ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► And that's my fault again. Well, it's a combination of John's. Actually, no, that one's more...

00:00:03 ◼   ► No, it's not. No, it's your fault again.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Yes.

00:00:09 ◼   ► Probably the most egregious error I made in the last episode was reporting that the Global

00:00:15 ◼   ► SAN iSCSI initiator was free. It used to be free, but apparently a couple of years ago it stopped

00:00:21 ◼   ► being free. Now it's 90 bucks. And so when looking at iSCSI initiators, you have Global SAN at 90

00:00:29 ◼   ► and Ado at 195, so 200 basically.

00:00:34 ◼   ► I still continue to get positive recommendations for the Ado one

00:00:38 ◼   ► and mixed to negative recommendations

00:00:40 ◼   ► for the GlobalSan one.

00:00:42 ◼   ► A few people sent in a few kernel panic stories

00:00:44 ◼   ► about GlobalSan.

00:00:45 ◼   ► So given that the price difference is now

00:00:48 ◼   ► much smaller than it was before, if I was going iSCSI,

00:00:53 ◼   ► I would go with the Ado one, but I still haven't.

00:00:56 ◼   ► One also interesting iSCSI thing that a few people have pointed

00:01:00 ◼   ► out to me, which I didn't realize,

00:01:01 ◼   ► but it makes perfect sense.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Because iSCSI is basically just like running the direct drive

00:01:07 ◼   ► access protocol over the wire, you can actually--

00:01:12 ◼   ► let's say Mac OS, whatever, Mavericks, or whatever

00:01:16 ◼   ► comes after Mavericks comes out, and your favorite iSCSI

00:01:22 ◼   ► initiator stops working and just won't work again.

00:01:26 ◼   ► you can take the drive out of the NAS

00:01:30 ◼   ► and stick it either directly into the computer

00:01:32 ◼   ► or into one of those drive dock things.

00:01:33 ◼   ► And because iSCSI is just accessing the drive directly,

00:01:38 ◼   ► if you plug it in directly to your computer,

00:01:40 ◼   ► it works directly because it's formatted--

00:01:43 ◼   ► however you formatted it, because it's just

00:01:44 ◼   ► like a block level protocol.

00:01:46 ◼   ► So I think that's pretty cool.

00:01:49 ◼   ► So that's an interesting kind of insurance policy,

00:01:52 ◼   ► again, because we were discussing last episode

00:01:54 ◼   ► how I was worried, and John, you were worried about, first

00:01:57 ◼   ► of all, even needing to run a third party kernel

00:01:59 ◼   ► thing to have this protocol enabled.

00:02:01 ◼   ► But also, I was worried about what

00:02:03 ◼   ► happens when a new version of the OS comes out.

00:02:06 ◼   ► And what if your iSCSI initiator breaks?

00:02:09 ◼   ► How long does it take them to fix it?

00:02:11 ◼   ► Do they ever fix it?

00:02:12 ◼   ► Does this cause problems?

00:02:14 ◼   ► So it's nice to have the option that we could always just--

00:02:17 ◼   ► because I have one of those DriveDoc things,

00:02:19 ◼   ► I'm sure every nerd does by now.

00:02:21 ◼   ► And if not, you can get one from Amazon for like $30

00:02:24 ◼   ► or something.

00:02:26 ◼   ► But it's nice to have that kind of fallback option.

00:02:29 ◼   ► And also, one more little bit of follow-up on the NAS topic.

00:02:35 ◼   ► One person recommended today-- I wasn't familiar with this,

00:02:37 ◼   ► because I haven't been paying a lot of attention

00:02:40 ◼   ► to PC hardware in probably about five years.

00:02:44 ◼   ► But there's an HP micro server.

00:02:46 ◼   ► And of course, HP makes really, really awesome

00:02:51 ◼   ► servers and networking products and their website is completely abysmal and makes all of them impossible to find and

00:02:57 ◼   ► impossible to find information about but if you just search Amazon for HP micro server

00:03:01 ◼   ► you can see there's a few of these things and it's basically it looks like a four bay NAS and

00:03:08 ◼   ► It's it's like a little cube

00:03:11 ◼   ► and

00:03:12 ◼   ► It's like 300 bucks

00:03:14 ◼   ► With some kind of low power CPU a little bit of RAM and four hard drive bays and even an optical bay

00:03:20 ◼   ► So if you're looking into the build your own area of NASes,

00:03:25 ◼   ► the HP Micro Server might be worth looking at.

00:03:27 ◼   ► That's all I really know about it,

00:03:28 ◼   ► but it looked really interesting,

00:03:29 ◼   ► and I would certainly want to play with that,

00:03:31 ◼   ► if I had a good reason to.

00:03:33 ◼   ► And that's it. What do you guys have?

00:03:35 ◼   ► On the iSCSI thing, with pulling the drives out of your NAS

00:03:39 ◼   ► and connecting them directly with an enclosure,

00:03:41 ◼   ► or in the old Mac Pro days, putting them inside your Mac Pro,

00:03:44 ◼   ► you've got to make sure you don't use any RAID setup,

00:03:46 ◼   ► obviously, on your NAS, if you do that.

00:03:48 ◼   ► If you just have a bunch of drives in there

00:03:49 ◼   ► and you want to be able to flexibly take out drives

00:03:52 ◼   ► and stick in new ones of different sizes

00:03:54 ◼   ► and have it resilver and everything,

00:03:57 ◼   ► if you're doing that, you lose the advantage

00:03:59 ◼   ► of being able to pull that drive out and attach it,

00:04:02 ◼   ► not through the nest, even if you're using iSCSI.

00:04:05 ◼   ► So that's one thing to be aware of.

00:04:07 ◼   ► I still don't have enough of a reason

00:04:09 ◼   ► to try iSCSI and spend that $200 and get the thing and try it.

00:04:13 ◼   ► But it's nice to know that it's an option.

00:04:15 ◼   ► like in case the time machine thing breaks with 10.9.

00:04:18 ◼   ► Because one of the things is 10.9 apparently changes--

00:04:23 ◼   ► it either removes Apple Talk or AFP,

00:04:26 ◼   ► or it disables it by default. One of those people are saying--

00:04:30 ◼   ► Doesn't remove it.

00:04:31 ◼   ► OK, well anyway, it runs network access over SMB2,

00:04:35 ◼   ► which I should know more about.

00:04:36 ◼   ► So I'll do some research on that.

00:04:38 ◼   ► But it ends up people are speculating

00:04:40 ◼   ► that might break or change the time machine thing.

00:04:43 ◼   ► So we'll see.

00:04:43 ◼   ► People keep asking me that as well,

00:04:44 ◼   ► I actually don't know the answer, so I can't break an NDA and tell you, but my guess is

00:04:49 ◼   ► that Time Machine is still AFP only, because they did a bunch of weird enhancements to

00:04:55 ◼   ► network Time Machine backups in the years past.

00:04:57 ◼   ► In fact, we got some email from somebody, I think, who was saying that when Apple made

00:05:02 ◼   ► those upgrades, Time Machine over the network used to be terrible, and they did some sort

00:05:06 ◼   ► of protocol upgrade to make it not terrible.

00:05:09 ◼   ► If you happen to have a third-party NAS device that supported the old terrible way, and that

00:05:13 ◼   ► company didn't upgrade it to support the new way, then you were sad because even though

00:05:16 ◼   ► your device technically supported Time Machine, it used the old terrible way.

00:05:20 ◼   ► And I think both the old terrible way and the new way are both built on top of AFP.

00:05:23 ◼   ► So my guess is Time Machine over the network, two-way time capsule, continues to use AFP

00:05:29 ◼   ► even in Mavericks, and I say that having not tested it at all.

00:05:33 ◼   ► Good to know.

00:05:34 ◼   ► And I don't even know how I'll be able to test that.

00:05:36 ◼   ► I think actually ours is going to do another article about SMB2 and AFP, and that's going

00:05:42 ◼   ► to be my excuse for not delving into it, because I just don't have that stuff available. Like,

00:05:45 ◼   ► I don't have a time capsule of any stripe available. Or an ass for that matter, so there's

00:05:49 ◼   ► not much I can do there.

00:05:50 ◼   ► I also thought it was interesting. So last episode we talked very briefly about the new

00:05:55 ◼   ► Apple 802.11ac, Airport Extreme, and time capsules. And you mentioned, of course, that

00:06:01 ◼   ► it has a fan, which was news to me. And I knew that there was an empty drive bay inside

00:06:06 ◼   ► of it, but I didn't actually look at the teardown. It's just something that I believe, actually,

00:06:09 ◼   ► John, you probably told me at WBC at some point

00:06:12 ◼   ► while we were walking somewhere.

00:06:14 ◼   ► So I looked at the iFixit tear down of the new Airport Extreme

00:06:17 ◼   ► base station.

00:06:18 ◼   ► And it is pretty comical because it is just

00:06:22 ◼   ► like a giant 3 and 1/2 inch hard drive bay

00:06:25 ◼   ► in the middle of this thing that does not need one.

00:06:29 ◼   ► Otherwise, if it isn't a time capsule--

00:06:30 ◼   ► Wait, it's 3.5 inch drive bay?

00:06:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Are you sure?

00:06:34 ◼   ► Positive.

00:06:36 ◼   ► Put the iFixit URL in the chat.

00:06:38 ◼   ► I got to find it.

00:06:39 ◼   ► The thing has to be gigantic.

00:06:40 ◼   ► Is it going to be like a--

00:06:41 ◼   ► Well, so what they do is they mount it diagonally.

00:06:43 ◼   ► So basically, it's standing up on end,

00:06:45 ◼   ► but it's oriented diagonally in the case.

00:06:48 ◼   ► So it's as if you drew a tall rectangle around a 45 degree

00:06:55 ◼   ► diagonal hard drive.

00:06:56 ◼   ► That is the shape of this thing.

00:06:59 ◼   ► It's really weird.

00:07:00 ◼   ► And so I think it's interesting, first of all,

00:07:05 ◼   ► that they're basically making the same unit,

00:07:08 ◼   ► whether it's a time capsule or not, and then just not having a hard drive or a

00:07:12 ◼   ► or even like the little connector cable that goes into it. Here, Casey, basically, you can see. And

00:07:18 ◼   ► what's also interesting is how much it looks like the new Mac Pro construction inside. And then the third interesting thing,

00:07:24 ◼   ► which kind of was a disappointment to me,

00:07:26 ◼   ► I thought that the point of that tall shape was to make larger antennas inside, to have like, you know,

00:07:33 ◼   ► tall antennas that are spaced out a bit for better reception, better range, different

00:07:39 ◼   ► frequencies, whatever the case may be.

00:07:41 ◼   ► And from what I could tell from this teardown, it looks like all of the antennas are still

00:07:47 ◼   ► in the top plate.

00:07:49 ◼   ► So there appears to be no reason for it to be tall other than to fit the hard drive and

00:07:56 ◼   ► have a smaller footprint and maybe have more room for the cooling and everything like that.

00:08:01 ◼   ► But there appears to be no good radio or reception reason

00:08:05 ◼   ► for it to be tall, with the exception that maybe that it

00:08:07 ◼   ► gets it a little bit off of whatever surface

00:08:09 ◼   ► you have the thing on.

00:08:11 ◼   ► It gets the antennas a little bit higher than that surface

00:08:14 ◼   ► to get a little bit less interference.

00:08:16 ◼   ► But that can't matter that much.

00:08:18 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:08:18 ◼   ► So I was a little disappointed about that.

00:08:21 ◼   ► Anyway, this might be the most boring follow-up

00:08:23 ◼   ► we've ever done.

00:08:25 ◼   ► And that's saying something.

00:08:26 ◼   ► I think this router is exciting because it's terrible.

00:08:30 ◼   ► And it's exciting to have 10-apple Apple hardware.

00:08:33 ◼   ► I don't want to buy this thing.

00:08:34 ◼   ► I'm going to end up buying one of those like Asus things

00:08:36 ◼   ► with two dorky-looking antennas.

00:08:39 ◼   ► I want all the features this thing provides.

00:08:41 ◼   ► I want to be able to just plug in a printer

00:08:43 ◼   ► and have the USB printer sharing thing,

00:08:45 ◼   ► because I still have my cheap printers.

00:08:48 ◼   ► I like the management software that Apple provides.

00:08:51 ◼   ► Well, the new version is kind of crappy.

00:08:53 ◼   ► Everything is fine, except the fact that it's gigantic

00:08:57 ◼   ► and has a fan and has a place for a hard drive

00:09:00 ◼   ► that I'm not going to use.

00:09:01 ◼   ► And they even took away one network port

00:09:03 ◼   ► versus the one I have now.

00:09:04 ◼   ► So I don't think I could buy this thing.

00:09:06 ◼   ► You have one with four?

00:09:08 ◼   ► Yeah, now the one I have has like the one--

00:09:10 ◼   ► The WAN port, right.

00:09:12 ◼   ► And then I think it has four.

00:09:13 ◼   ► I could go run over and check now.

