0:00:00Almost lost my mouth almost lost my fingertips yesterday because I decided to run with
0:00:06Insufficient glove wear I
0:00:11Thought I was too literally thinking
0:00:15About a mile and a half from my home. I
0:00:18Should have gotten that computer programmer
0:00:21fingertip insurance
0:00:26Had a lot of problems writing when I had that finger injury two years ago just with one bad finger
0:00:30I think if you lose them all here, I think you're kind of hosed. Yeah
0:00:33Become an expert in speech recognition systems in a hurry. Yeah, definitely. Although I think
0:00:42That's interesting I never really thought about it but it's got to be the worst the worst use case for voice recognition has got to be writing
0:00:52computer code I
0:00:55I would think so.
0:00:58The person to ask about that is John Siracusa.
0:01:00Right. I'll bet he doesn't. He'll probably pipe in. He listens to the show.
0:01:04He'd be the one to ask, though, because I know he uses it for his writing,
0:01:08like those massive Mac OS X reviews. He dictates all of those,
0:01:13which is amazing to me because I couldn't do that.
0:01:17No, I don't think I could either.
0:01:19it falls into the same category for me as not being able to type seriously on an iPad
0:01:29because it's not the same capacity that I have on a regular keyboard.
0:01:33>> It says two guys who both have weekly podcasts.
0:01:41I write to me, in my opinion, I write way more eloquently than I speak.
0:01:48I should not have a podcast.
0:01:50It's an interesting angle.
0:01:56Yeah, right. Here we are saying we basically can't express ourselves as fluidly or as
0:02:02elegantly with speech.
0:02:05Just not as accurate. I don't know. And part of it, I've said this before too.
0:02:10My typing speed is as fast as I can think. And some people might say, "Wow, you must type really fast."
0:02:17No, I type pretty slow. I think by the schemes by the the standards of somebody who's spent as many hours
0:02:24Commutatively over the what the last 25 years at it
0:02:29Keyboard is I have I should be a far better typist
0:02:33but I'm not because there's I don't think there's ever any motivation to type faster than you can think unless you take some kind of
0:02:40Secretarial job, which I've never had, you know, I've never had like a job or you
0:02:47Type transcripts or retype stuff. So I mean what how would anybody ever have a motivation to type faster than they can think?
0:02:54Right, unless you're just like I guess you could you could argue that stream of consciousness writing or something is faster than thinking
0:03:01But I can I can talk far faster than I can think which is you know
0:03:04That's why you stay in your home. Most right gets me into trouble. I
0:03:09Had an idea
0:03:11I should just toss this out there. Who knows maybe something will come in. You know, what's bothered me for years now
0:03:16You've got a podcast you've been doing the or you have two podcasts now
0:03:19Correct. Yeah. Yeah, I have a podcast on hiatus and the podcast with Manton Reese core intuition
0:03:26Which we have been keeping up right pretty bit splitting one. You've you've put on hiatus on hiatus
0:03:31Yeah, how many episodes just get in ten episodes?
0:03:35So that was kind of a nice round number and I wasn't sure it was going on hiatus and tell
0:03:40like the moment
0:03:42Episode ten went out there and I was just like oh, you know, it would feel really good
0:03:46not having, you know, the load of another episode next week or whatever. So it's
0:03:54been feeling good. I've been missing it, but... and I've been gratified by some, you
0:03:58know, faithful listeners who are missing it, but it's the kind of thing where it's
0:04:02a format that is well suited to being able to take long
0:04:07breaks. You should think about, yeah, it's what my wife Amy and Paul Kofasis did
0:04:13with their show and maybe will continue to do is that they thought of it as a
0:04:17season yeah and I think that they were originally gonna do 10 but they did 13
0:04:23because it was going well and because they had sponsors yeah and I had stuff
0:04:30lined up so you know why not and 13 you know is a reasonable season length but
0:04:34then there's a break you know yep because yeah seriously - I mean they
0:04:38were like did like proper editing and stuff like that I mean they would record
0:04:42for like two hours to get a half hour show.
0:04:44Right.
0:04:45Yeah, and a lot of beloved TV shows,
0:04:49it's not like they say even necessarily when
0:04:52the next season is going to come.
0:04:53They just eventually say, yep, we got another one.
0:04:56Remember, The Sopranos was like that, right?
0:04:58Yeah.
0:04:58They're kind of like, yep, give it a year or two.
0:05:02Maybe something will come out.
0:05:03Yeah, Mad Men has sort of gotten like that.
0:05:05I don't think quite as bad as The Sopranos got.
0:05:07But I mean, I just mean bad as a fan,
0:05:10because you'd like the show you wanted that season as quick as possible.
0:05:14I don't think it was any kind of laziness or sloth on the part of David Chase and the
0:05:19producers.
0:05:20I think it was that's how long it takes to write that quality of material for 13 hours
0:05:28of that quality and to line up all of the acting talent, creative talent to make it
0:05:34happen.
0:05:35That it can't happen.
0:05:36You can't do it every year.
0:05:39The side effect of that is it sort of exudes quality subconsciously, that idea that this
0:05:45thing isn't like all the other shows.
0:05:46It doesn't come out on some...
0:05:49Nobody had to hire illegal immigrants to finish the show on time.
0:05:56So let me just say this here.
0:05:57I've been thinking about this for years, many years, all the way back to the first runs
0:06:02of the talk show with Dan.
0:06:06the biggest problem with podcasts in general? I have one specific gripe and it
0:06:11applies to almost every podcast I'm aware of and it's the lack of
0:06:15transcripts. For a couple of reasons. One, for me selfishly wouldn't it be
0:06:22great to just have a searchable archive of all the shows that I've done so
0:06:27that if I know in the back of my head, Jesus I had I remember when Jalka was on
0:06:31the show a couple months ago and we were talking about you know whatever topic
0:06:34What the hell did we say? Yeah, and when did we say whereas I it you know, there's there's no way to get that
0:06:40You know and if I open up a six-month-old episode of the talk show, even if I know that this is the episode
0:06:45I can't you know, how do I don't remember?
0:06:48You know if it was at the 45 minute mark or the 20 minute mark or the hour and 20 minute mark when when whatever came
0:06:54up
0:06:56transcripts would solve that and then the other big thing would be
0:06:58it would be Google searchable by everybody else not just me and
0:07:03And thirdly, it has to be, it's like by definition, it's a huge accessibility issue, right?
0:07:10Anybody who has a hearing impairment cannot enjoy this show.
0:07:15That's true.
0:07:17But it seems like there aren't, you know, every time I think of it and I get the itch
0:07:23to look into it, there doesn't seem to be any kind of like turnkey solution.
0:07:28Yeah.
0:07:30Solution. Yeah
0:07:32well
0:07:32It seems like the kind of thing that where you could say naively that you should be able to just point
0:07:37Dragon Dictate or something at it and yeah
0:07:40transcript
0:07:41But you know, it's not the case right? Yeah, and the other big problem with that wouldn't that wouldn't even if that worked
0:07:46Accurately enough to be good enough it how would Dragon Dictate be able to tell our voices apart?
0:07:53You know know which was me and which was you? Yeah. Yeah, that's a challenge and
0:07:57You know, some people have tackled this like I think Renee Ritchie
0:08:00Among his many other projects has tackled transcripts and I think he may just be doing it all himself
0:08:08I'm not sure but
0:08:09It seems like I've also heard some other people though enlist, you know, super fans to
0:08:14Do transcripts on behalf of a show I mean that gets weird to me when it's like a
0:08:21commercial enterprise like enlisting
0:08:25donated labor, but
0:08:27You know, that's something I agree with you. It would be and and there's a sense it's some in some ways
0:08:33It's positive but in many ways it's negative. There's a sense that all this stuff that happens on
0:08:38podcasting is kind of ephemeral like
0:08:42radio
0:08:44even though it's permanently recorded just as
0:08:46Just as well as blog posts or articles are but you know
0:08:52It wouldn't be that way as as much or even maybe at all if there were an accurate trans trans. Uh, yeah
0:08:58It's not ephemeral, you know, it's like more ephemeral and maybe every single word is of less value
0:09:04You know that if if we like I just right there three seconds ago said, you know
0:09:09Which I know is a verbal tick I have and obviously
0:09:1198% of the times I say, you know on this show should and could be edited out
0:09:17it would be if it were a written article instead of
0:09:20off-the-cuff talk show. But there's always, you know, there's every show
0:09:29that's worth listening to. I mean the whole point of what makes it worth
0:09:32listening to is there's got to be something worth remembering about it,
0:09:34right? Yeah, absolutely. So I, here's the thing though, I was thinking about it and
0:09:40I know some people have done some things. I know Andy Baio had a project where they
0:09:44had a whole bunch of, I forget what it was for, but a couple years ago he had a
0:09:47a whole bunch of audio that he wanted transcribed
0:09:49and he just threw it at Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
0:09:53But that wouldn't, and it was really
0:09:56relatively cost effective, it was relatively inexpensive
0:09:59to get the people who participate in that to do it.
0:10:04But I don't think it would work for the show
0:10:07because I think you'd need somebody,
0:10:09it couldn't just be anybody, like any person
0:10:13anywhere in the world who happens to speak English,
0:10:16You know speak English well enough to transcribe it like you to do it, right?
0:10:19You'd a you'd need to know the guests on the show like
0:10:23Because I feel like if somebody in a foreign country who I think is a lot of the people who do the Turk work
0:10:30It is a very good possibility that every almost everybody I have on the show. We all sound alike to them. Yeah, right
0:10:37Some more than others. Yeah, right and that would really screw up
0:10:40I don't hear it. But like when I did the show with Dan every week
0:10:45We used to get comments every single week from people who said they cannot tell us apart
0:10:49Yeah, and I always felt bad about it, but it's like, you know must have made the show confusing
0:10:54But he tries so hard to impersonate you. It's really it's kind of weird
0:10:57And I feel like it would also help to know I mean not that we talk super tech stuff
0:11:04But I mean, you know, it would helped if you you know
0:11:07We start talking about some of these things that you know that you'd know that you know
0:11:11Some of the words we use are goofy jargon jargon II acronyms and then like other little things like little
0:11:16They've become like lovable like podcasting ticks like Merlin man with like
0:11:23Turns out or something. Yeah. Yeah, and see that kind of stuff would be like why the hell does this guy keep saying turns out?
