0:00:00I'm already tired, I'm already cranky. This is going to be a long show.
0:00:05If only there was like a mild beverage you could take that would help you be a little
0:00:09bit more awake and alert for a little while after you take it, that would really come
0:00:12in handy.
0:00:13Marco, drug pusher.
0:00:16I mean of all the drugs that you can be mildly chemically addicted to, it is by far the most
0:00:20pleasant and least harmful.
0:00:22That's not true. I'm sure there are less harmful drugs to be addicted to.
0:00:26I mean deodorant maybe, but like,
0:00:28that's not really a chemical addiction.
0:00:31- How are you using deodorant?
0:00:32(laughing)
0:00:34- He's huffing it, that's what he's doing.
0:00:37No, I did have a glass of Diet Coke, you're right.
0:00:40So maybe that'll help a little bit.
0:00:42'Cause that's what you were talking about, is caffeine.
0:00:44And I get my caffeine from Diet Coke,
0:00:46like any responsible human would do.
0:00:47- Right, surrounded by cancer sugar.
0:00:48Good luck with that.
0:00:50- It's better than having to choke down coffee, am I right?
0:00:52So anyway, so yeah, so I'm tired.
0:00:54- Nothing in the world is worse in the food world right now
0:00:58than the gradual invasion of sucralose into everything.
0:01:03Why, why?
0:01:04Just use real sugar or don't sweeten it.
0:01:06Sucralose is the worst in the universe.
0:01:10You can always taste that horrible aftertaste,
0:01:12ugh, this has sucralose in it.
0:01:14- Well, so that's the thing is,
0:01:15the horrible aftertaste that regular humans like yourself
0:01:18get from Diet Coke, I actually get that from regular Coke.
0:01:21Like the regular Coke lingers in my mouth for days.
0:01:25And Diet Coke is just--
0:01:26- It could be the phosphoric acid.
0:01:28- Just stop drinking soda, problem solved.
0:01:31- Soda's terrible.
0:01:32- I don't, I drink Diet Coke,
0:01:35I have a can at lunch pretty much every day,
0:01:38well, during the week that is,
0:01:40and then I'll usually have like a glass after dinner,
0:01:42and that's it.
0:01:43But I have not yet found any demonstrable proof
0:01:49in my own body.
0:01:50I'm not saying this is true for anyone else, but in my own body, I have not yet found demonstrable
0:01:54proof that caffeine negatively impacts my ability to sleep.
0:01:59Especially after you two keep me up until midnight.
0:02:02But I can have a fair bit of Diet Coke in the evening right before going to sleep and
0:02:07I'm fine.
0:02:08Why?
0:02:09Ew, it's so bad.
0:02:11But the thing is though, you are right that Diet Coke is bad.
0:02:15But coincidentally, I am also right that coffee is revolting.
0:02:19- No, that's not-- - And we're both wrong.
0:02:21- I think there's a large body of evidence
0:02:23to suggest that I'm right on this and--
0:02:26- No, coffee's disgusting and I,
0:02:28oh God, I would hate to be that person
0:02:30that has to have a cup of coffee in the morning
0:02:32in order to function.
0:02:33Screw that.
0:02:34You know what I do in order to function in the morning?
0:02:37I get out of bed.
0:02:38I don't even shower in the morning, I shower at night
0:02:39because PS, showering in the morning's disgusting.
0:02:41You should be showering before you get in bed
0:02:43rather than sleeping on three weeks worth of filth.
0:02:45But anyway--
0:02:46- You're just piling on the unpopular opinions.
0:02:49keep going. No, no, it's not my fault that everyone's wrong. How often are you washing
0:02:53your sheets? Hang on a second, I'm doing some math. You may be slightly off on your sheet
0:02:59washing cycles. No, it is more often than once every three weeks. But seriously, I cannot
0:03:05fathom, like I understand that I am the weirdo on this one, all snark aside. I am the weird
0:03:10one that almost everyone I know showers when they wake up. I'm trying to make two different
0:03:15points simultaneously. Number one, I currently, as it stands today, have no morning routine
0:03:23in order to get out, to get myself moving in the morning. The way I get myself moving
0:03:27in the morning is I open my eyes. I am ready to go after that.
0:03:31- Uh, so, so I'm looking at a, at a little avatar view of my Skype client that does actually
0:03:37- I don't even know what that avatar is, actually.
0:03:38- It does actually reflect generally what you look like, and your hair is really nicely
0:03:43and it looks like you might have some product in there.
0:03:45So did you put that on at night somehow?
0:03:47- No, no, no, that's a fair criticism.
0:03:49That's an entirely different issue.
0:03:50What I meant to say, I have my morning routine,
0:03:52don't get me wrong.
0:03:53My point was just that I'm not one of those people
0:03:56that needs a coffee in order to be ready to handle the day.
0:03:59You can come at me right first thing in the morning
0:04:01with some sort of technical problem,
0:04:03and I'm okay with that.
0:04:04Now, the one thing I did not consider
0:04:06is I do need to consume something for breakfast.
0:04:09It can be damn near anything.
0:04:11I can have a Pop-Tart, I can have an Eggo.
0:04:12I typically make myself a fruit smoothie, whatever.
0:04:15- You know, I would hate to be the kind of person
0:04:16who couldn't function in the morning
0:04:17before I ate something.
0:04:19I just get out of bed, I'm ready to solve problems.
0:04:21I often will start work and programming
0:04:24before I've had coffee.
0:04:25That's a thing.
0:04:26Like, I often don't have coffee till like 10 or 11 o'clock.
0:04:29- Oh, see, I'm okay with that.
0:04:31It's these people that typically work in an office
0:04:33that are like, "Ugh, don't talk to me,
0:04:35"I haven't had my coffee."
0:04:36Like, screw that, come on, you're an adult.
0:04:38- That's just them being like a pain in the butt.
0:04:40Like, you know, if they weren't complaining
0:04:41about their coffee, they complain about something else.
0:04:43- I agree, we agree.
0:04:44- No, I will say though, in defense of your weird
0:04:46night showering habit, having traveled with you a bunch,
0:04:50it actually makes it really convenient to travel with you.
0:04:53Because I'm never waiting in the morning
0:04:56for you to get ready, you're always ready,
0:04:58like whenever I am, 'cause I'm a morning shower,
0:05:01so of course I take longer, I also sleep
0:05:02as long as I possibly can, so I'm never waiting
0:05:05for you ever when we travel.
0:05:07- I don't know if that's actually true.
0:05:09I would hope you don't ever wait for me in the morning.
0:05:11I'm sure there's some point in time
0:05:13where you're waiting on me.
0:05:14- Well, when you're doing your hair.
0:05:15No, actually.
0:05:16(laughing)
0:05:17No, it actually, it would be,
0:05:18I don't think people actually shared a hotel room,
0:05:21but if we ever had to,
0:05:22that would be very convenient also
0:05:24to have you be a night shower,
0:05:25'cause then we're not competing for the shower
0:05:27in the morning either.
0:05:28- That's true, that's true.
0:05:30The whole point I was trying to make is,
0:05:31like I was saying, is twofold.
0:05:32One, I mean, I could handle a technical problem
0:05:35first thing in the morning.
0:05:36I'd prefer to have a breakfast first, but I don't have to.
0:05:38But number two, I can't get out of my head how gross it is for someone to take the day's
0:05:46filth and put it into their bed every night.
0:05:50Every night, today's filth.
0:05:51Monday's filth, into the bed.
0:05:52Tuesday's filth, let's add Tuesday onto Monday's filth.
0:05:55Wednesday's filth, let's add Wednesday's filth onto Tuesday's filth onto Monday's filth,
0:05:59and let's just roll in it for eight hours.
0:06:01That sounds awesome.
0:06:03And again, I recognize before the entire internet writes me, which they're about to do anyway,
0:06:07I recognize that this is a weird thing and that I am the weird one here, but I cannot
0:06:12fathom how any human being that values hygiene can get into covers that they're getting in
0:06:19without showering first.
0:06:21That's disgusting.
0:06:22Oh, I don't get it.
0:06:23Now, this is where a couple of...
0:06:24So there's a few things people say.
0:06:25Number one.
0:06:26How dirty are you getting during the day?
0:06:28So how dirty are you getting during the day?
0:06:30You sit in an air-conditioned office behind a queue, yeah, behind a chair, or in a chair,
0:06:34behind a screen, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
0:06:37It's still some point, it's, I can only speak for myself, but at some point, at some point
0:06:41during the day, I probably have at least a little shimmer on me of sweat, of dirt, of
0:06:47something.
0:06:48Because you don't have winter there.
0:06:49Maybe.
0:06:50Number two.
0:06:51In the south.
0:06:52I'm choosing what battles to fight right now.
0:06:53Number two.
0:06:54Number two.
0:06:56This is where all sorts of people come out of the woodwork and say, "Well, don't you
0:06:58sweat at night?"
0:06:59Sometimes.
0:07:00You're absolutely right.
0:07:01Sometimes I do.
0:07:02But at least leave it as the night dirt that's in the bed.
0:07:05Why not? Why would you contribute the day dirt on top of the night dirt? That's barbaric,
0:07:09I tell you. It's insane.
0:07:10I think your threat model for dirtying sheets is wrong. I think the whole model of like
0:07:18how sheets exist in one state and how transfer happens from you to the sheets, putting them
0:07:23in a state that you don't like. I think that whole model is wrong because, well, maybe
0:07:27we don't want to get into too much. Are you sleeping naked?
0:07:30Wouldn't you like to know, Jon?
0:07:33I'm just saying, it seems like what you're modeling here is an idea of how things would
0:07:43transfer from one place to another, making one thing that was clean dirty, right? But
0:07:48I don't know if that idea maps to the reality of you sleeping in beds.
0:07:52It's an alternative reality, Jon. Moving on, let's start with some follow-up.
0:07:55My favorite thing about this conversation is all the new listeners we got last week
0:08:00thinking, you know, what they're going to expect that this show is, and then they tune
0:08:05in and hear this this week.
0:08:06Well, they're not going to tune in live.
0:08:07They'll just be the pre-recorded one, and this will not be heavily featured at the start
0:08:11of the program.
0:08:12Let's hope not.
0:08:13Let's hope not.
0:08:14So let's start with some follow-up.
0:08:18Consumer Reports has recommended the MacBook Pro.
0:08:20So, turns out that they have worked with Apple in order to fix Apple's bugs, which may or
0:08:27may not entirely be Apple's fault.
0:08:28Well, I guess the bugs were. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Point is, they have retested their MacBook Pros.
0:08:33One model got almost 19 hours on a charge. I'm not entirely clear how that could be possible, but that's what they say.
0:08:41Because that's how their tests work. Like I was saying before, the absolute numbers don't really matter on tests like this,
0:08:47because there's no way you're actually gonna, you know, simulate any particular users.
0:08:51All you want to know is, we use the same test all the time. Is this better or worse than the same than, like, the previous Mac or a different model?
0:08:57You want some kind of consistency within the numbers, but it's like story points in a sprint,
0:09:03Casey.
0:09:04The absolute values don't mean anything.
0:09:05I don't know what you're talking about.
0:09:07So for the Consumer Reports thing, the main reason I put it in here, one was just to follow
0:09:11up on like, "Hey, guess what?"
0:09:12Like we said, they probably would last time, they retested it and everything's fine, blah,
0:09:15blah, blah.
0:09:16But thinking of it from the perspective of someone who used to write for a publication
0:09:22that did product reviews and used to do product reviews myself, as like an institution for
0:09:27for doing reviews as a publication, as a venue,
0:09:30as a place where people get information,
0:09:33this is not a good outcome
0:09:35because now anyone who reads Consumer Reports
0:09:38has to think Consumer Reports did or didn't recommend it,
0:09:42but is this the real story
0:09:43or do we have to wait two weeks
0:09:44for them to figure out what the real story was
0:09:45and then to tell us whether they should get it or not.
0:09:47Like their job is to tell us whether this laptop
0:09:50is worth buying or should be avoided.
0:09:53And I'm going to say, although some people may differ,
0:09:57that the product, with and without this bug,
0:10:00like whether you have the beta version
0:10:01that fixes this bug fix,
0:10:02or whether you don't have the beta version,
0:10:04is not that different.
0:10:05Marco's using it presumably without this beta fix,
0:10:08and it is a satisfactory product, right?
0:10:11With the beta fix, maybe it'll be a little better.
0:10:15- Stop.
0:10:15- You talked about it the whole last time,
0:10:17about how it's not as bad as you thought it would be.
0:10:19I'm not saying--
0:10:20- I know, no, just every week I waffle
0:10:21on whether I like the new one,
0:10:24or whether I wanna switch back to the old one.
0:10:25- But it's not as if the battery life is fatally bad.
0:10:27- The keyboard is so bad.
0:10:29- Yeah, I know, I know.
0:10:29- The battery life, so, again,
0:10:31I've actually been doing my own tests,
0:10:32and the battery life is not good, but it's okay.
0:10:36And the old one was similar.
0:10:37The old one was also not good, but okay.
0:10:39But, God, the keyboard is so bad.
0:10:42- That's the thing, they can't even recommend the product.
0:10:45- Marco, remind me, have you tried the Magic Keyboard?
0:10:48We've been through this so many times,
0:10:49I honestly don't recall.
0:10:50- No, 'cause for desktops, I gotta use an ergonomic keyboard.
0:10:53Like, I use-- - Oh, yeah, yeah.
0:10:54I just use desktops too heavily,
0:10:56and I have minor RSI problems if I use regular keyboards.
0:10:58And so to avoid those,
0:11:00and to avoid them becoming major RSI problems,
0:11:03I use ergonomic keyboards.
0:11:05- No, totally.
0:11:06I was just curious, I didn't know if you had tried one
0:11:08for more than 10 seconds in a store,
0:11:09because I find that,
0:11:11I've talked long, to anyone who will listen,
0:11:15about how much I love the Magic Keyboard.
0:11:17And I have only used the new MacBook Pro keyboard
0:11:19for but a flash.
0:11:21And it was a while ago, so this is all on memory,
0:11:24it was a very brief time that I used it, but I feel like the frustrating thing for me about
0:11:30the new MacBook Pro keyboard was that it was like 80% of perfection.
0:11:35I'm not saying you agree, I'm just saying to me.
0:11:37Because it was so similar to the Magic Keyboard, but I think the throw was a little bit smaller,
0:11:43and that difference was enough to just drive me batty.
0:11:47And I'm sure I would get used to it over time, but man was it annoying because I feel like
0:11:51it was so close you were right there you almost had it and they didn't quite get
0:11:56there and the thing that's scary to me is that I suspect whenever a Magic
0:12:00Keyboard 2 happens I bet you anything they're going to use that keyboard with
0:12:03the shorter throw and I'm going to be very sad and I'm going to be the I'm
0:12:07going to be Gruber in buying a thousand and four original Magic keyboards to
0:12:11keep around until kingdom come because this is my favorite keyboard I've ever
0:12:14used. Well first of all I actually have done that myself I Microsoft upgraded
0:12:19the Sculpt ergonomic keyboard that I have used
0:12:23for a few years now as my main one.
0:12:25They quote upgraded that to the new
0:12:27Surface ergonomic keyboard.
0:12:30And I bought one and I actually had to return it
0:12:32because the Surface ergonomic keyboard is Bluetooth
0:12:36instead of its own custom wireless thing,
0:12:37but it has like special Bluetooth implementation details,
0:12:41I guess, that are incredibly incompatible with Macs.
0:12:45And I've never had a PC keyboard that was
0:12:47incompatible with a Mac before.
0:12:49The Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic is one of these,
0:12:51or I mean the Microsoft Surface ergonomic, excuse me.
0:12:54And the two main problems, if you're looking at this,
0:12:57a lot of people ask me about this,
0:12:58two main problems, number one,
0:12:59you can't remap option and command
0:13:02to be like on Windows and Alt properly.
0:13:04The system panel that you do it in
0:13:06for every other PC keyboard,
0:13:08the change just doesn't apply, it doesn't work.
0:13:10Like you can change it there,
0:13:11but the keys still don't change their functions.
0:13:14And the second problem, which is even more fatal than that,
0:13:17is that it's Bluetooth implementation,
0:13:20basically it falls asleep after a while,
0:13:23and when you wake it up by pushing keys again,
0:13:25the first couple keys you push don't get recognized.
0:13:28So it's really a pain to use in practice.
0:13:32So it is effectively incompatible with the Mac.
0:13:35First time I've ever had a PC keyboard
0:13:36where that's been a problem, and so I had to return it.
0:13:39And also the ergonomics got worse and I got a little here.