00:09:15 ◼   ► Because as long as they've been the previous shape of this,

00:09:18 ◼   ► like the white Mac Mini shape rectangle,

00:09:20 ◼   ► they've always had three as far as I know.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Mine does.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:24 ◼   ► All right, let me go check because I

00:09:26 ◼   ► need to give Marco something to do in editing.

00:09:27 ◼   ► Right back.

00:09:28 ◼   ► [Music]

00:09:36 ◼   ► I counted the ports.

00:09:37 ◼   ► Yeah, what do you got?

00:09:38 ◼   ► That's the same as the new one.

00:09:40 ◼   ► I was fooled by like the, I guess the USB cable sticking out of the back or whatever.

00:09:44 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:09:45 ◼   ► It's annoying because like that's kind of a weird number to have.

00:09:48 ◼   ► Like if you have, if you don't have any wireless devices or any wired devices,

00:09:53 ◼   ► then you're probably not going to use any ports.

00:09:54 ◼   ► And if you have wired devices, you probably need more than that.

00:09:57 ◼   ► I have a bunch of switches connected to the thing so it's quite a rat's nest as it extends out from the...

00:10:03 ◼   ► I'm a little disappointed that you don't have all your cables like zip-tied, color-coded, etc.

00:10:08 ◼   ► I would if I could, but it's just not possible.

00:10:11 ◼   ► My dad and I rewired our... my home theater, which I say that with enormous air quotes...

00:10:17 ◼   ► We rewired the home theater in order to change from component or... component, not composite.

00:10:23 ◼   ► I probably got that wrong. Whatever, it doesn't matter.

00:10:25 ◼   ► You got it right.

00:10:26 ◼   ► Okay, we changed from those to HDMI cables and even I decided to color code the HDMI

00:10:33 ◼   ► cables.

00:10:34 ◼   ► So the ones going from the source into the wall, the colors match the ones coming out

00:10:38 ◼   ► of the wall into the TV because I'm that nerdy.

00:10:42 ◼   ► That is impressive.

00:10:43 ◼   ► I know, I thought you'd like that.

00:10:44 ◼   ► All right, so what are we talking about tonight?

00:10:46 ◼   ► Well, it might be worth talking about the developer portal being down for so long because

00:10:51 ◼   ► at the time we record this it still is, but because this is coming out to most of the

00:10:55 ◼   ► public in about a week. I don't know how useful that discussion would be, assuming

00:11:00 ◼   ► it's probably going to be up in a week, I hope. A lot of the iOS development world

00:11:06 ◼   ► is probably grinding to a halt right now during a major work period of getting ready for iOS

00:11:11 ◼   ► 7, so it's kind of a big deal.

00:11:13 ◼   ► But they're still selling software. There are degrees of magnitude. For example, the

00:11:16 ◼   ► iTunes store where nobody can buy anything that iTunes sells going down would be more

00:11:21 ◼   ► of a fire drill than this, which is why I think Apple would be more willing to say,

00:11:25 ◼   ► It's not like the iTunes store went down guys. I know developers are going to be annoyed

00:11:29 ◼   ► But let's take the extra six hours or whatever to make sure that we have ourself together

00:11:34 ◼   ► Because as terrible as it is for the developer portal to be down

00:11:37 ◼   ► It's not the type of thing where there's a big giant clock on the wall with a dollar sign in front of it and numbers taking

00:11:42 ◼   ► Up every second the thing is down which you know and two jobs ago. I was at a company like that

00:11:46 ◼   ► It's like look every every minute our server is down

00:11:48 ◼   ► We lose this amount of money, and it's a big number so it makes a difference whereas yet now

00:11:52 ◼   ► It's a bummer that people can't put stuff up in the store and stuff like that

00:11:55 ◼   ► But customers can still buy apps so the engine of revenue running into Apple is still running

00:12:00 ◼   ► And I think they can afford downtime here

00:12:02 ◼   ► And just like apologize profusely and be nice and extend people's you know undo all that stuff

00:12:07 ◼   ► Versus like what we what we would see from Apple what kind of motion and communication?

00:12:12 ◼   ► We would see from Apple if the iTunes store itself was down that would be that would be like New York Times headline calamitous, right?

00:12:18 ◼   ► I think this this might

00:12:21 ◼   ► This might be a result and you know you kind of get the feeling from Apple

00:12:24 ◼   ► that you see an event like WWDC and you think, wow,

00:12:28 ◼   ► they really love developers and this was really

00:12:31 ◼   ► a high priority for them.

00:12:32 ◼   ► But then you see what they do for the rest

00:12:35 ◼   ► of the year for developers.

00:12:36 ◼   ► And it's kind of a mixed bag.

00:12:38 ◼   ► Sometimes it looks like they really care

00:12:40 ◼   ► and are putting a lot of resources into it.

00:12:41 ◼   ► And sometimes it looks like they couldn't possibly care less.

00:12:45 ◼   ► And we get a lot of everything in between.

00:12:48 ◼   ► The entire developer program, the VP

00:12:51 ◼   ► who's responsible for that is Phil Schiller.

00:12:54 ◼   ► And Phil Schiller does a lot.

00:12:57 ◼   ► And it's kind of hard for people like us on the outside

00:13:01 ◼   ► to really get that great of an idea of what exactly Phil

00:13:04 ◼   ► Schiller does and how much he does.

00:13:06 ◼   ► But from what we can tell, it seems

00:13:08 ◼   ► like he does quite a bit.

00:13:11 ◼   ► And so things like whether developers

00:13:15 ◼   ► can do x, y, or z or are getting the kind of attention

00:13:18 ◼   ► they want, he might not have time

00:13:22 ◼   ► to care about that throughout the entire rest of the year

00:13:24 ◼   ► that's not WWDC week.

00:13:26 ◼   ► I don't think it's his skill set either.

00:13:28 ◼   ► Like, he's not a tech guy.

00:13:30 ◼   ► Not that he has to be there and they're fixing the servers,

00:13:32 ◼   ► but you would expect that an organization responsible

00:13:36 ◼   ► for some really important piece of server-side software that's

00:13:39 ◼   ► important to the business would have come

00:13:41 ◼   ► from the technical side, and it wouldn't be a marketing guy.

00:13:45 ◼   ► Well, but what he does-- marketing, I think,

00:13:48 ◼   ► is in giant quotes there, because he

00:13:49 ◼   ► does so many other things.

00:13:52 ◼   ► And he's involved with a lot of different things in the company, it seems.

00:13:55 ◼   ► Yeah, product design, marketing, like much more so than a regular marketing.

00:13:58 ◼   ► But he's not a Craig Federighi or Bertrand Soleil or anything like that.

00:14:01 ◼   ► He didn't come up with that area.

00:14:05 ◼   ► Or even like, I mean, Eddie Key was technically charged with the iTunes store.

00:14:09 ◼   ► So maybe, I don't know, did Eddie come from an engineering background?

00:14:12 ◼   ► But I feel like that team knows that they're responsible for online services, whereas developer

00:14:17 ◼   ► Relations probably within Apple is seen as a wing of the company that relates to people,

00:14:24 ◼   ► versus we run web services. But Developer Relations does run web services, and they're

00:14:28 ◼   ► important web services. So it's kind of a schizophrenic thing where it's like, "Oh,

00:14:31 ◼   ► we're relating to people. We need to make the people happy." It's like a customer relationship

00:14:35 ◼   ► management type role. But there's this other part of it that's web services, and it's really

00:14:39 ◼   ► important. So you have to have part of the team that's in that area, versus people who are on

00:14:43 ◼   ► iTunes is like, "Look, we're running a gigantic web store, and there may be some sort of relating

00:14:47 ◼   ► to customers involved in that, but really we're an online services thing. So,

00:14:50 ◼   ► Eddy Cue is like, I don't know if he's in charge of that whole thing. We should have the org chart

00:14:55 ◼   ► up. But I think he's the iTunes head honcho in charge of all that, isn't he?

00:14:59 ◼   ► That's what I thought.

00:15:00 ◼   ► I think it's worth considering whether—I hate to use the phrasing "It's time for Apple to do

00:15:08 ◼   ► a lot of that." That's like a crappy headline thing. But do you think Apple needs somebody

00:15:13 ◼   ► at that SVP level representing the developers and the app store almost exclusively or primarily.

00:15:22 ◼   ► That's what they do.

00:15:23 ◼   ► Because Phil Schiller I think probably has too much on his plate to be that guy.

00:15:28 ◼   ► Do you think...

00:15:31 ◼   ► I guess you could argue they're doing pretty well without...

00:15:35 ◼   ► It's hard to argue that Apple should really change anything about what they do because

00:15:37 ◼   ► they're doing pretty well with the way they have things set up now.

00:15:41 ◼   ► But you look at things like the App Store.

00:15:45 ◼   ► And the App Store has always looked

00:15:47 ◼   ► like it has way fewer people working for it

00:15:50 ◼   ► than it really does.

00:15:52 ◼   ► And there are certain things about it

00:15:54 ◼   ► that have lasted way longer than they should or have never

00:15:57 ◼   ► changed.

00:15:58 ◼   ► For instance, the category list, the app category list,

00:16:02 ◼   ► is really weird.

00:16:04 ◼   ► And most of those categories were there

00:16:07 ◼   ► when the App Store launched.

00:16:09 ◼   ► Most of the App Store's mechanics, most of the layout,

00:16:11 ◼   ► most of the things we think of, we know as the App Store today,

00:16:16 ◼   ► almost all of that was there on day one-- what

00:16:19 ◼   ► was five or six years ago?

00:16:21 ◼   ► However many years ago, 2008 was.

00:16:23 ◼   ► And so it seems like-- and obviously,

00:16:28 ◼   ► you look at pages.

00:16:31 ◼   ► And look at what Google has done to the Play Store

00:16:35 ◼   ► in the same amount of time, or less time actually, I think.

00:16:39 ◼   ► And you can see, obviously, they have a whole bunch of issues

00:16:42 ◼   ► themselves, and it's certainly not perfect over there

00:16:45 ◼   ► by any means.

00:16:46 ◼   ► But they've added a lot of features

00:16:48 ◼   ► that are really nice to have.

00:16:50 ◼   ► Some that aren't, but a lot that are really nice to have.

00:16:53 ◼   ► And Apple has done very little of that sort of thing.

00:16:57 ◼   ► And there's things like developers are always

00:16:59 ◼   ► posting blog posts, myself included,

00:17:01 ◼   ► or always posting blog posts about,

00:17:02 ◼   ► if you just change this one little thing,

00:17:04 ◼   ► or add this one feature, it would make such a big difference.

00:17:07 ◼   ► And those kind of changes almost never happen in the App Store.

00:17:12 ◼   ► I think we might want to talk about something that's awesome,

00:17:15 ◼   ► but you talking about bloggers that are saying,

00:17:19 ◼   ► if only this one thing happened, it would be so much better,

00:17:22 ◼   ► made me think of Underscore's article about upgrade pricing,

00:17:25 ◼   ► which I think is worth talking about.

00:17:26 ◼   ► Yes, definitely.

00:17:27 ◼   ► So we will get to that in a minute.

00:17:29 ◼   ► First, let me tell you about something we like.

00:17:32 ◼   ► This is an app that you've probably heard of,

00:17:34 ◼   ► But amazingly, as far as I know, the developer

00:17:38 ◼   ► has not sold like 300 million copies of it.

00:17:41 ◼   ► How many iOS devices are there?

00:17:42 ◼   ► 300 million?

00:17:43 ◼   ► A lot.

00:17:45 ◼   ► Probably more than that now.

00:17:46 ◼   ► A lot.

00:17:47 ◼   ► As far as I know, he hasn't sold 300 million copies yet.

00:17:49 ◼   ► So our job is not done yet.

00:17:51 ◼   ► This app is called Drafts, and it's by Agile Tortoise.

00:17:55 ◼   ► And Drafts, it's kind of hard to describe

00:17:59 ◼   ► what it is in a way that makes you realize how good it is.

00:18:03 ◼   ► But I'll give it a shot.

00:18:04 ◼   ► OK.

00:18:05 ◼   ► So Draft is a quick capture app that launches into a text field,

00:18:12 ◼   ► and it's just ready for you to start typing.

00:18:14 ◼   ► It launches really, really quickly,

00:18:16 ◼   ► and the whole point of it is quick, quick capture.

00:18:19 ◼   ► So whenever you are thinking about anything with text,

00:18:22 ◼   ► you launch Draft, and you are immediately

00:18:24 ◼   ► presented with a text field and a keyboard,

00:18:26 ◼   ► no matter what else you were doing.

00:18:28 ◼   ► So it's where text starts on your iPhone or iPad.

00:18:32 ◼   ► It can capture notes, ideas, status updates.

00:18:35 ◼   ► And then it has all these sharing and communication

00:18:38 ◼   ► options built in.

00:18:39 ◼   ► So you capture the text first.

00:18:41 ◼   ► You type it in as soon as you're ready to go,

00:18:44 ◼   ► then as soon as you're done typing in whatever you had

00:18:47 ◼   ► in mind before you forget.

