PodSearch

ATP

511: Moving to Antarctica

 

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

00:04:47   most powerful untapped resource in IT, end users.

00:04:50   When you're trying to achieve security goals, whether for a third party audit or your own

00:04:54   compliance standards, the conventional wisdom is to treat every device like Fort Knox.

00:04:59   Old school device management tools like MDMs force disruptive agents onto employee devices

00:05:03   that slow performance down and treat privacy as an afterthought at best.

00:05:07   And that way of doing things turns IT admins and end users

00:05:10   into enemies.

00:05:11   And it creates its own security problems

00:05:13   because users turn to shadow IT just to do their jobs.

00:05:16   So Collide does things differently.

00:05:18   Instead of forcing changes on users,

00:05:20   Collide sends them security recommendations via Slack.

00:05:23   It'll automatically notify your team

00:05:25   if their devices are insecure and give them

00:05:27   step-by-step instructions on how to solve the problem

00:05:30   themselves.

00:05:31   By reaching out to employees via friendly Slack DMs

00:05:34   and educating them about company policies,

00:05:36   But Collide can help you build a culture in which everyone

00:05:38   contributes to security because everyone understands

00:05:41   how and why to do it.

00:05:43   And for IT admins, Collide provides a single dashboard

00:05:45   that lets you monitor the security of your entire fleet,

00:05:48   whether they're running on Mac, Windows, or Linux.

00:05:51   You can see at a glance which employees

00:05:53   have their disk encrypted, their OS up to date,

00:05:55   their password manager installed, whatever else you

00:05:57   might need, making it easy to prove compliance

00:05:59   to your auditors, your customers, or your leadership.

00:06:02   So that's Collide, user-centered, cross-platform,

00:06:05   endpoint security for teams that slack.

00:06:08   You can meet your compliance goals by putting users first.

00:06:11   Visit collide.com/ATP to find out how.

00:06:15   If you follow that link, they'll hook you up

00:06:16   with a goody bag, including a t-shirt,

00:06:18   just for activating a free trial.

00:06:20   That's collide, K-O-L-I-D-E, .com, collide.com/ATP.

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.

00:56:32   We are brought to you this week by Squarespace,

00:56:36   the all-in-one platform for building your brand

00:56:38   and growing your business online.

00:56:41   Stand out with a beautiful website,

00:56:42   engage with your audience and sell anything,

00:56:44   your products, your content, even your time.

00:56:47   Squarespace makes it super easy to make all kinds

00:56:50   of websites and especially business websites now.

00:56:53   So you can have things like member areas.

00:56:55   You can monetize your content and expertise

00:56:58   in a way that fits your brand.

00:56:59   You can unlock new revenue streams

00:57:01   through your business with member areas.

00:57:02   Free up time in your schedule by selling access

00:57:04   to gated content like videos, online courses,

00:57:07   or newsletters.

00:57:09   And of course you can sell other things.

00:57:10   You can have online stores for products,

00:57:13   whether those are physical or digital goods.

00:57:15   Squarespace has all the tools you need to sell online.

00:57:18   You can have all this backed up by SEO tools,

00:57:21   so you can really make sure that you're maximizing

00:57:24   your prominence among search results,

00:57:26   and you can have analytics to see where people

00:57:28   are coming from, which channels are most effective

00:57:30   that you might be advertising in.

00:57:32   You can improve your website and build marketing strategies

00:57:34   based on your top keywords, your most popular products

00:57:37   and content, so it's really everything you need

00:57:39   at Squarespace, and all of this is backed by amazing support

00:57:42   if you ever need it, but frankly, you probably won't,

00:57:45   'cause Squarespace is super easy to use.

00:57:47   And there's all sorts of problems

00:57:49   that running websites in other ways

00:57:51   might have you deal with.

00:57:52   Things like software patches and security updates

00:57:55   and server maintenance maybe.

00:57:56   Maybe handling load if you get a lot of links all at once.

00:57:59   Squarespace doesn't make you deal with any of that stuff.

00:58:02   It's all behind the scenes.

00:58:03   They take care of all that for you.

00:58:04   You never have to worry about it.

00:58:05   It's amazing.

00:58:06   So go to squarespace.com/atp to start your free trial.

00:58:11   No credit card is required.

00:58:13   You can build the whole site in trial mode

00:58:14   see how you like it. When you're ready to launch, use offer code ATP to save 10% off

00:58:19   your first purchase of website or domain. Once again, squarespace.com/ATP to start that

00:58:23   free trial. Offer code ATP at purchase to save 10% off your first purchase of website

00:58:27   or domain. Thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring our show.

