ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Are we sure we have John?

00:00:01 ◼   ► Uh huh.

00:00:02 ◼   ► Oh, I almost forgot how to do this.

00:00:03 ◼   ► It's been so long since we recorded last.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I know, I know.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Although this last time was John's fault.

00:00:08 ◼   ► You're all recording, right?

00:00:09 ◼   ► We're remembering that?

00:00:10 ◼   ► Yes, yes.

00:00:12 ◼   ► You forgot once for like 10 minutes and you're never gonna live it down.

00:00:16 ◼   ► I know, I know.

00:00:18 ◼   ► That's why we have redundant systems, my friend.

00:00:20 ◼   ► That's why we have redundant systems.

00:00:24 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to editing this episode.

00:00:26 ◼   ► This is going to be the first one that I get to use my automatic drift corrector and aligner

00:00:32 ◼   ► for triple ender recordings.

00:00:34 ◼   ► I'm going to release this thing at some point.

00:00:36 ◼   ► I have it to a handful of beta testers right now just to make sure it works on more than

00:00:42 ◼   ► just my computer and more than just our tracks from the three of us for this one show.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Now when you say release it, do you mean release it like the FaceTime spec or do you mean actually

00:00:51 ◼   ► release it like Second Crack?

00:00:54 ◼   ► That's a good question.

00:00:55 ◼   ► So, OK, so backing up a second, what this tool is--

00:01:01 ◼   ► I guess this is going to become a quick topic,

00:01:03 ◼   ► so I'll try to make it quick, because it

00:01:04 ◼   ► isn't that interesting.

00:01:07 ◼   ► So when you record a podcast like this,

00:01:09 ◼   ► typically people talk to each other over Skype.

00:01:12 ◼   ► And then the way you can record it

00:01:14 ◼   ► is you can either have everybody record their own microphone's

00:01:17 ◼   ► input that records just them, and then they all

00:01:19 ◼   ► send the files to somebody who edits them together

00:01:21 ◼   ► and lines them all up and everything.

00:01:23 ◼   ► Or you can have one person just record everybody through Skype.

00:01:28 ◼   ► And the problem with that is, I'm

00:01:30 ◼   ► sure everyone's heard on other shows,

00:01:32 ◼   ► where if somebody's Skype connection gets

00:01:35 ◼   ► a little bit slow for a few minutes,

00:01:36 ◼   ► then they start either breaking up

00:01:38 ◼   ► or their voice gets noticeably worse quality or problems

00:01:41 ◼   ► like that.

00:01:42 ◼   ► Now, the other way of doing it where everyone records

00:01:44 ◼   ► their own thing and sends the files to somebody to line up,

00:01:48 ◼   ► one problem is that lining them up kind of sucks.

00:01:50 ◼   ► It's not a time consuming thing.

00:01:52 ◼   ► might take five or 10 minutes to line them up.

00:01:54 ◼   ► It's annoying and it's tedious, but it's not

00:01:57 ◼   ► that time consuming.

00:02:00 ◼   ► The bigger problem that a lot of people face is drift.

00:02:03 ◼   ► And that's that when you have somebody's microphone recording

00:02:07 ◼   ► at 44,100 hertz, very, very slight inaccuracies

00:02:14 ◼   ► or differences in how that's measured

00:02:15 ◼   ► between different hardware, different sound cards

00:02:18 ◼   ► and computers and such, very, very slight inaccuracies

00:02:21 ◼   ► will over time add up so that over the course of a 90 minute

00:02:25 ◼   ► recording, one person might be aligned perfectly

00:02:28 ◼   ► at the beginning, but at the end be off by a second and a half.

00:02:31 ◼   ► And that starts making the conversation sound weird

00:02:34 ◼   ► and just not flow right.

00:02:36 ◼   ► And so you can either not correct it,

00:02:38 ◼   ► which has bad output, or you can try to periodically go through

00:02:42 ◼   ► and every 10, 20 minutes or whatever,

00:02:45 ◼   ► go through and realign the tracks.

00:02:47 ◼   ► Like cut them at a convenient point

00:02:49 ◼   ► and then shift somebody over to correct for their drift.

00:02:52 ◼   ► It's not great.

00:02:53 ◼   ► And most people-- in fact, Dan Benjamin very famously

00:02:57 ◼   ► avoids this kind of workflow for the 5x5 shows,

00:02:59 ◼   ► because he does so many shows.

00:03:01 ◼   ► He has to get them out quickly.

00:03:02 ◼   ► He can't afford for him or an editor

00:03:05 ◼   ► to take an extra 45 minutes editing

00:03:08 ◼   ► each show for what ends up being a difference that a lot of people

00:03:12 ◼   ► don't care about.

00:03:14 ◼   ► But I do care about that difference.

00:03:16 ◼   ► And so we've always done our shows,

00:03:19 ◼   ► both neutral and this with the triple ender method, which

00:03:21 ◼   ► is everybody records their end and sends me the files

00:03:23 ◼   ► and line them up.

00:03:24 ◼   ► And Drift isn't too bad, because we all have good computers.

00:03:27 ◼   ► But it's still like-- Casey has the worst, actually.

00:03:30 ◼   ► Sorry, Casey.

00:03:31 ◼   ► Well, that's all right.

00:03:31 ◼   ► I'm not on a fancy pants Mac Pro like you two.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Maybe that's why you buy the Mac Pro.

00:03:36 ◼   ► You're not on a computer from 2008.

00:03:41 ◼   ► So anyway, I made a little command line tool basically

00:03:46 ◼   ► to solve this problem for myself.

00:03:48 ◼   ► And it just analyzes the sound and not only automatically

00:03:52 ◼   ► lines the tracks up, but also corrects the drift

00:03:54 ◼   ► in a nice, even way throughout the course of the whole file.

00:03:57 ◼   ► So it's pretty much exactly perfect output

00:03:59 ◼   ► of what you want, in theory, of course.

00:04:01 ◼   ► Obviously, I'm sure it doesn't work every time,

00:04:04 ◼   ► but we'll see.

00:04:05 ◼   ► How is it fixing the drift?

00:04:06 ◼   ► Is it stretching out the sound, or is it

00:04:08 ◼   ► doing a cut at places where there's

00:04:10 ◼   ► silence and sliding them?

00:04:12 ◼   ► It is adjusting for silence.

00:04:13 ◼   ► So it detects silence, and then it adds or removes samples

00:04:18 ◼   ► as necessary to get back on track.

00:04:22 ◼   ► So anyway, so this tool, it's extremely useful

00:04:27 ◼   ► to a very small number of people.

00:04:30 ◼   ► And so when thinking about, OK, I do want to release it.

00:04:32 ◼   ► Obviously, I'm not going to keep this for myself

00:04:35 ◼   ► and have ATP be the only podcast that sounds this good.

00:04:39 ◼   ► And it doesn't get out of sync.

00:04:41 ◼   ► That obviously is not that productive of a thing

00:04:45 ◼   ► to try to do and try to be.

00:04:47 ◼   ► And so I could also give it away for free,

00:04:53 ◼   ► which then I don't really see much of an upside.

00:04:55 ◼   ► Or I can charge money for it.

00:04:59 ◼   ► And the problem with that is if you charge money for this,

00:05:03 ◼   ► I'm sure I could sell this for like $50, maybe even $100,

00:05:07 ◼   ► to like 40 people.

00:05:09 ◼   ► And that's about it, at most.

00:05:12 ◼   ► There aren't that many people who edit shows in this way.

00:05:15 ◼   ► And of all the ones that do, what percentage of them

00:05:19 ◼   ► would actually ever hear about this

00:05:21 ◼   ► and then be willing to buy it?

00:05:23 ◼   ► So the audience for this is probably really small.

00:05:28 ◼   ► So I thought about it, and I'm also thinking, OK,

00:05:31 ◼   ► so let's say I sell it for x, and I make x dollars at most

00:05:35 ◼   ► from it in theory.

00:05:37 ◼   ► What's my possible upside here?

00:05:42 ◼   ► And it turned out to be I might make a few thousand dollars

00:05:47 ◼   ► ever for the course of the life of this app.

00:05:49 ◼   ► And I'm like, if I'm having people pay me

00:05:52 ◼   ► a good amount of money for this, they're

00:05:54 ◼   ► going to expect some level of support on that.

00:05:57 ◼   ► And do I really want to get in the business of supporting

00:05:59 ◼   ► this little tiny app for 50 people for not that much money

00:06:04 ◼   ► in the grand scheme of things for the next two years

00:06:07 ◼   ► that they're going to expect to be able to use it at least?

00:06:10 ◼   ► Sounds like crap.

00:06:11 ◼   ► It doesn't sound like a very good idea.

00:06:13 ◼   ► So I decided instead, when it's ready to be released,

00:06:19 ◼   ► I'm going to release it for free.

00:06:21 ◼   ► I don't think I'm going to open source it quite yet.

00:06:23 ◼   ► I'll think about that.

00:06:24 ◼   ► That's a whole other discussion.

00:06:26 ◼   ► I'm probably going to release it for free,

00:06:28 ◼   ► but with the condition that if you use it

00:06:33 ◼   ► and you have any shows that you edit with it that

00:06:36 ◼   ► have sponsorships at all, I would

00:06:38 ◼   ► like a quick little thanks mention.

00:06:40 ◼   ► and I'm going to release it when I release my next product.

00:06:43 ◼   ► And so the thanks mentioned will be for that.

00:06:45 ◼   ► So I'll kind of-- this is all my working theory.

00:06:49 ◼   ► I haven't fully decided on this yet,

00:06:50 ◼   ► but I think that's the best idea because it's free.

00:06:53 ◼   ► So it keeps the expectations on me low and the commitment

00:06:57 ◼   ► to my time low.

00:07:00 ◼   ► But I still see some upside and potentially a more valuable

00:07:04 ◼   ► upside than I would if I tried to charge $50 for the thing

00:07:08 ◼   ► and sell it to 40 people.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Sounds like a completely unenforceable system.

00:07:12 ◼   ► Exactly, well, yeah.

00:07:13 ◼   ► It wouldn't be like-- I'm not going

00:07:15 ◼   ► to go threaten to sue people who don't give me

00:07:18 ◼   ► a plug in their--

00:07:19 ◼   ► You'll never know it.

00:07:20 ◼   ► You'll never know it unless you're

00:07:21 ◼   ► watermarking their files.

00:07:23 ◼   ► No.

00:07:24 ◼   ► Again, this is all down the rabbit hole

00:07:26 ◼   ► of detecting piracy and everything.

00:07:28 ◼   ► It's so not worth it.

00:07:29 ◼   ► It's so not worth it.

00:07:32 ◼   ► So anyway, I believe that's pretty much all

00:07:35 ◼   ► I have to say about that topic.

00:07:36 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:07:37 ◼   ► Is there anything more to say about it?

00:07:39 ◼   ► Only that it seems like you're doing an excellent job of procrastinating from doing what is

00:07:43 ◼   ► arguably your actual job, which is your next big app.

00:07:46 ◼   ► Yeah, seriously.

00:07:47 ◼   ► Between Bugshot and ATP and this, you're doing a very good job of not doing your job.

00:07:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:53 ◼   ► One of the next app is that he just has to write before he can get back to what he was

00:07:57 ◼   ► doing.

00:07:58 ◼   ► No, now I'm back to the big app.

00:07:59 ◼   ► I mean, and I've been on it for like a nice solid week and a half or so, and it's been

00:08:03 ◼   ► great.

00:08:04 ◼   ► And this is-- I mean, I don't know how much you want to make

00:08:07 ◼   ► this the Marko show again.

00:08:10 ◼   ► Basically, the quick version is I

00:08:13 ◼   ► got discouraged working on the big app for a while.

00:08:16 ◼   ► And part of it was just because I was tired and lazy

00:08:19 ◼   ► and burnt out from big coding jobs.

00:08:22 ◼   ► Part of it was that I just wasn't really applying myself

00:08:25 ◼   ► very well and wasn't really-- my discipline was pretty weak

00:08:29 ◼   ► for a lot of the summer.

00:08:31 ◼   ► And part of it was that the name I had chosen for the new big app

00:08:37 ◼   ► ended up having a trademark problem.

00:08:40 ◼   ► And I could either figure out licensing of that

00:08:44 ◼   ► or use the trademark and spend a lot of money doing that maybe,

00:08:49 ◼   ► or pick a different name.

00:08:51 ◼   ► And so I listed all my options.

00:08:52 ◼   ► I had to call a bunch of lawyers and figure out what to do.

00:08:54 ◼   ► And it was very discouraging to have to be dealing with this.

00:08:59 ◼   ► And I mentioned this on Twitter, and a lot of people

00:09:01 ◼   ► chimed in saying they feel the same way.

00:09:03 ◼   ► If I don't have a good name for something,

00:09:05 ◼   ► I generally have a hard time working on it.

00:09:07 ◼   ► To me, it gives it a personality,

00:09:10 ◼   ► or it helps motivate me to see the end goal of the name

00:09:14 ◼   ► of product, name of thing out there.

00:09:16 ◼   ► And this is an app that has a web component,

00:09:19 ◼   ► so I had to do things like get SSL certificates

00:09:20 ◼   ► for the domain name.

00:09:21 ◼   ► I already had the domain name that I wanted and everything.

00:09:23 ◼   ► So it was like I had all this kind of work and hopes

00:09:28 ◼   ► invested in this name and then for the possibility of not having not being able to use it and

00:09:33 ◼   ► then I brainstorm new names and

00:09:36 ◼   ► Came up with what's the what's the name of the audio aligner?

00:09:40 ◼   ► sidetrack

00:09:43 ◼   ► Why you didn't focus group that one huh? No, I like it

00:09:46 ◼   ► Again, it's it's gonna be used by like 40 people who cares you know

00:09:50 ◼   ► I'm saying like if you didn't have a name for that one would you the same same type deal would you have not felt motivated?

00:09:55 ◼   ► to complete it, just left it as like a single purpose tool for yourself

00:09:59 ◼   ► once it has a name then it can be a thing. Well for most of its development it was called

00:10:03 ◼   ► Audio Align, but I thought that was a stupid name and so kind of at the

00:10:07 ◼   ► last minute I changed it. For that it was less important

00:10:11 ◼   ► to have a great name up front because it's really like a utility. It's like

00:10:15 ◼   ► you know like I don't have great names, I have a shell script that imports the

00:10:19 ◼   ► files off of my AVCHD camcorder because AVCHD files are

00:10:23 ◼   ► stupid and nothing supports them.

00:10:25 ◼   ► So I wrote a shell script forever ago that imports them and converts them into something

00:10:29 ◼   ► useful.

00:10:30 ◼   ► And that is called "Import Videos from Sony Camcorder Dutch."

00:10:36 ◼   ► So it's not the best name.

00:10:38 ◼   ► Well, you're scratching your own itch or you're solving a problem.

00:10:42 ◼   ► And when you're solving a concrete problem, especially a smaller one, and you're not

00:10:46 ◼   ► intending to make money off of it, I don't see that as being the same as writing this

00:10:51 ◼   ► new big app, which is perhaps solving a problem for yourself, but it's also solving a problem

00:10:56 ◼   ► hopefully for many, many, many other people, which totally changes your motivations.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Exactly. And so that's why I wanted--and I had such a great name, and I was working

00:11:06 ◼   ► on it. I looked up--the first classes I wrote for this new big app, I wrote last October.

00:11:14 ◼   ► I've been thinking about this for a long time. Before I sold Instapaper, shortly after

00:11:18 ◼   ► I started the magazine, I'm like,

00:11:20 ◼   ► I've been thinking about doing this for a while.

00:11:22 ◼   ► And I made some prototypes of some of the functionality

00:11:25 ◼   ► way back then.

00:11:26 ◼   ► I mean, I've been doing this for a long time.

00:11:28 ◼   ► And I had this name in mind for most of that time.

00:11:32 ◼   ► And so to not be able to use it, or to potentially

00:11:36 ◼   ► have a big problem with using it suddenly,

00:11:39 ◼   ► like after months of loving it, was very discouraging.

