0:00:00Have you been watching the Tour de France?
0:00:02No, have you?
0:00:03I actually have, I'm really into it.
0:00:06And 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.
0:00:22But 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.
0:00:47annoying. So you can actually buy an iPad app for 15 bucks that streams the entire thing
0:00:53live starting at like 6 a.m. Eastern time every day because it's happening in France,
0:00:59and you can airplay it to your TV. So it's basically – and then you can rewatch all
0:01:03of it at nighttime if you miss it that day. So it's one of those things where I'm
0:01:08so happy to spend $15 to get this wonderful full coverage live, no commercial thing, and
0:01:16And this is only possible because of my iPad and AirPlay, basically.
0:01:25I guess MLB has been doing this for a long time, but this is one of those things where
0:01:31it's once a year for three weeks and it's just the perfect kind of futuristic TV experience.
0:01:38sounds like a great deal I wouldn't hesitate to pay that 15 I mean 15 bucks
0:01:43for and it's like a 20-day event right yeah it's three weeks and it's you know
0:01:48like I said you know four or five hours a day so you know with no commercials so
0:01:52it's really great I bring this up because you know once again in the in
0:01:57the the talks of potentially Apple or Google or someone like that picking up
0:02:02the direct direct TV's current rights to NFL Sunday ticket and you know how cool
0:02:08that would be for it to launch the big Apple television with the NFL deal. That would be
0:02:14pretty cool. I don't know how realistic that is.
0:02:17But…
0:02:18Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there is… The thing that makes me think that it might
0:02:22be possible is that the Dish Network… Isn't it… It's Dish Network that has… Or it's
0:02:29the other one.
0:02:30It's DirecTV.
0:02:31DirecTV.
0:02:32Although, you know, everyone thinks they're going to merge two anyway. So, who knows?
0:02:34Right. Like the…
0:02:35The satellite radio guys.
0:02:37- Exactly, like Sirius and XM, because there's only two
0:02:39and they're still probably getting their butts kicked
0:02:42by cable, but-- - Exactly.
0:02:45- I've heard that that's really sort of the only reason
0:02:48DirecTV is even in business, that that deal,
0:02:52that NFL deal is so important to them.
0:02:55- I think that's a big thing, and obviously,
0:02:59the parts of the country that don't have Fios
0:03:02or good cable access, that's really your best option
0:03:05for HD and they were way ahead of the cable companies even,
0:03:10a lot of them at least, with over 100 HD channels
0:03:13and all that stuff.
0:03:14So I guess there are some redeeming qualities to DirecTV
0:03:17but I would guess that pretty much everyone I know
0:03:20who has it only has it because of the football deal.
0:03:23- Yeah.
0:03:25So I could definitely see Apple doing it.
0:03:26Every time I bring this up, this idea that Apple
0:03:28should buy out or either buy it, get it, steal it from
0:03:34or overbid, I guess, I don't mean steal, but overbid, you know, pay more than Direct TV
0:03:41can afford to pay to get the NFL. Or add it on as a, you know, somehow get it to be non-exclusive.
0:03:48I don't know. Just somehow throw money at the NFL until they say, "Okay, you can show
0:03:52the games on Apple TV." It would be a huge deal in the United States. And whenever I
0:03:58bring this up, people from outside the United States would say, "Well, why in the hell would
0:04:03I care about this. I don't even understand the rule. Well, the point would be, it wouldn't
0:04:06just be that Apple would only get rights to US pro football, and that's it. They would,
0:04:13obviously, that would be part of a strategy to do the same thing around the world, you
0:04:16know, get cricket in India and, you know, soccer all over the place, right, obviously,
0:04:21soccer in everywhere else. You know, I think like, that's the kind of thing where I think
0:04:27diehard soccer fans are already have these streaming services that are that are pretty
0:04:31I mean, I even remember in the middle school, my friend would stream Windows Media or Real
0:04:39Video or something, soccer games for the Champions League or something like that.
0:04:44So it's not like this is a new idea, but this is the kind of thing where even just these
0:04:48little updates on the Apple TV have made it a lot more interesting and useful to me, like
0:04:52that HBO Go thing that was added.
0:04:55I've been able to watch HBO Go on a computer and an iPad for a long time, but when it's
0:05:01It's one click away and it's sitting there already on your TV.
0:05:04I just tore through that whole season of Vice, for example, just because it was so easy.
0:05:08I didn't have to think about it.
0:05:10I didn't have to borrow my iPad or my iPhone for AirPlay or anything like that.
0:05:15I'm really excited about that.
0:05:16I think even just the little updates, they've been making it been great.
0:05:19If we can get this Tour de France on there and maybe some sort of live Olympic stuff,
0:05:25that could be really cool.
0:05:27When they added HBO Go to the Apple TV box, I don't think I tweeted it. I think I put
0:05:34it on app.net. That's usually where I go with super nerdy stuff that I don't want to bother
0:05:39all my Twitter followers with.
0:05:40That's too nerdy for me even.
0:05:42Well, when I signed up for it on my iPad and iPhone, whenever, a year ago, a year and a
0:05:47half ago, whenever HBO Go came out. I mean, I am a cable subscriber and we do have HBO.
0:05:52I pay Comcast for HBO.
0:05:54So when I did that, I got on the iPad and I had to sign in with my Comcast ID and password.
0:06:02And HBO, obviously, you know, they have – there's enough, you know, consolidation where there's,
0:06:08you know, I don't know, a dozen, two dozen cable providers in the US that they go through
0:06:13and they have deals with – I guess they somehow have a back end that talks to all
0:06:16of them.
0:06:17So Comcast is in with them.
0:06:19They authorize.
0:06:20They check with Comcast.
0:06:21Comcast goes, "Yeah, this guy is an HBO subscriber and then my HBO Go app on the iPad worked."
0:06:27It wasn't too bad, too much of a hassle.
0:06:30But with the Apple TV one, I just went to the channel or whatever you call it on Apple
0:06:36TV and it worked.
0:06:37I didn't have to log in.
0:06:38I didn't have to do anything.
0:06:40So I can only guess that it's like an IP address thing, like that somehow they could tell from
0:06:47my IP address that I'm getting my internet through Comcast and I don't know I have no idea how that
0:06:54how that worked did you know so that's not how it worked for me I'm on Time Warner Cable and I
0:07:00actually had to go to a web page and log in and then type in a pin code into the web page and then
0:07:06it synced up with my Apple TV on the back end but I think I read somewhere that Comcast has a new
0:07:14authentication system that just you know that quote unquote just works for that
0:07:19kind of stuff which which is smart because they can because they know that
0:07:23that's your cable modem and it's in your house so I have to say it was honestly
0:07:28one of the most amazing authentication experiences I've ever had really was
0:07:32because I was really dreading the you know sit there and type it in and man I
0:07:39just thought it was gonna be a huge pain in the ass and instead it literally just
0:07:43worked.
