ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Everyone should pull up pictures of the Ferrari 48 for the after show

00:00:03 ◼   ► We actually are probably going to do an after show neutral cuz I have what does he what'd you say 488?

00:00:08 ◼   ► Ooh, first turbo interesting. You're just hearing this news. Now. You didn't look at France was tweeting about it

00:00:13 ◼   ► I was going back and forth with you

00:00:15 ◼   ► I was watching I was watching it don't deserve Ferraris. Forget it. No Ferrari for either one of you. That's it

00:00:22 ◼   ► Did you guys add anything good to the topics list because I don't see anything exciting on there

00:00:28 ◼   ► I had one thing.

00:00:29 ◼   ► This is going to be a boring show everyone.

00:00:31 ◼   ► This is going to be a great show.

00:00:34 ◼   ► I just realized that I hadn't added anything other than one little measly item and I guess

00:00:40 ◼   ► we have some leftovers from before.

00:00:42 ◼   ► Oh yeah, so here's my crappy story I wanted to tell.

00:00:45 ◼   ► It was either today or yesterday I was fiddling with the CSS for my website and you have to

00:00:51 ◼   ► understand if you think of the person in your life that claims to be a developer but is

00:00:57 ◼   ► is the worst that you can possibly be at CSS.

00:01:01 ◼   ► I'm like five times worse than that person.

00:01:04 ◼   ► So anyway, so I'm fiddling with CSS,

00:01:05 ◼   ► trying to do a media query,

00:01:06 ◼   ► which is pretty for my god awful skill level.

00:01:11 ◼   ► And I remembered that you can actually have Safari

00:01:16 ◼   ► reach into whatever the iOS simulator Safari app is

00:01:22 ◼   ► to do the-

00:01:24 ◼   ► - The inspector.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Thank you. The inspector on what's being shown in the iOS simulator, which I thought was

00:01:30 ◼   ► freaking cool. And I know this is not new news, but that was the first occasion I had

00:01:34 ◼   ► to actually use it. And I thought it was amazing. It's amazing when it works. So last time I

00:01:39 ◼   ► used it was like two years ago, but boy was it flaky. It works great. I mean, I've, I've

00:01:43 ◼   ► used it a lot and it it's always worked great recently. I think it came out in iOS six.

00:01:47 ◼   ► Yeah. I think I was using it when it was a brand new one. I was so excited. I was able

00:01:51 ◼   ► to do it. It was like, this is going to make everything so much easier and it does, but

00:01:53 ◼   ► it would lose its connection to the remote browser thing all the time.

00:01:58 ◼   ► No, now it's pretty solid.

00:02:00 ◼   ► I use it all the time.

00:02:01 ◼   ► And it works with any web view in the app.

00:02:03 ◼   ► So not just Mobile Safari.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Oh, is that right?

00:02:06 ◼   ► That's one of the great things about it.

00:02:07 ◼   ► Like, if you have a web view in your app,

00:02:09 ◼   ► it'll list all the active web views that are currently

00:02:11 ◼   ► attached to the window.

00:02:13 ◼   ► And you can DOM inspect your web views, which is really handy.

00:02:16 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that's the main reason it's there.

00:02:18 ◼   ► And it's so useful.

00:02:22 ◼   ► That's extremely cool.

00:02:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, so, and like I said, it's kind of a silly story,

00:02:25 ◼   ► but I just thought it was neat.

00:02:26 ◼   ► So go try that if you're a web developer

00:02:29 ◼   ► and/or terrible at CSS like I am.

00:02:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, and for those of you who don't know where it is,

00:02:34 ◼   ► if you launch, if you're running the simulator,

00:02:36 ◼   ► go back to Safari, and under the debug menu,

00:02:39 ◼   ► it'll list any web views that are found

00:02:41 ◼   ► in the running simulator.

00:02:42 ◼   ► So in the Safari developer or debug menu,

00:02:44 ◼   ► whatever it's called.

00:02:46 ◼   ► - That's desktop Safari, just to be absolutely clear.

00:02:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's called, oh, it's called develop, okay, yeah.

00:02:50 ◼   ► So if you go to develop, it's listed there.

00:02:52 ◼   ► All right. Any other crappy stories before we get into follow-up?

00:02:56 ◼   ► I can tell you about some dreams I've had recently. Maybe some travel stories.

00:03:01 ◼   ► I've heard that Boston's gotten a wee bit of snow. You and your beloved Winters.

00:03:06 ◼   ► We're not talking about snow. It sounds like we are.

00:03:10 ◼   ► Hey, you love winter.

00:03:11 ◼   ► Did anything happen in the industry that we can actually talk about?

00:03:13 ◼   ► No, not really.

00:03:14 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like it was that big of a news week.

00:03:16 ◼   ► We have follow-up first. We're not on the topics yet.

00:03:18 ◼   ► Although I didn't put either one of these follow-up items. I think it was all you, Casey.

00:03:22 ◼   ► So let's do some follow-up. Daniel Shurson has said, "About handwriting recognition, text input is still kind of hacky for languages with more than 30-ish letters."

00:03:30 ◼   ► And that was a tweet that he had posted, we'll put that in the show notes. I just thought it was an interesting point because I can imagine in a situation where you have 11 gazillion characters that may be kind of difficult.

00:03:42 ◼   ► That being said hot off the presses earlier today on Wednesday

00:03:47 ◼   ► My friend will Haynes who I believe I brought up on the last episode or if not an episode or two ago

00:03:53 ◼   ► put together a about five minute video of

00:03:56 ◼   ► how you can

00:03:59 ◼   ► enter text

00:04:00 ◼   ► In iOS 8 in various different languages so again will is Australian born

00:04:05 ◼   ► But lives in Tokyo and has for a while now and so he put together this video

00:04:10 ◼   ► and it doesn't require audio which is kind of nice if you want to be listening to like music or something else

00:04:15 ◼   ► but what he talks about is the various ways that you can type in both Japanese and actually Chinese as well and that includes the

00:04:23 ◼   ► Romaji keyboard I'm probably pronouncing it wrong. I'm sorry try

00:04:27 ◼   ► So do you know the actual pronunciation? No, but I always say Romaji. Okay. Well, there you go. Like Jumanji. Yeah, it's exactly

00:04:34 ◼   ► I could be wrong, too

00:04:37 ◼   ► So yeah, so that apparently the way that works is you basically use what I would call an English keyboard in order to

00:04:44 ◼   ► Start typing the English language equivalent of Japanese words. I'm already probably going terribly wrong

00:04:52 ◼   ► I'm so sorry, and then he also showed a couple of the other keyboards one of which is

00:04:57 ◼   ► Set up like a numeric keypad, which is kind of interesting

00:05:02 ◼   ► And apparently because Japanese specifically only has but so many sounds that kind of works and it's a combination of typing and swiping

00:05:08 ◼   ► Which is what he had actually shown me at the beer bash

00:05:10 ◼   ► WWDC and then I had confused my own story and I had thought he had shown me a handwriting recognition

00:05:17 ◼   ► Keyboard which he didn't but in this video

00:05:21 ◼   ► He does take the liberty of showing you how a handwriting recognition keyboard would work for Chinese

00:05:25 ◼   ► So it you don't have to watch the entire video

00:05:28 ◼   ► Well, obviously don't watch any of it, but I thought it was a fascinating and very succinct look at

00:05:33 ◼   ► How you can enter these very different

00:05:37 ◼   ► languages or type in these very different languages in

00:05:41 ◼   ► Really wild in different ways than the traditional keyboard that we're all used to and I just thought it was really neat did either of you

00:05:46 ◼   ► Guys watch this. I assume that Marco you did not because you don't believe in homework

00:05:49 ◼   ► I'm actually very heavily medicated right now fighting off a horrible cold. So I did almost nothing to prepare for this show

00:05:56 ◼   ► I literally I printed out my little three pages here of sponsorship reads, and we'll talk about your printouts later. Yeah, and and that's

00:06:03 ◼   ► Literally all I did I just opened up Chrome after I started this call to look at the notes

00:06:08 ◼   ► Excellent John. Did you happen to watch this video? I?

00:06:11 ◼   ► Main thing I came away from our feedback about this is that like people all over the map some people were like

00:06:18 ◼   ► Nobody uses handwriting recognition. Everyone's just used to typing it in

00:06:24 ◼   ► Or only old people whatever use handwriting recognition other people or like handwriting recognition is so much better

00:06:31 ◼   ► in fact

00:06:32 ◼   ► It's better than it is in Western languages because there's in sort of an order that you're supposed to do the strokes and a direction

00:06:39 ◼   ► And everything it's very regimented, and if you you know everybody learns the same way unlike

00:06:42 ◼   ► You know letters in the English language that different people draw in all sorts of crazy different ways and in different orders and everything so

00:06:50 ◼   ► I really don't know what to think.

00:06:52 ◼   ► In fact, one of the weird things,

00:06:53 ◼   ► I guess this isn't weird,

00:06:54 ◼   ► but I think it seemed like the majority of the feedback

00:06:56 ◼   ► we got were from people who were not from the region.

00:07:00 ◼   ► Like I'm from Australia or the UK or Germany,

00:07:04 ◼   ► and I moved to the Far East,

00:07:05 ◼   ► and I guess they're giving like a Westerners impression,

00:07:08 ◼   ► and then I would imagine all the people who were born there

00:07:10 ◼   ► can't understand a word we're saying,

00:07:11 ◼   ► 'cause most of them don't know English.

00:07:13 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:07:16 ◼   ► Oh yeah, and a lot of people were showing us

00:07:17 ◼   ► the built-in handwriting recognition

00:07:19 ◼   ► that's in iOS now under the accessibility things

00:07:21 ◼   ► and everything, and saying,

00:07:24 ◼   ► "Oh, Apple doesn't need to do anything.

00:07:25 ◼   ► It's already built in there."

00:07:26 ◼   ► And I remember back in 2002, I think it was,

00:07:31 ◼   ► when Apple added handwriting recognition to OS X.

00:07:34 ◼   ► Do either one of you guys remember that?

00:07:35 ◼   ► - No.

00:07:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, I put it in my review

00:07:38 ◼   ► 'cause I got to show off my terrible handwriting.

00:07:40 ◼   ► I tried to write "Hello, world" like seven times,

00:07:42 ◼   ► and then I showed what OS X thought I was writing.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Sometimes it guessed correctly, "Hello, world."

00:07:46 ◼   ► Other times it was way off.

00:07:49 ◼   ► But in all these cases, it's like,

00:07:51 ◼   ► this is sort of an optional extra buried in some way.

00:07:56 ◼   ► It's not universal.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Like when Apple added speech recognition,

00:07:59 ◼   ► pretty much any place you have a text input field,

00:08:01 ◼   ► if you can bring up the standard keyboard,

00:08:03 ◼   ► there's the little microphone and you can use it there.

00:08:06 ◼   ► Handwriting recognition has not been raised that level,

00:08:09 ◼   ► mostly because Apple doesn't ship any devices with stylus

00:08:11 ◼   ► and doesn't really have its own stylus

00:08:14 ◼   ► that it supports or anything.

00:08:15 ◼   ► So I think that's what we're all waiting for

00:08:19 ◼   ► regarding the styles in the iPad.

00:08:21 ◼   ► Will Apple do for handwriting recognition

00:08:24 ◼   ► what it has already done for text input with a keyboard

00:08:27 ◼   ► and for audio input speech to text?

00:08:32 ◼   ► - Cool.

00:08:34 ◼   ► So is this even still in OS X now?

00:08:38 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:08:39 ◼   ► I mean, I should pull out my tablet and connect it

00:08:40 ◼   ► and see if it happens.

00:08:41 ◼   ► So they called it Ink or something.

00:08:42 ◼   ► You don't see the-- - Inkwell.

00:08:44 ◼   ► Yeah, you don't see the preference pane unless you actually attach a tablet.

00:08:48 ◼   ► So until you do that, it doesn't appear.

00:08:50 ◼   ► I guess you could just go into the preference panes directory and look to see if you see

00:08:53 ◼   ► the handwriting recognition or ink thing in there.

00:08:56 ◼   ► I have a Wacom tablet in the closet I could probably try with this week and report back

00:09:00 ◼   ► next week.

00:09:01 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I use for the review.

00:09:02 ◼   ► I think I borrowed a tablet and just plugged it in and a little thing appeared.

00:09:06 ◼   ► We'll find that link for the show notes at some point.

00:09:10 ◼   ► is in the chat saying to us that it's still there so we'll assume that that's the case.

00:09:15 ◼   ► Yeah you know I have been looking for ways to slow down my computer input and make it

00:09:19 ◼   ► less efficient and more annoying and take up more desk space so I'm looking forward

00:09:23 ◼   ► to trying this.

00:09:25 ◼   ► There's a designer at work and he has a Wacom, Wacom, Wacket whatever it's called, tablet-y

00:09:32 ◼   ► thing and not only that but he also has a Magic Trackpad and I believe he also uses

00:09:38 ◼   ► So he has all three manners of pointing devices on his desk

00:09:41 ◼   ► at all times, which I think is a little bit crazy,

00:09:45 ◼   ► but designers are kind of a little bit crazy.

00:09:49 ◼   ► - Well, he currently has the same number of input methods

00:09:52 ◼   ► on his desk as I have headphone amps on my desk,

00:09:54 ◼   ► so I can't really complain or say anything about that.

00:09:58 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:10:00 ◼   ► All right, any other follow-up that we have,

00:10:02 ◼   ► or are we good to go on that?

00:10:04 ◼   ► - I feel like we're forgetting something,

00:10:06 ◼   ► but I don't know what.

00:10:07 ◼   ► Well, yeah, you're forgetting to follow up on my email.

00:10:11 ◼   ► People complaining about, "Oh, yeah, we can talk about that."

00:10:13 ◼   ► No, no, that was a bad reference, never mind.

00:10:16 ◼   ► Anyway, it reminded me of last week when Marco told everybody that he hates them, and then

00:10:21 ◼   ► this week we got all the angry email from the people whose feelings are hurt by Marco's

00:10:27 ◼   ► email policy.

00:10:28 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, there were a lot of hurt feelings.

00:10:30 ◼   ► Were there?

00:10:31 ◼   ► Because from the responses that actually got to me via Twitter and email, it was overwhelmingly

00:10:37 ◼   ► positive. There were certainly some people who were like, "Yeah, you probably shouldn't

00:10:41 ◼   ► be doing that," or "I'm personally offended, you should not even be in business." One

00:10:46 ◼   ► guy got really bent out of shape, but for the most part, the response was not nearly

00:10:52 ◼   ► as bad as I expected. It was overall mostly in agreement, or at least understanding.

00:10:58 ◼   ► I think that is fair.

00:11:00 ◼   ► I think even the people who were angry understood. They were just like… the people who were

00:11:05 ◼   ► angry didn't like the idea that your policy left some people feeling bad like

00:11:14 ◼   ► especially if it was them like they would say I understand the effects of

00:11:18 ◼   ► your policy in terms of how you allocate your time and return on investments like

00:11:23 ◼   ► the the business type things but they would say but I think overall it's not a

00:11:29 ◼   ► good strategy because it leaves some of your customers feeling bad and and

00:11:34 ◼   ► and sometimes they would say they were one of the customers who have a health add, and

00:11:37 ◼   ► some of them would say, "I don't personally mind, but I can imagine that some customers

00:11:41 ◼   ► feel bad."

00:11:42 ◼   ► So therefore, the overall effect of your strategy is negative or could be better if you did

00:11:47 ◼   ► suggestions X, Y, and Z.

00:11:50 ◼   ► What I thought was interesting is that I actually heard from a handful of other people with

00:11:57 ◼   ► some degree of internet fame or some sizable audience who also have similar quick skimming

00:12:04 ◼   ► and very little replying policies,

00:12:07 ◼   ► or some of them you don't even read the emails anymore.

00:12:10 ◼   ► So I heard from a number of people, a few people,

00:12:13 ◼   ► who were in a similar situation

00:12:16 ◼   ► and who did basically the same thing,

00:12:18 ◼   ► but you can't really come out

00:12:20 ◼   ► and say that publicly a lot of the time.

00:12:22 ◼   ► Like it's kind of like saying you're an atheist

00:12:24 ◼   ► or a Howard Stern fan.

00:12:25 ◼   ► Like there's a lot of them out there,

00:12:28 ◼   ► but no one's talking about it really,

00:12:29 ◼   ► 'cause it can be politically unwise

00:12:31 ◼   ► to say this in public to everybody all the time.

00:12:34 ◼   ► But you'd be surprised how many people

00:12:38 ◼   ► do the exact same policy, or a very similar one,

00:12:40 ◼   ► or an even more ruthless one.

00:12:42 ◼   ► - You have to, otherwise, like you said,

00:12:45 ◼   ► you'll spend a very large amount of your time

00:12:47 ◼   ► conversing with people.

00:12:48 ◼   ► And a lot of the people who thought

00:12:50 ◼   ► it was an overall bad policy,

00:12:53 ◼   ► because despite the good parts of it,

00:12:55 ◼   ► which they would acknowledge in terms of

00:12:56 ◼   ► how you manage, giving you more time to do other things,

00:12:58 ◼   ► they would say, "Here are the bad parts,

00:12:59 ◼   ► and here's why it doesn't balance out, they would suggest alternatives.

