The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Are you wearing shoes?

00:00:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I am. Are we going out?

00:00:04 ◼   ► Is this where we're having an outside day?

00:00:06 ◼   ► I am not wearing shoes.

00:00:07 ◼   ► Oh, I see.

00:00:07 ◼   ► I've done it with socks on.

00:00:09 ◼   ► In the wintertime, I often do it with my slippers.

00:00:12 ◼   ► It's so ungodly hot here that I--

00:00:18 ◼   ► and we have air conditioning,

00:00:20 ◼   ► but it's like the air conditioning is struggling to--

00:00:23 ◼   ► Keep up.

00:00:24 ◼   ► It's losing the battle.

00:00:25 ◼   ► We were down in Florida for some, you know, to see some of the theme parks for

00:00:31 ◼   ► Family Vacation, and the weather is, of course, stifling hot and humid down in

00:00:37 ◼   ► Orlando, Florida, and it is exactly the same here in Philadelphia.

00:00:42 ◼   ► Yeah, well we always plan our our trip back east to coincide with the worst

00:00:46 ◼   ► possible weather. Early August? We'll be going to Baltimore in August.

00:00:51 ◼   ► August. Oh, beautiful! Baltimore is absolutely beautiful in August.

00:00:55 ◼   ► At the time it couldn't be better. It's just like you to give your sweat glands a good,

00:01:02 ◼   ► you know? Yeah, right, it's like it's a cleanse. Yeah, you know, it's like when your car gets

00:01:09 ◼   ► serviced, they put it up on the thing where the wheels spin and then they, you know,

00:01:12 ◼   ► you gotta put the gas all the way down. That's like, you know, you just gotta, you know,

00:01:17 ◼   ► Do that with your sweat glands. Yeah, flush out all the toxins. Barefoot. I'm absolutely barefoot.

00:01:22 ◼   ► I got a lot of toxins. We can roll right into this. One of the things I wanted to talk to you

00:01:27 ◼   ► about—I really do—like a little parenting episode here of the talk show, because I was

00:01:33 ◼   ► catching up on podcasts and the ATP guys were talking about "screen time" and made the

00:01:41 ◼   ► excellent point—we don't really talk about screen time here in our family either—that

00:01:46 ◼   ► it's um uh syracusa has had a big long rant about it but basically it's no it's no fair to just say

00:01:53 ◼   ► screen time because you know if a kid's reading a book on an ipad why does that count as screen

00:01:59 ◼   ► time i mean it's like yeah things that you might want to limit like watching tv and youtube and

00:02:04 ◼   ► movies and playing video games right i don't know is hank aware that there are such things as video

00:02:11 ◼   ► games you might have played one or jonas played one or two jonas has discovered them and he's

00:02:17 ◼   ► seen me play them i know that much uh i don't it is interesting though amy and i i uh you know we

00:02:24 ◼   ► don't really have like a hard and fast rule about it and i think if anything we are probably a

00:02:29 ◼   ► little too lax uh about yeah yeah we're probably we're probably much the same uh jonas is of the

00:02:37 ◼   ► personality that--

00:02:40 ◼   ► he's very sociable.

00:02:41 ◼   ► He is.

00:02:42 ◼   ► But he would happily spend his entire summer

00:02:46 ◼   ► and doing nothing but playing video games in our house.

00:02:49 ◼   ► Right, yeah.

00:02:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:52 ◼   ► I mean, Hank would do the same.

00:02:56 ◼   ► And usually-- I mean, our thing is just not so much screen time

00:02:59 ◼   ► as it is like non-screen time.

00:03:02 ◼   ► And there's a minimum.

00:03:03 ◼   ► Right, like you've got to figure out something to do that doesn't

00:03:06 ◼   ► involve looking at a screen.

00:03:07 ◼   ► Right, right. And so, he plays chess. We play chess with him. He likes to cook. We often have

00:03:14 ◼   ► him in the kitchen to make dinner and lunch and stuff like that. And so, we do things like that.

00:03:19 ◼   ► But I mean, yeah, but like you said, a lot of the stuff that he plays on his iPad or his iPhone

00:03:24 ◼   ► is like he'll play chess or he's playing words with friends, with family members, and that stuff

00:03:31 ◼   ► doesn't seem bad. I mean, it's certainly way better than playing—I can't even think of it.

00:03:39 ◼   ► He still likes to play Flappy Bird. And he's much better at it than I am, so he's developed

00:03:48 ◼   ► serious Flappy Bird skills. So that's good. I'm sure that'll work out well for him later in life.

00:03:53 ◼   ► One of the things that Amy and I struggle with,

00:03:56 ◼   ► and it is different from when you and I were kids,

00:04:02 ◼   ► because I like playing sports and Jonas doesn't.

00:04:05 ◼   ► So I would go out to play actual sports.

00:04:09 ◼   ► We had a community pool in the small town where I grew up.

00:04:15 ◼   ► That was where everybody hung out.

00:04:17 ◼   ► In the summer, I would go to the pool every day, just go to the pool.

00:04:22 ◼   ► Jonas doesn't really have anything like that here, but the other thing that is different is that

00:04:27 ◼   ► Sometimes not all the time not even most of the time

00:04:30 ◼   ► But sometimes the games are actually sociable where his friends will you know text each other and say let's all play whatever

00:04:38 ◼   ► and

00:04:39 ◼   ► they everybody you know, it's

00:04:41 ◼   ► It seems like a very happy coincidence

00:04:44 ◼   ► I mean

00:04:44 ◼   ► Maybe there's one poor kid in his gang who's got an Xbox instead of a PlayStation and I just don't know about it

00:04:49 ◼   ► and he's like excluded, but they all have PlayStation 4s,

00:04:53 ◼   ► which I really don't remember when we got it

00:04:56 ◼   ► that it was coordinated with his friends.

00:04:58 ◼   ► It seems like a happy coincidence.

00:04:59 ◼   ► But anyway, they're all on these headsets

00:05:01 ◼   ► and they're yelling at each other

00:05:02 ◼   ► and it's a lot like having them over to the house.

00:05:06 ◼   ► The kids are in the house except the other people's

00:05:09 ◼   ► stinky kids aren't in my house.

00:05:10 ◼   ► So it's actually kind of great.

00:05:12 ◼   ► But Amy and I don't really know, you know,

00:05:15 ◼   ► does that, is that a little,

00:05:18 ◼   ► seems it seems almost wrong to to you know not to limit it but to say hey

00:05:25 ◼   ► enough because it seems like that's what him and his friends want to do to play

00:05:28 ◼   ► with each other mm-hmm yeah which is kind of what we would have done like

00:05:33 ◼   ► going out someplace right they're doing something and I imagine I mean I would

00:05:37 ◼   ► feel I would think that where you live I mean maybe he's getting old enough now

00:05:41 ◼   ► but it's not exactly the kind of environment that you would just like let

00:05:45 ◼   ► kid out the door and no we well I Amy and I differ on that a little bit I'm a

00:05:50 ◼   ► little bit more willing to start letting him mm-hmm go out and about and Amy is

00:05:55 ◼   ► still of the he's 12 so yeah just for just for decline not that everybody

00:05:59 ◼   ► knows how old my kid is but he's 12 heading into seventh grade Amy is still

00:06:03 ◼   ► very over not over particularly very protective and perhaps reason perhaps

00:06:10 ◼   ► you know to the point where I don't I don't you know I I almost defer to her

00:06:13 ◼   ► wisdom that you know but I still think though that I think the world at large

00:06:18 ◼   ► is very different you and I grew up as like the last of the wild feral kids

00:06:25 ◼   ► yeah I mean I but I just I lived in a different environment - I mean it was a

00:06:30 ◼   ► much more it was a much smaller town yeah and lots of we had woods in the

00:06:34 ◼   ► backyard and you know trails leaving in all directions and so yeah I mean we

00:06:41 ◼   ► were just, you know, I mean I could go out the door anytime and just play in the

00:06:47 ◼   ► woods or something. Playing in the woods was the thing that we did. We don't have

00:06:51 ◼   ► that. I mean, you know, if he goes out to play in the woods here, it's, you know,

00:06:55 ◼   ► inhabited by homeless people. So it's not the same.

00:07:03 ◼   ► But it is important for him to do, and we're kind of, you know, we're getting the...

00:07:06 ◼   ► I mean, and we've done a little, you know, like, he's got a friend who lives like

00:07:09 ◼   ► three blocks away and we will let him walk over there anytime he wants to.

00:07:13 ◼   ► So he definitely gets to do some of that. And the other, like,

00:07:20 ◼   ► when was it? Was it 4th of July? Anyway, it was a few weeks ago, and we had some friends over and

00:07:26 ◼   ► he had a buddy with this other couple and we were having dessert, I think, and we were

00:07:33 ◼   ► out of whipped cream, and he loves to have whipped cream on his ice cream. So we're like,

00:07:37 ◼   ► well you know and you know instead of complaining about it why don't you walk over the convenience

00:07:40 ◼   ► store and get you know which is like four blocks from here why don't you walk to the convenience

00:07:44 ◼   ► store and go get some and so the two of them just you know we gave them like five bucks and they

00:07:48 ◼   ► walked out the door and and then you know they walked over and bought it and came back and

00:07:52 ◼   ► and that's like i mean it seems fine particularly now i mean you know when there's pretty when

00:07:57 ◼   ► there's two of them i feel much better about it it seems ridiculous right that that's like a a moment

00:08:04 ◼   ► but I know exactly what you mean. Like we're exactly at the exact same stage where it's like,

00:08:08 ◼   ► well, I swear to God, it was like a couple months ago, we gave Jonas a letter to drop in the mailbox

00:08:14 ◼   ► and it was like, and he was like, are you sure? And we're like, we're sure it'll be all right.

00:08:19 ◼   ► Take your phone. I can remember when Hank was really young. I mean, he was

00:08:24 ◼   ► three maybe. And I can't remember if it was a letter. I think it was like a card or something

00:08:32 ◼   ► that we had to break a birthday card for one of the grandparents or something like that, and

00:08:36 ◼   ► he had sat down with Karen to sign it and put it in the envelope, put a stamp on it, address it,

00:08:41 ◼   ► and so they did that. And then Karen kind of turned her back, and she was like, and then

00:08:49 ◼   ► a minute or two later, we're like, "Where's Hank? Where the heck is Hank?" And we noticed the front

00:08:54 ◼   ► door was open, and he had just grabbed the thing. He knew where the mailbox is like three blocks

00:09:00 ◼   ► away and he was booking to the mailbox. He was going to mail that letter. So that card.

00:09:05 ◼   ► It was like an assertion of independence.

00:09:07 ◼   ► Well, you know, it was just, I don't even think it was, well, sort of, but I mean,

00:09:10 ◼   ► I think it was mostly just like he knew that was the next thing that needed to be done and

00:09:13 ◼   ► he was going to do it. He was just going to take care of it. And this little three-year-old is

00:09:19 ◼   ► running up the street and this is long before he knew enough about crossing the street and people

00:09:24 ◼   ► can bomb through this neighborhood sometimes. So, you know, naturally being the modern day parents

00:09:30 ◼   ► that we are, we freaked out and chased after him, like tackled him like half a block away,

00:09:37 ◼   ► and brought him back. Those were idiots. Instead of like running up and saying, "Okay, let's go."

00:09:44 ◼   ► "Oh my god, where are you going? What's going on?" And at first we didn't realize what he was doing.

00:09:50 ◼   ► all we knew was that he was just like off and running and then later i think we were like oh

00:09:54 ◼   ► he was going to the mailbox and he had the letter yeah yeah yeah which we should have figured out

00:10:03 ◼   ► but i think the panic of like not seeing you know there's that moment where you like you turn around

00:10:07 ◼   ► and the kid's gone yeah and you're like oh my god i'm that parent i think i'm that parent that was

00:10:13 ◼   ► was in the news. Yeah, for us, a big part of it is definitely at least in my mind is

00:10:21 ◼   ► honestly just the safety of crossing the street because it's yeah, you know, cars go fast

00:10:28 ◼   ► fast enough that you know, they would kill you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, here we have all these,

00:10:33 ◼   ► you know, we have a mess of intersections with no stop signs. Yeah, that's a four way,

00:10:39 ◼   ► it's like a four-way no-stop and nobody knows how to deal with them. Technically, you're supposed

00:10:45 ◼   ► to let the person—if you arrive at the same time, the person to the right has the right-of-way.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Oh, I didn't know that.

00:10:51 ◼   ► Yeah, but very few people know that, and usually what people think is the person who's going the

00:10:57 ◼   ► fastest gets to go. "I'm going faster than you. I should get to go."

00:11:03 ◼   ► I grew up in the small town where Amy and I grew up was lots and lots of—almost everything was

00:11:08 ◼   ► was a four-way stop.

00:11:10 ◼   ► And what I remember in the handful of years

00:11:13 ◼   ► where I was of driving age and living there

00:11:16 ◼   ► was that the procedure was--

00:11:20 ◼   ► it's like living in suburbia full of very nice people.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Both drivers wave to each other.

00:11:28 ◼   ► Both of them wave saying, you go.

00:11:32 ◼   ► No, you go.

00:11:32 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:11:33 ◼   ► You go.

00:11:34 ◼   ► And then eventually--

00:11:34 ◼   ► And they sit there forever.

00:11:36 ◼   ► one of you gives up after 30 seconds and goes.

00:11:41 ◼   ► - Well usually what happens is you both give up

00:11:42 ◼   ► at the same time and then you both start going

00:11:44 ◼   ► and then the whole process starts all over again.

00:11:47 ◼   ► - I like this idea and I bet you're right,

00:11:48 ◼   ► that makes total sense.

00:11:50 ◼   ► If I ever learned that to pass the driver's test

00:11:53 ◼   ► written exam, I've since forgotten it.

00:11:55 ◼   ► - I had forgotten it for the longest time

00:11:57 ◼   ► and in our first house here, it didn't really matter

00:12:00 ◼   ► because we were on a busy street and there were stop signs

00:12:03 ◼   ► the way along it. But then we moved to this house like 12 years ago, yeah, and since then I've had

00:12:11 ◼   ► to learn. How about this smart guy? What if it's two cars facing each other and they both want to

00:12:17 ◼   ► make lefts and they arrive at the same time? They both want to make lefts, they can go.

00:12:21 ◼   ► Right? No. Yes, they can. If they're both facing, if they're across the way,

00:12:29 ◼   ► they both want to make lefts, they can both go. You mean they both want to go the same way?

00:12:33 ◼   ► one wants to make a left, the other one wants to make a right. We're both going to the same road.

00:12:37 ◼   ► Yeah, something like that.

00:12:38 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. I think it's the person who wants to make a right who gets to go.

00:12:44 ◼   ► Oh, oh.

00:12:45 ◼   ► Because the other person is turning across traffic and must yield.

00:12:48 ◼   ► I see what you mean.

00:12:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:51 ◼   ► Yeah. Boy, I bet you're a good driver.

00:12:53 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I'm an awesome driver. Doesn't everybody say that?

00:12:58 ◼   ► I don't.

00:12:59 ◼   ► It's always the other guy.

00:13:01 ◼   ► I know that there's, it's not you because you had your license taken away.

00:13:04 ◼   ► A phenomenal number of people. I do. It is true that if you like the Gallup poll,

00:13:09 ◼   ► it's like, do you think you're an above average driver? And it's,

00:13:11 ◼   ► it's like 95% of all people respond. I would respond. No, I'm,

00:13:15 ◼   ► I'm a terrible driver.

00:13:17 ◼   ► Who, so who there is your, do you have,

00:13:21 ◼   ► I mean everybody has like someone that you, um,

00:13:24 ◼   ► ridicule and drivers from some other place that you ridicule. Um, is it,

00:13:28 ◼   ► is it Massachusetts? I mean, Massachusetts drivers, I think are roundly,

00:13:31 ◼   ► considered lousy drivers.

00:13:32 ◼   ► - They are the worst.

00:13:34 ◼   ► We lived there for two years,

00:13:35 ◼   ► and we never ceased being astounded

00:13:38 ◼   ► by how bad Massachusetts drivers are.

00:13:40 ◼   ► But here in Philly,

00:13:41 ◼   ► you don't see Massachusetts drivers very often

00:13:43 ◼   ► because even if they tried to drive down here,

00:13:46 ◼   ► they would get in some kind of accident

00:13:48 ◼   ► by the time they get through New York.

00:13:49 ◼   ► They never make it.

00:13:50 ◼   ► So you don't see Massachusetts license plates this far south.

00:13:53 ◼   ► Here, it's New Jersey drivers.

00:13:57 ◼   ► New Jersey drivers are the worst.

00:13:59 ◼   ► And it's because New Jersey pretty much,

00:14:04 ◼   ► I mean, I'm not gonna say nowhere,

00:14:07 ◼   ► but they severely limit the number of places

00:14:10 ◼   ► where you can make a left turn.

00:14:12 ◼   ► So everything is, if you wanna make a left,

00:14:15 ◼   ► if you're on one of those, like a retail,

00:14:20 ◼   ► like all sorts of big box stores, and the place

00:14:24 ◼   ► you wanna go, yeah, the place you wanna go is on the left,

00:14:27 ◼   ► you've got to figure out whether it's before--

00:14:30 ◼   ► you've got to look for the sign where it'll tell you,

00:14:31 ◼   ► if you want to get over there, make a right here.

