ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I sound like crap because I'm still freaking sick. Yeah, I'm currently nursing a throat

00:00:05 ◼   ► lozenge or whatever they call it, a cough drop.

00:00:08 ◼   ► It's pronounced "la-zenge."

00:00:09 ◼   ► Ah, right. And "biz-el."

00:00:11 ◼   ► Yep.

00:00:12 ◼   ► That was a reference, Jon. To you, actually.

00:00:14 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:00:15 ◼   ► Anyway...

00:00:16 ◼   ► Culturally significant that one time I mispronounced the word.

00:00:18 ◼   ► It was culturally significant.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Anyway, I have a question for you two. How in the name of Zeus's butthole—also a reference—do

00:00:26 ◼   ► You get healthy when you have a child that is waking up in the middle of the night more

00:00:32 ◼   ► than occasionally because he's like in a wonder week or teething or sick or whatever.

00:00:37 ◼   ► How do you ever get healthy if you can't sleep?

00:00:40 ◼   ► Waking up in the middle of the night implies that the rest of the night the baby is sleeping,

00:00:43 ◼   ► so really you don't have anything to complain about.

00:00:48 ◼   ► It's just this time in the night when the baby wakes up, if that is significant, then

00:00:52 ◼   ► that tells you that the rest of the night,

00:00:54 ◼   ► you have an expectation that the baby will be asleep.

00:00:56 ◼   ► So really, you have a really good sleeping baby

00:00:59 ◼   ► and you can't complain that much.

00:01:00 ◼   ► How do you get better?

00:01:01 ◼   ► You will eventually, it'll happen, you'll see.

00:01:04 ◼   ► - All right, well, to continue with the housekeeping,

00:01:06 ◼   ► all kidding aside, for the two of your benefit,

00:01:09 ◼   ► for your two benefit and for the live listeners,

00:01:11 ◼   ► if I suddenly go silent in the middle of saying something,

00:01:15 ◼   ► just give me five to 10 seconds

00:01:16 ◼   ► and assume I'm hacking up a lung and I'm just muted

00:01:20 ◼   ► and just carry on, or well I guess don't carry on,

00:01:22 ◼   ► just give me a moment, and if I really have disappeared,

00:01:25 ◼   ► assume that I've poured more stuff on Aaron's Mac

00:01:28 ◼   ► and it's just all over at this point.

00:01:30 ◼   ► - Now don't pour cough syrup on there, for many reasons.

00:01:33 ◼   ► First of all, there's no way it would survive that.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Second of all, cough syrup doesn't actually work.

00:01:37 ◼   ► - That's probably true.

00:01:38 ◼   ► - It really, like nothing.

00:01:39 ◼   ► Like believe me, I'm an expert in coughing.

00:01:42 ◼   ► Like cough suppressants just don't work.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Like the only effective ones are like the narcotic ones

00:01:47 ◼   ► that just knock you out.

00:01:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, that suppresses your cough

00:01:50 ◼   ► because it puts you to sleep.

00:01:51 ◼   ► - Right, like it's not,

00:01:52 ◼   ► that's not really fixing the right problem.

00:01:54 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, shooting you in the head,

00:01:55 ◼   ► but also stop your cough.

00:01:57 ◼   ► You know, not, maybe not a good idea,

00:01:59 ◼   ► but you know, that would do it.

00:02:01 ◼   ► So yeah, cough,

00:02:02 ◼   ► nothing that's a cough suppressant actually works.

00:02:05 ◼   ► The only thing that works is either fixing the root problem,

00:02:08 ◼   ► which isn't always possible,

00:02:09 ◼   ► or if you're lucky, just like chain sucking,

00:02:13 ◼   ► please don't make that a title,

00:02:15 ◼   ► chain sucking those Ricola cough drops

00:02:18 ◼   ► with the menthol, like the traditional default flavor,

00:02:22 ◼   ► whatever it is, not like the weird fruit ones,

00:02:24 ◼   ► the regular, like the brown ones that taste like menthol.

00:02:27 ◼   ► That helps as long as it's in your mouth.

00:02:29 ◼   ► Like as soon as it's gone, it stops working.

00:02:32 ◼   ► So that's why you have to have, like, if you buy those,

00:02:34 ◼   ► just go right for the big bag,

00:02:36 ◼   ► the one that has like 40 instead of 10,

00:02:38 ◼   ► go right for the big bag.

00:02:40 ◼   ► - I want to do some follow up.

00:02:43 ◼   ► Cool, sounds great.

00:02:46 ◼   ► John, Serge K. wrote in and quoted you in saying that you said, "The drive just see

00:02:54 ◼   ► blocks.

00:02:55 ◼   ► It doesn't know about file systems."

00:02:57 ◼   ► Serge wanted to tell us that, "Firmware of modern drives reaches one million lines of

00:03:01 ◼   ► code and they do recognize common file systems."

00:03:05 ◼   ► Obviously encryption breaks this, but that's not common, especially in data centers.

00:03:09 ◼   ► This allows the drive to reorder or delay commit some metadata updates that are recoverable

00:03:14 ◼   ► by checking disk in case of failure. You had put this in the show notes, so tell us a little

00:03:18 ◼   ► more about this, please.

00:03:19 ◼   ► >> Yeah, I'm wondering, I'm actually surprised by this, because this implies some sort of

00:03:26 ◼   ► synergy in the market between the people who sell these drives and the machines they're

00:03:30 ◼   ► expected to go in and the file systems they're going to use. Like, how can the firmware on

00:03:35 ◼   ► a drive know about a file system? Like, how does it know what file system it's even being

00:03:38 ◼   ► initialized with? How does that communication happen across the various layers of the storage

00:03:43 ◼   ► system to say, like can you just buy one of these mechanisms, stick it in a thing and

00:03:46 ◼   ► format it as ext4 or whatever and then it knows that it's formatted by ext4 and does

00:03:52 ◼   ► clever things.

00:03:53 ◼   ► This is actually very interesting and it's the type of thing that capital O, capital

00:03:58 ◼   ► A, TM, only Apple can do.

00:04:00 ◼   ► But hey wait, this has nothing to do with Apple.

00:04:02 ◼   ► I thought only Apple could have this kind of connection between hardware and software.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Well apparently it can also happen in the wild and woolly world of what I imagine are

00:04:10 ◼   ► Linux servers and random storage hardware.

00:04:13 ◼   ► So I'm always interested in cases where

00:04:16 ◼   ► the supposedly rigid layers of the storage hierarchy

00:04:19 ◼   ► are quote unquote violated,

00:04:22 ◼   ► as the claim was about ZFS back in the day.

00:04:25 ◼   ► There was a rampant layering violation

00:04:27 ◼   ► combining the file system and logical volume management

00:04:30 ◼   ► and a bunch of other things and raid all into one thing.

00:04:32 ◼   ► Like, you know, we have this nice layered approach

00:04:35 ◼   ► where each thing is responsible for each layer

00:04:36 ◼   ► and I can mix and match my logical volume manager

00:04:38 ◼   ► with my file system, with my RAID thing.

00:04:41 ◼   ► And ZFS combined them all to, I think, great effect

00:04:44 ◼   ► by saying if we don't have that mix and match thing,

00:04:46 ◼   ► kind of like the way Apple Macs are not in mix and match

00:04:51 ◼   ► where you get to pick your own CPU and pick your own this

00:04:53 ◼   ► and pick your own that and build your own Mac,

00:04:55 ◼   ► that Apple picks the components in the same way.

00:04:57 ◼   ► ZFS, by picking all those different layers

00:04:59 ◼   ► and combining them, did some really interesting

00:05:01 ◼   ► and cool things.

00:05:02 ◼   ► This sounds like an interesting and cool thing.

00:05:04 ◼   ► This is the first I've ever heard of this,

00:05:06 ◼   ► that an SSD, I'm assuming it just has drives here,

00:05:09 ◼   ► that an SSD knows about the file system

00:05:13 ◼   ► and I would love to learn more

00:05:14 ◼   ► about how that actually happens.

00:05:17 ◼   ► But there you have it, at least one report

00:05:19 ◼   ► that this is now a thing.

00:05:21 ◼   ► - All right, we also had someone write in, Ryan wrote in.

00:05:25 ◼   ► Apparently Ryan is the one Honda Fit driver

00:05:27 ◼   ► that listens to the show and he or she

00:05:30 ◼   ► wanted to correct us about cameras on the Fit

00:05:35 ◼   ► And as our resident Honda expert, John,

00:05:37 ◼   ► would you like to tell us a little more?

00:05:38 ◼   ► - I think I was making a joke last time about like toasters,

00:05:40 ◼   ► how you know, you can make a decent toaster for 50 bucks.

00:05:44 ◼   ► Like you just concentrate on the important things

00:05:46 ◼   ► and the same way that you don't expect a Honda Fit

00:05:48 ◼   ► to have the fancy cameras that Marco's BMW has,

00:05:51 ◼   ► you don't expect a fancy toaster

00:05:52 ◼   ► to have all the bells and whistles.

00:05:53 ◼   ► You just want the basics right.

00:05:54 ◼   ► Like I was saying that the knobs on a Honda Fit

00:05:56 ◼   ► and the controls on a Honda Fit

00:05:57 ◼   ► still feel like they're quality components,

00:05:59 ◼   ► even though it's a cheap car.

00:06:00 ◼   ► Apparently, I don't know if this is an optional

00:06:02 ◼   ► or standard equipment,

00:06:03 ◼   ► The Honda Fit does have cameras on all sides of it.

00:06:06 ◼   ► I don't know if it does that synergy thing.

00:06:09 ◼   ► Maybe Ryan didn't understand the feature

00:06:10 ◼   ► that on Marco's car where,

00:06:12 ◼   ► yes, it has cameras on all the corners.

00:06:14 ◼   ► It also combines the cameras to show you

00:06:16 ◼   ► as if there's like a virtual camera floating above your car,

00:06:20 ◼   ► looking down on it so you can see

00:06:21 ◼   ► what's on all sides of your car in real time.

00:06:23 ◼   ► - Yes, the bird's eye view.

00:06:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I think this is just a bunch of cameras

00:06:28 ◼   ► on the corners to show you like your blind spots and stuff,

00:06:30 ◼   ► which is cool and everything.

00:06:31 ◼   ► It just shows how this tech is slowly creeping down.

00:06:34 ◼   ► And once you have the cameras in place, the extra bit of smarts to combine them into an

00:06:40 ◼   ► image isn't that complicated.

00:06:41 ◼   ► So it seems like it will eventually trickle down to even the cheapest cars.

00:06:44 ◼   ► But it shows that either as standard equipment or possibly optional on the Honda Fit, you

00:06:49 ◼   ► have a bunch of cameras that show you things.

00:06:51 ◼   ► Even on my Honda Accord, I have a backup camera.

00:06:54 ◼   ► So they're cameras.

00:06:55 ◼   ► They're coming to cars near you.

00:06:56 ◼   ► Yes.

00:06:57 ◼   ► And please, please don't write in telling us about regulations and things that are going

00:07:00 ◼   ► require backup cameras to be there. We know about those. Thank you.

00:07:04 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:07:05 ◼   ► Also, unrelated to any of the other follow-up, "unknown" has told us that there's lots of

00:07:10 ◼   ► classical music in the iTunes Music Store and on Apple Music. I'm not sure why that's

00:07:13 ◼   ► significant, but it's in the show notes and we have now covered it.

00:07:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know who said that, but a bunch of people—that's not a quote. It was like,

00:07:20 ◼   ► "Oh, there's tons of classical music." And then the very next thing from Frank Hertz

00:07:23 ◼   ► is, "For unknown reasons, iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, anything are awful at classical music.

00:07:29 ◼   ► vast archives of studio recordings for me and unavailable online. So there are two opinions

00:07:33 ◼   ► on classical music. One person saying that one person's name I did not record saying

00:07:37 ◼   ► there's tons of classical music and another person saying that there's not. So I don't

00:07:42 ◼   ► know what to think but obviously at least one person is not satisfied with the selection

00:07:46 ◼   ► available. You don't say. Yeah and then Chris wrote in to say that another thing that's

00:07:49 ◼   ► not on iTunes is hip-hop mixtapes, even mainstream ones, almost never on streaming services or

00:07:55 ◼   ► stores due to copyright for all the samples they include. Which I guess kind of falls

00:07:58 ◼   ► the same category as mashups.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Alright, this is my favorite piece of follow-up for this week.

00:08:04 ◼   ► We had somewhat comically, somewhat flippantly told _DavidSmith in the last episode, or had

00:08:11 ◼   ► assumed that _DavidSmith would figure out the origin of the phrase on an infinite time

00:08:17 ◼   ► scale.

00:08:19 ◼   ► This was referenced about 43 minutes into the last episode.

00:08:22 ◼   ► Underscore has reported in which is totally unsurprising and yet kind of surprising

00:08:27 ◼   ► And he has said that the first usage of the exact phrase infinite timescale wasn't was by Marco on

00:08:33 ◼   ► ATP 83 at about an hour in 14 minutes

00:08:38 ◼   ► However, the concept was introduced in ATP 53 at about an hour and 16 minutes, but in now I'm quoting

00:08:46 ◼   ► John never used the now canonical phrasing himself. I

00:08:52 ◼   ► I loved _DavidSmith. I don't know how he figured this out. I don't know what he did, but he figured it out.

00:08:57 ◼   ► Well, he is the official show historian.

00:08:59 ◼   ► That is true. He is the official show historian.

00:09:01 ◼   ► And the reason he looked this up is that my intention is that this infinite timescale thing is not the canonical phrasing of anything.

00:09:07 ◼   ► That it is what Marco made up to make fun of my argument that I made to him in probably episode 33.

00:09:14 ◼   ► And it's just the concept. The concept, once again, was that if you agree with me that something will happen eventually,

00:09:19 ◼   ► but can never actually agree on any actual finite time.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Like, well, you know, and then that's the mark.

00:09:24 ◼   ► I'll say, well, on an infinite timescale,

00:09:25 ◼   ► the idea is that you're not saying, you know,

00:09:28 ◼   ► it will happen when time equals infinity.

00:09:29 ◼   ► You're saying we all agree that at some point in the future

00:09:32 ◼   ► this thing will happen, but it won't happen this year

00:09:35 ◼   ► or next year or the year after that

00:09:36 ◼   ► or the year after that or the year after that.

00:09:37 ◼   ► And so you try to get to pin the person down and you say,

00:09:40 ◼   ► well, is it ever gonna happen or is it never?

00:09:43 ◼   ► And as well, it's gonna have it eventually.

00:09:45 ◼   ► Of course we agree.

00:09:46 ◼   ► But then it's like, all right, five years, 10 years,

00:09:47 ◼   ► 15 years, 100 years.

00:09:49 ◼   ► And so infinite time scale, infinity was,

00:09:52 ◼   ► is conceptually in there,

00:09:53 ◼   ► but I don't think I used that particular phrase.

