102: Marco Is Not a Platform

0:00:00- No.

0:00:00- Oh no.

0:00:02- Oh no.

0:00:03(John groans)

0:00:04(electronic beeping)

0:00:07- All right, so you wanna do some follow-up?

0:00:09We can start with handwriting recognition,

0:00:11which I'm assuming is more of John's follow-up?

0:00:14- Yeah, I don't know why none of us thought of this,

0:00:17probably because we're all Westerners.

0:00:20But the one thing we didn't talk about with iPads

0:00:22and styluses or styli is that handwriting recognition

0:00:28Good text input with a with a pen is good for people who don't write with

0:00:33Roman characters who have tons and tons of characters Chinese Japanese

0:00:37It's pain in the butt to enter those with the keyboard because they have to have these crazy multi-level keyboards, but you you know

0:00:43Tap one key then tap another tap another work your way down to the actual character you want or combine multiple taps to make one

0:00:49thing

0:00:50Whereas these people know how to draw it with you just gave them a pen

0:00:52So if you can recognize that it's actually way more convenient than trying to use a keyboard

0:00:56So that I mean, I don't know if that's harder or easier than recognizing. I assume it's harder than recognizing, you know

0:01:03regular Roman characters that we have

0:01:06But it's definitely if you can get it to work

0:01:09It's definitely more convenient for the person inputting the characters than hunting through some crazy keyboard

0:01:14Yeah, absolutely. I will say that a friend a friend of mine will Haynes

0:01:19He had shown me

0:01:22He lives in Tokyo despite having grown up in Australia and he had shown me the Japanese keyboard

0:01:28I'm sure there's like a name for like kanji or something like that and that's probably wrong, too

0:01:31But anyway, he had shown me the Japanese keyboard which involves

0:01:34you know drawing these little characters on the bottom of the screen very much like the palm was way back in the day and

0:01:41As someone who has never seen that before it was amazing

0:01:45It was extremely cool and I could see how having a stylus would make it that much better

0:01:48Monk bent in the chat room is telling us that

0:01:52Very few people write with characters these days and most most of the young people because everything is digital

0:01:57Just deal with the crappy input systems

0:01:59So it could be that everyone just gets over this and they forget how to write their traditional characters. I don't know

0:02:04I mean like

0:02:05We've been getting on the people on the Far East have been getting along without this for a long time with these with these various

0:02:10hacks of keyboards that have hierarchies to them or

0:02:13Graffiti like systems where you do a series of strokes to sort of narrow down and you know

0:02:17It's kind of like autocomplete for individual characters, which represent entire

0:02:21words or ideas.

0:02:24So we may already be past that threshold.

0:02:29This is where we need someone from the Far East

0:02:31to come on the program and tell us whether this is something

0:02:33that people actually like.

0:02:34But it's so hard to say how--

0:02:36I mean, we'll talk about this later when

0:02:38we talk about Apple's earnings-- how things play in countries

0:02:40other than the United States and what those markets really want.

0:02:43And it's very difficult to tell how much of what Apple does

0:02:46is influenced by people and cultures

0:02:49that we know nothing about.

0:02:51- Yeah, absolutely.

0:02:52As a quick aside, Marco, Tif's car has the iDrive

0:02:56with handwriting recognition, is that correct?

0:02:58- It does, yes.

0:02:59- Do you use it ever?

0:03:01- I tried it, I think once, and it wasn't really worth it

0:03:05because it was actually slower than just using the wheel

0:03:09to go around picking the letters.

0:03:10'Cause you have to draw the characters one at a time,

0:03:12so you write the character, and then you wait,

0:03:13and then it recognizes it, and then you keep going.

0:03:15And so, just because of the lag inherent in those steps,

0:03:20It just wasn't really any faster than using the wheel,

0:03:23so I just use the wheel now when I drive her car.

0:03:26- Fair enough.

0:03:27I mean, it's not a one-to-one comparison,

0:03:28but it was the closest that I could think of

0:03:31off the top of my head.

0:03:32- You could possibly argue it's better for safety

0:03:34that you're not looking at the screen as much.

0:03:36In practice, that's not true.

0:03:38In practice, it is just as distracting as using the wheel,

0:03:40and you still have to look at the screen just as much,

0:03:42so I just try not to enter navigation directions

0:03:45while I'm moving.

0:03:46- Yeah, that seems like the smartest approach.

0:03:48- Yeah.

0:03:49- All right, so we had a very interesting email

0:03:51from Matt Chandler and I really wanted to talk about this

0:03:55and then I thought, well, maybe that's mean of me.

0:03:58And then someone else who is not me

0:04:00and I'm guessing is not Marco added it to the show notes.

0:04:03- This is why Marco should look at the show notes

0:04:05before the show.

0:04:06(laughing)

0:04:06So he'll know when he has a question that's directed to him.

0:04:09- Oh, you picked out this one?

0:04:10Oh boy, this will be good.

0:04:12- Yeah.

0:04:12- Okay, so from Matt Chandler,

0:04:15"I listened to Marco on the talk show,

0:04:17episode now it's all floppy where he discussed how Apple's feedback system is

0:04:21quote extremely hostile quote because among other reasons you get no feedback

0:04:25or response from Apple when you file a radar I was surprised by this as some of

0:04:29my friends and I have filed bug reports for overcast both through Twitter

0:04:32Twitter and email and have never received feedback any feedback no form

0:04:36response tweet or favorite on Twitter this didn't bother me as I didn't expect

0:04:40a response but I wondered why Marco called this behavior by Apple extremely

0:04:44hostile while he takes the same approach with Overcast. Yes, Overcast is smaller,

0:04:47but it certainly receives much less feedback as well. Thanks for the great

0:04:51show and Marco, thanks for the great work on Overcast.

0:04:53I can answer this one if you want. The reason I put it in here is not because necessarily I

0:04:57thought Marco had to answer it, but I felt like anybody answered. Casey, do you want to answer it?

0:05:01Marco, I know can answer it. I can answer it. Can anyone in the audience not answer this?

0:05:05(laughing)

0:05:08I mean, I'd be curious to hear both of your answers.

0:05:11To me, it seems pretty obvious that even in operation

0:05:16the size of Overcast, if one were to acknowledge

0:05:19every single bug request and report and feature requests,

0:05:23that that would be a tremendous mountain of just thanks

0:05:28and okay and I got it and dupe and et cetera.

0:05:32And I can see why Marco wouldn't want to do that.

0:05:36But the difference is Marco's business isn't,

0:05:39well, I don't know,

0:05:40I already feel like this is a weak argument,

0:05:41but Marco's business isn't to make

0:05:44other people's bug reports his job.

0:05:48Whereas when you're providing developer tools,

0:05:51that kind of is your job.

0:05:53- John.

0:05:54- Yeah, what was your answer, John?

0:05:55- Oh, you want my answer now?

0:05:56Well, I think Matt Chandler knows the answer too.

0:05:58Yes, Overcast is smaller.

0:06:00You think?

0:06:01Is it a little bit slower than Apple?

0:06:02maybe a little bit smaller than Apple, I'm not sure.

0:06:04We have to check Marco's earnings for this year

0:06:05to see if he pulled in $18 billion in profit this quarter.

0:06:10I don't think he did, but we'll check.

0:06:12- I didn't quite hit that target, no.

0:06:14- Yes, Overcast is smaller,

0:06:15but it certainly receives much less feedback as well.

0:06:17Exactly, it is smaller,

0:06:19and proportionally receives less feedback.

0:06:20How much smaller than Apple is Overcast?

0:06:23And what proportion of his thing, you know?

0:06:27So that's one thing.

0:06:27Obviously it's pretty close to smaller.

0:06:28It's one person.

0:06:29He would spend all his time just dealing with bug reports.

0:06:31in a second, in case you already covered it.

0:06:33He's not a platform.

0:06:34He is not publishing APIs for people to write code against.

0:06:38He has no developers.

0:06:39There is no overcast developer program.

0:06:41There is no MarkerArmin developer program.

0:06:43People are not paying for a membership

0:06:46to a thing to be supported.

0:06:48You're merely a customer and sending a report.

0:06:49Now, all that said, that's not to say

0:06:52that he shouldn't give responses,

0:06:55form responses, personal responses, or whatever,

0:06:57to the degree that he feels like he can

0:06:59do sort of the Daniel Jowkut,

0:07:01I give you amazing exceptional customer support,

0:07:04he should by all means, it is a good thing to do that.

0:07:07But on the list of priorities,

0:07:09responding to every single bug report

0:07:12and giving an acknowledgement that it was received

0:07:15are probably pretty low for a one person shop

0:07:17that's doing all the stuff that Marco is doing.

0:07:20So I don't say that it's like he shouldn't send a response

0:07:25and people shouldn't expect one,

0:07:27but the explanation for why there was no response

0:07:29and why he might say it's extremely hostile for Apple

0:07:32to not send a response is fairly clear.

0:07:34It's hostile for Apple because Apple does not have

0:07:37any constraints that would make it have to be

0:07:39such a big black hole.

0:07:41We know that, I mean, look at App Review.

0:07:44They're hiring people to look at every single

0:07:45of these hoejillion apps that come in.

0:07:48If Apple wanted to do this and listed as a priority,

0:07:51they have more than enough money and resources

0:07:55and expertise to do this.

0:07:56So that's why it's hostile for Apple

0:07:59because from Apple it's like a choice.

0:08:00It's like a prioritization of something

0:08:02that we think should be much more important

0:08:03to Apple than it is.

0:08:05And we know they have the resources to do it.

0:08:06In Marco's case, you could still be angry at him

0:08:08because you got exceptional support

0:08:09but from this other one person operation

0:08:11because they value support more than he does.

0:08:13But if Marco shifts to do support differently,

0:08:16he's got to pull from someplace else.

0:08:18So what other part of Marco's business do you think

0:08:20he should sacrifice to make sure

0:08:21that everybody who sends a bug report gets a reply?

0:08:24I, you know, that's, these are trade-offs that he makes

0:08:27and you can argue whether they're the right trade-offs

0:08:29or whether you like that kind of company,

0:08:30but I don't think you should be confused

0:08:32about why Marco can call Apple extremely hostile

0:08:36for doing the same thing he does,

0:08:37because he's not Apple and they're so different

0:08:39than different standards apply.

0:08:40- So Marco.

0:08:42- This is gonna be possibly a little controversial.

0:08:46Not that I should be that surprised,

0:08:48or anybody who knows me should be that surprised

0:08:50by me previously saying something I'm about to say with that.

0:08:53(laughing)

0:08:55- This should be good.

0:08:55Wait, let me go make some popcorn.

0:08:56Hold that thought.

0:08:57- The sad truth is that it is not worth

0:09:02answering your email.

0:09:03You plural, not like you this guy, you everybody.

0:09:08In general, on average, it is not worth

0:09:11answering your email.

0:09:12Now let me go into why that is.

0:09:13I don't say this to be a jerk.

0:09:16I'm saying this literally as like

0:09:18just simple time constraints and economics.

0:09:22So here's how this works.

0:09:24This morning, so usually I go through the overcast

0:09:27feedback email in the evening or like before bed

0:09:32on the iPad, I'll go through it a lot there

0:09:34because I respond to almost none of it.

0:09:39Really, almost none.

0:09:40I respond to maybe three or four emails a day

0:09:43from that account.

0:09:44Since last night when I last cleared it out,

0:09:47I've received 207 and there's still three more hours today

0:09:51before I go to bed.

0:09:52So I expect to receive maybe 220, 250,

0:09:56we'll see what happens.

0:09:57That's pretty typical.

0:09:59Most days I receive between 60 and 200.

0:10:02I'm getting a little more now

0:10:03'cause there's some sync bugs that I'm trying to squash.

0:10:06When you buy my app, so I'm a one person company,

0:10:08I blogged about how much I made,

0:10:10it was like 160,000 before expenses and taxes

0:10:13and all that stuff last year.

0:10:15So that's roughly what I make.

0:10:17It's like, it's one developer's good salary.

0:10:20It's not stunningly great,

0:10:22it's just a good developer salary

0:10:23for the level of experience I have.

0:10:25That's not so much that it would make

0:10:27a lot of financial sense for me

0:10:28to hire a support person, for instance.

0:10:31And I've tried, I have tried

0:10:34to outsource support services in the past.

0:10:36I've had very mixed results with them,

0:10:39and I question whether that was money well spent at all.

0:10:43I could also attempt to answer more emails

0:10:47by using TextExpander to make my few form answers

0:10:51and just send those to everybody.

0:10:53And I did that for the first couple of months of Overcast.

0:10:56And I question whether that's better

0:10:57than not answering them at all.

0:10:59Because, and I should point out on Hello Internet

0:11:02they had a similar conversation with this a few months back.

0:11:04You know, is something that you're pretty sure

0:11:08is like a form response, a template response,

0:11:10is that actually better than no response at all?

0:11:13Like, is a response that is clearly insincere

0:11:17and that I didn't put a whole lot of time into,

0:11:19is that really a good thing?

0:11:21Like that's up for debate as well.

0:11:23The simple fact is, when you get 200 support emails a day

0:11:28and you're one person and, you know,

0:11:31my job is not answering email, my job is making the product

0:11:34and making it work for everybody.

0:11:35And responding to email, and this isn't just support email,

0:11:38this is email in general.

0:11:39Responding to email is one of the least

0:11:42time efficient things you can do.

0:11:44Like it really, like, and of course it varies

0:11:47depending on why you're responding to the email,

0:11:48who you're responding to and for what.

0:11:49But in general, responding to email

0:11:53is an extremely inefficient use of limited time

0:11:57because you are taking your time to produce something

0:12:01that's only ever gonna go to one person.