0:11:30That's the kind of thing that would look like a transcripting error
0:11:33So but I'm wondering though if maybe it's just as simple as sort of a combination of your hey
0:11:41have a superfan do it and combine that with well this show actually has good
0:11:47and real sponsors now and a reasonable revenue stream pay them you know like I
0:11:54don't know mm-hmm you know I think for a very reasonable hourly rate you know
0:11:59maybe somebody out there who listens to the show and is a very fast typist and
0:12:04maybe would actually even enjoy doing it maybe I could hire them and then they
0:12:07would do transcripts every week. I would insist upon paying for it though
0:12:12because I feel like it's got to be a quality product. Right, that just
0:12:17makes everybody take it more seriously. Now the question to throw out there is,
0:12:22and I always have this thought when it comes to the idea of app localization,
0:12:27which again is also often like volunteer driven and ironically enough and it
0:12:32seem to often be completely accepted by commercial software developers that it would be donated
0:12:38in that sense.
0:12:39I might be guilty of that too.
0:12:42But I've always thought with something like that, if I ever formalized doing a really
0:12:46ambitious localization, I would want to have two people for each language as a sort of
0:12:53self-correction.
0:12:55And I wonder if you would want that with transcriptions or if that sort of takes away that pride
0:13:00and like you know the respect that that one person would have for being like the
0:13:04official archivist yeah I think it's it's sort of a different problem because
0:13:09with with with a localization you're you're running into those from any
0:13:18language a converting to language B there's a 10,000 different weird you
0:13:25know things that don't translate directly you know it figures of speech
0:13:29in English that just don't have any direct equivalent in whatever language
0:13:34you're you're going to and then picking the nuance of you know like there's
0:13:39nothing like midway between casual and formal to translate it so do you pick
0:13:46the one that's a little bit more formal or the one that's a little bit more
0:13:49casual which fits with the brand and that's the sort of thing where if you
0:13:52don't speak that language it's so hard to judge right like if you commissioned
0:13:56the Spanish localization of Mars Edit. I don't know, I mean it's like I speak just a tiny
0:14:03little thimbleful of Spanish. I couldn't judge whether the button to publish was using too
0:14:09formal or too casual a tone. I wouldn't add... So that's where I would see having two eyes
0:14:16look at it would really be helpful and might catch some of those things. Whereas for a
0:14:21Podcast for idiomatic English speakers, you know, I don't I don't I don't think that would help
0:14:25Because what would you have the second person do you'd just be paying them? Yeah read the transcript while they listen to the show
0:14:31Yeah, well, I was thinking along the same lines of like each of them does it independently and then compare for differences
0:14:37But they I think that's overthinking it. That's that's crazy
0:14:40But I think it's a good idea. I think you you have an audience where I imagine at least
0:14:47You know 10 to 20 people right now are probably at least considering the possibility that they are the person to do that
0:14:54Yeah, I wonder if I wonder if just talking about this will turn up any any offers to do it
0:14:59We shall say I mean, it would be really crazy of just talking about something like motivated people to do something. I know
0:15:06The other problem I thought of I mean, this is easily solved, but it's like I don't know where I would put the transcripts. I
0:15:14Guess I could ask my friend at mule to maybe add something to the custom CMS over there where there'd be like a transcript field
0:15:21Or something like that, but or you know it were it seems like they'd be up to doing that
0:15:25but without you know, assuming that they would in the worst case you could always just have like a
0:15:30Site dedicated to it something that comes to mind is have you seen this?
0:15:35It's really great. If you ever want to search anything about
0:15:38WWDC it's called ASCII
0:15:41WWDC no, what's it called?
0:15:43ASCII like the
0:15:45formats, right, right, right
0:15:47WWDC calm and it's something I think Matt with three T's Thompson. I think he put it together
0:15:55And it's brilliant. I mean give it a look if you can right now because you just get to search any
0:16:01Word and because this makes it this makes sense because WWDC
0:16:06sessions are
0:16:08transcribed for
0:16:10Accessibility purposes, I think yes, they took advantage of the presence of this
0:16:16transcription material on the videos themselves, I think
0:16:19And so you can search anything
0:16:22it's only I think maybe
0:16:252013 sessions but
0:16:27It's pretty great and you can you can look up
0:16:30You know if you have this hunch that you heard something in a session
0:16:33You just type in the word maybe sometimes you have to because it's I think it is sort of automated or you know
0:16:39transcribed by people who aren't perfect and you have to you know, adjust the stem of the word or something, but
0:16:46It's pretty great
0:16:48Yeah, I'm gonna that up. That's really good. So you could imagine that wwdc. They've got wwdc 2012 - oh look at that scroll down
0:16:56All right help out with transcription. Oh
0:17:00Like it looks like maybe for 2012
0:17:03There were transcribed but maybe 2013
0:17:07Yeah, Apple did a great job transcribing the sessions for this past WWDC, but there's tons of content in the previous year
0:17:14So Apple did it for 2013 and I guess these guys were able to scrape it. Yeah, that sounds right
0:17:20I'm just grateful that this thing hasn't been shut down yet and maybe won't be shut down ever
0:17:25but this is probably the kind of thing where
0:17:27Everybody who likes it should instantly grab a right curl dump of the whole thing
0:17:34But this is the kind of thing, you know, you could imagine maybe not even limited to like how cool would it be if
0:17:39If you could go to you know, ASCII
0:17:44podcasts calm or something and then among the podcasts there is the talk show and
0:17:50You know, this is ringing a bell. I think there was some company that did this
0:17:54Years ago, I remember in like the original podcasting boom
0:18:00I remember something I had I had because I had like a search feed
0:18:04on you know my own name and products on this service that was trying to transcribe I think a bunch of the
0:18:11you know like Leo's
0:18:14twit shows and stuff like that, but
0:18:17There's some there's some there's some like state-of-the-art out there and I don't know what it is
0:18:21yeah, and another thing too is that
0:18:25It occurs to me that I'm you know, I've been doing it long enough that I'm a little
0:18:29blinded
0:18:31Historically because it used to be I mean and this was for the first couple of years where I was regularly podcasting
0:18:36It was there just wasn't a lot of sponsorship interest
0:18:40It was really hard to get sponsors and and it didn't bring in much money
0:18:44And so I you know, like when we were thinking about how could we get transcripts before what we were thinking we could possibly afford to pay
0:18:54Was a very different percentage of the overall income. It was more or less again at the time
0:18:58It was like cheese that's gonna take every you know, we'd have to you know
0:19:01Just take the sponsor money and then hand it right over to the transcription service and maybe nothing left over
0:19:06Whereas it's not the case anymore
0:19:08Yeah, that's a lot of money to put into just quote unquote just having a transcript, you know, I'm just
0:19:16randomly cruising around here on the web and I found this site podcast search service calm and
0:19:24I don't know. It kind of looks like it could be trying to do this and I
0:19:29don't know if it's worth even
0:19:32Mention having mentioned them on the air or not, but yeah, it's the angle
0:19:37It's the same kind of angle the idea looks like looks like a website from 1994
0:19:42Which means it might just work
0:19:44The whole thing is set in time Times New Roman
0:19:47Speaking of sponsors, why don't I take a break here and thank
0:19:53our first sponsor of the show and it's our friends at Drobo. You guys know
0:20:00that the file transporter people are back at Drobo. It's all one big happy
0:20:05family and they have sponsored the show a few times this year to talk about file
0:20:11transporter but today I want to talk to you about Drobo which is the service
0:20:15that they started with. Did you ever have a Drobo? I never did. Oh man, Drobo's are
0:20:20really cool. Basic idea with the Drobo is it's like a hard drive, you plug it into
0:20:24your Mac, it's a thing for your Mac, you plug it in your Mac and your Mac sees it
0:20:27from your Mac's perspective just sees it as a hard drive. But what it really is is
0:20:31a device that has like five slots and you can take actual drives in and out of
0:20:37it. You almost treat the hard drives like floppy disks sort of. And it appears to
0:20:42your Mac as one big single simple drive. But what you can do then is like, let's
0:20:51just say you put five one terabyte drives in so you've got five total gigs
0:20:59of storage. It won't give you all five gigs. What it'll do is replicate that
0:21:03data across those five drives. So if you put, you know, a terabyte or two of data
0:21:08in there. It's not all like the bit for one file is not just written on one bit
0:21:13on a platter on one disk. It's replicated so that depending on the color of the
0:21:18disk when it's ripped when it's green it's okay. When it drives are green
0:21:22they're okay and you can just without turning the thing off without unmounting
0:21:26it you can just pull one of the drives up which is crazy right now if you've
0:21:30been using computers and hard drives long and long enough the idea that you
0:21:34could do that, it sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Because your Mac still complains
0:21:39when you unplug a goddamn USB key without unmounting it first. But that's because the
0:21:46whole Drobo idea is set up that the data is always replicated. So why does that matter?