0:07:44But how cool is, you know, I remember writing about this stuff a couple of years ago and
0:07:47people would say, oh, Apple will never work with the cable companies.
0:07:51They, you know, they're, they're trying to disrupt that, that industry.
0:07:54They'll never ever have a service where you have to log in with your cable address.
0:07:59And sure enough, here it is.
0:08:01And you know, some, in your case, it sounds like Comcast has their, their technology together.
0:08:05So you don't even have to do that, which is even better.
0:08:08You know, how cool would a, a tuner app be?
0:08:10So then if, you know, whatever, your kid has a TV in his room and he wants to watch a channel,
0:08:15he wouldn't even need a cable box in his room.
0:08:18I think that stuff's coming.
0:08:19The Xbox already has some of that and I think it's great.
0:08:24The other one that works with is the Time Warner Cable iPad app, which has been surprisingly
0:08:28useful in our house.
0:08:31It initially was only allowed to work in your house because it was seen as an extension
0:08:37of your cable subscription.
0:08:39So you had to be on the IP address of your home internet connection.
0:08:45But because the cable company knows that, you know, can do that handshake on the back
0:08:50end, you know, you don't even have to, actually you do have to sign it.
0:08:54But theoretically you don't have to.
0:08:55And I think Comcast has actually been bragging about some of that stuff.
0:08:58And I think it's cool, you know, that then you could just turn on your Apple TV in your
0:09:03house and it'll already know what channels you're subscribed to and you won't even have
0:09:06have to install some Comcast app. I don't know. It's cool. I'm having fun with it.
0:09:13It's, you know, what else? It's good summer stuff. You know what else people
0:09:16used to say? People used to say prior to January 2007 that if I if Apple ever
0:09:21makes a phone, they'll never get into, they'll never work with the carriers. You
0:09:26know that they'll do something, some insert, some kind of hand-waving here
0:09:31that would allow Apple to completely circumvent the carriers. I mean, people
0:09:36used to speculate that Apple would buy, what are they, MVNOs?
0:09:40- Right, they would do an Apple,
0:09:41like an Apple virtual carrier the way ESPN tried
0:09:46or Disney tried, and both of those were big failures.
0:09:49- And that also is super US-centric,
0:09:52because what are they gonna do, set up their own carriers
0:09:54in 80 countries around the world?
0:09:56That's starting to get impractical,
0:09:58and it faces regulatory hurdles and stuff like that.
0:10:01- Although the funny thing is that MVNOs
0:10:02are actually working outside of the US
0:10:04in a way that they never did work in the US, but whatever. I actually just used one in
0:10:08Canada this weekend.
0:10:09So, but however limited the iPhone has been distribution wise in six years because Apple
0:10:15has to work out these deals with carriers and their deals with carriers are obviously
0:10:19a lot more negotiated than typical phone makers because Apple, you know, maintains control
0:10:27that the carriers don't want to bestow and they get more money and etc, etc. However,
0:10:33You know, much the iPhone has been limited.
0:10:36It would be way more limited if Apple only sold it on its own Apple-branded carrier networks
0:10:43around the world.
0:10:44Totally.
0:10:45You know, just even think of all the cell phone stores that, you know, especially outside
0:10:50of the US where they don't have as many Apple stores.
0:10:53And that's, I think, been, I think that's also, that's helped Android take off in phones,
0:11:00as we could see, has really not helped them in tablets at all because people don't buy
0:11:03their tablets at a phone store.
0:11:07I think in TV, it's also going to be the distribution of TV.
0:11:12You get your cable box from the provider, but you don't really go to the store and buy
0:11:16it there.
0:11:17I don't know how that will play into it.
0:11:19I don't know if they'll need that kind of help for distribution.
0:11:25Maybe there's some room for some subsidy or something.
0:11:28you sign a long-term contract with a TV provider or something like that, but I don't know.
0:11:33Yeah, I don't know. I'm not quite sure. But I still think, and I really do, I maintain
0:11:39this, that Apple's TV strategy is not this secret thing in a lab that's totally new and
0:11:45revolutionary. It's what we see right before our eyes, this evolutionary step-by-step improvement
0:11:51to Apple TV as we know it. Which I'm sure is disappointing to some people,
0:11:57But I guess that means it's real, unlike some fictional,
0:12:01and who knows what they wanna do.
0:12:03I mean, there's been reports for years
0:12:05that they wanted to do some sort of new and crazy thing
0:12:09where they get the TV and they resell it to you
0:12:13or something like that, and the networks have basically
0:12:16told them, no thanks, we're not interested in that.
0:12:18But yeah.
0:12:20- It's a weird business too, because, I mean,
0:12:23you have to think that broadcast television
0:12:25is sort of a legacy business, but it's a legacy business that is still ragingly popular,
0:12:33probably more popular than ever.
0:12:35I would only guess that people watch more TV than ever before.
0:12:41The way that the internet and mobile have affected TV is really more that people sit
0:12:46on the couch with their iPhones while they're watching TV, that they're doing both.
0:12:51It's still an absurd number. I think it's like at least four hours a day per household,
0:12:57maybe even more. So, and yeah, exactly.
0:13:00They've been disrupted in a different way. It's only that attention has been slightly
0:13:04divided, not that you don't watch TV.
0:13:07Right.
0:13:08As opposed to, say, you know, the devastation in the print industry of magazines and newspapers
0:13:16and things like that. So, there's still – that's what makes this whole thing so entrenched
0:13:21is that there's still so much money being poured into cable TV every single month by
0:13:30any household that can afford it.
0:13:35So I don't know.
0:13:36I feel like there is no way to just sort of blow that up.
0:13:39And I know that nerds, you know, I'm sure that like people who listen to this show are
0:13:44way more likely than the typical consumer to have, what do they call it, cut the cord
0:13:52and stop paying for cable but still watch lots of TV because you do it all over the
0:13:59internet with Netflix and Apple TV and Hulu and stuff like that.
0:14:04Dave Asprey I tried that and I went back actually.
0:14:08I could probably get away with it, but my wife, I don't think, could.
0:14:14I think Amy watches too many shows that aren't.
0:14:17Yeah, I would say similar situation here.
0:14:20Have you ever watched a YouTube channel?
0:14:23That's another thing where Google has been putting all this money into these YouTube
0:14:27channels and theoretically, that's kind of probably targeting even the younger generation
0:14:32and the kind of people who just never had cable.
0:14:36Maybe they grew up with cable in their house, but then they went off to school and switched
0:14:40watching.
0:14:41No, I don't watch a YouTube channel.
0:14:42I don't think I've ever seen a YouTube channel.
0:14:44I don't know.
0:14:46It's very interesting.
0:14:48One of the things that I think makes television so much more defensible than, you say, print
0:14:57news or whatever media, is just the complexity and cost of producing it.
0:15:03like exponentially harder to make good video than it is to make good print.
