0:00:00Is your shopping done?
0:00:02I think, but I haven't wrapped everything yet, and so that always leaves me wondering
0:00:07like maybe I forgot something or somebody or I didn't get enough for somebody or something.
0:00:13So it's always a baseline level of stress.
0:00:15So I'm always very worried about not having gotten somebody something or enough.
0:00:20That's why you have a spreadsheet to track these sorts of things.
0:00:24That would be wise if I was thinking that far ahead, yes.
0:00:28I agree that that's the kind of thing I should do.
0:00:30- I assume Jon has just a series of Perl scripts
0:00:32to figure out what to buy people.
0:00:35- No, I don't do anything.
0:00:36- I was thinking maybe you would have
0:00:38just a large number of windows.
0:00:39I think that would be more you.
0:00:41(laughing)
0:00:42Like maybe like one window that has like 15,000 tabs
0:00:44right in it that was just like one tab
0:00:47for every person you've ever known for each gift
0:00:48that you might someday maybe wanna get them
0:00:50plus the ones you did get them
0:00:51plus the ones you got them in the past
0:00:52for comparison and reference.
0:00:53- Actually that does make a lot of sense.
0:00:55- You need a burn down chart for a number of gifts
0:00:57you have to buy other people.
0:00:59- What is a burndown chart?
0:01:00- I was about to say,
0:01:01there's no way Marco knows what that is.
0:01:03- No, I assume this is another business thing.
0:01:05- Well, it's a software development thing,
0:01:07but also a business thing.
0:01:09- What happens in a burndown chart?
0:01:10I mean, it sounds really fun, I'm guessing it isn't.
0:01:13- No, it's not.
0:01:13- So you're looking for,
0:01:14I think it's because they look like flames
0:01:16if you have a layered bar chart,
0:01:18but you're trying to make it go down to zero.
0:01:20You're trying to make all these different things,
0:01:21it's like how many of X, how many Y,
0:01:22how many of Z in little bars over time,
0:01:24and what you're trying to do is drop them all to zero.
0:01:27So you're not buying anybody any gifts, is the goal.
0:01:30- I'm in the midst of reconciling our Visa bill,
0:01:32which is making me mildly upset, 'cause it's the holidays.
0:01:35- Like during the podcast, you're doing this?
0:01:37- I'm almost done, I only have a few.
0:01:39- If you want, we can discuss watching paint dry.
0:01:42- I was about to say, I know this is hugely entertaining.
0:01:44- We can walk through a sort algorithm on the air,
0:01:48and just like an example data set
0:01:49of how a sort algorithm sorts it.
0:01:51- That sounds super fun.
0:01:53- Yeah.
0:01:53- I use this app called MoneyWell, which is--
0:01:56- What a name.
0:01:56Chuck your money down a well.
0:01:58I think their icon was like a well at some point, too.
0:02:01- Right now it's a bucket full of money,
0:02:04but anyway, so I'm like four transactions away
0:02:07from reconciling my Visa bill, and then I get to pay it,
0:02:10which is super delightful because it's the holidays,
0:02:12and now I'm broke.
0:02:14- Well, the fact that your holiday purchases
0:02:16are already on a bill you've received
0:02:18means that you are way more ahead of the game
0:02:20than I am usually at the holidays.
0:02:24- Well, we should start with, this is a monumental,
0:02:28so this is a Christmas miracle.
0:02:30To the best of my knowledge,
0:02:31and I am not presently looking at the notes
0:02:32'cause I'm finishing reconciling my Visa bill,
0:02:35but to the best of my knowledge--
0:02:36- You're still, just how long do you think it'll take?
0:02:39Should we just sit here and wait?
0:02:40- No, no, no, wait, watch this, and,
0:02:41well you can't watch 'cause you're not seeing anything,
0:02:43boom, reconciled, done.
0:02:45- How does it feel to be reconciled?
0:02:47- So great, except now I gotta pay this not cheap Visa bill.
0:02:52But you are reconciled. That is so, it's like closure for all of your money. You're
0:02:57saying goodbye to all of your money. You're in a fully closed state.
0:03:00That's true. You could say I have some reconcilable differences.
0:03:03But you've reconciled them. You have reconciled differences.
0:03:06I was waiting for that. I was waiting for you to artfully work it in, but I guess you
0:03:10would just give up.
0:03:11You didn't think that was artful? Thanks a lot, jerk. I was pretty proud of that.
0:03:16Anyway, what the crap were we talking about? I already got a slide chart. Oh yeah, do we
0:03:19or do we not have a follow-up? I should take a screenshot of our show notes where there
0:03:24is the heading follow-up, there is a single bullet, and there is nothing else.
0:03:29Yeah, everyone's on vacation. I think we had a couple other shows where there was nothing
0:03:32and then I, like, made something up on the fly, but I don't even have anything to make
0:03:34up because everyone is off, everyone's watching Star Wars and they're on vacation and they're
0:03:38not sending us follow-up. To that end, can we establish that I have not seen Star Wars
0:03:44and I presume Marco hasn't either, and so I do not wish to talk about it and I do not--
0:03:47- I assume Marco never will, so.
0:03:49- That's true.
0:03:50- Well, actually, I wanted to start this episode
0:03:52with a bit of a game, with three truths and a lie.
0:03:57- See, Marco knows things from corporate America.
0:03:59(laughing)
0:04:01That's Icebreaker they use.
0:04:03- So here's three truths, three statements of these are true
0:04:07and one of them is a lie, and you have to figure out
0:04:08which one is the untrue statement.
0:04:10- Are any of these things Star Wars spoilers?
0:04:13- No. - Okay.
0:04:14Number one, I wrote my first Swift code.
0:04:17- Not possible.
0:04:18- Number two, I played Journey.
0:04:22Number three, I went to see Star Wars.
0:04:25And number four, I started using Pinterest.
0:04:29- I went to see Star Wars is the lie,
0:04:30because Marco doesn't see things.
0:04:32- Casey?
0:04:33- I would concur with that, but it's hard to vote against
0:04:36you actually writing, like, there's no way
0:04:38you've written Swift, you're such an old man
0:04:40that there's no way.
0:04:41But I would have to agree with Jon
0:04:43that that is the lie, that you have not seen Star Wars.
0:04:48- You should have gone with your instinct, Casey.
0:04:50- Really?
0:04:51You saw Star Wars and I didn't?
0:04:53- Tiff and I went today to a movie theater to see Star Wars.
0:04:57- Wow.
0:04:58- How did that, whose idea was that?
0:05:00- I'm flabbergasted.
0:05:01- It was actually my idea, but she was also planning
0:05:04on wanting to go and going anyway, so it was kind of mutual.
0:05:07- Did you do this just so you could read the internet
0:05:09without worrying about spoilers,
0:05:10or maybe Tiff was worrying about spoilers if you weren't?
0:05:13Well, part of it was because I basically have no podcasts left in my podcast player that
0:05:20I can play without being about Star Wars.
0:05:23Everything that I have to listen to this week is about Star Wars, and I've listened to
0:05:25everything else.
0:05:26So you were actually concerned about hearing Star Wars spoilers, that means.
0:05:29Otherwise you'd be like, "Whatever, Star Wars spoilers, I'm listening.
0:05:31I don't care.
0:05:32I'm never going to see it."
0:05:33Well, so the greatest thing is, all of you Star Wars fans have been trying so hard to
0:05:37avoid spoilers, to go into ridiculous lanes.
0:05:41I successfully avoided any spoilers about the movie simply by just not really caring
0:05:44about the movie.
0:05:45I didn't put any effort into avoiding spoilers, but I went into the theater today knowing
0:05:50nothing about it and being pleasantly surprised by everything in it.
0:05:54See, funny how that works.
0:05:56Yeah, I have—I would say I've been avoiding spoilers, but I haven't been going to particular
0:06:02lengths to do so.
0:06:03It's just if I see, like, a tweet fly by that looks like there might be a spoiler in it,
0:06:08then I'll just skip over it.
0:06:09I haven't been reading reviews or anything like that. I've asked friends that have seen
0:06:13it, "Do you like it?" And that's all I've asked. And, you know, I've gotten some hints
0:06:18as to the quality of the movie, but I've not seen it. I'm hoping that Aaron and I will
0:06:21be able to see it, maybe even tomorrow, actually, but I'm still avoiding spoilers. And I think
0:06:26my time is running out, because I think the internet has kind of collectively decided,
0:06:30from what I can tell, that shortly after Christmas, all bets are off and everyone's going to talk
0:06:33about everything.
0:06:34And that's part of why I went to see it, because I'm fine ignoring major cultural events.
0:06:39I've never seen any of the Lord of the Rings, never seen Harry Potter, never seen Twilight,
0:06:44anything like that.
0:06:45Most of the big movie franchises I've either never seen or I've seen some a long time
0:06:49ago, and then never again.
0:06:50Let me help you.
0:06:51Lord of the Rings, big waste of time.
0:06:53Harry Potter is pretty good.
0:06:54Reverse that.
0:06:55Please email Jon.
0:06:57Anyway, so, but this one felt very, very important to my circles.
0:07:03so than those other ones did. And also, I have seen the other Star Wars movies. I did
0:07:09enjoy them. You know, I am a Star Wars fan. I'm just not like a massive Star Wars fan.
0:07:13But I am a Star Wars fan, you know, in general. So, I did want to see it at some point. I
0:07:18was planning on watching it when it came out to video maybe or something or I could get
0:07:20on Netflix. But I figured like it's going to be talked about so much and it's so important,
0:07:26you know, in the circles that I live in that I figured I kind of had to go see it in the
0:07:32I should have gone with my instinct because you know in retrospect
0:07:35The the lengths you would go to to prevent yourself from writing any Swift that should have been the obvious answer
0:07:43I like I mean you have gone through some serious mental
0:07:46Gymnastics in order to get to the point that you can justify not writing Swift
0:07:50I didn't say I'm never writing Swift
0:07:52I'm saying I'm not writing Swift yet
0:07:53But that I do intend to learn it
0:07:55Probably when 3.0 comes out next year because they're doing a bunch of big changes to lead up to that
0:07:59Well, you had just changed your mind about it recently like in the past show you're like, oh I did that
0:08:03You know that podcast I was like, oh, I'm not gonna do Swift for a while
0:08:06But then the open source thing came out and kind of turned you around so you're primed to do Swift
0:08:09but the real tell was that the fact that we were talking about Star Wars and that prompted you to do the
0:08:14Truths and a lie thing so I mean I already had the list
0:08:18I mean I already I knew you played journey and the other ones are easy
0:08:21So it was just down to the Swift and the Star Wars. It just seemed so
0:08:26Crazy view to actually leave the house and go to a movie theater the Pinterest thing didn't you didn't have any pause about the Pinterest?
0:08:31Thing I know it. No, I know you did Pinterest. How'd you know? Yeah, how do you know Tiff told everybody? Yeah puppies
0:08:36Oh, that's right. She did
0:08:38Yeah
0:08:39So I joined I started a Pinterest account so I could collect pictures of puppies watches and things I want to buy for the house
0:08:44Like pipe heating wrap and the icicle melting zigzag wire that you put on the roof
0:08:50Exciting stuff if you find good good pipe heating wrap
0:08:54whatever you're gonna call it, tell me, because I have stuff around my, this is like stuff
0:08:57you put around the pipes to keep the heat from just leaking out into the areas where
0:09:02the pipes go through, right?
0:09:03- No, it's to prevent them from freezing if you have a pipe in an uninsulated space.
0:09:06- Nevermind then.
0:09:07- So it's like, we have one in the garage from forever ago, it's like this ancient,
0:09:11you know, two conductor cable that just like a heat wire that wraps in a coil around a
0:09:15pipe that runs through our garage, 'cause it's not insulated so that could freeze.
0:09:18That has burnt out and no longer heats, so I'm looking at new solutions to that, and
0:09:23They're all basically scaring me into either not doing it or having an electrician do it
0:09:27because it all basically says that these things are insanely dangerous and you will start
0:09:31fires and they all require insulation around the pipe and everything and yeah.
0:09:34So I'm probably going to actually outsource this job, but we will see.
0:09:37You know, living in the Northeast is the best because you have to worry about BS like this.
0:09:41Well, because we have winter.
0:09:42Well, right.
0:09:43Well, what you have really is months of depressing, evil, terrible, winter-like season, whereas
0:09:50I have this brief respite from wonderful weather with slightly less wonderful weather, and
0:09:57then it's back to wonderful weather again.
0:09:58So, you continue being smug up there in your tundra, and let me know how that works out.
0:10:03Yeah, it was wonderful there when we went there in July.
0:10:06That was really wonderful weather you had there.
0:10:08Yeah, it was warmish.
0:10:09Yeah.
0:10:10That's not true.
0:10:12It was very hot when you guys were here.
0:10:14Even for us, it was extremely hot.
0:10:16Yeah.
0:10:17I also ordered a Tesla this week, but that's, we'll save that for the after show, I guess.
0:10:19It was a big week.
0:10:20- Big week.
0:10:21- Big week for Marco and you killed the web font
0:10:23on your website, which by the way,
0:10:24I don't really agree with.
0:10:26I think that whatever font you have going on now,
0:10:28not making me happy.
0:10:29- No, I don't think I found the right solution to that.
0:10:31I'm experimenting with killing a web font.
0:10:33I might at least do a different web font
0:10:36because the service I was using,
0:10:39the Heffler & Co. font,
0:10:41because I like their Ideal Sans font.
0:10:43There have been a few benchmarks done by people
0:10:45that have shown that typically their web font serving
0:10:49is not as fast as Typekit or some of the other big web font services and not as fast as self-hosting
0:10:56and stuff. And they don't allow self-hosting, but they do kind of a weird thing where like
0:10:59they--you have to go through their CDN, but then it redirects to the font files on your
0:11:04server with no cache headers. So that you're making the clients make two requests, one
0:11:08of them is going back to your slow server and not to their CDN to actually get the big
0:11:13files, you know, the big like 300 kilobytes worth of font files. And the only reason I'm
0:11:17really is because I really like this one font they have. They have very nice fonts over
0:11:19there at Heffler. But I'm going to look at other options now because it just, it was
0:11:24just too slow. Like if you look at the network timeline in the web inspector of like time
0:11:28it's taking to render this page, it's just insane. And you could argue, I mean I've heard
0:11:32many counter arguments for why I shouldn't worry about the speed of my web font loading,
0:11:37most of which boil down to either that I should like async load it and then either pop it
0:11:41in or save it for the next load and put it on the next load. Both of those I think suck.
0:11:46Like, neither of those, I would say, are good options.
0:11:50Just for, you know, user experience-wise, like, why would I want to do either of those?
0:11:54You know, the other answer was, why do you care?
0:11:57It's just a blog.
0:11:58It doesn't matter how quickly it loads.
0:12:00And that's BS, because not only does it matter quite a bit how quickly pages load to whether
0:12:05people complete the loads, but when you're talking about loading a 300 kilobyte resource
0:12:10that requires two requests to be made before the page can even begin to load, this is like
0:12:16in the head on mobile and when you have bad connections and everything, that does matter.
0:12:21That really does add up to a significant delay when loading a page.
0:12:25You know, it isn't like when you embed a big image because that can load after the page
0:12:28loads.
0:12:29When you're on a mobile connection, that really matters.
0:12:30And it turns out that my traffic, like everyone's traffic, is mostly mobile these days.
0:12:35And you have to think about that when you're a blog or any kind of content site, especially
0:12:39a tech content site read by tech people, you're going to see a large portion of traffic on
0:12:44mobile.
0:12:45of those people will be on cellular at the time they are loading it. Yes, it would be
0:12:49nice if I didn't have, you know, ugly fonts on my site, but it would also be nice if my
0:12:56page loads very quickly. So I think I have to balance those things. I think maybe doing
0:13:00Typekit might be a little bit better because it's just a faster web font host. Maybe doing
0:13:06self-hosting would be a little bit faster because then, you know, it could optimize
0:13:11the connections a little bit better than going off to a different host. So we'll see. I'm
0:13:14I'm gonna play with it.
