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116: Women Aren't a Minority

 

00:00:00   We're going live. I'm tired of this.

00:00:02   You got an appointment with the raccoon? Yeah. Got somewhere you gotta be? You gotta be out in the backyard with a 2x4?

00:00:07   That's actually what happened and that actually worked. Since almost hitting the raccoon with a 2x4,

00:00:13   it has not come back. Hitting the raccoon with a 2x4, is that code for something?

00:00:17   Did you really take a 2x4 to a raccoon like it's a friggin baseball bat? Yes. Have you ever played baseball in your life?

00:00:23   I have played. I don't remember whether I've actually gotten a hit.

00:00:27   It was probably more like polo really with the new sport that Marco Nanno's exists. Oh, yeah, that's right

00:00:32   Wait, but that's that's on horses though, right? Yeah, but you're swinging down to a thing on the ground. Were you riding hops?

00:00:37   Someone please draw that

00:00:41   Marco like Don Quixote on top of hops jousting with a 2x4 against a rabid raccoon

00:00:50   In the car the duck hiding guarding its eggs now people think we're crazy who don't follow you on Twitter

00:00:57   I mean, I didn't like go and fetch a two by four. I happen to have a few in the backyard

00:01:02   from Adam's party. We were holding down a big tarp with them. So I had a few very long

00:01:07   two by fours in the backyard and we were standing in the backyard with these two raccoons stalking

00:01:12   the duck that's nesting in our backyard and they'd already gone for it once and the duck

00:01:16   made some crazy noise and scared him off temporarily. But they were just like sitting there maybe

00:01:20   12 feet away. It wasn't very far and they were just sitting in the tree and we tried

00:01:24   like shining the flashlight on their face, throwing pine cones at them. We hit them a

00:01:29   few times with the pine cones. They didn't give two craps. So eventually I realized,

00:01:33   oh, maybe they don't like water. So I got the hose and sprayed them and made them slightly

00:01:38   damp. I mean, it wasn't even that much pressure because it was a terrible hose. So I basically

00:01:44   gave them a shower. It was like, "Maybe go put some conditioner in their hair." Yeah,

00:01:49   Yeah, I mean it was it was the least intimidating use of a

00:01:52   hose probably in history and and they they kind of seem to

00:01:56   get annoyed by the hose and just kind of like walked away

00:01:59   slowly, but then eventually they came back and that's they

00:02:04   they were within swing distance of this two by four,

00:02:06   which is probably if I had to guess six feet long. So I tried

00:02:10   swinging at it and I missed completely, but the the area

00:02:16   I hit, I like hit it into a tree, and the area that I hit was, I don't know, a couple

00:02:20   of feet from the raccoon. Then they left and they have not come back. That was, and that

00:02:25   was now two or three nights ago.

00:02:28   So can you explain why you think these unborn ducks have a greater right to life than these

00:02:36   raccoons that are hungry?

00:02:39   There's a lot of other food for the raccoons to eat around here. They have no shortage

00:02:42   of food. They have no trouble finding food. It used to be my trash. Now it's all the

00:02:47   neighbors' trash since I got a trash house. And if it wasn't this duck, they would go

00:02:53   eat somebody's garbage and get a sandwich. Like, they are fine with food. So I don't

00:02:59   feel bad about this at all. Also, raccoons are kind of assholes. And ducks, I know that

00:03:04   ducks can be assholes to some people, but ducks have not been assholes to me. Raccoons

00:03:08   have been assholes to me. So I'm sure I have a bias here. I'm sure we're going to hear

00:03:12   from all the raccoon rights activists. I don't know. I don't like raccoons and I have no

00:03:18   reason to dislike ducks. Also, it just seems like kind of a cheap shot. Like the mother

00:03:22   duck is sitting on 11 eggs. She has to sit there for like a month to bake them. That's

00:03:27   like hitting somebody in the back. Like it's a cheap shot to like to try to attack her

00:03:33   like there in that kind of situation. Like have a fair fight somewhere, you know, go

00:03:36   fight an adult duck. Well dwell on that the next time you're eating an omelet. But that

00:03:40   doesn't require murdering a chicken. What we do to the chickens that we get eggs from

00:03:45   is way worse than anything that'll ever happen to that duck.

00:03:47   Well, that is true. That's a fair point. No, I mean, and look,

00:03:51   this is why I'm not like, you know, making a big political stink about my animal policies

00:03:55   here, because I know that whatever opinion I have of the animals in my backyard is completely,

00:04:02   it's completely hypocritical for me to keep having meat and animal products in my life.

00:04:07   I think the motivation for this, in the end, is that the potential cuteness of baby ducks

00:04:13   outweighs everything and everyone wants to see cute baby ducks.

00:04:17   Well, it's also the novelty.

00:04:18   You know, we've seen raccoons around our house since we moved in here almost five years ago.

00:04:23   This is the first time we've had ducks.

00:04:25   And we've never seen baby ducks.

00:04:26   This is the first time we've seen any duck.

00:04:29   And the adult duck is pretty cool looking.

00:04:31   Like we get these awesome pictures of her, you know, because she's a mallard.

00:04:34   She has like the big blue square on her ring and everything.

00:04:36   It's great, around her wing.

00:04:38   So yeah, she looks awesome, great picture opportunities.

00:04:41   Nobody wants a picture of a raccoon at night.

00:04:43   - You know, if this was, I guess,

00:04:44   I'm trying to think of,

00:04:45   Merlin would be able to come up with a reference.

00:04:46   I'm just gonna go with Adventure Time.

00:04:48   This was an episode of Adventure Time.

00:04:49   Those eggs would hatch and tiny alligators

00:04:51   would come out of all of them.

00:04:52   - Never seen it.

00:04:54   - Nope.

00:04:55   - All right, so let's start the show.

00:04:57   (electronic music)

00:04:58   We have some follow-up.

00:04:59   Do we wanna talk about some HFS+?

00:05:05   - That was fast today.

00:05:06   - Yeah, it was fast.

00:05:07   - We had a question about it,

00:05:08   I think we were talking about our Synologies,

00:05:10   and Kane, I think you pronounced his name,

00:05:13   said that aren't you guys concerned

00:05:17   about HFS+ corruption?

00:05:18   Why aren't you concerned about EXT3 or 4 corruption

00:05:21   on your Synologies?

00:05:22   And my understanding is that EXT3, 4

00:05:25   don't have any of the functionality John wants built

00:05:27   into the next OS X file system,

00:05:28   like checksumming, so on and so forth.

00:05:29   I think that is correct, but I'm not sure.

00:05:32   Either way, I'm pretty sure that the Synology

00:05:34   does not have any checksumming.

00:05:35   So why aren't we concerned about corruption

00:05:38   when using HFS+ and Synologies?

00:05:40   I am.

00:05:41   I am concerned about it.

00:05:42   I'm exactly as concerned about it as I am all the time.

00:05:44   I wish my Synology had data integrity.

00:05:46   I wish it ran ZFS.

00:05:47   Why don't you build your own NAS and put ZFS on it?

00:05:51   'Cause that sounds like a lot of work

00:05:52   and really complicated.

00:05:53   And I should reiterate,

00:05:54   maybe we didn't say this in the last show,

00:05:55   we should reiterate for the people

00:05:56   who haven't listened to the whole series,

00:05:57   our Synologies were given to us by the Synology Corporation.

00:06:00   So these were GIFs.

00:06:04   I probably wouldn't have bought this for myself.

00:06:07   Now that I have it, I think it's great,

00:06:09   but it's the only NAS I've ever owned,

00:06:10   so I can't tell you whether it's better or worse

00:06:12   than any other NAS.

00:06:13   I do know that I really wish to add data integrity.

00:06:15   And if someone made one of these things with ZFS on it,

00:06:18   at this point, having lived with the NAS for a long time,

00:06:21   I think I would probably consider buying it,

00:06:23   but I already have one,

00:06:24   and so I'm just kind of living with the potential crappiness

00:06:26   of what I've got and worrying about it

00:06:28   the same amount I worry about everything else.

00:06:30   I don't know if you guys are worrying about it

00:06:31   or just accepting your fate like so many other people.

00:06:35   - Don't care.

00:06:36   - Nope.

00:06:37   - And we should also mention, like Jon said,

00:06:39   these are all gifts from Synology.

00:06:41   And I was in the same situation as Jon,

00:06:43   never had an ask before.

00:06:44   I freaking love my Synology.

00:06:46   And I've been asked a lot lately, I'm not sure why,

00:06:50   but we were all given DS 1813 pluses.

00:06:55   And I believe the modern version of that box

00:06:58   is the 1815 Plus.

00:07:01   Synology has plenty of other models.

00:07:03   This one is pretty large, both physically

00:07:06   and in terms of disk space, because it takes eight disks.

00:07:10   But they have much smaller versions.

00:07:12   They also have a 214 Play,

00:07:13   which they also sent me one of those,

00:07:16   which is much better for doing things like hosting Plex,

00:07:19   if that's your cup of tea,

00:07:20   because it has the appropriate chips

00:07:22   for hardware transcoding.

00:07:23   But we've been asked a lot lately,

00:07:26   and it's DS1813 is our model, DS1815 is the modern version of it.

00:07:32   Yeah, and I asked, as soon as I got mine, when you were talking to the person who gave

00:07:36   them to us, like, you know, what's the outlook?

00:07:38   Are you guys going to add data integrity features?

00:07:40   And you know, then don't talk about future products, blah, blah, blah.

00:07:44   Like the, they, my request has been heard thus far.

00:07:47   I don't think anything has happened on that front, but I remain hopeful that at some point

00:07:49   in the future, they will come out with a new product or a new software update or something

00:07:53   that adds data integrity features, especially on a NAS.

00:07:55   Like, I don't stress it I/O-wise, I'd be fine for it to spend its time and energy

00:08:01   doing checksumming.

00:08:02   It wouldn't affect my use of it.

00:08:07   And it's not an issue of your request being heard.

00:08:10   We know that your requests have been heard by people at Apple for years about their file

00:08:16   system.

00:08:17   I think Synology is slightly more motivated than Apple, too.

00:08:20   Because this is a common feature of NAS.

00:08:23   a lot of NAS products that are out there are built on ZFS+ or some other checksumming file

00:08:27   system or at least have it as an option.

00:08:28   Like it's a good bullet point, right?

00:08:30   It's in, you know, one of the features that people look for in NAS, this is one of them

00:08:34   and, you know, I think them not adding it is probably just a statement on the state

00:08:39   of like Linux ZFS support or, you know, just how many ties their current software stack

00:08:45   has with their current file system and everything.

00:08:47   But anyway, it could happen.

00:08:48   All right, so do we want to cover a few more things about photos the app on OS 10

00:08:54   Same person more questions about aren't we concerned?

00:08:59   I always want he wants to know what we're concerned about aren't we concerned about the privacy aspects of using cloud sync with Apple's photos that

00:09:05   app

00:09:06   specifically about like

00:09:08   What kind of security do they use to stop Apple employees or the NSA or whatever from viewing photos about your authorization now that they're?

00:09:15   all in the cloud

00:09:16   And my answer this one is similar to the answer about check something like

00:09:19   I don't I don't know what the situation is. I assume the NSA can see all of my pictures

00:09:25   I think it's a safe bet for everybody

00:09:27   I assume that Apple is making a reasonable effort to keep them secure like they do with all their stuff

00:09:34   But in the end you are uploading all of your pictures to a server controlled by a corporation that you have no control over

00:09:42   So I have no idea if they have access to my pictures

00:09:45   I would recommend that if you have pictures that you don't want the world to see

00:09:49   Don't put them into a cloud photosyncing service period

00:09:52   Yeah, that's basically my answer is uh, I don't have any pictures that I would be that it would be a huge problem if

00:10:01   Somebody else saw them

00:10:03   But if you did like the solution is like there's nothing you can do the solution is do not upload them to anybody

00:10:08   Like that's it. That's your own that's your only solution and even that like who knows they could be breaking into your computer and getting

00:10:14   Them whatever but there is no I don't think there's any sort of

00:10:16   Technological guarantee that at this point that a company was well-meaning as they might be could give that would make me think

00:10:24   Oh, I previously didn't want to upload these pictures of my tax returns and social security number to an online photo service

00:10:29   But now that I've heard this promise from this company, I will totally do it

00:10:32   It's just I you know, I won't I just you shouldn't do it. There's nothing in this. It's not their fault

00:10:38   They could be 100% sincere that they are doing everything they can to protect your photos,

00:10:42   but I think history has shown that there are so many things between their promise and you,

00:10:46   namely the internet, that neither one of those parties has control over, that the NSA perhaps

00:10:52   does.

00:10:53   So just don't upload it.

00:10:55   Yep, agreed.

00:10:57   All right, and what about if you were to edit things in photos?

00:11:02   This is from Hampus.

00:11:03   Three questions in a row.

00:11:04   Don't you care about?

00:11:05   Aren't you worried about?

00:11:06   Aren't you concerned about?

00:11:08   we are. This is, well yeah, don't you care about your edits? Like, so we talked about last time

00:11:12   having a bunch of photos and they're all just a bunch of jpegs or raw files or whatever in a

00:11:18   big folder hierarchy, so worst case scenario you could extract all those files from this crazy

00:11:24   bundle thing and just have a bunch of jpegs in folders like that by putting your your photos into

00:11:28   this system, whether it be iPhoto, the new photos application, or anything else, you're not really

00:11:35   losing is because it's very good about preserving the originals and the originals are still there for you to get

00:11:39   You can always pull those originals out and go back there. Just a bunch of folders, right?

00:11:43   But what about your edits at that point?

00:11:45   What if you spent a long time editing your photos adjusting everything or all those edits and adjustments are not in the photos that the

00:11:50   Whole point is it doesn't write them back to the photos. It keeps the edit separate. That's a feature

00:11:53   but

00:11:55   You know if you're if you're saying that you can just pull get rid of all the library and play your phones that you're losing

00:12:00   all your edits. My answer to this is that I rarely edit my photos because I have

00:12:04   no idea how to edit photos. So that solves that problem. Like, I will crop photos,

00:12:09   occasionally I will move some sliders a tiny little bit, but for the most part I

00:12:13   feel like I'm making the photos worse and not better and I just don't I just

00:12:17   don't edit them and so it's not a problem for me. If it's a problem for you

00:12:21   I'm not sure what the solution is because I like the idea of never altering

00:12:25   the originals. Obviously if they're raw like that's part of it. But I don't know

00:12:30   how you would save the edits in a way that is not specific to any one application that

00:12:36   applies the edits.

00:12:37   Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the problem. Like, you know, Adobe and their apps, they

00:12:41   have, as part of the DNG format, they can embed the edits into the DNG files. And so

00:12:48   that's cool, because then you can match between any Adobe program and load up those edits

00:12:52   when they're embedded in the file. And that's kind of what I always wanted for so long,

00:12:55   which is give me one file that has everything in it that I can move around in the file system

00:12:59   and operate on as I need to.

00:13:01   The Apple ecosystem as far as I know has never had that,

00:13:04   but it's a hard problem to solve because what do you do

00:13:08   if, you know, right now they just moved

00:13:10   from iPhoto and Aperture to New Photos app.

00:13:13   iPhoto, Aperture, and the New Photos app

00:13:16   all have different editing controls

00:13:18   with different capabilities that probably many of them

00:13:20   use different algorithms from each other.

00:13:22   So you couldn't even say like, you know,

00:13:24   reduce highlights by 0.2.

00:13:26   You know, if you save that in the file,

00:13:28   then the next version of the program

00:13:30   might interpret that differently,

00:13:32   or a different program 10 years from now

00:13:34   will interpret that differently,

00:13:35   and it might not look the way you want.

00:13:37   So I think the only really sane long-term solution here

00:13:40   is to either not care about your edits,

00:13:43   or for the ones you edit,

00:13:46   when you're gonna move platforms,

00:13:48   you're gonna move editors,

00:13:50   to write the ones that you wanna save as JPEGs,

00:13:54   or be doing that the whole time,

00:13:55   and just maintain separate copies

00:13:57   that have the edits baked in,

00:13:58   if that's really important to you.

00:13:59   It is a very good question.

00:14:01   The problem is I don't think there's a good way to solve it

00:14:05   that will actually last long term

00:14:07   and be cross platform and cross app.

00:14:09   For me, it's very similar to what Jon said,

00:14:11   but just a little bit step further.

00:14:13   I do know how to edit photos a little bit.

00:14:15   And I can make them look better sometimes.

00:14:19   But I don't edit most of the photos I take.

00:14:21   Or if I do, it's like a really basic crop

00:14:23   and maybe a very small adjustment to exposure and stuff.

00:14:25   but not heavy edits that are that important.

00:14:30   As time goes on, I've gotten better at editing.

00:14:34   So if I was gonna go back and pull up an old photo,

00:14:37   I would probably wanna redo my edits to it

00:14:40   with the tools and techniques and abilities

00:14:43   that I have today, rather than when I first did the edit

00:14:47   five years ago when I didn't know about white balance.

00:14:49   You know, stuff like that.

