ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► It is so hot in this room and so humid the humidity has been brutal here

00:00:06 ◼   ► It's only 77 degrees and I'm dying in this room because it's so humid and of course

00:00:11 ◼   ► It's probably 90 degrees in this room. I feel great air conditionings on

00:00:14 ◼   ► I haven't put my slippers on mid show because my feet were getting a little bit cold

00:00:18 ◼   ► All right, we should probably actually get the show started huh? No, that's making it in the show none of it. No, come on

00:00:24 ◼   ► No, ah, so here, you know how I'm gonna make you put some of that in the show watch this

00:00:29 ◼   ► Hey, so speaking of cars, we should probably do some follow-ups, starting with more reasons

00:00:34 ◼   ► for QNX.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Hey Casey, do we have any follow-up?

00:00:37 ◼   ► I hate you so much.

00:00:41 ◼   ► So Casey, do we have any follow-up?

00:00:43 ◼   ► We should probably start with some follow-up, Marco.

00:00:46 ◼   ► You make an excellent point.

00:00:47 ◼   ► And we had an individual write in with more reasons for using QNX.

00:00:51 ◼   ► And these actually were the, to my ears and eyes, the best reasons I've heard yet.

00:00:58 ◼   ► And what it basically boiled down to was incredibly fast boot times were generally important for

00:01:06 ◼   ► cars because you don't want to, say, have to wait until you're five minutes down the

00:01:09 ◼   ► road before your air conditioning or your radio turns on or something like that.

00:01:13 ◼   ► And the other reason that this individual gave was, you know, if you think about it,

00:01:17 ◼   ► the instrument clusters on a lot of cars are often driven by some sort of display or perhaps

00:01:22 ◼   ► driven by a signal that's coming off some QNX-derived computer.

00:01:27 ◼   ► And those need to be real time.

00:01:29 ◼   ► I mean, that data needs to show you

00:01:31 ◼   ► exactly how fast you're going right freaking now.

00:01:33 ◼   ► And so having a real time OS like QNX

00:01:36 ◼   ► makes that sort of thing a lot easier.

00:01:39 ◼   ► - Like Tesla's system is not based on QNX.

00:01:41 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure it's just some kind of Linux.

00:01:43 ◼   ► And you can tell.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Like you can tell because it's,

00:01:45 ◼   ► because like, you know, some, like, again,

00:01:48 ◼   ► like I said last time, like most of the time it works fine.

00:01:51 ◼   ► But sometimes, like we were upstate and I heard,

00:01:56 ◼   ► We were driving around, I was following ad directions,

00:01:58 ◼   ► and the map was getting a little bit wonky,

00:02:00 ◼   ► like it was starting to like flick out

00:02:01 ◼   ► and slow down a little bit and like not update

00:02:03 ◼   ► quickly enough, and that's great too,

00:02:05 ◼   ► like when you're following a map doing turn by turn

00:02:07 ◼   ► and it just doesn't update, so you're looking at

00:02:09 ◼   ► like the last turn from 30 seconds ago instead, that's fun.

00:02:12 ◼   ► And then there was one point where it made

00:02:16 ◼   ► the turn signal clicking sound

00:02:19 ◼   ► when the turn signal wasn't on.

00:02:21 ◼   ► - What?

00:02:23 ◼   ► - There was, in one of the, like I described last episode

00:02:25 ◼   ► I've had to reboot it three times so far over the three or four months, whatever it is.

00:02:30 ◼   ► One of the times that I had to reboot it, immediately beforehand, the turn signal was

00:02:35 ◼   ► not clicking. Like it would turn on and the light would, the indicator would blink in

00:02:38 ◼   ► the dash, but you wouldn't hear the click noise. So obviously the clicking noise is

00:02:41 ◼   ► made by the center console computer. Like that, it's adding it to the sound system in

00:02:46 ◼   ► all likelihood. Anyway, so one of the symptoms that I knew something was wacky this time

00:02:53 ◼   ► was the turn signal noise started clicking

00:02:55 ◼   ► when the turn signal was not on.

00:02:57 ◼   ► I was driving straight down a road,

00:02:59 ◼   ► I hadn't touched it, like that was it.

00:03:01 ◼   ► So that I rebooted again a few days ago.

00:03:04 ◼   ► - Goodness.

00:03:06 ◼   ► - So yes, I would have pre,

00:03:07 ◼   ► and when it's not booted, the turn signal does not,

00:03:09 ◼   ► like when it's rebooting, you can turn,

00:03:11 ◼   ► and the indicator on the dashboard did blink

00:03:14 ◼   ► when the computer was rebooting,

00:03:16 ◼   ► like it was still blinking,

00:03:17 ◼   ► and so I assumed the signal was still on,

00:03:20 ◼   ► I hope the light was still blinking outside the car,

00:03:22 ◼   ► but there's no sound.

00:03:23 ◼   ► And again, it's like one of those things where

00:03:25 ◼   ► when you tie these things to software,

00:03:27 ◼   ► you are at the whim of the software's stability,

00:03:32 ◼   ► responsiveness, uptime.

00:03:35 ◼   ► It's similar to like, one of the things that I didn't like

00:03:39 ◼   ► so much when I wore the Apple Watch is

00:03:42 ◼   ► so many interactions are tied to force touch.

00:03:45 ◼   ► And when you push really hard on the watch face,

00:03:51 ◼   ► and you expect that button click,

00:03:52 ◼   ► even though it's not really a button,

00:03:54 ◼   ► even though it's all fake and simulated,

00:03:56 ◼   ► you expect that better click back immediately

00:03:59 ◼   ► as if it were a button.

00:04:00 ◼   ► And the same thing with all the force text track pads,

00:04:02 ◼   ► like they have the same requirement.

00:04:04 ◼   ► Like it has to respond like the physical object

00:04:07 ◼   ► that it is mimicking, right?

00:04:08 ◼   ► It has to be quick, it has to be immediate.

00:04:10 ◼   ► There can't be any delay.

00:04:12 ◼   ► Well, on the watch, you know,

00:04:13 ◼   ► the watch is very slow hardware-wise,

00:04:14 ◼   ► and sometimes the software gets gummed up a little bit,

00:04:17 ◼   ► and so you push and sometimes there's a delay

00:04:19 ◼   ► before it actually clicks back at you.

00:04:21 ◼   ► And it totally breaks the illusion,

00:04:23 ◼   ► it makes it feel broken or cheap or wrong

00:04:26 ◼   ► or whatever the case may be.

00:04:28 ◼   ► And that's actually one concern I have

00:04:30 ◼   ► with the Force Touch home button

00:04:32 ◼   ► that is rumored to be on the next iPhone.

00:04:34 ◼   ► That like, you know, if you push that home button

00:04:39 ◼   ► and the iPhone software is like a little bit overwhelmed

00:04:43 ◼   ► or buggy or whatever, if you push that

00:04:45 ◼   ► and you don't get a click feel back

00:04:47 ◼   ► for a few seconds or at all,

00:04:49 ◼   ► like that's gonna feel really broken really quickly.

00:04:51 ◼   ► So anyway, similar thing with like this car stuff,

00:04:54 ◼   ► like you know, back to this follow up saying

00:04:55 ◼   ► that QNX is really good for boot time

00:04:58 ◼   ► and response times of interactions.

00:05:00 ◼   ► Like I totally get that and I totally respect that

00:05:03 ◼   ► because when you're tying things to controls

00:05:07 ◼   ► of a physical object, that makes a big difference.

00:05:09 ◼   ► - My complaint about the ancient iPhone 6 that I'm using

00:05:12 ◼   ► is that I have a physical home button and I press it

00:05:14 ◼   ► and it always you know, goes in just like you said

00:05:16 ◼   ► and I feel that physical feedback immediately,

00:05:18 ◼   ► but you know what doesn't happen immediately?

00:05:20 ◼   ► Springboard doesn't appear immediately.

00:05:22 ◼   ► That's what doesn't happen.

00:05:23 ◼   ► I click it and then I look at my phone,

00:05:25 ◼   ► I'm like, what are you doing?

00:05:26 ◼   ► Well, I push the button.

00:05:27 ◼   ► I know I pushed it because it went in and then it went out,

00:05:29 ◼   ► and then, oh, okay, now the animation's starting.

00:05:31 ◼   ► I'm getting picky in my old age.

00:05:33 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:05:34 ◼   ► - Getting picky?

00:05:35 ◼   ► What you should really do,

00:05:37 ◼   ► to make it seem like your phone is even older,

00:05:39 ◼   ► instead of saying, my old iPhone 6,

00:05:40 ◼   ► you should say, my first iPhone, which I'm still using.

00:05:44 ◼   ► - That's true, yeah.

00:05:46 ◼   ► I don't think my iPhone 6 is getting slower, but I'm just getting less and less patient

00:05:50 ◼   ► for like when it doesn't respond.

00:05:52 ◼   ► And I know it's not just because it's slow.

00:05:53 ◼   ► Like my iPad Pro, the 9.7 inch iPad Pro, which is pretty darn fast, I still feel like when

00:05:57 ◼   ► I hit the home button on that sometimes I have to wait.

00:06:00 ◼   ► I want that to be instant.

00:06:01 ◼   ► Just wait for the new touch ID sensor.

00:06:04 ◼   ► It's pretty damn fast.

00:06:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

00:06:06 ◼   ► I've used my wife's phone.

00:06:07 ◼   ► I know that the touch ID sensor is fast.

00:06:08 ◼   ► I'm just saying like I feel like sometimes it's not responding to me as immediately as

00:06:13 ◼   ► I feel like it should.

00:06:15 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:06:17 ◼   ► Anyway, the other thing that this person had to say about,

00:06:19 ◼   ► why do cars have crappy hardware?

00:06:21 ◼   ► We read some other feedback from someone

00:06:25 ◼   ► who works on these systems talking

00:06:27 ◼   ► about how the car manufacturers want to save money and pinch

00:06:29 ◼   ► pennies.

00:06:30 ◼   ► And I said that was silly.

00:06:31 ◼   ► A couple other factors that were also

00:06:33 ◼   ► mentioned by many other people but reiterated by this person

00:06:35 ◼   ► is that there's a long lead time on hardware that goes into cars.

00:06:38 ◼   ► The development cycles are really long,

00:06:40 ◼   ► so they have to pick hardware that's

00:06:42 ◼   ► available like three years before the car even comes out.

00:06:44 ◼   ► And maybe it's even longer, so maybe it's

00:06:45 ◼   ► four or five years by the time comes out. So even if you pick something that was current it'll be

00:06:49 ◼   ► like three, four, or five years old by the time it ships in the car. And finally, stuff in cars

00:06:54 ◼   ► has to operate at extremes of temperature. If you've ever left your phone on the dashboard,

00:06:58 ◼   ► or even in a sealed cubby inside your car, like not in the sun, but just try taking your phone

00:07:03 ◼   ► and putting it in the glove box or in the little console thing anywhere inside your car on a hot

00:07:08 ◼   ► day, when you come back, chances are good after being away for several hours in the middle of the

00:07:12 ◼   ► your device will refuse to function because the temperature is too high and

00:07:15 ◼   ► the chips in the car obviously can't do that they have to continue working even

00:07:20 ◼   ► when they're like 150 degrees or whatever and they have to continue

00:07:23 ◼   ► working on it's negative 40 these are all real temperatures not a crazy

00:07:27 ◼   ► Celsius yeah it's similar like like if you ever heard of like how slow the

00:07:33 ◼   ► computers are on satellites or the space shuttle because like you know like you

00:07:36 ◼   ► hear stories you know about like how they're still running something it's

00:07:39 ◼   ► about as fast as like a 486 or something like that.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And like the reason, one of the reasons why they have

00:07:44 ◼   ► to use such slow types of hardware is that they have

00:07:48 ◼   ► to operate in extreme conditions that would just kill any,

00:07:51 ◼   ► you know, like the chip that's in an iPhone.

00:07:53 ◼   ► And so it's similar but less severe in a car.

00:07:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's their excuse, but like still,

00:07:57 ◼   ► it's a little bit ridiculous.

00:07:58 ◼   ► They, you know, like I said, the washing machine chips

00:08:01 ◼   ► they're using, like they're slower than the ones

00:08:02 ◼   ► in the space probes.

00:08:03 ◼   ► The space probes have PowerPC 601s that are like

00:08:05 ◼   ► rad hardened in them.

00:08:07 ◼   ► and they're using chips that are like from a Game Boy Advance, so it would seem worse.

00:08:11 ◼   ► Or maybe Game Boy Advance is faster than that.

00:08:14 ◼   ► Anyway, bottom line, we have the technology, we can make the hardware in cars better, and

00:08:20 ◼   ► I think we probably want to shorten up the cycle time on that too.

00:08:23 ◼   ► I know it's sort of all developed as one big unit, but you just can't afford to do that.

00:08:28 ◼   ► If a manufacturer can shave even just a year off of the cycle time and they can have a

00:08:32 ◼   ► year newer electronics, that can make a big difference, I think.

00:08:36 ◼   ► like I said, as the infotainment systems and even the instrument clusters and all that

00:08:39 ◼   ► stuff becomes a more important differentiator for cars, as the software becomes like all

00:08:45 ◼   ► our other products, the software becomes a more important part of the whole product mixture,

00:08:49 ◼   ► the company that can figure that software out is going to have a big advantage.

00:08:52 ◼   ► All right.

00:08:54 ◼   ► Tell us about AudioSync and Quartz Crystals, which we've gotten a lot of feedback about.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Marco, do you want to kind of cover this?

00:09:00 ◼   ► Yeah, sure.

00:09:01 ◼   ► So basically, so, you know, the last couple episodes we've discussed.

00:09:04 ◼   ► A while back I discussed my podcast tool

00:09:07 ◼   ► to automatically sync up tracks that were recorded

00:09:10 ◼   ► locally for each person in a multi-person recording,

00:09:12 ◼   ► and then sync it up to the master track

00:09:15 ◼   ► because if you try to import those tracks manually,

00:09:18 ◼   ► you sync it up, the difference in the sense of time

00:09:23 ◼   ► that each person's audio interface had,

00:09:26 ◼   ► it caused a problem called drift,

00:09:28 ◼   ► where if you sync up our recordings

00:09:30 ◼   ► like right up front in the beginning of a show,

00:09:32 ◼   ► an hour in, we might be out of sync

00:09:34 ◼   ► by like half a second or a second. My microphone interface, the little converter in it that

00:09:39 ◼   ► samples the audio at 44,100 times per second, has a very, very, very slightly different

00:09:46 ◼   ► interpretation of what that means, of how long a second is or how many times it has

00:09:51 ◼   ► to be, than the one in cases of John's computers. And over time, that very, very tiny error

00:09:56 ◼   ► can add up to quite a lot. And so this causes the problem of drift, so we've gotten lots

00:10:00 ◼   ► the feedback about why this happens.

