0:00:00Alright, so the showbot is up again so far.
0:00:03We'll see how long that lasts.
0:00:05Are you still centering the titles?
0:00:07Come on, Casey.
0:00:08Come on.
0:00:09What's wrong with that?
0:00:10What's wrong with that?
0:00:11Yeah.
0:00:12Besides that it's like daggers in your eyes, it's impossible to read?
0:00:18Besides that.
0:00:19Oh, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
0:00:22It forms crazy shapes that mean nothing.
0:00:24It turns the entire thing into a giant raw shock test.
0:00:27Oh, that's a man with a hat looking at me.
0:00:31Is this person's name actually Jason Discount?
0:00:34Not only is this person's name Jason Discount, but I knew this person when I was a kid.
0:00:38So you know this is actually his real name?
0:00:39Yes, it is his real name.
0:00:41I think he lives in Australia now, but he used to live, like, you know, the town over
0:00:46for me.
0:00:47So his name is Jason Discount and he's emailing us about upgrade pricing discounts.
0:00:50Yeah, it's finally a legitimate reason for him to have that name.
0:00:55been waiting his whole life for this moment when a podcast had something wrong about discount
0:01:00pricing."
0:01:01It's not wrong, it's just that I don't think any of us brought up this specific scenario
0:01:04when complaining about the confusing bundle pricing as a way to do upgrades. And he gives
0:01:10the example of, let's say you release an application and it's $6, and then you work on your second
0:01:14version of the application, and you want to sell that for $6 too, but you only want people
0:01:20to be able to upgrade from version 1 for $2. So his strategy for this is, if you reduce
0:01:24the first version to $4 and make the bundle price with both of them together $6. If someone
0:01:29accidentally buys the old app, it still only costs them a total of $6 to buy the new app.
0:01:34And of course anybody who already has the new app can buy the bundle and complete this
0:01:38bundle to get it for $2. I don't think this entirely solves it because what if somebody
0:01:43has the old app and accidentally buys the new app for $6? Then they're out $4.
0:01:48Oh, that's a whole other angle, you're right. Yeah, because there's nothing stopping
0:01:54them from individually buying the apps at full price in theory, right? Unless the store
0:01:58would like detect that they bought one and only offer them to complete their bundle.
0:02:01Right, but this idea of lowering the price of the old one that you have to keep on the
0:02:06store so that if anyone accidentally buys it, they're, you know, they're not, they've
0:02:12paid the same price anyway. If they accidentally buy it, they'd be like, "Oh, just buy the
0:02:15bundle," then you can get the new one for the same price you would have paid for it
0:02:18if you bought it individually. But there's still the full price new one out there lurking
0:02:22is a problem. Anyway, this whole thing is roundabout and trying to explain it is confusing,
0:02:26and that's why it's a bad idea. But I still think people are going to try it. We'll
0:02:30see.
0:02:31I still maintain that it's a terrible idea and that nobody should do it because at best
0:02:37it's fairly confusing for your customers. At worst, if you do things wrong, it could
0:02:41cost them extra money and then you—extra money that you can't easily refund them
0:02:45and that they will be angry about and leave you one-star reviews about. Like, the thing
0:02:49with the one star reviews, it only takes something angering a very small percentage of your user
0:02:54base in order for them to suddenly become the dominant voice in your reviews. Because
0:02:58very few people review things, even if you show them one of those annoying pop-ups. There's
0:03:04still a very small percentage of people who actually review your apps. And so it doesn't
0:03:07take much. If you cause an issue that really, really angers a tiny little fraction of your
0:03:13user base, that will become disproportionately influential in your ratings and your reviews
0:03:17and all the discussion about your app online, and that's really not good.
0:03:20Yeah, people are much more motivated to actually sit down and figure out how you go about leaving
0:03:26a review when they're mad about something. Whereas if they love your app, they may briefly
0:03:31think, "You know, the person who made this app is nice, and I wonder if I could do something
0:03:35to help them or I could help it," but that thought goes away quickly and they go back
0:03:38to their life.
0:03:39So, as a quick side note, one of my favorite things to do, which I admittedly don't do
0:03:43very often is if I, for some reason, have to call, like, say Verizon or something because
0:03:48there's an issue, which almost never happens, or if I have really, a really, really great
0:03:52server at a restaurant, occasionally I like to ask for their manager just to say something
0:03:57really nice because I feel like it puts some good karma in the world, and maybe that karma
0:04:01will come back one day.
0:04:02So you ask to talk to their manager, and don't they feel like, "Oh, what did I do?"
0:04:06Yeah, that's the best part is to kind of—
0:04:07No, that's not the best part.
0:04:08You're just torturing these people.
0:04:10No, but then usually I'm extremely effusive about how wonderful they are.
0:04:14Oh, that's like calling a kid down to the principal's office randomly and freaking him out
0:04:19and just saying, "I just wanted to say hi to you. How's your day going?"
0:04:21Well, oftentimes I'll say, "This was really awesome. Can I tell a manager?"
0:04:26But sometimes I don't. Sometimes I like to mess around.
0:04:29You're mad with power, Casey.
0:04:30Casey, we need to talk.
0:04:33Fine. I'm just going to be quiet from now on.
0:04:39You trying to say something nice about if you had a good server restaurant, that's
0:04:44a good—your motivation is good. The thing you're trying to do is good. The way you're
0:04:48doing it is not great.
0:04:49Which sounds a lot like the showbot, actually.
0:04:52Well, you'll get that. Practice makes perfect.
0:04:55All right. Are games movies? Are there going to be spoilers? Do I need to go away again?
0:05:01Because I genuinely, honestly did not listen to that part of the show.
0:05:04It's not going to be spoilers. It's not about Journey. It's about the whole, "Is
0:05:08set to disrupt Microsoft and Sony and that whole conversation we had, and lots of people
0:05:12tweeted about that.
0:05:13I know there was a whole podcast about it that is in my cube that I haven't yet listened
0:05:17to that features Ben Thompson, who wrote that article, and a bunch of other people.
0:05:22I haven't listened to that yet, but the thought that occurred to me after we finished the
0:05:25show -- because of course I wanted to talk even more about the topic that we talked about
0:05:28forever.
0:05:29Anyway, because I like talking about games -- was, are video games more like apps or
0:05:35more like movies?
0:05:36this in one specific respect that I don't think we touched on. Although we didn't bring this up
0:05:44in the show specifically, the whole personal computers are like trucks metaphor that has
0:05:51been discussed that I think Steve Jobs wrote up many years ago, and that people don't need a Mac
0:05:57Pro to post to Facebook and read websites and check their email and stuff, despite the fact
0:06:03that, you know, the Mac Pro does all these amazing things, they're probably not going to use them.
0:06:07Like, the amount of technology we have and the features available far exceed what any person
0:06:12is ever going to want to do with it. And that's when I say, is it like apps? Like, where—I
0:06:17guess I should have said it more—is it like a computer, where we know personal computer
0:06:22technology is available now that is far beyond the needs of what regular people
0:06:28want to do with computers. And I'm comparing that to movies, where movies, the technology
0:06:36available to make movies has gotten better by leaps and bounds. If you compare a blockbuster
0:06:40movie, if you could take even the crappiest blockbuster movie, like Transformers or some
0:06:44crap like that, back in time 50 years and show it to somebody, on first viewing they
0:06:52would not have been able to compute how terrible the movie was, because they would just be
0:06:56amazed at the visuals because they would be like, "This is magic. I don't understand where
0:06:59this came from. This must be like an alien artifact," because they wouldn't understand
0:07:02how we put all those visuals on the screen. And I think, in movies anyway, the mass-market
0:07:09appetite for increasingly amazing things is not satisfied. It's not like, "Well, once
0:07:14we can do reasonable practical effects like Raiders of the Lost Ark, that's all we'll
0:07:18ever need. There's no upside to making it better." People don't need the Mac Pro of
0:07:22movies. They get by perfectly fine with the iMac, so we'll just stick with the feature
0:07:25set that's available on Raiders of the Lost Ark, no need for Jurassic Park, no need for,
0:07:30you know, the advances in CGI we have today, no need for like all the CGI that's used in
0:07:34television shows to do backdrops and stuff. Sets are fine, we've pretty much got this
0:07:38set. I don't think that's the case, and it's not like the only people who care about just
0:07:43more features, more technology, more amazing stuff are the people who are super into movies
0:07:48and the casual moviegoers who are like, "Yeah, I don't need CGI, practical effects are fine
0:07:53with me. I think the appetite is essentially unlimited for amazing visuals in movies.
0:07:58Again, setting aside the stupidity of scripts and all the other stuff that have always been
0:08:02the same, it's not as if movies got good enough and people are like, "No, you don't need to improve
0:08:06them anymore." And they keep trying to improve them. It doesn't mean everything they do to
0:08:08improve them is better. 3D is an attempt to improve it and may or may not be better. Maybe
0:08:12people don't like that. Higher frame rate, same deal. High-definition television, I think that's
0:08:16an improvement that people do say, "Yes, we like that better." I say, "Yeah, standard F's good
0:08:19enough, I'm not a power user of television, I don't need high-definition television, standard
0:08:24television, no. As soon as you see high-definition, you're like, well, screw that old thing, we
0:08:27want the new thing. And the question about video games, what are they more like? Are
0:08:30they more like the PC, where increasing power is like, nah, I don't really need that? Or
0:08:35is it more like movies, where there is a seemingly infinite appetite of the mass market for making
0:08:40them better in ways that involve technology and money? And I think for video games so
0:08:46far, I don't know if this will always be true, but for video games so far they seem a lot
0:08:50more like movies to me, in that, any time, like people are saying, "What about when a
0:08:54$99 puck gets as powerful as the PlayStation 4?" Then we're all set, right? No, because
0:08:58people will still want the power that the PlayStation 5 or 6 offers. Like, why will
0:09:03they want that? Well, because they always want that, because their appetite for better
0:09:06games and better graphics and things that, you know, more power can do is unlimited,
0:09:10and it's not like a computer where it's like, "You don't need all that technology and that
0:09:13Mac Pro, you just want to check your email. Games are different. If you could have a vast,
0:09:18fully realized, realistic-looking city with amazing draw distances and amazing physics
0:09:22and everything, people want that. They don't know or care how it works. They're playing
0:09:24the game. It's much different than using the computer to do something. So that is a factor
0:09:30that I didn't articulate in the last time we discussed this that I think is definitely
0:09:35in play here with games. And that I don't know if the appetite is inexhaustible, but
0:09:41But I know we haven't exhausted it yet.
0:09:43And that's why I think a lot of people who are saying, "Oh, you think that now, but what
0:09:46about when the $99 puck is as powerful as the PlayStation 4?"
0:09:49Then there will be no more market for a $400 gaming device.
0:09:53I think the reason people keep buying $400 gaming things is because their appetite for
0:09:58better visuals and better gameplay and better physics and just better games, period, is
0:10:04insatiable.
0:10:05It is not satisfied.
0:10:07We never get to the point where games are good enough and then it just stops and stays
0:10:09that way.
0:10:11There's always something more you can do.
0:10:12Even just for stupid 2D genres and stuff like that, you can always do something more with
0:10:16more technology, with more memory, with more sensors, with more, you know, who knows what.
0:10:21So that, more than anything, I think is going to keep the $400 boxes alive for much longer
0:10:27than I think people think.
0:10:28I see.
0:10:29I'm not so sure.
