0:00:00- You know what we could start with?
0:00:01We could start with the,
0:00:04'cause this came up on my show two weeks ago
0:00:08with MG Siegler.
0:00:12We couldn't figure out how to pronounce your website's name.
0:00:16(laughing)
0:00:17- It's pronounced Jif.
0:00:19(laughing)
0:00:21So no, actually I wanted to ask your advice on this
0:00:24because it's actually, it is a bit of an ongoing issue.
0:00:29So, you know, I thought I was being very clever and as I've learned now that I'm writing with
0:00:37a bit more of an audience, cleverness does not go far on the web.
0:00:41So I call it a strategic-ery.
0:00:43There is the old Will Ferrell skit where he was being George W. Bush and they asked him,
0:00:48you know, what's your plan?
0:00:49And he just said, "Strategic-ery."
0:00:50And it was a one word answer.
0:00:53And so, you know, I was kind of the idea of strategy and tech together.
0:00:57And I loved the kind of E with the phonetic symbol on top of it, and that's my Twitter
0:01:01icon for the site.
0:01:06But the problem is everyone says "St. Zachary," and honestly it makes more sense.
0:01:10But I'm really loathe to either A, give up the phonetic symbol, or B, pronounce it in
0:01:16opposition to the phonetic symbol.
0:01:18So I kind of feel in a bind.
0:01:22I was hoping for a goddamn answer.
0:01:25If you don't know-- - I call it Stratecary.
0:01:28But I call it Stratecary, but--
0:01:30- If you don't know-- - I think I should
0:01:31probably switch.
0:01:32- I'm talking to Ben Thompson,
0:01:34and his website is stratecary.com.
0:01:38You've certainly seen it if you read my website.
0:01:40I've linked to it many times over the last year.
0:01:42Yeah, I've guessed that you meant Stratecary
0:01:48because I see the whatever that's called over the E.
0:01:52But it, yeah, in my head I've always called it stratechery.
0:01:57- Yeah, I think I should probably switch it.
0:02:00- Oh, I don't know.
0:02:01- I'm totally doing the Jif joke for my first t-shirt, though.
0:02:06- I didn't, I never thought of the Will Ferrell angle.
0:02:10- I know, actually, if you,
0:02:12I actually even have a pronunciation guide in the right bar,
0:02:14which, you know, no one ever looks at,
0:02:16but if you click it, it actually goes
0:02:18to the Will Ferrell video.
0:02:21- Which remains fantastic like 10 years later.
0:02:26- Yeah, see, I've never been good
0:02:28at reading those phonetic symbols.
0:02:31In fact, the only one I know is the schwa.
0:02:34- Which is my favorite one.
0:02:37So I used to be an English teacher,
0:02:38so when I first came to Taiwan,
0:02:39that's the classic sort of,
0:02:42I was gonna be here for a year, travel, teach English.
0:02:46So I'm very familiar with phonetic symbols.
0:02:49and so i thought it was kind of amusing to have them have them there but
0:02:53yes lo and behold no one actually knows what the fuck they are so uh...
0:02:57is this an explicit show or a clean show? I can't remember
0:03:00I never mark it explicit but we let them fly
0:03:04nobody ever... it's funny nobody complains i don't know i'll probably get
0:03:07inundated
0:03:09complaints and have itunes take it down off the store this week
0:03:14yes so when you submit a new podcast there's
0:03:17allegedly a review process,
0:03:19and they say it'll take like a week,
0:03:20but it actually comes back in like two hours,
0:03:21and there's no way they actually listen to anything.
0:03:25- And there's, you know,
0:03:26I don't know what is the record for swear words
0:03:31in an episode of the show,
0:03:32but whatever it is, it's not that bad.
0:03:34- Oh, no. - I don't think
0:03:36the sweariest show that I've done is that bad.
0:03:39- Well, considering the show's usually like two hours too,
0:03:41the ratio of swear words to minute
0:03:43has to be relatively low.
0:03:45- I'm working on cutting that down,
0:03:46And last week's show was only an hour.
0:03:49This week's show will be short.
0:03:50We'll be done in half an hour.
0:03:52- Yeah, I don't have much to say.
0:03:54- I also think it would be funny.
0:03:58There are times if you do it right,
0:04:00it can be very funny if you swear but bleep.
0:04:03But it's more editing work.
0:04:07- Well, what was the thing where they were adding bleeps?
0:04:11Oh yeah, like that whole like,
0:04:12what was that show that all the controversy or whatever.
0:04:16like I've never even heard of it in my life,
0:04:18but the guy made some like homophobic remarks.
0:04:21And apparently one of the things they were really irritated
0:04:24is that the network was adding bleeps to the show
0:04:27that weren't actually swear words,
0:04:28they were trying to like make it more interesting.
0:04:30- Oh, was it the Duck Dynasty thing?
0:04:32- Yes, yes, that's what it was.
0:04:33- They were bleeping out non-swear.
0:04:35(laughing)
0:04:37Let it see, that's funny.
0:04:38Jerry, I don't know if you ever heard it, dude,
0:04:41there's an Adam Sandler song from, oh my God,
0:04:45must be the late 90s called "Piece of Shit Car."
0:04:48- Yes, I'm familiar. - And it's like a reggae song.
0:04:51And the first time, we always laugh,
0:04:54it was just one of those things we'll never forget.
0:04:56I don't know where we were driving,
0:04:57but it was just me and my wife in the car, and it came on.
0:05:00And it was all bleeped out.
0:05:02And we just assumed that the,
0:05:05it was so funny with the bleeps
0:05:07that we just assumed that that's what it was.
0:05:09And in fact, no, that was the radio editor.
0:05:12But it was just riddled with them.
0:05:15but because everything rhymed, you knew what they all were.
0:05:18And it really worked.
0:05:20The swear words all hit on the rhymes.
0:05:23So it actually was-- and I'm not a prude at all.
0:05:30I don't think it needs to be bleeped out
0:05:32for our precious little children's ears or anything.
0:05:36But it was actually way funnier than the original.
0:05:40But it's like one of those things, right?
0:05:41Like it's weaving just a little bit to the imagination
0:05:44makes it that much more alluring.
0:05:46- Right, exactly.
0:05:49Or the old trick you could pull
0:05:50where if you write a little,
0:05:52I used to, you know, I was a punk-ass kid,
0:05:54and write this stupid four-line poem
0:05:57where the last line is clearly leading,
0:06:00you know, the rhyme is gonna end on a swear word,
0:06:02but then you pick some other word.
0:06:04- Yes.
0:06:05And then when someone reads it and remarks on it,
0:06:09you're like, that's not what I was going for at all.
0:06:12What kind of foul intentions do you have?
0:06:13Yeah, I was such an asshole.
0:06:15- I wasn't.
0:06:18(laughing)
0:06:20- We could start with this whole WhatsApp thing, obviously.
0:06:26I mean, it's, 'cause, what, do you understand this now,
0:06:29when it was first reported that Facebook bought these guys,
0:06:32that it was 16 billion, and then it went up to 19 billion?
0:06:36Do you know what--
0:06:36- Yeah, well, the three billion is basically
0:06:40restricted stock units for the employees of WhatsApp.
0:06:42It's a very, very strong golden handcuff basically to keep them in the company.
0:06:47So there's theoretically possible that they won't be exercised and then it would be a $16 billion deal,
0:06:55but given how lucrative they are and the fact that they should be easily, they should be converted,
0:07:03I think from a more of a VC perspective it's probably more of a $16 billion deal.
0:07:09deal like everyone I knew in VCU was calling it that and then everyone else is calling
0:07:13it 19. I think it's fair to call it a $19 billion deal. I mean, there's...
0:07:16But the deal was for, is it 16 billion in cash? Is that right?
0:07:20No, no, no, no, no. There's, uh, I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's a, it's three
0:07:25parts. It's the restricted stock units and then it's cash and then it's a Facebook stock.
0:07:29All right. So that's the other thing too. I mean Facebook stock is super high right
0:07:32now. So they have a lot of headroom to make these sort of acquisitions and that's one
0:07:41of the advantages of having an IPO and having stock. There's tons of downsides as we see
0:07:47with Apple a lot, but you get a lot of monopoly money to play with and they're taking advantage.
0:07:56It's such a crazy high number. A couple of people have pointed out and there's a whole
0:08:01Tumblr, you know, things that are worth less than WhatsApp. I should fire that up and just
0:08:10see what's on there. Isn't Sony's market cap less than, I think...
0:08:16I was looking at it today, so it should come up right away. Yeah, things that are cheaper
0:08:20than WhatsApp.tumblr.com. So, yeah, four years, the National Cancer Institute, the NBA...
0:08:26Yeah, that's...
0:08:28- The Hubble Space Institute, the top 20 football clubs.
0:08:31- Right, so the estimated market value
0:08:35of every single team in the National Basketball Association
0:08:39is less than 16 billion, or 19,
0:08:42whatever you wanna call it, I don't know, but either way.
0:08:44- Yeah, they're using 19 billion on this site.
0:08:46- Right.
0:08:47It seems crazy to me.
0:08:51I mean, some of this, I don't know.
0:08:54I mean, maybe it's right, and maybe it's just the way
0:08:57that the human mind plays tricks on you.
0:08:58But like, yeah, American Airlines,
0:09:00they're the perfect example.
0:09:03Like, I hate American Airlines, really.
0:09:05I think I've only flown on American once in my life
0:09:10and it was terrible.
0:09:13I'm pretty sure, and if it's not once, it's twice.
0:09:15(laughs)
0:09:17- My favorite on here is Iceland, the entire country.
0:09:21(laughs)
0:09:27Mean if you want to get a lot of communication you you can put a bunch of people on Iceland and uh, you know
0:09:32Monetize that so it is hard. It's hard to grasp numbers like that because we're talking, you know
0:09:37it's it's a big number and you know, I'm just a
0:09:41normal guy who carries, you know hundred dollars in his wallet, so
0:09:45It's a big number
0:09:52I don't think it's I mean that I was initially like I mean I
0:09:56Got the message via a messenger app WeChat in this case. I was laying in bed
0:10:03my you know time zones are obviously off and
0:10:05My first in action was like whoa
0:10:09but when you kind of dig into it if you look at like a per a
0:10:15Per user number. It's like $40 per user, which is actually
0:10:20relatively cheap.
0:10:21Facebook user, according to the stock market,
0:10:24is worth like $160.
0:10:27Twitter user is worth quite a bit,
0:10:31less than Facebook, but somewhere in the middle there.
0:10:34And like Facebook bought Instagram,
0:10:36which looks like a great deal now.
0:10:39Same reaction then, people are like, holy crap,
0:10:40a billion dollars. - Yeah, $1 billion, right.
0:10:42- Right, and people were like, wow.
0:10:43But they paid like $30 per user.
0:10:47And now everyone's like, wow,
0:10:49what a great deal that was.
0:10:51And WhatsApp is in, you know,
0:10:53$40 per user and that much more.
0:10:55You actually, raises in my mind a bigger question
0:10:58about like say Skype, where Microsoft paid $70 per user.
0:11:01But the point is, on that sort of metric,
0:11:06it's actually not outrageous.
0:11:10I mean, it's difficult, I think,
0:11:12to understand the scale of WhatsApp itself.
0:11:15It is, by a significant margin,
0:11:17second largest social network in the world. Second only to Facebook. I mean Facebook's
0:11:241.2 billion and WhatsApp is 450 million and it's 450 million active users. Like there's
0:11:31lots of networks that are tons of active users, tons of registered users. And if you want
0:11:35to value things as what are you paying per active user and you know active user is definitely
0:11:41an important metric because there's an awful lot and I know that WhatsApp's numbers for
0:11:45active users you know is is really really high it's something like 70% of
0:11:50the people who've signed up are active users and so they daily yeah and so they
0:11:54can just that's the number they actually use you know they don't they don't have
0:11:59to talk brag about how many accounts they have or you you know users period
0:12:03and sort of you know whitewash the fact that there's a whole bunch of them have
0:12:07been inactive for 90 days or something like that they just talk about daily
0:12:10active users and it's a really high number. But it's also clear if you look at the graph
0:12:17of or any graph of like the number of messages they're sending or the number of users they're
0:12:22sending or the number of signups they're getting daily that it's got to be an even lower number
0:12:27than 40 or $45 per user because no matter what happens after this announcement, you
0:12:34know, in the next couple of months, clearly they're still signing up for the next, for
0:12:38let's just say half a year next year,
0:12:41they're signing up somewhere around a million people a day.
0:12:43- Yeah, there's a graph comparing the first four years
0:12:48of WhatsApp to Facebook to Twitter to Gmail.
0:12:54And someone quipped that this is the first time
0:12:56that Facebook was ever willing to show a graph
0:12:58that showed them getting destroyed
0:13:00because WhatsApp is growing at four times the pace
0:13:03that Facebook was.
0:13:05And I think this is the key to really--
0:13:09- The hockey stick part of the graph
0:13:11is still going up on growth.
0:13:12- Right, exactly.
0:13:13- It's not even close to leveling off, it's accelerating.
0:13:16So I think it's easily, you know,
0:13:19if they're at 400 and some million now,
0:13:21it's easy to think that a year from now
0:13:23they might be at seven or eight, 900 million.
0:13:26- Totally, totally.
0:13:27And I think that, you know,
0:13:29there's the one thing to remember is these kind of deals
0:13:33where you're buying a accelerating service,
0:13:37like they actually usually turn out pretty well.
0:13:39I mean, everyone was scandalized
0:13:41by Google buying YouTube for $3 billion.
0:13:44Like that's a massive steal in retrospect.
0:13:48Same thing with Instagram,
0:13:50same thing with back in the 90s,
0:13:51Microsoft buying Hotmail for like $400 million.
0:13:53It was like the hugest acquisition at that time.
0:13:57It was actually turned out to also be $40 a user.
0:14:01And these sort of deals where you're buying a exploding viral networked sort of service
0:14:11tend to turn out pretty well.
0:14:13It's the ones that are more kind of like bank shot deals where lots of things have to go
0:14:18right for them to turn out that tend to not turn out so well.
0:14:22And so from that perspective, I think it's OK.
0:14:25The other thing is messaging is a-- and I've been on this for a while.
0:14:29part of it's because I'm in Asia. Like messaging is a really big deal. It's a way bigger deal than
0:14:35Facebook was on the PC. It is the thing on mobile. Like it dominates usage, absolutely dominates
0:14:44usage in every market except for the US. And if you remember, US was slow to SMS too. So I think
0:14:51that's part of the kind of the bewilderment. But I think it's a justified deal in my opinion.
0:14:58I'm going to play devil's advocate and I'm going to say, I'm going to argue here.
0:15:05I don't necessarily believe it but for the sake of argument here, I'm going to push a
0:15:10more common sense accounting look at this.
0:15:16So let's say they've paid $40 a user and let's say that I'm right and even as a – let's
0:15:25say for the sake of this argument that I'm a downer on this deal. But even so I've got
0:15:29to admit that you've got to be looking at let's say 800 million users on WhatsApp eventually,
0:15:35because of the growth that they're seeing in a way that these things spread socially
0:15:40where, you know, if three, four of your friends are using it, it there's, you know, significant
0:15:44pressure to download this free app that definitely runs on your phone because they run on just
0:15:50about any phone that can do IP networking. So let's call it $20 a user, right? Let's
0:15:57just say $20 a user. How the hell do they make $20 per user back from them? And if they
0:16:04don't, how can it possibly be worth the money? Because they've already promised no ads and
0:16:10they've said that it's eventually they're going to charge a dollar a user.
0:16:15So, one, I think 800 million is extremely conservative.
0:16:20I would bet you, and I'd gladly put money on this, that within five years, WhatsApp
0:16:25will have many more users than Facebook, the product itself.
0:16:30So that lowers the price that much more.
0:16:33Two, if you were to ask me in isolate...
0:16:36So the three really big messaging players are WhatsApp, Line out of Japan, and WeChat
0:16:43in China.
0:16:44If you were to ask me on a standalone basis which of those companies is worth the most,
0:16:49I would have trouble putting WhatsApp ahead because they don't have any real monetization
0:16:54strategy.
0:16:55Whereas Lion and WeChat have very developed strategies that are actually really, really
0:16:59interesting from a business perspective.
0:17:00Can I ask you an honest question?
0:17:02Yes.
0:17:03I mean, this is how big a dummy I am.
0:17:05How do you spell WeChat?
0:17:07W-E-C-H-A-T.
0:17:10Is the C capitalized?
0:17:11It is.
0:17:12It is.
0:17:13- It's China, line is Japan.
0:17:16- Line is Japan, but line dominates here in Taiwan,
0:17:19it dominates Japan, it dominates Thailand,
0:17:23and then they're finding it out in Vietnam.
0:17:25It's definitely a Asian sort of a phenomena.
0:17:29But anyhow, the point being like, yes, you're right,
0:17:33from looking at it from a pure making money on it,
0:17:37it's not totally queer.
0:17:39But this is why it's so interesting
0:17:42that Facebook bought them.
0:17:43Number one, Facebook, the company,
0:17:46doesn't need WeChat to monetize right away.
0:17:49Facebook is cleaning up right now
0:17:52when it comes to monetization.
0:17:53They're crushing it quarter by quarter for the last year.
0:17:57So if they don't make a dime on WeChat,
0:18:01they're gonna be okay because their main product
0:18:03is doing so well definitely for the next couple years.
0:18:06- So they've got some funny money
0:18:08because their stock after their IPO is really high.
0:18:12investors are very keen on Facebook.
0:18:14The last I checked their PE ratio was somewhere around 110.
0:18:18- Right.
