ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I like the fact that every time I start a call,

00:00:02 ◼   ► I have to click the button to say that I want to see the chat,

00:00:05 ◼   ► even though every single time I start a call, I do it.

00:00:07 ◼   ► Yeah, of all the work they've put into Skype,

00:00:09 ◼   ► they've never decided to make that persistent.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Yeah, God forbid an application remember anything that you do to it.

00:00:15 ◼   ► It's born anew every launch.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Happy birthday.

00:00:19 ◼   ► We have important things to talk about, so we should dive right in.

00:00:23 ◼   ► How's the Tesla?

00:00:24 ◼   ► Not that different from my opinion of it last week.

00:00:27 ◼   ► It's amazing. Like, it's just amazing. I really am appreciating it more and more every day,

00:00:33 ◼   ► and I already appreciate it quite a bit, so that's saying a lot. I'm very happy with the decision I

00:00:37 ◼   ► made to go with it. I'm also very happy with the one I chose to get, not getting the faster one

00:00:42 ◼   ► with less range for a lot more money. I'm just very happy with it. Now, tell me about—you tweeted

00:00:46 ◼   ► earlier today as we record that you put, like, this little teeny tiny USB stick. What is this

00:00:53 ◼   ► all about? Is this to put like three fish songs? Because it's like a 30 gig stick, right?

00:00:57 ◼   ► So that's like three or four fish songs?

00:00:59 ◼   ► It's 128 gig sticks, so it's six fish songs.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Ah, fair enough.

00:01:02 ◼   ► I don't actually need 128 gigs of storage in my car, but it was like 10 bucks more than

00:01:07 ◼   ► what I needed, so it's like, okay, just in case. I'm sure I will have some reason to

00:01:11 ◼   ► use 128 gig USB stick. It was like 40 bucks.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Is that all they are now? Good grief.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly! So this is the first USB stick I've ever purchased.

00:01:21 ◼   ► Really?

00:01:22 ◼   ► I've really used them and I've accumulated enough

00:01:25 ◼   ► little ones from freebies from things here and there

00:01:28 ◼   ► over the last decade that if I ever needed one

00:01:31 ◼   ► for the one time every two years I might actually need one,

00:01:35 ◼   ► I would just use one of those.

00:01:36 ◼   ► But none of them were big enough.

00:01:37 ◼   ► And if you wait until 2016 to buy a USB stick,

00:01:41 ◼   ► USB sticks are really good and are almost free.

00:01:44 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:45 ◼   ► I want something very, very small

00:01:46 ◼   ► 'cause this is in the center console of the car.

00:01:49 ◼   ► It's in the passenger compartment, so it's visible

00:01:51 ◼   ► protrudes from a little port. So I wanted it to be as small as possible. You know, there

00:01:56 ◼   ► was basically this one and a SanDisk one and the reviews of the SanDisk one all said that

00:02:00 ◼   ► it overheated constantly and ran weirdly hot all the time and the Samsung one everyone

00:02:05 ◼   ► said, "Nope, works great, doesn't overheat like that weird SanDisk one." So I went with

00:02:09 ◼   ► that. And the only downside of it, you know, it's incredibly fast, it's USB 3 and it has

00:02:14 ◼   ► really high quality flash in there because Samsung is really good at flash. I also have

00:02:18 ◼   ► I also have Samsung external flash drive

00:02:20 ◼   ► just in a two and a half inch enclosure for my computer.

00:02:23 ◼   ► 'Cause they make two gig SSD, or sorry,

00:02:25 ◼   ► two terabyte SSDs now for like 600 bucks.

00:02:29 ◼   ► And granted, $600 is a lot of money.

00:02:32 ◼   ► And two terabytes is not an earth-shattering

00:02:34 ◼   ► amount of space in 2016.

00:02:35 ◼   ► However, a two terabyte SSD that exists at all,

00:02:39 ◼   ► let alone is an affordable price, is quite something.

00:02:42 ◼   ► So I'm very happy with that,

00:02:44 ◼   ► 'cause it is totally silent and very, very fast.

00:02:47 ◼   ► so I store all my media on there anyway.

00:02:49 ◼   ► So this little Samsung stick, the only flaw in it

00:02:52 ◼   ► is that it has this giant Samsung logo written

00:02:56 ◼   ► on the part of it that sticks out.

00:02:58 ◼   ► So I just sanded it off with some light sandpaper

00:03:01 ◼   ► in about five minutes that I found in my garage.

00:03:03 ◼   ► And it's great.

00:03:04 ◼   ► So now it's a nice blank USB drive that is perfect.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Turns out USB sticks are kind of useful sometimes.

00:03:11 ◼   ► So anyway, the reason it's there in my car

00:03:13 ◼   ► is because the car has the ability to,

00:03:18 ◼   ► like many modern car stereos,

00:03:20 ◼   ► to browse folders of MP3 files

00:03:23 ◼   ► that you put on USB storage media.

00:03:26 ◼   ► And I don't think, I have to double check,

00:03:27 ◼   ► but I was pretty sure that it didn't have the ability

00:03:30 ◼   ► to use the iPod music browsing interface

00:03:35 ◼   ► from the iPhone when that was plugged in.

00:03:37 ◼   ► So, which is fine, because I actually prefer

00:03:40 ◼   ► having folders that I can organize things in,

00:03:41 ◼   ► 'cause I don't take my entire collection in the car,

00:03:44 ◼   ► 'cause most of my collection doesn't matter in the car.

00:03:47 ◼   ► So it's nice to kind of be able to organize it into folders

00:03:50 ◼   ► and have actual like subfolders.

00:03:52 ◼   ► So I have a folder for FISH 2015,

00:03:55 ◼   ► and then in that is like each 2015 tour,

00:03:57 ◼   ► and I can organize it how I want,

00:03:58 ◼   ► which is kind of different from what you get

00:04:00 ◼   ► in like a typical iPod thing.

00:04:03 ◼   ► And it plays the songs in order,

00:04:06 ◼   ► which thank God, it's amazing.

00:04:08 ◼   ► I don't know who designed whatever system many other car manufacturers and head unit

00:04:14 ◼   ► manufacturers use where whatever you insert, it plays the songs alphabetically by song

00:04:21 ◼   ► title.

00:04:22 ◼   ► Whoever wants to hear things alphabetically by song title.

00:04:26 ◼   ► There are two orders that you're allowed to play things in.

00:04:28 ◼   ► Either the order that they are on the album or shuffle.

00:04:33 ◼   ► Nobody ever wants any other order.

00:04:35 ◼   ► Yeah, see I I have I don't remember how much music I have my car I only have about 12 gigs

00:04:40 ◼   ► That's available to me

00:04:40 ◼   ► I believe

00:04:41 ◼   ► But I almost exclusively listen to stuff on my car and even though the Bluetooth stack is pretty good on my car

00:04:47 ◼   ► I find it just easier to navigate via iDrive and so with that in mind

00:04:52 ◼   ► Why do you not use Bluetooth on the Tesla?

00:04:54 ◼   ► I would think

00:04:55 ◼   ► Not having played with it that that being able to manipulate things on the Tesla would be a lot easier because you have that whole

00:05:01 ◼   ► big display there, but I guess if all you really have available to you via Bluetooth

00:05:04 ◼   ► is like skip forward, skip back, play, pause, maybe it's not really any different than

00:05:09 ◼   ► any other car.

00:05:10 ◼   ► You're right that having the big display there actually does make it much more useful

00:05:13 ◼   ► when you're doing things like navigating a USB stick full of folders and stuff, so

00:05:18 ◼   ► that is awesome on there. You are also right that Bluetooth is very limited in its interaction,

00:05:22 ◼   ► and making this problem worse, Tesla's Bluetooth implementation isn't particularly

00:05:27 ◼   ► great, it's an okay one, but there's a couple of shortcomings. The biggest one to me is

00:05:33 ◼   ► that it doesn't display the time elapsed or remaining, which is really annoying for podcasts.

00:05:40 ◼   ► More humorously, there is some method to transfer album art, and many Bluetooth stereos will

00:05:46 ◼   ► show album art as transferred from the end, but I think that's actually an Apple extension

00:05:50 ◼   ► to the standard or something anyway, it doesn't matter. Tesla doesn't support the album art

00:05:54 ◼   ► extension or whatever displays album art over Bluetooth. So instead, they show you the album

00:06:00 ◼   ► art from some kind of central album art database of a fuzzy match of whatever title is being

00:06:06 ◼   ► supplied by the device. So it tries to be smart, but then you end up with completely

00:06:12 ◼   ► nonsensical, random, often slightly risque album art when you're listening to Back to

00:06:19 ◼   ► It's like, it's, it makes no sense.

00:06:22 ◼   ► Like, the other day, I was like back to work

00:06:24 ◼   ► and I'm showing like some girl in a bikini

00:06:26 ◼   ► on like some album, I was like, you gotta be kidding me.

00:06:28 ◼   ► Like, and then I'm driving around like,

00:06:30 ◼   ► I'm like in my son's high school or preschool parking lot

00:06:34 ◼   ► and there's like this bikini girl showing on my dashboard,

00:06:37 ◼   ► I'm like, oh my God, I gotta listen to something else.

00:06:40 ◼   ► - That's not gonna work.

00:06:41 ◼   ► - So yeah, that is very strange.

00:06:45 ◼   ► I hope Tesla improves that shortly.

00:06:48 ◼   ► I'm not keeping my hopes up here,

00:06:51 ◼   ► 'cause I know that chances are this'll just be

00:06:53 ◼   ► how this car is for most of the time I have it,

00:06:55 ◼   ► 'cause nobody cares about this area of the software

00:06:58 ◼   ► except me, but yeah.

00:07:00 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:07:01 ◼   ► - Well, you've said you never work at Apple.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Would you work at Tesla?

00:07:05 ◼   ► - I mean, I don't really want to move to California

00:07:08 ◼   ► for a job, however, I actually did,

00:07:10 ◼   ► I was thinking recently, like,

00:07:11 ◼   ► would I be interested in working for Tesla?

00:07:13 ◼   ► And I think it would be actually potentially very interesting.

00:07:20 ◼   ► It would certainly give me pause.

00:07:21 ◼   ► I would certainly consider it.

00:07:24 ◼   ► Not to work on any of the fancy electrical stuff because I'm not qualified and also

00:07:28 ◼   ► don't care, but in order to work on the in-dash software, the touchscreen software,

00:07:36 ◼   ► the interface, the media stuff, maybe.

00:07:39 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:07:40 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:07:41 ◼   ► the house. Change the answer a little bit? Maybe a little. Could I bring hops? No. Like

00:07:50 ◼   ► a job where you get up and you get in your Tesla and you drive to the office and you

00:07:55 ◼   ► do your work there and then you drive back home and you have to do it Monday through

00:07:59 ◼   ► Friday and when you take vacation you have to tell them and you get a certain number

00:08:02 ◼   ► of those a year. I'm reminding you what a job is in case. If I can wear my slippers

00:08:06 ◼   ► slippers? And if I can take naps at the office, then yes.

00:08:10 ◼   ► Slippers? I don't know. I think, although we have some people at work who wear socks

00:08:16 ◼   ► and some people at work who are barefoot, but I feel like that is not the norm.

00:08:21 ◼   ► Do you ever rock either of those looks, Jon?

00:08:23 ◼   ► No. Are you kidding? I mean, if anyone has ever been in an office late in New England,

00:08:31 ◼   ► - You see the mice that come out.

00:08:34 ◼   ► Like, I mean, you're just there late,

00:08:36 ◼   ► and you look over, and you're like,

00:08:37 ◼   ► "Oh, there's a mouse."

00:08:37 ◼   ► And they just hop across the carpet.

00:08:38 ◼   ► And then you think about all the people

00:08:40 ◼   ► walking around all day with socks or bare feet

00:08:42 ◼   ► in this office, like, "Nope, just a big nope there."

00:08:46 ◼   ► (bright music)

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00:10:13 ◼   ► - Alright, so Anonymous wrote in again.

00:10:17 ◼   ► Anonymous does that from time to time.

00:10:18 ◼   ► And they cleared something up, sort of,

00:10:21 ◼   ► about Apple and renewable energy.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And I was wondering, and I think a lot of people

00:10:26 ◼   ► wondering, "Eh, are they really using renewable energy, or are they just like doing an offset

00:10:32 ◼   ► sort of thing?"

00:10:33 ◼   ► So Anonymous wrote, "Apple is engaging in agreements for 15 to 25 years of power from

00:10:38 ◼   ► renewable facilities by contracting with a wind or solar developer and agreeing to a

00:10:42 ◼   ► fixed price of power over the term.

00:10:45 ◼   ► So Apple doesn't physically use this power.

00:10:47 ◼   ► Instead, they agree to pay the wind or solar operator the fixed price per megawatt hour

00:10:52 ◼   ► of energy generated by the farm.

00:10:54 ◼   ► The operator then sells the actual power into the local market or utility service area where

00:10:59 ◼   ► the facility is located.

00:11:02 ◼   ► And I don't know, Jon, do you want to kind of distill this whole economic bit after here?

00:11:07 ◼   ► I believe this anonymous person was somebody who works for some alternative energy or works

00:11:12 ◼   ► in the alternative energy industry.

00:11:14 ◼   ► And I don't think they were going from any firsthand knowledge of contracts, but just

00:11:18 ◼   ► like last time we talked about solar and everything.

00:11:20 ◼   ► And I think some people have a vision in their mind of Apple building solar farms and connecting

00:11:27 ◼   ► a big wire from those solar farms to their facilities, which may be a thing that happens

00:11:31 ◼   ► in certain circumstances, depending on the geography and the available existing alternative

00:11:35 ◼   ► energy sources.

00:11:36 ◼   ► And then other people are imagining, all Apple is doing is buying offsets from some distant

00:11:41 ◼   ► land and just saying, "We'll pay you for that energy, and that offsets the energy we're

00:11:46 ◼   ► taking from our local power provider, and then you give that energy to the people who

00:11:49 ◼   ► live near the existing solar wind farm. and i imagine they do all those things and this

00:11:55 ◼   ► feedback had more detail in terms of the specifics of the agreement of not just that they're paying

00:12:00 ◼   ► for energy you know elsewhere because like there's a you know solar power facility miles and miles

00:12:05 ◼   ► away and they're not going to like run a wire from that to them you know. but that there it's not even

00:12:10 ◼   ► that they entered these contracts where they say we'll pay you a certain amount every month for you

00:12:15 ◼   ► for each megawatt hour of energy.

00:12:18 ◼   ► And it's kind of like a bet

00:12:19 ◼   ► between the alternative energy provider and Apple,

00:12:22 ◼   ► because if it turns out that the price to generate

00:12:25 ◼   ► that energy was lower than what Apple agreed to pay,

00:12:28 ◼   ► then that's good because the solar operator says,

00:12:32 ◼   ► "We only had to pay 2 cents per megawatt hour,

00:12:35 ◼   ► and you're buying it from us for $1 per megawatt hour,

00:12:37 ◼   ► and we get to keep the difference."

00:12:38 ◼   ► And the reverse is true too.

00:12:39 ◼   ► If it costs the solar energy provider,

00:12:41 ◼   ► "Oh, it turns out this month,

00:12:42 ◼   ► it costs us 10 bucks per megawatt hour,

00:12:44 ◼   ► and Apple agreed to pay us $1,

00:12:46 ◼   ► we just have to eat that $9 per megawatt hour.

00:12:48 ◼   ► So the key financial deal here,

00:12:51 ◼   ► because this comes in when I was talking about

00:12:53 ◼   ► how Apple can do this

00:12:54 ◼   ► because they have all this money to burn,

00:12:55 ◼   ► is that in a deal of this kind,

00:12:57 ◼   ► there's no upfront payment for the power.

00:12:59 ◼   ► If the facility already exists,

00:13:00 ◼   ► all Apple has to do is enter into a contract with them

00:13:03 ◼   ► and have this agreed upon price

00:13:04 ◼   ► in this particular arrangement, I think,

00:13:05 ◼   ► what is it called?

00:13:06 ◼   ► A contract for differences, it's called.

00:13:08 ◼   ► So you don't necessarily even have to have a lot of capital

00:13:12 ◼   ► if you can enter into one of these agreements and then it's just a matter of striking a

00:13:16 ◼   ► good deal based on what you think it will actually cost over the long term to generate

00:13:21 ◼   ► this power from this particular facility.

00:13:23 ◼   ► So anyway, the world is weird and that is a detail that's not particularly important.

