0:00:00Are you recording? I am recording now.
0:00:03We could do like a...
0:00:04Yes? Yeah, one, two, three.
0:00:08But should we do that?
0:00:09One, two, three.
0:00:10Well, we could just clap our hands.
0:00:12I already started. Do you want me to stop and do that?
0:00:14No, I thought you were...
0:00:16Are you gonna have to edit this now?
0:00:17You're not gonna edit this?
0:00:18I swear to God, you're not gonna do that?
0:00:24You wouldn't like that.
0:00:25I was gonna clap just for the sake of you.
0:00:28I don't think here's my thing I don't think that listeners of the show they
0:00:34shouldn't notice a damn thing it should just all the all the all the all the all
0:00:40the all
0:00:42(beeping)
0:00:45(static)
0:00:53- It's like they won't even know that anything has changed.
0:01:06Quality wise. - I guess they would,
0:01:09why would they?
0:01:10- Editing wise.
0:01:11still got to dot the I's and cross the T's on the feed redirection and stuff like that.
0:01:16Yeah, right. But that's not my problem. Or is that my problem?
0:01:21That is your problem too. No, I think it seems as though any well-written
0:01:27podcast client, if they get a 302 HTTP, which is like a 301 says redirect, go over there,
0:01:36but don't not permanently 302 is permanent and then it should remember the new URL so if you were
0:01:43previously subscribed at mule radio dotnet slash the talk show whatever the feed URL is
0:01:49your your podcast software will just automatically update to daring fireball dotnet feeds the talk
0:01:57show or whatever i don't know i haven't decided on the URL yet but nobody should notice a damn thing
0:02:03Ah Christ now you're back
0:02:11Starting out splendidly
0:02:19No quality problems are endemic to
0:02:25podcasting
0:02:28No problems whatsoever. Do you see the rumor today just broke hours before we started recording that?
0:02:33that Twitter might buy SoundCloud. Yeah. That won't mess with anybody.
0:02:41No, that won't. But it's funny, Dan Fromer, friend of the show, occasional guest of the talk show,
0:02:49pointed out the sort of irony in that is that SoundCloud is effectively Odeo 2.0.
0:02:55Yeah. And Odeo was like a,
0:03:01Hey, podcast. It was, I mean, this must be like back in like 2000.
0:03:04It's so hard to remember that.
0:03:05Or 2005, but it was Ev Williams and Biz Stone and all these guys, you know, they left Google after
0:03:12Blogger, you know, it was like Google bought Blogger. And then when their time was up,
0:03:17they all got the hell out of Google and they made Odeo and it was going to be like, like
0:03:21Blogger for podcasting. And it just, they just didn't seem, it seemed, you know, it was a good
0:03:27idea I mean they were on to something in terms of like back in 2004 2005 thinking podcasting was
0:03:33gonna be big clearly they're at it you know that the base the fundamental idea there's pretty good
0:03:39and ahead of its time but they didn't never get quite got it to work and then it was like one of
0:03:45their guys you know guy named Jack is over there and they were like anybody else have any ideas and
0:03:50Jeff Dorsey is like I got an idea and it turned into Twitter Twitter yeah but I
0:03:58know do the audio really didn't it was a separate company though right well it
0:04:03well it was start Twitter started as an audio product and it you know I'm not
0:04:09quite sure what the legal you know so at some point you know lawyers came in and
0:04:15and it went from Twitter being an audio product to Twitter being a standalone corporation.
0:04:23It was spun off. But Twitter started life as a product of the audio corporation.
0:04:30I've got an audio t-shirt upstairs.
0:04:34**Ezra Klein:** Nothing happened to that.
0:04:35**Beserat Debebe-Hassan:** To audio?
0:04:36**Ezra Klein** Yeah.
0:04:37I think they changed the name to the Obvious Corporation. I think it might...
0:04:43**Beserat Debebe-Hassan** Oh, really?
0:04:43Trenton Larkin Yeah, which I think is still the parent company
0:04:47of Medium. You know, that's the new thing that that
0:04:50Jay Haynes Oh, really? Okay. Okay. So that guy that they
0:04:52just when he started that he just started under that umbrella.
0:04:55Trenton Larkin Yeah, I think I you know, and again, is there
0:04:58really a difference if they just design? I don't know. Maybe they just dissolved Odeo
0:05:03and started a new company called Obvious or I think they changed the name though, you
0:05:07know, just to like save on paperwork or something. I don't know. Like, it might have been easier
0:05:12to just change the name of Odeo to the obvious corporation.
0:05:16Right.
0:05:17So, are you playing on using SoundCloud?
0:05:21I guess so. I mean, I don't want to get…
0:05:24Well, it's funny because now that I have to worry about every single detail of hosting
0:05:33the podcast, and there are… I don't know how much of the details you're taking care
0:05:37of with the—what's the parenting show? Get back in and I'm going to turn this car around.
0:05:44Yes. Turning this car around. I was going to call it Don't Make Me Go Back There.
0:05:50Also, that was also in the running. We had a long list of things that dad say.
0:05:59Yeah, don't make me go back. That was probably in there someplace.
0:06:04But there are, there's all sorts of details you have to worry about. And a fundamental one is,
0:06:09where do you store the audio files? It would cost, according to my calculations,
0:06:17a couple of thousand dollars a month for me to host the audio on Amazon S3.
0:06:24Could be off by a little, but I'm probably not off by a lot.
0:06:30which is, you know, start talking about hundreds of dollars, and I might just squander it.
0:06:35Thousands of dollars, you've got my attention. And SoundCloud is free. I mean, I don't want to
0:06:41get too into baseball here. But to me, it's sort of an interesting, it's the perils of venture
0:06:47backed cloud services. So SoundCloud is free for everything. And it started life, I guess,
0:06:55as sort of a music hosting service where musicians could put songs up and have people playing,
0:06:59but they don't, you know, they let you put anything up there, including podcasts. And
0:07:04you can put your podcast there and they don't insert their own ads. They have a player that
0:07:10you can embed. Like if you've got, you know, if anybody's ever looked at the talk show pages on
0:07:14Mule Radio, they use the SoundCloud embeddable player. That's what we use. And it but that
0:07:21doesn't really have ads. It has SoundCloud branding. But you don't have to use their
0:07:26audio player, you know, like Dave Whiskus's unprofessional show. Him and Jamie Newberry
0:07:35now are the hosts of that. I forget who used to be the host. But Dave. Well, what's his—I
0:07:40always forget that guy's name.
0:07:41Dave Buehler, Jr. Lex.
0:07:42Dave Buehler, Jr. That's it. Lex. Right.
0:07:44Dave Buehler, Jr. Who is on my parenting podcast.
0:07:47Dave Buehler, Jr. He is?
0:07:49Dave Buehler, Jr. Yes.
0:07:50Dave Buehler, Jr. He never speaks up. All I ever hear is you and John Armstrong.
0:07:55Are you giving them the Casey treatment? Isn't this called the Casey treatment?
0:07:58They should do a show they should do a show and they should be called like those guys the other guys
0:08:04Right the other guys. Oh my god. That'd be great
0:08:07They should pretend to be each other
0:08:13Just to confuse things
0:08:16But I got an unprofessional he hosts the their audio with SoundCloud, but he uses a different, you know, HTML 5 audio player
0:08:23there. And it all seems too good to be true. And because behind the scenes, SoundCloud
0:08:29hosts your audio on Amazon S3. And so, you know, it's hundreds, if for a popular enough
0:08:36show, thousands of dollars worth of S3 bandwidth that SoundCloud is just covering based on
0:08:44the like $60 million they've raised in venture capital.
0:08:48Yeah. So it's a perfect fit for Twitter. Right.
0:08:54And no idea how to monetize this. Right. And so like with like my friends and as I've been talking
0:09:00and planning and plotting and detailing, you know, everything I have to do to move the talk show to
0:09:07be part of Daring Fireball. And I hear that and I think, "Well, that's too good to be true." And
0:09:12too good to be true is to me, it makes me very uncomfortable. I'd rather pay a reasonable amount
0:09:18of money for something that I feel is sustainable, then do it. And I say this to some people,
0:09:22and some people hear it and they think, "Oh yeah, you have a good point. That is a little
0:09:26worrisome." And then other people are like, "Just take the free hosting, dummy. And worry about
0:09:31what you do when it goes away, when it goes away. Wait for the burden."
0:09:34Tim Cynova - Well, you have an established podcast. So in your situation, it's a little easier with
0:09:41established sponsors and such. So it's a little easier to actually go out and shell something out.
0:09:48but like right, you know, when we started up, we didn't have any, we didn't have any advertisers
0:09:51to begin with. And so it would have been a lot harder. Right. It's not that I have a lot of
0:09:57confidence that I was going to go someplace. And there's other options besides Amazon S3.
0:10:01There's all sorts of things like, you know, one could do to host a podcast, but they're, you know,
0:10:05because SoundCloud offers a good quality, you know, because it's backed by S3. I'm, they don't
0:10:14tell you that. But it just, if you poke around and see where your stuff's coming from, it seems
0:10:17like it is. Good quality. It works around the world, which is often a problem. Like if you were
0:10:23just to do like the obvious thing and just get like a Linux server and start just put your audio
0:10:31files there and let people download it. Like people around the world might have trouble getting it,
0:10:35whereas something that's meant to be a content delivery system, like S3 works better. And then
0:10:41you don't have to pay. And again, like you said, it seems like a perfect fit for Twitter.
