62: Journey Would Be Wasted On You

0:00:00You think if we wait another decade, this 90s musical will wrap around and become awesome,

0:00:06like the 80s music did, or will that just never happen?

0:00:12As I always do, I listened to this show last week, and I kept waiting for myself to make

0:00:16a point that I meant to make during the show, and it's conceivable that I stopped paying

0:00:21attention for three seconds and missed myself saying this, so if I'm repeating something

0:00:26I said in the very last show, I apologize.

0:00:29So to be clear, you are following up with your theoretical past self.

0:00:33Yeah, like I mean, I didn't have, you know, I don't have notes or anything, but when we

0:00:36were talking about PSEL, I'm like, this is one of the major points I want to make, and

0:00:40it's about scaling, which we also talked about in the last show, and I don't know how I could

0:00:44have possibly managed to miss it.

0:00:46But just in case, anyway, one of the innovations that the company that makes the PSEL thing

0:00:53is supposedly bringing to the table is the ability to solve this problem that we discussed

0:00:58in the last show, we're just sort of solving for what signal needs to be sent out by all

0:01:05the various towers so that the interference combines to make exactly the right signals

0:01:10in exactly the right place. So not just for one phone, but for two, ten, five, a thousand,

0:01:15whatever. Every single one of those, all the towers that are transmitting that could possibly

0:01:20be overlapping and interfering with each other, need to do so in such a way that every individual

0:01:24phone gets exactly the signal it's meant for it in exactly the spot that the phone is.

0:01:30And that, as you can imagine, requires fast communication between all the nodes, but also

0:01:35a lot of processing power.

0:01:36And the supposed innovation that the companies bring—I think Artemis is the name of it—that

0:01:41the companies bring is the ability to solve that problem.

0:01:44"Hey, everybody, what signal do all these towers need to put out so exactly the right

0:01:47signals go in exactly the right places?"

0:01:49To solve it in real time, scaling linearly with the number of phones.

0:01:54So instead of, "Oh, we can solve for two phones or three phones, but as we go up to 10 phones,

0:01:58then it becomes like 100 times harder to solve.

0:02:01And if we go up to 1,000 phones, it's like a million times harder to solve, and there's

0:02:03no way we could do it."

0:02:05Supposedly they have a system where they can just add computers in a more or less linear

0:02:09fashion to support more phones within the cell area.

0:02:14And so that's what allows this system to be possible, that they're saying, "We have the

0:02:20computing capability to do this.

0:02:21We have the communication infrastructure to do it.

0:02:23And we have come up with a way to solve whatever this problem is, to solve for the output that

0:02:30all these towers need to put out to make constructive interference in just the right way.

0:02:36And we can do it linearly.

0:02:37Because if you couldn't do it linearly, you can imagine that maybe it would work for like

0:02:41a trade show or something, but for an entire city with thousands upon thousands of cell

0:02:45phones, if it didn't scale linearly, you've got big problems in terms of computing power.

0:02:50And so that is one of, perhaps the most important claim, that and the ability to do with existing

0:02:54cell phones over existing LTE networks without requiring special hardware on the handsets.

0:02:58Those two things are the two things that make P cell possible, again, according to the claims.

0:03:03We'll see how it shakes out.

0:03:05All right.

0:03:07And the next bit of follow-up was actually for me for once.

0:03:10It doesn't happen often, but it does occasionally happen.

0:03:13Last episode at the end, I was discussing, or John and I, and occasionally Casey making

0:03:17vinyl references, we're discussing scaling and the difference between scaling and performance.

0:03:23And in it, I discussed how when I'm writing web apps, I don't use database joins. In fact,

0:03:30I don't use them in local apps either, but that's more because of my framework. Anyway,

0:03:35so I don't use database joins and the reason why I don't use database joins is for various

0:03:40scaling concerns and basically to keep my options open for splitting up that database

0:03:44in the future and also to shift as much work as possible onto the

0:03:48easy and cheap to scale web/application servers

0:03:52and leave the hard and expensive to scale database server with as light of a workload

0:03:56as possible. Anyway, so I got a bunch of feedback on

0:04:00that from a lot of people. A handful of people who agreed with me and a whole bunch of

0:04:04people who disagreed. The people who agreed are typically people who had

0:04:08done it before, who had worked on large

0:04:12large scale applications before who had seen these exact problems and solved them in the same way.

0:04:17So of course they would agree because they did it the same way themselves.

0:04:22The biggest argument against my technique of not using joins was that

0:04:26we've never needed that in our organization or in our project, or I've personally never needed that in my project.

0:04:33So you might as well use database as much as you can and when you need it then you cross that bridge.

0:04:42And to me, I wrote a quick thing on my blog,

0:04:44so I'm not gonna go too far into it,

0:04:45but basically I think that's kind of the wrong angle

0:04:48to approach scaling questions from.

0:04:50Scaling is constantly asking yourself, then what?

0:04:55So, okay, you have this, so far you have all these things

0:04:59on one server because that one server is enough.

0:05:01But then what happens when it's not enough, then what?

0:05:04And scaling well and building scalable systems

0:05:08means trying to anticipate some of those

0:05:11than what scenarios.

0:05:12And having a decent answer for it

0:05:14that's not gonna involve rewrite half your code

0:05:17and comb through your whole code base

0:05:19and make sure you aren't using joins anywhere anymore

0:05:22or rewrite, 'cause if you think about,

0:05:25not only is that a ton of work,

0:05:27and it could potentially introduce tons of bugs

0:05:30if you haven't written this way from the beginning,

0:05:33but also you'd probably be doing that

0:05:36under incredible pressure and time constraints

0:05:39because you're probably doing that because you hit

0:05:41an oh crap moment in your scaling and you realize,

0:05:44oh wait a minute, I've added the most RAM to this

0:05:47than I could possibly add and it's not helping.

0:05:50Or this, I've done everything I can with one box

0:05:53and it still isn't enough, what do I do?

0:05:56And if you don't plan for those,

0:06:00and obviously this is all qualified with,

0:06:04to an extent or within reason.

0:06:06You don't have to plan to be the next Facebook

0:06:08because you probably won't be.

0:06:09And if you do become the next Facebook,

0:06:11you can hire a bunch of smarter people

0:06:12that need to do all this as you get that big.

0:06:14But even just going from tiny to small,

0:06:19or from small to midsize,

0:06:21you're gonna hit some of these questions

0:06:23and you're not gonna have a giant IT staff,

0:06:26you're not gonna have infinite money,

0:06:27you're not gonna have infinite time.

0:06:29And so it's worth considering that because,

0:06:31and a lot of people would say,

0:06:34oh, this is about premature optimization.

0:06:36And premature optimization is wrong, period.

0:06:38'cause you've heard that before and it sounds good.

0:06:41And the fact is that's,

0:06:42premature optimization is not always wrong or bad.

0:06:46It's a trade-off.

0:06:47You're trading, in most cases,

0:06:48you're trading some complexity

0:06:51for some or a lot of performance.

0:06:53Or in the case of scaling,

0:06:57options in the future for better scaling

0:07:00or easier scaling or possible scaling.

0:07:02And so premature optimization

0:07:05and designing things to be scalable can be worthwhile

0:07:09if it's relatively easy and if there's not a lot

0:07:12of major costs to it, both in time and in maintenance

0:07:16and limitations in the app and other things.

0:07:19Like if it's relatively easy to make better decisions

0:07:23that make your app more scalable the whole time

0:07:25you're designing it, you should do it

0:07:27because it's like a best practice.

0:07:30It isn't that much more work and you might never need it,

0:07:34But when you do need it, you'll be very glad you have it.

0:07:37So I guess that's it on that topic for now.

0:07:40Do you guys have any other follow up on scaling?

0:07:42- I think there were two other threads of feedback

0:07:45on the thing.

0:07:46One were the people who were saying that it sounded

0:07:50like you were using MySQL without using

0:07:52any relational features.

0:07:53So here are a bunch of non-relational data stores

0:07:56that you could use instead.

0:07:57So there was a couple people who had that.

0:07:59And then the other one was, I think maybe it was

0:08:01just one person, but I thought it was a good point

0:08:03that we didn't get to, is that depending

0:08:05on the nature of your application,

0:08:07if you have something that's sort of non-interactive

0:08:09and trivially silo-able, you could get away with--

0:08:13you wouldn't have to worry about this join type thing,

0:08:15because all you would do is just sort of shard up by customer.

0:08:18And one customer's data would never mingle with another's.

0:08:21And at that point, then you have your entire scale,

0:08:25your entire horizontal scaling strategy

0:08:27is entirely based on divvying users up

0:08:28into smaller and smaller bins.

0:08:30And you just need some way to figure out

0:08:31user's bin is, and that could be something super fast and easily scalable.

0:08:37And then just the bins, it's like, well, if the bin is too slow, my solution is to cut

0:08:40the bin in half.

0:08:41And that point, if you do joins against the bins, it doesn't matter.

0:08:44All it does is make you have to cut them into pieces sooner.

0:08:47Obviously, social applications are not like this, where there's some sort of global awareness,

0:08:53or you're following that person's things and they're following yours or whatever.

0:08:57Most systems are not this simple, but it was a good point that it really depends on the

0:09:00shape of your system. What does the state look like in your thing? What state are you

0:09:05tracking? How is the state related to the other state? And if you're sure that there

0:09:11is no interrelations, nor will there be in the future, you can get away with just sharding

0:09:16by user.

0:09:17That's a very big if, though. And I agree. If you have something like, for instance,

0:09:23if you look at something like Zendesk or FreshBooks, these hosted applications that they create

0:09:30a little site or thing for you as the customer. And these are, by definition, very private

0:09:35things that none of their other customers ever need to access your data. In fact, it

0:09:41should not be possible for them to access your data. So it makes sense when you have

0:09:45something that is that strictly divided by user, where the users will never have to interact

0:09:51with each other or their data. It makes sense to then do that kind of sharding there.

0:09:56But if you have any kind of consumer facing

0:10:00general purpose service kind of thing,

0:10:02like there are so many options for cross data referencing.

0:10:07And if you start out with a system

0:10:12that's charted in that way,

0:10:13then first of all, that is a pretty big limitation

0:10:18you put in yourself on your development

0:10:19and it does add complexity

0:10:20and it does add management complexity.

0:10:22So that's the kind of thing that I would be very careful

0:10:26decide, if you're deciding that up front to do that from the beginning, I would be very

0:10:29careful with that decision, because that really will limit you later, and it might not be

0:10:35necessary or it might not be right, or you might have to pivot into something that has

0:10:40a little bit more data crossover.

0:10:44Even consumer-facing systems, though, I think real systems that are out there, a lot of

0:10:48the times they will take the part of their system that scales in this way and scale it

0:10:52in that way, and then use a different strategy for the interrelated, because that's what

0:10:55have to end up doing when you scale things is you're going to end up breaking apart the

0:10:59functionality of your application, which is part of the reason why you're not doing joins,

0:11:02but just like in the grand scheme of things, like maybe user information could be sharded

0:11:06up nicely by user, but then all the interrelated information has an entirely different backend

0:11:10with an entirely different scaling strategy.

0:11:12You end up, you know, it's the whole service-oriented architecture thing, you end up with different

0:11:16pieces of your application scaling in different ways, because very often it's not, there is

0:11:19no one master scaling solution for your entire app, you have to look at it in pieces, and

0:11:23like the login flow is like this, session management

0:11:25is like this, user information is like this,

0:11:27relationship management is like this.

0:11:29I mean, one of the crazy examples,

0:11:30I remember I wrote a story a while back

0:11:32about how LinkedIn had a fairly standard looking back end

0:11:35except for the part that handled all the relationships

0:11:37and that had to be on a server where it was all in memory.

0:11:40And I remember reading that and feeling bad for them

0:11:41'cause it's like, you know,

0:11:43that's like a built-in time bomb for scaling.

0:11:45Like they're racing more as law to see

0:11:48will the relationship information in LinkedIn

0:11:52get big faster than we can buy machines,

0:11:54faster than the amount of RAM

0:11:56we can stuff into a single machine.

0:11:58And so that's kind of an unfortunate thing,

0:11:59but it's obvious they didn't use that same scaling strategy

0:12:01for the user information,

0:12:02it was just for the relationship information,

0:12:04which is another system.

0:12:05And then one more thing, that's the then what question.

0:12:08One of the then what's that you haven't asked

0:12:11and didn't have to ask for a Tumblr,

0:12:13I guess probably will never have to ask

0:12:14for any of your applications,

0:12:15but I think a lot of people thinking about

0:12:18the then what's should consider

0:12:19is the idea of making database accesses from essentially a web

0:12:26application, or any application for that matter,

0:12:28like the code that is running your thing,

0:12:30it connects to a database.

0:12:32Very often in these large applications,

0:12:34they need to find somewhere to scale.

0:12:36They have to put a layer in between there.

0:12:38So you want some kind of data access layer

0:12:40that does not connect to the database to get information.

0:12:43And so if you're using something like, what is it,

0:12:45FC model or whatever you're using,

0:12:46or any of these things that basically you're

0:12:49you're putting SQL in your code somewhere, right?

0:12:52And you're like, well, it doesn't matter.

0:12:53You don't see the SQL.

0:12:54It's all abstracted away, but essentially what you're making

0:12:56is a front end to do SQL queries for you.

0:12:58Like if I needed to, I could swap that out

0:13:00for something that didn't talk directly to a database,

0:13:03but it would be kind of painful.

0:13:05And so if you make a data access layer

0:13:07that is agnostic to the destination,

0:13:09either you make it work over HTTP from the very start

0:13:11and then have sort of a web service back end

0:13:14that gets you that information, you're like,

0:13:15well, that seems like it's gonna be slower

0:13:17and it seems like a waste of time

0:13:19and I'm never going to need to do that, maybe you're right.

0:13:20But in my experience, a lot of applications,

0:13:23one of the first things they run into,

0:13:24even if they have perfect horizontal scalability

0:13:26in terms of sharding users,

0:13:27'cause it's that type of thing.

0:13:28Say it's like a B2B business where you're always,

0:13:31you know, your customers do want their things to be solid.

0:13:34Like, oh, it's no problem.

0:13:35Well, eventually you'll run into the realization

0:13:37that most, especially if you're using a relational database,

0:13:39most relational database products are not made

0:13:42to support the number of connections

0:13:43that are anything close to sort of the scale

0:13:45of users on a website.

0:13:47And so you have to conserve those database connections.

0:13:49You need some sort of, I mean,

0:13:50they have database connection pooling,

0:13:51all the other strategies, but in general,

0:13:53if you divorce your application as much as possible

0:13:55from where it's getting its information,

0:13:57even if that information is in a database now,

0:14:00having some sort of transport layer in there,

0:14:02like even something as dumb as HTTP for some kind of,

0:14:04again, service-oriented architecture type of thing,

0:14:06that seems terrible for performance,

0:14:09and often is much worse for performance.

0:14:11And that's why people say, no,

0:14:13Casey's probably, he was complaining about

0:14:15having to make a round trip to the database for multiple--

0:14:18imagine if you had to make an HTTP request or something,

0:14:20and then that something would potentially go to a database.

0:14:22That's even more overhead.

0:14:23And yes, you are sacrificing performance and complexity

0:14:26for along an axis that you think you might need to--

0:14:30if that then what says, OK, well, we're

0:14:35out of database connections, then what?

0:14:38Or having the application connect directly to the database

0:14:42is a security concern or a networking issue or whatever,

0:14:46then what?

0:14:47If you do everything as a service,

0:14:48then you could have multiple data centers and different--

0:14:52do everything over HTTP and do geographic load balancing

0:14:55and have all this-- it gives you more flexibility.

0:14:57So that's a then what.

0:14:59That's just one more then what that I've

0:15:01come across many times in my working career.

0:15:03And every time I've either designed or been working

0:15:06on an application that connects directly to a database,

0:15:08I've regretted it.

0:15:09But your mileage may vary.

0:15:11- No, I mean, I agree, and I'm pretty sure,

0:15:13I don't actually know this for sure,

0:15:14because when I left, I actually did leave,

0:15:17but I'm pretty sure at Tumblr,

0:15:20that was one of the big things they did

0:15:23pretty soon after I left.

0:15:24Once they got a more experienced staff in there

0:15:28who had worked on systems of that size,

0:15:30and it was, I mean, one of the reasons I left

0:15:32was that it was getting pretty far beyond

0:15:34my ability to scale it myself.

0:15:35And that's one of the first things they did,

0:15:39was moved to that kind of architecture.

0:15:41And that does make sense.

0:15:42That is one of those things again, where I'd like,

0:15:45I think you can go a pretty long way without doing that.

0:15:49And so again, and it's a premature optimization

0:15:53that you, you know, it might be worth it for you to do that.

0:15:57In my case, it almost never is.

0:16:00And it never, well, it never has been so far,

0:16:02but certainly that is something that might be worth doing.

0:16:05- I don't like that phrase though,

0:16:06but it's like it built into a premature optimization,

0:16:08premature is saying you're doing it sooner than you need to.

0:16:11These are optimizations.

0:16:12Because that's one of the vocabulary tools

0:16:16wielded by programmers and arguments.

0:16:17Like, well, that's a premature optimization.

0:16:19It's a tautology.

0:16:20You are asserting that it is premature

0:16:22by calling it premature.

0:16:24Why is it premature?

0:16:25Is it too early or is it not too early?

0:16:27That's the whole argument that we're supposed to be having.

0:16:28And you can't win that argument by pulling out

0:16:30the term premature optimization.

0:16:32That just explains what your position is,

0:16:33but then you still have to defend it.

0:16:34So all these optimizations, what you're saying, Marco,

0:16:36is like, they're not premature.

0:16:38this is in fact exactly the right time to do it,

0:16:40because my expectation is x, y, and z.

0:16:42And then you're arguing about, are we ever going to get big?

