The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hi, John. It's been a while. So here we go. Special episode. This is a very special episode

00:00:08 ◼   ► of the talk show. And it's not just one guest. It's three. It's panic. Co founders, cable

00:00:15 ◼   ► Sasser and Stephen Frank. No strangers to being guests together on this show. And first

00:00:21 ◼   ► time guest, Greg Maletic. Hello, everybody. Hey, John. How are you? Thanks. Thanks for

00:00:27 ◼   ► having us. Hello. We are here to talk about the most exciting piece of hardware and handheld

00:00:36 ◼   ► gaming in years. Just today Apple released an update to the iPod touch. Are you guys

00:00:45 ◼   ► excited? Finally. Sure. I think it's a great platform to be honest. iPod touch? Yeah. It

00:00:54 ◼   ► It is really nice. So I think that it is exciting.

00:00:56 ◼   ► Uh, I have, of course, I'm kidding. We're here to talk about play date,

00:01:01 ◼   ► but the iPod touches new. We could briefly touch on it. It's a, it's,

00:01:05 ◼   ► it is such, isn't it such an oddball device? Like it,

00:01:09 ◼   ► it obviously must sell in high enough quantities that they don't get rid of it.

00:01:14 ◼   ► Right? Like they don't sell old spin wheel, click wheel iPods anymore. Right.

00:01:18 ◼   ► At some point people stop buying them and Apple stop making them. They're not,

00:01:21 ◼   ► They don't keep making things for nostalgic purposes.

00:01:24 ◼   ► But on the other hand, they didn't update it in four years,

00:01:27 ◼   ► which is a long time.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Do they make any other iPod product right now?

00:01:32 ◼   ► Do they still make the--

00:01:34 ◼   ► nothing else, right?

00:01:34 ◼   ► There's no Nano.

00:01:35 ◼   ► There's no Shuffle.

00:01:36 ◼   ► I don't think so.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Are they all-- so the iPod touch is the last remaining iPod.

00:01:40 ◼   ► And when the Nano and Shuffle existed,

00:01:43 ◼   ► that was even weirder because there was that clone OS of iOS.

00:01:48 ◼   ► Somebody has to work on this every day.

00:01:50 ◼   ► That always seems super strange to me, but I think that touch is really cool

00:01:54 ◼   ► I mean that iPad mini is the closest thing to it actually true, huh, but that's too big for some cases

00:02:02 ◼   ► Yeah, and and it's always

00:02:04 ◼   ► Surprisingly thinner than whatever the state-of-the-art iPhone is. Mm-hmm

00:02:09 ◼   ► I remember and I've told this story before but at some point I'm pretty sure it was a WWDC but it was something at

00:02:17 ◼   ► Moscone West it was an Apple keynote. They let the press in it was like an hour before they were gonna open the doors and

00:02:22 ◼   ► Let us go into the theater and take our seats and we're mingling about and they have you know coffee and Danish whatever

00:02:29 ◼   ► So that pegs it in my mind whenever this anecdote take place

00:02:34 ◼   ► It was sometimes at sometime after Steve Jobs passed and Tim Cook was the CEO

00:02:39 ◼   ► It was probably early because when Steve was in charge the press got nothing

00:02:44 ◼   ► We got we got absolutely nothing we just sat and then they they dropped a rope and then we we'd scramble it

00:02:51 ◼   ► We got no coffee

00:02:53 ◼   ► We got nothing

00:02:54 ◼   ► So it's sometime in the in the cook here and we're mingling about and I saw this guy with the most it was

00:03:00 ◼   ► Clearly he was talking or he was holding it up to his face somehow

00:03:04 ◼   ► Like I don't know if he was doing like a FaceTime or what?

00:03:06 ◼   ► But it was clearly like not at any existing iPhone it

00:03:11 ◼   ► I was like what kind of a madman from Apple is using like this crazy super thin prototype. This is amazing

00:03:18 ◼   ► Right, I got closer and I realized oh, it's an iPod touch

00:03:21 ◼   ► I was like, wow, if that was an iPhone people would would crap their pants. Yeah, that'd be pretty sweet actually

00:03:29 ◼   ► Anyway, I mean, yeah, it's a real market iPhone without the cell connection. That's a thing to me. Yeah for sure

00:03:36 ◼   ► How do you feel about the announcement John? Are you excited? No, not really

00:03:41 ◼   ► It's like one of the only iOS devices I've never bought I've never had a purpose for it

00:03:45 ◼   ► And it's like I wrote on during fireball today like I think I don't know

00:03:48 ◼   ► I'm just pulling this out of my own observation from friends and family and what I see at airports

00:03:52 ◼   ► it seems to me like in the early years people bottom for their kids and

00:03:56 ◼   ► in

00:03:58 ◼   ► Recent years kids get hand-me-down iPhones and instead, you know, like I don't really see kids with the iPod touch anymore

00:04:05 ◼   ► What I see is kids with an old iPhone in like an otterbox case

00:04:09 ◼   ► So I guess the question is who's buying the iPod touch?

00:04:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know somebody told me and again, it's anic data

00:04:17 ◼   ► It's not it

00:04:18 ◼   ► I can't prove it but somebody told me a while ago on DM that a ton of them get sold for like industrial purposes

00:04:23 ◼   ► You know like Amazon Amazon warehouse, and I don't know if Amazon particular does it but like scanning things in a warehouse?

00:04:29 ◼   ► hospitals use them for like secure

00:04:33 ◼   ► You know like nurses can just take one around and then they can get all sorts of stuff on it instead of carrying

00:04:39 ◼   ► a full iPad, all sorts of industrial purposes like that, which are no fun. So Apple's still

00:04:45 ◼   ► like, on the product page, still talking about like AR games, music, you know, listening

00:04:52 ◼   ► to music, but that it's really just like a bunch of like doctors and people who work

00:04:55 ◼   ► in factories and stuff like that. I think Apple still uses them in the stores, right?

00:04:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that might be true with the with the thing on the back that allows them

00:05:03 ◼   ► to do the card scanning and everything. Yeah, that's right. All right, so they're making

00:05:06 ◼   ► it for themselves. I understand that. Well. All right, there we go. Here's iPod touch.

00:05:14 ◼   ► The only other thing I could think to talk about is Apple last week announced the they've

00:05:18 ◼   ► got a new third and a half generation MacBook Pro keyboard with these speed bumps. Cable

00:05:24 ◼   ► Am I misremembering that you actually like the feel of the new these new keyboards? Is

00:05:30 ◼   ► that no, you're totally right. 100% I love the keyboards. I feel like I can type extremely

00:05:36 ◼   ► quickly on them with their like super tippy tappy action. That's the technical term for

00:05:41 ◼   ► it. And I think they're great. And unbelievably, I have never had a problem with them. But

00:05:47 ◼   ► it is very clear that one cannot say well, it works for me. Therefore, it's fine. Lots

00:05:52 ◼   ► of people clearly have had incredible problems with this keyboard. How do you feel about

00:05:57 ◼   ► that? Do you know do you not like the shallow action? I so the most time I spent with it

00:06:02 ◼   ► It was last summer when in July when the then new MacBook Pros came out and I got a review

00:06:07 ◼   ► unit from Apple and it was a 15 inch and I used it exclusively for six weeks. I didn't

00:06:15 ◼   ► use my didn't touch my iMac didn't touch my or I mean barely touched my personal MacBook

00:06:19 ◼   ► Pro. If there's like some oddball thing that's only on that device, I'd copy it over. But

00:06:24 ◼   ► for the most part, I did six weeks nonstop work using it and within a week I got used

00:06:29 ◼   ► to it. I think it's fine. I think all I think all laptop keyboards have certain trade-offs

00:06:35 ◼   ► and once you get used to that shallow throw it is kind of fun to click and I can see how

00:06:39 ◼   ► you go faster. Yeah. And again I didn't have any problems. Although I did tweet. I tweeted

00:06:45 ◼   ► last summer. It was like I don't know two two and a half weeks into this six week period.

00:06:49 ◼   ► My E key got stuck. I wiggled it. It got unstuck and it never got stuck again. So one time

00:06:57 ◼   ► the E got like wedged under the aluminum. I wiggled it, it got unstuck. Never a problem

00:07:03 ◼   ► again. I used it for another three and a half weeks. And someone from Apple PR was on vacation

00:07:07 ◼   ► at the time because it was like end of July or something. So like two weeks later, I got

00:07:10 ◼   ► like, Oh my god. Oh my god, I just got back from vacation. Is that keyboard? All right.

00:07:17 ◼   ► And I was like, Oh, yeah, yeah, it was like, I guess you saw that tweet. But, you know,

00:07:20 ◼   ► I wiggled it, it got unstuck hasn't been a problem since and they're like, Oh, thank

00:07:24 ◼   ► Does it seem weird? I've never had any of the stuck key problems or anything.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Does it seem weird that always seems to be the E key?

00:07:31 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, that's right.

00:07:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's clearly, I think there was a Dustin Egress problem at some point

00:07:40 ◼   ► and I feel like this membrane…

00:07:41 ◼   ► Great John Grisham novel.

00:07:42 ◼   ► Dustin Egress.

00:07:43 ◼   ► The Dustin Egress problem. Sorry. Keep going.

00:07:47 ◼   ► Sorry. Keep going.

00:07:51 ◼   ► What's the name of the author of the series of books in Firewatch?

00:07:55 ◼   ► Oh, Richard Sturgeon.

00:07:58 ◼   ► Richard Sturgeon. I love those book titles.

00:08:00 ◼   ► I should have gone with a Richard Sturgeon reference, but yes.

00:08:04 ◼   ► No, Dustin Egress wouldn't work as one of those titles.

00:08:07 ◼   ► Dustin Egress now sounds like a special agent to me.

00:08:11 ◼   ► Yeah, Dustin Egress.

00:08:13 ◼   ► Dustin Egress.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Yes, clearly he has a problem.

00:08:17 ◼   ► I do think they had a Dustin Eager's problem that could be fixed with spray cans of compressed air

00:08:23 ◼   ► It was ridiculous really ridiculous for it is a premium product

00:08:28 ◼   ► Hold it upside down and like that support page is almost comical. They're like hold it at a 65 degree angle

00:08:35 ◼   ► No, but but lately when I see people complaining about it, it's clearly

00:08:46 ◼   ► clearly the most used keys. It's E, it's the spacebar. It's clearly some kind of durability

00:08:56 ◼   ► issue. And so I'm optimistic that this quote unquote "material change" might do the trick.

00:09:05 ◼   ► I think something wears out or breaks upon smacking it or whatever.

00:09:09 ◼   ► Well have to say that I can't help but feel a sense of empathy now

00:09:12 ◼   ► More potentially terrifying than shipping your thing to

00:09:18 ◼   ► People and then the emails start to trickle in like hey, what's up with my keyboard?

00:09:23 ◼   ► Like now I could only just be like, oh, please don't be my future. What's what's up with my

00:09:29 ◼   ► What's up with my d-pad? I can't go up. Yes

00:09:32 ◼   ► Our office into a repair depot

00:09:36 ◼   ► Anyways, so I sympathize with you Apple. I hope that you have solved this problem. All right, that's over. There we go

00:09:43 ◼   ► I get karma. Yes. There we go. Apple news out of the way. Forget about it. Let's talk about our little yellow friend

00:09:48 ◼   ► Play date. Yes

00:09:52 ◼   ► This is amazing. When did you guys announce it? This is all a blur to me. It was sometime last week my god

00:09:59 ◼   ► It's a way to raise wells. So it hasn't even been a weekend. Yeah, dear God. We're recording on Tuesday

00:10:04 ◼   ► 28th the show will probably be out tomorrow Wednesday. So a week later. Yeah, what kind of a week have you had? I mean, it's just

00:10:11 ◼   ► It's hard

00:10:14 ◼   ► It's I can barely

00:10:16 ◼   ► It was beyond I think anything that we could have imagined the struggle with working on this project the entire time

00:10:23 ◼   ► Has been not knowing if a hundred people are gonna care about this or a thousand people will care about it

00:10:30 ◼   ► You know, we're not doing focus testing because we can't because it would spoil the surprise and we wouldn't even know how to do that

00:10:36 ◼   ► even if we wanted to

00:10:38 ◼   ► You know, we're just flying blind on this project. So

00:10:41 ◼   ► to have it be announced to have it immediately picked up by all of these outlets and

00:10:48 ◼   ► Seem I mean, of course, there's some skeptics which I get like it's not you know for everybody

00:10:54 ◼   ► But to know that we seem to be reaching the people for whom it's for has felt extremely good and the first hint

00:11:02 ◼   ► I got of maybe this is gonna work out slightly

00:11:04 ◼   ► Okay was when I first showed the device to Jen who wrote the edge

00:11:10 ◼   ► Feature about played it which maybe you'll want to mention. Yeah. Well tell me about that how so that was at

00:11:17 ◼   ► E3 you guys weren't it says there's a bit of you know, sort of you are there style reporting in inner story

00:11:24 ◼   ► It says that you guys were in San Francisco and you're like trying to find a place where you can

00:11:29 ◼   ► show her this thing. It was incredibly awkward, but perfect. So it was during GDC. And you have

00:11:34 ◼   ► to understand that I've been reading E3. I've been reading Edge magazine for literally ever. I have

00:11:41 ◼   ► the premiere issue of it here in the office with, you know, still in its little plastic baggie,

00:11:45 ◼   ► because I'm a huge nerd. And when I reached out to them, just kind of on a lark before going to GDC,

00:11:53 ◼   ► and they naturally assumed that I would be talking about a new game, maybe like a follow-up

00:11:59 ◼   ► to Untitled Goose Game or whatever we're doing next. And so, yes, this comical farce, you

00:12:04 ◼   ► know, Jacques Tati movie scene began where we're going from building to building and

00:12:09 ◼   ► location to location and I'm trying to figure out where at GDC am I gonna produce this thing

00:12:14 ◼   ► from my pocket and not totally ruin it for everybody. And we ended up, of all places,

00:12:19 ◼   ► like a back stairwell of the Metreon, which I felt was kind of an amazing and yet appropriate

00:12:27 ◼   ► place for this weird device that also feels not from the past, but also not from the future.

00:12:34 ◼   ► And you know, and she just couldn't believe it, which was great, because, you know, one

00:12:40 ◼   ► of the best things about it is being able to do this shirt pocket reveal where you just,

00:12:43 ◼   ► you know, pull it out of your shirt pocket.

00:12:45 ◼   ► And yeah, she lost her mind. And within 15 minutes of talking to her, she's like, boy,

00:12:52 ◼   ► I think we might even want to put this on the cover. And of course, you know, I'm trying

00:12:55 ◼   ► to like, hold it in and play Mr. Cool.

00:13:00 ◼   ► Tell me a little bit about Edge magazine. I'm not a gamer. I've been out of video games

00:13:04 ◼   ► for the most part for years. So I've heard of it, but it has a rarefied status in gaming.

00:13:12 ◼   ► Even when there were multiple video game magazines, and today there are not.

00:13:16 ◼   ► Like there, I mean, in the US newsstands, I think the total may be zero.

00:13:22 ◼   ► The UK still somehow can still, you know, sustain a magazine industry, which I've always

00:13:28 ◼   ► been told is because distribution is really simple.

00:13:31 ◼   ► You just put all the magazines on a train and the train goes down the center of the

00:13:34 ◼   ► country and that's, you know, that's all there is to it.

00:13:38 ◼   ► And it's just always been sort of the,

00:13:41 ◼   ► rarefied is a good way to put it.

00:13:43 ◼   ► They sort of cover the artistic side of gaming,

00:13:47 ◼   ► they always do in-depth interviews with creators.

00:13:50 ◼   ► Like it's not just, here's the new game coming

00:13:52 ◼   ► from Rockstar and we gave it a nine out of 10 or whatever.

00:13:55 ◼   ► And so I've always looked up to that magazine.

00:13:57 ◼   ► And so to have that come full circle for me as a reader,

00:14:02 ◼   ► I even believe I sent a letter to the editor at one time

00:14:05 ◼   ► when I was like in college or high school,

00:14:07 ◼   ► which is really embarrassing to admit.

00:14:09 ◼   ► They totally printed it.

00:14:10 ◼   ► And for that to come full circle

00:14:13 ◼   ► was just completely mind-blowing.

00:14:15 ◼   ► - It's print only, which blows my mind.

00:14:17 ◼   ► - Yes. - Right.

00:14:18 ◼   ► - I didn't even know that was possible.

00:14:20 ◼   ► - Right.

00:14:21 ◼   ► - But they're doing it.

00:14:22 ◼   ► - And we're like, so does this article show up online later?

00:14:25 ◼   ► Nope.

00:14:26 ◼   ► - But you can't.

00:14:27 ◼   ► So the asterisk on that is that they are part

00:14:31 ◼   ► of Apple News Plus.

00:14:33 ◼   ► - Correct.

00:14:33 ◼   ► - And so if you want to read it

00:14:35 ◼   ► and you don't wanna find a print edition,

00:14:38 ◼   ► which might be hard to do in the US,

00:14:40 ◼   ► you can sign up for Apple News Plus and get it there

00:14:43 ◼   ► and read it in the wonderfully convenient Apple News.

00:14:46 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:14:48 ◼   ► - There's nothing like zoom in a PDF on an iPhone.

00:14:51 ◼   ► - So here's my little aside on that.

00:14:54 ◼   ► So you sent me a PDF of the article in advance,

00:14:57 ◼   ► so I'd read it and I'm reading it again.

00:14:59 ◼   ► And I remembered that there was something about using,

00:15:03 ◼   ► you guys ran into a problem with going diagonal

00:15:06 ◼   ► on an up, down, left, right D-pad.

00:15:09 ◼   ► And so I wanted to find that.

00:15:11 ◼   ► And it's a long story.

00:15:12 ◼   ► It's like 30 pages.

00:15:14 ◼   ► I mean, a lot of it is photos.

00:15:15 ◼   ► There's two page spreads of wonderful, wonderful.

00:15:17 ◼   ► I mean, that's one thing about this magazine.

00:15:19 ◼   ► It is gorgeous.

