0:00:00- Aye yai yai, where's Jon?
0:00:02Why do we not have Jon?
0:00:02- I'm working on it, I can't get him to connect yet.
0:00:05- It might be just you and me, my friend.
0:00:07(laughing)
0:00:08Oh God, can you imagine the internet revolt
0:00:11that would happen?
0:00:12- What do you think they would hate more,
0:00:13two hours of fish or the show without Jon?
0:00:16- Probably the show without Jon.
0:00:18I think they would prefer the two hours of fish.
0:00:20- I think you're right.
0:00:21(laughing)
0:00:23Oh, hey, Jon's here.
0:00:25- Oh, hi Jon.
0:00:26what would you think people would dislike more?
0:00:30Would people dislike hearing fish for two hours
0:00:34more than hearing the show without you,
0:00:38or would people dislike hearing the show without you
0:00:41and prefer to hear fish for two hours?
0:00:44- Oh. (laughing)
0:00:46I think they would prefer to hear the fish.
0:00:50- That's exactly what we concluded.
0:00:52- Yep.
0:00:53that the internet would find and smite, smote Marco and I,
0:00:58if you were not here.
0:00:59- I think I don't really hear any fish,
0:01:01'cause again, I never listened to the live stream,
0:01:03but the few moments I remember hearing,
0:01:05it's like, it's not terrible, right?
0:01:07It's like they play guitars and bass and drums and,
0:01:11you know, and then someone says something
0:01:13for like two seconds in the middle, and then, you know,
0:01:16even if you don't like it,
0:01:17it's not like you're making people listen to, you know,
0:01:20scream music or something, I don't know.
0:01:22I think we'll be fine.
0:01:24I mean, to be fair, I think more people like fish than like us.
0:01:28It might not be these people, but in total.
0:01:30Fair enough.
0:01:32It is currently the 13th of April. It is a Wednesday night.
0:01:40We just released this week's episode, or Marco did, a few hours ago,
0:01:44but because Jon is disappearing for a little bit,
0:01:48we are going to be where we are obviously recording right now.
0:01:51So we expect that Apple will buy Nintendo on the 14th of April, and we won't get a chance to talk about it until, I think, the 22nd, which is the next time we'll be recording.
0:02:01So expect all the juicy and interesting things to happen over the next week. You're welcome.
0:02:06I mean, at least my car was made obsolete yesterday.
0:02:09That's true, actually. I completely forgot about that. Yeah, they hit the Tesla with the ugly stick. Come at me, haters.
0:02:16- Yeah, I don't really regret not getting the new one.
0:02:21'Cause they literally just did a facelift yesterday
0:02:25and my car is something like two and a half weeks old.
0:02:28But the new one I think overall is probably better.
0:02:32It has better headlights, it has a center console,
0:02:37which I had to buy a separate third party center console
0:02:39to shove in there, it comes with one.
0:02:41- Oh, I didn't realize it was third party,
0:02:43that's interesting.
0:02:43- Yeah, well they had a first party one,
0:02:45but the reviews were terrible.
0:02:47So then they stopped selling it.
0:02:49So, you know, there's a couple of minor improvements,
0:02:52but nothing that really makes me unhappy
0:02:55that I bought, you know, two and a half weeks ago,
0:02:57rather than today.
0:02:59- Yeah, the front kind of grill, fascia area,
0:03:04just, I don't dig it.
0:03:07And a lot of people were coming after me,
0:03:09and you know, kind of rightfully so,
0:03:11and saying, oh well, you're just judging it
0:03:13because it doesn't look like an old car.
0:03:15It doesn't look like something that blows up old plants and dinosaurs and you're just being a stupid old man.
0:03:21And yeah, you know, I might be guilty as charged.
0:03:24And maybe in a few years I won't need to see a grill up front.
0:03:28But sitting here today, I just don't think it's pretty.
0:03:33And somebody had tweeted, I can't recall who it was, but somebody tweeted and it's been making the rounds endlessly.
0:03:40The picture of Keanu Reeves as Mr. Anderson, and when in the first movie, his lips disappear
0:03:51and his face just is, you know, it's all kind of one big flat area.
0:03:57And it is a very, very similar likeness to the updated Tesla Model S and the Model 3
0:04:05as well.
0:04:06And the X.
0:04:07Because like the Model S, basically this all started with the X.
0:04:10- That's true, I've forgotten about that.
0:04:11- I mean, ultimately, I don't think it's really
0:04:13gonna be that big of a deal.
0:04:14I think it's more just like we are not used to seeing cars
0:04:17that are designed this way, and that's why it looks weird
0:04:20because it's unfamiliar, but I think within a few months,
0:04:23once you start seeing these on the road and everything,
0:04:25everyone's just gonna be like,
0:04:25"Okay, that's just how cars look sometimes."
0:04:28- No, no, no, that's not it.
0:04:30We talked about this last week.
0:04:31We just forgot everything we talked about.
0:04:33(laughing)
0:04:34The Model 3 was the one where the Keanu lip sewing shut
0:04:38Disappearing matrix thing was going around because the model 3 what we've seen of it anyway because again who knows what's final
0:04:44But what we've seen with model 3 is there's nothing there. There's no
0:04:47Dividing line different color patch different material. It is just one continuous schnoz and
0:04:54And as as we talked about last week like it's it's not so much that
0:05:03That we demand to have a grill, right?
0:05:06It's that the car looks like it has a place where a grill should go
0:05:09Like the that they haven't fully embraced the idea that they don't need to pull air into that spot
0:05:14They have built a car with a spot where grill would go
0:05:17But just neglected to put the same reason a face looks weird with a big smooth spot where the mouth should go because we know
0:05:22That's where the mouth goes if you want to draw something that doesn't have a mouth
0:05:26Don't draw the place where the mouth goes and then just erase it right that the X and the add the new s
0:05:31They have a grill they have a little t-shaped thing which I think is pretty good for Tesla tea
0:05:36You know every brand has some sort of like signature grill shape that they go with and they change it over the years
0:05:40But you know Audi's got that big sort of big mouth trapezoid thing they go with
0:05:44Well, it does look a little bit like a creepy partial mustache like the skinny stash
0:05:48It looks a little bit like Alfa Romeo - like it's not like every band, you know BMW has the kidneys
0:05:55So that is a pretty big signature there
0:05:57But other brands have changed their shape over the years and sometimes they stick with it for like three or four model generations
0:06:02And they go with a different shape. Anyway, this Tesla thing with the little T with their actual T logo inside it. That's fine
0:06:08It's kind of like a grill. I
0:06:10Have to see this one in person because from some angles the little
0:06:14Little mustache they have there
0:06:17Suffices as far as I'm concerned visually because they put a place for the grill and they put a grill on
0:06:22I mean that basically is a grill
0:06:23It's not a big grill
0:06:23But it's a grill like why else have a big like opening in black air because because other internal combustion engine cars have one
0:06:29The model 3 has the same place for that thing to go, but there's nothing there. So it looks weird
0:06:33And like I said last show
0:06:37If they if they want to go with the no grill in the front because they can fine go for it embrace it make it
0:06:43look
0:06:44But make it look like a car that
0:06:46Never had a grill was never intended to have a grill and they kind of can't do that with the model s because they decided
0:06:51With Marco's car to put the big giant ball gag thing there. It looks like a big black grill, but it's just
0:06:56Clear plastic like someone shoved a rubber ball into the mouth of the car. It's like
0:07:00but
0:07:03But that you know that they made the decision you can't really reshape the whole car
0:07:07The other thing that's a factor is
0:07:08Pedestrian safety and crash standards probably dictate at the very least the minimum height of the front of the car
0:07:14So you can't really go whole hog into a styling that totally neglects the grill
0:07:18So I'm not entirely sure what to do to resolve this but I know the answer is not what the three did which is make
0:07:22A car with a place for a grill and just failed to put one there. Yeah the side view
0:07:27I'm looking at this post on jalopnik
0:07:29Which will have in the show notes if you look at it from the side of the car
0:07:32It actually doesn't look bad at all, but any sort of front angle
0:07:35Just looks it's just this this this vast
0:07:39Emptiness and it just I agree with you John
0:07:42It looks like a grill belongs there, but isn't there isn't there and I think I prefer this to the Audi
0:07:48I will swallow the world grill that's become so trendy for Audi these days
0:07:53Which is just awful or the new Lexus ones too and the new Lexus and Toyota. Oh, you're right
0:07:58Lexus the bowtie shape. Yeah, it's kind of like goes
0:08:02That's even worse. Yeah, and it's like the entire front of the car. Yeah, it's so bad
0:08:08But that's efficient efficient for cooling if they use all that space
0:08:11But are you talking about you're still saying that you don't like the S because Casey the S has a grill like that little the little
0:08:17mustache
0:08:18See, that's just it doesn't fill the area
0:08:21I see there's a big expanse under that you feel like right a place where more real show and there is exactly and they actually
0:08:26Exaggerated because if you look they actually extend down like the thing that's around the fog lamps the the material goes down even farther
0:08:33Making room even more room for the non-existing grill. Yep, exactly. I just don't care for it
0:08:38But anyway, I'm sure it looks fine, and once I see them in person, which, you know,
0:08:41should be any day now as soon as they start signing them because they're all over here,
0:08:44I'll have to render judgment of seeing it in person, but I think it looks better than
0:08:49the three by far.
0:08:50Yeah, it does look better than the three.
0:08:51I think so too, and I think of all their, like including, if you look at the X and the
0:08:56S and the three together, I think it looks the best out of all three of them, out of
0:09:00the current ones they're producing.
0:09:02Although one concern I have for all three of them is that front area that is body color
0:09:08is just gonna get full of bugs and chips.
0:09:11- Ooh, good point.
0:09:12- You know, that's always the most damaged area
0:09:15of any car I have, 'cause it's always just covered in--
0:09:18- Just put a bra on it.
0:09:19- Oh, God, are we starting there again?
0:09:22- Yeah, are we going back to this?
0:09:23Oh, God.
0:09:25Anyway, so I agree, I understand that this will probably,
0:09:30at some point, look normal to me,
0:09:33but today, I don't care for it, and I think it looks ugly.
0:09:37All right, so let's not talk about Teslas anymore,
0:09:40and let's start the follow-up.
0:09:41And our first follow-up item is let's talk about Teslas,
0:09:44and let's talk about superchargers and charging at night.
0:09:48- Now you're following instructions.
0:09:49This is another thing, by the way,
0:09:50that the chat room was also right about this last show.
0:09:54We just didn't get a chance to pull them out.
0:09:55I meant to do it, but we had moved on by then.
0:09:57In the discussion about how many supercharger stations
0:10:00there are versus how many gas stations,
0:10:02and factoring how long it takes to charge,
0:10:04and all the other infrastructure needed
0:10:06we were to convert all of the existing cars to electric with a snap of our fingers and
0:10:09so on and so forth.
0:10:10One point we didn't bring up, but again which the chat room did, was that even though superchargers
0:10:15take a long time to charge, you can get, you can fill up your electric car someplace other
0:10:22than the quote-unquote gas station.
0:10:24You know, when you drive it back to your house you just plug it in and a lot of people were
0:10:27saying that as long as you don't drive more than half the range of your car per day, you
0:10:34You never need to go to a supercharger unless you're going on a long trip, so you need far
0:10:37fewer superchargers because just when you go back home, you plug it in.
0:10:40And I was thinking about this when I was discussing the charge thing last time, and it's kind
0:10:46of in the middle because, I mean, Marco can tell us, but like I recall him saying somewhere
0:10:52on Twitter that it takes like three days to charge his car to full capacity from the plain
0:10:56old wall outlet.
0:10:57Yeah, so if you only have a plain old wall outlet, it's about three days for a full charge.
0:11:02But if you're spending this much on a car, I don't think it's that much to ask to spend
0:11:06another few hundred to at most a couple thousand dollars to do whatever it takes to get a high
0:11:12powered outlet in your garage.
0:11:13If you have a 50 amp outlet, the NEMA 1450 that Tesla recommends, that charges the entire
0:11:18car in something like seven hours, depending on how big a battery you have.
0:11:22So if you're buying a 70 or 80,000 or 35,000 dollar car, maybe, but as these things come
0:11:26down in price, like basically I would say if you're asking people to change their home
0:11:31in some way, they basically become like a little charging station. Like that's part
0:11:35of the infrastructure. Part of the infrastructure, you don't have to build gas stations, but
0:11:38every single person who owns one of these cars has to at least have a dryer outlet in
0:11:41their garage or buy one of the big supercharger things or whatever, which is fine, like you
0:11:44said, for people with Model S and the Model 3.
0:11:46Well, not every person. Like, you know, Underscore, our friend Underscore David Smith, he is still,
0:11:50you know, he bought the car like in December. He still just only has the regular outlet
0:11:55and he drives a few enough miles that it doesn't really matter unless he's taking a trip, in
0:11:59case using superchargers. And right now, I still have that too, because electricians
0:12:03in New York take a while to get back to you. So I still have the Plano outlet as well,
0:12:06and so far it's been totally fine because I'm not driving hundreds of miles a day.
0:12:11It would only be a problem if I was driving like 100 or more miles a day.
0:12:14What I'm getting at is that the math is not as long as you drive half the range. It's
0:12:19more like if you drive a third of the range or whatever. And the other thing is that since
0:12:24Since these are the first round of like minimally viable electric cars to compete with gas cars,
0:12:29they don't have the same range as a long range gas car, but they're close enough that, you
0:12:33know, that it's fine, right?
0:12:34This is not like the LEAF where it's intended to be a very short range car.
0:12:38I would assume that the capacity of electric cars will go up as batteries become cheaper.
0:12:44Maybe not that much, maybe they'll stop around a 300 mile range, like an easy 300 mile range
0:12:48for everybody.
0:12:50And so that will just only add to charging time.
0:12:53So it seems like some necessary part of the infrastructure of the electric car world is
0:12:58every home to have a little bit better charging capacity.
0:13:01It doesn't mean they need to have a big supercharger or the $3,000 thing or whatever, probably
0:13:04just an extra dryer outlet.
0:13:06And since most people, I would imagine, go way less than a third of the range of their
0:13:10electric car or even a quarter of the range of their electric car, they'll probably be
0:13:13fine.
0:13:14And that will definitely save on the supercharger, the number of superchargers needed.
0:13:17The flip side of that, though, is that the places that need superchargers are going to
0:13:21need a lot of them.
0:13:22along Interstate 90 where there's nobody else in the entire world. Everybody is
0:13:26stopping somewhere along Interstate 90. If all the cars were
0:13:28electric, no one is going across New York State. You know, you got to stop them for your
0:13:32gas somewhere if you're going from like, you know, Boston to Buffalo or something.
0:13:36And it's just a giant corridor of a bunch of cars that need to do that and
0:13:39they're used to pulling off at one of the service stations, getting gas, you
0:13:42know, and then just continuing on. And if it takes you even just 15 minutes, that's
0:13:47gonna, you know, you're gonna have big backups and starls. As you can tell if
0:13:50anything at all goes wrong at any of the toll stations
0:13:53along the way that you're sitting in traffic
0:13:55for hours and hours.
0:13:55So it seems like superchargers are gonna be concentrated
0:13:58along the major thoroughfares and then in suburban areas,
0:14:01maybe you could have one that covers a tremendous area
0:14:03because only people who are passing through
0:14:05need everyone else to charge at their house.
0:14:07- Well also, I think another major problem to tackle
0:14:10is that if you don't have a house with a garage
0:14:14or a permanent parking spot and a driveway,
0:14:16it's kind of impractical to have an electric car
0:14:18because you have, like, so many people live in apartments
0:14:21or in, you know, street parking only areas
0:14:24where you're parking your car on the street overnight,
0:14:26you know, you don't have a driveway,
0:14:27you don't have a garage.
0:14:29How do you charge, you know, on a regular basis out there?
0:14:34That's trickier to solve, I think.