0:12:03Whereas if I spent that time instead fixing the bugs

0:12:08that everyone's complaining about,

0:12:10then they're fixed for everyone.

0:12:11Or if I can make the product better in some way for everyone

0:12:16that's way better use of that time

0:12:19than responding to every email one by one saying,

0:12:22thanks for the report, I'm looking into it,

0:12:23or thanks, I'm about to fix this,

0:12:24or this is fixing the next version,

0:12:25or the version's pending approval.

0:12:27It's such a better use of time.

0:12:30In an ideal world, you would have time to do both.

0:12:33I recognize that.

0:12:34But this is not an ideal world, this is reality.

0:12:36And in reality, when you have an app that is free up front,

0:12:40and at the most you can ever hope to make from somebody

0:12:42is $3.50 before tax, it's really hard to justify

0:12:46spending a ton of time on answering individual emails.

0:12:51And I knew that going into it, I knew that for Instapaper.

0:12:54So the entire app is designed in such a way

0:12:58that it sets expectations accordingly.

0:13:02You'll notice in the app, nowhere does it say support.

0:13:05It only says feedback.

0:13:08And on the feedback link, first, before it lets you email it

0:13:11it shows you a page with an FAQ and known bugs

0:13:14and what's being fixed in this version,

0:13:16what's being fixed in the next version?

0:13:17It shows you this page, so try to address

0:13:19what you're about to tell me,

0:13:20so maybe you don't have to tell me.

0:13:22Maybe you can help yourself,

0:13:23maybe you can save yourself the time sending me the email.

0:13:25Certainly it saves me the time

0:13:26having to read it or answer it.

0:13:29And it says right there, I will read every email,

0:13:34which by the way, even that takes a lot of time,

0:13:37a lot more time than I would have expected

0:13:38when I wrote that.

0:13:40I read every email, and I say I will read every email,

0:13:42but I also say, I'm just one person with limited time,

0:13:45and so I cannot guarantee your response.

0:13:49And the result of that is I respond to almost none of them

0:13:54because I literally don't have the time.

0:13:56I would so much rather spend that time fixing the bugs

0:14:01and making the app better for everyone

0:14:03than responding to one person.

0:14:04And I know that sounds cold and I know that sounds harsh,

0:14:07but that's the reality.

0:14:09That's like when you're paying so little for apps,

0:14:12that's kind of part of it.

0:14:14That's kind of what you have to expect from that.

0:14:16That's all involved in this.

0:14:17And so the reason I don't answer my email most of the time

0:14:22is because, it's not because I'm a jerk,

0:14:26at least in my opinion,

0:14:27you can make your own evaluation of that.

0:14:29It's not because I'm trying to be a jerk.

0:14:30It's because it is really,

0:14:32I've decided it really is just an incredibly bad use of time.

0:14:37And I know it's not gonna please everybody,

0:14:39but I think it will please the most people overall

0:14:42for me to be doing things that make the app better

0:14:43for everyone rather than spending three hours a day

0:14:46answering email.

0:14:47- I don't remember if I've ever told this story publicly,

0:14:51but I feel like I have.

0:14:54I have a couple of thoughts.

0:14:55First, I remember vividly that I,

0:14:59when you and I kind of got reacquainted, so to speak,

0:15:03'cause we were old friends, kind of fell out of touch,

0:15:05not in an angry way, just fell out of touch,

0:15:07and then we were starting to get back in touch,

0:15:09And I would send emails to you periodically.

0:15:12And this was when Tumblr was really starting to take off.

0:15:15And then the Marco Arment was starting to become like a thing

0:15:18more than it was just a person.

0:15:20And I would send you emails, Marco, and I would never get a reply.

0:15:24Or I would get a reply really, really late.

0:15:27I remember one time Aaron and I were on our way to New York when this was when

0:15:30you were at Tumblr, because we ended up visiting you at Tumblr, we were on our

0:15:33way to New York to visit and I think I tweeted about it or something like that.

0:15:37And you were like, wait, you're on your way to New York.

0:15:39And I said, yes, I emailed you about that

0:15:41like two months ago.

0:15:42You said you did.

0:15:43And so, and God did it annoy me so much at the time.

0:15:47But then fast forward a few years

0:15:50and suddenly I'm on a podcast and we get email.

0:15:55Oh, do we get email?

0:15:56In fact, we even got an email

0:15:58about how we tell people not to send us email.

0:16:00- Yes, we did. (laughs)

0:16:02- Which actually made some really good points,

0:16:04but I couldn't help but laugh at the irony of it.

0:16:07But anyway, and so I don't know how to explain it

0:16:12other than however much email that you, the listener, gets.

0:16:17There's a decent chance that those of us on the show

0:16:22get more than that and Marco gets more than that still.

0:16:25And the other thought I had is how many shows

0:16:29across how many podcasts have talked about

0:16:32how email is such a problem?

0:16:34There was that wonderful episode of Hello Internet.

0:16:36I think Mike and I have talked about this on analog.

0:16:38God knows that Merlin has talked about this constantly

0:16:42and for good reason.

0:16:44The reason everyone complains and moans about email

0:16:48is because email is kind of an inherently selfish thing

0:16:52that nobody really deliberately signs up for

0:16:55and it just kind of happens to them.

0:16:57And so how you deal with that, you do the best you can

0:17:02and that's what Marco's doing.

0:17:04- Yeah, that's really it.

0:17:06Again, I'm not trying to be a jerk

0:17:08by not responding to most of the email I get.

0:17:10It's almost like a defense mechanism.

0:17:13I have to defend my time and attention

0:17:16because if I did respond to all that email,

0:17:19all these bug fixes and improvements and things I'm making

0:17:23would all take longer to come out

0:17:25and I wouldn't be able to do as much.

0:17:27- You could spend your entire day just doing email

0:17:30because remember that email, once you respond,

0:17:32Now you're engaging with that person.

0:17:33And from that person's perspective, it's just them and you.

0:17:36And from your perspective,

0:17:37you're holding now 200 simultaneous conversations,

0:17:40maintaining state in each of those conversations,

0:17:42remembering who that person is

0:17:43and what they said previously.

0:17:45Basically imagine, you get 200 support emails today.

0:17:48If you responded to all 200,

0:17:50then those 200 send the response back.

0:17:52Then tomorrow starts and you get another 200

0:17:53and you start responding to those.

0:17:55You will spend 100% of your time conversing over email

0:17:59with people who have problems with your $5 application,

0:18:02right?

0:18:03And you are just one person.

0:18:05And someone in the chat room says, I'm describing a CRM.

0:18:07Says, yes, when you have a staff of people, you can do that.

0:18:10But for a small business, with one person doing

0:18:14all of the work, if that one person said,

0:18:17I really need to support my customers,

0:18:19that's all that one person would ever do.

0:18:21They would never fix a bug, never write

0:18:23a new version of a program, never create a program,

0:18:26never do anything else, never do a podcast,

0:18:28never have any sort of extracurricular activities.

0:18:30They would just spend all their waking hours

0:18:32conversing with individuals over email

0:18:33about the problems they're having with their application

0:18:35and never have any time to investigate them.

0:18:37And so maybe you could say,

0:18:38well, you should expand your company.

0:18:40You shouldn't have a one-person company or whatever.

0:18:41But the origin of this question is about hypocrisy.

0:18:45How can you be so angry about Apple

0:18:47doing something that you yourself do?

0:18:49It's different context.

0:18:51The conditions are entirely different.

0:18:53Therefore, the conclusions are different.

0:18:55- Absolutely.

0:18:56And the input that the email gives me is very valuable.

0:18:59Like, by the emails alone, the emails kind of help me decide,

0:19:04like if I have a few big features that I want to do next,

0:19:07the emails decide what comes first.

0:19:09And the emails decide things like, for example,

0:19:12I've mentioned this on Twitter a couple times,

0:19:15my big feature plan over this winter was to do streaming.

0:19:19And I started streaming a little bit last fall,

0:19:21and I haven't worked on it since for two reasons.

0:19:24Number one is that they're keeping other things

0:19:26that keep coming up, bug fixes, sync issues,

0:19:29watch kit, stuff like that.

0:19:31But then number two is that by reading the email

0:19:34and by reading all the tweets, which is even more,

0:19:37you know, even more big stuff coming in that way,

0:19:40I can see very clearly that streaming

0:19:43is not what I should be doing next.

0:19:44What I need to be doing next, which is what I am doing next,

0:19:48is auto-delete control.

0:19:51That right now, the app just deletes an episode

0:19:52when you're done with it, 'cause that's how I listen

0:19:53and I don't care. Like once I'm done with it, I never want to hear it again. Like that's

0:19:57it, I'm done. And I thought that's how the app could always work. It keeps things very

0:20:01simple with like the different states an episode can be in and things like that. It keeps a

0:20:05lot of things very simple. That is by far and away the number one request, the number

0:20:11one complaint, and the number one reason people choose not to use my app is that I don't have

0:20:15that control, the finer control over whether something gets deleted or not and when it

0:20:19gets deleted. By far, that's way more important than streaming based on what people are telling

0:20:24me and what they've been telling me for months. And so, you know, I wouldn't have known that

0:20:28had it not been for the email. At the same time, I get, I would say, literally 40 emails

0:20:34a day about that. And, again, for a while, I was replying to all of them. It took hours.

0:20:40It takes long enough just to read them, even that. Like, and I said, I'll read all my email.

0:20:46I'm not necessarily sure that will always be the case.

0:20:48I can definitely see a future in which I say

0:20:51I can't even keep up with reading it all anymore.

0:20:54But even that, like reading it takes probably,

0:20:59probably an order of magnitude less time

0:21:01than responding to it.

0:21:03And even that's hard enough to keep up with.

0:21:04That's how much email I'm talking about.

0:21:06- All right, let's talk about something

0:21:08that's a little more positive than how much email we all get.

0:21:12Do you have any ideas, Marco?

0:21:13- Well, it's not email.

0:21:15It is Squarespace.

0:21:17Squarespace is the all-in-one platform

0:21:19that makes it fast and easy to create

0:21:20your own professional website, portfolio, and online store.

0:21:23For a free trial and 10% off,

0:21:25visit squarespace.com and enter offer code ATP at checkout.

0:21:28Now they emailed me something earlier today.

0:21:32This is kind of cool.

0:21:33So I guess the Super Bowl's coming up pretty soon.

0:21:35- That's correct.

0:21:36- Yeah, so that's football, right?

0:21:39No, I--

0:21:40- Oh, God, it's also Sunday.

0:21:42Did you know that? - They have winter there,

0:21:43right?

0:21:43- Oh God, I hate you.

0:21:45- So, you know Jeff Bridges, the dude?

0:21:48He has partnered with Squarespace

0:21:51to bring his project to life.

0:21:52It is dreamingwithjeff.com.

0:21:56That's dreamingwithjeff.com.

0:21:58This is an actual project.

0:21:59This is not just like a PR stunt.

0:22:01It's an actual project created by Jeff Bridges

0:22:03with his friends in various locations in LA.

0:22:07He created an album of unique and relaxing sounds,

0:22:10guided meditations, and stories designed

0:22:12to lull you to sleep.

0:22:13This includes tracks such as A Glass of Water, IKEA,

0:22:18and Hum.

0:22:20I don't know, I haven't listened yet.

0:22:21I literally just got this right before the show.

0:22:23- You have to listen.

0:22:24You can listen to the tracks on the website,

0:22:26go listen to some.

0:22:27- Yeah, I've heard it's quite good.

0:22:28So anyway, you can listen to it for free on the site

0:22:31dreamingwithjeff.com.

0:22:33If you wanna download it, they have a pay-what-you-like

0:22:35streaming system in place.

0:22:36This is all based on Squarespace.

0:22:38You can do all this Squarespace, the publishing of the site,

0:22:41listening, the buying, this is all Squarespace. You can bid on one of these box sets, it's

0:22:47like a limited edition box set, or you can just pay what you want to download the thing.

0:22:52Jeff Bridges is the face of No Kid Hungry, this is a charity group that the main mission

0:22:57of it is that no child goes to bed hungry in America. All proceeds from this album will

0:23:01go to No Kid Hungry, this wonderful charity. So really this is not a joke, this is not

0:23:06a PR stunt, this is really Jeff Bridges work with Squarespace to make this happen. Dreamingwithjeff.com,

0:23:11it out and you can watch the Super Bowl on 2/1, I assume that's this Sunday?

0:23:18Do I have to tell anybody besides myself what date the Super Bowl is?

0:23:21Yeah, tell me.

0:23:22I didn't know which Sunday it was.

0:23:24You guys!

0:23:25Oh, God, you're so bad.

0:23:27Anyway, so they've worked with Squarespace to, I guess he's going to be involved in their

0:23:30Super Bowl commercial.

0:23:31Like, they're doing a Super Bowl commercial again this year.

0:23:33I think they were the first one last year.

0:23:35So Jeff Bridges is going to be in the Squarespace Super Bowl commercial, all worked in with

0:23:40with this DreamingWithJeff.com project.

0:23:42So check it out, watch the Super Bowl.

0:23:44I'm really gonna add to tell people to watch the Super Bowl

0:23:49to see the full commercial for Squarespace

0:23:51with Jeff Bridges.

0:23:52Anyway, check out Squarespace.

0:23:54It's the best way to build a website.

0:23:56We talked about it so much in the past.

0:23:57We'll talk about it more in the future.

0:23:59They have all these new features for Squarespace 7,

0:24:01this whole new design, tons of great new features.

0:24:04It is still, as usual, beautiful design,

0:24:06simple and powerful, 24/7 support.

