ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Your new shows are good, man. Oh, thanks. I haven't heard it yet, so I don't have any complaints.

00:00:03 ◼   ► That might be the most John Syracuse thing I've ever heard, and I've said that phrase

00:00:12 ◼   ► more than once in my life. Well, you know, you gotta keep pushing the bar forward if you want

00:00:15 ◼   ► to succeed. My goodness, I haven't heard it yet, so I don't have any complaints. I don't even know

00:00:21 ◼   ► where to go from here. So we have some follow-up, mostly about lightning cables and galore, really,

00:00:27 ◼   ► And that begins with an image of a lightning cable

00:00:32 ◼   ► with a reversible USB connector.

00:00:34 ◼   ► John, why don't you tell me about this?

00:00:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is confusing if you just hear it.

00:00:38 ◼   ► What it's talking about is a cable that you have now

00:00:42 ◼   ► that you use to connect to your lightning connector

00:00:45 ◼   ► enabled iOS device.

00:00:47 ◼   ► So it's got a little lightning connector on one end

00:00:48 ◼   ► and it's got a regular, plain old, big fat USB thing

00:00:50 ◼   ► on the other end.

00:00:51 ◼   ► And they're not changing the lightning connector

00:00:53 ◼   ► and the rumor is on these rumor sites

00:00:55 ◼   ► that they're going to change the USB

00:00:57 ◼   ► end to be reversible. And they do that by, like if you look at a USB connector head on,

00:01:02 ◼   ► it's like there's an empty part and then a part filled with plastic sort of. And this sort of

00:01:07 ◼   ► takes the empty part, draws a line through the center of the connector and then flips it. So

00:01:11 ◼   ► now there's an empty part on top, empty part on the bottom, and plastic part in the middle.

00:01:14 ◼   ► And this type of connector is not like an Apple invention and it's not a new thing.

00:01:18 ◼   ► It's been around, I don't know, for how many, for a couple of years I think I've seen these. How long

00:01:23 ◼   ► have these things been around? Have you guys seen them before? Never seen it. I hadn't seen it

00:01:26 ◼   ► before this, but someone did point out quickly after this article came out that some other

00:01:30 ◼   ► company actually has a patent on it and they already sell cables like this.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I think the reason I saw it was like back on Hypercritical so long ago when I was talking

00:01:39 ◼   ► about the USB connector and how I hated how it was externally symmetrical but internally

00:01:43 ◼   ► asymmetrical. Everybody sent me links, "Oh, look at this company selling these things that are

00:01:47 ◼   ► externally and internally symmetrical," and it still kind of works. So anyway, the rumor is that

00:01:51 ◼   ► that Apple is going to adopt one of those.

00:01:53 ◼   ► I don't know how much credence to give this rumor,

00:01:56 ◼   ► but when I think about it, I'm wondering like,

00:02:00 ◼   ► will this make people's lives easier?

00:02:02 ◼   ► Like, you know, obviously reversible is a good thing,

00:02:06 ◼   ► but if you have a collection of wires in your house,

00:02:09 ◼   ► some of them are reversible and some of them aren't,

00:02:12 ◼   ► I'm thinking it will probably still make things better,

00:02:14 ◼   ► especially if they put the logo on both sides

00:02:16 ◼   ► of the reversible one, because for people who don't know,

00:02:18 ◼   ► the Apple code for figuring out

00:02:20 ◼   ► how to put your USB connector in,

00:02:21 ◼   ► as long as it's not vertical and you're screwed, good luck,

00:02:24 ◼   ► is the little logo faces up, right?

00:02:28 ◼   ► And so they only put the logo on one side

00:02:29 ◼   ► of their USB connectors and that one faces up.

00:02:31 ◼   ► So they just put the logo on both sides of this.

00:02:33 ◼   ► People will look down at the connector

00:02:34 ◼   ► and be reassured, Apple people,

00:02:36 ◼   ► will be reassured that they're putting it in the right way,

00:02:38 ◼   ► and it just so happens that there's a logo on both sides.

00:02:40 ◼   ► You know, they were both poisoned.

00:02:41 ◼   ► I've spent the last few years building up an immunity

00:02:43 ◼   ► iocane powder, it'll work out good for everybody.

00:02:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:46 ◼   ► You both got that?

00:02:48 ◼   ► Did I get one?

00:02:48 ◼   ► Did I finally get one that you both got?

00:02:49 ◼   ► - No, I just thought it was funny.

00:02:51 ◼   ► - Oh, forget it. - I got it.

00:02:52 ◼   ► All right, all right.

00:02:53 ◼   ► Anyway, I think the average experience,

00:02:56 ◼   ► the average frustration experience will improve with this.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Now that said, is Apple gonna do this?

00:03:01 ◼   ► Are they gonna pay for whatever stupid patent is on this?

00:03:04 ◼   ► Does it decrease the reliability of the connectors?

00:03:07 ◼   ► I have no idea, but I'm cautiously optimistic about this.

00:03:11 ◼   ► If it does come to pass,

00:03:12 ◼   ► I think I'm gonna have to give it a tentative thumbs up.

00:03:15 ◼   ► - Which at this point is about as high praise

00:03:18 ◼   ► as you could give, or would give.

00:03:19 ◼   ► I would rather have that cool reversible USB,

00:03:23 ◼   ► you know, whatever connector,

00:03:24 ◼   ► which is much smaller than these giant things.

00:03:26 ◼   ► And, you know, honestly,

00:03:27 ◼   ► if you keep looking at the sides of those MacBooks,

00:03:29 ◼   ► it's like, well, now that the ethernet is gone,

00:03:32 ◼   ► USB is looking pretty fat on the edges, right?

00:03:35 ◼   ► So, you gotta slim down to the skinny one.

00:03:38 ◼   ► - I think two quick comments on this new connector.

00:03:40 ◼   ► One, or this new old USB reversible connector.

00:03:43 ◼   ► One is that I think it is a little bit less important

00:03:46 ◼   ► that end of it be reversible,

00:03:49 ◼   ► because I have to imagine that in many conditions,

00:03:52 ◼   ► in many cases, possibly the majority,

00:03:54 ◼   ► I bet a lot of people leave that end of the cable

00:03:57 ◼   ► plugged in pretty much all the time,

00:03:59 ◼   ► and they just have the other end,

00:04:00 ◼   ► like the end that goes into the phone,

00:04:01 ◼   ► that's the part that's dangling,

00:04:02 ◼   ► and you connect the phone.

00:04:03 ◼   ► So for example, if you have a charger

00:04:05 ◼   ► that's always plugged into the same spot on the same wall,

00:04:08 ◼   ► and you just have the cable dangling there,

00:04:09 ◼   ► and every night you plug the phone into that.

00:04:10 ◼   ► Or if you have a desktop computer,

00:04:12 ◼   ► or if you have a laptop docked at the same place every day,

00:04:14 ◼   ► and then you have the cable just always plugged in

00:04:16 ◼   ► to the laptop, and then the phone end is open.

00:04:18 ◼   ► So it's a little bit less important, although certainly if you can get it there, it's better.

00:04:23 ◼   ► The other thing is, if you look at this connector, if you look at those pictures that are in this article,

00:04:28 ◼   ► about basically looking at it head on, it looks like the way they did this was to leave less space for the part on the computer end that slides into this enclosure.

00:04:42 ◼   ► So the part they cut out to make the second side of the plug,

00:04:50 ◼   ► it isn't the same size as the full size cutouts on the one-sided plug.

00:04:54 ◼   ► And so I fear that if you did this—I don't know how the port is constructed,

00:04:57 ◼   ► I assume there are springy pins on the computer side of it that press against these terminals in here?

00:05:03 ◼   ► The whole white thing, the whole plastic bit in the middle might move. I don't know if that's

00:05:07 ◼   ► rigid. It might actually move. I have no idea how this connector is made.

00:05:11 ◼   ► presumably, like since it's that since this is an actual product in the market, presumably it fits in all standard ports somehow does it fit with more wiggling does something move is it awkward or are there like weird non compliant ports that it doesn't fit in I don't know, right because my see my concern would be that if it's rigid, which I probably is I don't I think making it move would be problematic. If it's rigid, then it looks like it might compress the spring pins in the port significantly more than a regular port.

00:05:39 ◼   ► significantly more than a regular plug and possibly like loosen them up a little bit so that regular plugs might not work as well in that same port in the future.

00:05:47 ◼   ► Yeah, if Apple puts this out, presumably they will have tested it to death with every single one of their products and you know, screw you if you try to plug it into your PC laptop or something to charge your phone.

00:05:57 ◼   ► I think it's more likely Apple will skip this connector and just wait until the reversible USB plug is an official thing, wait until Intel chipsets support whatever version of USB that needs, and then just move to that on all their computers and call the problem soft and put out a cable that has that on one end and that's it.

00:06:13 ◼   ► Yeah, so like I said, there's no way to rate this rumor as just some random thing and the picture tells you nothing, so who knows?

00:06:20 ◼   ► So speaking of lightning cables, a friend of the show, Daniel Jalkut, was sharing with

00:06:28 ◼   ► us amongst others some shots of his frayed lightning cable and how it's always fraying.

00:06:36 ◼   ► What is the little sleeve there, the cuff there? I always forget the name of it.

00:06:40 ◼   ► Strain relief.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Yes, thank you. So outside of the strain relief cuff, guess what? It got strained and split.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Yeah, it seems like it's more of a strain delay cuff. It just moves the strain up the cable by

00:06:51 ◼   ► a half inch and just puts all the strain at that point instead. "Strain concentrator" was the term

00:06:56 ◼   ► some people use. Yeah, I think maybe Dr. Drang might have called it that. And so, like, he wasn't

00:07:00 ◼   ► the only one who posted this. As soon as he posted this, and we'll put the link to the tweet in the

00:07:03 ◼   ► show notes so you can all look at the picture, it's a lightning cable just underneath the strain

00:07:06 ◼   ► relief, the plastic that surrounds the wire is split open. Tons of people tweeted pictures of

00:07:11 ◼   ► of their own cables all split in that exact same spot.

00:07:15 ◼   ► I mean, obviously this is not a representative sampling.

00:07:18 ◼   ► As soon as one person sees someone else's picture,

00:07:19 ◼   ► they say, "I have one," but it's clear

00:07:21 ◼   ► that this is where these things break

00:07:22 ◼   ► and this is a problem with these connectors.

00:07:26 ◼   ► And one of the interesting theories I saw from somebody

00:07:29 ◼   ► was that this might have to do with,

00:07:31 ◼   ► aside from just bad strain relief design,

00:07:33 ◼   ► might have to do with all of the harmful chemicals

00:07:36 ◼   ► that Apple has been trying to take out

00:07:38 ◼   ► of its manufactured products.

00:07:39 ◼   ► I guess that the earliest analog I can think of

00:07:41 ◼   ► when they tried to remove lead from all their solder joints, which has the potential to

00:07:46 ◼   ► make the solder joints weaker until they figured out how to do it without the lead.

00:07:49 ◼   ► And there's some toxic chemical that someone in the chat room will look up and paste sometime

00:07:53 ◼   ► later in the show that they used to use for the plastics that made them sort of more resilient

00:07:57 ◼   ► and you know, they didn't crack, they would bend or whatever, but it was a bad chemical

00:08:00 ◼   ► and had bad environmental effects.

00:08:03 ◼   ► So they changed to using plastics without that chemical and it was like a transition

00:08:06 ◼   ► period where the headphones felt like someone in the chat room was saying PVC, I don't know.

00:08:11 ◼   ► like the headphones felt kind of weird and like that it takes them a while to figure out like we

00:08:14 ◼   ► could use what everyone else uses that makes the best product but if it's environmentally unfriendly

00:08:18 ◼   ► we have to figure out a way to do it without that chemical so that's one possible theory the other

00:08:23 ◼   ► theory that you know the bad strain relief that it's not actually gradually decreasing the strain

00:08:28 ◼   ► of the bend but rather saying okay well the part with the sleeve isn't going to bend at all and

00:08:31 ◼   ► we'll concentrate all the bending right after it and that's where your thing will split yeah so i

00:08:36 ◼   ► I saw a million of these pictures like you were saying,

00:08:39 ◼   ► and I can't remember not one lightning cable

00:08:44 ◼   ► that I've had that has broken in any way.

00:08:48 ◼   ► I have a handful of first party ones,

00:08:50 ◼   ► I have a couple of Amazon ones

00:08:52 ◼   ► which I don't really care for

00:08:53 ◼   ► 'cause the lightning end is kinda fat,

00:08:55 ◼   ► and I have a handful of Monoprice ones

00:08:57 ◼   ► which I actually quite like,

00:08:58 ◼   ► and not a one of probably 10 lightning cables that I have

00:09:03 ◼   ► has frayed in any or split or what have you in any of these ways.

00:09:07 ◼   ► And I don't know if maybe it's because I have so many and I'm splitting my time between all these

00:09:15 ◼   ► different cables. I don't know if I treat them better. I doubt that. I sincerely doubt that.

00:09:19 ◼   ► I don't know what it is. Maybe I just got the magic touch, but I don't have this problem. I

00:09:25 ◼   ► did with the 30 pin connector. I tore through almost all my 30 pin connectors, but I have not

00:09:30 ◼   ► had an issue with lightning cable thus far and so I'm sure I'm the weirdo not everyone else but man

00:09:36 ◼   ► I was looking at everyone else thinking that's weird man yeah usage definitely is a factor

00:09:41 ◼   ► because I have never broken a 30 pin connector or a lightning connector or like and you know I've

00:09:46 ◼   ► had tons of them they're all over the house they're still all here right I've never broken any of them

00:09:50 ◼   ► and it's not just dumb luck and I'm not like I've had too many cables for for this to be like oh I

00:09:55 ◼   ► just got lucky and did never got one that failed and these are super old I mean all the way up to

00:09:59 ◼   ► I have an original iPod in the attic with the cable,

00:10:01 ◼   ► but that doesn't have any problems with it.

00:10:03 ◼   ► That's not to say that it's these people's fault,

00:10:05 ◼   ► because it's clear that people are going to use

00:10:08 ◼   ► these devices in a way that breaks them,

00:10:09 ◼   ► and it's Apple's job to make sure they don't break

00:10:11 ◼   ► when people use them the way they use them.

00:10:13 ◼   ► What are those people doing differently than I'm doing?

00:10:16 ◼   ► Probably pulling them out by the cable.

00:10:18 ◼   ► Like, that's my guess.

00:10:20 ◼   ► - I do that, I do that all the time.

00:10:22 ◼   ► - Well, pulling them out on an angle,

00:10:25 ◼   ► I mean, like, you know, I baby my hardware, you know,

00:10:27 ◼   ► And so most people don't.

00:10:28 ◼   ► And so, you know, it's not, again,

00:10:29 ◼   ► this is not these people's fault.

00:10:30 ◼   ► This Apple's job to make a product

00:10:32 ◼   ► that withstands normal use, normal wear and tear.

00:10:35 ◼   ► And the lightning cables seem to have a weakness

00:10:36 ◼   ► for normal use.

00:10:37 ◼   ► All these people aren't abusing there.

00:10:39 ◼   ► All these people don't have like cats or children

00:10:41 ◼   ► yanking them out.

00:10:42 ◼   ► It's just that they are not, you know,

00:10:44 ◼   ► carefully pulling the connector out exactly perpendicular

00:10:46 ◼   ► to the surface of the phone and all this crazy crap

00:10:48 ◼   ► that people who are, you know,

00:10:50 ◼   ► in a retentive about their hardware do.

00:10:52 ◼   ► So I think this is something that Apple should address

00:10:55 ◼   ► and I really hope it's not another one of those

00:10:57 ◼   ► Johnny Ive situations where it's like,

00:10:59 ◼   ► yeah, we can make a more robust strain relief,

00:11:01 ◼   ► but that would require those little ribs or ridges,

00:11:03 ◼   ► and those are ugly, and it looks so nice

00:11:04 ◼   ► when we just have a little sleeve that's smooth

00:11:06 ◼   ► and it's only a little bit wider than the cable.