0:15:08So it's interesting to see Google invest, I think, hundreds of millions of dollars in
0:15:16these YouTube channels, which are trying to make kind of good enough stuff to watch, but
0:15:21it hasn't really caught my attention yet.
0:15:24The big thing though, and I think any disruption has to meet this criteria.
0:15:28I mean, I think, you know, just go back to the iPad introduction event.
0:15:34Steve Jobs almost spent half the event explaining the, is there room for a product between a
0:15:40phone and a laptop?
0:15:42And if so, what would it be?
0:15:43And the whole point is, it's got to be better for some things than either the phone or the
0:15:50laptop.
0:15:52I think that's a rule for any kind of disruption.
0:15:54And just go back to your Tour de France example, that watching it over the internet makes it
0:16:00better.
0:16:01It's not just, "Hey, I can do it over the internet."
0:16:04It's just better.
0:16:05Like you said, if you want to watch live, it's no longer plastered with ads.
0:16:10And you can time shift it without needing to fill up your TiVo with five hours of stuff
0:16:15a day.
0:16:16Yeah, exactly.
0:16:17Or even needing a TiVo.
0:16:18Yeah, it would eat up the whole TiVo, basically.
0:16:22Right.
0:16:23model you have to know in advance that you wanted to have it recorded and I'm
0:16:28you know I don't know if you're like me but I never remember to set the tone now
0:16:32record stuff so I would think like oh great did a Tour de France is started I
0:16:35can watch it and then I think I didn't tape it I started I still use the verb
0:16:41tape for the TiVo I do too and that's one of those things where you would you
0:16:45would think that the on-demand systems would be sophisticated enough by 2013 to
0:16:51So you wouldn't even need to DVR stuff, but no, they're not.
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0:20:16Have you ever run your own mail server? You mean like physically manage the server or
0:20:23have like a server that like my physically managed it? No, no, not physically.
0:20:28I in high school. I want to say I set up the Eudora internet mail server on my Mac
0:20:35over dial-up I
0:20:37Don't recommend that. Oh and then you'd have to your machine would dial in and get the mail
0:20:44I remembered I remember people do we I used to my dad and I had
0:20:49Two phone we had two phone lines running into our basement and we had dial-up
0:20:53we had these wacky dial-up accounts with static IP addresses,
0:20:57and we would just stay dialed up 24/7.
0:21:00You could basically never call our house
0:21:02'cause there would always just be busy signals
0:21:05on both lines, which is fine, you know, email us.
0:21:07But yeah, I ran a hotline server on that thing,
0:21:11and I also ran a mail server for a while.
0:21:14You know, it wasn't my main email address.
0:21:16It was mostly just to see what kind of experience
0:21:19that would be.
0:21:20It was pretty dumb, I don't recommend doing that.
0:21:23You know, even now with broadband,
0:21:26there's absolutely no reason to run your own mail server
0:21:28on your computer.
0:21:30It was kind of a fun project.
0:21:32- I can't even imagine doing that now.
0:21:37- So I wanted to ask you about Vesper.
0:21:40- Okay.
0:21:41- Because you've been doing it for, what, over a month now,
0:21:44and I'm just curious, and I've kind of entered this realm
0:21:47too somewhat recently, and I'm curious, like,
0:21:50As someone who's been observing and critiquing and analyzing this business for now five years,
0:21:57the app economy, I'm curious, how's your experience been participating in it?
0:22:04It's been very fun.
0:22:06You're talking more now about the month since it shipped rather than like the month…
0:22:10Yeah, you know, we kind of heard about the development process and…
0:22:13It has been fun.
0:22:14It has, I would say, and it has been very close to what I expected in terms of sales
0:22:22and response. I think support has been, although, you know, this is funny because Dave Whiskas
0:22:28handles 99% of the support for us, not me. But it seems that I keep my eye on it though.
0:22:34It does seem though that the support, you know, we do it by email, has been lower than
0:22:39I'd worried because it's the sort of thing when people say, "Oh, man, $4.99 for an iPhone
0:22:46app, that's expensive." But I'll tell you what, even at $4.99, if you're spending just
0:22:52a couple of minutes dealing with support, you lose most of that. It's unsustainable.
0:22:58But the customers have been great. I think they've been really, really easy to deal with,
0:23:05have made many great suggestions. Do you like it? Do you want to spend more time on it?
0:23:14Definitely. I know it's an ongoing, I mean it's, has it been a distraction from
0:23:22Daring Fireball? I guess somewhat. I guess anything I do that's not Daring Fireball
0:23:26is a distraction from Daring Fireball. That's okay, that's life, you know? Right.
0:23:30But you know, it's it was never it was never meant to be a 40 hour a week thing from my role
0:23:37It's you know a little slice of my day every day
0:23:41And I enjoy it. I enjoy I do enjoy it. That's great
0:23:45Have you is it is it interesting to see the?
0:23:50Kind of the app world from the other side or is it I guess you you're kind of pretty close to it anyway
0:23:56So I don't know if it's been very different or not.
0:23:58Well, it's always different when it's for real and it's yours and it makes it personal.
0:24:05How many articles have I written about app rejections going, "Ah, ha, ha."
0:24:09And then, of course, my app gets rejected and I'm like, "Oh, no.
0:24:13What do I do?"
0:24:14But it's interesting to hear that.
0:24:17It's all good.
0:24:18It's interesting now, though, that we're past the – I mean, we knew that when we announced
0:24:22it that it was going to garner a significant amount of day one press. Holy cow, Brent Simmons
0:24:29and John Gruber and some other guy made an app. The day one, day two sales were actually
0:24:41they were great and I guess it's still the majority of the total sales we've had but
0:24:45it was lower than I expected. But the next week or two of sales was higher than I had
0:24:51I expected us to sell a ton of copies on the first 24 hours and then immediately fall off
0:24:56a cliff.
0:24:58Instead, it was a lower day one or let's say initial 48 hours, but then the drop-off,
0:25:07it has dropped off, but it was a lot slower and steadier than I expected.
0:25:11Dave Asprey Yeah, I don't know if you look, I assume you look at the charts, but the App
0:25:16Annie cumulative charts are kind of interesting.
0:25:20you can see like, you know, when you update it, it spikes up. And I see you took a comma
0:25:26out of the name between last Monday and Tuesday or this.
0:25:29Yeah, we did. We did. This is one thing we're toying with is how to get regular day to day.
0:25:38You know, we haven't had a major new release, you know, how to get the average daily thing
0:25:44sales to go up a little bit. And so we switched from just having the app's name in the listing
0:25:49from just plain Vesper to Vesper simple and elegant notes. The thinking being that if
0:25:56somebody searches for, let's say, who hasn't heard of us, they're just searching for a
0:26:00notes app. If you type notes, we are listed somewhere in the results, pretty, you know,
0:26:06reasonably high. But our icon and the name Vesper say nothing about what the app does.