00:14:34 ◼   ► And all of a sudden, you're driving around people's houses

00:14:36 ◼   ► and stuff.

00:14:37 ◼   ► And then you'd come back out.

00:14:38 ◼   ► And then you waited a light so that you

00:14:40 ◼   ► don't have to make the left.

00:14:41 ◼   ► So New Jersey drivers are incapable of making a left turn

00:14:45 ◼   ► when they're in a place where you can make a left turn.

00:14:47 ◼   ► Like, you could just see the panic in their faces

00:14:49 ◼   ► as they try to make a left turn.

00:14:51 ◼   ► Who is it for you?

00:14:55 ◼   ► Here it's-- well, things are much more polite out here

00:14:59 ◼   ► than--

00:15:00 ◼   ► I mean, I grew up on the East Coast,

00:15:01 ◼   ► so I feel like I'm a bit of an East Coast driver.

00:15:05 ◼   ► But when I moved out here, it was very surprising to me

00:15:09 ◼   ► to learn a much more politer way of driving,

00:15:13 ◼   ► because you let people merge, and they wave to you

00:15:16 ◼   ► after they merge.

00:15:19 ◼   ► They wave thank you.

00:15:20 ◼   ► And seriously, I think that happens less the longer

00:15:24 ◼   ► that I've been here, maybe because of me.

00:15:26 ◼   ► But it still happens, I would say, maybe half the time.

00:15:35 ◼   ► And I think as far as people who we consider bad drivers,

00:15:40 ◼   ► it's people from Canada because they drive

00:15:44 ◼   ► on the other side of the road.

00:15:45 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:15:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I was going to say, I bet it's the Canadians.

00:15:49 ◼   ► I think actually, no, it's just--

00:15:50 ◼   ► I mean, I think actually maybe it is people from Canada

00:15:52 ◼   ► they're you know they're in some place where they don't know you know I mean

00:15:56 ◼   ► they're they're from out of town and they're panicking yeah yeah I hope we

00:16:02 ◼   ► know who have we offended so far in this show we've offended New Jersey and

00:16:06 ◼   ► my parents children I still forget I lived there for two years and I still

00:16:11 ◼   ► forget what you call people from Massachusetts Massachusetts it's not

00:16:15 ◼   ► mass holes mass holes we've offended them but that was again that was

00:16:20 ◼   ► actually. One time we were in Massachusetts and it seemed to us we

00:16:24 ◼   ► really did see it did seem this way that the way people merge in Massachusetts is

00:16:28 ◼   ► they just get up to speed and hope that there's a slot. Yeah, yeah. And one time we

00:16:36 ◼   ► were, Amy saw this, I didn't see it, but she was behind this guy and she could

00:16:40 ◼   ► see that there was a guy, you know, coming on the right on a ramp and he was keeping

00:16:45 ◼   ► pace with the car in front of her and she could see that they were getting

00:16:48 ◼   ► closer and closer and she was like who's gonna move is the you know is this guy

00:16:54 ◼   ► in front of me gonna get over to the passing lane and let this guy in is that

00:16:57 ◼   ► guy gonna speed up is he gonna and instead they just slowly just bump doors

00:17:02 ◼   ► a lighted each other and then put on their turn signals and then over to the

00:17:08 ◼   ► side and and Amy I think she stopped I really think she stopped because she was

00:17:13 ◼   ► like well I'm a witness maybe I should stop too and and it was like they were

00:17:18 ◼   ► were just like, and nobody was mad at each other.

00:17:20 ◼   ► Everybody was like, well, what are you going to do?

00:17:21 ◼   ► And the other thing was that there

00:17:23 ◼   ► were no other cars on the road.

00:17:26 ◼   ► It wasn't like busy traffic.

00:17:28 ◼   ► They were like, well, we both did what we were supposed to do.

00:17:31 ◼   ► Yeah, and they're like, well, what are you going to do?

00:17:33 ◼   ► I also remember my commute to bare bones was about 25 minutes.

00:17:42 ◼   ► And it was like flex time.

00:17:44 ◼   ► So I used to come in around 10 in the morning,

00:17:47 ◼   ► 10.30 or so, to avoid traffic.

00:17:50 ◼   ► And it was really kind of a nice drive.

00:17:52 ◼   ► It was just a straight shot.

00:17:53 ◼   ► You could go at highway speed.

00:17:55 ◼   ► Traffic was all over.

00:17:57 ◼   ► And in the winter, it was like all the time,

00:18:00 ◼   ► in the, what do you call the thing,

00:18:02 ◼   ► the grass between the two directions, the median?

00:18:06 ◼   ► - Median, yeah.

00:18:07 ◼   ► - There would be SUVs that rolled over in the bad weather.

00:18:12 ◼   ► Like, I've never seen-- you'd think like one time,

00:18:16 ◼   ► maybe you'd see like an SUV on the side or something

00:18:18 ◼   ► like that.

00:18:19 ◼   ► And again, it was like-- and it never

00:18:20 ◼   ► seemed like anybody was hurt.

00:18:22 ◼   ► There'd be people like standing in winter coats

00:18:24 ◼   ► and their cell phones.

00:18:25 ◼   ► I was like, well, what are you going to do?

00:18:25 ◼   ► My SUV flipped over.

00:18:27 ◼   ► Yeah, people have no idea how to drive in the snow out here,

00:18:33 ◼   ► obviously.

00:18:34 ◼   ► Massachusetts--

00:18:34 ◼   ► Because we don't get it--

00:18:35 ◼   ► People should.

00:18:36 ◼   ► We don't get it that often.

00:18:36 ◼   ► They get so much snow.

00:18:38 ◼   ► I think that-- and it was always SUVs.

00:18:39 ◼   ► I think it's this mentality where people

00:18:42 ◼   ► think an SUV is good in the snow because it's all-terrain

00:18:46 ◼   ► and four-wheel drive or whatever, when in fact, it's

00:18:49 ◼   ► harder to drive in the snow because it's so top-heavy.

00:18:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:53 ◼   ► Yeah, people don't--

00:18:55 ◼   ► they don't understand physics.

00:18:58 ◼   ► Right.

00:18:59 ◼   ► The fact that it's--

00:19:00 ◼   ► the heavier car is, it's harder to stop.

00:19:03 ◼   ► I can't wait for self-driving cars.

00:19:05 ◼   ► I wouldn't say I have a phobia.

00:19:08 ◼   ► but I do feel like it's kind of terrifying

00:19:12 ◼   ► how many people get killed in car accidents.

00:19:14 ◼   ► Like if you just look at the statistics,

00:19:16 ◼   ► it really seems like something maybe we shouldn't do.

00:19:19 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:19:21 ◼   ► - And-- - Yeah, I'm not sure,

00:19:22 ◼   ► I don't know, yeah.

00:19:23 ◼   ► I mean, I hope it works out, let's put it that way.

00:19:26 ◼   ► - I just feel like, I just feel like

00:19:28 ◼   ► it's one of those things where it'll happen

00:19:31 ◼   ► and then everybody's gonna transition

00:19:33 ◼   ► and then like the accident rates are going to plummet

00:19:37 ◼   ► and we're gonna look back at like, you know,

00:19:41 ◼   ► the 75, 80 year period where everybody in North America

00:19:45 ◼   ► was driving themselves everywhere and getting killed

00:19:49 ◼   ► as like barbaric, like what the hell, what the hell was that?

00:19:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, what were we doing?

00:19:53 ◼   ► I mean, I guess that guy who was killed driving the Tesla

00:19:59 ◼   ► was sort of thinking that we were there already.

00:20:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting story.

00:20:04 ◼   ► - We were not.

00:20:05 ◼   ► - What was he doing?

00:20:05 ◼   ► Star Wars or Star Trek or something? I think yeah, I think that's right. I think he was what I

00:20:10 ◼   ► thought it was the Star Trek movie, but I can't remember.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean I'd really hate to laugh. I, you know, it's a tragedy. I mean it's the guy's dead, but

00:20:20 ◼   ► it, you know, it really seems to me like if I was going to trust that I would really, you know,

00:20:26 ◼   ► that's where, you know, maybe you really read the manual and where it says very clearly, hey, this

00:20:32 ◼   ► is like you've still--

00:20:34 ◼   ► Don't take your hands off the wheel.

00:20:35 ◼   ► Right.

00:20:35 ◼   ► You just rest your hands on the wheel and be alert and ready

00:20:39 ◼   ► to take over in a moment.

00:20:40 ◼   ► Well, then I would think, OK, that's how I'll drive.

00:20:42 ◼   ► You know, it's sort of like cruise control with turns.

00:20:48 ◼   ► And it just seems ridiculous.

00:20:52 ◼   ► And it really-- it kind of makes me mad because it's like, you know--

00:20:56 ◼   ► you know, it's giving self-driving cars a bad name.

00:21:00 ◼   ► You know, that there's a guy-- now there's

00:21:01 ◼   ► a nut who got killed. I've seen the videos. Have you seen the videos of people doing that?

00:21:10 ◼   ► I've seen YouTube videos where guys, and it's always guys of course, start the Tesla thing

00:21:16 ◼   ► going, and then they climb into the back seat. It's crazy. Just because they know they're

00:21:22 ◼   ► going to get a lot of YouTube hits. But it's terrifying.

00:21:27 ◼   ► worth risking your life. Right. Oh, yeah, I fear that one day that'll be my kid. Yeah,

00:21:40 ◼   ► I wonder if our kids are gonna learn to drive. I don't know. You might because it's that

00:21:46 ◼   ► self-driving stuff might not come soon enough, but it doesn't seem like it's gonna come real

00:21:50 ◼   ► soon. But given that we live in a city, I don't know that Jonas would learn to drive

00:21:55 ◼   ► way, you know? Like a lot of, when I was in college, I knew a couple of kids who grew up in

00:22:00 ◼   ► Philadelphia and they didn't know how to drive and didn't care. And Uber just makes it even,

00:22:05 ◼   ► you know, more tenable to not know how to drive. Yeah. Yeah, I was interested to see,

00:22:14 ◼   ► we have some friends whose kids were, actually now that I think they're in college, but when I saw

00:22:19 ◼   ► them like a year and a half ago they were just they were ubering everything

00:22:27 ◼   ► and they were basically just in they were high school and they were calling

00:22:31 ◼   ► up we were left and right yeah it's definitely definitely much more likely

00:22:37 ◼   ► to do with the younger you are I guess yeah I may take a break and thank our

00:22:41 ◼   ► first sponsor it's our good friends at audible.com they have a 30-day free

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00:23:28 ◼   ► you wish that there were more episodes of the talk show to listen to, but there aren't. Well,

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00:24:02 ◼   ► sponsorship of this fine talk show.

00:24:06 ◼   ► - Do you want a recommendation?

00:24:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would love a recommendation.

00:24:10 ◼   ► I didn't have one.

00:24:11 ◼   ► - Well, I'm not listening to an Audible right now,

00:24:13 ◼   ► but it is available on Audible.

00:24:14 ◼   ► It's Leviathan Wakes.

00:24:16 ◼   ► It's a science fiction book,

00:24:17 ◼   ► and it's part of the Expanse series

00:24:19 ◼   ► that is being made into a sci-fi show,

00:24:22 ◼   ► which is really good.

00:24:23 ◼   ► - I just read a book on vacation.

00:24:31 ◼   ► I guess I could recommend it.

00:24:33 ◼   ► It's called Trigger Mortis.

00:24:35 ◼   ► It's a James Bond novel written by Anthony Horowitz.

00:24:40 ◼   ► And it's corny.

00:24:41 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:24:43 ◼   ► They keep writing these James Bond novels.

00:24:46 ◼   ► Ian Fleming's been dead, I think, like 50 years.

00:24:51 ◼   ► But this one's cool.

00:24:54 ◼   ► It's not like set in modern days.

00:24:55 ◼   ► It's set like two weeks after the end of Goldfinger.

00:24:58 ◼   ► And Bond is still bouncing around with Pussy Galore

00:25:03 ◼   ► at the beginning of the book.

00:25:06 ◼   ► That's cool.

00:25:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I enjoyed it.

00:25:07 ◼   ► So I mean, there's one.

00:25:09 ◼   ► Go listen to that on Audible.

00:25:12 ◼   ► Hey, I saw a story.

00:25:15 ◼   ► Wanted to know if you saw this.

00:25:17 ◼   ► It was on The Verge about a week ago by Dieter Bohn.

00:25:22 ◼   ► And the headline is, "Google is making better apps

00:25:25 ◼   ► for the iPhone than for Android.

00:25:27 ◼   ► And it's talking about things like motion stills.

00:25:31 ◼   ► Have you ever seen that app?

00:25:32 ◼   ► That's the app where you can take your live photos

00:25:34 ◼   ► and it kinda smooths them out and, you know,

00:25:37 ◼   ► smooths out the motion.

00:25:38 ◼   ► And let's you do things like turn them

00:25:41 ◼   ► into animated gifs and videos.

00:25:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, I keep meaning to get that

00:25:44 ◼   ► and I have not gotten that yet.

00:25:47 ◼   ► - It's a really, really good app.

00:25:49 ◼   ► And I actually haven't, I don't know,

00:25:53 ◼   ► I don't have iOS 10 installed on my phone yet.

00:25:58 ◼   ► I don't have it on my iPad,

00:25:59 ◼   ► but I don't think Apple did anything

00:26:01 ◼   ► with live pictures in iOS 10.

00:26:06 ◼   ► I really feel like they're filling,

00:26:09 ◼   ► like this app is filling in something

00:26:11 ◼   ► that should be built into iOS,

00:26:12 ◼   ► which is turn these live photos,

00:26:14 ◼   ► which I still think are a great feature.

00:26:16 ◼   ► I tend to keep it on all the time

00:26:19 ◼   ► because my phone has plenty of space,

00:26:21 ◼   ► And why not capture more info?

00:26:25 ◼   ► The only reason I can think of not to use live pictures

00:26:28 ◼   ► is if you're worried about the extra space that they take up.

00:26:32 ◼   ► But it's so hard to share.

00:26:33 ◼   ► I think some people find that annoying.

00:26:34 ◼   ► Some people find the image moving annoying.

00:26:36 ◼   ► But I think you're right.

00:26:37 ◼   ► It's probably mostly a space issue.

00:26:41 ◼   ► But it's just so--

00:26:43 ◼   ► it's so curious to me that they didn't come up

00:26:47 ◼   ► with a way to share them as--

00:26:49 ◼   ► I don't know if they'd do GIFs.

00:26:50 ◼   ► but it seems a little beneath Apple.

00:26:52 ◼   ► But the magic of animated GIFs is--

00:26:56 ◼   ► I still can't believe we're using these things.

00:26:58 ◼   ► I mean, who would have thought the GIF image format would make a comeback?

00:27:02 ◼   ► 256 colors.

00:27:05 ◼   ► But being able to share them as a standard movie that you could post--

00:27:09 ◼   ► Isn't it basically-- is it not basically just a series of--

00:27:12 ◼   ► it's like a-- whatever the--

00:27:15 ◼   ► the way they used to make movies, it's just a series of images?

00:27:20 ◼   ► No.

00:27:20 ◼   ► it's not. It's one high res, you know, the full resolution that you have your camera

00:27:26 ◼   ► set to shoot at, still JPEG, and it's like a sidecar.mov file.

00:27:34 ◼   ► No, well you're talking about, I'm talking about animated gifs.

00:27:36 ◼   ► Oh, animated gifs, yes. Animated gifs are just, yes, they're just, it's,

00:27:39 ◼   ► animated gifs image format is just, you know, take a bunch of stills and,

00:27:44 ◼   ► Right.

00:27:45 ◼   ► And each one has a...

00:27:47 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like a flipbook.

00:27:48 ◼   ► Yeah, and you can set each-- because I remember as a web developer-- oh my god, what was that?

00:27:54 ◼   ► Debabilizer? Remember that app? Oh yeah. You needed it because it was like, you know,

00:28:00 ◼   ► it would crush them down to like the minimum size and it would dither the colors in a really

00:28:07 ◼   ► pleasing way and, you know, get it down to like six bytes or whatever, six kilobytes.

00:28:14 ◼   ► And you could also set the format.

00:28:17 ◼   ► It's actually kind of a nice format,

00:28:19 ◼   ► except for the--

00:28:21 ◼   ► or nice in terms of being easily understandable, not nice

00:28:23 ◼   ► and being high fidelity.

00:28:24 ◼   ► But I think that each frame can have its own color palette.

00:28:32 ◼   ► It's not like one color palette of 256 colors

00:28:35 ◼   ► for the entire animation.

00:28:37 ◼   ► I think that each one can do that.

00:28:39 ◼   ► And you could also set how long the duration of each frame.

00:28:43 ◼   ► So you can do things like say it's show this frame for one second this frame for one second

00:28:47 ◼   ► but show this frame for three seconds right I think if I recall correctly I think no I think

00:28:53 ◼   ► that's I think that's correct because I long long ago I made some by hand and I don't remember why

00:28:59 ◼   ► but and I don't I Jesus I can't even remember what it was in I think maybe it was back when

00:29:04 ◼   ► I had a copy of photoshop which I don't have anymore but I think you're I think that's correct

00:29:11 ◼   ► But when I linked to it, Google's Motion stills app, I laughed and made a point of saying,

00:29:18 ◼   ► "Look at the comments," because the comments are all from these people with Android phones

00:29:22 ◼   ► saying, "Come on, Google.

