ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I was thinking about that the other day, about our differing definitions of jam band and how wrong your definition is. That's alright.

00:00:07 ◼   ► You mean mine is good? I agree, they are very different.

00:00:10 ◼   ► No, because I feel like a jam band by definition is about improvisation. It is not about what instrument is emphasized or what the particular flair of music is.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Totally disagree. Jamming is about improvisation. But a jam band is a specific musical genre.

00:00:29 ◼   ► I don't know how to properly adjudicate this disagreement, other than to say I feel as strongly as you the other direction.

00:00:38 ◼   ► That it is little to nothing to do with the particular flavor of the music, but more about the style.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Style is a wrong word there. It's about the fact that they improvise.

00:00:49 ◼   ► So as an example, I think it would be terrible, but there is no reason in my world that you couldn't have a death metal jam band.

00:00:56 ◼   ► If they are all about improvisation, and if every show sounds very different, sure, they are a jam band.

00:01:02 ◼   ► It's not my kind of jam band, but it's a jam band.

00:01:04 ◼   ► But that's like saying that anybody who raps is making rap.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Sure.

00:01:10 ◼   ► That's not necessarily, no, rapping is a verb.

00:01:13 ◼   ► Making rap may be the widest thing you've ever said.

00:01:15 ◼   ► I know. Maybe this is a bad example, I don't know anything about this.

00:01:18 ◼   ► But anybody can rap as part of some other genre of music, but then there's also a genre named rap that includes rapping, but is also a genre.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Jam band is a genre of music that refers to a specific style of music that includes jamming.

00:01:37 ◼   ► Other bands who are not jam bands, that are not playing jam band music, can jam, but it's not necessarily, that doesn't make them a jam band.

00:01:46 ◼   ► And the category, the musical genre of jam bands does not include all songs from all bands that include jams.

00:01:55 ◼   ► I don't think I ever heard the term jam band until I heard you, Marco, discussing it in this context.

00:02:02 ◼   ► And I just like to continue to think that it's a band that's really into like fruit preserves, like that kind of band.

00:02:07 ◼   ► Because that sounds much more appealing than either of your definitions.

00:02:10 ◼   ► They jammed our radar, John.

00:02:12 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:02:13 ◼   ► That's a reference, by the way.

00:02:15 ◼   ► Marco hasn't seen it.

00:02:16 ◼   ► Nope.

00:02:17 ◼   ► Ah, no, I bet he's seen Spaceballs. Come on.

00:02:19 ◼   ► He hasn't.

00:02:20 ◼   ► A long time ago, like I think like in high school or college, and I found it incredibly unfunny.

00:02:25 ◼   ► It's a really good movie, but...

00:02:27 ◼   ► God!

00:02:28 ◼   ► Yeah, in part because it isn't very good, and in part because I had one of the situations where like my friends had quoted it to me too much beforehand.

00:02:33 ◼   ► And so I was like, see also Monty Python.

00:02:37 ◼   ► I didn't think that was funny either for the same reason.

00:02:39 ◼   ► Like my friends had been quoting it to me badly for years before I ever saw it.

00:02:43 ◼   ► So by the time I did see it, it sounded like my annoying friends, not the movie, you know?

00:02:48 ◼   ► Unlike Spaceballs, Monty Python is not one thing.

00:02:51 ◼   ► So they probably quoted things that you are now sick of, but there's so much Monty Python that they weren't quoting that you couldn't theory watch, whereas Spaceballs is just the one movie.

00:02:59 ◼   ► See, and see the problem is though, I got quoted Monty Python so much by other people in like high school that the entire style of Monty Python humor sounds like my annoying friends.

00:03:11 ◼   ► Monty Python isn't really a style of humor, it's a genre.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, exactly. Here we are all over again. It all comes back around.

00:03:19 ◼   ► They're more of jam comedians, I don't know.

00:03:21 ◼   ► Oh God, it's going nowhere.

00:03:23 ◼   ► I mean, in the defense of Mark, see this is why I am not a good debater or arguer, because in the defense of Marko, I think the canonical like example jam band is someone like a Fish or a Grateful Dead.

00:03:38 ◼   ► And I think Fish and Grateful Dead, to my ears, have very, very similar sounds.

00:03:43 ◼   ► And I apologize if that's like blasphemous, I genuinely don't mean it to be, but to my ears, they're very, very similar.

00:03:48 ◼   ► Very guitar heavy, very happy-go-lucky, you know, very, very similar sound.

00:03:52 ◼   ► But I would contest and posit that it is not compulsory to have a guitar heavy, happy-go-lucky, you probably are high as s*** on weed when you listen to it sound.

00:04:06 ◼   ► Which by the way is also applicable to Dave Matthews, but you don't have to be high in order to enjoy it.

00:04:12 ◼   ► I think that to me a jam band is all about improvisation. Somebody said in the chat, you know, does that make all of jazz or every like jazz group a jam band?

00:04:20 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, if you want to use a, I suppose, I don't see why not, because jazz is all about improvisation.

00:04:26 ◼   ► Oh, Casey, I wanted to remain neutral in this argument, but the more you talk, the more I start to agree with Marko.

00:04:31 ◼   ► Okay, tell me why.

00:04:33 ◼   ► Because you're just, you're going into robot or not territory, that's why you're drawing.

00:04:37 ◼   ► I know, I'm waiting for you to jump in on this.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Because you're saying like, well if you think about it, you know, your definition is so broad it starts to include things that are ridiculous, like jazz, so yeah.

00:04:46 ◼   ► Right, exactly, like jam band, and you know, Grateful Dead was a good example.

00:04:50 ◼   ► I wouldn't say there's as much overlap between them as Fish is Youth think, but that's only because you don't know them very well, that's fine.

00:04:55 ◼   ► They do share a genre. Grateful Dead, I think, was the first jam band in the category, and they largely defined the category, and their fandom largely defined the category.

00:05:04 ◼   ► It's more about the style of music than about the actions in the music or the components.

00:05:11 ◼   ► Does that make sense? Like, jamming is an action or like a component, like it's not a musical style or genre, because you know, jazz is a great, like jazz sounds nothing like Fish or Grateful Dead or Dave Matthews or anything like that.

00:05:24 ◼   ► It sounds nothing like any of these bands, but it is the action of jamming. It includes that, right?

00:05:29 ◼   ► Jam bands include that too, but jam bands are a genre of music that does not include jazz.

00:05:34 ◼   ► I don't really think it's jazz. I think that that person, whoever it was, was trying to like poke holes in my argument.

00:05:40 ◼   ► And to me it doesn't include jazz, but yeah, by the definition I gave you, which is it being predominantly about improvisation, then sure.

00:05:46 ◼   ► Reading from Wikipedia, which is on the internet so it must be true, in the early 1990s and 2000s, a new generation of bands was spurred on by the Grateful Dead's touring and the increased exposure of the band.

00:05:53 ◼   ► Crows, My Morning Jacket, Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, and Aquarium Rescue Unit.

00:05:57 ◼   ► Many of today's jam bands have brought widely varied genres into the scene.

00:06:01 ◼   ► A jam band festival may include bands with electronic folk rock, blues rock, jazz fusion, psychedelic rock, southern rock, progressive rock, acid jazz, hip hop, hard rock, and bluegrass sounds.

00:06:09 ◼   ► To be clear, when I was saying I agree with Marco, it was about whether the definition is as broad, it was about the definition. I know nothing about Dave Matthews, so I can't say what definition they fit in. I was just saying, trying to define it as just any kind of music with improvisation or that being the essential part of it just seems wrong to me, because that includes too much stuff.

00:06:26 ◼   ► All these bands they named, I recognize two of the names that can name one or two songs, so I have no idea if any of these bands fit into the definition, but I think the definition is a lot narrower than just music that includes improvisation.

00:06:40 ◼   ► It's a tough call.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Anyway, everyone check out Church's. They're really good.

00:06:43 ◼   ► Wait, like the buildings?

00:06:46 ◼   ► It's spelled with a V, Marco. It's very complicated.

00:06:48 ◼   ► There's apparently a software-based fix to your MacBook Air, Jon, and this is Unshaky by Underscore Sam.

00:06:57 ◼   ► I kind of missed out on a cool name for this, so I'll describe what it is and then we can suggest some cooler names.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Sometimes on newer MacBook Pro keyboards, when you hit a key, you might get two or zero of the key that you pressed, even though you think you did what is a normal key press.

00:07:13 ◼   ► How can we fix that, aside from Apple making a better keyboard?

00:07:16 ◼   ► Well, industrious people like this person whose name, as far as I can determine, is Underscore Sam, not to be confused with Underscore David Smith, made this thing that you can install on your computer.

00:07:27 ◼   ► It will try to intercept all the keystrokes or the key input as you type on your computer and sort of mega-debounce your keys.

00:07:38 ◼   ► We discussed debouncing before, where the software or software that is involved in your keyboard waits for the key to settle before determining whether it's a key press or not, because it bounces microscopically when it hits.

00:07:52 ◼   ► So this is like, "Alright, I'm going to wait for it to stop bouncing, and then I'm going to wait a little bit more."

00:07:57 ◼   ► And if there's two letters that are the same right after each other really, really quickly, like so quick that maybe it might not even be humanly possible to hit them that quick unless you were really trying, like trying to play summer games or something on your computer, I'm just going to count that as one.

00:08:12 ◼   ► So that's what Unshaky does. I think a mega-debouncer would have been a cooler name.

00:08:15 ◼   ► I think it's sad that this has to exist. I think it's cool that Underscore Sam made it exist, and I might actually try installing it.

00:08:21 ◼   ► Horace DeDeux has pointed out some interesting facts and figures with regard to iPhone quarterly revenue growth, or not, over the last eight quarters.

00:08:31 ◼   ► And I'm assuming it was Jon that came up with this, but I'm going to steal your thunder and read them out.

00:08:35 ◼   ► So for the last eight quarters from oldest to newest, 1% growth, 3% growth, 2% growth, 13, 14, 20, 29, -15 for last quarter. Whoops.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Yeah, the numbers don't really tell much, which is why I made this little tiny sparkline graph that you probably can't see and we probably won't even bother putting the notes,

00:08:52 ◼   ► but the tale that the numbers tell is not only was iPhone revenue, like it was like, iPhone sales have flattened out, but they've been increasing the prices, so the revenue may still go up.

00:09:03 ◼   ► Not only was the revenue going up, this is not like how much money they made this graph, this is the growth, right?

00:09:09 ◼   ► So this is the rate of change. The rate of change was increasing, so it was like 1% growth, 3%, you know, it was going up, up, up, and right at the peak it takes a huge nosedive.

00:09:20 ◼   ► So it's not like this was a gradual thing where sales, where iPhone revenue was, you know, on the way down and then it just dipped below some threshold.

00:09:29 ◼   ► It went from going up pretty quickly to rock bottom, so that's part of why the story has a lot of drama behind it.

00:09:39 ◼   ► Yeah, it is pretty intense, that graph. I will try to remember to put it in the show notes, but you can envision that it is pretty ugly.

00:09:46 ◼   ► It's not a good graph because it doesn't label it. Again, this is revenue growth. I'm assuming it's year over year, or maybe it's quarter to quarter, I don't know.

00:09:53 ◼   ► Let's know what Horace's podcast is to find out for sure, but Bono

00:09:53 ◼   ► is not just numbers, it's not just like I sold five widgets, then 10 widgets, then 11 widgets. This is the rate of change.

00:10:01 ◼   ► And the next follow-up item relates to this.

00:10:05 ◼   ► And that would be that Samsung and LG have released their financial results, and it's a pretty bad dumpster fire for everyone involved, it seems.

00:10:15 ◼   ► Yeah, and guess what's bad? China.

00:10:17 ◼   ► Who knew?

00:10:18 ◼   ► Anyone who has anything to do with the smartphone industry, and there's other companies included in these stories too that I took out, but there's a bunch of companies that have like,

00:10:28 ◼   ► "This company has not made money selling smartphones since 2014, so we don't include them because they've never been making money or whatever."

00:10:34 ◼   ► But the other big players in the smartphone market also all had a bad year in China and are having bad results.

00:10:42 ◼   ► I don't know if it was smart for Apple to be the first one to say, "Hey, guess what? Our results are going to be worse than we thought, and we're doing really bad in China."

00:10:50 ◼   ► But everyone else is saying the same thing, and so it seems like the China story is definitely the real deal.

00:10:57 ◼   ► As Ben Thompson pointed this out to me, as we'll find out at earnings, even though we talked about in the last show, that's what Apple says, but they just gave us overall numbers.

00:11:06 ◼   ► When they announce earnings, they do still break stuff down by region. They don't give you unit sales, but they do break down all of their other numbers by region.

00:11:13 ◼   ► So we'll be able to validate Apple's report that this is all a China issue, and then we can see like, "Oh, China was in the crapper, but in the United States, growth continues," or things were flat or whatever.

00:11:25 ◼   ► So we'll find that out when we do actual earnings.

00:11:27 ◼   ► One thing I want to add to this, there was a great discussion on upgrade this past week on this whole mess and other related topics, but yes, Apple said this is due to losses and basically contractions of the market in China, lower demand in China.

00:11:43 ◼   ► And you can look at this and you can say, "Well, apparently a lot of things are taking a hit in China, not just the iPhone specifically." So it isn't necessarily Apple's fault that the iPhone isn't selling as well because of factors X, Y, and Z that are like macroeconomic factors and China-specific macroeconomic factors and so on.

00:12:03 ◼   ► Isn't it people at Apple's job to try to forecast this stuff?

00:12:08 ◼   ► Yeah, but you can't tell the future.

00:12:13 ◼   ► Well, you can't tell the future very far in advance, but when did they issue this guidance? October?

00:12:19 ◼   ► One quarter ago.

00:12:21 ◼   ► Right, it was October and November, right? So even then, and by the way, they issue guidance that is a range of what they think might happen.

00:12:30 ◼   ► And there was a great article also by Ben Thompson on Stereotecory about this two days ago now, looking at the timeline of when Apple had to make these predictions on their earnings versus it was only a couple of days into sales of the iPhone XR or something like that.

00:12:46 ◼   ► So they had to basically guess how many XRs they would sell and they had maybe one month of data on the S line, so it seems like they probably predicted way too high on the XR and that was causing basically this problem.

00:13:01 ◼   ► But isn't it their job to look at the economic climate all over the world and to base predictions on that? For them to have made such a significant miss in a relatively short-term prediction requires a lot of optimism and factors that turn out to be true.

00:13:21 ◼   ► And I'm not saying this is a reason for anybody to be fired, but I save those accusations for when it matters more.

00:13:27 ◼   ► But I think you look at this and it's not, you know, Apple's framing it in the letter, it's like this is something that happened to us, basically.

00:13:35 ◼   ► But it's their job to forecast things like this. They should have the best resources in the world at trying to look at world markets and what's happening.

00:13:46 ◼   ► There have been signs for a while now that the world economy is on shaky ground and after a period of things being kind of good, it's cooling down.

00:13:57 ◼   ► That's been evident for a while. I don't follow China stuff at all because I don't know anything about it.

00:14:03 ◼   ► But people who do, when they heard Apple's report, they're like, "Yeah, of course, that makes sense because China is contracting," or whatever.

00:14:09 ◼   ► It's been a hard time in China recently. So it's like when they're making their predictions and they're issuing their guidance, and they didn't just miss their guidance by amount x,

00:14:20 ◼   ► they fell below the bottom of the range of guidance by that much.

00:14:25 ◼   ► With such a short time horizon, I have to imagine this wasn't just something that happened to them.

00:14:32 ◼   ► It was actually a significant misprediction and misunderstanding of the market that they should have had a better understanding of.

00:14:40 ◼   ► It's like saying it's a basketball team's job to score more points than the other team.

00:14:44 ◼   ► It's their job to score more points than the other team. Why didn't they do it? They should have known what the other team was going to do.

00:14:48 ◼   ► They have all the tape of the other team playing. Why didn't they just score more points than that?

