ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Well, that's a weird one. I wonder that happened. Oh, you know, I think, okay, it's probably just a copy and paste though.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I think it was, yeah.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Copy and paste though.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Are we making that happen? Is that a thing that we're making happen?

00:00:10 ◼   ► Copy and paste though? Yeah, sure.

00:00:12 ◼   ► I meant to kind of yell at you on Merlin's behalf because you were just sh*tting all over Merlin for Sharrow,

00:00:19 ◼   ► which I understand why you're grumbly about it.

00:00:22 ◼   ► It's Sharrow.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Sharrow.

00:00:24 ◼   ► He's from Long Island, so it's Sharrow.

00:00:26 ◼   ► That's right.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Anyways, you were crapping all over Merlin for Sharrow, but then you busted out...

00:00:32 ◼   ► Shoot, what was it? It was not a round-wreck. There was something else that you had said.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Oh, uh, uh, Squirkel!

00:00:37 ◼   ► I didn't bust out Squirkel. I did not invent Squirkel.

00:00:40 ◼   ► That's the problem with Sharrow, is that Merlin, like, inventing a terrible word, but Squirkel is not.

00:00:46 ◼   ► I didn't invent Squirkel. Squirkel was before all of us.

00:00:48 ◼   ► First of all, I don't think Sharrow is bad.

00:00:51 ◼   ► However, I do agree that it seems to be a Merlinism that no one else uses.

00:00:55 ◼   ► - Right, whereas squircle is a thing, it's a term of art.

00:00:58 ◼   ► I didn't make up squircle, don't yell at me about squircle.

00:01:00 ◼   ► - I'm not yelling at you about squircle.

00:01:02 ◼   ► - You are, you are yelling at me about squircle.

00:01:04 ◼   ► - No, no, no, because my point is, to my brain,

00:01:07 ◼   ► they're both, I can't pronounce this word properly,

00:01:09 ◼   ► but they're both portmanteaus, you know,

00:01:11 ◼   ► Cher, Arrow, and Square Circle.

00:01:13 ◼   ► - If I say like, Pintovel or something,

00:01:15 ◼   ► feel free to yell at me, but squircle is not on me,

00:01:18 ◼   ► I'm sorry.

00:01:19 ◼   ► - All I'm saying is, you're grumbling at Merlin

00:01:22 ◼   ► for one portmanteau, yet you're--

00:01:24 ◼   ► - Just because he's making it up and it's dumb,

00:01:26 ◼   ► whereas Squirkel is preexisting, preexisting condition.

00:01:30 ◼   ► - So he's not given the right to create only to--

00:01:34 ◼   ► - No, I mean he can try to make Sharrow happen,

00:01:37 ◼   ► but good luck.

00:01:39 ◼   ► - So he does not have the C in CRUD is what you're saying.

00:01:41 ◼   ► For those who are confused, Sharrow is the Merlinism,

00:01:43 ◼   ► which I agree with Marco, I actually liked it,

00:01:45 ◼   ► is the Merlinism for a share arrow.

00:01:48 ◼   ► So you know like the square with the little arrow

00:01:50 ◼   ► popping out that you see as like a share icon on iOS.

00:01:54 ◼   ► - Well, we'll know he's made it

00:01:55 ◼   ► when you go into SF Symbols and type Sharrow.

00:01:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:00 ◼   ► - Anyway, I didn't mean to start this episode

00:02:02 ◼   ► antagonistically, so we should probably come up

00:02:04 ◼   ► with a happier pre-show than that.

00:02:06 ◼   ► - But we can't.

00:02:06 ◼   ► - But we can, all right, here we go.

00:02:08 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:02:10 ◼   ► Hey, so if you wanted to order a shirt,

00:02:13 ◼   ► but missed the sale because you don't listen

00:02:16 ◼   ► to your pal Casey and do your vision exercise

00:02:20 ◼   ► and visualize where you're gonna be

00:02:22 ◼   ► when you can actually order things

00:02:23 ◼   ► during the time limited sale.

00:02:25 ◼   ► Well guess what baby?

00:02:26 ◼   ► The on demand store is back open.

00:02:29 ◼   ► And Jon, would you mind taking us on a quick tour

00:02:32 ◼   ► of what we have available please?

00:02:33 ◼   ► - Sure, normally I wouldn't even mention

00:02:35 ◼   ► the on demand store for the podcast listeners

00:02:37 ◼   ► because the podcast listeners all hear

00:02:39 ◼   ► about the real time limited store

00:02:41 ◼   ► which has much better quality shirts

00:02:42 ◼   ► with better quality printing.

00:02:43 ◼   ► But yes, it costs a little bit more money.

00:02:45 ◼   ► But on this special occasion only,

00:02:48 ◼   ► I will mention the on demand store

00:02:49 ◼   ► because the holidays are coming up

00:02:51 ◼   ► but if you did happen to miss the other sale or you're just desperate for a gift for a

00:02:55 ◼   ► nerd in your life or something, the on demand store is up.

00:02:59 ◼   ► the products we have in the on demand store are the m1 and m2 shirts.

00:03:03 ◼   ► no suffix, just plain old m1 and m2.

00:03:06 ◼   ► also no back printing on any of these, so if you wanted a shirt without anything on

00:03:10 ◼   ► the back, these all have nothing on the back.

00:03:13 ◼   ► but i think that for the printing process that they use on these cheaper shirts, i think

00:03:18 ◼   ► the rainbow colored M1 and M2s don't look as good as I hope the monochrome ones will

00:03:23 ◼   ► look.

00:03:24 ◼   ► So we have monochrome M1 and M2 shirts as well there.

00:03:26 ◼   ► It's just white printing on it and that I think will come out a lot better with this

00:03:31 ◼   ► less expensive printing process.

00:03:33 ◼   ► And we also have monochrome ATP shirt.

00:03:36 ◼   ► And for the rainbow M1 and M2 logo shirts, the shirts are just black because the logo

00:03:41 ◼   ► has so many colors on it, it goes well with black.

00:03:44 ◼   ► But for the monochrome shirts, all the shirts come in different colors.

00:03:47 ◼   ► And if you load ATP.fm/store and wait a few seconds, you'll see the shirts rotate through

00:03:51 ◼   ► all the different colors that are available.

00:03:53 ◼   ► So there you go.

00:03:54 ◼   ► If you're desperate for shirts and you missed it out on it before and you want a chance

00:03:59 ◼   ► to buy slightly less expensive but slightly lesser quality shirts, they are available.

00:04:03 ◼   ► Excellent.

00:04:04 ◼   ► And what about a chicken hat?

00:04:06 ◼   ► We do not yet have more chicken hats.

00:04:09 ◼   ► The chicken hats remain sold out.

00:04:10 ◼   ► I promise you, if we manage to get more chicken hats in time for the holidays, we will tell

00:04:14 ◼   ► you on this program.

00:04:16 ◼   ► I'm, you know, that's probably not gonna happen because we are we are rapidly

00:04:19 ◼   ► manufacturing and shipping all the chicken hat orders that have already

00:04:23 ◼   ► received, you know, and we have made another order so there will be more

00:04:27 ◼   ► chicken hats eventually but, you know, anyway stay tuned to this program.

00:04:31 ◼   ► In time for summer next year? Yeah, right. They're gonna be here in time for winter

00:04:35 ◼   ► in the northern hemisphere this year, it's just a question of like will they

00:04:38 ◼   ► be here in January or whatever, so we'll let you know on the show.

00:04:41 ◼   ► We are brought to you this week by Collide, an endpoint security solution that uses the

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00:06:25 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Collide for sponsoring our show.

00:06:34 ◼   ► - All right, let's do some follow up.

00:06:35 ◼   ► With regard to what I have called FC model two

00:06:37 ◼   ► in no small part to try to encourage Marco

00:06:41 ◼   ► to come up with a better name.

00:06:42 ◼   ► - Oh wait, I have a better name.

00:06:43 ◼   ► I just haven't told you yet.

00:06:44 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Well, are you sharing it now or no?

00:06:46 ◼   ► - No.

00:06:47 ◼   ► - Okay, good talk.

00:06:48 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:06:49 ◼   ► Anyway, so with regards to FC model two,

00:06:51 ◼   ► AKA redacted, and async await,

00:06:55 ◼   ► and then bridging async await

00:06:56 ◼   ► into legacy Objective-C code,

00:06:58 ◼   ► I certainly, and I think John also was wondering,

00:07:01 ◼   ► hey, how does that even work?

00:07:02 ◼   ► And Aaron Farnham wrote in and pointed us to a article

00:07:06 ◼   ► or an entry on GitHub within Swift Evolution

00:07:09 ◼   ► that talks exactly about this and talks about,

00:07:13 ◼   ► hey, how do you go from Objective-C into async/await,

00:07:16 ◼   ► and how do you go the other direction?

00:07:19 ◼   ► And it talks about it, and it's pretty straightforward

00:07:20 ◼   ► and pretty reasonably easy to read.

00:07:22 ◼   ► And so if you're interested, you can dig into that.

00:07:26 ◼   ► And the short, short version is basically compiler magic

00:07:28 ◼   ► based on convention.

00:07:30 ◼   ► And obviously it's more complicated than just that,

00:07:32 ◼   ► but that's a short, short version.

00:07:33 ◼   ► As an aside, however, I wanted to bring up a toot

00:07:37 ◼   ► that Marco made like a day ago.

00:07:38 ◼   ► I would like to read it to you.

00:07:40 ◼   ► This is Marco Arment at mastodon.social.

00:07:42 ◼   ► Spent the day working in Objective-C

00:07:43 ◼   ► for the first time in a month,

00:07:45 ◼   ► and for the first time, I hated it.

00:07:47 ◼   ► I think I finally fully crossed over,

00:07:49 ◼   ► Swift all the way now, I know, welcome to five years ago.

00:07:51 ◼   ► And to this, I just would like to say, as I tooted, finally.

00:07:56 ◼   ► - Yeah. - I'm not sure

00:07:56 ◼   ► about that dramatic reading.

00:07:57 ◼   ► It didn't really sound like Marco's voice.

00:07:59 ◼   ► And another thing before we get--

00:08:00 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:08:01 ◼   ► Would you like Marco to do the dramatic comedian?

00:08:03 ◼   ► Before we get to the substance of this,

00:08:06 ◼   ► there is the problem that for many years, lots of us,

00:08:10 ◼   ► including me, have occasionally referred to tweets on Twitter

00:08:14 ◼   ► with the word "toot," like, just as a kind of an informal way

00:08:17 ◼   ► to say "tweet" without saying "tweet," right?

00:08:19 ◼   ► And what you're trying to say is Marco posted something

00:08:22 ◼   ► on Mastodon, right?

00:08:23 ◼   ► Which I think they've decided to change the name, though,

00:08:25 ◼   ► haven't they?

00:08:25 ◼   ► Yeah, and now the -- and the Mastodon has since stopped

00:08:28 ◼   ► calling them toots like as of a while ago, you know, because there was some controversy

00:08:32 ◼   ► because some small sport was like, "I don't like toot, it sounds whatever." Anyway, they

00:08:37 ◼   ► changed it to post. So now when someone says toot, I can't tell if they're fancifully talking

00:08:42 ◼   ► about something on Twitter in a kind of informal, fun, whimsical way, or if they mean the things

00:08:48 ◼   ► on Mastodon that are no longer called toots. Anyway, this was on Mastodon. Continue.

00:08:52 ◼   ► - Indeed.

00:08:53 ◼   ► - Which, by the way, by the way,

00:08:55 ◼   ► so now that it's, I think they've publicly acknowledged this

00:08:57 ◼   ► now that, oh my god, I'm on the Tapbots Ivory beta,

00:09:01 ◼   ► which is basically Tweetbot for Mastodon.

00:09:02 ◼   ► - Why are you on that beta and I'm not?

00:09:04 ◼   ► This I don't understand.

00:09:05 ◼   ► - Both of us are, both Marco and I.

00:09:07 ◼   ► - Why am I not on this?

00:09:08 ◼   ► I'm the only one who is posting any content

00:09:10 ◼   ► related to Mastodon clients on Mastodon

00:09:13 ◼   ► and you both get on the beta?

00:09:14 ◼   ► This is ridiculous, I'm outraged.

00:09:16 ◼   ► - You should be, it's really good.

00:09:17 ◼   ► Like, okay, look, it's just Tweetbot for Mastodon, right?

00:09:20 ◼   ► - It doesn't have a unified timeline though, right?

00:09:22 ◼   ► - No, it does not have a unified timeline.

00:09:24 ◼   ► - It's Tweetbot for Mastodon,

00:09:25 ◼   ► and that's exactly what I want.

00:09:27 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:09:28 ◼   ► So it is, see what's great about it,

00:09:31 ◼   ► like, you know, as I'm trying to give Mastodon

00:09:34 ◼   ► like a real solid try, and honestly,

00:09:36 ◼   ► I really do think it's getting quite a bit of steam.

00:09:39 ◼   ► And I think-- - Yeah, I think that's fair.

00:09:40 ◼   ► - A lot of people who I have followed mostly on Twitter,

00:09:44 ◼   ► a lot of them are there now as well or instead.

00:09:47 ◼   ► And there is enough of a community forming there

00:09:50 ◼   ► that I think this might stick,

00:09:53 ◼   ► especially once the app situation gets worked out,

00:09:55 ◼   ► which, so I'll get to that in a second,

00:09:56 ◼   ► but really, the community that is forming on Mastodon,

00:10:01 ◼   ► that has already formed,

00:10:03 ◼   ► but the community that is growing on Mastodon

00:10:06 ◼   ► is really seeing quite a bit of traction,

00:10:08 ◼   ► not necessarily amongst quote, non-geek people.

00:10:13 ◼   ► I'm sure, I mean, there are some non-geek people there,

00:10:15 ◼   ► but I don't think it's anywhere near as successful

00:10:18 ◼   ► as Twitter was and probably ever will be,

00:10:20 ◼   ► but there's enough people who I wanna follow,

00:10:25 ◼   ► who I do follow, who are there and posting there,

00:10:28 ◼   ► that I think if you consider yourself

00:10:31 ◼   ► to be in similar circles of interests as us,

00:10:35 ◼   ► I think you should go try Mastodon.

00:10:37 ◼   ► It's time.

00:10:37 ◼   ► There is a lot of good posting happening there.

00:10:42 ◼   ► There's a lot of great people there,

00:10:44 ◼   ► very interesting people there.

00:10:47 ◼   ► Many of the people you know from Twitter

00:10:48 ◼   ► and from our little nerd circle are there.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Many people who are outside of that circle are also there,

00:10:52 ◼   ► which is even better, because you get to diversify

00:10:55 ◼   ► what you're seeing and who you're interacting with.

00:10:58 ◼   ► It's time.

00:10:59 ◼   ► It has won the current battle of where's everyone going.

00:11:04 ◼   ► Like, I got in the intervening time between last episode,

00:11:07 ◼   ► I also got into Post, the post.news,

00:11:10 ◼   ► and it seems fine, but no one I know seems to be there.

00:11:15 ◼   ► no seems to be there and there's no native app.

00:11:19 ◼   ► It's just like the PWA,

00:11:20 ◼   ► like just the web app icon on the phone.

00:11:22 ◼   ► And it just seems like,

00:11:26 ◼   ► I don't know why I would use that

00:11:29 ◼   ► because Mastodon is there doing a better job

00:11:32 ◼   ► of a similar thing.

00:11:34 ◼   ► So, so far I'm really getting a lot of success

00:11:38 ◼   ► with Mastodon and I'm telling you what changed it for me

00:11:42 ◼   ► was when I got on this beta.

00:11:44 ◼   ► - Oh my God, because when you're a Twitter user

00:11:47 ◼   ► and you try Mastodon, some of the friction

00:11:50 ◼   ► that you encounter is wow, there's a bunch of weird

00:11:52 ◼   ► new terms and conventions I need to learn.