00:29:23 ◼   ► This is ridiculous.

00:29:24 ◼   ► I can't believe you did this for iPhone and not Android."

00:29:31 ◼   ► Even though Android doesn't have live photos.

00:29:35 ◼   ► And then somebody pointed that out,

00:29:37 ◼   ► and then somebody else said,

00:29:41 ◼   ► "Well, there's one HTC phone."

00:29:44 ◼   ► They obviously can't call it Live Photos,

00:29:46 ◼   ► but it has the same basic feature.

00:29:50 ◼   ► So out of like 3,000 Android phones,

00:29:52 ◼   ► there's one that has it.

00:29:54 ◼   ► But there's other apps too that people are talking about.

00:30:00 ◼   ► That there's just, and he links to it here.

00:30:04 ◼   ► There's a previous article from May about some other guy named

00:30:09 ◼   ► Ben Popper at The Verge is wholly invested

00:30:14 ◼   ► in the Google ecosystem, but uses iOS,

00:30:19 ◼   ► and that their apps are so good that he sees no reason

00:30:24 ◼   ► to switch to Android, that he does his email with the inbox

00:30:27 ◼   ► app, Google Calendar app.

00:30:30 ◼   ► Oh, the other one, too, is the Google--

00:30:32 ◼   ► the Google Gboard keyboard that a lot of people think

00:30:35 ◼   ► is the best third party keyboard for iOS.

00:30:38 ◼   ► - Oh, right, yeah, yeah.

00:30:40 ◼   ► - And it has some cool features.

00:30:42 ◼   ► Some of them are coming in iOS 10,

00:30:44 ◼   ► like the ability to type words

00:30:46 ◼   ► and get the emoji suggestions.

00:30:50 ◼   ► Like if you type coffee, maybe you'll get the,

00:30:52 ◼   ► one of the suggestions will be the coffee emoji.

00:30:54 ◼   ► But there was another one, that's another one too,

00:30:58 ◼   ► where when Google announced the Google Gboard thing,

00:31:03 ◼   ► the comments were half people saying this is great

00:31:05 ◼   ► and half Android users saying, how can you make this for iOS

00:31:10 ◼   ► and not for Android?

00:31:12 ◼   ► But I'm curious what you think about that.

00:31:14 ◼   ► And why do you think it might be that Google does seemingly--

00:31:21 ◼   ► at least as good or as popular their apps are on iOS.

00:31:28 ◼   ► What do you think's going on there?

00:31:30 ◼   ► Well, I don't know if it's still the case,

00:31:31 ◼   ► because I haven't seen the numbers recently.

00:31:32 ◼   ► But for a long time, they were making more money off of iOS

00:31:35 ◼   ► than they were off of Android.

00:31:39 ◼   ► Advertising.

00:31:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I believe that.

00:31:41 ◼   ► Dollars.

00:31:42 ◼   ► Right.

00:31:43 ◼   ► So it would make more sense to invest more

00:31:46 ◼   ► in the platform that's making you more money, regardless

00:31:49 ◼   ► of whether you made it or not.

00:31:50 ◼   ► I think part of it is just the nature of Google itself,

00:31:53 ◼   ► that Google is, to me--

00:31:57 ◼   ► And maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me

00:32:00 ◼   ► that Google is sort of a federation of many, many products

00:32:09 ◼   ► and teams and doesn't really have a single unifying,

00:32:15 ◼   ► you know, this is the main thing that we do.

00:32:18 ◼   ► You know, like, it's the nature of it at Apple.

00:32:21 ◼   ► The main thing that the company does

00:32:23 ◼   ► is they sell devices like iPhones and iPads and MacBooks.

00:32:28 ◼   ► That's the main thing that they do,

00:32:29 ◼   ► and everything fundamentally, at some level,

00:32:33 ◼   ► it really comes down to how do we keep making these devices

00:32:37 ◼   ► and selling them at a profit.

00:32:38 ◼   ► At Microsoft, Microsoft is definitely changing,

00:32:41 ◼   ► I think under, what's the new CEO's name, Satya Nadella.

00:32:46 ◼   ► Definitely changing, but under Gates and Balmer,

00:32:49 ◼   ► they were the Windows company, fundamentally,

00:32:51 ◼   ► and everything was about Windows.

00:32:53 ◼   ► And I think it's like, to see this as, wow,

00:32:56 ◼   ► this is kind of interesting or amazing

00:32:59 ◼   ► that Google does such a good job with iOS apps,

00:33:01 ◼   ► is you're kind of, I think you have to look at Google

00:33:05 ◼   ► sort of through Microsoft tinted glasses,

00:33:08 ◼   ► that why isn't Google treating Android

00:33:11 ◼   ► the way Microsoft treated Windows in its heyday?

00:33:14 ◼   ► As like the shining star.

00:33:18 ◼   ► And let's put our, let's do anything cool

00:33:20 ◼   ► that we come up with, let's make sure it's on Android first.

00:33:24 ◼   ► And I don't think it works like that,

00:33:25 ◼   ► because I don't think there's any reason for Google

00:33:31 ◼   ► to be like that.

00:33:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:34 ◼   ► It's not-- I wouldn't call it like skunkworks,

00:33:36 ◼   ► but it's kind of--

00:33:37 ◼   ► their philosophy is much more open to seemingly

00:33:42 ◼   ► having these side projects.

00:33:44 ◼   ► And then if that turns into something, yeah,

00:33:46 ◼   ► we'll do something with it.

00:33:50 ◼   ► which I think was the kind of thing that did not work at Apple back in the 90s.

00:33:54 ◼   ► They were running around and people were working on these side projects that were going nowhere.

00:33:59 ◼   ► But they seemed to do much better with it.

00:34:02 ◼   ► And I wonder, too, it's just—I don't even know how you'd get this information,

00:34:09 ◼   ► but it'd be so interesting to know. I would love to know how many, like what percentage

00:34:13 ◼   ► of Google employees use iPhones instead of Android phones.

00:34:19 ◼   ► Yeah. My guess always has been that it's pretty high and you know I don't know a

00:34:25 ◼   ► lot of people who work at Google. I'm not sure off the top of my head if I know

00:34:27 ◼   ► anybody who works there now but a couple at least you know within the last few

00:34:30 ◼   ► years I knew some people who live there or work there and the ones I knew had

00:34:35 ◼   ► iPhones and I don't think that there is there's no stigma attached to it. Yeah I

00:34:40 ◼   ► don't think so. I mean I mean the people that I knew were well no one was a

00:34:46 ◼   ► software engineer and the other one was more like in the design stuff. So yeah, I mean,

00:34:53 ◼   ► I wouldn't, it doesn't seem like that is, you know, unlike that, that, you know, thing that

00:34:57 ◼   ► Microsoft famously did, where they had like, what do they have like a bin that you're supposed to

00:35:03 ◼   ► throw your iPhones into, like a garbage can or something. I don't think that too many people

00:35:10 ◼   ► actually did it, but remember when you get, remember when to switch the Windows phone,

00:35:14 ◼   ► Remember when they had the funeral for the iPhone?

00:35:16 ◼   ► Yeah, that too.

00:35:18 ◼   ► Oh my god. That might have been the lowest point in the whole Ballmer era.

00:35:23 ◼   ► The parade that they had for the funeral for the iPhone.

00:35:27 ◼   ► Because it was so laughably not based in reality.

00:35:34 ◼   ► You know, like there wasn't... it didn't feel like, hmm, maybe.

00:35:39 ◼   ► You know, maybe Windows Phone is going to take this on.

00:35:43 ◼   ► I never really thought so, but let's just,

00:35:46 ◼   ► like three years ago or so, like 2013,

00:35:49 ◼   ► was a rough year for Apple's stock,

00:35:51 ◼   ► and there were a lot of people who seemed to think

00:35:54 ◼   ► at the time that Android was about to overwhelm iOS, right?

00:35:59 ◼   ► This is exactly like Windows and Mac from the '90s again.

00:36:03 ◼   ► And I think you can go back and read

00:36:07 ◼   ► Daring Fireball from that era, and you'd see that.

00:36:09 ◼   ► I didn't really think that was happening,

00:36:11 ◼   ► but it seemed like it was at least possible.

00:36:12 ◼   ► Like I never thought it was gonna happen,

00:36:15 ◼   ► but I didn't see it as like an impossibility.

00:36:17 ◼   ► I saw it as, it doesn't seem,

00:36:19 ◼   ► it seems to me like too many things are different here

00:36:21 ◼   ► and that, you know, one thing would be that, you know,

00:36:25 ◼   ► that Apple's, even if they only have 15% of the market,

00:36:29 ◼   ► that's a heck of a lot different than the 2% of the market

00:36:32 ◼   ► they had in the 90s and et cetera, et cetera,

00:36:34 ◼   ► go on and on, there's all sorts of other differences.

00:36:37 ◼   ► But it seemed like maybe, but the Windows Phone,

00:36:41 ◼   ► burying the iPhone didn't even seem like a possibility.

00:36:44 ◼   ► - And you could see how from their perspective,

00:36:50 ◼   ► that they wanted to believe that

00:36:52 ◼   ► and they needed to believe that in order to keep going.

00:36:56 ◼   ► And also to try and make it,

00:36:58 ◼   ► to have that sort of confidence work as a marketing tool.

00:37:03 ◼   ► But the thing that, you remember these analyst predictions

00:37:08 ◼   ► that came out around, boy was it like 2013, 2012,

00:37:13 ◼   ► maybe it was a little bit earlier than that,

00:37:16 ◼   ► saying that they, some of these analysts

00:37:18 ◼   ► were predicting that Windows Phone was gonna beat Android.

00:37:22 ◼   ► - Yes, yeah, that was earlier, that was a little bit.

00:37:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:26 ◼   ► - That was, I mean, like how could you even?

00:37:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:37:30 ◼   ► There was just like, there was just this simple belief

00:37:33 ◼   ► that Microsoft, being Microsoft,

00:37:36 ◼   ► would come out on top somehow.

00:37:38 ◼   ► - One of your and my shared preoccupations

00:37:41 ◼   ► is with the world of analysts.

00:37:47 ◼   ► And the magic way that somebody who,

00:37:51 ◼   ► if they're accepted as an analyst,

00:37:54 ◼   ► if that is like the title that,

00:37:56 ◼   ► something something analyst,

00:37:57 ◼   ► if that's the title when they go on CNBC,

00:38:00 ◼   ► that whatever they say is taken as,

00:38:04 ◼   ► well, we can publish this as news.

00:38:06 ◼   ► that this is something worth reporting.

00:38:11 ◼   ► When in fact, sometimes it might be,

00:38:14 ◼   ► there are some analysts who are incredibly smart

00:38:18 ◼   ► and astute and rigorous in their research

00:38:20 ◼   ► and in the evidence that they show to back up their claims.

00:38:24 ◼   ► And then there are others who just make stuff up.

00:38:27 ◼   ► And I remember that the Windows phone

00:38:30 ◼   ► is gonna surpass Android and be like

00:38:33 ◼   ► number one operating system by 2014 or 2015. It must have been a couple years

00:38:37 ◼   ► earlier than that, because I know we've already passed. Yes, so this, the prediction was

00:38:40 ◼   ► in May of 2011, yeah. All right, you got it, give it to me for the show.

00:38:45 ◼   ► It was, yeah, it was Pyramid Research's Stella Boken, and she said that by 2013,

00:38:55 ◼   ► Windows Phone was poised to overtake Android's massive market share. In two

00:39:01 ◼   ► years! Oh my god. Because somebody else had predicted it would be 2015 when it overtook,

00:39:10 ◼   ► and she said, "No, no, it's gonna be two years earlier than that. It's gonna happen fast."

00:39:15 ◼   ► I remember I looked her up again later, and she's not with Pyramid Research anymore,

00:39:24 ◼   ► but she still is. She's still working in the industry.

00:39:28 ◼   ► Not a debilitating, not a career-ending move.

00:39:33 ◼   ► I wonder what phones people use at Microsoft now today, too. That's an

00:39:37 ◼   ► interesting question, because they really are,

00:39:40 ◼   ► it seems to me, very clear that they are slowly winding down the whole Windows

00:39:45 ◼   ► phone thing.

00:39:46 ◼   ► I don't know that they're ever going to quite give up on it

00:39:49 ◼   ► completely, but it just seems like they're not even trying

00:39:53 ◼   ► anymore. Yeah, I mean you don't hear about it at all. It just seems to me like if you were a good

00:39:59 ◼   ► company person and bought a Windows phone like you're just left out of so many things, right?

00:40:05 ◼   ► Yeah. No Pokemon Go for you. I'm gonna say yeah there's no Pokemon Go, right? Right, it's, I just

00:40:11 ◼   ► can't help but think that they're mostly iPhones. I really do, and it's kind of such a weird thing

00:40:16 ◼   ► for Microsoft. I don't think it's so weird for Google, but it's weird for Microsoft.

00:40:20 ◼   ► Well, they but they I mean at least they have their philosophy has changed to the degree that

00:40:24 ◼   ► they don't have that windows only mentality anymore so right they are making and they're

00:40:28 ◼   ► making some good apps for multiple platforms so I mean I still don't like office but

00:40:35 ◼   ► I have to use it sometimes. Do you ever use it for iOS?

00:40:39 ◼   ► Uh yeah yeah actually and you know I mostly for my kid when he needs to do um because they get

00:40:46 ◼   ► a license for free through his school so often he's got an iPad that he will like write reports on

00:40:54 ◼   ► with a you know with attached keyboard and and do it and do it in Word and they will you know

00:40:59 ◼   ► they make presentations in PowerPoint and stuff like that and I'll often help them out with that

00:41:05 ◼   ► stuff. Yeah my kid's school is a Google Docs school. Okay. And it's such garbage I mean it

00:41:11 ◼   ► it makes me wish for Microsoft Office.

00:41:16 ◼   ► I really--

00:41:19 ◼   ► - Do they use Chromebooks?

00:41:21 ◼   ► - They have some in some of the classrooms.

00:41:24 ◼   ► They do have some, which makes total sense

00:41:28 ◼   ► as a Google Doc school.

00:41:30 ◼   ► I guess most of the devices the kids have access to

00:41:34 ◼   ► are Chromebooks.

00:41:37 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:41:40 ◼   ► I would rather have a MacBook any day,

00:41:42 ◼   ► but you know, our friends at MEH

00:41:45 ◼   ► often will sell refurbished Chromebooks

00:41:48 ◼   ► and they're so crazy cheap.

00:41:49 ◼   ► It's, I keep, I often think I should get one just to--

00:41:52 ◼   ► - Just for the hell. - Play around with it.

00:41:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, just for shitty. - But then I think

00:41:54 ◼   ► even like $175 is too much to--

00:41:58 ◼   ► - I don't know, I know, I do that.

00:42:00 ◼   ► Like every two years or so I buy an Android phone.

00:42:03 ◼   ► - Yeah. - And I wish I would've got

00:42:05 ◼   ► the Nexus 6, instead I got the Motorola

00:42:09 ◼   ► wood chipper or whatever it's called.

00:42:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:42:13 ◼   ► Well, the one, it's got a,

00:42:14 ◼   ► it's like the Moto X or something like that,

00:42:17 ◼   ► but you could get a custom finish on the back,

00:42:19 ◼   ► so I got the bamboo.

00:42:21 ◼   ► I mean, seriously, it's really made out,

00:42:24 ◼   ► this phone, it's in my hand right now,

00:42:25 ◼   ► it's made out of wood, which is interesting,

00:42:27 ◼   ► but it's so not a nice phone.

00:42:30 ◼   ► I saw a guy at WWDC, my friend Chad from MLB,

00:42:34 ◼   ► has two phones.

00:42:35 ◼   ► He has an iPhone and he had an Android,

00:42:38 ◼   ► he has to test the MLB stuff on Android too. And he has the Nexus 6. It's really nice.

00:42:43 ◼   ► It's much thinner than this Moto thing. But anyway, I don't see it as a waste of money.

00:42:50 ◼   ► I feel like it's a way to stay. I'm fearful of not knowing it. And I have to say, I've

00:42:56 ◼   ► never really used a Chromebook. I kind of feel like I should. I should spend 200 bucks

00:43:00 ◼   ► and get one of those.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Well, keep an eye on meth, because you can get a refurb real cheap. From a school's perspective,

00:43:07 ◼   ► makes complete sense. I mean, if you've got to get something that-- and the kids are basically

00:43:11 ◼   ► just gonna do-- write reports and look things up, and you don't want them playing games,

00:43:16 ◼   ► for the most part. So those devices are perfect. I mean, it's kind of like it's almost-- you

00:43:23 ◼   ► remember that whole OLPC thing? It's really succeeded at that where that didn't seem to

00:43:34 ◼   ► really get much traction. Yeah, what was that one laptop per child? Yeah. Yeah, and

00:43:42 ◼   ► it was just, you know, it was just a piece of garbage. Whereas, but maybe, you

00:43:48 ◼   ► know, I think a big part of that was, it's not that Google has any kind of magic, I

00:43:52 ◼   ► think it's just Moore's Law, you know. Like Moore's Law has famously, you know,

00:43:59 ◼   ► sort of come to an end at the high end where, you know, the clock rate on high-end CPUs

00:44:06 ◼   ► isn't really getting faster and, you know, there's only so much that adding more chips

00:44:11 ◼   ► to parallelize can really improve. But at the low end, it continues to march on where

00:44:18 ◼   ► better and better hardware is available at cheaper and cheaper prices.