0:16:45As we scale, which thing will break first?

0:16:48You have to basically decide, what

0:16:49is our maximum possible size?

0:16:51What's the first thing that's going to fall over?

0:16:53How long can we go doing joins?

0:16:55How long can we go directly connecting to the database

0:16:57and just map them out and have arguments

0:16:59about which one you think is going to come first?

0:17:01And then you live and learn, and applications change shape

0:17:04as you go, and inevitably you make some bad choices.

0:17:06And maybe you go, oh, I thought we

0:17:07were going to grow in this way.

0:17:08but it turns out this feature ended up being much more popular, and we hit this thing before

0:17:11we hit that thing. So you're always trying to second guess what the future is. But the

0:17:14whole point is, don't do any premature optimizations. Do ones that you know are not premature, in

0:17:20fact, they're exactly the right time to do them. And to know what that is, you kind of

0:17:25have to guess, but you use your experience and your knowledge of building similar applications

0:17:29in the past. Right, like maybe instead of thinking of them

0:17:33as premature, you think of them as whether they're worthwhile or not. Anyway, and the

0:17:38The only other thing I would say about having that multi-tiered architecture is, for whatever

0:17:44it's worth, if database connections are your problem, you're in a weird situation I've

0:17:50never seen before.

0:17:52I have never seen a database be limited by its number of connections.

0:17:56Maybe that's because I write my code to disconnect when it's done.

0:18:00Connecting and disconnecting is another thing.

0:18:02A lot of, especially old school relations databases, are not designed to handle connection

0:18:06storms.

0:18:08How many users can try to connect to your database once?

0:18:10Say 100,000 users want to connect at the same time.

0:18:13What does that do?

0:18:14Versus those 100,000 users being spread out over a minute, over 30 seconds, over one second.

0:18:18How does it handle that?

0:18:20And then you're like, "Well, we'll have persistent connections."

0:18:22Okay, but now you have people tying up connections, and now you have the number.

0:18:25I see it all the time.

0:18:26Yeah, fair enough.

0:18:28That's probably more usage-specific with whatever your application actually is, and however

0:18:34your layer actually treats the database connection.

0:18:37And how good your pooling solution is, because again, relational databases, depending on

0:18:40their vintage, may or may not have robust pooling solutions.

0:18:43At Google scale, though, one of the fun things is you run out of port numbers.

0:18:47Oh, yeah.

0:18:48Right, so when they do the web sockets and they're like, you know, what do you get?

0:18:51It's like a 16-bit number.

0:18:52You get 65,000 of them or whatever.

0:18:54And at Google scale, you run into limitations in the operating system.

0:18:59You're like, well, this machine could support more connections, but we were literally out

0:19:02of port numbers.

0:19:03That's insane.

0:19:04It makes sense, but that is not something I ever would think to be a problem.

0:19:07- Yeah, well that's what Google's for,

0:19:08to find those limits and patch Linux to overcome them

0:19:12and figure something else out.

0:19:14- Yeah, I'll say the other thing,

0:19:15I never got into the level where I had to start

0:19:17tweaking kernel settings and things like that.

0:19:19Like we would use the kernel's stock

0:19:21because that was like,

0:19:23and again, I don't know what Tumblr's situation is now.

0:19:26They're way bigger now,

0:19:27especially now that Yahoo bought them.

0:19:28They're probably getting a lot of help from Yahoo's people

0:19:31and running on some of Yahoo's infrastructure, who knows.

0:19:33But certainly at the time I left,

0:19:35that we never had to get into that.

0:19:37And yeah, anyway, we are sponsored this week

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0:21:16- All right, I have a question for the both of you guys.

0:21:20And I think it applies to both of you,

0:21:23but I'm gonna start with you, Marco.

0:21:24So how do you get outside of your comfort zone

0:21:28and learn something new?

0:21:29And if you think about your history,

0:21:33You wrote Tumblr in PHP, you wrote Instapaper in PHP,

0:21:38you used MySQL for both the magazine PHP and MySQL,

0:21:42now Overcast PHP and MySQL, even Second Crack,

0:21:46which was kind of a for fun pet project,

0:21:49was PHP and MySQL, or well, I guess not MySQL, but PHP.

0:21:52How do you learn something new?

0:21:56How do you go about that?

0:21:57Do you not care?

0:21:58Does it not bother you?

0:21:59Do you just don't think it's an issue right now

0:22:01and you'll learn it when you need to?

0:22:03because the only thing, the only example that I can think of knowing your history is when

0:22:06you learned iOS development for Instapaper, but have, what have you done since then? And

0:22:11what cued me off on this was everyone saying you should look at, you know, NoSQL databases,

0:22:17and you basically said, "Well, I've got MySQL and it works fine for me."

0:22:21Well, it's a combination of factors. I mean, one is certainly that I'm not very good

0:22:26at making myself learn new things if I don't have to. You know, that's, that's just

0:22:30a character flaw I guess. No question, that's one of the factors.

0:22:34But also, there's two others. One is

0:22:38conservatism. That, you know,

0:22:42I've been on the cutting edge before. I have lived in the cutting edge

0:22:46world before. And it's a lot of work. And it's a lot of

0:22:50maintenance and versions of weird things running on your server that crash

0:22:54in the middle of the night and need attention, or hitting weird bugs that

0:22:58because you're running such a new version of things

0:23:00or such a new technology that hasn't really

0:23:02had all the bugs ironed out yet.

0:23:05So that's another big part of it that I just,

0:23:08I'm now at a point where I want to avoid

0:23:10those kind of costs if I can.

0:23:12And that's not always going to be the case.

0:23:14And sometimes it's worth the cost.

0:23:16So for instance, on overcast servers,

0:23:18I've decided to run HHVM as the interpreter layer

0:23:23because it is just so much faster than PHP.

0:23:26And what I'm probably gonna do,

0:23:27I was setting up my load balancing today,

0:23:30and I'm probably going to have two web front-end VMs to start.

0:23:34And one of them I'll run HHVM, and one of them I'll run PHP.

0:23:36So if it crashes weirdly, I'll still

0:23:38have something to take up the slack until I fix it.

0:23:42But for whatever it's worth, generally speaking,

0:23:46I try to avoid the cost of being on the bleeding edge,

0:23:50because I've decided it's not worth it.

0:23:52You might have a different calculation on that

0:23:54for whatever your application might be.

0:23:55For me, I've just decided it's not

0:23:57being on the bleeding edge. Now that being said, obviously there's

0:24:01a lot of things that I could learn besides PHP and MySQL and Objective-C

0:24:05for iOS development. There's a lot of things I could learn that are mature

0:24:09and are far from being on the bleeding edge these days. And for most of those

0:24:13I haven't simply because it hasn't yet been really necessary.

0:24:17Learning things has a big cost and I have to weigh whether

0:24:21it's worth going through the learning period, going through the period of finding all of the

0:24:25intricate details of the behavior and finding out the best ways to do things

0:24:29and learning the APIs in enough depth to use them really

0:24:33well. And I'm at that point with the technologies I know now for the most part.

0:24:37And for me to learn a whole new language or platform

0:24:41or something, it has to be worth that learning curve.

0:24:45And I've decided that for what I'm doing currently it's not worth

0:24:49that. And part of that, obviously like on the iOS side

0:24:53I don't think there's anything I can learn that would be better than Objective-C.

0:24:56I don't think there are any better things really than, you know, for what I'm doing,

0:25:00I think I'm using the best things already.

0:25:02For the website, certainly you can do a lot better than PHP these days.

0:25:07I still would argue that that might not be the case for MySQL,

0:25:11but certainly you can do a lot better than PHP.

0:25:14The main reason I haven't gone there on the website

0:25:17is not only that I don't really need to,

0:25:22to, like nothing's forcing me, and not only do I already know it and it's

0:25:26very stable, but also I just don't care that much about the website.

0:25:30I am not that interested in running cutting edge web stuff or even

0:25:34learning new web stuff that I don't really have to learn because the website to me

0:25:38is a supporting role. I am not making a web app

0:25:42that happens to have an iOS client. I'm making an iOS app that happens

0:25:46to have a web backend. And that's where my focus is. I care

0:25:50so much more about the iOS thing. That's why I want to be cutting edge on the iOS side.

0:25:54I want to be doing everything right on the iOS side. But the

0:25:58web side is really just serving a supporting role here and

0:26:02it's more important for me. I don't care about new

0:26:06web stuff. I'm very interested in learning new frameworks for iOS.

0:26:10It's not like when so much of this cool stuff that's coming around like Grand Central Dispatch and stuff like that,

0:26:14like so much of this cool stuff that's coming around in iOS, I'm really into. I love that stuff.

0:26:18I find it very interesting.

0:26:19- That's a fair point.

0:26:20- New web stuff, I just don't care about.

0:26:22I don't care about web programming.

0:26:24I really don't enjoy web programming anymore.

0:26:26I find it very boring.

0:26:27And I do it because I have to

0:26:29to build the products I want.

0:26:31So the primary goal is,

0:26:34I like client-side programming for iOS in C,

0:26:36and Objective-C,

0:26:38and I like the products that result from these things.

0:26:40And so the web code base is really just a,

0:26:43you know, supporting role for that.

0:26:44So for me, my priority there

0:26:47"Just get it done. I don't want to spend a ton of time on it. Just get it done so that it can do what I need it to do."

0:26:52And that doesn't include, like, learn a bunch of new web languages when I'm

0:26:57not really being presented with clear motivations to do that.

0:27:02Yeah, that makes sense. And I think the

0:27:07most surprising use of PHP for me isn't

0:27:12or Instapaper or Tumblr, it's second crack.

0:27:15And granted, it makes perfect sense

0:27:17that you would use something you're familiar with,

0:27:18especially for a project that's not gonna make any money

0:27:21and you're just doing for the heck of it.

0:27:23But when I write something outside of work

0:27:26and I do it for fun,

0:27:28I tend to force myself to use a different technology.

0:27:31For example, I wrote FastText, which is an iOS app,

0:27:35and I did that in Objective-C because I didn't know

0:27:37Objective-C and I wanted to learn it.

0:27:39And I have been dabbling with writing my own kind of second crack.

0:27:44Let's call it third crack for the sake of a conversation.

0:27:46I've been using Node because I've heard a lot of great things about Node and I wanted

0:27:49to try it.

0:27:50I've actually really, really come to like it.

0:27:52And it's just surprising to me, perhaps because you don't have a corporate stooge

0:27:56job so you have a lot more control over your own destiny, but it's surprising to me that

0:28:01you don't have this thirst to learn something new.

0:28:06When I don't learn a new language in about a six-month to one-year window, I start to

0:28:11get kind of crabby and angsty and anxious, and I really need to learn something new.

0:28:17And it seems like, for better or worse, that doesn't seem to apply to you.

0:28:21Well, it does, and totally.

0:28:23I get that, like, the programmer itch, basically.

0:28:26I totally get that.

0:28:27But I satisfy it in different areas than the web language I use.

0:28:32crack, you know, for those who don't know or care, the second crack is my custom static

0:28:36blogging engine that I wrote. And it's just like a bunch of command line scripts basically,

0:28:40and they're all written in PHP. And I'm probably the only person in the universe using PHP

0:28:44to write command line scripts, and that's fine. And you're right, that totally would

0:28:49have been a great opportunity to try a new language, because it was a small project with

0:28:53small needs that was not very pressing to get it done quickly and doesn't need to scale,

0:28:59really, like, you're right, that would have been great,

0:29:01and maybe sometime I will, you know,

0:29:04rewrite that, 'cause it's pretty crappy, really,

0:29:06I mean, so maybe sometime I'll rewrite that

0:29:09in something else, but, you know,

0:29:11for part of the reason why, as you said,

0:29:13I don't have a day job, when I wrote Second Crack,

0:29:16it was itself a procrastination from my actual apps.

0:29:21Like, that's part of the problem when you work for yourself

0:29:23is that anytime you're able to do work like that,

0:29:27it's potentially taking away from your quote work,

0:29:31like your official work that you're actually

0:29:32getting paid for or trying to get done.

0:29:34And I forget exactly which project I was procrastinating on

0:29:38when I wrote Second Crack.

0:29:39I'm pretty sure it was probably Instapaper,

0:29:42but I'm not positive on the timing on that.

0:29:44But either way, that was itself a procrastination.

0:29:47And so I didn't wanna spend a lot of time on it.

0:29:49So that's why I figured, let me just use PHP

0:29:52because I can get it done very quickly with PHP.

0:29:55I didn't want it to be a big time sink.

0:29:57Yeah, that makes sense.

0:29:58That being said, though, I still learn tons--

0:30:01you know, as I said, I try to keep up as much as I can

0:30:03with iOS APIs, especially low-level stuff.

0:30:06Like, for instance, with Overcast,

0:30:10I don't use AVPlayer or AVAudioPlayer.

0:30:15And I'm not sure if I've said that publicly before.

0:30:17I think I have, so this shouldn't be a big surprise.

0:30:19But I'm playing audio files, and I'm not using AVPlayer.

0:30:24And if you've ever worked on this stuff,

0:30:26you should know therefore what that means I'm using raw core audio.

0:30:30And that, like, this has been an amazing learning process.

0:30:34And probably I didn't need to do that.

0:30:38I have some reasons why I did it, but I probably didn't need to. Chances are

0:30:42you could just do, you know, I could have used debut player and saved

0:30:46myself a lot of time, but I wanted certain levels of control and I wanted to learn this

0:30:50stuff. So I made extensive use of things like the accelerate framework

0:30:54all the VDSP functions. So these functions that basically vectorize operations and use SIMD

0:31:01instructions and stuff like that to really make these things awesomely fast if possible.

0:31:06And I'm using that stuff all over the place in so many ways. And so I'm learning things like that.

0:31:10I'm learning various different concurrency strategies and doing things like the crazy

0:31:17ring buffer for the buffering of the samples that I'm reading from the files and everything.

0:31:22That stuff I love.

0:31:23That's all really interesting to me.

0:31:25This is all, you know, that's where I've been learning

0:31:28is in overcast client-side code.

0:31:31And again, the web stuff I couldn't possibly care less about.

0:31:34- So John, what about you?

0:31:35Because your day job has been, as far as I know,

0:31:38pretty much forever in Perl.

0:31:41Do you ever have that itch?

0:31:43What do you do to scratch it, if so?

0:31:46- Well, with less time for like fun programming projects

0:31:50for all the things that I've put on my own plate,

0:31:52essentially, besides my job over the years,

0:31:54whether it be writing for Ars Technica,

0:31:56which I used to do much more of,

0:31:57or podcasting more recently.

0:31:59There's not as much time for fun programming projects.

0:32:01I wrote my own little static blogging engine thing,

0:32:04but that was kind of like Marco's,

0:32:06and they were like,

0:32:07yeah, it's supposed to be kind of a fun project,

0:32:08but really it was a practical thing.

0:32:10I just wanted to get it done quickly,

0:32:13so I wrote it in Perl

0:32:14'cause I knew we could get it done quickly,

0:32:16and I intentionally stopped myself from making it good,

0:32:19Because it was like, oh, because I, you know,

0:32:21this is something I know how to do.

0:32:23I could make this thing have bells and whistles

0:32:25and be awesome and have this cool feature.

0:32:26And I was like, no, make it as dumb as possible.

0:32:28Get done with it.

0:32:29Like, because I was, at that point I was trying

0:32:31to not distract myself from writing,

0:32:32which I'm not distracting myself from writing anymore

0:32:35by making the engine, but I'm also not writing.

0:32:36But anyway, back then it was like,

0:32:37don't spend time writing the engine.

0:32:39You do this all day, it's stupid.

0:32:42Make the dumbest thing you can possibly do that works.

0:32:44And I did, and it's super dumb,

0:32:46and it didn't stop me from writing.

0:32:49But the thing that I think has made me like try new things and stuff or whatever

0:32:53is kind of the brutal nature of the tech job market starting in the mid to late

0:32:59nineties in that I've had a lot of jobs.

0:33:01And, uh, you know, like, how did I get to use, uh, MSQL, MySQL, SQLite, Oracle,

0:33:09Informix, Postgres, like you're not going to get experience in all those databases,

0:33:14probably in one place, even if you're there from the beginning, when it's like

0:33:17three guys, maybe you'll touch on one or two of them.

0:33:20But how will you ever take an in-depth survey

0:33:24of all these different database products?

0:33:26Well, you do it by having seven different jobs.

0:33:29And the first place you work, there is no database,

0:33:31so you get to pick something.

0:33:32The second place maybe uses MySQL,

0:33:33and the third place you decide to use Postgres

0:33:34'cause you think that might be fine.

0:33:36When you make commitments like that,

0:33:37they tend to last for a long time.

0:33:40Or if you're some big company

0:33:41that are already using Oracle,

0:33:42you're not gonna come in there and go,

0:33:43"You know what, I'd really like to try out Postgres."

0:33:46It's like, well, we're using Oracle, so get a different job.

0:33:51And languages is the same way.

0:33:52If you're a web developer, yes, every place I've worked has used Perl in some fashion,

0:33:56but the proportion of my time spent writing Perl is very wildly.

0:34:00For example, the company where I used Postgres extensively, a huge amount of the code was

0:34:04in stored procedures in Postgres, and at various points, I was mostly a Postgres database designer/stored

0:34:12procedure writer.

0:34:13And in FormX, we also use a lot of stored procedures.

0:34:16And if you're writing an application that is mostly,

0:34:18essentially, a JavaScript application that just talks

0:34:21to a faceless back end, the faceless back end

0:34:23is pretty boring.

0:34:25And the entire application lives on the client side.

0:34:28And so at that point, you're writing a JavaScript

0:34:30application.

0:34:31It's not Node where it's server-side JavaScript,

0:34:33but client-side JavaScript with all the frameworks.

0:34:34Like, well, then what framework are you using?