00:15:20 ◼   ► It is gorgeous photography.

00:15:22 ◼   ► It is an incredibly well-written story by Jen Simpkins.

00:15:25 ◼   ► It's not just like, oh, hey,

00:15:27 ◼   ► you guys are getting this unbelievable promotional value

00:15:31 ◼   ► in arguably the most revered game magazine

00:15:35 ◼   ► in the world right now.

00:15:37 ◼   ► It's just a good article.

00:15:39 ◼   ► It's like, it's a really well-written article.

00:15:42 ◼   ► - I can't wait to read it.

00:15:44 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:15:45 ◼   ► I'm really excited to look at it.

00:15:46 ◼   ► - You still haven't read it?

00:15:47 ◼   ► - I still haven't read it.

00:15:48 ◼   ► I'm trying to wait until I can get the paper in my hands.

00:15:52 ◼   ► - How can you not?

00:15:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:15:55 ◼   ► - It's driving me crazy too.

00:15:57 ◼   ► I just, I have--

00:15:58 ◼   ► - How do you not have the print version yet?

00:15:59 ◼   ► Couldn't somebody just FedEx it to you?

00:16:02 ◼   ► That would have been nice.

00:16:03 ◼   ► It's a box of 500, by the way.

00:16:06 ◼   ► We ordered a few issues for the office.

00:16:09 ◼   ► Couldn't you just get one in addition to that?

00:16:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I should.

00:16:12 ◼   ► Why spend all the money on one more copy

00:16:15 ◼   ► when we've got 500 coming?

00:16:18 ◼   ► Anyways, I can't wait to read it.

00:16:20 ◼   ► I'm glad to hear that it turned out good.

00:16:22 ◼   ► It's a really well-written article.

00:16:23 ◼   ► And I wanted to look up this diagonal thing,

00:16:26 ◼   ► because I think I got it the wrong way.

00:16:27 ◼   ► I read it the first time as that you guys still didn't have diagonal movement working.

00:16:32 ◼   ► Turns out I misread it. It's it was just that that was a tricky thing. But anyway, I'm in

00:16:36 ◼   ► Apple news app and I hit command F to find diagonal and it just is that because it's

00:16:44 ◼   ► in a caption. No, you can't find it all. Really? Yeah. So you what you can do and I tweeted

00:16:52 ◼   ► this and of course, it's tweet so I didn't really write it carefully. You can search

00:16:57 ◼   ► in the sidebar for titles. So if you search for edge, you will find edge magazine and

00:17:03 ◼   ► a bunch of other magazines that have edge. But that's only like a title search. Like

00:17:07 ◼   ► if if you want to find the word diagonal in this 30 page story, you've literally got to

00:17:12 ◼   ► do it the old fashioned way with your eyeballs.

00:17:16 ◼   ► There was like a two day period where all the PDF magazines and Apple News just mysteriously

00:17:21 ◼   ► disappeared. And the entire list of magazine you can read just shortened dramatically.

00:17:26 ◼   ► for a second I thought, oh, maybe they just like formally gave up and knew that this is

00:17:30 ◼   ► not a good experience for reading things, particularly on an iPhone. But then they all

00:17:34 ◼   ► came back. So what happened there?

00:17:37 ◼   ► John Greenewald All right, I got now I got to carefully not

00:17:40 ◼   ► spoil this magazine article.

00:17:42 ◼   ► Dr. Justin Marchegiani No, no, you feel it's okay. You can say anything

00:17:47 ◼   ► you want about it. I've seen a couple of things. Don't worry. Don't worry about me.

00:17:50 ◼   ► John Greenewald All right. But when when was GDC? So when

00:17:53 ◼   ► When did you when did this magazine cover story first come into?

00:17:57 ◼   ► In the ocean?

00:17:58 ◼   ► When did they go to GDC?

00:17:59 ◼   ► Was that in March March of it in March?

00:18:01 ◼   ► Yep.

00:18:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:03 ◼   ► So we had no intention actually, of announcing this product at all until the end of the year

00:18:09 ◼   ► when it would go up for sale.

00:18:12 ◼   ► But suddenly the opportunity seems so great that we were like, Well, I guess we're doing

00:18:16 ◼   ► this now then.

00:18:17 ◼   ► And it was time to design and build a web page and like write all of our copy and like,

00:18:22 ◼   ► messaging figured out. So in a way, that's been really nice, because we've answered a lot of

00:18:26 ◼   ► questions. And we can get a lot of feedback now before we actually go up for sale later. So I

00:18:32 ◼   ► think that strategy accidentally turned out to be a really good idea. I've been I was thinking it

00:18:37 ◼   ► was March because Apple semi frequently has, you know, product announcements in March. And so I've

00:18:45 ◼   ► been in San Francisco during GDC, like for like a rando iPad announcement or something

00:18:52 ◼   ► like that. A couple of years, you know, just tends to coincide. It is massive. It is seriously

00:19:03 ◼   ► just almost staggeringly big conference. And of course, Apple always tells the press like

00:19:10 ◼   ► six days before an event. So like, I'm like searching for

00:19:12 ◼   ► hotels. It's like, it's like the the high is like $600 a night.

00:19:17 ◼   ► That's correct. Yeah.

00:19:19 ◼   ► I mean, just the fact that it absorbs every part of the

00:19:23 ◼   ► convention center, not just West, you know, I must have

00:19:26 ◼   ► wwc being tucked in that one little building, but it is every

00:19:30 ◼   ► single corner. Yeah.

00:19:32 ◼   ► And you know, so I sympathize with this part of you trying to

00:19:35 ◼   ► find a place to show this because the other thing too is

00:19:37 ◼   ► It's like I've gone out like, you know for a drink or something at the end of the day with a friend

00:19:43 ◼   ► Who just lives in San Francisco just hey, let's meet up. Let's have a beer and everybody around us is talking about games

00:19:49 ◼   ► They're all clearly GDC attendees like you can't take yeah, and I have to say playdate is not an inconspicuous device

00:19:56 ◼   ► No, there's no way to hide that and we didn't do Apple and put it in like a funky weird pretend case or whatever. Yeah

00:20:05 ◼   ► Although we should have done that kind of amazing

00:20:08 ◼   ► So we've got our first little nugget here the first little nugget

00:20:12 ◼   ► I was gonna ask is why announce now and the answer seems to be because you had this opportunity to be on the cover of

00:20:18 ◼   ► Edge you got it, right? And so

00:20:21 ◼   ► Instead of saying here's this thing you can order it. Now. You're saying here's this thing. You can order it later in the year

00:20:27 ◼   ► Yeah, please just give us your email

00:20:33 ◼   ► an easy decision. We talked about it a lot. Yeah. Because we had always been of the mind that

00:20:38 ◼   ► we're not going to tell anybody about this until like, it's done. Yes. We always want to have that

00:20:44 ◼   ► confidence to go out to people and say, Yep, we can definitely do this for you. Yep. Now,

00:20:48 ◼   ► we do have that confidence, to be fair, but we have a few things to finish off still. So it was

00:20:52 ◼   ► it was a big decision. Yeah. Well, and I think everybody in our world is a bit unnerved by the

00:20:59 ◼   ► airpower thing. Yeah, sure. Everybody and I've talked to people at Apple and people

00:21:05 ◼   ► who work on totally different things. They are like, there is like a serious like, hey,

00:21:09 ◼   ► let's not let's cool it with the pre announcements. Like, yeah. And that was so weird because

00:21:13 ◼   ► that was so unusual for Apple. And it's so ironic that the one time they really did such

00:21:18 ◼   ► an early announcement it bit him in the ass. That's I don't know. That's there's a lesson

00:21:22 ◼   ► there somewhere. Well, they did it with the iPhone too. That's and that to me is the comparison

00:21:27 ◼   ► to play date, right? So the iPhone was announced in January 2007 at Mac World Expo and didn't

00:21:35 ◼   ► ship until the very end of June. So about six months. And by all reports, they made

00:21:41 ◼   ► a day they had a lot of software left to write. Because if you remember the people who got

00:21:46 ◼   ► hands on, I was not in that rarefied status at that time. So I didn't even I didn't I

00:21:53 ◼   ► just got to look at it in the plexiglass like, like a regular schmo. But the people who got

00:21:57 ◼   ► the hands-on, half of the apps were just screenshots. You'd open the calculator and it was just

00:22:03 ◼   ► a screenshot of what the calculator was going to look like.

00:22:06 ◼   ► Sure, sure. Okay, you're right. It's kind of similar in a way.

00:22:10 ◼   ► And then there was other stuff too, like in May or at some point like April or May, I

00:22:14 ◼   ► don't know if it was a press release or if it was just the opening statement for a quarterly

00:22:19 ◼   ► finance thing. But they announced apps like Steve Jobs announced, "Hey, we're on pace.

00:22:26 ◼   ► We're still going to ship at the end of June, like we said, but we've replaced the plastic

00:22:29 ◼   ► screen with Gorilla Glass.

00:22:32 ◼   ► And it's like, this is like going on in May.

00:22:35 ◼   ► And it's like, holy shit.

00:22:39 ◼   ► That was the moment where it really dawned on me that this Tim Cook fellow must be some

00:22:43 ◼   ► sort of genius.

00:22:45 ◼   ► Because how is that possible?

00:22:46 ◼   ► Right, right, right.

00:22:49 ◼   ► So you know, you're in good company there.

00:22:51 ◼   ► And I think that there's a similar, you know, you guys wanted to have a surprise announcement.

00:22:58 ◼   ► You made a surprise announcement.

00:23:00 ◼   ► Maybe if you had waited until it was ready to ship, it might have leaked.

00:23:04 ◼   ► That's extremely possible.

00:23:06 ◼   ► And I think we're all stunned that it didn't, given the length of time that we're running

00:23:10 ◼   ► on.

00:23:11 ◼   ► It's been a long time.

00:23:12 ◼   ► And particularly, you know, we've had to involve so many devs in making games for this thing.

00:23:16 ◼   ► Many of them didn't even work out.

00:23:18 ◼   ► there's nothing keeping those people from leaking it. So maybe

00:23:22 ◼   ► it's just because, you know, you're looking for the next

00:23:25 ◼   ► Apple leak, right? Like, that's what everybody wants to know.

00:23:28 ◼   ► But this is maybe so out there that it wasn't enticing to

00:23:32 ◼   ► anyone for any reason. But yes, I think that would have happened.

00:23:36 ◼   ► So I think it's really good that it worked out the way that it

00:23:38 ◼   ► did.

00:23:38 ◼   ► You guys do have like working prototypes, though, like you

00:23:42 ◼   ► like when you showed it to Jen, you took out a thing that turns

00:23:45 ◼   ► on has games you can play.

00:23:49 ◼   ► - But you have hundreds of them actually.

00:23:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true.

00:23:51 ◼   ► - We have a lot.

00:23:52 ◼   ► We do have a lot.

00:23:53 ◼   ► They are everywhere.

00:23:54 ◼   ► - Why do you have so many of them?

00:23:58 ◼   ► - Just several rounds of manufacturing,

00:24:00 ◼   ► just making sure everything is right,

00:24:01 ◼   ► the fit and finish and the PCB, the circuit board.

00:24:05 ◼   ► It just takes a lot of revs to get this thing right.

00:24:09 ◼   ► And there have been tests of various things.

00:24:13 ◼   ► We have some in the office

00:24:14 ◼   ► we tried different colors and you know we're always experimenting with different stuff.

00:24:20 ◼   ► We maybe redid the design of the D-pad and the buttons a couple of times.

00:24:24 ◼   ► We changed it because it was hard to get that working properly and so we've changed that

00:24:27 ◼   ► a few times.

00:24:28 ◼   ► And here's the thing that sucks about hardware.

00:24:32 ◼   ► You just don't hit, you know, build and run and then see if your fixes worked.

00:24:37 ◼   ► You have to call your factory in Malaysia and fire up the line.

00:24:42 ◼   ► Wow, that is definitely been

00:24:44 ◼   ► Challenging for us to wrap our heads around it is you know, I want to get into it

00:24:48 ◼   ► But you know you guys come everybody knows you guys come from a software background

00:24:51 ◼   ► It is very different doing a build of software, you know

00:24:54 ◼   ► And when you do a new build of software like oh we fixed a bug or you know

00:24:58 ◼   ► There's this icon was was two pixels off here. I'll nudge it back over build and run. You just throw the old building the trash

00:25:04 ◼   ► It's just a bunch of ones and zeros that get de-referenced by the file system like with hardware you end up

00:25:12 ◼   ► hundreds of these things.

00:25:13 ◼   ► This is our life. Every drawer is packed with prototype devices. And I mean, you know, again,

00:25:20 ◼   ► to talk about the difference, like Dave, who really did software before he did the hardware

00:25:25 ◼   ► for this project, talks a lot about how wild that is, because, you know, then you're also factoring

00:25:29 ◼   ► in like weird physics into the equation and how, you know, you want to, we all know how frustrating

00:25:35 ◼   ► it is in software when you can't reproduce a bug, but at least there's a chance you could reproduce

00:25:41 ◼   ► a bug, but with hardware! I mean, you don't know what happened with that solder and that chip and

00:25:49 ◼   ► who knows what's going on in that situation until you like take it all apart and you know,

00:25:54 ◼   ► it's just a whole different level. I have such profound respect for what Apple manages to pull

00:25:59 ◼   ► off with hardware. Truly it gives you a deep understanding of the intricacies of that world

00:26:04 ◼   ► once you try it yourself and I guess I could have seen it coming, but we still decided to try it

00:26:09 ◼   ► anyways. All right, let me take a break here and thank our first sponsor. And this week,

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00:27:49 ◼   ► Take me back to the beginning.

00:27:50 ◼   ► When I know this, I know a little bit of this, but when, when, what came first?

00:27:57 ◼   ► Like firewatch came first and then you guys started thinking of this, like not

00:28:01 ◼   ► All of this stuff, to a degree, kind of gestated at really the same timeframe.

00:28:08 ◼   ► But I went back into my email and I found a very early email that I had written "Teenage

00:28:16 ◼   ► Engineering," which is the company that we partnered with.

00:28:19 ◼   ► They designed the look of the device and they did some of the mechanical engineering and

00:28:23 ◼   ► they had the crank and we can talk about that in a bit.

00:28:25 ◼   ► But I forget what year that was.

00:28:28 ◼   ► 2011.

00:28:29 ◼   ► Oh my god.

00:28:31 ◼   ► OK, so the year was 2011.

00:28:33 ◼   ► So that's a lot longer than I thought.

00:28:35 ◼   ► That's eight years.

00:28:37 ◼   ► It was not a game at this point.

00:28:38 ◼   ► Correct.

00:28:39 ◼   ► It was just, let's do a hardware thing.

00:28:41 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:28:41 ◼   ► So the very core idea of we should push ourselves and try

00:28:46 ◼   ► to do something with hardware goes that far back.

00:28:51 ◼   ► It took us a long time.

00:28:54 ◼   ► That conversation dropped off for a while.

00:28:56 ◼   ► We started doing some other stuff.

00:28:57 ◼   ► And then the core idea in that email

00:29:00 ◼   ► was we should make a little hardware thing as just

00:29:03 ◼   ► like a panic anniversary 15th anniversary gift.

00:29:09 ◼   ► We just keep scratching it out on the cases every year

00:29:11 ◼   ► passing.

00:29:12 ◼   ► And we were thinking maybe like a cool clock or maybe--

00:29:16 ◼   ► you know, like just really trying

00:29:18 ◼   ► to think of an excuse, really, to try to build something.

00:29:23 ◼   ► That conversation just kept going.

00:29:25 ◼   ► And eventually I found the screen, which is called a Sharp Memory LCD.

00:29:32 ◼   ► And it's very unique as a screen in that it has the look and feel of like a classic LCD

00:29:37 ◼   ► screen that you would remember from the 80s or on a Game Boy.

00:29:40 ◼   ► But it doesn't have the little grid lines.

00:29:43 ◼   ► It doesn't blur.

00:29:45 ◼   ► It's like incredibly sharp and crisp and like really viewable and light.

00:29:49 ◼   ► It's because we had settled on the idea of doing a game and watch game.

00:29:53 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:29:54 ◼   ► that screen sort of conversely, yeah, we were talking about Game & Watch, we found that

00:29:59 ◼   ► screen and then we thought, well, what if we made a Game & Watch game, but we used a

00:30:06 ◼   ► real bitmap screen? And then that led to well, what if people think it's a segmented LCD,

00:30:14 ◼   ► like a Game & Watch? In other words, you know, Game & Watch is like a calculator screen,

00:30:17 ◼   ► right? There's just different pieces of art that can turn on and off. We thought what

00:30:22 ◼   ► of people think it's that. And then like a month later, it like

00:30:26 ◼   ► magically transforms into another LCD game. Thanks to this

00:30:30 ◼   ► cool screen. That would be a cool trick. So then you can see

00:30:33 ◼   ► the seeds getting planted. Like, Oh, what if it changes from one

00:30:36 ◼   ► game to another game? Like it's all this. Greg and expensive

00:30:40 ◼   ► idea.

00:30:40 ◼   ► I had a Donkey Kong handheld that I would qualify as a game

00:30:47 ◼   ► and watch. I didn't actually that that is new to me. But so

00:30:51 ◼   ► The way that I recall it, and again, my dad, God bless him, I love him to death, he's a

00:30:56 ◼   ► great man, but he's a thrower aware of all sorts of stuff I still wish I had.

00:31:04 ◼   ► I had a Don Mattingly rookie card that's worth like $2,000 to me.

00:31:07 ◼   ► I threw it right out when I went to go home.

00:31:12 ◼   ► But as I recall, it was only the first level of Donkey Kong because it's a Game of Watch,

00:31:20 ◼   ► So the actual board was printed on the plastic,

00:31:24 ◼   ► the actual levels of the building you have to climb up.

00:31:27 ◼   ► And then there was just Mario sprites

00:31:29 ◼   ► every eighth of an inch all the way up.

00:31:32 ◼   ► So it's like you're saying, it's not like little bitmaps.

00:31:35 ◼   ► It was actual, you know,

00:31:37 ◼   ► Mario sprites and barrel sprites were just on the screen.