00:14:51 ◼   ► I would be more on your side if they were the only one who missed. But seeing the results from everybody else saying, "Yeah, we had it worse,"

00:14:57 ◼   ► is because China took a nosedive steeper than people predicted. The people who are saying, "Yeah, it makes sense," are saying it from now,

00:15:04 ◼   ► when we see the nosedive that China has taken. Last quarter or October, when they were making these predictions,

00:15:10 ◼   ► those same people, if asked to make predictions for Apple, there would have been some range.

00:15:14 ◼   ► Some would say that Apple's predictions are high. Some would say they're low. I don't think Apple is unique in this position.

00:15:19 ◼   ► Sometimes, things are on a trajectory, and Apple does predict these trajectories,

00:15:23 ◼   ► which is why sometimes its earnings that they predict are lower than Wall Street expects when they say,

00:15:27 ◼   ► "Here's our guidance," and Wall Street's like, "Oh, we don't like that guidance." But it turns out to be right on.

00:15:31 ◼   ► They have a pretty good record of getting their guidance. This is a more dramatic downturn than companies expected,

00:15:38 ◼   ► and every company that's in the same business as them is saying, "Yep, it's more dramatic than we expected, too."

00:15:42 ◼   ► Are they all incompetent? Is all of their jobs to predict? Sometimes, things just go down faster than you think they're going to.

00:15:48 ◼   ► Again, I'm not deep into this world, but I'm a high-level view, seeing a bunch of very similar competitors

00:15:56 ◼   ► having the same story about how things are happening. It makes sense to me.

00:16:00 ◼   ► Sometimes, things go down faster than you think they're going to.

00:16:03 ◼   ► If there were people who could track the market within this narrow percentage window,

00:16:08 ◼   ► as well as that, they would just not make devices, and they would just play the stock market or do commodities trading

00:16:16 ◼   ► and not bother actually having to do the hard work of making something, instead just make money off of their amazing knowledge

00:16:21 ◼   ► of how exactly the world's going to go.

00:16:23 ◼   ► To be fair, there are a lot of people who do that.

00:16:25 ◼   ► They try, but if you could predict the movement of the markets to a degree where you wouldn't make a miss like this in this situation,

00:16:34 ◼   ► three months ahead of time, that's a pretty amazing ability to predict.

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00:18:30 ◼   ► [music]

00:18:34 ◼   ► It seems that any time we scoff at Chrome because it's really bad,

00:18:39 ◼   ► somebody wants to come out of the woodwork to remind us that Firefox is not dead,

00:18:43 ◼   ► and is in fact still a thing.

00:18:46 ◼   ► And in this case it was Christopher Tipper who wanted to write us, or did write us, and say,

00:18:50 ◼   ► "Hey, I'm curious how there's a whole conversation about Edge without any mention of the other viable browser, Firefox.

00:18:55 ◼   ► I'm not about to advocate for it, though I've relied on it for a long time,

00:18:59 ◼   ► and it's not the browser you were using five years ago anymore.

00:19:01 ◼   ► But how sensible is it to complain about a lack of diversity when people are too lazy to switch?"

00:19:05 ◼   ► And that actually is a pretty decent question.

00:19:07 ◼   ► I mean, to me--

00:19:08 ◼   ► No, it is not a decent question.

00:19:10 ◼   ► First of all, we did mention Firefox, albeit in passing, but we did mention it.

00:19:13 ◼   ► Maybe got it at the episode, but it was definitely mentioned.

00:19:16 ◼   ► And second, what good is it to complain about lack of diversity when people are too lazy to switch?

00:19:20 ◼   ► Well, first of all, it's like there's a certain number of browsers and one goes away.

00:19:25 ◼   ► We want there to be diversity, so a decrease in the number of major browsers out there

00:19:28 ◼   ► is a decrease in diversity.

00:19:30 ◼   ► What sense does it make to complain about a decrease in diversity?

00:19:32 ◼   ► Maybe the point is it doesn't matter how many browsers there are,

00:19:34 ◼   ► because people only use one or two,

00:19:36 ◼   ► but the browser that went away is one of the ones that has the most power behind it

00:19:42 ◼   ► to get people to use it because it comes bundled with Windows

00:19:45 ◼   ► and historically has been a very popular browser,

00:19:47 ◼   ► whereas Firefox is a third-party download and much more difficult to get people to switch to.

00:19:51 ◼   ► This is a browser that people would end up using mindlessly,

00:19:54 ◼   ► because you have to know to install Chrome or know to install Firefox,

00:19:57 ◼   ► and if you don't do that and you have Windows, this is the one you would have been using.

00:20:00 ◼   ► So I think this is not a particularly good point.

00:20:04 ◼   ► Fair enough.

00:20:06 ◼   ► We aren't all in the world using Firefox or not using it because we're lazy.

00:20:11 ◼   ► We're not using it because it hasn't been very good for a very long time,

00:20:14 ◼   ► and if it's good now, cool.

00:20:16 ◼   ► Good luck to them. Maybe I'll check it out.

00:20:18 ◼   ► But it was not very good for a very long time,

00:20:22 ◼   ► and that's a very good reason for a lot of us not to have used it.

00:20:24 ◼   ► Yeah, it is better now to be fair, but it's got such a hurdle.

00:20:27 ◼   ► If Firefox went away, we'd also be sad because we'd be like,

00:20:30 ◼   ► "It's decreasing the browser diversity."

00:20:32 ◼   ► It's one of those big ones up there.

00:20:35 ◼   ► There's not that many, as we talked about.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Making a modern web browser engine is incredibly difficult and resource-intensive.

00:20:41 ◼   ► That's why there aren't a million of them.

00:20:43 ◼   ► So losing any one of them is bad,

00:20:45 ◼   ► but losing Firefox would probably be less impactful

00:20:51 ◼   ► than losing Internet Explorer or Edge or whatever

00:20:53 ◼   ► simply because Firefox is a third-party browser

00:20:55 ◼   ► that has to convince people on its merits to use it,

00:20:57 ◼   ► whereas the one that comes bundled with Windows has an immediate advantage,

00:21:01 ◼   ► just like the one that comes bundled with iOS has an immediate advantage

00:21:04 ◼   ► and, to a lesser degree, the one that comes bundled with the Mac.

00:21:06 ◼   ► So it would have been bad for any of these players to disappear.

00:21:09 ◼   ► Any of them disappearing is a decrease in diversity,

00:21:12 ◼   ► and it's particularly bad for one of the most powerful,

00:21:16 ◼   ► most important ones to disappear.

00:21:19 ◼   ► So the version of Firefox that I've been judging it on

00:21:22 ◼   ► apparently was not the current version

00:21:24 ◼   ► and had no auto-updating to the current version.

00:21:27 ◼   ► Yeah, the auto-updaters in Firefox at various times in the semi-recent history,

00:21:31 ◼   ► meaning the last five years, have stopped working

00:21:33 ◼   ► and refused to auto-update to the next major version.

00:21:35 ◼   ► They've just prompted you, "Go download the new version," which I've done,

00:21:37 ◼   ► and so you will eventually get to the newer version.

00:21:39 ◼   ► But it's weird that they don't chain their--

00:21:42 ◼   ► At certain points, they stop chaining their auto-updaters.

00:21:44 ◼   ► They're like, "We give up. Just go and download."

00:21:46 ◼   ► They send you. They say, "Go to this place and download it,"

00:21:49 ◼   ► but it's kind of weird.

00:21:50 ◼   ► I keep Firefox as my third browser, basically.

00:21:52 ◼   ► I have Safari primary.

00:21:53 ◼   ► I have Chrome as my secondary and Google and Facebook

00:21:57 ◼   ► if I have to kind of thing.

00:21:59 ◼   ► And then Firefox is kind of my third one.

00:22:02 ◼   ► If I need another login account for, say, if I'm testing Overcast,

00:22:06 ◼   ► I need a third browser that has a different account logged in

00:22:08 ◼   ► for one of the tests I'm doing or something like that.

00:22:10 ◼   ► I'm just curious. We have this whole conversation about browsers

00:22:12 ◼   ► and no one's mentioned Opera yet.

00:22:14 ◼   ► Well, because the Opera user is not part of this podcast.

00:22:17 ◼   ► But anyway, so I decided, "Okay, let me give it a fair shot,"

00:22:21 ◼   ► granted in the two minutes before we talked about it.

00:22:25 ◼   ► So I went to the Firefox site.

00:22:28 ◼   ► I downloaded the newest version of Firefox, installed it,

00:22:30 ◼   ► and opened it up and browsed to a few sites

00:22:33 ◼   ► and poked around a little bit.

00:22:34 ◼   ► And the first thing I did was resize the window

00:22:37 ◼   ► because it was the wrong size.

00:22:39 ◼   ► And the resize animation is wrong.

00:22:42 ◼   ► It was all jaggy.

00:22:43 ◼   ► It would have black clipping artifacts as you'd resize it.

00:22:46 ◼   ► Like, it's not a smooth resize.

00:22:48 ◼   ► I noticed when scrolling, it does not bounce on top and bottom

00:22:52 ◼   ► the way both Chrome and Safari and every other scroll view

00:22:54 ◼   ► on Mac and iOS do.

00:22:56 ◼   ► And finally, when I went to my own website, overcast.fm,

00:23:00 ◼   ► the logo, the orange on Overcast's site is wrong

00:23:05 ◼   ► because I have a P3 display, and they're rendering the regular,

00:23:11 ◼   ► you know, whatever the regular RGB...

00:23:13 ◼   ► I know what you're thinking of. I can never keep it straight.

00:23:15 ◼   ► - I thought it was sRGB. - It's probably sRGB.

00:23:17 ◼   ► Yeah, so, you know, my SVG and my website

00:23:19 ◼   ► specify, like, regular color, not wide color.

00:23:22 ◼   ► And it seems to be mapping that incorrectly

00:23:25 ◼   ► onto the wide color display, so the colors are way too bright

00:23:29 ◼   ► in the oranges in Overcast.

00:23:31 ◼   ► So my initial impression is not very positive,

00:23:34 ◼   ► that, like, all these basics are still really crappy.

00:23:38 ◼   ► So I'm kind of thinking this is gonna remain my third browser.

00:23:41 ◼   ► The color thing is actually one of the reasons

00:23:43 ◼   ► that it's so hard for third-party browsers to get traction,

00:23:45 ◼   ► because it could be-- I don't know the particular situation--

00:23:48 ◼   ► but it could be that what Firefox is doing

00:23:50 ◼   ► is technically correct to the letter of the law

00:23:52 ◼   ► according to the standards, and that both Safari and Chrome

00:23:55 ◼   ► fudge it a little bit and sort of do what you mean.

00:23:58 ◼   ► Like, you know, some minor violation

00:24:00 ◼   ► in how you're supposed to specify color spaces or something,

00:24:03 ◼   ► they let it slide, but this one doesn't.

00:24:05 ◼   ► But it doesn't matter who's correct

00:24:07 ◼   ► when it looks good in the browsers that have the massive,

00:24:10 ◼   ► the most market share, right?

00:24:12 ◼   ► Your other browser, Firefox, is the weird one.

00:24:14 ◼   ► Chrome had the same problem when it was introduced.

00:24:16 ◼   ► Chrome was the weird one. It's like, oh, this site works in IE,

00:24:18 ◼   ► but it doesn't work in Chrome, right?

00:24:20 ◼   ► That's the hill you have to climb.

00:24:22 ◼   ► If you're a third-party browser and you want to get traction

00:24:24 ◼   ► and you don't have a platform to be your tractor,

00:24:26 ◼   ► you have to deal with stuff like this.

00:24:28 ◼   ► You have to say, okay, well, even though we're technically right--

00:24:30 ◼   ► and again, I don't know if this is the case where they're right or not,

00:24:32 ◼   ► but there are cases like that-- even though we're technically right,

00:24:34 ◼   ► let's do the thing that the other browsers do

00:24:36 ◼   ► so that sites work.

00:24:38 ◼   ► Like, that was the hill Safari had to climb, too,

00:24:40 ◼   ► because it had the support of the entire platform.

00:24:42 ◼   ► It still had to climb the hill,

00:24:44 ◼   ► because when it came out, I believe IE was still on the Mac,

00:24:47 ◼   ► and so was Firefox.

00:24:49 ◼   ► Firefox was bigger than it at that point,

00:24:51 ◼   ► and it had to render sites as well as IE or Firefox or whatever.

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00:26:48 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:26:51 ◼   ► - This week is CES week,

00:26:53 ◼   ► which I have never really found that terribly interesting,

00:26:57 ◼   ► and it's even less so now, but that's okay.

00:27:00 ◼   ► But Casey, how are we gonna ever get so excited

00:27:04 ◼   ► about all the different TV technologies

00:27:06 ◼   ► and other technologies that always debut at CES

00:27:09 ◼   ► and then always come out into shipping products later

00:27:11 ◼   ► and are definitely as good as their promise

00:27:13 ◼   ► and come out anytime soon?

00:27:15 ◼   ► - That's not fair.

00:27:16 ◼   ► That's not fair at all,

00:27:17 ◼   ► because if you're bored by TV technology, then fine.

00:27:21 ◼   ► But they showed it at the show,

00:27:23 ◼   ► and for the most part, the things they show at the show

00:27:25 ◼   ► become products that ship in the year of the show

00:27:27 ◼   ► that they showed it,

00:27:28 ◼   ► or they say this is not for this year, whatever.

00:27:30 ◼   ► It's not different than any other sort of tech show

00:27:33 ◼   ► or Apple presentation, specifically on TVs.

00:27:35 ◼   ► Other tech, who knows?

00:27:36 ◼   ► They show that machine that folds your own laundry.

00:27:37 ◼   ► That's probably never gonna exist or whatever,

00:27:39 ◼   ► or only, it'll be ridiculously expensive

00:27:43 ◼   ► and not work that well.

00:27:44 ◼   ► But the TV stuff, it's pretty much like,

00:27:46 ◼   ► this is this year's crop of TVs,

00:27:48 ◼   ► and we're gonna release them.

00:27:49 ◼   ► Sometimes it's later in the year than you want it to be,

00:27:51 ◼   ► but we're gonna release them this year,

00:27:53 ◼   ► and this is what they're like.

00:27:54 ◼   ► And then also, here's a bunch of wacky TV tech.

00:27:56 ◼   ► And I do have a topic after the one

00:27:58 ◼   ► that we're actually gonna talk about,

00:27:59 ◼   ► and we probably won't even get to the show,

00:28:00 ◼   ► about specifically TV technology, which I find exciting.

00:28:04 ◼   ► All the rest of CES, meh, I can take or leave.

00:28:06 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:28:07 ◼   ► - In any case, it came out, I don't know,

00:28:10 ◼   ► it was a couple days ago, it doesn't really matter when,

00:28:11 ◼   ► but it came out in Fits and Spirts

00:28:14 ◼   ► that Apple has apparently partnered

00:28:16 ◼   ► with a lot of major TV manufacturers

00:28:18 ◼   ► in order to include iTunes and/or AirPlay 2

00:28:22 ◼   ► and/or HomeKit in several major manufacturers' TVs.

00:28:26 ◼   ► So the first shoe to drop, I believe, was Samsung.

00:28:30 ◼   ► And they have said that Samsung's 2018 and 2019 range of TVs

00:28:34 ◼   ► will be able to access and play your iTunes movie

00:28:35 ◼   ► and TV show library.

00:28:37 ◼   ► And you'll also be able to buy and rent content

00:28:39 ◼   ► from iTunes directly from the TV,

00:28:41 ◼   ► and of course it will support AirPlay 2.

00:28:43 ◼   ► Then later on, Vizio and LG said,

00:28:45 ◼   ► "Yeah, we're gonna get the AirPlay 2 thing,

00:28:47 ◼   ► "we'll get HomeKit support,

00:28:48 ◼   ► "maybe, maybe not on the iTunes thing."

00:28:50 ◼   ► Sony, I believe, said the same,

00:28:52 ◼   ► I don't have the information in front of me,

00:28:53 ◼   ► that's okay though.

00:28:54 ◼   ► And then Apple has actually updated their AirPlay page

00:28:57 ◼   ► to say, "Hey, a bunch of this stuff is happening."