0:18:20And it's honestly, it's pretty justified
0:18:23given the rate of growth that their revenue has right now.
0:18:27- Right, 'cause they do have real revenue and profits
0:18:31and I would say they're probably either in line
0:18:35or exceeding expectations.
0:18:38And not expectations like the stupid thing
0:18:41We do every freaking quarter with Apple
0:18:44where it's these quarter by quarter estimates.
0:18:49But just the ballpark, the longer term thinking
0:18:52like before even the IPO of how's Facebook gonna make money?
0:18:56And it's, you know, there was, well, they could do this
0:18:59and this and they could really, they could bring in
0:19:03so much advertising per quarter per user
0:19:05and they're doing that.
0:19:09It's a real business. - Yeah, I think
0:19:09that's exactly right.
0:19:10And they're beating it.
0:19:12They're certainly being my expectations
0:19:13for whatever it's worth.
0:19:16And so given that, presuming that they're
0:19:19fine as a business, you say, OK, then why even bother with this?
0:19:23Why throw away $19 billion when your main business is
0:19:26doing fine?
0:19:27Well, the big question is, three or four years down the road
0:19:31when, if I'm right, messaging is the dominant interaction
0:19:36model, and Facebook has tapped out
0:19:39their growth, then what?
0:19:41At that point, WeChat or WhatsApp is going to cost--
0:19:44is worth what, $100 billion, $200 billion?
0:19:48If you believe that--
0:19:49They're unbuyable.
0:19:49Exactly.
0:19:51$19 billion is on the edge of unbuyable as it is.
0:19:54So if they were ever going to get into this space--
0:19:57they tried.
0:19:57They tried with Messenger.
0:19:59And the reality is, except for the US,
0:20:02Messenger is getting its rear end kicked all over the world.
0:20:06this was the last chance to buy in into this area.
0:20:11And I think in that context, it's option value.
0:20:13- But I think it was Forbes who reported that last year,
0:20:22WhatsApp had $20 million in revenue.
0:20:25- Yep, no, they're not buying WhatsApp
0:20:28for their current business model.
0:20:30Like they're buying WhatsApp for one, the users,
0:20:33and to the option value of messaging being the dominant form of social networking in the future,
0:20:38which I happen to subscribe to and believe is the case.
0:20:42And the thing is, Line and WeChat are crushing it also from a monetization standpoint.
0:20:46So it is definitely possible to monetize this way.
0:20:50They don't do it via display ads.
0:20:52They do it through...
0:20:54The stickers is a thing. It's only like 20% of revenue, but they do it...
0:20:57It's a fascinating direct marketing channel.
0:21:01- Dude, I will go to the mat on stickers.
0:21:03- All right, well let's go to the mat on stickers.
0:21:04Let me take a break.
0:21:06Let me take a break and talk about our first sponsor.
0:21:11We've had them before, but it's been a while
0:21:14and I'm happy to welcome back as a sponsor of the show,
0:21:17Warby Parker.
0:21:18Now Warby Parker is a new concept in eyewear.
0:21:21Really, it's just a basic disruption story
0:21:24where there was one of the founders
0:21:26was traveling away from home, his glasses broke,
0:21:29He had to get them fixed or had to get a new pair
0:21:32and it was like six or $700 for a new pair of eyeglasses.
0:21:35And he was like, this is stupid.
0:21:36This should not cost this much.
0:21:38You shouldn't have to pay three or $400
0:21:41for a new pair of eyeglasses
0:21:43just to get a pair that looks good.
0:21:44So you know what they did?
0:21:46Started a business where they make vintage inspired,
0:21:50contemporary, stylish eyeglasses that start at $95.
0:21:58And it's no bullshit.
0:22:01It's none of this stuff where you have to pay extra money
0:22:03to get the good lenses, to get the anti-glare coating
0:22:08and stuff like that, 'cause who doesn't want that?
0:22:10Everybody wants it.
0:22:11The regular glasses from Warby Parker
0:22:13come with everything you need.
0:22:15And they have an amazing system for how to get 'em.
0:22:20'Cause you think, well, why do you wanna buy glasses
0:22:23over the internet?
0:22:24How you gonna tell how they look?
0:22:26They have a thing called the Home Try-On Program.
0:22:29You go to their website.
0:22:30You pick five pairs that you are interested in.
0:22:35They'll ship you the empty frames to your house and it's beautiful packaging, really
0:22:42nice.
0:22:43You try them on.
0:22:44Look in the mirror.
0:22:45See what you like.
0:22:46Take a picture.
0:22:47Show it to your friends.
0:22:48Let your spouse tell you which one looks best on you.
0:22:52them back and you'll get the one that you want back to your house.
0:22:58Super easy.
0:22:59You get five pairs to try at home of your choice.
0:23:03Pick the one you like, ship them all back and they'll send you the ones that you picked
0:23:07out.
0:23:09And here's the thing.
0:23:10They have a great, great charity program.
0:23:14Almost a billion people worldwide lack access to prescription glasses or prescription lenses
0:23:22for the glasses. That's 15% of the global population that cannot effectively work or
0:23:28learn because they can't see right. Warby Parker has partnered with nonprofits around
0:23:34the world. One of them is called VisionSpring and they ensure that for every pair of glasses
0:23:40that Warby Parker sells, a pair is distributed to someone in need around the world, which
0:23:46Which is amazing.
0:23:47So you get, you save money on stylish prescription glasses.
0:23:52Get a great deal on them.
0:23:54And while you do that, you're also helping somebody else around the world get a pair
0:23:58of eyeglasses too.
0:24:01Can't recommend them highly enough.
0:24:03Everybody I know who uses them loves them.
0:24:06Really cool stuff.
0:24:07They also have really cool stuff for sizing using your webcam.
0:24:12Just amazing, amazing stuff.
0:24:14cool technology and really, really disruptive to a business that was ripe for disruption.
0:24:21Where do you go to find out more? Go to warbyparker.com/thetalkshow. Warbyparker.com/thetalkshow. They'll know you came from the show and they'll have a special deal for you.
0:24:36My thanks to Warby Parker. Go check him out if you need glasses. They have sunglasses
0:24:40So if you need sunglasses go check them out too
0:24:42All right stickers
0:24:45I'm gonna tell you I am the typical
0:24:49American with all these messaging
0:24:52But it's apps platforms social networks where I I've heard of them
0:24:57But I don't really know anything about them and I've heard about stickers
0:25:00but mostly from path which I don't really use but
0:25:06Well, I'm path path ripped it off from I mean what brought from line which is which was the first one
0:25:11Well first off you should get you should get line
0:25:14You can you can add me if you want and I will inundate you with stickers and then you'll probably block me
0:25:19so, you know the thing with stickers is
0:25:22one like
0:25:24They're
0:25:26They're amazingly expressive. Like I mean obviously emoticons are a thing and you can have opinions about them. But like
0:25:34There's there's just things you can express with the sticker that you can't express any other way whether it be like
0:25:38You know some beers like some like sadness disappointment like it it honestly is a thing
0:25:44And I know I sound absolutely ridiculous saying it but unless you've actually tried it. You can't you can't get it
0:25:50Well, how's it? Any mode emoji emoji? How do you I always miss emoji? It's like what's the difference between like
0:25:57You know reading something and
0:26:02Seeing a picture or seeing a picture and seeing a movie like it's just it's that much more
0:26:07Expressive there's so much more variety
0:26:10Then even then a mojo. Oh totally totally I mean
0:26:14Mojo you you get you get the it
0:26:19It's not like honestly like I'm gonna not even do it justice like I would encourage
0:26:25Everyone who like doesn't believe me like just go down the line
0:26:28Get your significant other or one friend to do it and just like mess around for a little bit like use it for a week
0:26:34To communicate this one person
0:26:36And and then you can come back and say, you know, tell me I'm an idiot and but I would wager
0:26:42That some of you will definitely will definitely see what I'm talking about
0:26:46And what's interesting about wine in particular is like they've they've
0:26:51You know just the thing with stickers everyone thinks they all make their money in stickers
0:26:55It's only like 20% of these companies revenues actually just throwing that out there
0:26:59But like line is really made a thing out of like some of their main characters
0:27:04Like they have four main characters and there's like supplemental characters and it's like a whole thing
0:27:08like, you know, like Hello Kitty is like this like scourge upon the world and
0:27:12Is everywhere and there's all types of brand stuff like line is in Japan is already like that
0:27:18There are there was an exhibition actually here in Taiwan
0:27:22like about line characters like art pieces and like all this sort of stuff like it's
0:27:26It's it's really interesting what they're doing with it
0:27:30to being kind of this whole this whole kind of segment of
0:27:34You know, it's definitely a Japanese thing, but it's it's it's something it's hard to get unless you actually try it
0:27:42But take my word for it. You can be so much more expressive and so much more fast and what you want to say
0:27:48Right up with sticker really hits the spot. So so my wife is a pretty good
0:27:53Again, tell me how to pronounce these emoji or emoji. I
0:27:57You know what? I'm terrible pronouncing words. I mean you're over a mode. I think it's emoji
0:28:02I don't know whatever I did. I remember it
0:28:05at the live talk show at WWDC, but I had this because there was a
0:28:11bit that Scott Simpson
0:28:14wrote and
0:28:16Merlin Mann and and Adam Lisagor came out to perform it where they were
0:28:20they were reading a
0:28:23Dialogue back and forth that was communicated entirely in in emoji, you know
0:28:28Emoji emoji is what Wikipedia says well
0:28:32I said a mo then I must have said a mojai on stage and and Scott Simpson made a big shit out of me
0:28:37But he knows how to speak. He knows how to speak Japanese
0:28:41I mean he like lived there for a couple of years
0:28:43So it's like and what the point of him being there was to make a shit out of you was that wasn't it?
0:28:46Yeah, well, no, no, but not for my not for my
0:28:49Pronunciation disability
0:28:54No, but for example, my wife is very
0:28:57Funny with them, you know and she you know, so you're talking about things like where I will you know, she'll text me in
0:29:06if I'm
0:29:08You know out with a couple of other dads who coach Little League or something and I say, you know meetings running late
0:29:15And she'll just text me, you know a couple of beers emoji
0:29:20As in as if you know, yeah, I know what you're doing. Yeah, right and she doesn't have to say anything
0:29:27She'll just text me the beers
0:29:29Or something like that
0:29:31She would go nuts with the beer stickers in in in line and they come they come by default, which is great
0:29:37So here's the main testimony that I have.
0:29:40So the one person I've been trying to convince to line
0:29:43is the mysterious, no one knows who he is, Casey Liss, who
0:29:49likes to brag about his emoji capabilities on Twitter.
0:29:54Fluency.
0:29:55What'd you call it?
0:29:56It's like a fluency.
0:29:57I think he likes to think that he's some sort of master.
0:30:02I guess in a world of-- if you're
0:30:03living in a world with Mark Larmett and John Syracuse,
0:30:05You've got to claim some sort of high ground.
0:30:07So anyhow, I finally got him to sign up for Wine
0:30:12after resisting.
0:30:13And within five minutes, he totally got it.
0:30:19And he posted on Twitter.
0:30:20I find the tweet like, OK, I mocked it.
0:30:23You had to try it.
0:30:24Now I get it.
0:30:25It's awesome.
0:30:27So it's one of those things you just got to try.
0:30:30But like I said, it's only one piece
0:30:34the puzzle for for these apps. But all right, but let's, let's
0:30:37talk about the other pieces. But also, I'm gonna I want to figure
0:30:39out the stickers thing. So also, it is it like, who can add new
0:30:47stickers? See, like one of the problems if you you know, it's
0:30:49not well, I don't know about problem, but one of the obvious
0:30:52deficiencies to emoji is emoji is like a standardized character
0:30:57set. It's like, you know, I don't even I think I guess it's
0:31:00officially part of Unicode now. I don't know. But it's all
0:31:03predefined, right, where there's a code mark,
0:31:08and it's a piece of code, and the code
0:31:11maps to a smiling pile of poo.
0:31:15- I know, that was the worst thing.
0:31:16How did poo make it through a committee?
0:31:18- I don't know, right?
0:31:20But then there's--
0:31:21- Probably the same day as all the beers.
0:31:23- Right, and then there's, one of them is maps
0:31:26to a barbershop pole, right?
0:31:33- No, but you don't have a choice though.
0:31:35So if you were writing an app that was going to,
0:31:38or like when Apple decided to embrace emoji system-wide
0:31:44and they made a font, they didn't get to pick those things.
0:31:47They just drew a picture for each of those code points.
0:31:53And whereas with stickers,
0:31:57and if it's, you know,
0:31:58Line has its own proprietary stickers.
0:32:00So lines, stickers, are line only, right?
0:32:05- So it's a super, it's actually a really smart question
0:32:09'cause that starts to get at some of the other ways
0:32:11that they make money.
0:32:13So it comes with some free sets
0:32:16and they're always releasing extra free sets,
0:32:18like Christmas, they'll have like a set
0:32:19of like Christmas ones or whatever.
0:32:20But then there's also sticker sets,
0:32:23packs for sale for like $1.99.
0:32:25And there'll be thematic, sometimes there'll be,
0:32:29like there's a Mickey Mouse set, there's a Hello Kitty set,
0:32:32there's a Garfield set, just to take the US ones.
0:32:35And obviously there's a whole ton of them
0:32:36for all these Asian anime series.
0:32:41And so those are very, very popular.
0:32:43- And they're officially licensed.
0:32:45It's a real-- - Officially licensed.
0:32:46Yep, and so that's where they make the direct money.
0:32:50One thing that's really interesting is brands
0:32:54like say 7-Eleven or Starbucks,
0:32:58they will, what they will do is they pay Line like $50,000 or $100,000 depending on the market.
0:33:07Japan's probably the most expensive one. And then Line will, in conjunction, they'll create a set of
0:33:13stickers that are free. And so, but it works two ways. One, like so basically you follow the
0:33:19Starbucks account online, then you get the sticker pack for free. So Line's kind of like making money
0:33:25on both sides. So one, Starbucks is paying them for the right to have the stickers available
0:33:30in the store. Two, Starbucks gets the benefit of people like spraying Starbucks stickers
0:33:37all over the place. And then three, Starbucks now has this direct channel to all these customers
0:33:43because they willingly followed Starbucks.
0:33:46Well, what happens when you follow them? Is it like following a company on Twitter? You
0:33:51get posts from them?
0:33:52Well, you can't, yeah, they can send it to you, they can send a coupon to you, they can
0:33:58send, they could do all sorts of stuff, but it's not like a stream, like all these are
0:34:02organized by the person you follow, and you can block them, so you can download it and
0:34:08block it, but...
0:34:09Do you get to keep the stickers after you block them?
0:34:11Yeah, you can.
0:34:12Okay.
0:34:13But they all expire, like all the free ones always expire.
0:34:16The stickers?
0:34:17So, yeah.
0:34:18What happens if you go back to an old message?
0:34:19Does the expired sticker still show up?
0:34:22- Yeah, it still shows up.
0:34:23- But you can't use it anymore.
0:34:25- Right.
0:34:25So if Starbucks wants to keep their stickers in the store,
0:34:29then they're paying up again.
0:34:30So that's about another 20% of the revenue
0:34:35is enterprises and companies paying for the right
0:34:40to get on the platform and be available to customers.
0:34:44And stickers is one of the main ways they do that.
0:34:47The rest of it is, there's like,
0:34:51I want to say 40, but the number might be a lot bigger than that, like line games and apps.
0:34:56And there's a whole universe of apps which do monetize through in-app purchase.
0:35:02And because--
0:35:05>> Wait, games?
0:35:07>> Yeah, there's a ton of line games. And they're all these super simple--
0:35:10Like Flappy Birds have been a great fit for a line game. Like they're these simple--
0:35:14>> You can't play that in the iPhone app, though, can you?
0:35:17>> No, so they're all separate apps.
0:35:19>> Okay.
0:35:20So if you go into the iTunes store and go to Publisher and go by Naver, which is the company that owns Line, there's a ton of apps.
0:35:28And in these apps are the classic in-app purchase money makers, whatever you may think of them.
0:35:37But the thing is, because they own the app that people spend the vast majority of their time in,
0:35:47And whenever there's that little badge there
0:35:49that you have a message, you're gonna go to it.
0:35:50And occasionally there's a message there that says,
0:35:53oh, check out our new game.
0:35:54Or get these stickers if you download our game,
0:35:57which is totally something that they do.
0:35:59And then you download the game,
0:36:00and now you're playing the game,
0:36:01and then you only need a small percentage to get converted,
0:36:05and then you're making money off of them.
0:36:07- So like on iOS, if you download their game,
0:36:12does the game prompt you to sign in with your line account?
0:36:15- Yeah, it's like, you know how there's some,
0:36:17like Facebook Paper, like if you already had
0:36:19the Facebook app installed, like you're automatically
0:36:20signed in, well you would know about that.
0:36:21- Well, but that's a little different though,
0:36:22because Facebook is baked into the system.
0:36:25- Oh, that's true, but what it does is,
0:36:30if you click Sign In, it'll flip over to the line app,
0:36:34it'll authorize the feedback. - And then you authorize
0:36:35the app, right, it's like an OAuth type thing.
0:36:36- But you don't even have to sign in.
0:36:39Like I don't know what sort of black magic they're doing,
0:36:41but you click like Authorize, it switches,
0:36:44uses one of those, you know, the URL code
0:36:46to switch to the line app and then it switches right back.
0:36:49- Right, but you're already signed into the line app.
0:36:51- Exactly, exactly. - Right, I understand.