00:18:48 ◼   ► Then you have almost a limitless array of options.

00:18:52 ◼   ► So let me see what here.

00:18:53 ◼   ► He gave me a list here.

00:18:54 ◼   ► You can send it as an email or text message.

00:18:56 ◼   ► You can create a calendar event.

00:18:57 ◼   ► You can post Twitter, Facebook, app.net.

00:18:59 ◼   ► You can say to Dropbox, Evernote.

00:19:02 ◼   ► You can forward the text of your draft to a whole bunch of apps,

00:19:05 ◼   ► including OmniFocus, Things, Fantastical, Tweetbot.

00:19:09 ◼   ► This is one of those apps that-- oh, and by the way, it syncs.

00:19:14 ◼   ► It uses lightning fast sync to go through--

00:19:17 ◼   ► to go through between your iPhone and iPad,

00:19:19 ◼   ► or multiple iPhones, if you're one of those people.

00:19:21 ◼   ► Day and night, maybe, who knows.

00:19:23 ◼   ► There are some of those people.

00:19:25 ◼   ► But they're misunderstood.

00:19:29 ◼   ► So drafts for iPhone is $3.

00:19:32 ◼   ► Drafts for iPhone is $4.

00:19:34 ◼   ► They're both in the App Store.

00:19:36 ◼   ► And this is one of those things where if you've ever

00:19:39 ◼   ► talked about or thought about your workflow,

00:19:42 ◼   ► this is the kind of app that you need.

00:19:44 ◼   ► Because anybody who thinks about workflows,

00:19:47 ◼   ► they love this app.

00:19:48 ◼   ► One of the things developers suggest is try it for a week

00:19:54 ◼   ► in your dock.

00:19:55 ◼   ► You know, the little four icons at the bottom.

00:19:57 ◼   ► Try it for a week there.

00:19:58 ◼   ► You'll see, because if you start using this as your starting

00:20:02 ◼   ► point of I have some kind of text to enter and then

00:20:06 ◼   ► do something with later, or right now even just for faster

00:20:09 ◼   ► access, this is really what this app is good at.

00:20:13 ◼   ► The last time Merlin did a sponsor read for draft,

00:20:16 ◼   ► I think it took him like 15 minutes.

00:20:17 ◼   ► I'm going to try not to do that.

00:20:18 ◼   ► But it's really hard to describe just how cool this app is

00:20:22 ◼   ► and how much time it can really save you and how--

00:20:25 ◼   ► if you have one of those ideas that you need to quickly

00:20:27 ◼   ► capture, the best thing you can do is just get it out as soon as possible. Because then

00:20:34 ◼   ► you might forget, or if you launch some other app, maybe some other thing pops up and it's

00:20:38 ◼   ► some kind of problem you have to deal with, or some kind of distraction like, "Oh, look,

00:20:40 ◼   ► a list of tweets that I want to read," instead of tweeting this thing. There's so many possible

00:20:47 ◼   ► distractions and slowdowns when you go directly into the endgame of what you were typing for.

00:20:53 ◼   ► With Drafts, you just launch the app and you can start typing. It's that simple.

00:20:57 ◼   ► So anyway, Drafts for iPhone again, three bucks.

00:21:00 ◼   ► Drafts for iPad, four bucks.

00:21:01 ◼   ► They have lightning fast sync between them.

00:21:03 ◼   ► Go to Agile Tortoise.

00:21:04 ◼   ► Is it Agile or Agile?

00:21:06 ◼   ► - Agile, as far as I'm concerned.

00:21:08 ◼   ► - You are the expert on this, Casey,

00:21:10 ◼   ► 'cause you are in the consulting business.

00:21:12 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:21:13 ◼   ► So it is AgileTortoise.com/Drafts.

00:21:18 ◼   ► Go there to learn more and get the app

00:21:20 ◼   ► or just search for Drafts on the App Store

00:21:22 ◼   ► because it is actually so popular you will find it.

00:21:25 ◼   ► It is so good.

00:21:26 ◼   ► So agiletortoise.com/drafts.

00:21:30 ◼   ► And thanks a lot to Agile Tortoise

00:21:33 ◼   ► for sponsoring our show.

00:21:36 ◼   ► And a little tidbit here.

00:21:39 ◼   ► The creator of Agile Tortoise pretty much

00:21:44 ◼   ► invented x-callback URL.

00:21:46 ◼   ► He emailed me for a while ago.

00:21:49 ◼   ► He also makes an app called Terminology.

00:21:52 ◼   ► It's an awesome dictionary and kind of word exploration app.

00:21:56 ◼   ► And forever ago, we were trying to figure out a way

00:21:59 ◼   ► that Instapaper could look up boards and terminology

00:22:02 ◼   ► and then have it bounce back to Instapaper

00:22:04 ◼   ► after your look up was done.

00:22:06 ◼   ► And so he and I kind of coordinated on this standard.

00:22:08 ◼   ► And then I'm like, look, I don't really

00:22:10 ◼   ► have time to do anything more with this standard in public,

00:22:13 ◼   ► but I would love it if somebody took this and ran with it.

00:22:17 ◼   ► And so he took it and ran with it

00:22:19 ◼   ► and made x call back URL really what it is today.

00:22:22 ◼   ► And made a site, made a directory,

00:22:25 ◼   ► evangelize people using it, and then now it's this huge thing.

00:22:30 ◼   ► Pretty much every app on Federico Vatici's iPhone

00:22:33 ◼   ► uses X callback URL in some way.

00:22:35 ◼   ► It's a great way for apps to work together.

00:22:38 ◼   ► And since iOS still doesn't, even with 7,

00:22:42 ◼   ► still doesn't give us a whole lot of good inter-app sharing

00:22:44 ◼   ► options, or data sharing option between apps, or anything

00:22:49 ◼   ► like that, it's a really great kind of stand-in here

00:22:54 ◼   ► until we get anything cool like that.

00:22:55 ◼   ► And even afterwards, it's still going to be useful.

00:22:58 ◼   ► So anyway, thanks a lot to Giraffes for sponsoring.

00:23:01 ◼   ► And Greg, the developer, is a really cool guy.

00:23:04 ◼   ► And if you like X Callback URL and you haven't bought

00:23:06 ◼   ► all of his apps, you should.

00:23:08 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:23:09 ◼   ► All right, so moving along.

00:23:12 ◼   ► So thanks to them for sponsoring.

00:23:15 ◼   ► The thing I wanted to talk about in this queued in my mind

00:23:19 ◼   ► after you said bloggers talking about what Apple should do

00:23:22 ◼   ► is underscore David Smith's post from a couple days ago

00:23:27 ◼   ► and I'll put it in the chat about logic.

00:23:30 ◼   ► Is it logic X or logic 10?

00:23:33 ◼   ► I feel ignorant.

00:23:34 ◼   ► Logic Pro something. - John.

00:23:37 ◼   ► - Is John gone?

00:23:39 ◼   ► Did we lose John? - I'm here.

00:23:41 ◼   ► - He's trying to figure out the X or the 10.

00:23:43 ◼   ► - For logic pro.

00:23:45 ◼   ► - Is there a question?

00:23:46 ◼   ► Are you being serious?

00:23:47 ◼   ► - Yes, I'm assuming it's 10, but I don't know.

00:23:51 ◼   ► I don't do this stuff.

00:23:52 ◼   ► That's what Marco does.

00:23:53 ◼   ► - What?

00:23:55 ◼   ► - 'Cause you do all the editing, whatever.

00:23:56 ◼   ► - Maybe, now you're making me doubt myself.

00:23:57 ◼   ► I've always just, of course it's 10.

00:24:00 ◼   ► Why would it be, like,

00:24:01 ◼   ► I think I was looking at two products.

00:24:03 ◼   ► One of them's got an X at the end,

00:24:04 ◼   ► but it's the Roman numeral 10.

00:24:04 ◼   ► And the other one has an X at the end, and you say the X.

00:24:07 ◼   ► - Hey, who knows?

00:24:08 ◼   ► - That could be the case.

00:24:08 ◼   ► Maybe I'm crazy.

00:24:09 ◼   ► Now I feel like I have to go back and watch that,

00:24:11 ◼   ► like, "Mental Cut Pro 10," whatever it was,

00:24:13 ◼   ► you know, the intro video where they demoed it.

00:24:16 ◼   ► - God, I wish so hard that I was trolling you,

00:24:18 ◼   ► but I'm not, I'm really not sure.

00:24:19 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:24:20 ◼   ► Ignorance is its own special kind of trolling case.

00:24:23 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:24:25 ◼   ► Oh, god.

00:24:26 ◼   ► We're going to cut all this out, right?

00:24:27 ◼   ► So anyway, so David Smith said, we were looking--

00:24:31 ◼   ► we as a collective app developers--

00:24:33 ◼   ► we're looking at Apple to have an instance

00:24:35 ◼   ► to need upgrade pricing to see what they would do with regard

00:24:40 ◼   ► to upgrade pricing.

00:24:41 ◼   ► Because everyone's sort of seen-- let me quote him.

00:24:43 ◼   ► "It seems like most discussions of this ultimately ended up

00:24:47 ◼   ► with a conclusion that Apple would only

00:24:48 ◼   ► upgrade pricing if they themselves needed/wanted it for their own apps.

00:24:53 ◼   ► This morning's launch of Logic Pro blank seems to settle the matter on that front.

00:24:59 ◼   ► So Logic Pro whatever was a pretty major upgrade and they ended up saying tough

00:25:05 ◼   ► noogies you're gonna have to pay the whole $200 all over again. And that I

00:25:10 ◼   ► think is a pretty I think underscores right that's a pretty obvious cue that

00:25:16 ◼   ► we're not going to get upgrade pricing. And I don't think that's terribly surprising,

00:25:21 ◼   ► but I do think it's a little bit of a bummer. And that's coming from someone who doesn't

00:25:27 ◼   ► have a profitable app in the App Store. It just seems to me like it would be very useful

00:25:33 ◼   ► in certain circumstances to offer either, I guess just a discounted upgrade for paid

00:25:41 ◼   ► users. So if you came out with another Instapay, oh, you sold Instapay. If you came out with

00:25:44 ◼   ► another—no, you sold the magazine. If you came out with another bug shot that was a massive rewrite,

00:25:49 ◼   ► then maybe you could charge—I guess you can't because it's 99 cents. Yeah, I don't know what

00:25:53 ◼   ► you would use this for. I was actually thinking about doubling the price to $2.

00:25:57 ◼   ► You know, like, what is it that made Underscore decide that this was the turning point? Was it

00:26:04 ◼   ► because the price didn't change from the previous version? Is that because, like, you know, Apple's

00:26:10 ◼   ► done the same deal many times before. Like, they would come up with a new version of the app,

00:26:14 ◼   ► And you know way back when they were like oh the app store is out now and Apple selling its software through the Mac App Store

00:26:18 ◼   ► What are they gonna do well surely when as soon as Apple needs a new version of program X then

00:26:23 ◼   ► That's one will upgrade pricing because then Apple will be stuck behind and every time that has come up

00:26:26 ◼   ► They've released a new version of the program. It has not been upgrade priced, and you know they just keep going down the road

00:26:32 ◼   ► But it used to be that the prices were lower than like okay

00:26:35 ◼   ► Well, they didn't offer upgrade pricing, but they lowered the price

00:26:38 ◼   ► So it's almost kind of like upgrade pricing and they can afford to do that because they're Apple and have a whole jillion dollars of revenue

00:26:43 ◼   ► But now, I guess logic didn't decrease in price,

00:26:48 ◼   ► and is that what cemented it?

00:26:51 ◼   ► I don't know if there's another application

00:26:52 ◼   ► that came out before. - Well, I think,

00:26:53 ◼   ► as far as I know, this is the first Pro app from Apple

00:26:57 ◼   ► that has had a major version released after the App Store.

00:27:01 ◼   ► - Oh, no, Final Cut, Final Cut, right?

00:27:03 ◼   ► - Was the original Final Cut ever in the App Store?

00:27:08 ◼   ► - Well, you know, the whole deal was like,

00:27:12 ◼   ► people who own the existing version of Final Cut,

00:27:14 ◼   ► when the App Store version comes out,

00:27:16 ◼   ► how are you going to give them upgrade pricing?

00:27:17 ◼   ► And the answer is, you're not.

00:27:19 ◼   ► Apple didn't.

00:27:20 ◼   ► There was no upgrade pricing.

00:27:21 ◼   ► - If you look at like Aperture, for instance,

00:27:22 ◼   ► Aperture, as far as I know,

00:27:23 ◼   ► has not had a major version since the App Store,

00:27:25 ◼   ► but when the App Store launched,

00:27:27 ◼   ► Aperture was launched at $80,

00:27:29 ◼   ► where before I believe it was 200.

00:27:31 ◼   ► And so, they launched the App Store,

00:27:34 ◼   ► and all the pro apps that went into the App Store

00:27:37 ◼   ► all had substantially reduced prices

00:27:40 ◼   ► compared to what they were before.