00:09:55 ◼   ► Again, I'm not entirely sure,

00:09:56 ◼   ► because who can remember what you say?

00:09:58 ◼   ► So I had, I would love for people to find definitively

00:10:03 ◼   ► the source of this.

00:10:03 ◼   ► Someone else wrote in and said they thought it was on debug.

00:10:05 ◼   ► I think it was Guy English was saying like,

00:10:06 ◼   ► maybe you said it on debug,

00:10:07 ◼   ► 'cause I've made similar arguments with stubborn people

00:10:10 ◼   ► who refuse to acknowledge the inevitability of the future.

00:10:14 ◼   ► I believe, by the way, like the argument with Marco was about

00:10:17 ◼   ► - No, the argument maybe with Guy and Marco

00:10:19 ◼   ► was both about how Objective-C needed to be replaced.

00:10:22 ◼   ► - Yep, that's right.

00:10:22 ◼   ► - And I had to resort to like,

00:10:24 ◼   ► we all agree it's gonna happen eventually, right guys?

00:10:28 ◼   ► You're like, yeah, we'll find it.

00:10:29 ◼   ► And it eventually turned out to be like next year

00:10:30 ◼   ► or something.

00:10:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was like six months away, yeah.

00:10:33 ◼   ► - Right, but that's something like you never,

00:10:35 ◼   ► sometimes it's farther than you think.

00:10:37 ◼   ► And whenever it's like a new technology

00:10:38 ◼   ► is gonna be able in five to 10 years,

00:10:39 ◼   ► especially if it has to do with medicine,

00:10:42 ◼   ► it's always five to 10 years away.

00:10:43 ◼   ► And it just seems like it takes so long to get there.

00:10:47 ◼   ► But in tech, you could be caught by surprise

00:10:49 ◼   ► because lots of things in tech are feasible right now,

00:10:54 ◼   ► but we know there's a bunch of other things

00:10:56 ◼   ► that are stopping them from happening.

00:10:57 ◼   ► And so it could happen tomorrow, but probably not.

00:11:00 ◼   ► And it didn't happen last year,

00:11:02 ◼   ► and it didn't happen the year before.

00:11:03 ◼   ► Like we were with Objective-C for so long.

00:11:04 ◼   ► And even me with my whole thing of like Copeland 2010,

00:11:07 ◼   ► 2010 came and went, still Objective-C, right?

00:11:10 ◼   ► So that's the fun of the industry we're in,

00:11:14 ◼   ► that unlike medicine and other fields where things are very

00:11:19 ◼   ► often-- and pure science-- things are very often much

00:11:22 ◼   ► farther out than you think they are.

00:11:23 ◼   ► In technology, there are lots of things

00:11:25 ◼   ► that we know are possible today, but that sort of market forces

00:11:28 ◼   ► or momentum or just stubbornness of the people in charge

00:11:32 ◼   ► of these companies causes this not

00:11:34 ◼   ► to happen when we want them to.

00:11:36 ◼   ► But then you could just wake up one day and boom, all of a

00:11:39 ◼   ► sudden, it's there.

00:11:40 ◼   ► Boom, Apple has a new file system.

00:11:41 ◼   ► Where did that come from?

00:11:42 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:11:43 ◼   ► Someday it'll happen, right?

00:11:45 ◼   ► Someday.

00:11:46 ◼   ► It'll happen next year.

00:11:47 ◼   ► It could.

00:11:48 ◼   ► It could literally happen.

00:11:49 ◼   ► It could have happened this year.

00:11:50 ◼   ► It could literally happen next year.

00:11:51 ◼   ► There's nothing stopping it other than, you know, taking a really long time to do something

00:11:56 ◼   ► that should have been done years ago.

00:11:58 ◼   ► I enjoy this, what has become a routine segment of, in every show, Jon has to explain one

00:12:04 ◼   ► of the arguments he's made in the past that everybody keeps slightly misunderstanding.

00:12:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:09 ◼   ► - Well, the whole, the idea that infinite time scale,

00:12:13 ◼   ► the infinite time scale argument that that got,

00:12:15 ◼   ► that is the short version of this thing,

00:12:17 ◼   ► it's a terrible short name because it's misleading.

00:12:19 ◼   ► So that's why I'm trying to figure out, is this my fault?

00:12:22 ◼   ► Did I actually say this or is this Marco's fault?

00:12:25 ◼   ► And so far it's looking like it's Marco's fault.

00:12:26 ◼   ► - Most likely, yeah.

00:12:28 ◼   ► But I am really good at naming things,

00:12:29 ◼   ► even if names aren't entirely accurate.

00:12:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, you should have just called it the argument.

00:12:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:12:34 ◼   ► - All right, and our final piece of follow-up,

00:12:36 ◼   ► which I didn't even think to include

00:12:38 ◼   ► until I noticed it in the show notes,

00:12:40 ◼   ► so somebody else had said it, I guess Marco.

00:12:42 ◼   ► This is a very good idea.

00:12:44 ◼   ► In the show notes, it reads as follows.

00:12:46 ◼   ► Marco would like to explain the state

00:12:48 ◼   ► of US radio to non-Americans.

00:12:49 ◼   ► So, Marco.

00:12:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I put this in here last minute,

00:12:53 ◼   ► 'cause I kept thinking, we kept getting feedback from people,

00:12:56 ◼   ► 'cause last time we talked a lot about Beats 1,

00:12:59 ◼   ► and about how terrible modern radio is,

00:13:02 ◼   ► like broadcast FM radio.

00:13:04 ◼   ► And I will include Sirius XM in there as well.

00:13:07 ◼   ► I've been an XM customer for a long time,

00:13:09 ◼   ► then when Howard Stern went over,

00:13:11 ◼   ► I became a serious customer.

00:13:14 ◼   ► And I've been a satellite radio customer since about 2003,

00:13:19 ◼   ► yeah, about 2003, 2002.

00:13:22 ◼   ► So I've been there for a long time.

00:13:25 ◼   ► So, and before that, you know, radio was my whole youth.

00:13:27 ◼   ► Radio was everything to me.

00:13:29 ◼   ► Music was everything.

00:13:30 ◼   ► I grew up with radio as I think we all did,

00:13:32 ◼   ► being a very big deal.

00:13:34 ◼   ► And the state of radio, from what I've heard from people,

00:13:37 ◼   ► The state of radio in other countries, especially what sounds like people love BBC One and BBC

00:13:42 ◼   ► Radio, which I have no familiarity with at all.

00:13:46 ◼   ► I don't even know if that's the right station, I don't know.

00:13:48 ◼   ► It sounds like radio in other places is potentially good sometimes.

00:13:54 ◼   ► In the US, that is just not the case.

00:13:56 ◼   ► Radio in the US was gutted by Clear Channel, which is now iHeartRadio.

00:14:01 ◼   ► It was gutted by Clear Channel over the last couple decades.

00:14:05 ◼   ► And you know, you can't just blame one company and say they ruined everything.

00:14:09 ◼   ► The fact is, the difficult economics of radio ruined everything, really.

00:14:14 ◼   ► But it just became cheaper and crappier and more and more automated and fake and it just

00:14:21 ◼   ► became horrible to the point where now most FM stations in America are not...

00:14:30 ◼   ► very little human involvement. It's not like a DJ sitting at a console playing records all day,

00:14:34 ◼   ► you know, everything's like recorded ahead of time or just programmed completely with no humans or

00:14:39 ◼   ► with fake human involvement or minimal human involvement. There is no, like the idea of like,

00:14:44 ◼   ► a person with nice eclectic music taste curating a playlist for you, that doesn't exist really

00:14:51 ◼   ► on any scale. You know, there might be one or two stations in some cities that do it,

00:14:54 ◼   ► but for the most part in America, most places you are, you're not going to find that on the radio.

00:15:00 ◼   ► And so radio in America is just terrible. It's full of the worst commercials in the world

00:15:04 ◼   ► the same like 20 songs in a loop on a playlist and Sirius XM is

00:15:10 ◼   ► In most ways no better. It is as much as I've been a customer of this company for so many years

00:15:19 ◼   ► It's a horrible company. It's like it's horribly run. They have pretty questionable ethics when it comes to their marketing and billing practices

00:15:28 ◼   ► The audio quality is just awful over the air and their website is terrible, their app is

00:15:35 ◼   ► terrible, it's always been terrible.

00:15:38 ◼   ► The only reason this company exists and succeeds first was because it had eclectic music channels

00:15:43 ◼   ► nothing else had and at a time in the early 2000s when nobody had unlimited data plans

00:15:50 ◼   ► on their cell phones in their pockets that could play streaming services.

00:15:54 ◼   ► And of course after that then Howard Stern came on and that made a huge difference and

00:15:57 ◼   ► Now there's some exclusive talk shows

00:15:59 ◼   ► that have big audiences as well,

00:16:01 ◼   ► but for the most part, I see no future for satellite radio.

00:16:05 ◼   ► I think satellite radio is dead.

00:16:07 ◼   ► I think it'll be interesting to see what happens

00:16:09 ◼   ► to Sirius when Howard leaves

00:16:10 ◼   ► to see how much of an impact he has,

00:16:12 ◼   ► 'cause one of the problems with satellite radio

00:16:14 ◼   ► is that they can't tell who's listening to what.

00:16:15 ◼   ► So they can't tell how many of their customers

00:16:18 ◼   ► are listening to Howard Stern over the air

00:16:20 ◼   ► versus other shows, who knows?

00:16:21 ◼   ► But anyway, it'll be interesting to see what happens

00:16:24 ◼   ► when his contract is up this fall

00:16:25 ◼   ► and he has to decide to stay or go somewhere else in it.

00:16:28 ◼   ► Sure, sounds like from his comments, he's not gonna stay,

00:16:30 ◼   ► so we'll see what happens.

00:16:32 ◼   ► I've heard a few people suggest that maybe Apple

00:16:35 ◼   ► would hire him to do like a Beats 2 and it's all talk.

00:16:38 ◼   ► I don't see that happening at all,

00:16:40 ◼   ► just because I don't see Apple wanting his,

00:16:44 ◼   ► basically his profanity and dirtiness,

00:16:46 ◼   ► and I don't see him wanting to do a show without it.

00:16:49 ◼   ► - I won't even let any porn in the App Store.

00:16:51 ◼   ► I think I ended up at Howard Stern on their radio station.

00:16:54 ◼   ► - So going back to the original point,

00:16:55 ◼   ► Radio is horrible in America.

00:16:58 ◼   ► Sirius XM is horrible.

00:17:00 ◼   ► And so Beats 1 being like DJs that are talented

00:17:05 ◼   ► at being DJs playing good music,

00:17:08 ◼   ► that is actually novel again.

00:17:10 ◼   ► Because we haven't had that for a very long time in America.

00:17:13 ◼   ► So that's why it was such a big deal to us last year

00:17:15 ◼   ► or last week rather, sorry.

00:17:17 ◼   ► And if the rest of the world,

00:17:20 ◼   ► if you have great radio stations on just broadcast,

00:17:24 ◼   ► That's great, congratulations, enjoy them while you can,

00:17:27 ◼   ► enjoy them while they're there.

00:17:28 ◼   ► We haven't had them in a very long time.

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00:20:45 ◼   ► - All right, so we had kind of teased this last week

00:20:50 ◼   ► and we should probably talk about it this week.

00:20:52 ◼   ► Jon, is Safari the new IE?

00:20:55 ◼   ► - Somebody says it is or sort of says it is.

00:20:59 ◼   ► - And then sort of retracted it, but it's all right.

00:21:01 ◼   ► He seems like a good guy, so I don't know.

00:21:04 ◼   ► I sympathize with somebody writing a rant

00:21:08 ◼   ► and then it being spread way more than you think it should

00:21:11 ◼   ► or that you expected and then you have to deal

00:21:13 ◼   ► with all the like, oh, wait a minute,

00:21:15 ◼   ► Maybe I didn't actually, you know, mean that as severely as I said, or people are taking

00:21:20 ◼   ► the wrong idea from it.

00:21:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I sympathize with that a little bit.

00:21:23 ◼   ► Really?

00:21:24 ◼   ► So this is Nolan Lawson, the person we're talking about here.

00:21:26 ◼   ► He wrote a thing called "Safaris the New", i.e. it was republished or whatever by Ars

00:21:33 ◼   ► Technica but he's got it on his own site as well.

00:21:34 ◼   ► It was syndicated, John.

00:21:36 ◼   ► Is that what it was?

00:21:37 ◼   ► I don't understand.

00:21:38 ◼   ► I first read it on Ars, but yeah, somehow it appeared in multiple places.

00:21:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I like Ars, but I refuse to link to a syndicated version of the post.

00:21:44 ◼   ► We're gonna link to the original one.

00:21:45 ◼   ► - But did it, like the whole thing was there though.

00:21:47 ◼   ► So I'm assuming they asked him, hey, can we?

00:21:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, it was with permission.

00:21:51 ◼   ► Like, you know, that's just the whole,

00:21:53 ◼   ► like every time I write an article that spreads anywhere,

00:21:56 ◼   ► I get a handful of big sites saying,

00:21:59 ◼   ► hey, we'd love to syndicate your article to our audience.

00:22:01 ◼   ► And I've agreed a couple of times in the past.

00:22:03 ◼   ► You know what it got me?

00:22:04 ◼   ► Nothing.

00:22:05 ◼   ► Every time I did it, it got me nothing.

00:22:08 ◼   ► All it did was dilute the value of my original article,

00:22:10 ◼   ► compete for it in search results,

00:22:12 ◼   ► and make my site look worse to Google

00:22:14 ◼   ► because now I have duplicate content.

00:22:15 ◼   ► It looks like I stole it from Ars Technica.

00:22:17 ◼   ► It just, ugh. - Nice.

00:22:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was, and it wasn't actually ours

00:22:21 ◼   ► that I'd done it with in the past,

00:22:22 ◼   ► so I won't blame them specifically,

00:22:24 ◼   ► but it just never worked out well for me as the author.

00:22:27 ◼   ► It doesn't really, it helps the site that syndicates it

00:22:30 ◼   ► because they get content for free.

00:22:32 ◼   ► It doesn't really help you, the author,

00:22:34 ◼   ► in a meaningful way.

00:22:35 ◼   ► Anyway, so the gist of this article is,

00:22:40 ◼   ► Anand Lawson is a web developer,

00:22:43 ◼   ► and he said himself that he is an Android user

00:22:45 ◼   ► and an enthusiastic web developer,

00:22:47 ◼   ► and he contributes to a bunch of web standard stuff.

00:22:50 ◼   ► And he's very upset and frustrated with Apple

00:22:54 ◼   ► for, in general, two major things.