00:14:52   So it is a very valid question to ask

00:14:55   of what do you do with your edits and moving them

00:14:57   to a system, that is a very valid question to ask

00:14:59   for a lot of people, but it sounds like none

00:15:01   of the three of us are the kind of people

00:15:02   who worry that much about that,

00:15:03   and also a great solution I don't think exists.

00:15:07   - Well, you could always burn your edited copies

00:15:09   to a new copy, like burn them to JPEG or something.

00:15:13   - Right, that's what I was saying, yeah,

00:15:14   but I think that's the only solution.

00:15:16   I wouldn't say that's a good solution.

00:15:17   - But do the programs offer that?

00:15:19   I don't even know if the iPhone would even offer

00:15:21   that as an option.

00:15:22   - You could duplicate.

00:15:23   I don't know if it then stores it.

00:15:25   - Yeah, you could duplicate, but I think what it did

00:15:27   was duplicate the original, and now you just have

00:15:29   the same thing, you just have a second file

00:15:31   where you could do a different set of edits,

00:15:32   but it would still try to keep them separate.

00:15:34   - Yeah, I don't know.

00:15:36   This is definitely an advanced user feature

00:15:38   that most people will not need or use or ever care about,

00:15:43   and so therefore Apple's apps probably will cover it

00:15:44   very poorly, and if you really are very concerned

00:15:48   about that kind of stuff, you probably are gonna be

00:15:50   wanting more control over your stuff anyway.

00:15:52   Like my wife, Tiff, she's a pro photographer

00:15:55   and she's very serious even about her personal photography

00:15:58   and so she doesn't use any of these programs.

00:16:00   She uses Adobe Bridge and manages things in the file system

00:16:04   and she is very, very happy with that.

00:16:07   She has no desire to come into one of these

00:16:09   managed syncing library kind of programs.

00:16:11   She tried Aperture, she tried Lightroom, she hated them.

00:16:15   She's the kind of person who her edits are so much work

00:16:19   and so important and she's so good at it

00:16:21   that she wouldn't be able to do the kind of move

00:16:25   where she would just throw away all the edits

00:16:26   she's ever done.

00:16:27   But she does things manually.

00:16:29   So she has all her raw files,

00:16:31   and then when she does heavy edits,

00:16:33   she saves them out as JPEGs.

00:16:35   And so it wouldn't even be a problem for her in her system.

00:16:38   So anyway, I think the answer is if you're pro enough,

00:16:41   or if you're really into it enough to have a lot of edits,

00:16:44   you probably need to come up with your own

00:16:45   long-term solution to this problem.

00:16:48   We also got some feedback from Vincent Jan-Go.

00:16:51   I'm so sorry that I probably butchered that.

00:16:54   But he said that he forgot to tweet this after episode 114,

00:16:58   but Flickr gives a terabyte of storage free

00:17:01   and you can auto sync photos from your phone.

00:17:03   So that is something I don't think we covered

00:17:06   when we were doing the rundown of competing photo services.

00:17:08   So it's probably worth taking note of that.

00:17:11   - Everybody forgets about Flickr.

00:17:13   We forgot about them too.

00:17:14   They still exist.

00:17:15   They give you a terabyte of free storage.

00:17:17   apparently the auto sync photos from your phone. So bad us on forgetting that they still

00:17:21   exist. And it's not bad. The new Flickr, whenever they did their big redesign, it was a pretty

00:17:28   nice update. And one terabyte free is nothing to sneeze at. I know a lot of people use it

00:17:32   and enjoy it. Don't forget it's there.

00:17:35   It's a thing. Still a thing.

00:17:38   Giri Fiala, again, I'm so sorry I'm butchering all your names. When you disable iCloud Photo

00:17:44   library there's a grace period of 30 days. You can't start from scratch within those

00:17:48   30 days. My library has now 32 days in, 30,000 empty thumbnails, no image can be opened.

00:17:55   I can't re-enable it. It would just merge with this mess."

00:17:59   Yeah, this was a series of two tweets and it's like, "Well, if there's a 30-day grace

00:18:02   period and you're on day 32, shouldn't the grace period be over?" A lot of people told

00:18:06   me about this 30-day grace period. Like, if you turn iCloud Photo Library off, Apple doesn't

00:18:10   just dump all your photos immediately. They say, "Okay, well, I know you turned this thing

00:18:13   off and you don't want to use it anymore, but we'll hang on to the photos that you have

00:18:16   uploaded for 30 days just in case you change your mind, which is a nice safety feature

00:18:20   so you don't like, "Whoops, I turned it off and deleted all my photos and I actually don't

00:18:22   have local copies on and don't have my local copies."

00:18:26   Like I have some copies are only in the cloud and then I turned it off and now they're all

00:18:29   gone, right?

00:18:30   So they're saving it for 30 days, but this makes it all the more difficult it seems like

00:18:33   to do the big reset button of saying, "Look, I'm telling you Apple, I've got them all on

00:18:38   my local machine.

00:18:39   Please clear out your cloud and I want to start over."

00:18:42   And it's probably wise that that isn't easy to do because people don't actually know when

00:18:46   they have all the photos in their computer and if you gave them the ability to do it,

00:18:48   they would do it and then feel sad when they realize they're missing a year's worth of

00:18:51   photos and blah, blah, blah.

00:18:53   But it gets back to the same problem.

00:18:55   How do you restore from backup?

00:18:56   How does it synchronize things?

00:18:58   A lot of people respond to that question as well, showing us screenshots of what happens

00:19:01   when something gets screwed up and you go to a Time Machine backup and restore your

00:19:06   photos library and the new files plop onto your disk and then you launch the app and

00:19:11   How does it reconcile this version on disk

00:19:16   with what's in the cloud?

00:19:17   And apparently it throws up this big repairing photo library

00:19:19   thing, and it basically just goes through there

00:19:20   and reconciles.

00:19:21   And from the reports of people who have sent me pictures

00:19:24   of their libraries doing this, it seems to more or less work

00:19:28   correctly, albeit after waiting for a really long time for it

00:19:31   to go through all your photos, that it'll figure things out

00:19:34   somehow.

00:19:35   I'm still wary about there being something screwed up somewhere,

00:19:38   and I would still like to have some way to reset everything,

00:19:40   it's through nine different dialogue boxes that all make me click on advanced and enter

00:19:45   my admin password and swear oaths that I won't sue Apple after, whatever.

00:19:51   I would like there to be a way and I'm still a little bit worried about it.

00:19:53   I just hope I never have to find out how it behaves in that situation.

00:19:57   And I base this on my experience, which I, you know, right or wrong, because obviously

00:20:00   contacts does not use CloudKit or anything like that.

00:20:03   So it's very different in terms of code base, but contacts is such a small set of data.

00:20:06   I don't have a lot of contacts.

00:20:08   Just doing this with contacts drove me mad and took me hours.

00:20:11   So I really don't want to do it for 60,000 photos over the hell I have.

00:20:16   All right.

00:20:17   We also got with regard to me discussing LaunchD and CRON last episode for tickling a web server

00:20:25   to say that, "Oh, Aaron's Mac has not died," which by the way, it still has not died.

00:20:30   I'm speaking on it right now.

00:20:31   A lot of people suggested Launch Control by Somazone as another app to manage launch D jobs.

00:20:39   I have not tried it. It's not something I'm really that particularly concerned about, but

00:20:43   a lot of people recommended it, so I have to assume it's probably pretty good.

00:20:48   And then our final piece of follow-up is from Enrico Sussatio. Oh man,

00:20:55   why did I jump on this sword tonight? Maybe Sussatio or Sussatio?

00:20:59   Thank you, Marco. See, somebody's saving me. He said Microsoft is working on compiling Swift 2.

00:21:06   This is in regard to Project Islandwood. I did get the chance to watch the video, and for the most

00:21:11   part it's what's been reported. But toward the end, somebody in a question and answer session—imagine

00:21:18   that, a question and answer session in Moscone. Isn't that weird? Anyway. Please file a bug.

00:21:25   Exactly. Somebody asked, "Hey, what are you doing about Swift?"

00:21:28   And I don't recall if this was verbatim or not, but the quote was,

00:21:32   there were two guys that did the presentation, and one of them said,

00:21:35   "What is the plans for adopting Swift into this as well?"

00:21:39   We're going there. It's just a day at a time. This is all

00:21:43   preliminary. We're going to be struggling to get this out in time in the fall with VS update 1, but that's

00:21:50   just as doable. And then the other guy said,

00:21:54   I think what Jim meant to say is we're not making any comment on Swift today.

00:21:58   And this back and forth actually happened between the two of them on a couple of topics, but...

00:22:06   This is why Apple doesn't have Q&A.

00:22:07   Yeah, and to be fair, this is probably why Apple doesn't have Q&A, but...

00:22:12   One of the reasons.

00:22:13   Well, one of the reasons. That and they're secretive, even when they don't need to be.

00:22:16   That and the App Store.

00:22:17   Yeah, that too.

00:22:18   Also, to be fair, have you ever been in a conference session where the Q&A was worth

00:22:23   sitting through as an audience member?

00:22:25   There's always at least one or two good questions.

00:22:27   I wish I could find this video.

00:22:29   I'm going to call on the listeners of ATP

00:22:31   to help me here, or tell me that I'm imagining things

00:22:33   because I'm old.

00:22:34   But I seem to recall in one Q&A session long ago,

00:22:37   when Steve Jobs just came back, some angry person

00:22:39   in the audience-- and they were always angry people

00:22:41   in the audience in the late '90s,

00:22:42   because they were Apple developers in the late '90s,

00:22:45   and how could you not be angry--

00:22:47   held up a Newton and said, what am I

00:22:49   supposed to do with this to Steve Jobs

00:22:51   after he had canceled the Newton program?

00:22:53   And I think Steve Jobs is telling me like,

00:22:55   I'll tell you what you can do with it.

00:22:57   - Well.

00:22:58   - Am I imagining that?

00:22:59   Did that really happen?

00:23:00   If so, is it on video somewhere?

00:23:02   I have VHS tapes of W3C upstairs.

00:23:04   I haven't gone through them all.

00:23:06   I don't know where it is.

00:23:07   I can't find it.

00:23:08   Maybe I imagined it.

00:23:09   Either way, it's a good story.

00:23:10   Whether or not it's true.

00:23:11   - Do you still have a VCR?

00:23:12   - I don't know.

00:23:13   Maybe in the attic.

00:23:14   There's a lot of things in the attic.

00:23:15   - Yeah, I was gonna say, what is not in the attic?

00:23:17   Between you and Steven Hackett,

00:23:19   we could probably load any piece of software

00:23:22   on any Mac that has ever existed ever.

00:23:24   All right, let's talk about something that's awesome.

00:23:28   - Our first sponsor tonight is a new sponsor,

00:23:30   although I believe we all know the people behind it.

00:23:33   It is Glide.

00:23:35   Glide is a beautiful, simple tool

00:23:37   for professional app creation.

00:23:39   Go to createglide.com/atp to see for yourself.

00:23:44   Glide makes it easy to create beautiful apps

00:23:46   that look professional right from the start.

00:23:49   You simply put text, images, and movies into folders,

00:23:51   and Glide will build the app for you.

00:23:54   When you change the content,

00:23:55   the app updates automatically with the new stuff.

00:23:58   This is a remarkable tool for building many common app types,

00:24:00   especially content-focused apps,

00:24:02   things like portfolios, showrooms,

00:24:05   making your own news apps, magazines,

00:24:07   interactive books, kids' books,

00:24:09   mixed media apps for conferences, events,

00:24:11   special interests, filmmakers, musicians,

00:24:13   products, businesses, even schools and universities,

00:24:16   apps for galleries, museums.

00:24:18   They even have iBeacon integration for museum stuff,

00:24:21   pretty cool. So much you can do with Glide. And they're adding more capabilities at a

00:24:25   remarkable pace. So Glide's UK based company, Glide Creations, has been building and using

00:24:30   Glide professionally in their own consulting work for large corporate clients since 2012.

00:24:36   Now three of their clients have even won Best of the App Store awards from Apple. Wonders

00:24:40   of the Universe is a really famous one you've probably heard of. There's also Wonders of

00:24:43   Life, the follow up, and also Jim Dalrymple's The Loop magazine. All of these apps were

00:24:48   were built with Glide, they all won awards from Apple for how good they were. Also, any

00:24:52   of you who went to the OOL conference this year, the OOL conference app was also a Glide

00:24:57   app. That's where I saw the iBeacon integration, which was really cool. I was very impressed

00:25:03   with how great that app was overall. So I blogged about Glide when it was announced.

00:25:07   This was before they approached us for the sponsorship. I liked them that much. And I

00:25:11   honestly think it's going to be a really big deal. The way I think about Glide is I called

00:25:16   the Squarespace equivalent for app creation.

00:25:19   It covers a lot of very common needs and very common tasks

00:25:22   for app building with way less time and money

00:25:25   than writing everything from scratch.

00:25:26   And the results are fantastic.

00:25:29   You don't even need to be a programmer

00:25:30   to make a great app with Glide.

00:25:31   The source files are literally just like a bunch of folders

00:25:34   on Dropbox with text or images or media files in them.

00:25:37   And then when you make changes, the app

00:25:39   is updated live with those changes.

00:25:41   And you can do advanced logic.

00:25:43   There's scripting.

00:25:44   You can do custom behavior that way.

00:25:46   but you don't have to. So it's a very big deal for people who want to focus on the content

00:25:50   of their app, like if you're making a magazine like Jim, and you know, not have to worry

00:25:54   about the code behind it. And of course, keeping up with Apple. And Glide is a huge deal for

00:25:59   app development consultants as well. To me, this is a no-brainer if you're a consultant.

00:26:03   The market for custom coding, you know, this is not going to go away, this isn't going

00:26:06   to kill your job, but there's a massive number of projects that shouldn't be made from scratch

00:26:10   or can't afford to be. So if you're a consultant using Glide, you could offer clients fast,

00:26:15   small budget app creation far more efficiently and productively than before. So that--all

00:26:20   this is what's driving Glide's creators to bring this to Kickstarter and release it to

00:26:24   the public. It's almost done. Their campaign has already succeeded. They--see, Glide--Glide

00:26:30   believes everybody should be able to afford to make their own app and so that's why they

00:26:34   went to Kickstarter to make this happen, basically be like a big capital raise in pre-order to

00:26:38   get them to be able to release this app to the public. So there's only a few more days

00:26:42   left to support or preorder Glide on Kickstarter and be one of the very first people to have

00:26:46   access to it. I mean, to me, if you're a consultant, this is a pretty big competitive advantage

00:26:50   to have a tool like this. So I recommend checking it out. Go to createglide.com/ATP to see more

00:26:58   info or preorder it. Thank you very much to Glide for sponsoring our show.

00:27:02   Yeah, we all are friends with the people that make Glide. And so...

00:27:07   They're also, they're like the nicest people in the world, too.

00:27:09   Oh God, so nice.

00:27:10   But even if we weren't friends with those people,

00:27:14   genuinely, this stuff is amazing.

00:27:16   And Chris Harris, who is, I think, CEO of Glide,

00:27:21   he did a demo with me a long time ago now,

00:27:26   probably a year plus ago, of how Glide works.

00:27:29   And this was via FaceTime when he was in London,

00:27:32   I was in the States.

00:27:34   And just watching things happen in Dropbox

00:27:38   and then the app changing moments thereafter,

00:27:41   it was mind blowing.

00:27:43   So truly, this is amazing stuff,

00:27:45   and if this is at all interesting to you,

00:27:47   I highly suggest checking it out.

00:27:49   It is very, very cool.

00:27:51   - And they even, like they think of so many little details.

00:27:52   I mean, the things I've seen them do,

00:27:54   even like you said, the Dropbox.

00:27:56   So they read the files off Dropbox,

00:27:58   but they don't host them there.

00:27:59   They host them on their own EC2 stuff,

00:28:01   on Amazon Web Services, because they, you know,

00:28:04   they wanna make sure that if Dropbox goes down,

00:28:06   your app doesn't go down.

00:28:08   So they actually copied over to their stuff

00:28:10   after they read it off Dropbox.

00:28:11   So they even thought of that.

00:28:13   So these are great people.

00:28:14   I'm pretty sure I also still owe Chris a beer from Oul.

00:28:16   But yeah, these are great people.

00:28:18   And yeah, seriously check out Glud

00:28:20   and hurry up because you're running out of time.

00:28:22   - All right, so we have a very important

00:28:25   but fairly serious topic.

00:28:28   We have some real time follow up.

00:28:30   And that is that Evan Hindra in the chat

00:28:33   has drawn you on the-- you riding hops trying to stave off the raccoons.

00:28:43   Kind of punted on the face there, though. He just kind of drew a circle and wrote "Marco"

00:28:46   on it. I do appreciate the ATP shirt, though.

00:28:49   Yep. Oh, I didn't even notice that. That's a good

00:28:51   call. He's got the hose, the hose, the pathetic

00:28:54   hose with the little puddle of water. Yep. He's got the duck. He's got the raccoon running

00:28:58   away. Yep. The Apple Watch.

00:28:59   It's pretty good, especially given the time constraints.

00:29:02   Yeah, I'm impressed.

00:29:04   Ditto, very impressed.

