ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Pretend like I'm holding a hundred dollar bill

00:00:02 ◼   ► I'm out. You're out of what you're out of hundred bucks. Yeah, I got the stupid ultra

00:00:09 ◼   ► Why what brought you over the line is that everyone else has one and you don't what happened was

00:00:17 ◼   ► Yeah, it did happen to you Marco. Did it just happen to you?

00:00:21 ◼   ► So I was running some errands and then you found yourself in an Apple store somehow you have no idea how I literally

00:00:29 ◼   ► had to kill time and I was in a mall.

00:00:32 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

00:00:33 ◼   ► - I was getting the, a tow, what, is it the hook?

00:00:38 ◼   ► What's the square hole that you can put stuff into

00:00:41 ◼   ► on the back of a car?

00:00:42 ◼   ► Like, is it the tow hook?

00:00:44 ◼   ► It's not a hook, what is that thing called?

00:00:47 ◼   ► - The hitch, isn't it?

00:00:48 ◼   ► - No, the hitch is the ball thing

00:00:49 ◼   ► that you put into the square hole.

00:00:51 ◼   ► What's the square hole called?

00:00:52 ◼   ► - I should know this.

00:00:53 ◼   ► I understand the question you're asking

00:00:54 ◼   ► and I don't know the answer.

00:00:56 ◼   ► - Anyway, I was getting a square hole installed on my car

00:00:59 ◼   ► and it took a few hours and so I had to--

00:01:00 ◼   ► - Wait, why were you doing that?

00:01:01 ◼   ► What are you putting into that square hole?

00:01:04 ◼   ► - A shackle thing so I can pull or be pulled

00:01:07 ◼   ► if I get stuck.

00:01:08 ◼   ► - You are so worried about this,

00:01:10 ◼   ► this is huge Casey energy,

00:01:11 ◼   ► you are so worried about this thing

00:01:13 ◼   ► that you've spent inordinate amounts of money

00:01:16 ◼   ► to prevent from ever happening

00:01:17 ◼   ► and now you're spending more money.

00:01:19 ◼   ► - No, actually I negotiated this part of the deal

00:01:21 ◼   ► when I bought it, anyway.

00:01:22 ◼   ► - One of these really far down the beach

00:01:24 ◼   ► and he needs a watch that can survive the rugged conditions

00:01:28 ◼   ► two and a half miles from home.

00:01:30 ◼   ► - So what happened was,

00:01:31 ◼   ► while they were installing the hole in my car,

00:01:33 ◼   ► I had like a few hours to kill in the area.

00:01:35 ◼   ► They gave me a loaner of some much worse small thing.

00:01:38 ◼   ► I went to the mall 'cause I had a couple errands to run,

00:01:41 ◼   ► and I went to the Apple store,

00:01:43 ◼   ► and it was the first time I had seen the Ultra in person.

00:01:46 ◼   ► Now, I did not think, "Oh my God, I have to have that."

00:01:51 ◼   ► I also did not think, "Oh my God, that looks awesome."

00:01:54 ◼   ► Then when I tried it on,

00:01:56 ◼   ► I absolutely did not think, "Oh, this fits me great."

00:01:59 ◼   ► Because none of those things are actually true,

00:02:02 ◼   ► in my opinion.

00:02:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, just to very briefly interject,

00:02:04 ◼   ► I was in an Apple store doing one of the returns

00:02:06 ◼   ► we spoke about a few weeks ago,

00:02:07 ◼   ► and I put an Ultra on my wrist for literally 10 seconds,

00:02:11 ◼   ► and I immediately looked down,

00:02:13 ◼   ► maybe I had to tell the story, I don't know if I did,

00:02:14 ◼   ► but I immediately looked down and thought,

00:02:15 ◼   ► "Ooh, that's way too big."

00:02:16 ◼   ► Now, Erin was standing next to me at this point,

00:02:18 ◼   ► she was like, "Eh, I think you could pull it off

00:02:19 ◼   ► "if you wanted," and this is the conversation

00:02:21 ◼   ► that I think you would have had a few weeks before that,

00:02:23 ◼   ► in saying if you believe it's not too big, it's fine,

00:02:27 ◼   ► but, you know, because everyone else will think

00:02:28 ◼   ► it's fine regardless, but I looked down and I was like,

00:02:30 ◼   ► nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, not for me.

00:02:33 ◼   ► So I totally hear you, and you and I are both

00:02:35 ◼   ► on the teeny tiny wrist committee, right?

00:02:37 ◼   ► 'Cause you also have the smaller of the Apple Watch sizes.

00:02:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I wear the 40 or 41,

00:02:41 ◼   ► and I'm very happy with it. - Right, same, okay.

00:02:44 ◼   ► - Like before the Series 4 redesign,

00:02:46 ◼   ► I wore the bigger one, the 42, and it was fine,

00:02:48 ◼   ► but I'm a little happier with the 40 and 41.

00:02:52 ◼   ► Anyway, oh, and by the way, from real-time follow-up,

00:02:53 ◼   ► everybody in the chat is pointing out

00:02:55 ◼   ► that apparently the square hole

00:02:56 ◼   ► that you put in the back of a car to tow things

00:02:58 ◼   ► is called the receiver or the tow receiver

00:03:01 ◼   ► or the hitch receiver.

00:03:03 ◼   ► - I'll give myself partial credit on that.

00:03:05 ◼   ► - Which makes sense, receiver makes sense,

00:03:06 ◼   ► 'cause it's a hole, so it receives

00:03:07 ◼   ► whatever square object you're inserting into there.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Anyway, so I'm at the Apple Store,

00:03:12 ◼   ► and I try this thing on just out of curiosity's sake,

00:03:15 ◼   ► and it is massive, and I don't really think it,

00:03:18 ◼   ► you know, the look didn't do anything for me,

00:03:20 ◼   ► and it definitely didn't fit me.

00:03:22 ◼   ► However, I started using it.

00:03:26 ◼   ► And of course, I'm instantly pushing the action button

00:03:28 ◼   ► alongside the crown every single time I push it

00:03:30 ◼   ► because it's very difficult not to push those

00:03:32 ◼   ► at the same time when you're first getting used to this thing

00:03:35 ◼   ► but what I noticed instantly was everything looks

00:03:40 ◼   ► and feels extremely different compared

00:03:42 ◼   ► to other Apple Watches because of a number of factors,

00:03:45 ◼   ► mainly that the screen is so large,

00:03:48 ◼   ► secondarily because the screen is totally flat

00:03:50 ◼   ► and doesn't have the little curved edges.

00:03:52 ◼   ► And then tertiary that there's just the extra button

00:03:57 ◼   ► and a little bit different ergonomics and everything.

00:03:59 ◼   ► And so it's such a size difference that it's not quite,

00:04:04 ◼   ► it isn't as severe as going from the iPhone to the iPad,

00:04:08 ◼   ► but it's that kind of change where it's a bigger enough size

00:04:13 ◼   ► that you have to kind of rethink how you lay things out,

00:04:19 ◼   ► how you use the space, how big things should be,

00:04:22 ◼   ► where things should be on the device.

00:04:24 ◼   ► Just poking around the OS and the setting screens,

00:04:26 ◼   ► I realized, oh, I have to have one of these

00:04:31 ◼   ► for my app design.

00:04:32 ◼   ► - Oh, sure you do.

00:04:33 ◼   ► - Because, and it didn't help that like the day before,

00:04:37 ◼   ► I had seen a screenshot of Overcast running on it,

00:04:39 ◼   ► and I had seen it in the simulator,

00:04:40 ◼   ► and it was, you know, it looked weird, but it was fine,

00:04:42 ◼   ► but I saw the screenshot of somebody actually doing it

00:04:44 ◼   ► in use, and I'm like, oh, that looks bad.

00:04:46 ◼   ► Like, I can't just leave the layout the way it is.

00:04:50 ◼   ► I have to actually customize it for the bigger screen

00:04:52 ◼   ► because it just looks stupid.

00:04:53 ◼   ► - If only there was a simulator you could use

00:04:56 ◼   ► to do this sort of work.

00:04:57 ◼   ► - Yes, but when you're doing design work on the Apple Watch,

00:05:01 ◼   ► I know from previous experience,

00:05:02 ◼   ► like I'll be coding up something,

00:05:04 ◼   ► I'll do it in the simulator first,

00:05:05 ◼   ► and then I'll run it on a device,

00:05:06 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, that's not how I thought it would be.

00:05:09 ◼   ► And you always have to do, so anyway,

00:05:12 ◼   ► it is so, the screen is just so different.

00:05:14 ◼   ► It's such a different size.

00:05:15 ◼   ► It is not just the same thing, but a little bit bigger.

00:05:18 ◼   ► Like it's radically different.

00:05:20 ◼   ► And I knew, first of all, I knew from poking around the OS,

00:05:23 ◼   ► Apple has a lot more work to do to make the OS work

00:05:27 ◼   ► and feel right on this device.

00:05:29 ◼   ► And the watch face situation is dire,

00:05:32 ◼   ► I would say, on this device.

00:05:34 ◼   ► I'm not a huge fan of the general watch face situation

00:05:36 ◼   ► on the Apple Watch as a whole,

00:05:38 ◼   ► but on the Ultra in particular, it's dire.

00:05:41 ◼   ► It's bad.

00:05:42 ◼   ► But all this is to say, I knew instantly

00:05:45 ◼   ► as soon as I handled it, oh, I have to do

00:05:48 ◼   ► real design work on this thing.

00:05:50 ◼   ► And so I ordered one that day.

00:05:52 ◼   ► - Of course you did.

00:05:53 ◼   ► This surprises nobody, and as much as I'm giving you

00:05:56 ◼   ► a hard time, like I do understand what you're saying,

00:05:58 ◼   ► and yes, it is unquestionably, again,

00:06:00 ◼   ► as much as I'm pulling your leg,

00:06:01 ◼   ► it's much better to have a physical device

00:06:03 ◼   ► to do this sort of work on.

00:06:04 ◼   ► But yeah, this is not surprising.

00:06:06 ◼   ► And I'm sorry, I guess, or congrats,

00:06:10 ◼   ► I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to say in this context.

00:06:12 ◼   ► What are you gonna do with it?

00:06:13 ◼   ► Besides it being a dev thing,

00:06:15 ◼   ► do you think you're gonna end up wearing it at all?

00:06:17 ◼   ► You think someone else in your house is gonna wear it?

00:06:20 ◼   ► Is it gonna be a very small iPad mini for Atom?

00:06:23 ◼   ► - I don't think we have much use for it in the house.

00:06:26 ◼   ► All three of us wear the 41 size,

00:06:29 ◼   ► so I don't think we have a ton of use for it

00:06:32 ◼   ► within the house, but I'm going to wear it for a few days

00:06:35 ◼   ► while I figure out the app design,

00:06:37 ◼   ► because I have to be familiar with the size

00:06:41 ◼   ► to know what feels right.

00:06:43 ◼   ► But I don't like the way this looks on me.

00:06:46 ◼   ► It is also long sleeve season starting up now.

00:06:50 ◼   ► And my sleeve situation is such that they exist

00:06:55 ◼   ► and therefore this is not good.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Because as soon as you try to tuck this under a sleeve,

00:07:00 ◼   ► when you have a watch under a sleeve, it's always awkward,

00:07:03 ◼   ► especially when you have those like the ribbed sleeves

00:07:04 ◼   ► on the bottom of sweatshirts and stuff.

00:07:06 ◼   ► You never want a big watch in that situation.

00:07:08 ◼   ► It's awkward.

00:07:09 ◼   ► And this just makes everything like a thousand times worse.

00:07:13 ◼   ► - Maybe your Tesla could wear it.

00:07:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, there you go.

00:07:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:07:16 ◼   ► - The defender's already got a watch,

00:07:17 ◼   ► your Tesla's jealous, you know.

00:07:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:07:19 ◼   ► - It's high tech.

00:07:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, so even though I said

00:07:21 ◼   ► I wasn't buying a watch this fall,

00:07:23 ◼   ► I bought a G-Shock, this ridiculous thing,

00:07:27 ◼   ► and a refurbished Series 6 for Adam.

00:07:29 ◼   ► So here we are.

00:07:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, your Prince of Tides G-Shock.

00:07:33 ◼   ► Still didn't get that reference.

00:07:34 ◼   ► - No, still didn't.

00:07:36 ◼   ► It is awesome though.

00:07:37 ◼   ► Like I've been doing a lot of sand driving.

00:07:38 ◼   ► I love that G-Shock, it's fantastic for that purpose.

00:07:41 ◼   ► I tried wearing it and it looks ridiculous,

00:07:43 ◼   ► but I'm extremely happy with the actual functionality

00:07:46 ◼   ► of why I bought it to be this thing in the car.

00:07:48 ◼   ► It's awesome.

00:07:50 ◼   ► - So as much as I'm, again, pulling your leg

00:07:52 ◼   ► and giving you a hard time,

00:07:54 ◼   ► have you found that the truck is sufficient

00:07:57 ◼   ► for sand driving?

00:07:58 ◼   ► Is this hitch because you're genuinely worried

00:08:00 ◼   ► that you're going to get stuck,

00:08:01 ◼   ► or maybe that you expect to get stuck,

00:08:03 ◼   ► or is it just like you're trying to do everything

00:08:05 ◼   ► in your power to make sure this is never going

00:08:07 ◼   ► to be a problem ever, ever, ever, ever.

00:08:09 ◼   ► - Mostly the latter because I am not good

00:08:12 ◼   ► at asking for help.

00:08:13 ◼   ► And the idea that-- - Yes, I can confirm.

00:08:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the idea that I would be one of the newbies

00:08:20 ◼   ► who just got a permit and get stuck

00:08:23 ◼   ► and I have to call somebody for help,

00:08:25 ◼   ► I know many people who would come help me.

00:08:27 ◼   ► I'd be mortified though.

00:08:28 ◼   ► I want to avoid that, especially because if those people

00:08:32 ◼   ► were not able to come out at that moment or help me,

00:08:35 ◼   ► then what you're supposed to do is call 911

00:08:39 ◼   ► and explain to the Suffolk County Police where you are

00:08:41 ◼   ► and the situation you're in

00:08:43 ◼   ► and they arrange for a $700 tow truck.

00:08:46 ◼   ► I really don't wanna do that for multiple reasons.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Like that just sounds awful to me.

00:08:51 ◼   ► So it's mainly because I have been told

00:08:54 ◼   ► by everybody out here, everyone gets stuck sometimes.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Like every single person who's driven out here for years,

00:09:01 ◼   ► they all say that, everyone gets stuck sometimes.

00:09:04 ◼   ► And so not only do I kinda wanna try to prove them wrong,

00:09:06 ◼   ► like, hmm, maybe I won't get stuck, let's see.

00:09:09 ◼   ► You know?

00:09:10 ◼   ► But also, I want to be able to help other people

00:09:12 ◼   ► if I pass somebody who is stuck.