00:22:57 ◼   ► One, of kind of lagging behind implementing

00:23:00 ◼   ► new web standards as they come out,

00:23:02 ◼   ► and especially some of the more advanced,

00:23:03 ◼   ► recent stuff involving things like local databases,

00:23:06 ◼   ► local storage, and device access, stuff like that.

00:23:09 ◼   ► And secondly, he's frustrated with them

00:23:12 ◼   ► for not being visible active participants

00:23:15 ◼   ► in the web development community

00:23:18 ◼   ► and the conferences and stuff that he goes to

00:23:20 ◼   ► as a developer, and he thinks they need to be.

00:23:23 ◼   ► So I don't know, I mean, we are all current

00:23:26 ◼   ► or past web developers.

00:23:28 ◼   ► What do you guys think of this?

00:23:31 ◼   ► - I felt like it was reasonable for him to be embittered

00:23:35 ◼   ► that Apple wasn't really participating in this conference.

00:23:40 ◼   ► I'm going on the assumption, not knowing any better,

00:23:43 ◼   ► that this conference was important

00:23:45 ◼   ► and it wasn't like the Richmond, Virginia

00:23:47 ◼   ► Web Developers Conference, woo, you know, whatever.

00:23:50 ◼   ► I don't even recall what it was,

00:23:51 ◼   ► but I'm going on faith that the conference was one

00:23:54 ◼   ► that it would be appropriate for Apple to appear at.

00:23:57 ◼   ► I understand that Apple doesn't usually like

00:24:01 ◼   ► to show its hand.

00:24:03 ◼   ► I understand that this is not usually Apple's style.

00:24:07 ◼   ► I don't think it's unreasonable for someone who is into the "open web" to say, "Hey, it's

00:24:14 ◼   ► kind of BS that Apple wasn't there."

00:24:16 ◼   ► I don't think that's—I don't take any issue with that.

00:24:20 ◼   ► I do think he got a little bit aggressive saying Safari's the new IE.

00:24:25 ◼   ► And the way I read the original article was that he was bitter that his favorite new features

00:24:32 ◼   ► of the web, or his favorite, I don't know, new technologies, Apple doesn't seem to be

00:24:39 ◼   ► supporting, and he seemed like he was pretty grumpy about that. I don't think that was

00:24:42 ◼   ► really necessary, but like you said, Marco, sometimes you're just fired up about stuff,

00:24:47 ◼   ► and you get a little aggressive, and you really kind of regret it afterwards.

00:24:49 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's important that, you know, he did write this follow-up piece, and he addresses

00:24:54 ◼   ► many of the common criticisms head-on, and elaborates a little bit more, and does kind

00:24:58 ◼   ► of retract some of the severity of his original post, and he's, and, you know, he talks about

00:25:01 ◼   ► the title like, you know, Safari is the new IE

00:25:04 ◼   ► is a really catchy title, it's, you know,

00:25:06 ◼   ► some people accused him of being link baity,

00:25:08 ◼   ► it sounds like that wasn't really his intent,

00:25:10 ◼   ► but you know, it doesn't matter.

00:25:11 ◼   ► I think we can move past that analogy

00:25:13 ◼   ► because that is irrelevant 'cause it's really not accurate

00:25:15 ◼   ► and you know, we were all around developing

00:25:17 ◼   ► for the old IEs that were really bad.

00:25:19 ◼   ► I mean, the new IEs are glorious compared to the old ones

00:25:23 ◼   ► and they're still not quite right

00:25:25 ◼   ► but they're much closer now than they used to be

00:25:27 ◼   ► And it is impossible to understate

00:25:32 ◼   ► how much of a pain it was to develop

00:25:35 ◼   ► any kind of advanced web layout,

00:25:37 ◼   ► or even any kind of simple web layout, honestly,

00:25:39 ◼   ► any kind of web layout in like 2006,

00:25:42 ◼   ► when there was all this great stuff moving forward

00:25:45 ◼   ► and you had to still support these terrible versions of IE

00:25:48 ◼   ► that broke everything in such big ways.

00:25:51 ◼   ► It was so much worse back then, believe me.

00:25:54 ◼   ► So this is not, yeah, that was not a fair analogy,

00:25:57 ◼   ► but I think we can move past that as, you know,

00:25:59 ◼   ► that's not really the point.

00:26:01 ◼   ► - Well, I think there is something to that.

00:26:02 ◼   ► The reason why he picked that title.

00:26:04 ◼   ► Part of it could be, as you said,

00:26:05 ◼   ► like looking at this picture here,

00:26:06 ◼   ► maybe he's young enough that he didn't live through

00:26:08 ◼   ► the dark times and doesn't understand

00:26:10 ◼   ► exactly how grim the situation was when, like,

00:26:14 ◼   ► I remember not being able to set the font with CSS in IE.

00:26:17 ◼   ► Like, it was like, seriously?

00:26:19 ◼   ► Like, I can't style text.

00:26:20 ◼   ► Like, forget about layout.

00:26:21 ◼   ► Forget about the frigging box model.

00:26:23 ◼   ► Forget about, like, I just want to style text.

00:26:26 ◼   ► And back in the bad old days, IE5 could do it on the Mac,

00:26:29 ◼   ► but no other version of IE could do it.

00:26:32 ◼   ► So yeah, so there's obviously not in terms of severity.

00:26:34 ◼   ► But why would he pick this title?

00:26:36 ◼   ► The frustration he's feeling as a web developer--

00:26:38 ◼   ► and by the way, it's still true of current IEs,

00:26:40 ◼   ► even though they're so much better,

00:26:42 ◼   ► I still think IE is the new IE.

00:26:44 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:26:46 ◼   ► And what I mean by that is you want

00:26:49 ◼   ► to do something on the web.

00:26:51 ◼   ► And when you do anything on the web,

00:26:53 ◼   ► it's not like Android fragmentation

00:26:55 ◼   ► where you have to make 10 different versions,

00:26:56 ◼   ► sometimes it's just certain things you can't do

00:26:58 ◼   ► because you know X percentage of your users

00:27:00 ◼   ► are using a particular browser.

00:27:01 ◼   ► And if X is big, if X is even just like high,

00:27:05 ◼   ► single digit percentages, it's like, well, we can't do that

00:27:07 ◼   ► because what are you gonna say?

00:27:08 ◼   ► Screw you to that 5% of our users.

00:27:10 ◼   ► If you've got a lot of users, 5% has a lot of people.

00:27:12 ◼   ► Like no one is going to agree to that.

00:27:14 ◼   ► And so, oh, I wish I could use this thing,

00:27:16 ◼   ► but 5% of my users are still in IE8

00:27:19 ◼   ► and IE8 has a limit on the number of selectors in CSS.

00:27:22 ◼   ► And we either split up our CSS files into multiple files

00:27:24 ◼   ► or we don't use like, whatever,

00:27:26 ◼   ► like there's always some stupid limitation

00:27:29 ◼   ► for some technology you wanna use.

00:27:30 ◼   ► And there's always one browser that is like,

00:27:34 ◼   ► that is the one like when you say,

00:27:36 ◼   ► "Hey, I wish we could do this."

00:27:37 ◼   ► And then you try it in all the browsers

00:27:39 ◼   ► and this is the one that's like,

00:27:40 ◼   ► "Oh, it's supported everywhere, but at this one."

00:27:42 ◼   ► And again, I think IE is still that browser,

00:27:44 ◼   ► mostly in terms of not so much features,

00:27:45 ◼   ► but performance these days,

00:27:47 ◼   ► like a lot of times things that are reasonably fast

00:27:49 ◼   ► and all the WebKit-based browsers

00:27:51 ◼   ► are still not as fast in IE.

00:27:53 ◼   ► Again, IE is getting much better really fast,

00:27:55 ◼   ► so it is not the bad IE that it used to,

00:27:58 ◼   ► but it's still catching up.

00:27:59 ◼   ► But the techs that Nolan was talking about

00:28:02 ◼   ► are new things like Shadow DOM and web components

00:28:06 ◼   ► and service workers and things that give new capabilities.

00:28:11 ◼   ► A lot of them are sort of app related

00:28:13 ◼   ► and a lot of the focus on this article has been like,

00:28:15 ◼   ► oh, he wants to write things that are like native apps

00:28:18 ◼   ► but using web technologies.

00:28:19 ◼   ► But I think that's actually besides the point.

00:28:21 ◼   ► I think it's really, there's a bunch of new web technologies

00:28:23 ◼   ► And it's like, okay, well, what modern browsers

00:28:27 ◼   ► can I use this tech with?

00:28:29 ◼   ► And he points to the site caniuse.com,

00:28:31 ◼   ► which gives you nice grids of what browsers support

00:28:34 ◼   ► which thing, and for a surprising number

00:28:37 ◼   ► of these new things, Safari is the one

00:28:40 ◼   ► that's lagging behind, lagging behind Chrome even,

00:28:42 ◼   ► which used to be WebKit-based and now is based on Blink.

00:28:45 ◼   ► And even IE has implemented some of these things

00:28:51 ◼   ► more than Safari has.

00:28:52 ◼   ► And so if you are a web developer

00:28:53 ◼   ► and every time you wanna do something cool,

00:28:55 ◼   ► you are stopped because either mobile Safari

00:28:58 ◼   ► or desktop Safari, probably mobile Safari

00:29:00 ◼   ► because probably few people care about desktop Safari.

00:29:02 ◼   ► But anyway, if every time you go through this exercise,

00:29:06 ◼   ► you start seeing Safari as the one stopping you

00:29:08 ◼   ► and Safari has this historical reputation

00:29:11 ◼   ► as a good standards compliant browser.

00:29:13 ◼   ► You know, WebKit is great, everyone loves WebKit.

00:29:15 ◼   ► Like it's the good web rendering engine, right?

00:29:18 ◼   ► You start to feel like Safari is the one stopping you

00:29:22 ◼   ► from doing what you wanna do on the web.

00:29:24 ◼   ► And I think it is separate from,

00:29:26 ◼   ► do you wanna make apps or whatever,

00:29:28 ◼   ► like you wanna use IndexedDB and local storage

00:29:30 ◼   ► and all this stuff.

00:29:31 ◼   ► Even stuff like Shadow DOM has almost nothing

00:29:32 ◼   ► to do with apps.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Just has to do with having a sane way

00:29:35 ◼   ► to plop in some content on another page

00:29:37 ◼   ► and not have to fight the cascade of CSS.

00:29:40 ◼   ► Like web components and Shadow DOM,

00:29:42 ◼   ► stuff like these are good technologies

00:29:44 ◼   ► that are just beneficial to the web period,

00:29:46 ◼   ► having nothing to do with making web things like apps.

00:29:49 ◼   ► and Safari is behind on a lot of these.

00:29:53 ◼   ► And the other part of it that Casey was mentioning

00:29:57 ◼   ► is like, well, are they really behind

00:29:59 ◼   ► or had they just not announced the support?

00:30:00 ◼   ► Like is the next major version of Safari gonna come out

00:30:03 ◼   ► and have support for all these things?

00:30:04 ◼   ► 'Cause when new versions of Safari come out,

00:30:06 ◼   ► tons of stuff is in it.

00:30:08 ◼   ► And you don't hear about the stuff until it comes out,

00:30:09 ◼   ► which is different than the model

00:30:11 ◼   ► that the other browser makers do.

00:30:12 ◼   ► So in these web conferences,

00:30:14 ◼   ► when all the other browser makers

00:30:15 ◼   ► are showing off their cool things,

00:30:17 ◼   ► Apple's not there because Apple doesn't go

00:30:18 ◼   ► at any conferences, Apple goes to WWDC, right?

00:30:20 ◼   ► They don't, they tend not to show up at other places,

00:30:24 ◼   ► or at least not in a public way.

00:30:26 ◼   ► And so it feels like they're not participating

00:30:27 ◼   ► in the community.

00:30:28 ◼   ► So that combined with the fact that Safari is behind

00:30:30 ◼   ► on a lot of these things, makes you feel like the thing,

00:30:35 ◼   ► the browser that's stopping you from doing what you wanna do

00:30:38 ◼   ► is Safari, just like the browser that used to stop you

00:30:40 ◼   ► from doing what you didn't wanna do with IE.

00:30:42 ◼   ► And in terms of degree, it's, you know, world's different,

00:30:45 ◼   ► because again, people don't realize how bad it was

00:30:48 ◼   ► during the time when IE A sucked

00:30:50 ◼   ► and B was not getting any better.

00:30:51 ◼   ► Safari does not suck and is getting better.

00:30:55 ◼   ► It's just possibly getting better,

00:30:56 ◼   ► slightly slower in these specific areas

00:30:58 ◼   ► that web developers care about

00:31:00 ◼   ► in terms of this browser has support for this thing,

00:31:02 ◼   ► this browser has support, oh, Safari doesn't, nevermind.

00:31:05 ◼   ► And then that also spirals into like,

00:31:07 ◼   ► why can't I have other web rendering engines on iOS

00:31:10 ◼   ► and all sorts of other things?

00:31:11 ◼   ► But I think the kernel of truth behind the title

00:31:13 ◼   ► is that this web developer feels like every time

00:31:16 ◼   ► wants to use a new technology, Safari is the browser that's stopping him because Safari

00:31:20 ◼   ► is on the list of browsers that he cares about and has to support, but doesn't have this

00:31:25 ◼   ► new tech.

00:31:26 ◼   ► Well, I think it's even more specific than that.

00:31:30 ◼   ► I think it's that he's trying to make, and he elaborates a lot more on the follow-up,

00:31:35 ◼   ► like he believes, and this is not just him, this is a very widespread belief, that app

00:31:41 ◼   ► - App development, like native app development is,

00:31:44 ◼   ► you know, one thing and it's kind of a bad thing,

00:31:47 ◼   ► it's kind of inefficient, and that the way forward

00:31:50 ◼   ► for mobile is to just write really advanced web apps

00:31:54 ◼   ► and to have one web app that you write

00:31:56 ◼   ► that runs on all mobile platforms,

00:31:58 ◼   ► and that way you don't have to write native apps.

00:32:00 ◼   ► That is seemingly his main goal or position here

00:32:05 ◼   ► is like that is the end goal, that is the ideal.

00:32:09 ◼   ► And so what he's really talking about is,

00:32:12 ◼   ► iOS is holding him back.

00:32:14 ◼   ► It's really, it's 1000% about iOS Safari

00:32:18 ◼   ► and not about desktop really.

00:32:20 ◼   ► It's about iOS Safari and iOS Safari being

00:32:23 ◼   ► the only built-in thing that you can use on iOS devices,

00:32:26 ◼   ► which are kind of popular.

00:32:27 ◼   ► And he wants to write an app that can run on Android

00:32:31 ◼   ► and iOS by making it a web app.

00:32:33 ◼   ► And he wants that app to have basically

00:32:37 ◼   ► all the same abilities and quality and performance

00:32:40 ◼   ► and everything as native apps.