0:10:30Like, as an example, so we have a 40-inch TV at home, and it does support 1080, but
0:10:37difference to me between 720 and 1080 is I can't tell. I can tell the difference between 480,
0:10:45whatever standard def is, and 720 or 480 and 1080, but I can't tell the difference between
0:10:50720 and 1080. And I know with games it's a bit different because it's not a film. It's something
0:10:55that's been created. And so I do think you're right that it will always, we will always seek
0:10:59for more clarity, better, better, better, more polygons, etc. But I don't, I don't know of
0:11:04anyone that buys games that needs the latest and greatest systems specifically for the
0:11:11best graphics except people who generally self-describe as gamers. So for me, I don't
0:11:18really care about games very much. And if a new system comes out with better graphics,
0:11:21cool.
0:11:22But it's not just better graphics. That's the whole problem. First of all, I would say
0:11:25that yeah, maybe only the self-described gamers care about this and purchase on it, but there's
0:11:28enough of them to sustain the market. We already established this generation, previous generation.
0:11:32enough of them to sustain the market, right? But for everything else, as the technology
0:11:39increases, new types of games become possible. It's kind of like you couldn't do live-action
0:11:43Lord of the Rings without computer effects. You just couldn't film that. Like you could
0:11:46do it with puppets maybe, or people in costumes, but it would just not have the kind of appeal.
0:11:51And you don't need to know or care anything about the technology involved in making that
0:11:54to appreciate Lord of the Rings, right? And so it's not to get hung up on the high-def
0:11:59versus standard F, but it's like, it's what's on the screen. You can do different kinds
0:12:03of things. If you were to take any current game developer and say, "What if I gave you
0:12:07100,000 times the memory, the bandwidth, the whatever, what could you do?" They wouldn't
0:12:13just make their existing games with more polygons and higher-res textures. They'd be like, "Oh,
0:12:17well with that, I can make a different kind of game. I can make a hiking simulator that
0:12:22people will love." I mean, at a certain point, you get to the holodeck, right? It's different
0:12:25categories of games, especially with physics and materials, because a lot of things you
0:12:28do in games, it's like everything feels like a set where it's just sort of a rigid polygon
0:12:32or with some sort of predefined destructive things. Once technology gets to the point
0:12:36where you can do like real arbitrary destructibility, whole new... people who aren't so interested
0:12:42in games before will suddenly be interested if they can realistically take a baseball
0:12:45bat through like a showroom of supercars and it doesn't just feel like you're triggering
0:12:50a bunch of destruction animations.
0:12:51I'll have to rethink cities.
0:12:53No, like, there's different categories of games that you can have. I mean, the hiking
0:12:57The hiking simulator thing is a joke I had from when I was a kid, but I bet there probably
0:13:00is a hiking simulator now.
0:13:01We've gotten to the point where the visuals in games are enough that people who are only
0:13:06interested in visuals would never have been interested in 16-bit games, in NES games,
0:13:11in Pong or anything like that.
0:13:12But suddenly when games start to pass some threshold of realism, whole new categories
0:13:16of people become interested.
0:13:17Even if it's only the deer hunter simulator type things.
0:13:20Those people were not interested in playing Super Mario Brothers.
0:13:23But once you can simulate deer hunting in a way that they find appealing, suddenly you
0:13:26you open up an entire new market.
0:13:28So I think the insatiable appetite
0:13:31for better technology for games isn't because people know
0:13:34or care or understand the technology,
0:13:35it's the same as the insatiable appetite
0:13:36for increasingly ridiculous visuals.
0:13:38This again, transformed it,
0:13:40despite the fact that the rest of the movie is terrible.
0:13:42People go see these movies because the visuals are amazing.
0:13:45And you'd say, "Oh, well, they're amazing now,
0:13:47"but they can't get any more amazing.
0:13:49"Surely 10 years from now,
0:13:50"the visuals will be exactly the same
0:13:51"and no person will ever go into a movie and be wowed."
0:13:54I don't think that's the case.
0:13:55I think people will always want to see something amazing,
0:13:58and I think people always want to play something amazing,
0:14:00and I think increases in technology will only open
0:14:03the market because you'll be able to do different things,
0:14:06not just the same things we're doing now, but fancier.
0:14:09- Yeah, I think the big risk, though,
0:14:10is typical disruption where,
0:14:13the big risk is not that people will stop caring
0:14:16about things being more and more advanced
0:14:18as we get new technological capabilities.
0:14:21The big risk is that other factors come into play
0:14:25that the kind of thing where somebody gets to think,
0:14:29okay, well, I could buy this new game system for $400,
0:14:33but instead I can have this other thing where,
0:14:38maybe it's an iPhone, maybe it's an iPad,
0:14:39maybe it's a Nintendo DS7, whatever the case may be,
0:14:42you have these other devices that come in
0:14:44where somebody can say,
0:14:46I don't care about the graphics because X,
0:14:48or I don't care about the technological inferiority
0:14:51because X, where X can be some kind of
0:14:54really compelling reason, whether it's an extremely different price point, a completely
0:14:58different portability class, or it's always with you, or it's built into something else
0:15:02and you already have it so it's kind of free, things like that. That's what causes
0:15:05the big problems. And so it's not that the market for super powerful game boxes is going
0:15:10to disappear, but I certainly think there's a lot to suggest that's going to be marginalized
0:15:16and continue to be marginalized over time. And you can look at—movies are actually
0:15:20a pretty good example of this, where box office sales are actually kind of crappy relative
0:15:27to what people expected for this time period because there's a lot more to do besides
0:15:34go see a movie these days. And so it's not that people stopped caring about movies getting
0:15:40better and better, it's that now they have a lot of other stuff they can do during times
0:15:44which in the 90s they might have gone to see a movie. And so I think that's the big risk
0:15:50is kind of a splitting of attention
0:15:52and an increase in disruptive factors
0:15:55that are different from the things these boxes do best,
0:15:58not that people will stop caring about what they do best.
0:16:00- Well, you just put placeholders in
0:16:02for the things that's going to cause it,
0:16:03but I don't think you can name it
0:16:05because all the things you named already exist
0:16:07and still haven't killed off the market.
0:16:08I mean, spreading attention is one thing.
0:16:10Like, no one can help that.
0:16:11If suddenly just there's too many other things going on
0:16:13and, you know, if people just get spread too thin,
0:16:18like, that could happen, right?
0:16:19That can happen to anything.
0:16:20It can happen to TV, movies, anything like that.
0:16:22But the one thing video games has going for it is, as a concept, conceptually, if not
0:16:27in the specifics of a box that you buy that you connect to your TV, but conceptually,
0:16:32games are camped out in the end zone waiting—like, I don't know if this is the wrong analogy,
0:16:37it's not a good sports analogy—but games are basically at the end of the line, tapping
0:16:40the front and patiently saying, "You guys can do whatever you want.
0:16:44movies, live theater, music, all that other stuff. But we'll be here in the end when you're all gone,
0:16:50because our logical conclusion is the holodeck, which will sort of end humanity, because once
0:16:54you can realistically simulate anything and have you not distinguish it from real life,
0:16:58we'll all just be dead in our little virtual reality sensor tubes within ten years, right?
0:17:03That's the endgame. The endgame is, you know, omnipotence, the illusion of omnipotence. Know
0:17:11everything, do everything, indistinguishable from reality, that's going to come out of gaming. It's
0:17:15not going to come out of television. It's not going to come out of live theater. It's not going
0:17:18to come out of music. Gaming is trying to get there. And so it's not going to get there in our
0:17:22lifetime, obviously, but way out thousands of years in the future, games are the only form of
0:17:27anything and eventually destroy the entire human race. So I don't think that gaming has that one
0:17:32good thing going for it in that it's not going to go away. And if we do get spread too thin because
0:17:38of other factors it'll come back because it's it's uh the end zone is the wrong thing it's it's at the
0:17:43end of the line waiting for all of us wow our first sponsor this week i don't even know how to follow
0:17:50that so our first sponsor this week is a new sponsor and a close friend of the show uh if
0:17:56you ever listen to bionic you know the other half of it uh the fake british guy who used to be
0:18:01British but now is American. Matthew Percival Edwardius Alexander. He started
0:18:09a company and that company is called Need. It's at Need with an N not the K
0:18:14version of it. It's Needlifestyle.com so go to Needlifestyle.com check this out.
0:18:19So Need is a refined retailer and lifestyle magazine for men. So each month
0:18:25they get this nice curated collection of something like you know nine ten items
0:18:30and it's all from the world's top men's brands and they offer it to you at a
0:18:36special price in the special collection and they're presented in the form of
0:18:39this monthly editorial that's built around a theme and they always you know
0:18:44they support local photographers and have you know local photographers
0:18:47photograph all these things local models beyond clothing they also have coffee
0:18:51literature furniture it's it's like a men's kind of you know cool fashion
0:18:58magazine. It's for people who are not, you know, it's for people like me,
0:19:01basically. People who are not that good at making these decisions on our own. You
0:19:06can go to need and you can see what is cool because I certainly can't
0:19:10tell you. But this stuff is pretty cool. I've gotten some of this stuff and it's
0:19:13really, really good stuff. You know, Matt has a really good eye for this.
0:19:18They also plan to localize to different cities around the
0:19:22world. The first of which will be London, of course, because he's almost British.
0:19:26So take a look, go to needlifestyle.com. They just released volume 7 today, which is built
0:19:33around the theme this month is "Summertime Commutes, Events, and Weekends with Friends."
0:19:38So they're going to do a special deal for our listeners, because Matt likes us, and
0:19:42he's a cool guy, even though he's half British. Anyone who places an order with
0:19:45need and was sent from us, send them an email at hello@needlifestyle.com with the subject
0:19:51line world's greatest podcast. If you do this, if you email hello@needlifestyle.com
0:19:59with the subject line world's greatest podcast after you've placed an order with them,
0:20:02they will throw in a bunch of free extras with those orders. Things like magazines,
0:20:05field nose notebooks, socks, scarves, you know, the kind of extras that a cool hit men's
0:20:09magazine has lying around. They will also, if you do this, you will also then get 25%
0:20:15off your next order. This is pretty cool. I know this is kind of like haphazard last
0:20:19minute because neither of us knew how to write an ad for this and it was very it
0:20:22was kind of a last-minute booking that kind of saved our butts here so need is
0:20:25great mad is great it's really a fantastic company run by fantastic
0:20:29people that's all I can really say take a look need lifestyle calm for all of
0:20:34your cool stuff needs need lifestyle calm thanks a lot to need once again
0:20:39what I say once again this is the first time they're sponsoring thanks a lot to
0:20:43need for sponsoring our show I just love that they're having us now be associated
0:20:48with the world's greatest podcast.
0:20:50- In my defense, Matt wrote that line, I didn't.
0:20:53- We would have, but we didn't.
0:20:56- Yes, so it is Matt to blame if you do not think
0:21:00that we are the world's greatest podcast.
0:21:01Either way, you should order from his company
0:21:02just so you can then email him, get this cool discount,
0:21:04get the free socks and scarves and stuff,
0:21:06and then tell him why we're not the world's greatest podcast.
0:21:08- Do you wanna talk about a few more things
0:21:11on the WWDC hit list, or do you wanna jump straight
0:21:13to the Fire phone?
0:21:15- The Fire phone happened today, so that's,
0:21:17This is the best thing we do, is when an event happens the day
0:21:19we record, and we know nothing about it.
0:21:21Hey, let's talk about it.
0:21:22Why not?
0:21:23Yeah, before anyone has reviews or even
0:21:24has this thing in their hands.
0:21:26I read Twitter when the press conference was going on.
0:21:28Does that count?
0:21:29That's about all I did.
0:21:30Yeah, me too.
0:21:32And I reacted to things I wrote on Twitter.
0:21:34That's about it.
0:21:35So all right, so what this thing is,
0:21:38it's basically what you'd expect from Amazon making a phone
0:21:40based on what they've done with the Kindle Fire tablet line.