00:11:54 ◼   ► Some of the friction you encounter is the whole

00:11:57 ◼   ► nerd setup of like I gotta choose an instance

00:12:00 ◼   ► and figure out where people are,

00:12:02 ◼   ► and okay, that's another thing.

00:12:04 ◼   ► And those two, those kind of solve themselves

00:12:06 ◼   ► once you get over the initial day of usage.

00:12:10 ◼   ► Then longer term, the paper cuts that hit you are

00:12:14 ◼   ► Wow, this is weirdly different from Twitter,

00:12:17 ◼   ► but a lot of that is simply because the apps

00:12:20 ◼   ► are all different, and there's a whole bunch

00:12:22 ◼   ► of different mass on apps, and I have not been

00:12:26 ◼   ► super thrilled with any of them, frankly.

00:12:28 ◼   ► I've tried, I think, five before Ivory,

00:12:31 ◼   ► and including ones that are still in beta,

00:12:34 ◼   ► ones that people say are great,

00:12:36 ◼   ► and they're all different degrees of fine,

00:12:39 ◼   ► but they're not great.

00:12:42 ◼   ► And if you are accustomed to Twitterific or Tweetbot,

00:12:46 ◼   ► which really provide great Twitter experiences,

00:12:50 ◼   ► none of them are up to that level, not even close.

00:12:53 ◼   ► It's like using a web app versus using a native app.

00:12:55 ◼   ► It's that level of difference.

00:12:57 ◼   ► So now that I, for the last like day or so,

00:13:00 ◼   ► have had Ivory, which is effectively Tweetbot for Mastodon,

00:13:05 ◼   ► it works like Tweetbot, it looks like Tweetbot,

00:13:08 ◼   ► it feels like Tweetbot.

00:13:11 ◼   ► That makes such a massive difference,

00:13:13 ◼   ► in my opinion overall, of Mastodon itself.

00:13:16 ◼   ► Because now it seems much more like

00:13:19 ◼   ► a drop-in replacement for Twitter.

00:13:21 ◼   ► There are still important differences,

00:13:23 ◼   ► but they're much more minor once,

00:13:26 ◼   ► now that I have the exact same interface to it on my phone

00:13:30 ◼   ► that I have for Twitter.

00:13:31 ◼   ► Because I'm accustomed to Tweet,

00:13:32 ◼   ► but I've been using it for years.

00:13:34 ◼   ► I'm extremely confident now in the future of this,

00:13:36 ◼   ► because while it is, you know,

00:13:40 ◼   ► There's certain areas where it's never gonna be like Twitter.

00:13:42 ◼   ► Like the whole, there's no quote tweeting,

00:13:45 ◼   ► the federation angle, there's different things

00:13:47 ◼   ► that it's just never gonna be like Twitter in certain ways.

00:13:51 ◼   ► And there's definitely still all of the challenges

00:13:54 ◼   ► we mentioned before about scaling, moderation,

00:13:58 ◼   ► the federation reality, various,

00:14:01 ◼   ► there are a lot of challenges in Amazon for sure.

00:14:04 ◼   ► But I think the app situation,

00:14:08 ◼   ► once the ivories come out,

00:14:10 ◼   ► 'cause they're ranking the Mac version,

00:14:12 ◼   ► which I'm not on any beta for that yet,

00:14:13 ◼   ► but that would change everything for me.

00:14:16 ◼   ► 'Cause right now, I have Tweetbot open on my Mac

00:14:20 ◼   ► all the time, and I have four different columns open,

00:14:22 ◼   ► 'cause I have my account, then my mentions,

00:14:27 ◼   ► then ATP's mentions, then Overcast's mentions,

00:14:30 ◼   ► because I have to be monitoring everything

00:14:33 ◼   ► that people are saying to these other two business accounts

00:14:35 ◼   ► that we have to care about, right?

00:14:37 ◼   ► So, and I can post to any of those three accounts

00:14:41 ◼   ► from the app super easily, switch between them, et cetera.

00:14:44 ◼   ► So that's, it's an important part of my workflow.

00:14:46 ◼   ► The Mac app situation for Mastodon is dire.

00:14:51 ◼   ► But now that they've said they're working on a Mac version,

00:14:54 ◼   ► like from Tapots, if it's anything like Tweetbot for Mac,

00:14:58 ◼   ► that's gonna really raise the bar for me,

00:15:00 ◼   ► and that's gonna be super great

00:15:03 ◼   ► just drop-in replacement for Twitter.

00:15:05 ◼   ► And at that point, I think I really might

00:15:09 ◼   ► substantially move over.

00:15:11 ◼   ► Right now, I've kind of partially moved over.

00:15:14 ◼   ► Once the Mac app situation gets worked out,

00:15:17 ◼   ► I think I might really move over.

00:15:19 ◼   ► Because it's just a nicer place to be in, in a lot of ways.

00:15:21 ◼   ► And again, yeah, there are problems,

00:15:24 ◼   ► there are gonna keep being problems.

00:15:25 ◼   ► But it's funny, I think we've crossed a threshold

00:15:27 ◼   ► where, you know, when I was trying out Post the other night,

00:15:32 ◼   ► I was like, you know, here I am in this proprietary

00:15:36 ◼   ► closed system in this private VC funded,

00:15:40 ◼   ► you know, Andreessen Horowitz funded company.

00:15:44 ◼   ► Why am I doing this?

00:15:45 ◼   ► It's like, you know, I've already been burned

00:15:48 ◼   ► by one giant VC funded company

00:15:51 ◼   ► with a closed social network.

00:15:53 ◼   ► Why would I invest my time and content into another one

00:15:57 ◼   ► when we have this kind of open standards-based ecosystem

00:16:02 ◼   ► over here in Mastodon and Activity Pub land,

00:16:06 ◼   ► why would I invest in some closed VC-funded one again?

00:16:11 ◼   ► That thought process and that emotion,

00:16:13 ◼   ► I don't think anybody had that thought process a year ago

00:16:17 ◼   ► or even a month ago necessarily.

00:16:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:16:20 ◼   ► So I think it's really interesting that because Mastodon

00:16:24 ◼   ► and the Activity Pub environment,

00:16:27 ◼   ► the whole ecosystem there.

00:16:29 ◼   ► Because that, which is mostly Macedon,

00:16:31 ◼   ► because that is really gaining a lot of steam right now,

00:16:35 ◼   ► I think a lot of us are gonna start thinking this way

00:16:37 ◼   ► of like, now it's gonna be very hard

00:16:40 ◼   ► to convince any of us nerd types

00:16:43 ◼   ► to join closed, privately held, VC funded social networks

00:16:47 ◼   ► when we have this other ecosystem

00:16:49 ◼   ► that we can participate in instead.

00:16:51 ◼   ► And the ones that are already there,

00:16:53 ◼   ► like Instagram and like, those will stick around

00:16:56 ◼   ► because they're already established.

00:16:57 ◼   ► But for something to replace Twitter in particular,

00:17:01 ◼   ► Twitter has always been the more nerdy social network.

00:17:05 ◼   ► It's been the information junkies, the tech nerds,

00:17:09 ◼   ► like the kind of news and politics nerds,

00:17:12 ◼   ► it's been that kind of community much more strongly

00:17:15 ◼   ► on Twitter than the other social networks.

00:17:17 ◼   ► And I think that group might actually start to care

00:17:20 ◼   ► in a meaningful way, like wait, why should we go invest

00:17:23 ◼   ► in some other close thing?

00:17:25 ◼   ► especially the nerdy half of it,

00:17:26 ◼   ► which actually understands these kind of differences.

00:17:27 ◼   ► But even the information junkie part,

00:17:29 ◼   ► I think they're gonna largely feel burned by Twitter.

00:17:32 ◼   ► And you go over to look at something like Post,

00:17:34 ◼   ► and like, yeah, there are a bunch of people posting there,

00:17:36 ◼   ► but it's not my scene.

00:17:39 ◼   ► And I think my scene is now much more likely

00:17:43 ◼   ► to stick with the open ecosystem.

00:17:45 ◼   ► And I feel really good about that.

00:17:47 ◼   ► Like, I hope it works out.

00:17:49 ◼   ► Again, major challenges around scaling and moderation.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Those are massive challenges in this open ecosystem

00:17:57 ◼   ► that I think are gonna be really big problems

00:18:00 ◼   ► in the future to tackle.

00:18:02 ◼   ► But I don't know, maybe we'll figure it out.

00:18:05 ◼   ► I'm more optimistic than I've ever been

00:18:07 ◼   ► about this world now because I'm seeing it

00:18:10 ◼   ► really start to take off and I'm feeling that feeling

00:18:13 ◼   ► of I don't wanna go invest my time

00:18:15 ◼   ► into building up some giant following on post or whatever

00:18:18 ◼   ► when I can do this instead.

00:18:21 ◼   ► JWZ has an even more, in his typical fashion,

00:18:24 ◼   ► forceful and extreme version of what you just said about post

00:18:27 ◼   ► in a blog post entitled, PSA, do not use services

00:18:29 ◼   ► that hate the internet.

00:18:31 ◼   ► It's not Post and Hive and other things like that.

00:18:34 ◼   ► And in terms of people ending up on proprietary platforms

00:18:37 ◼   ► or whatever, it has happened before,

00:18:41 ◼   ► and it will happen again.

00:18:42 ◼   ► How did we all end up on Twitter?

00:18:44 ◼   ► Part of the reason we all ended up on Twitter

00:18:45 ◼   ► is because when we all went on Twitter,

00:18:47 ◼   ► it wasn't clear that Twitter would be anything

00:18:49 ◼   ► other than a curiosity.

00:18:50 ◼   ► People don't-- if you didn't join Twitter in January of 2007,

00:18:55 ◼   ► you don't know this, but there's a million things that

00:18:57 ◼   ► happen on the internet.

00:18:58 ◼   ► And they come, and they go, and whatever.

00:18:59 ◼   ► It just so happens that Twitter became a thing.

00:19:01 ◼   ► But the reason it got us all there

00:19:03 ◼   ► is because that was technical curiosity,

00:19:04 ◼   ► and we'll try it out, the same reason we're trying all

00:19:06 ◼   ► of those things out.

00:19:06 ◼   ► And then it snowballed, and we were already there,

00:19:08 ◼   ► and it became sort of self-sustaining in the way

00:19:10 ◼   ► that social networks do.

00:19:12 ◼   ► You could say the same thing about our favorite computing

00:19:15 ◼   ► platform.

00:19:16 ◼   ► How are we all using this proprietary, publicly-traded

00:19:20 ◼   ► company that runs this closed ecosystem that creates our phones and our Macs and controls

00:19:27 ◼   ► the app stores that do them and we could be using an open alternative that is open source and is not

00:19:32 ◼   ► and actually has actual meaningful competition instead of two companies that control the entire

00:19:36 ◼   ► market and you know the answer to that question is the same as the Twitter answer used to be which is

00:19:41 ◼   ► well Apple makes really good stuff and they kind of got there first and they built momentum and

00:19:46 ◼   ► and pull this in with really good products,

00:19:48 ◼   ► and they aren't currently run by a terrible person

00:19:52 ◼   ► who's making bad decisions.

00:19:53 ◼   ► So, you know, what would it take for us to go to Linux

00:19:57 ◼   ► on the desktop or whatever?

00:19:58 ◼   ► Well, things would have to get pretty dire in Apple

00:20:01 ◼   ► for that to be a thing that happens,

00:20:04 ◼   ► and that's basically what happened with Twitter.

00:20:05 ◼   ► Things are getting pretty dire as far as a lot of us

00:20:07 ◼   ► are concerned over at Twitter,

00:20:09 ◼   ► so we're looking for alternatives,

00:20:11 ◼   ► and luckily there is an alternative.

00:20:12 ◼   ► And then when it comes time to, you know,

00:20:15 ◼   ► look for alternatives, then we can say,

00:20:17 ◼   ► okay, well, among the alternatives,

00:20:19 ◼   ► let's choose the one that is not a repeat of past mistakes,

00:20:24 ◼   ► not a private company that controls the entire platform

00:20:27 ◼   ► top to bottom, it doesn't even have a web UI or whatever,

00:20:30 ◼   ► can we find something better than that and more open, right?

00:20:33 ◼   ► And if like, the reason we're doing that

00:20:36 ◼   ► is because we already, like Margaret was saying,

00:20:38 ◼   ► he already has the habit of using Twitter,

00:20:40 ◼   ► it is a known quantity, it is not a technical curiosity,

00:20:44 ◼   ► "I wonder if I'll enjoy reading and writing small snippets of text."

00:20:48 ◼   ► I'm like, "No, we know that's a thing already,

00:20:50 ◼   ► so it's not like we're stumbling into this just trying out a random thing.

00:20:53 ◼   ► What we're looking for is something to fill a similar role in our lives

00:20:57 ◼   ► if Twitter is not going in a direction that we want."

00:21:00 ◼   ► I think the same thing would happen if Apple started going down the tubes.

00:21:03 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, laptops and mobile phones are still a thing,

00:21:06 ◼   ► so now I need to find a new place to get that."

00:21:09 ◼   ► It seems much more plausible than an open solution

00:21:12 ◼   ► to the problem that Twitter tries to solve

00:21:16 ◼   ► can happen and be feasible than, for example, to say,

00:21:19 ◼   ► oh, let me find another mobile phone platform.

00:21:21 ◼   ► Because once you get past Apple and Android,

00:21:23 ◼   ► it's slim pickings.

00:21:24 ◼   ► Lots of people have tried.

00:21:26 ◼   ► We've got these two left.

00:21:26 ◼   ► And that's a big problem, which I'm sure--

00:21:28 ◼   ► Well, Elon's going to do it soon.

00:21:30 ◼   ► Don't worry.

00:21:31 ◼   ► Yeah, no, that'll be fine.

00:21:31 ◼   ► I'm sure it'll be-- it's not too hard to do.

00:21:33 ◼   ► Oh, I hope he tries.

00:21:36 ◼   ► - I echo what you were saying earlier, Marco,

00:21:40 ◼   ► that a lot of this has become a lot more appealing to me.

00:21:43 ◼   ► And I'll be the first to tell you,

00:21:44 ◼   ► I think I was the biggest curmudgeon of the three of us

00:21:46 ◼   ► in moving my world over to Mastodon.

00:21:49 ◼   ► But it's gotten, perhaps because it's less new and scary,

00:21:54 ◼   ► I don't know, but it's gotten a lot more palatable.

00:21:57 ◼   ► And then I jumped on the Ivory Beta about a day ago.

00:22:00 ◼   ► And it is very, very comforting

00:22:03 ◼   ► to have that nice warm blanket over you

00:22:05 ◼   ► and for everything to feel so familiar.

00:22:07 ◼   ► And it's not exactly the same,

00:22:09 ◼   ► and I really like that they've kind of

00:22:11 ◼   ► refreshed their iconography to be

00:22:12 ◼   ► kind of in a different spirit in a good way.

00:22:14 ◼   ► But it's an alpha, so like if you're clamoring

00:22:19 ◼   ► to be on the beta, it's actually really an alpha,

00:22:21 ◼   ► and that's how they self-describe it.

00:22:22 ◼   ► I mean, it crashes kind of a lot,

00:22:23 ◼   ► but that's what an alpha is, like that's fine.

00:22:27 ◼   ► - They're setting quality expectations by their standards,

00:22:30 ◼   ► but this rough, sometimes crashing alpha

00:22:34 ◼   ► of a Tweetbot app for Mastodon is already way better

00:22:38 ◼   ► than every other Mastodon app I have tried.

00:22:41 ◼   ► It's better than all of them, by a large margin.

00:22:43 ◼   ► - Mastodon client app authors, let me give you one tip.

00:22:47 ◼   ► I don't know why all Mastodon clients

00:22:50 ◼   ► do this particular thing.

00:22:51 ◼   ► I think it's because my use case is not the common one,

00:22:56 ◼   ► but I think my use case is a valid one,

00:22:59 ◼   ► so people should do it.