0:10:47You guys have no idea. You guys have exorbitant costs and no idea how to make money for it.
0:10:54We're going to spend a billion dollars on you guys. You should come work with us.
0:11:04All sorts of acquisitions.
0:11:06Who does Mark? There's another one. Marco uses something else. What's the other one?
0:11:12Libsyn.
0:11:13Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I don't know anything about that one.
0:11:16Trenton Larkin Yeah, they're a little bit less nebulous
0:11:21in terms of the money. They have some kind of tiering and paid accounts and something. I don't
0:11:25know. Amy, what's her name? And Paul Kefasis have a show that Neneh used Libsyn to. I'm so bad with
0:11:37names. Jon Moffitt
0:11:38Yeah, I understand. Trenton Larkin
0:11:40That's why I like to have you on the show, Jon. Jon Moffitt
0:11:43have to remember what your name is exactly. He's got the same name that I've got.
0:11:49Never bother you that Armstrong doesn't have an age. Yeah, he must be a Jonathan right
0:11:55whenever I see a J. O. N. I just assume that's what that is. I assume that you're a Jonathan,
0:12:01right? But we're not right. I mean, you're not know that's John. No, I see J. O. N. And
0:12:07I think you're really a Jonathan and you're just pretending to be a John and
0:12:12Then when other people will say to me if they say hey is your real name Jonathan group is your full name Jonathan grouper
0:12:18Then I'm offended because I'm like no I have an H
0:12:21Were you were you named after somebody?
0:12:23Sort of long story short I
0:12:28Was the first child and
0:12:32my mom
0:12:35This is before any kind of ultrasound type technology. So when my mom was pregnant with me in
0:12:411972
0:12:44All they knew was that she was pregnant and the sound had not been invented
0:12:49Nope sounded and neither or nor had color, right? Right, but my mom was a hundred percent convinced that she was having a girl
0:12:57She'd had no children before but she just felt like she was having a girl and she even has she still has it like
0:13:04a little like back pocket sized book of baby names like that sort of little almost like a
0:13:12pamphlet book with thousands of names but it's you know it's it's like you could fit in like
0:13:17you it's like the size of a field notes but 45 names that you know used to buy books like that
0:13:22in a supermarket yeah and she has it and and like the girl pages are all like worn you know that
0:13:31there's also and there's there's annotated dozens and dozens of names circled and then different
0:13:35colors for like second and there's like two boys names it was like jason and uh i forget the other
0:13:42one uh i didn't like it though um but there were like two boys names that were like vaguely
0:13:48underlined and that was it that was the only thought she'd put into it and then i came out
0:13:52and they said it's a boy and she goes no it's not and my dad put it back and and uh
0:14:00And she was upset because she didn't know she just was so sure it was a girl that had no names picked out and my
0:14:06Dad was not in a room because this was
0:14:081973 and men's was not done. No, it was not done. He was in a smoke-filled room with a bunch of cigars. Yeah
0:14:14Yeah, probably like a six-pack or something sure and then they came in and they said
0:14:21Yeah, good news. Your wife had a baby is a healthy boy and my dad
0:14:27I guess he joined my mom and they said she said well, what are we gonna call him and he discusses his name is John
0:14:32And that was it
0:14:34There was like no discussion if my mom had spent like hours and hours over the proceeding like eight months
0:14:41Picking out girls names and my they'd never discussed it and my dad just goes his name is John now
0:14:47It ends up that both both of my grandparents her dad and my dad's dad were both named John
0:14:52Okay, and so there you go
0:14:54You know everybody felt honored, right?
0:14:57What about you you named after anybody yeah, my grandfather my mom's dad he passed away like
0:15:05Six months before I was born. So I was named after him tragic. Yeah
0:15:10It's good name smoke kids don't smoke. It's a good name
0:15:15Gets me through the day. Yeah
0:15:21lots of other acquisitions in the news so and in near
0:15:25Near acquisitions. Yeah tortured continuing tortured acquisitions. Yes
0:15:30Well that the beats one which I thought would have been old news by the time we were recording this is still not still at limbo
0:15:37It's still actually not news
0:15:39Like that we're getting close to two weeks now right since it'll be like the end of this week will be two weeks Friday, right?
0:15:48And a lot of people have been writing to me, you know at daring fireball emailing saying like hey
0:15:53Maybe this whole thing is just nonsense and you know Apple not denying it is just their usual
0:15:58You know, we don't comment one way or the other
0:16:00Because if they and there might be you know, who knows I don't I actually don't know but you know
0:16:07The idea would be well, why wouldn't Apple just publicly deny it if it weren't true the idea then would be
0:16:14That they'd be given tonight anything right because then they'd be giving it away if there's another subsequent one
0:16:20That was real but was still pending and then they didn't comment on that one
0:16:25then
0:16:27It would be a sign that if it's not true Apple will deny it
0:16:30But if it is true is true, they'll be quiet where so therefore if they want to
0:16:35maintain
0:16:37You know keep people in up in the air until they have actually make the announcement themselves
0:16:42they have to not comment on everything whether it's true or false. So there's some logic there.
0:16:47But I do think though, that if it weren't the case, I don't think they would address it
0:16:52officially with an official statement, but I think behind the scenes, they'd get word out. And we
0:16:57haven't, I haven't seen any sign of that. There's not a single report from anybody saying, you know,
0:17:04unnamed sources familiar with the situation say that Apple is not buying Beats. Everything has
0:17:10said, you know, indicates that they that they still intend to and Peter Kafka of recode.
0:17:18That's like the new all things D. He said like midweek last week that it was taking
0:17:25longer than expected, but that this is the week sometime this week, it'll be announced,
0:17:30I guess.
0:17:32I can't, it seems like that video probably didn't help.
0:17:36No, I would guess that that video did not help.
0:17:40Dr. Justin Marchegiani That probably wasn't a right idea.
0:17:42Dr. Darrell Bock No, you would think so. I just—my
0:17:48guess is it's not the video that was the problem, it's the fact that the video got posted.
0:17:55Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, that's probably not the—right,
0:17:56the major problem. It was probably jumping the gun.
0:17:59Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. And I would guess that Dr. Dre did not
0:18:04expected to be posted to Facebook. You know, he's a very, very smart man. And he's clearly been,
0:18:12if it's true, he's clearly been in… He knows enough that Apple doesn't want anything announced.
0:18:19I think that it was the fact that it was his friend that… It wasn't that he posted it to Facebook,
0:18:23it was his friend that posted it to Facebook. I bet that was a good conversation.
0:18:30Because it was only up for a few hours. And then it was taken down early in the morning.
0:18:34And it also seemed like the sort of situation where maybe he wouldn't have been getting up
0:18:40early in the morning. Right? [Laughter]
0:18:45- That would probably be my guess as well, yeah. There might have been a little sleeping in done
0:18:50after that video was made. - No, and I pass no judgment there.
0:18:54Nobody loves to sleep in more than I do. - You sure can't swing a
0:18:59a pair of Beats headphones around without hitting somebody with an opinion about it though.
0:19:04Ted
0:19:04Yeah, yeah, I think the funny thing is I think that's it's to me the interesting thing about it
0:19:09Isn't the actual it's no longer the actual acquisition if it comes to pass it's more
0:19:14that the way that we've had like this two-week period where it was just a
0:19:19unconfirmed rumor with no explanation from Apple or beats as to why
0:19:25Apple would want to do this. It's become like this sort of
0:19:30Blank canvas where everybody can project whatever they think about Apple onto it
0:19:34Right
0:19:38Good or bad. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I
0:19:41Think I think it yeah everything. I mean, I think everything that Apple does has that has that element to it
0:19:46Yeah
0:19:47and I feel but I feel like this more so than anything else because we
0:19:50It did seem to come out of left field like nobody was really predicting it
0:19:56It did seem confusing at first to a lot of us to me at least and I think it's still I think it's still
0:20:02Confusing a little bit anyway, because it doesn't seem like the hardware is that great. It doesn't seem like
0:20:07you know, I mean like they have a streaming service already and
0:20:11From what everybody says it doesn't seem like the licenses for the music go along with the sale, right? But then there's
0:20:22have vine
0:20:24But three billion seems like a lot for an aqua higher, right? Exactly, right? I don't you know, maybe all together though
0:20:31Maybe yeah, I mean maybe all together. It seems like something a little bit here a little bit there
0:20:35So it's not you know on the surface. It's not completely clear exactly
0:20:39What the value is?
0:20:42Yeah, I totally agree, but I don't know though that it you know
0:20:46I'm willing to say as somebody who is you know, I think
0:20:51widely known as a keen Apple observer, I'm willing to say, I just don't know. And just wait. And I'll
0:21:01just wait. You know, I don't have there's no way that I could go off on any kind of strongly
0:21:06opinionated. You know, column or rant here on the show one way or the other that this is stupid,
0:21:15or it's genius. Either way, I don't know, because I don't know enough yet. I don't know why more
0:21:19people can't just say I don't know right they think that's a sign of weakness I
0:21:25guess I don't know but I've seen people you know saying that this is the clearest
0:21:30sign this is you know incontrovertible proof that Tim Cook is a moron you know
0:21:36that he's running the country into the company into the ground and I've seen
0:21:42other people say it's genius you know and this you know keeps Apple on top of
0:21:46music industry for another two decades. And it's like, really? I don't see how either
0:21:50of those extremes is evident in the least.