0:36:52You don't have to type a username password again,
0:36:54but you do have to go to the line app
0:36:56where you are signed in and authorize it.
0:36:58Yeah, a lot of Twitter apps work like that.
0:37:00- Yeah, exactly.
0:37:01So what's interesting is like,
0:37:04what's the hardest thing about making money,
0:37:07what's the hardest thing about making money right now
0:37:10as far as an app maker goes?
0:37:11It's discovery, right?
0:37:13It sucks. It's hard to market your app.
0:37:17And Line has this unbelievably efficient and powerful marketing channel directly to customers.
0:37:26And right now, if you're a developer, you could go into the app store and do your best to get a hit game
0:37:33and then you get to collect 70% of the revenue.
0:37:35Or you could partner with Line, give 30% to Apple, 20% to Line,
0:37:42and yeah, you're making less for every purchase.
0:37:45- But way more reach.
0:37:45- But way more in volume
0:37:47because you have this massive distribution channel.
0:37:49And that's why messaging is such a big deal.
0:37:52Like it is the killer distribution channel
0:37:55on these mobile phones,
0:37:57where there isn't searched like there is on the desktop
0:38:02or on the mobile web.
0:38:03And that's why they're a really, really big deal.
0:38:05- So Line and WeChat are both still independent?
0:38:08- WeChat's owned by Tencent,
0:38:11like the huge Chinese internet company.
0:38:15So it's interesting 'cause Tencent's biggest app
0:38:18has always been QQ.
0:38:21So QQ is instant messaging for the desktop, like think AOL.
0:38:26But unlike AOL and unlike MSN,
0:38:29QQ also had all these added services where,
0:38:34so everyone had a QQ account,
0:38:36that was the way to communicate in China,
0:38:37but there was tons of ways to make money on top of that.
0:38:40So actually, Lion and WeChat are almost copying the QQ model.
0:38:44And what's interesting about all this is there's so much more
0:38:50advanced and so much more innovation in this area in Asia
0:38:54than there is in the US.
0:38:56And it was just deeply amusing to find people kind of blown
0:38:59away by messaging.
0:39:00And I think once people start to realize these business models
0:39:03that are emerging around messaging,
0:39:05people are going to be that much--
0:39:07like, Lion's going to IPO this year,
0:39:08and it's going to blow people's socks off
0:39:10for, you know, rumor last fall was 10 billion,
0:39:14after this it's probably gonna be maybe 15.
0:39:17And, you know, it works very well, it's very interesting,
0:39:23it's totally mobile first.
0:39:25And like, if you're objectively honest
0:39:29and you say what are the most important technology companies
0:39:32in the world, like within a few years,
0:39:35you're gonna have to put line and WeChat
0:39:38in that conversation.
0:39:39Does Line have anything, does it have a web or desktop interface?
0:39:47They do.
0:39:48So they have desktop clients both for Windows and for the Mac, which is kind of nice actually.
0:39:52WhatsApp doesn't.
0:39:53And so actually that's one of the reasons I don't like using WhatsApp because I hate
0:39:57having to have my, like pay attention to my phone.
0:40:01And it's literally, WhatsApp is literally not really mobile only, it's phone only.
0:40:07I mean, they won't even run.
0:40:10- One phone only.
0:40:11- Right.
0:40:12- The only identification is your phone number.
0:40:15Whereas with Line, you can add a username to your account.
0:40:19It starts with a phone number,
0:40:20and so that'll let you have different clients.
0:40:23And it has like calling, so you can call client to client.
0:40:27It has video, it has the whole set of communications.
0:40:33- And actually, I wanted to talk about that.
0:40:35That's an angle of WhatsApp that to me,
0:40:38I mean, I suppose that they could pivot at some point
0:40:41and have a mechanism where if you have
0:40:44an existing WhatsApp account that is, like you said,
0:40:47tied explicitly to one and only one phone number,
0:40:50that if they wanted to expand from phones
0:40:52to any mobile device or have a desktop client or something,
0:40:57that they could have a way to make an account.
0:41:01There's gotta be some way that you could expand your account
0:41:04so that you could log in, just type your phone number
0:41:06and add a password or something.
0:41:08- Right, no, exactly.
0:41:09It's totally doable.
0:41:10- Or maybe even without a password, what they could do,
0:41:13I was thinking about this, it just seems like a good puzzle,
0:41:16is you could put your phone number in
0:41:21and then they would message you on your phone
0:41:24and authorize on the phone and say,
0:41:26"Hey, somebody's trying to log in on your thing.
0:41:29"Do you wanna authorize it?"
0:41:30And then you'd have like an authorization token
0:41:32or something like that.
0:41:34- Yep, no, totally.
0:41:36- But they don't, they're literally phone only.
0:41:39- Yep, they're phone only.
0:41:41And what's interesting too is not only phone only,
0:41:43but it's interesting that they don't have a VoIP capability,
0:41:48whereas the other ones do.
0:41:49Like you can't call someone through WhatsApp.
0:41:53It's messaging, which is, I get how that appeals to people,
0:41:57especially from a theoretical standpoint,
0:42:00because it's simplified, it's focused.
0:42:02As someone who I'd like to think subscribes to that,
0:42:06I vastly prefer using Wine over WhatsApp.
0:42:11Simplicity is good until it's too simple
0:42:14and it doesn't do everything that you would want it to do.
0:42:17- It is, I have to say, I didn't sign up for it
0:42:19until this week broke.
0:42:20I'd heard of WhatsApp, but then once I did,
0:42:22I had to check it out, so I downloaded it.
0:42:24And it is a truly no-brainer sign-up process.
0:42:29process mm-hmm for anybody who hasn't tried it you you download the app the
0:42:34app is now free sometimes it was 99 cents but now it's free it's a reading
0:42:41about them what they did was didn't I felt like their growth was too fast
0:42:44they just changed the app from free to know yeah that was so interesting yeah
0:42:47and that that alone slowed the growth it wasn't because I wanted the money from
0:42:5299 cents they just wanted to you know maintain a servers who keep up right you
0:42:59You launch the app and they say, "What's your phone number?"
0:43:03Because they don't know your phone number because apps on iOS can't just read, you know,
0:43:08it's actually private information.
0:43:11You type in your phone number, they send you an SMS with a code and a URL.
0:43:20So you can either enter the code manually or you can just tap the URL and it goes to
0:43:26the web and then it bounces back to the app and it says, "Okay, the person who actually
0:43:30owns this phone number authorized it. You're in." And then that's it. And now, people can
0:43:35message you. Anybody who knows your phone number can message you on WhatsApp.
0:43:39Dave Asprey Yeah, it's really smart. The other thing that's
0:43:43interesting just from a factoid perspective is their biggest cost is SMS messages.
0:43:48Dave Asprey Right, I saw that. I saw that, yeah. Because
0:43:51they send, they have to pay to send those. And the only SMS messages they send are those
0:43:57sign up authorization.
0:43:58Yeah, it gives you the idea of how massive their growth is.
0:44:03Right. It's not like their SMS costs are high because they're sending some of the actual
0:44:09messages by SMS. It's just the sign up authorization. And I saw that at one point it was like $500,000
0:44:19a month, it might be higher by now.
0:44:22Because in some of the countries around the world,
0:44:24it's just crazy how much bulk SMS costs.
0:44:29Yeah, well, that's the other thing that's
0:44:31interesting about this is 10, 15 years ago--
0:44:37and this, I think, is why the US is behind here.
0:44:3910, 15 years ago, it was really expensive to call people
0:44:42in most countries from a mobile phone or to a mobile phone.
0:44:48there was different rates, depending if you're calling a mobile phone or if you were calling a landline.
0:44:53And so what happened was it was relatively cheaper to message.
0:44:59So messaging became a big thing.
0:45:03In the US in the meantime, everyone had these bucket plans where your price per call, as long as you didn't call too much in a month, was basically free.
0:45:06And so the US has always been more voice centric.
0:45:15over time SMS is caught up and what happened in the US is SMS became all basically you
0:45:22pay 20 bucks a month and you get unlimited SMS.
0:45:26In the meantime in the rest of the world you were still paying for SMS it was less than
0:45:30talking but when you had an app come along that made SMS totally free again it was very
0:45:36attractive because you were still paying for SMS.
0:45:39Whereas in the US, if SMS is already free, the attraction of a free app is obviously
0:45:45less.
0:45:46So it's interesting how these kind of like dynamic US, everyone knows the US carrier
0:45:51market is kind of weird.
0:45:53And it's played out even through this deal where WhatsApp didn't really have any penetration
0:45:59in the US, yet was dominant all over the world.
0:46:03It's all because of like our messed up carrier system.
0:46:07Yeah.
0:46:08Let me take a break and I want to come back.
0:46:10I want to talk to you about iMessage and how that fits into this.
0:46:14But let me take a break and thank our second sponsor.
0:46:17That's our good friends at Media Temple.
0:46:21Now for years Media Temple's grid service has been the web hosting choice of more designers,
0:46:27developers and creative professionals than any other platform.
0:46:31That's because a single Media Temple grid account can host anything from your portfolio
0:46:36site to a hundred different client projects and the grid is ready for
0:46:42anything. Hundreds of servers working together in the cloud to keep your sites
0:46:45online even if you suddenly hit the front page of reddit or maybe if if I
0:46:54link to you they can handle it. It's all managed through Media Temple's own
0:46:59custom control panel very nicely designed by sort of a by designers for
0:47:06Designers control panel and backed by Media Temple's famous 24/7 live tech support.
0:47:14They also have virtual private server solutions, all sorts of stuff, really, really great stuff.
0:47:21If you are like an independent, like a freelance developer and you want a hosting thing where
0:47:29you can just offer your clients, look, we'll do all the work, we'll develop it, we'll design
0:47:35it and we'll host it. Media Temple's grid service is something you should absolutely
0:47:40look into because you can just keep as you keep growing you can just keep allocating
0:47:46more resources for your clients. Great, great stuff. Now here's a great deal. Go to mediatemple.net
0:47:54and if you use the promo code TALKSHOW, T-A-L-K-S-H-O-W, you get 25% off your first month of web hosting.
0:48:03temple.net and the coupon code is talk show go check them out for all of any
0:48:09anything you need web hosting wise so here's my question in the u.s. you like
0:48:16you said these apps are nowhere near as big as they seem to be elsewhere seems
0:48:20like most messaging is either SMS or for me at least it's almost entirely I
0:48:29I message. It is really rare for me to get a green message in messages. I think I have
0:48:36one person who I regularly text who uses an Android phone so it turns up green.
0:48:44>> And they work at Google?
0:48:46>> No, no. It's my friend Lee who owns Hopsin Laundromat, the bar.
0:48:53>> Someone worth keeping in touch with.
0:48:57And that's not because, it's half because I, professionally, I'm in this Apple-centric
0:49:05bubble.
0:49:06And so all of my professional, you know, work-related messaging, you know, to Dave Whiskus and Brent,
0:49:14if it's, you know, Vesper-related, or anybody who I'm texting with during Fireball-related.
0:49:22Well, yeah, obviously a lot of them are gonna use iOS devices or all of them are
0:49:26But even stupid things things that you wouldn't think I mean it just it just shows you know
0:49:32How popular the iPhone is and and in the you know, the circles. I mean like my my
0:49:38Sister uses an iPhone. I know I didn't tell her to buy an iPhone. She you know, it's just it's what she has
0:49:44The other coaches in my son's little league baseball Little League
0:49:50They just happen to how all have iPhones a lot of them former Blackberry users
0:49:56It seems like to me in this in the in the wake of the whatsapp deal that that
0:50:06Apple's
0:50:08prescience at developing iMessage has gone sort of unremarked upon because I think iMessage is
0:50:15Got to be up there in terms of you know number of user active users on a messaging platform
0:50:21It just stands out because it's you know it it and BBM are
0:50:27You know oddballs because they're proprietary to one company's devices
0:50:34Yeah, well, I mean BBM is now cross-platform, but um, but yeah, no, I agree. I mean, it's it's uh, it is prescient. It's a
0:50:44It's a very valuable
0:50:46It's a valuable service
0:50:49You know, I think it's a you know, it's a great example of how Apple uses
0:50:54Services to make their devices more valuable. So for example, I mean just one way to look at it
0:50:59There's I don't think Apple even ever once even considered for a moment
0:51:04Purchasing whatsapp because they already have they have exactly what they want and need which is their own
0:51:11Messaging platform for their just for their own devices, which is all they want. They already have it, right?
0:51:16And they they're they're not interested in making it easier
0:51:19you know to
0:51:22Easier than beyond the App Store to communicate with different manufacturers. Like that's silly. Why would it why would they wanted to do that?
0:51:29no, I mean it I think Apple from a
0:51:35You know, this is the key thing done, you know with Apple services is they exist to make Apple devices more attractive
0:51:42So they can charge a higher price, right? And I messaged a great example of that. I think Apple in general has
0:51:48You know photo stream I think is really interesting
0:51:52I would love to get some numbers on photo stream like how many people are using it?
0:51:58I don't think you at UI is as great as it should be but it's an amazing service
0:52:04You know, that's how I keep my you know, my parents in the loop with with the kids and stuff like that
0:52:08and
0:52:11you know, I almost feel like I
0:52:13Understand why Apple did maps, you know, it's so it's so critical but I wish Apple's
0:52:20Services energy in general. We're just totally focused on this like making their devices like
0:52:27Such a pleasure to own like photo stream does like I message does
0:52:32I wish like the iCloud thing like you should have like everything on an iDevice
0:52:39an iPad or an iPhone should be backed up for free like
0:52:43Yet you have these stupid nagging reminders and you can't even buy enough backup for all the devices that you have
0:52:51Like that's where I would love to see Apple really focus their
0:52:56Focus their energies like just make it if you buy an iOS device all this stuff's taken care of you're good to go
0:53:02And I agree, it's not valued, like no one has a number on that, like how much is iMessage worth?
0:53:08In the light of WhatsApp you could make an argument it's worth many billions of dollars.
0:53:12Yeah, I would love to know the active number of iMessage users.
0:53:18We kind of have a rough estimate of active iOS users.
0:53:24>> Mm-hm.
0:53:28Well, here's the question.
0:53:28Have you canceled your SMS part of your carrier package?
0:53:33>> No, because I still need to get, like I said,
0:53:35I need to get SMSes from Hopsin laundromat.
0:53:38>> [LAUGH] That's what would be really interesting.
0:53:42>> I don't think it makes sense on our Verizon shared family.
0:53:46From my understanding of the way it works, it doesn't make sense to cancel.
0:53:49I don't even know if we could cancel SMS separately.
0:53:52>> Yeah.
0:53:53I mean, we have a minimal--
0:53:55we certainly don't add any.
0:54:00We don't need to.
0:54:01And even things like--
0:54:04my son is 10.
0:54:05He doesn't text a lot yet.
0:54:08I think he's on the cusp.
0:54:10I suspect that the girls in fourth grade are way into it.
0:54:15I think that it's just the way that girls socialize
0:54:17so much faster than boys.
0:54:19but he'll text his grandparents a little bit,
0:54:24but it's all iMessage.
0:54:28- You know, when I think about it,
0:54:32it is very valuable, but I wonder--
0:54:36- I'm just gonna throw a ballpark number.
0:54:37I think there's gotta be at least
0:54:39100 million iMessage users.
0:54:41- Oh yeah, no, I think easily.
0:54:45- Right, and maybe 200 million?
0:54:48I think the question is not how many users there are, it's how many people prefer an
0:54:55iOS device because it has iMessage capabilities.
0:55:00I've heard anecdotes of, like in the high school circle, iMessage is the way to communicate
0:55:06and if you don't have the blue bubble, you're excluded or whatever.
0:55:12I think that's definitely possible and that stuff accrues.
0:55:16it accrues to Apple, it accrues to what it means to be
0:55:20an Apple owner for better or worse.
0:55:22- Yeah, the green ones are gross.
0:55:24- Yeah, they are.
0:55:26It's a weird kind of green.
0:55:27Like, I wonder if it's on purpose.
0:55:29- I don't know, I think it kind of is.
0:55:30I've said this before, I think one of the,
0:55:33it seems like a stupid thing to dwell upon
0:55:36with the gazillion changes in iOS 7.
0:55:38The single most surprising thing in iOS 7 to me
0:55:41is that they didn't change the icon
0:55:43for the Messages app to a blue bubble
0:55:47instead of the green bubble.
0:55:48That they've kept it phone colored green,
0:55:52which to me implies SMS, right?
0:55:55That the reason all along that Messages
0:55:58was the same color green as phone is it was the,
0:56:02until iMessage came along, it was, you know,
0:56:05it was the way that SMS and your phone conversations were,
0:56:11you know, not data, they were voice and SMS.
0:56:15Right, you got three things with your phone account.
0:56:19You get phone, you get voice calls,
0:56:22you get SMS, and you get data.
0:56:25And WhatsApp is a perfect example
0:56:28where not just on iOS devices,
0:56:30but everything around the world,
0:56:31everything is moving to data.
0:56:33And messaging is moving to data faster than voice.
0:56:39But voice will get there too eventually.
0:56:41I mean, it's nonsense that we're not all,
0:56:44that everything won't eventually soon be data.
0:56:47I think on iOS, it's at the point where most iOS users
0:56:53are sending the blue messages.
0:56:54So I think they should make the icon blue
0:56:57and make it seem like the green ones are the oddball.
0:57:00- No, I think, in principle, I agree.
0:57:05In reality, I keep all my messaging apps in one folder
0:57:08and they're all green except for Facebook Messenger.
0:57:10And I can't tell you how much having that blue icon there
0:57:13just drives me up the wall.