0:26:15And so, you know, is it a problem that people who already haven't heard of Vesper wouldn't
0:26:19even think to click on it in the store to do it?
0:26:24So I guess last week we changed it when we had an update.
0:26:28We changed the listing name to Vesper Simple and Elegant Notes.
0:26:32But like, I don't even, it may even matter like what number is in front of it, like,
0:26:39you know, where we are in productivity.
0:26:41but it said like 47 period space Vesper.
0:26:45But that's it for the first line
0:26:47and certain of the listings, I forget which device,
0:26:50but then it breaks to the next line
0:26:52and the next line just said simple and elegant dot dot dot.
0:26:55So the word notes didn't make it in.
0:26:58So it looked like it was really close
0:27:01to getting simple to wrap on the previous line.
0:27:04So we tried taking out the comma,
0:27:05which we thought would make it work,
0:27:07but it apparently didn't.
0:27:09So we took out that comma.
0:27:11I can't believe that you noticed that.
0:27:13- Well, of course I did.
0:27:14That's my, you know, I'm a writer, I'm an editor.
0:27:18No, it's interesting, and I've had the same experience,
0:27:22which is trying to figure out, you know,
0:27:24the App Store search as a user is obviously not ideal.
0:27:28Like, I think they actually made it worse
0:27:30when they switched from the list view
0:27:33to this kind of like card view
0:27:35in the App Store search on the iPhone.
0:27:38And in my field, the city guides,
0:27:42and then there's the problem that you can't duplicate names
0:27:47in the app store.
0:27:48So if someone has San Francisco travel guide,
0:27:52that's the only one that can exist with that title.
0:27:55So the solution for everyone else has been to add
0:27:58these kind of keywords to the title,
0:28:00which is actually, I found out completely by accident,
0:28:04not allowed.
0:28:05So we got rejected and we had to redo it
0:28:08and it's fine.
0:28:09That's probably a good policy,
0:28:11it's not to have too many keywords in the title.
0:28:13But it's been very interesting to see kind of,
0:28:16now, I'm sure you can do this
0:28:19for the productivity field too.
0:28:20Now I can look at the top ranking travel apps
0:28:24and go, oh, okay, I know how much money
0:28:26that guy's making today.
0:28:27That's not, that's okay, but that's not great.
0:28:31So it's been really interesting.
0:28:33And I'm sure you've kind of experienced this too,
0:28:35like the whole how big is the App Store economy really,
0:28:39and should we be tweaking the price
0:28:42or shifting the focus on making the app
0:28:47more of a kind of social collaboration experience
0:28:49and that kind of stuff.
0:28:50So I'm very interested to see what you guys do with it.
0:28:54I've been running into people who use it
0:28:56in single player mode and people dig it.
0:29:02- Yeah, and the response has been great.
0:29:05And we really like it. I mean, that's the main thing and that's how I know we're onto
0:29:07something is I really use the hell out of the app.
0:29:12Do I depend on it? Maybe. It's close. But I really do
0:29:18put my thoughts into it. And, you know, it's the dragging up and down that really
0:29:23helps for me, at least, organize my thoughts.
0:29:28But the big thing to me is that, strategy-wise, you just don't know where
0:29:33where you're gonna end up as a, you know,
0:29:36how successful it's gonna be until you hit the long run.
0:29:39And who knows, you know, what is the long run
0:29:41for an iPhone app?
0:29:42You know, is it six months, is it a year?
0:29:46But at some point, it settles in,
0:29:48and that's, you know, how successful you are.
0:29:50But like one month in, which is, you know,
0:29:52we're a little, I guess we're maybe like five weeks now,
0:29:55it's too early to tell.
0:29:58So I don't know.
0:30:00But in the meantime, we're, you know,
0:30:02tinkering with some of this stuff.
0:30:04I kind of hate adding the simple, elegant notes
0:30:07after the name, but I don't know, maybe it helps.
0:30:10If it does help, then it's worth it.
0:30:13But to me it's a little, not gross,
0:30:16because they're not keywords.
0:30:18- No, I like it, it's like a subheading,
0:30:21which I think probably is responsible
0:30:23for a lot more book sales than people think.
0:30:27It's not that it's, it's not like you're trying
0:30:29to goose your search rankings,
0:30:31trying to explain what your clever name means.
0:30:35Yeah, you know, that's exactly the analogy my friend Paul Kofosis noticed, the name change
0:30:41in the listings. And he said the exact same thing, that it's like the way that books,
0:30:45especially non-fiction books nowadays, can't just have a simple title. It has to be a title
0:30:50and then an explanation of what it is.
0:30:54And it's not like you're going to just name your app "simple elegant notes." I mean, you
0:30:59could, but that's not going to look good on the springboard.
0:31:06So like Moneyball, I just looked it up. So Moneyball, the great book by Michael Lewis
0:31:13on the Oakland days from the late 90s and early 2000s, it's not just Moneyball, it's
0:31:21Moneyball, the art of winning an unfair game. Everything has like, all books have like a
0:31:27little colon you know subtitle I almost feel like the App Store should make that
0:31:32a field let it be name and then have like a subtitle field with a fairly
0:31:41severe character limit you know like 50 or something like that yeah something
0:31:47yes I agree especially if they're going to maintain this requirement that no two
0:31:52apps can have the same title because now what are we?
0:31:58We passed a million apps.
0:31:59We're getting close to a million apps.
0:32:02At some point, you just run out of options.
0:32:06If some app that launched five years ago and hasn't been updated has the name that you
0:32:10want to use and you're putting a lot of time and effort into it, well, you should be able
0:32:14to use that name.
0:32:15I wonder at what point they're going to start, or if they ever will, but at what point they'll
0:32:20start calling seemingly dead apps from the App Store.
0:32:26How many apps are in there now that don't even run on iOS 6, let alone 7?
0:32:31I think that's kind of how they do, right?
0:32:35If you're running iOS 6, can you even, in the App Store, see apps that don't support
0:32:39iOS 6 in search or anything like that?
0:32:44I don't know.
0:32:45I don't think it would let you download an app that you can't run.
0:32:49I guess that's kind of how they…
0:32:52But are they still sitting there squatting on names, I believe that they are.
0:32:55Oh yeah, oh yeah, I would assume so.
0:32:56Yeah, so yeah, do they ever, you know, just kind of start…
0:33:03But then what if someone is still using that app on an old first edition, like we have
0:33:08the first iPad and now we're totally hosed because, you know, eventually a lot of the
0:33:13apps are going to break.
0:33:14So far they haven't yet, but…
0:33:16But you want to re-download it now because you… should you expect that you can still
0:33:22download it?
0:33:23I guess.
0:33:24I don't know.
0:33:25Yeah, I don't know.
0:33:27And that's the kind of stuff where I assume someone's thinking about it, but I don't
0:33:31know.
0:33:32It's going to be interesting.
0:33:36So I think that is true.