00:31:41 ◼   ► And then they would turn on them.

00:31:41 ◼   ► - Those things must've been super interesting to design

00:31:44 ◼   ► because you try to pack so much information into the screen,

00:31:48 ◼   ► But they can't overlap.

00:31:50 ◼   ► And it's a really interesting design constraint.

00:31:53 ◼   ► How do you convey the motion of a barrel when it's just--

00:31:56 ◼   ► Like two positions of a barrel.

00:31:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:59 ◼   ► We thought that'd be fun, actually,

00:32:01 ◼   ► to have that constraint.

00:32:03 ◼   ► The first concept was the games would

00:32:06 ◼   ► have to conform to the Game & Watch format.

00:32:09 ◼   ► That's right.

00:32:09 ◼   ► So you couldn't break those rules.

00:32:11 ◼   ► You couldn't draw on the screen.

00:32:12 ◼   ► You'd just turn on these stencils.

00:32:14 ◼   ► And we started to design a game that was like a transmit game,

00:32:18 ◼   ► where you were like a truck on the highway delivering

00:32:21 ◼   ► zip files and ping files left and right to dudes that

00:32:24 ◼   ► are waiting, fully following all of these constraints.

00:32:27 ◼   ► We still have this art somewhere.

00:32:29 ◼   ► And it was an interesting constraint.

00:32:32 ◼   ► But then as we kept going and iterating and talking

00:32:36 ◼   ► about this, we suddenly realized that actually, those Game

00:32:39 ◼   ► One games aren't super fun.

00:32:42 ◼   ► They get boring really quick.

00:32:44 ◼   ► There are like two good ones and they've already been done.

00:32:47 ◼   ► I mean, do you remember that with your Donkey Kong?

00:32:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, I remember it was no fun at all.

00:32:50 ◼   ► - Right, yes, correct.

00:32:51 ◼   ► - Once I beat it, once I got the timing down

00:32:54 ◼   ► well enough to beat it once,

00:32:56 ◼   ► it was like, well, now it goes in the door.

00:32:58 ◼   ► - Yes, and so that then unlocked, I think,

00:33:01 ◼   ► a door that we had been avoiding,

00:33:03 ◼   ► which was, well, crap, if we've got this actual pixel screen

00:33:07 ◼   ► and we're building an engine

00:33:09 ◼   ► and we're coding these games and all this stuff,

00:33:11 ◼   ► Maybe they're just real games with the constraint being now that they're black and white and that there's a crank

00:33:18 ◼   ► Well, take me back a little bit here. You said you found this screen the sharp one

00:33:24 ◼   ► sharp memory LCD so

00:33:28 ◼   ► The way I'm hearing this is that it's just sort of like

00:33:32 ◼   ► I mean you probably did it from Portland, but it you know, maybe or did you go to Japan?

00:33:38 ◼   ► I mean, how do you know I'll find a screen like this? This was just a tremendous amount of googling

00:33:44 ◼   ► That's really all there was to it. I was I think a very smaller version of the screen

00:33:49 ◼   ► Would have been used on pebble watches. Hmm, and I think that I might have seen a pebble watch

00:33:56 ◼   ► I thought oh that's kind of interesting that looks a bit like that LCD thing. We're trying to emulate

00:34:00 ◼   ► It's just really paying attention and googling and trying to figure all this stuff out

00:34:05 ◼   ► And then it turns out that like the rep for the screen or one of the reps for the screen happened to actually be in

00:34:11 ◼   ► Portland so she came by with some demo units and all that like all these things sort of connected together

00:34:16 ◼   ► But just yeah just us sitting in the office with google.com

00:34:21 ◼   ► And it sounds to me like there's the story that John Rubenstein was talking to

00:34:27 ◼   ► Toshiba executives, you know like around 2000 or early 2001 and they were like hey

00:34:34 ◼   ► I know you guys are using all of these 2.5 inch hard drives in your MacBooks. We love our relationship

00:34:40 ◼   ► We've got this new thing this 1.8 inch hard disk

00:34:43 ◼   ► And nobody nobody seems to know what to do with it

00:34:47 ◼   ► What do you guys think and Rubenstein took it back and they sort of built the iPod around the drive?

00:34:53 ◼   ► Cool, I think I got most of that from Steven Levy's great book

00:34:57 ◼   ► I forget the title on the iPod but that he had this thing and it was like well

00:35:01 ◼   ► we don't need a drive that small in a MacBook, but if we had a drive that small, we could

00:35:06 ◼   ► make something a lot smaller. And it sounds to me like that's what this screen is. Like,

00:35:09 ◼   ► now you found this screen, here we can build from here.

00:35:13 ◼   ► Yeah, that's exactly right. And I hope that, you know, they're always coming up with new

00:35:20 ◼   ► versions of the screen. So we're like, you know, listening to that and seeing what they

00:35:24 ◼   ► do in the future. But we did learn that this screen is widely used in Japan on the coffee

00:35:31 ◼   ► machine in every 711. Okay. Can you get it? When you order something like this, can you

00:35:42 ◼   ► get it in the exact dimensions you want? Or is it the resolution set set like it's all

00:35:49 ◼   ► 177 pixels per inch that said, but you could get it cut into a square or a 16 by nine or

00:35:56 ◼   ► no luck. No, if you're way bigger than us, you could probably have a custom screen built

00:36:02 ◼   ► to your specifications, but that doesn't work for our scale. And they had other sizes.

00:36:07 ◼   ► This is larger size of the screen. But ironically, the larger size of the screen has a lower

00:36:11 ◼   ► resolution. So for us, it was balancing those two things and determining the size of the

00:36:16 ◼   ► device and the size of the screen. But being as small as we

00:36:19 ◼   ► are, we have a website that lists six part numbers, we

00:36:22 ◼   ► choose one basically.

00:36:23 ◼   ► Well, but then again, it becomes one of those design constraints

00:36:27 ◼   ► that can exactly you know that, okay, here it is, it's 400 by

00:36:31 ◼   ► 240. It's 2.7 inches diagonal. And then now you've got this

00:36:35 ◼   ► linchpin at the at the center of the of the design. And you go

00:36:40 ◼   ► from there.

00:36:43 ◼   ► So how, when did you find this screen?

00:36:45 ◼   ► Oh boy, Greg.

00:36:48 ◼   ► Steve, do you remember?

00:36:49 ◼   ► We, it was a long time ago because we did base our original game machine prototype

00:36:58 ◼   ► off of this probably 13 or 14, 20, 2000.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Oh God, I thought you meant 13 years ago.

00:37:02 ◼   ► It just feels like I was 13 or 14 at the time.

00:37:07 ◼   ► Oh, right.

00:37:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:09 ◼   ► It was a really long time ago and we got the screen and we picked

00:37:13 ◼   ► a processor that seemed like it might work and ordered their discovery board. And what

00:37:20 ◼   ► that is, is to evaluate processors for your projects. They make these discovery boards

00:37:26 ◼   ► which give you a lot of the breakout connectors and stuff. So you can really easily get up

00:37:32 ◼   ► to speed with a processor without having to do a bunch of boards and stuff on your own.

00:37:38 ◼   ► And I think I tweeted that very first version.

00:37:41 ◼   ► It was that really janky plastic case.

00:37:43 ◼   ► It had no crank, because we hadn't talked about that yet.

00:37:46 ◼   ► The buttons are all like crazy angles,

00:37:49 ◼   ► because it was 3D printed in the office.

00:37:51 ◼   ► The board is sticking out of the bottom,

00:37:53 ◼   ► and so it's all held together with a rubber band.

00:37:57 ◼   ► But it played the game, right?

00:37:58 ◼   ► Like we actually kind of got it to work.

00:38:00 ◼   ► Dave got that working so fast after we got the screen.

00:38:02 ◼   ► Yeah, but that was a problem.

00:38:03 ◼   ► It was deceptive, yeah.

00:38:04 ◼   ► It was deceptive.

00:38:05 ◼   ► He got it working in like three months.

00:38:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:07 ◼   ► We're done.

00:38:07 ◼   ► is it? We can get this far in three months? We'll wrap this thing up in six easy!

00:38:14 ◼   ► Jim - Somebody get started on the website.

00:38:19 ◼   ► Bill - What are we calling this thing? Yeah, anyways, that was a trick. Don't be fooled

00:38:25 ◼   ► by that if you're into a hardware project. But yes, the screen was in place at the very

00:38:30 ◼   ► beginning and the processor actually. We did end up bumping to a more recent version of

00:38:35 ◼   ► the processor that has more speed and was theoretically pin compatible. So we could

00:38:40 ◼   ► just drop it in, although it has its own quirks. But the basics of that original prototype

00:38:47 ◼   ► are still kind of there in the device, which is pretty well

00:38:49 ◼   ► what is it? It's like an ARM processor, right? I mean, you guys don't really talk to tech

00:38:53 ◼   ► specs. Yep, yes. What st micro? Okay. I remember the exact Yeah, it's an F seven. F seven sounds

00:39:01 ◼   ► right? Yeah. And yeah, it's it's arm based.

00:39:07 ◼   ► And again, you know, I probably should have said this before we

00:39:12 ◼   ► started recording. Let me let me just preface the remainder of

00:39:16 ◼   ► the show with this that if I asked you guys a question that

00:39:19 ◼   ► you don't want to answer, you can just laugh and say, you know

00:39:21 ◼   ► what, we don't want to talk about that yet. So like, if you

00:39:24 ◼   ► know, there's, you know, there's all sorts, you know, I know you

00:39:26 ◼   ► got games that you want to keep under wraps. There's the Yes, I'm

00:39:29 ◼   ► I'm not going to ask stuff like that.

00:39:30 ◼   ► But if something is a state secret, if you want to be like Apple and not tell me how

00:39:34 ◼   ► much money...

00:39:35 ◼   ► I was just going to say, I got to learn the Schiller brush off.

00:39:38 ◼   ► Everything has been fine so far.

00:39:42 ◼   ► Yeah, you're doing fine.

00:39:45 ◼   ► Yeah, but with the screen though, is there any sort of fear like, okay, it's 2013 or

00:39:51 ◼   ► 2014, you find this screen, it's from obviously Sharp is a well-known company.

00:39:57 ◼   ► looks good. This is something we could build a little handheld thing around. Is there any

00:40:02 ◼   ► fear that Sharp is going to stop making the screen? I mean, you're still four or five

00:40:05 ◼   ► years out or did you like stockpile them in advance?

00:40:09 ◼   ► There is a fear that we try to have failures out to make sure that they're going to make

00:40:13 ◼   ► this and it seems like they're going to make it for a while. Well, the companies are also

00:40:15 ◼   ► really good about this in that there is a very strict process for end of lifing screens,

00:40:21 ◼   ► right? Where they give you like years notice, right? They don't just like, Hey, guess what?

00:40:26 ◼   ► week your screen's done. You gotta make a new coffee machine for 7-11." There's definitely

00:40:31 ◼   ► some super advanced notice. But of course we're nervous about that at all times. Like,

00:40:38 ◼   ► the clock is ticking, we don't want to announce, and then the next week it's end of life. So

00:40:43 ◼   ► please cross your fingers for us. Hopefully we have a sliver of clout at this point, we

00:40:50 ◼   ► it's a but it's on the cover of a magazine. You can't cancel it.

00:40:55 ◼   ► We're singing sharps praises every chance we get.

00:40:58 ◼   ► Right, right. We're trying. We're really trying. Yeah, but yes, that is a fear. That's a total

00:41:03 ◼   ► fear with any of the components actually. It is. I mean, this happened to Teenage Engineering.

00:41:08 ◼   ► They just had to change their screen because they're all that got end of life.

00:41:12 ◼   ► Did these a bigger screen? Do you know? It's a little bigger, although I think they might be

00:41:16 ◼   ► masking it. I think it's the same visible size. That's so funny. But inside the case,

00:41:20 ◼   ► it's larger. Amazing. Yeah. Hopefully that wasn't a secret. Yeah. I'm sure they're fine.

00:41:26 ◼   ► Well, tell me a little bit about Teenage Engineering. Okay. So,

00:41:31 ◼   ► God, where do I begin? I know them as a musical instruments company. They

00:41:35 ◼   ► make an incredible synthesizer called the OP-1. And the best way I can describe my

00:41:42 ◼   ► feeling about this company is that they give me the same kind of

00:41:46 ◼   ► "these guys care about everything" that Apple always has. And I can think of very few companies that can generate that

00:41:56 ◼   ► response in my brain. You know, like the

00:41:59 ◼   ► the case itself is just immaculately designed. They have this cool OLED screen, but they're limiting themselves to

00:42:07 ◼   ► four colors. It almost looks like an old vector screen.

00:42:11 ◼   ► Those are the exact same colors they will use on all of the knobs and packaging and like

00:42:17 ◼   ► Every single detail is well considered. You know, there's like a hidden game

00:42:22 ◼   ► Helicopter game that you can play under synthesizer

00:42:25 ◼   ► Something about this company just like these guys are operating at a level beyond

00:42:31 ◼   ► They're not known for being

00:42:33 ◼   ► Super affordable their products are thought of as quite expensive

00:42:38 ◼   ► I've always felt that it was worth it, but you know, it depends and

00:42:42 ◼   ► They also are really good at doing

00:42:45 ◼   ► Experiments like they have a partnership with IKEA

00:42:48 ◼   ► of all people right now where they're designing some lights and a speaker and

00:42:54 ◼   ► really interesting things for them they designed a a

00:42:57 ◼   ► Disposable digital camera for IKEA. There's literally a piece of cardboard with a battery and

00:43:05 ◼   ► and a viewfinder and like a little flip out USB stick.

00:43:08 ◼   ► It was like a $10 digital camera.

00:43:10 ◼   ► Just really unique products all across the board.

00:43:14 ◼   ► And so when we started this thought process early on,

00:43:19 ◼   ► and again, before we had even settled on video game,

00:43:22 ◼   ► I was really hoping that in some way they would be involved.

00:43:26 ◼   ► And so I just sent them a classic cold email.

00:43:29 ◼   ► Hey, how are you?

00:43:30 ◼   ► We are thinking about doing this thing.

00:43:32 ◼   ► and they were immediately enthusiastic about helping us in whatever. They said that they

00:43:39 ◼   ► loved using Transmit, which was great. We got in the door with Transmit. And yeah, it

00:43:46 ◼   ► just has become this really great partnership and they're just ridiculously talented.

00:43:53 ◼   ► It seems like part of what, and I think part of what some people who, when they first saw

00:44:00 ◼   ► playdate were like, "Really? That's it?" Some of this may be skepticism. Some of it

00:44:06 ◼   ► may come from somebody who just doesn't have any nostalgic feeling for old handheld games.

00:44:12 ◼   ► It's all reasonable. But I think the thing that's confusing to some people is that this

00:44:16 ◼   ► is not something designed to make a few billion dollars. And it sounds to me like you guys

00:44:23 ◼   ► are copacetic with the teenage engineering crew in the same way, that they're not setting

00:44:28 ◼   ► out to make a couple billion dollars and become the next Facebook or Snapchat or something

00:44:35 ◼   ► of that size, that they're willing to just be craftspeople who make good money that supports

00:44:41 ◼   ► a company in a healthy way but isn't really there to change the world.

00:44:46 ◼   ► That's exactly it. We've never had grand delusions about this thing. It's not going

00:44:51 ◼   ► change the world. It might improve your day. But it's, I think both of our companies are driven by

00:45:00 ◼   ► this feeling of just wanting to make a thing and bring it into the world. And, you know, you hope

00:45:07 ◼   ► it's the same with our software, really, you hope that it will resonate with people. But there's

00:45:11 ◼   ► always a chance that it might not. But then you just move on to the next thing. And I don't I

00:45:16 ◼   ► I always love that attitude.

00:45:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:18 ◼   ► Most of my friends, the people who, you know, the mutual friends, people you know, but the

00:45:24 ◼   ► one thing that we all share is an appreciation for good tools.

00:45:28 ◼   ► And, you know, if you're going to be sitting there working all day and you've got an FTP

00:45:33 ◼   ► client open all the time, why not have it look nice?

00:45:37 ◼   ► I know the engineering mindset, like, you know, all those tools are built into the command

00:45:42 ◼   ► line.

00:45:43 ◼   ► Right.

00:45:44 ◼   ► You could do it all from there.

00:45:46 ◼   ► But why not have it look nice?

00:45:48 ◼   ► In the same way that if you're gonna have a pen or a pencil,

00:45:51 ◼   ► why not get a nice pencil and have it feel good

00:45:53 ◼   ► and leave a nice mark on the paper?

00:45:55 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:45:56 ◼   ► - And sure, most people don't look at it that way.

00:45:58 ◼   ► I mean, that's the world we live in

00:46:00 ◼   ► where most people go in to the store

00:46:02 ◼   ► and find whichever pencil is the cheapest.

00:46:05 ◼   ► And then there's little Sally's 12 pack of pencils

00:46:08 ◼   ► for the school year.

00:46:09 ◼   ► - And that's totally fine.

00:46:10 ◼   ► And there's people that can get by completely fine

00:46:13 ◼   ► with free FileZilla or whatever.

00:46:15 ◼   ► And there's people that can, you know,

00:46:18 ◼   ► go buy a used Nintendo 2DS for the same price as our thing.

00:46:22 ◼   ► Like, and that's totally okay.

00:46:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:26 ◼   ► - Well, there's one other thing that I find interesting

00:46:28 ◼   ► is that it's part of what makes that,

00:46:31 ◼   ► this whole Asian manufacturing world, especially China,

00:46:36 ◼   ► let's just emphasize 'cause they're so big,

00:46:38 ◼   ► is what's driving the prices of some things,

00:46:40 ◼   ► just common things, seriously,

00:46:42 ◼   ► pencils or you know notepad are

00:46:44 ◼   ► Cheaper than they ever could have been like and it in some ways

00:46:48 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense to me that it's cheaper to make 10 billion pencils in China and then ship them over the Pacific

00:46:54 ◼   ► And then somehow moving from the west coast to the east coast to get them into a target here in Philadelphia

00:47:00 ◼   ► It doesn't really make sense to me, but I guess at a certain point scale wins and but that same

00:47:08 ◼   ► Asian supply chain that's revolutionizing the price of everything, you know of cars, you know, you can get a cheap car for unbelievable price

00:47:16 ◼   ► Is also what's enabled you guys to do hardware like I don't think you got I mean correct me if I'm wrong

00:47:24 ◼   ► I don't think you could do this all in the United States. I don't think so. We looked into it. We thought about it

00:47:29 ◼   ► There's a lot of reasons to do that with local and we could say that but it was not gonna work out financially, right?