0:13:16What led you to do all this?
0:13:18Because, no disrespect intended, it seemed to me that you've kind of, not abandoned,
0:13:25but avoided writing posts for a while now.
0:13:28I mean, you'll write your link posts to this show, to Under the Radar, but I haven't
0:13:33seen a whole lot of real writing from you in a while, outside of, you know, when you
0:13:37had headphones or podcast mics or what have you.
0:13:39So what inspired you to just start paying attention again?
0:13:42I was inspired by being forced by Dropbox.
0:13:46Oh, right, right, right.
0:13:48Basically, I use a Dropbox blogging engine that I wrote
0:13:51that nobody else should use.
0:13:52Please don't use it.
0:13:53It's terrible, but I like it, and it's good for me.
0:13:57And they ended support for the version
0:14:01that was probably ancient, the Linux client
0:14:03that I was using for Dropbox on my ancient server
0:14:06running its ancient distribution of CentOS,
0:14:08I think 5.5 or something.
0:14:10So, you know, running an old stack,
0:14:12an old version of their thing,
0:14:14and I couldn't update it without upgrading
0:14:16some pretty big things like libc,
0:14:19and everybody was basically saying on the internet,
0:14:21never upgrade libc on a Linux system.
0:14:24If you can help it, it's kind of a problem.
0:14:27So I migrated my whole blog to a new server.
0:14:31I also, I love Linux.
0:14:33So, you know, every Linux is basically like,
0:14:35yeah, rock solid, runs forever, it's great,
0:14:38but you wanna upgrade it?
0:14:39"Forget it, please don't do this,
0:14:41"you really shouldn't do this,
0:14:42"you should never upgrade a Linux server,
0:14:43"blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
0:14:45"never upgrade the distribution."
0:14:46They all say that, like, "Don't do that."
0:14:48The solution to upgrading a Linux server
0:14:49is to abandon it and make a new one.
0:14:51(laughing)
0:14:52So that is what I did.
0:14:54So I was already in there, mucking around
0:14:57with the guts of it,
0:14:59and setting up everything new and clean,
0:15:00so I figured, while I'm here,
0:15:03let me also take this opportunity to modernize it.
0:15:06So I switched over to HTTPS,
0:15:09and everything is now HTTPS, I dropped the www prefix,
0:15:13you know, all this fun stuff to modernize the site.
0:15:15And so part of that was, let me,
0:15:17I'm thinking about dropping the web font for a while,
0:15:20it was actually about to, it bills annually
0:15:22and it was about to bill me again, 160 bucks,
0:15:25so I'm like, you know, maybe this is a good time
0:15:27to reconsider whether I want to keep using this font,
0:15:29so let me try without it.
0:15:30All that being said, you are right,
0:15:31I have barely written anything on the site
0:15:34of any consequence in a long time, in months, really.
0:15:38And part of that was 'cause the last time I wrote stuff
0:15:40about app pricing, it went very, very badly.
0:15:44And so part of that was just I need to kind of rethink
0:15:47what audience I want to be writing to,
0:15:49who's reading this, do they really care,
0:15:51do I want to be taking the risk of some of the things
0:15:55that I would want to say,
0:15:57to risk getting all the feedback from it
0:15:59and having my name dragged all over the internet
0:16:01in horrible ways and starting a bunch of drama.
0:16:05And most of the time it's just not worth it
0:16:06to me honestly anymore. It's just not worth it. I do want to keep writing, but I'm kind
0:16:11of going through a process where I want to kind of try to figure out what I want to keep
0:16:16writing on the site. Because having the kind of potentially controversial tech topic discussions
0:16:22I think are better here, where it's more human and people know me better and you guys
0:16:26are here to rebut and to provide your own answers to things so that I'm just not going
0:16:32off the deep end, going crazy and getting all the, you know, getting trashed because
0:16:35said something horrible without any kind of rebuttal and the developer help things, I
0:16:42would rather do that on Under the Radar, the other podcast that I do with Undercover David
0:16:46Smith and anything that doesn't fit there, anything that is kind of helpful to developer
0:16:52economics, I think I'm just not going to reveal anymore because it has proven not to
0:16:56be worth it. And then I have lots of other things I could blog about. I can blog about
0:16:59headphones and coffee and microphones and stuff like that. I can blog about lots of
0:17:03other things without being that controversial or at least controversial in those ways that
0:17:07I've been kind of burned by. So I'll figure it out over time. I have noticed that not
0:17:14writing anything of substance in a while is not making me feel good and is actually making
0:17:21me a worse podcaster because as you can tell by this long rambling thing, I kind of not
0:17:27only do I have like more to say because it like builds up in me all week and then I like
0:17:31spew it all out at once in a podcast and that's no good. But also my arguments on the podcast
0:17:35are getting less coherent and less organized. I think that is because partially because
0:17:41I've been sick for like three weeks and partially because I think not writing is actually making
0:17:47the arguments in my head more weakly structured or more weakly organized if that makes sense.
0:17:53Just write it and don't publish it. That's one way to do it or like you know,
0:17:58it's like a private email list or something like that,
0:18:00that might be a good idea.
0:18:02I'm not sure if it would be as good.
0:18:05If you only surround yourself with people
0:18:08that agree with you or that want to read it,
0:18:10or if you're writing for something
0:18:13that is such a small audience, possibly of just you,
0:18:16then I think you lose the ability for people
0:18:19to improve you in constructive ways.
0:18:23And I think that would be unfortunate
0:18:26and it would not give the writing as much value to me
0:18:29as it would for, you know, if it was in public.
0:18:33- Oh, I was gonna give you a constructive improvement,
0:18:35but I just realized it might just be Chrome.
0:18:37Let me just check.
0:18:38- Reload.
0:18:39I didn't change the name of the CSS.
0:18:40If you reload, I think it's--
0:18:41- No, it's just Chrome, nevermind.
0:18:43- What?
0:18:44- I was gonna complain that the new font you had chosen
0:18:46apparently didn't have a good emoji glyph for the cloud icon
0:18:50that you use next to the streaming heading
0:18:51in the Overcast 2 post, but it's just Chrome.
0:18:54- It's a black cloud.
0:18:55- It looks like a little turd.
0:18:57But it's just Chrome, nevermind, carry on.
0:19:01- I don't understand why everyone loves Chrome so damn much.
0:19:04- It loads t.co links successfully,
0:19:06so it's got that going for it.
0:19:08- Yeah, well, see, I turned off,
0:19:11I think Renee Ritchie may have found it.
0:19:13Somebody had found a way to do a defaults right
0:19:17for Tweetbot, which I know is not what you use, Jon,
0:19:20but to do a defaults right to just direct
0:19:22to the actual URL instead of a TCO link or whatever we're calling them.
0:19:27And that made everything a million percent better.
0:19:31And all of the issues that so many people seem to have with Safari, I genuinely never
0:19:35run into them.
0:19:36So you haven't got the one, the new one in El Capitan where the entirety of the window
0:19:42chrome becomes inert.
0:19:43Like you can't put the insertion point in the address bar, you can't click the window
0:19:47widgets, you can't click any of the toolbar buttons, you can't use the scroll bar.
0:19:50I get that one twice a week now.
0:19:52- No, but remember that I have a sane amount of tabs open.
0:19:55I don't have 3,000 windows and 4,500 tabs.
0:19:58- Oh, that's not why.
0:19:59I gotta get up with two browser windows open
0:20:01and then one of them is dead.
0:20:02- Again, I'm sure that these people who say
0:20:05that Safari is a piece of crap,
0:20:06I'm sure they're saying that for a reason,
0:20:08but darned if I know why,
0:20:09because my experience does not match with that.
0:20:11And I just, I mean, I don't think that Chrome is bad
0:20:14outside of the piss poor, just awful emoji support.
0:20:19I don't think Chrome is bad,
0:20:20But I don't feel like it brings anything to the table that I care about.
0:20:24And again, I'm sure that there are all sorts of Chrome diehard Chrome fans that are firing
0:20:30up email clients right now.
0:20:31No, they're not.
0:20:32They're using Gmail.
0:20:33Yeah, exactly.
0:20:34Probably using Gmail to write me some sort of nastygram about the things that Chrome
0:20:37does better than Safari.
0:20:39And maybe that's true.
0:20:40I'm not saying that they're wrong.
0:20:41But in my personal experience, I have never thought to myself, "You know what?
0:20:44I really wish I could use Chrome for this because it does whatever better."
0:20:48- Yeah, I still run both.
0:20:50- I use Safari as my primary.
0:20:52I used to use Chrome, I used to use one at work,
0:20:54one at home, so I would always be up to date on both.
0:20:57And now I've just been using Safari now for a while
0:20:59as my primary, and Chrome is my flash isolation area.
0:21:03But anyway, my flash quarantine.
0:21:05But Chrome has always been very consistent for me
0:21:10with performance, with reliability and everything.
0:21:13Safari is all over the map with every new version.
0:21:15So sometimes Safari is great for a while,
0:21:18Sometimes Safari gets slow or buggy or inconsistent or it crashes or something for a few releases.
0:21:23And in my experience Chrome is just way more consistent. Also I think Chrome has the better
0:21:28web dev tools most of the time. So we'll see. Anyway, we will hear from all the Chrome
0:21:33people and what they think because Chrome I believe has more market share than Safari
0:21:38in pretty much every, you know, by anyone's metric. I'm pretty sure it's substantially
0:21:43head of Safari now. So the world has voted, just like they used to vote for, Compaq and
0:21:49Dell computers, that those are the best.
0:21:51Oh goodness. All right, so not speaking of things that are awesome, why don't you make
0:21:56us happier after mentioning Compaq and Dell and tell us about something that is awesome.
0:22:02There's this company out there that I have just talked about for the first part of this
0:22:05podcast quite a bit, and it's called Linode. Or Linode? I don't even know. So it's Linux,
0:22:11Linus Linode, I don't know, but I say Linode.
0:22:15It's a web host, it's been around for a long time now,
0:22:18and I have been a Linode customer myself
0:22:21for quite a long time, I think maybe like
0:22:24six or eight years at least, I've been there a while.
0:22:26I have done a lot of web hosts in my time,
0:22:29I've used a lot of them, big and small,
0:22:31from stuff as big as hosting the first four years
0:22:35of Tumblr at a huge host, all the way down
0:22:38to hosting little private sites for myself
0:22:41and my friends and everything.
0:22:42Over the years I've liked Linode so much
0:22:44and they've gotten so good that I now host
0:22:48everything at Linode.
0:22:49I think I have one dedicated server left somewhere else
0:22:52for some auxiliary tasks only because I haven't
0:22:54gotten around to moving it to Linode yet.
0:22:56It is such a great host and they can't pay me to say this.
0:23:00I'm saying this honestly as me.
0:23:02I was hoping to get them as a sponsor
0:23:03because I've used them forever and I really do
0:23:06genuinely like them and recommend them.
0:23:09In my opinion, it is the best value in web hosting today.
0:23:13They did a major upgrade about, I don't know,
0:23:15two years ago now, or a year ago,
0:23:17when they switched everything to SSDs.
0:23:18So it's all fast, all SSD, modern CPUs.
0:23:21More recently, they switched their hypervisor software
0:23:24from Xen to KVM.
0:23:25The latest Unix benchmark showed that it is
0:23:27300% performance increase moving to KVM from Xen.
0:23:31So I've done this with all mine, it's been fine,
0:23:33rock solid, everything's great.
0:23:35You want to host things at Linode, believe me.
0:23:37Like if you want real web hosting,
0:23:40you want root access to your own server
0:23:42that you can configure however you want
0:23:43and you can install your own software
0:23:46and run your own stuff, you want to do that at Linode.
0:23:49It really is an incredible value for what you get.
0:23:52It is very affordable.
0:23:53The hardware and speed and bandwidth is solid.
0:23:58Check it out.
0:23:59I use it, I recommend it.
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0:24:13Thank you very much to Linode for sponsoring our show.
0:24:16- We have some news in the Apple executive lineup.
0:24:20Jon, do you wanna kinda give us a synopsis
0:24:22as to what's been going on there?
0:24:24- Oh, it was so long ago, I can barely remember.
0:24:26That was the news that was like right after
0:24:28we recorded last week's podcast,
0:24:29we were like, "Wonder what news they're gonna dump
0:24:30"at the end of the year?"
0:24:32the news was I think a fairly tame reorg where Phil Schiller got control of the App Store
0:24:39stuff, the App Store stuff that used to be under ADQ.
0:24:43ADQ still has like the whole media thing and Apple Music and all that stuff I think.
0:24:49And they named, what's his name, Jeff Williams, COO, but he was already doing that.
0:24:54Not a lot of exciting things there, but the thing that developers got excited about is
0:24:58the moving of any app store responsibilities from one person to another.
0:25:02And I guess people are getting hopeful just because, hey, it's a change and things are
0:25:07bad now, so change has the potential to be good, but Phil Schiller has been in charge
0:25:11of App Review, Marco can correct me if I'm wrong, for a while now, right?
0:25:16That's not new.
0:25:17I believe since the start.
0:25:18Yeah, he's just getting the rest of the App Store.
0:25:20And so App Review is one of the things that developers complain about a lot, and Phil
0:25:24Schiller has always had that.
0:25:25So he's not exactly your sort of savior of the App Store.
0:25:29If you've been disgruntled about app review stuff,
0:25:32that's Phil Schiller and now he's got the rest of it.
0:25:33The hope is, I guess, that Phil Schiller's organization,
0:25:37I don't know, like will improve the tech parts of it better,
0:25:41like make iTunes connect nicer
0:25:42and let Mac developers use TestFlight
0:25:45and fix the Mac App Store sandboxing
0:25:48so people can actually test their apps in the sandbox.
0:25:51I don't know.
0:25:51Like that's the hope that Eddy Cue seemed
0:25:54not be able to roll out the features, like the software and server-based features for
0:26:00developers as quickly as developers wanted, and it somehow feels like it would do better.
0:26:04I have no idea if that is the case, but I have to admit I'm also slightly optimistic
0:26:10just because things have been kind of not great, limping along for a really long time,
0:26:15and I like to see some kind of shakeup, even if it's like the world's most minor shakeup.
0:26:19So, yeah, I mean, just to fill out what you said, basically the developer ecosystem of
0:26:25Apple has always been under these three different divisions in the company. There's the engineering
0:26:30division under Craig Federighi. They make all the APIs and new OSs and everything. And
0:26:35then there's the developer relations division, which is under Phil Schiller's division
0:26:41under marketing. And that does like WWDC, the developer program, and also App Review.
0:26:49and the app review policies.
0:26:50And then there's the store division
0:26:53and the editorial part of it.
0:26:54That has been under ediQ in the services division
0:26:57and that decides what apps to be featured
0:27:00and how the store works and running the store backend
0:27:03and everything.
0:27:04I would imagine it also involves the store apps themselves.
0:27:09So that, to have this under three different divisions,
0:27:12you could always tell in the past
0:27:14where there has been some kind of miscommunication
0:27:17or friction in the past.
0:27:18So for example, you would have an app that was featured by the App Store editorial team
0:27:24under ADQ because it was doing some new cool thing, and then the app review team would
0:27:29call them up and say, "Oh, sorry, we're not going to allow this.
0:27:32You've got to take this app down," while it's being featured by the department in
0:27:36the store.
0:27:38And so you have these kind of like weird miscommunications or disagreements between the divisions that
0:27:42have caused some friction or some, you know, clumsiness in the past.
0:27:47The engineering side is still going to be under Federighi, still totally separate, obviously
0:27:50that makes sense.
0:27:52But the developer relations and the app store is now together under Phil.
0:27:57And interestingly, as our friend Ben Thompson pointed out on Stratechery, and I think this
0:28:00was one of the private members only things, but if not I'm willing to it, a lot of people
0:28:04aren't paying a lot of attention to the fact that actually that Phil Schiller has actually
0:28:07lost a big chunk of his responsibilities in this as well.
