ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► All right, I'm going to use the most interesting two-thirds

00:00:01 ◼   ► of that for the after show.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Now let's start the real show.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Good idea, good idea.

00:00:08 ◼   ► Good to say.

00:00:08 ◼   ► So I hear it was Christmas at the Syracuse household already.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Yeah, the tiny little package arrived that weighed a lot.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I was very proud of that.

00:00:18 ◼   ► It seemed very dense.

00:00:20 ◼   ► It really shows how little Marco cared about the old Kindles

00:00:23 ◼   ► that he sent me.

00:00:25 ◼   ► He packed them together by stacking them

00:00:28 ◼   ► one on top of each other.

00:00:29 ◼   ► They were their own packing material.

00:00:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:32 ◼   ► Like, nothing in between them,

00:00:34 ◼   ► no like bubble wrap tissue paper, you know, just--

00:00:37 ◼   ► - I put the crappiest one on top.

00:00:39 ◼   ► - It's just a bunch of Kindles and other e-readers

00:00:42 ◼   ► jammed together into a solid brick.

00:00:44 ◼   ► - Well, they stack very well.

00:00:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was very-- - Except for the damn

00:00:48 ◼   ► Kindle one, which is wedge-shaped.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Everything else stacks really well.

00:00:51 ◼   ► - I think they managed to, like, yeah,

00:00:53 ◼   ► the original Kindle, like the back cover,

00:00:55 ◼   ► had come off in transit,

00:00:56 ◼   ► but I don't think anything was broken on it.

00:00:59 ◼   ► And the Kindle Touch has a thing in the upper left corner

00:01:03 ◼   ► where it's damaged.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Was that already there?

00:01:07 ◼   ► What kind of thing?

00:01:08 ◼   ► I think there's a small, tiny scratch on the screen

00:01:10 ◼   ► up there maybe?

00:01:11 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like a little spot that's permanently black.

00:01:13 ◼   ► Like a little--

00:01:14 ◼   ► Oh, like a dead pixel?

00:01:15 ◼   ► Well, no, it's bigger than that.

00:01:16 ◼   ► It's like someone took a flathead screwdriver

00:01:18 ◼   ► and went pink and jammed into the screen.

00:01:21 ◼   ► So it's like a little crack slash area.

00:01:23 ◼   ► It's not big.

00:01:23 ◼   ► It's like--

00:01:24 ◼   ► Nope, that's new.

00:01:26 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:01:27 ◼   ► Yeah, whatever.

00:01:27 ◼   ► But anyway, the kindles came and we opened them up at the table with all the kids are

00:01:33 ◼   ► there and all these kindles coming out and surprising things happened because Marco,

00:01:37 ◼   ► you know, I mentioned, I put this in the show and Marco's like, well, there's nothing to

00:01:39 ◼   ► say about that.

00:01:40 ◼   ► It's not, it's not that exciting.

00:01:41 ◼   ► And you know, it's a bunch of old kindles.

00:01:42 ◼   ► I thought I would just take them, put them up into the attic.

00:01:44 ◼   ► These are just the two surprising things that happened.

00:01:47 ◼   ► One, the first thing my son said when he saw all these things is, "Can I have a Kindle

00:01:51 ◼   ► Fire?"

00:01:52 ◼   ► I didn't mention Kindle Fire.

00:01:53 ◼   ► I didn't show him that there was a Kindle Fire in this stack of things, but he quickly

00:01:58 ◼   ► surmised that in this giant stack of things that I said are Kindles, one of them might

00:02:02 ◼   ► be Kindle Fire and that's the one that he want.

00:02:04 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:02:05 ◼   ► And this is before any of them were turned on.

00:02:06 ◼   ► So that means that the Kindle Fire has good brand recognition among young kids whose parents

00:02:11 ◼   ► don't want them to have a really expensive iPad.

00:02:14 ◼   ► That's really interesting.

00:02:15 ◼   ► Although he apparently didn't know enough about them to recognize that if you're going

00:02:18 ◼   ► to have any Kindle Fire, the one I sent you, which is the very first one, is by far the

00:02:23 ◼   ► worst one you can possibly have.

00:02:24 ◼   ► It's just a big stack of stuff.

00:02:25 ◼   ► And the thing is, it doesn't really make any sense because our iPad 2 is basically

00:02:30 ◼   ► the kids' iPads 2, and my daughter doesn't really use the iPad 2, so it's basically

00:02:33 ◼   ► his iPad 2.

00:02:34 ◼   ► So he sort of has an iPad 2 that he can use more or less whenever he wants, and he still

00:02:39 ◼   ► wanted a Kindle Fire because I guess he thought it would be his his.

00:02:42 ◼   ► And the second reaction is, my daughter said, "Oh, can I have a Kindle?"

00:02:46 ◼   ► And I said, "Yes, you can."

00:02:47 ◼   ► And she said, "Yay!"

00:02:49 ◼   ► So there you go.

00:02:51 ◼   ► Kids love Kindles.

00:02:52 ◼   ► I was trying to decide which one to give her, like, you know, we're gonna put some books on it.

00:02:57 ◼   ► You know, she's learning to read and stuff like that.

00:02:59 ◼   ► My son already has an old Ian Kindle that we had that he reads on and everything like that.

00:03:03 ◼   ► She's just starting to read, and I decided to actually give her the Kindle Touch because as anyone with young kids knows, you put a

00:03:08 ◼   ► Kindle in front of them, they touch the screen immediately.

00:03:10 ◼   ► And why wouldn't they? Like, anything that you can't touch the screen on is obviously broken.

00:03:14 ◼   ► And so the Kindle Touch, you actually can touch the screen.

00:03:16 ◼   ► I kind of regretted it because

00:03:18 ◼   ► Sometimes she wants to use her finger to trace like when you're reading the words and that doesn't really work that well on a Kindle

00:03:22 ◼   ► Touch because as soon as you touch, you know, it changes the page or whatever

00:03:25 ◼   ► But trying to give her one that you had to use like the cursor controls or something to do books

00:03:30 ◼   ► I think that would be more difficult than and

00:03:32 ◼   ► The Kindle touch has fewer like buttons and things you could bump on the edges and excellently turn pages

00:03:36 ◼   ► So well, yeah, you made a bunch of people happy with although I saw my son

00:03:39 ◼   ► He couldn't have the Kindle fire because I don't want him using that thing

00:03:44 ◼   ► He's already got his reading Kindle. He's got his iPad. So he doesn't really need it so he got over it now

00:03:48 ◼   ► But yeah, I was excited by the arrival of Kindles in the house

00:03:51 ◼   ► I first heard like when when the Kindle fire came out, what was it two years ago now roughly I first heard

00:03:58 ◼   ► When I first came out there was this massive

00:04:01 ◼   ► Common refrain I heard from people which was that they were men of course because they're nerds on the internet and it's way too

00:04:10 ◼   ► predominantly male still

00:04:12 ◼   ► And they were men who were buying Kindle fires

00:04:14 ◼   ► to give their wife a tablet

00:04:18 ◼   ► Which if you think about the quality of the Kindle fire, not only is this a fairly derogatory thing to do

00:04:25 ◼   ► but I

00:04:27 ◼   ► wonder if any of those caused marital problems I

00:04:30 ◼   ► Mean it is such an incredibly terrible device. I

00:04:35 ◼   ► Can't imagine that ended up. Well, have you seen the new one the HDX whatever it's called?

00:04:41 ◼   ► I haven't no is it any better

00:04:43 ◼   ► I've seen it and it like they're getting way better like if you compare the Kindle fire you sent me compared to the new one

00:04:48 ◼   ► It's like night and day like the new one is not embarrassing anymore

00:04:50 ◼   ► The only thing that I think is embarrassing about the new one is that it's externally asymmetrical, which I find incredibly offensive

00:04:56 ◼   ► Wait what it is in what direction like?

00:05:00 ◼   ► If you're looking at it in a portrait orientation, and you're gripping it one side is thicker than the other

00:05:05 ◼   ► It's like weird trapezoid back shape. It's it's it's for the origami style kind of case that comes with

00:05:11 ◼   ► I mean it makes sense in the context of the case that the thing like slots into the case

00:05:15 ◼   ► Because it's kind of like a a tapered trapezoid on the back

00:05:19 ◼   ► Oh, it's it's weird

00:05:22 ◼   ► But it bothers me way more than it should because like who cares who cares what shape the back of the thing is right?

00:05:25 ◼   ► But I do I don't want it. I want it to be symmetrical

00:05:28 ◼   ► I want a thing that I hold it just seems wrong to me

00:05:31 ◼   ► But but the screen is really really nice the interface is no longer disgustingly laggy

00:05:36 ◼   ► If you wanted to give somebody something that all they're gonna do on it is watch Amazon

00:05:42 ◼   ► instant streaming video and read books filled with typos

00:05:46 ◼   ► It would be fine. I

00:05:49 ◼   ► Wouldn't buy it for anyone who wants to use applications obviously, but but they've got they've come a long way. That's good

00:05:55 ◼   ► I mean they had nowhere to go but up

00:05:57 ◼   ► Yeah, this thing is like a brick. It's sitting right next to me. It's unbelievable.

00:06:00 ◼   ► I couldn't, I mean I'd seen them when they were new, but it's like was this always this huge? It's just

00:06:03 ◼   ► terrible.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Imagine like there are so many people bought that

00:06:09 ◼   ► because it was it was sold as like a as like the premium Kindle like if you wanted an E-int Kindle you should consider

00:06:15 ◼   ► upgrading to this and if you're reading on it it is in almost every way

00:06:20 ◼   ► substantially worse than the E-int Kindles

00:06:24 ◼   ► And it's so many people bought that as an upgrade, but that was that probably did not turn out

00:06:30 ◼   ► Well, you could fend off muggers with it. I guess

00:06:32 ◼   ► And the back of it is that nice textured plastic rubberized stuff. I like it back felt all right

00:06:38 ◼   ► I like this, but like it's so heavy you can't like holding this in one hand forget it whereas the E and kindles like they're

00:06:43 ◼   ► So light now. They're like practically like a piece of paper so much nicer to hold in one hand yeah, all right

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00:09:27 ◼   ► We got a lot, or I don't know if we should, I should say we got, but we saw a lot of interesting

00:09:33 ◼   ► news that may or may not be news about PhotoStream.

00:09:37 ◼   ► And Jon, you seem to have taken point and prepared some notes for the show that we don't

00:09:42 ◼   ► prepare for.

00:09:43 ◼   ► Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.

00:09:46 ◼   ► Do you want to walk through kind of what we've learned over the last week?

00:09:49 ◼   ► Yeah, since we talked so much about Everpix on a couple past shows, a couple of people

00:09:53 ◼   ► on Twitter sent me a link to a recently updated Apple Knowledge Base article about PhotoStream,

00:10:00 ◼   ► and we'll have the link in the show notes, and here's some text from one of them. It says,

00:10:05 ◼   ► "There is no limit to the amount of photos you can upload to my PhotoStream over a longer period,

00:10:09 ◼   ► such as several months or years. Photos uploaded to my PhotoStream or shared PhotoStreams are not

00:10:14 ◼   ► counted against the iCloud storage." Well, we knew that about the iCloud storage. And so we used to

00:10:18 ◼   ► like, "Oh, there was an upload limit of 1,000, but now it says there's no limit," right?

00:10:22 ◼   ► And that began the conversation amongst all the people on Twitter finding other knowledge-based

00:10:27 ◼   ► articles and saying, "Yeah, but here's this knowledge-based article that has an even

00:10:30 ◼   ► later date that says it's still limited to 1,000." And then there were people experimenting by

00:10:34 ◼   ► saying, "Okay, I've got 1,000 photos in my stream. I will take one more picture." And I see the first

00:10:39 ◼   ► picture just went off the end, and it still says I have 1,000. Then people were saying, "Well,

00:10:41 ◼   ► that's just what's on your phone. Really, all of them are on your server. I went on vacation,

00:10:45 ◼   ► Took 3,000 pictures. Only 1,000 were on my phone, but when I came home and went to iPhoto,

00:10:49 ◼   ► all 3,000 were in my photo stream. And this went back and forth and back and forth. I think we

00:10:54 ◼   ► should just put all these links in the show notes so people can look at them. My takeaway from all

00:10:59 ◼   ► of this is that regardless of what the situation actually is, experimentally determined, determined

00:11:05 ◼   ► from Apple's documents, however you want to do it, it's obviously still way too confusing for us

00:11:09 ◼   ► to figure out. And the most important feature of Everpix was not how it behaved. It was the fact

00:11:15 ◼   ► that you could explain it very simply. We could put all your photos forever. They're

00:11:20 ◼   ► stored in the cloud. Period. The end. Anything that you have to look at all these documents

00:11:24 ◼   ► and have a big Twitter conversation about and try to read the tea leaves on is missing

00:11:28 ◼   ► the most important feature, which is simplicity and understandability. So I'm not even sure

00:11:33 ◼   ► what the current situation is. The upload limit stuff seems straightforward because

00:11:36 ◼   ► you just say, "Well, they're just saying how many you can upload." They don't say anything

00:11:39 ◼   ► about how many they keep or how many will be redownloaded or anything like that. And

00:11:43 ◼   ► I think pretty much people have determined it'll only keep a thousand on your device in the stream and

00:11:47 ◼   ► 5,000 in each shared stream, but I'm still not entirely sure about okay

00:11:53 ◼   ► Well, so given all those constraints will it do like the guy who went on vacation said and yeah

00:11:57 ◼   ► You only have a thousand on your your main photo stream on your phone

00:12:01 ◼   ► But when you get home and I photo syncs with your photo stream will it pull down all your pictures?