00:27:43 ◼   ► And I think with Logic Pro X/10,

00:27:46 ◼   ► I think this might be the very first time

00:27:49 ◼   ► that a major update has been,

00:27:51 ◼   ► that Apple is in a major update to one of those Pro apps,

00:27:54 ◼   ► besides just when they first added it to the store

00:27:57 ◼   ► with that reduced price.

00:27:58 ◼   ► And so the theory is that if they were gonna add

00:28:03 ◼   ► upgrade pricing for themselves,

00:28:04 ◼   ► they probably would have done it for this.

00:28:07 ◼   ► Now, David's Post has a pretty big assumption

00:28:10 ◼   ► that the assumption here is that maybe they just

00:28:15 ◼   ► didn't do it in time for this, but they'll do it later,

00:28:17 ◼   ► or they'll do it for some other app.

00:28:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was gonna say, speaking of the dev down time,

00:28:23 ◼   ► that the assumption, the real underlying assumption

00:28:27 ◼   ► is that the only thing stopping Apple

00:28:30 ◼   ► from having upgrade pricing in the store

00:28:32 ◼   ► is the willingness to do it.

00:28:34 ◼   ► And what could actually be stopping them

00:28:35 ◼   ► is the ability to do it, you know what I mean?

00:28:38 ◼   ► - That's true.

00:28:39 ◼   ► ability to do it in a timely manner given the resources and priorities of the companies

00:28:45 ◼   ► and blah, blah, blah, blah, all that.

00:28:49 ◼   ► Perhaps the people, even all the way up the chain, the people who are on the teams with

00:28:53 ◼   ► these power apps are like, "Why won't you give us upgrade pricing?"

00:28:55 ◼   ► And they can't get the other part of the organization to give them the upgrade pricing.

00:28:59 ◼   ► We don't know what's going on inside.

00:29:00 ◼   ► All we know is that they haven't.

00:29:02 ◼   ► I think it's conceivable that they can't, in terms of like,

00:29:06 ◼   ► they can't make-- the people who are

00:29:10 ◼   ► responsible for these products wish they had upgrade pricing,

00:29:12 ◼   ► but either can't convince the rest of the company

00:29:14 ◼   ► that it was a good idea, or can't get the resources

00:29:17 ◼   ► into doing that with upgrade pricing.

00:29:18 ◼   ► But as we're sitting here not knowing

00:29:20 ◼   ► what's going on in that black hole that is Apple

00:29:22 ◼   ► and coming up with these crazy theories,

00:29:23 ◼   ► I've been thinking of reasons that lack of upgrade pricing

00:29:27 ◼   ► is actually good for consumers and Apple.

00:29:30 ◼   ► and I've got one, maybe you can think of a better one.

00:29:35 ◼   ► The reason I thought of is that

00:29:36 ◼   ► when you don't have upgrade pricing,

00:29:40 ◼   ► you don't have the things that developers love,

00:29:43 ◼   ► which is basically once someone gets on the train

00:29:46 ◼   ► of my product, they are encouraged to stay on that train,

00:29:50 ◼   ► because like, well, I already paid all this money

00:29:51 ◼   ► for the original version of Photoshop or whatever,

00:29:53 ◼   ► I can get the next version of Photoshop

00:29:55 ◼   ► for what looks to me compared to my original purchase price

00:29:57 ◼   ► to be a bargain, or I can buy an entirely different program

00:30:00 ◼   ► that's presumably priced kind of like the original version of Photoshop was.

00:30:04 ◼   ► And developers love that, like that's how we get upgrade revenue, because you know,

00:30:07 ◼   ► pricing psychology.

00:30:09 ◼   ► People want to pay a little bit of money because they never want to start over again, they

00:30:12 ◼   ► just want to stay on that train.

00:30:14 ◼   ► But that's bad for consumers and Apple because it's like a lockout factor for new competitors.

00:30:19 ◼   ► Apple and consumers would prefer it if you weren't locked in.

00:30:22 ◼   ► Like say, the reason Photoshop is so entrenched is that no one could, you know, come up against

00:30:26 ◼   ► and defeat it.

00:30:27 ◼   ► Everyone is kind of on a level playing field where you have to sell your new version or whatever you think it's worth and you

00:30:31 ◼   ► Can't give the people who bought the old version an advantage each time

00:30:34 ◼   ► It's time for you to buy a new version of your graphics program or whatever your program is

00:30:38 ◼   ► You can look at the entire field because no one has any

00:30:41 ◼   ► Pricing advantage based on your past purchases, and I think Apple likes that and I think consumers like that because it makes the developers you know

00:30:48 ◼   ► It doesn't lock you in as much and it's not like real locker

00:30:52 ◼   ► You're not being locked in by file formats or any you know sort of dongle type stuff or whatever you're being locked in but by pricing

00:30:57 ◼   ► psychology, you buy your own brain and the way you perceive loss and how you just want

00:31:01 ◼   ► to stay and keep buying the same one you did. So that's all I've got for why the lack of

00:31:05 ◼   ► upgrade pricing is good for consumers in Apple. I don't know if you guys can think of anything

00:31:09 ◼   ► else.

00:31:10 ◼   ► Well, it makes a lot of things a lot easier for both sides. First of all, it makes it

00:31:14 ◼   ► very clear like, well, I guess it doesn't apply to the App Store. I was going to say

00:31:19 ◼   ► one of the weird things with upgrades is that once you have upgraded, then you can't really

00:31:25 ◼   ► do anything with the previous version, you can't really sell it to anybody else, and

00:31:29 ◼   ► there's other weird things, but I guess you can't do that now in the App Store anyway.

00:31:34 ◼   ► But it certainly makes things easier on Apple's side for accounting and price calculation

00:31:39 ◼   ► and everything else to not have these weird dependencies like, "Well, it's this price

00:31:42 ◼   ► if you bought this, and if you didn't buy that, it's this other price." There's one

00:31:46 ◼   ► less thing there. There's probably a whole bunch of avenues for abuse that this rules

00:31:52 ◼   ► out because keep in mind anything you can do in the App Store, people are finding ways

00:31:59 ◼   ► to scam it and beat the rankings in some weird way or scam Apple or scam us. Everything in

00:32:06 ◼   ► the App Store is going to be scammed and so Apple is probably reluctant to do anything

00:32:12 ◼   ► to open up any more ways for that to happen. I'm sure there's some weird thing you could

00:32:16 ◼   ► do with gift codes and then weird pricing scenarios and somehow make your app jump in

00:32:21 ◼   ► in the ranks.

00:32:21 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:32:22 ◼   ► I'm sure there's weird stuff you could do.

00:32:25 ◼   ► But I think the biggest reason why--

00:32:27 ◼   ► and this is probably a bigger topic.

00:32:32 ◼   ► Before it gets too late, let me do the second sponsor,

00:32:34 ◼   ► and then we'll get back to this.

00:32:37 ◼   ► Our second sponsor this week is pretty much

00:32:40 ◼   ► the king of podcast sponsors.

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00:34:37 ◼   ► Let me just respond to the guy in the chat room, who I was reading there.

00:34:42 ◼   ► They said my example of Photoshop was a lousy one because all Photoshop's competitors

00:34:46 ◼   ► are like $80.

00:34:47 ◼   ► They're already way cheaper than Photoshop.

00:34:49 ◼   ► That's true, and it is only a weaker example, I think, but I think it's still an actual

00:34:54 ◼   ► example of the phenomenon I was describing.

00:34:56 ◼   ► Because if you took away upgrade pricing—pretend Photoshop is in the Mac App Store, we should

00:35:02 ◼   ► actually discuss Photoshop's real—I think it's on our topic list—Photoshop's actual

00:35:06 ◼   ► pricing with the whole Creative Cloud thing.

00:35:07 ◼   ► But anyway.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they could just get the master of a finger

00:35:09 ◼   ► with that.

00:35:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:10 ◼   ► Pretend Photoshop was in the App Store.

00:35:13 ◼   ► And no upgrade pricing is available.

00:35:15 ◼   ► When the next version of Photoshop came out,

00:35:17 ◼   ► Adobe would be forced to price it

00:35:20 ◼   ► at whatever the full price of Photoshop is.

00:35:22 ◼   ► And then you'd have a situation where, all right,

00:35:24 ◼   ► well, those competitors are still $80.

00:35:26 ◼   ► You can buy Pixelmator or whatever

00:35:28 ◼   ► for such a cheap price.

00:35:29 ◼   ► But when the previous owner of Photoshop said, OK,

00:35:32 ◼   ► I need a new version of Photoshop

00:35:34 ◼   ► because I want the new features or it doesn't run on my old computer anymore or whatever problem they have,

00:35:38 ◼   ► they would have a decision that used to be pay, you know,

00:35:43 ◼   ► upgrade pricing at the new version of Photoshop. And now the decision is I have to pay for the full version of Photoshop again?

00:35:48 ◼   ► Oh, well, I'm gonna look at some competitors.

00:35:50 ◼   ► And, you know, and they wouldn't be as motivated to look at competitors if there was upgrade pricing. And even though the competitors were always

00:35:57 ◼   ► way cheaper, why were they ever paying the, you know, the upgrade fee for Photoshop is more expensive than the competitors?

00:36:01 ◼   ► But being forced to like you like you're starting over a clean slate

00:36:05 ◼   ► There's no upgrade price and there is nothing keeping you on Photoshop except for your love of the program

00:36:09 ◼   ► Makes you more likely to look at the competitors, and maybe you still reject them and keep going with Photoshop

00:36:14 ◼   ► but I think that that lack of lock-in that lack of

00:36:17 ◼   ► pricing psychology keeping you buying the same program and over and over again kind of

00:36:21 ◼   ► Unthinkingly or not being able to get yourself to seriously consider the competitors because of the sunk cost fallacy or whatever

00:36:27 ◼   ► It's not good for for consumers or for Apple because Apple wants that dynamic marketplace where no one locks you in in the old style

00:36:34 ◼   ► Kind of Microsoft Office that you just have to keep buying because everybody uses the file format or whatever

00:36:38 ◼   ► You know file formats actually a digression in that whatever anyway

00:36:42 ◼   ► I think I think there is something to the lack of upgrades. I do not necessarily think this is why Apple doesn't have upgrades

00:36:48 ◼   ► I'm just trying to think of any any possible upside that could possibly explain

00:36:52 ◼   ► Some reason that they have this is this I wish

00:36:55 ◼   ► Someone would write a tell-all book about like the insides of Apple and not about like Steve Jobs or like

00:37:01 ◼   ► Forrestal being fired, but like about the boring stuff like what happened that dev center downtime

00:37:05 ◼   ► And what was the deal with upgrade pricing like no five people would read this book, but I think it'd be really interesting

00:37:10 ◼   ► So in in the vein of upgrade pricing I was thinking while you guys were talking

00:37:15 ◼   ► Well firstly I should real-time follow up myself. It is absolutely logic pro 10

00:37:20 ◼   ► I don't know what brain flatulence. I was going through at that moment so apologies

00:37:24 ◼   ► But with regard to upgrade pricing I was thinking you know if we look at the three groups of people that are involved with this

00:37:29 ◼   ► To my mind users Apple and developers you know how is not having upgrade pricing good for all three

00:37:36 ◼   ► Well for users it teaches them there's no free lunch and set some price expectations now

00:37:41 ◼   ► They may not like them, but it teaches us. I mean I think

00:37:43 ◼   ► That's good for users like a kind of like remember to drink your Ovaltine good users

00:37:50 ◼   ► Good like we're telling you it's all for you. Let me finish my thought I see what you're saying

00:37:54 ◼   ► Let me finish my thoughts

00:37:55 ◼   ► So so Apple it's good for them because there's a lot less complexity involved and that also

00:38:00 ◼   ► Arguably may be good for users as well because I don't need to worry about whether or not they've bought the app before and whether

00:38:05 ◼   ► Or not they're gonna apply to pricing

00:38:07 ◼   ► discounted pricing and obviously you can make that obvious within the iTunes store the App Store or whatever, but

00:38:11 ◼   ► It eliminates a lot of complexity

00:38:13 ◼   ► But most importantly I think it is good for developers in the sense that it's more money for the people who?

00:38:19 ◼   ► who write great apps.

00:38:20 ◼   ► I mean, look at Tweety as a great example of that.

00:38:22 ◼   ► Everyone at the time that was running Tweety immediately

00:38:25 ◼   ► insta-bought Tweety 2, because why would you not?

00:38:29 ◼   ► Lauren Bricher's a good guy.

00:38:30 ◼   ► Except, was it Alyssa Milano?

00:38:31 ◼   ► There was some celebrity that didn't.

00:38:33 ◼   ► And complained about the $2.

00:38:35 ◼   ► It's $2.99, man.

00:38:36 ◼   ► It was like, yeah, that was like her whole budget

00:38:38 ◼   ► for the year for iOS apps.

00:38:39 ◼   ► So she just couldn't do it.

