0:00:00They introduced the iMac. It was on a pedestal. The G4 Cube came up from the floor.
0:00:05Phil Scheller had to jump onto an airbag. That's real power.
0:00:09So, we got some email from an Apple store genius.
0:00:15Yeah, last week we were talking about iCloud and who buys more storage for iCloud, and
0:00:21I think I said that I imagined that people would go in, not knowing what this error message
0:00:26on their phone means, saying "It says something about iCloud, blah blah blah, fix it, Mr.
0:00:31Genius person at the bar."
0:00:33And what I assumed they would do is say, you know, the genius would tell them, "Oh, it's
0:00:38iCloud we only give you a certain amount of storage for free, you've run out of that,
0:00:40if you want more you have to pay blah blah blah, and the customer would be pissed and
0:00:43they would say I don't want to pay more money for this stupid thing or whatever, but I figured
0:00:46they would eventually just pay because they just want to keep using their phone the way
0:00:49they used to use it.
0:00:51And then at the end of that I joke that it said oh I guess they could just turn back
0:00:54off stuff entirely if they think nothing will ever happen to their phone.
0:00:57Well according to this Apple store genius who's been there for two years, people do
0:01:01come in with the message that they don't understand what it means, it says not enough storage,
0:01:05And he says, "The customer's first reaction is not to pay for something they don't understand.
0:01:09They just turn iCloud backup off and never think about it again."
0:01:12So there you go.
0:01:13Oh, God, that's so painful, but that's extremely believable.
0:01:18The other thing is, "Or they don't understand how to turn the prompt off and will just hit
0:01:20OK every morning when an iCloud backup was attempted."
0:01:23So that's their new way they use the phone.
0:01:25It's like, every morning there's this dialog box, then I hit OK and it goes away.
0:01:28It doesn't bother me until the next few days.
0:01:30And he says, "There are very few people who have actually paid for iCloud storage.
0:01:33In recent memory, the only people I can think of that bought it are people that assume iCloud
0:01:36storage will increase with the size of the phone's storage capacity.
0:01:41We talked about that before, like how ideally, you know, whatever they're going to do with
0:01:46iCloud storage, it would match the size of the total sum size of the devices you have.
0:01:51So whether that's free or whether it's a fee or whatever, it seems like as you buy more
0:01:55devices, your storage should expand.
0:01:56Apple should somehow build that into the price of the devices or build that into the price
0:01:59of iCloud, but they don't.
0:02:00They give you its freemium.
0:02:02They learned it from the App Store.
0:02:03They give you a little bit for free,
0:02:06and then you inevitably reach the limit,
0:02:08and you get some sad thinking of people going,
0:02:10oh, I know how to fix this.
0:02:10I'll just turn iCloud backups off.
0:02:12Done and done.
0:02:13- If the problem is I get this box every morning
0:02:15that's annoying, it does fix the problem, in quotes.
0:02:18You know, I don't know.
0:02:20I think this, you know, the more we hear about
0:02:24these stories of how regular people hit these walls
0:02:27on their iOS devices of this photo storage wall
0:02:31like what to do once you've hit that wall.
0:02:34It's just so sad.
0:02:36Really, it's tragic how many people lose their photos
0:02:41that they've taken.
0:02:42And you know, keep in mind, a lot of people,
0:02:44their phone is their primary or only camera.
0:02:47And you know, they could be taking like the only pictures
0:02:48they have of their kid.
0:02:50You know, and look, actually I know somebody
0:02:52who this happened to.
0:02:53So, you know, these problems really are affecting
0:02:57a lot of people in very big ways.
0:02:59And I have to imagine, you know, what we have now with iCloud photo backup, this can't be
0:03:07like it. Like this can't be the solution to this problem, period. Apple really has to
0:03:12address this in a more serious way. And you know, we've talked so much in the past, I
0:03:17don't want to go over it too much, we've talked so much in the past about the challenges of
0:03:20things like upstream bandwidth and uploading all your photos and especially what the heck
0:03:24you do with videos that gain space on the device way faster than most people could upload
0:03:30them to a web service. But I think there's such a huge gap between the ideal of backing
0:03:37up everything and where we are now of backing up kind of partially some things that are
0:03:43very confusing. I think there's a lot of middle ground between those two that we can still
0:03:47achieve today, you know, that Apple could still achieve today if they wanted to. And
0:03:51It just seems like either they can't get their act together on that yet or it's not a priority
0:03:55enough.
0:03:56Yeah, and I actually have some sort of related follow-up.
0:03:59So last episode, I lamented the fact that I had what I thought was multiple gigabytes
0:04:05of messages data on my iPhone, and it was so much that it was preventing iCloud from
0:04:11backing up my iPhone because I was running out of space and I hadn't paid for any extra,
0:04:15et cetera, et cetera.
0:04:16So I don't remember if I had hard facts at the time we recorded, but I can tell you I'm
0:04:19I'm looking at my iPhone right now, and I have three and a half gigabytes of messages
0:04:24data as per the settings than I believe it's general than usage, yeah, general than usage.
0:04:31And so I concluded that I really need to get this off of my phone, and as much as I love
0:04:36my animated GIFs, I can find them elsewhere.
0:04:39And so tonight I paid $35 for iExplorer, which used to be known as iPhone Explorer, and I'm
0:04:45sure someone will write and tell me, "No, you idiot, you should have done it this way,
0:04:48Here's the secret hack to get to these things, but nevertheless I paid for this app, and it will let me extract
0:04:55SMSes from an unencrypted iTunes backup, so I had to do an unencrypted iTunes backup well anyways
0:05:01It will do many things it will save PDFs of your iTunes of your messages. It'll save
0:05:07CSVs and it'll also save
0:05:10text files and I
0:05:13exported just
0:05:15My conversations with Aaron my wife and as a PDF which does like the little chat bubbles and everything it was
0:05:21217 megs as a CSV file where it's nothing but text it was still two megs of messages
0:05:28and that's because I haven't deleted any to my recollection since I got my
0:05:313gs in what either 2008 or 2010 I always get that wrong so anyway
0:05:36so the point is there I had a lot of messages on my phone, and I don't view this as
0:05:41something abnormal and and this is something that I feel like a lot of regular people do and and I'm really
0:05:49I'm surprised that Apple hasn't found a better way to handle this and it makes sense because
0:05:55In Apple's perspective it stands to reason they wouldn't have to handle this because maybe normal people do delete their messages
0:06:02But I would assume that not all normal people do and certainly I think of myself as slightly normal and I didn't
0:06:07So this is kind of a bummer and and hopefully after the show
0:06:11I'll be able to go through and delete all of these text messages and
0:06:15all of the animated gifs and emojis that are associated with them and
0:06:19Hopefully reclaim all that three and a half gigs and then be able to use iCloud for backups again
0:06:24So I guess you don't need this new
0:06:26romantic matic application
0:06:28Do you know about this? No
0:06:31Someone made an application. I think I think it was Greg Noss or somebody I know from the incomparable
0:06:36Oh, is this the thing that pings you?
0:06:38Reminds you to send the nice text messages to your significant other.
0:06:41It seems like you're all set in that regard.
0:06:44Oh, that could have been a fast text feature.
0:06:46It could have been.
0:06:47He doesn't need it, obviously.
0:06:49Clearly not.
0:06:50Which, by the way, I have a new icon for fast text.
0:06:53My internet friend, Jacob Swydek, has been working with me.
0:06:57That poor guy.
0:06:58And I have a new icon.
0:07:00I haven't quite finished the update to fast text,
0:07:03but I don't need to hear any more complaining from John and Marco about the icons soon.
0:07:07I'm going to complain if the new one doesn't have feet.
0:07:10Doesn't have feet.
0:07:11No!
0:07:11I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
0:07:14But the icon is so much better. Oh my goodness, it's so much better.
0:07:17No feet, no sale.
0:07:19Going back, I said to the photo thing, and the messages thing too. It's one of those problems
0:07:29where iOS has this kind of idealized picture of conditions of usage. And this has been
0:07:38a problem with a lot of Apple software, you know, the iPhoto storage and organization
0:07:43methods, iTunes, etc. There's these idealized situations that I guess the designers at Apple
0:07:51figure this is how people use this thing. And they try to hide the complexity of dealing
0:07:57with computers and the reality of computers. And when you get to something like the photo
0:08:02storage and backup issues on iOS, and even things like messages taking up a ton of space,
0:08:10I think the big problem is that you're hitting these places where it's, to use a Joel on
0:08:15Software term, it's a leaky abstraction. Like, you can't hide the realities of computing
0:08:21devices have limited storage space, and photos and videos shot by good cameras are huge,
0:08:27and upstream bandwidth in most places is not great, and oftentimes not free for very long.
0:08:34And there's all these kind of inconvenient truths in the reality of using these computing
0:08:39systems that iOS either ignores or buries so deeply that people do have to deal with
0:08:48the problem of storage space. That's a reasonable thing to expect somebody using a computer
0:08:53device to do is like, well, you have this much space and you're trying to store more
0:08:58stuff than it holds, so you've got to make some decisions here. And iOS really makes
0:09:02that hard. You know, Merlin talked about this a lot too. It makes it very hard to know where
0:09:07the storage is being used. It's very hard to control that, to delete things intelligently,
0:09:13to make space intelligently, to know what's being backed up somewhere and what isn't.
0:09:18You know, a lot of the blame for this lays on the design of iOS for trying to pretend
0:09:24like these realities don't exist, when in fact they're extremely common.
0:09:28iOS loves to do the thing where, like the usage screen where I spend a lot of my time
0:09:32because I always buy 32 gig iOS devices and I can barely fit my stuff on them. So I'm
0:09:37always right up against the storage limit because of like movies for the kids and other
0:09:40random things that I put on there. You know, video always pushes me over the edge. So I
0:09:43So I spend a lot of time on the usage screen looking at that stupid scrolling list and
0:09:46expanding it and seeing it.
0:09:47And the solution to your out of room is look at that big list, find the application that's
0:09:55like that's big that you don't think that you need or whatever and delete the entire
0:09:58application because you're like, "Well, can't I just delete a couple of the things in that
0:10:03application?"
0:10:04In some cases you can, like video you can delete individual videos from the video application.
0:10:06But in other cases, applications are not designed to say, "Hey, I'm Application Foo and here's
0:10:11all the list of the data that I'm storing and you want, I can purge my caches, I can
0:10:15delete these old things that you haven't seen in a while. I can, you know, just some way
0:10:19to manage the data in the application. The only solution is, you know, hold down, go
0:10:23into wiggle mode, hit the little X, nuke the whole application. I mean, I recently had
0:10:27to do that with Instapaper because I was up to like 1.2 gigs. Instapaper was 1.2 gigs.
0:10:32Instapaper doesn't have any way like within it to like trim its data or whatever. I could
0:10:36have gone through the individual things and deleted them off or whatever. The easiest
0:10:40thing for me to do, because luckily Instapaper has a server-side component, was to delete
0:10:44the whole app and then reinstall it. And there was basically no loss in functionality, but
0:10:48whatever the hell Instapaper was keeping around was gone, and then Instapaper shrunk back
0:10:51down to its normal size. And I'm sure it's slowly growing back up as I go. I mean, that's
0:10:55an extreme case or whatever, but same thing with the SMS thing. You could have gone through
0:10:59the SMS app and deleted individual messages if you wanted, but nobody, after a certain
0:11:03- once you hit that limit with SMS, I know so many people have hit this limit in iOS,
0:11:07No one's going to go back and delete individual messages.
0:11:10And there's nothing in the messages application
0:11:12that says delete messages older than x,
0:11:14delete messages from, you know, do something complicated.
0:11:18Do like a search query, find all those, delete.
0:11:20Like there's not a lot of good solutions
0:11:21and you can't delete the messages application
0:11:23as far as I know.
0:11:24So iOS tries to simplify things,
0:11:26but then it ends up chunking it
0:11:27into these big immutable blobs of data.
0:11:30And people are forced to make choices like,
0:11:32should I delete this entire application?
0:11:34I guess it's my only choice.
0:11:35I mean, and some people, maybe they don't even know
0:11:37that you can go into the video
0:11:38and delete individual videos, but yeah,
0:11:41it's a difficult situation.
0:11:42It will kind of be better if,
0:11:44when Apple does a storage shift,
0:11:47because I think most people can get away
0:11:49with like a 64 gig device and be pretty sloppy,
0:11:52but lots of people are buying 16s,
0:11:53and that's just not enough for anybody to use
0:11:55for more than like a year and not run out of room.
0:11:58- Well, in either way, if you have the 16 gig device,
0:12:01and if you have 16 gigs of legitimate data on it,
0:12:04that's not gonna get backed up to iCloud
0:12:06unless you pony up some money.
0:12:07And this is where, like you guys had mentioned earlier
0:12:10in Bradley Chambers,
0:12:10I think was the first place I've seen this,
0:12:12said, well, the amount of iCloud backup you have
0:12:15should be the cumulative size of all of your devices
0:12:19associated with that account.
0:12:20So if you have a 32 gig phone and a 32 gig iPad,
0:12:24then as far as we're concerned,
0:12:26the size of the, your iCloud allotment should be 64 gigs,
0:12:32which is a lot more than five obviously.
0:12:35Even then though, like, I mean obviously we're not talking about, you know, desktop size
0:12:39backup sets, but even that might hit problems with upstream limits.
0:12:43Yeah, very much so. But I mean at least it's a step, it's an improvement.
0:12:48True, yeah, definitely.
0:12:50All right, we are sponsored this week. Our first sponsor is lynda.com. L-Y-N-D-A dot
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0:15:59- So, we talked a lot about Google last episode
0:16:03and buying Nest and so on and so forth,
0:16:05and we've had at least a couple of people write in
0:16:08and actually have some really interesting feedback
0:16:11about that, but John, I believe it was you
0:16:13that added something in particular?
0:16:15- Yeah, I just wanted to note this one thing
0:16:17that, not to go into too much depth,
0:16:19but we were talking about why they buy Nest.
0:16:20Is it because they want to get into consumer products,
0:16:22because they want more information, blah, blah, blah.
0:16:24And Troy Diamond wrote in to mention one specific product
0:16:28that is actually directly connected to what Nest does,
0:16:30which doesn't necessarily mean that it has anything to do
0:16:32with why they bought Nest,
0:16:33but it's an interesting coincidence.
0:16:36There's this Genie project that they were doing.
0:16:38It's about creating like a smart building
0:16:41for sustainable construction
0:16:43and environmentally friendly buildings and stuff like that.
0:16:46And this was part another one of their pie in the sky things that Google does like self-driving cars or whatever
0:16:52And apparently they spun it off into another company
0:16:56So I don't know how much bearing this has a nest but it just goes to show that the type of things that nest is
0:17:01Doing albeit on a very small scale using technology to make things that we all have that we've you know
0:17:07We don't question like our thermostats or smoke detectors or whatever more intelligent to try to make for more efficient building
0:17:13Google's already gone down that road
0:17:15partially with this project.
0:17:17I should put this link in the show
0:17:18once people want to know more.
0:17:19Again, I don't think this has much to do with Nest at all,
0:17:21but it just goes to show the similarity of thinking.
0:17:24Nest is not too far from something
0:17:25that Google might have done, although the way Google does it
0:17:27is to do some crazy far-reaching sci-fi thing
0:17:31and then just lose interest and spin it off.
0:17:33But Nest actually focuses on one small area
0:17:35and ships a product that people might want to buy.
0:17:37So I think this might turn into the John Syracuse show,
0:17:41which will probably make a lot of people,
0:17:43including me, very happy.
0:17:45I hear that there's some things going on with TiVo that happened right before we recorded
0:17:50and were recording on Wednesday night.
0:17:52Yeah, so this is late breaking, so there's not much info right before I was going in
0:17:59to set up my computer to record.