00:11:09 ◼   ► So I really hope that's not the case,

00:11:11 ◼   ► and I hope they do improve the cable.

00:11:13 ◼   ► And by the way, a lot of people in that same thread

00:11:15 ◼   ► on Twitter were saying, if you have a busted lightning cable

00:11:18 ◼   ► that you just used in a normal way but broke,

00:11:21 ◼   ► there is some chance that you could go into an Apple store

00:11:24 ◼   ► and just get a new one for free.

00:11:25 ◼   ► How that works exactly,

00:11:27 ◼   ► some people said I had to make a Genius Bar appointment,

00:11:29 ◼   ► maybe you just look sympathetic and are nice and say,

00:11:31 ◼   ► "Boy, I just got this phone a couple months ago

00:11:33 ◼   ► "and I've really just been using it normally

00:11:34 ◼   ► "and this thing broke,

00:11:35 ◼   ► "'cause any chance you can get me a new cable,"

00:11:37 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah,

00:11:37 ◼   ► 'cause the cables are ridiculously expensive.

00:11:40 ◼   ► What are they, are they 30 bucks?

00:11:43 ◼   ► - 20.

00:11:44 ◼   ► - I still feel like that's way high for,

00:11:47 ◼   ► anyway, the point is occasionally,

00:11:49 ◼   ► I don't think this is an Apple policy,

00:11:51 ◼   ► it's not like it's a warranty

00:11:52 ◼   ► where they replace them forever when they're broken,

00:11:54 ◼   ► It's not like an L.L. Bean type thing.

00:11:56 ◼   ► But if you are nice and you talk to someone

00:11:59 ◼   ► at the Genius Bar and they happen to have one,

00:12:00 ◼   ► maybe you'll get a new connector.

00:12:02 ◼   ► I tell everybody this, it's a weird situation

00:12:05 ◼   ► where it's not like you can guarantee them

00:12:07 ◼   ► that they're gonna get nice free stuff from Apple.

00:12:10 ◼   ► Maybe they will, maybe they won't,

00:12:11 ◼   ► but enough people do that you say it's worth a try.

00:12:14 ◼   ► Go in there, be pleasant, be nice,

00:12:16 ◼   ► explain the situation in a nice way,

00:12:17 ◼   ► maybe you get a new cable.

00:12:18 ◼   ► And if you don't, don't be all angry.

00:12:20 ◼   ► I read on the internet I'm supposed to get a new cable.

00:12:23 ◼   ► I don't think so, but give it a try.

00:12:26 ◼   ► - All right, and speaking of cables,

00:12:29 ◼   ► let's talk about springy bits, shall we?

00:12:32 ◼   ► And John, I presume it was you

00:12:34 ◼   ► that put this in the show notes?

00:12:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, last week we talked about

00:12:37 ◼   ► where the springy bits are on the cable,

00:12:38 ◼   ► where the parts that, we just talked about this week,

00:12:40 ◼   ► where the parts that move are.

00:12:41 ◼   ► Are they in the cable or are they in the connector?

00:12:43 ◼   ► The cable is easier to replace than the thing,

00:12:46 ◼   ► the connector inside your phone or your computer or whatever.

00:12:49 ◼   ► And a lot of people pointed out in reaction to the last show

00:12:52 ◼   ► that there is one very popular kind of connector where the springy bit is inside the port and

00:12:57 ◼   ► that's the regular headphone jack what is that Marco you would know eighth inch is that called

00:13:01 ◼   ► yeah the eighth inch trs jack or in the iphone trrs well i don't know what any of that means

00:13:06 ◼   ► but presumably somebody does besides Marco tip ring sleeve it's you know like the the segments

00:13:11 ◼   ► on the plug tip ring sleeve is the regular stereo one and then tip ring ring sleeve is the one that

00:13:16 ◼   ► has the extra pin for the headphone thing for the clicker so tip is one contact then there's a ring

00:13:21 ◼   ► then a ring and then what is the sleeve part? Yeah, the bottom part, like the long part.

00:13:25 ◼   ► That's just another point along the little cylinder that goes in.

00:13:29 ◼   ► Yeah, it's how many, you know, tip ring sleeve has three conductors,

00:13:32 ◼   ► left, right, and ground shared. And then tip ring ring sleeve has the left,

00:13:35 ◼   ► right, ground shared on the remote. Doesn't it seem like both of the rings are also part of the sleeve?

00:13:39 ◼   ► Anyway, whatever, semantics. So that connector has been around forever.

00:13:46 ◼   ► Obviously, well, maybe not so obviously, you might say, well, it's been around forever.

00:13:50 ◼   ► where that has to spring a bit inside the connector.

00:13:51 ◼   ► Obviously putting the springing bit inside the connector

00:13:53 ◼   ► is not a death sentence for a connector,

00:13:54 ◼   ► but then the counter to that is, well,

00:13:56 ◼   ► how many people have a headphone jack on some device

00:13:59 ◼   ► they've had for a long time that's wonky now?

00:14:01 ◼   ► Like it doesn't, you sometimes have to twist

00:14:03 ◼   ► the little connector inside it,

00:14:04 ◼   ► sometimes it doesn't stay in.

00:14:06 ◼   ► - Or perhaps you have a circa 2011

00:14:10 ◼   ► high-res anti-clear MacBook Pro

00:14:12 ◼   ► where you've plugged a headphone jack,

00:14:14 ◼   ► or headphone set into it just a handful of times,

00:14:17 ◼   ► And then the sensor or something got stuck between that and the infrared line out.

00:14:24 ◼   ► Or maybe it's line in.

00:14:25 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:14:26 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:14:27 ◼   ► The optical line in.

00:14:28 ◼   ► Anyway, so the point is I had to get a motherboard replaced in order to get that fixed.

00:14:33 ◼   ► Thankfully under warranty because something inside the headphone connector got totally

00:14:39 ◼   ► out of whack and it refused to play via headphones or via the system speakers.

00:14:45 ◼   ► Yeah, in my experience the Apple headphone jacks are very stiff.

00:14:51 ◼   ► If they're going to get loose over time, maybe they will and maybe the springy bit will get

00:14:54 ◼   ► loose, but when you plug, especially if you plug an Apple headphone jack into an Apple

00:14:58 ◼   ► iOS device, that is a stiff little click in there.

00:15:01 ◼   ► It is not just a kind of... it feels secure to me.

00:15:05 ◼   ► Now maybe over time that will get loose, but especially with iOS devices, the ticking time

00:15:10 ◼   ► bomb in every iOS device is the battery.

00:15:12 ◼   ► the battery's gonna be useless, probably long before any of your ports go bad.

00:15:16 ◼   ► You can get the battery replaced, but then by that point it would be like me taking my

00:15:20 ◼   ► second gen iPod touch and go "well the battery on my second gen iPod touch is fried, I could

00:15:24 ◼   ► get it replaced for $99 but then what do I have?

00:15:26 ◼   ► I have a second gen iPod touch running like iOS 4, so it's pointless."

00:15:29 ◼   ► But anyway, everyone sent in that example so I thought I'd just bring it up.

00:15:35 ◼   ► You know, if they stop making the iPod touch or if they just stop updating it ever again,

00:15:39 ◼   ► you're gonna be that guy.

00:15:40 ◼   ► Because you're going to refuse to get an iPhone.

00:15:42 ◼   ► I wouldn't-- you think I'm going to use like iOS 7

00:15:45 ◼   ► when iOS 12 is out?

00:15:46 ◼   ► No, of course not.

00:15:48 ◼   ► If the alternative is to buy an iPhone?

00:15:50 ◼   ► I'll find a way.

00:15:51 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:15:54 ◼   ► All right, we only have a little bit more follow-ups.

00:15:56 ◼   ► Let's power through real quickly.

00:15:57 ◼   ► Local boy Sam Davies had some feedback for us.

00:16:01 ◼   ► Last week, I talked about using Verizon--

00:16:05 ◼   ► Casey was debating whether he should sign up

00:16:07 ◼   ► for that Verizon thing where they get his first-born child.

00:16:09 ◼   ► Oh, and let me quickly interrupt and say I did.

00:16:12 ◼   ► I did get my 75 symmetric internets,

00:16:15 ◼   ► and I have not yet had to sell Sprout,

00:16:18 ◼   ► so all seems well in the world.

00:16:19 ◼   ► Carry on.

00:16:20 ◼   ► - Well, it's not here yet, but you'll see.

00:16:21 ◼   ► They'll come, they'll come for you.

00:16:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:16:24 ◼   ► But I was talking about how you can use Verizon as an ISP

00:16:28 ◼   ► and not use any of their crap there.

00:16:30 ◼   ► Not using their router,

00:16:31 ◼   ► not having one of their cable boxes in your house,

00:16:34 ◼   ► not doing any of their on-demand stuff,

00:16:35 ◼   ► not downloading their software.

00:16:37 ◼   ► And I said the only thing I had left

00:16:38 ◼   ► that I was still using for Verizon was DNS,

00:16:40 ◼   ► because if I used Google DNS, I didn't get,

00:16:43 ◼   ► like it didn't know, the content delivery networks

00:16:46 ◼   ► didn't know where I was geographically

00:16:47 ◼   ► and would connect me to a crappier server

00:16:49 ◼   ► instead of the ones that are nearby.

00:16:52 ◼   ► So that's why I was still using Verizon DNS,

00:16:53 ◼   ► but I hated it because if you type in a domain name

00:16:56 ◼   ► that's, you know, you typo it or whatever,

00:16:57 ◼   ► you get sent to some stupid Verizon landing page

00:16:59 ◼   ► with ads all over it.

00:17:01 ◼   ► And Sam Davies and a couple other people

00:17:04 ◼   ► sent in a link to a page on the FIO site saying,

00:17:07 ◼   ► "Hey, if you don't like that spammy DNS redirection,

00:17:09 ◼   ► "here's what you can do to change it."

00:17:10 ◼   ► And as soon as I saw the page, I realized,

00:17:12 ◼   ► I've done this before, I've been to this page and I did it.

00:17:14 ◼   ► And it's basically just, you change your,

00:17:17 ◼   ► you change the last digit of your DNS addresses

00:17:20 ◼   ► from 12 to 14, the first three, you know,

00:17:23 ◼   ► what are they called?

00:17:25 ◼   ► - Octets, is that right? - Yep, yeah, there you go.

00:17:27 ◼   ► The first three octets are gonna be different for everybody,

00:17:29 ◼   ► that's the whole point, you have different DNS servers

00:17:31 ◼   ► depending on where you are geographically.

00:17:32 ◼   ► But if you just change the 12s to the 14s,

00:17:33 ◼   ► you won't get redirected.

00:17:35 ◼   ► And I did that years ago, and I just must have forgotten about it in one of the OS upgrades,

00:17:39 ◼   ► or maybe during the time when I changed to Google DNS and I changed it back.

00:17:43 ◼   ► So thank you, Sam Davies and other people, for reminding me, because I'm an old man

00:17:47 ◼   ► and forget things, to rechange my DNS to be the non-hijacked one.

00:17:51 ◼   ► All right.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Console sales.

00:17:54 ◼   ► Did we, I guess, didn't get this 100% correct?

00:17:57 ◼   ► No, it's just another data point that someone threw up in a tweet that I thought was interesting,

00:18:02 ◼   ► because we keep talking about how the Xbox One

00:18:04 ◼   ► and PS4 are doing and we keep saying they're doing fine

00:18:06 ◼   ► and Jeff, what are we gonna say for this?

00:18:09 ◼   ► Keeley?

00:18:10 ◼   ► - That's what I was gonna say.

00:18:11 ◼   ► - All right, anyway, Jeff Keeley says,

00:18:13 ◼   ► "US sales for Xbox One and PS4 are up 80%

00:18:16 ◼   ► "compared to the first nine months of sales

00:18:18 ◼   ► "of last generation Xbox 360 and PS3."

00:18:21 ◼   ► So not only is the PS4 selling faster than the PS3,

00:18:23 ◼   ► it's not just a little bit faster, it's 80% faster,

00:18:25 ◼   ► and the Xbox One is selling faster than the Xbox 360 was.

00:18:29 ◼   ► So this generation is not just doing okay

00:18:31 ◼   ► and growth wise, the uptake was faster for this generation

00:18:36 ◼   ► than it was for the previous one.

00:18:38 ◼   ► So I was a little bit surprised by that.

00:18:41 ◼   ► I knew the PS4 was doing better than the PS3.

00:18:43 ◼   ► I figured the Xbox One and the Xbox 360

00:18:46 ◼   ► were maybe neck and neck,

00:18:47 ◼   ► but it seems like both consoles

00:18:48 ◼   ► are off to a pretty good start.

00:18:50 ◼   ► - Excellent.

00:18:51 ◼   ► And then finally,

00:18:52 ◼   ► we enter the pronunciation section of the followup.

00:18:54 ◼   ► And we have two entries.

00:18:56 ◼   ► The first is regarding the thing that TiVo is using

00:19:01 ◼   ► that isn't Flash that is spelled H-A-X-E.

00:19:06 ◼   ► - Oh, hover.

00:19:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:19:09 ◼   ► - Well, apparently the correct pronunciation for that

00:19:12 ◼   ► as per Hyendian is hex, not haxy,

00:19:16 ◼   ► which is I believe what all of us agreed it probably was.

00:19:18 ◼   ► - I went for hakes or hacks.

00:19:20 ◼   ► Those were my two guesses last time.

00:19:22 ◼   ► But I would not have guessed hex

00:19:23 ◼   ► because that makes no sense, but there you go.

00:19:26 ◼   ► - We have a new sponsor this week.

00:19:27 ◼   ► It is Casper.

00:19:29 ◼   ► This is caspersleep.com/atp.

00:19:32 ◼   ► That's Casper like the ghost, caspersleep.com/atp.

00:19:36 ◼   ► This is pretty cool.

00:19:37 ◼   ► So it's a mattress, and they're an online mattress vendor.

00:19:40 ◼   ► And the way they do it is, I think, worth noting.

00:19:43 ◼   ► I think this is something really special here.

00:19:45 ◼   ► So Casper sells a premium mattress

00:19:49 ◼   ► for a fraction of the price of most premium mattresses.

00:19:52 ◼   ► The mattress industry has inherently forced customers

00:19:54 ◼   ► into paying notoriously high markups.

00:19:56 ◼   ► And you know this.

00:19:57 ◼   ► If you've ever gone to buy a mattress, which I hope at least some of you have bought a

00:20:02 ◼   ► mattress in your life, it is quite useful to have a mattress.

00:20:06 ◼   ► You sleep usually every day, so it's nice to get a good mattress in my opinion.

00:20:09 ◼   ► I've always told people, when you want to get a mattress, get a really good one because

00:20:15 ◼   ► how many times in your life do you buy a mattress?

00:20:17 ◼   ► Maybe three or four, maybe?

00:20:19 ◼   ► Not a lot of times in your life that you're going to buy a mattress.

00:20:22 ◼   ► Casper is revolutionizing the mattress industry by cutting the cost of dealing with resellers

00:20:26 ◼   ► and showrooms and passing that savings directly to the consumer.

00:20:29 ◼   ► They're selling direct on their site.

00:20:31 ◼   ► Now one of the ways they can do this is because their mattresses are really cool.

00:20:35 ◼   ► They actually like bunched down.

00:20:36 ◼   ► They come in a box like a regular sized box and then you take it out and it basically

00:20:42 ◼   ► like expands into your regular mattress.

00:20:46 ◼   ► Let me stop you there.

00:20:47 ◼   ► So I got a Casper.

00:20:49 ◼   ► They were nice enough to send me a mattress and it did come in this.

00:20:53 ◼   ► I got a full-sized mattress and it came in a reasonably sized box.

00:20:58 ◼   ► I'm not going to try to rattle off dimensions because if I do, it'll be in imperial units,

00:21:02 ◼   ► then all the metric people are going to yell at me.

