The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Have you been watching the Tour de France?

00:00:02 ◼   ► No, have you?

00:00:03 ◼   ► I actually have, I'm really into it.

00:00:06 ◼   ► And I bring it up, not because I think it's a little too obscure to ever become mainstream, but it's kind of like the perfect summer, not too much is going on, so I can watch something for five hours a day and not really feel crazy.

00:00:22 ◼   ► But the reason I brought it up is it's actually kind of the perfect like iOS, Apple TV, like future of TV product because it's so long and the TV network that carries it, which is like the NBC Sports Network, which used to be called Versus, they stuff it full of commercials and they only show part of it and they make it really annoying.

00:00:47 ◼   ► annoying. So you can actually buy an iPad app for 15 bucks that streams the entire thing

00:00:53 ◼   ► live starting at like 6 a.m. Eastern time every day because it's happening in France,

00:00:59 ◼   ► and you can airplay it to your TV. So it's basically – and then you can rewatch all

00:01:03 ◼   ► of it at nighttime if you miss it that day. So it's one of those things where I'm

00:01:08 ◼   ► so happy to spend $15 to get this wonderful full coverage live, no commercial thing, and

00:01:16 ◼   ► And this is only possible because of my iPad and AirPlay, basically.

00:01:25 ◼   ► I guess MLB has been doing this for a long time, but this is one of those things where

00:01:31 ◼   ► it's once a year for three weeks and it's just the perfect kind of futuristic TV experience.

00:01:38 ◼   ► sounds like a great deal I wouldn't hesitate to pay that 15 I mean 15 bucks

00:01:43 ◼   ► for and it's like a 20-day event right yeah it's three weeks and it's you know

00:01:48 ◼   ► like I said you know four or five hours a day so you know with no commercials so

00:01:52 ◼   ► it's really great I bring this up because you know once again in the in

00:01:57 ◼   ► the the talks of potentially Apple or Google or someone like that picking up

00:02:02 ◼   ► the direct direct TV's current rights to NFL Sunday ticket and you know how cool

00:02:08 ◼   ► that would be for it to launch the big Apple television with the NFL deal. That would be

00:02:14 ◼   ► pretty cool. I don't know how realistic that is.

00:02:17 ◼   ► But…

00:02:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there is… The thing that makes me think that it might

00:02:22 ◼   ► be possible is that the Dish Network… Isn't it… It's Dish Network that has… Or it's

00:02:29 ◼   ► the other one.

00:02:30 ◼   ► It's DirecTV.

00:02:31 ◼   ► DirecTV.

00:02:32 ◼   ► Although, you know, everyone thinks they're going to merge two anyway. So, who knows?

00:02:34 ◼   ► Right. Like the…

00:02:35 ◼   ► The satellite radio guys.

00:02:37 ◼   ► - Exactly, like Sirius and XM, because there's only two

00:02:39 ◼   ► and they're still probably getting their butts kicked

00:02:42 ◼   ► by cable, but-- - Exactly.

00:02:45 ◼   ► - I've heard that that's really sort of the only reason

00:02:48 ◼   ► DirecTV is even in business, that that deal,

00:02:52 ◼   ► that NFL deal is so important to them.

00:02:55 ◼   ► - I think that's a big thing, and obviously,

00:02:59 ◼   ► the parts of the country that don't have Fios

00:03:02 ◼   ► or good cable access, that's really your best option

00:03:05 ◼   ► for HD and they were way ahead of the cable companies even,

00:03:10 ◼   ► a lot of them at least, with over 100 HD channels

00:03:13 ◼   ► and all that stuff.

00:03:14 ◼   ► So I guess there are some redeeming qualities to DirecTV

00:03:17 ◼   ► but I would guess that pretty much everyone I know

00:03:20 ◼   ► who has it only has it because of the football deal.

00:03:23 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:03:25 ◼   ► So I could definitely see Apple doing it.

00:03:26 ◼   ► Every time I bring this up, this idea that Apple

00:03:28 ◼   ► should buy out or either buy it, get it, steal it from

00:03:34 ◼   ► or overbid, I guess, I don't mean steal, but overbid, you know, pay more than Direct TV

00:03:41 ◼   ► can afford to pay to get the NFL. Or add it on as a, you know, somehow get it to be non-exclusive.

00:03:48 ◼   ► I don't know. Just somehow throw money at the NFL until they say, "Okay, you can show

00:03:52 ◼   ► the games on Apple TV." It would be a huge deal in the United States. And whenever I

00:03:58 ◼   ► bring this up, people from outside the United States would say, "Well, why in the hell would

00:04:03 ◼   ► I care about this. I don't even understand the rule. Well, the point would be, it wouldn't

00:04:06 ◼   ► just be that Apple would only get rights to US pro football, and that's it. They would,

00:04:13 ◼   ► obviously, that would be part of a strategy to do the same thing around the world, you

00:04:16 ◼   ► know, get cricket in India and, you know, soccer all over the place, right, obviously,

00:04:21 ◼   ► soccer in everywhere else. You know, I think like, that's the kind of thing where I think

00:04:27 ◼   ► diehard soccer fans are already have these streaming services that are that are pretty

00:04:31 ◼   ► I mean, I even remember in the middle school, my friend would stream Windows Media or Real

00:04:39 ◼   ► Video or something, soccer games for the Champions League or something like that.

00:04:44 ◼   ► So it's not like this is a new idea, but this is the kind of thing where even just these

00:04:48 ◼   ► little updates on the Apple TV have made it a lot more interesting and useful to me, like

00:04:52 ◼   ► that HBO Go thing that was added.

00:04:55 ◼   ► I've been able to watch HBO Go on a computer and an iPad for a long time, but when it's

00:05:01 ◼   ► It's one click away and it's sitting there already on your TV.

00:05:04 ◼   ► I just tore through that whole season of Vice, for example, just because it was so easy.

00:05:08 ◼   ► I didn't have to think about it.

00:05:10 ◼   ► I didn't have to borrow my iPad or my iPhone for AirPlay or anything like that.

00:05:15 ◼   ► I'm really excited about that.

00:05:16 ◼   ► I think even just the little updates, they've been making it been great.

00:05:19 ◼   ► If we can get this Tour de France on there and maybe some sort of live Olympic stuff,

00:05:25 ◼   ► that could be really cool.

00:05:27 ◼   ► When they added HBO Go to the Apple TV box, I don't think I tweeted it. I think I put

00:05:34 ◼   ► it on app.net. That's usually where I go with super nerdy stuff that I don't want to bother

00:05:39 ◼   ► all my Twitter followers with.

00:05:40 ◼   ► That's too nerdy for me even.

00:05:42 ◼   ► Well, when I signed up for it on my iPad and iPhone, whenever, a year ago, a year and a

00:05:47 ◼   ► half ago, whenever HBO Go came out. I mean, I am a cable subscriber and we do have HBO.

00:05:52 ◼   ► I pay Comcast for HBO.

00:05:54 ◼   ► So when I did that, I got on the iPad and I had to sign in with my Comcast ID and password.

00:06:02 ◼   ► And HBO, obviously, you know, they have – there's enough, you know, consolidation where there's,

00:06:08 ◼   ► you know, I don't know, a dozen, two dozen cable providers in the US that they go through

00:06:13 ◼   ► and they have deals with – I guess they somehow have a back end that talks to all

00:06:16 ◼   ► of them.

00:06:17 ◼   ► So Comcast is in with them.

00:06:19 ◼   ► They authorize.

00:06:20 ◼   ► They check with Comcast.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Comcast goes, "Yeah, this guy is an HBO subscriber and then my HBO Go app on the iPad worked."

00:06:27 ◼   ► It wasn't too bad, too much of a hassle.

00:06:30 ◼   ► But with the Apple TV one, I just went to the channel or whatever you call it on Apple

00:06:36 ◼   ► TV and it worked.

00:06:37 ◼   ► I didn't have to log in.

00:06:38 ◼   ► I didn't have to do anything.

00:06:40 ◼   ► So I can only guess that it's like an IP address thing, like that somehow they could tell from

00:06:47 ◼   ► my IP address that I'm getting my internet through Comcast and I don't know I have no idea how that

00:06:54 ◼   ► how that worked did you know so that's not how it worked for me I'm on Time Warner Cable and I

00:07:00 ◼   ► actually had to go to a web page and log in and then type in a pin code into the web page and then

00:07:06 ◼   ► it synced up with my Apple TV on the back end but I think I read somewhere that Comcast has a new

00:07:14 ◼   ► authentication system that just you know that quote unquote just works for that

00:07:19 ◼   ► kind of stuff which which is smart because they can because they know that

00:07:23 ◼   ► that's your cable modem and it's in your house so I have to say it was honestly

00:07:28 ◼   ► one of the most amazing authentication experiences I've ever had really was

00:07:32 ◼   ► because I was really dreading the you know sit there and type it in and man I

00:07:39 ◼   ► just thought it was gonna be a huge pain in the ass and instead it literally just

00:07:43 ◼   ► worked.