00:44:22 ◼   ► Yeah. I think the one thing that...

00:44:24 ◼   ► Speaking of which, are you going to get yourself a Samsung Spin?

00:44:27 ◼   ► No, I don't think so.

00:44:31 ◼   ► I don't think so.

00:44:34 ◼   ► Did you like that?

00:44:35 ◼   ► That's a bridge too far?

00:44:36 ◼   ► We can hold that topic.

00:44:40 ◼   ► That's an interesting topic.

00:44:41 ◼   ► But the Chromebooks for school, I do see this.

00:44:44 ◼   ► And Jonas says that the ones that they have are terrible,

00:44:49 ◼   ► and that everybody hates them.

00:44:51 ◼   ► But I see the way kids treat stuff in school,

00:44:53 ◼   ► and they don't really treat it with respect.

00:44:55 ◼   ► Apple doesn't really make a device that's good for a school to buy.

00:44:59 ◼   ► If the cheapest thing you can get is an $899 MacBook Air,

00:45:03 ◼   ► that's a pretty expensive thing that kids are going to bang around and drop and stuff like that.

00:45:09 ◼   ► I think the idea that they're at a-- $200 is not disposable,

00:45:13 ◼   ► and I'm sure that anybody who works in any kind of school is going to say,

00:45:17 ◼   ► "Yeah, $200 is--" I know budgets are tight at schools everywhere,

00:45:22 ◼   ► but you know it just makes a lot more sense. Yeah, without a doubt.

00:45:29 ◼   ► Google Docs though, I find I don't even understand, I honestly I don't

00:45:33 ◼   ► understand the UI. I really don't. It just doesn't work for me.

00:45:38 ◼   ► I mean it seems like it's you know very reminiscent of those open source office

00:45:45 ◼   ► Yes, yeah, that's what I that's how exactly how I would describe it. Yeah, and I

00:45:50 ◼   ► I don't use it much. I mean that when I'm on the they use it like in the

00:45:56 ◼   ► incomparable to do scheduling and some sharing of like topics for podcasts.

00:46:02 ◼   ► So when I'm on clockwise I always that's the that's the only time I ever have to

00:46:06 ◼   ► use it is because Jason uses a Google like spreadsheet to um yeah you know

00:46:13 ◼   ► you're supposed to log in and put what your topic is for Clockwise.

00:46:16 ◼   ► Oh my god.

00:46:16 ◼   ► And that's the only time I ever--

00:46:18 ◼   ► OK.

00:46:18 ◼   ► We have to do it.

00:46:19 ◼   ► I don't do-- I mean, let's face it.

00:46:22 ◼   ► I hope Amy doesn't listen to this.

00:46:24 ◼   ► I think that she would agree.

00:46:26 ◼   ► I don't do much of the parenting.

00:46:28 ◼   ► She does a lot more of the parenting than I do.

00:46:31 ◼   ► And with stuff like dealing with the school, I really do none of it.

00:46:35 ◼   ► But every once in a while, when there's some kind of shared--

00:46:40 ◼   ► parents are involved.

00:46:42 ◼   ► Or a perfect example would be the teacher conferences, parent

00:46:45 ◼   ► teacher conferences.

00:46:47 ◼   ► You've got to get into Google Docs, though, and sign up

00:46:49 ◼   ► for a time.

00:46:50 ◼   ► And it's so, so bad.

00:46:54 ◼   ► But I understand why they do it, though,

00:46:55 ◼   ► because it works as a shared spreadsheet

00:47:00 ◼   ► where you're not going to run into a race condition

00:47:03 ◼   ► where three people signed up for the 1 PM teacher conference.

00:47:07 ◼   ► As I type John and Amy in the 1 PM slot,

00:47:11 ◼   ► anybody else who's in there would see it,

00:47:12 ◼   ► see those letters showing up.

00:47:14 ◼   ► So I understand the utility of it is why people,

00:47:17 ◼   ► please don't write in and tell me that that's why you use it.

00:47:19 ◼   ► I totally get it.

00:47:20 ◼   ► That as a shared resource, it works.

00:47:25 ◼   ► There's no syncing collisions.

00:47:26 ◼   ► But as somebody who cares about the interface,

00:47:29 ◼   ► boy, it's a nightmare.

00:47:31 ◼   ► So the other factor, we were talking about

00:47:33 ◼   ► the Google's iOS apps and how popular they are

00:47:35 ◼   ► and how people who are in the Google ecosystem

00:47:39 ◼   ► with their data, well, this is a pretty good segue,

00:47:41 ◼   ► feel perfectly at home using an iPhone

00:47:46 ◼   ► instead of an Android phone.

00:47:48 ◼   ► And the other flip side of that

00:47:49 ◼   ► is why I don't use any of those apps,

00:47:51 ◼   ► other than the motion stills one,

00:47:53 ◼   ► which just because of the utility to share the live photos.

00:47:58 ◼   ► As our good friend Jason Snell pointed out

00:48:03 ◼   ► like a month or so ago that Google's apps are sort of,

00:48:06 ◼   ► he compared them to Microsoft of the late '90s

00:48:09 ◼   ► where their Mac apps started looking like the Windows app.

00:48:12 ◼   ► And in fact, I think they even went to some kind

00:48:15 ◼   ► of a shared code system for some things,

00:48:18 ◼   ► where there was sort of a cross-platform

00:48:20 ◼   ► look and feel type stuff in Office apps.

00:48:25 ◼   ► And Google's apps, that's the reason I don't use them,

00:48:31 ◼   ► is that none of them look like iOS apps,

00:48:34 ◼   ► they all look like Android apps.

00:48:35 ◼   ► So there is that.

00:48:37 ◼   ► Like if there's one thing-- it seems to me like Google

00:48:40 ◼   ► institutionally isn't really all that committed to Android.

00:48:44 ◼   ► Android might as well be a completely separate company.

00:48:49 ◼   ► Except what the one thing Google is committed to company-wide

00:48:52 ◼   ► is the material design look and feel.

00:48:55 ◼   ► Whether they're doing stuff for the web or iOS or Android,

00:48:59 ◼   ► they're committed to that style of UI design.

00:49:02 ◼   ► That's where they have a commitment.

00:49:04 ◼   ► And that annoys me.

00:49:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:09 ◼   ► What about you?

00:49:10 ◼   ► Use any Google Apps?

00:49:13 ◼   ► Every once in a while, I use the Gmail app.

00:49:16 ◼   ► But I'm trying to think.

00:49:20 ◼   ► Like I said, I want to get that one that

00:49:22 ◼   ► makes the animated GIFs.

00:49:23 ◼   ► But I haven't gotten around to it.

00:49:26 ◼   ► And gosh, Hank mostly--

00:49:29 ◼   ► my son mostly uses--

00:49:31 ◼   ► he's got a Gmail account for email.

00:49:33 ◼   ► and he mostly uses the Google app for that.

00:49:35 ◼   ► - Huh, interesting.

00:49:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's just, it seems easier

00:49:40 ◼   ► if you have a Gmail account,

00:49:43 ◼   ► it feels much more straightforward

00:49:44 ◼   ► than trying to get it through mail.

00:49:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, what do you use for email on iOS?

00:49:51 ◼   ► - I mostly use mail.

00:49:53 ◼   ► - I almost, like 99% just use mail.

00:49:55 ◼   ► Every once in a while, if search fails me,

00:49:57 ◼   ► then I use Gmail or something.

00:50:00 ◼   ► - And I've tried a number of those other applications,

00:50:03 ◼   ► But you seem to always get,

00:50:05 ◼   ► I've been burned too many times, right?

00:50:07 ◼   ► I mean, 'cause Sparrow and whatever the other one was.

00:50:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I forget.

00:50:12 ◼   ► - The one that was like the online,

00:50:14 ◼   ► you could consolidate all your inboxes,

00:50:17 ◼   ► or what the heck was the name of that one?

00:50:19 ◼   ► They both got bought, right?

00:50:20 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:50:21 ◼   ► - And went away.

00:50:22 ◼   ► - The only one I've seen that really tempted me,

00:50:27 ◼   ► and I still have it here, is called Spark.

00:50:32 ◼   ► Do you ever see that one?

00:50:33 ◼   ► - No.

00:50:34 ◼   ► - 'Cause to me, the thing that's nice about Spark

00:50:38 ◼   ► is that it looks like an iOS app.

00:50:41 ◼   ► It looks like a very nice, I'll put it in the show notes.

00:50:46 ◼   ► I think it's from Readdle, the people who make,

00:50:48 ◼   ► are known for making PDF utilities.

00:50:52 ◼   ► But if you just take a look at the screenshots

00:50:56 ◼   ► of Spark for iPhone, you could see that it's like,

00:50:59 ◼   ► Oh yes, that looks like a nice iOS app.

00:51:04 ◼   ► And here's a news story, I just Googled it.

00:51:09 ◼   ► I logged in and--

00:51:11 ◼   ► - They've been acquired.

00:51:12 ◼   ► Spark's been canceled.

00:51:13 ◼   ► - No, Spark emailed, this is from eight hours ago.

00:51:16 ◼   ► Here's breaking news.

00:51:17 ◼   ► This is a bizarre coincidence that

00:51:19 ◼   ► some kind of thing where people,

00:51:25 ◼   ► if you're using it with your iCloud email,

00:51:28 ◼   ► you have to re-log in for security reasons.

00:51:31 ◼   ► And it made people panic and think that maybe

00:51:33 ◼   ► Spark had gotten hacked or something.

00:51:36 ◼   ► That's not true, there is no hack.

00:51:38 ◼   ► But it's, they switched something on their server side

00:51:42 ◼   ► at AWS and that made Apple or iCloud freak out

00:51:47 ◼   ► and therefore just say, hey everybody,

00:51:50 ◼   ► you gotta re-log in.

00:51:51 ◼   ► Anyway, it's a good app.

00:51:52 ◼   ► And if you're dissatisfied with mail,

00:51:54 ◼   ► highly, highly recommend you take a look at it.

00:51:58 ◼   ► it's a really good iOS app. But the thing for me is I like mail. I really, especially on iOS, I just,

00:52:02 ◼   ► it, you know, works very well for me for email. I understand people can be very picky about their

00:52:07 ◼   ► email, but for me, mail is pretty good. And I think my needs are not complicated, particularly.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Truth be told, I don't even read most of my email. So really, Apple mail works just fine.

00:52:23 ◼   ► Delete, delete, delete.

00:52:26 ◼   ► Merlin listens to the show.

00:52:27 ◼   ► I think-- it's too late now, so I don't think I'll ever use it.

00:52:31 ◼   ► But when Merlin had the inbox zero thing, I thought about making a parody.

00:52:40 ◼   ► I think I still own the domain.

00:52:42 ◼   ► I was going to make a parody, and it was called Select All Delete.

00:52:50 ◼   ► And it was going to go into-- it was going to set up a site that

00:52:53 ◼   ► detailed my patented email management system for keeping

00:52:58 ◼   ► your inbox empty.

00:53:02 ◼   ► Step by step, every--

00:53:03 ◼   ► My inbox management is to simply not delete anything.

00:53:07 ◼   ► Every single step of the process would

00:53:08 ◼   ► be given in exquisite detail.

00:53:11 ◼   ► And the URL is selectalldelete.com.

00:53:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:17 ◼   ► I think my inbox is up to 6,000 right now.

00:53:20 ◼   ► I mean, they're all red, but they just don't go anywhere.

00:53:24 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:53:27 ◼   ► I'm not going to mention the name of this developer,

00:53:29 ◼   ► because it would be uncouth.

00:53:31 ◼   ► But a couple of years ago, we were at WWDC,

00:53:35 ◼   ► and I was with Cable Sasser of Panic.

00:53:38 ◼   ► And we were talking about this other developer.

00:53:41 ◼   ► He had some very popular apps.

00:53:44 ◼   ► And Cable had just run into him the day before,

00:53:46 ◼   ► and after WWDC he was going to go on a six week hiking trip

00:53:51 ◼   ► through New Zealand, something like that.

00:53:54 ◼   ► It sounded like, if you want to be by yourself,

00:53:57 ◼   ► it was like somewhere beautiful, six weeks, all hiking.

00:54:01 ◼   ► And Cable was under the impression

00:54:04 ◼   ► that he was like a one man show, this other guy.

00:54:06 ◼   ► And he was like, "Oh, I thought you, did you hire people?"

00:54:09 ◼   ► And he was like, "No."

00:54:10 ◼   ► And he goes, "Well, what are you gonna do

00:54:11 ◼   ► "for technical support?"

00:54:12 ◼   ► And he just looked at Cable and he just said,

00:54:14 ◼   ► "Select alt delete."

00:54:15 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:54:20 ◼   ► He's just going to delete every email.

00:54:24 ◼   ► He might have even--

00:54:26 ◼   ► I forget the details, but he was dead serious, wasn't joking,

00:54:29 ◼   ► didn't see anything unusual or interesting about that.

00:54:33 ◼   ► He might have even set up an auto--

00:54:35 ◼   ► he just set up a filter to just throw everything in.

00:54:38 ◼   ► And he wasn't sending out an automate--

00:54:40 ◼   ► he didn't set up anything that say,

00:54:42 ◼   ► I'm going to be away for six weeks, get back to you then.

00:54:43 ◼   ► He just deleted them all.

00:54:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:45 ◼   ► I mean, I see the appeal, and I see, you know, as someone else is, like, the only person in my business.

00:54:54 ◼   ► Right.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Like, I just--I don't take--I don't never take a complete vacation.

00:55:00 ◼   ► That is true. That's very true for me.

00:55:02 ◼   ► Constantly writing wherever, you know, if I'm on vacation, I'm still writing the bare minimum that I have to get by.

00:55:09 ◼   ► I'll reduce it, but I, and often I'll stop podcasting.

00:55:14 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:55:15 ◼   ► - Take a break from podcasts,

00:55:17 ◼   ► but I still have to write something.

00:55:19 ◼   ► - I don't know why I, mentally I find it,

00:55:22 ◼   ► I find it hard to do a podcast when I'm not at home.

00:55:26 ◼   ► Like, I don't know why, all I have to do

00:55:27 ◼   ► is pack a microphone, you know, and there's,

00:55:29 ◼   ► you know, I don't need, like I've got this fancy one

00:55:31 ◼   ► hanging on a, you know, bendable arm here at my desk here,

00:55:35 ◼   ► but I don't, you know, you don't need a podcast,

00:55:37 ◼   ► You just use any, you get one for like 15 bucks.

00:55:41 ◼   ► I have one, I even have a portable one,

00:55:43 ◼   ► but it's so old that it uses,

00:55:46 ◼   ► remember the before micro USB, there was a mini USB?

00:55:51 ◼   ► And I don't, it takes a mini USB,

00:55:56 ◼   ► but mini USB is so outdated that I can't find a cable for it.

00:56:01 ◼   ► I mean, I'm sure I have one somewhere in my closet,

00:56:04 ◼   ► But it's like, at this point, my last used mini USB cable

00:56:08 ◼   ► is so far down the stack of cables

00:56:10 ◼   ► that it doesn't seem worth looking it up.

00:56:13 ◼   ► But mentally, I don't know.

00:56:14 ◼   ► I find it difficult.

00:56:16 ◼   ► I've done it.

00:56:16 ◼   ► Remember the one I did the episode with Dan Benjamin

00:56:20 ◼   ► with the boats going off?

00:56:21 ◼   ► - Oh yes.

00:56:23 ◼   ► - In a dock there was like a dock.

00:56:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, you were like dialed in, right?

00:56:26 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:56:27 ◼   ► - You were just doing it from your phone.

00:56:28 ◼   ► - No, I think I, I think I, I don't think I was doing it.

00:56:30 ◼   ► - It sounded like you were just doing it from your phone.

00:56:32 ◼   ► I might have. I forget how I did it. It was low fidelity, and there were boats and a dock,

00:56:37 ◼   ► and it was actually kind of fun. But I don't know. I find it hard.

00:56:43 ◼   ► John Armstrong, turning this car around, he's pretty particular about sound.

00:56:54 ◼   ► I can imagine. I just had dinner with him.

00:56:57 ◼   ► Every time I think about it, I can just take my little microphone, and then I think, "Oh,

00:57:00 ◼   ► he's not going to like that. I just, John was in Philly six weeks ago or something like that,

00:57:05 ◼   ► maybe longer, I don't know. But sometime within the last two months, and Amy and I went out with

00:57:10 ◼   ► them and he's, you know, we've known him for years. You obviously know him better, but I can

00:57:13 ◼   ► definitely imagine that he's a little tightly wound about something like that. He's, we're all

00:57:19 ◼   ► obsessive. I mean, all of us are obsessive or some things, but when he gets obsessed about something,

00:57:23 ◼   ► it's like dangerous. Yeah. And I think, you know, I think it's good. I mean, like, he makes it

00:57:29 ◼   ► sound better. It makes the show sound better. And it's bled over into other shows. I mean,

00:57:36 ◼   ► I've spent more on equipment. I haven't spent a lot, but I've spent a little bit more. And

00:57:42 ◼   ► I've also been-- I mean, I'm recording on two machines right now. Because of problems we've

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01:00:09 ◼   ► What else is going on?