0:33:37I think since last you were on the show, the San Francisco City Guide…
0:33:42I know you got it out just before WWDC because I remember linking to it because I thought
0:33:46it would be helpful for all the avalanche of during fireball nerds who are in town.
0:33:54But you were on before that though, right?
0:33:56Dave: Yeah, I think I was on not too far before that.
0:34:00Dave So how has that gone now that you've expanded
0:34:03to two?
0:34:04Dave So a couple of things.
0:34:07First of all, the concept people really like it and they dig it.
0:34:13I've been getting just tremendous feedback from people saying, "Yeah, this is great.
0:34:16This is exactly what I need while I'm traveling," or even just getting outside the house.
0:34:22I'd love a thoughtful, short, simple list of great places to go.
0:34:31The best feedback I think that we've gotten is from dozens of people who say, "This is
0:34:36awesome, I really want to make this. I want to make these lists. I don't want to get
0:34:43too detailed now, but that's kind of where I see the future of this going, is less about
0:34:50me making these lists. Although, I love making them and I'm going to continue making them
0:34:55forever, but trying to figure out an easy and fun way for other people to make them.
0:35:03some of the lessons we've learned about the bottlenecks in production.
0:35:10Or maybe not surprisingly, the longest time-wise element of making one of these City Notes
0:35:15apps is getting photographs.
0:35:20Some of these I take myself.
0:35:22Some of them are publicity photos from the venues.
0:35:25Some of them are Flickr Creative Commons.
0:35:28But by far the biggest time suck is photos.
0:35:32So how do we kind of rethink the product so that we don't rely necessarily on having
0:35:36a photo for each place right away?
0:35:37Right.
0:35:38Or having a super high-quality photo.
0:35:40Is that right?
0:35:41Yeah.
0:35:42I mean, most of these are professional photos, and I have to photo credit the photographer
0:35:46because they're doing it.
0:35:49Either the restaurant or the shop has either paid them or has some arrangement with the
0:35:53photographer where they can use these as their official publicity photos.
0:35:59But the notion of the iPhone and the iPad as a creative device and not just a consumption
0:36:06device, that's something I really want to tap into and let people really be creative
0:36:11with these things.
0:36:13It's not going to happen overnight, but that's really the direction that I want to
0:36:17take it, and I think it's going to be a lot more fun and more successful.
0:36:22It's great when we release a new app like the San Francisco app and it gets, like you
0:36:28said, some press attention or a daring fireball link or something like that.
0:36:33Both times we launched new cities, we became the number one paid travel app on the App
0:36:38Store.
0:36:39The first time it happened, I was in Tokyo.
0:36:40I was like, "Oh my God, did I sell 20,000 apps today?" or something like that.
0:36:46It's like, "No, it's actually a few hundred."
0:36:51to rely less on being ranked so high in paid apps
0:36:56and figure out new ways to get more people using it
0:36:59and not just downloading it and then not looking at it again,
0:37:03but really kind of playing with it every day.
0:37:05So obviously, I wish I had thought about all this
0:37:10and knew it when I started over a year ago,
0:37:12but that doesn't work like that.
0:37:15Do you think for you guys, is your main--
0:37:18or is it like-- maybe it's 50-50.
0:37:20But are you more interested in getting people aware of City Notes outside the App Store,
0:37:25just general awareness? Or is it about raising the awareness inside the App Store and getting
0:37:31good rankings on the travel section in the App Store?
0:37:36Um, I would say primarily now would be more outside the App Store. I would say that one of the
0:37:46kind of engineering or whatever you want to call it, product decisions I made very early
0:37:50on was that in the current kind of existence, each city would be a separate app.
0:37:57And I thought that would be the smart way to go about it because people would be searching
0:38:03for specific cities if they wanted information.
0:38:07And I thought that there would be enough search volume in the app store to make that a good
0:38:12decision.
0:38:13But it turns out that it's just not.
0:38:17What we'll eventually do and what we probably should have done from the beginning was just
0:38:20make one big app that has all the cities in it as either in-app purchases or some sort
0:38:25of in-app feature because the number of people searching specifically for San Francisco Guide
0:38:33is less than single digits every day or the search results.
0:38:41But anytime we do an article that gets linked or even a tweet, there's a huge spike in
0:38:49sales, potentially thousands a day.
0:38:57As the App Store gets bigger, and I guess there's just more apps and still the same
0:39:01amount of space on your screen, so really to be a successful brand in mobile now, you
0:39:08you really have to be everywhere,
0:39:11not just in the App Store.
0:39:12- Yeah, I think it's important.
0:39:15I think it's important for us too,
0:39:17'cause I really do think long-term.
0:39:18I mean, hopefully we'll eke out a spot
0:39:21where people are looking for notes.
0:39:23Like, I want a better notes app
0:39:25than the one that comes with the phone.
0:39:27We'll find Vesper in the App Store
0:39:29and consider it and maybe buy it.
0:39:31But I think ultimately our best chance
0:39:35to raise awareness of Vesper outside the App Store so that people go to the App Store looking
0:39:41for Vesper. I think it's a better and more sustainable strategy. You know, like I think,
0:39:48you know, I mean, obviously Evernote is a huge, you know, 500 pound gorilla in that space. And
0:39:55I think, you know, and they clearly have that, like, it's not just that people get Evernote
0:39:58because they were in the App Store looking for a notes app and found it. People have heard of
0:40:03Evernote and I think then you go to the App Store and find it.
0:40:06Yeah, well with Evernote, I mean that's how especially once you are that size and
0:40:12you have to go cross-platform and you know one of the things we think about is
0:40:16like well what if we had an Android version how would we charge for stuff or
0:40:21even just a web version like you know I assume maybe someday there will be a web
0:40:24version of Vesper or you know something that that were the iTunes currency
0:40:29doesn't exist. How do you even think about that? Do you need a virtual currency everywhere?
0:40:34Do you just need to use different payment engines and that sort of stuff? Thankfully,
0:40:39we're still at a point in simplicity, and it looks like you are too, where that's not really a concern.
0:40:44But at some point, it will be.
0:40:49In general, it's just about being wherever people are who want smart, in my case,
0:40:54smart city information and in your case a very simple notes system.
0:41:01So the other thing too is man search results in the App Store are just
0:41:06unpredictable. I mean sometimes you type something and you think you're gonna it
0:41:09you get exactly what you expect the one thing you're looking for is the first
0:41:13and the result other times it's not like the other day there are maybe it was
0:41:18just yesterday I linked to on during fireball to a new version of very cool
0:41:22calendar app called Agenda. And it's, you know, it's been around for a while, they're
0:41:26up to version 4.0. They've, you know, been successful enough that they, you know, have,
0:41:32you know, professional full time developers have gotten to 4.0. But when you go to the
0:41:36App Store, and type agenda, you get, it's all calendar apps that come up, but they're
0:41:43so, number one, they're just awful. Just you can just tell from the screenshots, they're
0:41:46just, they're just like, horrible. And agenda was actually I forget where it was, it was
0:41:52way down. It was like not even in the top ten in the results, which is just weird. You
0:41:57would think an app named Agenda that is popular would be—how could it not be the top hit
0:42:05when you search for Agenda?