00:38:42 ◼   ► I don't even know where to go from there.

00:38:43 ◼   ► But obviously, it keeps the system working.

00:38:45 ◼   ► And so I guess it's an application of keeping the system working.

00:38:50 ◼   ► In other words, by users continually paying developers for their very hard work, it keeps

00:38:57 ◼   ► the App Store running and it keeps interesting and worthwhile apps in the App Store, and

00:39:01 ◼   ► that is absolutely good for users.

00:39:03 ◼   ► So maybe it's a hop away from being directly beneficial to users, but I can make a case,

00:39:09 ◼   ► and perhaps someone at Apple has, that it is good for users not to have discounted pricing.

00:39:14 ◼   ► Now flip that around and if I put on my user hat, yeah, it makes me grumble a little bit,

00:39:19 ◼   ► but if you're willing to take one for the greater good, I'd rather give Chock and Berry

00:39:24 ◼   ► a few bucks every time there's a new Twitterrific or whatever the case may be in order to keep

00:39:29 ◼   ► the icon factor, you know, keep everyone writing these great apps.

00:39:33 ◼   ► And I will give Marco another dollar when Bugshot 2 comes out, even though it's never

00:39:37 ◼   ► going to happen.

00:39:38 ◼   ► But still, in principle I would.

00:39:40 ◼   ► And so I would argue it's actually possibly better for everyone if there is an upgrade

00:39:47 ◼   ► pricing.

00:39:48 ◼   ► But with that said, I don't run my life and my business by way of the app store.

00:39:52 ◼   ► So I could be totally missing the boat here, but I think it's probably for the best.

00:39:57 ◼   ► It's such torture that Apple doesn't say anything because we're forced into these

00:40:01 ◼   ► scenarios of trying to speculate.

00:40:02 ◼   ► And whenever that comes about, the tendency that I see is people want to assign to Apple

00:40:09 ◼   ► some high-minded ideal or overarching philosophy.

00:40:12 ◼   ► Sometimes that's the case, but I think that when there is some kind of idea or motivation

00:40:17 ◼   ► behind it, Apple articulates it eventually.

00:40:20 ◼   ► Sometimes repeatedly, sometimes strongly, sometimes weakly, but eventually you get their

00:40:23 ◼   ► philosophy behind it.

00:40:24 ◼   ► Whereas I don't think the lack of upgrade pricing has ever been justified or defended,

00:40:30 ◼   ► even like in a subtle or weak way, by Apple, which makes me go right to the other possibilities

00:40:34 ◼   ► that people don't like to think about, which is like incompetence, foolishness, that it's

00:40:38 ◼   ► a mistake, that there's mitigating circumstances that don't make any sense outside of Apple's

00:40:42 ◼   ► organization to explain why this doesn't happen.

00:40:43 ◼   ► And I—

00:40:43 ◼   ► Well, maybe they just don't care enough.

00:40:45 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. Like, all the reasons that make Apple not look good. Like, everyone wants to go,

00:40:50 ◼   ► "Well, it's a secret, and Apple won't say anything. Therefore—" And because Apple makes awesome

00:40:54 ◼   ► things and because I love Apple, "Therefore, the secret reason must be so incredible." And

00:40:57 ◼   ► that makes us all, you know, do Apple's work for it and try to come up with a philosophy that makes

00:41:02 ◼   ► sense and like, "Don't you see? It's because of like—" And we can come up with all those

00:41:05 ◼   ► possibilities, and they're all possible, but it's not on us to articulate that. It's Apple's

00:41:11 ◼   ► responsibility to either explain itself or not, and with a lack of an explanation, I'm just as

00:41:16 ◼   ► likely to assume incompetence is the reason, or that they really are making a mistake,

00:41:21 ◼   ► or that there's some sort of internal political BS conflict over the issue. I always go to those

00:41:27 ◼   ► possibilities, but whenever I read on the web, everyone starts from the premise that Apple is

00:41:30 ◼   ► all-knowing and wonderful. And that's kind of like one of the advantages of being secret,

00:41:34 ◼   ► is that if you're making good products and you don't say anything about them and you don't talk

00:41:39 ◼   ► about how things work internally, people will assume that you are a lab full of super genius

00:41:44 ◼   ► monks with high-minded ideals who have the whole world figured out. But in reality, it's like any

00:41:49 ◼   ► other company, and they're all fighting with each other and doing all sorts of stuff in there,

00:41:52 ◼   ► and being office politics and being incompetent and making mistakes and yelling at each other

00:41:58 ◼   ► and having fires in the server room, whatever the hell is going on today.

00:42:00 ◼   ► Well, and speaking of incompetence, earlier when you said, and it seemed to me to be jokingly,

00:42:06 ◼   ► that maybe that's why the dev center was down, was in order to get the upgrade pricing squared

00:42:10 ◼   ► away, I think it's pretty obvious that Logic Pro 10 wouldn't have been released already

00:42:15 ◼   ► if they were going to do the upgrade thing.

00:42:17 ◼   ► No, no.

00:42:18 ◼   ► I was connecting it in terms of things, the assumption of Apple's competence and the

00:42:22 ◼   ► counter example being this very extended downtime to a service that should not be down this

00:42:28 ◼   ► long.

00:42:29 ◼   ► No, absolutely.

00:42:30 ◼   ► sec to upgrade pricing. Neither of you, I don't think, have really mentioned, I think,

00:42:36 ◼   ► what the most obvious reason is, because it keeps software prices down.

00:42:40 ◼   ► And Apple, we've seen, like David Barnard had recently brought back that slide from

00:42:49 ◼   ► Steve Jobs at like three or four WDCs ago, where they were introducing iAd. And he said,

00:42:56 ◼   ► We want developers to be able to continue offering free and low-cost apps.

00:43:04 ◼   ► Obviously, Apple benefits substantially with a lot of basic economic reasons.

00:43:10 ◼   ► Apple benefits substantially by software being really cheap for their platforms.

00:43:15 ◼   ► The whole ancient Joel and software strategy thing of commoditizing your compliments.

00:43:20 ◼   ► And this is when like 12 people emailed me to say, "Joel didn't invent that," because

00:43:24 ◼   ► For some reason, Joel has received more criticism

00:43:27 ◼   ► than anybody who writes as friendly as he does

00:43:30 ◼   ► than I've ever seen.

00:43:32 ◼   ► Anyway, so Apple really benefits a lot

00:43:37 ◼   ► from having all the software for their devices

00:43:39 ◼   ► be cheap, because then people have a really great reason

00:43:42 ◼   ► to buy their devices, because all the software is available

00:43:44 ◼   ► for not that much more money.

00:43:46 ◼   ► And Apple takes a ton of profit on those device sales.

00:43:48 ◼   ► They don't make a whole lot from the app store,

00:43:51 ◼   ► so they don't really need to worry about making

00:43:52 ◼   ► that substantially bigger.

00:43:54 ◼   ► It just pales in comparison to what they can make on hardware.

00:43:59 ◼   ► And then having people have a lot of apps on their devices

00:44:03 ◼   ► is great for Apple because not only do you

00:44:06 ◼   ► sell maybe bigger hardware, faster hardware,

00:44:08 ◼   ► so people can run these apps better or hold more of them,

00:44:10 ◼   ► but there's this massive lock-in effect then.

00:44:12 ◼   ► Once you have a bunch of apps, there's

00:44:15 ◼   ► more likelihood, I think, that you're

00:44:17 ◼   ► going to keep buying Apple's products as new competitors

00:44:20 ◼   ► come out with fewer or different apps that you aren't used to

00:44:22 ◼   ► that don't solve your needs.

00:44:24 ◼   ► So--

00:44:24 ◼   ► Well, doubly so if you've just dropped $400

00:44:28 ◼   ► on two different versions of Logic Pro.

00:44:30 ◼   ► Because if I had just thrown a crud load of money

00:44:33 ◼   ► at the same app two or three times,

00:44:36 ◼   ► that's going to make me even less anxious to bail

00:44:38 ◼   ► from iOS or OS X. Does that make sense?

00:44:42 ◼   ► Sure, exactly.

00:44:43 ◼   ► Yeah, and so Apple-- I don't think they intentionally

00:44:47 ◼   ► went out there and built the app stores in such a way

00:44:51 ◼   ► to encourage cheap apps. I don't think that was intentional. I don't think it was planned

00:44:55 ◼   ► in advance. I certainly don't think it was designed because I think the App Store's success

00:45:00 ◼   ► has been just as much of a surprise to Apple as it has been to everyone else and the scale

00:45:05 ◼   ► and the scope of just how big it's become. But I do think that by having apps be really,

00:45:11 ◼   ► really cheap and having upgrades not be, you know, having upgrades be very simple, having

00:45:17 ◼   ► everything about buying and installing apps

00:45:19 ◼   ► be as simple as possible, including

00:45:20 ◼   ► that now we see like 90% of them or something are free,

00:45:25 ◼   ► then-- actually, that's probably not

00:45:27 ◼   ► true from Apple's point of view, but anyway, regardless.

00:45:31 ◼   ► I think we're seeing that Apple is benefiting substantially

00:45:33 ◼   ► from this.

00:45:34 ◼   ► So even though they didn't design it

00:45:36 ◼   ► from the outset to lower software prices,

00:45:40 ◼   ► that has certainly been the effect,

00:45:42 ◼   ► and it's benefiting Apple, and it's benefiting customers.

00:45:45 ◼   ► And developers just have to suck it up.

00:45:47 ◼   ► And that's kind of the attitude that Apple has with a lot

00:45:49 ◼   ► of stuff towards developers.

00:45:51 ◼   ► Look, here's the new way of doing things.

00:45:54 ◼   ► This is better for users, probably.

00:45:56 ◼   ► And it's going to be better for some developers.

00:45:59 ◼   ► And you can either join that train or wither and die.

00:46:03 ◼   ► We don't really care.

00:46:04 ◼   ► But here's how things are going.

00:46:06 ◼   ► And you can join us if you want to.

00:46:08 ◼   ► And I get the feeling-- and this is probably

00:46:12 ◼   ► going to anger some people.

00:46:14 ◼   ► But I get the feeling that you can look at developers,

00:46:18 ◼   ► myself included, especially my past self,

00:46:21 ◼   ► but even a little bit of my current self,

00:46:23 ◼   ► you can look at us and you can say about us and our behavior,

00:46:27 ◼   ► a lot of what we said about the music industry in the late '90s

00:46:32 ◼   ► and early 2000s of, obviously, things

00:46:36 ◼   ► are going in a direction here.

00:46:38 ◼   ► And a lot of developers are taking advantage of that

00:46:41 ◼   ► and making a killing or really substantially improving

00:46:46 ◼   ► their businesses and their products.

00:46:48 ◼   ► And it's great for people, and it's

00:46:50 ◼   ► great for a couple of intermediaries like Apple,

00:46:53 ◼   ► but the industry is moving in this direction.

00:46:57 ◼   ► And developers who sit around and whine

00:47:00 ◼   ► about not being able to charge $50 for an app anymore

00:47:03 ◼   ► are increasingly starting to look like the record labels

00:47:06 ◼   ► in 2002.

00:47:08 ◼   ► And there's only so much you can do in that position.

00:47:13 ◼   ► You can keep whining about it, and you can keep wishing things

00:47:16 ◼   ► will change, but they probably won't.

00:47:19 ◼   ► All odds are against that.

00:47:21 ◼   ► And you're not going to educate users into paying higher

00:47:27 ◼   ► prices.

00:47:28 ◼   ► That's not going to happen.

00:47:29 ◼   ► The software and services side, though,

00:47:31 ◼   ► are different than the music side in one really important

00:47:33 ◼   ► way, I think.

00:47:34 ◼   ► Because when the music side was like, they're all pissy,

00:47:36 ◼   ► they couldn't sell us CDs for like 20 bucks or whatever

00:47:38 ◼   ► anymore because people are getting for free.

00:47:40 ◼   ► And then iTunes wanted to sell them for $0.99 a track

00:47:43 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:47:43 ◼   ► That's the phenomenon, the low-pricing phenomenon.

00:47:45 ◼   ► But on the app side, it goes beyond that.

00:47:48 ◼   ► It's not just, oh, here's a new way

00:47:50 ◼   ► where people can get your thing less expensively.

00:47:52 ◼   ► What's happening on the app and the services side

00:47:56 ◼   ► is that that is mutating into a worse product for users

00:48:01 ◼   ► so that the developers can get more money.

00:48:03 ◼   ► the freemium model or the thing where it's a free service, but they sell your information,

00:48:10 ◼   ► it's as if the record labels found out a way to start selling CDs again as a whole for

00:48:15 ◼   ► 20 bucks online, and they did it by inserting ads every 10 seconds into the song or something.

00:48:20 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:48:21 ◼   ► The product is worse, and that's the way that they're working around.