0:21:53Jared: Yeah. Sean, did you read Jean-Louis' Gassés?
0:21:56Trenton Larkin No, I did not.
0:21:58Jared He's got a piece up today. His Monday note is about that. And he kind of splits
0:22:05it fairly well, basically just saying that he doesn't understand it at this point.
0:22:13Right. Yeah, I think that's the to me, that's the only thinking man's take is, and it's that it
0:22:19doesn't make it less intriguing. If anything, it makes it more intriguing. Because it's like, wow,
0:22:23now we you know, there's something interesting going on here. I can't wait to find out more
0:22:27about it. There's got to be you just feel like there's got to be something more. You know,
0:22:33like, I don't think I really, really, really do not think that the the answer is, Apple has just
0:22:42given up and decided to just be lazy and just throw billions around willy-nilly without really
0:22:47thinking about it. That after going decades, only making relatively small. I mean,
0:22:54I think it's the case that they haven't made a billion, they've never made a billion dollar
0:23:00acquisition. And then all of a sudden now after never having done so now they're just going to
0:23:08spend money willy-nilly. I mean, that doesn't… It just doesn't make sense to me. Like without
0:23:14a very, very concrete idea of how it's going to help Apple. I just don't see it though.
0:23:19Tim Cynova It's interesting that when they acquired Next, I mean, Next was only like
0:23:24400 million or something like that?
0:23:26Dave
0:23:26Yeah. 400 and some. Yeah. And there's some inflation adjustment that you have to do.
0:23:31Right. Right. But there's also, I mean, I think there's just a part from the value of the dollar,
0:23:37there's, there's an acquisition inflation. Yeah. That's gone on since then. I mean,
0:23:43some of these acquisitions that have happened have just driven up. It's like every time somebody
0:23:47wants to get acquired, they're like, well, you know, Facebook bought Instagram for.
0:23:55Well, look at it this way. The Apple next acquisition was, I forget when it was
0:24:03officially completed. I think it was like at least a handshake around Christmas 1996,
0:24:10but made official in January '97. So, whether you want to call it '96 or '97,
0:24:16probably '97 is a little bit better because it's, you know, Christmas week or New Year's week,
0:24:2296 is effectively 97 anyway. But even so, the dot com bubble was still in the early days,
0:24:30you know, it had gotten started, but it was still early days. And so I think at that point,
0:24:37acquisitions were still largely done on traditional metrics of revenue, revenue and profit,
0:24:46like the idea that you would value an acquisition on anything. Well, it's sad in a lot of cases,
0:24:56but in others, maybe not. So you know, like, a good example might be Facebook buying Instagram,
0:25:02where Instagram hadn't tried to make a nickel, right? They'd never sold the app.
0:25:08They'd, they'd never done was clearly worth a lot, right? Because they had growth. And they had,
0:25:14you know, all of these images, they had even a good technology, like one thing that to me often
0:25:19goes on unsaid about Instagram, because it's, when things work, we just don't notice it, we take it
0:25:24for granted. But Twitter, which was all just text, you know, had so many problems with scaling with
0:25:33the fail well, etc. Instagram was doing something, you know, where I'm guessing the average Instagram
0:25:40post is at least… Well, I don't know. It's got to be at least a thousand times bigger than a tweet,
0:25:47though, because it's an image, not just 140 characters. I don't know. It could be 10,000
0:25:56times more. I don't even know. I don't even know how big an Instagram image is. But it's got to be
0:25:59at least a thousand times more and never really had scaling problems. And the previous darling of
0:26:10social photo sharing Flickr. Now, we have to go way back in the day for the early days of Flickr
0:26:16before Yahoo bought them. Also had, you know, terrible scaling problems. And it was far smaller
0:26:23than Instagram was. They did a great job. So there's some value there. But billions or what
0:26:28was it 1 billion that Facebook bought them for? I think so. For a company that never even tried to
0:26:34make a nickel. That's crazy. Well, not crazy, but it's it's it would certainly be crazy if you
0:26:39had a lot of users which is a pretty important rhetoric for that kind of thing and the potential
0:26:46to make money is there yeah right i think the biggest thing if you're going to compare
0:26:53something like apple buying beats for three billion today to apple's next acquisition in 97
0:27:01isn't about the the inflationary difference between 400 and some million then and three
0:27:08billion now. It's really more how much is the cost compared to how much the Apple had
0:27:14on hand at the time. Whereas now Apple has what like 160 billion in cash, much of it
0:27:20off see overseas. But even so even if you even if they decided to pay the entire price
0:27:27in cash using overseas cash, and pay, you know, 30 or 40% income tax on the thing, it's
0:27:35a drop in the bucket, right? They could spend 5 billion on beats, and it's only 1/35 of their
0:27:43entire cash on hand. Whereas the 400 and some million acquisition of Next in 1997 was, people
0:27:53say this all the time that it's a bet the company move. That is one case where it's not the least
0:27:58bit hyperbolic, where it was enough, you know, Apple was near bankruptcy, they didn't have,
0:28:03they couldn't afford to lose to not have it work out. Right. If you're with us basically, so yeah,
0:28:10so Microsoft's investment was Microsoft 150 million, right? 150 million. Yeah. So it was
0:28:16three times bigger. A third. Yeah. And it seemed so Microsoft basically paid for a third of that.
0:28:22I've said this before. Microsoft's people often look back at that and say that Microsoft helped
0:28:27save Apple by giving them 150 million. The 150 million they gave Apple didn't really
0:28:32make much of a difference compared, you know, in terms of keeping the company afloat, like,
0:28:36right, they needed office. Yeah, they still needed billions of revenue per quarter, just to stay in
0:28:42the black. So 150 million investment from Microsoft. I mean, it was enough at the time that it
0:28:47certainly didn't hurt. But it didn't really make a big difference. I mean, they needed billions in
0:28:51revenue, and to keep costs down to stay in the black quarter quarter. It was the, like you said,
0:28:57yeah, the commitment to keep doing office and the political value of the $150 million investment.
0:29:04Yeah. The fact that…
0:29:06Jared: Apple's revenue last quarter was $45.6 billion.
0:29:10So, you know, considering that they've taken that about that, and that's not even a record quarter,
0:29:19$3 million does not, $3 billion does not seem like very much.
0:29:25Right, I think that the the the concern and I have this concern I do I mean I you know
0:29:31I want to see how it turns out. I mean but as a as a
0:29:34Company watcher. I'm certainly concerned about it where it's not the money. It's to me that the
0:29:40The potential that it could signify a lack of focus, you know that focus has always been
0:29:47The key to Apple's success that they have all of this talent in the company
0:29:55and so many good executives and the whole operation is working on such a
0:30:01relatively few number of products now Tim Cook has said I use the analogy
0:30:07several times but that like you know that that he could put all of the
0:30:12company's products on one table in an Apple store the entire lineup of
0:30:17hardware that Apple sells could be arranged neatly on one table and that
0:30:22that sort of focus is what lets the company do such good work on those products.
0:30:27Yeah, and I guess that kind of colors how you think this deal is, the value of this
0:30:36deal, depending on whether you think that they're going to sort of subsume that brand
0:30:39into their own or keep it separate.
0:30:42Yeah, totally. I mean, Montero and I talked about this last week. I just don't know.
0:30:47To me, that's one of the single biggest questions about this potential acquisition. It's fascinating
0:30:55to me because on the one hand, I can't see Apple owning a sub-brand. On the other hand,
0:31:05I can't see spending $3 billion for Beats and not keeping the brand because to me, it
0:31:11seems to me like most of the value in Beats is in the brand.
0:31:14Yeah, I would guess so. Again, again, we're just…
0:31:19Right. I have heard from some people, I mean, clearly among audiophiles, like your Marco
0:31:26Armentz, people who really know what they have seemingly have fully operational ears
0:31:34and really can tell the difference between different headphones. Beats is like a non-entity
0:31:39and almost treated with disdain. But I've seen other people say, "Well, so audio files
0:31:44will keep buying their audio file headphones from Sennheiser and whoever else." But normal
0:31:51people love the way beats headphones sound, and that it's not about fidelity and reproducing
0:32:00music in some sort of way that you measure fidelity, but effectively making it sound
0:32:06as though you have a nightclub in your head.
0:32:08Trenton Larkin And that they do a really good job of that.
0:32:12I don't know, though, that that means that it would be hard for a competitor to do the
0:32:16same thing, though, that they you know, that they have technology that is it that they
0:32:20have technology that's hard to reproduce or, you know, I don't think that's
0:32:24Unknown Speaker seem like that. No, it doesn't seem like
0:32:26it's particularly since their stuff was made by monster before. Right. I mean, they've
0:32:31only been making their own stuff for a little while six, six months or something. Yeah,
0:32:36Maybe a little longer than that, but I've also seen other people and this is on Twitter and you know
0:32:41It's all you know, this has been the knock against Apple for
0:32:44Did as long as Apple has existed, I mean probably from like 1980 onwards
0:32:50People who are clearly not a fan of Apple products in general saying it's a perfect acquisition for Apple overpriced technology
0:32:58sold based on marketing alone
0:33:02So it's a you know
0:33:03I don't think it's a problem for Apple that from among some people the idea that Apple buys beats
0:33:07Reinforces that notion of the company because I feel like those people there's nothing Apple could ever do in a million years to turn them around
0:33:14Right, you know and if your goal is to get a hundred percent of all consumers to view your brand
0:33:21Favorably, you're doomed. You're never you're gonna end up, you know
0:33:26You're gonna end up failing. Yeah, there's no brand in any market that works like that
0:33:31So what other what other acquisitions? Well, let's take a break. Okay. And let me tell you about our
0:33:39first sponsor, our good friends, all three sponsors today, longtime friends of the show,
0:33:44glad to have them on board with the transition to the new Daring Fireball version of the talk show.