00:09:14 ◼   ► But ultimately, I have found, I think,

00:09:18 ◼   ► since I have gone through the trouble

00:09:19 ◼   ► of installing a tow hole in my car

00:09:21 ◼   ► and have all these recovery boards,

00:09:23 ◼   ► that's probably going to mean,

00:09:24 ◼   ► kinda like when I bought a new snow blower

00:09:26 ◼   ► and then it didn't snow for two years,

00:09:27 ◼   ► it's probably gonna mean I'm never gonna use this stuff.

00:09:29 ◼   ► And that'd be fine with me.

00:09:30 ◼   ► I would gladly have made that trade-off

00:09:33 ◼   ► to have not ever getting stuck.

00:09:37 ◼   ► But I also think that, hmm, how do I put this?

00:09:40 ◼   ► Some people are, they get bad information.

00:09:44 ◼   ► And Long Islanders are really good at it.

00:09:47 ◼   ► And so, the tips I have heard for driving on the sand here

00:09:52 ◼   ► oftentimes are very different from the tips that I hear

00:09:58 ◼   ► from the community of Australian sand driving off-roaders.

00:10:03 ◼   ► And they seem to know what they're doing a lot.

00:10:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would trust the Aussies.

00:10:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, it seems like driving on sand

00:10:10 ◼   ► is a big thing down there.

00:10:12 ◼   ► - But their sand is upside down, it's totally different.

00:10:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, it swirls the opposite direction.

00:10:16 ◼   ► But anyway, it seems like the advice that they all give

00:10:23 ◼   ► basically comes down to what you need really

00:10:26 ◼   ► is ground clearance and low tire pressure.

00:10:29 ◼   ► That's the secret to everything, according to them.

00:10:31 ◼   ► So I lower my tires down to like 20, 22 PSI

00:10:35 ◼   ► for most driving around here,

00:10:37 ◼   ► and I know I could go lower if I really had to,

00:10:38 ◼   ► if I got stuck, and it's been great.

00:10:42 ◼   ► No one else here lowers their tires that reliably

00:10:45 ◼   ► or that far.

00:10:46 ◼   ► Everyone's like driving around on 30 PSI,

00:10:48 ◼   ► like yeah, it's low.

00:10:49 ◼   ► No, it's off-road and that really is not very low

00:10:53 ◼   ► from what I understand.

00:10:54 ◼   ► Even 20 is not that low for off-roading,

00:10:57 ◼   ► from what I understand.

00:10:57 ◼   ► But anyway, I think just having low tires,

00:11:01 ◼   ► plus good ground clearance,

00:11:02 ◼   ► plus a pretty seemingly great all-wheel drive system

00:11:06 ◼   ► on the Defender, it's been amazing.

00:11:09 ◼   ► Like, I'm able to hop in and out of the deep tracks,

00:11:11 ◼   ► no problem, like it's been glorious.

00:11:15 ◼   ► It's so easy.

00:11:16 ◼   ► The chances of me actually ever getting stuck,

00:11:20 ◼   ► I think might be lower than average.

00:11:22 ◼   ► Simply because not only do I have a decent vehicle,

00:11:24 ◼   ► for it, but I think more because I'm actually

00:11:26 ◼   ► bringing my tire pressure down,

00:11:27 ◼   ► and no one else seems to do that.

00:11:29 ◼   ► They also tell me things here like,

00:11:30 ◼   ► oh yeah, to get out just accelerates.

00:11:32 ◼   ► That's oftentimes the opposite of what you want to be doing.

00:11:36 ◼   ► So yeah, there's been a lot of information passed to me,

00:11:40 ◼   ► and some of it's been very good, but far from all of it.

00:11:45 ◼   ► - If you ever do get stuck, just to remind you,

00:11:46 ◼   ► you are obligated to take pictures and video of it,

00:11:50 ◼   ► because that's gonna be awesome.

00:11:51 ◼   ► Oh, you have plenty of time waiting around

00:11:53 ◼   ► for someone to come and save you anyway.

00:11:55 ◼   ► So you should just go around the car with the phone

00:11:57 ◼   ► and show the situation that we need to see it.

00:12:00 ◼   ► It needs to be documented.

00:12:01 ◼   ► - Honestly, to build on this,

00:12:03 ◼   ► I don't know that I've ever FaceTimed with John or Marco,

00:12:07 ◼   ► but I can tell you right now,

00:12:08 ◼   ► if you don't get a three-way FaceTime going on this

00:12:11 ◼   ► at this moment, I will never speak to you again.

00:12:13 ◼   ► I will quit the show and you're all fired.

00:12:17 ◼   ► We must have this happen.

00:12:18 ◼   ► And listeners, I'm sorry,

00:12:19 ◼   ► this is a perk of being on the show.

00:12:21 ◼   ► You may never get to see this,

00:12:22 ◼   ► But I want to see it, I want to be there virtually

00:12:26 ◼   ► and watch this as it happens.

00:12:27 ◼   ► But it probably won't, which is too bad.

00:12:29 ◼   ► I mean, which is excellent.

00:12:30 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:12:33 ◼   ► None of us are particularly active on Reddit,

00:12:34 ◼   ► but there is an ATP subreddit,

00:12:36 ◼   ► which I don't even remember what it's called anymore.

00:12:37 ◼   ► I should have thought this through

00:12:38 ◼   ► before it went in my mouth. - Wait, there is?

00:12:39 ◼   ► - Yes, I didn't create it, but I forget what it is, actually.

00:12:42 ◼   ► - I don't know if I've ever been there.

00:12:44 ◼   ► - I cruise it, like I'm subscribed,

00:12:47 ◼   ► I'm such a noob Redditor.

00:12:49 ◼   ► But anyways, there is an ATP Reddit that I look at.

00:12:52 ◼   ► Is it ATP FM, I think?

00:12:55 ◼   ► I think that's it, ATP FM.

00:12:56 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that's right.

00:12:57 ◼   ► Well anyways, somebody set up a robot to post

00:13:02 ◼   ► when shows go up.

00:13:04 ◼   ► I had nothing to do with any of this,

00:13:05 ◼   ► but I'll occasionally look at it.

00:13:07 ◼   ► This is not an officially sanctioned thing.

00:13:09 ◼   ► It's just occasionally I'll take a look.

00:13:11 ◼   ► Well anyways, somebody commented on Reddit

00:13:13 ◼   ► after the last episode, this is Yalom on Reddit,

00:13:15 ◼   ► who said, this is with regard, I'm sorry,

00:13:17 ◼   ► to AI images and AI image creation and stuff like that,

00:13:22 ◼   ► and whether or not that's like stealing

00:13:24 ◼   ► and whether that's art or not, et cetera, et cetera.

00:13:26 ◼   ► So Yalom writes, "I'm surprised I made it

00:13:28 ◼   ► "through the whole AI image generation segment

00:13:30 ◼   ► "without mentioning the last time

00:13:31 ◼   ► "technology completely bulldozed the art world.

00:13:34 ◼   ► "The bread and butter of the industry

00:13:35 ◼   ► "used to be portraiture,

00:13:37 ◼   ► "and those painters certainly realized

00:13:39 ◼   ► "what they were looking at

00:13:40 ◼   ► "the first time they saw a photograph,

00:13:41 ◼   ► "and maybe the first time that three of them

00:13:44 ◼   ► "have ever passed up the opportunity

00:13:45 ◼   ► to talk about cameras, which is accurate.

00:13:48 ◼   ► But that was a good point.

00:13:49 ◼   ► And I don't remember any of us bringing that up.

00:13:51 ◼   ► But yeah, portraits, I got to imagine,

00:13:52 ◼   ► obviously we weren't there,

00:13:54 ◼   ► but I got to imagine portraits were a big deal

00:13:57 ◼   ► way back when, and then suddenly photographs were a thing,

00:14:00 ◼   ► and sorry portrait artists,

00:14:01 ◼   ► you were basically told tough noogies.

00:14:04 ◼   ► - Well, they still paint portraits

00:14:04 ◼   ► just like they still have horses.

00:14:06 ◼   ► A couple of people wrote in

00:14:07 ◼   ► with similar points about photography.

00:14:09 ◼   ► One of them was noting that after the invention

00:14:14 ◼   ► of the camera and the spreading throughout the world,

00:14:17 ◼   ► you saw art go in different directions, less representative.

00:14:21 ◼   ► I'm not sure if the timelines line up exactly,

00:14:23 ◼   ► but certainly there was kind of an explosion

00:14:24 ◼   ► in non-representative art around about the time

00:14:28 ◼   ► that photography started to come into development.

00:14:30 ◼   ► So maybe there are some analogs there for AI art

00:14:33 ◼   ► versus human-made art, as we'll call it, I guess.

00:14:37 ◼   ► - By the way, real-time follow-up,

00:14:38 ◼   ► I used one of the AI art generators

00:14:42 ◼   ► to generate an icon for the little tiny app I'm making

00:14:47 ◼   ► for the sand drivers here.

00:14:48 ◼   ► - Oh, I was wondering what that was about.

00:14:50 ◼   ► I didn't wanna ask you publicly in case it was

00:14:53 ◼   ► just kept close to the vest or anything.

00:14:55 ◼   ► - It's really simple, just like showing the tight info

00:14:57 ◼   ► and letting people report where the conditions are.

00:14:58 ◼   ► That's it.

00:14:59 ◼   ► I use the AI generator to generate an icon for this

00:15:02 ◼   ► and not only was I laughing my butt off the whole time,

00:15:06 ◼   ► here, I'll show you.

00:15:07 ◼   ► So this was the first one that I generated.

00:15:12 ◼   ► I'll have to put these in the chapter art,

00:15:14 ◼   ► which made me laugh.

00:15:15 ◼   ► - That looks like a Wrangler, my friend.

00:15:16 ◼   ► - It's a Wrangler driving into a wave.

00:15:20 ◼   ► - That's not a good situation.

00:15:21 ◼   ► I would not recommend this.

00:15:23 ◼   ► - That's why it's funny, Jon.

00:15:24 ◼   ► That's the point of its humor.

00:15:26 ◼   ► And then what I eventually landed on,

00:15:30 ◼   ► so this is a white Jeep, I made it white.

00:15:33 ◼   ► - Oh, that's pretty good.

00:15:34 ◼   ► - Driving on the edge of the sand and the water

00:15:36 ◼   ► so one tire is in the water

00:15:38 ◼   ► and they're definitely getting stuck.

00:15:40 ◼   ► I love how the AI image generators have,

00:15:42 ◼   ► I mean, you don't have any text,

00:15:43 ◼   ► but they do have a big problem with text

00:15:44 ◼   ► 'cause they don't know what text is.

00:15:46 ◼   ► But also they have a problem with understanding symmetry.

00:15:50 ◼   ► So look at the wheel on the Jeep on the top

00:15:52 ◼   ► and look at the headlight, the right headlight,

00:15:54 ◼   ► or the headlight on the right-hand side of the second one.

00:15:56 ◼   ► - Or the mirrors are also wrong.

00:15:57 ◼   ► The second one doesn't have a driver's-side mirror.

00:16:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, it doesn't know or care

00:16:01 ◼   ► that a wheel should be radially symmetrical.

00:16:04 ◼   ► And same thing with the headlights.

00:16:05 ◼   ► They should be two circles that are the same.

00:16:07 ◼   ► It's the side one of the headlights

00:16:08 ◼   ► gonna have a big blob in the middle of it and that wheel is gonna be melted.

00:16:11 ◼   ► I feel like this AI art is, you know, people talk about machine learning as like ethics

00:16:16 ◼   ► laundering or morality laundering.

00:16:18 ◼   ► You say, "I didn't do it, the computer did it."

00:16:20 ◼   ► This is kind of like artistic laundering where it's like, "Yeah, it's ugly, but I didn't

00:16:22 ◼   ► do it, the computer did it."

00:16:24 ◼   ► It's like, 'cause I feel like you could draw a better icon than both of these.

00:16:28 ◼   ► It would take you longer than the 30 seconds it took to generate these, but they certainly

00:16:32 ◼   ► need some help here.

00:16:33 ◼   ► Yeah, but what was great about this was within a couple of minutes I had gone through 20

00:16:39 ◼   ► or 30 different proposals that the AI had generated and I found what I wanted the icon

00:16:46 ◼   ► to basically be conceptually.

00:16:48 ◼   ► And so now what I can do is take this one I like, the second one here, take this one

00:16:53 ◼   ► and then go to an icon designer and say, "Hey, here's a concept.

00:16:57 ◼   ► Can we make something based on this concept?"

00:17:00 ◼   ► And it saved, it gave me so many concepts to work with

00:17:04 ◼   ► with no effort and no cost.

00:17:06 ◼   ► That has tremendous value.

00:17:07 ◼   ► And in the meantime now, while I wait to actually

00:17:10 ◼   ► arrange that with an actual icon designer,

00:17:13 ◼   ► I have a placeholder that I can at least develop the app

00:17:16 ◼   ► and have this on my screen, not have like,

00:17:18 ◼   ► just like the Apple crisscross default thing.

00:17:20 ◼   ► Like, it's very, this technology I think has a huge amount

00:17:26 ◼   ► of use that doesn't involve destroying artists.

00:17:31 ◼   ► It's much more about being a part of the artistic process.

00:17:36 ◼   ► It might replace some work that is happening,

00:17:42 ◼   ► but I think ultimately this is just going to be another tool

00:17:44 ◼   ► in our lineup that artists use as part of their process

00:17:49 ◼   ► of being human artists.

00:17:51 ◼   ► - You're gonna keep that Jeep tilted so much?

00:17:53 ◼   ► Looks a little too, it looks like it's gonna fall

00:17:54 ◼   ► into the ocean.

00:17:55 ◼   ► point that's why it's funny. No the Jeep can absolutely handle that angle. I guarantee

00:18:01 ◼   ► a Jeep can handle that angle. This is what your app is going to prevent right? It's going

00:18:05 ◼   ► to prevent you from not realizing it's high tide in a Jeep that's tilting over into the

00:18:10 ◼   ► ocean. Yeah but that's why it's funny. Like in both cases it's like wow this something

00:18:14 ◼   ► has gone horribly wrong. That is pretty good stuff. Alright John tell me about how awesome

00:18:20 ◼   ► it is when you have to use a screen to open your glove box. I don't know what it is that

00:18:24 ◼   ► has caused the entire internet to send, at least me, but probably all three of us, links

00:18:28 ◼   ► to the Cadillac Lyric reviews showing that you opened the glove box with a touchscreen.

00:18:33 ◼   ► But Marco can confirm to me, I'm pretty sure that's been the case on Teslas for the history

00:18:37 ◼   ► of Teslas.

00:18:38 ◼   ► Is that right?

00:18:39 ◼   ► I don't know about the Model 3, but on the Model S there's a button.

00:18:42 ◼   ► There's like three buttons in the whole car, that's one of them.

00:18:44 ◼   ► All right, well anyway, Tesla did it first, like so many things.

00:18:48 ◼   ► And so, I mean, I guess Cadillac is on their big PR campaign for their EV, but they are

00:18:54 ◼   ► not the first car company to open the glove box via the touch screen.

00:18:59 ◼   ► And there, in terms of the controls inside the Cadillac, is it called the Lyric?

00:19:05 ◼   ► L-Y-R-I-C maybe?

00:19:06 ◼   ► Someone should look it up.