0:14:36- Inductive charging mats,
0:14:38you just drive your car over the top of it.
0:14:40- Those exist.
0:14:41- You never know.
0:14:42- I know, they'll just put them in the road
0:14:44when they're putting the little sensors
0:14:45for these automated cars,
0:14:46- Yeah. - Also put chargers
0:14:46at every stoplight.
0:14:48- Yeah, why not?
0:14:49Marco, what's the nearest supercharger to you
0:14:51in terms of distance?
0:14:52- Oh, I don't know.
0:14:53I mean, there's one in Newburgh,
0:14:54but that's, which is pretty far out.
0:14:55I mean, it's something like,
0:14:56what direction am I headed, is the more relevant question.
0:14:59If I'm going upstate, the closest one is Newburgh,
0:15:01which is something like a half hour up or an hour up.
0:15:04If I'm going into Pennsylvania, New Jersey area,
0:15:08then I'm sure it's a different one.
0:15:09If I'm going through Connecticut,
0:15:10I think there's a couple over there.
0:15:12So it depends on where I'm going, really.
0:15:15Yeah, the reason I'm asking is, like, I see there's one in Greenwich, Connecticut, which
0:15:18looks to my eye like it's pretty close to you.
0:15:20Yeah, that's very close.
0:15:21There's one in Paramus, New Jersey, which also looks fairly close, so it looks like
0:15:24Greenwich is probably closer.
0:15:26It is.
0:15:27And anyway, what I'm driving at, though, is let's suppose for the sake of discussion that
0:15:32you don't ever do anything to the home, and you only have a regular outlet, and you would
0:15:36have to charge over the span of three days.
0:15:38In a desperation scenario, you could drive what to my eye looks like half an hour or
0:15:43or less to say Greenwich, and you could use the supercharger there and drive back, and
0:15:49that's what, like probably 20, 30 miles, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, and that
0:15:53would in a pinch solve the problem as long as you had an hour to spare, to go charge.
0:16:00- I always have an hour for Greenwich. They have amazing watch stores there and a good
0:16:03lunch place.
0:16:04- Oh my God, how's the chicken salad?
0:16:06- You know, I haven't had that yet.
0:16:08- Fair enough. But anyway, but you see what I'm driving at is, you know, maybe--
0:16:10- I haven't been there that many times.
0:16:12Maybe you can avoid doing the home modification until the next time you do a demo on the house,
0:16:18which for you seems to be every couple of years.
0:16:21But…
0:16:22Yeah.
0:16:23I have one of the situations, I think like Underscore, where my circuit breaker panel
0:16:26is full and so the electrician is quoting me a couple thousand dollars to do like a…
0:16:31I don't need a panel upgrade, but I need a sub-panel.
0:16:33And then once you throw in the cost of all the local permits and everything else, all
0:16:37all the fees for the town and everything,
0:16:40it's probably gonna be maybe two or three thousand dollars.
0:16:42And that does make you pause and you're like,
0:16:45"Well, is it really?
0:16:46"Am I really ever going to need that necessarily
0:16:50"compared to the regular outlet?"
0:16:51And I might not.
0:16:52- Yeah, it's interesting.
0:16:53You know, I find this all fascinating.
0:16:55I don't suspect that I'm going to have
0:16:57an electric car anytime soon.
0:16:59Not necessarily from lack of desire,
0:17:01but because those that are available today
0:17:03don't really do it for me, or are exorbitantly expensive,
0:17:06Or are the Model 3 that even if I reserve one now,
0:17:10I won't get until Declan's graduating college.
0:17:13So I don't suspect I'm gonna get
0:17:15an electric car anytime soon,
0:17:16but I am fascinated by all the differences
0:17:19and the different thoughts and concerns
0:17:20and worries that one has,
0:17:22like should I modify my home
0:17:24in order to support charging this quicker?
0:17:27That's so different than what I'm used to thinking about,
0:17:29and I just find it very interesting.
0:17:30- I mean, in all fairness, the modification to your home,
0:17:34If your home is at all modern or new or has modern electric service in it, is usually
0:17:40very minimal.
0:17:41It's usually a couple hundred dollars to have an electrician install a high power outlet
0:17:45usually really close to where your breaker was anyway because so many breakers are in
0:17:48garages.
0:17:49So it's, you know, for most homes out there in the country that are fairly young, I think
0:17:55it would be a very inexpensive modification.
0:17:57And most people I don't think really think too much about it.
0:18:00Yeah.
0:18:01All right.
0:18:02Well, sort of moving on.
0:18:04Jon, do you want to tell us about this next item?
0:18:06Yeah, I meant to look up what SAE stands for, but one of you and/or the chat room will do that while I'm addressing one last point on the superchargers.
0:18:14Also brought up by the chat room, also related to SAE, which is connector standards.
0:18:18Tesla's apparently got its own connector. It's got like the two little things. Does it have like a T-shape in it? I seem to remember it had like kind of a branding theme. But anyway.
0:18:26Yeah, I think there's four pins in there, maybe?
0:18:28Society of Automotive Engineers, SAE stands for.
0:18:33They have a standard connector for electric cars, which is not the same as the Tesla connector,
0:18:38so I mean, we'll see how this works out in terms of, you know, adapters don't seem like
0:18:42it's rocket science if you have any kind of station that can provide electricity to the
0:18:45cars.
0:18:46Obviously Tesla has its own brand of supercharger stations, they don't care if you can charge
0:18:49anyone else's car there, I think, but I see no reason why they couldn't.
0:18:53I feel like that will work itself out.
0:18:55If it turns out that Tesla builds a million supercharger stations before anybody builds
0:18:58anything, guess what?
0:18:59The standard connector is Tesla's, not this SAE standard.
0:19:03But speaking of SAE standards, SAE has a standard measurement system for self-driving cars,
0:19:09which why wouldn't they?
0:19:10Because they're sitting around all day trying to come up with standards like, "Ooh, ooh,
0:19:12self-driving cars.
0:19:13How about we can make up standards for things that don't exist?"
0:19:15So they did.
0:19:16Zero, it goes from zero to five.
0:19:18Zero is no automation, and five is full automation.
0:19:20And they divide it into two regions of three each, because they start from zero because
0:19:23they're programmers.
0:19:24Zero, one, and two is human driver monitors' driving engagement.
0:19:30Basically, there needs to be a human driver, and they need to monitor everything.
0:19:33And three, four, and five is automated driving system monitors' driving environment.
0:19:37I didn't read this entire PDF, so I'm not quite sure how they break it down much farther.
0:19:41But again, my criteria is, do I need to know how to drive a car to get into this car?
0:19:46I guess you could do it simpler as, do I get to sit in the back seat?
0:19:49Because that boils down to the same thing.
0:19:50If you get to sit in the back seat and no one is in the front seat, that's complete
0:19:54self-driving car, right?
0:19:55Can I fall asleep?
0:19:56Yeah.
0:19:57If you have to sit in the front seat
0:19:59and have to know how to drive a car
0:20:01because you may be called upon to do so,
0:20:03you're still in the lower range.
0:20:04So that's really the barrier that I carry.
0:20:06But it's good that the Society of Automotive Engineers
0:20:08has decided to come up with a scale for this.
0:20:10And I wonder where they would--
0:20:11I mean, I guess your Tesla is on two, which
0:20:15they call partial automation.
0:20:16It's like no automation, driver assistance, partial automation,
0:20:19conditional automation, high automation, full automation,
0:20:21auto standards, bodies.
0:20:22Is there anything you can't standardize?
0:20:24Apparently not.
0:20:25So anyway, be watching for SAE numbers to be quoted on your cars just like the SAE engine
0:20:31power ratings that no one reads.
0:20:33Except you.
0:20:34All right.
0:20:36John, do you think—and this is Robin Malhotra that's asked us this—do you think, John,
0:20:44that Apple's new file system or truly autonomous vehicles will come first?
0:20:48Truly autonomous, according to my definition, just laid out, as in you can sit in the backseat
0:20:51and don't have to drive, Apple's file system will come first easily.
0:20:55I tend to agree, but you never really know.
0:20:59All right.
0:21:00Cameron Palm has written in and made some interesting points
0:21:06about the Amazon Echo and Amazon in general.
0:21:12He or she has said, "Well, I'm sure Amazon Echo and Dash buttons
0:21:15are interesting.
0:21:15Its products are a couple of key issues.
0:21:17Number one, Amazon is a US thing.
0:21:18It works in the US because of cheap shipping.
0:21:21It doesn't work/exist in most of the world, including Europe, not in the US sense.
0:21:26The Echo is also only available in American English.
0:21:29Siri on the other hand, and he or she provides a link, is available in many, many, many places.
0:21:35And there's a link that we'll put in the show notes for future availability for Siri.
0:21:40This happens a lot when we bring up things.
0:21:41I forget, maybe Netflix was another one.
0:21:42A lot of things that we don't realize are US-centric or US-only.
0:21:47So if there are other people listening in the US and who are just thinking, "Oh, Amazon,
0:21:50Everyone has Amazon, right?
0:21:52Apparently a lot of the stuff Amazon does
0:21:53is really confined to the US.
0:21:56In ways that you wouldn't imagine it would be.
0:21:58Is there anything specific about the Echo
0:22:00that has to be so US?
0:22:01It seems like they could make one for other countries.
0:22:04Maybe they just don't have enough server farms over there,
0:22:06they don't have the expertise to do the translation
0:22:08and the detection in different languages, either way.
0:22:11It's always seemed kind of weird to me
0:22:12that such a big company like Amazon
0:22:13seems to have such grand ambitions with the whole
0:22:16EC2 and S3 and selling things all over the world.
0:22:19I can understand maybe not being able to sell
0:22:20physical goods all over the world,
0:22:21but for all their electronic products and network services,
0:22:25they should expand more.
0:22:28- Well, and I think this is,
0:22:29I think we're seeing here a strategy tax at Amazon,
0:22:32which is the Echo does lots of things
0:22:35that don't use their services, their storefronts at all,
0:22:39and don't depend on their storefronts at all,
0:22:40but one of the main reasons that all Amazon hardware exists
0:22:43is to get you to buy more content
0:22:47or media or stuff from Amazon.
0:22:49And so I bet they don't want to even bother supporting it
0:22:52in countries and languages where they also don't have
0:22:56widespread store coverage for their stores.
0:22:59And Amazon is historically notoriously US-centric
0:23:03in their storefronts.
0:23:04So that's probably the reason, the main reason why
0:23:07is that the Echo couldn't do like half the things
0:23:11that Amazon wants it to be doing.
0:23:13- Yeah, maybe, but like you have to just think like long-term
0:23:16I mean Amazon is such a long-term thinking company. I mean the CEO is making spaceships and stuff. So
0:23:22Long term if you are if China if you're not selling in China
0:23:26You've got a big problem because China has a lot of an India for that matter China India
0:23:30Guess what? They have a lot of people and those people are in many cases
0:23:34crawling up into the
0:23:37The income class where they can buy your products like that those countries are they're not developing countries. They're like
0:23:45Developed like you know, they're entering the middle-class type of thing. They're ready to buy expensive frivolous electronics, right?
0:23:51And it's happening faster and faster
0:23:54So like if you no matter how I put it this way, you know
0:23:56Even if Amazon gets 100% of the market for physical goods in the United States
0:24:00If you just fast forward enough years
0:24:03The whoever gets 100% of the market in China and India is going to gobble them up
0:24:08Because having 100% of the u.s. Is meaningless when when they get billions of people in Asia
0:24:14Yep. All right, who wants to talk about Ubiquiti's 8-port Power over Ethernet switch?
0:24:20Probably Margo.
0:24:21Our first sponsor this week... Are we really going to talk about a switch?
0:24:25I am, briefly. Go ahead, sponsor. You're fine.
0:24:30Our first sponsor this week is Meh.com. This is a new sponsor. It's Meh... Am I pronouncing
0:24:35that right? M-E-H? Meh.
0:24:37Meh.
0:24:38I've never actually said this word.
0:24:39Yeah, you have to sound more apathetic.
0:24:41Meh.
0:24:42You got it.
0:24:43That's better. That's better.
0:24:44meh.com, these are the people, long ago they founded a site called woot.com and woot was
0:24:50like a one thing a day, daily deal kind of site and the things were like, things that
0:24:55appealed to geeks. So it was you know like cheap, crappy little hardware, like what,
0:24:59and what I was saying last week and the week before like just being blown away by how cheap
0:25:03hardware is these days and it especially costs nothing if you get it from a place like meh.
0:25:08So what they do is one deal a day and this is how Amazon ruined it, so Amazon bought
0:25:13woot, forever ago. The team behind it, the founders behind it, eventually got fed up
0:25:18because Amazon was ruining it. They were, they like made it instead of being one deal
0:25:22a day, it would be, oh now there's just a whole bunch of deals and it's kind of just
0:25:26Amazon at that point. It kind of lost its personality and kind of lost what made it
0:25:30special. So they were all unhappy with this so they just left and they went and founded
0:25:33a company called Mediocre Labs, which I love, and they made this site called Meh. And I
0:25:38love the attitude at this site. If you read their copy, this is like the best copywriting
0:25:42for trying to just barely sell a product.
0:25:45For this ad, there's no coupon code,
0:25:47there's no tracking URL, I was given no script,
0:25:50they just said just wing it.
0:25:51If you see that they sponsor Daring Fireball a lot,
0:25:53you can almost barely tell that they are sponsoring.
0:25:56Like the way they want those posts to be written,
0:25:59it almost seems like, wait, who's the sponsor here?
0:26:01They hide the link.
0:26:03They do fun, kinda quirky stuff like that
0:26:05because this is obviously laid back people
0:26:08who know that they are selling really cheap hardware
0:26:11And it's like surprisingly cheap so today that the one in there today is it looks kind of like an Apple watch shape
0:26:17But it's actually a speaker that goes on your wrist
0:26:19It looks it's like who would wear this and they even say like who would wear this
0:26:24And it's eight dollars, and that's today, and it changes every day changes at midnight once the things sell out. They're just gone
0:26:31That's it. There's no like advance notice of like hey tomorrow
0:26:34We're gonna have a Chromebook or whatever and sometimes they you know so they have all this like awesome like cheap
0:26:39crappy hardware that you can't believe it's that cheap and that has anything in it that works and
0:26:43They also sometimes have good stuff like they they had last week. They had a really impressive
0:26:48Home theater receiver that does 3d sound which I didn't even know this was a thing until I read their site
0:26:53They had Apple watch on there before the Apple watch sport on there a few weeks back or a few months back
0:26:58They have some really nice stuff as well. I love their copywriting more than anything else
0:27:02I love how they sell these products just barely the attitude is hilarious
0:27:07It's you can like sign up to become a special member which is the very mediocre person VMP not VIP
0:27:12There's all sorts of little benefits you can get here. Check it out. It's meh.com MEH.com
0:27:17Meh, that's that's pretty much spot-on. Okay, good. I feel like I need more facial hair to say it correctly
0:27:24No, you just need a lot of indifference. They just you need to be overflowing with indifference
0:27:31It's this is a hard ad read to do because usually I'm supposed to sound enthusiastic about the sponsor
0:27:35Not this time. I love I love the way these people do business. So check it out math calm. Thanks for sponsoring me
0:27:43There we go. That's how I'm supposed to say it
0:27:45So why don't we talk about this 8-port power over Ethernet switch I am right edge of my seat I'm so excited
0:27:53Last week I was talking about me trying to find just a simple 8-port switch that has no fan is silent is reliable and
0:28:01You know just sits there
0:28:02I did my other requirement by the way is that
0:28:04The power and the ports be on the same side just because of the way I have these very switches arranged
0:28:09It's kind of annoying to have the kind that are meant to be in Iraq where the ports are on the front
0:28:12But the power comes in the back
0:28:14Cuz that's just not a good arrangement for things that are sitting on the edge of a table or something anyway
0:28:19and Marco brought up and linked to his the
0:28:22HP thing that he likes and actually I saved the bookmark for that next time I need one
0:28:26I'm gonna give that one to try I still have a couple of extras at home
0:28:29I'm waiting for them to die, but once they die,
0:28:32I'll try that one.