00:47:36 ◼   ► That's what I meant by can't it's yes. Yes, right it playdate doesn't cost

00:47:42 ◼   ► $149 if it's entirely assembled in Portland, Oregon

00:47:45 ◼   ► Extremely correct, which is unfortunate. Yeah

00:47:49 ◼   ► Right. I say this with no joy, but it's just right the world is but in some ways the same

00:47:54 ◼   ► the same

00:47:57 ◼   ► economic

00:47:58 ◼   ► fundamental change that has so much cheap stuff cheap mass market stuff being made in Asia also enables

00:48:06 ◼   ► boutique I don't know if that's the right word but

00:48:09 ◼   ► the niche products to be moving right there's a

00:48:12 ◼   ► great I'm I won't get sidetracked too long but I have a couple of

00:48:18 ◼   ► automatic watches and some of my very favorites are from this small company called Halios. Halios

00:48:25 ◼   ► is a guy named Jason Lin is a one-man company up in

00:48:33 ◼   ► Vancouver. And he assembles the watches himself and designs them himself. But like the actual

00:48:40 ◼   ► steel cases he gets made some most of the time. I think he has somebody in Canada he

00:48:44 ◼   ► works with sometimes but when he does a run, they're made in China. He has to go over there

00:48:48 ◼   ► sometimes. But it enables you know, part of it, you know, it's not just electronic gadgets,

00:48:53 ◼   ► like he's a here's a guy making old fashioned automatic wristwatches. But part of it is that

00:48:59 ◼   ► part of what makes it possible and that he could sell them for 700 $800, which is to me,

00:49:03 ◼   ► extraordinary, is that he can get these steel cases made to his exact specifications in China.

00:49:10 ◼   ► And correct me if I'm wrong because I'm not a big watch person, but Shinola watches as well,

00:49:15 ◼   ► even though they say that they're, you know, from Detroit and made in the US, also depend heavily on

00:49:20 ◼   ► parts from China, I think as well. Yeah, they're assembled in Detroit. But so yeah, I think you're

00:49:27 ◼   ► You're right, that there is--

00:49:30 ◼   ► that stuff enables things that wouldn't be possible for us

00:49:34 ◼   ► while at the same time it being really unfortunate that we

00:49:37 ◼   ► can't pull it off here.

00:49:40 ◼   ► It would be nice if that changed.

00:49:41 ◼   ► But I mean, I think a lot about Apple building the Mac Pro

00:49:45 ◼   ► at Foxconn in the US.

00:49:49 ◼   ► And what a wild situation that was for a variety of reasons.

00:49:54 ◼   ► Gosh, John, did I ever tell you this story?

00:49:56 ◼   ► I'm not gonna ramble.

00:49:57 ◼   ► Did I ever tell you the story about the watch

00:49:59 ◼   ► I backed on Kickstarter that was also gonna be assembled

00:50:01 ◼   ► in the US by Flecktronix?

00:50:03 ◼   ► - No. - I'll keep it really short

00:50:05 ◼   ► 'cause I know you're gonna love one part of the story.

00:50:08 ◼   ► - Hold on a second, let me do another--

00:50:09 ◼   ► - Stephen Craig, forgive me.

00:50:11 ◼   ► Forgive me for telling the story again.

00:50:12 ◼   ► Okay, go ahead, John.

00:50:13 ◼   ► - We know, 'cause that way we know where we'll pick it up.

00:50:15 ◼   ► We'll pick it up with your story.

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00:51:49 ◼   ► All right, let's hear a story about the watch you back on Kickstarter.

00:51:53 ◼   ► This is my manufacturing is hard slash things can be more challenging.

00:51:57 ◼   ► So I backed this watch on Kickstarter that was pre Apple watch.

00:52:01 ◼   ► It was going to be this extremely thin watch that curved around your wrist.

00:52:05 ◼   ► It was like the CST 01 or something like that.

00:52:08 ◼   ► And it is like many Kickstarters.

00:52:10 ◼   ► They had bitten off way more than they could chew.

00:52:13 ◼   ► It quickly became clear in the updates that things were going not great.

00:52:19 ◼   ► They chose, I think, Flextronics to manufacture at any US facility.

00:52:25 ◼   ► And there's all this drama started to spring up about how they're holding some of their

00:52:31 ◼   ► equipment hostage and batteries and all this other stuff.

00:52:34 ◼   ► And then eventually there was just the saddest possible update where they said, "Hey everybody,

00:52:41 ◼   ► we've moved into a van in the Flextronics parking lot and we're just living in this

00:52:46 ◼   ► van now but we're gonna try to make this work" and it didn't work and when they

00:52:52 ◼   ► canceled the project they posted this graph showing timelines of where all

00:52:57 ◼   ► their money went and there's this it's just seared into my brain because at the

00:53:02 ◼   ► end of this graph there's this line with the label "van living begins" and just and then nothing.

00:53:10 ◼   ► And I think about, I thought about that a lot as you can imagine throughout the

00:53:13 ◼   ► course of this project, will there be a line on our graph that says "van living begins."

00:53:19 ◼   ► The sad part about that is the factory even disputed that they were living in a van! They

00:53:25 ◼   ► were like "that's not true, we have no proof of them living in the van." And so then they

00:53:29 ◼   ► posted additional photos of their van, the inside of the van, the parking lot at the

00:53:34 ◼   ► factory, like it was just the darkest thing. Anyways, manufacturing is hard.

00:53:39 ◼   ► and the watch was a huge quite the opposite. I never saw that money again. But let us all

00:53:47 ◼   ► pray that we never have van living begins. We had a I mean, I think everybody has spent

00:53:54 ◼   ► some money on some kickstarters that did not come to fruition. We had one I forget how

00:53:59 ◼   ► much Amy spent. But our son has a dairy allergy, very severe dairy allergy has had his whole

00:54:05 ◼   ► He's doing great. Just you know has to stay away from all dairy products. Okay, and you know, we've been really lucky

00:54:11 ◼   ► He's a cautious kid anyway, so he just doesn't eat random stuff even when he was little he's 15 now

00:54:15 ◼   ► So he's on his own. But anyway a couple years ago, maybe five six years ago

00:54:18 ◼   ► Somebody came out with a Kickstarter project and and they seemingly had an academic background

00:54:23 ◼   ► They didn't seem like a you know out of like a Yahoo

00:54:26 ◼   ► But they claim to be making a device that you could just sort of

00:54:30 ◼   ► Hold up about an inch away from food and it would tell you everything that was in it

00:54:34 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:54:37 ◼   ► - That sounds awesome though is the thing.

00:54:39 ◼   ► Like, yes I want that.

00:54:40 ◼   ► - And they had phrase, you know, spectromography

00:54:43 ◼   ► or what, I don't know what the hell their terms were.

00:54:45 ◼   ► And Amy was like, what do you think of this?

00:54:46 ◼   ► And I said, I think this is bullshit.

00:54:49 ◼   ► I can't believe that this would work.

00:54:51 ◼   ► But if you want to back them, you know,

00:54:54 ◼   ► think of it as like playing a couple hundred dollars

00:54:57 ◼   ► at Blackjack, you know, you're probably gonna lose.

00:54:59 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:55:00 ◼   ► If you want to back it because, you know,

00:55:03 ◼   ► need the kick if it was going to work they needed the Kickstarter funding to get there and so we did

00:55:08 ◼   ► it and there were a couple of updates I don't think I ever moved into a van but they just sort

00:55:12 ◼   ► of they just sort of stopped sending updates that's the other solution yeah I don't think that they

00:55:18 ◼   ► were a fraud I think that they genuinely I do think and if they were they were really good at

00:55:24 ◼   ► the copywriting I think that they were earnest and that they really thought they were on the cusp of

00:55:29 ◼   ► being able to do this and they just needed money to find out. We ended up talking about this stuff

00:55:36 ◼   ► all the time and I track these quite obsessively. There was the laser razor that was a razor that

00:55:42 ◼   ► was going to use like a laser beam to cut your hair. I don't know if you knew this.

00:55:46 ◼   ► I don't remember that one. Oh, everybody in the comments is like, "Hi, I am a master's in physics

00:55:52 ◼   ► and what you're making is not possible." They just kept at it and they still think they're going to

00:55:58 ◼   ► do it their last update they said that they had moved into Silicon Valley

00:56:04 ◼   ► laughing for like five minutes anyways I do believe you in this situation too I

00:56:11 ◼   ► don't think there are fraudsters I think they really thought we have an idea on

00:56:16 ◼   ► paper that can maybe work and let's just immediately go to Kickstarter how sad

00:56:21 ◼   ► would it be if you met them and like their cheeks are all scarred please

00:56:28 ◼   ► don't look at me. I'm idiots. The laser razor. They all look like the bad guys in a Bruce

00:56:36 ◼   ► Willis movie. They're all scarred up. No refunds. Anyways, well, anyway, these are my name,

00:56:45 ◼   ► though, while we're talking about Kickstarter, a lot of products of the scope and scale of

00:56:51 ◼   ► Playdate these days go through Kickstarter or or one of the Kickstarter like services Indiegogo

00:56:58 ◼   ► There's a dozen of them. I'm sure

00:57:01 ◼   ► I'm gonna guess that you guys never really even considered that route. No, did you did you great?

00:57:08 ◼   ► We talked about it for you know for a little while and we would we did go back and forth for like a week

00:57:13 ◼   ► I think so. What should we do? But ultimately, I mean we decided it was not quite

00:57:18 ◼   ► the right platform. We wanted to have a

00:57:20 ◼   ► surprise. Right. And we wanted to have the same kind of pop out fully formed with complete confidence. Yes. It was gonna work.

00:57:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I didn't want anyone to go on a journey with us, you know, like I just wanted it to be

00:57:34 ◼   ► "Here it is. It exists and it's real." Now ironically,

00:57:39 ◼   ► announcing early because of the magazine kind of took us back a little bit from that original dream. We're a little bit,

00:57:44 ◼   ► But we're still pretty far.

00:57:45 ◼   ► The plus of doing a Kickstarter, which some people pointed out

00:57:48 ◼   ► to us, is there's a built-in audience.

00:57:50 ◼   ► And you get notified when your friends follow--

00:57:52 ◼   ► well, at least I do-- your friends follow something

00:57:54 ◼   ► on Kickstarter.

00:57:55 ◼   ► That would help.

00:57:56 ◼   ► But I think we just were mostly confident that we could

00:58:00 ◼   ► accomplish that on our own.

00:58:01 ◼   ► And also, yeah, I love Kickstarter.

00:58:04 ◼   ► And actually, the vast majority of the things I backed

00:58:06 ◼   ► have been successful and been delivered.

00:58:08 ◼   ► Same here.

00:58:09 ◼   ► Have you ever gone to your Things I Backed page, John?

00:58:12 ◼   ► That's really interesting because they have a check mark for, "Yes, I got this, but you

00:58:15 ◼   ► do it yourself."

00:58:16 ◼   ► It's kind of a self-selected process.

00:58:19 ◼   ► I wish they had a second column for "This thing will never show up," but they didn't

00:58:22 ◼   ► seem interested in my idea.

00:58:25 ◼   ► But I'm amazed at how many things did ship successfully.

00:58:28 ◼   ► So definitely not knocking Kickstarter, but there is definitely a feeling of you now,

00:58:35 ◼   ► when you back something on Kickstarter, you just have to be prepared for the fact that

00:58:37 ◼   ► it might never show up.

00:58:38 ◼   ► And I just don't think we wanted to give anyone that feeling.

00:58:41 ◼   ► I'll bet you guys have a copy or two of this the

00:58:44 ◼   ► I'd forget his name, but there was a book that came out recently that was I think Kickstarter

00:58:49 ◼   ► But if not, it was like in D go go the Secret History of Mac gaming. Oh, yeah, definitely

00:58:53 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's it didn't just ship it is a very nice book

00:58:59 ◼   ► It is extremely very very nice hardcover book with the design is amazing

00:59:05 ◼   ► High quality paper high quality printing and that's the sort of thing that is an author you really?

00:59:11 ◼   ► You can't do you if you don't you know, you don't have the money to do that in advance

00:59:16 ◼   ► You can't print the book, but I had confidence he'd written previous books

00:59:20 ◼   ► So it's like I you know, I think he can do this, but I'm blown away by how nice it is

00:59:24 ◼   ► It's actually a nicer book than most of the books I get in a real bookstore. That's definitely true

00:59:29 ◼   ► Yeah, so I see that with the surprise and you guys are in a position where you have a successful company and you could write

00:59:37 ◼   ► you could write back this with the

00:59:39 ◼   ► the you know

00:59:41 ◼   ► The back of the profits on the back of the profits of the software you're already writing

00:59:45 ◼   ► Ironically it kind of reminds me of the question of do you put your app in the App Store or not?

00:59:50 ◼   ► Because you know the argument for the App Store one of the arguments for the App Store is that it's a marketing machine

00:59:56 ◼   ► And you don't have to set all these things up and all that other stuff

00:59:59 ◼   ► But of course for us having been around for a long time

01:00:02 ◼   ► We we already have a way to take credit cards and we already have an audience and a list that we can email and stuff

01:00:07 ◼   ► that makes that decision but that's like maybe a different podcast for another time.

01:00:11 ◼   ► We could really ruin the rest of this one by going there.

01:00:16 ◼   ► Let's not crack that open.

01:00:18 ◼   ► But you are, what's back in the App Store now?

01:00:21 ◼   ► Transmit. Transmit back in the App Store as a subscription.

01:00:24 ◼   ► As a subscription. What's the price?

01:00:26 ◼   ► Oh, got it. Twenty-nine.

01:00:29 ◼   ► Twenty-four.

01:00:30 ◼   ► Twenty-four.

01:00:31 ◼   ► Twenty-nine.

01:00:32 ◼   ► Or a year.

01:00:32 ◼   ► I'm glad that I'm on the ball.

01:00:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a yearly subscription.

01:00:37 ◼   ► Consummate businessman.

01:00:39 ◼   ► Yeah, did you like that?

01:00:40 ◼   ► I got that number straight.

01:00:42 ◼   ► I have a very small side story about that.

01:00:45 ◼   ► I'll keep this short.

01:00:47 ◼   ► Earlier in this year, throughout a series of dumb circumstances

01:00:51 ◼   ► that I won't get into, we ended up having to redesign

01:00:53 ◼   ► the subscription page that pops down in the app

01:00:57 ◼   ► to ask you to subscribe.

01:00:59 ◼   ► This was not our choice, but we were asked to.

01:01:02 ◼   ► And so when we were redesigning it--

01:01:04 ◼   ► and I keep meaning to blog about this,

01:01:06 ◼   ► so I guess this is an exclusive.

01:01:08 ◼   ► That's so dumb, nobody cares.

01:01:10 ◼   ► When we were redesigning that,

01:01:12 ◼   ► in the corner of that sheet,

01:01:14 ◼   ► we added a little link that just says,

01:01:16 ◼   ► "Don't like subscriptions? Email us."

01:01:19 ◼   ► And I think that was one of the smartest things

01:01:21 ◼   ► that we have ever done,

01:01:22 ◼   ► because we were getting a bunch of negative reviews,

01:01:25 ◼   ► of course, from people who don't like subscriptions.

01:01:28 ◼   ► But we also can't say anywhere in the app

01:01:32 ◼   ► that we sell a full-price version from our website.

01:01:36 ◼   ► However, we can set up an autoresponder on an email link

01:01:40 ◼   ► that says, hey, sorry you don't like subscriptions,

01:01:44 ◼   ► but you can always buy it here.

01:01:46 ◼   ► And people click that link like two or three times a day.

01:01:49 ◼   ► Fortunately, we get more subscriptions

01:01:51 ◼   ► than we do people complaining about subscriptions.

01:01:53 ◼   ► But it provided this great funnel and this great outlet

01:01:57 ◼   ► for people to not only say--

01:01:59 ◼   ► and it's amazing.

01:02:00 ◼   ► Some people just say, I don't like subscriptions.

01:02:02 ◼   ► But some people actually go into detail about it.

01:02:04 ◼   ► But it's really fascinating to Yes, it's a lot of detail. But

01:02:08 ◼   ► anyways, I'm really happy that we did that. I don't know why

01:02:12 ◼   ► that's just that has nothing to do with playdate whatsoever. I

01:02:14 ◼   ► just thought you might find it interesting. Yeah,

01:02:16 ◼   ► it reminds me of Netflix when Netflix for years allowed you to

01:02:20 ◼   ► sign up in the app and went through the revenue split with

01:02:24 ◼   ► Apple. And I don't think Apple still publishes at least the

01:02:27 ◼   ► other day when I look for it. I can't find the top grossing list

01:02:30 ◼   ► anymore. If it if they still have it. Does it even exist?

01:02:33 ◼   ► That's a great question. I don't know they definitely de-emphasized it, but what is great, but as as of the moment

01:02:38 ◼   ► It was still there when when Netflix decided they were going to cease taking signups in that

01:02:44 ◼   ► And Netflix was at the time the top the top grossing app in the App Store like Apple makes was making so much money off

01:02:51 ◼   ► Their 15% or whatever they negotiate share was Netflix. It was number one

01:02:56 ◼   ► but the thing that I find so bizarre about Apple's rules on this is the the

01:03:02 ◼   ► the rule that you're not allowed to tell the user what the hell is, what's the situation.

01:03:08 ◼   ► Like you can't Netflix can't say, here's what you have to do. You have to go to our website.