0:34:36How did I get to use all these different frameworks,

0:34:38going from plain old DOM to like prototype, Dojo, jQuery,

0:34:42Angular, Ember, Backbone, Underscore.

0:34:46How do you get to use all those?

0:34:47You're not going to get to use all of them at one place.

0:34:49Because once you start building an application on top

0:34:51of one of those, you're probably going

0:34:52to keep building it that way.

0:34:53And then you say, oh, well, jQuery is really popular now.

0:34:56So we've really picked the wrong horse

0:34:58when we decided to do everything with prototype.

0:35:00Rails did that a little bit to some degree as well.

0:35:02And it's like, well, how many thousands of lines

0:35:05are in this application now?

0:35:06Do you want to rewrite it with jQuery,

0:35:08or do we just continue plowing bravely onward?

0:35:10And so, yeah, changing jobs, usually not voluntarily,

0:35:13but more like when the company starts to go down the tubes

0:35:17or have layoffs or changes direction or whatever,

0:35:21you get a new job, that's a new opportunity

0:35:22to learn a lot of new things.

0:35:23Even if the whole time, like, I'm just a web developer.

0:35:26What does web developer mean?

0:35:27Web developer means being multilingual,

0:35:30learning, and even CSS.

0:35:31Like, well, I've got no CSS, I've got no HTML,

0:35:33I've got to keep all the specs,

0:35:34but there's all the languages on top of CSS,

0:35:35like LESS and SAS and stuff.

0:35:37you will find yourself learning new languages all the time just to keep up with the constant

0:35:42amazing churn in web technologies.

0:35:45And you will build products on whatever the web technologies are at the time that your

0:35:50company chooses or you choose or whatever, and then when you go to the next job there'll

0:35:53be a different set of technologies.

0:35:54Not that I enjoy moving jobs, I don't.

0:35:55I wish I could stay in one job for, you know, I don't like switching jobs, I find it stressful,

0:36:00but the plain fact is that I have switched jobs many times and I think that has forced

0:36:03me more than anything to learn new technologies.

0:36:06That makes sense.

0:36:07I'm a little surprised that neither of you seems to dedicate the time outside of work

0:36:15to do this, but let's also not lose sight of the fact that you have children and I do

0:36:18not. So that probably relates more than just a little bit.

0:36:22I mean, I read a lot about it. I've never written a significant program in Objective-C,

0:36:28but I feel like I know the language. And I've never written anything with any of these frameworks,

0:36:32but I know a lot about them. And it's like, yes, it's kind of like a dilettante. It's

0:36:36of like, "Well, I just read a lot of books about it." It's true. I read a lot of articles,

0:36:39read a lot of books, read a lot of Ruby Python code, read a lot of Node.js code, read headers

0:36:44from Cocoa to see what it's like. I'm not coding in those, but I feel like by surveying

0:36:49them, I don't know if it's the same thing as like, it's certainly not the same thing

0:36:53as doing a real project in it, but you kind of get a sense for what's out there, and so

0:36:56it's not entirely alien to it. Like, why am I reading these big long Rust tutorials? Why

0:37:00did I read all the documentation about Go? Because I have a project in mind because I'm

0:37:04going to use them? Probably not, but I have an academic interest in that type of thing,

0:37:07and I think reading through it gives you an idea of what it might be like to program in that.

0:37:11[laughs]

0:37:11Fair enough.

0:37:13Actually, I did look at Go recently, because everyone kept telling me I should. It does look

0:37:18really interesting, and I think if I were to go through the trouble of learning a whole new

0:37:22web language, that might be the one I would go to, because it seems like it's made with my

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0:40:23Apple did something a little un-Apple-like today, and they've announced an OS X beta

0:40:29program for regular people, for non-developers.

0:40:35This is surprising to me.

0:40:38What did you guys think?

0:40:39I wasn't so old I could remember definitively what the details of the old Apple Free developer

0:40:47program were, because Apple's developer program has had changed over the years.

0:40:53Right now it's like $99 for the iOS dev program, $99 for the OS X dev program.

0:40:59And those prices were a step down from the old program, which was like, you could be

0:41:04a select developer for like $500 a year, you could be a premier developer for like $1200,

0:41:09and there was no iOS, or maybe there was at the tail end of that, but anyway, there weren't

0:41:14separate programs for iOS and OS X.

0:41:17But there was also a free tier where you could be a developer at the free tier, and the things

0:41:21I can't remember at the free tier whether you got early seeds of the early OS 10 betas

0:41:27or not.

0:41:28Yeah, so someone can write in and tell me the exact details of what the free programs

0:41:31were like.

0:41:32But anyway, this is kind of a return to the free thing.

0:41:34It's like, hey, you can be a registered developer, kind of, sort of, not really, at Apple.

0:41:39But it's not part of the, like, if you're just interested in getting the pre-release

0:41:41software, sign up for free.

0:41:43You don't have to pay $99, because I'm assuming you're not going to write your own applications.

0:41:47You just want to get the early versions of the OS, which a lot of people did back in

0:41:50the day.

0:41:51You've got to be part of the dev program

0:41:52if you want early releases, even if you're not going to make

0:41:56your own application.

0:41:56Which is essentially why I'm always

0:41:58a member of the Mac developer program.

0:42:00I'm not writing Mac applications,

0:42:01but I've been a member of the Mac developer program,

0:42:05a paying member for just years and years now.

0:42:07Because that's how you get the early releases.

0:42:09And this is an example of the ability

0:42:11to get the early release, and I assume nothing else except for

0:42:14just the early releases, like no developer technical support

0:42:18incidents, no ability to sign apps and upload them to the App

0:42:21Store and all that other stuff.

0:42:23But anyway, for regular people.

0:42:26So you do need an Apple ID.

0:42:27You do need to agree to a confidentiality thing, where

0:42:30you're not going to talk about the features that you see

0:42:32and so on and so forth.

0:42:33You do agree to let Apple collect diagnostics

0:42:36from your computer and all the other normal stuff

0:42:38that you might imagine agreeing to if you've decided

0:42:40to run beta software to help out Apple.

0:42:45And in return, you get to see an early peak at things.

0:42:48So are you surprised by this?

0:42:51Not really.

0:42:52Because first of all, these people are not going to--

0:42:56I assume they're not going to get the same seeds

0:42:58that developers get.

0:43:00Probably Apple's going to take their time and release maybe--

0:43:02developers maybe get five or six seeds.

0:43:04And of those, Apple will pick, here's

0:43:06one seed that everybody gets.

0:43:07And then there'll be a bunch of dev seeds.

0:43:09And then one seed that everybody gets.

0:43:10Then a bunch of dev seeds.

0:43:11But nobody's getting anything until someone

0:43:13goes on stage at WWDC and shows the new features and stuff.

0:43:16It's not as if you will be seeing some secret thing

0:43:19before everyone else.

0:43:20Everyone's going to see it on stage at WWDC.

0:43:22There's going to be a build at WWDC.

0:43:24And at that point, it's like, well, who cares?

0:43:28If you get the WWDC build, you get

0:43:30the build a couple weeks after that,

0:43:31like the cat's out of the bag.

0:43:32So don't think that by signing up for this, wow,

0:43:34I don't have to pay any money, and I

0:43:35get to know all of Apple's secrets.

0:43:36You're not going to know any secrets.

0:43:39Continue to go to the rumor sites

0:43:40if you want to see fuzzy screenshots of supposed

0:43:43release things.

0:43:44This is merely a way to let you, you know, it's basically, Apple is doing this because

0:43:49I think they want wider testability of their OS and they're trying it out on the Mac because

0:43:53that probably seems like a safer bet.

0:43:55They just want more people to try stuff out so they're not surprised when they release

0:43:59something to the public because there's a very small number of developers and they have

0:44:04a, probably a less diverse set of hardware than the market at large.

0:44:08And so Apple would prefer, I think, to get wider testing of its OS.

0:44:12And not right away, in just certain builds, and you know, like, we think, you know, maybe

0:44:18two or three releases leading up to it, these are the ones that we want to test widely to

0:44:21check for, you know, driver compatibility issues or hardware issues or whatever.

0:44:26That's why Apple's doing this, because Apple thinks it will benefit to them and make their

0:44:28software more robust.

0:44:30It's not them doing you a favor to let you see pre-release software.

0:44:33is entirely, hey, we really need a wider testing base.

0:44:38At a certain point in the development of our OS,

0:44:40it comes to the point where we say,

0:44:42we know all we can know with our small set of internal testing

0:44:46in QA and our small set of developers who are using this.

0:44:49If anyone wants to sign up for a wider beta,

0:44:52we would love to know if something's

0:44:54crashing on some obscure configuration

0:44:56that we don't have here, and then we can collect the data

0:44:58and figure it out.

0:44:59And maybe they'll consider doing that with iOS eventually

0:45:02as well.

0:45:02but I think the Mac is like a safe place

0:45:04to try out this type of program.

0:45:06- Yeah, I tend to agree.

0:45:08I thought that there were a couple of interesting things

0:45:13that came from this.

0:45:14Firstly, something that occurred to me was,

0:45:17it's giving, or it's Apple participating

0:45:20in a little bit more outreach

0:45:22and a little bit more community involvement.

0:45:24I know, especially after Microsoft Build,

0:45:27there's been a lot of comparison

0:45:29between Microsoft's approach to developers

0:45:32and Apple's approach to developers.

0:45:33Now granted, this isn't a developer specific program,

0:45:37and that's kind of what I'm driving at,

0:45:39is that you would think if Apple was going to reach out

0:45:42into the public at all, in any capacity,

0:45:45that perhaps it would be to be a little more friendly

0:45:48to developers.

0:45:49I agree with what you said, John,

0:45:50that this is really about Apple doing what's good for Apple,

0:45:53as Apple always does,

0:45:55but it just seems kind of unfortunate

0:45:57that they're reaching out to the wrong group.

0:45:59And the other thing I was thinking about was, what if they've learned from iOS 7?

0:46:07And iOS 7, even though a lot of the nerds knew it was going to look really different

0:46:11and really flat, and that's really how you would describe it, but you know what I mean.

0:46:16But it has depth.

0:46:17Right, it has depth, of course.

0:46:19And clarity.

0:46:21And chamfered edges.

0:46:22Oh, wait.

0:46:23But anyway, what if Craig Hockenberry is right?

0:46:27He wrote a really great post.

0:46:28I think it was a post.

0:46:29it was a series of tweets, but either way, he wrote something recently saying, "Hey,

0:46:33there's a lot of indication that OS X is going to look pretty different in the next version."

0:46:39And his point was, "Developers, you should really start testing with some of the fonts

0:46:43we expect them to use," and so on and so forth.

0:46:45Well, what if this is queuing up, or setting up for, is a better way of phrasing it, a

0:46:51little bit more outreach to the public at large?

0:46:54So at WWDC, we see the new OS X.

0:46:57It looks really, really different.

0:47:00And rather than nobody getting to see it

0:47:02and nobody getting to play with it except developers

0:47:05or those willing to pay the $100,

0:47:07maybe they're trying to reach out

0:47:09to some of the super Apple nerds

0:47:11or maybe even like self-appointed evangelists, if you will,

0:47:14and say, "Hey, you try it out

0:47:17"and you spread the word that this isn't so bad."

0:47:19I'm standing on a whole bunch of theory here,

0:47:22but I don't know, it makes sense to me.

0:47:24Well, it's not so much that they want them to be evangelists for them.

0:47:27I think it's more like, to use an example from OS X instead of the iOS 7 thing, it's

0:47:31kind of like their attempts to handle autosave and getting rid of the save command.

0:47:35By sending out what's probably going to be a fairly significant UI overall of the OS

0:47:40to a wider group of people, they hope to find out earlier rather than later that, oh, everybody

0:47:45hates the new autosave and people want save as to be back and they want it to have a command

0:47:48key.

0:47:49thing you could have found out in a wider early beta, and that they only found out after

0:47:56the release and had to patch up in Mountain Lion. You know what I mean? Again, it's serving

0:48:01Apple. It's not just, "Hey, let's see if your thing crashes," or whatever, but also if people

0:48:06flip out. Because when all those people who are looking at rumors or screenshots see something

0:48:11like that, they may have trepidation about it, but Apple has no way to get feedback from

0:48:15them. And really, a lot of them will think, "Well, I've got to try it and see what it's

0:48:18like when I use it. But if all those people who are so enthusiastic that are reading a

0:48:21rumor site had the actual pre-release of the OS and got to try it and said, "Oh, I can't

0:48:26tell what's what." Like, for example, these buttons without borders, I can't tell whether

0:48:30they're buttons, they just look like text or, you know, that's the iOS equivalent. But

0:48:34if there's some big UI change that they're not so sure about, if they put it out to a

0:48:39wider audience, they will get, A, they'll get informed feedback instead of like, "I

0:48:42saw a screenshot that looks like it's going to be terrible." And B, presumably through

0:48:46the mechanisms that they're going to distribute, there will be official channels to send that

0:48:49feedback, not just complaining on Twitter or posting in web forums or whatever, but

0:48:54actual feedback directly to Apple where people can write 20-paragraph missives about why they

0:48:59don't like the new look and how they can't tell which window is in the front anymore

0:49:01or whatever they're going to say. You know what I mean?

0:49:04Yeah, that makes sense. I don't know. Marco, any thoughts on this?

0:49:09I'm less excited about it than most people. I mean, first of all, it's mostly because

0:49:12because I have zero interest in running a beta version

0:49:16of OS X on my Mac, zero.

0:49:18Like the only time I ever installed a beta

0:49:22was when reading list was first added to it.

0:49:26And I was tipped off that this was a thing in the betas

0:49:28and I should see it 'cause at the time

0:49:29I still owned Instapaper.

0:49:31And so I signed up with the developer program,

0:49:34paid the 100 bucks to see this reading list thing

0:49:37and see how worried I had to be basically.

0:49:42Even then, I installed it on a laptop that I didn't care that much about because it's

0:49:46so important to me that my computer work perfectly, as much as possible.

0:49:51And whenever my computer does not work perfectly, as much as possible, it's very disruptive

0:49:57and it's potentially very costly to me.

0:49:59And so I always want to make sure that I'm okay in that regard.

0:50:06And so it's just not worth me running the betas, for the most part, ever.

0:50:11I do it on iPhone because the iPhone is not that important to me.

0:50:13If the iPhone, you know, if my iPhone reboots twice a day, that's annoying, but, you know,

0:50:21oh well.

0:50:22And it's more important for me in iOS because my software runs on iOS.

0:50:25It's more important for me to get into that as early as possible and to have my software

0:50:29running on my main phone.

0:50:31When something like iOS 7 comes out that changes a whole bunch about the entire paradigm of

0:50:35the UI, the entire style, it's good to start getting that ingrained in me earlier so I

0:50:40so I can develop for it well, things like that.

0:50:43But because it doesn't apply to me on the OS X side,

0:50:48I just don't care at all.

0:50:49Now, maybe the problem was not enough people

0:50:53were testing things on the OS X side

0:50:55to make the testing really worthwhile to Apple

0:50:58or to accomplish their goals.

0:51:00'Cause you know, do you see them doing this for iOS?

0:51:03I sure as hell don't.

0:51:04Because the iOS beta is like,

0:51:06everyone who wants the iOS beta gets it.

0:51:08You know, they find some developer

0:51:10to get them to add it to their account,

0:51:11and to add their device to their account,

0:51:13and they get the beta.

0:51:14Or everyone pulls together money

0:51:16and buys a slot on someone's,

0:51:18there's all these weird things people do

0:51:20to get iOS betas these days.

0:51:22And the reason they don't really need to do it there,

0:51:26and they probably won't do it there,

0:51:28is because there's all this demand to run iOS betas.

0:51:31All that demand probably isn't really there

0:51:32for the OS X betas.

0:51:34And part of that's because Macs

0:51:36aren't as interesting as iPhones.

0:51:38There are a lot fewer people who have them.

0:51:40And part of that's just because OS X

0:51:41doesn't change that much.

0:51:43Maybe this next beta will be so different,

0:51:46you know, maybe 10.10 will be so different

0:51:49that everyone will want it, who knows.

0:51:51But I'm guessing they weren't getting enough people testing.

0:51:54And that's why you had things like

0:51:56the crazy Gmail problems in Mavericks

0:51:58that like, why wasn't that caught in a beta?

0:52:00You know, stuff like that.

0:52:01Because I'm guessing most people who are on the OS X betas

0:52:05probably have the same priorities I do

0:52:09in that they probably don't wanna run them

0:52:10on their main work machines.

0:52:12So they probably are like developers who make Mac apps

0:52:16who wanna make sure their Mac apps work.

0:52:18So they probably run them in a VM or on some other hardware

0:52:21that that's not their primary stuff.

0:52:23And then they just test their app.

0:52:25So if that's what most of the testers are doing,

0:52:27it's in Apple's best interest

0:52:28to try to broaden that tester base.

0:52:31But again, I don't see this as that big of a deal.

0:52:33I don't see how many people who are not developers

0:52:36and/or who were unwilling to pay

0:52:38for the developer account before,

0:52:39I don't see how many people are gonna really get

0:52:42who are gonna be dying to install

0:52:44what's probably going to be a boring beta

0:52:47of a boring OS on boring products

0:52:49because they're all pretty mature at this point.

0:52:50- Yeah, speaking of the Gmail thing,

0:52:52that's one aspect of,

0:52:55even if you do install the betas,

0:52:56like I have to do, of course, for writing my review,

0:52:59if that's something that you do,

0:53:02whether you're a developer, whether you're writing a review,

0:53:04or whatever you're doing with the betas,

0:53:06if you're one of the people who has an account

0:53:09like for a reason now because you're part of the press

0:53:12or because you're a developer,

0:53:13you almost never use it against your real data.