00:48:26 ◼   ► And so part of the resistance at this point is you're not saying, "Oh, I need to sell

00:48:30 ◼   ► next application for 50 bucks, you're saying, "I don't want to make it a freemium thing

00:48:34 ◼   ► where when you press the red button, you've got to pay 10 bucks in-app purchase to get

00:48:37 ◼   ► this feature and then 5 bucks to get that one. You've got to get coins and there's an

00:48:39 ◼   ► energy meter and you can't use the application more than 5 minutes a day unless you pay money."

00:48:44 ◼   ► That's the model that everyone is going to. All these apps in the App Store are making

00:48:46 ◼   ► money hand over fist by game theorying money out of people's wallets, not just kids but

00:48:52 ◼   ► also adults as well. It's a worse experience for users.

00:48:56 ◼   ► wasn't true with music because it was more or less, you know, I mean you said the sound

00:48:59 ◼   ► quality was worse and that wasn't that terrible, but it was not the hellscape that is the,

00:49:04 ◼   ► you know, the freemium free-to-play type of thing where just like the application ends

00:49:09 ◼   ► up costing you 50 bucks and the company make tons of money, but it's free, right? You know,

00:49:13 ◼   ► so the sale price of the thing is free. That's where it's gone too far.

00:49:16 ◼   ► I think most app developers have made their piece with adjustment in pricing. What they

00:49:21 ◼   ► don't want to do is say, "Man, I really do not want to make a freemium product. I really

00:49:25 ◼   ► do not want to put ads all over my thing or do anything like that because that just feels

00:49:29 ◼   ► wrong. Yeah, I mean, and that's, and certainly there's, obviously there's, there's a few

00:49:34 ◼   ► different aspects of this. Obviously the gaming world, it has, has way more severe problems

00:49:39 ◼   ► with this, with the whole, you know, free to play BS. And well, think of like paper,

00:49:46 ◼   ► doesn't paper do that? Or one of those graphics app where you buy the brushes? Like it can

00:49:49 ◼   ► be applied to anything. Yeah, but it's, it's a little bit different in that I don't think

00:49:52 ◼   ► consumable. But either way, obviously there's ways for abuse in both regular apps and games.

00:50:00 ◼   ► The gaming market I think deserves a special discussion on its own. But overall, certainly

00:50:06 ◼   ► you're right that to get this overall benefit to consumers of usually lower prices, we've

00:50:13 ◼   ► had to add complexity. And a lot of that complexity is bad. Like the old way of buying music,

00:50:19 ◼   ► in your theoretical example there,

00:50:21 ◼   ► the old way of buying music was really simple.

00:50:22 ◼   ► You paid money and you got the music on some kind of thing.

00:50:25 ◼   ► And you could play it, you could do whatever you wanted to,

00:50:28 ◼   ► you could sell it, you could throw it out the window,

00:50:29 ◼   ► you could, you know, whatever,

00:50:30 ◼   ► and it was just the music and that was it.

00:50:32 ◼   ► And, you know, if they're, you know,

00:50:35 ◼   ► once you start throwing in things like ads

00:50:37 ◼   ► and privacy invading creepiness and stuff like that,

00:50:40 ◼   ► like other ways to make money besides just charging people.

00:50:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, you're changing the product.

00:50:44 ◼   ► You're not just changing the pricing at that point.

00:50:46 ◼   ► And you're like, okay, I've done all I can with the pricing.

00:50:48 ◼   ► I'm going to change the product now.

00:50:49 ◼   ► So the experience of using the product is different.

00:50:51 ◼   ► So everything is out of the window.

00:50:53 ◼   ► If the song wasn't the song anymore,

00:50:54 ◼   ► if the song was changed in some way,

00:50:56 ◼   ► if it stopped midway through, if there was something else

00:50:58 ◼   ► inserted into the song--

00:50:59 ◼   ► Have a day of just singing about Samsung.

00:51:01 ◼   ► And somehow you could pull that off in a way

00:51:03 ◼   ► that customers were like, oh, I guess--

00:51:05 ◼   ► if you could get the tip of the wedge in.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Because it's like with freemium, it's like, oh, all right,

00:51:11 ◼   ► I do like getting the game for free.

00:51:13 ◼   ► This is kind of annoying.

00:51:14 ◼   ► It slowly creeps up on you, where you just--

00:51:16 ◼   ► You don't notice that eventually everything you get is free, but it's just torture to

00:51:20 ◼   ► use and you didn't notice it because it used to be you're just like, it's like they slowly

00:51:23 ◼   ► put, oh, just one second of audio into a song.

00:51:25 ◼   ► Oh, that's not that bad.

00:51:26 ◼   ► I'll listen to one second of audio to get my free song and they just kept increasing

00:51:28 ◼   ► and increasing and eventually you're just like, remember when you could buy something,

00:51:31 ◼   ► you just get the song, you use it, you know?

00:51:33 ◼   ► And I'm not saying free to play or free meme is a terrible thing, again, especially for

00:51:37 ◼   ► gaming, but everyone is going that direction because it's like a way to get $20 for CDs

00:51:43 ◼   ► again.

00:51:44 ◼   ► so much more money through a free-to-play or a freemium type of thing than they could

00:51:49 ◼   ► ever get if they sold you that application.

00:51:51 ◼   ► I see it happen with my son with these stupid games.

00:51:54 ◼   ► I told him that there's no way he would have spent $15 of his own money to buy an iOS game,

00:52:00 ◼   ► but within the first day of getting a free-to-play game, he spent $15 in the game.

00:52:05 ◼   ► It's just the way it works.

00:52:06 ◼   ► Granted, he's only nine, so he's more of a victim of this thing, but I see it with adults

00:52:10 ◼   ► as well.

00:52:11 ◼   ► Candy Crush game you were just talking about your wife playing. It's a bad scene.

00:52:17 ◼   ► Yeah. And to some degree, it is—I think I made this analogy last time—it is a lot

00:52:22 ◼   ► like arcades. But now it's always in your pocket. Now you don't have to go to the

00:52:26 ◼   ► arcade. You're always at the arcade and you're paying by credit card. But it is

00:52:34 ◼   ► hard to look at this and say it's overall worse.

00:52:39 ◼   ► In some way, you can look at specific examples

00:52:42 ◼   ► and say, well, that's worse.

00:52:43 ◼   ► But overall, we now have devices that-- you

00:52:50 ◼   ► can look at smartphones.

00:52:52 ◼   ► And iPads are a little bit more like game consoles in this way.

00:52:55 ◼   ► But smartphones, you don't pay a whole lot

00:52:58 ◼   ► up front for relative to the kind of thing it is.

00:53:01 ◼   ► And it's subsidized, and it has all these capabilities.

00:53:03 ◼   ► and you're kind of buying a phone anyway in modern society.

00:53:07 ◼   ► So you don't have to spend $600 on a PS3 to play these games.

00:53:14 ◼   ► That's the difference here.

00:53:15 ◼   ► Anyway, the bigger thing is now if you

00:53:19 ◼   ► want to play a new game on your iPhone,

00:53:21 ◼   ► it's between-- at least to start out-- it's between $0

00:53:24 ◼   ► and maybe $4 most of the time.

00:53:27 ◼   ► In the olden days, a game was $50 and more recently $60.

00:53:33 ◼   ► And so you're able to play a lot more games.

00:53:35 ◼   ► And the production value that goes into them

00:53:37 ◼   ► is obviously way lower than many $50 and $60 games.

00:53:43 ◼   ► But not all.

00:53:44 ◼   ► And there was a whole lot of like-- I don't know.

00:53:47 ◼   ► I think I'm still upset from buying

00:53:49 ◼   ► Marble Madness from my Genesis for $40 on an impulse.

00:53:51 ◼   ► And it was so, so bad.

00:53:53 ◼   ► And I've never impulse bought a game that turned out

00:53:57 ◼   ► to be good, like a physical game in a store for like $30 to $40.

00:54:00 ◼   ► I've never I've impulse bought I think three or four of them total and they've always been horrible

00:54:05 ◼   ► This is the making of Marco people. Yeah, these these formative years of impulse purchase is why now he researches light bulb

00:54:12 ◼   ► It's all about

00:54:13 ◼   ► Before he buys one because he's you know in his formative years

00:54:17 ◼   ► He like never again will I allow myself to buy this thing on an impulse?

00:54:21 ◼   ► I'm will research it and I'm the same way. It's such a terrible game. No, but it's like I totally get that and and

00:54:28 ◼   ► So like that that whole world now like the stakes are way lower

00:54:31 ◼   ► And that was that was like 40 or 50 or 60 bucks in the 90s

00:54:35 ◼   ► which was you know more substantial than then then those same amounts are today and so

00:54:40 ◼   ► You know everything is cheaper now

00:54:43 ◼   ► And you see the same problem or the same set of problems and benefits and kind of intertwined issues with like Walmart selling

00:54:50 ◼   ► Regular things to people like you know on in some ways

00:54:54 ◼   ► it's better for people to spend less for things. And then there's all these terrible side effects to that.

00:54:58 ◼   ► You know, I don't think this is as bad, but

00:55:01 ◼   ► but it's hard to argue that this overall is worse. That now that everything is like either free or cheap to get into and

00:55:10 ◼   ► then, you know, even the things that aren't totally free,

00:55:13 ◼   ► you know, you might spend, yeah, what if the worst case scenario is you put 15 bucks into Candy Crush?

00:55:19 ◼   ► Well, that's still like

00:55:21 ◼   ► relative to how expensive games used to be, that's not that bad. That's still actually

00:55:26 ◼   ► really cheap relative to how things used to be. And certainly you can go crazy and you

00:55:30 ◼   ► can get, you can kind of lose track of it and start spending, you know, $70. Well, yeah,

00:55:35 ◼   ► games used to cost $70.

00:55:37 ◼   ► I don't think it's the absolute amount that's bad. It's the, it's making it less of a conscious

00:55:42 ◼   ► decision. Because like, I would rather consciously spend 50 bucks than not realize that I'd spent

00:55:47 ◼   ► 15. Because like, in terms of like the honesty of the interaction, where you're basically

00:55:50 ◼   ► people into spending money they didn't really want to spend you know I mean

00:55:54 ◼   ► it's I get it all you know I do not want to get into free will but anyway

00:55:59 ◼   ► personal responsibility was another code word which I also don't want to get into

00:56:02 ◼   ► but like it's it feels like a more honest interaction to ask someone to

00:56:07 ◼   ► make a decision based on an amount versus ask someone to speculatively

00:56:12 ◼   ► predict their future behavior and decide whether they want to download this free

00:56:17 ◼   ► or cheap game based on what they think they're going to spend on it in the

00:56:19 ◼   ► future, it just doesn't feel as nice.

00:56:22 ◼   ► And I think you're right that it's been a net win.

00:56:25 ◼   ► We're making progress.

00:56:26 ◼   ► This is all good stuff.

00:56:27 ◼   ► But it's kind of like, with the good has come this other bad force that we're constantly

00:56:33 ◼   ► bombarded by, and we have to build up new defenses against this thing that didn't

00:56:36 ◼   ► used to exist.

00:56:38 ◼   ► There are awesome software out there for a fair price, even some really good free-to-play

00:56:44 ◼   ► things where you just buy new levels, and they're reasonably priced, and it's only

00:56:47 ◼   ► five things you can buy in the game and it's just a great way for a great developer to

00:56:50 ◼   ► get more money. That's all good. And then there's this giant bazaar of people yammering

00:56:55 ◼   ► at us and the vast majority of the App Store, or the vast majority of anything, was it Sturgeon's

00:56:59 ◼   ► Law or whatever, is crap. And they're in our face and they're trying to scam us and they're

00:57:03 ◼   ► trying to exploit us and they're trying to do terrible things to us. And some of those

00:57:06 ◼   ► companies are big enough, millions of dollars, Zynga. And we've created a monster and a mob

00:57:13 ◼   ► outside of this other stuff that we got which is way better than it used to be so I

00:57:17 ◼   ► Guess you got to take the good with the bad

00:57:19 ◼   ► But like we really need to build up like defenses against the bad that has come along with us

00:57:23 ◼   ► Well, I'm like, you know, nobody's forcing people to

00:57:26 ◼   ► Buy or use these games like I don't have candy crush installed on my phone because I heard it was really sleazy with all this

00:57:33 ◼   ► Stuff and I thought you know what that's not worth it

00:57:35 ◼   ► And then I saw Tiff play it and I you know

00:57:38 ◼   ► I'm like that actually isn't doesn't seem like it's a very good game like instead. I went out and bought

00:57:43 ◼   ► I bought Mean Bean Machine for my PS3 instead.

00:57:46 ◼   ► But that's a different story.

00:57:48 ◼   ► But no one's forcing people to buy these games.

00:57:54 ◼   ► The reason why these things are so prevalent,

00:57:57 ◼   ► the reason why games can do all this stuff,

00:58:00 ◼   ► is that people let them and people support it.

00:58:03 ◼   ► They do it because it works.

00:58:05 ◼   ► And so there's only so much that Apple can really

00:58:08 ◼   ► do about this.