00:13:04 ◼   ► It was the same thing you get with feature requests.

00:13:07 ◼   ► If only you would just...

00:13:08 ◼   ► If only you would just... and then whatever.

00:13:12 ◼   ► And all the "if only you would just" didn't seem like they would solve the problem.

00:13:18 ◼   ► If only you would just... would solve that person's problem.

00:13:20 ◼   ► If only you would just tweet about the problems.

00:13:24 ◼   ► Which by the way, I do.

00:13:25 ◼   ► I know.

00:13:26 ◼   ► Although you've done more recently than in the past.

00:13:28 ◼   ► If only you would just have a blog about the problem.

00:13:31 ◼   ► If only you would just have a mailing list.

00:13:32 ◼   ► If only you would just have a public blog tracker.

00:13:34 ◼   ► If only you would just have a blog.

00:13:38 ◼   ► But each one of those things, this person would be like, "Well, I don't use Twitter,

00:13:41 ◼   ► so you tweeting about it doesn't help me at all.

00:13:42 ◼   ► I don't want any more email, so a mailing list isn't going to help you.

00:13:45 ◼   ► I would never join up.

00:13:47 ◼   ► I would never find your blog, or I don't like to read your blog, so if you put updates there,

00:13:50 ◼   ► it's not going to..."

00:13:51 ◼   ► That's what it comes down to with all of these centralized places where you can communicate

00:13:57 ◼   ► to your users because everybody has something they do or don't want to do.

00:14:02 ◼   ► I don't want an email, I don't read Twitter, I don't want to read more blogs, I don't want

00:14:05 ◼   ► to do this, I don't want to do that, right?

00:14:07 ◼   ► To get them all, you would have to have all of those things.

00:14:09 ◼   ► A Usenet group, a mailing list, a set of forums, a Twitter account that's kept up to date,

00:14:15 ◼   ► a separate blog for it.

00:14:16 ◼   ► And even then, someone would be like, "Oh, I don't use any of those things.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Do you have an RSS feed?"

00:14:19 ◼   ► "Oh, I don't use an RSS."

00:14:20 ◼   ► Like, you will forever chase the individual people who have their specific needs of how

00:14:25 ◼   ► you're going to communicate with them.

00:14:26 ◼   ► And at that point it's like, well, now this is taking more time than just replying to the email.

00:14:29 ◼   ► Like, there is, it's like the person who wants a feature in a piece of software, like,

00:14:34 ◼   ► I don't need all the features in this program. You can cut every single feature except for these three,

00:14:37 ◼   ► and then everyone picks a different three in this, you know, 3,000 pictures in it.

00:14:41 ◼   ► So it's, a lot of people were trying to say, from your perspective, I see how this works out,

00:14:46 ◼   ► but from my perspective, as an individual user, it sucks. And I see that, but it's like,

00:14:51 ◼   ► If you look at the other side of it, you can't make it not suck for everybody.

00:14:56 ◼   ► It's always going to suck for somebody, and sometimes that somebody is going to be you,

00:15:00 ◼   ► or you, or you, you know what I mean?

00:15:03 ◼   ► It's not like a no-win situation, but people looking for a solution that's going to make

00:15:07 ◼   ► everybody happy, I just don't think it exists.

00:15:10 ◼   ► The alternatives that people suggest, those all take time.

00:15:15 ◼   ► If it comes to support tools, any kind of CRM thing, any kind of support service where

00:15:23 ◼   ► it sorts your emails into threads for you and has multiple people working on it and

00:15:27 ◼   ► stuff like that, any kind of email ticketing system, those all take work to plow through.

00:15:33 ◼   ► You're just moving the work to something else.

00:15:35 ◼   ► Forums, bugtrackers, public pages of any kind.

00:15:40 ◼   ► Somebody recommended GitHub tracking.

00:15:42 ◼   ► That's crazy, because regular people have no idea how to use GitHub and I don't blame

00:15:46 ◼   ► them.

00:15:47 ◼   ► You should have a Facebook group.

00:15:48 ◼   ► I do have a Facebook group.

00:15:49 ◼   ► I've posted zero times to it.

00:15:51 ◼   ► And Facebook keeps telling me how people are engaging with it, and that they want me to

00:15:54 ◼   ► pay them to let them engage more or something.

00:15:56 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:15:57 ◼   ► It's terrible.

00:15:58 ◼   ► I don't know how to use Facebook.

00:15:59 ◼   ► I even have a Pinterest group.

00:16:01 ◼   ► I don't know how to use that either.

00:16:02 ◼   ► But I have these channels.

00:16:04 ◼   ► The only one I really use is Twitter to communicate with the users.

00:16:07 ◼   ► I don't even have an overcast blog.

00:16:10 ◼   ► And if I had one, nobody would read it.

00:16:12 ◼   ► If I have the Twitter account, and I will tweet things in the Twitter account of current

00:16:17 ◼   ► status updates, things I'm working on, known bugs, and then I'll have people tweet at me

00:16:23 ◼   ► so I know they're using Twitter, I know they know about the account, I'll have them tweet

00:16:26 ◼   ► at the account like three hours later, as if they had not seen what I posted three hours

00:16:32 ◼   ► ago.

00:16:33 ◼   ► Because they didn't.

00:16:34 ◼   ► Because they didn't because they don't read their whole timeline.

00:16:35 ◼   ► So could you repeat your tweets on the hour every hour but not so much so that the people

00:16:39 ◼   ► who do read their timelines are annoyed by them?

00:16:41 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:16:42 ◼   ► not a good medium for keeping people updated, but everything else that's out there would

00:16:48 ◼   ► take more time, it would be one more thing to do, two more things to do, more things

00:16:52 ◼   ► to update, and overall probably more work, and there would still be hundreds of people

00:17:00 ◼   ► who would blow right by that, not see it.

00:17:03 ◼   ► I mean, look, on the part of the app where it lets you email me, it is surrounded by

00:17:09 ◼   ► reasons why you don't need to email me anymore. Here's FAQs, here's what's coming up in the

00:17:13 ◼   ► next version, here's what's in this version, here's the bug fixes, like here's the known

00:17:16 ◼   ► bugs. That's all right there on that page, no one reads it and everyone just clicks the

00:17:19 ◼   ► email and emails me things I already know about. That is, that's the reality, like,

00:17:24 ◼   ► no matter what you do, you know, no one's gonna read everything you put out there, no

00:17:27 ◼   ► one's gonna be aware of everything you put out there. No one is going to, is going to

00:17:32 ◼   ► be able to look and say like, "Oh, well, I have now checked all the official Overcast

00:17:37 ◼   ► communication channels, read back in the history by a few weeks to know everything there is

00:17:41 ◼   ► to know that's currently going on, now I will email them.

00:17:44 ◼   ► No, that doesn't happen.

00:17:45 ◼   ► I don't expect people to do that, that's ridiculous.

00:17:48 ◼   ► So no matter what you do, you are always going to get support email.

00:17:53 ◼   ► And there are things I can do to reduce the amount of support email.

00:17:55 ◼   ► Number one thing you can do to reduce the amount of support email is to get rid of the

00:17:59 ◼   ► bugs they're complaining about.

00:18:01 ◼   ► So that's what I'm doing.

00:18:02 ◼   ► by a long shot, that is the best thing you can do

00:18:05 ◼   ► to reduce support email is get rid of the problems

00:18:08 ◼   ► they're talking about and give people ways

00:18:11 ◼   ► to help themselves.

00:18:12 ◼   ► Now, the latter is worth discussing,

00:18:15 ◼   ► so give people ways to help themselves.

00:18:16 ◼   ► Password resets, like make that easy.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Any kind of like basic account management thing

00:18:23 ◼   ► that they would have to email you for, make that easy.

00:18:25 ◼   ► And I still have a little bit of ways to go on that.

00:18:28 ◼   ► I don't currently have a way to change your password

00:18:31 ◼   ► except by resetting it.

00:18:32 ◼   ► I don't currently have a way to change

00:18:34 ◼   ► your registered email address,

00:18:35 ◼   ► just because I haven't built them yet,

00:18:36 ◼   ► and like, hardly anybody ever asks,

00:18:39 ◼   ► so it's kind of a low priority compared

00:18:40 ◼   ► to other stuff I have to fix.

00:18:42 ◼   ► So there's things like that,

00:18:44 ◼   ► that I get occasional emails about.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Then there's the big stuff.

00:18:47 ◼   ► Hey, there's a sync bug.

00:18:49 ◼   ► Or, hey, you know, you should really give me

00:18:51 ◼   ► a delete preference.

00:18:53 ◼   ► That's the stuff I need to tackle.

00:18:54 ◼   ► That's like, and my time is so much better spent doing that

00:18:59 ◼   ► than setting up a support ticketing system,

00:19:01 ◼   ► and a knowledge base and a forum and a public bug tracker

00:19:04 ◼   ► and all these and letting people vote on bugs.

00:19:05 ◼   ► That's crazy.

00:19:07 ◼   ► That's just so much more work and overhead

00:19:09 ◼   ► and more things to manage and maintain.

00:19:11 ◼   ► That's not really helping.

00:19:13 ◼   ► - Well, that goes back to the value of those things.

00:19:16 ◼   ► A couple of the people who were upset basically said,

00:19:20 ◼   ► it takes me time and effort to isolate these bugs,

00:19:25 ◼   ► to screenshot them, to find out how to report them,

00:19:29 ◼   ► to make a bug report and to send it.

00:19:31 ◼   ► And then I spend all that time and effort

00:19:33 ◼   ► doing what is essentially help, I'm helping you, Marco.

00:19:35 ◼   ► I'm spending my time to help you

00:19:37 ◼   ► and then you're not even gonna send a reply.

00:19:39 ◼   ► It makes me think that your time is more valuable.

00:19:42 ◼   ► You're saying your time is more valuable than mine.

00:19:44 ◼   ► And the fact of life is the amount of effort

00:19:48 ◼   ► you put into something does not equate to its value.

00:19:51 ◼   ► You can put a tremendous amount of effort into something

00:19:53 ◼   ► and it just turns up not being valuable.

00:19:55 ◼   ► Like you could try really hard to make a fancy meal

00:19:59 ◼   ► and you just burn the whole thing.

00:20:01 ◼   ► It's like, but I work so hard.

00:20:02 ◼   ► It's like, yes, but the end result is just a burn thing.

00:20:05 ◼   ► So if you work really hard to make an awesome bug report,

00:20:07 ◼   ► unprompted by the way,

00:20:08 ◼   ► it's not like you're demanding people send you bug reports,

00:20:10 ◼   ► but you do this, you work really hard

00:20:12 ◼   ► to make an awesome bug report, you send it.

00:20:15 ◼   ► If you are the 900th person to send that exact bug report,

00:20:17 ◼   ► the value of your bug report is very small.

00:20:20 ◼   ► It is really just sort of a tick up on a counter.

00:20:22 ◼   ► So Marco knows a lot of people are seeing this problem.

00:20:24 ◼   ► You put a lot of work into it.

00:20:26 ◼   ► Maybe if you were the first one, there would be value,

00:20:28 ◼   ► But when you start multiplying it out,

00:20:31 ◼   ► it's like, if you want any,

00:20:34 ◼   ► you're never gonna have to commence your reply.

00:20:36 ◼   ► Marco is never gonna spend as much time responding to yours

00:20:38 ◼   ► as you spent sending it,

00:20:39 ◼   ► because it's not just a one-on-one relationship

00:20:41 ◼   ► between one person makes the software

00:20:43 ◼   ► and one person uses it.

00:20:44 ◼   ► It's one person makes it and lots of people use it, right?

00:20:46 ◼   ► So Marco doesn't get 10,000 days to reply to the email

00:20:51 ◼   ► that 10,000 users send in one day, right?

00:20:54 ◼   ► And then your value of your email, it really depends.

00:20:58 ◼   ► Like maybe it is super valuable,

00:20:59 ◼   ► and I bet if it was super valuable,

00:21:01 ◼   ► you're like, oh, I never could reproduce this bug,

00:21:03 ◼   ► and I didn't understand what people are seeing,

00:21:05 ◼   ► and now you sending me all this stuff, let's repit it.

00:21:06 ◼   ► I bet Marco would reply to that,

00:21:08 ◼   ► even though he says he doesn't reply to email.

00:21:09 ◼   ► - No, I said I don't reply to most email.

00:21:11 ◼   ► I do reply to things like that,

00:21:13 ◼   ► and so I've been doing this beta test this past week,

00:21:16 ◼   ► where I have about 800 beta testers

00:21:18 ◼   ► through Apple's TestFlight thing,

00:21:19 ◼   ► and I'm getting tons of email from those testers,

00:21:22 ◼   ► and I'm answering as many as I possibly can

00:21:24 ◼   ► out of that group, 'cause I know,

00:21:25 ◼   ► that's like a separate group.

00:21:26 ◼   ► That's like, I ask people to beta test,

00:21:29 ◼   ► they are taking the time to install

00:21:31 ◼   ► a relatively untested version on their device,

00:21:35 ◼   ► and they are writing up bug reports and sending them to me,

00:21:38 ◼   ► and I am actually doing a lot of responding on those.

00:21:41 ◼   ► It's way above my regular rate of responses on that.

00:21:45 ◼   ► It's probably over 50% that I'm responding to on those.

00:21:49 ◼   ► And I honestly feel bad about the ones I'm not responding to

00:21:51 ◼   ► out of the beta group, because that seems like

00:21:53 ◼   ► it should have a higher standard.

00:21:55 ◼   ► - Well, that's like 800 people,

00:21:56 ◼   ► but when you did the beta on Glassboard,

00:21:58 ◼   ► it was like, I don't know, 20 people or whatever it was?

00:22:02 ◼   ► And you were responding to all of them

00:22:04 ◼   ► because you kind of could 20 to one, right?

00:22:05 ◼   ► And the value of the first 20 people ever

00:22:08 ◼   ► to use the application besides Marco,

00:22:10 ◼   ► their reports are much more valuable

00:22:12 ◼   ► than the 700th person to send a sync bug, right?

00:22:16 ◼   ► It doesn't mean there's no value to that thing,

00:22:18 ◼   ► but you're never going to get a reply

00:22:21 ◼   ► that makes you feel like the effort you spent

00:22:26 ◼   ► wasn't in some ways wasted.

00:22:27 ◼   ► Because in some ways it was wasted.

00:22:29 ◼   ► You don't know whether it's gonna be wasted.

00:22:30 ◼   ► You don't know if you were the very first person

00:22:31 ◼   ► to send this bug report or the 900th.

00:22:34 ◼   ► How can you know that?

00:22:34 ◼   ► You don't know what other people are sending, right?

00:22:37 ◼   ► So I don't think you can have expectations

00:22:38 ◼   ► about this sort of many to one relationship

00:22:40 ◼   ► because you don't know what's going on

00:22:41 ◼   ► on the other end of it.

00:22:42 ◼   ► And it feels bad when you send a bug report

00:22:44 ◼   ► that you worked hard on

00:22:45 ◼   ► and you don't get any kind of reply at all,

00:22:46 ◼   ► which is why people are begging for like just something,

00:22:48 ◼   ► anything, an automated reply.

00:22:50 ◼   ► just like they're not asking you to spend them out of time

00:22:52 ◼   ► they did, but they just want something.

00:22:54 ◼   ► Like they're just desperate for something.

00:22:55 ◼   ► Of course, if you gave them that something,

00:22:56 ◼   ► they would say, I just need something a little bit more.

00:22:59 ◼   ► Like this automated reply makes me feel like you don't care

00:23:01 ◼   ► about my email, maybe just a personal note,

00:23:04 ◼   ► because I spent so much time on this.

00:23:06 ◼   ► And it just, I think that relationship is never gonna work

00:23:08 ◼   ► out where you want a response that makes you feel good

00:23:12 ◼   ► about the effort you spent.

00:23:13 ◼   ► And it's like, well then fine, I won't report bugs.

00:23:15 ◼   ► Like that's a problem Marco will have to deal with.

00:23:16 ◼   ► If suddenly no one reports bugs anymore,

00:23:19 ◼   ► or he gets only bad bug reports,

00:23:20 ◼   ► then he will actually have to take time to address it.

00:23:23 ◼   ► But that's, you don't know what's happening on the other side

00:23:25 ◼   ► so you can't say that Marco has to do that.

00:23:26 ◼   ► It seems like he's getting enough bug reports and feedback.

00:23:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, I already lost the exact words you used,

00:23:32 ◼   ► but you said something along the lines of,

00:23:35 ◼   ► you can't have expectations for what Marco did

00:23:37 ◼   ► and the relationship between you and Marco

00:23:39 ◼   ► is just some random, you know, bug reporter.

00:23:41 ◼   ► And I think that's absolutely true.

00:23:42 ◼   ► And one of the things that,

00:23:43 ◼   ► one of the more common themes that was angry

00:23:47 ◼   ► that I saw of the feedback that all of us got was,

00:23:50 ◼   ► how could you not respond to this?