0:28:33- Well also, if you just need one big one,
0:28:34I actually use, I forgot to mention,
0:28:36I actually use a rack mount HP switch in my garage.
0:28:39'Cause when we had our big renovations done,
0:28:41I had the house wired for ethernet.
0:28:44So I have something like 12 or 15 ports
0:28:48that all go into this big HP,
0:28:49I think it's an 1810, something like that?
0:28:53That's probably, yeah, something like that.
0:28:54It's some kind of gigabit HP semi-managed or managed switch.
0:28:58It was a couple hundred dollars,
0:28:59and that's also been rock solid.
0:29:01I've never rebooted that, never had a port die,
0:29:04never had any problems with it whatsoever.
0:29:06- Yeah, if I had it in a garage or in the basement
0:29:08or someplace like that, I would just get a big rack mat one
0:29:11and just put it wherever the heck I wanted it,
0:29:12and who would care as long as it was reliable.
0:29:14But unfortunately, due to the way I have the wires running,
0:29:16I have lots of these little ones around.
0:29:17I have an eight-port one on my TV.
0:29:19I have an eight-port one in the computer room.
0:29:22I have an eight-port one next to my NAS and stuff downstairs.
0:29:25And so there's a bunch of these little ones,
0:29:27many of which are in spaces where people have to be, so they have to be quiet. So the HP one,
0:29:31it's fanless, if it's reliable, you know, I'll give it a try, that sounds good, but I was surprised
0:29:34that Marco didn't suggest Ubiquiti, because we talked about Ubiquiti hardware last week,
0:29:38and you were saying how much you loved it, they make an eight port switch too, and Ars Technica
0:29:42actually reviewed it recently, and it looks weird and enterprisey and Ubiquiti and stuff like that,
0:29:48but I'm like, hey, well, if it's solid and reliable, it's exactly what you're looking for,
0:29:50right? This is a fanless one, their eight part one doesn't have any fans in it. It has a bunch of
0:29:54fancy features that I'm not interested in like the you know all these things that can do with traffic shaping and
0:30:00You know management and all sorts of other stuff
0:30:04But of course it's $200. So I pretty much noped out of that once I saw the price
0:30:10Completely unwilling to pay a lot of you know, most of the time it's like alright
0:30:17Well, if this is a good one and it's reliable pay money for but just it's just so much more than like the 50 bucks
0:30:21I'm used to paying and I
0:30:23It's like well if you keep buying $50 switches
0:30:25You're gonna get a crappy one and they're gonna make noise and go dead or whatever
0:30:28But the thing is I had these dealing switches that were attractive and reliable for a really long time like
0:30:36Six years seven years. No, it's gotta be longer. That's at least eight years
0:30:40That's all my Mac is and I figured out them before that. No, I just want that again
0:30:44You know, maybe I just got lucky and I found like it was I think about them for like $35 like eight years ago
0:30:49I just want that again eight years for $35 is much better than you know
0:30:52know, how long would a $200 thing need to last? So anyway, I think I am not in the market
0:30:57for these Ubiquiti switches, but who knows? Maybe I'll get burned by enough $30 boxes
0:31:01that I will regret not buying this fancy managed 8-port switch from the fancy Marco brand.
0:31:08Yeah, and also, you know, a little more follow-up on Ubiquiti before we leave so we stop getting
0:31:12email about it. Apparently Ubiquiti also sells IP cameras. And I did look very briefly into
0:31:20those, but Amazon didn't stock a lot of them.
0:31:21It looks like they're transitioning their model
0:31:22line into a new model that's like out of stock
0:31:24everywhere right now.
0:31:25So I kind of just missed it.
0:31:27So that's why I didn't look into that.
0:31:28They're also a little more money.
0:31:29And also a few people wrote in to say that they also now
0:31:33have, I was talking last week about how there's this
0:31:35annoying Java 8 wireless access point based controller
0:31:40software that you need if you have certain advanced
0:31:42features enabled, which I don't.
0:31:44And you also need it for initial setup of any of their
0:31:47wireless access points.
0:31:49And it turns out that they also sell this little,
0:31:51kind of like one of those Intel USB,
0:31:54it looks like a USB stick,
0:31:55but it's actually like a whole mini computer in there,
0:31:57you know what I'm talking about?
0:31:58The NUCs, is that?
0:31:59Whatever those are.
0:32:00They sell something that looks just like that,
0:32:02and it runs their software in this little mini computer
0:32:06thing, so you don't need to run it on one of your
0:32:10real computers if you don't want to.
0:32:11But those things are also sold out everywhere.
0:32:13But when they're in stock,
0:32:14they're supposed to only be like 70 or 80 bucks.
0:32:16So you can pay 70 or 80 bucks to avoid installing
0:32:19Java somewhere, which I would probably do.
0:32:22- And what was the name of that product, do you remember?
0:32:24- I have no idea.
0:32:25It doesn't matter because it's out of stock everywhere,
0:32:29it's Ubiquiti, it's like some kind of cloud controller
0:32:31or something like that.
0:32:33- Interesting, all right.
0:32:34- Ubiquiti makes routers and WiFi access points
0:32:38and IP cameras and switches.
0:32:40- They also make long range WiFi antennas.
0:32:43So if you wanna beam Wi-Fi from one building
0:32:46to a whole different building that might be far away,
0:32:49they make a whole bunch of stuff to do that.
0:32:51That also costs suspiciously little,
0:32:53but everyone says works very well.
0:32:55- It's like this company is everywhere.
0:32:57- Yeah, well, I think they,
0:32:58it turns out there's a pretty big business
0:33:00in taking something that's controlled
0:33:02by a very small number of very high-margin companies
0:33:06and doing the same thing for a lot less money.
0:33:08- I'm glad Casey got my joke.
0:33:10- Yeah.
0:33:11- I'm here for you.
0:33:12- Thank you.
0:33:13All right, so right after we recorded the last episode,
0:33:17Smile Software ended up changing,
0:33:22oh, it is for Smile, okay,
0:33:23changing some of the stuff about the new pricing
0:33:27for TextExpander.
0:33:30What it basically amounted to was,
0:33:32well, most of the things are the same,
0:33:35we're gonna give you a little bit of a discount
0:33:36if you're already a customer,
0:33:37and we'll keep the old thing around
0:33:38for some undetermined amount of time.
0:33:40Is that a relatively fair summary?
0:33:42I think the most important thing is that they did something because that was what we were talking about last week like oh
0:33:46Let's see what they did. Let's think maybe they meant this maybe they meant that blah blah blah, but it's like alright
0:33:51Well, we see what their their announcement of Texas Spanish six is doing to the market now. We wait to see is
0:33:57This what they wanted to do because a lot of the discussion last show was like well
0:34:01This is what they did and it doesn't seem crazy to expect
0:34:04To have these results come out of it surely they must have thought of this
0:34:08but on the other hand, maybe they've made a huge mistake and we'll find out if
0:34:12they
0:34:14Do anything about it like oh no, we hear your feedback. We're gonna and this is what I did
0:34:18It was faster than I ever thought they would so it's so clear that whatever it is. They thought they were doing
0:34:22They did not expect the reaction they got because there was was like two days after the answer one day
0:34:28It was very quickly afterwards. They have this post it says no. No. No. All right
0:34:32We heard your feedback blah blah blah and then we come to the announcement. Did they hear people's feedback?
0:34:37is what they've done actually addressing people's concerns?
0:34:42And I'll let Marco say,
0:34:44because I know he has a pretty strong opinion
0:34:45that they're not addressing the concerns really.
0:34:48- Well, it's, you know, I mean, honestly,
0:34:50I don't care that strongly about this topic in general,
0:34:53because as I said, I'm not really a TechSpinner user.
0:34:56And also, I am a developer who sells something
0:34:58that's subscription priced,
0:34:59and so I do sympathize with their economic needs here.
0:35:03However, you know, what they announced is basically that,
0:35:06They moved this product that was a traditionally sold,
0:35:10like you pay 40 or something dollars for this product.
0:35:14Every time you do a major upgrade,
0:35:15you might get an upgrade, discount or whatever,
0:35:17but for the most part, it's like you pay
0:35:18a decent amount up front,
0:35:20and then you can use it as long as you want,
0:35:21and then when we make new ones every couple of years
0:35:23or every year, you can choose to upgrade or not.
0:35:26And they moved it from that model to,
0:35:29it's now a web service with a required $5 a month
0:35:32subscription with these client apps that are now free.
0:35:35And so the people who used it were very angry
0:35:39for basically two main reasons.
0:35:42Number one, as we discussed last episode,
0:35:43a lot of people just don't like subscription pricing,
0:35:45especially for things that they don't expect it on
0:35:48or that they don't see the value in.
0:35:50Whether or not it's there,
0:35:51it's what people expect for pricing models.
0:35:54Whether I don't wanna pay per month for a USB hub,
0:35:59it's just a USB hub, it does its job, right?
0:36:01Why shouldn't you pay per month for that?
0:36:03Some people view software that way,
0:36:05even though it kind of isn't in practice.
0:36:06But anyway, so there was that complaint.
0:36:09And if you have that complaint, the new announcement,
0:36:13which is basically, we're dropping the price
0:36:15on the subscription for people who had the old version,
0:36:18and we're gonna keep the old version updated
0:36:20for an unspecified amount of time.
0:36:23And so if you had the objection that this thing
0:36:27should not be subscription priced, period,
0:36:30this will not affect you at all,
0:36:31you will still be upset about this.
0:36:34If you had the opinion that, "Well, I'm upset about this not because it's subscription
0:36:39priced but because I will end up paying a lot more than I did before," then this will
0:36:44probably make you happy because now it has removed, I think, most or all of that complaint.
0:36:49I haven't done all the numbers but it's something like, you know, I think you'll
0:36:52end up paying roughly the same that you were paying before if you upgraded every few years.
0:36:56So it will address some of the complaints and the ones that were primarily about just
0:37:00like total price over time.
0:37:03But it will not address the people who are really upset
0:37:05that they are moving to this model.
0:37:08And also, they also have this other problem
0:37:11where they removed their sync features.
0:37:15'Cause one of the ways they're justifying
0:37:17the new subscription service is you can now sync
0:37:20through their web service.
0:37:21In fact, you have to sync through their web service.
0:37:23Before, TextExpander, which works by having full
0:37:27keyboard access, so it can read every keystroke,
0:37:30it has to read every keystroke you're typing.
0:37:32So it is functionally a key logger.
0:37:35And before it didn't need internet access.
0:37:38Because before it supported sync
0:37:40through lots of different means.
0:37:41Basically like it would store its data in a file somewhere
0:37:45and you could sync that file through many different means.
0:37:47I think Dropbox was probably the most common one
0:37:49people used from people who I know who used it.
0:37:52So before this key logger effectively
0:37:56didn't need network access.
0:37:58Now it does.
0:37:59And so there's also the concerns about
0:38:01the security around this.
0:38:03It's kind of tricky to combine something
0:38:06that has full key logging access
0:38:07with something that has a network connection
0:38:09to third party servers that you don't control.
0:38:11And then there's a question around
0:38:13whether they are encrypting the snippets
0:38:15that you are storing there.
0:38:16And of course the answer, I'm pretty sure the answer
0:38:18is that they're not, but they're just relying
0:38:20on the other security measures around
0:38:21just your login and stuff to protect them.
0:38:23So there's a whole bunch of concerns here that people had.
0:38:26A whole bunch of objections that people had
0:38:28this new model, and they have addressed one of them, which is the total price over time.
0:38:33But that's all they've addressed so far.
0:38:35What about TextExpander 5?
0:38:38Their change on that, they said, "We will continue this from their press release.
0:38:41We will continue to sell and support TextExpander 5 for OS X and TextExpander 3 plus custom
0:38:45keyboard for iOS for those who need it."
0:38:48And they don't give any time scales.
0:38:50We will continue to sell and support, continue for how long?
0:38:52Forever?
0:38:53A year?
0:38:54A month?
0:38:55A week?
0:38:56Five days?
0:38:57for the next version of OS X, will it be updated?
0:39:02So many questions that, again, I have to think, they know these questions, like they've been
0:39:06getting tons and tons of feedback.
0:39:08Huge number of those questions must have said, how long will Texas Defender 5 be supported?
0:39:12Will you update it?
0:39:13How long will, you know, how long will your old versions that didn't do the subscription
0:39:16pricing, how long will they be supported?
0:39:18Will you continue to update them?
0:39:20And they just didn't answer it at all.
0:39:21And you have to think it's because they think people won't like the answer, not because,
0:39:25"Oh, it didn't occur to us to address that question because they must have got that question
0:39:28thousands of times already."
0:39:29Yeah, because the answer is, you know, if you think about it, just think about it from
0:39:33their point of view. They're not trying to be like greedy or evil or anything. They can't
0:39:37support an old version of this app forever. There's going to be, on an infinite time scale,
0:39:42there's going to be an end to the support for this version of this app. So, and, you
0:39:47know, when are they going to do that? They, what they've said in this post, it really
0:39:52just I think honestly makes the problem a little bit worse because it implies that this
0:39:57will be supported indefinitely. But in practice, there's going to be an end and I don't think
0:40:03we or they know when that end will be yet, but I think they're creating an unmaintainable
0:40:08expectation here.
0:40:09- Yeah, like to the naive person reading this, someone's going to read, "We will continue
0:40:15to sell and support Tech Expander 5," and be like, "Oh, I'm so satisfied. This price
0:40:18press release made me feel so much better. Thank you, smile. We love you." But what they
0:40:22have in their head is, "And I'll continue to use Texas Commander 5 forever." And eventually,
0:40:27like you said, "Texas Commander 5 will not work." And they're going to be so angry then,
0:40:32because they're going to be like, "But you put out this press release that said you will
0:40:34continue to sell and support Texas Commander 5." And then that's going to be like, "Well,
0:40:37we continue to support Texas Commander 5, but unfortunately, Texas Commander 5 is a
0:40:40product that is only compatible with versions X, Y, and Z, and blah, blah, blah." And they'll
0:40:43be like, "But you said..." People aren't reading lawyers. They're not reading for the nuance.
0:40:48And they don't know, like why should you expect a customer to understand what is involved
0:40:53in maintaining an application across multiple releases of various OSs?
0:40:57Like there is some, especially for like a system wide utility like Texas Band or whether
0:41:00it's an iOS or an OS 10, there's always going to be stuff you have to do to maintain it.
0:41:04It's not as simple as just a standalone application that you just run it and then it quits.
0:41:07And even that needs to be maintained.
0:41:08So I don't know if they're setting themselves up for failure, but like if I think about
0:41:12how much do I think they're going to support Texas Band or five?
0:41:15They don't want to support two different versions of their product like who would want like the whole point of that
0:41:20They want to have sustainable development as a whole bunch of description pricing. You can't say okay now
0:41:24We're gonna have two teams one that's just maintaining the old versions and ones maintaining the new version. Nobody wants to do that
0:41:29so my gut reaction is someone who's seen a lot of software is the Texas manner 5 and
0:41:34Texas manner 3 for iOS
0:41:37They'll probably work with this version of OS 10 and the next version of iOS and the next version probably but when they break
0:41:43I don't think Smile will invest too much in fixing them,
0:41:45but they'll be like, look, you had your time,
0:41:48now it's time to move on to the other one,
0:41:50to whatever, six or seven or whatever they're up to now.
0:41:53- Right, and in Smile's defense,
0:41:55this is why I don't wanna gang up on them
0:41:58or attribute malice to them,
0:42:02but there are these problems
0:42:04with every way you choose to take money.