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,

01:26:14   when you talk about adding ad slots everywhere,

01:26:17   it's such a slippery slope.

01:26:18   It really, it's so easy.

01:26:20   Once, like, again, as I was just saying how,

01:26:22   when they added the very first ads to the App Store,

01:26:24   the very first search ads, they were very careful about it.

01:26:27   They still did a really mediocre job,

01:26:28   but they were very careful about it at least.

01:26:31   And they were very sloppy about this one,

01:26:33   because now it's like, well, once you have ads,

01:26:36   what is it to add?

01:26:37   Hey, look, there's some real estate down there.

01:26:39   You know, it's kind of out of the way, it's below the fold.

01:26:41   We could just add a few more.

01:26:42   Just add, hey, what's one more?

01:26:44   It's such a slippery slope with ads.

01:26:46   I know, I've been there.

01:26:48   I run ad-based businesses and have for like 20 years.

01:26:51   Look, I'm very aware of the pressures here

01:26:54   that results from this, but you do have to worry

01:26:59   about the experience, and it matters a lot.

01:27:02   Like, we had, many years ago,

01:27:04   we started out doing this podcast,

01:27:08   once we got going and started having ads,

01:27:11   we briefly had two ads per show,

01:27:14   and then pretty early on went to three,

01:27:16   'cause the length of the show made sense.

01:27:18   We have six minutes of ads in a two-hour show,

01:27:20   no one really cares.

01:27:22   But we have a format, and where we put them,

01:27:24   what kind of ads we take, et cetera.

01:27:26   And we've gotten so many offers over the years to,

01:27:30   hey, you could make a lot of money

01:27:32   if you do a 30 second pre-roll ad,

01:27:34   which means before the show starts,

01:27:36   the very first thing you hear is an ad.

01:27:38   And there's a reason why a lot of podcasts do that,

01:27:41   because they're very high priced, they make a lot of money.

01:27:45   And we said no, because that is not the format of our show,

01:27:48   and that's not the experience we want it to have,

01:27:50   and we think the ads we have are enough.

01:27:52   And that's why we've had three ads

01:27:54   and it's been fixed at three ads

01:27:55   for something like six years.

01:27:57   - And we don't programmatically sell them

01:27:59   in an auction that runs by, like, the human being.

01:28:02   Human being sells our ads

01:28:03   and we choose which ads go on the show.

01:28:05   Like, obviously we're much smaller,

01:28:07   we couldn't programmatically sell them, right?

01:28:09   But like-- - We totally could.

01:28:11   - Well, anyway, the whole point is,

01:28:12   it is more quote-unquote efficient,

01:28:15   like the magic of the internet.

01:28:16   Wow, we don't have to have salespeople

01:28:17   and we can just have people bid

01:28:19   and we'll always make sure we get the maximum money

01:28:20   out of the advertisers and it's like,

01:28:22   yeah, but what are you trading for?

01:28:23   We know what you're trading for,

01:28:24   we know what that looks like.

01:28:25   Every ad would be casino ads or mesothelioma ads, right?

01:28:28   And that's not what we want the show to be.

01:28:30   And so we're making less money

01:28:33   and paying someone to sell our ads and everything,

01:28:35   but in the end we think we make a better product

01:28:37   than blah, blah, blah, right?

01:28:38   And we're small potatoes, but it's the same exact decision

01:28:41   for a company the size of Apple, Google, and Facebook.

01:28:43   And unlike Google and Facebook,

01:28:45   Apple has a really, really good way

01:28:47   to make a ton of money that doesn't involve ads.

01:28:50   It's a proven business model.

01:28:52   It really makes a lot of money.

01:28:53   Now, people in the chat room keep yelling,

01:28:55   growth, growth, growth.

01:28:55   It's like, oh, it makes a lot of money,

01:28:57   but it doesn't have growth or whatever.

01:28:59   That's supposed to be the lesson that Apple

01:29:01   is always trying to teach the rest of the industry,

01:29:02   that if you chase growth, you will catch nothing, right?

01:29:05   What you should be doing is,

01:29:06   we said this before, make great products,

01:29:08   make things that people like,

01:29:09   and in the end, that will actually make you more money

01:29:11   and give you more growth than pursuing the other thing.

01:29:13   But everyone else says, no, ignore that, chase growth.

01:29:15   And Apple has been historically one of the best companies

01:29:20   in the entire world at resisting that urge,

01:29:22   which is why they have all this money, right?