00:29:05   All right, so I was being slightly snarky about the seriousness of that, but all kidding

00:29:10   aside, we do really have a serious topic that we should discuss, and we wanted to make sure

00:29:14   we discussed it in the main part of the show this week.

00:29:17   And this all started with a tweet from Jon.

00:29:19   So Jon, you want to kick us off?

00:29:20   Sure, this was last month-ish, end of last month.

00:29:23   I don't remember what motivated this, but you know, no time like the president just

00:29:27   tweet and ask this question.

00:29:30   My tweet read, "Women and girls who listen to ATP, colon.

00:29:34   What do you think we could do to get more women and girls

00:29:36   to listen to ATP?"

00:29:37   Kind of wordy to go women and girls,

00:29:39   but I was trying to be inclusive in this thing.

00:29:40   But I was, anyway.

00:29:42   That's who I'm addressing the question to.

00:29:43   That was the question.

00:29:45   And we'll put the link to the tweet in the show,

00:29:48   and so you can look at all the replies.

00:29:49   There were a lot of replies, a lot of good replies.

00:29:52   I planned to write a blog post about this.

00:29:54   I tried to write a post about this.

00:29:56   I had a lot of difficulty because I thought it would be straightforward, but it ended up being fairly long and kind of boring

00:30:04   So I figure we can make an attempt to talk about it on the show

00:30:06   It'd be nice to have a blog post that people could reference. Maybe I'll still try to make one

00:30:11   But anyway, what I was gonna do in the blog post was explain what I felt like I couldn't explain on Twitter

00:30:16   Which is why if you look at that giant thread, you don't see a lot of replies from me to people

00:30:20   Mostly I was just asked a question and I was getting input, right? So I was reading all the responses, but not really

00:30:26   replying to all of them. Mostly because they didn't feel like it needed to reply to all of them. It's

00:30:29   like I ask the question and people give their opinions and I listen to them, right? But it

00:30:35   does, I think, require some explanation. A lot of people had legitimate questions about it and that's

00:30:40   what I was trying to address in my blog post, so I think I'll probably start with those. The first

00:30:45   thing are like the sort of the premises or the assumptions of all this. The premise of this

00:30:52   question is that I think not a lot of women listen to ATP. And many people will say, "How

00:30:58   do you know that? Do you take surveys of your listeners?" No, we don't. "You're basing it

00:31:02   on t-shirt sales?" Yeah, kind of, but you know, women can buy men's shirts and sometimes we don't

00:31:06   even know what the breakdowns are. We base it on the names of people who send feedback,

00:31:12   the names of people who tweet, the avatars on people's Twitter accounts. Like, we have some

00:31:17   inputs into the system, like we're not taking a completely wild guess, but the

00:31:22   information we have is admittedly imperfect. What if 99.9% of the people

00:31:25   listen are women and they never write because women never like to write it into

00:31:29   the show for some reason, right? But all we get is feedback from men and all

00:31:33   we sell are male details. That would be its own issue worth exploring. It's

00:31:37   conceivable that we could be totally wrong, but I'm going to say that given

00:31:40   the best information available to us, I would put money on the fact that mostly

00:31:44   mostly men listen to ATP. Certainly the majority, perhaps the vast majority. I don't know if

00:31:48   you two agree with that. Do you get that feeling?

00:31:51   Absolutely. No, it's just like what you said. The few inputs that we do have with feedback

00:31:57   and things like that, it certainly does suggest that it's mostly men.

00:32:01   Right. So that's what we're starting from. If we're wrong about that, then this whole

00:32:04   thing is pointless and we're barking up the wrong tree. But I would put money on it that

00:32:08   it's just the vast majority of the people listening to show are men. My second assumption

00:32:12   is that of all the potential people in the world who might enjoy this show, if you say,

00:32:18   just put all those people on the board, those are all the people who potentially might enjoy

00:32:21   this show, what percentage of the men who might enjoy this show are currently listening

00:32:25   to it, and what percentage of the women who might enjoy this show are currently listening

00:32:29   to it?

00:32:30   I think we have a larger proportion of the men who might enjoy the show listening to

00:32:32   it than we do the women.

00:32:33   So if we're going to grow our audience, which I would like to do, and here's what the blog

00:32:37   post is like, suffice it to say that we want people to listen to the show, I don't know

00:32:41   if you need to say that, but like, why are you doing this?

00:32:43   Why do you care?

00:32:44   I, at least personally, want people to listen to the show

00:32:46   because it's gratifying when lots of people,

00:32:48   I don't know if I need to explain this to people,

00:32:50   but it's one of the premises, like listeners equals good.

00:32:53   If you want to grow the audience,

00:32:56   you feel like there is an untapped market of women who,

00:32:59   you know, say we're getting like 1% of the men

00:33:03   who might enjoy the show are listening to it, right?

00:33:06   I think like 0.0001% of the women

00:33:08   who might enjoy the show are listening to it.

00:33:10   So that seems like where we should go.

00:33:13   Like, because if we can get 1% of the men

00:33:14   and 1% of them, that's a big boost,

00:33:15   but maybe, you know, 1% of the men,

00:33:17   1% of any group is our cap, you know what I mean?

00:33:19   So I feel like that's where we would want to go

00:33:21   to grow the audience first.

00:33:23   And there are other reasons too.

00:33:26   Like, you know, all the other reasons

00:33:28   you hear people talk about,

00:33:28   but what people don't talk about is like,

00:33:30   why, you know, why does diversity matter?

00:33:31   Why do you care how many men are willing to listen

00:33:33   to this show?

00:33:34   Like, there are other really good reasons

00:33:35   that many people will talk to you about,

00:33:37   but I'm appealing to people's sense of like,

00:33:39   just logic, like we want listeners.

00:33:42   If women are not listening to the show

00:33:45   in much greater proportions than men,

00:33:46   even though the women who we think would like the show,

00:33:49   that's bad, that is an untapped market.

00:33:53   We want those people to listen too, right?

00:33:55   That's, you know, ignoring everything else,

00:33:58   which are very important points

00:33:59   about like we should be encouraging women to technology

00:34:01   and because there's a culture of keeping them away

00:34:03   and so on, it's like even just setting that aside

00:34:05   and if you think that is not important or whatever,

00:34:07   just purely by the numbers,

00:34:09   They can appeal to anybody and say, "Look, you know, you're not...

00:34:13   There's an audience out there that we feel like is not listening to the show in much

00:34:17   larger proportions than another audience, and I want to figure out why and change it."

00:34:21   Right?

00:34:22   So that's the premise of this question.

00:34:23   That's why I ask.

00:34:24   And why did I ask the women and girls who do listen to ATP?

00:34:28   Well, I can't ask somebody who doesn't listen to ATP because they don't know what the show

00:34:32   is about.

00:34:33   And the people who do were once women who didn't, and basically they have the experience

00:34:36   to say, "I was once a woman who didn't listen to ATP, and then I listened to it, and now

00:34:40   how did you go from a non-listener to a listener?" And you're listening to it now. What you think

00:34:45   we're doing might be keeping women away from it or making it seem like the show is not

00:34:49   welcoming to them and is not something they might be interested in and so on and so forth.

00:34:53   Or "I did listen, and now I don't, and here's why."

00:34:56   Right, because this was done on Twitter. Like, I mean, you would assume, you know, this...

00:35:00   Basically, I don't have any way to communicate with the women who don't follow me on Twitter

00:35:03   and don't listen to the show or whatever. So I did what I could, right? But I specifically

00:35:07   was addressing them because I wasn't particularly interested in hearing all the things that

00:35:11   men thought we could do to get more women to listen to ADP. Even though they may be

00:35:15   entirely right, I feel like I have the male perspective. Three of us collectively have

00:35:20   the male perspective down pretty well here. I was looking for some, you know, different

00:35:25   input. So that is a very long-winded setup for this question. You guys want to add anything

00:35:31   I didn't consult either of you on this question.

00:35:33   This is on my Twitter account, not the ATP Twitter account.

00:35:36   I just threw this question out there.

00:35:37   I don't know how you guys felt about it

00:35:38   or if it's a thing that you're thinking about

00:35:39   or whether you agree this was a good thing to ask

00:35:41   or have anything to add to my premises here.

00:35:44   - I don't think I have anything to add.

00:35:46   Other than that, I believe Marco and I both

00:35:48   pretty much immediately retweeted it.

00:35:50   And I think one of us retweeted it

00:35:52   from the show account just as quickly.

00:35:54   So I'm pretty sure I speak for Marco

00:35:56   in saying that we are completely behind this line of thought

00:36:00   And I'm very curious to hear what it is we can do

00:36:04   about the women that listen, or don't listen, I should say.

00:36:08   And we definitely had some interesting feedback,

00:36:10   which I suspect we're about to go into.

00:36:12   - Yeah, so before we talk about all the different,

00:36:15   you know, how we feel about them,

00:36:17   let's just go through, we got a lot of responses,

00:36:19   and let's go through some of them categorically.

00:36:22   Frequent suggestions, this is not really ordered

00:36:23   by frequency, but I guess I probably wrote them down

00:36:25   in the order they started coming in.

00:36:27   Have women guests on the show.

00:36:29   have women hosts on the show.

00:36:32   Do a host swap with other women tech podcasts

00:36:35   where, you know, a woman from another tech podcast

00:36:39   goes over here and one of us goes over there.

00:36:40   Talk about women in tech topics,

00:36:42   which we're kind of doing now

00:36:43   and we have kind of done in the past.

00:36:45   Read feedback from identifiably female listeners

00:36:50   on the episodes.

00:36:51   Stay away from male-focused ads that are alienating.

00:36:57   Ask women to try the show.

00:36:58   This was an interesting suggestion that I would not have guessed came.

00:37:02   Someone said, "You're not going to get women to listen to the show unless you ask women

00:37:06   to listen to the show," which sounds stupid, but is totally true.

00:37:10   You have to ask for it.

00:37:11   You have to say, "Hey, are you a woman interested in technology?

00:37:14   We have a podcast you might like."

00:37:15   I actually addressed them specifically.

00:37:18   Lots of mentions of word of mouth, as in how they came to know the show.

00:37:21   I heard from a friend who heard from a friend.

00:37:24   Talk about women who are in technology.

00:37:28   about things they're doing, companies, applications, whatever, conference talks, whatever.

00:37:36   Things that women are actually doing in tech talk about them the same way we talk about

00:37:38   everything else.

00:37:40   Their blogs, link to them on Twitter, blog them, retweet them, follow them on Twitter,

00:37:44   all that stuff.

00:37:45   Sponsor things that are focused on women like AppCamp for Girls, which I think the ATP account

00:37:48   and us have retweeted and posted about it many times, but other similar types of things

00:37:53   that are trying to get more women into technology.

00:37:55   Let's see what else we have here.

00:37:59   One specific piece of feedback was about how she thought that our show, from the outside,

00:38:05   looks like it's just a bunch of dudes talking about tech, which I'm going to say that it

00:38:08   pretty much is.

00:38:09   But anyway, she's saying it's her words, not mine.

00:38:11   You just look like another group of dudes talking about techs, but it's really much

00:38:13   more.

00:38:14   I think they mean the parts where we talk about Marco swatting raccoons in his backyard.

00:38:17   But yeah, the idea is that the optics from the outside is that the show looks like it's

00:38:21   It's a boring show about tech, but we do kind of cover slightly broader topics, maybe?

00:38:26   I don't know.

00:38:27   And that, you know, that getting that image out there, getting that message out there

00:38:30   could make the show more appealing.

00:38:34   And I think that's it for the categories of feedback.

00:38:39   Unless you remember any other particular large categories that you saw going by?

00:38:43   I think you got it.

00:38:44   I mean, I think the biggest one by far is female host/guest, and then I think second

00:38:50   biggest was probably the advertiser thing.

00:38:53   Yeah, and all these suggestions. Another reason I didn't respond to them on Twitter was because,

00:39:01   like this is a trap, you know, it has many names, I like male answer syndrome, but there

00:39:06   are many different names, like it's not an invitation to debate all these things. Like

00:39:11   if you ask a question like this on Twitter, your instinct and my instinct and the instincts

00:39:15   of many people on Twitter, not just men, but everybody who's kind of is to, is to answer

00:39:20   them to say, I think you should do X and then to answer by saying, well, we can't do X because

00:39:26   of this, or we don't want to do X or we shouldn't do X or I disagree that X would help. Like,

00:39:33   and that, believe me, that instinct is strong, right? And that instinct is very strong because

00:39:37   even though I invited the question, every one of these responses is like, well, I have

00:39:41   a reason why, you know, you get defensive, right? And so I fought that instinct, I think

00:39:46   pretty successfully, and did not answer that every single—because basically, what it

00:39:51   comes down to is I think every single one of these responses is right for the person

00:39:54   who answered, right? No one person who answered represents all women, but they represent themselves,

00:39:59   and they give a perspective that we don't have. So I tried to just take them as what

00:40:04   they were. Now, realistically speaking, we are not going to do all of these things. And

00:40:09   In particular, I want to focus on the idea of having women hosts or having women guests.

00:40:15   Hosts is the easiest one.

00:40:17   I think that all the people who said we should have women hosts because it would get more

00:40:20   women to listen are 100% right.

00:40:23   But at a certain point, you're not getting more people to listen to your show, you're

00:40:27   making a new show that is more appealing to women.

00:40:29   And I totally believe that that show would be more appealing to women.

00:40:33   But that doesn't mean I want to change the show that I'm currently on.

00:40:36   I think the women audience is underserved.

00:40:37   I think shows like Rocket, there should be 50 more of those

00:40:41   because this is an underserved audience, right?

00:40:42   There are as many people, there's a million shows

00:40:45   with a bunch of guys talking about tech.

00:40:46   But we are one of those shows.

00:40:48   I like the three of us on the show.

00:40:50   I think this is the show.

00:40:52   I recognize that we are sacrificing

00:40:55   some audience by doing that.

00:40:56   So the people who made that suggestion are not wrong.

00:40:57   But speaking for myself, I don't want to change

00:41:00   the host lineup of the show.

00:41:02   - Yeah, I mean, I'm totally with you on that.

00:41:04   I mean, it is a great suggestion.

00:41:06   that is a big problem that we have three guys here,

00:41:08   but we have never had guest hosts.

00:41:12   We don't have like a regular,

00:41:13   like our format is the three of us talking.

00:41:16   It is not a guest show.

00:41:19   We've occasionally had times,

00:41:21   like where my wife Tiff has popped in during the after show

00:41:23   to talk about games with you guys.

00:41:24   - People married to us do not count as either hosts or guests.

00:41:27   - But like, but that's, you know,

00:41:28   and that's, even that's only like in the after show,

00:41:30   and it's like a fun occasional thing.

00:41:32   It's not like a regular feature of the show.

00:41:34   Like, the show is not regularly having

00:41:36   different people in here.

00:41:38   If it were, and like, I know John Gruber,

00:41:41   for the talk show, got criticized initially,

00:41:44   I don't know, maybe a year ago,

00:41:45   when people started becoming a lot more aware of this issue,

00:41:49   because the talk show is that format show.

00:41:51   It does have guests every week.

00:41:53   And since then, I think he took that to heart,

00:41:57   and if you look at the list of hosts

00:42:00   since about a year ago,

00:42:02   there's a lot more women on that list.

00:42:04   And it's not even yet, but you can see

00:42:06   the progression is going in the right direction.

00:42:09   So I think it does make sense for shows

00:42:12   that have rotating hosts or rotating guests

00:42:16   to really obey that and to really pay attention

00:42:19   to their gender breakdown and their breakdown

00:42:21   in all sorts of diversity categories, honestly.

00:42:23   But for our show, I think we can safely say,

00:42:27   we appreciate that feedback,

00:42:32   but our show has always just been the three of us.

00:42:35   It isn't like we're having different men every week.

00:42:37   We don't have anybody else on the show.

00:42:38   - Yeah, and two things about that.

00:42:40   That feedback is kind of disheartening

00:42:41   because it shows how underserved this market is.

00:42:44   That they're asking, the way they feel like

00:42:47   they can get a show that appeals to them better

00:42:48   is asking for changes in existing shows.

00:42:51   It's just like, it's like all the female gamers out there

00:42:55   begging for female avatars and protagonists in games.

00:42:59   They just want to see themselves represented

00:43:01   And there's not enough out there.

00:43:03   It's an underserved market.

00:43:05   And so they have to take the things they do like

00:43:07   that are currently not catering to their needs

00:43:08   and say, could you change the thing you're doing

00:43:10   to cater to my needs because I'm so massively underserved

00:43:12   that I can't go elsewhere for something better than this?

00:43:14   I feel like there should be more podcasts

00:43:17   with three ladies talking about tech.

00:43:19   But unfortunately there aren't.

00:43:21   And as I said, this feedback is correct.

00:43:23   They are right that this would make our show more appealing,

00:43:25   but I just feel like it would be a different show.

00:43:28   And we're not doing that show, but more people should.

00:43:30   And that's also, you know, like, you know, we don't want to be condescending here and

00:43:34   say, well, women would listen only if there's another woman on the show, because that's

00:43:37   not true.

00:43:38   No, we did, but we did get that feedback a lot.