0:21:50Because then what you could do if you start running low on space is you just pull one
0:21:54of the old smaller ones out and plug a bigger one in and it's just there. You don't have
0:21:58to reformat, you don't have to go into disk utility and manage partitions and resize and
0:22:04this and that. Just plug a bigger piece of hardware in a bigger capacity drive
0:22:09in there and it'll just work. So they have two, well three models for Mac users
0:22:16right now. They've got the Drobo 5D that's a five drive system with
0:22:19Thunderbolt and USB 3 interfaces. That's the one that's really really fast. That's
0:22:24the one you want if you're doing like photo and video work. They have the Drobo
0:22:275N and is for network. It's a network storage system that connects via gigabit
0:22:33Ethernet, really fast Ethernet. And then they also have Drobo Mini and that's
0:22:40designed for portability. It's small and lightweight. It's not as performance
0:22:44optimized. It's meant for somebody who needs to work in the field like maybe
0:22:48like a photographer or somebody who's out in the field and wants to carry
0:22:51their storage partition with them. It's really easy to set up, really, really
0:22:56friendly to just regular people. You just plug it in. The lighting system will tell
0:23:02you how much space is left on each drive, they have a little
0:23:04little blue lights for each one. And each one is worth 10% of the
0:23:08storage. So when you start when you have a drive that starts
0:23:11getting filled up towards like eight, nine blue lines, then you
0:23:14know it's time maybe to buy a bigger one. You can buy these
0:23:17things with no drives in them. No, no, just get the empty,
0:23:21empty Drobo and put your own drives into the slots. Or they
0:23:27will sell you ones with drives and their drive prices are very,
0:23:31very competitive. It's not the sort of thing like when you buy RAM from Apple and you pay
0:23:36a real markup for the convenience of having your Mac shipped with maxed out RAM. When
0:23:41you buy your drives from the Drobo store, I think the prices are super competitive.
0:23:46So it's really, really easy if you just want to get a big storage from them. Just buy it
0:23:50with the storage. Where do you go to find out more? Easy. Go to www.drobostore.com.
0:23:59DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO,
0:24:00DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO,
0:24:01DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO,
0:24:02DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO, DROBO,
0:24:03DROBO
0:24:03they have a coupon code. Use this at the DroboStore.com website. Talk10.
0:24:09T-A-L-K-1-0. And that'll save 10% off any purchase. And so some of these things, you
0:24:16get the 20 terabyte model. It's 1,500 bucks. Well, you'll save 150 bucks just by
0:24:21using that code. Serious money. 150 bucks you could save. Talk10. My thanks to
0:24:27Drobo. I've got one here. They sent me one. It's really nice.
0:24:32I love that idea that you know when they can be empty when they when they ship you an empty one
0:24:36I love the idea that it solves that like super geek problem of having like five miscellaneous hard drives lying around
0:24:43If you think I'll just plug them in here and see what it can what it can do with it
0:24:47Yeah, it just creates one big pool of storage. It's a great thing
0:24:50I mean, there's so many things you can use it for but anything you need if you you know, and again, it's just take a
0:24:54Once every few months recommendation that if you don't regularly back up your Mac, please please think about it get some you know
0:25:01Buy three different ways to back up your Mac.
0:25:03You'd never, ever regret backing up too much.
0:25:07You could use the Drobo as your time machine target.
0:25:10Do it if you're not doing it already.
0:25:12But it's a great way to, and like you said,
0:25:14if you're a geek and you have a whole bunch of drives
0:25:16laying around your office already,
0:25:17it's a great way to put them to use.
0:25:19So what's next?
0:25:24How about the, how about this whole thing
0:25:27with the Rate My App?
0:25:30Yeah, let's talk about it.
0:25:33So how do we review?
0:25:36There was a few days ago, or last week, I was linking--
0:25:39I had a whole bunch of-- every once in a while,
0:25:41it's like I like to do--
0:25:43if I have a whole bunch of saved stuff
0:25:45and I can see a pattern that connects a few of them,
0:25:47I'll be like, well, maybe today I'll do all four of these,
0:25:50because they're sort of related.
0:25:51And I had a whole bunch of--
0:25:53I think they were all Tumblr sites.
0:25:54And if they weren't on Tumblr, they were like Tumblr.
0:25:57and they were just sites that people were collecting like screenshots.
0:26:03One of them was like an iOS 7 criticism or it was a whole bunch of stuff in Apple's iOS
0:26:097 with questionable design in iOS 7.
0:26:12And then the other one of them was called F Your Review, EFF Your Review.
0:26:17And all it is is a Tumblr that collects screenshots of those dialogue boxes that say, "Enjoying
0:26:27this app?
0:26:28Take a moment to rate it on the App Store."
0:26:30And then there's usually three buttons.
0:26:32Rate this app, remind me later, or no thanks.
0:26:37And so I linked to it and I just wrote something to the effect of that it's been a pet peeve
0:26:43of mine for a long time and that I've long considered encouraging daring
0:26:48fireball readers to when they encounter these things to actually say yes if
0:26:51they're annoyed by it as I am every time you see it from now and click the rate
0:26:56button don't say the note don't hit the no thanks button hit the rate button go
0:26:59to the App Store and leave a review of like one star and explain politely that
0:27:04it's because the app keeps badgering you to review it and that is sort of a
0:27:11Typical John Gruber move because I didn't tell people you picked up on it you ran this why I want to join the show
0:27:17You picked up on it and and I didn't say this is what people should do
0:27:22It was a very, you know, it's the way that I'm a total asshole
0:27:25I just said I've long thought about doing this but by putting the fact that I'd long thought about doing it on
0:27:31Daring fireball there's you know tens of thousands of people who saw it and then therefore had the idea
0:27:37Well, and you're not naive you know that you can't protect against people following through with it
0:27:43And some people start have in fact started doing it. Yeah
0:27:46So you wrote about it and I linked it up today
0:27:52But I thought it was the other day when you wrote about I thought you were really really thoughtful
0:27:55Take on this because you're a developer. You are also in my opinion a very nice guy
0:28:02Right most of the time. Yeah, you're sensitive and it is there's nuance here, right?
0:28:07But there it is weird to me though there it
0:28:09Clearly touched a nerve though where there were a lot of people on both sides
0:28:14There are a lot of people on the user side
0:28:16Who after I wrote that like the people who immediately started doing it who are like hell
0:28:20Yeah, this this stinks and I'm sick of this. Yeah, and on the developer side boy
0:28:24There are some people who got really angry at me because they're like hey it works this you know
0:28:30You need good reviews in the App Store to stand out and this is the only way that you can
0:28:34Get good reviews to stay competitive with everybody else who's doing it and and and then
0:28:39probably even more
0:28:43aggressive against you were the people who were sort of
0:28:46protective of developers as a class who were kind of like who read into your statement as
0:28:53passive-aggressive maybe as it was
0:28:57that you were trying to literally undermine the
0:29:01profitability the viability of small developer right industry and
0:29:08That started to get I think that's what got my goat to start writing about it because it just rang very
0:29:17It felt to me like
0:29:23Misplaced blame
0:29:26It's hard not to jump to the conclusion that people are frustrated by the App Store in
0:29:34general and by the reviews system and they're doing things.
0:29:41I think what it reflects is that customers know, developers know, and these people I'm
0:29:47alluding to who are sort of jumping to the defense of developers in general all kind
0:29:52to know that this is a gross work around like the rate me dialogues I mean they
0:29:59are a gross work around and in the context of all that kind of collective
0:30:04disgust and maybe shame on behalf of some developers it's like to have
0:30:09there's this kind of phenomenon when you get like called out for something that
0:30:12you kind of know is shameful you're gonna be that much more likely to lash
0:30:16out about it it's like if you it's like it's like if you it's like if you are
0:30:21crossing the street and somebody almost hits you and you get mad at them they're gonna be like super mad at you they're gonna find some
0:30:27way to be like why the hell were you in the street, you know and
0:30:31I think there's something to that that kind of got me going like, you know folks I take take take
0:30:38responsibility for your own move here like
0:30:42the the fact of the matter is you many people are
0:30:47stooping in my opinion to a level of behavior with the design of their apps that is in
0:30:53the in the aim of making more money and yes possibly in the aim of making the difference between
0:30:59viability and and otherwise for a company
0:31:02But the fact of the matter is you know
0:31:05There's lots of different things you can choose to do or not to do to to make that difference
0:31:10Right. It's it's all in some sense a negotiation
0:31:15you know and and people forget that
0:31:18The some I don't know why it is. I never forget it
0:31:23I always think about it
0:31:24but there's a lot of people who forget that the customer gets his say in the in negotiation too and I always thought that that's what
0:31:30Music piracy was about like in the days when it was really rampant with
0:31:37Napster is
0:31:40that the music labels were saying as the CD era got older and older you're gonna pay more and more for CDs and a
0:31:47Lot of top 40 CDs are gonna have fewer and fewer
0:31:50Good songs on them, you know
0:31:52And and it's not an exaggeration to say that a lot of money was made by the record companies
0:31:57Selling seventeen eighteen dollar compact discs that maybe only had two two or three good songs on them. Yeah, and
0:32:07Napster was a way for people to say you know what I think that's too much money. How about zero and
0:32:13You know and and the the the me and I'm not saying it's right. I'm not justifying you know piracy of any content
0:32:22But it's a negotiation
0:32:25It's a way of them
0:32:26You know the customer saying that this stinks paying all this money for CDs this stinks that I owned all these albums on
0:32:33one format and now I have to pay for them on the same exact album on another format.
0:32:37And I think that, you know, when the success of the iTunes Music Store showed that it wasn't just about people
0:32:48saying that they felt entitled to never pay a nickel for anything. It was, you know, when you could only pay 99 cents
0:32:55it was a way of saying, "Well, yeah, that's cool. That's a good deal.
0:32:58I could get in on that." And, you know, is the right price 99 cents? Was it a $1.29 where they wanted to move
0:33:03it and they got to eventually. I don't know, but it certainly wasn't $18.
0:33:07Yeah. And the way I see it with this is, okay, you can ask us over and over and over again
0:33:14to rate your app. And you know, you certainly can ask, but we collectively could if we chose
0:33:22to rate the app and give it a bad rating because you're annoying us. We can do it, you know,
0:33:28And there's this weird entitlement that some of the backslash had where it's like, how
0:33:32dare you ruin this thing that is getting us four and five star reviews.