00:58:09 ◼   ► The reality is that let's say Apple gives us

00:58:12 ◼   ► upgrade pricing. What's that going to do? Is it going to make prices go up in the app

00:58:19 ◼   ► store? Probably not, because people like cheap software. And the reason why so many games

00:58:26 ◼   ► out there and so many apps out there have made their prices so low is not usually because

00:58:33 ◼   ► they have to. It's because they can make more that way. You know, people who are saying

00:58:38 ◼   ► "Oh, they put an app in the App Store and they wanted to charge $10 but nobody was buying

00:58:44 ◼   ► it so they were forced to lower the price." Well, we don't know if that app would have

00:58:47 ◼   ► sold any better in any other environment. Maybe the app isn't worth $10. Maybe there

00:58:52 ◼   ► are 15 other apps in the App Store that do the same thing for $1 and it just kind of

00:58:57 ◼   ► sucks for you competition-wise. There's no evidence that Apple's policies are really

00:59:04 ◼   ► holding us back here. There is the top list and that I think has harmful effects. I wrote

00:59:11 ◼   ► about that before. I do think if Apple removed the top lists from the App Store that it would

00:59:17 ◼   ► be overall much better for everybody, for people, for developers, users. It would be

00:59:24 ◼   ► way better for everybody I think. But with the exception of that, I really think that

00:59:30 ◼   ► there's not a lot Apple could really do here to change people's behavior. Because the fact

00:59:35 ◼   ► is people love cheap stuff. They respond way, way more to cheap stuff than to expensive

00:59:40 ◼   ► stuff. And pricing is very psychological and not absolute for people. So to them, like,

00:59:47 ◼   ► in a store where almost everything is a dollar or two, $5 does seem expensive. It's expensive,

00:59:53 ◼   ► in quotes there.

00:59:55 ◼   ► So there's all these other factors here.

00:59:58 ◼   ► And the reason why developers make their prices

01:00:01 ◼   ► what they are is usually because it works better.

01:00:04 ◼   ► And no one's stopping you.

01:00:05 ◼   ► Apple has not set a maximum price by policy.

01:00:08 ◼   ► Well, actually, I think it's like $1,000.

01:00:10 ◼   ► But no one is stopping you from charging 50 bucks

01:00:14 ◼   ► for your app in the App Store.

01:00:15 ◼   ► You can try, but if people don't want to buy it,

01:00:18 ◼   ► that's not really Apple's fault.

01:00:20 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, there's a couple little things.

01:00:23 ◼   ► We've all heard that the little things they could do it

01:00:25 ◼   ► I think they would actually help us like for example making their search better would help a lot because when you search for a well-known

01:00:29 ◼   ► Application you get the million scam apps like their apples constantly fighting though

01:00:33 ◼   ► It's not like they're not doing anything about it

01:00:34 ◼   ► But they're not doing a great job a lot of the time

01:00:37 ◼   ► There's a new game that I've heard of and I search for it and you have to be careful not to accidentally go through the app

01:00:43 ◼   ► That's trying to scam you because it looks like I mean even things like a Minecraft where they have those you know Minecraft clone type

01:00:49 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, like they're like scam. They're always trying to fight fraud, but then it's like oh

01:00:53 ◼   ► what's really fraud. This game actually is a legitimate game and it legitimately uses

01:00:57 ◼   ► that word. It's not keyword spamming. But Google does it better because they have a

01:01:01 ◼   ► system page rank.

01:01:02 ◼   ► Not in their store they don't.

01:01:04 ◼   ► If I search, no, I'm talking about Google on the web. With page rank and the incoming

01:01:09 ◼   ► links, right? If they can do that for the entire web, surely Apple can do a little bit

01:01:13 ◼   ► better job of when someone types in Candy Crush, I don't even know what the search returns,

01:01:17 ◼   ► but make sure the number one item is the actual candy or frame that everyone is talking about

01:01:20 ◼   ► and buying, and it's not some other thing. And they're constantly fighting that battle.

01:01:24 ◼   ► Like, you know, they have some role to play. It used to be much worse than it is.

01:01:28 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like they're doing that much in that regard, honestly.

01:01:32 ◼   ► They have some role to play in policing bad behavior. And that's the problem with the

01:01:37 ◼   ► system they set up, is once you put yourself on the line for any kind of quality control,

01:01:41 ◼   ► where you don't just say, "Look, upload whatever the hell you want, no limits," right?

01:01:44 ◼   ► Once you do that at all, then you're always constantly battling, like, "What's the line?

01:01:49 ◼   ► what do we stop? Okay, well, we'll stop outright fraud. What's fraud? How do we define fraud? Is

01:01:52 ◼   ► this fraud? Is this not fraud? Are we going to police copyright? Well, no, we can't really

01:01:55 ◼   ► do that because our lawyers say we have to just wait for a takedown. So we can't police copyright,

01:01:58 ◼   ► but then our store is filled with crap that's like Super Mario Brothers with the O is spelled

01:02:04 ◼   ► with a zero or something, and that stays up until Nintendo notices it. And I'm sure Apple hates

01:02:09 ◼   ► that, but it's the constant battle to figure out where you draw the line between intervention and

01:02:15 ◼   ► and allowing the stuff to sort itself out.

01:02:17 ◼   ► And in some respects, the pricing thing,

01:02:19 ◼   ► like the developers are all kind of in there making

01:02:22 ◼   ► their own fate with their own decisions, sometimes good,

01:02:24 ◼   ► sometimes bad.

01:02:26 ◼   ► But there is, again, like that mob,

01:02:28 ◼   ► that horde of barbarians on the outside who

01:02:30 ◼   ► are not well-intentioned, who are bad actors.

01:02:34 ◼   ► And there's a lot of them, and they're all over the place.

01:02:36 ◼   ► And the good people are like, hey,

01:02:38 ◼   ► can you get this mob out of here?

01:02:39 ◼   ► And Apple is like, well, we can't

01:02:41 ◼   ► tell the difference between the mob and the regular people

01:02:44 ◼   ► until they do something bad, so we can't be police for the entire world and you guys just need to sort it out.

01:02:50 ◼   ► I don't know. There's been a lot of talk over the years about building a wall around the good people.

01:02:55 ◼   ► All the people who are good actors in the App Store are like, "Can't we get some kind of thing where you agree that you trust us and we're not losers,

01:03:03 ◼   ► and then our apps get approved more quickly?" We've all heard things like that because we all think,

01:03:08 ◼   ► "We're the good guys and we know who the bad guys are, but we get treated exactly the same.

01:03:12 ◼   ► kind of way. I could pay more money, and then it becomes well-known. It's just the rich

01:03:15 ◼   ► people would go in, and a lot of the rich people are the bad people. It is a tiny microcosm,

01:03:20 ◼   ► a tiny world government inside the App Store. The way it's being run now, it's not the

01:03:26 ◼   ► feudal system, but it hasn't advanced probably past the 1800s in terms of sophistication

01:03:32 ◼   ► of the governing process.

01:03:34 ◼   ► No, it's weird because you said, "What could be done to make this better?" One of the things

01:03:39 ◼   ► I'm thinking about is, "Okay, let me put myself in the shoes of a game developer, and I'm

01:03:43 ◼   ► about to make this game."

01:03:45 ◼   ► And maybe it's a game that's kind of hard to digest.

01:03:49 ◼   ► And Mind Blitz from last week is a kind of interesting example of that in that, yeah,

01:03:54 ◼   ► on the surface it's just a standard memory game, but really it's a lot more than that.

01:03:59 ◼   ► And how do I get someone to see that it's a lot more than that if I don't have a free

01:04:06 ◼   ► download and then in-app purchase and it makes me wonder well would some sort of trial system

01:04:12 ◼   ► work better so it's a little bit less sleazy it's an all-or-nothing thing and you say hey

01:04:17 ◼   ► you can try the yo apple i should say allows developers to give users a trial maybe it's

01:04:24 ◼   ► for a day maybe it's just for an hour whatever the number may be and or maybe a developer

01:04:28 ◼   ► could even set that number one way or another then i could as the consumer of this game

01:04:34 ◼   ► I could download it and I could see if it was any good see if I liked it and then after an hour or

01:04:39 ◼   ► Whatever the number may be I can't use it anymore unless I pay for it, but the premise is if I'm paying for it

01:04:46 ◼   ► I'm buying all of it

01:04:47 ◼   ► And I'm not going to be nickel-and-dimed from there the oligarchs the oligarchs will not like that though because the oligarchs are the people who?

01:04:53 ◼   ► Are selling a gazillion one dollar games and they would not sell a gazillion one dollar

01:04:57 ◼   ► Games if someone could free trial it because they would sell like an eighth of that number because most people would free trial I could

01:05:02 ◼   ► five minutes out of it and say it's not worth the one, you know, whatever. Like, they make

01:05:06 ◼   ► more money selling one dollar a game that you can't trial than they would. And, yeah,

01:05:10 ◼   ► there are few oligarchs. There's not a lot of the people who are making tons of money.

01:05:13 ◼   ► There's the EA's of the world. But I think at this point, like, now we've reached the

01:05:17 ◼   ► point where EA has enough sway to say, "You know what? We would prefer not to have free

01:05:21 ◼   ► trials." I don't know what EA's official opinion is on that, but I feel like the games that

01:05:24 ◼   ► sell tons and tons of copies at a really low price would actually make less money in absolute

01:05:30 ◼   ► dollars if they were able to be free trialed. Even if they tried to crank the price up in

01:05:34 ◼   ► response. Okay, well, it was $1, no free trial. Now it's $10, but free trial. I don't think

01:05:39 ◼   ► they could make a balance that would give them as much money as the $1 free trial. Because

01:05:42 ◼   ► as an impulse purchase, you've already paid. If you don't like it, you don't feel bad,

01:05:46 ◼   ► and you just keep doing that.

01:05:47 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's true. And this all runs contrary to my point earlier about removing

01:05:52 ◼   ► complexity with upgrade pricing. But I still come back to, does Apple care? And yes, I

01:05:58 ◼   ► there are very influential people that will care and that will try to make Apple care,

01:06:02 ◼   ► but not Apple care, but Apple care. Anyway, so the point is that if that makes the store

01:06:08 ◼   ► a little less abrasive and a little less hostile to users, is that not worth it? I mean, I

01:06:14 ◼   ► don't know. It's hard to say, but it seems like it might be.

01:06:17 ◼   ► That lobbying effort, if it exists, and I assume it does between the big players in

01:06:21 ◼   ► the App Store and Apple, happens totally behind closed doors. We have no visibility to have

01:06:26 ◼   ► that something must be going on there,

01:06:28 ◼   ► because we know they're up on the stage during the keynote.

01:06:29 ◼   ► We know about the amounts of money involved.

01:06:31 ◼   ► And we know about the technical discussions,

01:06:33 ◼   ► like what do you want out of our next GPU

01:06:35 ◼   ► for your real racing game or whatever.

01:06:37 ◼   ► But I don't know what the app store policy issues are there.

01:06:43 ◼   ► I feel like even if it's subconscious,

01:06:45 ◼   ► there has to be a role at this point.

01:06:48 ◼   ► I mean, for whatever it's worth, I've

01:06:50 ◼   ► talked to a lot of developers over the years, big and small,

01:06:53 ◼   ► some of which have been involved in keynotes

01:06:56 ◼   ► or unveilings and things like that.

01:06:58 ◼   ► And the impression I get overall

01:07:01 ◼   ► is that nothing like that actually happens.

01:07:04 ◼   ► That like, for the keynote, Apple goes to you,

01:07:07 ◼   ► you don't go to Apple.

01:07:08 ◼   ► And other than that, your interaction with them

01:07:11 ◼   ► is very restricted, they don't really negotiate

01:07:13 ◼   ► with you that much, it's pretty much like they tell you

01:07:16 ◼   ► what to do and you say okay.

01:07:17 ◼   ► - But why does Apple go to you?

01:07:19 ◼   ► They go to you because you're EA,

01:07:21 ◼   ► because you're selling tons and tons of games,

01:07:23 ◼   ► because you're a big game developer.

01:07:25 ◼   ► Sometimes they go to small people, too.

01:07:26 ◼   ► There's two parts to that.

01:07:27 ◼   ► One is just the help us with our marketing effort.

01:07:29 ◼   ► But the other one is, who does have

01:07:31 ◼   ► influence over App Store policies?

01:07:33 ◼   ► Individual developers don't have an--

01:07:37 ◼   ► mom and pop shops don't really have much influence, except

01:07:39 ◼   ► in the aggregate.

01:07:41 ◼   ► And I have to think that big companies--

01:07:43 ◼   ► yeah, but big companies have more of an influence, let's say.

01:07:47 ◼   ► And I don't even know if it's formal or just

01:07:49 ◼   ► subconscious or whatever.

01:07:50 ◼   ► I wonder how much influence things like,

01:07:52 ◼   ► why isn't Microsoft Office in the App Store?

01:07:54 ◼   ► Not that that's a big deal for Apple,

01:07:56 ◼   ► and Apple's going to play all tough and be like,

01:07:57 ◼   ► we don't need Microsoft Office anymore.