0:57:15So that would be problematic from my perspective.
0:57:18But here's the thing, though.
0:57:20I think it depends on market by market basis.
0:57:24The reality is when you started out
0:57:25saying the thing that surprised me most about iMessage,
0:57:29like I started looking for my phone
0:57:31because I don't think I've opened the Messages
0:57:34app on my phone.
0:57:36It's been months.
0:57:38And that's because all messaging here is line.
0:57:42I have a few friends on WhatsApp, a few friends in WeChat.
0:57:45And the only time I use the Messages app
0:57:48is when I'm back in the States.
0:57:51So I think that it's probably somewhere in the middle.
0:57:55That's the thing with messaging.
0:57:57It's totally going to be a market by market thing.
0:57:59I don't think anyone will win the world like Facebook
0:58:02did on the desktop.
0:58:03but they'll fight it out kind of country by country.
0:58:07- Apple is in a really good spot in this regard
0:58:10because they own iMessage and iMessage,
0:58:13and again, I know there's a couple of bugs,
0:58:15but I think it's gotten a lot better.
0:58:16I use it a lot and at least for my use, it's pretty good.
0:58:21Yes, there's definitely bugs.
0:58:22So I just, I was traveling last weekend
0:58:26and for whatever reason, never unpacked my iPad
0:58:29and wanted it last night.
0:58:32So it had been, I don't know, five days since I'd used my iPad.
0:58:37And I opened it up and-- or I charged it.
0:58:40I took it out, charged it, and then like two hours later,
0:58:44took it out and started using it.
0:58:47And then I wanted to watch TV after I'd been using the iPad
0:58:50and put it down on the coffee table.
0:58:52And I was done with it.
0:58:53And then all of a sudden, every iMessage
0:58:56I'd had for like the last five days
0:58:58started coming in on the iPad.
0:59:01and I was getting--
0:59:02- Was there a mini earthquake at your house?
0:59:05- It was weird, I mean, you know, and that's not right.
0:59:08I don't know, I mean, it's like,
0:59:10it's kinda cool that it could catch up
0:59:11on those conversations, but it's,
0:59:14it was annoying that it was just, you know, making noise
0:59:18for old messages, and it was like,
0:59:24it was a lot of work stuff for Vesper,
0:59:26and so I thought, at first, I thought Dave Whiskus
0:59:28was sending me like 40 messages all at once at 3 a.m.
0:59:33and I was gonna give them, you know, shut the hell up.
0:59:39- Start talking too.
0:59:39- Yeah, but then it was, you know, they were like days old.
0:59:42So yeah, it's not perfect, I understand.
0:59:46But overall, I think it works pretty well.
0:59:49So they've got that, they have that in their pocket
0:59:51where no matter what, they've got iMessage
0:59:54and it's pretty solid and it does what they want.
0:59:58But number two, with the App Store,
1:00:02they've got all of these things, right?
1:00:05So WhatsApp is a big thing.
1:00:06Well, there's, you know,
1:00:08WhatsApp started as an iPhone app
1:00:10and is still actively,
1:00:13very actively developed iPhone app.
1:00:15There's a line app, there's,
1:00:16all these things have iPhone apps.
1:00:18So, you know, you go to Taiwan and everybody,
1:00:22nobody uses iMessage,
1:00:24everybody's using these other services,
1:00:25you're A-OK on your Apple device.
1:00:27Do all these apps, is this one of those, we shouldn't get sidetracked on Windows Phone
1:00:33yet, but is this one of those things where Windows Phone is lacking some of these apps?
1:00:40They, I don't know about, there's like a ton of messaging apps, but for the big ones, they
1:00:46have Windows Phone apps.
1:00:47Line has Windows Phone app, WeChat has Windows Phone app, WhatsApp has Windows Phone app.
1:00:51This is the thing about Windows Phone though, is those apps are crap.
1:00:56The problem with, the secondary problem that is easy to get lost in bemoaning the apps
1:01:02that aren't there is that the ones that are there are often very rough.
1:01:07You have the C team working on them or you have a, we weren't going to talk about it,
1:01:11but yeah, they are there.
1:01:12They're a little rough.
1:01:13No, but that's a, it is a good point and I've mentioned that point.
1:01:18Ever since Android really first started gaining traction while, this is circa 2008, 2009,
1:01:269 when Android was really early stages and was behind in every metric.
1:01:35There were fewer Android.
1:01:37There were only a handful of Android devices released yet.
1:01:39There were few in number.
1:01:42Apps were way behind.
1:01:43As the App Store started catching up and there were these...
1:01:48The total number of apps in the iTunes App Store was way higher than the Android App
1:01:53or the Google Play or whatever they called it back then.
1:01:56And I emphasize right from the start, that's great,
1:01:58but if that's the only reason to use an iOS device,
1:02:02then we should all be using Windows computers
1:02:04because Windows always had more apps than Mac.
1:02:07The reason we use Macs is 'cause the apps are better,
1:02:13not because there's more of them, right?
1:02:14- Dude, this is such a thing.
1:02:15- And that is an advantage.
1:02:17To me, that's always been the bigger advantage
1:02:19that the iTunes App Store has had,
1:02:21is not just the breadth, but the quality of the top apps.
1:02:26- Yep, no, so I worked at Microsoft, obviously.
1:02:29So I was a, I was originally a Windows user,
1:02:34switched to Mac in like 2004,
1:02:36and then went to Microsoft where I would say
1:02:38I'd use Windows again.
1:02:39And to be honest, like Windows 7,
1:02:42and then I worked on Windows 8,
1:02:43but we're both, like, they were great operating systems.
1:02:48There was actually some things in them
1:02:49really quite preferred to OS X having been away for a while.
1:02:54And when I was talking to a friend, I'm like, actually I don't mind the operating system
1:02:57at all, but the apps are just a disaster.
1:03:00And he was like, you know, he couldn't believe what I was talking about on Windows, I always
1:03:03had the advantage of apps, but that was exactly it.
1:03:06Like the quality of an outliner, I was used to OmniOutliner, the quality of a to-do app,
1:03:12you know, I used OmniFocus, you know, I guess Omni was the one I was really pining for,
1:03:17But the quality of the apps was, in my estimation, such a stark difference that it was a daily
1:03:26irritant that I was having these rough edges that I didn't enjoy having.
1:03:32I think that's still the case in phones.
1:03:34Dave Asprey I'm the worst talk show host ever.
1:03:36I want to talk about this stuff, but I want to talk about it later.
1:03:41So let's call that a teaser for the final segment of the show because I do want to talk
1:03:46about Windows Phone and Microsoft and Windows.
1:03:50And you're exactly, you're like, it's almost as though you're reading some of my notes
1:03:53that I prepared for the show.
1:03:56But I still want to talk about messaging.
1:03:58So iMessage, let's agree that Apple has, you know, this WhatsApp deal is, it's unheralded
1:04:05but it shows that Apple has another sort of billion dollar value thing in its pocket even
1:04:12though it's inseparable from the company.
1:04:14yep BBM I've seen a lot of people point out so like you said they it is
1:04:22cross-platform now and they had a plan to make it cross-platform years ago and
1:04:28and years ago it was sort of a killer feature of owning a blackberry is that
1:04:34you got free messaging you know and mobile messaging and mm-hmm you know I
1:04:42I think it's fair to say that in hindsight this was one of the main innovations that
1:04:47BlackBerry had.
1:04:49More than the device itself but that they saw the value in mobile messaging and that
1:04:57by making it unmetered compared to SMS, it let people do it freely.
1:05:08You didn't have to think, hey, because the thing about SMS is it's not just costing you
1:05:11to send the damn thing, you know--
1:05:13- It's the mental cost.
1:05:14- Well, and you're costing the person receiving it, right?
1:05:18It's like when you, in the days when SMS costs,
1:05:21when everybody used SMS and they cost,
1:05:23you know, it doesn't matter, 10 cents, whatever,
1:05:26it's a bit rude, it feels, to just say,
1:05:30hey, by the way, I'm gonna take a dime from you
1:05:33because I wanna send you this thing that says,
1:05:36you know, can we push back dinner half an hour, right?
1:05:39There's a mental cost to that.
1:05:40You don't wanna charge somebody.
1:05:41It feels rude. So Blackberry was way ahead on that. And it really does. I've seen it. This is not a unique observation and there's about 5000 people who observed the same thing that this WhatsApp deal shows just how big a mistake it was for Blackberry not to go cross platform with BBM three, four, five years ago. So three, three probably would have been too too late, but four or five years ago.
1:06:09But this is why business is hard.
1:06:12Because the reality is, is BBM was a killer feature.
1:06:17It absolutely drove the adoption of BlackBerry phones,
1:06:21particularly in emerging markets like Indonesia,
1:06:24where BlackBerry is still, that's their last foothold.
1:06:27- Right.
1:06:29- And the problem is when you're selling a BlackBerry device
1:06:31and you're making $150 of profit on that device,
1:06:36It's really, and you're saying,
1:06:41"Okay, we should actually pivot to removing
1:06:45the main differentiation of this device
1:06:49that makes it worth buying,
1:06:51and pivot to this model where we can make
1:06:52$5, $10 per user per year."
1:06:54And yes, over time, it will be a much bigger business.
1:06:58It'll be valued at $19 billion,
1:07:01and our company's on its way to being valued at $6 billion.
1:07:01there's this two to three year gap in there where you're basically killing your business
1:07:07for the promise of having a better business in the future and that two to three year gap is for
1:07:14a publicly traded company is untenable. One of the things I'd love to talk to you about, maybe we'll
1:07:21save it for another time, but is the kind of unfortunate reality of being a publicly traded
1:07:29company and the limitations it puts on you. And that's one of them.
1:07:37Because it's not just that you have to go to one person, be it the chairman or the CEO,
1:07:42and get one yes. It's that you need this consensus from a largely or often irrational herd.
1:07:54Right.
1:07:57And it's no way to get an explicit permission.
1:07:59You have to get this consensus permission.
1:08:02And if you think a committee of 10
1:08:04is hard to get agreement upon, imagine
1:08:06having millions of shareholders.
1:08:08But it's worse than that, though, because especially
1:08:10in tech, where so much compensation is tied
1:08:14into stock, you're kind of disincentivizing your workforce.
1:08:20The thing with Apple-- a big part of Apple
1:08:23is people absolutely believe in the mission,
1:08:25and they're there because they think
1:08:26they're changing the world, no question.
1:08:28The other thing, though, is an Apple engineer
1:08:31does not make any more.
1:08:32In fact, they probably make a little bit less
1:08:34than a lot of other places.
1:08:35But they've done very, very well with their stock options
1:08:39over, you know, before the last couple years,
1:08:42and that makes up for a lot of missed weekends,
1:08:45that makes up for a lot of late nights.
1:08:47And when that's getting stagnant or going down,
1:08:52now you're having a retention problem, you're having people wanting raises.
1:08:57The trouble with having a declining stock price or a stock price that's not going up is a lot more problematic than just bad press.
1:09:13And that's, I think, it's that final one,
1:09:17the employee issue that is important to understand
1:09:21when you wonder why Apple bothers with this stuff.
1:09:24- Well, and strategically, it is a lot easier
1:09:28for a company who is maybe coming to the end of the line
1:09:33with their previous cash cow.
1:09:39Blackberry with their messaging oriented devices.
1:09:43You know, let's face it, Microsoft with PC operating systems
1:09:50and applications, it is a lot easier to get buy-in
1:09:54for expanding and doing something new compared to
1:09:59disrupting and undercutting that cash cow, right?
1:10:04It's easier to add on.
1:10:05So just an easy example, Facebook buying WhatsApp,
1:10:10they're not disrupting Facebook Messenger, really,
1:10:16because WhatsApp is bigger than Facebook Messenger, right?
1:10:19And they're not making money, you know,
1:10:20the whole thing is that Facebook Messenger
1:10:22never really took off the way that Facebook wanted it to.
1:10:25Right, they're adding on.
1:10:26Now they've got something they didn't have before.
1:10:29- Right.
1:10:30- They're not screwing with what they already have.
1:10:32- Yep.
1:10:33- And screwing with what you already have
1:10:34sometimes is the right thing to do,
1:10:36but that's the thing that's hard to get buy-in for.
1:10:38And I think it's hard for, like you said,
1:10:40a public company to do because investors might object
1:10:44because they don't see it.
1:10:45- Yeah, well, since they don't see it, but they don't care.
1:10:49Like they're worried about, you know,
1:10:54they will sell your stock and invest it elsewhere.
1:10:57Like they're worried about,
1:10:59they're solely focused on the return.
1:11:02and it's a kind of mismatch in incentives.
1:11:06- Right, and I think that the time,
1:11:08so I'm gonna agree with you.
1:11:09I don't think, I think in theory and in hindsight,
1:11:13yeah, maybe BlackBerry had an opportunity with BBM
1:11:17to be one of these massive sort of platform-agnostic
1:11:22messaging, mobile messaging platforms,
1:11:26but that the time for them to make that happen
1:11:28was a time when they couldn't justify losing it
1:11:33as a competitive advantage for their devices.
1:11:38That it was just too, it was too compelling to say,
1:11:40look, if you want free messaging,
1:11:42and a bunch of the people you know,
1:11:44in Indonesia or wherever you live,
1:11:49are doing it with Blackberries,
1:11:51you should buy a Blackberry.
1:11:52- This is why it remains the single most impressive thing
1:11:58Apple has ever done is put iTunes on Windows for this exact reason.
1:12:05Because it was basically saying, we're giving up on the Mac.
1:12:12They weren't giving up on the Mac, but they were giving up on--
1:12:15that wasn't going to be a differentiator for the Mac.
1:12:17And we're kind of betting on this new business.
1:12:20It wasn't directly the same, because they weren't undercutting the Mac,
1:12:23per se.
1:12:25But they were foregoing-- it was an opportunity cost.
1:12:26They were forgoing an opportunity to make a Mac more attractive relative to Windows.
1:12:31Right.
1:12:31No, right. It set the iPod up as its own individual thing,
1:12:35as opposed to a thing that made the Mac better.
1:12:38Right, exactly. And the thing with that, though, is like what made that tenable in a lot of ways
1:12:45was that it was, even though he was the last one to agree to it, it was Steve Jobs doing it.
1:12:49Right.
1:12:50And this is one of the things that you get with having a founder, a CEO. Like,
1:12:53Like they have a lot more leeway to do these sort of things.
1:12:58And this is for Microsoft and you know,
1:13:00I hope this is why Bill Gates came back.
1:13:04Is to kind of lend credibility
1:13:09to some of the hard decisions they need to make.
1:13:11Because there's some things that people,
1:13:15like a founder can get away with
1:13:17that no one else can get away with.
1:13:19- All right, let's hold on that thought.
1:13:23I want to thank our third sponsor and it's our good friends at Backblaze.
1:13:28Backblaze is online, cloud-based, un-throttled backup for your Mac written by former Apple
1:13:38engineers.
1:13:40Great software.
1:13:41You download it, start a free trial for 15 days, backs up everything on your Mac, everything
1:13:48unless there's something you don't want backed up.
1:13:51Let's say a folder full of huge movies
1:13:53or something like that, that you don't care
1:13:55if it gets backed up. - Movies.
1:13:57- Movies, you know what I mean.
1:13:59(laughing)
1:14:01But if there's something big or, you know.
1:14:03- I'm determined to make this the show
1:14:05that gets you in trouble.
1:14:06- I'm not getting in trouble.
1:14:07You know, you could think of exceptions.
1:14:10If you want, you can make exceptions.
1:14:11If you want the whole drive backed up,
1:14:13you can back up the whole drive.
1:14:14And it just gets backed up to the cloud.
1:14:18Does the initial backup take a long time?
1:14:19Yes, it actually does, because you might have
1:14:22gigabytes of stuff.
1:14:25Just let it go.
1:14:27It just runs in the background,
1:14:29doesn't take up all of your bandwidth.
1:14:30You can throttle it, you can control how much it uses,
1:14:33and it's super easy, just goes.
1:14:36They have iOS apps that you can use
1:14:38once you have stuff backed up,
1:14:40or even in the middle of your first backup,
1:14:42whatever already has been backed up is there.
1:14:45So you're out of the house,
1:14:46you want to access one of the files on your Mac,
1:14:49just open up your Backblaze app on your iOS device,
1:14:54your iPhone, there it is, all of your files.
1:14:56Once it is backed up, changes get backed up incrementally.
1:15:00Unbelievable service, sounds too good to be true,
1:15:05but it really does work, it is just great,
1:15:07it is a no brainer, don't have to worry about it,
1:15:11backup for your Mac, $5 a month.
1:15:16No add-ons, no nonsense.
1:15:18It's not like, oh, basic account is five bucks,
1:15:21but if you want the good stuff,
1:15:23or if you want enough storage to actually hold all your stuff,
1:15:26you have to pay more.
1:15:27Nope.
1:15:28Whatever you've got on your Mac, $5 a month.
1:15:33Great, great deal.
1:15:34And I emphasize every week,
1:15:37when these guys sponsor the show,
1:15:39the fact that it's offline is a huge deal.
1:15:42It is a great addition to something like Time Machine,
1:15:45or a clone to drive by super duper that you keep in your house.
1:15:50Offline means that if anything happens,
1:15:54you know, somebody breaks in your house, a fire,
1:15:58some kind of electrical surge burns out all your stuff.
1:16:02There's something out of your house
1:16:05where everything on your Mac is backed up.
1:16:08Such peace of mind, really, really great.
1:16:11Go check them out, see for yourself.
1:16:14Go to backblaze.com/daringfireball.