0:18:01Someone tweeted some link to a Wired story that TiVo had laid off most of its hardware
0:18:08design teams, supposedly, and that they're getting out of the hardware business, which
0:18:12really annoys me mostly because I don't want to buy the new TiVo that came out. Like when it came
0:18:17out people are like "oh aren't you gonna get this new TiVo it's supposedly faster" so on and so forth
0:18:21and I read all the reviews and I said "no just wait for the next one" right? Well doesn't maybe
0:18:25there won't be a next one. It's a confusing article where it says they laid off five people
0:18:29and that was most of their hardware design team. I mean I guess that would explain some things but
0:18:33I don't know it's still too early to know if this is like a a rumor gone bad and they just did some
0:18:38some sort of reshuffling or whatever,
0:18:40but it seems like TiVo wants to get into the business
0:18:43of supplying software to other people who make set-top boxes
0:18:46and doing server-side DVRs like the AT&T U-verse thing,
0:18:51rather than selling you a box with a hard drive
0:18:53and a CPU that you put in your home.
0:18:54And I kind of like the box with the hard drive
0:18:56and a CPU that you put in your home.
0:18:58So as I tweeted, does this mean now I have to get
0:19:02one of these TiVos because like my television,
0:19:06it's like, well, it's the last one they're making
0:19:07when it goes away, who knows what you'll be able to buy?
0:19:10I don't know.
0:19:11I just priced one out, and even with a discount code
0:19:14that you get for filling out their stupid monthly survey
0:19:16things, it's still like $900 something
0:19:20dollars for me to get the big Honk and Tebow that I
0:19:23want with lifetime service.
0:19:24Wait, what?
0:19:26Are you serious?
0:19:27Half of that is the service cost.
0:19:29So the box itself is $500 or less
0:19:32for the big one that holds like 450 hours of HD content
0:19:35with six tuners.
0:19:37This is what we're talking about here.
0:19:38This is the big guns.
0:19:39I don't shop down at the low end of the range.
0:19:41And then double that price for the service contract.
0:19:46And the service contract is basically paying for them to send you program information for
0:19:51the life of the device.
0:19:52You could pay like $12 a month if you want to do it month by month, or you can pay some
0:19:56big amount of money and get lifetime.
0:19:58And I usually get lifetime because I keep my TiVo boxes for years.
0:20:01I slowly rotate them and retire them out.
0:20:03But most of the time, the lifetime thing more than pays for itself because I retire the
0:20:06TiVo after 3, 4, or 5 years and it's, you know, at $12 a month doesn't take too many
0:20:11years to equal like $100, $200 or whatever it used to be for lifetime.
0:20:14But they keep bringing the prices up and I don't want to pay month to month so I always
0:20:18look at the lifetime thing.
0:20:19But my current lifetime on my TiVo Premier is not close to being paid for.
0:20:23I forget what I paid for that lifetime thing.
0:20:25But that's another reason I didn't buy the new Romeo DVR when it came out, even though
0:20:30it does look like it's faster and nicer than mine.
0:20:32Some of the menus still were in HD and I said, "Oh, I'll just wait for the next one.
0:20:35I'm still in the middle of my lifetime in this, I don't need a new TiVo, my current
0:20:39TiVo is fine, such as it is.
0:20:42But now that they're getting out of this business, now I have to play that stupid game where
0:20:46I wait and see if I can get one of these when they become cheap or maybe they'll never become
0:20:49cheap and they'll just disappear.
0:20:51I don't know.
0:20:52I'm kind of sad about it though.
0:20:54So everything you like is disappearing from under you.
0:20:57I'm surprised there's a new Mac Pro.
0:20:59Well...
0:21:00Sort of.
0:21:01Yeah.
0:21:02It's not that like, the TV thing is just like a fluke kind of where, because there will be better
0:21:08TVs eventually, like OLEDs will eventually become cheaper and they'll be way better than what I have
0:21:11now, but it's just, you know, that we're in a lull period where the thing that I want is going away
0:21:18and something better will come and replace it, but I don't know when that will be. But the television
0:21:24I was, you know, it was a clear choice because my old TV, like you could buy almost any modern TV
0:21:29and it would be better than my old one, just because technology had moved on in four years
0:21:33for Plasmas.
0:21:34But for TiVo, my current one is still pretty darn good.
0:21:38It's very reliable.
0:21:39Four tuners, I don't need six tuners.
0:21:41Four tuners is enough.
0:21:42The only reason I would get the new one is because the UI is faster, and that's the thing
0:21:45that drives me crazy about my current one, that and the stupid ads.
0:21:50So I don't know.
0:21:51I haven't decided what I'm going to do, but I'm sad that they're apparently getting out
0:21:55of the hard...
0:21:56Like, I still think there's a market for this product.
0:21:58What it does is amazing.
0:21:59People who I know who have never had TiVo and they happen to buy one, like Scott McEltee
0:22:03from The Incomparable had never had a TiVo I think and he bought one recently and he's
0:22:06just amazed by it.
0:22:07He's like, "Wow, this is great."
0:22:08I'm like, "Yes, I could not watch television without TiVo.
0:22:13I would never want to use a cable company's DVR.
0:22:15I would never want to not have a DVR.
0:22:17This is how I want to do it.
0:22:19It's just that this hardware could be so much better.
0:22:21It just needs a little bit of finesse and know-how applied to it to make the CPUs faster,
0:22:26make everything about it better, improve the software.
0:22:30It's so close and it's so much better than everything else, but to see them bail on the
0:22:35business and just decide they're going to get in bed with the cable companies and just
0:22:38supply software.
0:22:39I don't know where their expertise lies.
0:22:42Are they great at making hardware?
0:22:44No, not really.
0:22:45Are they great at making software?
0:22:46No, not really.
0:22:47The combination is something that didn't exist before.
0:22:48The box that you could have in your house is kind of like transport.
0:22:50A box in your house with the hard drive, with stuff on it, no cloud stuff needed.
0:22:55program information you can come down and it's got a lot of features now like
0:22:58the iOS apps aren't that bad. You can control your TiVo from the other side of
0:23:02the country with your phone or your iPad. You could stream to your
0:23:06iPad from your house and what there's all sorts of things you can do with the
0:23:09hardware that they have. They finally started to kind of get some useful
0:23:12features under them. It's just that the hardware was not great and their
0:23:16software was a little bit creaky. I don't know. I'm sad.
0:23:21Well, if that makes you sad, what do you think of the Nintendo stuff?
0:23:26Oh, you're evil.
0:23:28That actually makes me less sad, yes.
0:23:30That's the next thing I'll say.
0:23:31But before we leave this topic, I want to ask you guys, do either one of you guys have
0:23:33a TiVo?
0:23:34No, I have Verizon's DVR that comes—well, I shouldn't say "comes" with your cable
0:23:41service, but just a year ago, Aaron and I finally decided that I think $10 or $15 a
0:23:48month was worth it for DVR.
0:23:49So everyone else on the planet had had a DVR for easily five years and we just got one,
0:23:56like I said, around a year ago.
0:23:58And I really like it, but I feel like I could live without it and I don't find it to be,
0:24:04I find it to be sufficient because I've never really used a Tebow.
0:24:08All I needed to do is record the shows I want and play the show I want when I ask it to
0:24:12play it.
0:24:13I guess maybe I'm ignorant, but I don't see why you need anything more than that.
0:24:18And my menus, if memory serves, are in HD.
0:24:22How much programming can you fit on your...
0:24:25Oh, I don't have the faintest idea.
0:24:26We don't watch enough TV to ever get that close.
0:24:30To me, I always avoided this stuff.
0:24:32I had a DVR box from the cable company for a few years, and then I was one of those people
0:24:41who cut cable.
0:24:43And that was a while ago.
0:24:44I mean, that was in like 2007, 2008 maybe?
0:24:48So it was a while ago.
0:24:50And to me, one of the reasons I did that is because,
0:24:54like as a nerd, looking at DVRs,
0:24:57it's just such a terrible hack.
0:24:59And it's hacks on top of hacks on top of hacks.
0:25:02Mixing in TiVo is even more hacky,
0:25:04'cause then you have to deal with your cable company's crap
0:25:06and it's like, it's layers upon layers of fragile,
0:25:09hacky things that can and often do fail or break.
0:25:12And I would rather just put the same amount of money
0:25:17really or less, what ends up being less most of the time, into Netflix and iTunes purchases.
0:25:24And it works for us because the shows we watch are available that way and the money works
0:25:29out where we don't watch so many shows where that would be prohibitively expensive. It
0:25:35doesn't work for everybody, of course. If you like live sports and stuff like that,
0:25:39it's not going to work. But for us, it works very well. And so to me, that's a much more
0:25:44elegant solution if you can fit within it,
0:25:47'cause then you don't have to fast forward
0:25:48through commercials, you don't have to worry about
0:25:49what if the thing missed the start time by five minutes
0:25:52'cause something changed at the last second.
0:25:54All that crazy stuff you have to deal with with DVR,
0:25:56storage space, I mean, all that crazy stuff,
0:25:59I prefer to just do the 80% solution of,
0:26:03I can get 80% of what we want in this far better way
0:26:08that's usually cheaper and has all these other advantages,
0:26:11like for example, no commercials ever.
0:26:12all these other advantages.
0:26:14It's just, to me, that's a much more elegant future.
0:26:16And so the idea of buying a really decked out DVR for me
0:26:21seems like investing in the wrong future.
0:26:25But again, it's only because my consumption habits
0:26:28fit within the way I've chosen to do things.
0:26:30There are some advantages, even if you're not a heavy TV
0:26:32watcher.
0:26:33If you're a heavy TV watcher, like I am and my whole family
0:26:36is, then you can't use a cable company to provide DVR
0:26:39because they don't have enough storage space.
0:26:41My thing has, I think it has like a three terabyte drive in there and we fill it constantly.
0:26:45We're deleting stuff to make room for things.
0:26:47So we fill the thing up because it's just four people's worth of programming in there.
0:26:51Actually we have another two terabytes upstairs and we use the superset of that storage.
0:26:57So if you're a heavy TV viewer, it's obvious that you can't get by with any other solution.
0:27:03And if you're a heavy TV viewer, that also means you're not content to wait until they
0:27:06show up on iTunes.
0:27:07It's not even the money thing.
0:27:08It's just like, can I watch it right now?
0:27:09It's on right now.
0:27:10I watch it right now or have one you're just torrented isn't available although
0:27:13I have a good deal with the torrenting and stuff like that
0:27:15It's like this this is the the solution that gets you the programming you want
0:27:19When you want it more or less
0:27:22And if you don't care about that then yeah, there's solutions better
0:27:25But I would say even
0:27:25Even if you're not a heavy TV watcher and even if you don't care about a little bit delay the main feature that I think
0:27:30Of all these DVRs in the age of cable card is they make it so you don't have to have a cable box if you think
0:27:35You want to have cable for whatever reason I can't imagine having a cable box
0:27:39I've never had a cable box.
0:27:41I've never had a cable box in any house that I-- let me see,
0:27:44maybe in the apartment?
0:27:45I don't think in any house that I've owned.
0:27:47I've had a cable box at all.
0:27:48When before, maybe before or around the time
0:27:51my first child was born, we said, OK, we're
0:27:53not going to have time to watch our TV shows the way
0:27:55we normally have.
0:27:56Because once you have a kid, you can't be like, oh, it's
0:27:578 o'clock.
0:27:58Let's go sit down and watch the TV.
0:27:59Because that doesn't work anymore.
0:28:01And that's when I sort of said my goodbyes to live TV.
0:28:04It's like saying your goodbyes to the light
0:28:06when you become a vampire.
0:28:07When I got my first TiVo like nine, ten years ago, that was it.
0:28:10I said goodbye to live television.
0:28:12I will never watch live television again.
0:28:14I will never see a commercial again that I don't skip through with a 30-second skip
0:28:16button.
0:28:17Live television is dead to me.
0:28:19Flipping through channels is dead to me.
0:28:21All that, totally gone.
0:28:22From that point on, for like the past decade of my life, television is like, go in front
0:28:26of my television, turn it on, go to some box that's connected to it and select what I want
0:28:30to watch from it.
0:28:31And it just so happens that TiVo is filled with all the programming that I want to record.
0:28:37in sort of real time. And even when we watch "live television" we always wait for the commercials
0:28:41to queue up. We don't start watching our 8 o'clock programs until 8.30 because we know
0:28:45we'll never have to see a commercial that way. You don't have to do it with HBO shows,
0:28:48we can watch them in real time because they have no commercials. So I just think it's
0:28:51a more civilized way to watch television because cable boxes, DVRs or no, cable boxes are disgusting.
0:28:57Just terrible black boxes with those big red LEDs on them and the horrible remotes they
0:29:02give you. I never want one of those things in my house at all. And this is like, you
0:29:05You can buy your own box, get this little cable car,
0:29:07put it in there, and get FiOS or something in the basement,
0:29:10run the coax up there.
0:29:12It's the same reason I don't use
0:29:13the cable company's router.
0:29:14I don't want their box, I don't want their router,
0:29:16I don't want anything in the house.
0:29:18So for that reason alone, I think if you subscribe to cable,
0:29:21it is better to have one of the smaller TiVo DVRs
0:29:26than to take their cable box.
0:29:28But if you don't want cable,
0:29:29then yeah, the TiVo's not doing anything for you.
0:29:32And if you can get by with the, I think even Casey,
0:29:34Depending on how much you use your Verizon DVR thing, you would probably like a TiVo
0:29:40better but probably not to be worth the amount of money that it costs.
0:29:43Although how much do you pay per month for that DVR thing?
0:29:46I think it's about $15.
0:29:47And I don't debate that a TiVo is surely better in every measurable way.
0:29:52And probably a bunch of immeasurable ones as well.
0:29:55But to me, having never had a DVR before, I'm just excited that I have a thing, a machine
0:30:02if you will, that will record the television shows that we do watch without me having to
0:30:07intervene. And to your point a moment ago, I used the Verizon piece of crap Action Tech
0:30:13router that I was given when we moved into the house in 2008. And I haven't...
0:30:18It's some kind of intervention.
0:30:20Probably. But it hasn't caused me any issues. Now for Wi-Fi, I use a slightly old airport
0:30:29extreme so really the only thing that this router is doing is getting internet to my
0:30:35set top boxes and getting internet to my airport extreme.
0:30:39And for that, it's fine.
0:30:43And again, I completely understand and agree that not having to use the Verizon router
0:30:48would probably be better and not having to use the Verizon DVR would probably be better
0:30:52but it serves my needs just fine and so I don't have any compelling reason to upgrade
0:30:57that I'm aware of.
0:30:5815 dollars a month though, that adds up.
0:31:01You should wait until they have a fire sale in the last Tivo Romeos and get one of the
0:31:04small ones and just try it.
0:31:05I think cost-wise it may end up being cheaper and it will be a nicer experience.
0:31:11Probably.
0:31:12And the chat room is saying, "Oh well, you're renting that equipment."
0:31:15I'm absolutely renting the DVR.
0:31:18I don't recall if I'm renting the router.
0:31:21It stands to reason I am.
0:31:24But again, for me it's sufficient and I mean our Verizon bill is somewhere around
0:31:30$150, $160 for the baller but not obscene internet.
0:31:36So not quite Marco level but really good internet and reasonable cable.
0:31:42We have HD service of course but we don't get any like Cinemax or HBO or anything like
0:31:47that and we even have a home telephone for a reason I haven't quite figured out yet.
0:31:51And for that it's about $150.
0:31:53And I actually, I love my Fios.
0:31:55I would be devastated if we ever moved to a place
0:32:00that didn't have Verizon Fios.
0:32:01So, I mean, I don't think that that's a terrible deal,
0:32:04but I don't know, maybe I'm missing out.
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0:34:14All right, so we never actually got to Nintendo, right?
0:34:16Or am I crazy?
0:34:17No, we didn't.
0:34:18I'm delighted.
0:34:18OK.
0:34:19OK.
0:34:19Are they dead yet?
0:34:20Oh.
0:34:21Yeah, it's going to be a while.
0:34:24Yeah, so they announced their financials,
0:34:26or their expected financials or projections.
0:34:29And they are forecasting a $240 million annual loss,
0:34:33because the Wii U is not selling.
0:34:35And they're cutting their forecast
0:34:36on how many Wii U's they think they're going to sell.
0:34:39They previously had saying they were going to sell 9 million, and now they're saying
0:34:42they're going to sell 2.8 million.
0:34:44And even Wii U games, they cut that from saying they were going to sell 38 million Wii U games,
0:34:49saying they were going to sell 19 million.
0:34:52So you know, everyone knows that Wii U is not selling.
