0:00:00All right, I'm going to use the most interesting two-thirds
0:00:01of that for the after show.
0:00:03Now let's start the real show.
0:00:05Good idea, good idea.
0:00:08Good to say.
0:00:08So I hear it was Christmas at the Syracuse household already.
0:00:12Yeah, the tiny little package arrived that weighed a lot.
0:00:16Yeah, I was very proud of that.
0:00:18It seemed very dense.
0:00:20It really shows how little Marco cared about the old Kindles
0:00:23that he sent me.
0:00:25He packed them together by stacking them
0:00:28one on top of each other.
0:00:29They were their own packing material.
0:00:31(laughing)
0:00:32Like, nothing in between them,
0:00:34no like bubble wrap tissue paper, you know, just--
0:00:37- I put the crappiest one on top.
0:00:39- It's just a bunch of Kindles and other e-readers
0:00:42jammed together into a solid brick.
0:00:44- Well, they stack very well.
0:00:46(laughing)
0:00:47- Yeah, it was very-- - Except for the damn
0:00:48Kindle one, which is wedge-shaped.
0:00:50Everything else stacks really well.
0:00:51- I think they managed to, like, yeah,
0:00:53the original Kindle, like the back cover,
0:00:55had come off in transit,
0:00:56but I don't think anything was broken on it.
0:00:59And the Kindle Touch has a thing in the upper left corner
0:01:03where it's damaged.
0:01:04Was that already there?
0:01:07What kind of thing?
0:01:08I think there's a small, tiny scratch on the screen
0:01:10up there maybe?
0:01:11Yeah, it's like a little spot that's permanently black.
0:01:13Like a little--
0:01:14Oh, like a dead pixel?
0:01:15Well, no, it's bigger than that.
0:01:16It's like someone took a flathead screwdriver
0:01:18and went pink and jammed into the screen.
0:01:21So it's like a little crack slash area.
0:01:23It's not big.
0:01:23It's like--
0:01:24Nope, that's new.
0:01:26Sorry.
0:01:27Yeah, whatever.
0:01:27But anyway, the kindles came and we opened them up at the table with all the kids are
0:01:33there and all these kindles coming out and surprising things happened because Marco,
0:01:37you know, I mentioned, I put this in the show and Marco's like, well, there's nothing to
0:01:39say about that.
0:01:40It's not, it's not that exciting.
0:01:41And you know, it's a bunch of old kindles.
0:01:42I thought I would just take them, put them up into the attic.
0:01:44These are just the two surprising things that happened.
0:01:47One, the first thing my son said when he saw all these things is, "Can I have a Kindle
0:01:51Fire?"
0:01:52I didn't mention Kindle Fire.
0:01:53I didn't show him that there was a Kindle Fire in this stack of things, but he quickly
0:01:58surmised that in this giant stack of things that I said are Kindles, one of them might
0:02:02be Kindle Fire and that's the one that he want.
0:02:04Interesting.
0:02:05And this is before any of them were turned on.
0:02:06So that means that the Kindle Fire has good brand recognition among young kids whose parents
0:02:11don't want them to have a really expensive iPad.
0:02:14That's really interesting.
0:02:15Although he apparently didn't know enough about them to recognize that if you're going
0:02:18to have any Kindle Fire, the one I sent you, which is the very first one, is by far the
0:02:23worst one you can possibly have.
0:02:24It's just a big stack of stuff.
0:02:25And the thing is, it doesn't really make any sense because our iPad 2 is basically
0:02:30the kids' iPads 2, and my daughter doesn't really use the iPad 2, so it's basically
0:02:33his iPad 2.
0:02:34So he sort of has an iPad 2 that he can use more or less whenever he wants, and he still
0:02:39wanted a Kindle Fire because I guess he thought it would be his his.
0:02:42And the second reaction is, my daughter said, "Oh, can I have a Kindle?"
0:02:46And I said, "Yes, you can."
0:02:47And she said, "Yay!"
0:02:49So there you go.
0:02:51Kids love Kindles.
0:02:52I was trying to decide which one to give her, like, you know, we're gonna put some books on it.
0:02:57You know, she's learning to read and stuff like that.
0:02:59My son already has an old Ian Kindle that we had that he reads on and everything like that.
0:03:03She's just starting to read, and I decided to actually give her the Kindle Touch because as anyone with young kids knows, you put a
0:03:08Kindle in front of them, they touch the screen immediately.
0:03:10And why wouldn't they? Like, anything that you can't touch the screen on is obviously broken.
0:03:14And so the Kindle Touch, you actually can touch the screen.
0:03:16I kind of regretted it because
0:03:18Sometimes she wants to use her finger to trace like when you're reading the words and that doesn't really work that well on a Kindle
0:03:22Touch because as soon as you touch, you know, it changes the page or whatever
0:03:25But trying to give her one that you had to use like the cursor controls or something to do books
0:03:30I think that would be more difficult than and
0:03:32The Kindle touch has fewer like buttons and things you could bump on the edges and excellently turn pages
0:03:36So well, yeah, you made a bunch of people happy with although I saw my son
0:03:39He couldn't have the Kindle fire because I don't want him using that thing
0:03:44He's already got his reading Kindle. He's got his iPad. So he doesn't really need it so he got over it now
0:03:48But yeah, I was excited by the arrival of Kindles in the house
0:03:51I first heard like when when the Kindle fire came out, what was it two years ago now roughly I first heard
0:03:58When I first came out there was this massive
0:04:01Common refrain I heard from people which was that they were men of course because they're nerds on the internet and it's way too
0:04:10predominantly male still
0:04:12And they were men who were buying Kindle fires
0:04:14to give their wife a tablet
0:04:18Which if you think about the quality of the Kindle fire, not only is this a fairly derogatory thing to do
0:04:25but I
0:04:27wonder if any of those caused marital problems I
0:04:30Mean it is such an incredibly terrible device. I
0:04:35Can't imagine that ended up. Well, have you seen the new one the HDX whatever it's called?
0:04:41I haven't no is it any better
0:04:43I've seen it and it like they're getting way better like if you compare the Kindle fire you sent me compared to the new one
0:04:48It's like night and day like the new one is not embarrassing anymore
0:04:50The only thing that I think is embarrassing about the new one is that it's externally asymmetrical, which I find incredibly offensive
0:04:56Wait what it is in what direction like?
0:05:00If you're looking at it in a portrait orientation, and you're gripping it one side is thicker than the other
0:05:05It's like weird trapezoid back shape. It's it's it's for the origami style kind of case that comes with
0:05:11I mean it makes sense in the context of the case that the thing like slots into the case
0:05:15Because it's kind of like a a tapered trapezoid on the back
0:05:19Oh, it's it's weird
0:05:22But it bothers me way more than it should because like who cares who cares what shape the back of the thing is right?
0:05:25But I do I don't want it. I want it to be symmetrical
0:05:28I want a thing that I hold it just seems wrong to me
0:05:31But but the screen is really really nice the interface is no longer disgustingly laggy
0:05:36If you wanted to give somebody something that all they're gonna do on it is watch Amazon
0:05:42instant streaming video and read books filled with typos
0:05:46It would be fine. I
0:05:49Wouldn't buy it for anyone who wants to use applications obviously, but but they've got they've come a long way. That's good
0:05:55I mean they had nowhere to go but up
0:05:57Yeah, this thing is like a brick. It's sitting right next to me. It's unbelievable.
0:06:00I couldn't, I mean I'd seen them when they were new, but it's like was this always this huge? It's just
0:06:03terrible.
0:06:06Imagine like there are so many people bought that
0:06:09because it was it was sold as like a as like the premium Kindle like if you wanted an E-int Kindle you should consider
0:06:15upgrading to this and if you're reading on it it is in almost every way
0:06:20substantially worse than the E-int Kindles
0:06:24And it's so many people bought that as an upgrade, but that was that probably did not turn out
0:06:30Well, you could fend off muggers with it. I guess
0:06:32And the back of it is that nice textured plastic rubberized stuff. I like it back felt all right
0:06:38I like this, but like it's so heavy you can't like holding this in one hand forget it whereas the E and kindles like they're
0:06:43So light now. They're like practically like a piece of paper so much nicer to hold in one hand yeah, all right
0:06:48Let me take our first sponsor break this episode is sponsored by our friends at file
0:06:52Go to filetransporter.com to learn more and you can use coupon code ATP for 10% off of any transporter you buy from them.
0:07:00So, what is File Transporter? Transporter is by some people who were at Drobo, left, got so good at building this thing called Transporter that Drobo bought them again, and now they're back at Drobo.
0:07:12So, Transporter is your own private cloud storage solution.
0:07:17It is a hard drive in an enclosure that you own and control.
0:07:22And there's no monthly fees. You can buy this thing up front and then you own it and control it.
0:07:27And then they give you software that lets you access it from your computer, much like Dropbox.
0:07:32And then Transporter can even sync to other Transporter devices on your network or over the internet.
0:07:37on your network or over the internet. And so you can replicate things between transporters,
0:07:42you can have constant online backup going, it's great for large photo storage that we were talking
0:07:47about last week because you're using your own bandwidth, using your own storage, it's fantastic.
0:07:53So transport is also great for collaboration and sharing and working with files with other people
0:07:59because like Dropbox you can have a shared folder. But these files are only on your device. There is
0:08:07no cloud copy of them. There's no copy on transporter servers. You have these files
0:08:12and you can have it replicate to somebody else and it's all secure. It's encrypted end-to-end.
0:08:17You can back up photos from your iOS device. You can copy files from your computer. You can use it
0:08:22as primary storage, secondary storage. It is fantastic. It's totally private, totally encrypted,
0:08:28no fees per month. You try to store a terabyte of data on Dropbox and you're going to see a lot of
0:08:34those fees building up pretty quickly. So Transporter is awesome. You can share confidential documents, you can work on them securely, you can share home movies and photos, you can send share links to people over email where the file is too big for email.
0:08:45You can automatically even copy data to an offsite location. You can have a Transporter at your house, a Transporter at your friend's house, your parent's house, your office, or somebody else's office, and everything can just replicate and you can have a built-in backup that way.
0:08:57It's really a fantastic product.
0:08:59So go to filetransporter.com.
0:09:01Check this out.
0:09:02If you use coupon code ATP, you can get 10% off
0:09:05any of the devices in the File Transporter store.
0:09:08And they range from $100 to $400, from 0 terabytes up
0:09:13to 2 terabytes.
0:09:16And if you even have your own drive,
0:09:18you can plug it into the cheap one, and it's really fantastic.
0:09:21So check out File Transporter at filetransporter.com.
0:09:25And thanks a lot for sponsoring the show.
0:09:27We got a lot, or I don't know if we should, I should say we got, but we saw a lot of interesting
0:09:33news that may or may not be news about PhotoStream.
0:09:37And Jon, you seem to have taken point and prepared some notes for the show that we don't
0:09:42prepare for.
0:09:43Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
0:09:46Do you want to walk through kind of what we've learned over the last week?
0:09:49Yeah, since we talked so much about Everpix on a couple past shows, a couple of people
0:09:53on Twitter sent me a link to a recently updated Apple Knowledge Base article about PhotoStream,
0:10:00and we'll have the link in the show notes, and here's some text from one of them. It says,
0:10:05"There is no limit to the amount of photos you can upload to my PhotoStream over a longer period,
0:10:09such as several months or years. Photos uploaded to my PhotoStream or shared PhotoStreams are not
0:10:14counted against the iCloud storage." Well, we knew that about the iCloud storage. And so we used to
0:10:18like, "Oh, there was an upload limit of 1,000, but now it says there's no limit," right?