0:21:45It's a phone that runs Android.
0:21:48It has pretty decent specs, two gigs of RAM, some kind of CPU
0:21:50I'm not familiar with.
0:21:51I don't know.
0:21:52I'm sure Android people know it.
0:21:55Most of the innovation in it comes from software tweaks,
0:21:57I think.
0:21:58But I think what's most interesting,
0:21:59if you would have asked people, including us, a few months ago,
0:22:03like, hey, Amazon's going to make a phone,
0:22:05what do you think they're going to do?
0:22:06I think almost all of us would have guessed
0:22:08that they were going to do something disruptive
0:22:10or creative or different around pricing.
0:22:13because everyone was thinking, oh, Amazon's all into getting
0:22:16things really cheap, and maybe they
0:22:18could revolutionize the phone business by giving you
0:22:22a phone for free, or included--
0:22:24for free supported by ads, or included with Amazon Prime,
0:22:28or something like that.
0:22:29Somehow subsidized the phone to make it very, very cheap or free.
0:22:32And what they gave us instead was a phone
0:22:35that's priced almost exactly like the iPhone
0:22:38and other high-end smartphones.
0:22:40It's interesting.
0:22:41So, you know, it's 200 bucks on contract, 650 without.
0:22:44There's a few things that make it a little better value.
0:22:46There's like the 32 gigs of storage
0:22:48is the base storage instead of 16.
0:22:50You get a year of Amazon Prime if you buy the phone.
0:22:54And if you already have it,
0:22:55you get your membership extended for a year for free.
0:22:58So there's a couple of things that value there,
0:22:59but for the most part,
0:23:01it's still a $600 unsubsidized phone
0:23:03or a $200 on a two-year contract phone.
0:23:06It runs only on AT&T so far, only in the US.
0:23:09So it's, honestly, it's kind of boring.
0:23:12I mean, there's a couple of things we'll talk about
0:23:15with what they've done with some of the software
0:23:16and hardware, but I don't think we're even gonna be
0:23:19talking about this in like two weeks.
0:23:22- Yeah, probably not.
0:23:24Some of the things that were very interesting,
0:23:25the most interesting thing to me,
0:23:27which has gotten less interesting
0:23:29as more information came out,
0:23:30was one of the slides they showed during their keynote
0:23:34or announcement or whatever you call it,
0:23:36was unlimited photo uploads to Amazon Cloud Drive.
0:23:40And so there wasn't a lot of information
0:23:42that I could glean on it.
0:23:43But John Gruber has said that there's only unlimited photo
0:23:50storage for photos taken with the phone itself.
0:23:53So notably, that completely eliminates
0:23:56videos, which are the things that take up the most space.
0:23:59And additionally, anything else is apparently
0:24:02subject to a 5 gig cap.
0:24:04And I'm not sure the mechanism by which they're determining this.
0:24:08I don't know if they're just reaching into Exif data or what have you.
0:24:11But yeah, that's a somewhat noteworthy difference.
0:24:16Although to be fair, the two cameras that we have in the house are two iPhone 5Ss.
0:24:22So in a parallel universe where Aaron and I both have Amazon, what are we calling this?
0:24:27A FirePhone.
0:24:28When we both have Firephones, that could be fine for us because that is all our photos.
0:24:34because that's the only cameras we use, but I know amongst this crowd we're probably quite the anomaly.
0:24:38Well, you know, so if you look at, look at when Amazon originally launched the Kindle Fire,
0:24:43the first, their first Android tablet, one of its biggest selling points by far was it was really
0:24:50cheap compared to other Android tablets, and it was, it was like the best $200 Android tablet you
0:24:56could get for a little while, and, which is pretty terrible because it was, it was pretty bad, and
0:25:02And the newer Fire's from what I hear are better.
0:25:04I haven't actually used them,
0:25:05but the newer ones are supposedly better.
0:25:06But anyway, the big reason people bought it was
0:25:10'cause it was so damn cheap.
0:25:12And the Fire phone doesn't have that.
0:25:14So my question is, what are the major things this offers
0:25:19above and beyond something like a high-end Samsung
0:25:22or HTC phone?
0:25:23Like if you're, obviously it's the same price
0:25:26and everything has an iPhone.
0:25:27Like, you know, you get a little bit less with the iPhone
0:25:28for the same price, but most people are not gonna care.
0:25:31it's close enough.
0:25:32So you're looking at 200 bucks either way,
0:25:36200 bucks on contract for this phone.
0:25:37So it's not cheaper than an iPhone.
0:25:40It's probably not gonna have much, if any,
0:25:42presence in phone retail stores,
0:25:44which is going to really hurt its sales.
0:25:46And you know, why?
0:25:49It's gonna be limited in certain ways.
0:25:51Like all the Google services it doesn't get.
0:25:54It is not, as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong,
0:25:57anybody, but all of Amazon's Android stuff so far,
0:26:00Like it doesn't get the Google seal of approval,
0:26:02it doesn't have the Google Play Store as far as I know,
0:26:05it doesn't have Google Maps, Google Now,
0:26:07all that cool integration you get
0:26:09on officially blessed Android phones.
0:26:12So there's a lot of downsides to this.
0:26:15The upsides are it has some Amazon integration
0:26:18with some of their stuff, it has some store integration
0:26:21where you can point it at some things and scan stuff,
0:26:23we'll talk about that in a minute,
0:26:24but I'm kind of wondering why people are really gonna buy
0:26:29this in any significant numbers.
0:26:30'Cause I don't see the appeal.
0:26:32If it was really cheap, maybe.
0:26:34If it had the full Android experience plus Amazon stuff,
0:26:37maybe, but I don't see, I see Android people wanting to get
0:26:41an officially licensed Google blessed phone,
0:26:44and I see iPhone owners sticking with their iPhones.
0:26:45So I'm kinda missing the point of this.
0:26:48- Amazon's kind of like the new Microsoft,
0:26:50but only with hardware.
0:26:51You just have to assume now whenever Amazon enters a market
0:26:55with a hardware product, just wait until their third try.
0:26:59Right?
0:26:59I mean, you mentioned with the Kindle Fire tablets
0:27:03or whatever, just forget about the first one, second one.
0:27:06You know, like it's gonna take them a while to get it right.
0:27:08So there's a learning curve there.
0:27:10And I just had a thought while you were describing the phone
0:27:14is that phones are kind of like PCs now, used to be,
0:27:17and that it's no longer a novelty that any company
0:27:22with reasonable pockets can make one.
0:27:24Like back in the day, if you were a technology company
0:27:27and you had a lot of money, you could make a PC.
0:27:30Like you buy the CPUs from Intel, you buy a motherboard,
0:27:33a chipset possibly from Intel, possibly from someone else.
0:27:35You buy a hard drive from someone, you make a plastic case,
0:27:38you put a power supply in it, you put a screen on it,
0:27:40you make a PC.
0:27:41Lots of people did it.
0:27:42There was tons of PC companies back before consolidation
0:27:45and it all fell apart.
0:27:46These days, it doesn't seem like a big deal for anybody
0:27:49to basically build your own iPhone-like smartphone.
0:27:53Amazon went to all the vendors,
0:27:55people are making all these parts,
0:27:56and the phone they made looks,
0:27:58I mean, if this phone had come out before the iPhone,
0:28:01we'd be falling all over ourselves to say how amazing it is,
0:28:03but now it's, you know, seven years later,
0:28:05it's not so amazing.
0:28:06Now it is just a fairly straightforward thing to say,
0:28:11yeah, we can make a phone that looks like a smartphone,
0:28:14that has a good CPU, that has memory,
0:28:16that has, well, I assume it has a reasonable battery life,
0:28:18that has a couple other little features.
0:28:19That's no longer a big deal.
0:28:22And obviously it's not quite as easy to make something
0:28:24as good as the iPhone on your first try.
0:28:26So we're gonna give Amazon three tries
0:28:28to do this or whatever.
0:28:30But I guess it's interesting that phones used to be
0:28:35this amazing thing and only amazing Apple
0:28:39could make a smartphone like this.
0:28:40And now they're basically like PCs.
0:28:41If you wanna make one, you can make one.
0:28:44And so Amazon is making one.
0:28:45I don't know if this is a good move or not,
0:28:46but Marco also mentioned disruption at the beginning.
0:28:48Like, oh, I hope they would do something with pricing
0:28:50to try to disrupt the phone market.
0:28:54I think Amazon, it's a problem with the word disruption.
0:28:57Like when they did that with the tablets,
0:28:59they sold them sort of at cost or possibly at a loss,
0:29:02certainly not making big profits, and undercut everybody.
0:29:05Like Amazon would give you a nicer screen
0:29:07and more storage for less money than Apple would.
0:29:11But I don't think you can,
0:29:13it's kind of weird to call something disruption
0:29:15before it has disrupted anything.
0:29:18You could say an attempted disruption,
0:29:20but everyone just says, oh, Amazon disrupts the tablet space
0:29:22by selling their product at or below cost.
0:29:25As far as we all know,
0:29:26because Amazon doesn't sell you sales figures,
0:29:28but as far as we all know from sort of just like
0:29:30walking around and how much Amazon is touting these things,
0:29:34they haven't disrupted the tablet space that much, right?
0:29:38I mean, it's not like because they priced them so low,
0:29:41all the incumbents who make a profit on their tablets
0:29:44were put on their heels and said, whoa,
0:29:47we can't handle this, soon our market share is shrinking,
0:29:49Amazon is stealing all our customers.
0:29:51My impression is that that has not happened.
0:29:53So their attempt at disruption with that pricing strategy
0:29:56with tablets didn't work.
0:29:57I guess they could have gone more and say,
0:29:59the real problem is we didn't,
0:30:00we weren't radical enough with the pricing.
0:30:02We'll pay you to take one of these phones, right?
0:30:05But instead they went in the other direction and said,
0:30:07all right, obviously that strategy did not buy our way
0:30:10into the tablet space.
0:30:11Let's try the more conventional strategy of making money
0:30:14by selling things at a profit with subsidies.
0:30:18And so that's what it seems like they're doing
0:30:19with the phone.
0:30:20I don't think there's any particular reason
0:30:23to favor this phone over the best Android phone
0:30:26you can find or an iPhone,
0:30:27and there's many reasons not to,
0:30:29but to Amazon's credit,
0:30:30they did at least try to differentiate it.
0:30:32I mean, again, if it was a version one product,
0:30:34I assume this is gonna be a stinker
0:30:35just like the version one Kindle Fire was,
0:30:38but it has interesting things in it.
0:30:40You know, the multi-camera thing
0:30:42and that silly depth perception and the parallax
0:30:44and the, you know, the thing for scanning things
0:30:47to buy them on Amazon in the Amazon brand.
0:30:49I mean, Marco listed all the stuff.
0:30:51That's way more differentiation
0:30:52than the average crappy Samsung phone has,
0:30:55and Samsung sells like crazy.
0:30:57So it could be again like the PC space
0:31:00that all you really need is to pass a minimum threshold
0:31:03of like, yep, we got a CPU, we got a hard drive,
0:31:05we got memory, we got a case that looks kind of nice,
0:31:07and we have a couple of differentiators or a reputation
0:31:09or a connection with a brand that you like
0:31:11or a franchise that you like or whatever,
0:31:12and again, in movie parlance,
0:31:14and that's enough to become a player in the space.
0:31:17I think that's sort of what Amazon's game plan is,
0:31:20not to rock the market,
0:31:22but just to try to be part of the conversation
0:31:25the same way all those PC makers were like,
0:31:27"Hey, we're a part of the PC market.
0:31:29We sell PCs.
0:31:30We'll put cow stripes on them.