0:34:55Nintendo has not done anything to make it sell any better.
0:34:593DS is doing okay.
0:35:01Not great, not terrible.
0:35:02It was actually the best-selling console of all of 2013, which is not that impressive
0:35:06because what did it compete with in 2013?
0:35:09A bunch of old consoles that were on their way out the door,
0:35:11but it was also the best-selling console in December,
0:35:14which is kind of impressive because in December
0:35:15the new consoles were just coming out
0:35:17and you think they sold like a million dollars
0:35:19in the million units in the first day or whatever.
0:35:21So I mean, compared to the DS numbers, 3DS isn't big,
0:35:25but compared to how dedicated gaming devices are selling now
0:35:283DS is doing pretty well for itself.
0:35:30Wow, someone, real-time follow-up in the chat room,
0:35:34someone, TiVo refutes the rumors and said hardware
0:35:36a core component of its business." Okay, well, I'll read that link later to see.
0:35:39Like, you know, I read that when somebody posted it earlier, and the actual response from the
0:35:46TiVo person, it kind of... Double speak.
0:35:50It basically sounds like they're trying not to scare people away from buying the Romeos.
0:35:56So it's basically saying, like, "We're going to keep supporting the Romeo." But it doesn't...
0:36:00It's a lot of double speak that basically sounds like, "We're going to keep supporting that,
0:36:04but don't expect much else because we're focusing on cloud. Yeah, that's kind of like when Panasonic
0:36:10was getting out of the plasma business for like a year leading up to that, there was like there'd
0:36:15be a story saying, "Oh, Panasonic is getting out of the plasma business." Panasonic would issue some
0:36:19statement that neither confirms nor denies, but kind of tries to tell you, "No, it's okay. You
0:36:23should buy our existing TVs because we have inventory to clear," but never officially saying,
0:36:27"We're getting out of the business," until like the whole year is up and then Panasonic then
0:36:30finally officially says, "Yes, it's true. We're getting out of... So where there's smoke,
0:36:33this fire but we'll continue with that. I'll look at that story after the show. That's
0:36:38why I prefaced it with saying I just saw this link just before we came in. Who knows how
0:36:41accurate it is. It's kind of fuzzy information but the signs don't look good. But anyway,
0:36:46Nintendo, I don't think there's any news here. Like we all knew that the Wii U wasn't selling
0:36:50that well. I guess they could have sold gangbusters in December but even if it did, I mean the
0:36:57PS4 and Xbox One sold pretty well in December. Like they're coming out of the gate strong
0:37:03and they got outsold by the 3DS.
0:37:06And what I've always said about Nintendo,
0:37:08and this is the time of year when people
0:37:10are gonna keep posting more stories about it,
0:37:11what Nintendo should or shouldn't do or whatever,
0:37:14is that as long as there's a market
0:37:16for dedicated gaming devices, Nintendo can,
0:37:19Nintendo has a way to thrive and to be successful
0:37:23and to be the Nintendo we want it to be.
0:37:25Just because there is a way for them to do that
0:37:26doesn't mean they will do it.
0:37:28That's the distinction that,
0:37:30you know, subtlety is that most people
0:37:32will probably forget about. There is a way for Nintendo to win as long as people are
0:37:38willing to buy hardware that mostly just plays games. If people stop being willing to buy
0:37:43hardware that just plays games, Nintendo can't play anymore because Nintendo can't make a
0:37:48general purpose OS, I don't think. They don't have the expertise. They can barely make a
0:37:51dedicated gaming console software stack. They can't make something based on Android. They
0:37:57can't make their own iOS. They can't be a platform. They just can't do that. They don't
0:38:00don't have the people do that. It's very difficult to do. So as long as people keep buying dedicated
0:38:06gaming devices, all Nintendo needs to do is make really good dedicated gaming devices
0:38:10with really good games that people want to buy. That's it. It sounds easy, doesn't it?
0:38:14Well, if they don't make game hardware that people want to buy and games that people want
0:38:19to buy, they can still fail under that scenario, but at least it won't be like, "Well, it's
0:38:22out of the question." They can't. I think there's nothing they can do to say, "We're
0:38:27going to make our own operating system and our own app store and our own general purpose
0:38:30platform that does more than games. That's just out of the question for them. The only
0:38:34thing they can do and the only thing I think they should do is try to make game devices
0:38:39that people really want to buy with great games that people want to buy on them. And
0:38:43that's it. And they're not doing that now. They made the Wii U and no one seems to want
0:38:47it for I think what should be fairly obvious reasons at this point. It's weak, it has bad
0:38:52third-party game support because it's weak. It's like a previous-gen console that no one
0:38:57is really interested in and that the novelty this time of the second screen is not catching
0:39:01on with people and Nintendo hasn't demonstrated why it should catch on. It's just a bad situation.
0:39:07But they do have $14 billion in the bank. As I said, I think a couple months ago when
0:39:11this came up in the first round of Nintendo WoW, it's like they just need to reset and
0:39:16think about what they're going to do for their next thing. They don't need to give up on
0:39:20Wii U. They still need to put out whatever games they have planned for the Wii U, even if it doesn't
0:39:24sell a lot of units, and third-party support is just disappearing for the Wii U, because who the
0:39:27hell is going to make a game for a crappy console that can't run modern games and has very few,
0:39:33you know, and is not selling a lot of units? No one's going to sign up to make games for that.
0:39:36It's just grim. But Nintendo will make games for it, because Nintendo will make money off its games
0:39:40for it. And, you know, what choice do they have? So I think that will just make games for the Wii U,
0:39:46put them out, the thing will sort of fade away, and Nintendo just needs to think about what it's
0:39:50going to do next. Spend that part of that $14 billion wisely and come out with a good idea,
0:39:56with a good platform, and hope that by the time they do that, that the market for dedicated gaming
0:40:01hardware has not disappeared. As I've said many times, I think there is room for one more
0:40:05generation of dedicated gaming hardware, and this is it. PS4 and Xbox One. After the PS4 and Xbox One,
0:40:11seven, eight years from now, I'll have to revisit that question and say, is there still a market for
0:40:15for dedicated gaming hardware, maybe then the answer will be no and then Nintendo is
0:40:18screwed. But for now, Nintendo just did a big swing and a miss this generation with
0:40:22their consoles and maybe got like a foul tip with their handhelds.
0:40:27Which, do you think, are they in worse shape now as they were when they launched the GameCube?
0:40:32I know the GameCube was not a huge success, was it?
0:40:36They're worse off now in terms of sales, but I'm assuming they have much more money in
0:40:40the bank now than they did back then. Because the GameCube, you know, if you look at the
0:40:44the GameCube sold more than, easily more than the Wii U. Like, if there were all the problems that
0:40:50the GameCube had, Nintendo would kill if they get GameCube-like numbers on the Wii U. They do not
0:40:55have that now. And the DS sold way better than the 3DS. But a lot of that is kind of like,
0:41:00look at the downward trend of dedicated gaming devices. Like, overall, the market is slowly
0:41:05declining. And so everything's like relative. It's like, well, the 3DS is doing well now,
0:41:10but nothing compared to the DS. And the GameCube was seen as a failure because it was a third-place
0:41:14console then, but boy, what Nintendo would give to sell GameCube-like numbers of Wii
0:41:19U at this point.
0:41:21So if you take off your Nintendo fanboy, and I mean that in a good way, hat, you're the
0:41:26only one of us that has a Wii U, and when we visited I played it for five minutes, and
0:41:32it seemed nice, but whatever.
0:41:35Taking off the hat, the fanboy hat, is it a good system?
0:41:38I know what you just said about it being not very powerful, but just in general, is it
0:41:42good?
0:41:43that Nintendo will make for the Wii U, and that they already have made, demonstrated
0:41:48as a platform that you can have fun games on.
0:41:51And as I said before, you can have kinds of fun and kinds of games on the Wii U that you
0:41:56can't have on any other console because of that weird second screen thing.
0:42:00It doesn't mean that they're the most amazing games in the world, but there's experiences
0:42:03you can't have other places.
0:42:06And like Nintendo Land, the thing that demonstrates, like here's umpteen different ways you can
0:42:10use our combination of hardware.
0:42:12Some of them are fun, some of them aren't, but out of that big collection of minigames,
0:42:15there's three or four in there that are really interesting and novel that can't be matched
0:42:19anywhere else.
0:42:20And so if you're into games and you want to say, "Show me a new way to be entertained,"
0:42:23instead of just another first-person shooter, Nintendo is showing you that.
0:42:27Kind of like on the Xbox One and the Xbox 360 with Kinect, Microsoft said, "You can
0:42:33stand up in front of the TV and wave your arms and legs around.
0:42:35That's a new way to play games.
0:42:37Try that.
0:42:38Do you like it?
0:42:39Is it fun?"
0:42:40something you can't experience on the other consoles because they don't have the Kinect.
0:42:43You know, they may have the eye toy and the other things, the cameras or whatever, but
0:42:46Nintendo does have something novel with the Wii U. And so that's one aspect of it.
0:42:53The second aspect is Nintendo makes great games and their games are going to be on the Wii U,
0:42:58their games are not going to be on any of the other consoles. So if you're interested in playing
0:43:03the next Zelda game, there's only one place to do that. And maybe the next Zelda game won't take
0:43:07advantage of any of the Wii U unique features at all, but it'll still be a great game.
0:43:12It's kind of the same reason I got a PlayStation 3 to play The Last Guardian, which has still
0:43:16not been released. But you know, Journey is an example. Journey is not available on any
0:43:20other platform. I would buy a PS3 just to play Journey. Journey could be on any platform,
0:43:24it doesn't use any unique features, it's like analog stick and buttons, it's not like
0:43:27you need the Kinect board, it's not like you need a second screen. It's a very straightforward
0:43:31game, it could be a PC game, hell, it could probably even exist on iOS, god forbid.
0:43:35but it was only on the PS3, so that's why I bought a PS3. And I continue to think that that's the way
0:43:43forward for Nintendo is make awesome hardware that people want that third parties are willing
0:43:47to support that sells in big numbers, and also make your very best games and put them only on
0:43:51your hardware. That's it. Just simple as that. Nintendo, I don't know, see what the problem is.
0:43:55You just got to make awesome games and hardware that people love.
0:43:58[Joey] In order to win, you have to do well, geez.
0:44:00[Joey] Yeah, I know. Well, I mean, like, people keep talking about structural things, like,
0:44:04"Oh, they need a different strategy." Even Nintendo itself saying, "You know, we'll have to look at smartphones and do this and do that."
0:44:10It's like, I don't think that's a winning strategy for Nintendo because I don't think Nintendo can
0:44:15can do what it does. You know, people keep making this analogy and saying, "Well, it's not apt or whatever,"
0:44:21but there's enough aspects of it that I think are apt that it's worth revisiting and thinking about. Again,
0:44:25it's kind of like when Apple was in trouble and they were totally in trouble, like in the 90s, and people were saying, "Apple needs
0:44:30to get out of the hardware business and just put Mac OS on Windows PCs."
0:44:34Because what they're doing now is not working.
0:44:37They're not making hardware that people want to buy.
0:44:39People kind of like their software.
0:44:40Why not just put that software on other people's hardware?
0:44:43And you could argue that had Steve Jobs not returned, Apple would have gone down the tubes
0:44:48and gone bankrupt and people would have said, "See?
0:44:50You should have just put macOS on PC hardware.
0:44:53Your stupid thing of selling it, you know, why did you keep doing that?
0:44:56Why did you keep keeping your software just to your hardware that nobody wanted?
0:44:59Why didn't you just put it on generic x86 hardware?"
0:45:03And now you're out of business.
0:45:04listen to me. But instead Steve Jobs came back and did the thing that I'm teasingly saying is so easy.
0:45:08How about you just make computers that people actually want to buy? And then you put your good
0:45:13software on it, you make that even better too. And then when you have hardware and software that
0:45:16people want to buy, you can become successful. That's not as simple as that because Apple did
0:45:21other things as well, but there is a definite analogy in that what Nintendo makes is a
0:45:27combination of hardware and software that gives a unique experience that is potentially better
0:45:31than all of its competitors and that's why people buy it. People bought the Wii because
0:45:35it was crazy waggly remote mixed with some software that made that crazy waggly remote
0:45:39fun. That's it. All you gotta do is make something that people want to buy. And if you said,
0:45:46"Okay, well why don't you just make software?" All you gotta do is make software that people
0:45:49want to buy. How many copies of software does Intender need to sell for iOS to make the
0:45:55kind of money they make even off of their crappy failing Wii U and their so-so 3DS.
0:46:01You know, 3DS games are like $30 a pop, Wii U games are like $60 a pop, and they gotta
0:46:08be making money in the Wii U consoles itself. Nintendo can't come into iOS, put out $60
0:46:14games and expect, like, I mean, just do the revenue graphs, I'm like, "Well, if I sell
0:46:17it $1, how many do I have to sell? If I sell it $60, we know how much I'll sell compared
0:46:21if I sell at $1.
0:46:22Does Nintendo have to start making freemium games?
0:46:25It's a whole different market.
0:46:27Never mind what kind of games could you make on iOS.
0:46:29And now you're dependent on a different hardware vendor, and you can't innovate gameplay because
0:46:34you're at the mercy of what kind of hardware Apple wants to put out and how well they're
0:46:37going to support your games.
0:46:39And whole category games can't even exist without the physical controllers.
0:46:41Oh, well, you just sell to people with physical controllers.
0:46:43Nintendo can make a physical controller.
0:46:45Now you're selling to a fraction of a fraction of a market.
0:46:48Anybody willing to buy a physical controller to play Nintendo games on their iOS device
0:46:51would also be willing to buy a 3DS.
0:46:54And television game consoles with a controller there, they could just buy a Bluetooth controller
0:46:59and AirPlay their iOS device and you worry about the lag.
0:47:02There is no good way out for Nintendo in those areas.
0:47:04I think Nintendo should pay no attention to the smartphone space because they can't be
0:47:09a player there.
0:47:10They're never going to have their own platform.
0:47:11They're never going to have their own OS.
0:47:13That becomes the price of doing business.
0:47:15They're doomed.
0:47:16For now, it looks like there's still a market for dedicated game consoles.
0:47:19They should just make one that people want to buy.
0:47:22Sounds easy.
0:47:23Yeah.
0:47:24I don't know why they didn't consult me before they made the Wii U.
0:47:26I would have told them.
0:47:27There's a couple of articles like, you know, the hindsight of 2020 articles, kind of like,
0:47:31I was at a game developer and they showed us the Wii U and I totally knew that they
0:47:34shouldn't be making this because the hardware was too weak.
0:47:39You know, it's easy to say that in retrospect, but I mean, they probably would have said
0:47:42the same thing about the Wii.
0:47:43A standard definition of game console?
0:47:44Everyone else go in HD.
0:47:45doomed, well, they weren't so doomed there. But yeah, I think they could pull that off
0:47:50a second time and they didn't.
0:47:51Yeah, I think part of the problem with that is that the Wii was really successful because
0:47:57of this fad that it introduced.
0:48:00No, it is totally not a fad. A fad is something that comes and goes quickly and has no lasting
0:48:06value. Motion control—
0:48:08I would say that is—what you just said—comes and goes quickly and has no lasting value.
0:48:14I bet that is the pattern for the majority of Wii owners of how they use their Wii.
0:48:19It lasted an entire generation. The Wii dominated the entire generation. Motion control is not going
0:48:25away. Every single modern console has motion control coming out the butt. It's like saying,
0:48:31"Well, the Macintosh," because the Macintosh lost the--
0:48:33That sounds uncomfortable.
0:48:35The Macintosh lost to Windows because that GUI thing was just a fad. And yeah,
0:48:39now every modern computer has a GUI, but they're not Macintosh, so I guess that whole GUI thing was
0:48:42a fad. Motion control was not a fad.
0:48:44Well, that's not a fair assessment. I think because, you know, stuff like a GUI is, you
0:48:52use it and then you keep using it and it keeps being awesome. Whereas the Wii, I bet, almost
0:48:58everyone I've ever heard from who has a Wii has said that they had the same problem where
0:49:03they got it, they played it, they played the crap out of it for like, you know, a couple
0:49:07of weeks or months, and then they never turn it on again, and then it eventually goes in
0:49:12in the closet and then it eventually goes away.