00:11:42 ◼   ► Anyway, so I know it's a terrible excuse

00:11:45 ◼   ► for not working on it very much for like two months.

00:11:48 ◼   ► It's a horrible excuse.

00:11:50 ◼   ► But it really did demotivate me.

00:11:53 ◼   ► And I was certainly distracted by, you know,

00:11:56 ◼   ► by "Bugshot" and by "Sidetrack."

00:11:59 ◼   ► So, you know, there were, like, I had other distractions,

00:12:02 ◼   ► but the main thing was, like, a combination of me being very

00:12:06 ◼   ► lazy this summer and, you know, just having a hard time getting

00:12:10 ◼   ► going on things and the discouragement

00:12:12 ◼   ► from the naming issue.

00:12:14 ◼   ► But the good thing is I now have two names.

00:12:18 ◼   ► I have the original name and I have a new one

00:12:20 ◼   ► I can use if I need to.

00:12:22 ◼   ► And I'm still negotiating the trademark

00:12:23 ◼   ► to get the original one that I want.

00:12:26 ◼   ► So I'll see how those negotiations go.

00:12:29 ◼   ► But if that falls apart, I have another name that I can use.

00:12:34 ◼   ► I'd rather not, but I can.

00:12:36 ◼   ► - I've forgotten what the original name was.

00:12:37 ◼   ► I am it to me, so you can remind me.

00:12:39 ◼   ► - I prefer the original over the second one.

00:12:43 ◼   ► I did not care for the second one at all.

00:12:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:46 ◼   ► We should really not be talking about this.

00:12:49 ◼   ► This is painful.

00:12:50 ◼   ► This is like constant inside jokes.

00:12:52 ◼   ► Oh, man.

00:12:53 ◼   ► This is-- anyway.

00:12:54 ◼   ► So I had to make sure I tested into the correct chat room.

00:13:00 ◼   ► That would have been funny.

00:13:02 ◼   ► Basically, so yeah, that's what I've been doing.

00:13:07 ◼   ► And recently-- I don't know if this really matters.

00:13:09 ◼   ► I did, a couple days ago, decide to delete my desktop Twitter

00:13:13 ◼   ► client and app.net client.

00:13:18 ◼   ► Because I realized-- have I mentioned Rescue Time here yet?

00:13:20 ◼   ► I mentioned it somewhere recently.

00:13:22 ◼   ► I don't think so.

00:13:23 ◼   ► One of my many podcasts.

00:13:25 ◼   ► No, I don't know.

00:13:27 ◼   ► I've been using Rescue Time.

00:13:28 ◼   ► It's one of the great things I picked up

00:13:30 ◼   ► from one of Merlin's many tools discussions

00:13:32 ◼   ► from the last few years in which he has discussed

00:13:35 ◼   ► every single productivity tool ever released

00:13:36 ◼   ► or that could be released or that might be released

00:13:38 ◼   ► for the Mac.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And I picked up Rescue Time about six months ago.

00:13:44 ◼   ► So what it does, it sits-- I think

00:13:50 ◼   ► it's a kernel-level thing.

00:13:51 ◼   ► It's some kind of creepy, deeply integrated thing

00:13:53 ◼   ► on your computer.

00:13:54 ◼   ► And it also sends all the stuff to a web service, which

00:13:58 ◼   ► makes it even more creepy.

00:13:59 ◼   ► And I wish it was just a local app, but it's not.

00:14:02 ◼   ► So what it does is it records how much time

00:14:04 ◼   ► you spend in every app.

00:14:05 ◼   ► And if you give it permission, it

00:14:07 ◼   ► also record what domain names you're browsing in web browsers.

00:14:13 ◼   ► And so it basically gives you-- every week,

00:14:16 ◼   ► it sends you an email saying, here is how you spent your time.

00:14:20 ◼   ► Here's how many hours you've had on the computer.

00:14:22 ◼   ► And here's how many hours you spent

00:14:24 ◼   ► and what percentage of the time that is on things that are work,

00:14:27 ◼   ► things that aren't work.

00:14:28 ◼   ► And you can customize what that means.

00:14:30 ◼   ► But it has pretty good defaults for Xcode

00:14:31 ◼   ► is work for most people, whereas Tweetbot is not

00:14:35 ◼   ► for most people and stuff like that.

00:14:37 ◼   ► And they can break down by website.

00:14:39 ◼   ► Like, maybe the New York Times might be work.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Facebook probably isn't.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Stuff like that.

00:14:43 ◼   ► So it showed me over the last few months

00:14:48 ◼   ► that the reason I installed this was

00:14:51 ◼   ► I was feeling like I wasn't getting enough work time

00:14:53 ◼   ► in every week.

00:14:54 ◼   ► And I didn't know why.

00:14:56 ◼   ► It turns out that I was getting enough work time

00:14:59 ◼   ► most of the time.

00:15:00 ◼   ► There were some weeks where it was busy, family stuff.

00:15:02 ◼   ► But for the most part, I was getting enough work time.

00:15:04 ◼   ► And the biggest problem was that I was just not

00:15:08 ◼   ► spending the time well.

00:15:09 ◼   ► And I was spending something like four hours a week out

00:15:14 ◼   ► of my 36 to 50 work hours a week.

00:15:17 ◼   ► I was spending about four of those in Tweetbot.

00:15:21 ◼   ► And that was scary.

00:15:24 ◼   ► I mean, do you guys use desktop Twitter clients?

00:15:25 ◼   ► That's just efficient multitasking, though, isn't it?

00:15:28 ◼   ► Whenever you're in I/O wait because something is compiling

00:15:31 ◼   ► or tests are running or whatever, then you

00:15:33 ◼   ► want to not leave the CPU cores idle so you can glance and read three tweets and then

00:15:38 ◼   ► you come back and your tests are finished or your code is compiled or you finally hit

00:15:41 ◼   ► that stupid break point. That's how I use Twitter all day.

00:15:45 ◼   ► Yeah, same here.

00:15:47 ◼   ► I don't think the total amount would bother me. Maybe if I saw a graph and it's all

00:15:51 ◼   ► like continuous periods of time where I'm just using Twitter, but I think it would be

00:15:54 ◼   ► little tiny slices.

00:15:56 ◼   ► Well, the problem was that months ago I kind of gave up on reading my whole timeline.

00:16:05 ◼   ► Like, I used to be a completionist in how I read both my Twitter timeline and my Tumblr dashboard back when I used Tumblr more.

00:16:12 ◼   ► And I would read everything. I would have to, like, quote "catch up."

00:16:18 ◼   ► And I still do that with mentions, but I no longer do that for the main timeline.

00:16:22 ◼   ► And I haven't done that for the main timeline in months. I gave up months ago.

00:16:25 ◼   ► You should just unfollow people.

00:16:28 ◼   ► Well, yeah, there's a lot of people

00:16:29 ◼   ► I have to follow for political reasons, stuff like that.

00:16:31 ◼   ► Political, they're going to assassinate you

00:16:33 ◼   ► if you don't follow them.

00:16:34 ◼   ► You know that whole deal.

00:16:35 ◼   ► You can unfollow anyone.

00:16:37 ◼   ► Well, anyway, so I haven't even been following the main timeline

00:16:40 ◼   ► reliably.

00:16:41 ◼   ► And yet, I was still spending the same amount of time on it.

00:16:44 ◼   ► I was still spending like four hours.

00:16:46 ◼   ► What am I doing?

00:16:47 ◼   ► And I think what I was doing was just clicking around.

00:16:50 ◼   ► Because with the streaming API, you can get one at reply,

00:16:54 ◼   ► and something lights up somewhere.

00:16:56 ◼   ► And so there's something new to read.

00:16:58 ◼   ► And I have a good amount of followers now,

00:17:00 ◼   ► so there's something new to read almost all the time.

00:17:02 ◼   ► And I can click around.

00:17:04 ◼   ► And so it was a very, very large number of context switches,

00:17:08 ◼   ► basically.

00:17:10 ◼   ► And I realized that when I was not running Tweetbot,

00:17:16 ◼   ► I was getting way more done.

00:17:18 ◼   ► And so I also realized that if I deleted it-- because I

00:17:22 ◼   ► tried just quitting it.

00:17:23 ◼   ► I don't have the self-control to keep it quick.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Because it's like automatic.

00:17:27 ◼   ► I just launch it, and it's like passive.

00:17:31 ◼   ► I don't even realize I'm doing it.

00:17:33 ◼   ► Does that bother you that you had

00:17:34 ◼   ► to delete it instead of just choosing not to launch it?

00:17:37 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, of course.

00:17:38 ◼   ► I would love to have the kind of self-control

00:17:40 ◼   ► where I can just say, you know what, I can't do it.

00:17:41 ◼   ► But the reason I deleted it was because I had like six accounts

00:17:44 ◼   ► configured in there.

00:17:46 ◼   ► If I ever want to reinstall it, it's a giant pain in the butt.

00:17:49 ◼   ► So I'm probably not going to do it.

00:17:51 ◼   ► And so I still have it on my laptop.

00:17:52 ◼   ► I figured if I need a desktop Twitter experience,

00:17:57 ◼   ► like I did when I was announcing that this show was recording

00:18:00 ◼   ► live, it's a big thing where I publish it

00:18:02 ◼   ► on both app.net and Twitter, and then I retweet it

00:18:04 ◼   ► into my main accounts from those services to get more people.

00:18:07 ◼   ► So it helps to have a desktop client for that.

00:18:11 ◼   ► So I figure I'll keep it on the laptop,

00:18:13 ◼   ► and if I ever really need to do it a lot,

00:18:15 ◼   ► I'll just keep the laptop open on my desk

00:18:17 ◼   ► as the second computer.

00:18:18 ◼   ► But my main computer does not have that on it,

00:18:21 ◼   ► And so most of the time, not only is the temptation gone,

00:18:25 ◼   ► but the ability to even read it is gone,

00:18:27 ◼   ► which helps me because I don't have any self-control.

00:18:29 ◼   ► So I have found in the last few days,

00:18:32 ◼   ► it really has been a dramatic improvement.

00:18:35 ◼   ► I don't know if it's-- it could just be temporary.

00:18:38 ◼   ► Like when you lose three pounds on the very first day

00:18:40 ◼   ► of a diet and you think every day is going to be like that.

00:18:43 ◼   ► It could just be temporary, but it's a massive difference

00:18:47 ◼   ► so far.

00:18:47 ◼   ► And I've gotten so much done in the last few days

00:18:50 ◼   ► on the main big app because I'm not using Tweetbot on the desktop.

00:18:55 ◼   ► And this is the first time since I've started using Twitter at all that I haven't had a desktop Twitter client open on a regular basis.

00:19:00 ◼   ► Now do you have any audible alerts or push notifications on your phone?

00:19:07 ◼   ► No, no, of course not. I never have. That I've never done. I've never gotten into that.

00:19:12 ◼   ► Because I used to run servers and so I would reserve audible alerts for things that were really potentially important.

00:19:19 ◼   ► So I don't have anything send me push notifications

00:19:21 ◼   ► for any reason.

00:19:23 ◼   ► It's just like, you know, and so I would sleep,

00:19:25 ◼   ► back when I ran servers, I would sleep with my phone

00:19:28 ◼   ► very close to my head with the speaker turned all the way up

00:19:30 ◼   ► so that if something beeped in the middle of the night,

00:19:32 ◼   ► I would hear it and wake up and go deal with it.

00:19:35 ◼   ► - Right, I just ask because I didn't know if perhaps

00:19:38 ◼   ► you would hear your phone chirping in the background

00:19:40 ◼   ► and find yourself reaching over for your phone

00:19:42 ◼   ► to figure out what was being talked about.

00:19:44 ◼   ► I guess that's not really possible for either of you guys

00:19:46 ◼   ► because you have a gazillion followers,

00:19:47 ◼   ► Although I just crossed 3000.

00:19:50 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:19:51 ◼   ► - Who's awesome now?

00:19:52 ◼   ► No, not really.

00:19:53 ◼   ► But anyway, but I guess for you guys,

00:19:55 ◼   ► it would be hard to have those sorts of things turned on.

00:19:57 ◼   ► Like I have the push notifications on

00:20:00 ◼   ► for Tweetbot on my phone, but I do not have sounds on

00:20:03 ◼   ► because I was finding that I am barely popular enough

00:20:06 ◼   ► that I get enough audible notifications

00:20:09 ◼   ► that it's distracting.

00:20:10 ◼   ► But I had visions of you perhaps

00:20:12 ◼   ► having these audible notifications on

00:20:14 ◼   ► and then reaching over for your phone every five minutes,

00:20:16 ◼   ► than negating the point of not having Tweetbot on your Mac at all.

00:20:20 ◼   ► No, it really, I mean, I don't like using it on my phone, honestly.

00:20:24 ◼   ► I would rather, I think, take out my laptop when I'm on the couch or lying in bed before going to sleep

00:20:28 ◼   ► and, like, which I know is horrible for other reasons, but I think I'd rather catch up on Twitter

00:20:32 ◼   ► then. I'd rather catch up on Twitter occasionally on a laptop than

00:20:36 ◼   ► all day on a phone.

00:20:40 ◼   ► You want to talk about something that's awesome? Let's do that. Our first sponsor this week

00:20:44 ◼   ► is a return sponsor, it's 23andMe, again, because they are that awesome.

00:20:48 ◼   ► So they give you the tools to better understand how your genes

00:20:53 ◼   ► may impact your health. So this could help you or your doctor find health areas to keep

00:20:57 ◼   ► an eye on,

00:20:57 ◼   ► or just tell you some really cool stuff about genealogy and your genetics.

00:21:00 ◼   ► So they have over 240 personalized health,

00:21:04 ◼   ► trait, and ancestry reports. So what they do is

00:21:07 ◼   ► they send you a DNA kit. It's only $99.

00:21:11 ◼   ► You sign up, you get a DNA kit, you give them a saliva sample so you don't have to cut a hole in your finger, you know, it's just saliva.

00:21:18 ◼   ► You give them a saliva sample, send it back to them, and they give you a full report on lots of interesting things about your DNA as they profile it.

00:21:28 ◼   ► They have over a quarter million members, which makes them the largest ancestry service in the world for DNA.

00:21:33 ◼   ► And so they give you genetic information, here's the cool thing, you can figure out if you're related to any celebrities, it'll tell you that.

00:21:40 ◼   ► If you have that gene that we talked about last time

00:21:43 ◼   ► that makes you have smelly asparagus pee,

00:21:46 ◼   ► they can tell you that.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Or whether you like cilantro or not,

00:21:50 ◼   ► they can tell you that.

00:21:51 ◼   ► All sorts of fun stuff you can learn from your DNA.

00:21:54 ◼   ► Plus, it can give you things like

00:21:56 ◼   ► how closely are you related to Neanderthals?

00:21:59 ◼   ► And how quickly do you metabolize coffee?

00:22:02 ◼   ► There's all sorts of things they can tell you.

00:22:04 ◼   ► And it's a fantastic service.

00:22:08 ◼   ► Once again, 23andMe, $99 to give you this full DNA analysis

00:22:13 ◼   ► of interesting characteristics you have,

00:22:16 ◼   ► interesting ancestors you might have.

00:22:18 ◼   ► It's really, really cool.

00:22:19 ◼   ► So go to 23andMe.com/ATP for our show.

00:22:24 ◼   ► That's 23andMe.com/ATP.

00:22:28 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to them for sponsoring our show.

00:22:30 ◼   ► - So you wanna hear a little bit about Fast Text?

00:22:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, so yeah, go on, yeah.

00:22:37 ◼   ► So last episode, which was number 24, I believe, we talked a little bit about my app, Fast

00:22:43 ◼   ► Text, which was never designed to be a money-making enterprise.

00:22:46 ◼   ► It was just kind of one of those things where I did it to prove to myself that I could.

00:22:50 ◼   ► And I think because it was an app that nobody had heard of, and then we mentioned it, or

00:22:55 ◼   ► actually more than just mentioned it, talked about it on ATP, which is a reasonably well

00:23:01 ◼   ► well-listened to podcast, it has accidentally become an interesting study in what publicity

00:23:09 ◼   ► does or does not do.