00:12:05 ◼   ► Like there's no good way as far as I know

00:12:09 ◼   ► To you know like the equivalent of Arabic's you go to the Arabic website, and there's all your pictures

00:12:14 ◼   ► You know the pic the cloud is the the source of truth your pictures are in the cloud

00:12:18 ◼   ► And they may be on local machines as a caching type thing

00:12:20 ◼   ► And and photo stream and everything we're still not sure so I think Apple may be making progress here

00:12:26 ◼   ► Or maybe they just changed the upload limit or a throttling thing

00:12:30 ◼   ► I don't know

00:12:30 ◼   ► But it's kind of one of those things where all the incremental steps don't really matter until they get to the point where they just

00:12:36 ◼   ► Don't worry about it. It's simple. We got you covered and here's how it works and here's you can feel secure knowing that it worked

00:12:41 ◼   ► Because right now I don't think anyone feels secure in their knowledge of exactly how photo stream works with all their devices

00:12:45 ◼   ► I know I certainly don't yeah, I don't either and this you know

00:12:49 ◼   ► I was thinking as you were narrating all this this feels so I don't know Microsoft like you know like oh well

00:12:55 ◼   ► It's this except one that and then there's this except one. That's other thing and it just it's so

00:13:01 ◼   ► blurry and weird and it's so not the way Apple usually is.

00:13:06 ◼   ► And just like you said, it needs to be simple.

00:13:08 ◼   ► And one thing, and I don't have the piece of feedback handy,

00:13:11 ◼   ► but somebody sent us some interesting feedback

00:13:15 ◼   ► with some back of the napkin calculations

00:13:17 ◼   ► as to how much data storing every iOS user's pictures

00:13:22 ◼   ► from the beginning of time would really take up.

00:13:26 ◼   ► And I don't remember the answer off the top of my head,

00:13:28 ◼   ► and I'm not even sure that they were right,

00:13:30 ◼   ► But suffice to say, it was a metric crap ton of data

00:13:33 ◼   ► that they would need-- or of hard drive space

00:13:36 ◼   ► they would need in order to store all of these pictures

00:13:39 ◼   ► from everyone under the sun.

00:13:40 ◼   ► So perhaps what made Everpix even mildly doable

00:13:44 ◼   ► was simply that they weren't trying to do it for everyone.

00:13:47 ◼   ► They were trying to do it for thousands or tens of thousands

00:13:49 ◼   ► of users.

00:13:50 ◼   ► I mean, the storage--

00:13:52 ◼   ► storage for individuals, especially--

00:13:54 ◼   ► I mean, maybe the sharing stuff has some angle on it.

00:13:56 ◼   ► But there's not the type of--

00:13:58 ◼   ► It's not the type of service like, I don't know, Twitter or Facebook where everybody's

00:14:02 ◼   ► seeing everybody else's stuff, where the complexity and difficulty really ramps up as you add

00:14:07 ◼   ► more things.

00:14:08 ◼   ► You can kind of silo this.

00:14:09 ◼   ► If you can support 10 people, you can just multiply that out to support thousands and

00:14:14 ◼   ► millions.

00:14:15 ◼   ► Yes, it costs tons and tons of money, but if it's profitable for whatever, you know,

00:14:18 ◼   ► Everpick said they'd be profitable at like 20,000 people, well, if it's profitable at

00:14:22 ◼   ► 20,000, presumably it'd still be profitable at 40, at 60, at 90, and it's like, "Oh, that

00:14:26 ◼   ► costs so much money.

00:14:27 ◼   ► Look at all the storage."

00:14:28 ◼   ► It costs lots of money. Apple has billions of dollars.

00:14:30 ◼   ► Maybe you'd have to have an upfront investment, but if it's profitable at 20,000 for this little dinky company,

00:14:35 ◼   ► hopefully Apple at 400 million, it could still be profitable, or at least break even.

00:14:39 ◼   ► Or maybe it's even a little bit of a cost center, but like I said, it may be just the cost of doing business eventually.

00:14:44 ◼   ► And the photo stream stuff is kind of like bargaining. It's like, "How about this, guys?

00:14:48 ◼   ► How about we will store all your pictures?"

00:14:51 ◼   ► The shared photo streams are way better than it used to be for sharing photos.

00:14:54 ◼   ► I use them all the time with my family because it's easier than it used to be and they don't

00:14:58 ◼   ► have to do anything.

00:14:59 ◼   ► If they have an iOS device, if I put a picture in my shared photo stream, it appears and

00:15:03 ◼   ► they can look at it right there.

00:15:04 ◼   ► And that's better than emailing them pictures.

00:15:07 ◼   ► That's even better than, you know, in the old days making a .Mac website and giving

00:15:10 ◼   ► them the URL of the website and they would look at and all that stuff.

00:15:13 ◼   ► So I like photo streams, but I think Apple was hoping if we make this constrained service

00:15:19 ◼   ► and we put these numbers up, you know, a thousand pictures, blah, blah, blah, whatever, we won't

00:15:23 ◼   ► have these crazy storage demands and maybe this will solve the problem and I

00:15:26 ◼   ► think it helps but it doesn't you know solve the are all my pictures safe

00:15:30 ◼   ► problem and that is an even bigger investment with more stuff and yeah the

00:15:33 ◼   ► numbers are terrifying when you have 400 million but almost anything you do with

00:15:36 ◼   ► 400 million people is terrifying. Just think about the email they get and

00:15:39 ◼   ► they're not even a big email provider like the amount of spam that they get at

00:15:43 ◼   ► iCloud.com and Mac.com email addresses alone is pretty terrifying and that is

00:15:47 ◼   ► one of those things that like gets worse as the volume goes up because you get

00:15:50 ◼   ► targeted by spammers and stuff.

00:15:52 ◼   ► So I'm not pretending it's a small problem,

00:15:56 ◼   ► but if anybody could do it, it's the company

00:15:58 ◼   ► with billions and billions of dollars of cash.

00:16:01 ◼   ► And this really is kind of a service--

00:16:05 ◼   ► it's not read mostly like iTunes.

00:16:06 ◼   ► You're not sharing the same files for everybody.

00:16:08 ◼   ► But it's not that complicated.

00:16:09 ◼   ► It's file storage.

00:16:10 ◼   ► It's not computational or a web application

00:16:15 ◼   ► that's all sophisticated.

00:16:16 ◼   ► It's basically like a big bucket of bits

00:16:18 ◼   ► that you can get back in an efficient manner

00:16:20 ◼   ► that good stuff. Well, but it's more than that. I mean, it's replication, it's backup,

00:16:26 ◼   ► and you're right that deduplication is really not an issue because there's nothing to be gained from

00:16:30 ◼   ► it. But certainly backup and replication and scalability and uptime and access speeds and

00:16:37 ◼   ► archival, all that stuff, that's... They've already got to do that for photo

00:16:40 ◼   ► stream. All it does is... I mean, a thousand pictures is still not small change. And if you

00:16:44 ◼   ► multiply that by 50 for 50,000 pictures for each person, it's 50 times harder in terms of... You

00:16:49 ◼   ► You need 50 times more storage and 50 times more money and like all the things that you need, right?

00:16:53 ◼   ► And you probably can't charge 50 times the price or whatever

00:16:57 ◼   ► But it's like it's not like the photo stream itself is already hopefully all those things you described

00:17:02 ◼   ► They already have a solution for and it's just a matter of okay

00:17:05 ◼   ► Well now we just need to pour more money in and hopefully find someplace to get more money out charge more money for users

00:17:10 ◼   ► For it don't don't give it to everyone for free

00:17:11 ◼   ► Maybe maybe make it a $100 a year service a $50 a year service

00:17:15 ◼   ► Like there are things you can do or you know again factored into the price of the other things spread that $50 over the cost

00:17:20 ◼   ► Of all your other products who knows like the money stuff. I feel like can be worked out the technology stuff

00:17:26 ◼   ► They should have all this stuff already in place, and they don't they should have this stuff anyway

00:17:30 ◼   ► Just because this is an important thing that companies in the technology sector are gonna have to have at some point in the future

00:17:36 ◼   ► So anyway, they're not there yet

00:17:39 ◼   ► They seem to be making motions in this direction because that document did have a recent modification date saying that the upload limits were

00:17:46 ◼   ► lowered I

00:17:49 ◼   ► Don't know like we'll know it's happened because they'll have a slide up that says

00:17:52 ◼   ► You know the slide we previously showed you about photo stream said a thousand photos blah blah blah

00:17:57 ◼   ► This slide just has a single word in the middle

00:17:59 ◼   ► It says unlimited or all your photos or some crap like that like we'll know it when it happens

00:18:04 ◼   ► I don't think it's going to arrive at a secret knowledge base article where suddenly there's no more limits

00:18:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean that's the kind of thing they would want to brag about that's a pretty big deal

00:18:12 ◼   ► And also like they would want people to know that they're doing it. I mean if they just start

00:18:15 ◼   ► Quietly backing up more than your last X photos

00:18:18 ◼   ► They're not really getting much of a benefit of that you know customer wise PR wise you know customers

00:18:24 ◼   ► Don't realize they can now put everything

00:18:26 ◼   ► Then we'll use it differently. We'll think about it differently

00:18:29 ◼   ► So I think it's important for them to to be very loud about it if they ever do that

00:18:34 ◼   ► Yeah, and also I don't recall if I mentioned this in the last time we talked about Everpix,

00:18:39 ◼   ► which thankfully that was so quick when we did because that gives us time to talk about

00:18:43 ◼   ► it now.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Oh, the chat room's going to kill you.

00:18:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

00:18:48 ◼   ► But just to really quickly add, if Apple did take this on, imagine how much of a selling

00:18:52 ◼   ► point that would be for your normal human that they look at it and they know enough

00:18:57 ◼   ► about the landscape to know that, well, Windows Phone series, mobile 7 series, Metro, not

00:19:02 ◼   ► Metro doesn't do any of the fancy photo things we want.

00:19:07 ◼   ► The Android phone that everyone is telling them to get, well, that looks nice and all,

00:19:11 ◼   ► and I really like that big screen, but I tell you what, this iPhone will back up all of

00:19:16 ◼   ► my pictures for me automatically, and I don't have to worry about it.

00:19:20 ◼   ► Why would I not get that?

00:19:21 ◼   ► So when I take pictures of my kids, grandkids, dog, car, whatever, I know I will never ever

00:19:26 ◼   ► ever lose any of them.

00:19:29 ◼   ► And that would be a real selling point.

00:19:30 ◼   ► But again, it's really hard to do and to get right.

00:19:33 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:19:35 ◼   ► A lot of people have been telling us about Google+

00:19:37 ◼   ► and how they back up all your stuff.

00:19:39 ◼   ► And some people even mentioned Dropbox.

00:19:40 ◼   ► And Google+ I think is worth addressing,

00:19:42 ◼   ► because I think Google is signed up for like, hey,

00:19:44 ◼   ► we'll save all your photos.

00:19:45 ◼   ► We'll do all this great stuff for you.

00:19:46 ◼   ► And the reason it never is on my radar for something

00:19:48 ◼   ► that I want to do is because Google+ and the whole stuff

00:19:52 ◼   ► associated with it, which is now almost everything that Google

00:19:55 ◼   ► does, is a social network.

00:19:58 ◼   ► It's a social sharing service.

00:20:00 ◼   ► And I would never take my family photos

00:20:02 ◼   ► and give them over to a service that's a social service.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Like I wouldn't, if Facebook said,

00:20:08 ◼   ► "Hey, we'll take all your photos

00:20:09 ◼   ► "and preserve them forever," I wouldn't do it.

00:20:11 ◼   ► And same thing with Google+.

00:20:12 ◼   ► Because the whole purpose of those services

00:20:14 ◼   ► is to share things with other people.

00:20:15 ◼   ► And my photo collection is by default

00:20:18 ◼   ► something I don't wanna share.

00:20:19 ◼   ► In fact, all I wanna do is selectively pick

00:20:21 ◼   ► maybe a handful of pictures and share them

00:20:23 ◼   ► with selected people like I do in PhotoStream.

00:20:25 ◼   ► I never wanna take, "Here's my entire photo library,

00:20:27 ◼   ► Jam it up to a social network service, even if it has control to say, "Oh yeah, no, it'll be private by default.

00:20:32 ◼   ► Everything you upload won't be shown to anybody unless you explicitly say it will. Don't forget to check the chat."

00:20:37 ◼   ► Even if all the defaults are right, even if all the heart isn't in the right place,

00:20:40 ◼   ► it just doesn't make me comfortable to take all my photos and put them on a social network.

00:20:44 ◼   ► Because that's not like I don't want to share them with the world.

00:20:47 ◼   ► I'm just looking for somebody to store my pictures, you know, like Everpix did.

00:20:51 ◼   ► Right. I know we saw I saw him briefly. I know I saw a lot of feedback

00:20:55 ◼   ► Oh just use Flickr and I actually engaged with somebody was like well, yeah, but they default to sharing all your pictures

00:21:01 ◼   ► No, no, you don't need to default sharing off all your pictures, but I completely agree with you John. That's inherently

00:21:07 ◼   ► Opposed their motivations are inherently opposed to my motivations and and that's just not good

00:21:14 ◼   ► So anyway, and we can move on from this photo stuff

00:21:17 ◼   ► And let me ask you John

00:21:20 ◼   ► If you were Steven Elop and you were trying to discuss without actually discussing what you do as the next Microsoft CEO

00:21:28 ◼   ► What would you do with Xbox? Yeah, I didn't actually read all these articles about

00:21:32 ◼   ► There was a bunch of leaks from

00:21:35 ◼   ► Presumably from Elop's camp about what he would do if he took over Microsoft and if you're gonna leak stuff like that like I

00:21:42 ◼   ► Assume the idea was to leak things

00:21:46 ◼   ► that people would say, "Yeah, that's awesome. Get this guy, because look what he said he's gonna do," like to make public pressure.

00:21:52 ◼   ► You know,

00:21:55 ◼   ► ELOP or his

00:21:56 ◼   ► surrogates or whatever, suddenly there'd be pressure from the press, from the public, from Microsoft shareholders.