0:49:13- Like a computer, it needs software.
0:49:15So if you got a Macintosh and then people just stopped
0:49:17making applications for it and Doom wasn't out for the Mac
0:49:19and like all these other programs you wanted to play
0:49:21weren't out for the Mac, you're just like,
0:49:23well, I had a Mac and I used it a lot,
0:49:24but then like I'd played the few games that I had
0:49:28and I'd used the software I had,
0:49:29but all the new applications were coming out for Windows.
0:49:32So I put the Mac in the closet and I got a Windows machine
0:49:34and I used their GUI apps.
0:49:35Like it's a platform, you do need software
0:49:37to be released for it.
0:49:38And making it standard definition didn't help.
0:49:40And Nintendo's relationship with third parties didn't help.
0:49:43And eventually the only thing available on the Wii
0:49:44were terrible crappy shovelware ports
0:49:47of like ancient PC games or last gen console games.
0:49:51And all the new titles that people wanted to play
0:49:53weren't available for the Wii at all.
0:49:54So what are you gonna do?
0:49:55Keep playing Wii Sports for eight years?
0:49:56Of course you're not gonna.
0:49:57Of course it's gonna go into the closet.
0:49:58It's a platform, right?
0:50:00But you can't say that the motion control was a fad
0:50:03and it went away and that's why.
0:50:04It's because no one made new games for it.
0:50:06No one made new exciting popular games for it.
0:50:08where everyone else wanted to play, like Mass Effect and the new Halo games, and even in
0:50:13the exclusive titles, you know, multiplayer, Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, Modern Warfare,
0:50:18like all these games came out, they're available for PC, 360, and PS3. PC, 360, or PS3. Never
0:50:24the Wii, because the Wii can't play because it was too weak, it just aged out, and no
0:50:28one made new software for it.
0:50:30So what you're saying is I was right.
0:50:32No, it's not that the motion control was a fad, you're saying like, oh, but--
0:50:35I didn't say the motion control was a fad, I said the Wii was a fad.
0:50:38The Wii is not a fan.
0:50:40The Wii was just a console that didn't have good third-party support.
0:50:42The GameCube was similar.
0:50:43As the GameCube got older, third-party games came out for the other platforms and not for
0:50:48the GameCube.
0:50:49Nintendo was really bad about third-party support because it's caught between, "Well,
0:50:53we can support our own platform with our first-party games," and, "Well, we kind of want third-party
0:50:57games to round out the platform, but we don't really care if those guys make any money."
0:51:00And then people are like, "Well, screw you.
0:51:01We're not going to make games for your platform anymore unless you sell in huge numbers."
0:51:05Even when they sold huge numbers, all they did was attract the vultures to say, "Well,
0:51:08I'll make a stupid tying game for my movie and sell a Wii version just to get some free
0:51:12cash because there's so many Wiis out there in the world."
0:51:15And then people would buy the crappy movie tying game for the Wii, and the kids would
0:51:18play it and say, "This sucks."
0:51:19And it was like the 2600, the Atari, where eventually everybody was making 2600 games,
0:51:26and it just devalued the entire concept.
0:51:28So the Wii as a product was a good idea and a good product.
0:51:33the relationship with third parties was terrible and they didn't support it and it just fizzled
0:51:37out. I mean, any console can do that. Like, if any of the other console makers had the
0:51:41same problem, if they put out hardware that was too weak to play modern games and didn't
0:51:44have a good relationship with third parties, they would fizzle out and die too. If Nintendo
0:51:48had simply made a PlayStation 4 with a second screen on it and had Sony or Microsoft level
0:51:54of intelligence about third party support, then we would be selling like hotcakes. Because
0:51:58who wouldn't want a PS4 that can play the next Mario and Zelda game? Everybody would.
0:52:01you have your cake and eat it too. There's no reason you have to choose between those two things,
0:52:05except for price. But Nintendo has always said, "Well, we want to keep it as cheap as possible,
0:52:11and we think that'll work great," and it did with the Wii, kind of, but even that ran into
0:52:15their stupidity about third-party relationships. Well, the reason I brought up this thing inside
0:52:20of this big fire is because it's always a strategic flaw in business if you don't really recognize
0:52:31why you have been successful in the past or the present.
0:52:37Because if you attribute present or past success to the wrong factors, then you'll probably
0:52:43do the wrong things on your next project in your upcoming direction.
0:52:46And so I think for Nintendo to say, "Oh, well, the Wii sold really, really well, and therefore
0:52:52we have to keep doing gimmicks like this."
0:52:56It's not a gimmick.
0:52:57Well, hold on.
0:52:58So this has kind of been Nintendo's MO in the last few generations of consoles, where,
0:53:04you know, it used to be in the olden days of like 8 and 16 bit, and even the N64, Nintendo
0:53:09was basically doing the same kinds of things as everyone else, and in some ways they would
0:53:15do things better. And then they had these awesome games to carry them and to really
0:53:19be the foundation of their business. The Wii was this new hardware gimmick that, excuse
0:53:26me, this new hardware method that was very successful in the market, briefly, you know,
0:53:34at least in that one generation.
0:53:35For eight years, yeah, briefly for eight years.
0:53:37Well, okay, regardless, it was very successful and it had this new hardware thing, this new
0:53:43kind of thing. The DS had these two screens. That was very successful, right? But is the
0:53:50reason it was very successful because it had two screens or because Nintendo made really
0:53:54good games and they happen to make the best portable game system and it happened to have
0:53:58two screens. You're right that they're misattributing things but it's not that
0:54:01misattribution because the Wii sold and the Amazing Numbers did because it had a novel input
0:54:06method, right? Their problem, here's the Nintendo's problem, is they competed with Sony and the
0:54:13original PlayStation 1 and Nintendo 64, that was kind of where the turning point was for them.
0:54:17And a little bit of the SNES as well. And they didn't do as well as they thought they should.
0:54:21They said, "We have a great product.
0:54:23We have great games.
0:54:25Why are we losing to Sony, this newcomer into the market?
0:54:28Why are we having trouble with Sega and their Genesis and stuff like that?
0:54:32We should be crushing them.
0:54:33We're Nintendo.
0:54:34We should do great."
0:54:35And the GameCube really brought that to a head because the GameCube is just an amazing
0:54:39piece of hardware.
0:54:41It was the best console of that generation hardware-wise.
0:54:44And they're like, "We should really be killing these guys.
0:54:47We made this thing and we came in last place.
0:54:50Why?
0:54:51people want to buy our stuff?
0:54:52Aren't our games good?
0:54:54And so when the Wii came around, they're like,
0:54:56we keep failing, we need to do something different.
0:54:58And they look back at why they had failed and they said,
0:55:01I think we failed because we're not giving people
0:55:03something different.
0:55:04We're just trying to make the same thing as everyone else.
0:55:06And they said, here's what we can do,
0:55:08but we'll make something different.
0:55:09How about we use motion control?
0:55:11And they were actually thinking about motion control
0:55:12for the GameCube as well.
0:55:13We'll do motion control.
0:55:13And they couldn't figure out why they kept losing.
0:55:16And they're losing because they're just obstinate
0:55:18in about third-party relationships with other developers.
0:55:20Like Sony won because it was nice to third parties
0:55:23and Nintendo always wanted to screw them.
0:55:24Because Nintendo said, "We sell our first party games
0:55:26"and you pay us through the nose
0:55:28"for the privilege of being on our platform."
0:55:29And another company came in there and said,
0:55:31"We won't be such bastards to third parties."
0:55:34And Nintendo continues to refuse to believe
0:55:36that that's why everyone is crushing you.
0:55:37It's not because they make better hardware.
0:55:39It's sure as hell not because they make
0:55:40better first party games.
0:55:42It's because they're not jerks to the third parties.
0:55:44And Nintendo doesn't wanna hear that.
0:55:46And unfortunately, the idea that,
0:55:49here's what the problem was.
0:55:50problem was we didn't make something that was interesting enough. We're just doing the same
0:55:53thing as everyone else. It's just something interesting. That worked for them. They said,
0:55:55"Aha! See, that was it." It wasn't that all that stuff people were saying about us not having a
0:55:59good relationship with third parties. It was just because we wanted to give people something new.
0:56:01So when it came time to make the Wii U, they said, "We can do that thing again where we make
0:56:05something new." And so they made something new, and it is new, and it is interesting. It's just
0:56:09not as interesting as motion control was coming from a previous world without motion control. And
0:56:14and they kept having the weak hardware and it fell on its face because
0:56:18you know they continue not to realize that the reason they keep failing is
0:56:22because they don't have good third-party resources. Again
0:56:24if you could buy a Nintendo console and had all the modern games on it, all of the
0:56:28you know, it had Grand Theft Auto, it had Call of Duty, it had everything, it looked great, it was
0:56:32competitive with everybody else
0:56:33any third-party game came out for the next eight years you should be sure it will be on the
0:56:37new Nintendo console
0:56:38it was just like the 360 or the PS3 sometimes on the 360, sometimes on the PS3
0:56:43It's probably on the PC.
0:56:44Nintendo is not even in that conversation for multiple generations now.
0:56:48And if they can't be in that conversation, the only people who are going to buy a Nintendo
0:56:51console are people who just want it for the first-party games.
0:56:54And they're stupidly limiting themselves.
0:56:56I almost wonder if there's a parallel to Apple here, in that Apple is getting more and more
0:57:05anger directed at them by third-party developers.
0:57:10You know, we've gone through the ratings kerfuffle a thousand times and the review kerfuffle a thousand times and
0:57:18I was fiddling with
0:57:21with certificates and provisioning profiles last night for fast text and I wanted to throw myself off the roof of my house and
0:57:27I'm definitely reaching here, but I
0:57:31can't help but wonder if
0:57:36Nintendo and Apple both were were or are in a position where
0:57:41they had the ability to be smug and to act like the king of the world and
0:57:47Eventually what we've seen with Nintendo is that
0:57:51didn't last and the more friendly to third-party developers upstarts came around and ate their lunch and
0:57:59I'm being overdramatic, but I can't help but wonder if that's the future for Apple if if they don't start
0:58:05improving things like iTunes Connect, improving things like developer relations, and they
0:58:10certainly have gotten a heck of a lot better.
0:58:12Marco, you would know better than any of us how much better it's gotten, but I don't know,
0:58:16it strikes me as a vaguely parallel path.
0:58:18Yeah, the difference with Nintendo is that their heyday when they really were the king
0:58:23was back with the NES.
0:58:24That was so long ago, and maybe the SNES, and it's just like, it's that carryover.
0:58:28It's kind of more like Microsoft, where they weren't as dominant as long as Microsoft was,
0:58:33But they were as dominant as Microsoft for a brief moment in time.
0:58:36And that's their image of themselves.
0:58:38And even a change of CEOs, like the change of CEOs, the old guy Yamauchi got pulled back
0:58:43and like, finally, now we'll get someone who realizes they're not the king of the world
0:58:46anymore.
0:58:47And the new guy did the Wii, which looks like, hey, new guy comes in.
0:58:49It's kind of like the return of a new job.
0:58:51New guy comes in and suddenly Nintendo is back on top of the console heat.
0:58:54But again, they were on top.
0:58:56Like they didn't recognize their previous problems.
0:58:58They just happened to find something else that would give them a turbo boost above everyone
0:59:02but they kept all the same old attitudes, like the expectation that you can make a new console
0:59:06and do it just like the Wii again and think that everything will work out fine because
0:59:11you'll just be that much more amazing than everyone else. It's like Microsoft thinking that
0:59:16for so long, "Well, we're Microsoft. When we make a tablet, people will buy it. And when we make a
0:59:20phone, OS people will buy it. And Windows Phone will soon be the dominant phone platformer. We'll
0:59:23be in strong second place or whatever." You just get that image in your head of like, "We're
0:59:28Microsoft. We're the king of everything. Obviously, anything we do is going to be successful."
0:59:32and it takes repeated failures to get through your corporate head that actually, no, you're
0:59:37not going to automatically win. You can't do that. You have to know developer tools.
0:59:41It's more like Apple did it to the other developer tools with PhoneOS. If you look at Apple's
0:59:49developer tools for writing apps for iOS, yeah, we may complain about them and everything,
0:59:53but compare it to phone development before the iPhone. Using Xcode to write applications for iOS
1:00:00is so far beyond using whatever SDK to write Nokia apps or whatever. It's like night and
1:00:07day. And so no wonder suddenly Apple has tons of third-party support for applications and
1:00:12every other phone platform just goes away. At this point, Nintendo's not that bad compared
1:00:17to their competitors, but Nintendo's strength is not making developer tools or middleware
1:00:23or other things. Not that it's really Sony's or Microsoft's strength either, but Sony and
1:00:26Microsoft have gotten better at it faster than Nintendo. Same thing with online. Xbox
1:00:30Live and the PlayStation Network, again, they're not great at it, but Nintendo was terrible.
1:00:35And so it's kind of like, Nintendo was the king a long time ago, and it does everything
1:00:39worse than all of its competitors now except make fun games. And that stuff is coming home
1:00:44to roost.
1:00:45Do you think some part of it also is, you know, back in the 8 and 16 bit era, I mean
1:00:52actually even 32/64 era, the first one, that back then the best games for a platform, both
1:01:03the best critically acclaimed ones and the ones that would sell the most, were usually
1:01:07first party games by the platform vendor. And that is no longer the case these days
1:01:12as far as I know, it seems like these days the big blockbuster games are made by third
1:01:16parties who have really no reason, unless they have some kind of big pricey business
1:01:20deal, they really have no reason to limit themselves to just one of the consoles. And
1:01:24so it becomes, you know, like if you want to play the latest Call of Duty or the latest
1:01:28Madden Football you can do it on anything. And it's in their best interest to put out
1:01:32the games for all the consoles and so it's a lot less of an advantage to have the strong
1:01:38first-party library as it used to be because most of the games people are buying and getting excited about are available on all the platforms
1:01:44It's so expensive now to make a triple-a title that
1:01:47People can't afford to have exclusives like if you're going if you're going to be EA or something
1:01:52You're gonna make Madden and someone wants you to make it exclusive to their platform
1:01:56He's gonna be like do you realize how much money you'd have to pass to do that?
1:01:59Because in a sort of even horse race between one, you know between two or three competitors
1:02:05It's like, are you going to pay for all the copies that we could have sold on the Xbox?
1:02:09You know, if Sony wants it to be exclusive?
1:02:12Pick any game like that.
1:02:14You can't afford to pay them.
1:02:15That's why these people buy studios, because Microsoft buys Bungie.
1:02:18Well, now we don't have to pay you to make Halo exclusive to the Xbox.
1:02:21We bought your whole company.
1:02:22Make it for the Xbox only, right?
1:02:24And even that Bungie found a way to wriggle its way out so its next game could be multiplatform.
1:02:28It's just so expensive.
1:02:30The only people who can afford to make a game exclusive to a platform are like gaming studios
1:02:35that are going down the tubes and need tons of money and they'll take whatever cash payout
1:02:39they can to go exclusive, or first parties.
1:02:43I don't know if there was ever a heyday where the first party games are always the best.
1:02:45I guess maybe in the NES days, Nintendo's first party games have always been among the
1:02:51best on any platform anywhere, so that's an easy one.
1:02:54Sega, I guess they had Sonic in the Genesis days, but was that really the best games?
1:02:59the only one who's been so dumb. Sega had a lot of, I was a Sega guy back then, they had a lot of
1:03:03really good games in the 8 and 16-bit era. Even, I would even say for the Saturn, you know, which
1:03:08didn't sell well. Well, yeah, that was, they were the only games for the Saturn. Right, yeah, that's
1:03:12true. Even for that generation, you know, I think Sega had the best Saturn games, I think Nintendo
1:03:16had by far the best N64 games. PlayStation changed that though, like that was their deal.
1:03:21Like, think of the first-party PlayStation games like Crash Bandicoot, you know. Well,
1:03:25Well, the first-- the PS1 games really were not that great.
1:03:29The PS1 mainly succeeded because the Saturn was a bomb.
1:03:32I mean, the Saturn kind of made space for it, and the N64 wasn't out yet.