01:03:14 ◼   ► Not only are they you know, even if they weren't allowed to put a link in that would open the

01:03:18 ◼   ► browser, if they could just tell you go to any t f dot com and sign up there, then come

01:03:25 ◼   ► back with your new account. But they had a phone number. So I called the phone number.

01:03:31 ◼   ► And this is my dedication to my work.

01:03:34 ◼   ► You guys can imagine how much I enjoy making a phone call.

01:03:37 ◼   ► Not much at all.

01:03:39 ◼   ► But I did it.

01:03:40 ◼   ► I called.

01:03:41 ◼   ► I talked to a friendly gentleman at Netflix Support.

01:03:42 ◼   ► It was not too long of a wait online.

01:03:46 ◼   ► They actually pinpointed it.

01:03:48 ◼   ► They answered the call and it was like, "Your call will be answered in 2 minutes, 41 seconds."

01:03:54 ◼   ► I don't know if it was that precise, but they were like, "2 minutes, 40 seconds."

01:03:57 ◼   ► And 2 minutes, 40 seconds later, I was on the phone with a guy.

01:03:59 ◼   ► I said, Hey, I've got my iPad here. I want to sign up for

01:04:03 ◼   ► Netflix. And it's asking me for a login. I don't have a login.

01:04:06 ◼   ► What do I do? And he says, Oh, you go to netflix.com. And you

01:04:09 ◼   ► sign up there. And then you go back to the app. Like he had it.

01:04:11 ◼   ► He was ready, right? But who what other companies? How many

01:04:15 ◼   ► companies can have phone support all the time? So that people can

01:04:19 ◼   ► who are confused? How do I sign up for a thing? Where's the

01:04:22 ◼   ► great account? It's such a bizarre situation. It is

01:04:25 ◼   ► extremely bizarre. Anyway, congratulations on making it

01:04:29 ◼   ► back to the app store. It's funny because you guys it's not

01:04:31 ◼   ► a coincidence because Apple has been courting certain longtime

01:04:35 ◼   ► developers not coincidence that BB edit is back right right on

01:04:38 ◼   ► the same time. You know, yes, there was a coordinated effort

01:04:41 ◼   ► there on the app stores part to sort of make power tools for the

01:04:44 ◼   ► Mac a little happier. Which is nice anyway. Okay, next. Yeah.

01:04:51 ◼   ► And then I'll have to set up my server to like IP block Apple's

01:04:56 ◼   ► I just want Steve to lean into the microphone and start talking at this

01:05:00 ◼   ► way but I know he's suspiciously hanging back.

01:05:05 ◼   ► Well I'm sure it was fun to get it back in the app store.

01:05:09 ◼   ► It was, it definitely was.

01:05:12 ◼   ► God, where were we?

01:05:16 ◼   ► Where we made a handheld gaming system, that's right.

01:05:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:20 ◼   ► So

01:05:21 ◼   ► Let's talk about the actual design of the device itself. Like what point did you guys go to teenage engineering?

01:05:29 ◼   ► So you guys had like prototypes working where you could make a gameplay on the sharp?

01:05:33 ◼   ► Electromagic whatever it's called

01:05:36 ◼   ► I'm calling it that it's a much better name. Yes

01:05:40 ◼   ► Sometime after our prototype was up and running that we

01:05:45 ◼   ► formally met with teenage engineering at

01:05:49 ◼   ► Moogfest in Asheville, North Carolina,

01:05:53 ◼   ► which is a big electronic music festival.

01:05:55 ◼   ► And that was just convenient

01:05:57 ◼   ► 'cause they were gonna be in the US

01:05:59 ◼   ► and we had never been there.

01:06:00 ◼   ► And that, as a side note for trivia fans,

01:06:03 ◼   ► is why the code name for Playdate was Asheville.

01:06:06 ◼   ► In fact, I'm still not used to being able

01:06:08 ◼   ► to say the word Playdate,

01:06:10 ◼   ► which is how Apple employees always feel, right?

01:06:12 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, I see you picked up the new Tango.

01:06:14 ◼   ► "Oh, I mean."

01:06:15 ◼   ► (both laughing)

01:06:16 ◼   ► Now I'm that guy.

01:06:18 ◼   ► But-- - Yeah, I've had that too,

01:06:19 ◼   ► I'd been in the product briefing like after the keynote talking to like a high-level executive not Phil Schiller, but let's

01:06:26 ◼   ► Say his name rhymes with was

01:06:28 ◼   ► You know, it was like one of the years where there were two sizes of new iPhones

01:06:37 ◼   ► You know the plus and the regular and he called the one like j22 and he's like forget that I never said that

01:06:45 ◼   ► Classic. Yeah, so we met with them in Asheville and that was I think

01:06:49 ◼   ► after that meeting and talking about possibilities and what we want to do

01:06:53 ◼   ► I think a few days after we came back and correct me if I'm getting this timeline wrong because

01:06:57 ◼   ► That's when we got the first renders from Jesper

01:07:01 ◼   ► That's right of his ideas and the very first render not only was there a crank

01:07:06 ◼   ► but there was a slider and there was like there's all sorts of unique input ideas and

01:07:13 ◼   ► Just seeing that that idea at all because we never thought beyond a d-pad and a B buttons

01:07:19 ◼   ► To be able to say why not put a crank on there would have never have occurred to us

01:07:23 ◼   ► So that was like the whole project went to like level four. I don't know I picked four

01:07:28 ◼   ► There was just an instant we have to have that. Yeah, like it just it was the exact right level of

01:07:33 ◼   ► Different weird and maybe actually useful and so

01:07:40 ◼   ► Yeah, and the phrase that it's in the story from teenage engineering is that one of the reasons they wanted to put this

01:07:48 ◼   ► analog

01:07:49 ◼   ► Rotating crank was to break people of their psychosis such psych. I will never forget him saying those words to us

01:07:56 ◼   ► Because iOS gaming was getting huge to be fair the Nintendo switch did not exist yet

01:08:02 ◼   ► so the idea of bringing something with you that was

01:08:07 ◼   ► Not a touchscreen of just us repeatedly tapping a piece of glass was driving him crazy

01:08:12 ◼   ► And this is somebody that loves knobs and switches and dials and synthesizers

01:08:17 ◼   ► And yeah, and I definitely I that was one of my favorite moments of all. I want to break people of their touch psychosis

01:08:23 ◼   ► Well

01:08:31 ◼   ► It's fascinating though. I mean it's you know, it's obviously I

01:08:35 ◼   ► iOS gaming and iPhone gaming in particular is just huge

01:08:38 ◼   ► You know Apple calls it the biggest gaming platform in the world and by some measures

01:08:42 ◼   ► I'm sure it is a certain number of titles and there are some games that are perfect for a touchscreen

01:08:48 ◼   ► They tend to be games that wouldn't even exist without a touchscreen like you couldn't I can't imagine how you would play candy crush with a

01:08:56 ◼   ► D-pad

01:08:57 ◼   ► It just doesn't make sense because not to touch it

01:09:00 ◼   ► But then there's all sorts of other games that are in my opinion no good on a touchscreen

01:09:05 ◼   ► Right, and especially the games that put the little virtual D-pad and buttons on the screen,

01:09:11 ◼   ► which at that point, yeah.

01:09:13 ◼   ► I've never enjoyed one of those at all.

01:09:15 ◼   ► No.

01:09:16 ◼   ► I really don't.

01:09:17 ◼   ► My finger always slides off eventually and I can't figure out why my character stopped

01:09:19 ◼   ► moving and like, it's tough.

01:09:21 ◼   ► I thought Nintendo did a pretty good job with Mario Run as an endless runner, you know,

01:09:27 ◼   ► and there's a couple of other of those endless runner type things where you just tap and

01:09:31 ◼   ► like your only real controls are tap and long tap.

01:09:34 ◼   ► I thought they did a really good job of that because of course they're Nintendo and they're

01:09:37 ◼   ► really good feel.

01:09:38 ◼   ► I agree.

01:09:39 ◼   ► That's probably one of the best examples.

01:09:42 ◼   ► But still, I don't know, I tired of it quickly.

01:09:46 ◼   ► Me too.

01:09:47 ◼   ► So yes, that's why when we saw the crank I think we're like, "Oh man, this is something

01:09:51 ◼   ► totally different."

01:09:52 ◼   ► We've all had analog spinning controls.

01:09:56 ◼   ► We grew up playing Tempest and having the little rotational knob or whatever.

01:10:02 ◼   ► That idea is not groundbreaking by any means, but the idea of having it attached to this

01:10:08 ◼   ► little portable thing.

01:10:09 ◼   ► And it was funny because, god, right after that, I forgot about this, fairly recently

01:10:15 ◼   ► after we came up with the idea for the crank, then Apple introduced the Apple Watch with

01:10:18 ◼   ► the digital crown.

01:10:19 ◼   ► And I remember going, "God damn it!

01:10:21 ◼   ► They have a little spinner thing on the side of their thing!"

01:10:26 ◼   ► The irony is, I don't think I've ever used the digital crown

01:10:29 ◼   ► on your watch since I've gotten it.

01:10:31 ◼   ► And other than-- yeah.

01:10:33 ◼   ► I mean, even when I'm activating Siri,

01:10:35 ◼   ► I always press the wrong button.

01:10:36 ◼   ► I always press the sleep button, and then

01:10:38 ◼   ► it asks if I want to do an emergency SOS or power

01:10:41 ◼   ► off my phone.

01:10:42 ◼   ► No memory for which button to use.

01:10:44 ◼   ► But anyways, I remember definitely

01:10:46 ◼   ► having two days of sadness that there was a digital crown,

01:10:49 ◼   ► but it makes sense.

01:10:51 ◼   ► It's kind of a nice feeling input method.

01:10:53 ◼   ► And so we're using it for games, but of course, we're

01:10:55 ◼   ► using it in the OS, and not every game uses it, and it flips out from the side, and there's even

01:11:02 ◼   ► a little sensor in the cavity where it rests where we can tell whether it's in there or not. So I'm

01:11:08 ◼   ► hoping that some games, like when you flip the crank out, will make a cool sound effect or

01:11:12 ◼   ► something. There's all sorts of possibilities with it, but what it really unlocked for us was

01:11:17 ◼   ► exciting these devs, these amazing game creators that I think just wanted something different,

01:11:25 ◼   ► a break from the routine of making a 3D game for whatever, where it's just like that to the right

01:11:32 ◼   ► person, the existence of that crank just opens up this incredible box of ideas. And that was

01:11:38 ◼   ► the true power of the crank. Right. So the one title that you've shown the most of is...

01:11:44 ◼   ► Yes is crank its time travel adventure. Right? What a name for a game. I love it

01:11:50 ◼   ► but yeah, it reminds me a little bit of

01:11:54 ◼   ► Nintendo's strategy with their new platforms where over the years they tend to have an opening title

01:12:02 ◼   ► Yeah that

01:12:04 ◼   ► exemplifies what they think is special about the platform the one that pops into my mind in particular is

01:12:10 ◼   ► The Mario game that shipped with the n64 because all of a sudden all of a sudden Mario's in 3d

01:12:16 ◼   ► 2d and it's like

01:12:19 ◼   ► This is amazing. This is so I cannot believe that this still feels like a Mario game even though it's in 3d

01:12:26 ◼   ► and

01:12:28 ◼   ► Actually have the word cranking like that

01:12:30 ◼   ► Name is cranking

01:12:33 ◼   ► You know, it is like here's playdate here it is

01:12:39 ◼   ► Here's crankin'!

01:12:41 ◼   ► Yes, well, so the reason we like that game obviously is because it's exclusively the crank

01:12:50 ◼   ► and it's something that would be really difficult to do with a regular controller. Your thumb would get super tired rotating an analog stick

01:12:56 ◼   ► or over and over forever.

01:12:58 ◼   ► And it's just kind of funny and it has funny sound effects and the plot is totally ludicrous and

01:13:07 ◼   ► It looks really cool

01:13:09 ◼   ► one weird piece of trivia about that game is that the bulk of the graphics not all of the graphics are

01:13:16 ◼   ► pre-rendered frames so

01:13:19 ◼   ► What's funny about that is the artist that did all the graphics actually rendered the graphics in Maya

01:13:25 ◼   ► So this incredibly advanced 3d modeling application and then exported to one bit

01:13:31 ◼   ► 400-240 or whatever, which is my favorite thing in the world

01:13:36 ◼   ► And so yeah, anyways, it's it's a good mix of

01:13:40 ◼   ► gameplay and uniqueness and funniness and I also have a huge fan of that guy's games and so like it really sort of

01:13:48 ◼   ► Ticked all the boxes for us. So the can the the inputs you have there's deep d-pad up down left, right?

01:13:55 ◼   ► and a B buttons and

01:13:57 ◼   ► there's a

01:14:00 ◼   ► Button that I'm hoping is called the panic button, but I still think is

01:14:03 ◼   ► There's a name in the top right.

01:14:08 ◼   ► There's a button which brings up sort of like a system menu where you can take a screenshot.

01:14:17 ◼   ► And the crank and that's it.

01:14:18 ◼   ► Yeah, there's a sleep wake button on the very top of the device, which reminds me a lot

01:14:22 ◼   ► of an iPhone or whatever.

01:14:24 ◼   ► So that sleep wake button also has a small little RGB LED light in it so that we can

01:14:31 ◼   ► do cool blinking notifications of new games or whatever. But yes, D-pad, A/B button, menu

01:14:40 ◼   ► button, Frank.

01:14:41 ◼   ► I've complained about this to you privately and now I'm going to complain.

01:14:44 ◼   ► I'm ready. You're going to talk about the buttons, aren't you?

01:14:47 ◼   ► Why call them A/B buttons?

01:14:49 ◼   ► Greg, do you have an answer? Steve, I'm going to just leave the room for a second.

01:14:55 ◼   ► Long, long, long discussion. And it's been almost everything.

01:15:00 ◼   ► I mean, they were A, B, and B, A. We're B, A now. Just like Nintendo.

01:15:05 ◼   ► They were one dot and two dots.

01:15:08 ◼   ► One dot and two dots.

01:15:09 ◼   ► That's right.

01:15:10 ◼   ► Did we ever do shapes or anything?

01:15:11 ◼   ► We tried shapes. Also like a Roman numeral one, Roman numeral two kind of thing with

01:15:16 ◼   ► two lines, one line. Yeah, we kept having to switch the API. That was the most embarrassing

01:15:21 ◼   ► part of it actually.

01:15:22 ◼   ► Like the developers?

01:15:23 ◼   ► The developers, we kept on switching the API.

01:15:24 ◼   ► Hey, happy Monday. Guess what? The button's on different now.

01:15:28 ◼   ► Eventually we added an extraneous left and right API.

01:15:32 ◼   ► So you can actually just do it that way.

01:15:34 ◼   ► Is that true?

01:15:34 ◼   ► Yes.

01:15:35 ◼   ► I did not know that.

01:15:36 ◼   ► Yes.

01:15:36 ◼   ► Oh, that's so good.

01:15:37 ◼   ► So then we can change them forever.

01:15:39 ◼   ► That's right.

01:15:39 ◼   ► OK, good.

01:15:40 ◼   ► As the button names change in your API, so you can--

01:15:45 ◼   ► Yeah, because when it was one and two dot,

01:15:47 ◼   ► I remember Sean actually baked graphics

01:15:49 ◼   ► into his game where the character would say whatever.

01:15:52 ◼   ► Press the and circle with one dot or whatever.

01:15:55 ◼   ► That was awkward, we thought, I think.

01:15:57 ◼   ► it's hard to talk about that. Just press two dots to continue. That's weird, but A and B

01:16:03 ◼   ► communicate. It's A, it's B. Also, there's some Nintendo nostalgia there because of course,

01:16:10 ◼   ► that's the classic NES controller, AB, actually BA technically, right? B first, A second, which is

01:16:17 ◼   ► also the secondary debate. Is it? Yeah, like you said, is it AB or BA? We chose BA.

01:16:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, huge debate. - But yeah, John, it's a nightmare.

01:16:25 ◼   ► Well, at least you consider it. That's all I need to know is that you consider it. My

01:16:29 ◼   ► fear is that it was like, well, Nintendo has BA so we all have BA.

01:16:33 ◼   ► Well, see, the button on the right is just kind of easier to push. And it's the primary

01:16:37 ◼   ► button for doing stuff in the UI. It just felt weird to have that be be. I think that

01:16:41 ◼   ► on the PlayStation, the OK and cancel buttons are different in the US and in Japan, no,

01:16:49 ◼   ► like at a system level. And if you localize your title into Japanese, you also have to

01:16:54 ◼   ► swap out these buttons. And the reason is, because the X button in X in Japan is like

01:17:00 ◼   ► no means no, but circle in Japan means yes. We do check mark, but in Japan they do circle.

01:17:07 ◼   ► And so that circle is on the right. Yeah. And then X is the bottom, but in the U S that's

01:17:12 ◼   ► instinctively backwards for what we're used to in controllers. Anyways, we are not the

01:17:16 ◼   ► only company to face this challenge. We actually had to localize that in Firewatch. Yeah. In

01:17:21 ◼   ► in Firewatch. I think we actually got dinged in cert or

01:17:24 ◼   ► whatever because we haven't localized those buttons in

01:17:26 ◼   ► Firewatch and then a Japanese person was mad at us.

01:17:29 ◼   ► Yes. But so I was looking at my switch before we started

01:17:34 ◼   ► recording the show and I I play it but I'm a simplistic player

01:17:40 ◼   ► and I tend to play super dumb games. I love that playdate

01:17:45 ◼   ► doesn't have all these buttons right so my switch has let me

01:17:48 ◼   ► think I'm if I'm recalling this right they've got a B then x y

01:17:51 ◼   ► I don't know but why not Z but then there's the shoulder buttons which I

01:17:56 ◼   ► guess are the Z and there's four shoulder buttons even on the tiny little

01:18:00 ◼   ► controller that is partly colorful ones if you use the little the ones that click

01:18:04 ◼   ► into the switch itself yeah there's up down left right and then there's a B XY

01:18:10 ◼   ► four shoulder buttons and then other buttons for like home and click the

01:18:16 ◼   ► analog sticks also. So my theory totally made up by me is that

01:18:22 ◼   ► they really wanted to conform to kind of what the industry

01:18:25 ◼   ► standard is right now. Right? So games would be easier to port.