00:22:02 ◼   ► "You've got to get his ELOP guy in there, because he has some amazing ideas,

00:22:05 ◼   ► and you guys are a bunch of bozos." But then the ideas he put out seemed terrible, and everyone seems to think they're terrible ideas.

00:22:09 ◼   ► And so, I don't know if this was an intentional leak by his camp. If it was,

00:22:15 ◼   ► Maybe they thought these were great ideas, but I don't think they're great ideas, and I don't see anybody else thinking they're great ideas.

00:22:21 ◼   ► I mean, maybe they're scary and radical, and that's the vibe he's going for, like he's ready to shake stuff up,

00:22:25 ◼   ► there's no sacred cows or whatever, but yeah, don't get rid of the one thing that is a cut.

00:22:31 ◼   ► The one product Microsoft has that's probably the most loved by customers.

00:22:34 ◼   ► You can't say it's the most successful product because they had, you know,

00:22:37 ◼   ► was it multiple billion dollar write down because of the red ring of death on the 360s, and it's lost money for years,

00:22:43 ◼   ► and it did start to break even and become profitable.

00:22:44 ◼   ► I think recently but over its entire lifetime it still hasn't dug itself out of the hole that took to get there

00:22:49 ◼   ► but people like it people like the Xbox and

00:22:52 ◼   ► That's in the world of Microsoft's. It's not easy to say that about much of anything these days

00:22:57 ◼   ► So getting rid getting rid of that only makes sense if you decide that Microsoft is not going to be consumer company anymore

00:23:03 ◼   ► They're just gonna become like Oracle with a different logo, and I don't think that's a win scenario for anybody

00:23:10 ◼   ► Now would you try to kind of pull the opposite or maybe a similar thing to what they do with Windows and brand?

00:23:17 ◼   ► Everything that everything new perhaps that Microsoft does with

00:23:21 ◼   ► Xbox this and Xbox that and what I mean is you know they they take the Windows

00:23:26 ◼   ► mobile whatever Windows Phone series whatever whatever and

00:23:30 ◼   ► Personally as soon as I see Windows applied to anything I get a little grumbly

00:23:35 ◼   ► What do you think if they rebranded things with Xbox that maybe that would be better?

00:23:40 ◼   ► I mean clearly that worked for Comcast and Xfinity, so why wouldn't it work here?

00:23:44 ◼   ► Because everyone wants to use the Xbox phone and their IT department is going to love that.

00:23:48 ◼   ► I mean I agree, but it seems like Microsoft could use some help in there in any sort of

00:23:53 ◼   ► branding situation.

00:23:54 ◼   ► I know, Mark, you're the king of brands, you tell me.

00:23:58 ◼   ► I mean part of it is, I don't know, their branding is pretty terrible and their marketing

00:24:05 ◼   ► is even worse, and especially their advertising is just the worst. But ultimately, they could

00:24:13 ◼   ► have this terrible advertising and those terrible names for the products, and they could get

00:24:19 ◼   ► away with it if the products were really amazingly good and compelling to buy. And the problem

00:24:24 ◼   ► is they're just not. You know, Office, people love Office, or at least they use it. I think

00:24:30 ◼   ► people really do love Office. It really is very good for what it does for the most part.

00:24:35 ◼   ► Windows, I feel like some people love it, most people just kind of use it.

00:24:39 ◼   ► Everything else, you just kind of use it because it's there, because it's what your business uses or whatever.

00:24:43 ◼   ► Except the consumer stuff like Xbox, that's a different story.

00:24:47 ◼   ► But the things like Windows Phone

00:24:51 ◼   ► and even Windows 8 and the new, you know, the Surface

00:24:55 ◼   ► and things like the Surface, the whole line of Windows 8 convertible

00:24:59 ◼   ► tablets or Pure tablets, Slate I guess they call them still.

00:25:03 ◼   ► All those things are just not that compelling.

00:25:05 ◼   ► And that's the biggest problem in the market.

00:25:06 ◼   ► It's not that they have stupid names.

00:25:09 ◼   ► It's not that they have dumbfounding commercials.

00:25:11 ◼   ► It's that these things just aren't getting any traction

00:25:15 ◼   ► with consumers.

00:25:16 ◼   ► And I don't think there's anything small

00:25:19 ◼   ► they can do to fix that.

00:25:20 ◼   ► I think this is a big problem.

00:25:22 ◼   ► It needs a big solution.

00:25:24 ◼   ► And I'm not sure they can deliver it

00:25:25 ◼   ► no matter what they call it.

00:25:26 ◼   ► - Xbox was actually kind of a triumph

00:25:28 ◼   ► of the anti-branding thing because I'm sure somebody,

00:25:31 ◼   ► a lot of somebodies wanted to call the Microsoft game console something with the word Microsoft

00:25:35 ◼   ► in it or something with the word Windows in it. And there must have been a fight and the Xbox

00:25:39 ◼   ► guys won that fight. It's not, you know, Microsoft Windows Xbox or Xbox for Windows or Windows game

00:25:45 ◼   ► machine or, you know, anything like that. It's just Xbox. Like, I mean, I guess I don't know.

00:25:50 ◼   ► I'm sure Microsoft is somewhere on the box. But the Xbox brand is not tied to Microsoft. It is

00:25:55 ◼   ► not tied to Windows in the same way that all the other things you just mentioned are. And I think

00:26:00 ◼   ► I think the Xbox brand has such value at this point that you made a joke about, "Oh, what

00:26:06 ◼   ► if they named everything Xbox?"

00:26:07 ◼   ► If they made something...

00:26:09 ◼   ► You know, the Xbox One does all sorts of non-gaming stuff.

00:26:12 ◼   ► And if they called one aspect of that non-gaming stuff Xbox TV, they didn't.

00:26:16 ◼   ► I don't think they have anything branded that way, but it basically is Xbox TV.

00:26:19 ◼   ► But if they called something Xbox TV and it worked kind of like, "Oh, we'll take..."

00:26:24 ◼   ► Like what the Xbox One does.

00:26:25 ◼   ► We'll take your TV in as an input and overlay stuff on it and let you switch back and forth

00:26:30 ◼   ► between games and blah blah blah. I think that branding would work because people like

00:26:33 ◼   ► Xbox and people would like the feature set presumably. So I don't think that's entirely

00:26:39 ◼   ► crazy to take Xbox and put it as a prefix instead of something else that's related to

00:26:43 ◼   ► what the Xbox does as in a box that connects to your TV that does interactive things.

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00:29:03 ◼   ► So John, since you're apparently cuing everything or kicking

00:29:06 ◼   ► everything off this episode, how is the enterprise software

00:29:10 ◼   ► experience treating you these days?

00:29:12 ◼   ► I have this big long sob story about enterprise software.

00:29:15 ◼   ► I was trying to debate whether it would fit in

00:29:18 ◼   ► on a complaining podcast if I had such a thing.

00:29:21 ◼   ► But--

00:29:22 ◼   ► This isn't it?

00:29:23 ◼   ► This is your enthusiastic appreciating everything

00:29:26 ◼   ► podcast.

00:29:27 ◼   ► You know, like, you ever think if there's

00:29:28 ◼   ► some kind of lesson to take about like what not to do

00:29:32 ◼   ► or something like that?

00:29:33 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:29:33 ◼   ► You can tell me.

00:29:34 ◼   ► I can try to go through it quickly

00:29:36 ◼   ► if that's at all possible.

00:29:38 ◼   ► I would love to hear you attempt that.

00:29:40 ◼   ► Yes, indeed.

00:29:41 ◼   ► My version of attempting that is I talk really fast.

00:29:43 ◼   ► That's probably not what you want.

00:29:45 ◼   ► All right, so this is a story about enterprise software.

00:29:48 ◼   ► And we've talked about enterprise software

00:29:50 ◼   ► and Pat shows, and my sort of thumbnail sketch

00:29:53 ◼   ► of enterprise software is that the people using the software

00:29:56 ◼   ► aren't the people who purchase the software

00:29:58 ◼   ► or selected the software if it happens to be free.

00:30:01 ◼   ► And so this is a story of just such a kind

00:30:04 ◼   ► of piece of software.

00:30:05 ◼   ► So before Mavericks was released,

00:30:08 ◼   ► my work changed its VPN software from a VPN that

00:30:11 ◼   ► worked with the VPN support that's built into OS X

00:30:15 ◼   ► to one that requires a third party client.

00:30:18 ◼   ► And so here is enterprise software assumption number one

00:30:21 ◼   ► of the story.

00:30:22 ◼   ► When a new version of OS X comes out,

00:30:24 ◼   ► assume your enterprise software will not work with it.

00:30:28 ◼   ► And that might seem like a weird assumption,

00:30:30 ◼   ► but when I was sort of sketching out the notes for this,

00:30:34 ◼   ► I'm like, you know what?

00:30:35 ◼   ► I do just assume that.

00:30:37 ◼   ► I just assume that when the new version of OS X comes out,

00:30:41 ◼   ► most of my favorite programs will work with it.

00:30:43 ◼   ► But of course, enterprise software won't.

00:30:45 ◼   ► And I've always-- I don't question it,

00:30:47 ◼   ► But I thought, why is that?

00:30:49 ◼   ► There are months and months to lead up to a new OS X release.

00:30:52 ◼   ► There's a developer conference.

00:30:53 ◼   ► There are developer builds.

00:30:56 ◼   ► And it seems like all these companies are just shocked

00:30:58 ◼   ► that Apple came out with a new app.

00:30:59 ◼   ► We've never seen anything like this before.

00:31:01 ◼   ► Where did this come from?

00:31:02 ◼   ► Mavericks?

00:31:02 ◼   ► Who heard of that?

00:31:04 ◼   ► And then that day, after it comes out,

00:31:07 ◼   ► they start work on--

00:31:09 ◼   ► they find out on that day whether their stuff works.

00:31:11 ◼   ► I mean, it's almost as if I'm not sure that enterprise

00:31:15 ◼   ► software companies have anybody actively working

00:31:17 ◼   ► on their software products, or at least on the Mac's software,

00:31:20 ◼   ► right?

00:31:21 ◼   ► And it's always just like in reactive mode.

00:31:22 ◼   ► I mean, Oracle went years--

00:31:24 ◼   ► no one cares about this except for people who do stuff

00:31:26 ◼   ► in my line of work.

00:31:28 ◼   ► But Oracle went years without a 64-bit client library

00:31:31 ◼   ► that worked in OS X, like years.

00:31:32 ◼   ► I think they span like two or three OS X releases

00:31:35 ◼   ► without anything that worked in 64-bit.

00:31:37 ◼   ► Because they just couldn't be bothered.

00:31:39 ◼   ► It's like, who cares?

00:31:39 ◼   ► Whatever.

00:31:41 ◼   ► So anyway, sure enough, Mavericks came out.

00:31:43 ◼   ► My enterprise software did not work with it.

00:31:47 ◼   ► And this is Cisco VPN.

00:31:49 ◼   ► I might as well just name names.

00:31:50 ◼   ► Why not?

00:31:50 ◼   ► I don't think they're going to sponsor the show.

00:31:52 ◼   ► Sorry, Cisco.

00:31:53 ◼   ► Cisco seemed genuinely shocked that Madrix was released.

00:31:59 ◼   ► And they seemed shocked that their software

00:32:00 ◼   ► didn't work with it.

00:32:01 ◼   ► They're like, huh, look at that.

00:32:03 ◼   ► Our stuff doesn't work with it.

00:32:04 ◼   ► And they said, the existing version kind of worked,

00:32:07 ◼   ► except it might frequently disconnect, which is like,

00:32:09 ◼   ► all right, well then it doesn't work, really, does it?

00:32:11 ◼   ► Because it frequently disconnects.

00:32:12 ◼   ► It's not really what I want out of VPN software.

00:32:14 ◼   ► And so I couldn't upgrade to Madrix

00:32:16 ◼   ► until the VPN software is updated.

00:32:18 ◼   ► So a short time later, I think it was only a couple weeks,

00:32:21 ◼   ► Cisco Update has a version that was compatible with Mavericks.

00:32:24 ◼   ► So this is thumbs up in Cisco,

00:32:25 ◼   ► see maybe they will sponsor,

00:32:26 ◼   ► because unlike Oracle they didn't wait three years.

00:32:28 ◼   ► Weeks, only weeks after Mavericks were released.

00:32:30 ◼   ► Now granted it still sort of drives me crazy,

00:32:32 ◼   ► 'cause like you should not have found out

00:32:34 ◼   ► when the OS was released that your software

00:32:36 ◼   ► was incompatible and then scrambled

00:32:37 ◼   ► for a couple weeks to have a compatible version.

00:32:39 ◼   ► But anyway, the new version said it has a workaround

00:32:42 ◼   ► for a bug that's in Mavericks

00:32:43 ◼   ► and that they filed the bug with Apple,

00:32:45 ◼   ► This version should work until Apple fixes the bug and the rest which I completely believe again this bug should have been filed like you

00:32:51 ◼   ► Know seven developer releases of Mavericks ago, but whatever

00:32:53 ◼   ► But in the meantime here's one that has a workaround that shouldn't disconnect all right

00:32:57 ◼   ► So then we come to enterprise software assumption number two you will not be able to get the software you need

00:33:01 ◼   ► Can I can I download can I download this new version of this VPN client is compatible with Mavericks?

