44:50that I could find at the time I wrote that code.

0:44:53- But this wasn't doing any tracking.

0:44:54It wasn't going to, I mean, literally it was just HTML.

0:44:57So it wasn't even going to have any measurable effect

0:45:01on download size.

0:45:02We're talking about not even kilobytes, but bytes.

0:45:05Actual, just extra bytes.

0:45:07- Right, although it would, if it loaded synchronously,

0:45:09which it would have had to do what they wanted with Google,

0:45:11it would block the page load

0:45:13while it fetched it on your server side.

0:45:15- I don't even think, I think they just wanted me

0:45:17to actually just paste, here,

0:45:18paste this little snippet of HTML into the article.

0:45:21- It wasn't even dynamic.

0:45:22It was like static. - No, it wasn't even dynamic.

0:45:23Most of the offers.

0:45:24Now, I think that there were some services

0:45:26like TextLink ads where it was dynamic

0:45:28'cause they wanted to keep selling it,

0:45:29but I used to field these offers

0:45:30from people who just wanted to buy a month of, you know,

0:45:34just put this snippet of HTML in this article for a month,

0:45:39you know, for significant money.

0:45:41And I didn't do it.

0:45:42I turned it down because it just felt gross.

0:45:44And it just, and I didn't need it.

0:45:46I do have to admit, 'cause you know,

0:45:47the whole RSS sponsorship thing at this point

0:45:50was taking off and it was doing well

0:45:52and the deck was, you know, I was already in the deck.

0:45:54So I didn't need it.

0:45:55I was already at the point where I could say

0:45:57Daring Fireball is supporting my family.

0:46:00I don't need to pile this on with things that I'm not proud of.

0:46:02Exactly.

0:46:03So I didn't.

0:46:06But there's other examples.

0:46:08I've fielded offers from people like other ad networks.

0:46:12Effectively, I would have had to quit the deck and go to them, who offered me way more

0:46:17than the deck has ever paid me per month.

0:46:22I just said no to all of them because I was just dancing around switching ad networks

0:46:28and going to the highest bidder and looking,

0:46:29and their ads, obviously they just weren't,

0:46:32they weren't little nice static ads like the deck.

0:46:34They were big and ugly.

0:46:36- Right, like the standard IAB, big rectangles and everything.

0:46:38I mean, the idea of looking,

0:46:40like the deck has this amazing lock-in

0:46:43because once you are accustomed

0:46:45to the way your own site looks with the deck,

0:46:47and once your readers are accustomed

0:46:49to the way your site looks with the deck,

0:46:51just imagine what your site would look like

0:46:53with the giant skyscraper ad on the sidebar,

0:46:56like the regular, like a big white,

0:46:58like that would look horrendous.

0:47:00Like it wouldn't look like your site at all.

0:47:03It would look like you were like on some crazy wifi

0:47:06that was like injecting ads into every page you visited.

0:47:08Like it would look like a scam or malware had taken over

0:47:12or something.

0:47:13It would, you would never say,

0:47:14oh, that's Daring Fireball, that's normal.

0:47:16Like, and that just goes to show, I think,

0:47:18like the different worlds that are possible here

0:47:22in the advertising space.

0:47:22Like you have, you know, fully native stuff

0:47:25like your RSS sponsorships that now everyone's doing,

0:47:28that the podcast do, then you have like the very, very

0:47:31subtle model like what the deck does,

0:47:34and then you have everything else.

0:47:36It's mostly like these giant, horrible things.

0:47:40- But I can say for certainty that it wasn't like

0:47:46the other ones that would come to me were offering me,

0:47:48well, it would be 25% more than the deck or 30,

0:47:50it wasn't like a percentage more,

0:47:52it was a factor of like three, four, five times more,

0:47:54like five times more than what I was making from the deck.

0:47:56It was significant money.

0:47:58The way I always chalked it up,

0:47:59and Amy completely supported me on this,

0:48:01is that to me, the money that I was leaving on the table

0:48:05by not using those ads was effectively investing

0:48:08in the brand of Daring Fireball.

0:48:10- Yeah, that's totally right.

0:48:12I mean, 'cause your site has always had that look.

0:48:15It's always, even in the age now where, you know,

0:48:18you might wanna consider a mobile layout

0:48:20in a bigger font someday, maybe,

0:48:21but your site has always had this look.

0:48:25And that definitely does help.

0:48:27It definitely does contribute.

0:48:28It makes your site look higher class, more valuable.

0:48:32Certainly it's much more pleasant to read

0:48:34as long as you hit the plus button a few times

0:48:35on the keyboard.

0:48:37It is very, it very much contributes.

0:48:39- You know, if you go to slash prefs,

0:48:42you'll get a little pref,

0:48:43it's actually, there used to be multiple prefs,

0:48:45which is why--

0:48:46- You think I'd do that on all my devices?

0:48:47- Yeah, and then--

0:48:48- Do you sync via iCloud?

0:48:49I doubt it.

0:48:50It sets a cookie on your device, but anybody who doesn't know this you can go to during fireball dotnet slash

0:48:55Prefs and you can set the font size and it'll save it in a cookie on that device

0:48:59Yeah, maybe maybe I should get to you sometime and make you finally update your font

0:49:04Add a responsive layout maybe well, you know what though?

0:49:08All right, not to it's we can keep going on this

0:49:12I wanted I got a sponsor break but one of the things that

0:49:16If I do if and when I do I want to change it once I want to change the layout to during fireball

0:49:22Once and then have it last at least another 15 to 20 years

0:49:27No pressure. Well, I the last design, you know has gone close to

0:49:32What so I changed it like 2003 or 2004 there wasn't early there's like a for the first year during fireball

0:49:41It's a slightly different design. So

0:49:4311 years

0:49:44I feel like I could get one that goes for 15 and maybe I'll need to tweak it like I have this one

0:49:50You know here and there subtly over the years, but you know, I want to do it once but to do it once

0:49:56I think it would require web fonts and

0:49:58I've

0:50:00procrastinated for years on web fonts because I just

0:50:03Can't get over the fact that to me they feel a little slow and one of the things that I really love about tearing fireball

0:50:09That's how fast is one of my favorite things I get from people from email or tweets or something like that

0:50:13It's every once in a while

0:50:14Like if Daring Fireball does go down or if there's like a DNS outage on the net,

0:50:23which makes really weird things and it's like some people, you know, like people say,

0:50:27"Hey, is Daring Fireball down?" And I check and it's definitely not down. It's right there really

0:50:31fast, but I keep, I get like three or four of these. It's usually like a DNS problem and people

0:50:36who are somewhere on some chunk of the internet can't get there. And when people say the following

0:50:42to me. It always makes my day. They say, "Daring Fireball isn't just one of my favorite sites.

0:50:46It's also the thing I always go to when I want to check my Internet connection."

0:50:49That's great.

0:50:50Yeah, but they expect that it's always up and they expect it to load instantly. And

0:50:57web fonts definitely change that. So I've put off on that. And that's funny because

0:51:01with the content bloggers, a lot of them have an option to block web fonts specifically

0:51:05just to make things faster, not because nobody's opposed to good-looking fonts and nobody's

0:51:12opposed to nice design, but people, some people favor fast page loads over, you know, pristine

0:51:21designer, however you want to put it.

0:51:23Yeah, I mean, I was I was doing that in from the early builds of peace that was like one

0:51:27of the very first things I built was I built one that blocked all third party JavaScript,

0:51:31which was insane, but worked. And, and I and it had an option to block all web fonts, and

0:51:37It broke my site, it broke a lot of other sites,

0:51:39but it was so much faster.

0:51:41It was a massive speed difference.

0:51:45And so now, as much as I love this wonderful

0:51:47HFJ ideal sans font that I use on my site,

0:51:51and as far as I know, I've seen a couple of benchmarks

0:51:54here and there that suggest that the HFJ web fonts

0:51:57are not as fast as Typekit, but either way,

0:52:00none of them are what I would call fast enough.

0:52:03You know, like you're still loading a few hundred kilobytes

0:52:07of fonts for most people that, you know,

0:52:10and it's from some other CDN that is off host,

0:52:13so it's like making another connection and everything

0:52:15and another opportunity for weird latency or DNS issues.

0:52:19And, you know, the fact is web fonts are really nice.

0:52:23They're very much like a nice to have,

0:52:25but if they're gonna come at a big cost,

0:52:28they're probably not worth it for most sites.

0:52:30And what I found when I would, like,

0:52:32when I've been browsing with web fonts disabled

0:52:34on my phone for a while now.

0:52:36And even with Ghostery on the desktop,

0:52:38I would turn off Typekit,

0:52:40'cause that's one of their trackers that they can block.

0:52:43I've been doing that for a couple months too,

0:52:44and you really don't miss much.

0:52:47Like, you can tell on certain sites

0:52:50where they didn't have a good fallback,

0:52:52so it defaults to Times New Roman.

0:52:53You can tell, like,

0:52:55oh, this wasn't supposed to look like Times.

0:52:57But for the most part,

0:53:00things load really fast and nothing looks that bad.

0:53:03And many times it looks pretty good

0:53:05'cause it falls back to something sensible.

0:53:07So, you know, I would say if I redesign my site

0:53:11any time soon, I would almost certainly go back

0:53:16to a regular system font and not use any more web fonts.

0:53:18Just for speed, because it just isn't worth it.

0:53:21And that being said, in defense of your ancient site design,

0:53:24I will say that a couple months ago,

0:53:27I decided to be a smart ass and to try to like,

0:53:32just write like 10 lines of CSS or whatever

0:53:36that I could just like text you

0:53:39and have you inject it in your template.

0:53:40Like here's your fricking responsive layout.

0:53:43Here, like here, just modernize your site

0:53:45with this little thing I just wrote in an hour.

0:53:47So that was my plan, I was gonna do this.

0:53:48And I tried, I started.

0:53:50And your site is surprisingly complex.

0:53:53Like I tried doing that and realized

0:53:55it was gonna be way more work than what I had planned for.

0:54:00This is a common theme with me.

0:54:01(laughing)

0:54:02It was gonna be way more work.

0:54:04And I was like, "Eh, okay, now I understand

0:54:05"why you haven't done this yet."

0:54:07- Yeah, that's a pretty, well, I mean, it's been so long

0:54:10that I don't really have an excuse, but it's--

0:54:11- Well, you've probably started it like 10 times.

0:54:13- Yeah, and it's a lot of boring backstories there,

0:54:17but it'll happen sooner or later.

0:54:19But yeah, there's no way to just take the current HTML

0:54:21and easily do it.

0:54:24I mean, you can make a new one that looks,

0:54:26that on a wide screen looks the same,

0:54:27but the way that everything is structured right now

0:54:30is actually sort of fights against responsive layout.

0:54:34It'll happen.

0:54:36Well, the other thing, probably the worst thing

0:54:38that ever happened was the fact that with a very,

0:54:41a very short amount of, I think it's just like that one

0:54:44viewport meta tag, and the fact that a double tap

0:54:49on the main text column is pretty good,

0:54:52and it has been since the original iPhone in 2007.

0:54:55I mean, like two lines of code in 2007

0:54:58made it easy to just double tap on the center column

0:55:00of text and have it reasonable,

0:55:02pretty good size and a pretty good width.

0:55:04It's not nice and fixed so that you can still slide

0:55:07around sideways when you scroll.

0:55:09But it's actually pretty good for a,

0:55:12for a non mobile optimized layout.

0:55:16And that's probably the worst thing that ever happened

0:55:17because if it had been terrible on iPhone,

0:55:20I would have done something in 2007 or 2008.

0:55:23- Yeah, I mean, and that's, I mean,

0:55:26your site works the way every site worked in 2007, you know,

0:55:29and that's, this was the problem

0:55:30that I created Instapaper to solve.

0:55:32Like one of the problems is like,

0:55:34I didn't want to keep zooming in on everyone's pages

0:55:36and then like, I would scroll, scroll, scroll

0:55:38as I was reading and I'd accidentally get misaligned

0:55:40a little bit side to side.

0:55:41And then I, oh, let me try to realign back

0:55:43to the center column and never quite get it right.

0:55:44Have to zoom back out, zoom back in.

0:55:46'Cause I'm, you know, just retentive like that.

0:55:49And I talked to a couple of people

0:55:54about a year ago with this.

0:55:55I think if I was designing Instapaper from scratch today,

0:55:59like if I was designing a thing

0:56:00that would solve this problem from scratch today,

0:56:03I don't think I would do the text view.

0:56:06I think I would just save what was there on the page,

0:56:08like the full layout, because responsive design

0:56:11and modern sensible design on most of the sites

0:56:15that I wanna read, and especially now

0:56:17with content blockers existing,

0:56:18if there was a way to hook into that kind of system,

0:56:21responsive design really solved the problem pretty well

0:56:25most of the time.

0:56:25Like these, like back in 2007, 2008,

0:56:28when I was designing Instapaper at first,

0:56:30the text view was necessary

0:56:32because no sites had mobile layouts.

0:56:34Responsive design didn't even exist yet.

0:56:37Like the spec wasn't even there.

0:56:39Like the media queries I don't think even existed back then

0:56:41or at least were not widely supported.

0:56:43So like you couldn't do responsive design back then,

0:56:46But that has really removed a lot of the need

0:56:49for things like Instapaper's TextView

0:56:52and Safari's ReaderView.

0:56:54- Yeah, prior to the iPhone,

0:56:56the only thing that had ever been done

0:56:58in web standards for mobile were completely different sites.

0:57:01WAP, I guess, was the big one.

0:57:03W-A-P, I don't even know what it stood for.

0:57:05But it was so, the devices pre-iPhone

0:57:09were so primitive computationally

0:57:12and displays were so small that it wasn't even feasible.

0:57:15nobody had even really considered how would we make a dynamic layout that this

0:57:19you could just have one URL one web page and it would look this way on a big

0:57:24monitor this way on a smaller monitor and this way on a on a tiny little phone

0:57:28nobody had even thought about that all right and that's why you still have

0:57:32sites today that have like mobile dot blah blah blah URLs and that don't

0:57:35redirect well and yeah and that's a little different because they usually

0:57:39don't go to like a WAP type site but still there and still annoying but

0:57:42Anyway, let me take a break here.

0:57:44I gotta thank our first sponsor.

0:57:45And this is a good one.

0:57:46So don't skip ahead.

0:57:49This is gonna be a good read.

0:57:51It's the Brawer Group, B-R-A-W-E-R.

0:57:56Now they sponsored during Fireball before.

0:57:58I think they actually sponsored the talk show too.

0:58:02And it was a great success.

0:58:03So they're back to announce.

0:58:04These are the guys behind an app called,

0:58:06this is a Mac app called Ubar.

0:58:08Just like a lowercase U-B-A-R.

0:58:11Ubar3 and it implements a ton of suggestions from,

0:58:16he even says specifically from listeners at the talk show

0:58:19and readers at Daring Fireball.

0:58:20It's a doc replacement for the Mac.

0:58:22The purpose of Ubar is to vastly increase your productivity.

0:58:26Pro users love it, but it's also, you know,

0:58:29it's not just like a pro only tool.

0:58:30You can definitely, you know,

0:58:32see how a normal person in your family

0:58:34would totally get into this.

0:58:36And it sort of modeled more on the Windows taskbar

0:58:41bar. So if you or anybody in your family has switched from Windows and sort of

0:58:46doesn't like the ways that the Mac OS X dock isn't like the Windows taskbar,

0:58:51U-bar is exactly the sort of thing you should look at. It looks good. It's not

0:58:56ugly. It's very, very cool-looking, very beautiful. It's pure OS X style design.

0:59:01And it's got, for power users, tons of shortcuts. You can do things like hold

0:59:05down control and you can see the CPU and RAM usage for any of the apps that are

0:59:10in there that are running.

0:59:11Hold down shift and you can quit any app

0:59:13or close any window from that app just by clicking it.

0:59:16Apps that are unresponsive, get a red background

0:59:20so you can spot hanging apps immediately.

0:59:22You don't have to go and launch.

0:59:24So it's sort of like it's adding features

0:59:26from activity monitor right there in the taskbar.

0:59:29Tons and tons of customization.

0:59:32You can set the size, there's different themes,

0:59:36dark and light, exactly what you would think.

0:59:39You get the idea when you listen to the you know the idea of this type of app, you know, there's a lot of customization

0:59:44You can put on any side of any monitor including the top you can pin it to a corner

0:59:49Just unbelievable stuff so that here's what you do go to you bar app

0:59:55Com and they have a four week trial. You can download it start running it you get four weeks

1:00:01And the cost is only 20 bucks. So this is a great utility

1:00:05typical Mac utility price 20 bucks

1:00:09But and I think they're actually crazy because I think 20 bucks is a great price, but

1:00:12Here's the deal. This isn't my idea, but they have a code retina Gruber

1:00:17Retina than my last name retina Gruber

1:00:21I don't know if that's a reference to retina graphics or my eye problems or both

1:00:24But either way that's good the way could go either way

1:00:2650% off so you can get it for just 10 bucks

1:00:30so you get four weeks to try it and then it's 10 bucks to get it and

1:00:34Then this is the part that's amazing one more thing

1:00:37The developer of the app, his last name is Brauer.

1:00:42I actually forget his first name.

1:00:44Let me look it up real quick.

1:00:45Seems like a shame, I don't know it.

1:00:49He has, the app and saw Edward, Edward Brauer.

1:00:53So the app and software development, that's his primary,

1:00:56that's how he supports himself, he's a programmer.

1:00:59But he has the most amazing hobby.

1:01:01His hobby is watchmaking.

1:01:04He makes real mechanical watches.

1:01:07So he's actually launching a new timepiece

1:01:10right here on the show.

1:01:11It's called the Mirage.

1:01:13It is a limited edition of only 300 pieces,

1:01:16each with an engraved number on the back.

1:01:19He has sent one to me.

1:01:21It's really, really nice.

1:01:24I think my number is, I forget what number I got,

1:01:28104 or something like that.

1:01:29Really nice dial, beautiful typography.

1:01:33I mean, this is like a real serious watch.

1:01:37I think, here's the price, 750 bucks.

1:01:41So we're talking about, this is not like a joke.

1:01:44It looks like a $750 watch.

1:01:47It is really, really amazing, very, very nice.

1:01:49It has a totally serious strap.

1:01:53It's made by a company,

1:01:54I'm never gonna pronounce this right,

1:01:55Camille Fornay in Paris.

1:01:58It's a lizard-like alligator leather strap.

1:02:02They make OEM straps for actual serious watch companies

1:02:06like Patek Philippe and others.

1:02:09It has a single deployment clasp,

1:02:12single fold deployment clasp.

1:02:14That only means something if you're a watch person,

1:02:16but if you are a watch person, you know what it means.