00:29:00 ◼   ► This is interesting to me,

00:29:04 ◼   ► and I think exciting,

00:29:06 ◼   ► I actually find it very hard to get excited

00:29:08 ◼   ► about anything TV related.

00:29:09 ◼   ► Our TV in the house, as I've said before,

00:29:11 ◼   ► is ancient, it's 40 inches,

00:29:13 ◼   ► I have no intention of upgrading it anytime soon.

00:29:15 ◼   ► I just don't, I don't get revved up about TV stuff

00:29:18 ◼   ► like you and Marco, you John and Marco do.

00:29:21 ◼   ► But--

00:29:22 ◼   ► - If you look at this different, Casey,

00:29:23 ◼   ► your TV is so old and it's only 40 inches,

00:29:26 ◼   ► you are in the market.

00:29:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe that's--

00:29:28 ◼   ► - So this should be very exciting to you.

00:29:29 ◼   ► - Except I don't think I wanna spend the money on this stuff.

00:29:31 ◼   ► - But you are in the market though,

00:29:33 ◼   ► because every year they come out with new fancy TVs,

00:29:35 ◼   ► the less fancy ones get cheaper.

00:29:37 ◼   ► They're pretty cheap now,

00:29:38 ◼   ► they're getting down into case territory,

00:29:39 ◼   ► getting down into I don't care about TV territory.

00:29:42 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:29:44 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:29:45 ◼   ► In any case, I do think this is interesting

00:29:48 ◼   ► because this is not the sort of move

00:29:52 ◼   ► that Apple of the past often made.

00:29:54 ◼   ► I mean, they did from time to time,

00:29:56 ◼   ► but this is not the sort of thing

00:29:57 ◼   ► that you saw that often in the past.

00:29:58 ◼   ► And as paired with, what is it,

00:30:00 ◼   ► Apple Music going to Amazon's Echo line of products,

00:30:04 ◼   ► Apple is really, really, really starting

00:30:06 ◼   ► to walk the services walk,

00:30:08 ◼   ► which I don't know if that's good or bad,

00:30:10 ◼   ► I don't know if I'm excited or sad,

00:30:12 ◼   ► but one way or another it's different and interesting.

00:30:15 ◼   ► And actually, speaking of upgrade,

00:30:17 ◼   ► a friend of the show, Mike Hurley,

00:30:18 ◼   ► had some very interesting tweets about this.

00:30:21 ◼   ► I think it was right when this information first dropped.

00:30:25 ◼   ► And I'm gonna butcher what Mike said

00:30:27 ◼   ► and I'll try to find the link for the show notes.

00:30:28 ◼   ► But basically he said,

00:30:29 ◼   ► "Hey look, Apple is not really the same company it was

00:30:33 ◼   ► "even just a couple years ago,

00:30:34 ◼   ► "much less five, 10, 15, 20 years ago.

00:30:36 ◼   ► "And you as an Apple fan are gonna decide

00:30:40 ◼   ► "if you wanna be on board with this or not.

00:30:42 ◼   ► "And either decision is fine, but they're different now

00:30:44 ◼   ► "and this is a very exciting and interesting time

00:30:47 ◼   ► "to be watching and interested in Apple."

00:30:49 ◼   ► And I think that that was very astute of Mike

00:30:51 ◼   ► and I think that this broadening of their willingness

00:30:54 ◼   ► to put their content on other people's devices

00:30:57 ◼   ► is a perfect example of that, which is what Mike was saying.

00:31:00 ◼   ► - I'm glad I got to get on to upgrade before Mike

00:31:02 ◼   ► and make that same point.

00:31:03 ◼   ► What did we see, were we like on vacation or something?

00:31:05 ◼   ► I forget.

00:31:06 ◼   ► - I forget, yeah.

00:31:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is episode 222.

00:31:09 ◼   ► I'll put a link in the show notes

00:31:10 ◼   ► where I talked about this very issue,

00:31:11 ◼   ► not in the context of TVs,

00:31:12 ◼   ► 'cause of course none of these announcements had been made,

00:31:14 ◼   ► but we were talking about it in the context of music.

00:31:16 ◼   ► It was just me and Jason.

00:31:17 ◼   ► To get back to the TV stuff for a second,

00:31:20 ◼   ► all those TV announcements that you listed,

00:31:22 ◼   ► that's basically all the important TV players.

00:31:25 ◼   ► I think TCL wasn't listed, right?

00:31:27 ◼   ► But I'm not sure what their deal is.

00:31:28 ◼   ► Maybe they since made an announcement.

00:31:30 ◼   ► But the little snippet on the AirPlay page,

00:31:33 ◼   ► Apple's AirPlay page, which probably used to say something

00:31:35 ◼   ► like, "AirPlay is a great way for you

00:31:36 ◼   ► "to wirelessly send your video to your Apple devices

00:31:38 ◼   ► "and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

00:31:40 ◼   ► Now it says, "To your Apple TV, favorite speakers,

00:31:43 ◼   ► "and soon, popular smart TVs."

00:31:46 ◼   ► And so it's clear that Apple is not just like

00:31:50 ◼   ► making one deal with one thing.

00:31:52 ◼   ► They are reframing their technologies,

00:31:54 ◼   ► not as a way, in the case of AirPlay,

00:31:56 ◼   ► not as a way for you to send your video wirelessly

00:31:58 ◼   ► among your Apple things,

00:31:59 ◼   ► but as a way for you to send your video wirelessly

00:32:02 ◼   ► to your TV.

00:32:03 ◼   ► And Apple doesn't even make TVs,

00:32:05 ◼   ► so it's gotta be third-party TVs.

00:32:07 ◼   ► And they didn't just do a deal with one.

00:32:08 ◼   ► They did a deal with as many as they could, it seems like.

00:32:10 ◼   ► So they had, even though the announcements trickled out,

00:32:12 ◼   ► it's clear that this has been sort of a full-court press.

00:32:15 ◼   ► And it's easier to just listen to me rant about this

00:32:17 ◼   ► on upgrade if you wanna hear a longer version.

00:32:19 ◼   ► But the short version is,

00:32:21 ◼   ► in the context of the discussion I was having with Jason,

00:32:23 ◼   ► if you have any kind of service

00:32:26 ◼   ► where someone's going to pay you

00:32:27 ◼   ► and then you get to watch TV shows

00:32:29 ◼   ► or listen to music or something like that,

00:32:31 ◼   ► it's very difficult to be in the market at all

00:32:35 ◼   ► if for people to use your service,

00:32:38 ◼   ► they have to do some specific thing.

00:32:41 ◼   ► Like, you want the largest addressable market as possible.

00:32:44 ◼   ► You don't wanna say, "We will sell our music service

00:32:47 ◼   ► "only to people with blue eyes,

00:32:49 ◼   ► "like only to people who own BMWs."

00:32:52 ◼   ► Like, why would you limit your audience that way?

00:32:54 ◼   ► If you have a music streaming service,

00:32:55 ◼   ► sell it to anyone who will give you $10 a month.

00:32:58 ◼   ► Like, sell it to everybody.

00:32:59 ◼   ► Like, "I'm sorry, you can't use our music streaming service.

00:33:01 ◼   ► "Only left-handed people can."

00:33:03 ◼   ► That's a bad music streaming service.

00:33:04 ◼   ► And how are you gonna make the economics worth

00:33:06 ◼   ► if you only sell to left-handed people?

00:33:08 ◼   ► There's just not enough of them, right?

00:33:09 ◼   ► So the technology version of being left-handed

00:33:13 ◼   ► is we will only sell you iTunes content

00:33:17 ◼   ► if you own an Apple device.

00:33:19 ◼   ► Apple does not have massive overwhelming market share

00:33:22 ◼   ► in any of the markets where it sells devices.

00:33:24 ◼   ► It doesn't have overwhelming market share in phones.

00:33:26 ◼   ► It doesn't have it in computers.

00:33:27 ◼   ► It doesn't even sell TVs.

00:33:29 ◼   ► It doesn't have it in TV puck devices.

00:33:31 ◼   ► It's not a good idea to have a service of any kind,

00:33:35 ◼   ► music or television or movies or whatever,

00:33:38 ◼   ► and only be able to sell it to people who buy your hardware.

00:33:41 ◼   ► And the whole thing, I think what Mike was getting at

00:33:43 ◼   ► was the whole notion, like,

00:33:44 ◼   ► "Well, Apple does all this stuff,

00:33:45 ◼   ► "but it's just a way to sell you high-margin hardware."

00:33:48 ◼   ► Even though Apple's hardware margins are still very healthy,

00:33:52 ◼   ► in the end, unless Apple sells something radically different,

00:33:56 ◼   ► it would be a Herculean effort to say,

00:33:59 ◼   ► "The iPhone is gonna go from 20% worldwide market share

00:34:02 ◼   ► "to 90%."

00:34:03 ◼   ► The Apple TV is gonna go from,

00:34:04 ◼   ► and maybe Apple TV actually does have these in market share,

00:34:06 ◼   ► but it's gonna go from whatever it has

00:34:07 ◼   ► to having 90% market share,

00:34:08 ◼   ► and even 90% is not as good as 100%.

00:34:10 ◼   ► And so what we talked about in "Upgrade" is,

00:34:11 ◼   ► let's look at the people who have been successful in services,

00:34:14 ◼   ► Netflix being the prime example.

00:34:16 ◼   ► The defining characteristic of Netflix

00:34:18 ◼   ► is you can't buy anything on the planet

00:34:20 ◼   ► that has electronics in it that doesn't play Netflix.

00:34:22 ◼   ► If you buy television, it plays Netflix.

00:34:24 ◼   ► There's Netflix buttons on the remote control

00:34:26 ◼   ► that say Netflix.

00:34:28 ◼   ► It's like Marco's dream of having a button that changes the issue.

00:34:31 ◼   ► There's literally a button that has the Netflix logo on your remote.

00:34:34 ◼   ► Forget about having to buy a box.

00:34:37 ◼   ► It's in all your TVs.

00:34:39 ◼   ► All your computers can play it.

00:34:40 ◼   ► You can play it on your phone.

00:34:41 ◼   ► You can play it on your tablet.

00:34:42 ◼   ► You can play it on your Fire--

00:34:43 ◼   ► It's everywhere, because Netflix is in the business of saying,

00:34:47 ◼   ► "We don't want there to be any barriers

00:34:49 ◼   ► "to you signing up for our service.

00:34:51 ◼   ► "If you exist and have a way to watch movies at all,

00:34:55 ◼   ► "we wanna make it as easy as possible

00:34:57 ◼   ► "for you to sign up for Netflix."

00:34:59 ◼   ► And that is really the only way

00:35:01 ◼   ► to have any success in any kind of service thing.

00:35:05 ◼   ► And I think on Upward, I also talked about

00:35:07 ◼   ► when has Apple done this in the past?

00:35:09 ◼   ► When has Apple actually done a thing where they say,

00:35:12 ◼   ► "We don't just wanna sell this to people who have Apple hardware

00:35:15 ◼   ► "or left-handed people, we wanna sell it to everybody."

00:35:17 ◼   ► And the iPod is the only real recent example

00:35:19 ◼   ► in most people's minds,

00:35:20 ◼   ► because once they made the iPod for Windows,

00:35:22 ◼   ► it's like, "Look, everybody can buy an iPod.

00:35:24 ◼   ► "We don't care if you have a Mac.

00:35:25 ◼   ► "We don't care, you know, just we'll sell iPods to everybody."

00:35:29 ◼   ► And everybody was simpler then, because it's basically like,

00:35:31 ◼   ► if you have a Mac or a PC,

00:35:33 ◼   ► and that was all that mattered back then.

00:35:35 ◼   ► But they sold them to everybody,

00:35:37 ◼   ► and they sold really cheap ones and really small ones

00:35:39 ◼   ► and really big ones and expensive ones,

00:35:41 ◼   ► and they just sold it to whoever would take it in the head.

00:35:43 ◼   ► They actually had fairly dominant market share

00:35:45 ◼   ► in the digital music player market.

00:35:47 ◼   ► Like, they were the biggest game in town.

00:35:49 ◼   ► Netflix has even better penetration.

00:35:50 ◼   ► Netflix basically has 100% penetration.

00:35:52 ◼   ► Like, if you can't watch Netflix,

00:35:53 ◼   ► you are trying really hard, or you're Casey,

00:35:55 ◼   ► and never replace anything.

00:35:56 ◼   ► Although, Casey can watch Netflix, so he can't escape it.

00:35:59 ◼   ► - Actually, I might, even my ancient TV might have a Netflix.

00:36:02 ◼   ► - Your Apple TV can play.

00:36:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, no, no, I'm thinking, though,

00:36:06 ◼   ► even my ancient TV that, I don't even remember how old it is,

00:36:09 ◼   ► but it was exciting that it was 1080,

00:36:12 ◼   ► because that was up for grabs,

00:36:14 ◼   ► whether or not it would have been.

00:36:15 ◼   ► And I think it has a native Netflix app,

00:36:18 ◼   ► which is to build,

00:36:19 ◼   ► it's exactly what you're talking about, Jon.

00:36:20 ◼   ► Netflix is friggin' everywhere,

00:36:21 ◼   ► and it was friggin' everywhere years ago.

00:36:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the apps weren't great,

00:36:24 ◼   ► but the whole point was not,

00:36:25 ◼   ► oh, it's a beautiful app that reflects the brand of Netflix,

00:36:28 ◼   ► and is elegant and lovely and high performance.

00:36:30 ◼   ► Like, it will eventually play video.

00:36:32 ◼   ► Like, that's all I care about.

00:36:33 ◼   ► Can you play the video?

00:36:35 ◼   ► And yeah, so Apple Music on Amazon's Echo devices

00:36:41 ◼   ► is one thing, but like, the video thing,

00:36:43 ◼   ► which we had in the notes for a long time,

00:36:44 ◼   ► we never really talked about.

00:36:45 ◼   ► We talked about it like a year ago

00:36:46 ◼   ► when we were talking about the same topic

00:36:48 ◼   ► that has been coming up for maybe multiple years now

00:36:50 ◼   ► of like, how can Apple produce video content

00:36:54 ◼   ► and then apply its Apple brand to say,

00:36:55 ◼   ► well, we don't want people to be cursing

00:36:57 ◼   ► and we don't want there to be violence.

00:36:58 ◼   ► Like, can you compete with HBO and Netflix

00:37:00 ◼   ► if you do that, blah, blah, blah.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Like, that story came around for its yearly run,

00:37:04 ◼   ► like maybe three or four months ago.

00:37:06 ◼   ► But the larger story,

00:37:08 ◼   ► as information has been trickling out

00:37:10 ◼   ► of the typically silent Apple,

00:37:12 ◼   ► is that Apple is going to introduce a video service,

00:37:15 ◼   ► and they're spending about a billion dollars

00:37:17 ◼   ► for original content.

00:37:19 ◼   ► Like, they're not just like we're gonna dip our toes in,

00:37:21 ◼   ► they want to be in the same game as Amazon

00:37:23 ◼   ► and Hulu and Starz and of course, Netflix.

00:37:28 ◼   ► And what you have to do to be in that market now

00:37:30 ◼   ► is you have to pay for and produce original content,

00:37:33 ◼   ► which costs tons of money.

00:37:34 ◼   ► And it's make or break.

00:37:36 ◼   ► Netflix would not be Netflix without like,

00:37:37 ◼   ► you know, House of Cards or Orange is the New Black, right?

00:37:40 ◼   ► HBO would not be HBO without its shows,

00:37:42 ◼   ► although it didn't start as a streaming service, obviously,

00:37:44 ◼   ► and everything has to have some original content,

00:37:47 ◼   ► otherwise why would I subscribe to your service?

00:37:48 ◼   ► Right?

00:37:49 ◼   ► It's not like it's a way for you to watch content

00:37:52 ◼   ► that other people make,

00:37:53 ◼   ► because increasingly the content is made

00:37:55 ◼   ► by the streaming services.