00:13:28 ◼   ► It's not as if Apple's being disingenuous because buying offsets or entering into these

00:13:32 ◼   ► agreements or paying for someone who lives near a solar facility to get that energy from

00:13:35 ◼   ► this whole facility while you get it from the coal-fired plant.

00:13:38 ◼   ► Like, it's all, it all comes out in the wash.

00:13:40 ◼   ► all on the same planet, it's all the same atmosphere, all the same CO2. And if Apple

00:13:43 ◼   ► didn't do this and didn't pay for these renewables, no matter who is actually getting those specific

00:13:47 ◼   ► electrons, I wouldn't make a difference. What you're looking for is total CO2 output of

00:13:53 ◼   ► the planet and not, you know, whether it's like right next to you or right next to someone

00:13:57 ◼   ► else. Anyway, I thought it was interesting.

00:14:00 ◼   ► All right. So have all of us switched to Purple Safari? I am using it on my work computer.

00:14:05 ◼   ► I just tonight installed it on my iMac, but haven't started using it yet. I should note

00:14:10 ◼   ► actually as I forgot about this follow-up, the beta of 1Password for sure. And at this

00:14:17 ◼   ► point they might have released a new non-beta version. But anyway, the beta of 1Password

00:14:23 ◼   ► supports the new Purple Safari. So if you are having the same woes that I was, you can

00:14:28 ◼   ► run the beta. Additionally, there's a switch in preferences that a couple people wrote

00:14:32 ◼   ► in to tell me about, and forgive me because I don't have either your names or the preference

00:14:36 ◼   ► in front of me, but even on the regular version, somewhere in like the advanced preferences

00:14:41 ◼   ► where they have the little Jedi-looking person on the right-hand side or the robot or not,

00:14:48 ◼   ► there's a switch that says you can override the security checks on the browser.

00:14:53 ◼   ► But anyway, we're not here to talk about 1Password, we're here to talk about Purple Safari.

00:14:56 ◼   ► So have you guys been using it?

00:14:58 ◼   ► I've switched everywhere, and last week I was worried that switching—that I'd have

00:15:02 ◼   ► to somehow disable my regular Safari or it would like get launched by like an Apple event

00:15:07 ◼   ► somewhere or you know whatever but after using it both at home and at work for a week my

00:15:12 ◼   ► fears were unfounded.

00:15:14 ◼   ► You switch the default browser in the Safari preference panes for either version of Safari

00:15:19 ◼   ► you know pull the other one off your dock and it's purple Safari all the way from there

00:15:23 ◼   ► and it works fine.

00:15:24 ◼   ► The only annoyance I found is that it unlike Chrome which will like sync your extensions

00:15:29 ◼   ► everywhere. I had to sort of reinstall all my Safari extensions and a lot of them I had to kind

00:15:33 ◼   ► of track down and find the original websites where I mean I could just dug them out of the folder but

00:15:36 ◼   ► I was trying to you know it was a good time to just get them from the web again or go through

00:15:41 ◼   ► the you know maybe get the later version if I had a bad update URL but anyway I had to reinstall my

00:15:46 ◼   ► extensions rearrange all rearrange all my icons on my toolbar, re-import the options like I have

00:15:51 ◼   ► the Safari keyword extension lets you type stuff in the address bar and do searches. I had to export

00:15:56 ◼   ► those from Safari and import them. Once I get everything set up, I'm all purple Safari now,

00:16:00 ◼   ► and I think I'll just stay this way unless I have some compelling reason to switch back,

00:16:03 ◼   ► like purple Safari suddenly starts crashing. But so far so good. I recommend people trying it out

00:16:08 ◼   ► if you're interested in maybe having a little bit faster Safari, or if you're interested in any of

00:16:13 ◼   ► the many new web technologies that are introduced in it, like if you're a web developer and want to

00:16:17 ◼   ► try them out. Yeah, I did feel like it was faster, although that very well could be a placebo effect.

00:16:23 ◼   ► But I remember thinking to myself, "Wow, this feels fast."

00:16:27 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:16:29 ◼   ► But do you feel like it's been quicker for you as well?

00:16:32 ◼   ► - Purple is faster, everyone knows that.

00:16:34 ◼   ► - Ah, totally.

00:16:35 ◼   ► All right, good talk.

00:16:36 ◼   ► I don't know what that reference was, if it was one.

00:16:38 ◼   ► Anyway, so there's been a pretty considerable kerfuffle

00:16:43 ◼   ► going across the internet over the last couple of days

00:16:47 ◼   ► about TextExpander 6.

00:16:49 ◼   ► TextExpander is an app that,

00:16:51 ◼   ► have they sponsored us in the past?

00:16:53 ◼   ► I believe they have.

00:16:54 ◼   ► - They sponsor so much stuff.

00:16:55 ◼   ► I think, I'm pretty sure, I mean,

00:16:57 ◼   ► I think PDF Pen sponsored my site a while back,

00:17:00 ◼   ► which is also Smiles, so, at any rate,

00:17:01 ◼   ► they've probably sponsored our stuff.

00:17:03 ◼   ► - Right, so, TextExpander 6 is new,

00:17:06 ◼   ► and it is moving to a subscription model.

00:17:10 ◼   ► And it previously was somewhere between 10 and 20 bucks,

00:17:14 ◼   ► depending on the platform, I believe.

00:17:16 ◼   ► And they tended to do an update about once a year,

00:17:19 ◼   ► from what I gather.

00:17:20 ◼   ► I am actually not a TextExpander user,

00:17:22 ◼   ► but that's the general gist of what I've understood.

00:17:25 ◼   ► And they've announced that, hey, they're going to switch

00:17:27 ◼   ► to subscription pricing.

00:17:28 ◼   ► It's about 50 bucks a year, give or take,

00:17:31 ◼   ► and you can get sync through their own servers,

00:17:34 ◼   ► kind of like what 1Password's doing now

00:17:36 ◼   ► with 1Password for Teams and 1Password for Families,

00:17:40 ◼   ► and actually day one as well.

00:17:42 ◼   ► So you can sync via their servers

00:17:45 ◼   ► and you can have collaborations

00:17:48 ◼   ► or you can have a shared text expander snippets

00:17:52 ◼   ► across teams, if that's something that you're interested in.

00:17:55 ◼   ► But by the way, we are not supporting Dropbox-based sync anymore.

00:18:02 ◼   ► Basically it's either use the old version until it doesn't work anymore, or give us

00:18:07 ◼   ► money and we'll give you the new hotness.

00:18:10 ◼   ► And a lot of people are flustered.

00:18:13 ◼   ► And we'll put a link to MJ Sai's blog, which as always is a really good summary.

00:18:20 ◼   ► This is one of the longer ones I've seen, actually, but a really good summary.

00:18:24 ◼   ► And it kind of goes through a lot of different reactions.

00:18:27 ◼   ► And I think the general summary is those who are developers or know developers completely

00:18:33 ◼   ► understand it and are probably willing to pay for it.

00:18:38 ◼   ► But those who are just users or can kind of put on their user hat, it's a tough sell.

00:18:47 ◼   ► unlike 1Password, they're kind of taking something away. 1Password will continue to let you use

00:18:53 ◼   ► Dropbox at least for now, and it seems that Smile's taking away that option for any future

00:18:58 ◼   ► version. So, I don't know. I don't really have a lot to say about this, because like

00:19:03 ◼   ► I said, I'm not a text expander user, but it's certainly a tough thing, because how

00:19:07 ◼   ► do you make money in the app store these days? I mean, it's not easy, is it, Marco?

00:19:11 ◼   ► - No, it's really not.

00:19:12 ◼   ► I mean, my view on this is certainly colored

00:19:16 ◼   ► by my own experiences in the app store.

00:19:19 ◼   ► And I have some distance from it because

00:19:21 ◼   ► while I did purchase the most recent version

00:19:23 ◼   ► of Text Commander before this,

00:19:25 ◼   ► when I was thinking I could actually answer support emails,

00:19:28 ◼   ► I don't currently use it because it turns out

00:19:31 ◼   ► I can't answer support emails.

00:19:32 ◼   ► So I'm not an active user of it,

00:19:34 ◼   ► so I'm not really invested in it either way.

00:19:36 ◼   ► And at the same time, I also now sell an app

00:19:40 ◼   ► with subscription pricing, sort of.

00:19:42 ◼   ► I see why a lot of people are mad about this.

00:19:45 ◼   ► What I've seen from my own experience

00:19:47 ◼   ► is that people get mad when they sense

00:19:50 ◼   ► that you're like double dipping or unfairly charging

00:19:54 ◼   ► in whatever their view is of unfair,

00:19:57 ◼   ► or if you charge them or if you ask for money

00:20:00 ◼   ► or if you put up barriers in a way

00:20:02 ◼   ► that they are not accustomed to

00:20:04 ◼   ► that breaks their expectations of like,

00:20:07 ◼   ► I've never had to pay this way before

00:20:09 ◼   ► or I've never had to pay for this thing before,

00:20:11 ◼   ► or I thought I already owned this thing outright.

00:20:14 ◼   ► And this is all very, very tricky these days,

00:20:16 ◼   ► because the reality is people's expectations

00:20:19 ◼   ► of software where you buy it and then you can use it

00:20:23 ◼   ► for a while until maybe there's an upgrade

00:20:25 ◼   ► a few years down the road, and then you buy the upgrade,

00:20:27 ◼   ► maybe at a discount.

00:20:28 ◼   ► People's expectations of that kind of software

00:20:31 ◼   ► is that you pay once and then you have it.

00:20:34 ◼   ► And at the same time, though,

00:20:37 ◼   ► they also expect updates to it.

00:20:39 ◼   ► They expect you to be fixing bugs,

00:20:41 ◼   ► to be providing compatibility for new versions of the OS,

00:20:44 ◼   ► and possibly even adding features

00:20:46 ◼   ► all within that same initial price they paid.

00:20:49 ◼   ► Somewhere along the line, that doesn't work.

00:20:53 ◼   ► The people are thinking of the benefits of the software

00:20:55 ◼   ► and the responsibility of the software makers

00:20:58 ◼   ► as a service that is constantly provided over time

00:21:02 ◼   ► for their one initial purchase price.

00:21:04 ◼   ► But of course, they get really mad

00:21:06 ◼   ► if you want them to pay on a subscription basis

00:21:09 ◼   ► for what they're really getting,

00:21:11 ◼   ► which is subscription benefits.

00:21:13 ◼   ► It's kind of hard to not do that in some way or another

00:21:16 ◼   ► if you're the software vendor.

00:21:18 ◼   ► You are having ongoing cost.

00:21:19 ◼   ► You're having cost as a service.

00:21:22 ◼   ► Whether you're running servers or not,

00:21:23 ◼   ► it's like you're having cost of just ongoing maintenance

00:21:25 ◼   ► of this app and advancing it, moving it forward,

00:21:28 ◼   ► keeping it working, improving it, et cetera.

00:21:31 ◼   ► So there is this disconnect between

00:21:35 ◼   ► what people are willing to pay for,

00:21:37 ◼   ► which is they wanna pay once and own it forever,

00:21:39 ◼   ► but also that if you don't give them constant updates,

00:21:44 ◼   ► they will hate you even more for that.

00:21:46 ◼   ► And they certainly don't want you to go out of business,

00:21:48 ◼   ► they really hate when you do that,

00:21:49 ◼   ► or when you pull a product.

00:21:51 ◼   ► They really hate that.

00:21:52 ◼   ► So that's worse.

00:21:54 ◼   ► So they want you to be there,

00:21:56 ◼   ► and to be providing updates on a regular basis,

00:21:59 ◼   ► and to fix any bugs that crop up,

00:22:01 ◼   ► and to improve the product,

00:22:02 ◼   ► and to make it work whenever there's a new OS.

00:22:04 ◼   ► They want that, but they don't want to pay more than that one time up front.

00:22:09 ◼   ► So obviously something has to give here.

00:22:12 ◼   ► So I don't begrudge the idea of subscription pricing.

00:22:16 ◼   ► I do think, however, that this particular case, I don't think they did a very good

00:22:22 ◼   ► job with it.

00:22:23 ◼   ► And I'm not too close to it, so maybe I'm wrong, but I think the reaction of a lot of

00:22:30 ◼   ► their customers that I've been hearing about from today that might back up that I'm

00:22:34 ◼   ► What TextExpander has done is they've transformed from a,

00:22:39 ◼   ► what was the price of the app, like 35 bucks,

00:22:41 ◼   ► something like that?

00:22:42 ◼   ► - I don't know, to be honest.

00:22:43 ◼   ► I thought it was closer to 20 originally,

00:22:45 ◼   ► but I very well could have that wrong.

00:22:47 ◼   ► - Whatever it is, I think it's somewhere in that range.

00:22:50 ◼   ► It has transformed from that into a required

00:22:54 ◼   ► $5 a month service.

00:22:57 ◼   ► So it's a pretty substantial price increase,

00:23:00 ◼   ► as well as the justification for this service

00:23:04 ◼   ► being something, they justify it by saying,

00:23:06 ◼   ► "Oh, well now you can like share your snippets

00:23:08 ◼   ► "with coworkers or family or whatever else."

00:23:12 ◼   ► And this is, it's like they took away the problem,

00:23:15 ◼   ► or the solution they had for syncing

00:23:17 ◼   ► for your own personal stuff between your own computers,

00:23:19 ◼   ► which was syncing via Dropbox or BitTorrent sync

00:23:22 ◼   ► or whatever other options they had

00:23:23 ◼   ► that you could sync pretty much any way you wanted to,

00:23:25 ◼   ► but I think a lot of people did Dropbox syncing.

00:23:27 ◼   ► So they took that away, and now they're saying,

00:23:29 ◼   ► now you have to pay us a lot more than you were paying before, but you will get these

00:23:33 ◼   ► benefits. And the problem is those benefits were things that most of their customers,

00:23:37 ◼   ► at least who we're hearing from, and I don't know if this applies to their entire customer

00:23:40 ◼   ► base, but the customers we're hearing from don't really want those benefits, they don't

00:23:43 ◼   ► really care about those benefits, and they're not going to use those benefits. So the reason

00:23:47 ◼   ► everyone's mad is because not only have they changed the model in a way that a lot of people

00:23:52 ◼   ► don't like, because a lot of people just don't like subscription pricing. And again, I totally

00:23:56 ◼   ► get why people don't like that. I don't like it either, but I also don't like software

00:24:02 ◼   ► that goes out of business or that can't afford to keep updated or anything else.

00:24:06 ◼   ► So it's hard. I recognize the way that software developers really need to have some model

00:24:12 ◼   ► that provides recurring revenue over time for users who are using it all the time. Whether

00:24:17 ◼   ► you do that via occasional upgrade to upgrade pricing or whether you do it via a monthly

00:24:21 ◼   ► subscription or some other scheme where they do with ads, you know, somehow you need to have some way to

00:24:27 ◼   ► Make money from people over time not just once up front

00:24:31 ◼   ► I don't think you need to be deep in the development community like, you know the mindset, you know

00:24:36 ◼   ► Certainly Marco is coming from and all of us because we know developers and we talk to developers and like we have that perspective

00:24:41 ◼   ► But I think for this particular change

00:24:43 ◼   ► I think you could take just anyone from business school and throw them at this and even if they don't understand what software is

00:24:50 ◼   ► I think it looks like so many other business decisions.

00:24:55 ◼   ► So from my perspective, what they're doing,

00:24:58 ◼   ► and it explains a lot of the anger that Marco just,

00:25:00 ◼   ► you know, talked about from the, you know,

00:25:01 ◼   ► the customer's perspective at the very least,

00:25:04 ◼   ► is they have a customer base now that uses their product.

00:25:08 ◼   ► If you were to survey those customers and say,

00:25:10 ◼   ► how much value do you get out of using TextExpander?

00:25:13 ◼   ► A lot of them would say, you know,

00:25:15 ◼   ► I mean, maybe I get $45 worth of value out of,

00:25:18 ◼   ► over the lifetime that I've been using it.

00:25:20 ◼   ► Some would say, maybe I, you know,

00:25:22 ◼   ► it's like asking like, how much would you pay?

00:25:24 ◼   ► If we say, take TextExpander away from you

00:25:26 ◼   ► and to get it back, you have to pay some money.