00:33:08 ◼   ► First step of that is trying to find it on Cisco's website

00:33:11 ◼   ► Which is not easy you ever tried to find this type of thing you would think it would be right there next to the words

00:33:15 ◼   ► I read that told me they had a new version

00:33:17 ◼   ► But it's not because that was like in a forum somewhere with some Cisco person. Oh god

00:33:20 ◼   ► This is reminded me of when I had to

00:33:22 ◼   ► Install raid drivers for raid cards on Linux. It's exactly the same thing like you have to dive through these like crazy

00:33:30 ◼   ► enterprise II sites and good luck finding anything and then they want you to join their their

00:33:36 ◼   ► Program for their premium support and everything like no I bought the card

00:33:40 ◼   ► I just want to download the thing that makes it work a mess

00:33:43 ◼   ► Yeah, whenever you find yourself in a forum, almost especially if it's an official forum,

00:33:47 ◼   ► like this is not just some random forum with a bunch of people. Like there's an official person

00:33:51 ◼   ► from the company responding to the forum. I mean, this is what drove the creation of

00:33:55 ◼   ► StackOverflow for one and Discourse for another. Like if you find yourself in a traditional forum,

00:34:01 ◼   ► scrolling through pages and pages of replies, looking for the ones from the official Cisco guy,

00:34:04 ◼   ► trying to like... It's like replaying the journal on a file system. Everything comes back to file

00:34:08 ◼   ► systems guys. It's like replaying the journal on a file system to reconstruct the history to like

00:34:14 ◼   ► zoom up to the current day so that you know you have to read these giant threads to find

00:34:17 ◼   ► the information. But anyway, I eventually found the page that had this text on it. You know,

00:34:23 ◼   ► I copy and pasted a lot of stuff on the website because I just love the copy from these websites.

00:34:26 ◼   ► Anyway, the following directory contains versions of AnyConnect for all platforms. The current

00:34:30 ◼   ► download for OS X is version 3.1.0.4.074. That's a real version number for enterprise software.

00:34:36 ◼   ► and all other platforms are 3.1.0.4.0.7.2. Any Connect version, big long number, is required

00:34:44 ◼   ► for OS 10.9, and all other Mac platforms may either use one of the old versions. Anyway,

00:34:48 ◼   ► so underneath that tiny, tiny, tiny text is a huge scrolling iframe containing many, many downloads,

00:34:55 ◼   ► most of which are not from my platform, including items with text like this.

00:35:00 ◼   ► Package enables Fips, all caps, for Mac OS X, all one word squished together.

00:35:07 ◼   ► Intel in scare quotes for some reason, platform. So package enables FIPS for Mac OS X,

00:35:13 ◼   ► Intel platforms. File contains the VPN API for Mac OS X spaced out this time, Intel platforms.

00:35:21 ◼   ► Standalone DMG package for Mac OS X, Intel platforms. Web deployment package for Mac OS X,

00:35:26 ◼   ► Intel platforms. All of these are the old version number, despite the note on the

00:35:30 ◼   ► top saying that you want to have the new version number. And I don't know which do

00:35:32 ◼   ► I want. Do I want tips? Do I want VPN API? Do you want a standalone DMG package?

00:35:36 ◼   ► Do you want a web deployment package? You know, like, no instructions in that regard.

00:35:39 ◼   ► Easiest way to find what I want was to search for the version number string on

00:35:43 ◼   ► the page. Do like in page, in browser, you know, search for the thing. Because then I

00:35:47 ◼   ► found like way down, you know, instead of, you scroll past like hundreds of these

00:35:50 ◼   ► things for Linux, for Windows, different versions of Windows, different platforms,

00:35:53 ◼   ► different versions, eventually I found the one that I want.

00:35:57 ◼   ► And the thing, I guess the take home lesson to this is that the next time you're on some

00:36:02 ◼   ► web developers, some developer's website and it auto detects what platform you're on and

00:36:07 ◼   ► gives you a gigantic shiny red glossy button with a download link for the latest version

00:36:11 ◼   ► of their software for your platform, appreciate it.

00:36:14 ◼   ► Because that's not how, you know what I mean?

00:36:16 ◼   ► Like you know when you go to a website and like, that's what they want you to have.

00:36:19 ◼   ► You want to go to some indie Mac developers, this is such a gigantic button that says download

00:36:23 ◼   ► Now download right here, even if it's a link to the Mac App Store, they'll take you right

00:36:26 ◼   ► to the thing.

00:36:27 ◼   ► Not on enterprise software, you have to hunt for the download link.

00:36:30 ◼   ► And there'll be decoys, like all those ones I just read, and you have to know what FIPS

00:36:33 ◼   ► is and I don't, you know, no explanation of this stuff.

00:36:36 ◼   ► A bunch of these are tar GZs too, just throw an XD Monkey wrench for the non tech savvy.

00:36:42 ◼   ► I find the download link that I want, I click it, and no luck.

00:36:45 ◼   ► I get a message saying I have to log in.

00:36:46 ◼   ► Right.

00:36:47 ◼   ► So okay, well, I figured that would be the case because they're not gonna just let you

00:36:50 ◼   ► download their software.

00:36:51 ◼   ► crazy, like Marco said, you have to register an account, you can't just have

00:36:54 ◼   ► the thing. So I register, I create an account, I check my email for the

00:36:57 ◼   ► confirmation message, I click the confirmation link, I'm all set. I

00:37:01 ◼   ► attempt to log into my new confirmed Cisco account and I get this error

00:37:05 ◼   ► message, again word for word. Your login was unsuccessful for one of the

00:37:09 ◼   ► following reasons. You entered your user ID and/or password incorrectly, please

00:37:13 ◼   ► try again, that's a bulleted item, and here's a second bulleted item. You

00:37:17 ◼   ► recently registered or reset your password and our systems are updating

00:37:20 ◼   ► your information. Please try again in five minutes.

00:37:22 ◼   ► Oh, my God. It's slave lag. That's actually an error message.

00:37:27 ◼   ► So then we come to enterprise solver assumption number three. What works in the rest of the

00:37:31 ◼   ► world does not work in the enterprise world. In the rest of the world, if you create an

00:37:35 ◼   ► account and they email you a confirmation link and you click it, you go through the

00:37:39 ◼   ► whole... Of course you can log into that account. You just confirmed it. Hell, most of the time

00:37:42 ◼   ► you can even partially log into it even if you haven't confirmed it. You don't have to

00:37:45 ◼   ► say, "Oh, you haven't confirmed your email yet."

00:37:47 ◼   ► But in the enterprise world merely creating an account and clicking the confirmation doesn't mean you can log into it, right?

00:37:52 ◼   ► So yeah, so I wait five minutes right same error. I wait ten minutes same error fifteen minutes same error

00:37:58 ◼   ► And I'm thinking like well, maybe I mistyped my password

00:38:00 ◼   ► I mean, maybe I mistyped it twice during the the account creation process as possible

00:38:04 ◼   ► Or may have the cat blocks on or some crazy thing like that right so I reset my password

00:38:08 ◼   ► Right thankfully they haven't forgot your password link or would have to go off into another realm because sometimes

00:38:12 ◼   ► They don't even have I forgot your password like you know like call somebody or something I?

00:38:15 ◼   ► I reset my password, you know, sends you an email, click this link to reset, type a new

00:38:19 ◼   ► password.

00:38:20 ◼   ► I try logging in with my newly reset password.

00:38:23 ◼   ► And what I of course get is that same error message that says, "You entered a user ID

00:38:26 ◼   ► and/or password incorrectly.

00:38:27 ◼   ► Please start again as one bulleted item."

00:38:30 ◼   ► Or "You recently registered to reset your password."

00:38:32 ◼   ► And I did recently reset my password.

00:38:34 ◼   ► And I realized, like, that's not going to help me because if I get that error message,

00:38:37 ◼   ► again, this error message says, "Your login was unsuccessful for one of the following

00:38:42 ◼   ► reasons."

00:38:43 ◼   ► two possible reasons. One user ID a password incorrect to you just recently registered or

00:38:48 ◼   ► reset. Well, I did just recently reset. It's actually four reasons. Yeah. Well, yeah. Two

00:38:52 ◼   ► bullet points. Please try again in five minutes. Wait, five minutes, wait 10 minutes, wait 15

00:38:57 ◼   ► minutes, wait a whole day. You actually did it again. Waited a whole day. Like who knows?

00:39:01 ◼   ► It was the enterprise software. Like maybe, like you said, maybe it hasn't probably maybe like

00:39:05 ◼   ► some person has to write it down on form and like mimeograph it and like put it in a pneumatic tube

00:39:10 ◼   ► and like, I don't know how things get into the real database. And some person entered into an

00:39:14 ◼   ► Excel spreadsheet, and someone prints that Excel spreadsheet, and then sends the FedEx to the

00:39:18 ◼   ► Topeka office, and the Topeka offices enters it in their COBOL system. And then finally,

00:39:22 ◼   ► you can go, I don't know how it works. I gave it a whole day, same error message. And this just

00:39:28 ◼   ► makes, this is a repeat of enterprise software assumption number three, it works in the rest

00:39:31 ◼   ► of the world. It doesn't work in the enterprise world. To create an account, you can't log into

00:39:34 ◼   ► it. Reset your password, you can't log into it. So now I'm in desperation mode, and I email the

00:39:39 ◼   ► the support link, right?

00:39:41 ◼   ► Find on the website something like "technical support for the Cisco website", right?

00:39:45 ◼   ► Here's the entire text of my email.

00:39:47 ◼   ► I can't log into my account at Cisco.com.

00:39:49 ◼   ► I gave the username as well.

00:39:51 ◼   ► I've tried resetting my password.

00:39:52 ◼   ► Each time it says it succeeds, but each time my new password still does not work.

00:39:56 ◼   ► I think that's straightforward.

00:39:57 ◼   ► I don't know what else to tell them.

00:39:59 ◼   ► I gave them my username.

00:40:01 ◼   ► I said that I can't log in, and their first thing is going to be like, "Oh, maybe you

00:40:04 ◼   ► forgot your password.

00:40:05 ◼   ► You should probably reset it."

00:40:06 ◼   ► tell them I've reset my password several times actually because I did do it several times.

00:40:10 ◼   ► And each time it says, "Yes, we've reset your password," but each time I try to log in again,

00:40:13 ◼   ► my newly reset password doesn't work. That's all I said. I didn't have to go into this

00:40:17 ◼   ► big rigmarole about the weird messages and stuff like that. I figure maybe there's something

00:40:20 ◼   ► weird on my account or I'm locked out or they should be able to see on their end failed

00:40:23 ◼   ► login attempts or something. Who knows? So I got a response about like 12 hours later,

00:40:27 ◼   ► which is pretty darn good. And I'm not being sarcastic about this in terms of customer

00:40:30 ◼   ► support. For any company, 12 hours is a pretty good turnaround time on a support email, especially

00:40:35 ◼   ► or a big company like Cisco.

00:40:37 ◼   ► Here's the reply.

00:40:39 ◼   ► Dear John, thank you for contacting Cisco.

00:40:41 ◼   ► By adding star.cisco.com to the trusted sites,

00:40:45 ◼   ► you are able to log in successfully.

00:40:47 ◼   ► How to do it question mark comma,

00:40:48 ◼   ► follow these easy steps period.

00:40:50 ◼   ► Just this crazy, crazy punctuation.

00:40:54 ◼   ► A, the steps are labeled with letter, capital A period.

00:40:57 ◼   ► Click the tools button, then click internet options.

00:41:00 ◼   ► Anyone who has those windows down here.

00:41:02 ◼   ► B, click the security tab.

00:41:03 ◼   ► C. Now click Trusted Sites, then click on the Sites button.

00:41:06 ◼   ► D. And it goes through the whole instructions

00:41:08 ◼   ► for Internet Explorer, adding start at Cisco.com

00:41:11 ◼   ► as a trusted site.

00:41:11 ◼   ► Because I guess the assumption is my problem

00:41:13 ◼   ► is that I can't log in because it's not a trusted site.

00:41:14 ◼   ► I didn't say anything about trusted site.

00:41:16 ◼   ► I didn't send them any screenshots.

00:41:17 ◼   ► I didn't mention platform.

00:41:18 ◼   ► But this is the canned response I get.

00:41:20 ◼   ► All right, so OK, forget about that.

00:41:21 ◼   ► Time to get creative.

00:41:22 ◼   ► I don't know why I didn't do this earlier,

00:41:24 ◼   ► but I made an incognito window in Chrome,

00:41:27 ◼   ► or the equivalent of deleting cookies.

00:41:28 ◼   ► Like, just start with a fresh slate, right?

00:41:30 ◼   ► And I go to--

00:41:31 ◼   ► You can call it porn mode.

00:41:32 ◼   ► It's all right.

00:41:33 ◼   ► Is that what they call it?

00:41:34 ◼   ► The kids call it these days.

00:41:36 ◼   ► And I go to the login form, and I enter my password,

00:41:37 ◼   ► and it works.

00:41:38 ◼   ► I log in.

00:41:39 ◼   ► I see the top of the page, my username.

00:41:40 ◼   ► I can go to my account.

00:41:41 ◼   ► I'm like, hey, my account.

00:41:43 ◼   ► It works.

00:41:43 ◼   ► Everything works great.

00:41:45 ◼   ► And so I re-navigate to the download link.

00:41:47 ◼   ► I click on it, and it asks me to log in.

00:41:48 ◼   ► And now I read the message, the message

00:41:54 ◼   ► that it shows you when you try to click on the link.

00:41:56 ◼   ► The message that was there the first time,

00:41:58 ◼   ► but that it didn't finish reading because I'm impatient,

00:42:00 ◼   ► it said, to download the software, you must log in.

00:42:02 ◼   ► link to log in. And the first time I encountered this problem, I immediately

00:42:05 ◼   ► clicked the login link and it went through "you don't have an account, create

00:42:07 ◼   ► account, blah blah blah." But that message continues. You must log in and have a

00:42:11 ◼   ► valid service contract associated with your Cisco.com profile.

00:42:15 ◼   ► So this is Enterprise Software Assumption #4. Sometimes, despite all

00:42:20 ◼   ► the terrible things that are terrible about Enterprise Software, it's at least

00:42:22 ◼   ► partially your fault. If I had read that message the first time, I probably would

00:42:26 ◼   ► have stopped this process and said, "Well, I don't have a valid service contract

00:42:29 ◼   ► associated with my Cisco.com profile.