0:31:31We'll call ourselves Gateway, put 2000 in our name
0:31:34'cause we'll never actually reach that year, right guys?"
0:31:36- That was my first computer
0:31:37and it came in the cow box and it was awesome.
0:31:38- Yeah, maybe some day we'll have retail stores.
0:31:41Anyway, that's how I see Amazon's entry here.
0:31:44And so I'm not for it or against it.
0:31:47I like more competition in the phone market.
0:31:49I don't know what their long-term odds are,
0:31:52but it wakes me up when they're on their third phone.
0:31:54(laughing)
0:31:55- I'm guessing a big part of it might be,
0:31:58I mean, as weird as this sounds,
0:31:59I mean, they probably didn't spend much money on this.
0:32:01Like, I'm sure they contrasted out
0:32:04the even hardware design to somebody else.
0:32:07They definitely contrasted out the manufacturing.
0:32:09- I think HTC made it for them, right?
0:32:11- Yeah, so, you know, they didn't,
0:32:13I bet they didn't invest very heavily in it.
0:32:16I'm guessing the main purpose of this is,
0:32:19just like all the other hardware,
0:32:20it's just to juice Amazon sales.
0:32:22And one of the things this will do,
0:32:25if they can get a big enough presence
0:32:27in the phone and tablet market,
0:32:29they're already probably there with tablets, maybe,
0:32:31but if they can get enough of a market presence,
0:32:36everybody who develops an Android app
0:32:39will be forced to put their app in Amazon's Android app store
0:32:43And because this, as far as I know,
0:32:45this only works with the App Store
0:32:46unless you go download APKs and enable that crazy setting.
0:32:49But I think for the most part,
0:32:51you have to have things in the Amazon App Store
0:32:52'cause there's no Google Play Store on this.
0:32:54Please correct me if I'm wrong in chat.
0:32:55But so if they get even 10% of the market,
0:33:00then it would be pretty unwise for Android developers
0:33:03to not develop, to not put their stuff
0:33:05in the Amazon App Store.
0:33:06And then Amazon gets to take a nice cut
0:33:08of any kind of money flowing through Android apps.
0:33:12Not that there's historically been a whole lot,
0:33:13but you know, there's enough people that that adds up.
0:33:16Now, and you know, there's also the other factors.
0:33:18There's, for all of the reasons that Google
0:33:22wanted to make Android and kind of had to make Android,
0:33:25the main reasons why were that Google was threatened
0:33:28by the possibility of somebody like Apple or Microsoft
0:33:33dominating the phone space in a way that then they could
0:33:38like lock out Google services from working on their phones.
0:33:42So Google kind of defensively had to make Android
0:33:45to give themselves a place for their services
0:33:47to live and thrive so they couldn't ever be locked out
0:33:50of a dominant phone platform.
0:33:51- Or so they tell themselves anyway.
0:33:52- Yeah, it's true, good point.
0:33:55So and I think Amazon has a similar goal here
0:33:58in that Amazon wants to make sure
0:34:00that none of their digital services get locked out.
0:34:02Their physical services are probably fine.
0:34:04Everyone's going to keep buying, you know,
0:34:07their shampoo from Amazon, it's no big deal.
0:34:09I don't think Apple cares to interfere with that.
0:34:11But it certainly is a risk that, you know,
0:34:15maybe Amazon's bookstore or video store or music store
0:34:19or those kinds of services could easily get locked out
0:34:23of future iOS and Google blessed Android.
0:34:28And so I think they kind of strategically thought
0:34:32this was a good idea and I'm sure they'll make enough
0:34:37on it to justify the probably minimal investment
0:34:39they put into it, maybe, but it doesn't need
0:34:43to set the rod on fire to succeed at their goal.
0:34:47Oh, sorry, yeah.
0:34:48It doesn't need to sell extremely well.
0:34:51It would be nice if it did.
0:34:52I'm sure they would appreciate having the extra margin
0:34:55to play with because they don't have a lot of margin
0:34:57on most of their other stuff, but the reality is
0:35:00I don't think this really is that important
0:35:02for this to sell well, and I don't think it will sell well.
0:35:04And I mentioned it in passing earlier,
0:35:06but it's definitely worth reiterating,
0:35:08this is also US only.
0:35:10Mostly because most of Amazon's services are still US only,
0:35:13or at least very limited outside of the US.
0:35:15And so as long as this is US only,
0:35:17that's going to extremely limit its market share,
0:35:20especially since it is the exact same price in the US
0:35:24as a lot of much better phones.
0:35:25- I think it is a good idea, I mean, don't you?
0:35:27You said, you know, whether this is a good idea,
0:35:28I think it is a good idea.
0:35:29It is a good idea for, it was a good idea
0:35:31for Amazon to make tablets.
0:35:33It's a good idea for them to make a phone.
0:35:34I mean, despite the fact that, like I said,
0:35:36I don't think the tablets are really tearing up the charts.
0:35:39Again, we don't know for sure,
0:35:40'cause Amazon doesn't like to release numbers.
0:35:42But I think it's a good idea for them to make a phone,
0:35:45because it is like PCs now.
0:35:46Like, why shouldn't they have a phone?
0:35:47Why shouldn't they have a tablet?
0:35:49It's part of their ecosystem.
0:35:50They sell you things you can consume on that tablet,
0:35:53so it's good to have a tablet.
0:35:55They also sell you things that you can consume on the phone,
0:35:57and you can use both of those devices
0:35:59to buy things from their physical store.
0:36:01They have a cohesive story around these things,
0:36:03and I think it was a good idea for them to develop it,
0:36:06because, and I think this was more or less the right time,
0:36:08where they can just put it together
0:36:10out of off-the-shelf parts, add some innovation.
0:36:13I think they probably did invest in it,
0:36:14because I think they, you know,
0:36:16it makes sense for them to have these pieces of the package
0:36:19and to not rely on other people for these,
0:36:20because it makes sense for their business.
0:36:21It's not totally out there like they've decided to make,
0:36:24you know, self-driving cars or something.
0:36:26- Yeah, but I still think, like,
0:36:29it was a good idea for them to make this, no question.
0:36:31And since they were already making tablets
0:36:33and already maintaining this OS,
0:36:35I'm sure there's a lot of shared development resources there anyway. I'm sure they almost
0:36:39definitely spent way more on software development than on hardware development, and they can
0:36:42probably use most of that in their tablet effort.
0:36:45The difference here is phones and tablets are very different markets, as a lot of people
0:36:49have found over the last few years, especially most of the early attempts at Android tablets
0:36:53found this out. It's a very, very different—these two are very different markets, and what works
0:36:59in phones doesn't necessarily work in tablets and vice versa. Amazon was able to break into
0:37:03of the tablet market by being extremely aggressive on price.
0:37:07Nobody was buying the Kindle fires, and still today,
0:37:10nobody's buying the Kindle fires because they're
0:37:12the best tablets, because they're not.
0:37:15They're certainly better than they used to be,
0:37:16but they're still not the best tablets.
0:37:17People buy them because they're cheap
0:37:19and they see them promoted like crazy on Amazon.
0:37:21This phone is gonna be promoted like crazy on Amazon fine,
0:37:24but it's not cheap.
0:37:26- It's cheap-er though, I mean, especially for,
0:37:30it's not gonna pull people away from the iPhone, right?
0:37:32But when people are shopping for Android,
0:37:33phones and anyone who's willing to pay $200 for a phone shops this $200 phone against
0:37:39any competitive $200 phone, assume they're not going to buy an iPhone because they're
0:37:42not in that market at all.
0:37:45Spec-wise and feature-wise, this compares favorably with another $200 Android phone.
0:37:52And so I think that's the conversation they're trying to win.
0:37:54They're like, "We're not going to compete with people who are shopping for an iPhone
0:37:57because this ecosystem, the cache, the apps, we're not there.
0:38:01Forget it."
0:38:02Right.
0:38:03phones did. I mean, you look around, mostly what I see is people with iPhones or people with
0:38:07a huge menagerie of crazy looking Android phones. That's the jungle where this phone is
0:38:14stalking, and it's got a nice screen. It's got a lot of RAM, it's got a fast CPU, it's got crazy-ass
0:38:20cameras that are going to impress people in a demo somewhere once they see someone who has one. The
0:38:24camera is pretty good, right? Like, it's got all sorts of stuff, and the crazy things are the tilt
0:38:28scrolling and the parallax that reminds you of the stupid crazy features like in the Galaxy S5 that
0:38:33no one's ever going to use to track your eyes and when you close your eyes the video stops and
0:38:37you don't have to touch the screen and like that people go for that crap and so this is in that
0:38:42crap show and even though it's not super cheap it i think it compares like it compares favorite to
0:38:48the iphone let's put it that way in terms of pricing and specs uh and i think they're going
0:38:53after the people who care about gwiz features and also the people who care about stupid number specs
0:38:58not against the iPhone where no one cares about the specs when they buy an iPhone.
0:39:02They're buying an iPhone to have an iPhone and to buy into that whole system.
0:39:05You know, what if you are living not near family members and you really want a smartphone
0:39:12and your family members that live nearby that are really good with computers—I'm sorry,
0:39:18your family members that are really good with computers don't live nearby and you feel
0:39:22kind of all in your own little island and you want something that you know you can get
0:39:26help with it. And maybe you don't live near an Apple store. This Mayday thing, I'm fairly
0:39:32surprised that the Mayday and the tablets hasn't made more waves. And I could very much
0:39:39see, like say my grandmother, for example, who is fairly computer savvy, especially for
0:39:45a woman that is not terribly young, but she lives near no one in terms of her family members
0:39:51that are good with computers. And so I could absolutely see her wanting this, if nothing
0:39:55else for the Mayday feature, so she knows within 15 seconds she can have help. And I
0:40:01can see that as being very powerful.
0:40:03That's a clever use of Amazon's strengths, because their strength is like physical logistics.
0:40:08Having a human being on the other end of a phone is a physical matter. It's not a matter
0:40:12of software or servers or whatever. And Amazon does that all the time. They're all about
0:40:16people and physical things and managing things at ridiculous scales. So they were wise to
0:40:21bring to bear the skills they have from their retail business on the phone.
0:40:25in the same way that Google is wise to bring to bear all of its great assets like, you
0:40:29know, it's really, you know, good maps and driving directions and their server capacity
0:40:33and all their web apps. Like, everyone is bringing their best stuff to the table. So
0:40:37that, you know, I think this does make sense. And I don't think this will necessarily, like,
0:40:41if your grandmother was to buy this phone, I mean, maybe she has nothing to compare it
0:40:45to, it wouldn't matter, but I don't think the experience would be that great because
0:40:47this is version one. And Amazon, in my mind, I tried to tweet this, but I couldn't figure
0:40:51had a way to tweet it in a way that would express myself, so I'll try just by rambling here.
0:40:56Unfortunately, my perception of Amazon now, whenever I think of them and I think of Jeff
0:41:03Bezos or Bezos, like, Glenn, you've got to tell me how to pronounce that name, I don't know,
0:41:06up on the stage is Amazon has really good demos and everything they show is much crappier in real
0:41:13life. Like, I don't know if that's just me getting that impression, but like, after several of these
0:41:17demos, because like, and sometimes they're okay in real life, like, you know, the Kindle Paperwhite
0:41:21really was more or less like what they showed. But like all of their Fire tablets and now
0:41:25the phone and a lot of the Kindles they've demoed, they do really good keynotes. And
0:41:29you look at them and you're like, "Wow, I can't even believe Amazon pulled this off.