0:53:16So you're not gonna use your real email account

0:53:19or your real contacts, and with good reason,

0:53:21because if you had done that,

0:53:22you would learn eventually that some early beta version

0:53:24of an OS scrambled all your contacts and now you're sad.

0:53:27You always have usually multiple test accounts,

0:53:29multiple test iCloud accounts,

0:53:31multiple game center accounts, multiple everything.

0:53:33Like, you know, dummy email accounts, dummy contacts,

0:53:37like you don't put it on your real data.

0:53:39And so are you gonna notice that the Gmail bug,

0:53:42if all you're doing is just like,

0:53:44you're not actually sending and receiving email,

0:53:46you're not actually keeping track

0:53:47of what you're marking red and what you haven't.

0:53:48And so you wouldn't notice these bugs

0:53:50because you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, mail.

0:53:52Like why would you even go to the mail app

0:53:53unless you just wanted to see

0:53:54what the new features are, whatever.

0:53:55If you don't use it for your real email every day,

0:53:57like, huh, didn't I mark that messages on Reddit?

0:53:59It's just a bunch of test messages.

0:54:00Maybe you wouldn't notice at all.

0:54:02And I think this actually will go to a different pool

0:54:05of people, pool of enthusiasts who want to use it

0:54:07and who are going to use it with their real data.

0:54:09And I would say at this point,

0:54:11if you find this program exciting

0:54:12and you wanna use these betas,

0:54:14keep in mind that like Marco said,

0:54:15he doesn't use it on his main machine.

0:54:17I never installed beta versions of OS X on my machine ever.

0:54:21Like I have complete separation because I,

0:54:24and even when it's like, oh, this is the golden master,

0:54:26like, oh, have you installed the ultimate?

0:54:28No, I wait until I can get it from these days from the Mac App Store.

0:54:32And didn't they have a thing this most recent release where like the build number changed

0:54:36at the last minute or whatever?

0:54:37I never ever ever install anything from ADC on my real computer.

0:54:41I always get it, I used to, you know, I would always get it from the actual CD that would

0:54:44come in the mail, you know, like a retail CD or DVD, or these days the actual one from

0:54:50the Mac App Store.

0:54:51I won't even usually install the .0 release.

0:54:53Yeah, well, occasionally I'll be worried about that,

0:54:57but in the past few releases they've been pretty good.

0:54:59So if you're thinking of doing this,

0:55:01Apple has all these crazy warnings and everything

0:55:02and have it backed up or whatever.

0:55:04By all means, if you're an enthusiast

0:55:06and you know what you're getting into,

0:55:07but realize it could erase your entire hard drive.

0:55:10It could scramble all your contacts in iCloud.

0:55:11You're like, "Oh, don't worry, I got backups."

0:55:12What if it scrambles all your contacts in iCloud?

0:55:14Where are those backups?

0:55:15How are you gonna restore that?

0:55:16iCloud is very opaque

0:55:17and it's difficult to wrangle it back into shape.

0:55:19So be aware of what you're getting into.

0:55:21I imagine that since this is free,

0:55:23A lot of people are going to be like, oh, awesome, I'm going to try the beta.

0:55:25And then it will hose them in some way.

0:55:26They'll be like, wah.

0:55:27The beta hose.

0:55:28It's like, that's, it's, you know, that's, you knew what you were getting into,

0:55:32but you don't know, like your enthusiasm kind of outrun.

0:55:34And that's part of the experience.

0:55:35I did the same thing back in the day with like, you know, Mecha was a betas and

0:55:39stuff where they were just terrible and data destroying.

0:55:42And it's, that's, I guess it's okay.

0:55:46I'm trying not to generalize and say it's going to be like a bunch of enthusiastic

0:55:49teenagers destroying their parents' Macs with beta versions of it.

0:55:52but like I was that teenager, you know, why not? Why shouldn't it be? Like, I think that's

0:55:57kind of a rite of passage. But, so, basically what I'm saying is I would recommend nobody

0:56:01join this program, but I think that people will. And I think that the people who do join

0:56:06the program will be providing a different kind of testing than the existing people who

0:56:10pay $99 a year.

0:56:13We are also sponsored this week. I feel good about the sponsor reads this week because

0:56:16they printed on card stock. See?

0:56:17Oh, thanks, Merlin.

0:56:19because of a printer loading error.

0:56:22So I have nice thick sponsor reads this week.

0:56:25- PC load letter.

0:56:26- Exactly, what does that mean?

0:56:27- Office space.

0:56:29- Hey, all right.

0:56:30- Is that both of us?

0:56:32- Yeah.

0:56:32- All right.

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0:58:41We learned today about some new Thunderbolt information,

0:58:45about third generation Thunderbolt.

0:58:46And I'm not really that excited about it,

0:58:50mostly because I don't plan on getting a new computer anytime

0:58:53soon.

0:58:53But Marco, do you want to tell us about this?

0:58:57Well, there's not a whole lot known yet.

0:59:00So there's not really much to discuss.

0:59:02I might as well just save it for three years from now

0:59:05when these ports actually come out.

0:59:06But basically, Intel,

0:59:09there was some leaked Intel roadmap document

0:59:12that showed details on the next Thunderbolt version,

0:59:15Thunderbolt 3, it'll probably be called.

0:59:17And basically, we'll put the link in the show notes

0:59:20on MacRumors, basically doubling the bandwidth,

0:59:23so up to 40 gigabits per second.

0:59:25And they're gonna actually change the connector,

0:59:29which is probably gonna be interesting in the community.

0:59:31They're gonna make a smaller connector

0:59:34that also apparently will be able to charge

0:59:36up to 100 watts.

0:59:38- Yeah, that's ridiculous.

0:59:40- Underscore Kyle Cronin in the chat room

0:59:42just asked a really good question.

0:59:43Which direction does the power go here?

0:59:46Does the peripheral power the computer or vice versa?

0:59:49- I thought you asked that on Twitter already.

0:59:50You were saying you could almost power a display.

0:59:52Didn't you tweet that today?

0:59:53- Yeah, that's interesting though that,

0:59:55yeah, I didn't think about it that direction.

0:59:57All this says is, enables system charging up to 100 watts.

1:00:02Yeah, that actually--

1:00:02ADC did it already.

1:00:03Speaking of ADC, the other ADC, Apple Display Connector,

1:00:06powered the 22-inch Apple Center of Display.

1:00:09There was one cabling in it.

1:00:10No, this is the other way.

1:00:12This is the other way, though.

1:00:13This is saying that a Thunderbolt display could

1:00:17charge your laptop.

1:00:18Right, without the little dangly MagSafe thing

1:00:20like we have now.

1:00:21Somebody pointed out on Twitter also

1:00:23that this is the proposed,

1:00:25the code name Alpine Ridge Controller from Intel.

1:00:28And this is apparently like still three generations away

1:00:30or something, it's pretty far off.

1:00:32So we're probably not seeing it soon.

1:00:34It's probably a year or two at least.

1:00:37- I think it might be sooner than we think

1:00:39because like it's maybe not across the line,

1:00:43but soon enough that I think the change in connector

1:00:46is a little bit upsetting 'cause it's like,

1:00:48I know we didn't want Apple to wait any longer

1:00:50to do what it's,

1:00:52really want it to be longer for the Mac Pro. But even if it's like a one and a half to

1:00:57three year gap, like you're going to change a Thunderbolt connector already? We just got

1:01:00Thunderbolt ports on our Mac Pro. And then you're going to change them? And the difference

1:01:04is 1.5 millimeters in height.

1:01:08And I mentioned on Twitter that I had been staring at the edges of various Retina MacBook

1:01:12Pros and meetings at work, because that's what you do in boring meetings, thinking about

1:01:17which one of those connectors is going to get thinner next. Because if you look at the

1:01:20the sides, what we have is kind of a menagerie of MacBook and MacBook Pros around the office,

1:01:26depending on who got their hardware when. So you can see them slowly getting skinnier

1:01:29and you can see like, oh, the ethernet port disappears, oh, the MagSafe gets squished,

1:01:33oh, now it looks like the USB is practically edge to edge, and you can see them squeezing

1:01:36and squeezing. And really, there's headroom there, but the way Apple designs their laptops,

1:01:41there is a curved section that sort of gives you a place for you to hook your fingers underneath,

1:01:45and then there's a flat section that's perpendicular to the table, and that's where the ports go.

1:01:50And they squeeze that thing down.

1:01:52MagSafe, USB, and Thunderbolt are squeezed pretty tightly in the flat section now.

1:01:57If you want to make the laptop thinner, you could start giving up the little lip that

1:02:01you tuck your fingers under, but you don't want to make something that's as thin as just

1:02:04a flat section and flat on a table.

1:02:05You wouldn't be able to pick it up.

1:02:06You'd be trying to get your fingernails underneath it to try to pull it up off the table.

1:02:10So things have to get thinner.

1:02:12And Thunderbolt is probably, USB is probably the first one, but we already know, we talked

1:02:16about it in the past show, the new USB 3 connector that it'll be skinnier.

1:02:19so that takes care of the USB ports.

1:02:22That leaves Thunderbolt as potentially the thickest thing

1:02:24besides MagSafe, and MagSafe I think is due

1:02:26to be revised as well because MagSafe 2,

1:02:29everyone seems to hate, but due to the design,

1:02:32it's like, well, it's a big magnetic surface,

1:02:34and people hate MagSafe 2 because it's not as secure

1:02:36as the old one because they made it skinnier.

1:02:39If you make it skinnier still, won't it be even worse,

1:02:41and maybe it's time for a new magnetic power connector

1:02:44that, I mean, I don't think they want it to insert,

1:02:46but the whole point, it's supposed to come off easily,

1:02:48but I think they could use a designer revision as well.

1:02:51But Thunderbolt, it seems kind of early for them

1:02:53to be making the thing thinner,

1:02:55and I'm a little bit worried about that.

1:02:56I hope this bus comes sooner rather than later.

1:02:59I hope actually 2015 that we would see this,

1:03:01sometime in calendar year 2015,

1:03:03if only for the retina angle,

1:03:06because now we finally, in theory,

1:03:08would have bandwidth to do my desired

1:03:11quad 27-inch retina resolution display.

1:03:15It'd still depend on the new display port specs

1:03:17and everything else,

1:03:18This lists a bunch of acronyms that could, in theory, provide this.

1:03:20Like, I don't know what HDMI 2 encompasses.

1:03:22I don't even know what TBT is.

1:03:25So maybe one of those things could power a monitor at the resolution that I want.

1:03:31But changing the connectors.

1:03:33They mentioned there'd be an adapter.

1:03:34An adapter?

1:03:35You're going to get—it's like two years after Thunderbolt appears, and now we're

1:03:38already at those adapters.

1:03:39I guess I guess it's MagSafe 1 and 2 all over again.

1:03:41Well, and to be fair, I mean, how many people really have Thunderbolt devices so far?

1:03:47It's not going to be a massive problem to have all these people buy little $30 adapters

1:03:52or probably even less than that.

1:03:56The whole problem with Thunderbolt is that no one's using it.

1:03:58Yeah, the stagnation of the market is an advantage because it's like, "Well, if I had anything

1:04:02to plug in, I wouldn't need an adapter, but since I have nothing to plug in anyway..."

1:04:05I guess even Apple's monitors, even for the people that are doing what I do with the MacBook

1:04:09Air and the Thunderbolt display.

1:04:11I bet a lot of people do that setup where you have Thunderbolt plugged into your laptop

1:04:16So you don't have, it's the equivalent,

1:04:18so we don't have to have a dock, you know,

1:04:19the stupid docks, they have a PC laptop,

1:04:21so you snap the thing in and 800 connectors connect.

1:04:23We can do it all through Thunderbolt, right?

1:04:25Well, now you're gonna need, like,

1:04:27the poor Thunderbolt display.

1:04:28First it came with the MagSafe one to two adapter,

1:04:30like you used to get that with a display,

1:04:32so you could, you know,

1:04:33attach the charging thingy to the laptops,

1:04:35and now it will also come with a Thunderbolt

1:04:37one to two adapter.

1:04:39(laughing)

1:04:40- For what it's worth though,

1:04:41ever since the Thunderbolt display came out,

1:04:43I have lusted after it,

1:04:44and I'm way too cheap to buy one,

1:04:46but the thought of not having to have,

1:04:49I don't know, four or five or six cables to plug in

1:04:52every time I plug in my computer when I get home

1:04:54and only have two just sounds awesome.

1:04:57And to bring this down to just one,

1:04:59if we're reading this right and the power would flow

1:05:03from display into laptop, I mean, that sounds great.

1:05:06It genuinely, genuinely does.

1:05:07- The problem is that one connector's

1:05:09probably gonna be crappy, 'cause I can tell you,

1:05:11we don't disconnect our laptop a lot,

1:05:13but I've done it enough that every time I do it,

1:05:15it does not feel like a robust,

1:05:17oh, you can connect and disconnect this 8,000 times

1:05:19and it'll be fine every time I do it.

1:05:20I'm so conscious of the potential number of connects

1:05:24and disconnects this cable has in it

1:05:25because there's a little chip in that thing

1:05:26and it's like a long stiff thing

1:05:28sticking out of the side of your laptop.

1:05:30It's not as, you feel like I can plug and unplug

1:05:33the lightning port in my iPhone forever

1:05:35and I feel fine about it until maybe the cable will fray

1:05:37but whatever, I'll get a new one.

1:05:39The Thunderbolt thing going into the side

1:05:40especially MacBook Air, feels pretty perilous,

1:05:44and I have little faith that the 1.5 millimeter

1:05:46thinner version will feel any less perilous,

1:05:48unless they invert it and do like a lightning-style

1:05:50connector, but I'm not holding my breath.

1:05:52- Well, I've read somewhere, maybe this is just

1:05:54somebody's reaction to this, but I did read somewhere

1:05:56that maybe one of the reasons they were redesigning

1:05:58the connector is that the new one really isn't that great,

1:06:01that it does fall out easily,

1:06:03or it becomes slightly pulled easily,

1:06:04and there's really, like there's no part of its design

1:06:08that's really high friction, or no little locking

1:06:10ball bearings like the Lightning has or anything like that.

1:06:12So it's, I've never felt that Thunderbolt

1:06:16things were secure.

1:06:17I mean, I mostly just use it like for ethernet.

1:06:19- Yeah, that feels precarious, right?

1:06:21- But yeah, exactly, exactly.

1:06:23- All right, this is a little bit random,

1:06:26but I keep meaning to ask you when we were asked on Twitter,

1:06:30what's the Overcast update?

1:06:31- I'm almost in beta.

1:06:35That's basically it,

1:06:36which is probably what I said last time,

1:06:37but I'm way closer this time.

1:06:39Today I was writing the directory to give you some idea,

1:06:42making the ad podcast thing work more than just search.

1:06:46That's what I'm doing right now.

1:06:49It's getting close, the login thing is done,

1:06:52all the account stuff is done.

1:06:54Yeah, getting there, that's about it.

1:06:58It isn't that interesting right now.

1:06:59- That's fair, I just don't think we talked about it

1:07:02in a while, that's quick and easy.

1:07:05Are iPad sales leveling off?

1:07:08There's been a little bit of chatter about this lately.

1:07:10- Yeah, this I wanted to talk about.

1:07:12So there was this post by, oh boy.

1:07:17- Go ahead, John, save Marco.

1:07:20- Please.

1:07:21- Jean-Louis Gasset.

1:07:22- Thank you so much.

1:07:23All right, so he wrote this post,

1:07:27which we'll link to in the show notes,

1:07:29basically saying or suggesting that iPad sales

1:07:32have or are about to be revealed to have leveled off.

1:07:36And then Gruber linked to it

1:07:37and added his own commentary as well.

1:07:40And so the theory here is that maybe iPad

1:07:43and overall tablet sales are not doing as,

1:07:46they're not growing as well as everyone expected.

1:07:49And maybe tablets have been overestimated

1:07:54and maybe the expectations of tablets have been too high.

1:07:58So I wanted to talk about this

1:08:00because I personally have really had trouble

1:08:05making my iPad useful to me.

1:08:07And I've heard so many people who that's not the case for.

1:08:11So many people are finding incredibly interesting,

1:08:14creative ways to use their iPad to get all their work done

1:08:16or just bring their iPad when they go on trips

1:08:18and not bring a laptop or whatever else.

1:08:20And I have not had that experience at all.

1:08:24I mean, and part of that's just 'cause the work I do,

1:08:26you know, being a lot of programming and stuff like that.

1:08:28But even things that aren't programming,

1:08:30I find myself, when I'm on the iPad,

1:08:33I find myself like saving things

1:08:35for when I go back to my Mac because it'll just be so much faster and easier to do it

1:08:38there.

1:08:39You know, for me, the limitations of iOS work on a phone. The limitations of how apps are

1:08:46so incredibly isolated from each other and so multitasking is very limited. There is

1:08:52no like, you know, the document model of iOS where you don't have your files, you just

1:08:58have each app and it has its own little silo of data. You know, all that stuff makes it

1:09:03very hard for me to work the way I want to work.

1:09:07And so I have not found the iPad to be very useful,

1:09:09and in fact I hardly ever use mine.

1:09:11I have stopped buying every version of it,

1:09:14even for developer testing purposes.

1:09:17Now that I have the Retina Mini,

1:09:19and my wife has the iPad Air,

1:09:21I really can't see us buying the next ones

1:09:23that come out either,

1:09:24'cause these are gonna be fine for a while.

1:09:26- Yeah, I'll remind you of that.

1:09:27- Sounds like you need an iPad Pro, Margot.

1:09:30(laughing)

1:09:31And so I wonder, how many people is this the case for?

1:09:35So for me, what I've found,

1:09:37and this is why I think the iPhone lineup

1:09:40might make this more interesting,

1:09:42I've found that there's things that a phone does well,

1:09:47and the iPad does most of those things well,

1:09:49but the things that the phone does poorly,

1:09:52the iPad doesn't do a lot of them much better.

