215: ‘The “Press Real Hard” Era’ With Marco Arment
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You see all this crap about how Facebook is using people's two-factor numbers to basically
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spam them into more engagement?
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Yeah, it's awful.
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Why would you do that?
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And you're literally punishing people.
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You're punishing people for doing the right thing.
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If you think that the right thing is setting up two-factor, which I actually think is sort
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of debatable if one of the factors is your cell phone.
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Yeah, it seemed like a good idea at the time it was first started being used.
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what almost 10 years ago but I think that's as we've seen like security-wise
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that's actually not that great not as great as we think it is no you know
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butcher his name Mac Jay Cichlowski that the pinboard guy mm-hmm so he was in
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town over the summer I think and we met up and he sort of he's sort of like
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thrown himself in head over heels into the world of best practices for personal security.
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And he's doing it. He's an activist for a bunch of Democratic candidates for Congress
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for this coming year.
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Tim Cynova Oh, yeah, the Great Slate.
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Dave Asprey Yeah, the Great Slate. It's absolutely
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fantastic including the district that's my—the home district where Amy and I grew
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up, which is arguably, literally, in the entire country, the single most gerrymandered congressional
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district in the country. It's unbelievable. If you grew up in the area, like if you just
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look at the map, it truly has got these little tiny slivers that connect areas. But if you
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grew up in the area like I did and think about how disparate the areas are, it's absolutely
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preposterous. And anyway, there's a great candidate that the great slate is running
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for there. And I'm thinking about really putting some significant promotional effort
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into it on the during fireball this year to get her elected anyway he came by and and
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you know he's doing things with these Democratic candidates to teach them like hey what's the
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best way to protect your email so that the you know Russians can't get into your Gmail
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like they did you know two years ago and one of his big things and I believe it he totally
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convinced me is go through if you have a Google account you know you could use Gmail as your
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Google account. Not, you know, relatively safe. But if you use two factor, get it off
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yourself. Don't don't let Google know your cell phone. Just completely disconnect your
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cell phone from your Google account. Because as soon as you hook up your cell phone as
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this as a factor and two factor, you're at the mercy of your carrier and the carriers
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are awful, just awful. Somebody calls up and says, Hey, I'm Marco Armond. And I'm having
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trouble with my my cell phone. You know, all of a sudden, they've got like a SIM card with
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with your phone number on it.
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And then, boom, game over for two-factor
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if they also know your email.
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It's really terrible.
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It happens all the time.
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- Yeah, it's one of those things like,
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the foundation of that being secure was on the assumption
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that, well, nobody else can get my phone number
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except me, obviously, right?
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But I don't think people realize,
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no, that's actually fairly easy for people
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to clone your phone number and start receiving things
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that are supposed to be going to your phone number.
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- Right, and it's not quite as easy
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going in with the name, but I mean,
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you don't need much information to go into your local AT&T
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or Verizon or whatever, T-Mobile,
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and just have some $11 an hour clerk print up a SIM card.
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There you go.
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I mean, it happens, it's really crazy.
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So anyway, get your, think about that, anyway.
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And anyway, that's what Facebook has done,
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is they got people to sign up with Two Factor,
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And then the longer you go without signing in to Facebook,
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the more often they send you text messages asking you.
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And it's so stupidly passive aggressive.
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It's like, are you having trouble signing in?
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It's like, no, I haven't signed in.
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- Yeah, it's worded as though, like, obviously,
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if you haven't signed in recently,
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there must be something wrong with your account.
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It's not that you don't wanna sign into Facebook.
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I saw one guy who got hit by this and he tweeted that he's texting, you know, he's getting
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these text messages and he's trying like the, those SMS bot interfaces. So he's trying things
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like stop. I forget what else he tried. And then he went and checked and Facebook, I swear
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to God, posted his things that he texted back to the SMS bot. They posted him to his wall
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and Facebook.
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So it was also, I felt like, stop, opt out, unsubscribe?
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That's amazing.
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It all caps.
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It's interesting because, you know, I famously, or perhaps not famously, I've still never
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signed up for Facebook.
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I do have an Instagram account, though, so I don't know, you know, I don't know how,
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it's, I can't, I can't claim any sort of, you know, holiness in this regard.
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But I never signed up for Facebook. Certainly as the years go on, it's looking like a better
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and better decision. It, to me, is reminiscent of my decision to never put comments on Daring
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Fireball. There were some early years where it seemed like, "Hmm, maybe I'm missing out.
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I don't know." And then it crossed a certain threshold and it was like, "Dodged a bullet
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on that one."
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Yeah, you're playing the long game on Facebook. You're going to have 10 years of people saying,
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how can you not be on Facebook, but you know,
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it's starting to appear like a reasonable choice recently.
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- I mean, like Tiff, so you know,
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my wife Tiff deactivated her account on Facebook
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over a year ago, I think, and really hasn't missed anything.
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I have an account there, but I don't really ever use it
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for much of anything, and all I get is like,
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emails basically spamming me with like,
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"Somebody commented on the Overcast page.
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"You should really log in and read it
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and respond to increase your rate of whatever.
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And then I get emails from like strange members
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of my family, like look at their comments.
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I don't want to look at their comments.
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I'm not speaking to them.
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And it's like all I get is like this is like,
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either spam about engagement on my Overcast page
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or like stuff with people that like Facebook
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just doesn't get the hint that like I actually
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don't want to interact with some people.
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And it's just like, and you know,
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I read something earlier on Twitter.
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I forget who it was, I'm sorry, but it was like,
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it was somebody who was saying like,
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she's getting these spam text messages from Facebook
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and it's all about like her ex-boyfriend who like she,
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you know, it kind of hurts to hear about him
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and you know, it's like Facebook just doesn't,
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either they, you know, their algorithms don't get it,
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which is certainly likely,
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but also I think they just don't care.
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You know, they're shameless and they will spam the crap
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out of everybody relentlessly because they know that,
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you know, it works for X percent of people
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to get X more page clicks and more engagement
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and they need to keep their numbers up
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because they're apparently bleeding users.
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- Yeah, that's the thing is that it's the,
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I'm not gonna say that they're in trouble
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or that they're to bring out everybody's favorite
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classic Apple word, beleaguered.
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- They're making more money than ever,
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but that's really more that they're getting more efficient
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at getting more money per user,
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not that they're getting more users.
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Like, logins in the US are actually down for the first time,
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which if I were on Facebook,
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would probably keep me up at night,
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because I would be very concerned about that.
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- Isn't that actually also kind of what's happening to Apple?
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Like, you know, basically making more money from users
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rather than growing the user base itself?
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- That's very possible.
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I read an article today,
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'cause I tried trying to write less and less
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about the financial stuff, and we can get into it.
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I find it excruciatingly boring.
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- There was a great Walt Mossberg tweet
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I'll probably get to later in the show
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just about focusing on the financial stuff
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is the wrong way to look at it.
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If you're really trying to look at it from the,
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is Apple making good products?
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Which is really what I'm interested in.
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But I read a thing that, it was just some,
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somebody was like, "You should file this as claim chowder."
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And it was just some shitty Forbes columnist
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who's saying that Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway
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has upped his investment in Apple in the last year,
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and this guy was making the argument
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that that's a huge mistake,
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and that instead, if he wants to invest in a tech company,
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he should invest in Amazon.
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And I don't like to get into the investment type stuff,
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but I actually think that this guy maybe has a point
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because I kind of feel like Apple,
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if I were going to give investment advice,
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I think it's quite possible that Apple's growth is over,
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or at least slowed down significantly.
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And this is his argument from the last two years
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that Apple's only grown at like six or seven percent
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the last two years, which is fine growth
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for a giant company or the biggest company in the world,
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but it's not, you know, if you want,
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trying to be super aggressive with your investments,
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it's probably not, whereas Amazon, who knows?
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I don't know what the hell backs up their stock
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other than the fact that, you know,
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it has nothing to do with profits.
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It has just to do with their,
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the idea that whenever they get into something,
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they dominate.
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I think it's possible that Amazon stock could go up
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way more than Apple's in the next, say,
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two, three, four years, I don't know.
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But I don't think that's a ridiculous argument.
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But anyway, I think the argument that Apple's sort of
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reached peak Apple is possible, at least in terms of reach.
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- I mean, maybe not peak, but just like,
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it's like they've transitioned, I think,
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I mean, granted neither of us are financial analysts,
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or really even experts in this field,
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but it does seem like they have transitioned
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from a growth company to a stable, long-term,
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like a high-risk stock to a low-risk stock, basically,
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in the sense that I don't expect them,
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whatever their price is now, I don't know,
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100-something, I don't even follow.
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I don't expect it to be 200 next year.
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I wouldn't expect that kind of growth anymore.
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- And you're just never gonna--
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- They're so big.
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- You're just never gonna see the sort of
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quarter over quarter, year over year,
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every single, for a whole series of years
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after the iPhone came out, it was every single quarter
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was up 28% year over year, up 30% year over year,
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up 50% year over year.
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Just quarter after quarter after quarter,
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every single quarter of the year,
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year after year after year,
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were these insane consistent growth numbers
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because the iPhone was growing insanely.
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But you don't have to be a genius to realize
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that the iPhone is possibly never going to be replicated
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by any company in our lifetimes in terms of being a product
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that will be used by such an incredibly large percentage
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of the people who might reasonably buy one
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and sells for a relatively high price,
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what the average selling price now is up to 800 bucks,
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and gets replaced every two to three years by normal people.
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Like there's no other product in the world like that.
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- Yeah, I mean, especially now that the subsidy thing
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in the US has largely shifted and kind of gone away
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or at least changed, like the price of the phones
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is more visible to people.
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Well, I guess maybe you could argue it isn't
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'cause now everyone's just paying
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on these monthly installment plans.
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But it's remarkable that people find a way,
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whether it's subsidized or parceled up by months
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or whatever it is, that people are buying a brand new
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$800 plus phone every one to three years
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in pretty large quantities.
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That's remarkable.
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- Yeah, they just accept it.
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- Because people never bought computers at that rate.
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Even people like me who are like,
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I'll buy lots of things 'cause I like them
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and I like computers a lot,
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and I don't buy a new computer every year.
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- Now wait a second.
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- Well, if you exclude laptops.
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- That's only because Apple doesn't come out with them
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frequently enough.
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You buy a new Pro desktop as frequently as Apple
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comes out with them.
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- No, that's not true.
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I had my 2014 iMac, the same one that you, I think,
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are still using.
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- I bought that in 2014, and there were three other updates
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to it that I didn't buy before the iMac Pro came out.
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- I mean, they were minor updates, really, but.
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- Yeah, none of them have even vaguely tempted me
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to be truthful.
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- Well, like changing a desktop is a pain in the ass.
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Like, I don't wanna have to change that very often.
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- Oh, I hate it.
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- It's a big deal.
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And again, and you know, when the gains to be had
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are fairly incremental, then it's kind of dumb
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to go through the expense and logistical crap
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of replacing your desktop every year
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when you're getting, what, a 5% increase
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in performance maybe?
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Like, that's not enough to make that worth it.
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- Yeah, and it's also, I mean, this has been a recurring
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theme on the show ever since I started it with old Dan
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back in the day.
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I mean, I just hate setting up a new Mac.
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- Yeah, I just hate setting up a new Mac, I really do.
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I liked, so I just, whether it's a desktop or a laptop,
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I just buy the best one I can afford, which, you know,
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now that I'm older is actually like the best one they make.
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So like the iMac, 5K iMac I bought in, what was that,
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- 2014 or 2015?
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- Yep, 2014.
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- I just bought the maximum everything.
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I just got the fastest i7 chip.
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I put, what is it, 32 gigs of RAM?
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It's gotta be 32. - 32 gigs of RAM,
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one terabyte SSD.
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- One terabyte SSD. - And very young,
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something 290, I think, or 90, something like that.
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- I don't know if I upgraded the video.
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I'd have to double check on that.
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- It was a small additional expense,
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and I think I did it just because I didn't,
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like I'd upgraded everything else, same as you,
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and I'm like, I don't wanna regret this later,
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and so I did it.
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Although I didn't, on the iMac Pro,
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now I didn't get the fancy GPU for that,
00:14:12
◼
►
because the number, it was like $600 more,
00:14:16
◼
►
and I don't do anything with the GPU, really,
00:14:19
◼
►
so I got the base GPU.
00:14:20
◼
►
- So back to the iPhone,
00:14:25
◼
►
there's just never gonna be anything like that again.
00:14:28
◼
►
Or if there is, whatever it is is unforeseen at this point.
00:14:33
◼
►
There's nothing on the market that's going to be like that.
00:14:36
◼
►
And so I just, like the insane growth for Apple is over.
00:14:41
◼
►
The fact that they're sustaining it,
00:14:42
◼
►
the fact that like the numbers
00:14:43
◼
►
that I just linked to a thing today,
00:14:46
◼
►
that for the first time ever, Apple, some group,
00:14:49
◼
►
who knows if it's accurate or not,
00:14:50
◼
►
but some groups at Apple took 51% of the revenue
00:14:54
◼
►
in the global smartphone market,
00:14:57
◼
►
which is insane for a product that sells for $800
00:15:01
◼
►
on average, and all competing devices sell
00:15:04
◼
►
for an average of 300, and Apple has 51% of the revenue.
00:15:09
◼
►
- I mean, look, Apple is really good
00:15:11
◼
►
at making lots of money.
00:15:13
◼
►
Like, they are really good at that.
00:15:15
◼
►
You know, we can get into lots of debates,
00:15:17
◼
►
and we probably will, about things like, you know,
00:15:19
◼
►
competitiveness and market share in certain areas,
00:15:21
◼
►
but like, they're really good at making money
00:15:23
◼
►
with whatever market share they have in something.
00:15:26
◼
►
That's very true.
00:15:28
◼
►
Same thing with the watch, really.
00:15:31
◼
►
- Yeah. - Which is funny,
00:15:32
◼
►
'cause the watch are coming at it a different way,
00:15:34
◼
►
where there was a story this week
00:15:35
◼
►
that they sold more watches
00:15:37
◼
►
than the entire Swiss watch industry combined,
00:15:40
◼
►
I think last quarter, not last year.
00:15:43
◼
►
But holiday quarter's a big one for watches,
00:15:45
◼
►
'cause people get 'em as gifts.
00:15:47
◼
►
And I think that they said that the average Swiss watch
00:15:51
◼
►
sells for something like $780,
00:15:54
◼
►
and the average selling price of an Apple watch,
00:15:57
◼
►
I think both by common sense and by Horace Dedue's estimates, which have some actual
00:16:04
◼
►
factual analysis of Apple's financials behind them, pegs at around like $330. And by common
00:16:12
◼
►
sense, I mean a $330 average selling price for Apple Watch means the average Apple Watch
00:16:17
◼
►
is the base model made out of aluminum.
00:16:19
◼
►
Yeah, because you figure like they probably sell more of the 42 size than 38 size.
00:16:25
◼
►
And what does that cost? 300 for the 42 base model?
00:16:27
◼
►
- Something like that, yeah.
00:16:28
◼
►
And you know-- - Yeah, so that makes sense.
00:16:30
◼
►
- And you know, whether or not you get it
00:16:31
◼
►
with the cellular or whatever.
00:16:33
◼
►
- Yeah, yeah.
00:16:34
◼
►
- But it's all centered around the base models
00:16:36
◼
►
and the total number of people buying
00:16:38
◼
►
the stainless steel ones, let alone the edition,
00:16:41
◼
►
are so few that it hardly even moves,
00:16:44
◼
►
hardly even nudges the average selling price.
00:16:46
◼
►
And anecdotally, from what I see on people's wrists,
00:16:49
◼
►
that's exactly it.
00:16:50
◼
►
And it's, you know, makes common sense.
00:16:52
◼
►
For most people, a $300 watch is a really expensive watch.
00:16:56
◼
►
- Oh yeah, especially one that you basically
00:16:58
◼
►
have to replace every two years or so,
00:17:00
◼
►
because its battery becomes useless.
00:17:01
◼
►
- Right, I mean--
00:17:02
◼
►
- Is there gonna be a battery gate for the watch?
00:17:07
◼
►
- I hope not.
00:17:08
◼
►
I don't wanna have to talk about that for six months.
00:17:10
◼
►
- Anecdotally, it does seem like Series Zero watches,
00:17:14
◼
►
like the original Apple Watch,
00:17:16
◼
►
they're getting worse battery life.
00:17:18
◼
►
Like, we got Jonas one when it was brand new,
00:17:20
◼
►
and he's worn it, he's worn it pretty much every day,
00:17:25
◼
►
or certainly like every school day,
00:17:27
◼
►
ever since they came out,
00:17:28
◼
►
and his battery life has gotten worse recently.
00:17:31
◼
►
And it makes sense.
00:17:33
◼
►
It's what, two and a half years of charge cycles,
00:17:36
◼
►
of nightly charge cycles in,
00:17:38
◼
►
and I think the battery's worn out.
00:17:40
◼
►
- Yeah, yeah, I think as a developer,
00:17:45
◼
►
it's really hard to support the first gen Apple Watch,
00:17:48
◼
►
and I think a big thing holding back
00:17:51
◼
►
what watchOS can offer for developers,
00:17:54
◼
►
like API-wise and backgrounding-wise,
00:17:56
◼
►
things like my background audio requests.
00:17:59
◼
►
I think a lot of that is being held back
00:18:01
◼
►
by the first generation watch hardware,
00:18:03
◼
►
but it's kind of, from that angle,
00:18:05
◼
►
it's not so nice if you have one,
00:18:07
◼
►
but it's kind of nice from that angle
00:18:08
◼
►
that these watches are just really becoming
00:18:12
◼
►
not very useful anymore en masse this year,
00:18:16
◼
►
because the batteries are now so old in them
00:18:18
◼
►
that they're not holding a charge
00:18:20
◼
►
throughout the whole day anymore,
00:18:21
◼
►
for most people who have them.
00:18:23
◼
►
- Yeah, I think that's true.
00:18:25
◼
►
I don't know if it's gonna be a scandal or not.
00:18:27
◼
►
I don't know, it's hard to predict.
00:18:30
◼
►
- Probably not.
00:18:31
◼
►
- I do feel like-- - The first generation
00:18:32
◼
►
watch was so slow, like can you even tell
00:18:34
◼
►
if it's being throttled?
00:18:35
◼
►
- Yeah, I don't know, I don't know about that.
00:18:38
◼
►
It felt like maybe they just turned on throttling
00:18:42
◼
►
right out of the factory.
00:18:46
◼
►
It's funny, I was thinking about that recently,
00:18:50
◼
►
and I was thinking about it in, we can get to it,
00:18:54
◼
►
in light of the balance between shipping stuff
00:18:59
◼
►
on a schedule, shipping stuff with a certain number
00:19:05
◼
►
of features, and shipping stuff with a certain quality level
00:19:08
◼
►
that those three things, it's not, you pick one,
00:19:11
◼
►
you wanna balance all three.
00:19:14
◼
►
And I don't know, I kind of, Apple Watch did ship late,
00:19:19
◼
►
I think a little bit later than even Apple hoped.
00:19:21
◼
►
I mean, there were reports that they were,
00:19:23
◼
►
that the year that they announced it in September
00:19:26
◼
►
and even said then it'll ship next year.
00:19:29
◼
►
And it didn't ship the next year until like May.
00:19:33
◼
►
And even then it was like six weeks back ordered
00:19:36
◼
►
for most people.
00:19:37
◼
►
- Yeah, it was like immediately back ordered
00:19:39
◼
►
for most configurations.
00:19:41
◼
►
- For up until, like I think it officially launched
00:19:44
◼
►
in April, but you couldn't really get
00:19:46
◼
►
a lot of the configurations until like June or July.
00:19:48
◼
►
- Right, and it was a product that by several accounts,
00:19:53
◼
►
Apple had been hoping until pretty late in the game
00:19:58
◼
►
that they might get out for the holidays the year before.
00:20:02
◼
►
And it came out as late as it did
00:20:03
◼
►
and really was sort of a subpar,
00:20:06
◼
►
both software and hardware thing.
00:20:10
◼
►
I honestly, in hindsight, I'm, in hindsight,
00:20:14
◼
►
I've been wondering, should they have waited another year?
00:20:18
◼
►
should like what we now call the Series 1 watch
00:20:21
◼
►
have been the original Apple Watch.
00:20:23
◼
►
I kind of see why they did it,
00:20:26
◼
►
and the other factor you have to recall at the time
00:20:29
◼
►
is they were facing a daily battery of,
00:20:33
◼
►
Apple hasn't released anything new
00:20:34
◼
►
since Steve Jobs died, reports.
00:20:36
◼
►
- Oh yeah, 'cause that was not that long after the
00:20:41
◼
►
can't innovate anymore my ass thing.
00:20:43
◼
►
That was like, what, about a year later?
00:20:45
◼
►
And you know, 'cause that really was,
00:20:47
◼
►
that was the narrative back then was Apple can't innovate anymore, Samsung was doing
00:20:50
◼
►
all the innovation and it turned out that was mostly about big phones. It turned out
00:20:55
◼
►
that Apple wasn't making big enough phones and then they started making big enough phones
00:20:58
◼
►
and everyone stopped talking about that. So that was kind of BS, it turns out. But the
00:21:04
◼
►
Apple Watch Series 1, or the first generation Apple Watch had so many problems with just
00:21:10
◼
►
like focus. You know, like the software was a disaster, it was a total mess. The third
00:21:16
◼
►
party app implementation was horrible with like the watch kit where like the
00:21:21
◼
►
everything was running on the phone and just kind of sent like basically
00:21:24
◼
►
drawing commands to the watch that would end it was so slow almost nothing worked
00:21:29
◼
►
everything would time out or fail like it was it was really rough and then all
00:21:34
◼
►
of the you know marketing focus on things like they wanted you to like be
00:21:38
◼
►
browsing like news feeds on your watch and and all the stuff about like that
00:21:42
◼
►
like the digital touch sending people your heartbeat and doodling little
00:21:45
◼
►
pictures and poking your friends through their wrists.
00:21:48
◼
►
Like there was so much weird stuff
00:21:50
◼
►
in that first watch release that fortunately
00:21:52
◼
►
they've mostly moved past or mostly fixed.
00:21:55
◼
►
There's still some of that weirdness in the watch.
00:21:57
◼
►
Like, you know, like I think the honeycomb screen
00:21:59
◼
►
is still terrible and there's like digital,
00:22:02
◼
►
at least digital touch stuff,
00:22:03
◼
►
they like buried pretty well now.
00:22:05
◼
►
You don't usually find it.
00:22:06
◼
►
But yeah, there's still so much about watchOS
00:22:11
◼
►
that seems like it was made on a different planet
00:22:14
◼
►
than Apple's other products?
00:22:15
◼
►
- I definitely think that they should have, in hindsight,
00:22:18
◼
►
maybe they should have released it
00:22:19
◼
►
when they did as a product,
00:22:21
◼
►
and maybe it was useful enough,
00:22:23
◼
►
and maybe by releasing it when they did
00:22:26
◼
►
and getting feedback from real people
00:22:29
◼
►
that the subsequent watchOS 2, 3, and 4
00:22:32
◼
►
were better than they would have been
00:22:34
◼
►
if they'd waited a year.
00:22:35
◼
►
They would have been a year behind
00:22:36
◼
►
on sort of zeroing in on, okay,
00:22:39
◼
►
notifications and fitness tracking, that's it.
00:22:43
◼
►
That's what people like and use about this product.
00:22:46
◼
►
So I get being wrong about things like digital touch,
00:22:51
◼
►
you know, was that a thing or not?
00:22:53
◼
►
But the one thing that they clearly should have known
00:22:56
◼
►
before they released it was that the original SDK
00:22:58
◼
►
was garbage.
00:22:59
◼
►
This is, that this is, this is, yeah.
00:23:02
◼
►
Just in, it's the only time I can ever recall.
00:23:06
◼
►
And now it's, you know, it's been a long time.
00:23:10
◼
►
I don't know, however long.
00:23:12
◼
►
The first review product I ever got from Apple
00:23:15
◼
►
was the Verizon iPhone 4, so I think that was 2010.
00:23:19
◼
►
So since 2010, I've been getting products to review,
00:23:23
◼
►
and every time I've gotten--
00:23:25
◼
►
- It was early 2011, I think.
00:23:26
◼
►
- Maybe it was 2011, maybe it was like--
00:23:28
◼
►
- The 4S was fall of 2011, right before Steve died.
00:23:31
◼
►
So I believe that came out like January or something.
00:23:33
◼
►
- All right, you're right then, so 2011,
00:23:34
◼
►
so seven years of me getting products from Apple to review.
00:23:42
◼
►
And every time I've gotten a product to review from Apple,
00:23:47
◼
►
and everybody I know who gets products to review from Apple,
00:23:52
◼
►
when you get it, they don't just ship it to you.
00:23:55
◼
►
Every once in a while, there's an exception,
00:23:57
◼
►
like with the MacBook Pros, the new MacBook Pros.
00:24:01
◼
►
I did have a briefing, but they didn't have--
00:24:05
◼
►
- Their new MacBook Pros?
00:24:06
◼
►
- No, the last time when they came out
00:24:08
◼
►
with the Touch Bar ones.
00:24:10
◼
►
Every time I've gotten a review product,
00:24:11
◼
►
I've had a product briefing with somebody
00:24:13
◼
►
from product marketing and somebody from Apple PR,
00:24:16
◼
►
either by myself or in a very small group,
00:24:18
◼
►
like say just me and Dalrymple together.
00:24:21
◼
►
And they show you what they wanna show you
00:24:25
◼
►
and they take your questions, which is great.
00:24:28
◼
►
But they never just give you the product
00:24:32
◼
►
in like a PDF pamphlet or something like that.
00:24:35
◼
►
They wanna tell you about it.
00:24:36
◼
►
And like the exception I was gonna say
00:24:39
◼
►
with the MacBook Pros is I had a product briefing,
00:24:41
◼
►
They didn't give me like all of them and then because they weren't ready yet
00:24:44
◼
►
And so they did ship me like the 15 inch like a week later or something something like that
00:24:49
◼
►
So it's not like they're gonna make you if they're gonna give you two or three MacBook pros to review
00:24:54
◼
►
That's right
00:24:54
◼
►
Like everyone only got the MacBook escape to review right first time and then like the touch bar 15 came later, right?
00:25:01
◼
►
So yeah, exactly
00:25:02
◼
►
So the escape and and there was a briefing where we could play with the touch bar
00:25:06
◼
►
But they didn't have them for us to take with us and so they shipped them to us a week later
00:25:11
◼
►
But there was a briefing where we had the touch bar thing in front of us and could ask questions about it
00:25:15
◼
►
So it's I would call that like the podcast equivalent of a footnote
00:25:20
◼
►
It's a minor exception. Anyway, the only product I can ever
00:25:24
◼
►
Remember where the briefing was mostly
00:25:28
◼
►
Apologizing for problems with the product was the original Apple watch
00:25:32
◼
►
It was like this is gonna be slow like even in the product briefing with a prepared Apple watch and their prepared demo
00:25:39
◼
►
There were things, aspects of it that they were like,
00:25:42
◼
►
this is gonna be slow, we're working on it.
00:25:45
◼
►
And it's just so unusual.
00:25:47
◼
►
- Like in so many ways it was kind of the opposite
00:25:50
◼
►
of the first generation iPhone.
00:25:51
◼
►
Where like the first generation iPhone,
00:25:53
◼
►
it was similarly to the watch,
00:25:55
◼
►
it had like extreme technical constraints
00:25:57
◼
►
to try to get an acceptable amount of processing power
00:26:00
◼
►
and battery life into something that size,
00:26:01
◼
►
running this kind of advanced OS.
00:26:04
◼
►
But with the original iPhone,
00:26:05
◼
►
they chose to basically have it do less,
00:26:08
◼
►
but have the things it does be executed very well.
00:26:12
◼
►
Whereas the first generation watch,
00:26:14
◼
►
and to this day I think still kind of the entire watch,
00:26:17
◼
►
it's not as bad now, but the first generation watch
00:26:20
◼
►
had the kind of the opposite approach of like,
00:26:22
◼
►
we're gonna have this do a whole bunch of crap
00:26:24
◼
►
even though we don't actually think it can do
00:26:26
◼
►
a lot of it very well because we wanna
00:26:29
◼
►
kinda see what sticks.
00:26:30
◼
►
And that was, it's a fundamentally different approach
00:26:32
◼
►
and you know, it's easy for us to argue in hindsight,
00:26:34
◼
►
like well, turns out it's only used for notifications
00:26:38
◼
►
fitness or whatever, you know, whatever the use case is,
00:26:43
◼
►
it's easy for us to look back on it now and say,
00:26:45
◼
►
launching that first SDK was almost certainly a mistake.
00:26:48
◼
►
Like, it should have launched without third-party apps
00:26:52
◼
►
because it was clearly not able to handle third-party apps
00:26:55
◼
►
yet in both hardware or software.
00:26:58
◼
►
So it should have launched that.
00:27:01
◼
►
But it's hard, like thinking back,
00:27:01
◼
►
like when you're actually in the process of making these
00:27:04
◼
►
products, it's really hard to make the right call on that
00:27:06
◼
►
that kind of thing every time.
00:27:07
◼
►
Like, do you support third-party apps or not?
00:27:08
◼
►
And I think at some point during some interview,
00:27:11
◼
►
I think somebody asked Schiller about that.
00:27:13
◼
►
It might have been on your show at WBC.
00:27:15
◼
►
I can't remember whether it was that or not,
00:27:17
◼
►
but it seemed kind of like Schiller,
00:27:20
◼
►
in the most verbose way that he ever will,
00:27:26
◼
►
said something along the lines of,
00:27:28
◼
►
it was a hard decision and maybe we picked wrong
00:27:30
◼
►
on whether to ship with support for third-party apps.
00:27:34
◼
►
- Yeah, I don't remember if it was on my show or not,
00:27:35
◼
►
I have terrible podcast amnesia.
00:27:37
◼
►
But that sort of feels true, and in hindsight,
00:27:39
◼
►
that's sort of how I feel.
00:27:41
◼
►
And they could have gotten away with
00:27:43
◼
►
the third party interaction with the watch,
00:27:45
◼
►
could have been, on that first version of the watch,
00:27:48
◼
►
could have been entirely through the mirroring
00:27:50
◼
►
of notifications from your phone.
00:27:53
◼
►
- Oh yeah, and in fact, I think a lot of apps
00:27:55
◼
►
are actually doing that now.
00:27:56
◼
►
A lot of apps are realizing now that
00:27:58
◼
►
actually just using rich notification functionality
00:28:01
◼
►
from the phone provides a better overall watch experience
00:28:04
◼
►
than making a watch app.