0:24:08All this for just eight bucks a month

0:24:10and you get a free domain if you buy a year upfront.

0:24:14And start a free trial.

0:24:15This is a real free trial with no credit card required.

0:24:17Start building your website today.

0:24:19When you decide to sign up for Squarespace,

0:24:21make sure to use the offer code ATP

0:24:23to get 10% off your first purchase

0:24:24and show your support for our show.

0:24:26Thank you very much to Squarespace.

0:24:27Start here, go anywhere.

0:24:29- Did you look at the songs, Casey?

0:24:31- No.

0:24:32- You should.

0:24:33I looked at my phone on the mobile site

0:24:34and I have this cool little tape player thing

0:24:36and little music players embedded in it

0:24:37and they are absolutely crazy.

0:24:39- Good, crazy?

0:24:40- It reminded me of something that John Roderick would make

0:24:43because they both have a similar kind of voice,

0:24:45they're both a little beardy and just--

0:24:48(laughing)

0:24:49- How does one vocally sound beardy?

0:24:52- There is a song called "Hmm"

0:24:54and it's like, just because he talks over them

0:24:57and there's this music, listen to them and tell me

0:24:59if you don't picture John Roderick doing it.

0:25:01Anyway, it's all for charity, you should go do it,

0:25:03spend some money.

0:25:04- Wow.

0:25:06So we had another piece of feedback from Alberto.

0:25:11And John, would you like to talk about this?

0:25:13- Sure, this is a question,

0:25:14well, we get lots of questions in the same vein.

0:25:17Most of the questions are like,

0:25:19I'm just starting out in Field X

0:25:21and you people have some experience in Field X,

0:25:24how do I get started, so on and so forth.

0:25:25This is a little bit of indirectly related to that.

0:25:29This is from Alberto, he says, he listens to episode 101

0:25:33about how Marco just quote, went and learned,

0:25:36unquote, a new computer language.

0:25:38And he was wondering how you go about learning

0:25:40something so complex by yourself in a short time.

0:25:43Do you just sit there with a textbook and start reading?

0:25:45Do you open up a compiler and try it and see what's what?

0:25:48Alberto says he wants to expand his very simple

0:25:50programming skills and any tips you will give will help.

0:25:52This whole vein of feedback where people want advice

0:25:57on how to get better at something they think we know

0:26:00how to do better than they currently know how,

0:26:03it's always very difficult.

0:26:04People always ask me for recommendations of things to do

0:26:07or books to read, and I wish I had to go to answers for them,

0:26:10but I don't.

0:26:10But for this specific answer,

0:26:12I'll just let Marco answer it.

0:26:13I think there is an explanation of how Marco was able

0:26:16to pick up Go in such a short period of time.

0:26:19- Well, can I interject before that happens?

0:26:21We get this, notice I didn't wait for your answer.

0:26:23We get this question constantly.

0:26:27We get this question, what should I learn?

0:26:29I wanna learn to program, where should I start?

0:26:31or alternatively, I'm about to start iOS development,

0:26:34should I learn Swift or Objective-C?

0:26:36And we get this question so darn often

0:26:38that I actually wrote a very short blog post about it.

0:26:41And it's only a couple of paragraphs,

0:26:43we'll put it in the show notes.

0:26:44But suffice it to say,

0:26:46I think the key phrase in that blog post,

0:26:48which conveniently is in bold,

0:26:50is find a problem to solve

0:26:52and then solve it using the most appropriate tools.

0:26:54And that's really all it comes down to

0:26:57as far as I'm concerned.

0:26:58And I think that Marco is about to tell you

0:27:00that that's kind of the path that he followed

0:27:02when learning Go.

0:27:03- Yeah, that's pretty much it.

0:27:05So, I mean, first of all, if you only know one language,

0:27:09and if you're new to programming,

0:27:10or if you don't know any programming languages yet,

0:27:13this sounds like a bigger deal than it really is

0:27:15once you know a lot.

0:27:16Like, when you've been programming for long enough,

0:27:19you start realizing,

0:27:20especially if you're exposed to a lot of languages,

0:27:22you start realizing that they're a lot more similar

0:27:24than you think.

0:27:25There's a lot of overlap.

0:27:26Usually the differences are really relatively minor

0:27:31and come down to minor syntax details

0:27:33and then the available libraries

0:27:35that are built into the language

0:27:35or that are available for it.

0:27:36So the names of things you're calling might be different,

0:27:39the symbols that you're using for certain things

0:27:41might be different, but you're kinda doing

0:27:43the same kinds of things,

0:27:44or at least there's a lot of overlap.

0:27:46And the concepts carry over.

0:27:47And so learning a new language really is,

0:27:52it's nothing like learning a new human language.

0:27:55I mean, I know they have similar concepts too,

0:27:56but there's a much higher learning curve

0:27:59for like human spoken languages.

0:28:01- There are more keywords.

0:28:02- Yeah, the vocabulary is much bigger.

0:28:05They're a lot more complex.

0:28:06Like going between programming languages

0:28:08is a lot simpler than it sounds,

0:28:09if you're not a programmer or if you're new at it.

0:28:12It sounds like it's a lot, but it's really not.

0:28:15And yeah, it's basically what Casey said.

0:28:18The way I learn, and I don't know if everyone does this,

0:28:20but the way I learn is basically,

0:28:23I have a problem that I need to solve in that language,

0:28:25that both the language is well suited for

0:28:28and that I'm very motivated to do.

0:28:31So when the App Store came out, I learned Objective-C

0:28:33and I learned the frameworks around Cocoa and UIKit

0:28:37because I really wanted to make the Instapaper iOS app

0:28:40and that was the only way to do it, so I did it.

0:28:43And I just plowed through.

0:28:45And what that looks like, and same thing with Go.

0:28:47I figured out I had these problems

0:28:49and before I tried Node,

0:28:51I did it the exact same way basically,

0:28:52just a little bit smaller learning curve

0:28:54'cause I already knew JavaScript somewhat,

0:28:55but I had this problem that my existing toolkit

0:28:59was not very well suited to solve,

0:29:01and I knew that many other languages

0:29:04would have been way better at it

0:29:05as we discussed in the show.

0:29:06I had heard good things about these, so I picked them,

0:29:10and I just started kinda plowing through.

0:29:13So Go has a pretty good online tutorial at golang.org.

0:29:17Put it up, we'll put it in the show notes.

0:29:19There's a pretty good online tutorial,

0:29:21And actually the problem that I was solving

0:29:22of basically being a feed crawler,

0:29:26one of their examples on their site is a web crawler.

0:29:29- Nice.

0:29:31- And so my design of it is actually based on that.

0:29:35And it's not very long, it was pretty easy to base on.

0:29:38But a lot of the concepts of like,

0:29:40oh how do I make it print status every second

0:29:42to the log file and stuff like that.

0:29:45How do I track what it's doing.

0:29:47Managing the concurrency aspects, all that stuff,

0:29:50That all came from that example first.

0:29:52And then I built on that and I kind of made it my own.

0:29:55But honestly, in general, the way to start a new language,

0:29:59like you said before, is really just have a project

0:30:02that you're motivated to do in it.

0:30:03If you just say, I wanna make an iPhone app,

0:30:06just in general, and you don't really know what,

0:30:08you don't have a specific app in mind,

0:30:10you just wanna make an app.

0:30:11'Cause you heard making apps makes money

0:30:12or it sounds interesting.

0:30:13That's gonna be harder to get into.

0:30:16It's much easier if you have a specific idea

0:30:19of something that you really want to see,

0:30:20something that you really want to make.

0:30:22That's way easier to start with,

0:30:24because then you're motivated to basically just start,

0:30:27just plow through it.

0:30:29And that's exactly how I do it.

0:30:31I didn't read a book, I just plowed through.

0:30:33You know, when I used to learn languages,

0:30:34I used to read books,

0:30:35like when I was in high school and college.

0:30:37Now, there's so many great resources on the internet.

0:30:40There's tutorials online,

0:30:42there's places like our second sponsor, lynda.com,

0:30:46which I'll get to in a second,

0:30:47because this ties right into that.

0:30:50There's all sorts of online documentation.

0:30:52There's walkthroughs.

0:30:55There's just so much available online that,

0:30:58and Stack Overflow has been amazingly helpful

0:31:01in this regard.

0:31:02There's just so much available online now

0:31:04that you can just kinda start,

0:31:06just like start plowing through it,

0:31:07like start with a tutorial and just start building it

0:31:10into what you want it to be.

0:31:12And you'll pick up a lot along that path.

0:31:16You'll learn as you go.

0:31:18You can do it the other way.

0:31:19can read a book. I've never found that very helpful, but a lot of people do. It just,

0:31:22you know, depends on how you learn. But in general, the way to learn is to just start plowing through.

0:31:27Yeah, the only thing I'll add is that the specific question of how we go about learning something so

0:31:34complex in a short amount of time. Both of us have been programming for a living for a long time now,

0:31:40and the way we do it in such a short time is, as Marco said, we recognize the similarities between

0:31:47programming languages and so we have a leg up on someone who's like "programming, what's that?"

0:31:51You know, we don't have to relearn the concepts of, you know, what's a variable, what's a loop,

0:31:57what's a conditional, like stuff like that. We don't have to relearn anything about functions or,

0:32:03you know, now that we all know something like blocks or whatever the closures and stuff like

0:32:08we don't have to relearn those concepts. It's just how are those concepts

0:32:11implemented in this particular language. If you're starting from zero,

0:32:15You will have to you will somehow have to learn these basic concepts, right?

0:32:19But your second language you'll be able to learn quicker than your first and your third language you'll be able to learn even quicker

0:32:24So that's how basically it's not like a technique of how do we go about learning something complex?

0:32:29It's because we already know a bunch of similar things

0:32:31So it's very fast for us to pick up something or what Marco in case you're both talking about is like, all right

0:32:36Well assume you can pick up the language

0:32:39It's still not gonna stick in our brains unless we use it to actually solve a problem because it'll just be like yeah

0:32:44I mean, I don't know about you, but I can read an entire book on a language, which I've

0:32:48done in the past, but if I don't use it to write a program of any significance, that

0:32:52just leaves my brain.

0:32:53And it's like, yeah, I can recognize it when I see it, and if you remind me, I'll be like,

0:32:57oh yeah, but it doesn't stick unless you use it.

0:32:59So you know, it's like, what's the trick?

0:33:02The trick is, be a programmer for 10 to 20 years first, then you'll be able to pick up

0:33:06new languages fairly quickly, unless it's a really weird language and you don't know

0:33:08the concepts.

0:33:09Like if we tried to learn something, like, I probably don't know a lot of the concepts

0:33:12that are involved in Haskell.

0:33:13So my first job there would be like, I can't just pick that up because I have no analog.

0:33:17I need to first learn concepts that are not in any other language that I know that are

0:33:21in Haskell or Erlang or something.

0:33:23And then once they get that concept, then you know, it becomes easier.

0:33:26Yeah, it's entirely true.

0:33:27And kind of building on what you were saying, I'll read say NS Hipster.

0:33:32And as of late, NS Hipster has been entirely in Swift and I have barely written any Swift

0:33:38in my life, but I can still read it reasonably well because I can pick out bits and pieces

0:33:45that remind me of other languages and kind of infer what this stuff is doing.

0:33:51So I can look at Swift and say, "Oh, that looks a lot like JavaScript.

0:33:55That's probably what they're doing there."

0:33:56Or, "Oh, that looks a lot like C#.

0:33:58I know exactly what's going on here."

0:34:01And of course, that looks like Objective-C.

0:34:03Well, I know what that means.

0:34:05And so you can take this really nice and broad foundation, especially as you get more and

0:34:13more experience, and apply that to all these other things, and you can do it quicker and

0:34:17quicker with time.

0:34:20What else is cool these days, Marco?

0:34:21Well, as I mentioned a minute ago, if you're looking to learn something new, you should

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0:37:26So Apple made a little bit of money last quarter.

0:37:29- I'm shocked.

0:37:31- I know, I thought they were on the ropes.

0:37:33I thought that Apple was doomed, but seemingly not.

0:37:37Yeah, so Apple made a metric butt ton of money

0:37:41is I believe the official measurement that I've been quoted.

0:37:44I don't even know really what to say about this.

0:37:47It's a tremendous amount of money

0:37:50and Apple is doing really, really well.

0:37:55And I don't know what to make of this.

0:37:57Even as someone who is very new to the Apple ecosystem,

0:38:00as we've talked about very recently, in fact,

0:38:02it's odd for me to see Apple doing this well.

0:38:08Like what's not going well financially for them these days?

0:38:13Anything?

0:38:14- I mean, even a tiny part of Apple's business,

0:38:19like the iPod business, for instance,

0:38:20even that is doing amazingly

0:38:23relative to many other companies.

0:38:25- Yep.

0:38:26- You know, it's like, and people mentioned

0:38:28apparently like the amount of money that they lost

0:38:30due to currency fluctuations this quarter

0:38:34was like Google's entire quarterly profit.

0:38:37(laughing)

0:38:37Something like that.

0:38:39Like, they just make an insane amount of money.

0:38:41I mean, honestly, I don't think this is that interesting

0:38:43from the money perspective.

0:38:44I think what's more interesting,

0:38:46and even then only mildly, but what's more interesting

0:38:50is kind of looking at the trends of like how well

0:38:53things like the iPhones and the iPads are selling,

0:38:56what does the growth curve look like?

0:38:57Are they accelerating?

0:38:58And I think what we're seeing right now,

0:39:01we're seeing that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus

0:39:04were just massive hits.

0:39:06And I think we all kinda knew that already,

0:39:08but to see it officially recorded in the totals here

0:39:13is really something to see.