00:32:42 ◼   ► And that is extremely common among a pretty large segment

00:32:46 ◼   ► of web developers to have that goal and that position

00:32:48 ◼   ► and those priorities in mind, but I really don't think

00:32:52 ◼   ► those are Apple's priorities.

00:32:53 ◼   ► And I mean, I have a whole lot to say about standards

00:32:57 ◼   ► and standards people, but maybe I'll save that.

00:33:00 ◼   ► But just because that is what all these people

00:33:04 ◼   ► are pushing for does not mean that either

00:33:08 ◼   ► that's what users care about

00:33:10 ◼   ► or that's what Apple wants to enable.

00:33:13 ◼   ► There's lots of downsides to that.

00:33:15 ◼   ► Like one of the things he cites in his blog post,

00:33:18 ◼   ► in the second post, he's talking about,

00:33:20 ◼   ► he said, you know, just one of many examples,

00:33:22 ◼   ► he says there's a problem using

00:33:24 ◼   ► this local database interface, which forgive me,

00:33:27 ◼   ► I have not followed this stuff,

00:33:29 ◼   ► so I don't know what is possible, what is not,

00:33:31 ◼   ► and what the limits are.

00:33:32 ◼   ► but there is, he mentions how this local database thing

00:33:37 ◼   ► he's using local storage and iOS for websites,

00:33:41 ◼   ► for web apps is capped at 50 megs

00:33:44 ◼   ► and then it'll ask the user to confirm

00:33:46 ◼   ► that they wanted to go past five megs

00:33:48 ◼   ► once they passed five megs.

00:33:50 ◼   ► And he's saying this is really a problem

00:33:53 ◼   ► for making native apps, which makes sense.

00:33:54 ◼   ► Like if you're trying to store a whole bunch of data

00:33:56 ◼   ► natively in a web app and you're limited to five megs

00:34:00 ◼   ► without asking and then 50 megs total even after asking,

00:34:03 ◼   ► that is quite limiting for that purpose.

00:34:04 ◼   ► But from Apple's point of view,

00:34:07 ◼   ► they already offer a way to make apps.

00:34:08 ◼   ► It's called native apps and they don't have

00:34:11 ◼   ► those storage limitations and I can see why,

00:34:16 ◼   ► and I don't know if this is why this limit's in place

00:34:18 ◼   ► or whether they just haven't gotten around to it yet,

00:34:20 ◼   ► but I can see why they would look at this request

00:34:23 ◼   ► to basically let WebPig just store arbitrary amounts of data

00:34:26 ◼   ► or whatever they want and you could see why

00:34:29 ◼   ► that could be a problem.

00:34:30 ◼   ► 'Cause one part of App Review

00:34:32 ◼   ► that occasionally causes controversial issues

00:34:35 ◼   ► is they actually have storage rules on how you use storage.

00:34:39 ◼   ► And you have to mark your files as backup

00:34:43 ◼   ► versus not backup properly.

00:34:45 ◼   ► You can't just like download excessive amounts of data

00:34:48 ◼   ► or store excessive amounts of data without a good reason.

00:34:52 ◼   ► And storage management on iOS is all about per app controls.

00:34:57 ◼   ► So you can go to the general usage thing,

00:34:59 ◼   ► which still isn't great, but you can go there

00:35:01 ◼   ► and you can see, oh, I'm out of space,

00:35:02 ◼   ► what apps are using the most,

00:35:04 ◼   ► and Apple gives you these controls to say,

00:35:06 ◼   ► all right, well, here's your list of apps,

00:35:08 ◼   ► here's the storage they're using,

00:35:09 ◼   ► you can delete or make choices based on that.

00:35:13 ◼   ► So there's all this baggage that comes along

00:35:16 ◼   ► with the ability to use lots of storage space on a device.

00:35:19 ◼   ► And when you're enabling web technology

00:35:23 ◼   ► and web capabilities,

00:35:25 ◼   ► you have to be much more conservative

00:35:27 ◼   ► and much more limiting for many good reasons.

00:35:31 ◼   ► Performance, battery life,

00:35:32 ◼   ► but also security and usability.

00:35:35 ◼   ► And many of these features,

00:35:37 ◼   ► like modern web standards,

00:35:39 ◼   ► are going way beyond what quote web standards meant

00:35:44 ◼   ► 10 years ago.

00:35:45 ◼   ► 10 years ago, it was really talking about

00:35:47 ◼   ► how a page would be laid out

00:35:49 ◼   ► and different capabilities you'd have with CSS

00:35:51 ◼   ► and a little bit of JavaScript.

00:35:54 ◼   ► That's really what web standards were about.

00:35:55 ◼   ► So back then, the idea was,

00:35:58 ◼   ► let's fix all the garbage we did in the past,

00:36:00 ◼   ► make things better for layout,

00:36:03 ◼   ► and enable a few small things in JavaScript,

00:36:06 ◼   ► and let's make it so that we only have to make

00:36:08 ◼   ► one set of markup and blah, blah, blah.

00:36:09 ◼   ► So back then, that made perfect sense.

00:36:12 ◼   ► Back then, it was very defensible.

00:36:13 ◼   ► And it wasn't, by the way,

00:36:15 ◼   ► it wasn't some perfectly clean thing

00:36:17 ◼   ► that just happened all of a sudden

00:36:18 ◼   ► and everyone was on board.

00:36:19 ◼   ► That took years to hammer out,

00:36:21 ◼   ► and took years before that stuff was remotely usable.

00:36:25 ◼   ► But back then, it was a much simpler thing.

00:36:29 ◼   ► It was all about how does the page render?

00:36:32 ◼   ► Now, what many of these standards are demanding

00:36:35 ◼   ► or creating or requesting is much harder things

00:36:40 ◼   ► to make performant and secure and good for users.

00:36:45 ◼   ► And so things like spawning background processes,

00:36:49 ◼   ► having any kind of native hardware access

00:36:51 ◼   ► or like compiled code access, any kind of interaction

00:36:55 ◼   ► where you can break out of the browser.

00:36:56 ◼   ► So things like notifications,

00:36:58 ◼   ► access to the hardware, sensors, vibrations,

00:37:00 ◼   ► stuff like that.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Now, so many of these new standards

00:37:03 ◼   ► are breaking out of the page that is rendered

00:37:07 ◼   ► and doing way more advanced stuff.

00:37:09 ◼   ► Stuff that is usually only the realm of native apps,

00:37:13 ◼   ► at least in the past,

00:37:14 ◼   ► has only been the realm of native apps.

00:37:15 ◼   ► So especially on iOS, where Apple's very careful

00:37:18 ◼   ► about these things for very good reasons,

00:37:20 ◼   ► I can totally see why they would not only move slowly,

00:37:25 ◼   ► but also say no to some things.

00:37:27 ◼   ► Because that actually, if they actually let every web app

00:37:31 ◼   ► create 500 megabyte large databases

00:37:35 ◼   ► that are not under app review

00:37:37 ◼   ► and can do basically whatever they want

00:37:39 ◼   ► and it's hard for people to find and delete that storage,

00:37:42 ◼   ► that's a problem.

00:37:44 ◼   ► You have to, with any capability that Apple adds to WebKit

00:37:50 ◼   ► and the web engine in Mobile Safari,

00:37:52 ◼   ► they have to assume the worst.

00:37:54 ◼   ► Like, assume, like, what is the worst possible people,

00:37:58 ◼   ► what are the worst possible people gonna do with this

00:38:00 ◼   ► on like some ad network that's embedded

00:38:02 ◼   ► on every single webpage or something?

00:38:04 ◼   ► Like, there are so many ramifications,

00:38:06 ◼   ► there's privacy, there's battery,

00:38:08 ◼   ► there's usability, there's speed,

00:38:09 ◼   ► I mean, so many considerations there

00:38:11 ◼   ► that it is totally completely reasonable

00:38:16 ◼   ► that Apple would both move slowly

00:38:19 ◼   ► and say no to some things.

00:38:21 ◼   ► - I don't know, I think that limiting web technologies

00:38:24 ◼   ► to only things that show pages

00:38:26 ◼   ► and not allowing app-like things is short-sighted

00:38:28 ◼   ► because there's a lot of things that web applications

00:38:32 ◼   ► are doing today that are crappier

00:38:34 ◼   ► because of lack of progress in standards.

00:38:37 ◼   ► I mean, even just like sort of the modern way

00:38:39 ◼   ► of writing web applications

00:38:40 ◼   ► where a lot of it happens client-side

00:38:42 ◼   ► where they're essentially JavaScript applications

00:38:45 ◼   ► that execute on the client,

00:38:47 ◼   ► which is better than them executing the server,

00:38:48 ◼   ► fewer round trips and the client has faster CPU dedicated just to you and all

00:38:52 ◼   ► this other stuff. But still served up by loading a page that gives you this

00:38:58 ◼   ► gigantic wad of JavaScript that may be minified and obfuscated and then gzipped

00:39:02 ◼   ► and then you bring it back to the browser and of course the browser has to

00:39:04 ◼   ► compile it every time even if it has a cached version doesn't cache the compiled

00:39:07 ◼   ► copy and then that takes time. Sometimes just you burn milliseconds just

00:39:12 ◼   ► parsing and lexing and compiling the JavaScript before you even start

00:39:16 ◼   ► executing it. And that's the type of crap that makes just plain old web pages feel slower.

00:39:22 ◼   ► It adds latency to everything. That's kind of like the WebAssembly stuff that's going

00:39:27 ◼   ► on now. That's why I've always kind of been rooting for something like Dart but better,

00:39:32 ◼   ► or like Swift in the browser, or something like that. People are doing things with current

00:39:36 ◼   ► technologies that are making the web experience worse for users. And there are advances in

00:39:45 ◼   ► in those areas that are sort of separate from the,

00:39:48 ◼   ► like you were talking about it,

00:39:49 ◼   ► like, oh, well you just give web developers

00:39:51 ◼   ► free reign of your hardware

00:39:52 ◼   ► and let them store tons of data or whatever.

00:39:54 ◼   ► Just, you know, even like I said,

00:39:55 ◼   ► just shadow DOM and web components.

00:39:57 ◼   ► That's not, there's nothing nasty anyone can do with that.

00:39:59 ◼   ► And in fact, that enables technologies that allow you

00:40:02 ◼   ► to have sort of reusable components

00:40:04 ◼   ► that are more isolated from each other,

00:40:05 ◼   ► that don't have access to other parts of the pages

00:40:07 ◼   ► that are separate, that make web development easier,

00:40:10 ◼   ► just to kind of like do the things we're doing now,

00:40:13 ◼   ► but technologies to do them better.

00:40:15 ◼   ► And it's not as if Apple isn't pursuing these.

00:40:17 ◼   ► Like if you talk about the web standards stuff,

00:40:18 ◼   ► Apple is and has been for many years

00:40:21 ◼   ► an active participant at W3C.

00:40:23 ◼   ► Like they have an opinion on what you should use

00:40:26 ◼   ► for like serving up written images, for example.

00:40:29 ◼   ► Apple is a heavy participant in that thing.

00:40:31 ◼   ► The Canvas tag basically comes from Apple.

00:40:34 ◼   ► They do care about web standards

00:40:36 ◼   ► and they have that position and they push their things

00:40:38 ◼   ► and so does Microsoft and all the other participants

00:40:40 ◼   ► in the web standards process.

00:40:42 ◼   ► It's just that in the grand scheme of things,

00:40:45 ◼   ► if you had to rank the browser vendors

00:40:47 ◼   ► about how aggressive they are at pursuing standards,

00:40:50 ◼   ► for the most part,

00:40:51 ◼   ► the other browsers are more aggressive than Apple

00:40:55 ◼   ► and partly because they kind of have to be

00:40:57 ◼   ► because what would Firefox's claim to fame be

00:41:00 ◼   ► if it was both less popular

00:41:02 ◼   ► and less technologically advanced than Safari

00:41:06 ◼   ► and kind of the same thing for IE,

00:41:08 ◼   ► which is trying to like refurbish its reputation

00:41:11 ◼   ► as the browser that doesn't implement anything,

00:41:12 ◼   ► so they're gung-ho to jump on top of whatever they can.

00:41:16 ◼   ► And Google, of course,

00:41:16 ◼   ► which is everything it does is a web app.

00:41:18 ◼   ► So, you know, they,

00:41:20 ◼   ► I'll put a link in the show notes

00:41:21 ◼   ► to my code harder go home thing,

00:41:23 ◼   ► which was talking about why it was kind of natural

00:41:26 ◼   ► for Google to go its own way with WebKit,

00:41:28 ◼   ► because they were just,

00:41:28 ◼   ► they were driving the development to a large extent,

00:41:32 ◼   ► and they wanted things, and they wanted things now,

00:41:34 ◼   ► and they didn't want to be held back

00:41:35 ◼   ► by sort of Apple's more cautious release schedule.

00:41:40 ◼   ► So I think the frustration that all web developers feel

00:41:44 ◼   ► about whatever the browser is that's not letting them

00:41:46 ◼   ► do the thing they wanna do is real,

00:41:48 ◼   ► but I don't know what the solution is

00:41:51 ◼   ► because it's not as if, you know,

00:41:53 ◼   ► all this frustration can be real

00:41:55 ◼   ► and this position can be justified

00:41:57 ◼   ► from the point of view of a web developer,

00:41:59 ◼   ► but I don't think any of it is compelling in any way

00:42:01 ◼   ► for Apple to change what it's doing

00:42:02 ◼   ► because then you just flip around and say,

00:42:03 ◼   ► well, what is Apple's perspective?

00:42:04 ◼   ► What do they care about?

00:42:05 ◼   ► What role do they see the web browser taking?

00:42:07 ◼   ► What things are important to them?

00:42:09 ◼   ► And a couple of people like sort of countering this article

00:42:13 ◼   ► saying basically Safari is not that bad.

00:42:14 ◼   ► Take a look at this.

00:42:15 ◼   ► There was one showing the CSS for selector support

00:42:18 ◼   ► with WebKit Nightly has like 53% support.

00:42:21 ◼   ► And the closest one is the Chrome Canary at 32%

00:42:23 ◼   ► and everything tails off from there.

00:42:25 ◼   ► Apple has always cared a lot about CSS.

00:42:27 ◼   ► There was someone showing like a CSS spinner

00:42:30 ◼   ► just showing like a little shape spinning around with CSS,

00:42:32 ◼   ► looking at the CPU usage.

00:42:34 ◼   ► If you just let that thing spin, Safari CPU usage is zero.

00:42:38 ◼   ► Firefox is 23%, Chrome is 20%, this is on OS 10, not on iOS.

00:42:43 ◼   ► Apple has always cared about power efficiency,

00:42:44 ◼   ► so they want to do as many things as possible

00:42:47 ◼   ► in an efficient manner.