00:28:05
◼
►
- Yep, it's the only thing I ever use, honestly,
00:28:07
◼
►
other than playback controls for my AirPods, really.
00:28:10
◼
►
And it would've been fine, I think, in the first year.
00:28:17
◼
►
Anyway, that's sort of a sidetrack.
00:28:18
◼
►
While you're here, it's so funny, too,
00:28:22
◼
►
'cause I have other people on the show
00:28:24
◼
►
who have their own podcasts,
00:28:25
◼
►
and I listen to them on their shows.
00:28:27
◼
►
But you're the only one, possibly because ATP,
00:28:30
◼
►
and I'm not just here to butter your toast,
00:28:32
◼
►
but it's the only show I can think of
00:28:34
◼
►
where I try to listen to every episode.
00:28:37
◼
►
So I listen to a lot of it.
00:28:40
◼
►
I keep thinking tonight that you sound
00:28:41
◼
►
like you're talking real slow.
00:28:45
◼
►
- You sound the same way to me.
00:28:47
◼
►
- I just keep thinking, God, why is he so slow?
00:28:51
◼
►
Is he tired?
00:28:53
◼
►
And then I realize it's, you know, we don't have.
00:28:55
◼
►
Wait, smart speed is where it takes all the gaps
00:29:00
◼
►
in my sentences.
00:29:02
◼
►
What's the other feature?
00:29:02
◼
►
Just speed up.
00:29:03
◼
►
Is there a name for that?
00:29:04
◼
►
- Well, there's, yeah, there's variable playback speed.
00:29:07
◼
►
Every podcast app offers that.
00:29:09
◼
►
Yeah, so that's just literally speeding up all the audio
00:29:11
◼
►
by a certain rate, and smart speed is what shortens
00:29:13
◼
►
the silence is more than the surrounding audio.
00:29:15
◼
►
- You know what, that's one reason why I don't mind
00:29:18
◼
►
at the moment that I can't just tell HomePod
00:29:23
◼
►
to play something from Overcast.
00:29:26
◼
►
Like, I wrote about it in my HomePod review,
00:29:29
◼
►
but I tried out the built-in play a podcast thing.
00:29:34
◼
►
You just tell it an episode of a podcast
00:29:36
◼
►
and it gets it from iTunes library and it works pretty well.
00:29:39
◼
►
And there's too many podcasts that have ambiguous names,
00:29:42
◼
►
including mine, unfortunately.
00:29:43
◼
►
But although it kind of worked for my show, I don't know.
00:29:48
◼
►
Some people said that it say that it doesn't.
00:29:50
◼
►
Some people, speaking of old Dan,
00:29:51
◼
►
some people say that when they try to get my show to play,
00:29:53
◼
►
it plays like an old episode with me and Dan Benjamin.
00:29:57
◼
►
I tried it with my show and it played the newest episode with Moltz or whoever it was.
00:30:03
◼
►
But then other times it just plays like some other show that's called a talk show or something.
00:30:07
◼
►
Anyway, it works. But because I use Overcast to follow the podcasts I listen to, I don't
00:30:14
◼
►
want to listen to anything outside it and then not have it be marked as read or for
00:30:18
◼
►
like long shows like ATP to keep my playback position for when I return. So I just use
00:30:24
◼
►
you know, and the nice thing about podcasts is that unlike a song, which is only three minutes,
00:30:31
◼
►
three, four minutes, and if you're doing it by airplay, you've only got three minutes before the
00:30:38
◼
►
next thing is up, you know, whereas a podcast tell it to play an hour or two hour podcast.
00:30:43
◼
►
I don't care if you know, because I can still talk to the HomePad and tell it to
00:30:47
◼
►
pause or play or something like that. And it'll keep going. But doing it with airplay through
00:30:52
◼
►
through overcast, I still like having the variable speed too. It's ruined me, really.
00:31:00
◼
►
I can't listen to any kind of audio show, like radio thing, and not feel like they're
00:31:06
◼
►
talking too slow. Even the morning news feature where you come down and you're making coffee
00:31:11
◼
►
and you're like, "Hey, HomePod, tell me the news," and it's like, "Why do these people
00:31:16
◼
►
on NPR talk so slow?"
00:31:19
◼
►
- What's really hard for me is watching YouTube videos
00:31:22
◼
►
because obviously there's no audio manipulation
00:31:24
◼
►
going on there.
00:31:25
◼
►
Although why they don't add a dynamics compressor
00:31:28
◼
►
to make everyone's volume high, I don't know.
00:31:31
◼
►
Why is that not an option in either production or playback?
00:31:34
◼
►
I have no idea.
00:31:35
◼
►
'Cause YouTube volume levels are all over the place.
00:31:38
◼
►
So that's a huge problem that they should solve.
00:31:41
◼
►
But yeah, it's really hard for me to watch YouTube videos
00:31:43
◼
►
because they just move so much more slowly
00:31:46
◼
►
than what I'm accustomed to hearing,
00:31:48
◼
►
which is podcasts with smart speed at like 1.25x.
00:31:52
◼
►
So it isn't a huge difference,
00:31:55
◼
►
but it's noticeable enough that it just,
00:31:57
◼
►
every YouTube video to me seems really slow paced.
00:32:01
◼
►
It also doesn't help that nobody seems to edit.
00:32:07
◼
►
- I don't know, we can get into YouTube later
00:32:10
◼
►
when we talk about their Apple TV app.
00:32:12
◼
►
But anyway, I listen to your show all the time.
00:32:14
◼
►
- I am a little curious though,
00:32:15
◼
►
Like with the HomePod and podcasting, like, so you know, I would love so much, and I talk
00:32:20
◼
►
about this everywhere, so I'm not gonna dwell on it too long, but I would love so much for
00:32:23
◼
►
there to be an audio Siri intent, which would also enable things like Spotify, just to be
00:32:29
◼
►
able to tell, you know, "Hey, Dingus, play, you know, play the latest episode of the talk
00:32:34
◼
►
show in Overcast."
00:32:35
◼
►
You know, the same way you can tell Siri to add things to your to-do list in other apps,
00:32:42
◼
►
in things, in OmniFocus.
00:32:43
◼
►
You can use other app names for certain intents,
00:32:46
◼
►
and they work pretty well.
00:32:48
◼
►
So I would love to have that kind of thing with Siri,
00:32:52
◼
►
just to have an audio intent.
00:32:53
◼
►
The main challenge to this IC is, I guess, twofold.
00:32:58
◼
►
One is you have to build some kind of indexing interface
00:33:03
◼
►
so that the audio app can provide Siri
00:33:07
◼
►
with a list of what content is available in it.
00:33:11
◼
►
And for something like Overcast, that is fairly easy,
00:33:14
◼
►
because if you limit it to only things
00:33:17
◼
►
that you already subscribe to in the app,
00:33:19
◼
►
that might only be between two and 30 entries
00:33:22
◼
►
for most people.
00:33:24
◼
►
But for something like Spotify, it's like,
00:33:26
◼
►
well, are you gonna ask Spotify
00:33:28
◼
►
for all the music that they have?
00:33:30
◼
►
Like, that's a bit of a challenge to implement that,
00:33:33
◼
►
and maybe they don't wanna tell you
00:33:34
◼
►
all the music that they have,
00:33:35
◼
►
so there's challenges there.
00:33:37
◼
►
So that's why I think they probably haven't done
00:33:39
◼
►
something like this.
00:33:40
◼
►
But another thing is, and this is kind of a bigger problem
00:33:45
◼
►
I think with the HomePod, is that Siri is still very
00:33:48
◼
►
device specific with what you're asking it
00:33:52
◼
►
when it comes to those APIs.
00:33:55
◼
►
The HomePod has a built-in Apple Music client,
00:33:57
◼
►
so it can directly query Apple Music with no phone nearby,
00:34:00
◼
►
and it can get songs and things from Apple Music
00:34:04
◼
►
and from the podcast directory.
00:34:07
◼
►
But if they built something, if they built the Siri audio intent
00:34:09
◼
►
that would allow Overcast and Spotify and things like that,
00:34:12
◼
►
if they built it the way that these things are built so far,
00:34:15
◼
►
they're only running on the phone.
00:34:17
◼
►
And so that phone would have to be nearby
00:34:20
◼
►
for it to say, hey phone, play this thing,
00:34:22
◼
►
and the phone would have to look at its own
00:34:24
◼
►
locally stored index of what's available
00:34:27
◼
►
and then tell the HomePod, okay, play this thing.
00:34:30
◼
►
And doing it that way would provide something like,
00:34:32
◼
►
well, maybe would provide something like Smart Speed.
00:34:35
◼
►
Because if the app is just running on the phone
00:34:38
◼
►
and the Siri command just tells it what to play,
00:34:43
◼
►
and preconfigures the AirPlay output
00:34:46
◼
►
to say send to the HomePod, that's great.
00:34:48
◼
►
But a much more powerful way to do this
00:34:50
◼
►
is the way that I think all of the other assistants work,
00:34:52
◼
►
and the way Sonos works,
00:34:55
◼
►
which is, and Google's Chromecast protocol,
00:34:57
◼
►
or casting protocol,
00:35:01
◼
►
is like if you have some kind of scalar integration
00:35:02
◼
►
with the voice assistant,
00:35:07
◼
►
you tell it, play this thing in Overcast,
00:35:06
◼
►
and it queries overcast's web service.
00:35:09
◼
►
And doesn't involve any phones or iPads at all.
00:35:11
◼
►
It queries the web service and the web service tells it,
00:35:14
◼
►
here's a URL, start playing this URL.
00:35:18
◼
►
And it fetches that and plays it
00:35:19
◼
►
without the involvement of phones.
00:35:21
◼
►
That is a much more versatile and resilient way
00:35:25
◼
►
to do things, but that's not how Siri Kit
00:35:29
◼
►
works right now at all.
00:35:30
◼
►
And when you're just talking about Siri on the phones,
00:35:34
◼
►
the iPad on the watch, that's kind of okay, although it does limit the watch over LTE,
00:35:38
◼
►
but that's otherwise that's kind of okay. But now that you have the HomePod, it kind
00:35:43
◼
►
of raises the question like, is that the right design for this? And, and, you know, would
00:35:48
◼
►
they be better off doing something that's more web service based? But honestly, I don't
00:35:54
◼
►
think I see Apple doing that or being good at that.
00:35:57
◼
►
It just seems outside their DNA. It's like they're so app centric, you know, like, I
00:36:02
◼
►
I don't think that the reason that this thing comes out of the box not being able to support
00:36:06
◼
►
Spotify, I really don't think it's pure competitive spite.
00:36:10
◼
►
You know, like, screw Spotify, we want everybody to sign up for Apple Music, so we're only going
00:36:15
◼
►
to support Apple Music.
00:36:16
◼
►
I think it's way more complex than that.
00:36:18
◼
►
I think that it's entirely possible that they want, like what you said, an audio intent for
00:36:24
◼
►
SiriKit that would let Overcast hook up to it and would let somebody like Spotify hook
00:36:31
◼
►
up to it if they wanted to, through the phone app and only work when the phone is at home
00:36:38
◼
►
on the network. I don't see them, but like most of these other devices, and I'm a bit
00:36:46
◼
►
of a rube when it comes to Spotify, but I've learned since Ombod came out, you know, that
00:36:52
◼
►
what's it called Spotify Connect or something is the name of their cast like service.
00:36:56
◼
►
Yeah, that sounds awesome.
00:36:57
◼
►
- Right, but it's like you said,
00:36:58
◼
►
it's driven by the truth is,
00:37:02
◼
►
as Steve Jobs said, the truth is in the cloud.
00:37:05
◼
►
And so you can give the direction from your phone
00:37:08
◼
►
and the direction goes from the Spotify phone app
00:37:12
◼
►
to Spotify server.
00:37:14
◼
►
And the direction is play whatever playlist
00:37:17
◼
►
and play it on my kitchen speaker.
00:37:20
◼
►
And the server says, okay,
00:37:22
◼
►
and then pings your kitchen speaker,
00:37:24
◼
►
which is already signed into your account
00:37:25
◼
►
and says, yeah, like you said, here, play this URL.
00:37:28
◼
►
And then it plays.
00:37:29
◼
►
And so it's going from whatever device
00:37:31
◼
►
you issued the directive on to Spotify in the cloud,
00:37:35
◼
►
from Spotify in the cloud to whatever device that is,
00:37:37
◼
►
which might be the same device, you know,
00:37:39
◼
►
could just come right back, but then it plays right there.
00:37:41
◼
►
- And then from that point forward,
00:37:43
◼
►
once the playback has started,
00:37:44
◼
►
the source device is not involved.
00:37:47
◼
►
- Right, but I don't see Apple,
00:37:49
◼
►
I don't blame Apple at all for not supporting Spotify's
00:37:54
◼
►
own proprietary connection thing.
00:37:59
◼
►
It's not just as much, it's not simple,
00:38:03
◼
►
we're not gonna let any third party audio play at all.
00:38:06
◼
►
So I could see them adding support for this
00:38:11
◼
►
and I don't know if Spotify would do it though
00:38:12
◼
►
if it's not Spotify Connect, who knows?
00:38:14
◼
►
- Ultimately, I don't know what Apple's strategy here is
00:38:20
◼
►
but I think they could sell a lot more of these
00:38:24
◼
►
probably high profit $350 speakers
00:38:27
◼
►
and presumably there's probably gonna be
00:38:29
◼
►
more than one HomePod model in the future
00:38:31
◼
►
so they could probably sell many different items
00:38:33
◼
►
in the family of HomePods.
00:38:35
◼
►
Selling a lot of high profit hardware
00:38:38
◼
►
if they covered more use cases
00:38:41
◼
►
and supported more third party services.
00:38:44
◼
►
And I would imagine,
00:38:46
◼
►
while there is a lot of long term strategic value
00:38:50
◼
►
to boosting Apple Music, Apple Music itself
00:38:52
◼
►
is probably not much of a money maker.
00:38:54
◼
►
You know, music streaming is famously unprofitable,
00:38:57
◼
►
as Spotify knows very well.
00:38:59
◼
►
So it, like, I would imagine Apple is probably better suited
00:39:03
◼
►
making sure their hardware sells really well,
00:39:06
◼
►
rather than trying to artificially hamper the hardware sales
00:39:11
◼
►
to boost an unprofitable web service.
00:39:13
◼
►
That doesn't really sound like Apple.
00:39:15
◼
►
- Well, anyway, we can keep talking about HomePod
00:39:17
◼
►
in a minute, but I wanna take a break here.
00:39:19
◼
►
But it reminded me with you on the show,
00:39:22
◼
►
and I've been meaning to say this on the show,
00:39:25
◼
►
I just posted on "Daring Fireball" yesterday
00:39:27
◼
►
about sponsorships and sponsoring a podcast in particular,
00:39:31
◼
►
that I never, the podcast has been doing,
00:39:33
◼
►
my podcast has been doing well.
00:39:35
◼
►
I think ATP's been doing well.
00:39:38
◼
►
Lots of shows, you guys do 52 shows a year, which is nuts,
00:39:42
◼
►
but lots of shows, three sponsors a week,
00:39:45
◼
►
and it's great, and I'm very happy about it.
00:39:47
◼
►
And I love all the sponsors that have come back.
00:39:49
◼
►
I love sponsors that have been with me for years
00:39:52
◼
►
and I'd like it because it seems to me like validation
00:39:57
◼
►
that it actually works, that paying money for me
00:40:00
◼
►
to tell you about such and such company
00:40:03
◼
►
and then years later, they're still sponsoring
00:40:05
◼
►
an episode, one episode a month or even more than that
00:40:09
◼
►
shows that they must be getting good results,
00:40:11
◼
►
so that's great.
00:40:11
◼
►
But then I never have to, I don't have to pimp it
00:40:15
◼
►
for lack of a better word.
00:40:16
◼
►
I never say, hey, you know, like if you have an app
00:40:19
◼
►
or a service, or you work at a company
00:40:21
◼
►
where you think their thing would do well
00:40:23
◼
►
with the talk show or Daring Fireball audience,
00:40:26
◼
►
you should think about sponsoring the show.
00:40:28
◼
►
And I almost, in the back of my head,
00:40:30
◼
►
I think that I've got a lack of variety
00:40:35
◼
►
on the sponsors on the podcast.
00:40:38
◼
►
And I think, duh, because I never tell anybody
00:40:40
◼
►
that you can sponsor it because I don't have to.
00:40:43
◼
►
And so I'm taking a moment here
00:40:44
◼
►
before I introduce our first sponsor,
00:40:48
◼
►
who happens to be a new sponsor, which is very cool.
00:40:50
◼
►
But just to you, the listener, to think about it,
00:40:54
◼
►
if you've got an app or something like that,
00:40:56
◼
►
the rates for the podcast are less than half the rate
00:41:00
◼
►
to sponsor the weekly sponsorship thing at Daring Fireball.
00:41:02
◼
►
So it's more affordable.
00:41:04
◼
►
It is, to me, I think a terrific audience.
00:41:08
◼
►
And just to me, just to sell it,
00:41:11
◼
►
the number of sponsors who come back over and over again
00:41:13
◼
►
is sort of my proof that it's a pretty good,
00:41:17
◼
►
effective way of spending your ad money.
00:41:19
◼
►
And the other thing too that I run into both
00:41:21
◼
►
with the podcast and when I sell the weekly sponsorships
00:41:24
◼
►
in particular is that a lot of the sort of indie type
00:41:28
◼
►
companies that sponsor it, the whole idea of buying ads
00:41:33
◼
►
is new to you and therefore weird.
00:41:36
◼
►
Just to name a company, like Squarespace knows
00:41:42
◼
►
how to buy ads.
00:41:43
◼
►
- Yeah, they're pretty good at it.
00:41:46
◼
►
You know and it can be scary to say I'm gonna spend a couple thousand bucks to sponsor a podcast I get it
00:41:54
◼
►
But you know if you've ever been thinking about it, seriously, it's not hard and you can just go to
00:42:00
◼
►
For me I had the landing page for me if you're interested
00:42:03
◼
►
Is that neat any AT fm? That's Jesse char who handles booking the the spots here?
00:42:11
◼
►
Because I'm too disorganized to to keep that together
00:42:16
◼
►
But she's very nice and you can go there and I think at least through the end of March
00:42:22
◼
►
I think you guys are doing the same thing but for new sponsors if you never sponsored the show we're offering a discount
00:42:27
◼
►
And I would love to have some new sponsors just for variety's sake
00:42:32
◼
►
not yep, same deal with ATP through the same site through the same nice person Jesse char and
00:42:37
◼
►
Yeah, it's and what I would say is
00:42:42
◼
►
Podcast listeners, just business-wise,
00:42:44
◼
►
how you're gonna spend your money,
00:42:46
◼
►
podcast listeners are a little bit expensive
00:42:49
◼
►
to get relative to other listeners.
00:42:51
◼
►
- CPM, right. - Because we are so valuable.
00:42:54
◼
►
- Right. - And so where this pays off
00:42:57
◼
►
is if you stand to make more than a couple bucks
00:42:59
◼
►
per new customer.
00:43:00
◼
►
So I actually don't recommend it.
00:43:02
◼
►
We occasionally get inquiries from people
00:43:04
◼
►
who are selling apps for $3 on iOS,
00:43:07
◼
►
and I actually tell them, you probably shouldn't do this.
00:43:09
◼
►
- I do too. - Because that,
00:43:11
◼
►
Where podcast really pays off is like podcasts,
00:43:16
◼
►
especially our podcast because we are so awesome,
00:43:21
◼
►
have an audience of people who are willing to spend
00:43:23
◼
►
good money for good products.
00:43:27
◼
►
And so that's why you have something like Squarespace
00:43:29
◼
►
because this is like a nice web hosting platform
00:43:33
◼
►
and the value of a customer to Squarespace
00:43:36
◼
►
is probably in the hundreds of dollars over time range.
00:43:38
◼
►
If you're buying a nice mattress from our friends at Casper,
00:43:41
◼
►
you're spending like $800 on a mattress.
00:43:44
◼
►
Basically, our audiences are willing to pay for good stuff.
00:43:49
◼
►
So if you're selling something where you stand to make
00:43:54
◼
►
like 30 bucks per customer, let's talk.
00:43:56
◼
►
If the most you can make from somebody is like a dollar
00:44:00
◼
►
from the app store, that's probably not a good fit.
00:44:03
◼
►
There's lots of businesses where this is a good fit.
00:44:06
◼
►
things like subscriptions and nice priced items,
00:44:09
◼
►
like nice things, and for that, please contact us.
00:44:13
◼
►
- Yeah, I completely agree, and I've done the same thing
00:44:16
◼
►
with like two or three dollar apps.
00:44:18
◼
►
There was somebody who just came out with a,
00:44:20
◼
►
it's a pretty cool puzzle game.
00:44:23
◼
►
I don't even play games on my phone,
00:44:24
◼
►
but I kinda, this one sucked me in for at least 20 minutes.
00:44:27
◼
►
But at three bucks a pop, and if you really are hoping
00:44:32
◼
►
that you're gonna multiply that by whatever number
00:44:35
◼
►
to at least break even, it's probably not gonna happen.
00:44:38
◼
►
You're gonna sell some copies of the app,
00:44:41
◼
►
but it's probably going to leave you in the red,
00:44:43
◼
►
and it may not, in the long run, help you get in the black,
00:44:47
◼
►
because it's just not that type of thing.
00:44:50
◼
►
So I do the same thing.
00:44:51
◼
►
I never, ever, ever, and hopefully I've never,
00:44:54
◼
►
in all the years I've been selling sponsorships and ads,
00:44:56
◼
►
I've never taken a dollar from somebody who I thought,
00:44:59
◼
►
like, ooh, they shouldn't be spending this.
00:45:03
◼
►
I sleep like a baby every night.
00:45:07
◼
►
On a castor mattress, on a hollow pillow.
00:45:10
◼
►
- Right, by certain standards,
00:45:11
◼
►
I am a terrible businessman because that's,
00:45:14
◼
►
there's, you know, I don't think there's any salespeople
00:45:17
◼
►
who listen to our shows, but if somebody out there
00:45:20
◼
►
is like a professional car salesman or something like that,
00:45:23
◼
►
they're like, "What the hell are you talking about?
00:45:25
◼
►
"Somebody wants to spend money
00:45:26
◼
►
"and you tell 'em not to buy your thing?"
00:45:28
◼
►
But I, you know, I would rather sleep well.
00:45:31
◼
►
- I think it's also a good long-term business.
00:45:35
◼
►
If you take someone's money knowing
00:45:36
◼
►
they're gonna not see a return on that,
00:45:39
◼
►
then maybe down the road, if they were gonna buy something,
00:45:44
◼
►
if they're selling something down the road
00:45:45
◼
►
that could benefit from it,
00:45:46
◼
►
or they could make money from it,
00:45:47
◼
►
they're gonna be less likely to go to you.
00:45:48
◼
►
Or if they tell a friend,
00:45:49
◼
►
they're gonna be less likely to recommend you,
00:45:51
◼
►
or they're gonna actually trash you,
00:45:52
◼
►
or the idea of podcast advertising to their friends
00:45:55
◼
►
or their company or whatever else.
00:45:57
◼
►
It's not good long-term business
00:46:00
◼
►
to take people's money knowing that you're
00:46:02
◼
►
kind of burning them.
00:46:02
◼
►
- Right, exactly, like it could show up on a Quora
00:46:05
◼
►
forum thread a year later where somebody would be like,
00:46:08
◼
►
"Hey, is sponsoring the talk show a good idea?"
00:46:10
◼
►
And somebody would be like, "Yeah, I spent a couple
00:46:12
◼
►
"thousand dollars and got $20 in sales."
00:46:16
◼
►
No, it's terrible.
00:46:17
◼
►
- Or like, you know, they could go work for an ad agency.
00:46:19
◼
►
Who like is, you know, some client asks them,
00:46:22
◼
►
"Hey, should we be buying podcast ads?"
00:46:24
◼
►
And they'll say, "Oh no, they're a terrible deal."
00:46:26
◼
►
Like, it's much better to actually like,
00:46:28
◼
►
Keep people happy and not take their money when you know that they're not going to see
00:46:32
◼
►
Well, anyway, our first sponsor this week is a new sponsor.
00:46:36
◼
►
I can't do the read right now.
00:46:37
◼
►
It is a company called Tres Pontas.
00:46:39
◼
►
Tres Pontas, they're a Brazilian company and they sell coffee and olive oil, which is the
00:46:45
◼
►
most intriguing mix of products I've ever seen from a company.
00:46:50
◼
►
And tomorrow, I'm getting by FedEx some of their coffee and I'm going to make it and
00:46:55
◼
►
I'm gonna and then I'm gonna through the magic of editing. I'm gonna jump in right around right here and
00:47:00
◼
►
I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm not gonna cheat you Marco and I recording on Thursday night, but on Friday
00:47:06
◼
►
I'm gonna jump in here with the recording and I'm gonna tell you what their coffee tastes like
00:47:20
◼
►
Okay, this is next day John Gruber
00:47:23
◼
►
I'm recording this about 12 hours after the show last night with Marco. I got my shipment of tres Pontes coffee this morning
00:47:30
◼
►
They sent me their cut to a and I'm probably butchering the pronunciation of that. It's Portuguese cat
00:47:39
◼
►
They sent it to me in four roasts light medium dark and French roast. I've had two pots of this coffee
00:47:46
◼
►
I've made two for some a/b testing with the dark roast light roast. It's excellent coffee. I love it
00:47:51
◼
►
I've drank way too much of it
00:47:54
◼
►
Quite frankly, it's really good
00:47:58
◼
►
I think I prefer the light roast did a lot of done up did a lot of a/b testing between the light and the dark
00:48:03
◼
►
I guess I'll do medium and French tomorrow
00:48:06
◼
►
It's really good stuff. So here's the deal trace
00:48:10
◼
►
Pontus coffee, you've probably heard of single origin coffee
00:48:13
◼
►
Well, tres pon tas coffee is takes it to a new level. It's single farm
00:48:21
◼
►
all of it comes from
00:48:24
◼
►
race re is race family farm
00:48:27
◼
►
Just underneath the peaks of the tres pon tas mountains in Brazil
00:48:32
◼
►
For over a hundred years and three generations the race family has been growing some of the best coffee in Brazil previously
00:48:40
◼
►
They only sold it to local roasters
00:48:43
◼
►
Recently, they've only recently started exporting it
00:48:46
◼
►
here to the United States.
00:48:48
◼
►
And so this is a new product
00:48:49
◼
►
that you really couldn't get before,
00:48:50
◼
►
and you can get it now, and it's just excellent.
00:48:52
◼
►
You have two ways to find out more information
00:48:57
◼
►
and to order it.
00:48:57
◼
►
You can go to their website, traspontas.com,
00:49:00
◼
►
T-R-E-S-P-O-N-T-A-S.com/coffee.
00:49:04
◼
►
You can find out all sorts of more information
00:49:06
◼
►
about their coffee.
00:49:06
◼
►
You can order it right there.
00:49:07
◼
►
And when you order their coffee, that's when they roast it,
00:49:11
◼
►
and then they ship it to you immediately.
00:49:13
◼
►
The coffee I got, it's stamped,
00:49:14
◼
►
it was roasted yesterday, which is insane.
00:49:17
◼
►
But getting fresh roasted coffee
00:49:20
◼
►
is probably the number one way
00:49:21
◼
►
that you can up your coffee game.
00:49:23
◼
►
Just about any coffee you get in a grocery store,
00:49:26
◼
►
even a quote unquote gourmet store
00:49:28
◼
►
that's been sitting on shelves,
00:49:30
◼
►
even for just a couple of weeks, loses freshness.
00:49:33
◼
►
Roasted coffee is a commodity that goes,
00:49:40
◼
►
just loses its flavor quickly.
00:49:43
◼
►
Fresh roasted coffee really does make a difference
00:49:46
◼
►
and Tres Pontas coffee only gets roasted once you order it.
00:49:49
◼
►
The other thing you can do is you can go to Amazon.
00:49:51
◼
►
This is so much easier if you just wanna try it.
00:49:53
◼
►
Go to Amazon and search for Tres Pontas.
00:49:55
◼
►
T-R-E-S-P-O-N-T-I-S and their coffee
00:49:59
◼
►
will be the first thing you see.
00:50:00
◼
►
And when you buy on Amazon,
00:50:01
◼
►
your coffee will still be roasted fresh to order
00:50:04
◼
►
and shipped out from Tres Pontas right away.
00:50:06
◼
►
When you get it from Amazon,
00:50:07
◼
►
it's not like it's sitting pre-bagged in warehouses
00:50:10
◼
►
or something like that.
00:50:11
◼
►
It's just a front end.
00:50:12
◼
►
The order goes through to Tres Pontas.
00:50:14
◼
►
They roast the coffee and they ship it to you.
00:50:16
◼
►
You can get it in any one of those four roasts,
00:50:19
◼
►
light, medium, dark French roast,
00:50:20
◼
►
and you can get it pre-ground or whole bean.
00:50:22
◼
►
I recommend whole bean, quite frankly.
00:50:25
◼
►
And all orders enjoy free shipping,
00:50:27
◼
►
regardless of where you order it.
00:50:28
◼
►
I don't, that seems too good to be true.
00:50:31
◼
►
The other thing you can do,
00:50:33
◼
►
if you get it, you like it, you wanna get more,
00:50:34
◼
►
is you can sign up for a coffee subscription
00:50:36
◼
►
from Tres Pontas and get roasted beans
00:50:38
◼
►
to you every one, two or four weeks, your choice. And when you sign up for a coffee subscription,
00:50:43
◼
►
you save 10% off every bag of coffee. Now here's the really good deal. Listeners of the talk show
00:50:49
◼
►
can get an extra 10% off using the code "THETALKSHOW" with the "the" at checkout when you buy a coffee
00:50:55
◼
►
subscription. This means you get a total of 20% off every bag of coffee in your subscription in
00:51:00
◼
►
perpetuity with that code. Just remember to enter the code "ATCHECKOUTTHETALKSHOW" when you sign up
00:51:05
◼
►
subscription. So my thanks to Trace Pontas for sponsoring the show and for
00:51:10
◼
►
sending me this excellent coffee to sample. Now we're back. We're back
00:51:15
◼
►
after my magically inserted review of Trace Pontas coffee. I do know one thing
00:51:22
◼
►
about their coffee. I do know how I'm going to grind it and that will be with
00:51:27
◼
►
what's the name of the thing I have, Marco? The Baratza Virtuoso. The only
00:51:31
◼
►
- The burrata grinder you should have.