1:02:18It's really, really nice.

1:02:19It is like a serious dress watch,

1:02:22but not so dressy that you couldn't wear it casually.

1:02:24So go to, for the watch, go to Brauer,

1:02:29V-R-A-W-E-R, timepieces.com.

1:02:34And the same code works there, RetnaGruber.

1:02:37And you can get that watch for 40% off.

1:02:42So it's a $750 watch, but you can get it for 40% off

1:02:45using that code.

1:02:47Shipping is free in the USA and Canada.

1:02:50And it comes in a real watch box.

1:02:53Again, if you've ever bought like a fancy watch

1:02:55or even like the Apple edition watches,

1:02:58know that like you know thousand dollar ish watches supposed to come in a nice

1:03:01box this thing comes in a really nice box you the thing that I can't believe

1:03:06it's not that I can't believe that somebody made a nice watch there's lots

1:03:08of nice watches out there I just can't believe that this guy designed and made

1:03:13it and did all this stuff and you know did all the machining to actually

1:03:18machine out the stainless steel frame of the watch and everything as like his

1:03:22hobby it's absolutely crazy that this is like the second thing that the same guy

1:03:27does who makes this amazing U-Bar app. So my thanks to them for the U-Bar, which is probably

1:03:33something an awful lot of you ought to go look at and maybe buy, and for the new Mirage watch,

1:03:38which probably isn't going to sell to a lot of you, but for those of you who are into watches,

1:03:43it's absolutely positively worth looking at. Also, it's not too big. I hate big watches. I don't know

1:03:47what I would say if it was real big, but it has a diameter of only 40 millimeters. So it's a

1:03:52perfectly standard, not too big watch. A woman could get away with it. It would be like a

1:03:58nice big watch for a woman. Totally normal size for men. It comes in three colors, white,

1:04:03blue, and black. So my thanks to them. Check them out. Is that the craziest sponsor? That

1:04:08might be one of the craziest sponsors I've ever had.

1:04:10Jared Polin, " That is pretty impressive. Also, I want to give you all my French words

1:04:15to pronounce whenever I need that."

1:04:16Tim Cynova, " I have no idea if I pronounced that right. It's not even that hard. All right.

1:04:21And here's the thing, I want to tell you why I think you were...

1:04:26Here's the mistake I think you made with peace.

1:04:28And I feel guilty about this because I knew over the summer that you were working on this

1:04:32thing and I didn't test it until like the night before or something like that.

1:04:37And I feel bad that I didn't because I would have called you out on the fact that it wasn't

1:04:42whitelisting the deck or automatically.

1:04:44And in fact, I was confused because I could swear that the night before when I did install

1:04:49the beta, the first thing I did was check during Fireball and I could swear that it

1:04:53did show the ad. And then you told me that there's some flakiness when you first enable

1:04:57these things and sometimes you have to restart. And I think that's what I saw. I don't want

1:05:03to put words in your mouth, but here's what I think you were thinking. You were thinking,

1:05:09I'm not, A, I don't want to have a whole bunch of Fidli settings. So I don't want to have

1:05:14thing that says block all ads, block most ads, block half ads, just block the worst

1:05:21ads. I'm just going to say, here's a switch, block ads. I think you were thinking I would

1:05:28be a hypocrite if I had whitelisted the deck just because that's what my site is in. I'll

1:05:36do the thing that's not being a hypocrite and just include the deck, which is mine,

1:05:40which is sort of, I don't know, magnanimous?

1:05:44I don't know what the word is.

1:05:45I think that by not white listing the deck,

1:05:51you are committing an entirely different form of hypocrisy,

1:05:55which is that all, everything is content.

1:06:00And everything that you publish from marco.org

1:06:10You're you're you're standing behind so by publishing ads from the deck by sending them to your users

1:06:16You're implicitly saying this is an ad that's worth your

1:06:20Seeing and it's worth your device that you're accessing this site downloading and rendering and putting on the page

1:06:28So I feel like you you painted yourself into by releasing piece with the deck not being included

1:06:35You have two things. You've got a website that is implicitly saying this is a thing

1:06:40this ad is worth you seeing and is okay.

1:06:44And then you have this other thing,

1:06:45which is saying this is something that should be blocked.

1:06:48And there's no way to square that circle.

1:06:52- Yeah, that's true.

1:06:53I mean, that was part of the problem,

1:06:55is that this was an unsolvable problem.

1:06:59You know, it was, I could say that I no longer

1:07:03want any web ads to exist and I could leave the deck,

1:07:06I could quit the deck and remove them from my site.

1:07:08I could try to differentiate and I could say,

1:07:13well, I'm gonna allow acceptable ads,

1:07:19but we see the problems that causes.

1:07:21When other sites try that or when other blockers try that,

1:07:24we see that that's extremely messy and controversial

1:07:28and I didn't wanna be in that business.

1:07:32Or I can try to differentiate between,

1:07:37well, I'm gonna block ads but not trackers.

1:07:40And I said that's an ATP too.

1:07:42You can't really make that differentiation

1:07:44because if you want to block tracking,

1:07:47you have to block almost all ads.

1:07:50And trying to keep up the list of what belongs

1:07:56on the other side of that almost

1:07:58is very politically charged, it is very subjective,

1:08:04It's very messy and arguable and vague

1:08:07as to what kind of ad is okay,

1:08:10what kind of ad is safe and is not a tracker,

1:08:12what does tracking include?

1:08:15It's such a messy world of vague distinctions

1:08:21and impossible problems,

1:08:23and whatever decision you make,

1:08:26people are going to disagree with it.

1:08:28And so actually, the safest, most defensible position

1:08:33that an ad blocker can take is to just block everything.

1:08:36Like that is the most defensible position

1:08:39that I think that most of them can take.

1:08:41And they just have to then own what they actually are.

1:08:44And this is the part I had a problem with.

1:08:45Like you can't just say, I'm gonna block trackers

1:08:48and I'm gonna serve only good.

1:08:50You have to hit some people

1:08:53in the process of being effective.

1:08:55Like some people have to lose

1:08:57and some of them are gonna be good people.

1:09:00Like the deck, you know, we know all these people

1:09:02Like these are good people.

1:09:03But if you're saying I'm selling an ad blocker,

1:09:06it has to block the deck.

1:09:07And it's weird, and if you sell an ad blocker

1:09:11and you know about the deck and you know the deck is ads

1:09:16and you whitelist it or you explicitly like go and omit it

1:09:20from your database once it was already there

1:09:23and you're selling people an ad blocker,

1:09:25then you're lying to your customers.

1:09:27- That's why I don't think you should call it an ad blocker.

1:09:29I think, and I've--

1:09:30- Right, but if you don't call it an ad blocker,

1:09:31nobody buys it.

1:09:32That's the problem. It's a terrible business.

1:09:35I think that, I don't know. I don't know if that no one would buy it. I mean, what did

1:09:41the marketing materials for Peace describe it as?

1:09:45It said Peace block ads and trackers powered by Ghostery, something like that. Block web

1:09:50ads and trackers.

1:09:51I would have said something to the effect of, well, I wouldn't use the word crappy,

1:09:57but block crappy ads and trackers.

1:09:59And think of, put that off the top of my head,

1:10:03I can't think of the way I would say that,

1:10:05but that would be the gist of what I would get across

1:10:07in very few words, block crappy ads and trackers.

1:10:11And then that lets you whitelist.

1:10:13And there are like one of the most popular ones right now.

1:10:17And the one, if anybody wants my recommendation right now,

1:10:19the one I'm using is One Blocker.

1:10:21By default, One Blocker does not block the deck.

1:10:26I've actually exchanged some emails with Ben Brooks,

1:10:29who's doing a lot of work at the Brooks Report,

1:10:31like really serious yeoman's work,

1:10:34especially if he's, you know,

1:10:35he's like restarting his iPhone

1:10:37in between testing these things,

1:10:38just to sort of get it to his neutral estate

1:10:40and clearing the cache.

1:10:41- That's good, because as you said,

1:10:42like the system is buggy,

1:10:43and it's really hard to know for sure

1:10:46whether something's enabled or not,

1:10:47and sometimes the system will,

1:10:49like I had to make a test URL that like,

1:10:52on Peace's website, a test URL that would load

1:10:55and would try to redirect to something that piece blocked

1:10:58and then would detect whether the redirect succeeded or not

1:11:01and so like I had this button in the app

1:11:03that would just test installation

1:11:04and it would like slide up a web view for a second

1:11:06and test something and slide it back down

1:11:07and tell you what happened.

1:11:09But it's very buggy, it's a very buggy system.

1:11:13- What I'm looking for in an ad blocker

1:11:18or a content blocker, whatever you wanna call it for iOS,

1:11:20is I want one that is fast

1:11:21and noticeably improves the browsing experience

1:11:25on my iPhone,

1:11:27blocks as much pernicious stuff,

1:11:33like the type of ads that cover up, pop up, and full page,

1:11:37block the page I'm looking at,

1:11:39block stuff like that,

1:11:42doesn't block the deck by default, and that's it.

1:11:48And the fact that-- - See, the problem is

1:11:50that nobody agrees on where that line is.

1:11:53- I agree, I agree.

1:11:54And that's, you know, obviously that's gotta go.

1:11:55So one of the other ways to look at it is,

1:11:57no ad blocker is going to be perfect, absolutely not.

1:12:01And even if you could say, right now at this moment,

1:12:04as I submit to the App Store,

1:12:05I think it's as close to perfect as I can get it

1:12:07in terms of what it blocks and what it doesn't,

1:12:09by next week that's gonna be different.

1:12:12Because some of the people you block

1:12:13are going to find workarounds,

1:12:15and some of the ones you don't

1:12:16might clean up their policies.

1:12:18It's totally dynamic.

1:12:19But what I would suggest and what I really think

1:12:23is possible, and what I think, for example,

1:12:25one blocker right now is evidence of,

1:12:28is that what you have to do is pick which side

1:12:30of perfection you're going to be on.

1:12:32Are you going to be, is your blocker going to be

1:12:34on the side of letting through some stuff

1:12:37that probably should be blocked,

1:12:39or is it going to be on the side of,

1:12:41erring on the side of blocking some stuff

1:12:43that shouldn't be blocked?

1:12:45And I think it's possible.

1:12:46I think it's possible to build an ad blocker

1:12:49or a content blocker, whatever you wanna call it,

1:12:51that isn't over-aggressive.

1:12:55And so therefore, errors on the side of maybe there

1:12:57will be some things that get through

1:12:59that you wish didn't get through,

1:13:00but that overall gives you a really fast browsing experience

1:13:03and blocks most of the stuff you want

1:13:05and doesn't punish people who are doing it the right way

1:13:09and are serving things that shouldn't be blocked.

1:13:11I think that's possible.

1:13:14one blocker is is the best proof of it today that it could be done but the fact

1:13:20is that what's amazing to me is that in Ben Brooks testing and he's I think he's

1:13:24up to like 32 of these I was content blockers that he's tracked in his

1:13:29testing one blocker isn't just fast it's the fastest I don't know where peace was

1:13:34on that because he you know he's taken peace out of that but the only one

1:13:37that's faster it was roughly in the middle when he still had it in the only

1:13:41one that's faster is some crazy one that I think is sort of like the one you wrote this

1:13:45summer that just blocks all third party JavaScript. There's one that makes that is head and shoulders

1:13:51faster than anything, but it breaks half the internet. Like Ben Brooks, I forget the name

1:13:57of it. It's got like a funny name too, but there's a whole bunch of like mainstream sites

1:14:02that just render as a white box.

1:14:03white box. No I actually I had that issue with with my first one because I when my

1:14:10first version of peace before I negotiated the deal with ghostery it

1:14:14literally just blocked all third-party JavaScript and the funny thing is how

1:14:18well that works most of the time. It's called script scrap. That's a

1:14:23wonderfully awkward name. No I mean like it that approach actually works the vast

1:14:30majority of the time. But, you know, it's one of those things where, like, if the error

1:14:34rate, like, if the pages it breaks, if it breaks on 10% of pages, well, that's actually

1:14:39very annoying in practice. Like, that's too high of a breakage rate. And the reason I

1:14:43went with Ghostery instead was because it was the solution I found that had the lowest

1:14:50rate of sites that broke, like, things that actually just stopped working. Because, like,

1:14:55Like a lot of sites will tie in in weird ways,

1:14:58especially analytics packages and especially Adobe Omniture.

1:15:02That is one like Apple's site breaks without that.

1:15:04A bunch of sites, functionality actually stops

1:15:08if you don't have certain trackers enabled.

1:15:10And Ghostery actually keeps a database of that

1:15:13and builds it into their extension to try to whitelist,

1:15:18to try to whitelist things like that

1:15:21that are fairly innocent on certain sites

1:15:24that are required for them to work properly.

1:15:27And they maintain a list of sites that break

1:15:29with, for example, Omniture disabled,

1:15:32and that's automatically whitelisted by default.

1:15:34- I forget what it was that I couldn't,

1:15:36there's a part of Apple's developer website

1:15:39that I couldn't get working,

1:15:40and I was like, what the hell's going on?

1:15:41- Yep, that's why.

1:15:42- And it just occurred to me, it was like,

1:15:44ooh, maybe I should whitelist this in Ghostery,

1:15:46and I did, and it worked, and I was like,

1:15:48oh man, of all the sites I never thought

1:15:49that I would have to dick around in Ghostery,

1:15:51it was apple.com.

1:15:52literally has no ads, unless you consider the entire website an ad, has no ads that

1:15:59you would think of as web ads, but it actually breaks without it being emphasized. I think

1:16:03it was exactly that Adobe amateur, whatever the hell that is.

1:16:06Well, and that's, I don't even know. I think it's some kind of analytics thing, but one

1:16:11of the problems, one of the reasons why we have such obscenely rampant and over-the-top

1:16:16tracking on the web is this this culture of data people where like everything it

1:16:21is considered outrageous and obscene and and reckless if you run a website today

1:16:28that doesn't do very detailed analytics and behavioral tracking like if you if

1:16:33you have access to quote data and you're not collecting it and you're not mining

1:16:38it and analyzing it for eyeballs and various other body parts like it is like

1:16:43that you're considered like negligent almost

1:16:45in an owner of a website, not doing all this tracking.

1:16:48Like the standard industry wisdom

1:16:50and the pressure from everywhere in the industry

1:16:52is to track as much as you possibly can.

1:16:55And this is, and we can get into it here if you want,

1:16:58one of the issues with this

1:17:01that is still mostly under the radar

1:17:04is tracking happening inside of apps

1:17:06that can't be blocked by Safari content blockers.

1:17:09- Yeah, no, definitely.

1:17:11like Twitter is famous for like always pushing the boundaries of like like they they they had this database of

1:17:17Like something like over a thousand

1:17:19URL schemes custom iOS app URL schemes that they that they would call can open URL on the system API

1:17:26And that would tell them which of these URL schemes were registered and they could then derive

1:17:31Which apps does each user have installed and they could tailor their ads?

1:17:35And they could sell their as they could they could actually sell people the idea of we can show your Twitter ad to people who?

1:17:41who have this particular app installed.

1:17:43It's crazy.

1:17:45And then, that was so egregious of a privacy violation

1:17:48that Apple severely restricted that in iOS 9,

1:17:51and they actually kind of broke it for uses like that.

1:17:54- So in other words, just to explain that,

1:17:58I know exactly what you're talking about,

1:17:59but just for anybody who, if that went over your head.

1:18:02So the way sandboxing works on iOS,

1:18:06an app that plays by the rules and uses,

1:18:10passes the test that they do

1:18:11that you're not using private APIs,

1:18:12can't really look outside at Sandbox

1:18:15and look at the file system

1:18:16and see what's in your iPhone's slash applications folder.

1:18:21You can't do it.

1:18:25But what Twitter did, and I'm sure other people did,

1:18:27but Twitter I guess really went far,

1:18:30is when a custom-- - Twitter got caught.

1:18:31- When a custom app, like if Instapaper

1:18:33has an Instapaper colon slash slash URL scheme,

1:18:37And then the idea of the URL scheme is,

1:18:40hey, that way another app can integrate with Instapaper.

1:18:44And this was really common in the pre-sharing sheet days

1:18:47where apps would, the only really way

1:18:49that apps could communicate with each other,

1:18:52Instapaper communicating with Tweetbot

1:18:55or something like that was through a URL scheme.

1:18:57So if Tweetbot was going to integrate with Instapaper,

1:19:02it used a URL scheme.

1:19:04Did it?

1:19:04I admit, you'd know.

1:19:06Is that how Tweetbot used to integrate with Instapaper?

1:19:09- As far as I remember, yeah.

1:19:10I mean, almost all the Twitter clients

1:19:12integrated with Instapaper eventually.

1:19:13- But through a custom URL scheme.

1:19:15But then to make a nice user experience, there was an API.

1:19:18So Twitter, Tweetbot, or whatever app,

1:19:21Twitter, whoever, would call.

1:19:24If I send an Instapaper colon slash slash URL,

1:19:28is it going to be handled?

1:19:30Yes or no?

1:19:31And then if the answer is no, it's like,

1:19:32oh, well they don't even have Instapaper installed,

1:19:33I won't even give them the option.

1:19:35So Twitter used it to survey whether any of a thousand apps

1:19:39were installed on the system and used it.

1:19:42And then they of course know your Twitter account

1:19:44'cause you're logged into Twitter, you're using Twitter.

1:19:46- And they would transmit that data back to Twitter

1:19:48and they would save it probably forever on your account

1:19:51in their ad analytics database.

1:19:52All this creepy stuff that was made possible

1:19:55by this relatively innocent intending system API.

1:19:58- Yeah, and so that, but this, it's sort of a tangent,

1:20:01but it absolutely gets to something

1:20:03and that is a false accusation against me,

1:20:06which is that in my defense of,

1:20:10I think the problem that some people seem to have

1:20:14with my take on this is that I'm not an absolutist,

1:20:17that I don't feel like,

1:20:20and I feel like there's some people who wanna say

1:20:24that if you're gonna block some ads,

1:20:25you have to block them all,

1:20:26and if you're going to whitelist some ads,

1:20:28you have to see them all.

1:20:30And I think that's bullshit.

1:20:33I think it's provably bullshit because people are doing

1:20:37just what I'm suggesting, which is try to use white lists

1:20:41and defaults for your ad blocker that strike a middle ground.

1:20:45And again, who defines that middle ground

1:20:47and whether different people have significantly

1:20:50different tastes on where that line is drawn?

1:20:52Absolutely, who knows how it's gonna shake out,

1:20:54but I absolutely think that someone who wants to take

1:20:57the absolutist all or nothing approach

1:21:00is being stubbornly idealistic.

1:21:05I don't know what the word is,

1:21:07and they're fooling themselves.