0:33:36Right.
0:33:37Because that's the thing that I got from a bunch of people.
0:33:39I got it on Twitter, I got it in email.
0:33:41It's it more or less boils down to the two word argument, it works.
0:33:45And what I'm saying with this campaign is maybe, you know, maybe it won't work forever.
0:33:51You know, using this music analogy, I also think that, you know, it was fairly subtle
0:33:57the fact that you sort of caged it as a hypothetical.
0:34:01But to any intelligent reader,
0:34:04that caging is a sort of implicit,
0:34:07it's a hint that this is sort of a,
0:34:11it's a thought experiment, right?
0:34:15And so taking your music example,
0:34:17you could imagine somebody, a blogger in the
0:34:19pre-iTunes days saying, $18 for a CD?
0:34:24Well, sometimes I think what would happen
0:34:26if I just asked each of my readers to
0:34:29Make a copy of their favorite song and give it to somebody for free. All right, you know and that's a I think that's fairly comparable
0:34:36because
0:34:38You know, there's lots of nuanced differences in particular like a lot of people in this case feel
0:34:43that
0:34:45if people acted on your
0:34:47You know
0:34:49Your hypothetical advice that it would unfairly
0:34:53Proportionately affect smaller indie developers. I think that was one of the one of the sort of like things that rank old people
0:35:00But you know, that's it was a hypothetical and it feels to me I think a lot of people it felt like they weren't
0:35:09They weren't giving
0:35:12First of all, Darian fireball readers as a whole like enough respect for you know, sure
0:35:18Yeah, I'm sure you have not not to dismiss anybody in your audience
0:35:21but I'm sure you have a few idiots reading the blog.
0:35:24(laughing)
0:35:25But, you know, come on, that's not who you're writing to.
0:35:30Right, it's not like a situation where you are
0:35:33getting up every day and writing for an audience of idiots
0:35:37who will do whatever you allude to
0:35:39without thinking it through.
0:35:41- Right.
0:35:42- And to sort of like hold you accountable
0:35:45for a standard of behavior that assumes
0:35:49you have thoughtless, mindless drones
0:35:53who read and follow your every word,
0:35:55I think there's something wrong with that too.
0:35:56- Right, or that I'm somehow targeting
0:35:58my political enemies or something.
0:36:00- Right.
0:36:01Well, another thing was somebody who was debating this
0:36:05with me on Twitter was talking about it
0:36:07being undermining businesses.
0:36:10And I pointed out, I do think it would be
0:36:13a much different situation if you were to list
0:36:17like five or ten companies and say, even theoretically, sometimes I wonder what if I ask the users
0:36:23of app A, app B, and app C to give them one star.
0:36:28That would be a more hostile act, I think.
0:36:33Our friend, there's a lot of nuance to explore here.
0:36:35Our friend Cable Sasser, you quoted his tweet, but he had a very good point out, Cable, a
0:36:40long time co-owner of Panic Software, that the one star aspect of it makes him very uncomfortable.
0:36:47that no argument that these these dialog boxes are annoying.
0:36:50And collectively, it's becoming, if anything, a bigger problem as
0:36:54time goes on as more apps do it and seemingly ask you more and
0:36:57more times. But that the the angle of my hypothetical
0:37:00proposal where you leave a one star review is perhaps
0:37:04problematic. Because what if you otherwise love the app, but you
0:37:07would just like to gently, gently poke the developer about
0:37:11this, this issue, the rate my app issue. And so I've seen
0:37:15other people on Twitter who are like, well, what if you gave them say two stars fewer
0:37:20than you would have otherwise awarded. So if you would have given them a five star,
0:37:24give them a three star review and say, I'd give it five stars if it weren't if it would
0:37:28cease bugging me to rate the app, which is an interesting proposal, like the one star
0:37:35in particular isn't magic, and perhaps would only skew the ratings, you know, it just it.
0:37:44I think the whole five star rating thing is a bad idea anyway.
0:37:49I almost feel like, I feel like the whole app store would be better off if it was like
0:37:52a thumbs up, thumbs downs thing.
0:37:54Yeah, absolutely.
0:37:55And I think most, more than anything, what your post and the follow up has done is just
0:37:59draw a circle around the fact that this review system is not very good.
0:38:03Right.
0:38:04And the combined with, yeah, it's a bad review system in general, I think.
0:38:08And nobody agrees on what difference between Ford, you know, what's a three star is three
0:38:13star in the because it's in the middle of the five stars does it mean okay or
0:38:16it's three stars good four is very good and five is excellent and you too is
0:38:22okay you know there's no guidelines as far as I know either from Apple so who's
0:38:27to say that one star isn't the right the right rating when an app does something
0:38:33that's like philosophically offensive to me like everything so I want I don't
0:38:39want if you had a track you're going there I don't want to derail it too much
0:38:42but one thing that came to mind is it's an interesting problem to me because I think
0:38:51it's fundamentally wrong to modally interrupt a user from the course of their own self-driven
0:39:00action in an app.
0:39:02To ask them to do something, and this is the key point, to ask them to do something that
0:39:08is of no benefit to them.
0:39:11Right. You are totally it is a developer's problem. You are and
0:39:14you are distributing your solution to this problem. And
0:39:18the attempt The problem is, how do we get more users to download
0:39:21our app?
0:39:22That's your problem as a developer, that is not the
0:39:27users problem at all. And if they've paid, you know, it's
0:39:29it's even worse, in my opinion. Yeah. And you're just taking that
0:39:33problem and distributing a solution across all, however
0:39:37many users you have, you know, if you have 10,000 users, you're
0:39:40just giving each one of your users one ten thousandth of a share of your problem.
0:39:45Yeah. So depending on how strongly you take that offense,
0:39:49it could very well be grounds for a one star review.
0:39:53But more, you know, more to the point, like if people are saying, no,
0:39:58you should have just recommended three stars or you know, two stars off.
0:40:01All of this is just, you know,
0:40:03you could make cable or anybody else could thoughtfully make an argument that
0:40:07That's not fair either, to deduct two full stars.
0:40:11But since Apple gives no guidelines
0:40:15for how things should be rated,
0:40:17the other thing is I just took that,
0:40:20your suggestion in the hypothetical,
0:40:23one star is the right number to choose
0:40:25because it makes the hypothetical expression
0:40:28of disdain more strongly.
0:40:31And it doesn't mean that every person
0:40:33who is even inspired to follow up on your pseudo advice
0:40:38actually chooses to give one star.
0:40:40- Right, and I tend to think that most people,
0:40:43whether they're being thoughtful or being unthoughtful,
0:40:47tend towards the extremes.
0:40:49So again, I haven't done any kind of statistical analysis,
0:40:51but just eyeballing reviews
0:40:53seems like the most common reviews are five star,
0:40:56if you really like the app,
0:40:57and one star if you don't or you feel ripped off
0:41:01or you've famously, and it's not a good practice,
0:41:06but users who are hit by bugs will often file the bug report
0:41:10by leaving a one-star review on the App Store.
0:41:13- Yeah.
0:41:16- But that just seems to be that in some ways,
0:41:19a lot of people tend to use it as a thumbs up, thumbs down,
0:41:21and thumbs up is five and thumbs down is one.
0:41:24And it works out.
0:41:27Maybe the average stands up in the middle.
0:41:30Yeah, or four is, it's perfect in every way,
0:41:33but there's one tiny little problem.
0:41:36So how much in general, Jon, do you feel like
0:41:38you should be held accountable for the power
0:41:43that you might wield with your audience
0:41:46to inspire them to do things?
0:41:49And is that something you think about more these days?
0:41:53- Oh, I definitely do.
0:41:54I worry about it, and this is a perfect example.
0:41:56'Cause it's no joke that I've been thinking about this
0:41:58for years and the reason I haven't done it before
0:42:00is that it's out of fear that it would be too successful,
0:42:05you know, that too many people would leave one star reviews
0:42:08and that it would, you know,
0:42:10anybody who thinks I took it lightly
0:42:11that this could actually affect the average rating
0:42:14of certain apps and that a decrease in the average rating
0:42:17would actually lead to a decrease in sales,
0:42:19I am completely aware of that, right?
0:42:21And that's, I do worry about that sometimes.
0:42:25- Yeah.
0:42:26- And it's very, very hard for me.
0:42:27I've said this before, my interface to Daring Fireball is literally almost exactly the same
0:42:35as it was six or seven years ago.
0:42:38I still have the same old 20-inch cinema display in front of me.
0:42:42I'm sitting at the same desk.
0:42:44I'm sitting in the same office.
0:42:47I'm using...
0:42:48Well, actually, it's not the same keyboard but the same model keyboard.
0:42:53it's so much of a bigger audience, right? And it's very different than like if
0:42:59you're like a live performer, right? Like I've effectively gone from back in 2002
0:43:05to 2003 being the equivalent of playing in like a local pub to playing on a
0:43:11daily basis, you know, before thousands of people. But it doesn't look different,
0:43:15right? If you're a stage performer and now all of a sudden you're no longer
0:43:19performing comedy in front of 20 people at 11 o'clock at night but instead
0:43:24you're performing in front of 4,000 people at you know the Mirage in Vegas
0:43:29every night it feels different instantly I mean it's a huge you know big room
0:43:33whereas when you're a writer like I am here it doesn't feel that different
0:43:38so I definitely think about it and I definitely hope that most people out
0:43:41there are being thoughtful about it but on the other hand I actually feel pretty
0:43:45I do feel I know it sounds and this is the other thing too people are like
0:43:49what's just a stupid dialog box hit a button and it goes away and you know for
0:43:52a while but I do feel like collectively it's such a bad practice mm-hmm and like
0:43:59I was saying it's a philosophical turn off and so if you get turned off it's
0:44:05the kind of thing where like for example on the positive side of things if like
0:44:09an app you use expresses you know some feature in a way that has like a little
0:44:14bit of humor or like a touch of humanity that really relates to you, then you get like a
0:44:19sense of like, "I'm kind of like simpatico with this app," right?