00:51:32
◼
►
- The burrata virtuoso.
00:51:33
◼
►
This was a source of conflict in our friendship
00:51:38
◼
►
for years and years because I had a piece of crap burr,
00:51:43
◼
►
well no, a burr grinder is what I have now.
00:51:45
◼
►
I just had like, it was just like a little--
00:51:47
◼
►
- Yeah, you had the spinning blade.
00:51:48
◼
►
- Yeah, a little spinning--
00:51:49
◼
►
- The kind that everybody has, yeah.
00:51:50
◼
►
- A little spinning propeller from KitchenAid, I believe,
00:51:54
◼
►
for years, and I said, "Well, what should I buy?"
00:51:59
◼
►
And then you told me what to buy,
00:52:00
◼
►
and I figured out how big it was,
00:52:02
◼
►
and it literally wouldn't fit in our old kitchen.
00:52:04
◼
►
But now we have a new kitchen,
00:52:06
◼
►
and it's a much bigger kitchen,
00:52:07
◼
►
and it's so big that I have my own cubby hole
00:52:11
◼
►
where I'm allowed to put stuff.
00:52:13
◼
►
So I have the Baratza Virtuoso,
00:52:18
◼
►
and I like it, I like it every day.
00:52:21
◼
►
I don't know--
00:52:22
◼
►
- I still remember,
00:52:23
◼
►
you gave me one of my favorite compliments of all time.
00:52:27
◼
►
when I visited you in your old kitchen
00:52:30
◼
►
and your old place a few years back,
00:52:32
◼
►
and I brought some of my own coffee that I roasted.
00:52:35
◼
►
Oh no, no, it wasn't even that,
00:52:36
◼
►
it was when I mailed it to you at some point.
00:52:38
◼
►
- Oh yeah. - And you told me
00:52:39
◼
►
after you tried it, you said,
00:52:42
◼
►
"I almost wanna say fuck you, this is so good."
00:52:46
◼
►
I was like so, so perfect.
00:52:49
◼
►
And there's been times in my life
00:52:50
◼
►
where I have said that now to other people about things,
00:52:53
◼
►
because it's just so, it's so perfect.
00:52:55
◼
►
- It was good coffee.
00:52:56
◼
►
It was very good coffee, I have to admit.
00:52:59
◼
►
I don't know that I could Pepsi challenge the difference
00:53:03
◼
►
between fresh ground coffee,
00:53:05
◼
►
ground with the Baratza Virtuoso,
00:53:07
◼
►
versus the old crappy grinder that I used to have.
00:53:12
◼
►
I think I probably could.
00:53:13
◼
►
I do feel that on a daily basis,
00:53:16
◼
►
I'm giving my coffee more Bs and As,
00:53:23
◼
►
and fewer Cs and Bs,
00:53:25
◼
►
in terms of how good I think it tastes.
00:53:28
◼
►
I don't know how much of it's due to that,
00:53:29
◼
►
but it just works better.
00:53:32
◼
►
I like that I can just set the dial and walk away.
00:53:35
◼
►
And the way that it cuts it up,
00:53:38
◼
►
even if it doesn't taste better,
00:53:40
◼
►
it's a much neater grind for,
00:53:43
◼
►
I do pour over almost every day.
00:53:45
◼
►
But even when I make, I think I use a finer,
00:53:48
◼
►
I always have to look it up.
00:53:49
◼
►
I think I use a finer grind for the plunger thing,
00:53:53
◼
►
the AeroPress. - The AeroPress.
00:53:54
◼
►
- Yeah, you should.
00:53:55
◼
►
But on the AirPress, you should be setting that dial
00:53:57
◼
►
to roughly like 10.
00:54:01
◼
►
- I think I do 12. - The dial goes like zero
00:54:03
◼
►
to 40, and yeah, for the AirPress, you should be around 10.
00:54:06
◼
►
- I do like 12, and I do 20 for pour over.
00:54:09
◼
►
- Yeah, that's about right.
00:54:11
◼
►
- But the bigger difference, whether it tastes better or not
00:54:14
◼
►
is it's way neater.
00:54:16
◼
►
Like it comes right out of that little plastic thing,
00:54:20
◼
►
and there's just a couple of little pieces of the husk
00:54:23
◼
►
that are sort of floaters, you know.
00:54:25
◼
►
- But Jeff, yeah.
00:54:26
◼
►
- Right, but they clean up real easy,
00:54:28
◼
►
just like one swipe with a wet towel
00:54:30
◼
►
and they're off the counter.
00:54:31
◼
►
- Yeah, most of that's just static.
00:54:32
◼
►
- But there's no dust, it's not like dust
00:54:34
◼
►
like the old grinder.
00:54:36
◼
►
- Well, it's also, it's a much more consistent grind size,
00:54:40
◼
►
like the grains that come out are much more consistent size.
00:54:42
◼
►
Like the problem with the spinning blade grinders,
00:54:45
◼
►
it's kind of similar, if you ever use a food processor
00:54:47
◼
►
or a blender, like you try to blend something
00:54:50
◼
►
that's like a little bit thick or chunky,
00:54:52
◼
►
like vegetables or a smoothie or something.
00:54:54
◼
►
And the part near the blade gets totally pureed
00:54:58
◼
►
and then the stuff around the edges
00:55:00
◼
►
that just kind of sticks to the walls
00:55:01
◼
►
just kind of stays all clumpy and everything,
00:55:04
◼
►
it doesn't get blended.
00:55:05
◼
►
So you have this huge variety between
00:55:07
◼
►
the stuff in the middle, which is super finely blended,
00:55:09
◼
►
and the stuff on the outside, which is really not.
00:55:11
◼
►
That's what a blade grinder does to coffee.
00:55:13
◼
►
So you have some of the grounds
00:55:16
◼
►
that are really finely ground
00:55:18
◼
►
and some that are really coarse.
00:55:19
◼
►
And depending on how you're brewing it,
00:55:22
◼
►
this may matter or it may not.
00:55:24
◼
►
Typically, like the pour over or drip methods
00:55:27
◼
►
are pretty forgiving of grind size.
00:55:29
◼
►
AeroPress and French press are really not.
00:55:33
◼
►
For French press, you want them to be really big
00:55:36
◼
►
so they don't seep through the filter.
00:55:38
◼
►
And for AeroPress, you want them to be really small
00:55:40
◼
►
because one of the great advantages of the AeroPress
00:55:42
◼
►
over any other method is that you can have
00:55:43
◼
►
a really fine grind and get tons of dense flavor
00:55:47
◼
►
packed into a small amount of liquid
00:55:49
◼
►
without having all the grounds seep through the filter.
00:55:54
◼
►
I tried French press years ago
00:55:55
◼
►
when I first started getting even semi-serious about coffee
00:55:59
◼
►
and I think compared to you who roast your own beans,
00:56:03
◼
►
I still can only say I'm semi-serious about it.
00:56:05
◼
►
Way more serious than anybody else in my family
00:56:08
◼
►
and way less serious than a lot of people.
00:56:11
◼
►
But I thought, well--
00:56:13
◼
►
- By the way, I'm way less serious than a lot of people.
00:56:16
◼
►
- The way I roast is pretty casual.
00:56:19
◼
►
Like I don't get into like, you know,
00:56:20
◼
►
custom roasting profiles and tweaking the temperatures
00:56:24
◼
►
just right to like during the roast
00:56:25
◼
►
to get these right curves.
00:56:26
◼
►
I don't do any of that.
00:56:27
◼
►
I basically do like the stock preset on the roaster
00:56:31
◼
►
of how to roast and I just decide like,
00:56:33
◼
►
how far do I go before I stop it?
00:56:35
◼
►
That's it, that's the only decision I make.
00:56:37
◼
►
- I do think though, I did try French Pest years ago
00:56:45
◼
►
and I fucking hated it.
00:56:47
◼
►
But it was because it was too much of the coffee
00:56:50
◼
►
was getting into the, you know, the beverage.
00:56:54
◼
►
- Yeah, 'cause you had the wrong grinder.
00:56:55
◼
►
- Right, I had the wrong grinder.
00:56:57
◼
►
And I was like, yeah.
00:56:57
◼
►
- French press can be amazing.
00:56:59
◼
►
The reasons that I don't like it are mainly
00:57:02
◼
►
that it's a pain in the butt to clean,
00:57:04
◼
►
which everyone has this problem.
00:57:06
◼
►
And also that I prefer the, like,
00:57:09
◼
►
AeroPress gives a little bit stronger of a flavor,
00:57:11
◼
►
and I just prefer that.
00:57:12
◼
►
But French press is also very good, very respectable.
00:57:15
◼
►
If I'm at a restaurant that has some kind of
00:57:17
◼
►
nice coffee as a French press option
00:57:19
◼
►
that you can order after the meal.
00:57:21
◼
►
I'll sometimes do that and share it with somebody
00:57:23
◼
►
'cause it is kinda nice.
00:57:24
◼
►
- Yeah, but it definitely has to be ground right.
00:57:26
◼
►
Otherwise it's like you're drinking mud.
00:57:28
◼
►
Oh, I had one other coffee related thing.
00:57:33
◼
►
Everybody had always told me for years,
00:57:36
◼
►
and I believe it, but the optimal water temperature
00:57:40
◼
►
for pour over is, I don't know,
00:57:42
◼
►
like 185 degrees Fahrenheit, somewhere around there.
00:57:46
◼
►
- Depends who you ask.
00:57:47
◼
►
- Yeah, I guess it depends who you ask,
00:57:48
◼
►
but definitely not 212.
00:57:50
◼
►
- Right, although a lot of coffee pros
00:57:55
◼
►
think it actually isn't that far off 212.
00:57:57
◼
►
Like, I think, I forget what the SCAA,
00:58:01
◼
►
the Specialty Coffee Association of America,
00:58:03
◼
►
they have like a bunch of standards.
00:58:04
◼
►
I think their temperature is 204.
00:58:07
◼
►
So it doesn't need to be that much off.
00:58:09
◼
►
Like, I use an electric kettle,
00:58:11
◼
►
and it has presets for basically every 10 degrees,
00:58:14
◼
►
And I use the 200 preset and it's fine.
00:58:17
◼
►
- So I don't have an electric kettle
00:58:18
◼
►
and I don't feel like, you know,
00:58:21
◼
►
I do have my own cubby hole but I'm running out of space
00:58:24
◼
►
in there with that and a SodaStream.
00:58:26
◼
►
So I just-- - Trust me,
00:58:28
◼
►
I was an electric kettle skeptic for a long time
00:58:31
◼
►
and what happened basically,
00:58:33
◼
►
like my favorite glass kettle finally broke.
00:58:36
◼
►
- The one that had the-- - Somebody had the,
00:58:38
◼
►
I did, the aerial printing.
00:58:39
◼
►
- The aerial printing. (laughs)
00:58:41
◼
►
- Yes, I called it the Helvetic Kettle for years,
00:58:44
◼
►
friends with you and later learned that it was actually printed in Arial.
00:58:47
◼
►
Right. And the problem was that if you get the same kettle it's the
00:58:51
◼
►
Medelko like glass kettle and the problem is if you get it after a few
00:58:55
◼
►
years ago they changed the font that it's printed and it's now printed in
00:59:00
◼
►
something that was kind of like italic comic sans. Like it's completely the
00:59:04
◼
►
opposite of what you'd want. Wait what's it called? It's Medelko and it's like just
00:59:10
◼
►
the Medelko glass kettle. It's like 12 bucks and and like and and then and the
00:59:15
◼
►
picture on Amazon did not reflect the font change for a long time. I don't know
00:59:18
◼
►
if it does now. Let me see. I don't know. Hold on. No, I don't think so.
00:59:27
◼
►
Although there's two. So see here. So this is so there are two that like
00:59:31
◼
►
there's one that still shows the old font and it's M-E-D-E-L-C-O if you search
00:59:37
◼
►
Medelko kettle one so she was the old font and right next to it is one that shows oh
00:59:41
◼
►
Oh my god, it's it's as though somebody at that company
00:59:48
◼
►
Who doesn't it does not see the difference between Helvetica and and
00:59:54
◼
►
Ariel and enough people like me wrote to them to complain and they were like, oh, yeah
01:00:00
◼
►
You want to complain about the font? Fuck you buddy. Here you go
01:00:05
◼
►
Exactly. So it went from almost Helvetica to
01:00:09
◼
►
To knock off Comic Sans. It's not even
01:00:13
◼
►
Better if it was actually Comic Sans
01:00:16
◼
►
There might be some because like if you look at where it says 12 cup capacity that looks almost exactly like Comic Sans
01:00:21
◼
►
Oh, it almost looks like it's doing a fake italic. We're just slanting the text
01:00:25
◼
►
Whistling kettle looks correct. Yeah, maybe that was like an actual italic. Maybe I don't know what Comic Sans italic is
01:00:33
◼
►
Maybe that's just Comic Sans italic. I'm sorry. The problem is like imagine so like, you know, imagine God even the numbers you order the aerial
01:00:40
◼
►
It's amazing it's like who would want this
01:00:45
◼
►
That's so funny though, because I literally did not buy it even though you said that you recommended it
01:00:51
◼
►
I literally didn't buy it years ago because it was printed in aerial and now they've done this. It's so much worse. Oh my god
01:00:58
◼
►
I've since moved on to because yeah when that broke I knew I couldn't get a new one
01:01:03
◼
►
and so I dug out an electric kettle
01:01:05
◼
►
I had bought a while ago for a camping trip
01:01:07
◼
►
and we've been using that since.
01:01:08
◼
►
And Europeans laugh at me whenever I would say
01:01:12
◼
►
like how I boil things in the kettle,
01:01:13
◼
►
they're like, "Wait, what?
01:01:14
◼
►
"Like on your stove?
01:01:15
◼
►
"What are you doing?
01:01:16
◼
►
"Like that's barbaric."
01:01:17
◼
►
'Cause like most of the rest of the world
01:01:18
◼
►
has figured out by now that electric kettles
01:01:20
◼
►
are way better at boiling things,
01:01:22
◼
►
boiling water for coffee and tea.
01:01:25
◼
►
- We are the only, first of all, they're way faster.
01:01:28
◼
►
- Oh, I don't know about that.
01:01:29
◼
►
I got it, we have a new range and I'll tell you what,
01:01:32
◼
►
that fucker boils water fast.
01:01:34
◼
►
- You have induction, right?
01:01:37
◼
►
That's pretty crazy.
01:01:38
◼
►
- No, well, we do have induction,
01:01:40
◼
►
but I just boil it right over a big old gas flame.
01:01:43
◼
►
- Oh, so you have gas, okay.
01:01:46
◼
►
- Yeah, we have gas.
01:01:47
◼
►
- We also have a really heavy-duty gas stove,
01:01:50
◼
►
and so it would boil pretty fast in the aerial kettle,
01:01:53
◼
►
but it's either the same speed or it's faster
01:01:58
◼
►
in the electric kettle.
01:01:59
◼
►
It's super fast and electric
01:02:01
◼
►
because they just draw tons of power
01:02:02
◼
►
and are pretty efficient at converting that to heat.
01:02:05
◼
►
And then what's nice about it is that first of all,
01:02:07
◼
►
you can set it to a certain temperature
01:02:09
◼
►
and have it hold it at that temperature,
01:02:10
◼
►
which is very nice.
01:02:11
◼
►
Especially if you're doing something
01:02:12
◼
►
that's not a full boil,
01:02:14
◼
►
if you're doing green tea,
01:02:16
◼
►
green tea has to be 170, 175,
01:02:19
◼
►
you don't want it to be any hotter than that.
01:02:20
◼
►
And it's always kind of a pain to do that
01:02:23
◼
►
with a kettle on the stove.
01:02:24
◼
►
- Right, or if you're halfway--
01:02:25
◼
►
- So you can hold it at certain temperatures.
01:02:26
◼
►
- If you're halfway through making coffee
01:02:27
◼
►
and get interrupted 'cause the UPS guy shows up or something.
01:02:30
◼
►
- Right, exactly.
01:02:31
◼
►
It can also hold it at a certain temperature
01:02:33
◼
►
for like a half hour.
01:02:34
◼
►
So if you're like, if you wanted to just start it
01:02:36
◼
►
while you prepare everything else,
01:02:38
◼
►
by the time you're done assembling the AeroPress
01:02:41
◼
►
and grinding up the coffee and everything,
01:02:43
◼
►
it's boiling, it's ready.
01:02:44
◼
►
And it's holding it at the temperature you requested.
01:02:46
◼
►
So that's really nice.
01:02:47
◼
►
It also just boils it, it's really fast,
01:02:49
◼
►
it holds a ton of water.
01:02:50
◼
►
The one I have holds like one and a half liters at once.
01:02:53
◼
►
So if you're making a lot, it's great.
01:02:55
◼
►
If you're making back to back, it's great.
01:02:57
◼
►
And then finally, you can do it
01:02:59
◼
►
in a different part of the kitchen.
01:03:00
◼
►
you're not taking up a burner on the stove.
01:03:02
◼
►
So what I found is it allowed me to like
01:03:05
◼
►
compact my coffee preparation area
01:03:08
◼
►
from like this big triangle that like spanned
01:03:11
◼
►
from the cabinet to the stove to the sink.
01:03:13
◼
►
It was basically like my whole kitchen.
01:03:14
◼
►
Now I can do it like all in this one little countertop
01:03:17
◼
►
next to the sink.
01:03:18
◼
►
'Cause it's all like I'm able to have it wherever I want.
01:03:20
◼
►
So that part's nice too.
01:03:21
◼
►
And also it just saves wear and tear
01:03:22
◼
►
out of my stupid gas burners that break constantly.
01:03:24
◼
►
Never get a Viking stove or a house
01:03:26
◼
►
that has a Viking stove already in it.
01:03:28
◼
►
- Ugh. (laughs)
01:03:30
◼
►
- So, go electric.
01:03:32
◼
►
It seems a little weird for the first day,
01:03:35
◼
►
and then you're like, how did I ever use the stove
01:03:38
◼
►
every day like an ape?
01:03:40
◼
►
- Where do you put it?
01:03:41
◼
►
I mean, it's just like on a countertop?
01:03:44
◼
►
- Yeah, you basically put it where you make your coffee.
01:03:47
◼
►
- No way, yeah.
01:03:48
◼
►
I like cooking. - 'Cause you already have
01:03:49
◼
►
a grinder plugged in, so put it next to your grinder.
01:03:51
◼
►
- Nah, I don't have room for it over there.
01:03:53
◼
►
No, I like cooking-- - Don't you have like
01:03:54
◼
►
four sinks in there?
01:03:56
◼
►
- Nah, two sinks.
01:03:57
◼
►
And there's no room by my sink.
01:04:00
◼
►
No, I figured out in my optimal solution
01:04:02
◼
►
is I put just the right amount of coffee in the kettle.
01:04:05
◼
►
I put it on the high flame.
01:04:08
◼
►
And then as I grind the coffee and get it prepared,
01:04:11
◼
►
by the time I'm ready for it, it's boiling.
01:04:14
◼
►
And then here's my trick.
01:04:16
◼
►
My trick is, and I go over and I get two ice cubes
01:04:21
◼
►
and throw two ice cubes in,
01:04:23
◼
►
and it immediately turns the 212 water
01:04:25
◼
►
into a better temperature, which I have measured precisely
01:04:29
◼
►
with my Thermapim, and it's exactly like 188
01:04:33
◼
►
or 190 or something.
01:04:34
◼
►
- All right, that's, I mean, as long as you can do that
01:04:38
◼
►
in like a repetitive way, which just sounds like you can,
01:04:41
◼
►
then that's fine, I guess.
01:04:42
◼
►
- I'm not even fully awake, and I've got the ice cubes
01:04:45
◼
►
in my hand ready to toss 'em in.
01:04:47
◼
►
And I don't know--
01:04:47
◼
►
- It's a little easier to just hit a button
01:04:48
◼
►
that says 185 and just move on.
01:04:51
◼
►
- I don't know, to me, there's something cool
01:04:52
◼
►
about throwing ice cubes into boiling water.
01:04:56
◼
►
- Fair enough.
01:04:57
◼
►
- Where were we?
01:05:01
◼
►
We were talking about HomePod.
01:05:01
◼
►
How about this thing with the HomePod
01:05:03
◼
►
leaving rings on people's furniture?
01:05:05
◼
►
I'm astounded by this.
01:05:07
◼
►
I really am.
01:05:08
◼
►
- It just seems, yeah.
01:05:10
◼
►
- Do you know how much fucking trouble I would be in if--
01:05:17
◼
►
- Like we've got, I don't even know what material they are,
01:05:20
◼
►
there's some kind of stone type material that are countertops in the kitchen.
01:05:24
◼
►
I, you know, they're not marble,
01:05:28
◼
►
but they're some marble like material that we've either granted or courts. Yeah.
01:05:32
◼
►
One of those and it might, I forget, but it's something like that. And, uh,
01:05:36
◼
►
you know, meticulously picked out at, you know,
01:05:40
◼
►
some input by me, but you know, the whole thing was designed by Amy. Um,
01:05:45
◼
►
and I mean, you've been, you've seen, it's a really nice, it's,
01:05:49
◼
►
She did good work. It's it's a really designed kitchen if I'll tell and that's where I set up the home pod and
01:05:54
◼
►
When I first got to review it, I'll tell you what if I left a fucking ring on that counter from that home pod
01:06:00
◼
►
You have any much I'd I would be fucking dead. I I cannot I
01:06:04
◼
►
Mean she would literally kill you we would not be told doing this podcast right? I mean literally killed I
01:06:09
◼
►
And I realize it doesn't leave rings on that material. Thank fuck. Thank God, but
01:06:16
◼
►
You know, I've seen pictures of some of the people like who've had it on
01:06:21
◼
►
You know the the tables and and shelves that that they've left these rings on they all seem like perfectly reasonable
01:06:28
◼
►
Places to put a home pod. Yeah. Well, and you know, it's a really popular countertop material butcher block oiled wood, right?
01:06:34
◼
►
Exactly really popular right and that's just it is that in some alternate universe, you know
01:06:40
◼
►
I could very easily imagine that that would have been the direction we would have gone
01:06:45
◼
►
You know it maybe if I picked it would have been the direction we would have gone
01:06:49
◼
►
I you know I've been in you know new kitchens that or even old kitchens
01:06:54
◼
►
But you know nice kitchens that have that type of material. I could totally see it I
01:06:59
◼
►
That's it's just crazy to me that that that product didn't ship with a
01:07:05
◼
►
I mean if there's some kind of thing of that that's that
01:07:11
◼
►
That's the way to go with the silicon material at the base and I realize there's an acoustic component to that right that this
01:07:18
◼
►
That the home pod the way that it shoots audio in all directions including down
01:07:25
◼
►
material and how it
01:07:27
◼
►
Rests on the thing it's sitting on has some kind of an effect on that and there might there might be that they were well
01:07:32
◼
►
aware of this and went with it anyway, but the fact that it didn't ship with a
01:07:38
◼
►
warning about it along the lines of the way that they said like hey if you buy the jet black iPhone 7
01:07:44
◼
►
It's gonna pick up scratches all micro abrasions or whatever. They called them all over the back, you know, just let people know
01:07:50
◼
►
Yeah, like like the the the iPhone 7 micro abrasion thing
01:07:55
◼
►
I think was that is the best parallel to like how they should have gone like assuming that
01:07:59
◼
►
assuming that they didn't want to or weren't able to
01:08:01
◼
►
Change the material before this thing shipped which that's a big assumption
01:08:06
◼
►
I think they probably should have found this during their apparently widespread and long-standing
01:08:11
◼
►
test of these home pods that were in employees' homes and being tested.
01:08:15
◼
►
This had to have come up.
01:08:18
◼
►
So there's possibly a process issue there where either this wasn't found in the test
01:08:25
◼
►
because they didn't do enough testing, or it was found and they decided to ignore it
01:08:28
◼
►
for whatever reason.
01:08:29
◼
►
Maybe they had good reasons, who knows?
01:08:31
◼
►
But either way, there's probably a process problem there.
01:08:35
◼
►
And then there's definitely a communication problem
01:08:38
◼
►
both in the fact that we weren't warned ahead of time,
01:08:40
◼
►
that it's not like a little note
01:08:41
◼
►
in the instruction manual or anything.
01:08:44
◼
►
And honestly, I thought their response
01:08:45
◼
►
to these claims yesterday was kind of dismissive
01:08:49
◼
►
and almost as bad as the, you know,
01:08:51
◼
►
you're holding it wrong thing.
01:08:53
◼
►
It was really not, I think, a good moment in Apple PR.
01:08:57
◼
►
But it just seems like, you know,
01:09:00
◼
►
it's such a dumb little thing.
01:09:03
◼
►
This is not a big deal.
01:09:05
◼
►
This is, like I said on ATP, it's not a big deal.
01:09:07
◼
►
It's not gonna like sink the home pod.
01:09:10
◼
►
It's not going to result in like a massive recall
01:09:13
◼
►
in all likelihood.
01:09:14
◼
►
I mean, you know, Watson announced it tomorrow
01:09:16
◼
►
and put me wrong, but like I don't think
01:09:17
◼
►
they're gonna do anything about it.
01:09:18
◼
►
I think it's gonna be like a footnote
01:09:20
◼
►
in the support documents basically says like,
01:09:22
◼
►
hey, don't put this on certain services
01:09:24
◼
►
without some kind of protection.
01:09:27
◼
►
And you know, but you know, like the response of,
01:09:31
◼
►
well, you should probably just refinish your table.
01:09:34
◼
►
- That's not a good response.
01:09:36
◼
►
- Right, and you know, it's--
01:09:37
◼
►
- And it seems like it's kind of like an unforced error
01:09:40
◼
►
because like lots of other products
01:09:44
◼
►
sit on these surfaces without leading marks.
01:09:47
◼
►
And it's not to say that like,
01:09:49
◼
►
I think I saw something earlier today
01:09:51
◼
►
that apparently the Sonos One leaves very, very faint marks
01:09:55
◼
►
on its four corners, like four little L-shaped corner pads,
01:09:58
◼
►
and apparently it leaves some mild version
01:10:00
◼
►
of the same thing.
01:10:01
◼
►
So like it's not that the HomePod
01:10:02
◼
►
is the only thing that does this.
01:10:04
◼
►
You know, similar to how like the iPhone 4
01:10:06
◼
►
was not the only phone where you hold it a certain way
01:10:08
◼
►
to block the antenna.
01:10:10
◼
►
And they spent a lot of that press conference
01:10:12
◼
►
telling you that.
01:10:13
◼
►
But it is Apple's problem in the sense that, you know,
01:10:17
◼
►
this is the big story about it.
01:10:18
◼
►
This is something that the HomePod seems to do more
01:10:21
◼
►
than anything else.
01:10:22
◼
►
And I don't think it's reasonable to expect people
01:10:27
◼
►
to know this ahead of time.
01:10:30
◼
►
Like just to automatically know,
01:10:32
◼
►
oh, you shouldn't put things with rubber feet
01:10:36
◼
►
on your oiled wood countertops.
01:10:38
◼
►
To me, something with rubber feet
01:10:40
◼
►
seems like it would be totally fine.
01:10:41
◼
►
- Clean, especially. - It's not totally inert.
01:10:43
◼
►
It seemed like that would be protecting
01:10:45
◼
►
the surface from damage.
01:10:46
◼
►
- Right, and I'm even-- - And even though--
01:10:47
◼
►
- I'm even careful about things
01:10:49
◼
►
like getting my finger grease on something.
01:10:50
◼
►
So when I took the HomePod out of the box,
01:10:53
◼
►
I was careful to only touch it by the sides
01:10:56
◼
►
and from Shenzhen, China, until it touched my countertop,
01:11:01
◼
►
the bottom had never been touched by human hands.
01:11:04
◼
►
You know, and I thought like, well, that's clean.
01:11:06
◼
►
You know, it's a clean countertop
01:11:08
◼
►
and the HomePod is certainly clean
01:11:10
◼
►
because I just took it out of the box and never touched it.
01:11:13
◼
►
It never would have occurred to me in a million years
01:11:15
◼
►
not to put it on wood kitchen countertops
01:11:18
◼
►
if we had had wood kitchen countertops.
01:11:20
◼
►
Just wouldn't have even entered my mind as like a,
01:11:24
◼
►
hmm, maybe I shouldn't put it there.
01:11:26
◼
►
You know, like things like, hey, maybe I shouldn't put it,
01:11:29
◼
►
you know, I would think of things like,
01:11:32
◼
►
well, maybe I shouldn't put it next to a sink
01:11:34
◼
►
because, you know, an accidental spill could happen here.
01:11:37
◼
►
Like, you know, I just put it next to where our echo was.
01:11:42
◼
►
So, but that spot was chosen because, you know,
01:11:45
◼
►
it seemed like a spot that is almost always dry
01:11:48
◼
►
and doesn't have accidental spills.
01:11:51
◼
►
So that occurred to me.
01:11:53
◼
►
The idea that it would leave rings
01:11:54
◼
►
never would have even occurred to me.
01:11:56
◼
►
- Yeah, and it's the kind of thing like,
01:11:58
◼
►
Obviously, like Apple should know,
01:12:00
◼
►
and I'm sure they do know,
01:12:01
◼
►
that this category of product,
01:12:04
◼
►
as much as they are trying really hard
01:12:07
◼
►
in the marketing and the PR
01:12:09
◼
►
to make this about audio quality
01:12:10
◼
►
while it's sitting in your living room,
01:12:12
◼
►
the fact is this category of product
01:12:14
◼
►
is very often used in kitchens.
01:12:16
◼
►
And a very common place to put it is on a countertop.
01:12:20
◼
►
And so they should have, and I hope did,
01:12:24
◼
►
test it on every popular countertop material
01:12:27
◼
►
that's available.
01:12:28
◼
►
And they would have found this if they did that
01:12:31
◼
►
because butcher block is very, very popular
01:12:33
◼
►
and very common because it's really nice
01:12:36
◼
►
and pretty inexpensive.
01:12:37
◼
►
And so they should have found this and they didn't
01:12:40
◼
►
or they decided to ship it anyway.
01:12:42
◼
►
And so it's just, again, this isn't a huge problem.
01:12:47
◼
►
There's already like 10,000 awesome little coasters
01:12:50
◼
►
that people will sell you for $30 made out of leather
01:12:52
◼
►
and metal and stuff and custom engraved,
01:12:55
◼
►
artisanally hand-stitched leather coasters for it.
01:12:58
◼
►
And maybe Apple will sell their own this fall
01:13:02
◼
►
for $100, this little leather circle
01:13:04
◼
►
with an Apple logo in the middle of it.