00:07:44 ◼   ► But how cool is, you know, I remember writing about this stuff a couple of years ago and

00:07:47 ◼   ► people would say, oh, Apple will never work with the cable companies.

00:07:51 ◼   ► They, you know, they're, they're trying to disrupt that, that industry.

00:07:54 ◼   ► They'll never ever have a service where you have to log in with your cable address.

00:07:59 ◼   ► And sure enough, here it is.

00:08:01 ◼   ► And you know, some, in your case, it sounds like Comcast has their, their technology together.

00:08:05 ◼   ► So you don't even have to do that, which is even better.

00:08:08 ◼   ► You know, how cool would a, a tuner app be?

00:08:10 ◼   ► So then if, you know, whatever, your kid has a TV in his room and he wants to watch a channel,

00:08:15 ◼   ► he wouldn't even need a cable box in his room.

00:08:18 ◼   ► I think that stuff's coming.

00:08:19 ◼   ► The Xbox already has some of that and I think it's great.

00:08:24 ◼   ► The other one that works with is the Time Warner Cable iPad app, which has been surprisingly

00:08:28 ◼   ► useful in our house.

00:08:31 ◼   ► It initially was only allowed to work in your house because it was seen as an extension

00:08:37 ◼   ► of your cable subscription.

00:08:39 ◼   ► So you had to be on the IP address of your home internet connection.

00:08:45 ◼   ► But because the cable company knows that, you know, can do that handshake on the back

00:08:50 ◼   ► end, you know, you don't even have to, actually you do have to sign it.

00:08:54 ◼   ► But theoretically you don't have to.

00:08:55 ◼   ► And I think Comcast has actually been bragging about some of that stuff.

00:08:58 ◼   ► And I think it's cool, you know, that then you could just turn on your Apple TV in your

00:09:03 ◼   ► house and it'll already know what channels you're subscribed to and you won't even have

00:09:06 ◼   ► have to install some Comcast app. I don't know. It's cool. I'm having fun with it.

00:09:13 ◼   ► It's, you know, what else? It's good summer stuff. You know what else people

00:09:16 ◼   ► used to say? People used to say prior to January 2007 that if I if Apple ever

00:09:21 ◼   ► makes a phone, they'll never get into, they'll never work with the carriers. You

00:09:26 ◼   ► know that they'll do something, some insert, some kind of hand-waving here

00:09:31 ◼   ► that would allow Apple to completely circumvent the carriers. I mean, people

00:09:36 ◼   ► used to speculate that Apple would buy, what are they, MVNOs?

00:09:40 ◼   ► - Right, they would do an Apple,

00:09:41 ◼   ► like an Apple virtual carrier the way ESPN tried

00:09:46 ◼   ► or Disney tried, and both of those were big failures.

00:09:49 ◼   ► - And that also is super US-centric,

00:09:52 ◼   ► because what are they gonna do, set up their own carriers

00:09:54 ◼   ► in 80 countries around the world?

00:09:56 ◼   ► That's starting to get impractical,

00:09:58 ◼   ► and it faces regulatory hurdles and stuff like that.

00:10:01 ◼   ► - Although the funny thing is that MVNOs

00:10:02 ◼   ► are actually working outside of the US

00:10:04 ◼   ► in a way that they never did work in the US, but whatever. I actually just used one in

00:10:08 ◼   ► Canada this weekend.

00:10:09 ◼   ► So, but however limited the iPhone has been distribution wise in six years because Apple

00:10:15 ◼   ► has to work out these deals with carriers and their deals with carriers are obviously

00:10:19 ◼   ► a lot more negotiated than typical phone makers because Apple, you know, maintains control

00:10:27 ◼   ► that the carriers don't want to bestow and they get more money and etc, etc. However,

00:10:33 ◼   ► You know, much the iPhone has been limited.

00:10:36 ◼   ► It would be way more limited if Apple only sold it on its own Apple-branded carrier networks

00:10:43 ◼   ► around the world.

00:10:44 ◼   ► Totally.

00:10:45 ◼   ► You know, just even think of all the cell phone stores that, you know, especially outside

00:10:50 ◼   ► of the US where they don't have as many Apple stores.

00:10:53 ◼   ► And that's, I think, been, I think that's also, that's helped Android take off in phones,

00:11:00 ◼   ► as we could see, has really not helped them in tablets at all because people don't buy

00:11:03 ◼   ► their tablets at a phone store.

00:11:07 ◼   ► I think in TV, it's also going to be the distribution of TV.

00:11:12 ◼   ► You get your cable box from the provider, but you don't really go to the store and buy

00:11:16 ◼   ► it there.

00:11:17 ◼   ► I don't know how that will play into it.

00:11:19 ◼   ► I don't know if they'll need that kind of help for distribution.

00:11:25 ◼   ► Maybe there's some room for some subsidy or something.

00:11:28 ◼   ► you sign a long-term contract with a TV provider or something like that, but I don't know.

00:11:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know. I'm not quite sure. But I still think, and I really do, I maintain

00:11:39 ◼   ► this, that Apple's TV strategy is not this secret thing in a lab that's totally new and

00:11:45 ◼   ► revolutionary. It's what we see right before our eyes, this evolutionary step-by-step improvement

00:11:51 ◼   ► to Apple TV as we know it. Which I'm sure is disappointing to some people,

00:11:57 ◼   ► But I guess that means it's real, unlike some fictional,

00:12:01 ◼   ► and who knows what they wanna do.

00:12:03 ◼   ► I mean, there's been reports for years

00:12:05 ◼   ► that they wanted to do some sort of new and crazy thing

00:12:09 ◼   ► where they get the TV and they resell it to you

00:12:13 ◼   ► or something like that, and the networks have basically

00:12:16 ◼   ► told them, no thanks, we're not interested in that.

00:12:18 ◼   ► But yeah.

00:12:20 ◼   ► - It's a weird business too, because, I mean,

00:12:23 ◼   ► you have to think that broadcast television

00:12:25 ◼   ► is sort of a legacy business, but it's a legacy business that is still ragingly popular,

00:12:33 ◼   ► probably more popular than ever.

00:12:35 ◼   ► I would only guess that people watch more TV than ever before.

00:12:41 ◼   ► The way that the internet and mobile have affected TV is really more that people sit

00:12:46 ◼   ► on the couch with their iPhones while they're watching TV, that they're doing both.

00:12:51 ◼   ► It's still an absurd number. I think it's like at least four hours a day per household,

00:12:57 ◼   ► maybe even more. So, and yeah, exactly.

00:13:00 ◼   ► They've been disrupted in a different way. It's only that attention has been slightly

00:13:04 ◼   ► divided, not that you don't watch TV.

00:13:07 ◼   ► Right.

00:13:08 ◼   ► As opposed to, say, you know, the devastation in the print industry of magazines and newspapers

00:13:16 ◼   ► and things like that. So, there's still – that's what makes this whole thing so entrenched

00:13:21 ◼   ► is that there's still so much money being poured into cable TV every single month by

00:13:30 ◼   ► any household that can afford it.

00:13:35 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:13:36 ◼   ► I feel like there is no way to just sort of blow that up.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And I know that nerds, you know, I'm sure that like people who listen to this show are

00:13:44 ◼   ► way more likely than the typical consumer to have, what do they call it, cut the cord

00:13:52 ◼   ► and stop paying for cable but still watch lots of TV because you do it all over the

00:13:59 ◼   ► internet with Netflix and Apple TV and Hulu and stuff like that.

00:14:04 ◼   ► Dave Asprey I tried that and I went back actually.

00:14:08 ◼   ► I could probably get away with it, but my wife, I don't think, could.

00:14:14 ◼   ► I think Amy watches too many shows that aren't.

00:14:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I would say similar situation here.

00:14:20 ◼   ► Have you ever watched a YouTube channel?

00:14:23 ◼   ► That's another thing where Google has been putting all this money into these YouTube

00:14:27 ◼   ► channels and theoretically, that's kind of probably targeting even the younger generation

00:14:32 ◼   ► and the kind of people who just never had cable.

00:14:36 ◼   ► Maybe they grew up with cable in their house, but then they went off to school and switched

00:14:40 ◼   ► watching.

00:14:41 ◼   ► No, I don't watch a YouTube channel.

00:14:42 ◼   ► I don't think I've ever seen a YouTube channel.

00:14:44 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:14:46 ◼   ► It's very interesting.

00:14:48 ◼   ► One of the things that I think makes television so much more defensible than, you say, print

00:14:57 ◼   ► news or whatever media, is just the complexity and cost of producing it.

00:15:03 ◼   ► like exponentially harder to make good video than it is to make good print.

00:15:08 ◼   ► So it's interesting to see Google invest, I think, hundreds of millions of dollars in

00:15:16 ◼   ► these YouTube channels, which are trying to make kind of good enough stuff to watch, but

00:15:21 ◼   ► it hasn't really caught my attention yet.

00:15:24 ◼   ► The big thing though, and I think any disruption has to meet this criteria.

00:15:28 ◼   ► I mean, I think, you know, just go back to the iPad introduction event.