01:00:12 ◼   ► Pokemon Go.

01:00:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, have you Pokemon went?

01:00:17 ◼   ► I did not. I have not played. Jonas is totally, as expected, totally into it. And so I had him

01:00:24 ◼   ► explain it to me and he showed it to me and I felt like that was good enough for me.

01:00:28 ◼   ► Yeah. I have played. We have played. So it's a thing we've been

01:00:35 ◼   ► involved in in the household. And like I've said numerous different places, but it's

01:00:43 ◼   ► been great because he's, you know, I mean often a kid doesn't want to go for a walk,

01:00:48 ◼   ► right? Like getting him off the couch and again going out and trying to run tying into our

01:00:53 ◼   ► previous conversation this time. Yeah, right, right. And this now he's just like, you want to go,

01:00:57 ◼   ► you just say, well, I'll go look for some Pokemon. Yeah, let's go. And, and my experience, you know,

01:01:03 ◼   ► I haven't gone out and tried to do it at like midnight, but, uh, walking around in

01:01:10 ◼   ► town and going to places has been fun and seeing other people and very social.

01:01:17 ◼   ► Most everybody's been nice. We were walking along the waterfront with some friends

01:01:24 ◼   ► looking for Pokémon and a whole bunch of other people were doing the same.

01:01:29 ◼   ► Like a Jeep SUV drove by and this girl leaned out the window and yelled "Nerds!"

01:01:37 ◼   ► so you know not everybody's nice but for the most part everybody's been

01:01:42 ◼   ► very pleasant to deal with which has been great

01:01:45 ◼   ► uh i don't think that we've run into anybody else who's playing

01:01:49 ◼   ► or you know we were doing it we were i said we were down at

01:01:53 ◼   ► disney world uh i think we were playing there which was fun but we didn't run

01:01:56 ◼   ► into other people who were playing interesting i mean yeah because we have

01:02:01 ◼   ► i mean pretty much every time the one day we

01:02:05 ◼   ► We walked out one time early on and just walked around the house, and obviously we didn't

01:02:09 ◼   ► run anybody then.

01:02:11 ◼   ► But every time we've gone to a place, even just going to the shopping district that's

01:02:17 ◼   ► like six blocks from here, there were at least two other groups of people who were playing

01:02:24 ◼   ► the game.

01:02:25 ◼   ► That's amazing.

01:02:26 ◼   ► It's unbelievable how quickly it's taken off.

01:02:29 ◼   ► Oh, my god.

01:02:30 ◼   ► It's astounding.

01:02:31 ◼   ► So there's a previous game, what was it called?

01:02:35 ◼   ► Ingress?

01:02:36 ◼   ► Is that what it was called?

01:02:37 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:02:39 ◼   ► Ingress?

01:02:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:41 ◼   ► It's the same company.

01:02:44 ◼   ► I-N-G-R-E-S-S.

01:02:46 ◼   ► So that was also made by Niantic?

01:02:52 ◼   ► Yes.

01:02:53 ◼   ► And it's the same, I'm not going to say it's exactly the same, but it's sort of like Pokemon

01:02:59 ◼   ► Go 1.0.

01:03:00 ◼   ► You know, and this is like the 2.0.

01:03:02 ◼   ► And it's got the same sort of thing where you can level up and stuff like that and you, you know,

01:03:07 ◼   ► same basic idea. I'll put a thing in the show notes. I always say that and I never do.

01:03:13 ◼   ► I'd heard of it vaguely and a couple of daring Fireball readers have,

01:03:24 ◼   ► you know, emailed me after I wrote about Pokemon Go and said that they, you know,

01:03:28 ◼   ► They were really into ingress and said that it's you know, it's a really interesting story

01:03:33 ◼   ► It used to be owned by Google the company this Niantic and then they got spun off for reasons that are unclear to me and

01:03:40 ◼   ► But it's the same basic idea and it's like you walk around staring at your phone

01:03:46 ◼   ► Well, I walked into anything yet, although we I did annoy somebody in a parking lot hmm

01:03:56 ◼   ► How by just walking well, I was walking through the parking lot not paying attention and suddenly

01:04:02 ◼   ► I realized there was a car behind me and I was like, oh, okay. Okay get out of the way. I

01:04:05 ◼   ► Think it's so interesting though

01:04:10 ◼   ► And I know that so I know that Niantic is the company that developed it and that it's based on their previous game ingress

01:04:16 ◼   ► But it is you know, it's Nintendo that has the the you know video game rights Pokemon

01:04:24 ◼   ► And so I do think it's still even if Nintendo didn't actually develop the app, you know, they they produced it

01:04:29 ◼   ► It's you know, I think that they you know, it's worth talking about Nintendo and mobile games again

01:04:34 ◼   ► and this is you know, I don't want to say I was yeah, I do want to say that I was right but

01:04:40 ◼   ► But this is it's exact

01:04:43 ◼   ► It's exactly the sort of thing though that I thought I've thought Nintendo should do for mobile phones for years, which is not

01:04:50 ◼   ► Port and every time when it when this came up a couple years ago

01:04:53 ◼   ► And I or at least it came up for me and it was a back and forth with a few other people on other blogs

01:04:57 ◼   ► It's like I feel like the black hole the discussion keeps getting kept getting sucked down to was that

01:05:06 ◼   ► DS games are terrible without a real d-pad and buttons and I agree with that

01:05:13 ◼   ► I totally see you know that like Mario Kart, you know, unless you somehow did it, you know

01:05:19 ◼   ► You'd have to have different controls. You'd have to have like motion controls or something.

01:05:22 ◼   ► And that other games like platformers or something like that are never as good with a fake

01:05:29 ◼   ► the fake d-pad on a not an iPhone. And so that's not my argument though. My argument isn't that

01:05:35 ◼   ► they should get rid of the DS and port all their DS games to a touch screen. It's you know we'll

01:05:41 ◼   ► come up with new game ideas that work on a touch screen and do things. I mean this Pokemon Go thing

01:05:46 ◼   ► is like, couldn't be more exactly what I was thinking that they should do, and do things,

01:05:50 ◼   ► you know, like, well, you've got GPS and you've got a camera, so why don't you do something

01:05:54 ◼   ► with that? And it's, you know, really, really clever.

01:05:58 ◼   ► Yeah. It's, it's, it's also very buggy.

01:06:01 ◼   ► Oh, is it really?

01:06:03 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

01:06:04 ◼   ► Jonas hasn't complained about that.

01:06:05 ◼   ► Oh, really? Well, at least it's been, it's been very buggy for, for me and, you know,

01:06:09 ◼   ► and my friends were playing as well. And also the terrible thing I think is that it's,

01:06:15 ◼   ► And then they had the problem with the Gmail or the Google

01:06:19 ◼   ► account.

01:06:19 ◼   ► So you can sign in.

01:06:20 ◼   ► You can become a member of the Pokemon Trainers Club

01:06:23 ◼   ► by going to this website, which I had no success for days.

01:06:26 ◼   ► And then finally, I was just like, I'm

01:06:27 ◼   ► just going to hit refresh, refresh, refresh.

01:06:29 ◼   ► And finally, I got in and was able to create an account,

01:06:33 ◼   ► which I wanted to do because I had signed in originally

01:06:36 ◼   ► with the Google account.

01:06:37 ◼   ► And then it was revealed that it was granting way too much

01:06:41 ◼   ► access.

01:06:43 ◼   ► So I wanted to set up the trainer account, trainer club

01:06:47 ◼   ► account.

01:06:48 ◼   ► And I finally got in.

01:06:49 ◼   ► But the problem is their servers are so overwhelmed, I guess,

01:06:52 ◼   ► that when we were out and about at one point--

01:06:57 ◼   ► first of all, it was very hard to create the count.

01:06:59 ◼   ► Second of all, when we were out, that it would not

01:07:02 ◼   ► be able to connect.

01:07:03 ◼   ► So it would log you out of the game

01:07:05 ◼   ► and you wouldn't be able to play.

01:07:06 ◼   ► So I finally-- and at that time, I was like, OK,

01:07:11 ◼   ► They had released the patch to reduce the amount of access

01:07:15 ◼   ► that it had to your Google account.

01:07:17 ◼   ► So I thought, okay, I'll just go sign back in

01:07:18 ◼   ► with my Google account, and that worked fine.

01:07:21 ◼   ► - It seems so curious to me that they would have this,

01:07:25 ◼   ► you know, privacy, I don't think it was a security bug,

01:07:29 ◼   ► but it was definitely a privacy hole,

01:07:30 ◼   ► where they were taking too much access

01:07:33 ◼   ► to your Google account.

01:07:35 ◼   ► It's so curious to me, though,

01:07:36 ◼   ► that the company used to be part of Google.

01:07:38 ◼   ► You know, you'd think if anybody would get this right,

01:07:40 ◼   ► it would be them. And I know firsthand everybody who's ever made any kind of online thing,

01:07:47 ◼   ► like identity is such a weird, there is no good answer to the identity problem. I mean

01:07:52 ◼   ► rolling your own versus letting people sign in with Twitter or Google or Facebook or whatever,

01:08:00 ◼   ► there's flip sides to all of it. I know that it's difficult. I mean Vespersync is about

01:08:04 ◼   ► as simple as it could be, but it was still a big hassle developing it.

01:08:09 ◼   ► It's funny, I mean, beyond those things, though, there are also numerous instances where we would

01:08:17 ◼   ► capture a Pokémon and then it would just freeze. And you'd have to restart the app to get back in,

01:08:24 ◼   ► and it wouldn't remember that you had caught that Pokémon. So that was obviously kind of annoying.

01:08:31 ◼   ► but the thing that is so amazing though is that despite these problems, it's still so crazy popular.

01:08:37 ◼   ► And those problems haven't even stopped us from playing either.

01:08:41 ◼   ► Explain to me what people are buying with the in-app purchases.

01:08:45 ◼   ► I'm not... well, you're buying credits, first of all. You're buying coin kind of things that you

01:08:53 ◼   ► can spend on different things. One of the things that you can buy... you can buy more pokeballs to

01:08:59 ◼   ► capture more Pokémon, although we have a we have a Poké stop up at the end of the street, so I don't

01:09:03 ◼   ► and don't feel like I have to worry about it. I don't play it so much that I'm using that many

01:09:08 ◼   ► Poké Balls. I don't understand what else you can buy. I'm assuming that you can buy things like

01:09:14 ◼   ► eggs so that you can incubate your Pokémon and maybe Incense to attract Pokémon, and maybe

01:09:21 ◼   ► you can also buy lures and things like that. So I'm assuming that you can spend coins on things

01:09:27 ◼   ► of that nature. But I haven't bought anything.

01:09:32 ◼   ► This part of my brain has obviously just atrophied.

01:09:36 ◼   ► I don't know if I killed it with alcohol, but the part of my game that is

01:09:40 ◼   ► supposed to listen to this and say, "That sounds like a lot of fun,"

01:09:44 ◼   ► is just totally gone. And I think there was a time where I

01:09:49 ◼   ► would have... See, I don't think it's quite like...

01:09:52 ◼   ► You know how there's people who hate sports?

01:09:55 ◼   ► Did sports just does nothing for them and so they kind of hate sports because whenever anybody else is talking about it

01:10:00 ◼   ► It's just blah blah blah, you know that they don't they don't get it

01:10:04 ◼   ► I

01:10:06 ◼   ► Used to love video games. I really did and it just somehow it just just died off

01:10:11 ◼   ► But the idea that you see spending real money to get incense bird to lure poke fun

01:10:16 ◼   ► They're not real

01:10:21 ◼   ► Well, yeah, I mean, I don't I don't like that

01:10:24 ◼   ► That model obviously I know but it's

01:10:28 ◼   ► Model I like paying for the game up front

01:10:31 ◼   ► I mean, you know the other game that I bought was recently was the Lego Star Wars the force awakens

01:10:36 ◼   ► Oh, we got that we've played like crazy, too

01:10:38 ◼   ► Which is super fun and is a fixed upfront. Yes

01:10:43 ◼   ► fee and

01:10:45 ◼   ► I am much more comfortable with that and that's why I don't that's why I don't buy

01:10:51 ◼   ► stuff. Yeah, those are the only games that I've really... I would say in the last 10 years that

01:10:56 ◼   ► at least 95% of my video game playing time has been on the Lego games. Yeah.

01:11:01 ◼   ► Yeah, the crazy thing that we found was that the...

01:11:06 ◼   ► speaking of Nintendo, that's the one and maybe there's one other platform. I think maybe the Xbox, like the Xbox 360 version and the

01:11:15 ◼   ► Wii U version of

01:11:18 ◼   ► Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens does not you can't even buy the season pass to get the extra characters and

01:11:25 ◼   ► Stuff it's only the basic. Hmm. So we we bought it and I was thinking oh, yeah

01:11:31 ◼   ► And then we played you know played through it pretty quickly

01:11:34 ◼   ► And we're like, oh, let's buy the the season pass and get the extra stuff. Oh, we can't

01:11:39 ◼   ► So we got it and we got an eye on iOS and it's not all out on iOS yet, but

01:11:47 ◼   ► supposedly that stuff will get eventually released on iOS.

01:11:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I like those games.

01:11:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:54 ◼   ► I'm not a fan of the modern ones, though, where they've started talking.

01:11:58 ◼   ► I liked the old.

01:11:59 ◼   ► Well, this is the one exception, I think.

01:12:01 ◼   ► And the reason I think it's an exception in this case is because they recorded a whole

01:12:05 ◼   ► bunch of new material for the game.

01:12:07 ◼   ► The thing that I think I agreed with that in the past, I always liked when they were

01:12:13 ◼   ► [imitates game noises]

01:12:14 ◼   ► and they were just making noises instead of using dialogue from the movies. But I think they've

01:12:20 ◼   ► upped their game significantly now because with this game they got everybody, including Harrison

01:12:26 ◼   ► Ford, and recorded a whole bunch of new material and stuff that is actually related to the gameplay.

01:12:34 ◼   ► So they'll say things like, "We need to get over there to connect those two things so that we can

01:12:40 ◼   ► open the gate to get through or whatever. You know, I mean, they're talking about stuff that

01:12:47 ◼   ► you need to do in the game in order to advance. And I think it's cool to be able to hear,

01:12:53 ◼   ► you know, it's the characters that you love from the movie and you're getting to hear more of them.

01:12:59 ◼   ► Well, I'm glad to hear you say that they did it well. I just, I still feel though that I miss

01:13:04 ◼   ► the old style where they just emoted, you know, sort of like The Sims, I think. You know,

01:13:09 ◼   ► I think it's a fair comparison where they would just, quote unquote, "speak" with these mumbles

01:13:15 ◼   ► that were like universal language. So they wouldn't have to, you know, and to me it was an

01:13:21 ◼   ► interesting thing to think about the writing challenge of making it very clear that when the

01:13:27 ◼   ► character goes "hmm" that you know what he's upset about because he can't actually say words. So you

01:13:33 ◼   ► have to be really, really clear with the game design and the writing, which I think helped them.

01:13:38 ◼   ► I helped it like focus on, you know, making everything as clear as possible.

01:13:42 ◼   ► And I just thought it was, you know, a like a cool thing.

01:13:46 ◼   ► Yeah. And it must have been great for them.

01:13:48 ◼   ► I feel like the reason, the main reason though for it was localization, wasn't it?

01:13:52 ◼   ► I mean, I would think...

01:13:53 ◼   ► That's what I was thinking is that it must have been a great boon to localization, you know,

01:13:57 ◼   ► that they wouldn't have to localize, you know.

01:13:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:00 ◼   ► Because they didn't really, as I recall, they didn't really do like subtitles either.

01:14:03 ◼   ► It wasn't like there was stuff that was on screen. It was just...

01:14:07 ◼   ► Yeah, they wouldn't-- yeah, right.

01:14:09 ◼   ► And I mean, every once in a while, I think there was some--

01:14:12 ◼   ► they would have an on-screen--

01:14:13 ◼   ► they would at least have an on-screen description

01:14:15 ◼   ► of what you might need to do.

01:14:19 ◼   ► But I think sometimes they actually

01:14:20 ◼   ► said the character is saying--

01:14:22 ◼   ► they would have the character's name and a colon

01:14:24 ◼   ► and then dialogue.

01:14:26 ◼   ► Maybe we should do the right--

01:14:29 ◼   ► Yeah, but so I mean, I think that it's kind of cool

01:14:33 ◼   ► to to get that extra material now and I'm so I'm I'm now on

01:14:39 ◼   ► board. Yeah. Uh that's the way they're gonna do it from now

01:14:43 ◼   ► on. I think but I'd also I think that those exclusives

01:14:46 ◼   ► stink too. You know that if if somehow Sony paid them so that

01:14:49 ◼   ► PlayStation has like a two-month period where only

01:14:51 ◼   ► PlayStation can get the oh yeah and that that's just rotten.

01:14:55 ◼   ► Like you shouldn't be penalized because you have the the quote

01:14:58 ◼   ► yeah. I mean I kinda get it if it's the I mean like the Xbox

01:15:01 ◼   ► 360 I kind of understand because you can get it on the Xbox one and so yeah, I mean, okay,

01:15:07 ◼   ► they're not they're not going to spend as much development time on an older platform,

01:15:10 ◼   ► but the Wii U, I was like the Wii U is the one that's the new one.

