ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Do you have a yellow highlight? I like a yellow highlight.

00:00:05 ◼   ► That's the intro.

00:00:08 ◼   ► Transparent yellow highlight.

00:00:10 ◼   ► Speaking of pronunciations, who's going to pronounce the fashion label CEO?

00:00:18 ◼   ► I'll take the fall on that if and when we get there.

00:00:21 ◼   ► I don't even know what his name is. I read the thing but I didn't retain the name. Is it hard to pronounce?

00:00:25 ◼   ► I think his regular name is somewhat normal, but the place he came from I think is substantially

00:00:31 ◼   ► not American sounding.

00:00:32 ◼   ► Oh, yes.

00:00:33 ◼   ► I was talking about the company, not the gentleman.

00:00:36 ◼   ► So, you want to talk about that?

00:00:39 ◼   ► So I guess we can talk about that, yeah.

00:00:40 ◼   ► So Apple in the last, what, 24 hours, maybe 48 hours, well, at the time of recording,

00:00:46 ◼   ► has announced that they've hired the former CEO of Yves Saint-Laurent.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Lauren. So no, no, not darn, not T.

00:00:55 ◼   ► - Close, close. - It's Saint-Laurent?

00:00:57 ◼   ► Saint-Laurent, something like that.

00:00:57 ◼   ► - I think it's Eve, isn't it?

00:00:59 ◼   ► - Eve's, I did this research like three hours ago,

00:01:01 ◼   ► so now I've already lost it.

00:01:02 ◼   ► But anyway, you can email Marco about that

00:01:04 ◼   ► because his last name is French.

00:01:06 ◼   ► So he should be the one that took the fall for us.

00:01:08 ◼   ► Anyway, so what is this for?

00:01:10 ◼   ► It's apparently he's been hired as a,

00:01:14 ◼   ► what is it, senior vice president, is that right?

00:01:16 ◼   ► To report directly to Tim.

00:01:18 ◼   ► - Yes, he's basically a senior vice president

00:01:20 ◼   ► of nothing in particular working on special products

00:01:22 ◼   ► special projects. As opposed to all those other projects that are totally not special

00:01:26 ◼   ► at all. Right, exactly. Isn't that great? I mean,

00:01:30 ◼   ► that could be. I mean, the speculation from everybody and this, there were also rumors

00:01:33 ◼   ► about Apple apparently filing for trademarks for the word "I watch" in a whole bunch

00:01:39 ◼   ► of countries in the last couple days. And so everyone's saying, "Oh, this is about

00:01:44 ◼   ► wearable computing because this is somebody from the fashion world." Right? It's the

00:01:48 ◼   ► fashion world? Yes, it is. But what sport does that team play? Right. So, yeah, exactly.

00:01:53 ◼   ► Well, that's one thing. I mean, obviously, you know, obviously a CEO is possibly not

00:01:58 ◼   ► going to be the best designer. But at the same time, like, if you want to know about

00:02:02 ◼   ► the computer market, you'd probably ask Tim Cook if you could, you know? So, anyway, so

00:02:08 ◼   ► all the speculation is about this being about wearables and specifically about a watch in

00:02:13 ◼   ► in all likelihood. I don't know. I mean, we talked a little bit about a possible iWatch

00:02:19 ◼   ► in—oh, that's a terrible name. It just sounds like some kind of illegal, you know,

00:02:25 ◼   ► observation. I don't know. It just sounds dirty. But, I mean, would you guys—would

00:02:30 ◼   ► you wear an iWatch? And do you think it would really take over the world?

00:02:34 ◼   ► I don't know. See, on the one side, I am a reformed watch wearer. And I think I might

00:02:40 ◼   ► mention this in another episode but I liked wearing a watch but I I'm too

00:02:45 ◼   ► cheap to buy the kind of watches I want which is like several hundred dollar

00:02:48 ◼   ► watches not the you know multi-thousand dollar watches that some people have and

00:02:52 ◼   ► I think it would be cool to have a watch that's functional like I was one of

00:02:55 ◼   ► those morons that had the Timex Microsoft watch do you know what I'm

00:02:59 ◼   ► talking about you would yeah with so the watch what it didn't broadcast soap all

00:03:05 ◼   ► over the place. Oh, maybe. No, I'm talking about like old school. And you had to go rinse it off, I don't know. No, no.

00:03:10 ◼   ► I think we're talking about something else. But... I think we're not, but go ahead.

00:03:14 ◼   ► Well, anyway, so whatever it was, it was like a data link or smart link. Where's the chatroom when we needed it?

00:03:18 ◼   ► Well, the thing that communicated via the IR on your computer monitor?

00:03:21 ◼   ► Well, I don't know if it was IR or not, but yeah, it would flash like random lines across the computer monitor.

00:03:27 ◼   ► Oh, right, right, you're right. And then you would hold the watch up to the monitor, and that's how you would get like phone numbers in it and all that.

00:03:33 ◼   ► And it was really cool at the time, but in retrospect it was terrible.

00:03:37 ◼   ► But anyway, so the point is I have already, even as like a 13 year old loser nerd, was already all in on the smartwatch idea.

00:03:47 ◼   ► But I don't know, like I haven't bought a Pebble, and even though I listened to a bunch of Geek Fridays with Faith and Jason talking about it,

00:03:53 ◼   ► and it did sound pretty appealing, and a friend of mine, Phil, has one, it seems a bit early.

00:03:57 ◼   ► But then again, if Apple were to do one, one would hope they would do it better.

00:04:00 ◼   ► So I guess it's a very long and rambling way of saying, I'd probably consider it if not do it, but we'll see what happens.

00:04:07 ◼   ► What do you think, John?

00:04:08 ◼   ► It seems highly unlikely that I would ever wear an Apple watch, because I don't wear a watch at all.

00:04:13 ◼   ► Like, even at least on the cell phone front, I carry a cell phone.

00:04:16 ◼   ► It's not an iPhone, but at least I have it. But I don't have a watch.

00:04:19 ◼   ► I don't think I've owned a watch since, I think like a sports watch, like maybe 10 years ago,

00:04:25 ◼   ► and I have it sitting in my drawer if someone hasn't stole it from me, right?

00:04:28 ◼   ► But I never I never wear like I guess if I was gonna go running

00:04:31 ◼   ► I needed something to keep time I would take it out and put it on but it's hard for me to imagine having something like

00:04:36 ◼   ► That and deciding even though I haven't worn a watch for basically my entire adult life now

00:04:40 ◼   ► I'm going to start wearing one the only scenario

00:04:43 ◼   ► I can see that happening is if I eventually get an iPhone and there's some sort of integration where this is like a

00:04:48 ◼   ► More convenient way to get information without taking out your phone or something, but even that's a stretch especially considering

00:04:56 ◼   ► I don't even have an iPhone yet.

00:04:59 ◼   ► I mean, I think it's also worth considering.

00:05:02 ◼   ► I know that's one of my catch phrases.

00:05:03 ◼   ► But it's also worth considering that if you would have asked

00:05:08 ◼   ► people in late 2006, if Apple released a phone with no

00:05:16 ◼   ► buttons and no removable battery and no keyboard,

00:05:19 ◼   ► would you buy it?

00:05:20 ◼   ► A lot of people would say no.

00:05:24 ◼   ► A lot of people did say that.

00:05:25 ◼   ► and when it was first announced.

00:05:27 ◼   ► But now we're all using either that or something very similar

00:05:30 ◼   ► to it from somebody else.

00:05:32 ◼   ► Except for me.

00:05:33 ◼   ► Except for you.

00:05:34 ◼   ► But everybody else on this podcast,

00:05:36 ◼   ► and many other people in the world who

00:05:38 ◼   ► have the means to get a smartphone,

00:05:40 ◼   ► go with an option very similar to that.

00:05:43 ◼   ► And so I have to wonder, what could they

00:05:48 ◼   ► do in the watch or watch-like area?

00:05:52 ◼   ► And chances are, I mean, whenever people try to predict

00:05:56 ◼   ► Apple products, like new categories before they're,

00:05:59 ◼   ► not just, oh, this is gonna get a faster CPU next week,

00:06:02 ◼   ► well, who cares?

00:06:03 ◼   ► Whenever people try to predict Apple products,

00:06:05 ◼   ► they almost always can only predict it in the context

00:06:08 ◼   ► of what we know today.

00:06:10 ◼   ► For instance, if you look back only like a month ago,

00:06:13 ◼   ► look back at the predictions for, or the mock-ups

00:06:18 ◼   ► for what a flat iOS redesign would look like.

00:06:22 ◼   ► And so many designers made these,

00:06:24 ◼   ► because the rumors were that Apple is redesigning iOS

00:06:26 ◼   ► and it's going to look all flat, which

00:06:28 ◼   ► was not far from the truth.

00:06:29 ◼   ► But what everybody came up with was basically

00:06:34 ◼   ► iOS 6 minus the gradients.

00:06:36 ◼   ► And it looked-- it was like even the same color

00:06:39 ◼   ► palette, all the same fonts, all the same layouts,

00:06:42 ◼   ► all the same everything, except they just

00:06:45 ◼   ► removed the gradients, basically.

00:06:47 ◼   ► And it was not nearly imaginative enough.

00:06:49 ◼   ► And Apple, of course, had radically different plans

00:06:52 ◼   ► in mind for iOS 7, which now we know about.

00:06:55 ◼   ► And by the way, a lot of it goes beyond just removing gradients

00:07:00 ◼   ► and all the colors and most of the font weight.

00:07:03 ◼   ► But I have to wonder in the watch world,

00:07:06 ◼   ► or in the wearable world, what are they going to do that no

00:07:10 ◼   ► one's really going to predict?

00:07:11 ◼   ► And obviously, by definition, we're

00:07:13 ◼   ► going to have trouble predicting this.

00:07:14 ◼   ► But I wouldn't write off the idea just yet of, oh,

00:07:18 ◼   ► What if they are they gonna do a watch am I gonna wear it or not because?

00:07:21 ◼   ► They really are more likely to do something that we hadn't really considered

00:07:26 ◼   ► Yeah, well the thing that I'm asking myself as I'm listening to you is what?

00:07:33 ◼   ► What is Apple solving by having a watch that's smarter than your average watch and the obvious answer is well

00:07:40 ◼   ► It's another way. It's a second screen for the device that's already called a second screen, but it's a second screen

00:07:47 ◼   ► so you don't have to pull your phone out of your pocket, which is a total first-world problem.

00:07:51 ◼   ► But, I mean, I feel like they would do more than that. That's not enough.

00:07:55 ◼   ► And I keep thinking in my head, well,

00:07:59 ◼   ► I think Tim Cook mentioned that he wears a fuel band, like you had said a moment ago, if I'm not mistaken.

00:08:03 ◼   ► He said he wears a fuel band. I know that a lot of people have Fitbits.

00:08:07 ◼   ► And I know that, like Aaron, my wife, for example, has a Fitbit, and she likes it, but it's not terribly accurate.

00:08:14 ◼   ► And so my thought is well, maybe this watch will have some sort of much more accurate sensor

00:08:19 ◼   ► That will have some sort of really nice integration kind of like Nike Plus, but better

00:08:23 ◼   ► But then again, I can't envision how you can make a better sensor than what we've already got

00:08:29 ◼   ► So I don't know what problem Apple is solving with this phantom watch

00:08:33 ◼   ► But I got to imagine it's gonna be something that we didn't expect just like you were saying Marco

00:08:38 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, despite the fact that I don't have an iPhone and probably not gonna wear a watch

00:08:42 ◼   ► I've been on board with the idea of Apple producing something that attaches to your

00:08:48 ◼   ► wrist or some other part, some small device like that because it makes a lot of sense

00:08:53 ◼   ► from Apple's perspective for a lot of reasons.

00:08:56 ◼   ► I think we went through these on Twitter or maybe someone blogged about it a while back.

00:09:01 ◼   ► Back when the iWatch rumors first came out, people were just listing reasons it makes

00:09:05 ◼   ► sense.

00:09:06 ◼   ► It's a consumer electronic device.

00:09:08 ◼   ► Apple is good at making them.

00:09:09 ◼   ► lot of deals with companies and manufacturing. So it's right in their wheelhouse. It's not

00:09:13 ◼   ► like they're making windmills or something. They're going to be cheap. You presume that

00:09:19 ◼   ► you can't make anything that's small, that expensive. It's not going to be made out of

00:09:23 ◼   ► diamonds. So it's inexpensive. Inexpensive means you can sell a lot of them because a

00:09:26 ◼   ► lot of people can afford them. You don't have to have someone who can afford a $200, $300

00:09:31 ◼   ► phone plus a two-year contract or something like that. Or even something as cheap as a

00:09:36 ◼   ► it's going to be presumably very cheap.