01:18:28 ◼   ► That's the one thing Nintendo hasn't had in the past. So I

01:18:33 ◼   ► think they probably have actually more buttons they would

01:18:34 ◼   ► like. Yeah, that's exactly my theory, too, is that Nintendo

01:18:37 ◼   ► isn't really happy about all those buttons, but they they

01:18:40 ◼   ► need the buttons as standards on the controller so that, you

01:18:43 ◼   ► know, cross platform games don't have to magically make do with

01:18:47 ◼   ► fewer buttons than they need.

01:18:48 ◼   ► Yes.

01:18:48 ◼   ► Yeah, the PS Vita was was missing some of those, it was

01:18:52 ◼   ► missing two shoulder buttons and the ability to click the

01:18:54 ◼   ► round sticks. And it may, you know, when you're used to that

01:18:57 ◼   ► sort of quote unquote, standard control scheme that made those

01:18:59 ◼   ► games a lot harder to play on that system.

01:19:01 ◼   ► I'm, I'm too old. And like my like, the last system I really

01:19:06 ◼   ► played a lot on was the N64. And I forget how many buttons that

01:19:09 ◼   ► had, but it had like a trigger button, I had like two shoulder

01:19:12 ◼   ► buttons and it had the four x, y, a, b, that my brain maxed out

01:19:17 ◼   ► at that point. Like, when I watch my son play and he's using

01:19:20 ◼   ► all these shoulder buttons, it is like, I cannot believe that

01:19:23 ◼   ► you can't play the piano or something useful instead of

01:19:27 ◼   ► able to use eight fingers at once on a controller. So here's

01:19:31 ◼   ► a question for you. When you're using the crank is it

01:19:34 ◼   ► ergonomically Can you still access the A B buttons?

01:19:40 ◼   ► Yes, you can with you. I mean, I'm right handed, I crank with

01:19:43 ◼   ► the right hand, and then I use left thumb to hit A and B and

01:19:46 ◼   ► sometimes D pad. I mean, but it is something that has to be

01:19:49 ◼   ► balanced. You can't just have games that were you doing them

01:19:52 ◼   ► all simultaneously. That does not work. But our developers

01:19:56 ◼   ► have been, you know, learning how to balance those and figure

01:19:59 ◼   ► out what what combination of controls makes sense at one

01:20:02 ◼   ► time.

01:20:02 ◼   ► I noticed that the your BA buttons aren't they're set

01:20:06 ◼   ► horizontal to each other. And my most systems, they're diagonal, including I think the classic

01:20:12 ◼   ► Nintendo controller like the NES. So I'm sure I think as was straight, but Game Boy definitely

01:20:18 ◼   ► switched today. Oh, yeah, you might be right that any s right. Let me guess you guys spent some time

01:20:23 ◼   ► on this. They were diagonal. They were diagonal. Yeah. Yep. For a while. For a long time. Yeah.

01:20:30 ◼   ► What what was the reason we changed it again? Like ran out of room or something and engineering

01:20:34 ◼   ► switched it. It was their suggestion. And it looked nice.

01:20:38 ◼   ► And we were skeptical, I think, because it is very different. I

01:20:42 ◼   ► think in practice, it isn't really a problem. You can push

01:20:45 ◼   ► both buttons simultaneously. And they're both easy to reach. So

01:20:48 ◼   ► it wasn't a big deal. And I admit it did look better that

01:20:52 ◼   ► way. Yeah. So we went for it. Yeah.

01:20:54 ◼   ► And you guys spent one of the things touched on in the edge

01:20:57 ◼   ► articles that you guys spent a lot of time on the feel of the

01:21:00 ◼   ► the buttons.

01:21:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:02 ◼   ► Yes.

01:21:03 ◼   ► Easily one of the hardest parts of this project, right, was making that feel correct and clicky

01:21:07 ◼   ► and responsive.

01:21:08 ◼   ► Yeah, and the weird thing was, like, you'd hand somebody two buttons and ask, you know,

01:21:12 ◼   ► which one feels better to you.

01:21:14 ◼   ► And they would press one, and it was always, they'd always say it was button A. Like, just

01:21:18 ◼   ► the first one we gave them.

01:21:20 ◼   ► But then after they pushed it for about 30 seconds, all of a sudden, that one had too

01:21:24 ◼   ► much tension and was getting too hard to press.

01:21:26 ◼   ► Was actually this slightly mushier one that was better in the long term. So but it was a lot of experimentation

01:21:33 ◼   ► Yeah, so what I mean and at that point

01:21:35 ◼   ► Do you even have games that you can play or you just like?

01:21:37 ◼   ► Sitting there and pretending like you've got like an inert hardware device and you just we were pretending at that point

01:21:43 ◼   ► I think we just had literally a button maybe or something like I don't know

01:21:46 ◼   ► Button that we really liked but they ended up

01:21:51 ◼   ► Stress testing out of the factory and it wasn't even close to what it was rated for first round of buttons

01:21:55 ◼   ► We had for whatever reason died after about

01:21:58 ◼   ► 2,500 presses

01:22:01 ◼   ► Yeah, we're in the hundreds of thousands if not here the millions down but yeah

01:22:09 ◼   ► How did they test that? I mean, I guess it's like a robot. Yeah, they have a machine

01:22:15 ◼   ► They place the device on there and the thing just sits there and presses it and yeah

01:22:20 ◼   ► They have all sorts of machines that will drop them or ascend like this huge electric current through them

01:22:25 ◼   ► Just they do everything to them. They totally torture them

01:22:28 ◼   ► I used to love you brought up IKEA before you guys ever at your local IKEA. Did you ever have the robot but

01:22:34 ◼   ► For the Poang chair

01:22:41 ◼   ► They had our I think they got rid of it

01:22:45 ◼   ► They moved the Philadelphia IKEA a couple years ago, and I think they got rid of the robot

01:22:48 ◼   ► butt, but it was this industrial butt that and the machine you could, of course it was all in metric

01:22:56 ◼   ► because it was from you know from IKEA so it was but you'd set a simulated weight of the individual

01:23:03 ◼   ► in kilograms and then it would just stand up sit down stand up sit down and then there was a counter

01:23:08 ◼   ► and I and my wife it would drive my wife nuts because she's got like an agenda she wants to buy

01:23:15 ◼   ► XYB she then she wants to go downstairs and just sort of browse through the the

01:23:20 ◼   ► knick-knack level and then get the hell out of IKEA in the meantime I just want

01:23:24 ◼   ► to stand there and watch the robot but watch the number increment like if you

01:23:32 ◼   ► put it in your back pocket or whatever like how does it fare sitting on a bus

01:23:37 ◼   ► so was there a debate on adding more buttons earlier like how quickly did you

01:23:44 ◼   ► settle on look, let's keep it simple. Up, down, left, right,

01:23:47 ◼   ► AB.

01:23:47 ◼   ► There was no debate on the standard controls. There was a

01:23:51 ◼   ► debate on sort of how many kind of weird gimmick controls you

01:23:55 ◼   ► might have. Yes. Like there was a touch area that te kind of

01:23:59 ◼   ► wanted to have underneath the BA button. So yeah, to be a touch

01:24:02 ◼   ► sensitive strip. Yeah. But eventually we thought, if we

01:24:05 ◼   ► put too many, it really would feel like a huge gimmick. Yeah.

01:24:09 ◼   ► And also the story is just cleaner if it's just the rank,

01:24:12 ◼   ► Like instead of having the game console with wacky controls, it's the crank.

01:24:18 ◼   ► I always imagine myself writing the copy and it's always like, "Oh my god."

01:24:22 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, and there's a crank!"

01:24:23 ◼   ► "And also a touch strip!"

01:24:25 ◼   ► "Oh, and a slider on the side!"

01:24:26 ◼   ► And at that point, people just close the tab and move on, I think.

01:24:30 ◼   ► Right.

01:24:31 ◼   ► At that point, it starts to sound like the old sample project from Next that it was like...

01:24:35 ◼   ► Right?

01:24:36 ◼   ► You're totally right!

01:24:37 ◼   ► I think Stephen Trouton-Smith just posted a screenshot of it, but it was just a sample

01:24:41 ◼   ► project for the old project builder and it was just a square window with one of every

01:24:45 ◼   ► control. Just to show you, here's how you use a pop-up menu and a slider and a checkbox

01:24:50 ◼   ► and a radio button. It starts to sound like that.

01:24:54 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:24:55 ◼   ► Because one of the things about it is it is so clearly, instantly, the moment you just

01:25:02 ◼   ► look at it, you know exactly what it is. It's a game playing device. You add enough controls

01:25:08 ◼   ► to it and all of a sudden maybe it loses that clarity, right?

01:25:12 ◼   ► Some sort of thing used in boating or something.

01:25:15 ◼   ► Right.

01:25:16 ◼   ► Or is it a musical device?

01:25:18 ◼   ► Is it?

01:25:19 ◼   ► Yes, correct.

01:25:21 ◼   ► So we kept it, well, relatively simple.

01:25:24 ◼   ► And I have seen some people on the internet be like, "This thing doesn't have enough buttons,"

01:25:27 ◼   ► which is kind of a hilarious criticism to me.

01:25:31 ◼   ► But I get it because modern controllers have a bunch of buttons, but our games are not

01:25:35 ◼   ► that complicated.

01:25:36 ◼   ► Yeah. One of the other things character defining characteristic of this device is that the display

01:25:42 ◼   ► is black and white, not grayscale. It is black and white. And, you know, how early did you settle on

01:25:52 ◼   ► that? And was that a concern? You know that in today's world, nobody wants a black and white

01:25:57 ◼   ► screen. You guys know, I think we settled. First thing we settled on was the screen. And that was

01:26:02 ◼   ► actually, it's the one foundational element that's been

01:26:05 ◼   ► there the entire time. Yep. So yeah, there have been moments

01:26:08 ◼   ► when we questioned, you know, gosh, is this going to be right,

01:26:11 ◼   ► but it was always what we were based on. And developers have

01:26:16 ◼   ► actually been kind of excited about it.

01:26:17 ◼   ► The other thing that seems contentious, I think for obvious

01:26:20 ◼   ► reasons, because we on the outside haven't seen it and used

01:26:23 ◼   ► it is the lack of backlighting.

01:26:25 ◼   ► Yes, that we've struggled with that nonstop because it doesn't

01:26:31 ◼   ► feel... it feels risky. But, so we did an experiment. So the first thing that needs to be understood

01:26:39 ◼   ► is that this display, like a traditional LCD, is somewhat transparent underneath and that's

01:26:44 ◼   ► how it works. The backlight shines through the LCD to give you the image. This display is basically

01:26:50 ◼   ► zero percent transparent on the back. It is opaque and that allows it to be super reflective and work

01:26:57 ◼   ► super good in sunlight. Their suggested solution, if you want to try to lighten up the screen,

01:27:04 ◼   ► is actually a little front light. And it's like a thin piece of plastic that has, you

01:27:09 ◼   ► wouldn't even be able to detect them, but ridges basically? Yeah, what's on like the

01:27:12 ◼   ► left side. Right, and the light hits this plastic sheet and the ridges and the plastic

01:27:19 ◼   ► direct the light towards you. Or towards the screen, one of the two. And we tried it and

01:27:26 ◼   ► And it just did not look good.

01:27:28 ◼   ► Not only did it not look good lit,

01:27:31 ◼   ► but it actually made the screen look worse unlit.

01:27:34 ◼   ► So it's kind of the best worst,

01:27:36 ◼   ► I mean the worst of both worlds.

01:27:39 ◼   ► And so we just decided kind of to own it.

01:27:43 ◼   ► Like that's just gonna be a quirk of this system,

01:27:46 ◼   ► is that you'll need a little bit of light

01:27:49 ◼   ► to play the screen.

01:27:51 ◼   ► And that's definitely gonna bother people.

01:27:54 ◼   ► And I just think we just have to kind of accept it.

01:27:58 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:27:59 ◼   ► - It's like the whole world has consolidated

01:28:02 ◼   ► on color displays.

01:28:03 ◼   ► And you know, it's for obvious reasons.

01:28:06 ◼   ► I mean, I always say like the biggest regret

01:28:07 ◼   ► I have in my computer purchasing life is in 1991

01:28:11 ◼   ► when I went to college, Drexel required freshmen

01:28:14 ◼   ► to have a Macintosh or at least have access, quote unquote.

01:28:17 ◼   ► So if you couldn't really afford to buy one,

01:28:18 ◼   ► you could, you know, but you had to be,

01:28:20 ◼   ► you had to say, I will go to the library

01:28:22 ◼   ► or the computer center and use it.

01:28:24 ◼   ► But we had classwork, like we had teachers who gave out like hypercard stacks and stuff.

01:28:28 ◼   ► It was all, it was like we were living in an Apple commercial, really.

01:28:33 ◼   ► Amazing.

01:28:34 ◼   ► But I made a terrible mistake.

01:28:37 ◼   ► There were three options.

01:28:38 ◼   ► There was the, I forget the third one, but I didn't want the third one because it was

01:28:42 ◼   ► the cheapest.

01:28:43 ◼   ► So my choice came down to an SE30 or the LC.

01:28:47 ◼   ► And I picked the LC because it had a color display.

01:28:50 ◼   ► Oh, sure.

01:28:51 ◼   ► And I wanted to play games, not realizing just how much faster

01:28:55 ◼   ► an SE 30 is and how gorgeous it really is.

01:28:59 ◼   ► And we had Max in my high school, but I didn't like them.

01:29:03 ◼   ► I was like an Apple.

01:29:04 ◼   ► I like the Apple two GS.

01:29:05 ◼   ► So I spent more of my time on the Apple two GS.

01:29:08 ◼   ► Like the Mac was a curiosity to me.

01:29:10 ◼   ► Always regretted it.

01:29:12 ◼   ► Regretted it ever since it was a terrible decision.

01:29:14 ◼   ► But it was all because of the color display.

01:29:17 ◼   ► I was like, I got to have that color display.

01:29:20 ◼   ► So I see it that's the way the world's gone even goofy Apple watch as a really really good color display

01:29:26 ◼   ► Even though there's a lot of trade-offs that we all sort of collectively forget like the fact that your Apple watch

01:29:33 ◼   ► Doesn't stay on all the time

01:29:35 ◼   ► like

01:29:37 ◼   ► Was you know, we don't want the games to look like poor versions of iPhone games

01:29:42 ◼   ► Like we wanted an experience that is distinctly different from that and the black and white screen is part of that

01:29:47 ◼   ► Yeah, there have to be a

01:29:50 ◼   ► I'll try to toss one over to Steven

01:29:52 ◼   ► There have to be a bunch of like Bill Bill Atkinson level tricks for dithering and

01:30:00 ◼   ► all sorts of work that that Atkinson and the original Mac team did in the 80s with their black and white displays to

01:30:07 ◼   ► Simulate grays and patterns and stuff like that. Like you guys have got to be using a bunch of cool stuff like that, right?

01:30:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean

01:30:17 ◼   ► It handles dithering really nicely.

01:30:21 ◼   ► I have a game that I've been working on with some folks here that uses, I think it's 32 or 33 levels of dithering.

01:30:30 ◼   ► The screen is dense enough that it reads pretty well.

01:30:34 ◼   ► I mean, you can still tell it's a dither pattern, but it looks like there's more going on on the screen than there really is.

01:30:42 ◼   ► There was a...

01:30:44 ◼   ► someone did a prototype of like a software rendered 3d object rotating that was shaded and

01:30:49 ◼   ► That was pretty convincing that it wasn't just black and white and in fact Dave wrote a little

01:30:55 ◼   ► 1-bit video codec

01:30:57 ◼   ► And he had a little clip of Big Lebowski

01:31:02 ◼   ► You gotta use that as your test and it looked it's really it reads really well considering there is no color

01:31:08 ◼   ► the trick that Dave did I think is really reduce the

01:31:11 ◼   ► redithering on portions of the screen that aren't changing so you don't get that like

01:31:16 ◼   ► constant dancing pixel distraction. So yeah, remind me to show that to you sometime. It's

01:31:21 ◼   ► pretty cool. Did you guys you guys are way more juiced into video games than I am. So

01:31:25 ◼   ► you probably know but there was a video game that came out like, I'm gonna say like a year

01:31:28 ◼   ► ago where you were like a pirate. And the whole game is over did. Yeah, over did. Yeah,

01:31:34 ◼   ► that's a return to the over then. Yeah, Lucas Pope's game and it definitely. He was very

01:31:41 ◼   ► open about his dev process and it was really fun to watch him try different dithering approaches

01:31:46 ◼   ► and how to make this thing look right. And that thing just looks incredible to me.

01:31:50 ◼   ► Yeah. And I think, but that what made me think of it was your thing about not re dithering

01:31:55 ◼   ► because my son was playing it and I just, I was just captivated watching it. But I think

01:31:59 ◼   ► that it, like you said, like somehow he figured out a way to do it without the dancing pixels.

01:32:04 ◼   ► You know, like even as you're like panning, it seems as though what was dithered stays

01:32:08 ◼   ► did the same way, even though you know all of the pixels are moving because you're panning

01:32:12 ◼   ► your vision.

01:32:13 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:32:14 ◼   ► Very convincing. I think that the potential, I think people might be underestimating the

01:32:18 ◼   ► potential for how graphically rich a game on the playdate screen could be.

01:32:22 ◼   ► I think so too.

01:32:23 ◼   ► Plus, you know, anyone who's an artist or creative, you know, loves a good constraint.

01:32:28 ◼   ► And, you know, it's been said about Twitter a lot of times is you've got to really distill

01:32:34 ◼   ► your thoughts to fit into, you know, the character limit. And it's kind of the same thing with

01:32:37 ◼   ► with getting rid of color and just going to black and white, you know, it's like, how

01:32:41 ◼   ► do I make something that reads well in that environment? And it kind of kind of pushes

01:32:46 ◼   ► you a little bit like you have to really stop and think about it and maybe put a bit more

01:32:50 ◼   ► effort into it than you you would if you could just kind of fall back on color.