00:43:39   Like some, some people also said, I like the show the way it is, you don't need to add

00:43:42   any women.

00:43:43   Like these, none of these single women represent all women.

00:43:45   They're just voicing their own opinions.

00:43:46   But that's why I asked, because you want to hear other people's opinions.

00:43:49   And we did get a lot of people who said the show would be more appealing if there was

00:43:51   a woman guest.

00:43:52   We got fewer people who said, I like the lineup exactly the way it is.

00:43:55   There are other things that you can do to make it more appealing.

00:43:57   But I agree that the people who asked for that are correct.

00:44:00   I just feel like it's not a thing we're going to do, which is disappointing for us and disappointing

00:44:04   for them, but that's how that one comes down.

00:44:08   And the second thing on this, you talked about, like, you mentioned diversity in different

00:44:12   aspects.

00:44:13   That's another question that I tried to get in my blog post and it was very difficult

00:44:15   to explain.

00:44:17   Why are you concentrating on women?

00:44:18   Why not, you know, people of color or, you know, different sexual orientations or geographies

00:44:25   or language or any other thing like that?

00:44:28   I think we're terrible in all those categories

00:44:30   in terms of how our breakdown are

00:44:32   and in terms of underserved market.

00:44:33   But here's the thing, women aren't a minority.

00:44:35   They're half the planet.

00:44:37   So again, like deal with the biggest problem first.

00:44:41   Our massive gender disparity,

00:44:44   our massive underrepresentation that we feel

00:44:46   exists based on the data that we have

00:44:49   is not for a minority group, it's for half the planet, right?

00:44:51   So address the biggest problem first

00:44:54   and I feel like this is our biggest problem.

00:44:55   I feel like all those other problems are also there,

00:44:58   But this is the biggest bang for your buck.

00:45:01   This is the worst thing we have going on here.

00:45:04   I think all those other things

00:45:05   we should be definitely aware of.

00:45:07   What are we doing to alienate all those other groups

00:45:08   that are minorities, that are marginalized,

00:45:11   that we should be trying not to do anything

00:45:13   that excludes them, Android users.

00:45:16   Yeah, well, yeah. (laughing)

00:45:17   Anyway, that's not sort of a category, that's a choice.

00:45:21   Anyway, so I mean, that is worth addressing.

00:45:24   That is a real thing, but just like,

00:45:26   The fact that all those things come up in the same conversation is women.

00:45:29   It's like women are not a minority.

00:45:31   I was trying to look at the stat.

00:45:32   I think they're more than half the planet by like a tiny little bit.

00:45:35   But anyway, they are a minority in tech and that's the problem we're sort of trying to

00:45:39   address here.

00:45:40   So, what do we do about sponsors?

00:45:43   Because one of the pieces of feedback that I saw most often, other than you should have

00:45:48   a woman host or you should have women guests, the next bit of feedback that I think was

00:45:54   the next most popular was, well,

00:45:57   you should really try to stay away from advertisers

00:45:59   that are clearly just for men.

00:46:01   And I don't mean the hair coloring, I mean,

00:46:04   designed for men.

00:46:05   - I have used that.

00:46:06   (laughing)

00:46:07   Not proud of it.

00:46:09   Don't use it anymore, but I did use it.

00:46:11   - That's big of you, Marco, I'm very proud of you.

00:46:12   - Not recommended.

00:46:13   - Man, we're getting deep into accidental analog right now.

00:46:17   Mike Hurley's gonna be so upset at us.

00:46:18   But yeah, we did get a lot of feedback of,

00:46:22   you should really have sponsors that are more... is unisex? Unisex is either gender, is that right?

00:46:29   I always get it backwards. I would say gender neutral. Thank you. That's a much better way

00:46:32   of phrasing it. Gender neutral advertisers. And we were, the three of us were talking about this

00:46:37   very briefly via iMessage before the show. And in our recollection at the time, and maybe there's

00:46:44   others that we're not thinking of, the only sponsor that I think we've run, or at least

00:46:48   recently that is clearly not gender-neutral is Harry's, which is shaving stuff. And in

00:46:55   actuality that could very well be used for women for the parts of their bodies that they

00:47:01   shave, but certainly the ad read, if nothing else, is more aimed at men. And maybe it's

00:47:08   as simple as just trying to be more inclusive on the ad reads, which is another thing that

00:47:13   the three of us have talked about recently. So I'm not sure what the right answer is on

00:47:18   And I think Marco, you especially had some thoughts on this

00:47:21   if you wanna kinda take the mic.

00:47:23   - Yeah, I mean, so I think this is a valid point.

00:47:26   You know, the idea that, you know, again,

00:47:30   it's not like women will run away if we do a read

00:47:34   for products that are aimed at men,

00:47:35   but it certainly contributes to an overall feeling of,

00:47:40   you know, maybe this isn't, maybe unwelcomeness,

00:47:43   or like not fitting in, or this isn't meant for you.

00:47:47   Like, I've heard all those things from people

00:47:48   who have sent in this kind of feedback,

00:47:50   and I get that, I understand that.

00:47:52   The reality is, we have very few sponsors

00:47:56   that are gender specific,

00:47:57   and so it wouldn't be a huge deal to stop having them.

00:48:01   And I mean, the only recurring sponsors that we've had,

00:48:07   that I can think of off the top of my head,

00:48:09   are Harry's and Need.

00:48:10   You know, Need even now has Foremost.

00:48:12   They have other businesses that are not just for men.

00:48:16   So really it's Harry's, like that's,

00:48:18   we're really just talking about Harry's.

00:48:21   And as you said, Harry's like,

00:48:22   and I did some research to see like, you know,

00:48:23   how big of a problem is this with Harry's?

00:48:26   And yet, there's no question it's aimed at men,

00:48:29   but you know, they sell razors that are like male-styled

00:48:32   and you know, definitely aimed at men.

00:48:35   But women have used them and have blogged about using them

00:48:38   and you know, they work on women.

00:48:40   There's nothing about a razor that makes it just for a man.

00:48:43   Women can use them too.

00:48:45   So there's marketing choices, there's stylistic choices,

00:48:48   there's language choices.

00:48:50   Anyway, but if it came down to us telling Harry's,

00:48:55   look, we'd love to keep advertising you,

00:48:58   but we wanna keep everything gender neutral now,

00:48:59   so call us back when you have a women's option or something,

00:49:04   or when it's no longer so male-specific.

00:49:08   I'm fine with that.

00:49:09   I think that would be a good idea.

00:49:11   This is an easy one to solve.

00:49:12   This does not require changing the show.

00:49:15   This requires changing two sponsors to basically say,

00:49:19   "Sorry, we're gonna have this new policy now.

00:49:22   "We hope to work with you in the future

00:49:23   "if we can work this out."

00:49:25   So I think that's an easy,

00:49:27   easy little hanging fruit to change that.

00:49:29   I don't care at all.

00:49:30   I don't think the language of the sponsor reads

00:49:32   is itself a major part of the problem.

00:49:35   I've actually edited the reads.

00:49:37   A couple weeks ago, we did a spot for Jack Threads,

00:49:40   which was very male-focused,

00:49:42   and I very heavily edited the read.

00:49:44   and to remove things that were obviously men in a style

00:49:48   that I thought was not appropriate

00:49:51   for a gender neutral show.

00:49:53   So I edited the script, no big deal.

00:49:55   I edit every script I get to be more in our style

00:49:58   or to be easier to read or to say things

00:50:00   that I think should be said and delete things

00:50:01   I think shouldn't be said.

00:50:04   Editing scripts is no big deal,

00:50:06   but I think the script is not the problem.

00:50:09   The product is the problem.

00:50:10   What's being advertised is the problem here

00:50:12   if you're gonna make this argument.

00:50:13   So it doesn't matter how I say it, it matters, you know,

00:50:17   are we advertising products that are clearly aimed

00:50:19   just at men, and what does that suggest

00:50:22   to the women in our audience who are listening?

00:50:25   And so yeah, my argument is, my idea was,

00:50:28   why don't we just drop these handful of sponsors

00:50:29   that do this, you know, it would,

00:50:32   it's never fun to drop a sponsor, like,

00:50:34   I feel bad, it could hurt relationships,

00:50:36   you know, it's inconvenient for them

00:50:37   if they were counting on you,

00:50:38   but I'd be perfectly fine to do this.

00:50:41   Now when this came up on I am I disagreed because I don't think the problem is

00:50:45   Necessarily that there's a line of products that are aimed just at men because they're these are men shaving supplies

00:50:50   First of all, the reality is the most of our audience is men

00:50:53   So this is you know, the advertisers want to have ads targeted at the people they think is listening

00:50:58   But and I thought the problem was basically

00:51:00   Having to do with the reeds because it's okay to have a product

00:51:04   focused on

00:51:07   Just iOS users just just men just women just people in a particular state just people who?

00:51:12   Live a lot of our stuff is just people in the US for example because a lot of people thought these companies as we here

00:51:18   Don't ship overseas right so and we hear about that too right just for people in the US or whatever

00:51:23   but I think the the problem actually is with how the reads can be done because

00:51:28   Just because you have a product for men

00:51:31   Doesn't mean the ad read has to be targeted at men and that sounds crazy like what do you mean of course has to be?

00:51:36   It's a product for men.

00:51:37   An example someone gave me on Twitter is,

00:51:39   what if you were selling some sort of,

00:51:42   whether it be shaving or anything else product,

00:51:44   it was just for women.

00:51:45   A leg shaving razor with a handle

00:51:47   just for shaving women's legs or something.

00:51:50   Like whatever it is, or some kind of product

00:51:52   that only or mostly women use.

00:51:55   If we did that ad read, the inclination would be,

00:51:59   the fairly shameful inclination,

00:52:01   but I imagine it would be to pitch it as in like,

00:52:04   oh, like, buy this for your wife or girlfriend or whatever,

00:52:08   as in, assuming that our audience is mostly men,

00:52:10   which again, we think it is, and just saying,

00:52:13   well, of course only men listen to this Dude Tech podcast,

00:52:15   so let me, if I advertise, if it's a woman's product,

00:52:17   we have to do the ad read differently.

00:52:18   But if it's a men's product, we say,

00:52:19   hey, you will like this, you as in the male thing.

00:52:22   And I think when you do, and as you said,

00:52:24   you've adjusted the language,

00:52:25   when you do an ad read for a woman's product,

00:52:28   you should pitch it as if the person listening

00:52:31   might be a man or a woman.

00:52:32   and is not saying the woman is going to use it for themselves,

00:52:34   buy this for the man in your life.

00:52:36   Maybe try it yourself, but if it's totally focused

00:52:39   to be a man's product, again,

00:52:42   assume all our listeners are 100% women,

00:52:44   how would the ad read be different?

00:52:46   If it would be different, then probably the ad read

00:52:48   is making people feel excluded,

00:52:50   because we're all used to living in a world

00:52:51   where there are certain products aimed just at men

00:52:53   or just at women, right?

00:52:54   We always see ads on television or in the newspapers

00:52:57   or whatever on billboards that are specifically aimed

00:53:00   at men or at women, for whatever reasons

00:53:02   You want to say that these products are culturally mostly for men or mostly for women

00:53:06   None of us feel like we get offended by that unless we listen to or watch the show and every single ad was like you should

00:53:12   Buy this for yourself and it's a woman focused product. I'm like, but I'm not a woman

00:53:15   Why do you keep saying you it's not me?

00:53:17   Like you never you never pitched this product to me as if you could buy this as a gift for a woman that you know

00:53:22   It's always you buy this for yourself and it makes you feel like geez

00:53:25   Maybe I shouldn't be watching this program because all these ads for women's stuff are telling are telling me that I should buy it for

00:53:30   myself but don't they know I'm not a woman it seems like maybe this is not

00:53:32   the place for me so I think the existence of gender-specific products is

00:53:36   perfectly fine especially if they're not an overwhelming majority like if all of

00:53:39   our ads were men only products that's a big problem but if one out of all of our

00:53:42   sponsors all recurring sponsors men only I don't see it as a big deal but I think

00:53:45   the ads that the reads themselves have to be done in a way that's not like hey

00:53:50   you should buy this for yourself because that's excluded that's excluding people

00:53:53   like the existence of the ad is not excluding people I think the way the ad

00:53:57   is pitches excluding people. And I think the fact that our audience is mostly men is the symptom.

00:54:01   Like that's, you know, that is the root problem here. And the symptom is the fact that advertisers

00:54:05   who advertise things for only men want to advertise on our program. If we got our audience

00:54:09   to 50/50, maybe Harry's would be less interesting in advertising with us, and that's fine. But,

00:54:14   like, they're interested now because they think, I think most of our listeners are men, and they're

00:54:18   probably right. And that's the root problem we're trying to solve. I'm not entirely sure getting rid

00:54:21   of that ad would change the gender disparity. I think it just needs to be presented. And my idea

00:54:26   for the past Harry's Read was we should read just like I said, do the Harry's Read as if 100% of our

00:54:31   listeners are women and see if anyone notices. Like see if people get confused and go, "I didn't

00:54:37   understand that ad. Wasn't it for men's products? Why were you advertising it to women?" And we said,

00:54:41   "Oh, we'll just assume 100% of the women people listening to the show are women because, you know,

00:54:45   tech podcast listeners are mostly women." So we didn't get to that before we did the Harry's

00:54:51   Edry before I communicated that idea to Marco, but I thought that would be a fun thing to

00:54:55   do. But that just shows the fact that that's not how it's done. It shows that everyone

00:55:01   is tacitly agreeing that, "Yeah, well, we just assume most of the listeners are women."

00:55:06   And that's the problem. That's the problem we're trying to solve. So I'm not entirely

00:55:09   opposed to judging Harry's, but I think it can be done in a way that is more inclusive

00:55:15   than it is done now.

00:55:17   I agree with most of what you said.

00:55:19   The problem is most of the examples

00:55:22   of the negative things that you used

00:55:24   are things that we don't actually have in our ads,

00:55:26   things that we don't say, things that aren't in our ads,

00:55:29   aren't in our scripts, aren't in our remarks usually even.

00:55:32   - Well, yeah, most of them are pretty neutral,

00:55:34   but we never make the explicit pitch to,

00:55:37   you should buy this for some man that you know,

00:55:40   for your father, for your friend who's a guy,

00:55:43   for your husband, for your boyfriend.

00:55:45   We never make that pitch.

00:55:46   It's never, you know, because that would be explicitly

00:55:49   saying, I am addressing now you,

00:55:52   woman listening to this program.

00:55:53   We never do that.

00:55:54   It's always, you should buy this for yourself, it's great,

00:55:56   it's much better than what you've currently been buying.

00:55:58   It's all about you, you, you, you are a man.

00:56:00   Never the other side.

00:56:01   And so I think that balances off.

00:56:03   Even though you is like generic and not gender specific,

00:56:05   when it's a male-focused product, it makes, you know,

00:56:08   we never go the other way in any degree.

00:56:10   - I could see that, but I mean, to me,

00:56:13   I think the solution there is not to have to address that issue either direction.

00:56:23   Why do we need to advertise products on our show that are only useful to men or only aimed

00:56:28   at men?

00:56:29   - But those products exist.

00:56:31   Would you reject a product that was focused only on women?

00:56:35   There's just some products like that.

00:56:36   And again, who says it's only?

00:56:37   Like, "Oh, we didn't get pantyhose."

00:56:39   Who says men can't wear pantyhose?

00:56:40   They totally can.

00:56:41   culturally speaking, percentage wise, blah blah blah blah blah for the most part, etc.

00:56:45   etc. Lots of caveats, so on and so forth. That's a whole separate culture issue. But

00:56:48   the fact is, there are products that are more often bought by women and more often bought

00:56:52   by men. They're not men only, not women only. They don't want to be excluding from the definitions.

00:56:56   But we all know what we mean about these. You know, if Harry's on their website, it's

00:57:00   men's shaving products. That's what they're going for. I don't think it's crazy to make

00:57:04   a product focused specifically on the needs of either men or women and whatever particular

00:57:08   things they want to do. I think you should have both of those things. It's a shame we

00:57:12   will never be able to get women products for women's things even because if we can't get

00:57:16   more women listening to the show. So that's what we're trying to do. But I think if we

00:57:20   ever got to 50/50 distribution, I would gladly take a quote unquote women only advertiser

00:57:26   any day of the week. And just as much as I think it would take a men only one. If it

00:57:30   takes ditching the men only sponsors to get more women to listen, I'd also be willing

00:57:33   to do that. But I feel like, and some people also reply to this, that like, there's no

00:57:37   No need to ditch the Harry spots, just be more inclusive in the reads, right?

00:57:41   But you just said the problem is when you go to the site, it's all about men.

00:57:44   Right, but it's the reads, the product is for men, but women buy products that are for

00:57:48   men as gifts all the time.

00:57:50   Well, but see, I just pulled up the Harrys read when we started discussing this, and

00:57:54   I pulled up my script that I read when we do these ads, and there's nothing in it that

00:58:00   presupposes that you are a man directly.

00:58:04   The only thing is the absence of something like,

00:58:06   "Oh, get this for a man in your life."

00:58:08   I don't say anything like that,

00:58:10   but I also don't say, "Get this for a woman in your life."