00:09:38 ◼   ► And that means they can sell a lot of them,

00:09:41 ◼   ► and a lot of people are eligible to buy this thing,

00:09:44 ◼   ► especially if they don't tie it to any of their more expensive devices.

00:09:47 ◼   ► It's cheap, and who can't buy one?

00:09:50 ◼   ► You don't need to be a Mac user or a PC user,

00:09:52 ◼   ► you don't need to be computer savvy,

00:09:53 ◼   ► you don't need to hook it up to your television

00:09:55 ◼   ► and have a cable subscription or anything else.

00:09:57 ◼   ► It's just kind of like a small, reasonably inexpensive thing

00:10:00 ◼   ► that presumably they can get good margins on

00:10:01 ◼   ► because it will really be cheap for them to make

00:10:03 ◼   ► and they'll sell it for 40, 50% margin on it.

00:10:06 ◼   ► It's not crazy to think of.

00:10:08 ◼   ► And so you're like, OK, this seems

00:10:10 ◼   ► like a pretty good product that has characteristics

00:10:12 ◼   ► that fit with something that Apple could sell

00:10:14 ◼   ► a ton of at a good margin and that's

00:10:17 ◼   ► not outside its realm of things that it normally makes.

00:10:20 ◼   ► And then the only question you're left with is, all right,

00:10:22 ◼   ► well, why would anyone ever buy this thing?

00:10:25 ◼   ► All these characteristics sound great.

00:10:26 ◼   ► What are you going to sell them?

00:10:27 ◼   ► A lump of plastic for $50 and it costs you $25 to make?

00:10:30 ◼   ► and you're making billions of dollars.

00:10:33 ◼   ► I think it's probably not that complicated.

00:10:37 ◼   ► Casey was saying, "Alright, so presumably this thing has a screen, and presumably I

00:10:45 ◼   ► can do stuff with it that I would normally have to take my phone out of my pocket for."

00:10:50 ◼   ► But that's not an important enough reason, because who cares if I get it in their phone

00:10:52 ◼   ► out of their pocket?

00:10:54 ◼   ► If everything comes together in the right way, and Apple does a good job with this product,

00:10:59 ◼   ► I think that those advantages that we scoff at now are exactly the thing that will make

00:11:05 ◼   ► this a big seller and addictive device.

00:11:07 ◼   ► Again, if they do a good job.

00:11:08 ◼   ► It's not de facto if they make something that's a smart watch that will fulfill this.

00:11:13 ◼   ► But what I'm thinking of is—I wrote something about this on my blog a while back, the Technological

00:11:17 ◼   ► Conservatism article, where anything you describe that doesn't exist now that removes some

00:11:23 ◼   ► tiny minor annoyance from your life sounds ridiculous.

00:11:25 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, such a big deal.

00:11:26 ◼   ► I've got to get my phone out of my pocket.

00:11:28 ◼   ► so hard to dig into my pocket and then I have to grip the phone and take my hand out of

00:11:31 ◼   ► my pocket, bring my arm up to my face, turn my eyes to look at the thing. That's so much

00:11:36 ◼   ► harder than having to turn my wrist. It's not that much harder and you can make fun

00:11:41 ◼   ► of people for having this thing. But if you get used to doing the ever so slightly easier

00:11:46 ◼   ► thing, it becomes annoying to go back to the old thing. These things build up in a series

00:11:51 ◼   ► of them. That's what I did in my article explaining like, look at any past invention. You could

00:11:57 ◼   ► have poo-pooed it with the same exact thing.

00:11:59 ◼   ► And yet, if you go back 17 of these inventions, no one would want to live in a world without

00:12:02 ◼   ► 20 or 30 or 40 of these things, but they all build on each other.

00:12:06 ◼   ► So if they can make this even just a little bit less annoying than something that we do

00:12:10 ◼   ► now, even if you were to describe it and it sounds ridiculous, I think that that's enough.

00:12:17 ◼   ► If it's a good product and people like it and it makes our lives a little bit better

00:12:20 ◼   ► and it's not that expensive, and it does maybe one or two things to get people in the door

00:12:24 ◼   ► to get that critical mass. Once you get used to having it and it provides some benefit to you,

00:12:28 ◼   ► even if the benefit sounds incredibly lame and makes you sound like a terrible person,

00:12:31 ◼   ► and all first world problem, and who needs this thing, and you get made fun of on the news and

00:12:35 ◼   ► everything, people will keep doing it. Just think of all the things in our life they're like, "I

00:12:38 ◼   ► know, right down to the smartphone itself." I think that's enough if they do a good job

00:12:44 ◼   ► with the product. So I'm looking forward to what they produce. Again, not that I think I'll get one,

00:12:48 ◼   ► but who knows? **Matt Stauffer**

00:12:51 ◼   ► Got to always throw that in there. **Matt Stauffer**

00:12:52 ◼   ► The thing is, I think a lot of people listening and people who send feedback get tied up with

00:12:58 ◼   ► the idea of what we like and use and what we think will be successful and is a good

00:13:02 ◼   ► idea.

00:13:03 ◼   ► They're not the same thing necessarily.

00:13:04 ◼   ► We're all, I think, very aware of what our wants and needs are not the same as everyone

00:13:09 ◼   ► else's.

00:13:10 ◼   ► There's no reason that a product that we choose not to buy is necessarily a bad product

00:13:14 ◼   ► or vice versa.

00:13:15 ◼   ► I think a lot of people in the chat are trying to figure out what kind of hardware the watch

00:13:22 ◼   ► will have and what else about that.

00:13:24 ◼   ► And I think-- and you mentioned a little bit about this, too.

00:13:28 ◼   ► Whether it would be kind of a standalone thing,

00:13:31 ◼   ► like its own device, whether it would have its own storage,

00:13:34 ◼   ► or be able to run its own apps, what kind of sensors

00:13:38 ◼   ► it would have, my guess, if they actually go through with this,

00:13:42 ◼   ► and if this watch is a real thing--

00:13:43 ◼   ► and there sure is a lot of smoke around that.

00:13:48 ◼   ► There's probably something there.

00:13:50 ◼   ► All the technology is there.

00:13:51 ◼   ► Obviously when you look at things like the Pebble and that other one, which whose name I forget, but Lex Friedman likes it

00:13:57 ◼   ► You look at things like that. Obviously technology is there

00:14:00 ◼   ► to do a smartwatch, but I think it's always going to be viewed as an accessory to

00:14:07 ◼   ► Another iOS device like just like and not quite a second screen necessarily

00:14:13 ◼   ► People use that term a lot

00:14:15 ◼   ► I think that's most of the way there

00:14:16 ◼   ► But I really see it as like like for instance you got you got to figure out the power envelope here

00:14:21 ◼   ► this thing is not going to have its own GPS chip.

00:14:23 ◼   ► It's probably not going to have many sensors.

00:14:27 ◼   ► You know, it can have things like a pedometer

00:14:31 ◼   ► and an accelerometer.

00:14:32 ◼   ► I guess it probably uses the same thing.

00:14:34 ◼   ► It can have things like that,

00:14:35 ◼   ► but it's probably not going to have a lot of its own power.

00:14:39 ◼   ► It's probably going to be just like,

00:14:40 ◼   ► almost like a Bluetooth headset kind of level of processing.

00:14:45 ◼   ► You know, just its own Bluetooth thing

00:14:47 ◼   ► using all the low power stuff and 4.0, whatever that is,

00:14:51 ◼   ► and it would use your other iOS device,

00:14:55 ◼   ► and it might not have to be an iPhone,

00:14:58 ◼   ► maybe it can use an iPod touch,

00:14:59 ◼   ► maybe it can use an iPad, who knows.

00:15:01 ◼   ► It can use your other iOS device nearby over Bluetooth

00:15:04 ◼   ► to do any kind of heavy lifting.

00:15:06 ◼   ► Or even the iOS device controls it.

00:15:08 ◼   ► - Or God forbid, a web application.

00:15:10 ◼   ► - No, forget it, that's crazy.

00:15:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:15:12 ◼   ► - Well, and figure also, look at things like,

00:15:16 ◼   ► Like, remember when Panic tore apart the HDMI thunderbolt adapter, or no, the HDMI lightning

00:15:22 ◼   ► adapter and found this tiny little arm processor in there and figured out that it's basically

00:15:31 ◼   ► a little tiny arm chip running a little tiny embedded version of AirPlay?

00:15:37 ◼   ► That's a perfect size thing to go in a watch.

00:15:39 ◼   ► Figure, shove something like that in a watch with almost all of the rest of the space being

00:15:43 ◼   ► taken up by a big battery and a very, very thin screen on top, would the screen even

00:15:50 ◼   ► need to be a touchscreen?

00:15:51 ◼   ► You know, because you can't really, as, because doesn't the current iPod Nano, that's a touchscreen,

00:15:56 ◼   ► right?

00:15:57 ◼   ► It is, and I want to talk about that a little bit more in a minute.

00:15:59 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I see this little thing as basically an iPod replacement, because I use the iPod

00:16:03 ◼   ► Shuffle a lot, and this is the only thing I think could maybe have it, is like, a lot

00:16:06 ◼   ► of people are looking for an iPod that's as small as possible, especially like runners

00:16:10 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:16:11 ◼   ► There's no reason this thing couldn't play audio with an incredible battery life except

00:16:15 ◼   ► for the niggling detail of how does that audio get into my ears because you're not going

00:16:19 ◼   ► to have a cord running from your wrist up to your ears.

00:16:21 ◼   ► But if it has Bluetooth and it makes Bluetooth earbuds or something like that, that is a

00:16:25 ◼   ► solution that would be attractive to all the current people who buy the iPod Shuffle.

00:16:29 ◼   ► And again, the iPod Shuffle must cost them at this point $15 to make and they sell it

00:16:33 ◼   ► for like $39, $49 an hour.

00:16:35 ◼   ► But I don't see this thing having a lot of storage though because I really see this thing

00:16:39 ◼   ► thing is, for this to be good, it can't be very bulky, it can't be very big, and so you're

00:16:44 ◼   ► talking a very, very tight amount of space in there, and all the space that's there must

00:16:48 ◼   ► be dedicated to a battery, because it's going to be really challenging to get any kind of

00:16:51 ◼   ► good battery life.

00:16:52 ◼   ► Well, how big do you think the battery is in the Shuffle? Because the Shuffle is tiny,

00:16:55 ◼   ► and most of the room is taken up by humongous buttons and switches that will not be needed

00:16:59 ◼   ► to be on this thing. The battery must be minuscule in the Shuffle, and it plays audio for hours

00:17:03 ◼   ► and hours. And I think especially if they do something—

00:17:05 ◼   ► But it's not doing wireless.

00:17:06 ◼   ► But I think especially if they do like all this prototype stuff of like you know curved glass or whatever basically

00:17:11 ◼   ► Spreading the mass out in a curved shape around your wrist gives you a lot more volume than making like the terrible pebble thing

00:17:17 ◼   ► where it's like a

00:17:18 ◼   ► You know a box a matchbox sitting on top of your wrist and then as a strap

00:17:22 ◼   ► I imagine this device spreading the volume of the stuff inside it

00:17:26 ◼   ► Across a much larger area than just having a box and a strap plus a box and a strap would not be Apple style

00:17:32 ◼   ► So I think they have room for enough storage to say contain a bunch of podcasts and a low-power Bluetooth thing

00:17:39 ◼   ► Or maybe version one isn't that great or whatever?

00:17:41 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think we expect to see this until next year, but I think they could pull it off

00:17:45 ◼   ► basically an iPod shuffle plus a pedometer plus some kind of

00:17:50 ◼   ► You know screen to give you information from somewhere and that's it

00:17:54 ◼   ► Yeah, you know I have a couple thoughts about this firstly a lot of times and I've been racking my brain trying to think

00:18:01 ◼   ► example and I can't, but a lot of times when Apple has new technologies you can

00:18:07 ◼   ► kind of smell or see the smoke or smell the fire from a distance and I don't

00:18:12 ◼   ► keep up with the low-level technologies and what's new but I'm asking myself

00:18:17 ◼   ► well are there any new Bluetooth profiles like Bluetooth low energy or

00:18:21 ◼   ► something like that that's even newer that's come out recently that maybe

00:18:25 ◼   ► would enable this sort of thing and that's kind of a rhetorical question I

00:18:28 ◼   ► And I don't know that we have an answer to that right now.