01:32:55 ◼   ► What's the battery story?

01:32:56 ◼   ► What is our battery story? We haven't done our final test yet, right? Yeah, it's always

01:33:00 ◼   ► in flux because occasionally we introduce a bug that just drains the battery in, you

01:33:04 ◼   ► know, seven minutes.

01:33:05 ◼   ► But is a battery built in?

01:33:07 ◼   ► Oh, yes. Yeah, it's a rechargeable battery built in and we can't really say exactly how long it's gonna be

01:33:13 ◼   ► Yeah, it's gonna be plenty long we think

01:33:15 ◼   ► But we'll say more when we know yeah, okay. I just want to make sure it wasn't like double A's or something like that

01:33:22 ◼   ► I think it's so thin. I don't even know if it could use double it probably I don't even know

01:33:34 ◼   ► It's a it looks very thin. I mean and it's one of those things that thinness often even in a picture

01:33:40 ◼   ► It's hard to convey you have to kind of pick it up to really appreciate it

01:33:43 ◼   ► But is that how it feels in hand?

01:33:45 ◼   ► Yeah, it's very thin. Yeah, actually if you look at the the firewatch

01:33:50 ◼   ► Play date the one we embedded in that game

01:33:52 ◼   ► It's about two or three times as thick as this one because that's what we thought we were gonna have to do with the time

01:33:57 ◼   ► That's true

01:33:59 ◼   ► So for the people who don't know this so firewatch is a game that you guys

01:34:03 ◼   ► Co-produced is that the maybe the best way of sure attributing your contribution with Campo Santo indie game makers

01:34:11 ◼   ► Wonderful wonderful game. It's won awards. It's very successful all deservedly. So it's one of the few games I've played in recent years

01:34:20 ◼   ► I loved it my son. I think I told you this cable. My son played it twice played through. That's amazing

01:34:25 ◼   ► That's really and you know, and I'm really blown away by by that because he's you know, he's typically playing

01:34:32 ◼   ► You know destiny or something like that with with a slightly different vibe and fire watch

01:34:38 ◼   ► But you guys put in one of the I forget where it was was it like in another one of the watchtowers or

01:34:46 ◼   ► Some stuff and one of his things was what is it called broken or handheld game?

01:34:57 ◼   ► Yeah, and if you flip it over there's actually like a PD logo on the back

01:35:02 ◼   ► too. So we like went pretty far. But actually that one was from when the buttons were diagonal.

01:35:08 ◼   ► Yes. And so that's why the buttons are diagonal on that one.

01:35:11 ◼   ► You know what, though, even if I would have really noticed it, if I would have actually,

01:35:15 ◼   ► you know, even if we would have said playdate by panic, I still wouldn't have thought I

01:35:21 ◼   ► would not have thought it was a teaser that you're actually going to make that device.

01:35:27 ◼   ► I would just think that's a fun Easter egg.

01:35:30 ◼   ► Like imagine if Panic made a little handheld video game.

01:35:35 ◼   ► You're right.

01:35:35 ◼   ► We were maybe more worried about it than we needed to be.

01:35:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:35:37 ◼   ► I could have noticed it.

01:35:39 ◼   ► It could have been like a big article on Max Stories

01:35:42 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:35:44 ◼   ► And I wouldn't have even asked if it was real.

01:35:47 ◼   ► I just would have thought, well, that's easy.

01:35:49 ◼   ► It's a lot easier to make a playdate in a video game

01:35:52 ◼   ► than it is to make one in the real world.

01:35:55 ◼   ► Turns out, yeah.

01:35:57 ◼   ► Quite a bit easier.

01:35:58 ◼   ► You mentioned the thinness.

01:35:59 ◼   ► One of the interesting things about that and the D-pad,

01:36:02 ◼   ► which we were talking about, it's

01:36:04 ◼   ► very hard to make a good D-pad with a device that's

01:36:07 ◼   ► that shallow.

01:36:09 ◼   ► I'll bet.

01:36:09 ◼   ► And that's been one of the challenges also.

01:36:11 ◼   ► I think we've cracked it, but that took a few redesigns

01:36:14 ◼   ► to get it working.

01:36:15 ◼   ► Well, and that brings us right back

01:36:16 ◼   ► to the opening of the show in the MacBook keyboards,

01:36:19 ◼   ► that you make these MacBooks so much thinner.

01:36:22 ◼   ► I mean, I still go in the Apple Store.

01:36:25 ◼   ► And when I see the little 12 inch MacBook,

01:36:28 ◼   ► the MacBook One port, the poor begotten,

01:36:31 ◼   ► you know, forgotten to, I think they forgot to update it.

01:36:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:36:35 ◼   ► But when I see it, I'm still blown away by how small it is.

01:36:38 ◼   ► It's so tiny.

01:36:39 ◼   ► And I'm sure it's the same type of thing

01:36:41 ◼   ► where really to make like, you know,

01:36:42 ◼   ► like on a Sega Genesis or something,

01:36:44 ◼   ► the controller has so much room for the D-pad to have depth.

01:36:48 ◼   ► - Right.

01:36:49 ◼   ► - That just isn't possible on something like this.

01:36:51 ◼   ► - Uh-huh.

01:36:52 ◼   ► - Were you concerned as that maybe you guys

01:36:54 ◼   ► making it too thin? That was a question. Yeah, I think we're good. I think it looks great and

01:37:01 ◼   ► feels great. And TE was the one pushing for the thinness. And it made things harder to do it that

01:37:09 ◼   ► way, but it worked out great. It feels good and it looks kind of cool. I can only judge by how

01:37:16 ◼   ► it looks, obviously, but it certainly the thinness vastly contributes to the uncanny valley where

01:37:24 ◼   ► this sort of seems a little retro, but it also seems incredibly modern, right? Because nothing

01:37:30 ◼   ► old was that thin. Like literally, like I just said, like you had to put like nine volt batteries in there.

01:37:36 ◼   ► What about the sound? Everybody that from what I've, I was going to say heard, no pun intended,

01:37:45 ◼   ► What I've heard, it has surprisingly good sound.

01:37:50 ◼   ► I mean, the weird thing about it being modern

01:37:53 ◼   ► is that it's not like a chip can create four channels of sound

01:37:58 ◼   ► or whatever.

01:37:58 ◼   ► We can play real sound.

01:38:01 ◼   ► We are working on a synthesis engine in addition

01:38:04 ◼   ► to being able to just play a WAV file or whatever.

01:38:07 ◼   ► And the speaker is small, but way louder than it

01:38:11 ◼   ► has any right to be.

01:38:12 ◼   ► We actually are not going to run it at full volume

01:38:14 ◼   ► because it is too loud.

01:38:15 ◼   ► It is.

01:38:16 ◼   ► That's great.

01:38:17 ◼   ► So, of course there's a headphone jack as well.

01:38:20 ◼   ► And we went to great lengths to support the mic in through the headphone jack.

01:38:24 ◼   ► So if you have an Apple headset or whatever and a game requires microphone, in addition

01:38:29 ◼   ► to the microphone that's on the playdate, that will work as well.

01:38:32 ◼   ► But yeah, it's surprisingly good sound.

01:38:35 ◼   ► Where is the headphone jack?

01:38:36 ◼   ► Bottom or top?

01:38:39 ◼   ► Bottom center.

01:38:40 ◼   ► Dead center.

01:38:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:38:42 ◼   ► Right?

01:38:43 ◼   ► Or is the USB port dead center?

01:38:44 ◼   ► and microphones on the left.

01:38:45 ◼   ► - Got it, okay.

01:38:46 ◼   ► - USB, you guys have USB-C, not the gross micro USB.

01:38:51 ◼   ► - Right, God, I hate that one, yeah.

01:38:53 ◼   ► - I hate it too.

01:38:55 ◼   ► I still, I can't believe how many devices

01:38:56 ◼   ► I still have that use it.

01:38:58 ◼   ► - Incredible, it's just the most unfulfilling port to use

01:39:03 ◼   ► on anything ever and it always feels

01:39:05 ◼   ► like it's gonna break off.

01:39:06 ◼   ► - Right, always feels like it's gonna break

01:39:08 ◼   ► and my close eyesight is not as good as it used to be.

01:39:12 ◼   ► So especially like in the dark,

01:39:14 ◼   ► and it is the prototypical buttered piece of toast.

01:39:18 ◼   ► Of course, it's always the wrong way when I first try it,

01:39:22 ◼   ► or it's the right way and I can't quite get it in.

01:39:25 ◼   ► And there, I think it's the wrong way

01:39:27 ◼   ► and flip it, it's terrible.

01:39:29 ◼   ► So I'm glad you guys are.

01:39:29 ◼   ► - It's wrong the first two times.

01:39:31 ◼   ► - It's wrong the first two times, that's true.

01:39:34 ◼   ► - So USB-C, when did you guys,

01:39:37 ◼   ► like I forget how long ago USB-C came out,

01:39:39 ◼   ► but you guys must've had this idea in your heads.

01:39:42 ◼   ► And when USB-C came out, you must have been like, "Oh, thank God, we can have a nice

01:39:46 ◼   ► part."

01:39:47 ◼   ► Yeah, for sure.

01:39:48 ◼   ► And I remember it was actually really hard to get, for a little while, USB-C parts, because

01:39:51 ◼   ► I think Apple had locked down the market because they were going to add USB-C to something.

01:39:57 ◼   ► I wonder what it was.

01:39:58 ◼   ► What was their first device with USB-C?

01:40:00 ◼   ► Huh.

01:40:01 ◼   ► Maybe a laptop, probably?

01:40:02 ◼   ► Yeah, probably a laptop.

01:40:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:40:04 ◼   ► I think it was the 12-inch MacBook.

01:40:06 ◼   ► Got it.

01:40:07 ◼   ► I think so.

01:40:08 ◼   ► And so we decided to use USB-C definitely immediately.

01:40:11 ◼   ► And for a long time, we couldn't even get I remember going to Alibaba.com hoping to

01:40:16 ◼   ► find some USB C parts.

01:40:19 ◼   ► And so yeah, I'm so glad that appeared when it did.

01:40:22 ◼   ► And you guys have a it's going to ship with a matching yellow USB C cable.

01:40:28 ◼   ► Yes, correct.

01:40:29 ◼   ► Well, you got it.

01:40:31 ◼   ► What's on the other end of the cable?

01:40:33 ◼   ► Is it just a USB A USB A, but you're not shipping a charger?

01:40:39 ◼   ► We are not. Now we're not planning on shipping one. We kind of figured everybody had one,

01:40:43 ◼   ► but we may or 50. I have a few. Yeah. So yes, it's not going to be included with the system

01:40:52 ◼   ► itself. I think that's reasonable. But I think it's you know, it's interesting. It's interesting

01:40:57 ◼   ► me how many things do come with a charger. Like there's certain gadgets I buy and I'm

01:41:01 ◼   ► I'm like, why did you give me a charger with this?

01:41:04 ◼   ► - Right.

01:41:05 ◼   ► - I have so many of these.

01:41:08 ◼   ► All right, what else do I have?

01:41:12 ◼   ► I wanted to talk about the software.

01:41:14 ◼   ► And I don't know why I'm hung up on this.

01:41:17 ◼   ► I don't know why I'm hung up on the fact

01:41:19 ◼   ► that you guys wrote your own OS.

01:41:20 ◼   ► - Should I bring Dave in here?

01:41:24 ◼   ► Should Dave talk about,

01:41:25 ◼   ► do you wanna ask him direct questions

01:41:26 ◼   ► about this mythical OS?

01:41:29 ◼   ► It just blows me away because I and I guess you didn't write the whole thing right like you didn't write your own

01:41:34 ◼   ► Bluetooth and Wi-Fi stacks, right?

01:41:36 ◼   ► Right, right. So how do you make a custom OS but use an existing open source like Wi-Fi stack? I

01:41:44 ◼   ► Mean is there is it like a POSIX operating system? Is there like a can you get like a terminal?

01:41:50 ◼   ► No, I

01:41:52 ◼   ► Mean even calling it a no less feels like

01:41:57 ◼   ► That's true. It has an OS in the way that an Apple II has an OS, you know what I mean?

01:42:02 ◼   ► Like it has, there's enough code in the firmware to service the hardware on the device, you know,

01:42:09 ◼   ► read the inputs and display stuff on screen. And then beyond that, it's primarily just hosting

01:42:17 ◼   ► a Lua runtime, which is, Lua is a scripting language that some people are writing their

01:42:23 ◼   ► and some people are going straight to C,

01:42:27 ◼   ► but Lua is a friendlier alternative.

01:42:29 ◼   ► And so that Lua runtime sort of exposes a set of APIs

01:42:32 ◼   ► for drawing stuff, playing sounds, reading the inputs.

01:42:37 ◼   ► And so the quote-unquote OS is basically just the glue

01:42:42 ◼   ► between the physical hardware and that runtime.

01:42:45 ◼   ► Not to understate what Dave has done,

01:42:49 ◼   ► it's quite an achievement, especially for a single person.

01:42:52 ◼   ► But yeah, it's not like we had to write a whole window manager and consider the types

01:42:59 ◼   ► of you know, what kind of word processor is going to need to run on this.

01:43:02 ◼   ► And it's so in other words, you're not going to teach like a computer science 201 course

01:43:07 ◼   ► on operating system design using this OS.

01:43:10 ◼   ► Probably not.

01:43:11 ◼   ► It's practical.

01:43:12 ◼   ► It's it's all very practical.

01:43:16 ◼   ► is all just the what do we need? Running a processor to get it

01:43:22 ◼   ► just to make this thing work? Yeah, it has to be less than a

01:43:25 ◼   ► megabyte. Actually, that's true. Yeah, the flash on the, on the

01:43:29 ◼   ► chip is only has only about that much space. Yeah, but yeah, it

01:43:32 ◼   ► does just enough to run a play date. That's impressive. That's

01:43:36 ◼   ► floppy disk sized. I mean, right? I mean, megabytes code is

01:43:42 ◼   ► small, you take all of the, you know, it resources, resource

01:43:45 ◼   ► stuff out and code is very small. I feel like code of the app is 99% icons, right?

01:43:50 ◼   ► And I have an app that was I think 75 K the actual binary and because it had

01:43:57 ◼   ► like all of the different icon sizes up to retina it came out to be something like

01:44:00 ◼   ► three megabytes. Did you guys see the Captain Marvel website that Marvel did

01:44:06 ◼   ► before the movie came out and because the movie takes place in like 1995 or

01:44:10 ◼   ► something like that. And so they did the website. Yes, they

01:44:14 ◼   ► extremely good. They did this really, really good Geo cities

01:44:18 ◼   ► style 1995 website. But like, people poked it apart. And it

01:44:23 ◼   ► was like hundreds and hundreds of megabytes. It's like, it's

01:44:28 ◼   ► like a backend. It's all running on like node node. JS, and

01:44:32 ◼   ► rendering all this stuff. And it's like, no part of the

01:44:35 ◼   ► challenge was making so that it would work over 14, four modem

01:44:39 ◼   ► Connection and I feel like that website was definitely inspired by the Space Jam website, which I don't know if you know

01:44:45 ◼   ► It's still running today

01:44:47 ◼   ► You can I don't know what whose closet that computer still is that is still running the Space Jam website

01:44:54 ◼   ► But it's my favorite thing on the internet

01:44:56 ◼   ► All right, I'm gonna put it in the show that

01:44:58 ◼   ► Space Jam website. All right, everybody in Space Jam. Yeah, you're gonna enjoy that website

01:45:04 ◼   ► I promise you but that's the challenge though

01:45:06 ◼   ► like the part of the, you know, it wasn't just making a website that looks so

01:45:09 ◼   ► cheesy. It was that we had to do it in this, you know, we had to pinch every single

01:45:15 ◼   ► bite out of our images, not just megabytes. So, hearing about this project that has to fit in

01:45:21 ◼   ► one megabyte of memory is, again, it just tickles my nostalgia. Like, that's impressive.

01:45:26 ◼   ► Awesome. So, what's the story with IDE for games? Is that something you're talking about? Is that

01:45:34 ◼   ► that come to ship before playdate?

01:45:37 ◼   ► - Do you wanna, I'm not sure about the timing yet,

01:45:39 ◼   ► but do you wanna explain in general how it works, Steve?

01:45:42 ◼   ► Here, I'll lean this close to you.

01:45:44 ◼   ► - The SDK is composed basically of a compiler

01:45:50 ◼   ► and a device simulator that's pretty much

01:45:54 ◼   ► like the iPhone simulator if you've ever developed for iOS.

01:45:57 ◼   ► It's like a mini virtual playdate that runs on screen.

01:46:02 ◼   ► and you develop your game, like I said before,

01:46:06 ◼   ► in either Lua or C.

01:46:08 ◼   ► Lua is a much more approachable scripting language.

01:46:12 ◼   ► Anyone who's ever written a program before

01:46:14 ◼   ► can probably pick it up in a couple of hours,

01:46:17 ◼   ► versus C, which has better performance characteristics,

01:46:20 ◼   ► but it's a higher learning curve

01:46:23 ◼   ► if you're not already familiar with it.

01:46:25 ◼   ► And actually the Lua runtime runs quite well

01:46:27 ◼   ► for all but the most demanding of games.

01:46:31 ◼   ► And you can kind of intermix the two if you want.

01:46:33 ◼   ► If you have a mostly Lua game

01:46:35 ◼   ► that is having bad performance in one particular area,

01:46:38 ◼   ► you can write a little C library to handle that one part

01:46:42 ◼   ► so it runs faster and call into that from your Lua code.

01:46:45 ◼   ► So yeah, you basically run this compiler

01:46:50 ◼   ► against your Lua code

01:46:52 ◼   ► and it kind of bundles it all up for you.

01:46:53 ◼   ► It does some stuff with the resources.

01:46:56 ◼   ► It compresses the images and wraps it all up

01:46:59 ◼   ► into a little single bundle file

01:47:01 ◼   ► that then can be run in the simulator.

01:47:05 ◼   ► And you can try it out and see how it goes.