00:42:48 ◼   ► They emphasize a lot of the past couple WWCs of,

00:42:52 ◼   ► what should Safari or WebKit be doing

00:42:57 ◼   ► when a page is just open in the browser

00:43:00 ◼   ► but you're not looking at it?

00:43:01 ◼   ► Or like, how is Safari not killing your CPU

00:43:04 ◼   ► and waking it up every few milliseconds

00:43:05 ◼   ► to animate some stupid JavaScript thing?

00:43:07 ◼   ► How is it maintaining responsiveness,

00:43:09 ◼   ► but not killing your CPU?

00:43:10 ◼   ► Those are the things that Apple is concentrating on.

00:43:12 ◼   ► They're spending a lot of engineering effort

00:43:13 ◼   ► on things that are important to Apple for its platform.

00:43:17 ◼   ► And I don't think web developers complaining

00:43:20 ◼   ► that they can't use particular technologies

00:43:22 ◼   ► are going to convince Apple

00:43:23 ◼   ► to add those technologies any faster,

00:43:24 ◼   ► because there's no sort of meeting of the minds here.

00:43:27 ◼   ► There's no sort of like,

00:43:29 ◼   ► let me tell you why this would be better for you, Apple.

00:43:31 ◼   ► That's why you should do it.

00:43:32 ◼   ► All it is is just saying it would be better for me.

00:43:34 ◼   ► And Apple's like, well, it would be better for us

00:43:36 ◼   ► if you wrote native apps.

00:43:37 ◼   ► And so they just stand there with their arms folded

00:43:38 ◼   ► and say, well, I'm not gonna run native apps.

00:43:40 ◼   ► And Apple's like, well, I'm not gonna add that thing.

00:43:43 ◼   ► We're adding the things that are running.

00:43:44 ◼   ► Like the Safari team at Apple adds stuff all the time.

00:43:47 ◼   ► I'm always amazed when the new version of Safari comes out,

00:43:49 ◼   ► how much stuff is in it.

00:43:51 ◼   ► It's just not necessarily the things that you would want

00:43:53 ◼   ► if your goal is to be a web developer.

00:43:56 ◼   ► I do worry a little bit about Apple kind of falling behind

00:44:00 ◼   ► the other browser vendors to the point where it really is

00:44:02 ◼   ► the next IE in terms of standard support,

00:44:04 ◼   ► when like everybody else has had support for,

00:44:08 ◼   ► say index DB catches on

00:44:09 ◼   ► and it becomes like a big awesome thing

00:44:11 ◼   ► and everyone has it.

00:44:12 ◼   ► And everyone has had it for five years

00:44:14 ◼   ► and Apple still doesn't have support for it.

00:44:15 ◼   ► At a certain point kind of the web community

00:44:19 ◼   ► sort of votes with their implementations.

00:44:22 ◼   ► Just what happened with IE.

00:44:24 ◼   ► It's like, well, I can't do that 'cause IE doesn't have it.

00:44:25 ◼   ► Eventually the web community was like,

00:44:26 ◼   ► you know what, I'm using CSS.

00:44:30 ◼   ► The standard was released in 1996.

00:44:33 ◼   ► I'm gonna use it.

00:44:34 ◼   ► the only way I'm gonna style text on my site is CSS.

00:44:36 ◼   ► Screw IE, like the web community voted, they said,

00:44:39 ◼   ► even though the version of IE

00:44:40 ◼   ► that some huge percentage of my users are using

00:44:43 ◼   ► does not support this feature,

00:44:44 ◼   ► I'm still going to write my website in it.

00:44:46 ◼   ► And when an IE user complains,

00:44:47 ◼   ► I'm gonna say, you know what, screw you.

00:44:49 ◼   ► Like that can eventually happen.

00:44:51 ◼   ► You don't want Apple to ever get in the situation

00:44:53 ◼   ► where they are the only ones refusing to implement

00:44:55 ◼   ► some particular standard

00:44:56 ◼   ► because it doesn't fit with their strategy.

00:44:58 ◼   ► And that the wider community of web developers

00:45:01 ◼   ► votes with their keyboards and says,

00:45:04 ◼   ► Well, fine Apple, don't support it.

00:45:06 ◼   ► We're writing web apps with it.

00:45:07 ◼   ► Everyone who comes in here on mobile so far

00:45:08 ◼   ► is gonna see a big thing that says,

00:45:10 ◼   ► sorry, get yourself a modern browser.

00:45:12 ◼   ► Like that's the doomsday scenario.

00:45:13 ◼   ► We are far from that today, very far from it

00:45:15 ◼   ► because most of these standards they're talking about

00:45:17 ◼   ► are barely implemented in the other browsers

00:45:19 ◼   ► and are super buggy everywhere.

00:45:20 ◼   ► No one would write any app with it, right?

00:45:22 ◼   ► But I do worry about that happening

00:45:26 ◼   ► simply because Apple's priority seems so different

00:45:29 ◼   ► than the priorities of pretty much every other company

00:45:32 ◼   ► that makes a web browser.

00:45:33 ◼   ► even Microsoft at this point,

00:45:34 ◼   ► which maybe we'll talk about their difficulties

00:45:38 ◼   ► with their own native platforms

00:45:39 ◼   ► and how the web may become more important to them

00:45:42 ◼   ► as they go forward in the same way

00:45:43 ◼   ► that the web was kind of the savior of Apple.

00:45:45 ◼   ► Macs were saved from being completely irrelevant

00:45:49 ◼   ► because, well, everybody can use the web

00:45:50 ◼   ► and once the Macs could use the web,

00:45:52 ◼   ► that gave them an extension on their lifeline

00:45:55 ◼   ► and it gave Apple time to sort of come back from the brink.

00:45:58 ◼   ► Right, that could be the situation

00:45:59 ◼   ► that Microsoft's going through now.

00:46:00 ◼   ► So even though, yes, this article is sensational,

00:46:03 ◼   ► and it's sort of, it is stating one position,

00:46:08 ◼   ► but it is not particularly compelling Apple

00:46:11 ◼   ► to change what it's doing, I do worry about

00:46:14 ◼   ► the sort of kernel of truth underlying this dissatisfaction.

00:46:18 ◼   ► - And that's certainly fair, but I think, you know,

00:46:20 ◼   ► if this does continue to get worse to the point

00:46:25 ◼   ► where it's a big problem that Apple doesn't support

00:46:27 ◼   ► things other people do, the market will sort that out.

00:46:29 ◼   ► Like, you know, as you said, like, you know,

00:46:31 ◼   ► if somebody puts up the doomsday page and say,

00:46:32 ◼   ► "Well, sorry, are this cool app that everyone wants to use

00:46:36 ◼   ► "just doesn't work on Safari?"

00:46:38 ◼   ► Then Apple will, you know, if that truly succeeds,

00:46:41 ◼   ► then Apple will be forced to respond

00:46:43 ◼   ► and to respond or to lose all of our business

00:46:46 ◼   ► or to lose our browser.

00:46:48 ◼   ► And that's fine, but I think one of the problems with this

00:46:51 ◼   ► is what you said earlier, like, you know,

00:46:53 ◼   ► what's Apple's motivation here?

00:46:55 ◼   ► Like the goal of having web apps replace native apps,

00:47:00 ◼   ► that is something that web developers are clamoring for.

00:47:06 ◼   ► But are users clamoring for it?

00:47:08 ◼   ► Are native app developers clamoring for it?

00:47:11 ◼   ► Like it seems like this is the kind of thing

00:47:14 ◼   ► that web developers are all saying,

00:47:16 ◼   ► in order for us to keep doing things the way we like best,

00:47:19 ◼   ► we need these things to make us relevant in this world

00:47:22 ◼   ► that right now we kinda aren't first-class citizens in.

00:47:27 ◼   ► But that world and the people who use it

00:47:30 ◼   ► don't have that problem.

00:47:31 ◼   ► Like me, as a native app developer

00:47:35 ◼   ► and as a user of native apps on my phone,

00:47:40 ◼   ► I don't have the problem of my web apps can't do enough.

00:47:44 ◼   ► Like that is not a problem I have.

00:47:45 ◼   ► - But you know, you do have that.

00:47:47 ◼   ► Like web developers obviously have the problem.

00:47:48 ◼   ► Users have it too, because why users have that problem

00:47:51 ◼   ► is that developers have to, companies that have a software

00:47:56 ◼   ► product or service have to make multiple different native apps.

00:47:58 ◼   ► Why?

00:47:59 ◼   ► Because you can't make just one web app that works for everybody.

00:48:02 ◼   ► Or if you can't, it's crappy.

00:48:03 ◼   ► And that is worse for you as a user,

00:48:05 ◼   ► because it's them spreading their efforts

00:48:08 ◼   ► over several proprietary platforms.

00:48:10 ◼   ► The open web is good for users.

00:48:12 ◼   ► So it's bad for users, I think, that you

00:48:16 ◼   ► can't use the open web to make an app that's

00:48:18 ◼   ► as good as a native app experience

00:48:19 ◼   ► or close enough to be good enough.

00:48:22 ◼   ► That's bad for users, that's also bad for developers

00:48:24 ◼   ► because they spend more time fighting

00:48:27 ◼   ► with individual proprietary platforms

00:48:29 ◼   ► instead of the open web.

00:48:29 ◼   ► The open web is good for pretty much everybody

00:48:32 ◼   ► except for big companies, right?

00:48:33 ◼   ► And so there is this constant effort

00:48:35 ◼   ► to try to make the open web better.

00:48:37 ◼   ► As you know, native platforms are getting better

00:48:39 ◼   ► all the time.

00:48:40 ◼   ► Companies are highly motivated

00:48:42 ◼   ► to make the native platforms better.

00:48:44 ◼   ► They're also motivated to make their web browsers better.

00:48:47 ◼   ► They're always working hard to make Safari run faster,

00:48:49 ◼   ► pages load faster, which is why I think Apple could actually

00:48:53 ◼   ► do well to be more aggressive on the things that just simply

00:48:55 ◼   ► let you get your JavaScript loaded and cached

00:48:58 ◼   ► and precompiled faster than we're currently doing

00:49:01 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:49:02 ◼   ► But yeah, I think the open web is a benefit

00:49:04 ◼   ► to both developers and users, and it's only a detriment

00:49:07 ◼   ► to companies with proprietary platforms.

00:49:09 ◼   ► And so we're kind of in this catch-22.

00:49:10 ◼   ► It's like, well, it's actually not really good for users

00:49:13 ◼   ► because if they could make a web app, everybody would suck.

00:49:15 ◼   ► And then the web developers are like, yeah,

00:49:16 ◼   ► but we want it not to suck.

00:49:17 ◼   ► And so what happens first?

00:49:19 ◼   ► Do you make it not suck first or do you implement it

00:49:21 ◼   ► but then it still sucks but then everybody does it

00:49:23 ◼   ► and native apps are still better.

00:49:24 ◼   ► Like it's a difficult situation for everybody involved

00:49:27 ◼   ► but I think it's wrong to say

00:49:29 ◼   ► that there's no benefit for users.

00:49:30 ◼   ► It definitely, it's the same thing you've talked about

00:49:32 ◼   ► many times before about proprietary systems

00:49:35 ◼   ► owned and controlled by one company like Twitter

00:49:38 ◼   ► versus an open alternative.

00:49:40 ◼   ► The open web is an important thing to preserve

00:49:42 ◼   ► and continue to enhance.

00:49:44 ◼   ► And there's always gonna,

00:49:47 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know if there's always gonna be a gap

00:49:48 ◼   ► There's currently a gap, and I would like that gap

00:49:50 ◼   ► to be narrower, and I think narrowing that gap

00:49:53 ◼   ► between native and the open web would be good

00:49:55 ◼   ► for everybody except the possible exception

00:49:57 ◼   ► of companies like Apple and Microsoft.

00:50:00 ◼   ► - I mean, in general I agree, but I do wanna clarify

00:50:02 ◼   ► that my position is not that there is no user benefit.

00:50:06 ◼   ► My position is that there's too little user demand.

00:50:08 ◼   ► - Well, that's it, it's the catch-22.

00:50:10 ◼   ► Why would they demand a crappier app?

00:50:11 ◼   ► Like, they want, you know, they don't know.

00:50:14 ◼   ► It's not like they're demanding a web app,

00:50:16 ◼   ► because they're like, oh, when I use the web app,

00:50:17 ◼   ► So if I want to use the native one, the native one is better, right?

00:50:19 ◼   ► So it's something that they would benefit from, the users would benefit from, but they

00:50:24 ◼   ► don't know enough to ask for it.

00:50:25 ◼   ► In the same way that users wouldn't know enough to ask for a language like Swift.

00:50:28 ◼   ► They don't know what causes bugs, and if there was a better, different programming language,

00:50:33 ◼   ► it would cause fewer of those bugs and help develop.

00:50:36 ◼   ► That's not a user concern, but they reap the benefits of it.

00:50:39 ◼   ► Users don't know what technologies developers need to have to make their lives better.

00:50:44 ◼   ► And they're not going to even connect back to the fact that it takes twice as long to

00:50:47 ◼   ► get something, especially if you're on a lesser platform.

00:50:50 ◼   ► Like if you're on a platform that isn't...

00:50:51 ◼   ► If you have a Windows phone, maybe you feel this more acutely, then hey, there's a version

00:50:56 ◼   ► of this app for iOS.

00:50:57 ◼   ► And they said they're making an Android version, but they don't even mention the words Windows

00:51:00 ◼   ► phone.

00:51:02 ◼   ► But I guess I can use this webpage that we can all use, right?

00:51:06 ◼   ► Again, Mac users have been in that position where there were Windows versions of everything

00:51:10 ◼   ► they wanted, and a Mac version maybe was mentioned once or maybe never mentioned.

00:51:14 ◼   ► - We didn't even get Half Life for crying out loud.

00:51:16 ◼   ► We still don't have Half Life.

00:51:18 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:51:19 ◼   ► - Well but, and that's part of the problem here

00:51:21 ◼   ► is like the argument for web developers

00:51:23 ◼   ► making web apps being like the way forward

00:51:26 ◼   ► for all mobile platforms would be a much stronger argument

00:51:29 ◼   ► if there were more than two that mattered.

00:51:31 ◼   ► But there aren't.

00:51:32 ◼   ► And it's not, and most like companies

00:51:35 ◼   ► and startups and everything that have an app,

00:51:38 ◼   ► you can get away just fine making either just iOS

00:51:42 ◼   ► or iOS and Android?

00:51:44 ◼   ► - Well, that's a symptom though, isn't it?

00:51:45 ◼   ► Like, why are there only two?

00:51:46 ◼   ► Well, because native apps are so powerful

00:51:48 ◼   ► and because it's so hard to make a native app platform.