00:42:31 ◼   ► In fact, I don't even have a Cisco.com profile.

00:42:32 ◼   ► But instead I read, "If you download the software,

00:42:34 ◼   ► "you must log in."

00:42:35 ◼   ► Log in was blue and underlined, and I clicked on it,

00:42:37 ◼   ► and I went off.

00:42:38 ◼   ► So I, like every other user, doesn't read all the messages,

00:42:40 ◼   ► just gets to the part that I want to get to.

00:42:43 ◼   ► So I can't get this all for myself.

00:42:44 ◼   ► I don't have a service contract.

00:42:45 ◼   ► - I'm sorry, can I pause you real quick?

00:42:47 ◼   ► - Go for it.

00:42:48 ◼   ► - How long between the first time you saw the login link

00:42:50 ◼   ► and clicked it, and the realization now

00:42:53 ◼   ► that you needed to read the rest of the message?

00:42:57 ◼   ► 'Cause you mentioned at least a 12-hour wait, right?

00:42:59 ◼   ► Yeah, so I tried it one day and went through this whole big thing, and then it kept asking

00:43:03 ◼   ► me to wait, so I said, "Fine, I'll wait till tomorrow."

00:43:05 ◼   ► And then I tried the second day and then did the email thing and then got the email back

00:43:08 ◼   ► I guess the third day.

00:43:10 ◼   ► I'm not sitting there hammering this.

00:43:11 ◼   ► It's just each day I make another run at it, right?

00:43:14 ◼   ► Okay, I'm sorry.

00:43:16 ◼   ► So carry on.

00:43:17 ◼   ► And by the way, I think the problem with the incognito window thing is that it probably

00:43:20 ◼   ► coquied me seeing that, "Oh, he was trying to get to destination X, but before you can

00:43:24 ◼   ► get there, we have to send you off on this tangent to create an account and log into

00:43:27 ◼   ► it."

00:43:28 ◼   ► I think what happened was I went off on a tangent, created an account, and every time

00:43:32 ◼   ► I went to the login form, it was trying to send me to the destination that I didn't have

00:43:35 ◼   ► permission to get to.

00:43:36 ◼   ► So every time I logged in, it would probably accept my authentication, try to send me to

00:43:39 ◼   ► the destination, and then bounce me back and say, "Oh, you can't get this because you haven't

00:43:42 ◼   ► logged in," and send me back to the login form.

00:43:43 ◼   ► And of course, the error message doesn't say anything about that, and the error message

00:43:46 ◼   ► is terrible anyway.

00:43:47 ◼   ► That wasn't one of the 400 error possibilities?

00:43:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:51 ◼   ► It's like, why else would clearing cookies, why else would the equivalent of clearing

00:43:56 ◼   ► and cookies allow me to get logged in,

00:43:57 ◼   ► because it sent me-- just dumped me on the home page then,

00:43:59 ◼   ► right?

00:44:00 ◼   ► So I couldn't get the software myself, so I figured,

00:44:03 ◼   ► let me try to get it the way that my work says

00:44:05 ◼   ► I'm supposed to get it, right?

00:44:07 ◼   ► And their instructions, which I've done before, obviously,

00:44:09 ◼   ► because I have the existing version of this VPN software

00:44:11 ◼   ► that works in Mountain Lion, is make sure you're not

00:44:14 ◼   ► on the VPN step one, which is always striking me strange.

00:44:17 ◼   ► But anyway, and go to some special URL,

00:44:18 ◼   ► log in with my special work credentials,

00:44:21 ◼   ► load a Java applet that will try to detect my platform

00:44:23 ◼   ► and send me the file.

00:44:25 ◼   ► And most of this time, of course, this doesn't work.

00:44:27 ◼   ► Because my login credentials work,

00:44:29 ◼   ► but then sometimes it bounces me back to the login page,

00:44:31 ◼   ► and then that whole browser is fried,

00:44:32 ◼   ► and you need to clear cookies or quit the browser

00:44:34 ◼   ► and relaunch it and have a chance at it.

00:44:35 ◼   ► Or sometimes the Java applet won't load,

00:44:38 ◼   ► or the Java applet hangs and says

00:44:39 ◼   ► it can't detect my platform,

00:44:40 ◼   ► so I try Chrome, I try Safari, I try Firefox.

00:44:43 ◼   ► I can't try IE in my VM,

00:44:45 ◼   ► because it auto-detects your platform.

00:44:46 ◼   ► And if it works in IE in Windows,

00:44:49 ◼   ► but then it gives me the Windows version of the VPN,

00:44:50 ◼   ► which is useless to me.

00:44:51 ◼   ► I need the OS X version of it.

00:44:53 ◼   ► So I always fight with this.

00:44:54 ◼   ► I'm used to it eventually I get it download a look at of course. It's still the old version all right

00:44:57 ◼   ► So now I just have to work wait for work to update its old version of the software

00:45:01 ◼   ► And this is kind of the state of Matt now. It's just like I can't get the software myself

00:45:06 ◼   ► I have to wait for my office to update the version of the software

00:45:09 ◼   ► I told you you know I told them I the beginning of this process before any I started any but I had sent a support ticket

00:45:13 ◼   ► And said hey can I have the version of the VPN that works with Mavericks blah blah blah

00:45:17 ◼   ► But I know the turnaround times are really long and that so while this was going on

00:45:20 ◼   ► I was figuring well

00:45:20 ◼   ► me try to get the thing myself." And the question is, I guess, why does this have a downloader?

00:45:26 ◼   ► Like, why does it require a service contract? Why are all these things that just happen to me,

00:45:30 ◼   ► why are they there? Why isn't this VPN installer just a download link on Cisco's website? Why isn't

00:45:35 ◼   ► this just on a share in my work that I can get? And I guess it just comes down to control.

00:45:39 ◼   ► Like, IT departments at offices want to have control because they don't want to just

00:45:44 ◼   ► let anybody install any VPN software. They want, they have to qualify it to determine

00:45:50 ◼   ► that it works with all the other software that it's qualified to work in the company or whatever.

00:45:54 ◼   ► And it makes sense from their perspective because it's the best way to have predictable results

00:45:58 ◼   ► when you're supporting hundreds and hundreds of people. You've got to have a set of approved

00:46:02 ◼   ► software. Nothing new goes in that set until it's tested and you make sure it works with all the

00:46:06 ◼   ► other approved software. And you can't just let users download whatever the hell they want to

00:46:10 ◼   ► install on their computers. That's the opposite of IT support. And we can get into a whole nuanced

00:46:16 ◼   ► discussion about whether that's the right model for IT support or whatever, but it's the current

00:46:18 ◼   ► model. And computer nerds are the worst, because we just all want to do it there ourselves.

00:46:23 ◼   ► And yeah, I do want to do it myself. It's kind of like how they say doctors make the

00:46:27 ◼   ► worst patients. I think computer nerds make the worst people to support in IT,

00:46:31 ◼   ► and I'm sure the IT department hates the fact that I'm emailing them. "Can I have a big,

00:46:34 ◼   ► giant version number of this piece of software, because it works with this version of the OS?"

00:46:38 ◼   ► There's this whole culture of people who really, really don't like Apple. Period. They just don't

00:46:45 ◼   ► don't like Apple and they don't like Mac in all capital letters.

00:46:50 ◼   ► And I have to wonder, like, I bet the percentage of people who manage IT departments at large

00:46:59 ◼   ► companies, I bet among them the percentage of them who are the kind of people who hate

00:47:05 ◼   ► Mac in all capitals is way higher than average.

00:47:08 ◼   ► And you know, just culturally, I guarantee you that's the case.

00:47:13 ◼   ► And so they don't like it, they don't respect it, and I think that also applies to enterprise

00:47:18 ◼   ► software developers as well.

00:47:20 ◼   ► I think that's partly why the enterprise software people are always totally caught off guard

00:47:26 ◼   ► when a new version of OS X comes out.

00:47:27 ◼   ► Because they don't respect Mac people or Apple or the platform enough to actually pay any

00:47:34 ◼   ► attention whatsoever to the betas, or to prioritize the releases that fix horrible bugs that only

00:47:42 ◼   ► affect Mac people. I really think that it's just this whole culture of, "Well, you people

00:47:49 ◼   ► who want to use Mac All-Capitals, you're just like this annoyance for us, and that's

00:47:55 ◼   ► not real software, and anything that goes wrong, that's definitely a Mac and All-Capitals

00:48:00 ◼   ► bug, and that's not our bug. That's their bug, and they messed something up because

00:48:03 ◼   ► Apple's stupid." I bet that's a lot of this.

00:48:06 ◼   ► That was definitely the Oracle vibe. But the vibe from Cisco is weird, though, because

00:48:10 ◼   ► As soon as the forums lit up with, "Hey, Mavericks is out and my VPN doesn't work,"

00:48:14 ◼   ► because this is a widely used product, it seemed like the official Cisco people were

00:48:19 ◼   ► genuinely concerned about this failure and didn't know about it.

00:48:24 ◼   ► Like, "Oh my god, our stuff doesn't work with the new version.

00:48:28 ◼   ► This just came out.

00:48:29 ◼   ► How could we have known?"

00:48:30 ◼   ► They're either not aware that there are developer builds of it or...

00:48:34 ◼   ► And the thing is, they reacted quickly.

00:48:36 ◼   ► They got a new build up in weeks.

00:48:39 ◼   ► It was less than a month.

00:48:40 ◼   ► That's pretty fast for enterprise software for such a while.

00:48:43 ◼   ► This has got to go through all...

00:48:45 ◼   ► They reacted like, "This is important.

00:48:47 ◼   ► We need to have a version of this that works with..."

00:48:49 ◼   ► But it's baffling to me.

00:48:51 ◼   ► If they're so concerned about it, this didn't have to be this way.

00:48:55 ◼   ► You could have known this was coming by being part of the Apple...

00:48:58 ◼   ► Not everybody, but just one dude in the company.

00:49:01 ◼   ► And the other thing is, I always picture in these companies, there is one guy who's a

00:49:04 ◼   ► Mac user, the one guy they have working on the Mac software.

00:49:06 ◼   ► Surely, that guy is a big Mac nerd.

00:49:09 ◼   ► And maybe he's held back by his bosses or something like that.

00:49:11 ◼   ► But I don't understand why a little one-person indie Mac

00:49:16 ◼   ► software developer shop can make sure all of his software,

00:49:20 ◼   ► all of his 17 applications that he's written over the years,

00:49:22 ◼   ► they all work on Mavericks, and have his software ready

00:49:25 ◼   ► before the official public release.

00:49:29 ◼   ► And I guess Cisco can't.

00:49:30 ◼   ► I mean, it's because they're a big company,

00:49:32 ◼   ► because they're slow moving.

00:49:33 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:49:34 ◼   ► And it's not just a big company.

00:49:36 ◼   ► Adobe's software, I'm assuming, worked in Mavericks.

00:49:38 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't understand it. But the enterprise stuff I do understand even a little bit.

00:49:44 ◼   ► Like with the VPN stuff especially, you can't just download software. Like the software they

00:49:49 ◼   ► give you from the Java thing is pre-configured with all the values for your company. And again,

00:49:53 ◼   ► that's better because most people in the company aren't tech nerds. So you just want to give them

00:49:57 ◼   ► something and just look, just run this. It'll be all set up for you, which is convenient. But it

00:50:00 ◼   ► also means that even if I was able to download that software from Cisco, I would have to then

00:50:05 ◼   ► know all the different values I have to put in. What is the server name? What is the port? What

00:50:08 ◼   ► What is the protocol that I have to check here

00:50:10 ◼   ► in this checkbox and all that stuff to get it configured?

00:50:13 ◼   ► So I would have to download the official version

00:50:15 ◼   ► and try to dig into it and find like plist files

00:50:17 ◼   ► or other configuration things to figure out

00:50:19 ◼   ► what all the values are or try to ask IT,

00:50:21 ◼   ► which is, you know, hey, can you tell me

00:50:23 ◼   ► the values to self-configure?

00:50:24 ◼   ► They'd be like, what are you doing

00:50:25 ◼   ► self-configure VPN plan?

00:50:26 ◼   ► You can't do that.

00:50:27 ◼   ► You can only download our official one

00:50:28 ◼   ► and run up to that version yet.

00:50:30 ◼   ► You really don't, you know.

00:50:31 ◼   ► So I'm a pain in the butt.

00:50:34 ◼   ► This was mostly/partially my fault,

00:50:37 ◼   ► but enterprise software is also terrible.

00:50:39 ◼   ► - It is, and I think I might be able to explain

00:50:42 ◼   ► some of that, but before I do that,

00:50:46 ◼   ► Marco, is there anything else that's awesome

00:50:48 ◼   ► that you'd like to tell us about?

00:50:49 ◼   ► - There is.

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00:51:00 ◼   ► For a free trial and 10% off,

00:51:02 ◼   ► go to squarespace.com and use offer code ATP11

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00:51:22 ◼   ► And if you end up needing any help at all,

00:51:23 ◼   ► they have an amazing support team

00:51:25 ◼   ► that works 24 hours a day, seven days a week,

00:51:28 ◼   ► with over 70 full-time employees based in New York City alone.

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00:51:35 ◼   ► And that includes a free domain name if you sign up for a whole year.

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00:51:45 ◼   ► I chose to do very little for the ATP site and it still looks amazing because they're

00:51:51 ◼   ► built in the theater just that good.

00:51:53 ◼   ► So these themes, they're built by professional designers, they've won awards, they even all

00:51:58 ◼   ► come with matching mobile templates.

00:52:01 ◼   ► They have these responsive designs that are really fantastic.

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00:52:23 ◼   ► get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for ATP.

00:52:28 ◼   ► Thank you very much to Squarespace for their very frequent and awesome support of ATP.

00:52:32 ◼   ► everything you need to create an exceptional website. Thanks Squarespace.

00:52:35 ◼   ► You should change our template. All these cool templates that Squarespace has.