00:37:56 ◼   ► So Apple is spending a billion dollars.

00:37:58 ◼   ► You don't spend a billion dollars on content and say,

00:38:00 ◼   ► "And this billion dollars is just to make shows

00:38:03 ◼   ► for people who listen to ATP."

00:38:05 ◼   ► It's not, you're not gonna spend a billion dollars

00:38:08 ◼   ► and say, "Yeah, you have to buy,

00:38:10 ◼   ► you have to buy the world's most expensive puck device

00:38:13 ◼   ► and attach it to your TV,

00:38:14 ◼   ► otherwise you can't watch this content."

00:38:15 ◼   ► You would never narrow your audience like that.

00:38:17 ◼   ► So this is all absolute no-brainer stuff that's going on.

00:38:21 ◼   ► And still, by the way, does not guarantee

00:38:22 ◼   ► Apple's going to be successful

00:38:23 ◼   ► because unfortunately in this market,

00:38:25 ◼   ► your shows have to be good,

00:38:26 ◼   ► which is a whole other issue,

00:38:27 ◼   ► but we don't know what the show's gonna be like.

00:38:28 ◼   ► All we know is Apple's gonna have a video streaming service

00:38:31 ◼   ► and Apple being in every TV in 2018 and 2019 and on,

00:38:37 ◼   ► they have to do that.

00:38:38 ◼   ► It's not shocking, it's not surprising,

00:38:40 ◼   ► they absolutely have to do it

00:38:41 ◼   ► and they have to do it as fast as they possibly can

00:38:43 ◼   ► because anything that makes it harder to sign up for

00:38:46 ◼   ► and watch whatever the content is, is death,

00:38:48 ◼   ► even before we get to the point of,

00:38:50 ◼   ► are the shows actually good?

00:38:52 ◼   ► - You know, just to make it absolutely clear,

00:38:54 ◼   ► if Apple would like to give the three of us a billion dollars

00:38:56 ◼   ► to make some TV content just for our listeners,

00:38:58 ◼   ► I am willing to orchestrate that for you, Apple,

00:39:00 ◼   ► so just have your people call my people.

00:39:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, I have really been dying

00:39:04 ◼   ► to make that Cooking with John show.

00:39:06 ◼   ► I think a billion dollars would do it.

00:39:08 ◼   ► - That would be amazing.

00:39:09 ◼   ► - I think I might have too much sex and violence

00:39:11 ◼   ► for Apple's service.

00:39:13 ◼   ► Wow.

00:39:14 ◼   ► Now I really want Cooking with John.

00:39:17 ◼   ► - It's a dark, gritty reimagining of Cooking with John.

00:39:20 ◼   ► - Well, you know, imagine the epic road trips we could do

00:39:23 ◼   ► 'cause even John would probably quit his job

00:39:26 ◼   ► for one third of a billion dollars,

00:39:28 ◼   ► so imagine the Top Gear style road trips we could do.

00:39:31 ◼   ► - You wanna bet he still wouldn't?

00:39:33 ◼   ► - I think you might be right.

00:39:34 ◼   ► - How much you wanna bet?

00:39:36 ◼   ► If John made $333 million,

00:39:38 ◼   ► he still wouldn't buy a Ferrari

00:39:40 ◼   ► and still wouldn't quit his job?

00:39:42 ◼   ► - No, that's over my threshold.

00:39:43 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:39:44 ◼   ► - I think we do that as a rec diff topic,

00:39:47 ◼   ► exactly how much money you need to do certain things,

00:39:50 ◼   ► and I have numbers.

00:39:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:39:52 ◼   ► - All right, so for you to quit your job

00:39:54 ◼   ► and buy a Ferrari, what's your number?

00:39:56 ◼   ► - I think 100 million is the threshold of Ferrari territory

00:40:01 ◼   ► because I feel like 100 million,

00:40:03 ◼   ► I could adjust my life enough to support a Ferrari

00:40:07 ◼   ► in the way that it needs to be supported.

00:40:09 ◼   ► - All right, and is that pre or post tax?

00:40:11 ◼   ► - That's pre tax.

00:40:12 ◼   ► - Cash or all assets?

00:40:13 ◼   ► - That's cash, pre tax and cash.

00:40:16 ◼   ► - Okay, let's see.

00:40:18 ◼   ► - So anyway, I'll just make that happen.

00:40:20 ◼   ► - All right, Apple, here's our price.

00:40:22 ◼   ► If you want Cooking with John,

00:40:23 ◼   ► the hottest new show of this coming fall,

00:40:25 ◼   ► that's our price.

00:40:27 ◼   ► - See, the thing is,

00:40:28 ◼   ► relevant to what I was gonna say before,

00:40:30 ◼   ► they have already spent a bunch of money on content

00:40:34 ◼   ► that as far as I can tell is not going to see

00:40:36 ◼   ► the light of day.

00:40:37 ◼   ► They made this whole The Story of Dr. Dre

00:40:39 ◼   ► or something series,

00:40:41 ◼   ► I don't know the details of this,

00:40:42 ◼   ► but they spent a lot of money to make a show,

00:40:44 ◼   ► but then they decided that it wasn't suitable

00:40:47 ◼   ► for, that it had too much violence and cursing

00:40:50 ◼   ► and drug use and whatever.

00:40:51 ◼   ► And so they just basically spiked it or canned it

00:40:54 ◼   ► or whatever the term is when it comes to television shows.

00:40:58 ◼   ► But they already paid to have it made.

00:41:00 ◼   ► So if they had taken that money

00:41:01 ◼   ► that they paid to have it made and just given it to me,

00:41:03 ◼   ► I can have my Ferrari now.

00:41:04 ◼   ► And they would have the same number of shows.

00:41:06 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:41:08 ◼   ► - So now we're offering to help them

00:41:09 ◼   ► not make shows for a lot of money.

00:41:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, they just gave it to me.

00:41:12 ◼   ► I'll tell them I'm making a documentary of Dr. Dre

00:41:14 ◼   ► and then I'll say, actually, it's got a lot of drugs in it.

00:41:16 ◼   ► You probably don't want it.

00:41:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:41:18 ◼   ► - Apple, this is a win-win.

00:41:19 ◼   ► It's a win for everyone involved.

00:41:20 ◼   ► - This could be like a, the one thing I have seen,

00:41:23 ◼   ► this could be like a producer's strategy

00:41:24 ◼   ► of like you take their money

00:41:26 ◼   ► and you try to make the absolute most offensive thing

00:41:28 ◼   ► you possibly can so that they spike it

00:41:30 ◼   ► and you get to keep all the money.

00:41:31 ◼   ► - Yep, that's another possible strategy.

00:41:33 ◼   ► And that's sort of, I mean, they do that in movies all the time

00:41:37 ◼   ► although usually they end up releasing this.

00:41:38 ◼   ► There's a lot of movies that were on the shelf

00:41:40 ◼   ► but usually they put them out, whether it's straight to video

00:41:42 ◼   ► or they just get them out somehow.

00:41:44 ◼   ► There are a few that I think have never been released.

00:41:46 ◼   ► I think there was that Jerry Lewis

00:41:48 ◼   ► clown concentration camp movie.

00:41:51 ◼   ► There was the Corman Captain America.

00:41:55 ◼   ► I forget if that was released.

00:41:56 ◼   ► Anyway, that totally fits with the Apple ethos

00:41:58 ◼   ► of like we try all sorts of things

00:42:00 ◼   ► and if they're not good enough, we don't release them.

00:42:02 ◼   ► We just tend not to hear about the technology products

00:42:05 ◼   ► that happens with but we did hear about this TV show.

00:42:07 ◼   ► Shelved it, there you go.

00:42:09 ◼   ► That's the term we should be using.

00:42:10 ◼   ► - It's funny to me that Marco, who didn't care for space balls,

00:42:13 ◼   ► actually neither of you really cared for space balls,

00:42:15 ◼   ► here we are talking about The Producers by Mel Brooks.

00:42:17 ◼   ► It's all coming full circle now.

00:42:19 ◼   ► - Does he know The Producers is by Mel Brooks?

00:42:21 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:42:22 ◼   ► - No.

00:42:23 ◼   ► - There are connections but he's not aware of them.

00:42:25 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:42:27 ◼   ► - Neil Patel had some points about this.

00:42:29 ◼   ► - I've already forgotten.

00:42:30 ◼   ► - Some points about this particular thing as well.

00:42:32 ◼   ► So he talked to Apple and he said,

00:42:35 ◼   ► "Apple tells me no smart TV content tracking is allowed

00:42:38 ◼   ► "on AirPlay 2 streams on Vizio and LG TVs,

00:42:41 ◼   ► "in addition to preventing Samsung

00:42:43 ◼   ► "from tracking the iTunes app."

00:42:45 ◼   ► So this is Apple saying like they are dictating

00:42:48 ◼   ► some amount of terms to their television partners

00:42:51 ◼   ► that integrate their technologies

00:42:53 ◼   ► and if you read this and aren't keeping up

00:42:55 ◼   ► with what the television world is like,

00:42:57 ◼   ► you're like, what do they mean?

00:42:58 ◼   ► No smart TV content tracking?

00:43:00 ◼   ► Like are they tracking what I watch?

00:43:03 ◼   ► The answer is yes.

00:43:04 ◼   ► That's what smart TVs do.

00:43:06 ◼   ► That is a very, very important business model

00:43:08 ◼   ► and there was a big article on The Verge about this

00:43:10 ◼   ► for years and years.

00:43:11 ◼   ► There was a bunch of stories about Vizio

00:43:13 ◼   ► having privacy violations and all sorts of other things

00:43:15 ◼   ► where even if you opted out, it still recorded stuff

00:43:18 ◼   ► and recording things on cameras and microphones

00:43:20 ◼   ► but forgetting all that, just the basics of

00:43:23 ◼   ► these televisions know what they're displaying on the screen

00:43:26 ◼   ► because they are the television, right?

00:43:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:43:29 ◼   ► And they do content identification and that

00:43:32 ◼   ► and they track that information

00:43:33 ◼   ► and they report it because it's valuable information

00:43:35 ◼   ► to know what people are watching on television

00:43:37 ◼   ► and these people make television sell that information.

00:43:39 ◼   ► So Apple apparently said, you are not allowed

00:43:42 ◼   ► to do content tracking for things that are streamed

00:43:44 ◼   ► over AirPlay or things that are in the iTunes app.

00:43:49 ◼   ► Basically just trying to fence it off and saying,

00:43:51 ◼   ► look, you can't do this.

00:43:53 ◼   ► I know you have the technology to do it.

00:43:56 ◼   ► I know you can tell what's being displayed in your stream

00:43:58 ◼   ► but no go.

00:43:59 ◼   ► I don't know how Apple is verifying that

00:44:00 ◼   ► but presumably it's in their contract

00:44:01 ◼   ► with all sorts of penalties if they mess up, right?

00:44:04 ◼   ► But as Neil points out in his next tweet,

00:44:06 ◼   ► the wacky part is that Apple can prevent TV makers

00:44:09 ◼   ► from tracking content over HDMI inputs

00:44:11 ◼   ► so a smart TV can track what you watch on your Apple TV.

00:44:14 ◼   ► So if you buy an Apple TV, they can totally track

00:44:16 ◼   ► what you're doing because it just connects over HDMI

00:44:18 ◼   ► and there's no sort of relationship or contract

00:44:20 ◼   ► between Apple and the television

00:44:23 ◼   ► because when you buy an Apple TV, they have no idea

00:44:25 ◼   ► what TV you're gonna hook it up to or whatever.

00:44:27 ◼   ► So the world of television is scary and filled with ads

00:44:30 ◼   ► and tracking.

00:44:31 ◼   ► What else is new?

00:44:34 ◼   ► But it's good that Apple is trying to do what it can

00:44:36 ◼   ► to not let television strike you quite as much.

00:44:39 ◼   ► - No, I think the question what else is new,

00:44:41 ◼   ► like this actually is fairly new.

00:44:43 ◼   ► Like the concept, in fact, going back to Neil A. Patel's

00:44:46 ◼   ► stuff put out recently, there was some article or podcast,

00:44:49 ◼   ► I forget where, but somewhere he had an interview

00:44:51 ◼   ► with a TV exec who I think anonymously told him

00:44:54 ◼   ► that post-sale monetization is a really big deal

00:44:58 ◼   ► in TVs now because they're selling them basically at cost

00:45:02 ◼   ► 'cause it's such a cutthroat commodity business

00:45:04 ◼   ► that there's very little profit margin

00:45:06 ◼   ► in the actual TVs anymore.

00:45:08 ◼   ► And so they're selling them basically as close to cost

00:45:10 ◼   ► as they possibly can and then making it up

00:45:12 ◼   ► by making money from you after the sale.

00:45:16 ◼   ► Now of course you ask, how do they make money from you

00:45:18 ◼   ► after the sale if you aren't, if you have no,

00:45:20 ◼   ► like I bought an LG TV last year.

00:45:22 ◼   ► I have no way to give LG more money for the TV, or do I?

00:45:26 ◼   ► Turns out that it's like, that yeah, you can monetize it

00:45:30 ◼   ► through analytics and selling data and ads and everything.

00:45:34 ◼   ► So this is yet more reasons why, like I don't trust

00:45:38 ◼   ► any of these TV makers to be ethical

00:45:42 ◼   ► or technically competent at all.

00:45:45 ◼   ► So like when I got, and I got a well-rated LG,

00:45:48 ◼   ► you know the C7, whatever TV, it's great, I love the TV.

00:45:52 ◼   ► It has no way to connect to the internet

00:45:54 ◼   ► because when I set it up, I plugged in an ethernet cable,

00:45:57 ◼   ► I did not give it my Wi-Fi info, and I said,

00:46:00 ◼   ► alright here, download whatever you need to download,

00:46:02 ◼   ► and then I unplugged the ethernet cable

00:46:04 ◼   ► and I never used any of its smart apps again.

00:46:06 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:46:07 ◼   ► And I feel totally confident that my TV

00:46:08 ◼   ► is not doing anything creepy because it can't.

00:46:11 ◼   ► That is the only sane way I think to use a smart TV now

00:46:14 ◼   ► if you care about your privacy.

00:46:15 ◼   ► If you don't care, that's a different question.

00:46:17 ◼   ► If you don't care, fine, that's up to you.

00:46:19 ◼   ► But if you do care, I would not trust

00:46:22 ◼   ► any of these manufacturers to actually respect

00:46:26 ◼   ► decency or laws or to not do anything that you opt out of.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Like I won't trust them for a second.

00:46:34 ◼   ► - Next year's TVs will connect to the cell network

00:46:36 ◼   ► if you're a little bit more serious.

00:46:37 ◼   ► Yeah, so that was the article I was referring to,

00:46:39 ◼   ► and no, it wasn't anonymous.

00:46:40 ◼   ► - Wait, will they?

00:46:41 ◼   ► - I'm guessing, I'm just making up.

00:46:43 ◼   ► Who knows, but I wouldn't put it past them.

00:46:45 ◼   ► - Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me.

00:46:46 ◼   ► - Because if that's their business model,

00:46:47 ◼   ► it's well worth their money for them to do that.

00:46:49 ◼   ► I don't think they need to though

00:46:50 ◼   ► because I think people are not as paranoid as you

00:46:51 ◼   ► and they'll just use people's wifi,

00:46:52 ◼   ► which they will connect it to.

00:46:54 ◼   ► But yeah, that was a Visio executive,

00:46:55 ◼   ► not an anonymous person, not a secret tip.

00:46:57 ◼   ► It was like a Visio executive making a public statement.

00:47:00 ◼   ► I mean, everybody in the industry knows this,

00:47:02 ◼   ► and I think consumers basically don't care about it.

00:47:05 ◼   ► - No, I really don't think consumers know.

00:47:08 ◼   ► Like, how would anybody know that?

00:47:10 ◼   ► I don't think consumers would ever expect that.

00:47:12 ◼   ► - Well, they make you agree to terms

00:47:14 ◼   ► and people will just click past them.

00:47:15 ◼   ► - Oh, nobody reads that, yeah, come on.