00:23:52 ◼   ► It only takes a moment to fire off an email,

00:23:54 ◼   ► be it automated or whatever.

00:23:56 ◼   ► And what I don't think people understand,

00:23:58 ◼   ► and this was the point in me bringing up that story

00:24:00 ◼   ► about me going to New York and me not understanding

00:24:04 ◼   ► why Marco didn't remember having read that email I sent him,

00:24:07 ◼   ► was I didn't understand the sheer volume of email

00:24:11 ◼   ► that someone in Marco's position can get.

00:24:14 ◼   ► And it wasn't until I got a lot of email through this show

00:24:18 ◼   ► that I started to understand it.

00:24:19 ◼   ► And maybe some of these people that wrote us very angry

00:24:22 ◼   ► about this do understand it, but I suspect that

00:24:26 ◼   ► unless you're in a position where you're getting

00:24:29 ◼   ► hundreds of unsolicited emails a day

00:24:31 ◼   ► that are not outright spam,

00:24:33 ◼   ► they're emails that you should probably be reading,

00:24:35 ◼   ► then it's hard to pass judgment on what any one of us,

00:24:39 ◼   ► particularly Marco, should do.

00:24:41 ◼   ► Because I find it challenging to keep up

00:24:44 ◼   ► with just ATP email, and that's a drop in the bucket

00:24:46 ◼   ► compared to what Marco's getting from Overcast.

00:24:50 ◼   ► So I think you're absolutely right, Jon.

00:24:52 ◼   ► In any case, we should talk about something that's awesome.

00:24:55 ◼   ► And if I'm not mistaken, this is a particularly awesome

00:24:58 ◼   ► something that's awesome, is that right?

00:25:00 ◼   ► - This episode is sponsored by Cards Against Humanity.

00:25:03 ◼   ► Now, they didn't want us to read a typical sponsor ad.

00:25:06 ◼   ► What they did instead was send Jon a toaster.

00:25:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:25:13 ◼   ► This is really happening.

00:25:14 ◼   ► I cannot believe this is really happening.

00:25:16 ◼   ► - So John, all they wanted to do for this ad read

00:25:20 ◼   ► was for you to review this toaster

00:25:23 ◼   ► compared to your, you know, the toaster.

00:25:25 ◼   ► - Well hold on, hold on.

00:25:26 ◼   ► Can we set the stage here since this is the first one?

00:25:28 ◼   ► What is the toaster and what is the particular

00:25:34 ◼   ► reviewed toaster?

00:25:36 ◼   ► - There's already not enough time for me to review

00:25:38 ◼   ► this toaster in a typical ad read slot.

00:25:40 ◼   ► So I don't think we can go too much into context.

00:25:42 ◼   ► So I think save for the after show, I will talk more about this toaster, but the context

00:25:48 ◼   ► is that I did a podcast, a Wally Wilko hypercritical.

00:25:51 ◼   ► One episode I talked about my difficulty finding a toaster that I found satisfying in response

00:25:56 ◼   ► to that episode.

00:25:57 ◼   ► A bunch of nice people got me as a sort of joke gift at WWDC, a fancy toaster that I

00:26:03 ◼   ► probably would not have bought myself.

00:26:06 ◼   ► And that's the one I'm using right now.

00:26:07 ◼   ► That's the context of it.

00:26:09 ◼   ► That's why it's funny to apparently send me toasters to review.

00:26:12 ◼   ► So I have received a toaster.

00:26:15 ◼   ► It is the Black & Decker TO1303SB.

00:26:23 ◼   ► I just want to note that the model number has both a capital O and a zero in it.

00:26:32 ◼   ► This is a four slice toaster.

00:26:34 ◼   ► And by the way, these are all toaster ovens.

00:26:37 ◼   ► Please do not send me things about "I should get a slot toaster."

00:26:40 ◼   ► I know about slot toasters.

00:26:41 ◼   ► Again, on the episodes, yes, I know all about them.

00:26:43 ◼   ► Slot toasters do not double as ovens.

00:26:45 ◼   ► I'm only interested in toaster ovens.

00:26:47 ◼   ► You may be interested in slot toasters.

00:26:49 ◼   ► That's great, get a slot toaster.

00:26:50 ◼   ► They're really nice.

00:26:51 ◼   ► Anyway, toaster ovens.

00:26:52 ◼   ► This one, let's talk about the good things first.

00:26:55 ◼   ► It toasts bread reasonably evenly.

00:26:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:26:59 ◼   ► This is a big thing because a lot of them have like hot spots

00:27:02 ◼   ► and you'd get, you know, one side is pale

00:27:04 ◼   ► and one side is over toasted.

00:27:05 ◼   ► It toasts them in about the same speed as my fancy toaster.

00:27:08 ◼   ► We'll have the model number of my fancy toaster

00:27:09 ◼   ► and a link to it in the show notes as well.

00:27:11 ◼   ► So speed wise, it's good.

00:27:13 ◼   ► Capacity wise, it is a smaller toaster,

00:27:16 ◼   ► but you know, size like it's not a fault for it.

00:27:19 ◼   ► It takes up less room on the countertop.

00:27:20 ◼   ► It's also small on the inside, that's fine.

00:27:23 ◼   ► It is relatively quiet.

00:27:25 ◼   ► You'd be surprised that the noises toasters make,

00:27:27 ◼   ► particularly when you just turn them on,

00:27:28 ◼   ► they make kind of like a transformer wine,

00:27:31 ◼   ► kind of like, meh.

00:27:31 ◼   ► - Is that what that is?

00:27:33 ◼   ► 'Cause yeah, they all kind of like have that buzz.

00:27:35 ◼   ► - It's not.

00:27:36 ◼   ► Someone, Dr. Drangenreisen tells what it is.

00:27:38 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe it's an inverter or something,

00:27:39 ◼   ► Whatever it is, the sound gets lower as the thing heats up.

00:27:42 ◼   ► So it's only the beginning of this one,

00:27:43 ◼   ► it's admirably quiet.

00:27:45 ◼   ► This one does have a thing that ticks,

00:27:47 ◼   ► a sort of a ticking countdown thing

00:27:49 ◼   ► until it gets to the end.

00:27:50 ◼   ► - Like a bomb?

00:27:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, basically.

00:27:53 ◼   ► Listen to the hyper-critical episode of me complaining

00:27:56 ◼   ► about the ticking thing.

00:27:58 ◼   ► But this is at least is a very quiet tick, right?

00:28:00 ◼   ► And the oven, I use this thing for toast

00:28:04 ◼   ► and for warming stuff up and for cooking things,

00:28:05 ◼   ► the oven part seems to work fine.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Overall, it's pretty good.

00:28:08 ◼   ► The bad things about it are some of the same bad things

00:28:11 ◼   ► about most modern toasters.

00:28:13 ◼   ► This thing has three dials on the front of it

00:28:15 ◼   ► and to toast anything, you have to put the top dial to toast.

00:28:18 ◼   ► You have to put the middle dial to toast

00:28:20 ◼   ► and you have to put the bottom dial

00:28:21 ◼   ► to the amount that you want to toast it.

00:28:23 ◼   ► And dials, oh, these are not good dials.

00:28:26 ◼   ► Dials, these dials are completely smooth

00:28:31 ◼   ► and have like a little, you know,

00:28:33 ◼   ► a thing showing you where it's supposed to be pointing

00:28:35 ◼   ► on the top of the dial, but they're raised like an inch off

00:28:38 ◼   ► so you can't tell quite where it's aiming.

00:28:39 ◼   ► And that's important because anything with a dial,

00:28:41 ◼   ► you have to turn it to a degree that you memorize,

00:28:44 ◼   ► 36 degrees, 37 degrees, 38, whatever it is

00:28:46 ◼   ► the amount that exactly toasts the bread

00:28:48 ◼   ► to the darkness that you want.

00:28:50 ◼   ► And every time you toast a piece of bread,

00:28:52 ◼   ► you have to turn the dial that exact amount.

00:28:53 ◼   ► If you're off by a little bit,

00:28:55 ◼   ► it won't be toasted enough or it'll be toasted too much

00:28:56 ◼   ► before the thing goes off.

00:28:58 ◼   ► This is a terrible design for toasters.

00:29:01 ◼   ► Remember when they used to be when we were kids,

00:29:03 ◼   ► you would have a darkness knob that you could set

00:29:04 ◼   ► and then you'd press a little thing down

00:29:07 ◼   ► and then it would pop up when it's done, right?

00:29:08 ◼   ► Like the little things?

00:29:09 ◼   ► - Yes, you could set the way you liked it and be repeatable.

00:29:13 ◼   ► - Right, and then it's just like one after the other,

00:29:15 ◼   ► down, down, down, down, down.

00:29:16 ◼   ► This thing with the knob, it's just not good at all.

00:29:18 ◼   ► And then having to set the other three knobs,

00:29:20 ◼   ► if you have the top knob set to the wrong thing

00:29:21 ◼   ► or the middle knob set to the wrong thing,

00:29:23 ◼   ► you can turn that toasting to the right degree,

00:29:25 ◼   ► but it won't do the right thing,

00:29:26 ◼   ► because oh, you didn't realize it was on bake or something.

00:29:28 ◼   ► And if you wanna use the bake thing,

00:29:29 ◼   ► you've gotta turn the bottom dial to the stay on setting

00:29:32 ◼   ► and then do the top two dials.

00:29:34 ◼   ► It's like, how freaking complicated can you make this?

00:29:37 ◼   ► They only have a little bit of an area for UI.

00:29:39 ◼   ► Like, I don't know how you can go this far wrong

00:29:42 ◼   ► with the toaster interface.

00:29:44 ◼   ► So performance-wise, this toaster gets the job done.

00:29:48 ◼   ► In fact, I was really nicely surprised

00:29:50 ◼   ► by how well it did all the jobs

00:29:51 ◼   ► as well as my big fancy toaster.

00:29:53 ◼   ► But user interface-wise, this is not good at all.

00:29:56 ◼   ► - And it's worth pointing out too

00:29:57 ◼   ► that this is, on Amazon currently, it's $43,

00:30:00 ◼   ► which is very inexpensive for a toaster oven brand new.

00:30:04 ◼   ► You know, the fancy ones, like the one you have,

00:30:06 ◼   ► are about $200.

00:30:08 ◼   ► So for $43, that's a pretty good buy.

00:30:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I would say the build quality

00:30:11 ◼   ► of this $50 toaster embarrasses my $200 toaster

00:30:15 ◼   ► in some areas.

00:30:16 ◼   ► So Black & Becker does make very solid,

00:30:19 ◼   ► like even the dials, which I don't like

00:30:20 ◼   ► because they're smooth and don't have a way

00:30:22 ◼   ► for you to tell where you're pointing

00:30:24 ◼   ► because the pointing thing is so far off the surface,

00:30:26 ◼   ► the dials on this one feel better

00:30:27 ◼   ► than the dials on my $200 toaster,

00:30:29 ◼   ► which I complained about when I talked about that toaster.

00:30:31 ◼   ► Right, there just shouldn't be this many dials

00:30:33 ◼   ► and it shouldn't be this complicated to use this thing.

00:30:36 ◼   ► - What's your final verdict?

00:30:37 ◼   ► - He loved it.

00:30:37 ◼   ► - I mean, how many toasters have I had in my life?

00:30:42 ◼   ► I'm not the wire cutter here.

00:30:43 ◼   ► I've had my old toaster.

00:30:44 ◼   ► I had my old toaster that I replaced with the fancy toaster.

00:30:47 ◼   ► I like my fancy toaster better than this,

00:30:49 ◼   ► but my fancy toaster is like four times the price.

00:30:51 ◼   ► So it damn well better be better than this.

00:30:53 ◼   ► My fancy toaster is probably not four times better than this

00:30:55 ◼   ► but you know, of all the toasters I've used in my life,

00:30:58 ◼   ► This is the second best, but the interface is still terrible.

00:31:01 ◼   ► Well, thank you very much to Cards Against Humanity.

00:31:05 ◼   ► This is entirely their idea.

00:31:06 ◼   ► Thank you very much to Cards Against Humanity

00:31:08 ◼   ► for sponsoring our show.

00:31:11 ◼   ► God, such a funny idea.

00:31:13 ◼   ► I don't even know where to go from here.

00:31:15 ◼   ► Are we done?

00:31:15 ◼   ► Is that it?

00:31:17 ◼   ► That guy should have been the sweet home, not the wire cutter.

00:31:19 ◼   ► Sorry, I'm not good at my brand.

00:31:22 ◼   ► Real time follow.

00:31:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:25 ◼   ► No one in the chat room caught it.

00:31:26 ◼   ► Someone in the chat room did say,

00:31:27 ◼   ► I don't understand why he's not using a slot toaster,

00:31:29 ◼   ► for crying out loud.

00:31:30 ◼   ► How much preamble do I have to give for people not to?

00:31:33 ◼   ► I understand what a slot toaster is.

00:31:35 ◼   ► I know all about it.

00:31:36 ◼   ► We're not talking about, I just, I can't,

00:31:39 ◼   ► you cannot get the, the slot toaster people

00:31:40 ◼   ► are just unstoppable.

00:31:43 ◼   ► - Why would you want a slot toaster?

00:31:45 ◼   ► I don't even understand. - But they're fine

00:31:46 ◼   ► if you want a slot toaster, it's good, but you can't--

00:31:48 ◼   ► - No, they're ter, they're worse at everything.

00:31:50 ◼   ► - Yeah. - They're not, no,

00:31:51 ◼   ► they're better at toast.

00:31:52 ◼   ► - No. - They're better,

00:31:52 ◼   ► you can toast, you can toast faster,

00:31:54 ◼   ► and they have a thing that you press down,

00:31:56 ◼   ► Like if you just want to make toast,

00:31:58 ◼   ► I think slot toasters are better.

00:31:59 ◼   ► - And as long as you never want to toast anything

00:32:01 ◼   ► that is crumbly or thick or non-symmetrical on both sides.

00:32:04 ◼   ► - Yes, you would have to have a toaster oven as well.

00:32:07 ◼   ► But if you have a very large kitchen

00:32:08 ◼   ► and with a lot of counter space,

00:32:10 ◼   ► then you can have a toaster oven, a slot toaster,

00:32:12 ◼   ► a convection oven, a microwave oven,

00:32:13 ◼   ► dual ovens in the walls, like whatever.

00:32:15 ◼   ► I do not have that kitchen.

00:32:16 ◼   ► - Seven ovens, at various shapes and sizes.

00:32:19 ◼   ► Many different knob types on the front.

00:32:21 ◼   ► - I love that all these people in the chat room

00:32:23 ◼   ► are going berserk about the slot toasters.

00:32:24 ◼   ► Yes, they may be plainly superior for toasting, like Jon said, but I still do.

00:32:28 ◼   ► I won't concede that point.

00:32:29 ◼   ► Well, I'm not saying that's true, but if you let's let's take it as writ that that is true.

00:32:34 ◼   ► Even if that is true, there's so many gazillions of things you can do with a toaster oven that you can't do with a frickin' slot toaster.

00:32:41 ◼   ► Now, if I had a big kitchen, I would have both. But I do not have a big kitchen, so I don't have both. That's it.

00:32:45 ◼   ► Oh, man, this show took a turn that I wasn't expecting.

00:32:47 ◼   ► Oh, man.

00:32:49 ◼   ► Do we have any actual topics for the week?

00:32:51 ◼   ► Who just added this? Did you just add the net neutrality thing?

00:32:54 ◼   ► Marco did.

00:32:55 ◼   ► I hope one of you knows something about it.

00:32:57 ◼   ► Well, I just have an incredibly under-informed opinion like usual.

00:33:02 ◼   ► Oh, well, nothing changes.

00:33:05 ◼   ► So the FCC released an announcement of some kind of... what exactly did they do? Just

00:33:10 ◼   ► an announcement of what they want to do, or...?

00:33:13 ◼   ► That's why I didn't pay enough attention to it, because A, I still cynically assume that

00:33:17 ◼   ► that we're being screwed just now in a more hard to detect way. And B, I didn't think

00:33:22 ◼   ► this announcement had anything to do with like, "We would really like this to happen,"

00:33:25 ◼   ► and then the political realities will kick in and nothing will actually happen.

00:33:28 ◼   ► Right. So basically, to give some very under-informed background on this topic, the FCC, which is

00:33:36 ◼   ► responsible for regulating US telecom and broadband and stuff like that, they have previously

00:33:42 ◼   ► classified broadband as a data service rather than a telecom service. For telecom services,

00:33:52 ◼   ► like the phone lines to your house, there's much more strict regulations over how much

00:33:58 ◼   ► control the carriers are allowed to exert over that, how much they're allowed to screw

00:34:02 ◼   ► people and put limits and controls and interfere with what's being telegraphed over the lines,

00:34:07 ◼   ► things like that. Internet service, by almost any kind of common sense definition, sounds

00:34:14 ◼   ► like that. If you ask people, "Should internet service be regulated like phone service in

00:34:22 ◼   ► these ways?" Most people would say, "Yes, that makes sense. Of course it should be."