00:52:39 ◼   ► You say template?

00:52:40 ◼   ► Template? Is that right? You want to say it? I say template. Anyway, there are cool ones.

00:52:46 ◼   ► It also says Mario.

00:52:47 ◼   ► There are cool ones. I see the mother of people's website and ours looks kind of boring.

00:52:51 ◼   ► Can't you just change it by clicking something and changing the template?

00:52:54 ◼   ► That can be your homework for the week, John.

00:52:56 ◼   ► No!

00:52:57 ◼   ► I don't have the login credentials for the Squarespace site.

00:52:59 ◼   ► Good! Don't get me wrong.

00:53:00 ◼   ► I'd be adding or rotating CSS3 cubes all over that site.

00:53:04 ◼   ► Oh, somebody please send me the code to do that.

00:53:08 ◼   ► That's easy to find.

00:53:09 ◼   ► Just type CSS3 rotating cube, you'll find it.

00:53:12 ◼   ► Oh, that's amazing.

00:53:13 ◼   ► Do not give him the login credentials, Marco.

00:53:15 ◼   ► I love all this good rolling.

00:53:16 ◼   ► Well, now I'm tempted to.

00:53:17 ◼   ► No, no.

00:53:18 ◼   ► After the show…

00:53:19 ◼   ► He can finally fix all the typos I make in the show notes.

00:53:22 ◼   ► Oh, give me the login credentials then.

00:53:24 ◼   ► Don't give him to John.

00:53:25 ◼   ► He already is doing way too much planning, as evidenced by the last segment.

00:53:27 ◼   ► So…

00:53:28 ◼   ► lot like preparation and notes to me. Well, I because like once this process started,

00:53:33 ◼   ► I'm like, I need to write this stuff down because the details are important. The exact error message.

00:53:37 ◼   ► If you just said I tried to do something, it was a bunch of errors and stuff. It doesn't like you

00:53:41 ◼   ► really need to get the details. So I wrote them down. John, let me tell you, you know,

00:53:45 ◼   ► if we're all honest with each other, the people come to the show for me and sort of kind of for

00:53:52 ◼   ► Marco, you're just a tag along. I will kick you off my show. If you continue to do this kind of

00:53:57 ◼   ► preparation. This is unacceptable. I'm just letting you know. You're on notice.

00:54:03 ◼   ► So earlier, KJ Healey in the chat said, think of it this way, people who develop Minecraft

00:54:07 ◼   ► mods as children grow up to be enterprise software authors as adults. And I think that

00:54:11 ◼   ► might pretty much sum it up. The Minecraft mod authors are way more enthusiastic

00:54:16 ◼   ► and dedicated than these enterprise people. They totally want to be. They are like, as

00:54:21 ◼   ► soon as the new Minecraft version, they have like, I have his version of my mod that works

00:54:25 ◼   ► with the beta of 1.7 and they track the betas, this works with the second beta of 1.7, and

00:54:30 ◼   ► when 1.7 official comes out, you can be damn sure their mod works with it if you can ever

00:54:33 ◼   ► find a download link and if you can figure out how to install it and if you have all

00:54:37 ◼   ► the prerequisites that they don't mention because they assume everybody knows.

00:54:41 ◼   ► Oh, man. I mean, enterprise software is a hard problem. I mean, I have a small amount

00:54:47 ◼   ► of experience in it because my first job after college for a couple of years was writing

00:54:50 ◼   ► enterprise software. And it was a little different because it was a very small company, but our

00:54:55 ◼   ► customers were very big companies. And it's just a tough business because any effort I

00:55:02 ◼   ► would want to put in for making things better, improving the UI, improving the design, improving

00:55:09 ◼   ► the flow of anything, the customers didn't really care. Nobody ever asked for that. When

00:55:15 ◼   ► I would actually get to spend some time doing it and I would work on it for like a month,

00:55:19 ◼   ► No one cared, no one said anything,

00:55:20 ◼   ► it didn't get us any more sales.

00:55:23 ◼   ► It probably didn't result in any benefit

00:55:25 ◼   ► to the company at all, actually.

00:55:27 ◼   ► And 'cause as you said, John, at the beginning,

00:55:28 ◼   ► like with enterprise software,

00:55:30 ◼   ► the people who make the buying decisions

00:55:32 ◼   ► usually are not the people

00:55:33 ◼   ► who are gonna be using it every day.

00:55:34 ◼   ► And so it's just this bizarre market

00:55:37 ◼   ► where it is a big market

00:55:39 ◼   ► and there's a lot of money to be made there,

00:55:40 ◼   ► but it just does not work the way you'd expect

00:55:43 ◼   ► based on consumer software.

00:55:44 ◼   ► It's just very, very different.

00:55:46 ◼   ► All the incentives are different.

00:55:47 ◼   ► The whole process of making and selling and maintaining it is extremely different.

00:55:53 ◼   ► And it's just this weird, bizarre alternative universe that people like us, who are mostly

00:55:58 ◼   ► in the consumer side, just can't possibly understand.

00:56:02 ◼   ► And I think we're better off for it.

00:56:03 ◼   ► Well, that's mostly true.

00:56:05 ◼   ► So as someone who has kind of a leg in both universes, I can tell you a few things.

00:56:12 ◼   ► Firstly, I've noticed at my company—so I work at a consultancy that's somewhere

00:56:16 ◼   ► around 60 to 80 people. I forget exactly what the number is now. And we typically work on

00:56:21 ◼   ► the Microsoft stack, but not exclusively. And I will tell you that I've noticed since I

00:56:27 ◼   ► started at this particular company about a year ago, a little over a year ago, almost

00:56:32 ◼   ► a year and a half ago now, I was one of the few people to have a Mac because I pretty

00:56:38 ◼   ► much negotiated on the way in that I'm not going to have a PC or this conversation's

00:56:43 ◼   ► And so I was one of the one of a handful people that had a Mac and now I'm noticing that there are

00:56:50 ◼   ► there are way more Mac users not only developers even the

00:56:56 ◼   ► executives are

00:56:58 ◼   ► using various flavors of Macs

00:57:00 ◼   ► More and more with each passing day and in fact our singular IT guy

00:57:06 ◼   ► He just decided you know

00:57:08 ◼   ► I've got a 15 inch

00:57:11 ◼   ► high-res anti glare MacBook Pro just sitting in the closet. Maybe I should use that myself and

00:57:16 ◼   ► Similarly his Android phone. I don't remember specifically what it was about there all the same right?

00:57:23 ◼   ► Right well, and there's a million, but they're all the same, but anyway the point is like cats

00:57:28 ◼   ► Exactly so about a month ago or whatever what I guess is yeah, it was right around the time the 5s came out

00:57:34 ◼   ► He said to me hey my Android phone's headphone jack is busted

00:57:39 ◼   ► And I use that for all my music everywhere.

00:57:42 ◼   ► So I need something to fix this."

00:57:45 ◼   ► And I was thinking, "If you just got a 5s, Casey, do you have an old iPhone that you

00:57:48 ◼   ► want to unload?"

00:57:49 ◼   ► And I said to him, "Well, yeah, I have a 4s, but I can't in good conscience give that

00:57:54 ◼   ► to you, let alone sell it to you.

00:57:56 ◼   ► But let me see what I can do."

00:57:57 ◼   ► And it ended up another friend of mine had a 5, and he paid my friend for the 5.

00:58:02 ◼   ► And so in the course of two or three months, this guy, this friend of mine/RIT guy went

00:58:08 ◼   ► from being an Android and Dell user to an iPhone and Mac user.

00:58:15 ◼   ► And so the reason I bring all this up is because in a smaller corporate environment, it's actually

00:58:22 ◼   ► starting to be more and more prevalent for even non-technical people like the executives

00:58:28 ◼   ► at the company to use Macs.

00:58:29 ◼   ► And I thought that was kind of interesting.

00:58:31 ◼   ► Now with regard to the enterprise software specifically, we work with all different size

00:58:38 ◼   ► clients.

00:58:39 ◼   ► We work with extremely small clients and we work with pretty big clients.

00:58:41 ◼   ► And I'm measuring pretty big at, generally speaking, tens of thousands of employees.

00:58:47 ◼   ► And if there's anything I've noticed, is that firstly, the group that we're specifically

00:58:54 ◼   ► working with can in large degree make or break a project.

00:58:58 ◼   ► So if the team at the client that we're working with is really enthusiastic and really

00:59:03 ◼   ► excited and really wants to build what's right, then we can play off of that and we

00:59:09 ◼   ► can build what's right.

00:59:11 ◼   ► There are other times that we'll be working with a group at the client that is not enthusiastic

00:59:20 ◼   ► and has been beaten down.

00:59:21 ◼   ► And just like you said, Marco, when you were at the search engine company, even if we pose

00:59:28 ◼   ► the most amazing solution to a problem, it's usually met with, "Meh, nobody's going to care."

00:59:35 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:59:36 ◼   ► And I think what that comes from is, I've noticed in big companies across a couple of jobs now,

00:59:42 ◼   ► because I've been a consultant for a while, that in really big companies, it seems like what I

00:59:47 ◼   ► would define as middle management. So people that are not peons, but are not really that important

00:59:54 ◼   ► either. Firstly, there's a million of them, and they all deep down inside realize that

01:00:02 ◼   ► they're kind of expendable. And the problem is that they know this deep down inside. And

01:00:08 ◼   ► so now it's their mission to prevent anyone else from knowing that they're expendable.

01:00:15 ◼   ► So what does that mean? What that means is, anytime you're in a meeting, Susie and Timmy

01:00:19 ◼   ► and Johnny and Sally and everyone there, all these middle managers need to have—

01:00:25 ◼   ► That's actually their names?

01:00:26 ◼   ► No, of course not.

01:00:27 ◼   ► But all of these middle managers need to speak up and let it be known, "I said something

01:00:34 ◼   ► interesting and I said something important.

01:00:37 ◼   ► This was my idea."

01:00:40 ◼   ► And because of that, nothing gets done, because everyone has to have an opinion about everything,

01:00:45 ◼   ► and nobody can agree on everything.

01:00:47 ◼   ► And everyone wants to make sure they know that I said that thing, I'm important, I shouldn't

01:00:52 ◼   ► be the one to get the pink slip, and it's just soul-sucking and it's terrible.

01:00:57 ◼   ► And the unfortunate thing is, a lot of times that is the entire company.

01:01:01 ◼   ► But what's almost worse is, is when you have a group that's really excited and really interested

01:01:08 ◼   ► and really cares, and then they're met with so much inertia that's really, or so much,

01:01:15 ◼   ► I guess non-inertia, in other words the company around them is so stagnant that there's

01:01:20 ◼   ► nothing they can do to move it.

01:01:22 ◼   ► And again, I bring all this up because what if the Cisco VPN people, hypothetically, knew

01:01:27 ◼   ► that Mavericks was coming out and wanted to go to WWDC and really cared that all this

01:01:33 ◼   ► was happening, but everyone around them just didn't care and didn't let them take action.

01:01:40 ◼   ► And that's what you see in corporate America.

01:01:41 ◼   ► And it's mind-boggling to me.

01:01:44 ◼   ► someone who lives in work or works in corporate America yet in a very small version of corporate

01:01:49 ◼   ► America, it's mind boggling to me that this works, that these humongous companies ever make any

01:01:55 ◼   ► money. I don't know how they do it. It's truly, truly amazing. Success hides problems. It does.

01:02:01 ◼   ► There's a bunch of money coming in and these middle managers can play that. It's like your

01:02:06 ◼   ► funding. It's kind of like the dotcom bubble when it was a bunch of dotcom companies selling

01:02:11 ◼   ► each other's services with their own VC money. Marco probably missed out on that the first bubble.

01:02:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I was in college during that.

01:02:18 ◼   ► Yeah, but that was basically very quickly, especially in the big metro areas, is you'd

01:02:24 ◼   ► have VC funded startups selling their services to another VC funded startup. And it was like

01:02:28 ◼   ► the strange exchange and swap with VC money until all the money ran out. And then you realize all of

01:02:33 ◼   ► our customers were other people who didn't have any customers except for us. And we were all just

01:02:37 ◼   ► in this giant big bubble. Right? And the only winners were the people who made the foosball

01:02:40 ◼   ► tables?

01:02:41 ◼   ► Not even that.

01:02:44 ◼   ► The real winners were the people who resell used office equipment.

01:02:48 ◼   ► The repo men come in with the big trucks and they come and sell.

01:02:52 ◼   ► You get an error on real cheap.

01:02:53 ◼   ► And the building owner is probably made out pretty well too.

01:02:55 ◼   ► Yeah, high rents for a short period of time, but then lots of vacancies was the problem.

01:03:00 ◼   ► So the difference in a company is that presumably they have some money maker, some product or

01:03:05 ◼   ► service that got itself entrenched that really does make money over the long term, and that

01:03:09 ◼   ► that funnel of money fuels internal dysfunction. It doesn't cause internal dysfunction. It

01:03:15 ◼   ► literally fuels it. There's an engine there of dysfunction running, and the only way it

01:03:20 ◼   ► keeps running is if you keep pouring money in. Because if you didn't pour money in, all

01:03:22 ◼   ► these people doing nothing would get fired, or you'd have layoffs, or something else would

01:03:26 ◼   ► happen. But if everything's going well, you guys get to play this game of basically internal

01:03:30 ◼   ► office politics foosball without worrying. Because hey, the money's coming in, and you

01:03:35 ◼   ► guys just jock you over who gets the credit for which amount of money that came in and

01:03:38 ◼   ► do a source of inefficient internal things.

01:03:42 ◼   ► In that type of scenario, if we're imagining a Cisco scenario, I guess the company is still

01:03:47 ◼   ► reactive enough that all of a sudden when the customer complaints stop flooding in,

01:03:51 ◼   ► that's an input to the company.

01:03:52 ◼   ► That's a metric that someone's tracking that has an effect.