0:39:16They have made very strong inroads into other markets,

0:39:22Asia, places like that, and also into the Android market

0:39:26with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

0:39:28- Yeah, I think these financial stories

0:39:30are mostly interesting in the ways

0:39:35they sort of highlight Apple's impotence.

0:39:39Not that that's the main story.

0:39:41Not that that's the main story.

0:39:42Like the main story we hear, the main story is like,

0:39:44oh, they're making a lot of money,

0:39:45then everyone, you know, Grubdust has claimed Chowder,

0:39:48and everyone makes fun of the stock analysts

0:39:50who thought they weren't gonna sell things,

0:39:51and then we look at the trends, how are the Macs doing,

0:39:53how are the iPads doing,

0:39:54I think I've seen all those stories.

0:39:56And there have been some good ones about that,

0:39:59but what I always think about when,

0:40:02well, two things, when Apple or any company

0:40:04has these big earnings.

0:40:07One is the old Ed Catmull quote that success hides problems.

0:40:10And so when you see massive success, you think,

0:40:12"Boy, that much success can hide a hell of a problem."

0:40:17You can have just dinosaur-sized problems.

0:40:21$18 billion, like what kind of problem

0:40:23could $18 billion not hide, right?

0:40:25And so that's what I think about.

0:40:27And the second thing is the frustration of,

0:40:30it's kind of like in those, you know,

0:40:31not SimCity or they don't play that enough,

0:40:33but any of those sort of like simulation games

0:40:35with an economy where eventually you break the game

0:40:38and you essentially have unlimited funds, right?

0:40:42And yet there are things, even with unlimited funds,

0:40:44there are things you can't do

0:40:45because usually it was the game world doesn't allow it.

0:40:47This is where the analogy breaks down.

0:40:48but when I think about Apple with all this money,

0:40:51is all this money is not enough for them

0:40:55to buy their way to whatever you want to pick,

0:41:00to do network services as well as Google or Amazon

0:41:04or even Facebook, to be able to hire

0:41:06and retain the world's best talent.

0:41:08There are some problems that throwing money out of them

0:41:12just will not solve, right?

0:41:14And that must be frustrating because it's like,

0:41:16How do you get these things that we need to get?

0:41:21What do we need?

0:41:22And most companies is like,

0:41:23"Oh, if we only had more money."

0:41:24But at Apple it's like,

0:41:25"No, we have all the money in the freaking world.

0:41:27Why can we not turn this money into,"

0:41:29and certain thing that Apple feels that it's lacking.

0:41:31And from the outside,

0:41:32there are many things that we feel Apple is lacking.

0:41:34And on the inside,

0:41:35I bet the main thing I think they're lacking is,

0:41:37how can we get people,

0:41:39how can we get really good employees?

0:41:40Because we all know what it's like at Apple

0:41:42or any large organization.

0:41:45Everyone can't be in charge at Apple.

0:41:48Some people have more of a say in what the company does

0:41:50than other, it's a hierarchy.

0:41:52Every corporation has a hierarchy.

0:41:54And so how can you get all of the world's best people?

0:41:58You can only get all the world's best people

0:41:59who wanna work for a company.

0:42:01And only a certain number of those can ever rise

0:42:03to a position in Apple where they're in charge or anything.

0:42:04And really smart people wanna be in charge of something

0:42:06because they're really smart people.

0:42:07So that's why people come to Apple, get experience,

0:42:10and if they're really awesome,

0:42:11they leave and start their own companies

0:42:12or do their own things, and maybe they come back.

0:42:15It's frustrating to see talent leave you

0:42:18and go to other companies or go to startups.

0:42:20So that's kind of the nature of the business.

0:42:21And so that's why it makes me think about

0:42:23all this giant mountain of money.

0:42:25If I was at Apple, I'd be like,

0:42:26how do we transform this money into improvements

0:42:30in our products and services?

0:42:31And all we do on the show is talk about all the areas

0:42:34where Apple is weak.

0:42:36And I think of every one of those areas

0:42:37and almost all those areas, money may be necessary,

0:42:41but it is clearly not sufficient

0:42:43Because if all it took was money,

0:42:46they would be great at everything.

0:42:48Because they have all the, and this is not like,

0:42:49they had blowout quarters before.

0:42:51They just have massive amount of money in the bank.

0:42:53They have a massive amount of money.

0:42:55Like, they could, you know, it's like,

0:42:56why not just pay all your employees $5 million a year?

0:42:59Apple could pay, like, done.

0:43:01And then all your employees leave

0:43:02'cause they retire on their $5 million in the first year.

0:43:04And you're like, well, we just destroyed

0:43:05the company with money.

0:43:06That was a really bad idea, guys.

0:43:08So it's actually, it's kind of like Brewster's Millions,

0:43:10a reference that neither one of you get

0:43:12because you weren't born, but the

0:43:13- Nope. - Good movie.

0:43:14- Nope.

0:43:14- Everyone go watch Brewster's Millions

0:43:17to understand the problem that Apple has.

0:43:20Yes, Apple is Richard Pryor in this analogy.

0:43:23- Oh, I love Richard Pryor.

0:43:24Oh, see, now I actually wanna watch this.

0:43:26- No, I think you're right.

0:43:27I mean, as you said, there's just a lot of problems

0:43:30that money either can't solve or makes worse

0:43:34or isn't sufficient enough to solve.

0:43:36And most, I mean, I would say looking at

0:43:40what we identify as Apple's problems from the outside,

0:43:42and assuming that they're at least partially true,

0:43:45it seems like Apple's two biggest problems

0:43:50are getting and retaining good talent, number one,

0:43:54and number two, just like organizational inertia

0:43:57of like the way things are set up,

0:43:58the way like departments are structured,

0:44:01the way the incentives are.

0:44:03Like honestly, I think anyone interested

0:44:06in the quality problems or perception of them,

0:44:11whether you think they're real or not,

0:44:13I think you should listen to this week's episode of Debug,

0:44:16which is Neetan Ganatra and Don Melton, part three,

0:44:21and they talk about this.

0:44:22They talk about these accusations of quality issues.

0:44:25And it was interesting to hear,

0:44:30partially I think they were actually,

0:44:33especially Neetan Ganatra,

0:44:34I think they were actually quite defensive.

0:44:37But it was little,

0:44:40I had mixed emotions listening to it,

0:44:42but it gives a lot of insight

0:44:44into the way things are done at Apple.

0:44:48And they don't work there anymore,

0:44:51but they were there fairly recently,

0:44:53and they were there for some fairly recent releases.

0:44:55And the way things are done,

0:44:58it sounds a lot like all the high priority bugs

0:45:02tend to get fixed, but there's not a lot of time left

0:45:05for the less high priority bugs.

0:45:08- Well, this is how every company works.

0:45:09like I haven't listened yet, it's in my queue,

0:45:10but like they're probably defensive

0:45:12because like what they're not saying,

0:45:14whether they realize it or not is,

0:45:16you don't know what it's like man,

0:45:18to get anything done inside the company,

0:45:19you have to do X, Y, and Z.

0:45:20And when you're telling me that I should be doing this,

0:45:22it's like, well, but you can't,

0:45:23because like Apple, the structure of Apple

0:45:25becomes the fixed thing.

0:45:27And it's like to get anything done within the structure,

0:45:29you have to do this.

0:45:30Maybe that means within the structure,

0:45:32the only thing you can do

0:45:33is get the high priority bugs first,

0:45:34because then you can get someone higher up

0:45:36to pay attention to you

0:45:37and you can make a priority for your team,

0:45:38you can get it done.

0:45:39anything lower priority, you can't work within the system.

0:45:41So really what they're angry about

0:45:43when they're being defensive is they're angry at the system

0:45:46into which they are placed.

0:45:47And then they're put into the system and told,

0:45:49"Now get things done."

0:45:50And they would like to do what they think

0:45:53is the right thing, but within the system,

0:45:55you have to work the system, right?

0:45:56And who gets to change the system?

0:45:58This gets back to, you know, who is in charge?

0:46:01Are the people in charge the best people to be in charge?

0:46:03You can't have a company where people move up the ranks

0:46:05over many years and then someone realizes,

0:46:08Like that guy has no idea what he's doing.

0:46:10Get him out of there and bring someone.

0:46:11Like people don't like it when you hire new people

0:46:12and above them, they don't like when they bring in

0:46:14new people that say all the current people there

0:46:15don't know what they're doing.

0:46:17Change like that takes time because egos get bruised

0:46:19and people have to be kicked out of the company

0:46:21and like, and if there's too much churn,

0:46:23it seems like a volatile place and it's not fun to like.

0:46:26All the problems of any human doing anything in a group

0:46:28are magnified in a corporate setting.

0:46:30And that is the main sickness of all corporations.

0:46:32And I would say Apple has done better

0:46:34than any other company to fight against

0:46:37the sort of corporate malaise

0:46:39to actually produce good products.

0:46:42And they're rewarded with buckets of money.

0:46:44But even those buckets of money

0:46:47can't cure all the sicknesses within the organization.

0:46:50And no amount of money can make it so that

0:46:53people who wanna be chief

0:46:54suddenly wanna be your Indians.

0:46:55So you're never gonna have all the best people.

0:46:57They're always gonna leave and do their own thing.

0:46:59They're always going to be restless and do something else.

0:47:01And, you know, I still say like the most practical thing

0:47:04that Apple will do with this money

0:47:05is address its shortcomings that can,

0:47:08the money has the most effect on, for example,

0:47:10prioritizing network services and infrastructure.

0:47:14You can throw money at that.

0:47:16If people learn that Apple was going to spend

0:47:19$300 billion trying to catch up to Google

0:47:22and Amazon and Facebook and network infrastructure

0:47:24and data center expertise,

0:47:25a lot of people who have network infrastructure

0:47:27and data center expertise would go work for Apple.

0:47:29But right now, those people don't wanna work for Apple

0:47:30because the idea is that Apple is a place

0:47:33where those things are not prioritized

0:47:35and all the glory people are working on UIKit or whatever.

0:47:38- Right, I mean that's like,

0:47:40it seems like the two biggest problems in that area

0:47:44of what frustrates the people who are there

0:47:46are the way the system is set up

0:47:50and the stress of working within that

0:47:54and the deadlines of what you have time to work on

0:47:56and what you don't have time to work on.

0:47:57From what I've heard from so many people

0:48:00in and out of Apple, those are the two biggest problems.

0:48:03It's like, you know, you might be,

0:48:05like a lot of people there are very happy

0:48:07doing what they're doing,

0:48:08but there's a lot of people there

0:48:09who can't get the time or the staff

0:48:12to fix the problems they wanna fix.

0:48:14And there's a lot of people there

0:48:16who are fighting the good fight

0:48:18and working on things that need to be worked on,

0:48:20but they don't get the support from above

0:48:22or the resources from above.

0:48:24I guess it's kind of the same problem.

0:48:26Where like it's just not a high enough priority

0:48:27for the company or it's kind of stuck

0:48:29in this weird division somewhere

0:48:31where like it kind of maybe should be somewhere else

0:48:33or there's some roadblock in the middle of the hierarchy

0:48:36that's making it hard for them or something like that.

0:48:38There's these organizational challenges and you're right,

0:48:41every company is gonna have problems like this.

0:48:44That doesn't make them non-problems.

0:48:46And really, I think you gotta listen to this debug.

0:48:51It really encapsulates this so well

0:48:54and even when Nitin Ganatra was attempting to argue

0:48:59against this point, he was proving this point unknowingly.

0:49:03Because he was saying, like, his point of view

0:49:07is that he thinks this is like, I think he said,

0:49:11it's probably like six P1, which means,

0:49:13highest priority, the P1, six P1 bugs,

0:49:16and then we'll all forget about this.

0:49:19And then they proceeded to talk about how the P2 bugs

0:49:22hardly ever, everybody wants to work on the P2 bugs,

0:49:26but they're hardly ever allowed to

0:49:27because of the release cycle leaving so little time

0:49:29and everything's just about like,

0:49:31is it high priority?

0:49:32Fix it.

0:49:33If it's not a high priority,

0:49:33we can't afford to work on it right now.

0:49:35And so I'm not feeling,

0:49:38when I say I'm feeling a lack of quality here,

0:49:41I'm not feeling six P1 bugs.

0:49:43I'm feeling 6,000 P2 bugs that have accumulated

0:49:46over the last five years and aren't being fixed.

0:49:49- Yeah, I agree.

0:49:49I was gonna say that the success side problems thing,

0:49:54The reason you can't get prioritization from your boss

0:49:57to fix the P2s or whatever,

0:49:59and the reason you think like they're, you know,

0:50:01that's not a priority, these are the priority,

0:50:03is because if you were to ever be able to make your case,

0:50:07what you would say is,

0:50:12we need to do this because of,

0:50:13and you lay out all these reasons,

0:50:14and what they would say is,

0:50:15well, I don't think we need to do this because X, Y, Z,

0:50:17and you'd have this argument,

0:50:18and eventually what you'd come down to

0:50:19as you move your way up the ladder is like,

0:50:21well, obviously my priorities as the boss

0:50:26are the correct ones

0:50:27because look how successful as Apple has been.

0:50:28And the higher you go up in the company,

0:50:30the more the person can say,

0:50:31well, I understand the people below me

0:50:33might believe X, Y, and Z should be done,

0:50:36but I believe it should be Q.

0:50:37And history has shown that I've been pretty right

0:50:40because Apple's been doing pretty well.