00:10:04 ◼   ► Last episode I speculated that you're making

00:10:06 ◼   ► these components, these physical components,

00:10:09 ◼   ► and any little tiny bit of imprecision in making them,

00:10:14 ◼   ► when you are taking 44,000 samples per second

00:10:18 ◼   ► over two hours, a very small variance

00:10:22 ◼   ► in the clock performance of two different physical devices

00:10:26 ◼   ► will cause them to disagree and to drift over time like this.

00:10:29 ◼   ► So my speculation was basically like,

00:10:31 ◼   ► it's not really possible to make something

00:10:33 ◼   ► that is cheap and in a computer like this

00:10:35 ◼   ► that is more accurate than that

00:10:37 ◼   ► and we just have to deal with it.

00:10:38 ◼   ► And we had lots of people write in from the pro audio world

00:10:42 ◼   ► and from some people even from like

00:10:44 ◼   ► the scientific equipment world, which is pretty cool.

00:10:46 ◼   ► We have a lot of pretty cool listeners.

00:10:47 ◼   ► Also confirming what I said last episode

00:10:49 ◼   ► that pro audio gear, and actually people wrote in to say

00:10:52 ◼   ► also pro film gear does similar things.

00:10:55 ◼   ► Rather than trying to like sync up

00:10:57 ◼   ► a bunch of different audio tracks afterwards

00:10:59 ◼   ► in software from different audio recording sources

00:11:02 ◼   ► that might be on a film set or in a recording studio,

00:11:05 ◼   ► they use the concept of a master clock.

00:11:07 ◼   ► And they have one device, whether it's a clock generator

00:11:10 ◼   ► or just a device that has an internal clock,

00:11:13 ◼   ► and ProGear has usually clock in and clock out ports

00:11:16 ◼   ► on the back of it.

00:11:17 ◼   ► And so they actually physically wire all to each other

00:11:21 ◼   ► and they coordinate the clock based on one master source

00:11:24 ◼   ► rather than each device keeping its own clock

00:11:26 ◼   ► and therefore introducing this drift.

00:11:27 ◼   ► So lots of people wrote in saying that was true.

00:11:29 ◼   ► And then the best feedback we got,

00:11:31 ◼   ► I very casually mentioned last episode

00:11:33 ◼   ► that I had just anecdotally found

00:11:35 ◼   ► that laptops generally have more drift

00:11:39 ◼   ► than like a Mac Pro or a desktop, or like an iMac.

00:11:43 ◼   ► And it turns out, there's some basis for this,

00:11:45 ◼   ► the quartz crystals that vibrate at particular frequencies

00:11:49 ◼   ► that create these clocks and these devices

00:11:51 ◼   ► that have to be so accurate,

00:11:53 ◼   ► they are very dependent on stable temperature.

00:11:55 ◼   ► And if they don't have a stable temperature

00:11:58 ◼   ► that they're operating at,

00:11:59 ◼   ► or if they're just two different ones

00:12:00 ◼   ► operating at two different temperatures,

00:12:02 ◼   ► that can cause these very slight differences.

00:12:06 ◼   ► And laptops, usually their internal components

00:12:09 ◼   ► usually operate hotter than desktops,

00:12:11 ◼   ► and they also fluctuate more.

00:12:13 ◼   ► And desktops have much bigger heat sink mechanisms,

00:12:17 ◼   ► they have usually larger fans that are spinning faster

00:12:19 ◼   ► and pushing more air over them,

00:12:20 ◼   ► so desktops tend to be cooled better.

00:12:23 ◼   ► And so I think that alone might explain

00:12:26 ◼   ► that little anecdotal thing that yes,

00:12:27 ◼   ► this is worse on laptops,

00:12:30 ◼   ► or when you have one desktop on one end

00:12:34 ◼   ► and the other person on the other end is using a laptop,

00:12:36 ◼   ► that might have more drift between them

00:12:37 ◼   ► than if both people were using desktops

00:12:39 ◼   ► or if both people were using laptops.

00:12:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, and this is related to the reason I was,

00:12:44 ◼   ► I put the original feedback in follow-up from like,

00:12:47 ◼   ► this seems weird to me.

00:12:48 ◼   ► You tell me we can't make quartz crystals that are accurate

00:12:50 ◼   ► I remember from you know the world of watches which I'm not that involved in but that you know the fancy mechanical watches obviously are

00:12:57 ◼   ► Terrible keeping time because they have a bunch of gears and stuff

00:12:59 ◼   ► But like you know a 10 cent quartz watch keeps amazing time for you know for an entire year

00:13:04 ◼   ► Maybe we lose a second

00:13:05 ◼   ► It's like so how can you make a stupid plastic quartz watch that keeps amazing time and it's very accurate over the course of an entire

00:13:11 ◼   ► Year, but we can't make a quartz crystal for our computer

00:13:14 ◼   ► That is equally accurate

00:13:15 ◼   ► And there are a bunch of factors that have to go into that having to do with the specifics of the quality of the crystals

00:13:21 ◼   ► for even for a 10 cent watch or whatever, but

00:13:23 ◼   ► one of our readers

00:13:25 ◼   ► One of our readers wrote in to tell us that the advantage a watch has is that it is essentially kept at an even temperature by

00:13:32 ◼   ► being next to your skin

00:13:33 ◼   ► So you are essentially

00:13:35 ◼   ► Temperature regulating the watch the entire time you're wearing it and that's the best thing for a quartz crystal actually in scenarios where they really want

00:13:41 ◼   ► Them to be stable they put them in a little everywhere

00:13:43 ◼   ► they called it, but they put them in a little device that keeps it at a stable temperature.

00:13:47 ◼   ► So having a watch and wearing it all the time keeps it accurate, much more accurate than

00:13:52 ◼   ► a laptop that the temperatures are going up and down and you're putting it to sleep and

00:13:56 ◼   ► you're playing a game and it's all over the map.

00:13:58 ◼   ► So this is all very explicable and now we should feel every time we learn anything about

00:14:04 ◼   ► the actual analog physical world of components inside your computer it makes you feel scared.

00:14:08 ◼   ► So now you can know that the things regulating the clocks are pieces of crap too and change

00:14:13 ◼   ► all the time, there's nothing you can do about it.

00:14:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, like whenever you learn anything

00:14:16 ◼   ► about the analog component world,

00:14:17 ◼   ► like you start, like we live in like this digital world

00:14:20 ◼   ► where we think everything is just,

00:14:22 ◼   ► like you know, a one is just on, and a zero is just off.

00:14:25 ◼   ► And of course, like when you get down to the analog level

00:14:27 ◼   ► of like the physical implementation of these chips

00:14:29 ◼   ► and these components, it isn't that simple,

00:14:32 ◼   ► and everything's kind of like tolerances and variances

00:14:35 ◼   ► and approximations and tricks, and it's like,

00:14:38 ◼   ► it's kind of amazing all the stuff we have works at all

00:14:41 ◼   ► as consistently as it does.

00:14:42 ◼   ► I mean, even just the clock, like you learned from like CPU design, even just propagating

00:14:46 ◼   ► the clock signal around the die of a large CPU is kind of sketchy at best.

00:14:50 ◼   ► And they all have all sorts of phase lock loops and other things to make sure that that

00:14:54 ◼   ► actually propagates everywhere and it's the same everywhere and you don't have delays

00:14:57 ◼   ► and yeah.

00:14:59 ◼   ► So anyway, I think we are now all completely satisfied that we understand why Marko's

00:15:03 ◼   ► tool is necessary in life.

00:15:05 ◼   ► Yep.

00:15:06 ◼   ► speaking of, in your quest to avoid doing actual work, you actually filed radar.

00:15:12 ◼   ► - Yes I did. - I'm very proud of you. So do you want to tell us about this?

00:15:17 ◼   ► - Okay, so last episode in the after show, I got my time in the sun or whatever the metaphor

00:15:26 ◼   ► is and whatever floats your bubble. And so I got to finally explain the details of the

00:15:34 ◼   ► MP3 file format and the efforts I was trying to do with variable bitrate or VBR encoding

00:15:41 ◼   ► and why podcasts couldn't practically use VBR encoding, which basically boils down to

00:15:47 ◼   ► the method to seek a VBR file that you don't have all of. So like if you are playing a

00:15:52 ◼   ► stream and the user jumps ahead to a timestamp that's way forward in the stream that you

00:15:57 ◼   ► haven't downloaded like the part of the file between those two points, you can't really

00:16:01 ◼   ► know exactly what byte position to jump to to get to timestamp one hour thirty without

00:16:07 ◼   ► using these lookup tables at the beginning of a VBR file that just don't have very

00:16:12 ◼   ► much precision in the current standards or in the old standard. They're very imprecise

00:16:16 ◼   ► and so over the course of like a two hour podcast, you only have in the most common

00:16:21 ◼   ► jump table format, you only have a hundred entries. So you have minute precision at best.

00:16:26 ◼   ► You know, it might even be less than a minute precision. I've learned a lot since then.

00:16:30 ◼   ► I did a lot of experimentation,

00:16:31 ◼   ► I talked to a bunch of people,

00:16:33 ◼   ► and I learned a lot about this.

00:16:36 ◼   ► So I was recommending the use of this,

00:16:39 ◼   ► there's an ID3 tag,

00:16:41 ◼   ► it's abbreviated MLLT for MPA location lookup table,

00:16:45 ◼   ► and this is basically an ID3 tag version

00:16:49 ◼   ► of the VBR offset jump table to tell you

00:16:52 ◼   ► which bytes map to which time stamp,

00:16:54 ◼   ► so you can jump between the file easily

00:16:55 ◼   ► without having to have download the whole thing

00:16:57 ◼   ► and just scan through manually.

00:16:59 ◼   ► The benefit of the ID3 tag is that it can be any size.

00:17:02 ◼   ► Like the VBR jump table thing is restricted to the size

00:17:06 ◼   ► of like the one MP3 frame that they shoved it into

00:17:09 ◼   ► for compatibility reasons, so it has to be like

00:17:12 ◼   ► basically below a kilobyte or so.

00:17:13 ◼   ► The ID3 tag can be any length you want it to be,

00:17:16 ◼   ► so the ID3 tag version of this would be great

00:17:19 ◼   ► because you can basically have arbitrary precision.

00:17:22 ◼   ► As much space as you're willing to devote to this,

00:17:24 ◼   ► and like for me, I was able to encode one second precision

00:17:28 ◼   ► of the time stamps with something like 16 kilobytes of a total jump table. So for like

00:17:33 ◼   ► a 45 megabyte podcast, 16K for the jump table is fine and by having VBR you're saving like

00:17:39 ◼   ► 20 megs on the file size in that case so like it's totally worth the savings to embed this

00:17:45 ◼   ► little jump table. So I also heard from Devin Govitt. After recording last episode I discovered

00:17:51 ◼   ► a GitHub open source project called AudioCogs.

00:17:55 ◼   ► And it's a group of people who make JavaScript implementations

00:17:59 ◼   ► of decoders for MP3, AAC, a couple other audio formats,

00:18:03 ◼   ► and a whole audio player, all written in JavaScript,

00:18:06 ◼   ► that can decode and play these audio formats entirely

00:18:11 ◼   ► in JavaScript, and that support MLT tag, these proper VBR seek

00:18:16 ◼   ► methods, and if they didn't, it's

00:18:18 ◼   ► an easy way for me to add support to this.

00:18:20 ◼   ► 'cause I could then have my site's web player

00:18:24 ◼   ► switch to this and then I would eliminate

00:18:26 ◼   ► a lot of this problem.

00:18:27 ◼   ► Anyway, so I heard from one of the authors of this,

00:18:30 ◼   ► Devin Govit, we went back and forth a few times.

00:18:33 ◼   ► Devin informed me that the Fraunhofer VBRI tag,

00:18:37 ◼   ► which is an alternative version of that stupid

00:18:40 ◼   ► 100 entry jump table, is basically a more precise

00:18:44 ◼   ► version of that, it still has to fit within one MP3 frame,

00:18:47 ◼   ► but instead of being 100 bytes, it can be like,

00:18:50 ◼   ► 1.3 kilobytes, so that's better.

00:18:54 ◼   ► You have more space, more precision.

00:18:57 ◼   ► So I did some experimentation with that.

00:18:59 ◼   ► Couple problems came up though.

00:19:00 ◼   ► First, I discovered in the experimentation

00:19:02 ◼   ► and going back and forth with Devin

00:19:04 ◼   ► that not only does Apple's decoder not support

00:19:08 ◼   ► the MLT or this VBRI tag that has the more precise version,

00:19:13 ◼   ► even that stupid little 100 byte version

00:19:16 ◼   ► in the Zing tag that we talked about last episode,

00:19:20 ◼   ► Apple doesn't use it.

00:19:21 ◼   ► Their decoder completely ignores it.

00:19:24 ◼   ► It does read these tags to get the duration of the files.

00:19:28 ◼   ► So it's parsing them,

00:19:30 ◼   ► 'cause the duration's also one of the fields in these tags.

00:19:33 ◼   ► So it reads them for the duration,

00:19:34 ◼   ► and if you edit them in a hex editor

00:19:35 ◼   ► and you put any duration you want there,

00:19:37 ◼   ► it'll show up like in QuickLook

00:19:38 ◼   ► and everything has that duration.

00:19:38 ◼   ► So we know it's reading them,

00:19:40 ◼   ► but it completely ignores any of the entries

00:19:43 ◼   ► that are in these seek tables

00:19:44 ◼   ► that tell it which byte maps to which timestamp.

00:19:47 ◼   ► In any of these formats, it ignores all of them.

00:19:49 ◼   ► This is bad.

00:19:51 ◼   ► So I basically wrote up a bug report

00:19:53 ◼   ► and I emailed some people inside Apple to say like,

00:19:55 ◼   ► hey, here's this problem I'm having.

00:19:57 ◼   ► And if you guys would support really any of these formats,

00:20:02 ◼   ► except for maybe the stupid 100 byte one,

00:20:05 ◼   ► but if you'd support the Fraunhofer VBRI frame

00:20:08 ◼   ► or the awesome MLT ID3 tag,

00:20:12 ◼   ► either of those would provide usable precision

00:20:15 ◼   ► for a two hour podcast to be able to seek reliably within it

00:20:17 ◼   ► within one to 10 seconds of the desired point

00:20:20 ◼   ► as opposed to the stupid 100 byte one

00:20:22 ◼   ► which is like a minute off and their estimation

00:20:25 ◼   ► which could be any amount off really

00:20:27 ◼   ► and is frequently like 30 to 60 seconds off.

00:20:30 ◼   ► Anyway, so I emailed this around and I made a blog post.

00:20:32 ◼   ► I basically made as much noise as possible about this issue

00:20:36 ◼   ► because I've realized,

00:20:37 ◼   ► and sorry for the massive diversion here,

00:20:39 ◼   ► I like talking about like ranty Apple stuff on a podcast

00:20:43 ◼   ► where it doesn't get me in trouble

00:20:44 ◼   ► and where you guys can tame me a little bit and rebut me.

00:20:48 ◼   ► It's better for me to reserve my blog for issues

00:20:51 ◼   ► of maybe greater importance or more boring topics

00:20:56 ◼   ► or whatever else.