1:21:08But the false accusation against me is that I'm somehow,

1:21:14because I'm in the bag for Apple and pro-Apple,

1:21:17I'm on board with Apple destroying the open internet

1:21:22and taking us to a world where there's nothing

1:21:24but apps from the App Store.

1:21:25And that falls for a couple of reasons.

1:21:28Number one, my life's work is on a website

1:21:31and I don't have an app for it.

1:21:32There is no daring fireball app.

1:21:35And I still have no plans to make one.

1:21:36My site is in Apple News.

1:21:40I haven't done anything related to it.

1:21:43I really don't even understand how Apple News works.

1:21:45I might do something with their stuff.

1:21:49I haven't really looked at it yet.

1:21:55I would not be in favor of most people reading my site through Apple News. I'm not in favor

1:22:00of that. And lastly, I don't think I'm just as suspicious and concerned about the tracking

1:22:07that's going on in native apps as I am on the web.

1:22:09Right, because native apps, like, the web can do a lot more egregious things. They can

1:22:16do a lot more cross-site tracking, like tracking between different sites by third parties.

1:22:21the web makes a lot more of that possible.

1:22:23Apps, you're mostly, I mean,

1:22:26depending on what they've integrated,

1:22:27but you're mostly in apps limited to

1:22:30the maker of the app tracking you themselves.

1:22:33- Right. - You know?

1:22:34And again, there are some exceptions,

1:22:36like with third-party packages,

1:22:38but for the most part, that's what's going on.

1:22:40And so you do have to worry about things like,

1:22:43like the big social apps, which,

1:22:46again, like when you're talking about,

1:22:48if you wanna block tracking, you gotta block social.

1:22:51and all the social widgets that are in all the sites.

1:22:54You have to block the fancy richly formatted Twitter embeds

1:22:57that people embed in blog posts.

1:22:59You would probably also have to block

1:23:01embedded YouTube players because that's owned by Google,

1:23:04a massive ad and tracking company.

1:23:06You know, there's a lot you have to block

1:23:07if you wanna truly block tracking.

1:23:10- Yeah, and if you just take a look,

1:23:11YouTube's a good example because it's so ubiquitous.

1:23:15I mean, it's central to the modern web landscape.

1:23:19But if you ever just do a view source on a page

1:23:21with a YouTube embed and just start going down

1:23:25the rabbit hole of the iframe and what's going on there,

1:23:29I mean, it's almost impossible to follow along,

1:23:31but you can see that it is nothing even vaguely resembling

1:23:36a video tag where the source pointing to a URL.

1:23:40- Exactly.

1:23:40- I'll bet like a single YouTube embed

1:23:45would probably involve more markup, let alone JavaScript,

1:23:49just more markup than the entirety of like a typical

1:23:52Daring Fireball page.

1:23:53- Exactly, yeah.

1:23:55But you know, with app tracking,

1:23:57they can do more detailed tracking of you,

1:24:03but in a narrower scope.

1:24:04Like you're not usually,

1:24:06like if you just open up a random app,

1:24:10like if you're, you know,

1:24:11there's a new game from the Crossy Road people,

1:24:14like Shooty Skies or something today.

1:24:16And I downloaded that and knowing like, you know,

1:24:19what's the most they can really do here like I know Ios is so sandboxed and

1:24:22everything like they're not gonna be able to get to all my other data they're

1:24:25not they're gonna be able to have like a unique identifier tied to me that they

1:24:28can use in you know fifty other apps that aren't even published by them and

1:24:32you know some other third-party thing to do it like the crossy road people have a

1:24:35new app yeah it's called shootie skies oh is it good I haven't lost you yet oh

1:24:40I mean I was gonna play it in bed tonight important planning play it in

1:24:45second half of the talk show. I'll play during all your ad reads. Yeah. No, I always pay

1:24:53attention to podcast ad reads. Never skip them. So is it nice? Do you like, do you enjoy

1:24:59not having to do them? Because you do them on ATP. Yeah, this was, this was great. Like

1:25:04it's great to just show up to a podcast and just talk and not have to worry about like,

1:25:08all right, got to get the sponsors ready. Got to make sure I have all the scripts for

1:25:11all of them. And if I don't, I got to write some and, you know, review them and everything.

1:25:14has there ever been any discussion about letting casey do some of them.

1:25:17I don't think we've ever actually talked about it. I think he kind of

1:25:21assumed yeah he's he's so much nicer than me john you should do it, but john

1:25:26does the toaster ones, which is yeah is the greatest single greatest ad campaign.

1:25:31In my opinion in podcast history is there's a it's a good one this week to

1:25:36this. This is a toaster week this week. It's a good one.

1:25:38It's a really good one.

1:25:42It's Cards Against Humanity's campaign.

1:25:45For any of you, I'm guessing an enormous number

1:25:47of the people listening to this episode listen to ATP as well.

1:25:50But for those of you who don't, on the Accidental Tech podcast,

1:25:54there's a year long, maybe over a year long--

1:25:58It's this whole calendar year.

1:26:00It's almost over.

1:26:02--from Cards Against Humanity.

1:26:04And the entirety of the ad campaign,

1:26:06there is absolutely no talking points about the game itself.

1:26:11They just send John Siracusa a toaster oven

1:26:15every time an ad is coming up.

1:26:17- Yeah, once a month.

1:26:18- Once a month, they send him a toaster oven

1:26:20and he just tears into it on air.

1:26:25- Yeah, it's like the entire role of the ad

1:26:27is for John to just review a new toaster oven every month.

1:26:30- Talk about the dials, talk about how well it works.

1:26:33- The knob feel.

1:26:35- You know, what egregious design mistakes

1:26:37that they've made.

1:26:38- Yeah.

1:26:39Turns out there's a lot of really badly designed toaster

1:26:41ovens out there.

1:26:42[LAUGHTER]

1:26:44And he takes it totally seriously,

1:26:46as of course he does.

1:26:47It's fantastic.

1:26:48But anyway, it must be nice.

1:26:50I don't know.

1:26:50I enjoy it when I'm a guest on somebody else's podcast

1:26:52as well.

1:26:53Yeah, it is quite nice.

1:26:54Even though I do enjoy--

1:26:55I actually enjoy doing these reads, though.

1:26:57I think I've gotten better at it.

1:26:59And I enjoy it because I've gotten to the point

1:27:01now where I feel like it's a game where

1:27:03I'm trying to keep people from hitting the 30-second skip.

1:27:08And if you do, it is what it is.

1:27:11And you know, it's funny, 'cause that's ad blocking, right?

1:27:15I mean, it ties into it.

1:27:16The 30 second-- - It's very similar.

1:27:19It's like, it's not quite the same, but it's very similar.

1:27:21It's in the ballpark for sure.

1:27:22- I actually saw somebody on Twitter

1:27:26at Peak Peace Controversy.

1:27:29I still think that's so funny.

1:27:31I think it was such a good name for a blocker.

1:27:33And I think it's so funny that the way that it played out

1:27:37(laughing)

1:27:39So unpeaceful for you.

1:27:41But I saw somebody who tweeted something to the effect of,

1:27:49it's actually a pretty clever idea

1:27:52that somebody who writes a podcast client could,

1:27:55for any given episode of a show,

1:27:59if you tracked people's use of 30 second skip,

1:28:02you could probably very easily pinpoint where the

1:28:06the sponsor breaks are in the episode.

1:28:10- Right, and this is like,

1:28:12I thought of this feature two years ago.

1:28:14I think everybody who has made a podcast app

1:28:16has thought of this feature,

1:28:17especially once Amazon launched their shared highlights

1:28:21for Kindles, 'cause it's very similar to that.

1:28:24It's like you kind of track what people highlight

1:28:26and then things that get highlighted a lot,

1:28:28you can say are important

1:28:29and you can default to highlight them.

1:28:31Well, in a podcast app, yeah,

1:28:32you could track what's being skipped

1:28:34and sections of a podcast that are skipped a lot,

1:28:35you can have an option to just automatically just skip them.

1:28:38And first of all, it would be hard to make that work

1:28:42very well in a way that wouldn't annoy people,

1:28:45and that would be obvious what's happening.

1:28:47But second of all, I think, like I've talked to other

1:28:51podcast app makers and mentioned this before,

1:28:54and everyone always says the same thing,

1:28:56the same thing I thought, which is,

1:28:58I don't want to do that to podcasting,

1:29:01because I know like, that would by nature

1:29:05hurt podcasting and I don't want to do that.

1:29:08- I, you know, and I feel like the other thing

1:29:12is that it's so respectful, you know, it's just time,

1:29:17you know, and it's, you know, I've gone to four

1:29:20on some of these summer episodes

1:29:22just because I've fallen way behind a weekly schedule,

1:29:24but my episodes are very long.

1:29:26And so I absolutely, I do stick to never more

1:29:30than one and a half hour, which I feel like is pretty fair

1:29:34and compares extremely favorably to Terrestrial Radio.

1:29:39- Oh my God, yeah, not even close.

1:29:41- And even compares, I think, very well

1:29:43to the Howard Stern show on Sirius.

1:29:46Like Amy, Amy's a huge Howard Stern fan.

1:29:51And she's still annoyed by the fact that the whole thing

1:29:54that pitched her on Sirius in the first place

1:29:56is that it was commercial free,

1:29:58and they were like, except for Howard Stern,

1:29:59because we can sell a lot of very expensive ads on his show.

1:30:02You know, I think in the history of--

1:30:06- Well, they aren't very expensive.

1:30:07I've bought them before.

1:30:08- Well, but from their perspective,

1:30:10in the aggregate, they are.

1:30:11I'm not saying each spot is,

1:30:13but I think that, I don't think that they could do,

1:30:15I don't think they could,

1:30:16I don't think they could pay his salary

1:30:18if it wasn't for that.

1:30:19I don't know.

1:30:20- Yeah.

1:30:22- You disagree?

1:30:23You think they could go, you think--

1:30:24- I paid less for a live read on his show

1:30:27than what you and I charge for live reads

1:30:29on our shows right now.

1:30:30(laughing)

1:30:32I'm serious.

1:30:34- That's amazing.

1:30:35And you got Howard to actually read it.

1:30:38- Yeah, yeah, it's a live read.

1:30:40That's why it's valuable.

1:30:42- That was really great.

1:30:43It was a really cool thing.

1:30:44But anyway, I just feel like that, again, it's negotiation.

1:30:49And I'm sure there are people out there listening right now

1:30:52who, even though I told them not to,

1:30:54hit the 30 second thing during the Brower thing before,

1:30:57and they're probably gonna hit it

1:30:58on some of the ones that I'm about to do.

1:31:00And that's okay.

1:31:01I mean, you know, it's my job,

1:31:03but I feel like I've gotten better enough at doing this,

1:31:05and I feel like I'm still attracting

1:31:07an interesting enough group of sponsors

1:31:10that it's a fun game for me when I do 'em

1:31:13to try to, you know,

1:31:14and when I'm doing 'em, I'm imagining a listener

1:31:19with his thumb hovering over the 30-second skip,

1:31:21and I'm trying to keep him from pressing it,

1:31:24or at least only having him press it once.

1:31:26- Yeah.

1:31:27- And I still think there's some value in it.

1:31:28Like for example, I'll break right into one right now.

1:31:32And here's one that I'll bet a fair number of people

1:31:35will 30 seconds skip because they are here

1:31:38almost every single week.

1:31:39It's our friends at Fracture.

1:31:40They'll fracture the people who print your photos on glass.

1:31:46They sponsor the show all the time.

1:31:51And the reason they keep coming back

1:31:52is 'cause you guys out there keep buying pictures from them.

1:31:57so you're probably familiar with them.

1:31:59Really high quality printing.

1:32:00They print on the back of the glass.

1:32:02You send them a photo.

1:32:03They print it on the back of the glass.

1:32:04It's right there on the glass,

1:32:05not like a piece of paper stuck to it.

1:32:07It's not a frame where there's a piece of paper

1:32:09behind glass.

1:32:09It's right there on the glass.

1:32:11Really, really nice.

1:32:12The best way to get actual analog versions of your photos

1:32:15that I've ever seen,

1:32:16because there's no work involved on your part.

1:32:18You just upload the photo and then it comes back to you

1:32:20and it's all nice and ready to go.

1:32:22They do have, they actually have a special message

1:32:25that they want me to get across.

1:32:27It's only October 1st as I record.

1:32:29Clearly a big part of Fracture's market is gifts,

1:32:35people buying photos for gifts.

1:32:37And obviously the holiday season's coming up.

1:32:40October 1st does not sound like it's close to the holidays.

1:32:42Nobody's, I don't think, even though the holiday decorations

1:32:46seem to go up earlier and earlier in retail.

1:32:48Usually people at least wait till Halloween.

1:32:50- Yeah, we're still in pumpkin spice season right now.

1:32:52- Yeah, exactly.

1:32:53You gotta wait till pumpkin spice goes away.

1:32:55But, Fracture wants me to remind you

1:32:59that they do get backed up at the holidays.

1:33:02And so, this might be a good way

1:33:05to just knock out a couple of your Christmas gifts

1:33:08really, really early and not worry about cutting it close

1:33:11and getting caught behind because by the end of December,

1:33:14they actually can't keep up and you can't do it last minute

1:33:17and get it in time for Christmas

1:33:19because they're so, so busy.

1:33:20So think about it.

1:33:23about the people who you might want to give a fracture image to for the

1:33:27holidays and get it over with now just do it and you'll feel better you'll know

1:33:31you have you know somewhere sitting in your office you've got these boxes

1:33:33packed up you've already got some of your Christmas gifts knocked out ready

1:33:37to go really is a good gift we do it every year I can't even imagine until

1:33:42fracture isn't even around anymore I can't imagine that a holiday season is

1:33:46gonna go by where we don't get some of these for some of the people in our

1:33:48family. Really, really great stuff. Where do you go to find

1:33:53out more? Their website is fracture me.com. And their URL

1:34:01code is, I think, daring fireball. And if you've never

1:34:06ordered for them before, use that code daring fireball, and

1:34:09you will save 15% off your listeners first order. And if

1:34:14you're listening to the show, if you're like a Marco fan, you

1:34:16could use the code ATP and you'll save the same amount and you'll give the

1:34:20the mojo to to the accidental tech podcast ATP 15 ATP 15 what did that

1:34:30change used to be ATP right or did they I think I think in 2015 I think it became

1:34:34me to be 15 anyway you could do that long-term that you know they were

1:34:37sponsors before 2015 they've been long-term sponsors anyway it's all good

1:34:41they're a great company with a truly truly great product and you know

1:34:46If you've ever wondered why in the world do they keep sponsoring these podcasts?

1:34:49I swear it's because people keep buying the fractures from them

1:34:52So so keep it up and really really can't say enough about I just bought one as a gift a couple weeks ago

1:34:56I'm about to do another one. They make great gifts

1:34:58Yeah, you get you do get because most of the people in your family probably don't listen to your podcast just like mine

1:35:04I don't say they have no idea and when they see them they there really is like a whole like well

1:35:09How did in the world did you make this and you just say, you know, you could tell them just tell them

1:35:14go to fracturedme.com.

1:35:16- Yeah, no, I have severe gift giving anxiety every year.

1:35:21And to have an easy solution that's kind of like

1:35:24a go-to thing, like if I don't know what to get

1:35:26somebody in my family, I can get them a cute picture

1:35:28of my grandparents or my kid or something.

1:35:32That works out well.

1:35:33Yeah, I don't know.

1:35:35I'm always envious of your ad reads.

1:35:37You and Hello Internet, I think,

1:35:39do the best live reads I've heard.

1:35:41- Those bastards, those guys.

1:35:42- Aren't they frustratingly good?

1:35:44- Yeah.

1:35:45- They really are.

1:35:45- That actually, 'cause again, I do,

1:35:47I don't, like I listen to yours, you know,

1:35:49because I wanna see how you do it, you know,

1:35:51like it's a challenge.

1:35:52- That's why I listen to it.

1:35:54- It's just, it's, you know, like, okay,

1:35:55it's Squarespace again, what are you gonna do?

1:35:57You know, it's a challenge, it is,

1:35:59'cause I wanna keep it fresh for people who aren't skipping.

1:36:03I don't wanna say the same thing every time.

1:36:05The Hello Internet guys, God,

1:36:06they're fricking really good at it.

1:36:08- Yeah, like it's frustrating enough

1:36:10that their podcast is so good in general,

1:36:12but that they also just kill it on the ad reads

1:36:14and that they record, like I've always wanted

1:36:17to try recording the ads separately from the show

1:36:19and dropping them in afterwards.

1:36:21- I just thought about it.

1:36:22- I don't like doing it during the show

1:36:24because it makes me pay attention to something else

1:36:28during the show rather than what my co-host

1:36:30is talking about.

1:36:31And so like I always have in my mind,

1:36:32oh, I gotta do another ad now,

1:36:33and I, oh, what's it gonna be, load it up on screen,

1:36:36maybe read it a couple times first, like,

1:36:38and I'm having to do all that as Casey or Jon

1:36:40talking about something that and so I'm not listening to them I'm looking at an

1:36:43ad and so I feel like that makes the show worse but I I don't know I I

1:36:48haven't figured out how to do it well yet maybe I'll have to try it sometime

1:36:51and see I've I've been given serious thought to that exact same thing and I

1:36:54might play with it cuz I feel like it's the sort of thing I can I can play with

1:36:57and it's not irrevocable you know yeah but I feel like you do need some kind of

1:37:02sound effect to start and end it and I don't have one of those ready and

1:37:05that's one of the reasons I haven't done it yet because like if you just try to

1:37:07drop it in you sound different and everyone notices like it is very obvious

1:37:12like this is recorded at a different time your voice is more or less tired

1:37:16and raspy than it was and like in the surrounding parts of the show you can

1:37:19hear maybe the room sounds a little bit different maybe it's like a little bit

1:37:22more echoey or you were using the mic a little bit further away or a different

1:37:25mic that you were using two weeks ago or something like you can always tell when

1:37:28it's when it was recorded at a different time have you ever noticed me I've done

1:37:32that a few times have you ever noticed yeah every time I'll bet you did I

1:37:36- I notice every time.

1:37:37And I listen to podcasts on terrible headphones.

1:37:40And I notice every time.

1:37:41But that's just me, I'm a nerd.

1:37:43- Yeah, if I switch to that, when I have done it,

1:37:45it's because something has changed.

1:37:47Either I've made a terrible mistake,

1:37:49or somebody else has made a mistake,

1:37:51or I didn't get it in time.

1:37:55That there was some kind of communication problem

1:37:57and it's like, crap, I told Marco,

1:37:59we're gonna record at nine, I don't have it.

1:38:01I'll just fill it in later.