00:15:34 ◼   ► Steve Jobs almost spent half the event explaining the, is there room for a product between a

00:15:40 ◼   ► phone and a laptop?

00:15:42 ◼   ► And if so, what would it be?

00:15:43 ◼   ► And the whole point is, it's got to be better for some things than either the phone or the

00:15:50 ◼   ► laptop.

00:15:52 ◼   ► I think that's a rule for any kind of disruption.

00:15:54 ◼   ► And just go back to your Tour de France example, that watching it over the internet makes it

00:16:00 ◼   ► better.

00:16:01 ◼   ► It's not just, "Hey, I can do it over the internet."

00:16:04 ◼   ► It's just better.

00:16:05 ◼   ► Like you said, if you want to watch live, it's no longer plastered with ads.

00:16:10 ◼   ► And you can time shift it without needing to fill up your TiVo with five hours of stuff

00:16:15 ◼   ► a day.

00:16:16 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:16:17 ◼   ► Or even needing a TiVo.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Yeah, it would eat up the whole TiVo, basically.

00:16:22 ◼   ► Right.

00:16:23 ◼   ► model you have to know in advance that you wanted to have it recorded and I'm

00:16:28 ◼   ► you know I don't know if you're like me but I never remember to set the tone now

00:16:32 ◼   ► record stuff so I would think like oh great did a Tour de France is started I

00:16:35 ◼   ► can watch it and then I think I didn't tape it I started I still use the verb

00:16:41 ◼   ► tape for the TiVo I do too and that's one of those things where you would you

00:16:45 ◼   ► would think that the on-demand systems would be sophisticated enough by 2013 to

00:16:51 ◼   ► So you wouldn't even need to DVR stuff, but no, they're not.

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00:20:16 ◼   ► Have you ever run your own mail server? You mean like physically manage the server or

00:20:23 ◼   ► have like a server that like my physically managed it? No, no, not physically.

00:20:28 ◼   ► I in high school. I want to say I set up the Eudora internet mail server on my Mac

00:20:35 ◼   ► over dial-up I

00:20:37 ◼   ► Don't recommend that. Oh and then you'd have to your machine would dial in and get the mail

00:20:44 ◼   ► I remembered I remember people do we I used to my dad and I had

00:20:49 ◼   ► Two phone we had two phone lines running into our basement and we had dial-up

00:20:53 ◼   ► we had these wacky dial-up accounts with static IP addresses,

00:20:57 ◼   ► and we would just stay dialed up 24/7.

00:21:00 ◼   ► You could basically never call our house

00:21:02 ◼   ► 'cause there would always just be busy signals

00:21:05 ◼   ► on both lines, which is fine, you know, email us.

00:21:07 ◼   ► But yeah, I ran a hotline server on that thing,

00:21:11 ◼   ► and I also ran a mail server for a while.

00:21:14 ◼   ► You know, it wasn't my main email address.

00:21:16 ◼   ► It was mostly just to see what kind of experience

00:21:19 ◼   ► that would be.

00:21:20 ◼   ► It was pretty dumb, I don't recommend doing that.

00:21:23 ◼   ► You know, even now with broadband,

00:21:26 ◼   ► there's absolutely no reason to run your own mail server

00:21:28 ◼   ► on your computer.

00:21:30 ◼   ► It was kind of a fun project.

00:21:32 ◼   ► - I can't even imagine doing that now.

00:21:37 ◼   ► - So I wanted to ask you about Vesper.

00:21:40 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:21:41 ◼   ► - Because you've been doing it for, what, over a month now,

00:21:44 ◼   ► and I'm just curious, and I've kind of entered this realm

00:21:47 ◼   ► too somewhat recently, and I'm curious, like,

00:21:50 ◼   ► As someone who's been observing and critiquing and analyzing this business for now five years,

00:21:57 ◼   ► the app economy, I'm curious, how's your experience been participating in it?

00:22:04 ◼   ► It's been very fun.

00:22:06 ◼   ► You're talking more now about the month since it shipped rather than like the month…

00:22:10 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, we kind of heard about the development process and…

00:22:13 ◼   ► It has been fun.

00:22:14 ◼   ► It has, I would say, and it has been very close to what I expected in terms of sales

00:22:22 ◼   ► and response. I think support has been, although, you know, this is funny because Dave Whiskas

00:22:28 ◼   ► handles 99% of the support for us, not me. But it seems that I keep my eye on it though.

00:22:34 ◼   ► It does seem though that the support, you know, we do it by email, has been lower than

00:22:39 ◼   ► I'd worried because it's the sort of thing when people say, "Oh, man, $4.99 for an iPhone

00:22:46 ◼   ► app, that's expensive." But I'll tell you what, even at $4.99, if you're spending just

00:22:52 ◼   ► a couple of minutes dealing with support, you lose most of that. It's unsustainable.

00:22:58 ◼   ► But the customers have been great. I think they've been really, really easy to deal with,

00:23:05 ◼   ► have made many great suggestions. Do you like it? Do you want to spend more time on it?

00:23:14 ◼   ► Definitely. I know it's an ongoing, I mean it's, has it been a distraction from

00:23:22 ◼   ► Daring Fireball? I guess somewhat. I guess anything I do that's not Daring Fireball

00:23:26 ◼   ► is a distraction from Daring Fireball. That's okay, that's life, you know? Right.

00:23:30 ◼   ► But you know, it's it was never it was never meant to be a 40 hour a week thing from my role

00:23:37 ◼   ► It's you know a little slice of my day every day

00:23:41 ◼   ► And I enjoy it. I enjoy I do enjoy it. That's great

00:23:45 ◼   ► Have you is it is it interesting to see the?

00:23:50 ◼   ► Kind of the app world from the other side or is it I guess you you're kind of pretty close to it anyway

00:23:56 ◼   ► So I don't know if it's been very different or not.

00:23:58 ◼   ► Well, it's always different when it's for real and it's yours and it makes it personal.

00:24:05 ◼   ► How many articles have I written about app rejections going, "Ah, ha, ha."

00:24:09 ◼   ► And then, of course, my app gets rejected and I'm like, "Oh, no.

00:24:13 ◼   ► What do I do?"

00:24:14 ◼   ► But it's interesting to hear that.

00:24:17 ◼   ► It's all good.

00:24:18 ◼   ► It's interesting now, though, that we're past the – I mean, we knew that when we announced

00:24:22 ◼   ► it that it was going to garner a significant amount of day one press. Holy cow, Brent Simmons

00:24:29 ◼   ► and John Gruber and some other guy made an app. The day one, day two sales were actually

00:24:41 ◼   ► they were great and I guess it's still the majority of the total sales we've had but

00:24:45 ◼   ► it was lower than I expected. But the next week or two of sales was higher than I had

00:24:51 ◼   ► I expected us to sell a ton of copies on the first 24 hours and then immediately fall off

00:24:56 ◼   ► a cliff.

00:24:58 ◼   ► Instead, it was a lower day one or let's say initial 48 hours, but then the drop-off,

00:25:07 ◼   ► it has dropped off, but it was a lot slower and steadier than I expected.

00:25:11 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Yeah, I don't know if you look, I assume you look at the charts, but the App

00:25:16 ◼   ► Annie cumulative charts are kind of interesting.

00:25:20 ◼   ► you can see like, you know, when you update it, it spikes up. And I see you took a comma

00:25:26 ◼   ► out of the name between last Monday and Tuesday or this.

00:25:29 ◼   ► Yeah, we did. We did. This is one thing we're toying with is how to get regular day to day.

00:25:38 ◼   ► You know, we haven't had a major new release, you know, how to get the average daily thing

00:25:44 ◼   ► sales to go up a little bit. And so we switched from just having the app's name in the listing

00:25:49 ◼   ► from just plain Vesper to Vesper simple and elegant notes. The thinking being that if

00:25:56 ◼   ► somebody searches for, let's say, who hasn't heard of us, they're just searching for a

00:26:00 ◼   ► notes app. If you type notes, we are listed somewhere in the results, pretty, you know,

00:26:06 ◼   ► reasonably high. But our icon and the name Vesper say nothing about what the app does.

00:26:15 ◼   ► And so, you know, is it a problem that people who already haven't heard of Vesper wouldn't

00:26:19 ◼   ► even think to click on it in the store to do it?

00:26:24 ◼   ► So I guess last week we changed it when we had an update.

00:26:28 ◼   ► We changed the listing name to Vesper Simple and Elegant Notes.

00:26:32 ◼   ► But like, I don't even, it may even matter like what number is in front of it, like,

00:26:39 ◼   ► you know, where we are in productivity.

00:26:41 ◼   ► but it said like 47 period space Vesper.

00:26:45 ◼   ► But that's it for the first line

00:26:47 ◼   ► and certain of the listings, I forget which device,

00:26:50 ◼   ► but then it breaks to the next line

00:26:52 ◼   ► and the next line just said simple and elegant dot dot dot.

00:26:55 ◼   ► So the word notes didn't make it in.

00:26:58 ◼   ► So it looked like it was really close

00:27:01 ◼   ► to getting simple to wrap on the previous line.