00:19:07 ◼   ► Anyway, as for the controls inside that Cadillac, the Model 3 still is the champ in terms of

00:19:13 ◼   ► not having physical controls anywhere.

00:19:15 ◼   ► So yeah, Tesla did it first, thanks to everyone sending it.

00:19:18 ◼   ► And just to reiterate, no, opening the glove box on the touch screen is not a good idea.

00:19:23 ◼   ► a button or a handle on the glove box, please.

00:19:25 ◼   ► Yep. So, an internet friend of mine just sent me his video review of his brand new Model

00:19:31 ◼   ► Y, and one of the things he points out—I'll put a link to it in the show notes—one of

00:19:34 ◼   ► the things he points out is that you have to go into the screen and, you know, bloop,

00:19:39 ◼   ► bloop, bloop in order to open the glove box, which I think is bananas. And that's a tussle

00:19:44 ◼   ► for you. Aaron's car does not have a physical latch that you can operate, but it does have

00:19:49 ◼   ► a physical button, which I also think is a bit ridiculous, but that's neither here nor

00:19:53 ◼   ► there. And also, since we're talking about ridiculous things, I would just like to point

00:19:58 ◼   ► out that whenever I get on my high horse, which is all too often, about how dumb Celsius

00:20:03 ◼   ► is for ambient air temperature, because it is dumb, I'm always telling people, "Oh, you

00:20:08 ◼   ► know, if you have to use a decimal point, then I think you've already kind of failed."

00:20:13 ◼   ► And every Celsius aficionado, which is the entire world except America, is quick to point

00:20:18 ◼   ► Oh, no, we never use decimals. We never use it. Maybe we'll use half degrees once a while

00:20:22 ◼   ► Maybe but you never ever ever see that me me me. Well, you know what I'm looking at on this Tesla Model Y video

00:20:28 ◼   ► This is an Australian and you know what it says on his screen 20.0 degrees Celsius

00:20:33 ◼   ► 0.0 people I'm telling you probably goes up in 0.5 increments, right? Yep. I would assume so

00:20:39 ◼   ► I don't know but I would assume so Celsius people come on

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00:22:39 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:22:42 ◼   ► Hey, we accidentally glossed over something last week

00:22:45 ◼   ► in Ask ATP.

00:22:46 ◼   ► David Kome had written,

00:22:47 ◼   ► and I had kind of lumped this in with another question,

00:22:50 ◼   ► and I think we glossed over it by accident.

00:22:52 ◼   ► So David wrote, "Given Jon has a new TV

00:22:54 ◼   ► and clearly has a number of input sources connected,

00:22:56 ◼   ► what advice beyond his past blog posts

00:22:58 ◼   ► would you suggest in 2022 about settings for color,

00:23:00 ◼   ► et cetera?"

00:23:00 ◼   ► Here's the key.

00:23:01 ◼   ► "In particular, we have an Apple TV 4K

00:23:03 ◼   ► and are curious about the match content option

00:23:06 ◼   ► in the late tvOS,

00:23:08 ◼   ► and what's best to be set or unset

00:23:10 ◼   ► on both ends of the HDMI cable?

00:23:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know we talked about this before,

00:23:14 ◼   ► but I didn't wanna actually answer the question

00:23:15 ◼   ► since it was part of Ask ATP and we didn't get to it.

00:23:18 ◼   ► I went off on a tangent about color calibration,

00:23:21 ◼   ► but to reiterate, the match content setting,

00:23:23 ◼   ► it's a weird name,

00:23:25 ◼   ► but you do want that to be turned on on your Apple TV.

00:23:28 ◼   ► What that's telling your Apple TV

00:23:29 ◼   ► is to do a feature that Apple TV didn't always have,

00:23:32 ◼   ► send the content to the television

00:23:35 ◼   ► in the format that the program is in.

00:23:38 ◼   ► So if you're watching a movie and the movie is 24 frames

00:23:41 ◼   ► per second, you're telling the Apple TV,

00:23:43 ◼   ► send 24 frames per second to the television.

00:23:45 ◼   ► And you may think, how could it ever do anything different?

00:23:48 ◼   ► If the movie's 24 frames per second,

00:23:49 ◼   ► of course the Apple TV is gonna send 24 frames per second

00:23:51 ◼   ► by television, but it didn't do that for years and years.

00:23:54 ◼   ► For years and years, the Apple TV worked like a little

00:23:56 ◼   ► computer, like your Mac does or whatever.

00:23:58 ◼   ► It had a fixed refresh rate.

00:24:00 ◼   ► Whatever the refresh rate is on, you know, ignoring the,

00:24:03 ◼   ► what do they call it on the MacBook Pros?

00:24:05 ◼   ► Do they call it-- - Promotion.

00:24:06 ◼   ► - Promotion? - Yep.

00:24:07 ◼   ► Anyway, ignoring promotion, before the advent of promotion and before the advent of different

00:24:11 ◼   ► refresh rates for screens, computers would just pick a refresh rate.

00:24:14 ◼   ► Like in your CRTs, you could pick whichever one you wanted.

00:24:17 ◼   ► LCDs mostly are 60 hertz, and it just shows everything at 60 hertz.

00:24:22 ◼   ► And that's what the Apple TV was like.

00:24:23 ◼   ► It was a little computer that had video output running at 60 hertz all the time.

00:24:27 ◼   ► So if you watched a 24 frames per second movie, it would output that at 60 hertz.

00:24:31 ◼   ► So it would show, I don't know if the math, I can't do the math off the top of my head,

00:24:34 ◼   ► If the number of frames per second was not an even multiple of or couldn't divide evenly into 60 frames per second

00:24:41 ◼   ► Sometimes it would show one frame for longer the other it was bad, right?

00:24:44 ◼   ► It was the reason the Apple TV wasn't a good video device for years

00:24:48 ◼   ► Then eventually I added this feature called match content and that says we won't do that anymore

00:24:51 ◼   ► We will send whatever the video dictates. We'll send that to the television

00:24:56 ◼   ► You're watching a 30 frames per second television program will send that to the TV if you're watching

00:25:01 ◼   ► 9.7 will send that, whatever it is.

00:25:03 ◼   ► What is it, in PAL, it was like 25 frames per second

00:25:06 ◼   ► or something, I forget.

00:25:07 ◼   ► - That's called PAL, not pal.

00:25:10 ◼   ► - Pal, PAL, I don't know.

00:25:12 ◼   ► - I've never had to say it before,

00:25:14 ◼   ► but I've always assumed it was pal.

00:25:16 ◼   ► Just like ours is ints.

00:25:17 ◼   ► - I don't think, well, PAL is not a mispronunciation,

00:25:20 ◼   ► it is just a reading of the letters in the abbreviation.

00:25:24 ◼   ► I pronounced the letters individually correctly.

00:25:25 ◼   ► Anyway, I don't know which one of those two things it is,

00:25:27 ◼   ► but yeah, they have different frame rates

00:25:30 ◼   ► for their television over there.

00:25:31 ◼   ► Apparently it stands for phase alternating line

00:25:34 ◼   ► and it's pronounced pal.

00:25:36 ◼   ► - Totally. - Yeah.

00:25:37 ◼   ► Anyway, so you want that to be turned on.

00:25:39 ◼   ► The downside of that though, there is a downside

00:25:43 ◼   ► and I'm telling you to turn on even despite this downside

00:25:46 ◼   ► is that when you enable that,

00:25:49 ◼   ► the Apple TV chooses to run its interface,

00:25:52 ◼   ► like the little thing with all the little rectangles,

00:25:54 ◼   ► it runs its interface at whatever refresh rate

00:25:56 ◼   ► it decides to run it at.

00:25:57 ◼   ► And then when you play something,

00:25:59 ◼   ► it has to switch from whatever it was running

00:26:01 ◼   ► the interface at to whatever the thing you're watching is.

00:26:04 ◼   ► And they're probably not gonna be the same,

00:26:05 ◼   ► 'cause I think the interface always runs at like 60 hertz,

00:26:08 ◼   ► but pretty much nothing you're gonna watch on Apple TV

00:26:10 ◼   ► is 60 frames per second.

00:26:13 ◼   ► And even if it was 30,

00:26:14 ◼   ► it doesn't just like frame double it up to 60,

00:26:17 ◼   ► it switches to 30 frames per second

00:26:19 ◼   ► or 24 frames per second or whatever,

00:26:20 ◼   ► which means there's like this blackout interval

00:26:22 ◼   ► when you launch an app

00:26:24 ◼   ► or when you start playing something or whatever.

00:26:26 ◼   ► Depending on how quickly your television setup responds

00:26:30 ◼   ► to that change, it can be kind of annoying.

00:26:32 ◼   ► You're like, instead of having such a phrase

00:26:34 ◼   ► where you just go bloop, bloop, bloop, play,

00:26:35 ◼   ► and it starts playing, it's bloop, bloop, bloop, play,

00:26:38 ◼   ► black screen, maybe your television pops up

00:26:41 ◼   ► and overlay native to the television

00:26:42 ◼   ► 'cause it's like a lost signal on HDMI one.

00:26:45 ◼   ► Oh wait, no, here it is, and then it comes back.

00:26:48 ◼   ► That can be annoying.

00:26:49 ◼   ► The best way to fix that would be for television

00:26:52 ◼   ► manufacturers and streaming box manufacturers

00:26:54 ◼   ► to get together to make that switching way, way, way, way faster than it is now.

00:26:59 ◼   ► Kind of like how when we got the ARM Macs, like changing screen resolution or attaching

00:27:04 ◼   ► external monitors was suddenly a bazillion times faster and we didn't realize how slow

00:27:07 ◼   ► it was before until we saw how fast it could be.

00:27:10 ◼   ► We need that moment to happen for televisions.

00:27:12 ◼   ► But in the meantime, I'm going to recommend endure the stupid screen blackout thing because

00:27:19 ◼   ► what you want to see is each frame of the video you're watching displayed for an equal

00:27:23 ◼   ► amount of time on your television.

00:27:24 ◼   ► If your television supports, and most of the modern ones do,

00:27:27 ◼   ► actually running at 24 frames per second

00:27:29 ◼   ► or some multiple thereof, some even multiple thereof,

00:27:31 ◼   ► and you're watching a 24 frames per second movie,

00:27:33 ◼   ► that's what you want to happen.

00:27:34 ◼   ► So turn on match content.

00:27:36 ◼   ► And the same thing with the match HDR, SDR thing,

00:27:39 ◼   ► turn that on as well, I think it's two separate settings.

00:27:42 ◼   ► Basically what you're trying to tell the Apple TV is,

00:27:44 ◼   ► hey Apple TV, look at the video you're trying to send,

00:27:47 ◼   ► find out what the properties of that video is,

00:27:49 ◼   ► and then send that to the television.

00:27:52 ◼   ► From that point, it's up to the television

00:27:53 ◼   ► to correctly receive that and display it.

00:27:55 ◼   ► Some televisions can be annoying about this,

00:27:57 ◼   ► and in particular, some receivers, my receiver,

00:27:59 ◼   ► can be annoying about this where you have to convince them,

00:28:02 ◼   ► oh, HDMI 1, turn on enhanced HDMI with,

00:28:06 ◼   ► like, they have these weird words that basically say,

00:28:08 ◼   ► should I support 4K?

00:28:10 ◼   ► Should I support 120 frames per second?

00:28:11 ◼   ► Should I support HDR?

00:28:13 ◼   ► And they come by default often turned off.

00:28:15 ◼   ► And so you may be wondering why the Apple TV

00:28:17 ◼   ► can't go into Dolby Vision mode,

00:28:19 ◼   ► or can't show something at the right frame rate,

00:28:21 ◼   ► and you don't understand why,

00:28:22 ◼   ► go to your television and/or your receiver

00:28:24 ◼   ► and make sure they are set up to use all the features

00:28:28 ◼   ► that you just paid for.

00:28:29 ◼   ► Like it boggles my mind that you pay for this fancy,

00:28:31 ◼   ► you know, television and receiver with all these features

00:28:33 ◼   ► and they default to like a really safe SDR,

00:28:36 ◼   ► non-4K, usually not non-4K,

00:28:38 ◼   ► but they default to dumb settings sometimes.

00:28:40 ◼   ► So that's what you want on both ends.

00:28:42 ◼   ► You want Apple TV to match content

00:28:43 ◼   ► in both frame rate and HDR SDR,

00:28:46 ◼   ► and you want on the television and receiver end

00:28:48 ◼   ► to have all the bells and whistles turned on.

00:28:51 ◼   ► Tell me about Mac window management and stage manager, please.

00:28:54 ◼   ► We talked a lot about Mac window management in the last episode,

00:28:56 ◼   ► and I wanted to make a point about stage manager.

00:28:59 ◼   ► We've talked about a few times before.

00:29:00 ◼   ► I think when we originally covered stage manager, uh,

00:29:03 ◼   ► I noted that on the Mac,

00:29:04 ◼   ► it makes a lot more sense to me than it does on the iPad and related to Mac

00:29:09 ◼   ► window management, even though Ventura is not out yet.

00:29:12 ◼   ► I think stage manager will appeal to a lot of people. Um,

00:29:16 ◼   ► in particular people who like the idea of spaces,

00:29:20 ◼   ► but need a better visual representation.

00:29:23 ◼   ► Because Stage Manager is kind of like spaces

00:29:25 ◼   ► on a single screen where you've got these icons

00:29:27 ◼   ► along the side, although you can turn them off

00:29:28 ◼   ► if you don't want them there,

00:29:29 ◼   ► that are groups of windows,

00:29:31 ◼   ► and you can switch between those groups of windows.

00:29:33 ◼   ► And unlike on the iPad, setting aside the stability things,

00:29:36 ◼   ► unlike on the iPad, there's not a lot of weird limitations.

00:29:39 ◼   ► You can't just have, you know, it's not like,

00:29:40 ◼   ► "Oh, you can only have four windows in each thing,"

00:29:42 ◼   ► and you can't position the windows.

00:29:44 ◼   ► It just works like regular Mac windows.

00:29:46 ◼   ► You can move them anywhere you want.

00:29:47 ◼   ► You can drag them easily between groups

00:29:49 ◼   ► 'cause you have like a mouse cursor and everything.

00:29:52 ◼   ► It's just very sensible.

00:29:54 ◼   ► And if this appeals to you,

00:29:55 ◼   ► if you think in terms of groups of windows,

00:29:57 ◼   ► but don't wanna think in terms of spaces

00:29:59 ◼   ► where you're swishing from side to side,

00:30:00 ◼   ► from one set of things to another,

00:30:02 ◼   ► try stage manager when it comes out immature,

00:30:05 ◼   ► it may appeal to you.

00:30:06 ◼   ► There's still the weirdness of like,

00:30:07 ◼   ► well, what happens when I make a new window?

00:30:10 ◼   ► What happens when I unminimize from the dock?

00:30:11 ◼   ► Does it go back to the space it came from,

00:30:13 ◼   ► or does it unminimize into the space I'm looking at right now?

00:30:16 ◼   ► Not space, whatever the hell they call it in stage manager.

00:30:17 ◼   ► I have no idea what,

00:30:18 ◼   ► I'm glad I don't have to write a review of this.

00:30:20 ◼   ► - Clumps?