0:44:23Like this is kind of like, it's almost like it's an emotional reaction.
0:44:26And this kind of thing is emotional as well.
0:44:30And if you're gonna have emotional bad things, well, I hate to break it to folks, but that's
0:44:37gonna lead some people to the one star zone.
0:44:41And the fact that this Tumblr blog existed that was called "F Your Review," that doesn't
0:44:47come out of thin air.
0:44:50It wasn't like problematicreviews.tumblr.com.
0:44:55It was meant to be a heated rejection of the whole idea.
0:45:00I do think that my having written it, it did uncover.
0:45:04And I'm not surprised, but it was kind of a relief because I felt like I'm not alone,
0:45:08where it feels felt like a lot of the response I got from users was, you know, I hadn't really
0:45:12thought about it. But you're right, this is annoying as hell. And I see a couple of those
0:45:16every goddamn day now. You know, it's funny, I'll tell you what, I was in New York, the
0:45:20last few days, I was up for the I went to the Instagram event in New York. And it was
0:45:27a really nice event. And Kevin Systrom, the founder, and I don't know what his title is
0:45:32now that they're on Facebook, but what you know, he's the boss of Instagram did a really
0:45:36great job. I thought it was a great presentation. But while he was doing a demo of the new faced
0:45:42or not Facebook, Instagram messages, while he was doing his demo, Instagram gave him the like
0:45:50Instagram, rate it later, not now. And so and it was clearly not part of the, you know, what he was
0:45:56ready for. And I think I'll get to the technical reason. I think I know why he got that alert.
0:46:02were on stage in front of the audience of the press you in so he you know he handled
0:46:06it great he's like no i don't want to rate instagram right now thank you very much all
0:46:11right let me come back to that in a moment let me just do a second sponsor read and this one's great
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0:48:06How about that? There you go. Quality stuff. Good new sponsor. I like getting a sponsor
0:48:12like that is a little bit off the... No offense to Drobo. I love Drobo. But Drobo is a perfect
0:48:18example of like a typical talk show sponsor, right? A little nerdy, plugging hard drives
0:48:22in. Now we've got something a little different.
0:48:25Well, this recognizes that all of us techies, we have other aspects to our lives that we
0:48:30need to buy other things. So why not get the message out?
0:48:34Right. So one of the things... And I didn't know this. Now, get back to these RateMe dialogues.
0:48:42I knew I'd been annoyed by them.
0:48:44And I knew that there was a lot of similarity
0:48:46between a lot of the ones I'd seen.
0:48:48But only after I wrote this and it sort of became
0:48:50a topic of conversation on Twitter
0:48:54and an email with readers
0:48:56that I start looking into it a little bit.
0:48:58And I found, I guess I'll put it in the show notes,
0:49:01but there's like an open source project at GitHub
0:49:03called iRate, which is funny, right?
0:49:06- How appropriate, yes.
0:49:07- Right, it's I capital R-A-T-E.
0:49:11But it's funny because it's gotten a lot of people--
0:49:14I'm not even going to say it.
0:49:16But anyway, and a longtime friend of the show--
0:49:20he's never been on, but he's Dan Weinman,
0:49:24who's a professional programmer, was taking a look at it.
0:49:30And it's, A, even if you're not a programmer,
0:49:33if you go to their website and just read the read me
0:49:35and just look at the configuration options for this--
0:49:37and it's ostensibly simple.
0:49:39it's you know air add this open source thing to your your iPad or iPhone app
0:49:44and it will automatically you know ask the user to rate and you know not rate
0:49:51if they choose the app but it has so many configuration options it's crazy
0:49:56it's so super complicated and it has really in my opinion really bad defaults
0:50:03And it's the dialogue like I think it is the default dialogue
0:50:07Is the one that you're all of you anybody I bet every single person listening to the show has seen it not just seen it
0:50:14but has seen it within the last three or four days is
0:50:17This dialogue that says do you like this app?
0:50:20And there's three buttons and then I'll rate it
0:50:24Ask me later and
0:50:28Bottom no. Thanks
0:50:31and
0:50:33And the one thing that I've noticed, I've known this, everybody's known it, the "No
0:50:38Thanks" button doesn't seem to do what you would want it to do, which is...
0:50:45I think this is very obvious.
0:50:47I'm not gonna rate rap right now, and I don't wanna ever be asked again.
0:50:51Right?
0:50:52Yep.
0:50:53And now all it says is "No thanks."
0:50:54It doesn't say, you know, "We'll never ask you again."
0:50:57But I'm not sure what else "no thanks" could mean, or a reasonable person could assume
0:51:03it means, if there's also a button above it that says "remind me later," which I'm guessing
0:51:09nobody has ever tapped in their life.
0:51:13But if one of the options is "remind me later" and another one is "no thanks" and you tap
0:51:19"no thanks" and then a week or two later the same app asks you again, that to me feels
0:51:25broken.
0:51:26And it's apparently by design, like looking at it,
0:51:29like Dan Weinman looking at the code.
0:51:32What no thanks really means in this open source project
0:51:36is no thanks for this version of the app.
0:51:39But if it's version 2.7.3, when you release 2.7.4 to fix a bug,
0:51:48this irate project will then take a queue to ask again.
0:51:52And that's why so many of us for so many apps
0:51:55have seen the same goddamn dialogue so many times.
0:51:59And I think it's why during the demo yesterday
0:52:02at the Instagram event that Kevin Systrom got prompted
0:52:05by it from Instagram app, because I'll bet what happened
0:52:08is that he upgraded the version on his phone
0:52:12to either a newer beta or to maybe
0:52:14the App Store release version.
0:52:16- Yeah. - Which had just come,
0:52:17which was coming out yesterday.
0:52:19I think it came out like during the event.
0:52:21So my guess is he upgraded to the new version
0:52:24of Instagram and hadn't launched it yet.
0:52:27Or maybe it like, maybe, I'm not even quite sure about this,
0:52:31but maybe it doesn't ask you the first time
0:52:33you launch after an upgrade.
0:52:34It maybe it asks like the third time after you upgrade,
0:52:39it will ask again.
0:52:40And he'd install, you know,
0:52:42it was such a good presentation, very well rehearsed.
0:52:44He probably installed it, ran through the demo
0:52:47two or three times, saw that it was all working
0:52:50exactly right and then on stage hit the whatever you know the nth time when irate is going
0:52:58to make you angry.
0:53:00[Music]
0:53:01Hey kids, John Gruber here. I've always wanted to do this. I've got breaking news. It ends
0:53:13up in the couple of hours in between when Daniel Jalkett and I recorded this episode
0:53:19right now, Friday, December 13th in the evening, the developer of this irate open source package,
0:53:28Nick Lockwood, has, now this is not coincidence, this is in response to conversations on Twitter
0:53:37among various people in the developer community before we recorded, but anyway, Nick Lockwood
0:53:43has made changes in the new version of irate which he published today on github
0:53:47has a few changes it no longer asks users to rate the app each version it asks once
0:53:56and if the user selects no thanks they will never be asked again and he even went so far as to remove
0:54:06the option to prompt again each version.
0:54:10I think all of these are changes for the better.
0:54:14So great move and really really cool response from
0:54:19developer Nick Lockwood and I really hope developers who are using this package
0:54:23update to the latest version. Now back to the show.
0:54:27So I'm looking as well at this configuration documentation. There are
0:54:31a ton of different things as you said including all these like fine-tuned
0:54:36attributes that taken together determine when it will prompt you but one of them
0:54:44is literally prompt again for each new version and it says in the
0:54:48documentation because iTunes ratings are version specific you ideally want users
0:54:53to rate each new version of your app so that's the mindset behind the so so you
0:54:59John when you said you think it has poor defaults I think the defaults if it's
0:55:05set to prompt again for each new version, which it sounds like it is, they are very
0:55:12well chosen for the goals of the project.
0:55:16And this gets back to my whole point about who is this in the service of, right?
0:55:23The whole point of this project being here at the disposal of hundreds or thousands of
0:55:31developers is to benefit developers by maximizing some perceived benefit of
0:55:38capitalizing on users and not just of getting reviews but of getting new
0:55:43reviews over and over and over again because in fact from everything I've
0:55:47been able to gather from this this project which I think is super popular
0:55:51and other ones there is no way to stop being asked not only does the no thanks
0:55:57button not stop you from being asked again when a new version comes out
0:56:00Even if you rate the app, if you do the thing that they really want you to do,
0:56:06which is tap that first button and leave the app, even though you clearly went to
0:56:10the app for some other purpose, which was to actually use the app, but you're
0:56:13willing to say, "You know what? Forget everything. I will do you a favor. I will
0:56:19take time out of my life right now. I will drop what I was doing. I will hit
0:56:24this button, I will go and peck out using my thumbs in the App Store a review of
0:56:31your app right now, and I'll give it five stars and submit it and put my name on
0:56:36it on the iTunes Store as a review of your app. You do all of that for the
0:56:42developer, and then the next time a new version of the app comes out you're
0:56:44gonna see that dialog box again. Even hitting "rate the app" doesn't set any
0:56:49kind of flag that says, "Okay, this guy is, you know, you don't have to show this
0:56:53user the dialog anymore there is no way to stop getting prompted there is no way
0:56:58as a user on a default configured deployment of irate and that's what it
0:57:05looks like and looking at this documentation a little more it actually
0:57:09covers this case specifically in the same area it says if you set that prompt
0:57:14again for each new version value to no then it clearly says they will not be
0:57:20prompted again each time they install an update if they've already rated the app
0:57:25then it goes on to say it will still prompt them for each new version if they
0:57:31have not rated the app and that presumably means if they've said no
0:57:35thanks but then it says you can override this using a delegate method
0:57:40irate should prompt for rating so it has to be completely customized
0:57:44Some sense of decency needs to be instilled into this framework.