01:03:55 ◼   ► "Oh, customer complaints.

01:03:57 ◼   ► We have important customers, big important customers who want this now."

01:04:01 ◼   ► Even if it's just the CEO of some company that spends a bazillion dollars at Cisco and

01:04:05 ◼   ► he has Mavericks and he wants his VPN to work.

01:04:08 ◼   ► it's a fire drill and everyone all hands on deck. And maybe that little unit that Casey was

01:04:12 ◼   ► hypothesizing, you know, it's like, yeah, we've been telling you that for a week. But like, oh,

01:04:16 ◼   ► no. Okay. Now you get to do it because it's a fire drill and now there's some external pressure to do

01:04:20 ◼   ► it. But who knows? Like many scenarios like this could be possible. I just don't know what's going

01:04:25 ◼   ► on inside there. And like, the thing about enterprise software is like, it exists for

01:04:29 ◼   ► a reason that is mostly understandable. Like the people in my company who do IT, like Marco was

01:04:34 ◼   ► was talking about the IT people who hate the Mac.

01:04:37 ◼   ► I've had those IT people.

01:04:39 ◼   ► I don't have them now.

01:04:40 ◼   ► My company has a good IT department

01:04:41 ◼   ► that wants to do the right thing,

01:04:42 ◼   ► and in fact are usually enthusiastic about Macs

01:04:44 ◼   ► and are trying to support it.

01:04:45 ◼   ► Their deficit is maybe they don't have the experience,

01:04:48 ◼   ► and so they don't really know,

01:04:49 ◼   ► but they gotta figure it out.

01:04:50 ◼   ► But their requirements are,

01:04:52 ◼   ► like enterprise software is made for them.

01:04:54 ◼   ► Again, the customers,

01:04:55 ◼   ► Marco was saying he'd make improvements

01:04:56 ◼   ► to the enterprise software, and no one would care.

01:04:58 ◼   ► The customers wouldn't care.

01:04:59 ◼   ► The customers are not the people using the software.

01:05:01 ◼   ► Again, it's enterprise software.

01:05:02 ◼   ► The customers are the people buying it.

01:05:04 ◼   ► Now things they care about are very different.

01:05:06 ◼   ► In our company, we're now supporting Macs

01:05:08 ◼   ► more or less officially.

01:05:09 ◼   ► I was the first Mac into the company

01:05:11 ◼   ► four or five years ago, and now their Macs are everywhere.

01:05:13 ◼   ► They're officially supported.

01:05:15 ◼   ► But to give an example, the Macs that are officially supported

01:05:18 ◼   ► have to run PGP, whole disk encryption.

01:05:20 ◼   ► And if you're a Mac user, why would they do that?

01:05:21 ◼   ► Why wouldn't they just run FileVault 2?

01:05:22 ◼   ► It's awesome.

01:05:23 ◼   ► Everybody loves it.

01:05:24 ◼   ► Well, because FileVault 2 is not enterprise software,

01:05:26 ◼   ► meaning it doesn't cater to the needs of the enterprise.

01:05:29 ◼   ► I'm more to the needs of the enterprise for,

01:05:31 ◼   ► my company for compliance with various industry regulations, you have to have the ability to

01:05:36 ◼   ► report that—not just install Holdis Encryption on all the machines, but prove in whatever way

01:05:43 ◼   ► they decide to prove for whatever auditing purposes—that everyone has it installed.

01:05:46 ◼   ► Then PGP Holdis Encryption as enterprise software sells to the enterprise and says,

01:05:50 ◼   ► "feature checkbox" on the back of the box that doesn't actually exist anymore

01:05:54 ◼   ► can report that it's enabled on all such and such systems. FileVault 2 is not enterprise software,

01:06:00 ◼   ► doesn't have that feature. Maybe Apple Remote Desktop does or some other piece of software

01:06:03 ◼   ► that's more geared toward the enterprise, but if you just get a new Mac and it comes with Mavericks

01:06:06 ◼   ► and you check off the FileVault2 checkbox and enable it all or whatever,

01:06:10 ◼   ► there's no central reporting structure to know and they need to do that for compliance.

01:06:15 ◼   ► So of course they're going to buy the software package that says, "Hey, IT Manager,

01:06:19 ◼   ► we know that you have to do these stupid reporting things because your legal department tells you to.

01:06:23 ◼   ► Our software does that for you." And yeah, so of course they're going to go for that.

01:06:26 ◼   ► And as a user, you're like, "I just want to run the built-in stuff because PGP

01:06:29 ◼   ► be a whole disk encryption bricks on a machine every time it runs a minor point update, as

01:06:33 ◼   ► it has many times in the past. And like it would be so much easier and cheaper, you wouldn't

01:06:37 ◼   ► have to buy this third party product, we just enable FileVault 2, it's awesome, everybody

01:06:40 ◼   ► loves it. And IT department to its credit wants to do that. But short term, it's like

01:06:45 ◼   ► we have PGP, PGP works, PGP fills our fills our reporting compliance. And this is the

01:06:50 ◼   ► dysfunction in the enterprise is that those customers have needs that may seem dumb, but

01:06:54 ◼   ► they're real needs. And if you're not going to serve them, some enterprise software company

01:06:57 ◼   ► And that enterprise software company

01:06:58 ◼   ► is allowed to be terrible along all the other axes,

01:07:01 ◼   ► as long as they're good along the axes that matter

01:07:03 ◼   ► to the IT department.

01:07:04 ◼   ► And they usually are.

01:07:06 ◼   ► God, I'm just so glad I don't work on anything important.

01:07:09 ◼   ► You should have a bring your indie developer to work day.

01:07:15 ◼   ► We bring in people who work from home on their own projects,

01:07:17 ◼   ► and we make them sit through HR seminars

01:07:19 ◼   ► and take compliance training courses in Flash.

01:07:22 ◼   ► I would love to watch Marco just sit there

01:07:26 ◼   ► and squirm and be uncomfortable 40 seconds into the HR annual "this is how not to sexually

01:07:33 ◼   ► harass your co-workers" meeting.

01:07:35 ◼   ► No, that wouldn't be a problem.

01:07:36 ◼   ► The problem would be when you'd have me sit down at some Windows PC with some like crap

01:07:42 ◼   ► Dell keyboard and say, "Alright, here's your Fortran terminal and you're going to be writing

01:07:48 ◼   ► financial management software.

01:07:51 ◼   ► You have to follow all these rules and do a lot of math and there's going to be another

01:07:54 ◼   ► sitting 18 inches from your elbow. Oh wait, that was Bloomberg, and that's why

01:07:59 ◼   ► I didn't take that job. I think we're done. All right, we good? Yeah, I think we're good.

01:08:06 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to our sponsors this week, Hover, File Transporter, and

01:08:12 ◼   ► Squarespace, and we will see you next week.

01:08:17 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, because it was accidental

01:08:24 ◼   ► Oh it was accidental John didn't do any research

01:08:30 ◼   ► Marco and Casey wouldn't let him Cause it was accidental

01:08:35 ◼   ► It was accidental And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM

01:08:44 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter You can follow them at

01:08:49 ◼   ► C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,

01:08:57 ◼   ► E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C, U-S-A, Syracuse.

01:09:05 ◼   ► It's accidental.

01:09:06 ◼   ► It's accidental.

01:09:08 ◼   ► They didn't mean to.

01:09:10 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:09:11 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:09:12 ◼   ► Tech podcast so long.

01:09:18 ◼   ► Hey, so let's not do ATP and let's just do neutral and talk about John's car.

01:09:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, this is a major event. You know, Casey and I get cars all the time.

01:09:27 ◼   ► Yeah, once every ten years. But like the last time you got a car, John,

01:09:32 ◼   ► like was the iPod even out yet? It was. I'm serious.

01:09:36 ◼   ► Well, my car was older than, more than ten years old.

01:09:39 ◼   ► But we had a newer car because we had a 2007 car, that's the car my wife drives.

01:09:44 ◼   ► So we had a newish car.

01:09:46 ◼   ► You know, it was like a 2004 before that,

01:09:49 ◼   ► and that got told, and we replaced it with a 2007.

01:09:51 ◼   ► I always get the years of our cars wrong,

01:09:52 ◼   ► which you would think would be something I know,

01:09:54 ◼   ► but I'm thrown off by the whole model year

01:09:56 ◼   ► having very little to do with the actual year distinction.

01:09:59 ◼   ► But anyway, we had a 2007 car, which is a pretty new car,

01:10:02 ◼   ► but the car I was driving was a 2002 Civic.

01:10:05 ◼   ► So yeah.

01:10:06 ◼   ► And this one I assume I will also have for 10 years.

01:10:10 ◼   ► - So now you have two Accords.

01:10:11 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:10:13 ◼   ► How does that feel?

01:10:14 ◼   ► It feels just fine.

01:10:17 ◼   ► That's the most glowing ad for an Accord.

01:10:19 ◼   ► How does it feel to have two of them?

01:10:21 ◼   ► It feels fine.

01:10:22 ◼   ► From John?

01:10:24 ◼   ► That is glowing.

01:10:25 ◼   ► This is my third Accord.

01:10:27 ◼   ► That is the Honda Accord encapsulated into a few words.

01:10:34 ◼   ► I don't share your opinion of the Honda Accord.

01:10:36 ◼   ► I find it a...

01:10:37 ◼   ► No, you do.

01:10:38 ◼   ► I think it's fine.

01:10:39 ◼   ► I find it a much more interesting car than other similarly priced

01:10:42 ◼   ► quote-unquote boring cars

01:10:45 ◼   ► Should have gotten a Mazda 6, but you know nobody's perfect

01:10:48 ◼   ► Well, I would have if I if I had test drove the main thing I was test driving it for was

01:10:53 ◼   ► clutch shifter driving position and visibility

01:10:56 ◼   ► Like that's what I was test driving for because if I didn't like the clutch and shifter or the driving position or the visibility or like

01:11:02 ◼   ► The ride I guess I would have gone in test drove the six

01:11:05 ◼   ► But I did like it and so I didn't even feel the need to go and get it because I really don't like how the six

01:11:09 ◼   ► looks. I've seen a lot of them on the road. I would have gone to it if it was like, well,

01:11:13 ◼   ► if the Accord was terrible, because I do need a new car. It's like I'm getting this car

01:11:16 ◼   ► for my health, because the old car was just going downhill. But if the Accord was good,

01:11:20 ◼   ► I didn't see a reason to continue to. And plus, I didn't want to drag it out. So I didn't

01:11:24 ◼   ► even bother test driving the 6.

01:11:26 ◼   ► I'm kind of surprised that you're able to get a car at all and be satisfied with it

01:11:30 ◼   ► at all, because cars, like even great cars, have such ridiculous glaring flaws, especially

01:11:36 ◼   ► like the interface and stuff.

01:11:37 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it's filled with terrible things.

01:11:40 ◼   ► So the good thing about having a new car every more 10, 12

01:11:44 ◼   ► years or so is that it's like if you kept your Mac for years

01:11:48 ◼   ► and years and you didn't have a Mac Pro and you replaced it.

01:11:51 ◼   ► Say you had a MacBook from five or six years ago.

01:11:56 ◼   ► Any new portable Mac you get, you'll be like, oh my god,

01:11:59 ◼   ► this is such a--

01:12:00 ◼   ► because so many things change in that period of time.

01:12:02 ◼   ► Now, cars don't move as fast as computers,

01:12:04 ◼   ► but there are big changes between 2002 and now.

01:12:07 ◼   ► So I get to see, like, let's see how far standard equipment has come, because I really don't

01:12:11 ◼   ► get any options.

01:12:12 ◼   ► I don't even think there were any interesting options to speak of in the car that I got.

01:12:15 ◼   ► And so all sorts of stuff are standard now.

01:12:17 ◼   ► Like my car did not have a little key thing that you pressed to unlock the doors.

01:12:23 ◼   ► And that's standard now on pretty much every car.

01:12:25 ◼   ► Like, I don't even know if you can get a car without that.

01:12:27 ◼   ► In 2007, that wasn't standard?

01:12:29 ◼   ► No, 2002.

01:12:30 ◼   ► Oh, right.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Sorry.

01:12:32 ◼   ► Like my car.

01:12:33 ◼   ► Of course, the Accord had it, right?

01:12:34 ◼   ► And I get to see the 2007 car kind of in the middle.

01:12:35 ◼   ► But yeah.

01:12:37 ◼   ► What else did my car not have?

01:12:39 ◼   ► The key fob thing was a big deal because the kids had to wait until I got into the car

01:12:42 ◼   ► and hit the little lock thingy because it did have a little button to unlock all the

01:12:44 ◼   ► doors.

01:12:45 ◼   ► It just wasn't on the key fob.

01:12:46 ◼   ► So I had to unlock my door with the key, get in, and then press the little thingy and then

01:12:49 ◼   ► they could open their door.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Wait, wait, wait.

01:12:53 ◼   ► My '94 Saturn, which of course was white before you even asked, you jerks.

01:12:59 ◼   ► Of course it was.

01:13:00 ◼   ► The '94 Saturn I had, if I recall correctly, if you put the key in the driver's door and

01:13:05 ◼   ► and double-turned a quarter turn to the right,

01:13:08 ◼   ► it would actually unlock all the doors from the exterior.

01:13:11 ◼   ► You're saying your Civic from eight years later didn't do that?

01:13:14 ◼   ► There were Civics in 2002 that had this feature, but not

01:13:16 ◼   ► my Civic.

01:13:18 ◼   ► I'm always buying from the bottom of the line, right?

01:13:20 ◼   ► Especially back in the old days, the stick shift

01:13:22 ◼   ► was always the bottom of the line.

01:13:24 ◼   ► All the other ones came with automatics.

01:13:27 ◼   ► And I'm always buying stick shift cars,

01:13:28 ◼   ► so I'm not buying sports sedans, and even those

01:13:32 ◼   ► don't come with manuals anymore.