00:18:31 ◼   ► And the other thing I wanted to mention was my friend, and I

00:18:35 ◼   ► think our friend Chris Harris, he posted something very brief

00:18:39 ◼   ► on his blog a couple days ago, which I'll paste in the chat.

00:18:42 ◼   ► And what he was saying is everyone is complaining and

00:18:45 ◼   ► moaning about the icons in iOS 7.

00:18:48 ◼   ► But if you envision those same icons on a much smaller device

00:18:52 ◼   ► like the current iPod Nano, suddenly that Safari icon we

00:18:55 ◼   ► hate actually kind of looks right. And I just wanted to pose that as a little thought exercise.

00:19:02 ◼   ► And I don't know if you guys have any input on that. If not, you can tell me about something

00:19:06 ◼   ► awesome. Well, and we did get a big hint. Somebody on one of the press briefings or something,

00:19:10 ◼   ► somebody got someone at Apple to comment that iOS 7 was designed with future devices in mind.

00:19:17 ◼   ► And obviously that could just be, "Oh, well, we're going to make, you know, a bigger iPhone with auto

00:19:22 ◼   ► layout that stretches everything. But it could also be things like this.

00:19:26 ◼   ► It could also be, well, iOS 7's new aesthetic

00:19:30 ◼   ► would look a lot better than iOS 6. It would look a lot better

00:19:34 ◼   ► on a really tiny low resolution screen possibly. Who knows?

00:19:38 ◼   ► I think there's something to that. Because on

00:19:42 ◼   ► a tiny screen you don't have a lot of space for ornamentation

00:19:46 ◼   ► and you can't really discern fine textures and things like that.

00:19:50 ◼   ► You need everything to be very simple, although I guess having a bunch of text labels won't really work either.

00:19:55 ◼   ► I think we all agree that this thing is not going to run iOS anyway.

00:19:59 ◼   ► No, but it might look like iOS. At least in the first eight years of its life it's not going to run iOS.

00:20:04 ◼   ► Right, exactly. But they have all that. I think you're right, John.

00:20:07 ◼   ► I think this is the continuation of the iPod line, basically.

00:20:11 ◼   ► They have all the parts they need in the iPod line already.

00:20:16 ◼   ► You know, they have that nice embedded OS, they have all this stuff running on top of

00:20:20 ◼   ► it, they have a lot of miniaturization, and they figured out tiny screen navigation.

00:20:26 ◼   ► So I do think there sure is a lot of smoke here.

00:20:30 ◼   ► Yeah, because the iPod line has been diverging.

00:20:34 ◼   ► It's been the iPod Touch, which is basically like an iPod in name only, and that's on one

00:20:37 ◼   ► side of it, and the classic kind of lurking there.

00:20:40 ◼   ► And then every other iPod has just been trying to disappear, like slowly getting smaller

00:20:44 ◼   ► and smaller until it almost disappeared.

00:20:46 ◼   ► The shuffle almost disappeared when they had the buttonless one.

00:20:48 ◼   ► And they said, "No, we can't do that.

00:20:50 ◼   ► We can't make it actually disappear.

00:20:52 ◼   ► We need something."

00:20:53 ◼   ► And then it's like, "All right.

00:20:54 ◼   ► Well, it gets bigger again.

00:20:55 ◼   ► No, no.

00:20:56 ◼   ► Can we make it smaller and bigger and smaller and bigger?"

00:20:57 ◼   ► And it's just they want that thing to go away, and they can't figure out what you do with

00:21:00 ◼   ► it.

00:21:01 ◼   ► I guess you clip it on your clothes.

00:21:02 ◼   ► You can't carry it when it's small or for a certain size.

00:21:04 ◼   ► Maybe a touchscreen will help us hide the buttons.

00:21:07 ◼   ► But then how do you hold this thing and try to use the touchscreen at the same size?

00:21:11 ◼   ► They want it to go away.

00:21:12 ◼   ► So, if you could strap it to your wrist and relabel it a watch, that solves a lot of the

00:21:19 ◼   ► design challenges of the Shuffle and Nano line as they've been trying to shrink away

00:21:22 ◼   ► into nothing.

00:21:26 ◼   ► Speaking of nothing that we were just talking about…

00:21:29 ◼   ► Good transition.

00:21:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm really good at this.

00:21:34 ◼   ► Professionals.

00:21:35 ◼   ► Our first sponsor this week is an iPhone--or actually,

00:21:39 ◼   ► iOS, sorry--an iOS game called Optia, O-P-T-I-A.

00:21:46 ◼   ► Optia is a beautiful and intuitive puzzle game for iOS

00:21:49 ◼   ► about reflecting light.

00:21:50 ◼   ► So each level, you have a laser on one side or somewhere

00:21:53 ◼   ► in the level, and you have one or more targets in the level.

00:21:56 ◼   ► And there's a nice little hex grid

00:21:57 ◼   ► to arrange all these things on.

00:21:59 ◼   ► And you go and place mirrors and other objects

00:22:03 ◼   ► that move or alter this beam of light from the laser,

00:22:07 ◼   ► and you try to hit all the targets.

00:22:09 ◼   ► And it's this great puzzle game.

00:22:12 ◼   ► You know, they sent me this game months ago when they booked it,

00:22:15 ◼   ► and I played it a lot.

00:22:16 ◼   ► It's really good.

00:22:17 ◼   ► It has 100 levels in the main campaign.

00:22:20 ◼   ► And one thing I liked a lot about it--

00:22:23 ◼   ► and I even emailed them to say how great this was--

00:22:26 ◼   ► the tutorial is really great.

00:22:28 ◼   ► There's no words.

00:22:29 ◼   ► You know, most games, like, you know,

00:22:31 ◼   ► You know, the first time you launch most games, you launch it and there's like some giant

00:22:35 ◼   ► wall of text explaining what to do.

00:22:38 ◼   ► Or there's nothing explaining what to do and you just have to figure it out and they don't

00:22:41 ◼   ► do a very good job of teaching you.

00:22:42 ◼   ► Very, very few games teach you properly as you play in some kind of intuitive way and

00:22:48 ◼   ► they really do it very well.

00:22:50 ◼   ► They have a great tutorial that you just learn as you go in a very, very intuitive fashion.

00:22:55 ◼   ► So anyway, Optia has very, very simple mechanics, but there's a huge amount of depth and variety

00:23:01 ◼   ► to the puzzles and their solutions.

00:23:03 ◼   ► So their philosophy was rather than having complexity

00:23:07 ◼   ► for its own sake, the game requires

00:23:09 ◼   ► you to find clever new ways of configuring your mirrors.

00:23:12 ◼   ► And after 80 levels, they say there's still

00:23:15 ◼   ► new mechanics to discover.

00:23:17 ◼   ► So there's a lot here, very, very deep game.

00:23:20 ◼   ► It's a thinker's game.

00:23:21 ◼   ► It's a puzzle game.

00:23:23 ◼   ► It's a universal app.

00:23:24 ◼   ► You buy it once.

00:23:24 ◼   ► You can play it on any iOS device.

00:23:26 ◼   ► And there's no in-app purchases, no coin packs,

00:23:30 ◼   ► None of that stupid stuff.

00:23:31 ◼   ► It is just an honest game, which I like a lot.

00:23:34 ◼   ► That's very rare these days.

00:23:36 ◼   ► There's also-- there's no timer.

00:23:38 ◼   ► It's not going to rush you.

00:23:39 ◼   ► It's not like a quick action game

00:23:41 ◼   ► where you have to be locked onto your phone

00:23:42 ◼   ► with tight, sweaty hands while you play this.

00:23:45 ◼   ► It's a very-- it's a thinker's game.

00:23:47 ◼   ► It's a puzzle game.

00:23:49 ◼   ► Personally, that's my favorite kind.

00:23:51 ◼   ► So it's very highly rated on the App Store.

00:23:53 ◼   ► Go check it out.

00:23:54 ◼   ► It's $2.99.

00:23:56 ◼   ► And it was actually made as a little side note.

00:23:59 ◼   ► It was made by two brothers a mathematician and an artist and I think that's kind of cool

00:24:04 ◼   ► Anyway, so go check it out. The artwork is beautiful. The gameplay is great. Nice thinkers game. It's called Optia

00:24:10 ◼   ► Optia and search for it in the App Store and I will put the link in the show notes

00:24:16 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Optia for sponsoring and really go check this game out. It's three bucks

00:24:20 ◼   ► You got you got to check it out. No, it is really good

00:24:22 ◼   ► I was I've been playing it for the last week and and the pacing is perfect

00:24:26 ◼   ► It's very simple up front. The tutorial, I completely echo what you just said, the tutorial's excellent,

00:24:33 ◼   ► but it gets harder very gradually and the way you want it to.

00:24:36 ◼   ► So there were a couple times I got stuck after I don't remember how many levels,

00:24:40 ◼   ► and I would kind of put it away, think for a little bit, come back,

00:24:43 ◼   ► and then I was able to get through that level.

00:24:45 ◼   ► And that's the right kind of difficulty to me.

00:24:47 ◼   ► Enough that it makes you kind of sit back and think, but not so much that you're like,

00:24:50 ◼   ► "Oh god, I hate this and I want to break this iPad over my knee."

00:24:54 ◼   ► So it is really, really good. Go check it out.

00:24:57 ◼   ► - There's a level editor too, right? - Pardon me?

00:24:59 ◼   ► There's a level editor too, right?

00:25:01 ◼   ► I don't recall, actually. I was just playing through the campaign

00:25:05 ◼   ► and that's been keeping me busy.

00:25:06 ◼   ► I was just looking at their demo video.

00:25:07 ◼   ► It shows someone making a level and then uploading it.

00:25:10 ◼   ► Oh, I guess so then. Look at that.

00:25:12 ◼   ► Oh, look at this. Yeah, hold on. That's buried in here.

00:25:15 ◼   ► There's over a thousand levels uploaded by players and sorted by rating

00:25:19 ◼   ► and a level editor, so you can...

00:25:21 ◼   ► And it's totally free, and it simply unlocks when you've beaten enough levels.

00:25:25 ◼   ► That's pretty cool.

00:25:26 ◼   ► Yeah, it's kind of like the PlayStation/Xbox One thing, where the fact that you can pay

00:25:33 ◼   ► money for a game and then play it is now a really massive selling point of a game, as

00:25:37 ◼   ► in it's not going to beg you for money.

00:25:39 ◼   ► My son is currently playing one of those free-to-play games on the iPad, and I warned him about

00:25:44 ◼   ► it, and I talked to him about it, and he understands intellectually what's going on, but he still

00:25:50 ◼   ► "But can I just get this thing?" And for these coins, it's like, "Don't you realize?"

00:25:55 ◼   ► At this point, it's taken like $15 from him already of his own money that he's paid for

00:25:59 ◼   ► just junk in this game. It's just so refreshing to go back to the good old days when you could

00:26:04 ◼   ► pay money in exchange for a product and then enjoy it.

00:26:08 ◼   ► And the phrase "free to play," that's... ugh. Anytime you have to add words to "free,"

00:26:14 ◼   ► that's bad news. That's always going to be some kind of scam.

00:26:18 ◼   ► It's like the USA Patriot Act. Free to play means not free to play.

00:26:22 ◼   ► Right, exactly. No child left behind.

00:26:26 ◼   ► Oh, God, let's not get me started on that. Oh, goodness.

00:26:30 ◼   ► So, Marco, I noticed a flurry of what looked like productive activity

00:26:34 ◼   ► over the last week, and you were apparently in iTunes Connect.

00:26:38 ◼   ► What's going on, man? Well, I was trying to be in iTunes Connect.

00:26:42 ◼   ► Well, touche. So, what's up? I decided,

00:26:46 ◼   ► I mean, I don't really have that much to say yet,

00:26:48 ◼   ► but I decided a little less than a week ago

00:26:53 ◼   ► that I wanted another app to exist.

00:26:55 ◼   ► Not the one I've been working on,

00:26:56 ◼   ► but I wanted something else to exist,

00:26:59 ◼   ► and something that I would use every day.

00:27:01 ◼   ► And so my other app, I've actually

00:27:03 ◼   ► only been working on the web component so far,

00:27:06 ◼   ► and I'm just about to start the iOS stuff.

00:27:09 ◼   ► But I decided to have a second app

00:27:12 ◼   ► that I was making just because it's

00:27:14 ◼   ► a really, really simple thing.

00:27:16 ◼   ► I'm sorry, this is gonna tease everybody

00:27:18 ◼   ► in a really cruel way.

00:27:20 ◼   ► It isn't that exciting, it's a very, very simple,

00:27:22 ◼   ► you know, very low functionality app,

00:27:27 ◼   ► but just something I wanted.