1:03:38And it used cartridges when it came out.
1:03:40Right.
1:03:41Although, I will stand by that being a good decision, actually.
1:03:44Looking back at the load times and everything, like--
1:03:47Well, it was a really bad decision for Nintendo.
1:03:50It had advantages, but like, the reason Nintendo did it was because A, they're stubborn, and
1:03:54be they, people would pay Nintendo to make their cartridges. If you wanted to make a
1:03:58game for N64, Nintendo, like they did with the other stuff, you'd have to pay Nintendo
1:04:03to make your cartridges for you. And Nintendo charged profit on that. It was like free money.
1:04:08Like, why would we let you make a 10 cent CD when we can charge you for these cartridges?
1:04:13Right. But, you know, my point is that in this new era of most of the big, popular games
1:04:20are multi-platform. Nintendo will always lose that battle because they're not in
1:04:25the cutting-edge hardware and ecosystem game. Like, they're not in that game at
1:04:28all and so they're going to keep losing. But they could be though, like, the GameCube
1:04:32proves that they could be because the GameCube, hardware-wise, was more than a
1:04:37match for its competitors. Like, there's no reason that they can't be because
1:04:40they don't make, you know, they pay ATI and IBM or whoever makes, you know, they
1:04:44like, look at the PS4 or the Xbox One. Is it AMD? They both have AMD CPUs with, you
1:04:49know, it's like, they could, Nintendo can go to the same vendors, just like they did
1:04:53with the GameCube. You know, the GameCube is even more extreme because IBM and ATI
1:04:57were also in the Xbox 360, so it was like, you know, it was right there. Like,
1:05:03we're all using the same vendors, you don't have to make this stuff yourself.
1:05:06They just chose not to compete in that. It's not, there's not something
1:05:09structural about Nintendo that prevents them from making a console that can host
1:05:13all the modern games. It's a business choice. Well, I don't know, it's because it
1:05:17isn't just about the hardware anywhere. Now it's about these online services, integration
1:05:21with cable boxes and stuff like that. It's all these things that Nintendo really has
1:05:25never shown any interest in doing.
1:05:28Sony is terrible at that too, and they've been slowly like... Microsoft is the only
1:05:31company that knew anything about online, because they're a PC company, they know about platforms,
1:05:36they know about networking, stuff like that. Sony didn't know anything about that. Sony's
1:05:38stuff sucked, and they slowly learned, and Nintendo's stuff has always sucked, continues
1:05:43to suck. It sucks slightly more than Sony. But it's not outside. I think this is something
1:05:49that Nintendo can do. Nintendo can make online games they have. Nintendo can make social lobby
1:05:55type things. They have done that. They just do it badly. Sony also does it badly. Microsoft does it
1:06:00less badly. But there's nobody who's like... I guess maybe Microsoft is out ahead of both of
1:06:04the other ones. But Sony's pretty crappy at that too. So the bar is low. I feel like they could
1:06:09crossed that hurdle. And again, now it may be a little bit too late, but they had so many years.
1:06:14Xbox Live came out so many years ago. Nintendo, if they got their head out of the butt, would have
1:06:18said, "All right, we suck at this now. Let's get good at it slowly over many years." This was what
1:06:23Sony did, and Sony is still terrible at it. They lost all those passwords, and their service is not
1:06:27as good as Xbox Live. But when the PS4 came out, it has integration with streaming and the headset
1:06:33support and stuff. I think they learned it's possible. Nintendo is just a much slower learner,
1:06:38and or too stubborn or whatever but I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility.
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1:08:45All right, what else do we want to talk about?
1:08:48Should we breach the net neutrality topic?
1:08:50Because this could go for hours.
1:08:52Even I have a lot to say about this.
1:08:55There's a lot there.
1:08:56I think any loss of net neutrality is really bad and really, frankly, a
1:09:01likely disaster for our industry and many others. But I legally, I don't know enough
1:09:06about what just happened. I don't have a good legal understanding of it and I haven't done
1:09:10all the reading on it. I still have to read New Life Patel's article on it. So I don't
1:09:16really have a lot to say on that right now.
1:09:17Well, I just wanted to briefly add, and then John, I'll ask for your two cents. Somebody
1:09:22tweeted, and I'll put a link in the show notes and in the chat, and this may not be the original
1:09:28instance of it, but somebody tweeted a really interesting graphic that basically said,
1:09:33"Hey, if you want really fast Netflix, that's an additional $10 a month, and if you want really
1:09:39fast blah blah blah, that's an additional $15 a month." And it was extremely interesting and
1:09:45a really ominous sign of what net neutrality could mean, or the loss of net neutrality could
1:09:52mean for the future. And it was a really clever way to hammer it home that if not all traffic is
1:09:57is created equal, that could lead to some very bad things. And it's very frightening.
1:10:02And just like you said, Marco, it's very, very potentially dangerous for the industry.
1:10:06Also I thought the Fred Wilson post was really good too. Fred Wilson is, in case you don't
1:10:10know him, he's a big investor. I actually know him, he's a really nice guy. And his
1:10:14blog is avc.com because he is a VC. Anyway, he had this great post on it, basically just
1:10:21like these scenarios of these theoretical future investor meetings where he's meeting
1:10:26some young startup founder who wants to get some funding and they're describing like,
1:10:32"Oh, well, I had this great idea for this new music startup where this is like a new
1:10:36streaming service. It's going to have these differences from other streaming services."
1:10:39And he's like, "Sorry, we can't take that because Apple and RDO and Spotify and Beats
1:10:45have all paid all the telcos to get their transfer to not count towards your data allotment."
1:10:50and you won't have that power or money,
1:10:52so no one's gonna buy your service
1:10:55because it's gonna count against their data,
1:10:56so we're not gonna fund you.
1:10:58And that's gonna happen, that kind of thing where
1:11:01it's not gonna affect everything.
1:11:03If you're running text and transmitting text all around,
1:11:06it's probably not gonna be big enough to matter
1:11:08or get throttled like that, but you don't know.
1:11:10And there's all these other,
1:11:13it dramatically affects any kind of large transfers.
1:11:16Definitely would affect podcasts, no question about it.
1:11:18And so that hits home for me, certainly.
1:11:21And it showed it for you if you're listening.
1:11:23And so there's that aspect.
1:11:25There's also, one thing I liked a lot
1:11:27was Matt Drance's piece on Apple outsider,
1:11:32where he also, not only does he link
1:11:33to all these other good ones, but he also says,
1:11:35there's also a problem of privacy,
1:11:37where now, yeah, right now your ISP
1:11:40can look at everything passing through and where it's going,
1:11:43but there's not really much of a reason for them to.
1:11:45There's no business case for it,
1:11:46so they probably aren't and generally there's not, you know, they don't really have motivation
1:11:51to do that. But with this, they would have to look at everything you're doing and they
1:11:56would have business reasons to do it. And so there's massive privacy implications for
1:11:59it as well. And so there's all these problems with, you know, what a lack of net neutrality
1:12:06will cause. And, you know, the arguments about free markets and everything else and, you
1:12:14regulations, benefits in some cases, don't really apply because there's not a lot of
1:12:19competition in most broadband markets. And mobile, the rules are different. And again,
1:12:25I don't know if I'm about to really talk at length, but the rules are different for mobile
1:12:28networks. And you could look at that and say, well, mobile is competition for the broadband,
1:12:33which it is. But, you know, as long as mobile data caps can be burned up with like watching
1:12:40Netflix for an hour. I don't think we're in the same league here. And so, you know, home
1:12:45broadband still has a big role for a lot of people. And as the cable companies and phone
1:12:51companies and these home broadband companies, as they add things like phone service to them
1:12:56and their own on-demand video, and as people start cutting cable service to say, "Oh, well,
1:13:02I don't need to pay for your TV service because I just buy everything online," those ISPs
1:13:06are going to have more and more really big business reasons to do evil crap like this,
1:13:12to do things like throttle Netflix, throttle Skype, you know, all these, all these, you
1:13:17know, I mean look at what happened with Vonage forever ago, that was one of these first cases.
1:13:22They're going to have reasons to do all this stuff, big business reasons, and so you know
1:13:25they're going to do it. It's not like they have morals and are sitting around saying,
1:13:28"Oh yeah, you know, oh yeah, we're Verizon, we're Comcast, we're just going to be nice
1:13:32to our customers." No, they're going to screw you at every chance you possibly get. I mean,
1:13:36I can't become on these companies the they they have in their DNA to be
1:13:40complete everybody that's every company that that's how companies work that's
1:13:44you know that's the if there's a business case to do some big thing
1:13:46they're gonna do it
1:13:48and so it would be foolish to think
1:13:51that if these companies were permitted to do stuff like this that they wouldn't
1:13:53do it of course they're gonna do it
1:13:55and where you gonna turn there's nowhere to go there's
1:13:58chances are you know most people have
1:14:01at most
1:14:02to options for their broadband at home usually usually you can choose between
1:14:06one cable company and one D-cell company in the US. And I think in the rest of the world,
1:14:10it's some places are better, some places are worse. I think overall it's not that much better
1:14:14on average. It might even be worse. Yeah, generally speaking, you have between one and two broadband
1:14:21companies to choose from in the US. And so, you know, if... and in most places, those one or two
1:14:28are like the same one or two. Like there's not that many ISPs. There's like five or six big ones
1:14:32in the whole country maybe. And so it doesn't take much. Like if Comcast or Verizon say,
1:14:38"Okay, we're not doing this thing," that's going to affect like a quarter of the country
1:14:43or something. It's a big number. And so this is a big deal and we need regulation.
1:14:51The role of government regulation is where the market can't do the right thing for whatever
1:14:57a reason, where it's dysfunctional or impossible or completely impractical for the market to
1:15:04do the things that are best for the people, best for the overall industry.
1:15:09That's when government regulation is most needed.
1:15:14And that's definitely the case with broadband.
1:15:16Broadband, there is no competition, and we need the government regulation, and it's
1:15:20not happening, and that's really scary.
1:15:21JE: Yeah, the problem with net neutrality—and I've experienced this problem myself with
1:15:26trying to explain it to my mother and for all the people who are going to complain that I always use
1:15:30my mother as an example and that's insulting because who's to say that mothers don't know
1:15:34stuff about technology. I'm using my mother example in this case and in many other cases because
1:15:38she's the one of my parents who is most interested in and knowledgeable about technology. So she's the
1:15:43one who's actually willing to entertain the discussion with me about net neutrality,
1:15:47not because she's less competent. So let's get the mother as a it's it's not a hypothetical this is
1:15:52my actual mother and I actually explained to her and that's the reason I explained it to her and
1:15:55and not my father because my father doesn't care, doesn't know about it, doesn't give
1:15:59a crap about this.
1:16:00Anyway, I try to explain net neutrality to her, and it's difficult.
1:16:03That image that Casey was talking about showed the big price sheet of like, "So you want
1:16:08internet access?
1:16:09Well, for an extra five bucks you get Netflix, or ten bucks."
1:16:11My impression was that you get faster Netflix.
1:16:13It's like, "Oh, so you want Netflix with your internet?
1:16:15That'll be five extra dollars.
1:16:16Oh, so you want to have HBO go with it?
1:16:19That'll be ten extra dollars.
1:16:20Oh, you want to go on Facebook?
1:16:21That'll be twelve extra dollars."
1:16:23It's made to look just like it does when you buy cable now.
1:16:25You want cable TV?
1:16:26Okay, well here's the base price.
1:16:27If you want ESPN, it'll be this price, and if you want HBO, it's part of our premium
1:16:30package.
1:16:31That's $12.
1:16:32It's like buying a BMW.
1:16:33You know, you got to get the whole other package.
1:16:35The problem with that image, as terrifying as it is to nerds, is that to a regular person,
1:16:40you're like, "Oh, that's already how I buy TV, and that's not that bad."
1:16:42We're like, "No, it's terrible when you buy TV.
1:16:44Don't you understand?"
1:16:45And with the television, it's terrible in some ways, but on the other hand, it also
1:16:49subsidizes a lot of channels, so there are good things about bundling and bad things,
1:16:53But in general, if you go from a situation,
1:16:56like it's different because those are services
1:16:58that are being bundled together in a package
1:17:01of things that you have to pay for
1:17:02and all those things you have to pay for.
1:17:03This is basically taking a wire and saying,
1:17:06we're only gonna let certain,
1:17:07it's a negative instead of a positive.
1:17:09We're only gonna let certain things through on it.
1:17:10Oh, so you want us to let Netflix traffic in?
1:17:12Pay us this amount of money,
1:17:13and now we'll let Netflix traffic go through your house.
1:17:15That's not an internet service provider anymore.
1:17:17I don't know what that is,
1:17:18but that's not someone providing you access to the internet.
1:17:21someone preventing you from having access to the internet to varying degrees based on
1:17:25how much you're going to pay them or how much they're going to pay the companies or whatever.
1:17:29The problem with that image, I think, is it looks too familiar to people, and it won't
1:17:32be terrifying to people because they won't realize the implications.
1:17:35And this is the difficulty I have trying to explain net neutrality to my mother or to
1:17:39anyone else, is that it's very difficult to impart on them the thing that we all know
1:17:44in our gut, that this is the end of the internet as we know it.
1:17:47But if you don't have an interconnected network of computers that can all talk to each other,
1:17:52but instead have an interconnected series of toll booths that you have to pay money
1:17:56for for information to get one person to the other, that defeats the entire purpose of
1:17:59the internet.
1:18:00And ISPs don't want to be dumb pipes, and we all want them to be dumb pipes.
1:18:04And that's the constant tension that's there between us and them.
1:18:07And the role of government regulation, like in any free market type system, it's not like
1:18:14companies can't do the right thing. The incentives are aligned for companies to maximize their profits.
1:18:21And if those are the only incentives in the system, then yeah, the companies will go off and
1:18:26do those things that will cause incredible damage in the long run because that will make them the
1:18:31most profits. They'll become monopolies, we have anti-monopoly laws. And if they will end net
1:18:37neutrality because it will make them more money, we need a counterbalance to that. And the
1:18:40counterbalance can't be other private market companies. Like that's something someone said
1:18:43me on Twitter. Well, if ISPs do this, won't other net neutral ISPs crop up to compete with them?
1:18:50That's an interesting fantasy scenario. But unfortunately, with the exception of wireless,
1:18:55all of the wires and fiber optic cables going to people's houses is the barrier to entry to
1:19:01saying, "Okay, well, Comcast is terrible and Verizon is terrible, and they're all net neutral
1:19:05anymore. I'm going to start my own ISP. Great. Well, let me know when you run wires to everybody's
1:19:09house in the United States. That's a significant barrier to entry. Or even for wireless, let
1:19:16me know when you paid for all the spectrum you plan to use. And again, the regulations
1:19:19are different about divvying up spectrum between people and common carrier stuff. And the same
1:19:23thing with the wires. There's some regulations in this area already. But you can't rely on
1:19:27the private market not to totally remove net neutrality, because it will make them more
1:19:33money. And if there are companies that are trying to make more money, that are not trying
1:19:36be magnanimous or advanced civilization. They're trying to make more profit. So there needs to be
1:19:41a counterbalance to that. And that's why all the nerds are hoping the government will fulfill its
1:19:45role as being a counterbalance to private industry to prevent private industry from doing what it
1:19:50does. Like those machines are aligned in a certain way to make money. And we should let them run off
1:19:55and do that right up to the point where they start causing damage and there needs to be a
1:19:58counterbalance. And it's just, it's too esoteric and weird and nerdy. And even if it slowly happens,
1:20:06It would just happen in pieces one at a time, and everyone who it was happening to would
1:20:10just simply accept it as the way things are until two generations from now, the internet
1:20:14could be dead as we know it, and no one would care, and no one would ever have put up a
1:20:17fuss.
1:20:18It's one of those type of things, like a slow-moving type of disaster, where you have to be a little
1:20:23bit chicken little and say the sky is falling to get people's attention.
1:20:25Otherwise, this terrible thing will slowly happen to them, and they'll accept it.
1:20:31They won't even wake up one day and be in a dystopia.
1:20:33They'll just be like, "Well, it's just the way things are.
1:20:35the way things have always been, oh well.
1:20:37You know, I'm glad we don't have much to say about this.