01:13:05
◼
►
But it isn't a big problem,
01:13:09
◼
►
but it's just kind of embarrassing,
01:13:10
◼
►
and I think it does reveal some potential process flaws
01:13:14
◼
►
in how this got out without even a warning.
01:13:17
◼
►
- Just seems very surprising to me.
01:13:20
◼
►
I think the two most, I don't know,
01:13:24
◼
►
Everybody's different, I don't know.
01:13:26
◼
►
But to me, the two most natural places for one of these
01:13:30
◼
►
are a kitchen and a bedroom.
01:13:31
◼
►
'Cause I don't think it's a great living room product
01:13:34
◼
►
if your living room is your TV room.
01:13:36
◼
►
Like I use that interchangeably.
01:13:39
◼
►
So I realize that in like a lifestyle magazine,
01:13:42
◼
►
people don't have a TV in their living room
01:13:44
◼
►
because it's meant for hosting parties and everybody.
01:13:48
◼
►
- In the magazines, they also have white couches.
01:13:50
◼
►
- Right, everybody, all the chairs face around each other
01:13:53
◼
►
so you can talk to each other and there's no place for a TV.
01:13:56
◼
►
Well, our living room has a TV.
01:13:58
◼
►
But because it is, you know, if you have a TV,
01:14:01
◼
►
a TV room is not a great place for a home pod
01:14:03
◼
►
unless you really listen to enough music
01:14:05
◼
►
independent of your TV that having a sound system
01:14:09
◼
►
that's completely independent of your
01:14:11
◼
►
home entertainment system makes sense to you.
01:14:14
◼
►
It doesn't really make sense to me that way.
01:14:17
◼
►
Kitchen though is perfect because traditionally
01:14:19
◼
►
most people don't have a good sound system in their kitchen.
01:14:24
◼
►
And a lot of people spend a lot of time in their kitchens.
01:14:27
◼
►
A lot of families eat their meals in the kitchen.
01:14:30
◼
►
So it's a great place for that.
01:14:33
◼
►
And a bedroom would be another place
01:14:35
◼
►
where maybe you don't have a good sound system.
01:14:38
◼
►
But that's another place where you might have wood.
01:14:41
◼
►
I'm still not sure about the details of what types of wood,
01:14:44
◼
►
what types of treatment.
01:14:46
◼
►
It's like ones that have a polyurethane coating are safe,
01:14:49
◼
►
and ones that are just sort of oiled aren't.
01:14:52
◼
►
But it seems to me like a lot of people
01:14:54
◼
►
might have bedroom furniture
01:14:55
◼
►
that exactly is along those lines too.
01:14:58
◼
►
- Yeah, it seems like the problem is that,
01:15:01
◼
►
it's in surfaces that their main treatment is just oil
01:15:06
◼
►
that is like slightly seeped into the wood.
01:15:09
◼
►
And that the problem therefore is that
01:15:10
◼
►
when you stick the silicone on top of it,
01:15:13
◼
►
that the silicone absorbs some of that oil into itself,
01:15:16
◼
►
pulling it out of the wood
01:15:17
◼
►
and creating basically an unfinished circle in the wood.
01:15:21
◼
►
And that's why it goes away after a few days,
01:15:23
◼
►
'cause the oil has time to reabsorb
01:15:24
◼
►
into that area of the wood.
01:15:26
◼
►
- So I had a tweet the other day, yesterday actually,
01:15:30
◼
►
that went semi-viral for me, at least, 1,322 likes.
01:15:34
◼
►
It was an interaction I had.
01:15:35
◼
►
It was with a HomePod in my office.
01:15:37
◼
►
The entire tweet-- - Oh, the courts thing?
01:15:40
◼
►
- Yeah, the entire tweet is just my, the playback.
01:15:45
◼
►
And I believe it's word-for-word accurate.
01:15:46
◼
►
So here's me, hey Siri, oh I shouldn't say that, I'm sorry.
01:15:49
◼
►
Hey, you know.
01:15:50
◼
►
- No, if Phil Schiller said it on your show,
01:15:52
◼
►
you can say it on your show.
01:15:53
◼
►
- Well, I'm gonna say, hey HomePod,
01:15:54
◼
►
hey HomePod, how many quarts are in a gallon?
01:15:57
◼
►
And HomePod said, what would you like me
01:15:59
◼
►
to convert one gallon to?
01:16:02
◼
►
And I already knew we were off to a rough start,
01:16:04
◼
►
and I said, quarts.
01:16:05
◼
►
And there was a little bit of a pause,
01:16:08
◼
►
and HomePod said, quarts is a mineral compound
01:16:12
◼
►
composed of silicon and oxygen atoms
01:16:14
◼
►
in a continuous framework,
01:16:16
◼
►
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:16:18
◼
►
It was verbatim the first paragraph of Q-U-A-R-T-Z
01:16:23
◼
►
from Wikipedia.
01:16:25
◼
►
And I thought it was so funny.
01:16:28
◼
►
And it was weird, and I actually know this.
01:16:31
◼
►
I actually, it was a weird conversation
01:16:34
◼
►
when Amy was doing something and she said,
01:16:37
◼
►
how many quarts are in a gallon, two?
01:16:39
◼
►
And I was like, no, no, four,
01:16:40
◼
►
because that's the quart and quart is a quarter,
01:16:44
◼
►
and it's a quarter gallon.
01:16:46
◼
►
That's how I remember it.
01:16:47
◼
►
- Wait, is it really?
01:16:48
◼
►
- Yeah, there's four quarts in it.
01:16:50
◼
►
- I never knew that.
01:16:51
◼
►
- Yeah, so there's four quarts in a gallon
01:16:52
◼
►
and the way to remember it is that the Q-U-A-R-T
01:16:56
◼
►
is the same whatever route as quarter.
01:16:59
◼
►
So there you go, you'll never--
01:17:01
◼
►
- Oh, that's awesome.
01:17:02
◼
►
- Yeah, so I actually knew it.
01:17:04
◼
►
I hate the dipshits on Twitter who were like,
01:17:06
◼
►
"Oh, don't you know that?"
01:17:07
◼
►
And it's like, you know what,
01:17:09
◼
►
I'm a big fan of Fahrenheit, everybody knows it.
01:17:13
◼
►
I'm okay with miles instead of kilometers.
01:17:16
◼
►
But you know, like for the volume,
01:17:21
◼
►
I mean, the imperial system is terrible.
01:17:24
◼
►
I mean, you know.
01:17:26
◼
►
And it even shows, like, you know,
01:17:28
◼
►
that you can buy like a two liter of soda, you know,
01:17:30
◼
►
like we do sell products and like the liter
01:17:33
◼
►
is the one thing that sort of seeped into American life.
01:17:36
◼
►
So I'm down with that.
01:17:37
◼
►
I can't remember for the life of me
01:17:39
◼
►
how many cups are in anything or anything like that.
01:17:41
◼
►
But I knew the answer to this,
01:17:43
◼
►
But I just thought off the top of my head, hey,
01:17:45
◼
►
here's a question to ask Siri on the HomePod.
01:17:50
◼
►
And the way that this interaction went bad was--
01:17:54
◼
►
I swear to God, this is verbatim, word for word,
01:17:56
◼
►
what she said.
01:17:57
◼
►
And then I immediately, after this,
01:18:00
◼
►
immediately tried it again.
01:18:02
◼
►
And I said the same thing.
01:18:03
◼
►
Hey, HomePod, how many quarts are in a gallon?
01:18:05
◼
►
And it got the right answer.
01:18:08
◼
►
I said, there's four quarts in a gallon immediately.
01:18:11
◼
►
So I got it.
01:18:12
◼
►
I had this comical response, immediately asked again,
01:18:16
◼
►
and it gave me the right answer.
01:18:18
◼
►
And so a whole bunch of people on Twitter,
01:18:21
◼
►
I didn't explain it.
01:18:22
◼
►
All I did was post the transcript of my interaction
01:18:24
◼
►
and a whole bunch of people said,
01:18:25
◼
►
"I just tried it, it works for me."
01:18:27
◼
►
But I thought it was kind of enlightening
01:18:31
◼
►
that the way that this blew up
01:18:34
◼
►
and became a widely retweeted and liked and everything,
01:18:37
◼
►
clarified for me some mushy thinking
01:18:40
◼
►
on what's wrong with Siri.
01:18:43
◼
►
And that sort of like, hey, I tried it, it worked for me.
01:18:48
◼
►
And the fact that it worked for me, five seconds later,
01:18:51
◼
►
I get it, I see that all the time.
01:18:53
◼
►
And that to me is the fundamental problem with Siri today.
01:18:58
◼
►
And it's not how much Siri can do
01:19:01
◼
►
and how many features Siri has.
01:19:05
◼
►
And even though I think that's what too many people
01:19:07
◼
►
focused on compared to the Amazon Alexa on the Echo products and the Google on theirs
01:19:14
◼
►
and how many home, smart home stuff they can hook up to and what syntax you have to use,
01:19:19
◼
►
blah, blah, blah. To me, that's way--you're already past the fundamental problem, which
01:19:23
◼
►
is that Siri is completely unreliable, even at the things that Siri can do and maybe even
01:19:30
◼
►
does most of the time correctly. But if you can't count on it--I don't know what percentage
01:19:36
◼
►
of my queries like how many courts are in a gallon go wrong like this. But whatever
01:19:43
◼
►
that percentage is, and I'm going to guess it's, I'm going to say off the top of my head,
01:19:47
◼
►
it's 10%, maybe 15%. And I could be way wrong either way because I don't keep track of it
01:19:54
◼
►
and human memory is very faulty. But whatever that percentage is, it's way, way, way too
01:20:00
◼
►
high and it breeds contempt. It breeds absolute contempt for the feature. And the analogy
01:20:10
◼
►
I would draw is that when I click or tap, you know, on the Mac I click and on the iOS
01:20:18
◼
►
I tap a button on the screen. And I know that I've hit the target correctly, that my mouse
01:20:26
◼
►
is within the buttons region or my finger is with touches within the button tap region,
01:20:33
◼
►
what percentage of the time does that button actually activate when I tap it? That percentage
01:20:38
◼
►
is very, very close to 100% and it may well be 100%. It may well be that I, in the what,
01:20:47
◼
►
five, six months I've been using an iPhone 10, that I haven't once tapped the screen
01:20:51
◼
►
on a tap target and not had the tap target fire.
01:20:56
◼
►
When I type a key on my keyboard, and this gets to some of the problems with the new
01:21:00
◼
►
MacBook Pro keyboard, when I type a D key, how many times do I get a D on the screen?
01:21:06
◼
►
A hundred percent of the time.
01:21:08
◼
►
Not 99% of the time, not 99.8% of the time.
01:21:11
◼
►
A hundred percent of the time.
01:21:13
◼
►
And anything less than that is unacceptable.
01:21:16
◼
►
And I feel like that's the problem with Siri.
01:21:18
◼
►
And I get it that Siri's not, in the year 2018,
01:21:22
◼
►
Siri's not going to be at 100%,
01:21:24
◼
►
and it's probably not gonna be at 99%,
01:21:27
◼
►
but it should be in the high 90s,
01:21:29
◼
►
and it's nowhere near that.
01:21:31
◼
►
- Yeah, Siri has a lot of, I think, pretty big problems
01:21:36
◼
►
and pretty big challenges,
01:21:37
◼
►
but the reliability is definitely, I think,
01:21:41
◼
►
one of the biggest, because when this was introduced,
01:21:45
◼
►
again, in 2011, that was a long time ago,
01:21:48
◼
►
and Apple really was indeed way ahead of the competition then.
01:21:51
◼
►
You know, it's kind of like, you know,
01:21:52
◼
►
when they introduced the iPhone and Steve sat on stage
01:21:56
◼
►
that they were five years ahead of the competition.
01:21:58
◼
►
And that proved to be roughly correct.
01:22:01
◼
►
It really did.
01:22:02
◼
►
- With Siri, I think they were, you know, similar,
01:22:05
◼
►
you know, maybe like three to five years
01:22:06
◼
►
ahead of the competition.
01:22:08
◼
►
But it seemed like the competition then, of course,
01:22:11
◼
►
caught up in that time, like Siri, you know,
01:22:13
◼
►
like many Apple innovations do,
01:22:14
◼
►
Siri kind of set the roadmap of the rest of the industry
01:22:18
◼
►
for them, and so they did, the industry followed.
01:22:22
◼
►
But it seemed like Siri has not gotten better
01:22:27
◼
►
at anywhere near the rate
01:22:28
◼
►
that everyone else is getting better.
01:22:30
◼
►
It seems like Siri gets better
01:22:32
◼
►
at an absolutely glacial pace compared to developments
01:22:37
◼
►
at Amazon, Google, and even Microsoft.
01:22:42
◼
►
So it seems like, and I don't know what it is,
01:22:46
◼
►
I don't know what exactly Siri's challenges are,
01:22:49
◼
►
whether there's like problems with the project or whatever.
01:22:52
◼
►
I have no idea, it doesn't really matter.
01:22:53
◼
►
What matters from the outside is that it is fundamentally
01:22:57
◼
►
way too unreliable compared to its competitors
01:23:02
◼
►
and also seems to be improving way too slowly.
01:23:06
◼
►
And there's a lot of things the competitors can do
01:23:09
◼
►
that Siri still can't do.
01:23:11
◼
►
There's a lot of basic things that the competitors do
01:23:13
◼
►
faster and more reliably than Siri does.
01:23:17
◼
►
And there's a lot of things that I think
01:23:20
◼
►
the competitors have figured out about
01:23:21
◼
►
how to design the system, how things should respond,
01:23:25
◼
►
how things should be that Apple seems to either
01:23:27
◼
►
disagree with or not care about.
01:23:29
◼
►
Like one of the big things there is like
01:23:31
◼
►
Siri is very kind of a smart ass about certain things.
01:23:36
◼
►
- Yeah, I've mentioned that before.
01:23:38
◼
►
You can be a smart ass if you're really,
01:23:40
◼
►
really good at your job.
01:23:42
◼
►
You can occasionally be a smart ass.
01:23:44
◼
►
- And you know that as a smart ass yourself.
01:23:47
◼
►
You know that.
01:23:48
◼
►
And I know it as somebody who's a bit of a smart ass
01:23:51
◼
►
and in my youth was an intolerable smart ass.
01:23:55
◼
►
But only when I knew that I was the smartest person
01:23:57
◼
►
in the room. - Now you're definitely not.
01:23:59
◼
►
Yeah. (laughs)
01:24:01
◼
►
But if I was somebody's assistant
01:24:03
◼
►
and I acted the way that I do
01:24:06
◼
►
while I also messed up a third of the things
01:24:08
◼
►
that I was asked to do in comically obtuse ways,
01:24:12
◼
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I would be fired in a day.
01:24:13
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Like it would take less than a day I'd be fired.
01:24:17
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Like Siri, I think there's always been this design
01:24:21
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of Siri to be like kind of a smart ass
01:24:23
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and that was kind of cute in 2011.
01:24:26
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But, and it would still be kind of okay.
01:24:29
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I mean, not always, honestly, I think a lot of,
01:24:31
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it turns off a lot of people,
01:24:32
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but it would still be kind of okay
01:24:35
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if Siri was just awesome and if it did everything like awesomely.
01:24:40
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But the reality is like, you know, no voice assistant
01:24:45
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is as reliable as our keyboards and our other input devices.
01:24:51
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And that's kind of a shame, honestly. If you think, you know, your earlier thing about, you know,
01:24:55
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how often does a keyboard fail or does tapping on a screen fail?
01:25:00
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I'm not sure there's any other area of consumer computing that we tolerate as high as we can.
01:25:04
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rate as high of an error rate as we do with with voices. No, it's no, I mean, the only
01:25:10
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other thing I can think of is is my Apple TV remote is not as accurate as my as my mouse
01:25:19
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at my iMac, my trackpad on my MacBook Pro or my keyboard like or the touchscreen on
01:25:27
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my iPhone and iPad. There's definitely a, I overshoot things with that remote or, or,
01:25:34
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but it's still way more accurate and efficient, you know, a combination of accuracy, reliability
01:25:41
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and efficiency than Siri way more. It's, it's not even close. And I've been, I was puttering
01:25:47
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around with the fire TV again recently, just, I wanted to see, I want to get to it later,
01:25:54
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to talk about the updated YouTube app for Apple TV.
01:25:58
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And I wanted to see what was going on
01:26:00
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on the Fire TV with YouTube,
01:26:02
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because there's that whole pissing match
01:26:04
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between Amazon and Google,
01:26:06
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where Amazon booted off the official,
01:26:10
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or YouTube yanked the official YouTube app
01:26:13
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or started blocking it, and we could get into that.
01:26:16
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But their remote is sort of Apple TV-like in its minimalism.
01:26:21
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I don't know if you have one.
01:26:24
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Do you have a Fire TV product?
01:26:25
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- I bought the first one, I have since sold it,
01:26:29
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but does it still have that same kind of black,
01:26:31
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almost like triangular profile remote?
01:26:33
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- Yeah, sort of.
01:26:35
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It's got a circular D-pad at the top,
01:26:38
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sort of a lot like the old Apple TV remote.
01:26:40
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It's got a circular D-pad at the top,
01:26:43
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a home button, a back button, and a menu button.
01:26:46
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The menu button is the one that puts it a little bit more
01:26:49
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in the more buttons than Apple has.
01:26:52
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But it's, you know, it's roughly Apple TV-like
01:26:55
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and it's minimalism.
01:26:56
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And it's not, I like the Apple TV,
01:27:04
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maybe it's 'cause I'm used to it,
01:27:06
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'cause I use Apple TV almost every day.
01:27:08
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I like the Apple TV, we could do a whole show
01:27:13
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and we all, you and I always go along,
01:27:15
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and we could do a whole show about the problems
01:27:17
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with Apple TV's remote.
01:27:20
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But the basic idea of a touchpad on a remote,
01:27:22
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I think, is definitely a solid one.
01:27:26
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There are times when it's so much-- it is nice and efficient.
01:27:29
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It feels like I can go more than one row.
01:27:31
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Like, the D-pad on the Fire one, it's like one click at a time sucks.
01:27:36
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And if you press and hold, it goes way too fast.
01:27:38
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But even so, I never feel as completely frustrated
01:27:45
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as I do when a Siri interaction goes wrong.
01:27:47
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And think about that.
01:27:48
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I do think that this one that I tweeted, it's really interesting how it went wrong.
01:27:53
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So the it's four interactions, two for me, two from Siri.
01:27:57
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And my first one is how many courts are in a gallon, which should be,
01:28:02
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you know, and again, I don't know, you know, to Apple's credit,
01:28:06
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they at least have the right goal,
01:28:08
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which is that they want to allow arbitrary syntax.
01:28:13
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Like you don't have to say, maybe I would have gotten a better result if I said,
01:28:18
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"Hey, convert one gallon to quarts."
01:28:22
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I don't know if that's better
01:28:24
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►
than how many quarts are in a gallon.
01:28:26
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But Apple's stated goal, which I think is admirable
01:28:29
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and which is correct,
01:28:30
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which is that it should just process language the way we do,
01:28:33
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where if I asked you, a human, thinking you knew the answer,
01:28:38
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it wouldn't matter to you which way I put it, right?
01:28:41
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And so I think it's admirable from Apple's perspective
01:28:44
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that they're approaching it that way.
01:28:46
◼
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And her response is, "What would you like me
01:28:49
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"to convert one gallon to?"
01:28:51
◼
►
So she obviously knew I was converting something to gallons,
01:28:56
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but must have misheard me say quarts,
01:28:58
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►
but it's just a weird thing.
01:29:00
◼
►
But then she asks me, "What would you like me
01:29:02
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"to convert one gallon to?"
01:29:04
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And all I said was the one word answer, quarts.
01:29:06
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And so she was in the mode where she's listening
01:29:09
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►
for me to respond.
01:29:10
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I didn't have to say, "Hey, HomePod, quarts."
01:29:14
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I could just, you know, there's certain multi-step things with Siri where she's expecting an
01:29:19
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►
answer and you can just say it.
01:29:21
◼
►
So what would you like me to convert one gallon to?
01:29:24
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I say one word, quartz, and somehow this gets misconstrued as what is quartz, the mineral.
01:29:33
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Yeah, that's…
01:29:34
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►
There's no excuse for that.
01:29:35
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►
It's a really strange interaction.
01:29:39
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►
really bizarre to me that she asked me what would I like to convert one gallon
01:29:43
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to and and if anything knowing that I was converting a gallon you would think
01:29:48
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you know listen for common forms of you know volume measures of volume you know
01:29:55
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whether they right yeah you didn't say like miles or airplanes or whatever it's
01:30:00
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►
like it was something that's very that it should be a very expected and common
01:30:04
◼
►
response to that question and and quartz should be on a very short list of things
01:30:09
◼
►
an English speaker might want to convert one gallon to. It's a very bizarre way for that
01:30:14
◼
►
to have gone off the rails. And again, immediately, within 10 seconds, I took a little bit of
01:30:21
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►
time just to jot it down, because I really suspected I wouldn't be able to reproduce
01:30:25
◼
►
it. So I wanted to get it down as best I could. And I even quick looked up the Quartz QRTZ
01:30:33
◼
►
Wikipedia page to make sure that—and it was word for word, so I didn't have to memorize
01:30:37
◼
►
that portion of it. I could just copy and paste it from Wikipedia. And then immediately
01:30:42
◼
►
tried it again and it worked. And it did. But to me, that level of unreliability is
01:30:48
◼
►
why people stop using it. And the problem is we're no longer at the point where Siri
01:30:56
◼
►
is, "Well, it's okay if it sucks because it's just sort of an extra and nobody really
01:31:01
◼
►
depends on it." Because now, with HomePod, they're shipping a product where the primary
01:31:05
◼
►
interfaces Siri. And again, even just leave aside, just leave aside the comparisons to
01:31:13
◼
►
Alexa and Google Assistant. Just judge it on its own merits. Is it good enough? And
01:31:19
◼
►
I really do think the answer is no, it's it's not it's like having it would be like shipping
01:31:23
◼
►
a touchscreen phone before capacitive touchscreens, right? Like back in the when you had to press
01:31:30
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►
real hard era.
01:31:32
◼
►
- Yeah, exactly.
01:31:33
◼
►
Like this, Siri is very frustrating to me
01:31:37
◼
►
because I want so badly to only be
01:31:40
◼
►
in the Apple ecosystem for this stuff.
01:31:43
◼
►
Like I want so badly to not have an Amazon cylinder
01:31:47
◼
►
of commerce and creepiness in my kitchen.
01:31:49
◼
►
Like I want that to be a HomePod.
01:31:51
◼
►
I want to be all in on Apple stuff
01:31:53
◼
►
because a lot of stuff just works better that way
01:31:55
◼
►
and I like their privacy and I like their apparent
01:31:58
◼
►
sound quality and niceness of their devices and everything.
01:32:00
◼
►
are like, I want so badly for that to be the case,
01:32:03
◼
►
but Siri, I really think is holding them back
01:32:06
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►
in some pretty big ways.
01:32:08
◼
►
It just is not good enough.
01:32:10
◼
►
You know, I think you're right.
01:32:12
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►
The rate of just errors and weirdness and unreliability
01:32:17
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►
and honestly, fragmentation is another major concern here.
01:32:21
◼
►
Of like, you know, Siri on different platforms
01:32:22
◼
►
handling different things or not handling different things.
01:32:26
◼
►
I think that's a pretty big problem.
01:32:28
◼
►
There's lots of problems with Siri,
01:32:29
◼
►
But it all comes down to the fact that like, it is now seven years old, and it's still not reliable.
01:32:38
◼
►
And not to the sense that it's like 100% reliable, because as I said earlier, like, none of the voice assistants are 100% reliable.
01:32:45
◼
►
But like one of the most shocking things to me when I first got the Amazon Echo, after only having used Siri before that,
01:32:52
◼
►
was that the Echo, even though in some ways it is less advanced,
01:32:57
◼
►
like it's less advanced in things like non-English language support,
01:33:01
◼
►
in things like what order you say certain phrases in with like understanding the syntax.
01:33:06
◼
►
So there's areas that like Apple and its fans are always happy to try it out and say,
01:33:11
◼
►
"Well Siri is really advanced in these areas, fine."
01:33:15
◼
►
But the Amazon Echo is 100% reliable for me in what it can do.
01:33:19
◼
►
It almost never misunderstands me.
01:33:22
◼
►
It almost never gives me, I think I've heard
01:33:25
◼
►
like their version of like the, like when Siri says,
01:33:28
◼
►
sorry, I can't help you right now,
01:33:29
◼
►
where it's like basically like a server error happened.
01:33:32
◼
►
I've heard that on the Echo, I think twice in two years.
01:33:37
◼
►
And we use it multiple times a day for lots of stuff.
01:33:41
◼
►
So the Echo is clearly way ahead in reliability.
01:33:46
◼
►
It's also way ahead in speed.
01:33:48
◼
►
Like I remember when I first got it,
01:33:50
◼
►
just being amazed compared to Siri,
01:33:51
◼
►
just how quickly and how consistently
01:33:54
◼
►
it responded to things.
01:33:55
◼
►
So we have speed, consistency, and reliability
01:33:59
◼
►
with the Amazon Alexa service
01:34:01
◼
►
that we just don't have with Siri.
01:34:04
◼
►
And I think that, like, that shouldn't be the case.
01:34:08
◼
►
This is not one of Amazon's like core competencies,
01:34:12
◼
►
historically, this is not the kind of thing
01:34:13
◼
►
that like their products heavily depend on it.
01:34:16
◼
►
Well, now they do, but they didn't at the time.
01:34:17
◼
►
Apple should be kicking Amazon's butt in this area.
01:34:21
◼
►
And the fact that they're not, I think,
01:34:22
◼
►
should be cause for serious concern in the company
01:34:25
◼
►
because this is not just some toy accessory feature
01:34:30
◼
►
that is kind of a fun thing.
01:34:32
◼
►
Like you said, this is becoming a really important feature
01:34:35
◼
►
and in some ways the most important feature
01:34:37
◼
►
of certain products.
01:34:38
◼
►
And it's just embarrassing that Apple seems to be
01:34:44
◼
►
unable to compete to that let to even a basic level of reliability and quality compared to
01:34:50
◼
►
What the other players in this same market were able to do in less time
01:34:55
◼
►
It's in arguable to me that Siri is the primary interface to home pod
01:34:59
◼
►
I don't see how else you I don't see how you could argue. Otherwise sure you can control it by airplay and
01:35:05
◼
►
Yes, there are hardware volume buttons and you can tap it for play pause, but it's it's clearly
01:35:12
◼
►
I mean, it doesn't ship with a remote control.
01:35:14
◼
►
I mean, there's no--
01:35:16
◼
►
- The fact that it doesn't ship with a remote control,
01:35:18
◼
►
and it's conceived that the remote control is your voice.
01:35:22
◼
►
- And one could argue that the Siri might even be
01:35:26
◼
►
a pretty close second interface for the Apple Watch.
01:35:28
◼
►
- Exactly, you took the words right out of my mouth.
01:35:31
◼
►
And AirPods, AirPods a little bit less so,
01:35:36
◼
►
but I think if Siri was better on AirPods
01:35:39
◼
►
and faster to respond, it would be primary.
01:35:43
◼
►
Like it's only not primary because it takes so long
01:35:46
◼
►
and isn't reliable for like, you know,
01:35:50
◼
►
changing what you're listening to or play pause
01:35:53
◼
►
or you know, changing the volume and stuff like that.
01:35:58
◼
►
And their future products are going to be,
01:36:03
◼
►
I mean, what is Apple great at?
01:36:05
◼
►
They're great at making personal computers
01:36:08
◼
►
smaller and smaller and more personal and more personal.
01:36:11
◼
►
And once you get beneath the size of a phone,
01:36:15
◼
►
a screen is really not that great as a primary interface.
01:36:19
◼
►
I mean, that's a big deal.
01:36:21
◼
►
That's why I wanted to bring up Apple Watch and Siri
01:36:24
◼
►
and you saw it coming.
01:36:26
◼
►
It's good for, it's okay for literally displaying things
01:36:31
◼
►
like taking a glance at your watch to see what that tap was.
01:36:35
◼
►
But for responding, Siri would be,
01:36:37
◼
►
I would be better if Siri were reliable and fast enough.
01:36:41
◼
►
- Yeah, and I think we're seeing,
01:36:44
◼
►
like this is the direction
01:36:46
◼
►
that some pretty big markets are heading.
01:36:48
◼
►
Like obviously, I don't think Siri has a ton of,
01:36:53
◼
►
I don't think it's massively holding back
01:36:56
◼
►
the Mac or the iPad, and maybe not the phone,
01:37:00
◼
►
but that's kind of a maybe.
01:37:02
◼
►
But a lot of these markets where things are getting smaller
01:37:05
◼
►
and especially anything wearable, as you said,
01:37:07
◼
►
like anything where you have either no screen
01:37:09
◼
►
or a very small screen,
01:37:10
◼
►
that's only gonna get more important.
01:37:12
◼
►
And the other voice assistants are not standing still.
01:37:15
◼
►
They are really advancing quickly.
01:37:18
◼
►
And Amazon I don't think is gonna ever
01:37:21
◼
►
have great multi-language support
01:37:23
◼
►
because Amazon, the company,
01:37:25
◼
►
doesn't really have a lot of great support
01:37:26
◼
►
outside of the US for pretty much anything.
01:37:29
◼
►
Google does, and Google I think is doing pretty well
01:37:31
◼
►
in that area so far.
01:37:33
◼
►
Microsoft, probably also with Cortana,
01:37:35
◼
►
I don't know much about that, but from what I hear,
01:37:37
◼
►
it's pretty decent.
01:37:38
◼
►
This is an area where, again, Apple should be
01:37:42
◼
►
leading the way, this is user interface.
01:37:45
◼
►
And Apple, in their DNA and in their history,
01:37:49
◼
►
they have cared so deeply about making really great
01:37:53
◼
►
user interfaces and user experiences.
01:37:55
◼
►
And this is one area where, when it came out in 2011,
01:37:58
◼
►
it was like, well, it's kinda crappy and kind of unreliable,
01:38:02
◼
►
but it's pretty cool, let's see where this goes.
01:38:05
◼
►
And hopefully Apple will have the best one of these
01:38:08
◼
►
like forever, the same way they usually
01:38:09
◼
►
have the best interface.
01:38:10
◼
►
And that just hasn't happened,
01:38:12
◼
►
and it's been quite the opposite,
01:38:14
◼
►
where now like Siri seems like Windows
01:38:17
◼
►
by comparison to even the most basic Alexa interactions,
01:38:21
◼
►
because the Alexa interactions are just so damn fast
01:38:24
◼
►
and reliable and pretty smart, honestly.