00:27:28 ◼   ► So I decided to whip it up and I'm gonna put it up for sale

00:27:31 ◼   ► for like a dollar, probably by next week.

00:27:35 ◼   ► I'm sorting out a tax ID issue with iTunes Connect,

00:27:38 ◼   ► but once I get through all that, I'll put it up for sale,

00:27:41 ◼   ► you'll all see what it is, and it's really simple

00:27:43 ◼   ► and really stupid, but I want it to exist

00:27:45 ◼   ► I'm going to use it a lot, so we'll see.

00:27:48 ◼   ► One of the biggest reasons I wanted to do it,

00:27:51 ◼   ► not only because I want it to exist,

00:27:53 ◼   ► but because first of all, it got me back into iOS development.

00:27:58 ◼   ► I mean, keep in mind, because of various timing of Instapaper

00:28:01 ◼   ► and the magazine sales, I haven't actually

00:28:03 ◼   ► written iOS code in probably six months off the top of my head.

00:28:07 ◼   ► It's been a while, maybe five months.

00:28:10 ◼   ► Either way, it's been a long time

00:28:11 ◼   ► since I've written iOS code.

00:28:13 ◼   ► And it's been even longer than that

00:28:14 ◼   ► since I've written substantial iOS code.

00:28:16 ◼   ► And so this was kind of a way to warm me back up to it,

00:28:19 ◼   ► get me back into it, and just practice

00:28:22 ◼   ► before I tackle my next big project's iOS code base, which

00:28:25 ◼   ► is probably going to be non-trivial in scale.

00:28:29 ◼   ► And I hope it's going to last a long time.

00:28:31 ◼   ► So it was nice to have kind of this warm-up round

00:28:33 ◼   ► first to do a very, very simple app.

00:28:36 ◼   ► And I will see if I can get away with this with Apple.

00:28:39 ◼   ► But I made the app look like an iOS 7 app,

00:28:42 ◼   ► even though it's written for iOS 6,

00:28:43 ◼   ► so it can be in the store now.

00:28:46 ◼   ► So I think it was kind of interesting making an iOS 7

00:28:50 ◼   ► design and getting into that and faking

00:28:54 ◼   ► all the stuff for iOS 6.

00:28:57 ◼   ► Is this your first Arc app?

00:28:59 ◼   ► No, the magazine was.

00:29:01 ◼   ► Instapaper never made it to Arc, but the magazine did.

00:29:04 ◼   ► And at first I was like, well, I don't really need this,

00:29:08 ◼   ► because I'm perfectly fine doing manual retain release

00:29:13 ◼   ► and auto-release and I never really had major bugs with that so I really didn't need Arc

00:29:18 ◼   ► for that but it is nice. It's a nice convenience to have, you know, so I switched to it with

00:29:23 ◼   ► the magazine during some like point release and yeah, it's fine. I still don't really

00:29:28 ◼   ► think I have much use for things like storyboards but yeah, Arc is good.

00:29:32 ◼   ► Are you using Xcode 5 or no? Well, no, you can because you can't build

00:29:37 ◼   ► App Store versions with that yet. Oh, that's right, yeah.

00:29:40 ◼   ► So this is all using the old tools and the old SDK,

00:29:43 ◼   ► but writing an app in the new style.

00:29:44 ◼   ► And then, I mean, it runs on iOS 7.

00:29:47 ◼   ► It runs great, because my testing iPhone was iOS 7.

00:29:52 ◼   ► But I had to dig out my TIFFs phone and my old iPad

00:29:56 ◼   ► or my iOS 6 test devices.

00:29:58 ◼   ► But yeah, it was nice.

00:30:01 ◼   ► I really do appreciate the value of practice.

00:30:04 ◼   ► And when you just work on one app for a while,

00:30:08 ◼   ► You don't really get a lot of opportunities

00:30:10 ◼   ► to practice with a clean slate.

00:30:13 ◼   ► It was an app that uses APIs and techniques

00:30:17 ◼   ► that I've never used before, so that was fun too.

00:30:19 ◼   ► And yeah, it's just a fun little thing.

00:30:22 ◼   ► Chances are no one's going to buy it, except 10 people or so.

00:30:26 ◼   ► But I don't really care.

00:30:27 ◼   ► Even if no one buys it, it serves its purpose already.

00:30:31 ◼   ► So is it using auto layout?

00:30:34 ◼   ► No.

00:30:35 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

00:30:36 ◼   ► I haven't gone that far.

00:30:37 ◼   ► You seem bold, just wanted to ask.

00:30:39 ◼   ► Well, to be fair, it only has two screens,

00:30:41 ◼   ► and they're both very, very simple.

00:30:43 ◼   ► I don't even use Interface Builder for this app.

00:30:46 ◼   ► I will use it when it's warranted,

00:30:48 ◼   ► when you're laying out something relatively complex.

00:30:51 ◼   ► But for this app, it was really not necessary.

00:30:54 ◼   ► So can we all guess now what it is?

00:30:56 ◼   ► If you want.

00:30:57 ◼   ► I mean, I'm not going to tell you anything,

00:30:58 ◼   ► because it's not going to be very exciting.

00:30:59 ◼   ► Maybe next week when it's available,

00:31:00 ◼   ► if it's available next week.

00:31:02 ◼   ► Well, here are my guesses.

00:31:04 ◼   ► OK.

00:31:05 ◼   ► My first and only categorical guess

00:31:07 ◼   ► is that it has to have something to do with coffee.

00:31:09 ◼   ► And then within that realm, I have

00:31:11 ◼   ► to think of the things that you do every day

00:31:13 ◼   ► that you would want a simple application to help you manage.

00:31:15 ◼   ► And the only thing I can think of,

00:31:16 ◼   ► not knowing much about coffee or anything,

00:31:18 ◼   ► except for what I've heard you talk about,

00:31:20 ◼   ► is one of them is timing how long the very steps

00:31:24 ◼   ► in the process to make coffee take.

00:31:25 ◼   ► And the other one is keeping track of your coffee supplies

00:31:28 ◼   ► in terms of the age of the beans and when they were ground

00:31:30 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:31:30 ◼   ► Those are my only guesses.

00:31:31 ◼   ► We'll see how.

00:31:31 ◼   ► And I have no inside information on this,

00:31:33 ◼   ► so we'll see how close I am next week.

00:31:35 ◼   ► Casey, do you want to make a guess or should I just tell John about his guesses?

00:31:39 ◼   ► No, don't tell me about them. Don't tell me now how wrong I am. We'll find out next week.

00:31:43 ◼   ► So, was it Nursing Clock was the other app? Yes, it was.

00:31:47 ◼   ► I'm biased against clocks. Can we start by saying that this is not in any way related to that?

00:31:53 ◼   ► Biased against clocks?

00:31:55 ◼   ► I don't even know where to go from there.

00:31:57 ◼   ► I'm upset because if this is a coffee clock, then you would have had the

00:32:01 ◼   ► alliteration, but now you'll...

00:32:03 ◼   ► all your apps will have to have the word "clock" like they supposedly have to have the word "instant".

00:32:07 ◼   ► Only the ones that don't sell any copies have "clock" in them.

00:32:11 ◼   ► No, there is no clock. And it also does not even have any kind of network connectivity. It's a very simple app.

00:32:15 ◼   ► But, you know, first of all, John is totally wrong.

00:32:19 ◼   ► I'll just tell you that now. The reason why, and I think this is an interesting topic, though.

00:32:23 ◼   ► The reason why you're so wrong is because I wouldn't use those apps.

00:32:27 ◼   ► Basically, people always, I feel so bad,

00:32:31 ◼   ► People work so hard on coffee apps.

00:32:33 ◼   ► And people send me coffee app promo codes all the time

00:32:36 ◼   ► and ask me to try them out.

00:32:37 ◼   ► I don't need an app to make coffee.

00:32:39 ◼   ► I really don't.

00:32:40 ◼   ► I don't need an app to keep track of my coffee roasting

00:32:42 ◼   ► supplies.

00:32:42 ◼   ► That's like-- I just know how to make coffee,

00:32:45 ◼   ► and I know how old my beans are.

00:32:49 ◼   ► My beans are never more than-- the roasted ones

00:32:51 ◼   ► are never more than two weeks old,

00:32:54 ◼   ► because I go through them faster than that.

00:32:55 ◼   ► So I always know-- I have some idea how old they are.

00:32:59 ◼   ► And the unroasted beans keep for like a year or more even.

00:33:07 ◼   ► And I never have them for that long.

00:33:09 ◼   ► I go through them too.

00:33:10 ◼   ► So I don't really need to keep track of that.

00:33:12 ◼   ► And people making coffee-- OK, so coffee,

00:33:15 ◼   ► I just know how to time it because I do it every single day

00:33:18 ◼   ► and it's fine.

00:33:19 ◼   ► Tea, I always have to manually time because it takes longer

00:33:22 ◼   ► and it's more sensitive, especially

00:33:23 ◼   ► like green tea, which is my favorite kind.

00:33:26 ◼   ► That's like a two minute brew usually at most.

00:33:29 ◼   ► And so you've got to be pretty precise with that.

00:33:31 ◼   ► And I don't have a good intuitive sense

00:33:34 ◼   ► of how long two minutes is just to try to wing it.

00:33:38 ◼   ► So I just use the built in clock app with its timer mode.

00:33:42 ◼   ► I mean, a lot of people are huge fans

00:33:46 ◼   ► of having very specialized apps for all the things they

00:33:50 ◼   ► do in their life.

00:33:52 ◼   ► And I'm not that kind of person.

00:33:54 ◼   ► I don't see the need for a coffee timer

00:33:57 ◼   ► when I can just use the system timer.

00:33:58 ◼   ► I don't see the need for a very specialized

00:34:02 ◼   ► data tracking app when I can just use

00:34:04 ◼   ► a text file or a paper notepad, you know?

00:34:07 ◼   ► Like, and it's just like a difference

00:34:09 ◼   ► of philosophy or opinion.

00:34:10 ◼   ► A lot of people just love super specialization like that.

00:34:13 ◼   ► I'm just, I'm not into it at all.

00:34:15 ◼   ► Do you guys use stuff like that?

00:34:18 ◼   ► - I can't say that I do.

00:34:19 ◼   ► I'm trying to think of an example.

00:34:20 ◼   ► I'm, when I go for run, I use RunMonster.

00:34:22 ◼   ► A lot of people use RunKeeper.

00:34:24 ◼   ► I don't know if you classify that as hyper specific.

00:34:26 ◼   ► I like using an app called glimpse

00:34:30 ◼   ► when I'm traveling to someone's house

00:34:32 ◼   ► and we're gonna see that again this weekend, Marco and I,

00:34:35 ◼   ► but I like using that as a way,

00:34:38 ◼   ► I call it reverse or inverse stalking.

00:34:40 ◼   ► Basically glimpse just beams your location

00:34:43 ◼   ► to one or more people for a short window of time.

00:34:46 ◼   ► And it's a really nice way if you're traveling

00:34:48 ◼   ► for more than like 10 minutes for whoever's

00:34:51 ◼   ► at your destination to know where you are.

00:34:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's actually really cool.

00:34:55 ◼   ► Like when you first sent me that, I thought,

00:34:56 ◼   ► this is stupid, I'm not gonna complete this link even.

00:34:59 ◼   ► What the hell could this possibly be?

00:35:01 ◼   ► And then I saw it, and like, you know,

00:35:04 ◼   ► when you guys were coming to our house once,

00:35:05 ◼   ► and we were like, you know, trying to get things

00:35:07 ◼   ► done in time, and trying to know, oh, do we have time

00:35:08 ◼   ► to go walk the dog or whatever.

00:35:10 ◼   ► And it's nice to know when you're expecting somebody

00:35:12 ◼   ► to know, oh, okay, they're 45 minutes away,

00:35:14 ◼   ► and they're right here.

00:35:15 ◼   ► Or, oh look, they're stuck in traffic,

00:35:16 ◼   ► they're gonna be a little bit longer,

00:35:17 ◼   ► you know, it's okay, you know, if they're a little bit late.

00:35:20 ◼   ► It's really nice to know that stuff in advance,

00:35:21 ◼   ► So that's, and as you go.

00:35:23 ◼   ► So that's actually really cool.

00:35:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, and to answer from the chat,

00:35:27 ◼   ► no, it's not really what Find My Friends is for.

00:35:30 ◼   ► This is more of a short term, but rapid updating thing.

00:35:34 ◼   ► Whereas Find My Friends is more of a long term,

00:35:36 ◼   ► infrequent updates thing.