00:30:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, what the heck is, what do you call that?

00:30:23 ◼   ► What is the nomenclature for a blob

00:30:26 ◼   ► of stage manager thingies?

00:30:27 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:30:29 ◼   ► Someone writing their venture review

00:30:31 ◼   ► will have to figure this out when they describe it,

00:30:32 ◼   ► but try it, it's a nice hybrid

00:30:37 ◼   ► of a bunch of different things that we had.

00:30:38 ◼   ► Of course, it's yet another way to manage Windows

00:30:41 ◼   ► on the Mac, as if we didn't already have enough.

00:30:43 ◼   ► But hey, they threw another one in,

00:30:44 ◼   ► and assuming it doesn't crash your Mac

00:30:46 ◼   ► or do weird buggy stuff,

00:30:47 ◼   ► I think a lot of people will find it very appealing,

00:30:49 ◼   ► so give it a try.

00:30:50 ◼   ► - And you have a new iPhone case, Jon?

00:30:52 ◼   ► - I do, finally.

00:30:54 ◼   ► The tyranny of the squeaky clear case is over.

00:30:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:30:58 ◼   ► - The saga.

00:30:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I got my first of two black leather,

00:31:04 ◼   ► bare-bottom iPhone cases that I ordered.

00:31:06 ◼   ► This is the Ryan London one.

00:31:07 ◼   ► They won the shipping race that came here first.

00:31:11 ◼   ► I was kind of half afraid that when I put it on,

00:31:13 ◼   ► it would squeak, 'cause people would get into my head

00:31:15 ◼   ► but it's the black DLC coating on the stainless steel,

00:31:19 ◼   ► that's what's causing the squeaking error,

00:31:21 ◼   ► but no, no, it's just a normal case.

00:31:24 ◼   ► Put it on, does not move, does not squeak, does not creak,

00:31:27 ◼   ► fits perfectly, it's fine.

00:31:29 ◼   ► - The John Siracusa review.

00:31:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, the case itself, it has one little stamping thing

00:31:36 ◼   ► on the lower left when I'm looking at it edge,

00:31:41 ◼   ► but it's not a place that I really feel.

00:31:42 ◼   ► The back is entirely unmarked, so that's nice,

00:31:45 ◼   ► no logos, no anything like that.

00:31:47 ◼   ► They did a really good job with the volcano blister mound,

00:31:51 ◼   ► I don't know, thing around the camera mesa, right?

00:31:55 ◼   ► 'Cause the Apple Clear Case has just a wall, right?

00:31:58 ◼   ► And this has a kind of a gradual smooth thing

00:32:01 ◼   ► and they did a good job of it's like,

00:32:03 ◼   ► it's black so it's slimming and the little mound

00:32:06 ◼   ► or taper also minimizes the gargantuan thing.

00:32:11 ◼   ► But I have to say, I think I mentioned this

00:32:13 ◼   ► when I was talking about the Clear Case,

00:32:14 ◼   ► I was surprised that I was using the wall

00:32:16 ◼   ► around the camera mesa to rest my finger on,

00:32:19 ◼   ► kind of like a very tiny pop socket thing.

00:32:22 ◼   ► Now it's not there anymore.

00:32:24 ◼   ► Now it's a little slanty leather thing

00:32:26 ◼   ► and I can't use it to rest my finger on it anymore.

00:32:28 ◼   ► I'm sure I'll get over it,

00:32:29 ◼   ► but it's amazing how I formed that habit

00:32:31 ◼   ► in only a few short weeks and now I have to change it up.

00:32:34 ◼   ► But the good thing is the whole rest of the case

00:32:36 ◼   ► is leather and will get grippier over time

00:32:38 ◼   ► and is already pretty grippy.

00:32:39 ◼   ► It doesn't do the thing that I wanted to do with the buttons.

00:32:43 ◼   ► I know this, the bull strap case is exactly the same.

00:32:45 ◼   ► The buttons are not recessed in a little divot.

00:32:48 ◼   ► They are instead poking out of a giant mound.

00:32:50 ◼   ► So not only are they not sunken in,

00:32:53 ◼   ► but they're actually, they start coming out

00:32:55 ◼   ► from a lump that's already there.

00:32:57 ◼   ► They feel good, they work well,

00:32:59 ◼   ► but they are sticking out more than I wanted.

00:33:01 ◼   ► I mean, you can't have everything.

00:33:03 ◼   ► The case itself is also a little bit thicker

00:33:05 ◼   ► than I expected.

00:33:06 ◼   ► I mean, it's just plastic wrapped in leather,

00:33:08 ◼   ► so it's not like it's thick, thick.

00:33:10 ◼   ► There's no other stuff in there.

00:33:11 ◼   ► There's no other additional padding.

00:33:13 ◼   ► but maybe the leather is thicker or whatever,

00:33:14 ◼   ► but it feels a little bit thicker

00:33:17 ◼   ► than my extremely cheap OXR iPhone 12 Pro case,

00:33:21 ◼   ► which is currently on sale for $5.50.

00:33:23 ◼   ► It's also ostensibly leather.

00:33:26 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm happy to have a leather case on my phone.

00:33:28 ◼   ► I'm getting used to the little mound volcano thing.

00:33:32 ◼   ► It is, you know, the thickness does have ramifications.

00:33:37 ◼   ► Like it looks a little bit like,

00:33:39 ◼   ► I don't know how to describe it.

00:33:41 ◼   ► It looks like it's wrapped in leather.

00:33:43 ◼   ► I know, duh, it is wrapped in leather,

00:33:44 ◼   ► but it looks like it's wrapped in leather

00:33:45 ◼   ► rather than like being,

00:33:47 ◼   ► the Apple cases often look like

00:33:49 ◼   ► they're just made of leather.

00:33:50 ◼   ► This looks like a case that is wrapped in leather,

00:33:53 ◼   ► if that makes any sense.

00:33:54 ◼   ► So it is a little bit thicker and chunkier,

00:33:57 ◼   ► but it also feels better and it's cushier

00:33:59 ◼   ► and it's definitely nicer than the Olexar case

00:34:01 ◼   ► in terms of leather quality.

00:34:02 ◼   ► So I'll let you know when the bolster case gets here.

00:34:05 ◼   ► I probably won't even swap it on

00:34:07 ◼   ► if it is not significantly different

00:34:09 ◼   ► because I'm perfectly happy with this one the way it is.

00:34:12 ◼   ► But I'm just happy to get that clear case off there.

00:34:15 ◼   ► Oh, and the MagSafe ring seems to work fine.

00:34:16 ◼   ► So I give the Ryan London case a tentative thumbs up.

00:34:21 ◼   ► - Jon, remind me, do you use MagSafe anywhere?

00:34:24 ◼   ► You said you do in your car.

00:34:25 ◼   ► Is there anywhere else that you'd use MagSafe?

00:34:28 ◼   ► Like for example, the battery pack,

00:34:30 ◼   ► which is, as we've discussed many times,

00:34:33 ◼   ► hilariously overpriced, but actually quite nice.

00:34:35 ◼   ► Do you use that or MagSafe charging or anything like that?

00:34:39 ◼   ► - I do have MagSafe puck on my nightstand,

00:34:41 ◼   ► but I don't put my phone on it.

00:34:42 ◼   ► I put my AirPods on it.

00:34:44 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:34:45 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:34:45 ◼   ► - Because I'm just so used to plugging in my phone.

00:34:48 ◼   ► We do have the little Apple battery pack thing,

00:34:51 ◼   ► but my wife uses that.

00:34:52 ◼   ► I don't use it.

00:34:53 ◼   ► And like I said before,

00:34:55 ◼   ► because I have the MagSafe charger in my car,

00:34:58 ◼   ► like I was starting to feel bad for my phone.

00:35:00 ◼   ► Like I felt like I was abusing the battery

00:35:02 ◼   ► because it would never go down below like 95%

00:35:05 ◼   ► during the course of the entire day.

00:35:06 ◼   ► And I feel like I should,

00:35:07 ◼   ► I'm intentionally not charging my phone

00:35:10 ◼   ► times when I used to.

00:35:11 ◼   ► Like when I'm making dinner, I would listen to podcasts

00:35:13 ◼   ► while I'm making dinner or whatever,

00:35:14 ◼   ► and I would plug in my phone.

00:35:16 ◼   ► My phone would be in the other room plugged in

00:35:17 ◼   ► and I just have my AirPods in, right?

00:35:19 ◼   ► Bluetooth range is fine.

00:35:20 ◼   ► And I would plug it in so it would charge.

00:35:21 ◼   ► Now I'm intentionally not doing that

00:35:23 ◼   ► because I want my phone to go below 50%.

00:35:26 ◼   ► 'Cause I want, it's better for the battery

00:35:28 ◼   ► for it to go below 50%.

00:35:29 ◼   ► So I don't use the battery pack.

00:35:31 ◼   ► I don't use any other MagSafe charging.

00:35:33 ◼   ► It's just the cars, 'cause now we have

00:35:34 ◼   ► the little MagSafe mounts in both cars,

00:35:36 ◼   ► no matter which car I'm driving, I just slap it on there and they both charge while driving.

00:35:39 ◼   ► So that's it for me and MagSafe.

00:35:42 ◼   ► That's another thing I'm interested in seeing if I'm going to get like a circle worn into

00:35:45 ◼   ► the back of the phone because obviously with the clear plastic one, it's not really, it's

00:35:48 ◼   ► already got a circle you can see anyway and it's pretty durable.

00:35:51 ◼   ► Both leather I imagine I will slowly wear in kind of a circle from slapping it on the

00:35:55 ◼   ► thing, but we'll see.

00:35:57 ◼   ► And then we should briefly mention Marco, if you need a repair on one of your army of

00:36:05 ◼   ► original home pods. Listener Timo Bruck wrote in, "Since you mentioned original

00:36:09 ◼   ► home pod failures on the show recently I wanted to let you know about NixFix who

00:36:13 ◼   ► will fix them for $60 plus shipping. If you want to watch he live streams the

00:36:16 ◼   ► repair on YouTube. For my home pod the issue was a shorted diode but he lists

00:36:20 ◼   ► other common failures on his website and if you click through to look at this oh

00:36:24 ◼   ► there's a lot of common failures." There's a lot of options there which is kind of

00:36:29 ◼   ► sad. But anyways Timo writes, "If you want to do it yourself he's got a tutorial on

00:36:34 ◼   ► on YouTube, which is like 30, 40 minutes long

00:36:36 ◼   ► or something like that, but we'll link both of these

00:36:37 ◼   ► in the show notes.

00:36:39 ◼   ► The common issues list, man, it's something else.

00:36:42 ◼   ► - That's weird. - Yeah.

00:36:43 ◼   ► - The interesting thing is weird is like,

00:36:44 ◼   ► it's not as if Apple doesn't have a lot of experience

00:36:46 ◼   ► building electronics, right?

00:36:48 ◼   ► Like you would expect something like this

00:36:49 ◼   ► if Apple made, say, a car.

00:36:51 ◼   ► They don't have a lot of experience making it,

00:36:52 ◼   ► but they make like literal millions of electronic devices,

00:36:56 ◼   ► and for some reason, this stupid big HomePod

00:36:58 ◼   ► that apparently didn't sell very well,

00:37:00 ◼   ► so how many of them have even made that?

00:37:01 ◼   ► Like, it's not a complicated device,

00:37:04 ◼   ► It's not expected to go underwater.

00:37:05 ◼   ► People don't put it in their backpacks,

00:37:07 ◼   ► and yet they can't survive more than like five years

00:37:09 ◼   ► without what you would think would be

00:37:11 ◼   ► like rookie mistake things of diodes burning out

00:37:14 ◼   ► or amplifiers being driven to,

00:37:17 ◼   ► like whatever these problems are,

00:37:18 ◼   ► they seem like problems that Apple in particular

00:37:20 ◼   ► should not be making with a product,

00:37:22 ◼   ► and I don't quite understand how it happened.

00:37:25 ◼   ► I mean, maybe they're the type of things

00:37:26 ◼   ► that happen all the time,

00:37:26 ◼   ► and they just fix them in revision two and revision three,

00:37:28 ◼   ► and just because there was no revision two or three,

00:37:30 ◼   ► they never got fixed,

00:37:31 ◼   ► but it's really an anomaly in the history of Apple stuff.

00:37:34 ◼   ► I can't remember any other device they've made

00:37:36 ◼   ► that has sort of such a seemingly low degree of difficulty

00:37:40 ◼   ► in terms of electronics,

00:37:41 ◼   ► like the basic electronics stuff.

00:37:44 ◼   ► It's not super high wattage CPU, it's not super fast,

00:37:47 ◼   ► it's not cutting edge.

00:37:49 ◼   ► Again, it sits on a counter in an air-conditioned space.

00:37:51 ◼   ► It doesn't go out into the world, it's not an Apple watch,

00:37:55 ◼   ► it doesn't go into backpacks, and they just can't stay alive.

00:37:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, we heard,

00:38:01 ◼   ► back when the HomePod was being developed,

00:38:02 ◼   ► we heard that it was just a whole bunch of changes

00:38:07 ◼   ► and the project kept getting restarted or changed around

00:38:10 ◼   ► or refocused and restaffed and all these other,

00:38:13 ◼   ► it seemed like the HomePod project was a mess

00:38:16 ◼   ► to get out the door.

00:38:17 ◼   ► It makes me so sad because again,

00:38:19 ◼   ► it's a great product in many ways, not in all ways,

00:38:23 ◼   ► but it's a great product in many ways

00:38:24 ◼   ► and yeah, it does seem really unfortunate

00:38:27 ◼   ► that there's so many actual physical flaws with its design.

00:38:30 ◼   ► That being said, my bigger surprise,

00:38:33 ◼   ► this came across my radar last time we talked about 'em,

00:38:36 ◼   ► like months ago, my biggest surprise is that

00:38:39 ◼   ► there is anybody out there who actually loves HomePods

00:38:42 ◼   ► enough to do these repairs.

00:38:44 ◼   ► And there's people out there willing to go have these done.

00:38:47 ◼   ► Like that was a happy surprise to learn about.

00:38:49 ◼   ► But unfortunately, my problems with the HomePods,

00:38:54 ◼   ► I don't think fit into any of these categories

00:38:56 ◼   ► of the common physical failures,

00:38:59 ◼   ► I suspect mine are just like both software related

00:39:03 ◼   ► and also them just kind of generally flaking out,

00:39:06 ◼   ► which is hard to pin down.

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00:41:06 ◼   ► We are hearing a lot of rumblings these days on and off, but this has flared up again recently,

00:41:12 ◼   ► about how Apple is really cranking up their interest in doing advertising all over the

00:41:18 ◼   ► place. And most recently, this has come up with regards to TV, but we'll get there in

00:41:22 ◼   ► a minute. But over the summer, there was a post on 9to5Mac about how the App Store will

00:41:29 ◼   ► be adding more search ads. So reading from this post, "The new advertising placements

00:41:33 ◼   ► in the App Store will allow developers to place ads outside of the search tab and search

00:41:37 ◼   ► results. First and foremost, there's a new advertising slot coming to the Today homepage

00:41:42 ◼   ► of the App Store. Apple notes that the rest of the Today tab will remain focused on curation

00:41:46 ◼   ► and Discovery, the ad spot will be clearly marked as an ad using the same blue banner

00:41:50 ◼   ► and background as search ads. The second new advertising placement is coming directly to

00:41:53 ◼   ► product pages themselves. This means that developers will now be able to place ads on

00:41:56 ◼   ► the product pages for other apps. This spot is located at the very bottom of the product

00:42:01 ◼   ► page beneath the banner section that shows the other apps by that developer. Developers

00:42:04 ◼   ► won't be able to target a specific application when bidding for product page ad placement.