01:38:28
◼
►
Like when I ask like general knowledge questions
01:38:31
◼
►
or like local questions.
01:38:32
◼
►
I will often try Siri first if I have my phone with me.
01:38:38
◼
►
And so often it just gives me bad results
01:38:41
◼
►
or no good results or a web search.
01:38:42
◼
►
And I ask the exact same question
01:38:44
◼
►
and the exact same phrasing to my Amazon Echo
01:38:47
◼
►
and it gives me the answer.
01:38:48
◼
►
And this doesn't happen every time that way
01:38:50
◼
►
but it happens a lot that way
01:38:51
◼
►
and it doesn't usually happen the other direction.
01:38:53
◼
►
So it's concerning to me like just quite
01:38:56
◼
►
how far behind Siri appears to be
01:38:59
◼
►
and how slowly it seems to ever change.
01:39:02
◼
►
It just seems like what I hope is coming
01:39:06
◼
►
is a massive reset or like a big Siri 2.0.
01:39:10
◼
►
I hope there's massive changes underfoot
01:39:13
◼
►
that we just aren't seeing yet
01:39:14
◼
►
because whatever they've been doing to date with Siri,
01:39:18
◼
►
it's just not good enough.
01:39:19
◼
►
And it doesn't seem to be getting good enough,
01:39:21
◼
►
quickly enough to ever catch up
01:39:24
◼
►
or ever even reach a minimum level of good.
01:39:27
◼
►
There was a funny thing, and it is funny because we were talking about how we don't like
01:39:34
◼
►
it when Siri tries to be funny, but there was a—Amy was the one who found it. But
01:39:44
◼
►
before the Super Bowl, if you asked the Echo who's going to win the Super Bowl, like,
01:39:49
◼
►
Siri has been—one of the things Siri has been ahead of is Siri's been hooked up to
01:39:52
◼
►
like sports betting lines for a while. So you can ask like who's the favorite in an
01:39:57
◼
►
upcoming major sports event, and Siri almost always can tell you exactly what the point
01:40:02
◼
►
spread is or if it's a different type of sport where it's just odds, what the odds
01:40:10
◼
►
But when you asked—did you hear about this?
01:40:11
◼
►
When you asked the Alexa before the Super Bowl who was going to win the Super Bowl,
01:40:14
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►
they programmed her with a total jab at the Patriots.
01:40:18
◼
►
Did you see this?
01:40:19
◼
►
She said, "The team favored to win is the—excuse me.
01:40:24
◼
►
Excuse me. It's the Patriots. That was tough to get out. But I'm flying with the Eagles
01:40:32
◼
►
on this one because of their relentless defense and the momentum they've been riding off
01:40:36
◼
►
their underdog status. E-A-G-L-E-S. Eagles. For whatever reason, Eagles fans, their chant
01:40:46
◼
►
is to just spell out the word Eagles, but they're very into it. I thought it was amazing.
01:40:53
◼
►
are speculating that it comes from the fact that Bob Kraft, the owner of the Patriots,
01:41:02
◼
►
is best friends with Trump, and that Bezos has his issues with Trump. Perhaps that was the reason.
01:41:10
◼
►
But for whatever reason, Echo was totally down with the Eagles in the Super Bowl. And I thought
01:41:15
◼
►
that was actually pretty charming. I thought that was actually one of these assistants trying to be
01:41:19
◼
►
be funny where it came off as pretty funny.
01:41:22
◼
►
- Meanwhile, I asked Siri the morning of the Super Bowl,
01:41:27
◼
►
who is playing the Super Bowl?
01:41:30
◼
►
And it told me Justin Timberlake.
01:41:32
◼
►
- Well, that's true.
01:41:34
◼
►
That is true.
01:41:35
◼
►
- Right, exactly, yeah, it's like, okay.
01:41:37
◼
►
And if you said who is playing in the Super Bowl,
01:41:39
◼
►
it would tell you the right answer,
01:41:41
◼
►
but if you said who is playing the Super Bowl,
01:41:43
◼
►
it treated that as a musical venue.
01:41:45
◼
►
Because as everyone knows,
01:41:48
◼
►
Super Bowl is primarily a musical venue. It's like you knew that the Eagles had a backup
01:41:53
◼
►
quarterback in but you didn't realize they were so desperate that they were going with
01:41:56
◼
►
Justin Timberlake. Yeah like it and it's like it's again it's like one of those it's just
01:42:03
◼
►
a great example of like okay I can see why a smart ass computer that isn't very advanced
01:42:10
◼
►
gave me that answer because like it interpreted who is playing place name as a musical venue
01:42:17
◼
►
question. Even though the Super Bowl halftime show is a very large event, sure,
01:42:24
◼
►
and it is a musical event, but if you say who is playing the Super Bowl that could
01:42:31
◼
►
have multiple meanings and I think the far more common interpretation of that
01:42:38
◼
►
is who is playing the sports game. Because I didn't say who was playing the
01:42:42
◼
►
Super Bowl halftime show. Like the Super Bowl halftime show is the name of the
01:42:45
◼
►
musical venue, the Super Bowl is a sporting event.
01:42:48
◼
►
And so there's like, it should have gotten that right.
01:42:52
◼
►
And again, it just, like your court saying,
01:42:54
◼
►
it just said something totally, to me, bonkers,
01:42:57
◼
►
even though it's not quite as bad as yours,
01:42:59
◼
►
'cause it at least like, you can at least see
01:43:01
◼
►
why it got there.
01:43:02
◼
►
- I feel like the next level of this needs to be
01:43:07
◼
►
a sort of, just, you know, I often say this
01:43:11
◼
►
as like a life lesson, like, honestly,
01:43:14
◼
►
I feel like where I sort of crossed from adolescence
01:43:18
◼
►
into adulthood was when I realized that there's no shame
01:43:22
◼
►
in saying I don't know when you don't know.
01:43:25
◼
►
And so, you know, it was just like a breakthrough in my life
01:43:27
◼
►
where I always was so, you know,
01:43:31
◼
►
worried about how smart I was,
01:43:32
◼
►
or if I didn't know something that it was shameful,
01:43:34
◼
►
I, you know, I should know the answer to everything.
01:43:37
◼
►
And it's like, if you just suddenly relax
01:43:38
◼
►
and realize that if you don't know something,
01:43:40
◼
►
don't waste people's time to say, you know what?
01:43:42
◼
►
I don't, I don't understand either.
01:43:43
◼
►
I don't understand this, can you stop and explain this to me
01:43:46
◼
►
in a way that I understand or if somebody asks you
01:43:49
◼
►
a question and you don't know, just say I don't know.
01:43:51
◼
►
I don't know.
01:43:52
◼
►
I want Siri to gain I don't know.
01:43:56
◼
►
So if you ask that question and she doesn't know,
01:43:59
◼
►
she's pretty sure you're either asking who's playing
01:44:01
◼
►
the halftime show or who's playing the game, just ask.
01:44:04
◼
►
Do you mean the game or the halftime show?
01:44:06
◼
►
Like what a human being would do.
01:44:08
◼
►
- Right, that would have been, yeah.
01:44:11
◼
►
Well a human being would have said the team names
01:44:12
◼
►
playing in the sporting event. But yeah, but even if a human was unsure and thought, you
01:44:17
◼
►
know, like, you know, it, there's an uncertainty to these virtual assistants that I will that
01:44:24
◼
►
that, you know, like a human should a normal human should pick that up. But you know, I
01:44:30
◼
►
could see how some an assistant, especially an AI one that isn't a human could think,
01:44:35
◼
►
Well, I don't think Marco is really all that into sports. So I'm not sure what he's asking
01:44:41
◼
►
about here. Just ask, and you could just say it quickly. Just say, "Do you mean the game
01:44:45
◼
►
or the halftime show?" And you could say, "The game," and then she would tell you who's playing
01:44:50
◼
►
in the game. That would be fine. You would walk away from that interaction without even
01:44:54
◼
►
thinking about that question in the middle, if it happened fast enough, roughly at the
01:44:59
◼
►
speed that it would happen if it was a human being. And computers are so much faster than
01:45:04
◼
►
human beings that there's no reason it shouldn't, even if it has to round trip to the cloud
01:45:09
◼
►
briefly, right? It could still happen at roughly the same speed as human interaction.
01:45:14
◼
►
You know, just think about the little questions you get asked. I've been thinking about this a
01:45:20
◼
►
lot lately, and it's like, we have a little, great little grocery store here in Center City,
01:45:26
◼
►
Philadelphia. It's called the Bruno Brothers, and they, you know, all sorts of great, like, Italian
01:45:33
◼
►
lunch meats and stuff and fresh break bread. So I stopped in and all I did is just get
01:45:38
◼
►
a big long loaf of Italian bread. And it comes in its own little paper sleeve. And I rang
01:45:46
◼
►
out. That's all I needed. And I rang out and the guy was gonna, you know, he was like,
01:45:50
◼
►
do you want to know you want a bag? And I was like, nah, because it's in a bag. But
01:45:53
◼
►
like him asking me, do I want a bag for my bread that's already in a bag? And that's
01:45:58
◼
►
all I've got to carry. Like, I didn't feel interrupted by that. You know, it because
01:46:02
◼
►
it happened at a speed and a pace and there's no reason that our virtual assistant shouldn't
01:46:08
◼
►
be able to interact with us like that. Like I don't expect it all to come out in one fluent
01:46:12
◼
►
query from a human that gives the answer, you know, but just have some back and forth.
01:46:16
◼
►
I love like if you were Siri, you would have asked a bag for what? And he would have said
01:46:24
◼
►
your bread and you would have been like bread is a big food product made from wheat. Right?
01:46:29
◼
►
The fact that she forgot we were talking about units of measure, it almost is like she's got a head injury.
01:46:36
◼
►
Right, yeah.
01:46:38
◼
►
You've hired an assistant, like a human, and it's great.
01:46:43
◼
►
And then, oh my God, terrible news.
01:46:46
◼
►
She's in a car accident, and she's injured her head, and then she comes back.
01:46:50
◼
►
And you ask a question like that, and all of a sudden she starts telling you about Quartz the mineral.
01:46:56
◼
►
know two seconds ago she just asked you a question about what do you want to
01:47:00
◼
►
convert gallons to you would feel terrible but you would think like well
01:47:03
◼
►
I've got a fire right yeah it's like this clearly this person like this is a
01:47:09
◼
►
tragedy but this also means this person probably can't write job you know and
01:47:13
◼
►
and it's like yeah here you don't have the human connection it's just this
01:47:16
◼
►
person can't do this this AI really is not very good at this job all right let
01:47:21
◼
►
me take a break here and thank our next sponsor that's our good friends at ero
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E-E-R-O. Eero makes Wi-Fi systems for your house and they use what's called a mesh network
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that are like a little, they call them a beacon. And the beacon, you just plug in like a night
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light goes right in the socket. There's no cable or anything. You just plug it in a socket
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somewhere like maybe at the top of some steps, stairway or something like that. And it even
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has a light because it could be a nightlight. So it has a nightlight. But if you don't want
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the nightlight, they're wonderful, excellent Euro app that you install on your phone, which
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from Eero adds a third 5 GHz radio and that makes it that's now tri-band and it's now
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twice as fast as its predecessor. And the first generation Eero is the fastest Wi-Fi
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if you already have first generation, you can add second generation hardware and it
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just works together. And the app is great. And the app lets you do all sorts of terrific
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things like do speed tests to make sure see what kind of upstream downstream connection
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you're getting. It's really it's just a great product. The beacon is half the size of the
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little of the normal stations that they have. And it really is it's very discreet. It is
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the sort of thing that doesn't junk up your house or anything like that no one will even
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notice that you've got it. But what you wind up with is a solid Wi Fi network, a single
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network mashed together with these multiple hardware units. So it's not like when you're
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moving from one area to another, your devices are going from one network to another. They
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just see one network and it really can thoroughly cover a large house or a difficult house with
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walls or something like that. It's really great. I use it here. You're hearing me right
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now speak to you over in the Eero network. I really do like this product. And to me,
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thing that I like is that it's just it could not have been easier to set up. I just plugged
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any more work than that to configure it. For someone as lazy as me that just wants good
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Wi-Fi throughout the house, that's really pretty great. What more am I supposed to tell
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I think I'm supposed to give you a URL and that's a euro.com. But what you got to remember,
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you got to remember is the code and it's a code that will get you free overnight shipping
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your house by tomorrow so there you go my thanks to euro.com for sponsoring the show
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what do you do on the underscore show do you do the ads due to the sponsors or does underscore
01:51:34
◼
►
- I do 'em, it's basically like a smaller version of ATP.
01:51:39
◼
►
- So do you like, is it relaxing
01:51:41
◼
►
to not have to do the sponsors?
01:51:43
◼
►
- Oh, it's glorious.
01:51:46
◼
►
Like what I love about doing this show
01:51:48
◼
►
is I can just walk over to my desk
01:51:50
◼
►
five seconds before we were gonna record
01:51:52
◼
►
and just sit down and just start.
01:51:54
◼
►
And I don't have to have any windows open,
01:51:56
◼
►
I don't have to be like watching like the script
01:51:59
◼
►
or the program or you know, having the list of sponsors out.
01:52:02
◼
►
Like with ATP, at first I started,
01:52:05
◼
►
for years I would do the ads live as we recorded,
01:52:07
◼
►
and that was terrible,
01:52:10
◼
►
because not only would I screw them up a lot
01:52:12
◼
►
and require lots of editing,
01:52:13
◼
►
but the whole show, I was like,
01:52:16
◼
►
I was always like a little bit distracted that,
01:52:20
◼
►
oh, I had this ad I have to fit in sometime,
01:52:22
◼
►
like I have to like wait for a time and then jump on it
01:52:24
◼
►
and just start doing it,
01:52:26
◼
►
and it was always distracting me
01:52:27
◼
►
from listening to the conversation
01:52:29
◼
►
or really being more in-depth about my own conversations.
01:52:34
◼
►
And so I started about, I don't know, six months ago
01:52:37
◼
►
or a year ago, I started basically pre-recording them,
01:52:40
◼
►
but I want it to sound like I'm doing them live.
01:52:43
◼
►
So I record them like a half hour before I record the show.
01:52:47
◼
►
So it's like my same setup,
01:52:48
◼
►
like it's the same night I'm recording,
01:52:50
◼
►
my voice sounds the same, the room is the same.
01:52:52
◼
►
So it's still kind of like a mad rush
01:52:56
◼
►
to get everything done before each show,
01:52:59
◼
►
But now I at least like during the show,
01:53:00
◼
►
I don't have to worry about it so much.
01:53:02
◼
►
So during the show, like I can be more present
01:53:04
◼
►
in the conversation and not be constantly looking
01:53:07
◼
►
at the sponsor list and trying to figure out
01:53:09
◼
►
like when I can do each one.
01:53:10
◼
►
The downside is that it allows me to be
01:53:13
◼
►
a little bit more of a perfectionist.
01:53:15
◼
►
So a lot of times I have to do an ad read
01:53:17
◼
►
like five times before I actually get it right.
01:53:19
◼
►
- That's the same with me.
01:53:20
◼
►
90% of the ad reads I do on the talk show,
01:53:23
◼
►
I just do live during recording
01:53:25
◼
►
like I did right there with Eero.
01:53:28
◼
►
probably more than 90%, but then every once in a while,
01:53:30
◼
►
something happens, either I botch it
01:53:32
◼
►
or something happens in between recording
01:53:35
◼
►
and doing the show, or I go to record
01:53:38
◼
►
and there's a sponsor who's set to go,
01:53:40
◼
►
but they still haven't given us the thing
01:53:43
◼
►
and I have to do that the next day.
01:53:45
◼
►
And when I do that, I almost never ever redo a read
01:53:50
◼
►
when I do it live during the recording like this.
01:53:52
◼
►
And every single time I do it independently by myself,
01:53:58
◼
►
I can't, there is something,
01:54:00
◼
►
I've developed some kind of mental muscle
01:54:03
◼
►
where I no longer feel weird or awkward
01:54:11
◼
►
talking to somebody like you doing the show.
01:54:14
◼
►
Like I'm very comfortable right now
01:54:17
◼
►
having this conversation with you,
01:54:18
◼
►
even knowing that we're recording it
01:54:20
◼
►
and tens of thousands of people
01:54:22
◼
►
will soon be listening to it,
01:54:25
◼
►
which originally I always felt very self-conscious about,
01:54:28
◼
►
but I've developed a comfort.
01:54:30
◼
►
But when I'm here just talking into the microphone
01:54:34
◼
►
and nobody's listening to me, I feel incredibly awkward.
01:54:37
◼
►
I don't know if you took notice that one of the reads
01:54:43
◼
►
last week I had to redo, Paul Kaphasis was the guest,
01:54:48
◼
►
and I had to do one of the reads the next day.
01:54:53
◼
►
I don't know if you noticed. I forgot. Honestly, I usually skip ads. I thought it was a good
01:55:01
◼
►
one. What was it? It was the Casper one because Casper had, you know this too because I think
01:55:11
◼
►
they were on ATP. Yeah, the President's Day sale. And it was sort of like, they were like,
01:55:20
◼
►
If your show airs on these dates in February, we want you to do the President's Day sale.
01:55:25
◼
►
And the show is going to come out the day before, but at night.
01:55:29
◼
►
And so we had the same issue.
01:55:31
◼
►
And we actually went ahead, Jesse, like, go check with them.
01:55:34
◼
►
Like, can we do it?
01:55:35
◼
►
Like, what should we do the day before this day was going to come out at like, like 1030
01:55:39
◼
►
at night the day before.
01:55:43
◼
►
And they were like, we'd rather have the President's Day sale.
01:55:45
◼
►
So I was like, I can do that.
01:55:47
◼
►
I can do it the next day.
01:55:48
◼
►
But I also had, I don't know if it sounded weird to people, if any, you know, backstory,
01:55:52
◼
►
if you thought that the Casper's President's Day sale sounded weird last week, it was because
01:55:58
◼
►
when I recorded with Paul, my voice was still really hoarse from having been out in Las
01:56:03
◼
►
Vegas for the Super Bowl.
01:56:05
◼
►
And I always come back from Vegas with a hoarse voice because it's dry and people smoke cigarettes.
01:56:10
◼
►
And I'm not used to either, I'm not used to desert air and I'm not used to breathing cigarette
01:56:14
◼
►
combined with the fact that in while watching the Super Bowl it's a really
01:56:19
◼
►
noisy big cavernous room and to say anything you have to yell so when I
01:56:24
◼
►
recorded I think on Wednesday with Paul my voice was still a mess and by
01:56:27
◼
►
Thursday it was already sounding better but I was as I'm recording the ad I'm
01:56:31
◼
►
like I should I should like scream a little or something to horse it up my
01:56:35
◼
►
voice to get it back to where it was anyway yeah this is why like whenever
01:56:41
◼
►
you record I do it the same night like right right before the show because
01:56:44
◼
►
because otherwise it sounds different.
01:56:46
◼
►
And I think most people really don't care, but I care.
01:56:50
◼
►
Like when I'm doing it, I care that I want this to sound
01:56:54
◼
►
totally seamless.
01:56:55
◼
►
- Speaking of ad skipping, one of the recent things
01:56:59
◼
►
that have come out in the world of podcasting
01:57:00
◼
►
is Apple's long-awaited analytics have come out.
01:57:04
◼
►
And so if you have a podcast in the iTunes store
01:57:08
◼
►
and you've signed up for their,
01:57:10
◼
►
I guess I don't think you can get listed
01:57:12
◼
►
which are not in Podcast Connect, right?
01:57:14
◼
►
Like they don't just list podcasts.
01:57:17
◼
►
- Yeah, you have to sign up.
01:57:18
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I think the only question is like,
01:57:20
◼
►
you know, if you signed up a while ago
01:57:22
◼
►
and you forgot what email you used,
01:57:24
◼
►
like you might have to like basically like claim it
01:57:26
◼
►
from them or register in a certain way with them.
01:57:28
◼
►
I forget how, I did it a while ago,
01:57:29
◼
►
so I forgot how to do this,
01:57:30
◼
►
but like I was already registered in some way.
01:57:33
◼
►
- Well, I have a cheat move 'cause I know,
01:57:35
◼
►
I know some people on the podcast team there.
01:57:37
◼
►
- Yeah, that's totally BS.
01:57:38
◼
►
- But I do think though that,
01:57:40
◼
►
Everybody, I think that's why they have the one special iTunes tag for the RSS feed
01:57:46
◼
►
with an email address. That if you can email from the address that's in your RSS feed,
01:57:51
◼
►
they trust it. And that makes a certain amount of sense that, you know, if somebody has right
01:57:58
◼
►
access to your RSS feed for your podcast, you're screwed already.
01:58:03
◼
►
Yeah, yeah. The game's over at that point.
01:58:07
◼
►
But anyway, they came out with these analytics and what the advertising industry wants is,
01:58:14
◼
►
of course, their JavaScript to be running all the time, turning on your camera to look
01:58:22
◼
►
at you while you listen to podcasts.
01:58:24
◼
►
The most intrusive thing you can possibly imagine, like all of standard web advertising
01:58:29
◼
►
technology has fallen into where your fucking battery goes dead because of ads on web pages
01:58:36
◼
►
Of course that's what they want and of course Apple wasn't willing to give them anything
01:58:41
◼
►
close to that, but they do have some basic listening stats.
01:58:46
◼
►
And I was super happy but totally not surprised that the graph of every episode of my show
01:58:53
◼
►
looks pretty much the same, which is that most people listen to the end, there's some
01:59:02
◼
►
drop off, but that, you know, and I think some of that could correspond to people who
01:59:05
◼
►
started listening to it and then listen somewhere else and it's not connected there. And you
01:59:11
◼
►
can see in each episode, three dips where the sponsor reads go, and those dips are surprisingly
01:59:19
◼
►
shallow. So yes, there are people who skip ads, but it is a definite minority of listeners.
01:59:28
◼
►
And I, you know, I've said before, I often say it when you're on because we get into
01:59:31
◼
►
shop talk about running a podcast. But I just see my job doing these ads as trying to make
01:59:37
◼
►
them as interesting as possible, both for everybody's benefit, for the sponsor's benefit.
01:59:43
◼
►
Even if you've heard me talk about ERO before or Squarespace, what can I say that maybe
01:59:47
◼
►
would throw a monkey wrench in there and make you want to listen for another minute? And
01:59:54
◼
►
if you want to skip, skip. I'm not going to try to fight you. It's my job to make it interesting.
02:00:01
◼
►
We found pretty similar patterns when we looked at ATP stats in the same thing, which probably
02:00:08
◼
►
makes sense because we probably have a lot of the same audience, where it turns out most
02:00:12
◼
►
people listen to most shows all the way through and there's a small dip at the ad breaks that
02:00:18
◼
►
you can see, but it's on the order of maybe 15% fewer people listen to the ad breaks.
02:00:24
◼
►
It's not a huge jump down.
02:00:26
◼
►
You can also see where they're using a 30-second skip.
02:00:29
◼
►
it starts to come back in the second half of the ad read.
02:00:33
◼
►
- Right, exactly, yeah.
02:00:34
◼
►
- So I appreciate that.
02:00:37
◼
►
I've always wanted to know, but I'm not surprised.
02:00:41
◼
►
I often get emails from people when I mention it,
02:00:42
◼
►
and people are so nice,
02:00:44
◼
►
and I think it's because they realize that me,
02:00:48
◼
►
and I'm sure it's true for you guys too,
02:00:52
◼
►
I'm sure it's true for everybody at Relay,
02:00:55
◼
►
all the people who have shows there,
02:00:59
◼
►
But people realize that we're all very low to the ground here.
02:01:04
◼
►
There's no employees at Daring Fireball.
02:01:06
◼
►
There's no-- Six Colors doesn't have a sales department.
02:01:09
◼
►
There's not much-- there's really
02:01:14
◼
►
nothing between us and our readers and listeners.
02:01:19
◼
►
And I often get email that takes that into consideration.
02:01:23
◼
►
And they want us to succeed.
02:01:25
◼
►
And the gist of these emails often are, hey,
02:01:28
◼
►
I'm a long time listener of your show.
02:01:30
◼
►
I love it, I love every episode that comes out.
02:01:33
◼
►
I feel guilty though 'cause here's my personal,
02:01:37
◼
►
and it's so funny how many people repeat the same thing.
02:01:39
◼
►
They're like, I will listen to every sponsor
02:01:41
◼
►
for the first time and sometimes a second time,
02:01:43
◼
►
but then after that, I'll skip.
02:01:45
◼
►
And I'm like, that's great.
02:01:47
◼
►
And they're like, I write back,
02:01:48
◼
►
you don't need to apologize, that's fantastic.
02:01:51
◼
►
- Yeah, I'm happy with that.
02:01:54
◼
►
I mean, when I started doing chapters in ATP,
02:01:58
◼
►
question obviously becomes like you know how do you chapter ads like you know
02:02:01
◼
►
some people don't put chapters in the ads so you so it's harder to skip them
02:02:05
◼
►
if you want to. I decided I basically worked through a bunch of things and
02:02:10
◼
►
decided what I do is I put a chapter at the start of the ad when the ad is
02:02:17
◼
►
playing it shows it says sponsor colon name of sponsor and it links to the
02:02:20
◼
►
sponsor URL so it's actually kind of better if you're you know if you're
02:02:24
◼
►
interested in the product you get a link right there in the chapter title so like
02:02:27
◼
►
it's showing right on screen.
02:02:28
◼
►
You don't have to like go over to the show notes,
02:02:30
◼
►
scroll down to the bottom and find it like it's right there.
02:02:32
◼
►
So it's super easy.
02:02:34
◼
►
If you want to look at the sponsor, the link is right there.
02:02:36
◼
►
So I think sponsors are getting some additional value there.
02:02:39
◼
►
And then you can skip that chapter,
02:02:42
◼
►
but where that chapter ends is not at the end
02:02:46
◼
►
of the sponsor read, but like 10 seconds
02:02:48
◼
►
before the end of the sponsor read.
02:02:50
◼
►
And so if you skip the sponsor read,
02:02:53
◼
►
what you hear is the very end summary
02:02:56
◼
►
where it says, "For a great mattress, go to this URL
02:02:58
◼
►
"and use this promo code."
02:03:00
◼
►
That's what you hear.
02:03:02
◼
►
And so you're basically hearing a 10 second version
02:03:05
◼
►
of the ad or so.
02:03:07
◼
►
And that is what I found to be a very good compromise,
02:03:11
◼
►
where if you've heard the ad a million times,
02:03:13
◼
►
you already know what this company does.
02:03:15
◼
►
You hit skip, you get reminded of the URL
02:03:18
◼
►
and the promo code, and you move on.
02:03:22
◼
►
I've heard from both listeners and from advertisers
02:03:26
◼
►
that that seems to be a very good balance.
02:03:29
◼
►
- I wrote to Caleb Sexton who,
02:03:32
◼
►
after you posted that you did that,
02:03:34
◼
►
and he edits this show, and I said,
02:03:36
◼
►
"Hey, that's pretty clever, maybe we could do that."
02:03:38
◼
►
And he was like, "I've been trying to do that all along."
02:03:40
◼
►
And I was like, "Oh, I'll try to do a better job
02:03:42
◼
►
"of doing a good summary at the end of this spot, thanks."
02:03:46
◼
►
Or by all along he means ever since he's been using forecast
02:03:50
◼
►
or whatever the--
02:03:51
◼
►
- Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, forecast, yeah.
02:03:54
◼
►
Yeah, 'cause it, and you do have to like kind of,
02:03:56
◼
►
you know, structure your reads, like to,
02:03:58
◼
►
what I basically say is like,
02:04:00
◼
►
we're brought to you this week by so and so,
02:04:01
◼
►
here's the URL and the promo code,
02:04:03
◼
►
and then big long explanation for two minutes,
02:04:05
◼
►
and then here's, once again, go to this URL, promo code,
02:04:09
◼
►
thanks again, thanks to sponsor, you know,
02:04:10
◼
►
like so you have to structure it in a way where
02:04:12
◼
►
if you cut out the whole middle of it,
02:04:14
◼
►
it still makes some sense.
02:04:16
◼
►
- So when you guys record ATP, you guys,
02:04:18
◼
►
you sit there and you've got a soundboard thing,
02:04:21
◼
►
And so when like when Syracuse had mentioned file systems
02:04:25
◼
►
and you play the ding, that's live when you're recording.
02:04:27
◼
►
Like you don't do that in post.
02:04:29
◼
►
- No, it's a bell.
02:04:30
◼
►
I got, it's an actual bell.
02:04:32
◼
►
- So it's not even a soundboard app.
02:04:34
◼
►
You actually-- - I have a bell on my desk.
02:04:35
◼
►
- Keep a bell and you do that.
02:04:37
◼
►
What about--
02:04:39
◼
►
- Yeah, the only time I've ever used a soundboard app
02:04:41
◼
►
is when we did our live show last year.
02:04:43
◼
►
I had a soundboard app running
02:04:44
◼
►
so I could play like our ad transition music
02:04:47
◼
►
and the outro music and the theme song.
02:04:50
◼
►
That's the only reason I've ever used one.
02:04:52
◼
►
But when we record live, I have a bell on my desk
02:04:54
◼
►
and I bring it out and the first time
02:04:56
◼
►
he mentions file systems, I hit that bell
02:04:58
◼
►
and I put a bell away.
02:04:59
◼
►
- What about the car door for car talk?
02:05:01
◼
►
- I put that in during editing.
02:05:03
◼
►
- Ah, so that is in post.
02:05:04
◼
►
I thought that might have been live, I wasn't sure.
02:05:07
◼
►
- Although, that is actually my car door
02:05:09
◼
►
from the BMW I had like five years ago.
02:05:13
◼
►
I actually went out one night and recorded those sounds.
02:05:15
◼
►
So that was actually my car.
02:05:17
◼
►
- Speaking of cars, I wanna say,
02:05:19
◼
►
and while we're talking about ATP,
02:05:20
◼
►
before we get back to the max stuff,
02:05:21
◼
►
I wanna thank you guys for turning me on to the Grand Tour.
02:05:26
◼
►
I never watched Top Gear, and I'm not really a car person,
02:05:31
◼
►
but I've heard what--
02:05:32
◼
►
- Did we turn you on?
02:05:32
◼
►
I think we've hated the Grand Tour.
02:05:33
◼
►
- I know, but I know.
02:05:34
◼
►
- Did we actually turn you on?