00:25:28 ◼   ► Obviously, if someone like uses it to answer support email,

00:25:32 ◼   ► for example, or like does a lot of repetitive emailing

00:25:35 ◼   ► or uses very sophisticated features

00:25:36 ◼   ► where you fill in the blanks and everything like that,

00:25:38 ◼   ► they're gonna say, oh, you know,

00:25:40 ◼   ► this is the main tool I use to make my living.

00:25:42 ◼   ► Like it is an essential part of my workflow.

00:25:44 ◼   ► If TextExpander was gone,

00:25:45 ◼   ► I don't know what I would do with myself.

00:25:46 ◼   ► It is incredibly valuable for me.

00:25:48 ◼   ► The fact that I paid $45 for it last year is like the steal of the century.

00:25:51 ◼   ► This is literally how I get all of my income.

00:25:55 ◼   ► And the dream of any business school major is like, "Can I charge that guy like $3,000

00:26:01 ◼   ► and then charge the guy who's only going to use it twice a year like five bucks?

00:26:05 ◼   ► Can I charge every customer the maximum amount they're willing to pay for this software?"

00:26:11 ◼   ► The answer is you can't do that because we don't know how much it's worth or whatever.

00:26:15 ◼   ► what you can do and what it seems like Texas Smile is trying to do with this

00:26:18 ◼   ► one is say we've got all these customers for a lot of them they're getting like

00:26:23 ◼   ► $45 worth of value or even less out of the software but there are some users

00:26:28 ◼   ► who get a tremendous amount of value because Texas Spanner is very powerful if

00:26:31 ◼   ► you do the type of things that Texas Spanner is made to do this is like best

00:26:34 ◼   ► in class like very sophisticated features you know like it makes and you

00:26:39 ◼   ► know a very polished workflow at mature product stables you know like this is

00:26:44 ◼   ► this is a it's not just like my first text expander type thing this is a very

00:26:48 ◼   ► substantial product for the people who do this all the time and you say i would rather just sell to

00:26:55 ◼   ► those people for a much higher price in a way that we can continue to sell to those people

00:27:01 ◼   ► essentially forever as long as those people exist because they're doing it for their job and we're

00:27:06 ◼   ► going to provide them this tool to do their job and the same kind of like photoshop type arrangement

00:27:09 ◼   ► Like, you're a graphic designer.

00:27:12 ◼   ► You use Photoshop to make your living.

00:27:15 ◼   ► And we will give you the tool to make your living.

00:27:16 ◼   ► And so you will subscribe to Photoshop because it's a bargain to you to pay whatever it is,

00:27:20 ◼   ► 100, 200 bucks a year to make thousands upon thousands of dollars as a graphic designer

00:27:24 ◼   ► every year.

00:27:25 ◼   ► And if we took away Photoshop, it would seriously impair your productivity because you have

00:27:28 ◼   ► to learn a new program and so on and so forth.

00:27:30 ◼   ► So it's like TextExpander is saying, "Thanks for all the participation, casual TextExpander

00:27:35 ◼   ► users, but we would much rather sell to the heaviest text expander users at a price that

00:27:43 ◼   ► they find justifiable and that we feel like is the most sustainable, the most profitable,

00:27:49 ◼   ► like whatever, you know, we're going to make it up in lack of volume, essentially. It's

00:27:52 ◼   ► the opposite of we're going to make it up in volume. I just want the good customers,

00:27:56 ◼   ► the ones who, the power user customers. And so why people are mad is text expander basically

00:28:01 ◼   ► saying to them, not really, but basically saying, "We're not that interested in your

00:28:06 ◼   ► business anymore. If TextExpander was only worth $45 and you want to use it for five

00:28:10 ◼   ► years, that's not the kind of customer that we want to serve." Maybe it's because they

00:28:16 ◼   ► feel like they can't serve it. Maybe, you know, like, I don't know what the motivation

00:28:19 ◼   ► for it is, but even if they were doing great, they could say, "We're refocusing our business

00:28:23 ◼   ► on the pro TextExpander market," right? And so everybody who wasn't a pro TextExpander

00:28:27 ◼   ► is like, "But I like TextExpander. Like, I don't use it that much, but I really like

00:28:31 ◼   ► it and now you're telling me I've been priced out of this market like because you want those

00:28:35 ◼   ► other customers and that can definitely make people mad but what I keep thinking is do

00:28:40 ◼   ► those people getting mad does that affect tax expander at all like you know that's the

00:28:45 ◼   ► business you try a business model and you see are there enough people who are willing

00:28:48 ◼   ► to pay 50 60 bucks a year for tax expander to make up for all the people you're losing

00:28:52 ◼   ► who wanted to pay you know $45 once and use it for three years that's the experiment they're

00:28:57 ◼   ► running, I think it is a perfectly valid experiment to have, but a necessary side effect is the

00:29:04 ◼   ► disenfranchised become angry about the fact that previously they had access to this very

00:29:10 ◼   ► powerful utility that maybe they only used occasionally or used a fraction of the power

00:29:14 ◼   ► of, and now they can just use the old version until it eventually stops working.

00:29:21 ◼   ► They've been cut out of that market and they have to look elsewhere so they could be annoyed

00:29:24 ◼   ► by it.

00:29:25 ◼   ► I can't feel like I can get particularly mad about it just because I think it is a reasonable

00:29:32 ◼   ► strategy for trying to make your business both more profitable, which, you know, like,

00:29:39 ◼   ► "Oh, they just want more money."

00:29:40 ◼   ► Yeah, that's how business works.

00:29:42 ◼   ► More profitable and more sustainable.

00:29:44 ◼   ► Because if you ever hit that critical mass, like apparently Adobe has and many other companies

00:29:48 ◼   ► try to, of, "These users use my tool to make their living.

00:29:52 ◼   ► They're willing to pay this much every single year, and that amount that they pay every

00:29:55 ◼   ► single year with the number of them there are is enough to sustain development, you

00:29:59 ◼   ► can do that essentially indefinitely. As long as a competitor doesn't come and steal your

00:30:03 ◼   ► thing or your product doesn't become moot because everyone uses mind control or so many

00:30:07 ◼   ► other things can affect you. But at the very least, you've got the basic inner workings

00:30:11 ◼   ► of a sustainable business model there, which is a refreshing change after the boom bust

00:30:17 ◼   ► viral hit throwaway application things that the app stores have brought on where it's

00:30:24 ◼   ► It's like, I gotta make a new app every year

00:30:26 ◼   ► and it's gotta be a big hit

00:30:26 ◼   ► and if it isn't, we're going out of business.

00:30:28 ◼   ► It's so much more comfortable to be able

00:30:29 ◼   ► to have loyal customers who pay for your product

00:30:32 ◼   ► and they're paying for your product every year,

00:30:33 ◼   ► pays for your development and you just do that.

00:30:35 ◼   ► - You know, if that really works out for them,

00:30:37 ◼   ► if they end up making more money from this, that's fine.

00:30:39 ◼   ► I think there's a couple angles to reconsider though.

00:30:42 ◼   ► First of all, and I know you didn't say this,

00:30:44 ◼   ► but for people thinking this, you can't just say,

00:30:46 ◼   ► oh, they just wanted to make more money.

00:30:48 ◼   ► It might be that they were declining in revenue

00:30:51 ◼   ► and they're trying to sustain this business

00:30:53 ◼   ► to keep this product going.

00:30:54 ◼   ► - Well, that is making more money.

00:30:56 ◼   ► More money than they were previously making

00:30:58 ◼   ► because the previous amount was not enough

00:30:59 ◼   ► to keep them in business.

00:31:00 ◼   ► Like, they need to pay the bills and get the lights on.

00:31:02 ◼   ► - Right, but you can look at it as a pure greed angle

00:31:04 ◼   ► if they were doing fine before

00:31:06 ◼   ► and now they just wanna juice it even higher,

00:31:08 ◼   ► but it's also possible that it was going down before

00:31:10 ◼   ► and now they're trying to just bring it back up

00:31:12 ◼   ► to where it was, right?

00:31:14 ◼   ► And if you read between the lines

00:31:15 ◼   ► and some of the statements they've made,

00:31:16 ◼   ► it sounds kind of like it wasn't making enough money before

00:31:20 ◼   ► for them to justify working on it.

00:31:22 ◼   ► Do you draw a distinction between those two cases

00:31:24 ◼   ► that you just outlined?

00:31:25 ◼   ► As in, previously we were sustainable,

00:31:27 ◼   ► but we felt like we could make more money with this model,

00:31:29 ◼   ► and previously we were unsustainable,

00:31:31 ◼   ► so we have to do something to avoid going out of business.

00:31:33 ◼   ► Do you think those are really any different?

00:31:37 ◼   ► Is that a distinction that you make as a customer?

00:31:40 ◼   ► Certainly it's a distinction you can imagine

00:31:42 ◼   ► making just as kind of like a human being,

00:31:44 ◼   ► where if it looks like they're gonna go out of business,

00:31:46 ◼   ► you feel bad for them, you have empathy.

00:31:48 ◼   ► You're like, I like those guys, I like their product,

00:31:50 ◼   ► I don't wanna see them go out of business,

00:31:51 ◼   ► both for self-investry reasons, like you said,

00:31:52 ◼   ► because I'm a user of their product

00:31:53 ◼   ► and I want it to continue to be developed, right?

00:31:56 ◼   ► And also because you feel bad,

00:31:58 ◼   ► like, oh, they've been doing a good job.

00:31:59 ◼   ► Their job is to write programs.

00:32:01 ◼   ► I think they're good at their job.

00:32:02 ◼   ► And I would like to see them succeed

00:32:04 ◼   ► because just basic human empathy.

00:32:07 ◼   ► And therefore you're more willing to sort of

00:32:10 ◼   ► allow for changes in their pricing model

00:32:13 ◼   ► to sort of help them out

00:32:14 ◼   ► versus they had a sustainable business

00:32:16 ◼   ► and they just want more money.

00:32:17 ◼   ► And that suddenly it's villainous to do that.

00:32:20 ◼   ► like that you should never,

00:32:21 ◼   ► that as soon as you have enough to pay your bills

00:32:24 ◼   ► and not go hungry and pay for food and shelter,

00:32:26 ◼   ► you should never want more

00:32:27 ◼   ► because wanting anything more is entirely like,

00:32:30 ◼   ► is essentially evil and that's greed.

00:32:33 ◼   ► And I don't see a hard line between those things.

00:32:36 ◼   ► I know a lot of people do,

00:32:37 ◼   ► but it's like, where do you draw that line?

00:32:39 ◼   ► When, what is enough money?

00:32:40 ◼   ► Like I have enough to have payroll

00:32:42 ◼   ► and enough to pay my mortgage,

00:32:45 ◼   ► but not enough to save for retirement

00:32:47 ◼   ► or send my kids to college.

00:32:48 ◼   ► Is it okay to ask to make more money then?

00:32:50 ◼   ► Like, I don't know that,

00:32:52 ◼   ► if you start breaking that down,

00:32:53 ◼   ► it starts to be nonsensical.

00:32:54 ◼   ► So I'm personally willing to give wide latitude

00:32:59 ◼   ► to making more, figuring out ways to make more money

00:33:01 ◼   ► with your labor.

00:33:02 ◼   ► If you're good at writing software

00:33:04 ◼   ► and the software product you have made

00:33:05 ◼   ► and polished over the years is TextExpander,

00:33:08 ◼   ► and you find a way to make more money from that product,

00:33:11 ◼   ► I don't attach any moral judgment to that at all.

00:33:14 ◼   ► Even if it means that a whole bunch

00:33:16 ◼   ► your previous customers are no longer in your customer base for future versions. But I know

00:33:20 ◼   ► a lot of people do and I think a lot of that, like what you just highlighted, Marco, explains

00:33:24 ◼   ► a lot of the anger that people really do draw that line of like, "You were making enough

00:33:28 ◼   ► money to not live in the street already and now you want more? Forget it, you're evil."

00:33:33 ◼   ► Oh, totally. Believe me, I hear from them that a lot of people draw that line and I'm

00:33:39 ◼   ► not one of them. But I think that could be something to consider here. If you're getting

00:33:44 ◼   ► angry at Smile for really dramatically raising the price of this app in a way that you might

00:33:51 ◼   ► not like. It might be because they had to. But also, you have to look at the competitive

00:33:57 ◼   ► landscape here. There are lots of similar utilities that do the same basic job and just

00:34:03 ◼   ► differ in the features they offer on top of that. So there's lots of alternatives to

00:34:08 ◼   ► this and honestly, today has probably been a very good day for them. However you feel

00:34:11 ◼   ► about this with whether you're a customer or not, looking at it from Smiles' perspective,

00:34:17 ◼   ► I think this was a mistake for them. And time will tell, obviously. I don't know the market

00:34:21 ◼   ► at all. Time will tell. But they have basically discarded a big part of their existing customer

00:34:28 ◼   ► base in an effort to either get more money from the part that's left and/or to move

00:34:33 ◼   ► into a more business-oriented one where there will be allegedly businesses who use synced

00:34:40 ◼   ► snippets and everything from Texas Commander and that might be a big business. I don't

00:34:44 ◼   ► know. I don't, I wouldn't have guessed it would be a big business but I'm wrong all

00:34:48 ◼   ► the time. So that might work out for them. If it does, that's fine. But I don't think

00:34:53 ◼   ► this is going to go well because what I see mostly happening here is, you know, you can

00:35:00 ◼   ► make a move like that when you are in a position of strength. You know, when you're like the

00:35:04 ◼   ► only game in town and people depend on you to get their work done. And for a lot of people,

00:35:09 ◼   ► will be true, but I don't think for enough people, because for a big part of the customers

00:35:14 ◼   ► who are now faced with a big price hike and removal of features they used versus other

00:35:20 ◼   ► choices, they have lots of other choices. There's all these alternative software things

00:35:25 ◼   ► that do this for substantially less money now. Before, they were much more competitive.

00:35:31 ◼   ► Now they're in a high competition environment, so I think one way to do this, one way to

00:35:38 ◼   ► resolve this if they wanted to make more money

00:35:41 ◼   ► or needed to make more money from this,

00:35:42 ◼   ► you can either cut the costs that you're putting into it

00:35:46 ◼   ► or you can charge more.

00:35:48 ◼   ► Both of those are gonna affect your users

00:35:50 ◼   ► negatively in some way.

00:35:51 ◼   ► The question is which one can you get away with better?

00:35:54 ◼   ► And I'm not sure they chose correctly,

00:35:57 ◼   ► but I don't know how many choices they had.

00:35:58 ◼   ► I don't know anything about their business.

00:36:00 ◼   ► - The natural consequence of this,

00:36:02 ◼   ► if you just keep playing it out,

00:36:03 ◼   ► is that someone gets the idea,

00:36:04 ◼   ► we could be enterprise software,

00:36:06 ◼   ► we could charge minimum five figures

00:36:08 ◼   ► for any installation of our thing.

00:36:09 ◼   ► Like why not sell TextExpander into, you know,

00:36:13 ◼   ► the sort of large email-based support networks of like,

00:36:18 ◼   ► where if you're a very large company

00:36:20 ◼   ► and you just have to hire like literally hundreds

00:36:22 ◼   ► and hundreds of people to answer your support emails

00:36:24 ◼   ► and everything, you'd want to give them tools

00:36:26 ◼   ► to do their job well and sort of standardize

00:36:28 ◼   ► on basic snippets and templates and so on and so forth.

00:36:31 ◼   ► You can imagine, I'm sure there is really terrible

00:36:34 ◼   ► enterprise software that already does that.

00:36:35 ◼   ► And TextExpander perhaps sees that market and say,

00:36:38 ◼   ► I would rather sell $5 million installations than $1.5 million apps, right?

00:36:44 ◼   ► We want to actually become enterprise software.

00:36:46 ◼   ► And so as we've discussed in many past shows, enterprise software can be tempting and can

00:36:51 ◼   ► be lucrative, and you can be protected from competition by the fact that it's a pain in

00:36:57 ◼   ► the butt to sell enterprise software and you have to hire salespeople and there's a high

00:36:59 ◼   ► barrier to entry and you have relationships and make deals on golf courses or whatever

00:37:03 ◼   ► the hell goes on.

00:37:04 ◼   ► Enterprise software is absolutely poison to the quality of your products and it makes

00:37:09 ◼   ► you vulnerable to anyone making anything worth a damn because eventually, you know, the enterprise

00:37:12 ◼   ► software, my definition from many years ago was like, when the person who buys your software

00:37:17 ◼   ► is not the person who uses it.

00:37:18 ◼   ► And that is a totally misaligned incentive and it leads to software that is very, very

00:37:25 ◼   ► attractive to buy, but terrible to use.