1:38:02And then when I've done that in the past,

1:38:04I've tried to fake it as best we can to do it.

1:38:07And if it doesn't come out perfectly, so what?

1:38:09If I were to switch, I would switch to something

1:38:11where it's obvious and it's, you know,

1:38:12there's a little, you know, sound effect or something.

1:38:15- Yeah, a jingle or a sound, yeah, something like that.

1:38:17'Cause I really do think it would, like,

1:38:20one of the reasons, like, I've always been interested

1:38:23in the idea of trying an ad-free show.

1:38:26But ATP is so big now, and it's not just me,

1:38:28that I, like, you know, I'm willing to gamble

1:38:32with large amounts of money of potential future income,

1:38:35but I can't make that decision for two other people alone.

1:38:38And so I don't wanna rock the boat there.

1:38:41But one of the reasons I was motivated

1:38:43to even consider rocking the boat there

1:38:44is because I don't like doing the ads in line,

1:38:47because I'm afraid of the attention it's taking away,

1:38:51of my attention it's taking away from the conversation.

1:38:55And I think that makes it worse, so I should try that.

1:38:57I gotta figure out what sounds to bookend it with

1:38:59and just try it.

1:39:00And I also like, I heavily edit the ad reads because,

1:39:04see this is why you frustrate me.

1:39:07Because I try to cap my ad reads to three minutes.

1:39:11And ideally it's at least one and a half,

1:39:14and it's at most three minutes.

1:39:16And if I, I almost always end up running way over that.

1:39:19I'll usually do it on the live show,

1:39:22I'll usually do a four minute ad read.

1:39:24And then in the edit, I edit it down to fit three.

1:39:27And I still feel like I'm not saying

1:39:29everything I wanted to say in the read. Meanwhile, you come

1:39:32in here and you talk at like one mile an hour during your

1:39:35ad reads and you manage to say everything that you need to

1:39:38say and they're not longer than three minutes. Usually, like

1:39:41they're not that much longer or shorter than mine. So you

1:39:44manage to somehow say way more with way fewer words in the

1:39:49same amount of time and your sounds more relaxed and more

1:39:51natural and mine sounds kind of stressed out because I'm

1:39:54trying to cram it all in in three minutes. It's kind of

1:39:56- That's probably right, I guess.

1:39:57- Yeah, maybe.

1:39:58Mine were brutal at first.

1:39:59They were really bad.

1:40:00I used to get, and I didn't get emails complaining about it.

1:40:03I got emails, very sympathetic emails.

1:40:06'Cause even though when I first started doing the show

1:40:08on my own without Dan Benjamin,

1:40:12and it was, obviously that was like my Marco moment

1:40:14where I had really angered the internet.

1:40:16The people who were angry refused to listen.

1:40:20So they weren't listening and sending me hate mail

1:40:22about how bad the show was.

1:40:24They weren't even listening, and they were just--

1:40:25You didn't even get to hate listeners?

1:40:27- I got some, but I think most of them just didn't.

1:40:31I really didn't get a lot of that.

1:40:33I think they just went right to iTunes

1:40:35and wrote terrible one-star reviews and they were done.

1:40:38The people who listened were people

1:40:39who were still enjoying it, and they were very sympathetic.

1:40:42But it was sort of like the sort of email, I think,

1:40:44that you get when you come down.

1:40:48It was exactly like the email I got

1:40:49when I talked about the stuff that's happened with my eye.

1:40:52And you get these really nice emails from people

1:40:54saying how sorry they are.

1:40:55and they have all my sympathy.

1:40:57And they're like, "I'm really sorry

1:40:59"about the way you're doing these ad reads.

1:41:00"It's terrible."

1:41:02It was like I had an affliction.

1:41:04- Yeah, but you picked it up pretty quickly.

1:41:07I mean, yeah, those first few were definitely rough.

1:41:09But I think by like the fifth or sixth episode,

1:41:11you were pretty much in a groove.

1:41:13- Yeah, well, if there's anything I did wrong,

1:41:15and I'm not a big fan of,

1:41:16like I read that the guy,

1:41:18the Noah, whatever his name is,

1:41:20just taking over the Daily Show,

1:41:21he did a whole week or so of test shows,

1:41:23that are never gonna air, but real shows, they do shows.

1:41:27I understand why you do that, and hosting a TV show

1:41:29that's as tight as The Daily Show

1:41:31really does have to be rehearsed.

1:41:34But you can't rehearse the whole episode

1:41:35because every day it's that day's news.

1:41:37So you have to get good at it.

1:41:38But if there's anything that I should've rehearsed

1:41:40and thrown away, I should've done sponsor reads

1:41:43instead of doing them.

1:41:44I should've just, not for episodes,

1:41:46I should've recorded some and enforced myself

1:41:49to listen to them and do it,

1:41:51'cause it didn't take too long.

1:41:53It only took a couple weeks before I got at least okay at it.

1:41:57So I could have just skipped the point where I was really, really terrible at it.

1:42:01Well, yeah, but that was part of the learning process.

1:42:04You wouldn't have learned it necessarily.

1:42:05I don't know.

1:42:07Anyway, the thing that really got me was on the last episode of Hello Internet when Brady

1:42:10did the fracture one.

1:42:13And it was that he had sent a picture to CGP Grey, sent a fracture to him of, what was

1:42:22it, the Jamaican rat?

1:42:23of the two animals that he's been obsessed with lately.

1:42:25- Yeah, no, the hen though.

1:42:27- The hen?

1:42:28- Yeah, the other one, yeah, the hen.

1:42:30Yeah, the official bird of Hello Internet.

1:42:32- Right, but had sent him a picture

1:42:35that related to an entire huge segment of the show

1:42:38that had already been gone.

1:42:39So it just had this beautiful serendipity

1:42:42and really made it feel like it was a part of the show.

1:42:46Again, like I said, ads are content.

1:42:49Part of the content of what you're serving is the ads.

1:42:51It's not something separate.

1:42:53And the Hello Internet, the way they do it,

1:42:56it really does feel like part of the show.

1:42:58- Those guys are so frustrating.

1:43:00And they have, they mentioned their numbers

1:43:04on the last show, they have way bigger

1:43:07listener bases than we do too.

1:43:09- Oh yeah. - It's with good reason

1:43:10'cause their show is awesome.

1:43:11And it's, people can enjoy that show

1:43:14without being huge tech nerds.

1:43:15Like our shows, you pretty much have to be

1:43:17a huge Apple nerd to really get much out of our shows.

1:43:20But their show is way more accessible

1:43:22and it really like they joke about a long time ago,

1:43:25they had a discussion about the two dudes talking

1:43:28podcast format, which is very common,

1:43:30especially two dudes talking loosely about tech matters.

1:43:34But I think what makes their show so great is that yes,

1:43:38there are a lot of two dudes talking shows,

1:43:40but they really perfected that format.

1:43:43Like to have these two specific people talking about

1:43:47whatever they talk about, like they have amazing host

1:43:50chemistry between the two of them.

1:43:52and they're both amazing characters.

1:43:54Like they're incredibly amusing to listen to

1:43:56and they play off each other well

1:43:58and it's very nicely edited.

1:43:59So you have this combination of just like,

1:44:01no wonder it's so popular

1:44:03'cause they're really good at it

1:44:04and it's a really good combination to begin with.

1:44:06- Yeah, they also both have good voices.

1:44:08- Yeah. - Which you really can't help

1:44:10and you know, what are you gonna do?

1:44:13- Well, that's one thing that I love about podcasting though.

1:44:16This whole episode's gonna be frustrating

1:44:17for like half the listeners who want us to talk about

1:44:19whatever Apple news happened this week.

1:44:21But one thing I love about podcasting,

1:44:24like when I was a kid, I used to,

1:44:26I think a lot of people did this,

1:44:27especially who were nerds like me.

1:44:29I used to record fake radio shows with my friends,

1:44:33basically like us talking into a cassette recorder

1:44:35as if we were on the radio and never listening back to it

1:44:39or listening back once and then that would be it.

1:44:42Like we'd make these fake,

1:44:44like I always wanted to be a radio DJ.

1:44:46And the reality is A, that is a terrible business.

1:44:51business of being an actual radio DJ is horrible. So that's problem number one.

1:44:57Problem number two is I was never going to be a DJ. I don't have the right voice.

1:45:02I don't speak well enough. I certainly don't have the background or the

1:45:06opportunity to become a DJ or the training like, you know, if there was any

1:45:10training like, I was never going to be a DJ. I just, I don't have the voice for it.

1:45:15I don't have the skills for it. I'm just not cut out for that job in the same way

1:45:19I'm not cut out to be like a football player.

1:45:21Like I'm just, that's just, I don't have,

1:45:23I'm not the person for that.

1:45:24I'm not made for that.

1:45:26But with podcasting, it's really quite a meritocracy

1:45:31in that like one of the beauties of this medium

1:45:32is that you don't need to attract the wide audience

1:45:35that TV and radio people do normally

1:45:38with like the locality issues and everything.

1:45:41With podcasting, even people who talk sloppily

1:45:46and have mediocre voices like me

1:45:48can, my job is podcasting.

1:45:51I talk on a version of the radio for a living.

1:45:56And the idea that like, I'm fulfilling this childhood dream

1:46:00of this thing I've always wanted to do

1:46:02that I really am not qualified to do,

1:46:04but it just happens to work out better in this medium.

1:46:07Like that is amazing to me.

1:46:09And as a listener of podcasts,

1:46:11as a massive listener of podcasts,

1:46:13I love listening to other shows

1:46:15that are also made by amateurs like me

1:46:18that are just talking about interesting stuff.

1:46:20And that's something, like the big public radio podcast,

1:46:25I don't listen to almost any of them

1:46:27because there's so much else going on

1:46:30that I wanna listen to, I don't have time for them.

1:46:33'Cause there's so much else that's made by amateurs

1:46:35and people like me that I'm much more interested in,

1:46:37that's much more narrowly focused than like,

1:46:40here's a story I'm gonna tell you

1:46:41about something interesting that happened.

1:46:42You know, like I don't need that.

1:46:44I have all my time is filled up with people

1:46:47talking about more narrow interests that I like better.

1:46:50- I totally agree.

1:46:52But it still makes me jealous when I hear

1:46:57the professionalism of Hello Internet.

1:47:00- Yeah, it is frustrating when people

1:47:02are really good podcasters who also have really good voices

1:47:05in production and speak well and everything.

1:47:08- They're two such interesting characters as well.

1:47:11- Exactly. - I think they're very honest.

1:47:12I don't think that they've made up personas

1:47:14and they're just being themselves,

1:47:15but they both seem like very nice fellows.

1:47:20- Absolutely.

1:47:20- Gray is obviously the straight guy.

1:47:25He's the more logical

1:47:30and doesn't come up with wacky ideas thing,

1:47:32but then he's got the crazy tick

1:47:34like that always comes up when he flies.

1:47:37He books a standby ticket

1:47:40and will wait weeks and weeks and weeks

1:47:42with not knowing when he's gonna fly,

1:47:44which is crazy.

1:47:45- Yeah, that's why that show is so great

1:47:47because you have these great, interesting people who,

1:47:52and the fact that Brady can tease that out of him

1:47:56and then hit him over the head with it constantly,

1:47:59they're able to push each other's buttons

1:48:00extremely well as well.

1:48:02Like it is, oh, it's so good.

1:48:04- Yeah, it's a really good show.

1:48:05So anybody who hasn't listened to it, go listen to it,

1:48:07but they're well beyond, like you said,

1:48:10they're well beyond the size of our audiences.

1:48:12We should have them talk about us for an hour.

1:48:14- Yeah, deservedly.

1:48:15So the funny thing was that they did a thing too,

1:48:16they've done a thing which is,

1:48:18which is actually interesting.

1:48:19I've been thinking, it's funny that you bring it up,

1:48:21'cause I was gonna bring it up.

1:48:22So anybody out there do,

1:48:23they did a thing where they solicited for the listeners

1:48:28of their show to write to them and tell them

1:48:30if they listened to the show while doing interesting things.

1:48:35Like what is the context, something beyond just,

1:48:38I listen to the show when I drive to work.

1:48:41And there's people who are like,

1:48:43there's like a guy who's like a surgeon.

1:48:45He does like surgery on like mice brains

1:48:47because he's studying the effects,

1:48:50some kind of scientist,

1:48:51and they put the mice through a study

1:48:52and then he performs surgery on their brain

1:48:54to see their effect.

1:48:55So while he's doing this,

1:48:57one of the things he does,

1:48:58he listens to podcasts and he listens to their show.

1:48:59Well, that's an interesting thing.

1:49:01And they had,

1:49:03they had a guy who,

1:49:09who manned the ladder, I don't know what you call it,

1:49:13the steps that Air Force One, when Air Force One lands,

1:49:17he's the guy who puts the ladder up there

1:49:20where the president comes down.

1:49:21- Yeah, the stair car, right?

1:49:22- Yeah, the stair car.

1:49:24Listens to their show while he does,

1:49:27and they even said, and just to make sure

1:49:29this guy doesn't get into trouble, he's very, very clear.

1:49:31He does this in, you have to stand here

1:49:34and wait for four hours for the president to come down.

1:49:36- While he's waiting.

1:49:37- He's not listening while the president might be

1:49:40coming down to staffs.

1:49:41He's paying attention and doing his job,

1:49:44but obviously it's a job with a lot of waiting involved

1:49:48because the president shows up when the president shows up.

1:49:51The president isn't running on a clock.

1:49:54What an interesting job though,

1:49:55and to think that that guy is alleviating the tedium

1:49:59of the waiting part of his job

1:50:01or while he's off duty or whatever

1:50:04by listening to their show.

1:50:05So anybody, I would be interested to know

1:50:07The same thing, if there are interesting contexts

1:50:09where people listen to the talk show.

1:50:12So you can just email them to me

1:50:13and maybe I'll read some of them in a future episode.

1:50:17I don't know anything about my audience.

1:50:22Like you said, the idea of you have to hook up the data

1:50:26and collect all the analytics for everything.

1:50:28- Oh yeah.

1:50:29- I don't wanna know.

1:50:30I do like knowing what's popular.

1:50:32I like to try to look at the stats and just to see

1:50:36if an article is unusually popular.

1:50:38And I like to see,

1:50:44actually it's not really audience tracking though.

1:50:47I like to see referral tracking

1:50:48and see if I'm getting an unusual amount of traffic

1:50:51from some other popular place or site or tweet.

1:50:54But in terms of knowing things about the audience,

1:50:59I don't wanna know that.

1:51:02- Yeah, well that's like,

1:51:03Even like the checking of the mint and everything,

1:51:06like back when I wrote the, my previous controversy,

1:51:11the Apple functional high ground thing,

1:51:16after that went crazy, I realized that I,

1:51:19like there was a day where like I just turned off analytics

1:51:23for the site during that, 'cause I was just kinda like,

1:51:24I don't wanna be motivated by this anymore.

1:51:27And it's kind of like, if you've gone on vacation

1:51:29and you stop checking Twitter for a while,

1:51:32and then you have such a massive pileup

1:51:34that you can't keep up and you just hit scroll to top

1:51:36and you realize like, oh, I didn't read Twitter

1:51:39for like three or four days

1:51:40and I missed nothing of importance.

1:51:42Then it's kind of eye-opening.

1:51:45Well, I had a similar kind of thing

1:51:47with analytics on my website

1:51:49where I ran first Mint for a while

1:51:51and also I ran Google Analytics for a while

1:51:53and eventually I realized when I turned it off

1:51:58for a little while after the, in the wake of all that drama,

1:52:00I just was like, I want some peace and quiet.

1:52:03I turned it off for a while

1:52:05and I realized I didn't miss it at all.

1:52:09And part of that is a luxury that we have that,

1:52:12we don't need to really know our day-to-day page views.

1:52:15The deck builds in advance for page views basically.

1:52:19And so we are paid a flat rate by the deck

1:52:23based on the general amount of traffic

1:52:25that we tend to have gotten over the last years or whatever.

1:52:28Like my rate for the deck hasn't changed

1:52:30in years, because my traffic is about the same.

1:52:34And so if I write something that gets all of a sudden

1:52:38a million page views out of the blue,

1:52:40I'm not gonna see another dime for that.

1:52:42And the deck has pre-sold the ads for that,

1:52:44and so they aren't seeing another dime for it.

1:52:45And that's just, so we have no incentive

1:52:50to temporarily juice page views or write things

1:52:53that are gonna get temporary traffic, really.

1:52:55And so the only reason I would really need to run

1:52:59web analytics of any kind is what you said.

1:53:03It's like for me to know, like, oh,

1:53:04where's traffic coming from?

1:53:06And where, you know, what do I write

1:53:10that gets meaningful numbers

1:53:11compared to anything else I write?

1:53:13And what I realized was that that information

1:53:16was not beneficial to my life or my work.

1:53:19It was, all it was doing was like being

1:53:22another vanity metric to check.

1:53:23And the reality is Twitter is that vanity metric now anyway,

1:53:26and I should probably stop checking that as well,

1:53:27but I still do.

1:53:28Like I will check the number of retweets that,

1:53:31like whenever I write a blog post, I tweet about it also.

1:53:34So I'll check like the number of retweets that got.

1:53:36And I have some idea like, oh, well, this one got two

1:53:40and this one got 40.

1:53:41So obviously that resonated with more people.

1:53:44But the actual web advertising or web tracking at that level

1:53:47for whatever reason, I've decided that's no longer a thing

1:53:50that I need to care about and so I don't run any.

1:53:53- Yeah, I like to know some of the user agent stuff

1:53:56and I can get this out of my server logs.

1:54:00It's just that, and that's the one thing

1:54:02I've been talking about getting rid of Google Analytics.

1:54:04I'm going to, I mean, it's seriously just a matter of days

1:54:09that I just unhook it.

1:54:10I probably should just do it tomorrow.

1:54:12And mainly because I think that it's privacy invasive

1:54:17and I actually think that it's wrong of me

1:54:20to be using Google Analytics.

1:54:22and they have a very opaque privacy policy

1:54:26that as I've read it, and I've done this over the,

1:54:29I've been using Google Analytics for years,

1:54:31and there was a whole year or two period

1:54:32where I stopped using it, and I missed some data,

1:54:36like what percentage of my users are using which browser,

1:54:40and what percentage of them are on iOS

1:54:42versus Mac OS versus other operating systems.

1:54:45And there's ways to get that without using Analytics,

1:54:47but Google just re-hooking up Google Analytics

1:54:50was the easiest way to do it.

1:54:52And then it felt bad because a lot of my long-term stats

1:54:55were entirely out of whack because I had this

1:54:57like 14 month period where I had shut it off.