0:28:11What corporate people call MarCom, marketing communications, which I think that's like
0:28:16like advertising and stuff, right?
0:28:17- Oh, beats me, I know nothing about that stuff.
0:28:20- Anyway, that used to be under Phil,
0:28:22and now they announced the new hire,
0:28:24whose name I forgot, I'm sorry,
0:28:25the new hire is now taking over
0:28:28marketing communications from Phil
0:28:31and reporting directly to Tim Cook.
0:28:33So this stuff has been removed from Phil's plate, it appears.
0:28:36And then Phil has gained the app stores.
0:28:40And logically, I don't know how this works internally.
0:28:43There's obviously a lot of implementation details here
0:28:46that we don't know.
0:28:47Like, the big one to me is,
0:28:50how do you separate the app stores
0:28:53from the backend that they run on,
0:28:56which is all presumably still under ADQ's division?
0:28:59There's gonna be some weirdness there, I would imagine.
0:29:01But, high level, it certainly appears that Phil has
0:29:06lost his responsibility of running the advertising part of it
0:29:10and gain the responsibility of running the app stores,
0:29:13whatever that includes.
0:29:15Because he already ran developer relations and app review,
0:29:18that makes some sense.
0:29:19So John, I'm with you in that I am optimistic about this.
0:29:23I don't think we're gonna see meaningful change
0:29:26to the app store policies.
0:29:28Any kind of rule that you can't do now,
0:29:30any kind of controversy over app review,
0:29:33I wouldn't even expect improvements to app review,
0:29:35at least on iOS.
0:29:36Like on the Mac app store,
0:29:37having these occasionally very long review times,
0:29:40I hope they fix that, because that's just messed up.
0:29:43I mean, that's bad, that's embarrassing.
0:29:44And that's obviously not the way it's supposed to work,
0:29:47to have your apps sit in review for a month.
0:29:49But when it is working, like on iOS,
0:29:51when you typically get a seven or eight day review time,
0:29:54I don't think we're gonna see any major changes
0:29:57to that system, the system of app review
0:30:00as we know it today.
0:30:02That is here to stay for a long time,
0:30:03because the person who is at the very top
0:30:06of that organization just took control
0:30:08of the entire app store.
0:30:09Obviously they're not looking to change that.
0:30:11But the things that I think that I'm optimistic about here
0:30:15are that first of all, I can't get a great read on Phil,
0:30:20but the more that I know of him,
0:30:23or the more that I hear him talk
0:30:26or that I hear stories about him,
0:30:28the more I think I like him.
0:30:31I think he has sensibilities that line up with mine
0:30:36more so than most of the other high up Apple executives.
0:30:40And more so that are in the interest of
0:30:43kind of the old Apple.
0:30:44And that comes with some good and some bad.
0:30:46That's why like, you know, App Review
0:30:47I don't think is going anywhere
0:30:48because that, you know, it's like the old school Apple.
0:30:51But, overall this is a good thing,
0:30:53if for nothing else, because as you said, John,
0:30:55it is a sign of a pretty big change.
0:30:59And if you look at like, things that
0:31:01stagnate or have problems in Apple,
0:31:04many of them, I would say possibly even most of them,
0:31:08fall under that services division.
0:31:09That is clearly a place where they have had
0:31:11a lot of problems in the past,
0:31:13and we keep hearing that they're getting better.
0:31:16Some of the things they're doing are better,
0:31:17like the new CloudKit stuff, the new Photosync,
0:31:20some of that stuff is really good.
0:31:21And so I think they are getting better,
0:31:23and we're hearing stories about them like,
0:31:25running Linux servers now,
0:31:26and doing this Apache Mesos thing,
0:31:28and now this is probably where Swift on Linux is going,
0:31:31and we're seeing lots of rumblings that this department is getting better, and some
0:31:37evidence of that is coming out to the consumers, but even if they start doing really well,
0:31:42they also seem dramatically overloaded, and they seem like they have a lot of trouble
0:31:47making progress, especially on multiple fronts. So the App Store has basically done nothing.
0:31:55The App Store has gone almost nowhere, has improved very little, or has changed very
0:31:59little since its inception in 2008.
0:32:03If you look at the App Store today versus the App Store in 2008, it really is not that
0:32:07different.
0:32:08Yes, some things are better, but not what you'd expect for, what is it, seven years,
0:32:13seven and a half years?
0:32:14Like not what you'd expect for that amount of time.
0:32:17So to move a big chunk of this division out of it under new leadership in a different
0:32:23division of the company, to have that be the App Store, the thing that controls so much
0:32:27of my living, many people's living,
0:32:30the modern computing landscape,
0:32:32like so much of this is dependent on the App Store
0:32:34and the way it's run and its policies.
0:32:37To move that to another executive is a big change, I think.
0:32:42It seems like it would be a big change.
0:32:43I mean, I don't think this is just like some paper thing.
0:32:45So I hope that this is a sign that they are finally
0:32:50going to change the App Store.
0:32:51They're finally going to improve it
0:32:53to start making meaningful changes.
0:32:55And again, I don't think it's gonna be
0:32:56in regards to app review.
0:32:57I think we're stuck with that for a long time,
0:32:59but it could be in regards to many things
0:33:01that could use improvement.
0:33:02Things like, you know, if you want upgrade pricing
0:33:04or trials, that's the kind of place, you know,
0:33:06this is the kind of change that would happen.
0:33:07If you want improvements to the Mac App Store,
0:33:10or better, I mean, if you look at the health
0:33:12of the app stores, pretty much all of them,
0:33:14except the iPhone one, need help.
0:33:16Like, they're not in great shape.
0:33:18The iPhone one is doing okay,
0:33:19simply because of its massive volume,
0:33:20but it could still, you know,
0:33:22it could still use some improvement.
0:33:24All of that now is kind of,
0:33:26we have renewed hope that the App Store might finally get better because they just did this
0:33:33seemingly substantial sounding move. I have high hopes for that, especially to be under
0:33:38Phil, he cares a lot about the Mac, about the product quality, and they wouldn't have
0:33:44moved this for no reason. There was nothing pressuring them to move it. There was no reason
0:33:49they had to do this, so they clearly want to do this, and this move has to have been
0:33:56been for a good reason.
0:33:57I think there is some kind of pressure,
0:33:59because it's always hard to tell why things are happening
0:34:02inside Apple, because obviously the press release isn't going
0:34:04to tell you.
0:34:04And all I can do is look at the experiences I've
0:34:07had in the companies that I've worked for when they've
0:34:09shuffled people around.
0:34:10And the only real underlying cling,
0:34:13other than stuff you don't know about,
0:34:14because there's so much information you don't have.
0:34:16Like for all we know, like maybe someone
0:34:18is going to retire soon.
0:34:19Or maybe someone has expressed an interest
0:34:22in doing something different.
0:34:23You don't know about stuff that's
0:34:24not in the press release.
0:34:26But usually if some top executive like the CEO or whatever is not getting something they
0:34:32want out of some subdivision of the company, they usually have that slide for a while,
0:34:37but eventually it's like, "I've wanted X for two years now, and this person hasn't delivered
0:34:44it.
0:34:45It's time to give another person a chance."
0:34:46Sometimes there's the, you know, "Give the really hard job to this one executive who's
0:34:50great for, you know, tackling tough problems," and that person bounces around like the problem
0:34:55Solver or the fixer or the you know like the what he called?
0:34:59Silver NSX Casey. Oh, it's a movie reference. You won't get it the wolf
0:35:03The wolf is definitely a fixer anyway. It could be that but like either way
0:35:07It's like someone is not getting what they want out of
0:35:09Insert thing and it could be is someone not getting what they want out of marcom
0:35:14And that's why a new guy has to come in to take it is someone not getting what they want out of the app store
0:35:19We don't know because it could be say it say the marketing stuff seems stagnant. You know like
0:35:23Apple's marketing message isn't evolving and for a while we wanted to change and Phil doesn't seem capable to get out of the rut
0:35:29So what we're gonna do is we're gonna bring in someone new they're gonna take over to marketing him in communication
0:35:33But since Phil is such an important person
0:35:35You can't take away that from him without giving him something else and Eddie's got a lot of stuff
0:35:40So give it over to him. All right, so that's one plausible scenario
0:35:42Another one is the one that we're all thinking of which is like Eddie for years
0:35:45We wanted X out of you know, this app store stuff. It hasn't been happening
0:35:49So we're gonna take that away from you and give it to somebody who is more
0:35:53I don't know who we think is gonna do a better job
0:35:55I don't know Phil Schiller is the person who's gonna do a better job with that particular thing
0:35:59Like it's just so much we don't know but the bottom line is these things don't happen without a substantial reason because top executives hate having
0:36:07Responsibility taken away from them. It's it's not a demotion, but it's seen as like, you know, so
0:36:11Phil Schiller is not really, you know, he got a bunch of responsibilities taken away, but he took the mantle of something else
0:36:17So I feel like this is you know in the political org chart of Apple is a little bit of a down-hour
0:36:23an ADQ and a little bit of an up or sideways arrow on fill.
0:36:26That's just the way it feels to me from the outside.
0:36:29And what I think about is what, you know,
0:36:31assuming this theory is corrected a little bit down
0:36:34our ad ad ad ad EQ, what is it that top executives
0:36:38might have wanted that they weren't getting out of ad EQ?
0:36:41And that's makes me think of the success
0:36:43heights problem things where in the beginning,
0:36:45when ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad
0:36:48ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad
0:36:49going gangbusters. Hey, the App Store is super popular. Everybody loves apps. They're installing
0:36:53stuff and like every year, every quarter, he, you know, at every meeting, and he could
0:36:58be like, look at these crazy numbers. Look how many apps we have. Look how many people
0:37:01are downloading stuff. Look how many developers are signed up. Like every metric that he could
0:37:05possibly every chart he could put up every number he could throw in someone's face was
0:37:08like, I'm in charge of the App Store and the App Store is awesome. But as you pointed out,
0:37:13Marco, at a certain point, like those numbers, not that they level off. It's like, yeah,
0:37:17yeah, we heard lots of apps, lots of whatever,
0:37:18but what's this I'm hearing about, you know,
0:37:21developers don't like this,
0:37:22or it's hard to search in the store,
0:37:24or we bought this company to redo the store,
0:37:26but it kind of looks the same
0:37:27and people don't think it's that much better.
0:37:28And just from regular,
0:37:30like you don't have to be plugged into this community,
0:37:32just Tim Cook can go to the app store on his own phone
0:37:35to try to find something
0:37:36and notice that there are problems
0:37:38and bring that up two years ago at ADQ
0:37:40and it'd be like, oh yeah, no, we'll take care of that,
0:37:41no, we're working on this, working on that.
0:37:42And at a certain point, it's like,
0:37:44it doesn't, you know, again,
0:37:45things that someone who's not plugged into the developer community,
0:37:49just Tim Cook on his own phone, using the App Store,
0:37:52can be like, you know, it doesn't seem like,
0:37:55regardless of whether I think this is good or not,
0:37:57and your numbers are great, and your reliability is great,
0:37:59and you're making a lot of money or whatever,
0:38:01it just doesn't seem like it has gotten that much better
0:38:03over the past several years, so maybe it's time for a change.
0:38:06Now, this could all be delusions based on our perspective as outsiders,
0:38:10and people who know a lot of developers,
0:38:12it could be something entirely unrelated,
0:38:13but to me that's a plausible scenario.
0:38:17Not that EdiKey was coasting,
0:38:18but that when you're on the fun part of the hockey stick,
0:38:22it can hide a lot of stuff,
0:38:23and at a certain point,
0:38:24either the hockey stuff levels off
0:38:26or that stuff becomes old hat,
0:38:27and you need like, what have you done for me lately?
0:38:30What have you done to the App Store lately?
0:38:32'Cause the complaints are there,
0:38:34and the feedback is there,
0:38:35and people leaving the Mac App Store,
0:38:37and long review times,
0:38:39I don't know if that's even involved in that,
0:38:40and like features in iTunes Connect,
0:38:42It just seems like at this point,
0:38:45no matter how distantly you're removed
0:38:46are from the developer community,
0:38:47you can do what Marco just said and say,
0:38:48look at what the App Store was like five years ago
0:38:51and look at what it's like now and think,
0:38:52is that five years worth of progress in the App Store?
0:38:54And you just have to say no.
0:38:56And so that's why that feels like the strongest reason
0:38:59why there might be a shakeup related to the App Store,
0:39:01regardless of what you think of it,
0:39:03it's just that it's just not progressing and advancing
0:39:06the way you would hope it would.
0:39:08- Well, and also, I think as I mentioned last episode,
0:39:11I think you can look at their recent product launches, the watch, the Apple TV, and the
0:39:17iPad Pro.
0:39:18In all three of those cases, you can very clearly point to the app ecosystem and the
0:39:24app stores themselves as holding these products back significantly.
0:39:28The TV app store is frankly embarrassing.
0:39:32There's so little in it.
0:39:34It is so hard to use.
0:39:36It is so hard to find anything.
0:39:39There's no public links for TV apps.
0:39:43If you hear about, like, Badland 2 came out this past week or sometime recently.
0:39:48I wanted to get it on my TV or at least find out if it was available on the Apple TV.
0:39:52I could not find this information out anywhere except going over, walking over to the TV
0:39:57and typing poorly "Badland 2" into that horrible text entry field and finding nothing.
0:40:04And I wasn't sure, like, is search just bad right now or is it really not here?
0:40:08And it turns out I don't think it's out for the TV yet.
0:40:10Had it been out for the TV, I would have no way on my computer or my phone or any other
0:40:15device to have clicked "Buy this app" and have it show up on my TV.
0:40:21There are simple things like this where the store is really not helping.
0:40:24It's really hindering things.
0:40:26Not to mention the way bigger challenge of developer economics and making it worth developing
0:40:33for these platforms, which is a whole separate discussion, but is related to this.
0:40:37Who's in charge of that?
0:40:39Just to give one example, upgrade pricing.
0:40:41Developers have wanted upgraded pricing for a long time.
0:40:44Of all the top execs we know at Apple, are the people saying no to upgrade pricing and
0:40:50are they still in charge of that decision?
0:40:52Well, I think it was kind of a combo.
0:40:55That kind of thing before would have been...
0:40:57If you look at the app review rules, there are many app review rules related to pricing
0:41:03and what you're allowed to do with your pricing and what you're not.
0:41:05what has to be free, what has to not break
0:41:08or not have limits on it or whatever.
0:41:10So a lot of that is under app review,
0:41:12but then anything related to things like upgrade pricing
0:41:14would have had to be implemented by an accused division.
0:41:18So that kind of thing spanned both divisions,
0:41:22and I think that's one of the reasons why we've seen
0:41:24so little change of that type,
0:41:27because it would have involved these two divisions
0:41:30working together, which was probably problematic
0:41:34or at least burdensome.
0:41:36- They implemented bundles, which was like,
0:41:38seems like so much more complicated than upgrade pricing.
0:41:40I mean, they did in-app purchase and they did bundles.
0:41:42Two features that are fairly complicated.
0:41:45So it seems like when whoever is the head of this snake
0:41:48wants to change to the economics,
0:41:50we wanna make bundles possible.
0:41:52We want to make in-app purchase possible.
0:41:54That's gonna involve your team, Eddie,
0:41:56'cause you gotta handle all the bundle
0:41:57and the pricing or whatever.
0:41:58And in-app purchase is gonna be like a backend
0:42:00that we're gonna talk to or whatever.
0:42:01But it just seemed to me that those efforts
0:42:04weren't coming from IDQ's team.
0:42:06And I'm just wondering like who, you know,
0:42:08I just pulled upgrade pricing out of the hat,
0:42:09but just in terms of those economic issues,
0:42:11somebody is setting the policy.
0:42:13I feel like in an organization like Apple still,
0:42:15if somebody high enough up said, you know what,
0:42:18we're gonna do upgrade pricing.