00:42:09 ◼   ► For instance, Twitter wouldn't be able to target Tweetbot specifically. The ads, however,

00:42:12 ◼   ► would be relevant for each of the product pages. This means you could and probably will

00:42:16 ◼   ► for direct competitors on app pages.

00:42:18 ◼   ► Ew, I don't like it.

00:42:23 ◼   ► - This, oh I have so many, so many thoughts about this.

00:42:27 ◼   ► I mean, so first of all, I have bought a lot of search ads

00:42:32 ◼   ► over the last, what has been about three or four years

00:42:35 ◼   ► they've existed.

00:42:36 ◼   ► - Something like that.

00:42:36 ◼   ► - Whatever it's been, I mean, I have bought a lot of them.

00:42:39 ◼   ► I have spent a really disgusting amount of money

00:42:42 ◼   ► on search ads and it's for the simple fact that

00:42:45 ◼   ► all of the low hanging fruit of easy to get people,

00:42:50 ◼   ► well I got them already.

00:42:51 ◼   ► So now I have to get the harder to get people

00:42:52 ◼   ► if I want my business to maintain and grow its user base.

00:42:57 ◼   ► And so I started buying search ads when they came out

00:42:59 ◼   ► and I've at various times paid reasonable amounts

00:43:04 ◼   ► and various times when I wasn't paying attention

00:43:07 ◼   ► paid unreasonable amounts.

00:43:08 ◼   ► And a number of, I think I have a number of takeaways

00:43:12 ◼   ► Number one, I unfortunately see search ads

00:43:17 ◼   ► as a necessary thing in today's App Store environment.

00:43:22 ◼   ► Like if you want people to find your app,

00:43:25 ◼   ► if you wanna grow your user base, even for free apps,

00:43:28 ◼   ► you gotta do search ads.

00:43:29 ◼   ► And whatever Apple says about the value of the App Store

00:43:34 ◼   ► in terms of discoverability that they are providing,

00:43:39 ◼   ► That was more true in the very distant past.

00:43:42 ◼   ► Recently, the App Store is just a giant search engine

00:43:46 ◼   ► and if you wanna rank highly, you have to play games.

00:43:49 ◼   ► And those games range from just being good,

00:43:53 ◼   ► which is, that helps, but also you gotta play games

00:43:55 ◼   ► like buying search ads or keyword spamming

00:43:58 ◼   ► or doing unscrupulous things that I don't and won't do.

00:44:03 ◼   ► And so, I view a lot of this stuff

00:44:08 ◼   ► as the necessary evil that it is.

00:44:11 ◼   ► A lot of this is within Apple's control

00:44:12 ◼   ► to make better though, and they just don't.

00:44:15 ◼   ► Like, the product page thing that you just mentioned, Casey,

00:44:19 ◼   ► like this is like the new thing that there's,

00:44:21 ◼   ► you know, they've been adding new ad units

00:44:22 ◼   ► over the last few months.

00:44:24 ◼   ► They added, they first, a while back,

00:44:26 ◼   ► maybe six months ago now, they added a unit where like,

00:44:30 ◼   ► if you go to the search box,

00:44:33 ◼   ► before you even type anything in,

00:44:35 ◼   ► there's an ad unit that shows right below it.

00:44:37 ◼   ► And Apple tries to use their ranking system

00:44:40 ◼   ► or intelligence or whatever they call it

00:44:43 ◼   ► to appropriately place personalized ads in that spot.

00:44:48 ◼   ► So I thought, well, let me try it.

00:44:51 ◼   ► So I created a campaign to use that spot.

00:44:55 ◼   ► I gave it, I forget, maybe a few hundred dollars,

00:44:57 ◼   ► just to try it out, to see like,

00:44:58 ◼   ► all right, what can I get for this?

00:45:00 ◼   ► It burned through the money so comically fast

00:45:04 ◼   ► and I got almost no installs from it.

00:45:07 ◼   ► It was terribly targeted.

00:45:09 ◼   ► Whatever they were doing to target that,

00:45:11 ◼   ► and they gave you very little control over it,

00:45:14 ◼   ► it was awful, it was just setting money on fire.

00:45:17 ◼   ► So that was fun, okay.

00:45:19 ◼   ► In the regular search ads that I've been using for years,

00:45:23 ◼   ► the relevance algorithms are still comically bad.

00:45:28 ◼   ► And you don't have to trust developers

00:45:30 ◼   ► to know that Apple's App Store relevance

00:45:32 ◼   ► or algorithms are terrible.

00:45:34 ◼   ► just search for any keyword in the App Store.

00:45:36 ◼   ► And you'll see for yourself that half the results

00:45:39 ◼   ► are really poorly matched to that keyword,

00:45:42 ◼   ► that the rankings of things that you think

00:45:44 ◼   ► should be higher are not, and they're beaten out

00:45:47 ◼   ► by apps that kind of play the scam system better.

00:45:51 ◼   ► And see for yourself, you'll see the App Store search

00:45:56 ◼   ► and relevance and ranking algorithms are still extremely

00:46:01 ◼   ► like web 1.0, rudimentary, very simplistic,

00:46:06 ◼   ► not having learned any lessons from the web basically.

00:46:10 ◼   ► You know, it's exactly, it's like searching Yahoo in 1997.

00:46:15 ◼   ► Like it's that level of sophistication.

00:46:17 ◼   ► Like you know when Google came around

00:46:18 ◼   ► and like made everything better with PageRank

00:46:20 ◼   ► and all these like fraud detection algorithms

00:46:22 ◼   ► and they like stopped using like keyword stuffing

00:46:24 ◼   ► as a thing, Apple seems to have learned

00:46:26 ◼   ► none of those lessons and the App Store search

00:46:30 ◼   ► and relevance algorithms are really rudimentary.

00:46:32 ◼   ► It's like comp sci 101.

00:46:33 ◼   ► I've written search engines that are better

00:46:35 ◼   ► than the app store search engine

00:46:36 ◼   ► and that's not saying much

00:46:37 ◼   ► 'cause it's never been my full-time job.

00:46:38 ◼   ► So the ranking algorithms are terrible.

00:46:41 ◼   ► When they do things like show something on the product page

00:46:44 ◼   ► but you can't buy a certain product page specifically,

00:46:47 ◼   ► you can just say put my app on relevant product pages.

00:46:50 ◼   ► What that tells me is that's also gonna probably

00:46:54 ◼   ► be setting money on fire.

00:46:55 ◼   ► Now am I going to try it?

00:46:56 ◼   ► Of course.

00:46:56 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:46:57 ◼   ► 'Cause that's what we have to do as developers.

00:46:59 ◼   ► "Sure, I'm gonna try it.

00:47:00 ◼   ► "I'll probably set a few hundred dollars

00:47:02 ◼   ► "to a thousand dollars on fire just trying that out."

00:47:05 ◼   ► That's part of the business.

00:47:06 ◼   ► You try buying ads.

00:47:07 ◼   ► I have burned more money on less effective ads before,

00:47:10 ◼   ► so I'm going to try it, but I have little hope for it.

00:47:13 ◼   ► And it seems like what Apple is doing

00:47:16 ◼   ► is just gradually increasing the ad load

00:47:21 ◼   ► in many places around the app store and the iPhone.

00:47:23 ◼   ► And it's not hard to see why they're doing this.

00:47:26 ◼   ► The heavily growing part of the company,

00:47:29 ◼   ► When the hardware seems to be mostly mature/stagnant,

00:47:33 ◼   ► the growing parts of the company largely are quote,

00:47:36 ◼   ► services.

00:47:38 ◼   ► Services is a wonderful euphemism

00:47:41 ◼   ► for what's actually going on.

00:47:43 ◼   ► What services seems to be largely comprised of,

00:47:48 ◼   ► composed of, I always get those wrong,

00:47:50 ◼   ► is app store revenue.

00:47:52 ◼   ► That's a huge chunk of it.

00:47:55 ◼   ► App store revenue is itself a huge chunk

00:47:59 ◼   ► of the 30% cut and everything, but also search ads.

00:48:03 ◼   ► And this is a massive business.

00:48:05 ◼   ► Facebook has made a ton of money in app install ads

00:48:07 ◼   ► over the years, Twitter has made some money,

00:48:10 ◼   ► whatever they were capable of figuring out

00:48:11 ◼   ► through all their crappy leadership with app install ads.

00:48:14 ◼   ► App install ads are a really big deal,

00:48:16 ◼   ► and they make a ton of money for whoever's doing them,

00:48:18 ◼   ► and Apple has put themselves in the position

00:48:20 ◼   ► to make the most money doing it,

00:48:21 ◼   ► while also kneecapping everybody else who was doing it,

00:48:23 ◼   ► so yay, good for Apple.

00:48:25 ◼   ► So what this means is that app install ads,

00:48:29 ◼   ► They're a huge deal, but Apple has huge incentives

00:48:34 ◼   ► to keep tightening the screws on the App Store,

00:48:37 ◼   ► to not give up a dime that actually matters,

00:48:40 ◼   ► and to not only not lighten up on the fees and stuff,

00:48:45 ◼   ► but to keep adding more ways in which we as developers

00:48:50 ◼   ► need to be paying them more money,

00:48:52 ◼   ► because that's a huge growth area of their business

00:48:55 ◼   ► when they're running out of huge growth areas

00:48:56 ◼   ► in their business.

00:48:57 ◼   ► So this is only going to continue.

00:49:00 ◼   ► There is no doubt in my mind this is gonna keep happening.

00:49:03 ◼   ► They're gonna keep adding more and more ads

00:49:05 ◼   ► around the phone and more and more ads

00:49:08 ◼   ► specifically around the App Store.

00:49:10 ◼   ► Whether it's in product pages, who knows?

00:49:13 ◼   ► Maybe when you launch an app,

00:49:14 ◼   ► they'll put up a little sheet sometimes saying,

00:49:16 ◼   ► hey, maybe you wanna try XYZ Tweetbot instead.

00:49:20 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:49:22 ◼   ► They're gonna keep doing this crap

00:49:23 ◼   ► because this is the business they are now in.

00:49:26 ◼   ► Apple is now an ad company and they make a ton of money

00:49:30 ◼   ► in a very important growth area

00:49:32 ◼   ► via extraction from app developers.

00:49:35 ◼   ► So that's what this is.

00:49:37 ◼   ► I hate that this is what it's become,

00:49:38 ◼   ► however this is the reality of the business.

00:49:40 ◼   ► This is what it has become

00:49:42 ◼   ► and they're gonna keep making really crappy ad units

00:49:46 ◼   ► that have really crappy search relevance algorithms

00:49:48 ◼   ► and I'm gonna keep spending a whole bunch of money on them

00:49:50 ◼   ► because I have to.

00:49:51 ◼   ► - How do you really feel?

00:49:53 ◼   ► You know, I recently read after Steve,

00:49:56 ◼   ► the, what is this, a trip, mickle,

00:49:58 ◼   ► I forget the guy's name, it was a great name.

00:50:01 ◼   ► Anyway, the book I had mixed feelings about,

00:50:03 ◼   ► I really encourage you if you're an Upgrade Plus member,

00:50:06 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that it was discussed

00:50:08 ◼   ► on the October 3rd episode in the Upgrade Plus segment

00:50:11 ◼   ► and I think I landed between Mike and Jason.

00:50:15 ◼   ► Jason seemed to really dislike it

00:50:16 ◼   ► and Mike seemed to really like it

00:50:18 ◼   ► and I was kind of in the middle.

00:50:20 ◼   ► But one of the theses, thes, the psi of the book was,

00:50:25 ◼   ► thesis, um, the thesis, this is, this is, this is, of the book was that, you know,

00:50:30 ◼   ► all Tim Cook cares about is money and in businessy things and he ruins

00:50:35 ◼   ► everything. And I think that that's, uh, not necessarily accurate,

00:50:39 ◼   ► but if you are to take it as accurate, I think this is one of those ways where,

00:50:43 ◼   ► you know, Apple needs to show growth, like you were saying, Marco,

00:50:47 ◼   ► and it seems that this is an easy way

00:50:49 ◼   ► for them to get growth without putting

00:50:51 ◼   ► a whole heck of a lot of effort in.

00:50:53 ◼   ► And from a business perspective,

00:50:55 ◼   ► I think this makes a ton of sense,

00:50:57 ◼   ► and I think it's smart.

00:50:59 ◼   ► From a user perspective, I think it's super gross,

00:51:02 ◼   ► and I don't like it at all.

00:51:03 ◼   ► Because in a world where so much of our lives

00:51:08 ◼   ► are inundated by ads, including this very program,

00:51:12 ◼   ► if you don't happen to be an ATP member,

00:51:14 ◼   ► by the way, ATP.fm/join.

00:51:17 ◼   ► - We got sponsored this week by ATP membership.

00:51:19 ◼   ► - Right, no I mean, obviously we try,

00:51:23 ◼   ► genuinely we try to do our best to make sure

00:51:25 ◼   ► that we only present ads that we think will be

00:51:26 ◼   ► genuinely relevant to the people that listen to the show.

00:51:29 ◼   ► - Have you tried listening to Upgrade?

00:51:31 ◼   ► Cortex?

00:51:31 ◼   ► Connected?

00:51:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:51:33 ◼   ► - So in any case, it's not a great look for Apple,

00:51:37 ◼   ► which is this thing that seems to be resisting,

00:51:41 ◼   ► just cranking out dollar bills by way of advertising.

00:51:46 ◼   ► and instead is trying to crank out dollar bills by making good products.

00:51:51 ◼   ► And now it seems to be falling and allowing itself to be overcome by the lure of the almighty

00:52:00 ◼   ► ad dollar.

00:52:01 ◼   ► And that's just a bummer.

00:52:03 ◼   ► I feel like one of the things that I love about Apple TV+ as an example is that I'm

00:52:10 ◼   ► not getting interrupted after the very beginning.

00:52:13 ◼   ► This is what's been great about Netflix until soon when it starts having ads here

00:52:17 ◼   ► But you know

00:52:18 ◼   ► it's one of the great things about a lot of these services and now we're coming back around to let's put ads everywhere and

00:52:23 ◼   ► It just stinks and and and I feel like I've always perceived Apple as being better than this which is probably

00:52:31 ◼   ► I don't know if ignorant is the right word, but probably wishful thinking on my part

00:52:35 ◼   ► But I completely concur Marco like there's no way that this

00:52:38 ◼   ► Faucet is going to be turned back off and if anything it's going to be opened even wider with time

00:52:43 ◼   ► And it's just, I don't care for it.

00:52:46 ◼   ► I wish it was different.