01:29:25   They don't have all this money

01:29:25   because the service revenues has made them

01:29:27   the richest company in the world.

01:29:28   No, the resistance to pursuing things like this

01:29:32   is what has made them the richest company in the world.

01:29:34   That is the lesson of Apple of the last several decades.

01:29:37   And this is just like one part of the company

01:29:41   going down a dark path that we don't want them to go down.

01:29:43   And this statement from inside Apple makes me hope

01:29:45   that this is not going to consume the company from the inside out.

01:29:49   But I guess the final little bit here is not a great sign, but speaking of ads and places

01:29:57   where they can appear, everyone of us who uses Xcode has been recently annoyed by a

01:30:01   dialog box that pops up in Xcode saying, "Hey, did you know you could use Xcode Cloud to

01:30:09   compile this?"

01:30:10   Xcode Cloud is a thing that will build your applications on cloud servers.

01:30:15   If you have a complicated application

01:30:16   or lots of unit tests or you wanna farm it out

01:30:18   to more different kinds of devices, it's cool.

01:30:19   It's a good product, it's a good service,

01:30:21   Apple should make this.

01:30:22   I don't have any objection to this product.

01:30:24   What we object to is I just hit build and run

01:30:27   on my application and you popped up a dialog saying,

01:30:29   hey, you can do the next code cloud.

01:30:31   That's a freaking ad.

01:30:32   And when I dismiss it, like I remember,

01:30:34   I think the original dialog box,

01:30:35   the only choices were like yes or like later or something.

01:30:39   - Oh, that's like the most,

01:30:41   I wanna punch somebody in the face whenever I see a dialog

01:30:43   it says like maybe later when I just wanna say,

01:30:46   no, I never wanna do this.

01:30:48   - They changed it, they changed the button

01:30:50   in an Xcode update to say like yes and like,

01:30:52   I don't know if it says yes, but whatever it says,

01:30:54   it says like the positive one,

01:30:55   then the other one says dismiss,

01:30:56   which at least is better than later,

01:30:57   because later is a lie, later is like,

01:30:59   but here's the thing, you hit dismiss, right?

01:31:02   You're not saying later, you hit dismiss,

01:31:04   but you'll be seeing that dialogue again.

01:31:06   - I believe it was every build an archive, I think.

01:31:10   - I don't know if it's everyone, but it would pop up again,

01:31:12   It's like, get out of my face.

01:31:13   And this is the worst, because this is a good service

01:31:16   that is useful for the people who need it

01:31:19   and may be worth money for the people who want it.

01:31:20   And it's an Apple service.

01:31:21   It's not a casino game.

01:31:22   It is a legitimate thing.

01:31:23   But seriously, dirtying up your IDE

01:31:26   by popping up this dialog in our face?

01:31:28   I understand you want developers

01:31:29   to be aware this feature exists.

01:31:30   I get that.

01:31:31   Lots of apps have an onboarding experience

01:31:32   to say, hey, you might not know this,

01:31:34   but in this menu here's a new feature

01:31:35   we want you to look out.

01:31:36   Fine, do it once.

01:31:38   We all see the things in the upper right-hand corner

01:31:39   of macOS when we do a macOS update

01:31:41   wants to tell us what's new in the OS, whatever.

01:31:44   It's annoying. You turn it off.

01:31:45   You can just turn off notifications for tips,

01:31:46   and you'll never see it again.

01:31:48   But we're fine with that.

01:31:50   It's like, "Hey, I want you to know there's new features

01:31:52   in the new OS you upgraded."

01:31:53   But that's it. Just one time, you get that once.

01:31:56   So this -- I mean, they're not --

01:31:59   is this part of the same ad for us?

01:32:01   No, but someone is involved with trying to make enough money

01:32:04   with Xcode Cloud

01:32:06   to pay for its development and maintenance.

01:32:08   I understand that.

01:32:09   But if the go-to move is, hey, we just made this product

01:32:12   and we have to pay for all these servers,

01:32:14   we need enough people to sign up for it

01:32:15   to make it worth our while.

01:32:17   We wanna make these new servers profitable.

01:32:19   How can we do that?

01:32:20   If the go-to move is like, well,

01:32:23   lots of developers use Xcode.

01:32:24   Why don't we put an ad in Xcode?

01:32:26   And why don't we have a comp every time they do build an R?

01:32:28   It's like, no, stop, don't do that.

01:32:31   I understand you can do that

01:32:33   and it's right there in front of you,

01:32:34   but that's not the Apple move.

01:32:36   And by the way, we'll put it in the show notes.