0:10:22And that began the conversation amongst all the people on Twitter finding other knowledge-based
0:10:27articles and saying, "Yeah, but here's this knowledge-based article that has an even
0:10:30later date that says it's still limited to 1,000." And then there were people experimenting by
0:10:34saying, "Okay, I've got 1,000 photos in my stream. I will take one more picture." And I see the first
0:10:39picture just went off the end, and it still says I have 1,000. Then people were saying, "Well,
0:10:41that's just what's on your phone. Really, all of them are on your server. I went on vacation,
0:10:45Took 3,000 pictures. Only 1,000 were on my phone, but when I came home and went to iPhoto,
0:10:49all 3,000 were in my photo stream. And this went back and forth and back and forth. I think we
0:10:54should just put all these links in the show notes so people can look at them. My takeaway from all
0:10:59of this is that regardless of what the situation actually is, experimentally determined, determined
0:11:05from Apple's documents, however you want to do it, it's obviously still way too confusing for us
0:11:09to figure out. And the most important feature of Everpix was not how it behaved. It was the fact
0:11:15that you could explain it very simply. We could put all your photos forever. They're
0:11:20stored in the cloud. Period. The end. Anything that you have to look at all these documents
0:11:24and have a big Twitter conversation about and try to read the tea leaves on is missing
0:11:28the most important feature, which is simplicity and understandability. So I'm not even sure
0:11:33what the current situation is. The upload limit stuff seems straightforward because
0:11:36you just say, "Well, they're just saying how many you can upload." They don't say anything
0:11:39about how many they keep or how many will be redownloaded or anything like that. And
0:11:43I think pretty much people have determined it'll only keep a thousand on your device in the stream and
0:11:475,000 in each shared stream, but I'm still not entirely sure about okay
0:11:53Well, so given all those constraints will it do like the guy who went on vacation said and yeah
0:11:57You only have a thousand on your your main photo stream on your phone
0:12:01But when you get home and I photo syncs with your photo stream will it pull down all your pictures?
0:12:05Like there's no good way as far as I know
0:12:09To you know like the equivalent of Arabic's you go to the Arabic website, and there's all your pictures
0:12:14You know the pic the cloud is the the source of truth your pictures are in the cloud
0:12:18And they may be on local machines as a caching type thing
0:12:20And and photo stream and everything we're still not sure so I think Apple may be making progress here
0:12:26Or maybe they just changed the upload limit or a throttling thing
0:12:30I don't know
0:12:30But it's kind of one of those things where all the incremental steps don't really matter until they get to the point where they just
0:12:36Don't worry about it. It's simple. We got you covered and here's how it works and here's you can feel secure knowing that it worked
0:12:41Because right now I don't think anyone feels secure in their knowledge of exactly how photo stream works with all their devices
0:12:45I know I certainly don't yeah, I don't either and this you know
0:12:49I was thinking as you were narrating all this this feels so I don't know Microsoft like you know like oh well
0:12:55It's this except one that and then there's this except one. That's other thing and it just it's so
0:13:01blurry and weird and it's so not the way Apple usually is.
0:13:06And just like you said, it needs to be simple.
0:13:08And one thing, and I don't have the piece of feedback handy,
0:13:11but somebody sent us some interesting feedback
0:13:15with some back of the napkin calculations
0:13:17as to how much data storing every iOS user's pictures
0:13:22from the beginning of time would really take up.
0:13:26And I don't remember the answer off the top of my head,
0:13:28and I'm not even sure that they were right,
0:13:30But suffice to say, it was a metric crap ton of data
0:13:33that they would need-- or of hard drive space
0:13:36they would need in order to store all of these pictures
0:13:39from everyone under the sun.
0:13:40So perhaps what made Everpix even mildly doable
0:13:44was simply that they weren't trying to do it for everyone.
0:13:47They were trying to do it for thousands or tens of thousands
0:13:49of users.
0:13:50I mean, the storage--
0:13:52storage for individuals, especially--
0:13:54I mean, maybe the sharing stuff has some angle on it.
0:13:56But there's not the type of--
0:13:58It's not the type of service like, I don't know, Twitter or Facebook where everybody's
0:14:02seeing everybody else's stuff, where the complexity and difficulty really ramps up as you add
0:14:07more things.
0:14:08You can kind of silo this.
0:14:09If you can support 10 people, you can just multiply that out to support thousands and
0:14:14millions.
0:14:15Yes, it costs tons and tons of money, but if it's profitable for whatever, you know,
0:14:18Everpick said they'd be profitable at like 20,000 people, well, if it's profitable at
0:14:2220,000, presumably it'd still be profitable at 40, at 60, at 90, and it's like, "Oh, that
0:14:26costs so much money.
0:14:27Look at all the storage."
0:14:28It costs lots of money. Apple has billions of dollars.
0:14:30Maybe you'd have to have an upfront investment, but if it's profitable at 20,000 for this little dinky company,
0:14:35hopefully Apple at 400 million, it could still be profitable, or at least break even.
0:14:39Or maybe it's even a little bit of a cost center, but like I said, it may be just the cost of doing business eventually.
0:14:44And the photo stream stuff is kind of like bargaining. It's like, "How about this, guys?
0:14:48How about we will store all your pictures?"
0:14:51The shared photo streams are way better than it used to be for sharing photos.
0:14:54I use them all the time with my family because it's easier than it used to be and they don't
0:14:58have to do anything.
0:14:59If they have an iOS device, if I put a picture in my shared photo stream, it appears and
0:15:03they can look at it right there.
0:15:04And that's better than emailing them pictures.
0:15:07That's even better than, you know, in the old days making a .Mac website and giving
0:15:10them the URL of the website and they would look at and all that stuff.
0:15:13So I like photo streams, but I think Apple was hoping if we make this constrained service
0:15:19and we put these numbers up, you know, a thousand pictures, blah, blah, blah, whatever, we won't
0:15:23have these crazy storage demands and maybe this will solve the problem and I
0:15:26think it helps but it doesn't you know solve the are all my pictures safe
0:15:30problem and that is an even bigger investment with more stuff and yeah the
0:15:33numbers are terrifying when you have 400 million but almost anything you do with
0:15:36400 million people is terrifying. Just think about the email they get and
0:15:39they're not even a big email provider like the amount of spam that they get at
0:15:43iCloud.com and Mac.com email addresses alone is pretty terrifying and that is
0:15:47one of those things that like gets worse as the volume goes up because you get
0:15:50targeted by spammers and stuff.
0:15:52So I'm not pretending it's a small problem,
0:15:56but if anybody could do it, it's the company
0:15:58with billions and billions of dollars of cash.
0:16:01And this really is kind of a service--
0:16:05it's not read mostly like iTunes.
0:16:06You're not sharing the same files for everybody.
0:16:08But it's not that complicated.
0:16:09It's file storage.
0:16:10It's not computational or a web application
0:16:15that's all sophisticated.
0:16:16It's basically like a big bucket of bits
0:16:18that you can get back in an efficient manner
0:16:20that good stuff. Well, but it's more than that. I mean, it's replication, it's backup,
0:16:26and you're right that deduplication is really not an issue because there's nothing to be gained from
0:16:30it. But certainly backup and replication and scalability and uptime and access speeds and
0:16:37archival, all that stuff, that's... They've already got to do that for photo
0:16:40stream. All it does is... I mean, a thousand pictures is still not small change. And if you
0:16:44multiply that by 50 for 50,000 pictures for each person, it's 50 times harder in terms of... You
0:16:49You need 50 times more storage and 50 times more money and like all the things that you need, right?
0:16:53And you probably can't charge 50 times the price or whatever
0:16:57But it's like it's not like the photo stream itself is already hopefully all those things you described
0:17:02They already have a solution for and it's just a matter of okay
0:17:05Well now we just need to pour more money in and hopefully find someplace to get more money out charge more money for users
0:17:10For it don't don't give it to everyone for free
0:17:11Maybe maybe make it a $100 a year service a $50 a year service
0:17:15Like there are things you can do or you know again factored into the price of the other things spread that $50 over the cost
0:17:20Of all your other products who knows like the money stuff. I feel like can be worked out the technology stuff
0:17:26They should have all this stuff already in place, and they don't they should have this stuff anyway
0:17:30Just because this is an important thing that companies in the technology sector are gonna have to have at some point in the future
0:17:36So anyway, they're not there yet
0:17:39They seem to be making motions in this direction because that document did have a recent modification date saying that the upload limits were
0:17:46lowered I
0:17:49Don't know like we'll know it's happened because they'll have a slide up that says
0:17:52You know the slide we previously showed you about photo stream said a thousand photos blah blah blah
0:17:57This slide just has a single word in the middle
0:17:59It says unlimited or all your photos or some crap like that like we'll know it when it happens
0:18:04I don't think it's going to arrive at a secret knowledge base article where suddenly there's no more limits
0:18:08Yeah, I mean that's the kind of thing they would want to brag about that's a pretty big deal
0:18:12And also like they would want people to know that they're doing it. I mean if they just start
0:18:15Quietly backing up more than your last X photos
0:18:18They're not really getting much of a benefit of that you know customer wise PR wise you know customers
0:18:24Don't realize they can now put everything
0:18:26Then we'll use it differently. We'll think about it differently
0:18:29So I think it's important for them to to be very loud about it if they ever do that
0:18:34Yeah, and also I don't recall if I mentioned this in the last time we talked about Everpix,
0:18:39which thankfully that was so quick when we did because that gives us time to talk about
0:18:43it now.
0:18:44Oh, the chat room's going to kill you.
0:18:47Yeah, I know.
0:18:48But just to really quickly add, if Apple did take this on, imagine how much of a selling
0:18:52point that would be for your normal human that they look at it and they know enough
0:18:57about the landscape to know that, well, Windows Phone series, mobile 7 series, Metro, not
0:19:02Metro doesn't do any of the fancy photo things we want.
0:19:07The Android phone that everyone is telling them to get, well, that looks nice and all,
0:19:11and I really like that big screen, but I tell you what, this iPhone will back up all of
0:19:16my pictures for me automatically, and I don't have to worry about it.
0:19:20Why would I not get that?
0:19:21So when I take pictures of my kids, grandkids, dog, car, whatever, I know I will never ever
0:19:26ever lose any of them.
0:19:29And that would be a real selling point.
0:19:30But again, it's really hard to do and to get right.
0:19:33So I don't know.
0:19:35A lot of people have been telling us about Google+
0:19:37and how they back up all your stuff.
0:19:39And some people even mentioned Dropbox.
0:19:40And Google+ I think is worth addressing,
0:19:42because I think Google is signed up for like, hey,
0:19:44we'll save all your photos.
0:19:45We'll do all this great stuff for you.
0:19:46And the reason it never is on my radar for something
0:19:48that I want to do is because Google+ and the whole stuff
0:19:52associated with it, which is now almost everything that Google
0:19:55does, is a social network.
0:19:58It's a social sharing service.
0:20:00And I would never take my family photos
0:20:02and give them over to a service that's a social service.
0:20:06Like I wouldn't, if Facebook said,
0:20:08"Hey, we'll take all your photos
0:20:09"and preserve them forever," I wouldn't do it.
0:20:11And same thing with Google+.
0:20:12Because the whole purpose of those services
0:20:14is to share things with other people.
0:20:15And my photo collection is by default
0:20:18something I don't wanna share.
0:20:19In fact, all I wanna do is selectively pick
0:20:21maybe a handful of pictures and share them
0:20:23with selected people like I do in PhotoStream.
0:20:25I never wanna take, "Here's my entire photo library,
0:20:27Jam it up to a social network service, even if it has control to say, "Oh yeah, no, it'll be private by default.