00:20:58 ◼   ► My blog is a great way to spread a message

00:21:01 ◼   ► to people who don't always follow me.

00:21:04 ◼   ► And that is often the problem.

00:21:07 ◼   ► Like when I get myself into hot water,

00:21:08 ◼   ► it's often because a whole bunch of people

00:21:10 ◼   ► who don't follow me and don't really get my context

00:21:14 ◼   ► are reading something that I didn't write very well

00:21:17 ◼   ► and where I assume people would get my context

00:21:19 ◼   ► and would understand me and they'd be the ones reading it

00:21:21 ◼   ► and that gets me into trouble.

00:21:23 ◼   ► But something like this, where I'm requesting

00:21:26 ◼   ► that Apple implement an esoteric standard

00:21:29 ◼   ► of the MP3 file format that's 20 years old,

00:21:32 ◼   ► that is really boring and doesn't spread

00:21:34 ◼   ► onto Business Insider or CNBC.

00:21:36 ◼   ► And there's not much in battle that's really controversial,

00:21:39 ◼   ► although Hacker News found some things,

00:21:40 ◼   ► but most people would not find this controversial.

00:21:43 ◼   ► So this is, I think, is a very good use of my blog,

00:21:46 ◼   ► and it kind of, it's helping inform me

00:21:48 ◼   ► like how I should use my various outlets going forward.

00:21:51 ◼   ► Anyway, I found a giant bug report with example files

00:21:54 ◼   ► and examples of why their way of just ignoring

00:21:57 ◼   ► these seek tables for long VBR MP3s was bad,

00:22:01 ◼   ► you know, why that's bad, how you can fix it.

00:22:03 ◼   ► That's it, nothing has happened yet on this front.

00:22:05 ◼   ► However, I have gotten rumblings here and there

00:22:08 ◼   ► that this bug report has traveled inside of Apple.

00:22:13 ◼   ► but that's all I know, and I don't know anything else

00:22:15 ◼   ► that's going on with it.

00:22:16 ◼   ► It is probably too late, even if Apple decided I was right

00:22:19 ◼   ► and they wanted to do this, it is almost certainly too late

00:22:22 ◼   ► to get it into iOS 10 or Mac OS Sierra,

00:22:27 ◼   ► but I would just love for this to happen sometime soon.

00:22:29 ◼   ► And the main reason why I can't do the audio cogs

00:22:34 ◼   ► and the Aurora JS, like the JavaScript version

00:22:38 ◼   ► that I was telling you about a minute ago,

00:22:39 ◼   ► the HTML5 audio element can fetch a file

00:22:42 ◼   ► from basically anywhere, but for JavaScript to fetch a file

00:22:45 ◼   ► you run into all these CORS issues.

00:22:47 ◼   ► And you also, you can't cross from HTTPS to HTTP,

00:22:52 ◼   ► and all these, like all these restrictions of like,

00:22:54 ◼   ► you know, for various web security purposes,

00:22:57 ◼   ► all these restrictions on what JavaScript

00:22:59 ◼   ► is allowed to fetch from.

00:23:01 ◼   ► And for me to be able to play podcasts

00:23:04 ◼   ► from arbitrary podcast hosts,

00:23:06 ◼   ► I basically can't use this thing.

00:23:07 ◼   ► I could run a proxy, but if I do that,

00:23:10 ◼   ► then the podcasters don't get unique hit information really,

00:23:14 ◼   ► so that's no good.

00:23:16 ◼   ► So there's a whole bunch of crappy reasons why,

00:23:20 ◼   ► in practice I can't use the JavaScript approach

00:23:22 ◼   ► of just decoding the whole file in JavaScript

00:23:24 ◼   ► and basically then running my own decoders.

00:23:27 ◼   ► So I'm reliant on Apple, I have to,

00:23:29 ◼   ► if podcast VBR is ever gonna happen,

00:23:32 ◼   ► Apple has to build it into their decoders, that's it.

00:23:35 ◼   ► - Well, but hold on, so a couple of questions here.

00:23:37 ◼   ► First of all, let's assume you did desire to proxy it,

00:23:42 ◼   ► because this was that important to you for the web client.

00:23:45 ◼   ► Why couldn't you proxy each request individually?

00:23:48 ◼   ► I mean, it's a crud load of bandwidth,

00:23:50 ◼   ► but is there any other reason why you couldn't do that?

00:23:53 ◼   ► So at least all of these hits are unique,

00:23:55 ◼   ► they're just coming from you

00:23:56 ◼   ► and not the actual person that's asking for them?

00:23:59 ◼   ► - The main problem with that is that

00:24:01 ◼   ► even if you architected the proxy such that

00:24:04 ◼   ► every inbound request equaled

00:24:06 ◼   ► one back end outbound request.

00:24:08 ◼   ► - Which would be silly in general,

00:24:09 ◼   ► but in this case may make sense.

00:24:11 ◼   ► - Right, so even if you did that,

00:24:13 ◼   ► the request would still appear to be all coming

00:24:15 ◼   ► from one IP address.

00:24:17 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:24:17 ◼   ► - So, and most, it's kind of a highly debated topic

00:24:20 ◼   ► in the podcast world of like what counts as a download.

00:24:24 ◼   ► You know, 'cause there's, as with most things,

00:24:26 ◼   ► it's complicated, and so you can't just say,

00:24:29 ◼   ► oh, well every hit you get, nope, doesn't work that way.

00:24:31 ◼   ► Because that's, yeah, a hit doesn't match up

00:24:34 ◼   ► to a listener necessarily.

00:24:35 ◼   ► So anyway, most podcast hosts have their own idea

00:24:39 ◼   ► of what a download should count as,

00:24:41 ◼   ► and most of them involve the IP address

00:24:43 ◼   ► of the source in some way.

00:24:45 ◼   ► So it might be like, you know,

00:24:47 ◼   ► a unique download is like one IP,

00:24:49 ◼   ► or like the IP has to be unique within a certain

00:24:51 ◼   ► time interval for it to count as a unique download

00:24:54 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:24:54 ◼   ► Like there's all these different tricks that people do,

00:24:57 ◼   ► but basically if all your requests came from my single IP

00:25:00 ◼   ► that was running the proxy, it would not,

00:25:03 ◼   ► people's stats would under count.

00:25:06 ◼   ► That being said, I actually already wrote

00:25:09 ◼   ► and run one such proxy.

00:25:11 ◼   ► I already have this, that I designed exactly this way

00:25:14 ◼   ► and that has exactly this problem.

00:25:16 ◼   ► And the only reason that it's not really a problem

00:25:20 ◼   ► that it hasn't gotten me into any hot water with anybody

00:25:22 ◼   ► is because it's hardly ever used.

00:25:25 ◼   ► And I designed it because Overcast has a Twitter card.

00:25:28 ◼   ► On any share link I have Twitter cards.

00:25:30 ◼   ► And so if you view a tweet with an Overcast link

00:25:33 ◼   ► on Twitter's website or in any other clients

00:25:35 ◼   ► that support their cards,

00:25:36 ◼   ► which is very few of them in practice.

00:25:38 ◼   ► I show a whole little overcast embedded player

00:25:40 ◼   ► and it works and it's great.

00:25:41 ◼   ► You can stream, you can do timestamps,

00:25:43 ◼   ► it works perfectly, it's just like the website but tiny.

00:25:45 ◼   ► Twitter's cards require that all assets loaded through them

00:25:49 ◼   ► must be served over HTTPS.

00:25:52 ◼   ► So I actually have kind of like a little function,

00:25:55 ◼   ► like a mapping that many big podcast hosts,

00:25:58 ◼   ► including Libsyn, our host,

00:26:00 ◼   ► Many of them have just a simple way

00:26:03 ◼   ► that you can transform their insecure URLs

00:26:07 ◼   ► into HTTPS URLs with a simple string replacement

00:26:10 ◼   ► on certain things and everything.

00:26:12 ◼   ► So some hosts I can just redirect,

00:26:14 ◼   ► I can do a straight redirect and it's fine,

00:26:16 ◼   ► but not all hosts.

00:26:17 ◼   ► So I actually run this proxy that does this,

00:26:21 ◼   ► that follows redirects,

00:26:22 ◼   ► and when it's a host that it knows about,

00:26:24 ◼   ► it can send you along,

00:26:26 ◼   ► and when it's not, it does that proxy

00:26:28 ◼   ► of one-to-one connection mapping exactly the way you'd think.

00:26:31 ◼   ► And the only reason it isn't a problem

00:26:32 ◼   ► for either my bandwidth cost or people getting mad at me

00:26:35 ◼   ► is that the cards get pretty low usage, relatively speaking.

00:26:39 ◼   ► Not a lot of people play podcasts that way,

00:26:41 ◼   ► as far as I know.

00:26:42 ◼   ► So that's the only reason that works.

00:26:44 ◼   ► And to answer Glass_ in the chat room,

00:26:48 ◼   ► who said send them something like the X forwarded for header,

00:26:53 ◼   ► that I do send X forwarded for,

00:26:55 ◼   ► that is a header that proxies use

00:26:57 ◼   ► to tell what they're fetching from the IP

00:27:00 ◼   ► of the person fetching it from them.

00:27:02 ◼   ► So it's kind of a way to forward the source IP.

00:27:05 ◼   ► Problem is you can't trust that.

00:27:07 ◼   ► So if you have a podcast metrics thing

00:27:09 ◼   ► that is trying to measure unique IPs in an honest fashion,

00:27:13 ◼   ► you can't really trust if somebody sends you

00:27:16 ◼   ► an X forwarded four header and you get a whole bunch

00:27:18 ◼   ► of requests from one real IP, but that IP says,

00:27:22 ◼   ► oh, I'm actually forwarding you these requests

00:27:23 ◼   ► from these other 10,000 IPs.

00:27:25 ◼   ► You really can't trust that for your purposes of stats that you tell sponsors.

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00:28:26 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:28:29 ◼   ► - So you had said before,

00:28:32 ◼   ► well if Apple just implements this,

00:28:33 ◼   ► then you can start using it on the web

00:28:37 ◼   ► because the HTML5 audio tag will support it,

00:28:40 ◼   ► et cetera, et cetera.

00:28:41 ◼   ► But what about your beloved Windows users?

00:28:44 ◼   ► Or next year's gonna be the year of Linux on the desktop,

00:28:48 ◼   ► so what about them?

00:28:49 ◼   ► - First of all, we don't have that many of them, honestly.

00:28:52 ◼   ► like not a lot of people use Windows and use my app

00:28:56 ◼   ► or follow the share links generated by my app

00:29:00 ◼   ► or anything else.

00:29:01 ◼   ► I would love to change that because there are a lot

00:29:02 ◼   ► of Windows users out there.

00:29:03 ◼   ► I would love for more Windows people to see the share links

00:29:06 ◼   ► from Overcast 'cause that would mean that the share links

00:29:08 ◼   ► are being spread far and wide and that's the whole point

00:29:10 ◼   ► of the share links.

00:29:12 ◼   ► But reality is different.

00:29:13 ◼   ► Reality is that they really don't get much Windows usage

00:29:15 ◼   ► at all.

00:29:17 ◼   ► So that's problem number one or rather dodge number one

00:29:20 ◼   ► where I can dodge this issue.

00:29:21 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:29:23 ◼   ► Same reason why I never test my websites in IE

00:29:25 ◼   ► because my audience and my customer bases

00:29:28 ◼   ► tend to have such incredibly low,

00:29:30 ◼   ► or whatever IE is called now, what is it called now?

00:29:33 ◼   ► - Edge.

00:29:34 ◼   ► - Edge.

00:29:35 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:29:36 ◼   ► - The edge.

00:29:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:29:39 ◼   ► - Anyway, the main reason why I don't really need

00:29:43 ◼   ► to care that much about this problem

00:29:45 ◼   ► for other browsers other than things

00:29:47 ◼   ► that use Apple's built-in decoders and my own app

00:29:50 ◼   ► is because it's only a problem for seeking to timestamps

00:29:55 ◼   ► that haven't been downloaded.

00:29:57 ◼   ► That's it.

00:29:58 ◼   ► In all other ways, VBR MP3s work great already.

00:30:01 ◼   ► - Don't you have the same problem

00:30:02 ◼   ► even if they added support for it?

00:30:04 ◼   ► That it doesn't matter because you have to wait

00:30:06 ◼   ► for everyone to upgrade to an operating system

00:30:08 ◼   ► that includes that support that Apple just added.

00:30:11 ◼   ► - In practice, yes, but the amount of time I have to wait

00:30:14 ◼   ► isn't that much, especially for podcast listeners

00:30:17 ◼   ► to a tech show.

00:30:18 ◼   ► Like, that's a pretty upgradey group.

00:30:22 ◼   ► We don't have to wait that long.

00:30:25 ◼   ► - Even on the Mac?

00:30:26 ◼   ► Like, iOS probably, like, their upgrade curves

00:30:28 ◼   ► are always pretty good, but the Mac upgrade curves

00:30:30 ◼   ► have not been great.

00:30:31 ◼   ► Like, you'd wait a year and it'd be like 50% adoption,

00:30:33 ◼   ► which is better than Windows, but still.

00:30:35 ◼   ► - For people who would see, 'cause again,

00:30:38 ◼   ► I don't have to worry about users of my app.

00:30:40 ◼   ► I control my app, I can update my app.

00:30:42 ◼   ► I have to worry about people who are gonna see

00:30:43 ◼   ► the share links.

00:30:44 ◼   ► You know, right now the share links

00:30:46 ◼   ► don't have big audiences.

00:30:47 ◼   ► They get used some, and some people see them,

00:30:49 ◼   ► and that's great.

00:30:50 ◼   ► I want to make them bigger,

00:30:51 ◼   ► because I think podcast sharing could use help,

00:30:54 ◼   ► and you know, I mean everybody in podcasting

00:30:55 ◼   ► thinks podcast sharing can use help.

00:30:57 ◼   ► But like, here I am, like actually,

00:30:59 ◼   ► I actually have something that does help,

00:31:00 ◼   ► and I want it to get bigger and better.

00:31:02 ◼   ► The reality is, even if, you know,

00:31:06 ◼   ► if Apple had support, suppose it makes it

00:31:07 ◼   ► into the next major versions of OS X and iOS, whatever,

00:31:10 ◼   ► you know, not the ones coming out in a few weeks or whatever,

00:31:12 ◼   ► but next year or in the spring or whatever else.

00:31:15 ◼   ► It'll probably be about a year after that

00:31:17 ◼   ► before I can reliably use it, because at that point,

00:31:22 ◼   ► you know, it's gonna be way more than half,

00:31:23 ◼   ► because first of all, the people who are seeing share links

00:31:28 ◼   ► from social media are gonna be way more likely

00:31:30 ◼   ► to be on mobile than on a desktop.

00:31:32 ◼   ► So the slower adoption curve on Mac OS

00:31:35 ◼   ► is not going to be as big of a problem

00:31:36 ◼   ► because it's gonna be offset by the large proportion

00:31:39 ◼   ► of those viewers who are gonna be on iOS and Android,

00:31:44 ◼   ► if anybody can tolerate me who's using Android,

00:31:47 ◼   ► which is a big ask.