0:42:06Tim Cynova Yeah, and the worst time for that is, unfortunately,
0:42:11when an app is new and comes out. That's the day where everyone wants it. You go to
0:42:18the App Store and you search for the new app and it just hasn't, I guess the cache hasn't
0:42:23synced up yet or something like that and you just, you don't find it. And that's, and I
0:42:27don't know how do you get past that?
0:42:30We weren't surprised by that. I mean Brent, you know, Simmons has already had a bunch
0:42:33of apps in the store and so he knew that. And I follow closely, and Dave too, Dave has
0:42:38submitted enough apps that he knew that. I mean, so we weren't surprised. But it was
0:42:41still frustrating because we were getting a lot of tweets day one like, "Hey, heard
0:42:45about your new app, went to App Store, searched for Vesper, doesn't show up. Is there a problem?
0:42:51Is it not in my country yet?" It's like, "No, it's just not in this iTunes search
0:42:55server for your country yet."
0:42:56Yeah, and I get that they have small teams and a lot of things to think about, but that
0:43:03would be something… If there were one thing in the App Store that they could really spend
0:43:09and more time on, it would be search because the editorial stuff they do is actually really
0:43:16good and when you get featured, you can definitely see a bump and that was awesome.
0:43:22But the search is an everyday thing that just as a user is frustrating and now as a developer,
0:43:28I guess, needs some attention.
0:43:31But…
0:43:32All right.
0:43:33Let me take a second break here and tell you about our second sponsor.
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0:45:53Have you done it yet?
0:45:56No, I haven't.
0:45:57I haven't either.
0:45:59- So you know that Sergey Brin's wife
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0:46:03- Yeah.
0:46:04- And do you remember when he started blogging?
0:46:06- Yeah.
0:46:07- That was like his first or second post,
0:46:09I actually just found it, 2008,
0:46:11where he wrote about how he found out
0:46:13that he has a gene and, you know,
0:46:18trying to read fast, but could potentially have Parkinson's.
0:46:24So it kind of, you know, is that the kind of information
0:46:27would be useful to have at this point in your life or not? I don't know. But then he kind
0:46:31of stopped blogging after that. So it was very interesting.
0:46:35Dave: No, I should do it. I definitely – it's just kind of amazing to me that you can do
0:46:41it. It just sounds to me like – it's like I read so much science fiction when I was
0:46:46a kid and a teenager. And it just sounds like something out of the science fiction I used
0:46:51to read. Send the company the thing and then you get back a report telling you, "Oh,
0:46:57everything about your DNA. I tweeted the other day. I had a tweet the other day that I was
0:47:03watching. I started watching the Terminator movies with my son, Jonas, who's nine. And
0:47:07this is actually, it sounds like a joke, but it really was not a joke. It was that the
0:47:12aspect of the first, the 1984 original Terminator that he found the most implausible was phone
0:47:20books.
0:47:21And that they used to be everywhere and that they listed everyone and it was the only way
0:47:25to find someone.
0:47:26I used to love the phone book.
0:47:29He was like, "Why wouldn't they just look them up online?"
0:47:33I was like, "There was no online."
0:47:35He was like, "But they're terminators.
0:47:37Wouldn't they have it in their heads?"
0:47:38I was like, "But the database didn't exist at the time."
0:47:43It blew his mind.
0:47:44And then funny enough, just total coincidence, this was the week when whatever the remnants
0:47:51of the old Yellow Pages company that they actually came by and dropped off a phone book
0:47:56in front of our house.
0:47:57I don't know if I still get them here.
0:48:00I also saw a huge pile of them.
0:48:03I mean like it must have been at least 30 or 40 of them.
0:48:06Just all 30 or 40 of them right next to one of the public trash bins here in Philadelphia
0:48:14right at the street corner.
0:48:15I don't know.
0:48:16I think that's what happens to them.
0:48:18They become mountains of garbage.
0:48:21It's like, however rude it is to come by and put like a flyer for, you know, a pizza place
0:48:28or a cleaning service or something like that, put it on your door knob or put it through
0:48:33your mail slot or something like that.
0:48:37It's incredibly rude to drop off a four pound stack of paper.
0:48:44And it just is such a, to me, like such a, because you know nobody uses the damn things
0:48:48anymore.
0:48:49mind-blowing waste of paper.
0:48:54What do people do for high chairs now? Booster seats?
0:48:58Somebody asked me that on Twitter. They did say that. I think that everybody has like
0:49:04real booster seats now. And I think like
0:49:09car travel with kids has gotten so
0:49:14like serious, like you know, when I was a kid,
0:49:17my sister and I used to just stand on the backseat
0:49:19of the car while we'd go places and jump around.
0:49:21Now it's like everybody, you know,
0:49:24there's like, you know, booster seats are like,
0:49:28I don't know, they're like rated by the,
0:49:30or approved by the government.
0:49:32- Yeah, have their own built-in iPod docks and everything.
0:49:35- Right, and cup holders.
0:49:38- That is though a great physical reminder of, you know,
0:49:42You have all these startup wanks talking about disruption all the time and all that stuff.
0:49:46But the phone companies, they should have been Google.
0:49:51They should have been the ones to be the ones maintaining and helping us find everything
0:49:57on the internet.
0:49:58But instead, they were so concerned about the business of their phone book division
0:50:05that they got completely passed up.
0:50:08Right.
0:50:09Because what a monopoly that was.
0:50:10What a fantastic monopoly, right?
0:50:12Like you're – all of a sudden, your shower breaks.
0:50:19No hot water comes out of your shower.
0:50:20I mean you got to get a plumber.
0:50:24Everybody would just go to the Yellow Pages.
0:50:26And there was only one Yellow Pages because it was – the phone service was a monopoly.
0:50:31Imagine how artificially inflated the advertising rates were for like businesses like plumbers
0:50:38and stuff like that.
0:50:39phone number in red or something or--
0:50:41- Yeah, that was a thing.
0:50:43Yeah, you'd get like your listing in red.
0:50:47- Or to be unlisted.
0:50:49- Yeah, and that was, isn't that ridiculous?
0:50:50You used to have to pay for that?
0:50:52- Google should charge for that, but no, no one wants that.
0:50:55No, everyone wants to be ranked higher.
0:50:57No one wants to be, I guess there's the robots TXT file,
0:51:01but they should charge for that.
0:51:03- Yeah, I would pay for that.
0:51:06- No, but it's so funny, like, just to think that
0:51:09I guess the same thing happened with the newspapers and classified ads too.
0:51:13You're not thinking it.