01:32:37   Apparently there's a default to write command

01:32:39   that you can do for com.apple.dt.xcode

01:32:41   where you set xcode cloud upsell prompt enabled

01:32:46   and set that to false.

01:32:48   I love they call it the upsell prompt.

01:32:50   So they know what they're doing.

01:32:51   So you can disable it.

01:32:53   - I don't wanna have to run an ad blocker

01:32:55   for my developer environment.

01:32:56   - Except for your frickin' IDE.

01:32:58   It's ridiculous.

01:32:59   - Like this, ugh, word.

01:33:01   Yeah, but again, it's like this is the corrupting influence

01:33:04   of ads and services revenue upsells.

01:33:07   They're just gonna keep doing this.

01:33:09   Look, we're not really a financial podcast

01:33:13   'cause we don't care and we don't know anything about it,

01:33:14   but you can look around the industry and you can see

01:33:18   this is a bad time for the economy

01:33:22   around tech companies especially.

01:33:24   Like we're in a serious downturn,

01:33:27   we're probably nowhere near the end of it.

01:33:29   All the big tech companies are doing these massive layoffs.

01:33:33   Apple at least has done a hiring freeze,

01:33:35   not layoffs yet, but you know,

01:33:38   obviously times are getting tight,

01:33:40   we're in a crunch right now.

01:33:41   And Apple has been,

01:33:44   Apple has had trouble for years now

01:33:46   trying to keep one-upping their previous sales numbers,

01:33:51   trying to keep the growth going,

01:33:52   because they've been so successful over time,

01:33:55   they've made so much money over time,

01:33:57   it's hard to keep making more money.

01:33:59   When you're at those levels,

01:34:01   it's very hard to keep growing.

01:34:03   - And they have been, like that's the other thing.

01:34:05   It's hard to, and also they have been.

01:34:07   - Right, but that is slowing down,

01:34:11   and it isn't because their products suck or anything,

01:34:13   it's just 'cause these industries are all maturing.

01:34:16   Everyone has phones now, everyone has--

01:34:18   - Well, not everyone has phones

01:34:19   because Apple can't make enough phones

01:34:21   to even meet demand due to the COVID stuff in China,

01:34:24   so there's that--

01:34:24   - Right, well that's a separate problem.

01:34:26   - That is, but it is, as they would say

01:34:28   in the financial calls, a headwind

01:34:30   that Apple's gonna have to deal with.

01:34:31   - Right, but anyway, the point is,

01:34:33   We're in tough times for that continued growth

01:34:36   to keep going for the whole tech industry,

01:34:38   I mean, many of whom are doing much worse.

01:34:41   But as these times are getting a little bit more tough

01:34:45   for Apple to maintain their growth and their expectations

01:34:49   and possibly their stock price,

01:34:51   they're gonna keep tightening these screws.

01:34:54   We're gonna keep having more and more upsells.

01:34:57   The prices are gonna go up.

01:34:59   The capabilities that you get for free are gonna go down.

01:35:01   The upsell points are gonna get more persistent

01:35:04   and more in your face, and there's going to be more of them.

01:35:08   And anywhere they can squeeze harder,

01:35:10   they're going to squeeze harder.

01:35:13   That's why I get concerned when I see moves

01:35:16   like putting more search ads everywhere,

01:35:18   because I know they're gonna just keep going on this.

01:35:21   Anything that they get away with,

01:35:23   in terms of their whole business doesn't collapse

01:35:27   and there isn't giant PR outburst,

01:35:30   Anything that they can kind of slip by

01:35:33   and wear people down with,

01:35:35   they're gonna keep going and do more of those things.

01:35:38   - That's the pessimistic take,

01:35:39   but the statement from inside Apple

01:35:41   is that they explicitly saying

01:35:42   that they don't plan through it.

01:35:43   This is like an anonymous leak,

01:35:45   so I doubt it's like Apple PR

01:35:47   speaking through this leaking thing.

01:35:49   It doesn't seem like that's the plan,

01:35:50   but we can, regardless of what they might say,

01:35:53   the reason we're talking about this

01:35:55   is we see on the outside new things like that coming out,

01:35:58   and we think they're crossing a line,

01:36:00   the thing in Xcode and these ad slots,

01:36:02   and it's just, you know, it's like, they are doing that.

01:36:05   And I think that's the only thing you can say.