00:21:04 ◼   ► So suffice it to say it was a normal sized box.

00:21:05 ◼   ► Right.

00:21:06 ◼   ► Well, because usually when you get a mattress delivered, it has to come on a furniture truck.

00:21:09 ◼   ► Right.

00:21:10 ◼   ► Because it's way too big for like UPS and FedEx to want to deliver.

00:21:12 ◼   ► Right.

00:21:13 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:21:14 ◼   ► And this was not the case.

00:21:15 ◼   ► In fact, it accidentally got delivered to my neighbor's house and he single-handedly

00:21:19 ◼   ► dragged the box over to our house and was not a sweaty, disgusting mess when he arrived.

00:21:23 ◼   ► So anyway, so we take the mattress out of the box

00:21:25 ◼   ► and it has this neat little card with neat diagrams

00:21:29 ◼   ► and I think acceptable typography.

00:21:31 ◼   ► Setting up your Casper.

00:21:32 ◼   ► So step one, your Casper has arrived.

00:21:34 ◼   ► Well, yes.

00:21:35 ◼   ► Step two, make sure to unpack your Casper in the room.

00:21:37 ◼   ► It belongs.

00:21:38 ◼   ► Step three, use the handy sharp and steady blade

00:21:39 ◼   ► to unbind your Casper.

00:21:41 ◼   ► Start on the dot when there's a little dot on the packaging.

00:21:43 ◼   ► Step four, unfurl your Casper

00:21:45 ◼   ► and cut open the remaining plastic wrap.

00:21:47 ◼   ► Hear it sigh with relief.

00:21:49 ◼   ► And I saw this and I was like, are you kidding me?

00:21:52 ◼   ► And then sure enough, I opened this thing.

00:21:54 ◼   ► And I guess because you were saying it's vacuum wrapped

00:21:57 ◼   ► or whatever, and so it's like sucking in all this air.

00:22:00 ◼   ► It sounded like it was sighing with relief.

00:22:02 ◼   ► It was the funniest thing I've ever seen.

00:22:04 ◼   ► So that is not a lie.

00:22:06 ◼   ► It is really trippy, but really cool.

00:22:08 ◼   ► - And these mattresses, so they're made of,

00:22:11 ◼   ► here, let me see how they describe it.

00:22:12 ◼   ► It's an interesting combination.

00:22:15 ◼   ► It's, they call it just the right sink

00:22:17 ◼   ► and just the right bounce.

00:22:18 ◼   ► So you know, like it sinks down as you sit,

00:22:20 ◼   ► but it can bounce back up.

00:22:22 ◼   ► They use a combination of latex foam and memory foam.

00:22:27 ◼   ► They combine these two things together

00:22:28 ◼   ► for basically the best of both.

00:22:31 ◼   ► They call it better nights and brighter days.

00:22:32 ◼   ► I call it a good mattress.

00:22:34 ◼   ► And what you get for this, this is a premium mattress.

00:22:37 ◼   ► And when I bought a premium mattress about 10 years ago,

00:22:40 ◼   ► it cost about $1,700 for a queen size.

00:22:43 ◼   ► These mattresses start at just $500 for twin size,

00:22:46 ◼   ► and the prices go up very reasonably.

00:22:48 ◼   ► Queen is $8.50, $9.50 for King, I mean these are really really great prices for this quality

00:22:54 ◼   ► mattress.

00:22:55 ◼   ► This is roughly, I would say roughly half of what you'd be likely to pay at a sleepies

00:23:00 ◼   ► or mattress store kind of thing.

00:23:02 ◼   ► So this is really quite something.

00:23:06 ◼   ► It's also very, you know, I would worry how do you buy a mattress without going and lying

00:23:09 ◼   ► on it in a store.

00:23:11 ◼   ► Well buying a cashmere mattress is completely risk free.

00:23:13 ◼   ► They have free delivery and free returns within a hundred days.

00:23:17 ◼   ► can buy this thing and try it out for three months and then decide whether you like it

00:23:20 ◼   ► or not. Really quite awesome. It's that simple. You know, because when you go to the showroom,

00:23:26 ◼   ► you're lying on it for a couple of minutes and there's some guy standing over you with

00:23:29 ◼   ► like, you know, a clipboard and, you know, mattress showrooms. It's like every stereotype

00:23:35 ◼   ► of used car sales places, you know, like it's, that's how mattress showrooms usually are.

00:23:40 ◼   ► And you know, you can actually just take this thing, order it, get it delivered in this

00:23:44 ◼   ► tiny box, let it sigh of relief in your house, and then try it for three months.

00:23:49 ◼   ► And, you know, they have this hundred day policy. So that's fantastic. They

00:23:53 ◼   ► understand the importance of trying it out in your own home, actually sleeping

00:23:56 ◼   ► on it, actually sleeping on it for more than one night, and really getting, you

00:23:59 ◼   ► know, really getting a good feel. So Casey, what'd you think? Right, so last night

00:24:03 ◼   ► Aaron and I went into the bedroom that the Casper mattress was in. Whoa, stop there.

00:24:08 ◼   ► Oh, relax. And we had a night's sleep on that mattress and I quite liked it.

00:24:14 ◼   ► I am not a fan of memory foam despite what most people think. I actually

00:24:18 ◼   ► like everyone loves memory foam. I don't care for it.

00:24:21 ◼   ► But this mattress was just the right balance and I

00:24:24 ◼   ► wouldn't be making a big deal out of this if I didn't think it. It was just the right balance of a little bit of foam

00:24:29 ◼   ► like Marco was saying but not so much that it felt like synthetic and weird.

00:24:32 ◼   ► So yeah, so I really liked it. I definitely recommend it.

00:24:36 ◼   ► They're really good mattresses and just the unboxing experience is pretty neat if nothing else, but they are really good mattresses as well

00:24:42 ◼   ► Yeah

00:24:43 ◼   ► What I understand if you're if you're a mattress geek from what I understand that one of the biggest benefits of this over pure memory

00:24:48 ◼   ► Foam is that this doesn't have the the hotness effect, right?

00:24:52 ◼   ► Because like a lot of people don't like memory foam that kind of makes them feel hot

00:24:54 ◼   ► And this this supposedly dramatically reduces that or eliminates that that problem

00:24:58 ◼   ► Anyway, so go to caspersleep.com/ATP

00:25:03 ◼   ► That's C-A-S-P-E-R sleep dot com slash ATP.

00:25:08 ◼   ► If you're asked for a promo code at any point during the checkout, use promo code ATP.

00:25:12 ◼   ► And these are made in the USA.

00:25:14 ◼   ► And this, they do a cool thing. So normally they have this thing where if they have a referral program where

00:25:19 ◼   ► if you refer a friend to Casper, they send you a $50 gift card and they give the friend $50 off their mattress.

00:25:25 ◼   ► Instead of us taking gift cards, we are donating our $50 to Casey's Charity of Choice for every bed sold.

00:25:32 ◼   ► sold. They've set this up so that this 50 bucks goes to a good cause. So if you buy

00:25:38 ◼   ► through our code you'll get 50 bucks off through code ATP, get 50 bucks off and

00:25:43 ◼   ► then 50 bucks will go towards a good cause. So once again check out

00:25:47 ◼   ► caspersleep.com/ATP. This seems pretty cool. I think the world, you know, the

00:25:53 ◼   ► world needs something like this. You know, this is, buying mattresses in person is

00:25:57 ◼   ► so annoying and yeah this is this is pretty cool I gotta say. Thanks a lot

00:26:01 ◼   ► once again to Casper for sponsoring the show.

00:26:04 ◼   ► So what are we talking about tonight? Want to talk about iTunes? Or do we want to talk

00:26:07 ◼   ► about open source?

00:26:09 ◼   ► You guys didn't add anything to the topics file, did you? Just leave those old ones in

00:26:13 ◼   ► there.

00:26:14 ◼   ► It's late August. Nothing is happening. No one does anything in the tech industry in

00:26:17 ◼   ► late August.

00:26:18 ◼   ► Nope.

00:26:19 ◼   ► There's a lot of crappy stuff happening in the world, but for the stuff that we usually

00:26:22 ◼   ► talk about in the show, nothing is happening.

00:26:24 ◼   ► We could get political, but I don't think any of us want to do that.

00:26:26 ◼   ► Honestly, I'm exhausted from it. I can't take it anymore. I'm just so exhausted from

00:26:31 ◼   ► Yeah, it's bad.

00:26:32 ◼   ► This is one of those times where I am happy to talk about anything else.

00:26:37 ◼   ► And I'm happy to immerse myself in anything else besides current events for this two hours.

00:26:43 ◼   ► This is a topic that Casey should address on his other show where he talks about his

00:26:46 ◼   ► feelings that I haven't listened to yet.

00:26:49 ◼   ► Because part of the exhaustion is aspects of technology.

00:26:55 ◼   ► One is it's good that we're in touch in real time with these events that we care about.

00:27:01 ◼   ► because we see them by who we follow on Twitter

00:27:04 ◼   ► and stuff like that, or whose blogs we read or whatever.

00:27:07 ◼   ► But it can be exhausting in that at a certain point,

00:27:10 ◼   ► you just start to feel overwhelmed with it,

00:27:12 ◼   ► whatever the issue of the day happens to be.

00:27:14 ◼   ► If you have it flooding into you on all possible streams

00:27:19 ◼   ► that you consume content on the net, it can be tiring.

00:27:23 ◼   ► I actually unfollowed some people

00:27:24 ◼   ► during this whole recent flare up,

00:27:26 ◼   ► not because I disagreed with them,

00:27:28 ◼   ► Or because anything bad is just in my typical,

00:27:32 ◼   ► I wanna read my whole Twitter stream

00:27:35 ◼   ► and if it just becomes too much

00:27:37 ◼   ► and I feel like I'm just getting anxious

00:27:38 ◼   ► and it's not being happy, it's a temporary

00:27:40 ◼   ► or possibly permanent unfollow of people

00:27:43 ◼   ► who I totally agree with on whatever issue

00:27:45 ◼   ► they're complaining about because it's just too much.

00:27:48 ◼   ► - So Marco, you'll notice that John

00:27:49 ◼   ► doesn't follow you anymore.

00:27:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:27:52 ◼   ► - Marco is not a high volume tweeter on this topic.

00:27:56 ◼   ► Not even close.

00:27:57 ◼   ► - I was a high volume retweeter.

00:27:59 ◼   ► I was mostly retweeting Glenn Fleischmann.

00:28:01 ◼   ► - You retweeted like three things.

00:28:03 ◼   ► - What are you kidding?

00:28:04 ◼   ► Like three things an hour every night for the last week.

00:28:06 ◼   ► - Well, I know three an hour is low volume

00:28:09 ◼   ► compared to some of the people.

00:28:10 ◼   ► - I guess that's true,

00:28:11 ◼   ► especially since I'm retweeting Glenn Fleischmann.

00:28:13 ◼   ► So if you follow him, it's like--

00:28:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I had to unfollow Glenn too.

00:28:17 ◼   ► Don't take it personally.

00:28:18 ◼   ► - He won't take offense.

00:28:19 ◼   ► - I will end up re-following him

00:28:20 ◼   ► because I have unfollowed and re-followed Glenn many times.

00:28:22 ◼   ► Just one of those things you have to do.

00:28:24 ◼   ► It comes a time in a person's life

00:28:25 ◼   ► But you have to unfollow Glenn Fleischman and then maybe you follow him again and then

00:28:28 ◼   ► you unfollow.

00:28:29 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:28:30 ◼   ► No, he totally tells people to do that because he knows that he tweets way more than most

00:28:33 ◼   ► people can read.

00:28:36 ◼   ► The other day, I actually now am totally crossing over, but the other day I abandoned being

00:28:41 ◼   ► a completionist on Twitter because I had like 400 tweets from a not very long amount of

00:28:46 ◼   ► time and I just went all the way to the top and this was a very traumatic experience for

00:28:49 ◼   ► me.

00:28:50 ◼   ► But I'm glad that I've done it.

00:28:52 ◼   ► I learned a lot that day.

00:28:53 ◼   ► I think that means I win, Casey, right?

00:28:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess so because you're still a completionist, right?

00:28:57 ◼   ► Yep.

00:28:57 ◼   ► I mean I am 99% of the time, but I was gone for like two hours and suddenly

00:29:03 ◼   ► I had hundreds of tweets waiting for me and I was like, "Oh, screw this."

00:29:06 ◼   ► My problem is my favorite Twitter client has a limit on how far back you can go in the timeline.

00:29:11 ◼   ► And so if I fall very far behind on a busy day,

00:29:14 ◼   ► I have to switch to my second favorite Twitter client to get back far enough.

00:29:18 ◼   ► And my second favorite one doesn't have a unified timeline.

00:29:20 ◼   ► That drives me insane because now I have to read two different things far back and like mentally

00:29:24 ◼   ► interleave them in chronological order. I don't know how you people use these clients

00:29:28 ◼   ► that aren't chronological.

00:29:29 ◼   ► I don't understand why you, unquestionably one of the smartest men I've ever met, have

00:29:34 ◼   ► such cognitive difficulties interleaving these two things. Or even, why do you even need

00:29:40 ◼   ► them interleaved? Who cares?

00:29:41 ◼   ► Because it's a running conversation. It's a time-ordered sequence of messages. They're

00:29:45 ◼   ► not random. They're not two separate streams. It's one thing. One person says one thing,

00:29:49 ◼   ► another person says nothing. Just because one person put an @ in front of his message,

00:29:53 ◼   ► somehow is in a different timeline? No. It doesn't make any sense. Everything should use

00:29:58 ◼   ► unified timeline. Well, the unified timeline makes sense if you're a completionist. Always.

00:30:04 ◼   ► But for me, I used Tweetbot, which doesn't have this feature, which sounds like it's

00:30:10 ◼   ► probably your secondary client. I use Tweetbot because overall I like it more, but I don't need

00:30:15 ◼   ► the unified timeline because I'm not a completionist. I used to be, and it took way too much

00:30:20 ◼   ► time and now like I can't do that anymore. But even if you're not a completionist, when

00:30:24 ◼   ► you're skimming though, it's better to skim in unified timeline because then you just

00:30:26 ◼   ► have one thing to skim and you can sort of see the flow of the conversation. Are these

00:30:30 ◼   ► two people bantering back and forth interspersed with random people mentioning them? Or like,

00:30:34 ◼   ► I mean, I just think it's easier overall. But anyway, whatever. Well, yeah, but I am

00:30:38 ◼   ► a completionist for my mentions, just not for my public timeline. By the way, yeah,

00:30:42 ◼   ► people in the chat are pointing out, do we want to talk about the things Twitter is doing

00:30:45 ◼   ► by messing with your timeline?

00:30:47 ◼   ► I haven't seen it.

00:30:49 ◼   ► Have any of you seen it?

00:30:50 ◼   ► I haven't because none of us use the official client.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Right.

00:30:54 ◼   ► I mean, what is there to really say?

00:30:55 ◼   ► It's probably self-serving for Twitter.

00:30:57 ◼   ► It pisses off all the long time…

00:31:00 ◼   ► Explain what it is first.

00:31:02 ◼   ► All right.

00:31:03 ◼   ► So, Twitter has decided that if you favorite something and Twitter believes it to be…

00:31:10 ◼   ► I'm sorry, if somebody else favorites something and Twitter decides that that's relevant to you for whatever reason

00:31:16 ◼   ► That they will show that favorite in your timeline. So let me give you an example

00:31:20 ◼   ► so John favorites some weird thing that has to do with video games and for whatever reason I

00:31:26 ◼   ► Am interested in video games according to Twitter that favorite that John gave to someone I may or may not follow

00:31:34 ◼   ► could appear in my timeline and

00:31:38 ◼   ► So suddenly Twitter is taking control of your timeline, which is a very Facebook II thing to do

00:31:44 ◼   ► Whereas as many people have pointed out

00:31:46 ◼   ► Twitter in the past up until this change has been more or less

00:31:51 ◼   ► Allowing you to control your own timeline

00:31:53 ◼   ► And this is doubly true of third-party clients where they're not doing like sponsored tweets and stuff like that or at least not yet

00:31:58 ◼   ► So the more passionate Twitter users are really up in arms about this, but I don't I mean it makes sense

00:32:05 ◼   ► that Twitter's doing this because it's completely self-serving. It makes sense that I don't like it because I'm completely self-serving and

00:32:11 ◼   ► I'm either gonna deal with it when it affects me in Tweetbot or I'm not. And I mean, I don't see that

00:32:15 ◼   ► there's that much debate here.