0:13:42So there you go.
0:13:43The key switches feel a little bit better,
0:13:44but it is way too wide,
0:13:46'cause it added the 10-key numpad area back on,
0:13:49and it's low and flat, does not have a riser in front,
0:13:52so the ergonomics are all worse,
0:13:53and whatever the look they're going for,
0:13:55it's like gray, it's like the lining of cubicle walls,
0:14:00like that kind of gray, carpet-y material, you know?
0:14:02- Oh. - Like that's,
0:14:04it's like they made a keyboard out of that,
0:14:06so big miss on that,
0:14:08and so because the sculpt ergonomic keyboard
0:14:11that I like so much is now officially discontinued.
0:14:14I stockpiled three of them right now
0:14:17'cause you can still get 'em in most places
0:14:19for like around 60, 70 bucks.
0:14:21So I stockpiled a few of them for myself.
0:14:23And I figure like by the time I burn through three of these,
0:14:25which should be probably five years or so, six years or so,
0:14:29then I should probably be able
0:14:31to find something else by then.
0:14:32- And is that one Bluetooth,
0:14:35the old one that you're stockpiling or is that wired?
0:14:38- No, it's its own custom RF dongle
0:14:40like most logitech mice, you know,
0:14:41it has its own little thing.
0:14:43And it's not very good, like the Sculpt wireless
0:14:47that I've been using for years now,
0:14:49the wireless thing is pretty flaky.
0:14:51That's usually the way these keyboards eventually die.
0:14:53The reason I replaced them is usually
0:14:55that the wireless thing just becomes too unreliable.
0:14:57And you can change batteries and you can resync it
0:14:59and you can move it around.
0:15:00And eventually those things just don't help anymore
0:15:04or it still starts failing.
0:15:05And when it's working properly, it never fails, it's solid.
0:15:08So whatever it is that kills these keyboards
0:15:10after maybe two years of use,
0:15:13that is what ultimately ends these for me
0:15:17and for a lot of other people.
0:15:18- So what were we trying to talk about
0:15:20on the consumer reports thing?
0:15:22- Consumer reports, who cares?
0:15:23I mean, consumer reports are still gonna keep doing
0:15:25the same BS they do all the time.
0:15:27They're gonna keep doing it.
0:15:28Every time there's a new Apple product,
0:15:28they're gonna get attention with some crazy headline.
0:15:31Oftentimes it'll be about a real problem.
0:15:33Sometimes it won't be.
0:15:35But usually when it is a real problem,
0:15:36they will be overblowing it.
0:15:38- Like Margo's drinking beer tonight.
0:15:40(laughing)
0:15:41- I've had like--
0:15:43- Am I right, am I right?
0:15:44- I've had literally like one inch of beer,
0:15:47it is still in the neck.
0:15:48- And you're hammered.
0:15:49- And it's a 4% beer.
0:15:51- There's no amount that I'm saying here,
0:15:54you mentioned last time I said I could tell
0:15:56when you were drinking and you said,
0:15:57oh yeah, well next time tell me, and so I just did.
0:16:00- This is like the lightest beer I've ever seen
0:16:02and I've drank almost none of it.
0:16:04- I do not, I'm not attributing any kind of cause,
0:16:07I'm just saying.
0:16:08- I'm just saying.
0:16:10All right, so also in this last week,
0:16:13I haven't had a chance to read this,
0:16:15so I'm gonna defer to you, Jon, on this.
0:16:18But there's a blog post on the WebKit blog,
0:16:21introducing Riptide, WebKit's Retreating Wavefront
0:16:25Concurrent Garbage Collector.
0:16:27That sounds fancy.
0:16:29So what's this all about, Jon?
0:16:31Well, on the last program where we talked to Chris Lattner,
0:16:35towards the end we talked about Arc versus garbage collection.
0:16:41And Chris went through this whole big thing
0:16:42about the trade-offs and the different behaviors.
0:16:46And that might have been over a lot of people's heads
0:16:48because there was lots of jargon there.
0:16:50This is another one of-- WebKit often does these things.
0:16:54The WebKit developers post a thing
0:16:56that talks about some technical underpinnings of some feature
0:16:59of the browser or the engine usually.
0:17:02And this one describes their new garbage collector
0:17:05for JavaScript, kind of like the stuff that Chris said,
0:17:09you can't read this starting from zero
0:17:11and understand every part of it,
0:17:13but they do go through and explain a lot of it.
0:17:15And I think if you just Google some stuff
0:17:16and find some links, you can start understanding it.
0:17:20But I think it's a good example of a lot of the things
0:17:24that Chris alluded to, like that the attributes
0:17:27a garbage collector that are very similar to the attributes of ARC in that there's additional
0:17:32bookkeeping and stuff that has to be done in line as part of the normal operation, because the slam
0:17:39against ARC is very frequently that, well, you've got all these reference counts, you know,
0:17:45increments and decrements all over your code. You didn't write those things, but they get added
0:17:48anyway, and it's just like overhead. And so even if you don't understand all the weird nuances of
0:17:54this very, very long article. I think it is written in a very clear way. Whoever wrote this,
0:17:58I think, did a good job. You have to assume some foundational knowledge, and maybe more things
0:18:04could be links, because, you know, I'd love to make things links and things that I had no idea.
0:18:08Yeah. But anyway, you can just the word you don't understand, just, you know, type it into a Google
0:18:13search box or look at the Wikipedia page or something and you learn about it. So I would
0:18:17encourage anybody whose interest was piqued by that discussion on last week's episode to read,
0:18:23maybe over a couple nights, this very long post about WebKit's garbage collector, because
0:18:29I think it is really well done, and you'll learn a lot, and you will also, even if you don't learn
0:18:36that much, come to a gut-level understanding of exactly how much of a pain in the butt it is to
0:18:42make JavaScript go fast, and how much time and effort and money is being put into doing that.
0:18:46Indeed, and this was by Philip Pislo, just FYI.
0:18:50I miss the beach.
0:18:51Beach. Wavefront, that's all it took. Riptide, wavefront, it's like, ah, summertime.
0:18:59If you read the whole thing and understand a little bit of it, the title will make sense
0:19:02by the end. Retreating Wavefront Concurrent Garbage Collector, all those words mean something
0:19:06and are explained at length in the article. Go figure. It's funny, you know, I remember
0:19:10you being vehemently opposed to the beach, and I was only mildly less opposed to it.
0:19:15Now the two of us are both converted. Who knew? Turns out I'm opposed to your pronunciation
0:19:19of that word.
0:19:20Which word?
0:19:21Just keep going.
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0:21:20[Music]
0:21:21[Music]
0:21:22[Music]
0:21:23[Music]
0:21:24All right.
0:21:25So, John had a big day yesterday, was it, I believe, when the 10.3 beta was released.
0:21:32And John, I have it on good authority that you did a little happy dance at your cubicle
0:21:37when you saw this news come out. Is that true? Please do not deny it.
0:21:40>> I did not do a happy dance. My happy dance was when they announced the existence of the
0:21:46file system. That was my happy dance. Like, yes, they were to make -- you know, we had
0:21:50a bell, we had a happy dance, we had all sorts of things. That time has passed.
0:21:54Although, I will say this, though. So what you're talking about is the announcement that
0:21:58-- the announcement/leak or whatever -- that iOS 10.3 and the beta builds that developers
0:22:03can get now will apparently convert your iOS device from HFS+ to APFS upon upgrade.
0:22:13And that's mostly notable because A) it is a partial fulfillment of the goal Apple set
0:22:20forth for itself at WWDC last year.
0:22:23They said, you know, we want to convert all of our platforms, that means like iOS and
0:22:28Mac OS, and I guess watch OS, I mean basically all Apple platforms, to be on
0:22:33APFS in 2017. Now 2017 is the entire year, they didn't say which part of the year
0:22:38or whatever, but here we are in January and there's already a beta of iOS 10.3
0:22:43that converts to APFS. So it's not as if they're waiting till, you know, October or
0:22:48whatever when the successor to Sierra comes out for the Mac or, you know,
0:22:52whenever these things are gonna be released. They seem to be ahead of the
0:22:56game ahead of schedule. And I was worried last year that are they really going to be
0:23:00able to roll over their entire product line with a new file system that they just announced
0:23:07next year sometime? But they're apparently doing well. They seem confident. People who
0:23:11have upgraded, I think Marco is one, have not seen all their data disappear in a puff
0:23:16of smoke. So things are looking good so far, right?
0:23:19So my upgrade went totally fine.
0:23:22I didn't realize, so here I was,
0:23:25new beta of iOS comes out.
0:23:27Of course, I installed on my main phone immediately.
0:23:31(laughs)
0:23:32Like, hour zero. - On the line.
0:23:34Did you not learn from iOS 5?
0:23:36You and I did this together on iOS.
0:23:38- I know. - Was it five, four?
0:23:39- It was five. - Which everyone, yeah.
0:23:40We learned together.
0:23:42- Gruber still gives me crap about that, yeah.
0:23:44- But you should give you and me crap,
0:23:46because we were both idiots.
0:23:47And here it is, well, now to your defense,
0:23:49this was a point release.
0:23:50- Right, and the point releases
0:23:52are usually completely harmless.
0:23:55They are almost never a problem for almost anybody.
0:23:57And so, that's why I figured, let me do this,
0:24:01there's some new APIs I needed to test against,
0:24:04let me try some stuff and make sure
0:24:05everything works and everything.
0:24:06So, okay.
0:24:08Then after I installed it, like an hour later,
0:24:12I learned that, oh, I'm now using APFS.
0:24:16Like, it was not even a thing.
0:24:18All I noticed was that the install took maybe
0:24:2215 minutes longer than I thought it would.
0:24:24It was a little slow, but otherwise,
0:24:26my phone booted up, everything's fine,
0:24:27everything's totally fine.
0:24:28I've had zero issues so far.
0:24:30And then, a couple hours later, when chatting with John,
0:24:34I learned that I'm using APFS before John.
0:24:38- Funny how that is.
0:24:40- Well, it's not really true, because like I said,
0:24:41I used it on the Sierra dev builds.
0:24:43- That doesn't, not in your main machine.
0:24:45That doesn't count.
0:24:46If it's not like your main machine.
0:24:47- It was on my main machine.
0:24:48It was as main machine-y as it could be.
0:24:50I did everything that you could do with APFS
0:24:52on my main machine.
0:24:53- You can't boot off of it with Mac OS X.
0:24:55- No, you cannot boot off of it,
0:24:57but I was still using it.
0:24:58- Well, then you're not really, yeah, that doesn't count.
0:25:01I'm using APFS in production on my main machine before John,
0:25:04and that's it, I think I'm done for the year.
0:25:06- It's on your phone, your main machine.
0:25:09Come on, thought you were a Mac user.
0:25:10- It's the computer I use most often.
0:25:12- Anyway, based on nothing but Marco's firsthand experience
0:25:17of having upgraded and the vague wording in Apple's release notes that have been tweeted
0:25:23out by various people.
0:25:27This is what we're talking about on past shows about in-place conversion and how the design
0:25:33of the APFS makes that not as crazy as you might think it sounds.
0:25:36You might be thinking, "Oh, how is it going to upgrade my file system?
0:25:40Do I have to have like 50% of my storage free so it can write all the data to a new location
0:25:44and do this thing or is it going to like back it all up to the cloud or make me do an iTunes
0:25:48backup and restore it?
0:25:50How is it going to do this without destroying my data?
0:25:53And as we discussed last time, the strategy is that you leave all the data exactly where
0:25:57it is, you write a new set of metadata structure somewhere and the metadata is just like, tells
0:26:03you information about the data.
0:26:05Where is it?
0:26:06How much of it is there?
0:26:07Like the names of the files, the dates, all that crap.
0:26:10Write that somewhere and that doesn't take up that much room.
0:26:13Like you need a reasonable, probably fixed-sized chunk of metadata, more or less, plus or minus
0:26:19extended attributes, for each file.
0:26:22And the bigger of the files you have, the more efficient this is.
0:26:26So if you have tons and tons of relatively large files like music or videos, it's an
0:26:31even bigger win.
0:26:33So you don't probably need that much free space.
0:26:34You need to need some free space.
0:26:36For all iOS upgrades, you need some free space.
0:26:38But you don't need that much.
0:26:39They write all the metadata there, pointing to the data exactly where it exists.
0:26:43And then only at the very, very end, after writing all of the metadata, they do a very
0:26:48fast, very quick operation that says, "And big swapper-oony."
0:26:52Rewrite the headers and the volume to say, "Oh, actually, now this is an APFS volume,
0:26:57and the metadata is over here."
0:26:58And that little tiny critical section should only take like fractions of a second, right?
0:27:04That is the only time where you could potentially have a problem if it failed in the middle.
0:27:08But even then they could use journaling and everything to defend against that.
0:27:12You don't have to worry about any more than you normally would.
0:27:15You know, somehow running out of battery during your upgrade or I don't even know what could
0:27:20happen because it's not like you're going to accidentally unplug a phone.
0:27:22Like they do want to be plugged in when they're being upgraded but it's not like you're going
0:27:25to have a power cut unless there's some sort of hardware problem where you really drain
0:27:27your battery.
0:27:29So the moral of the story is yes, upgrading in place is a real thing.
0:27:34It should go fine, and it is actually fairly safe, assuming everything goes okay.
0:27:40So I'm not afraid of doing this upgrade.
0:27:43I'm not going to do the beta.
0:27:44I'm not in no hurry.
0:27:46But when 10.3 comes out, I expect it to be fairly uneventful, barring any catastrophic
0:27:52bugs.
0:27:53Because once you're running APFS, then if there's a bug in APFS, then you're going
0:27:56to be sad, right?
0:27:57But the conversion process itself seems like it's okay.
0:28:01What are you more afraid of in practice?
0:28:04Bugs in APFS or the regular behavior of HFS+?
0:28:08Yeah, that's the only thing that bothered me a little bit about the conversion when
0:28:11I was thinking about it more now that it's a real thing.
0:28:15Because the conversion is, like, what I would like it to do is run essentially FSDK or,
0:28:22you know, the repair thing to validate all of the HFS+ metadata to make sure that it's
0:28:28not incorrect in various ways.
0:28:30In all the ways that if you were to run disk utility on your disk right now, it would find
0:28:33a bunch of crap wrong because HFS is weird and buggy and sometimes doesn't keep track
0:28:37of things the right way and it will find stuff that it can tell is wrong by exhaustively
0:28:40going over the data and the metadata and comparing them and doing so and so forth.
0:28:44I would like it to do that before it dutifully writes the new metadata to a new location.
0:28:49And based on your 15 minute time, I'm not sure that it does.
0:28:52I don't know how long it would take to essentially FSTK HFS+ on a 64 gig iOS device.
0:29:00Maybe it's faster than I think because the disks are so much smaller than, you know,
0:29:02like a terabyte on a Mac or whatever.
0:29:05So I'm not sure if it is doing that, but I would feel more comfortable if before it decided
0:29:10to make a copy, made sure the thing that it's copying is right.
0:29:13And this gets back to what you're saying.
0:29:14What are you afraid of bugs in APFS or bugs in HFS plus?
0:29:18I'm still probably more afraid of bugs in APFS because bottom line, it takes a long
0:29:23time for a file system to really be bug free.
0:29:27But at the moment of conversion, I am definitely more worried about my existing HFS+ disks
0:29:33on all my iOS devices having the normal residue of problematic metadata that seems to accumulate
0:29:39in all HFS+ volumes.
0:29:41I'm more worried about that at that point.
0:29:43After conversion, I have to say I have to give the nod to HFS+ for a brand new file
0:29:52substance that has never been deployed on Apple devices.
0:29:54If something is gonna go wrong,
0:29:56it's gonna happen in like that first big deployment.
0:29:59It's, you know, HFS plus for all of its little crappy bugs,
0:30:02I really don't expect any massive data destroying things
0:30:05to suddenly pop up.
0:30:07HFS plus is gonna be what it is
0:30:08and it has been for a long time and it's not good,
0:30:11not good by a long stretch, but presumably,
0:30:14like I can't remember the last time a,
0:30:16oh, I can't remember last time HFS plus was even updated,
0:30:19but all the updates that they've done to it,
0:30:21none of them have caused any sort of catastrophic problems
0:30:24is it APFS Plus, APFS, oh god, I cannot say these names.
0:30:28Yeah, anyway, I'm gonna upgrade everything.
0:30:32I'm just gonna go for it.
0:30:33I have a lot of backups, you should have
0:30:35a lot of backups too.
0:30:36Let's just all dive in and see how it goes.