01:36:07   And whether they take the lesson from that and back up,

01:36:09   again, if they want to look at like,

01:36:10   what is the lessons of the great success story

01:36:12   in the technology market of our lifetime, which is Apple,

01:36:16   the lesson is when things were going bad

01:36:18   for the whole tech industry, Apple strategy then,

01:36:21   under I CEO Steve Jobs or whatever, stated many times,

01:36:25   everyone in the industry was sad and their heads were down

01:36:28   and things were bad, and it was the dot-com bust,

01:36:30   and all sorts of terrible stuff was going on.

01:36:32   And the Apple strategy was,

01:36:34   we're going to innovate our way out of the downturn

01:36:37   or the recession or whatever the words were,

01:36:39   they'd always say, we're gonna innovate our way out of it.

01:36:41   What we're gonna do here is, unlike everybody else

01:36:44   who is running scared and firing everybody

01:36:47   and trying to figure out how to make money

01:36:49   by selling Punch the Monkey ads or whatever,

01:36:51   we're gonna do something different.

01:36:52   Instead, what we're gonna do

01:36:53   is we're gonna invest in ourselves.

01:36:55   We're gonna spend more money.

01:36:56   We're gonna hire more people.

01:36:57   We're gonna undertake more projects that cost us more money

01:37:00   and burn more of our capital and more time

01:37:03   because we think the only way out of this downturn

01:37:06   is to innovate our way out of it

01:37:07   or whatever the catchphrase was.

01:37:09   Like basically, we're going to figure out

01:37:11   how to make the iMac and the iPhone and the iPad,

01:37:15   and that's what's gonna save us.

01:37:17   Not let's scramble to run ads

01:37:18   against everything that we have or whatever.

01:37:20   Again, against the instinct of other people,

01:37:22   which is like, hey, business school,

01:37:23   we need to find an way to make money,

01:37:24   turn all the money dials up in the company, right?

01:37:27   I would hope that as things enter a downturn,

01:37:30   that they pursue that strategy.

01:37:32   That what we're seeing now is not the strategy

01:37:35   of a downturn into trying to make growth grow,

01:37:37   but instead what it is is the exuberance of success

01:37:39   and saying, "We make money everywhere.

01:37:41   "We turn all the dials up, everything's going great."

01:37:43   And as things get worse for the industry,

01:37:45   that Apple finds its previous strategy,

01:37:48   which is that's not the move.

01:37:50   The move is because we're Apple and have a hajillion dollars,

01:37:53   even when we didn't have a hajillion dollars, we did this,

01:37:55   The move is reinvest, like, yeah, maybe tighten down,

01:38:00   focus or whatever, but come out with the great thing.

01:38:03   Let's really work on that headset.

01:38:04   Let's figure out the car, whatever they're gonna do, right?

01:38:07   Let's make Macs great again, which they did.

01:38:09   That's the move when things are in a downturn,

01:38:12   is not now's the time to scramble and find a way

01:38:15   we can scrape more pennies from people

01:38:16   by putting XCO Cloud ads in everyone's ID.

01:38:19   - Yeah, but see, I don't think modern Apple

01:38:22   has those sensibilities anymore.

01:38:24   Literally, you're right, in that one big tech downturn

01:38:28   when Steve Jobs took over, his strategy was,

01:38:30   let's make our products better.

01:38:33   Tim Cook's strategy appears to be,

01:38:34   let's cover our products with ads for casinos.

01:38:37   - But I think that is a strategy of peak.

01:38:39   Like, I think that's a strategy of things are going great.

01:38:42   And it's a lagging indicator.

01:38:45   We don't get to see what Apple has decided to do

01:38:47   until much later when it actually does it,

01:38:49   but I feel like if we actually enter

01:38:52   really bad tech downturn for, you know, it's barely been touching Apple, but I feel like

01:38:57   the manufacturing stuff in China is really going to touch Apple and that's going to hit

01:39:01   their revenue.

01:39:02   Wait till their holiday quarter results come in and there's not a lot of iPhone sales in

01:39:06   them.

01:39:07   Yeah, no, it's going to be bad for them, right?

01:39:08   But I hope what this does is, and the whole discussion around this whole issue with ads,

01:39:13   I hope that what we're seeing was the last burst of exuberance of the go, go, rah, rah,

01:39:18   Apple always continues to grow, grow, grow, right?

01:39:21   Instead, if they need to find other areas for growth,

01:39:24   they're available to them and they're pursuing them.

01:39:26   The whole, let's get sports people to watch Apple TV,

01:39:28   let's get more people signed up for Apple TV.

01:39:31   There are other growth opportunities

01:39:33   that don't destroy your brand.

01:39:36   Getting more people to sign up for Apple TV+

01:39:38   because they like the TV shows, that's a clean win.