01:15:13 ◼   ► Right. Maybe we should do the rest of the episode just with mumbles and grunts and see if,

01:15:21 ◼   ► you know, can we do this?

01:15:28 ◼   ► I'm sure Karen and I used to play the Sims long long ago and we used to talk like that to each

01:15:33 ◼   ► other and then when we get mad at each other we would like hold a finger up over like a negative

01:15:40 ◼   ► sign up over our heads. It was great for our relationship. I'm sure that our third and final

01:15:53 ◼   ► sponsor of the show will love it if I just mumble and grunt these times.

01:15:58 ◼   ► I mean we should start after the sponsor read.

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01:18:12 ◼   ► practically minimal. And you get a... if you use the URL that they gave me, the

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01:18:41 ◼   ► No mumbles.

01:18:44 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:18:47 ◼   ► - I think if it was some jokers like Meh

01:18:51 ◼   ► or Cards Against Humanity,

01:18:55 ◼   ► those guys might take a mumble.

01:18:57 ◼   ► Yeah, Mem might do them.

01:18:59 ◼   ► I could probably--

01:19:00 ◼   ► [MUMBLING]

01:19:02 ◼   ► And just say, meh, every once in a while.

01:19:04 ◼   ► [MUMBLING]

01:19:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:19:08 ◼   ► I could actually see them requesting that.

01:19:11 ◼   ► They make wacky-- you know, if you've listened,

01:19:16 ◼   ► they do some weird stuff.

01:19:18 ◼   ► And they're like, you probably won't go for this.

01:19:20 ◼   ► But if you want to, you could do this.

01:19:21 ◼   ► And I'm like, I'll go for that.

01:19:22 ◼   ► It'd be great.

01:19:24 ◼   ► Anything to make these things interesting.

01:19:25 ◼   ► So hats off to them.

01:19:29 ◼   ► Anything else on your agenda?

01:19:30 ◼   ► What else is going on this week?

01:19:31 ◼   ► Well, I don't know, do you want to talk about Eddy Cue's…

01:19:36 ◼   ► Yeah, that'd be good.

01:19:37 ◼   ► And I read the piece that you linked to, which, yeah, I mean, I completely agree.

01:19:41 ◼   ► It sounds exactly like what he really meant.

01:19:47 ◼   ► How would you summarize this?

01:19:48 ◼   ► So…

01:19:49 ◼   ► What's the attitude there? It's sort of like, you know, the hell with this.

01:19:58 ◼   ► So it started with EdiQ at an interview in Variety, and the gist of it was that they

01:20:03 ◼   ► were asking about Apple's long-rumored "skinny bundle" of TV channels. Let's say you give

01:20:12 ◼   ► Apple $10 a month or $20 a month and you could get like ESPN, CNN, Turner Classic Movies,

01:20:21 ◼   ► you know, like I don't know, a quote unquote skinny bundle where maybe you'd get like 30

01:20:24 ◼   ► of the most popular channels.

01:20:28 ◼   ► Like a basic cable kind of thing.

01:20:30 ◼   ► Yeah, like a basic cable.

01:20:32 ◼   ► Maybe even smaller.

01:20:33 ◼   ► And they haven't been able to pull it off.

01:20:36 ◼   ► And one of the reasons is that all of these,

01:20:38 ◼   ► almost all of these TV channels

01:20:41 ◼   ► are owned by these massive conglomerates,

01:20:44 ◼   ► big media corporations that always want

01:20:47 ◼   ► to bundle these things all together.

01:20:50 ◼   ► And that's what they're used to dealing with

01:20:53 ◼   ► in the cable world.

01:20:54 ◼   ► And so the reason you have 850 channels,

01:20:57 ◼   ► I mean, literally, some of the channels I watch

01:21:01 ◼   ► are up in the 800s.

01:21:03 ◼   ► I don't understand why, but that's where they are.

01:21:06 ◼   ► I watch like four channels,

01:21:07 ◼   ► and some of them are up in the 800s.

01:21:09 ◼   ► But the reason why is that it's like

01:21:11 ◼   ► if you want to have ESPN in your bundle,

01:21:12 ◼   ► you've got to take ESPN2 and ESPN Spanish and ESPN3

01:21:17 ◼   ► and ESPN Headline News or whatever it's called,

01:21:21 ◼   ► you got to take them all.

01:21:22 ◼   ► You can't just say, "We just want to offer ESPN

01:21:24 ◼   ► "and then we can pass the savings on to our customer."

01:21:27 ◼   ► They're not interested in that.

01:21:29 ◼   ► And so at EQ told,

01:21:31 ◼   ► And everybody has been under the impression

01:21:33 ◼   ► that Apple has been trying to negotiate something like this,

01:21:35 ◼   ► specifically at EQ, that's right up his wheelhouse.

01:21:37 ◼   ► I mean, he's the guy.

01:21:39 ◼   ► And he told Variety that they don't even really wanna do it.

01:21:42 ◼   ► - I don't even wanna go to your party.

01:21:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:21:48 ◼   ► - Exactly. - I'm not invited.

01:21:49 ◼   ► Well, I don't wanna go.

01:21:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I didn't wanna go to your party.

01:21:52 ◼   ► And a friend of the show, Peter Kafka,

01:21:54 ◼   ► I was on his podcast recently.

01:21:56 ◼   ► I don't know if you listened to it.

01:21:57 ◼   ► I thought it was pretty good.

01:21:58 ◼   ► - It's in my queue.

01:22:01 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:22:02 ◼   ► Thanks for listening, John.

01:22:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:22:06 ◼   ► - It actually is.

01:22:06 ◼   ► I actually have had the webpage open for a long time

01:22:10 ◼   ► and I just haven't gotten to it yet.

01:22:13 ◼   ► - If you have or anybody who hasn't listened,

01:22:14 ◼   ► it's a good, I'll put it in the show notes.

01:22:17 ◼   ► Peter Kafka of Recode does a inside the media podcast.

01:22:24 ◼   ► I think Samantha Bee was on recently.

01:22:28 ◼   ► So that's kind of cool that I was on a podcast

01:22:30 ◼   ► Samantha Bee was on. Yeah. Like I find... Maybe you'll listen to that one instead.

01:22:33 ◼   ► Yeah, oh I would. I'm sure it's, I'm sure it's a lot funnier. I guarantee that.

01:22:38 ◼   ► I love her show, by the way. Do you watch her show? I've seen, well, I, you know, I get clip,

01:22:45 ◼   ► I clip everything. I honestly, I honestly would... Because I don't get cable, but yeah. If you said

01:22:49 ◼   ► to me, who's the funniest person on late night TV right now? I think I would say Samantha Bee.

01:22:53 ◼   ► I really... She's really good. I think she's really good. I like John Oliver a lot too, but...

01:22:57 ◼   ► He would be my--

01:22:58 ◼   ► The two of them would think we're tied for me.

01:22:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:23:01 ◼   ► I still can't--

01:23:02 ◼   ► I can't believe they were both on The Daily Show

01:23:04 ◼   ► and somehow Comedy Central let them both get away.

01:23:07 ◼   ► To me, the two funniest people on TV are them.

01:23:10 ◼   ► But anyway, I'll put it in the show notes.

01:23:12 ◼   ► You can listen to it.

01:23:13 ◼   ► Peter Kafka wanted to talk to me about the one-man media

01:23:16 ◼   ► empire I've set up here.

01:23:18 ◼   ► So if you've ever wanted to know my thinking behind what

01:23:22 ◼   ► the hell I do here at Daring Fireball, you could go listen.

01:23:24 ◼   ► I thought it turned out pretty good.

01:23:25 ◼   ► I hate talking about myself.

01:23:26 ◼   ► I hate, I really do, and the gist of it is that this has been somewhat successful, which

01:23:33 ◼   ► makes me hate talking about it even more.

01:23:36 ◼   ► And somehow he made it tolerable, and I didn't want to die.

01:23:39 ◼   ► So you can go listen to it.

01:23:41 ◼   ► But anyway, Peter Kafka, media reporter extraordinaire, linked to this EdiQ thing with variety, and

01:23:48 ◼   ► he offered his own translation of it, which, like you said, really is like, yeah, this

01:23:53 ◼   ► is what he made.

01:23:54 ◼   ► completely true. You know, I mean, just that we can't pull it together so, you know, so

01:24:01 ◼   ► heck with it. We'll just say that we don't even want to do it. Although, I mean, I'm

01:24:06 ◼   ► sure they're still interested.

01:24:08 ◼   ► Trenton Larkin Yeah, I think so too. And I think that Kafka's

01:24:12 ◼   ► take of, look, we see that you guys are headed off a cliff. You should see it too. You know,

01:24:19 ◼   ► this seems, this seems like it should, I hate to say it, but win, win, win, right? That

01:24:23 ◼   ► this is good this such a deal would be good for Apple it would be good for

01:24:27 ◼   ► Apple TV users and it would be good for the these TV channels because they'd

01:24:33 ◼   ► have this life after cable but if you guys want to wait till you go over the

01:24:39 ◼   ► cliff and then we'll work it out sort it out at the end I guess that's what we'll

01:24:43 ◼   ► do because it really for me for me it would obviously it would be great

01:24:48 ◼   ► because we don't get cable and every once in a while that's a problem.

01:24:55 ◼   ► The funny thing was like when we first canceled cable it was... my wife

01:25:01 ◼   ► called me back when I was working in an office and she called me she said, "I

01:25:04 ◼   ► canceled cable!" and I was like, "Oh!" This was... it was... what would have been six

01:25:11 ◼   ► years ago? Something like that. Anyway it was a year... it was the year of the

01:25:15 ◼   ► Olympics, the Winter Olympics. I was thinking we would do it right after the Olympics. She was like,

01:25:20 ◼   ► "Oh. Oh, yeah." So we didn't watch the Olympics that year. But we have not looked back other than

01:25:29 ◼   ► every once in a while there being something like that, though, I think. It would be really

01:25:32 ◼   ► nice to watch as it airs, but it's not worth the ongoing cost to us.

01:25:37 ◼   ► Yeah, and it just seems to me that I would think, again, I'm making this up, so I'm not

01:25:45 ◼   ► an analyst, I can make stuff up. I think though that cord cutting is a good demographic. It's

01:25:54 ◼   ► not people are cutting the cord because they can't afford cable, it's because they're technically

01:26:01 ◼   ► savvy enough that they've got devices that they can use to fill up the four hours of time they

01:26:09 ◼   ► want to spend entertaining themselves on a screen without cable. Well, it's like, I was spending so

01:26:15 ◼   ► much time getting my media some other way, time and money getting my media some other way, like

01:26:20 ◼   ► either buying it off of iTunes or getting it someplace where I wouldn't have to have ads in it,

01:26:26 ◼   ► that I was not, I mean, I certainly wasn't devoting $60 a month of my entertainment.

01:26:34 ◼   ► You know, I was spending so much more on that compared to the other stuff that it just didn't

01:26:38 ◼   ► make sense anymore. Yeah, I just don't understand why these, the TV executives wouldn't want to get

01:26:42 ◼   ► a piece of that pie, you know, get involved. Yeah, I will, like, you know, like Kafka alludes,

01:26:49 ◼   ► they probably will eventually. Yeah, and I don't know, I just can't help but think that the app

01:26:54 ◼   ► model is it's just not ideal. It's, you know, it's not bad and it works and there are some of those

01:27:01 ◼   ► stations, you know, I call them stations. It works if you're big, right? I mean, it works if you're HBO,

01:27:06 ◼   ► but I don't think it works necessarily for everybody. Yeah, HBO does it pretty well. I think

01:27:13 ◼   ► that their Apple TV app, I think the interface is a little confusing. The navigation, I don't know

01:27:18 ◼   ► I don't know if you've used it, but the--

01:27:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, just a bit.

01:27:21 ◼   ► - There's like a simple, like iOS really hammered at home,

01:27:29 ◼   ► but it's like that old next column view,

01:27:32 ◼   ► from the next finder or whatever, the file manager.

01:27:35 ◼   ► And now that you have it in the finder, right?

01:27:37 ◼   ► And it's such a simple little thing,

01:27:39 ◼   ► but it's so brilliant where you start on the left,

01:27:42 ◼   ► this is the root, and as you go deeper,

01:27:45 ◼   ► it just keeps sliding over, right?

01:27:47 ◼   ► The whole iPhone interface is built on that, right?

01:27:50 ◼   ► So far left conceptually is here's all

01:27:53 ◼   ► of your email accounts.

01:27:54 ◼   ► You go into one of them.

01:27:55 ◼   ► Here's all of the mailboxes in that account.

01:27:57 ◼   ► You hit a mailbox.

01:27:58 ◼   ► Here's all of the messages in that mailbox.

01:28:01 ◼   ► Just keep going to the right.

01:28:03 ◼   ► The Apple TV is large, you know,

01:28:05 ◼   ► a lot of the stuff in Apple TV is largely like that.

01:28:08 ◼   ► The HBO app is just sort of like,

01:28:11 ◼   ► here's a whole bunch of things you can tap

01:28:13 ◼   ► and it'll take you somewhere and there's no,

01:28:15 ◼   ► I have no idea how to get back to where I just was.

01:28:18 ◼   ► But anyway, it worked.

01:28:18 ◼   ► - One of my biggest complaints about the Apple TV

01:28:20 ◼   ► is the fact that it brought some crappy apps, I think.

01:28:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:28:26 ◼   ► - Like I think the Netflix app is not as good

01:28:27 ◼   ► as it used to be.

01:28:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, totally.

01:28:29 ◼   ► - Maybe it's the same on the old,

01:28:30 ◼   ► maybe there's an update that came to the older ones too

01:28:32 ◼   ► and it's not as good as well.

01:28:33 ◼   ► But they did an update, and actually maybe that's true

01:28:37 ◼   ► because I think the iOS one is not as good

01:28:39 ◼   ► as it used to be either.

01:28:41 ◼   ► It seems like they did an update

01:28:42 ◼   ► that was trying to get there.

01:28:43 ◼   ► you know, again, going back to sort of what we were talking about earlier about Microsoft and Google,

01:28:47 ◼   ► trying to get their app experience the same off of across all those platforms.

01:28:51 ◼   ► And it, you know, that experience was not nearly as good as the original iOS apps were.

01:28:58 ◼   ► The good thing about HBO, this, I salute you, HBO, you are doing it right, is that they,

01:29:07 ◼   ► they don't have any kind of like window. It's like if you want to watch Game of Thrones on Sunday

01:29:12 ◼   ► night because you don't want spoilers. You can watch it on the HBO app as soon as it's

01:29:18 ◼   ► on the TV station. I really like that. When I used to be in, I loved it, it was probably

01:29:26 ◼   ► my favorite show of all time, Mad Men. I always bought it on iTunes so that I could watch

01:29:32 ◼   ► it without ads and without even, you know, I mean this is me and my money just pouring

01:29:37 ◼   ► through my fingers.

01:29:38 ◼   ► Because I have TiVo, of course, but I don't even

01:29:42 ◼   ► like skipping the ads.

01:29:44 ◼   ► The show was too--

01:29:45 ◼   ► I thought Mad Men was so cinematic

01:29:47 ◼   ► that it was just wrecking it.

01:29:48 ◼   ► It's like watching a movie with commercials.

01:29:50 ◼   ► I don't even want to do the blip, blip, blip.

01:29:53 ◼   ► So I would buy the season pass on iTunes.

01:29:58 ◼   ► But it would only come out like 24 hours later.

01:30:01 ◼   ► And Mad Men wasn't like Game of Thrones,

01:30:03 ◼   ► where there were these crazy plot twists,

01:30:05 ◼   ► and it wasn't nearly as popular.

01:30:07 ◼   ► it was popular, but Game of Thrones isn't so popular. So you didn't have to worry about

01:30:11 ◼   ► spoilers.

01:30:12 ◼   ► Well, Game of Thrones is the kind of thing where everybody's watching at the same time,

01:30:14 ◼   ► and on Twitter you can see, you know when it's happening, because everybody's commenting

01:30:18 ◼   ► on it as it's being aired.

01:30:19 ◼   ► Right. And so it wasn't so much that I was worried about a 24-hour window where I could

01:30:26 ◼   ► encounter a spoiler. It was just a vague frustration that I'm really looking forward to this next

01:30:30 ◼   ► episode of the show, like maybe if there was some kind of cliffhanger the week before.

01:30:36 ◼   ► just felt annoying to me that I'm the sucker who paid money, even though I've

01:30:39 ◼   ► got cable where I could watch it for free. I've given you more money so that I can

01:30:44 ◼   ► watch it without the commercial interruptions, and you're making me wait

01:30:49 ◼   ► 24 hours. Like, I feel like I should get it 24 hours early, if anything. Yeah. The

01:30:55 ◼   ► other reason... But it's... and the stupid thing, the whole thing is predicated on

01:30:59 ◼   ► deals that they have with cable providers. Yeah. The other thing I will

01:31:04 ◼   ► say yes, this is true too. I don't know how we should be able to.

01:31:07 ◼   ► So you're suffering because of a deal they made with somebody else.

01:31:11 ◼   ► Yeah. In my defense also, I will defend my financial finagling.

01:31:19 ◼   ► You need Wealthfront. You need Wealthfront.

01:31:21 ◼   ► I, you know what, I should put all my money in there so I can stop wasting it on stuff.