0:30:38- Well that's part of like, you know,
0:30:40on one hand, it is awfully bold for Apple
0:30:42to deploy their brand new file system
0:30:45on their most popular device.
0:30:47Like, you know, to make it part, an automatic,
0:30:50not even like an opt-in, but an automatic part
0:30:53of seemingly all iOS 10.3 installed,
0:30:55well, you know, we'll see if it ships that way,
0:30:57but it looks like that's the plan,
0:30:59then that means all of the iPhones are gonna get this
0:31:01and they're all gonna be converted
0:31:02when they reboot and that's it, right?
0:31:04And that's a pretty bold move.
0:31:06On the other hand, iOS is, you know,
0:31:10even though it has a much larger install base,
0:31:13in many ways it's lower risk
0:31:14because the nature of phones is that
0:31:18they're these kind of closed systems,
0:31:19you have like very limited numbers of configurations,
0:31:22You don't have like weirdo, like on a Mac,
0:31:24you have all the different disks and partition schemes
0:31:28and all sorts of apps that could be trying to mess with them
0:31:30or things like that.
0:31:31On iOS, it's all very controlled
0:31:33and there's fewer combinations of things,
0:31:35fewer configurations, and also, the nature of phones
0:31:38is that people lose, break, and replace them often.
0:31:43And so they're designed in software and in services
0:31:47to have everything in the cloud
0:31:48and have everything backed up most of the time.
0:31:50I mean, that isn't in practice always the case,
0:31:52but that's the case way more often on phones
0:31:55than it is on Macs.
0:31:57So if something does go catastrophically wrong
0:31:59for some percentage of users on the phone,
0:32:01it is probably less destructive
0:32:03than if it happened on Mac OS.
0:32:05- Yeah, I mostly agree with that.
0:32:07Well, I mean, the other obvious reason
0:32:08why they would do iOS first is 'cause it's more important
0:32:11and that's where their effort goes
0:32:12and the Mac will be an afterthought.
0:32:14Like, oh yeah, I'm also looking for the Mac.
0:32:15But yeah, phones are so much more of a controlled system.
0:32:19And also all of the weird crap about APFS,
0:32:22which is mostly good, you know,
0:32:23like the space sharing stuff and, you know,
0:32:28all the things that make it behave differently
0:32:33than you might expect are not visible at all in iOS.
0:32:36'Cause iOS doesn't have the problem of 10 different ways
0:32:38that you can see free space and users looking at it.
0:32:41Like already the way you see free space in iOS
0:32:44is already an illusion.
0:32:45You go to the, you know, the preferences in general
0:32:47and usage and all that stuff.
0:32:48Like those numbers have only a vague connection
0:32:51to space on disk because they're totally hiding
0:32:52whole classes of things that don't count towards your space.
0:32:55And they're trying to sum up space
0:32:56and attribute it to applications
0:32:57like it's already an illusion.
0:32:59So there's no weirdness there.
0:33:01Whereas on the Mac, if you do, you know,
0:33:03if you use the power of the file system
0:33:05and a disk utility is actually updated to use it,
0:33:08people can make arrangements
0:33:10that start to make far less sense
0:33:12where you can have a single APFS container
0:33:14with three volumes on it
0:33:15and then how do you throw the free space on them?
0:33:17and trying to figure out when you make an instant copy,
0:33:20does that count as space being taken up?
0:33:22Now you have two one gigabyte files
0:33:24where before you had one,
0:33:25but the free space didn't change
0:33:26even though you don't have any shared volumes
0:33:28on the containers and all that goes away on iOS.
0:33:32And also iOS is case sensitive.
0:33:33So that gets rid of all of whatever you're gonna deal with
0:33:36for case folding stuff.
0:33:38I did file one radar against APFS back in the early days
0:33:41about the whole character encoding handling
0:33:45and the fact that you can have two files
0:33:47with apparently the same name on the Mac on APFS,
0:33:50but you can't do that in HFS Plus
0:33:52because HFS Plus does this normalization stuff
0:33:55to try to make them all the same.
0:33:56They do a weird normalization, but anyway.
0:33:58I don't know the state of that radar.
0:34:00I don't think the state of that radar has changed.
0:34:01Maybe it was closed as a dupe.
0:34:03I don't even remember.
0:34:04It went into the black hole.
0:34:05I haven't heard anything about it.
0:34:06But for Macs, most, the vast, vast, vast majority
0:34:10which have case insensitive file systems,
0:34:12they're gonna have to make decisions about that.
0:34:15And I don't know what decisions they made.
0:34:17So if the Mac gets the ability to boot from APFS
0:34:22before the October-ish release of whatever follows
0:34:25Mac OS Sierra, I will be surprised.
0:34:28But on the other hand, it's January,
0:34:30and they're already doing iOS.
0:34:31Maybe it will come to the Mac earlier.
0:34:33But coming to the Mac is obviously the change
0:34:35that I find more interesting, because I'm into the Mac
0:34:38and because you can actually see the file system.
0:34:40And I think it is actually the more difficult one
0:34:42than doing iOS.
0:34:44That's interesting.
0:34:45Never thought of it that way.
0:34:47Any other thoughts about iOS 10.3 that are general
0:34:52and aren't spelled out in the rest of our document?
0:34:54- No, I don't know.
0:34:55Marco, you're using it, what is it like?
0:34:57Anything exciting in there?
0:34:58- No.
0:35:00I mean, as a user, I don't even really notice anything,
0:35:04honestly.
0:35:05- That's a good sign.
0:35:05Sounds like it's stable.
0:35:07- I mean, I've had zero problems.
0:35:10Like, nothing that you'd typically associate
0:35:13with a beta one of a major point release,
0:35:16or like a major release like iOS 11.
0:35:18It's nothing like a beta one of that level.
0:35:21If I didn't know academically that I was running a beta,
0:35:26I would not realize I was running a beta.
0:35:29- That sounds like a pretty clear win to me, so far anyway.
0:35:32- Oh, the other thing on file system being in 10.3,
0:35:34like the fact that this is a point release,
0:35:36and Mark was saying, well, you don't really notice
0:35:37that much of a difference.
0:35:39APFS tech wise has capabilities that could be leveraged in iOS 11 or whatever the next
0:35:46major version is to provide headlining style features.
0:35:50So for example, snapshots, the ability to preserve the state of the entire file system
0:35:54in a consistent state could be used, I don't know if Apple will do this, you know, it's
0:35:59a political issue more than anything, to roll your phone back to an ungood state in a reliable
0:36:06way.
0:36:07It's something that you can't really do now.
0:36:08restore from backup or restore from the cloud and we know how annoying that is to do.
0:36:12But imagine if before the iOS 11.1 to 11.2 upgrade it would just routinely snapshot everything
0:36:19beforehand and if you didn't like the upgrade at any point you could switch back to the
0:36:23state it was like the day before or whatever.
0:36:25Well there's no chance of that.
0:36:26I know.
0:36:28But tech wise that is possible.
0:36:30Right and I think what's more likely to be used is maybe a recovery thing where like
0:36:35if an upgrade fails for some reason,
0:36:38then there'd be some mechanism to have it
0:36:41kind of automatically roll itself back.
0:36:43You know, that's more likely, I think,
0:36:45than I don't like the new icons, I'm gonna go back.
0:36:48Like Apple does not enable that really at all.
0:36:51- I mean, or you could do it on a, like,
0:36:53I don't know, they could do it at any level they want.
0:36:57They could do it at a per application level
0:36:58to go back to an old version of the application.
0:37:00They could do time machine type of features
0:37:02inside applications to find old versions of,
0:37:04You can already do this stuff in various ways
0:37:07above the level of the file system,
0:37:08but the fact that you get this sort of for free
0:37:11out of the file system and it's very efficient and fast
0:37:14and presumably will have APIs.
0:37:15Those are the type of things that,
0:37:16yeah, you've got APFS now,
0:37:18but you don't have probably almost any of the features
0:37:20that could be built on it.
0:37:21Those are major OS features.
0:37:23They could be for few, maybe not even 11,
0:37:25maybe iOS 12 or whatever.
0:37:26Same thing with on the Mac.
0:37:28If and when we can boot from APFS,
0:37:29yeah, that's all well and good,
0:37:31but there are many years, presumably,
0:37:33of features that are built in this.
0:37:34Like who knows if Time Machine will even be updated
0:37:37to support APFS in the next version of macOS.
0:37:39Maybe we'll have to wait for the version after that.
0:37:41It's non-trivial to take advantage of all these features.
0:37:44And I'm in no hurry.
0:37:45It's like step one, get the file system with these features
0:37:48and make it solid.
0:37:49Step two, three, four, and five,
0:37:50then slowly roll out the features that,
0:37:54consumers won't care that it's enabled
0:37:56by the new file system.
0:37:56They only care about the features,
0:37:58but many things will be enabled by these features.
0:37:59So I look forward to them, even though,
0:38:01oh, 10.3, ho-hum, new file system.
0:38:03What was the big deal?
0:38:04The big deal should come later.
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0:39:52and by our I mean mostly Marco,
0:39:54and you can respond to App Store reviews now,
0:39:57which is really exciting.
0:40:00I think developers have been talking about this for forever and a day.
0:40:03I saw a link fly by to Chalk's blog.
0:40:06I don't have it handy.
0:40:07I'll see if I can dig it up for the show notes.
0:40:09But I think it was from 2009 or something like that, saying, "Oh, we should really be
0:40:14able to respond to reviews in the App Store.
0:40:19Android has been able to do this for a long time, and now it's finally a thing."
0:40:24And that's something to be excited about.
0:40:26it seems pretty clear to me that Phil Schiller
0:40:29is making moves.
0:40:30So, Marco, how do you feel?
0:40:32- It's kind of amazing as an iOS,
0:40:35and I said some of this when Phil first started doing things
0:40:38like last spring and summer,
0:40:40but it's just kind of amazing as an iOS developer
0:40:43to have things changing in the App Store
0:40:46and getting better at all.
0:40:48Because the App Store is, what, eight years old,
0:40:52eight and a half, something like that?
0:40:53- Something like that.
0:40:54that time, during like the first seven years of it,
0:40:59almost nothing changed, almost nothing improved.
0:41:02There were a few minor things here
0:41:04and exceedingly minor things.
0:41:06Some things even got worse.
0:41:08So to have it being worked on and to have positive changes
0:41:13or any changes is a new feeling for iOS developers.
0:41:20And overall, since Phil has taken over,
0:41:23I think the changes have been overall quite good.
0:41:26Very few things have been like a major miss
0:41:29or majorly harmful.
0:41:31Even search ads where they were very controversial
0:41:34and I think that's with good reason.
0:41:37I now spend more on search ads than I do on my servers
0:41:41and I don't love that.
0:41:44- Oh, I didn't know that.
0:41:46- Yeah, I was, it's accounting time
0:41:48with taxes and everything.
0:41:50So I've been looking back and doing all the,
0:41:53adding up everything and I now spend a good amount of money
0:41:56on search ads every week.
0:41:58And I have all these graphs and I mean this is a diversion
0:42:02and this is not the main topic tonight I guess.
0:42:03It could be if you wanted to but anyway,
0:42:06basically I'm now paying for a certain part
0:42:09of my user base and it isn't that big of a portion
0:42:11of my user base that the overall search ad traffic
0:42:13has been lower than I expected.
0:42:16And I don't think it's 'cause I'm losing auctions.
0:42:18I think it's 'cause I'm not being shown
0:42:19or there aren't that many searches
0:42:21for the things I'm bidding on.
0:42:22but the search ad system is possibly a net improvement,
0:42:27but it's something, it's something big,
0:42:30and these are customers that now I'm getting,
0:42:33and the way I have things split out and being measured,
0:42:38it is apparent to me that most of the customers
0:42:40I'm getting via search ads are not coming from people
0:42:43who are looking for overcast.
0:42:45They are coming from people who are looking for like,
0:42:47podcast or things like that, like more generic terms,
0:42:50competitor names, things like that.
0:42:53'Cause I have my overcast bids I have on a separate campaign
0:42:57so I can tell, like, am I spending a lot of money
0:42:59just to get people out, I was gonna get anyway,
0:43:01which, you know, I don't want that number to be very high.
0:43:04Although I don't really want anybody else
0:43:05outbidding me either, but, you know,
0:43:07if that number was very high, then I'm just paying
0:43:09for people who tapped result number one
0:43:11and said result number two in the search,
0:43:13and that's no good.
0:43:14But that number isn't very high,
0:43:15that's not a massive percentage of what I'm spending.
0:43:17Most of what I'm spending is on generic search terms.
0:43:20So the system is kind of working as designed.
0:43:24I don't love that I'm taking a portion
0:43:27of what Apple's giving me every month
0:43:29and just giving it right back to them.
0:43:31(laughing)
0:43:32'Cause they're already taking 30%,
0:43:33at least that I don't see.
0:43:36It doesn't feel good to be paying them back all this money.
0:43:38(laughing)
0:43:39But overall, the search ads have been okay.
0:43:43As I said, they're not bringing in
0:43:45a large percentage of new users.
0:43:47Off the top of my head, I actually don't know the number,
0:43:49but off the top of my head, I think it's probably
0:43:5110% or less of new users are coming through search ads.
0:43:54But it's in that ballpark at least.
0:43:57But these are people I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
0:44:01Pretty clearly, you could tell from the search terms
0:44:04and from how, when I go to the store,
0:44:05how I rank on those search terms,
0:44:07'cause App Store search is terrible.
0:44:09So you search for podcasts and five of the first 10 apps
0:44:13are alarm clock apps.
0:44:14It's stuff that's totally unrelated, literally.
0:44:17The search is still just as awful as it's always been.
0:44:20But to have search ads there,
0:44:22I am getting customers I wouldn't have gotten before,
0:44:24so that's overall positive,
0:44:26even though I'm paying for them.
0:44:28And I'm paying a little more than I would like,
0:44:30but it's still within the realm of reasonable, I think.
0:44:34So anyway, that aside, it is really nice,
0:44:37going back to the original question,
0:44:39it is really nice to have changes happening
0:44:42in the App Store, that most of which are good.
0:44:44And I'm also using subscriptions now,
0:44:47using the internet purchase subscriptions.
0:44:49Next September, I'm gonna start getting
0:44:51my 85% people renewing.
0:44:53That's gonna be a great day,
0:44:54'cause I'm gonna just get a raise for no reason.
0:44:57That's awesome.
0:44:58So, you know, everybody let your subscriptions renew, please.
0:45:00(laughs)
0:45:02But otherwise, yeah, so anyway.
0:45:04So for this specific change of responding to reviews,
0:45:07and I guess maybe we'll get later
0:45:09to the app review prompting mechanism change.
0:45:13I don't know if we're gonna talk about that on this show.
0:45:16If not, we talked about it on this week's
0:45:17under the radar, plug plug.
0:45:19So, responding to reviews.
0:45:22So as, let me begin by asking you guys,
0:45:24as App Store users, do you read a lot of the reviews?
0:45:28- No.
0:45:29- So basically, if developers start responding to reviews,
0:45:31will you really see that?
0:45:34- I do read reviews for apps that I have no idea
0:45:37about the whole domain.
0:45:38Like I'm looking for an, I was looking for an application
0:45:40recently for like laying out where furniture is in rooms
0:45:45something that can do walls and doors and windows, you know, with correct to scale measurements and
0:45:49have like, you know, couches and end tables, you know, to see how furniture is going to fit in the
0:45:52room without doing it yourself by cutting out little pieces of paper, which is fun, but I
0:45:56figured that an iPad app would be better. And I have no idea about that area. And as you noted,
0:46:01search is terrible. So I do what I think are reasonable searches and it shows a million hits,
0:46:06half of which are scams or pieces of garbage. And the ratings don't tell you that much. I have to
0:46:12to actually look at the reviews to see, you know, like a two and a half star thing could
0:46:17be 50 people cranky that it's $5 and then 150 people who think it's actually a reasonably
0:46:23good app. And the only way to tell that is to look at the reviews. So I will scroll through
0:46:27them and see, you know, because you can't tell. People rate things low for reasons unrelated
0:46:33to the functionality of the app. I'm willing to pay $2.99. I don't care that 90% of your
0:46:37reviews are from people who can't believe you'd wanted to charge $2.99 for this. Like,
0:46:40I just want to know, does it do the job?
0:46:42So I do read them and weep, I suppose.
0:46:46- So my theory, my impression of this so far, basically,
0:46:52is like the effectiveness and the value
0:46:55in developers being able to respond to reviews
0:46:59is highly dependent on implementation details
0:47:02of how this is actually done for both the reviewer,
0:47:05the customer, or the reviewer, the developer,
0:47:07and people reading the reviews.