01:39:40   If you can do that, do it, pursue it.

01:39:43   That's service revenue that we're not complaining about.

01:39:45   People love severance, they wanna sign up

01:39:46   for Apple TV+ to watch it.

01:39:48   Thumbs up, that's the equivalent of making the iMac.

01:39:50   You made a good show that people want

01:39:51   and they signed up for your service

01:39:52   so they could see the thing.

01:39:54   Good, do that.

01:39:55   Selling more ad slots, not good, don't do that.

01:39:59   - Yeah, 'cause that's a service.

01:40:01   Like when you're offering something that people want

01:40:04   for a reasonable price to them,

01:40:07   that is a service you're offering to them.

01:40:09   If you're gonna call it services revenue,

01:40:11   that is exactly, first of all, that's the story

01:40:14   they probably tell themselves,

01:40:15   but also, that's a good service.

01:40:17   That fits within Apple's expertise.

01:40:20   That is the best of Apple,

01:40:22   is making something that people like,

01:40:24   doing a good job of it and selling it for

01:40:26   the maximum price people will tolerate in that category.

01:40:29   But we're happy to pay it, most of us,

01:40:31   most of the time, because it's a good product.

01:40:34   That is how Apple should and usually has

01:40:38   operated their business.

01:40:40   And I worry that we haven't seen

01:40:43   stuff really hit the fan yet with Apple

01:40:45   and its expectations with the stock market and everything.

01:40:49   I think we're in for a rude awakening

01:40:51   over the next few months.

01:40:53   And we are just gonna have these screws tightened

01:40:56   so much more than we think.

01:40:59   And I hope I'm wrong, please prove me wrong, Tim Apple.

01:41:03   But I am worried, I'm really worried

01:41:05   because I already see the direction they're going.

01:41:08   And because they have so much lock in,

01:41:12   it's hard for any of their metrics to go down

01:41:14   in a meaningful way that would actually kind of

01:41:16   wake them up here.

01:41:17   They are still sensitive to negative press.

01:41:20   That's why the casino ads got quote paused on that ad slot.

01:41:23   But there's only so much negative press

01:41:25   that can be generated by like small paper cuts.

01:41:28   If they do something really bad like casino ads

01:41:31   on gambling recovery apps, that'll get bad press.

01:41:34   But all these little paper cuts of minor ads

01:41:37   and minor upsell opportunities all over the place

01:41:39   here and there, those don't get the bad press.

01:41:42   And so I worry that they've made so much money,

01:41:45   they're so wildly successful in so many ways,

01:41:48   and they're so good at smelling their own farts

01:41:51   and thinking they're just wonderful,

01:41:52   and I mean that in the most loving way, Apple,

01:41:54   but you know it's true,

01:41:56   that I think they don't see the paper-cut nature

01:42:00   of things enough.

01:42:01   The highest up people in the company

01:42:03   who are in charge of such directions and decisions

01:42:06   are not seeing these things

01:42:08   or are not sensitive to these things.

01:42:10   Similar to the problems that our Twitter owner friend has

01:42:13   where he has surrounded himself only with yes men

01:42:17   and with numbers and things that support his worldview,

01:42:19   I think Apple suffers from that a lot of the time

01:42:21   where a lot of the higher ups at Apple

01:42:24   seem to be making decisions without all the information

01:42:27   or with bad information or with an inability

01:42:29   to read the room.

01:42:30   That's gonna really hurt them in this area.

01:42:32   They're gonna keep adding these paper cuts

01:42:34   and these little annoying missteps

01:42:37   and these reputation and brand eroding factors

01:42:40   in their user experience.

01:42:42   And I don't think they have a good feedback loop

01:42:43   up at the top for them to really say like,

01:42:46   hey, you know what, this is kinda making things worse

01:42:49   and this might not be worth,

01:42:51   the dollar that we're gonna make from this today

01:42:52   might not be worth the $10 we're gonna lose over time

01:42:55   from the damage it causes.

01:42:57   I don't think that higher up people think that way at Apple.

01:42:59   I don't think they have the right sensibilities

01:43:01   or priorities to think that way.

01:43:02   And I think they've demonstrated that

01:43:03   over the last decade very effectively.

01:43:05   That's why I'm concerned about this.

01:43:07   I don't have faith in the leaders to think this way.

01:43:10   They're really good at running operations and making money,

01:43:13   but they're not really good at avoiding paper cuts

01:43:15   in their product experiences

01:43:17   and properly valuing those long term.

01:43:19   They're really not good at that.