01:07:59 ◼   ► We move beyond that.

01:08:00 ◼   ► But in some ways, you know at the very least,

01:08:02 ◼   ► Microsoft has someone they can call on the phone

01:08:04 ◼   ► and talk to a human being and talk to them

01:08:06 ◼   ► about their issues once or twice a year about what

01:08:10 ◼   ► do you think about this, that, and the other thing.

01:08:12 ◼   ► And maybe Apple rebuffs them or whatever.

01:08:13 ◼   ► But there's communication there that's

01:08:14 ◼   ► happening on an individual corporate entity level that

01:08:17 ◼   ► is not happening on an individual developer

01:08:18 ◼   ► level in any capacity.

01:08:20 ◼   ► And I think eventually that has to weigh on them.

01:08:25 ◼   ► Again, even if it's just subconscious,

01:08:27 ◼   ► even if they don't have formal meetings about deciding

01:08:29 ◼   ► what to do about EA or Microsoft or Adobe or anyone else who

01:08:32 ◼   ► could potentially be in the App Store but isn't or whatever,

01:08:35 ◼   ► that it weighs on their minds in a way

01:08:38 ◼   ► that the aggregated mass of angry people blogging

01:08:41 ◼   ► about App Store policies does not.

01:08:43 ◼   ► I think you're selling their influence a little too much

01:08:47 ◼   ► based on no facts, just gut feeling.

01:08:49 ◼   ► That's all we've got to go on.

01:08:52 ◼   ► I just, I really don't think that Apple cares what EA thinks about their App Store policies.

01:08:59 ◼   ► And who knows?

01:09:01 ◼   ► There's like you said, it's a set of very high walls with closed and locked doors.

01:09:06 ◼   ► I'm never going to know what's going on behind there.

01:09:07 ◼   ► But I don't know, the impression I've gotten is that Apple certainly will listen to what

01:09:12 ◼   ► EA says, but I don't think it materially influences what Apple does.

01:09:16 ◼   ► Well, look at the strong army in the e-book thing, though.

01:09:19 ◼   ► Stuff like that goes on in the relatively low-stakes world of the iBook store, which

01:09:24 ◼   ► is nothing compared to the App Store.

01:09:26 ◼   ► They're like, "Oh, we didn't let their app into the App Store to try to twist their

01:09:31 ◼   ► arm on this other negotiation we're having."

01:09:33 ◼   ► That kind of petty crap going on on an individual corporate entity's basis, that's because

01:09:38 ◼   ► the corporate entity they're dealing with is big and important.

01:09:41 ◼   ► I don't think they would ever—Eddie Q's not going to call up the App Store guys and

01:09:45 ◼   ► and tell them to hold Marco's app because Marco said something mean, right?

01:09:49 ◼   ► But if Marco is all of a sudden like a major publisher who is in the middle of the negotiation

01:09:54 ◼   ► with Apple, then that comes into effect.

01:09:56 ◼   ► Like I don't put that petty crap beyond them, and we have now evidence in a legal trial

01:10:00 ◼   ► that they totally do stuff like that.

01:10:03 ◼   ► Turns out some of it's illegal.

01:10:05 ◼   ► But that's not a terribly fair comparison, is it?

01:10:07 ◼   ► Because in the case of the publishers, they had all the cards, or I guess you could say

01:10:10 ◼   ► all the pages.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Marco just has an app and EA just has a couple of games and maybe if

01:10:16 ◼   ► Madden and a bunch of other really popular EA titles were all in the App Store and making a just absolute killing

01:10:22 ◼   ► Then okay at that point. Maybe they have some of the cards, but I don't feel like EA as a silly example

01:10:29 ◼   ► I don't think they really have that much clout in Apple's eyes. Oh, no

01:10:32 ◼   ► I think Apple and the people who run the App Store are still

01:10:36 ◼   ► perhaps unjustifiably, but still kind of a little bit defensive and paranoid about the success of other app stores and

01:10:42 ◼   ► EA pulling out of the Apple App Store and going into the Google, you know Play Store

01:10:48 ◼   ► would make them upset. That's why Apple is constantly putting up the numbers about how awesome their app store is in terms of number of

01:10:54 ◼   ► applications and money given to developers and all that stuff. It's like a little bit does protest too much in all their

01:11:00 ◼   ► things like

01:11:01 ◼   ► Even though they're just so incredibly dominant in the App Store at this point

01:11:05 ◼   ► They do not want that to change and I think like I think they're terrified of like when Amazon starting selling

01:11:11 ◼   ► mp3s DRM free and the music labels wouldn't give them DRM free music because the music labels are basically

01:11:15 ◼   ► Intentionally trying to take power away from Apple by empowering another competitor

01:11:21 ◼   ► Not that the Amazon mp3 store came and swamped the iTunes store

01:11:24 ◼   ► But it was scary there for a minute in terms of their DRM free they're growing

01:11:30 ◼   ► we're not, the music labels are playing hardball with us, I think Apple does not

01:11:33 ◼   ► want their store to be at a disadvantage. And the big players and their games, and

01:11:38 ◼   ► you know, how many companies have the, you know, development bandwidth to

01:11:43 ◼   ► produce the types of games that EA puts in there? Like, the three or four or

01:11:46 ◼   ► five person shop can make an amazing iOS game, but at a certain point you can't

01:11:50 ◼   ► compete with however many umpteen people are making these, you know, big complicated

01:11:53 ◼   ► games that nevertheless run on iOS. Well, and that's exactly what I was gonna say

01:11:57 ◼   ► is, you know, if let's suppose EA pulls out and a handful of smaller indie shops step

01:12:03 ◼   ► in to kind of replace them, you know, what if we had a situation where there was a new,

01:12:08 ◼   ► I don't know, like a flight controller, what was the jetpack joyride or whatever it was

01:12:13 ◼   ► that was popular a year or two ago, or even Words with Friends before it got even really,

01:12:17 ◼   ► really slimy, you know, then Apple could spin it as, "Hey, when EA left, look at all you

01:12:22 ◼   ► little guys that had a chance to make money."

01:12:24 ◼   ► But no one's who's doing the next Call of Duty.

01:12:26 ◼   ► At a certain point, that's going to happen.

01:12:28 ◼   ► As the computing power of iOS devices increases,

01:12:31 ◼   ► at a certain point-- this is something

01:12:33 ◼   ► that the consoles went through many, many years ago.

01:12:36 ◼   ► One guy used to be able to make an Atari 2600 game.

01:12:40 ◼   ► One guy cannot make a PlayStation 4 game.

01:12:42 ◼   ► It's just almost impossible.

01:12:45 ◼   ► Like a AAA title, $60, you're going to buy this

01:12:48 ◼   ► and be happy with it.

01:12:49 ◼   ► You spent $60 on it.

01:12:51 ◼   ► The better your technology gets, the better the graphics are,

01:12:54 ◼   ► the more compute power you have, the more money it costs to produce the game.

01:12:58 ◼   ► It's why game developers were a little bit freaked out when they want HD, because now

01:13:01 ◼   ► all of a sudden the resolution of all your assets increases, and then you need bigger

01:13:05 ◼   ► machines to crunch them, and the artists have to do more work, and you can't fudge the details

01:13:08 ◼   ► anymore, and all this other stuff.

01:13:10 ◼   ► So if things continue apace, iOS is kind of creeping up that same trail, where at a certain

01:13:15 ◼   ► point, yeah, you can make flight control and stuff like that, and those kind of casual

01:13:18 ◼   ► games are fine, but someone's going to make Madden or Call of Duty or Destiny from Bungie

01:13:25 ◼   ► or something, and you can't make Destiny with a five-person shop.

01:13:29 ◼   ► And if the company that makes that pulls out and goes only on another platform, you would

01:13:33 ◼   ► have to form a company the size of Bungie before you can field a game like Destiny.

01:13:38 ◼   ► Or maybe Apple isn't interested in those kind of games.

01:13:43 ◼   ► Consumers are, though.

01:13:44 ◼   ► Consumers are.

01:13:45 ◼   ► Yeah, but how many?

01:13:46 ◼   ► A lot of them.

01:13:47 ◼   ► We'll see when Destiny comes out.

01:13:49 ◼   ► We'll see how the PS4 and Xbox whatever sells.

01:13:52 ◼   ► That's a good point.

01:13:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:54 ◼   ► I mean, like, I mean, they sell them on the PC as well.

01:13:57 ◼   ► That's why everyone goes multi-platform.

01:13:58 ◼   ► I'm just saying, like, iOS devices are not at that level yet.

01:14:01 ◼   ► They can't play those games at all, period.

01:14:03 ◼   ► Right?

01:14:04 ◼   ► So being incapable of playing makes you, oh, we don't have to decide whether people want

01:14:08 ◼   ► to play.

01:14:09 ◼   ► Once they become capable of playing them, then we'll really find out, is that something

01:14:12 ◼   ► people want to do?

01:14:14 ◼   ► You know?

01:14:15 ◼   ► Like the iOS devices aren't going to become you know more expensive relative to people's incomes if only they're only going to get cheaper, right?

01:14:20 ◼   ► So at that point if everybody who can afford you know

01:14:24 ◼   ► An iPad mini also can now play

01:14:28 ◼   ► You know current

01:14:31 ◼   ► Quality triple-a type games

01:14:33 ◼   ► Maybe they do want to like maybe it's maybe they're not just buying Candy Crush because that's the only kind of game

01:14:38 ◼   ► They're interested in maybe it's because they don't want to spend $500 on the game console or $1,000 on a gaming PC to play

01:14:43 ◼   ► that game. But if they could play it with a device they already have, like their web

01:14:46 ◼   ► browsing and whatever, maybe suddenly they're more interested in it. So we'll see how that

01:14:53 ◼   ► turns out.

01:14:54 ◼   ► We will. We should probably wrap up, though.

01:14:56 ◼   ► Yeah, we're getting pretty long here. All right, so thanks a lot to our two sponsors,

01:15:01 ◼   ► Drafts and Squarespace, and we'll see you next week.

01:15:04 ◼   ► Now the show is over They didn't even mean to begin

01:15:11 ◼   ► Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey

01:15:18 ◼   ► wouldn't let him Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:15:28 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm And if you're into Twitter, you can follow

01:15:37 ◼   ► Follow them @CASEYLISS

01:15:42 ◼   ► So that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:15:47 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C

01:15:52 ◼   ► U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:15:54 ◼   ► It's accidental (It's accidental)

01:15:57 ◼   ► They didn't mean to accidental (Accidental)

01:16:02 ◼   ► Tech podcast so long

01:16:06 ◼   ► Yes, I'm saying the wrong words.

01:16:09 ◼   ► I'm teen.

01:16:10 ◼   ► I'm trying to enunciate.

01:16:11 ◼   ► What did you say?

01:16:12 ◼   ► I'm my nose is like a little bit stuffed up and I'm dying in this incredibly hot room.

01:16:17 ◼   ► So I think I'm a little bit more fog horny than usual today.

01:16:20 ◼   ► Look at it this way.

01:16:22 ◼   ► At least you didn't stumble over Logic Pro, whatever.

01:16:24 ◼   ► That was funny though.

01:16:25 ◼   ► If I could only have that back.

01:16:27 ◼   ► I think Marco gave pricing for the iPhone version of drafts and also the iPhone version of draft.

01:16:32 ◼   ► You did.

01:16:32 ◼   ► And then you got it right the second time.

01:16:34 ◼   ► Sorry.

01:16:35 ◼   ► Sorry, yeah.

01:16:36 ◼   ► Speaking is hard.

01:16:37 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:16:43 ◼   ► Nothing happened in the summertime.

01:16:44 ◼   ► Yeah, something like that.

01:16:45 ◼   ► Except for OS X reviews.

01:16:47 ◼   ► That's the only thing that happens.

01:16:49 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

01:16:49 ◼   ► What's the quick update?

01:16:51 ◼   ► Today was the first day that I had

01:16:53 ◼   ► to consult the Darwin source.

01:16:55 ◼   ► So that's always an important point in my review

01:16:58 ◼   ► when I'm reduced to going through the source code.

01:17:01 ◼   ► So today was the day.

01:17:02 ◼   ► So that's pretty good.

01:17:03 ◼   ► I made it what-- I'm probably about halfway done,

01:17:06 ◼   ► and before I had to resort to that.

01:17:10 ◼   ► But every viewer, I'm so glad that exists.

01:17:13 ◼   ► Because I'm like, you know what?

01:17:14 ◼   ► The easiest way to get the answer to this question

01:17:16 ◼   ► is to look at the damn source.

01:17:17 ◼   ► And it always is.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Fun.

01:17:20 ◼   ► And those servers were up.

01:17:21 ◼   ► Open source.app.com.

01:17:23 ◼   ► I was like, oh no, I need the source.

01:17:25 ◼   ► And those were up.

01:17:26 ◼   ► Because you're the only one browsing.

01:17:28 ◼   ► Yeah, seriously.

01:17:29 ◼   ► Yeah, they were up and they were fast.