00:52:47 ◼   ► - And to be clear also,

00:52:48 ◼   ► there is value in App Store search ads.

00:52:52 ◼   ► I was just saying basically,

00:52:54 ◼   ► yeah, it sucks that we have to do it.

00:52:55 ◼   ► But the reality is, there is so many apps out there

00:52:59 ◼   ► that again, as developers,

00:53:00 ◼   ► you kinda do have to do stuff like this.

00:53:02 ◼   ► If you're lucky, you can get away with not having

00:53:06 ◼   ► paid promotion of your app,

00:53:09 ◼   ► but even then, that only lasts for maybe

00:53:11 ◼   ► if you have a good launch.

00:53:12 ◼   ► great, then you'll have like, you know,

00:53:14 ◼   ► if the blogs write you up and you get press

00:53:16 ◼   ► or you get, you know, some little bit of traction,

00:53:18 ◼   ► that's great, but you're still at some point

00:53:20 ◼   ► gonna have to go to paid promotion if you want growth.

00:53:22 ◼   ► That's just what happens.

00:53:24 ◼   ► Trust me, I've been on this ride before.

00:53:26 ◼   ► This is what happens to everybody at some point.

00:53:28 ◼   ► Whether it's worth it or not, that's a different story.

00:53:31 ◼   ► And that's hard, it's hard to make work, really.

00:53:34 ◼   ► And again, I've done a lot of different paid promotion

00:53:36 ◼   ► and it definitely has not all been worth it.

00:53:40 ◼   ► In fact, I would say only a very minuscule part of it

00:53:44 ◼   ► has been worth it, but again, you don't know,

00:53:46 ◼   ► the famous saying, you don't know which half

00:53:47 ◼   ► of your ad dollars are working until you've spent them,

00:53:50 ◼   ► and even then, not always.

00:53:51 ◼   ► But anyway, if the search ad system was better,

00:53:56 ◼   ► like if it actually had better ranking,

00:53:59 ◼   ► better relevance matching, just in general,

00:54:01 ◼   ► if it was less dumb about what ads it chose to show

00:54:06 ◼   ► and when and how, I would actually like it.

00:54:09 ◼   ► as a developer and theoretically even as a user

00:54:12 ◼   ► it could occasionally help.

00:54:14 ◼   ► But the way it is now, it just reeks of Apple's

00:54:19 ◼   ► crappy mediocrity when they don't have to compete

00:54:22 ◼   ► because of the way the App Store is.

00:54:24 ◼   ► And of all the issues and attitudes that come up therein,

00:54:29 ◼   ► App Store search ads suck because they're really half-assed.

00:54:34 ◼   ► That's why Apple does a terrible job

00:54:37 ◼   ► of search ranking and relevancy

00:54:39 ◼   ► and all of us are burning money unnecessarily,

00:54:42 ◼   ► like, God, you wouldn't believe

00:54:43 ◼   ► what they think Overcast is sometimes.

00:54:46 ◼   ► It's not hard, okay?

00:54:48 ◼   ► But because it's such a sealed box,

00:54:52 ◼   ► you can't see what they're doing with their relevancy

00:54:55 ◼   ► and you only have very little control.

00:54:59 ◼   ► There's this whole interface, I do the advanced login,

00:55:01 ◼   ► there's this whole thing where you can set certain keywords,

00:55:04 ◼   ► you can set them as exact or not exact,

00:55:05 ◼   ► you can set the negative keywords,

00:55:06 ◼   ► say don't match this, don't match broadly this

00:55:09 ◼   ► or exactly this, and there's all sorts of things

00:55:10 ◼   ► you can do there, but the basic relevance,

00:55:14 ◼   ► you end up just cleaning up after their mistakes

00:55:18 ◼   ► so often with like, all right, no, even though

00:55:21 ◼   ► the LLC name is Overcast Radio LLC, okay,

00:55:26 ◼   ► don't match me against radio apps, okay, fine.

00:55:28 ◼   ► Well then, why are you matching me against

00:55:31 ◼   ► free music downloader apps?

00:55:34 ◼   ► Oh, I can kinda see, you know, it's a podcast

00:55:36 ◼   ► Okay, well, let's turn that off.

00:55:39 ◼   ► Oh, wait, now here's all these apps

00:55:41 ◼   ► that literally just like exist to rip off Spotify,

00:55:43 ◼   ► to like download Spotify songs

00:55:45 ◼   ► that pass the DRM or whatever.

00:55:47 ◼   ► Why am I being ranting against those?

00:55:48 ◼   ► Oh, it's considered a news app,

00:55:51 ◼   ► so I'm being ranting against police scanners?

00:55:53 ◼   ► What?

00:55:54 ◼   ► Like, and this is what using search ads is.

00:55:57 ◼   ► It's a constant battle of going through

00:56:00 ◼   ► what they think your app is

00:56:02 ◼   ► and what they think it's relevant to

00:56:03 ◼   ► and just saying, oh, not that, not that, not that,

00:56:06 ◼   ► not that, like it's not any of these crazy things

00:56:09 ◼   ► that Google's relevance algorithms that are actually good

00:56:12 ◼   ► would never in a million years guess

00:56:15 ◼   ► that you were relevant to XYZ,

00:56:17 ◼   ► but Apple's algorithms are crap.

00:56:19 ◼   ► And so what that results in is not only

00:56:22 ◼   ► is the experience crappy for users

00:56:24 ◼   ► because they're getting ads that don't make sense,

00:56:26 ◼   ► but then the experience for developers is

00:56:29 ◼   ► we're not finding customers we could find

00:56:31 ◼   ► and we're paying too much for it.

00:56:33 ◼   ► Because the worse ads are targeted,

00:56:36 ◼   ► the more you pay as the advertiser

00:56:38 ◼   ► to eventually reach the right people.

00:56:41 ◼   ► So it's just, ugh, the whole system,

00:56:43 ◼   ► it's a crappy system poorly implemented

00:56:46 ◼   ► to do something that benefits mostly just Apple.

00:56:50 ◼   ► And if they did a better job of it,

00:56:52 ◼   ► it could be a lot better

00:56:54 ◼   ► and could benefit a lot more people.

00:56:55 ◼   ► But it's just such a crappy mediocre system

00:56:57 ◼   ► the way they've done it.

00:56:58 ◼   ► And they have seemingly neither the will

00:57:01 ◼   ► nor frankly the ability to make it any better.

00:57:04 ◼   ► - Jon, you collected some quotes.

00:57:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is the sort of snarky, cynical take

00:57:09 ◼   ► from a few people in our community I thought was good.

00:57:11 ◼   ► This is from Paul Haddad, he's the Tweetbot person, right?

00:57:15 ◼   ► He says, "Coming next year, download ads.

00:57:17 ◼   ► "Instead of downloading the app that you want,

00:57:19 ◼   ► "the App Store will randomly download

00:57:21 ◼   ► "the highest bidding app."

00:57:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:57:23 ◼   ► So that's the cynical take there of like,

00:57:25 ◼   ► what will Apple not take money for?

00:57:28 ◼   ► 'cause in some respects, taking money for advertising,

00:57:32 ◼   ► search advertising, is trading off on the user experience.

00:57:36 ◼   ► Now, like Morgan said, sometimes not always

00:57:39 ◼   ► because advertising can be useful to people.

00:57:41 ◼   ► You may be looking for an app

00:57:43 ◼   ► and you don't know what you're looking for,

00:57:44 ◼   ► so you search for something

00:57:45 ◼   ► and then one of the ads is actually relevant.

00:57:46 ◼   ► If the algorithm actually works for once,

00:57:48 ◼   ► you're like, oh, maybe I'll look at that app.

00:57:50 ◼   ► So there is some user benefit.

00:57:52 ◼   ► - That's basically what Instagram is.

00:57:54 ◼   ► It's a giant shopping app that occasionally

00:57:56 ◼   ► you can see pictures of your friends in.

00:57:57 ◼   ► - Right, and so there is some upside to that to users,

00:58:00 ◼   ► but there's an awful lot of downside,

00:58:01 ◼   ► which is why so many things, including our podcast,

00:58:04 ◼   ► allow people to pay more money to not see ads,

00:58:06 ◼   ► because at a certain point it just gets annoying.

00:58:07 ◼   ► So how far will they go?

00:58:09 ◼   ► Well, they're putting ads for other supposedly relevant

00:58:13 ◼   ► products on the actual product page.

00:58:15 ◼   ► You drill all the way down to the overcast page,

00:58:18 ◼   ► and then there's other things advertised there.

00:58:19 ◼   ► So maybe, would they allow a different app

00:58:21 ◼   ► to be downloaded randomly?

00:58:22 ◼   ► Because again, the way they make money,

00:58:25 ◼   ► let's have an auction.

00:58:26 ◼   ► Who wants their app to be downloaded

00:58:28 ◼   ► one out of every 1,000 times that Twitter is downloaded?

00:58:30 ◼   ► So bid against that, Tweetbot.

00:58:32 ◼   ► Maybe you'll get downloaded by accident

00:58:34 ◼   ► and the user will hate you.

00:58:35 ◼   ► Sebastian Dewitt says,

00:58:37 ◼   ► "Apple shouldn't get into the ad business.

00:58:38 ◼   ► "Pushing ads in their platform opposes their goals

00:58:41 ◼   ► "and core values and will only erode user trust.

00:58:43 ◼   ► "Are the relatively minor profits worth the price

00:58:45 ◼   ► "of bad experience and lost goodwill?"

00:58:47 ◼   ► I don't think the profits are minor.

00:58:49 ◼   ► That's the one problem with this statement here?

00:58:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the thing.

00:58:53 ◼   ► It's a lot of money.

00:58:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean we don't know exactly

00:58:56 ◼   ► 'cause they don't break it down to that way,

00:58:57 ◼   ► but there is large potential upside

00:59:00 ◼   ► and they're already potentially making

00:59:01 ◼   ► a lot of money on that, so it's not minor.

00:59:03 ◼   ► But this gets to what a lot of people feel like.

00:59:05 ◼   ► They're like, this doesn't feel like a premium experience.

00:59:08 ◼   ► It goes against Apple's quote unquote core values,

00:59:10 ◼   ► like the user experience above everything else,

00:59:13 ◼   ► a premium experience that you pay more money for,

00:59:15 ◼   ► a premium experience doesn't tend to have

00:59:16 ◼   ► as many ads or any ads, right?

00:59:18 ◼   ► So I definitely feel that.

00:59:20 ◼   ► And here's what MJ Tsai said,

00:59:22 ◼   ► "Your core values are what you do on an ongoing basis,

00:59:25 ◼   ► "not the talking points that you broadcast

00:59:27 ◼   ► "or what you did 20 years ago under different leadership."

00:59:29 ◼   ► This is the cynical take of saying,

00:59:30 ◼   ► "Apple sounds like it up on stage,"

00:59:32 ◼   ► saying, "Here are our values, and we value this,

00:59:35 ◼   ► "and we value user experience,

00:59:36 ◼   ► "and we respect the user,

00:59:38 ◼   ► "and we have the whole privacy angle

00:59:40 ◼   ► "and all these core values."

00:59:41 ◼   ► And it's like, you can say that all you want,

00:59:43 ◼   ► but your actual values are what you do, right?

00:59:47 ◼   ► And not what you did 20 years ago under different leadership

00:59:50 ◼   ► is implying that different leadership, maybe Steve Jobs,

00:59:53 ◼   ► Steve Jobs was kind of annoyed by the same things

00:59:57 ◼   ► that the users that we just read the quotes from

00:59:59 ◼   ► are annoyed by and would not want his company

01:00:01 ◼   ► to do something that annoys him,

01:00:03 ◼   ► whereas Tim Cook either has a higher tolerance

01:00:05 ◼   ► for annoyance or his desire to be a successful company

01:00:10 ◼   ► and be a success as a CEO overrides the annoyance

01:00:15 ◼   ► that he might feel dealing with this.

01:00:16 ◼   ► And that gets to the larger point about search ads

01:00:19 ◼   ► and advertising and stuff like that.

01:00:22 ◼   ► The reason it is inescapable is unfortunate

01:00:26 ◼   ► for people like the people I just quoted

01:00:29 ◼   ► and us on this program who don't like ads.

01:00:32 ◼   ► Most people have determined over years and years and years

01:00:37 ◼   ► that they will gladly watch ads

01:00:39 ◼   ► in exchange for paying less money.

01:00:41 ◼   ► It's not like they're suffering under the yoke of ads.

01:00:44 ◼   ► When given the choice to do something free with ads,

01:00:47 ◼   ► people will take that choice.

01:00:48 ◼   ► Most people will take that choice.

01:00:50 ◼   ► And it's not even because they don't have the money

01:00:52 ◼   ► or couldn't pay for it.

01:00:53 ◼   ► They just can't be bothered to pay the $1.99

01:00:57 ◼   ► to get rid of the ad banner

01:00:58 ◼   ► at the bottom of their solitaire game.

01:01:00 ◼   ► They'll have that stupid ad banner there rotating

01:01:02 ◼   ► and burning their phone's battery for literal decade

01:01:06 ◼   ► and never pay the $1.99 to get rid of the ad.

01:01:10 ◼   ► That's the choice people make.

01:01:11 ◼   ► It's been made in every medium, radio, television.

01:01:14 ◼   ► Yes, there's always been things that you can pay for

01:01:15 ◼   ► that have less or no ads or fewer ads,

01:01:19 ◼   ► but the vast majority of people go,

01:01:21 ◼   ► "Eh, I'll just take the cheap one with the ads."

01:01:23 ◼   ► It's one of the reasons Amazon made the Kindle

01:01:25 ◼   ► with special offers, right, with ads in it.

01:01:27 ◼   ► If people can pay less for a Kindle,

01:01:29 ◼   ► I'm like, "Eh, whatever, I'll just ignore the ads.

01:01:31 ◼   ► "It's not a big deal."

01:01:32 ◼   ► I'm not saying everybody loves ads

01:01:34 ◼   ► or that they're the ultimate evil,

01:01:36 ◼   ► but I'm just saying they have utility

01:01:38 ◼   ► for people with products reaching customers,

01:01:41 ◼   ► and customers writ large have decided,

01:01:43 ◼   ► "Yeah, we'll tolerate ads.

01:01:45 ◼   ► I'll tolerate ads if they help me pay for the newspaper.

01:01:47 ◼   ► My newspaper will only be 25 cents

01:01:48 ◼   ► because the advertisers pay for everything.

01:01:50 ◼   ► And sometimes when I want to classify it,

01:01:51 ◼   ► it's nice that the ads are in there, right?

01:01:54 ◼   ► The human population will accept ads

01:01:59 ◼   ► in exchange for hopefully some amount of money not being,

01:02:03 ◼   ► some amount of cost not being passed on to them.

01:02:05 ◼   ► That's why it's basically unavoidable,

01:02:07 ◼   ► especially as Apple slowly removes

01:02:10 ◼   ► the ability of other people to do effective

01:02:13 ◼   ► install-based ads where they can determine

01:02:15 ◼   ► with 100% certainty that you ran this ad

01:02:18 ◼   ► and this number of people installed your app because of it

01:02:21 ◼   ► and we're charging you this much.