0:50:41And like, it's the sort of,

0:50:43that's the ultimate success hides problem thing

0:50:45is that when you get into an argument

0:50:46about what people should be doing,

0:50:47that you need more staff to address this,

0:50:48that and the other thing, everybody can't be in charge,

0:50:50Again, for the millionth time,

0:50:51there has to be people who are in charge,

0:50:52and the people who are in charge always have at their back,

0:50:56Apple is the most successful company in the world.

0:50:57We make the best products.

0:50:58We have 100% customer set.

0:51:00Everybody loves us.

0:51:00We make a bazillion dollars.

0:51:01Everybody's buying iPhones.

0:51:03They always have that sitting right behind them.

0:51:05And so, no matter what argument you make based on reason,

0:51:07in the end, and in the end,

0:51:09the leaders might kind of be right.

0:51:10It's like, well, what do you want?

0:51:11We're the most successful company in the world.

0:51:12Do you think the priorities I'm setting

0:51:13as your boss or your boss's boss

0:51:16or your boss's boss's boss or as Tim Cook,

0:51:18are those priorities the wrong priorities?

0:51:19In what way are they wrong?

0:51:21Look how successful we are.

0:51:22What criteria should we be judging ourselves on?

0:51:25Pick a criteria, pick a metric, we are the best.

0:51:27And you're saying, oh, it's not good enough

0:51:28because you can't get people to fix your P2 bugs, right?

0:51:31That's success side problems.

0:51:33That's what you run up against.

0:51:35And if you're one of the lower down people

0:51:37and you can't convince the uppers,

0:51:38it's like either you agree that they kind of have a point

0:51:40and you become a company man,

0:51:41and you argue that Apple doesn't have

0:51:42reliability problems on podcasts,

0:51:44or you leave the company and say,

0:51:47well, these people are never gonna listen to me.

0:51:48And whether they're right or not,

0:51:49this is not the environment I wanna be in,

0:51:51and so you leave.

0:51:52- Yeah, you know, speaking of podcasts

0:51:55that we haven't listened to yet, or at least I haven't,

0:51:58a friend of the show, Ben Thompson,

0:52:00was on the talk show this week,

0:52:02and one of the things that I noticed in the notes

0:52:05was them talking about Apple employees

0:52:07who have gone on sabbaticals and then come back.

0:52:09And I know that both of you guys

0:52:11were mentioning that a minute ago.

0:52:12And then with regard to the P2 bugs

0:52:14that Marco was talking about,

0:52:16I know I brought this up a couple episodes ago,

0:52:18The Andy Matuszak interview on Objective-CIO,

0:52:21he talks about that indirectly,

0:52:23but just talks about how the incredible pace

0:52:26and the priority of just getting new hardware

0:52:28and other super important things done prevents them

0:52:33from working on kind of the not as showy issues.

0:52:39- Or major changes over time.

0:52:41- Right, right.

0:52:42So both homework assignments if you're bored.

0:52:45All right.

0:52:47Anything else on earnings other than that I want the bank account numbers for the hundred and seventy or whatever it is billion dollars

0:52:54I haven't heard the the call yet, but I've read in many places that

0:52:59Not that they gave a breakdown of six versus six plus

0:53:02But they merely just said the six sold better than a six plus. Did you guys read that as well?

0:53:07Yeah, that's that's what they said that that the six was the top seller in the line

0:53:11But they didn't say him, you know what the ratio was and they don't usually break down the ratio like that

0:53:16So I don't think we'd ever get good info on that.

0:53:19I'm mostly interested in-- I'm always interested in not so much what they don't say, because

0:53:22they don't say pretty much anything, but what they do say.

0:53:25What value is there, or what would motivate them to tell us that the 6 sold more than

0:53:30the 6 plus?

0:53:31Right.

0:53:32I don't know.

0:53:33I mean, I can't even think of a cynical faking out your competitors.

0:53:41Maybe they just-- I don't know.

0:53:42I don't understand why they would say that.

0:53:43And all I can think about is, why did you tell me that?

0:53:46I assumed it.

0:53:47I assumed it before the phones were even released.

0:53:49The 6 was still better than the 6 Plus.

0:53:50You're not telling me how much better,

0:53:51so it doesn't give me any actual information

0:53:53other than like 6 sold more than the 6 Plus,

0:53:55but why are you telling me this?

0:53:57I don't know.

0:53:58- You know, it's funny.

0:53:59I actually asked on Twitter, why wouldn't they say that?

0:54:02Because I was having a dunce moment

0:54:06and it was like, well, why not?

0:54:07Who cares?

0:54:08We're all friends, right?

0:54:10And immediately I got a thousand replies

0:54:14very gently telling me I'm an idiot.

0:54:16But a lot of the responses were,

0:54:18well, don't give your competitors anything.

0:54:20And that makes sense.

0:54:22And gosh, there was one or two others that were really good.

0:54:25But it basically boiled down to what you're saying, Jon.

0:54:28Why share that information?

0:54:31What good does Apple,

0:54:32what benefit does Apple gain from sharing it?

0:54:35- Yeah, I mean, I guess Apple breaks down things

0:54:37that it doesn't have to all the time,

0:54:38but like product mix is one

0:54:40that Apple has almost never broken down.

0:54:42I've always assumed, there's lots of reasons,

0:54:43like you said, of people who give you good responses.

0:54:45I always assume the reason they don't break it down

0:54:46is because they don't want to tell their competitors

0:54:50sort of like, this is the mix of demand for these products.

0:54:53So if you're going to make a line of phones,

0:54:55this is roughly how many big ones this size

0:54:57and how many small ones this size you wanna have, right?

0:54:59- Exactly.

0:55:00- Like they just, that's not the reason,

0:55:03that's just the reason I always think of,

0:55:04they're actually probably even better reasons.

0:55:06But then that goes to make you think why?

0:55:08I mean, someone in the chat room

0:55:09said they were answering our question.

0:55:10Yeah, but the press asks questions all the time

0:55:13at these conferences and Apple just says,

0:55:14"No, we're not gonna tell you that.

0:55:15"Just do it all the time, right?"

0:55:17Why decide to say that the six turns more?

0:55:20It's not even anything, they're not even bragging about it.

0:55:22It's not like a thing that you're bragging,

0:55:24they're not countering a story, I don't think.

0:55:26Is there a story out there that the, I don't know.

0:55:29I can't figure it out.

0:55:30But you know, maybe they just, you know,

0:55:33they decided to throw the press a bone and tell them this

0:55:36because it's another bullet point for a story.

0:55:38But I don't think it puts Apple

0:55:39in a particularly good or bad light.

0:55:40Anyway, I haven't listened to the call yet.

0:55:42We'll see what it was really like.

0:55:44- All right.

0:55:46So there's been a little bit of rumblings lately,

0:55:49which I was not aware of until somebody else pointed it out.

0:55:53And in this case, Wes Dart from Australia,

0:55:56he or she said,

0:55:59"It might be worth revisiting the new photo app for Mac.

0:56:02I remember you guys were pretty excited about it.

0:56:05I have a daily Google alert for all news about it.

0:56:08It seems Apple have been removing references to it

0:56:10their website. That doesn't instill a lot of confidence, does it? I mean, that's probably

0:56:19not a good sign. And it also was funny to me, semi-related, that somebody pressed Tim Cook on

0:56:24whether or not on the earnings call, whether or not the Apple Watch is really going to be released

0:56:30early in 2015, because it's apparently coming out in April. And Tim said, from what I gather,

0:56:38Well, the way we think of it is the first third of the year's early

0:56:41The middle third is just the middle third and the last third is late. And so sure why not? It's still early, right?

0:56:48We're all friends and I don't know it just struck me as funny. So are you guys?

0:56:53Concerned about the fact that that photos apparently may not be the photo app may not be a thing anymore

0:56:58Well, it seems like you know reading the tea leaves here and hearing a few rumblings here and there

0:57:05I think the answer is not that the photos app is canceled or anything. I think it's just late

0:57:09You know, it was I believe didn't did they say I thought I thought the initial release date was like last fall

0:57:16But I think somebody else corrected me recently and said it was also early 2015. Yeah, it was always next year

0:57:21So I think it was always supposed to be

0:57:232015 sometime. Okay, so, you know if if that means by the end of April 2015

0:57:28And they're suddenly removing all these references to it. I mean I

0:57:33It really does sound like based on a few rumblings here and there, from what I can tell, it's

0:57:39just delayed.

0:57:40It's not delayed.

0:57:41It's not cancelled.

0:57:42Yeah, and I always wonder with these stories, with the sort of implied, "Apple's removing

0:57:49Robinson's photo map for the Mac," dot, dot, dot.

0:57:51Those stories will never say, "This means Apple is canceling it," because that's

0:57:56the implication, but they only want to imply it.

0:57:58They don't want to say it, right?

0:58:00or even speculate about it,

0:58:02because my question would be,

0:58:03all right, if you're saying this

0:58:04because you think the photos app for the Mac is canceled,

0:58:08is that really a thing that you think would happen,

0:58:09that Apple would cancel both iPhoto and photos for the Mac,

0:58:12and there would be no--

0:58:12- And Aperture.

0:58:14- Yeah, and Aperture,

0:58:14and there would just be no photo management for the Mac.

0:58:16I mean, I suppose that could be a thing.

0:58:18Like, by all means, make that argument.

0:58:20Tell me why Apple does not want to be in the business

0:58:22of making first-party photo management applications

0:58:26for your Mac anymore.

0:58:27I would love to hear that argument,

0:58:28but they will never make that argument.

0:58:30They will just say that it's being fooled from the site

0:58:31and let you just worry about something.

0:58:33So in the absence of someone making a compelling argument

0:58:36that Apple no longer wants to make photo apps for the Mac,

0:58:39which I bet, you know,

0:58:40and if I had to make that argument by the way,

0:58:42I would say history has shown over the past several years

0:58:45that Apple's not great at making phone management apps.

0:58:46And if Apple didn't make one and give one away for free,

0:58:48that would open up the market to third parties,

0:58:50but then the third parties would have to work

0:58:52with the photos in the cloud.

0:58:54And if Apple doesn't have an API for that, blah, blah, blah.

0:58:56Anyway, I'm not saying it's totally ridiculous.

0:58:57It could happen, right?

0:58:59but I don't see anyone making that argument.

0:59:01So then it's just like, oh well,

0:59:02late software is late, right?

0:59:04You know, what else is new?

0:59:06And you take it off the site just because

0:59:08it's kind of embarrassing to have it up there

0:59:09for a long time and not have it available.

0:59:13And maybe, you know, it was on the website too soon.

0:59:16You're showing screenshots of something that doesn't exist,

0:59:18that people can't get.

0:59:21Why are you enticing them?

0:59:22Same thing with like still selling Aperture

0:59:24when it's canceled, like that's not a good move either.

0:59:26And so this just seems like a correction.

0:59:29If this photos app doesn't come out until next year,

0:59:31I don't care, just make it freaking work.

0:59:33(laughing)

0:59:34- That's the thing, I mean, you're right.

0:59:36Photos on your Mac, that's such an important thing.

0:59:39That's not something you can mess with.

0:59:42If it was a beta, I wouldn't install it.

0:59:44- I don't know if I'm gonna even install the final version.

0:59:48When they say this is a really, seriously,

0:59:51I barely trust iPhoto with my photos,

0:59:56and this new system, whatever it is,

0:59:59I'm gonna run it in parallel with iVoto

1:00:02for a long time before I trust it.

1:00:03- Yeah, I mean, whether I use it immediately

1:00:07and whether I trust it with everything immediately

1:00:09will entirely depend on whether I can read

1:00:12its directory structure. (laughs)

1:00:14If I can read it back out and I can back it up

1:00:17with Time Machine and all that stuff

1:00:18that we talked about months ago when they announced this,

1:00:21I'll be comfortable using it.

1:00:22If it doesn't have all those things,

1:00:23it's gonna be a tough sell.

1:00:25- Yeah.

1:00:26Anyway, we didn't actually get a third sponsor this week,

1:00:28so instead I decided to kind of throw this one

1:00:31to two conferences that are run by our friends

1:00:33and are really nice.

1:00:35Both happening in March, both happening,

1:00:38oh boy, I gotta consult the CGP Grey video.

1:00:40Is Ireland the UK?

1:00:42I think, hmm, I think the bottom half is, anyway.

1:00:46(laughing)

1:00:48- That's how they refer to it, I think, the bottom half.

1:00:50I remember seeing that on that video.

1:00:51- Yeah, me too.

1:00:52- Yeah, so anyway--

1:00:53- Oh my god, you're gonna get so much email.

1:00:56- To review, the two largest islands in the British Isles

1:00:58are Ireland and Great Britain.

1:00:59Ireland has under two countries,

1:01:01the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland,

1:01:02while Great Britain mostly contains three,

1:01:04England, Scotland, and Wales.

1:01:05These last three, when combined with Northern Ireland,

1:01:07formed the United Kingdom.

1:01:08- Anyway, NSConference@nsconference.com

1:01:12is an awesome conference that is in, oh boy,

1:01:15Lychester?

1:01:16- I think it's Lyster.

1:01:18- Oh, it's like the Boston style,

1:01:19you just kind of delete the middle of the word.

1:01:21- We can get some help from this in the chat.

1:01:23There was a good video I saw

1:01:24of Americans pronouncing British place names.

1:01:28I should find that for the notes.

1:01:29- Lysester.

1:01:30- Lester.

1:01:31- Like a creepy dude, Lester?

1:01:33- Yeah, sure.

1:01:34- My bad.

1:01:34Here it was, I was so smug,

1:01:36I thought I really nailed it, but I was wrong.

1:01:39- Anyway, all right, so that's March 16th, 18th,

1:01:41NSConference.com in Lester in the UK.