0:51:15And that's why I always give props to – I hate saying that.
0:51:20I really respect Reed Hastings though from Netflix because we're going to get rid of
0:51:24our DVD business and call it Quickster.
0:51:27And everyone gave him crap for that.
0:51:29That was ultimately a dumb idea.
0:51:31But he was coming from the right place.
0:51:33Right. It's the rare instance of somebody who was willing to truly saw where the puck was going,
0:51:42regardless of where the puck is right now, and wanted to get there as soon as possible.
0:51:47I think, and thankfully, you know, the nice thing is they recovered.
0:51:52Actually, you had to re-sign up for DVDs a few months ago to rent something.
0:51:59Oh, it wasn't even good. It was the brown bunny.
0:52:03What the hell is that?
0:52:06Look it up. I don't want to talk about it. Don't sign up for Netflix DVDs because then I just kept
0:52:14getting more and more. I finally canceled it and sent them all back.
0:52:16Is it a kid's movie or an adult movie?
0:52:18No, 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.
0:52:25Not a kid's movie.
0:52:29I'm looking it up.
0:52:31Not even a good movie, but it's only on Netflix DVDs.
0:52:36I don't get it.
0:52:38It doesn't even...
0:52:40You'll look it up later and you'll see.
0:52:42It's a Vincent Gallo movie.
0:52:44Yeah, yeah.
0:52:46Anyways, no more DVDs for me.
0:52:50Not much else going on news-wise.
0:52:53Only a little tiny thing. Well, what? Do you have something?
0:52:56Oh, just a gloriously slow period.
0:53:00So actually there's one thing that's kind of been interesting is these cell phone companies
0:53:05with these new subscription plans for your phone.
0:53:10Have you seen that?
0:53:11Like they'll charge you like $10, $20, $30, $50 a month so that you can get more upgrades
0:53:18every year, you know, upgrade your phone every few months.
0:53:21Yeah, yeah.
0:53:22I saw T-Mobile pushing that.
0:53:25T-Mobile and then of course everyone in mobile copies each other so immediately AT&T and Verizon have announced theirs too
0:53:31At different prices and some of this already existed
0:53:34It was kind of the this is just a different way of getting people to buy
0:53:38Insurance for their phone before it was if your phone is stolen or lost will replace it
0:53:43Well now it's if there's a new
0:53:45HTC Android phone that you like more than your current one then you can trade in and and get the newest one
0:53:52Yeah, it seems like it's a step even further in the direction of obfuscating the purchasing
0:53:59of a phone. You know, we're like, to me, the natural way, and I know that outside the US,
0:54:05this is actually, you know, like in Western Europe, I think this is very common, where
0:54:09you buy a phone for an actual price, unsubsidized, and you just pay X dollars a month for service.
0:54:19and there is no contract and that there's, you know,
0:54:23but that means your iPhone is six or 700 bucks.
0:54:26And then you realize it is,
0:54:28but your monthly bill is a lot lower
0:54:31than what we pay here in the US
0:54:32because there's no subsidy, right?
0:54:34Like we, you know, and I see how the psychology of that
0:54:38works, but you know, you're not really getting a $600 iPhone
0:54:43for $199, you're paying that, you know,
0:54:48It's like paying off a credit card over two years.
0:54:51And these subscription plans just seem like a way
0:54:53to even obfuscate that further.
0:54:56- Yes, and it does kind of, you know,
0:55:00especially in the Android world,
0:55:01where there are possibly two or three phones a year
0:55:06that are significantly better than
0:55:08whatever you had last year,
0:55:10that might be interesting, you know?
0:55:11Oh, there's a new-- - Would they let you do that?
0:55:13Would they let you replace it like two or three times a year?
0:55:15Yeah, but you got to give them the old phone, which you've essentially been paying for and
0:55:21now don't get the resale value or even just the old phone.
0:55:25So the bottom line is that it's kind of a rip off.
0:55:29Maybe it'll be something that people who don't care about necessarily the best value find
0:55:36interesting because they can get a new phone every year.
0:55:39And I wonder if this is successful, if this becomes the way that people buy phones, which
0:55:46I don't think it will, but if it does, how sustainable then is Apple's one phone per
0:55:51year kind of model?
0:55:54I guess right now it works because most people don't even get a phone every, most people
0:56:01do it every two years, so that's fine.
0:56:03But what if you-
0:56:04I can't imagine.
0:56:05It just seems like, I don't know.
0:56:06they're made a service that most people don't want.
0:56:10- I think so.
0:56:11It is a huge rip off, and it's not like
0:56:12you're getting cheaper service for it or anything either.
0:56:15So that subsidy that you're theoretically
0:56:17were paying off with expensive service,
0:56:20you're still paying that expensive service,
0:56:21so I don't know.
0:56:23- I think people want, I mean,
0:56:25I think most people really just want a phone
0:56:27that they can rely on, you know.
0:56:30Has battery, good enough battery to get them
0:56:31through the day and does the things that they want.
0:56:33And if, you know, if the phone's not giving them
0:56:35problems like being slow or running out of battery halfway through the day then
0:56:40they call it a win and they're not looking to replace it right I agree with
0:56:45that I think that's that's probably right so I don't think these will be
0:56:49hugely popular but yeah you know the other thing too about that one phone a
0:56:53year thing is even with the one phone a year pace at Apple it's still every time
0:57:02they do it always garners these really that's it that's it's just like last
0:57:07year's phone but blank every single year right so if they were to step it up to
0:57:13six months into a year right it would be even more incremental like I don't think
0:57:19it wouldn't it wouldn't help them increase the pace of technology it would
0:57:24just mean that maybe instead of getting a new camera and a new quad-core GPU
0:57:32GPU in the phone all at once, you'd have gotten the new camera in a model six months ago and
0:57:38then that same camera but now with a quad core, you know, GPU six months after that.
0:57:44Even less dramatic delta of change.
0:57:47Right.
0:57:48I don't think that's gonna…
0:57:49I think the people who just vaguely want Apple to release two phones a year instead of one
0:57:54phone a year somehow think that magically that would, you know, that there would still
0:57:58be the same technological delta between phones.
0:58:01That somehow if they released 12 phones a year, we'd have paper-thin phones that are
0:58:08made out of transparent aluminum or something.
0:58:11Yeah, we'll see.
0:58:15I do think it's interesting how everything now, I mean like so Apple earnings are coming
0:58:18up next week and I think pretty much everyone out there is expecting just kind of extremely
0:58:24boring results because there really hasn't been anything happening. At some point, they'll
0:58:32have to get out of this current thing where everything comes out on October 10th or whatever
0:58:38and then that's it for the whole year. I mean I don't know how – I can't see how that
0:58:42would be helpful for anyone inside or outside Apple.
0:58:45But –
0:58:46Yeah. I think it's – I don't think that that's on purpose. I think it's just the
0:58:49way that the current product cycles have all worked out.