01:43:20   They've repeatedly showed themselves not to be good at that,

01:43:23   and now that they are gonna face challenges

01:43:26   in the things they are good at,

01:43:27   the operations and the money,

01:43:28   they're gonna start tightening those product screws

01:43:30   and increasing the paper cut load

01:43:32   because that's how they know how to fix those problems

01:43:35   and they don't care about the cost of these problems.

01:43:38   - I will say though, part of the report was also

01:43:39   that there was internal disagreement

01:43:41   and that employees don't like it.

01:43:42   So maybe Apple's, maybe the asset that Apple

01:43:44   needs to leverage here is all the rank and file employees

01:43:48   who don't want Apple to be like this.

01:43:51   'Cause I feel like Apple employees do, to some extent,

01:43:54   have influence over what the company does.

01:43:55   It sounds like silly to do, of course,

01:43:56   don't the employees, aren't the employees

01:43:59   the only thing that influences what Apple does?

01:44:00   Well, certain employees.

01:44:02   - Not all employees, right?

01:44:04   It is a hierarchy, it is not a democracy, right?

01:44:06   But internal agitation can move the leader a little bit.

01:44:10   It's not the way you, like, to your point Marco,

01:44:12   like if you had internal agitation to do the right thing

01:44:15   but you didn't have Steve Jobs there

01:44:16   who is receptive to that or who already agreed with it,

01:44:19   they wouldn't have dug themselves out of the hole

01:44:21   that they were in.

01:44:22   Like leadership in the end needs to be on board with that.

01:44:24   I'm just not as pessimistic

01:44:26   about Apple's leadership as you are.

01:44:27   I agree that they definitely have blind spots

01:44:29   and often seem to be living in a different universe

01:44:31   than we are, but I think if they heard this conversation,

01:44:34   They would mostly agree with all the things I said

01:44:37   about what Apple had done in the past.

01:44:38   It's just that they think they're doing that now,

01:44:40   and we're telling them you're not doing that

01:44:42   as much as you think you are.

01:44:44   - Thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:44:45   Squarespace, Collide, and Linode.

01:44:48   And thanks to our members who support us directly.

01:44:50   You can join at atp.fm/join,

01:44:53   and we will talk to you next week.

01:44:55   (upbeat music)

01:44:58   ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:45:00   ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:45:03   'Cause it was accidental.

01:45:05   Oh, it was accidental.

01:45:07   John didn't do any research.

01:45:10   Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.

01:45:13   'Cause it was accidental.

01:45:15   Oh, it was accidental.

01:45:18   And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.

01:45:23   And if you're into Twitter,

01:45:26   you can follow them at

01:45:29   [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:45:58   - Tell us the name of your database framework.

01:46:00   - What's the point of having a secret name?

01:46:05   Is it embarrassing?

01:46:05   Is it a sexual position?

01:46:07   Like what?

01:46:08   - No, it's called Butt TV.

01:46:11   - Yeah, sure it is.

01:46:12   - No, all right, it's called Blackbird

01:46:14   because I like the plane, okay?

01:46:15   - There you go.

01:46:16   - What's wrong with that?

01:46:16   There's nothing wrong with that.

01:46:17   - I didn't want to like, you know, name it

01:46:19   and then have everyone tell me,

01:46:20   "You know, there's a million other things called that."

01:46:21   Yeah, I know there's a million other things called that

01:46:23   because it's a cool name and it's a cool plane.

01:46:25   That's, you know.

01:46:26   - It's kind of long to type though, you know,

01:46:27   I guess autocomplete saves you there.

01:46:29   Yeah.

01:46:29   Well, and how often are you typing in,

01:46:31   you know, Blackbird.database?

01:46:33   Like, it's not that common of a thing.

01:46:36   Yeah.

01:46:36   Yeah.

01:46:37   Anyway.

01:46:37   You didn't make a capital B in the middle of it, did you?

01:46:40   No.

01:46:40   What, are you crazy?

01:46:41   Just making sure.

01:46:42   We have to go to the title case site for all these ATP titles.

01:46:46   I just want to make sure that nothing was going terribly

01:46:49   wrong here.

01:46:50   Yeah.

01:46:50   Well, you can do lots of fun associated vocabulary

01:46:55   that you could throw in there with all Lockheed, Skunk Works, Sleddriver, all sorts of other

01:47:00   words associated with that whole thing.

01:47:02   Yeah, and the thing is, and there's all sorts of different ways, I'm not even a plane nerd.

01:47:07   I just like that plane. So I don't even know most of the other references I could make.