00:51:50 ◼   ► Like, if the open web was as powerful,

00:51:52 ◼   ► it would be harder for two platforms

00:51:54 ◼   ► to sort of dominate the entire market

00:51:55 ◼   ► because it would be like, well, you know,

00:51:57 ◼   ► we can have a diversity.

00:51:58 ◼   ► Like, Palm would have survived

00:52:00 ◼   ► if they didn't have to have their own native SDK

00:52:02 ◼   ► and have people write native apps

00:52:03 ◼   ► as the only viable way to, you know,

00:52:06 ◼   ► if web apps were the only apps,

00:52:08 ◼   ► and it's again, the same way that the Mac survived.

00:52:10 ◼   ► Like, why was the Mac,

00:52:11 ◼   ► Why did the Mac even continue to be relevant at all?

00:52:13 ◼   ► It's because the web became so big and it's like,

00:52:14 ◼   ► well, yeah, I can't have all these Windows applications,

00:52:18 ◼   ► but increasingly, as long as I can go to yahoo.com

00:52:20 ◼   ► and order books from Amazon,

00:52:21 ◼   ► a Mac is still a viable computer to own, right?

00:52:24 ◼   ► So it's, you know, it's, I don't know if catch-22

00:52:26 ◼   ► is the right term or chicken egg or whatever,

00:52:28 ◼   ► but each thing is blocking the other.

00:52:31 ◼   ► Like, well, it doesn't really matter

00:52:32 ◼   ► 'cause there's only two platforms,

00:52:33 ◼   ► but there are only two platforms

00:52:34 ◼   ► because the only way to write apps is native

00:52:35 ◼   ► and how many native platforms can we support?

00:52:38 ◼   ► Like you can't have seven, even game consoles,

00:52:41 ◼   ► it's only ever been like three with maybe a fourth.

00:52:45 ◼   ► Like there's just, you can't have 17 native app platforms.

00:52:49 ◼   ► So you can have 17 different web browsers

00:52:53 ◼   ► and different devices that all can view web pages.

00:52:55 ◼   ► That is totally possible.

00:52:56 ◼   ► Then you can get into like, well, web rendering engines,

00:52:58 ◼   ► how many of those are there?

00:53:00 ◼   ► Similar number, right?

00:53:01 ◼   ► But web rendering engines,

00:53:02 ◼   ► because they're defined by standards for the most part,

00:53:04 ◼   ► because we've all kind of agreed

00:53:05 ◼   ► that you can't just make up the marquee tag

00:53:07 ◼   ► and just be like, that's not a winning strategy

00:53:10 ◼   ► to just make up your entire proprietary thing

00:53:12 ◼   ► like ActiveX or whatever,

00:53:13 ◼   ► even Java Applets didn't catch on.

00:53:14 ◼   ► We want it to be open, we want the open web

00:53:17 ◼   ► to be not controlled by a single company,

00:53:20 ◼   ► but if we let it languish, then all that will be left

00:53:23 ◼   ► is proprietary native platforms.

00:53:25 ◼   ► - Oh sure, and also I think it would be remiss of us

00:53:27 ◼   ► not to also mention that this is not the only solution

00:53:31 ◼   ► to this problem.

00:53:32 ◼   ► So if you have this environment

00:53:35 ◼   ► of multiple mobile platforms, although let's be honest,

00:53:38 ◼   ► it's really one to two that matter right now,

00:53:41 ◼   ► and you want to have one thing that works on all of them,

00:53:44 ◼   ► there's already lots of things that let you make native apps

00:53:48 ◼   ► using some kind of shared higher level language

00:53:50 ◼   ► that then gets compiled down to the native code

00:53:53 ◼   ► to the other platforms.

00:53:55 ◼   ► Those things exist, and as far as I know,

00:53:57 ◼   ► they do pretty well in the consulting business especially.

00:54:00 ◼   ► And so there are other solutions to this problem.

00:54:02 ◼   ► Maybe, like, you know, the web, or the internet is fine.

00:54:06 ◼   ► You know, all this communication between these apps

00:54:09 ◼   ► and to servers is all going over HTTPS,

00:54:12 ◼   ► and it's using the internet,

00:54:14 ◼   ► but it is not displaying the front end

00:54:16 ◼   ► in a web browser necessarily,

00:54:19 ◼   ► or something that resembles a web browser.

00:54:20 ◼   ► And so, you know, the problem of making one front end app

00:54:25 ◼   ► that displays your stuff for all platforms

00:54:29 ◼   ► could be solved with web stuff.

00:54:31 ◼   ► with another proprietary company,

00:54:32 ◼   ► offering you a solution that's on top

00:54:33 ◼   ► of two other proprietary companies' things,

00:54:35 ◼   ► that's three things that can go wrong to,

00:54:38 ◼   ► because-- - Yeah, but nothing ever

00:54:39 ◼   ► goes wrong with web browser support for things.

00:54:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I'm saying,

00:54:42 ◼   ► a new version of a web browser is not gonna come out

00:54:45 ◼   ► in the next year that is gonna break the bold tag, right?

00:54:50 ◼   ► Whereas if you're writing something

00:54:53 ◼   ► that targets a particular API,

00:54:55 ◼   ► produces Objective-C code for iOS

00:54:59 ◼   ► and produces the Java code for Android and everything,

00:55:04 ◼   ► there are so many things that both those platforms

00:55:06 ◼   ► can do unintentionally to make it so that your thing

00:55:08 ◼   ► that targets both platforms breaks.

00:55:11 ◼   ► Whereas the web comparatively is much more stable

00:55:14 ◼   ► because it has to be, because there's tons of web browsers

00:55:16 ◼   ► and tons of markup and there's no sort of single

00:55:19 ◼   ► controlling body in the way that there is Apple

00:55:20 ◼   ► where Apple can just say, well, that API is gone,

00:55:24 ◼   ► or we changed our ABI, or we just changed from x86 to ARM,

00:55:27 ◼   ► or whatever, and you're like, oh god, this thing I have

00:55:29 ◼   ► that's supposed to be targeting multiple platforms

00:55:30 ◼   ► with a single code base is now like,

00:55:33 ◼   ► I don't even know with a year of work if I can get it to,

00:55:36 ◼   ► I don't know if it's ever gonna work again,

00:55:38 ◼   ► or they've changed the security rules

00:55:40 ◼   ► so I can't even do what I was doing before,

00:55:42 ◼   ► or they've changed the app submission rules.

00:55:43 ◼   ► Like with the snap of their fingers,

00:55:46 ◼   ► they can totally invalidate your entire strategy

00:55:49 ◼   ► for deploying stuff.

00:55:50 ◼   ► Whereas the web does evolve, but it evolves way more slowly

00:55:52 ◼   ► and there's no single, it's not a point,

00:55:54 ◼   ► there's no single company that can say,

00:55:55 ◼   ► you know what, the thing that you were making

00:55:57 ◼   ► that makes a web app that runs on mobile

00:56:00 ◼   ► and desktop browsers, like next week,

00:56:02 ◼   ► it's not gonna work at all.

00:56:04 ◼   ► - Our next sponsor this week is Backblaze.

00:56:08 ◼   ► Now Casey, I heard that you got some interesting information

00:56:10 ◼   ► about Backblaze.

00:56:11 ◼   ► - Indeed, just a few hours ago, a listener wrote in,

00:56:15 ◼   ► Nick wrote, "Hey Casey and ATP guys."

00:56:17 ◼   ► Not really sure how that distinction happened,

00:56:19 ◼   ► but that's cool.

00:56:20 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:56:21 ◼   ► - Thanks.

00:56:22 ◼   ► - Well, in his defense, he wrote it just to me,

00:56:24 ◼   ► so I'm assuming that's where this came from.

00:56:26 ◼   ► But anyway, he wrote, "I just wanted to share an experience.

00:56:29 ◼   ► I'm finishing up college and have a small film company

00:56:33 ◼   ► that I run out of my apartment off of old Seagate hard drives."

00:56:36 ◼   ► Hopefully not those three terabyte ones, right?

00:56:38 ◼   ► Right.

00:56:39 ◼   ► "And I haven't had the money to upgrade until recently.

00:56:42 ◼   ► While waiting for my new RAID to come in in the mail,

00:56:44 ◼   ► both my main hard drive and backup

00:56:46 ◼   ► completely failed because Backblaze is so cheap,

00:56:49 ◼   ► I had everything up there and downloaded my project files

00:56:51 ◼   ► and was able to cash some checks.

00:56:53 ◼   ► No Backblaze, no profits.

00:56:55 ◼   ► Thanks so much.

00:56:56 ◼   ► So hear it from a listener, not only from us,

00:56:59 ◼   ► this stuff really works.

00:57:00 ◼   ► But with that said,

00:57:01 ◼   ► Marco will tell you a little more about it.

00:57:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, and honestly, we've heard from a number of people

00:57:04 ◼   ► over the couple years we've been doing Backblaze ads,

00:57:08 ◼   ► people who Backblaze saved their bacon.

00:57:10 ◼   ► That is not an uncommon story.

00:57:12 ◼   ► And it makes sense.

00:57:13 ◼   ► So Backblaze is unlimited, unthrottled online backup.

00:57:17 ◼   ► Go to backblaze.com/atp to see for yourself.

00:57:21 ◼   ► It is five bucks a month

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00:57:26 ◼   ► You need to have online backup.

00:57:28 ◼   ► It is so nice to have the peace of mind

00:57:31 ◼   ► that all your files, all your memories,

00:57:34 ◼   ► all your documents, your photos, everything,

00:57:36 ◼   ► that is all safely backed up.

00:57:38 ◼   ► Let's say you already have a backup system.

00:57:41 ◼   ► Maybe you use Time Machine, maybe you use Super Duper

00:57:44 ◼   ► or another cloning program, maybe you use both.

00:57:46 ◼   ► That's great, you should, that's great.

00:57:47 ◼   ► Backblaze gives you that final fail safe

00:57:50 ◼   ► to know what if there's a flood in my house

00:57:53 ◼   ► and all my computer stuff that's on my desk

00:57:55 ◼   ► is destroyed, Casey.

00:57:56 ◼   ► You create mini floods all the time on your desk.

00:58:00 ◼   ► So what if Casey comes over and spills water

00:58:03 ◼   ► on your time machine drive and your computer

00:58:05 ◼   ► at the same time?

00:58:06 ◼   ► Then you're screwed unless you have something

00:58:08 ◼   ► somewhere else, right?

00:58:09 ◼   ► I highly recommend online backup for situations

00:58:12 ◼   ► like fires, floods, theft, Casey, power surges, anything.

00:58:16 ◼   ► You need something like this in your life

00:58:18 ◼   ► and for five bucks a month for unlimited space,

00:58:20 ◼   ► that's pretty hard to beat.

00:58:22 ◼   ► that value that you get for that

00:58:24 ◼   ► and that peace of mind you get for that.

00:58:26 ◼   ► Granted, everything I've said so far

00:58:27 ◼   ► applies to every online backup server for the most part.

00:58:29 ◼   ► What I like about Backblaze over the other ones

00:58:31 ◼   ► is not only have I never had any problems

00:58:34 ◼   ► with throttling or with limits or with bad performance

00:58:38 ◼   ► or bad upload speeds, which I can't say that

00:58:40 ◼   ► about the other services I've tried.

00:58:42 ◼   ► Also, their app is just nicer for me.

00:58:44 ◼   ► It's just better.

00:58:45 ◼   ► Everything about using them is just better for me.

00:58:47 ◼   ► The apps aren't slow.

00:58:48 ◼   ► I don't hit weird limits or anything

00:58:49 ◼   ► because they're native good apps.

00:58:51 ◼   ► Backblaze respects the Mac, their app is native code,

00:58:55 ◼   ► it is not like, you know, Java or web technologies,

00:58:59 ◼   ► it is real native code.

00:59:00 ◼   ► They have great features too, so they have an iPhone

00:59:03 ◼   ► and Android app if you want, and then what you can do

00:59:05 ◼   ► with that, you can like restore just one file.

00:59:08 ◼   ► So let's say you're on a trip, and you forgot a document

00:59:11 ◼   ► on your home computer, and you can't get to it.

00:59:14 ◼   ► Go to Backblaze, log in, and you can restore one file,

00:59:18 ◼   ► and that's it, then you have that document anywhere you are

00:59:20 ◼   ► from iPhone or Android.

00:59:21 ◼   ► Stop putting off doing this.

00:59:23 ◼   ► Really, you need online backup

00:59:24 ◼   ► and you need this online backup.

00:59:26 ◼   ► And that's me saying that, not them,

00:59:27 ◼   ► but they'll probably say the same thing.

00:59:28 ◼   ► So go to backblaze.com/atp.

00:59:32 ◼   ► Five bucks a month per computer

00:59:34 ◼   ► for unlimited backup, unthrottled speeds,

00:59:36 ◼   ► no add-ons, no gimmicks, no additional charges.

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00:59:40 ◼   ► You can get a risk-free, no credit card required trial

00:59:43 ◼   ► by going to backblaze.com/atp.

00:59:46 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Backblaze for sponsoring our show once again

00:59:49 ◼   ► and for just being awesome.

00:59:51 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:59:52 ◼   ► - I can't believe you're arguing

00:59:54 ◼   ► the proprietary side of this, Marco.

00:59:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:59:57 ◼   ► You're supposed to be the person who loves freedom

00:59:59 ◼   ► and hates Google for copying all your data into the cloud.

01:00:03 ◼   ► - Well, part of it is like I look at web standards

01:00:06 ◼   ► and standards people and I see, you know what,

01:00:09 ◼   ► this is all the same old bull.

01:00:11 ◼   ► Just now, you put the word standard on it,

01:00:13 ◼   ► it's like standard markdown.

01:00:15 ◼   ► Like, you know, you put the word standard on it

01:00:16 ◼   ► and it sounds like something that is like this,

01:00:19 ◼   ► this great purpose with this great intention,

01:00:22 ◼   ► this noble effort, and the reality is,

01:00:25 ◼   ► it's just companies having power struggles for themselves.

01:00:28 ◼   ► That's all it is.

01:00:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, but consensus is always ugly.

01:00:31 ◼   ► That's the whole point.

01:00:32 ◼   ► It's not owned and controlled by one company.

01:00:33 ◼   ► So you get a bunch of people arguing,

01:00:35 ◼   ► and they're gonna come up with something

01:00:37 ◼   ► that's not gonna be as pure as if one company decided.

01:00:40 ◼   ► But the end result is, hey, guess what?

01:00:42 ◼   ► No one company decided this.

01:00:44 ◼   ► No one company has enough pull of the W3C

01:00:47 ◼   ► to dictate what happens.

01:00:48 ◼   ► and the strengths of that and weaknesses.

01:00:52 ◼   ► The weaknesses are well known,

01:00:53 ◼   ► takes them forever to do anything.

01:00:54 ◼   ► Sometimes they come up with a stupid solution

01:00:55 ◼   ► that's a dumb compromise.