00:23:11 ◼   ► So I did a little bit of homework for the Accidental Tech podcast before the podcast.

00:23:16 ◼   ► And according to AppAnnie, which apparently I enabled on October 24th of 2011, I had 206

00:23:29 ◼   ► between then and July 23rd. And on July 23rd, which I'm guessing is around the

00:23:34 ◼   ► time that we recorded that episode, I had 11 downloads. And then I had not many, you

00:23:41 ◼   ► know, two, three, zero, two, zero, zero, zero, one, which is about an average week and a

00:23:47 ◼   ► half or whatever that is week of fast text downloads. Then on the day of the

00:23:51 ◼   ► release of ATP, which was either August 1st or August 2nd, somewhere around there,

00:23:55 ◼   ► I had 30 downloads 69 downloads 31 downloads 15 15 and yesterday was six or maybe was the day before yesterday

00:24:02 ◼   ► so

00:24:03 ◼   ► all told between October 24th of 2011 and

00:24:07 ◼   ► July 23rd of this year. I had according to app Annie 206 downloads and

00:24:12 ◼   ► Between July 23rd and tonight, which is August 7th. I've had 185

00:24:18 ◼   ► So I've almost had doubled the amount of downloads that I've had in the entirety of fast text existence

00:24:23 ◼   ► And I believe I initially put it on the App Store.

00:24:27 ◼   ► It was whenever iOS 4 came out, which I think was like late-ish 2011.

00:24:32 ◼   ► So that said, what was really interesting to me about this was that once I get my next

00:24:39 ◼   ► check from Apple, if I crunch this math properly, FastText will actually be in the green, which

00:24:46 ◼   ► is really exciting.

00:24:47 ◼   ► So even if you consider the three times $99 that I've paid for the Apple developer account,

00:24:53 ◼   ► If you consider the $40 I paid for Opacity Express, which is a great app that enabled

00:24:57 ◼   ► a completely non-artistic person to make an icon that's terrible but a lot better than

00:25:02 ◼   ► it otherwise would have been.

00:25:05 ◼   ► All that told, a fast text should be in the black soon.

00:25:07 ◼   ► So that's very exciting.

00:25:08 ◼   ► So thank you to everyone who bought it.

00:25:10 ◼   ► And thank you to the people who have sent unsolicited icon updates.

00:25:15 ◼   ► There have been only a handful.

00:25:16 ◼   ► There's one that I actually really, really liked and I apologize because I don't have

00:25:19 ◼   ► the gentleman's name in front of me that did it.

00:25:22 ◼   ► So I might end up using that for whenever I do an update

00:25:24 ◼   ► for iOS 7.

00:25:26 ◼   ► But the point I'm driving at is, we're a podcast that has

00:25:30 ◼   ► tens of thousands of listeners.

00:25:32 ◼   ► And even despite that, having a whole segment about my app,

00:25:39 ◼   ► quote unquote, "only" led to 200 downloads.

00:25:41 ◼   ► And don't take that as a complaint.

00:25:42 ◼   ► That's not a bad thing at all.

00:25:43 ◼   ► I'm extremely thankful for almost 200 of them.

00:25:47 ◼   ► But the point I'm driving at is, even that much exposure,

00:25:51 ◼   ► which not to be self-righteous, but I think that that was a pretty decent set of expo-

00:25:55 ◼   ► it was pretty high exposure, it didn't lead to an overwhelming amount of sales.

00:25:59 ◼   ► And I don't know if it's because the app is kind of silly, I mean, I- I- I- I-

00:26:04 ◼   ► for whatever the reason, it didn't lead to a lot, and that's- I just found that to be interesting.

00:26:08 ◼   ► So I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on that, and if not, we can talk about Minecraft, but...

00:26:12 ◼   ► Just a little F-you.

00:26:13 ◼   ► It has to be a product that people want to buy, like in-

00:26:17 ◼   ► a lot of the stuff for the fast text thing,

00:26:19 ◼   ► if people weren't in the market for a way

00:26:21 ◼   ► to send text very quickly, they may have bought it just

00:26:24 ◼   ► to make you feel better.

00:26:26 ◼   ► Because that was the gist of the whole conversation.

00:26:29 ◼   ► So fast text actually has a reasonable purpose.

00:26:33 ◼   ► But you could go even narrower.

00:26:36 ◼   ► Actually, even for text.

00:26:37 ◼   ► By this point, people probably have a system

00:26:39 ◼   ► of how they send texts or whatever.

00:26:40 ◼   ► So maybe in the early days of the iPhone,

00:26:42 ◼   ► it would have caught on.

00:26:43 ◼   ► But if you have some application that

00:26:44 ◼   ► a very narrow possible audience of people

00:26:48 ◼   ► who want to do this thing,

00:26:49 ◼   ► no amount of publicity is going to make

00:26:51 ◼   ► 5% of the people who have iPhones buy it.

00:26:55 ◼   ► It's never going to happen.

00:26:57 ◼   ► It's always going to, you know.

00:26:58 ◼   ► And so awareness is one thing,

00:27:00 ◼   ► where if you have an application that lets you

00:27:02 ◼   ► take pictures and put filters on it, right?

00:27:05 ◼   ► That's a pretty crowded market,

00:27:07 ◼   ► but a lot of people could potentially do that.

00:27:08 ◼   ► And if they've never heard of you,

00:27:09 ◼   ► but they've heard of Instagram,

00:27:10 ◼   ► they're going to get Instagram.

00:27:11 ◼   ► If they've never, you know, if Hipstamatic,

00:27:13 ◼   ► no one had ever heard of it, no one would ever buy it, even though it's a great application.

00:27:16 ◼   ► So you have to get the word out somehow. So if you have an application with broad appeal,

00:27:20 ◼   ► I think publicity is good. But it's like, look, the only reason people aren't buying

00:27:23 ◼   ► this is because they don't even know it exists. They don't know to search for it. We have a weird

00:27:26 ◼   ► name. How can they distinguish it from all the other crap apps in the store that claim to do

00:27:29 ◼   ► the same thing? Ours is actually good. You got to get the word out about it. But if you have an

00:27:33 ◼   ► obscure app or an app that's only of a limited appeal, getting the word out is not going to

00:27:40 ◼   ► expand your base much. Right, and I think that Optia, which was a sponsor of ours a

00:27:44 ◼   ► couple of weeks back, maybe a month ago now, was a great example of how advertising does

00:27:49 ◼   ► work because here was a game that, as we famously pointed out and was talked about briefly on

00:27:54 ◼   ► the last talk show, it didn't have any in-app purchase, which makes it unique and different,

00:27:58 ◼   ► and it's a genuinely good game anyway. So I've not heard direct feedback from the developer,

00:28:04 ◼   ► I've seen some general feedback from him that he's gotten a whole lot of sales from

00:28:11 ◼   ► the ad reads that we've done and that others have done.

00:28:14 ◼   ► And so I think you're right, John, that something that may have a little more universal appeal

00:28:19 ◼   ► could arguably benefit greatly from being a sponsor or being talked about, even if they're

00:28:25 ◼   ► not a sponsor.

00:28:26 ◼   ► But for me, it was certainly a tremendous increase.

00:28:31 ◼   ► And I'm extremely grateful for every one of those purchases, even if it was just to make

00:28:34 ◼   ► my self-esteem a little bit better, as somebody has joked in the chat room. But either way,

00:28:39 ◼   ► it wasn't like I'm about to retire on fast tech sales, unless I go ahead and sell it to Marco.

00:28:45 ◼   ► Well, you got to work on version 2.0, right? Which better be a free upgrade,

00:28:49 ◼   ► because I don't want to take this application again, Casey. 99 cents is all I budgeted for you

00:28:53 ◼   ► for the year. Oh, that's too bad. So anyway, I don't know if there's anything else there,

00:28:58 ◼   ► but I thought it was just a little interesting case study.

00:29:02 ◼   ► Well, I think, and this actually lines up very well with my bug shot sales.

00:29:06 ◼   ► I made the post last week or whenever about how

00:29:10 ◼   ► people assume that because I have an audience in some places that

00:29:14 ◼   ► any app I release is going to be some kind of giant hit, and that really isn't the case.

00:29:18 ◼   ► I have an advantage, certainly, by having an established audience.

00:29:22 ◼   ► I have an advantage mostly up front, where I'm guaranteed

00:29:26 ◼   ► pretty good launch. But then after that, I'm in the same boat as everyone else.

00:29:33 ◼   ► So, Bugshot, I posted my sales graph from the beginning until whenever that was, and

00:29:38 ◼   ► I made that post like a week ago. And right now, when I made that post, my peak day, the

00:29:45 ◼   ► launch day, I hit like $3,000 or something in that range. And then it dropped off significantly

00:29:52 ◼   ► after that, of course, because it already

00:29:55 ◼   ► reached a lot of people.

00:29:56 ◼   ► And on that day, I got tons of press from bloggers,

00:30:00 ◼   ► from the tech press.

00:30:02 ◼   ► I mean, I got more press than most people could really

00:30:05 ◼   ► hope for, including myself for an app

00:30:07 ◼   ► that I only spent a week or two making.

00:30:10 ◼   ► And so it was the perfect launch.

00:30:13 ◼   ► But the fact is, yeah, it peaked and it was great.

00:30:18 ◼   ► But then it fell down.

00:30:20 ◼   ► And at the time I wrote this post,

00:30:22 ◼   ► the average was $47 per day for the last five days.

00:30:27 ◼   ► Well, the last two days has been under 20.

00:30:30 ◼   ► It's been, I think yesterday was 16,

00:30:33 ◼   ► day before that was 19.

00:30:35 ◼   ► So obviously, this is a long tail effect

00:30:38 ◼   ► dropping off very, very, very quickly.

00:30:40 ◼   ► And yeah, 20 bucks a day is good,

00:30:44 ◼   ► especially for no continued effort, that's good.

00:30:47 ◼   ► But it isn't even staying there,

00:30:48 ◼   ► going to keep going down and down and down.

00:30:50 ◼   ► And the fact is, John, what you said

00:30:55 ◼   ► is correct, that no matter what kind of audience you get,

00:30:58 ◼   ► the app store is very, very crowded.

00:31:01 ◼   ► And it's hard to make good money there.

00:31:04 ◼   ► It's not impossible, but it's hard,

00:31:07 ◼   ► because you're competing with so many other developers.

00:31:11 ◼   ► And even-- Casey, your app, FastText,

00:31:15 ◼   ► which we're going to plug like crazy,

00:31:17 ◼   ► because I want the sales to go up.

00:31:20 ◼   ► But your app already has, as John said,

00:31:24 ◼   ► it's a specialty audience.

00:31:26 ◼   ► If you have this need to quickly send pre-written text messages,

00:31:30 ◼   ► that's the app for you.

00:31:32 ◼   ► That's already some small segment of the user base.

00:31:36 ◼   ► And then within that, you have to remove anybody

00:31:39 ◼   ► who either decided that they didn't

00:31:40 ◼   ► want to solve that problem after all,

00:31:42 ◼   ► or doesn't know about your app, or knows

00:31:46 ◼   ► about your app but decided not to buy it,

00:31:48 ◼   ► and whether they bought someone else's or what,

00:31:53 ◼   ► or just bought nothing.

00:31:54 ◼   ► So just getting a bunch of people to even look at it

00:31:58 ◼   ► isn't necessarily going to guarantee success.

00:32:01 ◼   ► So it's just-- I don't know the answer to this,

00:32:05 ◼   ► but I don't know how much Apple can really do about it.

00:32:09 ◼   ► People complain to Apple that they're making less money

00:32:12 ◼   ► in the App Store, but I just don't--

00:32:13 ◼   ► we talked about this last episode.

00:32:15 ◼   ► I don't really know what Apple's supposed to do about that exactly besides, you know,

00:32:19 ◼   ► they can make a few minor changes here and there, but I don't think anything's going

00:32:23 ◼   ► to fix the problem that there's hundreds of thousands of developers all trying to make

00:32:28 ◼   ► the same, you know, thousand different kinds of apps and with varying levels of success.

00:32:36 ◼   ► Marketing's not Apple's problem.

00:32:37 ◼   ► I mean, Apple has huge power in marketing, but technically speaking, like, that's really

00:32:40 ◼   ► on the individual developers.

00:32:42 ◼   ► can't, it's very difficult to start an app store business and say, "Okay, now we just

00:32:47 ◼   ► gotta wait for Apple to feature us." That is not really a viable strategy, even though

00:32:50 ◼   ► Apple featuring you is probably going to give you tons of money. You can't count on that.

00:32:54 ◼   ► You can't control that. You have to just do your own marketing. And if Apple features

00:32:58 ◼   ► you, that's great. But if not, you better have a plan for how you're going to market

00:33:01 ◼   ► your application.

00:33:02 ◼   ► Also, Apple very rarely features things that are not free and not games.

00:33:07 ◼   ► You never know.

00:33:10 ◼   ► The Mac App Store is better.

00:33:11 ◼   ► The Mac App Store, they will frequently feature big expensive applications.

00:33:15 ◼   ► Well they have to because there's nothing else.

00:33:16 ◼   ► There's cheap things.

00:33:17 ◼   ► There's lots of cheap things in the Mac App Store.

00:33:19 ◼   ► Lots of three and five dollar silly utility apps that are not great.

00:33:24 ◼   ► But then there's the big apps that are worth it.

00:33:26 ◼   ► It's like anything else.

00:33:27 ◼   ► You've got to write a great app first.

00:33:29 ◼   ► Is Fast Text a great app?

00:33:30 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:33:31 ◼   ► The icon's not great.

00:33:32 ◼   ► That would probably cut your sales in half right there.

00:33:35 ◼   ► That's true.

00:33:36 ◼   ► the power of that icon. If you had an awesome looking icon, your sales would be double guaranteed.

00:33:40 ◼   ► You know, and with that said, who is the end of the—let me dig this out. Let me stall for a second.

00:33:47 ◼   ► It was Jacob Swiadeck. I hope I pronounced that right. I'm so sorry, Jacob, if I didn't. Who

00:33:53 ◼   ► sent the one that I like the most of the three or four or five that I've gotten? And if I end up

00:34:00 ◼   ► working out something with him that maybe I can use that for iOS 7, for the iOS 7 version of

00:34:05 ◼   ► fast text, then maybe we'll see.

00:34:07 ◼   ► And maybe it will get a whole lot better.

00:34:10 ◼   ► And here again, we can use me as a kind of a case study for somebody who wrote

00:34:16 ◼   ► an app that, I mean, I put a lot of effort into it in terms of qualitatively,

00:34:22 ◼   ► but quantitatively, I wouldn't say it was that terribly much.

00:34:24 ◼   ► Most of the effort I put into it was because I was learning Objective-C

00:34:27 ◼   ► and Cocoa Touch at the time.

00:34:28 ◼   ► If I were to write that app again today, I don't know, it'd probably take

00:34:32 ◼   ► me a week at most, if not just a few days.

00:34:35 ◼   ► What's on the inside doesn't matter, Casey.

00:34:37 ◼   ► What's on the outside?

00:34:38 ◼   ► [INAUDIBLE]

00:34:39 ◼   ► This app just needs a makeover.

00:34:41 ◼   ► It's true.

00:34:41 ◼   ► It's true.

00:34:42 ◼   ► When iOS 7 comes out, imagine this app comes out

00:34:44 ◼   ► from the back with iOS 7 and a totally new icon.

00:34:48 ◼   ► All the code underneath is exactly the same,

00:34:49 ◼   ► but it just looks different on the outside.

00:34:51 ◼   ► Everyone's going to woo and ah, and then you'll

00:34:53 ◼   ► see the real sales numbers, maybe $300.

00:34:56 ◼   ► Oh, man.

00:34:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:57 ◼   ► No, I mean, all kidding aside, I know you're right.

00:35:00 ◼   ► And again, the advantage of iOS 7

00:35:01 ◼   ► that using raw UI kit, well from what I know today, using raw UI kit will actually be a

00:35:08 ◼   ► good thing because I'll look new and modern and I'll fit right in.