00:37:27 ◼   ► Like, it's why igloo stays in business.

00:37:29 ◼   ► Like you really, you really want to, you are vulnerable to someone who actually makes a

00:37:33 ◼   ► a product that the user's like.

00:37:34 ◼   ► Because eventually even enterprise users start to revolt

00:37:36 ◼   ► and bring their iPhones to work or bring their Macs to work

00:37:39 ◼   ► or bring whatever product they think is not a piece of crap

00:37:42 ◼   ► and use that instead.

00:37:43 ◼   ► So not that I'm saying TextExpander is suddenly

00:37:45 ◼   ► a terrible, you know, Oracle or SAP type company,

00:37:48 ◼   ► but that is, if you just keep playing that out and say,

00:37:51 ◼   ► instead of mass market, low price, let's do, you know,

00:37:55 ◼   ► much smaller market, much higher price.

00:37:57 ◼   ► And it could be, like you said, Mark,

00:37:58 ◼   ► if it's the crowded market for a TextExpander type products,

00:38:01 ◼   ► how does TextExpander differentiate?

00:38:03 ◼   ► What do they have that the other ones don't?

00:38:04 ◼   ► Maybe what they have is we have a very sophisticated feature set.

00:38:07 ◼   ► We want to be the pro-text expander product.

00:38:10 ◼   ► We're going to leave the consumer market to our competitors and let them fight it out

00:38:13 ◼   ► for the thousands and thousands of people who want to pay $5, $10, $15, $20, $30, $40,

00:38:19 ◼   ► and we want to move upmarket and just keep the sort of high-end, the people who are willing

00:38:23 ◼   ► to pay more for a better, more sophisticated product because it's part of how they do their

00:38:27 ◼   ► job.

00:38:28 ◼   ► I don't know how to handicap it either.

00:38:29 ◼   ► Like you said, Margot, neither one of us knows the details of the text expander market landscape

00:38:35 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:38:36 ◼   ► I have the same feeling that this doesn't seem like a power move to me.

00:38:39 ◼   ► This seems like something they would do because they were having trouble sustaining.

00:38:43 ◼   ► I do agree that the alternatives you laid out are there.

00:38:46 ◼   ► Maybe you just lower your costs.

00:38:47 ◼   ► Maybe they had hired too many people.

00:38:49 ◼   ► I have no idea how big their staffing is there.

00:38:53 ◼   ► That's one way to go.

00:38:54 ◼   ► But the other way is to, like I said, make it up in lack of volume.

00:38:58 ◼   ► we make more money by selling to fewer people for a higher price?" And that seems, again,

00:39:04 ◼   ► with total vacuum of knowledge. To me, if I had to make a bet, I would say that that

00:39:08 ◼   ► has a higher chance of failing than not, because it's really, really hard to do that. I mean,

00:39:12 ◼   ► it's hard to do in either direction. It's hard to say, "Hey, if we cut our price in

00:39:15 ◼   ► half, will we get more than double the customers?" Especially in the App Store market, the way

00:39:19 ◼   ► it is, that has worked for many people more often than, "Hey, if we double our price or

00:39:24 ◼   ► triple our price, can we get more than half or a third as many people? I don't know. But

00:39:31 ◼   ► anyway, this is business. Again, I understand why people get angry about it, but that's

00:39:35 ◼   ► how it works. They decide a price and they say we are offering you the server with this

00:39:39 ◼   ► price and then customers decide whether it's worth it for them. If it's not worth it, they

00:39:42 ◼   ► don't buy it, and that is a signal to the company that you need to change something.

00:39:46 ◼   ► And maybe the signal they were getting with the $45 one-time purchase product was people

00:39:50 ◼   ► will buy it, but they don't like upgrades and we can't pay to maintain the software.

00:39:55 ◼   ► So I think we'll revisit this in a year and see how it worked out for them, but I think

00:40:01 ◼   ► going on-market is a viable strategy. I just feel like they might have to go even farther

00:40:04 ◼   ► on market than this. And I agree with everything Marco said about, it's kind of like the things

00:40:10 ◼   ► we talked about with Overcast, like perception-wise that you being cut out of the market in a

00:40:17 ◼   ► way it makes you feel bad like I you know I like the previous deal I was

00:40:23 ◼   ► getting and now they've altered the deal and Casey can finish that reference for

00:40:28 ◼   ► me if he remembers it and they're sad about it and they also think there's no

00:40:34 ◼   ► reason for it but I don't think they're looking at it from the perspective of

00:40:36 ◼   ► Texas banner why should they they're just the customer but from the

00:40:39 ◼   ► perspective of Texas banner is like maybe maybe take Spanish doesn't want you

00:40:42 ◼   ► as a customer anymore it's like what do you mean they don't want me I've been

00:40:45 ◼   ► such a loyal customer, I love their product, why wouldn't they want me anymore? Why can't

00:40:48 ◼   ► they just continue to make the product that I've been using that syncs with Dropbox, why

00:40:51 ◼   ► can't they just keep making that forever?" And the answer is, "Because you don't want

00:40:55 ◼   ► to pay for it again." I'm like, "Oh, I do want to pay for it again, I'll pay you $45

00:40:58 ◼   ► right now." Would you? Suddenly you're ready to pay $45 if they came up with a new version

00:41:02 ◼   ► of Sex Expander and you bought six months ago, you'd be excited to pay $45 for a new

00:41:05 ◼   ► version? I don't know if you would. Anyway, even if you would, maybe there's not enough

00:41:09 ◼   ► other people like you, and so they have to come up with something different. It's not

00:41:13 ◼   ► It's not personal.

00:41:14 ◼   ► It's just business.

00:41:15 ◼   ► I made a passing reference to this earlier, but I think it is important to reiterate that

00:41:20 ◼   ► 1Password changed—well, maybe not changed their model, but augmented their model by

00:41:25 ◼   ► this 1Password for Teams and then 1Password for Families.

00:41:29 ◼   ► And the thing that made me cool with 1Password for Teams and 1Password for Families was it

00:41:35 ◼   ► didn't change the way things were.

00:41:37 ◼   ► So it was not a change as, like I said a second ago, it was an augmentation or an addition.

00:41:44 ◼   ► If one password, hypothetically, had said, "You know what?

00:41:48 ◼   ► If you want to sync between your own devices, leave aside other people, leave aside the

00:41:52 ◼   ► team aspects and the family aspects."

00:41:54 ◼   ► If they had said that, "Hey, if you want to sync your passwords between your devices,

00:41:58 ◼   ► guess what?

00:41:59 ◼   ► You have to sign up for $5 a month," I would be fairly upset because I would feel like

00:42:05 ◼   ► I got hoodwinked.

00:42:06 ◼   ► like it was a bait and switch. And I freaking love 1Password. I consider it like you were,

00:42:11 ◼   ► I think it was you John describing earlier, maybe it was Marco, but it is essential for me to get my

00:42:16 ◼   ► my life done. Not even my work, but my life. I love 1Password. I would probably pay $5 a month for

00:42:23 ◼   ► this hypothetical sync only service, but I would be pretty frustrated with it. And I would perhaps

00:42:30 ◼   ► go from saying, "I freaking love 1Password," to, "Yeah, I like 1Password and I use it."

00:42:36 ◼   ► As it turns out, because they didn't take away what I already had, and additionally

00:42:42 ◼   ► they added this new family feature that's $5 per, I think, per family per month, and

00:42:49 ◼   ► a family is defined as like, I don't know, five or so people, I forget exactly the specifics,

00:42:54 ◼   ► I've signed up for 1Password for Family, and that was actually the impetus I needed to

00:43:00 ◼   ► get Aaron using 1Password as well, which we haven't actually done yet, but it's on our

00:43:03 ◼   ► to-do list for the weekend, is to get Aaron finally using 1Password.

00:43:08 ◼   ► And that to me is the right way to handle this.

00:43:11 ◼   ► But just like you guys said, you know, I'm making all these proclamations in a vacuum

00:43:14 ◼   ► and I don't know what Smile's dealing with, I don't know what they're up against, but

00:43:18 ◼   ► taking away what's already there in that they're saying that they're not going to support Dropbox

00:43:22 ◼   ► and other sync methods, man, it's hard not to feel burned by that.

00:43:28 ◼   ► Even if you're sympathetic to them, it's hard not to feel burned.

00:43:32 ◼   ► You wonder if it's intentional.

00:43:34 ◼   ► We'll see in the coming days if they change course.

00:43:36 ◼   ► It could have been like what OnePassword did was essentially expanded their market.

00:43:39 ◼   ► Like they said, we have all these customers, they use our product.

00:43:42 ◼   ► We think some of these customers would be willing to pay more because it is really important

00:43:47 ◼   ► to them.

00:43:48 ◼   ► So if we give them this one extra feature, this family sinking or whatever, we're going

00:43:51 ◼   ► to leave all the existing customers with the product they have.

00:43:53 ◼   ► It's the same product.

00:43:54 ◼   ► We're not excluding them.

00:43:56 ◼   ► We just want to expand the market with this new little bump in our little, you know, the

00:43:59 ◼   ► blob that is the market, put another little bump that's, and these people are willing

00:44:02 ◼   ► to pay five bucks a month.

00:44:03 ◼   ► Everyone else keeps what they've got, but we can, we can extract more monies from our

00:44:07 ◼   ► customers for a certain subset of the customers by giving them a little bit more and charging

00:44:11 ◼   ► them a little bit more.

00:44:12 ◼   ► It totally, if that's what TechSpender was trying to do, it doesn't seem like they did

00:44:16 ◼   ► it well because what they did instead was took the blob that is their market, sliced

00:44:20 ◼   ► off most of it, and then the remaining part is the people who are willing to pay $50 a

00:44:25 ◼   ► year, right? If that's not what they intended, then you'll see

00:44:29 ◼   ► scrambling a week from now, oh, we've changed our mind. And in

00:44:31 ◼   ► fact, you can use text expand or sync with text expand or sync

00:44:34 ◼   ► with Dropbox syncing, or you can use text expand or sync with no

00:44:36 ◼   ► syncing for the old price or whatever, like, we'll see, like,

00:44:39 ◼   ► I'm basing my, you know, looking at what this move as if this is

00:44:44 ◼   ► intentional, because we all see the effects that it's having, I

00:44:46 ◼   ► think they see the effects that it's having. If that isn't

00:44:48 ◼   ► intentional, I think they will backpedal and say, we need to

00:44:52 ◼   ► what we really meant to do was actually just get more money

00:44:55 ◼   ► from the people who use it a lot, but not lose all those other customers because we

00:44:58 ◼   ► totally need them.

00:44:59 ◼   ► So we'll see if they change their mind based on the first week or two of sales and returns

00:45:04 ◼   ► and complaints about it.

00:45:06 ◼   ► But I think both of those strategies are viable.

00:45:10 ◼   ► One of them makes Casey sad.

00:45:11 ◼   ► Obviously if you're in the market that gets cut off by that strategy, it can be not good

00:45:15 ◼   ► for you.

00:45:16 ◼   ► But in the end, from the company's perspective, it doesn't matter, except for perhaps long-term

00:45:21 ◼   ► brand loyalty decisions.

00:45:22 ◼   ► But again if you're going towards the high-end or enterprise the enterprise people may love you even more if you add all these super power

00:45:28 ◼   ► User features like hell yeah, I'll pay $50 a year. You know this is how I make my living sure you know sign me up

00:45:33 ◼   ► And especially if they they realize the after year that this means new versions come out regularly bugs get fixed. You know better or whatever

00:45:40 ◼   ► But yeah, but as with all things you can't assume

00:45:44 ◼   ► Omniscience on the part of either party here

00:45:48 ◼   ► So it's possible that they just didn't anticipate

00:45:51 ◼   ► the backlash, and I guess we'll find out

00:45:53 ◼   ► in the next week's shows, or the week after.

00:45:56 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

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00:48:29 ◼   ► Thanks a lot.

00:48:30 ◼   ► - This actually segues into our next topic,

00:48:36 ◼   ► slightly unbeknownst to Marco,

00:48:37 ◼   ► although he's probably the one who wrote it there.

00:48:40 ◼   ► 'Cause I think this is a good time to bring this up,

00:48:42 ◼   ► what with me having my iPod stolen out of my car.

00:48:44 ◼   ► By the way, speaking of my iPod being stolen out of my car,

00:48:46 ◼   ► one thing I forgot to add when you guys were talking about

00:48:48 ◼   ► your various ways of trying to play

00:48:50 ◼   ► folders sold of MP3s like it's 1994 in your cars.

00:48:54 ◼   ► Why do neither one of you do what I had been doing,

00:48:59 ◼   ► which is take one of the many old iOS devices

00:49:02 ◼   ► that is no longer useful for anything

00:49:04 ◼   ► and connect it through USB to your car

00:49:07 ◼   ► and just leave it in there permanently,

00:49:08 ◼   ► aside from the fact that you're afraid

00:49:09 ◼   ► it's gonna get stolen out of your car.

00:49:10 ◼   ► Setting that aside, if you do that,

00:49:13 ◼   ► you will get all the things you talked about,

00:49:15 ◼   ► like a real interface to playing things,

00:49:18 ◼   ► hopefully reasonable album art,

00:49:19 ◼   ► not worry about it accidentally doing things alphabetical.

00:49:23 ◼   ► If you park your car close enough to get wifi

00:49:25 ◼   ► from your house and your thing has iTunes

00:49:28 ◼   ► in the cloud thing synced,

00:49:29 ◼   ► you won't even have to bring the thing back in

00:49:31 ◼   ► to put your new music on it.

00:49:32 ◼   ► Your new music will just sync to it silently

00:49:34 ◼   ► when you drive your car home

00:49:36 ◼   ► and just let it sit there, right?

00:49:37 ◼   ► That seems like it would solve all of your problems,

00:49:39 ◼   ► assuming you had a place to store

00:49:41 ◼   ► the connected iPod and all that.

00:49:43 ◼   ► Is that not something you guys are interested in?

00:49:46 ◼   ► - No, definitely not.

00:49:46 ◼   ► I don't want another thing to manage.

00:49:48 ◼   ► I would either use the stuff that's built into the car,

00:49:51 ◼   ► like I was describing earlier,

00:49:52 ◼   ► because I actually don't have a problem with it.

00:49:55 ◼   ► Or if it's not already in my car,

00:49:57 ◼   ► then I would just use Bluetooth on my phone.

00:49:59 ◼   ► - But what are you managing though?

00:50:00 ◼   ► 'Cause like literally my thing is just,

00:50:02 ◼   ► it's plugged in in a closed compartment

00:50:04 ◼   ► and I never even see it.

00:50:05 ◼   ► And like I said, now that I park within the wifi range

00:50:08 ◼   ► of my house, it gets my new music on.

00:50:10 ◼   ► If I buy a new song, that song is on my car,

00:50:13 ◼   ► like the next time I drive it.

00:50:15 ◼   ► There's nothing to manage.

00:50:16 ◼   ► You don't need to recharge it

00:50:17 ◼   ► because it charges when you drive your car.

00:50:19 ◼   ► I get all the features that you would expect,

00:50:21 ◼   ► like on my onscreen display showing the artist,

00:50:23 ◼   ► the album, the whole thing.

00:50:23 ◼   ► It even shows Unicode characters and the titles correctly.

00:50:26 ◼   ► Like everything just works.

00:50:28 ◼   ► And this is a Honda Accord.

00:50:29 ◼   ► I'm assuming all your fancy BMWs and Teslas

00:50:31 ◼   ► have the same ability.

00:50:32 ◼   ► The only downside is you gotta have an iOS device

00:50:35 ◼   ► which is way larger than the little tiny thumb drive

00:50:37 ◼   ► that Marco has.

00:50:38 ◼   ► - So it turns out Tesla actually does not support

00:50:41 ◼   ► iPod USB interfaces.

00:50:43 ◼   ► - Oh.

00:50:44 ◼   ► - Like they only support either USB folders,

00:50:46 ◼   ► like USB file browsing, or Bluetooth.

00:50:49 ◼   ► - They're preemptively spiting the Apple car.

00:50:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:50:52 ◼   ► - Maybe.

00:50:53 ◼   ► - Gonna compete with us, Apple?

00:50:54 ◼   ► Rumored to be possibly in the future competing with us?

00:50:57 ◼   ► No USB support for iPods.