1:16:19They use the code daringfireball
1:16:22'cause they tie the same campaign
1:16:24to ads they've run on DaringFireball.
1:16:27Go check 'em out.
1:16:30My thanks to them.
1:16:31You're nuts if you don't check out Backblaze.
1:16:34- No, so I picked it up.
1:16:36I didn't mean, one of the things I didn't mean to do,
1:16:39I have a super rigorous disk backup system,
1:16:43but I've been meaning to do the online thing for ages.
1:16:45Did it thanks to this ad.
1:16:48I was actually waiting,
1:16:51but no, it was actually way faster than I expected too.
1:16:53The upload went, that said, I'm in like a modern country
1:16:57that actually has decent broadband as compared to the US.
1:17:01So that might be part of it.
1:17:02- I live in Comcast country.
1:17:04(laughing)
1:17:05I have good downloads. - Philadelphia.
1:17:07- Comcast-- - I would be more impressed.
1:17:11You know, you ever see the prototypical guy at the gym who only works his arms and he's
1:17:16got like toothpick legs and real big arms?
1:17:18That's Comcast.
1:17:19Comcast has pretty good down, but up is a pair of skinny legs.
1:17:24Yeah.
1:17:25No, it's crazy.
1:17:26I mean, it's crazy.
1:17:27I think I have 100 down and 40 up and I pay like $30 a month or something.
1:17:34It's ridiculous.
1:17:35That's sick.
1:17:36All right.
1:17:37Alright last thing I want to talk about messaging wise and I think also largely
1:17:41Under talked about this week is Twitter and
1:17:46Twitter has direct messages and a
1:17:51While ago, I don't know when it was like two years ago somewhere around there Twitter started downplaying direct messages
1:17:59And on the web interface, which I know a lot of people a lot of people use for Twitter
1:18:04They really kind of buried it. I mean that may not even kind of that. I mean they buried it
1:18:09It's it is not there
1:18:10They have a lot of stuff you can click right on the home page and direct messages
1:18:14No longer was one of them
1:18:15You had to go down a level and once you put anything down one level in a hierarchy on interface
1:18:20It is gone from most people
1:18:22I think there were an awful lot of people who who signed up for Twitter, you know
1:18:29over the last few years who have no idea that there's a direct messaging and
1:18:33Then a couple months ago earlier this year. It's like they kind of
1:18:38you know
1:18:40kind of
1:18:41Realize we totally we got screw that one up. Yeah, and they you know started elevating again and promoting it
1:18:47and
1:18:49You know just for example this that's how you said you haven't looked at iMessage in a while that when we coordinated you know
1:18:56The show via direct message right we did up Twitter DMS. I
1:19:02I do, so I would say that for me personally,
1:19:06my primary messaging is iMessage,
1:19:09where most of the, what I would call a mobile message
1:19:11goes through that.
1:19:12Secondarily though is Twitter DMs.
1:19:15There's a bunch of people who I message that way.
1:19:20But I think largely though,
1:19:21it's a lost opportunity for Twitter,
1:19:24that they had an opportunity there and they blew it.
1:19:26- No, I completely agree.
1:19:30It's probably the primary thing for me just because being over here and that's the main way I connect and stay in touch with most people in the tech world.
1:19:39The problem for Twitter is exactly what makes Twitter so fantastic is exactly what makes it so...
1:19:51so such kind of a tough hill for them to climb.
1:19:56In that, like, for me, like, I would give up
1:20:00every single tech product in my life
1:20:02before I gave up Twitter.
1:20:03Like, I would use a Windows phone,
1:20:06I would use a Blackberry, like,
1:20:07as long as I still had Twitter.
1:20:09Like, that's how essential it is to my life,
1:20:13it's how I stay involved, it's how I stay connected, it's--
1:20:15- M.G. Seigler often says, "What's the first,"
1:20:17and when you wake up in the morning,
1:20:18"What's the first app you go to on your phone?"
1:20:21For me it is Twitter.
1:20:23For me, I post something similar.
1:20:26I think my first one was Line, but that's replaceable, right?
1:20:30There's competitors. There's nothing like Twitter out there.
1:20:34And what makes it so interesting is because Twitter is organized by your interest.
1:20:39It's like what you actually care about. It's not necessarily who you know.
1:20:43And one thing I want to hit at is I'm actually starting a new podcast,
1:20:47and it's with someone who I met on Twitter.
1:20:50Like, and there's tons of people I have like that.
1:20:53The problem is--
1:20:54- Can we have an announcement or just a hint?
1:20:56Is this a teaser?
1:20:57- No, it's an, I've been, it's called Exponent,
1:21:02exponent.fm.
1:21:03I need to, after this show, I'm gonna actually finish
1:21:06getting the site finished so it will be presentable
1:21:08when this is published.
1:21:10But we recorded two episodes actually,
1:21:11so there'll be two to download.
1:21:12- All right, who's your cohost?
1:21:14- It's a guy named James Allworth.
1:21:17So he co-wrote a book with Clay Christensen,
1:21:20How Do You Measure Your Life?
1:21:22He went to Harvard.
1:21:23He writes-- he used to write more West now for the Harvard
1:21:27Business Review blog.
1:21:29But it's about the intersection of--
1:21:31it's not just reviewing the news.
1:21:33It's kind of like tech and society,
1:21:34like what's the impact of what's happening
1:21:36in technology on society as a whole is more of the focus.
1:21:40So the first-- there will be business stuff.
1:21:43The first episode was all Microsoft and disruption.
1:21:46The second one was about things like what's happening in San Francisco with the protests
1:21:52as well as some about the Comcast merger with Time Warner and things like that.
1:21:56So I think it should be pretty interesting and hopefully appealing to this audience which
1:22:01is why I've been hustling to get it done.
1:22:02But this is a guy – but you're saying though that the relevance to Twitter is that
1:22:05this is somebody who your entire relationship with him was through Twitter.
1:22:09Absolutely.
1:22:10Like I found what he said on Twitter interesting.
1:22:12I thought it was, I thought he had a interest set
1:22:16that was similar to mine.
1:22:18So I followed him, I reached out to him,
1:22:20said, "Hey, can you follow me?
1:22:21"I'd love to ping you in DM."
1:22:23And then through that, we built a relationship.
1:22:27We've met a few times now,
1:22:29and now we're launching a podcast together.
1:22:33The trouble I have with Twitter is it's hard to,
1:22:41One thing I really try to do, and I think an advantage I have by not living in the valley
1:22:48and almost all the people I grew up with and almost all the people I interact with now
1:22:53are not technically inclined, is I feel it gives me a good idea of how normal people
1:23:00experience technology.
1:23:02I have a hard time of that with Twitter because it's so essential to my existence.
1:23:10It's hard to get out of it and see what it is to regular people.
1:23:17For me, because I think a lot of people who love Twitter can relate to this.
1:23:22I grew up in the Midwest, grew up in Wisconsin.
1:23:25No friends were technically inclined.
1:23:28I was into computers from a pretty early age.
1:23:30I loved following the stuff.
1:23:34And I've lived in lots of interesting places.
1:23:37And Twitter gives me a chance to have this ongoing conversation with people just like
1:23:41me no matter where they are in the world.
1:23:43And that's amazing.
1:23:46The problem is to have that conversation, to get from day zero where you sign in to
1:23:53having a great set of people you follow and stuff like that, it's really complicated.
1:23:59Like incredibly complicated.
1:24:02The learning curve is so high.
1:24:03The payoff is totally worth it,
1:24:06but it's so hard to get people along that path to get there.
1:24:09That's the challenge.
1:24:11- I also think, I think Twitter itself did not,
1:24:14in terms of messaging, I just don't,
1:24:16I really feel like internally they missed it.
1:24:20- I agree.
1:24:21- And I would judge it mainly by the interface
1:24:24that they presented for messaging,
1:24:26which was not chat style, right?
1:24:31third party Twitter app developers, you know, like Tweety and I know tweetbot, which I use,
1:24:43you know, they present your DMS, they don't look like the tweets, they don't look like
1:24:47a stream of tweets there, they look like chat. Everything about it from you know, the way
1:24:54that it's reverse chronological, instead of chronological, they flip the order, it looks
1:25:00like chat bubbles. You don't type in a regular tweet posting
1:25:05window. It's a little chat thing with a send button next to it.
1:25:08Whereas Twitter itself made it just, you know, for a while. I
1:25:13mean, I know that it was there were roots in, you know, back in
1:25:162007, when Twitter started there, it was all based on SMS
1:25:20at first, or at least they thought it was going to be. And
1:25:23so that was that code. What was it D or DM? I don't even
1:25:27remember.
1:25:27No, it's D and then the username, but without the @ symbol.
1:25:30Right.
1:25:31Because then you could joke, and you could type DM username
1:25:35and jokingly make it seem like a mistaken DM.
1:25:40Or people would do DM--
1:25:42You could do it for real.
1:25:43--and do it for real.
1:25:44It was a big thing in a couple of years
1:25:46that early pointed at Twitter.
1:25:47Yeah, people sending accidental messages.
1:25:51But still it was a problem.
1:25:54Even after the whole typing D thing, D space username, people sent accidental DMs, right?
1:26:03And that was a real problem.
1:26:04Whereas my personal rule is I will never – I almost never use the Twitter web interface.
1:26:09But if I do, I will never send a DM via it.
1:26:11I only send DMs by Tweetbot because I know – I'm 100 percent sure I'd never make
1:26:17a mistake because the interface is different.
1:26:19Right.
1:26:20Like you're not sending a personal tweet,
1:26:23you're sending a message.
1:26:25You know, even the name they picked,
1:26:28the name they picked showed how screwed up
1:26:30their interface was because direct messages,
1:26:32they didn't call them direct tweets,
1:26:34they called them direct messages.
1:26:36- Yeah, no, there's so much, like, yeah, I completely agree.
1:26:40The other thing too is like once they realized
1:26:42they're no longer SMS bound,
1:26:44like why are direct messages still 140 characters only?
1:26:48Like, what's amazing about Twitter is the relationships
1:26:53I can form around my interest as opposed to people
1:26:55who I actually know in real life,
1:26:57which all these other services are about real life.
1:26:59And the truth is, real life matters the most.
1:27:01Like, that's true for the vast majority of people.
1:27:06But Twitter kinda has the market for knowing people
1:27:10that I'm interested in, and they should make it
1:27:12as easy as possible to live in Twitter,
1:27:16to never leave that interface.
1:27:19And the other thing, yeah,
1:27:20they've made messages more accessible,
1:27:22but they've had this ridiculous limitation
1:27:25on sending hyperlinks through DirectMessages
1:27:29for the last few months, which is infuriating.
1:27:31- Right, it really, it's driving people away
1:27:33from DirectMessages.
1:27:34So something happened where I've heard
1:27:37that it was Dick Costolo himself got a DM
1:27:41with a spam Twitter link in it, and he clicked it.
1:27:45And I don't know that anything bad happened,
1:27:47but he was so infuriated that he just said,
1:27:50"Shut it down, no URLs and direct messages
1:27:53"until we can get the spam out."
1:27:55And it's months later and it's still screwed up.
1:27:58- Yeah, I had a few conversations where
1:28:03I've actually resorted to posting a text file on Dropbox
1:28:08and sending someone the link to it
1:28:09because my only relationship with them is through Twitter.
1:28:12It'd be weird to like, oh, can I get your Skype name or something like that.
1:28:16Well, a lot of the DMs I get are people who I know, I don't know in real life, but I know
1:28:22on the internet and I know they're sending me links for, possible links for Daring Fireball.
1:28:27That's the whole reason they send me DMs is the links.
1:28:30It's funny to me to see the different things that people will do.
1:28:33Yeah, to get it through.
1:28:35Right.
1:28:36I have one guy who's a pretty good regular contributor and his thing is he'll send it
1:28:40with three slashes, HTTP colon slash slash slash.
1:28:45So it's not clickable, I can't click it,
1:28:50but I can copy and paste it
1:28:51and then just delete the slash in the URL bar.
1:28:54- That's the idea, as you put spaces in it,
1:28:56which I think is probably more annoying.
1:28:58- Yeah, because, I don't know, all of them are annoying.
1:29:01All of them takes me back to like 1994, '93,
1:29:06when anytime you had anybody sent you a URL,
1:29:10You had to copy, paste, go to the browser app, paste.
1:29:16And it didn't take too long for indie Mac apps in the mid '90s
1:29:21to get-- it was Command Click, usually, on a URL,
1:29:24and you could open it.
1:29:26It was a long time since I've had to copy and paste URLs.
1:29:29But Twitter DMs have brought me back.
1:29:31It's honestly-- it kind of blows my mind.
1:29:36But the fact that it still is stuck like that,
1:29:39months later and everybody who uses the answers
1:29:42bitches about everyday just shows that twitter still doesn't have the heart
1:29:45messaging
1:29:47uh... i think it's a lost opportunity for them
1:29:53because how many users just twitter have
1:29:56uh... i think they have like a hundred million active
1:30:00uh... mike two hundred thirty million total right like
1:30:04yeah that that's
1:30:06The reality is Twitter is, and this pains me to say it because it's so important to
1:30:13me, they're in the most precarious state of all these guys. Yes, they've gone public and
1:30:21they had a nice run up in their stock price, but I'm not sure that was deserved. What's
1:30:27interesting about Twitter is it's so interesting because the potential is massive because they
1:30:33they know, knowing what I'm interested in is way more valuable than knowing who I know.
1:30:39You can market to me so much more effectively by knowing what I actually care about, and
1:30:43Twitter knows that.
1:30:45The problem is getting people from day zero to a curated following list that gives an
1:30:51accurate representation of what they're interested in is devilishly hard.
1:30:57I still don't know what they're doing.
1:30:59going open up an incognito browser and go to twitter.com and like the home page is just
1:31:05like the signup process is yeah I mean it's it there's a lot of room for improvement I
1:31:13don't think they've I still don't think they've solved the explain to someone who's not on
1:31:18Twitter why they should be on Twitter yeah elevated that's a bit of a problem but like
1:31:23MG Sigler and I were talking about a few weeks ago. They still have something that is amazing,
1:31:31which to me is best exemplified by the fact that when people are on TV as guests on a
1:31:38talk show, they show their Twitter name.
1:31:39Tim Cynova Yep.
1:31:40Dave Asprey Or they show a hashtag. And the hashtag, I
1:31:43know that one of the weird things about hashtags is you could use the same hashtag anywhere.
1:31:49and that Facebook is trying to get people to use hashtags too.
1:31:53And so if I tried to promote a hashtag daring fireball, it would work anywhere where you
1:31:58can type plain text because it's not a real metadata field.
1:32:02But when people see hashtags, I think they think Twitter.
1:32:06And I know when you see @monkbend, you know it's a Twitter name, right?
1:32:16for anybody who's interested is is Ben's Twitter handle right? M-O-N-K-B-E-N-T.
1:32:22Monk, monk bent I guess. Yes it's a monk bent tea. Yeah the bent tea is definitely
1:32:30you don't have to explain it. Thank you. No it's an unfortunate encounter with a
1:32:36Spanish teacher in freshman year, freshman year of high school so. Let me just take a
1:32:42up final break and thank our last and final last but not least our final sponsor and that's
1:32:50igloo let me tell you about igloo igloo is an intranet intranet that you will actually
1:32:55like it's built with easy to use apps that help you work with your teams shared calendars
1:33:02private twitter like micro blogs file sharing and more and it's all on their website now
1:33:10And what they want me to talk to you about is SharePoint.
1:33:14Igloo partnered with Osterman Research
1:33:17to study the challenges businesses face
1:33:19when implementing SharePoint,
1:33:20which is an intranet package from a little company
1:33:26in Redmond, Washington called Microsoft.
1:33:28They built a whole page about it and you can see it here.
1:33:33Go to igloosoftware.com/the-talk-show.
1:33:38Go there, they'll know you came from the show
1:33:39and they have this whole sort of a,
1:33:42I wouldn't wanna call it a white paper
1:33:45because it's not written in that white paper-ese language.
1:33:48It's like a plain, a real white paper.
1:33:52It's like written in English.
1:33:53Here's the five main results that this study showed.
1:33:56SharePoint doesn't work well on mobile.
1:33:59That's something that igloo does very well.
1:34:02They have responsive web design built into
1:34:04all the features of their platform,
1:34:06everything you can do on the desktop,
1:34:08even administering the internet itself,
1:34:10you can do from the phone with a responsive design.
1:34:13They also found that SharePoint is too expensive.
1:34:17It requires too many people.
1:34:20And here's the worst part, the most damning part,
1:34:23that no one ends up using it.
1:34:24People end up using the other things to work around
1:34:27all the things they don't like about SharePoint.
1:34:29So then you need all these third-party apps
1:34:32to do these things that you could be doing
1:34:35all through Igloo.
1:34:36Check them out and if you want to try it, this is the most amazing thing.
1:34:42This is great.
1:34:43It is free to use forever with up to 10 people.
1:34:48And after that, if you have a team of more than 10 people, it's very, very affordable
1:34:52after that.
1:34:54So it's better, it's got better features, it is mobile, it is mobile optimized, works
1:35:00great on the desktop too and you can try it for free for up to ten people and
1:35:06then after that it's very affordable so go to igloo software.com slash the talk
1:35:13show my thanks to them alright so I think we've done messaging pretty well
1:35:18and now we have just a few minutes we could talk about Microsoft who you now
1:35:24you used to work at Microsoft when did you leave I left last summer July 1st
1:35:29In 2013?
1:35:312013, yes.
1:35:33Wow, it feels like it's been longer.
1:35:35I know you haven't been there.