00:31:48 ◼   ► So I think iOS will be updated faster,

00:31:53 ◼   ► especially as Apple has figured out how to make people

00:31:55 ◼   ► upgrade by adding emoji and messages tricks.

00:31:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:31:58 ◼   ► So again, I think give it a year after they add support,

00:32:02 ◼   ► and then I think almost anybody can responsibly do this,

00:32:05 ◼   ► and it would be fine.

00:32:08 ◼   ► Podcast listening, if anybody doesn't know,

00:32:11 ◼   ► Rob Walks, the CEO of Libsyn,

00:32:13 ◼   ► Libsyn is a massive podcast host.

00:32:16 ◼   ► They've been around forever and they host a ton of podcasts

00:32:19 ◼   ► including this one and if you listen to this,

00:32:22 ◼   ► they probably host a lot of other podcasts you listen to.

00:32:24 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure all of the Relay FM shows are hosted there.

00:32:27 ◼   ► It's a very big podcast host.

00:32:31 ◼   ► And they do a podcast, I forget what it's called.

00:32:36 ◼   ► I'll put it in the show notes.

00:32:38 ◼   ► They do a podcast where it's like tips for podcasters.

00:32:41 ◼   ► And then something like once a month,

00:32:42 ◼   ► the CEO of Libsyn goes on there and gives stats

00:32:46 ◼   ► of like podcast user agents, like what clients,

00:32:49 ◼   ► what platforms are downloading podcasts.

00:32:51 ◼   ► And Libsyn is a pretty good source of this

00:32:54 ◼   ► because they host so many podcasts across so many markets

00:32:58 ◼   ► that it isn't just like tech heavy.

00:32:59 ◼   ► Like any stats I can give you on like

00:33:01 ◼   ► how people use Overcast is like how Apple nerds

00:33:04 ◼   ► who know who I am mostly use Overcast.

00:33:06 ◼   ► like the top podcast and overcast are mostly tech shows.

00:33:10 ◼   ► They're not, but if you look at the top podcast

00:33:12 ◼   ► in the world, it's mostly not tech shows.

00:33:14 ◼   ► So obviously, overcast usage is not representative

00:33:17 ◼   ► of all podcasters out there.

00:33:19 ◼   ► But Libsyn's stats are really close, I think.

00:33:21 ◼   ► I would say Libsyn's stats are probably

00:33:23 ◼   ► the best representation we have outside of Apple,

00:33:26 ◼   ► and they're not talking of how podcasters behave in mass,

00:33:30 ◼   ► what the overall market looks like.

00:33:32 ◼   ► And the stats they give, I listen to this

00:33:35 ◼   ► take notes every month.

00:33:37 ◼   ► And so here, let me just pull this up here.

00:33:39 ◼   ► So the most recent ones were stats for June.

00:33:41 ◼   ► 77% of listens were on mobile devices.

00:33:45 ◼   ► And every month that number increases.

00:33:47 ◼   ► So already, very mobile heavy.

00:33:50 ◼   ► iOS to Android is a little over three to one.

00:33:54 ◼   ► And that ratio's going down.

00:33:55 ◼   ► Android is becoming more popular now

00:33:57 ◼   ► because people are finally building in,

00:34:00 ◼   ► like Android vendors like Samsung

00:34:01 ◼   ► are finally building in podcast clients.

00:34:03 ◼   ► They weren't for a long time.

00:34:04 ◼   ► and so that's adding a lot to the Android side.

00:34:08 ◼   ► But so basically, you still have like more than three times

00:34:12 ◼   ► of any people listening on iOS than Android.

00:34:15 ◼   ► And only like 22% of listeners listening on computers.

00:34:20 ◼   ► So this is a very mobile heavy market

00:34:23 ◼   ► and it's a very iOS heavy market.

00:34:25 ◼   ► So that's why I think it's fairly responsible

00:34:28 ◼   ► for a lot of podcasters, especially if you are in like

00:34:31 ◼   ► the Apple tech world like we are,

00:34:33 ◼   ► where your audience is gonna be even more skewed

00:34:35 ◼   ► towards recent Apple platforms.

00:34:38 ◼   ► I think one year after they add support to this,

00:34:40 ◼   ► it's totally safe to do, and I might even do it sooner.

00:34:43 ◼   ► - So do you feel optimistic about them

00:34:45 ◼   ► actually adding support, or do you feel like

00:34:47 ◼   ► it's gonna be two years before this bug is closed

00:34:49 ◼   ► as it behaves correctly?

00:34:50 ◼   ► - When I filed this bug in my bug reporter,

00:34:54 ◼   ► it was next to two other bugs that have been open forever.

00:34:58 ◼   ► I'm lucky if I get a response.

00:35:02 ◼   ► I don't file that many bugs with Apple

00:35:04 ◼   ► because the effort on my side to feedback

00:35:07 ◼   ► and potential benefit I will get from that

00:35:11 ◼   ► ratio is so terrible.

00:35:13 ◼   ► Like, you know, this took the better part of two days

00:35:16 ◼   ► to do research properly to like figure out

00:35:19 ◼   ► that Apple didn't even support these tags at all.

00:35:20 ◼   ► You know, I thought they were supporting

00:35:21 ◼   ► at least the crappy one.

00:35:22 ◼   ► They supported none of them.

00:35:24 ◼   ► And you know, to modify my, these test files,

00:35:27 ◼   ► to like, you know, write these tags properly

00:35:29 ◼   ► and everything, took a lot of work.

00:35:30 ◼   ► to write a bug report, give proper test coverage

00:35:33 ◼   ► and everything, it takes a lot of time, a lot of work.

00:35:36 ◼   ► And usually I file bugs and they go nowhere.

00:35:39 ◼   ► If I'm lucky, they might be closed as a duplicate.

00:35:43 ◼   ► And when they're closed as a duplicate,

00:35:44 ◼   ► I believe I then lose any visibility on that.

00:35:48 ◼   ► I forget, I think they changed it recently, anyway.

00:35:50 ◼   ► So the feedback loop is terrible for filing bugs for Apple.

00:35:55 ◼   ► People who do it are good people.

00:35:58 ◼   ► they probably floss, they're probably very good people.

00:36:02 ◼   ► I have a hard time doing it most of the time

00:36:04 ◼   ► because again, I see what happens with the few bugs

00:36:07 ◼   ► I do file and they sit around forever

00:36:10 ◼   ► and they don't even get closed.

00:36:12 ◼   ► And the few that do get closed are often closed

00:36:16 ◼   ► in a way that I consider invalid.

00:36:18 ◼   ► They'll do something like, we're gonna close this

00:36:23 ◼   ► unless you tell us really soon that this is still happening

00:36:25 ◼   ► on the newest build of iOS.

00:36:27 ◼   ► for a bug that I filed like six months ago

00:36:29 ◼   ► that is easily testable.

00:36:30 ◼   ► Like, they clearly have a wide variety of quality of people

00:36:35 ◼   ► who go through the bug reports,

00:36:38 ◼   ► and many of them clearly just want to close

00:36:39 ◼   ► as many as possible without actually doing any work.

00:36:41 ◼   ► Like, the incentives are wrong there.

00:36:43 ◼   ► - Are you saying you don't floss?

00:36:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:36:47 ◼   ► - So anyway, I usually don't file bugs

00:36:50 ◼   ► because I've had a poor history of any response

00:36:54 ◼   ► from Apple on bugs, but this time I filed it

00:36:56 ◼   ► because I figured basically there's nothing else I can do.

00:36:58 ◼   ► I can't work around this.

00:36:59 ◼   ► Like, I mentioned the JavaScript thing.

00:37:01 ◼   ► I tried doing the JavaScript thing,

00:37:02 ◼   ► but because of all the CORS restrictions,

00:37:05 ◼   ► it makes it pretty much impossible to use

00:37:08 ◼   ► for an arbitrary set of hosts that you don't control,

00:37:12 ◼   ► most of which don't send CORS permission headers already.

00:37:15 ◼   ► So that's a non-starter.

00:37:17 ◼   ► I could write my own decoder in my app

00:37:20 ◼   ► that calculates these offsets, but that's only one app.

00:37:24 ◼   ► And so to make something, like even our podcast,

00:37:28 ◼   ► that you would think, you know, what percentage of people

00:37:31 ◼   ► who download our podcast do you think listen in Overcast?

00:37:34 ◼   ► And a lot of people would probably guess

00:37:36 ◼   ► it's a pretty high ratio, and it is,

00:37:37 ◼   ► compared to Overcast's global ratio.

00:37:39 ◼   ► I haven't looked recently,

00:37:40 ◼   ► but I think it's something like 60%.

00:37:42 ◼   ► That's still 40% of our listeners

00:37:44 ◼   ► who don't listen in Overcast who wouldn't have,

00:37:47 ◼   ► who would need compatibility in this way,

00:37:49 ◼   ► you know, for seeking in streams.

00:37:51 ◼   ► I basically, the reason I'm following this bug

00:37:53 ◼   ► is that it's my last hope to get the VR MP3s to be a thing.

00:37:56 ◼   ► I think they'd be great if they were a thing.

00:37:57 ◼   ► I think it's ridiculous that they aren't a thing yet,

00:38:00 ◼   ► but if there's any hope of them being a thing,

00:38:02 ◼   ► it's basically on Apple to do.

00:38:04 ◼   ► 'Cause if Apple doesn't do it,

00:38:05 ◼   ► nobody else can and nobody else will.

00:38:08 ◼   ► - Did you make a strong recommendation

00:38:09 ◼   ► that they implement a specific one of these?

00:38:11 ◼   ► 'Cause if you just said,

00:38:12 ◼   ► "Oh, here are all these things you don't support,"

00:38:13 ◼   ► I can imagine them supporting that terrible one

00:38:15 ◼   ► that only gives you 100 points,

00:38:17 ◼   ► and then being like, "Done, closed, fixed."

00:38:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, my bug report actually reads

00:38:21 ◼   ► a lot like the blog post.

00:38:22 ◼   ► I wrote the bug report first and then edited it

00:38:24 ◼   ► to be a blog post, but basically it's a similar format.

00:38:28 ◼   ► And I recommended, I gave the three options and I said,

00:38:33 ◼   ► you don't parse any of these right now.

00:38:34 ◼   ► This old one is not precise enough, don't use this.

00:38:37 ◼   ► So I said basically the MLT tag would be the ideal one to do

00:38:42 ◼   ► because it can be arbitrary length and arbitrary precision.

00:38:44 ◼   ► So that's the ideal one.

00:38:46 ◼   ► If you only pick one, pick that one.

00:38:49 ◼   ► The Fraunhofer VBRI tag, that's like 1.3 kilobytes

00:38:52 ◼   ► worth of stuff, like that's a good second choice.

00:38:54 ◼   ► Like if you do that, I'll be happy,

00:38:56 ◼   ► but the best one to do would be the MLT tag.

00:38:59 ◼   ► - I wonder if they don't support it,

00:39:01 ◼   ► not out of laziness, because like you said,

00:39:02 ◼   ► they are actually parsing the durations out of them,

00:39:04 ◼   ► but kind of for the same reason related to something else

00:39:07 ◼   ► you said, you know, why web hosts can't trust X forwarded for.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Maybe they're afraid it's gonna be filled with garbage data,

00:39:13 ◼   ► and then they're afraid to like expose exploits

00:39:15 ◼   ► in their like a buffer overflow or something,

00:39:17 ◼   ► they put crazy offsets in there and then trigger a bug. Who knows? I don't know. The type of thing

00:39:22 ◼   ► where it is, or they just don't trust the encoders to put good data in there, they don't want to try

00:39:26 ◼   ► to read garbage data. These are all solvable problems, like, you know, make your thing not

00:39:31 ◼   ► have silly buffer overflows and sanity check the offsets in the map and make sure they seem

00:39:38 ◼   ► reasonable before blindly following them and maybe disregard if it looks like line noise. But

00:39:43 ◼   ► I do wonder, because someone did have to write the code

00:39:46 ◼   ► to pull these durations out of there.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Why did they do that?

00:39:48 ◼   ► And they're like, "Well, I'm in there.

00:39:49 ◼   ► "Why don't I just actually parse this whole format

00:39:52 ◼   ► "and just implement it?"

00:39:53 ◼   ► - So, I mean, your concerns are totally valid.

00:39:56 ◼   ► And I can completely understand how,

00:39:59 ◼   ► it wouldn't surprise me at all

00:40:00 ◼   ► if there was an engineering meeting at Apple

00:40:02 ◼   ► some ridiculous amount of time ago.

00:40:05 ◼   ► Somebody was like, "Yeah, you know what?

00:40:06 ◼   ► "We could parse these things out,

00:40:08 ◼   ► "but the data might be wrong,

00:40:10 ◼   ► "and if we just do this percentage of time

00:40:13 ◼   ► to byte offset thing that we,

00:40:15 ◼   ► kind of like a dumb approximation,

00:40:16 ◼   ► like that'll be close enough and it'll be consistent.

00:40:20 ◼   ► And so there is a school of thought that says

00:40:24 ◼   ► you should override the stupid MP3 encoders

00:40:27 ◼   ► 'cause who knows what garbage you're gonna get there

00:40:29 ◼   ► and you should just do your thing

00:40:31 ◼   ► and just make it so that it works.

00:40:34 ◼   ► It's kind of close for short songs

00:40:36 ◼   ► and then it doesn't matter anymore.

00:40:39 ◼   ► - It's good enough for scrubber work.

00:40:40 ◼   ► Like they want the scrubber,

00:40:41 ◼   ► 'cause when you're moving a scrubber around anyway,

00:40:43 ◼   ► it's probably like an inch on some webpage

00:40:44 ◼   ► and you can't tell if it's like what pixel it's on

00:40:46 ◼   ► or whatever, but for your specific use case,

00:40:48 ◼   ► which is no, no, no, someone's not dragging a scrubber here,

00:40:51 ◼   ► I'm putting an offset in the URL down to the second

00:40:53 ◼   ► and I want that precision out of it.

00:40:55 ◼   ► Say, hey, YouTube does it, you should do it too.

00:40:57 ◼   ► - Exactly, yeah.

00:40:59 ◼   ► So there is an argument to be made there,

00:41:02 ◼   ► but A, they're already reading the duration of these tags.

00:41:05 ◼   ► Even if they have the whole file,

00:41:07 ◼   ► they still read the duration from that header.

00:41:09 ◼   ► And so if you put a garbage duration,

00:41:10 ◼   ► as I did during testing, it says, all right, yeah, sure,

00:41:12 ◼   ► this file is nine minutes long instead of an hour.

00:41:15 ◼   ► It's happy to use that value,

00:41:17 ◼   ► so it's already trusting it on some level.

00:41:19 ◼   ► Also, MP3 encoders don't change that much.

00:41:22 ◼   ► There's very few that are actually in active use today,

00:41:25 ◼   ► and they all write good data.