1:09:56And the iPad is worse than the phone in a few major ways.

1:09:59Number one, it is not always with you.

1:10:01Your phone is always in your pocket.

1:10:03Your iPad, you might not have it with you.

1:10:05In my case, I almost never have it with me.

1:10:08'Cause it doesn't fit in clothing or jacket pockets

1:10:11and I don't carry bags big enough for it

1:10:12most of those places I go.

1:10:13So, you know, the phone is always with you

1:10:17and your phone always has a data connection for most people.

1:10:20iPads, yes, you can get them with data connections

1:10:22but it's not the common case, I don't think.

1:10:26And even if you have data connection,

1:10:27like I feel kind of bad paying 20 bucks a month

1:10:31for this data connection that I hardly ever use,

1:10:33but my iPad becomes even less useful if I don't have that.

1:10:36But I'm not happy about that.

1:10:38Most people just don't get data connections

1:10:40or data plans for their iPads.

1:10:42And so, you know, that major difference

1:10:45between always being with you

1:10:47and always having a data connection,

1:10:50that actually makes the iPad even less useful for me

1:10:53than it normally is.

1:10:55And so I have to wonder, like, you know, I've said before,

1:11:00I don't think it's wise to ever bet against the smartphone.

1:11:03I think the smartphone is an amazing ideal

1:11:08and it's like the intersection of the best of so many things

1:11:11and it's so good and it's so useful

1:11:13and there's so much potential in the smartphone.

1:11:16For me, if the smartphone had a little bit bigger screen,

1:11:19which it's probably about to,

1:11:21which in the non-Apple world, that's old news,

1:11:25and they've had big screens for years,

1:11:28I really don't think I'm gonna have a use for an iPad

1:11:32at all.

1:11:34Even today, if my iPad got stolen today,

1:11:37please don't come steal it, but if it got stolen today,

1:11:40I'm pretty sure I would not replace it.

1:11:43And so, but you know, if my, like my phone,

1:11:47the combination of a phone and a computer

1:11:49is so great for me and I'm wondering, you know,

1:11:52whether the iPad is really necessary long term

1:11:55as a product category and whether it's succeeding

1:11:57long-term as a product category, or whether it will become more of a narrow niche product

1:12:02as most people realize that a phone and maybe a computer is good enough.

1:12:08So I would like to argue with everything you just said.

1:12:12Cool.

1:12:13So I had an iPad One.

1:12:16I had an iPad 3rd gen, so the first Retina iPad.

1:12:20And now I have what I like to call the RetinaPad Mini, which drives Stephen Hackett nuts, which

1:12:25which makes me want to call it that even more.

1:12:28And I got the RetinaPad Mini with LTE for the first time.

1:12:32I'd always had WiFi-only iPads,

1:12:34and this one I got with LTE.

1:12:36I got a Verizon RetinaPad Mini,

1:12:38and then right around the time I got it,

1:12:41T-Mobile started doing that crazy thing

1:12:42where you can buy a SIM for $10 one time,

1:12:46and then they'll give you 200 megs of data for free

1:12:49every single month.

1:12:51And the idea is, or I presume the idea is that

1:12:54It's a gateway drug to get you to pay T-Mobile for data.

1:12:58Well, what I found is the combination of moving from big iPad to iPad mini,

1:13:06as paired with this T-Mobile plan that really, quite honestly, gives me enough

1:13:11data for pretty much any usage I would want away

1:13:14from a wi-fi hotspot like a friend's house or family

1:13:17member's house or at home or work, the combination of having an LTE iPad

1:13:22with just a little bit of data every single month and having it be an iPad Mini made me fall in love

1:13:30with this iPad Mini so much more than I did my prior iPads, which I kind of went in and out of

1:13:37love with. I would use them a lot, then I wouldn't use them at all. Then I would use them a lot,

1:13:40not at all. And I love my iPad Mini. And I wonder if, I wonder if the, by virtue of it having LTE

1:13:52And either if I could tether against my iPhone, which I can't because I'm still on the AT&T

1:13:57Unlimited plan, or if I had a plan wherein I could share my data with my iPad for very

1:14:04little extra per month.

1:14:06Any of these combinations or the T-Mobile thing that I've done makes me absolutely

1:14:10adore my iPad.

1:14:11And generally speaking, when I travel, I don't bring a computer with me unless I'm traveling

1:14:18for work.

1:14:19And in fact, we were traveling all of last week.

1:14:23And the only reason I had a computer with me

1:14:25was because I had to record the podcast

1:14:27while we were on the road.

1:14:28And if it wasn't for that,

1:14:29I would have left the computer at home.

1:14:31So it's funny because everything you just said,

1:14:34it makes sense to me, but I like my iPad

1:14:37for all the reasons you don't like your iPad.

1:14:40I know, John, what do you think about this?

1:14:43- I think the thing that's holding the iPad back

1:14:45is two aspects.

1:14:46One is that, as I said in past shows when I was talking about the iPad Pro, if the iPad

1:14:53wants to take over more of the functionality currently occupied by PCs, it has to expand

1:14:57its ability to do the things that PCs can do in some vague, as yet unspecified way,

1:15:03possibly having a larger screen, possibly better multitasking, possibly better document

1:15:08management, better inter-application communication, all the things that we discussed, right?

1:15:11So that is, it's like, okay, well, what can you do with that?

1:15:13Well, the PC market is not as big as the phone market.

1:15:16Phone market's growing.

1:15:17PC market, I think, is either growing slowly

1:15:20or possibly shrinking.

1:15:21So say the iPad takes over some portion of that.

1:15:25That still doesn't get you the kind of growth

1:15:26that people are expecting from it.

1:15:28It's still like gangbusters, but that's one area

1:15:31where it probably has to move

1:15:33if it wants to get some growth.

1:15:34And the other area is it's gotta come way, way down in price

1:15:37because what it's competing against is psychologically,

1:15:40if not in actuality,

1:15:41competing against cell phones which are free. And they're not free. Like, "Oh, they cost thousands

1:15:47of dollars a year for your cell phone plans, and iPhone's incredibly expensive." All of that is

1:15:50true. But psychologically speaking, cell phones are practically free, because most people in

1:15:56first world countries feel like they need to have a cell phone, and eventually all cell phones will

1:15:59be what we currently call smartphones. And it's like, you know, it's not free because it costs

1:16:05a lot of money, but people's like, "Well, I have to have a phone." Right, like the tablet is

1:16:08is competing against nothing. If you don't buy a tablet, you will spend zero, because

1:16:16no one's going to say, "Oh, you know what? I'm going to replace my phone with a tablet."

1:16:19Well, that's the phablet phenomenon, right? But yeah, what they're competing against is

1:16:25they consider a phone as like, "I have to pay for that. That's a sunk cost, and that's

1:16:30basically free. Now you're telling me I've got to pay more?" And the thing is, if they

1:16:34have some task they need to do that is just not convenient or possible to do on even a

1:16:38very large phone. Their choice is a PC or a tablet, and PCs are traditionally more expensive,

1:16:44but tablets, especially Apple's tablets, are still pretty darn expensive. If Apple could,

1:16:49say the Retina iPad Mini was $99, just throw out some fantasy scenario there, there's no

1:16:55doubt that that would move the needle on sales. And even if you think, "Well, I'm not sure

1:17:00how I'm going to use this, and I'm not sure how that would shake out," but I just think

1:17:05The idea that every single home that has a smartphone would also have an iPad just hanging

1:17:10around just to be that thing that, like the modern, the future world equivalent of a magazine.

1:17:15I'm just going to sit on the couch and read a magazine.

1:17:17Well, you're not going to read a magazine.

1:17:18You're going to look at webpages on your iPad.

1:17:20Or I'm just going to go up to my room and watch some Netflix or stream something from

1:17:24my DVR or whatever.

1:17:25Like the idea that just having a flat screen, even if it never leaves the house, it's just

1:17:29a convenient thing to have around the house.

1:17:31and I think the uses of it are fine,

1:17:33but when it costs $700, you're like,

1:17:35do I need one of those Future World things, $700 worth?

1:17:38No, I don't, even $500.

1:17:40And I think they'll sell a lot more than

1:17:43if they go down in price, and I guess there's three things.

1:17:45The final thing is that many people have mentioned,

1:17:48they're just a little bit too,

1:17:50they're just a little bit too good so far.

1:17:51I know so many people who are using iPad 1s

1:17:53and see no reason to upgrade.

1:17:55That is the, again, they're competing against the phone

1:17:57where there's many reasons to upgrade

1:17:58because of the subsidies and all the other things

1:18:00or whatever, like, it's tough.

1:18:02First of all, they don't feel like they should,

1:18:03'cause they say, "Well, I spent $500 on an iPad,

1:18:05"I'm keeping it for years."

1:18:06And the second thing is, well,

1:18:08I guess unless games stop working,

1:18:11they don't care if they don't run iOS 7.

1:18:13I guess they do kind of cycle down to the kids

1:18:15and let them use it, but it's just,

1:18:17they are incredibly long-lasting and, I mean,

1:18:20surprisingly durable for a $500 piece of glass.

1:18:22You would think they'd all be destroyed by now,

1:18:24but I've seen so many go through the grubby paws of kids

1:18:27and just, they survive.

1:18:29In a home environment, those things survive

1:18:30for a long period of time.

1:18:32And so, if there were $99, you'd be like,

1:18:34"Eh, every year or two I'll get a new one

1:18:35"of these flat things."

1:18:36'Cause it's what we use to like, you know,

1:18:38it's what we use to like read stuff

1:18:40and read, you know, read web pages.

1:18:42It's better than reading it on my phone.

1:18:43I won't drain my phone's battery.

1:18:44And I use it to watch a video

1:18:45'cause it's a little bit bigger screen.

1:18:47And if you could get the price way down,

1:18:49and if you could get a little bit more capable,

1:18:51that would make sure that there's an iPad

1:18:53in everybody's home.

1:18:54And that would also make sure that when people go on trips

1:18:57So maybe I don't need to buy a laptop and I can eat into the PC market by just saying

1:19:01I can take this with me because I can do more or less everything I need to do.

1:19:04And you would say, when do you reach your limit?

1:19:06Can developers do everything they need to do?

1:19:08Probably not, but can you keep going down?

1:19:10Can people do regular word processing work?

1:19:12That's still pretty annoying.

1:19:13That's where the iPad Pro comes in.

1:19:14So it's not like Apple needs to like, "Hey, you need to sell your iPads at a loss right

1:19:18now."

1:19:19But I think just the natural...

1:19:20Take a look at the Apple TV.

1:19:22It took a while for the Apple TV to get down to $99.

1:19:26The iPad is going to take even longer because that screen is tough to really push down much

1:19:30farther, but give it five, seven years.

1:19:34When Apple has tablet things that span the same range as iPods do, I think there is a

1:19:40legitimate reason for every house that has a smartphone to have a tablet device.

1:19:45If Apple can get its price point down, it could be that device.

1:19:47I think that's where the growth potential is for tablets.

1:19:49Yeah, that makes sense.

1:19:52The thing that I think about is what is really holding the iPad especially, but the iPhone

1:20:00and just iOS in general, what's holding it back?

1:20:04And we've talked in the past around this time last year about what's the low-hanging

1:20:09fruit for iOS.

1:20:12And I guess maybe low-hanging fruit is a poor way of phrasing it, but what's the thing

1:20:18that bothers everyone the most?

1:20:20And copy-paste is the seminal example from years back, that it infuriated everyone to

1:20:27not have copy-paste. Obviously, that had to show up quickly. Well, inter-app communication,

1:20:32I feel like we're getting to the point that we're really going to need to crap or get

1:20:35off the pot, or Apple is really going to need to. I mean, is this the—I don't want to

1:20:39get into a WWDC prediction episode, but is this the time? Is that enough to make iOS

1:20:46a little bit more powerful?

1:20:49Interapp communication itself is a phrase we throw around, it's a concept we throw around

1:20:55that we think, first of all, we all assume that iOS 8 will improve this somehow because

1:21:02there's a lot of, you can see that there's a lot of the groundwork already laid in 6

1:21:05and 7 for this. You have things like remote view controllers, things like the UI activity

1:21:09system. You can tell that they're taking steps towards allowing this. But the problem

1:21:16is that Internet communication itself does not really solve the problem. It makes some

1:21:24things a little bit better. Suppose iOS does something very similar to the contracts you're

1:21:30intents on Windows Phone and Android, which is what most developers are asking them to

1:21:35do, myself included. I think that would be great. But I think a big part of the problem

1:21:40is the document model, the file system model.

1:21:44You know, where you store your data, how you access your stored data,

1:21:49where things are

1:21:52divided, and where things are not accessible from.

1:21:56And I think that, you know, there's

1:21:59all this simplicity on these devices of not having to manage your files,

1:22:04not having to figure out where things are, not having to

1:22:06go to your parents' house and see everything's on the desktop and that their

1:22:09hard drive is "full" because they're out of space for their icons.

1:22:14You avoid all those problems, but the amount of power that that removes from usage is pretty

1:22:20dramatic.

1:22:21And I think that, more than anything, is what limits iOS from being used in more productivity-type

1:22:27roles.

1:22:28Yeah, Apple's still holding the line on that, and I think most people agree with the sentiment,

1:22:36And we just hope that, like, well, presumably Apple

1:22:40has thought of this and has some solution.

1:22:42Like, the geeks just say, oh, just show us the file system,

1:22:44and they just want to reproduce all the same problems.

1:22:46And like, yeah, that would solve it for geeks, right?

1:22:48But-- modular sandboxing, I guess.

1:22:50But for everybody else, it's like, well, siloed per app

1:22:54is simple, but it has all these problems.

1:22:56And we're all hoping for a solution that does not

1:22:59give up all the simplicity and go all the way back

1:23:02to just raw access to the file system,

1:23:03again, if only for security concerns.

1:23:06but has the benefits of being able to like,

1:23:08you know, work, even normal people seem to grasp Dropbox

1:23:13because Dropbox essentially took the file system problem

1:23:15and narrowed it down to a single place,

1:23:17kind of like the desktop, which was the old place

1:23:19that everyone, you mentioned your icon-swelling desktop.

1:23:21That was the one place that people felt comfortable,

1:23:23I just put everything in desktop.

1:23:24And then what people would do is like,

1:23:25well, I have all my crap on my desktop,

1:23:27is this the one place I know how to find?

1:23:29And I make folders on my desktop for subprojects.

1:23:31And it's like training wheels for the real file system.

1:23:34And Dropbox is like that as well.

1:23:35and it's like, it's the same as the file system.

1:23:38It's just narrowed,

1:23:39like your Dropbox is equivalent to the desktop.

1:23:40But once you start making folders in your Dropbox,

1:23:42it's like the person who finally starts making folders

1:23:44on the desktop because lots of stuff.

1:23:45And they start organizing things.

1:23:46And like, you just wanted to say,

1:23:47just go a little bit farther.

1:23:48Like the whole file system is your oyster.

1:23:50It's not just the desktop.

1:23:52- New folder one.

1:23:53- Yeah, you can put folders anywhere.

1:23:54- New folder 17.

1:23:55- Yeah, so I hope that Apple doesn't give up,

1:24:01but at a certain point, like,

1:24:04it's kind of like that, you know,

1:24:05that give up and use Table's CSS joke site from years ago.

1:24:08It's like at a certain point, it's like, well,

1:24:09Apple, you've been thinking about this for years,

1:24:11and if you really can't think of something that's better,

1:24:13at a certain point, you need to just like say,

1:24:16we failed in our ability to give you something

1:24:18that's both simpler and equally powerful

1:24:19or close to as powerful,

1:24:21and just give us back the freaking file system.

1:24:23And I do not want them to do that.

1:24:24I think that would be not only an admission of failure,

1:24:27but an actual failure.

1:24:28So I really keep hoping that they come up with some scheme

1:24:32that has the security benefits of sandboxing,

1:24:36but that lets applications easily work,

1:24:38multiple applications work on the same document.

1:24:40I mean, that's part of my whole vague,

1:24:41cloudy iPad Pro vision,

1:24:43is the idea of using multiple applications

1:24:45to make a sort of composite document,

1:24:47or work on a project that has some images,

1:24:50and some text files, and some this, and some that,

1:24:52like you would do on your Mac

1:24:54when you're doing any sort of remotely complicated project,

1:24:57without it being, you know,

1:25:00oh, I just do everything in one app.

1:25:01Like even Xcode's going that direction.

1:25:02Xcode is like, yes, it's a whole bunch of different things.

1:25:05You've got images, you've got header files,

1:25:08you've got source code, you have interface builder documents,

1:25:11you've got all this stuff, but like it's all in Xcode.

1:25:13I guess some of the image editor,

1:25:14once they embed an image editor in Xcode,

1:25:16we'll know they've really just given up.

1:25:19'Cause then they can just port Xcode 7 right to the iPad Pro

1:25:22and it's like, hey, you don't need to launch

1:25:23a separate app, all your stuff is in one place.

1:25:26- Does it seem like the iPad app library is stagnating?

1:25:31Because it seems that way to me, but because I'm not that into using my iPad, that could

1:25:36just be because I use Tweetbot and it hasn't been updated yet, or whatever.

1:25:41What do you mean by that?

1:25:42Which kinds of apps are you talking about, specifically?

1:25:44It seems to me that, again, anecdotally, so whatever this is worth, I'm not seeing a lot

1:25:51of iPad apps come out anymore that are interesting or exciting, and a lot of the previously good

1:25:58apps still either have been updated to iOS 7 and are very dated or are just on really

1:26:06slow update cycles so they're seemingly abandoned or some of them actually have been

1:26:09abandoned, some of them have been updated but have been made worse. It seems like the

1:26:14iPad was a priority for app developers for about two and a half years and now it's

1:26:20just not. And I can point to lots of, if this is the case beyond just what I'm seeing,

1:26:26I can think of lots of reasons why that might be the case.