0:42:19It would happen.
0:42:20Like regardless of who's in charge of implementing it,
0:42:21maybe it would be credit and maybe like the interface
0:42:24for it and iTunes connect would be bad.
0:42:25And maybe it would be buggy to begin with.
0:42:27And maybe it would be difficult for developers to test.
0:42:28All those things you can blame on IDQ or whatever.
0:42:30but I always wonder where the decision is made.
0:42:33Do they have a meeting where I say,
0:42:35should we revisit this upgrade pricing,
0:42:36or does it never come up?
0:42:38Do they decide once, back when Steve Jobs was still alive,
0:42:41that upgrade pricing is good for developers
0:42:42but bad for users, and let's never revisit that decision,
0:42:45despite how the iPad Pro may change
0:42:48that equation or whatever?
0:42:50- You have to also look at how important is this thing,
0:42:54that's very important to us,
0:42:55how important is this relative to the division it's in,
0:42:59than the company it's in, you know.
0:43:00And so relative to all of Apple as a whole,
0:43:04I don't know how important they consider things
0:43:06like the App Store and developer happiness
0:43:08with the App Store and everything else.
0:43:09I don't know.
0:43:10- But they see the tertiary effects.
0:43:11It's like, why aren't more people buying iPad Pros?
0:43:13Why are people leaving the Mac App Store?
0:43:15Why aren't all these awesome apps
0:43:17that we know it's possible to build
0:43:18appearing on the iPad Pro?
0:43:20Why is Adobe not making a full-fledged version
0:43:22of Photoshop for the iPad Pro?
0:43:23Like all sorts of questions about
0:43:24why aren't people taking advantage of our platform?
0:43:27one is that we haven't sold enough hardware, but it's kind of a you know a chicken egg situation other answers
0:43:32What is it about especially specifically the iPad Pro like?
0:43:35What is it about our platforms that you know we all know the answers that lends itself to?
0:43:40applications that a bunch of people write and
0:43:42Support while they can still make money and then abandon like there is no sort of
0:43:46Ten year 20 year application because you can't get any more revenue from them unless it's like it in an app purchase type of thing
0:43:52Where you're constantly you know fleecing people for in-app currency or whatever you know like other than that
0:43:56those models, like why is there no model for sort of professional applications that people
0:44:01buy on a regular basis? I guess they could do subscriptions, but then, you know, like,
0:44:05we all know what the App Store policies are there that make it difficult to have a sustainable
0:44:11high-end software package that continually is upgraded on Apple's iOS platforms. And
0:44:16it's because all the tools people are used to either don't exist or have a 30% tax that's
0:44:19just mostly untenable. Like Adobe loves their subscription revenue. Adobe would love subscription
0:44:25revenue a lot less if Apple took 30% of it.
0:44:27- Right, and I mean there have been so many
0:44:32unimplemented or lost or canceled ideas
0:44:35and services and products because of that 30%.
0:44:38I mean that is not a small number.
0:44:40That is a number that makes or breaks
0:44:43people's business models in a lot of cases.
0:44:45You know, going back to Eddy Cue, to his division,
0:44:47like if you look at what else that division had to do
0:44:51while the app store was under them,
0:44:53That's all of iCloud, that's all of Siri,
0:44:55that is all of the stores, the other stores,
0:44:58the music stores, that's Apple Music.
0:45:00- The streaming television plan that still hasn't happened.
0:45:02- Right, and it's all the content deals.
0:45:04It's negotiating and dealing with all these
0:45:06content companies also, and Apple has not done well
0:45:10in that area recently.
0:45:11And I don't know if this is just Q doing his job badly,
0:45:15probably not, it's probably more complicated than that.
0:45:17- No, it's more like people have Apple's number now.
0:45:19The first one was easy, and then people learned
0:45:21their lesson from iTunes, and it was like,
0:45:22know we're intentionally giving our business to Amazon to check your power
0:45:25Apple so now it's it's much harder to go because you know Apple doesn't want to
0:45:30come out with a plan well as far as I know nobody has a plan that is a
0:45:34convincing replacement for quote-unquote real television at this point Apple
0:45:38wants to be the first so they're gonna have to be the ones to explain to the
0:45:42big networks and everybody just trust us this this won't disempower you and you
0:45:48won't lose your shirt on this deal but you have to bring the price down because
0:45:51because no one's gonna buy it if it costs as much as cable
0:45:53but isn't as good as cable, which it won't be
0:45:55'cause our stupid Apple TV box isn't that good.
0:45:57(laughing)
0:45:58- Right, and this is another thing where,
0:46:00kind of what I was saying last week
0:46:01about how Apple doesn't really seem to know
0:46:04how to be in a negotiating position
0:46:07of not just absolute power.
0:46:09Last week I was talking about developers,
0:46:12but this week I think that applies very equally
0:46:15to the content problems, the content deals.
0:46:18- Well, I'm willing to say here
0:46:20that in this negotiation between Apple
0:46:22and television networks, I'm willing to put money
0:46:25that the television people are being more unreasonable
0:46:28than Apple.
0:46:28(laughs)
0:46:29It feels like a safe bet.
0:46:31Every time Les Moonves makes a public statement,
0:46:33I'd be like, I don't envy Apple trying to negotiate
0:46:36with these guys because I think that they don't get it
0:46:40and Apple is trying to explain it to them.
0:46:41So I really, it's hard to fault Apple and these things.
0:46:46Maybe they are being a little bit stubborn,
0:46:48But geez, they're trying to pull an industry's head out of the sand and it's slow going.
0:46:53No, and that's fair, but that industry I think is still doing really well without Apple.
0:46:58And so the dynamic is different.
0:47:00One of the reasons Apple was able to have so much power in music and get such great
0:47:04deals for music is because the music industry was kind of naïve and also pretty desperate.
0:47:10And in this case, today that's not the case anymore, especially with TV industry.
0:47:14The TV industry is still doing very well and still making tons of money.
0:47:17- Well, Apple should have been Netflix, but wasn't.
0:47:20Like, and Netflix got there first, right?
0:47:22So, and then now everyone, it's a bigger mess.
0:47:26Like you're right, like music,
0:47:27I don't know if music was more desperate,
0:47:29but music was smaller and more tractable
0:47:31and nobody knew what was gonna happen.
0:47:33And Apple just steamrolled everybody.
0:47:35And then everyone saw what happened
0:47:36and everybody who basically lost power to Apple in that
0:47:39was like, no, we're not doing that again.
0:47:41So every other industry from eBooks, television,
0:47:43to movies, to everything was like,
0:47:45If Apple comes calling, look at the music industry as a cautionary tale and negotiate
0:47:50differently and find another way and we're going to make our own streaming apps and we're
0:47:54going to make deals with Netflix and, you know, who knows what we're going to do.
0:47:58But yeah, it's a more complicated world.
0:47:59Like I, yeah, and I do wonder, like, I don't know anything about EdiQ other than I see
0:48:05the guy on stage and hear him talk.
0:48:06We know he's not a big fan of buttoning a shirt.
0:48:08Yeah, well, it's getting lower.
0:48:10But I always wonder what like, what his core skill set is.
0:48:13Like he's not an engineer, right?
0:48:14He's not an ex-programmer or anything.
0:48:16- We've always heard that he is like the negotiator.
0:48:19Like that he is really good
0:48:21at these content deals apparently.
0:48:22Or I've also heard that he has a reputation
0:48:25of like being the fixer.
0:48:26Like, you know, kind of getting things done.
0:48:28But I honestly, I don't see it.
0:48:31- Not on iTunes Connect.
0:48:33- No, well, and look, I mean, iTunes Connect
0:48:35is the least of developers problems.
0:48:37I mean--
0:48:38- Well, all things associated with like
0:48:39test flight integration and you know, the process,
0:48:42your visibility into the app review process and the ability to contact a human about your
0:48:47thing and all that stuff.
0:48:48Oh yeah, yeah. But like, yeah, I mean the problems with the App Store go way beyond
0:48:53like the iTunes Connect web interface. Like that goes so far beyond that. I mean that's,
0:48:57iTunes Connect is good enough for what it does, you know, it's not great but it's
0:49:01fine. It's like the admin panel that we all make for our websites. Like no one's
0:49:06admin panel is nice. iTunes Connect is not nice. But I don't need Phil Schiller to
0:49:11fix iTunes Connect. We need Phil Schiller to fix a lot bigger problems than that.
0:49:16EdiQ got a bachelor's in computer science and economics from Duke.
0:49:21Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I don't know. I can't get a read. It was obviously
0:49:25at this level of the hierarchy. You're not doing anything. You're telling people who
0:49:28are telling people who are telling people to do things, which is fine. It's management.
0:49:34I'm trying to think. Things that were put in our EdiQ that saw substantial improvements
0:49:41or they got better or that, you know, like he's got a lot of sort of stars on his, you
0:49:46know, whatever you call them on his lapel, right?
0:49:48Like iTunes and the stores and the app store, especially in the initial part, there's lots
0:49:53of big important good numbers you can put up there.
0:49:55I bet he got a lot of big bonuses in a lot of those years and, you know, because everything
0:49:59looked good.
0:50:01But just lately, not that it doesn't look good anymore, it still looks good.
0:50:05But like I said, it's like, what have you done for me lately?
0:50:07What improvements have you made to the system?
0:50:09yes, this is a system.
0:50:10People can upload apps, they can put them on stores,
0:50:12we have multiple stores, we have multiple things,
0:50:14but it just doesn't seem like it's progressing.
0:50:16We've all been hearing the exact same complaints
0:50:19from the developer side of it for so many years,
0:50:21and so just set that aside,
0:50:22because a lot of people listening are like,
0:50:23who cares about developers?
0:50:24I don't care about developers.
0:50:26Apple should only care about users.
0:50:27Users should come above developers,
0:50:29and I think that's right.
0:50:30Users do come above developers and should,
0:50:31because there's many more of them.
0:50:33- But it's related, because as a user,
0:50:37you might be like, I don't care what developers
0:50:39think about pricing on the App Store,
0:50:40and then at the same time you might be like,
0:50:41I just got this iPad Pro,
0:50:42why isn't there more software updated for it?
0:50:44- Yeah, or why is this thing that I downloaded
0:50:46this throwaway app that no one's ever gonna support
0:50:48that doesn't work right?
0:50:49But I'm saying set that aside for a second,
0:50:51just 'cause I totally believe in the importance of that,
0:50:54but just set it aside.
0:50:55I really do feel that from the user's perspective,
0:50:59the App Store as experienced by the user,
0:51:01you just talked about it, Marco,
0:51:02the App Store as experienced by users of Apple TV,
0:51:05or just as a user going to the App Store,
0:51:08finding stuff, feeling good and confident about the things
0:51:12that you find there.
0:51:13I think that has not progressed, and the sort of cesspits
0:51:17of it have gotten deeper and more dangerous.
0:51:19The cesspits of free to play, all those mechanics
0:51:23that are taking money from people,
0:51:25and the cesspit of, at this point,
0:51:27sort of single-use unsupported applications
0:51:31that are clogging up your search results
0:51:33and make it much harder to find the one or two good apps.
0:51:38They always brag about how many apps they have.
0:51:40Once that number got to like six or seven digits,
0:51:43it stops being a plus, it starts being a minus.
0:51:45I don't want 10 million applications.
0:51:47I don't want 1 million applications,
0:51:49even 200,000 applications.
0:51:51Like seriously, those all can't be winners, right?
0:51:55There's a lot of, right?
0:51:57So not that I'm saying Apple should reject more things
0:51:59from the store or whatever, but like at a certain point,
0:52:02the number of applications you have becomes Apple's problem
0:52:04to solve, not their thing to brag about.
0:52:06The problem to solve is, Amazon has probably millions
0:52:10of products, but I find it easier to find decent things
0:52:14on Amazon because their review system is better than Apple's
0:52:16because they're people who like this, like that,
0:52:18is a little bit better.
0:52:20All the parts that have to do with dealing with lots
0:52:23of products and presenting it to users,
0:52:25that part of the experience of being a user
0:52:27of Apple products has, again, regardless of what you think
0:52:30of it, just hasn't gotten that much better
0:52:31in years and years and years.
0:52:33And so that is an area where I feel like,
0:52:35No matter what you think about it, you have to say,
0:52:37we are not progressing fast enough.
0:52:39I don't know if competitors are nipping at their heels
0:52:41or whatever, but if you can make that experience better,
0:52:44as they showed with the App Store to begin with,
0:52:45if you can make that experience better,
0:52:46that can do really big things for your bottom line
0:52:49and for your customer sat
0:52:50and for your developer satisfaction.
0:52:52Letting developers be able to respond to reviews
0:52:55or contact people anonymously,
0:52:56that's low hanging fruit.
0:52:59It's not even that big a deal.
0:53:01And it's like, well, we can't do that
0:53:03if the App Store just came out.
0:53:04It's been years.
0:53:04like, give me one of those a year for five years and it would make much bigger difference.
0:53:09And I know they did things, I just mentioned the bundles and in-app purchases arguably
0:53:13are an important thing and subscriptions and opening the stuff that used to be newsstand
0:53:16only up, like, they have done some things but it just feels like stagnation and I don't
0:53:24feel good going into the app store these days unless I know exactly where I'm going.
0:53:28And if I can't get a direct link like on the TV, I don't know what I would do.
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0:54:54- So also in the last week,
0:54:5560 Minutes and Charlie Rose did a, not really an interview, but a feature on Apple.
0:55:03And they were afforded a little bit more access than most TV crews are afforded.
0:55:10Have you guys seen this?
0:55:11Nope.
0:55:12Of course not.
0:55:13I did, but Stupid Football pushed it off the end of my TiVo, so I had to watch the rest
0:55:17of it on CBS's, or whatever, network.
0:55:20It is their terrible website that made me watch more ads, but I did eventually watch
0:55:23it all.
0:55:24I can do that?
0:55:25Yeah, if you stupid football pushes the show out and your TiVo doesn't correctly adjust because stupid football ran long
0:55:31Not enough time for TiVo to get updated guide information
0:55:34then you can watch as much as you can watch your TiVo and then I just always assume I can go to the website of
0:55:40The television show and watch the rest of it and lo and behold I could as long as I was willing to watch like
0:55:4517 of the same commercial before I could move a little play head up to the point where I left off
0:55:49So what do you think about football?
0:55:52I'm not gonna take this bait. I'm not gonna take this bait. It's not bait
0:55:55I'm just saying like is there a TV schedule or isn't there a TV schedule?
0:55:58I feel like if the football runs long it should switch to the football football overflow channel
0:56:02Anyway, all right, I'm still not gonna take this bait. Um, so the feature I it is worth watching although
0:56:10I don't think any like revelations came from it accepting apparently reddit seemed to think that a
0:56:16MacBook that was shown in the background for four seconds was some new Mac
0:56:20Which it wasn't which supposedly it wasn't or if it was like this is the best part of that theory
0:56:26Let's assume that it was so what happens now like let's just stipulate for the purpose of this conversation that there was it
0:56:33There was a different MacBook in the background now what happens?
0:56:35Nothing happens. It looked like
0:56:38Like it opens it closes. It has a screen and a keyboard. Can you buy one? Do you know what's in it? Nope pointless?
0:56:47Plus we already know what they're doing.
0:56:49Look, Skylake is coming out in the spring/winter/summer/god knows when.
0:56:54Skylake is coming out soon.
0:56:56It comes with a huge power savings.
0:56:58The Retina MacBook Pro design is going to be about four years old by the time it comes
0:57:01out.
0:57:02They're going to take advantage of the power savings and they're going to make the stupid
0:57:06thing thinner.
0:57:07And it's going to be fine.
0:57:08I'm going to complain about the keyboard and the battery life and the 4-star extract
0:57:11pad and then I'll end up buying one and they're going to be the same laptops we have
0:57:14now but thinner and cooler looking and maybe in space gray and gold.