00:41:27 ◼   ► This isn't 1997 anymore.

00:41:29 ◼   ► We have solved the MP3 encoder problem.

00:41:32 ◼   ► MP3 encoders work, and they work well,

00:41:34 ◼   ► and no one else besides me is going in with a hex editor

00:41:38 ◼   ► and messing with these values.

00:41:40 ◼   ► you're not gonna get total garbage on a regular basis.

00:41:43 ◼   ► So I think what's more likely to have happened

00:41:47 ◼   ► is that maybe these decoders were written

00:41:49 ◼   ► a very long time ago, maybe around that timeframe,

00:41:52 ◼   ► when the world of MP3 was still very much in flux

00:41:55 ◼   ► and you had crappy encoders in the late '90s,

00:41:59 ◼   ► and maybe they just haven't revisited it since then

00:42:00 ◼   ► because there wasn't a reason to.

00:42:02 ◼   ► That is the way more likely explanation for this,

00:42:04 ◼   ► is like, this is very old code

00:42:07 ◼   ► that no one has had any justification to touch

00:42:08 ◼   ► for a long time, it works well enough, so fine.

00:42:12 ◼   ► And that's why I think ultimately

00:42:14 ◼   ► it probably won't get done, because I would be surprised

00:42:17 ◼   ► if anybody was really motivated to devote,

00:42:20 ◼   ► people have limited time, so who's gonna devote time to this

00:42:25 ◼   ► out of their engineering time budget inside Apple

00:42:28 ◼   ► when they might have more pressing things to worry about

00:42:31 ◼   ► with supporting the new Bluetooth headphones

00:42:33 ◼   ► on the next iPhone?

00:42:34 ◼   ► If anything else these people could be working on

00:42:38 ◼   ► is probably more important than this

00:42:39 ◼   ► to Apple's overall corporate goals.

00:42:41 ◼   ► - You're just supposed to be using AAC anyway,

00:42:44 ◼   ► it's the future.

00:42:44 ◼   ► Just use a different container format

00:42:46 ◼   ► and those offset things can be all at the front of the file.

00:42:50 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:42:51 ◼   ► - I love that Hacker News thread though.

00:42:55 ◼   ► Just use a different container format,

00:42:56 ◼   ► doesn't that solve all your problems?

00:42:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was the best, yeah.

00:42:59 ◼   ► - All the existing container formats are bad,

00:43:00 ◼   ► but just invent your own,

00:43:01 ◼   ► doesn't that solve all your problems?

00:43:02 ◼   ► And then I guess make every encoder on the planet

00:43:05 ◼   ► understand your new container format, it'll be fine.

00:43:08 ◼   ► Yeah, this has been a lot of time on this topic.

00:43:09 ◼   ► I'm sorry to everybody who doesn't care.

00:43:11 ◼   ► You probably tuned out long ago,

00:43:13 ◼   ► but we actually got a decent response on it.

00:43:15 ◼   ► People actually enjoyed hearing about all this crap.

00:43:17 ◼   ► I'm very surprised by that, actually.

00:43:19 ◼   ► But I guess our listeners are both cooler and geekier

00:43:23 ◼   ► than I would've assumed.

00:43:25 ◼   ► - They are definitely cooler.

00:43:27 ◼   ► Geekier, I'm not sure.

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00:45:11 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:45:14 ◼   ► - So John, if the cell signal at your house is so crappy,

00:45:18 ◼   ► why not enable Wi-Fi calling and solve all your problems?

00:45:21 ◼   ► - The first reason I didn't enable this is

00:45:23 ◼   ► I didn't think my carrier supported it,

00:45:25 ◼   ► but I was just looking at the wrong place in settings.

00:45:28 ◼   ► For some reason I had it in my head

00:45:29 ◼   ► that only AT&T supported this and not Verizon,

00:45:31 ◼   ► but now Verizon supports it too.

00:45:33 ◼   ► Of course I've now forgotten where the setting is, but anyway it's in there somewhere, you

00:45:36 ◼   ► can find it.

00:45:38 ◼   ► But the second thing is when I turned it on I'm like, "Oh okay, I'll turn this on and

00:45:41 ◼   ► give it a try."

00:45:43 ◼   ► It makes you enter your physical address because once you're on Wi-Fi calling, if you call

00:45:48 ◼   ► 911, 911 can immediately tell where you are because you're coming from the internet essentially

00:45:53 ◼   ► and they can't get a location for you.

00:45:55 ◼   ► Which is kind of weird because you can get locations from Wi-Fi base stations and everything,

00:46:00 ◼   ► a lot of things use that big map of base station MAC addresses to physical locations and stuff

00:46:06 ◼   ► to help aid location awareness.

00:46:08 ◼   ► But anyway, what iOS says is please enter a physical location so when you call 911 if

00:46:14 ◼   ► you're too injured just speaking to the phone or whatever, don't worry, they will come to

00:46:18 ◼   ► this address.

00:46:20 ◼   ► But of course that means that if you go someplace else and you're on wifi, say you're at work

00:46:24 ◼   ► and you're on wifi, and you call 911 and don't get a chance to tell them where you are, they're

00:46:28 ◼   ► going to go to your house.

00:46:29 ◼   ► my understanding anyway of what this message is telling me.

00:46:32 ◼   ► Enter this address here, if you call 911 this is where people will go to.

00:46:37 ◼   ► But I didn't want to enable it because I'm like well then I have to remember to turn

00:46:41 ◼   ► off Wi-Fi calling when I leave my house because then if I call 911 people will go to my house

00:46:46 ◼   ► instead of where I am.

00:46:48 ◼   ► So that's one reason why I didn't leave it on.

00:46:51 ◼   ► And the second reason is, this is the stupidest reason, that reason I think is only vaguely

00:46:55 ◼   ► silly.

00:46:56 ◼   ► this reason is really dumb but nevertheless is a reason everyone has

00:47:00 ◼   ► the reasons this is mine it changes the thing that appears in the status bar to

00:47:04 ◼   ► make some ugly thing that says like VZW whatever it doesn't say like the Verizon

00:47:09 ◼   ► a little fit Wi-Fi fan symbol it says different words like in all caps and it

00:47:13 ◼   ► looks ugly I don't like it that's a reason like I can understand even though

00:47:19 ◼   ► I think it's a little ridiculous the whole address thing fine whatever but

00:47:23 ◼   ► But because you don't want to look at VZW in your status bar, that's your reason?

00:47:28 ◼   ► You try it, turn it on and see what it does to your status bar.

00:47:31 ◼   ► I use AT&T, like a gentleman, and so it says AT&T Wi-Fi.

00:47:34 ◼   ► But it gets rid of the fan thing, doesn't it?

00:47:36 ◼   ► Or maybe it doesn't.

00:47:37 ◼   ► Nope.

00:47:38 ◼   ► Anyway, it changes what's in the status bar.

00:47:39 ◼   ► I didn't like it.

00:47:40 ◼   ► The location one is the larger reason, but I was kind of glad that I had a legit reason,

00:47:44 ◼   ► so I didn't need to look at that ugly status bar anymore.

00:47:46 ◼   ► It would be nice if like an iOS enhancement would be, an iOS enhancement would be, "Only

00:47:51 ◼   ► use Wi-Fi calling when connected to this base station."

00:47:53 ◼   ► I would like that setting.

00:47:54 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:47:55 ◼   ► Because then I could say, "Use Wi-Fi calling when connected to my home base station," but

00:47:58 ◼   ► never anyplace else.

00:47:59 ◼   ► And then I don't have to worry about this.

00:48:00 ◼   ► Then I could set my home address to my home base station, but no.

00:48:04 ◼   ► And anyway, after I made the decision, I made a couple of successful voice calls from my

00:48:09 ◼   ► house where people could actually hear my voice.

00:48:11 ◼   ► So maybe Verizon loves me for coming back to them and not using this filthy internet

00:48:16 ◼   ► calling.

00:48:17 ◼   ► Wow.

00:48:18 ◼   ► Okay.

00:48:19 ◼   ► All right.

00:48:20 ◼   ► Well, I don't even know what to make of that.

00:48:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's. (laughs)

00:48:26 ◼   ► - Moving on.

00:48:28 ◼   ► Graham Spencer has indicated that Google and Facebook

00:48:31 ◼   ► and others also do a charity match on bug bounties.

00:48:34 ◼   ► So just FYI.

00:48:36 ◼   ► - And did it before Apple.

00:48:38 ◼   ► Most people didn't write it into Gloat

00:48:40 ◼   ► about how all these other companies did it before Apple,

00:48:42 ◼   ► but they totally did.

00:48:43 ◼   ► - Do you have any actual topics tonight

00:48:47 ◼   ► or is this all follow-up?

00:48:48 ◼   ► - We're getting there.

00:48:49 ◼   ► - There's topics down there, believe me.

00:48:51 ◼   ► Don't worry, we got another podcast

00:48:53 ◼   ► two days. I know. Yeah, that's true too. And somebody had to go all deep on the MP3 stuff,

00:48:58 ◼   ► but actually it's very entertaining and I enjoyed it, so I shouldn't give you a hard time anyway.

00:49:02 ◼   ► Imagine how much dead space we'd have in like the topics and everything this week if I didn't do

00:49:06 ◼   ► that. Fair. You don't know what's lurking down there in topics. There's all sorts of stuff.

00:49:10 ◼   ► Is there more about Teemo? Yes, there is actually. Really? Yes, I'm so excited. Oh, that's fantastic.

00:49:16 ◼   ► I'm so overjoyed. All right, well, hopefully we'll run long enough that we won't get there. I mean,

00:49:21 ◼   ► I mean, anyway, let me tell you about my iMac.

00:49:24 ◼   ► It has been rebooted.

00:49:26 ◼   ► I did it on purpose.

00:49:29 ◼   ► It ran 21 days on the stock RAM.

00:49:33 ◼   ► - And without a UPS.

00:49:34 ◼   ► - And without a UPS.

00:49:35 ◼   ► I've gotten in contact with Mac sales, OWC,

00:49:38 ◼   ► whatever they call themselves,

00:49:41 ◼   ► and have requested and am told that I'm receiving a RMA,

00:49:45 ◼   ► a Return Merchandise Authorization,

00:49:47 ◼   ► as I think that that stands for.

00:49:48 ◼   ► So I think what they're doing is sending me a box

00:49:50 ◼   ► send the RAM back in and they said they will replace it post-haste. I have plugged it into

00:49:56 ◼   ► the UPS, I have pulled the UPS power and seen the iMac stay on for at least long enough to make me

00:50:03 ◼   ► feel better about myself. I did not leave it disconnected long enough to see whether or not

00:50:09 ◼   ► the Synology would be smart enough to shut itself down, but I believe I have those settings squared

00:50:13 ◼   ► away in the Synology so it should shut itself down gracefully. The iMac won't, but you know I'm used

00:50:18 ◼   ► I'm used to that at this point anyway.

00:50:20 ◼   ► Hey-o!

00:50:21 ◼   ► So anyway, I am running still on the eight gigs

00:50:25 ◼   ► of stock RAM until I receive my new batch of OWC RAM.

00:50:29 ◼   ► I will try that.

00:50:32 ◼   ► If that doesn't work, then I will probably,

00:50:34 ◼   ► very politely but very sternly, ask for my money back

00:50:36 ◼   ► and get Crucial RAM, which the entire internet

00:50:39 ◼   ► has written to tell me is the only RAM

00:50:40 ◼   ► I should ever really buy.

00:50:42 ◼   ► - I don't think Crucial buys any different RAM than OWC.

00:50:45 ◼   ► I forget, someone at one point sent me a long email

00:50:47 ◼   ► me about the different bins of who buys the good chips versus the cheaper chips and i think crucial

00:50:52 ◼   ► was in the same bin with owc but anyway i've bought owc ram for years and like i said i think

00:50:57 ◼   ► the last time i had owc thing go bad the chip because my computer is ancient the chip the the

00:51:03 ◼   ► the ram dim was like four years old five years old maybe it was six years old like whatever it is i

00:51:09 ◼   ► just i just assume like well it's so old whatever warranty or whatever they had it must be completely

00:51:14 ◼   ► gone by now but I just called them up and they said I will send you a new one.

00:51:17 ◼   ► That's it. Like I don't know if they have like a forever lifetime if this RAM

00:51:20 ◼   ► ever goes bad they'll just replace it forever and ever and I know it's a

00:51:23 ◼   ► hassle to return if you have to keep returning it it's a pain but I've had

00:51:26 ◼   ► them last for years and years and then go bad years later and they just send me

00:51:30 ◼   ► a new one. I think it's like miraculous like try doing that with a

00:51:34 ◼   ► hard drive for example hey my hard drive died after six years can I get a new one?

00:51:37 ◼   ► Ha! No I mean like almost all RAM has a lifetime guarantee like almost all RAM

00:51:42 ◼   ► and that you would buy separately from a computer yourself.

00:51:44 ◼   ► They almost all have lifetime guarantees,

00:51:47 ◼   ► but it's up to the retailer or the manufacturer

00:51:49 ◼   ► to make that a good or bad experience

00:51:52 ◼   ► if you actually have to claim it.

00:51:53 ◼   ► And I too have had only good experiences with OWC RAM.

00:51:57 ◼   ► I don't use it anymore, now I just buy my computers

00:51:59 ◼   ► with enough RAM from Apple,

00:52:00 ◼   ► 'cause I'd rather just not deal with it anymore.

00:52:02 ◼   ► And the OWC RAM, when I was using it,

00:52:05 ◼   ► which was up until like two years ago, was always great.

00:52:07 ◼   ► I had to return it one time,

00:52:10 ◼   ► And that was one time in something like eight years

00:52:14 ◼   ► of using it, I think it's pretty good.

00:52:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I mean, they've been really good about it

00:52:18 ◼   ► so far, I didn't expressly reach out to them,

00:52:20 ◼   ► they reached out to me via Twitter,

00:52:22 ◼   ► I'm not entirely clear how they caught wind

00:52:24 ◼   ► of the fact that I was having issues,

00:52:25 ◼   ► but they just basically said, "Hey, can you send us

00:52:29 ◼   ► "an email and we'll talk about it?"

00:52:30 ◼   ► And I said, "Hey, here's the situation."

00:52:32 ◼   ► And I spelled it out and said,

00:52:36 ◼   ► it had been rebooting every week, look at this,

00:52:38 ◼   ► now running for 20 some days at this point. I feel like it's the RAM. So they said, "Yep,

00:52:44 ◼   ► you're probably right. I will get you an RMA and we will replace it immediately."