00:58:14   The ad does not specify gender.

00:58:16   It does, I agree, it has the built-in assumption

00:58:20   that this ad I'm reading saying,

00:58:23   "You should go get this, you can do this."

00:58:25   - Yeah, you've been annoyed by buying razors the normal way,

00:58:30   "You should get this because it's better,"

00:58:32   you know what I mean?

00:58:33   I've also been annoyed by buying razors the normal way.

00:58:34   It's like looking at this, this is what I'm saying,

00:58:38   I don't think the script that I actually use

00:58:41   in practice for these kind of ads,

00:58:43   I don't think the script is really the problem.

00:58:45   I think what is being advertised,

00:58:47   if this is gonna be a problem at all,

00:58:48   if you can say we want to avoid advertisers

00:58:52   that might suggest a male focus or a male bias

00:58:55   or male only stuff, I think the issue is

00:58:58   the advertisers themselves because we can edit the scripts

00:59:02   to be neutral, or if they aren't already.

00:59:04   But if a bunch of women go to the Harry's site

00:59:08   and it says these are for men--

00:59:10   - Well, that's why if you said buy this for the man

00:59:12   in your life, you'd be explicit about the fact

00:59:14   that this is a men's product or that's how they frame it.

00:59:16   And women can use it too, but this company's making product

00:59:20   that they're aiming specifically at men.

00:59:22   And it might be a good gift idea,

00:59:23   because if you know someone who has problems

00:59:25   and always complaining about their shaving situation,

00:59:27   you could get this for them.

00:59:28   Trying to be inclusive with the reed

00:59:30   is more than just leaving it neutral,

00:59:33   because neutral plus men's product equals not neutral.

00:59:36   But if you try to go in the other direction

00:59:38   to make sure that people are included in it.

00:59:40   And the same thing with, you know, to balance things out,

00:59:44   if we could get a women-only sponsor, that would be great.

00:59:46   But I don't know if we could do that

00:59:47   with the audience breakdown that we all feel like we have.

00:59:50   - See, I would say that the script editing

00:59:52   is necessary but not sufficient to solve this problem.

00:59:57   - Well, I mean, you know, like, that's possible as well.

01:00:00   I just feel like I would rather add sponsors than remove.

01:00:03   Because Harry's is, the reason we keep doing Harry's reasons

01:00:05   is because it's a good product.

01:00:06   And people don't know this, but we are fairly picky

01:00:09   about the sponsors that we take for the show.

01:00:11   If we don't think it's actually a decent product,

01:00:12   we don't take it.

01:00:13   - But on the other hand, of all the sponsors that we have,

01:00:17   we have, I don't know, maybe 10 regular recurring sponsors

01:00:20   most of the time, I think only one or two

01:00:25   are gender specific.

01:00:26   Like, we're a tech show.

01:00:27   We're not a health and beauty show,

01:00:30   we're not a fashion show, we're a tech show.

01:00:32   And tech, as much as it often isn't,

01:00:35   tech should be gender neutral.

01:00:37   And so most of our sponsors, like Squarespace

01:00:40   and Hover and Fracture, these are all totally

01:00:44   ignoring gender, you know, it's like,

01:00:47   it doesn't matter what gender you are to use Glide.

01:00:49   Like, I think there are enough people out there,

01:00:53   it's a tech show, like most of our sponsors

01:00:55   tech sponsors. You can say it's kind of a fluke that we have sponsors like Harry's and

01:01:00   Warby Parker because we're not a show about shaving our glasses. We have a certain kind

01:01:06   of audience, but it is a lot more focused to run a tech ad on our show than to run an

01:01:12   ad for anything outside of tech because you at least know that we have this many people

01:01:17   who care a lot about tech. I agree with you that in practice, or I mean in theory, the

01:01:23   the gender of ads shouldn't matter,

01:01:24   and it can be attempted to be neutralized,

01:01:27   or at least not always on one side of it.

01:01:30   But we're a tech show, we only have a couple of advertisers

01:01:33   who are gender specific.

01:01:35   We don't necessarily need to maintain that status quo.

01:01:39   - What I'm curious to hear,

01:01:40   and I can't pass judgment on this because I'm not a woman,

01:01:43   and so I don't really know,

01:01:44   but what I'm curious to hear is,

01:01:46   is it better to just quietly not have

01:01:51   male-focused sponsors,

01:01:53   Or is it better, like Jon was saying, to specifically call out,

01:01:57   "This is for the women that are listening.

01:01:59   Get this for the man in your life," or even, "Get this for yourself."

01:02:03   I don't, I feel like maybe it would almost be more inclusive to go,

01:02:09   to bend over backwards and say that this ad, which ostensibly is for men,

01:02:15   we're making it for women because we want to be inclusive.

01:02:19   But I don't know.

01:02:21   I'm not a woman.

01:02:22   I don't know how that feels.

01:02:23   Yeah, like a lot of the things that you do for groups that are marginalized is, you know,

01:02:31   is to try, you're trying to make them feel welcome, right?

01:02:35   And neutral things like Squarespace don't push them away, but also don't make them feel

01:02:41   particularly welcome.

01:02:42   The best case would be ads focused on women, because that would really make them feel,

01:02:46   "This is a product for you.

01:02:47   We were advertising this at you.

01:02:49   This is a thing for you.

01:02:50   We're talking to you now."

01:02:51   Right?

01:02:52   That would be best.

01:02:53   Second best I feel like is if there is an ad that may feel alienating, to try to be

01:03:00   inclusive in that read to say, "Even though it sounds like this is not for you, this show

01:03:04   is still for you, and in fact I'm talking to you as if 100% of the audience is women,

01:03:09   and I'm going to pitch this product for men to you, specifically you the listener, as

01:03:14   a woman."

01:03:15   This is kind of the same thing as using "she" pronouns in all of your pages.

01:03:20   Why is it she all the time?

01:03:22   Well, you're trying to balance the scales

01:03:23   of the massive inequity in the tech world.

01:03:26   Throw a little pronouns in one direction,

01:03:28   there's no reason to complain.

01:03:29   And it's more inclusive because people would say,

01:03:32   oh, I'm used to every single example being a he.

01:03:35   Why don't I, and I'm as guilty as anyone

01:03:37   of constantly using he.

01:03:38   People take note that someone,

01:03:42   something used she in this example.

01:03:44   Isn't that interesting?

01:03:45   I wish that was done all the time that you're trying.

01:03:49   It is such a tiny drop in the bucket against all the other things that have stacked against

01:03:52   them.

01:03:53   The very, literally the very least that you can do is try to make things like that more

01:03:57   equitable.

01:03:58   Dropping the ad entirely would also kind of make it more equitable, but then how do you

01:04:03   call out to them?

01:04:05   I don't know.

01:04:06   Right.

01:04:07   That's what I'm saying.

01:04:08   That's a really good summary of what I was trying to say.

01:04:10   Speaking of advertisers, it's been a while, so we should probably move along with the

01:04:15   advertising part by talking about ads.

01:04:18   - Yeah, and we have more to say on this topic,

01:04:20   but I think we can end the ad part of it.

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01:08:04   All right, so, finishing the general discussion,

01:08:07   well, it's never finished,

01:08:08   but continuing the general discussion for this show,

01:08:11   I think it's worth talking about the content of the show.

01:08:14   So, I asked Tiff, my wife, earlier this evening,

01:08:18   I said we were gonna be talking about this,

01:08:19   and I asked her, like, you know, what does she think,

01:08:21   what can we do to address this problem,

01:08:23   you know, from her point of view?

01:08:25   And what I've heard from a lot of people,

01:08:27   and, you know, Tiff told me this,

01:08:29   and we heard from a lot of people,

01:08:30   and even people in the chat have said this

01:08:33   in the last half hour that we've been talking about this,

01:08:35   what I keep hearing is we have a lot of listeners

01:08:39   who have wives or girlfriends or who are themselves women

01:08:45   who listen for the more human general parts of the show,

01:08:49   but don't like or don't listen

01:08:52   for the in-depth programming stuff.

01:08:55   And this is certainly an issue worth talking about,

01:08:59   because it's not that there are no women programmers,

01:09:03   but as we know, the ratio of the gender breakdown

01:09:07   in engineering jobs is really nowhere near even.

01:09:10   So this is a bigger problem.

01:09:13   I will note that we often get that exact same feedback

01:09:16   from men who are not programmers who listen to the show,

01:09:19   but I would imagine it's proportionally,

01:09:22   we keep hearing this as one of the reasons

01:09:26   why women don't like our show or don't listen

01:09:28   to all of our show or listen to our show consistently.

01:09:31   Do you guys, I mean, to some degree we can say,

01:09:33   like, well, just like we said earlier,

01:09:35   the format of the show is the three of us,

01:09:38   like we don't have guest hosts.

01:09:39   We could look at this topic and we can say,

01:09:42   well, do we just say, like,

01:09:45   well, we are a programming show sometimes,

01:09:47   or is it something that we should change

01:09:49   or something that will just always be this way?

01:09:50   What do you guys think?

01:09:51   - This is explicitly outside the bounds of my goals

01:09:54   because my setup was,

01:09:56   Of all the people in the world who I think would enjoy our show how many of them are not listening to it and our show

01:10:03   Means our show as it exists we could

01:10:06   Appeal to a much broader base if we talked about politics or sports, but that's not the show like anything

01:10:13   You know

01:10:13   There's broad topics and there's narrow topics if we only talked about the details of a specific kind of model train our audience would be

01:10:19   Way smaller. All right

01:10:22   We are doing what we were talking about what we are passionate about. It hasn't necessarily a narrow audience

01:10:27   We can always broaden things up

01:10:29   and get a larger audience and

01:10:32   broaden things up and again

01:10:34   I just picked politics or sport because those are pretty broad topics way more people care about politics and sports than care about any of

01:10:39   The stuff we talk about but this is the show we want to do

01:10:42   I will never give up talking about the minutiae of programming languages and operating systems and and

01:10:48   Api's all that stuff because that's what I want to talk about on the show

01:10:51   My focus is entirely on there are women out there who are interested in the minutia of programming languages and file systems and crap like that

01:10:58   Who aren't listening to the show because of stuff we're doing

01:11:01   To signal to them that the show is not for them and that is entirely where my focus is

01:11:05   I think we do talk about broader topics occasionally a lot of that might be as some of the feedback was pointing out

01:11:11   That it's not clear from the outside that we occasionally talk about touchy-feely things that occasionally it gets a broader top

01:11:18   Maybe it's not clear from the outside that occasionally we talk about programming language for a half an hour

01:11:21   I you know, maybe that would bring in more people as well

01:11:24   but in

01:11:26   General I want this show to be about tech stuff and we were all interested

01:11:30   We all have our own little tech pet peeves and hangouts and things we want to go super into depth with and that's never gonna

01:11:36   Change because that's the show

01:11:38   the only thing I would take away from this is that like

01:11:41   That we should do a somehow do a better job of representing to the outside world

01:11:46   The range of topics that we do talk about because there is a fairly weird

01:11:50   Not gonna say a big range, but it's definitely

01:11:53   You know there it's it's not as narrow as it seems on the outside. I think in some respects

01:11:59   It's more narrow in particular areas, but we do sort of go to these other islands and the different ends of the spectrum

01:12:04   Yeah, I completely agree. I think

01:12:07   We the three of us really love doing this show and it's not that we're opposed to

01:12:16   making tweaks, but I think we're opposed to making tremendous changes. And I think that

01:12:26   having the show be an accident, having the show, yes, we have show notes that we kind

01:12:31   of work off of every week, but we just kind of throw things against the wall and sometimes

01:12:34   they stick and sometimes they don't. And keeping that format is critical in much the same way

01:12:40   as keeping the three of us is critical. And I'm totally good with tweaking here and there,

01:12:49   but to dramatically change the content of the show would be changing the show entirely.

01:12:52   And I think the best part of, best piece of feedback we had about that is related to our

01:12:56   recent revelation that people didn't know the after show existed. Because we would always

01:12:59   put this stuff on the after show to try to maintain the balance, some semblance of like

01:13:03   uniformity of like, well, there's mostly the tech stuff in the beginning. And if we have

01:13:07   something that's less tech related because the show is called Accidental Tech Podcast,

01:13:11   we should save the most non-techy stuff or the time we just want to talk about like cars

01:13:16   or whatever for the after show. But having learned that a lot of people didn't know the

01:13:19   after show even existed, a lot of the feedback we've gotten and what we're doing now is say,

01:13:24   "Don't leave that stuff for the after show because half the people don't even know it's

01:13:27   there." And because it makes it seem like it's not as important, move it to the main

01:13:30   show which we are doing today. And I think in the future, we will be less, maybe we'll

01:13:34   We'll still keep the car stuff there, but you know.

01:13:36   - Nobody likes that except us.

01:13:38   - Because cars, I feel like the cars have a narrower appeal,

01:13:41   but then you've got to be a tech nerd

01:13:42   and be super into cars,

01:13:43   your percentages start going down, right?

01:13:46   But for things that have broader appeal than tech,

01:13:48   like women in tech, I think is a broader topic than HFS+.

01:13:52   That should be in the main show.

01:13:53   I think that is definitely a change we're going to do,

01:13:55   because we were talking about that anyway,

01:13:57   but I at least was under the impression,

01:13:59   like this was a separation in the show,

01:14:01   it was like just dividing things up on your plate, right?

01:14:03   Not like that's the ghetto over there where things go

01:14:07   and we don't really wanna talk about them.

01:14:10   It wasn't a lesser part.

01:14:11   The After Show was not lesser in any way,

01:14:12   but it's lesser if people don't even know it exists.

01:14:14   So we definitely need to move that.

01:14:16   - It's main course versus dessert, really.

01:14:18   Last week we had this on the topic list.

01:14:23   We had other things in front of it

01:14:25   'cause of news that had happened,

01:14:26   and we could've done it in the After Show

01:14:28   and we chose not to because we wanted to give it

01:14:30   the attention of being a main topic.

01:14:32   That's why it was up first this week as the first main topic.

01:14:36   - Yep, absolutely.

01:14:37   One more thing in the chat room.

01:14:39   Tim in Austin says, he's talking to someone

01:14:43   who is with him there and saying,

01:14:45   "Three men discussing what women like and don't like,

01:14:47   "matter of factly, is very patronizing.

01:14:48   "Women are individuals."

01:14:49   Which I tried to make that point in the beginning,

01:14:51   but maybe he missed that part of the show.

01:14:53   Yes, all this feedback we're getting

01:14:55   is from a bunch of different people.

01:14:56   None of them represents all women.

01:14:58   They just are themselves,

01:14:59   which is why you need a lot of feedback

01:15:00   from a lot of different people.

01:15:02   None of these women speak for all women.

01:15:04   We are trying to address women as a group,

01:15:06   and so I have to discuss them as a group.

01:15:08   But it's, we're, you just have to,

01:15:11   we're talking about them collectively,

01:15:12   but every person is different, every woman is different.

01:15:14   These, that's why I said the individual feedback.

01:15:16   Some women say this, some women say that.

01:15:17   They're individuals, they're not a group,

01:15:18   but we are trying to address them as a group.

01:15:20   So, you know, it's, people may not want to hear

01:15:25   three men talking about what we want,

01:15:26   but what we're trying to do is address them as a group

01:15:28   and say how can we make it so our show is not,

01:15:31   is doing fewer things that make you feel like the show is not for you.

01:15:35   And it's you, the collective, now.

01:15:37   It's not any particular individual.

01:15:39   Because if we wanted to address an individual,

01:15:40   we could just simply ask that individual, what do you specifically want,

01:15:43   and address them and get that one thing.

01:15:44   We are trying to address women as a group.

01:15:47   We're not going to do something that everybody likes and everybody hates.

01:15:50   We're just trying to do the best we can.

01:15:51   You know what I mean?

01:15:52   And that's why we've asked a lot of people and not just one person.

01:15:54   Right.

01:15:55   And this issue is so big and so important and so on everyone's mind

01:16:00   right now, especially, like this has come up so much

01:16:03   this year, and with the whole Gamergate,

01:16:06   horribleness, and this is affecting the entire industry.

01:16:10   It would be irresponsible of us not,

01:16:12   it would be weird if we didn't address this.

01:16:14   It would be weird if we didn't have conversations like,

01:16:17   what can we do to improve this with our show?

01:16:19   Like, this is a full topic.

01:16:22   This is a relevant topic that we have to cover.

01:16:24   - And it actually is tech related,

01:16:25   because the tech industry is the industry

01:16:27   with this massive problem.

01:16:28   It's not just like, you know, it's not,

01:16:31   doctors and lawyers have much better representation

01:16:33   of women than the tech industry.

01:16:34   Like it's a big problem in tech and in gaming

01:16:36   and these things like, so it is totally a tech topic.

01:16:39   Not that it needs to be a tech topic

01:16:40   'cause we can talk about cars whenever the hell we want,

01:16:42   but this is actually a tech topic.

01:16:44   - And we're gonna keep discussing it.

01:16:46   This is not gonna be the last time you hear

01:16:47   about this topic on our show.