0:33:50Our first is our good friends at Igloo. That's the internet you'll actually like. Igloo,
0:34:00And they want me to tell you a little bit about
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0:34:23You will go to a special page. They've set up just for listeners of the show where they show the results
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0:35:31SharePoint doesn't play well with mobile. That's a huge thing going forward
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0:36:03depending on what you need like if you need a customer community site or
0:36:06A corporate intranet just for your team to share two very different use cases where the years
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0:36:36start using a free get 10 people on board. You don't have to pay anything and make sure
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0:36:48and after that the price is really, really competitive. So my thanks to them. And again,
0:36:53just go to igloosoftware.com/thetalkshow. What were we talking about? Acquisitions.
0:37:01So what else?
0:37:02**Robert Wiblin-Lamport, Jr. "Aquisitions." **Ezra Klein "Aquisitions."
0:37:03**Robert Wiblin-Lamport, Jr. "Aquisitions."
0:37:04**Ezra Klein "Aquisitions."
0:37:05**Robert Wiblin-Lamport, Jr. "Aquisitions."
0:37:06**Ezra Klein "Aquisitions."
0:37:07**Robert Wiblin-Lamport, Jr. "Aquisitions."
0:37:08**Ezra Klein "Aquisitions."
0:37:09**Robert Wiblin-Lamport, Jr. "Aquisitions."
0:37:10**Ezra Klein "Aquisitions."
0:37:11record but YouTube is supposedly buying a twitch twitch for a billion dollars so
0:37:19there's two interesting things about that one twitch is is effectively I saw
0:37:25it I just posted a thing before I did we started recording that it's like the ESPN
0:37:28of video games that they stream right they treat video games the way ESPN
0:37:33treats sports and you go to twitch and you use twitch and you can watch you
0:37:36know top players play video games and you and I have talked about this because
0:37:41our sons, who are 10 years old, are really into watching videos of people playing video games.
0:37:46And, you know, I didn't come up with this last time we talked about it, but,
0:37:51you know, I've already watched this season, probably the Yankees have played, I think,
0:37:5742 games so far. I've probably watched about 30 of them. So, I'm probably up close to 100
0:38:04hours of baseball that I've watched so far this year. And yet, I'm the one who was thinking,
0:38:10just like a month ago. How crazy it is that my son watches people playing game, video of people
0:38:16playing games rather than playing them himself. Whereas I haven't played baseball in 15 years and
0:38:22watch hundreds of hours over the year. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks like, duh, it's the
0:38:27same thing. You know, I'm into baseball. So I love watching my favorite baseball team play. He's into
0:38:32video games. And so he loves watching people play video games. And I would rather watch people play
0:38:38video games because I have a better chance than with my local sports team. I have a better chance
0:38:43seeing somebody actually win. So. I think that maybe if you're Google YouTube, that makes a lot
0:38:57of sense. I also think it's interesting that it's being dealt with as a YouTube acquisition,
0:39:03not a Google acquisition. I thought that was interesting too. And I didn't even notice this,
0:39:06but like the head of YouTube, her title is CEO. Like their YouTube, I didn't know that. I just
0:39:13thought because they were trying to get the same unified sign in everywhere. I didn't realize that
0:39:17YouTube is, you know, as independent as it seems to be. But it totally makes sense to be, you know,
0:39:24for it to, you know, it does make sense that it's YouTube in particular, not Google in general that
0:39:29might be making this acquisition. Yeah. Somebody and I apologize because I don't remember it was
0:39:34a retweet of someone who I don't follow, but said that a while ago Vimeo had noticed that people were
0:39:41posting a lot of sort of the sort of let's play videos and responded by banning them.
0:39:47Which, I mean, I guess, you know, if that's what you want for your platform, then
0:39:56you don't want that kind of thing on your... I mean, they're a little more artsy, I guess.
0:40:00Yeah, and they've you know, they've yeah, they've always sort of differentiated themselves from YouTube or YouTube has sort of been like
0:40:07anything that you can legally post as
0:40:10Video you can post to YouTube where you know, I mean, you know
0:40:15The copyright stuff in particular and I'm sure that there's some kind of content based stuff that that would get
0:40:22Rejected from YouTube, but if it's legal you can post it and they don't care what it is
0:40:27Right, I mean you can just you know it's yeah, I'm sure they actually are they often
0:40:31I mean and they basically usually it seems like they usually wait for someone asked to have it taken down, right?
0:40:35Whereas Vimeo is always sort of yeah exactly they sort of want a sort of artistic style. I
0:40:41Don't know and they also have restrictions about commercials type stuff. You know where you can't
0:40:46So I did I didn't think about that the licensing aspect of it
0:40:50Which maybe maybe that is more of what it is rather than sort of the artsy
0:40:56Aspect of it. Yeah, I thought it was more like but we don't we don't want let's play videos on our
0:41:02our site
0:41:05I did see somebody tweeted that one of the things people who are fans of Twitter concerned about with the YouTube acquisition
0:41:11Is that a lot of these videos get posted with music playing in the background?
0:41:15You know and YouTube has gotten very very good at flagging such things identifying right copyright music
0:41:23But to me, that's sort of a, you know, and, you know, I'm not a big fan of Google. I think it's
0:41:29fair to say, but I have to say that if you're putting copyright music in your videos and
0:41:33uploading them to a commercial website, and it gets flagged, it's on you. Yeah, there's sort of,
0:41:40you know, the world's tiniest violin playing a sad song here for you. It's like, you know,
0:41:44I understand that it's it in if, you know, it's one of those things like comics ology going to
0:41:50Amazon where you know it is making it worse for you as a user but you know come on you know
0:41:56Copyright stuff is still copy. You know, there's
0:41:58Can't using music for free is still you have to admit. It's a gray area, right?
0:42:04Like you had to you know, you had to think eventually that's that bubble was gonna burst one way or the other
0:42:09Yeah, and I do I think we're on the cusp of this sort of
0:42:15video people people spent you know note and observe observing noting and then monetizing the fact that
0:42:22Millions of people are watching hundreds and hundreds of hours of people play video games this that's gonna become a thing
0:42:29It's it's gonna quickly. It's not gonna take long before
0:42:31Idiots like me who think wow these crazy kids today. You know no longer see it as odd or unusual
0:42:39Yeah, I think it may be you mentioned this before but I feel like that's this is kind of my first
0:42:44first moment of having something like that come up. I mean, and from kids so young, I
0:42:51mean kids from, you know, our kids are 10, and seeing what they do and kind of in the
0:42:56beginning going, "Oh, you know, that's so lowbrow," but then realizing, "Well,
0:43:01maybe not. Maybe I need to give it another chance."
0:43:04Pete: Yeah, and I'm sure it's just like, you know,
0:43:07I feel like I'm almost proud of myself for being as uncommudgeonly as to recognize that
0:43:13this is normal, that I shouldn't be seeing, that I was wrong, that I shouldn't be seeing,
0:43:17this is weird. I'm kind of proud of myself.
0:43:20Jared: And it wasn't until he started watching that stuff that I even realized that this was
0:43:27such a huge industry. I wrote that article about the guys doing Minecraft stuff and they're making
0:43:34ridiculous amounts of money.
0:43:35Pete: Right. And good for them, right?
0:43:38Jared Yeah, no, it's great. It's great.
0:43:39I mean, because it all comes down to the bottom line is attention. This is not a new observation,
0:43:46it's obvious, but that's the one thing that we have collectively in the aggregate that's
0:43:51a limited resource. Every person only has 24 hours in a day and we need to spend a certain
0:43:56number of hours of that sleeping and eating and working or going to school or something.
0:44:01So if you're capturing in the aggregate millions of hours of attention, there's tremendous value
0:44:09there. Yeah. And Stampy Longnose, that guy that are, the main guy that I wrote about
0:44:14that article, recently tweeted that he's, you know, it was a picture of Jack Black.
0:44:21You know, he was visiting with Jack Black and the two of them are going to be working
0:44:24on something together. That's awesome. Yeah. That's so great. Which is a really, which
0:44:30is a good fit for starters, but also just, I mean, the fact that this guy who was working
0:44:36in a pub two years ago and is now the gigantic mogul of YouTube Minecraft
0:44:42videos so awesome but that it's all just you know of a piece that you're doing
0:44:47this you know you're doing this thing that people watch for this reason I do
0:44:51these things that people watch for another reason we should do something
0:44:53together right what else acquisition news AT&T oh yeah is buying direct TV
0:45:03For 45 billion dollars you can just feel the increase in competition. Can't you I?