0:20:32Everything you upload won't be shown to anybody unless you explicitly say it will. Don't forget to check the chat."
0:20:37Even if all the defaults are right, even if all the heart isn't in the right place,
0:20:40it just doesn't make me comfortable to take all my photos and put them on a social network.
0:20:44Because that's not like I don't want to share them with the world.
0:20:47I'm just looking for somebody to store my pictures, you know, like Everpix did.
0:20:51Right. I know we saw I saw him briefly. I know I saw a lot of feedback
0:20:55Oh just use Flickr and I actually engaged with somebody was like well, yeah, but they default to sharing all your pictures
0:21:01No, no, you don't need to default sharing off all your pictures, but I completely agree with you John. That's inherently
0:21:07Opposed their motivations are inherently opposed to my motivations and and that's just not good
0:21:14So anyway, and we can move on from this photo stuff
0:21:17And let me ask you John
0:21:20If you were Steven Elop and you were trying to discuss without actually discussing what you do as the next Microsoft CEO
0:21:28What would you do with Xbox? Yeah, I didn't actually read all these articles about
0:21:32There was a bunch of leaks from
0:21:35Presumably from Elop's camp about what he would do if he took over Microsoft and if you're gonna leak stuff like that like I
0:21:42Assume the idea was to leak things
0:21:46that people would say, "Yeah, that's awesome. Get this guy, because look what he said he's gonna do," like to make public pressure.
0:21:52You know,
0:21:55ELOP or his
0:21:56surrogates or whatever, suddenly there'd be pressure from the press, from the public, from Microsoft shareholders.
0:22:02"You've got to get his ELOP guy in there, because he has some amazing ideas,
0:22:05and you guys are a bunch of bozos." But then the ideas he put out seemed terrible, and everyone seems to think they're terrible ideas.
0:22:09And so, I don't know if this was an intentional leak by his camp. If it was,
0:22:15Maybe they thought these were great ideas, but I don't think they're great ideas, and I don't see anybody else thinking they're great ideas.
0:22:21I mean, maybe they're scary and radical, and that's the vibe he's going for, like he's ready to shake stuff up,
0:22:25there's no sacred cows or whatever, but yeah, don't get rid of the one thing that is a cut.
0:22:31The one product Microsoft has that's probably the most loved by customers.
0:22:34You can't say it's the most successful product because they had, you know,
0:22:37was it multiple billion dollar write down because of the red ring of death on the 360s, and it's lost money for years,
0:22:43and it did start to break even and become profitable.
0:22:44I think recently but over its entire lifetime it still hasn't dug itself out of the hole that took to get there
0:22:49but people like it people like the Xbox and
0:22:52That's in the world of Microsoft's. It's not easy to say that about much of anything these days
0:22:57So getting rid getting rid of that only makes sense if you decide that Microsoft is not going to be consumer company anymore
0:23:03They're just gonna become like Oracle with a different logo, and I don't think that's a win scenario for anybody
0:23:10Now would you try to kind of pull the opposite or maybe a similar thing to what they do with Windows and brand?
0:23:17Everything that everything new perhaps that Microsoft does with
0:23:21Xbox this and Xbox that and what I mean is you know they they take the Windows
0:23:26mobile whatever Windows Phone series whatever whatever and
0:23:30Personally as soon as I see Windows applied to anything I get a little grumbly
0:23:35What do you think if they rebranded things with Xbox that maybe that would be better?
0:23:40I mean clearly that worked for Comcast and Xfinity, so why wouldn't it work here?
0:23:44Because everyone wants to use the Xbox phone and their IT department is going to love that.
0:23:48I mean I agree, but it seems like Microsoft could use some help in there in any sort of
0:23:53branding situation.
0:23:54I know, Mark, you're the king of brands, you tell me.
0:23:58I mean part of it is, I don't know, their branding is pretty terrible and their marketing
0:24:05is even worse, and especially their advertising is just the worst. But ultimately, they could
0:24:13have this terrible advertising and those terrible names for the products, and they could get
0:24:19away with it if the products were really amazingly good and compelling to buy. And the problem
0:24:24is they're just not. You know, Office, people love Office, or at least they use it. I think
0:24:30people really do love Office. It really is very good for what it does for the most part.
0:24:35Windows, I feel like some people love it, most people just kind of use it.
0:24:39Everything else, you just kind of use it because it's there, because it's what your business uses or whatever.
0:24:43Except the consumer stuff like Xbox, that's a different story.
0:24:47But the things like Windows Phone
0:24:51and even Windows 8 and the new, you know, the Surface
0:24:55and things like the Surface, the whole line of Windows 8 convertible
0:24:59tablets or Pure tablets, Slate I guess they call them still.
0:25:03All those things are just not that compelling.
0:25:05And that's the biggest problem in the market.
0:25:06It's not that they have stupid names.
0:25:09It's not that they have dumbfounding commercials.
0:25:11It's that these things just aren't getting any traction
0:25:15with consumers.
0:25:16And I don't think there's anything small
0:25:19they can do to fix that.
0:25:20I think this is a big problem.
0:25:22It needs a big solution.
0:25:24And I'm not sure they can deliver it
0:25:25no matter what they call it.
0:25:26- Xbox was actually kind of a triumph
0:25:28of the anti-branding thing because I'm sure somebody,
0:25:31a lot of somebodies wanted to call the Microsoft game console something with the word Microsoft
0:25:35in it or something with the word Windows in it. And there must have been a fight and the Xbox
0:25:39guys won that fight. It's not, you know, Microsoft Windows Xbox or Xbox for Windows or Windows game
0:25:45machine or, you know, anything like that. It's just Xbox. Like, I mean, I guess I don't know.
0:25:50I'm sure Microsoft is somewhere on the box. But the Xbox brand is not tied to Microsoft. It is
0:25:55not tied to Windows in the same way that all the other things you just mentioned are. And I think
0:26:00I think the Xbox brand has such value at this point that you made a joke about, "Oh, what
0:26:06if they named everything Xbox?"
0:26:07If they made something...
0:26:09You know, the Xbox One does all sorts of non-gaming stuff.
0:26:12And if they called one aspect of that non-gaming stuff Xbox TV, they didn't.
0:26:16I don't think they have anything branded that way, but it basically is Xbox TV.
0:26:19But if they called something Xbox TV and it worked kind of like, "Oh, we'll take..."
0:26:24Like what the Xbox One does.
0:26:25We'll take your TV in as an input and overlay stuff on it and let you switch back and forth
0:26:30between games and blah blah blah. I think that branding would work because people like
0:26:33Xbox and people would like the feature set presumably. So I don't think that's entirely
0:26:39crazy to take Xbox and put it as a prefix instead of something else that's related to
0:26:43what the Xbox does as in a box that connects to your TV that does interactive things.
0:26:49Once again we have back as a sponsor this week our friends at Hover. Hover is high quality,
0:26:54no hassle domain registration. Use promo code ATP for 10% off anything there, new or old.
0:26:59old add-on or brand new domain. So, hover.com/ATP. Hover takes all the hassle
0:27:06and friction out of owning and managing domain names. They offer smart, easy to
0:27:09use, and powerful domain management tools. They believe that everyone should be
0:27:13able to take control of their online identity with your own domain name and
0:27:16they will make it easy for you to do so. They're part of Two Cows, which has been
0:27:20around since 1994, which is basically forever, at least on the internet, and
0:27:25it's one of the largest domain registrars in the world. They offer tons
0:27:29of top level domains. .net, .co, .com, TV, country codes,
0:27:33and many, many more.
0:27:34They recently added IO and a bunch of other ones,
0:27:37and they're constantly adding more.
0:27:39So you can get dot just about anything.
0:27:41And what I like about Hover a lot
0:27:44is that they don't believe in heavy handed upselling
0:27:46or aggressive cross-selling.
0:27:48They don't believe in hiding functionality or requiring
0:27:51extra payment for things that really should be free,
0:27:53such as who is privacy on your names, subdomains,
0:27:56and URL forwarding.
0:27:58They also have a whole email hosting service if you'd like, it's optional, which is easy and affordable to create a memorable email address.
0:28:04So you can get rid of that weird free webmail email address that you don't control like something at gmail.com or yahoo.com or whatever.
0:28:11They offer excellent online help too, and this is something that really, their whole support system really sets them apart from the rest.
0:28:18Not only is there tons of online documentation, online tutorials covering pretty much everything you could possibly need to do with a domain name,
0:28:25name, but they also have this awesome no hold, no wait, and no transfer telephone
0:28:30support. I actually said telephone because it's that good. You call this
0:28:35866 number that's on their site Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern
0:28:39and you will be speaking to a live person who picks up the phone without
0:28:44having you wait and hold for 15 minutes, an actual live person picks up the phone
0:28:47who is empowered and eager to help you out. So this is pretty great. Go to
0:28:52hover.com/ATP for high quality, no hassle domain registration.
0:28:58And once again, use promo code ATP for 10% off.
0:29:01Thanks a lot to Hover for sponsoring.
0:29:03So John, since you're apparently cuing everything or kicking
0:29:06everything off this episode, how is the enterprise software
0:29:10experience treating you these days?
0:29:12I have this big long sob story about enterprise software.
0:29:15I was trying to debate whether it would fit in
0:29:18on a complaining podcast if I had such a thing.
0:29:21But--
0:29:22This isn't it?
0:29:23This is your enthusiastic appreciating everything
0:29:26podcast.
0:29:27You know, like, you ever think if there's
0:29:28some kind of lesson to take about like what not to do
0:29:32or something like that?
0:29:33I don't know.
0:29:33You can tell me.
0:29:34I can try to go through it quickly
0:29:36if that's at all possible.
0:29:38I would love to hear you attempt that.
0:29:40Yes, indeed.
0:29:41My version of attempting that is I talk really fast.
0:29:43That's probably not what you want.
0:29:45All right, so this is a story about enterprise software.
0:29:48And we've talked about enterprise software
0:29:50and Pat shows, and my sort of thumbnail sketch
0:29:53of enterprise software is that the people using the software
0:29:56aren't the people who purchase the software
0:29:58or selected the software if it happens to be free.
0:30:01And so this is a story of just such a kind
0:30:04of piece of software.
0:30:05So before Mavericks was released,
0:30:08my work changed its VPN software from a VPN that
0:30:11worked with the VPN support that's built into OS X
0:30:15to one that requires a third party client.
0:30:18And so here is enterprise software assumption number one
0:30:21of the story.
0:30:22When a new version of OS X comes out,
0:30:24assume your enterprise software will not work with it.
0:30:28And that might seem like a weird assumption,
0:30:30but when I was sort of sketching out the notes for this,
0:30:34I'm like, you know what?
0:30:35I do just assume that.
0:30:37I just assume that when the new version of OS X comes out,
0:30:41most of my favorite programs will work with it.
0:30:43But of course, enterprise software won't.
0:30:45And I've always-- I don't question it,
0:30:47But I thought, why is that?
0:30:49There are months and months to lead up to a new OS X release.
0:30:52There's a developer conference.
0:30:53There are developer builds.
0:30:56And it seems like all these companies are just shocked
0:30:58that Apple came out with a new app.
0:30:59We've never seen anything like this before.
0:31:01Where did this come from?
0:31:02Mavericks?
0:31:02Who heard of that?
0:31:04And then that day, after it comes out,
0:31:07they start work on--
0:31:09they find out on that day whether their stuff works.
0:31:11I mean, it's almost as if I'm not sure that enterprise
0:31:15software companies have anybody actively working
0:31:17on their software products, or at least on the Mac's software,
0:31:20right?
0:31:21And it's always just like in reactive mode.