01:16:48   - Yeah, and work on it because like, you know,

01:16:51   during the show when I'm talking, after the show

01:16:53   when I listen to myself to hear all the things I did wrong,

01:16:55   I know, like, you know, I did it 17 times in this show,

01:17:00   referring to people as he by default, right?

01:17:03   Using male-centered pronouns and discussions

01:17:07   from a male perspective like happens all the time.

01:17:09   It is very different, not that I'm saying this as an excuse,

01:17:11   but it's difficult to change, we are working on it.

01:17:13   Like we're trying, like we just need to get way better at it

01:17:16   and constantly hearing feedback from women that tell us

01:17:19   when we're doing it wrong,

01:17:20   like they will tell us things we don't notice ourselves.

01:17:22   Like all the things that I noticed

01:17:23   are things that people have told me.

01:17:24   That's why I noticed that, right?

01:17:25   So that feedback is essential

01:17:27   and that engagement of like asking women to tell us,

01:17:31   again, they're gonna have conflicting opinions.

01:17:33   They don't speak with one voice,

01:17:34   but if you don't ask, you're never gonna know.

01:17:36   Like what was the one that I highlighted

01:17:39   from the ideas about asking women to listen to the show?

01:17:43   Why did that not occur to me?

01:17:44   I don't know.

01:17:45   But like, if you don't explicitly say,

01:17:47   hey, women who love tech stuff, we have a tech podcast,

01:17:50   you might wanna listen to it.

01:17:51   They're not gonna come and you know what I mean?

01:17:52   Like that's called being inviting.

01:17:54   Literally, you are literally inviting them,

01:17:55   specifically them, not just like people,

01:17:57   like, hey, out there, people if you're interested in tech.

01:18:00   People used to say to me that they like the show or whatever

01:18:03   and I would say, that's great,

01:18:05   tell your nerdy friends about the show.

01:18:07   And I would say, tell your nerdy friends

01:18:09   'cause don't just tell your friends

01:18:11   'cause your friends probably aren't into

01:18:13   the minutia that we talk about on a tech podcast.

01:18:15   Tell your nerdy friends, right?

01:18:17   At this point, I would modify that to do a specific call out

01:18:21   tell your nerdy friends,

01:18:23   including your nerdy girlfriends, right?

01:18:26   And like, why do you have to call them out specifically?

01:18:28   Because I think most people just hear nerd

01:18:30   and picture a guy, which is wrong,

01:18:32   but like that's the stereotype, right?

01:18:34   So you have to actually make an actual assertive effort

01:18:39   to combat the overwhelming bias

01:18:42   of the entire tech world towards mail.

01:18:44   'Cause if you do nothing,

01:18:45   it will just default to mail everywhere.

01:18:46   And that's what we're trying to avoid here.

01:18:48   And yeah, it's difficult to do.

01:18:50   We all do it, I know I'm trying not to do it,

01:18:53   every week hopefully we're getting better,

01:18:57   a little bit maybe, but yeah, discussions like this

01:19:00   will hopefully produce some more feedback

01:19:03   and we'll get more ideas and do better things going forward.

01:19:07   - Yeah, I couldn't agree more and I mean,

01:19:12   all of us are trying, all three of us are trying

01:19:14   and I'm sure all three of us have said

01:19:16   some really dumb crap just now,

01:19:18   but it's from a good place for what it's worth

01:19:21   and we're trying to get better.

01:19:22   So if you are a woman--

01:19:24   - Or a girl, 'cause I don't wanna be the ageist.

01:19:26   It's cumbersome, but like I don't have,

01:19:29   you don't wanna, the feedback I've gotten many, many times

01:19:32   is that female is not a great way to refer,

01:19:34   which I've done three times in the show already,

01:19:35   I understand that, but like it's so clinical and just,

01:19:38   but women and girls is who we're talking about.

01:19:40   'Cause I don't wanna exclude kids from,

01:19:42   I would love the show when I was a kid.

01:19:44   Kids should listen to the show.

01:19:45   Girl kids, boy kids, everybody, and women and men.

01:19:48   It's a show for everybody, really.

01:19:50   As long as you're a nerd.

01:19:51   - If you self identify as someone who is female,

01:19:56   then please, if you have feedback, then let us know.

01:20:01   And if you're a dude, then I'm sure you're going to give us

01:20:04   your feedback anyway, because that's exactly what happened

01:20:06   when Jon asked specifically for women and girls

01:20:09   to give feedback.

01:20:10   - Yeah, I didn't wanna call that out.

01:20:12   I knew it was gonna happen.

01:20:13   I admit being the cynical person that I am.

01:20:17   Part of the reason I got excitement about explicitly tweeting to women and girls, like

01:20:23   the tweet was to them, is that I knew a million guys would answer.

01:20:26   I just said, "It's male answer syndrome.

01:20:28   I have it 100%.

01:20:30   I am a sufferer of this.

01:20:31   I'm not just a client.

01:20:32   I'm the president, okay?"

01:20:33   I think we all are.

01:20:35   And sure enough, you can go through the thread and try to count up.

01:20:38   Did more men than women—I mean, granted, I probably have more male followers than women.

01:20:42   I looked at my follower ratio with one of those tools

01:20:44   that tries to figure out if you're a man or woman.

01:20:46   It's just massively unbalanced.

01:20:48   I'm doing terrible at this.

01:20:50   I've been trying to adjust my follow count, by the way,

01:20:51   for the people who I follow.

01:20:52   I've been unfollowing men and following women

01:20:54   to try to get it even close.

01:20:55   I'm not even close to parody, but anyway,

01:20:58   tons of men answered this question.

01:21:00   And I'm not gonna shame them for answering

01:21:03   'cause I understand why they did it.

01:21:04   And their input is just as useful as anyone else's.

01:21:09   I just have to understand their input

01:21:10   is coming from a male perspective.

01:21:11   if you want a female perspective,

01:21:13   which is what I was asking for.

01:21:14   Look, they could be saying the exact same things

01:21:17   that the women are saying, and it's also a good idea, right?

01:21:19   But people jump on that bearing of like,

01:21:24   I didn't ask you men to like, bottom line on Twitter,

01:21:27   if I addressed a question to only people

01:21:29   who have a PlayStation 4,

01:21:30   a thousand Xbox owners would answer me.

01:21:32   That has nothing to do with gender.

01:21:33   People just want to say what they want to say.

01:21:34   Like, it really doesn't, you know?

01:21:37   But male answer syndrome is a thing,

01:21:39   and I don't want to shame any of the men who answered.

01:21:42   That's why I didn't reply to any of them

01:21:43   and telling them I didn't ask you,

01:21:45   I was asking like all feedback welcome.

01:21:47   You can't control who answers your questions.

01:21:49   You know, just my favorite person who gets frustrated

01:21:51   by this is JWZ, Jamie, what's his name,

01:21:54   Zawinski or whatever the old.

01:21:55   - Yep, yep.

01:21:56   - Yeah, he always has like tech questions on his blog

01:21:59   and he's fairly famous.

01:22:01   And so when he asked a tech question, like many of us,

01:22:03   he gets lots of different answers,

01:22:04   but he's so angry at people

01:22:05   not answering the question he asked.

01:22:07   He always says, "I want to figure out how to get X to work with Y.

01:22:10   Don't tell me how I can do it by compiling my own thing.

01:22:13   Don't tell me how I can write a program to do it.

01:22:15   Don't tell me if I use a different operating system, I wouldn't have this problem.

01:22:17   Don't tell me this program would do it.

01:22:18   I want to use this program with this thing and this..."

01:22:20   And then a million people answer him and they just ignore him and they just tell him whatever

01:22:23   they want.

01:22:24   "You should really use Gen 2 and compile from source."

01:22:25   It's like, it's impossible.

01:22:27   I don't know why he fights that battle.

01:22:28   I don't fight that battle.

01:22:29   All feedback is welcome.

01:22:30   I will gladly find the feedback that I want and read it.

01:22:33   I will read the other ones too.

01:22:35   I can file it away to my own mind.

01:22:36   never feel like you shouldn't respond to anything. Even if I explicitly address the question

01:22:40   to PS4 owners, if you're an Xbox owner and you want to give me an answer, just make it

01:22:44   clear you're an Xbox owner and I'll put it in the right bin and it'll be fine.

01:22:47   Our final sponsor this week, which is also gender neutral, is Fracture. Fracture prints

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01:23:05   I have tons of Fractured Prints hanging up

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01:23:13   You see these things, trust me,

01:23:14   I get compliments on them all the time,

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01:23:19   They make great gifts.

01:23:20   Holidays, of course, Mother's Day's coming up.

01:23:24   Oh, crap, that's gender specific, kind of.

01:23:26   Well, anyway, everyone has a mother at some point.

01:23:30   Anyway, oh boy. (laughs)

01:23:32   - You're overthinking it, Mother's Day, just go with it.

01:23:35   just go with it. Mother's Day is fine, you did not invent Mother's Day.

01:23:38   Right, so holidays exist, reasons to give people gifts exist, and if you want to get

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01:23:58   through the front, so that way, you know, the ink is not going to scratch off, if anything

01:24:02   happen to the front of the glass. It's not going to scratch off or anything. These are

01:24:05   durable things. But also, because the glass is really thin, it looks like the picture

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01:24:16   looks like it is just the picture on the front of the glass, but it's nice and shiny and

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01:24:26   like a nice big print. I mean, the ones I have above my desk, I have a pair of them

01:24:31   above my computer that I think are like 11 by 17,

01:24:33   and they don't weigh that much.

01:24:35   Like a framed picture that same size would weigh more

01:24:37   'cause the frame would weigh more.

01:24:39   Fracture prints, they have this thin glass layer

01:24:41   and then behind it is like some foam

01:24:43   that then, like some foam board, so you can hang it.

01:24:45   You can put like a little picture hanging nail in there

01:24:47   or whatever.

01:24:47   So the whole thing is actually pretty lightweight.

01:24:49   It looks like it's a solid piece of glass,

01:24:51   but it's thin glass adhered to foam board.

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01:24:56   from a practical point of view.

01:24:57   Like I'm always afraid when I'm hanging a big picture

01:24:59   'cause I have a couple of large frame prints

01:25:00   in my office too.

01:25:02   I'm always afraid they're gonna fall off,

01:25:04   they're gonna shatter or whatever,

01:25:05   they're gonna get broken during shipping maybe.

01:25:08   Fracture, I've never had that problem.

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01:25:11   they've never tore the nail out of the wall or anything.

01:25:14   You don't need a giant nail to hang them

01:25:15   'cause they don't weigh that much.

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01:25:18   They have desk mounts also or desk stands.

01:25:21   And again, I wouldn't feel bad,

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01:25:33   As I said, tons of compliments on these things.

01:25:36   Whenever anybody sees them, they always ask what that is.

01:25:38   People who are familiar with,

01:25:40   people who've heard the show,

01:25:41   who then come into my house for the first time,

01:25:43   they always look at those and are like,

01:25:44   oh, are those fractures?

01:25:45   They look really nice.

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01:25:53   So their prices start at just 15 bucks

01:25:55   for the five by five square print.

01:25:57   That's the kind that I kind of famously now,

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01:26:51   Thanks a lot to Fracture for sponsoring the show.

01:26:54   - All right, so you've been busy, Marco,

01:26:57   and you've been working on Overcast,

01:27:00   specifically for the Apple Watch.

01:27:03   And from what we've gathered, John and I,

01:27:06   or John and me, whatever.

01:27:08   - What whom have gathered?

01:27:11   - You wanna make a third guess or no?

01:27:13   - No, I'll just, I'll quit while I'm behind.

01:27:15   So what have you been up to lately

01:27:18   and what has caused you to make all these changes?

01:27:22   - So I got the Apple Watch.

01:27:24   I got the one that was shipped on the first day

01:27:26   that were available, so it arrived on the 24th,

01:27:28   and I started using my, I had written the app before then,

01:27:31   and I started using the app on the watch,

01:27:34   and within like a day, I already looked at what I'd made,

01:27:38   and I'm like, okay, this, it works, but it's not very good,

01:27:42   and it could be better.

01:27:43   And there's a number of things about this.

01:27:46   I'm not gonna go into a whole lot of specific details

01:27:48   of things that worked and didn't,

01:27:49   'cause that's all, that's better off as a blog post, really,

01:27:52   and therefore I wrote a blog post with tons of images,

01:27:55   and it's always bad to describe all that image stuff

01:27:57   on a podcast, so I'll say that for when I publish

01:28:00   the blog post, which will be when the new version's approved,

01:28:02   but I basically restructured the entire interface.

01:28:06   The original interface of it mimicked the three level

01:28:11   navigation hierarchy of the iPhone app.

01:28:13   So you have like, you know, root level is listed playlists

01:28:16   and podcasts, then you pick one of those and it pops

01:28:18   you into the second level, which is the list of episodes

01:28:20   in the thing you picked, and you pick an episode,

01:28:23   and it pushes you to the third level,

01:28:24   which is the now playing screen,

01:28:25   and you can go back to the other levels

01:28:27   and change things and whatever.

01:28:28   So I replicated that structure onto the watch.

01:28:31   So I had, you know, you'd launch the app,

01:28:33   and you'd see, you know, list of things,

01:28:34   list of episodes, and now playing.

01:28:36   In reality, anyone who's had a watch

01:28:39   has probably seen weird lags and delays

01:28:42   with loading apps, loading WatchKit apps.

01:28:45   WatchKit is really slow at times,

01:28:49   And in general, once things are loaded, it's fine,

01:28:52   but the process of loading an app,

01:28:54   it's doing all sorts of crazy optimizations

01:28:56   and power savings and everything.

01:28:58   And so whatever it's doing to conserve power,

01:29:02   it has occasional bugs still.

01:29:05   And I don't know if it's because it's going over Bluetooth

01:29:08   or if it's because this is just, you know,

01:29:09   watchOS 1.0 and these are 1.0 bugs.

01:29:12   Probably some combination of both, if I can take a guess.

01:29:16   But anyway, watch kit apps are fragile to some degree,

01:29:21   like, and they're inconsistent.

01:29:23   The more you ask them to do,

01:29:26   the more you exacerbate this problem.

01:29:28   I had a number of issues with my three-level

01:29:30   navigation structure being moved onto the watch.

01:29:32   One of the issues was that what I really wanted

01:29:35   most of the time was the now playing screen

01:29:38   to show up first, 'cause that's usually

01:29:40   what you need to interact with.

01:29:41   Like, changing things on the now playing screen,

01:29:43   seeing what's playing, seeing how much time is left,

01:29:46   Seeking back and forth within it,

01:29:48   maybe recommending it is something I frequently do.

01:29:51   'Cause oftentimes I'll be out walking my dog or something

01:29:54   and I'll love what I'm listening to

01:29:56   and I wanna recommend it,

01:29:56   so I wanna quickly go to the watch, hit recommend,

01:29:58   and back back, you know, then get back to what I was doing.

01:30:00   Stuff like that.

01:30:02   None of that is going back to the list of podcasts

01:30:05   and list of playlists.

01:30:06   That's something I hardly ever do on the go.

01:30:08   And if I'm going to do that, I can take my phone out.

01:30:10   I had built this app to mimic the structure of the iOS app.

01:30:13   In practice, that was adding a lot of complexity

01:30:16   to lots of things.

01:30:17   Suffice to say, I restructured the whole app.

01:30:20   And now, it is centered on,

01:30:24   rather than being a three-level navigation hierarchy

01:30:26   where the final level isn't the now playing screen,

01:30:29   now it is basically a single screen interface

01:30:31   where the only, the root level, is the now playing screen.

01:30:35   And any other functions are brought up

01:30:38   by slide-up modal sheets, like modal dialogues.

01:30:41   That structure, this is not coming across well

01:30:43   a podcast, but that structure ends up working a lot better because it's simple. It's asking

01:30:48   WatchKit to load a lot less on startup. Rather than loading a three-level deep navigation

01:30:52   hierarchy, it is now loading one screen.

01:30:55   >> So am I correct in characterizing this change as you choosing to do the things the

01:31:01   Watch can do quickly or responsibly over the things the Watch does slowly?

01:31:07   >> Yes. So this is the part I wanted to actually talk about on the show, that that does translate

01:31:13   Well-Do-Well podcast, which is like my initial inclination, and I think what a lot of people

01:31:17   would have initially tried to do and did try to do with WatchKit, my initial inclination

01:31:22   was, well, here's this device that is another app platform for iOS. So let's port over the

01:31:31   iOS interface to make the watch version of the app. It's assuming that the watch version

01:31:37   of the app should be like the iPhone version of the app. Not only is that wrong, but I

01:31:45   think there's a deeper thing that's even more wrong about it. I think you can look at what

01:31:50   happened with these platforms growing up so far. You know, first Apple developers made

01:31:54   Mac apps, then iOS came along, and so a lot of the Mac developers at some point have tried

01:32:01   in the last seven years to make an iOS version

01:32:05   of their Mac app, or an iOS counterpart to their Mac app.

01:32:09   Usually these have not gone that well.

01:32:11   There's some that work, there are a lot that don't.

01:32:14   There's a lot of apps that can be perfectly great,

01:32:17   useful, in-demand apps on a Mac that just like,

01:32:20   just the realities of iOS devices or iOS,

01:32:24   the platform, the OS itself,

01:32:27   it just doesn't work well on iOS.