01:00:56 ◼   ► Doing things by committee is dumb.

01:00:58 ◼   ► The whole HTML5 mess with the what WG.

01:01:01 ◼   ► It's definitely uglier, right?

01:01:03 ◼   ► But the end result, no matter how crappy it may be,

01:01:06 ◼   ► is still not owned and controlled by a single company.

01:01:09 ◼   ► And that is its one shining true benefit.

01:01:11 ◼   ► And you have to say that for all the bumps

01:01:13 ◼   ► and the crappiness, over the long term,

01:01:15 ◼   ► where we were with HTML4, quote unquote, strict mode,

01:01:19 ◼   ► and where we are today, we have made progress.

01:01:22 ◼   ► It has definitely not been a straight line,

01:01:24 ◼   ► but web technologies and the things you can do

01:01:27 ◼   ► with web apps of all kinds, just from plain old web pages

01:01:30 ◼   ► up to things that act more like applications,

01:01:32 ◼   ► is way better now than it was a couple decades ago.

01:01:35 ◼   ► - Oh sure, but--

01:01:36 ◼   ► - So I think we're making progress,

01:01:37 ◼   ► and all along that progress, at no point,

01:01:40 ◼   ► with the exception of Microsoft trying for it,

01:01:42 ◼   ► has all this web crap been under the thumb

01:01:45 ◼   ► of a single company?

01:01:47 ◼   ► - That's fair, but there's also,

01:01:50 ◼   ► there's downsides to this,

01:01:51 ◼   ► and one of the downsides is,

01:01:52 ◼   ► like if you're a company like Apple,

01:01:54 ◼   ► and you have strong opinions about how things should be done,

01:01:56 ◼   ► which let's face it, everyone else does too,

01:01:58 ◼   ► but everyone else is more like a,

01:02:00 ◼   ► we can all agree on cheese situation,

01:02:01 ◼   ► where they make it sound like what they want

01:02:03 ◼   ► is the standard for everybody, but really it's for them.

01:02:05 ◼   ► But Apple is not gonna be pushed around here,

01:02:09 ◼   ► And if you're Apple, this could look as though like,

01:02:14 ◼   ► why should I let this consortium

01:02:16 ◼   ► of other of my competitors basically,

01:02:19 ◼   ► dictate my roadmap to me and dictate my features to me

01:02:23 ◼   ► and dictate how I do things.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Like it cuts both ways.

01:02:26 ◼   ► Like it is nice to have some kind of industry correlation

01:02:30 ◼   ► and some kind of ad hoc standards form.

01:02:32 ◼   ► And sometimes you do need like a dictated standard,

01:02:34 ◼   ► but there's also so many downsides to that

01:02:37 ◼   ► and it can go so wrong.

01:02:39 ◼   ► And you have this situation where,

01:02:42 ◼   ► if you let the standards bodies,

01:02:44 ◼   ► which are just a bunch of dysfunctional people,

01:02:46 ◼   ► just like any other committee,

01:02:48 ◼   ► if you let these committees dictate everything

01:02:51 ◼   ► you're going to do,

01:02:52 ◼   ► they're gonna make you do some bad stuff too,

01:02:54 ◼   ► and they're gonna make you do some things

01:02:56 ◼   ► that are against your interests,

01:02:57 ◼   ► and possibly not good ideas even for your users.

01:03:01 ◼   ► And so you have to be a little bit picky,

01:03:04 ◼   ► and you have to push back sometimes,

01:03:06 ◼   ► and you have to just declare your own standards sometimes,

01:03:08 ◼   ► and hope people catch up, which Apple has done many times.

01:03:11 ◼   ► - Well, that's been Apple's kind of MO in the W3C.

01:03:14 ◼   ► Like when they come and they arrive with the Canvas tag,

01:03:17 ◼   ► they're like, "You know what would be a really cool idea,

01:03:18 ◼   ► "guys, if we had this tag called Canvas,

01:03:21 ◼   ► "which by the way, you've already implemented in the iPad,

01:03:23 ◼   ► "looks exactly like Core Graphics, but don't mind that.

01:03:25 ◼   ► "Like, it'd be real cool if we had this, guys."

01:03:27 ◼   ► And if they say yes, it's great for Apple,

01:03:30 ◼   ► because they're like, "Yay, they said yes,

01:03:31 ◼   ► "and guess what, we already implemented it.

01:03:33 ◼   ► "Like, we're not just hypothetically telling you

01:03:35 ◼   ► "about something we think would be cool,

01:03:36 ◼   ► "we're telling you about something we already implemented."

01:03:38 ◼   ► And that's great for Apple.

01:03:40 ◼   ► And other companies are always doing the same thing.

01:03:42 ◼   ► Hey, I don't know if they've already implemented it,

01:03:44 ◼   ► but everybody is bringing to the table,

01:03:46 ◼   ► like here's how I think we should do retina images.

01:03:48 ◼   ► And by the way, we've already implemented this

01:03:49 ◼   ► in our web browser.

01:03:50 ◼   ► And everyone wants you to pick your thing

01:03:52 ◼   ► for whatever the thing is,

01:03:54 ◼   ► because A, that puts you ahead,

01:03:56 ◼   ► and B, you're the one who got to design it.

01:03:57 ◼   ► And like the committees may take it and say,

01:03:59 ◼   ► well, we like your proposal,

01:04:00 ◼   ► but we wanna adjust this, that, and the other thing.

01:04:02 ◼   ► And then you're like, okay, great,

01:04:03 ◼   ► we'll go back and adjust our implementation.

01:04:04 ◼   ► That's how essentially web standards works at this point.

01:04:07 ◼   ► All the companies are coming with the thing

01:04:09 ◼   ► that's exactly the way they wanna do it.

01:04:11 ◼   ► The thing that's important to them or their priorities.

01:04:12 ◼   ► And sometimes what happens is the thing that Apple wants,

01:04:14 ◼   ► they more or less get in the way they wanted it.

01:04:16 ◼   ► And the thing that Microsoft wants,

01:04:18 ◼   ► they more or less get it.

01:04:19 ◼   ► I think the Google, like each company has things

01:04:20 ◼   ► that's the most important to them.

01:04:22 ◼   ► And sort of all the things get defined as standards

01:04:25 ◼   ► and everyone kind of agrees like,

01:04:27 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, no, that's totally a standard."

01:04:28 ◼   ► But then who implements the Canvas tag?

01:04:30 ◼   ► Well, Apple certainly has it.

01:04:31 ◼   ► They're the ones who made it up.

01:04:32 ◼   ► It's their first.

01:04:33 ◼   ► Who else is gonna implement the Canvas tag?

01:04:35 ◼   ► The other ones like Grumble, Grumble,

01:04:37 ◼   ► maybe I'll do it or whatever.

01:04:38 ◼   ► And like the same thing with IndexedDB and Shadow DOM,

01:04:40 ◼   ► like whoever is the strongest driving force

01:04:42 ◼   ► behind those standards is the one that wants it the most.

01:04:45 ◼   ► And even if it gets sort of agreed upon by the committee

01:04:48 ◼   ► and written up on W3C and say,

01:04:49 ◼   ► this is gonna be a standard,

01:04:50 ◼   ► like that takes years and years for it to get to that stage.

01:04:54 ◼   ► Then you're still left with,

01:04:55 ◼   ► all right, who implements these standards?

01:04:59 ◼   ► Just because it's written down in W3C org website,

01:05:01 ◼   ► like you said, Marco, it doesn't mean Apple has to make it.

01:05:03 ◼   ► They get to pick and choose

01:05:05 ◼   ► which web standards they're going to make.

01:05:06 ◼   ► It's a bad look for Apple if the committee,

01:05:10 ◼   ► you know, the W3C agrees on how we're gonna handle

01:05:13 ◼   ► retina images and Apple implements his own way to do it

01:05:18 ◼   ► despite the fact that it wasn't the accepted standard

01:05:20 ◼   ► and refuses to implement the accepted standard.

01:05:22 ◼   ► Like that is sort of not playing the game the right way

01:05:25 ◼   ► and Apple wouldn't do that because eventually

01:05:27 ◼   ► five years down the line everybody else would have

01:05:29 ◼   ► implemented this way to do retina images

01:05:31 ◼   ► and Apple would have the other way and people would be like,

01:05:33 ◼   ► well I gotta do conditional markup because now

01:05:36 ◼   ► For everybody else, I can use this element,

01:05:37 ◼   ► but for Safari, I would have to do this.

01:05:39 ◼   ► No, Apple would never do that.

01:05:40 ◼   ► They're going to just go with the standard eventually anyway.

01:05:42 ◼   ► For these other things that aren't implemented yet,

01:05:45 ◼   ► it's just because Apple,

01:05:46 ◼   ► they're not high on Apple's priority list.

01:05:48 ◼   ► Like, either they're not gonna catch on,

01:05:50 ◼   ► in which case Apple will have been smart

01:05:51 ◼   ► to not waste time implementing it,

01:05:53 ◼   ► or if they do catch on,

01:05:54 ◼   ► eventually Apple will implement it

01:05:56 ◼   ► when it becomes important.

01:05:57 ◼   ► It's all about prioritization.

01:05:58 ◼   ► It's just that it seems like every other browser vendor

01:06:00 ◼   ► is more motivated at this point

01:06:03 ◼   ► to implement the standards faster

01:06:05 ◼   ► because almost all the important platforms

01:06:09 ◼   ► see the web at this point as their weapon

01:06:12 ◼   ► against whatever other proprietary platform

01:06:15 ◼   ► is beating them in whatever other market.

01:06:17 ◼   ► Because they're like, well, you may be beating me

01:06:19 ◼   ► in this market, but like, say, Windows Thrones, for example,

01:06:21 ◼   ► well, Android and iOS may be beating me

01:06:23 ◼   ► in the native app market, but if I hurry up

01:06:24 ◼   ► and implement web standards really well,

01:06:26 ◼   ► maybe I'll have really cool web apps at the very least,

01:06:29 ◼   ► and web developers will like our platform.

01:06:31 ◼   ► Like, it's the only thing available to them, right?

01:06:33 ◼   ► Or as Apple's priorities are different,

01:06:35 ◼   ► and Google's priorities are a little bit weird

01:06:37 ◼   ► because they have Android,

01:06:38 ◼   ► but they also have all of Google's web apps.

01:06:40 ◼   ► So Google is highly motivated to make the web awesome,

01:06:43 ◼   ► but also motivated to make a native platform

01:06:45 ◼   ► that competes with iOS.

01:06:46 ◼   ► So I get, I mean, in this game,

01:06:48 ◼   ► Apple is the only one who is highly motivated

01:06:51 ◼   ► to work on native apps

01:06:52 ◼   ► and slightly less motivated to work on web stuff.

01:06:55 ◼   ► So it kind of makes sense that they are

01:06:57 ◼   ► choosing different web technologies to concentrate on.

01:07:01 ◼   ► And that so many of the things that they're concentrating on

01:07:03 ◼   ► with their web stuff,

01:07:04 ◼   ► like with all this power saving things

01:07:06 ◼   ► and GPU acceleration are actually things

01:07:09 ◼   ► that make their overall platform better.

01:07:10 ◼   ► It's better when mobile Safari doesn't kill your battery.

01:07:13 ◼   ► It's better for selling iPhones, right?

01:07:15 ◼   ► And so they're doing that.

01:07:16 ◼   ► It's not really a native app thing.

01:07:18 ◼   ► It's like, that's our platform.

01:07:20 ◼   ► Our platform is this entire product,

01:07:21 ◼   ► not just the software it runs on.

01:07:23 ◼   ► And so Apple has been doing things to make their web browser

01:07:27 ◼   ► like every other part of the system more power efficient.

01:07:29 ◼   ► And I don't think anyone else is as motivated to do that.

01:07:32 ◼   ► maybe Android a little bit, but you know,

01:07:34 ◼   ► it's a strange mix of prioritization there.

01:07:38 ◼   ► And I think what we're seeing is the result

01:07:41 ◼   ► of different companies with different goals

01:07:45 ◼   ► and different priorities.

01:07:46 ◼   ► I just do worry that as these companies drift off

01:07:50 ◼   ► in the directions that it's natural for them to drift in,

01:07:53 ◼   ► that things will start separating too much.

01:07:55 ◼   ► It's why I wrote that code harder go home thing.

01:07:57 ◼   ► Like it was kind of disappointing to me to see

01:07:59 ◼   ► that Apple and Google couldn't stick together

01:08:02 ◼   ► and put all their effort

01:08:03 ◼   ► behind making great web browsing engine

01:08:04 ◼   ► that Apple and Google's directions and pace

01:08:07 ◼   ► was so different that they had to split.

01:08:09 ◼   ► And I worry about Apple being left behind

01:08:11 ◼   ► simply because their web rendering engine priorities

01:08:15 ◼   ► are so much different than Google's

01:08:16 ◼   ► and different than web developers

01:08:18 ◼   ► and perhaps not in the best interest of users

01:08:21 ◼   ► in the longterm.

01:08:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, the thing of it is that, as you both have said,

01:08:25 ◼   ► everyone is acting in their own interests

01:08:26 ◼   ► and that in and of itself,

01:08:28 ◼   ► I don't think that's unreasonable or bad.

01:08:31 ◼   ► It's just, like you just said, John,

01:08:33 ◼   ► I would hope that all of these different companies' interests

01:08:37 ◼   ► eventually kind of come back together over time.

01:08:40 ◼   ► And I think it was John that said a moment ago,

01:08:43 ◼   ► a few minutes ago, you know,

01:08:44 ◼   ► if it comes to be that the new FOO tag

01:08:49 ◼   ► is just the coolest thing in the world,

01:08:51 ◼   ► and Apple hasn't done it, and everyone else has,

01:08:53 ◼   ► and it's freaking awesome,

01:08:55 ◼   ► you bet your butt that Apple's gonna implement it.

01:08:57 ◼   ► It may not be as quick as you want, but it'll happen.

01:09:00 ◼   ► I don't see them just completely sitting on their hands

01:09:03 ◼   ► and going, "La, la, la, la, la, we don't care."

01:09:05 ◼   ► So I understand everyone's perspective here,

01:09:09 ◼   ► but I just don't see it as near as big a deal

01:09:12 ◼   ► as Nolan apparently did.

01:09:15 ◼   ► - Well, and I just keep going back to motivations here,

01:09:18 ◼   ► perspectives, so much of this is the perspective

01:09:22 ◼   ► of web developers who see this world taking off

01:09:25 ◼   ► of native apps and who want to stick with what they know,

01:09:29 ◼   ► what they're invested in, what they believe is right,

01:09:31 ◼   ► which is the web app,

01:09:33 ◼   ► and they don't want to come make native apps,

01:09:35 ◼   ► especially for the platform they don't use.