1:35:37I started the blog while I was still at Microsoft.
1:35:39Right. But, you know, obviously it picked up a lot once you left.
1:35:43Yeah. Well, it was perfect timing because a few weeks later they had the reorganization,
1:35:47which I wrote about, and that got a lot of traffic.
1:35:53And then Balmer left, and then they bought Nokia.
1:35:55So it's been a very fruitful subject
1:35:58So we were talking earlier in the show we hint we hinted at where we're going but that
1:36:03that
1:36:06One of the obviously a big the biggest problem Microsoft has is that the industry is shifting to mobile
1:36:12The whole whatsapp thing and messaging is just one
1:36:16once one of many sides of it
1:36:22But everything is moving to mobile. I mean, that's where all the growth is and
1:36:26That is a place where Microsoft has really just utterly failed to get traction at all
1:36:32And
1:36:36That it's more one of the things is that it's more than just that they don't have apps
1:36:42you know on on Windows Phone, but that the apps like you said the apps they have just aren't that good and
1:36:48It occurs to me that that situation that that's why it's this situation that situation there is far worse for
1:36:56Microsoft than it was for Apple and the Mac back it does say the the nadir of
1:37:00The Mac market share wise in like 96 97 98 is that even though the Mac was overwhelmed?
1:37:08Market share wise by Windows and by the the number of apps available
1:37:13The Mac still had
1:37:17Office and it still had the whole Adobe suite and you know Quark Express and
1:37:23Freehand and other design apps that were
1:37:27You know really important to a lot of Mac users and even if Mac office was a little bit behind the Windows version
1:37:33It was there and the Adobe apps and the design apps always were you know?
1:37:38Parity or you know the Mac versions were better
1:37:42And the Mac always had throughout that whole time had an amazing indie community that was making
1:37:49Truly top-notch apps for people who really really cared, you know companies like bare-bones software with BB edit
1:37:56Panic got started around, you know the mid 90s
1:38:00And then he you know, yeah Omni with that shift. Yeah, perfect example one now
1:38:05That's a little bit later than the 90s because that's their next step
1:38:08But that's still like early days of Mac OS X. Mac OS X was, you know, effectively a new
1:38:14platform and in 2001 and 2002 Mac OS X was a smaller platform than classic Mac OS.
1:38:21I forget when it was that Mac OS X actually had more active users than classic Mac OS,
1:38:26but it was not until 2003 or 2004 even.
1:38:33And so, you know, when Mac OS X was getting off the ground, yeah, then you had the Omni
1:38:37Group, people like Brent Simmons, who I work with now, so disclaimer, but NetNewswire came
1:38:44out in 2002 and was an amazing app.
1:38:48Dave Asprey Yeah, just an amazing app that really, really
1:38:52changed the way I viewed the entire internet.
1:39:01Windows and Windows Phone just don't have anything like that, especially Windows Phone.
1:39:05- Yeah, this is exactly,
1:39:07this is why I completely agree with you.
1:39:10Like the Apple was in way worse financial shape
1:39:14than Microsoft is now.
1:39:15And then Microsoft will be for the foreseeable future.
1:39:19The difference though is,
1:39:23Apple's fate was in Apple's control.
1:39:28Like they just needed to make better products.
1:39:31And that's exactly what Steve Jobs was very good at.
1:39:34and they came back.
1:39:36- And they always had some people
1:39:37who were waiting for those products,
1:39:39who saw that potential, you know?
1:39:41- Yep.
1:39:42No, because they always had that bit in the UI,
1:39:46that bit in the experience
1:39:48that would always appeal to some people.
1:39:52The problem for Microsoft right now
1:39:53is their problems are out of their control.
1:39:56Like they're dependent on developers that they can't control.
1:40:00Like they're dependent on consumers buying their devices
1:40:03they can't make them buy them.
1:40:05And that's a much worse position to be
1:40:10because they could make literally the best phone on earth
1:40:15in every single dimension and none of us would buy it
1:40:19and justifiably so.
1:40:20Like Farhad Manjoo had a great column in the Times
1:40:24like yesterday saying like reviewing the latest Nokia phone
1:40:28saying this is an amazing phone but I can't recommend it
1:40:31because the app situation.
1:40:33and they can't change that.
1:40:35And that's, and the problem is this is where like
1:40:40being in a good financial situation actually hurts
1:40:42because nothing helps you change what you're doing
1:40:47than like knowing you're gonna have trouble making payroll
1:40:50in a few weeks, which is the case for Apple.
1:40:51- Yeah, there's not too many factors
1:40:53on phone hardware design, right?
1:40:57There's camera quality, screen quality,
1:41:01battery life and performance and storage,
1:41:05but storage is easy.
1:41:06I mean, that's, you know.
1:41:08- Build quality arguably.
1:41:09- Right, build, yeah, and build, well, and let's,
1:41:12and Nokia definitely has build quality down.
1:41:15- And they have camera quality.
1:41:16- And they definitely have camera quality.
1:41:18Arguably, they're probably the one that you can argue,
1:41:21you know, you could make a strong case is,
1:41:24beats the iPhone 5S.
1:41:26Better at different things,
1:41:28but they're both excellent, right?
1:41:30It's a top tier camera.
1:41:31So like you said, so what's left?
1:41:34Screen and performance.
1:41:36And I can't judge this new one that Farhad reviewed,
1:41:40but it might have.
1:41:42Let's just concede that it has the leading performance,
1:41:46good battery life, and a great screen.
1:41:48That's not enough.
1:41:51You don't buy the device.
1:41:52You really don't.
1:41:53I mean, the device definitely matters,
1:41:55but it's the overall experience,
1:41:57and the overall experience is largely about apps.
1:42:00- Yeah, the other thing that's interesting about this is,
1:42:06and I made this point in the first episode
1:42:10of the new podcast, again, exponent.fm,
1:42:14is what ultimately brought the Mac,
1:42:19made the Mac a viable platform again.
1:42:21Again, like just to be clear,
1:42:22like even if your in-cell can value only C Macs,
1:42:25so it's easy to think they're dominating.
1:42:27Windows still dominates in the laptop, desktop form factor.
1:42:36But what made the Mac a viable platform was the web,
1:42:40because all the applications that matter now
1:42:42ran everywhere.
1:42:44And what's interesting for Microsoft
1:42:46is they have to be the ones that are most--
1:42:49they should be the ones who are most distressed
1:42:51that the mobile web hasn't taken off in a meaningful way
1:42:54from an application standpoint,
1:42:56because that would be their salvation.
1:42:58Like that, and what they should be spending
1:43:01their resources on is they should be doing two things.
1:43:05And like this seems so,
1:43:08so this is what you know that they've woken up
1:43:12if you see these two things.
1:43:14One, they need to give up on IE.
1:43:16Like they need to give up on the Trident rendering engine.
1:43:18They need to do it, adopt WebKit.
1:43:20And quite frankly, like Apple could use the help.
1:43:23Like they've lost, like Google's forked it,
1:43:25they're going with Blink.
1:43:27Microsoft and Apple ought to work together
1:43:31on the future of WebKit because Microsoft cannot afford,
1:43:34like I, to be clear,
1:43:35IE's done a lot to be standards compliant.
1:43:37Like it's not a terrible browser like you think it is.
1:43:41But that doesn't matter.
1:43:43It's not a battle that they can afford to fight.
1:43:47Like they need to run every website perfectly
1:43:51with all, not just from standards perspective,
1:43:54but also with the WebKit quirks perspective.
1:43:56- Right.
1:43:58- And then two, like they need to take all these resources
1:44:01that are focused on trying to prop up their app store
1:44:04and funnel them into like making web apps
1:44:07into something that's meaningful.
1:44:09Because that's the only possible way back in my perspective
1:44:14is where web apps actually become something
1:44:17that's meaningful on mobile.
1:44:19And then it doesn't matter because--
1:44:21I think that's unlikely though. I agree. I think it's a high
1:44:24you know, I that's why they make picture they should just yet.
1:44:28And that's a good point there. So I see two. I see three ways
1:44:33forward. One would be to somehow get developer traction for
1:44:38Windows Phone apps. And I don't see that happening. I don't see
1:44:42any way they can do it. They can't bribe it. And I don't see
1:44:45it. So that's one. It is possible. But I don't think it's
1:44:49going to happen.
1:44:49- The thing that people don't realize is
1:44:53the return on investment from improving your iOS app
1:44:56or your Android app is so much greater
1:44:58than building a new one.
1:45:00It's not just, oh, you finished the first two,
1:45:02now you're gonna build a third.
1:45:04Like, the equation never works in their favor.
1:45:07- Two would be what you said,
1:45:11would be some sort of way that,
1:45:14what happened with web apps on the desktop
1:45:18in the 90s through the
1:45:22you know early 2000s like where big new things
1:45:26a startup or a big new service or something
1:45:29was almost always in that era a website
1:45:33you know Facebook is a fine example of it even you know
1:45:37was later it was in you know mid 2000s but what was Facebook
1:45:41it was a website it was a thing where you went to your browser and type
1:45:44facebook.com
1:45:45and you went there. And so anybody could, you know, Mac or Windows could use it. Whereas
1:45:50a decade earlier, Facebook would have been a Windows app and Mac users might have been
1:45:54locked out. I think the last big thing I can remember that was a Windows app was Napster.
1:46:01You know, obviously it had an online component, but there wasn't a native Mac Napster client.
1:46:09But...
1:46:09That's interesting because I was still on Windows then.
1:46:11I was on the Mac.
1:46:12Think about it.
1:46:13This is where the indie Mac community took it up and you know Napster Napster
1:46:18Didn't want to lock Mac users out
1:46:20They were just focused on you know where most of the people were which was Windows and so it was just you know
1:46:26It's the same reason. It's not that people necessarily don't even want you know
1:46:30You know like I guess Instagram has a Windows phone client now
1:46:34But it didn't take them a long time because they wanted to lock them out
1:46:37It just wasn't worth their attention yet, and that's right the Mac was but the indie Mac community had a couple of
1:46:42of pretty good Napster clients.
1:46:46I forget the names of them.
1:46:47I'm sure my readers--
1:46:48- The thing about Napster, just like,
1:46:49it was an amazingly well-designed app.
1:46:53- Yeah, but the Mac clients were even better.
1:46:55They were-- - I could imagine.
1:46:55- I think there's one called Macster.
1:46:57I forget the name of it.
1:46:59But there were at least two or three--
1:47:00- That sounds like what an indie Mac club
1:47:02would be named. - Yeah, there were like
1:47:03two or three of them, and they were good enough
1:47:06that you could do the thing,
1:47:08which was you typed in a song name
1:47:10and got a bunch of results and, you know, dragged them to your desktop and now you had
1:47:16the music on your desktop.
1:47:17So did you used to do the download MP3s by FTP thing, like pre-napser?
1:47:22No.
1:47:23So, I think this was, I was in college then, so, like, which was like the ground zero for
1:47:28this sort of stuff.
1:47:30So used to, there were these sites you would go to and you would get people's FTP addresses
1:47:35and then you would use an FTP client, you'd go to their site and they'd have like a whole
1:47:37tons of music that you could download.
1:47:39Like it was, in retrospect, like totally bizarre.
1:47:42So from that perspective, when Napster came along,
1:47:47like it was unbelievable.
1:47:49Like it was like going from a old school phone to an iPhone.
1:47:54Like it was like, it was so unbelievable.
1:47:56And of course it made it so much more accessible to everyone.
1:47:59Oh, fond memories.
1:48:01Well, it was sort of like Google, where, you know, the search results used to be,
1:48:06You'd have to reasonably expect to hunt through
1:48:0920 search results to find the thing you were looking for.
1:48:13And it felt amazing because, oh my God,
1:48:15now you'd go to Alta Vista and you would type this query
1:48:20and if you spent 10, 20, 30 seconds eyeballing the results,
1:48:25you would find the thing you're looking for.
1:48:27And you were like 30 seconds away
1:48:29from almost all the information you could imagine.
1:48:32And then all of a sudden Google came along
1:48:34and you were two seconds away from anything
1:48:36you could imagine.
1:48:37And you didn't really have to eyeball it,
1:48:38you'd just see it right there at the top of the list.
1:48:40And that's what Napster was, right?
1:48:42Instead of having to hunt for Keith Richards' version
1:48:46of Run Run Rudolph,
1:48:47which used to be before digital music
1:48:53was like this epically hard B-side of a single
1:48:56from 1978 to '59,
1:48:57you'd just type Run Run Rudolph into Napster
1:49:00and there it is at the top.
1:49:01You know, and it was a pretty--
1:49:03- It was unbelievable.
1:49:03It was a pretty good rip. Yeah
1:49:05But I remember you know, but that's where the indie Mac community really stepped in and maybe it Mac was you know
1:49:13every once in a while something would maybe break down because
1:49:16Napster would change something and Windows would pick up the change right away and it took a while for the Mac guys to do it
1:49:20But after that though things were web apps, you know, at least a big new thing. So you didn't feel left out
1:49:27Yeah, and you can get a Mac and and interchange
1:49:32You know with people using the mass market using windows. I don't see that happening on mobile
1:49:38I really hungry because I just it I
1:49:42Think it was always an aberration. I always thought that and it's the the UI I
1:49:48Critic in me always saw web apps as this gross
1:49:54Completely agree, you know, we agree
1:49:58No, I this is a I know this is controversial but to me it's it's so obvious
1:50:03Like the problem is people were scared to install applications
1:50:06Because the whole like virus right and it was hard to acquire them like it was the App Store
1:50:12It's the App Store that killed the web as the main thing. Yeah, and
1:50:16because apps are better like there's there's just
1:50:19like
1:50:21Any sort of technical or UI or any sort of way you look at it an app is going to be better
1:50:27No, like but you get updating and yeah, you can't you just cannot under
1:50:34emphasize
1:50:36The fear there and rightly so that most people had Mac or Windows Mac or Windows
1:50:43But especially Windows about installing new software because they eventually would get burned
1:50:48You know that you did, you know, and I know that there's not just need to do it once not a problem with modern windows
1:50:53But for a long time the DL L conflicts
1:50:56Just so many things that you could run into and that you could eventually slow down your computer
1:51:02and there was no way to undo it. You know that uninstall was not uninstalling everything.
1:51:08And that you'd have things running in the background and that the freedom of the App Store,
1:51:14and yes it is limiting, we're now apps there are cool things that an app that can do whatever it
1:51:20wants on your system. You know, you know, great stuff on there's
1:51:25so many, you know, that's why the Mac and iOS deserve to be
1:51:28different, you know, but you can stall over height, we're
1:51:30hijacking this conversation right now, like, right, what's
1:51:33your not allowed to do right that you can install audio
1:51:36hijack, pro or or, or Skype call recorder, and while you're in
1:51:43Yeah, or piezo. And while you're in one app, record the audio
1:51:47stream from another. And you can't do that on iOS, because
1:51:50are all sandbox, but it's that freedom that it helps normal people know, you know, you
1:51:55can install these apps willy-nilly and it will not slow your device down and
1:52:00- You'll get a virus.
1:52:01- Right, and if you decide you don't like the game, just hold your finger down on it
1:52:07and hit the X and it's gone and you know it's really gone. And it doesn't have all this
1:52:11stuff that detritus that it's left behind. And it's the remnants of that fear that fueled
1:52:18this whole unbelievable, still persistent thing
1:52:23that you're not supposed to leave your apps running in iOS
1:52:28and that every half an hour or so
1:52:29you should double click the home button
1:52:31and delete all the apps that are running.
1:52:34- Although given the way that iOS 7 crashes,
1:52:37it might be good advice at this point.
1:52:39But no, no, I completely agree.
1:52:41And I think it's one of the classic mistakes
1:52:44that people make in general is they attribute
1:52:48like success in one area,
1:52:50they don't consider all the things that might have contributed to it.
1:52:53And so they think like, "Oh, web apps were successful because they let you build
1:52:57once, deploy everywhere, easily update."
1:53:00And the people saying this are developers for whom this was a big
1:53:03advantage. It's very great to deploy everywhere, it's great to be
1:53:07able to update easily.
1:53:08But unless you can be empathetic and put yourself in the
1:53:13shoes of some of the end user,
1:53:16only then can you realize that they don't give a shit about that.
1:53:19They give a shit about, you know,
1:53:21not getting a virus about having their data available everywhere.
1:53:25And not, and that sort of thing. And once that's taken care of,
1:53:30that means what's more important.
1:53:33Is it a developer's life being easy or is it having a responsive,
1:53:37enjoyable to use application? And it's the latter,
1:53:41which means they prefer an app.
1:53:42If anything, I think that over the last,
1:53:46is it six years or five years,
1:53:49whatever the app store year is,
1:53:50I guess it was announced six years ago, but it didn't--
1:53:54- 2008.
1:53:54- Yeah, it was announced in 2008,
1:53:56but didn't ship until June.
1:53:58So let's call it six years,
1:54:01but the last five, six years, the mobile app year,
1:54:04I think that it's more native app focused today
1:54:08than it was then.
1:54:10- Agreed, because all the people who were insistent
1:54:14that it would eventually go to mobile web
1:54:15had finally kind of given up the ghost.
1:54:16- Yeah, there were a lot of people who thought,
1:54:19I'm not gonna go in for this
1:54:20'cause it's gonna follow the desktop
1:54:22where it's gonna go to the web.
1:54:23A lot of them have given up.
1:54:25And Facebook, to circle back to the beginning of the show,
1:54:28is a perfect example where I think Zuckerberg
1:54:31had a sort of come to Jesus moment two years ago or so
1:54:36and saw that mobile was not gonna be like the web
1:54:41and that native apps really mattered
1:54:43and that they shifted a lot of their development from like,
1:54:46and they did a great job for HTML5 web views
1:54:52in a native app.