02:05:35
◼
►
- Well, in a way, but you guys seemed to like
02:05:38
◼
►
Top Gear enough, and this Grand Tour thing
02:05:40
◼
►
was intriguing to me enough.
02:05:42
◼
►
And Jonas and I started watching it together,
02:05:46
◼
►
and we both love it.
02:05:47
◼
►
absolutely we watch season 2 first and just tore through it and
02:05:52
◼
►
We don't have Jonas and I don't have a lot of shows that we both like
02:05:57
◼
►
And and a lot of the ones we do are ones like Saturday night live that we watch with Amy -
02:06:04
◼
►
And I mean, it's not like I'm looking for shows that only Jonas and I watch but it's you know
02:06:09
◼
►
It's like a nice thing and like when he was growing up
02:06:11
◼
►
We loved the Star Wars the Clone Wars animated series and and the rebels thing
02:06:17
◼
►
But he's not into sports at all and a lot of what I watched during the day or like when he's still awake is sports
02:06:24
◼
►
And we both love the grand tour
02:06:27
◼
►
And and the thing I don't get though is you guys all seem to like when you watch it you like skip around like what?
02:06:33
◼
►
What are the parts that you skip past you just watch the parts when they're like actually reviewing cars
02:06:38
◼
►
Usually I will skip past any parts that have them in the studio. I love I love the parts. Oh yeah
02:06:47
◼
►
- A lot of them get pretty cringe word.
02:06:50
◼
►
Like not all of them, but yeah, a lot of them do.
02:06:53
◼
►
- And like back when it was Top Gear,
02:06:55
◼
►
I used to skip through a lot of that stuff
02:06:57
◼
►
because I would skip through the celebrity part
02:07:00
◼
►
because it would bring on usually like a British celebrity
02:07:03
◼
►
who I didn't know.
02:07:04
◼
►
And so I would skip it,
02:07:05
◼
►
I was like, well, I don't even know this person.
02:07:06
◼
►
I have no interest in this.
02:07:07
◼
►
And I skipped that section and just jump in
02:07:09
◼
►
to whatever they did next.
02:07:11
◼
►
The problem with the grand tour of the US,
02:07:14
◼
►
new US show is that they just I think need a lot more editing than what they
02:07:18
◼
►
are guys see I and a lot of the jokes and stuff that they do in the indoor
02:07:23
◼
►
segments I think are pretty I really disagree and Jonas likes it too we
02:07:28
◼
►
watch the whole thing straight through and it's I'm not gonna say every bit
02:07:32
◼
►
works but I think that they actually do a pretty good job of not letting any
02:07:37
◼
►
segment run too long and like when they do the thing that's most like a podcast
02:07:42
◼
►
the conversation street, it's always too short. It's like I would listen to those guys talk
02:07:47
◼
►
about cars for three times as long per episode. So I feel like they do a really good job of
02:07:52
◼
►
sort of leaving you wanting more. We love the show, we really do. And now we're like
02:07:57
◼
►
halfway through season one. And I give credit to you guys.
02:08:02
◼
►
I'm glad you enjoy it. Somebody has to.
02:08:04
◼
►
I think you should give it another shot when new episodes come out. I think you should
02:08:08
◼
►
just try just you know crack open an IPA or something just to take the edge off
02:08:12
◼
►
and then just just watch the whole show straight through I'm telling you it
02:08:15
◼
►
there's there there's something going on I don't know I I'm I really can't
02:08:20
◼
►
believe I never watched these guys before I really like it and I'm not even
02:08:23
◼
►
all that into cars well I'm glad you all right there was a thing last week and
02:08:33
◼
►
And actually the original scoop, it wasn't "Gurman,"
02:08:36
◼
►
it was actually, you know,
02:08:40
◼
►
Fried at Axios actually had the first story.
02:08:43
◼
►
I'm really digging Axios, by the way.
02:08:47
◼
►
I don't know if you read news on Axios,
02:08:48
◼
►
but Axios is this newish site that launched like last year.
02:08:53
◼
►
And they just, like the whole style of Axios,
02:08:57
◼
►
whether it's tech or politics or anything else they cover,
02:09:00
◼
►
is sort of breaking everything down
02:09:02
◼
►
into just like bullet points,
02:09:04
◼
►
which isn't how I'd wanna read everything,
02:09:07
◼
►
but it's really kind of efficient.
02:09:10
◼
►
And it's like, I either wanna read something
02:09:13
◼
►
that's truly a well-written article by a good writer,
02:09:16
◼
►
and you could really dig into it like a piece of steak,
02:09:20
◼
►
or I just want like the snack size tidbits.
02:09:23
◼
►
And I feel like so much of the news industry
02:09:26
◼
►
has sort of grown up around this idea
02:09:29
◼
►
You know if you've got three sentences to say you've still got to dress it up in 750 words
02:09:34
◼
►
History and whatever just to make it article length
02:09:38
◼
►
But anyway, you know had this story first before german that there was some kind of meeting
02:09:45
◼
►
Craig Federighi held
02:09:48
◼
►
To give a revised plan to employees
02:09:52
◼
►
And mentioned some features that were originally going to be set for iOS this year that got that are being pushed a year back
02:09:59
◼
►
including a refresh of the home screen and the CarPlay interface and some other things,
02:10:08
◼
►
but that there are new features, but that they're somehow doing something to focus on quality and
02:10:14
◼
►
performance a little bit more than before and giving certain projects more time to go.
02:10:20
◼
►
And then Germin, I think, had the story the same later in the same day, and I don't know
02:10:25
◼
►
if it was pressured because Ina had it first or if it was going to run anyway. But his
02:10:32
◼
►
story took more of an angle indicating that this is sort of a radical departure and that
02:10:38
◼
►
people who heard it were surprised by this, that this is a big change. And my take on
02:10:46
◼
►
it is that it's not a big change. It's like a course correction. And then there was a
02:10:51
◼
►
a good thread on Twitter by Steven Sinofsky who was you know used to head up
02:10:55
◼
►
the Windows division at Apple or Microsoft not Apple who sort of was
02:10:59
◼
►
making the same case that this sort of three-way three-headed thing of schedule
02:11:05
◼
►
quality and new features is always you know a balancing act I'm curious what
02:11:13
◼
►
you what do you think about this it's hard for me to really have a
02:11:20
◼
►
reasonable or useful opinion on the internal mechanics
02:11:25
◼
►
of how big companies balance this stuff,
02:11:27
◼
►
because I've never worked in a big company.
02:11:29
◼
►
So I really am not familiar with that kind of thing at all.
02:11:33
◼
►
All I can do is comment on what I see from the outside
02:11:36
◼
►
and what I experience with the products.
02:11:38
◼
►
Any way that I develop my stuff
02:11:42
◼
►
or that I prioritize quality and time and everything else
02:11:45
◼
►
is not at all the same way that a company like Apple
02:11:47
◼
►
would do pretty much anything.
02:11:48
◼
►
So what I can see is, I think it's clear that in recent years, Apple has struggled with quality,
02:11:57
◼
►
and they have been seemingly torn between a lot of competing desires of, you know, moving fast versus
02:12:05
◼
►
getting good quality stuff out there versus bug fixes versus expansion.
02:12:09
◼
►
And these aren't easy problems to solve, and they've been doing overall a pretty decent job of most of it.
02:12:17
◼
►
most of it. Like it's, the reason we're able to complain about minor problems here and
02:12:23
◼
►
there is because almost everything is great and almost everything has been working well
02:12:29
◼
►
for a long time and so you know the small stuff sticks out more. All I can see is that
02:12:40
◼
►
platforms and products that I like a lot, that I depend on a lot or that I feel like
02:12:45
◼
►
need attention, oftentimes don't get the attention.
02:12:50
◼
►
It seems like Apple has always been pretty bad at multitasking.
02:12:54
◼
►
And this isn't a Tim thing, this goes back
02:12:59
◼
►
to the Steve era too.
02:13:01
◼
►
Apple has been pretty bad at really well maintaining
02:13:03
◼
►
multiple platforms and many products.
02:13:09
◼
►
They do seem to have tunnel vision at times,
02:13:11
◼
►
where certain things will get the focus
02:13:11
◼
►
and everything else gets neglected pretty badly for a while.
02:13:15
◼
►
And then eventually it'll come around
02:13:18
◼
►
and the things that got neglected for a while
02:13:19
◼
►
will get a big burst of investment
02:13:21
◼
►
and then nothing for a few years or more.
02:13:23
◼
►
And again, they had this problem under Steve.
02:13:26
◼
►
- And it almost seems like that's happening again
02:13:28
◼
►
with the iPad, where last year iPad,
02:13:30
◼
►
for years people have been clamoring,
02:13:31
◼
►
well look, this thing is supposed to be
02:13:32
◼
►
a laptop replacement and it still has
02:13:34
◼
►
all the same multitasking features of a phone.
02:13:41
◼
►
of a 13 inch screen on my iPad Pro,
02:13:43
◼
►
why can't I put two apps up side by side, et cetera.
02:13:46
◼
►
And they finally addressed it, but now it seems like,
02:13:48
◼
►
according to these rumors, that big new, you know,
02:13:52
◼
►
major features like that for iPad
02:13:54
◼
►
are punted for next year again already.
02:13:56
◼
►
- Yeah, and it's hard to draw comparisons
02:14:01
◼
►
for like the way things used to be.
02:14:02
◼
►
Like, you know, people always say, well, you know,
02:14:04
◼
►
when the iPhone came out, like then,
02:14:06
◼
►
whatever version of Mac OS was that year,
02:14:08
◼
►
I forget, like it was delayed.
02:14:10
◼
►
And they famously said it took them too much effort
02:14:13
◼
►
on the iOS, anyway.
02:14:15
◼
►
It's really not that useful to make comparisons
02:14:18
◼
►
to how it was back then because Apple today
02:14:21
◼
►
is just vastly bigger and the competitive landscape
02:14:24
◼
►
is vastly different.
02:14:26
◼
►
It's such a different beast and such a different problem
02:14:29
◼
►
today that you can't just apply blanket wisdom
02:14:33
◼
►
or examples from the past.
02:14:35
◼
►
But it does seem like they still don't multitask very well.
02:14:40
◼
►
very well, like if they're all there growth
02:14:42
◼
►
and all the new product lines they've launched
02:14:44
◼
►
and everything, they still have that fundamental problem.
02:14:47
◼
►
And I don't know, some analysts like to talk about
02:14:50
◼
►
the corporate structure of Apple being
02:14:54
◼
►
functional rather than divisional or something like that.
02:14:56
◼
►
That's it, right?
02:14:57
◼
►
- Whatever that is.
02:14:59
◼
►
And I don't know, maybe that's holding them back
02:15:01
◼
►
in this area, I don't know.
02:15:03
◼
►
But whatever the cause and whatever possible solutions exist
02:15:07
◼
►
The problem to me is the same problem they've had
02:15:12
◼
►
for a very long time, which is they just don't multitask
02:15:18
◼
►
But today they have more platforms and products than ever
02:15:20
◼
►
that they're trying to maintain.
02:15:24
◼
►
And so even if, you know, back 10 years ago,
02:15:27
◼
►
maybe they could only really maintain like one or two things.
02:15:30
◼
►
Well now, maybe they can maintain 10 things,
02:15:33
◼
►
but they have 12.
02:15:32
◼
►
You know, like it's something like that.
02:15:34
◼
►
Like even if they've gotten better at it,
02:15:37
◼
►
they're still not able to do it well enough
02:15:40
◼
►
at the scale they're at today.
02:15:42
◼
►
And so you have things like, you know,
02:15:43
◼
►
things being neglected for a long time.
02:15:45
◼
►
You have like, I think one of the biggest,
02:15:48
◼
►
you know, for a while you were right,
02:15:49
◼
►
for a while the iPad was one of these things
02:15:51
◼
►
where it just seemed like iPad,
02:15:54
◼
►
the iPad OS was getting very little attention
02:15:56
◼
►
to Frankel for years.
02:15:58
◼
►
Fortunately, that seems to have turned around.
02:16:01
◼
►
Today I would say one of the big dangers of that is the Mac.
02:16:06
◼
►
I don't think I'm gonna make a lot of argument about that.
02:16:07
◼
►
The Mac has had not seemingly a ton of software investment
02:16:12
◼
►
in recent years, and it's really starting to have
02:16:17
◼
►
some pretty big problems.
02:16:18
◼
►
But again, I say this on a Mac, it's working.
02:16:21
◼
►
Everything's relative, I guess, but it seems like
02:16:27
◼
►
almost every week there's some kind of embarrassing
02:16:30
◼
►
quality or security flaw in Mac OS.
02:16:33
◼
►
And so like, obviously this is not getting
02:16:36
◼
►
the type of attention it deserves,
02:16:37
◼
►
or the time for bug fixing or quality assurance
02:16:41
◼
►
that it needs.
02:16:43
◼
►
So I think this is a problem that Apple can fix.
02:16:47
◼
►
Like, they have a massive amount of resources
02:16:51
◼
►
at their disposal.
02:16:52
◼
►
I think, you know, you can't just throw money
02:16:55
◼
►
at something and make it go away, it isn't that easy.
02:16:57
◼
►
but it's also really hard to argue
02:17:00
◼
►
that Apple can't do something
02:17:02
◼
►
because they don't have enough of something.
02:17:04
◼
►
That is really a tough argument
02:17:06
◼
►
because they have all the resources in the world.
02:17:10
◼
►
For example, if they can't hire enough engineers,
02:17:15
◼
►
well, fix that problem.
02:17:17
◼
►
Find ways to hire more engineers.
02:17:19
◼
►
More engineers exist, they work at lots of other places,
02:17:22
◼
►
why not Apple?
02:17:23
◼
►
And so maybe there's changes to policies or cultures
02:17:28
◼
►
or geographies that they need to make.
02:17:31
◼
►
I don't know, I don't know what the problem is,
02:17:32
◼
►
but these are problems that are within
02:17:35
◼
►
their control to solve.
02:17:36
◼
►
And so that ultimately what we need is a company
02:17:38
◼
►
that is able to maintain the many products
02:17:43
◼
►
and platforms and services that they keep launching,
02:17:48
◼
►
they keep expanding into.
02:17:50
◼
►
To me, it's not good if they just keep launching
02:17:54
◼
►
new platforms and new services and stuff
02:17:56
◼
►
and then just leave them to die
02:17:58
◼
►
while they work on the next big thing.
02:17:59
◼
►
That's not long-term gonna be healthy.
02:18:01
◼
►
- Yeah, it's a hard argument to,
02:18:06
◼
►
it's inherently mushy to say that it comes down
02:18:11
◼
►
to three things, schedule, features, quality.
02:18:13
◼
►
That's arbitrary to say those are the three things,
02:18:18
◼
►
But it's not a bad way to break it up.
02:18:22
◼
►
It's like the old analogy that you can have,
02:18:24
◼
►
what, good, soon, or cheap, pick two.
02:18:30
◼
►
The real thing is you can pick one,
02:18:32
◼
►
that they're all at odds with each other.
02:18:34
◼
►
But I do think that they've gone off the rails
02:18:39
◼
►
in recent years a little bit.
02:18:42
◼
►
And again, it's a course correction more than turning,
02:18:46
◼
►
Apple, especially the iPhone, you know, it's just this massive, massive ship analogy-wise.
02:18:52
◼
►
Just, you know, the biggest cruise ship you could imagine. And it's not like they need
02:18:57
◼
►
to turn this thing 90 degrees and go in a totally different direction and break all
02:19:01
◼
►
of this massive momentum they have. They need like a minor course correction, in my opinion.
02:19:05
◼
►
But in the long term, just a handful of years, if you're off by just a few degrees, you can
02:19:13
◼
►
wind up, you know, hundreds of miles away from where you should be. You know, it's
02:19:17
◼
►
important to make course corrections because even a minor course correction
02:19:21
◼
►
over time can get you way off track. And I feel like where Apple has gone wrong
02:19:27
◼
►
in recent years is emphasizing new features over improving
02:19:35
◼
►
existing features. It is the single biggest thing, and I think that's true
02:19:39
◼
►
across all their platforms. And I really, I just think that there's like, the Mac to
02:19:45
◼
►
me is the one that means the most to me personally. It's the one I love the most. If I could only
02:19:49
◼
►
use one Apple platform, I swear to God, I would give up my iPhone before I gave up using
02:19:53
◼
►
a Mac. That's how much I wouldn't even hesitate. If I had gone to my head, I wouldn't even
02:19:58
◼
►
really be a tough decision. And I might bitch about it every day for the rest of my life
02:20:03
◼
►
as I use a Google Pixel, but it's just too important to my work. If anything, maybe having
02:20:10
◼
►
a phone I like less would be better for my attention or something like that.
02:20:14
◼
►
And I worry the most about the Mac because I see weird things happening with the Mac
02:20:22
◼
►
that to me are worrisome because to me, as somebody who to me gets the Mac and what makes
02:20:29
◼
►
the Mac the Mac in a way that I even as a writer have trouble expressing
02:20:33
◼
►
sometimes because it's it's like trying to explain why I love my wife you know
02:20:38
◼
►
it's like I can give you reasons but there's also something ineffable about
02:20:43
◼
►
it that I can't explain and I see weird things happen on the Mac that to me are
02:20:48
◼
►
like this is weird and I'll just give you one minor example it's like I forget
02:20:52
◼
►
like two or three years ago when they added tab documents to to cocoa yeah
02:20:58
◼
►
Yeah, like I get it. I use tabs in Safari. I do I use tabs and terminal too
02:21:03
◼
►
and then they added it to like NS document and like any NS document based app could have tabs and
02:21:10
◼
►
It was all just so it it
02:21:14
◼
►
weird because it wasn't designed the system the UI wasn't designed from the get-go to have tab windows and
02:21:22
◼
►
Browsers kind of pulled it off because browsers have always sort of been a weird little world within a world where you can run apps
02:21:29
◼
►
within a browser, you know and
02:21:31
◼
►
Terminal is terminal and terminal is not really a normal app, but then to do it document wide and
02:21:38
◼
►
It's like well what keyboard shortcut are you gonna use because all these other apps that have tabs have command T
02:21:43
◼
►
For making a new tab, but all NS document apps have used command T since like 1988 with next step for opening the font panel
02:21:52
◼
►
And I thought well, there's a lot of things that they're gonna
02:21:55
◼
►
I can't wait to see how they clarify all these things and they they didn't really do anything
02:21:59
◼
►
And to me I know there's people who love spaces, but I really cannot get into spaces and to me
02:22:07
◼
►
It's just confusing and I often feel like where the hell am I and I get the idea of having multiple
02:22:12
◼
►
Doc, you know multiple desktops that you can go between and maybe divide your work up between them
02:22:19
◼
►
I get the idea but to me the fact that the system wasn't designed originally with spaces in mind and to me
02:22:26
◼
►
They never really they never really clarified it and unified it into a hole and there's just a whole bunch of little things like that
02:22:33
◼
►
so to me wanting Apple to add new features to Mac OS is
02:22:37
◼
►
The wrong way to look at it
02:22:41
◼
►
I almost feel like I feel like the desktop the idea of desktop computing in a window, you know mouse pointer and a
02:22:48
◼
►
Windowing system and the max style of having the menu bar at the top. They've got that down that doesn't really need to be rethought
02:22:55
◼
►
It's this is what it is and it'll have the future that it has and it's good for what it's good at and better
02:23:00
◼
►
Than anything else for what it's better at
02:23:03
◼
►
I feel just make those features work better. I feel like adding, you know, here's the thing that's all new it just
02:23:10
◼
►
messes it up
02:23:13
◼
►
Yeah, and to me like I I
02:23:17
◼
►
I disagree somewhat with the concept that,
02:23:19
◼
►
I know this is not what you just said,
02:23:20
◼
►
but a lot of people think of this in a similar way,
02:23:23
◼
►
where people think like desktop OSes
02:23:26
◼
►
are kind of just a solved problem,
02:23:27
◼
►
that they're just done,
02:23:29
◼
►
and there's really nowhere to go with them,
02:23:30
◼
►
and I fundamentally disagree with that.
02:23:32
◼
►
Like, there's so much improvement that Mac OS could have,
02:23:36
◼
►
and there's lots of different areas.
02:23:37
◼
►
You know, just as a quick example, like app installation,
02:23:41
◼
►
like the whole thing with like,
02:23:42
◼
►
well you download a DMG,
02:23:44
◼
►
and then you open up this virtual disk image
02:23:48
◼
►
and you drag this, like that's crazy
02:23:50
◼
►
and incredibly confusing to anybody
02:23:52
◼
►
and that's no wonder that's a problem.
02:23:54
◼
►
Also the fact that apps can just write all over the system
02:23:57
◼
►
with temp files and other garbage that goes all over
02:23:59
◼
►
like library and everything, that's kind of weird.
02:24:03
◼
►
And that when you delete an app,
02:24:04
◼
►
all of its crap isn't deleted.
02:24:06
◼
►
There's a lot of things that we learned from iOS
02:24:07
◼
►
that I think would be nice to be brought to the Mac
02:24:10
◼
►
for things like the ease of software installation
02:24:13
◼
►
deleting things and everything. The Mac App Store kind of went halfway with that,
02:24:17
◼
►
but it has been done so poorly and so half-assedly for its entire lifetime
02:24:24
◼
►
that it really doesn't do a great service to these concepts at all and
02:24:29
◼
►
might even be doing more harm than good to some of these concepts and to the
02:24:32
◼
►
advancement of the platform. But so to me like there's a lot of ways that
02:24:36
◼
►
the Mac can move forward and needs to move forward. From simple things like
02:24:42
◼
►
features like for instance I still very firmly believe that we need cellular
02:24:47
◼
►
Macs. We need cellular Mac laptops and the system has the concept of
02:24:53
◼
►
distinguishing a network connection request between cellular between like it
02:24:58
◼
►
should run over cellular and this shouldn't run over cellular. It's been
02:25:01
◼
►
there since iOS got it like three four years ago at least. So like there is a
02:25:05
◼
►
framework there for apps to like control their data usage. There's also third-party
02:25:09
◼
►
like trip mode that allow the user to control this.
02:25:13
◼
►
So like the software support is either there or easy to add,
02:25:18
◼
►
so they need to add cellular Macs.
02:25:20
◼
►
I don't know why they still don't have them.
02:25:21
◼
►
The PC industry's had them for 10 years.
02:25:23
◼
►
- That's the sort of problem
02:25:24
◼
►
that I always look to Apple to solve, right?
02:25:26
◼
►
It is a problem that if you have a cellular Mac,
02:25:29
◼
►
you wouldn't want it to behave the same way it would
02:25:32
◼
►
when it's on unfettered WiFi.
02:25:34
◼
►
And I can vouch for this,
02:25:37
◼
►
having been on a cruise ship where you pay for the Wi-Fi
02:25:42
◼
►
by very expensive one gigabyte doses,
02:25:46
◼
►
where I quickly learned that even with trying my best to,
02:25:51
◼
►
the last time I did this,
02:25:52
◼
►
I knew that Jason Snell had recommended an app
02:25:55
◼
►
and it ends up it was the trip mode,
02:25:58
◼
►
but I didn't have it yet.
02:25:59
◼
►
So even just getting it was hard
02:26:01
◼
►
because it was on this terrible cruise ship Wi-Fi.
02:26:04
◼
►
But literally just opening my Mac
02:26:06
◼
►
and like having a Safari that didn't have any tabs open
02:26:09
◼
►
in the background and don't open mail,
02:26:12
◼
►
and it's like, it didn't matter what I did,
02:26:13
◼
►
I'd mow through a gigabyte in like 10 minutes,
02:26:16
◼
►
and it'd be like, what the hell just happened?
02:26:17
◼
►
I don't even understand what the hell just happened there.
02:26:20
◼
►
I've looked at Apple to solve that,
02:26:22
◼
►
like, and I hate to say it to the Trip Mode people,
02:26:24
◼
►
but what I would look for Apple to do
02:26:27
◼
►
if they came out with cellular Macs
02:26:28
◼
►
is coincide with an OS feature that puts,
02:26:32
◼
►
you know, that puts Trip Mode out of business
02:26:34
◼
►
by making, just giving you explicit control
02:26:38
◼
►
over what can do what over cellular
02:26:41
◼
►
and treating it very differently.
02:26:42
◼
►
It's totally a solvable problem.
02:26:43
◼
►
- Just like we have on iOS.
02:26:45
◼
►
Like iOS solved this problem years ago with settings.
02:26:48
◼
►
- Well, iOS solves it in a different way though,
02:26:51
◼
►
where iOS has a very different concept
02:26:53
◼
►
of what an app can do in the background,
02:26:55
◼
►
meaning it's not the front most has input focus.
02:26:58
◼
►
Like the Mac would have to solve it in a different way.
02:27:00
◼
►
But it's totally solvable.
02:27:02
◼
►
But iOS has a settings panel called cellular,
02:27:05
◼
►
and you can go in there and you can see
02:27:06
◼
►
how much data each app is using, you can turn them off.
02:27:08
◼
►
And you can say, well this app is okay over Wi-Fi,
02:27:11
◼
►
but don't use cellular for this app.
02:27:12
◼
►
- Well I would imagine that in my mind,
02:27:14
◼
►
and I could be wrong, you always have to try it
02:27:16
◼
►
and see if it's good, but my mind,
02:27:18
◼
►
if they came out with cellular Macs,
02:27:20
◼
►
my mind, in my mind it would be something
02:27:22
◼
►
more active, interactive, where like,
02:27:25
◼
►
you turn on cellular and as soon as an app
02:27:27
◼
►
tries to hit the network the first time,
02:27:29
◼
►
you'd get some kind of alert like, "Hey, Tweetbot is trying to use the internet over
02:27:36
◼
►
cellular. Do you want to allow this?" And have an option where it's only allowed to
02:27:41
◼
►
do it when it's front most. I don't know.
02:27:44
◼
►
That's interesting. Almost like Little Snitch telling you, "Hey, this app is trying to do
02:27:49
◼
►
Yeah, exactly. Little Snitch is actually what I have in mind, where some kind of thing like
02:27:53
◼
►
that. And then once I say for the first time, "Oh yeah, Tweetbot, I always have that running,
02:27:58
◼
►
But yeah, you know what, that would actually be fine on cellular if it only could use the
02:28:02
◼
►
internet while it's the front most application.
02:28:04
◼
►
That's fine.
02:28:08
◼
►
And just say, "Hey, when you're on cellular, do you want to turn off everything except
02:28:11
◼
►
just downloading the text of mail?"
02:28:13
◼
►
You don't want to...
02:28:14
◼
►
And the iOS is very smart about this, where it won't download images in email and stuff
02:28:20
◼
►
It's solely solvable.
02:28:21
◼
►
What do you call it?
02:28:22
◼
►
It's a Microsoft.
02:28:23
◼
►
You guys talked about an ATP.
02:28:24
◼
►
Microsoft has cellular Surface laptops and they're--
02:28:29
◼
►
- Oh yeah, there's been cellular PC laptops
02:28:32
◼
►
literally for over a decade.
02:28:33
◼
►
Like this is not a rare thing.
02:28:35
◼
►
I'm not asking for something that we don't know
02:28:37
◼
►
whether it's possible or not.
02:28:38
◼
►
No, we know it's possible.
02:28:39
◼
►
The rest of the industry does it.
02:28:40
◼
►
People buy it and it's fine.
02:28:43
◼
►
And what worries me ultimately with the Mac is like,
02:28:47
◼
►
it's hard to see a lot of those big features like that
02:28:50
◼
►
getting done and/or getting done well.
02:28:55
◼
►
Because what seems to be Mac involvement,
02:28:57
◼
►
or Mac investment in recent years,
02:29:00
◼
►
is a lot of stuff just never comes to the Mac.
02:29:03
◼
►
Stuff that is introduced on iOS
02:29:05
◼
►
that becomes fairly standard
02:29:08
◼
►
that you kind of want everywhere.
02:29:09
◼
►
Things like iMessage effects.
02:29:11
◼
►
- And stickers.
02:29:12
◼
►
- Where you can do them, yeah, you can do it on iOS,
02:29:15
◼
►
you can't do it on the Mac,
02:29:16
◼
►
and there's kind of no clear path
02:29:17
◼
►
of how they would even do that on the Mac
02:29:18
◼
►
in the current environment.
02:29:20
◼
►
- I'll tell you which one gets me.
02:29:22
◼
►
I love the tap back feature on iOS messages
02:29:26
◼
►
where like somebody sends you an iMessage
02:29:29
◼
►
and you can just press on the thing and give it a thumbs up.
02:29:33
◼
►
It's such a great way to communicate.
02:29:35
◼
►
Instead of sending them an entire message
02:29:37
◼
►
to just say, okay, good or whatever,
02:29:39
◼
►
just put a thumbs up on their last message.
02:29:41
◼
►
And on the Mac, you can do it,
02:29:44
◼
►
but you've gotta like first bring up the contextual menu
02:29:47
◼
►
and then tap back and then you get the tap back options.
02:29:51
◼
►
Why aren't those thumbs and hearts,
02:29:54
◼
►
why aren't they right there in the contextual menu?
02:29:56
◼
►
There should just be a row of them.
02:29:57
◼
►
- That's a good question.
02:29:58
◼
►
You can also long click on it,
02:30:01
◼
►
like as if you were doing a long press on iOS,
02:30:03
◼
►
and that brings up tap back immediately,
02:30:05
◼
►
but it's still almost funky.
02:30:06
◼
►
- Yeah, but who the hell wants to do a long press?
02:30:10
◼
►
- Yeah, and long click on Mac isn't a thing.
02:30:13
◼
►
That's not a thing anybody wants to try,
02:30:14
◼
►
'cause that's not a gesture in the system.
02:30:16
◼
►
Anyways, so my point is for features like cellular Macs
02:30:21
◼
►
or other major platform changes,
02:30:25
◼
►
it's hard to see that happening
02:30:27
◼
►
because it seems like the Mac
02:30:29
◼
►
doesn't get a lot of those anymore.
02:30:31
◼
►
You can look at recent things and you say,
02:30:33
◼
►
oh, well the Mac got APFS, the new file system,
02:30:35
◼
►
that's a big job.
02:30:36
◼
►
But the main reason APFS existed
02:30:38
◼
►
is probably for iOS devices.
02:30:40
◼
►
That was something that wasn't just investing in the Mac,
02:30:42
◼
►
that was investing in all of their software platforms,
02:30:45
◼
►
including the big ones that get off the headlines
02:30:47
◼
►
and make most of the money.
02:30:48
◼
►
So it's hard to say that was like a Mac thing.