00:34:26 ◼   ► It hasn't been yet. The FCC has tried a couple of little things to kind of half-picks it

00:34:31 ◼   ► a little bit, like to say, "Well, we want you to have net neutrality most of the time,

00:34:37 ◼   ► we're not going to go all the way and classify you as this." And then they get sued by the

00:34:42 ◼   ► ISPs and then they have to roll that back. So generally speaking, the FCC has been very

00:34:48 ◼   ► weak on this, and even like six months ago, recently, the chairman Tom Wheeler basically

00:34:55 ◼   ► came out and said that he didn't think they need to reclassify it the way phone lines

00:34:59 ◼   ► are. A few weeks after that, President Obama made some statement about it, about how he

00:35:06 ◼   ► He was basically opposing the FCC chairman, who I think ostensibly he appointed, right?

00:35:11 ◼   ► Sounds right.

00:35:12 ◼   ► Obama basically politically overrode, not legally, but he politically said, "I think

00:35:19 ◼   ► differently on this," very publicly.

00:35:21 ◼   ► And then, of course, the geek population like us is very strongly against the FCC's previous

00:35:27 ◼   ► position.

00:35:28 ◼   ► We want it to be regulated the way phone service is.

00:35:31 ◼   ► Title II is, and I don't know all the details of what parts of Title II, all of it, none

00:35:36 ◼   ► of it, but anyway.

00:35:38 ◼   ► So you had the situation where the FCC says one thing, Obama a few weeks or months later

00:35:43 ◼   ► says another thing, and then it came up again in the State of the Union address last month

00:35:47 ◼   ► where Obama talked about again how he was on the side of net neutrality, which was directly

00:35:52 ◼   ► contradicting the FCC's most recent statements.

00:35:55 ◼   ► This week, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler comes out and says, "Oh, I changed my mind.

00:36:00 ◼   ► We're gonna try to, we're gonna seek this classification now.

00:36:04 ◼   ► And this guy, he has previous ties to the cable industry, and it's up for debate to

00:36:08 ◼   ► what degree that is, but he does have some previous ties to the cable industry.

00:36:11 ◼   ► Wasn't he a lobbyist for the cable industry?

00:36:14 ◼   ► Something, it was kind of, it was a little bit less severe than that in practice, but

00:36:19 ◼   ► it's like, there's some kind of connection there.

00:36:22 ◼   ► So he comes from the cable industry, so having him be the head of the FCC is kind of suspect,

00:36:26 ◼   ► suspects, well why wouldn't he just fight for the rights of the people who previously

00:36:31 ◼   ► employed him and will probably employ him in the future.

00:36:34 ◼   ► So anyway, that's the whole revolving door thing, that's a big problem.

00:36:37 ◼   ► The problem is, he said one thing last year or whenever, all of a sudden the president

00:36:44 ◼   ► says "I disagree" a few months later, "Oh, the FCC is now seeking something else."

00:36:49 ◼   ► This feels a lot like just posturing and just empty promises because Obama said that whether

00:36:56 ◼   ► he believes it or not, he said it because it was popular among his base, he kind of

00:36:59 ◼   ► had to say it.

00:37:00 ◼   ► Okay.

00:37:01 ◼   ► He had to probably put pressure on Tom Wheeler to kind of get in line with him and his party

00:37:06 ◼   ► and everything because that's kind of weird if your appointed FCC chairman is like directly

00:37:11 ◼   ► disagreeing with the president and his policies, that's kind of weak.

00:37:15 ◼   ► So it feels like posturing, it feels like putting on a good show for the voters.

00:37:22 ◼   ► But what's going to happen, like nothing's going to change tomorrow.

00:37:26 ◼   ► What's going to happen is the FCC might pursue this in some way, it's going to be going back

00:37:32 ◼   ► and forth for months if not years of drafting what the rules will even be, and then try

00:37:38 ◼   ► to put them in place.

00:37:39 ◼   ► And then Verizon, Comcast, all the big ISPs are probably going to sue the FCC or sue the

00:37:45 ◼   ► government to try to get these rules overturned.

00:37:48 ◼   ► And that's going to go through courts for months or for years and possibly go to the

00:37:51 ◼   ► Supreme Court eventually.

00:37:53 ◼   ► This is going to be a long process, this is how the legal system works with this kind

00:37:56 ◼   ► of stuff.

00:37:57 ◼   ► It's going to be a very long process.

00:37:59 ◼   ► And he can say whatever, Tom Wheeler can say whatever he wants today.

00:38:04 ◼   ► He can say, "Oh, we're going to seek this, we're going to seek these rules."

00:38:06 ◼   ► But over time those are going to be negotiated and weakened and possibly overturned by court

00:38:10 ◼   ► decisions.

00:38:12 ◼   ► So it's hard to say this really means a lot right now.

00:38:16 ◼   ► This might turn into something good down the road, but it's going to be a very long time

00:38:20 ◼   ► before in all likelihood before anything really can come of it if anything comes it comes of it at all and what will probably

00:38:27 ◼   ► happen which is what happens most of the time with these kind of moves is

00:38:30 ◼   ► It'll probably be watered down or completely thrown out before before it ever takes effect and the public won't notice

00:38:37 ◼   ► We would have moved on to some other stupid PR thing. So you're looking forward to it and you're sure it's going to work

00:38:44 ◼   ► That's it. I'm so cynical about these things because like just even if you don't know any of the details

00:38:50 ◼   ► The broad strokes are that you in your thing are roughly

00:38:55 ◼   ► you know a

00:38:57 ◼   ► Roughly correct like that the person Obama appointed to the FCC chairperson did not

00:39:04 ◼   ► Like he campaigned on the idea of like don't you know it was against the revolving door don't take people from?

00:39:11 ◼   ► Industries and then appoint them to regulate the industries that they came from and are going back to that's a bad thing

00:39:16 ◼   ► It's the anti pattern to use our lingo

00:39:18 ◼   ► We shouldn't do that and then did that it ostensibly did that same thing with the FCC chairman, although

00:39:24 ◼   ► MTW in the chat room says that this is not the case at all

00:39:28 ◼   ► And I don't know what we're getting wrong about that

00:39:30 ◼   ► But like it was an industry person, right?

00:39:32 ◼   ► It doesn't mean all people who were in the industry are bad or evil or whatever

00:39:35 ◼   ► It just means like it's kind of other things like if there's an appearance of impropriety

00:39:38 ◼   ► like try to avoid even the appearance rather than you know going on an individual basis like just you know, you know, I mean like so

00:39:46 ◼   ► You know that the optics of this were bad

00:39:49 ◼   ► You took someone from the industry and you and you put them in charge of something that has a big influence on the industry

00:39:53 ◼   ► You say well this person is upstanding

00:39:55 ◼   ► They're not going to be influenced and even if they do go back to work the industry doesn't make a difference like just the appearance

00:39:59 ◼   ► Of it is not good, right?

00:40:00 ◼   ► So that starts off on the wrong foot and then to see that person say things in that position

00:40:06 ◼   ► that make the telecom and cable industries happy.

00:40:11 ◼   ► If you are regulating an industry,

00:40:14 ◼   ► if you're doing things that make the industry

00:40:16 ◼   ► you're regulating happy,

00:40:17 ◼   ► you're probably doing your job wrong.

00:40:20 ◼   ► No matter what it is,

00:40:21 ◼   ► like if you are in charge of regulating

00:40:23 ◼   ► the food safety industry,

00:40:26 ◼   ► if you're in charge of regulating trucking,

00:40:28 ◼   ► if you're in anything,

00:40:29 ◼   ► like no matter what you are in charge of regulating,

00:40:32 ◼   ► if the companies or the industries you're regulating

00:40:35 ◼   ► are happy about what you're doing,

00:40:36 ◼   ► it is almost certainly the wrong thing to do,

00:40:38 ◼   ► unless maybe you're rolling back another regulation

00:40:41 ◼   ► that was like, went too far or whatever.

00:40:43 ◼   ► But like, if they're happy,

00:40:45 ◼   ► it's, you know, especially with these giant industries

00:40:48 ◼   ► that have near monopolies like telecom,

00:40:51 ◼   ► if they are happy, something is wrong.

00:40:53 ◼   ► Because they are never happy about things

00:40:55 ◼   ► that help consumers.

00:40:56 ◼   ► They're always happy about things

00:40:58 ◼   ► that make them more powerful and that screw consumers.

00:41:01 ◼   ► So that like, you don't even need to get into nippy details

00:41:05 ◼   ► and theories about the free market or whatever,

00:41:07 ◼   ► all you have to do is say, is Verizon happy?

00:41:10 ◼   ► Is AT&T happy?

00:41:11 ◼   ► Do they love this?

00:41:12 ◼   ► Then it's almost certainly the wrong thing to do.

00:41:14 ◼   ► Now you have to balance it.

00:41:16 ◼   ► You say like, well, you're not gonna make them miserable,

00:41:18 ◼   ► but you can't just regulate them to death

00:41:21 ◼   ► and strangle the industries, but believe me,

00:41:22 ◼   ► no one is strangling telecom.

00:41:24 ◼   ► Like now we can't have any telecom companies.

00:41:27 ◼   ► All telecom companies have closed up shop.

00:41:29 ◼   ► They're just leaving their wires, hanging in the trees,

00:41:31 ◼   ► and just no one's gonna use them anymore

00:41:32 ◼   ► because it's over-regulated.

00:41:34 ◼   ► No, the direction everything has been going in this country

00:41:36 ◼   ► has been decreasing regulation,

00:41:38 ◼   ► which has good size and bad size.

00:41:40 ◼   ► And again, you can talk about the details,

00:41:41 ◼   ► but just as a general rule of thumb,

00:41:44 ◼   ► you don't even need to look at consumers.

00:41:46 ◼   ► Don't say, "Are consumers happy?"

00:41:47 ◼   ► 'Cause consumers don't know what's going on.

00:41:49 ◼   ► These things all happen behind closed doors.

00:41:50 ◼   ► Consumers have no idea that it's happening.

00:41:51 ◼   ► Consumers have no idea what the effects are,

00:41:53 ◼   ► but if the industry loves it, stop.

00:41:55 ◼   ► Stop and look and say, "Wait a second, they love this.

00:41:58 ◼   ► What the hell are we doing?

00:41:58 ◼   ► Our job is, they should hate us.

00:42:00 ◼   ► Our job, it's like being the principal at a school,

00:42:02 ◼   ► like, or the assistant principal.

00:42:03 ◼   ► Like if everybody loves you,

00:42:05 ◼   ► you're not imposing enough discipline, right?

00:42:08 ◼   ► Not everybody doesn't have to hate you,

00:42:09 ◼   ► but if everyone's like,

00:42:10 ◼   ► "Yeah, everything you do is awesome, woo!"

00:42:12 ◼   ► Like, you know, that's not a regular,

00:42:16 ◼   ► same, you know, or parenting.

00:42:17 ◼   ► Like if your kids love every decision you make,

00:42:19 ◼   ► you're probably failing them as a parent,

00:42:22 ◼   ► or you have a perfect child, which could happen.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Anyway, that's how I feel about this thing.

00:42:28 ◼   ► So that's why I don't get too caught up in the details,

00:42:30 ◼   ► and maybe I'm too cynical about it.

00:42:32 ◼   ► I think I did, you know, every time this comes up,

00:42:34 ◼   ► I do do whatever things they have online to like,

00:42:36 ◼   ► oh, send a letter to your Congress person,

00:42:40 ◼   ► send, put a comment on the, you know, request for comments.

00:42:42 ◼   ► I do all that stuff.

00:42:43 ◼   ► So I'm not so cynical that I think I can't participate

00:42:45 ◼   ► in the process and everything.

00:42:46 ◼   ► And of course, you know, I vote and the people I vote for

00:42:50 ◼   ► are as close as possible to being in agreement with me

00:42:53 ◼   ► on positions like this.

00:42:54 ◼   ► But it's, in many cases, it's just simply impossible

00:42:57 ◼   ► because there are stupid two party systems

00:42:58 ◼   ► to find any candidate who agrees with you

00:43:01 ◼   ► even remotely on some issues like this,

00:43:03 ◼   ► but you do what you can, but anyway, I don't know.

00:43:07 ◼   ► I guess we'll just wait and see.

00:43:09 ◼   ► - All right, so let's move on real quick.

00:43:11 ◼   ► We hear that Apple may or may not be involved

00:43:15 ◼   ► in a mapping service.

00:43:17 ◼   ► Do you want to talk about this, John?

00:43:19 ◼   ► - I put it in there because it was on Loop Insight

00:43:24 ◼   ► and it wasn't Dalrymple that said it,

00:43:26 ◼   ► but like when I saw these stories, it's like,

00:43:28 ◼   ► "Oh, someone has some random spy shot of a van with crap on top of it, and they say it's from Apple."

00:43:34 ◼   ► And then I, you know, I saw that story. I'm like, "Yeah, whatever. I don't, you know, I don't really pay attention."

00:43:41 ◼   ► And then I saw that the loop had it, and I went to it hoping it would be Dalrymple giving one of his yuppernopes.

00:43:48 ◼   ► And I was expecting it to be a nope, because I don't think Apple's working on self-driving cars.

00:43:53 ◼   ► But he didn't even write it, so there's no thing one way or the other.

00:43:57 ◼   ► But I feel like he would want to write that was that Sean King that did that one

00:43:59 ◼   ► I feel like if you knew he would have grabbed that one and thrown in a note, but he didn't

00:44:03 ◼   ► And but the story did point out and I think it is a much more plausible theory

00:44:08 ◼   ► This is not Apple self-driving cars

00:44:10 ◼   ► This is just Apple's answer to Street View which we've talked about in many past shows the episode numbers of which I absolutely cannot remember

00:44:16 ◼   ► about

00:44:18 ◼   ► things that Apple's bad at and one of them is the audacity to do something like Google Street View where it's like we have overhead maps

00:44:24 ◼   ► and everything but wouldn't it be great if we could have

00:44:27 ◼   ► Street level views of stuff and like well, how are you gonna get street-level views everything?

00:44:30 ◼   ► well, what if we just put cameras on top of cars and drive them on every road in the entire United States and

00:44:34 ◼   ► That's something that would come up in a Google meeting. They would say, alright, let's do that

00:44:38 ◼   ► And by the way, it's scan every book in existence

00:44:40 ◼   ► but anyway get those cars on the road and drive it, you know, whereas Apple Apple is not an organization that

00:44:47 ◼   ► Does things like that that conceives things like that and that executes them?

00:44:52 ◼   ► But when they took up on the job of doing maps, it's like well

00:44:56 ◼   ► It's gonna take you a long time to catch up to Google and maps if you ever do and you don't have anything like Streetview

00:45:01 ◼   ► And if you want something that Streetview Google's not gonna give it to you

00:45:03 ◼   ► You're gonna have to do what they did which is really hard

00:45:05 ◼   ► So I desperately hope that that is an Apple

00:45:09 ◼   ► equivalent of Street View car

00:45:11 ◼   ► Piloting a program that's going to use some of that

00:45:13 ◼   ► 7878 billion dollars to drive on every road in the United States eventually every road in the world taking pictures of everything

00:45:19 ◼   ► - And that their pictures will be higher resolution

00:45:21 ◼   ► than Google's because they do it later

00:45:23 ◼   ► with better technology and all that stuff.

00:45:24 ◼   ► I desperately hope that's what it is

00:45:26 ◼   ► and not just some cleaning van with weird stuff on the roof.

00:45:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, me too, because it is,

00:45:31 ◼   ► it's unfortunate that there are these handful

00:45:35 ◼   ► of major areas where Apple and Apple's customers

00:45:40 ◼   ► are still really dependent on Google for things.

00:45:41 ◼   ► And obviously Apple does not really want it to be that way

00:45:45 ◼   ► if they can help it.

00:45:46 ◼   ► And some of these, like web search,

00:45:48 ◼   ► general purpose web search of find this phrase

00:45:51 ◼   ► on the entire internet.

00:45:53 ◼   ► I don't think Apple's gonna tackle that.

00:45:54 ◼   ► Somebody posted there was a job posting

00:45:55 ◼   ► for Apple search on some Apple job site.

00:45:59 ◼   ► - They just want you to be able to find a game

00:46:00 ◼   ► on the App Store and stuff.

00:46:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, right?

00:46:02 ◼   ► - Keyword spammers.

00:46:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean like, I don't think the Apple search thing

00:46:06 ◼   ► was about web search.

00:46:06 ◼   ► I think it's just like searching other things

00:46:08 ◼   ► that Apple needs to be searchable.

00:46:11 ◼   ► But the certain areas of maps and Street View

00:46:15 ◼   ► is probably the biggest one.

00:46:16 ◼   ► The mapping data is pretty close now.

00:46:21 ◼   ► Obviously this will vary depending on where you live, but I have found Apple's mapping

00:46:24 ◼   ► data to be pretty good.

00:46:26 ◼   ► The biggest problems I have with Apple Maps that still exist today are lack of street

00:46:31 ◼   ► view and that the business listings are pretty weak compared to Google's.

00:46:35 ◼   ► The Google's are not perfect.