0:31:22I mean, Oracle went years--
0:31:24no one cares about this except for people who do stuff
0:31:26in my line of work.
0:31:28But Oracle went years without a 64-bit client library
0:31:31that worked in OS X, like years.
0:31:32I think they span like two or three OS X releases
0:31:35without anything that worked in 64-bit.
0:31:37Because they just couldn't be bothered.
0:31:39It's like, who cares?
0:31:39Whatever.
0:31:41So anyway, sure enough, Mavericks came out.
0:31:43My enterprise software did not work with it.
0:31:47And this is Cisco VPN.
0:31:49I might as well just name names.
0:31:50Why not?
0:31:50I don't think they're going to sponsor the show.
0:31:52Sorry, Cisco.
0:31:53Cisco seemed genuinely shocked that Madrix was released.
0:31:59And they seemed shocked that their software
0:32:00didn't work with it.
0:32:01They're like, huh, look at that.
0:32:03Our stuff doesn't work with it.
0:32:04And they said, the existing version kind of worked,
0:32:07except it might frequently disconnect, which is like,
0:32:09all right, well then it doesn't work, really, does it?
0:32:11Because it frequently disconnects.
0:32:12It's not really what I want out of VPN software.
0:32:14And so I couldn't upgrade to Madrix
0:32:16until the VPN software is updated.
0:32:18So a short time later, I think it was only a couple weeks,
0:32:21Cisco Update has a version that was compatible with Mavericks.
0:32:24So this is thumbs up in Cisco,
0:32:25see maybe they will sponsor,
0:32:26because unlike Oracle they didn't wait three years.
0:32:28Weeks, only weeks after Mavericks were released.
0:32:30Now granted it still sort of drives me crazy,
0:32:32'cause like you should not have found out
0:32:34when the OS was released that your software
0:32:36was incompatible and then scrambled
0:32:37for a couple weeks to have a compatible version.
0:32:39But anyway, the new version said it has a workaround
0:32:42for a bug that's in Mavericks
0:32:43and that they filed the bug with Apple,
0:32:45This version should work until Apple fixes the bug and the rest which I completely believe again this bug should have been filed like you
0:32:51Know seven developer releases of Mavericks ago, but whatever
0:32:53But in the meantime here's one that has a workaround that shouldn't disconnect all right
0:32:57So then we come to enterprise software assumption number two you will not be able to get the software you need
0:33:01Can I can I download can I download this new version of this VPN client is compatible with Mavericks?
0:33:08First step of that is trying to find it on Cisco's website
0:33:11Which is not easy you ever tried to find this type of thing you would think it would be right there next to the words
0:33:15I read that told me they had a new version
0:33:17But it's not because that was like in a forum somewhere with some Cisco person. Oh god
0:33:20This is reminded me of when I had to
0:33:22Install raid drivers for raid cards on Linux. It's exactly the same thing like you have to dive through these like crazy
0:33:30enterprise II sites and good luck finding anything and then they want you to join their their
0:33:36Program for their premium support and everything like no I bought the card
0:33:40I just want to download the thing that makes it work a mess
0:33:43Yeah, whenever you find yourself in a forum, almost especially if it's an official forum,
0:33:47like this is not just some random forum with a bunch of people. Like there's an official person
0:33:51from the company responding to the forum. I mean, this is what drove the creation of
0:33:55StackOverflow for one and Discourse for another. Like if you find yourself in a traditional forum,
0:34:01scrolling through pages and pages of replies, looking for the ones from the official Cisco guy,
0:34:04trying to like... It's like replaying the journal on a file system. Everything comes back to file
0:34:08systems guys. It's like replaying the journal on a file system to reconstruct the history to like
0:34:14zoom up to the current day so that you know you have to read these giant threads to find
0:34:17the information. But anyway, I eventually found the page that had this text on it. You know,
0:34:23I copy and pasted a lot of stuff on the website because I just love the copy from these websites.
0:34:26Anyway, the following directory contains versions of AnyConnect for all platforms. The current
0:34:30download for OS X is version 3.1.0.4.074. That's a real version number for enterprise software.
0:34:36and all other platforms are 3.1.0.4.0.7.2. Any Connect version, big long number, is required
0:34:44for OS 10.9, and all other Mac platforms may either use one of the old versions. Anyway,
0:34:48so underneath that tiny, tiny, tiny text is a huge scrolling iframe containing many, many downloads,
0:34:55most of which are not from my platform, including items with text like this.
0:35:00Package enables Fips, all caps, for Mac OS X, all one word squished together.
0:35:07Intel in scare quotes for some reason, platform. So package enables FIPS for Mac OS X,
0:35:13Intel platforms. File contains the VPN API for Mac OS X spaced out this time, Intel platforms.
0:35:21Standalone DMG package for Mac OS X, Intel platforms. Web deployment package for Mac OS X,
0:35:26Intel platforms. All of these are the old version number, despite the note on the
0:35:30top saying that you want to have the new version number. And I don't know which do
0:35:32I want. Do I want tips? Do I want VPN API? Do you want a standalone DMG package?
0:35:36Do you want a web deployment package? You know, like, no instructions in that regard.
0:35:39Easiest way to find what I want was to search for the version number string on
0:35:43the page. Do like in page, in browser, you know, search for the thing. Because then I
0:35:47found like way down, you know, instead of, you scroll past like hundreds of these
0:35:50things for Linux, for Windows, different versions of Windows, different platforms,
0:35:53different versions, eventually I found the one that I want.
0:35:57And the thing, I guess the take home lesson to this is that the next time you're on some
0:36:02web developers, some developer's website and it auto detects what platform you're on and
0:36:07gives you a gigantic shiny red glossy button with a download link for the latest version
0:36:11of their software for your platform, appreciate it.
0:36:14Because that's not how, you know what I mean?
0:36:16Like you know when you go to a website and like, that's what they want you to have.
0:36:19You want to go to some indie Mac developers, this is such a gigantic button that says download
0:36:23Now download right here, even if it's a link to the Mac App Store, they'll take you right
0:36:26to the thing.
0:36:27Not on enterprise software, you have to hunt for the download link.
0:36:30And there'll be decoys, like all those ones I just read, and you have to know what FIPS
0:36:33is and I don't, you know, no explanation of this stuff.
0:36:36A bunch of these are tar GZs too, just throw an XD Monkey wrench for the non tech savvy.
0:36:42I find the download link that I want, I click it, and no luck.
0:36:45I get a message saying I have to log in.
0:36:46Right.
0:36:47So okay, well, I figured that would be the case because they're not gonna just let you
0:36:50download their software.
0:36:51crazy, like Marco said, you have to register an account, you can't just have
0:36:54the thing. So I register, I create an account, I check my email for the
0:36:57confirmation message, I click the confirmation link, I'm all set. I
0:37:01attempt to log into my new confirmed Cisco account and I get this error
0:37:05message, again word for word. Your login was unsuccessful for one of the
0:37:09following reasons. You entered your user ID and/or password incorrectly, please
0:37:13try again, that's a bulleted item, and here's a second bulleted item. You
0:37:17recently registered or reset your password and our systems are updating
0:37:20your information. Please try again in five minutes.
0:37:22Oh, my God. It's slave lag. That's actually an error message.
0:37:27So then we come to enterprise solver assumption number three. What works in the rest of the
0:37:31world does not work in the enterprise world. In the rest of the world, if you create an
0:37:35account and they email you a confirmation link and you click it, you go through the
0:37:39whole... Of course you can log into that account. You just confirmed it. Hell, most of the time
0:37:42you can even partially log into it even if you haven't confirmed it. You don't have to
0:37:45say, "Oh, you haven't confirmed your email yet."
0:37:47But in the enterprise world merely creating an account and clicking the confirmation doesn't mean you can log into it, right?
0:37:52So yeah, so I wait five minutes right same error. I wait ten minutes same error fifteen minutes same error
0:37:58And I'm thinking like well, maybe I mistyped my password
0:38:00I mean, maybe I mistyped it twice during the the account creation process as possible
0:38:04Or may have the cat blocks on or some crazy thing like that right so I reset my password
0:38:08Right thankfully they haven't forgot your password link or would have to go off into another realm because sometimes
0:38:12They don't even have I forgot your password like you know like call somebody or something I?
0:38:15I reset my password, you know, sends you an email, click this link to reset, type a new
0:38:19password.
0:38:20I try logging in with my newly reset password.
0:38:23And what I of course get is that same error message that says, "You entered a user ID
0:38:26and/or password incorrectly.
0:38:27Please start again as one bulleted item."
0:38:30Or "You recently registered to reset your password."
0:38:32And I did recently reset my password.
0:38:34And I realized, like, that's not going to help me because if I get that error message,
0:38:37again, this error message says, "Your login was unsuccessful for one of the following
0:38:42reasons."
0:38:43two possible reasons. One user ID a password incorrect to you just recently registered or
0:38:48reset. Well, I did just recently reset. It's actually four reasons. Yeah. Well, yeah. Two
0:38:52bullet points. Please try again in five minutes. Wait, five minutes, wait 10 minutes, wait 15
0:38:57minutes, wait a whole day. You actually did it again. Waited a whole day. Like who knows?
0:39:01It was the enterprise software. Like maybe, like you said, maybe it hasn't probably maybe like
0:39:05some person has to write it down on form and like mimeograph it and like put it in a pneumatic tube
0:39:10and like, I don't know how things get into the real database. And some person entered into an
0:39:14Excel spreadsheet, and someone prints that Excel spreadsheet, and then sends the FedEx to the
0:39:18Topeka office, and the Topeka offices enters it in their COBOL system. And then finally,
0:39:22you can go, I don't know how it works. I gave it a whole day, same error message. And this just
0:39:28makes, this is a repeat of enterprise software assumption number three, it works in the rest
0:39:31of the world. It doesn't work in the enterprise world. To create an account, you can't log into
0:39:34it. Reset your password, you can't log into it. So now I'm in desperation mode, and I email the
0:39:39the support link, right?
0:39:41Find on the website something like "technical support for the Cisco website", right?
0:39:45Here's the entire text of my email.
0:39:47I can't log into my account at Cisco.com.
0:39:49I gave the username as well.
0:39:51I've tried resetting my password.
0:39:52Each time it says it succeeds, but each time my new password still does not work.
0:39:56I think that's straightforward.
0:39:57I don't know what else to tell them.
0:39:59I gave them my username.
0:40:01I said that I can't log in, and their first thing is going to be like, "Oh, maybe you
0:40:04forgot your password.
0:40:05You should probably reset it."
0:40:06tell them I've reset my password several times actually because I did do it several times.
0:40:10And each time it says, "Yes, we've reset your password," but each time I try to log in again,
0:40:13my newly reset password doesn't work. That's all I said. I didn't have to go into this
0:40:17big rigmarole about the weird messages and stuff like that. I figure maybe there's something
0:40:20weird on my account or I'm locked out or they should be able to see on their end failed
0:40:23login attempts or something. Who knows? So I got a response about like 12 hours later,
0:40:27which is pretty darn good. And I'm not being sarcastic about this in terms of customer
0:40:30support. For any company, 12 hours is a pretty good turnaround time on a support email, especially
0:40:35or a big company like Cisco.
0:40:37Here's the reply.
0:40:39Dear John, thank you for contacting Cisco.
0:40:41By adding star.cisco.com to the trusted sites,
0:40:45you are able to log in successfully.
0:40:47How to do it question mark comma,
0:40:48follow these easy steps period.
0:40:50Just this crazy, crazy punctuation.
0:40:54A, the steps are labeled with letter, capital A period.
0:40:57Click the tools button, then click internet options.
0:41:00Anyone who has those windows down here.