1:20:40Yeah, we'll have to talk about it some other time.
1:20:42Well, we weren't talking about the events.
1:20:44We were just talking about net neutrality in general as a concept.
1:20:46And that, I think, is enough.
1:20:48Instead of talking about what happened in this court case or how is the battle going
1:20:52for net neutrality, just the concept of net neutrality, the concept that one computer
1:20:56could talk to another computer and send data through it, and they all pay for internet
1:21:00access to get access to the internet and it's undifferentiated and the ones and zeros flow
1:21:06through the tubes.
1:21:08That doesn't sound like much, but if you take that away and turn it into some crazy toll
1:21:12booth thing, it just destroys the whole endeavor.
1:21:14It destroys every part of it.
1:21:16And even as someone who doesn't directly make my living on the internet in the same way
1:21:22that say Marco does, obviously I still indirectly make my living on the internet because the
1:21:27consulting that I do in my day job is all web-based.
1:21:31And even despite being slightly removed from all this, it absolutely scares me.
1:21:37It petrifies me, the thought of losing net neutrality.
1:21:41And net neutrality was the great equalizer that, you know, there's no reason that Marco
1:21:47couldn't make a read later service or that Marco and David couldn't make a new blogging
1:21:52engine because they had the same right to the same pipes as everyone else did.
1:21:57And to take that away, that's scary.
1:22:00You know, we're in such a wonderful time right now where anyone in a—well, I guess
1:22:06you could argue anyone in the garage could always do something incredible, but it's
1:22:10so much easier now.
1:22:11I mean, hey, look at the three of us.
1:22:12Three people in three, you know, converted bedrooms in three houses across the eastern
1:22:17United States are able to reach tens of thousands of people on a weekly basis, and that's
1:22:22really powerful and really incredible and we're very lucky for that. The three of
1:22:25us most especially, but I like to thank all of our listeners as well. And just like Marco
1:22:31alluded to earlier, you know, imagine if we had to subsidize, the three of us had to subsidize
1:22:37getting our podcast to our listeners. You think ads are bad now, my goodness, the show
1:22:41would be 80% ads if that were the case.
1:22:43Right. Well, and the funny thing is like we already pay for that. Like the cable companies
1:22:49and stuff wanting payments from like Verizon and Google and Apple and Netflix and stuff
1:22:55like that. Google and Apple and Netflix are already paying to upload that data. They're
1:23:01already paying for their data centers to have connectivity to all the big backbones. And
1:23:06we already pay for the bandwidth for this show. And thank God Libsyn is unlimited because
1:23:11if Libsyn wasn't unlimited, this show would cost like $1,000 a month in bandwidth alone.
1:23:16And we already pay for that. Everyone already pays for their upstream bandwidth. And the
1:23:20cable companies don't get that money directly. They are offering access to these big backbones.
1:23:27And I don't, unfortunately, know the details of how all of that works and the way peering
1:23:31agreements work and who pays who and all the cases and everything. But they didn't build
1:23:35that infrastructure. They have parts of it. They have their own infrastructure to their
1:23:38home. But they are offering you this product that's out there that everyone else is already
1:23:43paying to be into, and they want money too. They want a cut too, even though no one's ever had to
1:23:49pay for that before, to get to that final, that last mile. The thing is, data is not water. There's
1:23:55not a volume of water going through pipes. Like, well, a certain volume of water goes through our
1:24:00pipes, and they wear down our pipes, and we have maintenance for our valves in the pipes. And there
1:24:03is telecom equipment that you have to have, but at a certain point, once you have the equipment set
1:24:09up, the amount of data going through it, if it's anything less than 100% or 90% of the capacity,
1:24:13where if you're using 1% of the capacity of the hardware, that's just wasted. It's not as if,
1:24:17well, there'll be less wear and tear on our routers now that there's less traffic on them.
1:24:21I guess someone's going to write it and say, well, the heat generated by a fully-stressed
1:24:24restaurant. You know what I mean? But it's not the same as cars going over roads. Cars destroy
1:24:31roads as they go over them, right? And it's not water through a pipe. At a certain point,
1:24:38the marginal cost of putting extra data, which is why they have these peering agreements. It's like,
1:24:42well, otherwise this bandwidth would just be idle, so I'll pay you and you'll pay me and it'll all
1:24:47work out. And there's all this strange kind of make-believe money changing hands or peering
1:24:52agreements just to make the entire internet work, because the data has to change hands,
1:24:55it has to go from one place to the other, and everyone is always jockeying for a position of
1:24:58who can make a little bit more money off of this. But in the end, what we just want it to be is the
1:25:03internet, this conceptual thing, kind of like iCloud, that is just a giant umbrella term for
1:25:08for these huge networks of computers and hardware and wires and software that is run by a giant
1:25:13conglomeration of people all trying to make this one big sort of emergent living entity
1:25:17called the internet work where any computer can talk to any other computer if it has its
1:25:20IP address.
1:25:21IPv6 will be a topic for another show.
1:25:24And that's the system we're trying to preserve here.
1:25:27And at every turn, companies are trying to say, "Yeah, but we can make more money if
1:25:32X, Y, and Z."
1:25:33And it's terrible.
1:25:34And the worst argument I hear about this is the free market thing.
1:25:37regulation is bad, you're stifling competition and blah, blah, blah. Marco talked about it before.
1:25:43The net neutral internet has been the largest driver of free market capitalism and economic
1:25:51growth that the world has ever seen. Two guys start Tumblr and it makes how many, what is it,
1:25:57how many billion dollars did Yahoo pay for it or whatever? If you don't have a net neutral internet
1:26:02and can't let two guys, like, it is, if you take that away and say, well, now only the big guys
1:26:07can, like, you have destroyed so much more of the economy, like, yes, you made the ISPs get richer,
1:26:12the price has been, like, a huge amount of innovation and market value that you've totally
1:26:18destroyed by not making it easy to enter this market. Like, it's so incredibly short-sighted
1:26:23for people to say government regulation is always bad, free market is better, because, you know,
1:26:27You know, the Internet is the free market.
1:26:29It is the thing that has enabled more businesses to spring into existence, to add value to
1:26:34the economy, to employ people than any other invention in the entire world.
1:26:38And to destroy that just so ISPs can make more money, it's so insane.
1:26:42And again, this entire concept and all this is so hard to explain to people who don't
1:26:46know or care about it, which is why I fear every day that people never have sane laws
1:26:50in this area, because no one understands the issues involved.
1:26:54No lawmakers do.
1:26:55If you look at the history of actions taken by the FCC in the last 15, 20 years,
1:27:02there's not a lot of things in there that give you a lot of confidence that they're going to do the right thing here.
1:27:06No. It's terrible. It's too nuanced and esoteric.
1:27:13And even when I say like Lawrence Lessig up there and other people who are trying to explain it,
1:27:17they do such a good job explaining it. I'm like, "Surely now you must understand it. He did such a good job explaining that."
1:27:22that and like nope still don't get it I need campaign donations from Comcast I'm
1:27:27screwing everybody it's miserable well with that let's wrap it up for the week
1:27:33thanks a lot to our three sponsors lynda.com harvest and fracture and we will
1:27:39see you next week
1:27:42now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental
1:27:50Oh it was accidental.
1:27:52John didn't do any research.
1:27:55Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
1:27:58Cause it was accidental.
1:28:00It was accidental.
1:28:03And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
1:28:08And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at
1:28:14at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A,
1:28:29[music]
1:28:36So I ended us on a sour note. Sorry about that.
1:28:47Any discussion of technology and politics is going to be sad.
1:28:51Yeah, that's true.
1:28:53Oh, it's so painful.
1:28:55You want to talk about the iPad Pro at all?
1:28:57with the after show. Save that for another show, because I think it's worth being an
1:29:01actual topic. Well, unfortunately, the prompt kind of beat us to it, and they did a better
1:29:03job of it. Did you hear Federico Vatici's discussion about this with, I think it was
1:29:10just Mike that week, on the prompt, like, I think last week or two weeks ago. I think
1:29:15it was last week. I'm still in the middle of the giant iPhone keynote episode. That's
1:29:19good. I'm kind of mad that we didn't think of doing that, you know? Oh, I know, me too.
1:29:24- So good.
1:29:25- I don't think I'd want to record that episode,
1:29:26but I'll listen to it.
1:29:28- Exactly, well, that's one of those things,
1:29:29like when they put that out there,
1:29:32I saw that in my list, and I was skeptical.
1:29:36I was like, man, I gotta listen to a two hour plus podcast.
1:29:40Come on, I heard the iPhone keynote.
1:29:42You know, I watched it.
1:29:44Like, I don't need to watch this or listen to this.
1:29:46And I listened to it, and it was so good.
1:29:48And when it ended, I was like, oh, that's it?
1:29:51Like, that's when you know that you don't need
1:29:53worry about cutting your show any shorter. Like, if people are going to listen to it
1:29:56and say, "Wow, that's, like, I'm kind of upset there's not more of that," even after,
1:30:01you know, two hours and ten minutes or whatever it was, that's really good. And they, they
1:30:05hit it out of the park with that. That was so good.
1:30:06Yeah, the show was good in gen--or really good in general, but God, that episode was
1:30:10so annoyingly good, and I'm really jealous, and I'm bitter it wasn't us.
1:30:13Well, 'cause what was good about it was that they didn't just go through the Apple keynote
1:30:17and say, "Oh, here's what happened, then this happened." They, they gave really good context
1:30:22of what the situation was at that time
1:30:26and right before that time,
1:30:27and why some of these things were so groundbreaking,
1:30:31and a lot of that stuff I had forgotten about.
1:30:33You know, like, why some of that stuff was so impressive,
1:30:36how, you know, how the room reacted to seeing, like,
1:30:40scrolling a table view for the first time by touch.
1:30:43Like, that was a big reaction.
1:30:44And like, you think about it,
1:30:46why that was a big reaction,
1:30:47because of what we had before the iPhone,
1:30:51And it was really good.
1:30:55The context they provided was very, very good,
1:30:57and made it extremely listenable, and very interesting,
1:31:01and very upsetting when it ended.
1:31:03Even if you've heard the iPhone keynote a million times before,
1:31:06it's still worth it.
1:31:07They needed more old people on the show, though,
1:31:09because a lot of them, their history of watching Apple
1:31:12had started around the time of the iPhone.
1:31:14That wasn't Apple's first keynote.
1:31:16They'd kind of been doing this whole keynote thing for a while
1:31:18since then.
1:31:19So as always I wanted an old person like me on the show to say well, you know
1:31:23Well, they introduced the iMac. It was on a pedestal
1:31:26G4 Cube came up from the floor
1:31:29Phil Schiller had to jump onto an airbag. That's real power
1:31:33Well the reference that none of you will get all right, it's fine
1:31:39No, I was just started listening to Marco and unprofessional and realizing that realizing the depths of his
1:31:45his pop culture lack of knowledge
1:31:48Sorry.
1:31:49It's all right.
1:31:50I don't know what Casey's excuse is.
1:31:54Well, why does Marco have an excuse?
1:31:57Well, he's unique.
1:31:59Maybe you have proximity to Marco has prevented you from engaging in the culture of producing
1:32:06entertainment.
1:32:07Yeah, I don't know.
1:32:10I just don't – I feel like I watch a crud-load of TV, and apparently I don't watch any,
1:32:17I just watched the wrong TV.
1:32:19- Are you watching NCIS with the senior citizens?
1:32:22- No, but I did watch CSI for a long time.
1:32:24- Oh, well, you're getting close.
1:32:25I was close.
1:32:26- Enhance. - I'm zooming out.
1:32:28- Rotate it around, enhance again.
1:32:30Look, a license plate.
1:32:31- If Casey was born 20 years early,
1:32:34he'd be watching "Matlock."
1:32:36- You're such a jerk, but you're probably right.
1:32:39- Go back a sec.
1:32:41So the reason I brought up the prompt and the iPad Pro,
1:32:44They had a good discussion last week where, you know, Federico Viteix, you brought up
1:32:49the really good point, because he's like the iPad Pro.
1:32:52Like he is the iPad Pro user.
1:32:55He might be the only one.
1:32:56I don't know.
1:32:57Maybe him and Dr. Drang.
1:32:58No, I don't think he even uses one.
1:32:59Anyway, the reason why -- so the rumors are that Apple is going to make a larger iPad
1:33:04maybe 12.9 inches-ish, and this will be a, quote, iPad Pro of some sort.
1:33:12And the rumors are all really confused and inconsistent as to whether this is going to
1:33:16also be a convertible MacBook Air with a keyboard, you know, an optional keyboard, there's one
1:33:22that would fold back like a convertible tablet, or whether, you know, whether it would even
1:33:26run OS X or iOS, whether it will have an Intel or an ARM processor, whether it has an ARM
1:33:30processor that runs OS X, who knows?
1:33:35And so the problem with all these rumors is that, and, you know, maybe the OS thing is
1:33:41is more interesting, but the problem is that the size of the iPad is not really what's
1:33:48holding it back for most types of quote "pro uses" whatever that means, that's a whole
1:33:54discussion of what that even might mean. The size is not holding it back. There are uses
1:33:59of the iPad where people want a bigger, so I was like, I had asked on Twitter a couple
1:34:03of weeks ago when this rumor first came out, like, you know, what would a bigger iPad even
1:34:08solve. Who's really asking for that? And the most common responses were either, "Nobody,
1:34:15I like my Mini," or it was, of course, it was, you know, a bunch of geeks following
1:34:19me, so it was that, mostly. But it was also, a lot of people who do music production in
1:34:24particular said they would love a lot more screen space. And there's a few other verticals
1:34:30like this where more screen space would be nice on the iPad and would be worth the extra
1:34:36size, but for the most part I certainly don't think it's mass market. And the problem is
1:34:42that the size of the screen is not holding back pro usage. What's holding back pro usage,
1:34:49and this is what they were talking about in the prompt, is iOS and the structure and the
1:34:55restrictions of iOS. And this is not an easy problem to solve. This is, like, the multitasking
1:35:01system is really extremely rudimentary in iOS and very limited. Document models and
1:35:08file storage and sharing data between applications, all that stuff is extremely primitive on iOS
1:35:16and is just so limited. That's really most of the problem. And if you're going to make
1:35:21a "pro iOS device", iOS itself needs major changes and that's not going to happen quickly
1:35:29or easily, and many of those changes would actually make iOS worse at its core functions.
1:35:35And so they probably aren't--like, I'm guessing that this kind of pro iOS is probably not
1:35:39really happening. And I think the iPad Pro, the Pro Super Compact Mac is the MacBook Air,
1:35:49or a Super Compact Apple device. I think it's the MacBook Air. I think--and we've answered
1:35:54about this before, which I got some flack for, but actually in the prompt--it's funny,
1:35:58On the prompt, Federico was arguing with a point that I didn't make, and he clarified
1:36:04that at the very beginning, but most listeners, I think, missed that. And so they were telling
1:36:08me, "Oh, he was ripping you apart on the prompt," and he actually wasn't. He actually
1:36:12agreed with most of what I said, I think.
1:36:14But anyway, if you're hitting these massive barriers with the iPad and having to jump
1:36:21through all these different hoops of bouncing between 10 different apps and these weird
1:36:24URL schemes that are kind of hacked together and trying to share data and weird methods
1:36:30because you can't share it directly. If you're jumping through all these hoops and doing
1:36:34all these weird hacks, maybe a Mac is really the better solution for you. And for pro work,
1:36:41if what you want to do does not fit comfortably in an iPad, an 11-inch MacBook Air is really
1:36:47not that much bigger. And it's not that much more money than a reasonably well-equipped
1:36:51iPad and it will last longer probably.
1:36:55And you know, it's just... I think the border is
1:36:59if you are needing to use a keyboard
1:37:03on the iPad frequently, like if you're buying a hardware keyboard
1:37:07and using it frequently, you're probably going to be better served by a Mac.
1:37:11See, I wanted to save this for a regular show, but no.
1:37:15Our topic list is so long, I knew this would be quick,
1:37:19I figured I'd burn it.