00:46:37 ◼   ► A lot of people say, "Oh, well Apple's business listings once brought me to some

00:46:41 ◼   ► terrible out of date listing of this thing that didn't exist anymore or wasn't there,

00:46:45 ◼   ► moved or whatever. Google's business data is not perfect either. This is kind of like

00:46:50 ◼   ► when people try a different cellular carrier and they forget how bad their other one was

00:46:55 ◼   ► or how spotty or inconsistent it was in certain areas and they run back and then forget about

00:46:59 ◼   ► how bad it, you know, it's kind of like grass is always greener but with a little bit longer

00:47:04 ◼   ► term memory involved. And so like, just like no cellular carrier including your beloved

00:47:10 ◼   ► Verizon everybody is actually consistently great everywhere.

00:47:15 ◼   ► Similar to that, no mapping data for many of these services is consistently perfect,

00:47:20 ◼   ► and no business place name data is consistently perfect from these places.

00:47:25 ◼   ► Certainly I think Google's is still better.

00:47:27 ◼   ► Again, neither of these are perfect.

00:47:30 ◼   ► Google's is still better.

00:47:31 ◼   ► And anything Apple can do to close that gap with the business data and to provide the

00:47:34 ◼   ► missing features like Street View, that is very beneficial to them.

00:47:40 ◼   ► Strategically, long term, I think they need to do things like that.

00:47:44 ◼   ► They need to get total independence from the need for Google services on their devices.

00:47:49 ◼   ► They've come very far.

00:47:50 ◼   ► They're almost there in many areas, but there's still a few things that they're really stuck

00:47:56 ◼   ► with.

00:47:57 ◼   ► I think Street View and good map business place data is probably up there.

00:48:02 ◼   ► - Do you think that the people who are zealots

00:48:06 ◼   ► about slot-loaded toasters are the same Verizon people

00:48:10 ◼   ► that won't shut up?

00:48:11 ◼   ► - You know, people with slot-loaded toasters are so bad.

00:48:14 ◼   ► You can't reheat a slice of pizza worth anything in there.

00:48:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's so true.

00:48:19 ◼   ► Why don't you tell us about something that's cool?

00:48:21 ◼   ► - Our second sponsor this week is Fracture.

00:48:25 ◼   ► Fracture prints your photo in vivid color

00:48:28 ◼   ► directly onto glass.

00:48:29 ◼   ► Go to fractureme.com to hear more about that.

00:48:33 ◼   ► I have fractures all over the office.

00:48:36 ◼   ► I really do.

00:48:36 ◼   ► I have, let's see, five, yeah,

00:48:38 ◼   ► I have five within view right now.

00:48:40 ◼   ► These are great prints.

00:48:42 ◼   ► So they're a photo printer.

00:48:44 ◼   ► And they print the photos on these squares

00:48:46 ◼   ► or rectangles of glass.

00:48:47 ◼   ► And it just mounts directly to your wall,

00:48:50 ◼   ► however you want, or it can sit on a desk or whatever.

00:48:53 ◼   ► They include even the wall anchor for you,

00:48:55 ◼   ► or the little desk stand, whatever you ordered.

00:48:57 ◼   ► They include everything, everything you need's in the box.

00:49:00 ◼   ► Print quality is great, it looks fantastic.

00:49:03 ◼   ► And my favorite part is that it doesn't need

00:49:04 ◼   ► a frame or anything.

00:49:05 ◼   ► If you're an adult and you're decorating a room as an adult,

00:49:10 ◼   ► you don't wanna just pin a poster on the wall.

00:49:13 ◼   ► You want it to look nice, right?

00:49:15 ◼   ► And so, generally the way you do that

00:49:18 ◼   ► is by putting it in a frame.

00:49:20 ◼   ► You can do custom framing, that's very expensive.

00:49:23 ◼   ► And with Fracture, this is great, Fracture prints,

00:49:26 ◼   ► like they're borderless, because it goes edge to edge

00:49:28 ◼   ► with the picture printed on the backside

00:49:30 ◼   ► of this thin piece of glass and then mounted on cardboard.

00:49:33 ◼   ► Anyway, so it looks like the picture is just right there

00:49:35 ◼   ► on the glass, because it is literally printed

00:49:38 ◼   ► on the backside of the glass.

00:49:39 ◼   ► So, fracture prints look so good,

00:49:42 ◼   ► you don't need to have them framed.

00:49:43 ◼   ► In fact, I don't even know if you could.

00:49:46 ◼   ► And for the price of the print,

00:49:47 ◼   ► for what you're getting for that,

00:49:49 ◼   ► it's an incredibly good deal compared to a nice frame.

00:49:52 ◼   ► A very, very good deal.

00:49:53 ◼   ► And it includes the print.

00:49:55 ◼   ► And it's all right there in the box, everything you need.

00:49:57 ◼   ► It looks clean, it looks modern, it looks great.

00:50:00 ◼   ► I get so many compliments on these prints.

00:50:02 ◼   ► I really, I can't stand up good things about Fracture.

00:50:04 ◼   ► That's why I keep ordering from them.

00:50:06 ◼   ► Anyway, prices start at just 15 bucks

00:50:09 ◼   ► for a five by five inch square,

00:50:11 ◼   ► which, and that's the size I use for my app icon prints,

00:50:14 ◼   ► which I've mentioned before.

00:50:15 ◼   ► So I actually, for the icons of the apps I've worked on,

00:50:20 ◼   ► I have little Fracture five by five inch prints of those

00:50:22 ◼   ► hanging on the wall.

00:50:23 ◼   ► sort of like trophy row of what I've done.

00:50:25 ◼   ► Anyway, every Fracture print is handmade

00:50:28 ◼   ► and checked for quality by a small team

00:50:30 ◼   ► that runs Fracture in Gainesville, Florida.

00:50:32 ◼   ► It is the thinnest, lightest, and most elegant way

00:50:34 ◼   ► to display your favorite photo.

00:50:36 ◼   ► Get 15% off your first order with coupon code ATP15,

00:50:41 ◼   ► which also lets them know that you came from the show.

00:50:42 ◼   ► So 15% off your first order, coupon code ATP15

00:50:46 ◼   ► at fractureme.com.

00:50:48 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Fracture for sponsoring our show once again.

00:50:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, I just wanted to pipe in real quickly

00:50:53 ◼   ► that we talk so often about the 5x5 sized ones,

00:50:56 ◼   ► but we've gotten a couple of the,

00:50:59 ◼   ► I think they call them regular size.

00:51:02 ◼   ► It's pretty wide, I'd say like a foot,

00:51:04 ◼   ► foot and a half wide and maybe a foot tall.

00:51:07 ◼   ► And those look beautiful as well.

00:51:09 ◼   ► It's not just the tiny ones.

00:51:11 ◼   ► So don't feel like you eliminate,

00:51:13 ◼   ► you should limit yourself just to those.

00:51:15 ◼   ► But they really do look amazing, like Marco said.

00:51:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, the big ones,

00:51:18 ◼   ► I have two of the big ones above my monitor.

00:51:20 ◼   ► It's, oh, I love them, I just love them.

00:51:21 ◼   ► Oh, that's true.

00:51:22 ◼   ► I forgot those were fractures.

00:51:24 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a good call.

00:51:25 ◼   ► All right, so we had a question from listener Ben,

00:51:27 ◼   ► which I thought was kind of interesting.

00:51:29 ◼   ► And he said, "Would really like to hear more

00:51:33 ◼   ► about the Overcast backend someday

00:51:35 ◼   ► as an example of what it takes to run a modern app beyond what

00:51:38 ◼   ► you upload to the App Store.

00:51:40 ◼   ► There's a lot of places to learn about how to design

00:51:42 ◼   ► and code an app, but most examples are standalone.

00:51:44 ◼   ► And Overcast has some really interesting infrastructure

00:51:46 ◼   ► behind it, and it seems like it could be a good example.

00:51:49 ◼   ► For example, where do you host the VPSs and why?

00:51:52 ◼   ► How much will the Go switch end up saving,

00:51:54 ◼   ► although I think you've talked about that a bit,

00:51:56 ◼   ► and what other tools are in use?

00:51:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I don't wanna go too far into this.

00:52:01 ◼   ► It's probably gonna be boring, but I host at Linode,

00:52:04 ◼   ► and I've used a lot of web hosts over the years, a lot.

00:52:08 ◼   ► I mean, I've been hosting stuff on web hosts since 2000,

00:52:13 ◼   ► so it's, over the years, web hosting business

00:52:16 ◼   ► has a lot of companies come and go.

00:52:18 ◼   ► Technology changes over time.

00:52:21 ◼   ► I've probably been at 10, 15 hosts over that time.

00:52:25 ◼   ► And through big and small, through my own personal site

00:52:27 ◼   ► all the way up to Tumblr scale

00:52:29 ◼   ► and a lot of things in between,

00:52:30 ◼   ► Linode is overall the best host I've used.

00:52:34 ◼   ► And there are certain areas in which other hosts are better,

00:52:37 ◼   ► but Linode, this past fall, they did a major hardware upgrade

00:52:42 ◼   ► where they upgraded the speeds of all their base systems

00:52:46 ◼   ► and their networking and they changed their plans a little bit.

00:52:49 ◼   ► And it is now an incredibly good deal for the power that you get.

00:52:55 ◼   ► Before that it was a decent deal, but it wasn't amazing.

00:52:57 ◼   ► Now it's really a very strong value.

00:53:00 ◼   ► So Linode, compared to other kinds of hostings, Linode is VPSs only, and I think they're all

00:53:06 ◼   ► unmanaged.

00:53:07 ◼   ► I don't know if they offer unmanaged servers.

00:53:08 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

00:53:09 ◼   ► I use unmanaged, so it doesn't matter to me.

00:53:12 ◼   ► meaning that it's all on you to take care of everything, whereas managed means there's

00:53:17 ◼   ► people monitoring it and trying to do first-level troubleshooting. Is that all correct?

00:53:22 ◼   ► Yeah, and so for a while, in the early days of Davidville and Tumblr, we had managed servers

00:53:28 ◼   ► at Rackspace. And Rackspace at the time, I mean this was 2006, 2007, so I don't know

00:53:35 ◼   ► how it is now. At the time, they were really considered the best of the business for managed

00:53:40 ◼   ► servers and I think they only sold managed servers at the time so they were very expensive.

00:53:44 ◼   ► It was like $800 a month for a server, for like a mid-range server which was very expensive.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Even back then it was very expensive.

00:53:52 ◼   ► We had managed that and what I found overall, what it promises is things like, "Well,

00:53:57 ◼   ► if your disks fill up we'll notice that and we'll go in there and clean it up."

00:54:01 ◼   ► Or if your database is being hammered by some runaway processor or some terrible query on

00:54:06 ◼   ► something, we can go in and optimize it for you and fix it.

00:54:10 ◼   ► In practice, that was spotty.

00:54:12 ◼   ► That was very inconsistent.

00:54:13 ◼   ► The quality of service we got from that was inconsistent.

00:54:16 ◼   ► Most of the time, it was ultimately on us to fix the problem.

00:54:20 ◼   ► It was like, well they could tell us, "Oh, well your problem is you have a lot of requests

00:54:25 ◼   ► coming in."

00:54:26 ◼   ► It's like, well, yeah, thanks.

00:54:30 ◼   ► Most of the time, it wasn't particularly useful.

00:54:34 ◼   ► And maybe that's just because we were programmers, so we knew how to do the basics of system

00:54:38 ◼   ► administration.

00:54:39 ◼   ► need them to install Apache for us, stuff like that.

00:54:42 ◼   ► We could figure that out on our own.

00:54:45 ◼   ► So it depends on what skill level you need.

00:54:49 ◼   ► These days, if you need more hand-holding from them

00:54:53 ◼   ► and you need them to do more things for you,

00:54:55 ◼   ► these days you're probably not looking at servers at all.

00:54:57 ◼   ► You're probably looking at managed cloud services,

00:54:59 ◼   ► which have higher abstraction and everything else.

00:55:03 ◼   ► That's kind of another story.

00:55:04 ◼   ► The industry's very different these days than it was in 2006.

00:55:06 ◼   ► But basically I use Linode because it has a very, very good value and a surprisingly

00:55:13 ◼   ► good control panel.

00:55:17 ◼   ► Web hosting control panels are kind of like non-Igloo intranets.

00:55:22 ◼   ► Oh my god, web hosting control panels are usually so awful.

00:55:29 ◼   ► It seems like every web host in the world is just totally incapable of making one that

00:55:34 ◼   ► is remotely usable and even has ever been slightly thought out of how people actually

00:55:40 ◼   ► use it, with a very small number of exceptions, and Linode is one of them.

00:55:44 ◼   ► Digital Oceans is decent, but Linode is still by far more fully functional.

00:55:48 ◼   ► I've tried other things, I've tried Digital Ocean, I've tried a couple of other ones.

00:55:52 ◼   ► I keep coming back to Linode because it is just a really fantastic value for what it

00:55:58 ◼   ► is, which is unmanaged VPSs.

00:56:02 ◼   ► So if you need some other kind of server, some other kind of service, some other kind

00:56:05 ◼   ► of hosting that's not an unmanaged VPS, I can't really help you because I haven't

00:56:10 ◼   ► bought those.

00:56:11 ◼   ► I don't really know what the market is like for those.

00:56:14 ◼   ► The reason I do what I do is because I know enough about system administration that I

00:56:18 ◼   ► can run my own servers.

00:56:20 ◼   ► I know how to do it in a way that does not put a lot of burden on me.

00:56:23 ◼   ► It's very low maintenance.

00:56:24 ◼   ► Like I'm not being woken up in the middle of the night to deal with a server problem.

00:56:28 ◼   ► I know how to do it now so that doesn't happen.

00:56:31 ◼   ► And honestly it isn't that hard these days because servers are so freaking fast these

00:56:34 ◼   ► days.

00:56:35 ◼   ► And I use old boring tools like MySQL.

00:56:37 ◼   ► So like MySQL, for all the crap it gets, I have never had a problem that was MySQL's

00:56:43 ◼   ► fault.

00:56:44 ◼   ► Ever.

00:56:45 ◼   ► In all of Tumblr, all of Instapaper, everything I've done on the side between then, since

00:56:48 ◼   ► then, and now all of Overcast.

00:56:50 ◼   ► I have used MySQL so, and I've said this before on the show, I've used MySQL so heavily in

00:56:55 ◼   ► so many different configurations.

00:56:57 ◼   ► I've never had a problem that was MySQL's fault.

00:57:00 ◼   ► I've never had MySQL wake me up in the middle of the night.

00:57:02 ◼   ► I've never even had it crash in use.

00:57:04 ◼   ► I've never seen the MySQL process crash.

00:57:08 ◼   ► It's incredible.

00:57:09 ◼   ► So if you are fairly conservative with your tools, if you use boring stuff like CentOS

00:57:14 ◼   ► Linux and MySQL and PHP or Python, some kind of boring language that's been around for

00:57:20 ◼   ► a while, you can be pretty good.

00:57:22 ◼   ► You can be pretty safe and it can be pretty low involvement over time.

00:57:28 ◼   ► You have some time to set it up and then you're done.

00:57:30 ◼   ► And modern VPSs have these great tools for making custom setup images, cloning, point

00:57:36 ◼   ► in time backups and branching and recovery, all this crazy stuff you can do now with all

00:57:40 ◼   ► these cool virtualized services.

00:57:42 ◼   ► It's way better than it used to be, it's way easier than it used to be, and it's way way

00:57:46 ◼   ► cheaper than it used to be.

00:57:48 ◼   ► So the reason I do it, even though there are all these cloud services that are also available

00:57:53 ◼   ► now is for that cost.

00:57:57 ◼   ► I send my own push notifications.

00:57:59 ◼   ► If I had a service that sent push notifications, it would cost thousands of dollars a month

00:58:04 ◼   ► for the volume I sent.

00:58:06 ◼   ► Thousands.

00:58:07 ◼   ► So much.

00:58:08 ◼   ► For me to do it online, it would cost like $40 a month worth of server time, maybe at

00:58:12 ◼   ► most, probably less than that.

00:58:14 ◼   ► It's a massive deal.

00:58:15 ◼   ► And it took me a day to figure out how to send them in code myself.

00:58:20 ◼   ► It wasn't that big of a deal.

00:58:23 ◼   ► So much of the stuff I feel like people shy away from because, and these are developers,

00:58:29 ◼   ► you're able to make an app which is not easy.

00:58:32 ◼   ► It's easy in the grand scheme of things.

00:58:34 ◼   ► It's easier than doing manual labor all day and it's easier than solving cryptos or whatever.

00:58:40 ◼   ► In the grand scheme of things, if you can figure out how to make software of any kind,

00:58:45 ◼   ► you can administer basic stuff on a server.

00:58:48 ◼   ► It's really not that hard.

00:58:49 ◼   ► It might just be unfamiliar to you, but just like any language or platform or new API,

00:58:53 ◼   ► you can learn it, it's not that big of a deal.

00:58:56 ◼   ► You can save so much money and you can do so many powerful things once you are open

00:59:01 ◼   ► to the idea of "You know what?

00:59:03 ◼   ► Maybe I will let myself run a web service."