00:23:00 ◼   ► Mastodon clients all seem to have,

00:23:03 ◼   ► They usually use like a little house icon

00:23:04 ◼   ► for like the home timeline, right?

00:23:07 ◼   ► And then there's usually some other icon

00:23:09 ◼   ► or a way to switch to that's your notifications timeline.

00:23:14 ◼   ► Every single Mastodon client I have tried

00:23:16 ◼   ► when you go to the notifications timeline,

00:23:17 ◼   ► it shows you a view that I never want,

00:23:20 ◼   ► which includes like,

00:23:21 ◼   ► here's all the people who favorited you,

00:23:22 ◼   ► here's people who are following you.

00:23:23 ◼   ► It's like, I never wanna see that.

00:23:25 ◼   ► I don't care about it ever, ever, ever.

00:23:28 ◼   ► What do I wanna see?

00:23:29 ◼   ► Marco mentioned it before.

00:23:30 ◼   ► For people like us, which granted,

00:23:32 ◼   ► we're not the common use case,

00:23:33 ◼   ► but we are a use case and I think it is a reasonable one

00:23:35 ◼   ► to accommodate, we just wanna see our mentions.

00:23:37 ◼   ► Don't show us people who are favoriting our things.

00:23:39 ◼   ► - Well actually, the client I was using before

00:23:43 ◼   ► I've already called Tusker, it's still in beta

00:23:45 ◼   ► but the test file links are being shared like crazy.

00:23:48 ◼   ► - Yep, I've got it.

00:23:48 ◼   ► - Tusker has a setting under, I believe it's called

00:23:51 ◼   ► something like digital well-being, or digital wellness,

00:23:54 ◼   ► and it says default notifications mode,

00:23:56 ◼   ► you can change it to mentions only.

00:23:57 ◼   ► And so that, when you go to that screen,

00:23:59 ◼   ► then it's doing what you want,

00:24:01 ◼   ► it's showing your mentions by default.

00:24:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, most of the clients have this feature,

00:24:05 ◼   ► which is usually on notifications,

00:24:07 ◼   ► you can filter notifications

00:24:08 ◼   ► to just show mentions or whatever, right?

00:24:11 ◼   ► But A is not the default, which whatever,

00:24:13 ◼   ► you can pick the defaults,

00:24:13 ◼   ► but B, almost every single app doesn't care

00:24:16 ◼   ► how many times I change it to show mention.

00:24:18 ◼   ► Tuskr is an exception, but it's a test flight beta,

00:24:20 ◼   ► so who knows where that's going, right?

00:24:22 ◼   ► But don't make me filter to show mentions every single time

00:24:25 ◼   ► I change the timeline.

00:24:26 ◼   ► This is setting aside things

00:24:28 ◼   ► that I'm accustomed to in Twitter.

00:24:28 ◼   ► I forgot where I can save searches,

00:24:30 ◼   ► So I don't think this is a thing you can even do in Mastodon yet, or at all, which is a

00:24:36 ◼   ► shame.

00:24:37 ◼   ► But I also, on my main Twitter account, I have a little icon in Twitter that lets me

00:24:41 ◼   ► see ATP FM mentions.

00:24:44 ◼   ► Can't do that in Mastodon.

00:24:45 ◼   ► That's a Mastodon thing, not a client app.

00:24:47 ◼   ► But anyway, yeah.

00:24:49 ◼   ► Notifications, if you allow me to filter it to just be mentions, remember that I did that.

00:24:53 ◼   ► Otherwise I have to do it every single time.

00:24:56 ◼   ► It amazes me that like, you know,

00:24:57 ◼   ► I think Tuskr may be the literally the only client

00:25:00 ◼   ► that remembers that setting or has a way to make it,

00:25:02 ◼   ► all the other ones, you tap on notification

00:25:05 ◼   ► and they're like, "Look at all the people

00:25:06 ◼   ► "who favorited stuff, I don't care."

00:25:08 ◼   ► Not that I don't care, you can favorite my thing,

00:25:10 ◼   ► that's fine, but I just need to see a timeline

00:25:11 ◼   ► of every single person who did the favor,

00:25:13 ◼   ► but I just wanna see mentions, anyway.

00:25:15 ◼   ► - Real time follow up, John Siracusa on Mastodon,

00:25:18 ◼   ► so siracusa@mastodon.social, @ivory,

00:25:20 ◼   ► how are Casey List and Mark O'Armond

00:25:22 ◼   ► on the Ivory beta and I'm not?

00:25:23 ◼   ► This is an outrage exclamation point.

00:25:26 ◼   ► - I feel a little bit bad because Aline replied to me

00:25:29 ◼   ► and said that she was so sad that she missed

00:25:31 ◼   ► the sign up window and I didn't know

00:25:33 ◼   ► there was a sign up window.

00:25:33 ◼   ► - I don't think there was.

00:25:35 ◼   ► - I don't know if there was.

00:25:36 ◼   ► - All right, well I'm mad again, nevermind.

00:25:38 ◼   ► - Maybe there was and I missed it

00:25:39 ◼   ► but I didn't think there was.

00:25:40 ◼   ► - I think one of the things that makes this kind of

00:25:44 ◼   ► migration or giant switch different from something like

00:25:48 ◼   ► if Apple's platforms go bad,

00:25:51 ◼   ► It's so easy to change where you are microblogging.

00:25:55 ◼   ► The switching cost and the switching workload

00:26:02 ◼   ► are just so tiny.

00:26:04 ◼   ► And it's not nothing, and depending on how integrated

00:26:07 ◼   ► you are with Twitter, it can be substantial.

00:26:09 ◼   ► But I think first of all it helps that most of us nerds

00:26:13 ◼   ► who even know what third party Twitter apps are

00:26:16 ◼   ► don't use a large portion of the features

00:26:19 ◼   ► that Twitter has made in the last 10 years.

00:26:21 ◼   ► 'cause they never exposed them to the third party API.

00:26:23 ◼   ► - Right, and you know, so we don't see things like

00:26:27 ◼   ► the trends and yeah, ads.

00:26:29 ◼   ► We don't see, you know, like we don't do Twitter spaces

00:26:32 ◼   ► really, like all these things they've added

00:26:34 ◼   ► and it also helps they've barely moved their product forward

00:26:37 ◼   ► in 10 years, but anyway, so I think that's part of it too.

00:26:41 ◼   ► If you look at like, you know,

00:26:42 ◼   ► to change your operating system, to move platforms

00:26:46 ◼   ► either on mobile or on the desktop or on your laptop

00:26:49 ◼   ► whatever, to change that, I know our friend CGP Grey once said, a long time ago, I think

00:26:53 ◼   ► on Cortex, once said, it's like moving to a different country.

00:26:58 ◼   ► It's such a massive disruption to move from iPhone to Android or from Mac to PC or whatever.

00:27:04 ◼   ► That's such a huge change, and especially if your work involves one of those platforms

00:27:11 ◼   ► or if you have a lot of software investment or workflow investment in these platforms,

00:27:15 ◼   ► it's a massive thing.

00:27:16 ◼   ► Whereas changing from Twitter using Tweetbot to Mastodon using Ivory is basically nothing.

00:27:24 ◼   ► You just move over.

00:27:25 ◼   ► I mean, you gotta have the people go along with you.

00:27:27 ◼   ► This is true of computing platforms as well, but there is a network effect thing that is

00:27:31 ◼   ► super important because no one would care about Mastodon if no one was there.

00:27:35 ◼   ► There has to be some critical mass of people you care about following or want to converse

00:27:38 ◼   ► with.

00:27:39 ◼   ► And the same thing with computing platforms.

00:27:41 ◼   ► If you decide you're going to change computing platforms, are you going to change to whatever

00:27:45 ◼   ► that those people sort of took the code for BOS, the Haiku operating system, right?

00:27:51 ◼   ► You're probably not going to go to Haiku as much as you might like it because you're going

00:27:53 ◼   ► to be like, "Well, who else uses this and who else develops software for it?"

00:27:57 ◼   ► And so there is a network effect on platforms as well.

00:27:59 ◼   ► And you mentioned like moving to another country.

00:28:00 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, if I don't want to use Apple platforms and I don't want to use Windows

00:28:05 ◼   ► or Android, I'm going to use Linux on a desktop."

00:28:08 ◼   ► That's like moving to Antarctica.

00:28:11 ◼   ► I mean, it exists and is a landmass

00:28:14 ◼   ► and you can go there and stand on it, but it's not that.

00:28:19 ◼   ► I mean, it's not good mind you, but like,

00:28:21 ◼   ► I mean, compared to the software ecosystems of, you know,

00:28:24 ◼   ► the Amazon jungle of software ecosystems of the, you know,

00:28:27 ◼   ► Windows, Android, iOS, yeah, Linux is tough.

00:28:31 ◼   ► But yeah, no, there's not a lot of choices there,

00:28:34 ◼   ► but you know, like I said,

00:28:35 ◼   ► the problem of a microblogging platform or whatever

00:28:39 ◼   ► is small enough that a bunch of open standards

00:28:41 ◼   ► and some reasonable software can hopefully

00:28:44 ◼   ► get us over the finish line.

00:28:45 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:28:46 ◼   ► - And I think the movement here is so strong.

00:28:49 ◼   ► The last time we tried to do this was App.net.

00:28:52 ◼   ► And there were a number of major differences

00:28:54 ◼   ► between then and now.

00:28:55 ◼   ► But I think the biggest one, first of all,

00:28:58 ◼   ► well first of all, that Mastodon is this federated

00:29:01 ◼   ► open source distributed thing, App.net was not that.

00:29:04 ◼   ► So this has that selling point that we didn't have back then.

00:29:08 ◼   ► But the biggest difference is that way more people

00:29:12 ◼   ► hate Elon Musk than we thought.

00:29:14 ◼   ► Like it's such a huge difference.

00:29:18 ◼   ► Way more people are fleeing or have fled Twitter

00:29:22 ◼   ► and he has made so many more enemies.

00:29:24 ◼   ► You know, back when the AMP.net thing

00:29:26 ◼   ► was trying to get started, I think our main beef then

00:29:28 ◼   ► was that Twitter was being kind of jerks to API users

00:29:32 ◼   ► and to developers of client apps.

00:29:33 ◼   ► - And they were, but like there's no match

00:29:35 ◼   ► for this series of just like decisions

00:29:38 ◼   ► that we all don't like coming out of Twitter

00:29:40 ◼   ► on a daily basis, right?

00:29:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, like the number of people who were upset

00:29:43 ◼   ► about Twitter's API policies 10 years ago,

00:29:46 ◼   ► whenever that was, versus the number of people

00:29:48 ◼   ► who hated Elon Musk and what he's done in the last month,

00:29:50 ◼   ► it's a world of difference.

00:29:52 ◼   ► And so there are just so many people fleeing

00:29:55 ◼   ► from that sinking ship of Twitter,

00:29:57 ◼   ► or being kicked off of it, that I think

00:30:00 ◼   ► it's like an order of magnitude more movement happening

00:30:05 ◼   ► or more momentum happening.

00:30:07 ◼   ► It's such a bigger difference now.

00:30:09 ◼   ► And so I think once Ivory comes out on iOS and Mac,

00:30:14 ◼   ► game over, all of us, all of our people, our community,

00:30:18 ◼   ► it won't be there anymore, it won't be on Twitter anymore.

00:30:21 ◼   ► - We'll see about that.

00:30:22 ◼   ► I'm still not entirely confident that that's gonna happen.

00:30:25 ◼   ► But hey, I'm in both places living two lives here,

00:30:28 ◼   ► so see how it goes.

00:30:29 ◼   ► And I also still kind of think that if,

00:30:33 ◼   ► The Twitter itself is going to have value even if it is totally destroyed by Elon Musk,

00:30:38 ◼   ► just like the brand and the legacy.

00:30:42 ◼   ► I know this is not a thing that he does, but if he gets bored and decides to move on, someone

00:30:46 ◼   ► will scoop it up.

00:30:48 ◼   ► And then if someone scoops it up and starts running it not like an idiot, they'll get

00:30:53 ◼   ► people back.

00:30:54 ◼   ► That's a pretty good chance.

00:30:55 ◼   ► Well, they might.

00:30:56 ◼   ► They might.

00:30:57 ◼   ► I mean, it depends on how long that happens.

00:30:59 ◼   ► If Mastodon snowballs and becomes really big and Activity Pub catches on and it becomes

00:31:04 ◼   ► like RSS, right?

00:31:06 ◼   ► If the good scenario happens, it'll be tough to get people back, but I feel like the brand

00:31:10 ◼   ► cachet of Twitter is such that the desiccated husk of Twitter after it's been hollowed out

00:31:15 ◼   ► and everyone has left is still valuable enough that someone will scoop it up and try to make

00:31:20 ◼   ► a go of it.

00:31:21 ◼   ► And I think if they do do that, there's a good chance that a lot of people will come

00:31:24 ◼   ► back.

00:31:25 ◼   ► Not even us, but like, you know,

00:31:27 ◼   ► the fat part of the bell curve would definitely return.

00:31:31 ◼   ► - I think where we will keep using Twitter is probably

00:31:35 ◼   ► for like, if there is some major world event happens,

00:31:37 ◼   ► like some earthquake happens,

00:31:38 ◼   ► or you know, some big political event happens,

00:31:40 ◼   ► then you're like, oh my god, somebody just died.

00:31:43 ◼   ► Like, you wanna go, oh my god, what happened?

00:31:45 ◼   ► Where's the news?

00:31:46 ◼   ► Like--

00:31:46 ◼   ► - You gotta go somewhere where it's not just

00:31:48 ◼   ► your nerdy friends, but like everybody else is.

00:31:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think Twitter's gonna remain

00:31:52 ◼   ► that go-to place for that kind of thing

00:31:55 ◼   ► indefinitely into the future.

00:31:56 ◼   ► Unless it really gets destroyed.

00:31:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, unless the Nazis just really take it over,

00:32:01 ◼   ► which is what seems to be the direction things are going.

00:32:03 ◼   ► - Wow, yeah.

00:32:04 ◼   ► But I think for the casual hangout version

00:32:08 ◼   ► of all this stuff, I think many groups,

00:32:10 ◼   ► including most of our people,

00:32:12 ◼   ► I think have already moved over.

00:32:14 ◼   ► - One of the things that I wanted to quickly point out,

00:32:16 ◼   ► which is known, but I'm now seeing it myself,

00:32:19 ◼   ► is that you can set up your own instance of Mastodon.

00:32:24 ◼   ► And I don't see a lot of that,

00:32:27 ◼   ► but I was exchanging don't call them toots

00:32:30 ◼   ► with my dear friend Jelly, who is running his own instance.

00:32:34 ◼   ► So he's Jelly at jellystyle.social, if I remember right.

00:32:37 ◼   ► And while that is not something

00:32:40 ◼   ► I think I'm terribly interested in doing,

00:32:42 ◼   ► and it's funny 'cause I was speaking with Jelly about it,

00:32:44 ◼   ► and he's like, "Oh, you should set up one for ATP."

00:32:46 ◼   ► And I said, "Yes, I should."

00:32:48 ◼   ► but none of the three of us are interested in doing it.

00:32:51 ◼   ► So it's not gonna happen.

00:32:52 ◼   ► - Running an instance is,

00:32:54 ◼   ► the one you think you take away from our past discussions

00:32:55 ◼   ► is running instances is not, it's quite a thing.

00:32:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, but even just for the three of us,

00:33:01 ◼   ► I think it would be manageable.

00:33:01 ◼   ► - I know, even just for the three of us,

00:33:03 ◼   ► I'm not entirely convinced that the scaling concern,

00:33:05 ◼   ► like this came up with the person who shut down their server

00:33:08 ◼   ► that I was on, 'cause they were just tired

00:33:10 ◼   ► of running it, right?