1:54:54They did a great job, but that it wasn't good enough.
1:54:56And that's when they went on this Aqua hiring spree
1:54:59and hired--
1:55:00- And this is what, like, I think Mark Zuckerberg
1:55:03is fantastic.
1:55:06And what makes him a fantastic CEO is he has
1:55:10repeatedly demonstrated the ability to change his
1:55:14mind in the face of evidence.
1:55:16Yes.
1:55:16And like, that sounds so obvious, like what
1:55:21someone should do, but you know, there's the old
1:55:23saying, like, someone's paid to think one thing,
1:55:27or I can't remember exactly what it is, but like,
1:55:28it's very hard in fact to do.
1:55:30And, and he has repeatedly shown that he's willing
1:55:34to give up what seems to be right for him or what he thought previously if new evidence
1:55:42presents itself.
1:55:43And I find that very admirable.
1:55:45Yeah, I totally agree.
1:55:48And I think some of it too is that he has a good gut.
1:55:53And I think, for example, hiring Mike Mattis and the other guys from Push Pop Press a couple
1:56:00years ago and now who work there and they're the guys behind paper.
1:56:04I think it was a gut thing.
1:56:09Another acquirer was the sofa, was big Mac indie, very, very good design quality thing.
1:56:22It wasn't because he wanted those products or wanted new products.
1:56:25It was like, I want talent like this making apps for Facebook.
1:56:29And it's more of a gut thing than I have a specific,
1:56:33rational, here's the thing I want them to build.
1:56:36No, totally.
1:56:37Because the things that make sense
1:56:38are often not rational in the present.
1:56:41Like, if they were rational, then everyone would do them,
1:56:44which makes them less valuable.
1:56:46But I have to say, I loved your discussion of paper.
1:56:49Like, I haven't heard you so excited,
1:56:53just like giddy about a product and just like geeking out over a UI in a long time.
1:57:00That was like – I found that podcast absolutely delightful.
1:57:04Well, thank you.
1:57:06I enjoyed talking – I got to write it.
1:57:07So have you signed up?
1:57:08Have you signed up for Facebook?
1:57:09No.
1:57:10You said you were going to.
1:57:11I know, but I'm scared.
1:57:15Is this the quote you were thinking of Upton Sinclair?
1:57:18Yes.
1:57:19to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
1:57:23Exactly.
1:57:25And that's, I think that often applies to like sort of a rank and file,
1:57:29but I think it's true for leaders as well. You know, and I, you know, let's, you know,
1:57:35Especially for a young CEO, right?
1:57:37Well, let's name the obvious counterexample, Steve Walmer.
1:57:40Right? Like how many times in the, under his CEO ship did he change his mind?
1:57:47I don't know. Maybe not many. Maybe none. I don't know. Not a big change like that.
1:57:55And I get it. Facebook being a young company and him being a young CEO, I think makes it even harder.
1:58:03Right?
1:58:03Yeah. Because people are Wall Street skeptical. Especially because Facebook got off to such a
1:58:10a rough start.
1:58:11You know, like their stock tanked,
1:58:13like they were, there's a ton of criticism.
1:58:15You know, like even more,
1:58:19like the natural human inclination
1:58:21is kind of want to be a people pleaser
1:58:22and like make investors happy
1:58:24and to retain the ability to be flexible
1:58:29and to adjust in the face of reality,
1:58:33I find very, very impressive.
1:58:36- Yeah.
1:58:38Ben Evans had a post this week on some of the advantages that--
1:58:44specifically in the context of mobile,
1:58:46but I think it applies to all apps.
1:58:47I mean, messaging was the context
1:58:49that he was talking about.
1:58:50But what are the advantages to mobile for messaging?
1:58:54I think it applies to all apps.
1:58:55But some of them are it's so much easier to get at photos,
1:59:00because your photo library is right there on the device,
1:59:03and there's an API to get it.
1:59:04Whereas on the desktop, it was always a pain in the ass.
1:59:07people had to, you know, 'cause there was no central location
1:59:09for photos and, you know, especially for the web browser,
1:59:12you'd have to use like a weird upload form
1:59:16and expect the user to click a button
1:59:18and then navigate to the photos in an open dialog box
1:59:23and it's all just IMG_0625.jpg, right?
1:59:29It was, you know, it was a pain,
1:59:31whereas now you go, you know, photo, you know,
1:59:35give this app permission to your photos,
1:59:36Yes. Boom. Here's your photos and you see the thumbnails.
1:59:40Preview. Yeah. And as I pointed out yesterday, the other big
1:59:44thing is not just that it has access to your photo library has
1:59:46access to your camera because the device itself is your
1:59:49camera. It's your main camera. And so if you want to take a new
1:59:53photo, you don't even have the photo yet. You can do it right
1:59:56there in the app. You don't even have to leave the app, the app
1:59:58will let you take the picture right there. That's it desktop
2:00:02has nothing like that. And I don't think the mobile I think
2:00:06unlikely that the mobile web is going to get that.
2:00:12This is something that's really interesting about the Facebook and WhatsApp thing, just
2:00:17to quickly rewind at the beginning of the conversation, is remember a couple years ago
2:00:21how Facebook was all about making everything public and people can follow you and it defaults
2:00:27to the public and there's a lot of outcry about it.
2:00:32They did that, I think, with a PC mindset where if you were going to post on Facebook
2:00:38from a PC, by definition, because it was such a relatively speaking pain in the ass to upload
2:00:45a photo, you were only going to post the best photos.
2:00:48And you were only going to post things that you had thought about before you threw them
2:00:53up there.
2:00:54And so it made sense, if Facebook was thinking about growth, it made sense to move from not
2:01:00just your private network but being more of a almost like taking over the blog
2:01:04space right like people there are people who see Facebook is like their blog
2:01:07right and they that's where they broadcast they broadcast something is
2:01:11actually way more prevalent you might think this is this is this is what I get
2:01:15by looking at my wife's shoulders the way she uses Facebook like she follows a
2:01:18ton of people who she doesn't know but who who use Facebook as a broadcast
2:01:23channel what's interesting now is that actually what that did to the Facebook
2:01:29is it made it a brand that you didn't trust.
2:01:31Like you were never sure if what you did on Facebook
2:01:34was private or not.
2:01:36And that made it impossible for them to break into
2:01:39this messaging space in a meaningful way,
2:01:41because that has to be private.
2:01:43What I'm saying to my wife has to be private.
2:01:45- Yeah, there's a definite trust issue.
2:01:47- Well, exactly.
2:01:48- I think I mentioned this a few weeks ago.
2:01:50I forget who I was talking to, but it might be a repeat,
2:01:53but I think it's worth repeating, is that
2:01:57As we work on sync for Vesper, we thought about how are you going to sign in and the easiest way for like a custom, you know, if it's not going to be iCloud but you don't have to sign in.
2:02:13If it was a custom thing, the easiest thing to do would be to use something like Facebook and Twitter and sign in with Twitter and Facebook.
2:02:20Because then you don't have to create a new account and a new password and remember it.
2:02:25You just say, "Sign in with Facebook," and you go to Facebook and you say, "Authorize
2:02:30this app," and you bounce back to the app and then you're in.
2:02:35But we did, obviously not scientific, but did some casual polling of friends and family.
2:02:42It was almost unanimous that among, especially among non-technical people, they hate that.
2:02:49Facebook because they don't trust it.
2:02:52That simple.
2:02:53That they don't – they almost – they try never to sign into other apps with Facebook
2:02:58because they just assume that if they do, that unwanted stuff is going to get posted
2:03:02to Facebook publicly.
2:03:04And –
2:03:05That's so interesting.
2:03:09You know, and it was a real eye-opener that they don't see it as a convenience to having
2:03:15another site with their email and a password, they see that using your email address is
2:03:23better because they know that they're the only ones who read their email. It was a real
2:03:28eye-opener. They just don't trust it. And not like they don't trust it, they don't use
2:03:32Facebook. They just assume though that Facebook is only safe for stuff that you assume will
2:03:39eventually be made public somehow.
2:03:41- Yeah, and what's interesting,
2:03:44but that was a reasonable thing for Facebook to do
2:03:46in the PC era, because it was such a pain in the ass
2:03:49to upload stuff, right?
2:03:50Like you weren't gonna upload,
2:03:52you had a chance to think before you uploaded stuff, right?
2:03:56But in the mobile area where everything,
2:03:58like this device is always with you all the time,
2:04:01like you're liable to take pictures
2:04:05and post all kinds of stuff.
2:04:06And yeah, so that's why WhatsApp
2:04:10never be branded Facebook. Like the biggest advantage of WhatsApp is it's not called Facebook.
2:04:15Yeah, I totally agree. I think that's very, very, I think it's essential to it. So let's go back.
2:04:21So what are the Microsoft options to get apps or software developed for Windows Phone? So first was
2:04:27to actually get people, developers to really engage and write native apps for Windows Phone.
2:04:33Not going to happen, I don't think. Second would be for web apps to really take off cross-platform
2:04:38And then they could just piggyback on Android and iOS as developers make web apps.
2:04:44I don't think that's going to happen.
2:04:47Which brings us to number three, which you've written about.
2:04:50Charles Arthur had a piece in The Guardian.
2:04:53There was a counterargument in Ars Technica by Peter Bright, which is that-- I'm going
2:05:03to present this as two ways of doing the same thing.
2:05:06Charles Arthur said what Microsoft should do is fork Android, pretty much pull an Amazon
2:05:13and just fork the open source version of Android and do their own Microsoft version of Android
2:05:19and replace all of the stuff that like when you get a Google Play version of Android where
2:05:25it all hooks up to, you know, with default, it goes to Gmail and has Chrome and, you know,
2:05:31Google sign in.
2:05:32replace that all with Microsoft services.
2:05:34And you would get, you know, Bing and Windows Live email
2:05:39and all that stuff.
2:05:42Now, second version of the same argument is that,
2:05:45and there are rumors that Microsoft is actually,
2:05:47the second one seems more likely to me,
2:05:49which is that they should,
2:05:53they can stick with Windows Phone as the OS,
2:05:56but have a runtime layer to run Android apps.
2:06:00To me it's six of one, half a dozen of the other.
2:06:05I think it's a little bit more likely
2:06:07that they would go the latter route
2:06:08because I think they would wanna control,
2:06:11I think they would wanna control the lower levels of the OS.
2:06:14Not that they wouldn't control an open source Android fork,
2:06:17but that they already have it with Windows.
2:06:21They don't need a new kernel.
2:06:22- Right.
2:06:23- It's the apps that matter.
2:06:25What say you?
2:06:29Well, first, just a small point.
2:06:36My main question would be if they did the ladder option running Android apps on Windows
2:06:41with a runtime for those apps, what's the performance going to be like?
2:06:46That would be my main question.
2:06:49Of course it's fine on a Windows 8 device that has an Intel processor, which is massively
2:06:55more powerful than the ARM processors. But on a phone which has that smaller processor,
2:07:07is it going to be performant? That would be my main question.
2:07:09Yeah, you never know. Again, I wish I could quick dial in John Siracusa or someone a little
2:07:17bit more technically in mind. I think because Android apps are fundamentally Java apps,
2:07:24I know that there's the whole lawsuit with Oracle
2:07:27and that they don't really use the official Java trademark
2:07:30runtime.
2:07:30They have the Dalvik version, and there's the second one.
2:07:34They have a new one to replace Dalvik.
2:07:36But because Android itself doesn't run native apps,
2:07:42you're not emulating.
2:07:44All they need is a API compatible runtime.
2:07:47Right, Android is an emulator, basically,
2:07:49for all its purposes.
2:07:50Right.
2:07:51So my understanding, I think with the way Java works,
2:07:56that I think it's certainly technically feasible
2:08:01that they could be performant.
2:08:05- Yeah, okay, so let's assume that it is.
2:08:08That's probably the case
2:08:11that that would probably be preferable for them.
2:08:18I'd imagine controlling the kernel is important to them.
2:08:23So regardless, it would be a significant step.
2:08:27So I think it's fair to lump those two together.
2:08:32Regardless, in either case, it's not a totally free lunch.
2:08:38It's not like they automatically get all the Android apps.
2:08:41Because the Android apps depend on the Google Play Store.
2:08:45And I'm relatively certain that Google is not going to develop a version of the Play
2:08:50Store for Windows.
2:08:51Right.
2:08:52You would still need the developers to actually submit the apps to the Microsoft App Store.
2:08:56Right.
2:08:57And they're going to have to change a few API calls and things like that.
2:09:00I think what Bright oversold in the Ars Technica article in particular is the number of changes
2:09:06that developers would have to make.
2:09:07I think it actually would be relatively trivial from a developer perspective to support the
2:09:15this new runtime if Windows, if Microsoft added it.
2:09:20But the fact is you're going to have to go out and do that, and there is a burden on
2:09:24developers.
2:09:25They have to maintain an additional, like, they're all maintaining an additional version
2:09:29of the app.
2:09:31But that said, if I'm going to developer, and this was my job at Microsoft, I did developer
2:09:36relations, if you're going to developer, it's a whole lot easier to say, "Can you just change
2:09:45these couple of lines in the API and submit it here,
2:09:49and you're going to get upside from sales to new customers,
2:09:54versus can you make a completely new app in a runtime
2:09:59that you're not familiar with.
2:10:01You might have to hire a new person.
2:10:04And oh, by the way, we don't really
2:10:07have any good evidence of people making it big on this platform.
2:10:12It's a herculean effort.
2:10:16And it was something that-- so I worked on Windows 8.
2:10:23The run up to Windows 8, we had a bit of a story,
2:10:25like saying, well, Windows has all this potential,
2:10:28and Windows just sells.
2:10:29There's going to be all these markets.
2:10:31And we got a lot of good wins on board.
2:10:33Once it actually came out, it got a whole lot more difficult.
2:10:37And just the degree of difficulty in talking to a developer,
2:10:42to me makes it a no brainer for sure.
2:10:47- Here's my take, and maybe I'm off base,
2:10:50because, and this is me speaking from somebody
2:10:53who's lifelong persnickety, user interface obsessive.
2:10:58And which is the main reason why I was,
2:11:02I never wavered from using a Mac.
2:11:06even when Apple was in trouble, even when the machines, you know, were compared very poorly,
2:11:12price for performance, without question, right?
2:11:15I was never deluded about that.
2:11:16And even when the OS was really on shaky underpinnings and, you know, you faced things
2:11:24like the whole system locking up when the browser locked up.
2:11:28Because I liked, I couldn't bear the gross interface of Windows, even with Windows 95
2:11:35798 it was just it was just too grossly designed to me. I couldn't take it is that
2:11:40Android apps running on Windows Phone are never going to fit in right there
2:11:46You know it's like running a Windows app on Mac. You know like when you run parallels or something like that sure it works
2:11:51But it's gross right it doesn't fit in it doesn't use the same
2:11:55Sharing you know when you go you know Android has its own way of sharing
2:12:00You know in advance one of the you know nice selling points of Android
2:12:05even versus iOS, is the inter-application sharing.
2:12:09- Right, intense, yeah.
2:12:10- Right, and Windows has its own version of that,
2:12:13but they're different, it's a mismatch.
2:12:15It's gonna look like you're running an Android app
2:12:17on Windows, and I think that's unpalatable.
2:12:20Now, it might be that I'm off base on that
2:12:22because all the people who care about stuff like that
2:12:25are all using iPhones anyway.
2:12:26- Yeah, no, I think there is something to that.
2:12:29Oh, sorry, go ahead.
2:12:30- Well, the end of that point is the one area
2:12:33where that doesn't matter and where this might help is games
2:12:37because games it doesn't matter.
2:12:38Games aren't really apps.
2:12:40They don't use the sharing and the framework
2:12:43and all that stuff, doesn't matter.
2:12:44The games almost always have their own UI
2:12:46for everything anyway.
2:12:47- Yep.
2:12:48- Flappy birds, right?
2:12:49Would have worked perfectly.
2:12:50So that's, it's just a funny little example.
2:12:53It's a stupid little thing.
2:12:54We're all gonna, by next week,
2:12:55we're gonna probably have forgotten about flappy birds,
2:12:57but that flappy birds was an example
2:13:00where Windows Phone missed out on it.
2:13:02- No, it, yeah.