0:42:06If they continue doing the old way of here's a paid app,
0:42:10you buy it once, and then in a couple years
0:42:12you might buy an upgrade.
0:42:13That method also has to cut off support
0:42:16for old versions eventually, and when that happens,
0:42:18that also angers people.
0:42:20And so, no matter what you do,
0:42:23no matter where you choose to take money,
0:42:24it will anger somebody, and a lot of somebodies,
0:42:27if you have a good customer base,
0:42:29you know, if you have a good-sized customer base,
0:42:30it's gonna anger a lot of people regardless of what you do.
0:42:33If you don't charge for anything, that'll anger people
0:42:35who are afraid that you're gonna sell their data.
0:42:37If you put ads in, that'll anger people who don't like ads,
0:42:40or don't like what they're doing.
0:42:42No matter what you do, you're gonna anger people.
0:42:44I don't envy the position that smiles in here
0:42:47because what they're clearly saying,
0:42:49if not directly then implying,
0:42:51what they're clearly saying is,
0:42:53we need to get more money from TextExpander.
0:42:56Like whatever, this isn't working for us,
0:42:57we need more revenue from it somehow.
0:43:00And the way we're gonna do that
0:43:02is gonna have this short-term pain for somebody.
0:43:04And it seems like they're trying
0:43:07to address people's concerns, but ultimately they're not able to, they can't, because
0:43:13they have to make money somewhere. So like, there's always going to be people who are
0:43:17mad about this, and they're going to have to choose to make some of them mad. I think
0:43:21the only two good options here are either that they continue doing the subscription
0:43:27model, which honestly I don't think is a good idea. It seems deeply flawed for the
0:43:33kind of product it is and the kind of audience that it had, as far as I know. But again,
0:43:37I'm not them, I don't know who the customers are,
0:43:39so I could be wrong.
0:43:40So that's one option, is to just go whole hog
0:43:42in the subscriptions the way they were before,
0:43:45and just be honest, like look, support for five
0:43:47will end after next OS 10 version or something like that.
0:43:51Set a date or set a version where it'll just say,
0:43:53all right, it'll stop after this,
0:43:54and then you're on your own,
0:43:55and you gotta move to our service now or not.
0:43:58Or completely bring back the old model of licensing.
0:44:01Whether they continue doing the subscription model also
0:44:04or not, I don't know,
0:44:06But the alternative here is you bring back the old model
0:44:10where okay, now, you know, TextExpander 6
0:44:12is a regular software release that you can buy
0:44:14for 40 bucks or whatever, and you can own it
0:44:18with no monthly fees after that for, you know,
0:44:20until you decide to stop using it or until it breaks
0:44:21with some distant future OS X version.
0:44:24I don't see another option here.
0:44:26Like, what they're doing now is trying to bridge
0:44:29the benefits of both.
0:44:30They're trying to please people who want both
0:44:34without giving up their subscription idea.
0:44:37Because this is obviously,
0:44:38they've obviously invested a lot into setting this up,
0:44:41migrating their product over to this kind of system.
0:44:44Somebody's using it,
0:44:45so if they kill the subscription service now,
0:44:48they're gonna anger the people who are using it
0:44:49and who do like it.
0:44:51So this is not an end-to-end position to be in.
0:44:54And I don't wanna make light of this
0:44:56because, as I said, this is all hard stuff.
0:45:00And in the current software landscape,
0:45:04It is incredibly difficult to make a healthy profit
0:45:08selling software today.
0:45:11It's just hard.
0:45:11And they have a staff they have to support.
0:45:14And you can argue, oh well, maybe software should be free,
0:45:18or maybe there's a lot of competition,
0:45:20or maybe they should lower their costs or whatever,
0:45:23but none of those things are easy things to address
0:45:24or easy things to actually follow through on
0:45:27and often have uncomfortable side effects.
0:45:29So this is not, the solution might just be,
0:45:33It's kind of like when the minimum wage goes up,
0:45:36yeah, I'm sorry if we're going political here.
0:45:38- Oh God, here we go.
0:45:39- When the minimum wage goes up,
0:45:40one of the problems that economists cite when that happens
0:45:44is it basically prices out a whole bunch of jobs
0:45:47from being doable because like, well now,
0:45:50if the minimum I have to pay a legal full-time employee
0:45:54is, or legal employee is X,
0:45:56then any job that costs less than X,
0:45:59I just can't pay somebody to do that really.
0:46:02or any job that's only worth something below X.
0:46:06That kind of problem happens now with software,
0:46:09which is like a lot of software that could be created
0:46:12and that could have value to people
0:46:14just is not going to do well enough in the market
0:46:16or people won't pay enough for it for it to be sustained.
0:46:20So a lot of that software just won't get created
0:46:23or it will get created and then get abandoned.
0:46:25So there's all sorts of economic,
0:46:27uncomfortable truths about this.
0:46:30However you think about software pricing,
0:46:33however you think things should be priced,
0:46:34or whatever you're willing to pay for them,
0:46:37it's a very tricky area, and I don't envy SMILE at all
0:46:40for the position they're in right now.
0:46:42- Yeah, I certainly don't either.
0:46:44- Yeah, I kind of think of Adobe,
0:46:47when they went through a similar transition of,
0:46:49I think Adobe was making plenty of money,
0:46:51but they said, "You know what?
0:46:52"We think it would be better for us financially
0:46:55"if you could pay for our applications
0:46:58"on a subscription basis, rather than us
0:46:59selling you a box with software in it or selling you a download or whatever and for the most
0:47:03part they made a transition to that and Microsoft is going through the same thing now trying
0:47:06to sell Office 365 subscriptions and everything like that.
0:47:11Smile obviously is much smaller than Adobe or Microsoft, looked like it was trying to
0:47:14make a similar transition and it's almost it's almost like I feel like ripping off the
0:47:19band-aid and just plowing bravely forward.
0:47:22Certainly from the outside that would be a cleaner situation but from the inside it may
0:47:26be like no that wasn't even an option like we would have died the product would not be
0:47:29viable we tried it it's not working too many people are angry we're not selling enough
0:47:33subscriptions we have to immediately do an about face and so i guess you know better
0:47:36now than six months from now or whatever but anyway this is surely not the way they hoped
0:47:42this transition would go um and i think their attempt to to uh fix it with the discount
0:47:49and the vague promise of support for the old versions.
0:47:54I don't know if it makes it worse, but boy,
0:47:58like I don't know if it gives them
0:48:01a higher chance of success either.
0:48:02Like I just feel like they're signing them.
0:48:05All they've done is deferred the anger to a later period.
0:48:09The discount I think is probably fine
0:48:12because I think a discount is actually like
0:48:14maybe the mistake they just made
0:48:15was making the subscription price too high.
0:48:17That could have been something they decided to,
0:48:18are, we're getting less angry feedback, we're not selling enough subscriptions, again I'm
0:48:21speculating here, maybe the price is just too high.
0:48:25Like if you told people they could use TechExpander, you get it for free and you have to pay a
0:48:28penny a month, everyone's fine with that.
0:48:30Suddenly it's not some sort of philosophical objection to subscription pricing, I don't
0:48:34want to pay a penny a month, it's too much.
0:48:35No, everybody's fine with that, it's below their level of concern, right?
0:48:39But $5 a month or whatever it is was above people's, you know, so the 50% discount for
0:48:43life. If that brings it down below people's threshold, then we'll see, like
0:48:48Margo said, do they really object philosophically to subscriptions period
0:48:52or is it merely that the price is too high? The promise for text expander is
0:48:56like, and also we're not even really sure the subscription thing is a good idea so
0:49:01you can have this thing for some undefined period of time but probably it
0:49:04will go away but you probably don't know that and it just makes me depressed but
0:49:08you know anyway we'll see how it works out for them like Margo said is
0:49:11difficult but the final part is you can't somehow can't get your way out of
0:49:15a press release without something terrible appearing and I feel like it's
0:49:20I'm not a PR person I don't know how to do a PR person's job I'm not gonna say
0:49:25that I could have written this better but as someone who reads a lot of press
0:49:31releases reading this does not make me feel better about the company and I
0:49:34imagine that's what press releases are supposed to do the last part of it was
0:49:37this is supposed to be like you know person to person like have empathy for
0:49:40so on and so forth. This was a big change. There were a number of things we could have done better.
0:49:44All right, this sounds like the start of a paragraph where they're saying basically like
0:49:47acknowledging, okay, our bad, you know, you are angry at us and we have to at this point
0:49:52acknowledge that you are angry at us with reasons. There are things that didn't turn out the way we
0:49:56wanted them to, you know, we're sorry, you're mad, we acknowledge your anger like that, right? Seems
0:50:02like it's going fine so far. We genuinely want to bring you the best Texas Banner experience we can.
0:50:06Unfortunately, not all of accents had the intended effects. Still good so far. For example,
0:50:10comma, we staggered our customer emails over three days to ensure smooth server capacity
0:50:15so that everyone would have a good initial experience with the service.
0:50:17The server held up, but many customers learned of the new text expander from news sites,
0:50:22or Twitter, rather than from Smile."
0:50:24That is not an example of the bad things that people are yelling at you about.
0:50:29Like because they found out the news from a site other than you, as if somehow if they
0:50:32found it from you, they would have choked it down and it would have been more palatable.
0:50:36They're angry about what happened.
0:50:38out what happened from news sites rather than from you. That's a component of that maybe.
0:50:42Like why do I got to hear this on Twitter instead of from you directly, smile? But
0:50:45substantively, if you're going to pick the thing that people are angry about, that's not it. This
0:50:49whole press release was addressing their issues, none of which were, "I found out about this from
0:50:53Twitter," instead of, "Smile." Don't end your press release like that. It's like,
0:50:56you know, what is your greatest weakness? Oh, I'm a little bit, I'm such a hard worker sometimes.
0:51:01They were so close, they were right there. For example, and the example they gave is
0:51:08is not what people are angry with. It's not even in like the top three that people are
0:51:11angry about. So close.
0:51:15Yeah, I have a feeling the story is not over.
0:51:18Yeah, we've heard you and actually it's going to be 25% of the original price for life and
0:51:24Texas Banner 5 will be supported indefinitely and we're canceling Texas Banner 6, but wait!
0:51:28We heard you Texas Banner 6 users, you want to keep... alright. I give them one. They're
0:51:34They're allowed to, you try something, doesn't work,
0:51:37you react fast, good.
0:51:39If they come back again with another press release,
0:51:41then we're just gonna have to have dedicated
0:51:42Texas Matter podcast, I guess.
0:51:44(laughing)
0:51:47- All right, well, we have one more quick piece of follow-up
0:51:49and then we can move on to some other stuff.
0:51:51- These weren't the topics.
0:51:53- They were, we're in that gray area.
0:51:56- It's not gray area, Texas Matter is follow-up.
0:51:58- So is Apple.
0:51:59- Yeah, fair enough.
0:52:00Jon, you finally got your wish,
0:52:01you got your bleeps and bloops,
0:52:03and how's that going?
0:52:05- Not my wish.
0:52:06I wanted a bleeps and bloops theme song
0:52:08that we had in one episode way back when.
0:52:10(upbeat music)
0:52:13But Marco took it upon itself to add bleeps and bloops
0:52:19before and after the ads.
0:52:21I think because he listens to too much Hello Internet
0:52:24or some other reason, but anyway,
0:52:25we've gotten a lot of feedback about that
0:52:27and I thought Marco should explain what he's doing and why.
0:52:30- We've gotten like three people who don't like it.
0:52:32- It's more than that, but man, the people who don't like it.
0:52:35- I mean, I can say the sky is blue,
0:52:37and more people will tell me I'm an idiot and wrong
0:52:39than what we've heard about this.
0:52:41- Well, that's also true.
0:52:42- Well, people don't like change, so that's obvious, right?
0:52:44But what I'm more interested in is why did you add them?
0:52:46Not why do people not like them, but why did you add them?
0:52:48- Sure, so first of all, you can quibble over
0:52:51the choice of sounds.
0:52:52I chose old Mac sounds.
0:52:53I wanted to do the Windows XP USB device
0:52:57plugged in and unplugged sounds,
0:52:59but I knew John would not allow that.
0:53:02That's correct, John?
0:53:04- I don't even know that sound, but no,
0:53:05that would be terrible.
0:53:06- It's like, "Boo-doom, boo-doom."
0:53:07- No, no, no one knows this.
0:53:10- Anyway, so that's what I wanted to do,
0:53:12and I knew John would object,
0:53:14so I chose old Mac sounds instead that kind of just,
0:53:18the actual origins of them are kind of funny.
0:53:20One of them's a crash, and one of them's a reboot
0:53:22of some old Macs.
0:53:23I didn't pick based on what computers they belong to.
0:53:26Specifically in the old Apple lineup,
0:53:28I just picked based on which ones
0:53:29I thought sounded right for this purpose.
0:53:31I was thinking about using something like this for a while
0:53:33because it allows me a lot more flexibility in editing
0:53:37of when I start the ad and when I end the ad.
0:53:39It also saves time in the episode
0:53:42because it removes all the transition lead-in
0:53:46from like Casey saying, all right, before we cover this,
0:53:49Marco, why don't you tell me something that's awesome?
0:53:51Something like that.
0:53:52It removes the need for a lot of that.
0:53:54So it does save time, I think,
0:53:56and it also just gives me the flexibility
0:53:59to place the ads wherever I want,
0:54:01Like wherever there's a natural break in conversation,
0:54:04even if we didn't say at that point in the show,
0:54:06all right, let's do a sponsor break now.
0:54:08So it allows flexibility in editing basically
0:54:10and it makes everything shorter.
0:54:11It also helps differentiate when the ad has begun
0:54:13and when the ad has ended.
0:54:15- It forces you to figure that out too,
0:54:17which is not always easy. - Yes.
0:54:18Yeah, it forces it to be like a firmly defined boundary,
0:54:21which I think is better editorially,
0:54:22even though I think we were pretty good about that already,
0:54:24but this does help just a little bit.
0:54:26Like last week, you talked, John, about Blue Apron
0:54:29after I had finished doing my script.
0:54:31And so if I wanted to integrate that into the ad read,
0:54:35I had to move it in, and I did.
0:54:37And so I actually rearranged the ending of the ad
0:54:39to move that into the ad read like explicitly,
0:54:42and then once the sound played, the ad was over.
0:54:45So I think that helped also.
0:54:47And so that's why I did it,
0:54:48and the reason I started two weeks ago
0:54:51is because all three live reads I did that recording,
0:54:56I hated them all.
0:54:57And so I recorded them all the next morning
0:54:59and when I do a recording after the fact,
0:55:02which I occasionally do if I mess up a read too badly
0:55:04or if I just don't like the way it turned out,
0:55:05I will of course always sound slightly different
0:55:08from the way I sounded the night before.
0:55:10Just because people's voices change throughout the day
0:55:12and throughout each day you might have different voices
0:55:14than yesterday by just how tired you are,
0:55:17whether you're sick, whether there's allergies, whatever.
0:55:19So I didn't like all three of the ads I did two weeks ago.
0:55:21I replaced them all the morning after
0:55:23and decided this would be a good time to use these sounds
0:55:25because it would help people not notice
0:55:27that I sounded different in the ads.
0:55:29And these did, as far as I know, these did originate,
0:55:32like the idea of ad bumper sounds,
0:55:35I first heard it on Hello Internet.
0:55:37I don't know if they invented it,
0:55:38but that is certainly where I first heard it.
0:55:40- They did not invent it just like underscore
0:55:42didn't invent exploding the eyes or as yes.
0:55:44- Didn't I heard it first on Core Induition, I thought.
0:55:47(upbeat music)
0:55:50- I think it's probably from the radio,
0:55:52the invention of radio.
0:55:54- Yeah, I mean-- - How about that?
0:55:54- Well-- - Within podcasts.