00:33:11 ◼   ► What they said is basically, hey,

00:33:12 ◼   ► here's a server that basically nothing is going on on,

00:33:14 ◼   ► because it's been in sort of like,

00:33:16 ◼   ► you have to get like six months of warning or whatever,

00:33:18 ◼   ► or they suggest you give six months of warning.

00:33:19 ◼   ► So no one's on it doing anything, right?

00:33:21 ◼   ► This is basically a dead instance, right?

00:33:23 ◼   ► But even this dead idle instance,

00:33:25 ◼   ► where everyone had accounts there,

00:33:26 ◼   ► has moved elsewhere and stuff,

00:33:28 ◼   ► when the Mastodon spike happened,

00:33:30 ◼   ► when all, like the rest of us came back to Mastodon

00:33:32 ◼   ► and everything, on his dead instance,

00:33:34 ◼   ► he saw huge spikes in activity and load, right?

00:33:37 ◼   ► So even if you make a Mastodon instance

00:33:38 ◼   ► where it's just literally the three of us,

00:33:40 ◼   ► and we're the only people on the instance,

00:33:41 ◼   ► we still have to communicate with the rest of the network

00:33:45 ◼   ► for all the people that the three of us follow.

00:33:48 ◼   ► And if something big is happening elsewhere

00:33:50 ◼   ► on the activity pub network, that would impact our server.

00:33:53 ◼   ► And do any of us want to be babysitting another server?

00:33:55 ◼   ► Marker certainly doesn't,

00:33:57 ◼   ► I don't want to sign up for it either.

00:33:58 ◼   ► There is a way to use your own domain name

00:34:00 ◼   ► as sort of like a redirect through WebFinger

00:34:02 ◼   ► with another instance, so you don't run the instance,

00:34:04 ◼   ► but your name is like your name@yourdomain.com,

00:34:07 ◼   ► but that still looked a little bit janky to me,

00:34:09 ◼   ► so I wasn't ready to dive down that path.

00:34:11 ◼   ► But yeah, no, if you want to run an instance

00:34:13 ◼   ► for your friends, you can, but don't think,

00:34:15 ◼   ► It'll only have a lot of three people on it.

00:34:17 ◼   ► There'll never be any load.

00:34:18 ◼   ► I don't think that is necessarily the case.

00:34:20 ◼   ► - I think also, as this network of instances grows

00:34:25 ◼   ► and matures over time, as we start having more and more

00:34:30 ◼   ► force required to solve things like the moderation issues

00:34:33 ◼   ► and scaling issues, it wouldn't surprise me

00:34:35 ◼   ► if really small instances that have one or two people

00:34:38 ◼   ► on them, if they kind of become second class citizens

00:34:42 ◼   ► in the ecosystem in the sense that the major instances

00:34:45 ◼   ► are all probably going to maintain blocking lists

00:34:49 ◼   ► and allow lists and everything else

00:34:50 ◼   ► to try to keep moderation under control.

00:34:53 ◼   ► And it's probably going to be kind of like trying

00:34:55 ◼   ► to run your own email server now, which

00:34:57 ◼   ► is like you'd be signing up for a world of headaches

00:35:00 ◼   ► if you try to run it yourself.

00:35:01 ◼   ► And you might have no reputation among the network.

00:35:04 ◼   ► It might make your posts not show up right for everybody

00:35:06 ◼   ► or not show up quickly or whatever.

00:35:08 ◼   ► I hope it'll be better than email.

00:35:09 ◼   ► Because I think running an instance with three people

00:35:12 ◼   ► is easier than running an email server with three people.

00:35:15 ◼   ► already is easier.

00:35:16 ◼   ► And I think the scaling concerns,

00:35:17 ◼   ► it's not like you're gonna be overwhelmed

00:35:19 ◼   ► because your activity pub traffic is going to be related

00:35:22 ◼   ► to how many people the three accounts actually follow

00:35:24 ◼   ► so you have some control over it.

00:35:25 ◼   ► It's just not zero.

00:35:26 ◼   ► It's not like, oh, it'll be free

00:35:28 ◼   ► and I'll never need to look at it,

00:35:29 ◼   ► I'll never need to babysit.

00:35:30 ◼   ► At minimum, you'll need to update it

00:35:31 ◼   ► when there's patches and software updates

00:35:33 ◼   ► to keep up with the rest of the network

00:35:34 ◼   ► and then you, eventually, you need to update

00:35:36 ◼   ► the underlying OS or the version of Docker.

00:35:39 ◼   ► Just running anything 24/7

00:35:41 ◼   ► you expect to be up all the time

00:35:42 ◼   ► is a lot more work than people think it is.

00:35:45 ◼   ► It's less work than non-technical people think,

00:35:47 ◼   ► 'cause you can just get it up and running and doing it,

00:35:48 ◼   ► but it is just one more thing to be thinking about.

00:35:51 ◼   ► And I really hope it doesn't get as bad as email servers,

00:35:53 ◼   ► 'cause the culture seems to be, for the most part,

00:35:57 ◼   ► federate with people by default and, you know,

00:36:01 ◼   ► de-federate as needed.

00:36:02 ◼   ► If that ever reverses, then we'll probably have a problem.

00:36:05 ◼   ► But that seems against the spirit of ActivityPub,

00:36:08 ◼   ► like the idea that a new instance will only federate

00:36:11 ◼   ► with like this hard-coded list,

00:36:13 ◼   ► and if you wanna add anyone else,

00:36:14 ◼   ► you have to do it manually.

00:36:14 ◼   ► It seems like that just is not a way to go.

00:36:18 ◼   ► - And then very quickly, since we've gone on

00:36:20 ◼   ► quite a bit longer than we intended about this,

00:36:23 ◼   ► there is a better Mastodon Friend Finder,

00:36:25 ◼   ► which I haven't tried, but I think Jon has.

00:36:26 ◼   ► Do you wanna tell us about this?

00:36:28 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, so there was the couple ones we linked last time,

00:36:31 ◼   ► like the Fedi Finder. - Fedi Finder, yeah.

00:36:33 ◼   ► - Right, but this one that I found finally had an interface

00:36:36 ◼   ► that was closer to what I wanted.

00:36:37 ◼   ► I didn't like the Fedi Finder one.

00:36:38 ◼   ► I was like, oh, download this CSV

00:36:40 ◼   ► and upload it to import all your things.

00:36:42 ◼   ► I was like, I don't wanna do that.

00:36:43 ◼   ► What I want to do is every once in a while

00:36:46 ◼   ► be able to look at something and say,

00:36:47 ◼   ► hey, have any more people that I used to follow on Twitter,

00:36:50 ◼   ► have they come over to Mastodon?

00:36:51 ◼   ► And if they have, I want to follow them.

00:36:53 ◼   ► And so movetodon.org, all right,

00:36:57 ◼   ► has the interface that I want.

00:36:59 ◼   ► You do the authentication with all the things,

00:37:01 ◼   ► and then it gives you a list of all the people,

00:37:02 ◼   ► and it says, if you're already following them,

00:37:05 ◼   ► it says you're already following them,

00:37:06 ◼   ► and if you're not following them,

00:37:07 ◼   ► right next to their name is a button

00:37:08 ◼   ► that lets you follow them.

00:37:09 ◼   ► That's all I want, right?

00:37:10 ◼   ► And I can just reload this page every day

00:37:12 ◼   ► and see if any new people have arrived

00:37:14 ◼   ► and if they haven't clicked the button to follow them.

00:37:15 ◼   ► It is so much easier than like download a CSV

00:37:17 ◼   ► or copy and paste this or go to their profile

00:37:20 ◼   ► and hit follow and like, yeah.

00:37:22 ◼   ► So I think movetodon.org has a way better interface

00:37:26 ◼   ► than FediFinder and I hope it's not stealing

00:37:28 ◼   ► all my information because you have to give

00:37:29 ◼   ► lots of permission, so.

00:37:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I actually also have used movetodon

00:37:34 ◼   ► and I just, I'm keeping the tab in mobile Safari

00:37:36 ◼   ► on my phone just open and I go back there

00:37:38 ◼   ► like every couple days and refresh the page

00:37:40 ◼   ► and just see like, oh, look, so-and-so just joined.

00:37:44 ◼   ► So it's actually really nice, I really like it.

00:37:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's a flaw in this system

00:37:48 ◼   ► and for people to know like how is this working,

00:37:50 ◼   ► I think we mentioned this before,

00:37:51 ◼   ► we're gonna mention it again.

00:37:52 ◼   ► This only works if people on Twitter change their profile

00:37:56 ◼   ► to put their Mastodon address somewhere in there, right?

00:37:59 ◼   ► That's how this works, it's like how does it know,

00:38:02 ◼   ► like it gets your list of followers

00:38:03 ◼   ► then it basically looks at their profile page on Twitter

00:38:05 ◼   ► and tries to find something

00:38:07 ◼   ► that looks like a Mastodon address.

00:38:08 ◼   ► So it knows that, hey, Joe Schmoe

00:38:10 ◼   ► that used to follow on Twitter,

00:38:11 ◼   ► they have in their Twitter bio or something else

00:38:14 ◼   ► or in their Twitter name somewhere,

00:38:16 ◼   ► they have something that looks like a Mastodon address,

00:38:17 ◼   ► so here's where they are and you can follow them.

00:38:19 ◼   ► If people don't do that,

00:38:20 ◼   ► they're never gonna show up in this tool.

00:38:22 ◼   ► I follow a lot of people and I, you know,

00:38:24 ◼   ► right now it has only found 53

00:38:27 ◼   ► out of the 314 people I follow.

00:38:29 ◼   ► Are the rest of those people I follow

00:38:31 ◼   ► ever going to put a Mastodon handle in their address?

00:38:33 ◼   ► Have they even moved to Mastodon?

00:38:35 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:38:35 ◼   ► So this is a weak point.

00:38:37 ◼   ► It is definitely better than nothing,

00:38:38 ◼   ► and these tools are great,

00:38:39 ◼   ► and I'm glad we were, at least enough of us

00:38:42 ◼   ► have gotten on board with this convention

00:38:44 ◼   ► to put the Mastodon address in our profiles,

00:38:46 ◼   ► but not everybody will, and it's kind of a shame.

00:38:49 ◼   ► And as you can imagine, Twitter is not.

00:38:51 ◼   ► I'm surprised that they haven't started

00:38:52 ◼   ► removing those things from our profile,

00:38:53 ◼   ► 'cause I think a bunch of Mastodon-related stuff

00:38:55 ◼   ► has already been blocked or muted on Twitter, because Elon.

00:38:58 ◼   ► - Do you think he actually,

00:39:00 ◼   ► do you think we are registering on his radar,

00:39:02 ◼   ► like this kind of movement?

00:39:03 ◼   ► I'm not sure that we would.

00:39:05 ◼   ► - It will eventually if it keeps going in this direction.

00:39:09 ◼   ► It'll come up.

00:39:10 ◼   ► - And then speaking of Elon, very, very quickly,

00:39:12 ◼   ► please, please, please, very quickly,

00:39:15 ◼   ► I wanted to call attention to the after show,

00:39:18 ◼   ► the paid after show of Reconcival Differences, episode 196.

00:39:23 ◼   ► Merlin posed a very, very interesting question

00:39:25 ◼   ► which I'm not sure ever actually got answered,

00:39:27 ◼   ► but nevertheless, the discussion was excellent.

00:39:30 ◼   ► And Merlin asked John, if you want Twitter to stay live,

00:39:33 ◼   ► how do you want Twitter to make money?

00:39:34 ◼   ► which seems an obvious question to ask,

00:39:37 ◼   ► but it's not a question I was asking, so.

00:39:39 ◼   ► - Totally answered it.

00:39:40 ◼   ► I mean, it's spread out over in the typical rec diffs way,

00:39:44 ◼   ► but yeah, no, I think the way they'd make money is,

00:39:47 ◼   ► because they're too big to make money by charging everybody,

00:39:50 ◼   ► 'cause there's just too many people,

00:39:52 ◼   ► and it's not the right business model for them.

00:39:55 ◼   ► They were already making, I mean, they were,

00:39:58 ◼   ► in terms of revenue, they had millions and millions

00:40:00 ◼   ► of dollars of advertising revenue,

00:40:01 ◼   ► and they had a large desirable audience to advertise to.

00:40:05 ◼   ► So I feel like advertising to your pretty large audience

00:40:09 ◼   ► filled with people that advertisers want to reach

00:40:13 ◼   ► is a good business.

00:40:14 ◼   ► So how should Twitter make money?

00:40:16 ◼   ► Again, assuming they weren't just spending all their time

00:40:18 ◼   ► allowing Nazis to get their accounts back.

00:40:20 ◼   ► You advertise to most of the people

00:40:24 ◼   ► and then for the people who are willing

00:40:26 ◼   ► and able to pay for something,

00:40:27 ◼   ► you allow them to pay for something,

00:40:30 ◼   ► Like the way I phrased it on RecDiffs was,

00:40:32 ◼   ► the people who pay have to pay for something

00:40:34 ◼   ► that does not make the service worse

00:40:36 ◼   ► for people who don't pay.

00:40:37 ◼   ► So they can't pay to like make their posts more visible

00:40:41 ◼   ► or like make them more prominent

00:40:43 ◼   ► or they can't pay to be able to like

00:40:45 ◼   ► delete other people's accounts.

00:40:46 ◼   ► Like you can't, what they have to pay for is instead

00:40:49 ◼   ► is like now you have more powerful search features maybe.

00:40:52 ◼   ► Even that can be abused, like it's tricky to pick,

00:40:54 ◼   ► but like obviously verification is worth paying for.

00:40:56 ◼   ► You paid to have a human being to look at your ID

00:40:59 ◼   ► and prove that you're really you and so on and so forth.

00:41:02 ◼   ► Paying to have better API access

00:41:04 ◼   ► for more sophisticated APIs for more sophisticated clients

00:41:07 ◼   ► like TweetDeck or whatever, right?

00:41:09 ◼   ► So that's, yeah, that's how they should make money.

00:41:11 ◼   ► You advertise to almost everybody

00:41:12 ◼   ► and you make the people who want to pay for services

00:41:15 ◼   ► that most people don't want or need,

00:41:16 ◼   ► but the people who do want or need to find worthwhile.

00:41:19 ◼   ► - You know, Jon, here it was,

00:41:20 ◼   ► I was trying to get people to implicitly sign up

00:41:22 ◼   ► for your show and pay to hear the after show,

00:41:25 ◼   ► which I will reiterate was excellent,

00:41:27 ◼   ► but here it is, you've now just given us the TLDR of the whole damn thing.

00:41:30 ◼   ► But I didn't, I didn't, I didn't imagine if that took like 15 minutes and was filled with bad jokes.

00:41:34 ◼   ► That's what you're paying for.

00:41:36 ◼   ► That's the idea!

00:41:37 ◼   ► Anyways, uh, anyway, so yeah, 196, you should listen to the After Show.

00:41:41 ◼   ► It starts at about an hour and 36 minutes,

00:41:43 ◼   ► which, speaking of, how am I the one that wants chapters all of a sudden?

00:41:45 ◼   ► The three of us were resisting it so much.

00:41:47 ◼   ► I don't edit that show, don't talk to me about chapters.

00:41:50 ◼   ► That's just, you should have chapters.

00:41:51 ◼   ► Um, and finally, with regard to this, 196 episode of Rectifs, when the hell did that happen?

00:41:56 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:41:57 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:41:58 ◼   ► - The episodes count isn't a thing.

00:42:00 ◼   ► It's what we talked about last time.

00:42:01 ◼   ► We did, it was like our seven year anniversary or something

00:42:03 ◼   ► and both of us were very shocked by that.

00:42:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:42:06 ◼   ► Seems like that's my new show that I just started doing.

00:42:09 ◼   ► Maybe we've been doing it for two years, but no.

00:42:11 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week by Linode,

00:42:14 ◼   ► my favorite place to run all of my servers.