00:35:12 ◼   ► Totally.

00:35:13 ◼   ► And maybe I'll go wild and use like tint colors or something, ooh. But you know just a new

00:35:20 ◼   ► icon and getting some of the iOS 7 stuff for free I think will make a difference and so

00:35:27 ◼   ► So we'll see what happens.

00:35:28 ◼   ► And once iOS 7 comes out, we'll follow up.

00:35:31 ◼   ► And maybe I'll have two sales a day

00:35:33 ◼   ► instead of just one, which would have doubled my sales.

00:35:37 ◼   ► So we'll see what happens.

00:35:39 ◼   ► First of all, I'm curious to see how this shakes out with iOS 7

00:35:45 ◼   ► and how cool it looks, and fashion-wise with apps.

00:35:49 ◼   ► Because you're right.

00:35:52 ◼   ► iOS 7 right now, just the default--

00:35:54 ◼   ► if you just use default UI kit stuff

00:35:55 ◼   ► and don't modify it at all, you look cool and modern,

00:35:58 ◼   ► because iOS 7 looks cool and modern.

00:36:01 ◼   ► iOS 1 looked cool and modern, too, at the time.

00:36:04 ◼   ► And eventually, that became stale

00:36:06 ◼   ► and didn't look cool anymore.

00:36:08 ◼   ► I wonder how long it's going to take for iOS 7,

00:36:13 ◼   ► for its default look, to start looking cheap or outdated.

00:36:18 ◼   ► And I wonder also how many apps are going to come out with,

00:36:23 ◼   ► know, "iOS 7 redesigns this fall that are all going to look exactly the same." Because

00:36:28 ◼   ► they're all just going to look like iOS 7 stocks default stuff. Like, I really wonder

00:36:33 ◼   ► because that's... it's going to be interesting to watch. I don't really know what to say

00:36:37 ◼   ► about it in advance except it's going to be interesting to watch because a bunch of people

00:36:40 ◼   ► are going to be making these big gambles and some of them are going to pay off and some

00:36:43 ◼   ► of them really aren't because like, you know, it's like prisoner's dilemma. Like, if everyone

00:36:48 ◼   ► makes their apps look just like iOS 7's default stuff, then they're all going to look terrible

00:36:52 ◼   ► and bland. But if only a few people do it, their apps are going to look really cool and

00:36:57 ◼   ► modern and everyone else's will look old.

00:37:00 ◼   ► There's going to be that backlash kind of effect where if you are one of the few people

00:37:06 ◼   ► who has an application that already looks really good and doesn't look particularly

00:37:10 ◼   ► iOS 6-y, like it doesn't have that kind of heavyweight kind of played out look, if

00:37:17 ◼   ► If you just keep your app the same and everyone else either converts to iOS 7 or copies to iOS 7,

00:37:22 ◼   ► look, suddenly your branding is even stronger, because previously you had some kind of...

00:37:26 ◼   ► Let's think of like the bot applications, Tweetbot, Calcbot.

00:37:29 ◼   ► I don't know if they fall into this category, but they have a branding across all their applications.

00:37:32 ◼   ► It's very heavy, but it's not exactly like iOS 6.

00:37:35 ◼   ► I think they may be too close to it for it to work, but think of another application that has like a completely custom UI.

00:37:40 ◼   ► It looks nothing like the OS at all. It's not a game, it's an application, but it did a really nice custom UI.

00:37:44 ◼   ► How about Vesper?

00:37:45 ◼   ► I think it's too close to iOS 7 as well.

00:37:48 ◼   ► I was thinking like if you were just the other end of the spectrum,

00:37:51 ◼   ► but also still don't look like iOS 6, you may be able to get away with not changing

00:37:55 ◼   ► and like carrying your brand and making your brand even stronger

00:37:58 ◼   ► as everyone else just goes all white and everything.

00:38:00 ◼   ► Like it's a difficult line to walk.

00:38:01 ◼   ► I wouldn't count on this as a plan.

00:38:03 ◼   ► I would say you should really convert your stuff to look like iOS 7 if you can.

00:38:07 ◼   ► But there are going to be survivors who are like, we didn't change our UI to look like iOS 7.

00:38:12 ◼   ► We either stuck to our guns or we came up with an all new look

00:38:15 ◼   ► it also doesn't look like iOS 7 because there is a strength in branding and not looking like all the other applications and

00:38:21 ◼   ► since the iOS 6 UI and

00:38:23 ◼   ► 5 and 4 looks kind of played out if you go with like the default buttons and everything so many iOS

00:38:28 ◼   ► Applications that are successful have custom UIs now, which is why everyone's scrambling with the iOS 7 thing, right?

00:38:33 ◼   ► Some of those custom UIs

00:38:36 ◼   ► could survive the trick is knowing am I one of those ones that can survive or if I stick to this am I just gonna

00:38:41 ◼   ► look terrible. And I think a lot of them are just going to, because it's like native

00:38:45 ◼   ► iOS 4.5.6 UI plus a couple custom controls, and that's going to be a mess.

00:38:50 ◼   ► Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think the closer you look to iOS 6, the more old you'll look if you

00:38:55 ◼   ► don't change it. Yeah, things like Vesper and Twitterific

00:38:59 ◼   ► are already iOS 70, maybe not enough. Maybe Twitterific, because they just changed their

00:39:05 ◼   ► app to become even more iOS 70, like they made minor tweaks. They were already there.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Vesper I think has its own look that's a little bit like iOS 7, but I'm sure they're going

00:39:15 ◼   ► to revise to sort of tap it over and realign a little bit, not making it look like iOS

00:39:20 ◼   ► 7, but just sort of like recognizing that it's living on an iOS 7 system.

00:39:24 ◼   ► We'll see how much they revise that.

00:39:26 ◼   ► But those apps are the lucky few that were already more or less positioned well and don't

00:39:32 ◼   ► have a lot to do probably.

00:39:33 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

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00:42:00 ◼   ► - All right, so do we wanna talk about Minecraft?

00:42:04 ◼   ► Because I hear, John, that you really love Minecraft,

00:42:07 ◼   ► and you particularly like installing Minecraft mods.

00:42:10 ◼   ► I didn't do my homework.

00:42:12 ◼   ► I didn't either.

00:42:13 ◼   ► You guys are slackers.

00:42:14 ◼   ► I put a second topic in there, too,

00:42:16 ◼   ► that's actually more tech related.

00:42:18 ◼   ► Oh, I missed that.

00:42:19 ◼   ► I do have it open.

00:42:20 ◼   ► The Google Chrome password thing.

00:42:22 ◼   ► Oh, yes.

00:42:23 ◼   ► Yes.

00:42:23 ◼   ► What was that?

00:42:24 ◼   ► Was that just the iOS stuff, or was that more--

00:42:27 ◼   ► No, it's a desktop Chrome.

00:42:28 ◼   ► I didn't read this yet.

00:42:29 ◼   ► Man, I'm back.

00:42:30 ◼   ► I'll give you the summary, because it's really quick,

00:42:32 ◼   ► and I want to do that.

00:42:32 ◼   ► I think we'll get through this password one faster

00:42:35 ◼   ► and leave the Minecraft one till the end.

00:42:37 ◼   ► So the Chrome thing, I didn't actually

00:42:40 ◼   ► read the original story.

00:42:41 ◼   ► I just read the Hacker News thread,

00:42:42 ◼   ► which is sufficient usually.

00:42:45 ◼   ► If you have desktop Chrome and you go to Preferences,

00:42:47 ◼   ► hit Click Advanced, and click Manage Passwords,

00:42:50 ◼   ► and click on a password, it shows the little dots

00:42:52 ◼   ► for the password, and there's a little button right next to it

00:42:54 ◼   ► that says Show.

00:42:55 ◼   ► You click the Show button, it shows you

00:42:56 ◼   ► the password in plain text.

00:42:57 ◼   ► Ooh.

00:42:58 ◼   ► And people don't like that.

00:43:01 ◼   ► And this Hacker News thread that I've also linked in the little documents you can put

00:43:04 ◼   ► in the show notes is one of some Google Chrome engineer explaining the reasoning behind that

00:43:10 ◼   ► decision.

00:43:11 ◼   ► And like any Hacker News thread, which Marco is very familiar with, there's a lot of nerd-on-nerd

00:43:18 ◼   ► violence going on in these Hacker News threads.

00:43:21 ◼   ► It's kind of the worst.

00:43:23 ◼   ► The Hacker News brings out the worst in nerds.

00:43:25 ◼   ► Like there's the dark side of being a nerd, and if you get a bunch of them together, the

00:43:29 ◼   ► The worst part comes out along with the good part sometimes.

00:43:32 ◼   ► And the reasoning, the explanation

00:43:35 ◼   ► for why the Chrome team decided to do this

00:43:40 ◼   ► is definitely a nerd explanation.

00:43:41 ◼   ► The explanation is, look, even if we didn't do that,

00:43:44 ◼   ► we're not increasing security at all.

00:43:46 ◼   ► Because once you have access to your computer

00:43:47 ◼   ► and you're logged in, security is pointless game over.

00:43:51 ◼   ► And people are like, why don't you have a master password,

00:43:54 ◼   ► like Firefox?

00:43:54 ◼   ► And the nerd explanation is, look,

00:43:57 ◼   ► that doesn't actually protect you.

00:43:58 ◼   ► If you're sitting there in front of the computer

00:44:00 ◼   ► and you're logged in, you can get all this information.

00:44:02 ◼   ► It's not possible to hide information from yourself

00:44:04 ◼   ► because you are going to use the information to log

00:44:07 ◼   ► into websites.

00:44:09 ◼   ► It's like DRM, where they want to give you the content

00:44:12 ◼   ► but somehow prevent you from getting the content.

00:44:14 ◼   ► They're cross purposes.

00:44:16 ◼   ► And so the reasoning is, if we didn't--

00:44:20 ◼   ► by removing that button that shows you your plain text

00:44:22 ◼   ► password, we would be effectively

00:44:25 ◼   ► lying to the user, making them think

00:44:27 ◼   ► that it's more secure than it really is.

00:44:28 ◼   ► And a novice user might somehow think,

00:44:30 ◼   ► oh, no one can get my password,

00:44:32 ◼   ► because it's just a bunch of dots.

00:44:33 ◼   ► There's no way they can get that, right?

00:44:36 ◼   ► And that is definitely a very nerdy explanation,

00:44:37 ◼   ► because you're like, let me just think about it

00:44:39 ◼   ► in the abstract.

00:44:41 ◼   ► It's not actually any more or less secure.

00:44:43 ◼   ► Effectively, the security is the same.

00:44:45 ◼   ► So I want to be technically honest,

00:44:47 ◼   ► and we're just going to leave the button in.

00:44:49 ◼   ► And they get yelled at in the Hacker News thread

00:44:52 ◼   ► by some people who don't understand the security

00:44:54 ◼   ► issues, some of them.

00:44:55 ◼   ► Some people say you just do what Firefox does and don't understand that doesn't help either.

00:44:59 ◼   ► But also a lot of people who understand that argument and just think it's a terrible one.

00:45:03 ◼   ► And I fall into that camp.

00:45:05 ◼   ► And it's explained very well by the good nerds showing the good parts of being a nerd.

00:45:10 ◼   ► And of course they're good because I agree with them.

00:45:13 ◼   ► In the thread of basically saying, there's a difference.

00:45:16 ◼   ► I think the best analogy was like, safe.

00:45:18 ◼   ► No safe is uncrackable.

00:45:20 ◼   ► The job of the safe is to make it time-consuming, inconvenient, noisy, difficult to get in.

00:45:26 ◼   ► You can always get into a safe.

00:45:28 ◼   ► The safe is there to delay you sufficiently long that other issues come in.

00:45:32 ◼   ► And I think having plain text passwords visible to anyone who grabs your mouse for five seconds

00:45:39 ◼   ► is, without a lot of knowledge, it's too easy.

00:45:43 ◼   ► It's just too easy.

00:45:44 ◼   ► Like, the previous easiest way to do it would be go to a website that you want their password for,

00:45:49 ◼   ► or let it autofill, right click, inspect,

00:45:51 ◼   ► change the text field to password,

00:45:53 ◼   ► that requires much more technical knowledge

00:45:55 ◼   ► and takes longer than, command comma,

00:45:59 ◼   ► click, click, click, click, click, I've seen your password.

00:46:02 ◼   ► It's just too darn easy, too fast.

00:46:04 ◼   ► And that's what you're trying to do, is draw a line there.

00:46:07 ◼   ► No, you can always get to it.

00:46:09 ◼   ► You're not actually preventing anyone to get to it.

00:46:10 ◼   ► You're just trying to make the time limit long enough

00:46:12 ◼   ► that it's not, if I turn my back for one second

00:46:15 ◼   ► and someone grabs my mouse,

00:46:16 ◼   ► they can see my plain text password.

00:46:17 ◼   ► 'Cause that's literally how it is.

00:46:18 ◼   ► someone who's fast with a mouse, you could like turn your head, talk to someone, say five words,

00:46:22 ◼   ► and they could have seen your plain text password. No other way to get that password is that fast,

00:46:27 ◼   ► without like, you know, malware or some other, you know, actual nerd hack type thing of getting into your computer.

00:46:33 ◼   ► So, I think this is a fairly terrible decision, and it just goes to show that security is not a black and white type thing.

00:46:37 ◼   ► Like, by removing that show button, technically speaking, you're not making it any more secure,

00:46:41 ◼   ► but practically speaking, there's a big, big difference between just letting someone click through preferences

00:46:47 ◼   ► to see your plain text password in three seconds and requiring them to at least know how to

00:46:51 ◼   ► use the Web Inspector or type something or put in, you know, do something that's beyond

00:46:55 ◼   ► the realm of just going to settings.

00:46:57 ◼   ► Yeah, this is a weird, you know, I was reading about this now. It's just a weird attitude

00:47:04 ◼   ► to have towards security that this engineer is displaying here. And I assume that the

00:47:13 ◼   ► engineer did not have permission to write this, because if they did, their bot should

00:47:17 ◼   ► be fired.

00:47:18 ◼   ► You don't need permission at Google. It's all one big, happy family of engineers working

00:47:22 ◼   ► — but it's definitely a nerdy-type position, because it's like, you know, I'm not actually

00:47:28 ◼   ► increasing security by removing that button. Therefore, I won't do it because it's intellectually

00:47:32 ◼   ► dishonest to remove that button. And they're not understanding the practical issues, because

00:47:35 ◼   ► they're like, no, that's, you know, it's like mathematical or black and white, and

00:47:41 ◼   ► They, you know, he's not like, I guess they said they would consider these nuances but

00:47:45 ◼   ► didn't deem them important, that there was some sort of, we felt like we were being dishonest

00:47:48 ◼   ► or misleading to the user by doing this, but it just does not hold together.

00:47:52 ◼   ► Like, practically speaking, that button is a problem where it is and how easy it is to

00:47:57 ◼   ► get to.

00:47:58 ◼   ► Yeah, it's kind of like an immature attitude to say like, "Well, this isn't really going

00:48:03 ◼   ► to help security," although actually your points are that it kind of does.

00:48:07 ◼   ► But their attitude is, "We don't think this is really going to help security, so

00:48:11 ◼   ► we're just not going to do it."

00:48:14 ◼   ► And the attitude they're having here, it kind of sounds like they messed up and they're

00:48:18 ◼   ► having a hard time accepting that or admitting that.

00:48:20 ◼   ► Well, they said they've debated it and discussed it for years.

00:48:23 ◼   ► And if they've debated it and discussed it for years, maybe the people who are on

00:48:26 ◼   ► the side of sanity are just tired of arguing with the people who are not, or the wrong

00:48:31 ◼   ► person is in control.

00:48:33 ◼   ► You know, it just boggles my mind that it's not so clear to everybody that this is the wrong decision to make for practical reasons.

00:48:42 ◼   ► Like, and just, you know, you should be able to put things into their right comps.