0:55:56- Yeah, radio, yeah, everyone does it
0:55:58a little bit differently, but the idea of just like,
0:56:00kind of like a quick opening and closing sound effect,
0:56:03I first heard that on Hello Internet,
0:56:05so they get full credit because they are awesome
0:56:06and they are still my favorite podcast.
0:56:08I don't know, I'm just gonna assume
0:56:09they stole something from us at some point
0:56:10and we'll call it even, and yeah, that's about it.
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0:58:37- Unlike SMILE, we need to actually wrap up addressing
0:58:41the various complaints of the bleeps and bloops.
0:58:42So collecting the bleeps and bloops complaints,
0:58:46one category of complaint is I don't like change.
0:58:49That's like the meta category, which you know,
0:58:52you can't dismiss out of hand because who wants their thing
0:58:55to, you know, you kind of get used to a certain structure.
0:58:57You don't like change, right?
0:58:58- All right, well listen to episode one
0:59:00and tell me you don't like change.
0:59:01- Yeah, so we'll put that aside for now.
0:59:03But it is a thing people said.
0:59:06The other one, surprising number of people
0:59:09listen to the podcast.
0:59:11I don't know how we should take this,
0:59:13while drifting off to sleep or to help them,
0:59:14or this help them get to sleep.
0:59:16Like, I mean, great.
0:59:17If I'm happy to make a product that you enjoy for whatever purpose you want to use
0:59:22it for.
0:59:23If that's how you want to use it, that's fine.
0:59:24But apparently the bleeps and bloops are harshing their mellow and jangling them out
0:59:28of the slumber that they were drifting into.
0:59:30So perhaps toning down the volume or picking different sounds could help out there with
0:59:34those people.
0:59:35But again, a surprising number of people said that.
0:59:37Yeah, that seems to be – I think that's the only complaint I would consider valid
0:59:42that we've received so far.
0:59:43And again, like you, I'm not sure how I feel about people complaining that they're
0:59:46having a hard time falling asleep through our podcast. But that is a semi-valid complaint.
0:59:54If that's how they're using the podcast, then we're helping make their life better
0:59:57by helping them drift off to sleep. More power to them, so maybe the volume down.
1:00:01Can you imagine people who hear us as the last thing they hear before they go to sleep?
1:00:05Is that mentally healthy?
1:00:07That's fine. We'll give them awesome dreams about USB hubs. USB hubs and new Mac Pros.
1:00:12Oh god, those are nightmares my friend, not dreams.
1:00:16Yeah, my complaint is I don't like the sounds.
1:00:19Like I know you went through all the lists of sounds, but because you have no sort of
1:00:22background of what those sounds are, where they came from, it is weird to hear the sounds
1:00:26that you picked in there.
1:00:29So I feel like better sounds could be found.
1:00:31I like that they're max sounds, but I don't like that one of them is a crash sound, and
1:00:34of all the star beeps you pick, you pick that one.
1:00:37Not my favorites.
1:00:39So I think there's an area where we could potentially improve to try to make, because
1:00:43all the reasons you cited for the sounds sound good to me, like I think they're all good,
1:00:47and we just need to tamp down the negatives, I feel like.
1:00:52- Sure, so if the issue is just like the volume of the sounds, I thought I had a good balance,
1:00:56I did reduce the volume on them from their stock configuration, like from the raw sound,
1:01:01just because it didn't match the levels really well otherwise, but if I have to reduce them
1:01:05further, that's fine.
1:01:06As for the choice of sounds, it's tricky, when you're choosing sound effects for a
1:01:09I know this is really inside baseball,
1:01:10I'm sorry for everybody who doesn't care.
1:01:11You can just skip over this chapter.
1:01:13When you're choosing sound effects to go in a pod,
1:01:15'cause I learned this in the early days of neutral,
1:01:17'cause I would use to delineate the ads in neutral,
1:01:20I would use, oh wait a minute,
1:01:21that was before Hello Internet.
1:01:23- Say they stole everything from us.
1:01:25- All right, so we used the BMW chime
1:01:30from the E whatever series, whatever that--
1:01:33- E90. - Yeah,
1:01:34whatever the pleasant little chime is
1:01:36when you leave your door open or start the car or whatever.
1:01:38I recorded one of those from my three series and we used that as our ad bumpers.
1:01:43And we got complaints from people.
1:01:44This is also why when I bleep a swear word, I don't use the horn honking sound.
1:01:53There was a couple early episodes of Neutral Wire where I would use all sorts of car sounds
1:01:56and I settled on just using a handbrake or a trunk slamming sound because when you're
1:02:00in a car and you hear that sound effect, it kind of throws you off.
1:02:04You don't know whether, like, is that a real horn honking outside?
1:02:07it kind of scares you or jostles you out of what you're supposed to be paying attention
1:02:12to.
1:02:13Is that the sound of my engine or is that? No, it's MP3. Nevermind.
1:02:16Nice. Nicely done. So anyway.
1:02:18Never get old. Did you know other car makers are doing that now, by the way? Not just BMW?
1:02:21I think I read, I forget what it was. Maybe it was Volkswagen or some other, but like
1:02:23just non luxury, non fancy brands are doing it. Anyway, it's terrible.
1:02:27BMW leads the way and lots of things, good and bad. Anyway, so I learned like you got
1:02:32to be careful not to, basically not to use like current sounds. So when I chose these
1:02:37sounds, I chose them specifically so that they wouldn't sound like the more recent
1:02:42Mac sound effects. So like I didn't use the current Mac startup chime, which has actually
1:02:46been in use for quite some time. I didn't use that because it was, I didn't want people
1:02:52to think that like the computer behind them was rebooting and they were like, "Oh crap,
1:02:56did a kernel panic?" Like you know, I don't want to like freak people out, so I had to
1:03:00pick sounds that were not recent. And it would be funny to troll the Windows XP users with
1:03:04the USB sounds and they are also quieter and simpler and they wouldn't annoy you because
1:03:08they would match each other, Jon.
1:03:09It's not that non-matching, it's just that I know those sounds from history and life
1:03:13and they, you know, I think everything you said is a good idea not to use modern sounds,
1:03:17don't use sounds that could be confused with car sounds, like all good, but just these
1:03:20particular ones, they just don't work for me. Like, on "Reconcilable Differences,"
1:03:26has a little guitar jangle that he does at the beginning and end.
1:03:35Obviously that's probably not appropriate for us, but on that show it works especially
1:03:38because it fits in with the sort of intro theme thing.
1:03:42Anyway I think we can do better here.
1:03:43Here's the other angle that no one brought up for the people who like don't like change
1:03:46and stuff.
1:03:49Having things like this, no matter what sounds we end up landing on and what volume they're
1:03:53at or whatever, having regular features of the show like the song in the middle and the
1:03:59little ringy things and the car door opening and stuff like that, that stuff is incredibly
1:04:04addictive. Like Pavlov with ringing the bell and making the dogs salivate. Like this is
1:04:09a literal bell. So for all the people who it's weird for you because we're changing
1:04:13it totally understand that, but for the people who are just starting to listen to the show
1:04:16now or for people a year from now after we've been doing this for a while, that will become
1:04:20such an integral part of the show that if we ever took it away, people would flip out,
1:04:24because humans are just silly little monkeys. So what I'm saying is, hang in there. Eventually,
1:04:31you will come to love the bells. Maybe not these particular chimes. We feel like we will
1:04:35get the kinks worked out, and version two and three of these sounds or whatever, eventually
1:04:40you won't be able to live without them.
1:04:42Yeah, and that's one of the reasons we have our theme song. So Jonathan Mann, the author
1:04:46of our theme song. We did the first few episodes without a theme song. I forget how many we
1:04:52did beforehand, but it was a few. And one time we complained that we didn't know how
1:04:56to end the show and everything, so he wrote this theme song. And at the same time, I had
1:05:00actually asked Merlin Mann a week or so earlier if he could write us a theme song. All those
1:05:07musical things, I'm pretty sure it's just him playing guitar or playing in a garage
1:05:11band or something. He is a musician.
1:05:12- Yeah, that's him.
1:05:13- You know, "Back to Work," that theme song was his high school band or whatever.
1:05:16High school band. I hope he's not listening.
1:05:18What, was it after high school? I don't know. Anyway.
1:05:20They're a serious band, you know.
1:05:22I bought their album. Anyway. It's Bacon Ray, right?
1:05:25Yeah, I think that one is.
1:05:26Yeah. So I actually asked Merlin, before Jonathan wrote what is now our theme song,
1:05:35I asked Merlin to write something for us. And then when Jonathan wrote his theme song,
1:05:39we were like, "This is so good." Like, it was getting stuck in all of our heads all day.
1:05:44And we were like, "I think we have to just use this.
1:05:47"It's too good, we have to use this.
1:05:49"It's so infectious, it gets in all of our heads so much.
1:05:52"We don't have a choice."
1:05:53So I went to Merlin, I'm like, "Look, I'm sorry.
1:05:55"If you start anything, please stop."
1:05:56And fortunately, he hadn't gotten to it yet,
1:05:58so it wasn't a huge deal.
1:06:00At least I don't think Merlin hates me forever for that,
1:06:02'cause that was three years ago,
1:06:03and I think we're still friends.
1:06:04But yeah, we knew when we heard the Jonathan Mann song,
1:06:08we knew we had to do it.
1:06:09By the way, quick plug for Jonathan Mann.
1:06:11He is launching a new podcast called Songonauts
1:06:15on The Truth, one of the Radio Topia shows,
1:06:17you know The Truth?
1:06:18It's a big podcast on Radio Topia.
1:06:19Anyway, so check out Songonauts by Jonathan Mann,
1:06:22which I think is launching shortly,
1:06:24or might have launched by the time we aired the show.
1:06:25Anyway, quick plug for Jonathan,
1:06:26'cause we like him a lot, 'cause he wrote a theme song.
1:06:29So anyway, that is why we do fun stuff like this,
1:06:34'cause it gets in our heads
1:06:34and it becomes part of the personality of the show.
1:06:37And I do, I like, John, your statement of basically like,
1:06:40- Oh, just stop your whining,
1:06:42you'll get used to it eventually.
1:06:43- It's not stop your whining,
1:06:44it's that you will not just get used to it,
1:06:46you will come to crave it,
1:06:47you will need it to be there,
1:06:48we will become a comforting regular,
1:06:50as any sort of routine,
1:06:51as any parent of a toddler knows,
1:06:53regular, you know, having a routine,
1:06:54this is the time when we do this,
1:06:55it is comforting to have a routine,
1:06:57to know that no matter what crazy stuff
1:06:59goes on during the show,
1:07:00at a certain point,
1:07:01there's gonna be these little jingles
1:07:03that demark the ads,
1:07:04and there's gonna be a song,
1:07:05and maybe there's gonna be a car sound,
1:07:06like those regular things,
1:07:08those routines, those traditions become comfort.
1:07:11You will come to love them
1:07:13as long as we don't pick terrible sounds.
1:07:15- Or as long as we don't charge you five bucks a month.
1:07:17- Yeah.
1:07:18- All right, so you wanna talk about a topic
1:07:19or do we just wanna end here?
1:07:21- We have one more sponsor to do if you want.
1:07:23- I'm kidding.
1:07:24We talked last week, see this is even a great topic.
1:07:27This is like halfway between follow-up and not.
1:07:30We talked last week about Apple's 40th birthday
1:07:32and we went on a journey together
1:07:34through our finding the Mac and finding Apple.
1:07:39And we didn't talk much about the iMac,
1:07:42or at least not enough for Jon.
1:07:43So Jon, tell us about Apple turning 40 and the iMac.
1:07:46- Yeah, we were running over in our 40th thing,
1:07:48so I kind of cut that out of where I would have talked
1:07:50about my stuff, but I think it is an important part
1:07:53to acknowledge, and maybe you guys can relate to it,
1:07:55'cause maybe you have opinions on it,
1:07:58looking at it from afar.
1:07:59But so the iMac was 1998,
1:08:01and Steve Jobs had come back to Apple.
1:08:04And that, people don't remember, they usually think of the iPod as the important turnaround
1:08:08product but the iMac was just as important, if not more important, for Apple as a company,
1:08:13not particularly for the industry because in the end they're like, "Oh, whatever, it
1:08:15was just a computer, people have made computers before."
1:08:18The important thing that the iMac did for Apple is it seemed like from the outside that
1:08:23it gave the entire company like a little measure of pride back, like that it made them believe,
1:08:29"Oh yeah, we can make cool things that people like that we're proud of."
1:08:32there was, you know, especially with Apple being near death in 1997 and going through
1:08:38different CEOs in the years before that and running out of money and having layoffs and
1:08:43having products that people weren't particularly happy with and not being able to field next
1:08:46generation OS after repeated tries and Windows 95 coming and just stomping all over their
1:08:52face and Marco feeling bad for people having Macs, it was getting harder and harder to
1:08:57be proud to be an employee of Apple.
1:08:59And so Steve Jobs and his typical hit, what would become his typical thing of having a
1:09:04secret group work on a secret project that no one knew about and having Johnny Ive make
1:09:07this amazing design for it that nobody saw, including the people who were working on it.
1:09:12The rumor mill, the Mac rumor mill, which was definitely still a thing back then, I
1:09:16remember them thinking it was a set-top box because I think the people working on the
1:09:19hardware, they didn't get to see what case it would go in.
1:09:22So to them it just looked like a little flat box.
1:09:25And so the rumors that came out was like Apple's making a television set-top box, which by
1:09:28the way they did at one point and and do now but it's not much of a set top it's
1:09:33more of a set top coaster anyway the segregation of the team's working on
1:09:37this and the big dramatic reveal of we made a new computer all right so what
1:09:40Apple you made a new computer you know you made a new max so what there's a
1:09:43million max and it is both minimizing and maximizes to say that what was most
1:09:51important about it was the way the thing looked it looked weird for a computer it
1:09:55It was teal.
1:09:56The color of blue was the name of a beach that I'm not going to pronounce after a long
1:09:59flame war on the Slack channel that I did not want to get involved in.
1:10:03But it was a particular kind of blue.
1:10:06And it was translucent, and it was cute, like the original Mac.
1:10:10And it was a super important product, both for Apple, because I feel like it made them
1:10:14proud of themselves again and set them on the road to greatness.
1:10:18And also for the entire industry, because with that product, the fact that there was
1:10:22such a reaction to it when, despite the fact that it was mostly just a run-of-the-mill
1:10:27Mac, and yeah, they ditched legacy ports and did other important things for Apple, like
1:10:29we're setting that aside for now, but it convinced the world, essentially, that the way computers
1:10:36look is a factor, which sounds so stupid, it's like saying, "Oh, this was the first
1:10:39car that convinced the world that cars should look good." We just, everyone accepts that
1:10:42cars have to look good. Everyone accepts there are ugly cars and pretty cars, and so many
1:10:45people factor in how a car looks and their car-buying decisions, and cars cost thousands
1:10:49and thousands of dollars more than computers in most cases.
1:10:52And yet somehow we were always okay with cars having that for our lifetime, right?
1:10:57It took Apple to say, "These computers, you should care how they look too, because who
1:11:01wants an ugly one?"
1:11:02And for years Apple had been making nice ones, but they were still somewhat constrained by
1:11:06the orthodoxy of the industry in terms of they were off-white or black or gray.
1:11:13Like they weren't grape colored, right?
1:11:15You know, there was still within the limits of the computer as defined by Apple itself
1:11:21in the early days of the Apple II and everything, and all the other companies that made computers
1:11:25big and small, they sort of defined a boring aesthetic.
1:11:30And it took Apple to break out of that on the mass scale and say, "We think this is
1:11:35cool, and you know what?
1:11:36I think customers will be tickled by the idea of a green computer, and we'll sell them to
1:11:40them, and they will buy a green computer, and they will love it because it's green."
1:11:45And it's just, that doesn't sound, it sounds like such a stupid thing in the age where
1:11:50we sell everything based on colors and all, you know, our phones come in different colors
1:11:54and all sorts of, you know, cases and everything like that.