02:30:51
◼
►
- In the hypothetical world where,
02:30:53
◼
►
just bear with me for a second,
02:30:57
◼
►
but if Intel-based computers had to use different SSDs
02:31:02
◼
►
at a technical level than ARM devices,
02:31:07
◼
►
like let's just say that in this hypothetical world,
02:31:10
◼
►
SSDs are built into the CPU.
02:31:13
◼
►
And there's a fundamental difference in the way
02:31:15
◼
►
Intel does it from the way ARM ones do it. Would APFS have been written to
02:31:18
◼
►
support both? I think that's a really... Right, it's like I want to say
02:31:24
◼
►
yes that they would have abstracted away because HFS+ really was long in the
02:31:29
◼
►
tooth. You know, you could play your little ding there, you only do once a
02:31:33
◼
►
show. But my heart is telling me, yeah, I don't think that... I think
02:31:40
◼
►
- Max would have been on HFS Plus forever.
02:31:44
◼
►
Like it's a fact that they use fundamentally the same SSDs
02:31:49
◼
►
that allowed that work to be justified.
02:31:52
◼
►
- Yeah, and like when the Mac does get significant effort
02:31:59
◼
►
put into it, it seems to be, like I often use the phrase,
02:32:03
◼
►
it's kind of like a drive-by update,
02:32:05
◼
►
where like some subsystem will be rewritten.
02:32:08
◼
►
we had Discovery D a few years ago.
02:32:10
◼
►
I think in Sierra we had the USB subsystem,
02:32:13
◼
►
and that's why Sierra had so many USB audio bugs.
02:32:16
◼
►
In High Sierra, I think the window manager was rewritten
02:32:20
◼
►
to be metal-based, and so everything is,
02:32:23
◼
►
that's one of the reasons why it's so much faster
02:32:25
◼
►
in certain ways.
02:32:26
◼
►
And then there's the PDF subsystem that was rewritten,
02:32:29
◼
►
I think one or two versions ago.
02:32:30
◼
►
- Yeah, I remember Michael Sauer writing about that.
02:32:32
◼
►
And it was f-ed up in a bunch of ways.
02:32:33
◼
►
- Right, and the problem is when, right,
02:32:36
◼
►
like when these subsystems and things get rewritten
02:32:38
◼
►
Mac OS they get brought up to like what basically seems like a beta. Disc utility.
02:32:44
◼
►
Instability and features. Yeah the new disc utility that had like you know
02:32:47
◼
►
grammatical errors and the dialog box and stuff like and the crazy password
02:32:51
◼
►
authentication. It seems like these things get rewritten to like you know
02:32:57
◼
►
it's almost done it works for me and then they ship it and then they never
02:33:01
◼
►
fix it. So it's like it not only is the Mac not getting like really major
02:33:08
◼
►
platform changing work put into it it seems but also what work is going into
02:33:14
◼
►
it seems to be done in a more rushed fashion and it introduces bugs that seem
02:33:21
◼
►
to never really get fixed and that is that to me that's what's most concerning
02:33:26
◼
►
is not only that the platform is not moving forward in ways that I think it
02:33:31
◼
►
could and should, but also that what we have,
02:33:34
◼
►
in some ways, is getting worse every year
02:33:36
◼
►
as more bugs are added for kinda three-quarters-assed
02:33:41
◼
►
rewrites of system--
02:33:42
◼
►
- Well, and it ties in with a couple of other recent rumors.
02:33:45
◼
►
There's the other one that Germin had
02:33:46
◼
►
where there's Project Marzipan,
02:33:49
◼
►
which is supposedly some kind of way
02:33:52
◼
►
to have universal iPad, iOS, Mac apps.
02:33:57
◼
►
It's, you know, we can't get into details on it.
02:34:00
◼
►
I talked about it on this show too.
02:34:03
◼
►
I don't think, I think in typical German fashion,
02:34:06
◼
►
there's probably something to it,
02:34:08
◼
►
and it's, what it actually is,
02:34:12
◼
►
is not really interesting or understandable by him,
02:34:16
◼
►
and so it's misrepresented.
02:34:18
◼
►
But it very likely could be some kind of either UI kit
02:34:24
◼
►
on Mac or UI kit-like version of app kit on Mac.
02:34:30
◼
►
And and to make a very long story very short UI kit is the fundamental framework for making iOS apps and app kit is
02:34:38
◼
►
the Mac framework for making apps that dates back to next in 1988 and UI kit is
02:34:44
◼
►
unsurprisingly
02:34:47
◼
►
almost universally held as
02:34:49
◼
►
What would you know a company?
02:34:52
◼
►
18 years into app kit in 2006. What would they change if they had it to do all over again?
02:34:58
◼
►
again. And therefore is easier, more convenient in certain ways for developers. AppKit developers
02:35:08
◼
►
find it much easier to move to UIKit and, "Ooh, this is suddenly a lot easier." And UIKit
02:35:14
◼
►
developers such as yourself often find it very frustrating to move to AppKit because
02:35:17
◼
►
all of a sudden there's more grunt work to be handled by the developer. And so something
02:35:26
◼
►
that would enable people with UI kit skills
02:35:29
◼
►
to more easily make native Mac apps would be great,
02:35:31
◼
►
if done well, in theory.
02:35:36
◼
►
- Yeah, I am very excited about that possibility.
02:35:40
◼
►
That, because as an iOS developer
02:35:43
◼
►
who kind of reluctantly makes some Mac apps,
02:35:45
◼
►
like I would love to make more Mac apps,
02:35:48
◼
►
but it feels like my iOS skills
02:35:51
◼
►
are almost completely useless.
02:35:53
◼
►
Like it feels like it's a whole new platform,
02:35:55
◼
►
Because in many ways, it's kind of a--
02:35:56
◼
►
Forecast probably would have been a perfect app for that,
02:35:59
◼
►
or maybe it would be.
02:36:00
◼
►
Maybe it's so perfect for it that if it comes out
02:36:03
◼
►
that you'd rewrite it using it, if that's basically what it is.
02:36:06
◼
►
Because I think where AppKit really shines over UIKit
02:36:09
◼
►
is on truly complex code bases.
02:36:13
◼
►
Think about apps like the big Omni apps,
02:36:17
◼
►
or some of Panic's apps, and stuff like that.
02:36:21
◼
►
Apps that truly are way more complex than anything
02:36:23
◼
►
could reasonably get by with on iOS.
02:36:26
◼
►
AppKit is great at making that manageable.
02:36:29
◼
►
And UIKit is better for sort of,
02:36:32
◼
►
hey, all I need is this one screen, really,
02:36:34
◼
►
and it'll have a list here of things
02:36:37
◼
►
and a couple of buttons and a text field.
02:36:39
◼
►
- Yeah, and like, I mean,
02:36:42
◼
►
forecast is kind of an okay example.
02:36:45
◼
►
A better example is overcast.
02:36:47
◼
►
- Yeah, yeah.
02:36:48
◼
►
- Overcast, like, it's,
02:36:49
◼
►
most people listen to overcast on their phones.
02:36:52
◼
►
And by far, I think it's something like 92% phone,
02:36:57
◼
►
and then the rest is iPad, something like that,
02:37:01
◼
►
like in that neighborhood.
02:37:03
◼
►
And so it is primarily a phone platform,
02:37:05
◼
►
but because I've written Overcast using a lot of stock
02:37:08
◼
►
UI kit components, it is not that much effort
02:37:11
◼
►
to also maintain an iPad version of it.
02:37:14
◼
►
And even though the iPad version is only 7 or 8%
02:37:17
◼
►
of the usage, first of all, I use the iPad version,
02:37:18
◼
►
so that's kind of enough of motivation right there.
02:37:21
◼
►
But also, it is only about seven or eight percent
02:37:25
◼
►
more effort to maintain the iPad version to the degree I do.
02:37:28
◼
►
Now I could make an incredibly awesome,
02:37:31
◼
►
more customized iPad version that would take
02:37:33
◼
►
way more effort, but it probably isn't worth that,
02:37:36
◼
►
but it's fine, it only takes five percent more effort
02:37:39
◼
►
to reach five percent more people.
02:37:41
◼
►
If the Mac became a similar type of extension,
02:37:45
◼
►
where I already have this entire iOS code base
02:37:49
◼
►
with iOS UI in a lot of places.
02:37:53
◼
►
I know it wouldn't be the most amazing Mac app in the world
02:37:56
◼
►
in the same way that it isn't the most amazing iPad app
02:37:58
◼
►
in the world, but if I could get a Mac app out of Overcast
02:38:02
◼
►
for 10% more effort, I would totally do that.
02:38:07
◼
►
Whereas right now, it would be nearly 100% more effort,
02:38:11
◼
►
and the market is not able to justify that.
02:38:13
◼
►
it's not a big enough market for that,
02:38:15
◼
►
and it's not worth, I don't have that much bandwidth
02:38:18
◼
►
to spare on something like that.
02:38:19
◼
►
Whereas anything that would make it easier,
02:38:22
◼
►
if it's gonna make developing for Mac from an iOS code base
02:38:27
◼
►
about as much work, or even if it's more work,
02:38:30
◼
►
but it's not that much more work,
02:38:31
◼
►
than it is to port an iPhone app to the iPad,
02:38:34
◼
►
that is going to enable a ton more Mac apps.
02:38:38
◼
►
And yeah, they won't be the best Mac apps in the world.
02:38:41
◼
►
There will be a lot of crappy ports,
02:38:43
◼
►
just like there are on iPad, there will be a lot of
02:38:47
◼
►
behaviors that are really a little too iOS-y
02:38:51
◼
►
that feel a little bit weird on the Mac,
02:38:53
◼
►
but it is better for the Mac on a whole if that exists,
02:38:57
◼
►
and it's better for the iPad, because what you basically do
02:39:01
◼
►
is, assuming that developing an iPad,
02:39:04
◼
►
or assuming if you have an iPhone app,
02:39:07
◼
►
that expanding it onto the iPad and the Mac
02:39:11
◼
►
are probably kind of similar in a lot of ways,
02:39:13
◼
►
then what you've basically done is you've almost doubled
02:39:17
◼
►
the value of what a developer would get
02:39:20
◼
►
out of making the app from their iPhone app
02:39:23
◼
►
into this larger type of app.
02:39:25
◼
►
And so you increase the odds that more developers will,
02:39:28
◼
►
and you increase the amount of resources
02:39:30
◼
►
that they're able to justify devoting to it.
02:39:33
◼
►
And so what that does is have way more and better apps
02:39:37
◼
►
for both the iPad and the Mac,
02:39:40
◼
►
which both of those platforms could honestly use.
02:39:43
◼
►
- Yeah, the Mac has such a great library
02:39:46
◼
►
of long-standing apps, you know,
02:39:49
◼
►
and I was looking at it the other day,
02:39:51
◼
►
and most of the apps that I use have been around
02:39:53
◼
►
for quite a long time.
02:39:55
◼
►
BB Edit, Transmit, they both date back to classic Mac OS,
02:40:00
◼
►
Omni Outliner, even Mars Edit is a long-standing app
02:40:05
◼
►
at this point, I think Brent first shipped it in 2004,
02:40:09
◼
►
I don't know but
02:40:11
◼
►
You know it. I don't need a lot of new apps and these are the apps that I use on
02:40:16
◼
►
You know acorn is a relative to me in my mind is still a relatively new app
02:40:20
◼
►
It's up to like version 6.0. So it's not it's not that new
02:40:23
◼
►
Yeah, like apps that succeed on the Mac tend to last for a long time
02:40:28
◼
►
And those apps are great and are all in active development. There's new versions
02:40:34
◼
►
I think of just about every one of those apps that I just mentioned brand new versions that have great new features in
02:40:39
◼
►
Just like the last year BB edit transmit Mars edit
02:40:42
◼
►
Tweet bot hasn't had a new version in a while on a Mac
02:40:48
◼
►
But I'm just looking at the Mac apps that I rely on the most things
02:40:51
◼
►
Has a new version out
02:40:54
◼
►
But I still I do feel like so I'm not worried about those apps and app kits not going anywhere and they can keep using
02:41:01
◼
►
It but I do worry about when's the last time like somebody shipped a new Mac app that you're like, wow
02:41:06
◼
►
I love this is a new Mac app and I really do worry that that that's sort of a canary in the coal mine
02:41:12
◼
►
for the platform, you know that
02:41:15
◼
►
And it has so much momentum and so much, you know and sales of Mac hardware still as like all-time highs
02:41:23
◼
►
It's all good
02:41:24
◼
►
but as a platform I worry about the fact that
02:41:27
◼
►
all the apps that I consider my most used and beloved and best examples of good apps on the platform are like
02:41:36
◼
►
you know, even the new quote-unquote new ones are ten years old.
02:41:40
◼
►
Yeah, and you know if you listen to you know, people like Mike Hurley and and other like Federico Vatici
02:41:48
◼
►
people who are really into getting their primary work done on iOS
02:41:54
◼
►
one of the most common reasons cited for that is
02:41:58
◼
►
that there's honestly just more action on iOS with like what new apps are coming out, new
02:42:05
◼
►
concepts and apps, new developers becoming prominent,
02:42:09
◼
►
new design languages and new workflow strategies
02:42:13
◼
►
and everything, there's so much more happening on iOS.
02:42:17
◼
►
The Mac, there's not a lot of software innovation
02:42:22
◼
►
and just software health that's really growing on the Mac.
02:42:28
◼
►
Like the old apps that have been here forever
02:42:31
◼
►
seem to be doing fine.
02:42:32
◼
►
all of them, honestly. But many of them seem to be fine.
02:42:35
◼
►
I just checked Acorn's about box. It's copyright 2007 to 2018, so it's 11 years
02:42:41
◼
►
old and I just acted like it was brand new. I knew it wasn't, but still, compared to
02:42:46
◼
►
BB Edit and Transmit, it's…
02:42:47
◼
►
Yeah, right. Time flies.
02:42:48
◼
►
Compared to BB Edit and Transmit, it's…
02:42:49
◼
►
Time flies when your platform is being neglected.
02:42:51
◼
►
Where's Transmit? Transmit is copyright 1997 to 2017.
02:42:56
◼
►
I was in middle school.
02:42:58
◼
►
I know I first started using BB edit in
02:43:05
◼
►
It's pretty old
02:43:09
◼
►
Yeah, yeah, so like
02:43:12
◼
►
My concern with the Mac is that if they don't do something like this if they leave the status quo
02:43:18
◼
►
Where you have the Mac with its own?
02:43:21
◼
►
You know API's for everything that are older and clunkier, you know
02:43:26
◼
►
though richer in a lot of ways, but still older and clunkier
02:43:30
◼
►
and basically turning off a lot of modern developers.
02:43:33
◼
►
If you leave this the way it is,
02:43:35
◼
►
I think we're just gonna keep seeing a continuation
02:43:38
◼
►
of what we see now, which is not a lot of new developers
02:43:41
◼
►
coming to the Mac, not a lot of new apps,
02:43:43
◼
►
not a lot of new concepts, all the action continuing
02:43:47
◼
►
to happen in the US. - I honestly--
02:43:47
◼
►
- And that's not good for the Mac.
02:43:50
◼
►
- If I could chew the ear of Apple's executive team
02:43:52
◼
►
on what to do with the Mac going forward,
02:43:54
◼
►
Honestly, I really think and and that's why I'm happy
02:43:57
◼
►
I'm optimistic about this marzipan rumor is that I would rather see them focus almost entirely on
02:44:04
◼
►
Stuff for Mac developers or would be Mac developers then actual
02:44:11
◼
►
You know, here's a thing that you the user get from Apple right when you install the OS features
02:44:17
◼
►
Like you the features are all there. There's windows. There's menus. There's buttons
02:44:23
◼
►
But I feel like enabling people to making it
02:44:26
◼
►
Doing for you know like when Coco was first came out, and it was just like man
02:44:31
◼
►
You can make an app that is rich and has all you know complete rich text editor and all of these features for free
02:44:39
◼
►
And just focus on the features you want to add for your app
02:44:45
◼
►
And and you really could like a smaller team of developers or one person could make an app that
02:44:52
◼
►
one person could never make on Windows because you just didn't you didn't get that much with the framework and I feel like
02:44:58
◼
►
At this point they need to level that up again and make it like that again
02:45:02
◼
►
I just wrote this week about how like to me the biggest threat to the Mac is this proliferation of
02:45:07
◼
►
Non-native apps that people just accept as being well, that's what an app is these electron apps and shit
02:45:13
◼
►
Like that's the way slack works
02:45:15
◼
►
I think it's a threat to the platform that if the longer it goes on where that's accepted where
02:45:21
◼
►
a 300 megabyte download app that consumes 500 megabytes of RAM just for opening one
02:45:28
◼
►
window and is slow and doesn't use native controls and breaks a bunch of native conventions
02:45:34
◼
►
and uses weird Moonman keyboard shortcuts. If that's just accepted as the way that it
02:45:39
◼
►
is, then the Mac loses its reason for existence because any system, a Chromebook is as good
02:45:47
◼
►
as that because the same app will run with the same keyboard shortcuts. All you need
02:45:51
◼
►
is something that runs a web view. And if that's what desktop computers devolve to,
02:45:59
◼
►
where it's really not about the OS but just about the form factor of having a clamshell
02:46:03
◼
►
laptop that opens up and a keyboard that's connected and a trackpad, the Mac OS loses
02:46:09
◼
►
its reason for existence. The whole reason that the Mac thrived or survived in the rough
02:46:14
◼
►
years and thrived in later years is that it was better. And the reason it was better was
02:46:20
◼
►
is that it had better apps.
02:46:21
◼
►
And if new apps aren't coming out
02:46:25
◼
►
that follow in the same mold as their predecessors,
02:46:28
◼
►
it's a long-term problem for the platform,
02:46:31
◼
►
like a serious problem.
02:46:32
◼
►
- Yeah, and because, you know,
02:46:35
◼
►
and when you have something, you know,
02:46:38
◼
►
like you have apps that are just like web views
02:46:40
◼
►
shoved into standalone apps for the Mac,
02:46:44
◼
►
that's only a continuation of what we had a few years ago
02:46:47
◼
►
before this became so common,
02:46:48
◼
►
which is basically like the solution was on your phone,
02:46:51
◼
►
you can use a cool native app,
02:46:53
◼
►
and when you're on your computer,
02:46:54
◼
►
you just have to use our webpage.
02:46:56
◼
►
Like that just sucks, and I know why it's done that way,
02:47:00
◼
►
but it sucks.
02:47:01
◼
►
- It depends what the app or service is though.
02:47:03
◼
►
Like OpenTable, I'm fine with OpenTable being nothing more
02:47:06
◼
►
than a web thing on the Mac.
02:47:07
◼
►
I don't wanna, I wouldn't install an OpenTable app
02:47:09
◼
►
on my Mac, why would I?
02:47:11
◼
►
- Sure, but what about things like Netflix?
02:47:13
◼
►
- Right, like Netflix should be a native app,
02:47:15
◼
►
but instead it's a web view.
02:47:16
◼
►
And you know, Slack is kind of a special case
02:47:19
◼
►
'cause it's like, it's kind of a web view
02:47:21
◼
►
on all the platforms, I think, but it's like,
02:47:25
◼
►
there are a lot of apps where, you know,
02:47:27
◼
►
they're willing to invest the effort into an iOS app
02:47:31
◼
►
because the market supports that and the platform
02:47:34
◼
►
really makes it hard to do anything else in a good way.
02:47:38
◼
►
So like, you know, they're willing to do that,
02:47:39
◼
►
but when it comes to the Mac, they're just like,
02:47:42
◼
►
ah, well, you know, just web view is fine
02:47:44
◼
►
because it isn't worth them making a whole separate
02:47:49
◼
►
app kit code base just for this portion of the user base
02:47:52
◼
►
when they can just throw the webpage at them.
02:47:54
◼
►
So anything that Apple can do to help companies
02:47:58
◼
►
leverage their iOS code base that they're writing anyway
02:48:02
◼
►
to also make a Mac app fairly easily will pay off big time
02:48:06
◼
►
because lots of companies are doing that calculus.
02:48:09
◼
►
They're saying, well, it's not worth making a whole Mac app
02:48:11
◼
►
from nothing, from scratch,
02:48:13
◼
►
and not being able to reuse anything really.
02:48:16
◼
►
But they would have a very different calculus
02:48:18
◼
►
if the barrier was lower,
02:48:21
◼
►
if you could share more of that iOS code.
02:48:23
◼
►
And I wouldn't expect it to be like a new checkbox
02:48:27
◼
►
in Xcode, just make Mac app and that's it, you're done.
02:48:30
◼
►
You know, it's not gonna be that easy,
02:48:31
◼
►
but I hope it can be more like what it is
02:48:36
◼
►
to have an app go from iPhone to iPad,
02:48:39
◼
►
where it does take some work to get it to be usable
02:48:41
◼
►
and to get it to be nice,
02:48:43
◼
►
but it's at least possible to do
02:48:46
◼
►
without rewriting your entire UI from scratch.
02:48:49
◼
►
- All right, let me take a break here
02:48:51
◼
►
and thank our third and final sponsor of the evening,
02:48:55
◼
►
two good friends at Squarespace.
02:48:56
◼
►
Squarespace, look, when you wanna make a website,
02:49:01
◼
►
what are you gonna do?
02:49:02
◼
►
You're gonna start coding,
02:49:03
◼
►
you're gonna start opening up a web hosting account,
02:49:06
◼
►
you're gonna start writing PHP, HTML, all that stuff,
02:49:11
◼
►
the way websites were made back in the stone ages. You could,
02:49:15
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you could do that. You know what?
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To be a lot easier way to do it is start at Squarespace,
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go to Squarespace and spend half an hour making a new website.
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Sign up, you get a free account, you get a free trial. Just to start going.
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Squarespace handles everything. They are the host.
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They provide the templates you can start with. They provide the,
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the widgets that you can add to your page to add something like a store or to
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◼
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add like image portfolio and then you can just upload the images and it'll go right
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◼
►
in. It is so much easier and takes so much work out of the process, especially if you
02:49:54
◼
►
are like a technically minded person who listens to the show and people come to you and they're
02:49:59
◼
►
like, Hey, I need a website. What am I supposed to do? You can build them a website at Squarespace,
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◼
►
get them started and then just hand it off to them and they can take care of everything
02:50:08
◼
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after that and do the updates. Back in the day when I was doing consulting and making
02:50:14
◼
►
websites for people, I'd make the website and I thought it was all the work and then
02:50:18
◼
►
I would just get all this continuing consulting work from them just to do content updates.
02:50:24
◼
►
It was like, "Well, thanks for the work, but it's like you're paying me to just be a typist."
02:50:29
◼
►
With Squarespace, a normal person, you can hand it over to them. It's a WYSIWYG interface
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and they can take care of updating content, adding new posts if you give them a blog or
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something like that on their Squarespace site. It really is so much easier and Squarespace
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has amazing technical support that they can just, normal person can just call them up
02:50:52
◼
►
and get help and instead of calling you, they'll call Squarespace. It's such a great product.
02:50:58
◼
►
Let me tell you, I like to do this because they sponsor the show a lot. I keep telling
02:51:02
◼
►
you more websites that you use on a regular basis are Squarespace sites than you would
02:51:07
◼
►
believe and I don't know what is wrong with me that I do it I guess it's because Squarespace
02:51:11
◼
►
sponsors the show so often but I every so I just view source and look for some of the
02:51:16
◼
►
things in the HTML that indicate that it's a Squarespace site and I'm like damn I this
02:51:22
◼
►
looks nothing like any other site I've seen it's totally branded to the company it doesn't
02:51:26
◼
►
look like it came from a cookie cutter template. So I had relatives in town from both sides
02:51:33
◼
►
of the family recently. They wanted to come to Philly, stay here at Daring Fireball headquarters
02:51:39
◼
►
for the Eagles Victory Parade last week here in Philadelphia because you couldn't get a
02:51:43
◼
►
hotel. The city was nuts. There were 3 million people at this damn parade. What do they want
02:51:49
◼
►
to eat the next night? Of course, everybody wanted to get cheesesteaks because that's
02:51:52
◼
►
you get in Philadelphia. Well, there's a great new cheese steak place pretty close to us
02:51:57
◼
►
here in Philadelphia. Cleaver's C L E A V E R S. Um, and their website is cleavers,
02:52:06
◼
►
philly.com. You can go there. It's a beautiful website. They have a beautiful restaurant
02:52:10
◼
►
and they make delicious sandwiches and they have great sides. Uh, I love that you're doing
02:52:16
◼
►
an ad for, well, guess what? Guess what? View source. It's Squarespace site. It is so
02:52:22
◼
►
so great. It's a great website. What do you want? You want a menu? You want to see pictures
02:52:28
◼
►
of their food? It's great. Go there, check it out. Check out to see what you can make
02:52:32
◼
►
with Squarespace. Go to cleversphilly.com. When you want to make your own website, though,
02:52:39
◼
►
where do you go? Well, you go to squarespace.com and you enter offer code. Now, this is what
02:52:45
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you do when you're ready to pay. You can just go there, go to Squarespace. That's all they
02:52:48
◼
►
care that you do to get started. Take their free trial and build what you want to build.
02:52:55
◼
►
And then when you go to pay, that's when you've got to remember this code. This is the thing
02:52:59
◼
►
you got to have long term memory for this. All you need to do to get started is go to
02:53:02
◼
►
squarespace.com. There's no special URL. But then when you go to pay, when you sign up,
02:53:07
◼
►
just remember the offer code talk show. No, the just talk show and you'll get 10% off
02:53:12
◼
►
your first purchase. So that's Squarespace is where you go to build a new website. I'm
02:53:15
◼
►
I'm telling you, the reason these people can make
02:53:18
◼
►
these great cheesesteaks is they didn't waste time
02:53:20
◼
►
building a website, other than going to Squarespace
02:53:25
◼
►
and putting their design out.
02:53:26
◼
►
They're not sitting there writing PHP,
02:53:27
◼
►
they're sitting there cooking up steaks.
02:53:30
◼
►
So go to squarespace.com and remember that offer code,
02:53:32
◼
►
talk show, know the.
02:53:34
◼
►
My thanks to Squarespace.
02:53:35
◼
►
That's not your favorite cheesesteak place.
02:53:38
◼
►
What's your favorite?
02:53:39
◼
►
You don't like Campos either.
02:53:40
◼
►
You go to the one that's a couple doors down
02:53:42
◼
►
from Campos when you're here.
02:53:45
◼
►
I forget what it's called, but it's it's the yeah, but campus is good too campus is really good
02:53:50
◼
►
You got to go to next time you're here that will take you to cleavers cleavers is I'm telling you. It's really good
02:53:54
◼
►
Now which is the one that I'm like the famous one that I don't go to that I'm supposed to be going to
02:54:01
◼
►
Every time I take a picture, okay
02:54:03
◼
►
The one I like a sunny is good sunny's is my favorite, but you've never been to campus
02:54:07
◼
►
so it says every time people will probably tell you to go to
02:54:12
◼
►
Well, there's Pat's and Gina's here and there's the one on South Street. What the hell's it called? Yeah, I hear Jim
02:54:17
◼
►
And Dallas, I don't want to
02:54:20
◼
►
Jim's Jim's if you google it Jim's has a lot of problems where every year or so they get busted for selling drugs
02:54:28
◼
►
It's and in my opinion that it's not a great steak it's really not
02:54:34
◼
►
It's a see when I have Sonny's I think why I'm not in Philly that much
02:54:41
◼
►
much. Why, when I come here, would I not get this?
02:54:45
◼
►
Well, like it's so good when I have it. I'm just like, I don't, I wouldn't want to
02:54:49
◼
►
like waste a meal. But you're a couple of miles away. You could save, you could, you
02:54:54
◼
►
could save a lot of driving or whatever by going to Cleaver's. You should, but see, and
02:54:57
◼
►
you should try more than one. I'm telling you, Cleaver's is the way to go. If you wanted
02:55:01
◼
►
to bust out and try one on the other side of Broad Street just because they, you know,
02:55:06
◼
►
It's similar sort of small shop atmosphere
02:55:09
◼
►
Jim's on South Street is designed to get like the most people through in the shortest amount of time like when they're busy
02:55:16
◼
►
They I don't know I wouldn't be surprised if they serve
02:55:19
◼
►
50 60 people an hour whereas you know like when you go to Sonny's it's like just going into a busy lunch place
02:55:24
◼
►
There's not like a crazy line out the door
02:55:26
◼
►
Yeah, that's fair but anyway I
02:55:34
◼
►
Had a thing what's what's the shortest show no no you and I often go
02:55:38
◼
►
All time record is me and Ben Thompson. Todd Visserie just updated his
02:55:43
◼
►
Talk-show episode length chart, although I don't think he posted it publicly. He sent it to me privately
02:55:48
◼
►
It's actually been going. Yeah, but we did one that was so long you split it into two
02:55:53
◼
►
Oh, so, I don't know. I don't think would that actually got credit for that one? No, it is. He's going by episodes
02:56:00
◼
►
Let me see here
02:56:04
◼
►
I'll send this to you. Where'd you go? There you are. I had a thing that kind of ties into
02:56:14
◼
►
what we were just talking about. Let me see if we have this in the notes. Oh, well, you
02:56:21
◼
►
were talking about two Do apps on ATP recently, and I wouldn't mind talking to you about this
02:56:26
◼
►
Mm-hmm. Sure.
02:56:27
◼
►
Sure, but I had this thing I've I've moved for years. I was using an app called itta ita
02:56:33
◼
►
From nice mohawk software for managing I had like a list of things
02:56:39
◼
►
I take with me every time I leave the house for like a trip
02:56:41
◼
►
And I've recently moved that into Apple notes and put it in one of the notes and use their checklist feature
02:56:49
◼
►
Just to sort of have one less one fewer app to use and it seems like it might be sort of
02:56:55
◼
►
Put out the pasture those guys are working on some cool new
02:56:58
◼
►
Home energy monitoring stuff. I don't think it has been updated for iPhone 10
02:57:05
◼
►
Etc. So anyway doing a checklist and Apple Notes. It's not really a to-do app type thing
02:57:11
◼
►
It's a little bit more simple
02:57:13
◼
►
but it's a nice way to have this note and every time and the way I update it is every time I
02:57:21
◼
►
Leave the house for a trip and wind up thinking. Oh, I should have brought whatever
02:57:26
◼
►
Then I just add it to the end of the list and I'll never forget it again
02:57:30
◼
►
But the thing is and indeed it is not updated for the iPhone 10
02:57:34
◼
►
After I pack for the trip I either as I pack everything on my list
02:57:41
◼
►
I check it off and if it's something that's not relevant like I'll put
02:57:44
◼
►
Swimsuit, but I'm going somewhere where there I'm not going to swim
02:57:48
◼
►
Well, I'll just check it off because I know I don't need it. So checking it off the list either means I've packed it
02:57:53
◼
►
It's in a bag that I know I'm not gonna forget or I don't need it
02:57:56
◼
►
What do you do for your next trip?