00:27:04 ◼   ► So we tried taking out the comma,

00:27:05 ◼   ► which we thought would make it work,

00:27:07 ◼   ► but it apparently didn't.

00:27:09 ◼   ► So we took out that comma.

00:27:11 ◼   ► I can't believe that you noticed that.

00:27:13 ◼   ► - Well, of course I did.

00:27:14 ◼   ► That's my, you know, I'm a writer, I'm an editor.

00:27:18 ◼   ► No, it's interesting, and I've had the same experience,

00:27:22 ◼   ► which is trying to figure out, you know,

00:27:24 ◼   ► the App Store search as a user is obviously not ideal.

00:27:28 ◼   ► Like, I think they actually made it worse

00:27:30 ◼   ► when they switched from the list view

00:27:33 ◼   ► to this kind of like card view

00:27:35 ◼   ► in the App Store search on the iPhone.

00:27:38 ◼   ► And in my field, the city guides,

00:27:42 ◼   ► and then there's the problem that you can't duplicate names

00:27:47 ◼   ► in the app store.

00:27:48 ◼   ► So if someone has San Francisco travel guide,

00:27:52 ◼   ► that's the only one that can exist with that title.

00:27:55 ◼   ► So the solution for everyone else has been to add

00:27:58 ◼   ► these kind of keywords to the title,

00:28:00 ◼   ► which is actually, I found out completely by accident,

00:28:04 ◼   ► not allowed.

00:28:05 ◼   ► So we got rejected and we had to redo it

00:28:08 ◼   ► and it's fine.

00:28:09 ◼   ► That's probably a good policy,

00:28:11 ◼   ► it's not to have too many keywords in the title.

00:28:13 ◼   ► But it's been very interesting to see kind of,

00:28:16 ◼   ► now, I'm sure you can do this

00:28:19 ◼   ► for the productivity field too.

00:28:20 ◼   ► Now I can look at the top ranking travel apps

00:28:24 ◼   ► and go, oh, okay, I know how much money

00:28:26 ◼   ► that guy's making today.

00:28:27 ◼   ► That's not, that's okay, but that's not great.

00:28:31 ◼   ► So it's been really interesting.

00:28:33 ◼   ► And I'm sure you've kind of experienced this too,

00:28:35 ◼   ► like the whole how big is the App Store economy really,

00:28:39 ◼   ► and should we be tweaking the price

00:28:42 ◼   ► or shifting the focus on making the app

00:28:47 ◼   ► more of a kind of social collaboration experience

00:28:49 ◼   ► and that kind of stuff.

00:28:50 ◼   ► So I'm very interested to see what you guys do with it.

00:28:54 ◼   ► I've been running into people who use it

00:28:56 ◼   ► in single player mode and people dig it.

00:29:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the response has been great.

00:29:05 ◼   ► And we really like it. I mean, that's the main thing and that's how I know we're onto

00:29:07 ◼   ► something is I really use the hell out of the app.

00:29:12 ◼   ► Do I depend on it? Maybe. It's close. But I really do

00:29:18 ◼   ► put my thoughts into it. And, you know, it's the dragging up and down that really

00:29:23 ◼   ► helps for me, at least, organize my thoughts.

00:29:28 ◼   ► But the big thing to me is that, strategy-wise, you just don't know where

00:29:33 ◼   ► where you're gonna end up as a, you know,

00:29:36 ◼   ► how successful it's gonna be until you hit the long run.

00:29:39 ◼   ► And who knows, you know, what is the long run

00:29:41 ◼   ► for an iPhone app?

00:29:42 ◼   ► You know, is it six months, is it a year?

00:29:46 ◼   ► But at some point, it settles in,

00:29:48 ◼   ► and that's, you know, how successful you are.

00:29:50 ◼   ► But like one month in, which is, you know,

00:29:52 ◼   ► we're a little, I guess we're maybe like five weeks now,

00:29:55 ◼   ► it's too early to tell.

00:29:58 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:30:00 ◼   ► But in the meantime, we're, you know,

00:30:02 ◼   ► tinkering with some of this stuff.

00:30:04 ◼   ► I kind of hate adding the simple, elegant notes

00:30:07 ◼   ► after the name, but I don't know, maybe it helps.

00:30:10 ◼   ► If it does help, then it's worth it.

00:30:13 ◼   ► But to me it's a little, not gross,

00:30:16 ◼   ► because they're not keywords.

00:30:18 ◼   ► - No, I like it, it's like a subheading,

00:30:21 ◼   ► which I think probably is responsible

00:30:23 ◼   ► for a lot more book sales than people think.

00:30:27 ◼   ► It's not that it's, it's not like you're trying

00:30:29 ◼   ► to goose your search rankings,

00:30:31 ◼   ► trying to explain what your clever name means.

00:30:35 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, that's exactly the analogy my friend Paul Kofosis noticed, the name change

00:30:41 ◼   ► in the listings. And he said the exact same thing, that it's like the way that books,

00:30:45 ◼   ► especially non-fiction books nowadays, can't just have a simple title. It has to be a title

00:30:50 ◼   ► and then an explanation of what it is.

00:30:54 ◼   ► And it's not like you're going to just name your app "simple elegant notes." I mean, you

00:30:59 ◼   ► could, but that's not going to look good on the springboard.

00:31:06 ◼   ► So like Moneyball, I just looked it up. So Moneyball, the great book by Michael Lewis

00:31:13 ◼   ► on the Oakland days from the late 90s and early 2000s, it's not just Moneyball, it's

00:31:21 ◼   ► Moneyball, the art of winning an unfair game. Everything has like, all books have like a

00:31:27 ◼   ► little colon you know subtitle I almost feel like the App Store should make that

00:31:32 ◼   ► a field let it be name and then have like a subtitle field with a fairly

00:31:41 ◼   ► severe character limit you know like 50 or something like that yeah something

00:31:47 ◼   ► yes I agree especially if they're going to maintain this requirement that no two

00:31:52 ◼   ► apps can have the same title because now what are we?

00:31:58 ◼   ► We passed a million apps.

00:31:59 ◼   ► We're getting close to a million apps.

00:32:02 ◼   ► At some point, you just run out of options.

00:32:06 ◼   ► If some app that launched five years ago and hasn't been updated has the name that you

00:32:10 ◼   ► want to use and you're putting a lot of time and effort into it, well, you should be able

00:32:14 ◼   ► to use that name.

00:32:15 ◼   ► I wonder at what point they're going to start, or if they ever will, but at what point they'll

00:32:20 ◼   ► start calling seemingly dead apps from the App Store.

00:32:26 ◼   ► How many apps are in there now that don't even run on iOS 6, let alone 7?

00:32:31 ◼   ► I think that's kind of how they do, right?

00:32:35 ◼   ► If you're running iOS 6, can you even, in the App Store, see apps that don't support

00:32:39 ◼   ► iOS 6 in search or anything like that?

00:32:44 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:32:45 ◼   ► I don't think it would let you download an app that you can't run.

00:32:49 ◼   ► I guess that's kind of how they…

00:32:52 ◼   ► But are they still sitting there squatting on names, I believe that they are.

00:32:55 ◼   ► Oh yeah, oh yeah, I would assume so.

00:32:56 ◼   ► Yeah, so yeah, do they ever, you know, just kind of start…

00:33:03 ◼   ► But then what if someone is still using that app on an old first edition, like we have

00:33:08 ◼   ► the first iPad and now we're totally hosed because, you know, eventually a lot of the

00:33:13 ◼   ► apps are going to break.

00:33:14 ◼   ► So far they haven't yet, but…

00:33:16 ◼   ► But you want to re-download it now because you… should you expect that you can still

00:33:22 ◼   ► download it?

00:33:23 ◼   ► I guess.

00:33:24 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:33:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:33:27 ◼   ► And that's the kind of stuff where I assume someone's thinking about it, but I don't

00:33:31 ◼   ► know.

00:33:32 ◼   ► It's going to be interesting.

00:33:36 ◼   ► So I think that is true.

00:33:37 ◼   ► I think since last you were on the show, the San Francisco City Guide…

00:33:42 ◼   ► I know you got it out just before WWDC because I remember linking to it because I thought

00:33:46 ◼   ► it would be helpful for all the avalanche of during fireball nerds who are in town.

00:33:54 ◼   ► But you were on before that though, right?

00:33:56 ◼   ► Dave: Yeah, I think I was on not too far before that.

00:34:00 ◼   ► Dave So how has that gone now that you've expanded

00:34:03 ◼   ► to two?

00:34:04 ◼   ► Dave So a couple of things.

00:34:07 ◼   ► First of all, the concept people really like it and they dig it.

00:34:13 ◼   ► I've been getting just tremendous feedback from people saying, "Yeah, this is great.

00:34:16 ◼   ► This is exactly what I need while I'm traveling," or even just getting outside the house.

00:34:22 ◼   ► I'd love a thoughtful, short, simple list of great places to go.