1:11:57But back then, that was a very important revelation.
1:11:59So in the big timeline of Apple 40 years, you have to credit them along with the bringing
1:12:05the GUI to the world, to the mass market.
1:12:09You have to also credit them.
1:12:10And again, it's not, they weren't the first one, they only went to ever do this, but they
1:12:12essentially brought the idea to the mass market that it is important how computers look and
1:12:17people will enjoy our products more if they like how they look. Which again, sounds so
1:12:23stupid in retrospect, but was super important for the entire industry and led the way for
1:12:27everything that came after it. It's the reason you had translucent teal irons and canopers
1:12:33and stuff following the IMAC because people got the wrong idea of like, "Oh, we just need
1:12:36to make everything translucent and teal." It's like, "You're taking the wrong... I like
1:12:40you're enthusiastic, good enthusiasm, you may be taking the wrong idea from things, or maybe you're
1:12:44just trying to cash in on the iMac trend. Either way, the whole industry of consumer electronics,
1:12:49I feel like, has circled out from, rippled out from that iMac in that people are no longer afraid
1:12:56to do interesting things with their hardware, even if everything isn't as exuberant as lifesavers.
1:13:00Obviously, they went to an extreme to make a point, you know. But today, the variety of
1:13:06shapes and textures and yes, even colors of electronics is much greater thanks in no small
1:13:12part to Apple.
1:13:13David Tompa Yeah, I remember, I mean, I was in college
1:13:16from 2000 to 2004 and, you know, it was, you know, it was like a full, you know, full-time
1:13:22college kind of thing. So we were in a dorm room and everybody else in the dorm had appliances
1:13:29that they had purchased for their dorm room that were, you know, designed in '99, 2000,
1:13:35right after the iMac came out and made this big splash.
1:13:38And so they were all, as you mentioned,
1:13:39like translucent plastic microwaves and phones,
1:13:43and like old corded and wireless phones,
1:13:45not like cell phones.
1:13:47Any kind of appliance you could buy
1:13:51that was relatively inexpensive.
1:13:52Also, the other computers.
1:13:54I mean, the look of like compact towers at the time,
1:13:59and oh God, e-machines.
1:14:02- They would just snap on a face plate.
1:14:04They had the same beige box, but like,
1:14:06all right, the one piece of this is plastic,
1:14:08can we just mold that piece of plastic
1:14:09out of colored translucent plastic?
1:14:11Done.
1:14:12It's like, no, it's just a little beige box
1:14:13with a thing stuck on the front.
1:14:15- Yeah, I mean, it was really,
1:14:17it was like the very first time, I think,
1:14:19in a while that the entire rest of the industry
1:14:22copied what Apple did at a remarkable pace
1:14:25and did so, so poorly.
1:14:27As you know, they're totally missing the point
1:14:30of why this was good and what parts of it made it good.
1:14:33Everyone else just kind of copied like the high level design brief.
1:14:37The service details, which is not like, I mean, that's something because it lets them
1:14:41not have to redesign everything.
1:14:42It lets them not have to have a design department like Apple does, right?
1:14:46And it lets them cash in slightly on people who have a vague notion that they saw a cool
1:14:50teal computer and they wander into Best Buy.
1:14:52But in the subsequent years, I think companies are way better now at copying not just Apple
1:14:57but anyone.
1:14:58everybody, I'm continually impressed by these formerly very, you know, sort of boring and
1:15:05uninteresting and risk-averse PC makers, all of which are obviously hiring their own design
1:15:12departments to make interesting computer designs.
1:15:15I mean, I like them, but they are way more interesting than they used to be, like the
1:15:21Microsoft Surface is interesting with that weird hinge thing, that HP one that's super
1:15:24slim with the little shiny chrome hinges and everything. There's no way that the PC industry
1:15:30of the 90s, those companies would even have a clue how to do that. So they're not just taking their
1:15:35existing computers and tacking a bunch of faceplates onto them. Even when they were copying
1:15:39Apple by saying we're going to make silver aluminum laptops that look exactly like Apple's ones,
1:15:44they still did a better job of that than they did of copying the iMac. At times of the iMac,
1:15:49they didn't know their butt from their elbow. They had no idea what they were doing. They were just
1:15:53just like, put something teal on it.
1:15:55Are we done now?
1:15:56I think so, good, ship it.
1:15:59- It was literally just bolted on.
1:16:00Like they already had the regular mid tower
1:16:03that they were shipping, and they just shoved
1:16:05this giant bulbous face plate on it
1:16:07that had this little translucent section
1:16:09you could pop out and replace the color
1:16:10if you really wanted to.
1:16:11Like, wow, it was a really dark time for PCs.
1:16:16- Yeah, but at least they got the message.
1:16:18The message was, and it's not like iMac was selling so much,
1:16:21It's not like the iMac was selling millions and millions and millions more than they were selling.
1:16:24They were still selling more than Apple, especially in those days.
1:16:26It's just that they saw the splash it made.
1:16:28It's like, why don't people care about our computer like they care about that?
1:16:31Are our computers boring?
1:16:33Do people want their computers to look nice?
1:16:35Like it was this strange awakening of, again, things that sound so stupid and obvious to us now.
1:16:40But back then, if you didn't live through it, it may seem crazy to think that so many of the most dominant computer makers in the world,
1:16:47this kind of design was not even on their radar.
1:16:49And as far as they were concerned, a Mac 2CI was exactly the same as a PC XT case, which
1:16:56just was not the case.
1:16:57And Mac users could see it, but nobody else could until Apple made something teal and
1:17:01translucent.
1:17:02This is tangentially related, but Marco talking about college and people with iMacs and not
1:17:08having iMacs and whatnot made me remember that Marco and I are the same age, so we went
1:17:13to school at the same time.
1:17:14And when I was at Virginia Tech, they had, and I believe still do, a very, very large
1:17:20off-campus computer lab called the Math Emporium.
1:17:24And it was specifically suited for math-related work, but it had, at the time, a gazillion
1:17:30Macs in it.
1:17:32And I remember two things vividly about the Mac Emporium in terms of the hardware there.
1:17:37Number one, the hockey puck mouse is the worst mouse that's ever been created in the history
1:17:41of man.
1:17:42Number two, I vividly remember there being G4 cubes all over it when I was there.
1:17:48There were like hundreds of them.
1:17:50And I remember going to this place and thinking, "Wow, that is a very peculiar design for a
1:17:54computer, but man, that's kind of cool."
1:17:57And I remember also VNC-ing into my full tower desktop that I had in my dorm room, and I
1:18:02thought I was the coolest kid in the world, because a guy down the hall showed me what
1:18:06VNC was.
1:18:08And the fact that I could log into my computer from somewhere else, it was mind-blowing.
1:18:11blowing.
1:18:12Oh, that was amazing back then.
1:18:13Oh, yeah.
1:18:14You didn't have the X window system on your college campus?
1:18:17No.
1:18:18You could run programs on a different computer and have the result displayed on your computer.
1:18:23Like it was a terminal for the X window system.
1:18:26You called it an X term.
1:18:27Yeah, yeah, I know what you're saying.
1:18:28And actually, I think that the Math Emporium was largely running on some sort of Citrix
1:18:33setup, which is a similar idea.
1:18:36But yeah, I just remember just a sea of G4 cubes.
1:18:40Wonder where though I had never seen a like I'd seen people who had been suckered into buying a lot of various kinds of computers
1:18:46Not suckered but you know
1:18:48Like a computer that later turned out to not be a particular popular popular model sort of faded away like one
1:18:54I remember is that Rose Hellman which is a small college somewhere that a friend of mine went to
1:18:58The next salesman visited Rose Holman and convinced them that next computers were the best thing slice since sliced bread
1:19:04And honestly, they were the best thing since sliced bread. They sold next computers to Rose Holman. They were everywhere
1:19:10And then next was not so much into selling hardware pretty shortly after that which must have felt bad
1:19:15If you were the one in charge of buying hardware for Rose-Hulman
1:19:18But on the other hand if you went to Rose-Hulman during that time everybody got to use like next cubes and next labs
1:19:22which is which was like living in the future really because even though it was kind of boring and gray and a lot of the
1:19:27Displays were grayscale instead of full-color
1:19:30Next step was still pretty amazing that hardware looked awesome. I got a bunch of it in my attic
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1:20:48- I think we found bumper sounds.
1:20:53Why don't we just have all of us make sounds
1:20:55with our mouth meant, we'll just put them in.
1:20:57It will solve the problem of like, this is too jarring
1:20:59because I just want to hear your voices. This will be our voices. It won't be a familiar
1:21:04sound in a car or of a modern computer. And it's royalty free, right?
1:21:09I don't know. I might run a royalty on mine. Yeah, seriously. One of us might change our
1:21:13minds. Now that you're a recording artist, the vocal
1:21:16stylings of Marco Armin. Yeah. Does that change the licensing of how
1:21:20we can use clips? Do I have to go through ASCAP or whatever?
1:21:23Yeah, that's right. That's right. So, a few days ago, as we record, actually
1:21:27just a couple days ago, I wrote a post coming to the defense of the Apple Watch. The post
1:21:32was entitled "Poor Apple Watch." And I just feel like lately it's been very trendy to
1:21:41poop all over the Apple Watch. "Oh, it's a piece of crap. It's so slow. It's too fat.
1:21:45The software doesn't do anything useful. It's not cool. Look at me. I'm going to get either
1:21:52mechanical watch or not use a watch at all. And that's fine, you know, if that's fine for you or
1:21:58for Merlin or for Marco, that's fine. Do what you gotta do. But I feel like nobody was coming to the
1:22:03defense of the Apple Watch. And so I thought, you know what, I will come to the defense of the Apple
1:22:09Watch. And I just wrote a post saying that, you know what, I like my watch and it is fat and it is
1:22:16slow and the apps are pretty much entirely useless. But for me, that's okay. I still
1:22:24like having the smart features of my smartwatch on my wrist. I think a lot of this may come
1:22:30from the fact that I leave the house to go to work, and I'm not saying that to be snarky
1:22:35or smug. I'm saying that genuinely, that I have appointments and meetings and things
1:22:41that happen throughout my day, obligations throughout my day, that have to happen at
1:22:47certain times. And so having my next calendar appointment on my watch face is very convenient.
1:22:54Additionally, I don't get to leave the building at work and occasionally the house if Declan's
1:23:01awake. I don't get to leave where I am whenever I want, just on a lark. And so having the
1:23:08temperature on my watch face is really nice. And on top of that I like having
1:23:13the activity rings, particularly the stand ring, because as we all know I
1:23:17happen to be a blue ring stud. So yes, there's a lot to dislike about the Apple
1:23:21Watch, full stop. I completely agree. The apps are useless, I never use them, I
1:23:25really never use Glances for the most part. I wish we had custom watch faces. I
1:23:30would love to be able to do more with complications, either have more of them
1:23:34on the screen or maybe have them be more intelligent somehow. I'm not even
1:23:38sure how, but all in all, I still really like my Apple Watch, and I'm looking around and I'm
1:23:45starting to feel like I'm the only one. Jon, are you wearing yours?
1:23:48No, I, I, we talked about this a while ago, but yeah, I bailed on using it mostly because
1:23:54I found myself going through entire days without having any meaningful interaction with it,
1:24:00including checking it for the time, which is not a habit I had, and I'm not a watch wearer,
1:24:04and it annoys me to have a thing on my wrist. So I have built-in negatives in that anything you
1:24:09put on my wrist has to overcome my aversion to ever having anything on my wrist ever,
1:24:12and I don't have any habits built in for watches, so I needed a positive to offset that,
1:24:16and when the positives evaporated, I stopped wearing it. And the positives were, the positives
1:24:21were like, you know, I like the notifications, I like the texts, and I like the activity tracking,
1:24:25but that wasn't enough to overcome my desire to not have something on my wrist. Although,
1:24:29now that I'm about to, you know, travel, I'm going to bring my watch with me and probably wear it
1:24:33on a vacation because if I'm walking around a different city it is convenient to be able to,
1:24:37for example, set a destination on your phone and then put your phone in your pocket and not have
1:24:41to take it out again and just walk there and have your wrist tell you which way to go. Same thing
1:24:44for driving, I kind of like that, you know, I don't need it when I'm going to and from work every day,
1:24:48you know, there's no directions I need to have, but if you're an unfamiliar place driving around
1:24:52it's nice to have that. So I still think it has value, I still like it, I still like how it looks,
1:24:58I still don't like wearing a watch. So yeah, that's pretty much where it is. It spends most
1:25:04of its time on my dresser. Do you hate having something on your wrist because of your shag
1:25:08carpet arm hair or just because you hate having something on your wrist? I think it's mostly
1:25:13because of RSI actually. Like the same reason I stopped wearing my wedding ring is that I'm
1:25:17very sensitive to have anything in that area as I'm sitting there and typing all day. Just everything
1:25:21about it is sensitive. I don't want any pressure on it. I don't want anything grabbing it. I don't
1:25:24I don't want anything rubbing against it.
1:25:25Even like the wrong kind of like sleeve cuffs
1:25:28when I wear long sleeves can bother me.
1:25:30So yeah, and that I don't have any ingrained habits
1:25:34of like I'm always looking at my wrists.
1:25:35I just, again, I think we discussed this before last time
1:25:37I wore a watch was like middle school
1:25:39and I just became old enough to have a watch
1:25:41and wanted to try it out.
1:25:41And I wore it for a little while,
1:25:43like some plastic digital watch
1:25:45and decided it wasn't for me.
1:25:46So I'm just not a watch person.
1:25:48- Fair enough, all right.
1:25:49So I wanted to save you for last, Marco, to your worst.
1:25:53- Well, I mean, first of all, I think it's not a very good
1:25:57argument to say like, well, it seems trendy to hate
1:25:59this thing right now.
1:26:00You know, that's just whoever you're reading,
1:26:02which includes people like me who are not,
1:26:04you know, who are cooling or have cooled
1:26:07on the Apple Watch.
1:26:08I think what we're seeing here, I mean,
1:26:10there's a number of factors here.
1:26:12I don't question the Apple Watch utility
1:26:14for a lot of people.
1:26:15And in fact, you know, I found a lot of utility
1:26:18that when I wore it as well, it just, you know,
1:26:20the downsides of it just bothered me too much
1:26:22and I found that I preferred regular watches.
1:26:25I went from no watch to an Apple Watch
1:26:29to oh, I like watches, turns out,
1:26:31but most of what I do is tell the time
1:26:33and regular watches just do a way better job of that
1:26:36for my purposes because they're always on
1:26:39and you don't have to charge them, et cetera.
1:26:41What I found that, I think if you look globally,
1:26:45if you step back from what any individual's personal needs
1:26:49are and personal opinions about the Apple Watch are,
1:26:52I think you can step back and you can see this product
1:26:54as really a really mixed bag as a 1.0 product.
1:26:59And there's a few things that exacerbate this.
1:27:01One of which is that it's going more than a year as a 1.0.
1:27:06And as we, I mean we talked about this before,
1:27:08so I don't wanna go too far into it,
1:27:09but like it's looking like we're not gonna get
1:27:11a good successor to it for at least now,
1:27:15which is now is like a year after it came out,
1:27:17we're at least not getting it now.
1:27:18We might not even get it until the summer or the fall
1:27:22or even next spring.
1:27:23We don't actually know when there's gonna be
1:27:25second generation and where the second generation
1:27:27will be very good or very much of an improvement
1:27:30in the areas that any person thinks that it needs it.
1:27:34So we are still judging this thing on generation one,
1:27:36but generation one is not only longer
1:27:39than these things usually are.
1:27:40Usually they're a year or less.
1:27:42So it's not only being a long generation one,
1:27:44but also I feel like the generation one hardware
1:27:47and software were both pretty mediocre on the scale
1:27:52of like various Apple first gen products.