00:50:59 ◼   ► - I mean it also could be possible that like,

00:51:01 ◼   ► either A, they haven't gotten to it yet

00:51:02 ◼   ► because they're a little bit new,

00:51:04 ◼   ► or B, they just probably think the future is Bluetooth anyway

00:51:09 ◼   ► for that kind of role for most people.

00:51:11 ◼   ► So it probably isn't worth the trouble

00:51:13 ◼   ► to build that into a car that you started

00:51:16 ◼   ► the media system platform only a few years ago.

00:51:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, you could do also the same thing.

00:51:20 ◼   ► My iPod that I have plugged in with the USB interface,

00:51:23 ◼   ► I could leave it plugged into USB just for charging purposes

00:51:26 ◼   ► and then have that connect through Bluetooth.

00:51:28 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:51:28 ◼   ► - Like, anyway.

00:51:29 ◼   ► Anyway, sorry for that derail.

00:51:30 ◼   ► The topic that's related to the Ring doorbell is,

00:51:34 ◼   ► quoting the show notes here, presumably written by Marco,

00:51:37 ◼   ► "Marco's recent experiments in home automation,

00:51:39 ◼   ► "surveillance, and general madness."

00:51:41 ◼   ► I'm adding that last part.

00:51:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, this was my grab bag of topics.

00:51:44 ◼   ► If we ran out of time or ran out of topics today

00:51:47 ◼   ► and we wanted something else.

00:51:48 ◼   ► And you moved it up.

00:51:49 ◼   ► - We didn't run out.

00:51:50 ◼   ► I actually, I shuffled it upwards

00:51:51 ◼   ► because I see your tweets about like,

00:51:54 ◼   ► does anyone, can anyone tell me how to find

00:51:57 ◼   ► a replacement for three-way light switches

00:52:00 ◼   ► that will respond to voice commands to my Amazon Echo,

00:52:03 ◼   ► and it sounds like you're really going off the deep end,

00:52:05 ◼   ► as is your way, so I actually do wanna hear about it.

00:52:08 ◼   ► - Okay, so let me preface this by saying,

00:52:11 ◼   ► and I think I said this last week,

00:52:12 ◼   ► that earlier in, I forget when it was,

00:52:17 ◼   ► whether it was our Thanksgiving episode

00:52:18 ◼   ► or whether it was after the new year,

00:52:19 ◼   ► sometime we were in a positive mood,

00:52:23 ◼   ► and we were expressing what we were gonna do

00:52:25 ◼   ► in the future or this year or whatever,

00:52:26 ◼   ► and one of the things I said was,

00:52:29 ◼   ► Because I had been having trouble getting excited

00:52:33 ◼   ► about a lot of stuff that's coming out of Apple recently,

00:52:35 ◼   ► I decided that I wanted to start exploring more

00:52:40 ◼   ► outside of the Apple ecosystem, just other stuff,

00:52:42 ◼   ► other platforms, other exciting things happening

00:52:45 ◼   ► in technology that aren't from Apple.

00:52:47 ◼   ► And so the Tesla obviously was contributing

00:52:50 ◼   ► to that quite a bit.

00:52:52 ◼   ► But also, I've recently decided, you know what,

00:52:54 ◼   ► let me explore past Siri, and everyone's saying

00:52:59 ◼   ► the Amazon Echo is really good. So you know what, what the heck, I'll try. Our friends

00:53:03 ◼   ► have had one for a while and whenever we're over there I always would think, "You know,

00:53:07 ◼   ► that's kind of really awesome." You know, they just talk to it and it plays good music

00:53:11 ◼   ► and the voice activation was really good and fast and always worked. That's kind of incredible.

00:53:20 ◼   ► I'm going to try to not make a negative about Apple, but just being accustomed to Siri from

00:53:25 ◼   ► Apple, the Amazon Echo by comparison is extremely fast to recognize what you're saying and

00:53:32 ◼   ► can recognize it at a seemingly much higher success rate, for me at least, and in the

00:53:38 ◼   ► environments I've seen. And even in conditions that you would think would be hostile, like

00:53:42 ◼   ► while it's already loudly playing music in a loud room and you are 12 feet away, it

00:53:48 ◼   ► can still recognize you most of the time. So that it's actually surprisingly good.

00:53:54 ◼   ► if you've only ever used Siri as your voice control baseline,

00:53:59 ◼   ► it really is surprisingly good.

00:54:01 ◼   ► I would say in many ways substantially better.

00:54:04 ◼   ► Probably not every way, but in the ways that I use it for,

00:54:06 ◼   ► it is substantially better.

00:54:08 ◼   ► Anyway, so we got an Echo, I decided,

00:54:10 ◼   ► what else can this thing do?

00:54:11 ◼   ► And it turns out, similar to what I discovered

00:54:14 ◼   ► with USB sticks, when you're not in the Apple ecosystem,

00:54:18 ◼   ► nothing costs any money.

00:54:21 ◼   ► You can get a ridiculous number of smart objects

00:54:24 ◼   ► and things with ports or wifi in them for almost nothing.

00:54:29 ◼   ► So for instance, one of the things we just got

00:54:30 ◼   ► was Amazon Dash Buttons, which it seems ridiculous.

00:54:35 ◼   ► For $5, which becomes a $5 credit once you use it,

00:54:38 ◼   ► so for basically free, you get a little button

00:54:42 ◼   ► the size of a key chain with a sticky back

00:54:44 ◼   ► and it comes assigned to a certain brand's products.

00:54:48 ◼   ► things like Charmin for your toilet paper,

00:54:52 ◼   ► or Bounty for paper towels, or razor blades, or whatever.

00:54:56 ◼   ► There's just a button on it, there's no screen,

00:54:57 ◼   ► it's just a single button.

00:54:58 ◼   ► You stick this wherever you store these household objects,

00:55:01 ◼   ► and when you are running low, you hit the button.

00:55:04 ◼   ► It automatically orders more of that thing,

00:55:07 ◼   ► whatever you've assigned it to order from that brand,

00:55:09 ◼   ► from Amazon, and it comes in a couple days.

00:55:12 ◼   ► So, I have one for paper towels,

00:55:15 ◼   ► and I have one for toilet paper.

00:55:16 ◼   ► - Wait, now let me interrupt you right there.

00:55:18 ◼   ► Genuine genuine question. Yes, if there are like 84 different flavors of Charmin so to speak do you like specify?

00:55:25 ◼   ► What one it is that you want?

00:55:27 ◼   ► Yes, and you can you can go on the site and you can it with each - button

00:55:31 ◼   ► There's like a little green thing. It looks like a banner ad and so you miss it the first few times

00:55:35 ◼   ► But it's not a banner

00:55:37 ◼   ► there's a little like green banner right below the item description on each - button and it says like, you know view what this button can

00:55:43 ◼   ► order and you can click on that and that'll show you before you even buy it.

00:55:46 ◼   ► You can see like make sure that it can order the thing you know the version of

00:55:49 ◼   ► it that you use and then you set and when you set it up it's kind of crazy so

00:55:53 ◼   ► it's it's this little button thing with no screen and with some kind of you know

00:55:59 ◼   ► long-lasting battery and it's a permanently installed I think battery

00:56:02 ◼   ► it's a Wi-Fi device so it has to be pretty hefty like lithium something

00:56:05 ◼   ► rather battery in there. Anyway how do you pair the thing? Normally these things

00:56:09 ◼   ► things, many of these smart objects, they will create their own little ad hoc Wi-Fi

00:56:14 ◼   ► network. And so you launch the app on your phone, you join your phone to this stupid

00:56:17 ◼   ► thing's Wi-Fi network, and then it auto-configs with the app. The app tells it your real Wi-Fi

00:56:23 ◼   ► network's password, and then you click back over and it sucks. Huge, clunky process that

00:56:28 ◼   ► I hope Apple gives some kind of method of improving with multi-mode Wi-Fi. I'm pretty

00:56:35 ◼   ► I'm not sure if things like that exist.

00:56:36 ◼   ► Anyway, those kind of like temporary ad hoc

00:56:39 ◼   ► Wi-Fi networks don't take over your main Wi-Fi,

00:56:41 ◼   ► whatever those are called, that camera things can use to.

00:56:44 ◼   ► Anyway, please, Apple, add those things.

00:56:46 ◼   ► Anyway, so the way that the Amazon dash buttons work

00:56:51 ◼   ► is you place the button next to your phone

00:56:54 ◼   ► and the phone emits static pulses out of the speaker

00:56:59 ◼   ► via audio and the dash button has a little microphone in it

00:57:02 ◼   ► and it just communicates via these static pulses

00:57:04 ◼   ► the wifi information to the dash button.

00:57:07 ◼   ► And then it's just like, all right, after a few seconds,

00:57:09 ◼   ► you hear this little weird static, and then it's like,

00:57:10 ◼   ► all right, done.

00:57:11 ◼   ► Just so cool.

00:57:12 ◼   ► And all this was for $5.

00:57:14 ◼   ► I know this is all just shameless consumerism

00:57:17 ◼   ► to honor the god of Amazon and make you buy

00:57:20 ◼   ► even more things from Amazon, but that is still remarkable

00:57:23 ◼   ► from a technology perspective that that works

00:57:24 ◼   ► and costs nothing.

00:57:26 ◼   ► That's kind of incredible.

00:57:27 ◼   ► - I've really looked into recently,

00:57:31 ◼   ► and I think this is just fascinating,

00:57:33 ◼   ► Somebody has reverse engineered how all of this works, and there's actually a node module

00:57:41 ◼   ► called Node Dash Button that you can use to have a Dash Button instead of calling, phoning

00:57:47 ◼   ► home to Amazon, it just tells a node server running on the local network the button has

00:57:53 ◼   ► been pressed.

00:57:54 ◼   ► And so what I was really looking into, but I couldn't quite make it work, just the other

00:57:58 ◼   ► side of it worked. I really wanted to buy a dash button and then stick it on like the bedside table

00:58:05 ◼   ► and then have that call down to my internet connected garage door opener, my chamberlain myq,

00:58:12 ◼   ► and if the garage door is open close it. So that my bedtime routine would just be to smack this

00:58:18 ◼   ► dash button that has nothing to do with Amazon anymore and if the garage door is open it'll

00:58:22 ◼   ► automatically close. I could never get it to work but I think it's really cool and fascinating that

00:58:27 ◼   ► people took this $5 device and are now hacking it such that it can be used for something

00:58:32 ◼   ► entirely different.

00:58:34 ◼   ► And I just think that's fascinating and super cool.

00:58:36 ◼   ► And it's for reasons like this that I really want to start figuring out how the hell Raspberry

00:58:41 ◼   ► Pis work and what that's all about.

00:58:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:44 ◼   ► My question about these buttons is, the reason I—when they came out with them, it was like,

00:58:48 ◼   ► "Is this like a joke?

00:58:49 ◼   ► Is this like an April Fool's joke?"

00:58:50 ◼   ► You know, they came out with it last year or the year before or whatever.

00:58:53 ◼   ► It just seems so ridiculous that you're gonna have talk about a you know, Alton Brown

00:58:57 ◼   ► Answering unitasker you're you can't have a big shiny red button in your house and all it does is order paper towels

00:59:03 ◼   ► My fear and why I'd never want to have that thing and it's like I'm the same type person who was always afraid to enable

00:59:08 ◼   ► one-click ordering is I

00:59:09 ◼   ► Know that I and everyone else in my house would forget when we have hit that stupid button who knows

00:59:14 ◼   ► Oh, we need paper towels and I would click the button

00:59:16 ◼   ► But I have no idea if someone who came into the same room and came to the same conclusion an hour ago

00:59:21 ◼   ► And so now we have two orders of paper towels coming.

00:59:23 ◼   ► I know someone else would have, you know.

00:59:24 ◼   ► - It turns out they thought of that.

00:59:25 ◼   ► Once somebody hits it, it doesn't accept an order

00:59:29 ◼   ► for another one until that one has been delivered.

00:59:32 ◼   ► - All right, that's pretty good.

00:59:33 ◼   ► I mean, that's what I was thinking, like,

00:59:34 ◼   ► well, rate limiting and debouncing,

00:59:36 ◼   ► and here's the other secret thing of like,

00:59:39 ◼   ► if it doesn't order it until it's delivered,

00:59:41 ◼   ► but you have small children in your house,

00:59:42 ◼   ► you figure out how these buttons work,

00:59:44 ◼   ► they wait for a package to be delivered,

00:59:45 ◼   ► and then they go around the house

00:59:46 ◼   ► and press every other button.

00:59:47 ◼   ► Like, just, you know, 'cause essentially it's allowing,

00:59:49 ◼   ► It is allowing anyone with physical access to your home

00:59:52 ◼   ► to spend your money.

00:59:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it's not like ordering an iPod.

00:59:56 ◼   ► Like it's, you know, well the iPods are pretty cheap.

00:59:57 ◼   ► It's a bad example, but--

00:59:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, they just wait for the iPod buttons,

01:00:00 ◼   ► you know, the iPhone button.

01:00:01 ◼   ► I mean, they'll put it in your house and in Gruber's house,

01:00:04 ◼   ► and as soon as the keynote's over,

01:00:05 ◼   ► you just slam your fist down on the button

01:00:06 ◼   ► and it orders one for you.

01:00:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:00:10 ◼   ► - That's the new method of trolling

01:00:11 ◼   ► is you go visit somebody's house,

01:00:12 ◼   ► and like when they're like, you know, in the other room,

01:00:14 ◼   ► you go pushing all their buttons

01:00:15 ◼   ► to order all their paper towels.

01:00:17 ◼   ► - So these dash buttons,

01:00:18 ◼   ► - So these are entirely independent of the Echo

01:00:20 ◼   ► other than the fact that they're all made by Amazon

01:00:21 ◼   ► and hook up to your Amazon account, right?

01:00:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:00:23 ◼   ► So that was just totally an aside that, you know,

01:00:25 ◼   ► I'm now like giving Amazon the benefit of the doubt

01:00:27 ◼   ► and trying some of the stuff that they're doing

01:00:29 ◼   ► that's all crazy.

01:00:30 ◼   ► And after the Fire phone and after some of the really

01:00:34 ◼   ► crappy Fire tablets, it's easy to write off

01:00:37 ◼   ► Amazon's hardware efforts, but they're getting better.

01:00:40 ◼   ► And they're kind of getting remarkably better

01:00:42 ◼   ► at some things.

01:00:43 ◼   ► and I think writing them off completely is not wise

01:00:48 ◼   ► because they are gonna keep making a lot of duds, I'm sure,

01:00:51 ◼   ► but not everything they make is a dud,

01:00:53 ◼   ► and some of those they make is actually pretty cool.

01:00:55 ◼   ► Anyway, so yeah, so I have some

01:00:59 ◼   ► Belkin WeMo switched outlets

01:01:02 ◼   ► that I'm using to switch some lamps.

01:01:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, can you explain that to me?

01:01:05 ◼   ► Because I understood that you were trying to make it

01:01:07 ◼   ► so you could say words into the air and cause lights to go on

01:01:10 ◼   ► but I don't know anything that connects those things

01:01:12 ◼   ► other than the Amazon Echo is listening to you

01:01:14 ◼   ► and then presumably what happens after that?

01:01:16 ◼   ► The Amazon Echo hears you and what does it do?

01:01:18 ◼   ► What does it communicate with?

01:01:19 ◼   ► Is this like an open standard?

01:01:21 ◼   ► Are they all Amazon products?

01:01:22 ◼   ► I don't understand this world.

01:01:23 ◼   ► - Honestly, I don't know that much about it.

01:01:25 ◼   ► I haven't looked that much into it.

01:01:27 ◼   ► You know, you go on Amazon's site and it tells you

01:01:28 ◼   ► like here's all the things that work with the Echo.

01:01:32 ◼   ► Some of the things require like a smart devices hub.

01:01:34 ◼   ► Some of them don't.

01:01:35 ◼   ► I've been only getting the ones that don't so far

01:01:37 ◼   ► just 'cause why not?

01:01:38 ◼   ► I bought a couple of Wemo switched outlets

01:01:40 ◼   ► because the better way to do lighting is,

01:01:43 ◼   ► if you can swing it, to use Wi-Fi light bulbs,

01:01:46 ◼   ► like LIFX or Philips Hue, that kind of thing.

01:01:49 ◼   ► I haven't used any of those yet

01:01:50 ◼   ► because the LIFX bulbs are too large

01:01:53 ◼   ► to fit into the lamps in question,

01:01:56 ◼   ► and the Philips Hue bulbs are not bright enough.