0:45:09Was just talking to somebody yesterday we we got together with friends yesterday out-of-town friends
0:45:16And and we were talking about that the that's the thing that really greats about the Comcast
0:45:23Time Warner
0:45:26Merger which is really Comcast buying Time Warner, which is for almost the same amount of money like forty six billion dollars
0:45:33It would be one thing if Comcast's argument was, "Okay, don't worry, this is still going
0:45:39to be okay for consumers. Here's why." And there's some kind of argument they could make
0:45:45there and maybe it makes some kind of sense. But the fact that they're actually saying
0:45:48that it will increase competition, it would increase competition for us to consume our
0:45:56largest competitor. It makes no sense, right? If the Yankees and Red Sox merged, you could say,
0:46:05"Well, this would be good for baseball for this reason or the other." But you can't say it would
0:46:10increase competition because it's two arch rivals with big budgets. It can't. Direct TV and AT&T
0:46:19merging cannot increase competition. **Matt Stauffer**
0:46:24Yeah, it's the classic lobbyist talk. Yeah, I also saw that DirecTV in particular was part of
0:46:31a compart of Comcast. And I think it's driven. It could be the sort of thing where maybe AT&T
0:46:38wouldn't have done this if they didn't have the nagging feeling that this Comcast/Time Warner
0:46:43thing is going to go through and that they kind of need to get bigger in the same way.
0:46:49But part of Comcast's argument that this is not anti-competitive or bad for consumers in
0:46:56a competitive way is that the average U.S. citizen has like three options, or at least three options
0:47:04as an alternative to Comcast and Time Warner. But it's not about cable service to your home or
0:47:10any kind of wired thing. It's DirecTV, that they're counting as competition, something of an
0:47:18an entirely different sort. Just the whole thing. I mentioned this before. I'm just
0:47:24glad that here in Tacoma we have a city provided broadband. You know, very few cities have
0:47:31done that. Forget who else. I just saw somebody was, was it San Diego? I forget. They're
0:47:38somewhere in Southern California where they have municipal Wi-Fi and that it works. It's
0:47:44really good. If it's not San Diego, it's somewhere else in Southern California. But
0:47:49you're downtown and you can just walk around and get on the Wi-Fi and you have superior
0:47:55to LTE, wireless internet everywhere.
0:47:59Tim Cynova Yeah. But those pockets are very few and far
0:48:03between.
0:48:04Eric Bischoff Yeah. So what do you guys have? You guys have
0:48:06wired broadband?
0:48:07Tim Cynova Yep.
0:48:08Eric Bischoff And who do you pay? Who do you write?
0:48:10Tim Cynova We were one of those, like in the late '90s,
0:48:14of those cities that was vying for the title of America's most wired city or something
0:48:20like that.
0:48:21So, you know, there was the few ones that were doing that.
0:48:26So the city runs the network and they have contracted with a few small local private
0:48:34companies to provide the service and come out and do the installation and stuff like
0:48:38that.
0:48:39And there's a good service?
0:48:40So just, it's fine.
0:48:41Yeah.
0:48:42I mean, it's certainly no worse than Comcast. I feel good that I'm not sending Comcast my money.
0:48:50**Matt Stauffer:** That should be their slogan.
0:48:51**Brett Harned:** Yeah, right. Certainly no worse than Comcast.
0:48:55I mean, I experience ups and downs. I don't have any idea if I experience more ups and downs than
0:49:03your average Comcast user. But I don't get a lot of them. And I pay for like the cheapest level.
0:49:13So...
0:49:14Trenton Larkin Shocker.
0:49:15David Bonilla Yeah.
0:49:16You need that before you ask.
0:49:20Trenton Larkin Let me take a break here and thank our second
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0:51:02I've been using it. I forget how long I've been using it. And it just runs in the background
0:51:08on your Mac. Nothing to worry about. Just a great service. I think it's probably a great thing,
0:51:13not just for all of you out there listening to the show. But it's also a great thing that you could
0:51:20set up for your parents or anybody like less technical family and friends members who have
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0:51:48Where do you go to sign up and find out more easy? Go to their website, www dot back blaze.com
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0:52:03I'm going there right now.
0:52:07Yes, just you but you should I currently don't have offsite backup. Well, then you're not is dumb.
0:52:16Yeah, really dumb. And you should start it. Start it right now while we're recording the show over
0:52:21Skype because I'm sure that won't cause any trouble whatsoever. I'll wait until we're done.
0:52:28My thanks to Backblaze for ruining this recording of the talk show.
0:52:31I already ruined it. I tell you, it does put perspective on it. Where if you want, you know,
0:52:39Apple, the company with $160 billion in the bank, is buying a company for $3 billion
0:52:45and it was mega mega news for you know a week and a half if assuming it comes to fruition this week
0:52:52i'm sure it'll pop pop back up to the top of the tech news uh what is that 1 15th the size of
0:52:59atnt's purchase of direct tv yeah do you think that they would wait until wwdc i've that's it
0:53:08i thought of that i you know they're close enough now because what we're as we record today we're
0:53:13two weeks to the day. We're recording on Monday the 19th. So, we're two weeks to the day. So,
0:53:18I don't know. Why not? And especially if they have some sort of consumer-based story to tell about
0:53:28why they're doing it and what they have planned together, why not? Why not just get all the
0:53:35paperwork ready to go and don't put the signatures down until Sunday, June 1st, and then Monday,
0:53:41June 2nd have something on the keynote. It's close enough that I wouldn't be surprised.
0:53:47Then you got instant news. Not that anybody's probably not going to write about it anyway, but…
0:53:53Well, and they get their own… They get to spin it their way. Tell their side of the story and
0:54:03explain themselves first in a in a in a forum that's more you know a richer medium than just
0:54:15a press release right a press release you just can write what you want to say whereas during a
0:54:19wwdc keynote you can tell it and you can you know use use your voice and you know slides and
0:54:27bring dr gray up on stage if you want i don't know i don't know but it you know it's
0:54:32it's, you know, it's the way that, you know, there's something about watching people talk
0:54:38that's different and better than just reading about it. Right. The iPhone announcement in
0:54:432007 would not have been the iPhone announcement if it had just come out in a press release
0:54:47with a picture. It's the fact that it was on on stage with the crowd, right?
0:54:51Stan Sigmund hadn't been there.
0:54:53Pete: Right. Exactly. What would we have laughed at?
0:54:56I wonder if anybody else remembers him as fondly as we did.
0:55:04Jared; God, that was, it was just so, because that keynote was so amazing.
0:55:11And then we had to sit there for five minutes and listen to Stan Sigmund.
0:55:16Do you know who Stan Sigmund was? Is it Sigmund or Stigman?
0:55:21Stan Sigmund.
0:55:21Stan Sigmund was to the iPhone keynote what Christian Laitner was to the Dream Team. Do
0:55:32you remember the Dream Team, the first time the US sent professional basketball players to the
0:55:37Olympics? And it was Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Charles Bart. I mean,
0:55:44it's just you know those three the three at the top are arguably that I think well you know LeBron's
0:55:49probably up there now maybe I don't know but you know at the time they were all three were
0:55:53considered arguably the single greatest player of all time all on the same team oh you know almost
0:56:00all not just all stars but Hall of Famers down the line and then they had they had room for one
0:56:06college player and it it could have been either Shaq who wound up having a fantastic pro career
0:56:12you know, Hall of Fame career, or Christian Leitner from Duke, and they picked Christian Leitner.
0:56:16That was Stan Sigmund.
0:56:20The greatest announcement in the history of consumer electronics.
0:56:27And then at one point…
0:56:31**Matt Stauffer** And then it just like stalls.
0:56:34**Ezra Kleinman** Right. In the midst of outright near pandemonium and delirium in the
0:56:40the in the in the hall all of a sudden there was narcolepsy people had to pass
0:56:50smelling salts out yeah when when Jerry Yang is up there yeah who's Jerry Yang
0:56:59is up there and he's not like the least charismatic
0:57:04right bring back Jerry Yang Jerry Yang back up breaking news
0:57:23come to our attention that like a dummy I forgot to mention something that I
0:57:30I wanted to during the recording with John Moltz and that is this
0:57:34For those of you who will be in San Francisco during the week of WWDC
0:57:40I'm gonna have another live audience episode of the talk show. I've done this last two years as we the third year
0:57:48It's been a lot of fun and the show should be even better than before
0:57:53It's going to be on Tuesday. That's June 3rd
0:57:576 to 9 p.m. At mezzanine in San Francisco. We've already got the venue
0:58:01I don't have any ticket information yet. Don't have the URL
0:58:05but I will
0:58:07So what I'm going to do is rather than announce it on daring fireball
0:58:12I will announce it here on the show in the next episode not this episode not not the one you're listening to right now
0:58:19next episode episode 82 I will
0:58:23Have instructions URL or something like that where you go to buy your tickets for the show. So the first crack at
0:58:30Tickets we should have about 500 available
0:58:33the first crack will go to
0:58:35The first people who listen to the show
0:58:38So if you really want to get a ticket you want to be sure to get one pay attention
0:58:41Keep your eyes peeled for the next episode of the talk show episode 82 give it a listen and in that show
0:58:47You'll find out how to get a ticket
0:58:50Thanks. I hope to see you there and now back to the talk show
0:58:55So so
0:59:02WWDC, all right two weeks
0:59:05Two weeks now, maybe you want to hold off on you want to hold off on speculation for your next show?
0:59:10Maybe but you know you could ask me questions. I
0:59:13Don't know
0:59:19Big iPhone, I don't think so. Oh, wait. Wait, wait. I got a better. I got a better question split-screen iPad. Yeah
0:59:28Believe it I mean, I don't think it's ridiculous
0:59:33And you know, I trust
0:59:36Mark Gurman who reported it enough that I don't think that he you know, I think his source probably, you know was reasonably
0:59:44either in Apple or reasonably could be expected to
0:59:48to know of such a thing. But I don't know. The devil would be in the details in terms
0:59:54of how it's actually how you actually get into and out of this such a mode.