00:47:17 ◼   ► - But I think consumers don't care.

00:47:19 ◼   ► I think you're also right that they don't know,

00:47:20 ◼   ► but if you told them, they'd be like,

00:47:21 ◼   ► "Oh, well, if it makes my TV cheaper, I'm fine with it."

00:47:23 ◼   ► And it is newish as in the last five years,

00:47:25 ◼   ► but it's not new as in this year.

00:47:26 ◼   ► It's just people are talking about it more now.

00:47:28 ◼   ► And the margins on TVs have always been terrible.

00:47:30 ◼   ► It's like it's always been cutthroat.

00:47:31 ◼   ► I think TV executives are super excited now

00:47:34 ◼   ► that unlike the decades and decades

00:47:36 ◼   ► where the business was cutthroats

00:47:38 ◼   ► and the margins were razor thin,

00:47:39 ◼   ► now they have a way to make money after the sale.

00:47:42 ◼   ► Like, they didn't have that before.

00:47:43 ◼   ► It was like we had to just compete

00:47:45 ◼   ► and they would kill each other for their 3% margins

00:47:47 ◼   ► and the one who has 3% margins

00:47:50 ◼   ► beats the one who has 2.9% margins

00:47:52 ◼   ► and then the other one dies and then you buy their factory.

00:47:54 ◼   ► Like, that used to be the TV business.

00:47:56 ◼   ► Now it's like we don't have to worry about that.

00:47:58 ◼   ► We can make, and I like it

00:47:59 ◼   ► because it means we can make the best TV we can make

00:48:01 ◼   ► and we'll make it all up by selling your data.

00:48:03 ◼   ► And then for people who care, like Bargo,

00:48:06 ◼   ► they can't get your data

00:48:08 ◼   ► because you'll just air-grap your TV,

00:48:10 ◼   ► but nobody does that.

00:48:11 ◼   ► Like, very, very few people do that.

00:48:13 ◼   ► And again, it's nice that it's an option.

00:48:15 ◼   ► Worst case, if they put a SIM card in there,

00:48:16 ◼   ► you can wrap some tinfoil around the right part of your TV

00:48:18 ◼   ► or something and keep it from connecting.

00:48:21 ◼   ► But honestly, I think that's a trade,

00:48:23 ◼   ► even if you explained it,

00:48:24 ◼   ► for the most part, people would be willing to make.

00:48:27 ◼   ► We will anonymously track everything you watch

00:48:29 ◼   ► and report it back and in exchange,

00:48:30 ◼   ► your televisions will be cheaper.

00:48:31 ◼   ► They'll be like, "All right, fine."

00:48:33 ◼   ► They just feel like they're a Nielsen family or something.

00:48:35 ◼   ► But yeah, and if Apple has a unique selling proposition,

00:48:38 ◼   ► it's that they won't do that.

00:48:39 ◼   ► But again, Apple doesn't make a TV.

00:48:41 ◼   ► And much to Gene Munster's dismay,

00:48:43 ◼   ► they decided not to.

00:48:44 ◼   ► That's one of the many products they decided not to ship,

00:48:47 ◼   ► although maybe it helped us get the HomePod,

00:48:50 ◼   ► but who knows?

00:48:51 ◼   ► - One of the aspects of this story

00:48:52 ◼   ► that I thought was really interesting is just,

00:48:54 ◼   ► and this was also discussed on Upgrade,

00:48:57 ◼   ► so please listen to Upgrade,

00:48:59 ◼   ► but the whole idea of, would you have imagined telling us,

00:49:04 ◼   ► not even, you often say,

00:49:05 ◼   ► "Oh, can you imagine telling us from five years ago

00:49:07 ◼   ► "this thing would have happened?"

00:49:09 ◼   ► Can you imagine telling us five months ago

00:49:11 ◼   ► that Apple would, in only a few short months,

00:49:16 ◼   ► be running the iTunes video content on an app

00:49:21 ◼   ► on someone else's hardware, let alone hardware by Samsung?

00:49:26 ◼   ► But even setting aside that, lol, Samsung,

00:49:29 ◼   ► nothing that is not an Apple device or iTunes

00:49:34 ◼   ► has ever been able to play iTunes DRM video content.

00:49:38 ◼   ► And the fact that this is now gonna be a thing

00:49:41 ◼   ► on at least Samsung, and if not more providers

00:49:45 ◼   ► for that part of it in the future,

00:49:47 ◼   ► that is a radical departure of strategy.

00:49:50 ◼   ► And see also having Apple Music on the Amazon Echo

00:49:53 ◼   ► and on Sonos.

00:49:54 ◼   ► I think this is really a turning point.

00:49:58 ◼   ► And all the reasons you said earlier, John, makes sense,

00:50:00 ◼   ► and that's great, and it's probably why they're doing it.

00:50:03 ◼   ► But it's still one of those things

00:50:05 ◼   ► that I never thought we'd see out of Apple.

00:50:08 ◼   ► - If you asked me five months ago, yes,

00:50:10 ◼   ► I would have totally predicted it

00:50:12 ◼   ► and put tons of money on it.

00:50:13 ◼   ► Again, because they've been spending,

00:50:14 ◼   ► if you've been keeping up with the

00:50:15 ◼   ► "how much money is Apple spending

00:50:17 ◼   ► "to produce original video content?"

00:50:18 ◼   ► 'Cause it takes a long time.

00:50:19 ◼   ► They have to hire talent.

00:50:21 ◼   ► Who hires talent?

00:50:22 ◼   ► Who makes the show?

00:50:23 ◼   ► And then like, yes, yes, up to a year or two years ago,

00:50:26 ◼   ► as soon as we started laying out real money

00:50:28 ◼   ► and hiring real TV executives,

00:50:30 ◼   ► it's just, the dominoes fall, right?

00:50:33 ◼   ► And it's very rare, and it is a big change,

00:50:36 ◼   ► but it's not unprecedented.

00:50:37 ◼   ► They've done it before in the past

00:50:39 ◼   ► when they've had a business where they've been convinced,

00:50:42 ◼   ► either by internal or external forces,

00:50:44 ◼   ► that the way to succeed in this business

00:50:46 ◼   ► is you have to go wide.

00:50:47 ◼   ► And it took convincing for the iPod,

00:50:48 ◼   ► you know, for iPod and Windows,

00:50:49 ◼   ► like Steve Jobs famously did not want it

00:50:51 ◼   ► and had to be berated into doing it,

00:50:54 ◼   ► and it spelled a success.

00:50:56 ◼   ► And so the question for music service,

00:50:59 ◼   ► video service, is always,

00:51:00 ◼   ► "Are you gonna do this, Apple, or are you not?"

00:51:02 ◼   ► In the beginning, you can start off

00:51:04 ◼   ► just selling to Mac customers

00:51:05 ◼   ► and see what the deal is, so on and so forth,

00:51:07 ◼   ► but eventually you have to decide,

00:51:08 ◼   ► "Look, are we in or are we out?"

00:51:10 ◼   ► And you can tell they're in when they said,

00:51:11 ◼   ► "Okay, we're gonna start hiring people.

00:51:13 ◼   ► "We're gonna start getting talent.

00:51:14 ◼   ► "We're gonna start making TV shows."

00:51:18 ◼   ► And yeah, after that comes, it's like,

00:51:19 ◼   ► "Well, you gotta be in every TV.

00:51:21 ◼   ► "You gotta let your music service be in every platform."

00:51:22 ◼   ► It could've been they could've said,

00:51:23 ◼   ► "Well, music, we're gonna get out,

00:51:24 ◼   ► "but video, we're gonna go in," or vice versa.

00:51:26 ◼   ► So it wasn't a given until they started laying out the books,

00:51:29 ◼   ► laying out the books that they were gonna do anything,

00:51:31 ◼   ► in particular the music service.

00:51:33 ◼   ► At any point, they could've said,

00:51:34 ◼   ► "Yeah, we're not really into this music thing anymore,

00:51:37 ◼   ► "and we'll just seed the market to Spotify," or whatever,

00:51:39 ◼   ► but they didn't, so they stuck with that,

00:51:41 ◼   ► and so now they have to go wide on that as well.

00:51:43 ◼   ► And the video thing, they tried to do the skinny bundle thing

00:51:46 ◼   ► back in the days when cable was much more important

00:51:48 ◼   ► than it is now and couldn't get that deal done

00:51:50 ◼   ► or didn't find anything satisfactory,

00:51:52 ◼   ► so we're quiet for a while, but a few years ago,

00:51:54 ◼   ► they said, "Okay, we're gonna do this other thing.

00:51:57 ◼   ► "We're gonna look at the model of Netflix.

00:51:59 ◼   ► "We're gonna make some original shows,

00:52:00 ◼   ► "and we're gonna sell somebody a video streaming service."

00:52:01 ◼   ► And we're talking about this like it's a done deal

00:52:03 ◼   ► because a billion dollars has been laid out,

00:52:06 ◼   ► and money has changed hands,

00:52:07 ◼   ► and shows are being made and have been made,

00:52:09 ◼   ► but there's no Apple video streaming service

00:52:11 ◼   ► you should subscribe to right now.

00:52:13 ◼   ► We're just talking about it as a done deal

00:52:14 ◼   ► because it's like if they laid out all this money

00:52:16 ◼   ► and they never introduced an Apple video service,

00:52:18 ◼   ► that's gonna be a big red mark on their balance sheet

00:52:20 ◼   ► in some quarter somewhere,

00:52:21 ◼   ► so we all very strongly assume that it's coming,

00:52:25 ◼   ► and for people who aren't Apple followers

00:52:30 ◼   ► and don't follow the trades in the world of movies and TV

00:52:34 ◼   ► or whatever, this will come as a surprise and a shock.

00:52:36 ◼   ► Imagine getting a TV and saying that it has Apple stuff.

00:52:40 ◼   ► Those people, especially if you're not an Apple fan,

00:52:42 ◼   ► might not even have known that Apple,

00:52:44 ◼   ► does Apple sell movies or TVs?

00:52:45 ◼   ► Can you rent movies from Apple?

00:52:47 ◼   ► That's weird, right?

00:52:48 ◼   ► And I don't think they're going to be inclined

00:52:50 ◼   ► to use anything that Apple offers,

00:52:52 ◼   ► because they'll be like, "Oh, well, I just watch Netflix."

00:52:54 ◼   ► There's no reason for them to try the Apple stuff

00:52:56 ◼   ► if they're not Apple customers,

00:52:58 ◼   ► so that's why Apple's spending a billion dollars

00:53:00 ◼   ► to have some show that they hope their friends

00:53:02 ◼   ► are gonna tell them, "You gotta check out the new show,"

00:53:04 ◼   ► whatever, and then it'll be like, "Oh, that does sound cool.

00:53:07 ◼   ► Where can I watch that?"

00:53:09 ◼   ► Only on, insert name of Apple streaming service,

00:53:11 ◼   ► and that is the feedback loop they're looking for

00:53:13 ◼   ► for people who don't even know that Apple sells

00:53:16 ◼   ► television shows or movies

00:53:18 ◼   ► and don't care that it sells television movies

00:53:19 ◼   ► because they already have cable or Hulu or Netflix

00:53:24 ◼   ► or whatever much more popular.

00:53:25 ◼   ► Like, Apple is late to this game,

00:53:27 ◼   ► and they are not the big name.

00:53:29 ◼   ► They have cachet with, again, ATP listeners

00:53:32 ◼   ► and other Apple enthusiasts,

00:53:34 ◼   ► but they do not have cachet with the massive people out there

00:53:38 ◼   ► who are watching, you know, Netflix or whatever other

00:53:40 ◼   ► much more established streaming service.

00:53:43 ◼   ► All right, and the second question,

00:53:45 ◼   ► and I promise I'll leave this topic alone after this,

00:53:48 ◼   ► I've been thinking, I haven't heard anybody

00:53:50 ◼   ► really talk about this, I've been thinking, like,

00:53:52 ◼   ► might we be heading into a massive oversupply

00:53:56 ◼   ► of not just TV subscription services, but TV content?

00:54:01 ◼   ► Like, already, I mean, I don't watch a ton of TV, I guess,

00:54:07 ◼   ► but already, there is tons of stuff

00:54:10 ◼   ► that I am interested in, even like, series

00:54:13 ◼   ► that have new seasons that I've watched

00:54:15 ◼   ► the previous seasons for, or new series

00:54:17 ◼   ► that I keep getting recommended by friends

00:54:19 ◼   ► and that I wanna check out,

00:54:21 ◼   ► and there just is not enough time

00:54:23 ◼   ► to watch all this TV for me.

00:54:24 ◼   ► There's way more good TV content being produced now

00:54:29 ◼   ► than I think a lot of people have time to watch,

00:54:32 ◼   ► even setting aside the definitely significant issue

00:54:36 ◼   ► that you are having to pay for more and more streaming services

00:54:40 ◼   ► in order to get all the things people are recommending.

00:54:42 ◼   ► Is this maybe a bad time to try to get into

00:54:46 ◼   ► the same market, because honestly,

00:54:48 ◼   ► I think there's gonna be a crash.

00:54:50 ◼   ► I don't think the market can bear this much,

00:54:55 ◼   ► this level of good TV production,

00:54:59 ◼   ► good video series production,

00:55:00 ◼   ► I don't think people have enough time for it all.

00:55:03 ◼   ► And I don't think that market really knows what that's like,

00:55:07 ◼   ► because it has never really been possible before

00:55:11 ◼   ► to oversaturate it.

00:55:12 ◼   ► You know, in the olden days, you had broadcast limitations,

00:55:14 ◼   ► which is the number of broadcast channels,

00:55:16 ◼   ► then you had cable,

00:55:17 ◼   ► but you still had cable channel limitations

00:55:19 ◼   ► and relatively wide targeting still necessary

00:55:22 ◼   ► and everything, but now with all these services,

00:55:24 ◼   ► you have infinite, just like the internet,

00:55:26 ◼   ► you have infinite real estate, you have infinite channels,

00:55:29 ◼   ► and because this seems like a hot market,

00:55:32 ◼   ► everybody's trying to get subscription services going,

00:55:35 ◼   ► it's a huge, great seller's market for,

00:55:39 ◼   ► if you're a TV producer, you can pitch your show

00:55:43 ◼   ► to so many different places now

00:55:45 ◼   ► that if there's anything good about it at all,

00:55:47 ◼   ► you can probably get it made.

00:55:49 ◼   ► And people have a certain fixed amount of time in the day

00:55:52 ◼   ► they can spend watching TV content.

00:55:54 ◼   ► I think we're way oversaturated in this market.

00:55:57 ◼   ► And by the time Apple releases their service,

00:56:00 ◼   ► it might be a really bad time,

00:56:02 ◼   ► because it might be, as everybody's realizing,

00:56:05 ◼   ► oh crap, I'm subscribed to four different services,

00:56:08 ◼   ► and I only really ever have time to watch one of them.

00:56:12 ◼   ► - I think you make a fair point,

00:56:13 ◼   ► but when was the last time you subscribed to a new podcast?

00:56:17 ◼   ► - I think today.

00:56:19 ◼   ► - And don't you already feel like you're fairly overexposed

00:56:22 ◼   ► on your podcast queue, because I know I do.

00:56:25 ◼   ► - Well, but you know, one comes in, one goes out.

00:56:27 ◼   ► - Who cares?

00:56:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, so the oversupply of television shows

00:56:31 ◼   ► is a multi-year-old meme, but it is a real thing, for sure.

00:56:35 ◼   ► It is so well established that there are

00:56:38 ◼   ► seemingly too many television shows,

00:56:40 ◼   ► that there was a recent Simpsons skit about it.

00:56:42 ◼   ► Simpsons is still in the air.

00:56:43 ◼   ► - Oh, good.

00:56:44 ◼   ► - I'm still making jokes, right.

00:56:45 ◼   ► So it got to the point where it was a Simpsons skit.

00:56:46 ◼   ► Here we go, Todd found me the link, thankfully.

00:56:48 ◼   ► - And maybe we could make room

00:56:49 ◼   ► by stopping the Simpsons, finally, please.