00:34:31 ◼   ► The best feedback I think that we've gotten is from dozens of people who say, "This is

00:34:36 ◼   ► awesome, I really want to make this. I want to make these lists. I don't want to get

00:34:43 ◼   ► too detailed now, but that's kind of where I see the future of this going, is less about

00:34:50 ◼   ► me making these lists. Although, I love making them and I'm going to continue making them

00:34:55 ◼   ► forever, but trying to figure out an easy and fun way for other people to make them.

00:35:03 ◼   ► some of the lessons we've learned about the bottlenecks in production.

00:35:10 ◼   ► Or maybe not surprisingly, the longest time-wise element of making one of these City Notes

00:35:15 ◼   ► apps is getting photographs.

00:35:20 ◼   ► Some of these I take myself.

00:35:22 ◼   ► Some of them are publicity photos from the venues.

00:35:25 ◼   ► Some of them are Flickr Creative Commons.

00:35:28 ◼   ► But by far the biggest time suck is photos.

00:35:32 ◼   ► So how do we kind of rethink the product so that we don't rely necessarily on having

00:35:36 ◼   ► a photo for each place right away?

00:35:37 ◼   ► Right.

00:35:38 ◼   ► Or having a super high-quality photo.

00:35:40 ◼   ► Is that right?

00:35:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:42 ◼   ► I mean, most of these are professional photos, and I have to photo credit the photographer

00:35:46 ◼   ► because they're doing it.

00:35:49 ◼   ► Either the restaurant or the shop has either paid them or has some arrangement with the

00:35:53 ◼   ► photographer where they can use these as their official publicity photos.

00:35:59 ◼   ► But the notion of the iPhone and the iPad as a creative device and not just a consumption

00:36:06 ◼   ► device, that's something I really want to tap into and let people really be creative

00:36:11 ◼   ► with these things.

00:36:13 ◼   ► It's not going to happen overnight, but that's really the direction that I want to

00:36:17 ◼   ► take it, and I think it's going to be a lot more fun and more successful.

00:36:22 ◼   ► It's great when we release a new app like the San Francisco app and it gets, like you

00:36:28 ◼   ► said, some press attention or a daring fireball link or something like that.

00:36:33 ◼   ► Both times we launched new cities, we became the number one paid travel app on the App

00:36:38 ◼   ► Store.

00:36:39 ◼   ► The first time it happened, I was in Tokyo.

00:36:40 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh my God, did I sell 20,000 apps today?" or something like that.

00:36:46 ◼   ► It's like, "No, it's actually a few hundred."

00:36:51 ◼   ► to rely less on being ranked so high in paid apps

00:36:56 ◼   ► and figure out new ways to get more people using it

00:36:59 ◼   ► and not just downloading it and then not looking at it again,

00:37:03 ◼   ► but really kind of playing with it every day.

00:37:05 ◼   ► So obviously, I wish I had thought about all this

00:37:10 ◼   ► and knew it when I started over a year ago,

00:37:12 ◼   ► but that doesn't work like that.

00:37:15 ◼   ► Do you think for you guys, is your main--

00:37:18 ◼   ► or is it like-- maybe it's 50-50.

00:37:20 ◼   ► But are you more interested in getting people aware of City Notes outside the App Store,

00:37:25 ◼   ► just general awareness? Or is it about raising the awareness inside the App Store and getting

00:37:31 ◼   ► good rankings on the travel section in the App Store?

00:37:36 ◼   ► Um, I would say primarily now would be more outside the App Store. I would say that one of the

00:37:46 ◼   ► kind of engineering or whatever you want to call it, product decisions I made very early

00:37:50 ◼   ► on was that in the current kind of existence, each city would be a separate app.

00:37:57 ◼   ► And I thought that would be the smart way to go about it because people would be searching

00:38:03 ◼   ► for specific cities if they wanted information.

00:38:07 ◼   ► And I thought that there would be enough search volume in the app store to make that a good

00:38:12 ◼   ► decision.

00:38:13 ◼   ► But it turns out that it's just not.

00:38:17 ◼   ► What we'll eventually do and what we probably should have done from the beginning was just

00:38:20 ◼   ► make one big app that has all the cities in it as either in-app purchases or some sort

00:38:25 ◼   ► of in-app feature because the number of people searching specifically for San Francisco Guide

00:38:33 ◼   ► is less than single digits every day or the search results.

00:38:41 ◼   ► But anytime we do an article that gets linked or even a tweet, there's a huge spike in

00:38:49 ◼   ► sales, potentially thousands a day.

00:38:57 ◼   ► As the App Store gets bigger, and I guess there's just more apps and still the same

00:39:01 ◼   ► amount of space on your screen, so really to be a successful brand in mobile now, you

00:39:08 ◼   ► you really have to be everywhere,

00:39:11 ◼   ► not just in the App Store.

00:39:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's important.

00:39:15 ◼   ► I think it's important for us too,

00:39:17 ◼   ► 'cause I really do think long-term.

00:39:18 ◼   ► I mean, hopefully we'll eke out a spot

00:39:21 ◼   ► where people are looking for notes.

00:39:23 ◼   ► Like, I want a better notes app

00:39:25 ◼   ► than the one that comes with the phone.

00:39:27 ◼   ► We'll find Vesper in the App Store

00:39:29 ◼   ► and consider it and maybe buy it.

00:39:31 ◼   ► But I think ultimately our best chance

00:39:35 ◼   ► to raise awareness of Vesper outside the App Store so that people go to the App Store looking

00:39:41 ◼   ► for Vesper. I think it's a better and more sustainable strategy. You know, like I think,

00:39:48 ◼   ► you know, I mean, obviously Evernote is a huge, you know, 500 pound gorilla in that space. And

00:39:55 ◼   ► I think, you know, and they clearly have that, like, it's not just that people get Evernote

00:39:58 ◼   ► because they were in the App Store looking for a notes app and found it. People have heard of

00:40:03 ◼   ► Evernote and I think then you go to the App Store and find it.

00:40:06 ◼   ► Yeah, well with Evernote, I mean that's how especially once you are that size and

00:40:12 ◼   ► you have to go cross-platform and you know one of the things we think about is

00:40:16 ◼   ► like well what if we had an Android version how would we charge for stuff or

00:40:21 ◼   ► even just a web version like you know I assume maybe someday there will be a web

00:40:24 ◼   ► version of Vesper or you know something that that were the iTunes currency

00:40:29 ◼   ► doesn't exist. How do you even think about that? Do you need a virtual currency everywhere?

00:40:34 ◼   ► Do you just need to use different payment engines and that sort of stuff? Thankfully,

00:40:39 ◼   ► we're still at a point in simplicity, and it looks like you are too, where that's not really a concern.

00:40:44 ◼   ► But at some point, it will be.

00:40:49 ◼   ► In general, it's just about being wherever people are who want smart, in my case,

00:40:54 ◼   ► smart city information and in your case a very simple notes system.

00:41:01 ◼   ► So the other thing too is man search results in the App Store are just

00:41:06 ◼   ► unpredictable. I mean sometimes you type something and you think you're gonna it

00:41:09 ◼   ► you get exactly what you expect the one thing you're looking for is the first

00:41:13 ◼   ► and the result other times it's not like the other day there are maybe it was

00:41:18 ◼   ► just yesterday I linked to on during fireball to a new version of very cool

00:41:22 ◼   ► calendar app called Agenda. And it's, you know, it's been around for a while, they're

00:41:26 ◼   ► up to version 4.0. They've, you know, been successful enough that they, you know, have,

00:41:32 ◼   ► you know, professional full time developers have gotten to 4.0. But when you go to the

00:41:36 ◼   ► App Store, and type agenda, you get, it's all calendar apps that come up, but they're

00:41:43 ◼   ► so, number one, they're just awful. Just you can just tell from the screenshots, they're

00:41:46 ◼   ► just, they're just like, horrible. And agenda was actually I forget where it was, it was

00:41:52 ◼   ► way down. It was like not even in the top ten in the results, which is just weird. You

00:41:57 ◼   ► would think an app named Agenda that is popular would be—how could it not be the top hit

00:42:05 ◼   ► when you search for Agenda?

00:42:06 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yeah, and the worst time for that is, unfortunately,

00:42:11 ◼   ► when an app is new and comes out. That's the day where everyone wants it. You go to

00:42:18 ◼   ► the App Store and you search for the new app and it just hasn't, I guess the cache hasn't

00:42:23 ◼   ► synced up yet or something like that and you just, you don't find it. And that's, and I

00:42:27 ◼   ► don't know how do you get past that?

00:42:30 ◼   ► We weren't surprised by that. I mean Brent, you know, Simmons has already had a bunch

00:42:33 ◼   ► of apps in the store and so he knew that. And I follow closely, and Dave too, Dave has

00:42:38 ◼   ► submitted enough apps that he knew that. I mean, so we weren't surprised. But it was

00:42:41 ◼   ► still frustrating because we were getting a lot of tweets day one like, "Hey, heard

00:42:45 ◼   ► about your new app, went to App Store, searched for Vesper, doesn't show up. Is there a problem?

00:42:51 ◼   ► Is it not in my country yet?" It's like, "No, it's just not in this iTunes search

00:42:55 ◼   ► server for your country yet."