0:59:59Yeah, because I think that's been I mean, Microsoft always tells them, you can use two
1:00:05apps at the same time. But you wouldn't really want to write my guess is if it's true, it's
1:00:11something that you manage within the multitasking switcher. In other words,
1:00:17would the thing you get when you double tap the home button and that you zoom
1:00:22out a little bit to like a card type view now in iOS 7 you do and it might
1:00:27even help explain why they switched to that card type view where you actually
1:00:32see what looks like windows of your apps as you pan left and right and that maybe
1:00:37you could take two of them and push them together yeah and then you know but I
1:00:44don't know though it all seems you know you start thinking about this if you
1:00:47actually try to think it through and you know get it detailed down enough that
1:00:52you could actually hand over to someone and say okay build this it you you start
1:00:57seeing how complicated it is because it almost certainly would require apps to
1:01:02support it explicitly because the size of the app on screen would be it would
1:01:06be a new size. It would be a new window size, right? Because it's, you know, it's something
1:01:11that would work with, uh, if they announced it at WWDC by definition, it would be part
1:01:17of an announcement of iOS eight, not a part of new iPad hardware. So it would have to
1:01:21work on existing iPads. Um, and then, so you could just take the half the size of the iPad
1:01:27screen and that's the size that the app would be running in, you know, 10, 20, 2048, uh,
1:01:33this would be like 1024 by I don't know whatever it would be I can't do the math
1:01:41man right but it would still be new dimensions and a new size yeah and it
1:01:49would so you couldn't just push together any two apps you'd only be able to push
1:01:55together two apps that support it well then how do you show the user which ones
1:01:59you can push together. I don't know. Yeah. And he also he ends the other thing was he
1:02:05in sort of insinuated that it might have implications for well, I guess he said this, but
1:02:11for data sharing between different apps. On that point, I think he was I think he was guessing,
1:02:20guessing. Yeah, I don't think so. Because I don't think Yeah, it didn't seem like that was,
1:02:23you know, what came from his source. It seemed like that was his reference. Yeah, I don't think
1:02:28it would require the XPC as he said yeah certainly possible but again I think it
1:02:37would have to be you know you have to figure I'd have to see the details of
1:02:40exactly how you get into and out of the mode and I think it has to be the sort
1:02:43of thing where I think the most important thing would be that you can't
1:02:47get into it accidentally because I think that then all of a sudden you're and
1:02:51it's starting to turn into something like the Mac where people are easily
1:02:54confused and that's so big a part of right why as a pro it would be good it
1:02:59would be great as a pro feature or something that you turn on explicitly
1:03:02right and you just can't underestimate you don't want somebody I mean like my
1:03:07mother or father right and I that everything's always and I don't play
1:03:12that card lightly you know that because I know that some people get all incensed
1:03:16about the plane that oh yeah the non techie tech savvy grandparents card but
1:03:22- It's true.
1:03:23- No, it's absolutely true.
1:03:25I mean, my parents both have iPads now,
1:03:28and in years I've gotten like one call
1:03:33about like an iPad problem,
1:03:35and it really came down to like a billing thing
1:03:39with the cellular wireless,
1:03:41which is sort of a complicated aspect of it.
1:03:45But in terms of just using it,
1:03:46it's never been a problem, whereas--
1:03:48- And I think you and I talked about,
1:03:50didn't you get a call once
1:03:51when somebody was in full screen mode?
1:03:55- Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely.
1:03:57- And couldn't get out?
1:03:58- Right, exactly.
1:03:58No, that was exactly true, where my parents
1:04:02had got a new iMac and upgraded,
1:04:06jumped a couple versions of Mac OS
1:04:09and never had full screen mode before, got into it,
1:04:13and it was a confusing phone call,
1:04:15'cause I was in there like, "How do you quit?
1:04:16"We wanna quit mail."
1:04:17And I was like, "Just go up to the menu."
1:04:19And they're like, "There is no menu."
1:04:20There's always a menu and then I thought wait
1:04:22Not when you're in full screen, although I guess if you run the mouse up there
1:04:27There is a menu but because they couldn't see it in the first place
1:04:29They never even thought to run the mouse up to see if there was a menu
1:04:31Yeah, full screen can getting into full screen mode accidentally required a phone call and I feel like whatever the iPad does for
1:04:39Two apps on the screen at the same time cannot be something that it's gonna get me a phone call
1:04:44Yeah, if I get a phone call about it, then I then Apple is somebody didn't do their job
1:04:50And to me that's more important than number two which would be making it
1:04:55Convenient enough that power users who know what they're doing and who really want to do it can get into it easy enough that it's that
1:05:03they end up using I
1:05:05Don't know it's like there's a lot of people out there who I
1:05:10Don't want to call them iPad doubters, but you know people who just generally down on the iPad as like a
1:05:18long-term replacement for the Mac and and a productivity device
1:05:22Who who want more power user type features
1:05:28In iOS, especially on the iPad maybe compared to the phone just because it's big enough that you could do stuff
1:05:34Like nobody is saying they want two apps on the same time on the iPhone or at least nobody's saying
1:05:41Just feel like those sort of people gla just gloss over how confusing
1:05:45computers in general are to most people. It's just if you understand it and you never really
1:05:52find yourself confused or lost on Mac OS X, you just can't. It's just so hard.
1:05:57It's the same people who think that widgets on Android are the killer feature.
1:06:01Yeah, yeah. I just saw something this week on ZDNet about how much more you can quote
1:06:05it. I didn't link to it because it was, you know, it's like one of those things like you
1:06:08don't want to draw attention to something. And it wasn't the guy was, I think the guy
1:06:12meant it honestly, but he said, look at how, you know, how huge the usability advantage
1:06:16of Android is versus iOS. Usability, he called it. And it was his his home screen on both
1:06:26devices. And he carries both like for work for some reason, he has an Android, a Galaxy
1:06:31and a iPhone. And his iPhone home screen, of course, is just a bunch of apps. And his
1:06:37his Android home screen is a couple of apps and a bunch of widgets, including a bunch
1:06:41of like home automation ones so that he can like, you know, open his garage door and change
1:06:47his thermostat and do all this stuff without ever entering an app, but do it right from
1:06:51his Android home screen, which is cool in a geeky way. It's kind of, you know, and obviously
1:06:57it makes him happy. And maybe, you know, he's too fiddly. Yeah, he's a perfect example of
1:07:01a sort of person who truly is better served by Android than iOS.
1:07:06**Matt Stauffer:** Plus that guy, he tries too hard.
1:07:08**Beserat Debebe:** But calling it a user-
1:07:10**Matt Stauffer** I know who that is.
1:07:11**Beserat Debebe:** Calling it a years long usability advantage is,
1:07:16I think, stretching it. I just feel like people vastly underestimate how big of a
1:07:21usability advantage for different people iOS has in terms of never making people feel like they're
1:07:26lost. Right? Because what happens you're in two screen mode and you hit the home button,
1:07:32what happens? Do both apps go away and replace with your home screen? Because that's what I
1:07:38would expect to happen because whenever I hit the home button, I'm taken back to the safety of
1:07:43I'm back to ground zero, just a home screen full of apps.
1:07:46There's a perfect solution for that.
1:07:50What's that?
1:07:51Two home buttons.
1:07:54Hold that thought. Hold that thought and let me thank our third and final sponsor of the
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1:10:15Home button
1:10:21Two of them well, here's what I wanted to talk about talking about one home button
1:10:25So I don't know if you notice as I tweeted a couple of times about it, but a couple of weeks ago, I
1:10:29bought I bought a Firefox Firefox, yeah, the ZTE open see Firefox OS phone. I saw it. I forget what
1:10:41site I was reading. But it said that they started to sell it in the US on eBay. It's like an eBay
1:10:46store. You just go there $99 smartphone unlocked. Oh, it's on. Of course, it's of course, it's on.
1:10:55unlocked. So, you just go there and you spend 99 bucks. A couple days later, you get your phone.
1:11:02I guess I should write about it on Daring Fireball. A lot of times,
1:11:06I get these things and never end up writing about it. But long story short, it's not a good phone.
1:11:13**Beserat Debele
1:11:13Oh, darn. B, one thing though that is interesting is that they copied conceptually, and I don't
1:11:25mean this in a pejorative way at all. I just mean in terms of, look, they're following
1:11:31years behind the footsteps of the modern smartphone, which is a touchscreen device that more or
1:11:40or less run something that's like a real computer operating system. The post iPhone
1:11:46smartphone, right? And one thing that they got right is there's only one button on the
1:11:51front, a home button. There's a button to turn it on. It's got the exact same buttons
1:11:56as the iPhone, except it doesn't have a mute switch. So there's an on/off switch at the
1:12:01top, just like the iPhone. Volume up, volume down on the side. And then on the front face,
1:12:08underneath the screen, there's just a circle, and that circle is the home button. And the
1:12:12home button does exactly what the home button on the iPhone does, is it takes you to a home
1:12:17screen full of app icons. So in one sense, I was actually, I found myself very… For
1:12:27an iPhone user, there's no way to get lost or confused. It's very, very iPhone-like
1:12:32in terms of what's the basic gist of how you use the thing. I would say in every other
1:12:40regard it is really pretty bad. And I don't mean that you just pop your sim out and put
1:12:46it in there. You know what I get another I can't because my sim is a Verizon sim and
1:12:51it's a GSM phone and so it doesn't work. And I was I was going to go to T mobile and just
1:13:01get a buy a SIM card from them because I've been curious I've been curious
1:13:05about t-mobile ever since you know it just seems like they're the most
1:13:08internet I don't know that I would say they're the best carrier right now in
1:13:11the u.s. but they're the most interesting carrier that they seem to
1:13:13have the best plans the most the best pricing right and a pretty cool you know
1:13:19they just seem better like a better company than Verizon or AT&T albeit with
1:13:24a smaller network coverage because it but it's like 50 I think to start and
1:13:29that you could get one for it's like 50 bucks a month and it's prepaid. You don't have to get
1:13:33in a contract or anything, but even 50 bucks felt like too much to waste on this thing.