0:41:02B, click the security tab.
0:41:03C. Now click Trusted Sites, then click on the Sites button.
0:41:06D. And it goes through the whole instructions
0:41:08for Internet Explorer, adding start at Cisco.com
0:41:11as a trusted site.
0:41:11Because I guess the assumption is my problem
0:41:13is that I can't log in because it's not a trusted site.
0:41:14I didn't say anything about trusted site.
0:41:16I didn't send them any screenshots.
0:41:17I didn't mention platform.
0:41:18But this is the canned response I get.
0:41:20All right, so OK, forget about that.
0:41:21Time to get creative.
0:41:22I don't know why I didn't do this earlier,
0:41:24but I made an incognito window in Chrome,
0:41:27or the equivalent of deleting cookies.
0:41:28Like, just start with a fresh slate, right?
0:41:30And I go to--
0:41:31You can call it porn mode.
0:41:32It's all right.
0:41:33Is that what they call it?
0:41:34The kids call it these days.
0:41:36And I go to the login form, and I enter my password,
0:41:37and it works.
0:41:38I log in.
0:41:39I see the top of the page, my username.
0:41:40I can go to my account.
0:41:41I'm like, hey, my account.
0:41:43It works.
0:41:43Everything works great.
0:41:45And so I re-navigate to the download link.
0:41:47I click on it, and it asks me to log in.
0:41:48And now I read the message, the message
0:41:54that it shows you when you try to click on the link.
0:41:56The message that was there the first time,
0:41:58but that it didn't finish reading because I'm impatient,
0:42:00it said, to download the software, you must log in.
0:42:02link to log in. And the first time I encountered this problem, I immediately
0:42:05clicked the login link and it went through "you don't have an account, create
0:42:07account, blah blah blah." But that message continues. You must log in and have a
0:42:11valid service contract associated with your Cisco.com profile.
0:42:15So this is Enterprise Software Assumption #4. Sometimes, despite all
0:42:20the terrible things that are terrible about Enterprise Software, it's at least
0:42:22partially your fault. If I had read that message the first time, I probably would
0:42:26have stopped this process and said, "Well, I don't have a valid service contract
0:42:29associated with my Cisco.com profile.
0:42:31In fact, I don't even have a Cisco.com profile.
0:42:32But instead I read, "If you download the software,
0:42:34"you must log in."
0:42:35Log in was blue and underlined, and I clicked on it,
0:42:37and I went off.
0:42:38So I, like every other user, doesn't read all the messages,
0:42:40just gets to the part that I want to get to.
0:42:43So I can't get this all for myself.
0:42:44I don't have a service contract.
0:42:45- I'm sorry, can I pause you real quick?
0:42:47- Go for it.
0:42:48- How long between the first time you saw the login link
0:42:50and clicked it, and the realization now
0:42:53that you needed to read the rest of the message?
0:42:57'Cause you mentioned at least a 12-hour wait, right?
0:42:59Yeah, so I tried it one day and went through this whole big thing, and then it kept asking
0:43:03me to wait, so I said, "Fine, I'll wait till tomorrow."
0:43:05And then I tried the second day and then did the email thing and then got the email back
0:43:08I guess the third day.
0:43:10I'm not sitting there hammering this.
0:43:11It's just each day I make another run at it, right?
0:43:14Okay, I'm sorry.
0:43:16So carry on.
0:43:17And by the way, I think the problem with the incognito window thing is that it probably
0:43:20coquied me seeing that, "Oh, he was trying to get to destination X, but before you can
0:43:24get there, we have to send you off on this tangent to create an account and log into
0:43:27it."
0:43:28I think what happened was I went off on a tangent, created an account, and every time
0:43:32I went to the login form, it was trying to send me to the destination that I didn't have
0:43:35permission to get to.
0:43:36So every time I logged in, it would probably accept my authentication, try to send me to
0:43:39the destination, and then bounce me back and say, "Oh, you can't get this because you haven't
0:43:42logged in," and send me back to the login form.
0:43:43And of course, the error message doesn't say anything about that, and the error message
0:43:46is terrible anyway.
0:43:47That wasn't one of the 400 error possibilities?
0:43:50Yeah.
0:43:51It's like, why else would clearing cookies, why else would the equivalent of clearing
0:43:56and cookies allow me to get logged in,
0:43:57because it sent me-- just dumped me on the home page then,
0:43:59right?
0:44:00So I couldn't get the software myself, so I figured,
0:44:03let me try to get it the way that my work says
0:44:05I'm supposed to get it, right?
0:44:07And their instructions, which I've done before, obviously,
0:44:09because I have the existing version of this VPN software
0:44:11that works in Mountain Lion, is make sure you're not
0:44:14on the VPN step one, which is always striking me strange.
0:44:17But anyway, and go to some special URL,
0:44:18log in with my special work credentials,
0:44:21load a Java applet that will try to detect my platform
0:44:23and send me the file.
0:44:25And most of this time, of course, this doesn't work.
0:44:27Because my login credentials work,
0:44:29but then sometimes it bounces me back to the login page,
0:44:31and then that whole browser is fried,
0:44:32and you need to clear cookies or quit the browser
0:44:34and relaunch it and have a chance at it.
0:44:35Or sometimes the Java applet won't load,
0:44:38or the Java applet hangs and says
0:44:39it can't detect my platform,
0:44:40so I try Chrome, I try Safari, I try Firefox.
0:44:43I can't try IE in my VM,
0:44:45because it auto-detects your platform.
0:44:46And if it works in IE in Windows,
0:44:49but then it gives me the Windows version of the VPN,
0:44:50which is useless to me.
0:44:51I need the OS X version of it.
0:44:53So I always fight with this.
0:44:54I'm used to it eventually I get it download a look at of course. It's still the old version all right
0:44:57So now I just have to work wait for work to update its old version of the software
0:45:01And this is kind of the state of Matt now. It's just like I can't get the software myself
0:45:06I have to wait for my office to update the version of the software
0:45:09I told you you know I told them I the beginning of this process before any I started any but I had sent a support ticket
0:45:13And said hey can I have the version of the VPN that works with Mavericks blah blah blah
0:45:17But I know the turnaround times are really long and that so while this was going on
0:45:20I was figuring well
0:45:20me try to get the thing myself." And the question is, I guess, why does this have a downloader?
0:45:26Like, why does it require a service contract? Why are all these things that just happen to me,
0:45:30why are they there? Why isn't this VPN installer just a download link on Cisco's website? Why isn't
0:45:35this just on a share in my work that I can get? And I guess it just comes down to control.
0:45:39Like, IT departments at offices want to have control because they don't want to just
0:45:44let anybody install any VPN software. They want, they have to qualify it to determine
0:45:50that it works with all the other software that it's qualified to work in the company or whatever.
0:45:54And it makes sense from their perspective because it's the best way to have predictable results
0:45:58when you're supporting hundreds and hundreds of people. You've got to have a set of approved
0:46:02software. Nothing new goes in that set until it's tested and you make sure it works with all the
0:46:06other approved software. And you can't just let users download whatever the hell they want to
0:46:10install on their computers. That's the opposite of IT support. And we can get into a whole nuanced
0:46:16discussion about whether that's the right model for IT support or whatever, but it's the current
0:46:18model. And computer nerds are the worst, because we just all want to do it there ourselves.
0:46:23And yeah, I do want to do it myself. It's kind of like how they say doctors make the
0:46:27worst patients. I think computer nerds make the worst people to support in IT,
0:46:31and I'm sure the IT department hates the fact that I'm emailing them. "Can I have a big,
0:46:34giant version number of this piece of software, because it works with this version of the OS?"
0:46:38There's this whole culture of people who really, really don't like Apple. Period. They just don't
0:46:45don't like Apple and they don't like Mac in all capital letters.
0:46:50And I have to wonder, like, I bet the percentage of people who manage IT departments at large
0:46:59companies, I bet among them the percentage of them who are the kind of people who hate
0:47:05Mac in all capitals is way higher than average.
0:47:08And you know, just culturally, I guarantee you that's the case.
0:47:13And so they don't like it, they don't respect it, and I think that also applies to enterprise
0:47:18software developers as well.
0:47:20I think that's partly why the enterprise software people are always totally caught off guard
0:47:26when a new version of OS X comes out.
0:47:27Because they don't respect Mac people or Apple or the platform enough to actually pay any
0:47:34attention whatsoever to the betas, or to prioritize the releases that fix horrible bugs that only
0:47:42affect Mac people. I really think that it's just this whole culture of, "Well, you people
0:47:49who want to use Mac All-Capitals, you're just like this annoyance for us, and that's
0:47:55not real software, and anything that goes wrong, that's definitely a Mac and All-Capitals
0:48:00bug, and that's not our bug. That's their bug, and they messed something up because
0:48:03Apple's stupid." I bet that's a lot of this.
0:48:06That was definitely the Oracle vibe. But the vibe from Cisco is weird, though, because
0:48:10As soon as the forums lit up with, "Hey, Mavericks is out and my VPN doesn't work,"
0:48:14because this is a widely used product, it seemed like the official Cisco people were
0:48:19genuinely concerned about this failure and didn't know about it.
0:48:24Like, "Oh my god, our stuff doesn't work with the new version.
0:48:28This just came out.
0:48:29How could we have known?"
0:48:30They're either not aware that there are developer builds of it or...
0:48:34And the thing is, they reacted quickly.
0:48:36They got a new build up in weeks.
0:48:39It was less than a month.
0:48:40That's pretty fast for enterprise software for such a while.
0:48:43This has got to go through all...
0:48:45They reacted like, "This is important.
0:48:47We need to have a version of this that works with..."
0:48:49But it's baffling to me.
0:48:51If they're so concerned about it, this didn't have to be this way.
0:48:55You could have known this was coming by being part of the Apple...
0:48:58Not everybody, but just one dude in the company.
0:49:01And the other thing is, I always picture in these companies, there is one guy who's a
0:49:04Mac user, the one guy they have working on the Mac software.
0:49:06Surely, that guy is a big Mac nerd.
0:49:09And maybe he's held back by his bosses or something like that.
0:49:11But I don't understand why a little one-person indie Mac
0:49:16software developer shop can make sure all of his software,
0:49:20all of his 17 applications that he's written over the years,
0:49:22they all work on Mavericks, and have his software ready
0:49:25before the official public release.
0:49:29And I guess Cisco can't.
0:49:30I mean, it's because they're a big company,
0:49:32because they're slow moving.
0:49:33I don't know.
0:49:34And it's not just a big company.
0:49:36Adobe's software, I'm assuming, worked in Mavericks.
0:49:38I don't know. I don't understand it. But the enterprise stuff I do understand even a little bit.
0:49:44Like with the VPN stuff especially, you can't just download software. Like the software they
0:49:49give you from the Java thing is pre-configured with all the values for your company. And again,
0:49:53that's better because most people in the company aren't tech nerds. So you just want to give them
0:49:57something and just look, just run this. It'll be all set up for you, which is convenient. But it
0:50:00also means that even if I was able to download that software from Cisco, I would have to then
0:50:05know all the different values I have to put in. What is the server name? What is the port? What
0:50:08What is the protocol that I have to check here
0:50:10in this checkbox and all that stuff to get it configured?
0:50:13So I would have to download the official version
0:50:15and try to dig into it and find like plist files
0:50:17or other configuration things to figure out
0:50:19what all the values are or try to ask IT,
0:50:21which is, you know, hey, can you tell me
0:50:23the values to self-configure?
0:50:24They'd be like, what are you doing
0:50:25self-configure VPN plan?
0:50:26You can't do that.
0:50:27You can only download our official one
0:50:28and run up to that version yet.