0:57:18Or not. Or they could have amazing features that, but none of them would be visible on
0:57:21the screen. It looks like a laptop. It's a screen and a keyboard and a track net. I just
0:57:25like to, you know, just arguing about it, it's like, I will agree right now that that
0:57:30was a brand new unreleased product in the background and now what happens? Do we just
0:57:34sit here and smile? I don't even understand. Anyway, go on Casey, we interrupted you.
0:57:38Yeah, so there wasn't that much that I thought was really remarkable about the piece, about
0:57:44piece, but I thought we should at least note that we, well, two-thirds of us have seen
0:57:48it.
0:57:49The one thing that I thought was really interesting was Dan Riccio saying, and I'm going to butcher
0:57:53the quote because I don't have it in front of me, "Even a tenth of a millimeter of thickness
0:57:57is sacred to us."
0:57:59And this was with regard to the MacBook One, but probably pretty telling about Apple's
0:58:03attitude about these sorts of things in general.
0:58:06So that's a thing.
0:58:08That's a thing that we've been lamenting for a while.
0:58:10I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on that.
0:58:12Well, the quote that stuck out to me was when they were talking to Johnny Ive and he was
0:58:16getting into his Johnny Ive mode where he is very passionate about things.
0:58:20And I think the question was something about like, did you feel like that Apple could become
0:58:25complacent or insular or something like that?
0:58:29And his answer was basically like, I like all the things in this.
0:58:33These are answers that anyone who follows Apple has heard before, just repeated in a
0:58:37new context.
0:58:38the the Johnny AI of answer from his folio which I which I believe is the
0:58:43truth it's not like BS it's just that he has to answer the same questions a
0:58:46million times like every you know every famous person has to and his answer to
0:58:50this one is we're not really looking at what like we're not satisfied with what
0:58:55we do like so we're not gonna be like oh just sort of you know lean back and just
0:58:59phone it in or whatever and we're not comparing ourselves to what else is out
0:59:05there and other people's products what we're comparing ourselves to is always
0:59:08this ideal, this perfection that we have in our own minds.
0:59:10So we're chasing perfection, our own internal,
0:59:14intrinsic motivation, the ideal that we have in our mind,
0:59:17and that's what we're chasing.
0:59:19And I believe that because it shows in their products
0:59:22that seem to be chasing some ideal
0:59:25that is inside their minds,
0:59:27and don't involve certainly too many looks
0:59:32at what other people are doing, which is fine,
0:59:35but also maybe not too many looks at how people use these things in the real world, you know, like
0:59:42his answer makes sense, but it hinges entirely on what is that ideal that you're chasing, and
0:59:48as articulated through many white background movies over many years,
0:59:52the ideal that that Johnny Ive has always said that he's chasing has good and bad aspects of it.
0:59:58The good one is like it has to look obvious, it has to seem like it's not designed,
1:00:03It shouldn't be designed for design's sake, but we can see in the products that he makes that he
1:00:09favors simplicity and symmetry and purity and beauty, and it can be argued that those things
1:00:15have a psychological effect on the user-as-well products that it benefits their bottom line, but
1:00:23there are practical considerations as well. And the balance between chasing that ideal
1:00:30that again may be beneficial to the company but may not be beneficial to the product and
1:00:35also doing things that you kind of have to do, whether it's more reliable strain relief
1:00:41on cables or more grippy surfaces for things or thickness and battery life and all that
1:00:49stuff.
1:00:50I haven't seen a lot of interviews where that balance has been brought up and really pursued.
1:00:56And I'm not expecting, like in 60 Minutes Interview, you know basically it's going to
1:00:59be people you know if you follow up a lot it's gonna be people you've seen
1:01:01before being asked questions they've been asked a thousand times you've seen
1:01:05them be asked these questions a thousand times and you know what their answers
1:01:07are gonna be because you've heard them give the same answer a thousand times
1:01:10but and they they dotted each one of them like labor practices parking money
1:01:15overseas popularity of products secrecy the new Apple campus I mean there's just
1:01:21nothing new there but it is interesting that they you know you get to come in
1:01:25the lab and see the tables draped with stuff and you get to see our milling
1:01:28machine running and whatever, you know, you can peek at it in that way.
1:01:31And it's interesting to see that people give the same answers and see if they
1:01:35change. But what I always want is, you know,
1:01:37I think what we all want as people who are either on or listening to this
1:01:40program is deeper questions. Like, so, uh,
1:01:42I think Gruber's interview with Schiller pursued this a little bit on the whole,
1:01:46like, I forgot what he was talking about then.
1:01:48Maybe he was also talking about battery life or maybe it was developer
1:01:50relations, but anyway, you like to, to pursue, to have followups,
1:01:53to dig a little bit, like to bring up this, because I'm sure Donnie,
1:01:56It's not like this is news to Johnny if he knows about the the balance between you know practical features
1:02:00I'm sure all the engineering people in the manufacturer is telling him practically speaking you need to do this and he's like no can we
1:02:05Figure out a way to do this like that's that's why he was talking about you know fractions of millimeters
1:02:10There there is a tension between what can be done. What is able to be manufactured? What is economical? What is beautiful?
1:02:17What is ergonomic is there something that's both beautiful and ergonomic and obvious and durable and stays beautiful for a long time like this
1:02:24This is that's what design is all about
1:02:26I would love to hear an in-depth discussion with Johnny I've just about those trade-offs about how he figures out where that balance is
1:02:33not in vague terms of getting into specifics because that I think is the most interesting thing about design and
1:02:38Johnny I've had never talks about it. Maybe he's never going to because secrecy type thing
1:02:43He doesn't want to give you a cute, you know a window into his mind
1:02:47but if he retired and I could get him on this podcast, I would spend the entire show just
1:02:51like
1:02:53trying to figure out how they how they did that balance and what factors do we not understand that are involved in this and
1:02:59Are there problems that we see that he doesn't and other problems that he knows are
1:03:03Legitimate issues that we never see and take for granted and that would be a much more interesting
1:03:07Interview than the Lopez on 60 minutes, but then again, it's 60 minutes. So what do you expect? I
1:03:12Think my expectations for that were even lower than my expectations for Star Wars
1:03:16Are your expectations low for Star Wars that you people have been saying good things about it the people involved were good
1:03:22Everyone likes JJ Abrams, you know George Lucas wasn't involved. It seemed like your expectation should have been at least middle of the road
1:03:28Well, let's just say the last three Star Wars movies I saw were not the best
1:03:32I know but there's a whole different set of maybe you don't know but it's a whole it's all different set of people here
1:03:36The old people are out. It's it's even bigger than the the eddy cue Phil Schiller thing all people out new people in well
1:03:42Yeah, well, I'm like the average consumer. I wasn't really in that world of paying attention to all that stuff
1:03:46I didn't expect much from it because
1:03:49The last few Star Wars movies I've seen have been terrible.
1:03:52No, they fixed that. They didn't just shuffle things around a little bit.
1:03:56Complete change of hands, new people in charge entirely.
1:03:59Everything on the internet comes back to Star Wars these days.
1:04:02That's what you have to see. Just go see it tomorrow.
1:04:03Yeah, how are you the one who hasn't seen this? Like, somehow Marco has seen it and you have—
1:04:07I don't understand what's going on today.
1:04:09Bizarro World.
1:04:10It is Bizarro World.
1:04:11It's a Christmas miracle.
1:04:12This is our Christmas miracle.
1:04:14Next you gotta tell me that Hop saw it.
1:04:16I should have brought him. He would have enjoyed it.
1:04:18Oh, God.
1:04:18No dogs in theaters. No, we need we need a babysitter because we have like a baby now
1:04:23We're all like old and boring. I know but you got family close by you can make this happen
1:04:26Yeah, put your kid in preschool. Actually the theater I went to an Alamo Drafthouse
1:04:30We just like this a kind of like hipster theater chain
1:04:32But I inadvertently booked a baby showing because they do they do like baby
1:04:37Okay showing really they allow people to bring babies and if they cry, oh well
1:04:41Tiff was really not happy that I booked this but it turned out not to matter
1:04:44There was like one baby in whole theater that cried like once but it didn't matter
1:04:47But that might exist near you if you can find that that is the kind of hipster thing you would have around that area
1:04:53Around me. Yeah. No. No, there's no alma draught house anywhere near here
1:04:57I think it's like at least an hour away
1:04:59well
1:04:59at any rate look look at look at local theaters to see if they have any like baby showings of movies because some I think
1:05:04Some theaters are going to do that now. I went to a nerd showing it was great. What does that mean?
1:05:07What does that include?
1:05:09only nerds allowed
1:05:11You know either people who are dressed up or people who think seriously about ever dressing up or people who could see believe you friends
1:05:16someone who dresses up. Very respectful nerds, that's how I saw it. It's the only way to do it.
1:05:21Did they market it that way, or is it just—? No, but it just happens naturally. We congregate.
1:05:25I clearly am not a card-carrying nerd, because I have no idea when that would be.
1:05:30If you saw it on the 17th, and especially if you saw it at either the very first showing,
1:05:35or like a ridiculously late showing that no insane person would ever go to because you
1:05:39end up getting back to your house at 3am, it's full of nerds. It was the best.
1:05:42So I guess we're done talking about the 60 Minutes thing then, huh?
1:05:46To be honest, I have no—I have nothing else to add.
1:05:49I mean, it was—it was interesting to watch.
1:05:52It's probably worth the 20, 30 minutes of your time.
1:05:54Assuming that you live in the United States—I saw something fly by on Twitter that it's
1:06:00locked down to the U.S. because reasons—but it is worth your time.
1:06:04Don't expect anything monumental.
1:06:05I also watched their—what do they call it?
1:06:0860 Minutes Overtime segments, which were not that particularly interesting nor worthwhile.
1:06:14The one thing I will say is that I was happy to see Angela Ahrens come out from the shadows.
1:06:20They spoke to her a few times and I was very impressed with her.
1:06:23I thought she was really, really good, which is what one would expect given that she was
1:06:27once a CEO.
1:06:28They did have one.
1:06:29All right, so there were some tidbits in there.
1:06:31Maybe I just don't know about this, but one of the things is they were showing like the
1:06:33model Apple Store, like, "Oh, this is where we tested our ideas for Apple Store."
1:06:36And there was one wall that had a bunch of foliage on it.
1:06:38I noticed that.
1:06:39That was very weird.
1:06:40And I'm assuming no real Apple Store has that.
1:06:42But boy, I'd love to see that.
1:06:45They try out all sorts of ideas there, right?
1:06:47I would love to see that idea make it out of the model and be, just go into the Apple
1:06:50store and have one wall, have a bunch of green vines hanging down.
1:06:54And also the ones where they had cases and the case was the pull on the thing.
1:06:59Lots of wacky ideas there.
1:07:00So that was interesting to see for two seconds.
1:07:02And the other reason to watch it, this will make you simultaneously angry about 60 minutes,
1:07:07but interested in seeing this, is you get to see Tim Cook get fired up about Apple keeping
1:07:12their money overseas and our stupid tax laws and labor practices and stuff, he gets kind
1:07:17of angry.
1:07:18Sounds like a fun time.
1:07:20Not angry.
1:07:21So they ask him the same questions you always ask him.
1:07:24And they don't, like he probably gave like very substantial, thorough answers to them.
1:07:29We've heard him give those answers before, like on Apple's earnings calls and the things
1:07:34he has for the meetings he has for stockholders and everything.
1:07:37But in 60 Minutes, you get three sentences that they cut out of your big, long, comprehensive
1:07:40answer.
1:07:41sentences when Tim Cook is the angriest and they don't explain anything and then they
1:07:44move on to the next topic. So it was really garbage from a, you know, a perspective of
1:07:49like giving insight to anybody who doesn't know about these issues. All you get the idea
1:07:53is that we say this leading question, Apple angrily denies it, I don't know what the truth
1:07:58is, not enough information, now it's time to ask about something else. But it was interesting
1:08:03to see Tim Cook leaning forward in his chair and getting probably the most sort of worked
1:08:08up I'd ever seen him in a public scenario like that. I also would have loved to have
1:08:14heard what Steve Jobs would have said to those same things. I think he would have had his
1:08:16smirk -- more of a smirk and less of an earnest sort of anger. Either way, there was no information
1:08:22-- like, you couldn't draw any conclusions from that. Like, Tim Cook, I'm sure, gave
1:08:26a good answer, but 60 Minutes just is not going to air it, which is a real shame.
1:08:31I would love to see you interviewed on 60 Minutes, Jon, and to just see, like, how the
1:08:35heck they would edit that.
1:08:36That's the word. I feel for those guys because they're getting interviewed for like, you
1:08:41know, half an hour, 20 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour, and they're going to take literally
1:08:44five sentences. And that's what they're going to have. Five sentences. Five of the most
1:08:48dramatic sounding sentences with no surrounding context. And there's nothing you can do about
1:08:52it. You can't explain yourself before. You can't explain yourself. It's like, they're
1:08:55just going to pull them out and that's what people are going to see. And just like, why
1:08:59would they even agree to it? Why would they agree to be it? Because they have no control
1:09:02over what those sentences are. I don't like it.
1:09:06This is honestly, this is why I haven't rushed to watch it, because I figured TV interviews
1:09:10are so low density.
1:09:14I feel like there's so little content in them, there's so much padding and time wasting in
1:09:19them, there's no smart speed.
1:09:22It's just so low density.
1:09:24There is a MIT though.
1:09:25Oh yeah, of course there is.
1:09:26Simpsons did it and Opera did it first.
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1:11:22- So a long time ago, in a Galaxy Fire,
1:11:26no, a long time ago we wanted to talk about
1:11:30something that came out of nowhere, and it's a new service, product, company, startup,
1:11:38it's a new thing, and it's called UpThere. And it has a lot of ex-Apple people in it.
1:11:44And Jon, I think this was kind of your baby, so what do you want to tell us about UpThere?
1:11:48Jon Sorrentino Yeah, Bertrand Cerlet used to be in charge
1:11:51of Apple software stuff, in charge of like OS X and everything, back before there was
1:11:54iOS, and even a little bit after, I think. And he retired from Apple a while ago, that's
1:12:00That's when Craig Federighi took over basically.
1:12:03And he disappeared to, I don't know, go on vacation and do whatever he wanted to do.
1:12:07But pretty quickly after he left Apple there were rumblings like "oh, what's Bertrand's
1:12:11next thing?"
1:12:12I guess you don't ever really leave.
1:12:13I guess you would just leave and become like, I don't know, a venture capitalist or support
1:12:18other technology things.
1:12:19Anyway, the whole, the rumor was that he was involved in some kind of startup and they
1:12:24were doing something having to do with computers and that's all anybody knew about it.
1:12:28I didn't pay too much attention to it.
1:12:29I figured he'll surface at some point.
1:12:31And he did surface a couple months back with this company called UpThere.
1:12:35And when I went to their website at first, it was like pretty impenetrable, because they
1:12:41say if you had a cloud-to-butt translation on your web browser, it was like, "A lot of
1:12:47butts going on here."
1:12:48It was like, "They're doing something in the cloud, and there are computers."
1:12:53and it's like, well, what is different about this company?
1:12:58It seemed like they were saying they were gonna store
1:12:59a bunch of your stuff on their servers
1:13:01so you wouldn't have to store it on yours.
1:13:03- Yeah, honestly, I have looked at this,
1:13:05it's been in the show notes for like two months,
1:13:07I've looked at this every so often before the show
1:13:09and I cannot figure out what it is
1:13:12and why I need to care about it.
1:13:13- Yeah, and like the quote I pulled from the CEO,
1:13:15who is not Bertrand Cerlet by the way,
1:13:17he's just one of the founders,
1:13:18but the CEO, Roger Bodamer says,
1:13:21We'd like the word backup to vanish from the dictionary.
1:13:24We built a consumer cloud from the ground up.
1:13:25Oh, here we go.
1:13:26We questioned everything, literally.
1:13:28We experimented a lot.
1:13:29We want the cloud to be the primary place for your data.
1:13:31So this is a fairly succinct summary.