1:13:37Where at a dollar? Well, you know, and I don't regret the $100 I feel like it I got $100 worth
1:13:42of curiosity answered and just using it at home on the Wi Fi network is more than enough to satisfy
1:13:49my questions about it. I don't feel I don't feel like the ability to actually go out and use it
1:13:53outside the house right would answer anything other than, you know, so I haven't been able
1:13:59will send any text messages because I don't have a SIM card in it and I haven't been able
1:14:02to place an actual phone call. But I don't like talking on the phone anyway.
1:14:06Jared Ranerel who does that? Who uses the phone?
1:14:09Jared Ranerel Right. And when I say that it's not good,
1:14:13when I say that it's not good, I do not mean in comparison to a $700 iPhone 5S, which is
1:14:19truly not a fair comparison. A $99 unlocked phone to an iPhone 5S that in the unlocked,
1:14:27know, sells for seven or $800, which is that's not a fair comparison. I would say and I don't
1:14:33have it here. So I can't you know, I don't have one in the house. But where Nokia has been going
1:14:39and now Nokia's handset division is part of Microsoft. And Motorola has been going on Android,
1:14:47in terms of lower cost smartphones. And I did see when I was out at build for the Microsoft
1:14:53conference a month ago, I saw a low end Nokia, Windows phone handset that I think unlocked
1:15:02was I could be wrong here, but it was like $129 way better than this device. Like, you
1:15:10know, and again, not, you know, definitely not iPhone five, five s five c iPhone five
1:15:16anything caliber, not even iPhone four s caliber, but pretty good, like in terms of things like
1:15:22frame rate and, you know, load a web page and slide your thumb around and how does it keep up
1:15:27with your thumb and stuff like that pretty good. And I know Motorola has a new thing I forget which
1:15:32the model number is, but they have one that's like $129. And so they're not quite at the $99 price I
1:15:38paid for this, but 129 to 99 is pretty fair comparison. And this this phone has got a lot
1:15:44of problems. Video. So when you shoot video on this phone, it's like 380 by like 240 pixels,
1:15:53which is really a pretty low size. And it's 15 frames per second.
1:15:59So you're, you know, I mean, it's almost like if that's all they were able to put in here,
1:16:08I almost, I mean, I guess it's better than nothing, but it's not much better than nothing.
1:16:12Yeah. Can you remember? Do you remember that the original iPhone didn't shoot video? Yeah,
1:16:17that's that is I caught myself thinking about that kind of crazy. Is that right? I was like,
1:16:24that can't be right. And then they like went back and looked and I was like, Yep, that was right.
1:16:27But I do think I bet that that was the sort of decision Apple made with the original iPhone,
1:16:34where they probably could have done something like shot posted stamp sized 15 frames per second
1:16:39video and they were like it'd be better not to even shoot video than to offer video like that
1:16:44eventually there was an app how did that work right that's sort of when did video come to the
1:16:51iPhone was it was it was another 3g 3gs because the 3gs the 3g only because it needed a better
1:16:57processor right the 3g only added 3g and a new a new case design right but technically it didn't
1:17:06didn't increase the CPU. You know, didn't increase the RAM, didn't increase the storage.
1:17:10The one and only technical difference other than the outside appearance between the original iPhone
1:17:15and the 3G was 3G. Maybe there was a jailbreak app that added video to the earlier ones. Because
1:17:25I remember that there was one and I never installed it just because I think by that point,
1:17:30I already moved on. The camera is just really bad. The video, it's not just that the video is low.
1:17:34It's it really takes terrible, terrible photographs. And again, I so with the Nokia one,
1:17:42the Nokia is low end $129 smartphone. The only photos I got to take I was in a room in Moscone,
1:17:49where they had demo unit set up for media to play with. I mean, but I could I it the Nokia has a,
1:17:56you know, if anything, they have it. Yeah. If anything, Apple just Apple just hired their
1:18:01Yeah, yeah. And from everything I've read about it, that's a pretty big hire that he wasn't,
1:18:06it's not just the name that he actually was largely, you know, played a big part in making
1:18:11Nokia. They're either one and two or two and one. I mean, that's, you know, more or less the gist
1:18:16is that the two best companies that at mobile photography right now are Apple and Nokia. And
1:18:21it doesn't matter which one you think is one and which ones too. You know, they're just leading the
1:18:25way in terms of image quality and features and stuff. And this phone from ZTE is just,
1:18:30it just feels like it's at least 10 years old. And it makes me wonder about Firefox in general.
1:18:38I mean, I know I've was never really a full time Firefox user on the on the desktop. But it just
1:18:45it's like, why are they way it just feels to me like this is just a waste of time on their part.
1:18:51I don't know. And I feel like they're they feel locked out because these mobile platforms don't
1:18:57allow, at least iOS certainly doesn't allow them to include their own rendering engine. You know,
1:19:04even Chrome doesn't get to Chrome for iOS doesn't use the Chrome rendering engine. It's just a Chrome
1:19:11wrapper around the system's WebKit version. You know, and so if you're a company like Mozilla,
1:19:17that you know that the whole point of your existence is to have your rendering and
1:19:23engine out there powering people surfing the web. I could see why you would want a mobile operating
1:19:29system of your own so you could do it. But if this is how far behind you are, boy, it's going to be
1:19:34tough to get anybody to—I just can't see why anybody would buy it. If you have the $99 to spend
1:19:40on it, I just can't see why you wouldn't save up another $30 and get a Motorola Android phone or
1:19:46get a Nokia Windows 8 phone when you get so much more. And much more likely you'd get the Android
1:19:51phone. I mean, more people would get the Android phone.
1:19:54Yeah, well, they would right now, at least, statistically. Although, you know—
1:19:58Unless you're buying into a bigger ecosystem.
1:20:01Right. I just feel—and I feel like the only other reason I can think of that someone would
1:20:04buy this phone would be the politics of it, you know, that you support the whole political angle
1:20:10of Mozilla and the, you know, open web and etc., etc. But I just don't see how there's enough
1:20:17people out there that that's a statistically valid number of people.
1:20:21Right. Well, it looks like it erased my notebook. I had some notes, but they were written using the
1:20:31notebook app on the actual phone and it seems as though now they're gone. That's a shame.
1:20:38I can remember a lot of them. One of the big problems with this operating system is that it
1:20:44does not support selecting text. So there's no cut, copy, or paste.
1:20:50So it's a lot like the original iPhone. It is. And I Twittered about some of these
1:20:55things and people who support, who are fans of it, I guess, tried to call me a hypocrite
1:21:04for it. How was it okay for Apple in 2007 when the iPhone was new and it's not okay
1:21:10Well, that's because it's not 2007 anymore, right? It's you know, the world's moved on and
1:21:16Other people called me out the other way and when I said that it was unacceptable
1:21:24It was acceptable for Apple then but it's unacceptable now and they said no it was unacceptable for Apple then - it used to drive me
1:21:30nuts
1:21:32But my point to them is that no that was annoying then it was like an obvious
1:21:37Shortcoming, but it was clearly acceptable because we were using it and you're even admitting that you still used it, right?
1:21:42We were frustrated by it, but we see you I when I say it's unacceptable now
1:21:46I mean
1:21:47Can't imagine why someone would buy this phone where they can't select cut copy and paste
1:21:51When for about the same amount of money they could buy a different one that does I mean everything has to be taken in
1:21:57Context right like I mean the context of 2007 was the iPhone was
1:22:03an amazing phone for the time
1:22:05Even with its flaws right that people and we did put up with it with those shortcomings
1:22:10And I just can't see why someone would put up with these now. I
1:22:13Can't believe that it erased my notes. I think it's because I might let the battery die. I don't know
1:22:18Didn't like what you were saying about it
1:22:22You can't and you know even the web browser which you would think would be the one thing that might be good because it's you know
1:22:32Fox's own thing
1:22:34It's not good
1:22:36You can't do things like jump like when you're scrolled down
1:22:40You can't jump to the top like it doesn't have the iPhone thing where you just tap the status bar and scroll to the top
1:22:46But the only way to get to the interface to manage your multiple tabs is at the top
1:22:51So if you're scrolled down on a web page and you want to switch to another tab that's open
1:22:55You have to sit there and flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick and and
1:23:01It doesn't really have a lot of inertia either. So if it's a long enough page that you've been reading
1:23:06I'm not exaggerating how many flicks you need to get to the top which is where
1:23:10the
1:23:13tab management is and
1:23:15There's no
1:23:17Bookmarks
1:23:20Therefore there's no bookmark. Let's and I use you know, it's there's no book. There are no bookmarks that no
1:23:27Not that I can tell I
1:23:30Don't know if there's bookmarks. I don't know how you how you make them
1:23:33Well, I guess our bookmarks here. Oh, yeah. I've just found it. Well, let's just say that the bookmarks are hidden
1:23:41It's not intuitive no
1:23:47Not intuitive the email client isn't too bad. It's got a decent. I map client. It's usable at least
1:23:55But they just and you know and it's this whole is it Thunderbird is a branded Thunderbird is that no are they owned by?