0:47:09And also, just how many people actually do go through
0:47:13and read reviews, 'cause I think iOS developers
0:47:16have a pretty good idea that having star ratings matters.
0:47:20Having a high average matters, and it looks better
0:47:23if you have a high number of them,
0:47:25'cause it says usually in parentheses next to the star
0:47:27average, it'll tell you how many ratings there were.
0:47:30And so when people are choosing an app or deciding
0:47:34whether to download or buy an app, I think a lot of people
0:47:36do look at those star ratings, and that matters.
0:47:39But the actual written reviews, we don't really know.
0:47:43I kind of have a hunch that they don't matter that much,
0:47:46that not a large percentage of people do go through
0:47:49and really read them, or read a decent number of them.
0:47:53And so if that's the case, then whether developers
0:47:56can respond to them doesn't matter that much.
0:47:59And if you look, this is one of those things
0:48:01that the Android people are going crazy today,
0:48:03'cause Android has had this for years,
0:48:05maybe even since day one, I don't even know.
0:48:07From what we hear from Android people,
0:48:08it's mostly a non-issue.
0:48:11It's like, yeah, some people do it,
0:48:12it doesn't really matter.
0:48:13Like, it isn't that big of a deal, right?
0:48:16So we don't know how this will play out on iOS,
0:48:19it isn't the same market,
0:48:20but there's certainly some overlap.
0:48:22And if I'm right that not a lot of people
0:48:24read a lot of the reviews,
0:48:26they mostly just look at the ratings,
0:48:28then whether you as a developer respond to them
0:48:32is really completely up to you.
0:48:33And it's kind of an optional support channel
0:48:36if you want it to be.
0:48:38That being said, App Store reviews,
0:48:41like your customers consider that a support channel
0:48:44whether you do or not.
0:48:45And that's not gonna suddenly start
0:48:48now that developers can leave responses.
0:48:50That's always been the case.
0:48:51You've always had people treating the review system
0:48:54as a support channel and using it to grind axes
0:48:59or to ask weird questions or to withhold stars as hostages
0:49:03until you add their favorite features.
0:49:05Like that has always been the case.
0:49:08it's not gonna change that for developers.
0:49:10Like the perception that people expect you to respond
0:49:13has always been there.
0:49:15So people who are upset now that this is like
0:49:18an additional support channel they now have to manage,
0:49:20you know, newsflash, it always has been one,
0:49:22we just haven't been able to manage it.
0:49:23So now we will have a way to do it.
0:49:28Implementation wise, there's a huge open question of
0:49:31how are these shown, are they shown in a way
0:49:33that many people will see them?
0:49:34One of my big questions about it is
0:49:36If I respond to a review, is the person who wrote it
0:49:39notified of that response?
0:49:41Is it sent to them in some way through, you know,
0:49:43through like an email by Apple or something?
0:49:45Because if not, then the value, I think,
0:49:47for me responding is even lower.
0:49:49'Cause a large part of the value,
0:49:51if somebody writes something that is either
0:49:54really a support request or is indicating
0:49:57they're having some kind of problem you could help with
0:49:59or the misunderstanding, the app in some way,
0:50:01like they're saying it doesn't have a feature
0:50:03but it really does have that feature,
0:50:05If they aren't notified of my response,
0:50:07that has a lot less value than to respond.
0:50:10So the implementation details, they rest a lot on this.
0:50:14How are they shown in the interface?
0:50:16How do developers respond?
0:50:17How hard is it to respond?
0:50:19Do we have to go through some weird iTunes Connect tool?
0:50:21Is there gonna be a third party app that makes it easy?
0:50:24How are we gonna deal with the different storefronts
0:50:26in different parts of the world?
0:50:28How are we gonna deal with different languages?
0:50:30There are lots of big question marks
0:50:32on the implementation details of this
0:50:34that will decide how effective it is or isn't
0:50:36and whether it's worth developers responding or not.
0:50:39And of course there's gonna be the people
0:50:41like Twitter and Facebook who just respond
0:50:44to every single thing with please email support
0:50:46and we'll try to help you out,
0:50:47like fake template response.
0:50:49But overall, it's probably gonna be either
0:50:53completely forgettable and it's gonna be a total non-event
0:50:56and not a lot of people are gonna respond
0:50:59and it'll be fine and nobody will care,
0:51:01or it'll be a positive thing.
0:51:03The only downside is I'm gonna start reading my reviews.
0:51:06(laughing)
0:51:07- It'll be positive for developers.
0:51:09Like it's situational.
0:51:09Like one, this is a developer pleasing feature
0:51:13more than a customer pleasing one it seems to me.
0:51:14- Yes, absolutely. - 'Cause as you noted,
0:51:15like customers may or may not care,
0:51:17especially if they're not notified, who knows.
0:51:19But if you happen to be a specific developer
0:51:24who has a specific app that has a very popular,
0:51:27lots of people clicked on helpful, blah, blah, blah,
0:51:29like the top review is a scathing review
0:51:33filled with mistaken information, as in like you said,
0:51:36I expect this thing to have feature X and it doesn't,
0:51:38it's garbage and it totally has feature X,
0:51:40this person just hasn't found it.
0:51:42And you would love to be able to tell them,
0:51:43actually click on the blah and there's a thing,
0:51:45and you know, like, but you can't respond
0:51:47and you don't know the person's email
0:51:49and there's no way you can communicate that
0:51:51and your poor app sits there with this,
0:51:53everyone, you know, and everyone who loads up your app
0:51:55is gonna see that as like the most helpful review
0:51:58and it is just the worst.
0:51:59And most developers aren't in this situation,
0:52:01But for the one that is, this feature is like the best thing ever because they don't care
0:52:08how it affects the whole app store.
0:52:09They don't care if it even gets them any more conversions.
0:52:13They just, it's like the principle.
0:52:14I just can't stand this one mistaken review sitting there at the top, right?
0:52:19And I guess I could just release a new version and erase it, which is a whole other thing
0:52:23about how reviews and ratings are going to last across releases, which by the way, is
0:52:27not part of this.
0:52:28Apple has said they're aware of that problem.
0:52:30They don't have anything to announce at this time, but we should be looking forward to something happening there
0:52:35But in the meantime it just feels so good
0:52:38I can imagine as a developer to be able to finally respond
0:52:42I think even if they're not notified it just lets you feel better to be like
0:52:46Well that person will never know because they're long gone
0:52:48But anyone else who stumbles across these reviews at least I've set the record straight whether or not you really set it straight
0:52:53Whether you actually dug yourself in deeper by being passive-aggressive in your response and people look think of your app worse
0:52:59Like it's just human nature to feel better about this and practically speaking. I think you have to give developers that channel
0:53:07It's up to them to do something useful with the channel
0:53:10They could not use it at all or they could
0:53:12You know be self-destructive and do bad things with it and argue with their customers even though you only have one reply
0:53:17I guess they get into edit wars as the question and the answer re-edited themselves over and over again
0:53:21But not having that channel along at all for like seven or eight years has just felt terrible
0:53:27And so I think this is it's a really important feature to have
0:53:30The importance is far out of proportion
0:53:33From the effect that it will have on anybody's business probably but just like it's one of those like why didn't you know?
0:53:40You had a system for commenting you had everything in place
0:53:43We're not asking you to expose their emails which is another bone of contention of who owns the customers Apple still owns them, right?
0:53:49But just give developers some way to respond and it took so long and it's finally here
0:53:53So I think I think there's no way this can't be a net positive for the App Store as a concept
0:53:59Even if it's not a net positive for any particular person sales
0:54:02It will it will be a net positive for for a developer state of mind exactly
0:54:07Well, I'm looking forward to seeing how this shakes out and I don't know
0:54:11I'm also curious to hear what you think of it Marco after it's been a little while in seeing if you hate reading reviews or not
0:54:16Well, what do you think of it? You're an iOS developer? What do you think? I?
0:54:21I don't know. It's a little weird for my situation because it's a company, it's not just me.
0:54:30And seeing the feedback come through our email is interesting and enlightening. It does tell
0:54:35me that a lot of the problems we expect to see, because we know that they're problems,
0:54:43you know, a lot of people cite them as problems. But there are certainly times where people
0:54:46like, "I don't understand how to do blah, why can't I do blah?" And in that situation,
0:54:52it would be super convenient to be able to—and these are all emails, so obviously we can
0:54:58reply—but hypothetically, if these are reviews, it would be super convenient to be able to
0:55:02say, "Oh, if you need to do that thing, you just tap here and then tap there, and then
0:55:06problem solved." And by the way, it sounds like we need to make this better in the future.
0:55:10But in that sense, I'm positive about it.
0:55:15I don't suspect that it's going to be my personal job to be trolling the reviews and—well,
0:55:21not trolling, I guess, but weeding through the reviews.
0:55:24You know what I mean, right?
0:55:25Weeding through the reviews to respond when necessary.
0:55:29But I agree with both of you.
0:55:31I think this is a net positive, and I'm curious to see what happens in it.
0:55:36And I'm also very curious to see if after a while, like if you people start, people
0:55:43or companies for that matter, start replying to your views and we see how that goes.
0:55:48And that either convinces the rest of us to dive in head first, or if it convinces, someone
0:55:55in the chat said trawling, that is the word I was looking for.
0:55:58T-R-A-W-L-I-N-G.
0:55:59Sorry.
0:56:00Sorry. Anyway, so yeah, so does Marco start replying to reviews and he has a terrible
0:56:08experience with it and so Underscore says, "Oh, I'm never touching that." Or does Marco start
0:56:13replying to reviews and it's a great experience and suddenly Underscore's like, "Heck yeah, I want
0:56:19in on that." And then suddenly my employer's like, "Heck yeah, we want in on that." You know what I
0:56:23mean? Like, I'm curious to see what the not literal beta testers but kind of effective beta testers
0:56:30show us about the experience, if it's garbage or if it's great.
0:56:33It really depends on that personality, though. We all know people who probably shouldn't
0:56:37respond to comments. Like, you can make it worse for yourself, you know, because you
0:56:41have a free text box, and if you get there, like, in the wrong mood or you're angry, like,
0:56:45if you end up, like, yelling at your customers, it's not a net win for you. But I don't think
0:56:48someone like David Smith is going to see someone yelling at their customers and say, "Oh, I
0:56:52better stay away from reviews," because he won't yell at his customers. Like, customer
0:56:55customer support and dealing with customer support issues is a skill, and you can have
0:57:01more or less of it depending on where your skill set lies, and it is not a thing that
0:57:05you should just assume that you're able to do just because you wrote the application.
0:57:08So the channel has to be there, but for, you know, it's giving people, even though they
0:57:15only have one reply, that is more than enough rope for a lot of people to hang themselves.
0:57:18So now there's another skill set that these small shops or independent developers who
0:57:23who have to be able to do a million things,
0:57:25guess what, here's one more thing
0:57:26that you have to add to your skillset
0:57:28or find some way to outsource.
0:57:30- And honestly, and I said this under the radar too,
0:57:34again, listen to the radar this week
0:57:35if you're into this topic 'cause we went into more of it,
0:57:38but this is a huge opportunity in the tools space
0:57:41for some service or app to make it easy for developers
0:57:46to receive new reviews and reply to them
0:57:49and track which ones they have either replied to
0:57:52or decided not to reply to.
0:57:54Across all the different stores,
0:57:55maybe with built-in translate functionality of some sort
0:57:57with a decent API, that's a thing.
0:58:00Please somebody make that,
0:58:01and you can sell that to a lot of iOS developers
0:58:03for ongoing recurring subscription fee.
0:58:05- Using Apple's convenient open rest API?
0:58:08(laughing)
0:58:10I like all these things you're describing,
0:58:12you know, it may just because I just did a podcast
0:58:15about this, but all I can think of is how much better
0:58:18that game I play that you guys make fun of all the time,
0:58:20Destiny does with this exact thing.
0:58:23Destiny, the game, has an extensive API
0:58:27that is completely open to anybody who wants to use it.
0:58:29They can give you all the information
0:58:32about all your characters and all your stats
0:58:33and let you do things with it.
0:58:34And there are, you know, browser plugins, websites,
0:58:39iOS applications, everything you could possibly imagine
0:58:42for messing with your stuff in Destiny.
0:58:45Why? Because it's an open API.
0:58:46They said, here's an API to all of our stuff.
0:58:48and a simple authentication scheme
0:58:51where you just authenticate and then it's just,
0:58:53and the number of things that people have made,
0:58:55it's just like the thing you just described,
0:58:57would there be a hundred of those the next day
0:59:00if this was Destiny that we were talking about?
0:59:02I don't know what the situation is
0:59:03for Apple's Interface 2 reviews,
0:59:06but if it's not as good as Destiny, the game,
0:59:09maybe they should hire some people from Bungie
0:59:10because this is like making a decent API
0:59:14that anybody can use is like a simple REST-based API
0:59:17that speaks JSON, it's not that hard.
0:59:20Like individual people make these little Chrome plugins
0:59:24or web pages that do amazing things.
0:59:26And they do it all for free,
0:59:28and they do it in their spare time.
0:59:29And any one of them, you would love to have something
0:59:32that's that good for what you described
0:59:34for dealing with reviews in the iOS App Store.
0:59:37But if Apple keeps it all proprietary
0:59:38and it's behind some weird thing,
0:59:40then it's gonna be much harder to make
0:59:41and there'll be fewer of them and it will be sad.
0:59:44(upbeat music)
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1:00:51- Moving on, I hear rumor on the streets
1:00:58that Marco is actually going to,
1:01:02in the new version of Overcast,
1:01:03and don't tell him I squealed,
1:01:05he's actually going to change the icon for Overcast
1:01:09to be the show art of the actively playing podcast.
1:01:14Since I've spilled the beans, Marco,
1:01:15why don't you tell us more about this?
1:01:18- So one of the features that has been added
1:01:20in iOS 10.3 beta is this mechanism
1:01:25for seemingly setting alternate app icons in code.
1:01:30The implementation of this is a little questionable.
1:01:33Steve Trout and Smith did some digging,
1:01:35and apparently, I believe the API doesn't actually work yet,
1:01:38but apparently there is evidence in the frameworks
1:01:42and stuff that it prompts you to confirm it.
1:01:45Like it prompts the user to confirm any change of icon
1:01:48before it actually applies it.
1:01:49And so the question is, what is this for?
1:01:54And it is not for developers like me to do things,
1:01:59like for instance, I would love to change the icon
1:02:02based on whether it's night or day.
1:02:07and I could have a dark mode at night,
1:02:08and then I could have automatic dark mode switching
1:02:11and everything, and that's just not gonna be practical
1:02:14if that's what it is.
1:02:15There was a tweet from the Fantastical people
1:02:18that they would love to have,
1:02:19because it's an alternative calendar app,
1:02:21and just like the Apple calendar app,
1:02:23they'd love to change their icon
1:02:24to be the day number every day,
1:02:27just like what Apple's app does,
1:02:28so it always shows the right date,
1:02:29and it's not gonna do that either.
1:02:31- It just prompts you every morning.
1:02:32- Yeah, right. (laughs)
1:02:33Send you a push notification, time to update your icon,
1:02:36Come here and say, "Okay."
1:02:38- You can kind of understand why they do it that way,
1:02:39because it is a security concern,
1:02:41because if applications could programmatically
1:02:42change their icon, you could totally be phished
1:02:46by an application that suddenly changes its icon
1:02:48to look like some trusted application,
1:02:50and you don't notice that you're not on the page
1:02:52you thought you were on, and you tap the icon,
1:02:53and it puts up a phishing screen that looks just like the,
1:02:56you know what I mean?
1:02:57It is dangerous to allow applications
1:02:59to arbitrarily change their icon without a prompt.
1:03:01So I totally understand that prompt, but you're right.
1:03:04that eliminates all sorts of use cases.
1:03:06And especially with the phishing stuff,
1:03:07this is kind of like so many other app store things.
1:03:10Fantastic Al should be able to change its icon
1:03:12to be the date, right?
1:03:14It should be able to do that.
1:03:16And it's like, well, but if we let them do that,
1:03:18then everyone can, it's like,
1:03:20do you like, there should be some earnable level of trust
1:03:24within the system,
1:03:25like just like there was on Stack Overflow or whatever.
1:03:27And Fantastic Al should have earned some level of trust
1:03:30by this point.
1:03:31I don't know how this mechanism is gonna work.
1:03:33It's very difficult to do these types of systems
1:03:34just as the people who run Stack Overflow.
1:03:36It is a hard problem to solve,
1:03:38but throwing up your hands and saying,
1:03:40well, oh well, fantastic help.