1:26:30I've been meaning to write a blog post about this,

1:26:33but I keep forgetting to do it.

1:26:35But one of the biggest would be the App Store pricing model

1:26:40and the top list model and how that encourages

1:26:43the race to the bottom in pricing

1:26:44and very low prices made up at very large volume.

1:26:47All of that depends on there being very large volume.

1:26:52But if the iPad is not being used that much

1:26:54to buy a bunch of apps, and if instead most of them

1:26:56are being used to watch videos and browse the web,

1:26:59and we know they don't sell nearly as well

1:27:01as iPhones do already, maybe that's a big problem.

1:27:06I mean, it certainly, it seems to me,

1:27:09like maybe, like to me, one of the reasons

1:27:11why I'm not using the iPad is because, like,

1:27:13the Twitter app is better on my phone,

1:27:15the RSS app is better on my phone,

1:27:17like half the things I do on my iOS devices,

1:27:21like the iPhone, the apps I have on my iPhone

1:27:24are better than any I can find on the iPad.

1:27:26Is this just me, or is this a broader thing?

1:27:29- I think the sales numbers definitely aren't in floats

1:27:31'cause there's way more iPhones,

1:27:32but I think there's a bifurcation of applications.

1:27:34And in the beginning it was like,

1:27:36well everyone's gonna make all their apps everywhere.

1:27:37And then eventually people learned which apps

1:27:39are better suited to which environment.

1:27:41So to give an example, these days if a new game comes out

1:27:44I don't have fear that there's not gonna be an iPad version.

1:27:47And if there's anything that has to do

1:27:49with reading experience, a magazine app, a comic reader,

1:27:54something for watching video.

1:27:55There's no concern that it's not gonna have an iPad version.

1:27:59Or even anything for like a controlling application,

1:28:01like the TiVo application.

1:28:02I'm not concerned that's not gonna, you know,

1:28:04but anything that's not sort of on the go.

1:28:06'Cause on the go style apps like Twitter clients

1:28:08and stuff like that, I don't expect to find them on the iPad

1:28:11'cause those are like clearly focused on the phone.

1:28:12Anything that is clearly something you'd wanna use

1:28:14like a mobile type application,

1:28:17that's gonna be phone first or phone only.

1:28:18Whereas any application that benefits

1:28:21from having a larger screen,

1:28:22that's gonna be iPad only or iPad first.

1:28:25And so I definitely do see that split.

1:28:27And I have the same frustration and it's like,

1:28:30well, I know most of the time I'm not reading Twitter

1:28:33on my iPad, but I would like to have a universal version

1:28:36of whatever my favorite Twitter client,

1:28:37as a matter of fact I do 'cause I use Twitterrific,

1:28:39but those type of applications like Glassboard, for example,

1:28:43there's no iPad version of that and it frustrates me.

1:28:45I kind of make sense, but on the other hand,

1:28:48it's like a mobile on the go app, but it's like,

1:28:51but I'm on my iPad, I have to run that 2X thing,

1:28:54I just feel bad.

1:28:55So I just think it's kind of the application splitting

1:28:57and going to where they need to go.

1:28:58And unfortunately, some of that split is,

1:29:00if you need X number of sales to be profitable,

1:29:03forget the iPad, because there's not that many iPads

1:29:05out there, but I think a lot of it is just

1:29:07appropriateness of screen size.

1:29:09- Well, and to answer your question, Marco,

1:29:11I'm gonna kind of ask myself and then answer it

1:29:14with a different question, which is,

1:29:15what have I been excited about?

1:29:17What have I been excited about on the iPad lately?

1:29:19And I'm really excited that the 1Password iOS 7 update just came out.

1:29:24That's universal.

1:29:25I'm waiting with bated breath for a Tweetbot update for iOS 7.

1:29:32And Fantastical 2 came out, and I'm really pumped about that.

1:29:35That's about it.

1:29:36I mean, 3s came out for the iPad.

1:29:38I was excited about that too.

1:29:39But do you see what I'm saying?

1:29:41To your point, there's not a lot that's been brand new that has happened on the iPad.

1:29:46Fantastic Isle is a good example though that I've been really really really excited about

1:29:50That's happened shoot months if not around a year now. Well, I mean there's games like if you're into playing games

1:29:57I mean, there's a pretty pretty regular cycle of

1:30:00Exciting new games that are available for the iPad that come out

1:30:04I mean, it's not you know, like it's not there are tons of the games that come out

1:30:08Most of them are crappy but I'm talking about the good games like the current one is like Monument Valley and before that was threes and

1:30:12and you had things like The Room and Year Walk.

1:30:16And there's always lots of great software out there,

1:30:19games that take advantage of a large screen.

1:30:21But I think a lot of the iPad stuff,

1:30:23thinking of it as the thing you have around the house, yeah,

1:30:25it's going to be a video app.

1:30:26And through it, you're going to consume stuff.

1:30:28Or it's going to be a comic reader through which you're

1:30:29going to spend a continual stream of money on comics.

1:30:32I mean, just ask Merlin.

1:30:33Like, is he excited that there's a new version of Comixology

1:30:36out?

1:30:36No, but it's just like it's a fixture.

1:30:38It becomes part of that appliance.

1:30:39And it's an appliance through which you funnel money.

1:30:41So it's not like there's not money to be made there,

1:30:43because if you have that app and use it to buy things,

1:30:46or even just magazine subscriptions,

1:30:48it's a continual faucet of money,

1:30:51versus just like, oh, I can sell you one app for $1.99

1:30:54if I'm lucky.

1:30:55It's like, no, you'll spend 50, $100 a month on comics

1:30:58through this one app that we will continually update

1:31:00and develop, but it's not exciting.

1:31:02It's not like there's amazing new apps coming out.

1:31:04But I think there's less of that on the phone,

1:31:06with the exception possibly of music streaming services

1:31:09that you pay a subscription for.

1:31:10the phone is less of a venue for,

1:31:13I'm gonna download this one app

1:31:14and yeah, the app will be updated,

1:31:16but for the next year or two years or my entire life,

1:31:18I will continue to funnel money through this application

1:31:20'cause it's the way I get my video, my comics,

1:31:23or my games or whatever.

1:31:25- Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it also depends on,

1:31:28you know, for any, whatever app you're talking about,

1:31:30like how hard is it, how much work is it

1:31:33to maintain a separate iPad interface

1:31:35or a separate iPad app entirely?

1:31:37And for certain types of things like,

1:31:39You know, video type apps, it's a lot less work

1:31:42than something like a word processor would be.

1:31:45You know, like games, it's, you know,

1:31:48some work in the interface layout and stuff,

1:31:50but for the most part, you're getting that fairly easily.

1:31:54There's, you know, there's all these productivity apps.

1:31:58That's, it's a lot more work.

1:31:59Like, you know, I'm not even making Overcast

1:32:02for iPad when I launch.

1:32:03And, you know, maybe I'll add it later,

1:32:04but I'm launching without any iPad interface,

1:32:06even though I could just say in the P list,

1:32:09yeah, I work on the iPad, sure,

1:32:11and just let the interface scale itself up,

1:32:14but it would look terrible.

1:32:15I'd rather not do that, and so I'm not doing that.

1:32:18I'd rather do it well or not at all.

1:32:22So right now I'm gonna choose not at all,

1:32:23and then maybe I'll address well later.

1:32:26But I wonder for how many developers,

1:32:29how many developers are gonna make that call and say,

1:32:31you know what, it's probably not worth it.

1:32:33Like almost every other podcast app on the store

1:32:36that's popular at all has a dedicated iPad version.

1:32:39'Cause all of them were written like two to three years ago

1:32:41when that was a thing you all did.

1:32:43Like everyone, you had to have an iPad version

1:32:45two or three years ago 'cause it was like the hotness.

1:32:48But now, for so many types of apps,

1:32:50and a lot of apps are still fine on the iPad.

1:32:52Things that are, you know, you had games,

1:32:54probably fine, you know, as well as an iOS game

1:32:58could be doing fine.

1:32:59You know, so they're probably fine.

1:33:02Reading apps, things like ComiXology,

1:33:04you know, reading apps are fine

1:33:06'cause reading is substantially better on the iPad,

1:33:08but other kinds of things, utilities, things like that.

1:33:12It's just-- - Well, I mean,

1:33:13what about, you mentioned word processors.

1:33:16Things like ComiCology and Microsoft Word or whatever,

1:33:19there's no iPhone version of the Office apps, is there?

1:33:23I don't know, I didn't even look.

1:33:24- No, I don't think so.

1:33:25- But I mean, ComiXology, again,

1:33:27I don't know if that's universal either,

1:33:28but really, who wants to try to read comics

1:33:29on their phone screen?

1:33:30There are certain applications where the big screen

1:33:32is not only desirable, but it's like,

1:33:34I'm not going to bother making-- even for games,

1:33:37depending on what your interface is,

1:33:38sometimes the games just don't make sense on the phone.

1:33:40I mean, obviously games are highly

1:33:42motivated to get on the platform that has more users.

1:33:44But there are classes of applications,

1:33:46and I think kind of like Office-style applications

1:33:48and stuff like that.

1:33:50It doesn't make sense to make a phone version,

1:33:52because you have a certain UI in mind,

1:33:54and that UI only works minimum on the iPad Mini.

1:33:57It's just not feasible.

1:33:58It's like, why even bother on the phone?

1:34:00And I think the reverse is also true for things

1:34:03like with the podcast app. Maybe you'll find out you're mistaken, but it's like, why even bother?

1:34:07Who's carrying around their iPad to listen to podcasts while they walk their dog, right? It's

1:34:11not a scenario you have in mind. Oh, believe me, I'm going to hear from all of them.

1:34:15Oh, you will. You will. It could be that there is an actual usage scenario where having an iPad

1:34:21version is useful. It might not just be that those people made it back when it was the thing to do.

1:34:25You'll find out, I guess, with the feedback. Oh, I can think of one. What if I'm at home

1:34:29and I want to broadcast via AirPlay or something like that.

1:34:32And I don't want to use my phone for whatever reason.

1:34:35It doesn't matter why.

1:34:36I'm at home and I want to beam to something else over AirPlay.

1:34:40I would reach for my iPad before I'd reach for my phone.

1:34:43Well, you could just run the iPhone version of 2x

1:34:45like I did with Glassboard.

1:34:46It's not like you're being prevented from it.

1:34:48What is it about a podcast application

1:34:50that you would want a specific-- iPad-specific version?

1:34:54Because for podcast apps, you're not

1:34:56spending your time manipulating the UI.

1:34:58You're spending time with the screen turned off, listening.

1:35:01Sure, but I'm going to want something

1:35:04that looks good on the iPad.

1:35:05So to Marco's point, yes, I can absolutely

1:35:08get away with a 2x version of the iPhone version of Overcast,

1:35:11hypothetically.

1:35:12But I wouldn't want it.

1:35:14I wouldn't be happy about it.

1:35:15And that may make me come back to my iPhone, which, granted,

1:35:19this is a huge first world problem.

1:35:21But nevertheless, I can absolutely

1:35:24tell you that if I could listen to a podcast on my iPad,

1:35:28I would in a lot of cases.

1:35:29Yeah, I mentioned Twitter apps before, and I was kind of speaking to the general case

1:35:33where Twitter apps imagine it much more popular when you're on the go on your phones, right?

1:35:37But I do read Twitter actually a lot from my iPad, mostly because what I'm doing when

1:35:42I'm reading Twitter is following links, and when I'm following links, oh, all of a sudden

1:35:45I'm browsing the web, and I would much rather browse a web page, A, not get the crazy iPhone

1:35:49mobile version if they have some crappy iPhone mobile version, and B, just get the much bigger

1:35:53screen to read things.

1:35:56Or even if I'm going to Instapaper them from the Twitter application, browsing—it's not

1:36:01the Tweets themselves that, "Oh, you need an iPad screen to see a Tweet."

1:36:04Tweets look fine on my iPod.

1:36:05But most of the time, what I'm using Twitter for is following links that people put in.

1:36:10It's kind of my on-demand replacement for RSS.

1:36:13And yeah, I want to read those links on the big screen, or I want to watch those videos

1:36:17on the big screen.

1:36:18If someone links to a new Godzilla trailer, I'm much happier to watch that Godzilla trailer

1:36:22on my iPad than to try to look at the tiny thing on my iPod touch and have to turn off

1:36:28the rotation lock so I could rotate it so the image isn't microscopic.

1:36:32How much does this change if there's a 5-inch phone?

1:36:35We'll see, I guess.

1:36:37None of us have used a 5-inch phone, right?

1:36:39So we don't know, like, does it make a difference?

1:36:42Does it make a significant difference?

1:36:43Do all of a sudden I feel comfortable watching the Godzilla trailer, or do I still wish I

1:36:46had it on my iPad?

1:36:47I guess we'll all find out.

1:36:49who are using Android phones now already know the answer for themselves, but for the people

1:36:53in the Apple camp, I, you know, presumably we get these phones, we'll find out how much

1:36:57it really makes a difference in practice.

1:36:59See, I think it'll make a big difference for non-power users, for, I don't want to call

1:37:05them normal people, but non-geeks. And I can't cite a specific example, but I know a lot

1:37:11of like friends and family who either have been saying, "Oh man, I really hope there's

1:37:16a bigger iPhone or I left the iPhone because it never got bigger and I wanted something

1:37:23bigger.

1:37:24Now, some of these people carry phablets, which personally I think look ridiculous and

1:37:28I would not want to try to stuff in a pant pocket, but that's just me.

1:37:33And typically everything I poo-poo, I end up coming around and liking, like Apple, like

1:37:37Macs, like iPhones, like BMWs, etc. etc.

1:37:41But anyway…

1:37:42Oh, and who recommended all these things to you?

1:37:43Yeah, whatever.

1:37:44The point is, I think Marco you're right, that for a lot of people, having a much bigger

1:37:50phone will prevent the need for an iPad.

1:37:56Although with that said, I wonder, I think John was right in saying having a bigger screen

1:38:02and not hitting the mobile version of websites is really, really refreshing.

1:38:06Because in my experience, a lot of times if there's a responsive site, it will either

1:38:12be considerably better at iPad sizes or the iPad will just see the full bore desktop version.

1:38:20And I'm curious to see if a five inch or maybe even six inch iPhone comes out this

1:38:27year, what will happen with responsive sites?

1:38:31Will they just stretch the current 4, what is it, 4.3 inch version of their site a little

1:38:37bit?

1:38:38Will that be a different break point?

1:38:39And as silly as that sounds, I think that would make a big difference to me.

1:38:42I think everything's coming up iPad Pro again, because this whole—a larger phone, what

1:38:46it does is it pushes the iPad to be like, "Okay, differentiate yourself now."

1:38:51Now with the difference in size between the mini and whatever phone Apple comes up with,

1:38:55that gap is narrowed.

1:38:57What is it that you're good at, iPad?

1:38:58You're like, "Well, I've got a bigger screen."

1:39:00You're like, "Well, how much bigger?"

1:39:01Again, do people want to read ComiXology on their bigger phone?

1:39:04No, maybe not, but maybe it encroaches—it starts to encroach on some things that people

1:39:07thought they needed an iPad mini for, and they're like, "Well, I can actually get away

1:39:10with that on my thing."

1:39:11So to make a spot for itself in that in-between area that the article's talking about, that

1:39:17find a home between the phone and the laptop, maybe it has to continue to move upscale and

1:39:22to continue to encroach on PC territory and to take things away from there and to go with

1:39:26bigger screens, or maybe the mini gets scaled up and the other one becomes the pro and it

1:39:33gets even bigger.

1:39:36I think that's inevitable with phones getting larger.

1:39:38I mean, I guess it depends on how large they get.

1:39:40If it gets just a little bit larger, then not a big deal.

1:39:42But some of these phones that I see,

1:39:44it's like, is that a phone or is that an iPad Mini?

1:39:46It's really close.

1:39:48And at that point, what place is there

1:39:50for an iPad Mini in your life?

1:39:51All it is is a slightly larger phone

1:39:53that doesn't work as a phone.

1:39:54And so then if you're gonna get something at all,

1:39:56it's gonna be like, what is this tablet uniquely good at?

1:39:59It's uniquely good at reading magazines.

1:40:01'Cause I don't wanna read a magazine on my phone

1:40:02'cause it's still too small.

1:40:03It's uniquely good at reading comics,

1:40:04uniquely good at having video, because I don't want to watch a video on this little tiny

1:40:08thing. And, you know, it's uniquely good at being a multifunction word processor, email,

1:40:13handling app, blah, blah, blah, within an extendable keyboard, and it becomes the Microsoft

1:40:17Surface and like, whatever. I feel like there's a potential for it to be pushed upmarket kind

1:40:22of in terms of capabilities and size.

1:40:24Right, like, I'm not arguing that the iPad is going to go away or that it's bad at everything.

1:40:30my position, which I think you agreed with,

1:40:32'cause I think you said this,

1:40:34is that it's just going to,

1:40:36there are things the iPad is better at,

1:40:38but it's no longer going to be assumed

1:40:44that everyone who has the means to buy an iPad

1:40:46should buy one.

1:40:48That's kind of been the assumption.

1:40:49Like if you're into this kind of stuff at all,

1:40:52and you have enough money to afford an iPad,

1:40:54you should buy an iPad.

1:40:55- I think it'll be, like I said,

1:40:56I think it'll be more assumed as we go on,

1:40:58because it'll just, as the price comes down,

1:41:00Every house will, if you have a smartphone,

1:41:02I would assume you also have a tablet

1:41:04to do the things you do on tablets,

1:41:05a big tablet, not a little one.

1:41:07- Yeah, maybe, and I do think that you're,

1:41:10you know, you're positioning it as like the thing

1:41:13you have in your home and just keep around the house.