00:32:17 ◼   ► Well, it's a crappy thing to do though, and you know, it matters a lot because we're locked in. So like, you know,

00:32:22 ◼   ► so there's two problems here. Number one is that

00:32:26 ◼   ► Twitter has now

00:32:29 ◼   ► ruined favorites, basically. They've now, like, favoriting a tweet used to be a way that you could

00:32:35 ◼   ► could passively and very subtly give someone some slight positive feedback that they might

00:32:40 ◼   ► see. And that was basically it. So I favorite all sorts of stuff that, you know, like, yeah,

00:32:46 ◼   ► stuff that I wouldn't retweet necessarily because I wouldn't want to necessarily repost

00:32:49 ◼   ► to people who follow me. But it's like, you know, a nice quick passive feedback thing.

00:32:54 ◼   ► So now they've added more weight to that. Now, favorites have always been kind of broken

00:32:58 ◼   ► because it was always very hard to view who favored your tweets and to be notified of

00:33:02 ◼   ► it and everything in any kind of scale. So it wasn't necessarily a great system at

00:33:08 ◼   ► first, but the way they've "fixed it" now is kind of redundant because they have

00:33:12 ◼   ► retweeting. And so now they've made favorites basically act like retweets in many places.

00:33:19 ◼   ► And they haven't said, as far as I know, on their page about how they're now ruining

00:33:23 ◼   ► our timelines, I don't think they've said it will work this way exactly forever. I think

00:33:28 ◼   ► they've just said, "We are going to start inserting things into your timeline that might

00:33:31 ◼   ► be relevant and this is one of the ways they might determine what to insert is, what's

00:33:35 ◼   ► been favorited by other people.

00:33:37 ◼   ► But I wouldn't expect it to always work that way or for that to be the only reason

00:33:41 ◼   ► to cause things to appear in your timeline that people you don't follow.

00:33:45 ◼   ► The thing is, what Facebook has done with their timeline has basically made it so that

00:33:52 ◼   ► they by default hide almost everything from you.

00:33:57 ◼   ► Let's say you have 10,000 people who like your page on Facebook or whatever, and if

00:34:02 ◼   ► you post something on your timeline on your wall, I don't know, I'm sorry, I'm not a Facebook

00:34:07 ◼   ► user really, so I don't really know how most of these terms work and stuff.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Basically only a very small percentage of the people who have expressed interest in

00:34:19 ◼   ► seeing everything you post will actually see that.

00:34:21 ◼   ► And then you can pay Facebook to increase that percentage.

00:34:24 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:34:26 ◼   ► It's really a pretty scammy system

00:34:28 ◼   ► and it frustrates a lot of people.

00:34:30 ◼   ► It frustrates companies who have made Facebook pages

00:34:32 ◼   ► 'cause that's where people are

00:34:33 ◼   ► and then all of a sudden their traffic to their page

00:34:36 ◼   ► drops to nothing because they don't pay Facebook

00:34:39 ◼   ► for ads to reach the people who have already said

00:34:43 ◼   ► they want to be reached.

00:34:44 ◼   ► Imagine if Twitter, imagine if your tweets

00:34:48 ◼   ► were only shown to 10% of your followers.

00:34:50 ◼   ► These people chose to follow you

00:34:52 ◼   ► but your tweets are only shown to 10% of them.

00:34:53 ◼   ► unless you join their ads program

00:34:55 ◼   ► and start paying them for every person who follows.

00:34:58 ◼   ► That's what Facebook does.

00:34:59 ◼   ► That's Facebook's current business model.

00:35:01 ◼   ► And so that's crappy for Facebook.

00:35:04 ◼   ► And it doesn't affect most of us

00:35:06 ◼   ► 'cause most of us are Twitter people.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Anyway, so Twitter doing this

00:35:12 ◼   ► is breaking the way the timeline works.

00:35:14 ◼   ► Now they already have broken it with ads.

00:35:16 ◼   ► And most of us who use third-party clients

00:35:18 ◼   ► have never seen these Twitter ads

00:35:20 ◼   ► because they don't show in third-party clients yet.

00:35:22 ◼   ► And there's no guarantee they ever will.

00:35:24 ◼   ► Twitter might choose not to,

00:35:25 ◼   ► just so they can control what the ads can do,

00:35:28 ◼   ► give them the rich experiences with the cards,

00:35:30 ◼   ► like somebody posted earlier today,

00:35:31 ◼   ► that you can build your new Acura

00:35:33 ◼   ► within this Twitter card and all this crap,

00:35:36 ◼   ► because people want to engage with brands.

00:35:38 ◼   ► And what Twitter is doing here

00:35:41 ◼   ► is breaking the medium, potentially.

00:35:44 ◼   ► And you can say, well, maybe they'll do it tastefully.

00:35:46 ◼   ► And that's true, maybe they will.

00:35:47 ◼   ► Maybe Twitter's leadership will have some idea

00:35:50 ◼   ► of why their product is so good and what's so good about it

00:35:53 ◼   ► and why people like it and what's so important about it

00:35:56 ◼   ► and maybe they'll do something that is best

00:35:57 ◼   ► for the product and the users.

00:35:59 ◼   ► However, I'm not holding my breath on that

00:36:03 ◼   ► because their record in those departments

00:36:04 ◼   ► is pretty poor so far.

00:36:07 ◼   ► The problem with Twitter doing this is that all of us geeks

00:36:11 ◼   ► and a whole lot of non-geeks have decided

00:36:13 ◼   ► over the last few years that Twitter is this new medium

00:36:16 ◼   ► where we get all of our news and many people

00:36:18 ◼   ► have replaced RSS with Twitter and many other ways to get news and discuss things with Twitter.

00:36:25 ◼   ► Imagine if RSS was centrally controlled by one private company, well, public company,

00:36:30 ◼   ► whatever, by one company, and every RSS client in the world all of a sudden started inserting

00:36:36 ◼   ► things you didn't subscribe to and you couldn't opt out of that and you couldn't stop that.

00:36:41 ◼   ► That would make the entire medium of RSS kind of weirder and not as useful to you and potentially

00:36:48 ◼   ► potentially bad long term, potentially kill it long term.

00:36:52 ◼   ► Certainly it would change it in a way that probably is not for the better.

00:36:57 ◼   ► And you'd have no recourse because the entire medium is controlled by this one company.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Well, that's what Twitter is.

00:37:02 ◼   ► Twitter is what should be a public open standard,

00:37:06 ◼   ► but by various coincidences and actions and technical realities, social realities, et cetera,

00:37:12 ◼   ► it is a whole new medium, but it's just one company controlling it.

00:37:16 ◼   ► There is no open standard for Twitter.

00:37:18 ◼   ► and whatever hope there was of having APIs and everything,

00:37:21 ◼   ► Twitter killed that years ago.

00:37:23 ◼   ► So what they're doing is breaking a very important medium.

00:37:28 ◼   ► And this should be a wake-up call to all of us,

00:37:32 ◼   ► especially the geeks who listen to this show,

00:37:34 ◼   ► and us who are those geeks.

00:37:36 ◼   ► This should be a call to all of us

00:37:38 ◼   ► to see how important it is to build open standards

00:37:42 ◼   ► instead of trying to let one company concentrate

00:37:44 ◼   ► so much of their power,

00:37:45 ◼   ► and not to trust these big companies.

00:37:47 ◼   ► and Twitter started out, it was geeky and friendly and there's people with one-syllable

00:37:50 ◼   ► names running everything and they were cool and they were in California and everything

00:37:53 ◼   ► was going to be great, they were going to change the world.

00:37:55 ◼   ► Well, you know what? They did change the world, then they took it all for themselves and now

00:37:58 ◼   ► they have complete control over it and it's being run by a bunch of people who don't necessarily

00:38:03 ◼   ► fit the original attitude of the founders and the founders are mostly all checked out.

00:38:09 ◼   ► And this is what happens, companies move on, people leave. We let this happen. We let this

00:38:15 ◼   ► entire monster grow. We helped it grow. We're all still using it. I'm still using it. I'm

00:38:21 ◼   ► going to keep using it because that's where all the people are and that's the one place

00:38:26 ◼   ► I can reach them, the people who I actually want to reach. So we let this happen and I

00:38:30 ◼   ► think we need to be very careful in the future not to assume that these companies that seem

00:38:36 ◼   ► like they have all of our best interests in mind always will because we just see time

00:38:40 ◼   ► after time that they don't. Anyway, so that's why I think of the new timeline. John?

00:38:46 ◼   ► I was going to say that when this happened, it made me think again. Oh, you know, where do we go

00:38:52 ◼   ► if this goes south? Like, because App.net is gone and intent is not like—we went through this once

00:38:57 ◼   ► when they were doing a bunch of things that we all hated, and then a couple of things sprung up

00:39:00 ◼   ► to try to replace it and none of those really worked out, but it's like—because if they went

00:39:06 ◼   ► full Facebook on this, like we would,

00:39:09 ◼   ► I don't know if we would leave,

00:39:10 ◼   ► but I would be desperately looking for someplace else to go.

00:39:13 ◼   ► 'Cause all I need is like my little circle

00:39:15 ◼   ► of people to be there.

00:39:17 ◼   ► And this is the reason I went to App.net.

00:39:18 ◼   ► Like I'm always looking for alternatives.

00:39:20 ◼   ► This is obviously like a hostile environment

00:39:23 ◼   ► for people like us.

00:39:23 ◼   ► Now they've been walking this line where it's like,

00:39:26 ◼   ► well, the people who really care about this are just,

00:39:28 ◼   ► it's just people like us or people who are listening

00:39:30 ◼   ► to this show.

00:39:31 ◼   ► It's such a small percentage in the grand scheme of things.

00:39:33 ◼   ► So we'll throw our U-bone and give you this token system

00:39:35 ◼   ► for the third party clients.

00:39:37 ◼   ► Third party clients won't have ads,

00:39:38 ◼   ► but you won't get the new features,

00:39:39 ◼   ► but you guys don't care about that either.

00:39:41 ◼   ► And the same thing with this,

00:39:42 ◼   ► they could continue to sort of walk that tight rope to say,

00:39:45 ◼   ► we're gonna do all this Facebooky crap to everyone else,

00:39:47 ◼   ► but we won't do it to third party clients.

00:39:49 ◼   ► We're not gonna tell you we're not gonna do it,

00:39:51 ◼   ► we're not gonna promise anything,

00:39:52 ◼   ► but they basically just won't do it.

00:39:54 ◼   ► Like this will be their policy.

00:39:55 ◼   ► Silently don't screw up the timeline

00:39:59 ◼   ► of the small group of obnoxious tech nerds

00:40:02 ◼   ► who nevertheless might have a disproportionate influence

00:40:05 ◼   ► over whatever, or might have the wherewithal to go

00:40:08 ◼   ► and make something else, right?

00:40:09 ◼   ► So don't anger them, don't tell them you're not angering

00:40:14 ◼   ► them on purpose, leave the fear and uncertainty there

00:40:17 ◼   ► about what's going on, but really, you know,

00:40:19 ◼   ► don't stir the pot too much and just kind of ignore them

00:40:21 ◼   ► and leave them all from the corner.

00:40:22 ◼   ► And so far, that strategy's been working.

00:40:24 ◼   ► Like, they've been doing obnoxious things to the people

00:40:26 ◼   ► who use the official Twitter client, which is like,

00:40:28 ◼   ► everybody else but us, and I guess Cable Sasser.

00:40:30 ◼   ► Sorry, Cable, I don't know why he does, he likes it,

00:40:32 ◼   ► but he's sad about this too.

00:40:34 ◼   ► And then just kinda don't rile up the hornet's nest

00:40:38 ◼   ► that is those tech nerds who might try to go elsewhere.

00:40:42 ◼   ► But yeah, no, I don't like this at all.

00:40:46 ◼   ► I hope it doesn't happen to me.

00:40:47 ◼   ► And if it does start happening, I don't know what I would do.

00:40:49 ◼   ► Like it takes a pretty big critical mass of people

00:40:52 ◼   ► to make someplace else viable.

00:40:54 ◼   ► And app.net didn't get it.

00:40:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think app.net is still,

00:40:57 ◼   ► strictly speaking, around,

00:40:59 ◼   ► but certainly no one that I am familiar with

00:41:03 ◼   ► still uses it as far as I'm aware.

00:41:06 ◼   ► One thing I wanted to ask the two of you guys is how do you use favorites today?

00:41:10 ◼   ► So as an example, I tend to come down in the Marco camp where if somebody does something

00:41:17 ◼   ► that I want to kind of give a kind of quiet nod of approval to, I'll typically do a favorite

00:41:23 ◼   ► or perhaps if someone, usually Guy English, makes a joke at my expense but I want him

00:41:28 ◼   ► to understand that I think it's funny and we're cool, bro, favorite.

00:41:33 ◼   ► But there are plenty of other ways that you could use favorites.

00:41:36 ◼   ► A lot of people, for example, tend to use it for bookmarking.

00:41:38 ◼   ► So, Marco, you kind of covered how you do it.

00:41:41 ◼   ► John, what do you do for favorites?

00:41:43 ◼   ► What purpose do they serve in your world?

00:41:44 ◼   ► I just want to tell you that I still am using app.net, just so you know.

00:41:49 ◼   ► I still have it running every day.

00:41:50 ◼   ► Oh, really?

00:41:51 ◼   ► Occasionally, people post something there, and I see it.

00:41:54 ◼   ► I don't really post anything there.

00:41:56 ◼   ► Maybe I'll reply to some of the runs in a while, but I still run it.

00:41:58 ◼   ► I'll probably run it until the servers don't work anymore.

00:42:01 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:42:02 ◼   ► falls in the woods. Yeah. Anyway, I mean, right now it's really low traffic. I can check

00:42:07 ◼   ► it like twice a day and be all caught up. I think there was like two posts in the past

00:42:12 ◼   ► two days in my timeline. So, for favorites, I favorite things as a way to, you know, like,

00:42:22 ◼   ► it's the little, same reason I reply to people with thumbs up. It's like the little social

00:42:26 ◼   ► thing trying to say, "I approve of what you have done here. You have made a good joke

00:42:29 ◼   ► that made me laugh, you said something clever, you said something I thought was insightful,

00:42:33 ◼   ► like I'd use it in that capacity, which I think is supposed to be the primary capacity.

00:42:37 ◼   ► And the other way I use it is I will want to find this tweet later, so like a bookmark.

00:42:43 ◼   ► So favorite it so that when I say, "Where the hell was that tweet?"

00:42:45 ◼   ► Because Twitter search still sucks balls.

00:42:48 ◼   ► And I hate, like, Google, you have to, you know, Google site twitter.com, type in some

00:42:52 ◼   ► words or use in URL to try to narrow, like it's just terrible.

00:42:56 ◼   ► So favorite is my way of saying,

00:42:58 ◼   ► I don't have time to deal with this tweet now,

00:42:59 ◼   ► but either I'm gonna put it in the ATP show notes,

00:43:02 ◼   ► or it's something that I wanna think about or write later,

00:43:04 ◼   ► it's some OS X thing that I wanna put in my notes,

00:43:06 ◼   ► I favorite it as a bookmark.

00:43:07 ◼   ► And I don't have so many favorites during the day

00:43:10 ◼   ► that it's hard to go through them.

00:43:11 ◼   ► I only do a handful of favorites a day,

00:43:13 ◼   ► so it's easy for me to find old stuff.