1:03:42Can't show the data in their icon.
1:03:43That's not the right solution either.
1:03:45So I'm glad whoever this feature is made for
1:03:48is getting the features that they asked for.
1:03:50And I can think of reasonable uses of it in that context,
1:03:54but it kind of annoys me
1:03:56that the API is finally being made public,
1:04:00but in a way that so many use cases can't use it.
1:04:04- Yeah, I mean, again, like you said,
1:04:07it is a tricky problem.
1:04:08There's lots of potential abuses for this.
1:04:11So it does make sense why they would strictly control it,
1:04:15but honestly, I'm kind of surprised
1:04:18it needs to be there at all.
1:04:19I honestly am very surprised it needs to be there at all.
1:04:22And if it needs to be there at all,
1:04:24I think it should be there in a way that's more useful.
1:04:28So for instance, maybe to avoid possible security issues,
1:04:32maybe the icon has to be part of your app's bundle
1:04:34so you can't generate it dynamically,
1:04:36and then maybe App Review checks all of them
1:04:38just to make sure that you don't have
1:04:41the messages or Apple Pay icon in there.
1:04:43That's a way they could do it for everybody,
1:04:46and that would make it a lot more useful,
1:04:47and then if it has to just ship 31 icons
1:04:50and have the app just call them without a prompt.
1:04:52That's totally reasonable.
1:04:54- Even with those things,
1:04:55because your applications aren't swept,
1:04:58they're even swept to get up.
1:05:00They could make an API like that,
1:05:02but once you can get pointers to things,
1:05:03you can fill in the image data with it,
1:05:05programmatically from an obfuscated giant data array
1:05:08that you hide and you're like--
1:05:09- No, you can't.
1:05:10If it was a set image named call
1:05:14and you had to pass it only a name,
1:05:16something in your bundle,
1:05:17there's no way to abuse that then.
1:05:19- People are very sneaky.
1:05:20What was that thing we saw recently
1:05:23with that piece of malware in the App Store,
1:05:26doing some weird things and calling some weird APIs
1:05:29with like some selector swizzling.
1:05:30Like, bottom line is it's really difficult
1:05:33to both human and automatically determine
1:05:36whether an application is safe.
1:05:37It's kind of a halting problem.
1:05:38So it doesn't mean that they shouldn't do it
1:05:40because it's impossible to do with 100% accuracy.
1:05:42Like you're right, they were just covered in the 99% case.
1:05:45But I think also, and even perhaps more reliably,
1:05:48reputation of developers earnable
1:05:52through some kind of system to show that you are trustworthy
1:05:55and are not trying to scam people.
1:05:56And even that has problems because like,
1:05:58what if you're not trying to scam them,
1:05:59but someone broke into your server
1:06:00and mess with your application?
1:06:01Like there's always gonna be problems.
1:06:03But at this point in the life cycle of the App Store,
1:06:09particularly for things like calendars
1:06:13where the utility of it is significant.
1:06:15Like I do look at the calendar icon
1:06:17to see what the date is on my phone frequently.
1:06:21they have to find a way to make that be there.
1:06:23And whether it's the scheme that you were describing Marco,
1:06:25where it's just a very limited API,
1:06:27or it is a trust-based system,
1:06:30which would have many other uses by the way,
1:06:32not just for this API,
1:06:33could have uses for review times
1:06:35and for how deep of a review you do and stuff like that.
1:06:38This is another one of those things
1:06:41that should be there by now.
1:06:43- I mean, no matter what, the fact that there's an API,
1:06:45even though it's super restricted right now,
1:06:47I mean, that's Apple style, right?
1:06:49I mean, look at the Siri,
1:06:50What do they call them?
1:06:51The different groups of functionality,
1:06:54there's a term for it.
1:06:55I can't think of it off the top of my head,
1:06:56but you can only use Siri in certain contexts.
1:06:59Well, maybe this is one of those things
1:07:02and maybe they'll open it up in the future.
1:07:05I mean, I'm not terribly confident about that,
1:07:07but it could be, you never know.
1:07:09But yeah, however this came to be, whatever this is about,
1:07:12I mean, I guess, cool, maybe we'll see what happens,
1:07:17but I suspect just like Marco was saying,
1:07:19is going to amount to a whole lot of nothing for most people.
1:07:21Yeah.
1:07:22Moving on, Steve Trout and Smith, who was, I guess at this point, an honorary member of the show,
1:07:27since he's given us most of the topics for tonight just by tweeting all this stuff.
1:07:32He has also found a floating detached keyboard.
1:07:37Now this is different than the thing, I don't even know if it's still a thing,
1:07:40but then the thing that at least used to be the case where you could slide the keyboard
1:07:44up the screen on an iPad and it would split in two, so there would be like a half on either side
1:07:48of the screen and I think the intention there was so you could touch type with your thumbs
1:07:52while gripping the screen. This is not the same thing as that because that's split in two.
1:07:56This is an entire like iPhone shaped and sized keyboard that you can use single-handedly on a
1:08:079.7 inch iPad which seems really peculiar and stupid to me at first and then I got thinking
1:08:14about it and I was like, "You know, that actually might make some amount of sense. This might be
1:08:18kind of cool." So there's, um, because if there's a situation where I'm holding an iPad one-handed,
1:08:27which admittedly I can't imagine that would be terribly often, but if I, or maybe if I had the
1:08:32iPad propped and I wanted to use only one hand to type, having all those keys right next to each
1:08:38other, I could see that being kind of cool. I mean, it's all hypothetical, right? Because I
1:08:41because I haven't tried this myself, but it might be neat.
1:08:44I'm not writing this off immediately as garbage.
1:08:46It might also be garbage, I don't know.
1:08:48It sounds like you're not too impressed, Marco.
1:08:51- We would have to see how Apple tells the story
1:08:54of this feature, like what is the intent of it,
1:08:56if it gets released.
1:08:58That's a big if, but if it gets released,
1:09:00I would be very curious to know what Apple thinks
1:09:04of this feature, what they expect it to be used for,
1:09:07because as he's showing it in these screenshots,
1:09:11I can't think of a good use for this.
1:09:14I think it would be very, very hard to type on
1:09:16on actual iPad hardware,
1:09:19no matter where you put it on the screen.
1:09:20I think it'd be very, very hard to type on.
1:09:22The whole reason that that keyboard works
1:09:25is because you are holding a device
1:09:27that is roughly the size of your hand
1:09:28and using one or two thumbs on it.
1:09:31The way you hold an iPad is totally different.
1:09:33The way your fingers reach things on the iPad
1:09:35is totally different.
1:09:36I don't see how this would work, honestly.
1:09:40but at this point iOS is so big, there's so much there,
1:09:44that they can add features like this
1:09:47that only two people ever wanna use.
1:09:49Or the app icon changing API that they added,
1:09:53how many apps are you ever gonna be able to use that
1:09:57in a constructive way, zero, five?
1:09:59There's lots of APIs now, various extension points
1:10:03that exist that are almost never used by anybody,
1:10:07but one type of app uses it and that's enough.
1:10:09as you mentioned, the Siri kit stuff,
1:10:11like being able to order certain things through Siri
1:10:15or query certain things through Siri
1:10:16where that's really only ever gonna be used
1:10:18by zero to one apps that are on somebody's phone.
1:10:22But it's worth it to have it
1:10:23because those might be enough people to matter
1:10:26with iOS being so big.
1:10:27So something like this,
1:10:28I would argue on the iPad,
1:10:31they should probably be spending their time
1:10:32doing more important things
1:10:34that affect more people on the iPad
1:10:35that could have a bigger return,
1:10:36but someone's gonna use it.
1:10:38And so I guess if it wasn't too much work,
1:10:41it's probably fine, but I hesitate to see,
1:10:44or I struggle to see the use of this myself.
1:10:47- I think there was a tweet saying that this is actually,
1:10:48this code has been in there since the beginning of
1:10:50- There it was. - of iOS 10.
1:10:51Like it's not a 10.3 feature.
1:10:53And again, to be clear to everybody,
1:10:55this is not something that's in a 10.3 beta.
1:10:57This is a hidden thing, like the code is there for it,
1:10:59but it's not exposed.
1:11:00It's just like going through headers
1:11:01and finding things to call.
1:11:03The most important thing to me,
1:11:06looking at this potential feature
1:11:10that may or may not ever ship or be revealed in any way,
1:11:15is that it is, I guess the second,
1:11:18maybe I'm missing some things,
1:11:19iteration of bringing essentially Windows to iOS.
1:11:24It is a floating square on the screen
1:11:29that is not, you know,
1:11:31it's not the screen divided in half or in thirds
1:11:33or a slide, a panel that slides up from the side or whatever.
1:11:35It is its own independent floating square
1:11:38that presumably you can put wherever you want.
1:11:40That's called a window.
1:11:42Doesn't have title bar on it.
1:11:44It's not a window in the Mac sense,
1:11:46but it's definitely a window.
1:11:47Picture in picture, also a window.
1:11:49You can kind of move that thing around on the screen
1:11:50without not completely free form.
1:11:52Same thing with our little friend,
1:11:53the assistive touch button nub thing
1:11:56that you can put anywhere on the screen.
1:11:58It's like iOS was first everything fills the screen,
1:12:01and then second, the screen starts getting subdivided
1:12:03pieces for multitasking in thirds and halves and stuff like that and then finally a bunch of little
1:12:09guys come and plop up on top on this one big floating layer on top of everything keyboards
1:12:14picture in picture is such stuff like it is a step in the direction away from the absolute extreme
1:12:23simplicity that ios was born in and towards a tiny toe dip into the world of the mac where you can
1:12:31have more than one thing on the screen at the same time in an arrangement of your choosing
1:12:36and you can move stuff around depending on what you want to see.
1:12:41And this tiny little keyboard, this weird little iPhone floating keyboard whatever thing
1:12:46is interesting to me not just because it's a window but also because it reinforces the
1:12:51idea and I feel this even on my iPad that sometimes when that keyboard slides up it's
1:12:57It's taking a larger portion of the screen than you think is appropriate for a keyboard
1:13:03at this time.
1:13:04Like, "Oh man, my big iPad screen, now a huge portion of it is taken up with this big
1:13:08honking keyboard."
1:13:10If a particular task, you don't need that whole bottom third of the screen to be taken
1:13:15up with the keyboard, just to have a little floating thing that you can put anywhere,
1:13:18maybe you don't want it covering the bottom, maybe you want it covering the left or the
1:13:20top or the side, or maybe you want it near your thumb or whatever.
1:13:23The same reason people like the Assistive Touch button, even though they're chasing
1:13:26that little puck around the screen,
1:13:27moving it out of the way so it doesn't obscure stuff.
1:13:30Apparently people get used to that and like,
1:13:32that's just part of me using my phone
1:13:33is occasionally I have to move the little thing
1:13:35out of the way, but it's still preferable.
1:13:37Well, here I think you're trading a very large keyboard,
1:13:41take up, you know, not just obscuring a large portion
1:13:43of the screen, but often the app have to change
1:13:45their view hierarchy and view structure to accommodate
1:13:47for the very large keyboard when it comes up,
1:13:49to say, no application, you don't have to change
1:13:51your layout at all, let the user deal with that.
1:13:53The user will be the janitor,
1:13:54and old Steve Jobs parlance,
1:13:56and they'll just move the little tiny keyboard around
1:13:59where they wanna move it.
1:14:00Now, like both of you said, having not used this,
1:14:04it does not immediately appear to me to be any sort of win,
1:14:08and I kind of agree with the fact
1:14:10of it not being exposed right now,
1:14:11and I would like to have to see
1:14:12what kind of story they explain this,
1:14:14but like the split keyboard
1:14:16that I think Casey mentioned before,
1:14:18where you take the existing iOS keyboard and split it,
1:14:21and I'm pretty sure that feature still exists
1:14:22'cause I've used it recently,
1:14:23or recently-ish, like in the last year.
1:14:25They announced that feature, they showed it,
1:14:29people oohed and aahed, and I think most people
1:14:32who don't use it just forgot about it.
1:14:33But if it's still there, it doesn't do anybody harm.
1:14:35If you don't ever use it,
1:14:37and you don't ever accidentally trigger it, it's fine.
1:14:40So this could be that category of things,
1:14:42but I wanna encourage Apple to continue to explore
1:14:45this radical idea we call Windows, with a lowercase w.
1:14:49(laughing)
1:14:51- Oh my goodness.
1:14:53Yeah, I mean, we'll see what happens.
1:14:54It's fascinating to me that Apple is shipping this code
1:14:59dark, not surprising necessarily, but just interesting.
1:15:03But what's really super interesting is that
1:15:05Steve Tran Smith is finding all this stuff.
1:15:07Like just the stuff that he can dig up is tremendous.
1:15:11And I don't even know where to begin to do some of the stuff
1:15:14that he's able to do.
1:15:15And I'm deeply impressed by it.
1:15:17And I love that he's sharing it with the world,
1:15:19even to the point of making a sample project
1:15:22on GitHub, and we have a link to it in the show notes, or a link to a tweet of his anyway,
1:15:25to exercise the icon thing. Like, just such cool stuff. And man, I wish I was smart like him.
1:15:33But anyway, yeah, we'll see what happens with this floating keyboard thing. I do think that
1:15:38your point about the windowing is interesting, Jon, especially because if I recall correctly,
1:15:44you can actually resize the picture-in-picture window if you pinch it. I think there are some
1:15:49some limits, but I think you can enlarge and shrink it.
1:15:52And I've also noticed that you can kind of flick it
1:15:54off to the side, so there's just like a little handle
1:15:58or like nubbin that pokes out off the side of the screen.
1:16:01So if you wanted to like shimmy it off to the side
1:16:03just for a moment to look at something
1:16:04and then bring it back, you can do that.
1:16:06So there is some amount of window management
1:16:08that's going on in iOS today.
1:16:10And it seems like more and more is coming,
1:16:12which is really, really interesting.
1:16:14- And picture in picture, like it shows Apple's willingness
1:16:18to ship features on iOS in which it's up to you
1:16:21to deal with that little window.
1:16:22Like the whole point is you don't have to have the app
1:16:24in the front, you can go do other things
1:16:27and we won't even mess with your multitasking.
1:16:28We won't even take up one of the multitasking slots
1:16:30or whatever, it's just this little window.
1:16:32And maybe it's blocking stuff.
1:16:33It's up to you to move it out of the way.
1:16:35If it's covering something you don't want,
1:16:37move it to a different place.
1:16:37If you just wanna get rid of it,
1:16:38like it is pushing that management test up,
1:16:41deciding that you know where like,
1:16:42oh, I don't care that it covers this part of the screen.
1:16:44And if it's covering something, knowing you move it.
1:16:45And in practice, I found with Picture-in-Picture,
1:16:48it's usually not that hard to find someplace on the screen
1:16:50where you can put it, where it's not bothering you.
1:16:52And you know where that is because you know the apps
1:16:54that you're using.
1:16:55That's the curse and the power of Windows,
1:16:58as we all know on typical personal computers is,
1:17:02you can put them wherever you want
1:17:03and you can arrange it in a way that makes sense to you.
1:17:04And it's so much more limited in iOS.
1:17:06Like you have very few of these little things
1:17:08and the where you can put them and how big they can be
1:17:10and how you manipulate them is incredibly limited.
1:17:12But I think coming from a world
1:17:14where the entire phone was one application all the time,
1:17:17that incredible simplicity,
1:17:18and moving to a world with iPad Pro,
1:17:22large type devices with a pen and all this other stuff.
1:17:25You have to start giving people the ability to do this,
1:17:27otherwise you're not leveraging the power
1:17:29of the larger screen and the multitasking
1:17:32and all that other stuff.
1:17:33- Yeah, I love picture-in-picture on my iPad,
1:17:35and I love it so much, even on macOS,
1:17:38that I found, I don't remember who introduced this to me,
1:17:41but, and forgive me if I mentioned this on the show before,
1:17:44But there's a Safari extension called Pied Piper, but it's Pied P-I-P-er, get it?
1:17:51Anyway, it's a Safari extension that'll allow you to easily do picture-in-picture on YouTube,
1:17:57and I think Vimeo and a couple of other places, and Plex for the Plex web front end.
1:18:02Yes, I am aware that you can do some right-click, right-click again dance on YouTube in order
1:18:09to get it to support Picture-in-Picture, but this just puts a little button right on the
1:18:15video that lets you kick it over to a Picture-in-Picture.
1:18:18I find that super convenient, particularly because, although I don't believe in having
1:18:22a gazillion Safari tabs like you do, John, I do believe in having about 11 billion spaces
1:18:28or virtual desktops.