1:24:01Oh, I don't know if they talk about Thunderbird anymore. No, they call it. It's just called email
1:24:06and in fact, I think what's interesting is they spell it e dash capital ma il which
1:24:12To me looks like and I you know, God knows I love some curmudgeonly grammar and spelling and stuff like that
1:24:18But the - an email feels kind of old-timey feels a little 1990s
1:24:25um and they have a thing called marketplace which is like their app store but really it's just sort
1:24:31of like a directory of mobile operated mobile optimized websites and when you create an app
1:24:38and download an app out of one of these things it's really just you know like when you're on iOS
1:24:43like when you use the plus button and save a web page as an app and it just you just lose the
1:24:48browser chrome um so that's like what the twitter app for this thing is the twitter app is just a
1:24:55it seems a little bit different than when you go to Twitter on an iPhone, but not much.
1:24:59And I haven't done that in so long.
1:25:05And therefore though, you can't do anything like have two different accounts any more than you can
1:25:11have two accounts on the Twitter website. There's no account switching. So it's just, when you use
1:25:19Twitter on this, it's just the mobile Twitter website. Yeah. I remember that those days of
1:25:24using like the mobile Major League Baseball site and all those the website's mobile yeah
1:25:31right right no that's a lot like using this mostly mostly because of edge all right not because
1:25:38they were better they were just they loaded faster right and so on the one hand there's the web and
1:25:47what you call the web as a developer can mean different things to different people and one
1:25:51thing could just be using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to do the actual layout and development of the app.
1:26:02And webOS worked that way, right? From Palm and later HP, where apps were really just sort of like
1:26:08bundles that inside were implemented using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. And there's nothing wrong
1:26:13with that. Although there's some performance problems you have to overcome if you want to be
1:26:19compared favorably to native code, like Objective C running on iOS, or even the Java type bytecode
1:26:29that you run on Android. But it could be overcome. But what Firefox OS does really is just load
1:26:38things, you know, actual websites over the internet and save them. And so a lot of stuff stops working
1:26:44if you don't have an internet connection. Like there's games, they call it, there's games you
1:26:50can get. But then if you don't have an internet connection, the games don't load because you can't
1:26:54connect to the server anymore. And it's not entirely cached locally. And I just don't feel
1:27:00like there's any, you know, I don't, we haven't gotten to a place where always having an internet
1:27:07connection is a thing. Right. Right. I thought of you, because what was the
1:27:14the thing you bought? You bought the for similar reasons. Like, I want to find out what the
1:27:18how the other side lives. You bought the fire tablet, right?
1:27:21Unknown Speaker No, I bought the Nexus seven Nexus seven.
1:27:25Yeah, how's that going?
1:27:27Unknown Speaker It's around here somewhere.
1:27:32Unknown Speaker Didn't work out that great. No, it was it
1:27:36was it was all right. I mean, it's, you know, for I mean, I think in that case, at the price,
1:27:42Because it was only, you know, this was a couple of years ago now, and it was only 200
1:27:47bucks and it was like an eight gigabyte.
1:27:48It was at a price point that there wasn't an iPad available at that price point.
1:27:53And you know, there's a, it's an ecosystem that has apps and Android is a full fledged
1:28:00operating system.
1:28:02So it was okay.
1:28:03But I, you know, not a year into using it, I ended up having battery problems and then,
1:28:11I had to reset it, recondition it to get it to the point where it would really hold a charge for
1:28:16a good amount of time. And then one of the things I wanted to use it for was listening to music
1:28:22on my desk as I was working. And it was just... There was a lot of bleed through in the device
1:28:31of sound from other electronics. The kind of problems that we used to have with... I mean,
1:28:38I mean, it seems like we used to have those problems.
1:28:41I used to have to turn off the phone to do a podcast
1:28:45or that kind of thing.
1:28:45- Right, or if you got your headphones too close
1:28:47to your laptop, you'd get weird feedback.
1:28:51- Yeah, and it wasn't the headphone
1:28:54'cause it's the same headphones that I use with my iPhone
1:28:56and everything else, and I don't get it
1:28:58with any other device other than that.
1:29:01- The other thing about this Firefox phone,
1:29:04It has a 4.0 inch screen.
1:29:08I think the aspect ratio is a little bit wider
1:29:11when you're holding it in portrait than the iPhone.
1:29:14But it's roughly an iPhone-sized device.
1:29:17And I do find that comfortable.
1:29:19I don't find myself wishing that the screen were bigger.
1:29:22I don't know.
1:29:23I feel like, I don't know.
1:29:24I feel like it's gonna be a problem for me
1:29:29if the new iPhone is bigger.
1:29:30- Yeah, I know.
1:29:33I mean, I'll wait until I see it, but I don't feel like I want a bigger iPhone particularly.
1:29:39I'm curious. The other thing I guess I'm curious about, and it occurred to me when I was thinking
1:29:43about how the buttons are the same as the iPhone, except for the lack of a mute switch,
1:29:47but most phones don't have mute switches. And Apple, who is notoriously sort of minimalist
1:29:54on including hardware buttons, you know, I love the mute switch on the iPhone. I don't
1:30:01like whenever I try out these other phones and you have to do like this one the way to get into mute
1:30:05is you hold down the power button and instead of you know like as though to turn off the phone
1:30:09but you get a menu with four options turn off airplane mode or turn it on silence incoming
1:30:17calls restart power off and I think android does the same thing where if you want to
1:30:21at least an android phone that I had a while ago did where if you wanted to turn off the sound you
1:30:27hold down the power button, wait for a menu to come up, and then hit it. I love that, like,
1:30:33at the start of my son's concert a couple weeks ago, I didn't even have to take my phone out of
1:30:41my pocket. I just, you know, just toggle the—
1:30:44Stick your hand in and, yeah.
1:30:45Yeah, just toggle the switch, and then I know it's not going to make a sound.
1:30:48I do the opposite. I mean, I almost always have it in mute and only when I'm expecting a call that
1:30:56I want.
1:30:57Do I turn it off mute?
1:30:59Yeah, I could do that too.
1:31:01Or just to double check it, really.
1:31:02A lot of times when I want to turn on mute, it already is on mute and I don't turn it
1:31:06off.
1:31:07I thought you were going to say that you do the opposite and when your son's school is
1:31:09going to have a concert, you turn your phone up real loud.
1:31:12I got to take this.
1:31:14Sorry.
1:31:15I thought that's what you were going to say.
1:31:19Spend 45 minutes in the lobby drinking.
1:31:24Please turn off and silence yourself.
1:31:26I do the opposite.
1:31:27not going to tell me when to silence my phone. I'm turning mine up. And I've set my ringtone
1:31:34to a song with inappropriate lyrics. Tim Cynova Get wrestled out of the
1:31:38school program by some bouncers. Now, I'd seen like back in the fall, I'd seen a few things
1:31:48people predicting that Firefox OS was really going to take off and change the
1:31:57playing field. If they had come out with this in 2009, two years after the iPhone, I would say
1:32:03maybe because that's when Android was new too. I think it was the end of 2008 when the first
1:32:14Android phone came out, the HTC. Was it the HTC One? I forget what it was called,
1:32:20but I think it was Brown. It had a keyboard that came out of the side.
1:32:26And had a lot of problems and a lot of problems just like this where you know it was it was like they were still
1:32:32Growing out you know they'd started with the idea of an operating system that required a keyboard and required an up-down left rice device
1:32:41So if you wanted to select text on that Android phone you had to use the rollerball
1:32:44You couldn't use your finger on the touchscreen you had to go to the rollerball
1:32:48You know it just feels like something from that era it just it's just a
1:32:55Long long time ago though since I could have you know used a phone of any operating system where you can't even select text
1:33:01Just feels you know
1:33:05bizarre just feels like and it just makes me think that Mozilla as a whole is just off in their own cocoon and
1:33:10Echo chamber in terms of you know, the politics of the whole thing are the only reason keeping it afloat
1:33:16And and whatever remaining
1:33:23traction or momentum
1:33:24I guess that they have of all the people who switched to Firefox on Windows a decade ago, you know still
1:33:31Giving them some revenue because they go up to the search bar and search through Google and that they have a you know
1:33:37Revenue share deal with Google, but that's it's all
1:33:39You know everything that's going on that that gives them any value is is 10 years old
1:33:45Like they're still nowhere in terms of actual mobile
1:33:51Kind of sad. Yeah, but not surprising
1:33:53But open but totally open
1:33:56John moltz, thanks for joining me. I
1:33:59Say we call it a show. Where should we tell people to go?
1:34:02We could tell them to go to your very nice website. Nice website net
1:34:05and
1:34:07your
1:34:08Your podcast is called don't make me go back there
1:34:11We should buy that you're home
1:34:14It's called don't make me turn this turning this don't make me turn this car around automobile over
1:34:20With on the freeway with turning this car around turning this car around with John Armstrong and Casey and the other guy Casey lists
1:34:28Exactly
1:34:32It's about three days you get get kicked out of school school function just for it in a car accident
1:34:39Yeah, I don't text and drive but I do turn my ringer up during a school play