00:42:56 ◼   ► Yeah, and I get that they have small teams and a lot of things to think about, but that

00:43:03 ◼   ► would be something… If there were one thing in the App Store that they could really spend

00:43:09 ◼   ► and more time on, it would be search because the editorial stuff they do is actually really

00:43:16 ◼   ► good and when you get featured, you can definitely see a bump and that was awesome.

00:43:22 ◼   ► But the search is an everyday thing that just as a user is frustrating and now as a developer,

00:43:28 ◼   ► I guess, needs some attention.

00:43:31 ◼   ► But…

00:43:32 ◼   ► All right.

00:43:33 ◼   ► Let me take a second break here and tell you about our second sponsor.

00:43:36 ◼   ► Our second sponsor is brand new, first time on the talk show.

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00:43:44 ◼   ► It's 23andMe.

00:43:46 ◼   ► What they've got is you give them $99

00:43:50 ◼   ► and they send you a DNA, personal DNA testing kit.

00:43:54 ◼   ► It's like something right out of like

00:43:56 ◼   ► Minority Report or something.

00:43:58 ◼   ► You get over 240 personalized health trait

00:44:02 ◼   ► and ancestry reports.

00:44:05 ◼   ► So they give you your ancestry information.

00:44:07 ◼   ► You can discover your global origins and maybe even,

00:44:11 ◼   ► I don't know, find living relatives around the world.

00:44:13 ◼   ► They have over a quarter million members already.

00:44:17 ◼   ► So it's the largest DNA ancestry service in the world.

00:44:20 ◼   ► And it's very easy to do.

00:44:22 ◼   ► You order a kit online.

00:44:24 ◼   ► You provide a saliva sample.

00:44:26 ◼   ► So you don't even have to puncture your skin

00:44:28 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:44:29 ◼   ► It's not nothing like that.

00:44:30 ◼   ► It's just a little bit of saliva.

00:44:32 ◼   ► And you send it back to them

00:44:33 ◼   ► in the provided return postage.

00:44:36 ◼   ► Then it goes to their lab and their lab,

00:44:39 ◼   ► I don't know, insert all the crazy tests that they do there

00:44:42 ◼   ► and then they send back to you your personal reports

00:44:46 ◼   ► in a totally secure online account.

00:44:49 ◼   ► And it includes fun stuff too.

00:44:52 ◼   ► You can find out, maybe you find out

00:44:53 ◼   ► you're related to somebody famous.

00:44:55 ◼   ► You can find out how closely you're related to Neanderthals.

00:45:00 ◼   ► You know, I think we can guess that there's some people

00:45:02 ◼   ► who are closer and closer than others.

00:45:04 ◼   ► And even this crazy stuff,

00:45:08 ◼   ► like everybody knows about this stuff with jeans.

00:45:11 ◼   ► You know how some people, when they taste cilantro,

00:45:16 ◼   ► it tastes like soap?

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00:45:19 ◼   ► based on your kit,

00:45:20 ◼   ► whether you're gonna like the taste of cilantro.

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00:45:26 ◼   ► Go to 23andMe.com/thetalkshow.

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00:45:42 ◼   ► Invention of the Year.

00:45:45 ◼   ► And that's when they were named that.

00:45:46 ◼   ► That was back in 2008.

00:45:47 ◼   ► Their price was $299.

00:45:49 ◼   ► Now it's down to $99.

00:45:51 ◼   ► So go check them out if you're curious about your DNA.

00:45:53 ◼   ► Have you done it yet?

00:45:56 ◼   ► No, I haven't.

00:45:57 ◼   ► I haven't either.

00:45:59 ◼   ► - So you know that Sergey Brin's wife

00:46:02 ◼   ► is one of the founders.

00:46:03 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:46:04 ◼   ► - And do you remember when he started blogging?

00:46:06 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:46:07 ◼   ► - That was like his first or second post,

00:46:09 ◼   ► I actually just found it, 2008,

00:46:11 ◼   ► where he wrote about how he found out

00:46:13 ◼   ► that he has a gene and, you know,

00:46:18 ◼   ► trying to read fast, but could potentially have Parkinson's.

00:46:24 ◼   ► So it kind of, you know, is that the kind of information

00:46:27 ◼   ► would be useful to have at this point in your life or not? I don't know. But then he kind

00:46:31 ◼   ► of stopped blogging after that. So it was very interesting.

00:46:35 ◼   ► Dave: No, I should do it. I definitely – it's just kind of amazing to me that you can do

00:46:41 ◼   ► it. It just sounds to me like – it's like I read so much science fiction when I was

00:46:46 ◼   ► a kid and a teenager. And it just sounds like something out of the science fiction I used

00:46:51 ◼   ► to read. Send the company the thing and then you get back a report telling you, "Oh,

00:46:57 ◼   ► everything about your DNA. I tweeted the other day. I had a tweet the other day that I was

00:47:03 ◼   ► watching. I started watching the Terminator movies with my son, Jonas, who's nine. And

00:47:07 ◼   ► this is actually, it sounds like a joke, but it really was not a joke. It was that the

00:47:12 ◼   ► aspect of the first, the 1984 original Terminator that he found the most implausible was phone

00:47:20 ◼   ► books.

00:47:21 ◼   ► And that they used to be everywhere and that they listed everyone and it was the only way

00:47:25 ◼   ► to find someone.

00:47:26 ◼   ► I used to love the phone book.

00:47:29 ◼   ► He was like, "Why wouldn't they just look them up online?"

00:47:33 ◼   ► I was like, "There was no online."

00:47:35 ◼   ► He was like, "But they're terminators.

00:47:37 ◼   ► Wouldn't they have it in their heads?"

00:47:38 ◼   ► I was like, "But the database didn't exist at the time."

00:47:43 ◼   ► It blew his mind.

00:47:44 ◼   ► And then funny enough, just total coincidence, this was the week when whatever the remnants

00:47:51 ◼   ► of the old Yellow Pages company that they actually came by and dropped off a phone book

00:47:56 ◼   ► in front of our house.

00:47:57 ◼   ► I don't know if I still get them here.

00:48:00 ◼   ► I also saw a huge pile of them.

00:48:03 ◼   ► I mean like it must have been at least 30 or 40 of them.

00:48:06 ◼   ► Just all 30 or 40 of them right next to one of the public trash bins here in Philadelphia

00:48:14 ◼   ► right at the street corner.

00:48:15 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:48:16 ◼   ► I think that's what happens to them.

00:48:18 ◼   ► They become mountains of garbage.

00:48:21 ◼   ► It's like, however rude it is to come by and put like a flyer for, you know, a pizza place

00:48:28 ◼   ► or a cleaning service or something like that, put it on your door knob or put it through

00:48:33 ◼   ► your mail slot or something like that.

00:48:37 ◼   ► It's incredibly rude to drop off a four pound stack of paper.

00:48:44 ◼   ► And it just is such a, to me, like such a, because you know nobody uses the damn things

00:48:48 ◼   ► anymore.

00:48:49 ◼   ► mind-blowing waste of paper.

00:48:54 ◼   ► What do people do for high chairs now? Booster seats?

00:48:58 ◼   ► Somebody asked me that on Twitter. They did say that. I think that everybody has like

00:49:04 ◼   ► real booster seats now. And I think like

00:49:09 ◼   ► car travel with kids has gotten so

00:49:14 ◼   ► like serious, like you know, when I was a kid,

00:49:17 ◼   ► my sister and I used to just stand on the backseat

00:49:19 ◼   ► of the car while we'd go places and jump around.

00:49:21 ◼   ► Now it's like everybody, you know,

00:49:24 ◼   ► there's like, you know, booster seats are like,

00:49:28 ◼   ► I don't know, they're like rated by the,

00:49:30 ◼   ► or approved by the government.

00:49:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, have their own built-in iPod docks and everything.

00:49:35 ◼   ► - Right, and cup holders.

00:49:38 ◼   ► - That is though a great physical reminder of, you know,

00:49:42 ◼   ► You have all these startup wanks talking about disruption all the time and all that stuff.

00:49:46 ◼   ► But the phone companies, they should have been Google.

00:49:51 ◼   ► They should have been the ones to be the ones maintaining and helping us find everything

00:49:57 ◼   ► on the internet.

00:49:58 ◼   ► But instead, they were so concerned about the business of their phone book division

00:50:05 ◼   ► that they got completely passed up.

00:50:08 ◼   ► Right.

00:50:09 ◼   ► Because what a monopoly that was.

00:50:10 ◼   ► What a fantastic monopoly, right?

00:50:12 ◼   ► Like you're – all of a sudden, your shower breaks.

00:50:19 ◼   ► No hot water comes out of your shower.

00:50:20 ◼   ► I mean you got to get a plumber.

00:50:24 ◼   ► Everybody would just go to the Yellow Pages.

00:50:26 ◼   ► And there was only one Yellow Pages because it was – the phone service was a monopoly.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Imagine how artificially inflated the advertising rates were for like businesses like plumbers

00:50:38 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:50:39 ◼   ► phone number in red or something or--

00:50:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was a thing.