1:13:33The whole idea is like, you know,
1:13:35it's kind of like a Chromebook.
1:13:36You don't back up a Chromebook
1:13:38because there's nothing on it
1:13:39that isn't already on Google servers somewhere, right?
1:13:42And up there, the whole idea is,
1:13:44don't worry about what's on your phone
1:13:46or on your Mac or wherever you want it to be.
1:13:48That's just like a local cache.
1:13:50That's not where the stuff is.
1:13:51Check your phone into the ocean.
1:13:53Who cares?
1:13:54There was nothing on it anyway.
1:13:55You're fine.
1:13:56All your stuff is up there in the cloud.
1:13:58And the bit from here is like,
1:14:01from the second quote is we experimented a lot.
1:14:04They've been in stealth mode, as they say, for a long time.
1:14:07So who knows what they've been doing behind the scenes?
1:14:09But they do have a beta program and I'm on the beta
1:14:12and it's a public beta program.
1:14:15You just sign up for it.
1:14:16And they have a couple of applications.
1:14:20This is a Mac application and this is an iOS application.
1:14:22Those are the ones I use.
1:14:25And you launch them and it's like, "Hey, we're this cloud thing.
1:14:28Sign up."
1:14:29They already have two-factor authentication, which I thought was really nice, you know,
1:14:32out of the gate because if you're going to be a cloud thing, like you don't add that
1:14:35like in your fifth year or something, it's important enough to have it now.
1:14:38And then it wants you to put stuff into their cloud.
1:14:40I'm like, "All right."
1:14:41Well, they have like an easy button press that's like, "Hey, do you want to put your
1:14:44photos library into the cloud?"
1:14:46And it's my photos library, not like the family one.
1:14:48my photos library only has like 10,000 photos in it or something so I'm like sure here you
1:14:51go take those you know like I mean a lot of this is going on I'm just trusting Bertrand
1:14:55Cerlet this is not a shady company or whatever and you can upload it and you can drag files
1:15:02into it or whatever just like whatever fine so I told it to pull up my photos library
1:15:07and just let it do its thing and then it eventually uploaded my photos library and then on the
1:15:11iOS application I can go and I can browse through all of my photos in my photos library
1:15:15again only like 10,000 or so.
1:15:18There was some weirdness in that to get the phone totally synced, like uploaded them from
1:15:22my Mac, and then to get the phone totally synced, the best way to do it was to have
1:15:29the phone in the application launch as like an option that says don't let your phone go
1:15:34to sleep when the application is in the foreground because I guess it uploads better or faster
1:15:37when the application is running and in the foreground.
1:15:39And I didn't even know that was an option but apparently it is.
1:15:41But anyway, they got everything uploaded there.
1:15:43They have a camera application as well, which is kind of getting more into how this is supposed
1:15:48to work.
1:15:49It's a camera for your phone and you launch this application instead of launching Apple's
1:15:53camera application, you take pictures.
1:15:55But instead of the pictures going onto your phone, the pictures go directly into the cloud.
1:16:00And the pitch there is you'll never fill your phone with pictures.
1:16:03And that's a real thing that a lot of people who have smartphones do is they take pictures,
1:16:07take pictures, take pictures, and then they fill up their phone.
1:16:09Iowa storage management is such that there's not a real easy way out of that
1:16:14without oh you need to have an iCloud photo library or do you have that turned
1:16:17on do you have a Mac and like you know the up there thing is we're never gonna
1:16:22fill your phone because we don't put the pictures on your phone you take the
1:16:25pictures and we immediately upload them now obviously everything about up there
1:16:29is predicated on you having a network connection and that can network
1:16:32connection being somewhat reliable and somewhat you know having a reasonable
1:16:37bandwidth. So it's a forward-looking play where it's like the future is not going to be doing
1:16:44stuff locally and figuring out how to sync it. The future is going to be pushing everything up.
1:16:48That's a pretty safe bet. What it all comes down to though, that's why everyone hears about this
1:16:52and reads the website and thinks that it's like, well, whatever, you're uploading stuff to a server
1:16:56somewhere, who cares? What it all comes down to is execution. How well does it upload stuff to the
1:17:02Does the sync ever get stuck?
1:17:05Can I actually scroll through all 10,000 of my pictures?
1:17:07How long does it take for the thumbnails to load?
1:17:10And I don't know what exactly they're doing tech-wise, because the website is not illuminating.
1:17:14I would imagine, since they've been in stealth mode a really long time, what they're trying
1:17:17to do is come up with a better interface than like...
1:17:20The application uses POSIX APIs to do synchronous I/O to your local disk, and then some daemon
1:17:25process wanders the file system, or Dropbox or whatever, and finds things, and opens an
1:17:30connection and shoves the files one at a time to our servers. Like, that's the old way of doing
1:17:35things. I don't know if they're doing exactly that or if they are, you know, I'm imagining sort of
1:17:41more interesting abstractions where instead of going through a POSIX file I/O API, they have
1:17:46their own file I/O API that does intelligent things like better support for streaming and
1:17:52batching of multiple things and like, you know, handling failures better and being asynchronous
1:17:58instead of synchronous by default and being multi-threaded and being able to use multiple
1:18:03connections and handling, you know, like that's what I'm imagining is behind the scenes. But the
1:18:07bottom line is it uploaded all my pictures and when I scroll through them I can scroll through
1:18:12all of them and the thumbnails load and, you know, pretty fast and when you go to the iOS usage
1:18:19screen to see how much disk space the up there applications are taking up it's like nothing,
1:18:23it's like 90 megabytes. So I think it really is streaming all this stuff in real time
1:18:28from the cloud, as they say.
1:18:31And the pitch on their website is
1:18:34storing our entire digital lives-- photos, video, music,
1:18:37and documents-- in a single place
1:18:38that is always accessible, growing, evolving,
1:18:40and ready to share.
1:18:41They're sharing stuff is even better than Apple's.
1:18:42Already it's better than Apple's.
1:18:43You can make something they call loop,
1:18:45where you can have multiple people putting their photos
1:18:48into a single bucket.
1:18:50And so you could do that with a family photo library,
1:18:52where the whole family could have camera applications.
1:18:55And every picture they take could
1:18:55go into one giant shared thing, where
1:18:57people can contribute is it like,
1:19:00it just seems like a forward looking way to do everything.
1:19:05And is the implementation good
1:19:07just because they have five beta testers
1:19:08and all five of us are connected
1:19:10to their super fast servers
1:19:11and it will be terrible when there's a million people?
1:19:13Could this scale to be the size of like Apple Music
1:19:16or like photo library?
1:19:17I have no idea.
1:19:18All I know is that whatever the heck they're doing,
1:19:20it's working and Apple should buy them
1:19:22because it's better than everything Apple is doing.
1:19:24Even though there aren't a lot of features yet,
1:19:25I'm just going by like,
1:19:26Did it upload my pictures?
1:19:27Yes. Can I see them all?
1:19:28Yes. Can I scroll through them quickly?
1:19:30Yes. Is it storing any files on my phone?
1:19:32Not as far as I can tell.
1:19:33So it does what it says on the tin
1:19:36and it's pretty impressive.
1:19:37- I have been on the beta for like a week or two now
1:19:41because I didn't get a clear read
1:19:44on what the intention is for the app.
1:19:46In fact, you describing it
1:19:47has given me a much better understanding
1:19:49than the very little bit of documentation I read.
1:19:52I didn't really know what to make of it.
1:19:54And like the Mac app, it has some tabs on the left.
1:19:56It has flow, which I guess is just kind of like a newsfeed sort of thing.
1:20:00It has photos and videos, music, and documents.
1:20:03And it's not, I mean, I understand what those words mean.
1:20:06I understand that it's presumably, I'm supposed to just start chucking things in these buckets,
1:20:11but it wasn't entirely clear to me what the long-term play is here, and I understand that
1:20:15a lot better.
1:20:16It seems to work well, like you said.
1:20:19I mean, I'm not, I haven't really tried much with it, but there's plenty of stuff there,
1:20:23it certainly is streaming things from the cloud, like you said, very quickly.
1:20:29So initial impressions by me were confusion, but happy confusion, if such a thing exists.
1:20:36Now that I've heard you talk about it, I'm very interested to play with the iOS app,
1:20:39which I had never bothered to download.
1:20:41Maybe that was half my problem.
1:20:43Very interested to play with that and see how it goes.
1:20:46But it wouldn't surprise me if this was in some ways just an acquisition play to see
1:20:52if Apple is feeling desperate to get away from web objects and hire a team that can
1:20:58solve this problem once and for all.
1:20:59Well, presumably, like, that it's a tech play.
1:21:02It's not just that they've done, like I said, that they're doing exactly the same thing
1:21:05everyone else is doing, just using HTTP connections with standard libraries and doing local file
1:21:12I/O and just, like, doing that slightly better than, you know, 1% better than everyone else.
1:21:16It seems like the only reason this could ever be a startup is someone has some good ideas
1:21:19about how to abstract the file system and the network in a way that accounts for the
1:21:25modern world.
1:21:26That it is not like backward looking, to some degree like even drop boxes, that it's just
1:21:29a bunch of local files on disk and this is other process that watches them and moves
1:21:33them up and down.
1:21:36When I think about with like the thumbnails, like surely it is not loading each of those
1:21:39thumbnails one at a time.
1:21:40Surely it is either chunking them up or streaming them down or like it's not making a new connection
1:21:45for everyone, definitely, right?
1:21:47How is it dealing with the size of the thumbnails and how is it keeping up with my scrolling
1:21:53and knowing which things it wants to load and stuff like that.
1:21:56And I mean right now it's a beta whatever.
1:21:58I'm not putting anything, nothing is only in up there because that would be ridiculous.
1:22:02My entire photo library, they're really smart to say there's a one button press, you launch
1:22:05a thing it's like do you want me to upload your photo library?
1:22:07All right.
1:22:08I mean you don't use photos so you didn't see that button or it wouldn't be useful to
1:22:10you.
1:22:11But for me I'm like fine go ahead.
1:22:12Because it's just reading from the photos library and it keeps in sync with it and everything
1:22:15too.
1:22:16When I take photos with the regular Apple camera app, like a million other apps, like
1:22:20remember the Dropbox camera app or whatever, we'll try to see when you take pictures with
1:22:23your photo app and it'll upload those.
1:22:25What I'm basically using it now is a toy to play with every once in a while to see what
1:22:29the performance is like and try to figure out what the heck they're actually doing behind
1:22:32the scenes.
1:22:33And yet another free backup for all of my photos.
1:22:37The small photo library, not the big one.
1:22:39I thought about signing up my wife for it and trying to put the big library up to the
1:22:44thing to see if it would choke on that because 10,000 is not that big of a challenge. What
1:22:47about 60 or 70,000? And maybe I'll do this, it's hard to test, but that would never burn
1:22:53anything only up there. And business model, I don't know, it's all free in beta, so who
1:22:57knows what they would charge for this stuff. So it's still a big question mark.
1:23:01Pricing is a pretty big question mark, though. That matters a lot to how many people will
1:23:06even bother trying to adopt it in the first place. Because photo libraries can be quite
1:23:10And once you start talking about like storing all of my stuff up there or all of my documents or even many of my documents plus all my photos plus you know other kinds of media like that gets very big very quickly, especially if you have any video shooting.
1:23:22shooting.
1:23:23But their explanation and the people behind it make you think like, obviously they would
1:23:27take that into account, that their whole idea is that the old way of doing things, the way
1:23:30that everybody else is doing them, was sort of using 80s and 90s tech to solve a problem
1:23:36that's really in the future for this future world where everybody has ubiquitous fast
1:23:40connections, which is getting closer every day.
1:23:43They are coming at it from that perspective.
1:23:45They must have smart solutions for not just the API and how to write applications into
1:23:52this back end, but how the back end works, how it's hosted, how it's scaled, how, you
1:23:57know, what the economics are, how much does it cost for us to host X amount of data? Can
1:24:00we undercut everyone else's prices by using better technology because we can more efficiently
1:24:06store like I have, again, they don't tell you it's their secret, you know, whatever.
1:24:09I have no idea what they're doing behind the scenes, but all I can look at is the front
1:24:13end and the front end seems to work more smoothly than every other floor I've tried, whether
1:24:20be Dropbox or the Microsoft's OneDrive thing or Google Drive or like we've all tried all
1:24:26these different things. What was that one? BitKasa. There's been so many different services
1:24:30that are like this. And you know, there are good ones. I use Dropbox all the time. Like
1:24:35they're not bad. But this impressed me with just how sort of no nonsense and smooth it is.
1:24:42And how I don't even know how they're doing it. How like how is it that I'm able to scroll
1:24:45through 10,000 photos and the thumbnails like they're not there instantly. There's little
1:24:49little white squares initially, but they come in pretty fast, whole screens full of thumbnails.
1:24:54I have no idea how it's doing that, but it's pretty impressive.
1:24:57- Assuming that this actually becomes a thing and launches to the public with some kind
1:25:02of business model or something, would you, obviously they don't want to be your cloud
1:25:08backup service.
1:25:10They want to be your primary storage, and possibly your only storage, therefore, 'cause
1:25:15Is there even an easy way to maintain a local copy of everything,
1:25:19or do they really not want you to do that?
1:25:20Well, that's what I'm getting at.
1:25:22I don't know.
1:25:23Maybe that's their long-term play, obviously,
1:25:25but right now, they are perfectly willing to be omnivorous.
1:25:28They will pull in content and say,
1:25:30like you don't have to manually say,
1:25:31"Oh, I took some new photos with my phone."
1:25:33Like, every time you launch the app,
1:25:35it will sync up any new photos you've taken.
1:25:37Anytime I add anything to my phone,
1:25:38like I'm just using photos.
1:25:40I'm not using up there at this point,
1:25:41but up there is, every time I launch it,
1:25:43is pulling all that stuff in.
1:25:44So, you know, it's a great sort of on-ramp.
1:25:48Like, they want to make it easiest for people to launch this app and say,
1:25:51"We know you have your stuff elsewhere, and probably you want to keep your stuff elsewhere,
1:25:54and probably you're only going to deal with elsewhere, but we're here too."
1:25:57And they would have to sort of get you into the flow by saying,
1:26:00"We're cheaper than your other hosting.
1:26:02We're more reliable than photos." Eventually become trustworthy.
1:26:05I mean, realistically speaking, they'll probably be bought by somebody before any of this happens,
1:26:08but because that does look impressive.
1:26:10But, you know, I don't see any reason why they, what you're getting at,
1:26:14I think is like would you event would you ever like put your stuff in there?
1:26:17Really? What would you trust it as primary story just because they're trying to get rid of backups
1:26:22I don't know that I could do that. Well, you know, I mean like it's it's aspirational like obviously, you know
1:26:27You can't get rid of backups because if a meteor hits your data center, I need my stuff
1:26:32All right
1:26:32so we're always gonna have I'm gonna have you know, my
1:26:34Online backups and my time machine and my clone and and the question of can you have local only copies?
1:26:41Well, yeah, if I just keep using photos and I have one of the Macs set to always have local copies of the photos and
1:26:46I have 17 backups of that including online like that's the way I would continue to go but
1:26:51I could see for example
1:26:54Not enabling the the thing that lets you know
1:26:58whatever it is iCloud photo library that lets you see your entire library on your phone because it's too onerous or maybe and
1:27:02enabling it but never going to it like for example when someone says
1:27:05I like I like having access to all photo libraries. I was someone asked question like what you know
1:27:11What did one of your kids look like when he was three years old, right?
1:27:13I like being able to launch a thing on a phone and go to the year and say, you know
1:27:18I have access to every single one of my pictures here
1:27:20But it's slower to do that with iCloud photo library than it is to do that with up there
1:27:24Just because it is like I can go to the year. It can launch it faster the thing load faster and you know, like
1:27:30that's that's a win for me if that takes over that role where I
1:27:34No longer go to photos to look at my photos
1:27:38I just go to up there because the same things are in both places and it has nothing to do with backups or whatever
1:27:42It's a long road from there to the aspirational goal of like hey, we keep all your stuff and that's right
1:27:48But but I truly believe in that end state not the end of backups
1:27:52But maybe the end of backups for regular people like where you could where they can get it to the point where it's reliable and redundant
1:27:58enough that you won't be up because think about now you're obsessing with people like
1:28:03Have you ever backed up your phone?