0:41:32They've got the features, they've got the specs, they've got the design, everything
0:41:35is amazing." Then you see the actual product and it's like, "Oh." You feel like they pulled
0:41:40the wool over your eyes. And that's the reputation they're getting in my mind, so much so that
0:41:44I'm kind of tuning out what are very good presentations and fairly polished and not,
0:41:49Not, I'm not going to say in the Steve Jobs style, but obviously, you know, in the post-Steve
0:41:53Jobs presentation world, adding their own twist, but now I'm just kind of starting to
0:41:57write the—that's a tech person type thing.
0:41:59But anyway, my, you know, grandma doesn't know what their presentations are like.
0:42:02But I feel like real people, once they get them, will be like, the same way they when
0:42:06they get the Galaxy S5, like, you play with the little whizzy features that you're never
0:42:09going to use again, and in the end you have kind of a crappy, ugly phone that you get
0:42:13rid of after two years.
0:42:14See, but what makes you think that anyone would find it to be crappy and ugly?
0:42:20Because on the surface, especially if you don't have something as well-designed as perhaps
0:42:24modern Android or certainly an iPhone, like you said, if you don't have anything to compare
0:42:30to, then how would you conclude that it's that crappy?
0:42:33The Samsung, I was saying, is crappy and ugly.
0:42:35I think Amazon's industrial design is better.
0:42:39As ridiculous as the original Kindle Fire was in terms of size and weight and everything,
0:42:43The industrial design, it's not bad.
0:42:45Like it was, you know, pleasingly shaped.
0:42:47I mean, all right, so the power buttons
0:42:49are in the wrong place.
0:42:49We all know that.
0:42:50But like they have rubber grippy parts in the right spot.
0:42:53Amazon has been, had really great screens.
0:42:55Their problems of course are in software and ecosystem
0:42:57and kind of using the device is not as wonderful
0:43:00and magical as you would expect it to do.
0:43:02They miss on a lot of the details.
0:43:03It's like, well, you can have an amazing screen
0:43:05and a quad core GPU and twice the RAM of any iOS Apple
0:43:09device, please Apple, fix this please.
0:43:12But it doesn't matter if when you flick the scroll, it's jumpy.
0:43:15Like, how can it be jumpy?
0:43:16We got twice as many cores.
0:43:17We got twice as much RAM.
0:43:19It's like, it takes a lot of effort and coordination
0:43:21between hardware and software to make all that come together.
0:43:24How can Apple get away with having half as many cores
0:43:27as the top-end Android phones, and yet it still feels faster
0:43:30and does things quicker?
0:43:32That's where those guys can't compete.
0:43:34And that's what I mean by, again, if they don't have anything
0:43:36to compare it to, fine.
0:43:37But what if they go into an Apple store
0:43:39and start flicking around on an iPad or an iPhone,
0:43:42I think even a normal person can be like,
0:43:44oh, my thing doesn't feel like this.
0:43:46- Well, and going back a sec to Mayday,
0:43:49I do think that that's probably Amazon's best feature.
0:43:52If it even works half as well as it demos,
0:43:56that's an amazing feature.
0:43:57And that will win over a lot of people,
0:44:00especially people like us who are possibly
0:44:03in the position of buying a phone for someone else
0:44:05that we don't wanna have to tech support.
0:44:08You know, that I can see the benefit of.
0:44:11But there's also the other side of that,
0:44:14which is Mayday can only help you with problems
0:44:17that involve the phone being able to boot
0:44:19and show the screen contents.
0:44:21- Yeah, I was gonna say, like, the comparison is,
0:44:24I like to tell people to get Apple stuff
0:44:25because then if they have any problems,
0:44:27I say, just go to the Apple Store.
0:44:29- Exactly, and that's the thing.
0:44:30Like, you know, Mayday, well, Mayday is great
0:44:33as long as the phone can boot, the screen works,
0:44:36and it can connect to a data network.
0:44:38or Wi-Fi. All of those things have to be true, and that will solve a lot of problems, no
0:44:42question. But there's also a whole class of other problems that people routinely hit
0:44:47with their phones that Mayday won't be able to solve, or they won't be able to access
0:44:51it. And there is immense value in Apple having this giant network of retail stores, and in
0:44:58being able to walk into an AT&T store with your Samsung phone that you bought there,
0:45:03and get some help there. There's massive, massive value in being able to go to a physical
0:45:10place and get service. In the case of Apple, the phone network stores aren't that great
0:45:15about this, but in the case of an Apple store, you could walk out of there with a replacement.
0:45:20Your phone could break in the morning, you could go to the Apple store at lunch, and
0:45:25if there's not too big of a line, you can walk out of there with a replacement in a
0:45:29a half hour. And that's something that Amazon can approach that. They can have you be able
0:45:35to call them up and then they can overnight you a new phone maybe, maybe we'll see about
0:45:39that. But that's still a very different degree. It's a very different kind of experience.
0:45:42You have to talk on the phone to somebody who talked them through the problem and then
0:45:47Amazon has to decide whether to send you a phone, then send you a phone, then it arrives
0:45:50the next day or by drone later that day, who knows. But it's still a different problem.
0:45:56And there's just such immense value in having those retail stores there.
0:46:00Now, granted, there's also a whole class of problems where you might just live with
0:46:05it.
0:46:06Like if you're somebody who doesn't know the technology very well and you're like,
0:46:08"Oh, well, for whatever reason, my mail is all blue and I don't know why, but it's
0:46:14not really worth going all the way to the Apple store for that."
0:46:15Well, maybe on a Kindle thing, maybe you would hit the May Day button and say, "Hey, why
0:46:20is this all blue?
0:46:21Can you help me change this back?"
0:46:23you would be able to get better help with a lot of small problems like that using Mayday,
0:46:28but phones, and phones are even more so than tablets, phones get carried around with people,
0:46:33so phones have a lot of hazards happen to them and a lot of things that are weird that
0:46:35break and so I see that being a problem for Amazon.
0:46:39Steve McLaughlin See, but what you're not considering is that
0:46:42both of you are taking a completely myopic northeastern view of the world because the
0:46:48nearest Apple Store to like half of Virginia is either in another state or
0:46:54easily two hours away. I mean I'm lucky in that there happens to be an Apple
0:46:58Store in Richmond but outside of Richmond like let's take Charlottesville
0:47:03for example which is an hour west of where I am you can either come here to
0:47:07Richmond or go two hours north to DC and Charlottesville is a not small city I
0:47:13I mean, Virginia classifies it as a city.
0:47:16- Well.
0:47:17- Okay, you can be all smug and mightier than me
0:47:19because you live in the Northeast.
0:47:20- I'm just saying that you just look up
0:47:21the population of Charlottesville
0:47:23and see if it's larger than the population
0:47:25of where I went to high school.
0:47:27- And perhaps it's not, but I think you're way,
0:47:31way overselling the utility of Apple stores
0:47:34because if you're lucky enough to live near one,
0:47:36yes, you're absolutely right.
0:47:38But most of the country doesn't,
0:47:40And beyond that, most of the world doesn't.
0:47:43So that's wonderful that you guys have 44 Apple stores
0:47:46within a 10 minute drive, but I've got only one option.
0:47:49And if I lived an hour away, it would be an hour drive
0:47:53to get to the nearest Apple store.
0:47:54An hour drive, maybe in my busted ass car,
0:47:57that can barely get up the highway.
0:47:59I mean, I'm being a little dramatic,
0:48:01but my point is that Apple's retail footprint
0:48:03is really inconsequential.
0:48:05Now this is where you would say,
0:48:06well, there's AT&T's footprint,
0:48:08and yes, you're right about that.
0:48:09AT&T has a lot more stores, but you're not gonna get
0:48:11the same level of service and repair at an AT&T store
0:48:14that you would at an Apple store.
0:48:15So I think you're grossly overselling.
0:48:17- I like you self-rebutting there,
0:48:18'cause that's exactly what I was gonna say.
0:48:19Apple store is the best case scenario,
0:48:21but leave Apple store aside,
0:48:23normal people get their phones
0:48:25at the quote-unquote phone stores,
0:48:26and they're everywhere, in every strip mall,
0:48:28probably even in Charlottesville.
0:48:30And those are not a great place to bring your phone back to,
0:48:32but it's still a place to bring your phone back to.
0:48:35Because once grandma gets that phone from Amazon,
0:48:38She doesn't know where to take that when it doesn't work.
0:48:40And then it involves essentially tech support,
0:48:42calling someone on the phone and trying,
0:48:44I mean, Amazon is generally good at that.
0:48:45Maybe that's also playing to Amazon's strengths,
0:48:47but Amazon for all their physical logistics
0:48:50is not in the retail,
0:48:52the physical brick and mortar retail store business
0:48:54for what I think are obvious reasons.
0:48:56That's sort of the opposite of what Amazon is.
0:48:58So if they're gonna sell you physical products,
0:49:00it's all about them trying to make the experience
0:49:01really good of like, I can do text chat,
0:49:04I can do email, or I can call someone on a phone
0:49:07to arrange for me to return this thing to them in a package.
0:49:11Either I ship it myself or they send me a box
0:49:13and I ship it back and all that other stuff.
0:49:16And that has to compete with going to the phone store
0:49:19at the strip mall that's five minutes away,
0:49:20going to the Apple store that's nearby me
0:49:22if I live near a big city.
0:49:23If you don't live near anything,
0:49:27then maybe Amazon is the way to go.
0:49:29But I don't know, it's,
0:49:32the May Day feature I think is a good selling point
0:49:36And Amazon was smart to put it in there, but it's competing against those other possibilities
0:49:43for getting help.
0:49:44And as someone said in the chat room, my mom can get tech support in 15 seconds too, but
0:49:47it's a FaceTime call to me.
0:49:50Or calling you on the phone.
0:49:51And that's what we're weighing as the technically savvy people with relatives.
0:49:55We're weighing like, what do I tell my relative or my non-tech savvy friend to get so that
0:50:00they don't call me in the middle of the night because they're having a problem?
0:50:03Or when they do call me, I don't have to debug it.
0:50:05I can tell them, just take your phone back to the store.
0:50:08Just go to the Apple store.
0:50:10Or just go to this web page on Amazon and decide whether you want to call them, email
0:50:14them or text chat them.
0:50:16And they'll arrange for you to return the thing.
0:50:18Because that's really what we want is to not be bothered with other people's...
0:50:21We want them to get a solution and we're not going to try to debug it remotely.
0:50:24Maybe we can go over their house and try to figure it out or whatever.
0:50:27But once that's happened, it's all that.
0:50:28So I think maybe in the cases where everything is working, it's great just to have another
0:50:33human there to talk to who's getting paid to help you with your thing, and that will
0:50:38help you not send a FaceTime request to your child.
0:50:43It's also very smart of Amazon to do this because it's the kind of thing that their
0:50:48competitors really can't. Microsoft probably could, but Apple really can't because it would
0:50:55just be way too big of an operation because way too many people have iPhones. It would
0:51:00be a nightmare to support and scale that at the iPhone sales volume. And Google kind of
0:51:07can't because, well, first of all, they hate people and don't understand them. And
0:51:11second of all, how would Google even pay for that? The way Android's whole model is set
0:51:18up, they'd have a hard time supporting that, really. And even if they were in the business
0:51:24of applying lots of human power to things, which they are definitely not, Microsoft could
0:51:29maybe do it for the same reason Amazon can do it which is they don't sell that many
0:51:33phones.
0:51:34Like Amazon is actually lucky in a lot of these things that like for example one of
0:51:38the reasons why they were able to use like certain screens and some of the Kindle Fire
0:51:43HDX's and stuff like that is because they're at small scale.
0:51:46They can use components that don't have very good yields that aren't being produced
0:51:51in very high volume because they can't be yet.
0:51:54Things that like for Apple to put something on an iPhone they're going to need a hundred
0:51:57million of them in a month, like they can't do that.