00:48:46 ◼   ► No, you're not actually making it more secure, but like security is more than just like, is it hackable? Yes, no.

00:48:52 ◼   ► It's a continuum. And at this, you know, there's a certain threshold beyond which it's just too darn easy to see people's plain text passwords.

00:49:00 ◼   ► And many people were giving examples of why people might do these malicious type things.

00:49:06 ◼   ► There's a threshold.

00:49:10 ◼   ► If there was one button you could press on your keyboard that would put all your plaintext

00:49:13 ◼   ► passwords up on the screen, you would never enable that button.

00:49:15 ◼   ► But the Google attitude that's expressed here is like, "Well, they can get all those passwords

00:49:18 ◼   ► anyway if they have access to your keyboard, so there's no harm in leaving a single button

00:49:22 ◼   ► that shows them all instantly."

00:49:24 ◼   ► That's the obvious extreme thing.

00:49:27 ◼   ► Time required matters.

00:49:28 ◼   ► and, you know, skills. And going to the settings menu and clicking four times is not a very

00:49:36 ◼   ► high time or skill barrier. It's just too easy.

00:49:39 ◼   ► Well, you know what's interesting is, you know, everyone's perception of Google, and

00:49:43 ◼   ► mine to some degree included, is that it's a collection of unbelievably bright people

00:49:48 ◼   ► that are all working together. And this strikes me as the argument made by a bright person,

00:49:54 ◼   ► Like an academically bright person, but not a realist.

00:50:00 ◼   ► And just like you were saying, it still is a big security hole, but the PhD, air quote,

00:50:08 ◼   ► "PhD" argues correctly that, well, it's no different than what we're already doing.

00:50:13 ◼   ► It's a very short-sighted...

00:50:15 ◼   ► You're hanging your hat on academia when reality is very different, and it just seems silly.

00:50:19 ◼   ► it fits well with my very uninformed perception of what Google is.

00:50:24 ◼   ► Oh definitely. I mean honestly, and maybe this is just me being a little bit

00:50:29 ◼   ► tinfoil heady, but I

00:50:34 ◼   ► to me, Chrome, I treat Chrome as though

00:50:39 ◼   ► it is Google. And that everything I do in it, Google knows. Or can easily

00:50:44 ◼   ► easily get or is collecting.

00:50:47 ◼   ► Even though I know that what they do collect

00:50:50 ◼   ► is more limited than that, and I know

00:50:52 ◼   ► there's things like Chromium, like the open source thing that

00:50:55 ◼   ► has less of their stuff in it, but I still generally

00:50:58 ◼   ► treat Chrome as though it is a giant Google application.

00:51:03 ◼   ► It is a giant Google ad, basically,

00:51:05 ◼   ► and it's just recording everything I do,

00:51:07 ◼   ► even though I know that's not the case.

00:51:08 ◼   ► But that's not entirely untrue.

00:51:11 ◼   ► There's some traces of truth to that here and there

00:51:13 ◼   ► and various things it does.

00:51:15 ◼   ► So to me, Chrome is like my Google and Facebook

00:51:20 ◼   ► kind of silo, quarantine, where I use Safari

00:51:24 ◼   ► for my main browsing, and I use Chrome for things

00:51:27 ◼   ► that I know I'm being spot on, even though I know those companies are matching my IP

00:51:31 ◼   ► and figuring out that I'm really the same person, even in Safari.

00:51:34 ◼   ► But I try.

00:51:35 ◼   ► But I've noticed that Chrome also-- because I

00:51:42 ◼   ► have this kind of pessimistic attitude towards Chrome

00:51:47 ◼   ► and this defensive attitude.

00:51:49 ◼   ► I also-- generally when Chrome asks me for keychain access,

00:51:54 ◼   ► I say no.

00:51:56 ◼   ► And every time you visit any website at all

00:51:59 ◼   ► that has a password in it, Chrome will prompt a box

00:52:02 ◼   ► on Mac saying, hey, Google Chrome

00:52:04 ◼   ► wants access to your keychain.

00:52:05 ◼   ► Always allow?

00:52:07 ◼   ► And I click no every time.

00:52:10 ◼   ► And it'll keep asking.

00:52:11 ◼   ► It'll ask like six times for a page load to like Twitter.com

00:52:14 ◼   ► or Facebook or Google or whatever.

00:52:17 ◼   ► It'll ask a lot.

00:52:19 ◼   ► Obviously, Chrome for Macs is clearly

00:52:24 ◼   ► misusing the Keychain API.

00:52:26 ◼   ► Clearly, I don't think it's that they don't understand it.

00:52:29 ◼   ► I think it's they don't respect it.

00:52:31 ◼   ► I think Google has this culture of engineering arrogance, which

00:52:35 ◼   ► is often earned, but sometimes not.

00:52:38 ◼   ► And Macs have this awesome keychain system

00:52:42 ◼   ► that is pretty secure and certainly better

00:52:45 ◼   ► than a lot of these methods.

00:52:47 ◼   ► And Chrome basically tries to take it,

00:52:51 ◼   ► like take it over, take all the value out of it, but yet still

00:52:53 ◼   ► have its own little system that does its own thing on the side

00:52:56 ◼   ► because they think they're better.

00:52:57 ◼   ► Well, they want to be cross-platform.

00:52:58 ◼   ► They don't want to be tied to-- I

00:53:00 ◼   ► don't blame Chrome for not having deeper OS X integration,

00:53:04 ◼   ► because that's the value in Chrome.

00:53:06 ◼   ► Well, then why access the keychain at all?

00:53:08 ◼   ► Well, you know, like, they have their own way to store these things,

00:53:12 ◼   ► and they want to integrate a little bit, but they're certainly not going to say,

00:53:14 ◼   ► "Oh, on the Mac, all we do is use Qchain," because that's not going to be the case.

00:53:17 ◼   ► Like, the value I see in Chrome is that I know that if I go somewhere else,

00:53:23 ◼   ► my Chrome environment is there too, because Chrome is not tied to any OS.

00:53:26 ◼   ► Like, if I installed Chrome on Windows and signed in with my Google account

00:53:29 ◼   ► and synced everything, I'd have all my preferences, all my extensions,

00:53:32 ◼   ► all my tabs, all my history, all my passwords, all that stuff on Windows.

00:53:36 ◼   ► Like that's the value in Chrome.

00:53:38 ◼   ► That would not be the case in Safari.

00:53:39 ◼   ► It wasn't even the case when it was Safari for Windows, right?

00:53:42 ◼   ► So I think you're torturing yourself

00:53:44 ◼   ► by not letting Chrome do these things.

00:53:46 ◼   ► You either use it or don't use it.

00:53:48 ◼   ► But if you're going to use it, just

00:53:48 ◼   ► let it do what it's going to do.

00:53:50 ◼   ► I don't see anything worse about it

00:53:52 ◼   ► in terms of being tracked or anything like that.

00:53:54 ◼   ► And I really like Chrome as a web browser,

00:53:56 ◼   ► especially since WebKit 2 was introduced

00:53:59 ◼   ► and Safari started to be flaky.

00:54:00 ◼   ► Safari is still my default browser,

00:54:02 ◼   ► but Chrome is much more solid for me.

00:54:05 ◼   ► And I spend a lot of time in it.

00:54:06 ◼   ► And I don't fight it.

00:54:07 ◼   ► I let it do what I want.

00:54:08 ◼   ► And I'm happy when I go to another machine,

00:54:09 ◼   ► sync everything up in Chrome, and my whole Chrome environment

00:54:12 ◼   ► is there.

00:54:12 ◼   ► I wish every part of my computing experience

00:54:14 ◼   ► was like that.

00:54:15 ◼   ► So when you say your whole Chrome environment,

00:54:17 ◼   ► I treat Chrome the same way Marco does.

00:54:19 ◼   ► But what is synced that makes your experience that much

00:54:24 ◼   ► better?

00:54:25 ◼   ► I use extensions, Chrome extensions.

00:54:27 ◼   ► And I'm annoyed.

00:54:28 ◼   ► I can't use default Chrome at this point.

00:54:30 ◼   ► I'm too addicted to the handful of extensions that I use.

00:54:32 ◼   ► I like my preferences of what's displayed in NOD.

00:54:35 ◼   ► like my bookmarks bar, my bookmark menu,

00:54:38 ◼   ► all those little things, like when you go to a new machine,

00:54:40 ◼   ► you gotta go away, especially because Chrome's preferences

00:54:42 ◼   ► are terrible, like Chrome's UI is not nice,

00:54:45 ◼   ► it's not Mac-like and it's also not nice,

00:54:46 ◼   ► so it's double whammy against it.

00:54:48 ◼   ► And I would not wanna go into that UI

00:54:52 ◼   ► every time I was on a new machine and configure stuff,

00:54:54 ◼   ► like I don't wanna go in there ever,

00:54:56 ◼   ► so it's great when I could just sign in with my Google ID

00:54:58 ◼   ► and get everything synced up,

00:54:59 ◼   ► like that's the experience I wanna have

00:55:01 ◼   ► with all my applications, with iCloud,

00:55:02 ◼   ► That's the dream of iCloud and all the Apple stuff.

00:55:05 ◼   ► It's just go anywhere, sign in with your Apple ID,

00:55:07 ◼   ► all your stuff and awareness of who you are

00:55:09 ◼   ► and everything you've ever purchased

00:55:11 ◼   ► and all your preferences and everything

00:55:13 ◼   ► are all just there with you.

00:55:13 ◼   ► And that is still not the case on OS X.

00:55:15 ◼   ► If I set up a new Mac, it sets up some things for me

00:55:18 ◼   ► and they're getting better about it.

00:55:19 ◼   ► But it is not like my Chromebook fell in the ocean.

00:55:23 ◼   ► Give me another Chromebook, sign in with my Google ID,

00:55:27 ◼   ► and it looks just like my previous Chromebook, which

00:55:29 ◼   ► is, granted, easier when all your thing is

00:55:31 ◼   ► a giant web browser, but you know, that's what Apple is working towards.

00:55:34 ◼   ► Right, and in case I don't go near the ocean, so it isn't a problem for us.

00:55:36 ◼   ► If you drop it in a lake, it's just as dead. And it's muddy.

00:55:41 ◼   ► Wow. Oh, goodness.

00:55:47 ◼   ► And filled with broken glass that cuts your feet because there's no way of still wearing

00:55:50 ◼   ► it. Oh, come now. Although I will say, now we're

00:55:53 ◼   ► looking... What lake have you been to?

00:55:55 ◼   ► Lakes are filled with sharp broken glass. Everyone knows that.

00:55:58 ◼   ► No, they're not. No, they're not.

00:55:59 ◼   ► Yes, they are, from beer bottles from Lake Yokels.

00:56:04 ◼   ► There's no waves to agitate them enough to turn into sea glass.

00:56:09 ◼   ► There are small waves from boats and stuff.

00:56:11 ◼   ► There are waves from boats.

00:56:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it takes much longer.

00:56:13 ◼   ► That's why you should get cut.

00:56:14 ◼   ► Although, I tell you what.

00:56:15 ◼   ► I'm stealing a line from Kevin James right now, but I have never screamed louder, like

00:56:20 ◼   ► more of a little girl, than when a piece of seaweed from the bottom of the lake touches

00:56:24 ◼   ► my feet.

00:56:25 ◼   ► Oh, my goodness.

00:56:26 ◼   ► It's not seaweed if it's in a lake.

00:56:28 ◼   ► Oh, whatever. Lakeweed. Whatever it is.

00:56:31 ◼   ► That stuff freaks me out so hard. Oh, God.

00:56:34 ◼   ► Are we in After Dark already? I didn't even think we ended the show.

00:56:37 ◼   ► It's all downhill from here.

00:56:40 ◼   ► I could talk about Minecraft mods to finish it up.

00:56:43 ◼   ► Well, I have a feeling that's going to last a while. Do we want to end it here and then do Minecraft for the next episode?

00:56:48 ◼   ► It's up to you guys. I have no preference.

00:56:50 ◼   ► It could just become the topic that we always push off to the next episode.

00:56:53 ◼   ► I'm okay with that. That can be a thing. I'm okay with that.

00:56:56 ◼   ► Is there something that Casey and I can do to make it a better topic for us to discuss?

00:57:00 ◼   ► Well, like I said, you guys should, you know, adopt a neighborhood kid and have them request that you install Minecraft mod to them.

00:57:08 ◼   ► Because like we discussed, that's not at all creepy.

00:57:11 ◼   ► Yeah, so just go install Minecraft. You might have to pay for it, but you know, now that Casey's selling all these copies of FastX, he can afford it.

00:57:19 ◼   ► it and pick a mod like pick you know I can send you I can send you the name of a mod because that's

00:57:26 ◼   ► all you get from a kid like I want that whatever like kids discover these mods by watching youtube

00:57:31 ◼   ► videos and youtube videos is show someone playing hey look at this cool new mod you can do this you

00:57:34 ◼   ► can do that kids watch these videos say I want to do that and all you've got to go on is the youtube

00:57:39 ◼   ► video and usually they just mention the name of the mod it's like that's like video you know it's

00:57:44 ◼   ► like video podcasting type thing but on youtube youtube channel where every week they'll say okay

00:57:48 ◼   ► Here are these new mods we're checking out and do some stuff with it and it's a show.

00:57:52 ◼   ► So not all of them have like show note links to say if you're interested in this mod link

00:57:56 ◼   ► to it.

00:57:57 ◼   ► In fact, most of them don't.

00:57:58 ◼   ► So you just have a name like I want the whatever mod.

00:58:01 ◼   ► And given those two pieces of information that Minecraft exists, that there's a YouTube

00:58:04 ◼   ► video that shows someone using this mod and a kid wants that mod, go and see how long

00:58:09 ◼   ► it takes you to successfully get that mod into Minecraft.

00:58:14 ◼   ► Is this why there's infinite Minecraft-related spam on the App Store?

00:58:20 ◼   ► I don't know why. I can't quite understand what has happened to...

00:58:25 ◼   ► It could be like a broken windows type thing where Minecraft was very popular and it's

00:58:28 ◼   ► been around for a long time and at a certain point people stopped fixing the windows.

00:58:31 ◼   ► And so now just like all of them have been knocked out by stones.

00:58:34 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I mean...

00:58:36 ◼   ► Look, we're already talking about this. Might as well get into it now.

00:58:40 ◼   ► Alright, I've got time. I've got to go to another podcast in half an hour.

00:58:45 ◼   ► Busy man.

00:58:46 ◼   ► Alright, so...

00:58:47 ◼   ► You're so popular.

00:58:48 ◼   ► Yeah. So Minecraft mods. The problem with Minecraft mods, I complained about it on Twitter

00:58:55 ◼   ► a little bit and I hesitated to complain about it on Twitter because I didn't actually want

00:58:58 ◼   ► anyone to help. And the other thing I didn't want was people to think that it was a technical

00:59:04 ◼   ► It is totally not a technology-based issue. It is a social, community-based issue.

00:59:11 ◼   ► That's the problem with Minecraft mods. And that is the essential thing to understand about them.

00:59:15 ◼   ► That it's not difficulty in doing something with computers or software that's buggy or anything like that.

00:59:23 ◼   ► It is completely evidence of what happens when either there is just chaos and anarchy in the community,

00:59:30 ◼   ► like the broken windows thing where no one is repairing anything and everything's just

00:59:33 ◼   ► in shambles. And it also looks a lot like Lord of the Flies, where it's just a bunch

00:59:38 ◼   ► of kids on an island and you just leave for like two months and then you come back and

00:59:42 ◼   ► it's just, you know, it's Lord of the Flies. Like, the entire community has been, uh, is

00:59:47 ◼   ► run by young children. I don't think it really is run by young children. I think Minecraft

00:59:51 ◼   ► is played by the same kind of demographic that plays all games, which is probably like

00:59:54 ◼   ► the average of a 30-year-old person or something. But it seems like it's run by kids. So here's

00:59:59 ◼   ► Here's the problem. If you got Minecraft, like you can go to the Minecraft store, you

01:00:05 ◼   ► know, mojang.com or whatever it is, buy Minecraft, download it, play it. Even that-

01:00:10 ◼   ► Hold on, hold on, hold on. Can you explain for those of us who don't know what Minecraft

01:00:13 ◼   ► is, what Minecraft is?