0:50:30You really don't, you know.
0:50:31So I'm a pain in the butt.
0:50:34This was mostly/partially my fault,
0:50:37but enterprise software is also terrible.
0:50:39- It is, and I think I might be able to explain
0:50:42some of that, but before I do that,
0:50:46Marco, is there anything else that's awesome
0:50:48that you'd like to tell us about?
0:50:49- There is.
0:50:50It is our wonderful friends at Squarespace.
0:50:53Squarespace is the all-in-one platform
0:50:55that makes it fast and easy to create
0:50:57your own professional website or online portfolio.
0:51:00For a free trial and 10% off,
0:51:02go to squarespace.com and use offer code ATP11
0:51:06for the month of '11.
0:51:08Squarespace has constantly improved on their platform
0:51:10with new features, new designs, and even better support.
0:51:13They have beautiful designs for you to start with,
0:51:16and all the style options you need
0:51:17to create a unique website for you or your business.
0:51:20It's incredibly easy to use.
0:51:22And if you end up needing any help at all,
0:51:23they have an amazing support team
0:51:25that works 24 hours a day, seven days a week,
0:51:28with over 70 full-time employees based in New York City alone.
0:51:32So Squarespace starts at just $8 a month,
0:51:35And that includes a free domain name if you sign up for a whole year.
0:51:39Every design, they have these beautiful templates.
0:51:41I mean really you can do as little or as much as you want to customize them.
0:51:45I chose to do very little for the ATP site and it still looks amazing because they're
0:51:51built in the theater just that good.
0:51:53So these themes, they're built by professional designers, they've won awards, they even all
0:51:58come with matching mobile templates.
0:52:01They have these responsive designs that are really fantastic.
0:52:04They look just like the rest of the site, so it looks on theme, on brand, if you will.
0:52:09And it's really fantastic.
0:52:10Your content will look great on any size screen on any device.
0:52:13You can start a free trial today with no credit card required and start building your website
0:52:17right now.
0:52:19When you do decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure you use our offer code ATP11 to
0:52:23get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for ATP.
0:52:28Thank you very much to Squarespace for their very frequent and awesome support of ATP.
0:52:32everything you need to create an exceptional website. Thanks Squarespace.
0:52:35You should change our template. All these cool templates that Squarespace has.
0:52:39You say template?
0:52:40Template? Is that right? You want to say it? I say template. Anyway, there are cool ones.
0:52:46It also says Mario.
0:52:47There are cool ones. I see the mother of people's website and ours looks kind of boring.
0:52:51Can't you just change it by clicking something and changing the template?
0:52:54That can be your homework for the week, John.
0:52:56No!
0:52:57I don't have the login credentials for the Squarespace site.
0:52:59Good! Don't get me wrong.
0:53:00I'd be adding or rotating CSS3 cubes all over that site.
0:53:04Oh, somebody please send me the code to do that.
0:53:08That's easy to find.
0:53:09Just type CSS3 rotating cube, you'll find it.
0:53:12Oh, that's amazing.
0:53:13Do not give him the login credentials, Marco.
0:53:15I love all this good rolling.
0:53:16Well, now I'm tempted to.
0:53:17No, no.
0:53:18After the show…
0:53:19He can finally fix all the typos I make in the show notes.
0:53:22Oh, give me the login credentials then.
0:53:24Don't give him to John.
0:53:25He already is doing way too much planning, as evidenced by the last segment.
0:53:27So…
0:53:28lot like preparation and notes to me. Well, I because like once this process started,
0:53:33I'm like, I need to write this stuff down because the details are important. The exact error message.
0:53:37If you just said I tried to do something, it was a bunch of errors and stuff. It doesn't like you
0:53:41really need to get the details. So I wrote them down. John, let me tell you, you know,
0:53:45if we're all honest with each other, the people come to the show for me and sort of kind of for
0:53:52Marco, you're just a tag along. I will kick you off my show. If you continue to do this kind of
0:53:57preparation. This is unacceptable. I'm just letting you know. You're on notice.
0:54:03So earlier, KJ Healey in the chat said, think of it this way, people who develop Minecraft
0:54:07mods as children grow up to be enterprise software authors as adults. And I think that
0:54:11might pretty much sum it up. The Minecraft mod authors are way more enthusiastic
0:54:16and dedicated than these enterprise people. They totally want to be. They are like, as
0:54:21soon as the new Minecraft version, they have like, I have his version of my mod that works
0:54:25with the beta of 1.7 and they track the betas, this works with the second beta of 1.7, and
0:54:30when 1.7 official comes out, you can be damn sure their mod works with it if you can ever
0:54:33find a download link and if you can figure out how to install it and if you have all
0:54:37the prerequisites that they don't mention because they assume everybody knows.
0:54:41Oh, man. I mean, enterprise software is a hard problem. I mean, I have a small amount
0:54:47of experience in it because my first job after college for a couple of years was writing
0:54:50enterprise software. And it was a little different because it was a very small company, but our
0:54:55customers were very big companies. And it's just a tough business because any effort I
0:55:02would want to put in for making things better, improving the UI, improving the design, improving
0:55:09the flow of anything, the customers didn't really care. Nobody ever asked for that. When
0:55:15I would actually get to spend some time doing it and I would work on it for like a month,
0:55:19No one cared, no one said anything,
0:55:20it didn't get us any more sales.
0:55:23It probably didn't result in any benefit
0:55:25to the company at all, actually.
0:55:27And 'cause as you said, John, at the beginning,
0:55:28like with enterprise software,
0:55:30the people who make the buying decisions
0:55:32usually are not the people
0:55:33who are gonna be using it every day.
0:55:34And so it's just this bizarre market
0:55:37where it is a big market
0:55:39and there's a lot of money to be made there,
0:55:40but it just does not work the way you'd expect
0:55:43based on consumer software.
0:55:44It's just very, very different.
0:55:46All the incentives are different.
0:55:47The whole process of making and selling and maintaining it is extremely different.
0:55:53And it's just this weird, bizarre alternative universe that people like us, who are mostly
0:55:58in the consumer side, just can't possibly understand.
0:56:02And I think we're better off for it.
0:56:03Well, that's mostly true.
0:56:05So as someone who has kind of a leg in both universes, I can tell you a few things.
0:56:12Firstly, I've noticed at my company—so I work at a consultancy that's somewhere
0:56:16around 60 to 80 people. I forget exactly what the number is now. And we typically work on
0:56:21the Microsoft stack, but not exclusively. And I will tell you that I've noticed since I
0:56:27started at this particular company about a year ago, a little over a year ago, almost
0:56:32a year and a half ago now, I was one of the few people to have a Mac because I pretty
0:56:38much negotiated on the way in that I'm not going to have a PC or this conversation's
0:56:43And so I was one of the one of a handful people that had a Mac and now I'm noticing that there are
0:56:50there are way more Mac users not only developers even the
0:56:56executives are
0:56:58using various flavors of Macs
0:57:00More and more with each passing day and in fact our singular IT guy
0:57:06He just decided you know
0:57:08I've got a 15 inch
0:57:11high-res anti glare MacBook Pro just sitting in the closet. Maybe I should use that myself and
0:57:16Similarly his Android phone. I don't remember specifically what it was about there all the same right?
0:57:23Right well, and there's a million, but they're all the same, but anyway the point is like cats
0:57:28Exactly so about a month ago or whatever what I guess is yeah, it was right around the time the 5s came out
0:57:34He said to me hey my Android phone's headphone jack is busted
0:57:39And I use that for all my music everywhere.
0:57:42So I need something to fix this."
0:57:45And I was thinking, "If you just got a 5s, Casey, do you have an old iPhone that you
0:57:48want to unload?"
0:57:49And I said to him, "Well, yeah, I have a 4s, but I can't in good conscience give that
0:57:54to you, let alone sell it to you.
0:57:56But let me see what I can do."
0:57:57And it ended up another friend of mine had a 5, and he paid my friend for the 5.
0:58:02And so in the course of two or three months, this guy, this friend of mine/RIT guy went
0:58:08from being an Android and Dell user to an iPhone and Mac user.
0:58:15And so the reason I bring all this up is because in a smaller corporate environment, it's actually
0:58:22starting to be more and more prevalent for even non-technical people like the executives
0:58:28at the company to use Macs.
0:58:29And I thought that was kind of interesting.
0:58:31Now with regard to the enterprise software specifically, we work with all different size
0:58:38clients.
0:58:39We work with extremely small clients and we work with pretty big clients.
0:58:41And I'm measuring pretty big at, generally speaking, tens of thousands of employees.
0:58:47And if there's anything I've noticed, is that firstly, the group that we're specifically
0:58:54working with can in large degree make or break a project.
0:58:58So if the team at the client that we're working with is really enthusiastic and really
0:59:03excited and really wants to build what's right, then we can play off of that and we
0:59:09can build what's right.
0:59:11There are other times that we'll be working with a group at the client that is not enthusiastic
0:59:20and has been beaten down.
0:59:21And just like you said, Marco, when you were at the search engine company, even if we pose
0:59:28the most amazing solution to a problem, it's usually met with, "Meh, nobody's going to care."
0:59:35Exactly.
0:59:36And I think what that comes from is, I've noticed in big companies across a couple of jobs now,
0:59:42because I've been a consultant for a while, that in really big companies, it seems like what I
0:59:47would define as middle management. So people that are not peons, but are not really that important
0:59:54either. Firstly, there's a million of them, and they all deep down inside realize that
1:00:02they're kind of expendable. And the problem is that they know this deep down inside. And
1:00:08so now it's their mission to prevent anyone else from knowing that they're expendable.
1:00:15So what does that mean? What that means is, anytime you're in a meeting, Susie and Timmy
1:00:19and Johnny and Sally and everyone there, all these middle managers need to have—
1:00:25That's actually their names?
1:00:26No, of course not.
1:00:27But all of these middle managers need to speak up and let it be known, "I said something
1:00:34interesting and I said something important.
1:00:37This was my idea."
1:00:40And because of that, nothing gets done, because everyone has to have an opinion about everything,
1:00:45and nobody can agree on everything.
1:00:47And everyone wants to make sure they know that I said that thing, I'm important, I shouldn't
1:00:52be the one to get the pink slip, and it's just soul-sucking and it's terrible.
1:00:57And the unfortunate thing is, a lot of times that is the entire company.
1:01:01But what's almost worse is, is when you have a group that's really excited and really interested
1:01:08and really cares, and then they're met with so much inertia that's really, or so much,
1:01:15I guess non-inertia, in other words the company around them is so stagnant that there's
1:01:20nothing they can do to move it.
1:01:22And again, I bring all this up because what if the Cisco VPN people, hypothetically, knew
1:01:27that Mavericks was coming out and wanted to go to WWDC and really cared that all this
1:01:33was happening, but everyone around them just didn't care and didn't let them take action.
1:01:40And that's what you see in corporate America.
1:01:41And it's mind-boggling to me.
1:01:44someone who lives in work or works in corporate America yet in a very small version of corporate
1:01:49America, it's mind boggling to me that this works, that these humongous companies ever make any
1:01:55money. I don't know how they do it. It's truly, truly amazing. Success hides problems. It does.
1:02:01There's a bunch of money coming in and these middle managers can play that. It's like your
1:02:06funding. It's kind of like the dotcom bubble when it was a bunch of dotcom companies selling
1:02:11each other's services with their own VC money. Marco probably missed out on that the first bubble.
1:02:17Yeah, I was in college during that.