1:54:59But I've read their private, the privacy issue

1:55:03is the main thing that makes me want to shut it off,

1:55:05above and beyond anything else,

1:55:06is that I can't shake the suspicion

1:55:09that Google is using the cookies they set

1:55:11for Google Analytics to track the people

1:55:13who read Daring Fireball across the web

1:55:16and using it for advertising,

1:55:18even though I don't use any Google advertising.

1:55:20and if you read their privacy policy,

1:55:22to me at least, to me it's like reading a foreign language.

1:55:25And it's the way that I'm amazed and impressed

1:55:28by attorneys who write the contracts

1:55:32that run the whole world.

1:55:34Because I think I'm a good reader,

1:55:36I've always tested high in terms of reading comprehension.

1:55:39I read most contracts and it might as well

1:55:42be written in a foreign language.

1:55:43I don't understand anything,

1:55:45I don't understand what is going on.

1:55:47and Google's privacy policy for analytics

1:55:50is to me that type of privacy policy.

1:55:52I understand what each of the words mean

1:55:54and in the aggregate I have no idea what it means.

1:55:58And I've come to the conclusion that

1:56:00if you don't understand what a privacy policy means,

1:56:02your worst assumptions are probably right.

1:56:05- Right.

1:56:06And you're right that by having Google Analytics

1:56:11on your site, you are selling your visitors' data

1:56:16to Google without their knowledge.

1:56:18And it's one of those things,

1:56:19it's kind of uncomfortable.

1:56:20Like a lot of the things in web publishing and advertising,

1:56:24if you actually face it,

1:56:26if you actually think about all the ramifications of that,

1:56:28and you face the truth of that,

1:56:29and you face the reality of that,

1:56:31it is uncomfortable.

1:56:32And you have to weigh this decision of like,

1:56:35do I keep using this for the utility it provides,

1:56:40or do I take a principled stand

1:56:42and accept the cost of that stand?

1:56:45So Google Analytics gives you information

1:56:47like how many people are in what country

1:56:48and even like within the US, like what state,

1:56:50like how many, you know, and unsurprisingly,

1:56:53you know, my site is largely US,

1:56:55a lot of people in the UK, a lot of people in Germany,

1:56:58I think Germany's always been the third country,

1:57:00but you're already down at a very low percentage

1:57:02and then everybody else is spread around the world.

1:57:04And then within the US, tons of people

1:57:06on the Northeast Coast, most of them in California

1:57:10and most of them in California largely centered

1:57:13in the northern part of California.

1:57:14It's exactly who you think.

1:57:17I don't need Google Analytics to tell me that though.

1:57:19And I find it weird and I just wonder

1:57:21how the hell did they know that?

1:57:22And I know there's ways to go back from IP addresses

1:57:26and stuff like that, but I just can't help but worry

1:57:29that part of it is that if you're logged into Google

1:57:32from Gmail and then you go over to a separate tab

1:57:34and you're at Daring Fireball, that they're saying,

1:57:37oh, we know Marco lives in New York

1:57:39because we know everything about Marco

1:57:42and we've already got a cookie on this system

1:57:44that's right there that does this.

1:57:46- Right, and it doesn't take much

1:57:48to uniquely identify somebody between sites on the web.

1:57:51Like, you can, just by analyzing some very basic stuff

1:57:55about the requests they make,

1:57:56even if they block almost every kind of ad,

1:57:58you know, if they come to your site a couple times

1:58:00and if they, you know, you can just kind of match,

1:58:03even if their IP changes,

1:58:05you can just match like somebody's approximate zip code

1:58:07by using IP lookup and match that with like

1:58:12the request headers that their browser send,

1:58:14which include the browser's version,

1:58:16like the exact version, the OS exact version,

1:58:18stuff like that.

1:58:19Maybe sometimes if it has certain plugins,

1:58:21then the plugin version, like Flash or Java,

1:58:24those are all in the headers that it sends on every request.

1:58:27So if you just take a couple of those things,

1:58:30a couple of those data points,

1:58:31you can uniquely identify people surprisingly quickly,

1:58:34like with only two or three different data points

1:58:36of that kind of set.

1:58:38So it is very much like

1:58:41if you give them an inch to take a foot.

1:58:43Like, you have to be very careful what you allow

1:58:47on your site if you wanna actually be protective

1:58:49of people's privacy and you have to be aware as a visitor

1:58:52that you might think that you have more privacy,

1:58:55but in reality, you are inadvertently leaking data

1:59:00all over the place to everybody who's willing to capture it.

1:59:02And you might not care.

1:59:04Most people don't think about it

1:59:06and they might not care if you told them.

1:59:08But, and especially young people tend not to care.

1:59:11but certainly if you're privacy minded,

1:59:15you have to be incredibly wary of what you let in

1:59:17because they can do so much with so little.

1:59:21- If you go, if you're logged into Google Analytics,

1:59:25I was here, and you go to the bottom.

1:59:28Maybe they have a separate one, I don't know,

1:59:29but when you go and hit Privacy Policy,

1:59:32it just takes you to Google's main privacy policy,

1:59:35which is for everything that Google does.

1:59:40So it's just, I don't even know if that's what they mean.

1:59:45What I want to know as a publisher is what are my readers

1:59:49being exposed to here and what's being tracked about them.

1:59:52And it doesn't seem like there's any good way

1:59:54to get that answer.

1:59:55Or if there is, I'll be damned if I can find it.

1:59:58And to me, that's just worrisome.

2:00:00So I don't know, I really gotta get rid of it.

2:00:03I'm sure there's other ways I can do it, I don't know.

2:00:07There's this, the system I'm thinking about installing

2:00:09called Piwik, Piwik, P-I-W-I-K. Yeah, that's a pretty common one. Yeah, I'm not quite sure

2:00:15what information is there, but the gist of Piwik, Piwik, whatever it's called, is that

2:00:20it's like Mint in that it's locally stored. And so I would be running it, my own copy

2:00:25of it on my server, storing my copy of the stats in my SQL database. And there are no

2:00:32cookies that are shared across other sites or anything like that that would track you.

2:00:37All it is is knowledge of what people coming to my site do.

2:00:40So there'd be nothing privacy invasive about it

2:00:43at all, other than the fact that you are a person who

2:00:46is reading my site, which I obviously do know.

2:00:51Some of the stats, though, that from--

2:00:53I don't know what PyWIC has, but some of the stuff that

2:00:55is interesting and I will miss, but I don't miss it enough

2:00:57to keep using Google Analytics, is

2:00:59like the number of people using which browser

2:01:01and how many people use which operating system

2:01:03and stuff like that.

2:01:04Right.

2:01:05And some of that you can get out of the user agent,

2:01:06but a lot of it you have to use JavaScript to get.

2:01:08It's like things like whether it has written a screen or not

2:01:11but I just think so much of that stuff

2:01:13is just becoming so irrelevant.

2:01:15What would you actually do with that information?

2:01:19Most of it is not that important.

2:01:21- Well, and the other fact is that I don't like,

2:01:23like I truly do believe, I'll say it over and over again,

2:01:25if there's a theme of this episode,

2:01:27it's that everything you publish on your site

2:01:29is content and counts.

2:01:31And so I don't want JavaScript executing

2:01:33that's getting the bounds of the screen.

2:01:35It's a waste of CPU time.

2:01:37And I get all Syracusey here, but I'm

2:01:40sure it doesn't take very long for a little bit of JavaScript

2:01:43to just figure out what the current screen size is

2:01:46and send it back.

2:01:49But every little thing you do that tests like that adds up

2:01:51to something, and all of a sudden,

2:01:53you've got five seconds of load time for ads and trackers

2:01:58and analytics.

2:02:00And each little step of it is a tenth of a second.

2:02:04- Exactly.

2:02:07- So anyway, gotta get rid of Google Analytics.

2:02:09I might as well take a break right here

2:02:14and talk about our next sponsor.

2:02:16It is a new sponsor, first time sponsor of the show.

2:02:20They're called JustWorks, J-U-S-T-W-O-R-K-S.

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2:02:31I'm already asleep, this sounds terrible.

2:02:33These are all the things that if you're a small business

2:02:36owner that you could be doing instead of listening

2:02:40to the talk show.

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2:02:44Well, you could instead just let JustWorks

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2:02:49JustWorks helps businesses take care of all that type of,

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2:02:57Not that it's crap that it doesn't matter.

2:02:58I think most of your employees think payroll

2:03:00is very important, but the bookkeeping aspects of it,

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2:03:06and making all the books add up

2:03:07and making sure everybody gets paid

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2:03:11You're not in a business of running payroll.

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2:03:36But all those little details of HR and payroll

2:03:40and stuff like that can make it feel overwhelming.

2:03:43It's probably the sort of thing that keeps a lot of people

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2:04:40I bet there's a lot of people who run companies

2:04:43that have to do stuff like that.

2:04:44- Yeah, I had to do that for a little while

2:04:46and I used one of the other big services to do it

2:04:48and they forgot to file the state workers comp stuff

2:04:52and I was threatened by New York State

2:04:55to have to pay $15,000 a day until it was resolved

2:04:59and I was able to negotiate that down

2:05:01and only pay a few thousand bucks, but man.

2:05:03Yeah, you want a company that does that right.

2:05:07And I can tell you, the big guys don't always,

2:05:09so I would definitely give Just Works a shot.

2:05:11- Yeah, really good.

2:05:12I would definitely do it.

2:05:15I'd say anything, it's always worth reevaluating in your life.

2:05:19Anything that is a pain in your ass,

2:05:20you should look and see if there's a way

2:05:22that you can pay someone to do it for you.

2:05:24- Yeah, that's a really good rule in general.

2:05:28- And it's the best part of the internet era

2:05:33of modern society is that an entirely new realm of things

2:05:39can be automated that just wasn't feasible before, right?

2:05:45Like, you know, it's a silly example,

2:05:49but like those buttons that Amazon gives you out now.

2:05:53So like when you run out of detergent,

2:05:54you can just hit a button

2:05:55and have detergent sent to your house.

2:05:58- Those are so bizarre.

2:05:59- But there's no way that could happen

2:06:00before the internet, right?

2:06:01There's no way before the internet

2:06:03that you could just easily set up a thing

2:06:06that would do the payroll and HR for your company.

2:06:09Like it just wasn't feasible.

2:06:10How would you interact with them?

2:06:12You need the internet and a website.

2:06:13You need some way of interacting with them.

2:06:16Like the Sears catalog existed,

2:06:18So you could order stuff to get shipped to your house

2:06:21before the internet, but you can't have

2:06:24like a print-based interaction with the company

2:06:27that's handling your HR, you know.

2:06:29- I think you'd have to use a fax machine.

2:06:31Maybe it'd be an LP player.

2:06:33- You know, I think right now I might be,

2:06:37this might be a good thing to keep track of,

2:06:38is how long I've gone without being asked

2:06:42to either send or receive a fax.

2:06:44And I think, I think if I had been doing that,

2:06:47know, like this many days since an accident at the plant. I think that right now, knock

2:06:52on wood, I might be in the longest stretch of not having been asked to do a fax in my

2:07:00life.

2:07:01Until you buy a house.

2:07:02Oh, are you serious?

2:07:03Oh yeah, that's going to break your stretch. If you're going to buy a house anytime soon,

2:07:08I'm pretty sure they still… I mean, these days you can usually… somebody who asks

2:07:13you to fax something, you can usually say,

2:07:16can I scan it and email it to you instead?

2:07:18And usually they will say yes, but not always.

2:07:21The percentage of time you can do that is going up,

2:07:26thank God, but we're not there yet.

2:07:27- I don't have a working scanner in the house.

2:07:30Or I do, I shouldn't say I don't have a working scanner.

2:07:33I've got a Doxy, but I don't know--

2:07:36- You gotta go scan Snap.

2:07:38- I don't have, I don't know where it is.

2:07:41and Amy, I've mentioned this before,

2:07:43Amy recently gave me a wonderful gift,

2:07:46she cleaned up my office.

2:07:47My office is a mess, I mean it's like a serious

2:07:51Andy Rooney situation, but I do have, it's not a system.

2:07:55I'm not even saying it's a good idea,

2:07:57but I generally, if I go a long time without cleaning up

2:08:00my office, I have a vague idea of in which pile,

2:08:04on which shelf something is.

2:08:05She cleaned it all up and it's all organized and stuff,

2:08:10but I don't know where that is.

2:08:11So usually when I have to scan something,

2:08:13I don't know where an actual scanner is.

2:08:16And so I just take a picture with my phone.

2:08:19Like I'll ask them, I'll say,

2:08:20"Can I scan it and email it to you?"

2:08:23And they'll say, "Yes."

2:08:24And I'll just take a picture with my phone

2:08:26and then crop out the table.

2:08:27Just send them that.

2:08:30And I've never once heard anything.

2:08:32- Well, and there are also,

2:08:33there are lots of apps that will do a fancier job of that.

2:08:36Like they'll use, they'll still use the phone camera,

2:08:38but they'll be able to like detect where the page is

2:08:40and then like de-skew it so it's properly,

2:08:42you know, lined up and everything.

2:08:44- I don't even know.

2:08:45- I know Smile makes one, I think it's PDF Scan Plus.

2:08:47- Yeah, yeah, exactly.

2:08:49- Yeah, they make one, there's a bunch of these

2:08:50on the App Store, but I have theirs, I'm pretty sure.

2:08:52I honestly never use it 'cause I have a ScanSnap,

2:08:56which is awesome, but a lot of people use those apps

2:08:59on the phone and they're fine.

2:09:00And you know, for your scanning volume,

2:09:02which sounds like it's very low, that's probably fine.

2:09:05- It is extremely low, very, very low on the scanning volume.

2:09:10- Anything else you wanna say about peace?

2:09:12- No.

2:09:13(laughing)

2:09:16I'm glad it's over.

2:09:17I mean, it really does seem like it's over now.

2:09:19Like I really, you know, I'm still getting like the,

2:09:22the various like inquiries from media people.

2:09:27I got a good one earlier.

2:09:29Let me, this is a guy on Twitter asked me earlier,

2:09:34any chance you can join us for a webinar on ad blockers

2:09:37for the ad industry this coming Tuesday.

2:09:40I can DM you more details.

2:09:42I can't imagine a tweet that was less well-crafted

2:09:49to get my response than that.

2:09:52Yeah, so I'm still getting a lot of these media requests

2:09:58from people who want me to go speak at their webinars

2:10:01to the ad industry about ads, but for the most part,

2:10:05everything else has died down.

2:10:06and it is, I'm just so relieved.

2:10:09And so now I'm back to working on Overcast,

2:10:11which is so much better.

2:10:13Like as I said, it's probably not gonna make anywhere

2:10:16near the amount of money that Peace did,

2:10:17but I don't care because I'm so much happier working on it.

2:10:21It's no contest.

2:10:23- I thought that you really, it seemed on your show,

2:10:27and this wasn't even talking to you,

2:10:29but it just seemed listening to ATP

2:10:31that it really hit you hard personally.

2:10:35The thing that seemed to me to most upset you

2:10:38was the idea that this thing that you built in two weeks,

2:10:43and I think you're probably right.

2:10:44I mean, maybe on and off you've been thinking

2:10:45about it all summer, but a really, really low level

2:10:50of effort relative to everything else

2:10:52was going to significantly outgrowse

2:10:56the app that you've been working on for years

2:11:02and thinking about for even longer.

2:11:04And that you want to keep working on for years to come and that that seemed to really get to you

2:11:09Yeah, I mean and you know, like it is really it is impossible to

2:11:14to

2:11:16understate how little code there is in peace like

2:11:19people who asked me like a bunch of people in a bunch of the angry responses were

2:11:24along the lines of the only responsible thing for you to do is to open source it since you abandoned it and

2:11:31First of all, I can't because it has ghostery data,

2:11:33which I don't have the rights to,

2:11:34but the actual application code

2:11:38that is not just the database of sites is so tiny.

2:11:42There's almost no code there

2:11:44because Apple basically made

2:11:46this entire content blocking framework

2:11:47to be really efficiently designed to create ad blockers.

2:11:52And so that's why I assume from the beginning,

2:11:55I assumed that mine wouldn't get significant traction

2:11:58because I assumed there'd be tons of them.

2:12:00right on day one, and there were a handful,

2:12:04but not nearly as many as I expected.

2:12:06But yeah, but that did, you know,

2:12:08the reality was that the iOS ad blocker business

2:12:12is not a technical challenge at all.

2:12:16It is, I mean, I suppose if you've never made an app before,

2:12:19it's as challenging as making any other kind of app,

2:12:21but if you are an experienced app developer,

2:12:25you can crap out a content blocker in a week or less.

2:12:28You can do it in a couple days.

2:12:29I mean, it is so easy to do.

2:12:33And it is therefore not intellectually stimulating,

2:12:36it's not satisfying really beyond the first couple days,

2:12:41then it's just grunt work and it's just keeping up

2:12:43the database, which is really boring,

2:12:44which is not programming,

2:12:46and it's not intellectually valuable.

2:12:50So it is not stimulating if you desire

2:12:53that kind of intellectual satisfaction.

2:12:54So, whereas Overcast is full of really satisfying,

2:12:59complex technical problems that require my brain

2:13:05to be really working at its best to solve properly.

2:13:08And that is incredibly satisfying to me.

2:13:11And I would much rather work on that.

2:13:16- Do you have the number, do you know how many

2:13:17ATP listeners listen to via Overcast?

2:13:21I don't have a head, it's something like 60%.

2:13:24It's in that ballpark.

2:13:27- Yeah, I think it's very close to that for me,

2:13:29'cause I do get those numbers from SoundCloud,

2:13:32where I host the audio.

2:13:35Let's see how I, I always forget how to click around

2:13:40and get it though.

2:13:42Oh yeah, Overcast, number one.

2:13:43Yeah, even more, and second place is

2:13:48Apple Core Media iPhone, which I'm 99% sure

2:13:52translates to the built-in podcast app.

2:13:55- Yeah, it also includes anything with AV player,

2:13:58so if you're playing a webpage, Embed,

2:14:02or certain podcast apps actually report themselves as that,

2:14:07just because they don't change it,

2:14:08or they can't reach that part of the API

2:14:10with the level they're playing at.

2:14:12So some will be included in there.

2:14:14- Yeah, for me it's a little, it's right around 50%,

2:14:17So it's not quite 60%, but no surprise

2:14:20that it's more like 60 for you, since you wrote the thing.

2:14:25But it's-- - I'll just double check.

2:14:27It's actually, I'm about 50.

2:14:29- Yeah, that's right.

2:14:30It's right around 50. - 49.92 on three episodes ago,

2:14:34'cause I figured that gives people enough time

2:14:35to actually download it.

2:14:37So yeah, I'm up there.

2:14:39- Actually, let me change it to a month

2:14:43and see if that changes anything.