00:52:49 ◼   ► I don't know how they heard about this. I just told 80,000 people about it for a month

00:52:54 ◼   ► and somebody told them. Well, but what I mean is I don't recall having seen anyone mention

00:53:00 ◼   ► me and them on Twitter. Maybe that did happen and I just missed it, but it seemed like they

00:53:05 ◼   ► came out of the woodwork as opposed to somebody tagging them to kind of wave the flag in their

00:53:10 ◼   ► face and say, "Hey, you should pay attention over here." So I'm not sure how that came to be. But,

00:53:15 ◼   ► you know, hey, I'm happy that they reached out. I'm happy that they seem to be more than happy

00:53:20 ◼   ► to replace the RAM. Because, I mean, like you were saying earlier, I bought this RAM in January. I

00:53:25 ◼   ► looked up my order number and I forget when it was in January, but it was still January. I mean,

00:53:29 ◼   ► that was somewhat long ago. And I guess, you know, most things have a year warranty, but

00:53:34 ◼   ► I don't know, it's nice of them to not fight me on it because I'm used to most retailers being like,

00:53:40 ◼   ► "Well, are you sure it's the RAM? Why don't you take it to Apple first?" Yeah, etc, etc, etc.

00:53:46 ◼   ► And they were like, "No, no, no, send it back. We'll get you RAM."

00:53:48 ◼   ► So like I said, you didn't have to wait for someone to hear it and tweet you. You could

00:53:51 ◼   ► have just called them on the phone. All you got to do is tell them you have bad RAM and notice that,

00:53:54 ◼   ► like, last time I called from mine, like I said, it was years after I bought it, I said,

00:53:57 ◼   ► "I've got a bad DIMM." They said, "Okay, read me the serial number. Okay, we'll send you a box."

00:54:01 ◼   ► Like that was it. There was no I didn't even give them a reason it was dead

00:54:04 ◼   ► Yeah, and I truly hand on heart was planning on calling sometime this week and then right as I decided no, it's been long enough

00:54:11 ◼   ► I'm happy. Well, I'm not happy but I am satisfied with my my scientific experiment

00:54:16 ◼   ► That around that time when I had finally concluded that was the case. That's when they reached out. We're like, hey what's happening?

00:54:22 ◼   ► So that was my plan

00:54:24 ◼   ► Marco I am deeply sorry, but I have to ask John

00:54:28 ◼   ► Tell me about TiVo lifetime service, please

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00:55:22 ◼   ► using If This Then That and the Automatic API.

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00:56:28 ◼   ► [Music]

00:56:29 ◼   ► >> John, go ahead and tell us about TiVo.

00:56:33 ◼   ► >> You're saved by real-time follow-up.

00:56:35 ◼   ► Someone just tweeted at me that from the Verizon Wi-Fi calling fact, "When using Wi-Fi calling,

00:56:41 ◼   ► 911 calls will always try cellular service in the local market first, even when the device

00:56:45 ◼   ► is in airplane mode or cellular service is off."

00:56:48 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:56:50 ◼   ► Now I'm back to just the status bar, I suppose.

00:56:52 ◼   ► Which is a silly reason.

00:56:54 ◼   ► I'll think about it.

00:56:55 ◼   ► I'll think about it.

00:56:56 ◼   ► I don't like getting phone calls at home anyway.

00:56:57 ◼   ► And I have landlines.

00:56:58 ◼   ► Oh my god.

00:56:59 ◼   ► I should take a screenshot of that status bar.

00:57:02 ◼   ► We can mark it and switch to the show art to it so you can just see what a horror it

00:57:07 ◼   ► actually is.

00:57:08 ◼   ► All right, TiVo.

00:57:10 ◼   ► The news today about TiVo?

00:57:12 ◼   ► Not really that big of news, but apparently TiVo is discontinuing service for the TiVo

00:57:19 ◼   ► Series 1.

00:57:20 ◼   ► TiVo series 1 that was, what, introduced in 1999?

00:57:26 ◼   ► And what they mean by discontinuing is it will no longer get any guide updates or anything.

00:57:32 ◼   ► So you can still watch shows that are recorded on it, but you can't record any new ones because

00:57:36 ◼   ► it won't know when anything is on.

00:57:39 ◼   ► And it doesn't work like a VCR, we can do it manually anyway.

00:57:43 ◼   ► And it's because they're changing the format of the guide data, probably modernizing it

00:57:46 ◼   ► in some way that we would be horrified to learn about.

00:57:50 ◼   ► we knew exactly what they were feeding because of these TiVo Series 1.

00:57:53 ◼   ► TiVo Series 1 was an analog device.

00:57:55 ◼   ► It recorded video from analog sources.

00:57:58 ◼   ► It was pre-digital.

00:57:59 ◼   ► And of course standard def because it was all analog.

00:58:02 ◼   ► I didn't know that you could still use a TiVo Series 1.

00:58:06 ◼   ► I thought they were already non-functional entirely, but apparently...

00:58:09 ◼   ► Did you make it with like semaphore flags?

00:58:11 ◼   ► Like how does that even work?

00:58:13 ◼   ► If you have a TiVo Series 1 and your 16 year old hard drive, or maybe a hard drive you

00:58:17 ◼   ► replaced it because you can do third-party hard drive replacements or

00:58:19 ◼   ► whatever. We're still using it to record analog standard FTV.

00:58:24 ◼   ► They're terminating your service. This is even if you bought quote-unquote

00:58:28 ◼   ► "lifetime service." That's what the story about this the tweet is like, "Oh I bought

00:58:31 ◼   ► lifetime service, but now you know I'm still alive and the box is still alive

00:58:37 ◼   ► but somehow the service is ending." So the tweet was "Tivo series 1 lifetime"

00:58:41 ◼   ► and scarequote service lasted about 16 years. And for this inconvenience Tivo is

00:58:46 ◼   ► offering you a $75 prepaid visa card so you get 75 bucks if you if you held on

00:58:50 ◼   ► and kept using your TiVo series 1 for this long and they say there are 3,500

00:58:54 ◼   ► of these series 1s still in use which is a small number but you know anyway I

00:58:59 ◼   ► can't believe that there wasn't some fine print written into the lifetime

00:59:03 ◼   ► service that says after 16 years we reserved the right to turn off the

00:59:06 ◼   ► service maybe you should buy a new DVR but I salute the people who are out

00:59:10 ◼   ► there still using it I never expected like lifetime service I have lifetime

00:59:14 ◼   ► was on all my Tevo boxes but I replaced the boxes long before I get to the lifetime service thing.

00:59:18 ◼   ► People used to be better about letting you transfer lifetime service for some nominal fee

00:59:22 ◼   ► or for free to another device to encourage you to upgrade or whatever but those days are mostly gone

00:59:26 ◼   ► and the deals have been getting worse. Anyway, I just thought this was funny that there are

00:59:30 ◼   ► actually people out there still using a series one DVR. I don't think I have any piece of electronics

00:59:35 ◼   ► in my house that is 16 years old and still working including smoke detectors, telephones,

00:59:43 ◼   ► Microwave maybe I think my as discussed on a recent reconciled with em, so I think my microwave

00:59:47 ◼   ► Maybe more than 16 years old, but I should look at the date on the back of it

00:59:50 ◼   ► I should see exactly how old it is, but other than that

00:59:52 ◼   ► No DVR. So that's for sure

00:59:55 ◼   ► fair enough

00:59:57 ◼   ► We had spoken a few episodes ago about Twitter verification because all three of us are now verified and

01:00:04 ◼   ► a friend of the show Brianna Wu has been verified now in the last week or so and

01:00:12 ◼   ► Apparently it's made everything immensely better.

01:00:17 ◼   ► Brianna tweeted a couple of days ago as we recorded this fact, "I have not seen a single

01:00:21 ◼   ► death threat or rape threat since being verified and getting the 'quality filter' quote.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Everyone should have this."

01:00:28 ◼   ► Funny how that works.

01:00:29 ◼   ► Yeah, that's exactly it.

01:00:30 ◼   ► I mean, like, we talked last time, like I joked, like, we have computers now, like,

01:00:35 ◼   ► any computational overhead of offering this to everybody, like, that's totally worth it.

01:00:40 ◼   ► And we've since heard a little bit more discussion from various other places about

01:00:43 ◼   ► it.

01:00:44 ◼   ► It seems like the gist of the problem here is not that turning this on would be computationally

01:00:49 ◼   ► expensive for everybody.

01:00:51 ◼   ► It's that Twitter, fundamentally Twitter is very, very tied to the idea internally,

01:00:58 ◼   ► politically that there should be this kind of open platform and that there should be

01:01:03 ◼   ► no filters by default.

01:01:05 ◼   ► And that's a really nice theory.

01:01:07 ◼   ► So is communism.

01:01:08 ◼   ► But in practice these things don't work quite that well.

01:01:12 ◼   ► It is really ideal and that would be nice and it worked that way for a while and that's

01:01:16 ◼   ► cool, but the reality is the harassment problem is very big and very real and that wonderful

01:01:23 ◼   ► world where anybody could tweet anybody and they would see it by default, I think that's

01:01:28 ◼   ► a nice idea.

01:01:29 ◼   ► Like blog comments, that's a nice idea but in practice it doesn't work.

01:01:34 ◼   ► In practice there's lots of problems with that.

01:01:36 ◼   ► So I maintain that the quality filter feature that is available to verified Twitter accounts

01:01:43 ◼   ► not only should be available to everybody, but I'd even say it should be on by default.

01:01:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I would agree with that.

01:01:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know why you wouldn't have it on by default.

01:01:51 ◼   ► I guess the idea is that maybe the filter is bad and things will accidentally get filtered

01:01:56 ◼   ► out, but it's not like Gmail has spam filtering off by default.

01:02:00 ◼   ► Of course it's not by default.

01:02:02 ◼   ► Sometimes things end up in your spam folder when they shouldn't be in there, but no one

01:02:07 ◼   ► would say the correct default is off.

01:02:09 ◼   ► Yep, I don't get it.

01:02:12 ◼   ► Finally, in follow-up, over an hour in, a few people have taken me to task for saying

01:02:19 ◼   ► in the last episode, or maybe it was one of the recent episodes, that I was not satisfied

01:02:24 ◼   ► with Apple's diversity numbers, particularly with ethnicities and how many white employees

01:02:32 ◼   ► Apple has as opposed to other races. And what I'd said was, "Hey, this is really unfortunate,"

01:02:41 ◼   ► and it looks like as I look up these numbers again, 56% of Apple is white as they self-report

01:02:46 ◼   ► today. And a lot of people said in various degrees of obnoxiousness, "Well, what's the

01:02:50 ◼   ► appropriate amount of diversity because the country is..." And I don't have those numbers

01:02:54 ◼   ► in front of me, but something like 60 or 70 percent white. So if they're less white than

01:03:00 ◼   ► America, then what's the problem? And I don't have any simple answer for that. It's something

01:03:06 ◼   ► I hadn't considered, and it's a fair point, but I would point out that not all of Apple

01:03:12 ◼   ► is in America, and so that probably should be factored in as well. But I think the biggest

01:03:20 ◼   ► thing to me was that Apple seems to have made not a lot of change from just a

01:03:27 ◼   ► couple of years ago when they started reporting this, which I admire. They

01:03:31 ◼   ► didn't make that much change, yet it seems like the thing that was completely

01:03:36 ◼   ► unacceptable a couple a couple of years ago is now, "Look at us and how wonderful

01:03:40 ◼   ► we are." And that just seems kind of weird to me. I don't know if you guys had any

01:03:46 ◼   ► thoughts on this, but that's basically the thing that I still stand by, which is

01:03:50 ◼   ► which is it hasn't gotten that much better.

01:03:52 ◼   ► Why are we really celebrating it

01:03:54 ◼   ► like it's completely turned around?

01:03:56 ◼   ► - So before we let Jon tell us the truth

01:03:58 ◼   ► and why this is, you know.

01:03:59 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:04:00 ◼   ► Before we let Jon basically rock this

01:04:02 ◼   ► and do everything correctly,

01:04:04 ◼   ► I will just kind of speak for myself

01:04:06 ◼   ► and for I think a lot of people

01:04:08 ◼   ► who listen to this kind of stuff

01:04:09 ◼   ► and who see these kind of things.

01:04:11 ◼   ► I know, having been just in the area

01:04:16 ◼   ► of people discussing this for a while now,

01:04:19 ◼   ► I know now that it is never that simple.

01:04:22 ◼   ► And so when you throw out a stat like,

01:04:27 ◼   ► "Well, you know, America is X percent white,

01:04:29 ◼   ► "and so that's fine," it is usually not that simple.

01:04:33 ◼   ► And so I know to keep my mouth shut with things like that,

01:04:37 ◼   ► because I know, I'll hear something like that,

01:04:38 ◼   ► and I'll be like, "Yeah, that might make logical sense

01:04:41 ◼   ► "when you read it in 140 characters,

01:04:43 ◼   ► "but I bet there's more to the issue than that."

01:04:45 ◼   ► And so it's important,

01:04:48 ◼   ► When you are responding to people, not you Casey,

01:04:50 ◼   ► but you the public, and I'm talking to myself too,

01:04:54 ◼   ► don't just jump to a conclusion like that

01:04:55 ◼   ► because chances are the issue

01:04:56 ◼   ► is way more complicated than that.

01:04:58 ◼   ► So John, tell us why.

01:04:59 ◼   ► - I was gonna start getting to the thing,

01:05:02 ◼   ► but I'm basically on what you just said.

01:05:04 ◼   ► That's something I always notice on Twitter,

01:05:08 ◼   ► and we all notice it to some degree or another,

01:05:10 ◼   ► whether we're doing it ourselves

01:05:11 ◼   ► or we see other people doing it,

01:05:14 ◼   ► where people will start from a premise

01:05:18 ◼   ► and then start throwing out facts in support of that.

01:05:21 ◼   ► And that's fine, right?

01:05:23 ◼   ► Because why wouldn't you?

01:05:24 ◼   ► You know, this is what you think.

01:05:25 ◼   ► And so you will find facts that support what you think

01:05:27 ◼   ► and then you will list those facts.

01:05:30 ◼   ► But it's always important to kind of ask yourself,

01:05:32 ◼   ► why am I seeking out the facts that I can find

01:05:38 ◼   ► that align with this thing that I already think?

01:05:40 ◼   ► Like, am I actually thinking about the situation

01:05:42 ◼   ► I'm merely just trying to find something that will support my release.

01:05:46 ◼   ► So that maybe, I mean, this is not universally true, but perhaps someone who was telling

01:05:51 ◼   ► Casey, "Hey, you said this percentage was bad, but it's about the ratio of the people

01:05:57 ◼   ► in the United States."

01:05:59 ◼   ► You'd have to go look up the ratio of the people in the United States.

01:06:01 ◼   ► You could do it.

01:06:02 ◼   ► This is a bad example because they're probably too intellectually honest in this.

01:06:04 ◼   ► But a lot of times, you see an issue come up and people immediately go looking for something

01:06:10 ◼   ► they can throw out that supports their thing.

01:06:12 ◼   ► really asking why am I so desperate to find things that support this rather than looking

01:06:18 ◼   ► at the issue from first principles or understanding the wider context.

01:06:22 ◼   ► Because there will always be things, especially statistics, that can help support one side

01:06:27 ◼   ► or the other.

01:06:28 ◼   ► But if you're only ever looking for and saying repeatedly to anyone who mentions anything

01:06:31 ◼   ► about the topic the few facts you have in your back pocket that support the one thing

01:06:35 ◼   ► that you care about, you probably are missing the larger issue.