01:31:26 ◼   ► Stop spending it on, I don't TV shows that you get other ways.

01:31:29 ◼   ► I don't know what my annual returns are on the episodes of Mad Men I own, but

01:31:34 ◼   ► but I don't--

01:31:35 ◼   ► - For you, it's not 1, 1.5% or whatever they said it,

01:31:38 ◼   ► so it's more like 2, 3% because they would revise you

01:31:41 ◼   ► to stop spending your money on TV shows.

01:31:43 ◼   ► - I will say this, I have watched Mad Men

01:31:45 ◼   ► in its entirety twice, although I didn't watch

01:31:47 ◼   ► the last season, re-watch the last season yet,

01:31:49 ◼   ► but I've watched everything but the last season

01:31:52 ◼   ► entirely twice, so, and I, you know,

01:31:54 ◼   ► so that would've, you know, wouldn't have still

01:31:57 ◼   ► been on my TiVo, so I would've had to buy it somehow.

01:32:02 ◼   ► Do you watch do you watch Kimmy Schmidt? Yes, I don't know if we completed season two. I don't

01:32:10 ◼   ► know if we have or not, but I know we're at least halfway through season two and we did watch. Okay,

01:32:14 ◼   ► because Jon Hamm is the crazy one. Oh yeah, we did finish it because I know that there's a

01:32:19 ◼   ► spoiler. I won't say it. There is a yeah, okay, yeah, I won't say it either. Yes, now that you

01:32:23 ◼   ► mentioned it. There's a great joke about that. What was the joke about Jon Hamm? Is that a

01:32:28 ◼   ► spoiler? Can you say that? Well, I mean, it kind of ruins the joke, but it's in reference to

01:32:33 ◼   ► him being able... I'll say it. If you don't want to skip over this, if you don't want to know what the

01:32:42 ◼   ► joke is. Skip 30 seconds. But she talks about how the guy that held her captive was so crazy,

01:32:48 ◼   ► and one of the things that he... He thought that he wrote that Coke song.

01:32:54 ◼   ► that slipped past me. I didn't notice that. Oh, I did not catch that joke.

01:33:00 ◼   ► It's delivered, yeah, because it's delivered in a very, like, you know, like most of the jokes,

01:33:06 ◼   ► it's like a very off hand. So they're just walking down the street and, you know, and I think like,

01:33:12 ◼   ► she's talking to Titus or something and his next line cuts right in, you know, I mean, like they

01:33:16 ◼   ► don't spend any time on it at all. It just, they just deliver it and move on.

01:33:22 ◼   ► So it's an odd segue, but I will go with it.

01:33:25 ◼   ► One other thing, I was talking after we watched the season two of Kimmy Schmidt,

01:33:29 ◼   ► so anybody who doesn't know, it's the TV show on Netflix,

01:33:33 ◼   ► The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, or just Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

01:33:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:33:39 ◼   ► Created by Tina Fey. I don't know who else deserves creator credit.

01:33:43 ◼   ► And if you liked 30 Rock, you'll like this show. I don't see how anybody who liked 30 Rock

01:33:52 ◼   ► wouldn't like this show. And it is so densely populated with jokes. And the thing that really

01:33:58 ◼   ► struck me is that it, now that there's a second show in this style, it's like Tina Fey. I know

01:34:06 ◼   ► that everybody loves her and she's super popular and does award shows and all these accolades.

01:34:13 ◼   ► But I still feel like it's almost like under remarked upon how she's like invented like a

01:34:20 ◼   ► format for a sitcom that is like

01:34:22 ◼   ► like an entire order of magnitude

01:34:25 ◼   ► denser with jokes than

01:34:29 ◼   ► Than anything that came before it

01:34:32 ◼   ► Like it's it's exquisite. Like if you really think about and I think about it as a right

01:34:36 ◼   ► I mean, I don't write screenplays, but you know

01:34:38 ◼   ► I write it just seems impossible to me that they come up with 10 or 20 episodes that yeah that densely

01:34:46 ◼   ► Packed with jokes like almost every single word out of every character's mouth is a joke

01:34:51 ◼   ► There's no setup. It's uh, it's just relentless and I'm not you know, it's not like you're sitting there laughing the entire time non-stop

01:34:58 ◼   ► It's you know, but it's I find it incredibly engaging because it's just so smart. It's like the smartest thing I've ever seen

01:35:05 ◼   ► yeah, and there's it's

01:35:08 ◼   ► It has another layer to it, too

01:35:12 ◼   ► I think there's like things going on that you have to you have to be it's one of those things like I

01:35:17 ◼   ► made a mistake in watching the most recent season of Arrested Development, which was

01:35:25 ◼   ► trying to watch it while doing something else. I had it on the background like when I was making

01:35:30 ◼   ► dinner and stuff and things like that and you can't and I really didn't appreciate it. And so

01:35:35 ◼   ► I need to go back and like I think devote because the way that show interweaves with things going

01:35:40 ◼   ► on, particularly that show, where interviews and things are going on in the background that

01:35:44 ◼   ► are really the funny part a lot of times. It's like you see something going on that happened

01:35:50 ◼   ► in a previous episode that's going on in the background right then that makes the joke in the

01:35:55 ◼   ► foreground funny. Yeah, it demands your attention. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think this is kind of like

01:36:01 ◼   ► that too, where you can, if you're not really paying attention, you can miss a lot. Yeah,

01:36:06 ◼   ► so that's what my recommendation is. Anybody, if you're looking for something good to watch,

01:36:10 ◼   ► get into the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Super smart. Almost impossible. And Jon Hamm is

01:36:17 ◼   ► very funny on it.

01:36:18 ◼   ► That was great casting.

01:36:22 ◼   ► I never even mentioned the premise of the show. If you're not aware, I mean, maybe

01:36:28 ◼   ► most people are aware, but the premise of the show, it's almost sick. The premise

01:36:32 ◼   ► of the show is that Kimmy Schmidt, the main character, is...

01:36:38 ◼   ► She's a mole woman.

01:36:39 ◼   ► mole woman, she was kidnapped as a teenager by a weirdo and kept in an underground bunker

01:36:45 ◼   ► for 20 years or something. Was it like 20 years? Ten. Ten, I think. So she like missed,

01:36:51 ◼   ► you know, like the Bush administration or something like that. But she went from like

01:36:55 ◼   ► 15 to 15, I can't remember, something like that. Yeah, because it feels like it was the

01:36:58 ◼   ► 90s when she was captured. And then the show starts with her and the other women who were

01:37:04 ◼   ► captured by this guy escaping from from and going you know assimilating back into regular life

01:37:10 ◼   ► yeah and and they don't show and they don't show the guy they're crazy i mean they he they show

01:37:15 ◼   ► them from like the back right um for episodes and episodes and then he finally shows up toward the

01:37:21 ◼   ► end um or at least you know like it you know more than halfway through the first season and it's

01:37:26 ◼   ► that's Jon Hamm.

01:37:27 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:37:28 ◼   ► It's just, it's great.

01:37:30 ◼   ► - There were, Jon, and then there's a,

01:37:34 ◼   ► I don't wanna spoil it too much,

01:37:35 ◼   ► but there's a trial where Jon Hamm goes on trial

01:37:37 ◼   ► for what he did, and it really reminded me,

01:37:40 ◼   ► like, and he represents himself as his attorney,

01:37:44 ◼   ► and it so reminded me of my all-time favorite

01:37:48 ◼   ► Simpson character, which was Lionel Hutz, the lawyer.

01:37:52 ◼   ► The, who was he played by?

01:37:54 ◼   ► Phil Hartman.

01:37:55 ◼   ► - Oh. - Phil Harmon, yeah.

01:37:57 ◼   ► - The Lionel Hutz was, to me,

01:37:59 ◼   ► the funniest thing ever on "The Simpsons."

01:38:01 ◼   ► That's why you're the judge, and I'm the law-talking guy.

01:38:05 ◼   ► You mean an attorney?

01:38:06 ◼   ► Yeah! (laughing)

01:38:09 ◼   ► Oh, what else is going on?

01:38:11 ◼   ► What else do we have to talk about?

01:38:13 ◼   ► - Are you guys submitting yourselves for Planet of the Apps?

01:38:18 ◼   ► - Oh, no.

01:38:21 ◼   ► I don't get this at all, I really don't.

01:38:23 ◼   ► - I don't either, I really don't.

01:38:25 ◼   ► It's really strange.

01:38:27 ◼   ► Well, first of all, I'm not a fan of reality TV.

01:38:31 ◼   ► So I may not be a good person to judge this.

01:38:35 ◼   ► I kind of get it in that it's a marketing tool for the app store, I guess.

01:38:43 ◼   ► So Apple, and sort of ties in in that regard, but it seems like a good idea.

01:38:49 ◼   ► co-producing an upcoming reality show with some production company that does regular

01:38:55 ◼   ► reality shows, obviously has experience with it, where it's going to be about developers

01:39:00 ◼   ► making apps. And it just, from what I know of reality TV, it's like, it's all this

01:39:10 ◼   ► emotional soap opera stuff. And I can't think of anything, I mean this is like the

01:39:17 ◼   ► the most--

01:39:19 ◼   ► developing apps is-- it's not cinematic.

01:39:23 ◼   ► It's a lot of typing.

01:39:24 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

01:39:27 ◼   ► What are they going to show?

01:39:29 ◼   ► I don't get it.

01:39:29 ◼   ► Maybe I want to see Craig Hockenberry sitting

01:39:32 ◼   ► at a computer.

01:39:33 ◼   ► Right.

01:39:34 ◼   ► I just don't see how that's a show.

01:39:36 ◼   ► I don't get it.

01:39:37 ◼   ► But anyway, Apple's doing it, and they're taking applications.

01:39:41 ◼   ► And you have to be willing to live

01:39:43 ◼   ► in Los Angeles for a couple of months at the end of the year.

01:39:47 ◼   ► and they said, "Please don't sign up."

01:39:49 ◼   ► Did you see this, in fact?

01:39:50 ◼   ► It was like, "Please don't sign up if you can't do that."

01:39:53 ◼   ► - If you can't commit two months to, like.

01:39:55 ◼   ► - Right.

01:39:56 ◼   ► - I mean, maybe the guy that decided

01:39:59 ◼   ► he wasn't gonna answer his email

01:40:01 ◼   ► to go to New Zealand, he could do it, but.

01:40:04 ◼   ► - Well, I can see how some developers definitely could,

01:40:07 ◼   ► especially young ones,

01:40:08 ◼   ► and maybe that's part of the gist of the show,

01:40:09 ◼   ► is that it's the 20-something demographic.

01:40:16 ◼   ► So I could see it, I guess.

01:40:17 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:40:18 ◼   ► It just seems very strange.

01:40:20 ◼   ► The strange part to me, it doesn't seem so strange

01:40:23 ◼   ► that somebody would make a show about Aptobound,

01:40:25 ◼   ► but it seems strange to me that Apple is co-producing it.

01:40:29 ◼   ► And it's going to be,

01:40:30 ◼   ► so this is like the first original content,

01:40:32 ◼   ► to loop it back with the previous topic of the show,

01:40:34 ◼   ► that it's original content that Apple is going to give out

01:40:37 ◼   ► through the iTunes store somehow.

01:40:40 ◼   ► And it just seems very strange

01:40:41 ◼   ► that it would be a reality show

01:40:43 ◼   ► when everybody else's exclusive content

01:40:45 ◼   ► stuff like Kimmy Schmidt and you know Daredevil House of Cards yeah Daredevil House of Cards

01:40:54 ◼   ► you know it's all these these you know cinematic really good shows really good shows and really

01:41:00 ◼   ► great shows that are very compelling to watch and we're gonna have some guys typing

01:41:06 ◼   ► t-mobile is giving users a free year a year of free data to play pokemon go

01:41:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I wonder how that works technically like how do they know what data is used for Pokemon go and oh, that's a good point. I

01:41:21 ◼   ► mean I guess I

01:41:24 ◼   ► Mean there's got to be a way to identify it somehow. Yeah, I don't know I don't get it

01:41:30 ◼   ► You're not you're not you're not on t-mobile, right?

01:41:33 ◼   ► No, not really. I had that might yeah, I told you I have the the

01:41:38 ◼   ► Okay, very Android is yeah. My Android is on a

01:41:42 ◼   ► a month-to-month T-Mobile plan? I think if I were going to switch, I'd probably switch to T-Mobile.

01:41:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I would like to, but we don't have enough good coverage. I wrote a thing, gosh, it was a

01:41:56 ◼   ► year ago for Tom's Hardware. And they were doing a series of studies of who had the best coverage

01:42:06 ◼   ► in certain cities and I did the testing for them for Seattle and spent a bunch of time

01:42:13 ◼   ► driving around testing these different carriers on these Android phones. And T-Mobile was the

01:42:23 ◼   ► fastest, but when I came home with the phones, we didn't get any coverage here.

01:42:29 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:42:30 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean, speed is nice, but coverage is key.

01:42:33 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't really an option. I mean, really, our only option where we are right now is

01:42:38 ◼   ► Verizon because we had the same experience with AT&T. And we got one of those micro cells and it

01:42:43 ◼   ► didn't work for... Yeah, those things are garbage. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'd have to test with this phone

01:42:50 ◼   ► before I switch and see if it covers everything. I mean, I figure where you are, you're probably

01:42:55 ◼   ► safe. I think it probably is. But it's such a better deal. I forget what we pay for Verizon,

01:43:00 ◼   ► But it's a lot.

01:43:02 ◼   ► Yeah, all around it's a bitter deal, right?

01:43:04 ◼   ► I mean, you've got more flexibility and it's cheaper.

01:43:06 ◼   ► Yeah, and when they tell you it's $50 a month, you get charged $50.

01:43:09 ◼   ► Like, $50.00.

01:43:11 ◼   ► Which is amazing to me.

01:43:13 ◼   ► What?

01:43:15 ◼   ► It's like, it's $50 a month and you get three gigs.

01:43:18 ◼   ► And you get your credit card notification.

01:43:21 ◼   ► I get a notification that my credit card was charged $50.00 T-Mobile.

01:43:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:43:26 ◼   ► It wasn't-- I mean, I think I'm getting a better and better deal out of Verizon.

01:43:30 ◼   ► I feel like because we added Hank and and he does not use a small amount of

01:43:36 ◼   ► data and sometimes that's a problem but we're still paying I think we're paying

01:43:41 ◼   ► less than we were a year ago I tell you what Jonas did so Jonas we have 15

01:43:46 ◼   ► gigabytes of shared data among the three of us on Verizon and Amy and I what Amy

01:43:54 ◼   ► probably three times what we have and it's three times more than we used most

01:43:57 ◼   ► months. But it's grandfathered in. It's almost like the Verizon version of the old AT&T 5

01:44:05 ◼   ► Unlimited. Which I bet a surprising number of people are still hanging onto.

01:44:11 ◼   ► Paul was for a long time. I think he finally got off of it.

01:44:15 ◼   ► I think Casey List is, too. I think Casey List. Somebody was talking on a podcast recently

01:44:21 ◼   ► about how they're still hanging onto it. Which drives me. I can't believe anybody does it

01:44:24 ◼   ► because you can't tether like I don't care how much you love it I the unlimited

01:44:28 ◼   ► data plan that you have an L&T but tethering is so important to me it's

01:44:32 ◼   ► it's really me too I mean I'm I told you I'm literally tethered to my Verizon

01:44:37 ◼   ► phone right now as we speak the show without that's how we're recording this

01:44:40 ◼   ► show it is so essential to my mobile computing it's ridiculous but anyway

01:44:47 ◼   ► we're grandfathered in at like a better rate than you can get now for 15 gigs

01:44:51 ◼   ► And we Amy and I flew out to California for WWDC

01:44:55 ◼   ► Jonas had just gotten out of school that you know the Friday before was his last day of school

01:45:00 ◼   ► and he was with Amy's sister for the week and

01:45:02 ◼   ► on

01:45:05 ◼   ► Like the Monday of WWDC I got a notice from Verizon that we've used up

01:45:11 ◼   ► 14.9 gigabytes of our 15 gigabyte plan

01:45:15 ◼   ► And our billing cycle

01:45:20 ◼   ► ends on the 12th, meaning it ends on the 12th of July, a month later.

01:45:24 ◼   ► So it was literally like the first day of the billing cycle. Jonas used like 15 gigabytes of data

01:45:33 ◼   ► in like 48 hours.

01:45:36 ◼   ► I didn't know what to say.