1:18:30And so having Picture-in-Picture can let this hover across several different spaces, which
1:18:35is really nice.
1:18:36So I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
1:18:39Anything else on iOS 10.3?
1:18:40I briefly mentioned the reviewing interface thing that Marco said he talked about under
1:18:45the radar, but that was an issue we talked about on past ATPs, I think, with applications
1:18:52asking you to rate them obnoxiously more often than you would like.
1:18:56And we were discussing, you know, "Oh, maybe you could report them that they're doing that
1:19:00or applications shouldn't be doing that, but then how do you enforce the guidelines?"
1:19:03Apple's solution to this seems to be make an official API for asking that and put limits
1:19:08on the official API, and eventually some point in the future force everyone to use the API.
1:19:13So this sounds, I endorse this plan.
1:19:15This sounds like a good plan.
1:19:16I look forward to them rolling it out.
1:19:18I like that they're doing it reasonably cautiously, not just one day saying, "Hey, guess what?
1:19:22If your app asks for reviews in any way except the official API, you will get rejected."
1:19:26They're not doing that.
1:19:27But the API is, the limits are sane.
1:19:30It's like three times per year you can ask, and with a global switch that says, "I never
1:19:36want to be asked to rate an application. I'm going to use that global switch because I
1:19:40do never want to be asked. Many applications that I use and like frequently ask me to rate
1:19:45them and have obnoxious choices at the bottom of the dialogue boxes, none of which my brainstem
1:19:51knows, you know, my brainstem doesn't know which one to pick so I have to read words
1:19:54and be like, it's like, maybe later, no, like, oh, just go away box, I don't want to see
1:20:04you. So I endorse this API. I wish it would come sooner. In fact, I wish they would, you know,
1:20:11make it even more draconian now. And the nice thing is, everything I've heard about this is like,
1:20:15yes, these are reasonable choices. Like what about the applications like Marco's that
1:20:20never prompt you, but just have a little section in the preferences that say, hey, if you want to
1:20:24rate it, are they okay? Answer, yes, you're totally allowed to do that because that's not a thing that
1:20:28pops up in your face. If you're scrolling through the settings and you see the thing, those
1:20:31Those applications don't have to be removed from the store
1:20:34or changed a thing.
1:20:35And if Marco wants to make it,
1:20:37so when you tap that thing,
1:20:38it pops up an inline thing to review the app.
1:20:40Can he use that new API?
1:20:41Yes, he can.
1:20:42See, it's not that hard.
1:20:43Like we're so used to like every API that Apple,
1:20:46every sort of app store rule or API they introduce,
1:20:49there being a bunch of obvious problems
1:20:50that we all whine about, right?
1:20:52No obvious problems in this one.
1:20:54There may be non-obvious problems,
1:20:55but like it is just a great feeling
1:20:57to get an announcement at the app store and go,
1:20:59they made, for all the big choices,
1:21:02they made reasonable ones, yay!
1:21:05- Yeah, I mean this, like, again,
1:21:06we did spend about half of Under the Radar this week
1:21:08talking about this, so I have to re-put that
1:21:10in the show notes, plug plug.
1:21:11However, this is one of, this is like
1:21:14quintessential good Apple.
1:21:16This is like seeing a problem that is,
1:21:18that causes a poor user experience,
1:21:21but that for some reason, that exists for a good reason.
1:21:25So like, these app reviews, these Rate My App dialogues
1:21:28just for good reason, because they work.
1:21:30And because, as I mentioned earlier,
1:21:32star ratings in the App Store tend to matter.
1:21:35And so when you can have a way for most apps
1:21:38to get a lot more star ratings,
1:21:40that will definitely increase their downloads and sales
1:21:44in a way that most people don't love,
1:21:47but most of them also just don't care that much about it,
1:21:51that's going to happen, that's going to be inevitable.
1:21:53So Apple has addressed the need for them with this API.
1:21:56They're saying, okay, we understand that you need
1:21:59to prompt users, or that you think you need,
1:22:03there needs to be a way to prompt users to review your app.
1:22:06However, they take control away from the developer
1:22:09of whether that's allowed to happen or not.
1:22:13The developer still says when it should happen,
1:22:16but they don't know whether it will succeed or not.
1:22:18And then combined with the policy change
1:22:23that will be coming down the road at some unspecified time
1:22:26that says you won't be allowed to ask for reviews
1:22:28any other way, that combination will be awesome.
1:22:32The only problem I see with this,
1:22:33which again we talked about this on Under the Radar,
1:22:35please listen to that also,
1:22:36the only problem I see with this is enforcement,
1:22:38because I think it's going to be similar to the rules
1:22:41that they have against spam push notifications,
1:22:44or push notifications that are used for quote,
1:22:46marketing or promotional purposes.
1:22:48I think every single app that uses push notifications,
1:22:52with very, very few exceptions,
1:22:55including the App Store app,
1:22:58has been used for promotional purposes.
1:23:00Apps abuse this all the time.
1:23:02Apple themselves abuse this sometimes.
1:23:04Games are the worst.
1:23:08Big content apps are the worst.
1:23:10Big company apps are the worst.
1:23:11Tons of apps spam notify people for things like,
1:23:15"Hey, bombs are now on sale for a limited time.
1:23:18"Come check out the newest content."
1:23:20Crap like that.
1:23:21That is explicitly prohibited in the app review rules.
1:23:24but that has never been enforced in any kind of scale
1:23:27because it's kind of hard to enforce that
1:23:29when you're reviewing apps for like three minutes at a time.
1:23:33As long as you don't see the problem come up
1:23:35during those three minutes during app review,
1:23:38it's gonna be really hard to enforce
1:23:39unless as we discussed a couple times way back,
1:23:42maybe they could add some kind of report a problem button
1:23:44but is Apple really gonna clutter up their UI
1:23:48of every notification or something like that
1:23:51or every app icon or every app in the store
1:23:53with a report violation button, probably not.
1:23:57So the problem that this review policy
1:24:02and review change will have is like,
1:24:04if they can't really consistently enforce
1:24:08that you aren't allowed to do it the old way anymore,
1:24:10then all the big apps that are data-driven,
1:24:13like Twitter and stuff,
1:24:14they're just gonna keep doing it the old way.
1:24:15And nothing's gonna really,
1:24:17it's only gonna hurt the good people
1:24:19who are trying to do things the right way.
1:24:21- I think you only need a small number of people reporting.
1:24:23Like this is not a type of thing where you need like everybody to even know the reporting
1:24:26interface exists.
1:24:27All you need is five nerds.
1:24:29Five nerds to know where – how to report it, right?
1:24:32Because all you need to do is alert Apple, "Oh, hey, maybe check this app out.
1:24:37Maybe it's doing this thing."
1:24:38And unlike push notifications, it's not like this is a data-driven thing where like
1:24:42the avenue is there and the avenue is legal.
1:24:44It's just the content that's bad.
1:24:46This is the place where the avenue is not allowed.
1:24:49You are not allowed to pop up a dialogue box that says anything about ratings and leads
1:24:52people to ratings, like without using the official API, right? So you don't have to
1:24:56be like, "Oh, you're allowed to use push notifications." It's just the things that you push on those
1:24:59notifications shouldn't be ads. You're like, "Oh no, totally. We'll never push ads," right?
1:25:03That's not a reviewable thing. Whereas popping up a dialogue, I mean, obviously you can be
1:25:08sneaky and say, "Oh, the content of the dialogue is pulled from the web and you'll never know
1:25:11what it is," right? You know, people can work around it. But if you just let this go out
1:25:15into the wild and nerds know where the box is that tells them the application is a problem,
1:25:20that will you know and then they sort them by volume and they just say every week go through the ones that people are complaining about
1:25:27And see if it's yes, it's true
1:25:29Look, I've you know
1:25:30I spent more than three minutes with this application and guess what it does prompt you for ratings and bring the ban hammer, right?
1:25:35It's you know
1:25:36It's like like all these enforcement problems like just because you can't do it a hundred percent doesn't mean you shouldn't try at all
1:25:42They and they need to get better about this in general some kind of feedback mechanism for it
1:25:47And honestly, I think applications will be motivated
1:25:49to use it, because the API, another good thing
1:25:53this API does, is it improves the application.
1:25:55You don't have to send people elsewhere
1:25:56to write a review anymore.
1:25:57They can stay in your app.
1:25:59Developers have wanted that for a long time,
1:26:01and now you get it.
1:26:02So there is incentive.
1:26:03There's a carrot as well as a stick
1:26:05for everybody to use this API.
1:26:07I don't know.
1:26:08I was happy with this announcement.
1:26:09- And honestly, I hate read this app dialog boxes,
1:26:13but the implementation of this is so good
1:26:16that I think I would leave it on.
1:26:18And I think I would be totally okay with apps I use
1:26:20on a regular basis showing this easy little box,
1:26:23like once, and then I can just say, yeah, okay,
1:26:26four stars, five stars, whatever, done.
1:26:28And that's it.
1:26:30I never leave ratings for anything
1:26:33because I don't wanna go through the hassle
1:26:34and I never think about it.
1:26:35I should because usually only people with access
1:26:38to Grime leave ratings, so if you like things,
1:26:40you should leave ratings for them.
1:26:42But I almost never do.
1:26:43I have very few reviews on my account
1:26:46because I just don't think about it.
1:26:48This makes it a lot easier to do it.
1:26:50So as a customer and as somebody
1:26:52who wants to support good apps,
1:26:54I actually would leave this on.
1:26:55It is a really nice implementation.
1:26:57- Speaking of reviews, you've reminded me/shamed me
1:27:02into the same sort of thing.
1:27:03I was thinking, when do I leave Star Reviews
1:27:05and why don't I?
1:27:06And you got both the reasons.
1:27:07I almost never do and I don't because who wants
1:27:10to leave the application they're in to go do something.
1:27:11But if it was in the dialogue and I could just hit the number of stars, I would do that
1:27:15and I should.
1:27:17And thinking of that, obviously I don't have any app in the store to think about reviews
1:27:20for, but I do have podcasts in the iTunes store and those get reviews and I'm not going
1:27:25to say they are a tire fire because they're not.
1:27:29They're good reviews.
1:27:30You know, we have good reviews for this podcast and for other podcasts that I'm on.
1:27:35But as shows age, what I have found is new reviews come in more slowly and the reviews
1:27:42become increasingly negative because eventually everyone who had anything nice to say about
1:27:46the show has already said what they have to say, which is fine.
1:27:49Like how many reviews can you leave for a show?
1:27:53But if in the middle of this podcast, a magic auditory dialogue box could pop up and people
1:27:59could auditorily or with mental powers press like, this is the analogy is falling apart.
1:28:05If it was really easy to rate podcasts, I think more people would rate it, and I think it would
1:28:09make the ratings nicer. But it's not easy to rate podcasts, and therefore nobody does it.
1:28:14And I have to say, I don't rate the podcast I listen to either. And so the only people who
1:28:18are motivated to rate podcasts are when the show newly launches and people are enthusiastic,
1:28:23and then later when people are angry. And so now all we have left are the angry people rating the
1:28:27podcast, which is fine. I don't even know how reviews or podcast stars have any effect on our
1:28:32audience at all either, but...
1:28:34I mean, it's also possible that you might be using a podcast app whose creator is very
1:28:39vehemently against the idea of podcast reviews and would never implement such a feature.
1:28:43Do other podcast things have it?
1:28:46Well, not a lot of other podcasts have their own directories.
1:28:50Those that do, I don't know of any that have any kind of review system, but that's probably
1:28:53for good reason because your view systems for podcasts are a terrible idea.
1:28:57But there's no API to do iTunes reviews basically to give a star rating to...
1:29:01- No, I really doubt it.
1:29:03I mean, you might be able to hack it
1:29:04through some kind of undocumented weird thing,
1:29:06but I really doubt it.
1:29:07That would be a massive potential for abuse.
1:29:10So I don't think they would want to expose that any real way.
1:29:13You can read reviews through an API
1:29:16that's I think also undocumented.
1:29:19I don't do that either.
1:29:20I don't care.
1:29:21I don't want to show the content of reviews,
1:29:25the ratings from reviews.
1:29:26I think in the context of podcasts and podcast search
1:29:31and podcast discovery, the star rating system
1:29:34is incredibly dysfunctional, and therefore,
1:29:38I just do not want it, and I don't want Overcast
1:29:41to show any part of it ever.
1:29:42I have my own recommendation system,
1:29:44which is a simple thumbs up, that's it.
1:29:46It's a Boolean, you like this, that's it.
1:29:49There's no dislike, there's no stars, there's no commentary.
1:29:53There's many problems with those systems.
1:29:56Simple, thumbs up, easy.
1:29:57- Yeah, the recommendation system in Overcast
1:29:59works really well.
1:30:01Chris Latner cheated on us and went on another podcast
1:30:04to talk about stuff.
1:30:05And I was like, oh, I wanna hear that podcast too.
1:30:07So I launched Overcast and I went to the screen
1:30:09where I was gonna search for the show name or whatever,
1:30:12but I didn't have to because it was already
1:30:14at the very top of the most recommended thing.
1:30:16It was right there.
1:30:17Like the icon, I mean, I recognized it
1:30:19because the icon I had seen on Twitter.
1:30:20I'm like, oh, that must be it, boop, boop, done.
1:30:23Didn't even need to type anything into a search box.
1:30:25And that's just from people going, thumbs up,
1:30:27hey, this was a good episode of the show.
1:30:29That's all it takes.
1:30:30I don't really care what the star rating is for that podcast.
1:30:33On a final note for tonight, there's been a lot of mathematics that's been done.
1:30:40There's been a lot of math done.
1:30:42Math, British listeners.
1:30:43Maths, Casey, it's math.
1:30:45No, it's math.
1:30:46They don't know what that means.
1:30:48Whatever.
1:30:49Did you know it's pronounced hover?
1:30:50Anyway, so a friend of the show, Dan Provost, who is one half of Studio Neat, has done some
1:30:56math.
1:30:57some numbers, and he has concluded that there probably should, or at least could, be a ten
1:31:06and a half inch iPad.
1:31:08And I'm going to try to summarize this as quickly as possible.
1:31:10If you look back to the original big iPad Pro announcement, what Schiller had said was,
1:31:18"Hey, if you take two full-size iPads vertically in portrait, but put them adjacent with each
1:31:25other. That screen real estate of the two of them combined is the size, real estate-wise,
1:31:31you know, resolution-wise, of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. So Dan said, "Well, what happens
1:31:38if you did the same thing but with iPad Minis? So you have two iPad Minis standing in portrait
1:31:44mode next to each other, adjacent to each other. How big would the resultant iPad need
1:31:50to be. So cue some math, a little Pythagorean theorem, and guess what? The answer is right
1:31:57around ten and a half inches. Which works out, er, I shouldn't say works out, which
1:32:01is interesting because we've been starting to hear a little bit of rumbling about, oh,
1:32:07there might be a ten and a half inch iPad someday, somehow, in the future, but nobody
1:32:11really understood it until Dan started to do this math. So this sounds really darn plausible
1:32:17me. What I'm not sure of, and I've heard a lot of people pontificating about it, is do
1:32:22they keep a 9.7-inch iPad around? If I were to wager a guess, I'd say they do, but only
1:32:30in the dustbin, the old device's bin, cheaply, as Apple is oft to do. What do you think?
1:32:37No intermhood, that means it's going to be here for like 10 years.
1:32:40Well there's that. So Marco, how do you read all this? What do you think?
1:32:44- I think it sounds very plausible.
1:32:45I mean, it seems like, if you look at the 12.9 inch
1:32:50iPad Pro users, like, the people who like that
1:32:54are real power users of the iPad.
1:32:56Like, they really like having multitasking especially,
1:32:59you know, 'cause the more you multitask,
1:33:01the more you really want resolution.
1:33:03If they ever do Windows like John wants,
1:33:05that would be even more important,
1:33:06as we know, from using PCs forever.
1:33:08So, you know, the demand for it, I think,
1:33:11is almost certainly there,
1:33:13because lots of people who are real iPad power users
1:33:18want that extra resolution for multitasking,
1:33:20but for whatever reason, either it's carry size
1:33:25or hand size or whatever else, the 12.9 is a little too big.
1:33:30It's a pretty big iPad.
1:33:31Have you spent any time with one case, the 12.9?
1:33:35- Not really.
1:33:36There's a couple people at work that have them,
1:33:38so I see them, and even though I see them
1:33:40from time to time, like maybe once a week,
1:33:42Every time I see one, I think to myself,
1:33:45my word, that is a tremendous iPad.