00:43:15 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:43:17 ◼   ► I'm trying to quickly figure out how many favorites we had,

00:43:21 ◼   ► but you didn't talk long enough, so I don't know.

00:43:23 ◼   ► but I was gonna compare because I favorite constantly.

00:43:26 ◼   ► I like vomit stars on Twitter.

00:43:28 ◼   ► - Yes, you are an over-favoriter.

00:43:30 ◼   ► Like the same thing of like,

00:43:32 ◼   ► you just explained a situation

00:43:33 ◼   ► that I would essentially never do a favorite,

00:43:35 ◼   ► where if someone teases me about something,

00:43:39 ◼   ► I don't feel the need to favorite them

00:43:41 ◼   ► to let them know I'm not mad at them,

00:43:42 ◼   ► 'cause I feel like that's the default,

00:43:43 ◼   ► and if, you know, whatever, like, yeah.

00:43:46 ◼   ► - Wait, Casey, you do that?

00:43:47 ◼   ► Like if somebody makes a joke at you

00:43:50 ◼   ► that is insulting to you, you favorite it?

00:43:52 ◼   ► - Well, no, no, so if it's somebody that I like,

00:43:54 ◼   ► and again, we'll pick on Guy English

00:43:56 ◼   ► 'cause we all like Guy English a lot.

00:43:57 ◼   ► - Well, you retweet them, Marco,

00:43:59 ◼   ► speaking of unhealthy behaviors.

00:44:01 ◼   ► - Yes, seriously. - Anyway, go on.

00:44:02 ◼   ► - But yeah, so I want Guy to know

00:44:05 ◼   ► that I may not be replying to this

00:44:07 ◼   ► with some snarky comeback of my own,

00:44:10 ◼   ► but we're still cool.

00:44:10 ◼   ► I'm not offended by it.

00:44:12 ◼   ► I'm not running away with my tail between my legs.

00:44:14 ◼   ► I thought it was funny.

00:44:15 ◼   ► I got a gag, or I got a giggle out of it,

00:44:17 ◼   ► but I'm not going to take the effort

00:44:19 ◼   ► to continue this conversation.

00:44:21 ◼   ► but hey, here's a favorite to let you know.

00:44:23 ◼   ► I understand I saw it and it was funny, we're cool.

00:44:26 ◼   ► - The funny thing is, like, do you guys ever check

00:44:30 ◼   ► the favorites that you're receiving?

00:44:32 ◼   ► - I get notified on my computer, but not on my phone.

00:44:36 ◼   ► - You get notified with like an actual OS X notification

00:44:40 ◼   ► that comes sliding in?

00:44:42 ◼   ► That's crazy.

00:44:43 ◼   ► - Well because sometimes, again, well firstly,

00:44:45 ◼   ► I don't have but a fraction of the followers

00:44:47 ◼   ► that you guys have, although over 9,000, what's up?

00:44:50 ◼   ► Anyway, so the point is that a lot of times I'll make a really sarcastic obnoxious joke

00:44:57 ◼   ► that is meant in a guy English kind of way.

00:45:01 ◼   ► Now that's becoming a verb.

00:45:02 ◼   ► But I'm making like a guy English kind of joke and I want to know that if I'm making

00:45:07 ◼   ► a joke at, I don't know, maybe Jason Snell's expense that he thinks it's okay and funny

00:45:11 ◼   ► and cool and if he throws me a favorite then I know, all right, I don't need to apologize

00:45:15 ◼   ► profusely and hate myself.

00:45:17 ◼   ► And if he doesn't throw me a favorite…

00:45:19 ◼   ► Why not just make that the default?

00:45:21 ◼   ► Just assume you don't have to apologize and hate yourself

00:45:24 ◼   ► and assume that everyone gets your jokes

00:45:25 ◼   ► unless they actually tell you that they didn't.

00:45:27 ◼   ► - Marco, this is the difference between you and I.

00:45:29 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:45:30 ◼   ► I'm kind of serious, but anyway.

00:45:32 ◼   ► - No, I think it's funny that we all seem

00:45:35 ◼   ► to be using favorites kind of correctly,

00:45:38 ◼   ► except that all the people who I follow who I'm favoriting,

00:45:42 ◼   ► they probably all use third-party clients,

00:45:44 ◼   ► and most of them have enough followers

00:45:46 ◼   ► and get enough favorites that it might be annoying

00:45:49 ◼   ► to be notified of each one.

00:45:51 ◼   ► And the third party clients, they don't really show

00:45:54 ◼   ► your received favorites in any way useful

00:45:56 ◼   ► because there is no good API for it.

00:45:58 ◼   ► - I think most people do what I do,

00:46:00 ◼   ► which is go to a site that shows you

00:46:01 ◼   ► your accumulated favorites.

00:46:02 ◼   ► I go to FaveStar, tons of people use those services.

00:46:06 ◼   ► And I think that's a reasonably healthy,

00:46:08 ◼   ► it's not good to be obsessed with it,

00:46:09 ◼   ► to be unhealthy, but it's a feedback mechanism.

00:46:12 ◼   ► Have you made a funny joke or not?

00:46:14 ◼   ► If nobody faves it or nobody RTs it,

00:46:17 ◼   ► you have, you know, it is less funny than,

00:46:18 ◼   ► or to be surprised that you said something

00:46:21 ◼   ► you didn't think resonated,

00:46:22 ◼   ► but then like a huge percentage of your followers

00:46:24 ◼   ► favored or RT'd.

00:46:24 ◼   ► And the ratio of fav and RT'd,

00:46:26 ◼   ► is something people are faving to try to give like,

00:46:28 ◼   ► oh, you made me laugh, or I thought that was interesting,

00:46:31 ◼   ► or they RT'd it in like,

00:46:32 ◼   ► this is something I want my followers to see as well.

00:46:36 ◼   ► So I definitely look at favstar,

00:46:37 ◼   ► but that is like, that doesn't come at me.

00:46:39 ◼   ► I go to favstar when I'm interested.

00:46:41 ◼   ► How have I done for today?

00:46:43 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:46:44 ◼   ► Again, like anything,

00:46:46 ◼   ► Some people can get obsessed with it,

00:46:47 ◼   ► and as soon as they tweet this in there

00:46:48 ◼   ► on their favorite things, they say,

00:46:50 ◼   ► did I get any favorites, did I get any favorite,

00:46:51 ◼   ► who would favor me, but you know, it's a balance.

00:46:54 ◼   ► You don't use any site to show you

00:46:56 ◼   ► the number of favorites or retweets, you got any tweets?

00:46:59 ◼   ► - No, I'll occasionally be notified by Favstar

00:47:03 ◼   ► that I did something that got a lot of favorites,

00:47:05 ◼   ► like crossed some threshold, like 100, 200.

00:47:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, those emails are obnoxious.

00:47:08 ◼   ► - No, they just @ reply me on Twitter.

00:47:10 ◼   ► They say, congratulations on your 100 star tweet or whatever,

00:47:13 ◼   ► and that happens a few times a year.

00:47:14 ◼   ► It's not a frequent thing that I get.

00:47:16 ◼   ► I did recently start checking my retweets tab,

00:47:20 ◼   ► 'cause that, the third-party clients can show,

00:47:22 ◼   ► just like your last few tweets,

00:47:24 ◼   ► and how many retweets they got, basically.

00:47:26 ◼   ► So I did check that.

00:47:27 ◼   ► Boy, this is boring.

00:47:28 ◼   ► - Well, really quick real-time follow-up,

00:47:30 ◼   ► then we'll go to the next awesome thing.

00:47:32 ◼   ► I have 8,753 faves.

00:47:36 ◼   ► Marco has 7,969.

00:47:39 ◼   ► John, Mr. Stingy, Syracuse, 1,489.

00:47:43 ◼   ► - I think I have the right number.

00:47:44 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:47:45 ◼   ► - Of course you do.

00:47:46 ◼   ► - I think I've been on Twitter longer than you guys too.

00:47:49 ◼   ► - You probably think you have too many.

00:47:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's probably--

00:47:52 ◼   ► - I mean, half of those are bookmarks,

00:47:54 ◼   ► or more than half probably.

00:47:55 ◼   ► - You don't actually like that much stuff.

00:47:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:47:59 ◼   ► - Tell me about something cool, Marco, other than favorites.

00:48:02 ◼   ► - All right, once again, our longtime,

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00:48:43 ◼   ► It's, these shows are great.

00:48:45 ◼   ► Mike's back, Steven's back, Casey's back, Federico's back.

00:48:48 ◼   ► Who else is on there?

00:48:49 ◼   ► I don't know, who's the Panatic guy?

00:48:50 ◼   ► I don't know his name.

00:48:51 ◼   ► - Brad Dowdy, is that right?

00:48:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, so he's back too.

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00:51:30 ◼   ► - All right, so Marco, are you running Yosemite

00:51:34 ◼   ► in any of your computers?

00:51:35 ◼   ► - What are you crazy? No.

00:51:36 ◼   ► - Okay, I am not either.

00:51:38 ◼   ► So I have not seen the new version of iTunes

00:51:41 ◼   ► and I'm assuming it's Yosemite only, isn't it?

00:51:43 ◼   ► Or am I crazy?

00:51:45 ◼   ► - I've been assuming that it, like all versions of iTunes,

00:51:48 ◼   ► it will be released not just for Yosemite,

00:51:50 ◼   ► but for all recent versions of OS X,

00:51:52 ◼   ► which is why I'm basically not saying anything about it

00:51:54 ◼   ► in the review, because for all I know,

00:51:56 ◼   ► it could be released before Yosemite even comes out.

00:51:58 ◼   ► Like they do that all the time.

00:52:00 ◼   ► It's only visible on Yosemite now,

00:52:02 ◼   ► but there's no reason to believe

00:52:04 ◼   ► that they could release that iTunes whenever it's ready.

00:52:06 ◼   ► It's not like it's gonna be Yosemite only, I assume.

00:52:08 ◼   ► I hope that's true. - Right, right,

00:52:09 ◼   ► but today it's Yosemite only.

00:52:11 ◼   ► - As far as I know.

00:52:12 ◼   ► I mean, I haven't gone looking.

00:52:13 ◼   ► Sometimes they have iTunes beta downloads

00:52:15 ◼   ► in the developer portal.

00:52:16 ◼   ► I haven't looked for them.

00:52:17 ◼   ► - No, neither have I.

00:52:17 ◼   ► All right, so but you have spent some amount of time

00:52:20 ◼   ► with iTunes, John, is that right, the new one?

00:52:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've played around with it.

00:52:24 ◼   ► - And do you have any thoughts about it?

00:52:26 ◼   ► - As I've said on past shows,

00:52:27 ◼   ► the first thing I do with every new version of iTunes

00:52:29 ◼   ► bring up the preferences window and see if it's still app modal.

00:52:31 ◼   ► And if it is, I lose interest.

00:52:33 ◼   ► And?

00:52:34 ◼   ► And it's still app modal.

00:52:35 ◼   ► Oh, sorry.

00:52:36 ◼   ► Probably NDA.

00:52:36 ◼   ► Whatever.

00:52:38 ◼   ► This is not the gigantic-- so iTunes 11,

00:52:41 ◼   ► I think that was the one where they did the larger overhaul

00:52:43 ◼   ► where the sidebar was hidden by default.

00:52:45 ◼   ► And it's like the one we're all using now.

00:52:47 ◼   ► I think that's 11, right?

00:52:48 ◼   ► Yep.

00:52:49 ◼   ► And that was like, well, look, they really changed the UI.

00:52:51 ◼   ► And it was different.

00:52:51 ◼   ► And there's lots of things that are interesting improvements.

00:52:54 ◼   ► And it's clear a lot of thought went into it.

00:52:56 ◼   ► It's also weird.

00:52:58 ◼   ► I've gotten used to it more or less,

00:53:01 ◼   ► but I did make the sidebar visible,

00:53:02 ◼   ► so I kind of go back to the old mode.

00:53:05 ◼   ► The new one even goes farther in that direction,

00:53:08 ◼   ► but it's not a complete rethinking.

00:53:10 ◼   ► And so it's like, well, you're breaking my habits,

00:53:12 ◼   ► but are you giving me an application that's faster,

00:53:14 ◼   ► that's more stable, that does its job better,

00:53:18 ◼   ► or are you just kind of redecorating?

00:53:21 ◼   ► And I'm not gonna say the current version of iTunes

00:53:23 ◼   ► you're using is just redecorating,

00:53:24 ◼   ► 'cause I think the way, I know some people hate this

00:53:27 ◼   ► 'cause they got used to the old one,

00:53:28 ◼   ► But like the way they handle the up next stuff and everything is interesting if you like the old way

00:53:33 ◼   ► Then I can understand why you're pissed off that they made this new way

00:53:35 ◼   ► But I wasn't all that happy with the old way and the new way has some features that I like

00:53:40 ◼   ► but it's just it just doesn't feel it just doesn't feel refreshed and the

00:53:46 ◼   ► This topic is coming to us because Todd Vizzier II wrote and asked about like photos on the Mac

00:53:52 ◼   ► We talked about this in the past show, you know photo is going to replace I photo

00:53:55 ◼   ► We don't really know what that's going to mean. But one thing we do know is it's not going to be iPhoto with like the UI

00:54:00 ◼   ► refreshed right it's gonna be let's rethink how we do photo management and

00:54:05 ◼   ► His question was he was wondering if we might see Apple do the same thing with iTunes and you know

00:54:11 ◼   ► Everyone's been waiting this when is Apple going to do something with iTunes either

00:54:14 ◼   ► Split it up into a bunch of individual applications. Just rethink what it means to do whatever the hell iTunes does but just like

00:54:22 ◼   ► play music and let you buy things and watch movies, but also sync and back up your iOS devices and it's just I

00:54:29 ◼   ► Don't know and so I that's that's I think that's a good question. What what does it mean?

00:54:34 ◼   ► What does the next gen iTunes look like? What does it mean to rethink iTunes? That's see there's there's a lot there

00:54:40 ◼   ► I think what a lot of people forget

00:54:42 ◼   ► is that iTunes has to run on Windows and

00:54:47 ◼   ► And the reason it has to run on Windows is because,

00:54:50 ◼   ► you know, it's not necessarily because Apple needs to sell

00:54:53 ◼   ► music and movies to Windows people.

00:54:54 ◼   ► I mean, I'm sure they like doing that,

00:54:56 ◼   ► and I'm sure that's a significant portion of buyers,

00:54:58 ◼   ► but the biggest reason is that people who sync iPods

00:55:02 ◼   ► and iPhones and iPads, people who sync iDevices

00:55:06 ◼   ► need something to sync them with on Windows.

00:55:08 ◼   ► And by keeping all this functionality in iTunes,

00:55:11 ◼   ► it lets them have this shared code base

00:55:13 ◼   ► that runs on both Windows and Mac

00:55:15 ◼   ► and handles all their iOS syncing and media needs for them.

00:55:20 ◼   ► So I would say we're not going to see

00:55:23 ◼   ► the kind of big rewrite and split up a functionality

00:55:27 ◼   ► that I think most of us would like in theory.

00:55:30 ◼   ► I'd say we're not going to see that until it's no longer

00:55:33 ◼   ► necessary to have a version of iTunes that runs on Windows.

00:55:35 ◼   ► So what does that mean?

00:55:40 ◼   ► So right now--

00:55:41 ◼   ► Wait, why do you think we won't see that until

00:55:42 ◼   ► iTunes doesn't run it?

00:55:41 ◼   ► if anything it would make that job easier. If they split it up into pieces, the only piece that needs to live on Windows is the piece that lets you sync your iOS devices.

00:55:48 ◼   ► And that presumably would be a simpler app than constantly having to keep the full functionality of iTunes updated and running on Windows, right?

00:55:55 ◼   ► Well, not necessarily. Well, first of all, keep in mind what syncing iOS devices includes still.

00:56:01 ◼   ► You can still, and I still do, manually sync media over to your iOS devices.

00:56:06 ◼   ► because you know what, iTunes match doesn't always work.