2:14:46Yeah, actually it's even more, actually if I look bigger,

2:14:50it's actually more, yeah.

2:14:53'Cause I haven't had an episode in the last seven days.

2:14:55So if you count the whole month,

2:14:57which gets to all the people who listen right away,

2:14:59and I think it under samples the people

2:15:03of the last seven days because the biggest fans of the show

2:15:05listen when they're new, and so in the last seven days,

2:15:07there haven't been any.

2:15:08So really, really overwhelmingly number one

2:15:11for my listeners.

2:15:13And if anybody out there has been curious about it,

2:15:14I really do recommend it,

2:15:15not just 'cause Marco's on the show today,

2:15:16but it's my favorite app for listening to podcasts.

2:15:19- I'm really good at promotion,

2:15:21so here I am talking about the app

2:15:22that I just pulled off the store for two hours.

2:15:25And meanwhile, I'm gonna ship Overcast 2.0 pretty soon.

2:15:29And I'm not gonna be right back on to talk about that

2:15:33in like three weeks or whatever.

2:15:35I'm really not good at this promotion.

2:15:36- Yeah, you're not good at it at all.

2:15:38The big new feature in Overcast 2.0 is the streaming engine,

2:15:42which is in addition to just letting you listen

2:15:47to stuff right away instead of download the whole episode,

2:15:51it's really more of like a just play.

2:15:55It's like a just play interface.

2:15:56So whether you care about stream,

2:15:57if you think you care about streaming podcasts or not,

2:16:00if you've ever been frustrated

2:16:01because you wanna just start playing something

2:16:03but your phone's been asleep or whatever

2:16:05and it didn't download in the background

2:16:06or you just got the alert that the new episode

2:16:09of Hello Internet is out

2:16:09and you wanna listen to it right away,

2:16:11It just means that you hit the play button and it'll just start playing.

2:16:15So many people, when I was talking a year ago about how streaming was going to be a

2:16:20big deal and I didn't even include it in 1.0 because I knew that not everybody would need

2:16:25it, I heard from so many people who said, "Please don't work on that.

2:16:29Please do other things because I don't care about streaming."

2:16:32And granted, I heard from way more people who said, "I won't use this until it has streaming,"

2:16:37which was the more common emotion by far,

2:16:41but a lot of people just keep saying,

2:16:43"I don't need it, I will never use it."

2:16:45But the reality is, it is really nice to have

2:16:48for those times when, you know, what you said,

2:16:50an episode just came out or just came in,

2:16:52you just got, you just synced it,

2:16:53and you wanna start listening to it right now.

2:16:56And podcasts can be, you know, 50, 100 megs,

2:16:59and not every CDN is fast, and not every connection

2:17:01that you might have is fast.

2:17:02And so, a lot of times, you know,

2:17:04if you have to wait for the whole podcast to download,

2:17:08you know, it might take 10, 20 seconds

2:17:10or it might take five or 10 minutes.

2:17:12No matter what it takes, it feels like an eternity

2:17:14as you're sitting there watching this stupid download thing,

2:17:161%, 2%, and you're like, oh my God,

2:17:19I just wanna listen to it now.

2:17:20And so like streaming really makes everything

2:17:23a little bit better.

2:17:24And it enables a bunch of other little stuff.

2:17:26Like it enables me to, although I haven't done this yet,

2:17:30to put a play button on the notifications for new episodes

2:17:34that you can just start playing them immediately.

2:17:36Like stuff like that, just like there's so many new

2:17:38little things that it makes possible

2:17:40and so many old things that it makes better.

2:17:42'Cause right now with streaming now you can just,

2:17:44as long as you are connected somehow,

2:17:46you can tap on any episode in any list,

2:17:49whether you have it or not, and it just starts playing.

2:17:51- Yeah, and it's one of those things where, again,

2:17:54the absolutist position, it just doesn't work

2:17:58in software design, where if you wanna say,

2:17:59nope, no settings whatsoever, the app,

2:18:02I'm gonna make all the choices for the user

2:18:04and do them right way.

2:18:05Or you could say everything should be configurable

2:18:07and the users should be able to configure everything.

2:18:09Well, both of those extremes are absurd.

2:18:12And if you think you're sticking to them,

2:18:14you're fooling yourself.

2:18:15The right way to think about it is,

2:18:16you do have kind of have to pick which side

2:18:18of the 50 yard line you're gonna be on though.

2:18:20Are you gonna make this sort of app

2:18:22where you're going to default to not offering options

2:18:26and configurability and maybe, you know,

2:18:30you'll wind up not having enough options

2:18:32Or are you gonna default to saying yes to most things

2:18:35and having options for things?

2:18:38And you're gonna wind up with a complex number of settings.

2:18:42And one way or the other,

2:18:44you're gonna disappoint some users.

2:18:46Clearly, you, Marco Arment, err on the side

2:18:52of not offering too many options in the stuff that you build.

2:18:55I mean, and peace was a canonical example of that.

2:18:59But you have to, you've talked about this on ATP.

2:19:02there have to be some settings for streaming

2:19:04because it's different people have it around the world,

2:19:08even maybe even within the country,

2:19:10even just in the United States,

2:19:12have incredibly different situations with,

2:19:15and tolerance levels for data charges, right?

2:19:19There's people who are living in countries

2:19:21where their online data is still measured in megabytes,

2:19:26not gigabytes.

2:19:30or people who are traveling internationally

2:19:32and are on an international data plan

2:19:35and you're measured in megabytes, not gigabytes.

2:19:38If you're on a 25 megabyte data plan,

2:19:41you cannot download an episode of the talk show

2:19:43over cellular unless you wanna pay over its charges.

2:19:48But then there's plenty of other people

2:19:49who have unlimited data or virtually unlimited data

2:19:53with 15 or 20 gigabytes a month

2:19:55and 150 megabyte podcast is no big deal

2:19:58and they wanna download it there.

2:19:59So there have to be settings.

2:20:01- I mean, the funny thing is,

2:20:02like going back to our earlier conversation,

2:20:05I really sweat a lot of the details around this stuff

2:20:07to try to minimize data transfer.

2:20:09Meanwhile, you view a couple of web pages on a big site,

2:20:13and that's as much as a podcast episode.

2:20:16- It is, it's,

2:20:18some of the, the fact that people

2:20:20are measuring these things now,

2:20:21I've always known that things are big,

2:20:23and that some sites are obviously serving too much data,

2:20:26or a ridiculous amount compared to the,

2:20:29what, you know, something, if it's an article

2:20:31I just wanna read, it should not be measured in megabytes.

2:20:34- Right.

2:20:35- But now that people are actually measuring it

2:20:36while they test these content blockers,

2:20:38it is like, holy crap, no wonder when I was in Ireland

2:20:42for OOL that I mowed through my 100 megabyte data plan.

2:20:46While I thought I was being, you know,

2:20:51conservative with how much I used my phone,

2:20:54I thought that, you know, hey, I'll just read

2:20:57a couple articles on Techmeme and see

2:20:59if there's anything new going on. Well, no wonder I ate through 100 megabytes. It's like

2:21:02one page on the verge load, seven megabytes. Right? Yeah. Like you see all these, all these

2:21:06net reports now, like pages, seven megs, nine megs, 30 megs on the Boston.com was that is

2:21:11like some create. And it's like a podcast episode is like 30 to 50 megs usually. These

2:21:17are not like, like that's, that's eight, 10 web pages. Maybe like it's not, that's really

2:21:23scary. That's really scary and really sad. But anyway, yeah. So with streaming, I, yeah,

2:21:27I've done a lot.

2:21:28I've actually offered, I'm offering very few options

2:21:31on 2.0, and we'll see how that plays out.

2:21:33You know, you're right, you can't,

2:21:35the absolute positions never work.

2:21:37There's always gonna be realities

2:21:40and also market pressures that set in.

2:21:42So I'm trying to have as few settings as possible

2:21:45to still make it good.

2:21:47But of course, everyone's trying that,

2:21:48and everyone, again, draws that line in different places.

2:21:51- Yeah, I think the biggest thing

2:21:52is to try to avoid surprise.

2:21:54- Right.

2:21:56- Yeah, like my theory, like right now,

2:21:57the way it works right now,

2:21:59it's probably the way it's gonna ship,

2:22:00is if you choose to stream something,

2:22:03it will always allow it to use cellular in that case.

2:22:07And the rationale there is that,

2:22:10well, that's how everything else works.

2:22:11You know, if you load a webpage,

2:22:13it doesn't ask, it doesn't say waiting for wifi.

2:22:16You know, it just, if you click on a link

2:22:18to load a webpage, it just loads it

2:22:20via whatever connection it has available.

2:22:21And if you want to restrict apps to not use cellular,

2:22:24So you can do that globally in settings.

2:22:26You can say per app, you can go to Overcast

2:22:28in the system settings app, and you can say,

2:22:30just never allow this app to use any cellular data.

2:22:32Like, that's a switch right there.

2:22:33You can do it.

2:22:33And a lot of people do.

2:22:35And so all I have to do is I don't

2:22:37have to cover the case of people who

2:22:39want the app to use no cell data,

2:22:41because the system covers that.

2:22:43I have to cover the case of people

2:22:45who want to use it sometimes or want to use it always.

2:22:51And so the way everything else works--

2:22:53web pages, more importantly stuff like YouTube.

2:22:56Like if you, you know, YouTube is obviously massive.

2:23:00That is the entire internet to people like your son

2:23:03and lots of other people in the world.

2:23:04Like that's a big deal.

2:23:06You know, YouTube, if you are on cellular data

2:23:10and you launch a YouTube thing

2:23:12and go view a YouTube video, it just plays it.

2:23:15It streams it and it plays it over cell data and it's fine.

2:23:18If you go play a song these days,

2:23:20you're probably playing it off cell data.

2:23:22you know, most of that's how most people are listening to songs.

2:23:24Like, so the idea of like having to like prompt the user or make a lot of granular settings

2:23:30for when to use cell data, I think is outdated.

2:23:33And so now I think I can get away with the current options that I have, which is literally,

2:23:40it just, it always allows cell data on streaming because you initiated that.

2:23:43Like you, the user said, play this now.

2:23:45And so in my opinion, then you don't have to ask, are you sure you want to play it

2:23:50over cell data because you're currently on the cell network?

2:23:52No, these days, what year is this?

2:23:53You play it now.

2:23:55And then the only option I have is

2:23:57whether automatic background downloads should use cellular.

2:24:03And it's default to off.

2:24:04So the automatic background downloads

2:24:06will default to Wi-Fi only.

2:24:08Because in that case, it's like, well, you didn't initiate this.

2:24:11This came in outside of your control.

2:24:13It could have come in the middle of the night

2:24:15when you were asleep.

2:24:16And your iPad downloaded an entire episode of Mad Men

2:24:18and burned through your whole Verizon cap.

2:24:20That could have happened.

2:24:21So, you know, that is a preference to me.

2:24:25That is like, okay, do you have so much data

2:24:28that you always want the app to use

2:24:31as much of it as it needs to,

2:24:33or do you want to basically use it on demand?

2:24:36- Yeah, that seems about right.

2:24:37That seems right.

2:24:38Let the automatic stuff stay on Wi-Fi

2:24:40and let the user-initiated stuff play.

2:24:43And however, you know, you're never gonna win,

2:24:45somebody's gonna complain,

2:24:47but I think in general,

2:24:49it's actually, your logic is completely correct,

2:24:53that if the user hits play

2:24:54and they have a working network connection, they mean play.

2:24:57- Right, because that's how, you know,

2:24:59podcast apps historically have not worked that way always,

2:25:02like they've offered more granular control,

2:25:04but I'm not, see, I'm not looking at what other podcast apps

2:25:06are doing to solve this problem.

2:25:08I'm looking at what other apps are doing, not podcasts,

2:25:10like just what people expect based on the reality

2:25:14of other apps that exist in the universe today.

2:25:16And what that is these days is a lot of streaming media.

2:25:19And it just uses cellular when it needs to

2:25:21and it doesn't ask you.

2:25:22- Yeah, I think part of it too is that

2:25:24things have changed so quickly in so few years

2:25:26and that streaming in general has just become,

2:25:28it's a huge phenomenon.

2:25:31But podcasting started back, I mean the name even says,

2:25:35you know, it's the iPod, you know, that's the podcasting,

2:25:39from a time when you downloaded stuff first

2:25:42and then synced it over to your iPod and USB

2:25:45and that it was a big deal.

2:25:46and podcast episodes were things you had to wait for

2:25:50while they downloaded, 'cause they were big.

2:25:52Whereas, you know, they're not that big anymore,

2:25:55and most people, an awful lot of people

2:25:58have cellular network connections that handle it easily.

2:26:01'Cause they can handle video, if they can handle video,

2:26:02you can handle audio easily.

2:26:04- Exactly, you know, so, and there was,

2:26:06there's also, like, there's other implementation details

2:26:08that were tricky problems.

2:26:09Like, one of them is, if you're on cellular,

2:26:12how much should the streamer read ahead of the file?

2:26:17Like, should it just keep downloading

2:26:18until it has the whole thing?

2:26:20Or should it only buffer ahead

2:26:22like five minutes worth at a time, you know, and so on?

2:26:25And the decision I came to on that is

2:26:28it should just download as much as it can

2:26:30whenever it feels like it.

2:26:31So if you start an episode of playing over cellular,

2:26:35you know, in streaming,

2:26:37it will download as much as it can

2:26:39until the connection drops or until it finishes the file.

2:26:42that's it because any other solution that I thought of and

2:26:45tried would fail in other ways like it would it would be

2:26:49inconvenient or annoying or it wouldn't be what I wanted in

2:26:51other situations and the fact is an entire podcast episode.

2:26:55You know most people who listen to podcasts aren't listening to

2:26:58shows like this that are two hours long. Most people are

2:27:01listening to stuff like you know public radio shows that

2:27:04are maybe twenty thirty minutes, and so those are like

2:27:08fifteen megs twenty megs like they they they were really

2:27:11small files and again that's like two verge articles so so

2:27:15it's no big deal to buffer ahead whereas it is a big deal

2:27:18if somebody is driving on a long highway trip and they're

2:27:21counting on streaming to play their their podcast for them

2:27:24and they lose reception for a few minutes because they're in

2:27:26the middle of the mountains and the show that they were

2:27:29downloading just drops because it didn't buffer ahead enough

2:27:31and it could have it had the connection back there. It could

2:27:33have it could have downloaded the whole show had plenty of

2:27:35time to download it and then just didn't you know so there's

2:27:38situations like that or or you know more commonly like if

2:27:41if you're on a metro system that's underground

2:27:42and stuff like that.

2:27:43So it was just better, again, another decision that

2:27:48if I was making that decision five years ago,

2:27:5010 years ago, I would have probably made it differently.

2:27:52But now, this is the era where things stream

2:27:56and it's not a big deal.

2:27:58And if you need to really restrict the amount of data

2:28:01that you use, you have to consciously download media

2:28:05for offline use and then like, you know,

2:28:07and avoid actively streaming things

2:28:09or go into the system settings app

2:28:11and turn off cellular for all these apps.

2:28:14- I think you're on the right track.

2:28:15I think it's gonna be a big hit.

2:28:17Let me take one last break here

2:28:18and hit the money button once again

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2:30:50just to see that it works, get it set up,

2:30:52configure it the way you want it to work, test it out,

2:30:56and until you're satisfied with it,

2:30:58you don't have to pay for anything.

2:30:58And then when you are satisfied,

2:31:00you go and they have very, very low prices for per user over 10.

2:31:05But that's the way they work.

2:31:06Free for up to 10.

2:31:08Over 10, you pay a very, very reasonable, very competitive

2:31:12number of dollars per user.

2:31:15So go check them out.

2:31:16Longtime friends of the show.

2:31:18People keep writing to me.

2:31:19I get a lot of email from people saying--

2:31:21they signed up for Igloo-- very, very happy with it.

2:31:23Good software.

2:31:24Those guys know how to spend their ad money.

2:31:28I know they started, when they started years ago,

2:31:30they got Sandwich to make videos for them.

2:31:33- Yeah, they were really, they've been progressive

2:31:35right from the start.

2:31:36- Yeah, they did like TV commercials with Sandwich.

2:31:41Good stuff.

2:31:41We don't have much time.

2:31:43We've been going on forever.

2:31:44We always go long.

2:31:45We haven't gone on too terribly long,

2:31:46but we don't have a lot of time left.

2:31:48I guess we can just briefly--

2:31:50- It's been like two and a half hours.

2:31:52- Briefly talk about the new iPhone,

2:31:57now you've got one yeah we got two in the house now yeah so what did you guys

2:32:03get success she got gold I got black you know usual and no no pluses no and we

2:32:11went 16 gigs for you I think you guys have been more more critical of the 16

2:32:20gig than then I have your your you are more convinced that it's an upsell

2:32:25product market, or would you call it marketing? I don't know. It's not that they want to make

2:32:31higher margins on the 16 gigabyte phones, it's that they want to make higher margins

2:32:36because there's enough people out there who would, if the bottom line was 32 instead of

2:32:4216, they would buy that 32. But they know that 16 isn't enough, so they just bite the

2:32:48bullet and buy 64. And that's an entire $100, extra $100 in revenue, and probably close

2:32:54to $100 in margin.

2:32:58- Correct, I mean, you can look at something as,

2:33:00well, there's lots of justifications for this.

2:33:04You can look at it, there's reasons,

2:33:06like when Phil Schiller was on here

2:33:08and he explained a lot of justifications

2:33:10for why this works.

2:33:12There's also, I heard from a lot of people,

2:33:13when we were talking about this,

2:33:14I heard from people who were saying,

2:33:15well, we buy these for business,

2:33:18we buy thousands of these for our employees or whatever,

2:33:20and we don't need them to have more space,

2:33:23which I think is a terrible argument.

2:33:25And you can apply that same thing,

2:33:26well, do they need cameras?

2:33:28Do they need a headphone jack?

2:33:29Like, you know, you can apply that to lots of things.

2:33:33So there's a lot of bad justifications for it,

2:33:36but I think separating justifications

2:33:39from reasons is important.

2:33:41And I think the main reason for it is, you're right,

2:33:44it is not necessarily to make the extra couple of dollars

2:33:48of margin on the 16 gig model.

2:33:50it's that they're selling so many more of the 64s

2:33:53that it is most likely having a significant boost

2:33:57on the average selling price.

2:33:58And when you're talking about the most profitable product

2:34:02of the most profitable company,

2:34:04like a significant boost to the average selling price

2:34:08of their best-selling product is massively important.

2:34:12Like that is a big deal to them.

2:34:14And they don't always do what's 100% best for the customer.

2:34:17It's always a balancing act.