00:42:17 ◼   ► Visit linode.com/ATP and see for yourself

00:42:21 ◼   ► why so many people like me choose Linode to run our stuff.

00:42:23 ◼   ► So first of all, they are a great host

00:42:26 ◼   ► for the regular stuff that we used to use Host for

00:42:28 ◼   ► all the time, compute instances, slash cloud instances,

00:42:31 ◼   ► slash VPSs, these are all the same thing.

00:42:34 ◼   ► They are the best at this.

00:42:35 ◼   ► I've been with them for almost a decade now,

00:42:37 ◼   ► using primarily that product.

00:42:39 ◼   ► And it's amazing what you get at Linode for the price.

00:42:42 ◼   ► So first of all, amazing value, right?

00:42:44 ◼   ► They also have all sorts of different capabilities

00:42:46 ◼   ► that you might need.

00:42:47 ◼   ► So if you need a really small instance

00:42:49 ◼   ► that prioritizes maybe price over everything else,

00:42:51 ◼   ► they have that.

00:42:52 ◼   ► I think it starts at five bucks a month, it's amazing.

00:42:54 ◼   ► Then if you need more resources,

00:42:56 ◼   ► Maybe you need more disk space, more CPU power, more RAM.

00:42:59 ◼   ► They have amazing plans above that that are all,

00:43:02 ◼   ► in my experience, the best values in the business, by far,

00:43:05 ◼   ► and they always have been.

00:43:06 ◼   ► And also, they have dedicated specialties.

00:43:09 ◼   ► So if you need things like high memory plans,

00:43:11 ◼   ► GPU compute plans, dedicated CPU plans, they have all that.

00:43:14 ◼   ► You need more disk space than what they offer

00:43:16 ◼   ► on the regular ones, they have block storage.

00:43:18 ◼   ► You can have giant volumes if you need to.

00:43:20 ◼   ► They also have, if you need something that's maybe

00:43:21 ◼   ► an S3 compatible object storage, they have that.

00:43:24 ◼   ► They have managed databases now.

00:43:25 ◼   ► They have managed load balancers, managed backups,

00:43:28 ◼   ► all these things available at Linode,

00:43:30 ◼   ► and all this backed up by amazing support,

00:43:32 ◼   ► an amazing API, amazing documentation,

00:43:35 ◼   ► and at amazing values.

00:43:36 ◼   ► So to me, honestly, you look at other hosts

00:43:39 ◼   ► and it's no contest, Linode is the best.

00:43:41 ◼   ► So see for yourself all this stuff at linode.com/atp.

00:43:45 ◼   ► Create your free account there,

00:43:47 ◼   ► and you get $100 in credit to start looking around

00:43:49 ◼   ► at Linode and trying stuff out.

00:43:50 ◼   ► So linode.com/atp, free accounts there,

00:43:54 ◼   ► get $100 in credit.

00:43:56 ◼   ► Linode makes cloud computing fast, simple, and affordable,

00:43:59 ◼   ► so you can focus on your projects, not your infrastructure.

00:44:02 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Linode for hosting all my servers

00:44:04 ◼   ► and sponsoring our show.

00:44:05 ◼   ► - Moving on finally, with regard to your recommendation

00:44:11 ◼   ► to instrument your code, Marco,

00:44:13 ◼   ► John was recommending to instrument your code

00:44:15 ◼   ► and figure out ways to--

00:44:17 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, but we're talking about ButtDB.

00:44:19 ◼   ► - Yep, and so we were,

00:44:22 ◼   ► did you just drop the name and I missed it, shoot.

00:44:24 ◼   ► - Make a joke about what he called last week.

00:44:25 ◼   ► Is it to make it Googleable?

00:44:26 ◼   ► Call it ButtDB so you can find it

00:44:28 ◼   ► instead of calling it single light.

00:44:29 ◼   ► - Yes, yes, yes.

00:44:30 ◼   ► Anyway, so ButtDB, you should instrument it

00:44:33 ◼   ► and so this way you can figure out

00:44:35 ◼   ► how to debug concurrency issues.

00:44:38 ◼   ► And we had a listener write and say,

00:44:40 ◼   ► "Hey, you should check out this WWDC session,"

00:44:42 ◼   ► which we will link in the show notes,

00:44:43 ◼   ► "with Hargis Manga and Mike Ash."

00:44:46 ◼   ► Mike Ash, who used to be independent

00:44:47 ◼   ► and then got sucked into Apple,

00:44:49 ◼   ► as so many people do a few years back.

00:44:51 ◼   ► And I'd seen it before,

00:44:52 ◼   ► I had forgotten about it, and then rewatched it

00:44:55 ◼   ► and was reminded that it's actually

00:44:56 ◼   ► a very, very good session.

00:44:57 ◼   ► And among other things, it will show you

00:44:59 ◼   ► what they call a task forest,

00:45:00 ◼   ► which, this is in Instruments, I'm sorry.

00:45:03 ◼   ► In Instruments, you can see a task forest,

00:45:05 ◼   ► which shows you a hierarchical tree view of your tasks,

00:45:08 ◼   ► which was super freaking cool.

00:45:10 ◼   ► And I actually thought it was a really good,

00:45:12 ◼   ► like, it was contrived, but a semi-real world example

00:45:16 ◼   ► of why actors are important and how you use them

00:45:19 ◼   ► the correct way and so on and so forth.

00:45:20 ◼   ► The whole video is like 25, 30 minutes,

00:45:22 ◼   ► and it's worth checking out.

00:45:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's definitely a cool tool.

00:45:25 ◼   ► What I was saying was to instrument for metrics

00:45:27 ◼   ► on like, you know, slow queries,

00:45:29 ◼   ► how many queries are you running,

00:45:30 ◼   ► how long do they take, you know,

00:45:31 ◼   ► to just find performance bottlenecks.

00:45:32 ◼   ► And this is the type of thing that you do

00:45:34 ◼   ► while you're developing your application

00:45:35 ◼   ► to sort of make sure you're not doing something silly

00:45:37 ◼   ► in terms of concurrency or to debug issues you're having.

00:45:39 ◼   ► But obviously you can't run this instruments thing

00:45:41 ◼   ► when it's running on other people's phones and stuff.

00:45:44 ◼   ► And so that's where your telemetry and logging

00:45:46 ◼   ► and everything will potentially save your butt

00:45:49 ◼   ► to figure out like, hey, someone says,

00:45:51 ◼   ► when I go to this screen, it hangs for two seconds

00:45:53 ◼   ► before the screen comes into view.

00:45:54 ◼   ► Maybe you're logging it, like,

00:45:55 ◼   ► oh, I see there's a slow query happening here.

00:45:57 ◼   ► And then you would go back to this instrument's thing

00:45:59 ◼   ► and say, if this query is slow,

00:46:01 ◼   ► can I make it not block the task?

00:46:03 ◼   ► Like, am I using actors poorly?

00:46:04 ◼   ► And really mostly just say, why is this query slow

00:46:07 ◼   ► so I can fix it?

00:46:08 ◼   ► Because he's got that choke point with buttDB

00:46:10 ◼   ► of like, all the queries go through this library.

00:46:12 ◼   ► So if you're wondering if you've got slow queries,

00:46:14 ◼   ► well, there's one place that you can instrument

00:46:16 ◼   ► and for timings on every single one of your queries,

00:46:18 ◼   ► and then you'll find, or even just do,

00:46:20 ◼   ► just log the ones that take longer than x number

00:46:22 ◼   ► of milliseconds.

00:46:23 ◼   ► Then you'll only log the slow ones.

00:46:24 ◼   ► And you can do that on everybody's phone

00:46:25 ◼   ► and then have a button in your UI,

00:46:27 ◼   ► which I think Mark already has somewhere, which is like, hey,

00:46:28 ◼   ► email me your logs or whatever.

00:46:30 ◼   ► Yep.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:31 ◼   ► That was my suggestion.

00:46:32 ◼   ► But yeah, the instruments thing is definitely cool too.

00:46:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I've been working on butt DB a lot for the last week.

00:46:37 ◼   ► And I've mostly just been--

00:46:41 ◼   ► I learned yesterday, like, oh, wait a minute.

00:46:44 ◼   ► I forgot to write a delete method.

00:46:46 ◼   ► Whoops.

00:46:47 ◼   ► Never delete data.

00:46:48 ◼   ► It's a append-only database.

00:46:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

00:46:50 ◼   ► - Which is a thing.

00:46:51 ◼   ► I think you need to just switch over to Xcode right now,

00:46:54 ◼   ► a right click and go to refactor and just write buttDB.

00:46:57 ◼   ► Just go do it.

00:46:58 ◼   ► - No, I like the name I picked.

00:47:00 ◼   ► - But buttDB, I know.

00:47:01 ◼   ► I'm just saying.

00:47:02 ◼   ► That's the name you picked,

00:47:03 ◼   ► so go change the name of your actual class to that.

00:47:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, so yeah, and I did the Objective-C

00:47:08 ◼   ► compatibility layer yesterday and today,

00:47:12 ◼   ► and boy, that was not fun.

00:47:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:47:16 ◼   ► It was just, 'cause first I wrote this whole

00:47:19 ◼   ► Swift version of the class with the little object Cs

00:47:22 ◼   ► all over the place.

00:47:23 ◼   ► And then when I just went to try to use it,

00:47:25 ◼   ► I learned, oh, wait a minute.

00:47:26 ◼   ► Objective C can't subclass a Swift class.

00:47:30 ◼   ► Even if it's an object C subclassing NSObject,

00:47:33 ◼   ► you just can't subclass it from objective C.

00:47:36 ◼   ► So I had to move a lot of that functionality

00:47:39 ◼   ► into an objective C class, and I had to rewrite some stuff.

00:47:42 ◼   ► It was a whole thing.

00:47:44 ◼   ► So it's been a little un-fun,

00:47:46 ◼   ► but I've been able to keep most of it in Swift.

00:47:48 ◼   ► And the way I designed this so that the Objective-C support

00:47:53 ◼   ► is only like a few extra little files,

00:47:56 ◼   ► and then, and you can, and the whole library

00:47:58 ◼   ► doesn't depend on those files.

00:48:00 ◼   ► And so if you have a project, or if I in the future

00:48:03 ◼   ► have a project where I don't need Objective-C compatibility,

00:48:06 ◼   ► I can just omit those files and the rest of it

00:48:08 ◼   ► still builds just fine and it's fine.

00:48:10 ◼   ► So I have, I'm trying to be very forward looking here

00:48:14 ◼   ► with how I'm doing this.

00:48:15 ◼   ► That being said, I still have not actually tried

00:48:18 ◼   ► to integrate it into a functioning app yet.

00:48:22 ◼   ► Like there's a thing in Overcast

00:48:23 ◼   ► I need to build this month to start trying to track stats

00:48:27 ◼   ► a little bit better for listening stats,

00:48:30 ◼   ► 'cause this is the month where the Spotify,

00:48:33 ◼   ► what's it called, Spotify replay?

00:48:35 ◼   ► Yeah, the Spotify wrap, yeah, it's like,

00:48:37 ◼   ► it's when Spotify tells people in December,

00:48:40 ◼   ► like here's the artist you listen to the most this year,

00:48:43 ◼   ► And then everyone posts them all over Twitter

00:48:45 ◼   ► and everyone starts emailing me asking,

00:48:48 ◼   ► like hey, when are you gonna add this feature?

00:48:50 ◼   ► What's my Overcast wrapped?

00:48:51 ◼   ► And so what I have to do really is at some point

00:48:54 ◼   ► start recording better stats on how much time

00:48:58 ◼   ► you spend listening to each show or whatever

00:49:00 ◼   ► and do that for a whole year.

00:49:02 ◼   ► And so if I'm gonna release this feature next December,

00:49:04 ◼   ► the time to start doing that data collection

00:49:06 ◼   ► is now before January 1st when it'll then be less complete.

00:49:13 ◼   ► - Well, so like the Spotify thing,

00:49:15 ◼   ► and other podcast clients do,

00:49:16 ◼   ► because I've seen some other people tweeting at us

00:49:19 ◼   ► saying that we were their number one listen thing.

00:49:21 ◼   ► That's what happens when you make shows that are this long.

00:49:22 ◼   ► We get a lot of actual listen time in there.

00:49:25 ◼   ► But like the people doing the Spotify things,

00:49:27 ◼   ► I understand why they do it now,

00:49:28 ◼   ► 'cause it's kinda like, oh, the year is winding down,

00:49:30 ◼   ► it's kind of the new year,

00:49:31 ◼   ► and it's the time you do those types of things, right?

00:49:33 ◼   ► But the year's not over.

00:49:34 ◼   ► What have you listened to like hundreds of hours

00:49:36 ◼   ► of some other podcast on December 30th and 31st, right?

00:49:39 ◼   ► I know you can pick any arbitrary time in the year,

00:49:41 ◼   ► and that's what I'm getting at with Marco

00:49:42 ◼   ► trying to rush to get this feature done.

00:49:44 ◼   ► Like why, why not just start your accounting

00:49:45 ◼   ► from January 15th?

00:49:46 ◼   ► Well, it's because Spotify does it around this time

00:49:49 ◼   ► and this is the time when people are thinking

00:49:50 ◼   ► about the end of the year, so it's probably wise

00:49:52 ◼   ► that you do try to get it done in December.

00:49:54 ◼   ► Just kind of annoys me that like,

00:49:55 ◼   ► you can't do any year-end accounting

00:49:57 ◼   ► when the year hasn't ended yet.

00:49:58 ◼   ► - I know, right?

00:50:00 ◼   ► - That's what they do.

00:50:00 ◼   ► - I mean, in all fairness, a lot fewer people

00:50:03 ◼   ► listen to podcasts in the last couple of weeks

00:50:04 ◼   ► of December than in the rest of the year.

00:50:06 ◼   ► - You can go on a long road trip or something.

00:50:08 ◼   ► You never know what's gonna happen.

00:50:09 ◼   ► - But anyway, yeah, so I haven't done

00:50:11 ◼   ► any actual integrations when App yet.

00:50:13 ◼   ► I think the async only nature of this library

00:50:18 ◼   ► is going to prove to be a massive pain in the butt

00:50:21 ◼   ► to integrate in any legacy code.

00:50:24 ◼   ► That being said, I still want it to be designed this way.

00:50:29 ◼   ► So that's just gonna be in typical me fashion,

00:50:34 ◼   ► I'm gonna start in fifth gear

00:50:35 ◼   ► and just slowly get myself going.

00:50:38 ◼   ► And once I'm going, it's gonna be great,

00:50:41 ◼   ► but it's going to be a slow build. So we'll see.

00:50:44 ◼   ► With regard to an Ask ATP from last week, with regard to X-Pendity Wi-Fi, I think one

00:50:49 ◼   ► or all of us had said, "Oh, it's a little bit weird using somebody else's bandwidth."

00:50:54 ◼   ► And Clayton O'Neill wrote in to say the following, "This actually does not use the customer's

00:50:58 ◼   ► bandwidth. The cable modem is provisioned to have a completely different 'service flow'

00:51:01 ◼   ► for the alternative SSID. The service flow is effectively how DOCSIS enforces quality

00:51:06 ◼   ► what is it, not quality of service, yeah, quality of service.

00:51:09 ◼   ► And it is how cable providers sell you

00:51:11 ◼   ► a specific tier of service.

00:51:12 ◼   ► For example, 75 down, 10 up.

00:51:14 ◼   ► The Xfinity WiFi service will have a separate service flow

00:51:16 ◼   ► in addition to the service flow provision

00:51:18 ◼   ► for the customer service.

00:51:19 ◼   ► And there's a whole article about this

00:51:22 ◼   ► that's a little bit less explicit,

00:51:24 ◼   ► or not explicit language, it discusses it less explicitly

00:51:27 ◼   ► in a less nerdy way, but there's an article

00:51:29 ◼   ► we'll link in the show notes about this.