00:56:08 ◼   ► And a lot of times, it's a lot easier

00:56:11 ◼   ► to sync over a whole bunch of downloaded files

00:56:13 ◼   ► that you already have on your computer,

00:56:14 ◼   ► put it over a wire and put it on your device,

00:56:16 ◼   ► than to try to do the same thing over the internet

00:56:18 ◼   ► and use God knows how much bandwidth,

00:56:21 ◼   ► no idea how fast it's gonna go.

00:56:24 ◼   ► - How does this stuff get onto your Mac?

00:56:28 ◼   ► Like you're saying like home movies that you take

00:56:30 ◼   ► or something like that?

00:56:31 ◼   ► - Music, movies, you know, whatever the case.

00:56:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I think all that stuff comes

00:56:35 ◼   ► from the network to begin with for most people.

00:56:37 ◼   ► I don't think a lot of people are taking home movies

00:56:39 ◼   ► and then putting them into their iTunes that way.

00:56:41 ◼   ► If they're on their iOS device already

00:56:43 ◼   ► 'cause they take them on their iOS device.

00:56:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, but a lot of, I'm talking more like

00:56:48 ◼   ► movies that you buy from iTunes,

00:56:49 ◼   ► music that you've accumulated over the last decade.

00:56:52 ◼   ► People have large media collections

00:56:54 ◼   ► that they wanna sync quickly to a device,

00:56:56 ◼   ► and a lot of times redownloading it all over the internet

00:56:58 ◼   ► is impossible or impractical.

00:57:00 ◼   ► So there is still the need for this.

00:57:04 ◼   ► Also, a lot of people might, well, not a lot,

00:57:07 ◼   ► some people might still back up over cable.

00:57:09 ◼   ► That's less important these days,

00:57:10 ◼   ► 'cause I think iCloud backup is by far more popular.

00:57:13 ◼   ► But either way, there are still a lot of people

00:57:16 ◼   ► who do this.

00:57:17 ◼   ► Now, there is one other major part here,

00:57:19 ◼   ► which is iPods, which still exist.

00:57:22 ◼   ► They don't, they're not doing that well,

00:57:24 ◼   ► but they still exist, they're still for sale,

00:57:26 ◼   ► and there's still a good number of them out there.

00:57:28 ◼   ► And the number is probably going down over time,

00:57:31 ◼   ► but it has a long way to go down.

00:57:33 ◼   ► So iPods, most of them have no network connection.

00:57:38 ◼   ► And so you need to sync an iPod from iTunes.

00:57:41 ◼   ► There is no other way to get music onto,

00:57:43 ◼   ► excluding the touch, but the non-touch iPods

00:57:46 ◼   ► are what I'm talking about here.

00:57:48 ◼   ► Oh, the touch isn't doing so hot either.

00:57:50 ◼   ► But you need to have some way to get the media onto those

00:57:54 ◼   ► and manage that media, and iTunes is still required for that.

00:57:56 ◼   ► So I think we're not gonna see,

00:57:58 ◼   ► so I think Apple is a very patient company,

00:58:01 ◼   ► especially when it comes to big technical shifts like this.

00:58:04 ◼   ► I think Apple is probably going to do

00:58:07 ◼   ► what it needs to do with iTunes

00:58:09 ◼   ► only after it can discontinue the Windows version

00:58:12 ◼   ► or substantially shrink it down.

00:58:15 ◼   ► And I don't think that's going to happen

00:58:17 ◼   ► until it is no longer important

00:58:19 ◼   ► to be able to sync music to iPods from Windows.

00:58:22 ◼   ► - Well, they have a technical debt problem though,

00:58:23 ◼   ► that even if you decide that every ounce of functionality

00:58:26 ◼   ► that's in iTunes, including visualizers and crap like that,

00:58:28 ◼   ► needs to stay there just because.

00:58:30 ◼   ► A rewrite of the iTunes application long term

00:58:36 ◼   ► eventually will be required.

00:58:37 ◼   ► I don't know how much weird, crufty carbon stuff

00:58:39 ◼   ► that's in there.

00:58:40 ◼   ► I know a lot of their Windows libraries

00:58:41 ◼   ► were based on carbon, and if the Mac version

00:58:43 ◼   ► moves off of carbon, then you're diverging the code bases,

00:58:46 ◼   ► but it's not like you're gonna port Cocoa to Windows,

00:58:48 ◼   ► and so how do you deal with that?

00:58:50 ◼   ► To make the application better,

00:58:52 ◼   ► eventually the application gets old and gross,

00:58:55 ◼   ► and you need to rewrite portions of it,

00:58:56 ◼   ► and I'm sure they've been doing that slowly over the years,

00:58:58 ◼   ► but depending on how long it takes to wait out,

00:59:00 ◼   ► if they're doing that strategy of like,

00:59:01 ◼   ► well, eventually we won't need it on Windows anyway,

00:59:03 ◼   ► but if they're gonna wait that out,

00:59:05 ◼   ► it may take such a long time,

00:59:06 ◼   ► and really, like the state of the UI on Windows

00:59:09 ◼   ► is already moving on,

00:59:10 ◼   ► and not that Apple's been keeping up with it,

00:59:11 ◼   ► but eventually, they'll have to do something on Windows.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Like their application won't fit in,

00:59:17 ◼   ► maybe we'll stop working.

00:59:18 ◼   ► I know Microsoft historically has been super good

00:59:20 ◼   ► about making old applications work for a really long time,

00:59:22 ◼   ► but maybe the new Microsoft isn't as excited about that.

00:59:25 ◼   ► So it's kind of a game of chicken with progress.

00:59:30 ◼   ► Like, well, we'll keep doing this thing,

00:59:31 ◼   ► we'll keep kind of refreshing it,

00:59:33 ◼   ► but we are held back by the fact

00:59:34 ◼   ► that our Windows UI library is based

00:59:38 ◼   ► on old QuickTime libraries and carbon code or whatever,

00:59:40 ◼   ► and that's what we have to use,

00:59:42 ◼   ► and if we wanna have a shared code base,

00:59:43 ◼   ► we have to keep using that on the Mac,

00:59:44 ◼   ► and iTunes becomes this increasingly weird application,

00:59:49 ◼   ► both on the Mac and on Windows,

00:59:50 ◼   ► I mean, already on the Mac, where it's supposedly native.

00:59:52 ◼   ► It's odd, it's always been a little odd,

00:59:55 ◼   ► And on Windows, it's also always been a little bit odd.

00:59:58 ◼   ► So I wonder how long they can keep going in this direction.

01:00:02 ◼   ► And I still think you can make a smaller, simpler,

01:00:04 ◼   ► more purpose-built app that fulfills all of Apple's needs

01:00:08 ◼   ► on Windows for this purpose.

01:00:11 ◼   ► You know, like take out as much as you can,

01:00:14 ◼   ► but still let people sync their iPods

01:00:15 ◼   ► and buy things and put them on.

01:00:17 ◼   ► But it becomes like, the whole purpose of that application

01:00:19 ◼   ► is like what you said, why do they need it on Windows?

01:00:21 ◼   ► This is a companion application for your iOS devices

01:00:23 ◼   ► and that's all it is.

01:00:24 ◼   ► And if that's how you focus the application,

01:00:26 ◼   ► it looks and works very differently than it does now.

01:00:28 ◼   ► It doesn't look like a music player

01:00:30 ◼   ► that also has this other little thing you can click

01:00:32 ◼   ► that changes it into kind of

01:00:34 ◼   ► an iOS device management application.

01:00:36 ◼   ► That's all it is,

01:00:37 ◼   ► it's just an iOS device management application.

01:00:39 ◼   ► And I would think that if they did that,

01:00:42 ◼   ► that iTunes is important enough

01:00:45 ◼   ► that they could dedicate a team

01:00:46 ◼   ► to write iTunes for Windows as a separate application,

01:00:49 ◼   ► to not be obsessed with sharing all the UI code

01:00:51 ◼   ► and everything, to say, look,

01:00:52 ◼   ► You're like the biggest technology company in the world.

01:00:54 ◼   ► This is a core part of your business.

01:00:56 ◼   ► iTunes sales keep going up and up.

01:00:59 ◼   ► Can't you spare a small team to write a full native,

01:01:02 ◼   ► I'm sure Windows people would love this,

01:01:03 ◼   ► a full native Windows application.

01:01:05 ◼   ► The only parts that it would share

01:01:06 ◼   ► would be like underlying faceless code

01:01:08 ◼   ► and have the UI be all custom for Windows.

01:01:11 ◼   ► And that may be actually easier

01:01:13 ◼   ► than trying to keep these two code bases handcuffed together

01:01:16 ◼   ► as they sort of lurch onward through history.

01:01:20 ◼   ► It's just so much to redo though,

01:01:23 ◼   ► because as I'm listening to you guys,

01:01:25 ◼   ► I'm looking at the chat just to enumerate

01:01:26 ◼   ► all these other things that iTunes does.

01:01:29 ◼   ► And one thing that I came up with

01:01:31 ◼   ► and maybe it was in the chat as well,

01:01:32 ◼   ► like iTunes can still burn CDs, right?

01:01:35 ◼   ► That's still a thing, believe it or not.

01:01:36 ◼   ► - And rip them, yep.

01:01:38 ◼   ► - And rip them in various different codecs

01:01:41 ◼   ► with constant or variable bit rates.

01:01:43 ◼   ► I mean, there are so many things that iTunes does.

01:01:46 ◼   ► And the only way that we're really gonna get a rewrite,

01:01:49 ◼   ► I think is just like you said, John, to do something is to change the purpose of iTunes,

01:01:53 ◼   ► which is I think coming back to Todd's point, change the purpose of iTunes and look at it

01:01:57 ◼   ► more as device management than as anything else.

01:02:00 ◼   ► But if that's the case, then what do you do with the store?

01:02:04 ◼   ► I mean, I think Marco, you made a great point earlier.

01:02:06 ◼   ► Is that its own app?

01:02:07 ◼   ► Is it the...

01:02:08 ◼   ► Well, we've got the Mac App Store app, right?

01:02:10 ◼   ► Which is separate.

01:02:11 ◼   ► That was the whole thing.

01:02:12 ◼   ► When the Mac App Store came, people were like, "What is that going to be another tab in iTunes?"

01:02:14 ◼   ► And the answer was, "No, it's going to be a separate, terrible, crappy application,

01:02:17 ◼   ► it's going to be separate application.

01:02:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:19 ◼   ► Do we actually want them to try to make separate applications?

01:02:22 ◼   ► At least when it's separate.

01:02:23 ◼   ► No one is saying, boy, the Mac App Star app is so bloated and slow

01:02:26 ◼   ► and it crashes my computer and it's like it's limited.

01:02:30 ◼   ► It's super simple, but it is not a pig like it launches.

01:02:34 ◼   ► It runs. It's got this thing.

01:02:35 ◼   ► It's got one window and it's got no tabs.

01:02:38 ◼   ► It's you know, it's super limited, but it's it's lightweight.

01:02:41 ◼   ► And you could iterate if they cared.

01:02:44 ◼   ► They could iterate within that single purpose thing

01:02:46 ◼   ► to make an application that sort of gets better over time.

01:02:49 ◼   ► With iTunes, they just kept adding stuff,

01:02:50 ◼   ► and it's just an impossibility to have one application

01:02:53 ◼   ► that does all these things.

01:02:54 ◼   ► For the Windows purpose, if you really think

01:02:58 ◼   ► the only purpose of iTunes on Windows

01:03:00 ◼   ► is so people can sync iPods and iOS devices,

01:03:03 ◼   ► then make an application for syncing iPods

01:03:05 ◼   ► and iOS devices for Windows.

01:03:06 ◼   ► And then the question is, what do you do on the Mac?

01:03:08 ◼   ► Well, on the Mac, we wanna also offer a music player.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Windows people can use whatever Windows media thing

01:03:12 ◼   ► that they're offering these days.

01:03:13 ◼   ► For the Mac, we wanna offer a music player,

01:03:15 ◼   ► and we also wanna let you buy stuff

01:03:17 ◼   ► and we wanna put it into a single,

01:03:19 ◼   ► it's like iPhoto, like it used to be one application

01:03:21 ◼   ► that managed all your stuff and now they're like,

01:03:22 ◼   ► well, actually your photos are gonna be in this

01:03:25 ◼   ► photos and iCloud thing,

01:03:27 ◼   ► which is based on this whole new framework

01:03:28 ◼   ► and blah, blah, blah,

01:03:29 ◼   ► and this app will be an interface to it

01:03:30 ◼   ► and we also have an app that's an interface to it,

01:03:32 ◼   ► like a sort of a cloud-centric thing

01:03:34 ◼   ► where it stops being this monolithic application

01:03:36 ◼   ► and starts being a series of windows into a set of data.

01:03:39 ◼   ► And that's why you can get it like,

01:03:40 ◼   ► well, if you had a separate music player

01:03:42 ◼   ► and a separate iOS syncing app,

01:03:44 ◼   ► Would they have to have duplicates of the data?

01:03:45 ◼   ► No, it'd be like one pool of your stuff.

01:03:47 ◼   ► And where would your stuff be?

01:03:49 ◼   ► Probably in the same amorphous place

01:03:50 ◼   ► that your photo stuff is going to be.

01:03:52 ◼   ► And if they really wanted to go crazy,

01:03:54 ◼   ► I know this is crazy, Apple, hold on to your seats,

01:03:57 ◼   ► I suggest this, I don't want you to fall over.

01:04:01 ◼   ► But there's one way you can make a single interface

01:04:04 ◼   ► for multiple platforms to have access to data

01:04:06 ◼   ► that's on a server somewhere, and it's called a web page.

01:04:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:04:11 ◼   ► You could have web app,

01:04:12 ◼   ► Like I'm not saying this has to be the main interface.

01:04:14 ◼   ► - Once again, are you sure you want this?

01:04:16 ◼   ► - I'm not saying this is the way it has to be,

01:04:17 ◼   ► but like every other company in the world,

01:04:19 ◼   ► like they would immediately go to that.

01:04:21 ◼   ► And of course we also need to have a web interface

01:04:23 ◼   ► to whatever, you know, to our email system

01:04:25 ◼   ► and we'll call it Gmail.

01:04:26 ◼   ► You can use local clients too,

01:04:27 ◼   ► but you know, like- - 'Cause that works great.

01:04:28 ◼   ► - It's not ideal for, I like Gmail's web interfaces.

01:04:31 ◼   ► It's not ideal for iTunes type stuff,

01:04:33 ◼   ► but if like, if they're gonna put all your photos

01:04:35 ◼   ► into the cloud and just some local subset

01:04:37 ◼   ► is on your machine, why can't all the stuff

01:04:39 ◼   ► you buy through iTunes also be,

01:04:40 ◼   ► I mean, it's already in the cloud, right?

01:04:41 ◼   ► iTunes match.

01:04:42 ◼   ► stuff is already in the cloud, but I have no access to it anywhere except for on a Mac

01:04:45 ◼   ► or Windows computer running iTunes or on my iOS device. Web interfaces are such a natural

01:04:50 ◼   ► fit for a pool of data that's already on a server somewhere. Why should it be tied? And

01:04:56 ◼   ► just have local caches of stuff. I think that's where all of Apple's applications are going.

01:05:00 ◼   ► They just don't want to go the last step to do the web interface. So I'd be perfectly happy to

01:05:04 ◼   ► have slim client-side interfaces, that stuff. But if they wanted to address Windows and didn't want

01:05:09 ◼   ► want to write a separate Windows application,

01:05:11 ◼   ► some kind of web integrated thing could work for them.

01:05:14 ◼   ► - So what you're saying is that you think

01:05:16 ◼   ► it would be an improvement if Apple made more applications

01:05:19 ◼   ► that are like the Mac App Store app and more web apps?

01:05:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, and less like iTunes, yeah.

01:05:26 ◼   ► - Aren't the store apps basically mostly HTML anyway?