1:01:45Speakers to this include some of my friends,

1:01:47Jessie Char, Daniel Jockett, Paul Kvassus, Laura Savino,

1:01:50Jamie Newberry and a bunch more people

1:01:52who I don't know quite as well,

1:01:53but it's a very, very good list.

1:01:54And I will be speaking there as well.

1:01:57I tend to speak at about one conference per year

1:01:59and I've been wanting to do this one for a while

1:02:01and the scheduling has never worked out until this year

1:02:04and I'm very happy to finally work this out.

1:02:06So check out NSConference.com.

1:02:08Also, Oll, I apologize to Casey

1:02:11'cause he really wants to go and probably won't go

1:02:13because baby stuff is hard and so, not that I blame you.

1:02:17So anyway, it's ull.ie.

1:02:20This is March 30th and 31st in Killarney, Ireland.

1:02:24Speakers to ull include lots of people we know,

1:02:26Jason Snell, Guy English, Dal Rampell, Georgia Dow,

1:02:30Dave Whiskus, Serenity, Renee,

1:02:32some guy named John or Jonathan Gruber,

1:02:34I think he's an economist and more.

1:02:37Go to ull.ie, 'cause that's pretty cool.

1:02:41Anyway, yeah, so NS Conference and ull,

1:02:43wanted to give them a nice shout out

1:02:44since we didn't have a third sponsor this week.

1:02:46Anyway, what else?

1:02:48- So we're gonna get so much hate mail

1:02:49and I'm not looking forward to it.

1:02:51Anyway, I wanted to quickly talk about a tweet

1:02:55that I had seen retweeted by my friend Andre Arco.

1:02:58This tweet is by Gary Barnhart.

1:03:02It says, "The history of programming is much more

1:03:04"about programmers unacknowledged emotional attachment

1:03:07"to familiarity than it is about invention."

1:03:10And the first thing I thought of when I read this tweet

1:03:13was Marco's insistence on sticking with PHP forever

1:03:17up until a month ago.

1:03:19The difference though in Marco's defense

1:03:21is that you acknowledge your ridiculous insistence

1:03:24on this ridiculous language

1:03:25rather than just stick your head in the sand.

1:03:29Although I guess maybe I should have thought of John first,

1:03:31but since I don't feel like there's any--

1:03:34- Why were you thinking of me first?

1:03:35- Perl is fine.

1:03:37Why do you need to learn any languages?

1:03:38Perl is the best language, period.

1:03:39- I know a whole bunch of languages.

1:03:40(laughing)

1:03:42I learn new ones all the time.

1:03:43When Go and Dart comes out, when Go comes out,

1:03:45when all these new languages come out,

1:03:47I read all the documentation for the languages.

1:03:49- Yes, but the only one you really need,

1:03:52like Marco said, is Perl.

1:03:53Just dollar signs for everyone, John.

1:03:55- I think it's JavaScript is the only one

1:03:56you ever really need.

1:03:57(laughing)

1:03:58No matter where you work,

1:03:59you will find yourself writing JavaScript.

1:04:01- That's true, actually.

1:04:02- JavaScript, the worst language everywhere.

1:04:04- Yep, that should be the slogan.

1:04:06- Oh, you guys.

1:04:08Anyway, I don't really have much to say

1:04:10other than that I thought the tweet was cool

1:04:11and it reminded me of you guys.

1:04:13Yeah, that's true not just of programming languages, though it's true of anything.

1:04:17Like again, with any sort of group organization with a hierarchy where people are in charge,

1:04:25there's going to be an attachment of the people in charge to the things that they are familiar

1:04:29with and since they're in charge they get to impose that on everybody else.

1:04:34And any attempt to change is met with resistance from the people who are attached to the thing

1:04:39that they're familiar with.

1:04:40There are specific instances in programming it,

1:04:43whether it's specific language or technology

1:04:46or a particular code base

1:04:48that people get attachments with.

1:04:50In many cases, specifically with tech,

1:04:54what's required is somebody who's not a tech person

1:04:59to make a decision and impose it on the tech people.

1:05:03That's how you get situation,

1:05:05that's how you get essentially Mac OS X, right?

1:05:08because Apple had all sorts of next generation

1:05:11operating system initiatives within its walls,

1:05:15and none of them were focused enough,

1:05:18and they were put under very difficult constraints,

1:05:21and they just couldn't get the job done.

1:05:23So the only way they could break out of that

1:05:25was they had to, someone who is not a programmer,

1:05:27who has no attachment to the Mac toolbox

1:05:30or to anything involving classic Mac OS,

1:05:33to come in and say, "We're doing something different,"

1:05:36because none of the people who were there in the trenches

1:05:41were going to do that because all those people were experts

1:05:44in the current Mac operating system.

1:05:46And they may have had ambitions

1:05:47to make a new operating system,

1:05:49but they certainly had an attachment to the current one.

1:05:51And it takes kind of an outsider.

1:05:52And usually an outsider is not a tech person.

1:05:55In this case, the outsider was the CEO of the company

1:05:58who decided to purchase another company

1:06:00that came along with Steve Jobs.

1:06:01And he did a little inside out takeover type thing.

1:06:03Those are the people who decided

1:06:05Apple's next generation operating system was built on next step nobody

1:06:08You know inside the company working on a new kernel or whatever decided

1:06:13That next step was going to be the thing so like there's a way out of this. How do you

1:06:18Deal with that emotional attachment you have a you get a decision made by somebody who has no emotional attachment to those things

1:06:25And you know who I didn't know who there is it was Gil amelio then was the CEO

1:06:31oh, I can't even remember the frigging CEO progression

1:06:33in Apple, he did not have an emotional attachment

1:06:35to classic Mac OS.

1:06:36So the idea of, you know, using the Windows NT kernel

1:06:40or buying Next or buying B or any of those things,

1:06:43he is not burdened by any emotional attachment

1:06:45to technologies or languages or anything having to do

1:06:48with the current technology stack.

1:06:50That was kind of a Christ-tunity though,

1:06:53because if your company's going down the tubes,

1:06:55the person can, the person in charge is empowered

1:06:59to do that, and again, the success sides,

1:07:00problem things, who at Apple is empowered to make them massively change their

1:07:04priorities for network services? Anyone who has that sort of ability, like there's

1:07:11no crisis causing it to happen at this point because for all the noise we make

1:07:15talking about Apple and their problems, like then they turn in these financial

1:07:19numbers and it's like tell me again why I have to totally change the way we do

1:07:21things or otherwise, otherwise what? What happens if we don't? We have another

1:07:24record quarter? Hmm. Well you know Blackberry was doing great in 2006. I know,

1:07:28I know it hides problems right up to the point

1:07:31that it doesn't, right?

1:07:32And Apple especially, because if Apple misses

1:07:34its fantastical earnings by just a little bit,

1:07:36it's like, oh God, Apple is doomed.

1:07:37They only made 16 billion.

1:07:39And last year they made 18.

1:07:40If they make 16 billion this, you know,

1:07:42the same quarter next year, are they doomed?

1:07:44No, they made $16 billion in a quarter.

1:07:46They're fine, right?

1:07:47So it's, but people will still go crazy over it.

1:07:49So I guess that's kind of the upside.

1:07:51I guess no one really talks about this,

1:07:52but the upside of the crazy Apple blogosphere

1:07:55and the pundits who are like,

1:07:57Apple is doomed no matter what Apple does.

1:08:00They're about to be destroyed

1:08:02by whatever their competitor is.

1:08:04That is actually that sort of manufactured chrysotunity.

1:08:08That's like, it's not real.

1:08:09It's a phantom.

1:08:10Oh, I don't want to say it.

1:08:11All right.

1:08:12It's not a real problem.

1:08:15But the perception that there is a problem

1:08:18is the only thing they could ever give anybody

1:08:20inside Apple any sort of clout to make a, you know,

1:08:24to have a crisis that leads to an opportunity, right?

1:08:27'cause otherwise if there were any other company,

1:08:28we would be like, nothing ever changes.

1:08:31We're doing great.

1:08:32I don't understand why I would ever listen to you.

1:08:36Everything is fine.

1:08:37- Yeah, and just to put a little bit of nuance on this,

1:08:41when I complain about Apple's quality problems,

1:08:44or what I perceive as those quality problems,

1:08:47I'm not saying Apple's doomed.

1:08:49They're not.

1:08:50Apple's gonna be fine for a long time.

1:08:52Apple's gonna be, even if they have a bad patch,

1:08:56it's gonna be a little bit like Microsoft is today,

1:08:58which is like, Microsoft is, you know,

1:09:02I think by most of our estimations,

1:09:05they're going through like their worst period ever

1:09:07right now, and they're still making tons of money,

1:09:09and they're still fine, and you know,

1:09:11they're not making as much money necessarily

1:09:13as they could be, or maybe as they were in the past,

1:09:15I don't know about that, but you know,

1:09:17they're still like, even in this state of them

1:09:21producing things that don't do well on the market,

1:09:23and things that tend to suck a lot, or fail at least,

1:09:27they're still, as a company, and financially and everything,

1:09:30so fine, it's not even funny.

1:09:32And so, you know, Apple, even if they had a colossal series

1:09:36of terrible moves and terrible products

1:09:38that flopped in the marketplace,

1:09:39which doesn't look like it's gonna happen anytime soon,

1:09:42but even if that happened,

1:09:45they have so much money coming in.

1:09:47They're still gonna be selling to so many people.

1:09:49They're still gonna have such great success

1:09:52relative to the market as a whole,

1:09:53relative to other companies,

1:09:54relative to zero,

1:09:56that they're gonna be fine.

1:09:59So I'm not saying they're doomed.

1:10:01I'm not even saying that they're gonna start

1:10:04making less money.

1:10:05I don't know that, you know, who knows?

1:10:07I do think though that,

1:10:09following the theme of success hides problems,

1:10:12you can be selling tons and doing very well

1:10:17in profit, in market share,

1:10:20in any kind of like, you know,

1:10:21money metric you want to measure,

1:10:23and still not be making stuff that's good enough.

1:10:26That is a different metric.

1:10:28And you can, similar to how I said,

1:10:31you can lose the functional high ground

1:10:34without losing it to somebody else,

1:10:35you can just lose it yourself.

1:10:37You can still be doing very, very well.

1:10:40You can still be making tons of money.

1:10:41You can still be the market leader

1:10:44in whatever metric you choose to be.

1:10:46Despite that, your stuff might not be

1:10:50as good as it could be or should be.

1:10:52That is a totally separate measure

1:10:54that often does not correlate to your market success.

1:10:56- Yeah, I wasn't talking about you.

1:10:58I was talking mostly about, you know,

1:10:59like this bad assumptions article by Ben Thompson,

1:11:02who may or may not be in our chat room,

1:11:04that like it's the analysts who are like,

1:11:06"Apple has to come out with a network, you know,

1:11:09or the competitors are gonna crush them.

1:11:10They need, their lower priced phones

1:11:12are gonna destroy them in China."

1:11:13Like all these people who just don't understand Apple

1:11:16or their business, they're the people who are manufacturing,

1:11:19like the drama on the stock market with their price,

1:11:22like why Apple's PE ratio is not what it should be

1:11:26according to almost any rational thought.

1:11:29It's just like, as this big article says,

1:11:31we'll put it in the show notes,

1:11:32like Apple is eternally,

1:11:34and I think Asympico has said similar things,

1:11:37Apple is eternally like on the edge of doom.

1:11:40Like I think this was an Asympico thing.

1:11:45He said like they're constantly falling to earth.

1:11:48they just keep missing it, so basically they're in orbit.

1:11:51Right?

1:11:51Like it's just, and it's not,

1:11:53and this is from the people who matter,

1:11:56like in the financial markets and everything like that.

1:11:58And everybody hates that,

1:12:00and you have whole websites dedicated to just like,

1:12:02I mean the Maclope, like all he does is just,

1:12:05he or she, has just take down these people

1:12:09who just have no idea what they're talking about

1:12:10and constantly are talking about Apple

1:12:12and seemingly having people listen to them.

1:12:14But there is a benefit to that,

1:12:17And the benefit is if that chatter gets loud enough,

1:12:21it can be fuel for things to happen inside the company

1:12:23that otherwise wouldn't.

1:12:24I mean, and the other fuel is what Marco talked about,

1:12:26that any good company, and especially Apple knows,

1:12:29don't let yourself be Blackberry, right?

1:12:30Don't let yourself be Microsoft.

1:12:31Don't miss the mobile revolution.

1:12:33Don't decide that a hardware keyboard

1:12:35is the way forward, dammit.

1:12:36Like you can always get blindsided.

1:12:40And if I had, you know, an Apple to its credit,

1:12:42and perhaps better than anyone else,

1:12:44has been really good over the past decade or so

1:12:47about trying not to let that happen to himself,

1:12:49not resting on, like that's what the watch is all about.

1:12:51Is the watch the right thing?

1:12:53Is Apple TV the right thing?

1:12:54Like these are things that Apple is trying.

1:12:56They don't try a million things,

1:12:57but they know we're gonna be the iPhone company forever.

1:13:01That is not a viable strategy.

1:13:02You will end up as a BlackBerry eventually.

1:13:04It may take a while, but it'll eventually happen.

1:13:07Like if I had to pick out something that is dangerous

1:13:09to Apple right now, I would pick out like VR or something.

1:13:13Maybe VR will be a fluke and it's not a big deal,

1:13:15but Apple should be worried about it.

1:13:16Apple should have contingency plans.

1:13:18Apple should be working on VR.

1:13:20Like, maybe it's not a big deal.

1:13:22Maybe VR comes and goes and it's like, you know,

1:13:24we didn't need to be worried about it, but.

1:13:26- Doesn't VR come and go every seven or eight years?