0:57:51Right, and again I think that it's arguably well-intentioned but blind to
0:57:58the cost of user attention. I don't think that you know whoever wrote this and set
0:58:04up this configuration system was in any way evil. You know I just think it's right
0:58:11You know and it and I do think it was well-meaning in that it's aiming to solve a problem developers face
0:58:16But I think it's completely blind and ham-fisted to the effect it has on users. Yep
0:58:21You know and I'll draw another similarity and again people keep saying that the defenders of this practice keep saying but it works
0:58:28And there's all sorts of stuff that works. That's that is not right, you know telemarketing works. That's right, right telemarketing works
0:58:35But it's annoying as hell and I would never want any product or service that I'm involved with to be involved with it
0:58:41Like even if it was cost-effective I would never have you know
0:58:45You know pay $100 to have some
0:58:48Telemarketer try to get more readers of daring fireball or you know people to buy Vesper or something like that
0:58:55It's you know, it's beneath the brand in my opinion. That's why we're on the same. It works. Yeah
0:59:01was just gonna say I think that this reflects like
0:59:04there's kind of a herd mentality with
0:59:07developers and I fall victim to it sometimes but you know
0:59:11The problem is we're all sort of scrambling for how are we gonna make a living at this?
0:59:14How are we gonna like eke out enough of a profit that we can you know?
0:59:18Maybe quit our day job or you support our family. All these are valuable things to aspire to do, but you're right there
0:59:25This is one variable in like not just dozens but hundreds or thousands of variables that added together
0:59:33you know lead to whether you make a living or not and
0:59:37And there's lots of things.
0:59:38You know what else makes money?
0:59:39Pornography.
0:59:41And Apple--
0:59:43- That's a good point.
0:59:44- Apple draws the line right there.
0:59:45If each of these apps popped up a bare boob
0:59:49every once in a while,
0:59:50maybe they'd make a little more money.
0:59:52But Apple draws the line on that for us.
0:59:56If Apple said tomorrow,
1:00:02hey, guess what, folks?
1:00:03New policy.
1:00:05you're not allowed to proactively encourage users
1:00:09to rate your app from the app.
1:00:12That would be it.
1:00:13It would be over, and that would be a new rule of the game
1:00:16for developers to play with.
1:00:17And they'd have the time to fix it, to submit.
1:00:21No apps would be taken out of the store,
1:00:23but as new apps, new versions get submitted,
1:00:26they would need to comply.
1:00:27Yeah.
1:00:28And I think what I feel like when stuff like this
1:00:31comes up and people--
1:00:33I have to be careful because I'm a developer too.
1:00:35I face my own problems, but it so happens
1:00:39that I'm not in deep with iOS as a revenue stream.
1:00:44So I have to be careful not to be too dismissive
1:00:46of folks having problems with this,
1:00:49but it feels to me, it reminds me of situations
1:00:52I've encountered myself where I was looking
1:00:55for easy outs or easy blames for what's going wrong
1:01:02with my business or with my app.
1:01:04Kind of reminds me of this old quip
1:01:08I think Gus Mueller made on his blog years ago.
1:01:12I wish I could remember the context,
1:01:13but it was like somebody had one of these
1:01:15kind of like whiny rants about so and so.
1:01:19I think it was somebody who was like quitting
1:01:20the software business and blaming it on
1:01:23piracy or people not,
1:01:28lack of marketing or something or other.
1:01:30Gus just says maybe your app just sucks
1:01:32You know like that's always something
1:01:35We have to think about yeah, and and and sometimes I think when people are down to the point where they're considering
1:01:43whether or not I can force users or
1:01:47strongly compel them to do my bidding and
1:01:50That makes the difference between whether I make a living or not. That's a sad place to be and there is there is
1:01:58To be sympathetic to developers. There's also a prisoner's dilemma angle to this, right?
1:02:04I mean, what's the classic formulation of the prisoner's dilemma? It's like you and a friend are both put in jail
1:02:10separate cells and
1:02:13the jailer comes to you and they want you both to confess to a crime and you can
1:02:18Your like three options are to maintain your innocence
1:02:21And if you both maintain your innocence, then you'll both get out without doing a day of jail time because the they don't have a confession
1:02:27you can say it was all the other guy's fault and he'll do all the jail time. He'll do, you know,
1:02:32ten years of jail time and
1:02:35you get to walk away.
1:02:39Or it's no, no, or what did I guess it would be like you would do like a year of jail and he'd do ten years
1:02:44of jail.
1:02:45Isn't that it?
1:02:47I don't remember the details.
1:02:48Well, but anyway, it's in your interest in theory to stick together and do the right thing and maintain your innocence and you both walk
1:02:55out but that there's a big motivation to rat the other guy out because then you won't be getting
1:03:01the worst of it and you can't trust him not to do the worst and stick it to you. Or it's like if you
1:03:06both rat each other out then you do some time. But if you rat him out and he says you're both
1:03:16innocent then he does all the time. And so it's in your interest to do it and just hope that he
1:03:21did the right thing and let you go, right?
1:03:23- Yeah.
1:03:24- And there is a prisoner's dilemma angle to this
1:03:26where it's like if the other developers are doing it
1:03:29and you're not, they're getting more reviews.
1:03:31And if it does seem to work
1:03:33and the reviews that are left are mostly positive,
1:03:36then your app is getting a disproportionate share
1:03:40of positive reviews because you're not asking,
1:03:44your competitors are,
1:03:46and therefore their app is better reviewed than yours only,
1:03:48not because it is better, but only because they're asking.
1:03:51And therefore, it's in your interest to go along with it.
1:03:54And that's sort of why I feel like Apple would be the one
1:03:59who could solve it best by saying,
1:04:00"You're not allowed to do this."
1:04:02Because it also leads, it's a slippery slope.
1:04:04And as I've researched this,
1:04:06there's a lot of apps that are doing other things.
1:04:08They're not just saying, "Hey, if you like it,
1:04:09"leave an app or leave a review."
1:04:12There's other apps that are like going,
1:04:14taking measures to try to only get positive reviews.
1:04:18Instead of saying, "Rate the app," they're doing things like saying, "Do you like the
1:04:23app?
1:04:24How do you like this?"
1:04:25And if you say, "Yes, I like it," then they ask you to leave a review.
1:04:29And if you say, "No, I don't," then they don't ask you to leave a review.
1:04:33They'll point you somewhere else, like point you to a help page or something like that.
1:04:36Right, which somehow feels disingenuous and slimy when it's automated like that.
1:04:42But for example, it doesn't feel so bad if I, as a software business owner, like selectively
1:04:50choose to mention, "Hey, maybe you could leave me a review," in like an email correspondence.
1:04:56Right.
1:04:57And that's totally okay.
1:04:58You know, we do that with Vesper.
1:05:00Like we'll, you know, at the bottom of like, when we answer support emails, we'll just
1:05:04put in a little quick boiler point like, "Hey, if you like the app, it would be really, it
1:05:09would be great for us if you took the time to leave a review."
1:05:12Something like that. Well, it's sweet. A big part of that is you're you're squeezing that in as like a side note in
1:05:19A communication that is getting back to the point otherwise for the customers benefit exactly answering a question, you know
1:05:27providing them with a workaround or
1:05:30Acknowledging. Yes, that's a known bug but it's it's you know, it's an Apple bug and we have to wait for salt
1:05:36We're as annoyed by it by you, but we have to wait for Apple to fix it
1:05:39we've filed bugs with them and you know hopefully we'll have an update soon or
1:05:43something else you know like hey you're that's a cool feature request we'll
1:05:46think about it you know or you know that's a cool feature request we have
1:05:50thought about it here's why we didn't do it you know something like that some
1:05:54sort of positive interaction and at the end of it another thing I've seen and I
1:05:59think it's great I think it's totally cool are some people it's nowhere near
1:06:04as prevalent a practice as these alerts these alerts have become like a disease
1:06:08But like so I've seen there's I've seen screenshots of some apps
1:06:11We're like on the settings page on a settings panel. There will be like a link like
1:06:16to two buttons like one tap here to get support if you have a
1:06:21Issue and then underneath that if you like the app tap here to rate it in the App Store
1:06:26These ratings really help us with our you know rankings in the store
1:06:30I think that's ideal because it's again it's sneaking it in and in a place that does not slow down the user and right
1:06:38It's not you know just I don't know that's to me
1:06:40It's it just as crazy to me that there are some people who don't see how an alert is is going right to code red
1:06:47You know yeah
1:06:49You should never show an alert unless you have to like I think ideally the ideal work flow through any app
1:06:55involves no alerts
1:06:57You know only when you really have to when there's no other solution
1:07:02We've got to make sure because all right they're trying to delete this thing and if they do it
1:07:06There's no way to undo it
1:07:08we've got to show an alert to double-check that they really wanted to because it would be catastrophic if they
1:07:13deleted it by accident, right and so I think like
1:07:16More forgivable example is like sparkle in Mac apps where it does show an alert
1:07:25but it is clearly usually clearly for the customers benefit right to get an updated version and
1:07:32importantly in almost every app on the Mac that uses sparkle there is a
1:07:36preference in the app to completely disable the
1:07:40the alerts
1:07:42So it's a totally different
1:07:44Mindwell, and again, it's an important thing where again it's in the users interest usually to be running the latest version of the app
1:07:51But it's not in the users interest in general to update automatically, you know without their yeah
1:07:59Okay, right. So you're protecting them and and and benefit. Yeah, the right thing to do is to do
1:08:05What sparkle does is to say, okay, there's an app store. There is an update of version, you know
1:08:10Whatever number you're running this number. Here's you know, you can do this later or you could do this now
1:08:17so I think that there is a possible like
1:08:20another possible like acceptable
1:08:24Communication stream between developers and users which is some kind of like passive news stream
1:08:30Where it's kind of like the about box idea. It's still begging the users attention
1:08:36I've seen this in some games like they'll have like general news, but then occasionally they'll also have as among those news items
1:08:43You know, hey, you've been using this for a while if you like it rate it. Yeah
1:08:47And that kind of stuff usually entails like some kind of little subtle signal like a little
1:08:54You know like maybe a little red light or something on the main screen that lets you know, there's messages, right?