1:02:18Yeah, but that was basically very quickly, especially in the big metro areas, is you'd
1:02:24have VC funded startups selling their services to another VC funded startup. And it was like
1:02:28the strange exchange and swap with VC money until all the money ran out. And then you realize all of
1:02:33our customers were other people who didn't have any customers except for us. And we were all just
1:02:37in this giant big bubble. Right? And the only winners were the people who made the foosball
1:02:40tables?
1:02:41Not even that.
1:02:44The real winners were the people who resell used office equipment.
1:02:48The repo men come in with the big trucks and they come and sell.
1:02:52You get an error on real cheap.
1:02:53And the building owner is probably made out pretty well too.
1:02:55Yeah, high rents for a short period of time, but then lots of vacancies was the problem.
1:03:00So the difference in a company is that presumably they have some money maker, some product or
1:03:05service that got itself entrenched that really does make money over the long term, and that
1:03:09that funnel of money fuels internal dysfunction. It doesn't cause internal dysfunction. It
1:03:15literally fuels it. There's an engine there of dysfunction running, and the only way it
1:03:20keeps running is if you keep pouring money in. Because if you didn't pour money in, all
1:03:22these people doing nothing would get fired, or you'd have layoffs, or something else would
1:03:26happen. But if everything's going well, you guys get to play this game of basically internal
1:03:30office politics foosball without worrying. Because hey, the money's coming in, and you
1:03:35guys just jock you over who gets the credit for which amount of money that came in and
1:03:38do a source of inefficient internal things.
1:03:42In that type of scenario, if we're imagining a Cisco scenario, I guess the company is still
1:03:47reactive enough that all of a sudden when the customer complaints stop flooding in,
1:03:51that's an input to the company.
1:03:52That's a metric that someone's tracking that has an effect.
1:03:55"Oh, customer complaints.
1:03:57We have important customers, big important customers who want this now."
1:04:01Even if it's just the CEO of some company that spends a bazillion dollars at Cisco and
1:04:05he has Mavericks and he wants his VPN to work.
1:04:08it's a fire drill and everyone all hands on deck. And maybe that little unit that Casey was
1:04:12hypothesizing, you know, it's like, yeah, we've been telling you that for a week. But like, oh,
1:04:16no. Okay. Now you get to do it because it's a fire drill and now there's some external pressure to do
1:04:20it. But who knows? Like many scenarios like this could be possible. I just don't know what's going
1:04:25on inside there. And like, the thing about enterprise software is like, it exists for
1:04:29a reason that is mostly understandable. Like the people in my company who do IT, like Marco was
1:04:34was talking about the IT people who hate the Mac.
1:04:37I've had those IT people.
1:04:39I don't have them now.
1:04:40My company has a good IT department
1:04:41that wants to do the right thing,
1:04:42and in fact are usually enthusiastic about Macs
1:04:44and are trying to support it.
1:04:45Their deficit is maybe they don't have the experience,
1:04:48and so they don't really know,
1:04:49but they gotta figure it out.
1:04:50But their requirements are,
1:04:52like enterprise software is made for them.
1:04:54Again, the customers,
1:04:55Marco was saying he'd make improvements
1:04:56to the enterprise software, and no one would care.
1:04:58The customers wouldn't care.
1:04:59The customers are not the people using the software.
1:05:01Again, it's enterprise software.
1:05:02The customers are the people buying it.
1:05:04Now things they care about are very different.
1:05:06In our company, we're now supporting Macs
1:05:08more or less officially.
1:05:09I was the first Mac into the company
1:05:11four or five years ago, and now their Macs are everywhere.
1:05:13They're officially supported.
1:05:15But to give an example, the Macs that are officially supported
1:05:18have to run PGP, whole disk encryption.
1:05:20And if you're a Mac user, why would they do that?
1:05:21Why wouldn't they just run FileVault 2?
1:05:22It's awesome.
1:05:23Everybody loves it.
1:05:24Well, because FileVault 2 is not enterprise software,
1:05:26meaning it doesn't cater to the needs of the enterprise.
1:05:29I'm more to the needs of the enterprise for,
1:05:31my company for compliance with various industry regulations, you have to have the ability to
1:05:36report that—not just install Holdis Encryption on all the machines, but prove in whatever way
1:05:43they decide to prove for whatever auditing purposes—that everyone has it installed.
1:05:46Then PGP Holdis Encryption as enterprise software sells to the enterprise and says,
1:05:50"feature checkbox" on the back of the box that doesn't actually exist anymore
1:05:54can report that it's enabled on all such and such systems. FileVault 2 is not enterprise software,
1:06:00doesn't have that feature. Maybe Apple Remote Desktop does or some other piece of software
1:06:03that's more geared toward the enterprise, but if you just get a new Mac and it comes with Mavericks
1:06:06and you check off the FileVault2 checkbox and enable it all or whatever,
1:06:10there's no central reporting structure to know and they need to do that for compliance.
1:06:15So of course they're going to buy the software package that says, "Hey, IT Manager,
1:06:19we know that you have to do these stupid reporting things because your legal department tells you to.
1:06:23Our software does that for you." And yeah, so of course they're going to go for that.
1:06:26And as a user, you're like, "I just want to run the built-in stuff because PGP
1:06:29be a whole disk encryption bricks on a machine every time it runs a minor point update, as
1:06:33it has many times in the past. And like it would be so much easier and cheaper, you wouldn't
1:06:37have to buy this third party product, we just enable FileVault 2, it's awesome, everybody
1:06:40loves it. And IT department to its credit wants to do that. But short term, it's like
1:06:45we have PGP, PGP works, PGP fills our fills our reporting compliance. And this is the
1:06:50dysfunction in the enterprise is that those customers have needs that may seem dumb, but
1:06:54they're real needs. And if you're not going to serve them, some enterprise software company
1:06:57And that enterprise software company
1:06:58is allowed to be terrible along all the other axes,
1:07:01as long as they're good along the axes that matter
1:07:03to the IT department.
1:07:04And they usually are.
1:07:06God, I'm just so glad I don't work on anything important.
1:07:09You should have a bring your indie developer to work day.
1:07:15We bring in people who work from home on their own projects,
1:07:17and we make them sit through HR seminars
1:07:19and take compliance training courses in Flash.
1:07:22I would love to watch Marco just sit there
1:07:26and squirm and be uncomfortable 40 seconds into the HR annual "this is how not to sexually
1:07:33harass your co-workers" meeting.
1:07:35No, that wouldn't be a problem.
1:07:36The problem would be when you'd have me sit down at some Windows PC with some like crap
1:07:42Dell keyboard and say, "Alright, here's your Fortran terminal and you're going to be writing
1:07:48financial management software.
1:07:51You have to follow all these rules and do a lot of math and there's going to be another
1:07:54sitting 18 inches from your elbow. Oh wait, that was Bloomberg, and that's why
1:07:59I didn't take that job. I think we're done. All right, we good? Yeah, I think we're good.
1:08:06Thanks a lot to our sponsors this week, Hover, File Transporter, and
1:08:12Squarespace, and we will see you next week.
1:08:17Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, because it was accidental
1:08:24Oh it was accidental John didn't do any research
1:08:30Marco and Casey wouldn't let him Cause it was accidental
1:08:35It was accidental And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM
1:08:44And if you're into Twitter You can follow them at
1:08:49C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
1:08:57E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C, U-S-A, Syracuse.
1:09:05It's accidental.
1:09:06It's accidental.
1:09:08They didn't mean to.
1:09:10Accidental.
1:09:11Accidental.
1:09:12Tech podcast so long.
1:09:18Hey, so let's not do ATP and let's just do neutral and talk about John's car.
1:09:22Yeah, I mean, this is a major event. You know, Casey and I get cars all the time.
1:09:27Yeah, once every ten years. But like the last time you got a car, John,
1:09:32like was the iPod even out yet? It was. I'm serious.
1:09:36Well, my car was older than, more than ten years old.
1:09:39But we had a newer car because we had a 2007 car, that's the car my wife drives.
1:09:44So we had a newish car.
1:09:46You know, it was like a 2004 before that,
1:09:49and that got told, and we replaced it with a 2007.
1:09:51I always get the years of our cars wrong,
1:09:52which you would think would be something I know,
1:09:54but I'm thrown off by the whole model year
1:09:56having very little to do with the actual year distinction.
1:09:59But anyway, we had a 2007 car, which is a pretty new car,
1:10:02but the car I was driving was a 2002 Civic.
1:10:05So yeah.
1:10:06And this one I assume I will also have for 10 years.
1:10:10- So now you have two Accords.
1:10:11- Yep.
1:10:13How does that feel?
1:10:14It feels just fine.
1:10:17That's the most glowing ad for an Accord.
1:10:19How does it feel to have two of them?
1:10:21It feels fine.
1:10:22From John?
1:10:24That is glowing.
1:10:25This is my third Accord.
1:10:27That is the Honda Accord encapsulated into a few words.
1:10:34I don't share your opinion of the Honda Accord.
1:10:36I find it a...
1:10:37No, you do.
1:10:38I think it's fine.
1:10:39I find it a much more interesting car than other similarly priced
1:10:42quote-unquote boring cars
1:10:45Should have gotten a Mazda 6, but you know nobody's perfect
1:10:48Well, I would have if I if I had test drove the main thing I was test driving it for was
1:10:53clutch shifter driving position and visibility
1:10:56Like that's what I was test driving for because if I didn't like the clutch and shifter or the driving position or the visibility or like
1:11:02The ride I guess I would have gone in test drove the six
1:11:05But I did like it and so I didn't even feel the need to go and get it because I really don't like how the six
1:11:09looks. I've seen a lot of them on the road. I would have gone to it if it was like, well,
1:11:13if the Accord was terrible, because I do need a new car. It's like I'm getting this car
1:11:16for my health, because the old car was just going downhill. But if the Accord was good,
1:11:20I didn't see a reason to continue to. And plus, I didn't want to drag it out. So I didn't
1:11:24even bother test driving the 6.
1:11:26I'm kind of surprised that you're able to get a car at all and be satisfied with it
1:11:30at all, because cars, like even great cars, have such ridiculous glaring flaws, especially
1:11:36like the interface and stuff.
1:11:37Yeah, no, it's filled with terrible things.
1:11:40So the good thing about having a new car every more 10, 12
1:11:44years or so is that it's like if you kept your Mac for years
1:11:48and years and you didn't have a Mac Pro and you replaced it.
1:11:51Say you had a MacBook from five or six years ago.
1:11:56Any new portable Mac you get, you'll be like, oh my god,
1:11:59this is such a--
1:12:00because so many things change in that period of time.
1:12:02Now, cars don't move as fast as computers,
1:12:04but there are big changes between 2002 and now.
1:12:07So I get to see, like, let's see how far standard equipment has come, because I really don't
1:12:11get any options.
1:12:12I don't even think there were any interesting options to speak of in the car that I got.
1:12:15And so all sorts of stuff are standard now.
1:12:17Like my car did not have a little key thing that you pressed to unlock the doors.
1:12:23And that's standard now on pretty much every car.
1:12:25Like, I don't even know if you can get a car without that.
1:12:27In 2007, that wasn't standard?
1:12:29No, 2002.
1:12:30Oh, right.
1:12:31Sorry.
1:12:32Like my car.
1:12:33Of course, the Accord had it, right?
1:12:34And I get to see the 2007 car kind of in the middle.
1:12:35But yeah.
1:12:37What else did my car not have?
1:12:39The key fob thing was a big deal because the kids had to wait until I got into the car
1:12:42and hit the little lock thingy because it did have a little button to unlock all the
1:12:44doors.
1:12:45It just wasn't on the key fob.
1:12:46So I had to unlock my door with the key, get in, and then press the little thingy and then
1:12:49they could open their door.
1:12:51Wait, wait, wait.