2:34:18know, it's, it's, you know, they, they, they will, they're happy to charge $45 for,

2:34:25you know, a leather case that they could sell for a lot less, you know, stuff like that.

2:34:29Like, you know, they, they're not totally a charity here, like they're doing stuff

2:34:33as a balance between satisfaction and profit and I think this is one of those things where,

2:34:37in my opinion, they've chosen wrong. I think they have not balanced this correctly in this

2:34:41case, that I think the long-term costs to satisfaction and to the load it places on

2:34:51support on the Genius Bar, the problems people face with their full phones and trying to

2:34:58manage storage themselves, you know, I think all these things are a poor balance of utility

2:35:04versus profit. And I would say the same thing about other things like the iCloud storage

2:35:12tier pricing. It just got better but it's still not great. There's problems. You can

2:35:19point to all sorts of things like this with Apple and most of the stuff they do is a pretty

2:35:23good value. But there's these little edges like this where you can just kind of tell,

2:35:28"Oh yeah, they just did this because this would be a massive difference in profit."

2:35:33Yeah, and I, it's weird, I can't help it. I think it has to change next year.

2:35:39Although, who knows? You know what I mean? Like, I keep thinking, well, next year when I go to the

2:35:437, I'll have to up the minimum to the 32. And the OS isn't going to get bigger, so it'll just mean

2:35:49that there's a lot more free space for everybody. And then I think to myself, I don't know if I'd

2:35:55want to bet on that. Because maybe, you know, they've had, the thing that I keep thinking about

2:36:01is if they did it again going from the 6 to the 6s with the exact same split.

2:36:05And they changed so much other stuff.

2:36:07They changed the actual aluminum alloy they make the things out of.

2:36:11So it's not like they're afraid to change stuff in the Ss.

2:36:14It also seems like they changed the flash.

2:36:16Everyone's saying it's much faster.

2:36:17Yeah.

2:36:18And whether that's because it's the component or it's at least the--

2:36:24like, was it Ars Technica?

2:36:27I think that had the specs and wrote some code.

2:36:29It's the storage controller is new and is now more like,

2:36:34it's effectively like a MacBook storage controller.

2:36:40So it's a serious upgrade.

2:36:42It is in addition to like the CPU and GPU benchmarks

2:36:45being equivalent to the MacBook One,

2:36:48it really seems like they've upped their storage performance

2:36:53and the way they treat storage to laptop,

2:36:57MacBook quality engineering,

2:36:59which is, again, it's a crazy big change.

2:37:01This whole notion that the S1s are just minor revisions,

2:37:04it's really, really crazy.

2:37:06I think if anything in my review,

2:37:09I think I undersold this new theory I have,

2:37:13which is that it takes Johnny Ive's team two years,

2:37:16I think I've got this boiled down to a good nut,

2:37:18that it takes them two years to come up with it,

2:37:20what they think is a superior design,

2:37:23as in, this is what it looks like,

2:37:26this is the basic gist of the,

2:37:28it's gonna have these size screens

2:37:30with this pixel resolution,

2:37:32and there's gonna be a button down here

2:37:34that'll be a fingerprint sensor.

2:37:39These are the buttons, these are the sizes.

2:37:42And then the engineering teams have to decide,

2:37:46well, how do we make this?

2:37:47And because it takes two years

2:37:48for these new designs to come out,

2:37:50and because two years is a good pace for them

2:37:53for new designs, for product marketing reasons anyway,

2:37:57it means that the engineering teams get two cracks at it.

2:37:59They get the first crack, which is how can we make this

2:38:02to hit this ship date?

2:38:05And then they get a second, an entire year after that

2:38:10to okay, how can we make that design even better?

2:38:14And in terms of, they rethink everything.

2:38:17Every single thing you touch on this iPhone

2:38:18is a different material than last year's.

2:38:21I mean, maybe the rubber gaskets that cover the antennas

2:38:24are the same material, but it's a new aluminum

2:38:27and it's a new glass.

2:38:29So if they wanted to change the minimum to 32,

2:38:31they could have done it.

2:38:33And I just keep thinking about the fact

2:38:34that if the customer satisfaction downsides

2:38:38to the 16 gig minimum were as significant enough

2:38:43to worry them, they would have changed it.

2:38:45That they could have seen those numbers last year,

2:38:49early on, and known that we've got, you know,

2:38:52That's a thing that I think that they could have changed,

2:38:55say, between last December and this September.

2:38:59And I think a lot of it is locked down a year in advance,

2:39:01but they could have changed the minimum.

2:39:04- I do worry a little bit.

2:39:05You know, we've seen, I think in the Tim Cook era of Apple,

2:39:10I think it's safe to say,

2:39:11based on our observations from the outside

2:39:13and some other statements,

2:39:14I think it's probably safe to assume

2:39:16that they are more data-driven than they used to be.

2:39:19Like with Steve, it was very much still

2:39:22based on Steve's intuitions to a lot of degree, right?

2:39:25And Tim is very much, is much more data driven

2:39:28and so that's showing in the rest of the company.

2:39:30And I worry, one of the things that came up

2:39:33from various Apple people that I spoke with

2:39:37or that I heard from, one of the things that came up

2:39:39during the functional high ground thing is that

2:39:42about half of Apple was like, oh my god,

2:39:46thank you for finally saying this.

2:39:48I've been trying to convince higher ups for years

2:39:49that we need to slow down and fix things.

2:39:51And the other part I heard was that

2:39:53a lot of this was catching higher ups by surprise.

2:39:58- Yeah.

2:39:59- That they thought they were doing better

2:40:01than what I thought and what a lot of other people thought.

2:40:03And this is very much a metrics-driven company now.

2:40:07- I would go even further than that.

2:40:09And what I heard wasn't just that that side of the company

2:40:13thought they were doing better than what you and others,

2:40:16and the, "Yeah, I hear you, that's right."

2:40:19They honestly and truly believed,

2:40:22believed and maybe still continue to believe,

2:40:24that they're doing better on software quality

2:40:26than ever before in the company's history.

2:40:28Not just that they were doing okay,

2:40:30that they were doing better than ever.

2:40:32- Right, and so my concern is twofold.

2:40:36First of all, the fact that there's a massive

2:40:39disconnect of opinion there,

2:40:41regardless of which side is right,

2:40:42that shows a problem somewhere on the line,

2:40:44that that should be considered.

2:40:45but my main concern is that we can see definitely

2:40:50that they are way more metrics-driven

2:40:52and numbers-driven than they have been before.

2:40:55That is the new culture of Apple in the Tim Cook era.

2:40:58And the Tim Cook era has brought a lot of positives,

2:41:03and this is one that I think is certainly positive

2:41:06in some areas, but it also has risks

2:41:09that they have to look out for,

2:41:10and I'm not sure they found the right balance yet.

2:41:12One of the biggest risks is you gotta make sure

2:41:14measuring the right numbers, you know, and, you know,

2:41:17whatever metrics you are collecting,

2:41:20is that the whole picture?

2:41:21And also, whatever metrics you're collecting will,

2:41:24first of all, they will be gamed by internal people

2:41:27within the company, like internal departments

2:41:29will gain the metrics because they have to,

2:41:30because that's the pressure that is put on them,

2:41:32and when they have to start making decisions

2:41:34about difficult things to cut or to put off or to whatever,

2:41:37you know, they know what metrics they're judged on,

2:41:40and so people will gain metrics.

2:41:42- It's the way that, you know,

2:41:44And I know you're not a big sports fan,

2:41:45but it's the reason that every single team sport

2:41:49with a ball has what seems to be from an outsider

2:41:52a complex set of rules.

2:41:54The more you learn about baseball,

2:41:56the more you think these rules are crazy.

2:41:57But it's all about the fact that if the game is about

2:42:01how many people cross home plate and touch home plate,

2:42:04that if these rules weren't in place,

2:42:06people, teams would do whatever they could

2:42:08within the rules that are in place to game the game.

2:42:13- Right.

2:42:13gets gamed. You're exactly right. And that ties into the advertising discussion we had

2:42:19four hours ago. Right. So I do worry that if Apple is putting all this emphasis internally on metrics,

2:42:27I wonder what they're missing. And because we've seen already, you know, with the high ground thing,

2:42:33we've seen that there are things they're missing and that they need to be shown that sometimes from

2:42:37the outside. And part of the reason why I complain so much about certain things Apple does is because

2:42:42Because I know that outside voices like ours

2:42:45can affect things internally.

2:42:47Usually whatever we are arguing about outside,

2:42:50somebody inside is arguing about too.

2:42:52And if there's outside support for one viewpoint

2:42:54or the other, we can be giving ammunition

2:42:56to the side that we want to win the fight.

2:42:58- Yeah, I think that the whole Discovery D thing

2:43:00was a perfect example of the type of thing

2:43:05that slipped through their metrics.

2:43:07I mean, one of the things I know that they specifically

2:43:09were thinking about were crash reports.

2:43:11and that there's this whole opt-in system

2:43:13that Apple, I think, is very, very upfront about.

2:43:16And in fact, there may even be too upfront about it

2:43:18because when you upgrade your OS on systems,

2:43:21you have to always re-opt into these things.

2:43:23They might even ask, they might even err on the side

2:43:26of asking too many times, you know,

2:43:27are you sure you wanna let us have location services

2:43:30enabled on this device?

2:43:31Even if you've said it already,

2:43:32you've just upgraded to a major new version of the OS,

2:43:34they're gonna ask you again.

2:43:35So they know that most of, an overwhelming majority

2:43:40of users on the Mac, or Mac and iOS,

2:43:44opt into the will you send us the crash reports

2:43:47and stuff like that for helping us make things better.

2:43:50And that's one of the things that they've measured

2:43:53and one of the things that they know has gone way down

2:43:57in recent years is apps crashing.

2:43:59Anecdotally, that feels true to me as well,

2:44:03that on my Mac, fewer and fewer apps crash

2:44:06in terms of just disappearing and getting the,

2:44:10And especially if I--

2:44:12again, I'm not measuring statistics.

2:44:14I'm thinking about it just in my mind.

2:44:16Almost all the crashes I see nowadays on my Mac

2:44:18are from beta software that I'm testing

2:44:20and that I expect to crash.

2:44:23It feels to me like apps crash less, especially Apple's apps.

2:44:27Yeah, I'd say you're right.

2:44:29And the whole discovery de-thing,

2:44:31all of the various problems that people have seen from it

2:44:34are the type of things that-- there aren't crashes.

2:44:36They're just these weird silent failures.

2:44:39You know, like when the printer that I've been using for the last four years, and it's

2:44:44the only printer I use, and I hit Command P and nothing ever comes out of it, and I

2:44:50go over to the thing with the red badge in my dock and it just says, "Printer cannot

2:44:54be found," and I go to this thing and the system settings and try to configure the printer,

2:45:00and I can't configure it, and I just sit here and I see if Amy can print and she can print,

2:45:07I can't it doesn't even see the printer and then I just turn the printer off and on and back on again and

2:45:12Now it all just works, but I haven't updated anything on my printer. That's for damn sure the printer hasn't changed at all

2:45:19That never gets reported to Apple that never you know, there is no crash log that gets sent

2:45:25There is no I you know Siri heard John cursing in his office about the fucking printer

2:45:32That never it doesn't register, right?

2:45:34it's the sort of thing that you just kind of have to you kind of have to play by feel and

2:45:39Internally you have to be like hey guys. This is a shit show this

2:45:42My Apple TV is keeps calling itself Apple TV parentheses 13

2:45:47Right and that and playing it by feel that as we all know that was one of Steve's

2:45:52Greatest strengths that he was like he was really on point and yeah, he wasn't always perfect

2:45:57but his track record was pretty good in playing it by feel and

2:46:01And so, you know, when you move to this metric system,

2:46:04you have to both A, make, you know,

2:46:06you have to be on the lookout for gaming

2:46:08and try to reduce it or eliminate the incentives for it

2:46:11whenever possible.

2:46:12And that's an ongoing constant battle.

2:46:15And B, you have to really make, you have to look at like,

2:46:18what do the metrics not include?

2:46:21Where are the blind spots of these metrics?

2:46:25And every set of metrics is gonna have massive blind spots.

2:46:28And that is where I think there is still room

2:46:31for improvement there.

2:46:32And so if Apple is measuring their beloved customer set

2:46:37in ways that show that 16 gig is not a problem

2:46:41for most of the people who have it,

2:46:44I mean, they have way more data than we do.

2:46:47So they could be right, that could be true.

2:46:49Most of the things Apple says are,

2:46:52you know, on our surface level, on the face of it, true.

2:46:54Like my blog post, there was no deeper meaning.

2:46:57and like most of the things, as you always say,

2:46:59most of the things Apple says

2:47:00are pretty straightforward and true.

2:47:02But this is one of those cases where

2:47:04if they keep saying that 16 gig is fine

2:47:06and that people are happy enough with it,

2:47:09that is a really stark contrast and disagreement

2:47:14to what I and everyone I know sees anecdotally

2:47:18from our friends and relatives who have 16 gig phones.

2:47:21And like I love like when underscore David Smith

2:47:24posted his analysis of like free space.

2:47:27- You have that right in front of you right now.

2:47:28- Yep, yeah, that was great, 'cause that shows

2:47:30actual broad data set from people who aren't all nerds,

2:47:35who have, like, how much free space they actually have,

2:47:37and how many, and, you know, we all, everyone

2:47:39who has been around other people with iPhones,

2:47:41we've all known people who, like, oh, they go

2:47:44to take a picture and their phone's full,

2:47:45or they keep getting the message that their phone is full,

2:47:47or their iCloud storage is full, and they have no idea

2:47:49what to do about that exactly, and, you know,

2:47:52iOS storage management has never been particularly easy

2:47:55or obvious and how to do it.

2:47:57You know, there's all these problems people have.

2:48:00People who are stuck on old OSs,

2:48:02like I think they learned big time

2:48:05with how low the adoption rate was of iOS 8

2:48:07compared to previous releases

2:48:09because they had all these 8 and 16 gig phones out there

2:48:11that didn't have enough space to install it.

2:48:13And people just never installed it.

2:48:16- I would say actually, I think that the way

2:48:18that iOS deals with storage now

2:48:20in terms of dealing with a low storage situation

2:48:22is actually better than it's ever been

2:48:23better than anything on the Mac.

2:48:26Because the Mac, you're dealing with the Finder,

2:48:29and you've already lost most people.

2:48:31Like, the file system, you've lost them.

2:48:33And so the way that you can go into Settings now,

2:48:35and if you at least Google enough,

2:48:37you can probably get someone to tell you, go to Settings,

2:48:40go to General, go to Usage, and it'll show you

2:48:42which apps are using how much data.

2:48:44And then you can do something right there and deal with it.

2:48:47That's actually pretty good.

2:48:48And I think it's about as good just blaming the whole app.

2:48:51here, this app is using four gigabytes,

2:48:54is about as good as it's gonna get

2:48:56for mass market typical people.

2:48:58But most people aren't gonna get that far.

2:49:00I just linked to a thing before we started recording today

2:49:03that around the world, there's like five or six percent

2:49:07of Facebook users don't know that they're using the internet

2:49:10when they use Facebook.

2:49:12- That's great.

2:49:13- That you go around and poll people

2:49:14and they say, "How much do you use the internet?"

2:49:17And you get, you know, it's 40%.

2:49:19And then do you use Facebook?

2:49:20And it's like 60%.

2:49:22Well, how is that, that's not really possible.

2:49:25They're obviously misinformed,

2:49:27but if you're surprised that there are that many people

2:49:30who don't realize that Facebook is on the internet,

2:49:33you really just don't understand

2:49:34how untechical people are, you know?

2:49:38And it's just not,

2:49:39it doesn't even say that they're not intelligent.

2:49:40They just don't, they might be unintelligent,

2:49:43but it might just be that they are not technically inclined.

2:49:46And the genius-- - It also might be

2:49:47the decreasing relevance of the web.

2:49:49I didn't say that.

2:49:50- It's very possible, very possible.

2:49:52Like that they, and combine that with the age old genius

2:49:56of Microsoft branding their browser Internet Explorer,

2:50:01which made people think that that was the internet.

2:50:03Which was very purposeful and again,

2:50:07gets tied into like the whole Joe Camel marketing angle,

2:50:10you know, marketing is evil, you know,

2:50:13from earlier in the show.

2:50:14That was very deliberate.

2:50:16and then they know they're not using the thing

2:50:18that's the internet, 'cause they're not using the browser,

2:50:20and so therefore they're not using the internet.

2:50:23That's just the loose way people think about things.

2:50:25And it speaks to the genius of modern smartphones

2:50:29that they're able to do so much and share so much

2:50:32and be so engaged by not really understanding

2:50:35the underlying technology at all.

2:50:37But therefore, if you're surprised that people,

2:50:41some number of people buy 16 gigabyte phones

2:50:44and have no idea that they're doing themselves

2:50:47a great disservice, it's not their fault.

2:50:51This is the bottom line.

2:50:52The thing that gets people upset, like you say,

2:50:53and I know there's people who are out there

2:50:56rage-swearing at us listening to the podcast saying,

2:51:00my company buys 16 gigabyte phones and they're just fine

2:51:03because we do blah, blah, blah.

2:51:04If Apple wants to sell them to the enterprise, fine.

2:51:07Sell them directly to the enterprise,

2:51:08but don't sell them in retail stores to consumers

2:51:11because Underscore's data shows

2:51:13that somewhere around 37% of those people have,

2:51:17at least his users of his app,

2:51:18but I think it's very, very possible that that's,

2:51:20let's call it one in three.

2:51:21So we'll even err on the, you know,

2:51:23underscore says 37, we'll call it 33.

2:51:261% of the people with 16 gigabytes iPhones

2:51:29have under one gigabyte of space available,

2:51:32which is really, really,

2:51:33and some of them have, you know,

2:51:34really low mounts under one gigabyte.

2:51:38But if you don't even have one gigabyte available,

2:51:40you're really in trouble for a lot of little things.

2:51:43- Yeah, like a lot of things just start failing

2:51:45for you at that point.

2:51:46- Right, like having the room to download

2:51:47150 megabyte podcast that you wanna listen to,

2:51:51or to record video, like the thing that he showed

2:51:54that his wife got when she took out the camera

2:51:55and she could not record video

2:51:57because there wasn't enough space.

2:51:58And, you know, it really bites you.

2:52:03And then the other thing you look at in his stats is,

2:52:05so the next step up now is 64,

2:52:07and you look at how many people with 64 gigabyte phones

2:52:10have storage problems, and it's effectively none of them.

2:52:12- Yeah, I mean, and the sad thing is,

2:52:15I've heard rumblings here and there from various tipsters,

2:52:18some of which have no credibility,

2:52:21I've heard rumblings that they are finally

2:52:23going to fix this next year, and with the iPhone 7,

2:52:26it's going to start at either 32 or even 64.