0:58:53Yeah.
0:58:54that it just, you know, that I think that there's,
0:58:59there was a push, you know, last year.
0:59:01You all right?
0:59:03- Oh yeah, everything's cool.
0:59:05- That maybe had a stroke or something.
0:59:08You know, there was a push last year-
0:59:09- There's a much better noise than that.
0:59:11- To get these new iPads out in time for the holiday.
0:59:14And, you know, I think whatever's coming up
0:59:16for the iPad this year, it wasn't ready in February.
0:59:20But you know, last year was the weird year
0:59:22where they had the iPad 3 on the, you know, until then regular schedule coming out around
0:59:27April. And then they, for the first time, had a new one come out six months after that.
0:59:33And I don't think that meant that they were going to do it every six months. I don't,
0:59:36I'm almost certain that was never the plan. It was, I think, a sort of a stop gap because
0:59:41they knew whatever the one is coming out this year wasn't going to be ready until, you know,
0:59:47late in 2013. So rather than go 18 months with the iPad 3, better to only go six months
0:59:53and quick, you know, improve the GPU and put the lightning adapter in there.
1:00:00Yeah.
1:00:01Yeah, that's the sort of incremental thing that would happen with the phone if they came
1:00:06out with new phones every six months. And I think the only reason they did it with the
1:00:08iPad last year is that they knew that that iPad, I guess call it the iPad 4, was going
1:00:15to be on the market for a whole year.
1:00:18Yeah, that makes sense.
1:00:22Are you going to follow Jonny Ive's desire and get a white iPhone for the first time
1:00:27this year?
1:00:28No, definitely not.
1:00:29I wouldn't be surprised though.
1:00:30I would not be surprised if this is the year though where the iPhones come out with multiple
1:00:36colors.
1:00:37Oh, no.
1:00:38I think that's definitely going to happen.
1:00:39I do think it's interesting though that they really are playing up the white phone with
1:00:43the with iOS 7 so I wonder I you know I don't know I mean I'm testing iOS 7 on
1:00:49my black iPhone I'm actually using it now on my daily iPhone oh you are yeah
1:00:54it's pretty good the latest beta is really it was a huge step up
1:00:58stability wise so I you know I installed it and it's you know hasn't been a
1:01:02problem I think it looks just fine on black I don't think it looks any better
1:01:09on white I think the reason that they show white in all the marketing
1:01:13materials now is one to be consistent and two because I feel like a lot of people make
1:01:19good looking black phones and very few companies seem able to make a good white one. And Apple
1:01:27you know itself famously struggled to get the white iPhone 4 out. I mean it took like
1:01:31nine months after it was scheduled to come out. I think it's hard to do white and therefore
1:01:36they can show something that most companies can't do. I think HTC is maybe the only other
1:01:40company that makes a pretty good looking white phone.
1:01:42And HTC is sort of obscure, and I think the Apple's white phones look way better than
1:01:49Samsung's.
1:01:50I don't know if I've even seen Samsung's up close.
1:01:55Yeah, that's interesting.
1:01:57And I would guess that their colorful color ones are going to look pretty great too.
1:02:04I recently bought an iPod Touch to run beta software on.
1:02:12I almost got one of those colored ones, but I went with the cheapo black and silver one.
1:02:19But yeah, they're getting good with the colors.
1:02:22So I'm actually excited.
1:02:23I don't think I'm going to buy the cheap colorful one, but it's good that they'll be there,
1:02:28I think.
1:02:29I'm not convinced that they're going to do a cheap colorful one.
1:02:31I don't know.
1:02:32Oh, okay.
1:02:33I don't know about that.
1:02:34I don't know.
1:02:35I want the big one, but that's another show.
1:02:37Yeah, that's a whole other show.
1:02:39No, I don't know.
1:02:40I don't know.
1:02:41I could be wrong, but I'm not entirely sure what to expect with the phones.
1:02:47I'm not quite sure.
1:02:49I wouldn't be surprised at all if there's no change at all, just that iPhone 5S.
1:02:54iPhone 5 moves down into the scale and iPhone 4S becomes the free one.
1:02:59Yeah, or they bring in the colorful one on the low end with lightning and everything.
1:03:05Right. That would be the reason to do it. I mean, there is some sense that – and then
1:03:08to have all of the phones be – there's two hardware angles on that. Have all the
1:03:13phones have 16 to 9 screens and have all the phones have lightning adapters. That would
1:03:19be the reason to introduce a new low-end iPhone instead of keeping the 4S around for another
1:03:28year is the low end phone. And LTE possibilities on every device too. Yeah, I guess that too.
1:03:36But I think that that way the screen dimension is the same on all the, you know, the aspect
1:03:39ratio is the same on all phones. Perhaps the screen size would be the same on all phones
1:03:44and the lightning adapter. So maybe. I mean, why would I want to buy a low end phone though?
1:03:50I don't want that. I want the five S.
1:03:52Boom. Me too. Sold. Cool. Well, we'll see. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
1:03:59Let's wrap the show. Let's do it. Dan from thanks, man. Thanks.
1:04:02Where can people find you online?
1:04:04The best place is on Twitter, I guess from dome fr o me do me or
1:04:10if you'd like to check out city notes, which is my mobile travel
1:04:16city guides thing at city notes dot IO. What style dot IO? I think it's Indian Ocean Indian
1:04:24Ocean where Vesper is Vesper app.co.co, which I think is very popular because it looks like,
1:04:30hey, it's just like dot com, but without the M. But it's actually Columbia. Oh, cool. Yeah.
1:04:37It's one of those things that I've seen over the past year or two dozens and dozens and dozens of
1:04:42times, but never really thought what it meant until we registered it. And I thought, well,
1:04:45I better know what the hell this is.
1:04:47- I think one of the neat things about mobile
1:04:50being so important for a young company now
1:04:55is that the domain really doesn't matter
1:04:57as much as it used to be.
1:04:58And then, for me, the biggest thing is just
1:05:00people being able to pronounce and spell it,
1:05:04which is not the case for my other site, SplatF.
1:05:08- .io is a cool domain, I think.
1:05:11- Yeah, we're enjoying it so far.
1:05:14We haven't been shut down by the Libyan government or any of that sort of stuff.
1:05:18I actually, I would not register a .ly.
1:05:21Oh no, that's scary man.
1:05:23I 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.
1:05:31And I know that they've got other domains that the same shortcuts work.
1:05:35So if something happened and the Libyan government shut down Bitly, they have the J.MP.
1:05:41I think they have bitly.com also.
1:05:43also. Yeah, but it's just nuts to me that you'd put any brand equity in something
1:05:48where it's at the at the liberty of Libya. But just wait for those North Korean
1:05:54domains to open up. That's gonna be a feeding principle. What did they have?
1:05:59Do they have dot NK? I don't know. You could get like JU dot NK. Alright,
1:06:08let's wrap the show. Thanks.