01:02:23 ◼   ► This sort of direct connection between

01:02:25 ◼   ► you pay for advertising and you can see exactly

01:02:27 ◼   ► how effective it is, Apple has been slowly breaking that.

01:02:31 ◼   ► And so it's leaving them as the,

01:02:32 ◼   ► not the only advertiser for app vendors,

01:02:36 ◼   ► but the best one, the most powerful one

01:02:38 ◼   ► because they own the platform,

01:02:39 ◼   ► they have access to all the information

01:02:41 ◼   ► and they can choose how much they want to expose to people

01:02:43 ◼   ► how much privacy they want to preserve, so on and so forth.

01:02:46 ◼   ► But it means also that as they edge other people out,

01:02:50 ◼   ► they have to fulfill the role of advertiser.

01:02:52 ◼   ► Because if they edged everybody out and said,

01:02:53 ◼   ► "Yeah, but we're also not gonna do any ads,"

01:02:56 ◼   ► that wouldn't benefit the market for apps on the phone.

01:02:59 ◼   ► Because some users, again, not that they wanna see ads,

01:03:03 ◼   ► but some users want to make that trade-off

01:03:04 ◼   ► of seeing ads in exchange for not paying for things.

01:03:07 ◼   ► And also, people with products

01:03:10 ◼   ► wanna get them in front of customers,

01:03:12 ◼   ► potential customers.

01:03:14 ◼   ► And if Apple refused their money and said,

01:03:15 ◼   ► "No, no, no, we're not gonna run an ad platform.

01:03:17 ◼   ► "You can't run any ads in the app store at all.

01:03:19 ◼   ► "Oh, and by the way, Facebook,

01:03:20 ◼   ► "we're not letting you run effective ads anymore

01:03:23 ◼   ► "for ad installs."

01:03:24 ◼   ► Like that would be not good for the overall market.

01:03:27 ◼   ► So we think of it as a quote unquote, "Necessary evil."

01:03:32 ◼   ► But I think it's just a natural part of any market

01:03:34 ◼   ► that advertising is a thing that has value

01:03:37 ◼   ► to the extent that the market is weirdly shaped

01:03:40 ◼   ► because the platform owner has a stranglehold on it,

01:03:43 ◼   ► that causes ads to be more expensive than they should be.

01:03:46 ◼   ► 'Cause Marco talked about how his ads,

01:03:48 ◼   ► how the relevance algorithms are crappy or whatever.

01:03:50 ◼   ► In a more efficient market,

01:03:51 ◼   ► those ads would become cheaper because they're crappy.

01:03:54 ◼   ► But when the only game in town is Apple,

01:03:56 ◼   ► they don't become that much cheaper.

01:03:57 ◼   ► I mean, I suppose all the people buying the ads say,

01:03:59 ◼   ► "I'm not gonna bother buying the ads."

01:04:00 ◼   ► But when it's the only game in town,

01:04:03 ◼   ► people just keep end up coming back to them and say,

01:04:04 ◼   ► "Well, maybe I'll try this."

01:04:05 ◼   ► And so people end up throwing money at it to say,

01:04:07 ◼   ► "Maybe if I do this, maybe do that.

01:04:09 ◼   ► "Maybe I'll try this ad slot.

01:04:10 ◼   ► Maybe I'll put this keyword, maybe we'll do this.

01:04:12 ◼   ► And it's probably not a particularly efficient market

01:04:14 ◼   ► in terms of pricing those ads at what their actual value is,

01:04:18 ◼   ► especially if they don't do the complete connection

01:04:20 ◼   ► of telling you exactly how effective your ad is

01:04:23 ◼   ► in each slot and all that stuff.

01:04:24 ◼   ► So I think it's not particularly healthy,

01:04:27 ◼   ► but it's unavoidable that there will be ads.

01:04:30 ◼   ► And the final point related to the inevitability

01:04:33 ◼   ► of advertising and what it does to companies

01:04:35 ◼   ► and whether any individual likes that or not

01:04:39 ◼   ► was on the September 30th episode of dithering,

01:04:42 ◼   ► John Groob and Ben Thompson's podcast.

01:04:43 ◼   ► It was around eight minutes and 40 seconds into the podcast.

01:04:47 ◼   ► Ben said, they were talking about something related

01:04:49 ◼   ► to advertising, I believe, and Ben said,

01:04:50 ◼   ► "I wonder if an advertising-based company

01:04:52 ◼   ► "is constitutionally incapable of really excelling

01:04:55 ◼   ► "or putting the necessary investment

01:04:56 ◼   ► "into any other sort of business model."

01:04:59 ◼   ► They were talking about Stadia and Google and everything,

01:05:01 ◼   ► how Google seems to have a hard time making products

01:05:03 ◼   ► that you sell to consumers,

01:05:04 ◼   ► but they're really great at advertising.

01:05:06 ◼   ► And so that's the question here, the open question.

01:05:09 ◼   ► Is it possible for an ad-driven business

01:05:11 ◼   ► to make good products?

01:05:13 ◼   ► And on the flip side, is it possible

01:05:14 ◼   ► for a product company to do ads well?

01:05:17 ◼   ► Despite Marco saying Apple is a services company

01:05:20 ◼   ► and they're an advertising company,

01:05:21 ◼   ► they're still a product company.

01:05:23 ◼   ► That is what they're best at.

01:05:24 ◼   ► Apple's attempts to get into the ad business

01:05:26 ◼   ► have not been smashing successes.

01:05:28 ◼   ► iAd wasn't great, even the search ads

01:05:30 ◼   ► showed that they're not really good at being,

01:05:33 ◼   ► at selling ads.

01:05:34 ◼   ► They're good at controlling their platforms

01:05:36 ◼   ► such that they have less competition,

01:05:38 ◼   ► And then it's like, well, what are you gonna do?

01:05:39 ◼   ► We're practically the only game in town

01:05:41 ◼   ► or we're the best game in town.

01:05:42 ◼   ► But looking at them compared to,

01:05:44 ◼   ► let's say Facebook or Google,

01:05:46 ◼   ► both of those two companies are much better at selling ads

01:05:49 ◼   ► and making ad marketplaces than Apple is.

01:05:52 ◼   ► And then the Google Stadia example was,

01:05:54 ◼   ► what about these companies like Google and Facebook

01:05:56 ◼   ► that make all their money basically from ads,

01:05:59 ◼   ► but they also suddenly wanna make products?

01:06:00 ◼   ► Oh, Google wants to sell Stadia,

01:06:02 ◼   ► which was a little video game controller

01:06:04 ◼   ► and a cloud gaming scenario.

01:06:05 ◼   ► They wanna sell pixel phones or tablets

01:06:08 ◼   ► or that weird sphere-shaped speaker

01:06:10 ◼   ► that never shipped or whatever.

01:06:11 ◼   ► Like when Facebook tried to make a phone too

01:06:13 ◼   ► and Facebook bought Oculus and it got the headset things.

01:06:16 ◼   ► If your company is built around advertising,

01:06:18 ◼   ► can you make good products?

01:06:19 ◼   ► And making this question is setting up

01:06:21 ◼   ► at sort of like two extremes where

01:06:23 ◼   ► if you're really, really good at making products,

01:06:25 ◼   ► it means you care about the user experience,

01:06:27 ◼   ► you're very focused on building physical things

01:06:29 ◼   ► that you sell to individual people

01:06:30 ◼   ► who have to give you money for them.

01:06:33 ◼   ► It's not like an indirect market

01:06:34 ◼   ► where people throw money over a wall

01:06:36 ◼   ► and see if they get some result back,

01:06:37 ◼   ► you have to appeal to actual consumers,

01:06:39 ◼   ► you have to support the products,

01:06:41 ◼   ► as opposed to advertising where it's all about

01:06:44 ◼   ► gathering data and making an efficient market

01:06:46 ◼   ► and giving a small number of quote unquote customers,

01:06:49 ◼   ► being the people who buy ads from you,

01:06:52 ◼   ► giving them access to enough information

01:06:54 ◼   ► to feel like they're making an effective use

01:06:55 ◼   ► of their marketing dollars.

01:06:56 ◼   ► Two very different markets, and historically speaking,

01:06:59 ◼   ► the companies that are good at one

01:07:01 ◼   ► have not been good at the other.

01:07:02 ◼   ► It's not like, Google's good at making phones,

01:07:04 ◼   ► The Pixel phones are good and they've made some good hardware products, but it definitely

01:07:08 ◼   ► is not their strength.

01:07:09 ◼   ► And certainly they haven't turned it into a huge moneymaker.

01:07:11 ◼   ► You would think Google, they make Android, shouldn't they be the biggest seller of Android

01:07:15 ◼   ► phones?

01:07:16 ◼   ► But they are not.

01:07:17 ◼   ► Google Pixel and Nexus before it are not the biggest seller of Android phones.

01:07:21 ◼   ► And on the flip side, Apple, they've got all this money and they've got all this technology.

01:07:24 ◼   ► They should do great in the ad business and historically they have not.

01:07:28 ◼   ► And to the extent they're doing great now, it's because they're fencing out everybody

01:07:30 ◼   ► else with the thing they are good at, which is controlling their platform.

01:07:33 ◼   ► So I do wonder, that's what the commenters are worried about.

01:07:39 ◼   ► If Apple suddenly becomes good at ads, will that change the company that they are?

01:07:43 ◼   ► Will they become worse at making MacBooks and iPhones if they become better at being

01:07:47 ◼   ► ads?

01:07:48 ◼   ► Are those two core strengths and sets of values that are required to excel in both of those

01:07:52 ◼   ► areas opposed to each other?

01:07:54 ◼   ► It's almost like you need to split off into a separate company that is ruthless and cutthroat

01:07:58 ◼   ► and runs its ad business like a real ad business.

01:08:00 ◼   ► On the other side, it's the product company that makes things that appeal to users.

01:08:04 ◼   ► I do worry about that.

01:08:05 ◼   ► That, I feel like, is underlying lots of our fretting about Apple and services.

01:08:10 ◼   ► We talked about this before, not just ads, but just services.

01:08:13 ◼   ► How being a service company, "You pay me money, I give you some network-based service that

01:08:17 ◼   ► you get to use," is different than selling someone a product and making the profit from

01:08:23 ◼   ► that.

01:08:24 ◼   ► I think Apple, I'm not going to say they're in the middle of a transition, but they're

01:08:27 ◼   ► definitely off on their...

01:08:29 ◼   ► what is it, like the finding yourself trip

01:08:31 ◼   ► where they go off to Europe and go backpacking

01:08:33 ◼   ► to see what kind of company do we wanna be.

01:08:36 ◼   ► Services, that's where the money and the growth is,

01:08:39 ◼   ► so we really need to investigate that,

01:08:40 ◼   ► but at the same time, if you ask anybody

01:08:43 ◼   ► in their product organization,

01:08:44 ◼   ► they still really care about making good products

01:08:46 ◼   ► and are trying, big home pot aside,

01:08:48 ◼   ► are trying really hard to make really good products

01:08:50 ◼   ► and for the most part still succeeding,

01:08:52 ◼   ► and I would say if they're trying really hard

01:08:55 ◼   ► to be a great advertising company,

01:08:57 ◼   ► they're still not doing great.

01:09:00 ◼   ► Like I don't, they don't seem to be excelling in that area.

01:09:03 ◼   ► So my hope is that Apple is kind of constitutionally

01:09:08 ◼   ► incapable of being a really good advertising company.

01:09:10 ◼   ► And that's to their credit because in the end,

01:09:12 ◼   ► they are first and foremost a product company

01:09:14 ◼   ► and they will always necessarily sort of

01:09:16 ◼   ► kneecap their advertising business

01:09:19 ◼   ► because they can't do what it takes

01:09:21 ◼   ► or can't organize their entire business around that,

01:09:25 ◼   ► around that type of market.

01:09:27 ◼   ► because it will screw up their products

01:09:29 ◼   ► and they're never gonna do that.

01:09:31 ◼   ► - See, I don't have as much faith in them,

01:09:34 ◼   ► I think, as you do.

01:09:35 ◼   ► It seems like Tim Cook's Apple,

01:09:40 ◼   ► and I don't know if this is him, people below him,

01:09:42 ◼   ► I don't know, but Apple under Tim Cook

01:09:46 ◼   ► prioritizes profits over product quality.

01:09:49 ◼   ► And it's not to say that they always will take

01:09:52 ◼   ► the most cynical route to get there.

01:09:54 ◼   ► They try to blend as much as they can,

01:09:57 ◼   ► but the insidious thing about putting ads and promos

01:10:02 ◼   ► all over your platform for all your new services

01:10:04 ◼   ► and everything is that once you say it's okay to,

01:10:09 ◼   ► for instance, degrade the experience of using the music app

01:10:13 ◼   ► on the phone to constantly, incessantly promote Apple Music

01:10:16 ◼   ► to people who don't subscribe to it until they subscribe,

01:10:19 ◼   ► or to degrade the experience of the App Store

01:10:21 ◼   ► until people get Apple Arcade or whatever.

01:10:24 ◼   ► Once you say it's okay to send promotional push

01:10:29 ◼   ► notifications to make sure people have Apple News

01:10:31 ◼   ► or to promote the new tier of iCloud storage or whatever,

01:10:34 ◼   ► once you break that line and then you see the numbers go up,

01:10:39 ◼   ► it becomes much easier to then justify,

01:10:44 ◼   ► you know what, we're having a bit of a soft quarter,

01:10:47 ◼   ► let's break that line a couple more times

01:10:49 ◼   ► and get those numbers up because we have to.

01:10:51 ◼   ► And then it eventually just becomes,

01:10:53 ◼   ► this is just what we do, what are you talking about?

01:10:55 ◼   ► What do you mean we don't send

01:10:56 ◼   ► promotional push notifications?

01:10:58 ◼   ► What do you mean we don't have ads

01:11:00 ◼   ► and people setting screens for our other products?

01:11:02 ◼   ► What do you mean?

01:11:03 ◼   ► Of course we do that.

01:11:04 ◼   ► Look, we've been doing it for years.

01:11:07 ◼   ► Apple has not only fallen down a slippery slope,

01:11:11 ◼   ► but has jumped off of a slippery cliff

01:11:12 ◼   ► with a lot of these things in the last,

01:11:15 ◼   ► I don't know, five years, maybe more.

01:11:17 ◼   ► They have decided that this is acceptable now,

01:11:20 ◼   ► that the iPhone is no longer purely

01:11:23 ◼   ► about serving their customers.

01:11:25 ◼   ► It is really about serving Apple

01:11:28 ◼   ► and hoping the customers come along for the ride,

01:11:31 ◼   ► but it's turning the customers more into

01:11:33 ◼   ► like a resource to be squeezed.

01:11:35 ◼   ► So instead of just squeezing us on the purchase price

01:11:37 ◼   ► of the iPhone, which is something that we do willingly,

01:11:40 ◼   ► now they are squeezing us as,

01:11:42 ◼   ► let's get those,

01:11:45 ◼   ► what's that profitability per user number

01:11:48 ◼   ► that everyone's always talking about in the industry?