01:45:41 ◼   ► And I realized like in the old days, like I feel like maybe it was a test. Like at first there was a moment where I

01:45:48 ◼   ► was

01:45:50 ◼   ► furious

01:45:52 ◼   ► Seriously angry

01:45:53 ◼   ► Because he he's a smart kid

01:45:56 ◼   ► He knows what Wi-Fi or at least he's smart enough to know what you know, he knows what Wi-Fi is. He just never got on

01:46:03 ◼   ► Got on their Wi-Fi when got on their Wi-Fi when he got there. Yeah

01:46:06 ◼   ► Watch non-stop high-definition YouTube

01:46:10 ◼   ► Yeah, 48 hours, right, right

01:46:13 ◼   ► Man, that's a lot though. Even even with

01:46:18 ◼   ► It's great. I am even watching that I'm in 15, you know, well then I got I kind of got proud

01:46:23 ◼   ► I was like, well, that's actually kind of enough, you know, my kid used 15 gigs of data 48 hours like

01:46:29 ◼   ► You know, that's like the equivalent for the baby book like, you know Jonas isn't very good at sports

01:46:36 ◼   ► But you know, it's sort of like, you know hit for the cycle

01:46:38 ◼   ► He's very good at using data very good at using data, but I figured out that and they were gonna charge me

01:46:44 ◼   ► I forget what it is, but it's like once you go over you have to pay for every gigabyte

01:46:48 ◼   ► And I knew it was going to be a fairly you know

01:46:50 ◼   ► The whole WWDC week was ahead of me where we you know the the week where we were at Disney world was in there

01:46:57 ◼   ► I was like this is going to be a nightmare

01:46:59 ◼   ► This is like them like them he did this on the day of the month

01:47:03 ◼   ► Starting on the billing cycle where we probably actually this is the time we actually used the 15 gigs in fact

01:47:08 ◼   ► I remember it was at Disney world the one year where I upped the I upped our plan to the 15 gig plan

01:47:13 ◼   ► But I checked and upgrading, like you can temporarily upgrade to a higher plan.

01:47:19 ◼   ► Like Verizon is nice about that. So you can go to 20 or 25 or something like that.

01:47:24 ◼   ► But once you do, I couldn't ever go back down to this 15 gig plan we had

01:47:29 ◼   ► because it no longer exists. And I figured that we're gonna, it would be

01:47:33 ◼   ► better to just pay like seriously like an extra $150 this month for all of our overage.

01:47:39 ◼   ► But we'll make up for it in the long run.

01:47:41 ◼   ► We really would make up for it in the long run

01:47:43 ◼   ► as long as we stay in Verizon.

01:47:45 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

01:47:46 ◼   ► - And of course now here I am talking about

01:47:47 ◼   ► switching to T-Mobile.

01:47:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

01:47:50 ◼   ► Well you need to get your money out of it first.

01:47:54 ◼   ► - I did not yell at Jonas.

01:47:57 ◼   ► I feel like this is where I'm a good parent.

01:47:59 ◼   ► By the time I conversed with him about the situation,

01:48:03 ◼   ► I was calm and I was in a similar tone that I am now.

01:48:08 ◼   ► I mean, what are you gonna do?

01:48:10 ◼   ► But I just remember, when I was a kid,

01:48:13 ◼   ► if I had done something like that,

01:48:15 ◼   ► that had resulted in our family having to pay $150

01:48:19 ◼   ► for something that I could have done for free

01:48:23 ◼   ► just by turning on wifi and logging on

01:48:27 ◼   ► to his aunt's house wifi,

01:48:29 ◼   ► my parents would have,

01:48:33 ◼   ► I mean, they might have had a stroke.

01:48:36 ◼   ► I mean, I can just imagine my dad would be so mad.

01:48:40 ◼   ► Oh my God.

01:48:41 ◼   ► - It's ludicrous how easy it is.

01:48:43 ◼   ► I mean, and I don't wanna be,

01:48:45 ◼   ► I'm not trying to blame Apple or anybody else really,

01:48:47 ◼   ► but it's just technology

01:48:50 ◼   ► and giving them access to this stuff.

01:48:53 ◼   ► 'Cause when he was a little kid,

01:48:55 ◼   ► he spent, I mean, he did like some in-app purchase thing

01:48:59 ◼   ► where he got like coins for paper toss or something.

01:49:03 ◼   ► It was like some ridiculous game

01:49:05 ◼   ► and spent like 150 bucks. I remember. Yeah, I think I told you that. And then,

01:49:10 ◼   ► oh, and then like, did you call about that one? Did you pay it or did you call Apple?

01:49:16 ◼   ► I think that one I got back. I think they refunded that, or they refunded most of it or something.

01:49:22 ◼   ► I can't remember. Like I decided, I think what I decided was that some of it should be on me

01:49:27 ◼   ► because I let, you know, I wasn't doing the password logout thing. I, you know,

01:49:32 ◼   ► and I gave him his iPad, I bought the thing for him,

01:49:35 ◼   ► because he wanted like, it was like $10 of coins

01:49:38 ◼   ► or something like that, that's fine, yeah.

01:49:40 ◼   ► So I got him some coins and then he was like,

01:49:42 ◼   ► "Oh, hey, I'm still logged in."

01:49:44 ◼   ► Click, click, click, click, click.

01:49:47 ◼   ► And I think what I did was I decided,

01:49:50 ◼   ► some of it I would split, like that was on,

01:49:52 ◼   ► part of it was on me, so I paid for half of it

01:49:54 ◼   ► and they refunded me the other half or something like that.

01:49:59 ◼   ► And then the other thing that happened last year was that--

01:50:04 ◼   ► God, was it just last year?

01:50:05 ◼   ► I think it was.

01:50:07 ◼   ► He wanted a book, a Kindle book.

01:50:11 ◼   ► And so I got onto his laptop--

01:50:14 ◼   ► this was a terrible mistake.

01:50:15 ◼   ► I got onto his laptop and got onto Amazon

01:50:19 ◼   ► and bought him a book on Kindle so that he

01:50:21 ◼   ► could get it onto his iPad.

01:50:22 ◼   ► And then my credit card information was left in there.

01:50:26 ◼   ► And so he was still logged into Amazon.

01:50:28 ◼   ► He was just like, I don't think he knew exactly what had happened.

01:50:31 ◼   ► I mean, he probably did, but he put a couple of things in the cart and bought them.

01:50:35 ◼   ► I love him.

01:50:37 ◼   ► No, no, these are going back.

01:50:40 ◼   ► I admire him for that.

01:50:46 ◼   ► You know, I mean, you know, unfortunately that one, that one, it was like, and I

01:50:51 ◼   ► mean, so now the thing is like, if he goes, if we go over and like, I like, I figure

01:50:54 ◼   ► like five gigabytes, we mostly spend our time in the house all, you know, I mean,

01:50:58 ◼   ► particularly in the summer, where we have access to Wi-Fi.

01:51:01 ◼   ► And I think our plan is like five gigs.

01:51:05 ◼   ► And I'm like, if we go over and you're using most of it,

01:51:08 ◼   ► you're paying for the overage.

01:51:10 ◼   ► That's our deal.

01:51:11 ◼   ► So it comes out of his allowance, the fee.

01:51:14 ◼   ► Jonas has--

01:51:15 ◼   ► He doesn't do that too much.

01:51:16 ◼   ► He has-- just like the parenting episode of the show,

01:51:18 ◼   ► he has a surprising amount of cash.

01:51:23 ◼   ► And it's all accumulated from birthdays and Christmas and stuff like that.

01:51:29 ◼   ► I mean, he literally looks like he's going to Atlantic City to gamble.

01:51:35 ◼   ► He's got a wad of cash in a roll with a rubber band around it.

01:51:42 ◼   ► Because we do make him--

01:51:44 ◼   ► if he wants to do an in-app purchase or something,

01:51:47 ◼   ► if he wants to get a $10 upgrade for a PlayStation game or whatever,

01:51:51 ◼   ► It's like, OK, I'll OK it, but you've got to give me $10.

01:51:57 ◼   ► And it's like, when he takes out the--

01:51:59 ◼   ► I never had money like that.

01:52:00 ◼   ► I remember when I was 12 years old,

01:52:02 ◼   ► the most money I ever had at a time

01:52:04 ◼   ► was enough to buy a Hot Wheels car.

01:52:08 ◼   ► And they used to be about $2.

01:52:11 ◼   ► Buying a Hot Wheels car at Kmart would bankrupt me.

01:52:16 ◼   ► I feel like maybe I would scrape together $15 or something

01:52:18 ◼   ► like that, but for the most part, yeah.

01:52:20 ◼   ► And Hank is similar though because it comes in fits and spurts and I think it usually is like he's usually very flush because his birthday is near Christmas. So he's usually very flush come January.

01:52:31 ◼   ► But he has also spent like a I mean sometimes he just like he just won't buy anything for a great stretch of the time and then he'll build up like I mean there have been a number of times where he's had like a like $100 bill just lying around in his room for months.

01:52:44 ◼   ► How does it happen?

01:52:46 ◼   ► No, I never have a $100 bill.

01:52:49 ◼   ► We squandered our youth going out playing sandlot baseball.

01:52:53 ◼   ► We should have been in the house collecting $100 bills.

01:52:57 ◼   ► I did not make him pay the overage.

01:52:59 ◼   ► It clearly was a mistake, and it was a lot of money.

01:53:01 ◼   ► But if it happens again--

01:53:03 ◼   ► Well, that's the thing.

01:53:04 ◼   ► I mean, the first one's fine.

01:53:06 ◼   ► But after that-- and he had already gone over once.

01:53:11 ◼   ► This wasn't the first time.

01:53:13 ◼   ► That's our new deal.

01:53:14 ◼   ► We've had this discussion before.

01:53:15 ◼   ► I was like, we're not having this discussion again.

01:53:17 ◼   ► You have got to realize that you don't watch--

01:53:22 ◼   ► you don't go into one of your YouTube fever dreams.

01:53:27 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

01:53:29 ◼   ► A few--

01:53:30 ◼   ► What is he watch?

01:53:31 ◼   ► Does he watch people playing games?

01:53:33 ◼   ► Is that--

01:53:33 ◼   ► I think it's mostly people playing games.

01:53:35 ◼   ► Whenever I look at a screen, it's always people playing games.

01:53:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:53:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:53:41 ◼   ► Hank has gotten into--

01:53:42 ◼   ► we went to an arcade.

01:53:43 ◼   ► He loves going to these arcades and playing these coin games,

01:53:47 ◼   ► which I can't stand most.

01:53:49 ◼   ► But he watches people play these things on YouTube.

01:53:52 ◼   ► And so we went yesterday to one of these goofy arcades,

01:54:00 ◼   ► most of the games of which I can't bear.

01:54:03 ◼   ► But there was this one game where you just

01:54:05 ◼   ► dropped these balls into this thing that's going around

01:54:09 ◼   ► that has these holes.

01:54:10 ◼   ► And the balls go into the holes, and whatever number you get,

01:54:13 ◼   ► get and then they give you these tickets right yeah and you go and exchange the tickets for some

01:54:17 ◼   ► crap um but he had been watching he had apparently been watching somebody who figured out like the

01:54:23 ◼   ► best way to play this game on youtube and he was like it was like one of those things where the

01:54:27 ◼   ► tickets were just like pouring out of the machine wait and hank was able to like replicate it yeah

01:54:34 ◼   ► oh my god apparently it was the kind of thing where instead of like putting your coins in like

01:54:41 ◼   ► one coin and then letting the game play out and then putting another coin in, you just shove like

01:54:46 ◼   ► five coins in in succession. And because I guess the way the balls like event, you know, you'll get

01:54:53 ◼   ► a ball in a good hole because if there are a number of balls in play at any given time,

01:54:59 ◼   ► your chances of getting into a good hole are better because they're all going to go into

01:55:02 ◼   ► separate holes. Whereas if you drop one ball, you could get a crappy hole every single time.

01:55:09 ◼   ► But if you drop like 10 balls, one of them is probably going to go into one that's a really high number.

01:55:15 ◼   ► And then you can take the tickets up and get candy or toys.

01:55:19 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. And then you get this place is not just their gifts were pretty lousy.

01:55:26 ◼   ► Arcades aren't what they used to be, John.

01:55:28 ◼   ► No, they're not what they used to be. Well, we didn't we didn't get prizes at all.

01:55:32 ◼   ► We went to an arcade. But there's a place at the beach where that had that we this place that we

01:55:37 ◼   ► go to the beach has a great arcade and the prizes are pretty good but this

01:55:42 ◼   ► place was pretty crappy so he ended up with a whole bunch of tootsie rolls he

01:55:47 ◼   ► ended up with a laser pointer and a bunch of tootsie rolls yeah Jonas had a

01:55:50 ◼   ► party it was at a birthday party at a place like that sometime in the last few

01:55:55 ◼   ► months and when we picked him up like everybody was just cashing in their

01:55:58 ◼   ► tickets for candy yeah nobody was looking at the toys it's all candy yeah

01:56:02 ◼   ► that's what I mean he wanted to get nothing but candy but I was like now you

01:56:05 ◼   ► should get something get something else don't just have candy you're lying around the house

01:56:08 ◼   ► you'll be bouncing off the walls yeah uh anything else uh i don't know if you did you would you want

01:56:16 ◼   ► to circle back to that samsung laptop no yeah i guess we could do that wrap up we didn't we

01:56:21 ◼   ► we alluded to it earlier but didn't yeah that's actually a good topic so i i linked to a a review

01:56:29 ◼   ► i forget who where it was where it was uh gizmodo gizmodo reviews the samsung notebook

01:56:35 ◼   ► 7 spin. Alex Kranz was the reviewer. And it was so presumptuous. He said, "Apple, take

01:56:46 ◼   ► note. This is what people are actually looking for in a laptop under $1,000." And it looks

01:56:50 ◼   ► like a fine Windows laptop, but it looks to me a lot like a three or four-year-old MacBook

01:56:55 ◼   ► Pro, where they were thicker.

01:56:57 ◼   ► Well, it's huge.

01:57:00 ◼   ► It's very huge.

01:57:01 ◼   ► It's one thing.

01:57:02 ◼   ► And it's one of those things where it's like I don't know, sometimes I don't know when

01:57:05 ◼   ► to stop. It's like it's a short link piece and you know I was doing it from my phone.

01:57:10 ◼   ► But I felt like this is one of those ones where I could take it apart, you know, do

01:57:13 ◼   ► the old school thing where I quote as much of it as I want and just you know make fun

01:57:18 ◼   ► of each time. Because I get somebody, it's like he goes on and on at the beginning and

01:57:20 ◼   ► the end about how great this machine is. And then at one point it's like...

01:57:23 ◼   ► I think it's a she. I think it's a she.

01:57:25 ◼   ► Oh, I don't know.

01:57:26 ◼   ► I'm not positive.

01:57:27 ◼   ► Alright, I didn't even think about that.

01:57:28 ◼   ► I think I did.

01:57:29 ◼   ► I could be.

01:57:30 ◼   ► Hope I didn't use any, I didn't use any pronouns,

01:57:34 ◼   ► so I didn't really talk about Alex.

01:57:36 ◼   ► So he or she, I'll say she.

01:57:38 ◼   ► But at one point it comes up that the thing weighs--

01:57:40 ◼   ► - She uses her in her, yeah, so.

01:57:43 ◼   ► - Okay, so my apologies to Alex Kranz.

01:57:47 ◼   ► Five pounds, it's like so heavy.

01:57:50 ◼   ► It's like, and she even talks about how

01:57:53 ◼   ► it's kind of heavy and clunky.

01:57:54 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:57:57 ◼   ► And it has like a keypad, right?

01:58:00 ◼   ► It has the number keypad.

01:58:01 ◼   ► - Yes, yes.

01:58:02 ◼   ► - Because the thing is so big,

01:58:04 ◼   ► the keyboard is actually like a full,

01:58:06 ◼   ► like desktop-sized keyboard.

01:58:09 ◼   ► - That would bother me.

01:58:10 ◼   ► One reason that would bother me,

01:58:11 ◼   ► I don't really need the keypad.

01:58:13 ◼   ► I don't do a lot of spreadsheet work,

01:58:15 ◼   ► but I wouldn't mind having arrows over there.

01:58:17 ◼   ► But it would bother me to have my hands off center.

01:58:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, and that's the thing that I've noticed.

01:58:22 ◼   ► I mean, so Hank has a, he's got a Lenovo,

01:58:25 ◼   ► I can't stand, but and you know and is a perfect example of how lousy plastic laptops are because

01:58:33 ◼   ► he's rough on everything. Yeah. But he, you know, just by opening and closing the the lid a lot

01:58:39 ◼   ► broke the hinge on the on the the screen. Yeah. And so, I mean fortunately we sent it, I mean,

01:58:46 ◼   ► they actually fixed it for free which was nice but I just and but now he's now he's hot on like

01:58:54 ◼   ► he wants to he wants he wants a laptop that's all metal which is really like if you want a windows

01:58:59 ◼   ► laptop is that is not easy to do yeah yeah they have a lot of ones that look like metal but

01:59:04 ◼   ► they're actually the you know so this thing is this thing is um is five pounds so it's a it's a

01:59:09 ◼   ► half a pound heavier than the 15-inch macbook pro and is um made of plastic yeah um i wrote here's

01:59:20 ◼   ► Here's what I wrote, any laptop thick enough

01:59:22 ◼   ► for an ethernet port is too thick.

01:59:24 ◼   ► And a lot of readers push back,

01:59:26 ◼   ► 'cause you know, it's me being a little confrontation,

01:59:29 ◼   ► but you know, just being short and sweet.

01:59:31 ◼   ► But what I mean by that, I understand the whole idea

01:59:34 ◼   ► that there are people who would be,

01:59:35 ◼   ► you know, there are a lot of readers,

01:59:36 ◼   ► I got a lot of email from people saying,

01:59:37 ◼   ► well, I would gladly take a thicker laptop

01:59:39 ◼   ► that got better battery life.

01:59:40 ◼   ► I don't carry it that much, it doesn't bother me,

01:59:42 ◼   ► I've got so much other crap in my bag,

01:59:44 ◼   ► you know, an extra half a pound or a pound