00:59:06 ◼   ► The doors it opens for you, to me, are usually, the vast majority of the time, usually worth

00:59:12 ◼   ► it for the time and stress and expense of running your own servers.

00:59:18 ◼   ► - I have nothing to add to that.

00:59:21 ◼   ► That's pretty straightforward.

00:59:25 ◼   ► Now, would you mind recapping what the Go savings were

00:59:30 ◼   ► when you changed the feed crawler to Go?

00:59:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was like a couple hundred bucks a month.

00:59:37 ◼   ► - That's significant, for sure.

00:59:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, my total line-of-the-bill is, I gotta look,

00:59:41 ◼   ► I'm still moving stuff around with images and everything.

00:59:44 ◼   ► So one thing I do with Overcast is,

00:59:47 ◼   ► because every podcast has the album artwork image

00:59:51 ◼   ► that it defines in its feed.

00:59:54 ◼   ► iTunes wants those to be 1400 pixels square,

00:59:57 ◼   ► so they're huge.

00:59:58 ◼   ► And because when dealing with arbitrary podcasts

01:00:01 ◼   ► from arbitrary people, many people, many podcast producers,

01:00:06 ◼   ► don't particularly optimize that file.

01:00:08 ◼   ► So you might have this album artwork that's a meg,

01:00:12 ◼   ► or it's a PNG when it's actually the photo,

01:00:15 ◼   ► so it compresses very badly or something like that.

01:00:18 ◼   ► Or it's a JPEG that they just saved on 12 quality.

01:00:24 ◼   ► Sometimes you have these massive files.

01:00:26 ◼   ► In the context of Overcast, I don't really need those.

01:00:28 ◼   ► I need them only really as the iPad artwork.

01:00:31 ◼   ► In every other context, things like search results, even just downloading things, you

01:00:35 ◼   ► don't need the files to be that big.

01:00:37 ◼   ► And a lot of times, people who subscribe to a lot of podcasts, they might have hundreds

01:00:41 ◼   ► of megs worth of album artwork to download, and that's no good.

01:00:45 ◼   ► So what I do as part of my hosting is I proxy and serve all album art images in Overcast

01:00:52 ◼   ► through my own infrastructure.

01:00:54 ◼   ► I resize the images to correct sizes that are actually needed by the app and I serve

01:00:59 ◼   ► them through a CDN.

01:01:00 ◼   ► So that's why when you search Overcast, if you do a search for like "add podcast"

01:01:04 ◼   ► type in a keyword.

01:01:05 ◼   ► Those thumbnails will load incredibly quickly.

01:01:09 ◼   ► Way faster than if I was pulling in like the full size, mostly uncompressed versions from

01:01:14 ◼   ► all the different feeds.

01:01:16 ◼   ► I'm doing all that just to make things better.

01:01:18 ◼   ► You know, and again, this is another advantage I have by having some kind of infrastructure

01:01:22 ◼   ► in place, I can do that.

01:01:24 ◼   ► So right now, I'm in the process of moving some stuff around, like that used to be on

01:01:28 ◼   ► my own servers, now I'm trying out Imageix, but it's costing me a fortune, so I'm moving

01:01:32 ◼   ► it to something else, and probably back on my own servers soon.

01:01:36 ◼   ► So my costs are all in flux, but generally speaking, the Go transition saved me a lot

01:01:42 ◼   ► of money and my next attempt for the image resizing is actually going to be based in

01:01:47 ◼   ► Go and using this library called Vips, which I don't know anything about but apparently

01:01:51 ◼   ► it like destroys everything else in image resizing performance. So if anybody knows

01:01:56 ◼   ► anything about the Vips library for resizing images let me know. Fair enough. You're not

01:02:00 ◼   ► going to try to install ImageMagick? ImageMagick is just, it is fine. I've used it a lot in

01:02:07 ◼   ► the past. I built most of Tumblr's stuff against ImageMagick for the second revision when I

01:02:11 ◼   ► when we added the ping and gif support.

01:02:15 ◼   ► It's okay, ImageMagick is okay, ModernGD is okay.

01:02:19 ◼   ► There are some bindings in PHP, some bindings in Go.

01:02:23 ◼   ► It's okay, but overall ImageMagick is just not very fast.

01:02:27 ◼   ► That's the biggest problem,

01:02:27 ◼   ► and VIPs promises to be really, really fast.

01:02:30 ◼   ► Like, I've seen a few benchmarks, and it seems amazing.

01:02:34 ◼   ► So I don't know what the trade-offs are.

01:02:35 ◼   ► Maybe it's terrible quality, I don't know yet.

01:02:38 ◼   ► I'm looking into it.

01:02:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's because it's not ImageMagick or GD.

01:02:40 ◼   ► both of those things are like,

01:02:42 ◼   ► forgetting how well they work when you use them,

01:02:46 ◼   ► just getting them installed is just,

01:02:48 ◼   ► it's just like such a nightmare,

01:02:50 ◼   ► and it never got better over the decades of me

01:02:53 ◼   ► having to install those two things.

01:02:54 ◼   ► You're like, well, they'll work it out,

01:02:56 ◼   ► and it'll be, oh god, so painful, so painful.

01:02:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I don't know if this is still the case,

01:03:01 ◼   ► but we, at Tumblr, we had a lot of issues with,

01:03:04 ◼   ► like, ImageMagick would increment the version

01:03:07 ◼   ► in some minor way, and then all of a sudden,

01:03:10 ◼   ► it would be 10 times slower in certain cases

01:03:12 ◼   ► 'cause they were like playing with multi-threading

01:03:14 ◼   ► and something wouldn't work right

01:03:16 ◼   ► or it would lock things weirdly.

01:03:18 ◼   ► It was unstable for a while there.

01:03:20 ◼   ► It's probably better now, but anyway,

01:03:21 ◼   ► this is pretty boring.

01:03:23 ◼   ► Our final sponsor, Harry's.

01:03:25 ◼   ► Go to harrys.com and use promo code ATP

01:03:28 ◼   ► to save $5 off your first purchase.

01:03:30 ◼   ► Start fresh this year,

01:03:31 ◼   ► start making smarter decisions this year.

01:03:33 ◼   ► Overpaying for drugstore razor blades

01:03:35 ◼   ► is a bad habit you should leave behind.

01:03:37 ◼   ► Harry's offers high quality razors and blades

01:03:39 ◼   ► for a fraction of the price of the big razor brands in the drugstores.

01:03:43 ◼   ► Harry's was started by two guys who wanted a better product without paying an arm and

01:03:46 ◼   ► a leg for shaving.

01:03:47 ◼   ► They make their own blades from their own factory.

01:03:50 ◼   ► This is actually an old blade factory they bought in Germany.

01:03:52 ◼   ► I love German stuff.

01:03:54 ◼   ► Germans are so good at making stuff.

01:03:55 ◼   ► So Harry's went and bought an old blade factory in Germany.

01:03:58 ◼   ► They liked it so much they just had to buy it.

01:04:00 ◼   ► These are high quality, high performing German made blades crafted by shaving experts, giving

01:04:05 ◼   ► you a better shave that respects your face and your wallet.

01:04:08 ◼   ► Harry's offers factory direct pricing at a fraction of the big brand prices.

01:04:12 ◼   ► So Harry's blades run, by my math, roughly half the price of the big brands.

01:04:17 ◼   ► And plus, you don't have to actually go to the drugstore to buy them.

01:04:19 ◼   ► You can just order them online, they ship them directly to your door for free.

01:04:22 ◼   ► You don't have to deal with like going to the drugstores, getting them out of the shoplifting

01:04:26 ◼   ► case and all that stuff.

01:04:27 ◼   ► It's just so much easier to just order it online.

01:04:30 ◼   ► So they have the Starter Set.

01:04:32 ◼   ► Starter Set's an amazing deal.

01:04:33 ◼   ► For $15, you get a razor, moisturizing shave cream or gel, your pick, and three razor

01:04:38 ◼   ► blades.

01:04:39 ◼   ► When you need more blades, they run about $2 each or less depending on how many you

01:04:42 ◼   ► buy.

01:04:43 ◼   ► So an 8-pack is $15, a 16-pack is $25.

01:04:47 ◼   ► They sent me a sample a while back, I tried it, I went through the whole thing.

01:04:50 ◼   ► So I would say they are very comparable to the Gillette Fusion blades without the ProGlide

01:04:55 ◼   ► strips.

01:04:56 ◼   ► So the ProGlide strips are a little bit smoother if you like that, but overall the Harry's

01:05:01 ◼   ► blades I would say gave exactly the same quality shave as the Gillette Fusion non-ProGlide

01:05:06 ◼   ► blades.

01:05:07 ◼   ► The best price I can find on Amazon for those Fusion blades right now is a 12 pack for about

01:05:11 ◼   ► $41.

01:05:12 ◼   ► 12 Harry's blades are $20, so it's less than half the price for what I would say is exactly

01:05:19 ◼   ► the same shave quality.

01:05:21 ◼   ► They have also amazing packaging, very classy designs, and what I like about Harry's too,

01:05:27 ◼   ► they have this nice heavy razor blade, I mean razor handle.

01:05:32 ◼   ► It's this classy metal thing.

01:05:34 ◼   ► It's kind of like Mad Men era or at least what we like to romanticize Mad Men era as

01:05:39 ◼   ► being.

01:05:40 ◼   ► Really nice metal, shiny, chrome, handles, these nice quality blades that are great bargain.

01:05:47 ◼   ► You can't go wrong.

01:05:48 ◼   ► All this, get started with a set that includes a handle, three blades, and shaving cream

01:05:52 ◼   ► for just $15 including shipping right to your door.

01:05:56 ◼   ► Go to harrys.com.

01:06:00 ◼   ► Use promo code ATP to save $5 off your first purchase.

01:06:05 ◼   ► Definitely check this out if you shave.

01:06:07 ◼   ► It is really a fantastic deal.

01:06:09 ◼   ► Harrys.com, use promo code ATP.

01:06:11 ◼   ► Thanks a lot.

01:06:12 ◼   ► Do you want to talk about family sharing, Jon?

01:06:15 ◼   ► Oh, that was the David Sparks thing that we've had in the notes in forever.

01:06:19 ◼   ► Yeah, he has a lot of complaints about family sharing.

01:06:23 ◼   ► My expectations, I guess, were just way lower.

01:06:27 ◼   ► What I was looking for for family sharing is an officially sanctioned acknowledgement

01:06:33 ◼   ► from Apple of the structure of our family unit, which this more or less gave.

01:06:37 ◼   ► I talked about the caveats in my Yosemite article where it's like, well, what if you

01:06:40 ◼   ► had already sort of kind of given your kids Apple IDs even though they weren't supposed

01:06:46 ◼   ► to have them because they're too young, which I did.

01:06:50 ◼   ► They introduced this way for you to add like child's Apple IDs.

01:06:53 ◼   ► And I said, well, my kids already have Apple IDs.

01:06:56 ◼   ► and I convert them to child Apple IDs and Apple said, "Lol."

01:07:00 ◼   ► So you can't actually convert an Apple ID,

01:07:02 ◼   ► you can't merge Apple IDs, you can't convert them.

01:07:04 ◼   ► And so I have to give my kids fake ages

01:07:06 ◼   ► and wait until, whatever, like that's annoying.

01:07:08 ◼   ► But at least I can have an organizer for the family

01:07:13 ◼   ► and another adult in the family

01:07:15 ◼   ► and two children in the family.

01:07:16 ◼   ► And so just having Apple,

01:07:19 ◼   ► having me be able to input that information in some place

01:07:22 ◼   ► where Apple knows it,

01:07:23 ◼   ► gives me hope that future applications, future services,

01:07:28 ◼   ► other future things that Apple does,

01:07:30 ◼   ► maybe even third-party things if they expose that,

01:07:33 ◼   ► could recognize the structure of my family

01:07:36 ◼   ► and use that to do non-stupid things,

01:07:38 ◼   ► like working the way that we would want the applications

01:07:42 ◼   ► to work for our family.

01:07:43 ◼   ► I have dim hopes that Apple's photo stuff

01:07:46 ◼   ► was going to do this, but whatever.

01:07:48 ◼   ► And the second thing I wanted out of it

01:07:50 ◼   ► was I wanted my kids to be able to buy things

01:07:54 ◼   ► on the App Store with their own Apple IDs

01:07:56 ◼   ► with me having some control over what they buy.

01:07:59 ◼   ► And so then they could have their own,

01:08:00 ◼   ► you know, if people get them iTunes gift cards

01:08:02 ◼   ► for their stocking or something,

01:08:03 ◼   ► they can go into their own Apple ID,

01:08:05 ◼   ► it'll be their own money,

01:08:06 ◼   ► they can spend it on the games that they want to spend it on

01:08:09 ◼   ► and then I can still see what they're doing.

01:08:11 ◼   ► And this feature has worked spottily,

01:08:15 ◼   ► which you would expect from most of these features,

01:08:16 ◼   ► but sometimes it works.

01:08:18 ◼   ► It's like, it's better than this feature not existing.

01:08:21 ◼   ► Now, all the complaints about this is like,

01:08:22 ◼   ► well, what if they download an application

01:08:25 ◼   ► that you bought on your Apple ID,

01:08:26 ◼   ► but the in-app purchase doesn't transfer over there,

01:08:29 ◼   ► so they have to redo the in-app purchase.

01:08:31 ◼   ► A lot of the annoyances of family sharing

01:08:35 ◼   ► cause many people, including me occasionally,

01:08:37 ◼   ► to go back to what we were all doing before,

01:08:39 ◼   ► which is just designating a member of the family

01:08:41 ◼   ► as the designated App Store Apple ID person.

01:08:44 ◼   ► And then everybody assigned in with that Apple ID

01:08:47 ◼   ► to the iTunes store, and I've said this before,

01:08:49 ◼   ► to Apple's credit, despite the fact that they're so terrible

01:08:51 ◼   ► at recognizing how families work,

01:08:54 ◼   ► they have made it relatively easy

01:08:56 ◼   ► to have different Apple IDs for all the different things.

01:08:58 ◼   ► You can be signed into one Apple ID in iCloud,

01:09:00 ◼   ► to a different Apple ID in the App Store,

01:09:03 ◼   ► and I think even to a different Apple ID in Game Center,

01:09:06 ◼   ► and maybe a different Apple ID in iMessage, I don't know,

01:09:08 ◼   ► but there's a whole bunch of different places

01:09:09 ◼   ► where you can have Apple IDs.

01:09:10 ◼   ► If it was all one thing, nothing would work,

01:09:12 ◼   ► because that would just totally have,

01:09:15 ◼   ► wouldn't allow people to even do workarounds,

01:09:17 ◼   ► But the workaround everybody I know does is,

01:09:19 ◼   ► oh, that's the Apple ID we buy everything on,

01:09:20 ◼   ► everybody in the family gets to use it,

01:09:22 ◼   ► which is nice from the bad old world of like,

01:09:24 ◼   ► you had to get a license for each seat

01:09:26 ◼   ► and if you had two computers,

01:09:27 ◼   ► you can only use the software on one or whatever.

01:09:30 ◼   ► So now, you know, in the yesterday,

01:09:32 ◼   ► you would spend $200 on a program

01:09:35 ◼   ► and you had to spend another $200

01:09:36 ◼   ► if someone else wanted to use it.

01:09:37 ◼   ► Now you spend 99 cents and your whole family can use it.

01:09:39 ◼   ► So maybe we're all spoiled by that.

01:09:40 ◼   ► But whatever the policy is, we all have a workaround,

01:09:45 ◼   ► which is just use the same Apple ID for everything.

01:09:47 ◼   ► and the quote unquote correct way

01:09:49 ◼   ► to do it with family sharing, even if it doesn't work,

01:09:51 ◼   ► and even if it has limitations,

01:09:53 ◼   ► and even if iTunes matches and integrated with it

01:09:55 ◼   ► and everything, it is a start.

01:09:57 ◼   ► And I've waited so long for them to have any kind of start,

01:09:59 ◼   ► I'm like, finally, they realize we have families.

01:10:01 ◼   ► So maybe in another decade, everyone in the family

01:10:04 ◼   ► will be able to take pictures

01:10:05 ◼   ► and put them into one big family photos pool

01:10:07 ◼   ► and not have to have one computer designated

01:10:10 ◼   ► as the iPhoto computer or one Apple ID

01:10:12 ◼   ► designated as the one family Apple ID.

01:10:14 ◼   ► But baby steps.

01:10:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, for whatever it's worth,

01:10:18 ◼   ► I've now set up Apple family sharing on two families,

01:10:21 ◼   ► on me, my wife, and my son, and then also on Tiff's parents,

01:10:25 ◼   ► so they together can each be their own people

01:10:27 ◼   ► and have their own iPads and share purchases.

01:10:30 ◼   ► For both of those cases, we didn't do it

01:10:35 ◼   ► the way everyone else did it before,

01:10:37 ◼   ► where we didn't have one account

01:10:39 ◼   ► that we just bought things from

01:10:41 ◼   ► and then we'd have our own accounts.

01:10:42 ◼   ► No, we were always separate before,

01:10:44 ◼   ► 'cause Tiff and I just don't buy a lot of the same things.