01:05:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, they're sort of like Apple's version of web apps

01:05:33 ◼   ► where it's not really a web app,

01:05:35 ◼   ► but they want to have control over everything,

01:05:37 ◼   ► but it's like a really poor performing web app.

01:05:40 ◼   ► Because the time it takes for Mac App Store pages to load

01:05:44 ◼   ► is way more than the time it takes like an Amazon.com page.

01:05:47 ◼   ► Those Amazon.com pages are filled with crap

01:05:49 ◼   ► and yet they load instantly.

01:05:51 ◼   ► But the Mac App Store is like load.

01:05:53 ◼   ► It's like going back in time to the Netscape 4.

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01:08:57 ◼   ► Now getting back into this discussion

01:08:58 ◼   ► about iTunes for a second,

01:08:59 ◼   ► I have one little thing to say here

01:09:02 ◼   ► that I'm sure will be a quick topic

01:09:04 ◼   ► that nobody will argue with.

01:09:05 ◼   ► Is iTunes really that bad?

01:09:08 ◼   ► Does it really justify--

01:09:09 ◼   ► - Oh, it is bad.

01:09:11 ◼   ► - Does it really justify all of the work

01:09:12 ◼   ► that it would take to rewrite the whole thing,

01:09:15 ◼   ► break it up into different apps,

01:09:17 ◼   ► lose Windows support, lose some of the--

01:09:19 ◼   ► - You're not losing Windows support,

01:09:20 ◼   ► you're making a new one of those too, remember?

01:09:22 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, but then like,

01:09:24 ◼   ► is the media store still there?

01:09:26 ◼   ► You know, like right now they also enjoy a benefit of

01:09:29 ◼   ► if you have an iPhone and you want it

01:09:30 ◼   ► sync to your computer, you have to install the iTunes Music Store, and you have to look

01:09:34 ◼   ► at it sometimes, and so that has to drive sales to some degree.

01:09:37 ◼   ► If you have an iPhone, you mean an iPod, right?

01:09:40 ◼   ► Uh, yeah, I guess.

01:09:41 ◼   ► You don't need iTunes for an iPhone. iOS devices don't need iTunes anymore.

01:09:45 ◼   ► But anyway, yeah, so some devices still need the most don't, I guess, but the point is,

01:09:50 ◼   ► iTunes works. It doesn't work great all the time, but it does work, and is it really worth

01:09:57 ◼   ► them spending so much time to rewrite all of this stuff, that's a massive amount of

01:10:03 ◼   ► time where it would not only be very expensive for them and would take a lot of talent away

01:10:07 ◼   ► from other projects, but it would also in the meantime probably get worse before it

01:10:11 ◼   ► gets better because rewrites always have a ton of bugs at first, you know, the bugs they

01:10:15 ◼   ► fixed over the years or addressed in some other weird way, they gotta like re-solve

01:10:18 ◼   ► all the same problems again.

01:10:20 ◼   ► It would be a massive, massive job.

01:10:23 ◼   ► What's more important to Apple, iTunes or iPhoto?

01:10:26 ◼   ► a good question actually. I'm not sure. And they're rewriting iPhoto. What I'm getting

01:10:31 ◼   ► at is like, yeah, but you can keep going with an application for a long time, but at a certain

01:10:34 ◼   ► point you need to sort of overhaul it. And it's like, oh, I don't want to do this. There's

01:10:39 ◼   ► always some excuse not to redo it because you're like, well, but eventually time runs

01:10:44 ◼   ► out. 10 years, 20 years, 5,000 years from now iTunes will be rewritten, right? And you

01:10:47 ◼   ► have to do it. It's the same thing with the new language stuff. Everyone just wants to

01:10:50 ◼   ► put it off forever. And iTunes is not just some obscure application. It's like, well,

01:10:54 ◼   ► you know, whatever, we're getting along with it, it's okay.

01:10:56 ◼   ► iTunes is like the cornerstone of their entire, you know,

01:10:59 ◼   ► strategy for selling digital content.

01:11:02 ◼   ► And that's why they're afraid of changing it.

01:11:04 ◼   ► Like, oh, don't touch iTunes.

01:11:05 ◼   ► We need it to be like, if you screw it up,

01:11:07 ◼   ► if you make the new version crappier or whatever,

01:11:09 ◼   ► and maybe that is why that iPhoto gets the treatment,

01:11:11 ◼   ► 'cause like, well, we screw up iPhoto, it's all right.

01:11:13 ◼   ► We already screwed up iMovie a couple of times

01:11:14 ◼   ► and we survived that or whatever,

01:11:16 ◼   ► but iTunes, you can never change.

01:11:17 ◼   ► Well, you can't just like never touch it.

01:11:20 ◼   ► And you can't just like, well, we'll just keep,

01:11:22 ◼   ► we'll just keep rearranging the furniture.

01:11:23 ◼   ► and just keep doing changes to the UI.

01:11:24 ◼   ► Because basic functionality has gotten super terrible,

01:11:27 ◼   ► like podcasts, which I thankfully, thanks to you Marco,

01:11:30 ◼   ► do not manage in iTunes anymore.

01:11:31 ◼   ► But right up until you've released Overcast Beta,

01:11:34 ◼   ► I was doing it in iTunes,

01:11:35 ◼   ► and it's just gotten worse and worse.

01:11:37 ◼   ► And I don't listen to that many podcasts.

01:11:39 ◼   ► I'm kind of like a moderate podcast,

01:11:41 ◼   ► maybe 10, 12 subscriptions.

01:11:43 ◼   ► But managing them in iTunes was a nightmare.

01:11:45 ◼   ► And it's like these are just like little MP3 files.

01:11:47 ◼   ► I felt like all these people who manage stuff in folders,

01:11:49 ◼   ► like I can manage stuff in folders better than you can.

01:11:51 ◼   ► And now it's gotten so bad,

01:11:53 ◼   ► Like they've added features, but now you, like,

01:11:55 ◼   ► I was trying to clean through my iTunes podcast library

01:11:57 ◼   ► to try to like delete episodes and find ones

01:11:59 ◼   ► that I haven't downloaded and mark ones for saving.

01:12:01 ◼   ► It is, it's just torture.

01:12:03 ◼   ► It is not friendly.

01:12:04 ◼   ► I could never expect anybody but me to go through this.

01:12:07 ◼   ► I would never instruct someone else,

01:12:08 ◼   ► oh, get iTunes, it's an easy way

01:12:09 ◼   ► for you to manage your stuff.

01:12:11 ◼   ► Like I can barely use it to listen to music

01:12:14 ◼   ► just because I have it set up the way I want to,

01:12:16 ◼   ► have my playlist that I want, I have iTunes match,

01:12:18 ◼   ► which I think is a valuable service.

01:12:20 ◼   ► And you know, I just get it just so

01:12:22 ◼   ► just hit play essentially and then next track to skip over because I use random play through

01:12:25 ◼   ► my playlist.

01:12:26 ◼   ► It is not a pleasant experience.

01:12:28 ◼   ► It doesn't make me feel good about the application.

01:12:31 ◼   ► And I'm not saying it needs to change right now, but eventually they need to do something.

01:12:35 ◼   ► And I don't know if they can wait out until the Windows version doesn't work.

01:12:39 ◼   ► And all the excuses about why you don't want to rewrite something that's critical, like,

01:12:42 ◼   ► you can say that about anything.

01:12:43 ◼   ► They said it about classic Mac OS for way too long.

01:12:46 ◼   ► iTunes is not at that point.

01:12:48 ◼   ► Their programming language arguably wasn't at that point, but these things take time

01:12:51 ◼   ► and they're hard to do and so sooner or later it's got to be done.

01:12:55 ◼   ► You know I actually I think it does need to be done eventually but I lean towards Marco's

01:13:01 ◼   ► view on this one in that I don't ask that much of iTunes and it does its job just fine.

01:13:09 ◼   ► Does it ever download movies for you and fill your disk with movies that you purchase elsewhere

01:13:13 ◼   ► just for fun?

01:13:14 ◼   ► No.

01:13:15 ◼   ► No.

01:13:16 ◼   ► Never.

01:13:17 ◼   ► Does it ever consume all memory on your computer when you launch it?

01:13:20 ◼   ► Does it ever?

01:13:21 ◼   ► Maybe your Mac pros too old no

01:13:23 ◼   ► Program and it has

01:13:27 ◼   ► Unfriendly bugs and it has tons of crap in it and this is like a delicate thing

01:13:30 ◼   ► You don't want to touch too much like as a user and it's not it's not pleasant. It's not friendly

01:13:35 ◼   ► It's not nice see and I for a regular like not super duper power user. I'm not so sure you're right

01:13:42 ◼   ► I think it gets the job done. Could it be better? Yes, it could be better. It gets the job done

01:13:47 ◼   ► Yes, obviously it functions like it does what it's supposed to do

01:13:50 ◼   ► but we're arguing like is it good enough?

01:13:52 ◼   ► Is it up to Apple standards?

01:13:53 ◼   ► Could it be improved?

01:13:55 ◼   ► Or are we just gonna keep like,

01:13:56 ◼   ► has the trend in iTunes progressed?

01:13:58 ◼   ► Like is it positive?

01:14:00 ◼   ► Is every new version of iTunes better than the previous one?

01:14:02 ◼   ► Even if the slope is really shallow,

01:14:03 ◼   ► going back maybe five, you know, seven years.

01:14:06 ◼   ► I think the slope is flat or trending down.

01:14:09 ◼   ► And that is not a good trend for an application

01:14:11 ◼   ► that's so important for Apple.

01:14:12 ◼   ► - I would agree with that,

01:14:14 ◼   ► but there's so much technical debt there

01:14:17 ◼   ► that it's moving a mountain in order to--

01:14:19 ◼   ► I know, and the longer you wait, the bigger the mountain gets.

01:14:22 ◼   ► And that's true as well.

01:14:23 ◼   ► I just, I don't know, to me, I think they have bigger fish to fry than fixing iTunes,

01:14:28 ◼   ► personally.

01:14:29 ◼   ► I think this is a bigger slam dunk than new programming language, because new programming

01:14:33 ◼   ► language had people on the opposite side.

01:14:34 ◼   ► Not only is Objective-C just fine, in fact, it's better than anything you can suggest,

01:14:38 ◼   ► so they sure as hell don't need a new language, and luckily Apple disagreed with that.

01:14:42 ◼   ► iTunes, I don't think anyone's going to say, "Not only is iTunes just fine, in fact, it's

01:14:46 ◼   ► better than any alternative you can imagine,

01:14:48 ◼   ► therefore, you know, at the most you get like,

01:14:51 ◼   ► well, iTunes is all right, it doesn't bother me

01:14:53 ◼   ► on a daily basis, it does what it's supposed to do.

01:14:57 ◼   ► That's a low bar, I really like, again,

01:14:59 ◼   ► I don't say this is an impending crisis

01:15:01 ◼   ► and I have to do this now, but the reason people

01:15:02 ◼   ► keep bringing this up and haven't been bringing it up

01:15:04 ◼   ► for years is it just seems like it's due.

01:15:06 ◼   ► So maybe not this year, maybe not next year,

01:15:10 ◼   ► but sometime within the next maybe five, 10 years,

01:15:13 ◼   ► They have to address this, they have to do something.

01:15:16 ◼   ► And maybe they'll be able to wait, like Mark said,

01:15:18 ◼   ► until the Windows version is irrelevant.

01:15:20 ◼   ► Yeah, finally, we don't have to worry about Windows version

01:15:21 ◼   ► and it simplifies our transition.

01:15:23 ◼   ► But by then, maybe they will have built up too much crap.

01:15:26 ◼   ► Maybe by then, old Macs will be ARM

01:15:27 ◼   ► and there's a bunch of weird, crazy x86-only code

01:15:30 ◼   ► in iTunes that we don't know about.

01:15:32 ◼   ► And yeah, I mean, you brought up the CD stuff.

01:15:34 ◼   ► Eventually, they'll have to get rid of the CD-ripping stuff,

01:15:38 ◼   ► I would assume.

01:15:38 ◼   ► I mean, obviously, Apple still sells computers without,

01:15:42 ◼   ► - Don't they don't sell any computers

01:15:43 ◼   ► optical drives now do they?

01:15:44 ◼   ► They still sell an optical drive that's external.

01:15:46 ◼   ► I believe that's Apple branded but.

01:15:48 ◼   ► - Yeah I guess you're right.

01:15:49 ◼   ► They don't have any.

01:15:50 ◼   ► - There's none left now right?

01:15:52 ◼   ► - I don't think so.

01:15:54 ◼   ► Where's Hackett when we need him?

01:15:56 ◼   ► - I think the question of,

01:15:58 ◼   ► rather than arguing about whether the iTunes

01:16:00 ◼   ► needs to be fixed or replaced or whatever,

01:16:02 ◼   ► the idea of, all right so fast forward

01:16:04 ◼   ► to whatever your arbitrary year is

01:16:05 ◼   ► then again bring back the programming language

01:16:07 ◼   ► and everyone's like okay I will concede

01:16:09 ◼   ► that 500 years in the future Apple

01:16:10 ◼   ► will need a programming language

01:16:11 ◼   ► but not a year sooner.

01:16:13 ◼   ► Anyway, for iTunes, whatever year you concede

01:16:16 ◼   ► that iTunes will need to be rewritten

01:16:18 ◼   ► or redesigned or refactored, the question remains,

01:16:21 ◼   ► what does that redesign, refactor, rewrite look like?

01:16:26 ◼   ► Does it look exactly the same as the current iTunes,

01:16:27 ◼   ► but like better written and with a non-app modal

01:16:30 ◼   ► preferences dialog box?

01:16:31 ◼   ► Or is it, do you envision it breaking up

01:16:34 ◼   ► within multiple applications?

01:16:35 ◼   ► Do some applications become irrelevant?

01:16:37 ◼   ► Do some features of iTunes get integrated

01:16:39 ◼   ► into the operating system in a way that doesn't feel

01:16:43 ◼   ► like an application but feels more like a notification

01:16:45 ◼   ► center where it's integrated?

01:16:47 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:16:48 ◼   ► Those, I think, are interesting questions.

01:16:49 ◼   ► I don't have any good answers, but I

01:16:51 ◼   ► think that is the most interesting line of thought

01:16:53 ◼   ► about this rather than worrying about when

01:16:55 ◼   ► something has to happen.

01:16:57 ◼   ► First of all, I would disagree with your assumption

01:17:00 ◼   ► that iTunes is more important to Apple than Photos.

01:17:03 ◼   ► If you think about where they make most of their money, which

01:17:06 ◼   ► is the iOS devices and everything,

01:17:08 ◼   ► and then what people tend to do on the iOS devices most,

01:17:12 ◼   ► and what's important to people,

01:17:14 ◼   ► and why people might choose one mobile platform

01:17:16 ◼   ► over another, I think handling of photos and videos

01:17:21 ◼   ► that are captured by the device, handling of photos,

01:17:24 ◼   ► is way more important than everything iTunes does

01:17:27 ◼   ► to most of Apple's consumers.

01:17:29 ◼   ► - It's how important it is to Apple,

01:17:30 ◼   ► not how important is it to Apple's consumers.

01:17:32 ◼   ► Photos, obviously, all the stuff they do is like,

01:17:36 ◼   ► okay, well that makes the hardware more valuable

01:17:39 ◼   ► to customers and Apple makes this money

01:17:41 ◼   ► by selling the hardware, but it's like,

01:17:42 ◼   ► okay, well what percentage of the value

01:17:45 ◼   ► that is in the hardware is added by Photos

01:17:47 ◼   ► versus what percentage is added by FaceTime

01:17:49 ◼   ► versus what percentage is added by iMessage

01:17:51 ◼   ► versus what percentage is added by Safari

01:17:53 ◼   ► and you start carving it up into pieces

01:17:55 ◼   ► and yeah, iPhoto does contribute value to the hardware,

01:17:58 ◼   ► but iTunes, I mean, what you really need

01:18:01 ◼   ► is a breakdown of iTunes usage inside and outside of iOS

01:18:05 ◼   ► because iTunes revenue is going up, up, up.