1:09:00Something like that. Let's just say if something like that had become the de facto standard for how
1:09:06People try to cajole people into reviewing. I don't think we'd be having this conversation
1:09:12It's not that's not problematic enough or maybe not problematic at all
1:09:16but there I
1:09:19I think even with the alerts, which I think is generally heavy-handed for this, but as long as if this irate project that everybody...
1:09:27or it seems to be so popular, if no thanks meant never show this again, ever.
1:09:32Yeah, just one time only and you can opt out and it'll never show you again. I don't think we'd be having this conversation.
1:09:38I really don't because then you'd only see that dialogue once for every app and even if you have a lot of apps installed,
1:09:44that's not that bad.
1:09:45It's in hindsight, and I didn't really this didn't really occur to me until after I published that
1:09:50But the more I thought about it and really considered my position
1:09:53It's not being asked the first time that annoys me
1:09:56It's being asked the second through the nth times the one time it's like I don't like it
1:10:02Yeah, I wouldn't do it, but I could live with it and it's the same thing as things like hey
1:10:07Maybe you want to I don't think you should do all of these things. I think you have a limited amount of
1:10:12attention you can take from the user, but if you wanted to maybe you want to do something like you said like
1:10:16Prompt them once to sign up for an occasional newsletter
1:10:20Yeah, or just follow your company's or products account on Twitter
1:10:26Follow Vesper app on Twitter and you'll receive you know occasional
1:10:30You know tips tricks news stuff like that, right and it would be completely appropriate
1:10:37to say on your Vesper Twitter account, you know folks if you haven't done it yet now would be a great time to review
1:10:44Exactly and and part of that too is that with an email newsletter?
1:10:48You know you can and I know the panic apps have always done this and I think they've had a great success with it
1:10:53And it's a really cool
1:10:54You know the newsletters are you know everything you'd think a panic newsletter would be it's funny and very well designed
1:10:59It's like one time when you install like a new panic app for the first time
1:11:04They show you a dialogue box and it'll just it says something, you know, very friendly and it's like hey
1:11:09We run a company newsletter where we give occasional
1:11:12news and updates and tips
1:11:14It's not annoying we promise and you can unsubscribe anytime
1:11:18But it'd be it would be great if you signed up and you could put your email address in and hit a button and if you
1:11:23Don't want it you hit another button and they never ask you again
1:11:25Yeah, same thing for like Twitter and then again if you want to in your newsletter or in your Twitter account
1:11:32occasionally remind people to do to maybe leave a review in the App Store
1:11:35That's cool
1:11:36Because if if they want to they'll do it if they don't they won't and if they're annoyed they know how to make it stop
1:11:42You know how to hit the unfollow button in Twitter. Yeah
1:11:45Whereas there is no way to make these dialogues stop
1:11:48I think you I think you're right that the the one-time thing is I might consider it like
1:11:54slightly a slight like
1:11:58Tarnish on an app, you know, but maybe not even that maybe I would just accept it as the as the you know
1:12:04Cost of doing business, but we all overlook
1:12:07little things here and there in apps that bug us right and they don't have to be things that are like intentionally trying to
1:12:13Coerce us into doing something could just be like oh, I I really hate the fact that
1:12:18this button, you know always behaves this way when I click it and and then I think what you're on to here with the
1:12:25in particular of this open source framework is collectively,
1:12:30when you magnify that out over so many apps
1:12:33doing the same thing and the sense that they're all
1:12:35kind of collectively, they're giving it the okay
1:12:40by all doing it, right?
1:12:42It would be like what if you had this one really frustrating
1:12:45annoying behavior of an app and then they open sourced that
1:12:48and then suddenly all your apps were behaving that way.
1:12:50- Right.
1:12:51Let me take a break here and do the third sponsor break
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1:15:38So the last thing I wanted to say about this is Apple's role, and not just in approving
1:15:42the apps that are doing this, but in the way that the App Store is currently configured.
1:15:47And one of the things, a lot of people jumped on this in the Twitter conversation.
1:15:52An awful lot of people are saying what I think I agree with too, which is that there's a
1:15:56big difference between asking the user once and asking them over and over again.
1:16:01And it's that once every version that was annoying.
1:16:04immediately then there were people defending it because the way the App
1:16:07Store is set up it's only the current version of the app whose reviews are
1:16:14counted to make the average rating so like if you had really good reviews a
1:16:19year ago but now you've had two versions since and not so you know maybe not even
1:16:24bad reviews just you don't have that many reviews they don't show up in the
1:16:27default listing and that people based there like should I download it or not
1:16:31decisions on how well rated it is. Be that as it may, that is not the user's
1:16:38problem. That's right. Right? It just isn't, you know, and it's like, I don't know,
1:16:47should that be fixed? I think there's got to be a better way to do it. I mean, I
1:16:51think there's a lot of people who are, you know, as time goes on, who are kind of,
1:16:54and the App Store gets older, you know, that it's discovery is definitely, it's
1:16:59always been a problem in the App Store, right? Where the best apps don't
1:17:02necessarily filter to the top. You know, Twitter clients is a perfect example
1:17:06where like if you search the App Store for Twitter, you don't get a listing of
1:17:11the best Twitter clients. You do get Twitter.com's official Twitter client
1:17:15early on, but like apps like Twitterrific and Tweetbot, depending on, you know, the
1:17:19day and what's going on with Apple's indexes, don't show up. You get a whole
1:17:23bunch of junk underneath the official Twitter client. Whereas I think in a
1:17:28world where the App Store worked according to Apple's ideals where the
1:17:32best you know Apple's you know stuff has always been about the best you know
1:17:36what's the best quality apps like tweet bot and Twitter if ik should be at the
1:17:40yeah near the top of the results and what's worse is that they have
1:17:44apparently been you know punished for this practice of starting you know
1:17:49releasing a new release with a new skew and SKU code on the App Store right
1:17:54which is itself a workaround to the lack of a paid upgrade system,
1:18:00like where people, developers would like to ideally hold on to their sort of like
1:18:06notoriety and their reputation in the store for a particular app, but to get paid again,
1:18:12they either have to like jump through some weird hoops to turn their upgrade into an a la carte in
1:18:19in-app purchase or they have to make an all-new SKU,
1:18:23and then they start at the bottom, literally.
1:18:27Like, I mean, somebody mentioned,
1:18:30I think it was maybe David Barnard,
1:18:31'cause he's always real, you know,
1:18:34I think productively critical about the search issue.
1:18:38He said, you know, Tweetbot went from like number one
1:18:41or number two in those results to off the page fold.
1:18:46- Right.
1:18:47So yeah, Apple's role, it's one of those things where,
1:18:52you know, it's always been easy for us
1:18:54who are big Apple fans and we appreciate
1:18:57so much that Apple does, it's always easy for us to say,
1:18:59like, oh, this one fix would fix everything,
1:19:02or this is what they should do,
1:19:03or this is, why is this all so screwed up?
1:19:06And of course, we have to take a step back
1:19:08and realize that when you consider that
1:19:11for any one of these little things we can pinpoint,
1:19:13there are actually dozens or hundreds of things
1:19:16that could probably be improved.
1:19:18It's easier than to at least be empathetic
1:19:21to how it's not perfect.
1:19:23- It is effectively, the similarity that keeps,
1:19:27I don't think we've even mentioned it during the show yet,
1:19:30but this whole practice of asking for the reviews,
1:19:32it reeks of SEO, search engine optimization,
1:19:37which is largely, in my opinion,
1:19:41and always has been ways to take advantage
1:19:46of search engines.
1:19:49Whatever techniques have worked.
1:19:50It's not about truly deserving top spots.
1:19:54It's how to get the top spot, whether you deserve it or not.
1:19:58And that's-- it's become a dirty word.
1:20:01And people, other than marketing scumbags, people hear SEO,
1:20:07and they think, oh, man, it's bad practices and annoying
1:20:10cheats.
1:20:11Well, that's-- I hate to say it.
1:20:13That's what this rating thing is.
1:20:15Even if it works, that shouldn't be how it works.
1:20:18You're taking advantage of Apple's relatively poor ranking system.
1:20:25Yeah.
1:20:26Well, something else that just came to mind is another one of the Twitter things that
1:20:32got to me a little bit because, of course, it's close to home and it's a personal allegation,
1:20:38but there was a not so subtle suggestion that for me to criticize developers who are doing
1:20:45this, it's a situation where my privilege should be called into question, meaning that
1:20:56it's easy for me to take the high road or to proclaim that developers should or shouldn't
1:21:04do these things, because implying that even with my modest Twitter and blog audience and
1:21:12podcast audience that I have this huge upper hand in marketing my apps such that I wouldn't
1:21:18need to use these kinds of marketing techniques.
1:21:21And I thought that was particularly interesting because this was based in a post that you
1:21:29had written because people could as easily, if not more forcefully, make that allegation
1:21:38about you with Vesper.
1:21:40Vesper. Right. Yeah, I definitely got that. I mean, to a couple of people with the effect
1:21:44of developers defending their use of it in their apps. Well, I wouldn't have to do it
1:21:49in my app either if I could get a link on Daring Fireball for my app as often as Vesper
1:21:53does. And I don't know what to say to that. Here's what I have to say to it is these people
1:22:00are overlooking how difficult it is to market apps and to make apps profitable and successful.