01:32:29   Maybe things that need precise mouse control,

01:32:32   keyboard shortcuts, big screens, that kind of stuff.

01:32:35   Like I'm not gonna edit the podcast on an iPad

01:32:38   even though I can, like there are tools to do that,

01:32:41   but I can do it so much better on a Mac

01:32:43   than I could ever do on an iPad

01:32:45   than I'm just gonna do it on a Mac.

01:32:46   You know, there are certain things like that

01:32:48   where like something might be technically possible

01:32:51   to migrate over to a new platform,

01:32:53   but not useful or compelling

01:32:56   compared to just having it be on one.

01:32:59   And same thing applies in the opposite direction.

01:33:01   Like a lot of iOS things are not very compelling

01:33:04   or useful on the Mac.

01:33:05   They're compelling and useful on iOS.

01:33:06   And you can say the same thing between iPhones and iPads.

01:33:10   Many things work better on one device than the other,

01:33:12   et cetera.

01:33:13   So from that point of view alone,

01:33:16   you can look at the watch and the assumption

01:33:18   that the watch should have apps corresponding

01:33:22   to your iPhone app, whatever app you make

01:33:25   or whatever app you're thinking of using.

01:33:28   Chances are most iPhone apps don't need watch components

01:33:32   and probably shouldn't have watch components.

01:33:35   Like for most iPhone apps, a watch component

01:33:38   is not that compelling and not that useful in practice,

01:33:42   especially considering what the watch can do today.

01:33:44   Like there's limitations of just things WatchKit can't do.

01:33:47   There's quite a lot of things WatchKit can't do.

01:33:49   It's a very simple system.

01:33:50   So there's limitations of what WatchKit can and can't do,

01:33:53   plus just speed and bugs.

01:33:56   There's also just inherent qualities of the watch

01:33:59   as a platform, as a physical device.

01:34:02   iPhones have gotten bigger over time,

01:34:06   but they're still relatively handheld touch screen devices.

01:34:10   They're still the same general size class

01:34:14   of what they've always been.

01:34:15   They are things that can fit in your pocket,

01:34:17   that you can pick up and probably use with one hand,

01:34:20   and then put back in your pocket when you're done.

01:34:22   iPads are bigger things.

01:34:24   They don't fit in most pockets.

01:34:26   They can fit in most bags, but not most pockets,

01:34:29   and you use them generally with two hands,

01:34:31   and that decides a lot of things.

01:34:33   Laptops are different.

01:34:34   Laptops, even the super small ones, like the MacBook One,

01:34:39   laptops are different.

01:34:40   You generally don't put them in any pockets

01:34:42   of any size garment.

01:34:44   So there's these different classes,

01:34:46   and as technology progresses,

01:34:49   most of those major lines

01:34:51   between those different size classes don't change.

01:34:54   laptops, even the super small ones like the MacBook One,

01:34:59   are generally not gonna be brought in somebody's handbag

01:35:02   to dinner if they don't have to.

01:35:03   Laptops are generally not gonna be in your back pocket.

01:35:08   You know, like, this is just how things work.

01:35:11   So a laptop is not gonna be always with you.

01:35:14   An iPad is not gonna be always with you.

01:35:17   You know, you might have it in your house,

01:35:20   but it might not be in the same room that you're in.

01:35:22   And no matter how much technology progresses,

01:35:24   no matter how thin and light these things get,

01:35:27   how good the batteries get, whatever else,

01:35:29   those broad strokes, those broad lines tend not to shift.

01:35:34   Whatever inherent limitations of a form factor exist

01:35:37   tend to stay there.

01:35:38   iPads and iPhones are inherently limited

01:35:41   by not having physical keyboards and precise mice.

01:35:46   Like that limits the kind of apps that work well on them,

01:35:48   the kind of uses that work well on them.

01:35:50   And even if you get a keyboard for your iPad or whatever,

01:35:53   it's not the same, it doesn't, like,

01:35:56   those lines always exist, right?

01:35:57   So looking at the watch now,

01:36:00   the watch is always going to be

01:36:02   a relatively small screen,

01:36:05   a very small battery,

01:36:08   according to the iFixit teardown,

01:36:09   the watch is approximately a tenth the size

01:36:13   of the iPhone 6 battery,

01:36:15   so that's literally an order of magnitude

01:36:17   less battery capacity,

01:36:18   so also, you know, much like a screen,

01:36:20   probably, I don't know, maybe a tenth of the screen area,

01:36:22   or probably not that bad, but it's closed,

01:36:25   maybe a fifth of the screen area,

01:36:26   it's a much smaller thing.

01:36:28   It's also strapped to your arm and strapped to your wrist,

01:36:33   and so it is necessarily, as we discussed last episode,

01:36:36   a device that one of your hands can't operate.

01:36:40   And so you have to operate with your other hand

01:36:43   or your nose or John's tongue or whatever the case may be.

01:36:47   So there's these inherent limitations to this device.

01:36:50   no matter how good the hardware inside the watch gets,

01:36:53   as technology will go over time, no matter how good

01:36:55   that gets, it's still always gonna be a small screen

01:37:00   strapped to one of your wrists that will have

01:37:02   probably an order of magnitude less battery life

01:37:06   than whatever we can put into the phone in your pocket.

01:37:09   That's why, so there's this assumption

01:37:11   that many people have made that the watch

01:37:13   is eventually going to replace the smartphone.

01:37:16   Over time, the watch will get its own cell radios

01:37:18   GPS and that part might happen.

01:37:21   And that over time, the watch will become

01:37:23   the dominant computing platform.

01:37:25   That everything is just moving smaller and smaller

01:37:27   and first it was computers, then it was your phones,

01:37:29   now it's gonna be your watch.

01:37:30   Or eventually it's gonna be your watch.

01:37:32   And because of all these limitations,

01:37:34   of these, as I was talking about,

01:37:36   these physical limitations, physical characteristics,

01:37:38   I don't think that's ever gonna happen.

01:37:40   - You just said ever, didn't you?

01:37:42   - I did, I know on an infinite time scale, I know, I know.

01:37:45   - But who have you heard this from?

01:37:47   Like I haven't heard in all the watch coverage

01:37:49   people saying that the watch is gonna replace the phone.

01:37:50   Where have you, like most coverage is talking like near term.

01:37:53   Who's on that bandwagon?

01:37:56   - I've heard a lot of tech commenters say it,

01:37:58   especially before the watch was out.

01:37:59   A lot of people said that that's where we were going.

01:38:02   What's more interesting is that I've heard that now

01:38:05   from almost everybody in real life

01:38:08   who I've talked to about the watch.

01:38:09   Like people who are not geeks.

01:38:10   - Like regular people think like,

01:38:12   oh, this is the next new thing.

01:38:14   literally every single person who has asked me about the watch and we start talking about

01:38:19   it, this isn't a huge group, but they have all said that. Every normal person out there

01:38:25   in the world thinks that that's where this is going. So I do think this is a valid thing

01:38:30   to discuss and it especially pertains to app developers. So A, as I said, no matter how

01:38:36   good the technology gets, the phone that's in your pocket is always going to have ten

01:38:42   10 times the battery life, five to 10 times the screen space, the ability to be used one-handed

01:38:48   in either of your hands at any time, way faster processors, bigger, more aggressive power-hungry

01:38:54   radios, things like that, less aggressive power-saving measures.

01:38:59   There's always going to be that difference just because of the physical differences between

01:39:04   those two roles.

01:39:05   As long as humans still only have two hands and their wrists aren't a foot wide, that's

01:39:11   going to keep being the case. So, you're doing it again! So, do you foresee a future

01:39:17   in which wrists get a foot wide and people grow third hands?

01:39:20   No, like, so the, I don't think this is what these people are talking about. I think if

01:39:23   people are coming up to you and saying that like, that they think, they're asking you

01:39:27   as to which you're placing your phone, they're talking about exactly what you're talking

01:39:29   about. But long term, the reason like the futurist visionary, whatever people say, that

01:39:33   long term, that wearables and so on are the futurists, because what they're envisioning

01:39:38   is input and output methods being radically different.

01:39:42   So they're envisioning, it doesn't matter how big the screen is, it'll be projected

01:39:45   onto your retina, it could be whatever size you want or whatever distance from your head

01:39:48   you want.

01:39:49   That's what you basically have to do.

01:39:50   Because like you said, you're never going to do the stuff you do on a phone on a screen

01:39:54   that small.

01:39:55   It's just not going to happen if you're touching it with your fingers and looking at it with

01:39:57   your eyeballs.

01:39:58   But if the thing is projected onto your retinas and there's a virtual 19 inch screen in front

01:40:02   of you that comes and goes when you blink your eye in a certain way, input methods have

01:40:05   have to change radically from what they are now.

01:40:08   If you envision a world that only contains capacitive touchscreens of various sizes,

01:40:12   then everything you're saying is 100% true, and that is our future for the next, like,

01:40:16   many decades, probably, right?

01:40:17   But long, long term, I think the reason you hear all this wearable hype, most of the wearable

01:40:20   hype I read, is that, like, as the cost and size of compute goes down to zero, other things

01:40:26   become possible.

01:40:27   When everything on your entire body is filled with tiny microprocessors that are 15 times

01:40:32   is more powerful than the A8 and it's all powered by static electricity from you scuffing

01:40:35   your feet on the carpet. You need new input and output methods though. And something that

01:40:40   goes directly into your eyeballs or VR goggles are the first giant clunky versions of that

01:40:46   or things that are in your ears waving your hands around in the air like Kinect style

01:40:50   hold. That's I think what people are talking about, the tech people who talk about future

01:40:54   world wearables of the future. But the people who are coming up to you are legitimately

01:40:58   seems like asking you, "Are you not going to use your phone now that you have a postage

01:41:02   stamp size-capacitive touch screen on your wrist?" And I hope you're telling them no.

01:41:08   That is exactly right. People are making that assumption. And that's going to keep being

01:41:12   a thing as smartwatches grow in popularity over the next few years. That's going to keep

01:41:17   definitely being a thing.

01:41:18   The reason I asked before about you're making choices for overcast based on what the phone

01:41:23   can do quickly is that it's like, put another way, the watch did things just as fast as

01:41:29   the phone.

01:41:30   Like multi-level hierarchies, they work just like they did on, you know, like are you making

01:41:34   the choice because it's the best UI conceptually or are you saying conceptually it would be

01:41:40   better this way, but practically speaking it's too damn slow with WatchKit.

01:41:42   So I have to choose a UI design that I wouldn't otherwise choose just because performance

01:41:48   is so much more important than like navigation hierarchy or whatever.

01:41:52   Like all, you know, performance, like, I mean, it's this whole reason the iPhone was awesome.

01:41:55   Like, you know, what's the difference between the iPhone and all the other touch phones?

01:41:58   Like, the performance is so massively better, it's like a, you know, a step jump in an experience,

01:42:02   right?

01:42:03   So you are definitely making the right choice, but like, I'm wondering, you know, A, it's

01:42:08   kind of a shame that you were forced to make that choice by crappy performance in the watch

01:42:11   kit, and B, I'm wondering if the choices will change as the watch evolves, because although

01:42:15   obviously you'll always be able to get something more powerful than something the size of a

01:42:18   phone, the watch will get faster, and the phone will get faster, and they will, you

01:42:21   March forward down the line of getting faster and so on eventually the watch will be

01:42:26   Hopefully like either you know native apps or watch kit will be better or like

01:42:30   Five versions of the watch from now. I'm hoping performance will be way way better and then

01:42:35   You know what will app design look like then you know given given that watch the five years from now watch

01:42:41   Would you revisit your UI and say now the performance isn't in a factor?

01:42:45   I might how I might I do this UI differently

01:42:47   And I think for the most part, you can tell me,

01:42:50   'cause you were iOS-to-oper really early on

01:42:52   when it was iPhone OS, right?

01:42:53   Did you ever have to make that choice on iOS?

01:42:55   Like that you were making UI choices

01:42:57   based on what the phone, the actual phone did,

01:43:01   maybe with table views when they were scrolling really slow?

01:43:03   I don't know, did you ever have to do that?

01:43:05   - Not really, usually it was the opposite direction.

01:43:07   Usually the things I would think in my head

01:43:10   before I did it, that probably won't be fast enough.

01:43:12   And I would try it and I'd be like,

01:43:13   oh, this phone hardware is not as bad as I thought.

01:43:16   Like the way out, the crazy way,

01:43:17   within this paper that I would do pagination

01:43:19   and detection of where pages ended was crazy.

01:43:21   And it worked, and I'm shocked that it worked.

01:43:24   Or even with Overcast, as I've said before,

01:43:26   like with Overcast, when I first was prototyping

01:43:29   the audio engine with smart speed and voice boost--

01:43:31   - And the visualizer, right? - And the visualizer,

01:43:33   all of those things I thought would be too slow

01:43:35   on the real hardware, and then I tried them,

01:43:37   and they all were like, oh yeah, 2% CPU usage,

01:43:40   like wow, okay, I'll do it then.

01:43:43   - So this is like yet another reason

01:43:44   amongst all the other ones you already listed

01:43:46   that the watch is different because I think it's the first

01:43:48   Apple platform in a while, except for maybe OS X,

01:43:50   which is also but slow in the beginning.

01:43:52   That like, that it's the opposite.

01:43:54   It's like, actually it's slower than you think it is.

01:43:57   And actually watch kit has more limitations

01:43:59   than you thought it might.

01:44:00   And not just like limitations and capability,

01:44:02   but like, yeah, you can do it with the watch kit,

01:44:04   but have you seen what it's like

01:44:05   and how long it takes to load those things, right?

01:44:07   So it's just a different mindset.

01:44:08   It's kind of going back to, I don't know,

01:44:10   like old world mindset where you just assume

01:44:13   the computer was really slow and you had to be like,

01:44:16   I gotta figure out what this computer can do fast

01:44:18   and then make my app do that because,

01:44:20   especially when it comes to UIs,

01:44:22   that's so much more important than conceptual purity

01:44:25   or some wireframe that you have

01:44:26   that you've fallen in love with.

01:44:28   - Well, but the fact is,

01:44:29   what we're talking about, like, you know,

01:44:32   CPU performance, really,

01:44:34   but that's not the problem on the watch.

01:44:36   I mean, we don't know.

01:44:37   Our apps are not running on the watch's CPU at all.

01:44:40   Like, we really can't tell.

01:44:42   - Right, it's the whole Bluetooth connection or WiFi

01:44:45   between, like we talked about before,

01:44:46   like it's never gonna get faster, faster, faster

01:44:49   until the watch gets faster and you get native apps

01:44:51   because, you know, our, at least anyway,

01:44:53   my collective experience with WiFi and Bluetooth

01:44:55   is there's some inherent lag in that

01:44:57   that's just never gonna, you're never gonna get that

01:44:58   down to a point where it feels as responsive

01:45:00   as something running on the device.

01:45:01   - Exactly, and, but, you know, even that being said,

01:45:04   like, you know, as the performance for things

01:45:07   like tapping buttons, like, yeah, you can feel

01:45:10   there's lag there, but it's acceptable overall.

01:45:13   It's not great, it's acceptable.

01:45:15   - Having used the watch for a grand total

01:45:17   of three and a half minutes so far,

01:45:20   one of the first things I did was swipe through

01:45:22   the glances or whatever, and just doing the swipe test.

01:45:25   And it didn't feel slow, but it kinda felt like

01:45:30   a couple generations ago, iPhone,

01:45:32   like this is not a demanding test.

01:45:33   This is all happening on the phone.

01:45:34   It's not WatchKit apps.

01:45:35   Like it's just, I'm assuming it's got the views

01:45:37   all in memory, I'm just asking it to open GLFI,

01:45:40   transition things from one to the next

01:45:41   in response to swipes, and it felt a little bit like,

01:45:45   it didn't feel as snappy, certainly not as snappy

01:45:48   as like an iPhone 6, maybe it felt like one of my old

01:45:51   iPod touches or whatever, so even with native apps,

01:45:55   like I think we're kind of, we've moved back in time

01:45:58   to at best, Apple's own apps have moved back in time

01:46:02   several generations in the iOS world,

01:46:03   even for a simple, completely on-device,

01:46:05   completely OpenGL accelerated core animation transition

01:46:08   from one tiny view to a next.

01:46:11   - Oh, totally, and the rumors, I mean,

01:46:12   I don't think we've had any confirmation on this

01:46:14   now that we've had the thing,

01:46:15   but the rumors were always that it was roughly A5

01:46:19   performance, which would match your old iPod Touch.

01:46:21   - Was that the architecture they thought it was,

01:46:23   like it's a tiny A5?

01:46:24   'Cause it's gotta be so massively underclocked in there.

01:46:27   We don't know, right, but I assume, just--

01:46:29   - Yeah, that's a good point about clock, yeah, I don't know.

01:46:31   But look, I mean, the reality is,

01:46:34   what we've seen the watch do,

01:46:35   it does certainly appear that computational performance

01:46:39   is not limiting factor here,

01:46:41   at least not for any WatchKit app,

01:46:43   but it isn't even seeming to be the limiting factor

01:46:46   for Apple's apps.