01:10:47 ◼   ► It was never really a big problem.

01:10:49 ◼   ► And Tiff's mom just got an iPad this Christmas,

01:10:51 ◼   ► so it was after family sharing existed,

01:10:53 ◼   ► so we could start kinda clean on those.

01:10:56 ◼   ► And so for us, like using it the way it's intended,

01:11:01 ◼   ► the clean way that Apple thinks everyone does,

01:11:03 ◼   ► even though almost no one does except us,

01:11:05 ◼   ► but using it that way, it has worked incredibly well.

01:11:08 ◼   ► I don't think we've had a single issue with it.

01:11:10 ◼   ► It has really been flawless.

01:11:12 ◼   ► I think the challenges people are having are migrating between the old way of having one

01:11:18 ◼   ► shared account, if you were doing that, which you're right, a lot of people do.

01:11:23 ◼   ► Migrating from that into this new system.

01:11:25 ◼   ► But if you kind of come to the system on its own terms and do it the way Apple thinks you

01:11:29 ◼   ► should be doing things today, then it works very well.

01:11:33 ◼   ► Then you have separate pools of photos.

01:11:36 ◼   ► That's true, yeah.

01:11:37 ◼   ► The photos are not really a solved thing yet.

01:11:40 ◼   ► And Adam's not old enough to be buying his own things

01:11:43 ◼   ► on the App Store, but soon he will be.

01:11:44 ◼   ► And so then, you know.

01:11:45 ◼   ► - Well no, but that actually works.

01:11:47 ◼   ► So we have it set up, he has his own little iPhone

01:11:49 ◼   ► that's an old iPhone of mine,

01:11:50 ◼   ► and he has these games on it.

01:11:54 ◼   ► And we set him up his own child account

01:11:56 ◼   ► through the new child account system.

01:11:58 ◼   ► And so it has his real age in it,

01:12:00 ◼   ► like you don't have to pretend he's 13 or whatever.

01:12:03 ◼   ► Has his actual real age in it,

01:12:04 ◼   ► and his purchases are charged to my account.

01:12:09 ◼   ► and then me or Tiff have to authorize those purchases

01:12:11 ◼   ► before they're made, and it pops up, it works great.

01:12:14 ◼   ► And on Tiff's mom, we had hers doing what you were saying

01:12:18 ◼   ► with the cards, whereas, where like,

01:12:20 ◼   ► we gave her the iPad and we gave her an iTunes card

01:12:23 ◼   ► to start it up with, and Tiff's dad has had one for years,

01:12:26 ◼   ► so he has all this existing stuff,

01:12:27 ◼   ► and his payment information's already in his account,

01:12:30 ◼   ► and we made them a family account,

01:12:31 ◼   ► and we added the prepaid card only to hers,

01:12:35 ◼   ► and it separates it out.

01:12:37 ◼   ► So whichever member of the family adds a prepaid card,

01:12:40 ◼   ► it gives them that credit,

01:12:42 ◼   ► not the first person or the owner or whatever of the family.

01:12:47 ◼   ► And so everyone else's purchases don't draw

01:12:49 ◼   ► from one person in the family's credit account.

01:12:53 ◼   ► So it actually does the right thing there.

01:12:54 ◼   ► It works very well.

01:12:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, the reason I said it works spotally

01:12:58 ◼   ► is because I've had other people in my family

01:13:00 ◼   ► set up their family things

01:13:01 ◼   ► and then just never be able to get the notification,

01:13:04 ◼   ► you know, the thing that says,

01:13:05 ◼   ► do you wanna approve this thing?

01:13:06 ◼   ► And as with so many other iCloud problems,

01:13:08 ◼   ► once you confirm that the setup is correct,

01:13:10 ◼   ► yep, you've got a family, yep, it's structured correctly,

01:13:13 ◼   ► yep, people are signing in with the right Apple IDs

01:13:15 ◼   ► for all the various things.

01:13:16 ◼   ► All right, now make a purchase or try to make a purchase.

01:13:18 ◼   ► And now you should see a notification on your thing.

01:13:20 ◼   ► Nope, don't see it.

01:13:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's nothing you can do.

01:13:23 ◼   ► - Right, and then you gotta do the dance.

01:13:24 ◼   ► Okay, well, I guess we all sign out of our Apple IDs,

01:13:26 ◼   ► we wipe our devices, we do this,

01:13:28 ◼   ► or you just do this silly dance

01:13:29 ◼   ► and just if it doesn't work, you're like, I don't know.

01:13:32 ◼   ► And so that still happens.

01:13:34 ◼   ► And it annoys me that that happens.

01:13:37 ◼   ► Every time it does happen, you just feel powerless.

01:13:40 ◼   ► And it's like, look, see, they got to work,

01:13:42 ◼   ► or there's got to be a way for me to debug it.

01:13:44 ◼   ► And debugging it doesn't mean doing the only things

01:13:47 ◼   ► that have buttons-- sign out, send back in,

01:13:50 ◼   ► delete all data, restore data.

01:13:51 ◼   ► And just, it's very frustrating.

01:13:53 ◼   ► I've had good luck with it here, but I've seen it not work.

01:13:57 ◼   ► Actually, I think the first time I tried it,

01:13:59 ◼   ► it didn't work for me either.

01:13:59 ◼   ► But then it did start working.

01:14:00 ◼   ► What changed between the time it didn't work and it didn't?

01:14:03 ◼   ► know. I still find that pressure. But really the thing I'm most excited about is the fact

01:14:10 ◼   ► they have that metadata. Because I hope that once they have that metadata that it can be

01:14:14 ◼   ► useful for something. That it will encourage them to... Because if you think about it,

01:14:18 ◼   ► anyone designing some kind of application or service inside Apple, if it's like, "Oh,

01:14:24 ◼   ► we can do this thing for families." But I don't want to set up a thing where people

01:14:26 ◼   ► have to sign up their family. I just want to make an app. No one wants to do the infrastructure.

01:14:31 ◼   ► But someone eventually, the infrastructure finally did get done as a separate thing.

01:14:34 ◼   ► Family sharing is a separate thing.

01:14:35 ◼   ► So now that infrastructure is there, anybody making an application, at least with an Apple

01:14:39 ◼   ► for now, doesn't have to be like, "Oh, we could do this cool thing with family.

01:14:43 ◼   ► Oh, but I don't want to have a thing where people have to enter their families and that's

01:14:46 ◼   ► not part of my application really or whatever."

01:14:47 ◼   ► It's like, "No, wait, we've already got that.

01:14:50 ◼   ► It's already, you know, that information is there and presumably there's some way for

01:14:52 ◼   ► us to get it.

01:14:53 ◼   ► Then we can leverage that."

01:14:55 ◼   ► In kind of the same way, like I hope they leverage it more like, you know, the little

01:14:58 ◼   ► VIP thing.

01:14:59 ◼   ► when your phone is on do not disturb,

01:15:00 ◼   ► allow calls from VIPs and mail has VIPs and stuff like that.

01:15:04 ◼   ► Now that it knows who the family members are,

01:15:06 ◼   ► you can say things like allow calls from my family,

01:15:09 ◼   ► you know, or automatically put things from my family

01:15:12 ◼   ► in a separate bin in Apple Mail

01:15:13 ◼   ► instead of just the VIP thing like, you know,

01:15:16 ◼   ► and this is just immediate family.

01:15:17 ◼   ► They can go to extended family and you can like,

01:15:19 ◼   ► they can slowly start to model the real world

01:15:22 ◼   ► so we can do things with,

01:15:23 ◼   ► in the same way that Siri can say, you know, call my wife,

01:15:26 ◼   ► like the relationship,

01:15:28 ◼   ► trying to map the relationship between you and other people

01:15:31 ◼   ► and having sort of these smart assistants in there

01:15:33 ◼   ► that are aware of these relationships

01:15:35 ◼   ► and more than just like,

01:15:37 ◼   ► I don't know how do you do the spouse arrangements

01:15:40 ◼   ► and things, is there a field in context

01:15:42 ◼   ► where you say what their relation is

01:15:43 ◼   ► or is it just a note field or?

01:15:44 ◼   ► - No, there's a field in context for relationship, I believe.

01:15:47 ◼   ► - But is it like free form?

01:15:48 ◼   ► Like you can write any text there you want

01:15:49 ◼   ► or is there some like?

01:15:51 ◼   ► - Is it's complicated an option?

01:15:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

01:15:54 ◼   ► You know, to give some kind of metadata

01:15:56 ◼   ► that is not just arbitrary key value pairs,

01:15:59 ◼   ► but that has meaning,

01:16:00 ◼   ► and that the meaning is understood by the program

01:16:02 ◼   ► so they can, so that, you know,

01:16:04 ◼   ► even it's just like quickly doing something

01:16:07 ◼   ► like pulling up a picker where everything is just like

01:16:11 ◼   ► your most recent context or your most recent whatever,

01:16:13 ◼   ► but there's some kind of picker where it makes sense

01:16:15 ◼   ► for you to have the spouses being the default thing

01:16:18 ◼   ► or have immediate family as being the default

01:16:20 ◼   ► or trying to make reservations

01:16:23 ◼   ► that it guesses that you want your whole family.

01:16:24 ◼   ► I don't know, there's lots of things that you can do.

01:16:26 ◼   ► And I don't wanna get into sort of a creepy,

01:16:28 ◼   ► like oh Google, they know too much about me or whatever.

01:16:30 ◼   ► I'm just like this is information that I enter

01:16:32 ◼   ► and I want my photo management application

01:16:34 ◼   ► to know about my family, who the members are,

01:16:37 ◼   ► how I might want things shared and stuff like that.

01:16:39 ◼   ► So this is just the very first step

01:16:41 ◼   ► to the possibility of doing that.

01:16:44 ◼   ► - Real time follow up,

01:16:45 ◼   ► I am not seeing a relationship field after all.

01:16:48 ◼   ► I could swear it was there, but I am not seeing it.

01:16:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, the information's gotta be in there.

01:16:52 ◼   ► But like in the family sharing,

01:16:53 ◼   ► you don't set relationships like that.

01:16:55 ◼   ► You just say like, this is a family,

01:16:56 ◼   ► there's an organizer and there's adults

01:16:57 ◼   ► and there's children, which is fine.

01:16:58 ◼   ► Like, you don't need to be prescriptive

01:17:01 ◼   ► about like the structure of a family or whatever.

01:17:02 ◼   ► Just like, I just want to connect the lines

01:17:04 ◼   ► and say, here is the structure and here is the hierarchy,

01:17:08 ◼   ► adults, children, you know, like whatever.

01:17:11 ◼   ► Just that information, I can imagine being so useful,

01:17:15 ◼   ► but nobody who wants to write an application

01:17:18 ◼   ► that would take advantage of that information

01:17:19 ◼   ► also wants to sign up for gathering,

01:17:21 ◼   ► storing and managing that information.

01:17:22 ◼   ► So it's an infrastructure thing that Apple

01:17:24 ◼   ► needs to be doing and now is finally doing,

01:17:27 ◼   ► but apparently not particularly well.

01:17:28 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week,

01:17:31 ◼   ► Cards Against Humanity, Fracture, and Harry's,

01:17:34 ◼   ► and we will see you next week.

01:17:36 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:17:39 ◼   ► ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:17:41 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:17:44 ◼   ► ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:17:45 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:17:46 ◼   ► ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:17:48 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:17:49 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:17:54 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (it was accidental)

01:17:57 ◼   ► It was accidental (accidental)

01:18:00 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:18:05 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:18:10 ◼   ► @c-a-s-e-y-l-i-s-s

01:18:14 ◼   ► So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:18:18 ◼   ► ♪ Anti-Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C ♪

01:18:23 ◼   ► ♪ USA, Syracuse, it's accidental ♪

01:18:27 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:18:29 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't mean to ♪

01:18:31 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:18:33 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:18:34 ◼   ► ♪ Tech podcast ♪

01:18:36 ◼   ► ♪ So long ♪

01:18:38 ◼   ► - We have a lot of important stuff to talk about,

01:18:42 ◼   ► and it looks like we need to get through some BS first.

01:18:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:18:47 ◼   ► Isn't that the usual formula for a show?

01:18:49 ◼   ► That's a very, very good point.

01:18:50 ◼   ► So to weed through this BS as quickly as possible, can we talk about your PS4 setup and Destiny

01:18:57 ◼   ► UI woes?

01:18:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I ordered that monitor so I could play Destiny on it instead of on my television

01:19:04 ◼   ► and it got delayed by two snowstorms, so it was kind of frustrating for all involved.

01:19:09 ◼   ► Eventually it did arrive, I set it up, I've been playing it now.

01:19:12 ◼   ► I had to do...

01:19:14 ◼   ► My son hasn't learned trigonometry yet, so I tried to give him sort of the approximated

01:19:17 ◼   ► version of trigonometry to convince him that a 23-inch monitor, the distance he's sitting

01:19:21 ◼   ► from it is actually twice as big in his field of vision as the 55-inch television at the

01:19:26 ◼   ► distance he was sitting from it.

01:19:27 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:19:28 ◼   ► I was just doing that as a ratio of distance to width of the screen rather than going through

01:19:33 ◼   ► like the angles and the fields of view or whatever.

01:19:35 ◼   ► I think he mostly bought it.

01:19:37 ◼   ► And you know...

01:19:38 ◼   ► How old is he?

01:19:39 ◼   ► How old is he?

01:19:40 ◼   ► Ten.

01:19:41 ◼   ► I mean, like, if you don't even,

01:19:43 ◼   ► I tried to gloss over and say,

01:19:44 ◼   ► all you need to know is the ratio,

01:19:45 ◼   ► like how far, you know, anyway.

01:19:48 ◼   ► He found it fairly convincing.

01:19:50 ◼   ► Hooking it up and playing it like that, it's nice.

01:19:53 ◼   ► The one thing I realized, which kind of makes me sad,

01:19:55 ◼   ► is that the black levels on this display

01:19:57 ◼   ► are nowhere near as good as they are on my TV.

01:19:59 ◼   ► I mean, I knew this, like I knew I'm getting,

01:20:01 ◼   ► it's like a super cheap LCD screen,

01:20:02 ◼   ► but it's just, it's shocking to me

01:20:06 ◼   ► how non-black everything is on this screen

01:20:09 ◼   ► coming off of my TV.

01:20:11 ◼   ► but what can you do?

01:20:12 ◼   ► But anyway, it does fill more of my field of vision.

01:20:16 ◼   ► It makes it easier to get headshots.

01:20:18 ◼   ► I've been trying out a little bit of hand cannon stuff

01:20:21 ◼   ► because everyone tells me it's good.

01:20:23 ◼   ► I'm not a total convert, but I've been using a little bit.

01:20:25 ◼   ► Anyway, the other thing I want to talk about with Destiny

01:20:27 ◼   ► is the UI, like the toaster,

01:20:30 ◼   ► there are some UI problems in Destiny.

01:20:33 ◼   ► Most of the UI in Destiny is actually,

01:20:34 ◼   ► you can tell that they play tested it a lot

01:20:36 ◼   ► because the things that people do frequently in Destiny

01:20:38 ◼   ► usually have nice ways to do them.

01:20:40 ◼   ► So it shows there must have been a really long play testing period where they made can be like you have a lot of crap

01:20:44 ◼   ► To manage and if you ever played a game that makes a management difficult

01:20:47 ◼   ► You're just going through screens and menus and back and forward and it's super difficult

01:20:50 ◼   ► This system seems weird at first when you use it for a while you realize it's very efficient

01:20:55 ◼   ► Lots of things are done on mouse over

01:20:57 ◼   ► Lots of things you do frequently like comparing the equipped weapon to another one can be done easily with a nice

01:21:03 ◼   ► You know the UI is actually a great lesson in how to make a game UI that's efficient for the things that people do when

01:21:08 ◼   ► they're playing the game. But there's one area where I think they fell down and

01:21:12 ◼   ► that led me to my other sad destiny thing. I was in this in a little vendor

01:21:17 ◼   ► trying to look at different things that I was thinking of buying and I pretty

01:21:20 ◼   ► much decided which thing I was gonna buy a particular helmet but I just wanted to

01:21:23 ◼   ► check one more time back at the other one and I went over to the other one to

01:21:26 ◼   ► hit what I thought was the button for details which is triangle to say let me

01:21:30 ◼   ► just look at this one more time to be sure that I'm buying the right one

01:21:32 ◼   ► it's the with the right perks or whatever and I accidentally hit X instead of

01:21:35 ◼   ► triangle and that immediately purchased the item spending things in game which I

01:21:42 ◼   ► don't want to get into that take a really long time to get I'd spent a long

01:21:45 ◼   ► time building up this currency and there is no one do like I'm still in as far as

01:21:50 ◼   ► I know no one to call it tweeted at me to correct me there is no one do there

01:21:53 ◼   ► is no going back it's like but but I'm you know I haven't used it I haven't

01:21:57 ◼   ► equipped it I haven't I just bought it immediately I just want to immediately

01:21:59 ◼   ► say undo unpurchase refund go back it's like the app store like sorry all sales

01:22:04 ◼   ► - The bills are final.