0:52:01And so this is a very smart move from Amazon
0:52:03of doing something that they can do
0:52:08and that kind of only they can do.
0:52:10So anyway, let's move on to our second sponsor
0:52:14before we forget 'cause it's been almost an hour.
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0:54:57- So I'm looking at the,
0:55:00I'm still a little frustrated with you two.
0:55:01I'm looking at the Boston metro area,
0:55:03and there are, by my count, one, two, three, four, five,
0:55:06six, maybe seven Apple stores within, what is this,
0:55:11128 that runs around Boston?
0:55:12- Well, one thing I'd like to know,
0:55:14based on your rage here, so yes, by geographic area,
0:55:18Apple stores don't serve a lot of people,
0:55:20but what percentage of the US population
0:55:23is within driving distance of an Apple store,
0:55:25and then also, what percentage of the population
0:55:28most likely to buy an iPhone
0:55:30is within driving distance of an Apple store?
0:55:32- Well, the first one I'll give you,
0:55:33the second one I won't,
0:55:34and let me finish my thought real quick,
0:55:36which is to say that the Boston metro area
0:55:38has six Apple stores.
0:55:39The entire state of Ohio has six Apple stores.
0:55:44- It also has less people
0:55:45than the Boston metro area, probably.
0:55:46- It probably does,
0:55:48But if you don't live on I-71, is this,
0:55:50that runs from southwest Ohio to northeast Ohio,
0:55:53then kindly piss off because there is no Apple store
0:55:55near you.
0:55:56So anyway, so the point is, there's a lot of 'em here.
0:56:00Like the entire, what is this, Nebraska, South Dakota,
0:56:04North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, like none of them
0:56:08have an Apple store, if they do, I missed it.
0:56:10- Yeah, but those are all green states.
0:56:12- In any case, and your point about population density
0:56:16is fair, but I also wonder, like, what if an Apple store popped up in a larger city
0:56:22in Wyoming, assuming such a thing exists, which I'm sure it does, but I can't think
0:56:26of any. But anyway.
0:56:27Let me cap off the geography thing that I just bothered to look up while you guys were
0:56:31discussing where stores are in the United States. The population of Charlottesville
0:56:36is apparently about 44,000 people.
0:56:39Is that really it?
0:56:40The population of Smithtown, New York, where I went to high school, is 117,000 people.
0:56:4515,000 people. So, just saying.
0:56:47God, I'm surprised. I mean, hey, it's a fair point. I'm surprised that we're all
0:56:50that small. Funny how that is. Well, I mean, look at Richmond, the Richmond metro area.
0:56:54Not Richmond itself, but the Richmond metro area. I think it's a couple million, and
0:56:57we have an Apple store.
0:56:58I think you have an Apple store. Anyway, sorry.
0:57:01Yes.
0:57:02Yes. Getting back to something Marco said a while back about taking advantage of the
0:57:08fact that they're not going to sell a lot of them. Like, they can afford to have the
0:57:11fancy screens because their volumes are low, and they can afford to do May Bay, presumably
0:57:14because they're not gonna sell a lot of these,
0:57:16or at the very least they're starting from zero,
0:57:17so there'll be a growth curve.
0:57:18It's not like Apple where on day one,
0:57:20you're gonna sell 10 million of these things,
0:57:22or whatever they sell,
0:57:23and then you've got a big problem with May Day, right?
0:57:25'Cause you just can't handle that capacity
0:57:27without working up to it.
0:57:29And this gets me to the problems
0:57:31with the concept of unlimited
0:57:33that a lot of people were tweeting about
0:57:34when they were tweeting about the unlimited photo storage,
0:57:36and Casey already noted what Gruber had tweeted about it,
0:57:38not really being unlimited.
0:57:39It's like, oh, well, it's only unlimited
0:57:40if you take them on the phone,
0:57:42if you have any existing library pictures,
0:57:44then you know, it's subject to a five gigabyte cap,
0:57:48maybe they'll charge you above that.
0:57:49And it gets us back into the same discussion
0:57:50we always have where it's like,
0:57:52I just want someone to take care of my crap.
0:57:54And then you hear about it, you're like,
0:57:56well, that will take care of my crap,
0:57:57but then you learn the details
0:57:58and there's always weird rules
0:57:59and you gotta remember this and you gotta remember that
0:58:01and this is free and this is for pay
0:58:03and this is for that and the other thing.
0:58:04And a lot of people on Twitter were saying,
0:58:07this is the problem with unlimited.
0:58:08It's like, it's pointless,
0:58:09it's never really gonna be unlimited.
0:58:11If you ever see the word unlimited,
0:58:12run in the other direction, it's just for people who use too many resources, and it's
0:58:18not like the way anything should be.
0:58:20And I think that's too extreme of a reaction, because I think the thing that we all want
0:58:24someone to take care of our pictures for us can be done and will be done eventually.
0:58:30It's not the unlimited part that's bad, it's the complexities of like someone who wants
0:58:34to put unlimited on a slide but doesn't want to commit to that, right?
0:58:36And it's not like, "Oh, you're going to get something from nothing."
0:58:39And a great example is our frequent sponsor, Backblaze, where it's unlimited, but they
0:58:43charge you.
0:58:44There's a monthly—it's a low monthly fee, and they figured out how to—presumably,
0:58:48they figured out how to run a business where we charge people a low monthly fee, we give
0:58:51them unlimited—it really is unlimited—and the way it works out is that most people don't
0:58:55have a lot of data, and the average works out so that we're able to make money.
0:58:58We are also sponsored this week by Backblaze.
0:59:00Wow, serendipitous.
0:59:01Really, actually.
0:59:02I might as well do this now.
0:59:04(laughing)
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0:59:57Backblaze is by far the simplest online backup to use.
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1:00:59you really need online backup.
1:01:00If you are not backing up online
1:01:02and you have the upstream capacity
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1:01:06I know some places you don't have good upstream
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1:01:19Things that are gonna happen to your house.
1:01:22If you have just your computer
1:01:23and a time machine drive plugged into it,
1:01:24then electrical problems, fires, floods, theft,
1:01:28all sorts of crazy stuff, water flooding from the apartment above you, like all sorts of
1:01:31crazy stuff can happen that can take out all of your copies of your data if it's only in
1:01:35your house. So really you want an offsite backup, and Backblaze, in my opinion, is the
1:01:38best one. Go to backblaze.com/atp. Thank you very much.
1:01:42And the thing that Backblaze has going for it is they get to use the word "unlimited,"
1:01:48which takes away the stress from anybody, really, but certainly from high-capacity,
1:01:54high demand users, you don't want to know, is there a limit? Am I going to hit the limit?
1:01:59Do I have to worry about the limit? And even casual users who, if there is a limit, they
1:02:02may not have any sort of conception of how much data they have. Like, so they're like,
1:02:06do I have that much data? How much is a gigabyte? Will I have that much data in five years?
1:02:10Like, it doesn't matter if they're totally never going to reach the cap. If they don't
1:02:12understand that, it could cause them hesitance. So unlimited gets rid of that anxiety of like,
1:02:17I don't have to worry about how much stuff I have. And then the only job you have to
1:02:21to do after that is make the financial arrangement
1:02:25both attractive and easy to understand.
1:02:27And this Amazon arrangement is not easy to understand.
1:02:29I would never have guessed that only the photos
1:02:31I take on my phone count towards that unlimited
1:02:33but it's a five gigabyte cap
1:02:34but maybe I can buy stuff other than that
1:02:35and can I import my existing photo collection and blah blah.
1:02:37It's already too complicated.
1:02:39Backblaze is we charge a fee per month,
1:02:42it is a small fee, people are willing to pay it.
1:02:44The average data stored by our customers
1:02:47is enough that we make money at that price.
1:02:49It's easy to understand.
1:02:50$5 a month unlimited.
1:02:52Something like that for photos.
1:02:54It doesn't have to be,
1:02:55we'll store all your photos for free.
1:02:56Unlimited doesn't mean free and unlimited.
1:02:58It just means no more anxiety about,
1:03:01but what about these photos?
1:03:02But what about those photos?
1:03:02What about photos I take here?
1:03:04But what about my existing stuff?
1:03:05But will you keep the raws at full resolution?
1:03:07Will you down sample them?
1:03:08Is there a 30 day window?
1:03:10Is there like, all that crap and anxiety needs to go away
1:03:13and then the company just needs to find some way
1:03:15to pay for that.
1:03:16Whether by charging a reasonable monthly fee
1:03:18or incorporating it into some other service
1:03:20subsidized or whatever. And so we were all briefly excited about this Amazon thing. Now
1:03:25we're all unexcited about it. It's just another solution that is too complicated and too weird
1:03:29and is going to leave people in situations where they're not sure their stuff is safe
1:03:32and where in reality probably won't be safe.
1:03:35All right. So I actually, if we have the time, if you guys will permit me, I would actually
1:03:41like to talk now about continuity. I think it plays into some of the stuff we were just
1:03:45talking about. So continuity is a feature during the keynote that they demoed where
1:03:49between Yosemite and iOS 9 and or 8 yeah iOS 8 and now apparently possibly even the Apple
1:03:59TV they have features where you can for example start doing something in an app on one of
1:04:03these devices and then go to another one of your devices and pick up where you left off
1:04:08or do crazy things like take a phone call on your Mac and stuff like that or transfer
1:04:14an email as you're writing it between your phone and your computer. All these different
1:04:17things that involve basically passing off tasks from one computer or device to another
1:04:23one seamlessly.
1:04:26And one of the reasons I think this is smart, you know, this one of the themes where Apple
1:04:32tends to not do so well, and this doesn't actually apply just to Apple, but where Apple
1:04:38tends to not do so well is trying to go past what they're good at, trying to do a really
1:04:45big new project in an area that they are really, really not good at. And so one of the best
1:04:50examples of this obviously is Maps, where Maps is the kind of area where Google is really
1:04:55good at the kind of big data integration, massive scale data collection, and resolving
1:05:02conflicts between different sources of data, and ranking things, and finding relevance.
1:05:09Google is really, really good at that kind of problem. And so when Google tackles that
1:05:12kind of problem, they can generally do it very well,
1:05:14and very few others can.
1:05:15Apple tried to tackle that problem with Maps and iOS 6,
1:05:19five, six?
1:05:20- I think it was six.
1:05:22- And famously did not do very well at it.
1:05:25And it's certainly better than it was,
1:05:26but it's still not to Google level of quality,
1:05:28and honestly probably never will be.
1:05:30And so you can look at things like that,
1:05:33you can see these are kind of areas where Apple's weak.
1:05:37And I mentioned right before the break,
1:05:39or right before this last topic,
1:05:41how I thought it was very good of Amazon to recognize one of their strengths and do something
1:05:47in May Day, do something that the other people kind of can't do in the business, can't
1:05:53or won't do.
1:05:55And so what Apple has done with continuity, I think, is the same kind of strategic thing
1:06:01where continuity is the kind of thing that Apple actually can do very well. Yes, it uses
1:06:08iCloud, but I think it mostly actually uses local networking. I think it uses Bluetooth
1:06:11LE to do some of the initial handshaking and probably doesn't go over the network or
1:06:16over the WAN unless it has to.
1:06:19So I think, to jump in, my recollection of the video I watched was it negotiates over
1:06:25Bluetooth LE and then the amount of data you can send back and forth is like the state
1:06:32of the world is almost none. So it establishes proximity using Bluetooth LE and then you have
1:06:38to use some other mechanism of your choice including a stream that I believe they can
1:06:45open between devices. Actually that might be over Bluetooth as well. But anyways by some other
1:06:49mechanism you have to establish like what the crap it is you're working on and what you're doing.