00:35:37 ◼   ► - And it also gives you an ETA, which is nice.

00:35:39 ◼   ► - I wanted to, if we're mostly done with this topic,

00:35:44 ◼   ► I wanted to go back to something you said

00:35:45 ◼   ► a minute ago, Marco, which is it gave you practice.

00:35:48 ◼   ► And one thing that I think is important as a developer,

00:35:53 ◼   ► which all three of us are, is to get a lot of practice.

00:35:56 ◼   ► And one thing that I've found,

00:35:57 ◼   ► and I think I might've talked about this briefly in the past,

00:36:00 ◼   ► but one thing I've found is getting practice

00:36:02 ◼   ► in things that you're not used to

00:36:05 ◼   ► is always, always, always, always helpful.

00:36:08 ◼   ► And so you had said you were using frameworks

00:36:10 ◼   ► that you're not used to in iOS.

00:36:12 ◼   ► So you're getting the practice in the stuff you're used to,

00:36:14 ◼   ► which is iOS in general,

00:36:15 ◼   ► but you're also expanding a bit

00:36:17 ◼   ► getting practice and frameworks that you're not used to. My day-to-day is .NET, and so

00:36:22 ◼   ► whenever it is I sit down and write a little Objective-C, that scratches a different itch

00:36:26 ◼   ► in my brain, which in turn I think positively affects the way I think about my .NET code.

00:36:33 ◼   ► And so one of the ways that I stay fit as a developer is by trying to learn new things

00:36:40 ◼   ► always. And man, do I get grumpy if I'm not learning. I mean, I've left jobs because

00:36:45 ◼   ► I've been pigeonholed and not learned stuff, and it drives me nuts.

00:36:49 ◼   ► I was just curious, do you two have anything you'd like to add in terms of what keeps

00:36:54 ◼   ► you sharp as a developer?

00:36:56 ◼   ► Coffee.

00:36:57 ◼   ► Fine.

00:36:58 ◼   ► I should have seen that coming.

00:36:59 ◼   ► Lots of coffee.

00:37:00 ◼   ► John?

00:37:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I got an email.

00:37:02 ◼   ► I don't know if you guys were CCN and R, but someone asked me last week, I think, I

00:37:06 ◼   ► was mentioning how once you know the basic concepts, you can pick up any programming

00:37:11 ◼   ► language because all they're doing is you just look for what the equivalents of this

00:37:15 ◼   ► this concept is in that language or whatever.

00:37:17 ◼   ► You just need some critical mass of concepts.

00:37:19 ◼   ► So if you've never used a language that's object oriented

00:37:22 ◼   ► and you try to learn one that is,

00:37:24 ◼   ► you have a hurdle to overcome

00:37:25 ◼   ► before you figure out the language.

00:37:26 ◼   ► First, understand what object orientation is

00:37:28 ◼   ► and the various parts of it.

00:37:29 ◼   ► And second, how does this language do those things?

00:37:32 ◼   ► And once you have this collection of concepts,

00:37:34 ◼   ► you can pick up anything.

00:37:35 ◼   ► And someone asks, what are those concepts?

00:37:36 ◼   ► Like, what's the laundry list of concepts

00:37:39 ◼   ► that's that critical mass?

00:37:40 ◼   ► And what I told this person was basically like,

00:37:44 ◼   ► When I thought of-- let me see what they are.

00:37:46 ◼   ► Let me just start listing them.

00:37:47 ◼   ► It actually ends up being a pretty darn long list,

00:37:49 ◼   ► especially when you get into specifics like concepts

00:37:52 ◼   ► that are specific to GUI programming or COCO, event

00:37:56 ◼   ► loops and delegation and event bubbling and things that

00:38:01 ◼   ► are related to any sort of user interface type toolkit.

00:38:04 ◼   ► This laundry list for each one of those things and server side

00:38:07 ◼   ► programming, whatever.

00:38:08 ◼   ► So I thought making a list was not useful,

00:38:11 ◼   ► because the list really actually is pretty long.

00:38:13 ◼   ► And the best thing for you to really do is to not try to go out and, "Okay, now I'm going

00:38:18 ◼   ► to learn about the concept of object-oriented tasting.

00:38:20 ◼   ► Now I'm going to learn about the concepts in functional programming.

00:38:22 ◼   ► Now I'm going to learn about the concepts of closures and currying and stuff."

00:38:26 ◼   ► You will not be successful by doing that.

00:38:27 ◼   ► The best thing to do is find a language that you're interested in using for a project that

00:38:32 ◼   ► has one of these concepts you want to learn and do the project.

00:38:35 ◼   ► And then find a different language that happens to have some other concept that you might

00:38:38 ◼   ► want to learn and do a project in that language.

00:38:40 ◼   ► You can't learn the concepts by academically trying to learn them.

00:38:43 ◼   ► What you have to do is a series of projects, each one of which touches on one of these

00:38:47 ◼   ► new concepts.

00:38:48 ◼   ► And that's why I was saying, once you've been—especially in web development, where you're using umpteen

00:38:52 ◼   ► languages and frameworks and APIs, and they keep changing all the time—once you've been

00:38:56 ◼   ► a programmer for a long period of time, you pick these things up.

00:38:59 ◼   ► And I don't know if there's any shortcut.

00:39:00 ◼   ► I don't think you can get the book with all the concepts, learn the concepts, and then

00:39:04 ◼   ► say, "Now, even though I know zero or one languages, I'm ready for any language."

00:39:08 ◼   ► You have to have done real projects with real APIs with real products, and once you get

00:39:14 ◼   ► enough of them and they're different enough, that builds up this base of knowledge, and

00:39:18 ◼   ► then you're free to pick up anything much more quickly.

00:39:22 ◼   ► My advice is to basically do real projects with real languages and real APIs, and make

00:39:29 ◼   ► sure each new one that you do doesn't overlap 100% with the last one you did.

00:39:35 ◼   ► I absolutely think that's the right approach.

00:39:38 ◼   ► When I was first a professional developer, I was writing C++ on a Whatcom compiler for

00:39:43 ◼   ► DOS, which was kind of weird.

00:39:46 ◼   ► And then I taught myself C# just by writing an app actually comically enough to track

00:39:52 ◼   ► my time during the day because I started doing a consulting gig.

00:39:56 ◼   ► And so I needed to make sure I tracked my time, and so I wrote a C# app in order to

00:40:01 ◼   ► help me track my time.

00:40:03 ◼   ► And that's how I learned C#.

00:40:04 ◼   ► and then I ended up doing C# professionally in Stalamb.

00:40:07 ◼   ► My really, really basic app that's in the App Store,

00:40:10 ◼   ► I did that just to teach myself Objective C.

00:40:13 ◼   ► And I couldn't echo what you just said enough,

00:40:16 ◼   ► that the best way to do it is to dive in,

00:40:18 ◼   ► but to do something specific and productive.

00:40:21 ◼   ► And so I think that that's the best way,

00:40:25 ◼   ► not only to stay sharp, but also to learn something new.

00:40:27 ◼   ► And again, I can't stress enough that in my experiences,

00:40:30 ◼   ► when I learn a different language or a new framework

00:40:33 ◼   ► whatever the case may be, it makes me think about the stuff I feel like I know cold differently.

00:40:38 ◼   ► I mean, I know C# pretty darn well, and when I learn different languages or different frameworks

00:40:43 ◼   ► or whatever the case may be, that changes how I write my code in C#, again, usually

00:40:47 ◼   ► for the better. So forgive me for actually doing something nerdy on this podcast.

00:40:52 ◼   ► It's like when someone, you know, comes back from France and they start using French

00:40:56 ◼   ► words or eating French foods or doing like…

00:40:58 ◼   ► From the fake accent?

00:40:59 ◼   ► Yeah, well, that happens.

00:41:01 ◼   ► I've read, especially early in my career, lots of Java books, even though the only Java

00:41:05 ◼   ► program I ever did was in school.

00:41:07 ◼   ► I never did it professionally.

00:41:09 ◼   ► But a lot of the early books about object-oriented design principles and stuff use Java as their

00:41:13 ◼   ► language or were specifically about how to write a better application in this one of

00:41:17 ◼   ► the UMTIN GUI APIs that Java supported in its history.

00:41:21 ◼   ► And I read a lot of those Java books, and I brought with me a lot of the concepts and

00:41:25 ◼   ► practices from Java into my daily work in JavaScript, Perl, C++, whatever I was doing

00:41:32 ◼   ► at the time.

00:41:34 ◼   ► You could see, "Oh, this person has just read some Java book," or maybe you just read the

00:41:39 ◼   ► Patterns book, which did a lot, the Gang of Four Patterns book, which does a lot of examples

00:41:42 ◼   ► in C++, if I recall correctly.

00:41:44 ◼   ► For a little while, you'll have that carryover effect.

00:41:48 ◼   ► I think that's weird initially, but it's good because it'll settle down eventually.

00:41:52 ◼   ► learn some new idea and you'll just want to use that new idea in this totally different language

00:41:56 ◼   ► because you're excited about it. And maybe it's not quite a good fit and maybe you'll be too enthusiastic

00:42:00 ◼   ► and you'll paint yourself into a corner, but you'll learn something. And sort of, that will settle down. You say,

00:42:04 ◼   ► "Okay, I learned about this concept and I found out this other language also has this concept.

00:42:08 ◼   ► Now I'm going to use it everywhere. Okay, that's too much. It's not a good fit. But now it's in my tool belt

00:42:12 ◼   ► and now I have it available to me to know when I have this kind of problem, use this approach.

00:42:16 ◼   ► And when I have that kind of problem, use that approach." Like KJ Healy,

00:42:20 ◼   ► The ever-helpful chat room person said, "As a friend of mine likes to say, there's an

00:42:25 ◼   ► easy way and a hard way to learn programming language, and the easy way doesn't work."

00:42:29 ◼   ► That's not the answer most people want to hear, but that's the only wisdom I have to

00:42:32 ◼   ► offer from my experience, is that there is actually no substitute for experience, and

00:42:37 ◼   ► you just have to do lots of things.

00:42:39 ◼   ► I don't know a shorter way to end up at the endpoint without going through all those intermediate

00:42:45 ◼   ► points.

00:42:46 ◼   ► And one, I think there is a slight, not necessarily a shortcut, but at least makes it a little

00:42:51 ◼   ► bit easier. It doesn't save you any time, but it does help a little bit. To slow down

00:42:56 ◼   ► the pace of what you're being barraged with that's new and to reduce the chances that

00:43:03 ◼   ► you'll get totally frustrated and just give up and stop, I find it very helpful to take

00:43:08 ◼   ► half steps. So, for instance, when you first dive into programming for the very first time

00:43:14 ◼   ► of any language, you can't make a half step.

00:43:17 ◼   ► But once you know a language, then maybe the next step

00:43:21 ◼   ► you take isn't learning a whole new language from scratch.

00:43:24 ◼   ► But if you know Java from school,

00:43:27 ◼   ► then maybe try writing a web app in Java,

00:43:30 ◼   ► because you probably didn't do that in school.

00:43:32 ◼   ► If you know a little bit of Cocoa in Objective-C,

00:43:37 ◼   ► because you made an iOS app at some point,

00:43:40 ◼   ► try making a radically different iOS app

00:43:43 ◼   ► using very different frameworks, but using the same language.

00:43:46 ◼   ► That way you don't have to relearn the language that time.

00:43:48 ◼   ► Or if you make web apps in PHP, then you already

00:43:52 ◼   ► know things like HTML and the HTTP requests and protocols

00:43:56 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:43:57 ◼   ► So if you already know how to make web apps in one language,

00:44:00 ◼   ► then maybe learn another language that makes web apps.

00:44:03 ◼   ► So you're only taking a half step

00:44:04 ◼   ► in some of those instances.

00:44:05 ◼   ► So it's a little bit easier, and you won't just give up.

00:44:08 ◼   ► That tends to happen, actually, during the course of a career.

00:44:13 ◼   ► because the next job you get will probably build on something you already know,

00:44:17 ◼   ► and so you will end up like, "Okay, well, I did web apps in LanguageX,

00:44:20 ◼   ► and now I need to get a new job, and so I have experience building web apps,

00:44:24 ◼   ► but this company uses a different language."

00:44:25 ◼   ► You will find yourself writing web apps in a different language,

00:44:27 ◼   ► and now you've taken that half step.

00:44:30 ◼   ► All the things we're talking about, yes, you can do them on your own,

00:44:33 ◼   ► as a hobby or whatever, but if it's your career,

00:44:37 ◼   ► you will probably not find yourself doing completely, totally unrelated things

00:44:41 ◼   ► from job to job because you will, that's not a good way to build your career.