01:22:06 ◼   ► - And it was so disappointing.

01:22:07 ◼   ► I bought the wrong helmet.

01:22:08 ◼   ► And so some purchases make you hold down the button

01:22:11 ◼   ► as does dismantling.

01:22:12 ◼   ► And in fact, if you dismantle something super valuable

01:22:15 ◼   ► like an exotic, it will make you hold it down even longer.

01:22:18 ◼   ► Like that's good UI to make it

01:22:19 ◼   ► so you don't accidentally do something.

01:22:22 ◼   ► One little tap of the X button, boom,

01:22:23 ◼   ► like three weeks of work to build up

01:22:26 ◼   ► what it took to buy this thing, gone.

01:22:28 ◼   ► I found that very sad.

01:22:30 ◼   ► So now I have an ugly helmet with the wrong perks.

01:22:33 ◼   ► - I have no idea what any of that means,

01:22:34 ◼   ► but I am sorry for your loss.

01:22:36 ◼   ► - Well, you know, it's just general design things.

01:22:38 ◼   ► Like if an action has large consequences,

01:22:43 ◼   ► make some kind of undo for it,

01:22:45 ◼   ► or even just like sell back or,

01:22:47 ◼   ► and I understand that it's like,

01:22:48 ◼   ► I actually, I understand that it's really hard to do that.

01:22:51 ◼   ► Like, I don't think this is a trivial change.

01:22:53 ◼   ► This is a massively multiplayer game

01:22:55 ◼   ► where there actually are stocks for the vendors

01:22:58 ◼   ► and other people buy things.

01:22:59 ◼   ► Like it's not as simple as like,

01:23:01 ◼   ► it is really complicated to undo.

01:23:02 ◼   ► They have to kind of build it in from the beginning,

01:23:04 ◼   ► is you can use it for exploits, you know,

01:23:06 ◼   ► you can imagine all sorts of ways

01:23:07 ◼   ► that being able to buy something and immediately refund it

01:23:09 ◼   ► can be used to break the game

01:23:11 ◼   ► and can screw with like keeping track

01:23:13 ◼   ► of what inventory is there and like just,

01:23:15 ◼   ► it's super hard to do, which gives me almost no hope

01:23:17 ◼   ► that it will ever be done.

01:23:18 ◼   ► I guess the best thing they can do instead of undo

01:23:20 ◼   ► is just make it a long press to buy things.

01:23:23 ◼   ► But then people are annoyed because like,

01:23:24 ◼   ► every time I buy something,

01:23:25 ◼   ► I gotta hold down the button.

01:23:26 ◼   ► So I don't know, I think they just need to do something.

01:23:29 ◼   ► - And that's the extent of your destiny woes for this week?

01:23:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, about the fact that I never get any time

01:23:34 ◼   ► to play and my son is way ahead of me because he has more time to play.

01:23:38 ◼   ► Still want to do raids.

01:23:39 ◼   ► I need ascendant shards.

01:23:41 ◼   ► Please send ascendant shards.

01:23:42 ◼   ► I need like 20 of them.

01:23:44 ◼   ► I mean, do you want me to like rescue this conversation by talking about headphone amps

01:23:47 ◼   ► some more?

01:23:48 ◼   ► I mean...

01:23:49 ◼   ► No, we gotta move on to your printouts now.

01:23:50 ◼   ► What's wrong with my printouts?

01:23:51 ◼   ► Why are you printing things on paper to read for sponsor reads?

01:23:55 ◼   ► You were sitting in front of a computer with a screen!

01:23:58 ◼   ► Alright, a few reasons.

01:24:00 ◼   ► A, I have a printer and a lot of paper.

01:24:04 ◼   ► What else am I supposed to do with it?

01:24:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:24:08 ◼   ► - You've got paper burning a hole in your virtual pocket.

01:24:11 ◼   ► Just had to spend it.

01:24:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true.

01:24:14 ◼   ► I mean, I have this laser printer that I bought

01:24:16 ◼   ► when paper still mattered slightly more than it does now.

01:24:18 ◼   ► And it can print like thousands of pages

01:24:21 ◼   ► before running out of toner.

01:24:22 ◼   ► And so, hey, what else am I gonna do with it?

01:24:24 ◼   ► That's part of it.

01:24:25 ◼   ► Also that my microphone is angled.

01:24:30 ◼   ► I can't actually talk ideally optimally directly into the mic while looking at my computer

01:24:36 ◼   ► screen without having it not be perfectly, you know, not be as well isolated against

01:24:41 ◼   ► echoes and stuff like that in my setup that I have here.

01:24:44 ◼   ► Why don't you move your mic?

01:24:46 ◼   ► I mean I could do that, but it just like, it works better this way for me right now.

01:24:51 ◼   ► And then mostly it's just because my computer screen is full of windows, despite the way

01:24:57 ◼   ► you think I work.

01:25:00 ◼   ► I know you think I have one window and then I close it

01:25:01 ◼   ► and then I open up another one and then I close that.

01:25:03 ◼   ► - I retweeted that guy who was like,

01:25:05 ◼   ► oh Marco can't have it on his screen

01:25:06 ◼   ► 'cause there'd be too many windows

01:25:07 ◼   ► and you'd feel overwhelmed.

01:25:08 ◼   ► - So I'm gonna move on from that.

01:25:10 ◼   ► - I didn't tweet it, someone else did, I just retweeted it.

01:25:13 ◼   ► - It's easier for me to manage it, for me to see it,

01:25:16 ◼   ► for me to read from it and for me to keep track

01:25:18 ◼   ► of which ones I have to do and which ones have been done

01:25:23 ◼   ► and then at the end to be able to glance at all three

01:25:25 ◼   ► and be able to read them back as the thanks

01:25:27 ◼   ► to these sponsors, we'll see you next week.

01:25:29 ◼   ► It's just easier for me to do that all on paper right now.

01:25:32 ◼   ► I thought about maybe doing it on an iPad

01:25:34 ◼   ► 'cause that has a lot of the same benefits

01:25:35 ◼   ► where I could hold it right in front of my face

01:25:37 ◼   ► behind the mic here and stuff like that,

01:25:39 ◼   ► but I just haven't gotten around to trying that.

01:25:41 ◼   ► I mean, it's no big deal to do it on paper.

01:25:43 ◼   ► It's really not a big deal.

01:25:45 ◼   ► - The main reason I actually wanna talk about this

01:25:47 ◼   ► is because this, not because I think it's kind of silly,

01:25:52 ◼   ► but on the other hand, it reveals something

01:25:54 ◼   ► that I'm constantly complaining about,

01:25:56 ◼   ► which is people have the ability to deal with things,

01:26:01 ◼   ► to deal with real things in their hands

01:26:04 ◼   ► in ways that they can't do on a computer screen.

01:26:09 ◼   ► And if you wanna take advantage of those skills,

01:26:12 ◼   ► like the fact that you can manage those three pieces

01:26:13 ◼   ► of paper, you can look at them,

01:26:14 ◼   ► you know where they are and everything.

01:26:16 ◼   ► It's not that you have to approximate the real world,

01:26:18 ◼   ► but you have to leverage those same abilities.

01:26:21 ◼   ► Like it shouldn't feel so much more comfortable for,

01:26:24 ◼   ► and it's not just you, tons of people have this.

01:26:25 ◼   ► It shouldn't feel so much more comfortable to deal with a physical thing than it does

01:26:28 ◼   ► in the computer.

01:26:29 ◼   ► It's always going to feel a little bit more comfortable, and on the other hand, there's

01:26:31 ◼   ► always going to be things you can do on a computer screen that you can't do in the real

01:26:33 ◼   ► world.

01:26:34 ◼   ► But any time I see someone saying, "Well, I could do that on the computer screen, but

01:26:41 ◼   ► it feels better to do it in real life."

01:26:43 ◼   ► It's something that does not seem...

01:26:46 ◼   ► It seems like a reasonable thing for a computer to do, like say show a screen full of text.

01:26:50 ◼   ► It's not obviously kneading dough or something.

01:26:53 ◼   ► you need to do that in the physical world

01:26:54 ◼   ► is harder to do on a computer, right?

01:26:57 ◼   ► That's like a failure of the interface.

01:26:59 ◼   ► And whatever it is, it's a failure of like,

01:27:01 ◼   ► is the interface too complicated?

01:27:03 ◼   ► Is the mouse not as good as grabbing a piece of paper

01:27:08 ◼   ► for you?

01:27:09 ◼   ► Is to keep track of things, do you ever see people

01:27:12 ◼   ► who take notes in meetings with a notebook,

01:27:14 ◼   ► even though like an actual paper and pen,

01:27:16 ◼   ► even though they have a laptop and an iPad

01:27:18 ◼   ► and everything like that?

01:27:19 ◼   ► Is it just old habits because people are, you know,

01:27:21 ◼   ► grew up doing it a certain way?

01:27:23 ◼   ► Like it's difficult to suss out exactly what the problem is,

01:27:25 ◼   ► but I think there is still an element of computers feeling

01:27:29 ◼   ► sort of less tangible, which sounds stupid

01:27:31 ◼   ► because obviously it's just a bunch of little lights

01:27:32 ◼   ► on a screen, but like less tangible in the figurative sense

01:27:36 ◼   ► instead of the literal sense that they can't get a handle

01:27:38 ◼   ► on something unless they have it literally in their hand

01:27:41 ◼   ► and it feels better.

01:27:42 ◼   ► So anyway, that's like, I think no one is immune to that.

01:27:46 ◼   ► Even people who use computers all day

01:27:47 ◼   ► to do complicated things that occasionally

01:27:50 ◼   ► is just more convenient, even if it's just simply

01:27:51 ◼   ► like out of band.

01:27:52 ◼   ► Like I know these are separate like there's the show and then there's the sponsors and the sponsors are separate

01:27:56 ◼   ► No

01:27:56 ◼   ► Well, they'll never accidentally get mixed in with my other windows and I'll never lose them and I'll always have them available

01:28:00 ◼   ► Right and and I can always tell in the corner of my eye like

01:28:05 ◼   ► How many more sponsors do I have for the show?

01:28:08 ◼   ► Like how many do I have to do? Whereas if they were windows?

01:28:10 ◼   ► I think I think they might get lost a little more easily

01:28:12 ◼   ► Yeah, if you had blue index cards, you could throw them behind you through a a window that doesn't have any glass in it

01:28:17 ◼   ► They can make a glass crashing sound

01:28:21 ◼   ► Nobody you guys were too young to stay up that late. All right, that's fine. All right

01:28:25 ◼   ► We have more

01:28:29 ◼   ► BS to go through although I have a feeling this might be worth it and then I'd really like to talk about

01:28:33 ◼   ► Cars for a few minutes. So tell us John a little more about this toaster that you were that you were given

01:28:39 ◼   ► so things to know about toasters like

01:28:43 ◼   ► You know how I'm sort of rating them because again, I haven't had a million toasters

01:28:48 ◼   ► but I sort of know the rough outlines of the features that they may or may not have and

01:28:52 ◼   ► The way I like I always look at toasters in the stores. I don't buy them, but I look at them a

01:28:56 ◼   ► few things that I think most toasters

01:28:59 ◼   ► Get wrong especially the cheap ones the things that make the toaster hot the heating elements

01:29:03 ◼   ► If they don't have anything covering them

01:29:06 ◼   ► That's just asking for trouble because no matter how careful you are with your toaster

01:29:10 ◼   ► You always end up getting something in there and it like drips a little piece of melted cheese or whatever

01:29:14 ◼   ► You know, you're not really supposed to put things in there that are drippy

01:29:16 ◼   ► But everybody always does eventually you do not want that dripping directly on the element because it burns and it's just awful

01:29:22 ◼   ► there should be some kind of

01:29:25 ◼   ► other

01:29:26 ◼   ► Guard above the element sometimes that guard gets almost as hot as the element and sometimes the guard has openings in it that let stuff

01:29:32 ◼   ► get down to the element anyway and

01:29:34 ◼   ► Sometimes those guards can block the heat from the element if it doesn't have a reflective thing of load like there's it's difficult to get

01:29:39 ◼   ► The balance right between the elements in the guard, but anyway I look for that if I see bare elements on the bottom

01:29:43 ◼   ► I think it's not great. Mine has that. Yeah, well, if I see only one little

01:29:49 ◼   ► skinny element in a gigantic toaster I'm thinking that one element is not gonna

01:29:52 ◼   ► be able to heat things up enough or it's not gonna have even heating so if it's a

01:29:55 ◼   ► really big toaster I want to see two elements top and bottom. The plugs, nobody

01:29:59 ◼   ► seems to care about this and maybe it's just my old ancient crappy kitchen but

01:30:03 ◼   ► they give you these plugs that are like three prong plugs heavy-duty and they

01:30:07 ◼   ► stick out like an inch they're just huge plugs and if you have the type of

01:30:10 ◼   ► kitchen where the plugs are down at the same level as the toaster and you only

01:30:13 ◼   ► have a little tiny spot where you can put the toaster and the plug is right

01:30:16 ◼   ► behind it and the toaster has a tremendous depth because they're all

01:30:19 ◼   ► made to put giant deep dish pizzas inside them or whatever the hell they're

01:30:22 ◼   ► made for these days. If you plug in the toaster you can't push it up

01:30:27 ◼   ► against the wall because the plug sticks out from it and if you jam it right

01:30:30 ◼   ► against the plug A) you're kinking the cord and B) the hot back of the toaster

01:30:34 ◼   ► is pressing against the you're gonna melt the little rubber coating on the

01:30:37 ◼   ► back of the thing. I think every toaster should come with a low profile plug that sits flush

01:30:42 ◼   ► against the wall so that you can shove the toaster right back up against it and it should

01:30:45 ◼   ► have little stops in the back of it that keep you from pressing the hot back of the toaster

01:30:48 ◼   ► against the cord and melting through and electrocuting you and your whole family. So that's an area

01:30:52 ◼   ► I think all toasters could get better. Even my toaster doesn't have that, the fancy one.

01:30:56 ◼   ► I bought a low profile plug extension cord and did this little thing to make it all work.

01:31:01 ◼   ► Otherwise I couldn't even have a toaster there. Mine does have the standoffs that prevent

01:31:04 ◼   ► you from putting it right against the wall. And it only has a two prong plug, but it is

01:31:08 ◼   ► a regular straight plug, not a corner plug. Yeah, they usually have some kind of standouts

01:31:12 ◼   ► for safety reasons, but like when the plug sticks out, it's like, the standouts don't

01:31:17 ◼   ► hit, the plug hits first. And I guess maybe people have the plugs either higher up, I

01:31:20 ◼   ► don't even know what code dictates, all I know is that my plugs are way down low and

01:31:24 ◼   ► I have very little space and the plugs are right behind where I need to put both of these

01:31:26 ◼   ► toasters in fact. How hot does the toaster get on the outside? Some toasters get absurdly

01:31:32 ◼   ► hot on the outside and people stack all sorts of crap on top of their toasters.

01:31:36 ◼   ► Like I wouldn't put anything on top of a toaster because I know it gets hot up there but people

01:31:40 ◼   ► do put things up there but some of them get so hot like you're basically cooking stuff

01:31:44 ◼   ► on the outside of a toaster.

01:31:45 ◼   ► Or even if you just have like something next to it like within an inch of it and it slowly

01:31:49 ◼   ► like bakes that over time.

01:31:50 ◼   ► That's not great.

01:31:52 ◼   ► This used to be a standard feature that seems to be only on the super high end ones now

01:31:55 ◼   ► and I don't understand why.

01:31:57 ◼   ► So all you need is a friggin metal hook but when you open the door the little thing that

01:32:00 ◼   ► pulls the tray out a little bit that's convenient everyone should do that why

01:32:04 ◼   ► do they not do it it's too little metal hooks just do it you know some of them

01:32:07 ◼   ► use magnets some use fancy things and the final element is that I see all the

01:32:11 ◼   ► time is how robust are the things inside it like the little the little wire thing

01:32:15 ◼   ► that you put the toast on sometimes that wire is like as thin as a hair it's like

01:32:20 ◼   ► what what are you trying to save money on give me a nice big thick you know it

01:32:24 ◼   ► doesn't need to be so thick that the heat can't get through it but it

01:32:27 ◼   ► It shouldn't be easily bent or like the type of thing where it will slowly deteriorate

01:32:33 ◼   ► and just crack or like just the heat will work its way.

01:32:37 ◼   ► It should not feel cheap.

01:32:39 ◼   ► It shouldn't bend easily.

01:32:40 ◼   ► The tray that you put stuff in shouldn't be like the thinnest possible metal you can get

01:32:44 ◼   ► so that it slowly bends and warps and dents.

01:32:46 ◼   ► Just again, it doesn't cause, you know, I guess the difference between a cheap toaster

01:32:49 ◼   ► and a good one, just make those things a little bit thicker.

01:32:51 ◼   ► So that's how I'm going to be judging any toaster that comes into my life.

01:32:55 ◼   ► Okay.

01:32:56 ◼   ► That's amazing.

01:32:57 ◼   ► Can we talk about cars for a few minutes?

01:33:02 ◼   ► We can.

01:33:03 ◼   ► All right.