1:13:28- I know, like, you don't know, like,

1:13:30but you never know what's gonna take.

1:13:32Maybe it won't take now.

1:13:33If you had said, like, tablet computers,

1:13:35you better be worried about that Apple

1:13:36when, like, pen for Windows came out,

1:13:38or like the grid pad or whatever.

1:13:41Oh my God, Apple, you better be worried about this.

1:13:43They'd be like, what if they said,

1:13:45no, we don't need to worry, that's stupid.

1:13:46And then it went away and you're like,

1:13:47see, we were totally right.

1:13:49The whole thing with like tablets, that's pointless.

1:13:51No one's gonna be, that stuff is useless.

1:13:53And Paul was like, oh, you better do it in this PDA space.

1:13:56We tried the Newton, it was crappy.

1:13:57Nobody wants to have like a smart device

1:13:59with a touchscreen, that's stupid, right?

1:14:01If Apple kept having that attitude,

1:14:03they would have never made the iPhone, right?

1:14:06And so VR comes and goes, like you said,

1:14:07and it's like, see, we were right, we didn't have,

1:14:09no, you have to, you absolutely have to explore every avenue.

1:14:12Maybe nothing comes to it,

1:14:13but you have to be on the lookout for it.

1:14:14I think Apple has that going for it,

1:14:17that it's always gonna be on the lookout

1:14:18for what the next thing that's gonna blindside it

1:14:21and trying to stay ahead of it.

1:14:22But the more difficult thing is

1:14:24when you don't have anybody who's competing with you

1:14:27in terms of product quality, profits, customer set,

1:14:30anything like that,

1:14:31what do you have to motivate you to be better

1:14:34or to change the way you do business?

1:14:37Because any argument you make about changing

1:14:39the way you do a business can eventually end in,

1:14:42what is it do you think,

1:14:44How could we do better in some way?

1:14:46Which metric that we can measure would we do better in?

1:14:48Would we make more money?

1:14:49Would we have higher customer satisfaction?

1:14:51I guess maybe you could say we would have more market share,

1:14:53but then they have a counter to that.

1:14:55Like if you sold a lower priced phone,

1:14:58you would increase your market share.

1:14:59And then Apple said,

1:15:00"Yes, but we don't care about market share.

1:15:01We care about making the best products

1:15:02and making a lot of money."

1:15:04Possibly in that order.

1:15:05- All right.

1:15:07- Still waiting for that Sega VR headset.

1:15:09- Okay.

1:15:11Let me know how that works out for you.

1:15:14Sony's making one, you got the Oculus,

1:15:16you'll be able to get a VR headset someday.

1:15:18- Thanks a lot to our sponsors this week,

1:15:20Squarespace and lynda.com, and I guess Jeff Bridges.

1:15:24And we will see you next week.

1:15:26(upbeat music)

1:15:29♪ Now the show is over ♪

1:15:32♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

1:15:34♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

1:15:37♪ Oh it was accidental ♪

1:15:40♪ John didn't do any research ♪

1:15:42Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, 'cause it was accidental.

1:15:47It was accidental.

1:15:50And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.

1:15:55And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at

1:16:00C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

1:16:09♪ Anti-Marco, Armin, S-I-R-A-C ♪

1:16:14♪ USA, Syracuse, it's accidental ♪

1:16:18♪ Accidental ♪

1:16:19♪ They didn't mean to ♪

1:16:22♪ Accidental ♪

1:16:23♪ Accidental ♪

1:16:24♪ Tech broadcast so long ♪

1:16:28- What else is going on?

1:16:30Anything fun?

1:16:31- I mean, at this point, I think we're never gonna watch

1:16:33the Microsoft thing, right?

1:16:34'Cause we all forgot to do it for two weeks in a row, right?

1:16:36- Oh, were we supposed to?

1:16:37I'll probably watch a little bit.

1:16:39I read articles with highlights, and I know more or less

1:16:42what was announced.

1:16:43I just want to see it, I guess.

1:16:45I mean, sometimes when I watch those things,

1:16:48it very quickly becomes not about what's been announced,

1:16:51but about how it's being announced.

1:16:53Yeah, yeah.

1:16:54And sometimes that could be good,

1:16:55and sometimes it can be bad.

1:16:56If it's really long and boring, then it's bad.

1:16:58But you can always be surprised.

1:17:00I would remember that one of the best Microsoft things I watched

1:17:02in a long time was that when Windows 8 Metro was announced,

1:17:07and it was like the UI guy explaining the UI philosophy

1:17:11behind the Metro interface.

1:17:13That was really good.

1:17:14- Yeah, I think, I mean, I've heard so many people

1:17:18talking about this Microsoft thing

1:17:20and various things about it.

1:17:22I think the biggest red flag for me

1:17:27is that all these features that are designed for like,

1:17:30it sounds like they have basically one continuous UI

1:17:33between phones, tablets, and PCs,

1:17:37and convertible laptops and everything,

1:17:40everything, rather than the Windows 8 environment

1:17:43of these two separate environments and Windows RT,

1:17:46which I think no one's even really mentioned yet recently

1:17:49with this stuff.

1:17:50- I think they canned that, didn't they?

1:17:52- I think so, but I don't know if that's been confirmed.

1:17:55I think it's just been implied.

1:17:56But all that stuff, the problem is that whole system of,

1:18:01oh, it'll be wonderful, you can have these apps

1:18:03that run the same on all these different platforms,

1:18:05you can have things being handed off, all that stuff.

1:18:08You have to not consider what happens

1:18:11if you have all the Microsoft devices,

1:18:14because that's not gonna happen.

1:18:16Like, that's unrealistic.

1:18:17So you have to instead be like,

1:18:20all right, so what happens if I only have one or two of these?

1:18:24Maybe I only have the laptop and the Xbox,

1:18:28or maybe it's just like the tablet and the laptop,

1:18:31or something like that.

1:18:33No one's gonna buy the Windows Phone anytime soon.

1:18:35So what happens then in a mixed environment

1:18:38where I'm not totally bought in?

1:18:41Is this stuff still compelling, if it works at all?

1:18:44Is it still compelling?

1:18:46That I think is, I hope Microsoft is smart and practical

1:18:51and humble enough to recognize that they need

1:18:54to be worried about that and they need

1:18:56to make sure that works well.

1:18:58I don't know yet if they are.

1:19:00In general, the new Microsoft is moving in that direction

1:19:04of being more pragmatic and honest

1:19:07about their position in mobile, but we'll see.

1:19:11And then HoloLens, I mean, HoloLens from what everyone says

1:19:14is a really awesome tech demo that everyone hopes

1:19:18will come out sometime soon with some kind

1:19:20of reasonable hardware that performs something well

1:19:24and works with some kind of mystery software,

1:19:25but that's a whole lot of ifs, you know?

1:19:29That's a big line of pretty big problems to solve

1:19:33before this thing is truly compelling.

1:19:36And so I hope it succeeds.

1:19:38I think it'd be cool.

1:19:39I think it would be cool to kinda like shake things up

1:19:41in the industry and to have Microsoft be at the front

1:19:44of it again is kind of exciting

1:19:45because they haven't been for a while.

1:19:48So I think that would be interesting.

1:19:50I think it'd be cool.

1:19:50I hope it works.

1:19:51But there's so many ifs and people are comparing it

1:19:57to the original demos of Kinect,

1:20:00back when it was still called Project Natal, I think.

1:20:02Right, that was what that was?

1:20:04- Sounds familiar.

1:20:05- Yeah, yeah.

1:20:05So people are saying the original demos of that

1:20:08were like insanely awesome, ridiculous stuff,

1:20:11and then the real thing came out

1:20:12and it wasn't nearly that good in reality.

1:20:14And so that could happen here,

1:20:15but from what everyone has said

1:20:17who has tried the HoloLens at the press event,

1:20:19everyone said it was really good.

1:20:21It was actually really good.

1:20:22But of course it was all prototype hardware,

1:20:24prototype software, pretty far from reality,

1:20:27pretty far from release, so.

1:20:28- Yeah, but like, I saw some people

1:20:31who were normally skeptical say it was really good too,

1:20:32but it's like really good, like a fun amusement ride,

1:20:36but like what problem is this solving for me?

1:20:38Like in gaming, it's easier,

1:20:41because like gaming is an amusement ride.

1:20:42That's the problem it's solving for you.

1:20:44It's entertainment, right?

1:20:45But for something that's not a gaming system,

1:20:47the demo could be amazing because you didn't know

1:20:49the things you're experiencing were possible,

1:20:51and it was a super rock solid implementation of these ideas,

1:20:53but then it's like, if you gave this to me

1:20:56and put it in my house, what would I use it for?

1:20:58Games are easy, I would use it to have fun, right?

1:21:00If it doesn't make me sick,

1:21:01and it's fun and novel and interesting,

1:21:03and it makes new gameplay, it's just fun.

1:21:06So that's all you need out of that.

1:21:08But for, like I kept showing people

1:21:09like 3D modeling and stuff, are you kidding me?

1:21:12Take someone who uses Maya all day

1:21:14and tell them you're gonna do everything with HoloLens.

1:21:15It could get there eventually, maybe you have to do,

1:21:18but like those applications are fiendishly complex.

1:21:21They just, they're like the UI looks like

1:21:23the dashboard of a 747, right?

1:21:25You're gonna try to do that by waving your hands

1:21:29around in space.

1:21:30What is it making easier that,

1:21:33like what is it making possible or easier

1:21:35for people in those complex,

1:21:36are you gonna use it for word processing?

1:21:38Are you gonna use it for web browsing?

1:21:39Like maybe, I don't know,

1:21:40but like it's up to Microsoft to figure that out.

1:21:43And putting a bunch of people in these little things

1:21:46and having them be wowed by technology is,

1:21:49it's a start, I guess, but you know,

1:21:52the Apple thing is you have to come up with at least

1:21:54one thing that you think this thing can do better

1:21:56than something else and you have to be right about it.

1:21:58And I don't know what that is yet.

1:22:00- Yeah, there was a good discussion about this on Rocket,

1:22:03our friend's new podcast by Brianna Wu

1:22:04that she was talking about, you know, like three,

1:22:06like she does 3D work all day and she knows,

1:22:09and other people who do it, and she knows like

1:22:11that's not really how people do 3D work and everything.

1:22:14I think too, you know, we've seen as, you know,

1:22:19tablets have gotten big and phones and everything, and we've seen all these weird peripherals

1:22:27that the computing industry has tried over time. I think we've mostly figured out the

1:22:34things that work really well for most tasks. And I'm not saying that we can never do

1:22:40anything different or that we can never find better ways, but a lot has been tried and

1:22:45a lot has failed and I think it's,

1:22:48when you look at like to get a lot of work done,

1:22:51a lot of precise complicated work done,

1:22:54a keyboard and a pointing device and a screen

1:22:57is really, really effective.

1:23:00And again, that might not be the most ideal solution

1:23:03but we have a lot of inertia behind that solution.

1:23:05- Well you just gotta wait until it becomes the,

1:23:09it becomes the best way to do it.

1:23:11Like touch screens, we had touch screens forever.

1:23:12People hated them, people just hated touch screens.

1:23:14How long have we had touchscreens?

1:23:15My whole, practically my whole life

1:23:17we've had touchscreens and universally reviled, right?

1:23:20And does that mean touchscreens are a bad idea?

1:23:22It's like, no, someone eventually has to do them

1:23:24right enough that you go, oh yeah, touchscreens.

1:23:27Apple happened to be the one that got there, right?

1:23:29And so VR is the same way.

1:23:31We've had VR forever.

1:23:32Every time we've seen it, it's like,

1:23:35half the time it wasn't even good as an amusement,

1:23:36like those big giant heavy things you put on

1:23:38in the '90s in a video arcade.

1:23:39It wasn't even fun, right?

1:23:41We're probably at the point now

1:23:43or you can make fun games with it

1:23:44if they can work out all the problems.

1:23:47But we'll know it when someone finally

1:23:49crosses that threshold.

1:23:50And it's not like VR is a bad idea.

1:23:53The reason people keep trying is because it's an amazing idea.

1:23:56You just gotta be the first one to do it right enough

1:23:58that people go, "Oh, yes, every other,"

1:24:00and people will say, "Every other previous effort

1:24:02"of VR or AR sucked, and this is the one that's good."

1:24:06And you won't even have to convince people

1:24:07because no one needs to be convinced now

1:24:08that touch screens are a good thing.

1:24:10and people born in the post smartphone era

1:24:14will never believe you.

1:24:15And we said, well, for all my life,

1:24:16touch screens were terrible and everybody hated them.

1:24:18And it's like, well, what was different about them?

1:24:20They were slightly less responsive.

1:24:21Like that's it?

1:24:22(laughing)

1:24:23Yeah, that's pretty much it.

1:24:24Some of them had to press real hard.

1:24:25Some of them were a little bit less responsive.

1:24:27Like it doesn't take much, right?

1:24:29So that's why people are excited about Oculus

1:24:30because it seems like,

1:24:32and again, I haven't tried it myself,

1:24:33but it seems like they've crossed that threshold

1:24:35into no longer sucking for games.

1:24:37And we'll see.

1:24:38- I've tried an Oculus Rift.

1:24:40- Which one?

1:24:41- I have no idea.

1:24:42As soon as I tweeted about it, everyone was like,

1:24:43"Which one, which one, I'm not lying."

1:24:45Fricking clue.

1:24:46But I tried one.

1:24:47I genuinely don't know which one.

1:24:49I'm not trying to be funny.

1:24:50I tried it for two minutes and it was cool as hell.

1:24:55And I was playing like one game where I was flying around

1:24:59and like shooting at something or other.