01:00:15 ◼   ► We're asking for a friend.

01:00:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:18 ◼   ► I'm asking for a friend.

01:00:19 ◼   ► Absolutely.

01:00:20 ◼   ► Whose name might also be Casey.

01:00:21 ◼   ► It's actually not important what Minecraft is, but briefly it's a- I can't explain it

01:00:24 ◼   ► without doing jargon. I was gonna say it's a voxel-based game, but anyway.

01:00:27 ◼   ► What?

01:00:28 ◼   ► You don't know what voxels are.

01:00:30 ◼   ► I don't even know if it uses voxels.

01:00:31 ◼   ► Wait, like Tiberian Sun?

01:00:32 ◼   ► Yeah, remember Comanche on the PC, Marco?

01:00:35 ◼   ► No.

01:00:36 ◼   ► Back in the day?

01:00:37 ◼   ► Voxels!

01:00:38 ◼   ► Anyway, you can Google it later.

01:00:39 ◼   ► You make a bunch of cubes, and the cubes come in different materials, and the materials

01:00:46 ◼   ► have properties, and they start you off with a procedurally generated world with grass

01:00:51 ◼   ► and water and mountains and stuff like that, and you can hit little cubes to make them

01:00:55 ◼   ► disappear or use cubes to make more cubes appear. So it's like Legos, but all the Legos

01:01:01 ◼   ► are cubes, and they're made of different materials and they interact with each other. You can

01:01:04 ◼   ► put water on lava and different things happen and stuff like that.

01:01:07 ◼   ► Okay, so how do you win? The appeal of the game is like a sandbox game,

01:01:11 ◼   ► literally. There's a survival mode where you can go and you have health and there's enemies

01:01:15 ◼   ► that come out at night and you have to defend against them and fight them by clicking on

01:01:17 ◼   ► them or whatever. And then there's other modes where you're just like, you don't have any

01:01:21 ◼   ► health or life, you're just there playing in a big bin of Legos.

01:01:25 ◼   ► What do you want to do? You want to build things. You know, you want to build structures, build architecture,

01:01:29 ◼   ► you can dig into the ground and

01:01:31 ◼   ► mine for minerals and jewels and make structures underground and do all sorts of very interesting things.

01:01:36 ◼   ► It's totally a sandbox game.

01:01:37 ◼   ► So you like it because it's a combination of Legos and GameCube?

01:01:40 ◼   ► I don't play it. I'm not into Minecraft.

01:01:42 ◼   ► I played it enough to know that it's not really familiar, but kids like it and my son really, really likes it.

01:01:46 ◼   ► So that's the game, and the mods, you know, alter the behavior of the game, like

01:01:54 ◼   ► There's certain amount of like things you can put on your person like different kinds of armor

01:01:57 ◼   ► And there's a mod that gives you different

01:01:59 ◼   ► You know armor with special abilities like armor lets you glide or fly or jump higher

01:02:03 ◼   ► And there's you know mods that give you larger explosives

01:02:06 ◼   ► You know they have TNT in the game

01:02:08 ◼   ► But what if you want something that makes it even bigger explosion or?

01:02:10 ◼   ► Mods that give you new enemies instead of just the regular zombies and creepers that are going around you can get different kinds of it

01:02:15 ◼   ► So that's what the big mods do what mods do right now. It is mods

01:02:19 ◼   ► accepted or like an extension or is it the sort of thing where you would get like some

01:02:25 ◼   ► Hypothetically if you were young and couldn't afford things you would get a patch so that you wouldn't have to register a game and pay for

01:02:32 ◼   ► it

01:02:33 ◼   ► Well, so here's the thing about the game like just like I was saying before just getting the game itself like no mods

01:02:39 ◼   ► No, nothing

01:02:40 ◼   ► I just want to buy this game and play out of my Mac even that was not a great experience

01:02:43 ◼   ► until recently and even now it's not great like I

01:02:47 ◼   ► When I first bought the game, you get an icon, it's in your application folder, you double-click it, it doesn't work.

01:02:51 ◼   ► Like, that's not a good experience.

01:02:53 ◼   ► Just, like, the game does not launch. And it's like all this permission errors,

01:02:58 ◼   ► and if you had the older version, you had to go in and chmod something, or, you know,

01:03:01 ◼   ► it turned out being faster for me to just, like,

01:03:04 ◼   ► run the jar file from the command line using the Java command line thing to get the game started because their wrapper thing didn't work

01:03:10 ◼   ► right. So right off the bat, it's not a great experience just for the game itself. Because, seriously, if I buy a game,

01:03:15 ◼   ► I downloaded that I put a little app icon. I double-click it the game doesn't launch

01:03:18 ◼   ► You know game over and this is not again

01:03:21 ◼   ► It's not like version one of a game minecraft had been out for years by the time

01:03:24 ◼   ► I installed it for the first time and it just didn't work

01:03:26 ◼   ► And so how did you allow your son to play this if the experience was that bad already?

01:03:31 ◼   ► I would have expected you would have said son. I'm sorry, but this just doesn't cut the mustard

01:03:35 ◼   ► Yeah, you know for gaming you put up with a lot of hell. I put up with Windows to play some games

01:03:41 ◼   ► Eventually just want the games to play and I didn't you know, I this was years ago

01:03:45 ◼   ► it was like years after the game had come out but years before now and I

01:03:49 ◼   ► Played around in it

01:03:51 ◼   ► wasn't that I think I fired it up again so I could see like the five by five minecraft server where they did a

01:03:56 ◼   ► Giant version of my head floating in the sky. So I went and flew around in there for a while. Look at that

01:04:01 ◼   ► And that was fun, but I don't actually play but so

01:04:05 ◼   ► My son's friends are into it and you know, oh you got a can I play Minecraft? I'm like, okay

01:04:10 ◼   ► Well, I already paid for it, I have it, so here you go, you can play Minecraft.

01:04:12 ◼   ► And then he starts watching the YouTube videos about mods, and says, "Can I have, like, the, you know, the armor movement mod, which gives you some armor stuff that lets you, you know, fly and move and stuff like that?"

01:04:23 ◼   ► Uh, and, "Ah, it's not clear what you're talking about."

01:04:26 ◼   ► And he says this, and shows me a YouTube video, and this one actually did have a link, so it was like, you know, "Armor movement mod, blah blah blah,"

01:04:33 ◼   ► they scroll down in the little text underneath the video and it has links like

01:04:38 ◼   ► "Download the mod here, you need to have this installed first"

01:04:41 ◼   ► and it gives a link to it and you're like "Alright, so no problem"

01:04:43 ◼   ► So you click on the links and they take you to forums

01:04:46 ◼   ► and that's a bad sign, number one

01:04:48 ◼   ► If you click on a link or something and you end up in a forum

01:04:51 ◼   ► that's a bad sign

01:04:52 ◼   ► And so I quickly learned that mods are not a feature of the game

01:04:57 ◼   ► Like a lot of games are built with the intention that you're going to modify it

01:05:01 ◼   ► Like they support it, they say

01:05:02 ◼   ► "Okay, if you want to mod, here's the API you can do, here's the folder you put it in, put your stuff in there and it will run it."

01:05:06 ◼   ► Minecraft is not like that.

01:05:08 ◼   ► Which, first of all, that alone boggles my mind.

01:05:10 ◼   ► Because it is so clear that mods are something that the community wants to do with this game, that if...

01:05:14 ◼   ► You know, you would imagine that any other game developer would love the fact that people are modding the game and stuff like that.

01:05:20 ◼   ► Like, you know, support it as an officially supported feature of the game, because clearly that's what people want to do.

01:05:25 ◼   ► But nope, nope, they're not going to support that.

01:05:28 ◼   ► So your very first problem is that you're trying to mod a game that doesn't want to be modded

01:05:32 ◼   ► And that is always going to be gross and ugly

01:05:34 ◼   ► And like I said, it's a Java game

01:05:36 ◼   ► So the process of modding is usually like this is the technical part of it, and it's not difficult although

01:05:42 ◼   ► You would think it's the you know the end of the world if you google around for it

01:05:46 ◼   ► JAR files are just zip files, so if you just unzip them you get a bunch of you know

01:05:51 ◼   ► .class files and stuff and other Java crap in there

01:05:54 ◼   ► To mod it you take some other jar file and you know open it up take its contents throw it inside the

01:06:00 ◼   ► Minecraft jar and you know zip the thing back up and rename it dot jar that is the technical process of modding

01:06:07 ◼   ► Minecraft and usually what you want to do is make a install mod loader

01:06:11 ◼   ► That's like you do one mod that you shove into the Minecraft jar file that lets you load other mods that you don't have to

01:06:16 ◼   ► Shove in there anymore or something like that

01:06:19 ◼   ► And so if you google around for how to install the whatever mod, there's a million YouTube videos

01:06:24 ◼   ► These are mostly kids like talking into their built-in mic showing you a screencast of them in Windows XP

01:06:31 ◼   ► Like opening up zip files and dragging files from one place to the other and there's a bunch of people doing it on a Macs too

01:06:36 ◼   ► Showing you how to right-click and open, you know and drag things around and stuff like that

01:06:40 ◼   ► One of the videos of some kid doing it on a Mac. I think it was on tiger or something really ancient version of OS 10

01:06:47 ◼   ► He is this is the best part of this video, and it's another thing about how real people interact with technology

01:06:53 ◼   ► He was dragging like from you know one column view window into another

01:06:57 ◼   ► and

01:07:00 ◼   ► A lot of these mods like replace files that come with

01:07:04 ◼   ► Minecraft and so you get the dialogue that says you know a file by this name already exist you want to replace or whatever and

01:07:09 ◼   ► It's got I figure what the options are but there's a checkbox in the corner that says you know answer this for the rest of

01:07:14 ◼   ► prompts so you don't have to click clicking the button. He says in the video, "You can

01:07:18 ◼   ► click this checkbox, but I like to click it individually for each one just in case." That

01:07:23 ◼   ► whole idea that the checkbox is not trustworthy, that you are taking matters into your own

01:07:29 ◼   ► hands and wresting control from the evil, mysterious computer by clicking the button

01:07:34 ◼   ► manually each time versus hitting that checkbox and hitting the button once. Because in one

01:07:38 ◼   ► case, it's desperation for control, to feel like you are in control of the system. If

01:07:43 ◼   ► I click the button 100 times for these 100 files, I'm in control.

01:07:46 ◼   ► If I hit that checkbox and click the button, I have no idea what it's going to do with

01:07:49 ◼   ► those 100 files.

01:07:50 ◼   ► Maybe it will forget to do it for one of them.

01:07:53 ◼   ► That's how real people relate to computers.

01:07:56 ◼   ► I've seen that phenomenon before, and this was an amazing instance of it.

01:07:58 ◼   ► Granted, it was a kid, but I don't think it's confined to just kids.

01:08:02 ◼   ► Anyway, that is the technical process.

01:08:04 ◼   ► That is the part that I had the least problem with.

01:08:07 ◼   ► Because whatever, I could do that 800 different ways.

01:08:10 ◼   ► The difficult part was everything else.

01:08:13 ◼   ► Finding where to download this thing from.

01:08:16 ◼   ► Successfully downloading the thing.

01:08:20 ◼   ► Those two steps are very difficult.

01:08:22 ◼   ► Finding where to download, you go to a forum post

01:08:24 ◼   ► and maybe it's like a sticky post

01:08:25 ◼   ► and it's the post at the top constantly updated

01:08:27 ◼   ► or it's the most recent version at the bottom.

01:08:30 ◼   ► Having to read through the whole thread

01:08:31 ◼   ► to figure all that stuff out.

01:08:32 ◼   ► Then when you get there, to download it,

01:08:36 ◼   ► you click on a link that takes you to one of those scam,

01:08:39 ◼   ► download sites that's like, you know, click here, there's like 800 download buttons, free,

01:08:44 ◼   ► download, download now, and you gotta figure out which one is the real download button,

01:08:47 ◼   ► sometimes it's like seven layers deep, and you have to--

01:08:48 ◼   ► You have to--

01:08:49 ◼   ► You have to flood a survey and three captchas, and send it for some credit cards.

01:08:53 ◼   ► Yeah, and I would say the majority of those do not eventually lead to an actual download.

01:08:57 ◼   ► No.

01:08:58 ◼   ► Right, so now you're just angry, right?

01:09:00 ◼   ► And what I'm thinking during this process is Minecraft is an insanely popular game.

01:09:04 ◼   ► This is obviously a very popular mod.

01:09:07 ◼   ► How is there not, like, a .org site?

01:09:09 ◼   ► How is there not a damn Squarespace site as the official home for the armor movement mod for Minecraft?

01:09:13 ◼   ► An official website that would say, "Here it is."

01:09:17 ◼   ► Because if you Google for it, you'll find a million hits, like keywords spamming, and the keywords like,

01:09:23 ◼   ► "Download Minecraft armor movement mod."

01:09:26 ◼   ► People are camped out on that like crazy with things that have nothing to do with it,

01:09:30 ◼   ► but the Google results are useless, and you come to realize there is no official site for these mods.

01:09:35 ◼   ► There's no, like the people who make these can't be bothered to put up a single website that has like,

01:09:39 ◼   ► "Here is the mod, here is the download link, here are the versions."

01:09:43 ◼   ► Like, that just doesn't exist for the most part.

01:09:45 ◼   ► And you would think, "Okay, well are there sites that compile these mods together?"

01:09:48 ◼   ► Like a mod management site? Kind of, sort of, but those suck too.

01:09:51 ◼   ► And the next problem is, say you successfully download something,

01:09:54 ◼   ► what you really need to know is not just like, "Oh, here's this download link."

01:09:56 ◼   ► What are the prerequisites? What do I need to make this mod work?

01:10:00 ◼   ► Does it only work with a certain version of Minecraft?

01:10:02 ◼   ► Do I need something else to be installed first?

01:10:04 ◼   ► what version that needs to be installed. All these details do not exist because every single person

01:10:09 ◼   ► doing these mods is apparently a goldfish who forgets things after seven seconds and said like,

01:10:14 ◼   ► "This is what I had to do to get this work on this day. I uploaded a video about it and forget it."

01:10:18 ◼   ► And you can sort of read the tea leaves and say, "When this was posted,

01:10:22 ◼   ► according to Wikipedia, the most recent version of Minecraft version was. Therefore..."

01:10:27 ◼   ► And then you have to guess, did this guy have the install the most recent version or did he not?

01:10:30 ◼   ► Because if you take those files and jam them into the Minecraft

01:10:33 ◼   ► jar that's the wrong version, they just won't work,

01:10:35 ◼   ► and the thing will crash on startup or whatever.

01:10:37 ◼   ► And they will not tell you this.

01:10:39 ◼   ► They will not tell you what you need.

01:10:41 ◼   ► And most of them say, you need to install modloader or forge.

01:10:45 ◼   ► It requires modloader or forge.

01:10:47 ◼   ► Modloader or forge is never linked to anything.

01:10:49 ◼   ► It was assumed that everybody reading this

01:10:50 ◼   ► knows what modloader or forge are, already

01:10:51 ◼   ► have them installed, have no problem finding the link.

01:10:54 ◼   ► Go ahead and Google for Minecraft modloader,

01:10:56 ◼   ► Minecraft forge.

01:10:57 ◼   ► You'll find a million hits, a million fake downloads.

01:10:58 ◼   ► and again you don't know which one of those work.

01:11:00 ◼   ► And then you're like, okay, this one says, I found something, this one says it only works

01:11:04 ◼   ► in Minecraft version 1.5.1.

01:11:06 ◼   ► Where can I get Minecraft version 1.5.1?

01:11:08 ◼   ► You think you could go to the main Minecraft site and get it, and you can kind of sort

01:11:11 ◼   ► of do that, but not really, because they really hide the old versions down there.

01:11:15 ◼   ► And then you're like, okay, well this has got to be up on the web somewhere.