00:56:52 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:56:53 ◼   ► - Put it out of its misery.

00:56:54 ◼   ► - It was actually on, Fresh Air had the clip, so it was nice.

00:56:56 ◼   ► We have an audio clip of a television show courtesy of NPR.

00:57:00 ◼   ► So I will put the link in the chatroom and in the show notes.

00:57:02 ◼   ► This clip, while funny, although longer than it should be

00:57:05 ◼   ► for a traditional Simpsons gag,

00:57:08 ◼   ► that's more like an SNL skit that goes too long,

00:57:10 ◼   ► actually does explain the situation fairly well

00:57:12 ◼   ► while trying to be funny, which is, yeah,

00:57:15 ◼   ► there are a huge number of scripted television shows available,

00:57:19 ◼   ► just astronomical, way more than there has ever been.

00:57:22 ◼   ► And also, there's therefore a larger number of good ones,

00:57:25 ◼   ► and it feels like there's too much for you to watch.

00:57:27 ◼   ► But the point made in this thing as a joke, but is real,

00:57:32 ◼   ► is that the companies paying for this content to be created

00:57:36 ◼   ► don't care if you have time to watch it.

00:57:38 ◼   ► All they care is that you care about one show enough

00:57:42 ◼   ► to sign up for their service.

00:57:44 ◼   ► It's recurring, they just want,

00:57:46 ◼   ► if you sign up for their service and never watch anything,

00:57:48 ◼   ► you are their best customer.

00:57:49 ◼   ► Sign up for monthly recurring billing,

00:57:51 ◼   ► and there are so many services.

00:57:54 ◼   ► And we talked about it before, we talked about it on this show,

00:57:56 ◼   ► how many services I pay for.

00:57:57 ◼   ► Like, I just subscribe to these things.

00:57:58 ◼   ► Sometimes I cancel them on the shows.

00:58:00 ◼   ► I'm not interested anymore, aren't there?

00:58:01 ◼   ► Sometimes I don't, right?

00:58:03 ◼   ► Does it add up to be more than my cable bill?

00:58:05 ◼   ► Of course, I also still pay for cable, right?

00:58:07 ◼   ► But they just want to get you on a recurring payment.

00:58:10 ◼   ► And the way they get you is to make as much content

00:58:13 ◼   ► as they possibly can that's compelling

00:58:15 ◼   ► to the widest range of people.

00:58:16 ◼   ► They can't just make one good show and just say,

00:58:18 ◼   ► "Well, we'll get all the people like that one good show."

00:58:20 ◼   ► They want to make as many good shows as they can.

00:58:22 ◼   ► They need -- because it's a creative endeavor,

00:58:25 ◼   ► you don't know what's going to be a hit or whatever.

00:58:27 ◼   ► You have to make a lot of stuff, and some of them are,

00:58:30 ◼   ► and some of them aren't.

00:58:31 ◼   ► And the thing is, as someone who subscribes

00:58:32 ◼   ► to a million of these services,

00:58:33 ◼   ► I am forever -- it's kind of like Apple Music for me.

00:58:36 ◼   ► I am forever discovering shows that were made

00:58:38 ◼   ► three, four, five years ago, right,

00:58:41 ◼   ► that I find interesting and want to watch.

00:58:44 ◼   ► Like, you get to the deep catalog type thing.

00:58:46 ◼   ► It's like music because I don't follow music,

00:58:48 ◼   ► and I go to Apple Music, and it's like, "Hmm,

00:58:49 ◼   ► what has been released in the last three decades

00:58:51 ◼   ► that I might be interested in, right?"

00:58:52 ◼   ► You can do that with television shows

00:58:54 ◼   ► because they have a back catalog.

00:58:55 ◼   ► It's not like broadcast TV.

00:58:56 ◼   ► There's a huge oversupply, but it's actually kind of great

00:59:00 ◼   ► because if you're interested in mid-budget sci-fi

00:59:03 ◼   ► time travel shows, you have like 15 choices,

00:59:06 ◼   ► whereas before you would have zero ever, right?

00:59:08 ◼   ► And sometimes you find an amazing gem,

00:59:10 ◼   ► and we all in our little circle of friends here found "Patriot,"

00:59:14 ◼   ► which was a show that was made in 2015,

00:59:16 ◼   ► and we found it in late 2017, right?

00:59:19 ◼   ► And enough people found out that they made a season two of it.

00:59:22 ◼   ► So some people say it's the golden age of television,

00:59:24 ◼   ► but you are 100% right, Marco,

00:59:26 ◼   ► that there is too much television

00:59:28 ◼   ► for any human to watch.

00:59:30 ◼   ► It is a huge oversupply, but I don't think it's actually --

00:59:33 ◼   ► and I think there actually is -- you know,

00:59:35 ◼   ► there's going to be a limit, and you're right,

00:59:36 ◼   ► there's probably going to be reckoning.

00:59:38 ◼   ► It's a bad time for Apple to enter, though,

00:59:39 ◼   ► not because of oversupply, but because they're late,

00:59:42 ◼   ► because everyone else is already there,

00:59:44 ◼   ► and they have to come from behind.

00:59:45 ◼   ► That's why it's bad for Apple.

00:59:47 ◼   ► It's not like Apple's going to be the straw

00:59:49 ◼   ► that breaks the camel's back, right?

00:59:51 ◼   ► The camel's back is long since broken.

00:59:53 ◼   ► Like, there are just way too many --

00:59:54 ◼   ► way too many shows and way too many things, like --

00:59:57 ◼   ► and you have to -- you know, regular people

00:59:59 ◼   ► who aren't dumb like me and are willing to pay, like,

01:00:02 ◼   ► $15 a month literally six times over

01:00:04 ◼   ► to subscribe to every service I'm going to sign,

01:00:06 ◼   ► you have to pick and choose.

01:00:07 ◼   ► You have to say, "Do I care enough

01:00:09 ◼   ► about 'Star Trek Discovery' to pay for CBS All Access?

01:00:12 ◼   ► Because it's the only show I care about on the whole service.

01:00:14 ◼   ► I don't watch any of the shows on CBS.

01:00:16 ◼   ► Do I care enough about that?"

01:00:18 ◼   ► Especially since sometimes in the past,

01:00:21 ◼   ► shows that you care about that used to be exclusive

01:00:23 ◼   ► end up appearing on some other thing, like on Netflix,

01:00:25 ◼   ► you can get a bunch of shows that weren't Netflix originals

01:00:28 ◼   ► but end up on Netflix anyway,

01:00:30 ◼   ► but, like, delayed by a year and a half,

01:00:32 ◼   ► which may not be a big deal for you

01:00:34 ◼   ► if you don't watch your shows that quickly.

01:00:35 ◼   ► So I think it's bad because Apple's late,

01:00:37 ◼   ► but I don't think the oversupply

01:00:39 ◼   ► is going to be what hurts Apple.

01:00:40 ◼   ► What's going to hurt Apple is

01:00:41 ◼   ► if they don't make good shows that people want to watch.

01:00:43 ◼   ► It is very -- it's much more like Pixar,

01:00:45 ◼   ► to name another Steve Jobs-affiliated company.

01:00:48 ◼   ► It's much more like Pixar,

01:00:49 ◼   ► where it's like you got to make good movies.

01:00:50 ◼   ► We don't care how good your tech is

01:00:53 ◼   ► or how elegant, you know, your artwork is.

01:00:56 ◼   ► You got to tell a good story.

01:00:57 ◼   ► You got to make a thing that people want to watch.

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01:01:44 ◼   ► This is the famous New York Shopsin restaurant family,

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01:01:58 ◼   ► "Arbitrary Stupid Goal" by Tamara Shopsin.

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01:02:53 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:02:56 ◼   ► You know, we've been talking about TVs for a while

01:02:58 ◼   ► and I'm similarly cautious about buying new TVs

01:03:01 ◼   ► even though I'm super into them, I'm still using my plasma.

01:03:04 ◼   ► And I mentioned that like,

01:03:06 ◼   ► I'm probably gonna be in the market for a new TV

01:03:09 ◼   ► in maybe this year or next or something.

01:03:12 ◼   ► And CES is where the new TVs are announced,

01:03:13 ◼   ► so I'm watching those announcements with interest.

01:03:16 ◼   ► And it occurred to me that the time

01:03:18 ◼   ► I'm usually ready to buy a TV is like,

01:03:21 ◼   ► when whatever the best TV making technology

01:03:25 ◼   ► is like mature and established, right?

01:03:28 ◼   ► So I bought my plasma, I bought multiple plasmas,

01:03:31 ◼   ► but I bought my first plasma

01:03:33 ◼   ► when plasmas were like clearly the king of the hill.

01:03:36 ◼   ► They were mature,

01:03:37 ◼   ► they had addressed their growing pain issues,

01:03:38 ◼   ► they weren't super expensive anymore,

01:03:40 ◼   ► they had the best picture quality,

01:03:41 ◼   ► there was large selection,

01:03:43 ◼   ► and then I bought another plasma at the very tail end,

01:03:45 ◼   ► like the very last plasma you could buy

01:03:46 ◼   ► before Panasonic stopped making them,

01:03:48 ◼   ► the best one they ever made, you know, I got, right?

01:03:50 ◼   ► At that time, whether you're in like

01:03:53 ◼   ► the middle of the curve,

01:03:55 ◼   ► like this is the heyday of this technology,

01:03:57 ◼   ► or especially the tail end,

01:03:59 ◼   ► it usually means that there's another technology coming out,

01:04:02 ◼   ► like whatever the new technology is.

01:04:04 ◼   ► Like I'm basically, what I'm getting to is

01:04:06 ◼   ► I'm gonna buy an OLED TV just at the point

01:04:09 ◼   ► when we all know what will eventually be better than OLED.

01:04:13 ◼   ► And last year and this year, at CES,

01:04:16 ◼   ► they've had technologies that are fairly clearly,

01:04:19 ◼   ► depending on when they ship,

01:04:20 ◼   ► the better successor to OLED.

01:04:23 ◼   ► So while I'm excited to get a new OLED TV

01:04:26 ◼   ► this year or next year, at CES,

01:04:28 ◼   ► I was also excited to see what is my next,

01:04:31 ◼   ► next TV gonna be like?

01:04:33 ◼   ► And it looks like it's probably going to be micro LED,

01:04:38 ◼   ► which I think is very interesting

01:04:40 ◼   ► because television technology,

01:04:42 ◼   ► I think I talked about this in hypercritical,

01:04:44 ◼   ► like what the contenders were,

01:04:46 ◼   ► and what the roadmap was,

01:04:48 ◼   ► like someday we may have televisions like X, Y, and Z.

01:04:50 ◼   ► For a long time, OLED was like,

01:04:51 ◼   ► someday we may have these televisions made with OLEDs

01:04:54 ◼   ► and they could be super thin

01:04:55 ◼   ► and they'd be amazing and have these properties.

01:04:56 ◼   ► And look, here they are.

01:04:57 ◼   ► They took a long, long time.

01:04:58 ◼   ► It took decades of us hearing about OLED

01:05:00 ◼   ► before you could even buy one

01:05:01 ◼   ► and then you could buy some tiny one

01:05:02 ◼   ► and it'll cost 15 grand.

01:05:03 ◼   ► And eventually they come in TVs.

01:05:05 ◼   ► One of the other technologies that was discussed,

01:05:08 ◼   ► way back when we went from the CRT to the flat tube era

01:05:11 ◼   ► is like, well, you've got LCDs and you've got plasma

01:05:14 ◼   ► and you've got potentially OLED

01:05:15 ◼   ► and you also have potentially LED TVs.

01:05:18 ◼   ► And everyone thinks they have an LED TV

01:05:20 ◼   ► because they advertise them in the store.

01:05:21 ◼   ► Like you can, I have an LED TV, I bought it at the Best Buy.

01:05:24 ◼   ► No, you don't actually have an LED TV.

01:05:26 ◼   ► What you have is an LCD television

01:05:27 ◼   ► where the backlight is made of LEDs,

01:05:29 ◼   ► which is great and all, but it's not an actual LED TV.

01:05:32 ◼   ► LED, I don't know if you've seen these,

01:05:34 ◼   ► if you've used like a breadboard kit or whatever,

01:05:35 ◼   ► it's light emitting diode.

01:05:37 ◼   ► It's a little tiny thing that lights up

01:05:39 ◼   ► and you can make colored ones and you can make white ones.

01:05:42 ◼   ► And like when they have the backlight

01:05:45 ◼   ► where it's like an LED backlight LCD,

01:05:47 ◼   ► it's usually like white or blue backlights,

01:05:50 ◼   ► just a bunch of LEDs they're making.

01:05:52 ◼   ► You make light bulbs that are, it's very small,

01:05:54 ◼   ► relatively energy efficient compared to incandescent bulbs,

01:05:57 ◼   ► source of very bright light.

01:06:00 ◼   ► An LED television would be a television

01:06:03 ◼   ► where the red, green and blue sub-pixels

01:06:06 ◼   ► are each tiny LEDs, little red LED, little blue LED,

01:06:11 ◼   ► little green LED.

01:06:14 ◼   ► A television like that would have,

01:06:17 ◼   ► it would be like the best of all possible worlds

01:06:19 ◼   ► that we have available to us now.

01:06:21 ◼   ► Like an OLED, it can have perfect blacks,

01:06:25 ◼   ► meaning if the screen is black,

01:06:27 ◼   ► you just turn off all the LEDs

01:06:29 ◼   ► and you could be in a dark room

01:06:30 ◼   ► and all the LEDs are off and it's fine.

01:06:33 ◼   ► Can't have that in LCD because the way LCDs work

01:06:35 ◼   ► is they shine a bunch of light through a liquid crystal layer

01:06:39 ◼   ► and then through some colored filters

01:06:41 ◼   ► and when you don't want the light to come through,

01:06:43 ◼   ► you tell the liquid crystals to stop the light from passing,

01:06:45 ◼   ► but they can't stop all the light, so light leaks out.

01:06:48 ◼   ► So if you sit in front of a LCD television in a black room

01:06:51 ◼   ► and make the television black, it's not black.

01:06:55 ◼   ► It will light up your room because the liquid crystal

01:06:57 ◼   ► can't stop that backlight from spraying light out.

01:07:00 ◼   ► That's why they have backlights that can turn off,

01:07:01 ◼   ► but they can only turn off for regions, yada, yada, yada.

01:07:04 ◼   ► Micro LED, just like OLED, can turn off off,

01:07:07 ◼   ► so it can have perfect blacks.

01:07:09 ◼   ► It can also be super duper bright

01:07:10 ◼   ► because the things that make the light are the actual subpixels.

01:07:13 ◼   ► It's not like it's shining some light through a bunch of filters,

01:07:15 ◼   ► through liquid crystal, through anything like that

01:07:17 ◼   ► where you're losing light content.

01:07:19 ◼   ► The little tiny subpixels actually produce the light,

01:07:22 ◼   ► so they can be very bright

01:07:23 ◼   ► and they're also very close to the screen

01:07:25 ◼   ► and they shoot light in all directions,

01:07:27 ◼   ► so you have amazing perfect viewing angles from everywhere

01:07:29 ◼   ► and they can also be very saturated and rich

01:07:32 ◼   ► and have really great colors.

01:07:33 ◼   ► You don't have these strange color shifts and everything.

01:07:35 ◼   ► A couple of articles will put links in the show notes

01:07:37 ◼   ► if you want to read about all this,

01:07:38 ◼   ► but there's much more detail than that

01:07:40 ◼   ► in terms of how current televisions work

01:07:42 ◼   ► and how potential future ones can work,

01:07:44 ◼   ► but I'm just giving you the broad strokes here.

01:07:46 ◼   ► And then also they can be very thin

01:07:48 ◼   ► and they can be energy efficient

01:07:50 ◼   ► and you can make them to any size and shape you want

01:07:54 ◼   ► because once you're stamping out these tiny little LEDs,

01:07:57 ◼   ► you just keep making more and more of them

01:07:58 ◼   ► in little panels that you can just snap together

01:08:00 ◼   ► and just keep making larger and larger sets,

01:08:02 ◼   ► any resolution you want.