1:25:02And I played another game where basically I was just,

1:25:04well, I don't even know if it was a game to be honest.

1:25:05I was just walking around like a balcony

1:25:07on the edge of a cliff.

1:25:08and it's freaking trippy, man.

1:25:11It is weird.

1:25:12I am not typically prone to motion sickness,

1:25:15so I didn't get any,

1:25:16and I only had the headset on for a couple of minutes,

1:25:19but I would assume since there is even the slightest bit

1:25:24of potential latency between real world and it,

1:25:27that, Jon, you would vomit profusely.

1:25:30But I mean, I thought it was spot on.

1:25:33I thought it was really cool.

1:25:34- Well, I think that that's the challenges they're taking.

1:25:36One of them is motion sickness.

1:25:37can you make this so that a reasonable percentage

1:25:41of the population does not get motion sick

1:25:42and you just have to keep trying to make it,

1:25:44you know, reduce the lag and, you know, make it

1:25:47because most people don't get motion sick

1:25:49just walking around all day in a 3D world.

1:25:51Once you put that thing on your head,

1:25:52any disagreement between what your inner ear is telling you

1:25:57and what your eyes are seeing is going to be interpreted

1:25:59by people who are prone to motion sickness as, you know,

1:26:01maybe you've eaten poison, you should vomit that up now.

1:26:06So like that's the problem they're working on.

1:26:08Essentially, you know, what they're saying is,

1:26:09oh, we're looking at low latency displays

1:26:11and reduced tearing and reduced latency,

1:26:13but then all that builds up to,

1:26:14is this something that a large enough portion

1:26:16of the population can use and we'll find fun?

1:26:18Because that's the goal, you want people to buy it, right?

1:26:21And it seems like they're getting closer

1:26:23to that threshold, right?

1:26:25But that's just for games.

1:26:26Microsoft, nothing so far that I've read or seen,

1:26:29I've read a lot but not seen much,

1:26:32has convinced me that they have reached the iOS moment,

1:26:37the iPhone moment for touch screens.

1:26:40Like they have, you know,

1:26:41this is a thing that everyone will wanna use.

1:26:43It's not just an entertainment,

1:26:45it is actually a better way for you to interact

1:26:47with software because of recent XYZ.

1:26:50And I haven't seen that yet.

1:26:52- Yeah, it seems like a very good technical achievement

1:26:57in the labs so far that might make

1:27:00for a very good product, but that no one has quite figured out what's the killer app.

1:27:08What will make it worth spending $500 or $1000 on one of these things and possibly changing

1:27:15the entire way you work physically or your desk setup or whatever? What will make it

1:27:19worth all that cost and change? That's so much better on this thing than on what you

1:27:26have.

1:27:27that you sound old, killer app.

1:27:28That's what people used to say of like,

1:27:30well, it's great and all,

1:27:31but you need the killer app for your platform.

1:27:32But like the touchscreen did not have a killer app

1:27:35in the sense of like, you know, an application made touch,

1:27:38like the whole thing, the whole experience

1:27:41of a handheld thing that's mostly a screen,

1:27:44that was essentially the quote unquote killer app.

1:27:46But like that phrase was back from the days

1:27:48when it was literally a single application.

1:27:50Like, oh, you need a Mac because it has page maker, right?

1:27:53Or you can get Photoshop or whatever.

1:27:54Like that was a killer app

1:27:55that was attractive for your platform.

1:27:57The killer route for touch screens was,

1:27:59touch screens are better for everything on a phone,

1:28:01practically.

1:28:03Maybe borderline keyboard,

1:28:04but they're so much better at everything else

1:28:06that the trade-off is worth it.

1:28:08- I think, I mean, one of the biggest challenges

1:28:10they might have with this,

1:28:11and I know this sounds really superficial,

1:28:13but trust me, it will matter, is portability.

1:28:17You know, the reality is, I think most people today

1:28:19do their work on a laptop.

1:28:21Desktops are really a dying breed,

1:28:24and again, they're never gonna be dead,

1:28:27but certainly laptops are the default computer

1:28:30for most people.

1:28:32And mobility matters for a lot of those people,

1:28:34not all of them, interestingly,

1:28:36but for a lot of them it matters.

1:28:38And if this thing is something that goes on your head

1:28:40and has these screens or whatever,

1:28:42that actually might not fold nice and flat

1:28:46and skinny and light into a bag.

1:28:48- Oh, HoloLens is actually better than Oculus

1:28:50because Oculus is like giant ski goggles, right?

1:28:52And so, you know, they seem to actually be,

1:28:54because they're AR and not VR,

1:28:55like you can see through the lenses.

1:28:57You're wearing glasses that you can see the real world in

1:28:59and they just overlay images onto it.

1:29:02VR is like, you know, completely covered.

1:29:04You can't see anything outside,

1:29:05which is why it's mostly better for entertainment

1:29:08where you don't need to see the outside world,

1:29:10but not so good for an office setting

1:29:12where you'd have a bunch of people

1:29:13who are essentially blindfolded.

1:29:15- Well, also I would expect to have,

1:29:17not knowing anything about this, admittedly,

1:29:19I would expect that AR is probably a lot easier

1:29:22to work out the motion sickness problems for.

1:29:24- Yeah, probably because you do have the visual cues

1:29:27of everything else, but then what that does

1:29:29is it reveals all of your,

1:29:30that's what people were saying about the tech demo.

1:29:32Like it reveals any latency or miscalibration you have

1:29:35is revealed because the real world is, you know,

1:29:37it stays perfectly steady.

1:29:39And they would say, like, I looked at a coffee table

1:29:41and there was a Minecraft structure on it.

1:29:43And they'd pretty much say,

1:29:45it looks solidly stuck to the table.

1:29:46I couldn't, when I wiggled my head,

1:29:48the Minecraft structure didn't like,

1:29:49well, it moved, you know, move from side to side

1:29:51or jiggle like, or it looks like there was a hole

1:29:53in the coffee table and there was like a thing down

1:29:55and like, no matter how I looked at that hole,

1:29:57it still looked like a hole.

1:29:58I'd never sort of lost track of where the coffee table was

1:30:00and accidentally drew it a millimeter to the left

1:30:02and then to the right,

1:30:03because that takes you out of the illusion.

1:30:04It's like bad special effects, like, oh, okay, well,

1:30:07the coffee table's real,

1:30:08but the little castle on top of it isn't, you know,

1:30:10ignoring like photorealism and lighting,

1:30:12just to have it connected to the world.

1:30:14And that's one of the big problems in AR

1:30:16and it seems like Microsoft has solved that pretty well,

1:30:18But it's like, OK, now what do you do with that?

1:30:21Besides put Minecraft castles on tables.

1:30:24Why wouldn't you?

1:30:26I have one. I put it in the after show.

1:30:28I have sad TV news for before we go.

1:30:31Oh, no, what happened?

1:30:33Sad, sad, sad TV news.

1:30:35It's sad on multiple levels.

1:30:37So I've got my fancy TV that I like.

1:30:40It's a Panasonic plasma TV.

1:30:42I know all about plasma TVs and their limitations.

1:30:46I take very good care of my television, or so I thought, encouraging all the kids not

1:30:53to leave television shows paused, making my children watch 4x3 live action television

1:30:58shows stretched out into 16x9 just so I fill the entire screen.

1:31:02But recently, I recently got a Playstation 4 and I've been playing a lot of Destiny on

1:31:06it and that turned out to be a mistake.

1:31:09We got about maybe 80 hours into Destiny split between me and my son and we both really liked

1:31:15the game despite its flaws, perhaps because of its flaws I'm not sure anymore.

1:31:20But Destiny has one feature that I should have paid more attention to and didn't.

1:31:24And in the lower left corner of the screen while you're playing Destiny is a heads up

1:31:28display that shows a 100% yellow line and 100% white silhouettes of guns.

1:31:35And when I was flipping inputs the other day I noticed that I could still see the yellow

1:31:39line and the little silhouettes of the guns in the corner of my screen and I said "Noooooo!"

1:31:43- Oh no. - Oh no.

1:31:45- So this is sad for multiple reasons.

1:31:49Now one,

1:31:50so quick Googling led to a giant jackpot of people

1:31:58begging Bungie to make the HUD transparent

1:32:00or to make it optional.

1:32:02This is something that most games are good about,

1:32:05giving you a way,

1:32:07all you need to do is make it a little bit transparent

1:32:09because the background is constantly changing, right?

1:32:11The problem is when you make something opaque,

1:32:13then it never changes and it's just there

1:32:15for just hour after hour and it's terrible.

1:32:17Bungie hasn't done that yet.

1:32:18I saw one acknowledgement that they acknowledged

1:32:20that they've heard this complaint before

1:32:22and they can't give any timelines and blah, blah, blah,

1:32:23but that was back in November.

1:32:24So there hasn't been a patch yet to fix this.

1:32:27And the second thing is regarding Plasma TVs,

1:32:30there is image retention and burn-in.

1:32:33And the only difference is as far as I can tell

1:32:35that burn-in is considered permanent

1:32:36and image retention is considered not permanent.

1:32:38Is what I have permanent or not?

1:32:40Many stories from people who have played past games

1:32:42in their Plasma TVs, not just Destiny,

1:32:44but many other games say, "I stopped playing the game

1:32:47and it took months for it to go away, but it eventually did."

1:32:49Other people say, "It never went away."

1:32:51And so like the people who say it never went away,

1:32:52they had burned it and the other people had image retention.

1:32:54And there's different debates.

1:32:56So they're, if your Plasma TV supports 3D,

1:32:58it's more susceptible to either image retention

1:33:00or burn-in or whatever.

1:33:01And anyway, my TV has a screen wipe feature

1:33:04that puts white across bar across the screen

1:33:06that's supposed to help.

1:33:08But the bottom line is from what I've read,

1:33:11The best cure is to just simply continue to use your TV as normal, don't play that game anymore,

1:33:15wait several months to a year, and maybe it will go away.

1:33:18I think it has faded already, but the worst part of this is now Destiny is banned from my television

1:33:24until they pass that to the thing, which means that I can't play Destiny,

1:33:28which also means that my son can't play Destiny, and that is the worst part of this.

1:33:32Well, second worst, I think. If that thing stays on my screen, I'll be super pissed.

1:33:35No one else at this point, I think no one else would even notice it unless I pointed it out,

1:33:38because it is actually fairly faint, but you know me.

1:33:41So my solution to this is I'm buying a gaming monitor,

1:33:451080p gaming monitor,

1:33:46and I'm gonna move the PlayStation 4

1:33:48into the computer room and play it there

1:33:50instead of on the television,

1:33:51because we got a player destiny.

1:33:53These guns aren't gonna level themselves.

1:33:57- Wow, so let me ask you a serious question.

1:34:00I'm not trying to troll you.

1:34:04You bought this TV, this specifically a plasma TV.

1:34:08If I understand things correctly

1:34:10because the blacks are better,

1:34:13but otherwise it's mostly the same as any other TV.

1:34:17Is that?

1:34:18- No, pretty much everything about it's better.

1:34:20It handles motion better, the color accuracy is better,

1:34:23the blacks are better.

1:34:24It is better than any television you could buy

1:34:27except for the possibility of OLEDs,

1:34:30but OLEDs by the way also have burning problems.

1:34:32Well, anyway, what I'm driving at is you bought this TV for a difference that probably only

1:34:40your robot eyes can see.

1:34:42No, anybody could see it.

1:34:44Anybody could see it.

1:34:45Put them next to each other in a showroom.

1:34:46You will pick my TV as the better looking one.

1:34:48Yet, you can't use the TV to do the one thing you want to do with it, which is play Destiny.

1:34:52No, because Destiny, like for video games, I don't-

1:34:54Oh, it's all the game's fault, right.

1:34:56No, no.

1:34:57Well, the motion is an important thing in gaming, right?

1:35:00But the thing I really want good picture for is for television and movies, like live action,

1:35:05because games, they're limited by the graphics that are in the games.

1:35:08They're not photorealistic.

1:35:10And I want to watch my favorite movies and television shows and all that other stuff

1:35:16on my nice fancy screen.

1:35:17I'm perfectly happy to move my gaming to a little 23-inch monitor in the computer room,

1:35:23right?

1:35:24But I am not happy...

1:35:25I wouldn't be happy to watch like my Studio Ghibli Blu-ray on a little tiny computer screen

1:35:31or to watch Godfather movies on a little tiny computer screen or to watch the next season

1:35:35of Game of Thrones on a little tiny computer screen.

1:35:37So what I'm trying to do is preserve my TV for its intended purpose, which is watching

1:35:43television and movies.

1:35:45Its intended purpose is not gaming.

1:35:47In fact, the monitor will probably have a much lower input lag and lower latency than

1:35:51my television does for gaming.

1:35:52I tried to get a TV that has a low input lag as possible to make it acceptable for gaming

1:35:56But it'll probably be much better on this monitor that I got

1:35:58All right, well, I'm sad to hear that

1:36:01Yeah, and I worried about it for other games too like Zelda games have HUDs and stuff too

1:36:05But all you need is a little bit of transparency

1:36:06And you know it has not been a problem with any and I've gamed a lot of that like hundreds and hundreds of hours

1:36:11I've gamed on this TV and my previous TV so

1:36:15Some of the chair who's complaining that stretching 4x3 is a crime. I'm not saying I watch shows like that

1:36:20I'm saying I make my kids watch

1:36:22They're watching Full House. It's standard death there. I'll make I make them stretch it they watch Full House

1:36:27Yeah, that's their reruns for it that the show looks awful in any in any aspect ratio. Oh come on cut it out

1:36:34No