1:41:16That I think it has a better future for

1:41:19than being traveling productivity devices.

1:41:23- Yeah, see, I couldn't disagree with you more,

1:41:25but I think we're both right is the thing.

1:41:28It depends on what you're after,

1:41:29And typically if I'm on the road, I just want to browse Twitter.

1:41:32Like John was saying, catch up on RSS, do, you know, the things that people

1:41:37always say are content consumption.

1:41:39And that's all I need when I'm on the road.

1:41:40And I prefer to do that on an iPad.

1:41:42And so I think it would be great.

1:41:46I would continue to have an iPad for travel if for no other reason.

1:41:49People do want to leave their laptops at home.

1:41:52Like there still is that people want to, whether they're ready to or not.

1:41:55I don't know.

1:41:55But like, I know I like going places with just my iPad.

1:41:58And in many cases, I can pull it off.

1:42:00And there is a desire to do that.

1:42:02It's just the question of does the iPad yet fulfill that?

1:42:06Does it live up to the way you want to use it?

1:42:08And sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

1:42:10Again, if it starts to push up market a little bit,

1:42:12people still won't want to bring their full-fledged laptop,

1:42:14especially if it's their work laptop

1:42:15or they associate it with work.

1:42:17But they'll want to have a powerful tablet with them.

1:42:20- See, I think that the distinction of this idea

1:42:24of people that don't want to bring their laptops with them,

1:42:27there's two sides to this.

1:42:28One is that if it's their work laptop and it's not like,

1:42:33they're not self-employed or they are self-employed

1:42:35but they hate themselves,

1:42:37a lot of people don't want to bring their work with them

1:42:38because they don't like their work and that's fine.

1:42:40And so the work laptop has this emotional baggage

1:42:45of being your work, that you're on vacation,

1:42:48you don't want to bring this.

1:42:49But that's one side and you're never gonna get over that.

1:42:52Eventually you'll have a work tablet

1:42:53if this goes the way that everyone thinks it will

1:42:56and you won't want to bring that either

1:42:57'cause that's your work tablet, so whatever.

1:42:59That I think we can safely disregard it as a thing

1:43:02'cause eventually that will be merged.

1:43:04But the other side of it is people who say,

1:43:07I don't wanna bring this whole laptop with me.

1:43:10Laptops in the last couple years

1:43:12have gotten so much thinner and lighter and smaller

1:43:15and battery life is going through the roof.

1:43:17Laptops are getting so awesome

1:43:19that a lot of people who say that,

1:43:22they have like a two or three year old laptop.

1:43:24Well, it turns out modern laptops

1:43:26are a lot better than that. The last few years have been amazing in laptops.

1:43:30And if half of the rumors are true about what Apple's lineup is going to have in laptops

1:43:34in the near future, it's going to be even better. Like they're talking about this

1:43:38supposed 12 inch Retina Air that might not even have fans

1:43:42and maybe it might even run on an ARM chip, who knows.

1:43:46Laptops are really, really good.

1:43:50And there's a reason why laptops have taken over the world as the

1:43:54computer of choice for almost everybody who can make that choice.

1:43:58Laptops are awesome. And they keep getting more and more and more awesome.

1:44:02They keep getting smaller, thinner, lighter, better battery life, better displays, everything

1:44:06about them. And the OS's are, you know, well, Windows.

1:44:10Now you're getting to it, but it's not just the size and everything. It's like the reason

1:44:14people feel like I don't want to bring my laptop isn't just because it's my work thing. It isn't just because

1:44:18it's heavier because I have an old laptop. It's also because the experience of using an iPad

1:44:22because it runs iOS and it's so simplified,

1:44:25is more relaxing for a vacation type atmosphere.

1:44:29And again, that gap could narrow as well.

1:44:31That's what Apple's trying to do.

1:44:32They're trying to simplify Mac OS X,

1:44:34they're trying to shave off the edges.

1:44:36Like these things are on a collision course,

1:44:38but it's still debatable which one will get

1:44:40to the critical point first, especially with pricing,

1:44:44because if a tablet can be 99 bucks

1:44:46and Apple's best MacBook Air is still 599

1:44:49in some distant future, the tablets are gonna win

1:44:52just based on price.

1:44:54So it used to be definitely a size thing.

1:44:57I don't wanna be lugging this big thing with me.

1:45:00As the size issue becomes less, then you get down to,

1:45:02okay, now it's down to price,

1:45:03and now it's down to OS simplicity.

1:45:05And OS simplicity, the PC has a fighting chance

1:45:09if you look at what Microsoft's trying to do

1:45:11with Windows 8 and Apple trying to simplify its OS.

1:45:14On the price front, I don't know, maybe that's a closer,

1:45:19I was going to say I would give the edge to the tablet, but now that I think about it,

1:45:21especially if they go to an ARM-based Air, that might be a reasonably fair fight too.

1:45:26Because in the end, what's the difference between an ARM-based MacBook Air and a Microsoft

1:45:30Surface and an iPad with a keyboard in terms of pricing?

1:45:33Like that could be close too.

1:45:35I don't know.

1:45:36This is too close to call this race.

1:45:37I mean, the funny thing is if you think about what people want out of a "iPad Pro," most

1:45:42people who try to get productivity work on their iPads either use or at some point have

1:45:45tried keyboards for their iPads.

1:45:48So you think about, okay, what do you do with the keyboard?

1:45:50If you've ever used a keyboard on an iPad,

1:45:52you realize how much the pointing device situation sucks

1:45:55because you have to keep using the keyboard on the bottom

1:45:57and then reaching up to touch the screen

1:45:58to move things around on screen, that sucks.

1:46:00It seems like what people want out of an iPad Pro

1:46:05is to make it more like a laptop.

1:46:06And what if this 12 inch thing is pretty much

1:46:10the iPad Air's hardware with a keyboard

1:46:13running a ported version of OS X?

1:46:16That would solve multitasking,

1:46:17it would solve document management, it would solve all of the "productivity needs."

1:46:21Well, it wouldn't solve "solve." People don't like OS X

1:46:25compared to iOS. It's more relaxing to use iOS.

1:46:29I know, geeks do, but the appeal of

1:46:33tablets is broad-ranging in terms of not just

1:46:37the physical parts of it, it's also the software parts, the same software parts that we're complaining against.

1:46:41The limitations, that's the line Apple is trying to walk. How do I make the iPad

1:46:45capable without making it crappier?

1:46:46How do I make the Mac less annoying to use without removing its capabilities?

1:46:51Yeah, see, and I come back to what Jon has been saying, which is part of the reason I

1:46:57ditch the laptop is because it's old and heavy and doesn't have a great battery, but partly

1:47:02because for the things I do when I'm traveling, which is basically just catch up on Twitter

1:47:07and RSS and email and so on, I'll just bring the iPad.

1:47:11And maybe if I'm feeling really exotic, I'll bring my Apple Bluetooth keyboard and

1:47:15throw it in a suitcase and use it in situations where I'm sitting down at the desk in the

1:47:20hotel or whatever and cranking out a few emails.

1:47:23But I'd much prefer that over a small Mac because I find using iOS more enjoyable in

1:47:31that situation.

1:47:32I don't know.

1:47:33We'll see.

1:47:34Time will tell.

1:47:35And I guess we also forgot the input method.

1:47:38Like Marco mentioned the terrible keyboard support in iOS, which really is grim, especially

1:47:42like cursor control.

1:47:43And really doing cursor control with touch is also grim.

1:47:46But for all other applications, people like just being able to touch the screen and move

1:47:51stuff around.

1:47:52Say you're using Apple or Google Maps to do nav on your iPad and you want to move the

1:47:57thing around.

1:47:58There's just direct manipulation as part of the relaxation.

1:48:00You're not swiping on a track pad.

1:48:02You just can touch the screen.

1:48:03And again, Apple can do something.

1:48:05They can make some kind of convertible MacBook Air

1:48:09that the keyboard folds around the back on it,

1:48:11and then you can touch the screen.

1:48:12And there are ways out of this, but then it's

1:48:13like how to use Mac OS X with touch and blah, blah, blah.

1:48:18The attractiveness and the relaxation factor of the iPad

1:48:22is about the whole product.

1:48:23It's about the interaction.

1:48:24It's about the size.

1:48:25It's about the OS.

1:48:26It's about the simplicity.

1:48:27It's about the applications.

1:48:28It's about the history, the lack of baggage.

1:48:30Like, there is a lot to it.

1:48:33in the same way that there's a lot to,

1:48:34what's stopping it from being a PC replacement?

1:48:37There's a huge laundry list of things there as well.

1:48:40It's not just one thing, and so it's difficult to sort of,

1:48:43it's difficult to say who's going to be able to make moves

1:48:47the best and the fastest.

1:48:49If we fast forward seven years, what does the,

1:48:52in terms of how many tablets are sold

1:48:55versus how many PCs are sold,

1:48:56what do those ratios look like?

1:48:57Is it like 80% tablets and 20% PC?

1:49:00Is it 50/50?

1:49:01We'll know who got to the sweet spot first by looking at those ratios in a decade or

1:49:08two.

1:49:09I mean, I think it's going to end up shaking out with basically…

1:49:15I suspect we're going to see the category which ironically Microsoft started with these

1:49:23pretty much like laptop tablets.

1:49:26that are basically just really small laptops,

1:49:31running laptop type OS's, laptop type software,

1:49:35whether they're convertible or not, I don't think is that relevant. I think we're going to see the market split

1:49:39as it matures into, you know, phones are going to keep getting bigger

1:49:43until they're all pretty much as big as they can be and still fit in most people's pockets.

1:49:48So we'll have these big phones that'll cut out a lot of the tablet use cases,

1:49:53tablet rationality at least. Then we're going to have the tablet for consumption people

1:49:59who like things like big screens or who need to draw on them or do things that most people

1:50:04could do on a phone but are better on something with a bigger screen. And those might be used

1:50:09at home a lot or whatever. And then we're going to have people who want to do productivity

1:50:13type tasks who are really going to want these lap tablets, like the Surface type things

1:50:19and maybe that's what this 12 inch thing is,

1:50:22that kind of thing.

1:50:23I think that's gonna be,

1:50:24it's gonna split into the more casual

1:50:27or non-traditional productivity use cases

1:50:31will keep the current tablet form factor

1:50:35as their best thing where they run best.

1:50:38But I think people who keep trying to put their iPads

1:50:41in these big folio cases and attach a keyboard

1:50:43to the bottom and all these iPad bolt-ons

1:50:46trying to make it more like a computer,

1:50:49I think we're gonna see that usage merge into

1:50:52just really compact laptops that whether they run,

1:50:55you know, whether they run Intel chips or not,

1:50:57whether they run OS X,

1:50:58I'm guessing it would be really small laptops

1:51:00running OS X or Windows 8.

1:51:02Like, you know, really small computers running

1:51:04regular PC operating systems

1:51:06with tablet-like hardware, but with a keyboard.

1:51:10- With touch screens?

1:51:11- No, well, maybe touch screens optionally,

1:51:13but probably not.

1:51:14Probably just, what I'm really talking about

1:51:17is really like an iPad Air hardware running an ARM port

1:51:20of OS X, as I said earlier.

1:51:22I really think that the productivity use

1:51:25is gonna be so much better on that.

1:51:27- That's just a laptop though.

1:51:28I mean, that's not a laptop.

1:51:31I mean, Microsoft's really taking the bullet on this one

1:51:32because they're trying to do the thing we're describing

1:51:35and not doing well at it for a variety of reasons,

1:51:38not all of which have to do with the design of their product.

1:51:40A lot of them is just like market timing

1:51:41and issues with their OS and all sorts of other issues.

1:51:44- They're basically being the Sega CD of this generation.

1:51:46Yeah, but the bottom line is they haven't figured out the--

1:51:49ignore all the software, ignore all the market things,

1:51:51ignore all the timing things.

1:51:52They just haven't figured out the hardware,

1:51:54like kickstand, floppy keyboard, hinge, no hinge.

1:51:58I mean, everything they've done, it's like an 11-inch MacBook

1:52:01Air does all those things better in terms of--

1:52:03it's got the stiff hinge.

1:52:05That's why I keep thinking of give you stiff hinge,

1:52:08a keyboard that folds all the way on the back,

1:52:11and then a touch screen, and then an OS that you

1:52:13can actually use with touch.

1:52:14Those are the ingredients they're missing so far.

1:52:16And I think Microsoft will keep trying with Surface.

1:52:18Hopefully they will eventually find

1:52:22the correct combination of physical attributes

1:52:24and then who knows if they'll ever get the timing right

1:52:26or their software right.

1:52:28But Apple, there's still an opportunity for Apple

1:52:30to figure that out before them if they decide to.

1:52:32So I guess we'll be watching for this 12 inch Retina Air.

1:52:36Is it just another Air that happens to be a different size

1:52:39or are they gonna try to do something special there?

1:52:41I think Apple does not have an appetite

1:52:45to try to make a hybrid device of the type that I described

1:52:48many, many years ago in a back page, Pecan and Macworld.

1:52:51I think I was saying dual OS,

1:52:53and certainly Apple's not gonna do that,

1:52:55but I'm not sure they're even trying to find the solution.

1:52:59I think they're happy to allow things to evolve

1:53:00independently and just let them duke it out in the market.

1:53:04- Yeah, I don't know.

1:53:04Again, I'm more skeptical that I think it's really just like

1:53:08in the same way that phones getting larger screens

1:53:14will eat a lot of the tablet use from the bottom.

1:53:17I think laptops getting a lot smaller, thinner, lighter,

1:53:20and having better battery lives

1:53:21will eat a lot of the top end of the market.

1:53:23And so I really don't,

1:53:25I think so many of the people

1:53:27who are using tablets for productivity

1:53:30are gonna be very satisfied in a few years

1:53:32with a really small laptop

1:53:34that has a lot of the benefits of a tablet hardware

1:53:37while not having a lot of the limitations

1:53:38of tablet software.

1:53:40- Marco, we tried the netbook thing, it didn't work out.

1:53:43Yeah, that's true.

1:53:45All right, well thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week.

1:53:48HelpSpot, Lynda.com, and New Relic,

1:53:52and we will see you next week.

1:53:54♪ Now the show is over ♪

1:53:59♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

1:54:02♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

1:54:04♪ Accidental ♪

1:54:05♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

1:54:06♪ Accidental ♪

1:54:08♪ John didn't do any research ♪

1:54:10♪ Marco and Casey wouldn't let him ♪

1:54:13'Cause it was accidental (it was accidental)

1:54:15It was accidental (it was accidental)

1:54:18And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

1:54:23And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

1:54:28@c-a-s-e-y-l-i-s-s

1:54:32So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

1:54:37♪ Anti-Marco, Armin, S-I-R-A-C ♪

1:54:42♪ USA, Syracuse, it's accidental ♪

1:54:46♪ Accidental ♪

1:54:48♪ They didn't mean to ♪

1:54:50♪ Accidental ♪

1:54:51♪ Accidental ♪

1:54:52♪ Tech podcast ♪

1:54:54♪ So long ♪

1:54:57I feel like I need to explain my Sega CD reference

1:55:00'cause the chat room's getting it all wrong.

1:55:02Saying that maybe I meant the 32X or the CDX even,

1:55:06I think that was what the Jupiter project became that like it looked like a toilet and it was like a Genesis with Sega CD combo

1:55:13anyway, I

1:55:15Don't even think that even came out. But if it did, oh, well, no one bought it

1:55:18The reason I said Sega CD and not 32x

1:55:21Is because I was I was using the reference just to you know, Sega Sega was infamous for

1:55:28putting out technology long before it could be good or at least trying to and

1:55:36The Sega CD was one of the first

1:55:40widespread CD-ROM gaming systems, if not the first widespread one.

1:55:44And it was just awful. It was a 1X drive

1:55:48and load times were insane. The graphics really weren't

1:55:52that much better than any Genesis games. It didn't really add much

1:55:56hardware-wise to the Genesis. It was just very expensive. The games were terrible.

1:56:00They were mostly FMV adventure games. The only game worth getting really was

1:56:04CD, almost every game besides that was terrible. And the reason why I made that reference in

1:56:09relation to the Surface was like the Surface I think was Microsoft having this interesting

1:56:14hardware idea of doing it like a generation too early basically. Before it could really

1:56:18be, if it was going to be good I think they did it too early to be good. So that's why

1:56:25I suggested the Sega CD because that was like they did it like a generation before the other

1:56:30CD ROM gaming systems, and the other ones were way better than Hit because they had

1:56:35the benefit of having better technology available to them, whereas the Sega CD was just way

1:56:39too early, way before its time, and pretty bad as a result.

1:56:44And that's why the 32X is not an appropriate reference, because the 32X failed for lots

1:56:48of reasons that had nothing to do with its technology.

1:56:50The technology was actually pretty good, but it failed for lots of other reasons.

1:56:53Yeah, I was a Nintendo kid.

1:56:57As you can tell, I was a Sega person.

1:56:59What happened to you both?

1:57:01I grew up.

1:57:02Ooh!

1:57:03Yeah, what happened to me was the Sega CD and 32X, and then I stopped being a Sega person.

1:57:09I might have told the story on the podcast, I don't recall, but when I was in high school

1:57:15and for the beginning of college when I was at home, I worked at a Babbage's, which

1:57:21was a subsidiary of GameStop, and I remember vividly peddling the Dreamcast like you couldn't

1:57:28imagine before it came out. "Oh, it's going to be so much better, it's going to be awesome,

1:57:32it's going to be awesome, it's going to be so much better, it's going to be awesome."

1:57:34And then it came out, and it was so much better, I would argue. Although I'm not going to

1:57:39stand on this one like I did the vinyl argument. Anyway, point being, it came out, like three

1:57:44people bought it, and then it disappeared and Sega all but folded after that.