2:52:29I worry, though, by the time, if they ever move up to 32,

2:52:35maybe that's gonna be too small by that point.

2:52:37(laughs)

2:52:38You know, 'cause the point of this,

2:52:40It's very much like when you're designing an app

2:52:44with a paywall, and I have this in Overcast,

2:52:46when you're designing an app with a paywall of some sort,

2:52:48whether it's a free trial with shareware style,

2:52:52unlock all features, whatever,

2:52:53the idea is to put that wall at a threshold

2:52:58such that you're creating a small pain point for people

2:53:03so that they won't like frustratingly quit your app

2:53:06and say, well, this is useless, I can't even try it,

2:53:09but you have to create that pain point at such a place

2:53:12where most people will reasonably run into it a few times

2:53:16and a good percentage of those people

2:53:18will run into it enough that it pushes them,

2:53:21it motivates them into paying.

2:53:24And I use the term pain point here intentionally.

2:53:27Like this is like you're causing like inconvenience

2:53:31or you're making people like hit a wall that's unpleasant

2:53:33that they want to go past.

2:53:35Because if you don't do that,

2:53:36If you are too generous with what you give away for free,

2:53:40effectively nobody buys the upgrade.

2:53:41This is one of the things like apps that have ads by default

2:53:45and you can pay to remove the ads.

2:53:47Historically, those have very, very low payment rates.

2:53:50Almost no, you know, effectively almost nobody

2:53:52pays to remove ads.

2:53:53- I always pay.

2:53:55I always pay to save ads.

2:53:55- Right, me too, but we're weird.

2:53:57You know, most people are just like,

2:53:59well, okay, I'll take the ads.

2:54:00That isn't enough of a pain point.

2:54:02Or if you say like, you know, suppose, you know,

2:54:05So suppose with the overcast, if I said,

2:54:08well, in order to subscribe to more than three podcasts,

2:54:12you have to unlock the pay thing.

2:54:15Well, most people subscribe to like two podcasts

2:54:18or one and a half podcasts, something like that on average.

2:54:20So hardly anybody would even hit that,

2:54:23and then I would create this horrible incentive

2:54:25for people not to try out new shows.

2:54:27- Right, right.

2:54:28- So like, that's why I don't limit that.

2:54:30I limit other things, but I don't limit that.

2:54:33And so, you know, with Apple, you know,

2:54:35when they're pricing their products,

2:54:37when they're designing the tiers,

2:54:39of deciding what the storage tiers or whatever,

2:54:42the product lines, you know,

2:54:43where does the Mini run into the Air?

2:54:45Where does the Air now run into the Pro?

2:54:48On the MacBooks, you know,

2:54:49where do the size boundaries lie

2:54:50and what capabilities do you have to move up to get

2:54:53at each stage?

2:54:54Like, all these things are designed

2:54:56to try to place those barriers and those limits

2:54:59and those boundaries between classes

2:55:01or between price levels.

2:55:02try to place them at a point where you're going to capture a

2:55:06lot more value from a lot of people who are going to hit

2:55:09those barriers and are going to want to push past them by

2:55:12paying you more money. That is the whole point. If they if

2:55:15if Apple did their job badly, they would give away too much

2:55:19for free at the low end, but Apple tries to do their job

2:55:21well and they are very very good at that most of the time

2:55:24and so so when like these these storage tiers are designed

2:55:29specifically to maximize that I look at the iPad and the iPad Pro. I was just

2:55:34about 32 and 128 right and the 128 is cellular only or it was only available

2:55:39on the 128 right right so like so there's only three available you can

2:55:42refer 799 I think it's 799 I'm looking at my notes yeah I think you're 799 you

2:55:47can get a 32 gigabyte no cellular for 949 you can get 128 gigs no cellular and

2:55:53And then for 1079, their usual $130 upgrade for the cellular, you can get 128 in cellular.

2:56:01Those are the only three configurations available. I actually think that's great. I think it's great

2:56:06that it's a lot simpler, that you don't have three storage tiers. It's just two. Do you want the real

2:56:10one? And let's face it, the real one is the 128. Do you want cellular or not? And the 32 totally

2:56:17make sense in the context of industrial uses of the iPad Pro, like for the enterprise.

2:56:24Like single app uses.

2:56:25Yeah, and I was talking to Dr. Wave from Pixar, and they even publicized this is public information

2:56:30that's not secret, that Apple was there at Pixar last week and letting their artists

2:56:35play with them and use them and test the palm rejection, which they were very pleased with.

2:56:40I say very pleased, they called it like near perfect.

2:56:44But like I said to him, I was like, I'll bet that the 32 is the one you guys are gonna

2:56:47buy.

2:56:48He goes, "Oh yeah, of course."

2:56:49Because they don't store anything on the thing.

2:56:50It's all connected to their little internal internet and it's all stored on the servers

2:56:55and so that they can share it and it's all there.

2:56:57So the extra storage would be completely and utterly wasted on them.

2:57:01And it's also, the lack of cellular is a feature because they don't want these things connected

2:57:06to cellular networks.

2:57:07They want them connected only to their little internal network.

2:57:11I didn't even talk to him about this, but I know in the movie industry in general, that

2:57:14whole thing where Sony got hacked has really, really upped their game on security. And places

2:57:19like hospitals and stuff like that with all the HIPAA laws, this configuration is perfect

2:57:25for them. If you're a consumer though, you want the 128 and you probably want the one

2:57:29with cellular.

2:57:30And I think it's very obvious. And also, the low-end model, 32, is a great little low-end

2:57:37thing where there's still plenty of space for things like software updates and temporary

2:57:42caches and big files and stuff like that. Whereas like a 16 gigabyte model on that would have been

2:57:46like, it just would be terrible. Yeah. I mean, like I like, you know, if I, if I end up having

2:57:51to get one for various testing purposes, I would get 32 because I wouldn't be like a power user of

2:57:56that. Right. That feels like it's okay. But just barely like it, it does feel kind of weird to

2:58:03spend nine or $800 on this high end thing. And then to not spend the extra 150 or whatever to

2:58:12to quadruple the storage because this is the kind of

2:58:16thing that you can never change. You can never upgrade

2:58:18that store the other way or like it's you can't undo that

2:58:21decision and and they know that when they're pricing it

2:58:25and when they're deciding these, they know that and

2:58:27they know that a certain percentage of people usually I

2:58:30would expect a pretty significant one will

2:58:33rationalize that same thought of well, I'm already spending

2:58:36eight hundred. If I go up to nine fifty, I'll quadruple

2:58:39this thing that might be a problem for me in the future.

2:58:40I don't do it.

2:58:41You know, and same thing with adding Apple Care

2:58:43and everything else, this is how retailers always work.

2:58:45This is business.

2:58:47So all this is a very long way to say,

2:58:50I definitely still believe that these 16 gig phones

2:58:53are a decision to raise average selling price,

2:58:55not because it is best for customers.

2:58:59And that I don't necessarily even,

2:59:02I'm not even that mad at them about it

2:59:04because, you know, that's just, that's business.

2:59:06That's the kind of decision that they have to make

2:59:09to be successful and every business person does this

2:59:12and Apple is not Santa Claus.

2:59:16They're a business and they're gonna make money off of us

2:59:19and we happily keep giving it to them

2:59:21and so they're obviously doing something right.

2:59:23- The one and last point I wanna make about this,

2:59:26the other thing that causes me to think about it a lot

2:59:29is that the repercussions of this last

2:59:34for at least three years because what it means

2:59:39is that next year the mid-tier phone

2:59:41is going to be a 16 gigabyte,

2:59:43start at a 16 gigabyte iPhone 6S,

2:59:47and then two years from now,

2:59:48the free with contract $99 phone

2:59:51is going to be the iPhone 6S with 16 gigabytes.

2:59:54So there's going to be brand new iPhones

2:59:56that some people are buying with 16 gigabytes

3:00:00for at least the next three years.

3:00:01- Oh yeah, I mean, they've been selling eights

3:00:04at the low end, I think.

3:00:06- Right.

3:00:07- I don't know, are they still now?

3:00:08- I think that that--

3:00:09- They were before last week.

3:00:12- Yeah, before last week.

3:00:13- They're still selling the 5C,

3:00:14the 5C had an eight gig version.

3:00:16- Yeah, so it's the fact that the minimum

3:00:20when the iPhone 5C came out was six,

3:00:22it made a difference.

3:00:24- And the minimum now, at least the minimum in the US

3:00:27is 16 now in the 5S.

3:00:29- Yeah, they might sell eight somewhere around the world.

3:00:32But that still means though that it's going to be 16 though

3:00:36for a while.

3:00:37- Exactly.

3:00:39- I thought, I linked to it today,

3:00:44and I don't wanna repeat it.

3:00:45I'll just tell people to go,

3:00:47'cause you and I don't have,

3:00:49this episode is pretty short,

3:00:50so if you still have a lot of time left

3:00:51for podcasts listening, go listen to,

3:00:54it's a great podcast in general,

3:00:55but I really thought it was a fantastic episode of Upgrade

3:00:58with Jason Snell and Mike Hurley,

3:01:00and they talked about upgrading to iOS 9,

3:01:04or getting a new phone.

3:01:05You buy a new iPhone, you have an old iPhone,

3:01:07you wanna upgrade from your backup.

3:01:10What an enormous pain in the ass that really is.

3:01:13And if anything, it's gotten worse over the years

3:01:15because the phones do so much more

3:01:17and ask so much more permission.

3:01:18And some of the things I totally understand,

3:01:20I know it has to be that way,

3:01:21it's actually a feature

3:01:23that you have to redo your fingerprints.

3:01:26That's actually good,

3:01:26even though it's a little bit of a pain in the ass.

3:01:29You have to reenter your credit cards.

3:01:30I realize that's actually a feature

3:01:32because the credit card data is stored on a secure element

3:01:35and if it was a thing that they could just copy

3:01:37one phone to another, that wouldn't be a very secure element. It's the fact that it literally

3:01:41cannot be copied from there to here. That's great. So some of those things are obviously

3:01:46— it can't be avoided, but it takes so long and it's so indeterminate what you're waiting

3:01:54for. Like, did you run into — do you upgrade when you get a new phone? Do you upgrade from

3:01:57a backup?

3:01:58Yeah, I do. I do the iTunes encrypted backup and everything. This time I did it mostly

3:02:03seamlessly. Tiff's phone came with a dead SIM card, so we had to swap the SIM on that

3:02:09one. And I had the endless loop of iCloud authentication dialogues during this setup

3:02:15process problem, which I've heard a couple people mention that they ran into as well.

3:02:18Yeah. Other than that, I did the whole thing where I unpair the watch, then back up the

3:02:23phone, then restore to the new phone, then repair the watch to the new phone and all

3:02:27that. It went mostly okay. I've gotten this down because, and again, this is not really

3:02:33a complaint. It's great that I get these review units. I get them two weeks early and I get

3:02:40to write about them before other people and I get to spend more time with them. But now

3:02:43that they do two new phones a year, 5C, 5S, 6 and 6 Plus and the 6S and 6 Plus, I get

3:02:50two phones to test. So there's two phones that I have to go through this with. And then

3:02:53I always buy my own. I already have my own. I bought my own. I pay for my own personal

3:02:58use iPhone every year. So that means like in a period of like three weeks, I do this

3:03:02with three phones every year.

3:03:05And then later in the fall, I generally wind up doing it

3:03:07with an iPad too.

3:03:09And then I might buy my own iPad.

3:03:11I don't buy a new iPad every year, but I at least test one.

3:03:14So I do this with like five or six devices every year.

3:03:17I'll bet there's people within Apple who do this more often

3:03:20because they're using test units or the hardware.

3:03:22So the people inside Apple have to know this.

3:03:24And I think that if you do it like I do more than once a year

3:03:32the inadequacies of this system are in your face.

3:03:34And I really, and now that they're selling a program

3:03:38to upgrade every year, encouraging people

3:03:40to upgrade every year, I really hope that somewhere

3:03:43within Apple there's a, you know, this is a high priority.

3:03:47We really gotta streamline this.

3:03:49One thing I was not aware of-- - I hope so too, but--

3:03:51- I was not aware-- - I think--

3:03:52- I'm sorry for the crosstalk, but I was not aware

3:03:54that if you do the iCloud backup,

3:03:56you still have to reenter all your passwords.

3:03:59- Yeah, yeah, iCloud backup is not,

3:04:01it doesn't count as encrypted,

3:04:03because they don't want to store your passwords on iCloud.

3:04:05So the iCloud keychain, I think,

3:04:07is gonna be their long-term solution around that,

3:04:10which doesn't store the password.

3:04:11It always keeps it on one device, right?

3:04:13It doesn't actually,

3:04:14that's why you have to go to another device to approve it.

3:04:16- Right.

3:04:17- But no, so that's probably the long-term goal with that.

3:04:19But I think one thing that is very obvious here,

3:04:23first of all, is that once again,

3:04:25sometimes stuff about the Apple Watch

3:04:27kind of seems like it was developed

3:04:29on a spaceship away from Apple.

3:04:30like it just kind of got handed to them when it was done.

3:04:33Like there's certain things about it that are just like,

3:04:35this is obviously like the rest of the company

3:04:38didn't see this or approve this before they got out

3:04:40or like where did this come from, you know?

3:04:42So there's certain things about it

3:04:43and I think obviously the way the Apple Watch deals

3:04:47with backing itself up to the iPhone

3:04:49and moving it to a different phone,

3:04:53it's very un-Apple like, if I can use that generalization.

3:04:58It is very much like this does not seem like it was

3:05:01well, you know, Apple's whole thing is like the

3:05:03integration top to bottom. They make everything.

3:05:05They make the software, they make the hardware,

3:05:07they make the services, they make everything.

3:05:08The way the Apple Watch pairs and backs up to a

3:05:12phone or doesn't rather is it just seems like this

3:05:17like thing that was tacked on and it was not

3:05:20thought of with, you know, with integration in

3:05:22mind, with the whole stack in mind, with what

3:05:25happens with your phone upgrade in mind. And that

3:05:28seems like a massive oversight and hopefully that's just because it's a 1.0

3:05:32and they'll get to it because it does seem really weird that like by default

3:05:37your watch is not backing up to your phone ever it seems. Does it only do it

3:05:44when you unpair it? I think so yeah and if you so if you like wipe your old

3:05:48phone and while in the process of I it's very easy to end up as a as an ideal

3:05:57Apple customer, meaning ideal from Apple's perspective, you're a big fan and when they

3:06:01when they release new things, you just go out and buy them. So you've already got an

3:06:04Apple Watch and you're buying a new iPhone. It's very, very easy to wind up like, like

3:06:09with a default factory installed watch again and like losing your activity data.

3:06:14Yeah, and that's that's a major like that could like as as a slacker who like barely

3:06:20holds together an exercise regime here, like, if I lost all my activity data, that's a major

3:06:25demotivator to keep going. Because it's the whole point, like it's the idea that

3:06:28I've got this streak going that is the motivator. Yeah, like that should not be

3:06:33taken as lightly, you know, temporary data and with all of Hellkit is about

3:06:37like how how crazy is it that the watch A) doesn't seem to back itself up at all

3:06:44and B) when it does back itself up it doesn't back up to iCloud it backs up to

3:06:49just that local phone. Right. That is crazy.

3:06:52Like they iCloud has existed for a long time iCloud backups have existed for a long time before the watch

3:06:57Why doesn't the watch?

3:07:00regularly at night when it's plugged in just like the phone

3:07:03Back itself up to iCloud and you don't have like one of the benefits of the watch is that you just don't have much

3:07:09user created data

3:07:10It's not even possible to have a lot of user created data that you know

3:07:13But the stuff that is there the metrics, you know

3:07:16biometrics and stuff, like the fact that it's not.

3:07:19And it's--

3:07:20- Even just your settings and stuff,

3:07:22it's annoying to lose all that stuff.

3:07:24- If you understand how it works,

3:07:26it makes sense why you have to first unpair it

3:07:29with the old phone, and then it makes sense

3:07:31why the unpair takes five minutes,

3:07:35because that's when the backup takes place.

3:07:37So why does it take five minutes to unpair your iPhone?

3:07:40Well, because that's when it backs up,

3:07:41so that you can then restore it when you're done.

3:07:44You're like, oh, well then that makes some sense.

3:07:46doesn't make you say, well, that's a clever design.

3:07:49It just makes you say, okay, that's why it takes.

3:07:51But if you don't know that,

3:07:52why in the world would you ever unpair it first?

3:07:54Why wouldn't you think as an Apple customer?

3:07:56I mean, I think it makes total customer common sense

3:08:00that you would just think, I bought a new iPhone,

3:08:02I already have an Apple Watch,

3:08:03I'm gonna restore from a backup,

3:08:05and then my new phone will be paired with my Apple Watch.

3:08:08- Yeah, that is what, like, you can totally see

3:08:11a bunch of people making that assumption totally reasonably.

3:08:14- Right, and then if it, like, popped up and said,

3:08:16you know, do you want to switch your Apple Watch?

3:08:18Your Apple Watch can only be paired

3:08:19with one iPhone at a time.

3:08:20Would you like to switch to this new iPhone?

3:08:24Yes, please.

3:08:25Okay, and then you would expect that to maybe

3:08:27spin for a couple of seconds, and then it would just work.

3:08:30- Yeah, this whole process,

3:08:35it seems like it's very much a 1.0 process,

3:08:39which it isn't, unfortunately, with the rest of the phone.

3:08:41And the sad part of this to me,

3:08:44the discouraging part of this to me is that most of this rests on the parts of Apple's

3:08:52infrastructure that I think have the most problems usually. It's like the store infrastructure,

3:08:57not even, not necessarily like all of iCloud, but like the backup and purchases part of it,

3:09:06I think is really unrelated, especially the purchase. I mean, this all goes back to the store.

3:09:10I hate the store.

3:09:11(laughs)

3:09:12Like that whole infrastructure seems like it has

3:09:14frequent problems and frequent bugs.

3:09:17And all of this seems to rest on that.

3:09:21And iTunes, which yay, right?

3:09:23So I actually don't have incredibly high hopes

3:09:28of this improving.

3:09:30It's also just very complex.

3:09:32You know, like the way Apple designs things,

3:09:34as you said, like with the privacy in mind

3:09:36and with the security that they do,

3:09:39a lot of these things aren't possible

3:09:41to make significantly better.

3:09:42You know, like a lot of it, like, you know,

3:09:43you can't just transfer a protect ID

3:09:45in your credit card data because it doesn't,

3:09:48you actually can't do it with security

3:09:50and the designs that they have.

3:09:52Stuff like that, like a lot of this stuff

3:09:53works in ways like that where the answer is just,