00:51:31 ◼   ► - I mean, I understand what they're saying

00:51:32 ◼   ► about dividing up the different flows or whatever,

00:51:34 ◼   ► but in the end, it's the same cable leaving

00:51:36 ◼   ► people's house and you know maybe there's plenty of leftover bandwidth so it doesn't

00:51:39 ◼   ► affect the customer but there's a reason cable have crappy cable you know services have crappy

00:51:44 ◼   ► upload speed and it's how they choose to proportion the you know the bandwidth they have going

00:51:48 ◼   ► to and from the house and so yeah you're probably not screwing things up too much but if you

00:51:52 ◼   ► were to grab that and start uploading a massive amount I would imagine that you could impact

00:51:57 ◼   ► the other quote unquote flow maybe it is maybe they do reserve bandwidth I don't even know

00:52:00 ◼   ► but anyway as you said this is part of the service that you're paying for so try and

00:52:04 ◼   ► not using it out of some form of politeness or because you feel bad is silly.

00:52:08 ◼   ► You're paying for it.

00:52:09 ◼   ► Xfinity service is bad in many other ways.

00:52:11 ◼   ► At least take advantage of this perk.

00:52:13 ◼   ► And then finally, earlier this week, I took my iPad to my beloved picnic table, and I

00:52:20 ◼   ► think we had discussed this like three or four weeks ago, and I had said, "Oh, my iPad

00:52:23 ◼   ► wasn't on the appropriate Verizon cellular plan such that I didn't get ultra wideband."

00:52:29 ◼   ► Well, I've since rectified that problem, and I am getting ultra wideband, and I did a speed

00:52:33 ◼   ► test and it got 4,373.71 megabits down. So that's four gigabits, almost four and a half

00:52:41 ◼   ► gigabits down, 300 megabits up. In the span of this 30 second speed test, I used six and

00:52:48 ◼   ► a half gigs of data. I think I get like 15 or 30 in a month. So it was really wild. So

00:52:54 ◼   ► I did the math. This is approximately 550 megabytes per second down. So at home, I get

00:53:02 ◼   ► In real world usage, I get something like 80 megabytes on a good day, and that's on

00:53:07 ◼   ► a gigabit files connection.

00:53:10 ◼   ► Sitting on a picnic table in a park in the greater Richmond area, I was getting 550 megabytes

00:53:17 ◼   ► a second down.

00:53:18 ◼   ► That is 85% of a standard CD in one second.

00:53:22 ◼   ► Do you remember when you would download an album in the early Napster days?

00:53:26 ◼   ► I've told this story so many times in this program.

00:53:28 ◼   ► I would be sitting in my dorm at Virginia Tech and I would get like a

00:53:31 ◼   ► megabyte a second and go holy smokes this must be somebody else on campus

00:53:35 ◼   ► because look how fast this is at a megabyte a second and and it would take

00:53:39 ◼   ► like an hour or two to download an entire CDs worth of stuff I mean not

00:53:43 ◼   ► that any of us would ever do that we would always pay for everything

00:53:45 ◼   ► hypothetically if you were to do that in the early 2000s and it

00:53:48 ◼   ► would take like an hour it would take one second or maybe a second and a half

00:53:53 ◼   ► to download an entire CD worth of data that's just bananas technology school

00:53:58 ◼   ► - It is really funny to me to think that like, you know,

00:54:00 ◼   ► how many seconds would it take to use up

00:54:03 ◼   ► your entire data cap for the month?

00:54:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, seriously, it's so true.

00:54:06 ◼   ► - 'Cause it's definitely measured in seconds.

00:54:08 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:09 ◼   ► Oh man, that's ridiculous.

00:54:12 ◼   ► And I'm also kind of impressed that like,

00:54:13 ◼   ► the speed test architecture can serve things

00:54:17 ◼   ► through all the way from wherever they're serving it

00:54:19 ◼   ► to your device at four gigabits.

00:54:22 ◼   ► Like nothing is throttling that along the way.

00:54:24 ◼   ► - Yep, no, that's so true.

00:54:25 ◼   ► And I mean, obviously, like so many people,

00:54:27 ◼   ► what I had tooted about this.

00:54:29 ◼   ► So many people were like, in a nice way, but like, okay, why?

00:54:34 ◼   ► And honestly, I don't have a good answer for that,

00:54:36 ◼   ► but it's just cool that you can do it.

00:54:38 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:54:39 ◼   ► - You're basically like playing Ghostbusters

00:54:40 ◼   ► where you're trapping those bits inside your iPad

00:54:43 ◼   ► where they can't get out except for through

00:54:45 ◼   ► the wired connection that runs at USB 2.0 speeds.

00:54:47 ◼   ► Or no, actually, their iPads have Thunderbolt, don't they?

00:54:50 ◼   ► - Well, some of them do.

00:54:51 ◼   ► And previously, there were a couple, I think the 10.5,

00:54:55 ◼   ► And then the first couple 12.9s before that Thunderbolt,

00:54:59 ◼   ► they had USB 3.0 speeds over lightning.

00:55:02 ◼   ► That was possible, and a few iPad models had that,

00:55:06 ◼   ► but iPhones for some reason

00:55:08 ◼   ► have never gotten that capability.

00:55:09 ◼   ► - All right, it's just bananas.

00:55:10 ◼   ► I think I told you when I was first using Ultra Wideband

00:55:13 ◼   ► with my iPhone, I'm pretty sure I told the story already,

00:55:16 ◼   ► but I was tethered via USB to my computer,

00:55:19 ◼   ► and I did a speed test on my computer,

00:55:20 ◼   ► and it was slower than dirt,

00:55:21 ◼   ► and I was like, "What the hell is going on?"

00:55:22 ◼   ► Oh, and then I tethered via Wi-Fi,

00:55:24 ◼   ► and suddenly it got way freaking faster.

00:55:27 ◼   ► So bring on our USB-C iPhones,

00:55:29 ◼   ► is what I'm saying in a roundabout way.

00:55:31 ◼   ► All right, let's talk topics.

00:55:32 ◼   ► I wanted to just briefly call out,

00:55:33 ◼   ► in part to prevent everyone and their mother

00:55:35 ◼   ► from tweeting this at me,

00:55:36 ◼   ► but also because I think it's freaking cool.

00:55:39 ◼   ► FFmpeg has been ported to WebAssembly.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Why?

00:55:43 ◼   ► Not sure, but that's so freaking cool.

00:55:46 ◼   ► And I just wanted to call that out.

00:55:47 ◼   ► - What does this mean?

00:55:50 ◼   ► - I guess you can run FFmpeg in the browser,

00:55:53 ◼   ► But like, I'm not sure why you would,

00:55:55 ◼   ► but I mean, WebAssembly is supposed to be

00:55:57 ◼   ► pretty damn fast, right?

00:55:59 ◼   ► - Someone should make a website where the URLs

00:56:01 ◼   ► are the command line strings,

00:56:02 ◼   ► like with the appropriate translation,

00:56:04 ◼   ► so it works as a URL.

00:56:06 ◼   ► So you have to come up with a weird command line

00:56:07 ◼   ► and then you just paste it into the address bar

00:56:09 ◼   ► and then it runs.

00:56:10 ◼   ► - Right, right, that would be very cool.

00:56:11 ◼   ► I mean, honestly, I don't know why this is.

00:56:14 ◼   ► I'm not even sure why I think this is cool.

00:56:15 ◼   ► Other than that, I think it's cool.

00:56:17 ◼   ► So I just wanted to call it to everyone's attention.

00:56:19 ◼   ► This is a FFmpeg, wasm.netlify.app.

00:56:24 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the show notes.

00:56:25 ◼   ► But yeah, you can apparently like transcode stuff

00:56:27 ◼   ► in the browser for fun and profit?

00:56:30 ◼   ► I don't know, I just thought this was super cool.

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00:58:34 ◼   ► And we've had something in the show notes for about 13 years, and it's probably time

00:58:39 ◼   ► to go ahead and talk about it.

00:58:41 ◼   ► There's been a couple more ads added to basically

00:58:44 ◼   ► everything you touch on an Apple device.

00:58:46 ◼   ► - We talked about the ad slots already in a past show.

00:58:49 ◼   ► We're like, oh, here are the new ad slots or whatever,

00:58:51 ◼   ► but like there's fallout from that.

00:58:53 ◼   ► I think we just discussed the fact

00:58:54 ◼   ► that they were going to do it.

00:58:55 ◼   ► They were gonna add these ad slots

00:58:57 ◼   ► and this is where you can buy ads

00:58:58 ◼   ► and this is where they'll appear or whatever.

00:58:59 ◼   ► But since then, we've been trying to let this run its course

00:59:04 ◼   ► so we'd be able to say something conclusive about it,

00:59:07 ◼   ► but it seems to kind of be in stasis at this point, so I guess we can talk about it the way it is now.

00:59:11 ◼   ► Yeah, so to recap very briefly, there's a bunch more ads either already here or coming in other places.

00:59:19 ◼   ► On the App Store, the Today View has advertising on it now, it never used to, that's kind of like the landing page of the App Store.

00:59:25 ◼   ► It used to be exclusively curated content, which, although I didn't personally look at it very often,

00:59:31 ◼   ► it was very, very good. Like, any time I looked at it, I was impressed. Anyone I've ever spoken to about it was impressed.

00:59:36 ◼   ► It was good stuff, but now on the Day View there's advertising. There's always been advertising in search.

00:59:42 ◼   ► Alarmingly on an apps detail page, and Marco in particular was talking about this a few weeks ago,

00:59:48 ◼   ► there are also advertisements there. And when this first dropped,

00:59:52 ◼   ► Apple just assumed the best as

00:59:55 ◼   ► people want to do. And it turns out that the people who are most likely to buy advertising on the App Store are gambling

01:00:03 ◼   ► apps and hookup apps and things like that. So a lot of people were pointing out that

01:00:09 ◼   ► when you did a search for a

01:00:12 ◼   ► app that will help you with getting over an addiction to gambling, well, what's getting advertised at the bottom?

01:00:18 ◼   ► And this is a tweet or something. Yeah, tweet from user John. I'll put a link in the show notes.

01:00:22 ◼   ► And so John was looking at the app Recover Me, which its subtitle is "Manage a gambling addiction." At the bottom of the details page

01:00:30 ◼   ► you might also like Jackpot World, casino slots.

01:00:34 ◼   ► Cool, that's great.

01:00:35 ◼   ► That's not a bad look at all.

01:00:37 ◼   ► And they've said that there's going to be ads

01:00:41 ◼   ► and maps potentially, or maybe that's not been said,

01:00:44 ◼   ► but it's been rumored.

01:00:45 ◼   ► It's just, I don't know.

01:00:46 ◼   ► It's hard for me not to just regurgitate

01:00:50 ◼   ► what so many other very, very smart people

01:00:52 ◼   ► have said about this.

01:00:53 ◼   ► But one of the reasons I like Apple stuff so much,

01:00:56 ◼   ► and I've gotten the same feeling from Sonos,

01:00:59 ◼   ► and I used to get the same feeling from BMW and from Sony in the past is that it just felt premium.

01:01:04 ◼   ► It just felt like people who really gave a crap made this. And having ads kind of junking up

01:01:13 ◼   ► everything, I feel like it's gone too far. And it makes my devices, makes my Apple stuff feel

01:01:20 ◼   ► less premium. In the same way that like nickel-and-dime-ing you over iCloud storage,

01:01:25 ◼   ► I'm not gonna be able to find it for the show notes, but I saw a tweet recently where it showed

01:01:28 ◼   ► graph of iCloud storage since like iCloud debuted and it's a flat 5 gigabyte line since

01:01:32 ◼   ► like '08 or no it was like 2011 or something like that. It's silly stuff like that.

01:01:38 ◼   ► How fast can you fill that up over an ultra wide band?

01:01:41 ◼   ► Yeah right, so apparently about 30 seconds. But anyways, it's silly things like that that

01:01:49 ◼   ► kind of nickel and dime my opinion of Apple and just make me feel like ugh, this thing

01:01:56 ◼   ► that used to just unabashedly make me happy just kind of feels yucky now and

01:02:01 ◼   ► and I just I don't like it and I understand that services is seems to be

01:02:07 ◼   ► the golden child now and you know obviously Apple has has an interest if

01:02:13 ◼   ► not a responsibility in making as much money as they possibly can I've behind

01:02:17 ◼   ► on my podcast and I was listening to the talk show with Gruber and Federico

01:02:21 ◼   ► Vitici from I don't know probably a month or two ago and they were talking

01:02:25 ◼   ► about this quite a lot and and I think they had a lot of both of them had a lot

01:02:28 ◼   ► of really smart things to say about it but I don't know it at what point does

01:02:32 ◼   ► Apple look around and realize oh this is this is making us look gross and crummy

01:02:39 ◼   ► and and maybe they just don't care as they're making piles and piles of money

01:02:43 ◼   ► but not only does it just make them feel gross but I think that there's this is

01:02:48 ◼   ► just making the whole antitrust like Tim Sweeney and Elon Musk oh it's an Apple

01:02:53 ◼   ► It's an Apple tax.

01:02:54 ◼   ► Like, I really don't want Elon Musk or Tim Sweeney

01:02:58 ◼   ► to be my champion on this issue,

01:02:59 ◼   ► but I kind of agree with them.

01:03:00 ◼   ► Like, this is all just, it's just all yucky,

01:03:04 ◼   ► and I don't like it.

01:03:05 ◼   ► I don't make it make sense, one of you, please.

01:03:07 ◼   ► - I remember when Steve Jobs was talking about iAd, I think.

01:03:11 ◼   ► Like, his pitch issues that keynote search tool

01:03:14 ◼   ► that Stephen Hackett linked to today,

01:03:15 ◼   ► where you could, it's like a full text search

01:03:17 ◼   ► of Apple keynotes, but anyway.

01:03:18 ◼   ► Steve Jobs was talking about iAd,

01:03:19 ◼   ► which is one of the early ad services,

01:03:21 ◼   ► I remember how he talked about it using the model that he grew up with and the model that

01:03:27 ◼   ► we grew up with.

01:03:28 ◼   ► He was saying, "You as a user, when you see these ads, you're going to like these ads

01:03:34 ◼   ► because Apple has a hand in making them and they're going to be nice ads.

01:03:39 ◼   ► That was why this was going to be an Apple ad service.

01:03:41 ◼   ► It's not going to be a Punch the Monkey because Apple is involved in this iAd process and

01:03:45 ◼   ► you'll like these ads."

01:03:46 ◼   ► I don't remember what the quote was, but it was something like, "They'll be ads that you

01:03:48 ◼   ► want to see."

01:03:49 ◼   ► very similar to the model from all of our youth where you'd watch a TV show and there'd

01:03:54 ◼   ► be ads on it.

01:03:56 ◼   ► Those ads got on the TV show because advertisers connected with the television network and

01:04:02 ◼   ► said "Hey, we'd like to advertise on your show" and they would work something out between

01:04:05 ◼   ► them and they would pay the money and their ad would go up.

01:04:08 ◼   ► The networks performed an important function there which is Coca-Cola or whatever would

01:04:13 ◼   ► contact the networks and there'd be some advertising department that sells ads.

01:04:18 ◼   ► If you said you wanted to put a casino gambling ad on the Cosby Show, NBC probably wouldn't

01:04:22 ◼   ► let you.

01:04:24 ◼   ► There was some editorial control about what kind of ads go on there.

01:04:28 ◼   ► At the very least, there were humans involved.

01:04:30 ◼   ► If you wanted to put an ad for Playboy Magazine or your hardcore porn whatever on a particular

01:04:38 ◼   ► show that was supposed to be a family show, the network wouldn't take that ad.

01:04:42 ◼   ► They wouldn't let you do it.

01:04:43 ◼   ► They exercised control and there were people involved in that process.

01:04:48 ◼   ► The network would be protecting their show and their brand.

01:04:51 ◼   ► And the bottom line is it was a human to human sales relationship.