00:44:46 ◼   ► Your salary and stature will not be increasing with each job change.

00:44:49 ◼   ► You will want to build on what you know before, but you will also necessarily have to do things

00:44:53 ◼   ► that you're unfamiliar with because you're not going to find a job that's exactly like

00:44:56 ◼   ► your old job probably.

00:44:58 ◼   ► So that just happens over the course of an actual program and career.

00:45:01 ◼   ► Good point.

00:45:02 ◼   ► All right.

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00:47:44 ◼   ► I believe I have never used a promo code for Hover

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00:47:48 ◼   ► I should use my own, maybe I can remember ATP now.

00:47:51 ◼   ► Is it ATP or is there an R out there?

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00:48:00 ◼   ► I'm just paying full price all the time. It's not that expensive. Domains are cheap.

00:48:06 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true. I think especially listeners of this show are probably very familiar with

00:48:11 ◼   ► having a lot of domains and having too many of them.

00:48:14 ◼   ► All right, so what else are we talking about? I've been bossy this episode, so...

00:48:19 ◼   ► So do you want to talk about any RSS crap or is that just kind of over? I don't know.

00:48:24 ◼   ► I don't really have much to add. A lot of people have asked what we're using.

00:48:28 ◼   ► I don't know if we wanted to do a quick roundtable. I've thrown my weight in

00:48:32 ◼   ► $19, whatever it is, behind a friend of the show underscore David Smith's speed wrangler.

00:48:38 ◼   ► I've liked it since the moment I paid for it and started using it. It's gotten even better now that

00:48:44 ◼   ► Reader for iPhone is supporting it. And that's basically all I have to say about that. David

00:48:48 ◼   ► David Smith's a good guy, so you should give him some cash. He deserves it.

00:48:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm also using, I also agree that he's a good guy. I also agree that he's a friend

00:48:56 ◼   ► of the show. And I'm also using Feed Wrangler. I guess we'll have to link to that in the

00:49:00 ◼   ► show notes as well. I wonder if he can give us a coupon code. Actually, probably not within

00:49:07 ◼   ► that purchase at least. But I believe he also supports Stripe on the site.

00:49:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I like it. You know, I wasn't crazy about giving up Reader back when I first tried

00:49:15 ◼   ► it, but now I don't have to do that. So I went back to Reader. I like Reader a lot,

00:49:18 ◼   ► on iPhone. So yeah, I like it a lot. It works, it's fast, it's solid. Even in the last couple

00:49:27 ◼   ► days when he's had a massive influx of new users, it's held up really well and I've never

00:49:31 ◼   ► really hit any problems with it so far. And even among the paid options, I think it's

00:49:36 ◼   ► one of the cheapest. It's very well priced. I know Lex Freeman, our friend and ad salesman,

00:49:44 ◼   ► He wrote a big article on Mac, maybe we'll link to that.

00:49:46 ◼   ► He recommended Feedbin, was it?

00:49:49 ◼   ► The one that's not free.

00:49:50 ◼   ► Feedly is free, right?

00:49:52 ◼   ► I think that's right.

00:49:53 ◼   ► Yeah, so he likes Feedbin, the other one.

00:49:56 ◼   ► But it's $24 a year, so David Smith is actually cheaper.

00:49:59 ◼   ► And I haven't tried Feedbin.

00:50:01 ◼   ► I don't know if it's better in any particular way.

00:50:03 ◼   ► But for me, Feed Wrangler, it works.

00:50:06 ◼   ► It's a sync service.

00:50:07 ◼   ► I would rather not use his first party apps,

00:50:10 ◼   ► because I already have apps I like.

00:50:13 ◼   ► And so as long as you're using someone else's apps,

00:50:16 ◼   ► it doesn't really matter which sync service you sync with.

00:50:18 ◼   ► All that matters is like cost and whether it works, right?

00:50:21 ◼   ► And so yeah, I like Feed Wrangler a lot.

00:50:25 ◼   ► John?

00:50:26 ◼   ► - I've just been ignoring this entire thing

00:50:28 ◼   ► because I assumed, well eventually,

00:50:30 ◼   ► everyone will have everything sorted out

00:50:31 ◼   ► and like three days before the shutoff date,

00:50:36 ◼   ► I will simply look online and there will be some consensus

00:50:38 ◼   ► for some slot in replacement that I can use

00:50:41 ◼   ► will let me continue to use the apps that I like using to read news. That turned out

00:50:46 ◼   ► not to be true, much to my disappointment. I mean, I really thought it would happen.

00:50:51 ◼   ► My habits aren't that esoteric, but I thought someone would just support the API, and I

00:50:57 ◼   ► could just do some Etsy host thing to just get it to magically work. I don't know what

00:51:02 ◼   ► I expected, but I thought people would get everything to go together, and it didn't

00:51:06 ◼   ► So, I mostly do my reading on the iPad in Reader, which is different than the iPhone

00:51:12 ◼   ► version.

00:51:13 ◼   ► It's not a universal app.

00:51:14 ◼   ► I have both of them, but I never use the iPhone version.

00:51:17 ◼   ► So I have nothing that I can read on now on the iPad.

00:51:20 ◼   ► Like I bought Mr. Reader or something like that, which kind of works, but I miss my good

00:51:25 ◼   ► old Reader with two Es.

00:51:26 ◼   ► So I'm just going to wait for Reader to start working with some service that I like or use.

00:51:31 ◼   ► And I use NetNewsWire on the Mac, and it just turned off sync.

00:51:34 ◼   ► I can't just do it the old-fashioned way.

00:51:39 ◼   ► And I don't think it'll be that big of a deal.

00:51:41 ◼   ► Believe it or not, I know which things I've read.

00:51:44 ◼   ► I don't understand which part of my brain is dedicated to keeping track of the last

00:51:48 ◼   ► unread point in hundreds of feeds, but I don't have to do it.

00:51:51 ◼   ► I just know the last thing that I've read.

00:51:54 ◼   ► So I'm using Feedbin because I figured I should pay for one of them.

00:51:57 ◼   ► But Feedbin is only supported on Reader on the iPhone, presumably will be supported in

00:52:02 ◼   ► Reader on the iPad and then I guess I'll be kind of all set except for the cross-device

00:52:07 ◼   ► singing.

00:52:08 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:52:09 ◼   ► It's kind of --

00:52:10 ◼   ► I didn't like Google Reader.

00:52:14 ◼   ► You know, I'm glad that it went away.

00:52:16 ◼   ► It's just that we're now in a transition period that's kind of uncomfortable.

00:52:19 ◼   ► And a lot of the new readers that I've tried, I've downloaded and purchased a lot of the

00:52:23 ◼   ► new Reader apps that didn't really exist before the Google Reader apocalypse happened, and

00:52:28 ◼   ► I still like Reader better.

00:52:29 ◼   ► So I'm hoping my old apps will come to support it.

00:52:33 ◼   ► And NetNewsWire 4, I don't like the UI that I've seen so far of that, so maybe I'll

00:52:36 ◼   ► just keep using NetNewsWire 3 until it dies.

00:52:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm with you on NetNewsWire 4.

00:52:43 ◼   ► I was a big fan of 3 for a couple of years now, and 4, I don't really like the direction

00:52:50 ◼   ► they've gone.

00:52:51 ◼   ► They've removed a lot of what I like, and they haven't added a lot that I like in

00:52:55 ◼   ► their efforts to remove the other things.

00:52:57 ◼   ► But it's not done yet, so I'm going to wait and see.

00:53:00 ◼   ► That's true.

00:53:00 ◼   ► It's not done yet.

00:53:02 ◼   ► I think there's a possibility that they will eventually

00:53:05 ◼   ► come to support all the things that I like.

00:53:07 ◼   ► By the time 3 stops working entirely,

00:53:09 ◼   ► maybe 4 will be something nice for me to use.

00:53:12 ◼   ► I'll be disappointed if it's not, because what's

00:53:14 ◼   ► the alternative on the Mac?

00:53:15 ◼   ► I don't want to use a web app, right?

00:53:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

00:53:19 ◼   ► I use Rekit now, because I think it's the only Mac

00:53:23 ◼   ► app that natively supports anything right now that's

00:53:25 ◼   ► not Google Reader. If it's not the only one, it's certainly one of very, very few. I'd

00:53:30 ◼   ► actually like the chat room. I'd love to know if there's any others, but I don't think there

00:53:34 ◼   ► are. It's decent, but the problem with ReadKit is that it started out as an Instapaper pocket

00:53:42 ◼   ► readability app. And so it's really designed for that. It's designed to be like a ReadLater

00:53:47 ◼   ► service client. And they added feeds. The developer added feeds. And the developer's

00:53:53 ◼   ► very responsive on Twitter and everything. He or she, I forget, added feeds, feed support

00:53:59 ◼   ► to it recently. So it can now do all these things. And I assume it's under pretty rapid

00:54:04 ◼   ► development right now. So this all could change soon. But right now it just does not, it doesn't

00:54:09 ◼   ► flow as gracefully as NetNewsWire. It doesn't have a lot of the keyboard navigation. You

00:54:13 ◼   ► know, it just, there's a whole lot of missing details about NetNewsWire that, like, you

00:54:19 ◼   ► You know, when you build something into your workflow, which, you know, your RSS client,

00:54:23 ◼   ► your Twitter client, these are all important parts of anyone's workflow who uses them.

00:54:29 ◼   ► And once you get into a habit of, like, you know, using the keyboard a certain way or

00:54:33 ◼   ► expecting things to disappear when you've read them or any kind of minor detail like

00:54:37 ◼   ► that, it really gets ingrained so much that when you have to switch, the differences or

00:54:43 ◼   ► the absence of any of those things really, really grinds on you or grates on you, I guess.

00:54:48 ◼   ► And so ReadKit is kind of like that with me right now.

00:54:52 ◼   ► Every time I use it, I want to set it on fire.

00:54:55 ◼   ► But I'm glad it's there.

00:54:56 ◼   ► And I like it a lot better than any web app I've seen so far.

00:54:59 ◼   ► So I'm assuming it's going to get a lot better quickly.

00:55:02 ◼   ► Because it really does seem like the developer's

00:55:04 ◼   ► being pretty active with it.

00:55:06 ◼   ► So I'm going to hope that turns out well.

00:55:11 ◼   ► There should be money flowing into the ecosystem now.

00:55:13 ◼   ► Because everyone's using Google for Free.

00:55:15 ◼   ► and a reasonable portion of the replacement services and apps charge money. And so hopefully

00:55:22 ◼   ► now this influx of money will result in whoever gets the most of it rapidly increasing the

00:55:27 ◼   ► quality of their application.

00:55:28 ◼   ► Oh, sure. I mean, look, if BlackPixel just took NetNewsWire 3's code base and somehow

00:55:32 ◼   ► made it work with any other service, they could release it for $100 and people would

00:55:36 ◼   ► buy it. You know?

00:55:38 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:55:39 ◼   ► But anyway, there's a good question in the chat a few lines up.

00:55:47 ◼   ► Somebody who I now lost because it was too long ago asked how blog traffic is being affected

00:55:53 ◼   ► now that Google Reader is shut down.

00:55:58 ◼   ► I posted my stats the other day.

00:56:01 ◼   ► First of all, if you run a feed crawling service, please, please, for webmasters, add the number

00:56:08 ◼   ► of subscribers in the user agent string when you fetch the feed.

00:56:11 ◼   ► Because Google Reader did this, a few others do it.

00:56:14 ◼   ► It's very, very important for web people

00:56:16 ◼   ► to know, if you look at their stats,

00:56:18 ◼   ► at least, it's very important to know how many subscribers

00:56:20 ◼   ► there are to the feeds.

00:56:21 ◼   ► And if you are running a service that

00:56:23 ◼   ► proxies the crawling of the feed and caches it so that it's not

00:56:26 ◼   ► one to one anymore on our side, please

00:56:29 ◼   ► report your subscriber counts.

00:56:31 ◼   ► Anyway, so Google Reader, for me,

00:56:36 ◼   ► I have like 54,000 RSS subscribers, or 53,000 most

00:56:39 ◼   ► of the time.

00:56:40 ◼   ► Of that, like 9,000 or so was other aggregators

00:56:44 ◼   ► as of a few days ago.

00:56:46 ◼   ► And the other 46, or whatever it is, or 43, or 44,

00:56:50 ◼   ► that was all Google Reader.

00:56:52 ◼   ► So it was a massive chunk of the subscriber base.

00:56:54 ◼   ► And it's always been that way, except for the last few days

00:56:57 ◼   ► when everyone switched over.