01:47:11   If you want to go onto YouTube, the SR-71 Blackbird YouTube rabbit hole is awesome.

01:47:19   Oh, I can only imagine.

01:47:20   Just go down there on YouTube and just watch these three hour videos of someone who flew

01:47:25   this thing is their career telling you all about it or the engineers that worked on it

01:47:28   or the engineering explain video that there's like seven engineering explain videos that

01:47:32   talk about this plane so good you can just spend if you like this kind of stuff and even

01:47:36   if you don't think you like it it's just hours and hours of qualities I should find the engineering

01:47:40   explain one for notes let me go find that yeah anyway yeah because it's I like the plane

01:47:44   it's fast and it's old and well I made a sequel I think that's and that's old and I made it

01:47:49   (laughing)

01:47:50   So, you know.

01:47:51   It's like SQLite is like old and awesome and fast,

01:47:55   and that's what this is.

01:47:56   It's, you know.

01:47:57   - So when your library's on the runway,

01:47:58   it will leak fuel from the fuel tanks

01:48:00   because it needs to get up to speed

01:48:01   to have enough heat to close the seams.

01:48:04   Yeah, it's so nuts.

01:48:05   - And it will be a super big pain in the ass to use it,

01:48:08   but it will be awesome.

01:48:09   (laughing)

01:48:10   All the async calls I'm gonna have to make,

01:48:12   like it's gonna be a big pain in the ass

01:48:14   to use this thing from my code.

01:48:16   However, when I'm using it,

01:48:17   it's going to be awesome and fast.

01:48:19   - Yeah, I'll put one Engineering Explained videos in there.

01:48:22   And then probably once you watch that video,

01:48:25   your recommended videos along the sidebar,

01:48:28   we'll just follow those.

01:48:29   And yeah, eventually you get to Nazis,

01:48:30   but it'll be a while.

01:48:31   (laughing)

01:48:33   - Wow.

01:48:34   - One of my favorite things on the SR71 though,

01:48:37   one of the videos, I don't know which one it is,

01:48:39   you'll have to dig it out or whatever,

01:48:40   but it was like, I think it was like,

01:48:42   it was either predating GPS or they needed something,

01:48:45   they need something to tell where they are, right?

01:48:47   on the globe in the spy plane, right?

01:48:50   And it's so old and was engineered in such a long time,

01:48:54   like I was just, I mean, I don't know what I was thinking

01:48:56   that they would use for that, but if you didn't have GPS

01:48:59   in your plane, how would you try to figure out,

01:49:01   like for the people on the plane, so they know

01:49:03   like where on earth they are?

01:49:05   - I guess I would, I mean, obviously you have compasses,

01:49:08   but beyond that, I guess I would just descend

01:49:11   until I could look around at the landscape

01:49:12   and try to identify it, I don't know.

01:49:14   - So what they did was they have a package

01:49:16   that's in the plane that has a bunch of cameras in it.

01:49:19   And what it does is it points up at the sky

01:49:22   and looks at the stars.

01:49:23   It positions itself by the positions of the freaking stars

01:49:26   with an optical camera.

01:49:28   - That's amazing.

01:49:30   - And it's like, well, how else were you gonna do it?

01:49:31   It's like, well, ships at sea, you navigate,

01:49:33   because they have to know where they are anywhere

01:49:35   on the Earth and they can't do like dead reckoning of like,

01:49:37   well, I've been going this direction

01:49:38   according to the compass headings for this amount of time

01:49:39   and the wind isn't, like, they literally look at the stars

01:49:43   and it's like, that's what era this plane is from.

01:49:45   It's it's amazing. That's awesome. And then you look at the device you're like who has designed that who had to engineer that?

01:49:52   It's like okay. It's gonna be in a plane and we'll have like a little window and you

01:49:55   Look at the sky

01:49:57   at the stars with like it with like

01:49:59   1960s technology figure out where we are on the planet and show it on like just it's it's mind-boggling

01:50:06   Yeah, they don't really have like Raspberry Pis and camera modules back then

01:50:10   - No.

01:50:11   - Yeah, so anyway, that's it.

01:50:12   It's not that exciting, but that's what it's called.

01:50:14   And it's super fast and I love it.

01:50:15   - Well, it's not too late to call it ButtDB.

01:50:18   (laughing)

01:50:19   - I feel like ButtDB now has some, you know,

01:50:20   some wonderful--

01:50:21   - It's cache as SEO.

01:50:24   - Yeah.

01:50:25   - Oh my gosh.

01:50:25   (laughing)

01:50:27   (beeping)