1:28:05Have you enabled iCloud photo library if I run over your phone with the car or chuck it into the ocean?
1:28:11Did you just lose the pictures of your infant child?
1:28:13Who's now five years old because you've never emptied your phone before the whole problem of filling your phone with photos like all those concerns
1:28:19I would like to be addressed and go away
1:28:21I think Android is better at addressing the now and apples catching up with the iCloud photo library and up there is trying to say
1:28:27We're at we're way out here at the extreme
1:28:29where you guys want to be and I
1:28:33I'm just looking at it as a competition between implementations, really, at this point, and
1:28:37their implementation looks pretty good.
1:28:39Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Linode, Fracture, and Harry's, and we'll see
1:28:45you next week.
1:28:46Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental, oh, it
1:28:57was accidental.
1:28:58John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let it go.
1:29:03'cause it was accidental.
1:29:05Accidental.
1:29:07It was accidental.
1:29:09Accidental.
1:29:10And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM
1:29:14And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them
1:29:19@C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
1:29:23So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:29:28♫ Anti-Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C, U-S-A-C-R-A-C-Uza ♫
1:29:35♫ It's accidental, accidental ♫
1:29:38♫ They didn't mean to ♫
1:29:41♫ Accidental, accidental ♫
1:29:43♫ Tech podcast so long ♫
1:29:48I do love the Cloud To Butt plugin.
1:29:50That is quite good.
1:29:51It's magical.
1:29:52Well, maybe you didn't spend any money this week, Marco, but you committed yourself to
1:30:00spending some money sometime soon.
1:30:02You want to tell us about that?
1:30:03I spent some.
1:30:04There's a deposit.
1:30:05Fair enough.
1:30:06Yeah, so I ordered a Tesla, and you lost the bet.
1:30:10I know.
1:30:11I knew already that I lost the bet, but nobody else did.
1:30:14The bet was—and the winnings were just bragging rights—the bet was that Marco would absolutely
1:30:22get the performance version of whatever Tesla that he ended up buying.
1:30:26And that's because Marco doesn't typically know how to do halfway on anything.
1:30:31As it turns out, I lost the bet and you did not get a P90D or a P90NoD or whatever it
1:30:38is.
1:30:39I forget the different permutations.
1:30:40What did you end up getting?
1:30:41Why don't you run through the setup with us?
1:30:44I got the 90D.
1:30:46So it is approximately M5 speed
1:30:51and maximum range available in a Tesla today.
1:30:54It's white because it's the only color that cars can be in.
1:30:57No, just kidding, it's red.
1:31:00This is gonna be my first non-dark colored car
1:31:04in a long, ever really, and my first non-black car
1:31:07in a decade at least.
1:31:09So red Tesla 90D is coming in late March,
1:31:13one of my leases up, but I ordered it now
1:31:16to take advantage of some discounts
1:31:17they were running before the end of the year.
1:31:19- What wheels did you get?
1:31:20- The 19 Silver Cyclone wheels.
1:31:23I know in the pictures, so on red you can argue
1:31:26that the dark colored wheels would probably look better,
1:31:29and in pictures they do.
1:31:32First of all, I think up close,
1:31:34they look a little bit flat,
1:31:36like they almost look like painted plastic.
1:31:38I know they're not, but just like the finish on them
1:31:40is kinda like flat and a little bit dull.
1:31:43They also, because it is just like a thin color coating
1:31:46on top of a regular, I don't know,
1:31:48what are these made out of, steel, aluminum?
1:31:50What are they usually made out of, what metal?
1:31:52- It depends.
1:31:53- Anyway, so whatever metal it is, probably aluminum,
1:31:55the dark colored wheels, any kind of curb rash,
1:31:58anywhere, any scratch whatsoever on them,
1:32:01that bright colored metal below it just shines
1:32:03right through and you can see it from a mile away.
1:32:06And sure enough, whenever I'd be at a Tesla dealer
1:32:09looking at these things, there would often be
1:32:11customer cars parked in the lot,
1:32:13like just getting serviced or people visiting
1:32:16to, I don't know, look at new Teslas or whatever,
1:32:18and every car I saw in person that was a customer-owned car
1:32:21that had dark wheels on it
1:32:23had very visible scratches on them.
1:32:26- Those people can't just drive.
1:32:28I went past a black Model S today
1:32:32with the big dark-colored wheels at the supermarket,
1:32:36red brake calipers too, I think,
1:32:37and there were no scratches on them.
1:32:39- Yeah, if it has the red calipers, that is a P model.
1:32:41It was tempting to spend 20 grand extra
1:32:44just for red calipers, but I did not.
1:32:47It wasn't really tempting.
1:32:48- Well, you get a lot more than red calipers,
1:32:50but point noted.
1:32:51- Well, but honestly, so you get the red calipers
1:32:54and you get the faster rear engines.
1:32:59The D models have the two engines.
1:33:00The rear engine is faster,
1:33:01but those are actually the only two differences.
1:33:03Plus, you get less range,
1:33:05but the suspension is all the same.
1:33:07Everything else about the car is the same.
1:33:09I've confirmed this with multiple people from Tesla,
1:33:11that they always say the same thing in my drive,
1:33:13and totally, it certainly seems that way.
1:33:15The only thing different is the engine, the red calipers,
1:33:19and you get the option for a spoiler on the back
1:33:21that I hate.
1:33:22- So you got red, you got the 19 inch silver cyclone wheels.
1:33:26What other options?
1:33:27You said 90D.
1:33:28- Yeah, 90D, black interior, sunroof.
1:33:32I got autopilot, range upgrade, premium interior,
1:33:35the big next-gen seats.
1:33:37I did not get the smart air suspension.
1:33:39I was going to and I did some reading and did some research
1:33:43and it sounds like the air suspension
1:33:47really does make the car feel more like a Lexus,
1:33:51like a cushy or softer ride.
1:33:53And I did not think that that was even what I wanted,
1:33:57let alone worth $2,500 extra on the purchase price,
1:34:00even though I'm leasing it, but still,
1:34:02I would pay probably half that.
1:34:04So I didn't get smart air suspension
1:34:06because I want a more firm, sporty ride.
1:34:09And I did not get the ultra high fidelity sound
1:34:13because I did a back to back test of those in the showroom
1:34:16and could tell very little difference
1:34:18in the two sound systems.
1:34:19And neither of them sounded great to me.
1:34:20Like they both sounded honestly pretty mediocre.
1:34:23So I figured might as well not spend
1:34:25extra money on mediocrity.
1:34:26I did get the Sub-Zero weather package
1:34:28because I live in a place with real seasons.
1:34:30And I did not get the rear facing seats
1:34:31because for the next three years at this lease we'll cover.
1:34:35my wife and I decided that we would probably not be
1:34:37comfortable with our kid in those seats during this age
1:34:40period by enough to make it worth getting them
1:34:43for an extra $3,000.
1:34:44- What did you get as the interior trim accent?
1:34:47You can get a carbon fiber looking or, you know?
1:34:50- That was actually a tough call.
1:34:52The carbon fiber looks decent but kind of hurt my eyes
1:34:56and Tiff's opinion here matters a lot because she,
1:34:59as the passenger usually while I'm driving,
1:35:01she sees the trim way more than I do.
1:35:03there's this big strip right in front of the passenger side and in the driver side you
1:35:06don't really see much of it. So she didn't care for the carbon fiber so that was fine.
1:35:13The two woods they just have like basically a glossy and a matte wood. I didn't like the
1:35:16look of the matte so I was basically deciding between the glossy wood and the piano black.
1:35:20The piano black, my current car has that. I know I like it. It is very nice. That being
1:35:25said, it shows fingerprints and scratches like crazy. But I decided ultimately I would
1:35:30I would rather have fingerprinted piano black trim
1:35:33'cause I just like it better.
1:35:34I would rather have that than perfect glossy wood trim.
1:35:37- You stoked?
1:35:38- I am, yeah.
1:35:39I'm actually looking forward to something new.
1:35:42I mean, I mentioned before, I've loved having the M5.
1:35:45It's been great.
1:35:46I do, however, miss all-wheel drive.
1:35:48Yes, I know they're adding it to the next model,
1:35:50but it isn't there now.
1:35:51I also mentioned earlier that I really want a quieter car.
1:35:54BMW does not currently sell a quieter car
1:35:58that has all-wheel drive, that has a transmission
1:36:00that I would tolerate, except maybe the,
1:36:03is 335 X-Drive still available in stick?
1:36:07- You know, I don't know, well it's a 340 now anyway,
1:36:09but I honestly don't know, I would think not.
1:36:12- I think it might be, that would probably
1:36:14be the only option, the 5 Series is totally out,
1:36:16'cause the 5 Series you can't get,
1:36:17you can't get a stick with all-wheel drive,
1:36:20if at all anymore, and you can't get a DCT
1:36:22on any of the 5 Series, and I will not drive
1:36:24the Sport Auto, yes, I've driven it,
1:36:26and no, it is not the same.
1:36:28- Yeah, the Tesla is, in some ways,
1:36:31it's not as good as the M5.
1:36:33I'm not expecting it to match it
1:36:35in the luxury feel features.
1:36:38Like the BMW interior is more luxurious feeling,
1:36:40no question.
1:36:41I'm very much going to miss the heads-up display
1:36:45and the top-down parking camera.
1:36:47- That thing is the best.
1:36:48Real-time follow-up, you can get a 340i X-Drive
1:36:51with a manual transmission.
1:36:53- Okay, so that is the only other car BMW makes
1:36:56that I would consider getting right now
1:36:57out of the new lineup, but that also,
1:37:00I really don't like the F30 3 Series, honestly.
1:37:03I don't like it.
1:37:04I don't like the steering system.
1:37:06I don't really care for the way it looks,
1:37:09and I think the interior has actually gotten lower quality
1:37:13in certain ways than the previous 3 Series.
1:37:16And the lack of the all button on the climate control
1:37:18just kills me.
1:37:19- Yeah, that is really insane.
1:37:21- I don't know why you're not shopping
1:37:22Mercedes at this point.
1:37:24Neither one of you ever talk about Mercedes,
1:37:25but Marco just bought a Tesla.
1:37:26he's now safely within the Mercedes market.
1:37:31- I did, on a recent trip, I actually rented a Mercedes,
1:37:36'cause I was on a trip about a year ago
1:37:38and I had to rent a car, and I rented a,
1:37:41is it the E-Class there, version of the 5 Series,
1:37:43the middle one? - Yeah.
1:37:44- Yeah, so I rented an E something something,
1:37:46it was like the V6, roughly 300 horsepower,
1:37:49like basically their version of the 335.
1:37:52- Well, I wouldn't say that, but yeah.
1:37:54Anyway, so I rented that and I drove it for a few days.
1:37:57And it was a really nice driving car,
1:38:00but definitely not for me overall.
1:38:02Like I think they, I think first of all,
1:38:05I don't care for Mercedes' designs very much.
1:38:07I think they're a little bit dated for me.
1:38:08- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
1:38:09When you say that you mean exterior design?
1:38:11- Yes.
1:38:12- Oh, see, I think they've gotten pretty lately.
1:38:14Although that being said, the brand, brand, brand new ones
1:38:17are very bubbly and I'm not as into that.
1:38:20But up until about this year or the year prior,
1:38:23there was like a five year stretch where they went from
1:38:26really, really, really boring to actually very pretty.
1:38:30But for me, it's a non-starter because they don't believe
1:38:34in three pedals.
1:38:34- I know, but he doesn't have three pedals anymore anyway.
1:38:37And he has in for two cars, I understand.
1:38:39But I feel like a Mercedes S-Class,
1:38:42like when you come back from your electric hangover,
1:38:44you should look at the S-Class.
1:38:47'Cause by then the S-Class might be electric.
1:38:48- It might be, I don't know.
1:38:49But I also, I really don't care for
1:38:52the Mercedes media system.
1:38:56- Those change every year.
1:38:57- No they do not these, not Mercedes.
1:39:00- Well every five years, whatever.
1:39:01But yeah, they're all terrible, I understand.
1:39:04- Oh yeah, I'm not saying I'm gonna be Tesla forever,
1:39:05I'm saying I'm gonna be Tesla for the next three years.
1:39:08That's one of the reasons I love these cars.
1:39:10So I'm looking forward to trying something new,
1:39:13to trying electric, to it being truly different,
1:39:16And honestly, as I said when I drove them,
1:39:20to it really feeling modern, really feeling like today.
1:39:22And in three years when I have to choose my next vehicle,
1:39:27whether I get another Tesla or something else,
1:39:29by that time, there will probably be more
1:39:32all electric options or more compelling electric options
1:39:36from the other luxury brands.
1:39:37Right now, there really isn't much.
1:39:39- There will definitely be, yeah.
1:39:40They've all got Tesla fighters in the works.
1:39:43- Yeah, like that Porsche concept looks really nice,
1:39:45Honestly, I don't know if that would pan out into something
1:39:49and God knows how much it will cost, if it does,
1:39:51but it does look really nice on paper at least.
1:39:54We'll see what happens with Mercedes and BMW and Audi
1:39:57and you know, even Acura, anybody else,
1:40:00we'll see what happens in their electric department.
1:40:03Right now, as I have to make a decision right now,
1:40:05Tesla is by far my favorite option
1:40:08of what's available right now.
1:40:10- Well, I'm excited for you.
1:40:12This should be really awesome.
1:40:14- It's gonna be sad to not have you personally
1:40:17in the BMW family anymore, but at least your family
1:40:19will still be a BMW family.
1:40:22- Don't worry, I'm sure at some point we'll be back.
1:40:25To be honest, there is a lot about the way BMW does things
1:40:28that I do prefer.
1:40:29I do prefer not having a giant touchscreen, I think.
1:40:33We'll see, again, we'll see what happens when I get it,
1:40:35but I do think I'm gonna prefer still having hardware knobs
1:40:37to giant touchscreen if given the choice.
1:40:39I do certainly like a heads-up display,
1:40:42and I do like the BMW quality interior
1:40:45that's in the 5 Series.
1:40:46So maybe eventually there will be an all electric 5 Series
1:40:50that will be really compelling.
1:40:52That will be nice to me.
1:40:54Because that will eliminate the problem I have
1:40:56with the regular 5 Series of having a transmission I hate.
1:40:59If they can move to not having a transmission,
1:41:02that does solve the problem.
1:41:04So yeah, we'll see what happens.
1:41:05- Did you ask Tesla people
1:41:06if the model has to design for short trips?
1:41:09(laughing)
1:41:11Can this get egg salad?
1:41:13Or is it not designed for that?
1:41:14- Chicken salad, John.
1:41:16- Sorry, chicken salad.
1:41:17I'm thinking with my stomach, I prefer egg salad.
1:41:19- Why, what?
1:41:21- Yeah.
1:41:22- This is worse than the windows thing.
1:41:23What?
1:41:24- I mean, I'm not against chicken salad.
1:41:26I like chicken salad, but my go-to was
1:41:28I would get a cinnamon raisin bagel with egg salad on it,
1:41:31wrapped up in wax paper,
1:41:32and then cut in half through the wax paper,
1:41:34as, you know, as is proper.
1:41:36- Okay, there are so many things wrong with this.
1:41:38- Kid Kerr.
1:41:39- First of all, a cinnamon raisin bagel
1:41:41does not belong with any of the salads.
1:41:43That is an illegal combination.
1:41:45- You are wrong, you are so wrong about that.
1:41:49You don't know what you're missing.
1:41:50- John, you're out of your mind.
1:41:51- Second of all, egg salad only belongs on bread,
1:41:54not bagels because it is such a soft filling
1:41:57that you bite into a bagel and it squeezes out.