1:33:48- It really is large. - It is comically large.
1:33:50- Yeah, yeah, and especially 'cause you
1:33:51coming from the Mini, right?
1:33:52So-- - Yeah.
1:33:54- And you know too, so the Mini shows us
1:33:56that you can take the regular 9.7,
1:33:59quote regular iPad 9.7 resolution,
1:34:02you can shrink it down a little bit to iPhone density,
1:34:06and as long as you have decent eyesight, it works, right?
1:34:10And so there is a market for that,
1:34:12For people who don't mind everything being a little bit
1:34:14smaller, who are maybe younger or are power users
1:34:17or are really precise with their fingers or whatever else,
1:34:20they would rather have a smaller carry size
1:34:22and still have higher resolution.
1:34:24So there is a market for that going from 9.7 resolution
1:34:29into the iPad Mini size, so therefore it follows
1:34:32there's probably also a market for people who want
1:34:35the 12.9 resolution in a more like 9.7 size.
1:34:39So I think this makes a lot of sense.
1:34:41whether they'll do it or not is another story.
1:34:43It's plausible, certainly, we've heard minor rumblings.
1:34:46And I think big picture, before Jon gets in
1:34:49and tells me why I'm wrong about all this,
1:34:51I think big picture, if you look at
1:34:55the way Apple devotes resources in recent years,
1:34:59they find a product line that is like
1:35:03in great need of attention,
1:35:05and they spend like a year really whipping it into shape,
1:35:09and then they move on to the next thing
1:35:11that needs a lot of attention.
1:35:12The Apple TV a couple years ago was that thing.
1:35:15The Apple TV was in terrible shape.
1:35:17There was lots of increase in competition.
1:35:18They wanted to get it onto an app model,
1:35:20and so they gave some effort to it.
1:35:23They gave it a big boost, and then they just left it alone.
1:35:26There's been almost nothing changed in the Apple TV
1:35:28since its release a year and a half ago, whenever that was.
1:35:31Last year, they put that amount of attention
1:35:33on the Apple Watch, because the Apple Watch
1:35:36was basically on fire when it came out.
1:35:38Like it was in, had so many problems.
1:35:41And so watchOS 3 got like lots of attention.
1:35:45I expect that the Apple Watch is not gonna see
1:35:48tons of major changes this year.
1:35:50I think last year was its time to shine,
1:35:52it got a bunch of good improvements in watchOS 3,
1:35:55and now we're probably in for a quiet period.
1:35:58And now I expect this year to be another year
1:36:02of iPad improvements where I expect there to be
1:36:06decent investment into the iPad this year
1:36:09to try to turn around its sales curve,
1:36:12to try to really boost it,
1:36:14try to get it moving as another growth engine again.
1:36:18And I also expect that this year, I hope,
1:36:22that there is a larger than usual effort
1:36:25put into the iPhone.
1:36:26I think it's the iPhone's turn in this model.
1:36:31So basically I think,
1:36:32and the iPhone is a lot more important than the iPad,
1:36:33So I expect the iPhone to get things
1:36:36that are a little more resource intensive,
1:36:38and the iPad to get things that will satisfy people,
1:36:41like kind of like holdover updates.
1:36:43So, you know, long-standing customer requests,
1:36:47like if we ever get the rumored fix
1:36:49of the multitasking switcher
1:36:50to have like a much better app launching icon thing
1:36:53than the weirdo card thing they have now,
1:36:55like that's probably gonna happen this year
1:36:57if it's gonna happen at all,
1:36:58because it may, like, this is the year
1:37:00for like iPad improvements that people really want
1:37:03It'll get people really excited about the iPad again,
1:37:05and that will keep the power users going.
1:37:07And then probably major effort
1:37:11on the iPhone hardware-wise, I hope.
1:37:14- Here's the thing about the iPad form factor
1:37:16and where the product is in its life.
1:37:18It's one of the easiest products for Apple to fiddle with,
1:37:25because at iPad size with the internals,
1:37:28you have a lot of leeway.
1:37:31You have so much leeway that they don't even have
1:37:33use all the space for battery anymore, right? It can be pretty darn thin, they have room
1:37:37for giant speakers, the actual system on a chip and all the other things is so small
1:37:41compared to the size of the device. You can, from year to year, make different decisions
1:37:47about how big is it? How big is the, you know, the surround for the entire screen? Does it
1:37:53have a home button on the screen if that tech ever comes from the iPhone? Like, you can
1:37:57play with all sorts of sizes, and by the way, every time you change the size or any other
1:38:01dimension you can sell more accessories and cases and stuff and everybody loves that.
1:38:05So tech wise and investment wise it's such an easy thing to do to say we can take the
1:38:11iPad Pro 9.7 which is one of the best iPads ever made and change a whole bunch of things
1:38:18about it dimensionally to try to make a different compromise on the product with very little
1:38:22investment because what does it really take to change the size of the screen by less than
1:38:29an inch?
1:38:30to update the Mac Pro.
1:38:32- Right, like it's not--
1:38:32- Oh, here we go.
1:38:33- No, but this is like, this is the easiest thing ever,
1:38:36'cause you're not under space constraints.
1:38:37It's just a matter of finding a new supplier,
1:38:39and they do that routinely anyway,
1:38:40even if they keep the screen the same size
1:38:42to find new suppliers for things.
1:38:43You can tweak this product,
1:38:45and I think the iPad is in a good place now.
1:38:47Like I said, I think the iPad Pro is, you know,
1:38:51one of the best iPads Apple has ever made,
1:38:53perhaps the best, and it is one of the few products
1:38:55that I recommend, Apple products that are
1:38:57recommend to people these days with no reservations.
1:38:59I want to get an iPad.
1:39:00I like the 9.7.
1:39:01Should I get the iPad Pro?
1:39:02Yes, just get it.
1:39:03It is, there's nothing wrong with it.
1:39:05Like, it is great.
1:39:07Maybe you could have more RAM, but who cares?
1:39:08Like, it's so good.
1:39:09There's so few compromises.
1:39:11And the few things that I think about
1:39:14that they could change, these rumors, like I said,
1:39:16for satisfying type of things that you can do
1:39:17to make people happy.
1:39:19Would I like an Apple Pencil 2
1:39:20that connects to the smart connector?
1:39:22Hell yes, and charges from it.
1:39:24I hate the little plug-in thing on the end to charge.
1:39:26Like, you rarely have to do that.
1:39:28like the battery lasts a long time,
1:39:29but there's room for improvement with small changes
1:39:33to form factor and fit and finish,
1:39:35and they'll get to sell new cases and new pencils
1:39:38and new third party stuff to go, such an easy win.
1:39:42And I don't know if that counts as, like you said, Marco,
1:39:43putting lots more investment with the iPad
1:39:45and giving it more attention.
1:39:47What I think it counts as is satisfying customers
1:39:50of the iPad with actually a fairly minimal investment,
1:39:53just doing the basic stuff, saying,
1:39:55"Well, we made a couple iPads, we've learned some things,
1:39:57let's change it, let's shift it around.
1:39:59You know, they don't know what sizes,
1:40:01they talked about it on the original iPad,
1:40:02this is the size that we picked.
1:40:03When you just gotta pick one size, fine.
1:40:06But as the product line diversifies,
1:40:07I don't care how many sizes of iPad there are,
1:40:09as long as they're not changing by three millimeters.
1:40:11Three or four sizes is fine with me,
1:40:13and if you wanna fade one out and bring another one in,
1:40:15these are not radical shifts.
1:40:16I mean, aside from the thing that we always talk about
1:40:19of like, I would like a 28 inch iPad,
1:40:21you know, the Microsoft Surface Studio,
1:40:23that's a whole different product, right, whatever.
1:40:25But within the realm of iPads
1:40:26that you battery powered iPads that you hold in your hands,
1:40:29I'm perfectly happy to see them mess with the dimensions
1:40:33of this product and the sort of the ergonomics
1:40:35and how it works with the case and the pencil
1:40:38and all that stuff.
1:40:39And I can't imagine that that type of change
1:40:42is a break the bank type of thing.
1:40:43So by all means Apple,
1:40:45continue to make the already good iPad better
1:40:48with minimal investment.
1:40:50And with the money that you save,
1:40:52you have a line of desktop computers
1:40:55- I would love to see it updated.
1:40:57(laughing)
1:40:59- And I think that does it.
1:41:01- Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week,
1:41:03Indochino, Betterment, and Casper,
1:41:05and we will see you next week.
1:41:07(upbeat music)
1:41:10♪ Now the show is over ♪
1:41:12♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪
1:41:15♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪
1:41:17♪ Oh it was accidental ♪
1:41:20♪ John didn't do any research ♪
1:41:22Marco and Casey wouldn't let him
1:41:25'Cause it was accidental
1:41:27It was accidental
1:41:31And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM
1:41:36And if you're into Twitter
1:41:39You can follow them
1:41:41@C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
1:41:45So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:41:50♪ Anti-Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C ♪
1:41:55♪ U-S-A-C-R-O-Q-S-A ♪
1:41:57♪ It's accidental ♪
1:41:58♪ Accidental ♪
1:42:00♪ They didn't mean to ♪
1:42:02♪ Accidental ♪
1:42:04♪ Accidental ♪
1:42:05♪ Tech podcast ♪
1:42:07♪ So long ♪
1:42:10- So a friend of the show, Brianna Wu,
1:42:12has decided that she really hasn't had enough grief
1:42:18in her life. And so she thought, "You know what? I'm going to run for Congress." Which
1:42:25is it the House or the Senate? I always get it backwards that she's running for.
1:42:28House, I believe, right?
1:42:30So she's running for the House in Massachusetts, if I understand everything properly. And she
1:42:35has an ad that we will link to in the show notes. And so one of the platforms she's running
1:42:42on among other things is like the whole kerfuffle from, I guess it was early last year, middle
1:42:48last year about Tim Cook and the iPhone FBI stuff.
1:42:52I think that that's worth mentioning,
1:42:54something that's relevant potentially
1:42:56to a lot of our listeners,
1:42:57even if you don't happen to live in Massachusetts.
1:42:59So John is our representative massa-chus-it-in,
1:43:04I don't even know, what do you call yourself?
1:43:07- That's it, you just wanted to say,
1:43:08you just wanted to say mass-hole, didn't you?
1:43:09- I really did, I really, really did, but I tried not to.
1:43:13- You got it right, it's massa-chus-it-in, that's right.
1:43:16- I'm pretty sure that's not right.
1:43:17got it in one.
1:43:18Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's not it at all.
1:43:20Anyway, so what are your thoughts on this, Jon?
1:43:22Yeah, so she's running in Massachusetts.
1:43:24She's running against another Democrat, because surprise, in Massachusetts, well, maybe it's
1:43:29a surprise.
1:43:30No way.
1:43:31We've had problems with Republicans here before.
1:43:32But anyway, she is running against another Democrat who is insufficiently aligned with
1:43:38Democratic principles and is not prioritizing the things that she would like to see prioritized.
1:43:43And one of those issues, one of the issues that is relevant to a tech podcast is the
1:43:47The idea that, you know, this is true of most politicians, regardless of party, they don't
1:43:51know much about tech stuff.
1:43:54And they're easily influenced by companies with a lot of money who will persuade them
1:44:01to vote in ways that are aligned with the interests of those companies.
1:44:05And because they don't know much about the tech stuff, like, well, I don't know, I guess
1:44:08this is the right thing to do.
1:44:09Like, they don't even know, right?
1:44:10if someone who is involved in the tech world has a chance to take stands on and make an
1:44:19important part of the platform issues that we care about. So for example, the iPhone
1:44:23FBI stuff, like, I think if you just asked a regular person, should the FBI be able to
1:44:28get into a terrorist throne? Like they all say, yes, of course, totally, right. But to
1:44:32understand the bigger issue, right, the bigger issue of like, oh, don't just don't just answer
1:44:37based on your fear of terrorism, but think about the bigger issue of data privacy and
1:44:41the consequences and what it would lead to if all information was accessible and encryption
1:44:46was outlawed and all these other things. All the things that tech people, I feel like,
1:44:50have a better grasp on than regular people. To make that a platform of a congressional run,
1:44:56A, it's novel to have someone who is actually informed about tech and who is making those issues
1:45:03front and center like this is a differentiating factor. My opponent doesn't know about any of
1:45:07this stuff and doesn't care and is going to always vote the wrong way on these issues because they're
1:45:10just going to be aligned with the cable companies or whoever donates to their campaign. Again,
1:45:14regardless of party, this is not a partisan issue. Like tech is terrible in the political world.
1:45:18But to make it a differentiating factor, but my question is,
1:45:24do people care enough about this issue for it to be a good idea politically speaking? Like maybe
1:45:31the reason that no politicians bring it up is that it's like, yeah, so what? You are on the right
1:45:37side as far as nerds are concerned, but are there enough nerds to make this something that helps you
1:45:41get elected? Or is this an issue that you've never seen in campaign ads for a very good reason? And
1:45:47that very good reason being nerds are few and don't vote or don't believe you or don't care?
1:45:53And I don't know the answer to that question. I like the idea of, you know, who doesn't like the
1:45:57the idea of their pet issues becoming the platform of some politicians are
1:46:00gonna say I know you care about you know net neutrality and digital privacy and
1:46:06whatever and no one ever talks about them but I'm gonna talk about them like
1:46:09yes I like that person but if there's like seven of us out there who care
1:46:12about these things this is not going to help her get elected so I'm of two minds
1:46:16in this I'm I'm I'm happy to be catered to by a candidate who believes the same
1:46:21things I do about these relatively esoteric features but especially in the
1:46:25current climate, which I'm not going to go into too much, where there are so many
1:46:29issues that I think we all agree are so much more important than this. Is this a
1:46:34distraction or even in the best of cases do people really care enough about
1:46:40digital privacy and other tech issues to vote based on them? And to be clear
1:46:45that's not like the only item on her platform by any stretch of the
1:46:48imagination. No, no, no, I mean the ad we'll have a link to in the show is not even
1:46:52about that. Like it's not about that at all. Like women's issue is much larger
1:46:55platform and that's an easier sell because yes, I think that is a winner, you know, women's issues is
1:46:59I mean just look at the women's march and like plenty of women will vote based on women's issues
1:47:04but specifically as it relates to a tech podcast, you know, her mentioning it all that this is an
1:47:11issue and part of her platform I think is is rare and novel so I'm not I'm not excluding any of the
1:47:16other things that are much more important on our platform I'm just saying this issue specifically
1:47:20Does anyone care enough about it, or will it always be dwarfed by the much more important
1:47:25issues, including women's issues?
1:47:26Well, I think it's one note in the music, right?
1:47:34It's one thing that certainly I care about and I think that the two of you guys care
1:47:39about, that when an elected representative of mine here in Virginia votes against what
1:47:46I consider to be common-sense nerd topics, for example, of voting against net neutrality.
1:47:54I notice that, and that's enough to make me strongly consider the way I vote the next
1:47:59time I vote. So yeah, I think this can absolutely sway people. I think you're right also that
1:48:04there are far more important things to worry about, but this is also something that I am
1:48:09worried about.
1:48:10I always feel the same way when I see my representatives, which in general I'm fairly well aligned with
1:48:16because in the state that I happen to live in. But again, they just vote the wrong way,
1:48:22in my opinion, on so many issues related to tech. And it's like, you just have to swallow that and
1:48:26be like, look, the alternative is so much worse on so much more important things. But on the other
1:48:32hand, it just hurts to constantly have to swallow that. So like I said, I'm excited by someone who I
1:48:38agree with on all the big issues and also these one section of small issues. Right? And that
1:48:45That definitely, it's so rare, especially for tech things,
1:48:48because everybody can, no one's gonna find a politician
1:48:50that agrees with everyone in their views.
1:48:51That doesn't exist.
1:48:52You always have, you know,
1:48:53even if we didn't have this horrible two-party system,
1:48:55you're never gonna find someone to represent you
1:48:57who like, I agree with every single thing they say.
1:48:59You gotta have a hierarchy,
1:49:00you gotta prioritize and so on and so forth.
1:49:02But I think tech is not as obscure as,
1:49:06it should be more prominent than it is,
1:49:08let's put it that way,
1:49:09because the importance of tech in all of our lives
1:49:12has increased so much over the past several decades,
1:49:16that now it actually is up there with the other issues.
1:49:20It should be discussed.
1:49:23It shouldn't be like, oh, that's completely esoteric,
1:49:25who cares about the internet?
1:49:26'Cause the internet is extremely powerful
1:49:29and extremely important, and its power and importance
1:49:31is not diminishing over time.