1:06:53But the proximity awareness bit is Bluetooth LE and this is freaking terrible for me because
1:07:00both of my Macs are late 2011 Macs and they don't have Bluetooth low energy and I'm very sad.
1:07:05Don't worry, they'll eventually be replaced and you'll be able to use all this cool stuff.
1:07:08But I'm sad now!
1:07:10Just talk to any Mac Pro owners in the last few years who ever had to use AirDrop and realize
1:07:15they can't do it because the Mac Pro is so old. Anyway, so this is the kind of thing,
1:07:21this involves local networking with high-end, brand new controlled hardware and passing around
1:07:28the internet very small bits of information in very large volume. That's
1:07:33what push notifications are, that's what iMessage is, that's the kind of stuff
1:07:37Apple is already doing this stuff at scale and doing it very well most of the
1:07:41time. And so like this is the kind of... and it requires very deep you know top to
1:07:48bottom integration of the hardware and the software and the services. It
1:07:51requires people who buy multiple devices from the same manufacturer and who
1:07:56you actually keep them somewhat up to date, Casey.
1:07:58And I'll just give you a hard time.
1:08:00(laughing)
1:08:01Eventually you'll have it, it'll be cool.
1:08:03And so this is the kind of thing where
1:08:07not only is Apple really good at this sort of thing,
1:08:10but only Apple can really do that.
1:08:13If you look at Google, and Gruber wrote a big thing
1:08:15about only Apple is really good,
1:08:17and I was kind of hoping it'd be more about this
1:08:20when I saw the title.
1:08:22He touches on this, but I'd like to go a little more
1:08:23into it.
1:08:26Microsoft can't do this because they don't sell any phones really.
1:08:31And even their computer sales are not doing that great.
1:08:34And they can't, you know, they have this massive bevy of hardware to contend with and
1:08:38what percentage of Windows computers have Bluetooth low energy and what version and
1:08:43all this crazy stuff that they would have to contend with that Apple doesn't.
1:08:46Google can't do this because nobody's buying Google computers and even their tablets are
1:08:52pretty weak.
1:08:54And there's also, again, similar issues with hardware diversity.
1:08:56Well, Microsoft and Google can't do it now.
1:08:58They'll be able to do it eventually.
1:09:00Apple can do it first.
1:09:01So it's the only Apple can do this now.
1:09:03It's an important qualifier because eventually everyone will be able to do this, and they
1:09:07will.
1:09:08Well, the directions that these various companies, markets, and products, and strengths are going,
1:09:14I don't see a future where anybody else can do this, really.
1:09:17Well, I mean, if it's a useful thing to do that catches on, all the other players will
1:09:22will develop some kind of open standard for doing it, and eventually all their hardware
1:09:25will catch up in many years. It's the same thing with everything else. Only Apple could
1:09:29make the iPhone 1, but today Amazon can slap together a phone that essentially looks and
1:09:34behaves to a regular person's perspective like the iPhone 1. Hopefully maybe a little
1:09:38bit better performing, but maybe not. We'll see. But you know what I mean? There's a big
1:09:43lead time. Apple has an advantage, but it's mostly a temporal advantage, not a qualitative
1:09:49advantage. Everyone will eventually be able to do this. So yes, this is the kind of thing
1:09:52Apple should be doing. Doing the things that they can do before anyone else can do them
1:09:55because they have more control than everyone else. And even Apple is kind of in the uncomfortable
1:09:58situation. It was like, poor Casey, you know, you gotta have a new-ish Mac because the chipset
1:10:02needs to be whatever and you gotta have a device with lightning connector, sorry iPad
1:10:063 users like me, and you know all this. There are other, even with Apple's world and how
1:10:12fast they get everyone upgraded and everything, there is a slight constraint. So Apple is
1:10:15doing it essentially as soon as they possibly can. And we'll see if this feature is like
1:10:20a killer fee. Like that's what you need. If this is a feature that people really want,
1:10:23then everyone else will eventually copy it. If it turns out to be something that's kind
1:10:26of okay, but maybe not important enough for the other guys to go through the effort to
1:10:30copy, then oh well. But Apple will have the advantage of the first mover advantages that
1:10:34they like to have.
1:10:35Yeah, but I think really ultimately this is the kind of thing that Apple is going to be
1:10:41the only game in town that really does it in any effective, widespread way for the foreseeable
1:10:47future. I really don't see that changing anyway.
1:10:49Well, I also worry a little bit when networking is thrown into the mix.
1:10:52Because I agree with devices and hardware and software just on those devices.
1:10:57That's at an Apple's wheelhouse.
1:10:59But once you get anything involving the network, I have bad flashbacks.
1:11:02I mean, like messages, which I've been using much more lately, because sort of WWDC, everyone
1:11:07was using messages.
1:11:08And I guess last year I was doing it too, maybe.
1:11:11But this year I use messages way more, and I'm still using it.
1:11:14I've been using it more since basically since my wife got maybe the iPhone 5s, she had the
1:11:194s, but anyway, I find myself using messages on the Mac, I find myself using it on my iPod,
1:11:24my kids have iMessage accounts so I use them to talk to them on their various iPods, and
1:11:29I find the program maddening, like it doesn't fulfill the basic function of providing a
1:11:33text box that I can type into and hit send and having a message show up somewhere else.
1:11:37Some absurd percentage of the time it says "not delivered" and the only thing I get to
1:11:41do is tap the exclamation point and say try again and it says not delivered. Why is it
1:11:45not delivered? Will it ever work? Sometimes I just have to delete that message and send
1:11:49the same message again and then that one will work. I have no idea but it's failing on a
1:11:52basic level. So I really hope continuity doesn't actually involve the internet or any of Apple
1:11:57servers. I hope it does ad hoc Wi-Fi like AirDrop and I don't have to involve any internet
1:12:01stuff because every time Apple does internet stuff it screws up. I mean just today I saw
1:12:04a tweet in my timeline and someone said on one device I added a phone number, on another
1:12:08the device had deleted the phone number.
1:12:09Now neither device has either phone number.
1:12:12Thanks iCloud, that was like stuff like that.
1:12:16I know sync is hard or whatever.
1:12:18I'm just saying like that is outside Apple,
1:12:19still is outside Apple's wheelhouse.
1:12:21So I really hope continuity only involves like the airspace
1:12:26and hardware and software that's within my arm's reach
1:12:29and does not involve any servers anywhere.
1:12:30I know push notifications is better, but I don't know.
1:12:34I haven't tried it yet.
1:12:36So we're all just hoping it will be good.
1:12:38There is a potential, you're right,
1:12:39that potentially this is something
1:12:40that is right in Apple's wheelhouse.
1:12:42If it's outside, it is not very far outside,
1:12:44it's just, you know, I get nervous.
1:12:46- Yeah, I mean, that's certainly fair,
1:12:49but I really think that people give them a hard time
1:12:53with stuff like iMessage weirdness,
1:12:54but if you look at things like iCloud Key Value Store,
1:12:58push notifications, and really most use of iMessages,
1:13:03iMessage, whatever, most use of iMessage,
1:13:06I think everything works great.
1:13:07And there are these, there are like, you know,
1:13:09the fringes where things fall apart, but.
1:13:12- See, I think the bar is low on iMessage though.
1:13:14Like it's just text, like I'm not asking for the world.
1:13:17I'm not sending GIFs like Casey is.
1:13:19Like I'm just, it's just text.
1:13:21And like, here's my fallback.
1:13:24Like in these times when I'm frustrated
1:13:26and I can't send a message and it's frustrating,
1:13:27I launched the Gmail app and I send that message as an email
1:13:31and you know what, that sends every freaking time.
1:13:33Every freaking time I send the email in Gmail,
1:13:35If I have an internet connection, it sends the email.
1:13:37Every single time.
1:13:38It has never said could not send.
1:13:41It has never failed if I have a network connection.
1:13:44And that, it's tough to compete with that.
1:13:46Like when I find myself going to the Gmail app,
1:13:48or maybe even Apple's own mail app.
1:13:50Like I could have, if I used Apple's mail app,
1:13:52I would have gone to that.
1:13:53iMessage still angers me greatly.
1:13:56- So yeah, it's funny because I actually don't have
1:13:58any normal issues with iMessage.
1:14:01I occasionally get like a message failed to send.
1:14:03I occasionally get like either a time shifted message
1:14:08or something like that, but 99% of the time,
1:14:12I have no issues with iMessage.
1:14:14And so it's so weird to me to hear
1:14:17that you have a ton of problems and you're not the only one.
1:14:19- But you've had the failed to send.
1:14:20What does that mean?
1:14:21What does it mean failed to send?
1:14:22I don't understand what it's,
1:14:24like I would like an error message.
1:14:25- I'm thinking it means that the thing
1:14:26that it tried to send didn't send.
1:14:28- I don't know what that means.
1:14:31Like why?
1:14:31you haven't entered into the server and not respond.
1:14:34Not that I'm saying I need the details,
1:14:36but intellectual curiosity, I wonder what it is
1:14:39that is not connecting.
1:14:40Here's what I would want out of the thing.
1:14:42Okay, so you can't connect the dots for whatever reason.
1:14:45Or maybe that's a legitimate reason.
1:14:46Sometimes I think maybe the phone,
1:14:48if their phone is rebooting, can I not send this message?
1:14:51Is there some sort of,
1:14:52they wanna show me the delivered message,
1:14:54and if, say, the phone was in the middle of rebooting,
1:14:56it can't possibly be delivered
1:14:57because there's nothing to receive it,
1:14:59maybe that's what it is.
1:15:00But even if that's the case, which I think is ridiculous, by the way, it should never be the case, it should be stored and forward, like most other IAM systems are, like Google Talk or whatever.
1:15:08Even if that was the case, it should be the job of the software to just say, "I'll just keep trying, don't worry about it. I won't say it was delivered, I'm not going to lie to you, but you don't have to keep hitting the exclamation point and hit try again. I'll eventually get it sent."
1:15:20And what it should really be is storing forward like email or like apparently every other
1:15:24I am message like when on AIM or Google Talk or whatever.
1:15:27If someone is not online, if all their computers are turned off, I can still send them a message
1:15:30and the next time they sign onto the service or turn on one of their devices they'll
1:15:33see my message, right?
1:15:34Like that's all I'm asking for.
1:15:35It's not, it's just text, man.
1:15:38Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week.
1:15:41Need at needlifestyle.com, Hover, and Backblaze.
1:15:45And we will see you next week.
1:15:49Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin
1:15:54'Cause it was accidental (accidental)
1:15:57Oh, it was accidental (accidental)
1:16:00John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him
1:16:05'Cause it was accidental (accidental)
1:16:07Oh, it was accidental (accidental)
1:16:10And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:16:16And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
1:16:24So that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:16:29Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C
1:16:34USA, Syracuse, it's accidental
1:16:39They didn't mean to, accidental
1:16:44Tech podcast so long.
1:16:49Want to do titles?
1:16:50Did your bot survive?
1:16:52I saw you yelling at the people in the chat room.
1:16:53Nope.
1:16:54Bot's dead.
1:16:56Right now, I want to be bitter and angry
1:16:58and say I'm just not bringing it back, but that's immature.
1:17:02What was the problem this time?
1:17:03So the problem this time was somebody decided to-- so I
1:17:07guess WebSockets may have been a poor choice.
1:17:11It's actually a technically sound choice,
1:17:13But the problem is it's not very obfuscated.
1:17:16Well, I guess I could base64 encode everything.
1:17:20Don't worry about obfuscation.
1:17:21What was the problem?
1:17:22So the problem was that somebody decided
1:17:24to run a loop of voting for every possible ID.
1:17:28And IDs are integers, because why wouldn't they be?
1:17:31Because why do you need a GUID or something
1:17:33super complex for an ID?