01:08:04 ◼   ► The reason it's called microLED

01:08:06 ◼   ► is because it's easy to make a television out of LEDs.

01:08:09 ◼   ► Like if you go to a football stadium

01:08:10 ◼   ► and you see those huge screens,

01:08:11 ◼   ► they're usually made out of LEDs,

01:08:12 ◼   ► but the LEDs are the size of tennis balls.

01:08:14 ◼   ► They're huge, right?

01:08:16 ◼   ► At CES last year, they had huge LED displays.

01:08:20 ◼   ► Like look, it fills the whole wall.

01:08:21 ◼   ► Isn't it amazing?

01:08:22 ◼   ► You may think it's amazing,

01:08:23 ◼   ► but what's more amazing is a smaller one

01:08:25 ◼   ► because you can make big ones

01:08:27 ◼   ► because you can just make a bunch of LEDs

01:08:28 ◼   ► for every single pixel,

01:08:29 ◼   ► but if your LEDs are the size of a thumbtack

01:08:33 ◼   ► and you make a 4K display,

01:08:34 ◼   ► then it's being the size of a wall.

01:08:36 ◼   ► Most people don't have room in their house

01:08:38 ◼   ► for a 50-foot display.

01:08:39 ◼   ► If you want something that's 55 inches,

01:08:41 ◼   ► the LEDs have to be really, really, really small,

01:08:44 ◼   ► and it is really hard to make tiny, tiny little LEDs

01:08:47 ◼   ► and put enough of them as tightly packed

01:08:49 ◼   ► as you can to make a 4K display.

01:08:51 ◼   ► I think I had numbers in the article.

01:08:53 ◼   ► It's basically 25 million LEDs

01:08:55 ◼   ► in precise arrangements of RGB.

01:08:58 ◼   ► There's some complication with that

01:08:59 ◼   ► in terms of quantum dots to change the colors

01:09:01 ◼   ► and actually making all the LEDs the same color

01:09:03 ◼   ► for cost reasons, yada, yada.

01:09:05 ◼   ► The bottom line is that this year's CES,

01:09:07 ◼   ► they had demos of like television-sized micro-LED displays,

01:09:10 ◼   ► and they are amazing.

01:09:12 ◼   ► They have all the things I said, perfect blacks,

01:09:14 ◼   ► infinite viewing angles, amazing color reproduction,

01:09:18 ◼   ► energy-efficient, thin, good response time,

01:09:22 ◼   ► and by the way, no burn-in.

01:09:24 ◼   ► It would be like the first television technology

01:09:27 ◼   ► in several decades that I would end up buying

01:09:29 ◼   ► that doesn't have any burn-in issues.

01:09:30 ◼   ► So now, obviously, I want a micro-LED display,

01:09:33 ◼   ► but they don't exist yet except as tech demos.

01:09:36 ◼   ► So come back to ATP in, let's say, eight years,

01:09:41 ◼   ► and I should be buying my first micro-LED display,

01:09:45 ◼   ► but I am super excited about it

01:09:47 ◼   ► because both this and a quantum dot emissive technology

01:09:50 ◼   ► both have the promise of getting me where I want,

01:09:52 ◼   ► which is all the best attributes

01:09:54 ◼   ► of every current television technology

01:09:56 ◼   ► with none of the bad ones, and that's what I want.

01:09:59 ◼   ► And so I'm super excited about micro-LED.

01:10:01 ◼   ► And if you recall, Apple, to bring it back to Apple briefly,

01:10:04 ◼   ► had invested in some micro-LED company,

01:10:06 ◼   ► and they were looking into it for their displays and stuff.

01:10:08 ◼   ► I think they bailed on those efforts

01:10:10 ◼   ► because it turns out to be way harder

01:10:11 ◼   ► than you think it's going to be.

01:10:13 ◼   ► There are lots of issues with micro-LEDs,

01:10:16 ◼   ► and the other one with the quantum dot stuff

01:10:18 ◼   ► was actually really fascinating.

01:10:19 ◼   ► You should read one of the articles

01:10:21 ◼   ► that I put in the show, and it's about how you can emit light

01:10:24 ◼   ► of one wavelength, and these little quantum dot things

01:10:26 ◼   ► can absorb it and emit it a different wavelength.

01:10:28 ◼   ► That's how you can have an entirely blue backlight,

01:10:32 ◼   ► like an entirely blue blacklight,

01:10:34 ◼   ► and make your red and green pixels

01:10:36 ◼   ► by taking the blue into a quantum dot

01:10:38 ◼   ► and changing it into the red and green

01:10:41 ◼   ► so you don't lose any light.

01:10:42 ◼   ► It's not like going through a filter

01:10:43 ◼   ► because when you send light through a filter,

01:10:44 ◼   ► you lose a lot of the light.

01:10:45 ◼   ► You can't get peak brightness or anything like that.

01:10:47 ◼   ► So yeah, that is another promising technology.

01:10:51 ◼   ► Micro-LED was actually on display at CES,

01:10:53 ◼   ► so it makes me believe that this is,

01:10:55 ◼   ► it was a tech demo last year the size of a wall.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Now it's a tech demo the size of a TV.

01:10:59 ◼   ► It makes me think, eight years,

01:11:01 ◼   ► they're gonna have television sets that work like this

01:11:02 ◼   ► 'cause it's kind of following the same path.

01:11:04 ◼   ► It's not just an idea we have.

01:11:05 ◼   ► We can actually build them and show them to you,

01:11:07 ◼   ► and they do indeed look amazing, so I'm excited about that.

01:11:10 ◼   ► - How long do you think it'll be

01:11:12 ◼   ► before we can actually buy these?

01:11:14 ◼   ► Sorry, let me correct that.

01:11:15 ◼   ► Before they're good and we can buy them.

01:11:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:11:18 ◼   ► - I think probably like seven or eight years probably.

01:11:21 ◼   ► - That long?

01:11:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause remember, they had OLEDs at CES for years,

01:11:25 ◼   ► and OLEDs were the opposite.

01:11:27 ◼   ► They had small ones first

01:11:28 ◼   ► because it was just hard for them to make them at all.

01:11:30 ◼   ► They had a 14-inch OLED seven or eight years ago,

01:11:34 ◼   ► and then by the time you bought one,

01:11:36 ◼   ► they'd gone more or less mainstream.

01:11:39 ◼   ► They were still expensive, but you could buy them

01:11:40 ◼   ► and you could make TVs out of them.

01:11:42 ◼   ► That's usually the path it takes.

01:11:44 ◼   ► There are a bunch of manufacturing uses

01:11:45 ◼   ► they have to deal with.

01:11:46 ◼   ► They're very expensive to make.

01:11:48 ◼   ► The strategy they're probably gonna go with

01:11:50 ◼   ► is the Quantum Dot thing,

01:11:52 ◼   ► where it's easier to make 25 million tightly packed blue LEDs.

01:11:57 ◼   ► They're all the same

01:11:58 ◼   ► instead of having to do red, green, blue, red, green, blue,

01:11:59 ◼   ► red, green, blue, 'cause it's actually difficult to do them.

01:12:01 ◼   ► And the power efficiency of red and green and blue LEDs,

01:12:05 ◼   ► they're more expensive and they have different characteristics.

01:12:07 ◼   ► So it's easier to make them all the same color

01:12:08 ◼   ► and use Quantum Dots to change the color.

01:12:12 ◼   ► The emissive ones have a potential advantage

01:12:14 ◼   ► in that you can kind of print them

01:12:17 ◼   ► because it's more like laying down silicon stuff.

01:12:20 ◼   ► So if the emissive dot comes out,

01:12:22 ◼   ► I'm giving it the wrong name,

01:12:23 ◼   ► but there's a technology that uses Quantum Dots

01:12:26 ◼   ► and just uses them to emit light of different colors.

01:12:29 ◼   ► If that gets done before microLED and outruns it,

01:12:32 ◼   ► microLED may never end up existing

01:12:34 ◼   ► 'cause it has much of the same characteristics,

01:12:36 ◼   ► but one of the two of them, I think, in about eight years,

01:12:38 ◼   ► you're gonna be able to buy an expensive, fancy person's TV

01:12:41 ◼   ► with one of these two technologies.

01:12:43 ◼   ► Yay.

01:12:44 ◼   ► And someone asked in the chat room what QLED is.

01:12:47 ◼   ► Right now, you can buy televisions

01:12:48 ◼   ► that advertise Quantum Dot.

01:12:49 ◼   ► They are LCD televisions that try to,

01:12:52 ◼   ► they use Quantum Dots to, again,

01:12:54 ◼   ► change the color of the light coming out

01:12:55 ◼   ► in a way that absorbs less light than filters.

01:12:57 ◼   ► Like, a filter is just like you put a green or a blue

01:13:00 ◼   ► or a red filter like you would put on sunglasses or whatever,

01:13:04 ◼   ► and it blocks a bunch of light.

01:13:05 ◼   ► And so they do a bunch of tricks

01:13:06 ◼   ► to make the backlight emit light with big peaks

01:13:10 ◼   ► in the wavelengths of exactly red, green, and blue,

01:13:14 ◼   ► or they try to make it emit light that has those components,

01:13:18 ◼   ► and then they use the Quantum Dots to change the wavelength

01:13:22 ◼   ► to the one they want.

01:13:24 ◼   ► Anyway, there's a bunch of articles in the show,

01:13:26 ◼   ► and as you see, it's actually very complicated,

01:13:27 ◼   ► but the QLED ones you see are LCD televisions

01:13:30 ◼   ► that are using Quantum Dots to help increase their brightness

01:13:33 ◼   ► and color saturation,

01:13:34 ◼   ► but they're still, in the end, LCD televisions,

01:13:36 ◼   ► and so they cannot have perfect blacks, which is a bummer.

01:13:40 ◼   ► All right, friend of the show,

01:13:41 ◼   ► and previously mentioned, Todd Vasiri writes,

01:13:43 ◼   ► "Hey, what Siri shortcuts do you all use and have created?

01:13:46 ◼   ► "I'm still fairly intimidated by the shortcuts workflow

01:13:48 ◼   ► "and haven't yet made any significant tools

01:13:51 ◼   ► "and need a push to get going."

01:13:53 ◼   ► So let me get my terminology straight.

01:13:55 ◼   ► So by Siri shortcuts, I'm assuming Todd is talking

01:13:58 ◼   ► about a workflow-style shortcut

01:14:00 ◼   ► that is kicked off specifically with our voices.

01:14:04 ◼   ► Is that what we're taking this to mean?

01:14:06 ◼   ► - That's how I interpreted the question.

01:14:08 ◼   ► - Okay, all right, so the only one that I can think of

01:14:10 ◼   ► that I really use a lot is I made,

01:14:14 ◼   ► I kind of improved upon the "Hey, I'm on my way home"

01:14:18 ◼   ► shortcut that I had written about on my blog forever ago,

01:14:22 ◼   ► which is basically take wherever I am

01:14:25 ◼   ► and figure out how long it will take me to drive home

01:14:28 ◼   ► and send a text to Aaron saying,

01:14:30 ◼   ► "Hey, I'll be home in five minutes,"

01:14:31 ◼   ► whatever the case may be.

01:14:33 ◼   ► Well, I've since improved that, and it says,

01:14:36 ◼   ► "Hey, I'll be home in five minutes."

01:14:37 ◼   ► That's 5.05 p.m.

01:14:39 ◼   ► And what's nice about shortcuts being a first-party app

01:14:43 ◼   ► is that you can actually have it send a text message

01:14:45 ◼   ► in the background, whereas previously,

01:14:47 ◼   ► when it was workflow, you had to interact with your phone

01:14:49 ◼   ► and actually hit the send button, blah, blah, blah.

01:14:52 ◼   ► Well, now, and where this is all coming around

01:14:54 ◼   ► to what Todd is asking, I can say to my phone,

01:14:57 ◼   ► "Hey, Dingus, I'm on my way home,"

01:15:00 ◼   ► and it will automatically figure out

01:15:02 ◼   ► how long it will take to get home

01:15:03 ◼   ► and tell Aaron, you know, in the background

01:15:06 ◼   ► that I'll be home in five minutes.

01:15:07 ◼   ► That'll be 5.05 p.m.

01:15:09 ◼   ► And that is the only shortcut I can think of

01:15:11 ◼   ► that I use regularly that I kick off by Siri.

01:15:15 ◼   ► I'm trying to think if there's any others.

01:15:17 ◼   ► There's plenty of shortcuts I use in general,

01:15:18 ◼   ► but not through Siri.

01:15:20 ◼   ► Marco, what about you?

01:15:22 ◼   ► - None.

01:15:23 ◼   ► - Aw.

01:15:24 ◼   ► - I don't, you know, I'm not proud of this.

01:15:26 ◼   ► I'm not saying I always want to use no Siri shortcuts,

01:15:30 ◼   ► but right now, I use no Siri shortcuts.

01:15:32 ◼   ► - John?

01:15:33 ◼   ► - So when I saw this question, I was thinking,

01:15:35 ◼   ► "Well, I'm gonna be like Marco and say none,"

01:15:36 ◼   ► because I don't really use Siri shortcuts,

01:15:38 ◼   ► and that's true.

01:15:39 ◼   ► I'm not sure I don't use them or invoke them

01:15:41 ◼   ► through Siri or otherwise,

01:15:42 ◼   ► but the actual number of shortcuts I have

01:15:44 ◼   ► in the shortcuts app is actually pretty large,

01:15:46 ◼   ► because every time I see an interesting shortcut,

01:15:48 ◼   ► usually posted by Vitici, but not always,

01:15:50 ◼   ► I download it and I check it out,

01:15:51 ◼   ► and I usually run it once or twice manually.

01:15:53 ◼   ► Remember when we were dealing with the, like,

01:15:55 ◼   ► maybe your contacts aren't syncing

01:15:56 ◼   ► because the contact photos were too big

01:15:57 ◼   ► and a bunch of people made cool shortcuts

01:15:59 ◼   ► that would, like, find your big contact photos,

01:16:01 ◼   ► and eventually we got to the point

01:16:02 ◼   ► where one of them would, like, scan your contacts,

01:16:04 ◼   ► find all the contacts that have photos that are too big,

01:16:07 ◼   ► scale them, and save the scaled versions

01:16:09 ◼   ► to a folder in your iCloud drive, like, cool stuff.

01:16:12 ◼   ► Like, so I have run many shortcuts,

01:16:14 ◼   ► and I think I have multiple scrollable screens

01:16:17 ◼   ► full of shortcuts, many of which are very complicated,

01:16:19 ◼   ► none of which I wrote.

01:16:20 ◼   ► I think I tried to write, it wasn't a shortcut,

01:16:22 ◼   ► it was back when it was workflows,

01:16:23 ◼   ► I tried to write a workflow to mail myself a tweet

01:16:27 ◼   ► and mail myself links from tweets,

01:16:29 ◼   ► and I failed pretty miserably

01:16:30 ◼   ► because I don't know what I'm doing,

01:16:32 ◼   ► and I really hate, as we discussed in a past episode,

01:16:34 ◼   ► I really hate, like, essentially programming

01:16:36 ◼   ► through that kind of interface.

01:16:37 ◼   ► It's like, you know, programming with other mitts on it,

01:16:39 ◼   ► it makes, I don't like it.

01:16:41 ◼   ► So I never ended up making anything, like,

01:16:44 ◼   ► I made one that worked kind of, but didn't work as well

01:16:47 ◼   ► as using the mail share action,

01:16:49 ◼   ► and it didn't work as well as the sadly defunct app,

01:16:53 ◼   ► which is called, like, Mail Me or Mail Myself Something,

01:16:56 ◼   ► or I forget what the hell, what the hell is that app called?