01:01:59 ◼   ► I like nice bright bulbs, and even LEDs,

01:02:01 ◼   ► I like to get the ones that are like the 100 watt equivalent

01:02:04 ◼   ► rather than the more common ones

01:02:05 ◼   ► that are more like a 60 watt equivalent.

01:02:07 ◼   ► So they're just not bright enough.

01:02:08 ◼   ► Anyway, so the way I do this is I keep my fancy bulbs

01:02:12 ◼   ► and I just switch the outlets the Lancer plugged into.

01:02:14 ◼   ► Again, I don't know how any other system works,

01:02:15 ◼   ► but the way Belkin's Wemo thing works

01:02:18 ◼   ► is all just local Wi-Fi.

01:02:20 ◼   ► And there's probably a way to connect to a web service.

01:02:22 ◼   ► I don't really care.

01:02:23 ◼   ► - There is.

01:02:24 ◼   ► - But right now I'm doing it on local Wi-Fi only.

01:02:26 ◼   ► So you use their app to configure the things,

01:02:29 ◼   ► using the stupid join the Wi-Fi network thing.

01:02:31 ◼   ► But then once it's configured,

01:02:33 ◼   ► the Echo knows how to talk to it directly.

01:02:34 ◼   ► So the Echo just has support for whatever local protocol

01:02:37 ◼   ► that uses over the local wifi network.

01:02:39 ◼   ► And then you go into the Alexa app to configure the Echo,

01:02:42 ◼   ► it shows all your compatible devices

01:02:44 ◼   ► and you can create groups.

01:02:46 ◼   ► So you can say like, Alexa, turn off all lamps.

01:02:48 ◼   ► And it just says, okay, and turns them all off.

01:02:51 ◼   ► And that's it.

01:02:52 ◼   ► Sorry for anybody whose lights I guess turned off.

01:02:54 ◼   ► It's really cool.

01:02:55 ◼   ► Like, what's really cool about it is that it's fast enough

01:02:59 ◼   ► and it works enough of the time

01:03:01 ◼   ► that it's actually convenient.

01:03:03 ◼   ► So part of my nightly routine,

01:03:04 ◼   ► you know, you're saying your garage

01:03:05 ◼   ► like trying to like eliminate steps from your nightly routine. Part of my nightly routine

01:03:10 ◼   ► is you know we don't watch TV for the night or whatever so I go around locking all the

01:03:14 ◼   ► doors, turning off all the lights, taking hops out you know one last time in the back

01:03:19 ◼   ► yard and more lights go on and off, go on and off, and then come in lock, lock, lock.

01:03:23 ◼   ► Any step I can remove from that process will save me like 15 seconds a day. And yeah, it's

01:03:28 ◼   ► stupid to be talking about 15 seconds a day. You know this is obviously a position of like

01:03:32 ◼   ► like first world privilege here, but that's convenient.

01:03:35 ◼   ► And when everything is so cheap,

01:03:37 ◼   ► it's actually kind of compelling.

01:03:39 ◼   ► I've effectively cut 30 seconds out of my nightly routine

01:03:43 ◼   ► just by automating some light switches

01:03:44 ◼   ► and being able to tell the Echo,

01:03:46 ◼   ► turn everything off at once.

01:03:48 ◼   ► - Will the Amazon Echo tell my children 8,000 times

01:03:50 ◼   ► to brush their teeth and get their pajamas on?

01:03:53 ◼   ► 'Cause maybe I'll just say, "Amazon Echo,

01:03:55 ◼   ► "do the bedtime routine."

01:03:56 ◼   ► And then Amazon Echo will say,

01:03:58 ◼   ► "Do you guys have your pajamas on yet?

01:03:59 ◼   ► "Or have you brushed your teeth?

01:04:01 ◼   ► Have you brushed your teeth yet?

01:04:02 ◼   ► Have you had your pajamas on?

01:04:03 ◼   ► And you find them in their room an hour later

01:04:05 ◼   ► playing with Lego without their pajamas on?

01:04:06 ◼   ► Have you put your pajamas on?

01:04:07 ◼   ► Have you brushed your teeth?

01:04:09 ◼   ► That's the service I need.

01:04:10 ◼   ► - You could probably bring that up with,

01:04:11 ◼   ► you know, I have TCT or something.

01:04:13 ◼   ► I bet you could.

01:04:14 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:04:14 ◼   ► I bet there's something like that.

01:04:15 ◼   ► I mean, the thing is, like, and this is why

01:04:18 ◼   ► I really am enjoying the Echo and why I do worry

01:04:22 ◼   ► for Apple's presence or lack thereof in this market.

01:04:25 ◼   ► In order to make this market succeed, you know,

01:04:27 ◼   ► in order, like, what makes the Echo so good

01:04:30 ◼   ► is a combination of having what seems to be a pretty awesome, solid, big data web service

01:04:37 ◼   ► behind it, which is not something Apple's good at.

01:04:40 ◼   ► Apple can do things like keeping notifications running, keeping iMessage running.

01:04:44 ◼   ► When it comes to a kind of web service that uses big data and AI type stuff, Apple is

01:04:50 ◼   ► not as competitive as other entrants in the market.

01:04:54 ◼   ► And it seems, maybe that will change over time, but they're just not there and they've

01:04:58 ◼   ► they've been not there for so long after it began to matter, that it does seem like

01:05:03 ◼   ► they're not capable of it, or at least they don't prioritize it.

01:05:06 ◼   ► It seems like this is the kind of problem that other companies, Google, Facebook, Amazon,

01:05:12 ◼   ► just do big data services better than Apple does. And what also makes this so powerful

01:05:18 ◼   ► is all this integration with third-party stuff. And so Apple has HomeKit, but HomeKit is a

01:05:23 ◼   ► much less successful program, I think, than what it needs to be. Whereas the Echo doesn't

01:05:29 ◼   ► really care. The Echo is kind of all inclusive. It'll work with everything. They talked briefly

01:05:33 ◼   ► about this on Connected this week on Relay. They were saying that there was some kind

01:05:38 ◼   ► of hardware requirement for HomeKit devices and that Belkin's kind of balking at it.

01:05:43 ◼   ► Amazon doesn't really care. Amazon works with everybody. Siri launched in 2011. It

01:05:47 ◼   ► 2016, there is still no Siri API. There is no way for third parties to integrate with

01:05:54 ◼   ► Siri at all. The Echo comes out like not that long ago, what, like a year ago, last June

01:05:59 ◼   ► or something, so almost a year ago. It is already full of third party integrations.

01:06:05 ◼   ► There's an API for a lot of what it can do, not everything. There's still no music API,

01:06:09 ◼   ► which means I can't make overcast for it yet, but I'm hoping there will be soon. So it has,

01:06:14 ◼   ► But it has tons of integration

01:06:17 ◼   ► with all these third-party things.

01:06:18 ◼   ► Anybody can go in and make a speech response API to it.

01:06:22 ◼   ► And it integrates with all this different hardware

01:06:24 ◼   ► from all these different vendors.

01:06:26 ◼   ► Amazon, I feel like, they're in a better position

01:06:30 ◼   ► than Apple is to really take over this kind of thing,

01:06:34 ◼   ► 'cause this is so dependent on both

01:06:36 ◼   ► the big data web service

01:06:38 ◼   ► and also tons of third-party integration.

01:06:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, Apple had the foresight to purchase

01:06:44 ◼   ► Siri research project company or whatever they were like that they that they understood very early on

01:06:48 ◼   ► that something like this could add value to their products and you know i forgot when they bought

01:06:54 ◼   ► them but obviously it was before it was actually released to the public when released to the public

01:06:57 ◼   ► with the exception of google like they i don't know if they were in the lead next to google but

01:07:03 ◼   ► they were at the very least seemingly neck and neck with google in terms of we recognize this

01:07:07 ◼   ► is going to be important thing for the future and maybe our thing is kind of crappy when it launches

01:07:10 ◼   ► because Siri certainly was. But at least, you know, at least we're not ignoring this market.

01:07:16 ◼   ► Like, in fact, we're out ahead of a lot of our competitors. But like Marco said,

01:07:19 ◼   ► like, and then what happened? It was like the Mac Pro all over again. Well, we'll make Siri better,

01:07:24 ◼   ► and Siri certainly hasn't gotten better. But there's no reason Apple couldn't have done

01:07:29 ◼   ► something like Amazon Echo years and years ago, because they had like their and Google

01:07:33 ◼   ► has been expanding Google now and, you know, to make it much more sophisticated and complicated

01:07:39 ◼   ► in Siri and we even have like just random apps like this third-party hound application that

01:07:43 ◼   ► Merlin was raving about a little while ago like like lots of other companies are you know it's

01:07:48 ◼   ► not early days anymore everyone is like oh some kind of intelligent agency you can talk to is

01:07:52 ◼   ► basically like speed recognition has kind of crossed a vaguely good enough barrier and then

01:07:57 ◼   ► understanding of speech and breaking it down into meaning and figuring out what you mean not just

01:08:00 ◼   ► like translating into text and doing a google search or whatever you know that's getting more

01:08:04 ◼   ► sophisticated and it just takes a little bit more stuff to put it together into ways that allow like

01:08:10 ◼   ► the community essentially the community of like nerds and hackers to come up with more uses for

01:08:14 ◼   ► this thing so like that was on echo and all that stuff definitely seems like much more you know

01:08:18 ◼   ► nerd uh you know hacker friendly if someone who wants to just toy with it and figure out what

01:08:23 ◼   ► kind of cool things to do with it i'm like sure whatever build whatever on you want it's a pretty

01:08:27 ◼   ► open protocol you can reverse engineer it like just going up because they don't know like you

01:08:31 ◼   ► their approach is like, let's do stuff

01:08:32 ◼   ► and see what sticks, right?

01:08:34 ◼   ► Apple is just totally absent in this market.

01:08:36 ◼   ► And you could say that makes sense

01:08:37 ◼   ► 'cause Apple doesn't make sort of like tinker products

01:08:39 ◼   ► for people who just wanna hack on things.

01:08:41 ◼   ► And if Apple wanted to have this product,

01:08:43 ◼   ► it would be like, no, no, no,

01:08:44 ◼   ► it has to be beautiful and elegant and integrated

01:08:46 ◼   ► and blah, blah, blah.

01:08:47 ◼   ► But if the end result is they just aren't in the market

01:08:49 ◼   ► at all or know what, they do HomeKit

01:08:51 ◼   ► and they say, we have these strict requirements

01:08:52 ◼   ► 'cause your products must meet these stringent standards

01:08:55 ◼   ► that we as Apple and blah, blah.

01:08:56 ◼   ► In the meantime, Amazon is just like running off with it

01:08:59 ◼   ► and they're gonna wake up one day and say,

01:09:01 ◼   ► you know, we could have had a substantial chunk

01:09:04 ◼   ► of that market and we just waited too long for perfection

01:09:08 ◼   ► and didn't, you know, just start releasing and iterating.

01:09:10 ◼   ► Again, that's not the Apple way to do it,

01:09:12 ◼   ► but I feel like in many other, Siri was like that.

01:09:15 ◼   ► It was like, Siri's not gonna be perfect initially,

01:09:17 ◼   ► but it's important for us to get this out there

01:09:18 ◼   ► because we feel like in the future,

01:09:20 ◼   ► you telling your phone to do something

01:09:22 ◼   ► is a feature that we need to have.

01:09:23 ◼   ► And they were right about that.

01:09:24 ◼   ► Every cell phone you buy now has some feature

01:09:26 ◼   ► where you can speak to it and have it do something,

01:09:28 ◼   ► either while you're driving to tell it to play a song,

01:09:31 ◼   ► or if you're just lazy and don't wanna go find an icon

01:09:33 ◼   ► and tap something, just run a search or whatever.

01:09:35 ◼   ► They all have that, and Apple recognize that.

01:09:38 ◼   ► Not saying they have to be in the Amazon Echo market,

01:09:41 ◼   ► but I'm just thinking like VR,

01:09:42 ◼   ► where we all assume Apple's secretly doing things

01:09:44 ◼   ► behind the scenes, I hope they don't stay secret

01:09:46 ◼   ► for too long either.

01:09:46 ◼   ► If VR turns out not to be a bust,

01:09:48 ◼   ► Apple doesn't wanna just be sitting there waiting

01:09:51 ◼   ► for their perfect entry in that market either.

01:09:53 ◼   ► And I think the watch, as much as we've all talked about it

01:09:57 ◼   ► and had complaints about it,

01:09:58 ◼   ► I think it was important for Apple to do a watch,

01:10:01 ◼   ► even if the watch they did has problems,

01:10:03 ◼   ► rather than saying,

01:10:05 ◼   ► we're not entirely sure we figured out

01:10:06 ◼   ► every aspect of what makes a watch good.

01:10:08 ◼   ► Like the only way you're gonna figure out

01:10:09 ◼   ► is to make a product, right?

01:10:10 ◼   ► That's, and you can't hold back from it.

01:10:13 ◼   ► And hell, if they're making a freaking car,

01:10:15 ◼   ► surely they can make an Amazon Echo type competitor.

01:10:19 ◼   ► And I think they could do a reasonably good job for it,

01:10:22 ◼   ► if only because it would force them,

01:10:23 ◼   ► like Morgan was saying,

01:10:24 ◼   ► force them to work on their back ends more,

01:10:26 ◼   ► as Siri has, like they have all those presentations

01:10:28 ◼   ► of like, look, we're using these open source,

01:10:30 ◼   ► you know, data processing backends for Siri

01:10:33 ◼   ► and we're all impressed by it

01:10:34 ◼   ► and we're talking at conferences,

01:10:35 ◼   ► like Siri forced them to do that

01:10:37 ◼   ► because it wasn't simple enough

01:10:39 ◼   ► to use whatever they were using before.

01:10:40 ◼   ► It was complicated.

01:10:42 ◼   ► What is it, Mesos, someone just wrote in the chat room?

01:10:44 ◼   ► Having a product like Siri

01:10:46 ◼   ► forces them to get better at that stuff.

01:10:48 ◼   ► Having a product like Amazon Echo

01:10:49 ◼   ► would also force them to get better at this type of thing

01:10:52 ◼   ► as HomeKit should be forcing them to as well.

01:10:53 ◼   ► But if they're going into the same situation where they're making very onerous demands

01:10:59 ◼   ► of the third parties and the result is few third party products, they're not winning

01:11:05 ◼   ► that battle.

01:11:06 ◼   ► So it's kind of disappointing.

01:11:09 ◼   ► And with Amazon, their challenge is always going to be, it's easy to do the beginning

01:11:13 ◼   ► part.

01:11:14 ◼   ► We're just very open and we'll try lots of things, lots of people go in.

01:11:16 ◼   ► How do you develop it?

01:11:17 ◼   ► I've been waiting personally.

01:11:18 ◼   ► I don't know if enough people who have an Echo that I've been like, "I'm kind of interested

01:11:21 ◼   ► in that.

01:11:22 ◼   ► would like to wait for the Echo 2 to come out, the one that is nicer and smaller and

01:11:26 ◼   ► faster and more reliable and has more features.

01:11:28 ◼   ► I know they came out with that little tiny one that doesn't have the speakers in it and

01:11:30 ◼   ► stuff like that, but I want the full-fledged Echo version 2.

01:11:34 ◼   ► If Amazon doesn't make an Echo version 2 for three years, they will be again pulling a

01:11:39 ◼   ► Mac Pro.

01:11:40 ◼   ► It's like, "We're right there.

01:11:42 ◼   ► Why did you stop?"

01:11:43 ◼   ► I don't think they will.

01:11:44 ◼   ► I think they will continue to iterate, just look at how many freaking Kindles they've

01:11:47 ◼   ► come out with.

01:11:48 ◼   ► And there's about to be another one.

01:11:49 ◼   ► They're hyping up next week.

01:11:50 ◼   ► I have more kindles to mail you and they're hyping up next week. They're gonna make another one. That's even thinner. Awesome

01:11:56 ◼   ► Yeah, and we have no idea how many kindles they've ever sold because they never put numbers on their graphs

01:12:00 ◼   ► But they continue to plug away at that

01:12:02 ◼   ► So I fully believe that Amazon will continue to plug away at the echo

01:12:05 ◼   ► If only because it just has such a natural synergy of like make it easier for people to give us money

01:12:09 ◼   ► Alright thumbs up. This is a good product for Amazon to make especially since the hardware costs don't seem that big

01:12:14 ◼   ► it's like it's a speaker with Wi-Fi and

01:12:18 ◼   ► a whole bunch of microphones and a little bit of software.