1:12:53My '94 Saturn, which of course was white before you even asked, you jerks.
1:12:59Of course it was.
1:13:00The '94 Saturn I had, if I recall correctly, if you put the key in the driver's door and
1:13:05and double-turned a quarter turn to the right,
1:13:08it would actually unlock all the doors from the exterior.
1:13:11You're saying your Civic from eight years later didn't do that?
1:13:14There were Civics in 2002 that had this feature, but not
1:13:16my Civic.
1:13:18I'm always buying from the bottom of the line, right?
1:13:20Especially back in the old days, the stick shift
1:13:22was always the bottom of the line.
1:13:24All the other ones came with automatics.
1:13:27And I'm always buying stick shift cars,
1:13:28so I'm not buying sports sedans, and even those
1:13:32don't come with manuals anymore.
1:13:34So I'm always getting the cheap trim levels.
1:13:37Some more things that are first on this car for me--
1:13:39this is my first car with power seats.
1:13:41It only has one of them.
1:13:43This is the driver's seat.
1:13:46What else is first on this car?
1:13:48First car with fog lights.
1:13:50Now, are you a complete tool and use them
1:13:52anytime the headlights are on like me,
1:13:53or are you actually an adult about it?
1:13:55I don't even know how to turn them on yet.
1:13:58I'm assuming it's somewhere on the same stock
1:14:00as the headlights, but--
1:14:01Sometimes there's a separate button,
1:14:03left somewhere. Yeah, I don't see myself being a big fog-like user, but who knows? First
1:14:08car with dual exhaust. It's exciting. Oh, fancy. I'm pretty sure they're real dual exhausts.
1:14:13I have to look under the cars. One of them could be cosmetic, but I'm pretty sure it's
1:14:16real. And you were talking about, was it Bluetooth or USB connection? First car with a USB connection,
1:14:22first car with Bluetooth. So Bluetooth is standard on all cords. That's good to know,
1:14:26actually. I don't know, because I didn't actually get the bottom of the bottom of the line.
1:14:32I actually got the this the sport level trim is not the bottom of line you can get an LX with a stick shift
1:14:37And I didn't so this is the first car that I bought it was slightly more expensive than it had to be
1:14:42Because I could have gotten an Accord manual LX trim level which would have been less expensive
1:14:47And not had all this fancy stuff, and would you get EX?
1:14:50No sport is the name of the trim level oh that's all it's a separate trim level has 18 inch wheels first car with 18 inch wheels
1:14:59Has the another dual exhaust has the fake carbon fiber inside it has a leather wrap steering wheel also a first not heated of course
1:15:05That's not you know. It's it's it's very nice. It's very it's a very fancy car for me first car
1:15:09I ever bought that it was more than 20 grand
1:15:11Even though it just barely crossed over that line
1:15:14That's still that's a pretty good deal to get like a really nice car of that size class
1:15:19You know even even with with moderate options
1:15:23To get that for just over 20 grand is pretty good
1:15:26No, no options the sport trim level comes with all this stuff like this the optional dealer installed add-on crap that you can get
1:15:32I think but I don't think there are any other options that you can get for it to speak of and maybe I wasn't looking hard
1:15:36Enough, but yeah, I'm just taking what it came with and yeah, is it was a pretty good deal car shopping always sucks
1:15:41So, you know whatever but I got done in a three-day weekend
1:15:44Yeah
1:15:45I always I love car shopping in theory and
1:15:48Then when it comes time to actually go to the dealerships and try to test drive anything and try to find anything
1:15:53It's such a pain in the butt that I just want to end it as quickly as possible
1:15:57yeah, it's funny you say that I went with so Aaron and I went with a
1:16:02Friend of ours and she's looking into perhaps either an s4 or an equivalent
1:16:08And so of course I made her drive an m3 at the local BMW dealer and this particular m3 was pretty busted
1:16:14It was no wait and it had the prior version of iDrive which I'd never actually seen before and oh my goodness
1:16:20All the stories are right. It is that bad
1:16:22But anyway, we went to test drive this car and I was thinking, "Ooh, maybe I'll take it for a little spin."
1:16:28And, you know, it was a six-speed because she actually wants a six-speed and I was all excited about it.
1:16:33And the process to get in the car took forever. Once we got out of the car, it took forever.
1:16:37The car was kind of all busted up and, like, the second gear crunched. I think a couple wheels were out of balance.
1:16:44Jeez.
1:16:46We felt the rear tires and they had no tread, yet the fronts suspiciously had a lot of tread.
1:16:51and it was just not good times.
1:16:53But yeah, you're absolutely right.
1:16:55The actual act of buying a car is terrible,
1:16:57or even test driving a car is terrible.
1:16:59And this was a used one.
1:17:00It wasn't even like it was new.
1:17:02Ugh, gross.
1:17:04- I think I've gotten the swing of buying cars,
1:17:07but it's just, I mean, especially the cars I buy,
1:17:09there's not a lot of drama involved.
1:17:11There's no rarity.
1:17:14There's no real hunting down of the cars.
1:17:16You know, it's a Honda Accord.
1:17:18That's more or less a commodity.
1:17:20It is a little bit difficult to find the stick shifts,
1:17:22because it's trying to search for them.
1:17:25Minor dealers might not have them in stock,
1:17:27but they can get them if you want.
1:17:29But if I'm going to find one that's in stock, I'll find it.
1:17:31I am surprised that you were able to find one so easily
1:17:33to test drive.
1:17:34Usually you can get them to order you one, maybe.
1:17:36But to actually find a stick shift
1:17:38to test drive at a dealer is pretty rare these days.
1:17:41The internet.
1:17:41I did internet searches for dealers in your area
1:17:44who have this thing.
1:17:44It's not called around as well, but just a combination
1:17:48of the internet and calling around.
1:17:49That was my first order of business, was first find one of these things that I can test drive
1:17:53to see if I like it.
1:17:55And once I found it, then started the new phase of the search, which is I know exactly
1:17:58the car I want down to the trim level and color, and then just go price shopping.
1:18:01And that's always annoying, because nobody wants you to talk to them or come into a dealer
1:18:07or do anything without completing in a sale.
1:18:09So every single one of them is like, this is not going to end in a sale.
1:18:12I'm price shopping.
1:18:14And nobody likes that.
1:18:16I tried to do, there's a thing a friend of mine did that it was like, "You pay us $200,
1:18:22we do all the crap for you, and we hopefully save you more than $200 on the price of the
1:18:26car."
1:18:27And he was very satisfied with the service, and it's a local website that does it, but
1:18:30the website says they're not taking any more orders.
1:18:33My wife says it was a 2006 Accord, not 2007.
1:18:35I told you, I can never remember the model year versus the...
1:18:38Anyway.
1:18:39I think you just got served.
1:18:41Yeah.
1:18:42So that service that does that car buying thing, we said, "We're not doing that anymore."
1:18:45Maybe they were overbooked or maybe they're going into business or I don't know.
1:18:49So I couldn't do that and then I had heard that Costco has a car pricing thing that was
1:18:54similar and we're a Costco member so I tried doing that.
1:18:58And that's like fill out this thing and tell it what car you want and it will direct you
1:19:02to a dealer and turns out there's only one dealer in our area that does the Costco thing.
1:19:06And so I did the thing on the internet and filled out this thing and it sent me some
1:19:09email and it said, "Hey, come down to the dealer."
1:19:11I'm like, "Well, I don't want to do that."
1:19:12So I called the dealer and said, "Hey, I did this Costco thing.
1:19:14you tell me, you know, I want to know what is the Costco price for this car?
1:19:18The whole idea was they'll just give you a price that they can't tell you on the website
1:19:22and it's a no haggle price and here it is.
1:19:24And I said, oh, we can't tell you the price here.
1:19:26You have to come into the dealer, which of course they want you to come into the dealer.
1:19:29Everyone wants you to come in.
1:19:30And again, you know, that kind of ruined the point of this Costco.
1:19:33I mean, if it's a no haggle thing and it was a good deal, I just wanted to know what the
1:19:35price was.
1:19:36So, you know, I had to drive all up there.
1:19:39Basically it was just like I'm here because you told me I had to drive here.
1:19:42So you would tell me the price.
1:19:43Now please tell me the price.
1:19:44And then of course they don't want you to go once they tell you the price.
1:19:48They would be like, "Okay, thank you for the price. I'm now going to leave." They want to say,
1:19:51"Well, you know, hey, why don't you want to buy what it's going to take to get you into a car
1:19:54today and go through all that business or whatever?" So eventually I got a reasonable
1:19:58deal. I'm searching through all these websites for what is the invoice price for this car and
1:20:07what are local deals like or whatever. And there's like a million different websites that do this.
1:20:11I was also looking up the blue book value of my car,
1:20:14thinking of trading it in, like the old Civic and everything.
1:20:17And at one of the dealers, the bad cop guy--
1:20:22like, there's always the good cop, bad cop.
1:20:23The sales manager.
1:20:24Yeah.
1:20:25The bad cop guy pulled up on his computer
1:20:28one of the websites I had been looking at to show,
1:20:30like, here's the range of prices that people are paying locally.
1:20:33And it's like, immediately you go, OK,
1:20:35do not look at that website ever again.
1:20:37Because if the dealer is showing it to you,
1:20:38the information on that website is not
1:20:40going to help you at all.
1:20:43Yeah.
1:20:44And I think I got a reasonable deal.
1:20:46I didn't get an amazing deal like I got on my wife's
1:20:49accord, because that was just an unbelievable deal.
1:20:51But that was because it was like a car that someone else had
1:20:53ordered and put a bunch of crap on and then bailed out
1:20:55on the deal.
1:20:56And now they had a car tarted up with all these aftermarket
1:20:58extras that nobody wanted.
1:20:59There was a stick shift, and we scooped it up and took it off
1:21:01their hands.
1:21:02So you can't expect to get that deal over you.
1:21:04So I got an OK deal.
1:21:06I was going to say, I got a pretty good deal on the trade-in,
1:21:09considering the car was covered with acorn dents.
1:21:11Do they give you more than $10?
1:21:13Yeah, that's like the perfect use of the dealer trade-in.
1:21:16Because dealer trade-ins, they will underball the crap out
1:21:19of the price.
1:21:19And so it's worth it to just-- if you have a car like that,
1:21:22that's just going to be really hard to get much value
1:21:25privately.
1:21:26The perfect use of the dealer trade-in.
1:21:28Yeah, because no individual wants a car--
1:21:30and it didn't have an air conditioning compressor.
1:21:32The reason I was getting new cars
1:21:33is the air conditioning compressor
1:21:34would cost over $1,000 to fix according
1:21:36to the way-too-expensive dealer or whatever.
1:21:38It's like all right. It's the end of the time for this car, so I had a car
1:21:41It was ugly there was a stick shift covered in dents and no air conditioning
1:21:45and like
1:21:47The dealer ended up buying from originally said we'll give you about a thousand fifteen hundred for it
1:21:51I'm like well
1:21:52That's terrible because the blue book value
1:21:53Sans acorn dent the blue book value of the car if it was not dented or I guess you put that condition is like fair or
1:21:59whatever
1:21:59And and the air conditioning compressor worked it was like twenty five hundred thirty five hundred dependent
1:22:04But that was not deducting for the compressor
1:22:06But I ended up getting twenty five hundred for the trade in for so I feel like I got a lot of deal
1:22:102500 for a 2000 - I mean who knows like there they could you just assume that's off the price
1:22:15You know like they really give you 2500 for your thing or is it just some negotiating tactic to?
1:22:19Bottom line is I gave them about 20 grand and I got a new car so and I gave them my old car so the
1:22:24end