1:27:55Certainly not every Apple first gen product
1:27:58is a great product or is a huge hit,
1:28:00but I think as they go, especially in recent years,
1:28:03as they go, I think the watch has been a pretty mediocre one
1:28:06in terms of like bugs, performance, limitations,
1:28:10things like that.
1:28:11What we're finding with Apple, I've talked before
1:28:14about this issue with the low-hanging fruit
1:28:17has all been picked everywhere.
1:28:19And so what we have now is the kind of baseline products,
1:28:24the Macs, the iPhones, to most of a degree the iPads,
1:28:30these things are mature.
1:28:32The innovation on them has slowed,
1:28:34but they're pretty awesome.
1:28:36They have great performance,
1:28:40they have great physical characteristics,
1:28:41a great balance between size and weight
1:28:44and battery life for the most part,
1:28:46you know, very few exceptions.
1:28:48These are all very mature products.
1:28:50But Apple is a company that depends on
1:28:53trying to sell its customers more devices
1:28:57and trying to sell devices to more customers.
1:29:00So it is Apple's job as a hardware maker
1:29:04to just try stuff in the market,
1:29:06to say, you know, hey, everybody has a phone.
1:29:08A lot of people have computers, most people have computers.
1:29:10Does everybody also need a tablet?
1:29:12Let's try.
1:29:13Does everybody also need a watch?
1:29:14Let's try.
1:29:15Does everybody also need a TV box?
1:29:16Let's try.
1:29:17You know, that is their job.
1:29:20But all these mature things that are like the core
1:29:22of things, you know, basically the computers and the phones
1:29:24and maybe the tablets, that covers most people's needs.
1:29:28So we are accustomed to judging Apple and their products
1:29:31based on those products, those core products,
1:29:33mostly the computer and the phone,
1:29:35which is like, yeah, sure, almost everyone could use those.
1:29:39And so it's easy to look at that and say,
1:29:42well, if Apple makes a computer or a phone
1:29:44that sucks for me, then that kinda sucks for everybody.
1:29:48And why do they do it?
1:29:50And whether that's true or not,
1:29:51it's easy for people to look at it that way.
1:29:53With the watch, I feel like we went into it
1:29:56with that kind of expectation.
1:29:57And a lot of people bought it based on that expectation
1:30:00of like, it's a new, high-profile Apple product line.
1:30:04Of course it's gonna be for me.
1:30:06Of course it's gonna be for everybody.
1:30:09And of course it's gonna be good.
1:30:11And I think what we're seeing is it's hard to find new things that are for everybody
1:30:16in technology, new things that are going to be potentially as big as phones or computers
1:30:20or tablets or anything else.
1:30:23These are hard problems.
1:30:25And the watch, you know, because of the incredibly strong demands, the conflicting demands of
1:30:32that kind of product, you have severe size constraints, severe power constraints, it's
1:30:38really severe cost constraints. It's just very hard to get a good smart watch product
1:30:45on the market. It's just really hard to do. And I think what we're seeing is this is an
1:30:51Apple product that we thought was going to be for everybody, but just isn't. It's just
1:30:56not, you know, it's just like you can look at any kind of watch and you can, you know,
1:31:01no kind of watch is for everybody, not even Rolex or Omega, Omega people, sorry. Not every
1:31:07free watches for everybody.
1:31:08And the Apple Watch has not replaced all watches,
1:31:12and has not replaced everybody's phones
1:31:13or anything like that, and never will.
1:31:16It is a product that is gonna work for some people,
1:31:20but it's not a home run for everybody,
1:31:23or even the people who it works for.
1:31:24It's not even a home run necessarily for them.
1:31:26It's just decent maybe, you know, but it's hard
1:31:30to make new stuff that is gonna be really great anymore,
1:31:33because so much of it's already been made
1:31:34and has already matured in these areas,
1:31:36the areas of technology and things like this
1:31:39that people are working on in this industry.
1:31:43So I don't think it's bad to say the Apple Watch
1:31:48isn't for me, and I don't think it's a sign
1:31:50that the watch has failed if a lot of people
1:31:55think it's not for them, but I also think
1:31:57that the watch as a 1.0 product was really done
1:32:00with a lot of mediocrity, and it is not unfair
1:32:04to criticize that, these are real shortcomings it has. It has real problems, real shortcomings,
1:32:12real design question marks and missed opportunities and weird choices that they made. And all
1:32:18of this will probably be fixed over time. I hope it is. And maybe someday I'll go
1:32:22back to it as a product that I use on a regular basis. Because there are things about it that
1:32:26I do miss. I think I mostly miss it while driving. To have the quick glance of like,
1:32:31Why did my phone just vibrate in my pocket while I'm driving?
1:32:35Which is probably unsafe and I probably shouldn't even look at the watch, but that is when I
1:32:38miss it.
1:32:39And so overall though, I think, again, these are hard problems.
1:32:45And we are in an era now where the new things that Apple makes are not going to be guaranteed
1:32:52to be mass market.
1:32:53And that's probably okay.
1:32:56I think the watch was a good bet for mass market though because wearables have a much
1:33:02broader appeal than computing devices because many more people spend more time wearing things
1:33:08during the day than they spend using computers.
1:33:10I'm not saying everybody's a watch wearer but just wearables as a category.
1:33:14Like if you had to pick a category of areas that Apple should get into, they're kind of
1:33:17on the cusp of like, well, we mostly do computery things and we're getting to the point where
1:33:22you can have a computery thing that's part of clothing or jewelry in some way.
1:33:28Does that mean glasses like Google is doing?
1:33:30Does it mean watches?
1:33:31Does it mean like a little fitness turd like Fitbit is doing or something else?
1:33:36As a category, I think this was a very smart bet for Apple to get into.
1:33:41Their first entry in the category, you know, they'll learn, they'll move on.
1:33:44I hope they don't abandon it because if you're looking for another mass market thing, the
1:33:51they're looking at are all potential winners. Lots of people watch television or watch a
1:33:55video, so something having to do with TV is a good idea. Lots of people have cell phones,
1:33:59that was a good market for them. Lots of people wear things, also a good market, and as computers
1:34:05get smaller and lighter weight and the power requirements go down and so on and so forth,
1:34:11that entire category will only become more viable. So if I had to look like broad strokes,
1:34:17term product strategy. I think it was really smart for Apple to get into wearables and
1:34:22I really hope they do stick it out, learn their lessons, make better products, keep
1:34:25iterating and innovating because these type of products play to all their strengths. Miniturization,
1:34:32mass manufacturing of beautiful objects, especially the ability to make things that are appealing
1:34:36to people visually that we just talked about with the iMac. That's important when you're
1:34:39wearing it. Apple has shown with their watch bands and their watch designs within the constraints
1:34:43of the tech available, they're actually pretty good at that part of it too. They just have
1:34:46to figure out how to make the product part of it.
1:34:48And if I think about the first iPod,
1:34:51it was pretty crappy too.
1:34:52It's just that the first iPod had such a huge positive
1:34:55to outweigh its negatives, and the watch is like,
1:34:57it has some positives to outweigh some of its negatives,
1:34:59but net, it is not as compelling a product.
1:35:03- Yeah, and ultimately, I think what gives me concern
1:35:07about the watch is the apparent slow pace of progress.
1:35:11And we will see what happens the next time
1:35:13there is a substantial update to either the hardware
1:35:16or the software.
1:35:17We'll see, you know, this could totally change
1:35:19my tone about it, but right now,
1:35:21it appears to be moving pretty slowly.
1:35:24- I don't know, I don't outright disagree
1:35:27with anything you just said, but if we really step back
1:35:31and think about it, first of all, as someone who works
1:35:36in an office building like Jon does,
1:35:38I see so many Fitbit, bracelet-y, watch-y things.
1:35:43I can't even count them.
1:35:45And I concur with what John said, that wearables are a
1:35:50market that I think it's going to be a bigger and bigger
1:35:55market with time.
1:35:56And I think that Apple playing in this
1:35:57market is a wise choice.
1:36:01Recently, it was a day or two ago, I watched that classic
1:36:05Louis CK or Louis CK video when he was on Conan about
1:36:10people getting pissed off about not having Wi-Fi in their flying tube.
1:36:15People getting all upset about the fact that they're in an airplane and don't have Wi-Fi.
1:36:19And this is not the same as people getting upset about their watch.
1:36:24But at the same time, I have a mini computer on my friggin' wrist that can, with limitations,
1:36:33connect to almost all the known information on the planet on the internet.
1:36:38That's pretty friggin' amazing.
1:36:39And I agree that there's a lot that's frustrating about my watch.
1:36:43I never use apps for several different reasons, number one of which, it's so, so slow to do
1:36:52anything.
1:36:53And it's infuriating.
1:36:55But nevertheless, I have this device that tracks my heartbeat, it tracks how much I'm
1:37:02standing, how much I'm moving, it tracks when my next appointment is.
1:37:05Like John was saying, if I'm in a city that I'm not familiar with and I'm walking around,
1:37:09I can do so without having my phone out, screaming, "I'm a tourist, please rob me."
1:37:14There's so many things for me that I really like about this, and that impressed me so
1:37:20deeply about it, especially given the unbelievable engineering constraints that this product
1:37:25was made under.
1:37:28To me, it's such an impressive product, and there is so much that could be done to make
1:37:34it better, Marco.
1:37:35You're absolutely right about that.
1:37:36I mean, I can't argue with that at all.
1:37:38But for me, it's still something that adds value to my life, and I still like it.
1:37:45And I just feel like--I think the thing of it is that it was like a switch flipped, and
1:37:50suddenly everyone was talking about how much they don't want to wear an Apple Watch anymore.
1:37:54And in and of itself, that's fine, but it just seemed weird to me.
1:37:57And I felt bad for the poor little Apple Watch.
1:37:59And I still feel bad for the poor little Apple Watch.
1:38:01It's a cute little feller.
1:38:03And I feel like somebody needed to build it up a little bit.
1:38:05I don't know enough people who are not
1:38:07Tech nerds who have an Apple watch know how it's playing in the non tech nerd crowd
1:38:12Because obviously we're all talking to other tech nerds and they're the ones writing things about how they're not using their watch and whatever
1:38:17And yeah, it did kind of all come together
1:38:18It's because I think people slowly stopped wearing them and then the people who needed to tell the world that they slowly stopped wearing them
1:38:25Had to write stories about it and then other people saw those stories and it felt safe that they could now admit that they slowly stopped
1:38:30Wearing them which is fine
1:38:31Like that's how the press cycle goes, but it's still all within just these sort of tech nerd circles
1:38:36And I'm sure the watch is selling outside tech nerd circles
1:38:39You can tell by the huge spike in sales that they seem to have from everything. We're able to understand from
1:38:44Apple's
1:38:46Closely guarded secrets about how much how many watches they're selling exactly during the holidays
1:38:50Because tech nerds don't save their spending for the holidays. They buy it as soon as released
1:38:54No, I've actually you know anecdotally I've seen
1:38:57Since the holidays I've seen a lot more Apple watches in the real world
1:39:01Oftentimes on on you know non geeks or at least people whose geek status is unknown to me
1:39:05Yeah, that's I'm saying they must be selling them
1:39:09I just I don't know those people so I can't sort of get a read on like not none of my
1:39:13Family or friends who are not tech nerds have an Apple watch so I would love to know what regular people think of the Apple
1:39:18Watch it's just still kind of an unknown to us surely Apple knows because it's their job to know I can imagine regular people
1:39:25Not being as picky about it
1:39:27But also not becoming eternally addicted to it like they were once you started selling
1:39:32iPods to regular people once it wasn't a $400 accessory
1:39:35They only work with Macs like once you know you had the the mini and stuff people love their iPods man
1:39:40They love them like do people love their Apple watch or do they say it's pretty cool
1:39:44And it was a good Christmas present that I got
1:39:46But I don't know if they are
1:39:48So incredibly in love with it as they were with their smartphones or their their iPods or whatever
1:39:54So we'll see next Christmas and how they iterate on this. I'm entirely open to the idea that
1:39:59Apple can try other kinds of wearables whether it's a fitness turd or
1:40:04You know an earring or a ring or something involving glasses and there was discussion on Twitter today about Apple
1:40:12Cable sass or panic was disappointed that Apple wasn't
1:40:15Anywhere on the radar when it came to VR and if you wanted to do VR
1:40:19You had to basically build a PC because no Mac we are just us
1:40:23No Mac you can buy is viable for which isn't entirely true because the Mac is technically capable of doing a VR experience
1:40:28But the current VR products the the pioneers of the VR industry are either
1:40:32You know, you need a gaming console or you need a PC and no matter what Mac you have forget it
1:40:38And so he was cable was concerned that Apple is missing out on this that they are watching this one go by and again
1:40:44We've talked many times about the supposed rumored VR things that Apple is surely toying with internally, but as far as I'm aware
1:40:50There's no there's no credible rumors about Apple fielding any products in that area
1:40:55I think they should be experimenting with it and same thing with wearables
1:41:00I think they should be experimenting with everything having to do with wearables not just watches
1:41:03And some people some feedback we got recently was like you guys say that Apple spread too thin
1:41:10But on the other hand, you're always saying Apple has to be checking out everything
1:41:13There's a difference between fielding a product
1:41:17to their platform or investigating it.
1:41:19Like Apple's job is to try everything,
1:41:22to see, you know, not in the market,
1:41:24but like try it out internally,
1:41:25make sure someone is working on VR,
1:41:26make sure someone's working on this,
1:41:27that maybe not cars, right?
1:41:28But everything that's close to their industry,
1:41:31be, don't let it catch you by surprise.
1:41:34And then figure out out of all those things,
1:41:36is this someplace where we can sell a good product?
1:41:38You know, can we, can we, you know,
1:41:41make a significant contribution to this market?
1:41:42How big is the potential market?
1:41:44Like that's what they should be doing internally.
1:41:45What you can't do is actually say,
1:41:48we need to be in every single market
1:41:49like Microsoft in the 90s.
1:41:50We need to make, if there's a technological thing
1:41:53that can run software, we need to make one of them
1:41:54and we need to sell it as a product
1:41:56and we need to support it forever
1:41:57because then you just end up with too much crap.
1:41:58So it's being spread too thin is when you do more
1:42:01than you can do externally.
1:42:04And then doing due diligence internally is saying,
1:42:07we need to be looking at everything.
1:42:09We need to not be caught by surprise.
1:42:10we need to, at the very least,
1:42:12be making an internal determination of,
1:42:14it's not time for us to enter that market,
1:42:16but we'll continue to look at it.
1:42:16Because it's so much cheaper
1:42:17to just continue to investigate internally.
1:42:20It gets really expensive once you say,
1:42:21and you know what, we're gonna make a product.
1:42:22That's one of the rumors about the car, by the way,
1:42:24is someone inside decided,
1:42:26we can innovate in the car space,
1:42:28whether it's with electric cars, self-driving cars,
1:42:30or whatever they're gonna do, right?
1:42:32And the rumor I heard was that Apple had essentially said
1:42:36they're willing to spend a billion dollars
1:42:38on development of a car and then walk away
1:42:40from the entire project if it doesn't look
1:42:42like it's working out.
1:42:43So that's like, you know, again, it's just a rumor,
1:42:45who knows, but that's the mindset you have to go in with
1:42:48because how do you know whether you can do something good
1:42:50in the car space?
1:42:51You can think about it all you want,
1:42:53but at a certain point, someone has to say,
1:42:54all right, I think we can do something here.
1:42:55Let's give it a try.
1:42:57And if you have budgets the size of Apple,
1:42:59you can say, all right, we'll put a billion dollars
1:43:00into this and then we'll revisit.
1:43:01And we'll say, once we spend a billion dollars,
1:43:03what do we think guys?
1:43:04Is this ready?
1:43:05And gals, this is a lifetime.