01:06:37 ◼   ► And what you're really missing more is why is it so important to you that your current

01:06:41 ◼   ► view of this be exactly correct. So anyway as for these specific stats I

01:06:46 ◼   ► don't know I thought the stats were just US only so I think there are percentages

01:06:51 ◼   ► for you know white employees that are actually accurate to the United States

01:06:56 ◼   ► the United States has that percentage of the population and then that's there you

01:06:58 ◼   ► know so I thought that was an apt comparison but like Margot said it's

01:07:02 ◼   ► never quite that simple because you know especially with statistics you can

01:07:05 ◼   ► they're taking like all their employees right and all US employees Apple

01:07:10 ◼   ► employees a lot of people and not all those jobs are the same. If you start

01:07:15 ◼   ► looking at different sections of employees the percentages, I think they

01:07:18 ◼   ► do this don't they break it down on the page, the percentages will change you

01:07:22 ◼   ► know pretty dramatically by five to ten percent maybe even more. If you look at

01:07:27 ◼   ► like the top level of the org chart director level C level executives they

01:07:33 ◼   ► are not 56% white right so and then all the way down to look at engineering

01:07:39 ◼   ► versus QA versus retail versus, you know, all the different categorizations. If you lump them all

01:07:46 ◼   ► together, it's nice to get a nice aggregate, but you don't know what the pieces are, right? And so

01:07:49 ◼   ► Apple's not trying to mislead anybody there. They're not going to break down their hiring and

01:07:55 ◼   ► their employees by individual job level and location and, well, what is the population in

01:08:01 ◼   ► the state of Maryland and what are the retail employees in the state of Maryland and what about,

01:08:04 ◼   ► you know, like it's just, they're not going to do that, right? But that is Apple's job internally

01:08:08 ◼   ► to work on this problem because if their overall numbers happen to work out to the same percentage

01:08:14 ◼   ► of the United States but it's only because like all the leaders of the company are white men

01:08:19 ◼   ► and all the rest of the company are not, that's not that you're not you're not achieving your

01:08:24 ◼   ► goal of diversity right your goal is not to make a bunch of numbers match a bunch of other numbers

01:08:28 ◼   ► you can always pick numbers to make you look better or worse and to some degree Apple may be

01:08:32 ◼   ► doing that in the high level numbers that are up there but that's not the goal of the thing you're

01:08:36 ◼   ► not — Apple is not an amorphous blob of people that combine to one Uber person. They are a bunch

01:08:40 ◼   ► of individual people, and you want to know if, you know, if I get a job at Apple, what are my chances

01:08:46 ◼   ► of, you know, being in charge of all software at Apple? What are my chances of rising to the level

01:08:52 ◼   ► of the org chart where I'm taking meetings with Tim Cook and stuff? What, you know, what are my

01:08:56 ◼   ► odds of becoming an engineering manager or leading whatever? And if you look around you at Apple,

01:09:01 ◼   ► and it's like, "Gee, everybody who's an engineering manager is a white dude, and everyone in the board

01:09:06 ◼   ► meetings is a white dude, and everybody who's on stage at WWDC is a white dude." To a first

01:09:12 ◼   ► approximation, that was the case not too many years ago. And like I said, even now, the high

01:09:17 ◼   ► levels of the company are like that. Maybe you feel like, "Oh, sure, I can get a job at an Apple

01:09:21 ◼   ► store. They're good at it, but do I feel like this company is giving equal opportunity to everybody?"

01:09:30 ◼   ► And that's what Apple is working towards, and I don't think they've yet achieved it,

01:09:33 ◼   ► which is why they keep putting out these numbers. So as Casey said, if these numbers that were given

01:09:41 ◼   ► are these big aggregates and they haven't changed that much from year to year, it just shows they're

01:09:45 ◼   ► making slow progress, right? And so it's not phenomenal progress, but it certainly doesn't

01:09:49 ◼   ► mean because you can say 56% is less than 60%, therefore they're done, it absolutely doesn't

01:09:54 ◼   ► mean that because it doesn't take much thinking to realize, well, that's just a big aggregate

01:09:58 ◼   ► number and it's not that's not the goal the goal is not to simply people are asking that like

01:10:02 ◼   ► honestly asking like what is the goal what numbers you're supposed to see here to let you know that

01:10:06 ◼   ► apple has achieved its goal of diversity and the answer is those numbers are never going to tell

01:10:11 ◼   ► you that right otherwise you know they wouldn't they wouldn't be continuing along this path they

01:10:15 ◼   ► would just say when we're done we've accomplished our goal isn't that great right um and that's

01:10:20 ◼   ► before you even get into details of like percentage of u.s population versus percentage of u.s

01:10:24 ◼   ► population of working age, like not babies, not children, not retired people, you know, so it's

01:10:29 ◼   ► numbers are complicated. But anyway, I'm confident that Apple understands the problem before them and

01:10:35 ◼   ► is working towards it, just as I am not particularly tied to the specific numbers they throw out on

01:10:42 ◼   ► these pages. All we're basically looking for is are the little graphs they put up going in an

01:10:46 ◼   ► upward direction? Do they have enough of them every year so they show they're making progress?

01:10:50 ◼   ► and how fast is that progress, what do the slopes look like.

01:10:54 ◼   ► Yeah, that's about it.

01:10:56 ◼   ► All right.

01:10:58 ◼   ► Well, we are out of follow-up.

01:10:59 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Betterment, Tracker, and Automattic, and we

01:11:04 ◼   ► will see you next week.

01:11:06 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental.

01:11:15 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:11:16 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental.

01:11:18 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:11:19 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:11:24 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:11:27 ◼   ► It was accidental (accidental)

01:11:30 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:11:35 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:11:40 ◼   ► @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:11:44 ◼   ► So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:11:48 ◼   ► ♪ Anti-Marco armen ♪

01:11:51 ◼   ► ♪ S-I-R-A-C ♪

01:11:53 ◼   ► ♪ U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-S-A ♪

01:11:56 ◼   ► ♪ It's accidental ♪

01:11:57 ◼   ► ♪ It's accidental ♪

01:11:59 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't mean to ♪

01:12:01 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:12:02 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:12:04 ◼   ► ♪ Tech podcast ♪

01:12:06 ◼   ► ♪ So long ♪

01:12:08 ◼   ► - Well, I wanted to talk about the Intel Fab thing.

01:12:10 ◼   ► That's a topic.

01:12:11 ◼   ► - Can we make that quick?

01:12:15 ◼   ► - Hmm.

01:12:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:12:18 ◼   ► Maybe. I don't know. Let's dig down what we have here. What do we have for an aftershow then?

01:12:22 ◼   ► We can do Instagram stories.

01:12:24 ◼   ► Instagram stories is a good idea because that's fluffy.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Yeah, it's this thing that appeared on top of Instagram recently that's confusing all the old

01:12:31 ◼   ► people like me. You're not that old.

01:12:33 ◼   ► Your wife's face is always up there. I know. She figured it out very quickly because she is

01:12:39 ◼   ► younger at heart and also biologically than I am. I am too old.

01:12:45 ◼   ► Am I what, three months?

01:12:47 ◼   ► - I think like six, yeah about six, yeah.

01:12:50 ◼   ► So I am too old to understand Snapchat,

01:12:53 ◼   ► so Instagram has basically cloned a major part of Snapchat

01:12:59 ◼   ► into the Instagram interface,

01:13:01 ◼   ► which has just confused Instagram for me,

01:13:03 ◼   ► and now I have this row of heads on top of Instagram

01:13:06 ◼   ► and I tap them and weird things happen,

01:13:09 ◼   ► and I don't really know what I'm supposed

01:13:10 ◼   ► to be doing with this.

01:13:11 ◼   ► Can you explain it to me?

01:13:12 ◼   ► - So John, I don't think I've seen any posts from you yet,

01:13:15 ◼   ► So you're not producing using this,

01:13:18 ◼   ► although I presume you're at least consuming it.

01:13:20 ◼   ► Is that fair?

01:13:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't see myself ever making one of these videos,

01:13:23 ◼   ► but they're up there and they tap on the faces.

01:13:25 ◼   ► - Okay, so the idea here, from what I can understand,

01:13:29 ◼   ► as someone who's never used Snapchat

01:13:31 ◼   ► and didn't really have any interest in Snapchat,

01:13:33 ◼   ► is with Instagram Stories,

01:13:36 ◼   ► you can take a photo or a video that is semi-ephemeral.

01:13:43 ◼   ► So I believe it's after a day they will self-destruct and your phone explodes.

01:13:49 ◼   ► It's very inconvenient.

01:13:50 ◼   ► No, they'll self-destruct and then they won't be available anymore.

01:13:53 ◼   ► Not to you, not to anyone else.

01:13:55 ◼   ► And so the idea is if your Instagram profile and the photos that you post on Instagram

01:14:02 ◼   ► proper is the like super staged, super deliberate, super serious version of you, Instagram Stories,

01:14:10 ◼   ► which is this ephemeral thing, is more of the candid, fun-loving, like, "Hey, here's

01:14:17 ◼   ► the real me, take it or leave it" sort of thing.

01:14:20 ◼   ► And I actually wanted to call out the latest episode of Connected, which is episode 103.

01:14:26 ◼   ► The host did a really incredible job of talking about kind of what the motivations are behind

01:14:33 ◼   ► Instagram Stories and how it's different than regular Instagram.

01:14:36 ◼   ► But regardless, I've really been enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would as someone

01:14:43 ◼   ► who had not even the slightest interest in Snapchat.

01:14:47 ◼   ► And one of the common complaints about Snapchat that I've understood is that anyone who is

01:14:51 ◼   ► over the age of about 18 finds the interface completely inscrutable.

01:14:55 ◼   ► And everything is gesture-based, and as much as we all hate tutorials as you install an

01:15:00 ◼   ► app for the first time, this is one of those instances where a tutorial or walkthrough

01:15:07 ◼   ► or onboarding would have perhaps been useful in Snapchat, because everything's gesture-based,

01:15:12 ◼   ► nothing's obvious, everything's weird.

01:15:14 ◼   ► In Instagram, there's a little bit of that in Instagram Stories, but it's not nearly

01:15:18 ◼   ► as bad, and I was able to figure it out pretty quickly, and I'd classify myself as an old

01:15:23 ◼   ► man just as much as you two are.

01:15:26 ◼   ► And I've been enjoying both consuming and creating.

01:15:30 ◼   ► One of the things I've wondered as I consider whether or not to post a new entry in my Instagram

01:15:34 ◼   ► story which sounds super cheesy, but anyway, one of the things I've been considering is

01:15:39 ◼   ► why would anyone else give a crap about this?

01:15:42 ◼   ► So like, as an example, I was going to take a picture of my setup at work, and you know,

01:15:47 ◼   ► after having obscured the sensitive parts of what was on my computer screen, and then

01:15:51 ◼   ► it occurred to me, I don't think anyone really gives a crap.

01:15:55 ◼   ► And so while I was at the beach, you know, I'm on vacation, whee, that's exciting and

01:15:59 ◼   ► kind of cool or whatever. I had posted a handful of times then, but now that I'm back on my

01:16:05 ◼   ► normal grind, well it's not my normal high roller, you know, look at me, I'm so awesome

01:16:09 ◼   ► life, it's my normal grind. So I don't know if I'll be producing that much or posting

01:16:15 ◼   ► that often from now until the next time I do something interesting, but I really like

01:16:21 ◼   ► the idea and I echo what Mike had said on Connected, and he's talked about it and he

01:16:28 ◼   ► and I both have talked about this on analog as well, that Instagram is kind of my happy

01:16:32 ◼   ► social network. I get a lot out of Twitter and I enjoy Twitter, but Twitter is nevertheless

01:16:38 ◼   ► kind of a dumpster fire where I cannot remember a time that Instagram has made me anything but

01:16:46 ◼   ► happy. And even with stories, it makes me happy in a different way because it's kind of the

01:16:52 ◼   ► fun, ephemeral, you know, "Hey, it's not going to be perfect and that's okay because life isn't

01:16:56 ◼   ► perfect. And it's brought, and this is a super sleazy business-y term, but it's

01:17:01 ◼   ► brought my engagement with Instagram up even more. And I check Instagram a

01:17:05 ◼   ► handful times a day because I enjoy it so much. But now I found myself checking

01:17:08 ◼   ► it more often wondering which one of my friends, because I tend to follow mostly

01:17:12 ◼   ► friends on Instagram, which one of my friends has posted something new and

01:17:16 ◼   ► something worth looking at. And so I have really been enjoying it. Two thumbs up

01:17:20 ◼   ► from me. I think it's super, super interesting and it seems to have

01:17:24 ◼   ► I have traction so far.

01:17:26 ◼   ► Don't think it's a flash in the pan.

01:17:29 ◼   ► This isn't the next Peach, I don't think,

01:17:31 ◼   ► but remind me of that in six months.

01:17:32 ◼   ► This is future Clean Shoppers.

01:17:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean like this, I have,

01:17:37 ◼   ► I've been using Instagram more and more recently

01:17:38 ◼   ► because I've been using the Explore View,

01:17:40 ◼   ► the little search thing at the bottom,

01:17:41 ◼   ► which Tiff introduced me to,

01:17:42 ◼   ► and I didn't even realize that's what, that was there.

01:17:45 ◼   ► I thought it was literally a search,

01:17:46 ◼   ► and I never wanted to search for anything,

01:17:48 ◼   ► so I never visited that tab.

01:17:50 ◼   ► And it turns out it's more of like a browser Explore View,

01:17:53 ◼   ► and you pick topics, so mine's full of watches

01:17:56 ◼   ► and puppies now, which is awesome.

01:17:58 ◼   ► And--

01:17:59 ◼   ► - I didn't know that either, actually.

01:18:01 ◼   ► - It is really nice to, so I'm using Instagram a lot now,

01:18:04 ◼   ► and I have the same feelings as you.

01:18:05 ◼   ► Instagram is just a feel-good place.

01:18:08 ◼   ► It is, both to browse and to post,

01:18:10 ◼   ► it is a just nice place to be.

01:18:13 ◼   ► People aren't universally terrible.

01:18:15 ◼   ► - Unlike Twitter?

01:18:16 ◼   ► - Well, in general, I'm saying,

01:18:18 ◼   ► including all services that we have,

01:18:21 ◼   ► people in general are not terrible.

01:18:24 ◼   ► The design of a social thing online,

01:18:27 ◼   ► a social construct, a social service,

01:18:29 ◼   ► the whole design of it, the structure,

01:18:31 ◼   ► what's allowed, what's possible,

01:18:33 ◼   ► how things work, who sees what,

01:18:36 ◼   ► that all affects how horrible people are enabled to be

01:18:41 ◼   ► and what kind of impact their horribleness can have.

01:18:46 ◼   ► So the same group of people can use two different services

01:18:51 ◼   ► and act very differently on them

01:18:52 ◼   ► and get very different things out of them

01:18:54 ◼   ► just because of differences in their design.