01:47:07 ◼   ► And from there, you can also transfer it

01:47:10 ◼   ► onto a physical device if you have one attached

01:47:13 ◼   ► by the USB cable and see how it runs on the device.

01:47:16 ◼   ► - And we have a plugin for Coda 2 that makes this easier.

01:47:20 ◼   ► Also, it will deploy to the device, et cetera.

01:47:24 ◼   ► - This is the upcoming new version of Coda

01:47:26 ◼   ► that you guys are working- - For the existing one.

01:47:28 ◼   ► - Oh, the existing one.

01:47:28 ◼   ► But also the new one.

01:47:29 ◼   ► - We can do it with the new one too.

01:47:31 ◼   ► - That you're-- - A forthcoming,

01:47:33 ◼   ► a forthcoming unnamed editor has a--

01:47:34 ◼   ► - Right. - Yes, a very good--

01:47:37 ◼   ► - The app you guys are working on in your spare time.

01:47:39 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:47:42 ◼   ► - Right. - But that is before we go,

01:47:43 ◼   ► I know this is part of your announcement,

01:47:44 ◼   ► but this, it is coming, the next version,

01:47:47 ◼   ► as yet unnamed to the outside world,

01:47:49 ◼   ► the successor to Coda, is still coming sometime in 2019?

01:47:54 ◼   ► I think that's as much as you're willing to promise?

01:47:57 ◼   ► - Yep, for sure, we're closing in on it.

01:47:59 ◼   ► I think it'll be a developer release kind of situation

01:48:02 ◼   ► because we know that there's gonna be a lot of feedback

01:48:04 ◼   ► and we wanna make sure to shape the product

01:48:06 ◼   ► to meet the needs of today's web developers.

01:48:09 ◼   ► Yep, that's coming soon.

01:48:11 ◼   ► - Have you gotten any negative feedback

01:48:13 ◼   ► from people who are not interested in Playdate

01:48:17 ◼   ► but are interested in Transmit and Coda?

01:48:20 ◼   ► - Oh, for sure.

01:48:21 ◼   ► It's a classic running joke that's not really a joke

01:48:25 ◼   ► that no matter what we ever announce ever,

01:48:29 ◼   ► someone's mad that it's not another thing.

01:48:31 ◼   ► And so it doesn't matter.

01:48:33 ◼   ► This is the extreme version of that by far.

01:48:36 ◼   ► And that's partially why the panic blog post specifically

01:48:39 ◼   ► is, but don't worry, we're working on the next.

01:48:41 ◼   ► We always have to be one step ahead of that

01:48:44 ◼   ► because it just happens every single time.

01:48:46 ◼   ► Jake Rodkin at Campo still jokes every time I tweet,

01:48:50 ◼   ► but what about candy bar three to this day?

01:48:54 ◼   ► Except we actually made Candy Bar 3.

01:48:56 ◼   ► Oh, did we make Candy Bar 3?

01:48:58 ◼   ► Okay, Candy Bar 4.

01:49:00 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, it's easy to have that perception from outside that, you know, they're a small company.

01:49:04 ◼   ► They probably pulled all their engineering resources off of all their apps to put them to work on this stupid game idea.

01:49:10 ◼   ► Right, right, right.

01:49:11 ◼   ► Now everything's languishing, but that's not quite really the case.

01:49:15 ◼   ► I would say that the apps have all been under steady development the whole time.

01:49:19 ◼   ► I agree with that.

01:49:20 ◼   ► This has been going on on the side, so.

01:49:21 ◼   ► actually better about that now than we've ever been. Everything is rolling. I definitely

01:49:26 ◼   ► remember when it took a little while for Transmit 5 to come out, somebody would be like, "Well,

01:49:29 ◼   ► maybe if you weren't making that sign for your building, you would have made Transmit

01:49:33 ◼   ► 5." And I'm like, "I don't. We don't make signs. That was a different person." But I

01:49:38 ◼   ► understand the sentiment, which is just, "I want that thing that I want," which is totally

01:49:42 ◼   ► fine. And I'm guilty of it doing, guilty of doing it too. You know, like, a look at Apple

01:49:45 ◼   ► and like, "Well, you're putting all your work on this watch or whatever, and you're working

01:49:49 ◼   ► No, my is like a how many thousands of people work at the company?

01:49:53 ◼   ► They're not all working.

01:49:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:49:55 ◼   ► My favorite are the people who think that their foray into original TV content is just

01:50:00 ◼   ► is detracting from like the Mac OS.

01:50:04 ◼   ► If Tim Cook wasn't directing the premiere episode of the new Jim Henson project or whatever.

01:50:09 ◼   ► Yeah, like I totally get and again, it'd be a whole episode onto itself.

01:50:13 ◼   ► I get the idea that you can make a very strong argument that maybe Apple shouldn't be worried

01:50:17 ◼   ► about original content period.

01:50:19 ◼   ► should just make the TV platform and let other people fill it with their Netflix and Hulu

01:50:23 ◼   ► and HBO. I get that. But the idea that the people who Apple has hired to make these shows

01:50:29 ◼   ► were like taking off like the I/O.

01:50:33 ◼   ► They're not cocoa engineers yet.

01:50:36 ◼   ► But imagine if they were. Imagine that's programming I want to see.

01:50:41 ◼   ► He's like the gaffer.

01:50:43 ◼   ► Are the drawing APIs higher level like SpriteKit or something like that or is it more like

01:50:49 ◼   ► direct drawing to a screen buffer?

01:50:52 ◼   ► It's kind of comparable to QuickDraw.

01:50:56 ◼   ► So you get-- you're drawing primitives.

01:50:58 ◼   ► You can-- circles, lines, rectangles, polygons,

01:51:02 ◼   ► and those can be outlines or filled with a pattern.

01:51:06 ◼   ► And of course, you can put images onto the screen.

01:51:11 ◼   ► And we do have a built-in library

01:51:13 ◼   ► for managing sprites that just provides the basics.

01:51:18 ◼   ► And if you want something more complex than that, you can, of course, write your own.

01:51:21 ◼   ► And we support some things like tile maps built in and, yeah, fonts.

01:51:26 ◼   ► >> Fonts?

01:51:27 ◼   ► Oh, tell me about the fonts.

01:51:29 ◼   ► >> They're pretty basic.

01:51:31 ◼   ► Yeah, just imagine a very small image containing all of the characters from your font and then

01:51:38 ◼   ► like a little sidecar text file that explains here's the spacing of the letters and the image.

01:51:43 ◼   ► >> So, are they all bitmap fonts?

01:51:46 ◼   ► you're not doing like rendering of true type on the fly

01:51:48 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:51:49 ◼   ► - No, none of that.

01:51:50 ◼   ► - So it's a classic black and white display bitmap font.

01:51:54 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:51:55 ◼   ► - We do things like kerning pairs, which is nice.

01:51:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:51:59 ◼   ► That's a plus, yeah.

01:52:01 ◼   ► - All right, let me take one last break.

01:52:03 ◼   ► I thank our third and final sponsor and then we'll wrap up.

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01:53:59 ◼   ► support of this podcast. Anything that I, is there anything about it that you guys haven't

01:54:05 ◼   ► talked about that, that, that you know, like maybe I wouldn't think to ask.

01:54:10 ◼   ► boy that we can talk about yet? Maybe not. What do you think?

01:54:13 ◼   ► There's the season of gaming we haven't really touched on. Yeah,

01:54:17 ◼   ► there we go. That's concept. When did when did you come up on

01:54:19 ◼   ► that? That's a great and it truly a differentiator. I mean,

01:54:23 ◼   ► I've never heard of anything like that. So the basic idea for

01:54:26 ◼   ► anybody who's not paying attention, you buy your play

01:54:28 ◼   ► date for $149 I guess you get some kind of an account or

01:54:31 ◼   ► something, you know with and then every Monday for 12 weeks,

01:54:36 ◼   ► Get a new game. It just shows up and your your little LED

01:54:40 ◼   ► Light blinks to let you know that there's a happy little surprise there on the play date. I

01:54:44 ◼   ► Mean that came that came from the Game & Watch days. We were thinking about having the device transform into a new game every week

01:54:52 ◼   ► That's true. But how did we then take it to season of games? I feel like we were also subconsciously inspired by your

01:54:58 ◼   ► match cut movie club which

01:55:03 ◼   ► Neven and Greg have an occasional party movie showing where you go to the movie but you

01:55:10 ◼   ► have no idea what's going to be screened.

01:55:12 ◼   ► You can tell it better than I can.

01:55:13 ◼   ► They give you a couple hints, right?

01:55:15 ◼   ► Yeah, but that's the story.

01:55:17 ◼   ► It was really...

01:55:18 ◼   ► This didn't start as a season, per se.

01:55:20 ◼   ► It started as surprises.

01:55:21 ◼   ► How do we surprise people with this thing over and over again as they're using it?

01:55:26 ◼   ► And eventually we couldn't figure out how to describe it, but eventually we settled

01:55:30 ◼   ► on a TV season being the right metaphor.

01:55:33 ◼   ► And so that's how we came to that point.

01:55:36 ◼   ► And you're, you know, let's not get ahead of ourselves, right?

01:55:39 ◼   ► You still have to ship.

01:55:41 ◼   ► And that's a lot.

01:55:43 ◼   ► Yes.

01:55:44 ◼   ► Very true.

01:55:45 ◼   ► But you've hinted, you know, like what is the future?

01:55:47 ◼   ► Like let's just say, okay, it ships and it works and people are happy and the games are

01:55:54 ◼   ► actually delivered on Monday right on schedule.

01:55:58 ◼   ► You get to the end and you've got all 12 games.

01:56:01 ◼   ► I mean, number one, I know you guys were tinkering with the idea that every Monday the last game

01:56:05 ◼   ► would be replaced by the new game.

01:56:07 ◼   ► Absolutely, yeah, the device would completely become the new game and that was it.

01:56:12 ◼   ► People are staying up all night on Sundays.

01:56:14 ◼   ► Right, yeah, that would be a little intense.

01:56:16 ◼   ► But you backed away from that.

01:56:18 ◼   ► And if you buy it, if you get yours a month late, you'll already have the first four games

01:56:23 ◼   ► or something like that, right?

01:56:25 ◼   ► It's an option, I think.

01:56:27 ◼   ► We're still debating it, but it may be an option where you get to start your season

01:56:30 ◼   ► late or you can start it in progress.

01:56:37 ◼   ► What about after that though?

01:56:38 ◼   ► I mean obviously there's the potential for this to be an indie platform.

01:56:43 ◼   ► You're already talking.

01:56:44 ◼   ► I mean you said there's going to be an SDK and support and Coda so other people can start

01:56:49 ◼   ► making games.

01:56:50 ◼   ► What happens with those games?

01:56:52 ◼   ► Like will people just sideload them?

01:56:54 ◼   ► Are you going to make an app store?

01:56:57 ◼   ► This is definitely something we're figuring out right now.

01:57:00 ◼   ► We've talked about all sorts of options.

01:57:01 ◼   ► Side loading, we want to always be an option, but it's very possible that in the ultimate

01:57:07 ◼   ► of Cosmic Ironies, we might find ourselves making an app store.

01:57:11 ◼   ► Apps is so great.

01:57:13 ◼   ► There's a lot of questions about that.

01:57:17 ◼   ► So I think we're gonna really just take a look at how many people are interested, which

01:57:21 ◼   ► so far is an overwhelming number of people, and what's the best way for us to get the

01:57:26 ◼   ► the games on there, but that's later.

01:57:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I think we'd love nothing more than to see

01:57:30 ◼   ► like a thriving, you know, homebrew community of developers

01:57:34 ◼   ► who are able to put things out there

01:57:36 ◼   ► and, you know, get paid as well.

01:57:39 ◼   ► - One of the great ironies to me of the modern world

01:57:42 ◼   ► is that there's more adherence to, for lack of a better term,

01:57:46 ◼   ► a human interface guidelines, unlike the major platforms.

01:57:49 ◼   ► Like you were just talking about how on PlayStation

01:57:51 ◼   ► that there's buttons for, you know, okay and cancel,

01:57:54 ◼   ► They're different in Japan in the US and they won't let you ship if you don't obey

01:57:59 ◼   ► But there's all sorts of other conventions that that the console makers make game makers apply so that there's consistency

01:58:06 ◼   ► Through the game. So you guys have like the equivalent like the play date

01:58:09 ◼   ► Like a play date human interface guidelines dear God, we're gonna have to write that aren't we?

01:58:15 ◼   ► Yeah, we

01:58:17 ◼   ► Around as an idea of something we need to do, but we haven't quite gotten there yet. You've got time

01:58:22 ◼   ► I want to talk a little bit about the website. Number one, the domain name, Play.date. When did

01:58:35 ◼   ► you come up with the name Playdate and when did you figure out that there is a .date top-level

01:58:40 ◼   ► domain? The name was very early on. It was one of the first things that really stuck with the

01:58:46 ◼   ► project and playdate.com was of course unavailable. It's some sort of

01:58:54 ◼   ► intense blog and so gosh I don't know I must have just every now and then I

01:58:59 ◼   ► would load up Uniregistry which is who we use for a lot of our domain name

01:59:03 ◼   ► stuff and just type the word playdate in again and see what kind of possibilities

01:59:07 ◼   ► we had playdate.systems at one point and all sorts of ideas but play.date

01:59:13 ◼   ► was always there, but was pretty expensive. And then eventually, we just bit the bullet and decided

01:59:19 ◼   ► that that would be the best possible home for our website. And it is a wonderful website. You guys

01:59:26 ◼   ► are, I often criticize the modern web. And, and I've said, there's a part of me that wishes that

01:59:34 ◼   ► browsers had never even supported JavaScript, but that I wish it was still just a document viewer

01:59:40 ◼   ► for text and images and video and just put your multimedia

01:59:45 ◼   ► up there and have no interactive element to it

01:59:46 ◼   ► because it's all being abused, right?

01:59:48 ◼   ► It's so much of the JavaScript

01:59:50 ◼   ► that your individual devices are running

01:59:52 ◼   ► is not for the stuff you wanna see, it's all this ad tech.

01:59:57 ◼   ► But then I see something like the Playdate website

02:00:01 ◼   ► and I think this is why browser makers at W3C

02:00:06 ◼   ► spent so much time making something like this possible.

02:00:08 ◼   ► Like this, this 3d model is so great.

02:00:12 ◼   ► I'm playing with it right now.

02:00:14 ◼   ► It's so a while ago, actually it was for the transit five webpage when we were

02:00:20 ◼   ► thinking, gosh, what can we do?

02:00:21 ◼   ► That's interesting.

02:00:22 ◼   ► And I, it dawned on me that WebGL is just sorely underutilized and we have an icon

02:00:28 ◼   ► artist that knows how to do 3d and we, and you know, the transit truck icon is a 3d

02:00:33 ◼   ► model.

02:00:33 ◼   ► So it seemed like something we could take advantage of.

02:00:36 ◼   ► And so I think I literally googled like good WebGL people or whatever and found

02:00:42 ◼   ► these two guys in France that run a little consultant shop called Little Workshop and so they did the

02:00:50 ◼   ► rotating transmit truck which was super exciting for us because it's gonna be sharper and crisper than any

02:00:56 ◼   ► rendered movie is ever going to be plus we can do clever things like as you scroll the

02:01:02 ◼   ► the Transmit 5 webpage, we very gently shift the perspective

02:01:06 ◼   ► of the truck to match how far you scrolled,

02:01:09 ◼   ► which if we were rendering that, pre-rendering that,

02:01:11 ◼   ► would be enormous.

02:01:12 ◼   ► So that tradition just continued with this.

02:01:14 ◼   ► It just seemed like, man, if we're gonna have this device

02:01:16 ◼   ► on this page, we might as well make it a 3D model.

02:01:20 ◼   ► - It's so nice.

02:01:23 ◼   ► - Thank you.

02:01:24 ◼   ► - But it really gives you a sense of the device.

02:01:26 ◼   ► It's both, I'm sure it's a ton of work

02:01:29 ◼   ► and it makes my old MacBook Pro cry.

02:01:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

02:01:33 ◼   ► - Sorry.

02:01:34 ◼   ► - It's a lot more fun on iPad,

02:01:39 ◼   ► because it's more fun to use your actual fingers.

02:01:41 ◼   ► And then the other thing you guys have

02:01:42 ◼   ► is on the media page, you go to playdate/media.

02:01:46 ◼   ► If you scroll down on an iPhone or an iPad,

02:01:49 ◼   ► you've got links to ARKit models.

02:01:52 ◼   ► - That's correct.

02:01:53 ◼   ► At the very last second,

02:01:54 ◼   ► we realized we already have a 3D model,

02:01:57 ◼   ► so maybe we can do,

02:01:58 ◼   ► I think they technically call it ARKit Quick Look,

02:02:01 ◼   ► which is the ability to view a model

02:02:05 ◼   ► and see the model in AR in your own space

02:02:08 ◼   ► on an iPhone or iPad by just linking to the model itself.

02:02:13 ◼   ► It couldn't have been easier to do.

02:02:15 ◼   ► So that's a pretty cool thing that Apple made.

02:02:18 ◼   ► - Again, is it useful?

02:02:20 ◼   ► I don't know.

02:02:21 ◼   ► (laughing)

02:02:22 ◼   ► But I think it's a fun way to sort of get a sense

02:02:25 ◼   ► of the size of the thing.

02:02:27 ◼   ► I tweeted a picture of it next to my iPhone

02:02:29 ◼   ► And it looks super realistic.

02:02:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was impressive.

02:02:33 ◼   ► - Totally fooled some people.

02:02:35 ◼   ► I felt bad about.

02:02:39 ◼   ► - It's a good prank.

02:02:42 ◼   ► - But it's really great.

02:02:43 ◼   ► Do you guys ever have to go?

02:02:44 ◼   ► Do you go to Malaysia to actually oversee?

02:02:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, we do.

02:02:51 ◼   ► For various reasons to help set up all the QA

02:02:54 ◼   ► that needs to be done is one of the big things.

02:02:56 ◼   ► We have a lot of test code that we've written

02:02:58 ◼   ► and you kind of load the Play Date right into this little jig