00:56:58 ◼   ► And especially sites like mine, and Daring Fireball,

00:57:04 ◼   ► and a bunch of others, we sell sponsorships

00:57:07 ◼   ► based on feed subscriber numbers,

00:57:09 ◼   ► at least we have so far.

00:57:12 ◼   ► So it's interesting.

00:57:14 ◼   ► I mean, last night at like 2 AM, I published a major article,

00:57:17 ◼   ► so my traffic today has been very high.

00:57:19 ◼   ► So today is kind of an outlier.

00:57:20 ◼   ► But yesterday was the first full day,

00:57:22 ◼   ► I believe, without Google Reader being operational.

00:57:26 ◼   ► And so I looked at my traffic for yesterday,

00:57:28 ◼   ► and it was actually slightly up from previous days.

00:57:32 ◼   ► But overall, it was a pretty average day.

00:57:35 ◼   ► I didn't see some kind of massive dip down.

00:57:37 ◼   ► And I wonder-- I mean, over time--

00:57:40 ◼   ► it's probably too early for anybody to say it,

00:57:42 ◼   ► but I wonder for people who didn't do anything special

00:57:45 ◼   ► yesterday or today on their sites,

00:57:46 ◼   ► did you find any kind of massive drop in traffic or referrals

00:57:52 ◼   ► by the lack of Google Reader?

00:57:53 ◼   ► And so far, I haven't seen it on my site.

00:57:57 ◼   ► My site gets so little traffic that I'm really

00:58:00 ◼   ► getting a distorted picture, but I saw the shift away from Google Reader for my subscription

00:58:07 ◼   ► numbers happening like weeks in advance, and it shifted dramatically. I should graph it.

00:58:12 ◼   ► It was like, it used to be like 90% Google Reader and then just a bunch of other stuff,

00:58:16 ◼   ► and it shifted to like 50/50 weeks before the transition. I haven't looked at the numbers

00:58:20 ◼   ► post-transition, but I assume it's gone in the other direction now, and now it's... I'm

00:58:26 ◼   ► I'm assuming my numbers might have actually stayed steady

00:58:29 ◼   ► because they're so low.

00:58:30 ◼   ► But I was just trying to pull it up

00:58:32 ◼   ► while you were talking to see if I could look at the logs.

00:58:35 ◼   ► I'm using the same--

00:58:36 ◼   ► I'm using a conversion of your terrible shell script,

00:58:38 ◼   ► but basically the exact same algorithm for--

00:58:39 ◼   ► Dr. Dranks?

00:58:40 ◼   ► Yeah, the exact same algorithm of how to figure things out,

00:58:44 ◼   ► parsing out the user agents or whatever.

00:58:46 ◼   ► And yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that went.

00:58:48 ◼   ► But yeah, I was surprised at how quickly the Google Reader

00:58:51 ◼   ► bailout happened before it shut down.

00:58:53 ◼   ► Because the few people who are reading my site

00:58:55 ◼   ► like the super nerds, they know what's coming and they're trying out different services

00:58:59 ◼   ► and stuff.

00:59:04 ◼   ► To answer the immediate question of what do you do with sponsorships, I think the biggest

00:59:09 ◼   ► thing really is I'm just going to keep selling them the way I've been selling them. I assume

00:59:14 ◼   ► that even if I have a big drop temporarily or permanently in RSS readership, I assume

00:59:19 ◼   ► that dedicated people who are reading the site

00:59:23 ◼   ► and who put any kind of thought into reading the site

00:59:26 ◼   ► and care at all about it, they're probably still

00:59:29 ◼   ► going to find some way to read it.

00:59:30 ◼   ► And so there's not really going to be

00:59:32 ◼   ► an interruption for them.

00:59:33 ◼   ► And all the other people who had it in Google Reader

00:59:36 ◼   ► but hadn't logged into Google Reader in like a year,

00:59:39 ◼   ► people who just aren't that engaged, they probably,

00:59:46 ◼   ► I'm guessing, were not really responding to the sponsorships

00:59:48 ◼   ► that much anyway, or even seeing them, if they weren't really

00:59:52 ◼   ► even checking it.

00:59:54 ◼   ► So I'm just going to check in with my advertisers

00:59:57 ◼   ► and just see, if they're getting the right kind of response

01:00:01 ◼   ► from what they expect and from what previous things have gotten

01:00:04 ◼   ► them, then I don't think it's that big of a problem.

01:00:07 ◼   ► I think your most engaged fans are still going to read you.

01:00:11 ◼   ► They're going to find out how to read you.

01:00:13 ◼   ► If they are surprised by Google Reader shutdown,

01:00:16 ◼   ► They're going to find out how to read your site for the most part, and that's going

01:00:20 ◼   ► to be it.

01:00:21 ◼   ► What's really going to hurt, I think, is all the really small sites that don't sell

01:00:26 ◼   ► feed subscription because they're just too small or their owners don't care enough

01:00:30 ◼   ► to do that.

01:00:31 ◼   ► You know, small, infrequently updated sites where if you ask some of their readers to

01:00:36 ◼   ► list the sites they read, they probably wouldn't think of them because they don't update

01:00:41 ◼   ► enough or they're not that important to them.

01:00:44 ◼   ► But then in an RSS reader, when they would make their one post a month, all those people

01:00:48 ◼   ► would see it.

01:00:50 ◼   ► And now, anyone they've lost might not come back because they might forget about it.

01:00:56 ◼   ► So that's going to be the bigger issue, I think, is for smaller, infrequently updated

01:01:01 ◼   ► sites.

01:01:02 ◼   ► They might see a bigger change than the bigger...

01:01:04 ◼   ► I think Gruber's going to be fine.

01:01:06 ◼   ► I think Daring Fireball's going to be fine.

01:01:08 ◼   ► But I think a much smaller site might have some trouble.

01:01:12 ◼   ► But we'll see.

01:01:13 ◼   ► Man, I'm screwed.

01:01:14 ◼   ► I just ran the thing on today's stats.

01:01:16 ◼   ► Why am I still seeing Google Reader numbers on the third?

01:01:19 ◼   ► Their crawler is still running.

01:01:22 ◼   ► Yeah, their crawler-- somebody said

01:01:24 ◼   ► that their API is actually still running until the 15th.

01:01:28 ◼   ► I don't know where that source trumps.

01:01:30 ◼   ► That could be crap.

01:01:30 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:01:31 ◼   ► But apparently it's still-- and so I would assume,

01:01:34 ◼   ► because the API is still running,

01:01:36 ◼   ► I would assume the crawler will also run until the 15th,

01:01:38 ◼   ► at least.

01:01:39 ◼   ► So we will see.

01:01:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm over 50% non-Google reader as of the beginning of January, so the people all

01:01:46 ◼   ► shifted out.

01:01:47 ◼   ► In fact, 75% on the first 75% non-Google reader.

01:01:54 ◼   ► Yeah I don't even know how many people read.

01:01:56 ◼   ► Just because you have a Google reader subscriber, it was always difficult to tell.

01:02:02 ◼   ► Just because the thing is checking your site and reporting that subscriber number, how

01:02:05 ◼   ► many of those subscribers are looking at your feeds?

01:02:08 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:02:09 ◼   ► Especially if you provide a full text feed and there's no reason for someone to go to

01:02:12 ◼   ► your site so you don't like traffic numbers to the site.

01:02:16 ◼   ► That's people actually coming to your site and you can do the normal unique IPs per day

01:02:19 ◼   ► or whatever dance on that and get a more reasonable number.

01:02:23 ◼   ► Then the reader subscribers, I guess we're a good proxy because when it was just Google

01:02:28 ◼   ► Reader, even if the numbers were crazy, we were all using the same numbers so advertisers

01:02:33 ◼   ► could compare relatively.

01:02:36 ◼   ► Even if the number was totally made up, "Well, you've got a seven and you've got a three.

01:02:38 ◼   ► I don't know what those numbers mean, but seven is more than three.

01:02:41 ◼   ► They're both provided by Google Reader, so there you go.

01:02:45 ◼   ► I think we'll be able to tell also just by repeat buys.

01:02:48 ◼   ► Obviously, that doesn't help initial sponsors very much as we figure all this out.

01:02:55 ◼   ► If we see that our sponsors are still buying repeat buys, then I think we're fine.

01:03:01 ◼   ► The exact same thing applies to podcasts.

01:03:04 ◼   ► measurements. First of all, how you measure podcast downloads is itself very

01:03:10 ◼   ► much up for debate because it's not simple. Because some clients will start

01:03:14 ◼   ► multiple downloads. There are places like Stitcher that work for Google Reader

01:03:19 ◼   ► where they cache a copy for everybody and so you don't see any of that traffic

01:03:22 ◼   ► unless you become their partner and sell your soul to the devil or something.

01:03:25 ◼   ► And I don't like Stitcher but, sorry. And you know with podcasts it's always

01:03:33 ◼   ► difficult when selling it to a sponsor because like, you know, if we say we have this many

01:03:37 ◼   ► downloads per episode, a good sponsor probably should, although usually doesn't, but probably

01:03:43 ◼   ► should ask, "How are you measuring that?" Because that could be the difference of like,

01:03:48 ◼   ► you know, four times more or four times fewer hits. It's like it's that big of a difference

01:03:53 ◼   ► of how you measure it. And then there's the other problem as Dashie points out in the

01:03:57 ◼   ► chat that a lot of podcast clients, the biggest one is desktop iTunes, will keep downloading

01:04:05 ◼   ► podcasts for a while even if you aren't listening to any of the episodes. And so a download

01:04:09 ◼   ► doesn't necessarily equal a listen. Just like for Google Reader, a subscriber doesn't necessarily

01:04:14 ◼   ► equal somebody seeing that. So yeah, it's a mess.

01:04:18 ◼   ► Is that it?

01:04:21 ◼   ► Anyway, I think that's it. I mean, unless you guys have anything else to add on that

01:04:24 ◼   ► topic.

01:04:25 ◼   ► I think we're good. John?

01:04:26 ◼   ► I'll do two minutes on free Mavericks.

01:04:29 ◼   ► I couldn't resist.

01:04:30 ◼   ► It's a quickie, though.

01:04:31 ◼   ► That's some kind of like, uh, like it prevents cancer, free Mavericks?

01:04:36 ◼   ► That's free radicals.

01:04:37 ◼   ► Oh.

01:04:38 ◼   ► Sorry.

01:04:39 ◼   ► They're full of blueberries.

01:04:40 ◼   ► Mavericks, yeah, Mavericks are different than radicals.

01:04:43 ◼   ► Uh, the question someone asked me on Twitter or whatever, uh, will Mavericks be free?

01:04:48 ◼   ► As in, not cost you any money to download from the App Store?

01:04:52 ◼   ► I thought it couldn't be because of some strange accounting stuff.

01:04:56 ◼   ► I don't remember exactly. Well, that used to be the case. I know they...

01:05:00 ◼   ► we are not qualified to talk about this. I believe they changed the way they

01:05:04 ◼   ► accounted for

01:05:05 ◼   ► iPhones like four years ago to prevent that from being a problem with iOS

01:05:09 ◼   ► updates and for iPod touches as well.

01:05:11 ◼   ► Right, right. But I don't... I think the Mac might still be accounted for the old way.

01:05:16 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:05:17 ◼   ► It wouldn't surprise me if they still have to charge for it.

01:05:20 ◼   ► I'm guessing, Jon, you're about to lay the truth on us.

01:05:24 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know.

01:05:25 ◼   ► The only thing I think of is when they were showing, again, the WCD keynote, when they

01:05:30 ◼   ► were showing the adoption numbers and the adoption of iOS was massive and the adoption

01:05:34 ◼   ► for the new versions of Mac OS was not massive.

01:05:37 ◼   ► Well, that's interesting, yeah, because one of those is paying.

01:05:41 ◼   ► What can they do to move that needle?

01:05:42 ◼   ► You know, free gets much better traction than 30 bucks, right?

01:05:48 ◼   ► Free also gets massively better traction than 99 cents, which is counterintuitive, but changing

01:05:54 ◼   ► your price from zero to one cent totally destroys how many copies you could distribute, and

01:06:01 ◼   ► you wouldn't think so.

01:06:02 ◼   ► Like, if it's changing it from two cents to one cent, it doesn't have the same effect

01:06:05 ◼   ► of changing it from one cent to zero.

01:06:07 ◼   ► Free is magical, right?