01:18:56 ◼   ► And so even if Twitter's entire user base

01:18:59 ◼   ► is also Instagram's exact user base,

01:19:03 ◼   ► you have better results on Instagram

01:19:05 ◼   ► because just the form and the structure

01:19:07 ◼   ► and the way everything works in a setup

01:19:09 ◼   ► and the expectations of it and the format and everything

01:19:12 ◼   ► just encourage better behavior

01:19:14 ◼   ► and limit the places people can be horrible to you.

01:19:17 ◼   ► So that's good.

01:19:18 ◼   ► What worries me about this,

01:19:20 ◼   ► And one of the reasons I never used Snapchat was,

01:19:23 ◼   ► and again, yeah, that conversation I connected was awesome

01:19:26 ◼   ► and we will link to it.

01:19:28 ◼   ► One of the reasons I never had to get into it

01:19:30 ◼   ► was because no one that I know really uses it.

01:19:33 ◼   ► Like all the people I would be interacting with

01:19:35 ◼   ► are on Twitter and Instagram.

01:19:37 ◼   ► So I don't need to use, first of all,

01:19:39 ◼   ► I don't need to use Facebook, which is great

01:19:41 ◼   ► because I don't want to use Facebook.

01:19:42 ◼   ► And I also, and yes, I know they own it

01:19:44 ◼   ► and that doesn't matter.

01:19:46 ◼   ► And I also never had to use Snapchat

01:19:47 ◼   ► because my people aren't there, really.

01:19:50 ◼   ► So to bring that to Instagram,

01:19:53 ◼   ► to basically bring a major feature of Snapchat to Instagram

01:19:58 ◼   ► is kind of okay on one level because it's like,

01:20:01 ◼   ► well, I wasn't gonna use Snapchat anyway

01:20:04 ◼   ► because my friends weren't there.

01:20:06 ◼   ► But on the other hand, it really shows,

01:20:09 ◼   ► Facebook has always been a very tasteless company.

01:20:12 ◼   ► Facebook is pragmatic and ruthless and tasteless,

01:20:15 ◼   ► just like Microsoft was in the 80s and 90s really.

01:20:18 ◼   ► Facebook now is this conglomerate really.

01:20:21 ◼   ► They have tons of properties that are major on the internet.

01:20:25 ◼   ► They have Facebook itself, which is probably

01:20:28 ◼   ► the biggest web property in the world

01:20:31 ◼   ► and probably will stay that way for quite some time.

01:20:34 ◼   ► Anything that gets really big that they think

01:20:36 ◼   ► might threaten that, they just buy it.

01:20:37 ◼   ► They have enough money to keep doing that indefinitely.

01:20:40 ◼   ► And they are clearly totally okay with like,

01:20:44 ◼   ► well if you won't let us buy you,

01:20:45 ◼   ► we're just gonna rip you off,

01:20:47 ◼   ► and we'll just kill you that way.

01:20:49 ◼   ► And that strategy doesn't always work.

01:20:53 ◼   ► Microsoft did the same thing.

01:20:55 ◼   ► Apple has done things on a smaller scale

01:20:57 ◼   ► with Sherlocking things,

01:20:58 ◼   ► but they don't usually do a huge scale job of it

01:21:00 ◼   ► with stuff like this.

01:21:02 ◼   ► Google does it sometimes,

01:21:03 ◼   ► and that strategy tends to work.

01:21:06 ◼   ► In general, when the big powerful companies

01:21:09 ◼   ► that already have all the users, and all the usage,

01:21:13 ◼   ► and all the attention going to them,

01:21:14 ◼   ► and all the time spent on their services,

01:21:16 ◼   ► if they clone some smaller service,

01:21:18 ◼   ► their clone often wins.

01:21:21 ◼   ► And if they can't clone it, they can buy it.

01:21:24 ◼   ► And this just kinda, it's a bit of a warning sign

01:21:28 ◼   ► of the power that Facebook has.

01:21:29 ◼   ► And I'm not saying Snapchat will be killed by this.

01:21:32 ◼   ► In all likelihood, Snapchat is too big now

01:21:34 ◼   ► and they'll probably be totally fine

01:21:36 ◼   ► because Snapchat's really big.

01:21:37 ◼   ► I think they're bigger than Twitter.

01:21:38 ◼   ► They're really big.

01:21:40 ◼   ► But it does kinda scare me a little bit

01:21:43 ◼   ► that Facebook is willing to so cavalierly

01:21:46 ◼   ► just like completely rip off the stories feature,

01:21:50 ◼   ► call it the same thing, do the same things,

01:21:52 ◼   ► use the same gestures, like completely rip it off.

01:21:55 ◼   ► It's so closely and so shamelessly

01:21:58 ◼   ► and they just couldn't possibly care less

01:22:00 ◼   ► because they are just that ruthless.

01:22:02 ◼   ► And we live in an age now where these handful

01:22:06 ◼   ► of big internet companies have a lot of control over us

01:22:11 ◼   ► and a lot of resources.

01:22:13 ◼   ► And the centralization of power here

01:22:16 ◼   ► is just getting more and more severe.

01:22:18 ◼   ► And that kinda worries me for the future

01:22:20 ◼   ► of internet things in general, things we do online

01:22:24 ◼   ► that use the internet or that involve the internet

01:22:26 ◼   ► or are the internet.

01:22:27 ◼   ► It is a little concerning.

01:22:29 ◼   ► - The thing that struck me about using this

01:22:31 ◼   ► and having used Snapchat a little bit

01:22:33 ◼   ► is what you often hear, and you guys said it before,

01:22:37 ◼   ► is like, oh, well, I don't understand Snapchat,

01:22:39 ◼   ► the kids understand it or whatever. And there is a demographic thing about what age groups use,

01:22:44 ◼   ► which applications, that's definitely true, and more older people use Instagram or whatever.

01:22:48 ◼   ► But Snapchat and also the Instagram stories have bad interfaces. They have bad user interfaces.

01:22:57 ◼   ► There is no sensible structure to the interface. They don't use OS conventions, that's for sure.

01:23:05 ◼   ► So the normal affordances and sort of the things you're used to in like generic UI kit,

01:23:10 ◼   ► you know, I don't know about another platform, I'm just talking about an iOS, but like it

01:23:13 ◼   ► doesn't look like iOS, that's for sure, right?

01:23:15 ◼   ► So it's kind of its own thing, and within its own thing, they don't really define any

01:23:19 ◼   ► particular spatial metaphor or something to hang your hat on where you can say, "Oh, I

01:23:25 ◼   ► see all up swipes to this."

01:23:27 ◼   ► I mean, like basically if you, you know, if someone's like, "Oh no, Snapchat is totally

01:23:30 ◼   ► sensible," what you'd basically be doing is listing, "This does that, this does that,

01:23:34 ◼   ► does that, just does that, there, now it's, that's not a system. That is just a list of

01:23:38 ◼   ► actions and the resulting, you know, what you're looking for a system is like, because I understand

01:23:42 ◼   ► the system, before you tell me the list of all things I can do, I can predict, oh, then obviously

01:23:47 ◼   ► the way to do x is going to be y. That's when you know you have a system. Snapchat doesn't have a

01:23:51 ◼   ► system or not a very good system. It's a lot of arbitrary crap in there. Not using native controls,

01:23:56 ◼   ► not using sort of unprecedented, right? So sort of setting their own standard. And why does,

01:24:03 ◼   ► Does that mean, is that why young people get Snapchat

01:24:06 ◼   ► and old people don't?

01:24:07 ◼   ► No, like there are other factors there

01:24:08 ◼   ► in terms of who it's advertised towards

01:24:10 ◼   ► and who the first users were and you know,

01:24:12 ◼   ► critical mass and social networks

01:24:13 ◼   ► and where my friends are and all those other things.

01:24:15 ◼   ► That all factors in as well.

01:24:16 ◼   ► But I think there is something to the idea

01:24:18 ◼   ► that young people will,

01:24:21 ◼   ► they do something because a bunch of their friends

01:24:24 ◼   ► are doing it, they'll just figure it out.

01:24:26 ◼   ► They have a high tolerance

01:24:28 ◼   ► for learning arbitrary stupid crap.

01:24:30 ◼   ► If I think about all the arbitrary stupid crap

01:24:31 ◼   ► that I learned, which basically is the entire early years

01:24:34 ◼   ► of computing where everything was terrible

01:24:36 ◼   ► and nothing made sense and the Mac was the only one

01:24:38 ◼   ► that had kind of an understandable system.

01:24:40 ◼   ► Think of all the things that I memorized,

01:24:41 ◼   ► things I learned how to do in video games.

01:24:43 ◼   ► There was no system, it was just arbitrary.

01:24:44 ◼   ► And kids have a lot of time and good memories

01:24:48 ◼   ► and they'll just plug away

01:24:50 ◼   ► until it becomes second nature to them.

01:24:51 ◼   ► So to kids, Snapchat makes perfect sense

01:24:53 ◼   ► because they memorized all the stupid gestures and commands,

01:24:56 ◼   ► even though those gestures and commands

01:24:57 ◼   ► are almost entirely arbitrary,

01:24:59 ◼   ► countered everything that every other UI paradigm

01:25:02 ◼   ► on the device they're holding has taught them

01:25:04 ◼   ► and are just plain bad, right?

01:25:06 ◼   ► They're just bad, this is a bad UI.

01:25:07 ◼   ► And so Instagram Stories didn't use all the same things

01:25:11 ◼   ► as Snapchat, but it's a similar thing

01:25:12 ◼   ► where Instagram was a very sensible,

01:25:14 ◼   ► straight up the middle iOS application

01:25:16 ◼   ► with a reasonable UI using metaphors and controls

01:25:19 ◼   ► and interfaces that we understood

01:25:21 ◼   ► so you could predict what would happen

01:25:22 ◼   ► when you did things for the most part.

01:25:23 ◼   ► There's always weird edge cases

01:25:24 ◼   ► and custom controls and stuff.

01:25:26 ◼   ► But then when they did Stories, it's into La La Land again,

01:25:29 ◼   ► where nothing makes sense and you can't you have no you have no nothing to hang your hat on except for like

01:25:34 ◼   ► Maybe it'll behave like snapchat

01:25:36 ◼   ► Which again maybe that's establishing a standard and if you're familiar with snapchat

01:25:40 ◼   ► That might be a good way to go if you're trying to do like what Margo said it like oh

01:25:42 ◼   ► We want to do a snapchat like thing then just copy a snapchat gestures because all the kids who do snapchat

01:25:47 ◼   ► It makes perfect sense to them and if they go to your thing and swipe or drag or tap and it doesn't do what they?

01:25:52 ◼   ► Expect from using snapchat. They think your thing is broken

01:25:55 ◼   ► But again, it's not a good UI just because they make it like snapchat for like or you know

01:26:00 ◼   ► Make things similar snapchat to try to get it's a little bar

01:26:03 ◼   ► They've got on the top with a little segmented timers and what happens when you swipe in different directions

01:26:07 ◼   ► and a little rotating effect versus the sliding versus up and down and tapping and it's just

01:26:12 ◼   ► These are bad interfaces. And so I maintain as the old cranky person that not only

01:26:18 ◼   ► actual reason like old people don't understand snapchat because they made a bad UI and

01:26:24 ◼   ► And because older people have less tolerance for figuring out a bad UI that doesn't look

01:26:29 ◼   ► like all the other ones they're going to do.

01:26:31 ◼   ► And I don't just think it's bad on many, many levels.

01:26:34 ◼   ► And again, this doesn't explain why old people don't use Snapchat.

01:26:37 ◼   ► There's so many other reasons, but this is a factor.

01:26:39 ◼   ► I'm saying this is a factor in that giant stew.

01:26:41 ◼   ► It's not the biggest factor, it's not even maybe a major factor, but it's there.

01:26:46 ◼   ► And that annoys me, because I feel like Snapchat could have been successful with a clever,

01:26:52 ◼   ► innovative UI.

01:26:53 ◼   ► games with this, like a UI that uses no native controls, totally custom, doesn't use anything

01:26:57 ◼   ► from UIKit, is the same on Android and iOS, but is delightful and understandable and fun

01:27:03 ◼   ► to use.

01:27:04 ◼   ► And someone can pick up and learn.

01:27:06 ◼   ► Again, this is my hobby horse, but it's really true.

01:27:09 ◼   ► If you make some kind of physical world-based metaphor like, "Oh, I have stacks of cards

01:27:14 ◼   ► and we can slide them from side to side and up and down and bring them together and collapse

01:27:17 ◼   ► them, or I can crunch them up."

01:27:19 ◼   ► Like if you make some sort of thing like, these aren't physical things, but in some

01:27:23 ◼   ► ways they behave in physical things or there's like a larger map that you can't see of this

01:27:27 ◼   ► application, once you learn the layout of that map, you know how to move around in it

01:27:31 ◼   ► and you know how to make things happen and you know what a button looks like and you

01:27:34 ◼   ► understand like any kind of metaphor like that, even if it uses totally non-native controls,

01:27:41 ◼   ► can become understandable where people start using it, learn one or two things that, oh,

01:27:45 ◼   ► I see how this works and then they can figure out how to do the other things without being

01:27:48 ◼   ► told explicitly, whereas Snapchat, it's like all mystery meat navigation, a bunch of inscrutable

01:27:53 ◼   ► icons and no real sense of where you are, what you're doing, where you're going.

01:27:57 ◼   ► You just memorize how it works because you're young and you have a lot of time or use the

01:28:01 ◼   ► application a lot and that becomes second nature to you and you just think that's normal.

01:28:04 ◼   ► So if you ask any kid, is Snapchat easy to use?

01:28:06 ◼   ► They'd be like, everyone knows how to use Snapchat.

01:28:08 ◼   ► It's like I know how to write my name, I know how to put one foot in front of the other

01:28:11 ◼   ► to walk and I know how to use Snapchat.

01:28:12 ◼   ► It's the most intuitive interface on my entire phone.

01:28:14 ◼   ► No, you just use it a lot.

01:28:16 ◼   ► That's what that means.

01:28:17 ◼   ► a good UI. And the reason they like using it is because it makes people like us that

01:28:22 ◼   ► angry. No, but that's not why we're angry about it.

01:28:25 ◼   ► I'm just saying it's a bad UI. You're angry about it because it's like you're making silly

01:28:28 ◼   ► videos of yourself and sending them to your friends and you're like, "Oh, these kids these

01:28:30 ◼   ► days shouldn't be taking video--" I don't care about that. Whatever, take videos. It's

01:28:34 ◼   ► the same thing when we take videos in our things and send it to our friends. It's fine.

01:28:38 ◼   ► Whatever. I have no anger towards people who use Snapchat. I have anger towards the developers

01:28:42 ◼   ► of Snapchat for making a bad UI.

01:28:44 ◼   ► [laughs]

01:28:46 ◼   ► Snapchat users, thumbs up.

01:28:48 ◼   ► Snapchat developers, thumbs down.

01:28:51 ◼   ► [beeping]