01:04:56 ◼   ► One of the innovations of the internet and the innovation that has powered Google to

01:05:01 ◼   ► great heights of money and fame is you can take the people out of that equation and instead

01:05:06 ◼   ► just make a "efficient market" for selling advertisements, where you have advertisement

01:05:10 ◼   ► slots and then advertisers bid on who wants to fill that slot and the slot goes to the

01:05:16 ◼   ► the highest bidder and boy doesn't that make you a lot more money. You don't have to pay

01:05:18 ◼   ► an ad sales staff and you always get the maximum amount that people are willing to pay for

01:05:22 ◼   ► a given ad slot. And that's what Apple has done for advertising in the App Store. They're

01:05:28 ◼   ► like, "Well, we don't need to sell these individual ad slots to individual people and have people

01:05:32 ◼   ► involved. Why don't we just do what everyone else does on the internet with advertising

01:05:35 ◼   ► and use the power of the internet to make a site where you can bid on these ad slots

01:05:39 ◼   ► and that will make us more money and it'll be hands off and it'll be a self-service type

01:05:43 ◼   ► of thing and that's how you get casino ads.

01:05:45 ◼   ► Because who's going to pay the most money for ad slots?

01:05:48 ◼   ► People who get the most revenue for a person

01:05:50 ◼   ► who gets roped into the ad.

01:05:51 ◼   ► And casinos make a lot of money for people

01:05:53 ◼   ► who go use their apps, 'cause it's kind of the function

01:05:56 ◼   ► of a casino app.

01:05:57 ◼   ► And if it's like, oh, it's almost like Apple

01:06:01 ◼   ► was taken aback by that.

01:06:02 ◼   ► It's like, what did you think was gonna happen?

01:06:03 ◼   ► I'm sure the advertising people knew it was gonna happen.

01:06:05 ◼   ► It's what happens whenever you open up an ad slot

01:06:07 ◼   ► to the highest bidder.

01:06:08 ◼   ► You get the mesothelioma or whatever that asbestos

01:06:11 ◼   ► cancer law firm, lawsuit, things like,

01:06:13 ◼   ► whoever has the most money to spend will get the slot.

01:06:17 ◼   ► And it may not be who you'd want to have that slot,

01:06:19 ◼   ► but you don't have people involved.

01:06:21 ◼   ► What Apple said back on October 26th was,

01:06:24 ◼   ► this is a statement from Apple,

01:06:26 ◼   ► we have paused ads related to gambling

01:06:28 ◼   ► and a few other categories on App Store product pages.

01:06:30 ◼   ► That is the extent of the statement.

01:06:32 ◼   ► They use the word pause,

01:06:33 ◼   ► which doesn't mean they've stopped,

01:06:35 ◼   ► but it does show that Apple had decided

01:06:38 ◼   ► that they didn't like how this was going.

01:06:40 ◼   ► Maybe they didn't like being yelled at

01:06:42 ◼   ► for having casino ads.

01:06:43 ◼   ► Maybe they said, we know those ads are gonna go to casinos

01:06:46 ◼   ► 'cause they have the most money

01:06:46 ◼   ► and they're gonna be the top bidder,

01:06:47 ◼   ► but we're okay with that.

01:06:48 ◼   ► But then it turns out people weren't and we stopped,

01:06:50 ◼   ► or maybe they were surprised.

01:06:51 ◼   ► And someone somewhere in the organization said,

01:06:53 ◼   ► "I didn't realize that casinos would be the top bidder

01:06:55 ◼   ► "for all these categories."

01:06:56 ◼   ► And it's like, if you didn't realize that,

01:06:58 ◼   ► like what world were you,

01:07:00 ◼   ► I think some people were still in the Steve Jobs world

01:07:02 ◼   ► where they were envisioning the ads would be

01:07:04 ◼   ► like the premium ads you would see on, you know,

01:07:07 ◼   ► the top rated television program in 1987, right?

01:07:11 ◼   ► Hand selected ads or the ads that go on the Super Bowl,

01:07:14 ◼   ► they're expensive ads artfully made.

01:07:17 ◼   ► And it's like, no, it's just,

01:07:18 ◼   ► I mean, Super Bowl's showing cryptocurrency ads too.

01:07:20 ◼   ► So it was probably not that much,

01:07:21 ◼   ► but hey, the cryptocurrency ads have movie stars in them.

01:07:24 ◼   ► Anyway, that's what it feels like to me

01:07:27 ◼   ► that like that Apple had didn't realize,

01:07:30 ◼   ► like didn't fully take on board what it means

01:07:34 ◼   ► to sell ad slots to the highest bidder

01:07:37 ◼   ► in an automated process that does not involve humans.

01:07:39 ◼   ► This is what that looks like.

01:07:41 ◼   ► I don't know how they didn't know that.

01:07:42 ◼   ► Didn't you see Punch the Monkey?

01:07:43 ◼   ► Like, didn't you live through the, like,

01:07:45 ◼   ► that's what happens.

01:07:46 ◼   ► And yes, it is much more efficient than having a sales staff,

01:07:49 ◼   ► but you're not going to get to Casey's point

01:07:51 ◼   ► that sort of high touch experience

01:07:53 ◼   ► where everything is quality.

01:07:54 ◼   ► You're not gonna get that thing

01:07:55 ◼   ► that Steve Jobs is talking about, iAds,

01:07:56 ◼   ► like, oh, you'll like these ads.

01:07:58 ◼   ► No, we won't like these ads.

01:08:00 ◼   ► And it is, yes, it is also worse that,

01:08:02 ◼   ► hey, you know what they're advertising?

01:08:04 ◼   ► Stuff in their own app store.

01:08:06 ◼   ► Like these are apps that Apple sells,

01:08:08 ◼   ► which is itself another, you know, not problem,

01:08:10 ◼   ► but another sort of decision point

01:08:12 ◼   ► that we've talked about in the past.

01:08:13 ◼   ► What apps should Apple allow on the App Store?

01:08:16 ◼   ► On the one hand, we're like, we hate that Apple

01:08:18 ◼   ► has the control to say what is allowed in the App Store,

01:08:20 ◼   ► but on the other hand, we don't like

01:08:21 ◼   ► casino games for children.

01:08:23 ◼   ► And all this gets back to the root problem,

01:08:25 ◼   ► which is there's only two places

01:08:27 ◼   ► where you can sell mobile applications.

01:08:29 ◼   ► You can sell them in the Android App Store,

01:08:31 ◼   ► you can sell them in the Apple App Store,

01:08:32 ◼   ► and everything else is a rounding error.

01:08:34 ◼   ► And that, of course, is the root problem.

01:08:36 ◼   ► And that's what puts Apple into these no-win scenarios

01:08:39 ◼   ► where we yell at them if they don't allow apps

01:08:41 ◼   ► on the App Store, but we yell at them

01:08:43 ◼   ► if they allow casino games for children on the App Store,

01:08:46 ◼   ► and then we yell at them some more

01:08:47 ◼   ► if they programmatically sell ad slots

01:08:49 ◼   ► that are bought by casino games for children or adults.

01:08:52 ◼   ► - I think what got to me the most about this was twofold.

01:08:57 ◼   ► I think, number one, having all of these

01:09:02 ◼   ► not only accidentally irrelevant ads,

01:09:05 ◼   ► but intentionally irrelevant ads.

01:09:07 ◼   ► Like the ad unit that sparked all this is like,

01:09:10 ◼   ► is the under, if you go to an app page in the app store,

01:09:13 ◼   ► you scroll all the way down,

01:09:14 ◼   ► and it says you might also like.

01:09:16 ◼   ► And this is a, it's a category that Apple search ads added,

01:09:20 ◼   ► and they told us that they were gonna add it

01:09:23 ◼   ► a couple of months ahead of time,

01:09:24 ◼   ► and you could go in, like I buy search ads for over a cat,

01:09:26 ◼   ► you could go in, you could like pre-order these

01:09:28 ◼   ► like a week beforehand,

01:09:30 ◼   ► and they would start running on this day or whatever.

01:09:31 ◼   ► It was not a surprise, but I think the surprise was

01:09:36 ◼   ► that this was, I think, the first type of search ad

01:09:40 ◼   ► that you could explicitly anti-target.

01:09:44 ◼   ► You could, like, other search ads,

01:09:46 ◼   ► the way they launched, when they first launched search ads,

01:09:48 ◼   ► whenever that was, five, six years ago,

01:09:50 ◼   ► they launched them very carefully.

01:09:51 ◼   ► That was the first time they were ads in the App Store.

01:09:53 ◼   ► They knew that they had to be careful,

01:09:55 ◼   ► and they were being careful.

01:09:56 ◼   ► And one of the things, the way they designed that system

01:09:58 ◼   ► was you can bid on keywords,

01:10:01 ◼   ► you can bid on any keywords you want,

01:10:03 ◼   ► you can type in whatever you want,

01:10:04 ◼   ► any arbitrary keywords,

01:10:05 ◼   ► but they would only show your ad

01:10:08 ◼   ► in a context where they thought it was relevant

01:10:10 ◼   ► based on their relevance algorithms.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Now, their relevance algorithms are terrible,

01:10:14 ◼   ► but they were at least trying to be relevant,

01:10:18 ◼   ► and they would occasionally succeed in that.

01:10:19 ◼   ► But this ad unit, it explicitly was anti-targetable.

01:10:24 ◼   ► Like you could select on how to target it,

01:10:28 ◼   ► you could actually say show it in other categories

01:10:31 ◼   ► that my app is not considered relevant in.

01:10:34 ◼   ► That's why you could get casino ads

01:10:36 ◼   ► showing up on podcast apps.

01:10:38 ◼   ► Because you would think, if you look at the bottom

01:10:41 ◼   ► of the overcast page right now, you might also like,

01:10:44 ◼   ► the actual organic results are almost all podcast players,

01:10:48 ◼   ► or at least things that are adjacent to podcast players.

01:10:50 ◼   ► There's also Pocket, which I guess that's relevant.

01:10:53 ◼   ► I wish it was Instapaper, but whatever.

01:10:56 ◼   ► And everything else is relevant.

01:10:57 ◼   ► And then the ad for that that I'm seeing right now is

01:11:01 ◼   ► Wolf Game, Wild Animal Hunters, the hunt is on.

01:11:04 ◼   ► And it appears to be a game where you play as a wolf

01:11:06 ◼   ► and you go eating other animals

01:11:08 ◼   ► and possibly fighting other wolves,

01:11:10 ◼   ► which is frankly a little close to dog fighting

01:11:12 ◼   ► for my comfort, but oh well, I don't know what this game is.

01:11:15 ◼   ► So that has nothing to do at all with podcast apps

01:11:20 ◼   ► or any of the other results that are in that list.

01:11:23 ◼   ► And so on one hand, this offended me

01:11:26 ◼   ► because it allowed us to have all these totally unrelated

01:11:31 ◼   ► apps, some of which were offensive to a lot of people,

01:11:34 ◼   ► myself included, like all the gambling stuff.

01:11:36 ◼   ► And you know, it had that problem of like,

01:11:39 ◼   ► all of a sudden you're seeing dramatically irrelevant

01:11:42 ◼   ► results in places where they make no sense whatsoever

01:11:45 ◼   ► and it's just insulting.

01:11:46 ◼   ► And then the second part of that is that it revealed for,

01:11:51 ◼   ► I think one of the first times ever at this level,

01:11:54 ◼   ► it revealed quite how large of an amount of the money

01:11:59 ◼   ► that Apple makes from the App Store

01:12:02 ◼   ► is coming from really seedy places.

01:12:05 ◼   ► That they are making gobs and gobs of money.

01:12:08 ◼   ► And by the way, this is a large chunk

01:12:10 ◼   ► of what they call services revenue.

01:12:12 ◼   ► The term services revenue when they use it

01:12:15 ◼   ► is a wonderful euphemism.

01:12:17 ◼   ► And you think, when you hear that,

01:12:19 ◼   ► you think things like iCloud, Fitness Plus, TV Plus,

01:12:24 ◼   ► you know, you think of those things that are kind of more directly obviously services that

01:12:29 ◼   ► people can sign up for and pay for and they serve them in some way, you know, that's what

01:12:35 ◼   ► you think of. But massive chunks of Apple services revenue are the deal to make Google

01:12:41 ◼   ► the default search engine in Safari and also App Store revenue, which is mostly the 30%

01:12:47 ◼   ► and then obviously some portion of it is now ads.

01:12:52 ◼   ► That's most of services revenue.

01:12:54 ◼   ► And services revenue is one of Apple's biggest growth areas

01:12:59 ◼   ► in the last few years as their hardware businesses

01:13:01 ◼   ► have largely matured and have seen slowing growth.

01:13:04 ◼   ► So it's a very important area of the company

01:13:07 ◼   ► in finance analytics ways and stock price and analysts.

01:13:11 ◼   ► It's very important for all those reasons.

01:13:15 ◼   ► And yet, when you look at what it actually is,

01:13:18 ◼   ► such huge parts of it are this gross Google deal,

01:13:22 ◼   ► and then this gross area of App Store revenue,

01:13:25 ◼   ► which is most, so like, you know,

01:13:27 ◼   ► what is the App Store revenue?

01:13:28 ◼   ► Well, it's, you know, some of it is gonna be

01:13:30 ◼   ► 15% of all my subscriptions,

01:13:32 ◼   ► and you know, the other indie apps that we make,

01:13:34 ◼   ► and you know, Good Games, stuff like that.

01:13:36 ◼   ► But a lot of it, probably the vast majority of it,

01:13:41 ◼   ► is stuff that Apple probably would be

01:13:44 ◼   ► more comfortable if we didn't see.

01:13:46 ◼   ► Casinos, scammy dating apps, overpriced subscription scams

01:13:50 ◼   ► for apps that charge for a weekly subscription

01:13:53 ◼   ► for some calculator app or something.

01:13:56 ◼   ► - They broke it down in one of the trials,

01:13:57 ◼   ► wasn't it like 85% games?

01:13:59 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Something like that?

01:14:00 ◼   ► It was some massive,

01:14:01 ◼   ► income from the app store is basically games.

01:14:04 ◼   ► It's games and everything else, and it was like 85%.

01:14:06 ◼   ► Now all those games aren't crappy,

01:14:08 ◼   ► but boy, a lot of them are, right?

01:14:10 ◼   ► 'Cause you're not getting it,

01:14:12 ◼   ► and even the games that are quote unquote good,

01:14:14 ◼   ► Even like the high profile, like, oh, this is a high class, high profile game like Candy

01:14:18 ◼   ► Crush.

01:14:20 ◼   ► That is a standard bearer for casino games for children, or casino games for adults for

01:14:23 ◼   ► that matter.

01:14:24 ◼   ► Like they do not shady things, but they leverage human psychology to extract more money from

01:14:31 ◼   ► you in exchange for hopefully the fun that you're getting in a lot of those games.

01:14:35 ◼   ► Even the quote unquote good ones, depending on how you feel about it, may cross a line

01:14:39 ◼   ► in terms of exploitive mechanics where their main concern is not allowing you to have fun,

01:14:45 ◼   ► the main concern is finding ways to get money out of you.

01:14:47 ◼   ► And there's a balance to be struck there because they need money to make the game.

01:14:51 ◼   ► Like I'm not saying don't pay for games, but kind of like we're kind of all feeling with

01:14:55 ◼   ► these ads in the App Store, the relationship between how do I give you money for the thing

01:15:02 ◼   ► that I want to get, that's delicate.

01:15:06 ◼   ► People want to play games for free, but I think people also understand if you want games

01:15:08 ◼   ► to be made, you have to give money for them. But how, what is the exchange there? How much

01:15:13 ◼   ► money did I give you when in exchange for what? There's lots of different ways to slice that up.