01:09:38 ◼   ► So, just like iOS developers, or like me,

01:09:41 ◼   ► like I use iOS, I'm an iOS developer,

01:09:44 ◼   ► I just can't address Android in a way that is good,

01:09:47 ◼   ► because I don't see it, I don't use it,

01:09:51 ◼   ► I choose not to have it be a part of my devices and my life,

01:09:56 ◼   ► and so I just can't serve Android.

01:09:58 ◼   ► And the web development world is not used to that.

01:10:01 ◼   ► The web development world is used to being able

01:10:02 ◼   ► to serve everybody with only writing one version

01:10:06 ◼   ► of the site, especially now that modern browsers

01:10:07 ◼   ► are so good with CSS and stuff.

01:10:10 ◼   ► You can really just write one version of the site

01:10:12 ◼   ► and have it work pretty much everywhere

01:10:14 ◼   ► without a whole lot of effort

01:10:15 ◼   ► and without a whole lot of hacks,

01:10:17 ◼   ► which is way better than it used to be,

01:10:19 ◼   ► thanks to web standards, John.

01:10:21 ◼   ► But you have to look at this as web developers really just,

01:10:25 ◼   ► of course they want to stick with what they know.

01:10:27 ◼   ► Of course they want to use all the knowledge and the tools

01:10:30 ◼   ► and the code that they already have.

01:10:34 ◼   ► But the fact is, this is a world of native apps now.

01:10:37 ◼   ► And there is nothing from users saying,

01:10:42 ◼   ► we want web apps to come back and get better

01:10:45 ◼   ► so we can stop using these native apps.

01:10:47 ◼   ► That's just not the world we live in.

01:10:49 ◼   ► Maybe it is, and so many of these standards

01:10:52 ◼   ► are about pushing web apps

01:10:55 ◼   ► into becoming native app replacements,

01:10:57 ◼   ► maybe that's not the right goal.

01:11:00 ◼   ► Maybe just yelling at native apps

01:11:03 ◼   ► and saying we're coming after you with our old stuff,

01:11:05 ◼   ► just wait 'til it catches up, you'll see,

01:11:07 ◼   ► it'll be there just like desktop Linux,

01:11:08 ◼   ► it'll be there next year.

01:11:10 ◼   ► Maybe that is actually a path towards faster relevance.

01:11:14 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:11:15 ◼   ► I've said things in the past that are very skeptical

01:11:19 ◼   ► of the future of the web browser

01:11:22 ◼   ► being the front end for apps.

01:11:24 ◼   ► like you know, and you look at so many new things

01:11:27 ◼   ► that matter a lot, like Instagram when it came up,

01:11:30 ◼   ► and it didn't even have any website whatsoever.

01:11:32 ◼   ► I mean heck, it didn't even have an Android app for a while,

01:11:34 ◼   ► but look at things like that, and like Instagram rose up

01:11:38 ◼   ► and was bought for a billion dollars

01:11:40 ◼   ► before it even had a website at all,

01:11:42 ◼   ► like that did anything useful.

01:11:44 ◼   ► Like it was crazy, and I think the website

01:11:46 ◼   ► still doesn't do that much.

01:11:48 ◼   ► And you know, you can look at examples like that,

01:11:50 ◼   ► that was granted a long time ago,

01:11:52 ◼   ► but these examples just keep happening now.

01:11:55 ◼   ► And you can say, you know, maybe, maybe, you know,

01:11:58 ◼   ► I've hitched my train to this web standards thing,

01:12:01 ◼   ► this web app thing, and that's what I'm gonna invest

01:12:03 ◼   ► all my professional life and career in.

01:12:06 ◼   ► Maybe that train, you know, maybe the ride there

01:12:08 ◼   ► is coming to an end.

01:12:09 ◼   ► I don't know how many more metaphors I can shove in here,

01:12:11 ◼   ► but like, that might not be the best thing,

01:12:14 ◼   ► both career-wise, financially, or for your users,

01:12:17 ◼   ► or for your company.

01:12:19 ◼   ► Like, these new platforms come up, and right now,

01:12:21 ◼   ► you know, we went through this period where web apps,

01:12:24 ◼   ► it was the glory days of web apps,

01:12:26 ◼   ► like from like 2005 to like, you know, 2013, 2014,

01:12:31 ◼   ► it's like the glory days of web apps of like,

01:12:33 ◼   ► that was the place to be to succeed,

01:12:36 ◼   ► to make a big startup, to make a successful app or whatever,

01:12:40 ◼   ► that was the place to be.

01:12:42 ◼   ► Now, that's very clearly not the place to do those things.

01:12:46 ◼   ► Now, apps are the place to do those things.

01:12:49 ◼   ► And you can look at the way web developers talk about

01:12:53 ◼   ► the things they need, the things they want,

01:12:55 ◼   ► the future they see, and look at other industries

01:12:58 ◼   ► that have been made less relevant or less successful

01:13:02 ◼   ► by technological change.

01:13:03 ◼   ► Look at statements made by publishers of magazines

01:13:06 ◼   ► and magazine-like websites.

01:13:08 ◼   ► Look at statements made by record industries

01:13:10 ◼   ► about music and the music business,

01:13:11 ◼   ► and you can see, it isn't that bad,

01:13:13 ◼   ► but you can kinda see some parallels there.

01:13:16 ◼   ► I really do think web developers would be best served by,

01:13:21 ◼   ► you know, sure, if this is what you care about,

01:13:24 ◼   ► keep pushing on it, keep doing what you want,

01:13:26 ◼   ► but keep an open mind to the idea that maybe in 10 years,

01:13:31 ◼   ► web development won't reach this point

01:13:33 ◼   ► that you want it to reach.

01:13:34 ◼   ► Maybe native apps will keep the hold they have on them.

01:13:37 ◼   ► Technology moves in these eras.

01:13:39 ◼   ► It is not always as open or standards-based

01:13:43 ◼   ► as idealists want it to be.

01:13:45 ◼   ► Sometimes you have a span of like 10 years,

01:13:47 ◼   ► like Microsoft in the 90s.

01:13:48 ◼   ► Sometimes you have a span of like 10 years

01:13:50 ◼   ► where one company does control a lot

01:13:52 ◼   ► and you just have to deal with it.

01:13:54 ◼   ► You have to work within that.

01:13:55 ◼   ► You have to find ways to succeed

01:13:57 ◼   ► and get your business done in that environment.

01:13:59 ◼   ► And what John has said about open being better for everybody

01:14:04 ◼   ► is true in theory and it has a lot of benefits,

01:14:07 ◼   ► but in practice it doesn't always work out that way.

01:14:09 ◼   ► It doesn't always happen.

01:14:10 ◼   ► You don't always have those chances.

01:14:12 ◼   ► And so you have to work within whatever era

01:14:15 ◼   ► your career is happening in at this moment

01:14:17 ◼   ► and where it's gonna go next,

01:14:18 ◼   ► you have to work within that just pragmatically.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Ideally, yes, ideally things are different.

01:14:23 ◼   ► Pragmatically, this is how the real world works.

01:14:25 ◼   ► - I don't, you're making it sound like

01:14:27 ◼   ► you can't get a job as a web developer.

01:14:28 ◼   ► Like the web will be around longer than Windows Phone.

01:14:31 ◼   ► I mean, don't worry about it.

01:14:33 ◼   ► - Well, that's not saying much.

01:14:35 ◼   ► - The web will be fine.

01:14:35 ◼   ► Like, it's just a question of like,

01:14:37 ◼   ► relative rates of development.

01:14:40 ◼   ► Like I don't know what Nolan's motivation is,

01:14:43 ◼   ► 'cause he lists himself as an Android developer

01:14:44 ◼   ► a web developer.

01:14:45 ◼   ► Like, you know, obviously he wants to make more appy type things.

01:14:47 ◼   ► But I've seen similar complaints from other people, and I don't think it's all personally

01:14:50 ◼   ► motivated.

01:14:51 ◼   ► In fact, I think most of it is kind of like altruistic hippy dippy, like, we don't want

01:14:56 ◼   ► a future controlled by a small number of companies.

01:15:00 ◼   ► We want a future controlled by nobody in the, you know, in the Brent Simmons RSS, you know,

01:15:07 ◼   ► Manton Rees microblogging, get your own domain, Marco Armond, host your own email, sense of

01:15:13 ◼   ► the word of independence, that our future isn't dictated by a small number of people

01:15:20 ◼   ► who run some very large and very powerful companies, right?

01:15:23 ◼   ► The web is a hedge against that.

01:15:25 ◼   ► And if we give up on the web and say, well, maybe I should just learn to write native

01:15:30 ◼   ► apps, like every person who does that every time a company moves in that direction is

01:15:35 ◼   ► -- it's kind of ceding control, giving up on the dreams that all three of the people

01:15:42 ◼   ► I listed you, Brent, Manton, and me for that matter,

01:15:45 ◼   ► have expressed about a future defined in our own terms,

01:15:50 ◼   ► where we sort of own our own information, right?

01:15:54 ◼   ► And where we don't have to do-- where companies don't have

01:15:58 ◼   ► the power to end our careers with a flick of the switch

01:16:01 ◼   ► or change the rules on us.

01:16:02 ◼   ► Like, that's what the open web is about.

01:16:05 ◼   ► And so I don't think it's so much about,

01:16:09 ◼   ► I'm worried about my personal career,

01:16:11 ◼   ► So I'm gonna write this thing about Safari is the new IE to try to make Apple do the thing that I want them to

01:16:15 ◼   ► Do so I can do the thing like

01:16:17 ◼   ► You write that there's adjustments like that especially in startups like starps all about the web now starps all about apps who knows what?

01:16:23 ◼   ► The heck starps will be about in the next couple of decades. Maybe you know be about like biotech. I have no idea right

01:16:29 ◼   ► but I think that is that's separate from the overarching discussion of

01:16:35 ◼   ► What is going to define the future of technology and like we define it by?

01:16:40 ◼   ► you know by sort of the the anyone who participates in the development community defines it like even you know

01:16:46 ◼   ► Seen a lot of tweets from Lauren brick tear discussing this

01:16:49 ◼   ► Who has very strong and strange feelings about programming and development these days?

01:16:54 ◼   ► but when he did iOS development, he wrote his own GUI and OpenGL and he's currently having fantasies of

01:16:58 ◼   ► Writing a web application entirely with web GL and the canvas tag, right?

01:17:04 ◼   ► Is that still a web application as we define it? Why would he be doing that?

01:17:07 ◼   ► Why wouldn't he just write a native app? He's certainly a really good native app developer.

01:17:11 ◼   ► He's not doing it because he's afraid that he won't be, he already knows how to write native

01:17:16 ◼   ► apps, right? It's because he doesn't want to be under the thumb of Apple or Microsoft or Android

01:17:21 ◼   ► or anyone else. And that was what I think is the underlying motivation of at least some of the

01:17:25 ◼   ► people who are sort of behind the "hey let's make the web a better place to write applications"

01:17:30 ◼   ► thing. It's not so much about trying to defend their small domain of knowledge because if they

01:17:34 ◼   ► If they can't write web applications, they can't do any other job.

01:17:37 ◼   ► I mean, Lauren Bricher is a great example.

01:17:39 ◼   ► He can obviously write native applications, right?

01:17:42 ◼   ► That's not why he's doing that.

01:17:43 ◼   ► That's not why people like Jeffrey Zeldman are gung ho on the web, right?

01:17:48 ◼   ► It's sort of trying to ensure a better future for everybody.

01:17:52 ◼   ► And I like to think that that is the majority of the thing that motivates everyone on the

01:17:56 ◼   ► Safari team, everybody on the Blink team at Google, everybody doing anything with web

01:18:01 ◼   ► that they're motivated in large part by the idea that even if they work at Google or Microsoft

01:18:07 ◼   ► or Apple that the web isn't owned by anybody.

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01:21:31 ◼   ► - Okay, so was it earlier today, I believe,

01:21:35 ◼   ► Microsoft announced big layoffs,

01:21:38 ◼   ► and someone was kind enough to put some snippets

01:21:41 ◼   ► in the show notes, and I will capitalize on their hard work

01:21:44 ◼   ► and claim it as my own.

01:21:46 ◼   ► Microsoft Corp. today announced plans to restructure the company's phone hardware business to better focus and align resources,

01:21:52 ◼   ► which typically is business speak for "we screwed up." Microsoft also announced a reduction of up to

01:21:57 ◼   ► 7,800 positions primarily in the phone business. As a result, the company will record an impairment charge of approximately

01:22:06 ◼   ► $7.6 billion

01:22:08 ◼   ► related to assets associated with the acquisition of the Nokia devices and services business in addition to a

01:22:14 ◼   ► restructuring charge of approximately 750 million to 850 million

01:22:18 ◼   ► Yikes, and just for reference isn't that they're basically saying like the entire price we paid for Nokia is a write-off

01:22:25 ◼   ► Isn't that basically what they paid for? Yeah, since they bought Nokia they basically lost ten billion dollars on it

01:22:30 ◼   ► so not a great acquisition and like I always wonder I

01:22:34 ◼   ► Obviously, I don't understand enough about a big business to know like someone is highly motivated to make these things happen, right?

01:22:42 ◼   ► Someone is highly motivated to marry two large companies together because it's going to be a big payday for them, right?

01:22:49 ◼   ► But anybody from the outside and probably most people from the inside know that the joining of these two giant companies

01:22:56 ◼   ► Despite all the talk of synergy is going to be a terrible idea

01:22:59 ◼   ► like the nothing, you know

01:23:01 ◼   ► Nothing good is going to come from this multi-billion dollar acquisition that it's like the chances are really really really high that instead what's gonna happen is

01:23:09 ◼   ► More losses more layoffs just like bad things will happen

01:23:14 ◼   ► I mean it's possible to have plenty possible to have good acquisitions Apple buying next was perhaps the best acquisition in the history of the world

01:23:21 ◼   ► Value value wise like 400 million dollars for next or whatever it was

01:23:25 ◼   ► If you look at what they got out of that deal

01:23:28 ◼   ► Tremendous right and all sorts of like oh I bought a small company and that was a great idea because it helped me make this

01:23:33 ◼   ► product that you know like whatever buying the companies that do like touch ID sensor or

01:23:38 ◼   ► strategic investments in other small companies, but when it's like a

01:23:40 ◼   ► Company that's in trouble buying some other company for a really really big amount of money

01:23:46 ◼   ► It just always seems like to me from the outside that it's like seriously someone thinks

01:23:51 ◼   ► This is a good idea. Like this is not going to save them

01:23:54 ◼   ► This is going to be a disaster and most of the time you're right, but somebody in all these companies

01:23:59 ◼   ► Must be both incentivized to do it and in the position where they can make it happen

01:24:05 ◼   ► And those people are I guess laughing all the way to the bank or retiring to their private islands or whatever is they're doing but