1:41:59- No, I understand the difficulties.
1:42:03The magic is getting that right.
1:42:05It seems like it shouldn't work.
1:42:07It seems like it should be a disaster
1:42:08that you would bite down and that all it would do
1:42:10is cause the bagel to choose the egg salad
1:42:12shooting out the side and you would just be left
1:42:13with an empty bagel, but no, it can be done.
1:42:16We have the technology.
1:42:18- Oh my God.
1:42:18- The wax paper is key.
1:42:20You know the wax paper.
1:42:21I don't know if your local delis do that,
1:42:22but you know the wax paper thing?
1:42:23- It holds it in during cutting, basically.
1:42:25- Right, but they wrap it really tightly
1:42:27and hold it in during cutting and you can
1:42:30move the wax paper back and eat it
1:42:32and it won't come shooting out the sides.
1:42:34And if the bagel is fresh and it's not like
1:42:36a stale, big, hard brick type thing,
1:42:38You can actually bite it and not lose all of your egg salad.
1:42:41It's a delicate balance, I understand.
1:42:43This is, I haven't had a good one of those,
1:42:46I don't know, in how many decades, 'cause--
1:42:47- Ever, because it's a terrible concept?
1:42:49- No. - Agreed.
1:42:50- It's a great concept.
1:42:51And you don't know, this,
1:42:52here's a little advanced technique for you
1:42:54if you wanted to make a bagel sandwich at home.
1:42:55For example, say you wanna have peanut butter and jelly
1:42:57on a toasted bagel, which is fabulous, by the way.
1:42:59- No, that's, I was about to say, like,
1:43:01'cause I, in high school, I worked at a bagel shop,
1:43:03and it was always a disaster whenever somebody would order
1:43:06peanut butter and jelly on a bagel,
1:43:07because that squeezes out like crazy.
1:43:10- I know, I know.
1:43:11So I'm gonna give you a little, some tips here.
1:43:13Peanut butter and jelly on a toasted bagel at home.
1:43:15How can you possibly make that work?
1:43:17It seems like it shouldn't work at all, right?
1:43:19- You don't.
1:43:19- No, no, you do.
1:43:20We have ways, all right?
1:43:22So you toast the bagel, and then one half of it,
1:43:25you sort of dig a trench for the jelly to go in.
1:43:28You don't pull out all the insides,
1:43:30leaving just the shell.
1:43:31But you dig a trench, then you put the jelly in the trench.
1:43:33The peanut butter-- - Is that legal?
1:43:35- The peanut butter will stay on its own
1:43:37for the most part, then you assemble it,
1:43:39you can eat that sandwich, nothing will squirt out the sides.
1:43:42If assembled correctly, nothing will squirt out the sides,
1:43:44and what you have is a toasted peanut butter
1:43:46and jelly bagel sandwich.
1:43:47So things I do with bagels, I understand.
1:43:50These are advanced techniques.
1:43:51- Advanced?
1:43:52I'm not sure that counts, first of all.
1:43:54- Oh, it counts, it counts.
1:43:56You can do that with tuna as well.
1:43:57When I put tuna on a bagel,
1:43:58it's key to hollow out some part of it.
1:44:00And you eat the part that you take out,
1:44:01it's not like you're just throwing it away.
1:44:03The trick is not take so much out of it
1:44:05that you're just basically left with just a crust, right?
1:44:07You have to take out just the right amount.
1:44:09- Well tuna has enough, you know tuna is very similar
1:44:11to chicken salad in texture.
1:44:12Like it has enough strength internally
1:44:15to tolerate your bagel usage.
1:44:16- Yeah but you can get more in there.
1:44:18Anyway, you don't always have to do it with tuna.
1:44:20You're right, it can hold together more like chicken salad.
1:44:21- I like tuna salad and I like bagels
1:44:23and I like bagels with tuna or chicken salad on them.
1:44:26At no point have I ever had a bagel with tuna salad
1:44:29or chicken salad and thought,
1:44:31I need to find ways to shove more of it in here.
1:44:33- Oh well, I've thought that.
1:44:35because you can fit a lot in the regular way.
1:44:37- Yeah, it really depends on how stiff your mixture is.
1:44:41- This is the worst.
1:44:42- John.
1:44:43- Anyway, these are all good things
1:44:43that I'm getting hungry even thinking about them.
1:44:45- You're so wrong.
1:44:46You're so wrong.
1:44:47- What am I wrong about?
1:44:48What are you talking about?
1:44:49These are all delicious things.
1:44:50These are all delicious things
1:44:51that you can make in your own home.
1:44:52- These are terrible.
1:44:54They're terrible things to know.
1:44:55- Yeah, everything you've just said has been wrong.
1:44:57- Yeah, I concur.
1:44:59- First of all, I'm not gonna take any input
1:45:01about what's proper way to eat bagels
1:45:03from someone who lives in Virginia.
1:45:04Second of all, I'm also not going to take that input from somebody who just recently moved to New York.
1:45:08Oh, which one of us is in New York right now? Oh.
1:45:11Recently moved to New York.
1:45:12Yeah, like eight years ago.
1:45:13Did not grow up there.
1:45:15Now, what...
1:45:16No, I already got...
1:45:17Egg salad. I'm just... I'm so... I can't get past...
1:45:20Are you against egg salad? Is this some anti-egg salad? Egg salad is delicious.
1:45:25I... In general, I think I am against it. And I've eaten a lot of egg salad in my life.
1:45:30Oh, now the truth comes out. Against egg salad.
1:45:33- Margar-arm-ent against egg salad, bad for America.
1:45:37- This is why I can't blog anymore.
1:45:39- That's right, go ahead, you write your blog
1:45:41against egg salad, you'll see what happens.
1:45:42- No, see, to me, egg salad is not worth it
1:45:46when you have other options that are similar to it.
1:45:48So like, if all you have in a store is egg salad,
1:45:51fine, I'll eat egg salad.
1:45:53But if right next to it is tuna salad and chicken salad,
1:45:56those are both way better.
1:45:57So I can't think of any context in which
1:46:00I would choose egg salad.
1:46:02if chicken salad or tuna salad or cream cheese
1:46:05or any other sandwich topping were available.
1:46:08- Oh no, I like all of those things.
1:46:11Those are all good.
1:46:11I feel like you just have to mix it up.
1:46:13You don't have the same thing every day.
1:46:15Maybe your place makes better chicken salad
1:46:17than they make egg salad, but good egg salad.
1:46:19You cannot turn your nose up at that.
1:46:20- I have never had egg salad that was good enough
1:46:24to overcome decent chicken salad.
1:46:27I've had egg salad where I've tasted it
1:46:28and been like, oh yeah, this is fine,
1:46:29but that's the most I've ever thought about egg salad
1:46:31it's fine. In other forms, like I love deviled eggs, which are very similar really. You know,
1:46:36deviled eggs have a lot of similarities in taste and ingredients to egg salad, just in
1:46:41a different shape and preparation. But you know, I love eggs in other forms. Just egg
1:46:47salad is, ugh, it's just so mediocre compared to the other options that it's usually next
1:46:52to.
1:46:53- It's good stuff. If you like eggs, it's good stuff.
1:46:56- Egg salad is the sesame bagel of the salad.
1:46:59Oh, you're gonna come out against sesame bagels now? Forget it. Forget it!
1:47:03Sesame bagels. What do you have against sesame bagels? They are one of the greatest bagels.
1:47:08What I have against them is similar to what I have against egg salad.
1:47:11It's not worth it when you have better options nearby. So it's like a sesame bagel is fine.
1:47:16I've had many sesame bagels in my life. They're fine.
1:47:19It's chocolate cake for every meal. Why would you have anything else if you're gonna have chocolate cake for every meal?
1:47:26John, you've been out of New York far too long. You've lost touch.
1:47:30No, I am the only one here who's in touch. We've got you who's in Virginia, and we've
1:47:34got him who's coming from the world outside of bagels, who was only recently being released
1:47:38and he's trying to find his way.
1:47:40Which one of us goes to a bagel shop every day in New York? Oh, that's right.
1:47:43I'm saying, like, you're coming from Ohio or wherever, just trying to figure out this
1:47:48crazy new world and making it up as you go along. I'm telling you the way it is.
1:47:53- Oh my God, why would you, yeah,
1:47:55go get a sesame bagel with egg salad.
1:47:58- Against sesame bagels and against egg salad.
1:48:00This is not a position you wanna stake out.
1:48:02- Compare that to an everything bagel with chicken salad,
1:48:05which is right next to those.
1:48:07- So you can't, that's the whole thing,
1:48:08like you're gonna have everything on an,
1:48:10you're always gonna have it on every,
1:48:11not that everything bagels are great, right,
1:48:12but the whole idea that every single time you have it,
1:48:14you have the most, you know, the best topping,
1:48:17the bagel with the most stuff on it.
1:48:19It's like sometimes you gotta have, you know,
1:48:21There's a certain place for the poppy seed bagel.
1:48:24The sesame seed bagel.
1:48:25Sometimes you can have the plain bagel.
1:48:26Why would anyone ever have a plain bagel?
1:48:28People do, it happens.
1:48:29Sometimes that's the right combination.
1:48:31Oh my God.
1:48:33- Oh my God.
1:48:34- You know, I thought you had turned around
1:48:36by not getting the really expensive Tesla,
1:48:38but you're still getting the everything bagel
1:48:40only with chicken salad because you can't bring yourself
1:48:42to have anything that you consider lesser.
1:48:44But they're not lesser, they're just different.
1:48:45- No, I mean, I have different bagel orders.
1:48:47Like, I love a toasted bagel with butter.
1:48:50And if you're gonna have a toasted bagel with butter,
1:48:51everything is a good choice, but so is rye or pumpernickel.
1:48:54- Why would you have rye if you could have everything?
1:48:57(laughing)
1:48:58- Oh my god.
1:48:59- Doesn't make any sense.
1:49:00Anyway.
1:49:01- Because those things are actually good.
1:49:02- Sesame seed bagels are good.
1:49:04- I would say a proper toasted rye bagel with butter
1:49:08is just as good as a toasted everything bagel with butter.
1:49:11But a sesame bagel is like you have the plain dough,
1:49:14so the dough just tastes like any other
1:49:15plain dough flavored bagel, and the topping
1:49:17is included in everything and itself has almost no taste.
1:49:22- It's got everything, it's already there.
1:49:25Wait, well, let's try to find some common ground here.
1:49:29Caraway seeds in everything bagels, yes or no?
1:49:30- No, what, ew.
1:49:31- All right, good, just making sure.
1:49:33Some people want that.
1:49:34- No, everything bagels require five things.
1:49:37Sesame, poppy, garlic, onion, and salt.
1:49:39If it's missing any of those things,
1:49:41don't leave out the salt, Midwestern people.
1:49:43If it's missing any of those things,
1:49:44it is not a proper everything bagel.
1:49:46Some people like the caraway seeds. I gotta say no to that. Also, some people put sunflower
1:49:50seeds on them, which is illegal. No, forget about this. California people just forget.
1:49:54Yeah, they shove an avocado on there. I just, I can't handle this conversation. John, you're
1:49:58so out of touch. It defies description. I'm not out of touch! I'm the only one who's in
1:50:03touch! I'm the only one with authentic bagel experience. You up there in Connecticut have
1:50:06got nothing, and Marco is a tourist. We'll see. Bagel Eating World. Email John this week
1:50:13and tell you which of us is right.
1:50:15- There's no bagel eating world.
1:50:16It's not a democracy.
1:50:17It's the people who live in the New York Metro area
1:50:19and everybody else.
1:50:20And everyone else is wrong and we are right.
1:50:22- Wait, wait, you don't live in the New York Metro area.
1:50:25- I did, I live there.
1:50:26I'm from there.
1:50:27It will never leave me.
1:50:29You can take the whatever out of New York, you know,
1:50:31complete the saying yourself.
1:50:32- Yeah, but you left it and I'm here.
1:50:34(laughing)
1:50:35- You're upstate.
1:50:37(laughing)
1:50:39- My God.
1:50:40I can't handle this.
1:50:42I can't.
1:50:43- Christmas miracle.
1:50:43- Oh, God.
1:50:45I hate you, Jon, so much right now.
1:50:47You're so wrong.
1:50:48This is terrible.
1:50:50- This really is worse than the like 90 windows thing.
1:50:53(groaning)
1:50:55- I don't know.
1:50:56- I know, I can't believe you've come out
1:50:57against sesame bagels.
1:50:58Seriously, there's gonna be protesters outside your house.
1:51:00- A sesame bagel with egg salad.
1:51:02- It's terrible.
1:51:03- It's so boring.
1:51:04- No, I don't, sesame, see, I have certain,
1:51:07it's like pairing, you know, pairing wine with meals.
1:51:09- No, it's not.
1:51:10- You know, that's, oh yes it is.
1:51:12- Yes, that's where you're wrong.
1:51:13You don't even understand, you don't even know
1:51:15this is a skill that you can have,
1:51:16let alone have the skill.
1:51:17- It's like pairing lightly flavored water.
1:51:19- Pairing the bagel type with the thing you put on it
1:51:22is a skill.
1:51:24- I agree, I just don't think you have it.
1:51:26- Well, your answer is everything goes on
1:51:27in everything bagel.
1:51:28- Not necessarily.
1:51:29- All right, here, I will fix this.
1:51:32Marco, do you or do you not put lox on a bagel?
1:51:35- Well, I don't like fish and I don't like lox.
1:51:37- So you're already wrong.
1:51:39- But I recognize that many people love
1:51:42putting lox on bagels and were I to choose a bagel for lox,
1:51:46everything would be pretty high on the list
1:51:48'cause I know people like that kind of salty garlicky
1:51:51onion flavor with the lox.
1:51:52I know it's a very common combination.
1:51:54- Jon, would you do lox on a bagel?
1:51:56- I also don't eat fish, you know that.
1:51:58- Finally we agree.
1:51:59- You too, so ignorant.
1:52:01- It's not ignorance, we just don't like fish.
1:52:02That's my miss.
1:52:03- But see, but I've tried it.
1:52:06I know what I'm missing and every time I say
1:52:09I don't like fish, for years, like Tiff would be like,
1:52:11you just have to have good fish.
1:52:12Everyone would say, "Oh, you have to have good fish."
1:52:14Same thing, like I don't like sushi either,
1:52:16there's some overlap there, and everyone's like,
1:52:18"Oh, you haven't had good sushi."
1:52:19And eventually, somebody brings me to a place
1:52:22where they say, "Okay, this is good X thing I don't like."
1:52:25And I try it, and I give it an honest shot,
1:52:28and I hardly ever end up liking it.
1:52:29(laughs)
1:52:30But I can at least say that,
1:52:32"Okay, I at least know what I'm missing now,
1:52:35"and I have confirmed that I honestly don't like this,
1:52:38"but I've had the good thing,
1:52:40Maybe I can see why you like it, you know, but I can't see why anybody would ever order
1:52:45a sesame bagel for anything.
1:52:46That's why I try Marco's Coffee when I'm there.
1:52:49Just in case.
1:52:50It seems like if you were going to get a sesame bagel, you might as well just get plain.
1:52:53Or if you want flavor and stuff, you get an everything.
1:52:56You can all agree on sesame.
1:52:59Only you are agreeing on sesame.
1:53:00Me and the rest of the New York metro area who's not upstate.
1:53:06The sesame bagel is, it's like, that's like the Dell computer.
1:53:10- Sesame bagel is one of my favorite kind of bagels.
1:53:12Like I like them all.
1:53:13- What do you put on it?
1:53:14So in your expert bagel pairing experience.
1:53:17- Things that pair well with sesame.
1:53:19Sesame bagel with butter on it, toasted, is very nice.
1:53:23Sesame with tuna, very nice.
1:53:26If I had to get chicken salad at your deli,
1:53:28I would probably go with sesame.
1:53:30- Oh, that would be an insult.
1:53:31- No, it wouldn't.
1:53:32(beep)