01:16:58 ◼   ► There's an app whose sole job was to vend a share extension

01:17:02 ◼   ► that would email something to yourself,

01:17:04 ◼   ► and the app stopped working, I think because GPDR,

01:17:08 ◼   ► whatever stuff, which was sad,

01:17:10 ◼   ► but now I'm back to doing share, selecting mail,

01:17:14 ◼   ► typing in the first few letters on my email address,

01:17:16 ◼   ► tapping the auto-complete, and hitting send,

01:17:18 ◼   ► which is not ideal.

01:17:20 ◼   ► But when it did that, it got more of the tweets content

01:17:23 ◼   ► than I could figure out how to extract with workflows.

01:17:28 ◼   ► So no, I haven't written any,

01:17:29 ◼   ► and I never activate any through Siri,

01:17:32 ◼   ► and the only time I ever run them is after I download them

01:17:34 ◼   ► and when I'm playing with them.

01:17:36 ◼   ► And like Marco, I don't think this is ideal,

01:17:38 ◼   ► and I think I should find a place for them in my iOS life

01:17:41 ◼   ► because I think they will make my life easier and better.

01:17:44 ◼   ► I just, that's why I keep downloading them

01:17:46 ◼   ► and checking them out.

01:17:47 ◼   ► I just haven't crossed that hurdle yet.

01:17:49 ◼   ► - Moving on, Fred McCann writes,

01:17:51 ◼   ► "I recently wanted to go back and re-listen

01:17:52 ◼   ► "to the Geek Friday IRL Talk podcast,

01:17:54 ◼   ► "only to find that the podcast feeds are still indexed

01:17:56 ◼   ► "in the iTunes directory, but the underlying files are gone

01:17:59 ◼   ► "and don't appear to be anywhere on the internet.

01:18:01 ◼   ► "The websites are still available at archive.org,

01:18:03 ◼   ► "but the audio files are not cached.

01:18:05 ◼   ► "Given the topical nature of shows like ATP,

01:18:07 ◼   ► "do you think there's value in preserving the recordings?

01:18:09 ◼   ► "Are podcasts as an art form essentially ephemeral?

01:18:13 ◼   ► "Do you envision that ATP, hypercritical, et cetera,

01:18:15 ◼   ► "ought to be archived long after the show ends,

01:18:17 ◼   ► "or are they products that are relevant

01:18:19 ◼   ► "and exist only at some point in time?"

01:18:21 ◼   ► So kind of in summary, where do podcasts go when they die?

01:18:25 ◼   ► And I just wanted to call out Geek Friday and IRL Talk.

01:18:28 ◼   ► That was one of my favorite podcasts,

01:18:31 ◼   ► and I was really saddened, it was a year ago, I believe,

01:18:34 ◼   ► that the co-host of those shows, Jason Seifer,

01:18:38 ◼   ► passed away suddenly, which we talked about on April 1st,

01:18:41 ◼   ► which is very fitting given Jason's personality.

01:18:44 ◼   ► But anyway, I just wanted to call out

01:18:47 ◼   ► that I do still miss Jason, and I wish he were still around.

01:18:50 ◼   ► But to directly answer the question,

01:18:52 ◼   ► I archive any podcast that I appear on,

01:18:55 ◼   ► and I put it on my Synology so that one day,

01:18:57 ◼   ► if I want to go back and listen for some crazy reason,

01:19:01 ◼   ► or if Declan or Michaela would like to go back and listen,

01:19:04 ◼   ► they're all available.

01:19:06 ◼   ► Do I think all shows should be archived?

01:19:08 ◼   ► I think that's kind of the choice of the creator,

01:19:10 ◼   ► or creatores, right?

01:19:12 ◼   ► But I don't have any problem

01:19:14 ◼   ► with ATP being archived forevermore.

01:19:16 ◼   ► I'm proud of the work that the three of us have done,

01:19:19 ◼   ► and I'd like to think it holds up.

01:19:21 ◼   ► So I think it's a case-by-case basis,

01:19:23 ◼   ► but in the case of ATP and analog,

01:19:25 ◼   ► I'd be perfectly happy for it to be recorded forevermore.

01:19:28 ◼   ► What about you, Marco?

01:19:30 ◼   ► - You know, I do think that inherently,

01:19:33 ◼   ► almost everything we put on the internet

01:19:35 ◼   ► is ephemeral to some degree, or temporary, at least.

01:19:39 ◼   ► I mean, one could argue that everything in life is temporary,

01:19:45 ◼   ► but everything we've ever made or will build

01:19:48 ◼   ► or ever will make is temporary on an infinite time scale.

01:19:52 ◼   ► But it's just like anything else you put on the internet,

01:19:57 ◼   ► it's subject to removal down the road,

01:20:00 ◼   ► and there's lots of good projects like archive.org

01:20:02 ◼   ► that try to actually archive stuff

01:20:05 ◼   ► and make things searchable after they're removed.

01:20:08 ◼   ► The fact is, anything on the internet with a URL

01:20:10 ◼   ► that points to it, somebody can remove that down the road.

01:20:13 ◼   ► So everything we do here is temporary,

01:20:17 ◼   ► even if you stay out of the whole larger life questions

01:20:20 ◼   ► and question everything that you will ever do

01:20:22 ◼   ► and legacy and so on, just at a technical level,

01:20:26 ◼   ► it just files on a server, and whoever runs that server

01:20:30 ◼   ► can at some point decide to remove those files,

01:20:33 ◼   ► or the person can die and stop paying for it,

01:20:36 ◼   ► and then the hosting company will reclaim it or whoever.

01:20:38 ◼   ► It's like, there's always something that can happen to them.

01:20:40 ◼   ► So, you know, podcasts are just more files on the internet

01:20:44 ◼   ► that can disappear at any moment.

01:20:46 ◼   ► - I think there is definitely value

01:20:48 ◼   ► in preserving stuff like this.

01:20:49 ◼   ► Obviously, the people who make it have that choice.

01:20:52 ◼   ► They can throw it away.

01:20:53 ◼   ► It's their stuff, right?

01:20:54 ◼   ► But as I think I talked about in "Hypercritical Way"

01:20:57 ◼   ► way back when, at a certain point,

01:21:00 ◼   ► especially for media entertainment,

01:21:04 ◼   ► when it reaches a certain level of popularity,

01:21:07 ◼   ► I feel like it, and a certain amount of time passes,

01:21:11 ◼   ► it stops being owned exclusively by the creator

01:21:14 ◼   ► and starts being owned collectively

01:21:16 ◼   ► as part of the culture.

01:21:17 ◼   ► Like, the example I gave was "Star Wars,"

01:21:19 ◼   ► which is a cultural phenomenon that has long surpassed

01:21:22 ◼   ► its small number of creators

01:21:24 ◼   ► and now belongs to us all as a cultural artifact.

01:21:28 ◼   ► And at a certain point, it is not --

01:21:31 ◼   ► It should not be possible for the creator to say,

01:21:35 ◼   ► "You know, 50 years later, I've decided

01:21:37 ◼   ► that I want all copies of 'Star Wars' to be deleted."

01:21:39 ◼   ► It doesn't just belong to you anymore.

01:21:41 ◼   ► Like, legally, it may or whatever,

01:21:43 ◼   ► but, like, philosophically, it's part of the culture.

01:21:46 ◼   ► Obviously, podcasts do not raise the level of "Star Wars."

01:21:50 ◼   ► Most don't, anyway. Maybe some do.

01:21:52 ◼   ► Like, maybe "Serial" is gonna end up being like that or whatever,

01:21:54 ◼   ► like, whatever the "Star Wars" podcast is.

01:21:56 ◼   ► But in general, I think there is value

01:21:58 ◼   ► in preserving all kinds of media like this.

01:22:01 ◼   ► So I would encourage anyone who does make a podcast

01:22:03 ◼   ► to preserve it the same way, you know,

01:22:05 ◼   ► like, old movies are preserved.

01:22:07 ◼   ► They don't have to be classics. They don't even have to be good.

01:22:09 ◼   ► But, like, bad, old, silent movies should be preserved

01:22:12 ◼   ► because they are of significance.

01:22:14 ◼   ► They were a thing that was created.

01:22:16 ◼   ► They are a part of the culture.

01:22:17 ◼   ► At the very least, they are of academic significance

01:22:19 ◼   ► in the future and far future.

01:22:21 ◼   ► So, obviously, we're fighting against entropy,

01:22:24 ◼   ► and we're fighting against the fact that we're all gonna die,

01:22:26 ◼   ► and our hosting company is gonna delete our files or whatever,

01:22:28 ◼   ► but ideally, I think this stuff should be preserved,

01:22:31 ◼   ► and I think there is definitely value in it.

01:22:33 ◼   ► As for things that just happened, like, a few years ago,

01:22:36 ◼   ► where no one has yet --

01:22:37 ◼   ► Well, I was gonna say no one has died,

01:22:38 ◼   ► but now I'm sad again thinking about Jason.

01:22:40 ◼   ► I think if you are somebody who creates something

01:22:45 ◼   ► that you think has some value and you intend to preserve it,

01:22:48 ◼   ► like, you should make some effort to do so.

01:22:49 ◼   ► I'll link to the classic W3C article

01:22:53 ◼   ► that has a boring URL that just talks about URIs,

01:22:56 ◼   ► but the thing everyone remembers about this

01:22:58 ◼   ► is the big H1 tag at the top that says,

01:23:00 ◼   ► "Cool URIs don't change,"

01:23:02 ◼   ► which means that once you put something up on the Internet

01:23:04 ◼   ► that you've created, if at all possible,

01:23:07 ◼   ► leave it where it is.

01:23:09 ◼   ► So people's links to it don't break.

01:23:11 ◼   ► Don't constantly redesign your site and move it around.

01:23:14 ◼   ► Like, don't put it on a different site and say,

01:23:16 ◼   ► "I don't want that site anymore. I started a new site."

01:23:19 ◼   ► Let it continue to work, and this applies to audio files

01:23:22 ◼   ► or web pages or anything like that,

01:23:24 ◼   ► because if you're intending to --

01:23:26 ◼   ► If you think it should still be there

01:23:27 ◼   ► and it just falls off because of some redesign,

01:23:29 ◼   ► that's not great, so I think everyone should keep their stuff

01:23:32 ◼   ► up at the URLs they're at.

01:23:33 ◼   ► We will make an effort to do that with ATP.

01:23:35 ◼   ► I, like Casey, also make local copies of everything,

01:23:38 ◼   ► but as a creator, I do feel some responsibility

01:23:41 ◼   ► to keep the things that I make,

01:23:44 ◼   ► that I have control over in some fashion,

01:23:46 ◼   ► on the Internet at their original URLs

01:23:49 ◼   ► so that people can find them in the future.

01:23:51 ◼   ► Obviously, when I'm dead,

01:23:52 ◼   ► who knows what the hell's going to happen,

01:23:53 ◼   ► but I hope someone preserves this stuff.

01:23:55 ◼   ► -And finally, I have a new mortal enemy,

01:23:59 ◼   ► and thy name is Graham Wetzler,

01:24:01 ◼   ► who writes about Destiny stuff,

01:24:02 ◼   ► so I'm going to go pass out now.

01:24:04 ◼   ► -This is a weird "Essentier" question,

01:24:05 ◼   ► but I figured we could do it as a quickie.

01:24:06 ◼   ► I put it at the end. I always put these at the end for you, Casey,

01:24:09 ◼   ► because I know... -Thanks, honey.

01:24:10 ◼   ► -...at the beginning, you won't be able to handle it.

01:24:12 ◼   ► You're not even going to read the question for me?

01:24:14 ◼   ► -For Jon, as a developer, what are your thoughts

01:24:16 ◼   ► on the way that Destiny 2 mechanics

01:24:18 ◼   ► are tied to visual frame rate?

01:24:20 ◼   ► For example, 1K voice is doing more damage on PC,

01:24:23 ◼   ► or the fact that you can only Titan skate

01:24:25 ◼   ► on a PC with high frame rate.

01:24:26 ◼   ► Okay, so all kidding aside,

01:24:27 ◼   ► this actually did pique my interest,

01:24:29 ◼   ► but I don't understand but every fourth word

01:24:31 ◼   ► in this question, so can you translate into "dum-dum" for me?

01:24:35 ◼   ► -So, this is interesting, because I don't understand

01:24:37 ◼   ► all the technical details of this,

01:24:39 ◼   ► but I think we all remember --

01:24:41 ◼   ► Well, people who are old enough,

01:24:43 ◼   ► and I think that includes both of you,

01:24:45 ◼   ► remember games that were written for personal computers

01:24:49 ◼   ► where the author of the game designed around the computer

01:24:54 ◼   ► they had available to them and so made a game system

01:24:57 ◼   ► that basically did everything as fast as it could

01:25:00 ◼   ► and used the computer clock as the thing

01:25:02 ◼   ► that controlled when things happened.

01:25:04 ◼   ► One of the examples I can think of is the game Red Baron on PC

01:25:07 ◼   ► where you play Red Baron and it would be fine,

01:25:10 ◼   ► but if you press the turbo button on your PC XT or AT --

01:25:14 ◼   ► which one had the turbo button? Maybe both --

01:25:16 ◼   ► and it increased the clock rate of your CPU,

01:25:18 ◼   ► the game would go twice as fast

01:25:19 ◼   ► because you would double the clock rate or whatever it was,

01:25:21 ◼   ► because the game was literally tied to the clock rate of the CPU,

01:25:24 ◼   ► which is fine on game consoles whose clock rate

01:25:26 ◼   ► is never going to change, but PC games,

01:25:28 ◼   ► it's not the right approach.

01:25:30 ◼   ► And in general, modern game design,

01:25:32 ◼   ► meaning after the '80s, especially on PCs,

01:25:36 ◼   ► but even I imagine on consoles at this point,

01:25:38 ◼   ► makes games so that they have some sort of internal clock

01:25:42 ◼   ► of like our physics engine makes new calculations

01:25:45 ◼   ► 30 times a second and we render to the screen

01:25:47 ◼   ► 60 times a second if we can,

01:25:49 ◼   ► and if we can't -- the player AI changes

01:25:52 ◼   ► five times a second or whatever.

01:25:54 ◼   ► It's based on wall clock time, not, oh, if you get a faster CPU,

01:25:59 ◼   ► all of a sudden, like, the enemies in the game will walk much faster.

01:26:02 ◼   ► Like, if you run around in Doom, for example,

01:26:04 ◼   ► you run at the same speed in Doom,

01:26:06 ◼   ► whether you have a fancy computer or a slow one.

01:26:08 ◼   ► If you have a fancy computer, you get more frames per second,

01:26:12 ◼   ► but you don't travel across the room faster

01:26:14 ◼   ► until it takes you one second to cross the room.

01:26:16 ◼   ► You just may get more in between frames during that room crossing.

01:26:19 ◼   ► So what this question is asking about is in Destiny 2,

01:26:22 ◼   ► there are certain Destiny 2s available on consoles and on the PC,

01:26:24 ◼   ► and on the PC, you can get much higher frame rates

01:26:26 ◼   ► because PCs are more powerful than consoles.

01:26:28 ◼   ► And there are certain mechanics in the game that behave differently

01:26:33 ◼   ► because there are so many more frames.

01:26:35 ◼   ► You don't run faster -- well, that's the Titan skating aside.

01:26:37 ◼   ► You don't -- the game doesn't, you know,

01:26:39 ◼   ► things in the game don't move faster,

01:26:41 ◼   ► but because there are so many more frames

01:26:44 ◼   ► and apparently so many more calculation points,

01:26:46 ◼   ► some things behave differently.

01:26:48 ◼   ► So some weapons that do, like, damage apparently actually do damage

01:26:51 ◼   ► that is in some way tied to the number of frames of animation,

01:26:55 ◼   ► and if you're running at, like, 120 frames per second,

01:26:57 ◼   ► it does more damage.

01:26:59 ◼   ► And Titan skating, I think, mostly has to do with macros,

01:27:01 ◼   ► but this is a way that you can move in the game

01:27:03 ◼   ► by hitting a series of commands in just the right sequence

01:27:06 ◼   ► to, like, initiate a jump and then a move forward.

01:27:09 ◼   ► You know, it lets you basically travel faster

01:27:11 ◼   ► by doing this strange maneuver that's harder