01:06:08 ◼   ► So if they want to move the needle on OS X penetration, and I think they do, but I think

01:06:13 ◼   ► they're kind of annoyed about all the people who are still running like Snow Leopard, Lion,

01:06:17 ◼   ► lion out there, especially snow leopard. I bet Apple wants to just—Federighi wants

01:06:21 ◼   ► to go to all his houses and upgrade those people's computers. Like, "Stop running

01:06:24 ◼   ► snow leopard." That's the last good version you put out. They want to get those people

01:06:30 ◼   ► on, and so how can you do that? Lower the price or make it free. If they can't make

01:06:34 ◼   ► it free for some accounting thing, though, I'm worried that—well, if you can't

01:06:37 ◼   ► make it free because of some crazy legal reason, is it even worth it to try lowering the price?

01:06:43 ◼   ► It has been getting lower. Where did it used to be? I can't remember the price.

01:06:46 ◼   ► I think it was went from 30 to 20, right? Yeah, I don't remember with it, but it's going down the trend

01:06:51 ◼   ► I did a little graph of it at one point so they can keep going down. It could be five bucks to 99 99 cents

01:06:56 ◼   ► It would be great if it could be free though

01:06:58 ◼   ► And if you think about why can't it be free like Apple doesn't need that money if you you know multiply 20 bucks times

01:07:04 ◼   ► Assume every single person who owns a Mac upgrades and see how much money that is

01:07:08 ◼   ► It's like you know five minutes of launch day iPhone revenue

01:07:12 ◼   ► Not that they're gonna you know we don't need the money whatever, but I think Penta version penetration is more important to them

01:07:18 ◼   ► Than the money they make from this so I think if they can make it free they should I'm not ready to say whether they

01:07:25 ◼   ► Will or not but presumably we'll find out at some point at some point

01:07:28 ◼   ► Before I have to publish my review that talks about what the pricing is because it would really be bad if a day before they

01:07:35 ◼   ► Release it is a and finally. Here's the pricing

01:07:37 ◼   ► That would be bad. I think well another problem

01:07:40 ◼   ► I mean, honestly, I don't really think

01:07:42 ◼   ► that the pricing of Mavericks really matters at all.

01:07:45 ◼   ► I think the reason why OS X adoption is not matching iOS

01:07:50 ◼   ► adoption is because computers are generally

01:07:53 ◼   ► in use longer than phones because of the pricing

01:07:56 ◼   ► models and subsidization and things like that.

01:07:59 ◼   ► And there's a whole lot of computers

01:08:01 ◼   ► that can't run Mountain Lion that Apple

01:08:03 ◼   ► has sold four years ago or whatever.

01:08:06 ◼   ► And they're still in use.

01:08:09 ◼   ► Apple computers have a pretty long useful life. As you know, if you've ever tried to

01:08:15 ◼   ► buy a cheap one because you can't afford the full-priced ones, and you find out that used

01:08:21 ◼   ► ones still sell for quite a bit of money, or if you've sold one after you've used it,

01:08:26 ◼   ► you realize, "Wow, I got a lot more money for that than I expected." Macs are in use

01:08:30 ◼   ► for a pretty long time after they're sold. Whereas iPhones, if Apple cuts off a two-year-old

01:08:38 ◼   ► iPhone model from compatibility, that's not that big of a problem since so many iPhones

01:08:44 ◼   ► are discarded after two years or sold for bargain basement, nothing, just some kind

01:08:51 ◼   ► of trade-in program.

01:08:53 ◼   ► This doesn't apply everywhere in the world, of course, but it certainly applies to a lot

01:08:57 ◼   ► of smartphone buyers.

01:09:03 ◼   ► For Apple to keep moving that bar up for hardware, I think with OS X, it restricts that a lot

01:09:09 ◼   ► more on the Mac side than on the iPhone side.

01:09:12 ◼   ► Plus, computers are a pain to upgrade.

01:09:15 ◼   ► I was just about to say the same thing.

01:09:17 ◼   ► And plus, they store a lot more critical data.

01:09:19 ◼   ► I mean, yes, you have photos on your iPhone, and if you're a regular person, that's

01:09:23 ◼   ► the only place they exist, except maybe iCloud.

01:09:26 ◼   ► But even beyond that, you have tax documents, you have financial documents, you have office

01:09:32 ◼   ► documents that you can't get rid of if you're a normal person.

01:09:35 ◼   ► And so the thought of that going wrong, I would expect, would prevent a normal person

01:09:41 ◼   ► from being very enthusiastic about upgrading.

01:09:44 ◼   ► Even though OS upgrades on Macs seem to go really well most of the time, it's still scary,

01:09:50 ◼   ► much scarier than on an iOS device.

01:09:52 ◼   ► It's not an appliance.

01:09:53 ◼   ► It's the same reason that people feel totally comfortable adding and removing apps on their

01:09:57 ◼   ► phone but don't feel totally comfortable adding and removing apps on their Mac.

01:10:00 ◼   ► and the Mac App Store has helped a lot with that,

01:10:02 ◼   ► except for the removing part,

01:10:03 ◼   ► but it's still a different world.

01:10:05 ◼   ► It's the little appliance, people upgrade iOS

01:10:07 ◼   ► and they just expect it to work.

01:10:08 ◼   ► Which if you think about it,

01:10:09 ◼   ► we know that it's not actually much less complicated

01:10:12 ◼   ► on the iPhone because it is basically

01:10:14 ◼   ► an OS X based operating system

01:10:16 ◼   ► that's doing all fancy stuff.

01:10:17 ◼   ► And the sandboxing, the restrictions really help

01:10:19 ◼   ► the upgrade process have work on something

01:10:22 ◼   ► that's in a known state,

01:10:23 ◼   ► if you're having jailbroken or something like that.

01:10:25 ◼   ► But it's still pretty complicated

01:10:26 ◼   ► and those guys must be sweating.

01:10:27 ◼   ► People just expect, oh, upgrade to iOS 6,

01:10:30 ◼   ► "Alright, tap this button, and their phone will be unusable for a while and they'll come back and it will work."

01:10:34 ◼   ► And if it didn't, people would be livid.

01:10:36 ◼   ► It's like, "This thing broke my phone."

01:10:37 ◼   ► Whereas, with a computer, people accept some amount of like, "Oh, this is going to be a big deal,

01:10:42 ◼   ► and I have to set aside a whole day to do it, and upgrade's going to..."

01:10:45 ◼   ► I mean, even we do.

01:10:47 ◼   ► I mean, I certainly do, because I know, I mean, granted, I'm a special case,

01:10:50 ◼   ► but like, I know that I'm going to have to like rebuild all my stuff in user-local probably,

01:10:54 ◼   ► or I'll want to rebuild it because it would be a good time to upgrade stuff.

01:10:56 ◼   ► and things that link to shared libraries that aren't there or incompatible, weird esoteric

01:11:01 ◼   ► stuff.

01:11:02 ◼   ► But even just making sure all my apps are updated before I upgrade and doing all that,

01:11:06 ◼   ► looking for any apps that are going to not work with the new version and stuff like that,

01:11:11 ◼   ► that's a pain.

01:11:13 ◼   ► When I do iOS upgrades, I don't do them.

01:11:14 ◼   ► I publish my review and then I don't upgrade my main machine for sometimes weeks or months

01:11:18 ◼   ► after just because I don't want to think about having to do that and I'd rather just wait

01:11:22 ◼   ► for the applications to get updated.

01:11:24 ◼   ► So that is a big barrier too, but I think the $29 just doesn't help.

01:11:29 ◼   ► But like I said, I'm not sure if going lower is worth doing if you can't go all the way

01:11:36 ◼   ► free.

01:11:37 ◼   ► Rob Matheson in the chat room looked it up and said, $29 for Snow Leopard 19, Snow Leopard

01:11:41 ◼   ► in line, and $19 for Mountain Lion.

01:11:43 ◼   ► So if you're going to follow the pattern, it would be one more $19 release and then

01:11:48 ◼   ► down to $9.

01:11:49 ◼   ► But who knows?

01:11:50 ◼   ► They don't follow any patterns.

01:11:51 ◼   ► We learned that from cat modifier cat.

01:11:56 ◼   ► And we're done.

01:11:57 ◼   ► That's it.

01:11:59 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to our two sponsors, Optia and Hover.

01:12:03 ◼   ► And we will see you guys next week.

01:12:07 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:12:10 ◼   ► Now the show is over.

01:12:12 ◼   ► They didn't even mean to begin.

01:12:14 ◼   ► Because it was accidental.

01:12:17 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental.

01:12:20 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:12:25 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (it was accidental)

01:12:28 ◼   ► It was accidental (accidental)

01:12:31 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:12:36 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:12:40 ◼   ► @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:12:44 ◼   ► So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:12:49 ◼   ► ♪ Anti-Marco, Armin, S-I-R-A-C ♪

01:12:54 ◼   ► ♪ USA, Syracuse, it's accidental ♪

01:12:58 ◼   ► ♪ It's accidental ♪

01:13:00 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't mean to ♪

01:13:02 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:13:03 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:13:05 ◼   ► ♪ Tech broadcast so long ♪

01:13:08 ◼   ► - I haven't lost a letterpress game in like 30 games,

01:13:12 ◼   ► so I need some new opponents.

01:13:14 ◼   ► - Oh, you're not gonna get to somebody like that from me.

01:13:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, did you give up, Casey?

01:13:18 ◼   ► I just kept I'll play you again. No, I just haven't played letterpress in a while. Not because I don't like it

01:13:24 ◼   ► I just haven't thought about it.

01:13:26 ◼   ► Casey is glad that the letterpress application does not keep records.

01:13:30 ◼   ► Oh god, you have no idea. I would be like one in 394. You've never won against me Casey.

01:13:36 ◼   ► I don't doubt it, but I did not. I'm keeping track because I'm always rooting for you now. I'm like this is gonna be the game Casey.

01:13:43 ◼   ► You're gonna make it happen like months ago.

01:13:46 ◼   ► months ago you came close and like oh this is it this is the game he's gonna do it and then you

01:13:50 ◼   ► haven't come close since and it's just been so bad i'm so bad i remember that game and i was

01:13:55 ◼   ► oh i was on cloud nine and then right back to earth i hope you're still recording

01:14:00 ◼   ► uh now i'm getting like nervous shakes i gotta add a topic to the notes that we didn't get to

01:14:10 ◼   ► to this week I learned from my vacation strange ways that real people use

01:14:15 ◼   ► iPhones oh I'm already interested don't don't don't get started because we'll go

01:14:19 ◼   ► for another two hours but I'm already interested what do we think about titles

01:14:23 ◼   ► a box in a strap what was that about like they have the pebble the stupid

01:14:28 ◼   ► pebble oh have you seen a lot of those in person I find them so I've seen one

01:14:31 ◼   ► in person and I could not believe how nerdy and and how large it was it was

01:14:36 ◼   ► It's like it's from the 80s. It's like rubber gaskets on it like that yellow Walkman. I feel like yeah, exactly

01:14:43 ◼   ► I feel like

01:14:46 ◼   ► You're right the the era of most watches has so passed us by like

01:14:50 ◼   ► It would have been awesome if we could have a smartwatch in 1991, but now yeah, but now like who I?

01:14:58 ◼   ► Don't know who's wearing watches

01:15:00 ◼   ► I mean

01:15:00 ◼   ► Well the people like I thought the people who got the pebble would stop wearing it and I see them and they're still wearing it

01:15:05 ◼   ► So I believe that it is performing some useful function for them.

01:15:09 ◼   ► And that function is probably not telling them the time because you've got to jiggle

01:15:13 ◼   ► the stupid thing to make the backlight go on so you can read the damn screen.

01:15:17 ◼   ► All I know is I just want a Dick Tracy watch.

01:15:20 ◼   ► Even though it would be terrible in every way, I just want a Dick Tracy watch.

01:15:24 ◼   ► Is that so much to ask?

01:15:25 ◼   ► Well, here's the problem with the Dick Tracy watch.

01:15:28 ◼   ► When you see Dick Tracy using it, what you see is what he sees on the watch, which is

01:15:33 ◼   ► some attractive person in a head-on shot. What they see is the inside of his nose.

01:15:37 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:15:38 ◼   ► And what you don't realize is that actually using a Dick Tracy watch would just be like

01:15:41 ◼   ► nose hair vision.

01:15:42 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:15:43 ◼   ► I didn't think it had video. I thought it was just audio.

01:15:45 ◼   ► Maybe it is just audio, but I'm saying like the view of the person, that person is like

01:15:49 ◼   ► in a studio standing right in front of the thing. It's going head-on right into them.

01:15:53 ◼   ► They're making eye contact with Dick Tracy somehow, and Dick Tracy is showing them the

01:15:57 ◼   ► underside of his chin and nose.