00:50:43 ◼   ► Yeah, you'd get like your listing in red.

00:50:47 ◼   ► - Or to be unlisted.

00:50:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that was, isn't that ridiculous?

00:50:50 ◼   ► You used to have to pay for that?

00:50:52 ◼   ► - Google should charge for that, but no, no one wants that.

00:50:55 ◼   ► No, everyone wants to be ranked higher.

00:50:57 ◼   ► No one wants to be, I guess there's the robots TXT file,

00:51:01 ◼   ► but they should charge for that.

00:51:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would pay for that.

00:51:06 ◼   ► - No, but it's so funny, like, just to think that

00:51:09 ◼   ► I guess the same thing happened with the newspapers and classified ads too.

00:51:13 ◼   ► You're not thinking it.

00:51:15 ◼   ► And that's why I always give props to – I hate saying that.

00:51:20 ◼   ► I really respect Reed Hastings though from Netflix because we're going to get rid of

00:51:24 ◼   ► our DVD business and call it Quickster.

00:51:27 ◼   ► And everyone gave him crap for that.

00:51:29 ◼   ► That was ultimately a dumb idea.

00:51:31 ◼   ► But he was coming from the right place.

00:51:33 ◼   ► Right. It's the rare instance of somebody who was willing to truly saw where the puck was going,

00:51:42 ◼   ► regardless of where the puck is right now, and wanted to get there as soon as possible.

00:51:47 ◼   ► I think, and thankfully, you know, the nice thing is they recovered.

00:51:52 ◼   ► Actually, you had to re-sign up for DVDs a few months ago to rent something.

00:51:59 ◼   ► Oh, it wasn't even good. It was the brown bunny.

00:52:03 ◼   ► What the hell is that?

00:52:06 ◼   ► Look it up. I don't want to talk about it. Don't sign up for Netflix DVDs because then I just kept

00:52:14 ◼   ► getting more and more. I finally canceled it and sent them all back.

00:52:16 ◼   ► Is it a kid's movie or an adult movie?

00:52:18 ◼   ► No, it's not a kid's movie. It's not at all a kid's movie. I was at a party and I heard about it.

00:52:25 ◼   ► Not a kid's movie.

00:52:29 ◼   ► I'm looking it up.

00:52:31 ◼   ► Not even a good movie, but it's only on Netflix DVDs.

00:52:36 ◼   ► I don't get it.

00:52:38 ◼   ► It doesn't even...

00:52:40 ◼   ► You'll look it up later and you'll see.

00:52:42 ◼   ► It's a Vincent Gallo movie.

00:52:44 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:52:46 ◼   ► Anyways, no more DVDs for me.

00:52:50 ◼   ► Not much else going on news-wise.

00:52:53 ◼   ► Only a little tiny thing. Well, what? Do you have something?

00:52:56 ◼   ► Oh, just a gloriously slow period.

00:53:00 ◼   ► So actually there's one thing that's kind of been interesting is these cell phone companies

00:53:05 ◼   ► with these new subscription plans for your phone.

00:53:10 ◼   ► Have you seen that?

00:53:11 ◼   ► Like they'll charge you like $10, $20, $30, $50 a month so that you can get more upgrades

00:53:18 ◼   ► every year, you know, upgrade your phone every few months.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:53:22 ◼   ► I saw T-Mobile pushing that.

00:53:25 ◼   ► T-Mobile and then of course everyone in mobile copies each other so immediately AT&T and Verizon have announced theirs too

00:53:31 ◼   ► At different prices and some of this already existed

00:53:34 ◼   ► It was kind of the this is just a different way of getting people to buy

00:53:38 ◼   ► Insurance for their phone before it was if your phone is stolen or lost will replace it

00:53:43 ◼   ► Well now it's if there's a new

00:53:45 ◼   ► HTC Android phone that you like more than your current one then you can trade in and and get the newest one

00:53:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it seems like it's a step even further in the direction of obfuscating the purchasing

00:53:59 ◼   ► of a phone. You know, we're like, to me, the natural way, and I know that outside the US,

00:54:05 ◼   ► this is actually, you know, like in Western Europe, I think this is very common, where

00:54:09 ◼   ► you buy a phone for an actual price, unsubsidized, and you just pay X dollars a month for service.

00:54:19 ◼   ► and there is no contract and that there's, you know,

00:54:23 ◼   ► but that means your iPhone is six or 700 bucks.

00:54:26 ◼   ► And then you realize it is,

00:54:28 ◼   ► but your monthly bill is a lot lower

00:54:31 ◼   ► than what we pay here in the US

00:54:32 ◼   ► because there's no subsidy, right?

00:54:34 ◼   ► Like we, you know, and I see how the psychology of that

00:54:38 ◼   ► works, but you know, you're not really getting a $600 iPhone

00:54:43 ◼   ► for $199, you're paying that, you know,

00:54:48 ◼   ► It's like paying off a credit card over two years.

00:54:51 ◼   ► And these subscription plans just seem like a way

00:54:53 ◼   ► to even obfuscate that further.

00:54:56 ◼   ► - Yes, and it does kind of, you know,

00:55:00 ◼   ► especially in the Android world,

00:55:01 ◼   ► where there are possibly two or three phones a year

00:55:06 ◼   ► that are significantly better than

00:55:08 ◼   ► whatever you had last year,

00:55:10 ◼   ► that might be interesting, you know?

00:55:11 ◼   ► Oh, there's a new-- - Would they let you do that?

00:55:13 ◼   ► Would they let you replace it like two or three times a year?

00:55:15 ◼   ► Yeah, but you got to give them the old phone, which you've essentially been paying for and

00:55:21 ◼   ► now don't get the resale value or even just the old phone.

00:55:25 ◼   ► So the bottom line is that it's kind of a rip off.

00:55:29 ◼   ► Maybe it'll be something that people who don't care about necessarily the best value find

00:55:36 ◼   ► interesting because they can get a new phone every year.

00:55:39 ◼   ► And I wonder if this is successful, if this becomes the way that people buy phones, which

00:55:46 ◼   ► I don't think it will, but if it does, how sustainable then is Apple's one phone per

00:55:51 ◼   ► year kind of model?

00:55:54 ◼   ► I guess right now it works because most people don't even get a phone every, most people

00:56:01 ◼   ► do it every two years, so that's fine.

00:56:03 ◼   ► But what if you-

00:56:04 ◼   ► I can't imagine.

00:56:05 ◼   ► It just seems like, I don't know.

00:56:06 ◼   ► they're made a service that most people don't want.

00:56:10 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:56:11 ◼   ► It is a huge rip off, and it's not like

00:56:12 ◼   ► you're getting cheaper service for it or anything either.

00:56:15 ◼   ► So that subsidy that you're theoretically

00:56:17 ◼   ► were paying off with expensive service,

00:56:20 ◼   ► you're still paying that expensive service,

00:56:21 ◼   ► so I don't know.

00:56:23 ◼   ► - I think people want, I mean,

00:56:25 ◼   ► I think most people really just want a phone

00:56:27 ◼   ► that they can rely on, you know.

00:56:30 ◼   ► Has battery, good enough battery to get them

00:56:31 ◼   ► through the day and does the things that they want.

00:56:33 ◼   ► And if, you know, if the phone's not giving them

00:56:35 ◼   ► problems like being slow or running out of battery halfway through the day then

00:56:40 ◼   ► they call it a win and they're not looking to replace it right I agree with

00:56:45 ◼   ► that I think that's that's probably right so I don't think these will be

00:56:49 ◼   ► hugely popular but yeah you know the other thing too about that one phone a

00:56:53 ◼   ► year thing is even with the one phone a year pace at Apple it's still every time

00:57:02 ◼   ► they do it always garners these really that's it that's it's just like last

00:57:07 ◼   ► year's phone but blank every single year right so if they were to step it up to

00:57:13 ◼   ► six months into a year right it would be even more incremental like I don't think

00:57:19 ◼   ► it wouldn't it wouldn't help them increase the pace of technology it would

00:57:24 ◼   ► just mean that maybe instead of getting a new camera and a new quad-core GPU

00:57:32 ◼   ► GPU in the phone all at once, you'd have gotten the new camera in a model six months ago and

00:57:38 ◼   ► then that same camera but now with a quad core, you know, GPU six months after that.

00:57:44 ◼   ► Even less dramatic delta of change.

00:57:47 ◼   ► Right.

00:57:48 ◼   ► I don't think that's gonna…

00:57:49 ◼   ► I think the people who just vaguely want Apple to release two phones a year instead of one

00:57:54 ◼   ► phone a year somehow think that magically that would, you know, that there would still

00:57:58 ◼   ► be the same technological delta between phones.

00:58:01 ◼   ► That somehow if they released 12 phones a year, we'd have paper-thin phones that are

00:58:08 ◼   ► made out of transparent aluminum or something.

00:58:11 ◼   ► Yeah, we'll see.