1:37:20I mean, I actually have a quick thing to say about it, because I think Al Simpsons did
1:37:24it again and say that I'm pretty sure I'm the first person who I recall-- like, I didn't
1:37:30hear anyone else say iPad Pro when I talked about it on a Hyperk
1:37:30hear anyone else say iPad Pro when I talked about a hyper-credits episode years ago. I
1:37:34don't remember how it came up, but I mentioned that I'm very interested in a larger, more
1:37:39powerful iPad. I don't remember if I said iPad Pro, I probably did, because that's the
1:37:43obvious name for it. Years and years ago, basically as soon as the first iPad came out,
1:37:48way well before there was a mini, I wanted a bigger, more powerful iPad, an iPad Pro.
1:37:53And I said that's not going to happen anytime soon. And Marco's question on Twitter reminded
1:37:58me of this because he was like, who the hell's asking for a bigger iPad?
1:38:01Because Marco's old now and he had forgotten or not listened to that episode of Hypercritical
1:38:05where I'd asked for it.
1:38:06I'm asking for a bigger iPad Pro.
1:38:08And the reason I'm also not a mini user, but anyway, the reason I keep thinking about an
1:38:12iPad Pro and the reason I was thinking of an iPad Pro all those years ago and continue
1:38:15to, it's very simple.
1:38:16It has nothing to do with these rumors, which as many people have pointed out could just
1:38:20be the new 12-inch MacBook Air form factor, whatever.
1:38:23You can't-- I love screen size rumors.
1:38:27Apple is ordering screens of X size, therefore--
1:38:29and then every product, they could possibly
1:38:30fit that screen in it.
1:38:31It's the new Retina Mac Pro.
1:38:33They're going to put seven of those screens together.
1:38:35Anyway, ignoring that, why do we care about an iPad Pro?
1:38:40Why do I think this iPad Pro is the thing?
1:38:42And it's very, very simple.
1:38:44iOS is a better user experience than the Mac for most people.
1:38:48I think everyone would agree on that, which probably means
1:38:51that iOS or something like iOS is
1:38:52the future of computing. And if iOS is the future of computing or something like it,
1:38:57that means that anything we can do on our Mac today will want to do on something that's
1:39:01more like iOS in the future. And that will mean that iOS devices need to get bigger and
1:39:06more powerful. Yes, the hardware, yes, also the software. It's just simple logical progression.
1:39:11You're going to want to do more stuff with iOS devices because iOS is the future. iOS
1:39:16devices are going to have to get both bigger and smaller, probably not much smaller than
1:39:19they are now, they're gonna have to get bigger and more powerful.
1:39:21Some day, not all probably, but some of the things we do on our Mac that we can't do on
1:39:26iPads today, we will have to be able to do on iPads, because they're the future.
1:39:30So they're gonna have to get bigger, they're gonna have to get more powerful, and yes,
1:39:32they're gonna have to get more capable.
1:39:34And that's it.
1:39:35That's the calculus.
1:39:36You don't have to say they're gonna come out now or this year or next year, or they can't
1:39:39come out until software changes.
1:39:40Of course, all that is true.
1:39:41But all the things that iOS gets rid of that we don't like anymore, they're not coming
1:39:46back.
1:39:47device that comes out that's more complicated than the Mac.
1:39:50Like it's going, it's the other direction, right?
1:39:52Now the iOS is going to have to get more capable and hopefully not get as complicated as the
1:39:56Mac.
1:39:57Like it's the whole continuum, iOS on one end and the Mac on the other.
1:40:00Where do they meet in the middle?
1:40:01What happens?
1:40:02But that form factor, a tablet form factor, is going to become more capable.
1:40:06You're going to be able to do more stuff with it.
1:40:08So they have to have a bigger, more powerful one someday.
1:40:10I don't know when that day is, but I continue to wait for it because as soon as you see
1:40:13iOS, as soon as you see a tablet OS, you're like, "Well, I can barely do anything on this
1:40:17thing now, but I can imagine a future where I can do way more with this thing, and that
1:40:24way more is going to require a bigger screen and more power."
1:40:27And so that's my simple explanation for the iPad Pro, because it has to assume some of
1:40:32the mantle of the Mac eventually.
1:40:34It will assume some of the mantle of the Mac eventually, or it will just go away and be
1:40:37replaced by something different.
1:40:39But it has to, you know, tablet form factor has to do that, and so it's going to get bigger.
1:40:43Yeah, but that doesn't—well, nothing you just said implies a difference.
1:40:48So when I hear iPad Pro, what that indicates to me is that there's going to be a clear
1:40:52delineation between iPad regular and iPad Pro, be that a much larger screen size, which
1:40:59to me is a weak line, a dashed line, if you will, or a much better processor, a much more
1:41:04RAM, or a much bigger—
1:41:07It's got to have a bigger screen size, though.
1:41:09But see, I just—I don't see why.
1:41:12Because one of the things that a Mac can do that iOS devices can't do is a bunch of stuff
1:41:17at once.
1:41:18And a bunch of stuff at once means the thing you're doing probably can't take up the entire
1:41:22screen.
1:41:23And if you're going to divide the screen up in any possible way, you need more screen.
1:41:26That's it.
1:41:27But iOS, some of the beauty of iOS is not being able to do more than one thing at once.
1:41:33True.
1:41:34All true.
1:41:35Like, I'm not saying that's going to go away.
1:41:36I'm saying, well, you wouldn't want to divvy up.
1:41:38You would never, like, imagine divvying up an iPhone screen.
1:41:40Now you can have two iPhone apps side by side,
1:41:42no, it's too small, right?
1:41:44And even a full-size current iPad screen,
1:41:47I don't think you wanna divvy that up.
1:41:49But if you're gonna be using a tablet device
1:41:51to do development, like the new version of Xcode in 2027
1:41:54only runs on iOS, right?
1:41:57You're gonna wanna see more than one thing at once.
1:41:59And you need more screen space to do that.
1:42:01It's the same reason we all have multiple windows on our Mac.
1:42:03Now, it's not gonna be a multi-window interface,
1:42:05like that's too complicated, right?
1:42:07But it's a continuum.
1:42:08And if you want to do more stuff with iOS, you need to see more things at once.
1:42:12And it's not a smart idea to take existing screen sizes and chop them up.
1:42:16So I think it's inevitable that at a certain point you need more screen space to do.
1:42:20Otherwise it would be saying Mac's going to be around forever, and there's nothing you
1:42:23can do on a Mac today that you can't do on iOS that's ever going to jump ship to like,
1:42:27"Well, previously you couldn't do that on iOS, but now you can.
1:42:29And previously you needed a Mac to do that, but now you can actually get away with it
1:42:32on iOS."
1:42:33We've already seen that happen in small degrees.
1:42:36we're going to reach a point where you say, "Well, the only way we could ever do that
1:42:38on iOS is we need to be able to see more than one thing at once, and we can't do that on
1:42:43existing screen sizes, so we need a bigger screen." And a new OS and a new paradigm for
1:42:47how we're doing that, whether it's the Windows 8 way with Divi in half, or... They've got
1:42:51to come up with some of that, because the need to do more than one thing at once and
1:42:54see more than one thing at once is not going away.
1:42:56Well, but we've had, throughout computing history, we've always had specialty devices
1:43:03that could do less that still had a place in the market, but they never took over. So
1:43:08things like game consoles are probably the best example of this. Where you have, like,
1:43:13no one was ever saying, "Eventually game consoles are going to be so good they're going to replace
1:43:18computers."
1:43:19No, no, no, you're forgetting the GUI again. It could do less than the command line, but
1:43:22it took over.
1:43:23The problem I see with trying to make tablets replace computers, the biggest problem by
1:43:30far, is the same thing I was saying on my blog, which was horrible in 2009, when I was
1:43:37basically, there were all these rumors that Apple was going to make a tablet, and I wrote
1:43:42a few articles that were, the gist of it was, Apple's going to have to solve the input problem,
1:43:47because the biggest problem with tablets, and the reason they've never taken off before,
1:43:53is because of input and because you have this weird thing
1:43:58where it's trying to do computer tasks
1:44:01but keyboards for tablets have always sucked
1:44:06unless they've been full on laptops
1:44:08that do the convertible thing,
1:44:10in which case they're big and kind of crappy tablets.
1:44:13And so what are they gonna do to solve this, right?
1:44:17And in fact, they didn't solve it.
1:44:20They just punted.
1:44:21They basically said, you know what,
1:44:23"We're just gonna keep the on-screen keyboard that we had on the iPhone and it's gonna work
1:44:26okay."
1:44:27And they did, and it does.
1:44:28It works okay.
1:44:29You know, it doesn't work amazingly.
1:44:32It's very limited.
1:44:33And there's a lot of things that people are demanding real keyboards for for very good
1:44:37reason because real keyboards work way better.
1:44:40And so they didn't solve that problem with the iPad.
1:44:44That doesn't mean they ever will.
1:44:45That doesn't mean that, like, I think multitasking on a full computer kind of requires good advantage
1:44:53advanced fast input. And so, you know, I'd only have to solve the keyboard problem of--
1:44:57Who's to say an iPad Pro wouldn't have a keyboard?
1:45:00Well, so, okay, so maybe it will. So, the bigger problem is, what do you do with the
1:45:04mouse? Because iOS doesn't--and there was a good discussion on the talk show this week
1:45:09about this, too. iOS is not built for a mouse cursor. A mouse cursor doesn't really--I mean,
1:45:16you could, like, you can do it in the simulator, but it kind of sucks, and it's very clearly
1:45:20not made for that. The experience of using a hardware keyboard with an iPad and having
1:45:25to keep reaching up to the screen with your finger to touch things is really terrible.
1:45:30And so there's these major, major problems with iOS that they would have to solve. I
1:45:36mean, it's a problem only in the sense of trying to make it replace computers.
1:45:40Well, they're not trying to replace computers. They're just trying to take some of the functionality
1:45:43that currently requires computer and allow it to be done on the iPad. That's the history
1:45:48of iOS and the iPad. Things that previously required a computer are now feasible on iOS
1:45:53devices.
1:45:54Well, yeah, but that's always been the case with iOS. It's always been expanding its reach
1:45:59a little bit, but there are these major barriers that it doesn't really easily cross because
1:46:05of things like input and multitasking.
1:46:07It's going to be difficult. Yeah, even the multitasking problem is not technically difficult
1:46:10but UI-wise. But I think it has to happen because the alternative is relegating the
1:46:15human race to have to use windowed personal computers of the type that we know now forever.
1:46:20And they're just too complicated for regular people to use. The windowed interface with
1:46:25file system access and folders, we all love it. We all think it's great. It will always
1:46:29exist for expert users, but humanity has voted and they want things that they can touch that
1:46:34are not as complicated. And so we are tasked with, we have to find a way to make more things possible
1:46:42with these things that people actually want to use that are harder to screw up, like that's
1:46:45just progress. Like make it so it's not so complicated, so there's not so much to know,
1:46:48so it's harder to break, so it's more reliable. Like we've done that with iOS. We've done it by
1:46:53shedding almost everything that you can do with a personal computer, but we'll say how much of that
1:46:57can we get back without compromising the complexity? And if we screw it up and bring
1:47:01too much of the computer stuff over to iOS, then maybe we'll need another reboot and let's try this
1:47:05again and start over with a different paradigm sometime in the future. But I think this is what's
1:47:10What's going to happen is this is our opportunity is to make iOS more capable.
1:47:15Does it include putting a keyboard on it?
1:47:17Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.
1:47:18Maybe, you know, what can you do without a keyboard?
1:47:20Or do we need a mouse or do we not need a mouse?
1:47:22We don't like to reach up for the thing.
1:47:24Like do we want to have it on our lap?
1:47:25Do you want to have a better virtual keyboard?
1:47:27Like I don't know what the solutions are to these things, but like baby steps would just
1:47:31be, you know, Windows 8 is already doing it with like if you've got a big enough screen,
1:47:35sometimes you want to see a Twitter app on the side while you're working in another app.
1:47:38or sometimes you want to copy and paste from one app to the other without doing a switch
1:47:41type thing.
1:47:42Like, the larger screen being able to see more than anything at once is a small step
1:47:45in that direction, and if done well, can open up lots of functionality that I haven't listed
1:47:51in this episode of the podcast you're talking about, but it can open up a lot of functionality
1:47:54that I assume they're complaining about.
1:47:55It's like, "Look, I just want to do a simple workflow where I've got a graphic editor and
1:47:59some links and a web page and I'm writing text."
1:48:01You know, just blogging.
1:48:02How much easier it is blogging on a Mac because you have all those things kind of in play
1:48:06at once versus trying to do an iOS and you feel like you're constantly switching stuff,
1:48:10that is a surmountable barrier with some clever software and a larger screen.
1:48:16Ignoring the keyboard input and just keeping with our fingers, just being able to do a
1:48:20simple blog post synthesizing from some graphics and text and links and stuff.
1:48:25That's our next step.
1:48:26See, I don't think that's the next step.
1:48:28I feel like the next step is—and I know everyone's been beating this to death—but
1:48:34better inter-app communication. Because if you look at what Viticci is doing with x call
1:48:39back URL and URL schemes and chaining just ridiculous things together, I feel like if
1:48:47that was less user hostile, and it will probably always be a power user sort of thing to do,
1:48:54but just a less user hostile way of doing things. Like whatever Android does or like
1:48:59Windows phones, contracts, whatever they're called, that's not the right word for it.
1:49:03I forget what it is now, but...
1:49:04>> Now that was a... it's intense on Android, I think, and contracts on Windows 8, right?
1:49:08>> Oh, it is?
1:49:09Okay.
1:49:10I think you're right now that you say that.
1:49:11It doesn't matter.
1:49:12You get the idea.
1:49:13>> I would love that on iOS.
1:49:14>> Right?
1:49:15And it would be so much nicer.
1:49:16But it would enable us to do a lot of things.
1:49:19Like, if you're doing a blog post, yes, it would be in a perfect world.
1:49:21Nice to look at something that you're commenting or writing a post about on the left-hand side
1:49:26of a landscape screen and your editor window on the right.
1:49:30But to be honest, using your four fingers on an iPad to shimmy back and forth between
1:49:35apps and do the fast app switching, that's sufficient.
1:49:38And I'd almost rather have the hurdle of swapping between apps to see something that
1:49:45I'm commenting on and then comment on it.
1:49:47I'd rather do that than have some crazy scheme of having, I don't know, two iPhone
1:49:55apps side by side or something where the screen is split in half. It seems to me like that
1:50:02would be not fun.
1:50:03Well, we're talking about the same thing, because that's the plumbing that would have
1:50:06to underpin all this. The display issues are kind of neither here nor there, because again,
1:50:11the same ability to do more than one thing, like to have more balls in the air at once,
1:50:16would still also probably exist on the full-size iPad, even though they would probably never
1:50:19want to split that screen. It's the plumbing that makes it work. It's just that when you
1:50:23have more screen space, think of it this way.
1:50:26Remember when people first got 24-inch monitors or 21-inch monitors?
1:50:31The monitors were way bigger than they previously had.
1:50:32It was like you'd have a 14-inch and all of a sudden you got a 21-inch.
1:50:35You'd see the Windows users with their new 21-inch monitor be like, "This is awesome.
1:50:38I have a gigantic monitor."
1:50:39Then they would take their Notepad window and zoom it to full screen.
1:50:42It would fill their entire screen.
1:50:44Their text would be in a little column in the upper left and the whole vestibule would
1:50:47be in expansive white.
1:50:48It's like, "I think you're missing the advantage of having a larger monitor.
1:50:52It's not so you can take all your existing windows and make them huge because I mean people would eventually learn if it was wrapping wasn't
1:50:57On the trying to read a line of text that go that's two feet wide is not comfortable like there's a comfortable width for a column
1:51:03Of text so you can your eyes you know and then once you've made it narrow
1:51:06What are you gonna do with all you can put something else in that space like?
1:51:08And that's why I'm getting back to iPad Pro not that it's what everyone's gonna use instead of a PC or not that everyone who?