01:46:47   They do all sorts of animations and stuff

01:46:50   that are probably not all pre-rendered images

01:46:52   the way that WatchKits have to be.

01:46:55   They can do stuff that is clearly,

01:46:58   this is not running a 486 in there.

01:47:00   So, do you know what that is, being a Mac person, Jon?

01:47:02   I know Casey does.

01:47:03   (Jon laughing)

01:47:04   I made a reference to an old CPU.

01:47:07   Anyway. - I'm with you.

01:47:07   (laughing)

01:47:08   - Yeah, I knew you'd know it.

01:47:10   Yeah, while John was watching every movie under the sun

01:47:13   to make other references--

01:47:14   - I will wager that I have written more X86 assembler

01:47:17   than both of you combined.

01:47:18   (laughing)

01:47:20   - Anyway.

01:47:21   - Thousands and thousands of lines.

01:47:23   - Anyway, so the point is like,

01:47:25   technology will get better even if the watch hardware

01:47:28   right now is too slow to do something.

01:47:31   That will change in a few years.

01:47:33   That's not gonna be a problem for very long.

01:47:35   My argument is that no matter how good the hardware gets,

01:47:40   the inherent limitations of how you interact with this thing,

01:47:44   how the interface being the time piece is the home screen,

01:47:49   and the honeycomb of app icons is kind of like this,

01:47:54   you kinda go there as a last resort to do something,

01:47:56   and many things are happening through glances

01:47:59   and watch complications instead of going out

01:48:01   to the app screen and everything.

01:48:03   This is, and you know, and it's still,

01:48:05   it's a very small screen that you can only access

01:48:07   from one hand, that hand might be busy.

01:48:09   There's always gonna be these limitations of this device.

01:48:12   So anyway, going back to the reason I brought this up,

01:48:15   not every app needs to be on the watch,

01:48:17   not every app should be on the watch,

01:48:20   and I would venture to say that overall,

01:48:22   while the watch does add a lot of types of apps

01:48:26   that are now compelling that weren't before,

01:48:29   like a lot of kinds of apps that I would love to have

01:48:32   on the watch, if they had an iPhone version,

01:48:34   I would have completely ignored them before now.

01:48:36   Like, they wouldn't have been useful enough on an iPhone,

01:48:39   or it wouldn't have been interesting on an iPhone.

01:48:41   It would have seemed too simple or whatever.

01:48:43   On the watch, I'm interested.

01:48:45   Like, the watch is definitely creating new opportunities.

01:48:48   But I would argue, like, there's like a continuum

01:48:52   of computing devices and like their uses.

01:48:56   And on one hand, you have like full-blown

01:48:59   computer-type devices where you can install applications,

01:49:02   you can run them, you can do, you know,

01:49:04   it's like a general purpose, it could be your main computer.

01:49:07   For some people that is an iPhone or an iPad.

01:49:10   For most people that's gonna be a PC or a Mac.

01:49:13   Well, actually, probably not most anymore,

01:49:15   I bet the smartphone is winning, but anyway,

01:49:17   for a lot of geeks at least, that's gonna be a PC or a Mac.

01:49:20   For a lot of people in the world,

01:49:21   it's gonna be a smartphone, and for some it'll be a tablet.

01:49:24   But I don't think the watch will ever get there.

01:49:27   To me, like the watch, so on this continuum,

01:49:30   you have those kind of devices,

01:49:33   which can be the general purpose computers,

01:49:34   and then on the other end you have a Bluetooth headset,

01:49:39   which is, it has a computing processor type thing in it,

01:49:43   but it's not an app platform.

01:49:45   It will never be an app platform.

01:49:47   It doesn't need to be an app platform.

01:49:48   - What about my Thunderbolt cable?

01:49:49   Can I run apps on that?

01:49:51   - I think you might be able to, actually.

01:49:52   But anyway, so, that's panic.

01:49:55   So you have this continuum.

01:49:56   On one end you have full-blown computers,

01:49:58   on the other end you have things

01:50:00   have computing hardware in them,

01:50:01   but are really just dedicated peripheral type things,

01:50:03   or dedicated specialized things.

01:50:06   I would say the watch is closer to the left than the right.

01:50:10   I would say the watch is closer to a peripheral,

01:50:14   to an iPhone accessory,

01:50:15   than to its own independent standalone platform.

01:50:19   - Well, that's going a little far.

01:50:21   I mean, it's running iOS, for crying out loud.

01:50:23   - On the technical side, you're right.

01:50:25   On the technical side, it has a CPU, it has a display,

01:50:29   it has apps that you can access, but I think the way you actually use this thing, once

01:50:34   everyone calms down, once the novelty's worn off, I think the way we're actually going

01:50:37   to use this thing is this is like a remote view onto the computing life of mine that

01:50:44   lives on my iPhone. And that, like, not every app is going to need to be on the watch. A

01:50:52   lot of uses where we're now using the watch, we're going to go back to the phone and say,

01:50:57   actually it was easier to just pull my phone out

01:50:59   and do X, Y, or Z, rather than doing those things

01:51:02   through clunky slow apps on the watch.

01:51:05   And I think the watch is, in general,

01:51:09   even though it does create new opportunities,

01:51:11   I think it's gonna be a much smaller app platform

01:51:15   in practice than what people might have been hoping for

01:51:18   before we had them.

01:51:19   And that's not because Apple did a bad job with it,

01:51:22   that's just because of the realities of what watches are

01:51:25   they have to be. Well, I hope that's just a temporary thing though, because if, like,

01:51:30   I'm thinking of some specific applications that are actually better suited to the watch

01:51:34   than the phone, and we just can't do it because the computing is not there, and like, you know,

01:51:39   so if you get a watch that has its own GPS, that has a much faster CPU and GPU, any kind of like

01:51:46   GPS-based hiking or walking around the city type thing, it's the worst to try to walk around a city

01:51:54   while holding up a phone in front of you to see where it is.

01:51:56   If you had, basically if you just had unlimited computing capacity

01:52:00   and onboard GPS on your watch, you could navigate in a city with just the watch.

01:52:04   It would be an awesome experience, better than fishing your phone out of your pocket

01:52:07   every 10 seconds to find out which road you're supposed to turn onto.

01:52:10   And so I think there is a potential for this computing platform

01:52:15   to come into its own and be a full-fledged computer,

01:52:17   but only for applications that are actually better on the watch.

01:52:21   because not now all of a sudden every one of your iOS apps can be in your watch because that's stupid but

01:52:25   For things that are actually better when they're on your watch that we just can't do now

01:52:28   It was like well, it's always tested the phone if you tried to use it that way as a remote display for the Apple Maps

01:52:33   Application it's gonna be slow and clunky and you know

01:52:36   Can you imagine like a watch that responded in basically real time to its orientation and direction?

01:52:42   Like it had a map on it and as you raised your arm

01:52:45   It would adjust in like 3d to point the arrow towards where you're supposed to go

01:52:48   So no matter how you waved your arm around, the arrow would constantly be pointing to

01:52:51   the left turn you're supposed to make.

01:52:53   We're not even close to that kind of computing power and the battery to support that, but

01:52:56   it's conceivable in our lifetime.

01:52:58   And that is a way cooler experience to just be able to glance down at your wrist, put

01:53:02   your arm into any position, and have the big green arrow pointing exactly where you're

01:53:05   supposed to go on the trail next or whatever, or what block you're supposed to turn on,

01:53:09   or little indicators to see how close the closest Starbucks is or whatever.

01:53:14   Marco needs that app.

01:53:15   Oh yeah, every day.

01:53:16   Yeah, well like you know

01:53:18   I'm I'm not willing to accept that the watch will be relegated to this forever because I think it's just we're just stuck with what

01:53:24   We're stuck with now

01:53:25   But it if they just ramp up the technology new classes about this is whatever install right new classes applicationally possible right now

01:53:31   Perhaps new classes are not possible

01:53:33   Like you said it's mostly just for a peripheral view of things that are going on on

01:53:37   Your phone and you don't to tell time and count your steps and do all that stuff, but eventually

01:53:44   Several generations from now on an infinite timescale not infinite. This is the close timescale

01:53:49   I get I mean like we'll get to this one, right? It doesn't think much more

01:53:52   I mean obviously it takes native apps and then it takes you know

01:53:55   Lower power CPUs and blah blah a couple generations new things will be possible on the watch

01:54:00   and

01:54:02   GPS is just the one I thought off top of that. Maybe that's not even true

01:54:04   But like people will try everything like that's the good thing about it people will try

01:54:07   Maybe we can have games on there and maybe that sucks

01:54:10   Maybe it does like everyone people will try everything and you know one of those things is gonna hit the same thing

01:54:14   We did with the phone

01:54:15   It's like no one knew what was gonna be great on the phone until we tried every possible thing including fart apps and eventually it

01:54:20   Settles on other things that it does well. It's just that you know right now

01:54:23   I mean it's kind of happening right now everyone's saying but I'm gonna make everything for watch kit

01:54:26   And you know as a lot of their viewers say there's like thousands of watch kit apps and most of them suck because people were wrong

01:54:32   About what would be good in a watch kit app?

01:54:34   but the watch kit days

01:54:36   Hopefully we'll be gone in a few years and we'll move on to trying the equivalent of fart apps on the watch until someone hit

01:54:43   something good

01:54:44   Well day one of the App Store. I don't John. I don't know if you remember those day one of the App Store

01:54:48   They were very similar to what people are saying now

01:54:51   It's just like yeah, the vast majority of these things were terrible a few are good. Okay, but the majority are terrible

01:54:57   What was the first app you downloaded from the App Store?

01:55:00   Hmm. I don't know. I remember that first day. I downloaded a bunch. I downloaded monkey ball and

01:55:06   a couple of other.

01:55:07   - Yeah, I think Monkey Ball was probably my top three.

01:55:09   I think I had Lights Out, remember that one?

01:55:11   - Yeah, that was there early.

01:55:13   - But what I'm getting at is the experience.

01:55:15   I remember like, "Oh, so this is the App Store,

01:55:17   "what can we download?"

01:55:17   And Monkey Ball was like nine bucks or something, wasn't it?

01:55:20   - Yeah, 10 bucks.

01:55:20   - It was the old days at the App Store.

01:55:22   As kids, let me tell you, Monkey Ball was 10 bucks

01:55:24   and it was terrible.

01:55:25   - Yep.

01:55:25   - 'Cause the control scheme was terrible,

01:55:26   even though I love Monkey Ball on the GameCube,

01:55:28   awesome game.

01:55:29   On the iPhone, terrible.

01:55:29   Anyway, I downloaded tons of stuff,

01:55:32   like went for big names, things made by people I know,

01:55:35   blah, blah, blah, and you're right.

01:55:36   You used all of them, you're like,

01:55:38   all right guys, try again.

01:55:39   - Right, yeah, you saw everybody with their like beer app,

01:55:41   the beer pouring things and--

01:55:42   - Like Lights Out was the best game practically

01:55:44   because that one had been developed before the App Store

01:55:46   and it was a game they knew would work on the phone

01:55:49   because all you do is poke the screen,

01:55:50   which that is actually something that the phone is good at,

01:55:53   a big sort of board game grid type thing

01:55:55   where you poke the screen, good use of the phone.

01:55:58   That was like the best app that I remember on day one.

01:56:01   - All right, thanks a lot for our three sponsors this week,

01:56:03   glide, hover and fracture, and we'll see you next week.

01:56:07   (upbeat music)

01:56:09   ♪ Now the show is over ♪

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01:56:40   @CASEYLISS

01:56:44   So that's Kasey Liszt, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

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01:57:08   - I'm looking at, I went into my iPhone

01:57:12   to the app store to purchases.

01:57:15   - You scroll to the bottom.

01:57:16   - You actually got to the end of that list?

01:57:18   - Mm-hmm. - Wow.

01:57:20   - The very first one, AOL Instant Messenger.

01:57:23   (laughing)

01:57:24   - Mistake, yeah. - The next one, I know.

01:57:26   I probably used it for five minutes

01:57:27   'cause I didn't even remember

01:57:29   that I had had it.

01:57:30   Next one, Labyrinth Light Edition.

01:57:33   - Oh, I had that too, yeah.

01:57:34   - Next one, Tap Tap Revenge Classic, paid version.

01:57:37   - Yeah, I had that one.

01:57:39   - And then a couple of games,

01:57:43   restaurant nutrition, air sharing,

01:57:46   a couple of, VNC SSH, Apple Remote, and Flight Control,

01:57:49   which is what I was really,

01:57:50   I thought Flight Control was the first one I had downloaded

01:57:53   because when I got my phone,

01:57:55   that was, to my memory,

01:57:57   around the time that flight control was brand new.

01:57:59   And to my memory, that was one of the first games,

01:58:03   Tap Tap Revenge actually was kind of like this too,

01:58:05   but one of the first games that just everyone had to have.

01:58:08   And oh my God, I loved flight control.

01:58:10   I played the thing for hours.

01:58:12   - New York Times, Apple Remote app, Net News Wire,

01:58:16   Chopper, which is like Choplifter, which I loved,

01:58:18   Tap Tap Revenge, Scribble Light, More Cowbell.

01:58:21   Yes, I downloaded a cowbell app.

01:58:23   - Nice. - Banner free,

01:58:25   black and white, which looks like Othello.

01:58:27   - Yeah, that's right, I played that a lot.

01:58:29   - I wondered why I had that Banner app,

01:58:30   and I guess it's because it was like one of those only apps

01:58:33   on the store on day one.

01:58:34   That's why I have the same stupid thing.

01:58:35   - And I'm guessing it probably was originally

01:58:37   just called Banner.

01:58:38   - Yeah.

01:58:39   - And then they later added a paid version,

01:58:40   just like I did with Instapaper.

01:58:41   - I shouldn't say it's stupid, it's cool.

01:58:42   That's the one that like scrolls the message

01:58:44   across your screen.

01:58:45   I think that was actually a good idea for a day one app.

01:58:47   - Yeah, on iPads, it's actually kind of useful.

01:58:50   The screen's nice and big.

01:58:51   Yeah, Cube Runner, AP, World Nine,

01:58:53   PairMe, Subway Shuffle, Labyrinth Light,

01:58:55   that's where you got all the Labyrinth games on day one,

01:58:57   peg jump and Galcon is my first like no recognizable game. Yeah so yeah a whole bunch of garbage

01:59:03   basically with some good stuff.

01:59:04   Did you have the physical version of Labyrinth Light? You know, the show on the icon for

01:59:09   Labyrinth?

01:59:10   The Marble Labyrinth thing is made of wood?

01:59:11   Yeah.

01:59:12   Yeah, I had a few of them.

01:59:13   Yeah, I love those things. We have one too. The physical one is much more satisfying than

01:59:17   the iOS game.

01:59:18   Yeah. Yeah, of all these things, the thing I spent the most time playing was Black and

01:59:22   White, the Othello clone.

01:59:24   Yeah.

01:59:25   Until Galcon came around.

01:59:27   flight control for me. I probably haven't played it.

01:59:29   - Well that wasn't there on day one though.

01:59:30   - No, no, no, but it was my day one, if you will,

01:59:33   because it was by the time I got an iPhone,

01:59:35   and I think I've played flight control

01:59:37   more than any other game on my phone,

01:59:39   any of my phones ever.

01:59:41   I loved flight control, although I did play

01:59:44   a lot of Ramp Champ.

01:59:45   - That was much later though.

01:59:46   - Yeah it was, it was much later.

01:59:48   - I gotta go get my phone to see what my apps are,

01:59:50   I'm curious, hang on a second.

01:59:51   - Don, you can find it in iTunes.

01:59:53   - Oh, can you?

01:59:54   - Yeah, go to the App Store page, go to purchases,

01:59:56   So yeah, if you scroll all the way, if you sort by most recent, scroll all the way down

01:59:59   to the bottom of that giant page, it's there.

02:00:02   Net News Wire, Chopper, Tap Tap, Scribble Light, Pandora Radio, Facebook?

02:00:06   I downloaded Facebook?

02:00:10   Super Monkey Ball, New York Times, Net News Wire, Apple Remote, Google Aim, I should make

02:00:15   fun of the aim thing, I've got it too.

02:00:18   The eBay app, and then two Othello clones.

02:00:22   Tap Tap Revenge, Trism, Banner Free.

02:00:24   Boy, yeah, we all download the same damn app someday one labyrinth light

02:00:28   My 12th app was flight control as previously discussed 15th app tumblr

02:00:34   Another classic from the old days space dead beef. I think it's still out there very cool game. I'm surprised

02:00:40   I mean, maybe it's not a good not good fit for the phone

02:00:43   But I really loved that game and I wish there were more games like that

02:00:47   If not for the phone and further platforms two biggest pieces of install for me flight control icon and the Tweety icon

02:00:54   I miss Tweety.

02:00:57   I love iTunes. Even though I have my thing set to always show scrollbar,

02:01:00   iTunes says, "I'm ignoring that. I'm going to give you one of those auto-hiding scrollbars."

02:01:04   It is its own UI. It has no respect for the system settings.

02:01:08   [BEEP]