01:11:18 ◼   ► I should be able to find Minecraft 1.5.1 or 2 or 3 or whatever downloads somewhere.

01:11:22 ◼   ► And so you're hunting around justifying the original Minecraft jar, and there are a million

01:11:25 ◼   ► files out there that claim to be this that are not this, that when you download them

01:11:28 ◼   ► they're just a bunch of EXEs or mislabeled where you find out the jar file is actually

01:11:32 ◼   ► 1.6.2, not 1.5.2.

01:11:36 ◼   ► That's another incredibly problematic phenomenon.

01:11:39 ◼   ► People keyword spamming for like "armor movement mod for Minecraft 1.6.2" which is a total

01:11:44 ◼   ► lie because the thing downloadable from there will not work with 1.6.2, as evidence if you

01:11:49 ◼   ► can dig through like the YouTube comments, people saying "doesn't work with 1.6, change

01:11:53 ◼   ► a comment, this really works with 1.5, like, it is a terrible maze of lies and bad downloads

01:12:01 ◼   ► and no help from anyone, and there is no safe haven. There's no clean, well-lit place to

01:12:05 ◼   ► explain what these things are. And you would think for a game as popular as Minecraft,

01:12:10 ◼   ► that at this point, you would launch Minecraft and there'd be an app store in the freaking

01:12:15 ◼   ► game, it would only show you the mods that you can load, you would click on them and

01:12:18 ◼   ► they would automatically install. You would think at this point, that's how it would have

01:12:22 ◼   ► But years and years of development have just led to this. It's like just a giant, chaotic mess of

01:12:28 ◼   ► crap, and it has not gotten better. Maybe there was a golden age before the world fell and

01:12:33 ◼   ► everything crumbled to dust, but I didn't experience the time. And now it is just a big,

01:12:38 ◼   ► giant mess. And really, everybody involved with this did what they required to get their thing to

01:12:43 ◼   ► work on the day they posted it three years ago, and that's all they care about. And everything

01:12:46 ◼   ► else is lost in the sands of time. So I spend most of my time trying to guess where can

01:12:52 ◼   ► I get the file to work. First of all, what version of Minecraft does this mod work with?

01:12:56 ◼   ► Second of all, can I get that version of Minecraft? Third, putting that version of that mod into

01:13:04 ◼   ► that version of Minecraft and running it and seeing if it worked. And of course, there's

01:13:06 ◼   ► no real indication for a lot of these things, especially when I was trying to get mod loader

01:13:11 ◼   ► or forge installed. If it seemed to work, it wouldn't crash, but I couldn't tell if

01:13:15 ◼   ► will work successfully and like mod loader 4 is like okay, I think I successfully installed these things

01:13:20 ◼   ► How do I install a mod the mod loader and Forge people won't tell you

01:13:24 ◼   ► You can find instructions like oh just after you installed them

01:13:26 ◼   ► Just just throw the mods inside your Minecraft jar

01:13:29 ◼   ► But other ones like oh there's a mods folder put your mods in there

01:13:31 ◼   ► All the instructions reference outdated structures of Minecraft and different this there's a whole other menagerie of Minecraft launchers of ways to launch the Minecraft

01:13:39 ◼   ► Program that are also third-party applications because apparently the main launcher doesn't work

01:13:43 ◼   ► and they changed how the launches work between 1.5 and 1.6,

01:13:45 ◼   ► and there are many, many mods that only work with 1.4 or even earlier versions.

01:13:50 ◼   ► It's a problem of community and society and organization.

01:13:56 ◼   ► It just shows how terrible--

01:13:58 ◼   ► it makes Linux package management look like paradise.

01:14:01 ◼   ► That's probably the best I can say about this.

01:14:03 ◼   ► Because it makes RPMs look like the promised land,

01:14:08 ◼   ► because it is unbelievably terrible,

01:14:11 ◼   ► And it boggles my mind that it has not gotten better.

01:14:13 ◼   ► So this is like a cautionary tale for anyone who wants to have any kind of

01:14:16 ◼   ► community involving a game.

01:14:18 ◼   ► Do not let your game community, do not let whatever happened to the Minecraft

01:14:22 ◼   ► community happen to your game community, because it is, it's, I got to think of a

01:14:26 ◼   ► good analogy for it, but it's like, it's like a terrible plague or virus has

01:14:30 ◼   ► destroyed that community and it's just filled with this sadness and angry

01:14:33 ◼   ► children and frustrated parents.

01:14:37 ◼   ► So John, I have to ask you, do you enjoy installing a new Minecraft mod, or do you find it to be a little bit frustrating?

01:14:43 ◼   ► At this point, you build up a certain level of expertise and you kind of know where all the bodies are buried and stuff like that.

01:14:49 ◼   ► At this point, I know what all the problems are. My son asked me if I want the Explosives Plus mod.

01:14:54 ◼   ► I couldn't even find the mod he was talking about because the video didn't have any links.

01:14:58 ◼   ► I found lots of mods with the word "explosive" in them.

01:15:00 ◼   ► I picked one that looked like it had a reasonable download link that went through one of those scammy ad sites where I know the

01:15:05 ◼   ► Seven places you have to click to actually get the download. I did that for two mods one of them

01:15:10 ◼   ► Just caused it to crash on launch. I'm not sure if I had the wrong version again

01:15:13 ◼   ► I had the version that it said that I needed I was but the fact that it said that I needed a version doesn't mean

01:15:17 ◼   ► Anything because like you know it said needs one point

01:15:19 ◼   ► What do you mean it is it the official website for this mod?

01:15:22 ◼   ► No, of course not it's some random scam Google keyword page

01:15:25 ◼   ► No one human probably didn't even write that like there is no canonical source for information about any of these things, right?

01:15:30 ◼   ► So it's just all trial and error. So one of them totally didn't work at all and caused the thing to crash.

01:15:34 ◼   ► Another one only worked when I uninstalled another mod. Again, cross mod compatibility, forget about that.

01:15:39 ◼   ► That's not even a glimmer in the Minecraft community's eye. They have no conflict resolution whatsoever.

01:15:43 ◼   ► So I uninstalled a bunch of other mods. I have this this thing that lets you make

01:15:47 ◼   ► Re-instance Minecraft to say here's an entirely new instance of Minecraft of a particular version and then you could screw with that one.

01:15:53 ◼   ► So they have tools that are trying to manage this chaos, but the wrong way.

01:15:55 ◼   ► Like, they're just—we will duplicate your entire world so you can start off with it in a known state and screw it up and then throw that away and do another one.

01:16:03 ◼   ► So I eventually got one of the explosion mods installed and my son played with it today.

01:16:06 ◼   ► You know, I have two thoughts on this. Firstly, I am genu—and all kidding aside, I am genuinely stunned that you are so willing to take code from random places and drop it on your computer and run it and just go on faith that it's not going to screw things up.

01:16:23 ◼   ► Like, how does that not freak you out?

01:16:24 ◼   ► It's just Java.

01:16:25 ◼   ► What?

01:16:26 ◼   ► I mean...

01:16:27 ◼   ► It doesn't have local file system access because you're running it.

01:16:31 ◼   ► It could be totally rooting me.

01:16:33 ◼   ► Like it could just be stealing every one of my files and my passwords.

01:16:36 ◼   ► But seriously, the competence level of the Minecraft community is such that malware could

01:16:42 ◼   ► not successfully propagate.

01:16:43 ◼   ► It would be thwarted by the Byzantine maze of crappy download pages and everything.

01:16:48 ◼   ► So I'm assuming I'm not being hacked.

01:16:50 ◼   ► And also I'm installing this on my wife's computer.

01:16:52 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:16:53 ◼   ► It's that.

01:16:54 ◼   ► Then the truth comes out.

01:16:57 ◼   ► Also, it would only have access to your passwords in Chrome.

01:16:59 ◼   ► Yeah, it would have access to everything.

01:17:01 ◼   ► It's running as me.

01:17:02 ◼   ► It could recursively delete my wife's home directory if it wanted to.

01:17:07 ◼   ► You're right.

01:17:08 ◼   ► That's true of anything.

01:17:09 ◼   ► If I download any game in the pre-app storage and even in the post-app storage, any application

01:17:14 ◼   ► you download that you think, "Oh, it's shareware," or whatever, from some random place and you

01:17:18 ◼   ► run it, it could destroy your disk.

01:17:19 ◼   ► But in practice, that is extremely rare

01:17:21 ◼   ► and has not happened.

01:17:22 ◼   ► And that's what backups are for.

01:17:24 ◼   ► And sandboxing.

01:17:25 ◼   ► And sandboxing.

01:17:26 ◼   ► Sandboxing is not helping in this case.

01:17:29 ◼   ► You know what this reminds me of-- and perhaps this

01:17:31 ◼   ► isn't the best comparison in the world.

01:17:33 ◼   ► And John, you won't understand this at all,

01:17:35 ◼   ► I don't believe, because this is a PC thing.

01:17:37 ◼   ► But Marco, I don't know if you remember Kali, K-A-L-I,

01:17:41 ◼   ► from way back in the day.

01:17:42 ◼   ► I never had it, though.

01:17:43 ◼   ► But I do remember it.

01:17:44 ◼   ► OK.

01:17:44 ◼   ► So what this was--

01:17:45 ◼   ► I just pulled out Comanche.

01:17:47 ◼   ► And now you're questioning my Windows

01:17:49 ◼   ► But go on.

01:17:50 ◼   ► Sorry.

01:17:51 ◼   ► So anyway, so Kali was this thing that it would take the internet and it would make

01:17:57 ◼   ► the internet be emulated as an IPX whatever whatever network.

01:18:02 ◼   ► I'm a little light on the details because my memory is crummy.

01:18:04 ◼   ► But the idea was all of these old DOS games or perhaps some early Windows games were designed

01:18:10 ◼   ► to be multiplayer based on IPX networks, which was some style of local network.

01:18:16 ◼   ► And what Kali would do was it would fake the internet as an IPX network.

01:18:22 ◼   ► So basically what this means is games that were not designed to be played on the internet,

01:18:26 ◼   ► and Descent 1 was a great example of this, you could then play over the internet.

01:18:30 ◼   ► And Kali not only would create this kind of tunnel, for lack of a better word, but on

01:18:34 ◼   ► top of that it would also let you view servers, it would let you join games.

01:18:42 ◼   ► So take, I don't remember if Quake 1 supported internet play or not, but I believe it did not.

01:18:47 ◼   ► It did, what are you talking about?

01:18:48 ◼   ► It did? Okay, well...

01:18:49 ◼   ► Quake World.

01:18:50 ◼   ► That was Quake 1.

01:18:51 ◼   ► Well, fair enough.

01:18:52 ◼   ► Well, maybe it was just early Quake, or maybe it wasn't Quake at all, maybe it was Doom 2.

01:18:56 ◼   ► I don't know, you're thinking of, yes.

01:18:57 ◼   ► I remember playing Doom 2 over fake IPX, because the Mac version of Doom 2 was compatible with

01:19:03 ◼   ► the PC version through, like it was a Byzantine, you know, they would have to use the IPX and

01:19:09 ◼   ► they would have to use Kali and then the Mac version would do whatever the hell crazy stuff

01:19:11 ◼   ► it's doing and we both outed them through modems and it was not a good experience, but

01:19:15 ◼   ► it worked.

01:19:16 ◼   ► Right.

01:19:17 ◼   ► So the point I'm driving at though is that here's a situation where Kali was a standalone

01:19:22 ◼   ► app that was, to the best of my knowledge, not at all supported by any of the many, many,

01:19:27 ◼   ► many, many games that it supported.

01:19:30 ◼   ► So Kali was a complete third-party hack, but it was really well done.

01:19:35 ◼   ► And you could find servers, you could find games, you could find rooms, if you will.

01:19:40 ◼   ► And it was really awesome.

01:19:42 ◼   ► And I remember losing so much of my time playing Descent One against people on the internet

01:19:47 ◼   ► over like crummy 56k X2 connections, or maybe it was even before that.

01:19:53 ◼   ► Whatever it was, it was terrible.

01:19:55 ◼   ► I had a Thrustmaster joystick that I'll never forget used.

01:19:58 ◼   ► What it did was you would plug your keyboard into the Thrustmaster, which by the way had

01:20:03 ◼   ► to be the big fat keyboard connection, not the small PS2 connection.

01:20:06 ◼   ► Then you would plug the Thrustmaster into your computer and you could run this app in

01:20:11 ◼   ► DOS that would let you configure the 950 buttons on the Thrustmaster to emulate keyboard keys.

01:20:16 ◼   ► So I thought I was hot crap because I could play Descent basically all on the joystick

01:20:21 ◼   ► without having to hit 350 keyboard keys.

01:20:24 ◼   ► Anyway, the point I'm driving at is it was really well done and really well orchestrated

01:20:29 ◼   ► for something that was not at all supported.

01:20:31 ◼   ► And so it's surprising to me that Minecraft isn't, especially in this day and age where

01:20:37 ◼   ► self-management is so much easier, it's surprising to me that the Minecraft world is such a wild,

01:20:44 ◼   ► wild west.

01:20:45 ◼   ► Minecraft would be better if it was a DOS game, because in the DOS days, like you said,

01:20:49 ◼   ► one guy would make some sort of mod loader thing, and it would kind of filter through

01:20:53 ◼   ► the community through like BBSs and floppy disk trading, right?

01:20:56 ◼   ► And there wouldn't be a million of them, and they'd have to be careful because it's not

01:21:00 ◼   ► like you can update people so the version you got would probably work and

01:21:03 ◼   ► there'd be like three possible versions in circulation and that would be the one

01:21:06 ◼   ► that everybody uses and they'd be like five or six mods on the BBS's and they

01:21:10 ◼   ► would all work and all be used you wouldn't have this problem like the

01:21:13 ◼   ► problem is that it's like the complete irresponsibility of children combined

01:21:17 ◼   ► with the complete lawlessness and huge you know reach of the internet so it's

01:21:23 ◼   ► just spam explosion crappy download sites kids YouTube videos no official

01:21:30 ◼   ► for anything, which just boggles my mind.

01:21:32 ◼   ► Like, the official page of a lot of these mods seems to be like a forum post

01:21:35 ◼   ► where the guy just continually updates the top post in a sticky thread

01:21:38 ◼   ► with his latest versions and stuff.

01:21:40 ◼   ► It's just... it is really amazing, and especially in the modern age

01:21:45 ◼   ► where any real game has a real supported built-in system for mods,

01:21:50 ◼   ► or in the worst case, a folder where you throw a bunch of things

01:21:52 ◼   ► and then it just loads them, and just opening up JAR files

01:21:55 ◼   ► and putting stuff in in complete versioning compatibility,

01:21:58 ◼   ► system for sorting that out, no conflict resolution, and it's really, really terrible. Shockingly

01:22:04 ◼   ► terrible.

01:22:05 ◼   ► So what you're saying is you really like it?

01:22:09 ◼   ► No, not at all.

01:22:10 ◼   ► I think what you're saying is this is your next app idea. You were saying last episode

01:22:14 ◼   ► that you didn't have any app ideas, and now this is clearly a major problem that no one's

01:22:19 ◼   ► adequately solving to your standards, although I would at most probably be solving your standards.

01:22:24 ◼   ► It's unsolvable to my standards because of the way things are set up, and there's a million

01:22:28 ◼   ► applications to try to help you with it. And each of those applications has exactly the

01:22:31 ◼   ► same problems that they're trying to solve. So you don't know which version of Minecraft

01:22:34 ◼   ► it works with and which mods it works with and where to get it from and what you're supposed

01:22:38 ◼   ► to do once you get it. And just a million repetitions of instructions of how to zip

01:22:43 ◼   ► and unzip files. It's like, "That's not the problem. Everyone knows how to do that."

01:22:48 ◼   ► I found a couple of people on Twitter did send me helpful links for like, "Here's a

01:22:53 ◼   ► thing that I used to manage." And most of them were terrible or had already tried, but

01:22:56 ◼   ► One of them actually did work for one mod that I was doing, and another one worked for

01:22:59 ◼   ► a different mod.