01:11:50 ◼   ► - ARPU, average-- - That's it, yeah.

01:11:52 ◼   ► Yeah, like we're just like ARPU blobs.

01:11:54 ◼   ► They just wanna squeeze us for even more

01:11:57 ◼   ► because we are now like an ongoing resource

01:11:59 ◼   ► for ongoing revenue and there's always new

01:12:03 ◼   ► and new and exciting ways that we can be annoyed

01:12:05 ◼   ► into getting squeezed.

01:12:08 ◼   ► That's what happens here.

01:12:09 ◼   ► That's what all the people making these smart comments,

01:12:12 ◼   ► that's what they're all worried about.

01:12:13 ◼   ► That's what I'm worried about,

01:12:14 ◼   ► that Apple has decided that it is okay

01:12:18 ◼   ► to degrade the user experience in order to promote something

01:12:22 ◼   ► that helps them.

01:12:23 ◼   ► And they just keep doing that more and more and more.

01:12:27 ◼   ► They're converting from a company that makes money

01:12:29 ◼   ► by pleasing customers with really great products

01:12:32 ◼   ► into a company that makes money by badgering their customers

01:12:36 ◼   ► until we give in.

01:12:37 ◼   ► - Oh, the distinction I was making,

01:12:39 ◼   ► like the thing that is keeping Apple

01:12:41 ◼   ► from being an effective advertising-driven business,

01:12:45 ◼   ► is that they're only willing to do all that stuff

01:12:48 ◼   ► for Apple, but they're not gonna sell an ad

01:12:51 ◼   ► in the music app to Spotify.

01:12:53 ◼   ► And if you're an advertising business,

01:12:54 ◼   ► of course you would sell that ad spot.

01:12:56 ◼   ► It's an incredibly valuable ad spot.

01:12:58 ◼   ► Why would you not allow everybody to send,

01:13:00 ◼   ► put advertisements in your notifications,

01:13:02 ◼   ► in the settings screen, in the Apple Music app?

01:13:05 ◼   ► Like, why wouldn't you do that?

01:13:06 ◼   ► That's what an advertising-driven company does.

01:13:09 ◼   ► And as you said, Apple is serving Apple.

01:13:10 ◼   ► It's the joke hierarchy that we've been passing around

01:13:14 ◼   ► our little community for probably multiple decades

01:13:17 ◼   ► of Apple's order of priorities in terms

01:13:20 ◼   ► of what's important to them.

01:13:22 ◼   ► Number one is Apple.

01:13:23 ◼   ► Number two is users.

01:13:24 ◼   ► Number three is developers.

01:13:26 ◼   ► But Apple is number one.

01:13:28 ◼   ► And so, yeah, Apple gets to tell you that you

01:13:30 ◼   ► can buy more iCloud stories.

01:13:32 ◼   ► Apple gets to remind you for the umpteenth time

01:13:34 ◼   ► that you can subscribe to Apple Music.

01:13:35 ◼   ► Apple gets to put an ad in your settings screen.

01:13:38 ◼   ► But an advertising company would sell all those ad spots

01:13:41 ◼   ► to the highest bidder.

01:13:42 ◼   ► And that, I think, Apple is not going to do.

01:13:44 ◼   ► because they still have that,

01:13:46 ◼   ► I mean, it may seem like,

01:13:49 ◼   ► if it was really a slippery source,

01:13:50 ◼   ► they would have just gone all down

01:13:50 ◼   ► and there'd be ads everywhere.

01:13:52 ◼   ► They still don't wanna be that company.

01:13:53 ◼   ► They still wanna sell a premium experience.

01:13:55 ◼   ► It's just that very often I feel like Apple

01:13:58 ◼   ► drinks its own Kool-Aid to the extent that they think,

01:14:01 ◼   ► oh, well, we're sending you, those aren't ads.

01:14:03 ◼   ► We're just telling you about our great products, right?

01:14:05 ◼   ► And that sounds so insane to us.

01:14:07 ◼   ► Like, that doesn't make any sense,

01:14:09 ◼   ► but there is a little bit of that internal thinking, right?

01:14:12 ◼   ► Now, if you really press people,

01:14:14 ◼   ► like, oh yeah, okay, so I guess it is ads

01:14:15 ◼   ► and we try to do it less.

01:14:17 ◼   ► And I bet they would say, but see, it's only us doing that.

01:14:19 ◼   ► And that means, and there is something to this,

01:14:22 ◼   ► that means there will necessarily always be

01:14:24 ◼   ► limited number of things.

01:14:25 ◼   ► Because Apple just doesn't have that much stuff to advertise

01:14:27 ◼   ► and they're only one company.

01:14:29 ◼   ► So you're not going to see 10,000 times more of those ads

01:14:33 ◼   ► if Apple is the only one who can place them.

01:14:35 ◼   ► We're all annoyed because we liked it

01:14:37 ◼   ► when there was zero of those things.

01:14:39 ◼   ► That Apple didn't do it at all because, you know,

01:14:41 ◼   ► again, under the fantasy of Steve Jobs

01:14:43 ◼   ► would never do something like that.

01:14:44 ◼   ► But I wasn't Steve Jobs around for iAd.

01:14:46 ◼   ► I don't know if that's the topic.

01:14:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think the first one, yeah.

01:14:49 ◼   ► - Right, right.

01:14:50 ◼   ► So, but anyway, we would like there to be less of it.

01:14:53 ◼   ► To my earlier point, most of the people on the planet

01:14:57 ◼   ► have shown that they're okay

01:14:58 ◼   ► with some amount of advertising.

01:15:00 ◼   ► That said, the people who buy Apple products

01:15:03 ◼   ► are not most of the people on the planet.

01:15:04 ◼   ► And I have heard complaints about those Apple ads

01:15:07 ◼   ► inside Apple products, because that is a relatively

01:15:09 ◼   ► new thing for people who have been using

01:15:10 ◼   ► Apple products for years.

01:15:12 ◼   ► But mostly people get over it.

01:15:13 ◼   ► And it boggles my mind when people get annoyed,

01:15:15 ◼   ► like, oh, I hate that thing telling me

01:15:16 ◼   ► to buy more iCloud storage.

01:15:17 ◼   ► Let me go back to my Solitaire app

01:15:18 ◼   ► with the flashing ad banner on it

01:15:19 ◼   ► that I've been using for five years.

01:15:20 ◼   ► Pay the dollar 99, oh my God.

01:15:22 ◼   ► Sometimes the apps don't even let you pay the dollar 99,

01:15:24 ◼   ► which is really sad, but.

01:15:26 ◼   ► - Oh my God, by the way, I have, oh, Crafty Craft.

01:15:31 ◼   ► This is the app that Adam uses to mod Minecraft on the iPad,

01:15:36 ◼   ► like to make Minecraft mod.

01:15:37 ◼   ► - Does it have an ad banner on it?

01:15:39 ◼   ► - Oh, you don't know.

01:15:41 ◼   ► - You get to watch a 30-second movie

01:15:42 ◼   ► to continue using the app?

01:15:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, so let me just be clear.

01:15:46 ◼   ► We pay for this, I think it's like $4 a week.

01:15:50 ◼   ► - What? - It's one of those

01:15:51 ◼   ► weekly subscription scams.

01:15:52 ◼   ► We pay for this because it's like a major creative outlet

01:15:55 ◼   ► for them and we wanna support that and everything.

01:15:56 ◼   ► But this is the most abusive, manipulative garbage

01:16:00 ◼   ► I've ever, like, I can't believe Apple lets us in the store.

01:16:04 ◼   ► Not only is it, so you pay for it to get rid of ads,

01:16:08 ◼   ► but then it's still full of ads, just a few,

01:16:10 ◼   ► a few of them, and then they have this like in-game gems

01:16:14 ◼   ► currency that you have to spend to use things

01:16:18 ◼   ► like the save button.

01:16:19 ◼   ► You have to spend gems every time you save something.

01:16:24 ◼   ► - Are you kidding?

01:16:25 ◼   ► - So you run into saves for the day.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Oh my, it, oh, it makes me so angry that like,

01:16:33 ◼   ► this horrific app is the only and best option

01:16:38 ◼   ► to do this on the iPad, and it is just downright abusive

01:16:41 ◼   ► to children, and Apple's making 30% of all that money.

01:16:44 ◼   ► Good for you, Apple, I'm so happy for you.

01:16:47 ◼   ► - Casino games for children, yeah, that's another place

01:16:49 ◼   ► that Apple has decided they're okay with things.

01:16:52 ◼   ► - But it's a good thing that the App Store is protecting us.

01:16:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, the final thing that Casey alluded to before

01:16:58 ◼   ► is there's rumors today, we'll put a link in the show

01:17:01 ◼   ► to the story, I haven't had time to read it

01:17:03 ◼   ► 'cause it just came out today, about they're gonna have

01:17:06 ◼   ► an ad product that they're selling in the TV space.

01:17:09 ◼   ► This, again, is kind of a no-brainer,

01:17:11 ◼   ► the Netflix doing streaming services ads.

01:17:14 ◼   ► Television being sponsored by companies that buy ads

01:17:18 ◼   ► is not a new technology.

01:17:19 ◼   ► It is a thing that the entire world accepts.

01:17:23 ◼   ► And yes, people will pay a premium to get a network

01:17:26 ◼   ► that doesn't have ads like HBO or whatever,

01:17:28 ◼   ► but most television is not HBO.

01:17:31 ◼   ► Most television is television with ads.

01:17:34 ◼   ► And if you give people the choice between Netflix

01:17:36 ◼   ► without ads for more money and Netflix with ads

01:17:38 ◼   ► for less money, a lot of people are gonna take Netflix

01:17:41 ◼   ► with ads.

01:17:42 ◼   ► And Apple has a TV streaming product,

01:17:45 ◼   ► and it seems like they're investigating, you know,

01:17:48 ◼   ► having ads.

01:17:49 ◼   ► Now as someone who doesn't like ads and is willing to pay

01:17:51 ◼   ► to get rid of them, I'm annoyed that Apple TV

01:17:54 ◼   ► always tells me about the other Apple TV shows

01:17:55 ◼   ► before I watch an Apple TV show.

01:17:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, agreed.

01:17:57 ◼   ► - Right?

01:17:58 ◼   ► People who are very sensitive to ads and are willing

01:18:00 ◼   ► to pay money to get rid of them, it's like,

01:18:01 ◼   ► there's nothing I can pay to stop Apple

01:18:03 ◼   ► from telling me about the apple in the apple.

01:18:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:18:07 ◼   ► There's too much apple in my apple, yo dog, right?

01:18:11 ◼   ► And every streaming service is like this.

01:18:12 ◼   ► HBO, you wanna watch a show on HBO?

01:18:14 ◼   ► Let's watch House of the Dragon.

01:18:16 ◼   ► Oh, there's another show on HBO?

01:18:18 ◼   ► Oh, season two of White Lotus is coming out?

01:18:20 ◼   ► A, I already knew that.

01:18:21 ◼   ► B, I'm already gonna watch it.

01:18:22 ◼   ► C, get off my TV!

01:18:24 ◼   ► I wanna watch the show!

01:18:25 ◼   ► I already pay for HBO!

01:18:27 ◼   ► Why are you advertising this to me?

01:18:29 ◼   ► I can't pay again!

01:18:30 ◼   ► Do you, I mean, you're afraid I'm gonna cancel,

01:18:32 ◼   ► because I'm gonna get done with House of Dragon

01:18:33 ◼   ► and I'm not gonna know that the new season

01:18:34 ◼   ► of White Lotus is coming out, I'm gonna cancel HBO.

01:18:37 ◼   ► That's just me, but I am not like most people.

01:18:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:18:41 ◼   ► And so it's the same situation with Apple.

01:18:42 ◼   ► If you buy an Apple device increasingly,

01:18:44 ◼   ► you will get ads for Apple Things.

01:18:45 ◼   ► If you buy the Apple streaming service, Apple TV+,

01:18:49 ◼   ► you will get ads for Apple Things.

01:18:50 ◼   ► And now, just like its competitors,

01:18:52 ◼   ► Apple seems to be investigating the idea

01:18:54 ◼   ► that perhaps there will be other ad slots

01:18:56 ◼   ► that people can buy in Apple TV+.

01:18:58 ◼   ► Will there be a different tier

01:18:59 ◼   ► for people to subscribe with more ads?

01:19:01 ◼   ► Will there only be certain shows?

01:19:03 ◼   ► We'll see, but it's kind of not possible to avoid that.

01:19:07 ◼   ► If you were in charge of Apple TV+ or streaming at Apple,

01:19:11 ◼   ► you would not be doing your job

01:19:12 ◼   ► if you didn't investigate this avenue

01:19:15 ◼   ► because your competitors are doing it

01:19:16 ◼   ► and it's a proven business model, right?

01:19:18 ◼   ► You could say, oh, we should be the premium one or whatever.

01:19:21 ◼   ► You should be the company that doesn't have ads.

01:19:23 ◼   ► Well, A, that ship has already sailed

01:19:25 ◼   ► 'cause Apple advertises with its own stuff as we established

01:19:27 ◼   ► and B, Apple knows what that means in terms of market share.

01:19:33 ◼   ► If you try to take the high road and not do any advertising

01:19:36 ◼   ► and only appeal to the people who really dislike advertising

01:19:40 ◼   ► and have lots of money or whatever,

01:19:41 ◼   ► it will limit your market share, it will limit your reach.

01:19:43 ◼   ► It will, in the end, and debate,

01:19:45 ◼   ► use a big highfalutin Steve Jobism,

01:19:47 ◼   ► it will limit the size of the dent

01:19:49 ◼   ► that you can put in the world

01:19:50 ◼   ► because fewer people will use your products

01:19:52 ◼   ► because there aren't as many people

01:19:54 ◼   ► who care that much about ads, right?

01:19:56 ◼   ► So if you want to go to the largest number of people,

01:19:59 ◼   ► you have to entertain this business model, and so they are.

01:20:02 ◼   ► So, you know, that's what it's like

01:20:05 ◼   ► when your tastes and preferences

01:20:07 ◼   ► are a little bit outside the norm,

01:20:09 ◼   ► you are inevitably going to be disappointed

01:20:12 ◼   ► by the largest company in the world's moves in business,

01:20:15 ◼   ► because for the most part,

01:20:17 ◼   ► they're going to try to appeal to the masses.

01:20:21 ◼   ► Still, to Apple's credit,

01:20:22 ◼   ► they tried to appeal to the masses

01:20:24 ◼   ► in a way that is a little bit nicer than their competitors,

01:20:27 ◼   ► and I think they continue to do that,

01:20:29 ◼   ► but it's the magnitude of the little bit in that phrase

01:20:31 ◼   ► that may change from year to year.

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01:22:30 ◼   ► - All right, let's do some Ask ATP, and Brian writes,

01:22:36 ◼   ► "On a recent episode, y'all discussed future improvements

01:22:38 ◼   ► to the Apple Watch, mentioning new sensors,

01:22:40 ◼   ► longer battery life, and so on.

01:22:42 ◼   ► But the most obvious improvement to me

01:22:43 ◼   ► would be the complete elimination of the bezel,

01:22:45 ◼   ► or perhaps bezel.