00:58:15 ◼   ► I do think it's interesting how everything now, I mean like so Apple earnings are coming

00:58:18 ◼   ► up next week and I think pretty much everyone out there is expecting just kind of extremely

00:58:24 ◼   ► boring results because there really hasn't been anything happening. At some point, they'll

00:58:32 ◼   ► have to get out of this current thing where everything comes out on October 10th or whatever

00:58:38 ◼   ► and then that's it for the whole year. I mean I don't know how – I can't see how that

00:58:42 ◼   ► would be helpful for anyone inside or outside Apple.

00:58:45 ◼   ► But –

00:58:46 ◼   ► Yeah. I think it's – I don't think that that's on purpose. I think it's just the

00:58:49 ◼   ► way that the current product cycles have all worked out.

00:58:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:54 ◼   ► that it just, you know, that I think that there's,

00:58:59 ◼   ► there was a push, you know, last year.

00:59:01 ◼   ► You all right?

00:59:03 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, everything's cool.

00:59:05 ◼   ► - That maybe had a stroke or something.

00:59:08 ◼   ► You know, there was a push last year-

00:59:09 ◼   ► - There's a much better noise than that.

00:59:11 ◼   ► - To get these new iPads out in time for the holiday.

00:59:14 ◼   ► And, you know, I think whatever's coming up

00:59:16 ◼   ► for the iPad this year, it wasn't ready in February.

00:59:20 ◼   ► But you know, last year was the weird year

00:59:22 ◼   ► where they had the iPad 3 on the, you know, until then regular schedule coming out around

00:59:27 ◼   ► April. And then they, for the first time, had a new one come out six months after that.

00:59:33 ◼   ► And I don't think that meant that they were going to do it every six months. I don't,

00:59:36 ◼   ► I'm almost certain that was never the plan. It was, I think, a sort of a stop gap because

00:59:41 ◼   ► they knew whatever the one is coming out this year wasn't going to be ready until, you know,

00:59:47 ◼   ► late in 2013. So rather than go 18 months with the iPad 3, better to only go six months

00:59:53 ◼   ► and quick, you know, improve the GPU and put the lightning adapter in there.

01:00:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:01 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the sort of incremental thing that would happen with the phone if they came

01:00:06 ◼   ► out with new phones every six months. And I think the only reason they did it with the

01:00:08 ◼   ► iPad last year is that they knew that that iPad, I guess call it the iPad 4, was going

01:00:15 ◼   ► to be on the market for a whole year.

01:00:18 ◼   ► Yeah, that makes sense.

01:00:22 ◼   ► Are you going to follow Jonny Ive's desire and get a white iPhone for the first time

01:00:27 ◼   ► this year?

01:00:28 ◼   ► No, definitely not.

01:00:29 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised though.

01:00:30 ◼   ► I would not be surprised if this is the year though where the iPhones come out with multiple

01:00:36 ◼   ► colors.

01:00:37 ◼   ► Oh, no.

01:00:38 ◼   ► I think that's definitely going to happen.

01:00:39 ◼   ► I do think it's interesting though that they really are playing up the white phone with

01:00:43 ◼   ► the with iOS 7 so I wonder I you know I don't know I mean I'm testing iOS 7 on

01:00:49 ◼   ► my black iPhone I'm actually using it now on my daily iPhone oh you are yeah

01:00:54 ◼   ► it's pretty good the latest beta is really it was a huge step up

01:00:58 ◼   ► stability wise so I you know I installed it and it's you know hasn't been a

01:01:02 ◼   ► problem I think it looks just fine on black I don't think it looks any better

01:01:09 ◼   ► on white I think the reason that they show white in all the marketing

01:01:13 ◼   ► materials now is one to be consistent and two because I feel like a lot of people make

01:01:19 ◼   ► good looking black phones and very few companies seem able to make a good white one. And Apple

01:01:27 ◼   ► you know itself famously struggled to get the white iPhone 4 out. I mean it took like

01:01:31 ◼   ► nine months after it was scheduled to come out. I think it's hard to do white and therefore

01:01:36 ◼   ► they can show something that most companies can't do. I think HTC is maybe the only other

01:01:40 ◼   ► company that makes a pretty good looking white phone.

01:01:42 ◼   ► And HTC is sort of obscure, and I think the Apple's white phones look way better than

01:01:49 ◼   ► Samsung's.

01:01:50 ◼   ► I don't know if I've even seen Samsung's up close.

01:01:55 ◼   ► Yeah, that's interesting.

01:01:57 ◼   ► And I would guess that their colorful color ones are going to look pretty great too.

01:02:04 ◼   ► I recently bought an iPod Touch to run beta software on.

01:02:12 ◼   ► I almost got one of those colored ones, but I went with the cheapo black and silver one.

01:02:19 ◼   ► But yeah, they're getting good with the colors.

01:02:22 ◼   ► So I'm actually excited.

01:02:23 ◼   ► I don't think I'm going to buy the cheap colorful one, but it's good that they'll be there,

01:02:28 ◼   ► I think.

01:02:29 ◼   ► I'm not convinced that they're going to do a cheap colorful one.

01:02:31 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:02:32 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

01:02:33 ◼   ► I don't know about that.

01:02:34 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:02:35 ◼   ► I want the big one, but that's another show.

01:02:37 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a whole other show.

01:02:39 ◼   ► No, I don't know.

01:02:40 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:02:41 ◼   ► I could be wrong, but I'm not entirely sure what to expect with the phones.

01:02:47 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure.

01:02:49 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised at all if there's no change at all, just that iPhone 5S.

01:02:54 ◼   ► iPhone 5 moves down into the scale and iPhone 4S becomes the free one.

01:02:59 ◼   ► Yeah, or they bring in the colorful one on the low end with lightning and everything.

01:03:05 ◼   ► Right. That would be the reason to do it. I mean, there is some sense that – and then

01:03:08 ◼   ► to have all of the phones be – there's two hardware angles on that. Have all the

01:03:13 ◼   ► phones have 16 to 9 screens and have all the phones have lightning adapters. That would

01:03:19 ◼   ► be the reason to introduce a new low-end iPhone instead of keeping the 4S around for another

01:03:28 ◼   ► year is the low end phone. And LTE possibilities on every device too. Yeah, I guess that too.

01:03:36 ◼   ► But I think that that way the screen dimension is the same on all the, you know, the aspect

01:03:39 ◼   ► ratio is the same on all phones. Perhaps the screen size would be the same on all phones

01:03:44 ◼   ► and the lightning adapter. So maybe. I mean, why would I want to buy a low end phone though?

01:03:50 ◼   ► I don't want that. I want the five S.

01:03:52 ◼   ► Boom. Me too. Sold. Cool. Well, we'll see. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

01:03:59 ◼   ► Let's wrap the show. Let's do it. Dan from thanks, man. Thanks.

01:04:02 ◼   ► Where can people find you online?

01:04:04 ◼   ► The best place is on Twitter, I guess from dome fr o me do me or

01:04:10 ◼   ► if you'd like to check out city notes, which is my mobile travel

01:04:16 ◼   ► city guides thing at city notes dot IO. What style dot IO? I think it's Indian Ocean Indian

01:04:24 ◼   ► Ocean where Vesper is Vesper app.co.co, which I think is very popular because it looks like,

01:04:30 ◼   ► hey, it's just like dot com, but without the M. But it's actually Columbia. Oh, cool. Yeah.

01:04:37 ◼   ► It's one of those things that I've seen over the past year or two dozens and dozens and dozens of

01:04:42 ◼   ► times, but never really thought what it meant until we registered it. And I thought, well,

01:04:45 ◼   ► I better know what the hell this is.

01:04:47 ◼   ► - I think one of the neat things about mobile

01:04:50 ◼   ► being so important for a young company now

01:04:55 ◼   ► is that the domain really doesn't matter

01:04:57 ◼   ► as much as it used to be.

01:04:58 ◼   ► And then, for me, the biggest thing is just

01:05:00 ◼   ► people being able to pronounce and spell it,

01:05:04 ◼   ► which is not the case for my other site, SplatF.

01:05:08 ◼   ► - .io is a cool domain, I think.

01:05:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, we're enjoying it so far.

01:05:14 ◼   ► We haven't been shut down by the Libyan government or any of that sort of stuff.

01:05:18 ◼   ► I actually, I would not register a .ly.

01:05:21 ◼   ► Oh no, that's scary man.

01:05:23 ◼   ► I think it's crazy. I think it's really nuts that Bitly, which has a lot of money in it, that they went that route.

01:05:31 ◼   ► And I know that they've got other domains that the same shortcuts work.

01:05:35 ◼   ► So if something happened and the Libyan government shut down Bitly, they have the J.MP.

01:05:41 ◼   ► I think they have bitly.com also.

01:05:43 ◼   ► also. Yeah, but it's just nuts to me that you'd put any brand equity in something

01:05:48 ◼   ► where it's at the at the liberty of Libya. But just wait for those North Korean

01:05:54 ◼   ► domains to open up. That's gonna be a feeding principle. What did they have?

01:05:59 ◼   ► Do they have dot NK? I don't know. You could get like JU dot NK. Alright,

01:06:08 ◼   ► let's wrap the show. Thanks.