01:18:07 ◼   ► But you don't know is that like, what is it 99.9%

01:18:11 ◼   ► of that people making purchase on their iOS devices,

01:18:13 ◼   ► then that decreases the value of iTunes to the company,

01:18:16 ◼   ► the application.

01:18:18 ◼   ► But if a lot of people are still buying things

01:18:21 ◼   ► on their computers and like, for example, Apple TV,

01:18:23 ◼   ► I think is something that a lot of Mac nerds have.

01:18:26 ◼   ► But, you know, I forget what the sales numbers are

01:18:29 ◼   ► for Apple TV, but there's way more iPads and iPhones

01:18:32 ◼   ► out there than Apple TVs.

01:18:33 ◼   ► Are people buying movies and watching them on their iPads and iPods?

01:18:36 ◼   ► Or are people buying them and watching them on their computer still?

01:18:38 ◼   ► Like we're in transition between iTunes, where you did everything on your computer,

01:18:42 ◼   ► to stuff where you do everything on your handhelds.

01:18:45 ◼   ► And I know, for example, that even though my daughter has access to iPads and iPod touches

01:18:50 ◼   ► and all sorts of stuff, she still watches videos

01:18:52 ◼   ► on a laptop computer rather than a giant TV, by the way.

01:18:56 ◼   ► I don't understand that choice, but it makes me wonder if iTunes as a vehicle

01:19:01 ◼   ► for both purchasing and consuming digital content

01:19:03 ◼   ► is not as completely passe as it seems to be in our circles

01:19:07 ◼   ► 'cause we've all moved on to AirPlay and iOS devices.

01:19:12 ◼   ► - Maybe your TV's fans are too loud.

01:19:14 ◼   ► - Kids don't hear the fans.

01:19:15 ◼   ► I hear them, the kids don't.

01:19:18 ◼   ► I'm kind of glad because then you don't have to worry

01:19:19 ◼   ► about them accidentally leaving it paused

01:19:20 ◼   ► and getting burned into whatever, but it is weird.

01:19:23 ◼   ► - Are we good?

01:19:26 ◼   ► - Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week,

01:19:29 ◼   ► Casper, Backblaze, and Squarespace,

01:19:31 ◼   ► and we will see you next week.

01:19:34 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:19:36 ◼   ► ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:19:38 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:19:41 ◼   ► ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:19:43 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:19:44 ◼   ► ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:19:45 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:19:47 ◼   ► ♪ John didn't do any research ♪

01:19:49 ◼   ► ♪ Marco and Casey wouldn't let him ♪

01:19:52 ◼   ► ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:19:53 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:19:54 ◼   ► ♪ It was accidental ♪

01:19:56 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:19:57 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM And if you're into Twitter, you can follow

01:20:06 ◼   ► them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:20:16 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse

01:20:23 ◼   ► It's accidental, accidental.

01:20:26 ◼   ► They didn't mean to.

01:20:29 ◼   ► Accidental, accidental.

01:20:31 ◼   ► Tech podcast so long.

01:20:36 ◼   ► They'll be dead in three weeks.

01:20:38 ◼   ► I hope not.

01:20:39 ◼   ► That was 10 review.

01:20:41 ◼   ► It's going to kill me.

01:20:42 ◼   ► OK.

01:20:42 ◼   ► Well, that's possible.

01:20:43 ◼   ► So how's it going?

01:20:44 ◼   ► I wasn't going to bring it up, but how's it going?

01:20:47 ◼   ► I don't-- it's terrible.

01:20:49 ◼   ► Like, I-- oh, god, I didn't want to talk about it.

01:20:51 ◼   ► I don't know how.

01:20:52 ◼   ► I don't know how I'm gonna I don't know how it's gonna happen. I don't know how I'm gonna finish this thing

01:20:58 ◼   ► So you're taking time off your job. I don't know I just

01:21:02 ◼   ► I mean I would like a release date eventually. I hope they don't surprise me and say hey

01:21:09 ◼   ► It's ready early, but I mean it doesn't seem like

01:21:11 ◼   ► it'll be ready early, but I

01:21:14 ◼   ► Have too much stuff to do and

01:21:18 ◼   ► Even sections. I thought I knew what I was gonna write I get into them and realize I don't

01:21:22 ◼   ► don't like I just I just started writing about Swift. I

01:21:25 ◼   ► saved it like to the end like I saved it until like this past

01:21:28 ◼   ► weekend and like finally now I can do the Swift section. I

01:21:31 ◼   ► know exactly what I'm gonna do. It turns out I don't know

01:21:33 ◼   ► exactly what I'm gonna write and I'm stuck in the freaking

01:21:35 ◼   ► Swift section. Cool. Not cool. Uh well, I don't know what to

01:21:40 ◼   ► say about that other than I'm sorry. Yeah. I think this

01:21:44 ◼   ► really may be my last one. You sound surprisingly serious when

01:21:49 ◼   ► say that? 10/10 is a nice round number. I hope it's not, but I bet it is. I hope it's

01:21:55 ◼   ► not as well. We'll talk about it after. I don't know what we're thinking now. Now I

01:21:59 ◼   ► just got to get this done, but we'll see. Well, you don't have to really decide until

01:22:01 ◼   ► next summer. Yeah, exactly. That's what, you know, you don't want to like, so you don't

01:22:04 ◼   ► decide whether you're going to have another kid right after you have the first one. It's

01:22:07 ◼   ► probably the worst time to decide that, actually. Well, this is really my, like, 15th kid, so

01:22:11 ◼   ► if we go on OS X review terms, so I don't know. Right, and this is the worst time for

01:22:15 ◼   ► you to decide whether to write another one of these the next year or not. I know. It's

01:22:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, because you sounded pretty much exactly

01:22:21 ◼   ► the same a year ago if memory serves.

01:22:23 ◼   ► - It gets worse every year though.

01:22:24 ◼   ► Like, and I don't know if like the review--

01:22:26 ◼   ► - But you say that every year too.

01:22:27 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:22:28 ◼   ► - But I don't know if the reviews are getting worse.

01:22:29 ◼   ► Like that's, anyway, we'll talk about after.

01:22:31 ◼   ► That's a whole--

01:22:32 ◼   ► - This is like deciding whether to have another kid

01:22:33 ◼   ► during contractions.

01:22:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:22:36 ◼   ► This is like the worst possible time.

01:22:38 ◼   ► - Ah, funny.

01:22:39 ◼   ► Anything else going on?

01:22:41 ◼   ► - I don't know.

01:22:42 ◼   ► I still don't, I don't think iTunes is that bad.

01:22:44 ◼   ► And I say that having had a lot of weird little iTunes

01:22:47 ◼   ► problems happen over the years,

01:22:48 ◼   ► I use it a lot for various things, but

01:22:50 ◼   ► It mostly works for me. It's like like you can't see like it works for me. Yep. Just be glad you use it for podcasts

01:22:57 ◼   ► You should try that for like a week to try to use it for podcasts. Like I used to yeah me too

01:23:01 ◼   ► They're actually paying attention to the podcast feature now, which you think would be good

01:23:05 ◼   ► But it's actually kind like they're adding features that are good. Like oh, I've always wanted to do that

01:23:09 ◼   ► I've always wanted to be able to tell iTunes that you they that it's just save this episode

01:23:12 ◼   ► I've always wanted better control over which ones it downloads and so on and so forth

01:23:15 ◼   ► but everything is so slow and painful

01:23:17 ◼   ► and everything is at a different mode

01:23:19 ◼   ► and a different screen and a different view.

01:23:21 ◼   ► And I don't understand how it could be so damn slow.

01:23:22 ◼   ► The recent update had a note in the release notes

01:23:25 ◼   ► that was like, improved performance problems

01:23:27 ◼   ► in podcasts, blah, blah, blah.

01:23:29 ◼   ► I haven't checked whether to see

01:23:31 ◼   ► if it's got that much better,

01:23:32 ◼   ► but at least they acknowledged that it's a problem.

01:23:33 ◼   ► Like, I would select like five podcasts

01:23:36 ◼   ► and hit the delete key and you would like count

01:23:37 ◼   ► one, two, three, like just waiting for it to do something.

01:23:41 ◼   ► Like it was multiple seconds before anything would happen.

01:23:44 ◼   ► and you're like, come on guys, I'm deleting four MP3 files.

01:23:48 ◼   ► I don't know what you're doing behind the scenes,

01:23:50 ◼   ► but are you communicating with a server?

01:23:52 ◼   ► Are you updating some gigantic plist file

01:23:55 ◼   ► because you didn't want to make SQLite backend for core?

01:23:58 ◼   ► I don't even know what they're doing.

01:24:00 ◼   ► It's all carbon code and stuff.

01:24:01 ◼   ► I have no idea what's going on behind-- all I know

01:24:03 ◼   ► is that the experience of using the application

01:24:06 ◼   ► is not up to Apple standards.

01:24:08 ◼   ► Yeah, but see, I think pointing out the carbon code,

01:24:11 ◼   ► that's almost certainly there.

01:24:13 ◼   ► in the modal preferences box,

01:24:15 ◼   ► I think those are really not,

01:24:17 ◼   ► I think those are red herrings.

01:24:19 ◼   ► - The modal preferences box,

01:24:20 ◼   ► someone brought that up in the chat room.

01:24:21 ◼   ► That's not like, I don't care that the preferences,

01:24:23 ◼   ► I'm just using that as a canary to say,

01:24:25 ◼   ► when that goes away,

01:24:26 ◼   ► I will know that they seriously refactored the application

01:24:29 ◼   ► because it's not important enough to address directly,

01:24:31 ◼   ► like who cares, right?

01:24:32 ◼   ► But if it is change,

01:24:34 ◼   ► it means they did such a sweeping change

01:24:35 ◼   ► that this came out of it as a side effect

01:24:37 ◼   ► and therefore they really made changes.

01:24:39 ◼   ► So that's why I'm checking preferences,

01:24:40 ◼   ► not because I care about app modal preferences or anything,

01:24:42 ◼   ► Just just as an extra quick external indication of how much refactoring work was really done in this app

01:24:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know. I I think

01:24:51 ◼   ► We all say that we want. Oh, yeah, we'd love they should rewrite iTunes and and we say that with the implied

01:24:59 ◼   ► Following sentence that will solve everything

01:25:03 ◼   ► Of course we know that when Apple rewrites a major application all new

01:25:09 ◼   ► especially in recent years

01:25:11 ◼   ► That not only doesn't solve everything but often makes things worse for a while. Well. Yeah, well, I think I'm in I'm speaking myself here

01:25:19 ◼   ► I'm I acknowledge that I'm willing to accept like photos is not going to be very talk about it like how

01:25:23 ◼   ► How few features will photos have in the initial version and how much worse than I photo will it be and well okay like you?

01:25:29 ◼   ► Have to just accept those kind of transitions because you can't stick with one thing forever

01:25:33 ◼   ► And I think that the most confusing thing is like it's the first of all it's not rerouting because it's huge swaths of non

01:25:40 ◼   ► UI related code that presumably they would reuse that have nothing to do with UI, nothing

01:25:43 ◼   ► to do with carbon, they're just, you know, there's just tons of code in there that does

01:25:47 ◼   ► the things it does, even all the code they've been doing that talks to iTunes match and

01:25:50 ◼   ► all that network related code.

01:25:52 ◼   ► If you assume that that was factored reasonably, they're not rewriting that.

01:25:55 ◼   ► Like they've added all that code over the years, they will continue to use it and wherever

01:25:58 ◼   ► they use it, hopefully they did it in a modular way.

01:26:00 ◼   ► What you're mostly talking about is what's the glue that holds that all together and

01:26:05 ◼   ► especially like the local glue of like, is there still a local iTunes database that can

01:26:09 ◼   ► get corrupted and cause your app to go crazy?

01:26:11 ◼   ► Is everything server-side?

01:26:12 ◼   ► Does it move to more of a photos model where it's like, "Well, it used to be all about

01:26:16 ◼   ► local SQLite databases and files on disk, and now it's all about some cloud thing with

01:26:21 ◼   ► everything local being like a cache to make things faster and stuff."

01:26:25 ◼   ► So photos will be the first guinea pig in this area, I guess, although, arguably with

01:26:29 ◼   ► photos, they've already kind of done several versions of that on iOS, albeit with a very

01:26:34 ◼   ► spare interface, but I'm assuming the backend is going to be very similar in terms of how

01:26:38 ◼   ► How does Photos on iOS know what photos you have, and how does it get little thumbnails

01:26:41 ◼   ► for them, and are they all on your phone and all that good stuff?

01:26:45 ◼   ► So I'm optimistic that what they do with Photos will be a good learning opportunity for when

01:26:50 ◼   ► they have to do something similar to iTunes later.

01:26:53 ◼   ► That's a big use of "when" when the real word might be "if."

01:26:57 ◼   ► It's got to be "when."

01:26:58 ◼   ► What would it be?

01:26:59 ◼   ► 500 years?

01:27:00 ◼   ► 1,000 years?

01:27:01 ◼   ► What are you willing to agree to?

01:27:02 ◼   ► Everyone always wants to push it out.

01:27:03 ◼   ► Seriously, though, this is actually a mental exercise, because you feel like it's not imminent,

01:27:05 ◼   ► It's not imminent, right?

01:27:07 ◼   ► But everyone agrees that on a long enough timeline something has to happen or Apple

01:27:11 ◼   ► will be out of business.

01:27:12 ◼   ► And so it's like, do you assume iTunes lasts until Apple goes out of business?

01:27:15 ◼   ► What timeline are you comfortable with?

01:27:17 ◼   ► Like keep shrinking it until you get a feel for where it...

01:27:19 ◼   ► Because if you can't bring it down to like, well, iTunes will be in its current form until

01:27:24 ◼   ► Apple goes out of business, and I believe that will happen in 200 years, it's a pretty

01:27:27 ◼   ► good bet that you are not factoring in all information available because that's a little

01:27:32 ◼   ► bit crazy.

01:27:33 ◼   ► So just what do you think,

01:27:35 ◼   ► what kind of range do you think is reasonable?

01:27:37 ◼   ► - Well, again, I think it's much more likely

01:27:40 ◼   ► that they're gonna stick with the current

01:27:42 ◼   ► iTunes architecture and not break all this stuff out,

01:27:45 ◼   ► not do crazy UI rewrites and everything.

01:27:48 ◼   ► They're gonna stick with that until most of what iTunes does

01:27:52 ◼   ► is no longer relevant and no longer necessary.

01:27:54 ◼   ► And then they'll do a Final Cut 10 of an iMovie rewrite.

01:27:59 ◼   ► They'll do one of those rewrites

01:28:00 ◼   ► where they delete the whole thing basically

01:28:01 ◼   ► rewrite the core 10% of it from scratch.

01:28:05 ◼   ► Right, but when does that happen?

01:28:07 ◼   ► That's a good question.

01:28:08 ◼   ► Again, iTunes does so much.

01:28:10 ◼   ► I would say, since they're still selling iPods,

01:28:13 ◼   ► those are still doing not great, but they're still

01:28:16 ◼   ► selling them.

01:28:18 ◼   ► They still have certain things with iOS devices

01:28:21 ◼   ► that are using iTunes.

01:28:23 ◼   ► I think there's going to be some future iOS device or version

01:28:28 ◼   ► of iOS that doesn't sync with iTunes at all.

01:28:31 ◼   ► I think that is gonna be when they do this.

01:28:35 ◼   ► And so when might that be?

01:28:37 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe five years?

01:28:40 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think it's gonna be shorter than that.

01:28:42 ◼   ► - No, everyone likes the round numbers.

01:28:44 ◼   ► But five years is reasonable, I think.

01:28:45 ◼   ► I wasn't gonna even go longer than that.

01:28:47 ◼   ► But here's the easy way to get rid of the iPod requirement.

01:28:50 ◼   ► And I think this is probably, if iPods stay around,

01:28:53 ◼   ► I think this will happen sooner rather than later,