1:57:48I mean, the problem was that by all accounts—I never had a Dreamcast, but I played one a

1:57:52few times here and there—by all accounts, the Dreamcast was a good system. The problem

1:57:57was Dreamcast followed the Sega CD, the 32X, and the Saturn, all of which were terrible

1:58:02game systems. And so Sega's fan base was pretty burned by that point. And there were other

1:58:07factors involved as well that made the Dreamcast kind of fail. But the biggest problem with

1:58:13the Dreamcast had nothing to do with its hardware. The hardware was actually really good.

1:58:16Yeah, agreed.

1:58:18So Jon, out of curiosity, what should we have been talking about besides the Sega CD and

1:58:24Casey's Nintendo fanboyism. What was the proper answer to what game systems we used in the early 90s?

1:58:32I was saying what happened to you. You were both enthusiastic gamers as kids and then

1:58:36fell off the wagon or onto the wagon. I don't know whichever analogy is the one that's bad.

1:58:40Yeah, I'm never straight on that actually. I mean, for me personally, it was getting into things like

1:58:47personal side projects and like side programming projects and making and then eventually working

1:58:51for myself and writing and podcasting, like all this other stuff I'm doing with my free time,

1:58:56where I just don't, like there's never a time during the day when I think I would like to spend

1:59:01the next hour playing a video game. Like, I used to have those moments and now I just don't. There

1:59:06are other ways I'd rather spend that time now. Yeah, same here. Like, when I was younger,

1:59:12the Nintendo 64 came out and I was still hugely into that. Like, I blew so many hours on

1:59:18Goldeneye and Mario Kart, I can't even tell you.

1:59:21And then I just kind of stopped playing games.

1:59:24I think I might've found girls around that point,

1:59:26or more appropriately, I might've actually started

1:59:28to have some modicum of success with girls.

1:59:30But I remember vividly buying a PlayStation,

1:59:34the original PlayStation with my own money,

1:59:37and getting Metal Gear Solid in one of the Final Fantasies,

1:59:40and playing the crap out of those.

1:59:43And then I never really looked back at games ever again.

1:59:47Well here's what you two are missing right now.

1:59:50For the same reason that I assume you both like to watch

1:59:53television and movies, like you still both do that,

1:59:55and it's a thing that you enjoy,

1:59:57the experience afforded by the best modern games

2:00:02is like the best movie you've ever seen

2:00:05combined with the best TV you've ever seen

2:00:06multiplied by 20.

2:00:07For people who are into games and who are, you know,

2:00:10fluent in the interface and vocabulary of gaming,

2:00:14a great game, I think all gamers would agree,

2:00:17is a superior experience to a great movie to them,

2:00:21'cause they're gamers, right?

2:00:22And so even if you're not that into games,

2:00:24I would think that a really great game

2:00:26could give you the equivalent experience

2:00:28of a really great movie or a really great TV show.

2:00:31And just like movies and TV,

2:00:32there's gonna be a lot of crap,

2:00:33there's gonna be a lot of stuff you're not interested in,

2:00:35there's gonna be stuff that's disappointing,

2:00:37but that's why I continue to find time in my schedule

2:00:40to play these games.

2:00:43A, I like to follow the industry, so it's just a hobby,

2:00:45just reading about it or whatever,

2:00:46what games do I play? I don't have a lot of time to play games, but I make time to play

2:00:50the games that I think are going to be great, and I enjoy them immensely, and I'm glad I

2:00:54carve out that time in the same way that I carve out time to watch Game of Thrones or

2:00:59In the Past, The Wire or The Sopranos or all those other things that you find time in your

2:01:02schedule. I'm not going to watch every TV show. TV is mostly crap, but The Sopranos

2:01:06is great, and I'm going to watch it. And I feel the same way about playing The Last of

2:01:10Us or certainly Journey or anything like that. So it's not like, you know, I'm not saying

2:01:14You both have to be. Not saying you both have to be gamers or whatever, but I think that it isn't.

2:01:20It's reasonable to assume that were you to pursue gaming, there would be games that you would enjoy

2:01:25as much as you enjoy your favorite television programs or movies.

2:01:28Yeah, but let's consider that I tend to have terrible taste in music, television, and movies.

2:01:43But I mean like you like what you like like there's a bazillion games out there

2:01:46There's a bazillion movies and TV shows if you like to watch you know

2:01:49Supernatural then that's the kind of show you want there are gaming equivalents of that like I'm saying it's at this point

2:01:55It's a genre as rich as television or movies or books for that matter

2:01:59Well, maybe not as rich as those things but moving in that direction, but certainly in mass-market appeal. There's

2:02:06Probably something that you could find that would appeal to you the problem

2:02:09I think for people who aren't into it is like well

2:02:11how do I know what to pick? Like, to me it's just one big giant blob of games, and if you're

2:02:15not following the game industry and reading game magazines and reading gaming news sites

2:02:18and following gaming people on Twitter, you don't know which thing to pick. And if you're

2:02:22just going to the store like, "Oh, I'll just try this game," you'll try it, it will be

2:02:25crap, you'll be annoyed, and you're like, "See, this is why I don't play games, they're

2:02:28stupid." Right? So there is that barrier. I'm not saying it's easy to come into, but

2:02:32I think that there's nothing about the two of you, including your age or maturity level,

2:02:37is preventing you, but is making you incapable of enjoying modern gaming.

2:02:40Because for a reasonable approximation, everybody enjoys modern gaming.

2:02:45Everybody's a gamer, to some degree or another.

2:02:48And if anything, you two are standing out as oddities in that you used to be gamers,

2:02:52and now as adults just sort of cut them out of your life entirely, and that's becoming

2:02:55increasingly rare.

2:02:56Wait, you think this is like unusual?

2:02:58Yeah!

2:02:59What?

2:03:00I don't think so.

2:03:01Yeah.

2:03:02I'm with Marco.

2:03:03Go look at the numbers on the gaming industry.

2:03:06go look at the average age of a gamer. You are not in the majority.

2:03:11You're saying that it's unusual for people to play games when they're younger and then

2:03:14not play games when they're like in their 30s?

2:03:16Yep. What do you think the average age of a gamer is?

2:03:18No, I know it's going up, but that doesn't necessarily mean what you just said.

2:03:22Yeah, but just look at the distribution. Look at how many people—how big is the gaming

2:03:25industry? How many copies do games sell? How many people say they play games at all? Like,

2:03:31it's massive. It is mass market. Most people play games. Certainly most people who have

2:03:35any kind of computing device do? I don't know. I'm with Marco on this. I have no facts to back me up,

2:03:40but well, that never stopped me before. Yeah, me neither.

2:03:43That just doesn't pass the smell test for me. And what's interesting is...

2:03:49It does. You sound like my parents. I'll let the readers read it and tell you all this.

2:03:54It doesn't say... You're still playing games? You haven't grown out of those? The equivalent

2:03:58I always used to give my parents, which they found non-convincing at all, and you also find

2:04:01non-convincing, but I will do it again. It's kind of like if my grandparents' parents could

2:04:09see them at 85 years old and say, "You guys are still playing PNUCKLE? You didn't grow out of

2:04:14cards? How can you be playing?" It's like they played it their whole life. They played card

2:04:17games when they were kids. They played it till the day they died. That was their version of games,

2:04:22is these card games. They didn't grow out of them. And in the same way, anyone who's actually a

2:04:26game, of course, never grows out of them. But at this point, anyone who grew up with games

2:04:32continues to play them their whole life. They don't stop playing them in the same way that

2:04:34my grandparents never stopped playing P-Nuckle. It's not something you grow out of. It's not like

2:04:39a child's toy. There's no such thing as adults would never want to do it. Games are not like

2:04:47that. It's like saying, "You still watch movies? Isn't that a kid thing? You still read books?

2:04:51That's not just something for kids?" I don't want to suggest that games are juvenile,

2:04:55because that's not at all what I mean, and that's not why I stopped playing them for the most part.

2:04:59It's literally just like, there are many different ways to entertain yourself these days,

2:05:03and I have chosen to not play very many games anymore, to hardly play any at all anymore,

2:05:08because all of the alternatives, all the alternatives to amusing myself or to spending time

2:05:15things like browsing the internet or socializing online or watching TV series on Netflix,

2:05:22Like, I've chosen to do all of those things instead.

2:05:25But that's not true because you and Tiff both love board games.

2:05:29And yes, it's not video games, but it's games.

2:05:32And if I'm moving the goalpost, that to me counts.

2:05:37And similarly, I don't really play games anymore, but if I'm in a group setting,

2:05:41I love to play a game of Cards Against Humanity.

2:05:44Or I enjoyed, what was it, Puerto Rico that we played in South Carolina, Marco.

2:05:49And what was it we played just this past weekend?

2:05:51I already forgotten.

2:05:52JONATHAN HARRIS Thank you. Games like that I really enjoy.

2:05:56And the other thing I've found that I fill my free time with, if I'm not just farting

2:06:00around on the internet, is I've gotten really back into reading novels again, which I used

2:06:05to do a lot as well as a kid, and now I've gotten back into that. And so realizing that

2:06:11the local library is one of the best inventions of the world, I've pretty much had a book

2:06:16with me almost always for the last six months to a year.

2:06:19Well, see, now you're back in the minority again, because most Americans anyway don't

2:06:24read.

2:06:25You ever see those scary statistics about how many people don't read a novel after they

2:06:28graduate from high school?

2:06:30That is not, yeah.

2:06:31Yeah, I don't want to think about it.

2:06:32But gaming is much more a mass market than reading novels.

2:06:35Yeah, that's probably true.

2:06:36Oh, yeah, definitely.

2:06:37I mean, and really, you guys too game a little bit.

2:06:39Like you're saying, you're thinking like, if I'm not playing Grand Theft Auto, I'm not

2:06:42gaming.

2:06:43I mean, like, letterpress counts, you know?

2:06:46total annihilation or whatever you're playing with your friends at your friend's wedding.

2:06:50Like that counts. That's not like...

2:06:52That didn't happen by the way.

2:06:53Well, you tried.

2:06:54Failing to play total annihilation.

2:06:56That's PC gaming. PC gaming is attempting to get a game to play.

2:07:00No, I know. But even console... Like I have a PS3. The only game I have for it is the

2:07:06Wipeout version that was a download game. I bought it thinking I'd get more gaming out

2:07:10of it, but I also just wanted a Blu-ray player. And at the time it was about the same price

2:07:15as a Blu-ray player, so I'm like, "Oh yeah, I'll get the PS3," and yeah, never use it as a gaming console.

2:07:19Wait, that's not true either, is it? Because I thought you had something to learn the Nürburgring on.

2:07:24Was that the PS3 or the Xbox? I forget which one I chose. You know what that might have been the PS3?

2:07:29I forget, but I used that for like three nights total, so okay, I might have two games for it.

2:07:35The problem for getting into these type AAA-type games is that, like, if you're out of it for a

2:07:41for a long time. Again, you're lacking in the literacy of the current gaming conventions

2:07:45and genres. And so, yeah, you can fire up a driving game, because driving games are

2:07:49driving games. But were you to-- I mean, that's why I don't spend my time encouraging you

2:07:54too much to play Journey, because I feel like if you played it, it would be lost on you,

2:07:57in that you're missing the context to appreciate that game fully. And it's almost like--

2:08:00You have spent so much time encouraging me to play Journey.

2:08:03I know. But it's clear that you're not going to do it. And so now I'm almost like, I'd

2:08:08I'd rather you not play it.

2:08:09I'd rather you have a bunch of warmup games

2:08:11if you ever got to that point.

2:08:12Because you'd play it and you'd be like,

2:08:14man, it's all right, it's kind of boring.

2:08:17The game would be lost on you.

2:08:18And the same thing with like, you have a PS3,

2:08:20should you play The Last of Us?

2:08:21No, if you haven't played a AAA video game

2:08:23in years and years, The Last of Us is not,

2:08:25it's not gonna work for you the way it works

2:08:27for the people who are still sort of

2:08:31in the AAA gaming thing.

2:08:32You were definitely both of you

2:08:34in more of the casual gaming space.

2:08:35So I'd say, yeah, get Monu and Valley, it's fun.

2:08:37like, I don't think it's, you know, it's all right. It's not amazing. I think it's a little

2:08:42bit too easy and a little bit too short and not even as I think your walk was a much better

2:08:47game. For example, I think ridiculous fishing is a better game, for example. But those are

2:08:50types of games where you don't need a lot of context, you can just dive right into them.

2:08:54And I think, for example, both of you probably enjoy ridiculous fishing.

2:08:56I played ridiculous fishing for about 10 minutes and didn't see the appeal. And I know everyone

2:09:01loved it. And so that's I assume, you know, what happens is I will try these games that

2:09:05that everyone says are amazing and they're being big hits.

2:09:09I'll try them and most of them, I mean, you know,

2:09:12like I got into threes and letterpress, you know,

2:09:14like the kind of, and dots, like, you know,

2:09:15I get into some iOS casual games, but most of these games

2:09:19that people just totally obsess over,

2:09:22I don't find them that fun.

2:09:24And so I assume there's something wrong with me

2:09:25that I'm just not a gamer because I don't like

2:09:28what everyone else likes.

2:09:29- But you are, like you made your own units

2:09:31for whatever that was, was that total annihilation?

2:09:33I mean, like-- - Yeah, when I was 16.

2:09:35Right, but you still had the instinct to want to play.

2:09:39That's still inside you.

2:09:40It's just that now all of your touchstones are now out of date, so when you try to play

2:09:44something modern, it doesn't work.

2:09:45Casual games like Ridiculous Fishing, when I first tried it too, I thought, yeah, whatever.

2:09:49But there is a hook in the game, and if you're allowed to go, maybe you need to be a little

2:09:53bit more of a gamer for that hook to find purchase.

2:09:55Monument Valley is simpler, but I think it's more of a trifle.

2:10:00Year Walk is probably, you would need to be a gamer to play that.

2:10:03I'm just trying to think, like, threes and letterpress,

2:10:06you guys both have no problem getting to that.

2:10:08Because it's more like a board game,

2:10:09which Marco does play actively,

2:10:10like, and then you're like,

2:10:11"Oh, I understand what this is about, more or less."

2:10:13It's like--

2:10:13- By the way, by actively, like, I'll play,

2:10:15we'll play board games, meanwhile,

2:10:16we'll play board games with, with like, you know,

2:10:18friends who are over sometimes.

2:10:20I would say we probably play board games

2:10:22for maybe an hour and a half every two months.

2:10:26Like, we're not talking about a frequent hobby.

2:10:28I would like to play more of them, 'cause I do enjoy them.

2:10:31But, but yeah, it doesn't,

2:10:32I don't get the chance that often.

2:10:35That's more of a time investment from my perspective than a video game, because you've got to get

2:10:40all the stuff out, and you get to multiple people, and they all have to be there, whereas

2:10:44a video game you can steal time to play more conveniently than you can steal, because you

2:10:47can't play one of these complicated German board games that requires five people, and

2:10:51they all have to know the rules already, otherwise you're going to be there for an hour.

2:10:54That is not something you can steal time and just grab a quick game of, or even put in

2:10:58an extra hour of, "How did I play The Last of Us?

2:11:01I played it when the kids were asleep, when my wife was out of town in a series of, you

2:11:05know, one or two hour sittings.

2:11:08And I could not play a...

2:11:10If I had a board game that I was interested in, I would be like you and waiting around

2:11:12to have time to gather a bunch of people who also want to play a board game, who also know

2:11:16the rules to play the board game.

2:11:18So I think that's...

2:11:19It's harder to find time to do that, but you manage to do it.

2:11:22And it's fine.

2:11:23I'm just saying, I think there is enjoyment to be had.

2:11:25There is nothing in you that's making you like, "Oh, I'm just not a gamer.

2:11:28I guess I don't love these games that everybody loves."

2:11:30A lot of times you're just missing the context for it.

2:11:33And I think there are games out there that you would enjoy.

2:11:37Yeah, I'm sure there are.

2:11:38But I think you're right that I'm not

2:11:41willing to put in a massive time investment

2:11:43to try to find these things.

2:11:45I'm not willing to say, oh, yeah, I'm

2:11:49going to spend this whole Saturday afternoon--

2:11:51like if my wife's out of town and my kid's asleep,

2:11:54the thing I would most want to do is go to my computer

2:11:58and write or program.

2:12:01I love doing those things.

2:12:02I would rather do that than go to the TV and play a game.

2:12:07- Someday you'll be ready for Journey, Marco.

2:12:09Maybe Adam will do it for you.

2:12:10'Cause Adam will wanna play games probably

2:12:12'cause they're a fun thing to do

2:12:13and kids have nothing to do about,

2:12:15you know, they have nothing but free time, right?

2:12:16So maybe he'll help you get you into them.

2:12:18But someday when you're ready,

2:12:20Journey will be there for you presumably

2:12:21with the PS5 remastered version.

2:12:24- Yeah, and you know, if that happens,

2:12:25like, you know, if my kid ends up liking games,

2:12:26Yeah, and I agree. That's that's likely you know, if he ends up liking games and I'll play with him

2:12:30That's a whole different story then I would you know because then I'm spending time with my kid and you know interacting with him while playing

2:12:36These games that makes sense. Of course, then you'll suck and you'll be the dad who can't play games

2:12:39Well, but isn't that how it always has to be you probably suck too. You just don't realize it. No, not my family

2:12:44I will tell you the day when my any of my kids can beat me in any video game and I am determined that day

2:12:50Will never come

2:12:51Alright, now it's time for titles.

2:12:54So let's see what we've covered in this episode so far.

2:12:57We've had OS X reviews, Journey...

2:13:01File systems, yep, file systems.

2:13:03We had it earlier.

2:13:04We have seriously hit the John Syracuse, like, quadfecta.

2:13:08We're not even close, we didn't even mention TiVo.

2:13:10Like, there's so many things that I didn't even touch on.

2:13:14[BLANK_AUDIO]