1:22:07make apps profitable and successful,
1:22:11even if you do have the luck of an audience.
1:22:14- Of starting with some kind of audience or notoriety.
1:22:16- It's this, you know, not to,
1:22:20I don't wanna insult these people per se,
1:22:23but they have a misunderstanding of the whole system.
1:22:28- And it's better to have an audience than not.
1:22:34It's better to be the Omni group and already have tens of thousands of happy users when
1:22:40you're launching a brand new version 1.0 app that nobody's had before.
1:22:45It's better to be Panic than to be an unheard of software developer.
1:22:51But it definitely does not make it easy for Panic or the Omni group or anybody else to
1:22:58launch a 1.0 and get it to stick more than just on the first day.
1:23:03You do get a nice spic.
1:23:05It's easy to get a nice spike on the first day if you're known.
1:23:09It does not have that much bearing on what happens a week or a month or two months or
1:23:14six months later.
1:23:15Eventually, it doesn't take very long for water to reach its own level.
1:23:19The app becomes as popular as it should be whoever you started out as.
1:23:23Eric: Then we get back to Gus Mueller's, "Maybe your app just sucks."
1:23:27Those of us with some kind of built-in audience, if we're struggling to sell the app at some
1:23:31point, we can choose to take stock in whether the app needs to be improved.
1:23:38A lot of times an app just needs to exist for a number of years before it has the refinement
1:23:46and the feature base and the mind share to be successful.
1:23:50Gus is probably a good example of that because I'll bet that that's sort of what happened.
1:23:53I don't know exactly how the sales chart for Acorn has been, but I think when Acorn first
1:23:59shipped it was very interesting because there had been so many years where
1:24:03everybody was like how come there's no indie image editors and then all of a
1:24:06sudden there were a couple yeah corn was one and had some interesting you know
1:24:10design and interface and features but it's such a heat you know you you know
1:24:16you're competing against Photoshop you know and you've got a lot you know I
1:24:21think it just took a while for acorn to have a minimum feature set that was just
1:24:25like, you know what, this is totally feasible.
1:24:28- Yeah, and one other quick thought that comes to mind
1:24:32is all of these people who are sort of like
1:24:34comforting themselves, I think,
1:24:38maybe for the behavior of their app
1:24:39or for the apps that they love,
1:24:41comforting the fact that these tactics are being used
1:24:45because it's somehow necessary
1:24:46or because it's the leg up that they need
1:24:49to offset that lack of an existing audience
1:24:52or the lack of existing success.
1:24:54It just strikes me as totally opposite
1:24:59from the mindset you need to have
1:25:01if you actually want to be successful
1:25:03because by adopting these follow the herd tactics,
1:25:07it's the exact mindset that prevents you
1:25:11from having those noticeably different,
1:25:15you look at some companies where you're like,
1:25:18panic, for example, they keep coming up,
1:25:20obviously we love them,
1:25:21but they distinguish themselves often
1:25:25by doing things that no other company does.
1:25:28And it's not by assuming that because everybody else
1:25:32has a nagware like dialogue in their app
1:25:37that that's the way to do it.
1:25:39And I think if these people think that,
1:25:42if they're so convinced that the way to succeed
1:25:45in the software business is to adopt whatever,
1:25:48like I'm being a little dramatic here,
1:25:50but whatever bottom feeding tactics everybody else is using,
1:25:54then that's just like a symptom
1:25:56that they're setting themselves up
1:25:58for that kind of mentality in general.
1:26:01Like, well, it's good enough for everybody else
1:26:04on the App Store.
1:26:05And you don't get successful and popular and beloved
1:26:08by trying to be only as good as everything else
1:26:12on the App Store.
1:26:13Is that, I had to get up on my high horse eventually, right?
1:26:19Well, that's why I had you.
1:26:20I always have you on the show to get up on your high horse,
1:26:22Daniel.
1:26:24I got my stirrups on and my 10 gallon hat.
1:26:29It's nuanced.
1:26:29I think bottom line takeaway.
1:26:32I think if there's anything everybody could take away
1:26:34from this, if there's a way that raising this into an issue
1:26:38that we're being discussed, if there's some change that comes
1:26:42of this, my hope would be that it
1:26:44would be to make these dialogues a,
1:26:48when you hit no thanks, you never see it again.
1:26:51- Yeah. - Or any version.
1:26:53Regardless of all of the arguments that that's,
1:26:55you know, that the App Store wants that.
1:26:58'Cause let's face it, people are not,
1:27:00what do you do really as a developer?
1:27:01If you're out there and you're on the fence
1:27:03and you're thinking, you know, your app does this
1:27:06and you're listening to the show,
1:27:07I hope that we've convinced you at least
1:27:09that it doesn't even make any sense
1:27:10to ask people to do it over and over again.
1:27:12Do you really think that they're going to leave multiple reviews?
1:27:16I think they are, Jon.
1:27:18I think that that's...
1:27:19I think that...
1:27:22Let's say you got 10,000 users.
1:27:25I think they're counting on the fact that by annoying 10,000 people, 5 to 10 of those
1:27:32people will push the button and go review.
1:27:36I don't know what the numbers are, but if you think about it that way, you don't need
1:27:40to hit that many people.
1:27:41I mean, you don't need to hit that big of a percentage for it to make an impact and I think unfortunately, that's just another
1:27:47That's another that's another case for
1:27:50punishing the bulk of your users
1:27:53When you know only a small tiny fraction of them is needed to give you the result you want. I
1:27:59Also think that Apple should seriously considered banning it
1:28:03And yeah
1:28:04And I think the fact that there that like I as we talked about a few minutes ago that developed some developers
1:28:10are doing the even more questionable practice of trying to figure out first
1:28:15whether you're gonna leave a four or five star review and only then forwarding
1:28:19you on. Because if you're gonna allow in general I'm not sure how you
1:28:24would how you would ban just that even though that is to me clearly gaming the
1:28:29reviews. It's almost as bad it's only it you know it's only a hair short of using
1:28:35those scammy paid services that leave made-up reviews. Right, and it sort of
1:28:41feels like the kind of thing where Apple could include it in the whole genre of
1:28:47prohibitions against like acting like the App Store or acting like
1:28:52the springboard or whatever, you know, getting into Apple's business. Right,
1:28:55the reviews should be, you know, in theory, should be organic and, you know,
1:29:00and only maybe prompted by things that are outside the app, like I said, like in
1:29:04in a tech support email or your Twitter
1:29:07or something like that.
1:29:08- Well, one positive thing I think that came out of this
1:29:11is there has been a little bit of a kind of a grassroots
1:29:14call for voluntary rating of apps that you love.
1:29:19And I think that's great.
1:29:22That will offset to some extent that tiny percentage,
1:29:25I think, of your readers who have gone out
1:29:27and taken your advice literally.
1:29:30But it also reminds me that there are a few,
1:29:34In my mind, there may be at high level three different approaches to solving this problem.
1:29:39The approach that many developers are taking now to coerce users into rating,
1:29:43the approach that we wish would happen, which is Apple would systematically repair the review system in some important ways.
1:29:50And then there's another option, which is
1:29:54somebody putting together some
1:29:57system whereby people can kind of take pride or
1:30:02ownership of their ratings of apps some kind of system that gamifies
1:30:07ratings in a way that
1:30:10Users would want to go
1:30:12You know show off what they like and and share their reviews like the example that comes to mind is I think some people out there
1:30:20Developers in particular you are more likely now to report radar bugs to Apple because of this open radar
1:30:27site where you can say look folks I
1:30:31Did my part and whether Apple ignores my suggestion or heeds it I reported the bug
1:30:37And I could imagine some system existing outside of the control of developers or Apple
1:30:44that would encourage users to
1:30:47Sort of show their their
1:30:50And maybe this would be gaming in an appropriate way
1:30:54I don't know but expect if it were framed towards showing your love for the apps that you love
1:30:58I think that could be something I think that could
1:31:01affect
1:31:03You know the same kind of results that the people the developers are looking for without being so disrespectful of the users, right?
1:31:12Interrupting them. Yep, that's it. Exactly. And if you I mean the funny thing is a lot of these users would be happy
1:31:17To give five or ten minutes of their time voluntarily in service of the developer
1:31:23But are outraged to have to give ten seconds in voluntarily
1:31:28Right. Right. Because it's not just the 10 seconds, it's the interruption.
1:31:31And it's like the cartoons, you know, there's a bunch of them who made the rounds.
1:31:34But like, you know, why it's bad to interrupt a programmer.
1:31:37And it's, you know, it's because it's...
1:31:40You may only be taking two seconds of their time, but you're effectively like popping a bubble.
1:31:44Yep.
1:31:45That has taken a while to build up to get their, you know, head around a problem.
1:31:49You know. And like you said, you know, right at the beginning that
1:31:53The whole reason that they're in the app in the first place is to do whatever it is that the app does.
1:31:58You know, let you take a picture or let you read your tweets or let you play a game.
1:32:05Which is why it's especially terrible, this behavior on mobile devices,
1:32:11because the whole thing about the time you spend in a mobile app is so much shorter than on a desktop app, right?
1:32:17So interrupting is that much more egregious.
1:32:20Right. Exactly.
1:32:22Well where can people find out more from you Daniel?
1:32:24Where do you want to send people?
1:32:25Oh well I'm @DanielPunkAss on Twitter and I have a blog at bitsplitting.org and my software
1:32:33is wonderful and you should rate it.
1:32:35Please take a moment now to stop, pause this podcast, go directly to iTunes or to the App
1:32:40Store and rate my software.
1:32:42Mars Edit.
1:32:43Mars Edit is on the Mac App Store and on my site at red-sweater.com.
1:32:48And don't forget to rate the talk show in the podcast listings.
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1:32:55Pause it right now before we finish.
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