01:12:21 ◼   ► They'll make that up the first year alone

01:12:24 ◼   ► with people accidentally ordering things

01:12:27 ◼   ► by saying Alexa buy paper towels

01:12:29 ◼   ► or whatever your kids are saying

01:12:30 ◼   ► when you're not in the room.

01:12:32 ◼   ► Anyway, I'm enjoying this thing.

01:12:34 ◼   ► It's not perfect.

01:12:35 ◼   ► There's lots of things about it that are not perfect,

01:12:37 ◼   ► but overall, it's really cool.

01:12:40 ◼   ► I would say if you're on the fence,

01:12:42 ◼   ► if you've been tempted by the Echo,

01:12:44 ◼   ► if you're on the fence, just get it.

01:12:46 ◼   ► Just order it now.

01:12:47 ◼   ► You won't regret, if you're already thinking

01:12:50 ◼   ► you might enjoy it, you probably will enjoy it

01:12:52 ◼   ► and you should just try it.

01:12:53 ◼   ► 'Cause it really is quite good.

01:12:55 ◼   ► - What does Adam say to Alexa?

01:12:57 ◼   ► - He gets very mad that she doesn't recognize him.

01:13:00 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:13:01 ◼   ► - He doesn't enunciate well enough that--

01:13:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, basically.

01:13:05 ◼   ► - You ask her to define words, multiply numbers,

01:13:07 ◼   ► play music, convert units of measurement when cooking,

01:13:11 ◼   ► so many things you could do.

01:13:12 ◼   ► - Setting timers by voice while cooking is so useful.

01:13:16 ◼   ► Like that's, it always drew me nuts with the Apple Watch.

01:13:18 ◼   ► It was so slow and somewhat unreliable to do that,

01:13:22 ◼   ► because when that works, it's so useful,

01:13:24 ◼   ► it just doesn't work enough with the Apple stuff.

01:13:26 ◼   ► But it works all the time with the Amazon thing.

01:13:28 ◼   ► - Or you have to push a button, like activate Siri.

01:13:30 ◼   ► And if you don't have Hey Siri enabled,

01:13:32 ◼   ► you basically have to take your dirty cooking fingers

01:13:35 ◼   ► and touch some iOS device and then have it go bloop bloop

01:13:38 ◼   ► and figure out, do I talk before the bloop,

01:13:40 ◼   ► or does it not, do I have to wait for the bloop?

01:13:43 ◼   ► And then you say, set a timer for five minutes,

01:13:45 ◼   ► and then you wait and then you see

01:13:47 ◼   ► and then sometimes it misunderstands you.

01:13:49 ◼   ► It seems to me from all the people I know who have echoes

01:13:51 ◼   ► that you can basically just yell it into the air

01:13:53 ◼   ► with a reasonable expectation that it's gonna get you

01:13:55 ◼   ► and if it doesn't, you yell it again

01:13:56 ◼   ► and you're not ever waiting for a loop.

01:13:59 ◼   ► And the echo plugs in, right?

01:14:00 ◼   ► It's not just battery powered?

01:14:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:14:02 ◼   ► They have one that's battery powered

01:14:03 ◼   ► but the one that's battery powered is the tap

01:14:06 ◼   ► and that one doesn't listen all the time.

01:14:07 ◼   ► You have to push it to listen.

01:14:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's not good.

01:14:10 ◼   ► - So if you wanna be listening all the time,

01:14:11 ◼   ► you need to plug it in.

01:14:12 ◼   ► - Is that the one I'm thinking of?

01:14:14 ◼   ► - I thought the one I was thinking of is like,

01:14:16 ◼   ► is a very short cylinder, it doesn't have,

01:14:18 ◼   ► it doesn't double as basically a Bluetooth speaker.

01:14:20 ◼   ► - That's the Dot.

01:14:22 ◼   ► - Great names, I remember that.

01:14:23 ◼   ► - The Dot does also plug in, and is always listening.

01:14:26 ◼   ► The Dot is basically just like the Big Echo,

01:14:28 ◼   ► but without the Big Speaker, so it sounds substantially

01:14:31 ◼   ► worse if you're playing music through it.

01:14:32 ◼   ► And the Big Echo, like, as a speaker,

01:14:35 ◼   ► it's also a Bluetooth speaker, as a speaker,

01:14:38 ◼   ► it is merely decent, it is not an amazing speaker.

01:14:41 ◼   ► Like I have a Sonos Play One right next to it,

01:14:44 ◼   ► and the Play One is a way better speaker, by a mile.

01:14:48 ◼   ► You know, for like music quality, volume, tone,

01:14:51 ◼   ► you know, the Sonos system has way better speakers.

01:14:54 ◼   ► But the Amazon Echo is really convenient,

01:14:57 ◼   ► and that often wins.

01:14:59 ◼   ► - Cool.

01:15:00 ◼   ► (piano music)

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01:17:39 ◼   ► (guitar strum)

01:17:40 ◼   ► - Starting to think about why Apple,

01:17:42 ◼   ► why Apple is the way it is about third party integrations.

01:17:46 ◼   ► It's not as if Apple says,

01:17:48 ◼   ► "Oh, we have to do everything ourselves."

01:17:49 ◼   ► Almost everything Apple does that has a reasonable place

01:17:52 ◼   ► for third parties to be part of it,

01:17:55 ◼   ► there is a place for it to do it.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Like their APIs, they make APIs for third parties

01:18:00 ◼   ► to write software for their platforms.

01:18:03 ◼   ► They have programs for hardware vendors to make accessories

01:18:06 ◼   ► for all their various hardware devices.

01:18:08 ◼   ► They have, especially for hardware,

01:18:09 ◼   ► they have compliance programs.

01:18:10 ◼   ► You have to fulfill these requirements in terms of size

01:18:13 ◼   ► and voltage and reliability and you know, whatever.

01:18:15 ◼   ► Like all sensible things, especially in the hardware realm,

01:18:19 ◼   ► there's no shortage of accessories for iOS devices.

01:18:21 ◼   ► You can buy, even for the watches, you can buy watch bands,

01:18:24 ◼   ► you can buy cases for your iOS devices,

01:18:25 ◼   ► you can buy docs for them, keyboards,

01:18:28 ◼   ► like everything that Apple sells for its devices,

01:18:31 ◼   ► there's tons of choices for third parties.

01:18:33 ◼   ► So it seems like they know how to foster

01:18:37 ◼   ► an open ecosystem of third parties

01:18:39 ◼   ► selling things for their products.

01:18:42 ◼   ► And in software, on the application front,

01:18:44 ◼   ► they're okay at that.

01:18:46 ◼   ► We've talked about the App Store

01:18:47 ◼   ► and the problems it might have,

01:18:48 ◼   ► but it's not as if people have the impression

01:18:50 ◼   ► that if you buy an Apple product,

01:18:51 ◼   ► you're stuck with Apple software.

01:18:52 ◼   ► They know lots of people make software,

01:18:54 ◼   ► especially for iOS devices.

01:18:56 ◼   ► And most of those people are not Apple that make them.

01:18:58 ◼   ► And yet, for things like this, where they're connecting to web services, or they're sending

01:19:07 ◼   ► you to someone else's store, or they're integrating with someone else's line of products for your

01:19:12 ◼   ► home, that seems to be like Apple's kryptonite.

01:19:17 ◼   ► Anything having to do with the web, certainly.

01:19:19 ◼   ► Anything having to do with money, like giving other people money or becoming their customer.

01:19:24 ◼   ► seem to be areas that Apple is not willing to sort of open the doors and make connections.

01:19:30 ◼   ► And they're precisely the area that you would want anything having to do with home automation

01:19:35 ◼   ► to connect. Because imagine if Apple sold something like this, but you couldn't use it

01:19:40 ◼   ► to buy things from Amazon. Apple's not a retailer of physical goods other than its own products.

01:19:45 ◼   ► Like it's not technically a competitor to Amazon in this way, but can you imagine Apple

01:19:53 ◼   ► selling products and say oh and doing like a keynote demo and say look how easy it is for me

01:19:57 ◼   ► to order new paper towels because they don't care about ordering paper towels. Their customers have

01:20:01 ◼   ► to order paper towels but they're not going to endorse Amazon unless they can extract some money

01:20:06 ◼   ► or some deal from Amazon or whatever. But that would be a perfect third-party integration. If

01:20:12 ◼   ► they made a product like this and made an open API surely a third party would make an integration for

01:20:17 ◼   ► their favorite brand of you know wi-fi enabled light bulbs or their favorite retailer or

01:20:23 ◼   ► or a Raspberry Pi thing, or an integration with the Ring doorbell that we just talked

01:20:26 ◼   ► about or whatever.

01:20:27 ◼   ► Those are the things that you have to do if you're going to try to break open this market

01:20:32 ◼   ► and be like this sort of de facto central speaking into the air in the middle of my

01:20:36 ◼   ► house hub for home automation.

01:20:39 ◼   ► And it just seems like Apple and even companies like Nest still have the idea of like, "No,

01:20:42 ◼   ► we're going to own the whole freaking house and we're going to tightly control our hardware

01:20:45 ◼   ► vendors and they're going to comply to our specifications."

01:20:47 ◼   ► And in the meantime, Amazon using the old PC strategy of just, "We're completely open,

01:20:51 ◼   ► do whatever the hell you want, and we'll just look at it a couple years later and see

01:20:55 ◼   ► what worked so far is the only thing that has had any measure of success, even though

01:21:01 ◼   ► it's a very small measure of success just among nerds who are willing to pay $180 to

01:21:05 ◼   ► have a weird black cylinder of the house so that they can ask how to spell words.

01:21:10 ◼   ► Apple has always had this part of its corporate personality reflected originally by Steve

01:21:16 ◼   ► and by a lot of the people who are still there, I think,

01:21:19 ◼   ► and who are still making important decisions.

01:21:22 ◼   ► They've always had these parts of their personality

01:21:25 ◼   ► where sometimes a little bit too much greed shows

01:21:29 ◼   ► and sometimes a little bit too control freaky shows,

01:21:34 ◼   ► if that makes sense.

01:21:35 ◼   ► And that often holds these things back.

01:21:38 ◼   ► So for instance, the 30% in-app purchase rule on iOS apps,

01:21:44 ◼   ► One of the reasons why you can't buy Amazon books

01:21:48 ◼   ► in the Kindle app for iOS is this rule

01:21:50 ◼   ► that Apple won't let Amazon sell them directly

01:21:52 ◼   ► without using an app purchase,

01:21:54 ◼   ► and if you use an app purchase, Apple takes 30%.

01:21:56 ◼   ► And that is a very, very high commission to take on sales

01:22:01 ◼   ► that you're kind of not much of a part of.

01:22:04 ◼   ► But they do it, and it works, and it's the only game in town

01:22:07 ◼   ► and if you wanna be on this platform,

01:22:08 ◼   ► which really matters a lot,

01:22:09 ◼   ► you basically have to play by those rules

01:22:11 ◼   ► or avoid them like Amazon does

01:22:12 ◼   ► and just don't sell anything there.

01:22:14 ◼   ► And that kind of attitude goes way beyond that rule.

01:22:18 ◼   ► That kind of attitude also extends to things

01:22:20 ◼   ► like 16 gig devices, the price hike in the iPad cases.

01:22:25 ◼   ► Apple has some greed there.

01:22:28 ◼   ► And depending on our discussion earlier

01:22:32 ◼   ► about whether you consider that offensive or not,

01:22:35 ◼   ► or whether it's just business,

01:22:37 ◼   ► but they do oftentimes prioritize profitability of things

01:22:42 ◼   ► over making everyone else happy.

01:22:45 ◼   ► And that is often good business,

01:22:46 ◼   ► so I can't really fault them for that.

01:22:48 ◼   ► But it does hold back certain kinds of advancements

01:22:50 ◼   ► from the products.

01:22:51 ◼   ► - Or they're going for an ideal.

01:22:53 ◼   ► Like sometimes they have a vision in their mind

01:22:55 ◼   ► of how it's gonna look, and third parties

01:22:56 ◼   ► will just screw up that vision with the crap that they add.

01:22:59 ◼   ► - Right, and so that's the other side of it,

01:23:00 ◼   ► is the controlling part of it,

01:23:02 ◼   ► where Apple's very opinionated in a lot of ways,

01:23:06 ◼   ► and very controlling.

01:23:08 ◼   ► So for instance, one of the more recent dust ups

01:23:13 ◼   ► around Apple's decision making was in the early betas

01:23:17 ◼   ► of 9.3, they stopped letting the Apple Pencil

01:23:21 ◼   ► navigate the entire iPad interface.

01:23:23 ◼   ► So the Apple Pencil came out in November or whatever

01:23:25 ◼   ► with the iPad Pro, it could navigate the whole interface

01:23:27 ◼   ► for its first few months, and then in the early betas

01:23:31 ◼   ► of 9.3, they removed that ability.

01:23:34 ◼   ► And it was from, the official PR statement on it

01:23:37 ◼   ► was kind of BSE, what we've heard from people who are better informed on the matter is that

01:23:43 ◼   ► this was actually an intentional decision because it was not being used the way they

01:23:46 ◼   ► thought it should be used. They didn't want it to be used to navigate the whole interface.

01:23:49 ◼   ► They wanted it to only be used for like artistic purposes or drawing or whatever. It was just

01:23:55 ◼   ► being used in a way that Apple didn't foresee and didn't think was proper but wasn't really

01:24:00 ◼   ► hurting anything. And Apple almost removed that ability. And it was only, I think, only

01:24:06 ◼   ► by a decent amount of public shaming and outcry over this during the beta period that reversed

01:24:14 ◼   ► their decision. They were being a little too overreaching in their control, you know, their

01:24:19 ◼   ► desire for control.

01:24:20 ◼   ► I don't know if that's so true though, because there was no obvious reason for them to get

01:24:25 ◼   ► rid of it today, but what if something's coming in the future that would conflict with this

01:24:30 ◼   ► the pencil is equivalent to your finger approach that Mike and Gray love so much.

01:24:36 ◼   ► You know, it certainly seems to me like they should have some sort of happy medium,

01:24:41 ◼   ► like there should be a switchboard or something like that, but I think it's a little bit bold of

01:24:49 ◼   ► us to assume they're doing it just to be jerks. They very well could be that they're doing it

01:24:53 ◼   ► to set themselves up for something in the future. Well, it might not even, you know,

01:24:57 ◼   ► I don't want to say that they're being jerks necessarily, it's that they're being controlling.

01:25:01 ◼   ► We see a lot of this with App Review too, and whenever there's an App Review controversy,

01:25:07 ◼   ► a lot of times it's because Apple doesn't want us to do things a certain way, like what

01:25:14 ◼   ► happened with the disaster of various rejections around today widgets with calculators and

01:25:19 ◼   ► drafts and everything else, where like PCALC in today's view, and it's like, "No, well

01:25:24 ◼   ► you can't have buttons there,

01:25:26 ◼   ► 'cause we don't want people to do calculations

01:25:28 ◼   ► or to do work in today view.

01:25:30 ◼   ► I was like, okay, that's kind of weird.

01:25:32 ◼   ► And maybe there might have been a technical reason for that,

01:25:35 ◼   ► but it seemed, from Apple's statements

01:25:38 ◼   ► to the various developers who were

01:25:39 ◼   ► affected by those things, it didn't seem like

01:25:41 ◼   ► it was a technical limitation,

01:25:42 ◼   ► it seemed like it was just an ideological thing,

01:25:44 ◼   ► like no, this is not right,

01:25:45 ◼   ► they should be using your app for this.

01:25:47 ◼   ► All this is just to say,

01:25:48 ◼   ► there are these areas in the company

01:25:52 ◼   ► that still show these negative personality traits

01:25:56 ◼   ► that I think do hold them back in some ways.

01:25:59 ◼   ► And sometimes it's the right move,

01:26:01 ◼   ► but a lot of times it's not.

01:26:03 ◼   ► Sometimes it leads to better products,

01:26:04 ◼   ► but a lot of times it doesn't.

01:26:06 ◼   ► - I brought up the iPod and everything

01:26:07 ◼   ► because I feel like they do this so well in so many areas.

01:26:10 ◼   ► They strike the right balance in terms of,

01:26:13 ◼   ► the reason we buy their products is they're opinionated

01:26:14 ◼   ► and we like their opinion.