01:15:17 ◼   ► And I think in the games industry in particular, there has been lots of experimentation in terms of

01:15:22 ◼   ► what relationship is sustainable and makes people not feel abused, but also makes the developer be

01:15:29 ◼   ► able to continue to make the app. And I feel like almost everything in the App Store is on the wrong

01:15:35 ◼   ► side of that line in terms of how it makes the customers feel.

01:15:38 ◼   ► Well, and not necessarily almost everything, but almost all the money. Like, where almost

01:15:41 ◼   ► all the money is going is in-- Yeah, I'm talking about games. That 85% of

01:15:44 ◼   ► game revenue for in-app things, like even the very best of the best, the best games,

01:15:49 ◼   ► I feel like the way they make money is not on the right side of that 50% point in terms

01:15:54 ◼   ► of how the people who pay that money feel about the relationship. Whereas I would say,

01:15:58 ◼   ► For example, console games, the very best console games, have found a way to make money

01:16:05 ◼   ► that the players do not... doesn't make the players hate themselves.

01:16:10 ◼   ► To give an example, like in Destiny or Fortnite even, you sell cosmetics, which sounds like

01:16:14 ◼   ► it shouldn't work, but lord does it work, right?

01:16:18 ◼   ► And players feel okay about it because if you don't want to buy the cosmetics, you don't

01:16:22 ◼   ► have to.

01:16:23 ◼   ► But people do want to buy the cosmetics, but if you don't buy them, you're not going to

01:16:28 ◼   ► killed by someone who bought a better gun than you.

01:16:30 ◼   ► It's not pay to win, it's pay to look fancy.

01:16:34 ◼   ► And that relationship, mostly, people are mostly okay with.

01:16:38 ◼   ► It can still be exploitive, right?

01:16:40 ◼   ► But the whole energy mechanics and paying to watch a 30 second ad to continue further

01:16:45 ◼   ► or pay, like you were saying with that Minecraft thing, paying a weekly fee and pay to compile

01:16:50 ◼   ► your thing or whatever.

01:16:51 ◼   ► It was pay to save your work.

01:16:53 ◼   ► It was literally pay to save.

01:16:54 ◼   ► What?

01:16:55 ◼   ► That's right.

01:16:56 ◼   ► Each time.

01:16:57 ◼   ► so far across the line that just no one

01:17:00 ◼   ► feels good about that.

01:17:01 ◼   ► - It's just bananas.

01:17:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I feel like when you look at,

01:17:05 ◼   ► I think it's so easy for us, and probably,

01:17:09 ◼   ► for most Apple executives and employees and shareholders,

01:17:13 ◼   ► it's probably much, it's so easy for us

01:17:16 ◼   ► to not see this inconvenient underbelly

01:17:20 ◼   ► of what's really going on in the App Store

01:17:22 ◼   ► and what's really going on in revenue

01:17:24 ◼   ► and services revenue there,

01:17:25 ◼   ► because it's so easy to just look at the apps that we use

01:17:29 ◼   ► and that we care about and most people,

01:17:32 ◼   ► the iPhone is such a mature platform,

01:17:34 ◼   ► it's been around for so long,

01:17:35 ◼   ► that most people are not just casually browsing

01:17:38 ◼   ► the App Store as a pastime to look for new apps anymore.

01:17:40 ◼   ► Like that's one of the reasons why

01:17:42 ◼   ► new user acquisition costs are so high

01:17:44 ◼   ► and why Apple's trying to capture all that with search ads

01:17:46 ◼   ► because it used to be a thing where

01:17:50 ◼   ► when the App Store was new and when people were getting

01:17:52 ◼   ► iPhones for the first time for years,

01:17:55 ◼   ► it was a good pass time.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Hey, let's go check out what's new

01:17:58 ◼   ► in the app store this weekend or whatever.

01:17:59 ◼   ► You'd go browse it casually just for fun,

01:18:02 ◼   ► like the same way you'd browse Twitter or something.

01:18:03 ◼   ► You'd go, oh, let me go look at some apps.

01:18:06 ◼   ► That doesn't happen much anymore.

01:18:07 ◼   ► And so I think it's so easy for all of us and all of them

01:18:12 ◼   ► to not see this if we're not looking for it.

01:18:16 ◼   ► And again, part of the reason why this new ad unit

01:18:21 ◼   ► was so offensive is that it just revealed it all to us.

01:18:24 ◼   ► everyone started looking at these ads

01:18:26 ◼   ► and started seeing all of these high bidders for these ads

01:18:29 ◼   ► were all these really disgusting apps.

01:18:31 ◼   ► - And it reminded people those apps exist.

01:18:33 ◼   ► Forget about the fact that they have an ad slide,

01:18:35 ◼   ► it just reminded people, hey, just so you know,

01:18:36 ◼   ► these are things on Apple's App Store, they've been there,

01:18:39 ◼   ► they've always been there,

01:18:40 ◼   ► and you don't wanna think about them

01:18:41 ◼   ► and you think you're not the type of person

01:18:42 ◼   ► who would use them, but here they are and they're there,

01:18:44 ◼   ► and that gets back to the rock and a harp place

01:18:46 ◼   ► I was talking about before.

01:18:48 ◼   ► Part of us would say, I want Apple to curate the App Store

01:18:51 ◼   ► so it's only the good apps.

01:18:51 ◼   ► So the other part of us says,

01:18:52 ◼   ► why is Apple being so restrictive

01:18:54 ◼   ► about what they allow in the App Store.

01:18:55 ◼   ► And you can't have both.

01:18:56 ◼   ► It's the problem that Apple has made for itself

01:18:58 ◼   ► by choosing not to have side loading,

01:19:00 ◼   ► to try to find some impossible balance

01:19:02 ◼   ► between having an App Store that allows,

01:19:04 ◼   ► you know, that is open to innovation in apps,

01:19:07 ◼   ► but also that keeps out the crap,

01:19:09 ◼   ► and they're not doing that now.

01:19:11 ◼   ► We can tell which way they picked, right?

01:19:14 ◼   ► - Right, and they're making a killing from it.

01:19:16 ◼   ► And like, that's I think the most uncomfortable part of this

01:19:19 ◼   ► is not necessarily that these apps exist in the App Store,

01:19:21 ◼   ► which is its own question which can be debated,

01:19:24 ◼   ► but that it became so obvious to us in such a short time,

01:19:29 ◼   ► oh my God, Apple is making all of this money.

01:19:32 ◼   ► This is where so much of their profit and growth

01:19:35 ◼   ► is coming from, is scams and garbage and low quality,

01:19:39 ◼   ► low rent, inconvenient apps that they really would rather

01:19:41 ◼   ► the public not really pay much attention to

01:19:43 ◼   ► or not know about.

01:19:44 ◼   ► - And things that exploit their customers

01:19:47 ◼   ► in ways that the customers themselves feel

01:19:50 ◼   ► somewhat a little icky about.

01:19:51 ◼   ► Again, finding a way-- the game developers themselves,

01:19:55 ◼   ► it's on them to find a way to make a relationship where

01:19:59 ◼   ► both sides feel OK about.

01:20:01 ◼   ► And instead, what game developers have done

01:20:03 ◼   ► is become very, very good at finding the most efficient way

01:20:05 ◼   ► to extract money from people, no matter how they feel.

01:20:07 ◼   ► Or-- and I mean, don't minimize the outright trickery also.

01:20:10 ◼   ► There's a lot of actual fraud and BS going on too.

01:20:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I do think the scam apps don't make as much money

01:20:16 ◼   ► as the legitimately good app.

01:20:18 ◼   ► Again, sorry to use Candy Crush as an example,

01:20:19 ◼   ► But like it's a legitimately good fun game that's well made and also uses every trick in the book to get money out of people

01:20:25 ◼   ► Right. I think those are the real money makers the actual scam ones

01:20:28 ◼   ► It's it feels bad when we see it happening because we think no one should ever be scammed by this and we see the big

01:20:34 ◼   ► Numbers like this we estimate like those things that we estimate this made a million dollars

01:20:37 ◼   ► Like candy catch probably makes that in a week, right? So it's you know, it is a crime does pay but making a

01:20:44 ◼   ► Making a really good app that also extracts money from people efficiently pays way more for a longer period of time

01:20:50 ◼   ► I think you're right individually

01:20:52 ◼   ► But I think collectively the the collective damage done by scam and misleading apps

01:20:57 ◼   ► And and like, you know trick trickily price subscriptions and everything. I think that's collectively quite a lot

01:21:02 ◼   ► I think you are right that in general, you know, the big whale apps are doing most of it

01:21:06 ◼   ► But I do wonder how people blame for those things

01:21:08 ◼   ► although speaking of damage like this is part of the meta commentary about this from the the people in our circles is about

01:21:13 ◼   ► the reputational damage that Apple is taking by engaging this thing. So here's

01:21:18 ◼   ► a quote from Gruber that I think you know boils us down to sort of the

01:21:23 ◼   ► different thing they're doing. I'll put a link in the show notes to this. This is a post

01:21:27 ◼   ► from October or no yeah October sorry. "It remains true that Apple is not

01:21:31 ◼   ► monetizing the information we store on our devices or an iCloud but they're

01:21:35 ◼   ► certainly monetizing our attention and their exclusive hold on the on that

01:21:38 ◼   ► attention for all apps and games for iOS. Apple's business model is no longer the

01:21:42 ◼   ► straightforward selling of great products and these new ads in the App

01:21:45 ◼   ► Store are not designed to make anything better other than Apple services bottom

01:21:49 ◼   ► line. So you know that's again harkening back to the old days is like Apple just

01:21:53 ◼   ► makes really good products and they sell it to us for a lot of money and that

01:21:55 ◼   ► makes them billions of dollars and this is like but they also sell our attention

01:21:59 ◼   ► and that doesn't make us feel better but it does make Apple money and it is a it

01:22:03 ◼   ► is a change in our relationship with Apple the relationship before was like

01:22:06 ◼   ► we pay really huge margins right for the things that we buy from them but in the

01:22:12 ◼   ► we're satisfied by that and when they come out with a fancy new thing we want the fancy new thing so he's paid them the

01:22:17 ◼   ► Money and that is what has made Apple its billions of dollars like people didn't buy the iPhone

01:22:21 ◼   ► You know it's like the iPhone was not a didn't make Apple tons of money because it made them tons of service revenue at least

01:22:27 ◼   ► Initially initially they sold a lot of phones at like 40% margins, and they still do that and makes them a lot of money

01:22:31 ◼   ► But now this this you know this app store

01:22:34 ◼   ► You know that the the ad stuff is not making the products better for its users

01:22:39 ◼   ► You could argue that it's making the product, the platform better for developers because developers do need some way to

01:22:46 ◼   ► Reach their customers, but if you look at what actually happens if you programmatically sell an ad slot

01:22:52 ◼   ► It's not like you're the developers that you want to connect with customers the people making the best

01:22:56 ◼   ► Applications that Apple features on stage and gives awards to those aren't filling the ad slots

01:23:01 ◼   ► They probably don't have enough money to fill the ad slots. It's the casino games that are lurking as the you know, 85%

01:23:07 ◼   ► thing underneath it all and then we'll put a link to MJ size blog post where he collected a bunch of

01:23:12 ◼   ► comments from people but a lot of them are just like talking about the

01:23:15 ◼   ► Reputational and brand damage that's that's being done by this because most people didn't think of Apple as a company that sells their attention

01:23:22 ◼   ► because Apple tends not to be in that business and to that end there was one thing that did come out about this was there

01:23:29 ◼   ► was a

01:23:29 ◼   ► Report and the information that tried to get some information from inside Apple about this

01:23:34 ◼   ► This is a MacRumors summary of it, but we'll put a link to the information as well

01:23:38 ◼   ► The MacRumors summary says a new report revealed internal disagreements within Apple causing some employees who work on the company's ad business to raise concerns

01:23:45 ◼   ► That showing more ads to iPhone users ruins the premium experience that's long been offered to its customers

01:23:50 ◼   ► Makes sense right because it's not what they're used to here. This is directly from the information

01:23:54 ◼   ► Report on this it says one person familiar with Apple's ad business said the company doesn't harbor ambitions to compete at the same level as meta

01:24:01 ◼   ► and Google in digital advertising, nor does it plan to build an advertising network similar

01:24:05 ◼   ► to those of its rivals that would serve ads to users outside its own apps and services.

01:24:09 ◼   ► The person said, "Ad executives are pleased with revenue growth based on Apple's existing

01:24:12 ◼   ► ad spots and don't plan to significantly increase the number of ads on phones to meet growth

01:24:17 ◼   ► targets."

01:24:18 ◼   ► So this is from inside Apple saying, "Yeah, we added more ad slots, but we're not going

01:24:23 ◼   ► to fool Google here.

01:24:24 ◼   ► We're not just like, 'Hey, we're going to sell ads against every piece of information

01:24:27 ◼   ► that we have because that'll make us tons more.'"

01:24:29 ◼   ► And it would make them tons more money.

01:24:30 ◼   ► That is Google's business model.

01:24:32 ◼   ► We sell ads against what we know about people, right?

01:24:34 ◼   ► And Facebook's business model.

01:24:35 ◼   ► It's a good business model in terms,

01:24:37 ◼   ► if you wanna make a lot of money.

01:24:38 ◼   ► But this person is saying,

01:24:39 ◼   ► "We're not going down that road.

01:24:40 ◼   ► "We added these ad slots,

01:24:43 ◼   ► "but we're not just gonna keep pursuing that

01:24:45 ◼   ► "to get more and more growth."

01:24:47 ◼   ► Is that true?

01:24:48 ◼   ► Or will it be irresistible to them to do that?

01:24:50 ◼   ► But regardless, regardless of whether this is 100% true,

01:24:53 ◼   ► I think that they have crossed a threshold here

01:24:57 ◼   ► with these ad slots,

01:24:59 ◼   ► because we're saying we've already revealed things

01:25:02 ◼   ► that people would rather not see.

01:25:04 ◼   ► And I think it's just a bridge too far.

01:25:06 ◼   ► If this is the truth, if this Apple ad executive

01:25:08 ◼   ► is leaking to the information,

01:25:09 ◼   ► that they don't want to actually pursue this

01:25:11 ◼   ► to the extent that Google does,

01:25:12 ◼   ► they just wanna have enough ad slots

01:25:15 ◼   ► to give their developers a way to advertise,

01:25:17 ◼   ► this is not helping, this is hurting.

01:25:19 ◼   ► It's making people think of Apple in a new way,

01:25:21 ◼   ► it's making people less pleased with their phone,

01:25:23 ◼   ► kind of like the search results

01:25:25 ◼   ► when you try to search for an app

01:25:26 ◼   ► and instead of finding the app that you wanted,

01:25:28 ◼   ► you get a big blue ad for a different app.

01:25:30 ◼   ► Most people don't like that,

01:25:31 ◼   ► both because Apple's relevance is bad

01:25:33 ◼   ► and because it just seems like it's getting in your way.

01:25:35 ◼   ► It's not making the experience better for users, right?

01:25:39 ◼   ► And that was before these new ad slots.

01:25:40 ◼   ► These new ad slots at the bottom of the products,

01:25:42 ◼   ► most people probably won't see,

01:25:43 ◼   ► but I just feel like this is crossing a line

01:25:46 ◼   ► with at least the nerdy people in our circles,

01:25:48 ◼   ► maybe not regular people, right?

01:25:50 ◼   ► And I do think it will be hard for Apple's advertising folks

01:25:54 ◼   ► to resist adding another slot,

01:25:56 ◼   ► turning a dial to monetize this or whatever.

01:25:59 ◼   ► Despite the fact that they say

01:26:00 ◼   ► that they're not going down that road,

01:26:02 ◼   ► maybe that's what every one of these ad executives

01:26:04 ◼   ► is gonna say after they add every new ad slot

01:26:06 ◼   ► for the next 10 years.

01:26:07 ◼   ► And you'll wake up one day

01:26:08 ◼   ► and every part of Apple's applications are filled with ads.

01:26:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, 'cause it's such,