01:13:34 ◼   ► So I'm always getting the cheap trim levels.

01:13:37 ◼   ► Some more things that are first on this car for me--

01:13:39 ◼   ► this is my first car with power seats.

01:13:41 ◼   ► It only has one of them.

01:13:43 ◼   ► This is the driver's seat.

01:13:46 ◼   ► What else is first on this car?

01:13:48 ◼   ► First car with fog lights.

01:13:50 ◼   ► Now, are you a complete tool and use them

01:13:52 ◼   ► anytime the headlights are on like me,

01:13:53 ◼   ► or are you actually an adult about it?

01:13:55 ◼   ► I don't even know how to turn them on yet.

01:13:58 ◼   ► I'm assuming it's somewhere on the same stock

01:14:00 ◼   ► as the headlights, but--

01:14:01 ◼   ► Sometimes there's a separate button,

01:14:03 ◼   ► left somewhere. Yeah, I don't see myself being a big fog-like user, but who knows? First

01:14:08 ◼   ► car with dual exhaust. It's exciting. Oh, fancy. I'm pretty sure they're real dual exhausts.

01:14:13 ◼   ► I have to look under the cars. One of them could be cosmetic, but I'm pretty sure it's

01:14:16 ◼   ► real. And you were talking about, was it Bluetooth or USB connection? First car with a USB connection,

01:14:22 ◼   ► first car with Bluetooth. So Bluetooth is standard on all cords. That's good to know,

01:14:26 ◼   ► actually. I don't know, because I didn't actually get the bottom of the bottom of the line.

01:14:32 ◼   ► I actually got the this the sport level trim is not the bottom of line you can get an LX with a stick shift

01:14:37 ◼   ► And I didn't so this is the first car that I bought it was slightly more expensive than it had to be

01:14:42 ◼   ► Because I could have gotten an Accord manual LX trim level which would have been less expensive

01:14:47 ◼   ► And not had all this fancy stuff, and would you get EX?

01:14:50 ◼   ► No sport is the name of the trim level oh that's all it's a separate trim level has 18 inch wheels first car with 18 inch wheels

01:14:59 ◼   ► Has the another dual exhaust has the fake carbon fiber inside it has a leather wrap steering wheel also a first not heated of course

01:15:05 ◼   ► That's not you know. It's it's it's very nice. It's very it's a very fancy car for me first car

01:15:09 ◼   ► I ever bought that it was more than 20 grand

01:15:11 ◼   ► Even though it just barely crossed over that line

01:15:14 ◼   ► That's still that's a pretty good deal to get like a really nice car of that size class

01:15:19 ◼   ► You know even even with with moderate options

01:15:23 ◼   ► To get that for just over 20 grand is pretty good

01:15:26 ◼   ► No, no options the sport trim level comes with all this stuff like this the optional dealer installed add-on crap that you can get

01:15:32 ◼   ► I think but I don't think there are any other options that you can get for it to speak of and maybe I wasn't looking hard

01:15:36 ◼   ► Enough, but yeah, I'm just taking what it came with and yeah, is it was a pretty good deal car shopping always sucks

01:15:41 ◼   ► So, you know whatever but I got done in a three-day weekend

01:15:44 ◼   ► Yeah

01:15:45 ◼   ► I always I love car shopping in theory and

01:15:48 ◼   ► Then when it comes time to actually go to the dealerships and try to test drive anything and try to find anything

01:15:53 ◼   ► It's such a pain in the butt that I just want to end it as quickly as possible

01:15:57 ◼   ► yeah, it's funny you say that I went with so Aaron and I went with a

01:16:02 ◼   ► Friend of ours and she's looking into perhaps either an s4 or an equivalent

01:16:08 ◼   ► And so of course I made her drive an m3 at the local BMW dealer and this particular m3 was pretty busted

01:16:14 ◼   ► It was no wait and it had the prior version of iDrive which I'd never actually seen before and oh my goodness

01:16:20 ◼   ► All the stories are right. It is that bad

01:16:22 ◼   ► But anyway, we went to test drive this car and I was thinking, "Ooh, maybe I'll take it for a little spin."

01:16:28 ◼   ► And, you know, it was a six-speed because she actually wants a six-speed and I was all excited about it.

01:16:33 ◼   ► And the process to get in the car took forever. Once we got out of the car, it took forever.

01:16:37 ◼   ► The car was kind of all busted up and, like, the second gear crunched. I think a couple wheels were out of balance.

01:16:44 ◼   ► Jeez.

01:16:46 ◼   ► We felt the rear tires and they had no tread, yet the fronts suspiciously had a lot of tread.

01:16:51 ◼   ► and it was just not good times.

01:16:53 ◼   ► But yeah, you're absolutely right.

01:16:55 ◼   ► The actual act of buying a car is terrible,

01:16:57 ◼   ► or even test driving a car is terrible.

01:16:59 ◼   ► And this was a used one.

01:17:00 ◼   ► It wasn't even like it was new.

01:17:02 ◼   ► Ugh, gross.

01:17:04 ◼   ► - I think I've gotten the swing of buying cars,

01:17:07 ◼   ► but it's just, I mean, especially the cars I buy,

01:17:09 ◼   ► there's not a lot of drama involved.

01:17:11 ◼   ► There's no rarity.

01:17:14 ◼   ► There's no real hunting down of the cars.

01:17:16 ◼   ► You know, it's a Honda Accord.

01:17:18 ◼   ► That's more or less a commodity.

01:17:20 ◼   ► It is a little bit difficult to find the stick shifts,

01:17:22 ◼   ► because it's trying to search for them.

01:17:25 ◼   ► Minor dealers might not have them in stock,

01:17:27 ◼   ► but they can get them if you want.

01:17:29 ◼   ► But if I'm going to find one that's in stock, I'll find it.

01:17:31 ◼   ► I am surprised that you were able to find one so easily

01:17:33 ◼   ► to test drive.

01:17:34 ◼   ► Usually you can get them to order you one, maybe.

01:17:36 ◼   ► But to actually find a stick shift

01:17:38 ◼   ► to test drive at a dealer is pretty rare these days.

01:17:41 ◼   ► The internet.

01:17:41 ◼   ► I did internet searches for dealers in your area

01:17:44 ◼   ► who have this thing.

01:17:44 ◼   ► It's not called around as well, but just a combination

01:17:48 ◼   ► of the internet and calling around.

01:17:49 ◼   ► That was my first order of business, was first find one of these things that I can test drive

01:17:53 ◼   ► to see if I like it.

01:17:55 ◼   ► And once I found it, then started the new phase of the search, which is I know exactly

01:17:58 ◼   ► the car I want down to the trim level and color, and then just go price shopping.

01:18:01 ◼   ► And that's always annoying, because nobody wants you to talk to them or come into a dealer

01:18:07 ◼   ► or do anything without completing in a sale.

01:18:09 ◼   ► So every single one of them is like, this is not going to end in a sale.

01:18:12 ◼   ► I'm price shopping.

01:18:14 ◼   ► And nobody likes that.

01:18:16 ◼   ► I tried to do, there's a thing a friend of mine did that it was like, "You pay us $200,

01:18:22 ◼   ► we do all the crap for you, and we hopefully save you more than $200 on the price of the

01:18:26 ◼   ► car."

01:18:27 ◼   ► And he was very satisfied with the service, and it's a local website that does it, but

01:18:30 ◼   ► the website says they're not taking any more orders.

01:18:33 ◼   ► My wife says it was a 2006 Accord, not 2007.

01:18:35 ◼   ► I told you, I can never remember the model year versus the...

01:18:38 ◼   ► Anyway.

01:18:39 ◼   ► I think you just got served.

01:18:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:42 ◼   ► So that service that does that car buying thing, we said, "We're not doing that anymore."

01:18:45 ◼   ► Maybe they were overbooked or maybe they're going into business or I don't know.

01:18:49 ◼   ► So I couldn't do that and then I had heard that Costco has a car pricing thing that was

01:18:54 ◼   ► similar and we're a Costco member so I tried doing that.

01:18:58 ◼   ► And that's like fill out this thing and tell it what car you want and it will direct you

01:19:02 ◼   ► to a dealer and turns out there's only one dealer in our area that does the Costco thing.

01:19:06 ◼   ► And so I did the thing on the internet and filled out this thing and it sent me some

01:19:09 ◼   ► email and it said, "Hey, come down to the dealer."

01:19:11 ◼   ► I'm like, "Well, I don't want to do that."

01:19:12 ◼   ► So I called the dealer and said, "Hey, I did this Costco thing.

01:19:14 ◼   ► you tell me, you know, I want to know what is the Costco price for this car?

01:19:18 ◼   ► The whole idea was they'll just give you a price that they can't tell you on the website

01:19:22 ◼   ► and it's a no haggle price and here it is.

01:19:24 ◼   ► And I said, oh, we can't tell you the price here.

01:19:26 ◼   ► You have to come into the dealer, which of course they want you to come into the dealer.

01:19:29 ◼   ► Everyone wants you to come in.

01:19:30 ◼   ► And again, you know, that kind of ruined the point of this Costco.

01:19:33 ◼   ► I mean, if it's a no haggle thing and it was a good deal, I just wanted to know what the

01:19:35 ◼   ► price was.

01:19:36 ◼   ► So, you know, I had to drive all up there.

01:19:39 ◼   ► Basically it was just like I'm here because you told me I had to drive here.

01:19:42 ◼   ► So you would tell me the price.

01:19:43 ◼   ► Now please tell me the price.

01:19:44 ◼   ► And then of course they don't want you to go once they tell you the price.

01:19:48 ◼   ► They would be like, "Okay, thank you for the price. I'm now going to leave." They want to say,

01:19:51 ◼   ► "Well, you know, hey, why don't you want to buy what it's going to take to get you into a car

01:19:54 ◼   ► today and go through all that business or whatever?" So eventually I got a reasonable

01:19:58 ◼   ► deal. I'm searching through all these websites for what is the invoice price for this car and

01:20:07 ◼   ► what are local deals like or whatever. And there's like a million different websites that do this.

01:20:11 ◼   ► I was also looking up the blue book value of my car,

01:20:14 ◼   ► thinking of trading it in, like the old Civic and everything.

01:20:17 ◼   ► And at one of the dealers, the bad cop guy--

01:20:22 ◼   ► like, there's always the good cop, bad cop.

01:20:23 ◼   ► The sales manager.

01:20:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:25 ◼   ► The bad cop guy pulled up on his computer

01:20:28 ◼   ► one of the websites I had been looking at to show,

01:20:30 ◼   ► like, here's the range of prices that people are paying locally.

01:20:33 ◼   ► And it's like, immediately you go, OK,

01:20:35 ◼   ► do not look at that website ever again.

01:20:37 ◼   ► Because if the dealer is showing it to you,

01:20:38 ◼   ► the information on that website is not

01:20:40 ◼   ► going to help you at all.

01:20:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:44 ◼   ► And I think I got a reasonable deal.

01:20:46 ◼   ► I didn't get an amazing deal like I got on my wife's

01:20:49 ◼   ► accord, because that was just an unbelievable deal.

01:20:51 ◼   ► But that was because it was like a car that someone else had

01:20:53 ◼   ► ordered and put a bunch of crap on and then bailed out

01:20:55 ◼   ► on the deal.

01:20:56 ◼   ► And now they had a car tarted up with all these aftermarket

01:20:58 ◼   ► extras that nobody wanted.

01:20:59 ◼   ► There was a stick shift, and we scooped it up and took it off

01:21:01 ◼   ► their hands.

01:21:02 ◼   ► So you can't expect to get that deal over you.

01:21:04 ◼   ► So I got an OK deal.

01:21:06 ◼   ► I was going to say, I got a pretty good deal on the trade-in,

01:21:09 ◼   ► considering the car was covered with acorn dents.

01:21:11 ◼   ► Do they give you more than $10?

01:21:13 ◼   ► Yeah, that's like the perfect use of the dealer trade-in.

01:21:16 ◼   ► Because dealer trade-ins, they will underball the crap out

01:21:19 ◼   ► of the price.

01:21:19 ◼   ► And so it's worth it to just-- if you have a car like that,

01:21:22 ◼   ► that's just going to be really hard to get much value

01:21:25 ◼   ► privately.

01:21:26 ◼   ► The perfect use of the dealer trade-in.

01:21:28 ◼   ► Yeah, because no individual wants a car--

01:21:30 ◼   ► and it didn't have an air conditioning compressor.

01:21:32 ◼   ► The reason I was getting new cars

01:21:33 ◼   ► is the air conditioning compressor

01:21:34 ◼   ► would cost over $1,000 to fix according

01:21:36 ◼   ► to the way-too-expensive dealer or whatever.

01:21:38 ◼   ► It's like all right. It's the end of the time for this car, so I had a car

01:21:41 ◼   ► It was ugly there was a stick shift covered in dents and no air conditioning

01:21:45 ◼   ► and like

01:21:47 ◼   ► The dealer ended up buying from originally said we'll give you about a thousand fifteen hundred for it

01:21:51 ◼   ► I'm like well

01:21:52 ◼   ► That's terrible because the blue book value

01:21:53 ◼   ► Sans acorn dent the blue book value of the car if it was not dented or I guess you put that condition is like fair or

01:21:59 ◼   ► whatever

01:21:59 ◼   ► And and the air conditioning compressor worked it was like twenty five hundred thirty five hundred dependent

01:22:04 ◼   ► But that was not deducting for the compressor

01:22:06 ◼   ► But I ended up getting twenty five hundred for the trade in for so I feel like I got a lot of deal

01:22:10 ◼   ► 2500 for a 2000 - I mean who knows like there they could you just assume that's off the price

01:22:15 ◼   ► You know like they really give you 2500 for your thing or is it just some negotiating tactic to?

01:22:19 ◼   ► Bottom line is I gave them about 20 grand and I got a new car so and I gave them my old car so the

01:22:24 ◼   ► end