1:51:13Has an iPad is gonna get one just that there will exist this it's kind of like the Mac Pro of the iPad line there
1:51:18will exist a
1:51:20tablet type device for artists for graphic designers
1:51:23Maybe even for coders if like you put a keyboard in front of it an Xcode would like
1:51:26Instead imagine architects drafting table with a keyboard in front of it where it's all flat
1:51:31You're not reaching up at a screen or whatever like there are
1:51:34Endeavors that you might be able to do where you're like this is less complicated than a Mac
1:51:38I can get all the same things not and once you get a larger screen like that you're gonna like well
1:51:42You know all the plumbings there. I could do this with the four finger swipe or whatever, but I've got this gigantic screen
1:51:48that's like 19, 20 inches, and it's a beautiful touch screen, I can do these amazing things
1:51:52with it and everything, but sometimes I just want to see more than one thing on it.
1:51:55So they have to come up with some solution to that, and the solution can't be a bunch
1:51:58of windows because that sucks and we're just making the same stuff come back that we had
1:52:01before.
1:52:02So I don't know what the solution is, but I think that's inevitable if we ever want
1:52:07to leave behind the crappy things that computers make us endure now, but still get some of
1:52:14those advantages in some realms.
1:52:15It will still be all the single screen phones, it will still be the regular sized iPads that
1:52:19normal people use.
1:52:20I'm just thinking if this is the reason the Pro is in the name.
1:52:23The iPad Pro used by 3D modelers, graphic designers, people doing page layout if pages
1:52:30still exist anywhere, maybe people doing web development, maybe even people working in
1:52:34Xcode doing iOS devices.
1:52:36Hell, maybe you could have one of the other windows could be your simulator while you
1:52:40do real-time updates in Xcode and it recompiles your stuff in real-time and you watch the
1:52:45changes take effect in real-time on the other thing.
1:52:47It's like you had a dynamic programming language, but not really.
1:52:50And that would be very cool.
1:52:53But doesn't the move for OS X to be more iOS-like, most specifically around full-screen
1:53:00windows and how that support has gotten a lot better in Mavericks and it's actually
1:53:05kind of usable now?
1:53:09That makes me feel like some sort of windowing system isn't the right answer.
1:53:14And I know I'm harping on something that I really shouldn't harp on, but I just don't
1:53:17see how any sort of windowing is really the right answer.
1:53:21I think it's something else.
1:53:22Well, it can't be that kind of window system.
1:53:25Like with OS X, again, OS X is trying to become more iOS-like, and iOS is trying to do more
1:53:30things that previously only OS X could do.
1:53:32And I don't know who will lurch more in which direction and how that will go.
1:53:38like it. My impression is that it's harder to make Mac OS X simpler or OS X simpler than
1:53:43it is to make iOS more capable. So I would imagine, that's why I think the future is
1:53:46making iOS more capable and not, we can simplify OS X until it's just as simple as iOS. You'll
1:53:51never do it, nor should you ever. It would just be a disaster. Better to start with what
1:53:56you, they were so smart to start really simple on iOS and just don't screw it up. And it's
1:54:00probably not going to be Windows. Like full screen mode on OS X is a great example because
1:54:04Like, now we've made it simpler.
1:54:05No, you've actually just made it more complicated.
1:54:07Because you left all the existing ones,
1:54:09because you can't get rid of the existing windowing system,
1:54:11nor should you.
1:54:12But now you have another mode to go into.
1:54:14And on iOS, they have the opportunity
1:54:17to do something better.
1:54:19And I'm not sure what it is or how it will work,
1:54:21but it can't be like OS X Windows.
1:54:23So it seems like the kind of jobs forestall dynasty
1:54:29was pushing for the Mac to become more iOS-like,
1:54:33for iOS to get better. But for the most part, that era of Apple was pulling the Mac towards
1:54:42iOS. And it seems like now in the Tim Cook era and the restructuring of the divisions,
1:54:50it seems like Apple has become more confident in keeping the Mac the Mac and not trying
1:54:56to make the Mac iOS. And you know, all of this talk, and John, you've kind of been on
1:55:02this too, like all of this talk about these two merging eventually has this built-in assumption
1:55:10that that would be a good idea and that that's inevitable. And I would question both of those
1:55:14things. I would say that we saw what happened when Apple tried to make the Mac more iOS-like.
1:55:23kind of sucked. And everything you're talking about, about what iOS would need to become
1:55:30more pro, in a lot of ways that would make iOS worse.
1:55:34Well, I mean, it's like I said in the Mavericks review, it's picking the right things. What
1:55:38they forced all jobs thing was like, they were picking the wrong things to make the
1:55:42Mac iOS. They picked some of the right things, but the right things they did pick, we like.
1:55:48For example, the App Store is a better way to deal with--
1:55:52ignoring the policy stuff, just in terms of the mechanics
1:55:55of installing applications.
1:55:57It's better the App Store way than it used to be,
1:55:59where you go to a web page, download a DMG,
1:56:01mount a blah, blah, blah.
1:56:02That's a simplification that came from iOS.
1:56:04It doesn't necessarily have to look like iOS
1:56:06or work the same way.
1:56:07The finder doesn't need to be replaced with a launch pad
1:56:10with little shaky icons.
1:56:11And Access really did that, too.
1:56:13But the key feature is dealing with installing applications
1:56:17pain in the butt, it's not a pain in the butt on iOS, can we bring that simplicity to the
1:56:21Mac?" And they did, and they brought a bunch of other crappy baggage with it. It's just
1:56:24about picking the right thing. So if you're going to do it the other direction and say,
1:56:27"We want to make iOS more capable," don't pick the crappy things that just make it as
1:56:31complicated and evil as the Mac. You've got to find the right things. It's not like you're
1:56:34bringing a feature over, you're bringing a capability. Can I instruct someone over the
1:56:39phone on how to purchase and install an application on a Mac? Previously, you couldn't. Now you
1:56:44you can. Right? Good job. Uninstalled, not great, right? But like, it's just a tiny little
1:56:51bit. It's why I keep talking about filing off the rough edges of OS X. All the parts
1:56:57of it that are like complicated in ways that normal people shouldn't have to care about
1:57:01need to go away. And you got to just do that part and not try to be like, "Yeah, we need
1:57:05to make this application look like an address book because it looks like that in iOS." And
1:57:09it's like, no, that's not the important part.
1:57:12The important part is like seamless data
1:57:14sinking through the cloud and blah, blah, blah,
1:57:16and they kinda screw that up, right?
1:57:17But it's difficult, it's not saying it's an easy job,
1:57:21but that's what they have to do.
1:57:21Pick the right things, the right capabilities to bring over.
1:57:25Some of them can't be carried over,
1:57:26some of them shouldn't be carried over,
1:57:27and some of them have to be done in a different way
1:57:29on the target platform.
1:57:31- See, I would disagree that it's even possible
1:57:36to make a good combination.
1:57:38Like the problems that these two
1:57:40very different platforms solve,
1:57:42I think there's insurmountable differences
1:57:45in attempting to merge them.
1:57:46I mean, look at Windows 8.
1:57:47- Well, you're not gonna get like one, yeah.
1:57:49No one is, I don't think anyone's arguing.
1:57:52Both of these will go away and they'll be replaced
1:57:53by one thing, like that's not gonna happen.
1:57:55Because if you did replace it by one thing,
1:57:56it would have to be one thing that has so many
1:57:58different modes that it access to different things.
1:57:59Like what's the point of you having--
1:58:01- You'd have Windows 8.
1:58:02- Yeah, exactly.
1:58:03Like I could, you could just right now
1:58:04make up a new brand name and apply it to both
1:58:07OS X and iOS and say, "Hey, we're unified. It's one operating system. This is what you
1:58:10install it on your Mac. It looks different and behaves totally different." You're right.
1:58:13It's exactly like Windows 8, where there's the desktop version and then this Metro thing
1:58:17over here. And that's not useful to anybody.
1:58:19Really. I think if both platforms maintain their confidence and they're both okay being
1:58:27themselves, I think everyone's better off. The platforms, Apple, the customers, regular
1:58:32nerds, power users, I think everyone's better off, because I don't think trying to merge
1:58:37these two platforms together is possible to do well.
1:58:41Yeah, but I think the thing that they're doing now of making the Mac simpler and making iOS
1:58:47more capable is the right thing to do, carefully, cautiously, in the right ways.
1:58:52They've already had false starts.
1:58:53They tried to make the Mac simpler in ways that were not appropriate, and the jury's
1:58:56still out on a lot of them, like autosave and stuff.
1:58:59of the right idea, kind of not the best implementation, but in general, I agree with that motivation.
1:59:05And with iOS, adding multitasking, thumbs up, right?
1:59:09The multitasking switcher was not great.
1:59:10It's a little bit better in iOS 7, right?
1:59:13They're doing it in little bits, and with some dead ends, and copy and paste was a good
1:59:18addition, right?
1:59:19Let's make iOS more capable.
1:59:21You did that right, but that was something you needed.
1:59:23Baby steps, sometimes dead ends, retreat, figure out what you did wrong, try again.
1:59:29and the big reset with iOS 7 is another opportunity.
1:59:32And I fully expect if and when they come out
1:59:35with something like an iPad Pro and try to enhance iOS
1:59:37to make it a worthwhile product,
1:59:39they'll screw up something about it.
1:59:40They'll make it more complicated than it should be.
1:59:41They'll have to, you know,
1:59:43I mean, like the multitasking switcher,
1:59:44it's like that wasn't a great multitasking switcher
1:59:46and it's gone now and I don't think many people miss it.
1:59:49But the idea that you would want to switch applications
1:59:52and that some of them could be running,
1:59:53like, or background apps, like that concept was good.
1:59:56They just had to figure out the right time to do it,
1:59:58the best way to do it.
1:59:58the current implementation is not great, but they're going in the right direction in small
2:00:03pieces. And I look down the line at that, and you're right, I never see one OS going on
2:00:09everything because it doesn't make any sense. It would have to be such an incredibly capable OS
2:00:12to scale from a phone up to a PC. It doesn't make any sense probably in our lifetime. But these two
2:00:18products should evolve to adopt each other's benefits to the degree that it's possible
2:00:24and appropriate. Are we actually done now?
2:00:27Marco wanted to put this topic in this show.
2:00:31It's all Marco's fault. God, he's so mean to us.
2:00:34Well, you just wait until I talk about AV receivers.
2:00:37How about soccer methodologies? When are we doing that?
2:00:41Let's start now.
2:00:43Why not?
2:00:45Did you guys Google the fireworks factory now? You probably didn't.
2:00:48What in the hell are you talking about?
2:00:49Oh, never mind.
2:00:50Oh, you have to make another Simpsons reference.
2:00:52Yes.
2:00:53Not all my pop culture references are from The Simpsons, but a lot of them.
2:00:5790% of them are. All right, can we do titles? Aye yai yai. I'm half tempted to start software
2:01:04methodologies, kind of to troll myself into staying up late.
2:01:10I do really like Romeo and Syracuse yet. What the hell was that? Where was I when that
2:01:16happened? There was no one said that. That's just someone making up a title.
2:01:19That's hell of a compliment, the Accidental Hypercritical Podcast. It's a terrible title,
2:01:23but a great compliment. This was not an accidental hypercritical podcast.
2:01:26It was no accident.
2:01:28This was no boating accident. Do you get that one?
2:01:30Nope.
2:01:32Chat room, do you see what I'm dealing with here?
2:01:34I need something to commiserate.
2:01:36How many times have you said that?
2:01:38It just boggles my mind.
2:01:40This should totally be part of their drinking game.
2:01:42This should be on everyone's bingo boards.
2:01:44Do you see what I'm dealing with?
2:01:46When I get mad and become crazy because you guys don't know, like,
2:01:50the most...
2:01:52I'm not that bad.
2:01:54most… I'm not that much older than you, but you have no excuse. There's no excuse!
2:02:01Oh, John, trolling you might be my favorite thing in the world. I mean, I love you.
2:02:07If you start trolling me, it would work, because your actual lack of knowledge about pop culture,
2:02:12it's impossible to parody. You could be like, "Oh, that time I had actually seen
2:02:17that movie, but I lied just to annoy you." It's no worse than the ones you haven't
2:02:20legitimately seen, so it's not even effective trolling.
2:02:24Oh god, it's so true.
2:02:26Is there a movie you can pretend to not have seen that is more implausible than the movies
2:02:31you've actually not seen?
2:02:34Forrest Gump?
2:02:35No, that's not that impressive.
2:02:37No one likes Forrest Gump.
2:02:38Yeah, speaking of the unprofessional listening to Marco, he was saying that he had seen the
2:02:42Star Wars movies.
2:02:43Like, Marco has seen Star Wars?
2:02:44I was so proud of you.
2:02:45Yeah, of course.
2:02:46Although I have not seen any Harry Potters, any Lord of the Rings.
2:02:50You're not missing anything on Lord of the Rings, I'll tell you that right now.
2:02:52No Star Trek?
2:02:53I was never a Star Trek guy, so.
2:02:55- Zero Star Treks ever?
2:02:57- Yeah.
2:02:58I've seen bits and pieces of the TV show here and there,
2:02:59but never like sat down and really watched it.
2:03:02- See, I was a religious Next Generation fan,
2:03:05Next Generation, excuse me,
2:03:07I'm already making myself sound terrible.
2:03:09- You're already trolling.
2:03:10- I know, I'm trolling myself and John.
2:03:13And then I watched all of the movies
2:03:16up through like the second or third Next Generation one.
2:03:19I forget which one it was, that was the last one.
2:03:21but I know enough to know that the evens are the goods and the odds are no good.
2:03:26Debatable. You should watch the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies. They're fun.
2:03:30Oh, I'm sorry. I have seen the new ones. Those are very good.
2:03:34I was talking about like the-- it was Star Trek Generations, I think, was the last one I saw,
2:03:39and then there were like four that were the next generation cast, staff, whatever you want to call them,
2:03:45and I missed those last four, whatever it was.
2:03:48You're not missing too much.
2:03:49I didn't think so.
2:03:50You watch the TV series Next Gen, so you can imagine that crew is not really cut out for
2:03:56action movies.
2:03:57No.
2:03:58I mean, I loved the show, don't get me wrong, but you're right.
2:04:00They're not cut out for action movies.
2:04:01We need some titles here.
2:04:03Sorry, yes.
2:04:04So I'm going through the podcast by Lex and Dan Morin called Not Playing, where they go
2:04:12through movies that everyone has seen that Lex and Dan Morin have not seen, and they
2:04:16watch them for the first time and record a commentary track.
2:04:18Well, they did Mannequin.
2:04:19I don't think that's a movie ever I see yeah, I haven't seen okay. I'm looking through here
2:04:23Alright, so Beverly Hills cop. I've never seen that
2:04:27So guy hard one. I don't think I've seen that so I've seen some of the recent ones
2:04:32UHF I did see UHF hey you're gonna drink from the fire hose all right. I hated it, but I did see it
2:04:39Field of Dreams, I'm pretty sure I have not seen I might have seen bits and pieces on TV here and there
2:04:45But I haven't seen the whole thing. I don't think I've never seen it
2:04:47Mannequin definitely not I think I saw that when I was a kid and had inappropriate feelings about it if memory serves
2:04:54So did Lex and lethal weapon definitely not
2:04:56Lethal weapon I've seen all I've seen all the lethal weapons all the Beverly Hills cops
2:05:01Let's see field of dreams never seen UHF UHF I don't think I've ever seen of course I've seen diehard I mean come on
2:05:08I'm not an animal
2:05:10And that's it I guess
2:05:12titles people God
2:05:14Titles this is how this is how John's trolling you constantly off the titles track
2:05:18I didn't think you're the one looking through not playing. I haven't listened to that though
2:05:22I don't listen to the capsule ones. I don't do the commentary ones. I don't see any amazing titles so whatever
2:05:28I'm a big fan of Romeo in Syracuse, Seattle though. I have to spell Romeo correctly
2:05:33Which that's not the way the tivos people spell it yeah
2:05:35I had to look it up when I tweeted about it cuz I'd made a guess and I was wrong. It's a stupid name
2:05:41That's not a word. And it has nothing to do with roaming. It sits under your TV. You're
2:05:46roaming. You can roam all over your house on the internet. Like, yeah. Stupid.
2:05:50All right. Can we go off here for just a minute before I pass out?
2:05:54Yeah. All right. We'll keep not picking titles. All right. Thanks. Thanks, live listeners.
2:05:59Bye, everybody.
2:06:01We're so good at this. All right.
2:06:02We're professionals. Good grief.