2:13:03That's what kills it is it's stuff exactly like Blackberry Birds
2:13:06where there's this thing out there and everyone hears about it and
2:13:11It's not a Windows Phone or you walk into Cisco or not Cisco Costco and and
2:13:18There's a massive poster on the wall. It says download our app, but it says and there's a icon for iOS
2:13:25There's an icon for Android and there's not for Windows Phone
2:13:28Like it's just this constant kind of reinforcement that there's a lack that is that is
2:13:34that's it's devastating and
2:13:37and the problem is is like
2:13:40the problem the reason I bring up the Costco example is
2:13:43One of the things that that people that's hard to get about marketing in the way that by marketing
2:13:50I mean like advertising about advertising the way it works is
2:13:53They're advertising in a lot of ways is kind of like water running over limestone like it wears it down over like centuries
2:14:00And that's why you have like McDonald's ads all the time. That's why you have the Kleenex coupon in every Sunday paper
2:14:08It's not that they're getting a return on any one ad and that's why it's okay
2:14:14They and that's why Apple runs ads all the time. It's the repetition like repetition matters. Yeah, and the
2:14:22repetition of reminders that Windows Phone
2:14:25isn't a meaningful platform like any one example fine. You can explain it away, but it's the repetition that kills it and
2:14:34And yeah, no, I agree like the the
2:14:38Especially on Windows. I think the difference is magnified because Windows met like the metro environment is so different than
2:14:47Android in particular yeah to its credit as design wise speaking as a designer you know and it's
2:14:53You know largely praised. You know and it is original. It is not a copy of iOS or Android
2:14:59Yeah, it's different, but that means the apps would stick out this I mean I know
2:15:04This is like so leaving that one one concern. I personally have it's not shared widely so
2:15:11Take it for what it's worth
2:15:14Being at Microsoft. I used a Windows Phone regularly. I don't like it
2:15:19I think it reviews very well in day-to-day use
2:15:24I found it limiting and frustrating but I might be an exception there
2:15:28It might be fantastic as everyone has reviewed it and saying it's great
2:15:31Well, that was sort of my I used I used one for like a month and a while ago
2:15:35And that that was sort of my take on it. I didn't love it. I
2:15:38Liked it better than Android though
2:15:42Yeah, I mean what yeah, I mean it it uh
2:15:46They'll have their strengths and weaknesses. Um, I thought it also had it. I thought it also suffered poorly from a
2:15:53Density of information. Yes
2:15:55You know that yeah use these big friendly fonts and big friendly things and and like you said it reviews
2:16:02Well, it looks very friendly
2:16:04But then it ends up that you just see fewer stuff on screen at once and it just goes annoying
2:16:08- Yeah.
2:16:10- The other thing too is I can't stand like soft buttons.
2:16:14- Yeah, I mean.
2:16:15- And especially that goddamn search button in the bottom
2:16:18always triggering Bing.
2:16:20Like every time I opened up any app
2:16:22that had a search function
2:16:23and there was both a soft button for Bing
2:16:26and another button for search within the app,
2:16:29like it just hurt me.
2:16:33- Maybe because I have iOS habits
2:16:37where I'm used to assuming the bottom of the screen is safe.
2:16:41Every time I've tried using, not just for days,
2:16:44but a couple weeks at a time,
2:16:46a non-iOS device with soft buttons.
2:16:49- I trigger it constantly.
2:16:50- Right, by typing.
2:16:51Because when I go to get the space,
2:16:53my thumb, I hit underneath,
2:16:55and then I've hit the home button, or search, or something.
2:16:59You shift, shift, I don't know, whatever's in the bottom.
2:17:01- I have very meaty hands.
2:17:04Like I have these thick, like ugly fingers,
2:17:06and massive palms, which means I just, using the phone,
2:17:11I trigger it all the time.
2:17:12- The second time it happens,
2:17:13it didn't, the first time you think,
2:17:15ooh, what was that, was that me?
2:17:16And the second time,
2:17:17you wanna throw the phone against the wall.
2:17:19- Exactly.
2:17:20Like it's, yeah, it's not just like a little annoyance.
2:17:24It's a, yeah, it's a throw the phone annoyance.
2:17:26- And I don't know, I guess,
2:17:27'cause there's obviously people have phones
2:17:29that they haven't thrown against the wall for a long time.
2:17:32So maybe people get used to it.
2:17:33I never did.
2:17:34I don't like soft buttons.
2:17:35And I thought that was a mistake.
2:17:36I thought that Windows phone copied the wrong thing there.
2:17:40- I agree.
2:17:41- That they should have gone,
2:17:43I also don't like the,
2:17:44I've written too long for this show, can't get into it.
2:17:47I hate the whole back-button metaphor.
2:17:49I think they should have ignored that.
2:17:51- Agreed.
2:17:52And the other thing we go into is like
2:17:54why the home button on iOS will never go away.
2:17:57And anyone who says that they should get rid of it,
2:17:59like doesn't grok iOS.
2:18:02- Yeah, I agree.
2:18:05It's a safety risk.
2:18:06- Exactly.
2:18:07Like you can, it's always there.
2:18:10- Right.
2:18:11To me, it's the Einstein quote,
2:18:13"Everything should be as simple as possible,
2:18:14"but not more so."
2:18:15Or paraphrase or whatever.
2:18:19But to me, it's a quote, it's genius
2:18:21because it doesn't quite have a logical meaning.
2:18:24But to me, what it means is,
2:18:25don't take simplicity too far.
2:18:29- Yeah.
2:18:30- I think we talked about it
2:18:31when we were talking about the paper app,
2:18:33that you can make an app
2:18:34that literally has no buttons, you know,
2:18:36like the Clear app, the Clear To Do app.
2:18:39But then it just feels almost like a gimmick to me.
2:18:43It's like, whereas paper has almost no buttons,
2:18:46but then when you wanna like post something,
2:18:48there's a button there that just says post,
2:18:50and it's a button, and it's exactly what you want.
2:18:52They didn't take it too far.
2:18:53So you could say, man, wouldn't it be great
2:18:55to have a phone with no buttons?
2:18:57Man, that would be amazing.
2:18:58There's the ultra minimal,
2:19:00and that you can imagine some kind of way
2:19:02that you could make a version of iOS
2:19:04that didn't have a home button.
2:19:05And then you'd have this ultra minimal no button.
2:19:09And you know what?
2:19:10That's too few buttons
2:19:11because people love that one button.
2:19:14- No, you know, yeah, gestures,
2:19:17I think gestures are only workable
2:19:20as a secondary interaction.
2:19:22- Yeah, it's for--
2:19:23- They're like keyboard shortcuts.
2:19:24- They're all for power users.
2:19:25- Exactly. - Every one of them.
2:19:26Everything other than single tap
2:19:29and one finger drag up and down
2:19:32is a power user feature.
2:19:34- And this is the thing with Windows 8,
2:19:35beyond the whole gluing two interfaces
2:19:40that were totally different together,
2:19:42it was so gesture dependent.
2:19:45It was like delivering an interface
2:19:50where the only way around was,
2:19:51it was almost like returning to the terminal.
2:19:54The only way around was using the keyboard.
2:19:56Like you have to have the thing you can see
2:20:00and can point or tap, tap or touch.
2:20:03- Yeah, one thing that they never lost with iOS,
2:20:05even with the redesign in iOS 7,
2:20:07is that you never need to do anything
2:20:10with more than one finger,
2:20:12and you never need to do anything with more than one tap.
2:20:15You can double tap like to zoom in a webpage,
2:20:17but if you don't know that, you'll be fine,
2:20:19'cause you can pinch.
2:20:20Pinching does take two fingers, but it's natural, right?
2:20:23- Yeah, it makes sense.
2:20:25You can figure it out with something you can do.
2:20:26- You can figure it out.
2:20:27And everything else is a thing you can see on the screen and tap.
2:20:33And so there's stuff like Notification Center
2:20:36that you have to use an edge gesture from the side to get,
2:20:40and the new control center from the bottom.
2:20:43But that's just shortcuts.
2:20:45And I swear, I know there's so many people out there
2:20:47who are going to say, that's not for power users.
2:20:49And I'm telling you, at some level, it is.
2:20:51Because what a lot of people can still do is tap the Home button,
2:20:55go to settings, go to--
2:20:57- Yep, exactly.
2:20:58There's another way to do it.
2:20:59It might be slower, but--
2:21:00- An explicit way.
2:21:02- Yep.
2:21:03This is why, by the way, I think Safari
2:21:04is the worst of the new apps.
2:21:06Because it's, I am definitely a power user,
2:21:12and I still get confused about how to bring up
2:21:15the address bar and the command bar.
2:21:17It's not obvious, and it's not clear how to do it.
2:21:22And it's not as terrible as it could be,
2:21:24because if you've touched on the,
2:21:26if you muck around, it will come up.
2:21:29But that's the weakness in it,
2:21:31is that there's not an explicit path
2:21:34that's always available to the user.
2:21:36- Are you okay with it on the iPad, though?
2:21:39'Cause it's a lot more explicit there.
2:21:41- No, exactly.
2:21:42And I was fine with it on iOS 6, too.
2:21:43I think--
2:21:45- They took it too far to minimize the Chrome.
2:21:48- Exactly, exactly.
2:21:49- Well, and the big one to me that still gets me,
2:21:53and I've been using iOS 7 full time since sometime in July,
2:21:58still gets me is iCloud tabs,
2:22:01because on the Mac there's a cloud button
2:22:05that brings down your list of open tabs and other devices,
2:22:08and on the iPad there's a cloud button
2:22:10that brings down the list of your tabs on other devices.
2:22:12But on the iPhone you have to hit the plus button
2:22:15to make a new window,
2:22:16and then scroll down underneath all your windows,
2:22:18and then just magically they're hovering over
2:22:21you're fogged over desktop or wallpaper
2:22:25is the list of open tabs.
2:22:27- Well, I mean, open tabs on other devices
2:22:29are kind of a power user feature anyways.
2:22:32- Yeah, but it's such a mismatch though
2:22:35to the way you get it from the other two devices
2:22:37where there's a cloud button that brings up the list.
2:22:40Whereas they're just there floating underneath your tabs
2:22:42and still--
2:22:43- I'm happy to agree with you that Safari on the iPhone
2:22:46is, could be a lot better.
2:22:48- Well, I still like it.
2:22:51I still think it's pretty good.
2:22:53I don't know, maybe I do question whether they've,
2:22:57and I like the new tab interface a lot.
2:22:59I love it actually.
2:23:00- Yeah, to be fair, I switched to Safari.
2:23:02- I question the Chrome hiding.
2:23:04- Yeah, no, I switched to Safari on,
2:23:09so I use Chrome on Mac, on the Mac,
2:23:13but I do use Safari on iOS devices.
2:23:15One, it's stupidly faster.
2:23:18But two, I don't find the Chrome interface.
2:23:23If you want a confusing interface,
2:23:27there's a whole 'nother one right there.
2:23:29So it's a mess in general.
2:23:32- All right.
2:23:32All right, let's wrap it up.
2:23:35So what do you think about the Android,
2:23:37Windows Phone running Android apps?
2:23:39I think it would help with games.
2:23:41I definitely think it would help with games.
2:23:43But then what's the point?
2:23:47I don't know that this solves any problem for them.
2:23:49- No, I completely agree.
2:23:50The problem is that Microsoft's not gonna make money
2:23:53on licensing the OS.
2:23:54- Right.
2:23:55- That's just never gonna happen.
2:23:56- Right, you just wrote,
2:23:57I'm 99% sure it was you who just wrote that,
2:24:00look, the whole, go to the bottom line.
2:24:02The bottom line, the whole reason they made Windows Phone
2:24:04in the first place, or call it Windows Mobile or whatever,
2:24:06is on the assumption that they could license it to OEMs
2:24:08for 10 bucks a pop.
2:24:10- Right.
2:24:11- That's the whole reason it exists,
2:24:12is we'll make an OS, phones will run it,
2:24:15we'll license it for 10 bucks a pop,
2:24:17and there'll be a billion of them
2:24:19and then we'll have $10 billion.
2:24:20And guess what?
2:24:21Android took all the air out of that
2:24:23where like the licensing value of an OS is like $2.
2:24:26- Yeah, no, exactly.
2:24:29I mean, it's whatever the patent fees they pay to Microsoft.
2:24:33- Right, and you're competing against,
2:24:35and the other thing too is, and it's a big difference,
2:24:40and I think it was a blind spot to Microsoft,
2:24:43is that in the real low-end markets,
2:24:45You know all throughout Asia China for example
2:24:49Where they use the the open source version of Android where they don't pay any licensing fees to Google
2:24:55They don't even pay the 75 cent, you know device activation or inspection fee
2:25:00They don't pay any patent royalties to Microsoft because they're in countries that have different IP protection levels
2:25:05They're not paying anything to anybody. Yeah, and so it's zero and in the PC era
2:25:12it didn't fly like that. What the people who wanted a zero license fee did for their PCs was pirate a version of Windows.
2:25:23And Microsoft got some value out of that. Because it was, you know, they were either paying for Windows or they were pirating Windows, but it was Windows everywhere.
2:25:31And that's not going to happen.
2:25:34No, exactly the Android of the PC area arrow was pirated windows, right?
2:25:39Like which is like yeah, maybe we're not actually making money. It's a nice. It's a nice problem to have though
2:25:45Exactly. It really you know, it's it
2:25:49It's a funny argument to make but it Microsoft was far better served from that because it helped make it helped
2:25:55It just at least helped build the windows
2:25:57How do you pronounce the word ecosystem hegemony? Yeah
2:26:02- Hegemony? - Hegemony?
2:26:04- Hegemony? - Whatever.
2:26:05- I actually, I have no idea.
2:26:06- It's a wonderful word, but I don't know how to pronounce it.
2:26:09- Well, we're problematic together at a podcast.
2:26:11We know way too many words.
2:26:12- Right.
2:26:13- Their meaning and not their pronunciation.
2:26:15- It goes right back to the beginning.
2:26:16You can send me the phonetic spelling of it.
2:26:21(laughing)
2:26:23- I didn't teach any Chinese kids hegemony.
2:26:27- Hegemony, no, I just looked it up.
2:26:29It's a soft G, like GIF.
2:26:32- GIF is GIF.
2:26:35I was always right on that.
2:26:37- No, it's GIF.
2:26:38- So here's the thing with Microsoft.
2:26:40I think big picture,
2:26:42if you back out and say, "What's the point?"
2:26:48There is nothing to be gained from Windows Phone.
2:26:51The purchase of Nokia was throwing good money after bad.
2:26:55There's no money you made.
2:26:57The only way you make money by selling a device
2:27:00is if you're highly differentiated like iPhones are.
2:27:04If you're not, it's a commodity device.
2:27:06You're gonna, it's a race to the bottom,
2:27:08and you don't wanna be in that business.
2:27:10Microsoft knows that very, very well.
2:27:12Like, they've forgotten what they know
2:27:15in the, like, assumption they have to be an OS company.
2:27:18- Right.
2:27:19- Like, they need to be a services company.
2:27:21They need to be Apple's absolute best friend.
2:27:25like get Bing on iOS in exchange for Office,
2:27:30get Azure services built into Xcode.
2:27:34This is the sort of stuff they need to be thinking about.
2:27:37Google will never let them in.
2:27:40So yes, it makes sense to do something on the low end
2:27:43to compete with that, but at the end of the day,
2:27:46what's the point?
2:27:48And the problem is the BlackBerry problem,
2:27:51is going from where I'm at now
2:27:55to where I need to be in three to four years,
2:27:57there's this valley where I'm not making any money
2:28:00or I'm losing money.
2:28:01And it's really hard to cross that valley.
2:28:04And the problem is the longer you wait,
2:28:06because it's hard to cross,
2:28:08the more your kind of inherent advantage on the other side
2:28:11start to dissipate.
2:28:13And the problem for Microsoft
2:28:15and the big danger they face right now
2:28:17is the longer they wait to kind of capitalize
2:28:21on what they have, whether that be Office,
2:28:23whether that be Bing, whether that be the maps
2:28:27that they have, the longer they wait,
2:28:29the more those become commoditized as well.
2:28:33And when they finally go across that valley,
2:28:36they find that the pot of gold that might have been there,
2:28:39it has dissipated.
2:28:41And it's really getting to crunch time for them.
2:28:45And what makes it so hard is they make so much money still,
2:28:51especially in the enterprise,
2:28:52that there's not that life-threatening,
2:28:55we're gonna go out of business
2:28:57if we don't make a change that Apple faced in the '90s.
2:29:00They don't have that yet.
2:29:02- I think the best way they can manage it
2:29:05is to view, just separate legacy and future,
2:29:09and just run the PC business separately,
2:29:14and just not run it into the ground,
2:29:17but run it into the sunset.
2:29:19and focus, refocus Windows, and I think they're doing this
2:29:23with what everything I've heard about Windows 8.1,
2:29:26at least in some small degree,
2:29:28that they're shifting it back away from the changes
2:29:30and back towards let's make the traditional
2:29:33Windows user happy.
2:29:34And let's just concentrate on making Windows happy
2:29:38for the people who wanna use a PC with a keyboard
2:29:41and a mouse, and focus separate efforts on everything new.
2:29:49- Yep, no, I agree, that's exactly right.
2:29:52But the thing is, I think they need to give up
2:29:53on the OS Dream, and they need to figure out
2:29:56how can we pass the money. - Well, on everything
2:29:58other than PCs. - Exactly, no, exactly.
2:30:00- But they have to accept the fact that the PC
2:30:02is now effectively already a minority of computing devices.
2:30:07- Yep. - And that it's only
2:30:09gonna shrink. - Yep.
2:30:11- And that there's money to be made there
2:30:13for years and years to come.
2:30:14- But there's no growth. - Right, but there's no growth.
2:30:18Exactly. Ben Thompson. People can read your website at Stratechary.com.
2:30:26Yes. Stratechary.com.
2:30:30Or they could just Google Ben Thompson.
2:30:32Yes, it is the first result.
2:30:34With a P.
2:30:35Yes, with a P. So people were irritated that the title of my site was Stratechary by Ben Thompson.
2:30:42in, you know, like if you look at the top of the browser bar.
2:30:47But Ben Thompson is way too common of a name. Like I had to play every trick in the
2:30:51book.
2:30:52That's pretty good.
2:30:54And they could also find you on Twitter at
2:30:58MonkBent, M-O-N-K B-E-N-T, good Twitter feed.
2:31:03And last but not least, your new
2:31:06podcast.
2:31:08Yes, the site is actually up there. It's
2:31:12pretty brutal website. I have one post, I have one podcast posted so we can get into iTunes,
2:31:17but exponents.fm, exponents.fm. There you go. Thanks. Great show. Cool.
2:31:25[ Silence ]