1:49:34So maybe it's a generational thing,
1:49:36and maybe we have to wait for a couple of generations
1:49:38to turn over before we really get into a world
1:49:40where people accept and understand the importance
1:49:42and power of networks and the internet.
1:49:45And hopefully we don't make too many bad decisions
1:49:46before then and screw it all up, you know?
1:49:49But it should be talked about more than it is.
1:49:51And it's a shame that even today,
1:49:53like even in the framing that I gave this,
1:49:55it is still viewed as a thing that only nerds care about
1:50:00and can understand, but it affects everybody's life.
1:50:03It doesn't matter whether you're a nerd
1:50:04or whether you're into tech
1:50:05or whether you're listening to this podcast.
1:50:06These issues do affect your life.
1:50:08it is basically impossible to live in the United States and not be affected by technology
1:50:16law and telecommunication law and all those things.
1:50:18You are affected by it whether you understand why your cable bill is going up or where you're
1:50:25able to get information from or not.
1:50:27Things could be much worse than they are.
1:50:30I think the net neutrality thing, we've sort of held the line on it for a long time, but
1:50:35It's a fragile wall that could crumble at any moment,
1:50:38and I really hope more people in Congress
1:50:41and running for Congress bring this issue along.
1:50:44Like you said, another note in the symphony.
1:50:46It deserves to be at least mentioned.
1:50:48That's not gonna say that.
1:50:49It deserves to be at least mentioned,
1:50:50along with the other headline issues
1:50:51that are much more important,
1:50:54that people's lives depend on
1:50:55in a very real and immediate way.
1:50:57Tech issues should also be brought along
1:51:00for the ride at this point.
1:51:03So moving on to anything that's not politics.
1:51:06So Casey, it seems like you might be thinking
1:51:12more seriously than I expected
1:51:15about possibly getting a Tesla.
1:51:18- That is not true, stop with that ridiculousness.
1:51:21- So let me just give you a brief statement
1:51:24on the matter of you possibly getting a Tesla.
1:51:27So when, so you, cars are a big part of your identity.
1:51:32- Oh boy, he's going right.
1:51:36So this is how this is gonna go, okay.
1:51:39- Right, yeah.
1:51:40- Seriously.
1:51:41- So when we went to Cars and Coffee a few weeks ago,
1:51:44I made the remark that now that I'm a Tesla person,
1:51:48now that I look at all the other cars out there
1:51:53and all their decked out engines and big mufflers
1:51:56and all this horsepower and everything else,
1:51:59And I feel kind of the way I feel now
1:52:03when I see cool overclocked PC hardware
1:52:07with all the blue LEDs in it and everything else.
1:52:09It's like that is something that was a huge part of my life
1:52:14for a long time, but what I've moved to now,
1:52:19all that is irrelevant to me now.
1:52:20And so I look at that now,
1:52:23I look at cool PC hardware, even just like fast PCs,
1:52:27good graphics cards, awesome CPUs, dual CPU systems
1:52:31that used to be members of the Mac family and now aren't.
1:52:34All of these high-end PC hardware things
1:52:37that I used to love so much, I'm no longer interested
1:52:41because I see them and I'm like, okay, that's cool,
1:52:44I respect the kind of horsepower your PC has,
1:52:47but because I'm no longer interested in Windows PCs,
1:52:52that's all, I have a hard time really getting into it
1:52:55and it kind of feels like it's the past in my life.
1:52:59So at this car event, I kind of felt that way,
1:53:01looking at all these cars, thinking like,
1:53:03now that I have experienced the joy
1:53:07and sheer disruption of driving an electric car,
1:53:11that really does make all gas-powered cars
1:53:14feel like the past and feel old and clunky by comparison,
1:53:18even really good ones, it makes them feel old
1:53:21and clunky by comparison.
1:53:22I had a hard time appreciating much of the,
1:53:25like cool car world because of that,
1:53:28'cause now I've kinda shifted in what I live in
1:53:31and what I like and what's important to me.
1:53:33So for you to consider a Tesla, I have a feeling
1:53:38that you were gonna have a very hard time in your mind
1:53:41reconciling that with this core part
1:53:45of what you've made your identity of.
1:53:47Like you love cars, you've loved cars your whole life,
1:53:49and you love the engine parts of cars.
1:53:52You love the mufflers and the noise and the cylinders.
1:53:56Like, you love all that stuff.
1:53:58And so I wonder if maybe you should be considering a Tesla
1:54:03more seriously than you are,
1:54:05but maybe you're not letting yourself consider it
1:54:08because you don't want to put at risk
1:54:13that part of your identity changing.
1:54:15- So I think, I'm trying to think of a brief answer
1:54:20quasi question because I think we could do a like 50-minute deep dive into my
1:54:26psyche and what motivates me and what doesn't. But I understand where
1:54:31you're coming from. I think that first of all the primary reason I'm not really
1:54:36considering a Tesla is it's just so much money. It's just so much money. I had said
1:54:42to you privately that you know if you look at what a reasonably
1:54:48well-equipped Model S costs if one were to buy one. And not to say that's the right answer,
1:54:54but that's what I think of because I've only ever bought cars. I've never leased. So you
1:54:58look at the price tag of a reasonably equipped Model S and it's hovering around $100,000.
1:55:04I understand you can get cheaper ones, but built the way I would want it, it would probably
1:55:08be around $100,000. That's almost three times what I paid for my current car, which is a
1:55:14BMW 3 Series. That's not an unreasonable car. That's a pretty nice car.
1:55:19Well, to be fair, you are comparing used to new, though. So compare used to used if you're
1:55:25going to make a price comparison.
1:55:26Well, I'm going to have to go the other direction because I don't have the faintest idea what
1:55:29a Tesla is used, but I can tell you that my car, when it was new, was $55,000, something
1:55:35like that. Which, to be clear, is ridiculous. Like, my car is very nice. It is not a $55,000
1:55:42car. That's why I bought it used. But in any case, so you're looking at two of my
1:55:48car for one Tesla, and that in and of itself makes all of my pipe dreams moot.
1:55:55Because there's, I don't think that there's any way I could justify spending
1:55:59that kind of money, or the equivalent thereof in a lease. I just, I don't think
1:56:04I could do it. Now this is where everyone will say, "Well perfect, the Model 3 is
1:56:08just the right car for you. Maybe. I don't know. I'm skeptical it'll be as quick as I'd
1:56:13like it to be, and this is where everyone says, "Well, what do you really need to go
1:56:16fast for?" I don't, but that's what I like, and I like what I like.
1:56:20- No, there's nothing wrong with wanting to go fast, and believe me, with a Tesla, there
1:56:23is ample speed. Even their slow models are fast.
1:56:26- Oh, the Model S, I agree. I'm less confident in the 3. It very well could be, very, very
1:56:33well could be I'll end up wrong, in which case I think I'll give the Model 3 a real
1:56:36I didn't put a deposit down or anything like that
1:56:39Because I think it'll still be like two to three years before one of those is even
1:56:43Available for those who put a deposit down I forget what the official timeline is, but we'll see yeah
1:56:47But so so let's assume for the sake of conversation that I'm willing to spend
1:56:53$100,000 or the equivalent thereof in the lease payment I
1:56:56think you're
1:56:59largely on to something in that it would be a tough bridge to cross because I
1:57:05have for my entire life since I can remember I
1:57:09have treated cars in in car culture to some degree as such a
1:57:15critical part of my life and I think that comes from
1:57:19There was always an old car in our garage. My dad worked for IBM for something like 30 30 years, but
1:57:28there was a brief window of time before he started working for IBM where he was a professional mechanic for Buick and
1:57:35he had always tinkered with cars since he was a kid. Now the difference between dad and I is that
1:57:40he has actual practical knowledge and all of my knowledge, well, what little I have is all
1:57:44theoretical. And if you doubt me on that, I have a podcast to recommend to you. But in any case,
1:57:51but all kidding aside, you know, I've grown up with cars around me all my life. And you know,
1:57:56I think you tend to emulate your parents. And my dad has always been obsessed with cars. And so
1:58:00because of that, I think I've always been obsessed with cars. And even if I were to get
1:58:05a Tesla, sitting here now not knowing any better, I think I would probably want like a stupid dino
1:58:12juice powered, not weekend car, but like weekend car. One that has three pedals. Maybe a convertible.
1:58:18Not that I've ever owned one really, but that sounds like it could be fun. You know, like an
1:58:24S2000 or something like that. Just to have to remind me what driving used to feel like before
1:58:31it was all automated and before some of the soul was taken out of it. And I don't mean that to be
1:58:35insulting. I just feel like it's a very different animal with the Tesla. But I tell you what,
1:58:41when we were out that morning on New Year's Eve, I drove us from Cars and Coffee to where we had
1:58:48breakfast. And every time I gave that Tesla, this was Underscores Tesla, every time I gave that
1:58:56Tesla a little bit of my right foot, it just put a humongous smile on my face because it is just
1:59:01frigging intoxicating, having infinite torque from no RPM. It's unbelievably intoxicating.
1:59:08And so to that end, I wonder if I had a Model S if I would get over it a lot quicker than
1:59:14I expect.
1:59:15- I sure did. I mean, like, I'm telling you, like, going from the M5 to the Model S, I
1:59:21really was afraid that I would really miss, like, the sporty, you know, V8-ness of the
1:59:27and shifting the gears and everything.
1:59:30And I really didn't.
1:59:33Like I thought that would, I was very worried about that.
1:59:36And it was a complete non-issue
1:59:38as soon as I started driving the Model S,
1:59:39I'm like, oh my God, this is so good.
1:59:41Now, that being said, if you theoretically were
1:59:44to do your like little gas car for fun weekend,
1:59:48reminding yourself that you exist,
1:59:50if only there was someone else in your household
1:59:53who was looking for a new full-size sedan.
1:59:56- Yeah, so what, you're saying Aaron gets a Tesla?
1:59:59- I mean, Aaron can make her own car decision, of course,
2:00:02but maybe Aaron could get a Model S,
2:00:04'cause that's the size and class of car
2:00:09that I believe she wants the space from.
2:00:12And then you, for like, you know, when you go to work,
2:00:16you know, you could leave the Model S at home for,
2:00:18you know, 'cause Aaron's with Declan
2:00:20during the work day, right?
2:00:21So, you know, there'd be the car seat in that one,
2:00:24and then you ride your little S2000,
2:00:27which is probably not that expensive today,
2:00:29'cause they're not that new.
2:00:31You ride your S2000 to work, or a Miata or something,
2:00:34and you have your fun little rocket engine car
2:00:37with a stick with three pedals,
2:00:40and that's you remind yourself that you like cars car,
2:00:43and then you have the Model S as the other car
2:00:46in your family that Aaron drives most of the time,
2:00:48and that you slowly fall in love with.
2:00:50- It's funny you mention that for a couple of reasons.
2:00:53First of all, I've barked up this tree with Erin, and she has told me on no uncertain
2:00:57terms that there's no way she would be spending that kind of money on a Model S. Now, it's
2:01:02kind of funny because her money is my money and my money is her money.
2:01:05It's all really our money, but be that as it may—
2:01:07Well, it's a joint decision, obviously.
2:01:09Right, but yeah, she said no way.
2:01:12She has no interest in it.
2:01:13Not because she doesn't think it's nice.
2:01:14I mean, she's driven Underscore's car once or twice as well, and I think she really liked
2:01:18it, but she just does not feel like it's the right value for money.
2:01:22Because I don't think it is value for money.
2:01:23Now, so as an automobile alone,
2:01:26I don't think it's a very good price performer.
2:01:28As a glimpse of the future, yeah, not that bad.
2:01:32- How much money you put into your car for all your pairs?
2:01:34- Don't even talk to me about that.
2:01:35It's a very sore subject and it's too soon.
2:01:37(laughing)
2:01:39- Can I give you my plan for all this disposable income?
2:01:42For the price of Casey's used BMW,
2:01:45you can get a his and hers Honda Accord,
2:01:47which I highly recommend,
2:01:48and then take the 100 grand,
2:01:51- Take the hundred grand that you were gonna spend
2:01:53on the Tesla and buy a used Ferrari.
2:01:55Done and done.
2:01:56- Oh, talk about maintenance cost.
2:01:58Yeah, right.
2:01:59- No, seriously.
2:01:59- It's your fun.
2:02:00You have two very large cars,
2:02:02both of which can carry all of your stuff
2:02:04and all of your children.
2:02:06And then when Casey wants to feel connected
2:02:08to the living, breathing heart inside him,
2:02:11I don't think your heart breathes.
2:02:13- You know what I mean, yeah.
2:02:13- He would have a Ferrari.
2:02:15And I'm gonna say, going to the Cars and Coffee thing,
2:02:17I did not, having, despite having driven
2:02:20Been driven in Tesla's which I think are great, you know, and I would recommend anybody who wants to buy one, whatever
2:02:26I still love all those cars. I still want a Ferrari
2:02:28And I think in 20 or 30 years, I'll eventually want an electric Ferrari. But right now I want I want a gas one
2:02:36That's what I want. Please send me that now if I had a hundred grand
2:02:40There is no way I would be looking like if I had a hundred grand that I was forced to spend on a car
2:02:45I would be looking at Ferraris because it would be like I can can I can I get a used Ferrari for 100 grand this season?
2:02:52I think I can can you afford to maintain a hundred grand Ferrari when it stops working?
2:02:56I'll just look at it and enjoy it like it's a piece of art
2:03:00It's like like that guy, you know that guy who put the old Ferrari like inside his house
2:03:03Remember that guy? Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep, right. I can relate to that guy
2:03:07I probably wouldn't do that
2:03:08But I can relate to that guy because even when it's not moving
2:03:12Looking at it would make me happy in the Tesla when it's not moving looking at it's a fine looking car like don't get me wrong
2:03:18It's not an ugly car
2:03:19But it does not make me happy in the way that looking at Ferrari does so I
2:03:22Still I would still spend that kind of disposable income on a completely frivolous and unpractical car not even pretend like because I don't want
2:03:31A practical car for 100 grand. I want a car that no one should ever own and that's a Ferrari
2:03:35Well, do you remember it was a few years ago? I'll put a link in the show notes Doug DeMuro
2:03:40who at the time was with Jalopnik, I'm not sure if he still is, he bought a Ferrari.
2:03:44He bought it, this article was written in December of '14.
2:03:48He said he had it for a little under a year and put 5,000 miles on it.
2:03:52He spent about $13,000 between depreciation, maintenance, everything else.
2:03:57So it's $13,000 a year.
2:03:58So it's like about the same amount as your BMW then, right?
2:04:01Oh, that cuts deep.
2:04:03That cuts deep.
2:04:04Did the engine explode at any point on his Ferrari or no?
2:04:07I don't think so.
2:04:08It's been a while since I read this article,
2:04:10but my engine didn't exactly explode.
2:04:12It just-- - It would have exploded.
2:04:14- No, it just had a relatively catastrophic failure.
2:04:17- If it starts to eat itself,
2:04:19make small pieces of metal, that's bad.
2:04:21(laughing)
2:04:22- No, it didn't start to eat itself, you big jerk.
2:04:25It's just the Vano system kind of forgot how to work.
2:04:28No big deal.
2:04:29And then the water pump kind of forgot how to work.
2:04:31No big deal.
2:04:32- Pretty sure my car has neither of those for the record.
2:04:34- Yeah.
2:04:35- It has some kind of water pump,
2:04:36probably for the cooling of the batteries.
2:04:38That's true.
2:04:39There are far fewer things that can go wrong with an electric car.
2:04:41I'm totally on board with the electric.
2:04:42I will get an electric car as soon as they come down to my price, which could be a while
2:04:45at this rate.
2:04:47But yeah, I can relate to Casey both, A, in the absence of money falling on my head, it's
2:04:55hard for me to justify, as is apparent by my car purchases, spending that much money
2:04:58on a car, period.
2:05:00And if I had that kind of money and I was forced to spend it on a car, I would be thinking
2:05:03way more frivolous than the Tesla, which is like, it sounds extravagant, but the Tesla
2:05:10is an eminently practical car. It is not a frivolous car. It will not cost you 13 grand
2:05:14in repair bills. You do not need to hire a special Italian to do your repairs for you
2:05:18and everything costs a million dollars. There's nothing in the car to go wrong for the most
2:05:22part except for the infotainment system that can't find podcast art.
2:05:25And the door handles.
2:05:26Yeah, and the door handles. It is a pretty darn boring car for that amount of money.
2:05:30No one should buy the Model X though, it's gross.
2:05:32[door closes]
2:05:34[BLANK_AUDIO]