1:43:08Sexist language cemented in my friggin brain anyway
1:43:11What do we think of this is this going to be a product worthy of Apple should we release it?
1:43:16And that's where Marco comes and yells at you and says you know what maybe the watch wasn't a product worthy of Apple quite yet
1:43:21We think wearables are great, but when it's time to give the go no-go. Maybe let it bake a little bit longer anyway
1:43:26Or maybe it was the wrong approach
1:43:28Yeah, the rumored attitude with the car. I think is the right attitude is
1:43:32Get while the getting is good. You've got a lot of money you can invest a lot
1:43:37Just because you put a billion dollars into it doesn't mean you actually have to ship a car
1:43:40You could put a billion dollars in and say we thought we could do something really interesting here and turns out we can't
1:43:46Lesson learned move on that's doing your due diligence if they're doing that in VR. We've been looking at VR for two decades
1:43:52We've had people do an AR and VR internally
1:43:54We've been investigating it for as long as we've been investigating anything any of the technologies that we actually release like touchscreens and voice recognition
1:44:00And all these things that we've been doing in labs forever and ever in Apple
1:44:04And it's time to come out with a product when we feel like we can make a contribution we will and until then we won't
1:44:08So that's why we always just assume here on the outside
1:44:11But of course Apple's looking to VR and then sometimes in our darker moments you think right right Apple
1:44:16You're at least experimenting with it. It doesn't mean you need to feel the product today
1:44:18It doesn't mean you must compete with the oculus rift today like
1:44:20There's so many questions about VR to still, you know, we still don't know what's gonna happen there
1:44:25but we just hope that Apple as
1:44:27The richest technology company in the world at the very least is investigating all these avenues and for wearable same thing
1:44:33You can wear a lot of technology things on your body
1:44:36And a lot of people wear things on their body every day and if Apple could sell them something that makes their lives better
1:44:42That would be perfect
1:44:44Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week math calm fresh books and betterment and we will see you next week
1:44:51Now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental
1:45:02John didn't do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn't let him,
1:45:09'Cause it was accidental, it was accidental.
1:45:15And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm,
1:45:20And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them
1:45:25at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. So that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, N-T-Marco-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-S-C-R-A-C-U-S-A.
1:45:41It's accidental. They didn't mean to. Accidental. Tech podcast so long.
1:45:53We can talk about that uh that
1:45:57Macos thing or
1:45:59Yeah, I didn't get a chance to read what are all these what's John's mong who's Californian?
1:46:04What the hell is that? It's been in our show notes for like three years. It's a bike
1:46:07Yep, it should stay there because I can talk about it sometime but not today
1:46:10Why not today because I'm not prepared for it not ready the whole
1:46:14You know what the whole purpose of this show you know what I mean? It's not like I need to I just need to know
1:46:20that it's a thing we're gonna talk about tonight.
1:46:22No, the Mac OS thing is a good idea,
1:46:24'cause I forgot that was there,
1:46:25and I did look at that page.
1:46:26- Yeah, so I didn't get a good look at it.
1:46:28I looked at the picture, so I really liked 'em.
1:46:31- That's, I mean, that's a lot of it.
1:46:32So, yeah, so there's this blog post by Andrew Ambrosino
1:46:37on Medium called Mac OS, M-A-C-O-S,
1:46:41the lowercase Mac way that we think they're gonna rename it,
1:46:44colon, it's time to take the next step.
1:46:47And he basically outlines a number of substantial changes
1:46:52that he thinks should be done or he proposes might be good
1:46:57to Mac OS in things like design and interface changes
1:47:03and really kind of making it,
1:47:05he was originally responding a little bit
1:47:08to Steve Trout and Smith's claim back in his WBC wishlist
1:47:12post a few months, a couple months back,
1:47:14or a couple weeks back,
1:47:15He was saying, Steve Trout and Smith said
1:47:18that he really believes that OS X is a dead platform,
1:47:21and kind of elaborated on that.
1:47:22So this, so Andrew here basically kind of took that further
1:47:27and was like, well, you know, what does OS X need
1:47:30to kind of take the next level, to remain relevant,
1:47:33to go the next step?
1:47:35And there's a number, if I could summarize it,
1:47:38he basically makes the interface look a lot more
1:47:41like iOS apps that are kind of being windowed
1:47:45in a regular OS X environment.
1:47:47So it basically, it's a significant design refresh
1:47:52around a more iOS-y style for lots of apps in the system,
1:47:57rather than what we have now,
1:47:59which is kind of like mostly App Kit styles,
1:48:02and then some apps like Photos are more iOS-y.
1:48:04And then he proposes a few other things
1:48:06like a new file system thing, and a few other things.
1:48:08So I don't know, what do you guys think of this?
1:48:10I think it's really interesting.
1:48:12- I think it does not look as much like iOS
1:48:14as you think it does.
1:48:15And I also think it doesn't take much
1:48:17to get a designer's juices flowing.
1:48:19I think all you need to throw them is the, again,
1:48:22mostly agreed upon by the people out in the outside world,
1:48:26renaming of the operating system to match iOS and tvOS
1:48:29and watchOS to have a lowercase M on Mac OS
1:48:31that we've been talking about for months and months.
1:48:33I think that's basically all you need.
1:48:35You could just put that little grain of sand
1:48:37in the mind of a designer
1:48:39and they immediately want to design screenshots
1:48:41of what this OS will look like, starting,
1:48:42I guess this one does with the about screen,
1:48:44because if you don't think that changing the capitalization
1:48:48and naming of an operating system
1:48:49can lead to a visual design,
1:48:51you don't have much of a designer in you,
1:48:53because it doesn't take much to get that ball rolling.
1:48:55And I like these screenshots,
1:48:57but they remind me a lot of what I see
1:48:59whenever there is a new Mac operating system coming,
1:49:02designers wanna say, "This is how I would make it look."
1:49:05And I have to say that most of them, I feel like,
1:49:08are doing a surface treatment.
1:49:10they are re-skinning without rethinking any of the paradigms because they have a dock on the bottom,
1:49:18a menu bar on the top, they have windows with windows widgets and toolbars and search fields
1:49:22and sidebars and master detail views and table views and scrolling lists of thumbnails and it's
1:49:29like that's not rethinking anything. That's exactly what the Mac operating system is now
1:49:32and what it has been for years and years. And just because on your video player you put a big circle
1:49:37kind of like there is on the iPhone camera, does not change the interface of dealing with
1:49:42video on the Mac at all.
1:49:45Like a real paradigm shift would be away from some aspect that has defined the Mac and the
1:49:51basic desktop GUI operating system, whether that's in the modern era, the dock, but really
1:49:56just movable, resizable windows with widgets and toolbars and a menu bar on the top of
1:49:59the screen, like when you come down to it.
1:50:01And I'm not saying that needs to change, but anybody who's like, "This needs to be...
1:50:06We need to have a rethink of the Mac because it is stagnating and then they show a reskin
1:50:10type of thing.
1:50:12There seems to be a disagreement between the spirit of the text and the actuality of the
1:50:18images, even though I'm sure these images are exciting to the person who drew them and
1:50:21they do look kind of cool, even if they do look a little bit like the current look and
1:50:25feel of the system, maybe just dressed up a little bit.
1:50:30If your pitch is in the text that needs a radical rethink, then the screenshot should
1:50:36be a radical rethink and I don't think these are. On the other hand if your pitch is, you
1:50:40know, as we talked about in the past shows, that the Mac should be taking advantage of
1:50:45its maturity and just decrease the number of bugs and increase performance and stability
1:50:50over and over again until it is just like rock solid, super responsive, like a game
1:50:55console in the olden days when there was no such thing as frame rate drops and just everything
1:50:58happens because the screen can handle its sprites on the screen at the time and they're
1:51:03always perfect and there's never any drop in frame rate and everything is perfectly
1:51:06responsive and stable and the thing never crashes because you can't do a software update
1:51:09because it's on a cartridge and nothing's ever going to change.
1:51:12Anyway, not that it has to be a nostalgic type of thing, but that is another route you
1:51:18can go with the Mac.
1:51:19Not going to radically rethink it, make it the best version of the current Mac operating
1:51:22system that it could possibly be.
1:51:24As in the same paradigm, resizable windows, scroll bars, window widgets, menu bars, that
1:51:29is a powerful paradigm that has lasted us a long time and you can do amazing things
1:51:32with it and there's nothing really particularly broken about it for the current customers
1:51:36of the Mac.
1:51:37Plenty of things broken out of it for the mass market who would much rather use their
1:51:40smartphones.
1:51:41But again, setting that aside for now, if you're going to take the Mac at face value
1:51:44for what it is, who wouldn't love a Mac that reacted to your input faster, that did everything
1:51:49faster, that never crashed, that never stalled, that never did anything weird?
1:51:54Can you do that?
1:51:56It's easier to do that if you say that's all we're going to do with this thing.
1:52:00We're not going to try to come up with big important features every single time we're
1:52:03going to say, "If there's a big important feature crying out to be implemented, by all
1:52:06means we'll implement it, but if there's not, we will not feel ashamed to spend an entire
1:52:10year just polishing the hell out of the Mac operating system."
1:52:14I know I would love that, and I know a lot of the existing customers would love that,
1:52:17and maybe you could say that defines a dead platform because stability equals death, but
1:52:21that is one possible route to go to make the people who use the Mac now love it even more.
1:52:27And I think to extend its life, because in order for the Mac to continue to be viable,
1:52:32it has to continue to offer things better than iOS.
1:52:34And iOS is getting better all the time, and if the Mac operating system is not also getting
1:52:39better, eventually those lines on the graph will cross and there's no more point for having
1:52:43the Mac.
1:52:44Yeah, I mean, I think it really comes down to, like, you know, is the Mac being treated,
1:52:50you know, platform-wise, software-wise, is it being treated like the MacBook Air, which
1:52:56which is kind of like, we're gonna keep selling it
1:52:58for a while until it becomes irrelevant or dies,
1:53:00and then we're just gonna kinda stop?
1:53:02Or is it an active platform that Apple wants
1:53:05to keep going indefinitely?
1:53:06And I think it's the latter.
1:53:07I think we've heard comments to that effect
1:53:10from Craig Federighi, and I think maybe even
1:53:13from Phil Schiller, and so it does seem like
1:53:17that is the idea, that the Mac is not dead,
1:53:20it's not just in maintenance mode
1:53:22until it gets subsumed by iOS.
1:53:24it does seem like they want to keep moving it forward.
1:53:29It really just needs maybe the resources to do that,
1:53:32and maybe they're doing that already, I don't know,
1:53:34but if they're going to keep it going as a platform,
1:53:39I think I'm about to make a John argument here,
1:53:42but they have to eventually make massive jumps
1:53:46in certain areas.
1:53:47Eventually, whatever we know as OS X,
1:53:49there's gonna be Mac OS 11 or whatever it's gonna be called
1:53:53eventually there's going to be the next big jump forward
1:53:57on this platform, or at least there needs to be,
1:54:00if it's gonna remain relevant.
1:54:02And it's hard to tell whether it's getting the resources
1:54:05and the attention it needs internally
1:54:07to be on track for that,
1:54:08or whether they're mostly focused on iOS right now.
1:54:11But I don't know.
1:54:12- Yeah, maybe the naming is their way of doing this.
1:54:15I always wonder if they're gonna reset the version numbers.
1:54:17They start from 1.0, this is Mac OS 1.0,
1:54:21and under the covers, of course, they would still be like,
1:54:23you know, 10, 12, whatever, just for software,
1:54:26backward compatibility, kind of like how Windows
1:54:28has the crazy versioning number that got skewed off
1:54:30because they continued,
1:54:31where they continued the NT versioning numbers, I think.
1:54:33- Yeah, yeah. - After 2000.
1:54:35Yeah, anyway, I can imagine that they're doing something
1:54:37like that, that's not the big reset
1:54:39that we're talking about.
1:54:40This was the other direction.
1:54:41It's like, all right, then radically rethink it.
1:54:42Radically rethink the Mac operating system.
1:54:44Do another Mac OS X style transition.
1:54:47That can be dangerous too,
1:54:49because you could just be annoying
1:54:51the remaining customers you have, and they say,
1:54:53forget this, if I'm going to go through the big change,
1:54:54I'm just going to learn how to use an iPad Pro.
1:54:57I don't know, but at the very least renaming and reskinning
1:55:00can actually go a long way towards getting people excited
1:55:03about a platform again, even if it's all service details.
1:55:07If you also do some other things, right?
1:55:08That's another free gimme.
1:55:10Like, do you want to make things faster
1:55:13and fix bugs release,
1:55:14but make people think it's a feature release?
1:55:16Just change how everything looks.
1:55:17They'll be like, "Whoa, this new mega-harboring system,
1:55:19it's crazy," when all they did was change the graphics
1:55:21and then they spend the whole rest of the time
1:55:22fixing bugs, increasing performance.
1:55:24And as someone who writes software
1:55:26and someone who likes software updates,
1:55:29I'm obviously more excited than normal people are about this.
1:55:31I love when a new version of a software product
1:55:34that I use comes out,
1:55:35that they tell me something and it is faster.
1:55:37I love that because as a programmer, I love doing that.
1:55:40I love deleting code that no longer has Xtude
1:55:43on every frame of animation
1:55:45or on every time this thing happens.
1:55:48I love better algorithms that scale better
1:55:50with large amounts of content,
1:55:52handles huge numbers of photos better.
1:55:54Like, you know, even just something as simple
1:55:56as better responsiveness during scrolling
1:55:58or like, you know, loading things or whatever.
1:56:01Like performance, I love things,
1:56:02but then they get better like that.
1:56:04And regular people don't really care about that,
1:56:06but they feel it.
1:56:07They, you know, if you do that consistently,
1:56:09people will have sort of this intangible feeling
1:56:11that your product is better than others
1:56:13in ways they can't explain simply because of react.
1:56:15And the same way that if you gave someone
1:56:16the original iPhone and then gave them
1:56:18another touchscreen phone,
1:56:19another contemporary touchscreen phone,
1:56:21everyone could tell you that the iPhone was way better,
1:56:23even if they don't know like,
1:56:24oh, I recognize this as a superior product
1:56:27because the hardware is nicer
1:56:29or the stupid thing actually reacts to my finger.
1:56:31Like they don't have to understand the nuances
1:56:32of finger reaction,
1:56:34but the general public immediately saw that,
1:56:37oh, this is different than the touchscreen
1:56:38that I hate on my ATM.
1:56:39This touchscreen is awesome.
1:56:41The ATM touchscreen is terrible.
1:56:43And I don't need to tell you the technical reasons why,
1:56:45I just recognize it.
1:56:46So if you make a product that is more stable, more reliable, and faster and more responsive,
1:56:53and you keep doing that on a regular basis, customers will react.
1:56:56They will love your product more, and those of us in the know will also react.
1:57:02You don't need to win us over.
1:57:03The real win is everyone else who will feel that.
1:57:06But boy, I love products.
1:57:10Any product that has in their release notes bug fixes are good, performance improves.
1:57:14And I get the feeling speaking of like dead platforms and everything that people seem to think that
1:57:18There's nothing in the Mac applications. They use a date from day to day or the operating system itself that can get faster like well
1:57:26This is just how computers are and I just reject that notion entirely everything on my computer can and should be faster
1:57:32Even just on the software side like ignoring that. Yes. I think they should be faster CPUs for storage faster graphics card
1:57:38Yes, that should all continue to happen, but you would but Apple can right? Yeah
1:57:42But just even within the same hardware there are things you can do to make the software faster
1:57:48So many things can be done like that that poor guy I see on Twitter who just spends all day trying to make NS user defaults
1:57:53Faster I love that guy
1:57:55Just yes, please do spend an entire year making NS user defaults faster
1:57:59Please you should because you know if that's used by tons of applications and you make it just a little bit faster
1:58:03You'll save us all a lot of time. My computer will be better. So keep making things faster
1:58:08[BEEP]