01:26:16 ◼   ► If you don't like their opinion,

01:26:16 ◼   ► you buy different products, right?

01:26:17 ◼   ► But if you like their opinion,

01:26:18 ◼   ► you like the fact that they're designed,

01:26:20 ◼   ► and again, especially on the hardware,

01:26:23 ◼   ► carefully designed for the particular look and feel

01:26:25 ◼   ► and the features they put in them

01:26:26 ◼   ► and just the whole iPhone itself.

01:26:28 ◼   ► When is it, what is the iPhone?

01:26:31 ◼   ► When do we make a touchscreen

01:26:32 ◼   ► that Apple feels like is good enough?

01:26:34 ◼   ► What are the aspects of it?

01:26:35 ◼   ► The whole, that's how you end up with something

01:26:37 ◼   ► like the iPhone, that you have tastes and opinions

01:26:39 ◼   ► and you are controlling about it

01:26:40 ◼   ► and you slowly open it up.

01:26:41 ◼   ► But if I look at the market of iOS devices,

01:26:44 ◼   ► especially on the hardware side,

01:26:46 ◼   ► they're striking such a good balance

01:26:47 ◼   ► terms of having the products they want to have, selling accessories that they want to

01:26:53 ◼   ► sell, but also having this huge ecosystem of accessories from other people. Every kind

01:26:59 ◼   ► of case you could possibly imagine, including ones that Apple surely thinks are ugly, but

01:27:02 ◼   ► they're not forbidding those to be made or forbidding an integration. We're not going

01:27:07 ◼   ► to let our iPhone be docked into this docking device because we think it's gross or we don't

01:27:13 ◼   ► want it.

01:27:14 ◼   ► We don't want you to be able to plug this thing in with USB cable and control this other

01:27:18 ◼   ► thing.

01:27:19 ◼   ► For the most part, within the constraints of their programs, they have a hands-off type

01:27:22 ◼   ► of attitude.

01:27:23 ◼   ► You want to make a weird keyboard case that folds onto your iPad six years before we come

01:27:28 ◼   ► out with a hardware keyboard for our iPads that's not Bluetooth?

01:27:31 ◼   ► Fine.

01:27:32 ◼   ► We're not going to be like, "Oh, well, we want to forbid that because we haven't decided

01:27:34 ◼   ► whether we're going to do a keyboard with a thing."

01:27:37 ◼   ► Even styluses.

01:27:38 ◼   ► we don't want you to, we won't give you a made for, you know,

01:27:41 ◼   ► iOS stamp of approval on any styluses

01:27:43 ◼   ► because we don't want to have a stylus.

01:27:45 ◼   ► Like for years, you had those little fake finger styluses

01:27:47 ◼   ► and there was a million of them, right?

01:27:49 ◼   ► Apple's willing to just let that go.

01:27:50 ◼   ► And I think that was an important thing

01:27:53 ◼   ► because it showed them,

01:27:54 ◼   ► like especially if they sell any in their stores,

01:27:56 ◼   ► boy, a surprising number of people buy these super terrible,

01:27:59 ◼   ► you know, stylus things that they pretend to be fingers.

01:28:01 ◼   ► Maybe there's something to the stylus thing after all.

01:28:03 ◼   ► And eventually they came up with their own solution,

01:28:05 ◼   ► which of course didn't have to emulate a finger

01:28:06 ◼   ► and was much, much better.

01:28:07 ◼   ► and they did a really good job.

01:28:08 ◼   ► But that, I feel like that falls out

01:28:11 ◼   ► of the having a big open market.

01:28:13 ◼   ► And it's just certain kinds of products

01:28:15 ◼   ► that have a blind spot about that with.

01:28:18 ◼   ► Even you can even say Apple TV has that

01:28:19 ◼   ► for so many years not having apps on it,

01:28:21 ◼   ► which just seems crazy because they had learned

01:28:23 ◼   ► how important apps are.

01:28:24 ◼   ► And even now having the apps

01:28:25 ◼   ► and having them be limited in all sorts of ways,

01:28:27 ◼   ► because Apple has an idea of what a TV app should be like.

01:28:30 ◼   ► And they're necessarily fencing off whole ranges

01:28:33 ◼   ► of possibilities, even going down to, you know,

01:28:35 ◼   ► my own particular pet peeves about 24 Hertz output

01:28:37 ◼   ► whatever like that's a whole class of applications that could flourish or not

01:28:41 ◼   ► on the Apple TV but because Apple has this narrowly defined you know you get

01:28:45 ◼   ► 200 megs you download stuff on demand you can have games but you have to

01:28:48 ◼   ► support the remote just like they're just they fenced it in so narrowly

01:28:51 ◼   ► they're not allowing that ecosystem to expand in the ways that some of their

01:28:57 ◼   ► other ecosystems have been allowed to expand and it's and I think it's just

01:29:01 ◼   ► it's just not the right balance like I think that's what Apple is always

01:29:04 ◼   ► looking for and what I'm looking for Apple to do is not to be completely open,

01:29:09 ◼   ► not to be completely closed, to find the right balance for each product line and

01:29:12 ◼   ► it's and the way we see when Apple hasn't found the right balance is

01:29:15 ◼   ► competitors. Competitors show us because they say if Apple's dropping the ball

01:29:19 ◼   ► here then we can do better and show you something and then you look at it after

01:29:24 ◼   ► the fact and you go boy Apple had all the pieces they had all the technology

01:29:26 ◼   ► and they just didn't they just didn't do it or they were their own worst enemy

01:29:30 ◼   ► and I see that I see that the most for every product that Apple does that has

01:29:33 ◼   ► anything to do with sort of the open web and web services. Not that Apple is against the

01:29:37 ◼   ► open web or web services, but it just seems to be a big blind spot for them. They don't

01:29:41 ◼   ► realize the inherent power in that. And Amazon Echo, I think, is the most recent and most

01:29:47 ◼   ► glaring example.

01:29:48 ◼   ► All right, thanks so much for our three sponsors this week. Betterment, Ring, and FreshBooks.

01:29:53 ◼   ► And we'll see you next week.

01:29:55 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:30:02 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:30:07 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:30:12 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:30:18 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:30:23 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:30:28 ◼   ► @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:30:32 ◼   ► So that's Kasey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:30:37 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C

01:30:42 ◼   ► USA, Syracuse, it's accidental

01:30:47 ◼   ► They didn't mean to, accidental

01:30:52 ◼   ► ♪ That's the tech podcast ♪

01:30:55 ◼   ► ♪ So long ♪

01:30:57 ◼   ► - So Tesla came out with a new car,

01:31:03 ◼   ► which means your Model S is effectively old and busted.

01:31:06 ◼   ► - Yep, totally obsolete.

01:31:07 ◼   ► No, it isn't, because his car is still better

01:31:09 ◼   ► than the preview car.

01:31:11 ◼   ► In so many ways, it's better.

01:31:14 ◼   ► - So Tesla came out, or debuted with the Model 3.

01:31:19 ◼   ► - I like the emphasis on the master plan

01:31:21 ◼   ► in the presentation like, oh, so many years ago,

01:31:23 ◼   ► I had this master plan about what we're gonna do.

01:31:25 ◼   ► If you're making a master plan,

01:31:26 ◼   ► maybe that's the time to come up with like a naming scheme

01:31:29 ◼   ► for your cars that's sensible, like so many other,

01:31:31 ◼   ► like you only got three cars.

01:31:33 ◼   ► It could be model one, two, and three, model A, B, and C,

01:31:36 ◼   ► you know, four, six, eight.

01:31:38 ◼   ► Like there are many possibilities that you could draw

01:31:40 ◼   ► from one or name them after your favorite cities

01:31:43 ◼   ► or whatever, but I don't think anybody drawing

01:31:46 ◼   ► a master plan would be like Roadster S, X, and 3. Like, in your first outing, that's

01:31:54 ◼   ► a ball drop. Anyway, we don't care about the name.

01:31:57 ◼   ► Right. So, for those who are not aware, this is their cheaper sedan, their kind of mass

01:32:05 ◼   ► market car. I did watch the presentation, which we'll have a link in the show notes.

01:32:09 ◼   ► Elon had said, "Hey, the roadster was to kind of get really, really, really rich people

01:32:15 ◼   ► to spend money on something stupid, and then that would let us bootstrap the S, which would

01:32:22 ◼   ► let well-to-do people spend money on something that was less stupid, which in turn will let

01:32:28 ◼   ► us do what we really want to do, which is the mass market Model 3."

01:32:34 ◼   ► And they open pre-orders for the Model 3 the day of the announcement, but I think really,

01:32:41 ◼   ► really early in the morning in whatever your local time was.

01:32:45 ◼   ► And by the time of the announcement, they had over 100,000 pre-orders, is that right?

01:32:49 ◼   ► A hundred and ten, I think, yeah.

01:32:51 ◼   ► Something like that.

01:32:52 ◼   ► And so the pre-orders, you have to put $1,000 down, but it is refundable.

01:32:56 ◼   ► So that means 100,000 people had given Tesla $1,000 apiece.

01:33:03 ◼   ► And I think they're up to like a quarter million.

01:33:06 ◼   ► - Something like that, yeah.

01:33:07 ◼   ► - But what's interesting is, you know,

01:33:08 ◼   ► the first half of those people did it sight unseen.

01:33:10 ◼   ► They knew nothing about the Model 3.

01:33:11 ◼   ► Other than that, it was gonna cost, eh, around 40 grand.

01:33:14 ◼   ► And it should have, eh, around the same range

01:33:17 ◼   ► as the Model S, give or take.

01:33:19 ◼   ► And then they did the reveal,

01:33:22 ◼   ► which it was clear that Apple employees

01:33:26 ◼   ► spend a lot of time practicing their presentations,

01:33:28 ◼   ► not only those in the keynote, but those that like dub-dub,

01:33:31 ◼   ► Because, man, Elon Musk was not built for this sort of presentation.

01:33:35 ◼   ► And that's okay.

01:33:36 ◼   ► Yeah, he could have used some rehearsal.

01:33:38 ◼   ► It seemed like he didn't rehearse it once.

01:33:41 ◼   ► Right.

01:33:42 ◼   ► But the presentation, nevertheless, was impressive.

01:33:45 ◼   ► And the Model 3, on the whole, I like it.

01:33:49 ◼   ► I think, aesthetically, it's got a little bit of problems on the outside.

01:33:54 ◼   ► I think Jon takes more issue with the outside than I do.

01:33:56 ◼   ► On the inside, I have major issues.

01:34:00 ◼   ► a $40,000 plus car-ish that has 200 miles plus-ish of range, that's pretty damn appealing.

01:34:12 ◼   ► And supposedly they're going to ship the end of next year. Like, this is sounding pretty

01:34:16 ◼   ► good. I'm definitely interested.

01:34:19 ◼   ► I wouldn't call this mass market, though. I understand the progression. Like, you go

01:34:21 ◼   ► from a $100,000 impractical car to a $70,000 or $80,000 very practical car to a $35,000

01:34:29 ◼   ► still pretty practical car. But you know, mass market is 25k. They're doing everything

01:34:36 ◼   ► they can. The batteries cost a lot of money, right? So they're building this big factory

01:34:39 ◼   ► or whatever, they're driving the price down. Eventually you would expect, if Tesla is still

01:34:43 ◼   ► in business 10 years from now, that they will have something in the Honda Civic category

01:34:47 ◼   ► or whatever. So they're working their way down. I like the progression, I like what

01:34:50 ◼   ► they're doing. As for the specifics of the product, I was never really impressed with

01:34:55 ◼   ► roadster because it's just the, you know, the, what do you call it? Lotus Elise. Yeah,

01:35:00 ◼   ► yeah, but you got to do what you got to do. And I never, I, you know, it's, it was a sort of a

01:35:05 ◼   ► minimum viable product type thing, but as a car I was like, all right, fine, whatever. The S, I was

01:35:11 ◼   ► generally impressed by the styling because I think the overall shape of the car is good. They didn't

01:35:14 ◼   ► get the details very right, but practically speaking, having both written in model S's and

01:35:21 ◼   ► driven one, it's a good car. Like we've talked about this before, like it's not just a good

01:35:25 ◼   ► electric car, it's a good car. I mean, and you'd imagine, well, it better be for the

01:35:28 ◼   ► price you get, but they successfully made a good car, which is no small feat because

01:35:31 ◼   ► not a lot of new car companies have come out and made a good car in our lifetimes, right?

01:35:38 ◼   ► And it seemed to have enough of all the components together that even if you have complaints

01:35:44 ◼   ► about certain small areas, that it's not a big deal. I totally expect the Model 3 to

01:35:48 ◼   ► to do the same thing.

01:35:49 ◼   ► To be good in all the same ways that the S is good.

01:35:52 ◼   ► Because they can use the same foundation.

01:35:54 ◼   ► Battery, electric motor, wheel, suspension, steering, everything.

01:35:59 ◼   ► I see no reason to believe that those aspects of the 3 won't be just as good as the Model

01:36:05 ◼   ► S. The only place you're saving any money is I would imagine this car is smaller, lighter,

01:36:09 ◼   ► has less batteries in it, and they're made in the big giga factory and economies of scale

01:36:14 ◼   ► and blah blah blah.

01:36:15 ◼   ► All the sorts of reasons why does this car cost less than the Model S.

01:36:18 ◼   ► Mostly it's because they're getting better at building these cars and have the big factory building the batteries and there's fewer of them and it's smaller

01:36:24 ◼   ► And all that other stuff, but I can imagine for instance the interior of the model 3

01:36:28 ◼   ► Giving the model s a reasonable run for its money mostly because the model s is not super luxurious to begin with

01:36:33 ◼   ► But like that's not where the money is in these cars like the money is all in that freaking battery

01:36:37 ◼   ► And just you know general raw materials and assembly like the lecture motors aren't super expensive in the grand scheme of things certainly not compared

01:36:44 ◼   ► to an internal combustion engine

01:36:46 ◼   ► Where I think the three falls down for me is

01:36:48 ◼   ► I feel like it should it had the opportunity to learn

01:36:52 ◼   ► From the s-class and exceed it in all the few areas where it falls down

01:36:56 ◼   ► So is the interior gonna be better than the s?

01:36:58 ◼   ► Probably not design wise having that big screen in the middle doesn't strike me as a we learned a lot from the

01:37:06 ◼   ► The model s and so now we know how to make a better interior other than the fact that they learned that bigger screens are

01:37:13 ◼   ► better. But my biggest complaint about the outside is what they've done with the front-end

01:37:17 ◼   ► treatment. And in some respects, it's obvious what they're going for. It's like, "Hey,

01:37:23 ◼   ► guys, we don't have to have a place where air goes into the front of our car because

01:37:27 ◼   ► there's not a giant exploding internal combustion engine there that we have to blow air on,

01:37:30 ◼   ► otherwise it overheats. We don't have to do that. So we should not be constrained by

01:37:35 ◼   ► the styling of internal combustion engine cars. We have all this freedom. Let us now

01:37:41 ◼   ► Reimagine what the front end of a car can look like because why should we make it look like an internal combustion engine?

01:37:46 ◼   ► That's a good spirit and that's a good idea and they should pursue that that I feel like what they did

01:37:50 ◼   ► Was took the front of an internal combustion engine car and just erased the grille in Photoshop

01:37:55 ◼   ► There's a place for the grille

01:37:58 ◼   ► It is shaped like a car with a grille would be was Marcos does the same thing the model s has a place for the grille

01:38:03 ◼   ► And they just put a thing there that is a different color and it looks grill like but there's no holes in it

01:38:07 ◼   ► It's you know because you don't need air to go into there, right?

01:38:10 ◼   ► That at least like visually from a distance like,

01:38:13 ◼   ► oh, that's a car with a grill, but it's not really grill.

01:38:16 ◼   ► This car clearly has no grill,

01:38:18 ◼   ► but it has shape wise the place for the grill.

01:38:20 ◼   ► So I would encourage them to pursue

01:38:23 ◼   ► this avenue of styling further,

01:38:27 ◼   ► not like that they went too far,

01:38:29 ◼   ► they didn't go far enough,

01:38:29 ◼   ► they didn't sort of reimagine the front end

01:38:32 ◼   ► of an electric vehicle that does not need to suck air

01:38:33 ◼   ► through a big opening in the front,

01:38:34 ◼   ► they didn't do it enough.

01:38:36 ◼   ► And this is not, I think this may not be the final design,

01:38:38 ◼   ► They could conceivably change it and add other little trim things to mess it up.