1:17:34Yeah, you need throttling.
1:17:37It's a defense against denial of service.
1:17:39Yeah, you don't have any--
1:17:41I guess the problem is, because--
1:17:43You don't have state to be a counter for--
1:17:45Well, no, you can keep it in memory.
1:17:46I mean, whenever I've done a rate limiter in the application
1:17:50layer, I always do memcache, because it's quick, it's easy,
1:17:52it's lightweight, I know it's fast.
1:17:54And if you hit the application, it
1:17:57consists only of launching your-- getting your stack up
1:18:00to the controller level and you firing off a memcache read,
1:18:04or a memcache increment, rather.
1:18:05He doesn't need memcache, he's single process, though.
1:18:07Oh, yeah, he could just keep it in an array.
1:18:09Well, that's the thing though is that, well, there's two problems.
1:18:12One, I mean, I'd have to do this all by hand because this is a raw socket to the server
1:18:18by definition.
1:18:19That's what a web socket is.
1:18:21And shoot, what was the other one was I realized that double vote prevention was totally borked
1:18:27and it took me a few minutes to realize that all of the vote submissions were coming from
1:18:3410.x addresses, which can't be.
1:18:38Because you didn't get the X forwarded for, Heather.
1:18:40You're just trusting the--
1:18:42Exactly.
1:18:42This is like a mini web boot camp for you.
1:18:45It's like a little microcosm of how to make a web app.
1:18:47It's funny, because I've been so far abstracted from all
1:18:50of these things that you guys, I guess, have somehow or another
1:18:53had to worry about.
1:18:54But--
1:18:55Somehow or another by writing web apps, yes.
1:18:57No.
1:18:59It's just experience.
1:19:00It's just the same way you learned all the stuff
1:19:02you learned writing fast text that you didn't know before
1:19:04about how to write an iOS app.
1:19:05Well, there's a different set of things
1:19:07you need to know for web apps.
1:19:08They're just more fun when you're doing them publicly
1:19:10and there's antagonists in the chat room.
1:19:12- Right, see this can be a whole series,
1:19:13a graduate school for KCA and web apps.
1:19:15Just every week you'll try it, you'll try to put it up.
1:19:18And every week the chat room will educate you
1:19:20on something that you didn't account for
1:19:22or didn't do correctly.
1:19:24And then the next week you can fix that
1:19:26and you can get a new problem.
1:19:28- Well, and the thing is, like I write web apps for a living
1:19:30which at this point probably sounds like
1:19:32I make a terrible living.
1:19:33But the thing is, so much of it is abstracted
1:19:35so far away from me that I never have to worry about.
1:19:37- And it's also for intranets, right?
1:19:39- Not exclusively, but generally, yes.
1:19:42I've done some public-facing stuff.
1:19:44- But things that aren't a target,
1:19:46basically you survive because there's not people,
1:19:49now we have a podcast and it's a fun little game
1:19:51to target your thing.
1:19:52- It's fun for them.
1:19:53- Just think of how incredible your thing will be
1:19:57when forged in the crucible of people in the chat room.
1:20:00By the end of it, it'll just be completely hardened shell,
1:20:02unlike so many other crappy things
1:20:04where someone writes a little web app
1:20:05and puts it up on GitHub and says, "Here you go,"
1:20:07and then some poor sucker runs that
1:20:09and uses it for something really popular
1:20:11and then it falls under the load.
1:20:13Yours will be battle tested.
1:20:15- I guess. - Or dead.
1:20:16One of the other two, battle tested or dead.
1:20:17- Well, we're sitting here, standing here now, actually.
1:20:19I feel like just murdering it forever more,
1:20:22but that's very immature of me, so I will lick my wounds.
1:20:26I will put bandages on them,
1:20:28and I will take another stab sometime, maybe next week.
1:20:32I had to eliminate myself from the chat room for like half an hour though because not only
1:20:36was it distracting, but I wanted to murder all of them.
1:20:39You just need to, like for all these things, write like failing test cases for all of them.
1:20:43Write a little test for denial of service to test your throttling.
1:20:46Write a little test for duplicate voting to handle, you know, like do everything that
1:20:49is done to you, turn into a test case.
1:20:51And so that you'll know that your future changes don't regress and you know, blah blah blah.
1:20:56You're right.
1:20:57The thing that's frustrating about it is this is a bot to record votes for the chat room
1:21:03and suggestions and votes for the chat room to suggest titles.
1:21:07Why am I having to go through all this?
1:21:11Why can't we all just act like adults and behave?
1:21:15But oh no, not this crowd.
1:21:16I'm wondering what the heck could 20 people in a chat room do to bring down Node.js?
1:21:24I've seen the code.
1:21:25It's not that complicated.
1:21:27They're not bringing it down.
1:21:28They're just writing an infinite loop,
1:21:29and he's got no throttling, and it's denial of service, right?
1:21:32Well, I think what happens is at some point--
1:21:34actually, it might be when ints wrap around,
1:21:37like Brent was talking about way back when.
1:21:39But anyway--
1:21:40There is no way they're making enough requests
1:21:42to make a 53-bit integer wrap around in 20 minutes.
1:21:46Well, today, the issue was they were just incrementing the ID
1:21:49and trying to place a vote for every successive ID number.
1:21:54And eventually that did piss it off and make it fall down.
1:21:59- Do you know the, what the hell is the acronym?
1:22:02You know this acronym, is it OWASP?
1:22:04Yeah, it's the, they do,
1:22:05Open Web Application Security Project.
1:22:07OWASP has like a list of common vulnerabilities
1:22:12and web apps and they update the list every year.
1:22:13And you have hit several of them already.
1:22:16One of them is exposing your internal IDs
1:22:18to the outside world.
1:22:19I forget what it's called,
1:22:19but there's some snappy name for it.
1:22:21And that's the one where they let people
1:22:23increment a number to try to guess your IDs.
1:22:26- Well, that's the thing, but I mean, here again,
1:22:28like I conceptually know that many of these things
1:22:32could and probably would be problems,
1:22:35but I was perhaps obtuse or maybe just stubborn,
1:22:39but I didn't think that I would need to write
1:22:42like 10,000 lines of node to prevent the chat room
1:22:46from being a bunch of (mumbles)
1:22:47and as it turns out, I'm going to need to do that
1:22:50or just give up on it and we'll rely on Brad Schoetz,
1:22:52well, the Gray Winter/Brad Schoet setup.
1:22:55- There isn't a package in Node
1:22:57that's like a simple rate limiter and stuff like that?
1:23:00- Well, there is, but again,
1:23:01because I'm using WebSockets, it's not so simple.
1:23:03- Well, it's probably like a WebSockets wrapper library
1:23:05that has a rate limiting parameter that you can,
1:23:08when you set up the receiving end of your socket,
1:23:10you're not gonna do it on the sending end,
1:23:11it's all gonna be in the receiving end.
1:23:13- And that's the thing,
1:23:14is I'm gonna have to write my own rate limiting.
1:23:15I did a quick cursory search to see if there was anything,
1:23:19And I didn't see anything, but I did a 30-second search.
1:23:23So tomorrow or at some point when
1:23:24I'm less bitter about it all, then I'll
1:23:26have a proper think on it.
1:23:27Not that it matters for show bots or whatever,
1:23:29but realistically speaking, for the people who
1:23:31are actually web developers and are listening to this,
1:23:35this type of thing where a bunch of people
1:23:36are just intentionally attacking this app, you're like,
1:23:40oh, well, I'm glad the app that I'm doing
1:23:42doesn't have that problem.
1:23:45I mean, you may luck out there, but really what you're saying
1:23:48is my app is going to develop and add features
1:23:50and become important and essential to the people who
1:23:52are using it.
1:23:53And then some person is going to stumble across it and break it.
1:23:57Because it doesn't mean your application is not
1:23:59vulnerable to these or will never experience these.
1:24:01It just means that if it's not going to happen now,
1:24:06it's going to happen later.
1:24:07And later, it's going to be worse.
1:24:08Because you want this stuff-- if this stuff is ever
1:24:11going to happen in the lifetime of the app,
1:24:12you want it to happen early.
1:24:13Because if not, it happens when the app has been deployed
1:24:16for six months and the entire business relies on it and then some piece of
1:24:19malware or bot or whatever stumbles across your thing and wipes off the face
1:24:22of the earth and that's much bigger problem when your whole company now
1:24:25relies on this app or you have millions of customers or whatever you have then
1:24:28it would have been if during the early development of this app it had a bunch
1:24:33of jerks attacking it and and made you harden it again not really relevant to a
1:24:36show bot but I'm like it is relevant to people building a real app it's like
1:24:41don't stick your head in the sand because everybody gets hit by one of
1:24:44eventually. And if you don't, then you're either lucky or you never got popular enough
1:24:48to be noticed. But even if you're not popular, just this malware that scans and just, you know,
1:24:53fuzzes its way into everything. And so eventually every web app will be a victim.
1:24:57Yeah. And that's the thing is that I had thought, since this is a controlled audience,
1:25:02which I had assumed were all well behaved, I didn't think I needed to do a lot of the things
1:25:07that I would have otherwise done in my real world, in my job world.
1:25:12And I just took a lot of shortcuts because I thought, "Eh, well, we're all friends here.
1:25:17It'll be okay." Apparently not.
1:25:18And by the way, I owe an apology to, I think it's Adam Kearney, who has already,
1:25:23actually quite a while ago, put up a pull request on GitHub because
1:25:28Accidental Bot is on there, put up a pull request to fix an unrelated
1:25:33small issue that we discovered during the show about not refusing titles that are too long.
1:25:39And that is the appropriate way to behave. Not if you're gonna break it, that's fine,
1:25:42but throw me a pull request, man.
1:25:44- Did he submit the source code change as a very long title?
1:25:47- No, but that would be funny.
1:25:49- That would be the best way to do it. But there's no persistence, so you would never see it.
1:25:53- And that's on the list is I'll probably have to set up like some
1:25:58like NoSQL database or something just to stuff this in there.
1:26:02- It's pronounced nos-key-well Casey.
1:26:03- Whatever, just because, well actually in a perfect world
1:26:07I would never need it because the darn thing
1:26:09will never crash, but oh well, that's right.
1:26:12- I'm still, how did this take down a Node instance?
1:26:17This is either the worst ad in the world
1:26:20for Heroku small instances, or the worst ad
1:26:23in the world for Node.
1:26:24- Or my code, but to be honest, like you said,
1:26:27this code is pretty straightforward.
1:26:29I mean, I don't know.
1:26:31I really don't because I've, I've survived a couple of, uh, a couple of
1:26:35links from your site, which, which through.
1:26:37As far as I could tell some pretty serious traffic.
1:26:40We talked about that in the past and, and Heroku, like I said, in the past
1:26:43reached out to me and said, oh yeah, that was nothing like you, your, your
1:26:46Dino was good to go cruising at.
1:26:48Like, I think what they said, it was like under a third CPU usage, bandwidth
1:26:52usage or throughput, et cetera.
1:26:54So I, I don't know if it's my code, if it's the fact that it's web sockets,
1:26:59Something is weird.
1:27:00- Is it maybe, is there like a connection limit
1:27:02on the WebSockets layer somewhere?
1:27:04- I mean, it could be, I'm not aware of one,
1:27:06but it certainly could be.
1:27:06I mean, there's only so many port numbers,
1:27:09but I can't imagine that's the issue.
1:27:11- Well, it could be, you should guard against that.
1:27:13(laughs)
1:27:14- Yeah, whatever, so yeah, so.
1:27:17- Let's look at titles in the show about that works.
1:27:19(laughs)
1:27:20- Man, you guys have been mean today.