02:57:59
◼
►
Well, what you want to do is uncheck all of those check marks right and start all over on
02:58:06
◼
►
Far as I can tell the only way to do that in Apple Notes whether you're on iPad or phone is to go through each
02:58:13
◼
►
Goddamn item and uncheck everything whereas in the Mac app
02:58:17
◼
►
app in Notes, you can, there's a menu command where you can uncheck everything. It's like
02:58:27
◼
►
mark as checked and then if you select them all, you can do mark as unchecked, like marking
02:58:32
◼
►
multiple messages as unread. It's a menu command in the format menu, which seems like something
02:58:39
◼
►
a computer program should do, right? Computers are supposed to alleviate us of tedium. Isn't
02:58:45
◼
►
that great, right? But there's no way to do it. So these people like Mike Hurley and all
02:58:51
◼
►
these other iPad lifestyle people, I believe them. I'm not disputing that they're leading
02:58:57
◼
►
a happier life for them using an iPad as their main computer. But that's the sort of thing
02:59:06
◼
►
that makes the iPad a complete non-starter is my main computing platform. Because the
02:59:13
◼
►
fact that I would have to do that and that on the Mac version I can just hit a
02:59:16
◼
►
menu command and have it all unchecked all at once is exactly why I like using
02:59:22
◼
►
a computer as opposed to you know mimeo graphing 20 copies of the same
02:59:27
◼
►
checklist on paper I mean and you know in there in the iPad users defense like
02:59:33
◼
►
there are apps that do this better like so like the solution for something like
02:59:38
◼
►
that where it's like well you can't do this very well on the iPad where the Mac
02:59:43
◼
►
The solution on the iPad is probably,
02:59:44
◼
►
well, if you use this other app, this can do that.
02:59:47
◼
►
So it's not that it's impossible,
02:59:50
◼
►
but it's often that you have to seek out
02:59:52
◼
►
a more power user-y app or a more obscure app
02:59:56
◼
►
to do these kinds of things better.
02:59:57
◼
►
- To me, it comes down to the most mundane and overlooked
03:00:01
◼
►
and it's, 'cause it's been here since,
03:00:04
◼
►
right since 1984 when the first Mac shipped,
03:00:07
◼
►
but the menu bar, and I'm not saying that iOS
03:00:10
◼
►
should get a Mac style menu bar because it wouldn't work.
03:00:13
◼
►
But the fact that Mac apps have a menu bar
03:00:16
◼
►
and you can put commands in there,
03:00:18
◼
►
and in recent years, in the old days,
03:00:21
◼
►
Mac apps didn't have toolbars at all.
03:00:24
◼
►
Like the only thing in the window chrome
03:00:26
◼
►
were the controls to close the window, zoom the window,
03:00:29
◼
►
or like minimize the window at some point
03:00:34
◼
►
when they didn't even have that at first.
03:00:38
◼
►
And anything you wanted to do was mostly done
03:00:41
◼
►
by using menu commands.
03:00:43
◼
►
That was like the main way of doing it.
03:00:46
◼
►
And I get it, 'cause they're hidden,
03:00:48
◼
►
everything in a menu bar is at least one level down, right?
03:00:52
◼
►
Like if you wanna save, you can't just click one button,
03:00:55
◼
►
you have to go to File and then go down to Save.
03:00:58
◼
►
I get it that even one level of indirection
03:01:03
◼
►
is gonna put some people off who are less likely
03:01:07
◼
►
to be technically minded. And normal people don't memorize keyboard shortcuts. That's
03:01:12
◼
►
all fine. I get it. And I think the overall trend to putting the main functions of an
03:01:16
◼
►
application as visible buttons that are always present in the window is a good trend. But
03:01:23
◼
►
the max menu bar, the fact that it's still there and still useful is organized, if well
03:01:29
◼
►
done and well designed, organizes things in a way that you know where to look for them
03:01:36
◼
►
is such a powerful feature for something like
03:01:39
◼
►
uncheck all of these check boxes,
03:01:41
◼
►
which maybe most people will never need or want to use
03:01:46
◼
►
or it wouldn't even occur to them that it exists,
03:01:49
◼
►
but there it is, a feature for me who wants to do it
03:01:51
◼
►
and thinks I should be able to do it.
03:01:53
◼
►
Oh, there it is.
03:01:54
◼
►
And there's no good way,
03:01:57
◼
►
and the point of my story is I can't think of a good way
03:02:00
◼
►
to put that many commands,
03:02:02
◼
►
even just from the simple Apple Notes app,
03:02:04
◼
►
How would you put as many commands that Apple Notes on Mac has in the iPad version?
03:02:10
◼
►
Where would you put those commands?
03:02:12
◼
►
Yeah, I mean this has been one of the big challenges to trying to bring touch screens
03:02:21
◼
►
into like the more like pro computing markets or into more like, you know, pro software
03:02:29
◼
►
And you know, it's a problem that I don't think we've really figured out yet as an industry,
03:02:33
◼
►
how to design touchscreen-based apps in a way that can support the level of complexity
03:02:41
◼
►
and functionality that we can have on desktops.
03:02:43
◼
►
And there's two different problems to this, I think.
03:02:46
◼
►
One of them is that you have far less precision in the input than you do on a PC, whether
03:02:54
◼
►
it's a laptop or a desktop, whether it's Windows or a Mac.
03:02:57
◼
►
On a PC you have a very precise pointing device,
03:03:01
◼
►
in either a mouse or a trackpad or whatever,
03:03:04
◼
►
where you can really get down to the pixel-level
03:03:06
◼
►
precision there, so you can cram a lot more
03:03:10
◼
►
click targets on screen than you can by using
03:03:13
◼
►
our fat fingers on a 10-inch screen with a touch screen.
03:03:16
◼
►
And then the other problem that you have is,
03:03:19
◼
►
and you have this massive keyboard where you have
03:03:23
◼
►
100 keys and conventions that have been going on
03:03:26
◼
►
for decades of things like holding down certain modifiers
03:03:30
◼
►
and certain other keys to do certain common actions.
03:03:33
◼
►
And iOS has some support for common keyboard shortcuts,
03:03:38
◼
►
but not great support for it.
03:03:40
◼
►
And there's also like, there's conventions that you can do
03:03:42
◼
►
with the keyboard and mouse that have not yet been
03:03:46
◼
►
really established on iOS.
03:03:47
◼
►
So for instance, like, power users pretty quickly discover
03:03:50
◼
►
things like, you can drag a box around a whole bunch
03:03:53
◼
►
of icons and then pick them all up at once.
03:03:55
◼
►
or you can, if you're on one mail message,
03:03:59
◼
►
you can hold down shift and click one really far away
03:04:01
◼
►
from it and it selects all of them in the meantime.
03:04:03
◼
►
Like, you can do things like that
03:04:07
◼
►
that allow you to very efficiently work
03:04:10
◼
►
in the Mac and PC type form factors
03:04:14
◼
►
that the touch devices just haven't developed
03:04:16
◼
►
those standards yet and in some ways,
03:04:18
◼
►
it's kind of hard to see how they can
03:04:20
◼
►
because of the limitations of their input.
03:04:22
◼
►
Just not being, obviously it does certain things better
03:04:25
◼
►
like drawing and stuff like that,
03:04:27
◼
►
but because you don't have the incredibly precise
03:04:31
◼
►
pointing device of a mouse and a mouse cursor,
03:04:34
◼
►
and you don't have the incredibly rich button-filled
03:04:37
◼
►
like 100-key keyboard, it's just very, very different.
03:04:40
◼
►
And then the other problem is a visual design problem
03:04:44
◼
►
of your menu bar thing.
03:04:46
◼
►
It's like how do you expose lots of complex features,
03:04:51
◼
►
or just how do you expose lots of features
03:04:55
◼
►
in a UI on a touch screen.
03:04:57
◼
►
You don't have a lot of the discoverability conventions
03:05:02
◼
►
that we've had on PCs.
03:05:03
◼
►
You know, you don't have hovering the mouse pointer
03:05:06
◼
►
over something to get a tool tip to explain what it is.
03:05:09
◼
►
You don't have right clicking really.
03:05:11
◼
►
You have like forced touching or long pressing,
03:05:14
◼
►
but those are, it's very hard to, I mean honestly,
03:05:17
◼
►
I guess right clicking has the problem.
03:05:18
◼
►
It's very hard to know like what you can force touch
03:05:20
◼
►
and what you can long press.
03:05:22
◼
►
And there's not a lot of like conventions
03:05:24
◼
►
of how to show users that.
03:05:26
◼
►
And then the way that you accommodate things
03:05:29
◼
►
like that you would typically get like in a menu bar
03:05:32
◼
►
where like, you know, a menu bar has a very, very small
03:05:35
◼
►
amount of screen space devoted to it,
03:05:37
◼
►
but you can click on it and then you get expanded
03:05:41
◼
►
these lists of commands that they themselves can have
03:05:44
◼
►
their own subcommands that expand out
03:05:46
◼
►
when you hover over them.
03:05:48
◼
►
So you can cram a whole bunch of functionality
03:05:50
◼
►
into a relatively small amount of screen space
03:05:54
◼
►
that is out of the way when you don't need it, et cetera.
03:05:57
◼
►
In addition, it really enables power use
03:05:59
◼
►
because it shows you what the keyboard shortcuts are
03:06:02
◼
►
for these things.
03:06:02
◼
►
So if you keep going to the same menu commands
03:06:04
◼
►
over and over again, eventually you might notice
03:06:07
◼
►
those little characters after it and figure out,
03:06:09
◼
►
oh, that's the symbol on the keyboard,
03:06:11
◼
►
oh, I can hit Command + T and do this thing, right?
03:06:14
◼
►
And so it enables both the progressive disclosure
03:06:19
◼
►
and management of lots of functionality,
03:06:22
◼
►
as well as it kind of shows you as a power user
03:06:25
◼
►
how to get faster at these things.
03:06:27
◼
►
And on touch devices, we really don't have
03:06:29
◼
►
good conventions for these yet.
03:06:31
◼
►
We don't have good ways to show power users
03:06:34
◼
►
how to do things faster.
03:06:36
◼
►
We don't really have concepts of things
03:06:38
◼
►
like keyboard shortcuts being incredibly discoverable.
03:06:41
◼
►
I know on an iPad you can just hold down command
03:06:43
◼
►
on an external keyboard and it shows a little overlay,
03:06:45
◼
►
but that only applies to the iPad
03:06:48
◼
►
and only when you're having a keyboard attached
03:06:50
◼
►
and a lot of people are using a lot of Tux devices
03:06:53
◼
►
that don't have keyboards attached to them that way.
03:06:56
◼
►
And we don't also have in our UI paradigms
03:06:59
◼
►
the amount of progressive disclosure that you get
03:07:04
◼
►
from a menu, we don't have that really
03:07:06
◼
►
in our design vocabulary on Tux OS software yet.
03:07:10
◼
►
And instead, Tux OS things tend to do that
03:07:14
◼
►
with just having lots of modes,
03:07:16
◼
►
where you tap this toolbar icon
03:07:18
◼
►
the whole interface changes to be this mode, and then it's, and that just gets very confusing
03:07:23
◼
►
very quickly. And even then, you're usually using iconography, not text, to show what
03:07:30
◼
►
the actions are, which makes it, in some ways it makes it more accessible if like, you know,
03:07:36
◼
►
if it's not in your language or if you don't understand some of the terminology used. But
03:07:40
◼
►
it also makes it a lot harder to skim and browse and kind of learn the ins and outs
03:07:45
◼
►
of for a lot of people. So we have like, you know, it took us a long time to figure this
03:07:49
◼
►
stuff out on desktops, or on PCs rather. And I think tux just, it's just too early in the
03:07:57
◼
►
tux OS's and in how we design software for them to know how to how to solve some of these
03:08:04
◼
►
problems because you can't just take the solutions from PCs and translate them right over in
03:08:09
◼
►
a lot of ways because it just doesn't fit.
03:08:11
◼
►
- And it's not quite true that you could use the menu bar
03:08:14
◼
►
to explore the entire functionality of an app.
03:08:16
◼
►
And like a perfect example of that
03:08:18
◼
►
is like in Adobe apps, like Photoshop.
03:08:21
◼
►
- The paradigms of good user interface.
03:08:24
◼
►
- Well, even going back to the early days of Photoshop
03:08:27
◼
►
when it was truly a good Mac app.
03:08:29
◼
►
But you could, you can always,
03:08:30
◼
►
as long back as I can remember,
03:08:32
◼
►
let's say you have an image
03:08:33
◼
►
and you're zoomed in way bigger than your screen, right?
03:08:36
◼
►
But you still wanna pan around the image.
03:08:38
◼
►
You can just hold down the space bar wherever you are
03:08:41
◼
►
and the mouse cursor will change to the Mickey Mouse hand,
03:08:45
◼
►
and then you can click and drag
03:08:47
◼
►
to just drag the canvas around screen.
03:08:50
◼
►
Well, that's not a menu command.
03:08:51
◼
►
That's something you somehow you have to learn that.
03:08:53
◼
►
And for whatever reason, QuarkXPress back in the day,
03:08:57
◼
►
the desktop image or layout program,
03:09:00
◼
►
desktop like publishing program
03:09:01
◼
►
that at one point I practically lived my life in
03:09:05
◼
►
had the same feature, but they used the option key,
03:09:07
◼
►
which I actually always liked better than space bar
03:09:10
◼
►
'cause it always felt like it should be a modifier
03:09:12
◼
►
and just plain option clicking on something
03:09:14
◼
►
was completely unused, right?
03:09:16
◼
►
Command clicking, open links,
03:09:17
◼
►
and control clicking opens control menus.
03:09:20
◼
►
Option clicking was right there, but you had to learn that.
03:09:23
◼
►
But for the most part though, if you just wanna learn
03:09:25
◼
►
what's everything this app can do,
03:09:27
◼
►
if you just go through the menu bar, you'll find it all.
03:09:30
◼
►
And I'll give you a perfect example of that.
03:09:32
◼
►
I've lost that curiosity almost,
03:09:35
◼
►
or the instinct to like, when I have a new app, to do that,
03:09:39
◼
►
Because even me, as somebody who thinks of himself primarily
03:09:43
◼
►
as a Mac user, I've gotten so accustomed to the,
03:09:47
◼
►
look, if it's not an icon in the window that I can click,
03:09:50
◼
►
don't think about it.
03:09:51
◼
►
Like when I was looking for that uncheck all thing in Notes,
03:09:55
◼
►
I found another feature that I had no idea was there.
03:09:58
◼
►
This is probably new to almost everybody
03:09:59
◼
►
who I'm going to tell this to,
03:10:00
◼
►
because you didn't even think to look at it.
03:10:01
◼
►
But in Apple Notes on like Sierra and Hi Sierra,
03:10:05
◼
►
you can open a note in its own window, right,
03:10:08
◼
►
double-clicking it and then if you go to the window menu there's a float on top
03:10:12
◼
►
command and that window will stay floating on top of all other windows did
03:10:17
◼
►
you know you could do that open any note you want float on top and now it's like
03:10:25
◼
►
an always on top thing look at that you can you know you can keep a little
03:10:28
◼
►
skinny window open on the side while you're doing other work gathering notes
03:10:32
◼
►
and it's always there for you to like drag stuff to it's fantastic but there's
03:10:37
◼
►
There's no other way to do it other than to go to the menu bar
03:10:40
◼
►
Anyway, that's my I really feel like that's the biggest one of the biggest problems facing the iPad
03:10:46
◼
►
especially like because I don't think you want apps with an extra, you know, the
03:10:50
◼
►
Even the biggest phone possible whatever whoever in China is making a six point whatever inch phone
03:10:57
◼
►
It's it's a small enough screen where the maximum complexity of an app is
03:11:03
◼
►
dictated by the size of the screen.
03:11:05
◼
►
But there's no reason in theory that a 11 inch
03:11:08
◼
►
or 13 inch iPad shouldn't be able to support apps
03:11:12
◼
►
of the same complexity as a Mac,
03:11:14
◼
►
but the UI metaphors just aren't there
03:11:16
◼
►
for where to put those commands
03:11:17
◼
►
that can't be shown on screen at all time.
03:11:21
◼
►
- Yeah, like where do you put a whole bunch of functionality
03:11:24
◼
►
and also how do you show users
03:11:27
◼
►
how to use the app in a more powerful way?
03:11:31
◼
►
So with the equivalent of keyboard shortcuts
03:11:34
◼
►
and things like that,
03:11:35
◼
►
like how do you show users what is possible?
03:11:39
◼
►
I don't know.
03:11:45
◼
►
What else did I have to talk about this week?
03:11:47
◼
►
Oh, I wanna talk about the sad state of Apple TV apps.
03:11:50
◼
►
I really wanna talk about this.
03:11:51
◼
►
- So do I actually.
03:11:52
◼
►
I don't know, are you gonna release a three hour episode?
03:11:55
◼
►
Like how do you do this?
03:11:56
◼
►
- What are we at?
03:11:57
◼
►
I see we got interrupted by a Skype drop before,
03:11:59
◼
►
so I don't know where we are.
03:12:00
◼
►
- Yeah, we're gonna be at about three hours.
03:12:02
◼
►
- We'll be close.
03:12:03
◼
►
Well, there you go, you get your money's worth
03:12:06
◼
►
out of this episode.
03:12:07
◼
►
- I'm finally gonna get counted in your episode
03:12:12
◼
►
length records. - Yeah, I'll tell Vasiri
03:12:13
◼
►
to update his chart.
03:12:14
◼
►
The sad state of Apple TV apps.
03:12:16
◼
►
And this popped into my bubbled up,
03:12:18
◼
►
I wrote recently about the long awaited Amazon Prime app.
03:12:22
◼
►
And I was just telling you, in fact,
03:12:24
◼
►
all of those episodes of Top Gear,
03:12:26
◼
►
the reason I hadn't watched it until now,
03:12:28
◼
►
not Top Gear, Grand Tour. By the way, have you realized how clever the name Grand Tour is? For
03:12:35
◼
►
people who don't know the backstory, the three guys who did the Grand Tour for years did a BBC
03:12:40
◼
►
show called Top Gear, and it was very popular around the world. And then one of the guys,
03:12:46
◼
►
Jeremy Clarkson, was at a steakhouse and having dinner with one of the producers, and I don't
03:12:54
◼
►
know what happened. Nobody really seems to know what happened, but he punched the guy out.
03:13:00
◼
►
- That wasn't quite what, yeah, it's close enough.
03:13:03
◼
►
- Yeah, he punctured a staff member,
03:13:07
◼
►
and therefore, like the BBC basically had to fire him.
03:13:10
◼
►
- And the other two guys in solidarity left,
03:13:12
◼
►
and they went to Amazon,
03:13:13
◼
►
and they've started what's effectively the same show.
03:13:16
◼
►
Do you realize how clever it is
03:13:17
◼
►
if you're well known for a show called Top Gear,
03:13:20
◼
►
how perfect a name Grand Tour is,
03:13:23
◼
►
because you're taking the same two letters,
03:13:25
◼
►
T and G, and just replacing them,
03:13:28
◼
►
And there's something, at least in my mind,
03:13:31
◼
►
where they get filed right next to each other
03:13:34
◼
►
in the hash table, in my mind.
03:13:36
◼
►
They sound the same, Grand Tour, Top Gear.
03:13:39
◼
►
They have the same cadence.
03:13:42
◼
►
Like for three guys who couldn't take the name Top Gear
03:13:46
◼
►
with them, the name Grand Tour is,
03:13:50
◼
►
it's unbelievably perfect.
03:13:53
◼
►
It's really crazy.
03:13:54
◼
►
And I find myself saying,
03:13:55
◼
►
even though I never even watched Top Gear,
03:13:57
◼
►
I find myself saying Top Gear all the time just because it's, like I said, it's like
03:14:01
◼
►
in the same, it's like a hash table collision in my brain because it's so perfect. Anyway,
03:14:07
◼
►
the whole reason I put off watching it, even though you guys started talking about it when
03:14:10
◼
►
their Amazon show launched last year, was because I couldn't watch it on my goddamn
03:14:14
◼
►
Apple TV. And it's not like I'm spiteful and only watch stuff on Apple TV. It's just that
03:14:20
◼
►
switching to something else never seems convenient enough.
03:14:24
◼
►
Yeah, it's nicer to watch an Apple TV.
03:14:26
◼
►
So now that there's an Amazon Prime app on Apple TV, and even though it's a garbage
03:14:30
◼
►
app, which I wrote about, it's just horrible. And it's just a direct port from the Prime
03:14:37
◼
►
app on all these other platforms. It's terrible. It's just really, really a bad app. It disobeys
03:14:44
◼
►
so many conventions of Apple TV. It doesn't work like any other normal Apple TV app. But
03:14:49
◼
►
The one saving grace that it has is it does integrate with Apple's Apple TV app.
03:14:54
◼
►
So you can just go to the Apple's TV app and it seems to do a good job of
03:14:59
◼
►
saying, Hey, you just watched episode three of season two of this.
03:15:02
◼
►
Do you want to watch season four?
03:15:04
◼
►
And I don't really have to interact with the Amazon app. But anyway,
03:15:08
◼
►
this week YouTube came out with a new,
03:15:10
◼
►
an updated version of their Apple TV app and it's like the exact same thing as
03:15:16
◼
►
story is the Amazon app where it's just a direct port of their youtube.com/tv web app
03:15:23
◼
►
doesn't look or act anything like an Apple TV app doesn't work well with the whatever
03:15:28
◼
►
you think of the Apple TV remote control. Certainly this app isn't meant to be used
03:15:32
◼
►
with it and it doesn't even make noises you move around. You know how like on Apple TV
03:15:36
◼
►
you go up down left, right? It goes beep, beep, beep, beep. It doesn't doesn't make any
03:15:40
◼
►
noise and I have a stupid TV setup where I don't have one button to hit to turn everything
03:15:45
◼
►
on. I've got to hit a button to turn on the TV and a button to turn on my sound system.
03:15:51
◼
►
And then, like, I always have to wake up the Apple TV, so that's the third button. So when
03:15:56
◼
►
it wasn't making noise, I just assumed that when I went to turn on the sound system, I
03:16:01
◼
►
didn't hit it. And now I'm like, well, shit, the green light's on. Oh, maybe I have to
03:16:04
◼
►
turn the volume up. And I turn the volume way up. And if I turn the volume to, like,
03:16:08
◼
►
you know, too loud. And I'm like, holy shit, they shipped an Apple TV app that doesn't
03:16:12
◼
►
make noises you navigate. Yeah, this is so I pose a question in our notes here and
03:16:20
◼
►
I think it might be a discussion like were in retrospect and and I'm not
03:16:26
◼
►
saying Apple should have known this but it just as a question now in retrospect
03:16:31
◼
►
was this model of letting everybody make their own apps for the Apple TV actually
03:16:36
◼
►
the right model was it was this actually better than the previous Apple TV
03:16:41
◼
►
software like before they had the fortune what was in 2015 before that one the app the
03:16:47
◼
►
old Apple TVs before they were apps Apple basically wrote all of the like kind of channels
03:16:54
◼
►
that that appeared there and they were all based on you know like a common code base
03:17:00
◼
►
where it was basically like being fed like a list of things that can be played and they
03:17:04
◼
►
were you know some structures it's a TV ML or something like that TV markup language
03:17:08
◼
►
it was sort of like, well that's the new one.
03:17:11
◼
►
- I thought that was the old one.
03:17:12
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- Anyway, so, I don't think we ever knew the name
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of what the old one was like.
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It was basically, it was like a version of XML
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that would like render.
03:17:21
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- It was just an XML file, right.
03:17:23
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- Right, and so all Apple TV video sources,
03:17:27
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in the previous generation of Apple TVs,
03:17:29
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all would work the same way.
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Like you'd have the same kind of menu structure,
03:17:32
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everything would look basically the same,
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you'd just be accessing,
03:17:35
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oh now you're running HBO's content,
03:17:37
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and now you're running so-and-so's content.
03:17:39
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And it all looked and worked in the standard way,
03:17:43
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which is how TV stuff had always worked before.
03:17:47
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Like your cable box, every provider who does things
03:17:51
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on a cable service doesn't have their own app
03:17:53
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that you don't have to navigate to.
03:17:55
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Like if you wanna watch a show on a different channel
03:17:57
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on a cable service, it works exactly the same way
03:18:00
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as every other channel that you have access to
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in your channel guide and whatever.
03:18:04
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Everything works the same.
03:18:05
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And so when Apple moved to the fourth gen,
03:18:09
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there was a lot of questions about how they should do this
03:18:13
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and people saying what they should and shouldn't do.
03:18:15
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And what they did at the time,
03:18:16
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which I think was probably the right move
03:18:18
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with everything we knew at the time,
03:18:19
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was now we just make everything apps.
03:18:22
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And video providers and other people
03:18:25
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can just make their own app however they want it to be,
03:18:29
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and that's how they can bring their content
03:18:31
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to the Apple TV, which is great in a number of ways.
03:18:34
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it lowers barriers, it makes it so that, you know,
03:18:37
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Apple doesn't have to hand create every one of these
03:18:40
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video providers' channels on the TV, like,
03:18:42
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the people can make their own apps,
03:18:44
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and they can make them really awesome.
03:18:47
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The problem is, when big companies make their own apps,
03:18:50
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they often don't make them really awesome,
03:18:52
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and they often have their own goals in mind,
03:18:54
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like, you know, Amazon wants the Amazon app
03:18:57
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to look the same way on all platforms,
03:18:59
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Netflix, you know, same thing, YouTube,
03:19:01
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probably the same thing, like,
03:19:03
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So what we have now is companies that they control
03:19:08
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the entire experience rather than Apple,
03:19:11
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and what they've chosen to do is to make
03:19:14
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kind of a crappy Apple TV experience.
03:19:17
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- Not even kind of.
03:19:18
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- Now there's no more recourse for that.
03:19:19
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- And they both, I think Amazon at least
03:19:22
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is using standard playback controls for the video stream.
03:19:24
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Like once video is streaming,
03:19:26
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it's a standard Apple TV video stream,
03:19:28
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but YouTube uses their own video playback controls.
03:19:31
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and they don't support, I mean, things that are fundamental
03:19:35
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to the platform, like being able to tap, not click,
03:19:38
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just tap the touch pad on the remote to bring up like,
03:19:43
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"Hey, where am I?"
03:19:44
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That doesn't work.
03:19:45
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It doesn't do anything.
03:19:46
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It's so literally tied to the idea
03:19:50
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of a generic shitbox TV connected thing
03:19:52
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with a D-pad and a select button
03:19:55
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that anything other than that on the Apple TV remote
03:19:58
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doesn't work, including just fundamental to the platform,
03:20:00
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just tap on the thing to see where I am.
03:20:03
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And the playback controls look all weird.
03:20:05
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And they even bring up like a stupid picker,
03:20:08
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the way that YouTube is so obsessed with always,
03:20:11
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no matter where you are in a video,
03:20:13
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you could be watching like a half hour YouTube video
03:20:15
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and you're only 10 minutes into it.
03:20:16
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But if you do anything, they immediately present you
03:20:18
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with eight options for other things
03:20:20
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you might wanna watch right now, right?
03:20:21
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Like, I don't know how somebody
03:20:24
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with a genuine attention deficit problem,
03:20:28
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how they could ever watch anything on YouTube.
03:20:30
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Like I don't have any kind of issues in that regard,
03:20:33
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like in a clinical sense, but even I feel badgered.
03:20:37
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Like I just wanted to pause the show.
03:20:39
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Why are you telling me about eight other things to watch
03:20:42
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and taking up a quarter of the screen?
03:20:45
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All I wanted to do was freaking pause
03:20:46
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and maybe see where I am in the video.
03:20:48
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So the other thing I did, I told you earlier in the show,
03:20:53
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I fired up the Fire TV 'cause I wanted to see
03:20:57
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what the hell's going on with YouTube over there.
03:20:59
◼
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And so they have a youtube.com, at least on my Fire TV.
03:21:04
◼
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It was like one of the top two or three suggestions
03:21:06
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for things to do.
03:21:08
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And I was like, "Ooh, that's interesting."
03:21:10
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And it didn't have the YouTube logo.
03:21:11
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It was even a blue rectangle and not red.
03:21:14
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So they weren't even trying to impersonate YouTube.
03:21:17
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It's just a blue rectangle that said youtube.com.
03:21:20
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And I clicked it and it said,
03:21:22
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"You have two ways of watching YouTube on Fire TV.
03:21:25
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►
"You can download Firefox,
03:21:27
◼
►
or you can download Silk. That's Amazon's web browser. So I downloaded both. And when
03:21:36
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you fire up either Mozilla or Silk, both of them assume that the only reason they exist
03:21:44
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►
is to show YouTube. Like they're effectively both YouTube apps. So you download Silk on
03:21:51
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the thing and it's just like, "You want to watch YouTube, right?" And they're like, "Yeah."
03:21:55
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and then it just turns into the YouTube app.
03:21:57
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And it looks exactly like the Apple TV app.
03:22:01
◼
►
So running YouTube as a website in a web browser
03:22:06
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on the Amazon Fire TV box is exactly the same interface
03:22:13
◼
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as Apple TV, with the small exception of at the very least
03:22:17
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on Apple TV, the currently selected item does have the 3D
03:22:23
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►
pops out effect and you can kind of jiggle it around
03:22:26
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►
a little bit.
03:22:27
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►
But every other thing is exactly the same.
03:22:29
◼
►
So somehow, and my, I guess, is that the new YouTube app
03:22:33
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►
on Apple TV somehow got an exception
03:22:36
◼
►
and is running a web view, even though the web view
03:22:39
◼
►
isn't really part of the Apple TV SDK.
03:22:43
◼
►
And I think that they--
03:22:45
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- Or it might not technically be a web view,
03:22:48
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►
maybe it's some kind of thing where they're using
03:22:50
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JavaScript under their hood to do most of their logic,
03:22:53
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►
but they're rendering it differently.
03:22:55
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►
But it doesn't necessarily have to be a WebView to do that.
03:22:58
◼
►
But yeah, it's still some kind of cross-platform
03:23:01
◼
►
gallery for people.
03:23:02
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►
- And the other funny thing about the Prime app,
03:23:04
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►
which is a great example, was the people who still have
03:23:08
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►
the previous generation Apple TV,
03:23:11
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the one from three generations ago,