01:23:00 ◼   ► I have like 17 versions of Minecraft all in various states of disrepair, just so I have

01:23:04 ◼   ► a chance to put like, "Okay, well this mod I'll try to shove into that one, and this

01:23:07 ◼   ► one I'll use this thing, and this one I'll use this launcher application, and this one

01:23:11 ◼   ► I'll use my clean 1.6 with."

01:23:16 ◼   ► It is probably the worst gaming experience I've ever had, and that is including updating

01:23:20 ◼   ► any and bat files and making special boot floppy disks on my friend's PC.

01:23:26 ◼   ► I love that for the last 26 minutes,

01:23:29 ◼   ► Kacian and I have said almost nothing.

01:23:31 ◼   ► (Kacian laughs)

01:23:32 ◼   ► And this is like one saved, bottled up rant

01:23:36 ◼   ► that you've been waiting to let this out for months.

01:23:39 ◼   ► - I've calmed way down about this.

01:23:41 ◼   ► I was livid like in this first game,

01:23:43 ◼   ► 'cause it's been weeks since this first happened

01:23:46 ◼   ► and we just saved it and I've mellowed out significantly.

01:23:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:23:50 ◼   ► - I would've loved to be there that night.

01:23:52 ◼   ► - Especially if you'd gotten me at the point

01:23:53 ◼   ► where I had yet to be successful,

01:23:55 ◼   ► Because I spent several nights with nothing to show for it.

01:23:57 ◼   ► It was just like a series of broken Minecraft jars.

01:24:00 ◼   ► You know, that's all I had.

01:24:01 ◼   ► And you know, that, anyone who's like technical,

01:24:03 ◼   ► you're like, you're just so pissed, like, you know,

01:24:06 ◼   ► because the problem is not like,

01:24:07 ◼   ► look, I know how to zip files, okay?

01:24:08 ◼   ► You can't give me a damn download link.

01:24:10 ◼   ► You can't tell me what I need.

01:24:12 ◼   ► How can I tell whether it's working?

01:24:13 ◼   ► What do I need to do for this?

01:24:14 ◼   ► What version does it work with?

01:24:16 ◼   ► You know, all that stuff.

01:24:18 ◼   ► That's after you fight through the download pages

01:24:19 ◼   ► to get downloads that aren't like exe files.

01:24:24 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:24:25 ◼   ► This is the Mellow version.

01:24:26 ◼   ► I would love to see the full boar version.

01:24:30 ◼   ► Oh goodness.

01:24:31 ◼   ► And then you're trying to remain calm for like Marco when you get older.

01:24:36 ◼   ► You're trying to remain calm for your kid, right?

01:24:38 ◼   ► You don't want him to see the product.

01:24:39 ◼   ► It's not his fault that you can't install this mod, right?

01:24:41 ◼   ► But he's also saying, "You should install the mod yet."

01:24:43 ◼   ► When you get the mod installed, it's just the worst in the entire world.

01:24:48 ◼   ► Alright.

01:24:49 ◼   ► I think we should probably wrap it up.

01:24:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I think we're done.

01:24:53 ◼   ► Well, Jon, would you like to add anything else?

01:24:57 ◼   ► I'm sitting here waiting for--I'm here for you, Jon.

01:25:01 ◼   ► If there's anything else you'd like to add, is there anything else you'd like to complain

01:25:03 ◼   ► about?

01:25:04 ◼   ► Not today.

01:25:05 ◼   ► I've got another podcast in five minutes.

01:25:06 ◼   ► You've got to save it up.

01:25:07 ◼   ► Fair enough.

01:25:08 ◼   ► All right, thanks a lot to our two sponsors this week, 23andMe and Squarespace, and we'll

01:25:13 ◼   ► see you next week.

01:25:14 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:25:21 ◼   ► Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:25:26 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:25:32 ◼   ► Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:25:37 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:25:42 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:25:52 ◼   ► So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:25:56 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Arman S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse

01:26:04 ◼   ► It's accidental (It's accidental)

01:26:07 ◼   ► They didn't mean to accidental, accidental, tech podcast so long.

01:26:17 ◼   ► Oh, no after show because we have no time for it today.

01:26:20 ◼   ► Oh, come on.

01:26:21 ◼   ► That's boring.

01:26:22 ◼   ► That is boring.

01:26:23 ◼   ► I have five minutes.

01:26:24 ◼   ► You have five minutes.

01:26:25 ◼   ► And now you've already had two things you have to beep.

01:26:26 ◼   ► Hey, really quickly, how's your review?

01:26:30 ◼   ► That good?

01:26:32 ◼   ► That's a great sound bite right there.

01:26:33 ◼   ► It's like, I want it to be done, but there's more.

01:26:43 ◼   ► Today was the first build of Mavericks that Apple even released that had one of the major

01:26:47 ◼   ► applications that they advertised in the keynote.

01:26:48 ◼   ► Oh wow.

01:26:49 ◼   ► So that's the pace we're at here.

01:26:52 ◼   ► And they didn't even get the release number right in the release notes.

01:26:54 ◼   ► They said, "Keep in mind that in Mavericks developer preview 4, blah blah blah won't

01:26:58 ◼   ► work."

01:26:59 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh that's great, this is developer 5 preview notes.

01:27:01 ◼   ► I guess you just copied and pasted that from 4.

01:27:03 ◼   ► copying and pasting the known issues from the previous notes, you're not making progress.

01:27:06 ◼   ► So I don't know when this thing will be released, but it makes review writing slow going.

01:27:11 ◼   ► Do you think, given the developer preview state, do you think its release is imminent?

01:27:16 ◼   ► No. No, I do not. In any sense, they said fall. Fall starts on September 22. They reiterated fall

01:27:25 ◼   ► in the earnings call. So I listened to that earnings call, waiting to hear what they said.

01:27:30 ◼   ► they said fall again.

01:27:32 ◼   ► Because I'm guessing all of the pending computer updates

01:27:35 ◼   ► are waiting for this.

01:27:37 ◼   ► I'm guessing the Mac Pro and the new Retina MacBook Pros

01:27:41 ◼   ► and maybe other MacBook Pros, maybe even a Mac Mini,

01:27:45 ◼   ► probably eventually an iMac.

01:27:46 ◼   ► I bet these are all being held up by Mavericks.

01:27:49 ◼   ► Yeah, could be held up by the Haswell things or screens.

01:27:54 ◼   ► Who knows what the limiting factor is?

01:27:56 ◼   ► But progress is slow.

01:27:58 ◼   ► I just got to was gonna write the dictation section today. Okay. Now. Let me try this dictation thing didn't work

01:28:03 ◼   ► At all no did not put my words that I said into the document

01:28:08 ◼   ► Did it put other words into the document?

01:28:11 ◼   ► Nothing at all the UI work. You see a little microphone see the levels going up and down

01:28:15 ◼   ► Yeah, so

01:28:19 ◼   ► All right, it makes it slow to write there like I want to make progress and yet

01:28:24 ◼   ► How can I write anything when things are broken?

01:28:26 ◼   ► Well, why don't we hang up on you because friend of the show Jason Snell is actually

01:28:34 ◼   ► in the chat room being extremely patient, but let's hang up on John and then Marco,

01:28:39 ◼   ► I don't know if you have anything to add, but I don't mind hanging on for a few if you'd

01:28:42 ◼   ► like. We can just talk about John while he's gone.

01:28:46 ◼   ► You can pick a title.

01:28:47 ◼   ► Oh yeah, we do have to do titles.

01:28:49 ◼   ► All right, that's how we win.

01:28:50 ◼   ► That is how we win.

01:28:51 ◼   ► That's how you win?

01:28:52 ◼   ► We just wait him out so he has to give up and yield to us.

01:28:55 ◼   ► otherwise I dictate the titles.

01:28:57 ◼   ► You pick the titles anyway.

01:28:58 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:28:59 ◼   ► - Don't ruin it for everyone.

01:29:01 ◼   ► - All right, now Jason is calling me.

01:29:02 ◼   ► All right, there you go.

01:29:03 ◼   ► That's not subtle.

01:29:04 ◼   ► All right.

01:29:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:29:06 ◼   ► - Bye, John.

01:29:06 ◼   ► - Bye, guys.

01:29:08 ◼   ► - All right, what do we--

01:29:08 ◼   ► - By the way, I love,

01:29:10 ◼   ► so for the secret live listeners that are under NDA,

01:29:14 ◼   ► Casey sent me the screenshot of fast text under iOS 7.

01:29:17 ◼   ► Now, I'm not gonna share it with them

01:29:18 ◼   ► because that would be a violation of trust, however.

01:29:21 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:29:22 ◼   ► Because I don't wanna give away secrets

01:29:25 ◼   ► of the much-anticipated fast iOS 7 update.

01:29:29 ◼   ► But I love, this is so you, unintentionally,

01:29:33 ◼   ► that you are running it in the 3.5 inch iPhone simulator.

01:29:37 ◼   ► - Oh, go yourself.

01:29:38 ◼   ► Is it, you know, I almost pasted it in the chat,

01:29:41 ◼   ► but I didn't know if it was like breaking NDA

01:29:43 ◼   ► by even showing that.

01:29:44 ◼   ► And so I-- - I don't think it.

01:29:46 ◼   ► I mean, technically it probably is, but nobody cares.

01:29:49 ◼   ► - All right, here's what we're gonna do.

01:29:50 ◼   ► So I'm gonna put it in the chat,

01:29:52 ◼   ► and chat room, you're not gonna share it anywhere else,

01:29:54 ◼   ► right?

01:29:55 ◼   ► agree chat room? Right? This is gonna go right onto kcrumors.com. Yeah, right onto kcrumors.com.

01:30:01 ◼   ► All right, nobody on the chat room is agreeing with me, so maybe I won't do anything. Well,

01:30:05 ◼   ► they're on like a five-second delay. Whatever, whatever. Everyone agrees, that's it. There we go.

01:30:09 ◼   ► That's like four people, that's enough. All right, that's a quorum. All right, everyone lie to me

01:30:15 ◼   ► and tell me how beautiful it is. Anyway, so yeah, that's what I've been saying is that it actually

01:30:21 ◼   ► looks pretty good. It does, yeah. Because it's all raw UI kit, so I think I'm thinking maybe I'll

01:30:26 ◼   ► maybe I'll throw a tint color on it like a badass and call it a day. You know, I was, so I'm doing

01:30:34 ◼   ► this stage of my app development now where like I'm building like the the basics of the UI. I'm

01:30:39 ◼   ► way behind development, like I've been doing like the data layer, the sync layer, now I'm doing like

01:30:44 ◼   ► the basics of the UI, very very beginnings. And like I wrote my first view controller yesterday

01:30:49 ◼   ► for this project. That's how far along I am. So, but like looking at all this iOS 7 stuff,

01:30:57 ◼   ► I'm like, you know, I don't really want to do anything different here because this all

01:31:01 ◼   ► looks really good. Like I just want it to look like this.

01:31:05 ◼   ► >> Right. And so on the one side, I'm like, man, I feel like any time you use raw UI kit,

01:31:10 ◼   ► you're copping out. But on the other side, I mean, not to toot my own horn because I really

01:31:16 ◼   ► really didn't have much to do with this,

01:31:18 ◼   ► but I don't think it looks bad.

01:31:19 ◼   ► Like it really does look pretty good.

01:31:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, really.

01:31:22 ◼   ► And you know, I'm sure in a year or two,

01:31:26 ◼   ► anything that looks like this will probably have

01:31:28 ◼   ► to have some more design work put into it.

01:31:30 ◼   ► But I think I'd rather run this for a year.

01:31:32 ◼   ► - Exactly, exactly.

01:31:33 ◼   ► - And really, you know, plus,

01:31:35 ◼   ► customizing stuff gets easier with every release.

01:31:37 ◼   ► 'Cause first we had the UI appearance stuff,

01:31:40 ◼   ► and then I think it came in five,

01:31:42 ◼   ► and then it got better in six,

01:31:43 ◼   ► and it's even better by a little bit in seven,

01:31:45 ◼   ► and NASA has all this cool new UI kit stuff.

01:31:48 ◼   ► And like customizing the appearance is getting easier

01:31:50 ◼   ► with every OS release.

01:31:51 ◼   ► And like this, I think we can fly with this

01:31:54 ◼   ► for like easily for a year and be awesome.

01:31:57 ◼   ► - 'Cause I agree.

01:31:58 ◼   ► - You know, not every app is gonna be updated immediately.

01:32:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, I completely agree.

01:32:03 ◼   ► - I would say we're in for a pretty uncomfortably ugly

01:32:06 ◼   ► and awkward phase similar to like browsing the web

01:32:09 ◼   ► on a retina MacBook Pro.

01:32:10 ◼   ► You know, like you see all the--

01:32:13 ◼   ► - I mean, I don't know what that's like.

01:32:15 ◼   ► I don't know what that's like, Marco, because I'm using a pedestrian high-res anti-glare

01:32:19 ◼   ► MacBook Pro, you big jerk.

01:32:20 ◼   ► Yeah, and a 3.5-inch iPhone.

01:32:22 ◼   ► Oh, you're such an animal.

01:32:25 ◼   ► So AFWALR...

01:32:26 ◼   ► Your phone is so heavy and thick.

01:32:27 ◼   ► Oh, f*** off.

01:32:29 ◼   ► So AFWALR in the chat said, "Add in a bunch of UI kit dynamics," and no, I don't know,

01:32:34 ◼   ► if you've used fast text, when you send a text, a little green box pops up that says,

01:32:39 ◼   ► "Hey, you've gone ahead and sent it successfully."

01:32:41 ◼   ► Well, just for grins and giggles on the way back from WWDC, I definitely changed that

01:32:45 ◼   ► from going from like one by one pixel

01:32:49 ◼   ► in the center of the screen to something

01:32:51 ◼   ► to the order of 100 by 100.

01:32:53 ◼   ► So it zooms in, if you will.

01:32:55 ◼   ► But what I did on the way home was from W2DC

01:32:58 ◼   ► is I changed it to be full size, drop in-- what did I do?

01:33:03 ◼   ► It drops in from the top and bounces on the bottom

01:33:06 ◼   ► using UIKit Dynamics Gravity, and then eventually falls

01:33:10 ◼   ► off the bottom.

01:33:10 ◼   ► And it was really fun to do, and it looks like crap,

01:33:13 ◼   ► and it takes way too long.

01:33:15 ◼   ► But it was a lot of fun to write that.

01:33:17 ◼   ► Oh, that's-- we're gonna be in for a rough time, I think, with apps playing a little bit too much with that kind of stuff.

01:33:23 ◼   ► Oh, I had no reason to do it, but I was like, "Ooh, this sounds fun! Let me try some of that!"

01:33:27 ◼   ► And it was terrible. But it was fun.

01:33:29 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:33:31 ◼   ► Aye yai yai.

01:33:33 ◼   ► Uh, what else we gotta talk about? Anything--

01:33:35 ◼   ► I feel like we should be totally making fun of Jon or saying terrible things about Jon since he's not here to defend himself, but...

01:33:41 ◼   ► But he's a nice guy, we can't really say anything about him.

01:33:43 ◼   ► I know it's terrible. Did we so what are we concluding with titles? Are we going with thrustmaster joystick?

01:33:48 ◼   ► It's really good a thrustmaster. Yeah, I mean was that not the most ridiculous name for a company in the world

01:33:56 ◼   ► That's why thrustmaster joystick has to be our title

01:33:59 ◼   ► I mean, come on

01:34:03 ◼   ► man, so on a completely unrelated note, I know that I have made it in the world and

01:34:09 ◼   ► This link I'm about to post in the chat confirms it. I now have a parody account nice

01:34:15 ◼   ► My work here is done. This is my last episode of ATP. I've accomplished all that there is to accomplish

01:34:21 ◼   ► I'm done, and I would drop my road podcaster if it wasn't so damn expensive and mounted on a human

01:34:28 ◼   ► Yeah, and stuck to something stuck to something

01:34:31 ◼   ► Oh man.